Doubt

If there ever was a night that felt mystical, this was it. Darkness has a way of making the everyday seem supernatural in any case, of twisting ordinary objects into new forms in the mind’s eye, of hiding unseen things in patches of deepest night that would be mere shadows in the daytime. But on this night in particular, the moon was full and beaming down through the trees. Its rays were further distorted by the mists that played about the uneven floor and coiled around trees, pervasive and menacing all by themselves, like demons frolicking amongst the flora.

Heavy hoofbeats thudded methodically into the branch-strewn turf. The noise was deadened by the cloying mist, sapping all of the life and energy out of it. The beast’s massively horned head shook ponderously from side to side, as if trying to dislodge the phantom tendrils that trailed in the wake of its antlers. Nostrils flared and lips flapped as the creature gave vent to a snort of unease.

“Easy, Algiz,” said Eric, reaching down from his place on the elk’s back to pat his mount’s flank comfortingly.

If truth be told, he could have done with some reassurance himself. He shared the elk’s disquiet. Nights like this were portentous. Who knew what could happen at such a time? Anything was possible and he would not merely be a background character in someone else’s story. Not any more, at least.

But he needed answers. Whatever malaise his current surroundings had inflicted upon him was insignificant when compared to the restlessness he had experienced in recent months. Questions about past choices and future uncertainties chased one another through his anxiety-ridden mind and, when queries involving those two aspects of time needed to be resolved, between dusk and dawn was the only period to address them.

He came upon his destination all at once. One moment he was gently rocking back and forth to compensate for Algiz’s unhurried gait, passing between trees with no notable means of differentiation. The next, the great elk had halted as the mists parted to reveal a fallen forest giant. The great tree had toppled long ago and, over time, the forest had adapted to its new orientation. Plants and creepers grew up its sides. Moss and other bryophytes spreads across exposed sections and critters dwelled in its many nooks and crannies. The great tree had evolved a new ecosystem all of its own and played host to a variety of sentient and insentient lifeforms, including the ones that Eric had travelled so far to seek out.

Their abode was a cottage nestled in the roots of the fallen tree. So tightly entwined was the dwelling, it was as if it had grown amongst the roots underground and only been exposed when the forest giant toppled. Clearly that had not been the case but Eric was baffled as to how else the roots of a dead tree could have wrapped the cottage so tightly in their embrace. Still, how the cottage had come to be was one of the lesser wonders of its occupants.

“I won’t be long,” Eric promised as he slid from the elk’s back.

Once again Eric patted his flank. The contact was more for himself than Algiz. There was something reassuring about the great beast’s bulk. Then, on silent footsteps, Eric tentatively approached the cottage.

Light flickered from one of its downstairs windows. Eric was not surprised. It seemed that, no matter the hour, at least one of the occupants was always awake. Above the doorway, a horse’s skull gazed sightlessly down at him, the moon’s glow making pits of of its eye sockets and giving it a ghostly pallor.

Eric shifted his javelin into the hand that also bore his shield and reached out to rap armoured knuckles on the worn woodwork of the purple door.

“Come in!”

The call came before his mailed fist made contact with the wood and he paused, caught in the indecision of whether to rap on it or not. He decided against it, even thought a part of him was screaming out to complete the action he had initiated. Despite his armour, he was sure he had made no sound. Those inside had known he was coming, possibly even before he had decided to do so, and it wouldn’t do to upset anyone who wielded such powers.

He did as he had been bidden, pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold. Light spilled out across him, exchanging the moon’s pale illumination for the warm glow of the fire within. Something was boiling in a worn cauldron above it.

“You’re just in time.”

Eric glanced towards the speaker; a tall, slender woman with a voluminous mass of flame red hair. Her form was clad in an off-the-shoulder number, tight of bodice and loose of skirt. Her feet were bare. Indeed, the only other thing she was wearing was a knowing look upon her strikingly beautiful features.

“In time for what, Zorya?” Eric asked.

“Your arrival,” came a cracked voice.

Eric turned to the room’s main concession to furniture, a rustic table, at which was sat a wizened crone, bent with apparent age. She was clad in rags and bones and yellow eyes stared unblinkingly out of a face tinged green.

Eric could have enquired further, but then he remembered the call to enter. They had predicted his arrival and arrive he had.

“Danica,” he said instead, nodding his head in the second witch’s direction. “Where’s Antonia?”

“Abed,” said Zorya.

“Not her time yet,” Danica added.

The duo fell silent. Over the crackle of the fire, Eric could make out the audible snores of someone deep in slumber.

“I don’t sound like that,” Zorya said. She glanced uncertainly at Danica. “Do I?”

Danica ignored her and favoured Eric with her gaze. “To what do we owe the pleasure or your company?”

Eric considered that the witch’s face contained no evidence of any pleasure whatsoever but held his tongue.

“Do you not know?”

Zorya laughed. “Maybe we do; maybe we don’t.”

“Can’t give too many spoilers,” Danica added. “It ruins the mysticism.”

Eric shook his head. Conversing with the witches was a riddle in itself.

“I’m having doubts,” he admitted.

He glanced from Danica to Zorya. The latter still wore that omniscient look on her face and he wondered how much she already knew and how much pleasure she was deriving simply from hearing him admit his faults

“About what?” asked Danica.

Eric took a deep breath. “About my decision.”

“To come here?” Zorya’s smile was mocking Eric, he was sure. The Dawn Witch wanted to hear him say it.

“My decision to choose the Leshavult.”

There. He’d said it. The doubt that had been plaguing his thoughts was out in the open, spoken to two of the key followers of Leshavit, no less. There was no going back now. All he could do was brace himself for their reaction, their outrage, and their hatred.

None came.

“You feel as if Dranyer influenced your choice?” Zorya asked.

Eric cast his mind back to the events by the lake. Dranyer, flickering between forms, her trickster nature on full display. And yet she had been very clear on one thing; everything she had done up to that point, every time she had been involved in events, had been for nothing more than to make him think about things. No, the decision had been his alone.

“I don’t think so” he admitted, “I’m just not sure I made the right choice.”

“What makes you say that?”

Eric’s composure broke.

“I thought everything would settle down after I decided!” he wailed. “All my life I wanted to be a knight and fight for the Commonwealth. I didn’t even consider anything else until Dranyer intervened. I spent a year of my life in turmoil, striving to reach the same state of certainty I once had. I made my choice thinking that would be an end to it and yet since then I’ve been going over events in my head on repeat wondering it if was the correct one. What if I should have stayed true to my path and remained aligned with the Commonwealth? What if the Dominion would have been a better fit? How do I know if I’ve made the right choice?”

His outburst complete, Eric lapsed into silence, his voice giving way to the crackle of the fire and the snores of Antonia once more.

Neither witch responded. Zorya glanced at Danica, eyebrows raised. Eric followed the look but could read nothing in the Dusk Witch’s inscrutable features.

Shouts sounded from without, specific words rendered indistinct by the thick mist. Eric hesitated. The witches did not. Danica rose suddenly and, one by one, they pushed past the knight and out through the door. A staccato clattering preceded the homely figure of Antonia, her round face flushed, dragging her sandals onto her feet as she stumbled down the stairs. In one movement she hoisted the cauldron by its straps from its stand over the fire and settled it across her back, seemingly unfazed by the blistering heat of the metal. Then she too was out of the door, leaving Eric all alone and feeling quite foolish in the witches’ cottage.

“Wait for me,” he said, softly and to himself, before he brandished his javelin and shield in readiness and darted out into the night.

The scene that greeted him could only be described as chaos. Coloured lights coalesced around the witches as they gathered arcane energies about themselves and these, combined with the blazing moonlight above, served to bathe the tableau in an unnaturally eerie luminescence.

Across the open ground before the witches’ cottage, two figures were charging. Two figures with whom Eric was all too familiar.

The one in the lead was slender and moved with a careful grace, light on his feet. A sword of some craftsmanship was clasped in one hand whilst the other was being used to steady the most magnificent hat (even if its wearer did say so himself!) that rose majestically above his handsome, moustachioed features.

Just behind him, his broad, armoured form made all the weightier by the warhammer he wielded in both hands, lumbered a formidable warrior. His menacing presence was undermined somewhat by the bird helmet that shielded his skull and the spread of feathers that sprouted from his shoulders like some demented peacock’s mating display.

“Baron von Fancyhat?” muttered Eric to himself, puzzled. “Sir Poppycock?”

And yet for all his confusion, there was no mistaking the two men. The former had been his master for the majority of his life and the latter had been coming and going from the baron’s estate for as long as Eric could remember. And yet their presence here, this deep in the woods, and particularly at this time, simply didn’t make sense.

He adjusted his gaze to the tree line and spotted a rangy figure sighting down the barrel of a long rifle.

“Flintlock,” Eric gasped. “No.”

He followed the weapon’s trajectory to where Danica was standing and was about to shout a warning before he heard a yell of frustration from Flintlock. The marksman had lowered his gun and was fiddling urgently with the mechanisms. For her part, the Dusk Witch remained mostly still. Her hands were held out before her and her fingers were pinching the air as if pulling at invisible threads.

“An apple, kind sir?”

The jolly call seemed out of place amidst the unfolding conflict. He turned to see Antonia, arm extended, holding out a shining red orb. It certainly looked enticing. Clearly Sir Poppycock thought so, too, as he ambled towards the Noonday Witch, warhammer lowered. When he was several feet from her, Antonia threw the apple towards the knight, who dropped his weapon and snatched the fruit out of the air, immediately taking a sizeable bite.

The effect was instantaneous. The big man doubled over, retching violently, and, when he looked up, the glare he gave the witch was pure venom. He scooped the warhammer from the turf and charged in one swift movement, bringing it overhead and down in one violent swing. With a speed unexpected of someone of her stature, Antonia brought her cauldron up to deflect the blow before striking out at the suddenly vulnerable knight. Sir Poppycock took the cauldron full in the face with a cry that was a mixture of surprise and anger.

His shock did not last for long and he turned his stumble into a second strike, coming in a wide swing. This time, Antonia was not so quick to defend herself and she took the strike in her side, knocking her to the ground.

“Antonia!”

Zorya’s call attracted Eric’s attention and he watched as the Dawn Witch, already battling with Baron von Fancyhat, glanced her sister’s way. Zorya’s eyes flashed green. In response, the cauldron by Antonia’s side exploded, covering both witch and knight in its viscous contents. As the debris settled, both combatants lay prone and unmoving on the floor.

Eric turned his attention back to Zorya. The baron and the witch were exchanging blows, the latter seemingly unperturbed by the former’s weapon. She fought with her bare hands, slashing at the armoured baron with her sharp nails. And that wasn’t right, either, Eric considered. The baron was one of the greatest swordsmen he had ever seen and yet Zorya was matching or else besting him whist also influencing conflict elsewhere.

“My hero!”

That cry was a shock, more so than anything else that had gone before. It was a call dredged up from the past. More specifically, Eric’s past. And there he was, a younger version of himself at any rate, charging from the tree line towards the conflict, wooden sword drawn for what little good it would do, ready to sacrifice himself for his master, ready to prove himself worthy of a knighthood that always seemed on the verge of being granted.

Zorya was holding the baron off, but Young Eric’s arrival would surely tilt that balance. And where would that leave his older self? At the mercy of the Commonwealth once again? Under the baron’s thumb with no certainty of his future? More empty promises with no resolution?

In that moment he was taken back to his younger self. A younger self desperate for approval. A younger self who didn’t know any better. That was then; this was now. Now he did know better and he had no intention of going back.

Almost of its own accord, without a conscious intervention from his thoughts, his hand hefted his enchanted javelin. The weapon felt good in his hand, like it belonged there, like it was a part of him. And, in that moment, he knew that he wouldn’t miss.

With a short skip he launched the javelin. Its flight was true. Young Eric didn’t even register its approach. So focussed was he on reaching his master that he continued blindly on his chosen path. The javelin intersected it, taking the squire in the side.

The boy that Eric had once been crumpled and faded, leaving no body. Eric stared. Then he looked to Zorya. The witch was no longer fighting the baron. Flintlock was no longer lurking at the tree line. Sir Poppycock was no longer lying wounded on the floor. Nor, for that matter, was Antonia.

“What happened?” he asked.

Zorya grunted as she retrieved Eric’s javelin from where it was impaled in a tree and returned it to him.

“You made a choice.”

“But Sir Poppycock,” Eric managed. “Antonia!”

Zorya cocked her head to one side, indicating for Eric to listen. He did so and could make out the unmistakable sound of the Noonday Witch’s snores emanating from the cottage.

“You tricked me!”

Danica cackled. “Like Dranyer did? We didn’t influence your choices any more than she.”

Eric’s mind whirled. “Why?” he managed at last.

“To teach you,” said Zorya, smiling.

“The lesson being?”

Zorya laughed. “You don’t just choose once,” she explained, laying a gentle hand on the knight’s shoulder. “You have to keep on choosing every day.”

She stepped past the stunned Eric, heading back towards the cottage. Danica fell into step beside her, her shuffling steps a stark contrast to the Dawn Witch’s sashaying gait.

Zorya glanced over her shoulder, the smile still on her lips.

“Keep choosing, Eric the Enlightened,” she called. “Only by doing so can you, over time, truly eradicate the doubt.”