If it had been only a few weeks earlier, he would have lurched back screaming for his mother, but in the decimated and unrecognizable town that his home had become, he’d learned to control such instincts. His hands clutched the edge of the carriage, but he stayed where he was, pulling his gaze from the woman and toward the town hall. The smell of warm bread baking thrust itself into his nostrils and made all other thought impossible.
Abandoning all attempts at covert approach, Eriloyn leapt up and sprinted for the door of the Council building, the smell of bread luring him on, as if he were a hungry trout and there was a hook jammed in his snout. The huge oak doors of the building loomed over him but were slightly ajar. Eriloyn looked over his shoulder, but the street was silent.
The town had not been silent for a long time: screams, wails and people begging for their lives. He’d prayed for silence during those horrible days, and yet, now it was here, he was terrified by it. He turned and slipped into the building.
As a young boy, Eriloyn had gone with his father to pay his taxes in this building. It had seemed huge and beautiful back then: high oak beams, blazing fires, and people bustling around on important matters. Now only the oak beams remained. Chairs were overturned, books ripped from the shelves, and the remains of the fire from the great hearth scattered everywhere.
Eriloyn walked on haltingly, feeling his breath choking in his throat, and his heart beating in his ears. As terrified as he was, the hunger was greater.
He stumbled and staggered through the broken room, down hallways smeared with blood and other terrible things. Maybe it was his imagination, but he could hear voices; and not the voices he’d been used to in recent weeks. These were not screams; they were of genuine laughter . . . maybe even children like him.
Eriloyn’s feet began to quicken all by themselves. He slipped and slid down the stairs of the hall into the lower floors. Now the smell of fresh baking was overwhelming, and already in his mind’s eye he could see other orphans playing, both hands full of warm bread.
The tread of a stair broke under his foot, trapping his leg for a moment. With a sob Eriloyn tore it free. The pain of the wood ripping into his flesh was a distant thing to the hunger. He was almost passing out from both of these by the time he made it down to where the kitchens of the town hall were. It had once produced bread for the poor and the needy, now surely it was doing it again.
For a moment the boy was confused. He stood there in the wreck of the kitchen, blood pouring down his leg, stomach cramped with hunger, and looked at the broken crockery lying on the floor. Everything was turned over and rotten. The hearth itself was snapped in two, the great stone smashed as if by an iron fist.
“Quite the sight isn’t it,” a voice hissed behind him.
Eriloyn spun about, but he couldn’t see anyone there—only the shadows in doorways he was too terrified to enter. His skin was crawling, and the darkness was now creeping into the edges of his vision. Fingers were creeping over his skin, and he couldn’t find the strength to rip himself away from them. Terror that he had been fighting off for weeks flooded over him, like an ice-cold tide that he could no longer hold back.
“Give in. Give up. It’s all right to surrender,” the voice at his back whispered into his ear. “You’re tired. Rest for a while.”
It made complete sense to do so. He’d been running and terrified for a very long time, so he listened to the voice and fell into its cold embrace.
For the longest time that was all there was, but Eriloyn could not hide in unknowingness for long. Slowly, his eyelids fluttered open. He hurt everywhere, but his leg ached worst of all. Suddenly the need for food was not as important as he had thought it was. Survival now loomed large.
All of this flashed through the boy’s mind even before he took in his surroundings. He’d made a promise to his dad to survive, and he had to keep that promise. So slowly he levered himself upright, feeling the grind of hard metal and straw under his palms. He looked straight into the eyes of a girl. She couldn’t have been any older than he was, and she had long matted dark hair, blue eyes and a massive bruise that covered half of her face. Her gaze, when it locked with his, was empty, though, as if the light had been snuffed out behind them.
Eriloyn would have smiled in normal circumstances, but here and now he merely nodded. Looking down, something caught his eye, a gleam of metal. Shackles. He and the girl were shackled together by the ankles. Tilting his head, the boy saw that they were not alone; other children, silent and huddled, ran in a line behind the girl. They were in the basement, and there was no longer any smell of bread in the air; there was only the odor of frightened children.
Eriloyn pushed his hair out of his eyes and tugged on the chain. It was pointless, he knew that, but he had to try.
“Don’t bother,” the girl whispered to him, her voice hoarse. “He’ll be here soon enough. You’re the last they needed.”
A little voice in Eriloyn’s head was screaming in horror, but somehow he stuffed it down with a hard swallow. He turned his head and saw that night had come on while he’d been wrapped in unconsciousness. The night was the worst. Something about the darkness gave the geists bravery.
While that thought possessed him, a very real man made an appearance. Unlike those men left in Waikein, he appeared well fed, well cared for, and with not an ounce of pity for the children. They began to sob, but quietly, as the man unhitched the chain from the wall and began to lead them away.
Eriloyn however would not go quietly—not with his father’s last words ringing in his head.
As the man wordlessly swung away to tug the captors upstairs, the boy dashed forward, throwing himself at the stocky man’s legs. He was young, small and poorly fed, so the adult swung at him, knocking him down as if he were nothing more than a fly. The tunnel seemed to spin, but Eriloyn felt the nameless girl’s hands on his shoulders, guiding and holding him up.
“It’ll be over soon,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.” Her damp hand clutched onto his. It seemed to be her mantra.
Eriloyn tried to clear his head, struggling to hold himself up. The town hall flashed past him in a series of blurry images. The chain between the children dragged them onward.
Now they were outside. Night was about the city, but there were lights. By the time Eriloyn came back to himself, their captor had reattached their chain to one on the side of the town hall.
They were not alone. Eriloyn swallowed hard. He had not seen so many citizens of Waikein since before the geists came, and now they were all here. It should have gladdened his heart that so many of his living fellows were in one place, instead it only filled him with an abiding dread.
Once he pulled his gaze away from the assembly, it traveled naturally to the man that stood before them. He knew him, though he had seldom seen him this close. It was the mayor of Waikein. A tall man, still well dressed despite the situation, his red and silver hair immaculately styled as if barbers had somehow survived the chaos. The mayor stood on a raised platform, and from where he stood Eriloyn could see that he was smiling. However, it was not a smile that would soothe any fears. When he pulled back his lips, he revealed rows of sharp, pointed teeth—as if they had been filed to a predatory gleam.
The girl holding his hand squeezed it once more, her empty eyes following the mayor as he waved at the crowd. Eriloyn tugged at the chain, but it was tight and strong.
“Survivors of Waikein”—the mayor’s voice carried over the heads of the citizens and echoed off the hollow buildings that surrounded the square—“I am here to offer you salvation, and a way to keep yourselves alive.”
Eriloyn tilted his head; there was something strange about the air around the man’s head. It was bending slightly, and there was an odd smell coming off him, something sharp that hurt his nostrils.
“Do you smell that?” he whispered to the nameless girl, but she shook her head.
The odor overwhelmed him, and the boy gagged on it, not understanding how she could be so lost to the world as to not be affected by it.
No one else in the town square seemed able to smell it either, because they were actually drawing closer to the mayor as he spoke. Could they not see his teeth?
“We have to live with the geists now.” His voice was soothing and sounded reasonable. “The Order is all gone, and we must make our own way. All the undead want is small sacrifices, little offerings, and they will let us live in peace.”
Again Eriloyn knew that only a few weeks earlier would have made a world of difference; everyone knew
