by Barb Hendee
Magiere couldn't imagine anyone feeling a chill in this sweltering room, and she stripped off her cloak to drop it over a chair.
The man's hair was sandy, like Geza's, but longer and ill-kept. Thick stubble on his jaw didn't suggest a beard so much as many mornings of forgotten grooming. Elena hurried over to him, putting her hands protectively on the back of his chair.
"They're here, my lord, " she said, but when he didn't respond, she added, "Stefan... the hunter is here. "
Magiere winced at the word hunter. She watched Elena's hand settle on the lord's shoulder and gently slide up to his neck into the back of his hair. Leesil tapped Magiere's arm and raised his white-blond eyebrows.
Was Elena serving as mistress of this house?
"You asked for us?" Leesil said.
The man blinked and turned his head to look at them. The lost expression in his eyes faded, but he didn't stand up. Instead, Elena motioned to wooden benches placed near the fire.
"It's so warm in here, " Wynn said, and the lord sat up straight at her words.
"You may call me Stefan. " He spoke in Belaskian. "We lost the need for decorum a while ago, as prisoners do not have titles. "
Stefan's gaze wandered to Magiere's sword and to Leesil's blades as he tossed his cloak on top of Magiere's before circling to the hearth. Magiere followed, ushering Wynn and Chap before her. Stefan's eyes rested a moment on Chap, and his mouth formed the beginning of a smile.
"I see my Shade has found a friend. All the dogs but mine were the first to go. "
He slipped his right hand out from under the blanket, the other still tucked away, and Shade walked stiffly over to lick his fingers.
Magiere remained standing, while Leesil straddled a bench, loosening his shirt collar. Wynn sat down with Chap beside her.
"What about the other dogs?" Leesil asked.
Stefan didn't answer, but his faint smile remained as he studied Wynn more closely. The hide of Elvish symbols was half-unrolled beside her upon the bench.
"Who are you?" he asked. "It's difficult to imagine such a bookish girl involved with these other two. "
"I help as I can, " Wynn answered.
Magiere folded her arms. A few moments in this lord's languid presence was enough to stir her dislike of the man. He was likely useless and found himself far too tragic.
"Why don't you get to the point... why you called for us, " she said.
"It's a rather long tale, but if you can help, I will pay anything you ask. "
"Just tell us what plagues these people. "
"My replacement, " he said.
And he began his story.
ILord Stefan Korbori's wife, Byanka, wasn't beautiful, accomplished, or overly rich. He was a soldier, son of a second-generation noble who'd died in military service to Prince Rodek's father. Distinguished by only a minor title, he possessed both the ambition and the ability to lead, but he considered himself most fortunate to have won Byanka's hand. She was blood kin of the Antes house, favored second cousin of Ivanova, half sister to Prince Rodek. And Rodek was reining Grand Prince of Droevinka. In Byanka's company, Stefan surfaced from the ranks of lesser nobles to the attention of Baron Cezar Buscan, Prince Rodek's chief counsel and Protector of the City in the capital, Keonsk. After quelling a peasant uprising over grain tax, at the age of twenty-eight, Stefan was rewarded with the Pudurlatsat manor and its coveted fief, only two days' travel down the Vudrask River from Keonsk.
He took his new responsibility seriously, and Byanka served well as his lady without complaint at being taken from court. She shared his ambitions and knew the fiefdom was a stepping stone toward favor with the Grand Prince himself. After two years in the fief, Stefan celebrated the birth of a son. In that hour, he felt affection for his wife that had nothing to do with her royal blood.
Crops flourished, his son learned to walk, taxes were collected on time, and the fief's commerce grew. After excelling in arms of war, Stefan showed his worth in orderly governing. Life was good as he returned home on a quiet night from a neighboring village. Byanka sat in the main hall by the huge hearth, teaching their son to pet Shade more softly and not pull on the dog's fur.
Stefan smiled. "Any luck?"
"Not really, " Byanka answered. "It's fortunate she's so patient with him. "
Stefan's wife was short, plump, and plain, with mouse-brown hair, but she paid careful attention to proper appearances. She had engaged Geza's daughter, Elena, as a personal maid to dress her hair every morning, though she rarely left the manor. Her idea of a good day was raising their son and enjoying a dinner with her husband, when they might discuss the future together. He appreciated her calm demeanor and understood her sacrifice in marrying him, and he promised himself she would never regret such a choice. In the years to come, he would surely be appointed to serve on the prince's counsel at court.
Geza, the captain of his guard, entered. "My lord, you have a visitor from Keonsk. "
'Taxes aren't due for a month. Who is it?"
"I don't know him, my lord, " the captain answered. "He calls himself Vordana and says he was sent by Baron Buscan. Should I show him in?"
"Vordana? No title?"
"None that he mentioned, sir. "
This visitor was unlikely to be of serious importance and perhaps was only a messenger. Until he was certain, Stefan thought it best to receive this Vordana privately.
"Byanka, why don't you take the boy upstairs?"
With a smile for her husband, she whisked their son away. Soon after, Geza escorted the visitor in and left the room. Stefan didn't bother to mask his surprise.
Vordana was of medium height and slight of build. Unarmed, he wore a shin-length umber brown robe that swished when he walked, and it was tied closed by a scarlet cord. There was no mud on his boots. His clothing, unusual for travel, was not the most remarkable thing about him.
Around his young face of twenty or so years hung hair as white as that of an old man in his final days. It lay unbound across his shoulders, reaching to midtorso, and glowed vividly in the firelight of the warm hall. He wouldn't be thought handsome, with his thin-lipped mouth and deep-set eyes, but he was striking.
Stefan didn't know what to say and forgot even a polite greeting as Vordana circled the room, looking at everything but Stefan and nodding in approval.
"Yes, " he said in a hissing slur, "this will do nicely. "
"You are from Keonsk?" Stefan asked. "Baron Buscan sent you?"
Vordana turned as if seeing Stefan for the first time, or perhaps as one forced to take notice of another's presence. "Yes, " he said again.
"You didn't come alone? Do you have men who need barracks for the night?"
Vordana stared at him through black eyes. "I have, two guards outside. I required no others, as those stationed here will serve my needs. "
Stefan tensed, disquiet growing inside him. "My people will see to your needs for the night. Perhaps you should state your business. "
"Business?" Vordana stopped near the hearth with his arms folded. "I am to assume the stewardship of this fief. Is that not part of Baron Buscan's authority, to award the fiefs of the Antes?"
At first, Stefan suppressed his rising alarm, wondering what he could possibly have done to fall out of favor. All was in order in the fief, and more so, it had improved in his care. He stilled his thoughts and stood his ground.
"I oversee this fief, " he said, "and Baron Buscan has sent no word to the contrary. By your own address, you aren't even titled. "
Vordana smiled with teeth as white as his hair. He coiled one hand into his robe and pulled out a rolled parchment.
"Here is the order signed by the baron. You have been reassigned to the cavalry under Baron Lonaes, on his way to Stravina concerning border matters. I understand you have a wife and child, so you are welcome to wait until morning to take your leave. "
Stefan snatched the parchment from Vordana's hand. It bore the Antes seal.
He tore it open and scanne
d the contents twice to confirm every poisonous word. It ended with the rough signature of Baron Buscan. Stefan had somehow fallen from favor.
"It has all been arranged, " Vordana said. "I am told you are devoted to the grand prince and the Antes house, and that you would respond with good grace and duty. "
Stefan remained completely still for a moment. Then he jerked his sword from its sheath. Vordana's smile didn't have time to vanish before he ran him straight through the heart. Stefan's voice was quiet and sharp as he whispered to Vordana.
"Here is my good grace to you. "
Vordana's smile faded. He tried once to gulp a mouthful of air and died before his body struck the floor. Dark red blood spread outward through the white shirt beneath his robe. From out of the shirt's collar tumbled a small brass vial, some strange token hanging by a chain, and it dangled over his shoulder upon the floor.
"Geza!" Stefan shouted.
His captain ran into the room, sword drawn, for Stefan never shouted. "My lord—?" Geza began before he saw the body.
"Where are his guards?" Stefan demanded.
"Outside, in the courtyard, " the captain answered. "Waiting with the horses. "
"Find men you trust for discretion, and send them to the stables. Tell those two guards to take their horses there. When they are out of sight, have your men kill them both. Dispose of the bodies and mounts in the forest where they will not be found. If anyone comes to ask, we have had no visitors from Keonsk. Do you understand?"
Geza stared at him, but Stefan knew his captain would obey. Geza's own success in the ranks depended on Stefan's position. With a brief hesitation, the captain hefted Vordana's body over his shoulder and left once more.
Stefan took two long, slow breaths to quell his anxiety, then stood up straight. If Buscan truly wished to replace him, he would know soon enough, but something about the parchment felt wrong. It was unprecedented for a fief steward of title to be replaced with no prior word—and certainly not a lord in good standing. And not by some untitled miscreant. He would wait for further word from Keonsk.
A month passed, and nothing came.
Stefan began to relax. Geza showed some disquiet in his presence, but otherwise life remained ordinary. Until the night Byanka screamed.
Stefan sat in the hall by the fire and heard her horrified wails from the upper floor. He ran up the stairs, following her voice, and found her standing in their son's room, ripping at her hair.
In the bed lay his son, or what had once been his son.
The little face and hands were shriveled husks above the covers, and his eyes were open but dried and sunken. He looked like one abandoned in a wasteland to die of starvation and thirst, transformed into a dwarfish, withered old man. Stefan had kissed his son good night just hours before, and now the boy was dead.
Byanka cried out like a madwoman. "I hear the guards whispering. The visitor who came that night... What have you done to us?"
When Stefan reached out to give her comfort, she shoved him away and began howling again.
In the days that followed, her mood remained unchanged. One evening when Stefan again tried to calm her, he saw lines in her face and the darkening rings about her eyes. Fear filled him at the thought of an unknown plague spreading among them. He closed the manor to outsiders and kept his guards out of the villages as much as possible. Byanka continued to wane over the next three days. No matter how much water or broth she drank, she suffered from a terrible thirst. When she finally died, Stefan wept, crouched by her bedside, where she lay as withered as their son had been.
Within a moon, the peasants and animals of Pudurlatsat began dying.
Crops and trees withered along with them. Geza followed orders without question but wouldn't look his liege lord in the eyes. At the month's end, Stefan rode to an outlying village of the fief and found it thriving. Only the town nearest the manor, on the river to Keonsk, suffered this mysterious blight. He returned home that night at a loss for what could be done.
He feared sending word to Keonsk for assistance. He feared an inquest. Once in the courtyard, he handed his horse to a guard, walked to the manor's main hall, and froze in its archway.
A cloaked and cowled figure stood by the hearth. It took effort for Stefan to breathe evenly as he entered. Someone had come looking for Vordana. When the figure turned his way, Stefan's anxiety turned to horror.
Fair skin was as gray as Stefan's dead wife and son when he had buried them. The man's shin-length robe was soiled all over, as were his boots and bloodstained shirt. Stark white hair hung out of the cowl in dirty, lanky clumps. His eyes peered out from sunken sockets.
Stefan tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat.
Vordana stood by the hearth.
Yes, came the word with its taint of reptilian slur, but Stefan was uncertain if he actually heard it aloud. He jerked out his sword and rushed around the hall's table.
Laughter surrounded him, and he stopped before the pale figure of Vordana. Disbelief made him dizzy as he held out his sword.
I am already dead, and that will not help you.
Vordana's dead lips never moved.
I could drain you to a husk, like your mate and offspring, but I want you to live a long, painful life... my puppet! Even your guards I will leave... for a while.
Stefan rammed the blade through Vordana's chest. The man lurched back one step, but that was all.
Unintelligible words, like a hum, built to an ache inside Stefan's head. His vertigo increased with those sounds in his skull, and he lost control of his body. His hands dropped limply to his sides, and his legs buckled until he knelt upon the floor.
Vordana did not bother to remove the sword from his chest. Stefan watched helplessly as the man's pale, begrimed hands clamped about his own head. Over the hum in his head came words he could understand.
I can maintain my watch here just as easily behind a puppet, but for my broken life, yours is forfeit. You remain in the manor, and by my command, if you step beyond the threshold, you will die in that instant. You will do whatever I instruct but always while locked within your stately cage. I will drain your town and land as I need to sustain myself. When they are gone, I will turn to you and your household.
And before you think that death is your escape, you will not join your son and wife by such an act. Look upon me to see what lies beyond your death if you attempt to take your own life.
Stefan lost awareness of the room, of himself, and of Vordana, except for the words that subjugated his own thoughts over the chant buzzing within his skull.
Then all was sudden silence, and he opened his eyes.
The hall was empty, as was the passage through the archway. He ran along it to the front door and pulled it open. There was no one outside.
In that quiet moment, it seemed his fevered imagination, fed with guilt and loss, had conjured him a nightmare. Had Vordana even visited him? Light-headed, he put his hand on the edge of the doorway to steady himself. A chill bit his hand through to the bones, and he fell back with a scream.
I"What happened?" Wynn asked abruptly. "Could you not leave the house?" Lord Stefan closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened the blanket wrapped about him and held up his hands. Or rather one, for the other was missing. All that Wynn saw of his left hand was a scarred stump of wrist.
"We had to cut it off, " Geza said in Belaskian.
Wynn jumped at his voice. She had forgotten his presence across the room while she listened to Stefan's tale.
"It had to be removed before the rot of dead flesh spread, " the captain added.
"Your wife and child, " Magiere asked of Stefan. "Were there any wounds or other marks on their bodies?"
Elena shook her head, answering for him. "They just faded, the life draining from them. "
"How did Vordana survive two thrusts through the heart?" Leesil asked. "And how did he trap this lord in the manor? What are we dealing with here?"
There was long pause.
"Well, he was certainly an undead, judging from your description, " Leesil said. "Perhaps even a type of Noble Dead we haven't heard of. "
"What is that... a Noble Dead?" Stefan asked.
"The highest, most powerful of the undead, " Wynn answered. "They retain more of who and what they were in life than simple spirits of the dead. They move freely in the world under their own volition, but must feed on the living to sustain themselves. They can learn, grow, become more than they are, like the living. "
Magiere grunted at this last comment, but Wynn did not respond. They never spoke of their disagreement over Chane in the sewers of Bela, but Wynn knew Magiere had been wrong. It stood to reason that if not all humans were the same, then not all vampires were the same either. Lord Stefan's replacement was certainly another matter.
"So Vordana is one of your Noble Dead, " Stefan said, pulling the blanket around himself again. "He gained a title after all. "
"By what you described, he's a mage, " Leesil said. "We've run into such among the undead before. "
Wynn caught Leesil's glance toward her. Obviously Magiere was not the only one to recall that moment in Bela's sewers.
"Could he do this to himself?" Leesil asked her. "Raise himself from the dead?"
Wynn shook her head. "I don't know. At my homeland guild, we study many things to prepare for becoming journeyman sages. Domin il'Samaud was my instructor for arcane arts, but I never heard mention of anything like this. There was talk of life-theory, and how some conjurors focus on spirit work. A few to the extent of reanimating the dead. "
There was one small detail of Lord Stefan's tale that surfaced in Wynn's thoughts.
"You mentioned that Vordana wore something around his neck. "
Stefan nodded. "A small brass vial on a chain. A token of some kind, I assumed. "
"Some conjurors use brass containers, " Wynn continued, "to trap conjured or summoned elemental material, including that of spirit—even a human spirit. But to do so as preparation against one's own death, or to reconjure one's own spirit back from death... It would be impossible. "
Wynn felt Chap pawing at her leg. The dog snatched the rolled hide sitting on the bench and pulled it to the floor. She reached down and finished unrolling it, and Chap began tapping upon it with his paw.