Weekly tales #460
“Whispers at Wyrmswire Pass” and “The shadows of Cléron Abbey”
Whispers at Wyrmswire Pass
Genre: ghost lore
Word count: 840
The wind howls across Wyrmswire Pass the way it has for centuries, shrill as a war horn, sweeping over stones stained by old blood. On certain nights, when the moon slips behind clouds, those who walk the path swear the voices of the slain ride the wind, calling for justice that will never come.
The folk of New Branscairn, a village nestled in the green folds of the Marches, know the tales well. Their grandparents spoke of the last great clash between the realm of Carland and the kingdom of Drascia, when the men of the Marches took up spear and sword against each other on the slopes of Wyrmswire. They called it the Raid of the Redeswire, though no one speaks the name now without glancing over their shoulder.
It was said the trouble began with a border moot, where the wardens of both realms met to settle grievances: the theft of cattle, the murder of traders, old vendettas that flared like summer fires. On the eleventh day of Greenmonth in the year of the Wolf Banner, the moot turned sour. A Carlish warden named Sir Arvyn Halluver accused the Drascian envoy, Lord Gavric Thane, of sheltering bandits who had raided Branscairn. Harsh words grew into shouts, then swords were drawn, and the hills rang with steel.
The skirmish became a slaughter. The Drascian men surged forward, driving the Carlish soldiers back through the bracken and stone. When the dust cleared, bodies lay strewn on both slopes, and the stream that wound through the pass ran red for three days.
A fragile peace followed. Borders were redrawn. Treaties were signed and broken. But the echoes of the battle did not rest.
On a night like this one, thick with mist, Moira Greystane trudged up the pass, lantern held high. She was a keeper of the old ways, a weaver of charms and teller of tales. The villagers often sought her counsel, though few admitted it openly. Tonight, she walked with a courage that belied the fear in her heart.
Moira’s task tonight was grim. A shepherd named Callan Birk had vanished three nights earlier, his flock found scattered along the lower slopes of Wyrmswire. Only his crook remained, snapped in two, its handle stained with something darker than mud.
At the mouth of the pass, Moira paused. The mist curled around her skirts, cold as grave soil. She murmured a prayer to the Bright Mother and stepped forward.
As she climbed, shapes began to form in the swirling fog. Not solid shapes, but hints of banners, the glint of spear points, the gleam of mailed sleeves. She could hear the muffled thunder of hooves, the clash of swords and the ragged cries of the dying.
“Who goes there?” she called out, though her voice trembled.
No answer came, only a sighing breeze and the faint clangour of phantom steel.
Higher still, near the ridge where the old cairns stood, she found the place where Callan’s crook had been discovered. The soil was churned and dark, as though many feet had trembled it in a wild fight.
A sudden chill wrapped around her throat, squeezing tight. She dropped the lantern, which sputtered and went out, plunging the pass into darkness.
Then, in the black, she saw them: the ghosts of Wyrmswire.
Pale warriors in tattered surcoats, bearing the badges of Carland and Drascia both, gilded across the stones. Some held swords still dripping ghostly blood. Others clutched at wounds that would never heal. One knight, helm shattered, stared straight at Moira, his eyes two burning coals.
“Peace…” she whispered, hands raised. “Go to your rest.”
But the knight only lifted his sword, pointing beyond Moira’s shoulder. She turned and saw Calln Birk stumbling from the shadows. His eyes were wide, his mouth moving soundlessly.
“Callan!” she cried.
But the shepherd recoiled, as though he saw something terrible behind her. Before she could reach him, cold hands grasped his shoulders and pulled him back into the fog.
The wraiths closed in, swirling around Moira. A voice, echoing like wind through an empty hall, whispered, “Blood cries for blood. The pact remains unbroken. The Raid if not done.”
And then they were gone.
The mist thinned. Stars blinked above the ridge. Moira fell to her knees, breath ragged. Callan was nowhere to be seen. Only his crook lay on the stones, snapped anew.
Moira carried it down to New Branscairn at dawn. The villagers gathered at the edge of the square as she arrived, pale and silent. She held up the broken crook.
“They will keep claiming the living,” she said, voice rough, “until Carland and Drascia make peace true and lasting.”
But no one spoke. The villagers only stared at Wyrmswire Pass, where the sun rose red as blood.
And though treaties might be signed in the courts of kings, the folk of the Marches knew one truth: ghosts have long memories, and the Raid of the Redeswire would haunt Wyrmswire Pass for as many centuries as the wind would blow.
The end
The shadows of Cléron Abbey
Genre: ghost stories
Word count: 1,490
The wind screamed across the valley of Bellecombe as though it carried the voices of the dead. Clouds tore themselves ragged on the peaks, leaving a pale wash of moonlight spilling over the tiled roofs of Cléron Abbey. Inside the abbey walls, silence reigned, yet it was a silence that pressed on the skin, thick as damp wool.
Éloise Marcellin stood in the scriptorium, fingers tracing the carved letters of an ancient ledger. Her breath misted in the cold air, even though summer still lingered beyond the high stone windows. She was twenty-three years old, with dark hair braided tightly under her linen cap and ink stains on her slender fingers.
Around her, the shadows seemed to lean closer, as though listening. She tried to concentrate on the pages, but her gaze kept drifting to the doorway, half expecting someone —or something — to appear.
Cléron Abbey had belonged to the Order of the Holy Name for centuries. But since last spring, everything had changed. The Grand Council of Ardal, seat of the kingdom of Lydara, had issued the Edict of Velmont, revoking all tolerance for those of the Reformed Faith. Where once neighbours worshipped side by side, now suspicion clawed at every doorstep. Whispers spoke of soldiers tearing through towns, of books burned, of hidden graves.
Éloise’s own father, Henri Marcellin, had been a Reformed preacher in the small town of Chavannes. Two months earlier, the royal guard had dragged him away under the cover of the night. His fate remained a silence that swallowed her mother’s eyes and weighed on Éloise’s shoulders like stones.
Yet she had come to Cléron Abbey not merely to hide, but to protect the one thing she could still save: a forbidden manuscript, bound in calfskin and inked with sermons her father had written. The abbey’s Mother Superior, Soeur Lucienne, had agreed to shelter her. Though more for the price Éloise could pay than out of mercy. Gold opened doors, even holy ones.
But since her arrival, Éloise had felt eyes on her that no nun possessed. She heard footsteps where there were none. She dreamed of a woman in white who wept beside the abbey’s great stone fireplace. And tonight, as the wind howled outside, the air seemed to shimmer with an energy that made her scalp prickle.
From the hallway came a soft tap, tap, like finger drumming on wood. Éloise turned sharply.
“Soeur Lucienne?”
No answer.
She swallowed and stepped into the corridor, holding her candle high. The flame bent sideways in a draft that smelled faintly of old herbs and stone dust.
The corridor was empty.
Yet as she strained her ears, she heard it again: a faint sobbing, distant but distinct.
It seemed to come from the lower floors, near the old crypts.
For a long moment, Éloise hesitated. She knew the stories. Long before Cléron had become a convent, it had been a fortress and then a noble estate. Blood had soaked its stones in centuries past. Some said that on nights when the wind howled, the old abbey’s wall whispered secrets of betrayal and death.
But Éloise was no child. She lifted her chin, gathered her skirts and started down the steps.
The crypts lay beneath the abbey’s western wing, beneath vaults of moss-green stone. Her candle cast nervous flickers over carved saints with eyeless sockets and chipped noses.
The sobbing grew louder as she approached the crypt’s far wall, where an iron gate separated the old tombs from a storage chamber filled with broken statues and disused altar pieces.
Through the bars, Éloise caught a glimpse of movement: a pale figure in a thin white gown, kneeling on the stone floor, face buried in her hands. Long dark hair spilled down the woman’s back.
“Madame?” Éloise said, voice trembling. “Are you hurt?”
The figure did not look up. Her shoulders shook with silent weeping.
Éloise reached for the gate. It creaked open on stiff hinges.
“Please,” Éloise said, stepping inside. “Can I help you?”
Slowly, the woman lowered her hands. Her skin was chalk-pale, her eyes black as spilled ink. Around her neck hung a silver cross crusted with dark stains. When she spoke, her voice sounded dry as crumbling parchment.
“They silenced my prayers.”
Éloise froze. A chill crawled up her spine.
The woman stood, her feet bare and bloodless on the cold stones. “They forbade my words, though I harmed no soul. They burned my books. They branded my name a curse.”
The shadows thickened around her, swirling like ink in water. Éloise clutched her candle until wax dripped onto her wrist.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The woman stepped closer. Her hair lifted in an invisible breeze. “I was Isabelle Launay. Once I read the Scriptures in secret rooms, teaching the words my heart believed. The soldiers came in the night. They dragged me from my house, crying that the Edict forbade me to speak. They took me here. I confessed my faith beneath the lash. Then they walled me into these stones.”
Éloise staggered back, slamming against a pillar. “No… That’s not true. Cléron is a holy place.”
The ghost’s eyes glistened. “A holy place steeped in sin. The blood of the innocent soaks these stones. They walled me alive behind the bricks.”
She turned, pointing to the far wall, where ancient mortar crumbled in a ragged seam.
Éloise, trembling, peered closer. By the flicker of her candle, she saw faint red marks in the mortar. Scratches that might have been letters.
HELP ME
Her stomach lurched.
The ghost reached out. Cold air rushed around Éloise’s neck like icy fingers. “Your faith will damn you here. They hunt you as they hunted me. Leave this place. Take your father’s book and flee.”
Éloise shook her head, voice ragged. “I have nowhere to go. They’ll find me anywhere.”
The ghost’s expression softened. “Then hide the truth where no flames can touch it. Bury it beneath the stones.”
Éloise blinked tears from her eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”
The ghost faded, her white gown dissolving into the darkness like mist under sunlight. Only her voice lingered, soft as a prayer.
“Because I was like. And I would not see another die for words written in ink.”
The crypt fell silent once more. Éloise stood shaking, her candle guttering low.
When she finally fled the crypt, dawn was bleeding into the sky.
Two days later, Mother Superior Lucienne summoned Éloise to the abbess’s chamber. The room smelled of lavender and stale parchment. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows, casting red and gold patterns on the floor.
Lucienne, tall and spare as a scythe, sat behind her desk, a folded parchment in her hand. Her black veil framed a face pale as ivory.
“Soeur Éloise,” she said, in her crisp, low voice, “I have received troubling news. The royal guard searches for heretics in the abbeys. They carry lists of names.”
Éloise swallowed. “Mother, I…”
Lucienne held up a bony finger. “Your father’s name is on that list. And yours. They believe you carry forbidden writings. If the guard comes here, I will not risk this abbey’s safety for a traitor’s daughter.”
A tremor passed through Éloise. “But… you promised me sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary ends when soldiers stand at the gate,” Lucienne said. She leaned closer, eyes sharp as shards of glass. “Destroy whatever writings you possess. Burn them tonight. Or leave Cléron Abbey before dawn.”
Éloise felt the ground sway beneath her feet. “Where would I go?”
Lucienne’s lips thinned. “This is not my concern.”
That night, Éloise stood once more in the crypt. In her arms, she held the manuscript in linen cloth. Her father’s words lay inside, pages filled with sermons of forgiveness and mercy.
The abbess’s threat echoed in her mind. Burn it. Or run.
But Isabelle Launay’s voice whispered from the shadows. “Bury it beneath the stones.”
Éloise knelt beside the crumbling wall where the scratches spelled HELP ME. She pried loose the bricks until her finger bled. Inside the hollow space, she placed the manuscript, wrapping it in oilcloth to keep out the damp.
As she replaced the stones, a breeze stirred the air. She turned and saw the ghost of Isabelle watching her, pale and sad, yet peaceful.
Éloise bowed her head. “I’ll keep your secret. And my father’s.”
The ghost smiled faintly. “Then my soul is lighter.”
Before dawn, Éloise slipped from Cléron Abbey in a borrowed cloak. She crossed the abbey’s silent courtyard, past the chapel door and the weeping stone saints. The wind carried whispers as though the ghosts of Cléron were bidding her farewell.
By the time the sun rose over Bellecombe, she had vanished into the forest.
And beneath the stones of Cléron Abbey, the words of the Reformed faith waited, silent and hidden, until the day when voice could speak freely again.
Or until the restless dead chose to reveal them once more.