A Letter Left Behind

The forest road was so thickly overgrown that it lay almost entirely in shadow, and in that perpetual gloom, moss flourished in every crevice of rock and every patch of settled earth. The dampness seeped into his skin and left him gasping for breath more often than not. Whenever he paused to rest, a cold wind came moaning out from the depths of the forest and cut straight through his clothes, chilling him to the bone in an instant. Kasvren had repeated this rhythm of walking and stopping a dozen times before, as the path grew steadily rougher, he glanced back over his shoulder. The entrance he had come through was no longer visible, and he had no idea how much farther he had to go before reaching his destination. There was no signpost, no fence or painted marker to declare that this was private land.

What kind of place even is this? Kasvren chewed over his incredulity, a bitter laugh and a dull unease taking turns in his chest. Several times already, a moment's distraction had nearly sent him wandering off the path and into the gaping maw of an unfamiliar forest; and now, trudging on with his nerves strung tight through a woods that offered nothing to anyone, he found himself drained to the point of collapse, though he was hardly a frail man.

"Good grief."

With a groan that was equal parts complaint and lament, Kasvren stopped dead in the middle of the road. He raised his head, checked the sun's position, and stared down the interminable stretch ahead before rummaging in the inside pocket of his jacket. Something small and glittering caught the light briefly in his palm.

It was a black ring set with a red ruby, the kind of thing one would struggle to find anywhere in the world. Around the elongated hexagonal ruby, a black dragon had been engraved in intaglio. It was a family treasure handed down through generations of the Drasken ducal house—and there was a rather complicated, possibly story behind how it had come into the hands of Kasvren, a man with no blood tie whatsoever to the Draskens.

He lifted the clasp, hidden beneath a small black diamond. The ruby setting opened to reveal a small, dried sheet of paper. Unfolded, it was about the size of his palm—a letter from the previous Grand Duke Drasken to Kasvren, his godson.

Kasvren reread the letter he had read so many times before, and his brow furrowed faintly. At the very bottom, still vivid, sat the signature of his godfather Grand Duke Drasken and the seal of the ducal house. He stroked the seal with an aching sense of longing, and the faint texture beneath his fingertips sank him deeper into guilt. He could count on one hand the number of times he had met his godfather, the Grand Duke Drasken—yet every meeting had filled Kasvren with a deep restfulness and peace. The Grand Duke had been patient and generous. He was a good man, one who spared neither time nor effort to put another's heart at ease.

And that was precisely why Kasvren could not bring himself to lift his head before the man's letter.

The letter had been written in December of the year 279 by the royal calendar. It was now May of the year 287. Nearly ten years had passed between the letter's writing and its discovery—and even then, had misfortune not come crashing down upon him, it might have remained forever veiled. Had it merely been the sort of letter a dying man writes to bequeath a small memento to a godson he had not seen in ages, perhaps that would have been one thing. But the Grand Duke Drasken, with his dying breath, had entrusted Kasvren with a request that outweighed everything else.

His youngest daughter.

The Grand Duke's posthumous effects had been delivered to Kasvren five years ago, by the Duke's representative, on the occasion of his coming of age. So it was no fault of Kasvren's that he had not gone to the duchy at once after the Duke's death. But why, then, had it never once occurred to him to examine his godfather's belongings carefully? He had his own reasons, to be sure—reasons that would become clear in time—though that did nothing to lighten the weight on his heart. Nor could he fathom why the Duke had entrusted him, of all people, with the welfare of his precious youngest daughter.

He had made discreet inquiries after the Grand Duke's youngest daughter and learned, mercifully, that she still lived. When Kasvren had first arrived at the duchy and asked after the house of Drasken, the villagers had answered with one voice: all that remains in that house are ghosts and a witch. When he pressed them on the word witch, every mouth had clamped shut—but he had doggedly dug until he learned that it referred to the Grand Duke's youngest daughter, Isolde Drasken.

The townsfolk—even the coachman who worked for pay—did not hesitate to call Isolde a witch, all of them with a single voice. If she was the last surviving descendant of the Drasken line, then she was mistress of the very land these people tilled to feed themselves, yet not a trace of respect for her could be found. There was only hatred, brimming and undiluted.

But those reactions only fanned Kasvren's curiosity about the Drasken mansion. When the coachman had bared his yellowed teeth and forced him down from the carriage, the fact that Kasvren had not simply ordered the man to turn the carriage around—that single wretched sliver of curiosity—was what had lit the ember in his heart. The weight of his godfather's letter, of course, had been influence enough in itself to draw him deeper and deeper into the forest.

Then he saw the brambles. They had lain across the middle of the road until someone had hacked through them and tossed the severed halves to either side—a sight that bore the unmistakable mark of a human hand. The rough path, flooding past his ankles and up to his knees, had just about beaten down his resolve when—

Behind the shade of an enormous zelkova tree, a fence came into view. It lay slumped now across the stone wall, propping up the thin stems of some creeping vine, but there had been a time when it stood tall and proud in its solidity, crushing the spirit of any intruder who dared cast an eye on the mansion. That was not all he saw. Following the stone wall around a little farther to the left, he came upon a garden gate whose lock had long since fallen away.

The garden had been given over entirely to stinging nettles and every manner of unnameable plant, growing wild and unchecked. They seemed like clumps of stubborn malice, shoving aside the estate's ruined old glory and seizing its place for themselves. But the mansion that reared up before Kasvren's eyes was another matter entirely from the garden that had collapsed without a fight. It stood firm, as if it would permit not an inch of intrusion, gazing down with a judge's heavy gravity upon anyone who dared set foot on the Grand Duke's land.