Karin Ledge made her way to her father’s office with snow pouring around her, whiting out the entire world, leaving the night lamps and illuminated windows haloed in the golden glow of firelight. She kept as close as she could to the sidewalk, which had been all but effaced in the deepening drifts. Beyond the meager circles cast by the light from lamps and windows, there was a mesmerizing white, and beyond that, darkness encroached.
Karin hurried as quickly as she could. Patches where the snow had fallen over ice could be treacherous. Slipping and breaking an ankle was an ever-present concern during these snowfalls. Ahead, her father’s office suddenly loomed out of the cascading flakes like the prow of an oncoming ship.
Karin was relieved. Her father was the mayor of Old Flood, and had been for the past twenty-five years. She had grown up with Count Joachim’s sisters, and was proud to be closely allied with such a good man. This was part of the reason she hurried to be at her father’s side.
Ever since her mother’s death two years back, he had lost a vital part of himself. Life had been hard for both of them. Mayor Braun’s disappearance and the deaths wreaked by that monster set loose by the sorcerer were taking their toll on him. People around Old Flood were terrified and growing restless with their fear. Her home was beginning to feel like a pot set on a fire and left to boil with a sealed lid. Soon something was going to cause that pot to explode. Part of this came as a foreboding, a sense that the heat was increasing steadily. Unfortunately proof appeared in the form of an officer sent by Count Eason through the snow-choked passes between the Valleys and Kalavere. He along with several other men arrived earlier in the day to speak with her dad. They seemed smoothly polite, but it was the kind of politeness that men only wore for show, like a seller of medicines promising cures that only brought a quicker death.
The officer told her father that Count Joachim had refused aid generously offered by Eason and vigorously ignored his lord’s best advice on how to track down and capture this beast. Then he all but insinuated that perhaps there never had been a creature at all, but that some of Joachim’s own troops were responsible and that a prominent merchant in good standing in Kalavere and Pallodine had been wrongfully accused of sorcery so Joachim could avoid blame. Her dad had come to her in a state of panic about it. This kind of political trouble was a nightmare.
Karin wanted to bring her dad home for dinner and soothe his worries until they could talk to Joachim about what had happened. She finally made it to the steps of her father’s office and frowned. Inside only a night lamp burned. Could he have left early? He was supposed to be waiting on her to accompany him.
Karin frowned.
Hurriedly she walked up the stairs. Cold from the snow-covered rails bit into her fingers despite her gloves. Beneath the overhang, Karin kicked the ice off of her shoes and unlocked the door. Inside all was cool and still, which meant that the fires had been left to die a few hours earlier.
“Dad?” she called out.
No answer.
“Dad?”
An ember popped in the fireplace, and a charred log collapsed as the air stirred with the opening of the door. From down the hallway leading to her father’s office she heard a soft thump-thump that sounded like a man struggling to pick himself up off the floor. A spark of panic flared inside of her.
“Dad?” she called out in a panicky voice and hurried down the dark hallway, reaching out for the wall in case she stumbled.
Karin felt her father’s office door and hurried into the room, relieved that a candle was burning dimly behind his desk. Fearfully she scanned the floor through the gloom, looking desperately for her father’s shape on the floor by his desk.
“Dad! I’m here Dad!” she called out.
The sound of a floorboard creaking behind her alerted Karin that someone was approaching quickly and quietly. She spun in time to see the dark, familiar face of Ravel Grimmel leering at her from the darkness.
Then he hit her.
Hard.
Karin fell to the floor, crying out in pain and fear. “What are you doing to me?” she screamed.
Ravel ignored her, walked quickly up to her and kicked her in her head. His boot connected with her temple setting off flashes of light and pain inside her skull. Darkness drew in around her, and how long she was out, she had no idea. Slowly the world resolved itself in front of her, spinning sickeningly. The air inside the office was now bitterly cold, and the ffft-ffft-ffft of large snowflakes striking the window provided a deceptively tranquil backdrop to what was taking place inside the room.
Karin struggled to move, but realized that her hands and legs were bound. “What are you doing?” Her words sounded hollow in the dark room. “Why? Ravel?”
Her father’s desk partially obscured her view. Ravel continued to ignore her. He appeared to be rummaging through the contents of a bag.
“Ravel!” she said, hoping to appeal to his sense of decency. If he had one. “I . . . never believed that you could have done those things that got you sent to the Pit. This isn’t like you . . . Mr. Grimmel . . .”
Of course it was. Of course it was. All too like a man of Ravel Grimmel’s caliber. His response cut across her like a whip. “Shut up.” Karin bit back a black tide of fear. Her head ached mercilessly and a cold smear of dried blood crusted across her forehead. She could feel it in her hair where strands sticking to the clots stung, making the area where his boot connected with her scalp throb. The rope Ravel wound around her wrists was almost tight enough to cut off circulation in her hands.
Karin tried to subtly wriggle enough slack to gain any edge she could. Her heart convulsed when Ravel looked up and gave her a mocking smile. “That won’t work.”
“Please get what you need and leave,” she said breathlessly.
“I promise I’ll be leaving shortly.” The things Ravel left hanging in the air made her want to be sick. Her attacker finally located everything he needed and stood up slowly. In his hands he held some kind of glove—its fingers were tipped with long, wickedly sharp claws. A look of absolute finality shone on his face. It was the look of a man who was determined to do very bad things.
Karin struggled futilely to inch herself away from the man as his footfall thudded against the wooden floor. In cold terror she cried out, “What are you going to do with that?”
Ravel’s face was flat, carrying no emption beyond that iron hard determination to do something unpleasantly messy. “I have to make this look like a trall attack, and that’s what they’ll think at first, until witnesses see men in Joachim’s uniforms running away from another victim.”
“You’re evil!” Karin cried out. “Evil!”
Ravel laughed pitilessly. “That means nothing,” he slowly drawled. “It’s just a word, and you’re just one more step on the way to a goal.”
Karin began to scream, and Ravel smiled. Pain followed. Great pain. And then for the final time, darkness drew around her like a blanket. The figure above her continued on with his work, as intent and emotionless at his task as a butcher over a pig’s carcass. Outside, the snow continued to fall heavily across the land until the entire Lake Valleys were covered over in a white funeral pall.