The Land of Infinite Whispers

Her father’s destriers stirred in the stables; they kicked the stalls and huffed steaming breaths into the frigid air like smoke from a brazier. It had been the third night in a row their unrest had awoken Mirabelle and drawn her from the warmth of her bed. With her sandaled feet moving across the hardwood floor, she carefully rekindled a lantern and wrapped a wool coat over her nightgown before she began making her way through the halls of the Baron’s estate. The combined whinny of the horses was so uproarious in the empty hallways that she was afraid the dead would wake in their graves—or worse, her father in his bed. Even from this distance across the yard, their unrest in the barn seemed to come from inside the mansion itself.

When the young Lady finally stepped out into the chilly Autumn night, the breeze pulled at her hair and she tightened the wool coat around herself to stay warm. It was too cold to be out so late. Hurriedly, she moved across the yard to the stables, looking at the small town of Maddock’s Mark as she made her way. A nebulous haze had lain itself over the village, with glimmers of candlelight flickering in windowsills like stars in a cloudy sky. Although slumber had seemed to cover the land like a heavy blanket, the horses were not the only restless ones tonight.

The whinny of the horses settled before she reached the stables, where she found Mister Pritchett tending to the anxious destriers. The stablemaster had lit an assortment of lanterns all around the room. The wind kicked and battered the flames, casting oblong shadows that danced in amber light across the ruddy walls and the hay-strewn floor. She set her lantern on a crate beside a small candle and examined all the destriers in their stalls: they were all beautiful, strong, and tall, black stallions, with long and full manes that glimmered in the light like obsidian shrouds. Around them, saddles, bits, and riding crops decorated the room, all flaked with wear and rusted from age. The night whispered to the young Lady and the stablemaster through the cracks in the barn as the old man was bent over, forking hay into piles.

“This is the third night they stand restless,” Mirabelle said, sure not to startle the man at work. They both knew why the horses grew restless. They had all heard of the terror sweeping across the land, the fabled doom that left cities deserted and towns barren. Since it began, the land had begun whispering to her, and now it was saying, “Cold, cold, cold...” It was coming for Maddock’s Mark, there was no doubt about that. The land told her so.

“I know, my lady. I cannot say for certain why,” the stablemaster grunted as he stood upright. He turned to face her, with his chubby cheeks covered in downy, white tufts of sideburns, and a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck to beat the Autumn chill. He chewed his lip as he spoke. “It may be the cold, it may be the wind, it may be their stomachs. I changed their hay and brought them fresh water, so they should stay calm through the night.” He turned around to eye the destriers, each with his head protruding from over their stall doors. The beasts’ stir had been calmed to quiet whimpers. Pritchett crossed the dirty floor, the wooden boards creaking underfoot with every step, and methodically snuffed every flickering flame. “Do not worry yourself with such matters, my lady,” he told her as he worked. He came to stand before her, arm outstretched for her to take. “Please, let me brew some tea before you return to bed. It will help you sleep.”

The young Lady smiled and curtseyed at his offer. Pritchett had always been a good man, kind to her and loyal to her father. “That would be delightful, sir,” she said. He took a dancing lantern in one hand and allowed Mirabelle to hold the other, and together, the stablemaster and the young Lady left the barn and crossed the yard in front of her father’s estate. As they took short, hurried strides to try and outrun the cold, a sound began to echo through the night. It was a rhythmic clamor that shattered the cold air and took control of the Lady’s heart: thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump.
Pritchett held the lamplight against the darkness of the night and squinted to see as the sound made its way toward them with every beat. Mirabelle’s limbs froze and her breath stopped and for a moment it felt to her as if the whole world stood still. It was the end! The Scourge was coming for them! The doom, the death, the end of all ends; it was coming to Maddock’s Mark with such a fury that the Earth and the trees seemed to tremble in its path. It was coming for Mirabelle, and she could hear the land whisper to her in the moment, “Death, death, death…” The words filled her ears and gnawed at her mind, “Death, death, death.” Would this be how she would go?

As the sound was upon them, Mirabelle saw it now: a beautiful silver mare as large as any of the destriers in the stables, yet thin from starvation, approached galloping across the cold, hard ground. It nearly trampled the young Lady and the stablemaster as it raced past them like a white arrow loosed toward its target.

Pritchett spun around and watched as the beautiful beast ran through the gatehouse and into the town square, toward the statue of the First Baron Maddock. Seemingly without thinking, Stablemaster Pritchett ran into the barn and emerged with a long snare pole. Together, Mirabelle followed him into town where the mare galloped around the statue with nowhere to go. They came upon the mare then, interrupting her path. Mirabelle watched as, in the blink of an eye, the silver-maned beauty reared and bucked and kicked, and in another instant Pritchett had the snare around her neck and held his weight down to the ground. She kicked, screamed, and fought against his strength; the young Lady was sure that this was a battle old man Pritchett could not win, but just a moment later the horse’s fit was tempered to anxious pacing and abrupt snorts.

Slowly, still pulling the snare around her neck down with all his strength, Pritchett rose to a stand and inched closer to the mare. She repeatedly picked up her hooves and set them down, searching for even ground to make an escape. Pritchett whispered to her in a calm voice and stroked her mane from the top down; the mare huffed and puffed and slowly stilled herself.

The stablemaster and the young Lady released a shared sigh of relief. Seemingly numb to the cold now, Mirabelle made her way over with the lantern in hand and helped Pritchett bring the creature into the barn. The tall black war stallions all stuck their heads over their stalls and watched as they ushered in the silver beauty. In the lamplight, the young Lady could see now the saddle and bags that hung around the horse’s body, with a bit in her mouth and a set of reins around her neck. A long gash dominated her right thigh, in the shape of three jagged claw marks each nearly seven inches long. The hair around the wound was wet with dark blood, and when examined closely one could see the pulsating crimson river in the opening of the flesh. Several other scratches and scars marred the mare’s body, and in her glassy eyes lay the semblance of tears. It was then, examining the horse, that Mirabelle came to realize this horse was no stranger.

“Sterling…” Mirabelle whispered under her breath, suspended in disbelief. Louder she said to the stablemaster, “Pritchett, this is Sterling!” She could see it in her eyes, the dark glassy pools that looked back at her, and her long mane, still as soft as ever, along with her coarse hair and familiar white hooves.

“Impossible,” Pritchett said as he shouldered between Mirabelle and the horse. He had a leather bag in-hand that clamored with metal tools. He didn’t stop to look at her; instead, he removed the snare pole from around her neck, and replaced with a rope that was anchored to the barn walls. Then he knelt by the horse’s side and took to cleaning and dressing her wound. Two years ago, her oldest brother had taken Sterling when he left home to travel the land and work for the king. Maelor had never returned—how had Sterling gotten home without him?

“Will she live?” Mirabelle asked as Pritchett examined the wound in the dim amber light.

“She is upright and she can run, which means the pain is enough for her to bear.” Pritchett switched from a sharp knife to a needle and thread, which he used to sew the wound. Mirabelle walked around to Sterling’s side and ran a finger along the divots of her ribs and felt her tremble underneath her touch. It saddened her to see another living creature like this, starved and in pain. She unbuckled the heavy saddle and lifted it from the horse’s back, then proceeded to undo the latchings on the bit and reins. Once undressed, one could see clearly now the way the mare’s skin clung tight to her frame, creating deep valleys across the landscape of her wiry figure. Once Pritchett had cleaned the wound and stitched it shut, he stood back to observe the mare in the dim lamplight. “She hasn’t eaten in days,” he thought aloud, wiping the blood from his hands with an already-soiled cloth.

“It is such a terrible sight,” Mirabelle said as she knelt on the floor with the saddlebags. Her hands trembled as she opened one and began to sift through its contents. Images of Maelor flashed through her mind, riding through the night. What could have happened to him?

Pritchett excused himself to fetch a bowl of grains, and meanwhile the young Lady fingered through the contents of the two saddlebags; in the first, she uncovered several notes of unused paper, each bearing the sigil of a town named Maplewatch. She moved her finger across the sigil, bright with blue and green and brown, displaying a blue river running past a tree trunk on a field of white. She knew the town, a few day’s ride east; Maplewatch was smaller than Maddock’s Mark, but wealthier still. Had Maelor been sent to Maplewatch by the king? Mirabelle continued to rummage through the saddlebag’s contents; she found multiple knives, each one dulled from use, along with many utilities for wilderness living such as stakes, ropes, and an empty skin of water. At the bottom of the bag, she found a lone folded piece of paper. This one bore the golden-crown sigil of the king. Mirabelle gasped as she saw the marking. These were orders! If anything held the secret to finding her brother, it would be these words. She opened the note and read the flowery calligraphy written across the page:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

THIS WRIT, BY THE POWER OF KING KALIN XII GRANTS THIS SCOUT, MAELOR MADDOCK II, PERMISSION TO WANDER ON PROPERTY PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, IN ORDER TO GARNER A GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF THE SCOURGE OF THE LAND ON THE BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE SERVICE OF THE PEOPLE.

Mirabelle slowly folded the paper and ran her fingers along the golden-crown seal. If her brother had been sent to investigate the Scourge, she could only imagine one thing had become of him.

The crunch of Pritchett’s boots on the dry hay announced his return, and as he swept into the stables with a bowl of alfalfa in one hand and a pail of water in the other, he asked, “Did you find anything important, my lady?”

She quickly tucked the letter snugly into the folds of her gown. The land rang faintly in her ears: “No, no, no…”

“No, nothing at all. Just blank notes and hunting supplies.” Maplewatch was only a week’s ride from the Mark; if the Scourge had taken it, their doom was surely coming to them. She wanted more than anything to do something about it. She wanted to show this to the baron herself.

Pritchett stepped closer to her and squinted at the horse. “You know,” he said, “she does look a lot like Sterling…” he set the alfalfa and the pail of water down before her. He ran his fingers through her mane and ran the other along her snout. “I will have to have your father’s opinion on this in the morning. Let me take these bags inside.”

Mirabelle handed the first saddlebag and all its contents to Pritchett and watched him carry it off. As she turned back around to continue her search, her eyes stopped to examine the silver mare up and down as she ate, resting on her thin figure and the tight skin that clung to her bones, the gashes, deep, and the blood-soaked hair around her stitches. What had she been through? Eager for answers, Mirabelle hurriedly opened the second bag and began to search through its contents. Her father wouldn’t believe any story she concocted without proof.

Buried under a straw pillow and a doeskin blanket, she found a single leather-bound journal and a bronze compass with a glass needle that shone in the flickering lamplight. Mirabelle flipped open the hard cover of the journal and found inked words scrawled across its pages. She began to read an excerpt, anxious to finis¬¬h before Pritchett returned:

The compass does not work. It is wild and unpredictable, spinning in all directions for all hours of the day, and for all hours of the night it points due East, no matter if I am facing West or North or South. A waste of fifty silvers—

“Did you discover anything else, my lady?” Pritchett asked when he returned just a moment later, and in her panic, Mirabelle snapped the journal shut and hid it with the compass under her wool jacket.

The young Lady shook her head and lied, “No, Mister Pritchett. Only a pillow and blanket.”

“In that case, there is nothing more to be done ‘til morning,” he said and held his hand out for her to take. “Come, let me make some tea.” She took it and he helped her to her feet; Mirabelle had to hold her jacket tight against herself to keep the journal and compass from falling on the hay-strewn ground. Together, the young Lady and the old stablemaster crossed the yard between the Baron’s stables and his mansion once more. They entered the home through the front door and stepped into a wide vestibule, where Pritchett used the lantern to light a candle, which he then used to light sconces along the walls to bring light to the dark home. Mirabelle followed him as he lit the path to the dining room, where a large eight-chair table sat in the center, with a goat-horn chandelier hanging from the ceiling above it. Across the room, a door led into the kitchen, and on the wall adjacent was another doorway that led into yet another hall; paintings of old barons decorated the walls, of their families and their wives, from the first to the last. One large window looked outside into the night, the glass alight with the silver glow of the moon.

Pritchett set the candle at the center of the table, filling the room with a dull amber glow, before he pulled a chair for Mirabelle to sit in. As the young Lady moved across the room, she felt the eyes of all the paintings following her. “Thank you,” she said as she took the seat; it wasn’t until he disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen to fetch tea that she pulled the compass and journal from hiding. She opened the journal again, and peered down at the inked words, hard to see in the dim light:

The Scourge. The compass—its wildness, its Eastward pointing—they seem to work in tandem. It was only a year ago when the first refugee reached Honor’s Stone, with word from the East of the mysterious force that had taken the land from its people. The Scourge moves West. The compass points East. It’s—

Pritchett came through the door then, with two cups of tea in his hands. Mirabelle closed the journal and looked up at the stablemaster as if nothing were wrong. He set the tea on the table before her and she took it in one hand, the other grasping the leather cover of the book in her lap. She sipped her brew quietly and Pritchett sipped his, seeming to dip the long white hairs of his upper lip in the drink to do so.

“Late nights may become more and more common, I’m afraid,” he said, his voice quiet and seldom. “We must prepare ourselves.”

Mirabelle nodded her head, and it was then that she heard a terrible voice, a tremulous whisper from the earth: “No escape, no escape, no escape…” The words sent a deep shiver went down her spine; she looked at Pritchett, wondering if he’d heard the words as well, but he simply sat there, sipping his warm tea. The story swirled in her head—her brother had been at Maplewatch, but his mount was here now. Had he fallen to the Scourge?

Mirabelle slipped the journal back under her jacket, took one last swig of her tea, and then stood from the table. “You’re right, Mister Pritchett,” she told him. “I must sleep while I can. Thank you for the tea, sir.”

“Goodnight, my lady,” Pritchett said to her. He watched the young Lady as she crossed the dining room and left through the doorway, down the hall toward the steps that led to her bedroom. She felt as if his stare bore into her soul, and the entire time the whispers from the land grew in her ears, “No escape, no escape, no escape…”