Page 90 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
‘Come on, before the weather changes.’ Emrys moved closer to help but I ignored his chivalrous offer.
The animal shook its head in annoyance as I mounted, shifting beneath my weight, but I was thankful for my trousers as I settled, and watched Emrys mount his own horse in one effortless motion.
The boy moved off, compelling us to follow down the rest of the path and into the vast muddy lands. I patted the horse’s neck as it resisted slightly, uncertain of the path. The wind picked up, forcing me to turn my face out of it, glancing behind to see the imposing structure of Fairfax Manor in the distance for the first time.
A grand structure of stone, bold and out of place in the enormity of the nature that surrounded it. I could also see the extent of the damage the fire had caused. What Emrys had warned me about.
Half the building was gone, hollow and dark. What little remained clawed up towards the sky in sharp charred points.
The devastation shocked me, and yet the lord inside pretended there was nothing wrong with his home. Oblivious to the scent of smoke even now. Emrys followed my gaze, a troubled expression on his face. As if the madness of the old man’s grief hadn’t missed his attention either.
‘Lord Fairfax knows you.’ I was curious to know just how deep his connection with higher society went before the uprising.
‘I was at the Institute with his son,’ Emrys replied distantly as he returned his attention to the mud path, steering his mare round a deep divot.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked, despite knowing from the gloom that lingered around Fairfax the tale didn’t have a happy ending.
‘I killed him.’
‘What?’ I almost slipped in my saddle. Unsure if I’d misheard him or he’d lost his mind. ‘Does Fairfax know?’
‘That his son became one of the dark fiends he worshipped? No. I saved the old bastard that at least.’ His response was devoid of emotion, and where that could have pointed to cruelty in some, I’d learnt it pointed to a depth of emotion in Emrys.
A hesitance lingered in his voice, cautious of sharing. As if these events had taken place in a different lifetime. To a different Emrys.
‘Richard wasn’t as strong as he thought he was. He believed that he could be smarter than the darkness, use its power against it. He didn’t stand a chance.’ A bitterness accompanied those final words.
I considered the troubled profile of him, this lonely, strange being.
We manoeuvred the steep land and came to the opening of the woods, the trees bleached of colour, their branches likesharp claws tangling with each other high above. No leaves on the ground, and the smell of rot was prominent in the barren surroundings.
He’d made me forget with his words and attention that there was a war happening. That there was an Emrys long before he strode across my path. An Emrys with secrets and a past. Perhaps even darker than my own.
I fixed my gaze ahead, unsure if I was more worried about what those things could be, or how little they bothered me.
‘It’s easy to misjudge how well a being can fight the temptation of the dark.’ Emrys’s words were softer with caution, his gaze straight ahead. Monitoring the dark press of trees for a lingering threat, but I could see the stiffness in his jaw and hear coldness in his voice.
‘Not me.’ No, because what could it offer me? This world had already taken everything and that was the dark thought that burdened me.
Emrys was silent.
We pressed deeper into the forest, the horses protesting as they stepped over large roots and maneuvered the undulating trail that was barely visible. The trees were green despite the winter season, and thick mud covered the ground. There was no evidence of the darkness consuming this earth, despite it devouring it so viciously on the other side around Paxton Fields.
‘Fairfax seems open to our interference here,’ I observed.
‘I wouldn’t find too much comfort in that. He’s half mad, talking to the dead and telling the servants his son has returned,’ he commented wryly.
‘Grief is a potent monster.’ A demon all its own and one that could never be exorcised.
Emrys looked at me with that dark knowing gaze, his lips parting, but no words left him.
‘Here you are, my lord,’ the boy called, jumping down from his mount. He fixed his cap as he crossed the path, ducking into the thicket to indicate a narrower and more overgrown passage. There was stone hidden beneath the moss – ruins of what used to stand there. The remains of metal gates merged with the great trunk of an oak tree. ‘The trail is too narrow now for the horses.’
‘Thank you,’ Emrys replied, flicking a silver coin to the boy, who caught it and rushed back to his horse, turning swiftly and guiding it back down the precarious path. Clearly he’d decided we wouldn’t need a guide back.
Emrys dismounted with a smooth kick, landing easily. I followed with a little less grace. The horses moved aside to graze on the grass that protruded from the uneven stone ground as I ducked under a low hanging branch to reach Emrys’s side.
There was a worn, cobbled footpath concealed under a blanket of moss. Through the thicket, the remains of a manor house, or the ruins of what used to be one, sat deep in the woods before us. Statues of saints watched from the darkness between the press of trees.
