The snake-like rope trailed after the Hangman as he took a confident step towards the trio. Roland could practically hear it hiss as it slithered. Still, he stood his ground, his rapier aloft. Running now would be foolish as he knew he’d have to face this enemy sooner or later.

  ‘Believe the Hangman is real now?’ Roland called back to Holsley. ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’m hoping it’s a trick of the light,’ replied Holsley. ‘Maybe that hardtack biscuit I had earlier?’

  The young bard gathered his lute up to him. He noticed that the Hangman didn’t miss that little action. It was purely a defensive manoeuvre because, in truth, he had no idea what he was going to do with it. Maybe the charming song? He looked at the circles on his little finger. Two spells ready to go.

  Roland was thinking more offensively. This was an obstacle he was going to need to overcome eventually, so why not get it out of the way now? Acting on that radical thought, the rogue suddenly dashed forward with his rapier. He didn’t realise he was shouting until the very last moment.

  The Hangman didn’t flinch.

  Turns out, he didn’t need to. The rapier tore right through his torso, and the point came out clean through the other side. There wasn’t a hint of pain, not even a whimper. Roland blinked. It was clear that the attack had done nothing.

  This wasn’t at all what Roland had expected. Usually, when someone is stabbed through with a rapier, there’s more blood, more screaming. This time there was nothing. It was as if he had savagely attacked a sack of grain, and the Hangman had reacted in much the same way as one.

  ‘What are you?’ he breathed.

  ‘A Servant of Xoal,’ the Hangman whispered.

  Holsley heard a sharp intake of air from his left and about two feet down. Merhim?

  Ropes lashed out at Roland too quickly to dodge. They wrapped around his arms and legs, pulling him away from the Hangman and raising him a foot into the air. The rogue grunted as he struggled against them, but they were tight around him, stretching him.

  ‘Roland!’ Holsley brought his fingers to the strings of his lute. What could he do? The young bard had no idea what their opponent was, but any supernatural creature was susceptible to magic. It would have to be the charming spell, then — that’s the only one in his repertoire that had a shot.

  His clumsy fingers fumbled the strings as he desperately tried to get the notes out. The redrose lute compensated, but it couldn’t keep up. Holsley couldn’t do it. He was shaking too much. He looked up to see Roland struggling against his restraints, then looked down again at the strings to place his fingers back in the correct position.

  The next time he looked up, the Hangman was standing right in front of him.

  Holsley fell backwards with a surprised yelp. The lute tumbled from his hands, and the drum thudded loudly against the floor. The Hangman looked at it curiously and reached out a hand. Ropes came to claim it, but before they could touch it, they recoiled as if frightened.

  Holsley raised an eyebrow at that.

  ‘Magic,’ The Hangman stated in his whispery, hoarse voice.

  Caught in petrified horror, Holsley stared as the Hangman reached up to remove his cowl. Sparks flew from the creature’s fingertips, and the tunnel suddenly erupted in an impossible inferno. A wall of fire separated Holsley and the Hangman from the rest of the world.

  Holsley crawled backwards until he hit a wall.

  The cowl was tossed back, and he was suddenly staring into the eyes of a very familiar face. A man stared down at him. One with tanned skin, bushy black eyebrows, and a tangle of long hair that reached past their neck. It was the beard that brought Holsley’s heart to stutter, however. It was delicately braided, like how the dwarves typically weave it, and small colourful beads and bits of old stone were woven into the hair.

  ‘Dan!?’ Holsley’s voice caught in his throat. He couldn’t believe it. Seconds became years as his body became as rigid rock. All he could do was stare at this figure as he struggled to breathe.

  ‘Don’t believe it, Holly!’ Roland shouted from somewhere over the fire.

  ‘Why did you abandon me, Holsley?’ Dan said sullenly. He stepped closer, and suddenly, the light shifted, revealing a mass of burns covering his face. ‘I needed you, and you left me.’

  ‘I, I, I,’ Holsley stammered, unable to find the words. ‘I…’

  ‘You don’t deserve that lute.’ Dan’s eyes flickered to the redrose lute, his voice becoming harsh and cruel. ‘You don’t deserve it, and you know it.’

  ‘I know,’ Holsley breathed, tears crowning the edges of his eyes. ‘I’m…I’m sorry.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean much when I’m dead, Holsley.’

  Merhim came out of nowhere. The gnome grabbed hold of the redrose lute and swung it like an axe towards the figure. The lute went straight through Dan and cut the illusion as if it were made of smoke. This image of horror and the flames accompanying it disappeared in a moment, fading away like dust caught in a breeze.

  ‘It was an illusion, Holsley.’ Merhim grabbed the bard by the shoulders like he had when the goblin king’s room had caught fire. ‘He’s working on your fears.’

  ‘I can’t breathe.’ Holsley clutched his chest, which felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand tiny daggers. It hurt to inhale — it hurt even to try. ‘Help.’

  ‘You’ve got to breathe, eh.’ Merhim took a firm hold of his hand. ‘Try and calm yourself.’

  Holsley shut his eyes, concentrating, but still found the pain unbearable.

  ‘Try and focus on my voice,’ said Merhim calmly. ‘We’re going to count to five. Nice and slow. Let’s do it together.’

  The bard nodded.

  No matter how hard Roland strained against the ropes, they wouldn’t loosen.

  In fact, the more he struggled, the tighter they seemed to become. The Hangman stood nearby, watching him. Roland knew that the Hangman could end him right here and now if he had a mind to. All it would take was a noose around the neck, but he didn’t. The rogue was a stuffed pig primed for the fork, but still, the Hangman didn’t move.

  ‘What do you want?’ Roland finally asked. ‘Are you going to hang me here and now?’

  ‘No.’ The Hangman moved a little closer, the stale aroma of death following shortly behind them.

  ‘Then what!?’ Roland shouted. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘One,’ Holsley and Merhim said together.

  ‘You want me to go back into the city?’ Roland tried to figure it out on his own, seeing as now answers were forthcoming. The Hangman had appeared when he’d tried to escape. ‘You want me to hang in a couple of days instead? Is that it?’

  ‘Two.’

  The Hangman said nothing, but Roland knew he was on the right track. The ropes eased their grip, and he found he could get a hand free. That was answer enough. The Hangman took a step back, and the ropes retreated.

  This had all been just a warning — don’t leave the city.

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  ‘Three.’

  Roland got his stone hand free, which was still hidden beneath his glove. He landed back on the floor. The Hangman displayed absolutely no emotion, which made it difficult for Roland to read him. They were like a wild animal, just doing what it was born to do and nothing more than that. You couldn’t reason with it nor bargain; he was simply a force of nature.

  ‘Four.’

  Roland took a few tentative steps back. The Hangman didn’t follow. It left him with a sense of unease. Originally, he thought escaping the city would be the easiest part of his escapades. Now, he realised he was wrong. It would be the hardest, maybe impossible even.

  Roland knew a hundred ways out of Tressa as a rogue, almost a hundred more than any typical tubhead. There were so many ways, and even if anyone knew all of them, they couldn’t all be guarded. Except, now he saw that they were. The Hangman was guarding them all at the same time. There’d be no escape, not while that thing was still alive.

  ‘Five.’

  Holsley’s breathing levelled out, and he found himself able to inhale again. The panic resided a little, and he once again opened his eyes. Merhim was above him, smiling gently. With some effort, the gnome brought Holsley up onto his feet again.

  ‘We should go,’ said Merhim, taking a hard look at the Hangman, who stood just before the grate, watching all of them. ‘Now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Roland weakly. ‘We should.’

  Merhim led Holsley out. Roland stopped just before the corner and dared to look back. The Hangman was still there, patiently watching him. The only thing that had changed was the ropes. They were positioned along the iron bars of the grate, spreading out from the Hangman’s body.

  Without flexing, the ropes became taught and pulled on the bars in all the weakest positions. In disbelief, Roland watched as the iron bars broke free, cracking the stone and breaking the wall’s foundations. The ground rumbled as dust erupted into the sewers. When it settled, he saw the aftermath quite clearly.

  The exit had collapsed.

  What was once a nice view of the ocean beyond the city was now a pile of stone rubble with chinks of light peering through the tiny gaps. Roland stared at it in disbelief. He’d fought a fair share of opponents over the years, but he’d never felt this outmatched before. The Hangman wasn’t human, he decided then, and he’d need more than skills with a rapier to defeat it.

  He would need Holsley’s magic.

  Around the corner, Roland found Merhim and Holsley waiting for him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked Holsley, who was pale as a sheet of paper.

  ‘Peachy.’ Holsley nodded. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ replied Roland, then he eyed Merhim. ‘That’s why I can’t leave the city just yet. Every time I try, he’ll stop me. I wasn’t even going to leave, and it showed up anyway.’

  ‘I always heard of the Hangman,’ replied Merhim. ‘Didn’t figure he was real, eh.’

  ‘What are we doing to do about him?’ Holsley asked. ‘I was useless back there. He showed me…well, he showed me things I don’t want to repeat. How in the name of good are we supposed to fight a creature like that? We don’t even know what it is?’

  ‘We need to—’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Merhim cut in, and the pair turned to him. He looked back at them sullenly. ‘That was a Servant of Xoal.’

  ‘What’s a Servant of Xoal?’ asked Roland.

  Merhim looked back at him hopelessly. ‘A paladin of fear.’

  ***

  They wasted no time in rushing back to the New Leaf to regroup. It was here that Merhim promised he would spill the details of everything he knew regarding the Hangman. Fire erupted in the hearth, a table from the corner was pulled over, and the three of them chose a chair and sat around it like co-conspirators of a fiendish plot.

  Roland looked over at Holsley. The bard was still pale and nibbling on a biscuit. Roland knew that his encounter with the Hangman had left an impression, just as it had done with him. When Berry Kellam had appeared in that ill-fated escape attempt, he’d thought the devil herself was coming to claim his soul. It was the same for his friend.

  The rogue offered Holsley a reassuring hand on the shoulder, which seemed to ease him a little, before turning his attention to the gnome struggling to light a pipe with shaky hands across the table.

  ‘What’s a Servant of Xoal?’ Roland asked all business.

  Merhim let out a breath. ‘They’re paladins from Ankland, and they’re not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of. Do you know who Xoal is, eh?’

  Holsley did. He’d read the name several times across the many history books he had studied in the elven libraries. He shuddered. No one had ever mentioned the name out loud before. Until now, it had just been a word on the page of a book.

  ‘He’s a God,’ Holsley replied. ‘Not just any God, though. Xoal is the God of Fear.’

  Merhim nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, these paladins are worshippers of fear?’ Roland added.

  ‘That’s right again.’ Merhim took a draw from his pipe, his bangles jingling on his forearm. ‘Paladins that worship Xoal are called Servants of Xoal, and the name couldn’t be more accurate. They believe, truly, that courage can only come from conquering great fear, so they spread themselves thin across the Further Kingdoms and use their divinity to conjure a person’s greatest fears. The courageous are usually recruited as paladins, while the weak are…’

  ‘Killed,’ Roland finished.

  Merhim shot him a worried glance that told the rogue he was correct.

  ‘I’m not sure what the Hangman is, not entirely, eh,’ said Merhim. ‘If they’re a Servant of Xoal, though, then you two are in big trouble. He can summon your greatest fears and use them against you.’

  Holsley shuddered, thinking about how Dan had appeared beneath that cowl. Those burns. That face. What he’d said.

  ‘But they’re just illusions. There’s nothing to worry about, right?’ asked Roland. ‘Illusions can’t hurt you?’

  ‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ said Merhim. ‘I’ve heard it said that the Servants can make their images real.’

  ‘How did the Hangman survive my attack?’ Roland straightened up. ‘I stabbed him through the chest with my rapier, and it did nothing. It was no illusion either. I felt the blade go in. I had to pull it back out.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Merhim shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of a Servant who could do that. I think them being a paladin is only part of this puzzle, eh. There’s something else at work here as well.’

  ‘So, what now?’ Holsley, who had been unusually quiet, asked.

  ‘There ain’t no leaving the city while that monster is here.’ Merhim pointed at both of them. ‘You are both going to have to figure out how to deal with your fears, and I’m sorry to say, but you’ve only got about two days to do it.’

  Roland and Holsley exchanged a glance.

  ‘For the moment, though,’ Merhim pressed. ‘Let’s figure out your stupid ruby situation, eh.’

  Holsley exhaled a breath, glad for the change in conversation.

  ‘Great,’ replied Roland. ‘I know that Fox has the shards of the ruby, but we’ve got his ring. He’s going to want that back. I’m going to leave a message for him that we’re looking to trade.’

  ‘Where?’ Holsley cleared his throat. ‘Uh, where are we going to trade?’

  ‘I was thinking we could do it in the Teetering Tavern,’ Roland replied. Holsley gasped. He continued. ‘There’s plenty of places to retreat if we get into trouble, and I know a way out that Fox wouldn’t have thought of.’

  ‘Seems like a bit of a dangerous spot to do a trade,’ muttered Holsley. The Teetering Tavern was a building right on the edge of Tressa, hanging over the edge. It had been abandoned long ago when there was more cliff for it to sit on, and now everyone was just waiting for it to fall into the sea. ‘Also, do we really have to give back the ring?’

  ‘No, I’m going to arrange a trade with Fox, but we’ll double-cross him.’ Roland smiled. Merhim shook his head in disbelief. ‘You said you can conjure up minor illusions, right? Could you do one for the ring?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’ Holsley shrugged his shoulders. ‘So long as no one’s looking closely at it.’

  ‘Perfect.’ Roland rubbed his hands together and leaned forward. ‘I’m going to get in touch with Fox—’

  ‘How?’ Merhim demanded.

  ‘Don’t worry, I have a way,’ said Roland. ‘We’ll meet him at the Teetering Tavern. Holly, you’ll conjure up an image of the ring, and we’ll trade for the ruby. Once we have it, and before he knows the ring isn’t real, we’ll make a break for it, utilising the tavern’s secret exit. Then, we’re done.’

  ‘Will this Fox character be suspecting a trap?’ asked Merhim. ‘Would others be with him?’

  ‘No.’ Roland shifted in his chair. ‘Fox always comes alone, but even if he doesn’t, we’ve got plenty of ways to escape from that tavern.’

  ***

  Roland left shortly after that, but Holsley didn’t join him. Instead, he sat in one of the seats and twiddled his thumbs. Dan’s sudden appearance had really done a number on him. It had seemed so real, but he still felt foolish at being suckered in by an illusion. The whole thing was bringing up some intense feelings that he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with.

  Merhim sidled up next to him.

  It had been almost a quarter of an hour since Roland had left, and neither of them had spoken a word to one another. The gnome took another long draw of his pipe and exhaled the smoke slowly. He was getting ready to talk, Holsley guessed.

  ‘Are you okay, kid?’

  Holsley rolled his tongue over his teeth and found the distinctive gap at the front. He fondled it as he thought hard on that question. At first, he didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to bring up the pain of the past, but it’s not like that was doing any good. The pain was coming anyway. He couldn’t avoid it.

  ‘No,’ he said honestly, staring distantly at the furthest wall. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You’re scared of fire, aren’t you, eh?’ Merhim edged a little closer. ‘Back when we were in the goblin den together, you froze when that wand set the throne alight.’

  Holsley didn’t say anything; he continued to twiddle his thumbs.

  ‘Back just then with the Hangman, they conjured fire to paralyse you with fear,’ Merhim continued. ‘And I heard that when the gallows were set alight, people saw that you couldn’t move. Roland pulled you away.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Holsley breathed.

  ‘I’m also thinking there’s a reason for it,’ said Merhim. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, Holsley. It might help too, though, eh.’

  ‘You’ll think less of me.’ Holsley sniffed. ‘It’s not a very good story.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it anyway.’

  A few moments passed between them in silence as Holsley thought on the proposal. Merhim was right; it was about time he told someone his side of the story. It was inevitable. The young bard had wanted to wait until he was ready, but that wouldn’t happen. He could’ve told the elves, Ariesse, or the tens of people he had met and made friends with on the road. He hadn’t.

  Holsley had carried this dark secret for a long time.

  Finally, the bard turned to Merhim with a forlorn face and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling through it his nostrils. He nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what happened.’