It’s a tombstone, realised Fionn with horror. This… was a graveyard.
Indeed, the clearing was riddled with mounds of dirt and deep holes, and here and there stood stone statues, some weather-worn and deteriorating, marking what once were graves.
Fionn promptly recovered and trudged through the cemetery. Every so often, he caught a glimpse of a coffin sitting at the bottom of an opened grave, but no corpses remained inside.
A sound of muffled sobbing became apparent as Fionn ventured deeper. Eventually, it was clear where the sounds were coming from, and Fionn took a stone-pathway uphill, winding back around toward the High Road.
The full view of Roseán’s devastation spanned out from the crest of the hill. The town’s square had faced the brunt of the disaster, it seemed, with smouldering piles replacing what were once tall and proud commercial buildings. Although the residential outskirts appeared intact, a vast clearing in the dense forests out to the east indicated the direction the horde had travelled. The sun was high in the clear sky, but it’s light did nothing to illuminate the dead landscape.
Just off the path, Cormac sat kneeling before a grave, his hands buried in his hands. He seemed to be muttering something between his sobs, but Fionn couldn’t catch the words.
Perhaps I should let him be alone, thought Fionn, squinting his eyes to read the text on the tombstone. It was only now that Fionn realised what was different about this grave.
It was undisturbed. Although the flowers were dying, they were still arranged in an intricate pattern across the base of the tombstone. White pebbles lined the grave’s perimeter, dappled with blues and blacks.
“Cormac,” said Fionn, feeling he should make his presence known, at least. “I just wanted to tell you that—”
“I’m sorry,” said Cormac, seeming to finish Fionn’s thought. “Gods above and below, I’m sorry!”
Fionn took a step closer to the grave. Its inscription read, ‘Aoife Ní Branna. Beloved mother, wife, and friend. She lived and died in the Light of The Lady, AC 360–403, and shall now live forever in the plains of Tierna Meal.’
“I’m sorry,” repeated Cormac. “I was never worthy to be in your life, let alone to be your husband.”
“Don’t say that,” said Fionn, though he regretted his choice of words. He took a second to reconsider. “I mean, it’s like you said before. It wasn’t your fault you weren’t there that morning. You can’t blame yourself, Cormac.”
“It wasn’t my decision to flee,” said Cormac. “But not returning was mine and mine alone. I said before that I stayed away from Roseán because I was afraid. But that isn’t true. I never came back, because….”
He threw his head back and howled even louder than before, like an animal maddened by pain.
“Because I was ashamed. Ashamed of how I treated them. Gods, I did things no man should even consider. I hurt them in ways no woman should ever know.”
He raised a hand and placed it against the granite. “I stayed away for Morry’s sake. She was better off without me.” He hung his head down. “I knew. I knew the whole time that she wasn’t my daughter. Gods, sometimes it seemed like Morry was the only person in the whole village who didn’t know who her real father was.”
“Cormac….” whispered Fionn, stepping forward. Although he barely knew the man, Fionn found it hard to fight back his own tears.
“The truth drove me to the drink,” said Cormac. “Every day I was forced to live with it, and I coped with it the only way I knew how. I lashed out against them. I lashed out against the woman I swore to love, because I knew she never loved me.”
The two stood there in silence. Cormac’s rambling made little sense to Fionn, but the pain he understood all too well.
“My mother died when I was born,” Fionn whispered. “She was living out in the streets of Dromán, and she came to the brothers of the Academy, deep in labour. They couldn’t save her, and barely saved me. The brothers took me in, but out of duty, not love. That’s only family I ever known.”
Cormac didn’t respond, though Fionn didn’t necessarily expect him to.
Gods, why did I even tell him that? Was my past supposed to make his seem better?
In truth, it was the first time Fionn had ever told anyone outside of the Academy about where he came from. Why should he? It’s not like anyone would ever care.
“Your mother loved you,” said Cormac, eventually. “Even though she never met you. All mothers love their children, even when they’re still in the womb.”
A lump formed in Fionn’s throat. “Maybe you’re right,” he managed to say, masking how close he was to tears. “If the gods are good, you’re right.”
He placed his oversized hand on Cormac’s trembling shoulder.
“Come on. The others are probably waiting on us.”
***
Fionn immediately recognised Yarlaith’s house, sitting on a ledge overlooking the town square. Of all the ruins of Roseán, this one was the most intact. Indeed, on closer inspection, the house seemed to be completely untouched by the doom that had taken the town.
Fionn and Cormac walked through the house’s tiny garden toward an open wooden door. As they stepped into the abode, the ruin of its interior was immediately apparent.
What was once a quaint little house had been ransacked from floor to ceiling. Furniture was overturned, paintings and pictures torn from the walls. Fionn stepped through the familiar hallway, back toward the white mage’s clinic.
Gods, has it been only a year? he thought. Sometimes, it seemed like a lifetime ago when Yarlaith had sewn Sir Bearach’s arm to Fionn’s shoulder.
Feels like less to me, remarked Sir Bearach. I still find myself forgetting that I no longer inhabit my own body.
Whether the remark was meant in sarcasm or not, Fionn couldn’t tell. Before he had a chance to consider it further, Garth stepped into the hallway.
“The dead haven’t been through here,” he said. He gestured into the clinic. “This mess was caused by the living.”
The room beyond was in a worse state than the rest of the house. The screens and curtains that once gave the clinic’s patients privacy lay torn and broken. The beds were turned over, with crumpled bedsheets strewn out across the floor.
Fionn stepped forward carefully, for the shelves that once housed Yarlaith’s alchemical equipment were cleared, their contents and glass scattered to the ground.
“This was an act of passion,” said Garth, speaking with the air of an expert. “Someone, or some people, did this in a fit of rage.”
“A mob?” ventured Fionn. It was common knowledge that the country folk were fiercely loyal to the Church’s teachings. If anyone had learned that Yarlaith was a Necromancer, then….
