“I did touch one,” she corrected. “He tried to pull me down, and his touch awakened the power. I could then feel them all. . . .”
“Hm-m-m. . . . Then why did you not put the whole battlefield to rest?” he asked musingly.
“I—” She was somewhat taken aback by the audacity of his question.
“Well, could you have?” he persisted. “Could you have slain them all?”
“Yes . . . I think. Only, it would have been—”
She did not know how to answer. She could not tell him she was afraid of losing herself entirely to the power, of dissolving into the dark storm. . . .
Most of all, she could not tell him that she did not know if it would destroy her.
“Next time,” he said with a ruthless chuckle, “don’t bother sparing anyone. They are gone already, might as well send them along to the next world where they belong. Just think, you could have single-handedly taken care of the siege of Letheburg.”
“I felt—your father,” she said suddenly. “Your father, the Duke, his death. I touched it—him.”
Beltain stopped laughing.
“You should have taken them all,” he said in a voice hard as flint. And turning his back to her, he returned to the fire to stare at the boiling water.
“Next time . . .” she whispered in his wake. “Next time, I will.”
The water boiled and they drank it plain from two wooden cups he found in the corner. They could hear the wind howling outside, a fierce storm. The fire in the hearth blazed higher after he added another log and twigs. The air in the room was almost pleasantly warm.
“I am sorry, but I need to use the chamberpot,” she said awkwardly, seated on the bed, with her feet under his velvet cloak.
“Call me when you are done.” Without looking at her, he got up from the bench where he had been sitting and immediately headed outside in only his shirt.
“My Lord! Will you not freeze?”
“Not unless you take too long.” His answer came in a voice ruefully edged with humor. Not since she had mentioned his father had he smiled. Now was the first time.
Feeling only slightly dizzy as she got up, and remarkably well recovered, all things considered, Percy rushed to take care of nature’s business. She hid away the chamberpot again, arose and stood very still for a moment to let a minor headrush pass, then went barefoot to the door and opened it to the storm and called out for him.
Beltain returned immediately, blowing snow flurries and wind in with him.
“Get into bed,” he said, glancing only once at her, his gaze purposefully averted from her shape.
Percy stared at him, shivering in her nightshirt.
“Will you not take the bed, My Lord?” she said. “Where will you sleep? You are larger than me.”
“No,” he said.
“Don’t be a ninny, Sir Kni—My Lord,” she began speaking, then put the back of her hand against her mouth.
“Did you just call me a ninny, girl?”
Percy stared at him, with very wide eyes.
“That’s it, get into bed this instant! Or I will thrash you as I once promised!”
“Hah! You can try!” And suddenly she squealed, and panicked, and rushed like a big terrified horse, and threw herself on the mattress, while gulping for air with nervous giggles. She clutched the black cloak and dragged it against herself and cowered in the corner, still giggling and gasping helplessly in what was obviously a crazed fit—similar to the times when she had played with her two sisters upon occasion and they squealed and got out of control—except that now she was terrified, acutely self-aware, and shocked at her own ridiculous response.
“Holy Lord in Heaven!” he said, and stood over her, shaking his head. A smile hovered around the corners of his mouth. He stilled momentarily, and his slate-blue eyes glittered black in the red firelight. They were so intense suddenly, so focused, as he looked at her.
“What a strange little wench you are, Percy Ayren,” he said after a long pause, and looked away. “Enough of this maudlin nonsense, you need to get some sleep. And I do, too. We have a long road ahead of us tomorrow.”
“What about the bed?” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about the bed,” he replied. “I’ve slept outside under the trees and worse.”
“But there is plenty of room for both of us! Whole village families could fit in this one bed, and probably have!” she insisted.
“But we are not a family. . . .” His voice came softly. With his back to her he proceeded to arrange his armor and clothing on the beaten floor, then pulled on his thick woolen gambeson back over his undershirt, and easily lay down on the floor, with a small sack under his head for a pillow.
And then he turned away from her, lying on his side to face the fire.
“Good night, Percy.”
“Good night, My Lord,” she whispered, her mind in a strange soft turmoil.
For long moments she watched his reposing silhouette against the flames.
And then she slept.
Percy awoke at dawn to a profound silence. The pallor seeping from the cracks in the shutters and under the door was a harbinger of a white winter world. The storm had passed and left in its wake a rare serenity.
The knight was awake, and was quietly adding new logs to the fire in the hearth, and indeed its gentle rising crackle was the only sound to intrude upon the silence.
She noticed he was fully dressed already, with his boots and leg pieces on, and the chain mail hauberk in place. He must have made trips outside without her knowing it, because there were a few more logs near the hearth than before.
She shuddered, because despite the relative warmth in the room, she was chilled, and his fine black cloak she had been using as a blanket was hardly adequate protection over a nightshirt alone. Her dress, winter shoes, socks and stockings were drying near the fire, for which she was grateful. But it was awfully embarrassing to consider that he had to handle them on her behalf—the whole poor threadbare smelly lot of them. The realization of it made Percy’s cheeks flame.
“Good morning . . .” she muttered, scrambling out of bed, and heading straight for her clothing, while trying not to meet his gaze directly.
“Good morning to you, girl,” he replied in a calm voice. “Hope you are well rested. There is snow in the pot ready to heat up, together with some bark I managed to procure. Nothing edible unfortunately, so it will have to wait once we get on the road.”
“How bad is it out there?” she whispered, thinking of the usual knee-deep drifts against the door back at home in Oarclaven, and the blanketed roads on the days after heavy snowstorms.
“Bad enough,” he retorted. “But none of it matters. We are going forward today, no time to waste.”
He finished stirring the kindling and then straightened. “I’ll wait for you outside while you dress.”
“Thank you, My Lord,” she replied hurriedly, clutching her clothing. “I will be quick!” Her entire face was flaming now.
“Take your time.” And he went outside.
They had the hot tea to warm them up, finished dressing, and were outside on horseback within the half hour.
The snow had fallen at least two feet deep all around, and once they came out of the house, there was no frame of reference except for the occasional shrubbery and trees and the rising winter sun which cast its impotent light from a washed out blue sky, free of overcast. Percy had to wade through knee-deep whiteness to get just a few paces past the front door, holding her skirts up in order to take each step, while Beltain’s much taller metal-booted legs left deep imprints. He had brought out Jack from the barn, and even the great warhorse took each step with massive legs sinking, shook its tail and mane in displeasure and snorted every few breaths.
The black knight lifted her up in the saddle with an effortless hold of his metal-clad arms, so that Percy did not even know it was coming. Then, just as quickly he was up in the stirrups and seated behind her on the saddle. He wore
his black cloak, and its folds separated Percy from the icy cold metal plates of his armor.
She once again rested sideways against him, but there was something inexplicably different about his manner—a new subtle reserve and stillness. Beltain made a point of barely making bodily contact with her, held himself stiffly, and his metal vambrace-clad arms on both sides of her took care to encircle without touching her, while his gauntlets kept the reins. As for his face, he kept his head turned directly ahead, eyes upon the way before them, and what she could see of his lean unshaved jaw and lines of mouth was expressionless stone.
“Where will we go?” Percy asked, as they moved slowly through the open field.
“In general, south,” he replied, looking ahead. His baritone sounded close against her ear, and again it seemed to go all through her to the bones. She was so acutely aware of every point on her body, the feel of the saddle underneath, every spot where his cold hard armor pressed against her. . . .
Stop thinking, do not think. . . .
“We need to find a road,” she remarked. “So much snow!”
“The road is there, just beyond those fields and the shrubbery. The hedge growth defines it. See how it curves along.”
And indeed, as she allowed her eyes to take in the general linear pattern of the growth, it seemed to flow in the outline of a roadway. And then, in the hazy distance there were dark shapes it the form of remote settlements.
“Oh, I think that must be Fioren town, just there, far along the way.”
“Very likely so,” he replied. “Fioren is the next town south of Letheburg.”
“I have an uncle in Fioren!” exclaimed Percy. “It’s my father’s older brother, Uncle Guel. I met him only once when he came to visit. He and his wife have an apple orchard in town. I’ve never been to Fioren before—”
“We have no time for detours, but if your uncle lives on the way and does not mind visitors, we can stop for a quick meal.”
“Oh . . .” Percy hesitated. “I don’t know. He was very nice when he came, but he is a bit fancy, and, well—his wife Carlinne and their boy, my cousin, Martin are a little stuck up—I don’t want to impose.”
“Then we won’t. An inn would do, and I have coins enough to pay. But we need to find food eventually.”
A lone hawk circled overhead. Percy’s gaze swept up to take in the washed-out blue sky of morning, and suddenly, it was as if heaven itself pressed down on her with all its infinite layers, and she had a choking sensation of vertigo. An otherworldly wind swept inside her mind and pulled at her. . . .
Percy gasped and went very still.
The black knight noticed her strange reaction and turned his head to glance at her. “What is it?”
“Oh! So many dead!” she replied in stunned wonder.
“What?”
“I am not sure—suddenly I feel something new in the distant south, a whole great overwhelming number of death shadows! They came into being just now, in the last few minutes, so many of them, thousands! And all in one place, it’s why I can feel them!”
“Dear Lord, I did not know,” he said, looking at her intensely. “I had no notion you could feel the dead all around us so much. Even when they are out of sight?”
“Oh, yes. I always feel them a little bit, since the world is filled with mortals, after all. There are dead things everywhere around us, little dead things. Even now, under the snow. . . . It’s like a prickling in the back of my head. It is how I feel her out there, the Cobweb Bride. I know her in particular, for she has been singled out to me by Death Himself. But—”
And she turned her face to him, her eyes dilated with intensity. “But this is different. So many have died just now, that it’s as if a whole lake of death has flooded, nay, an ocean, and all in one place.”
“And is it where we are heading?” he asked. “Must we?”
“I—I think so. . . .”
“In that case, Percy Ayren,” he said in a grim voice, “you’ll need to make ready.”
Chapter 13
It was time to send the birds.
Ebrai Fiomarre moved silently through the remote north wing corridors of the Palace of the Sun. It was only half an hour since the entirety of Trova Square became a field of slaughter for an army of thousands upon thousands. And with some deadened part of himself he still heard their voices and ringing tandem strikes, the hum of strange butchery filling the expanse with reverberating acoustics. And then they had marched. . . .
The onlookers from the Palace, the myriad windows and balconies, and all around the edifices of the square, were suspended in a strange impossibility, a kind of psychic stillness. They had mostly fallen silent—first in disbelief, then in horror—a few were shaking, some weeping, holding their mouths and faces, others praying. They were witnessing a unique moment in history. Never before had it known and never again would Trova Square know such methodical mass atrocity enacted upon a friendly army by their own, of their own free will.
Yet, was it indeed free will that moved them to this act? Or was it her influence upon them, taking away all truth of will and choice, all rational awareness of what was real, of what was duty and what was madness, and binding their mind to her own?
Ebrai walked with a blank demeanor, encountering almost no one in the corridors.
Rumors had spread all over, and the Sapphire Court was stunned, broken, impossibly empty. They hid all over the Palace and in houses overlooking the square and outlying streets. Soft muted weeping came from shuttered windows. Many of the Trovadii had come from remote parts of the Domain, each of the four Kingdoms having sacrificed their best and brightest sons to the highest honor of Sovereign’s brilliant military service. But even more of them had been local—sons and brothers and husbands.
They who witnessed the slaughter this sunrise, were seeing their own loved ones fall before their eyes.
Ebrai himself had not expected this; had not had any warning. He was present for each of the preliminary war councils, watched the Field Marshals discuss strategy with the Sovereign over great maps. Watched them place tiny painted figures of tin and pewter soldiers to mark battle movements and formations. And not once had he heard this part of the plan, the part where the orders were given to take their own lives.
No wonder the three distinguished generals had looks of such desperate intensity, such impossible poised calm when he last saw them alive in the Palace at her side.
What had she done?
Ebrai turned a few more corridors along an older terrace, and found himself ascending a stair of old marble, well polished by generations of feet, up to the uppermost level of the Palace, almost near the roof. Here, perched in a remote forgotten spot were the small apartments allocated by the Sovereign to Micul Fiomarre, his father.
Micul Fiomarre had been living here for months now, in the subtle role of a man touched by tragic fate and diminished in his senses. After being marked as a traitor by the Emperor of the Realm, he had thrown himself at the mercy of the House of Avalais.
The Sovereign took him in out of amusement, and Fiomarre the Elder expected no true trust from her, only an opportunity to remain and fix himself firmly in this position. He immediately demonstrated that he was not quite in his right mind—but not so much that he was perceived as an outright madman, merely enough to be considered an eccentric given to periodic fits and turgid moods in-between relative clarity. And as such he took it upon himself to show an obsession with cultivating flowers in his apartment near the attic and upon the small rooftop terrace given him.
“As long as he does not decide to cast himself off the roof, he may do as he please,” the Sovereign had announced casually. But there was not a moment of doubt that Micul Fiomarre was continuously under surveillance, or that the Sovereign ever underestimated him. Thus, Fiomarre the Elder had to play a very subtle game of real quasi-insanity, and took his horticultural pursuits very seriously. His terrace roof and greenhouse was soon overflowing with plants and flowers of all hues a
nd varieties. In addition, he made a point of requesting strange varieties of seeds and grain of every sort, attempting to plant and nurture new hybrids, and scattering more than half of what was brought to him underfoot and all over the rooftop garden, so that soon flocks of birds came to roost nearby. Thus, under the guise of eccentricity, he somehow managed to acquire and keep a number of carrier pigeons and other winged messengers that pecked alongside the wild birds of the Sapphire Court.
Ebrai Fiomarre reached his father’s apartments and knocked softly on the door in the designated manner. Moments later, the door was opened by a tall dark-haired man in his late middle years, bearing a strong family resemblance but with heavier brows, graying temples, and a receding hairline.
He did not look well at all.
Ebrai was particularly concerned, knowing how soon this came in the wake of the recent hard news of his younger brother Vlau having committed that unfortunate atrocity at Silver Court, taking the life of the Emperor’s daughter—all because of a mistaken impression, all because he could never be told the honorable truth of their spy status and their true loyalty to the Imperial Realm. When their father learned the news of his second son’s murderous act, he was taken genuinely ill for a day, despite putting on his usual mask of composure. And now, for the first time he was showing signs of a real decline in his focus, health, and faculties.
“Good morning, father,” Ebrai said, and entered, closing the door behind them then locking it from the inside. But even here, in the relative privacy of confined quarters, there was the possibility of surveillance—for the walls of the Palace had ears; political factions always vying for advantage, each with their own agenda and various degrees of loyalty to the Sovereign—and thus they had to continue in their act, even between themselves, speaking half in code and half in bitter jest.
On this day, even Micul Fiomarre was shaken, having just observed the slaughter in Trova Square from his rooftop terrace, and his grim pallor and lines of exhaustion went deeper than usual.