No one shoved a sword into her hand. That was to be expected, given her disability, but no one else seemed ready for battle, either. Hobblefoot and Edvard gave her a guided tour of the old temple that was to be her new home, but none of it included secret armories or plans for violent insurrection.
Perhaps that was only because they didn't trust her yet. Belle asked about it warily, guessing that they would send their new recruits on test missions that would gradually pull them in deeper and deeper, to the point that they couldn't betray their fellow conspirators without putting their own necks in the noose. At least, that was how it was in the books she had read.
That was when Edvard Sorenson told her the meaning of the circular tattoo on his face. "It's called the traitor's penny. A coin for the ferryman for someone who won't die with a whole corpse."
"Master Sorenson took part in the Pretender's War," explained Hobblefoot. The honorific was used universally as a form of address in the empire, where every citizen was due respect as master or mistress of their own self. "Fifteen years ago, one of the exiles from Aluli was smuggled out in a plot to assassinate the Dark Lord and restore their rightful rulers to the throne."
"My master being one of the conspirators," said Edvard. "We ambushed the Dark Lord when he was in Sweetport for the midwinter festival. Everyone whipped their swords out from under their cloaks and..." He sighed. "As you can imagine, it was a bloodbath. And not the Dark Lord's blood, either."
"Master Sorenson was spared due to his youth," said Hobblefoot.
"The Dark Lord offered me a pardon if I would turn and give evidence."
"But you didn't," Belle guessed, looking at the mark under his eye.
"Become one of the Dark Lord's running dogs? Never." Edvard smiled grimly. "I was sentenced to three years, but was released after one for good behavior and work hours."
Belle nodded. "But you didn't give up on overthrowing the Dark Lord?"
"I would have. But," he sighed. "But it wasn't so simple. With this brand on my face, no one dared hire me. So I challenged the Dark Lord..."
"And was appointed the curator of this place for his troubles," said Hobblefoot. They had made the laborious climb to the top of the bell tower, giving them a bird's eye view of the city. Now he gestured broadly, indicating the old temple laid out below them.
"I don't understand." Belle took in the view. "It sounds like he took pity on you...?"
"Look there." Hobblefoot pointed downward. "That's what people call 'Hanged Man's Gate'."
The old temple complex extended in the back all the way to the city wall. A gatehouse offered passage through the wall itself. For as long as anyone could remember, explained Edvard, it had been used to transport the bodies of the unclaimed dead to the burial ground outside the city wall. It wasn't only criminals and traitors who were sent out that way; some were the remains of unidentified strangers, or those outcast from their families, or without living kin.
"This is haunted ground," said Edvard. "Doubly cursed. Once by the heavens, once by the earth. It was used as a mass grave when the kingdom fell, and then again during the Pretender's War. My master was buried here."
No wonder he felt haunted. But as he explained it, it was more than a figure of speech. Though heaven had abandoned it, traces of divinity lingered, and the walls had become a conduit for lesser spirits. After sunset, the temple slid partway into a netherworld where voices and images of the dead clung to the living, flaunting their ghastly wounds or crying their heart-wrenching cries. It was enough to inspire anyone to a vow of peace.
"As long as the empire rests on a foundation of violence, the cycle will continue," said Edvard. "Suppose someone, somehow, kills the Dark Lord. Why not? Time is long and chance is fickle. Then what? The next person on the throne just painted a target on himself and so it goes. No. We need to put an end to the whole idea of bowing to the strongest."
Hobblefoot scoffed. "May as well say you want to end life itself. It's always been like that. Power is the only reality."
"If you believe that, why are you here at all?" Edvard had the tired air of someone who had asked the same question before without receiving a satisfactory answer.
Belle was curious to hear what he would say. "You said the Dark Lord was the flaw at the heart of the empire. But maybe Edvard is right, and someone who could defeat him would be just as bad."
Hobblefoot shook his head. He leaned on his staff, face lowered and hidden behind his hair. He said softly, "I am here... I am here because I want someone to prove me wrong."
There was such a weight of grief behind his words that Belle couldn't breathe, struck as she was with a desperate urge to comfort him. Without realizing it, she had already taken a step forward to lay her hand over his. "If I can help, I will. I swear it."
Even Edvard had fallen silent.
Hobblefoot had gone still under Belle's touch. He let out his breath and said in a whisper, "Then stay the night and take what inspiration you can from the dead."
Belle nodded, letting him draw back without protest, breaking their moment of connection.
After they shared a simple supper of bread, cheese, and apples, Belle was assigned to one of the old priests' cells. It was small and bare, and she had little to add to it, when all her worldly possessions fit into one bag. The wax candle given to her felt like a luxury, as was the book she had borrowed from the temple library — a short treatise on ghosts by an author Belle had never heard of. She was left alone to read, meditate, sleep, or wander as she pleased.
It felt like an initiation, she thought. She would face the ghosts and her memories with no weapon but whatever strength she carried in her heart. Reading usually helped her calm her mind, but tonight the words seemed to swim before her eyes, and she couldn't piece together the meaning.
Night had fallen. Eyes heavy, Belle felt herself nodding off. A splat of something wet jerked her back to wakefulness. She opened her eyes to see the page in front of her marked with a drop of fresh blood.
"What?" Belle rocked back, nearly falling off her stool. She grabbed for it clumsily and barely managed to keep her balance. She tilted her head reluctantly to look up at the ceiling. A dark stain loomed overhead... growing and spreading as she watched. Another drop of blood splattered onto the book. Offended despite her fear, she snatched up the book and hugged it to her chest. "Hey!"
She edged warily towards the door. She clutched the book close, keeping it between her and the bleeding ceiling, as if the written word was a talisman to shield her from evil. She backed into the curtain that hung across the doorway. A temple curtain was meant to have blessings woven into the fabric, but any blessing had long faded or been revoked. The cell suddenly felt like a trap and Belle couldn't stay a moment longer. She took another step.
Darkness enfolded her. Not a sliver of light remained. Belle reached out one hand in a panic to find that the curtain was gone. Damn. Why hadn't she picked up the candle instead of the book? Even so, she clung to the flimsy volume for comfort, however illusory. Cold air flowed across her face, ruffling her hair and clothes. She turned, hand still outstretched, shuffling a few steps in each direction. She couldn't sense the walls around her anymore. The stifling, everpresent city smells of dung and woodsmoke had gone. The wind carried the sea and behind that, an endless void.
At the back of her mind, she thought she could hear voices, indistinct and distant as a half-remembered dream. Then with piercing clarity, the wailing of a battle horn sounding across a vast expanse. It rose from a deep moan up an octave, up again, in an unearthy ululation. Belle shuddered. It was no modern bugle such as Avonlea's armies used, but some ancient, alien-sounding instrument.
As if summoned by the horn's call, a rush of memory flooded all of Belle's senses. She fell to her knees, closing her eyes as all her limbs went numb. Her own name forgotten under the flood, she was there again.
Charging the ogre camp, running to her death...
Echoes and resonances of her own past mingled with the memories of the dead, countless ghosts reliving their last bloody moments. Killing, being killed, more memories than one mind could hold, but each leaving another drop of blood to stain her soul. Hatred, terror, fury, bloodlust, confusion... all converged in the stab of a longspear, in the slash of a saber, in the choked gasp of a dying soldier.
Belle screamed and stumbled forward blindly, but there was no out-running the call of the war horn.
For the rightful king! Death to the infidels! Death to the rebels! Death to the monsters! Behind the wailing of the horn, ghostly voices shouted. Forward! Retreat! Kill!
Bowed low by the weight of memory, her nostrils filled with the reek of blood and acrid smoke. The images of the dead were vivid flashes behind her eyelids. Some died cursing the ones whose orders had sent them to such wretched ends, some held to their righteous causes, some had only pain and fear in their last moments. The onslaught continued for what felt like an eternity that she had no choice but to endure.
Then the memories ebbed, leaving a single presence lingering in the darkness. One who sparked recognition in the sea of confusion that was her mind.
Belle!
She closed her eyes even tighter, clutching at the book still pressed under her as she bent over her knees with her elbows digging into the ground. The name tugged at her consciousness, washing away the other names that had rushed through her. Her lips moved silently to shape an incredulous question, Mother?
Yes, my darling. It sounded exactly like Colette.
"M-mother?" Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes that she didn't dare open, fearing that this was only an illusion or worse. "Is it really you?"
Cold brushed against her skin as the presence drew closer. A chill stabbed deep into her bones. But the ghostly voice was warm. Don't cry, darling. We don't have long. Until sunrise. Then I must leave you, never to meet again in the mortal world.
Belle nodded. She felt her mother's embrace in her heart and didn't doubt her knowledge. Her mother was here to protect her from going mad under the onslaught of the dead horde. She said in a choked whisper, "I'm so sorry. You sacrificed yourself for me, but I can't even remember..."
Those lost, last moments had only added to Belle's guilty suspicion that she had been partly responsible for her mother's death. That guilt had driven her all the way to Arendelle, a futile mission in the end.
Shhh, it's not important. Leave the past in the past.
"I missed you so much. I had to know what happened, but I only ended up making a terrible mistake." At the time, the ogres had been driven back easily, and Belle had no qualms about running off across the sea by herself. It was only later that the ogres had become a real threat and she had no more leisure to pursue the mysteries around her mother's death. "Nothing about it felt right."
A ghostly sigh. You were always a perceptive child.
Belle wiped a hand across her eyes and sniffled. "But I may have got someone killed in my pursuit of the truth. Now I'll never know..."
Unless I tell you. A ghostly chuckle.
"You're allowed to do that?" Belle nearly opened her eyes then, but a superstitious fear prevented her. (Was it superstition? She remembered the tale of Orpheus. Some things vanished at the touch of open doubt.)
Consider it a warning. Or a cautionary tale. Such has always been within the purview of ghosts.
Belle could hear the smile in her mother's voice. She sounded just like Belle remembered from her childhood, telling her a bedtime story. "Yes, please."
Well, darling, you remember why we were in that library. The memories floated up, evoked by the ghost's words. I had wanted to change things between our people and the ogres. I knew that in other kingdoms, there was peace. But no one in Avonlea knew how to speak to them.
"The manuscript, the one from the eastern trader," Belle recalled. She had gone to help her mother translate, having made a study of the eastern language, at least in its written form. "The one you thought could teach us the ogre language."
Yes. Just think how it could have been if we could have spoken with that ogre child you met.
Belle nodded. And even if it had been too late to prevent that tragedy, a common language could have lessened those that followed. She lamented, "A pity the manuscript burned with the library."
It was no accident.
Belle froze. "What?"
Why would the ogres attack that library? How did they penetrate so deeply past our defenses?
"You mean..."
Someone didn't want things changed. True peace with the ogres would have meant we would have to make concessions. To allow ogres to claim sovereignty over their land would force us to admit how much we had stolen. But as long as they were seen as dumb beasts, humans could reign supreme in Avonlea.
"Someone?" Dread settled into her stomach as Belle realized what her mother was implying. Half-overheard arguments echoed in the back of her consciousness. You can't mean it. Father wouldn't...
Wouldn't he? The ghostly voice was cold enough to freeze the thoughts in her head. A conveniently broken town wall. A raiding party diverted in one direction and not another, the library 'unluckily' in their path. Then the smallest of gaps in the defenses to allow a single ogre warrior through. The guards rush in just in time to save you, but too late for me. In the midst of such chaos, no one questions the fire left behind.
No, no, I can't believe it. He loved you! Belle remembered her father in mourning, vowing to eradicate the monsters who had slain his wife.
Once, perhaps. But in the end, he found a martyr more to his taste than a wife nagging him to change his ways. The ghostly chill intensified. I would not have believed it of him, either, but I was blinded by sentiment.
Belle said through clenched teeth, "How can you be sure?"
He had no reason to be there that day, but he was. What a show of grief, the brave king cradling his dying wife. But I saw the truth in his eyes. I accused him with my last breath, and he didn't deny me. You heard everything, my Belle. That was why he couldn't allow you to remember.
"He what?" A burst of anger set her thoughts in motion again. No wonder her father had so opposed her quest for the truth.
You had gone mad with grief, spouting wild accusations. That was the official story.
Belle could imagine it all too well. She had always had a reputation for being strange. Who in Avonlea would listen to her? Gaston certainly hadn't.
Maurice went to the clerics for a blessing to comfort his 'distraught' daughter, and they provided. A sprinkle of fairy dust and it was done. No more memory of his betrayal to trouble your sleep.
Belle was speechless.
That was when another ghostly voice roared, What lies are you feeding our daughter, you miserable hag?
Father? Belle, her eyes tightly shut, shook where she knelt on what now felt like the cold hard stones of the castle courtyard in Avonlea. Was this proof that her father truly was dead? Then her mother's chilling presence flared again.
I'm not the liar, came Colette's furious retort.
Belle, don't listen to her. I had to protect the kingdom. Maurice's voice had gone dark and mournful. Belle...
She couldn't endure it anymore. She had to know for sure. She turned her head and her eyelids opened just enough for her to see—
—two spectral shapes looming over her in the darkness, visible in their own phosphorescent glow. Their faces were distorted, eyes burning with green fire, blood dripping from every oriface. Darkness pulsed in veins starkly visible against corpse-pale skin. One resembled her father, the other her mother, hair flying loose in the ghost wind that Belle could only feel as a chill in her bones.
Belle screamed and wrenched her head away from the sight. She clawed desperately at the ground, forcing her limbs to move. Overcome by a rush of mindless fear, she fled. A subconscious anticipation of pain kept her from straightening completely. She scrambled away in a half-crouch, using one hand to propel herself forward while the other instinctively hugged her book to her chest.
The void seemed to swallow her.
She didn't know how long she ran or how far, only that she left the ghosts behind and kept going. The sky opened above her, gaining a hint of light and a scattering of stars. It wasn't enough to illuminate her path, but she kept stumbling blindly in any direction as long as it was away.
"Please, please," she whispered under her breath. Please let me wake from this nightmare. Eyes screwed shut, she fought to replace those terrifying glimpses of her parents' distorted faces with happier memories, but failed miserably.
Then the ground gave way beneath her and she tumbled in a fall of dirt and mud into a pit. She landed heavily on her back, the breath knocked from her. After a long dazed moment, she shifted carefully to her side, getting her knees under her. She groped around her for leverage. Her fingers closed on what she took for a tree root, but when she put her weight on it, she pulled it out of the side of the pit.
It was a severed human hand.
"Agggh!" Belle dropped it in disgust and fell over again.
That was when a light shone over the edge of the pit, nearly blinding her. She blinked and squinted up at the source: a lantern hanging from the end of a stick.
"Hey! Hey, help!" Belle managed to babble. She made out a vaguely human shape behind the light.
"Hmm?" Then the shape came closer, a face peering down at her, thrusting out the lantern with one hand for a better view. The other hand held a chunk of something wet and soft. The stranger, still staring down at her, absently lifted the chunk to her mouth and took a hearty bite.
Belle stared back. "That, that... what...?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry. Want some?" The stranger tore off another piece with her teeth and spat it out in Belle's direction. "There you go!"
It landed on her cheek with a horrible splat. Belle frantically swatted it away. The stench of rotting corpses filled her nostrils. She was trapped in an open grave. And the face peering down at her belonged to no human. That was a ghoul, a carrion eater. And she...
The light swam above her. Belle was overcome with the sudden dizzying conviction that she had died and forgotten. The past few months melted away as if it had all been a dream. The truth was that she had never left Avonlea. She had charged into the ogres' camp and died there, her body thrown into the pit with the others, waiting for the ghouls.
And now, finally, she was next on the menu.
"Mistress Belle?" The voice was gentle but persistent.
Belle woke up with a start. Everything ached and she was shivering and numb. But there was light and she felt the icy air in her lungs. She was alive.
She was sitting in a trench among the dead. That much was true from her jumbled memories of the previous night. "Uh..."
Someone landed in the trench next to her and draped a cloak over her shoulders. "Here."
She opened her eyes a crack. "Master Hobblefoot?"
"Aye." His face held a hint of a smile. "Wouldn't want you to catch your death, no matter that you seem hellbent on chasing after it..." He held out a hand to help her to her feet.
As she stood up, the book slipped out and fell into the dirt. "Oh, um." She winced, gathering her willpower to bend her cold-numbed joints enough to pick it up again.
Before she could do it, Hobblefoot picked it up. He glanced at the cover. He seemed startled, then handed it back to her. "A rare treasure..."
Belle flushed. She furtively rubbed at the cover with a sleeve. "Yes, sorry about the blood stains, I didn't expect—" Then she realized that it was too heavy, the shape all wrong — yet familiar and comfortable in her hands. She looked down and gasped. "Her Handsome Hero?"
"A tale from Avonlea?" Hobblefoot sounded uncertain. "It's not one I know."
Even stained with blood, the cover was unmistakeable. This was her own copy. The first book her mother had ever read to her. Leafing through the pages, Belle confirmed her guess. There was the inscription from Colette. Under it the childish scrawl of her own name. "I don't understand. Last night it was Fendaline's treatise on ghosts."
"Ah, well, a mystery, then." He helped her up the wooden ladder at the end of the trench, then climbed up after her, using the strength of his arms to compensate for his lame foot. "Better to be discussed somewhere warm, maybe over a cup of hot tea?"
Belle nodded, grateful. Even with the cloak clutched around her, she was still half-frozen. "Yes, please."
"And breakfast wouldn't go amiss, aye?" Not waiting for her answer, Hobblefoot paused to call out, "Mags, do us a favor and put away the ladder, won't you?"
Belle looked around, wondering who he was talking to.
"Eh, fine," came the answer in a low grumble. A grayish shape appeared from behind a gravestone. It pointed its chin at Belle. "Hey again. Had a nice sleep?"
Belle yelped in shock. It was the ghoul from her nightmare!
"Mags!" Hobblefoot hissed.
"Sorry, sorry." Mags ducked her head.
Hobblefoot sighed, gesturing with his free hand. "Mistress Belle, Mistress Margaret Kessler. Mags is our resident ghoul and beekeeper."
"You... you're real," stammered Belle. Her hand went to her cheek where a bit of very questionable 'meat' had touched. She swallowed uncomfortably. "Sorry, it was a confusing night. I meant no offense."
"None taken." Mags ambled past them to haul up the wooden ladder from the end of the trench, as requested.
Belle envied her strength. Not so much her diet. Of course, Belle had read about the empire's funeral customs, where ghouls were consecrated agents of rebirth in the grand Ourobean cycle of life and death. But it was one thing to read about it and quite another to see it up close and in person.
Leaving Mags in the burial grounds, Hobblefoot led Belle into the kitchen, where a fire had already been set in the stove. A few minutes later, they sat at the table with cups of tea and bowls of porridge, both sweetened with honey. They ate in silence. Too much had happened, she had seen and heard too much last night, and she needed time to clear her mind. It seemed to thaw slowly along with the rest of her. Thankfully, Hobblefoot seemed to understand that and didn't press her with questions.
Halfway through, Edvard passed through the kitchen to collect his own breakfast, and even in her distracted state, Belle saw Hobblefoot shoot the other man an irritated look.
"What's wrong?" she asked once Edvard had gone.
Hobblefoot shook his head. "He was meant to keep watch. Instead, he let you run off and nearly freeze to death. There was frost on the ground!"
Belle sighed. "It's fine. I'm fine." Honestly, that was the least of it. She pushed the book onto the table and stared down at it, her food forgotten. All her appetite had vanished at the sight of the familiar cover and the memories it evoked. "Was it really... was she really there, or did I just imagine it?"
"'She'?" Hobblefoot glanced from the book to her face and back again.
"My mother," Belle explained. Tears blurred the corners of her vision. She thought that wound had healed, but the ghosts last night had torn through her old scars and left her bleeding.
"It's all right." Hobblefoot leaned forward to squeeze her shoulder briefly. He ducked his head and whispered, "We all have our dead."
Belle felt him sit back, but the impression of his warm touch lingered. It gave her the strength to speak about what had happened. "...but when I looked, they were, they were..."
"Monsters?" Hobblefoot sighed. "The road to this world from the land of the dead passes through a realm of nightmare."
"But was it really her? Her, her soul?"
"How not? She left you this sign, this book. That is only possible when there is a bond of love that transcends the boundaries of life and death." He spoke slowly, with a wistful smile on his lips.
"Have you...?" Belle cleared her throat, swallowing her tears. "Your family, did you ever...?"
The smile vanished. Dropping his gaze to the book, Hobblefoot whispered, "Once. Long ago." His hands dropped to his sides, clenched into fists.
Belle patted his arm tentatively, wanting to comfort him as he had comforted her. "I'm sorry."
Hobblefoot shook his head slightly. "It was long ago. Your, um, visitation, it was last night."
"What does it mean, though? It can't be revenge; my father is already dead." Belle touched the book gingerly. "There's blood on the cover. It vanished from everywhere else, but it's still here."
"What did the book mean to you, before?"
"My mother read it to me when I was a child. It taught me about what it really means to be a hero. About compassion and forgiveness." Belle shuddered. "The things that got my mother killed!"
Hobblefoot nodded, expression grim. "By your father, you said."
Belle opened the book. "But see, the story inside survives. Maybe she wants me to have hope."
"Hope, but no longer innocent," supplied Hobblefoot.
"Yes." Belle turned to a page at random and read it aloud. "'But Gideon was unafraid. He drew his sword and turned to face the evil Sorcerer, ready to save the people he loved.'"
"If that's not a sign..." Hobblefoot chuckled. "Well, you've certainly come to the right place if its an evil sorcerer you want to face."
"That's a very literal interpretation," said Belle.
"I'm a simple peasant," retorted Hobblefoot. "We aren't much for fancy figures of speech."
Belle eyed him dubiously. By now, she had a feeling he was more than that. Under the humble exterior, she sensed a sharp mind and wider experience than an ordinary peasant. Then again, maybe that was the empire's superior educational system that taught him more than the average serf in Avonlea. She set her suspicions aside. "I think she wanted to tell me not to give up on hoping to create a better future. And if that's what you and your fellow conspirators want, I want to help."
It turned out to be more of a revolution in theory than in practice. People all over the empire had been recruited in preparation. They were supposedly laying the groundwork for an uprising, but mostly wrote letters to each other arguing about methods for a peaceful revolution and what would come after. What was good? What was evil? What rights did every sapient creature deserve? How should freedom be balanced against stability? Or adaptation against corruption? What was justice? How much power did the empire have to minimize suffering within its borders, and how much power should it exert outside of them? When was violence justified, and how should its application be regulated? How could the conflicting interests of different races and factions be reconciled?
The questions were endless. So were the proposed answers, and so were the historical examples and counter-examples cited in support, all analyzed and extrapolated into potential futures. Irgol, the archivist, collected and organized their correspondence, enough to form a small library in itself. It was her job to prune the papers and keep them on the right side of the line between scholarship and sedition. If they were caught plotting the violent overthrow of the Dark Lord, they could bid their heads good-bye. Luckily, Irgol had a keen sense for where the line was drawn.
Irgol was an ogre.
It took Belle a while to realize. When not aggressive or feeling threatened, ogres were not much taller than a tall man. Their gigantic stature was a trick they played on reality. Thinking back, it explained how no one had accurate measurements for the size of an ogre, and how something that towered over the rooftops could also fit nimbly inside a human library.
The thick, amber-tinted spectacles the archivist wore to overcome her natural blindness also disguised her facial features enough that Belle hadn't recognized her race at first glance.
It made her wonder how many other ogres she had overlooked in her time in the city. Belle couldn't help staring. "You speak our language so fluently..."
Irgol scoffed. "The empire requires all its citizens to speak the same tongue. So much so that the elders fear our true speech will be lost."
"Schlaraffenland will be more multilingual," said Edvard.
Schlaraffenland was both the name of their conspiracy and of the new country they intended to create out of the death of the Dark Empire. Belle had only known it as the subject of a mocking poem and had been puzzled at first.
Why call it that? she had asked Hobblefoot. Isn't Schlaraffenland the kingdom of lazy fools?
Lazy? What the master takes for sloth is the slave's wisdom, Hobblefoot had responded. It was the nobles who turned an idle folk tale of a paradise on earth into a warning. Gods forbid anyone dream of bettering themselves in this life!
Bettering themselves in this life. A dangerous ambition, thought Belle, remembering her mother's fate. One disapproved of by the Avonlean clerics, who preached suffering in this life in hopes of being rewarded in the afterlife.
Easier said than done: they had plenty to say, but much less that they had done. Belle wondered what she could do to change that.