I waited for a disquiet wind to disturb the forest, perhaps even for a clap of thunder or the mournful howl of a direwolf.

I was disappointed. Silence lingered in the wake of the elf's statement. I only spoke when the other two made it obvious they weren't going to.

"You're here to judge me?" I asked.

"Yes," Urawn said in a soft voice.

"And Rysanthe is missing, so you have her job now."

"Indeed."

Something else he'd said registered then. Instead of asking the drow for an explanation, I turned to Oraeka. "I don't understand. He's here to judge me on behalf of all the Faen? I thought you, me, and Rysanthe were the only Doomsmen in Urn. Just the three of us."

Urawn snorted in contempt. "Doomsmen. Even with that moniker you claim this sacred position for yourself, though you are the first man to hold it."

He was right. I realized only then I'd been mistranslating the word Faen — Doombearer — this whole time. All the previous Headsmen would have been elves.

"Rysanthe herself told me we were the only three in Urn," I said.

"In Urn, yes," Oraeka told me. "But it is but part of the world, and the Sidhe dwell in all lands. There are six of us, including you."

Six Doomsmen. "This is a lot to take in. Why didn't I know this before?"

Urawn answered me this time. "You are fresh to this world, Alken Hewer. The Faen are an ancient order. We are the arbiters and heralds of the old powers who have dwelt within these shores since well before humankind first trod upon it. Indeed, we have been here longer than the Choir, who appropriated the role in your case. For eons, this world has been the dwelling of the Sidhe. Throughout that history the Faen have acted as arbiters, as heralds, and as carriers of the fates — the dooms — handed down by the greatest lords to have ever walked this world."

He paced to one side and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "And you think you own a whole third of that honor? Your arrogance astounds me."

Wonderful. The new Grim Reaper of the Underworld didn't like humans. That was just what I needed.

"I didn't know, Urawn. Arrogance had nothing to do with it. So I'm being judged for what? Revealing my identity to the leaders of the human kingdoms? You realize the Choir sanctioned this? They were there that day, as was an Oradyn of the Sidhe. Why don't you talk to Fen Harus, ask him what he thinks?"

"The Butcher of Hithlen does not decide this," Urawn said darkly. "Neither do the seraphim."

The Butcher of Hithlen? I hadn't heard that name before, and it wasn't easy to reconcile it with the good-humored elk I'd met in Garihelm. And judging by Urawn's reaction, there was some history there.

Of course, there always was with elves. Lots and lots of history.

"You're saying the Choir of God doesn't have a say?" I asked with incredulity.

"Your god," Oraeka said. "Never ours. We made peace with the Onsolain, but we never bent the knee to them or their queen."

"Yet they have given you the Axe of Hithlen," Urawn said. He began to pace around me, and each time his crook struck the moonstone circle the wind chimes hung from it sang with silver notes. "The Faen Orgis, reforged after nine hundred cycles of the daystar for a mortal man to wield. In this act, the Onsolain have made you one of us, this is indisputable… yet that also makes you subject to our traditions, our oversight. Our judgement."

"The position of Faen is a great responsibility," Oraeka supplied. I noted how her hand clenched on her old spear. "We carry the words and judgements of the mightiest beings in the land. Often, this means that we carry death. Before there were mortals, even."

I followed the train of logic. "That means… Before mortals were around, most things in the world didn't die. Not unless you made them die."

"You begin to understand why we place so much meaning to the post," Urawn said in a musing tone, stopping just behind me so I had to turn to keep him in my sightline. "We were given great power, and with that power came stipulations. We could not be… ah, what is the human word? Vigilantes, acting in our own interest, by our own will and whim. When our lords decreed the fate of a soul, then we became that fate. That doom."

He turned to face me fully and his voice hardened. "Yet, you have by all accounts acted largely by your own whim. You have delivered death even where the Choir did not demand it, fighting in a plethora of petty battles."

"Petty?" I said.

"At the town of Vinhithe, you delivered your judgement to the priest Leonis Chancer clumsily, allowing a child to stumble on the scene and sound the alarm. Because of this, you were forced to cut your way out of the city, slaughtering nearly a dozen others who would not have impeded you and who were not given the doom of death."

"That was beyond my control, I—"

"At Garihelm," Urawn continued mercilessly, "despite having no such orders, you infiltrated a cathedral belonging to the Priory of the Arda and there killed many servants of the Aureate Church, an event that ended in your incarceration and near death. Not to mention that it put you at the mercy of an agent of Orkael. Following that, you were rescued by agents of your former liege, Rosanna Silvering, Queen of Karles and Empress of the Accorded Realms. You promised to give her your aid and swore your service to her children, future monarchs of human kingdoms, thus binding yourself and your role to their will."

I stared at the drow, speechless, and realized I'd been shaking my head. But he wasn't done.

"You proceeded to spend many weeks in the capital, ignoring signs and portents meant to lead you to other duties by drowning yourself in the noise of human civilization. You killed many others during this time, in your skirmishes with the Priory."

"They were kidnapping people. Torturing them."

"Yet you punished them for this even before the angel Umareon tasked you to deliver a doom of death to Horace Laudner, Grand Prior of the Arda. Following this, you again acted by your volition, declaring this act to the Ardent Round and the Emperor, and then invited them to the covenant my own kind share with the Onsolain."

"And why should we not share in it?" I demanded, losing my patience with the one sided conversation. "If the Choir and the Sidhe can decide the fates of mortals, if you're going to make me — a mortal — murder my own kind for breaking your laws, then I believe we should get a say as well."

"And there it is!" Urawn wheeled on me, and the flat teeth of his skeletal face were bared. "You believed. You decided. You acted. That is not your role, Headsman. We are the arms and the voices of the land itself, and to act by our own will…"

He shook his head and let out a tired sigh that fogged in the frozen air. "We do not decide fate. We only carry it to its proper destination."

"Poetic nonsense," I snapped. "Pretty words for the same thing."

Oraeka winced. She watched the other elf, not me.

Urawn lowered his voice, and I sensed something dangerous in that quiet. "Do you understand how much power you have given Markham Forger by offering your services to him? Or to his wife? To their heirs? In doing this you have placed them as near equals to our own ancients and to the Choir itself."

"There needed to be safeguards," I said in an equally quiet voice, hiding my anger behind a stiff jaw. "On me, on the Sidhe, and on the Choir. I would not allow myself to become a weapon against my own people."

Oraeka frowned at that. Urawn regarded me cooly, and I knew by the appraisal in his rotted gaze that I'd landed close to the mark.

"I know that was a possibility. That you might have made me take my axe to the leaders I'd once served, if they displeased you." I inhaled and spoke in a steady voice. "I chose to fight this war willingly, but I'm fighting it for my fellow humans as much as for the elves. I don't regret the choice I made that day in the Emperor's court."

"You are no mere soldier, Headsman. You are a Doombearer. Now the Emperor can wield that power as he sees fit, if he chooses to press on your vows. It has set a dangerous precedent."

"A precedent? What are you talking about?"

Urawn considered a moment, and when he continued his voice had less of that anger from before. He seemed patient now, almost scholarly, and he began to pace again.

"What is to stop your successors from doing the same? Perhaps the next to wear your mantle chooses a different monarch, one of their own preference? What if Markham Forger's rule is challenged? What if another emperor rises, a split in your Accorded Realms? What if he steps down, or is opposed?"

Noting my silence, he paused and glanced at me. "This new regime is less than a decade old, and untested. Most empires die in their infancy. Human history has made this apparent. And yet, you allowed the High King of all this land's mortal realms to tap your shoulders and make you a Knight of the Accord, subject to his rule and his laws."

"I…" I trailed off, at a loss for words. To give myself time to think I asked, "How do you know all of this?"

Even private conversations. How could he know about my interaction with Rosanna that night I'd been rescued from the Priory?

"The land is full of eyes and ears," Urawn told me. "And I am now Faen of Draubard. Before speaking with you, I appraised myself of your history. I spoke with the dead. With ghosts, many of whom have followed you through your tenure. My realm has also been keeping an eye on you, Alken Hewer."

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That was chilling. "And all of that is against the credo of your order? I was never appraised of these laws, Urawn Aarlu."

"I am beginning to see the problem." Urawn turned to face me. "You are obsessed with this idea of laws."

"Isn't that what this whole thing is about?" I asked. "That I broke your rules?"

Urawn held up a single finger tipped in a long brown nail. "We are not lawkeepers, Alken Hewer. We do not police the peoples of this world. We do not act based on some principle or law, nor do we kill when a code is broken, but when the powers given the burden of lordship over this world demand it must be done. When the spirits of the land cry out for justice, when the very substance that binds this sphere into a single whole is made to feel pain, then we are the silence at the end of the weeping."

I felt then like the world went still, like everything held its breath. I realized I held my breath.

I studied the being in front of me, his decaying garments, his ghastly appearance. Even from several feet away he gave off a scent like dead roses and gravestones. He didn't look like a king's executioner, or even like a dark knight.

He looked like Death.

"We deliver judgements," Urawn continued. "We are dooms. We are symbols and last resorts. By binding yourself to this human king, to this mortal man and those like him, you have complicated your role and mired what it means to hold it."

"I do not understand," I told him. The statement was a genuine one.

"What if you decide that the current leader of the Accord is a tyrant?" Urawn asked.

I considered my response a moment. "I believe that Markham Forger is a strong man, and that it's only because of him we've had anything even resembling peace this past decade."

"Your opinion. And what if the rest of the Accord disagrees? What if, five years from now, they put it to vote and decide that he needs to be deposed? What if he steps down from his position as leader of the alliance? What about when he dies of old age?"

I had no immediate reply. Urawn waited a beat before continuing. "What if his successor is a fool, or incompetent, or if another is never chosen? Urn has gone many centuries without an emperor. How will you decide who your loyalty goes to, then?"

He was right. And… I'd never considered any of that. I never gave any thought to issues of succession, much less my own. I'd been so busy dealing with the here and now, focused on the next step, the next battle.

If anything, I'd tried to avoid that line of thinking. I'd tried to train Emma as a knight, not as a Doombearer. Perhaps part of me had believed, or hoped, that I would be the first and the last human to hold the title.

I decided for honesty. "I am a Knight of Urn. I lost the title for a while, true, but I never forgot my original vows. Right now, Urn has recognized Markham and Rosanna as its leaders, and they are in common cause. I want to help preserve the stability they're trying to uphold, and I believed that your people and the Choir were also allied to that effort. The Seydii are members of the Accord, are they not?"

"It is true," Oraeka said.

"It is," Urawn agreed. "For now. You ask why humans were not allowed a say in this? It is because humans are temporary. I do not mean that as an insult — indeed, mortals have moved the very stars with their actions. I would be a fool to dismiss you. But your beliefs, your leaders, your very way of life? That changes like so." He snapped his fingers. "But our spirits are eternal, Headsman, and we know that when we decide to make a change — to destroy or to create — then we must persist with the consequence of that decision through eternity."

His voice fell into almost a hush. "Can you imagine it? Can you imagine snuffing out an existence, and then through ten thousand years to wonder at what might have been? The consequence of that choice? The future that you undid, the fates you unraveled? To know that the evil before you might have become a force of good, if only given time?"

I sensed this was a true question, that he wanted me to think about it.

So I did. I spent several minutes mulling on the idea, trying to imagine what it must be like to be an elf. To see humans born, grow, love, then wither and die. To see the same occur on a mass scale, to watch wars and triumphs shape kingdoms only for the very names of those realms to be forgotten over the course of ages. To see injustices done and go unanswered, to dwell on missed opportunities or mistakes.

To know that other endless beings like yourself would also never forget, and might never forgive. To feel that weight of experience crushing down like ever rising water.

I remembered the Wending Roads, which was made of the world's memories. It'd been tangled, rotted. Overgrown with qliphoth.

"…I cannot imagine it," I admitted after a while. "It sounds terrible."

"It is. Some have been driven mad by this very thing. I was Doombearer before, long ago." He placed a hand to his chest. "Now I have been called to take up the mantle again, and I see you abuse it so, and I cannot keep my silence."

Oraeka stood stock still during Urawn's speech, a statue with an iron spear, and I wondered how much of this she'd known already. Was it unspoken for her, as an elf? Something fundamental her kind understood, where I'd only filtered names and titles through the norms I was familiar with? I'd interpreted being the Headsman as not unlike being a knight. Serving a lord, yet also operating on a set of vows and principles.

"I did try to learn about my duties," I told the drow. "I combed through every record of old Sidhe customs and descriptions of the Faen that I could."

Urawn nodded. "And yet, this cannot be known from books. Where is your axe?"

That abrupt question caught me off guard, and I hesitated before answering. Urawn waited patiently, and Oraeka watched me with her wolf eyes, her emotions unreadable.

"…Broken, at Tol. By a changeling named Ildeban."

Urawn gave me no sign of anger or disappointment. He held out a hand. "Allow me to see it."

I hesitated only a moment, then reached a hand into the folds of my red cloak where it blocked the faded daylight and made shadow. My fingers slipped through that space, into it, and plunged into what felt like arctic water.

It hurt. Immediately my hand went numb, the sensation traveling up my arm like oily cold tendrils were stretching through my veins. I clenched my jaw against the discomfort and pulled my hand back out, and this time it grasped a heavy branch of dark oak, gnarled and uncarved, like a pilgrim's walking stick. It was covered in old stains and burnt, an ugly thing with many bends and warts. Bits of black metal were still embedded into one end, the wood grown through and around them like both had fused together into an organic whole.

I let Urawn take it. He studied the handle of my axe for several minutes, saying nothing. Then, to my mild surprise, he handed it back to me.

"I assume you came here to have this repaired?"

"…Yes. And to see an old comrade."

"The other Alder Knight, Maxim Braeve, who slew the Lindenwurm. Yes, I have heard he takes refuge here. A sad fate. Have you found any of the other Alder Knights?"

This line of questioning wasn't what I expected. "Two. Ser Karve, who I killed in Seydis, and Ser Rubek, after the war. They'd both been driven mad beyond my ability to reason with them."

"Yet you did try?" Urawn asked, his tone curious.

I nodded, still feeling confused. Even Oraeka looked perplexed. "Yes. They were my brothers, and I don't think they were all evil. It was only Alicia and her cronies who betrayed the Archon."

"Which is why Maxim lives." Urawn mused. "You are not a mindless killer, not a brute. I had wondered. That is a point in your favor, Alken Hewer."

"Respectfully, elder, I'm not sure what you want from me here. Are you going to strip the title of Headsman from me?"

"I have no such power. You have claimed the vestiges of the Alder Table and made yourself a power of this land. The mantle is part of you now. If I deem you unworthy of the role, then I will kill you and take your soul back with me to the Underworld."

I stiffened, and to my surprise Urawn chuckled. It was a surprisingly ordinary sound from that monstrous visage. "Do not look so shocked. I am Death, after all."

"You know what I did then," I said softly. "With the Table."

"Yes. As I said, I spoke with the dead. Many of them were there that day."

I forced myself to relax and chewed on everything Urawn had said so far. "You just said if you deem me unworthy, yet you seem to know everything I've done so far. So why this meeting?"

"I wanted to meet you," Urawn said. "Judgement has not yet been passed. Consider this an appraisal."

"Lord Urawn is greatly trusted by both the surface and subterranean Sidhe," Oraeka told me. "Both the Choir and the Silver Council heed him."

I got the message. If he decided that I wasn't worthy of my position, it would be tantamount to ordering my death. He would be the executioner. If he were as strong or stronger than Rysanthe, I didn't like my chances. I was confident in my strength against many foes, but there are always bigger fish.

But he'd handed the broken Faen Orgis back to me. Should I take that as a good sign?

"You should know that Draubard wishes you dead."

Not a good sign, then. "I see."

If his face were capable of it, I think Urawn would have smiled then. "But members of the Choir intervened on your behalf. You should know they are not of one voice in this. Still, when the whole does not sing in one voice then an impasse is made, even if only a few speak against the rest. It is the way of the Onsolain. This abstinence will not last forever, and in the meantime it causes friction where we cannot afford it."

"I think I understand," I told him. "I'm causing tensions among the Onsolain and the Sidhe during a time when we need to be united against other threats… like the one in Seydis."

"I am glad you understand," Urawn said somberly.

"So what can I do?"

"Prove that you worthy of the position. Compel the Choir to sing with one voice. Convince me."

I had a suspicion I knew what they might want me to do. They'd already demanded it once, and I hadn't finished the job.

"Where is Lias Hexer?" I asked. "Last I saw him, he was with Urddha. She ordered his death, and then gave him a stay of execution while I dealt with another crisis. I haven't been contacted since then."

"Lias Hexer has been taken to Heavensreach," Urawn said. When I started, he gave a single slow nod. "Indeed, the magi's transgressions have gone beyond the pale. The Choir is also debating on what is to be done about him."

"I'm surprised they don't just kill him." I tried to say it without emotion, hiding my own unease on the subject. I'd worked myself up to the idea that I would have to kill my oldest friend, came very close to doing that exact thing when we'd confronted one another in the Wend.

The idea he might die on his own, without any action on my part… it made me feel ill. It felt like the easy way out, and also like the coward's way.

"His actions nearly had cosmic consequences," Urawn told me. "He has committed blasphemies only rivaled by the likes of Reynard and the ancient alchemists, and even a quick death might have repercussions now that he has bound himself to the Iron Hell. You did your duty by stopping his plot and capturing him on behalf of the Choir. Take solace in that."

I did not take solace in it, not much anyway. "I expected to be punished for that."

"It is not a failure. In the matter of Osheim, you did well."

I almost laughed in the drow's face. "Well? That was a disaster. I botched it."

Urawn tilted his head to one side, then made a show of looking all around the grove. "Strange. I do not see Zosite angels streaking across the sky. Am I mistaken, and did a gate to Orkael actually open that day?"

"…It did. Briefly. At least one demon escaped."

"Regrettable," the elf mused, "but not disastrous."

It felt damn disastrous. Feeling somewhat whiplashed I asked, "What about the Zoscian? It was stolen, and might still be used."

Urawn seemed troubled by that. "I had feared as much. It is something to be wary of, and we have eyes and ears in every corner searching for Delphine Roch. Thus far she has eluded our eyes."

They know so much. Feeling very tired all the sudden, I asked, "So what's the path forward then?"

"A task, of course. In order to help the immortals of the heavens, the earth, and the underworld reach a consensus on these matters, you are to be given a labor."

That felt more familiar. I took a steadying breath and waited for him to tell me.

"A shadow hangs over this land. The Gatebreaker has revealed himself, and a new war brews across the realms of Urn. Swords have been unsheathed and demons walk amok. The strongholds of Man and Elf are under attack by the forces of chaos. In the midst of all this, my predecessor has vanished, costing Draubard both a loyal daughter and champion. It is clear that these troubles are connected. The timing cannot be a coincidence."

Urawn Aarlu, Doombearer of Draubard, struck the stone circle beneath Oria's Fane once with his crook. The silver bells of that shepherd's staff rung, and a single larger note reverberated through the forest. I felt that cold power wash over the woods, and knew the elf's next words would have the weight of fate upon them. A spell, a cant that would bind me.

"Alken Hewer, Headsman of Seydis, you are tasked to learn the fate of Rysanthe Miresgal, and to deliver your doom to those responsible for it."

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