Arc 1: Chapter 26: Unhallowed
“Something’s wrong,” Catrin said, as we approached the village in the hour preceding dawn.
I had noticed the same. There were no guards at the gate, as there’d been when I’d arrived with the doctor. The streets of the lakeside community seemed quiet. Empty.
Out over the lake, the black towers of the Falconer castle jutted from a shifting haze of fog, cast in its own eerie glow against the black horizon. A ghost castle, brooding and watchful.
I wondered if the Baron was watching us even then.
“Maybe something’s happening at the keep,” I said.
“Or maybe your hunter friends killed everyone,” Catrin suggested, half joking.
I grunted a non-reply. I didn’t think the doctor was that dangerous, but it paid to be ready for anything.
We approached the village cautiously, but openly. Tiny blue lights flitted around us, illuminating the overcast gloom. They giggled like little bells and chased one another, toying with the frayed hem of my cloak or flitting in and out of my raised hood. They played with Catrin’s hair too, though she swatted at them, half-annoyed and half charmed. They’d followed us from Irn Bale’s manor.
“You remind them of the Gilded City,” Irn Bale had said. “They are fickle creatures, but perhaps they will give you some comfort. Remember, Sir Knight, there is beauty in this world still worth fighting for.”
I wish I could believe it.
We passed through the gates, and no one challenged us. It wasn’t until we were in the village square that we found anyone.