Deniably Dead (Arucadi Series Book 4)

by E. Rose Sabin

  “Back from--excuse me, what did you say?” Renni had thought that the young man this woman spoke of might be Lore, but if she’d heard the woman correctly, she might be dealing with a crazy person.

  “My husband Mel. The neighbors next door. All the people they killed eight years ago. They’re back. Alive.” The woman clutched her chest and slowly shook her head. “Eight years dead, and they’re all back, alive again. I don’t understand it.” Tears fell from her eyes. “Mel didn’t know how long it’d been. And how hard it’s been with all the people gone. Eight years. Eight long years.”

  “Who’s there, Anya?” a man’s voice called from another room.

  The woman made no attempt to answer, but just stood shaking her head. A tall man stepped into the foyer and came up behind the woman. He put his hand on her shoulder. She flinched, and he removed it with a hurt look.

  “She hasn’t accepted what’s happened to me—to all of us,” he said apologetically. “It’s hard for me, too. I didn’t have no sense of time passing, didn’t have no idea it was eight years since the poisoning.”

  “I don’t understand,” Renni said. “What poisoning? I just came to ask about a place where I can get food for my horse and for me. We’ve come a long way.”

  “Horse?” The man peered past Renni through the still open door. “You come by horse?”

  “I tied him to your tree there in front,” Renni said. “I just wanted to ask directions.”

  “So you’re not--not one of us then. Didn’t think I recognized you.” The man stepped up beside his weeping wife. “Anya, get hold of yourself. It is me, and I am back, along with ever’body else those, those whatchacallems.”

  “Demons I call ’em,” his wife stated bitterly. “‘Aspirants’ is what they called themselves. Aspiring to be priests of Harin, they were. Thought they were doing their god a service by poisoning good people who never did them or Harin harm.”

  “I’m confused,” Renni said. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, better come inside and take a seat, and we’ll tell you,” the man said.

  “Not until you take that horse out back into the barn,” the woman objected. ““He’ll be stole and butchered for meat if you leave him there in plain sight. Seems the returned are hungry. I already gave food to the people next door.”

  “I’ll move him right away,” Renni said, alarmed. “Will he be safe in your barn?”

  “Long as nobody knows he’s there,” the woman answered. “You’d best hurry, though. I think there’s still some oats left there, if the young fellow didn’t feed them all to his horse.”

  Young fellow again. On a horse. Could it be Lore? Maybe he hadn’t killed his horse as they’d thought. She’d have a lot more questions when she got back into the house, but she’d take care of Dark Star first.

  She ran to Dark Star, untied him, and led him around the house to the barn. There she found a stall with evidence of recent occupancy, so there had been another person here with a horse. She couldn’t decide how much of the weird story to believe. She only knew she had to learn more from—what were their names? The man was Mel, and the woman? He’d called her Anya, she thought. Unless Mel and Anya were raving lunatics, something very strange was going on, and she should learn more before going any farther.

  As eager as she was to return to the house and hear the story, she took time to care for Dark Star. She made certain there was clean water in the trough, found oats left in the manger, and even brushed him a bit before returning to the house. As she walked away from the barn, the back door of the house opened. “Come in this way,” Mel called.

  She entered and found Anya bustling about in a cozy kitchen, putting plates on the table, and stirring something in a pot on her stove. “I’m low on supplies right now,” Anya said. “I do a lot of canning and preserving, though. I’ve mixed up a batch of biscuit dough, and I have cheese and chirberry preserves to put on them when they’re done baking.”

  How good that sounded! Renni hadn’t intended to stay long, but she couldn’t resist the smell of biscuits already emanating from Anya’s oven.

  “Sit down at the table,” Anya ordered. “I admit I’m still shook up from the shock of Mel’s return, but I haven’t forgotten how to be hospitable.”

  She sat where Anya indicated, and Mel took a seat opposite her. “I can tell you the first part of the story,” he said. “Anya will have to fill in what happened after.”

  §

  “If you tell me why you were traveling across the country with a dead woman in a coffin,” Thornbridge said to Camsen, “I’ll tell you why I think you’re making a big mistake heading for Pescatil.”

  They’d stopped to let the horses graze in the grain fields that now bordered the road while they ate some lunch. Thornbridge had assured Camsen that they’d reach Pescatil before nightfall, but he insisted they’d be unlikely to find accommodations there.

  “I’ll consider explaining if you tell me first why you have such a negative view of Pescatil,” Camsen countered, unsure how much he should say about the mission he and his others were on. He didn’t trust the bandit leader, and was still wary of Thornbridge’s men mounting some kind of attack against them, though thus far he’d seen no indication that they were being pursued.

  Thornbridge frowned. “I asked you first. And because I was led to expect riches but found only a corpse in that coffin, yet you seem inordinately distressed by its loss, I’m naturally quite curious. Were there no burial places left in Port-of-Lords? We tore that coffin apart looking for a hidden compartment and found nothing. So the corpse itself is of value to you. Someone beloved, perhaps? Yet why, even so, would you cart her body half-way across the country?” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Could it be you have something valuable hidden inside the corpse itself? Maybe we should have taken it apart to check when we didn’t find anything hidden in the coffin.” He gave Camsen a questioning look.

  “It’s very good you didn’t think of that,” Camsen said. “You wouldn’t have found anything. But I wonder, didn’t you notice that the ‘corpse’ as you call her had not decayed and had no odor of putrefaction?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes, we did wonder about that, but I confess to being too angry about not finding the wealth we expected to give the condition of the corpse much attention.”

  Ril, who had been listening intently to the conversation, now piped up. “Master Wellner, are you saying that maybe she wasn’t dead?”

  Trust the lad to catch on quickly. Camsen nodded. “We believe she is in a state of life-suspension from which she will eventually awaken,” he said. “We received instructions to take her to a certain place where she may be kept safe until she awakens.”

  “That’s crazy! Her body might be preserved somehow to prevent decomposition; I could believe that. But return to life?” He shook his head. “You don’t strike me as being a fool, but that’s a foolish idea if I ever heard one.”

  Camsen shrugged. “I confess we’ve all had our doubts, but my three companions and I have seen a display of power so great that we were willing to believe.”

  “Oh? I’d like to hear about that.”

  “No.” Camsen rose and stretched. “I won’t say another word until you’ve told me about Pescatil. And I think right now we need to get back on the road.

  “Jeppy, do you want me to drive from here?”

  Jeppy had been eating quietly and saying nothing. He seemed too afraid of Thornbridge to do anything to call attention to himself. And he clearly did not want to be in the wagon alone with the bandit leader. “No, I don’t mind staying in the driver’s seat. The horses don’t give no trouble. They just keep plodding along, followin’ the road.”

  “All right then,” Camsen said, “you go back and get the horses hitched up again, and Ril can ride with you in the driver’s seat.”

  At that Ril let out a howl. “No, sir, Master Wellner. I want to hear Thorn--uh, my father’s story. I ain’t ridin�
�� up front with Jeppy, no sir.”

  “You’ll do what you’re told to do, brat,” Thornbridge said with such menace in his tone, his clenched fists, and the scowl on his face, that Ril, eyes wide in alarm, scuttled from the wagon without another word.

  As soon as the boy disappeared from sight, Thornbridge’s scowl relaxed into a grin, his hands unclenched, and he said, “That’s the only way to shut that kid up.”

  “Is there a particular reason why you didn’t want your son to hear what you are going to tell me?”

  “No. He’s just too nosy for his own good, and remember, after I tell you what happened in Pescatil, I have more questions for you.”

  Camsen nodded, but said, “I’ll decide what questions I’ll answer after I hear your story.”

  “Fair enough,” Thornbridge said. “Well, ten or eleven years ago this whole area suffered a terrible drought. Farmers’ fields turned brown and died from lack of rain. The area in and around Pescatil was particularly hard hit. Their cattle and sheep were dying from lack of water. The streams dried up. The people were desperate. They prayed to Harin for rain, but no rain came. Some people abandoned their farms and moved away. Those that stuck it out grew more and more desperate. They sacrificed cattle to Harin. The drought persisted.

  “Then one day into Pescatil walked a black dog. It was bigger than a coyote but smaller than a wolf. Its nose was long and pointy, and its ears rose to points when it cocked them. It was thin, but not in a way that suggested starvation. Its glossy black fur and the way it carried its long tail indicated health. The people took it for a harbinger of death, especially when it sat down right smack in the middle of the town square, lifted up its head, opened its mouth, and howled.

  “That howl was a fearsome sound, they said. It went on and on until a man stepped out and aimed a rifle at it, meaning to quiet it forever. But at that moment, before he could squeeze the trigger, rain fell, just a few drops at first, then more and more. People ran out into the streets whooping and hollering, letting the downpour soak them through and through; they were so grateful for the rain.

  “The black dog stopped howling, and the rain eased up to a slow, steady fall—just the kind of rain the parched fields needed. It kept up for about three hours, and all that time the black dog just sat there in the center of the square not seeming to mind the rain at all. Finally, though, it stood, stretched, and trotted off, out of town. And the rain stopped.”

  Thornbridge paused and stretched. “All this talk is tiring. I wouldn’t mind a glass of water,” he said.

  Camsen rose and filled a cup with water from his own canteen. He took it to Thornbridge, who drank it down and handed back the cup.

  “You’re describing all this in such detail,” Camsen said. “It almost sounds like you were there to see it.”

  “Matter of fact, I was.” Thornbridge grinned. “I was the man with the rifle. And I was mighty glad I didn’t shoot. Had my finger on the trigger, but something made me hold off, and then the rain came.”

  Now Camsen was curious. “But you aren’t from Pescatil, are you?”

  “No. I had relatives there—an uncle and aunt. I’d heard how bad the drought was up here, that it was worse than for us in Marquez. So I gathered up some skins of water, a load of hay for the livestock, some other supplies, and borrowed a wagon to take it to my aunt and uncle. I’d been there a couple of days and was ready to return to Marquez when the dog appeared. I already felt bad for the people and uneasy because I’d brought the supplies for my aunt and uncle, but not enough for anybody else, though they did share what I’d brought with their closest neighbors. I figured I’d need to get back and gather more, but I knew I couldn’t gather enough for the whole town. Then when that dog appeared and started its howling, everybody was so sure it was a sign that they’d all die, and I figured if I killed it, people would see it wasn’t a sign of anything. It was just a starving dog. But I was wrong about it.

  “I didn’t head back to Marquez that day. It was too near nightfall by the time the dog trotted off and the rain stopped, so I stayed another night. And the next day, I stayed a bit later than I intended, and didn’t that dog show up again! Just like before, he pranced right into the center of town, sat down in the middle of the square, and started howling. And again rain fell.

  “Now people were sure the dog was bringing that life-saving rain. They gave the dog a name—Vito. They put out food for it out of their meager stores. And they held a celebration, because their fields were greening up and the streams flowed with water. So I stuck around a few more days, and every day that dog came back. And every day when he howled, rain fell. Well, I guess you know the people loved that dog. He’d saved them. They more than loved him, they worshipped him. They tried to catch him, to keep him there, but when anyone came near him, he stopped howling and snarled, and the rain stopped falling. So they gave up trying to catch him. They tried following him when he left, but once he got out of town, he headed off into the woods, and just kind of disappeared. So they came to believe he was a gift from the gods.

  “Harin never had answered their prayers when they’d prayed for rain. Then this dog came, and some said he must be a gift from Harin, but others said no. Maybe from Dor and Dora, or maybe, well, maybe the dog was some kind of god.

  “Well, I stayed out of that discussion, and in a couple more days I went back to Marquez. But I heard about what happened after that, and I did make one more trip there to see for myself. This was after more than a year had gone by. The dog no longer came, but the drought had ended, fields were green again, and some of the people who’d left returned. Everything was going well.

  “Among the citizens of Pescatil was a skilled sculptor. He had shipped in from somewhere a big black rock, obsidian he said it was. And out of it he’d carved a life-sized statue of the dog, Vito, and set it up in the square where Vito had sat and howled. When I was there I saw for myself how the people every day brought flowers to put around that statue. I saw women kiss it and men bow before it. One evening the people came and played music and danced around it. It gave me a funny feeling, made me uncomfortable, though I couldn’t say why. Anyway, I didn’t go back for another couple of years.”

  He paused and asked for more water, which Camsen got for him. He drank the water, handed the cup back to Camsen, and let out a big sigh. “Now comes the part it’s hard to talk about,” he said.

  Camsen waited while Thornbridge seemed to gather the strength, or perhaps the courage, to continue. He’d spoken confidently up to now, but when at last he resumed his tale, his reluctance was clear in the hesitations between words, the softening of his voice, so that at times Camsen had to lean close to hear, and in the sadness in his eyes.

  “In Harnor the temple of Harin boasts a training center for aspiring priests and priestesses, people who are known as aspirants. Eight years ago the training center had an unusually large group of aspirants, mostly male. They’d learned they would not all be inducted into the priesthood, so there was considerable rivalry among them, each trying to outdo the other in demonstrating his love for and loyalty to Harin. The word somehow came to these aspirants that the people of Pescatil had erected a statue to a dog and were worshipping it as a false god. They decided that this heresy should not be tolerated. While the priests debated at length how to handle this unprecedented situation, a group of the male aspirants decided to take matters into their own hands.

  “They made secret plans and slipped away, traveling by boat to Highport and then making their way to Pescatil. There they pretended to be eager to learn about Vito, the new dog god. They proclaimed devotion to his service, and in celebration of their ‘conversion,’ they hosted a huge picnic in a newly harvested and mown field.” At this point, Thornbridge paused, took a deep breath, and began speaking rapidly, as though eager to conclude the tale as rapidly as possible.

  “They served food they’d brought with them, meat pies made from a special meat later revealed to have been dog meat. And they served
everyone drinks from a large vat they’d procured. That drink was poisoned. Possibly the meat was, as well. At any rate, not long after eating and drinking, people began to collapse. One after another fell writhing on the ground in terrible agony, and one after another they died, until that field was filled with the corpses of most of the inhabitants of Pescatil, my aunt and uncle among them. They lay there until their corpses rotted—so few people were left that there was no one to bury them. The few survivors were people who were ill or infirm and unable to attend or in one or two cases people who never joined in the worship of Vito and had refused to attend the celebratory picnic.

  “After the murderers made certain all their victims in that field were dead, they returned to Pescatil and took sledge hammers to the statue of Vito, bludgeoning it to bits. They left praising themselves for a job well done.”

  Thornbridge fell silent, and Camsen, stunned by the strange and horrific tale, needed a bit of time to absorb it before he could speak. The horses’ hoofbeats and the squeaking of the wagon wheels sounded unusually loud in the quiet that prevailed for several minutes.

  At last Camsen found his voice. “I see why you found it difficult to speak about this. I had no idea … I’d heard nothing of this atrocity.”

  “It isn’t widely known,” Thornbridge said. “The priests of Harin did their best to keep it hushed up. When the murderers returned to Harnor and boasted of their foul deed, the established priesthood was horrified. The guilty were flogged and expelled from the priesthood. I don’t know what happened to them after that.

  “I only returned to Pescatil once after the massacre. I had to know whether my aunt and uncle were among the survivors. They weren’t. But I did discover one unexpected survivor—-Master Iston, the sculptor who had created the statue of Vito. He and his assistant had by good fortune been out of town when the aspirants came and committed the atrocity. He was distraught when on his return he learned what had happened. He could not get another black stone of that size, so instead he went about gathering all the fragments of the statue. He swore he’d fit them back together and repair the statue. I’m curious to learn whether he kept that vow.”