Gaiety of day became mourning by night. No birdsongs to sweeten the air or vibrant colors to decorate the earth. All was blue, black, and gray. They walked, pushing into each other with arms crossed, exposed bodies pleading for cover. Invisible creatures scurried underfoot, darting into the dim shroud of the forest. Tall and pale birch trees towered over them, breathing with the wind; leaning in and out, sharing conspiratorial sighs. Soon, the forest was comprised only of the ghostlike trees, packed densely so that every other step was that of avoidance.
Wending his way through the crowd of skeletons, Rhone felt the hairs on his neck bristle. Crunching of leaves, the pushing aside of grass, and the bending and breaking of twigs snickered at them from the darkness. He focused his gaze on Nebanum’s back, afraid to look for the source of the noise that surrounded them. Rhone wanted to speak, to seek reassurance from Nebanum who had always had a sensible answer or a dismissive remark. Rhone desperately needed to be called foolish, paranoid, childish. It’s just deer; it’s only the wind; lack of sleep can make one hear noise that isn’t there. But it was there. Inconsistent—as though whatever it was made an effort to be silent—but there nevertheless. The comfort and trust he had in darkness had abandoned him in the forest. Instinct recommended flight. It’s that foul gatekeeper, it has to be. He’s taunting us, trying to frighten us for his own amusement. The idea of the twitching abomination—lurking and dripping behind the tall, thin, pale trees in a veil of absolute darkness—was somehow uncomforting. I have to see, he thought, I have to know it’s just him. Rhone began to draw his eyes up into the blackness at his side. Nothing. Pitch. Where he expected to see grinning horror was only mocking darkness. The sounds continued however, working his imagination into a frenzy. He returned his eyes to Nebanum. Once more, just to be sure, his cruel mind commanded. Looking into the black, he hoped that whatever was out there was as wary of them as he was of it.
Only when the sun began to rise at their backs did they realize they had veered off course in the night. Too exhausted to become angry, they corrected their heading and continued. It took the majority of the day before their pains were rewarded: a sprawling city, walled and lively, spread before them. As they made their way around the edge of the farms that surrounded the walled city, they began to see familiar landmarks. It was a strange feeling Rhone had when he realized they were back at Warwick. Part of him was glad to be somewhere familiar, somewhere where he’d been able to eat and sleep in relative peace and seclusion. Familiarity guided them past the wheat, past the barely. Fatigue led them to the goat farm. The kids seemed larger as they jumped and kicked off stones and one another. In the shadows of the encroaching forest, the leaning shack waited. It offered its door, as if expecting their return. Nothing had changed inside. They dropped soon after the door had closed. They wrapped themselves in the dusty rags and quilts that lined the floor and surrendered to sleep.
Returning to the goat farm seemed inevitable after Rhone woke. He lay still, wrapped and sleepy, thinking about the last time he had been in the shack. He’d been whole, but he’d also been hollow. He looked at Nebanum’s neck and head and the white scars that spread across his skin. He’d laid right where he was and watched Nebanum and Mary in the dark, heaving and panting. Hatred and jealousy used to burn his eyes and make him sick. When he’d sneak away to steal from the foolish and gluttonous of Warwick, he’d pray, as he made his way along the fence holding the goats, that Mary would be gone and Nebanum would need consoling. He’d thought about killing her before; luring her in with promise of love then choking her and dragging her body into the woods while Nebanum was away.
Now Nebanum was his. He had made up his mind that he’d do whatever it took to be with him. Now, it seemed, he had. He abandoned that line of thought, afraid regret might chime in and make him resent all that had happened. He crawled over to Nebanum and slid under his covers. The bumps of his permanent gooseflesh caressed the underside of his arms, his chest and his belly. He rubbed his gums between Nebanum’s shoulder blades, tasting, smelling, and breathing him.
Outside the shack it was night again. They had slept away the light. Rhone tried to count the days since they’d left. It would hardly be a month, which he found impossible to believe. He counted the days again. Even with generous allowances for travel time, they had not been gone more than a month and a week. He reached around to take Nebanum in his hand and stroked him awake. He guided him over and pressed his buttocks into his groin. They swam through the night making love, despite their hunger; trading one craving for another.
As the local cockerel sang its praises to the sun and the goats began to laugh, Nebanum and Rhone slept soundly. They would have their life together; they would become immortal in the red sands, spending eternity in each other’s embrace. Then the door to the shack was kicked in.
Morning light burst in with the splintered wood of the door. The tiny room shrank as large men filled it. They were thrown out into the morning, naked and confused. The earth was hard and unforgiving. Rhone squinted up at the towering figures that surrounded them. Blinding light reflected off their polished helmets.
“For the crimes of trespassing, burglary, theft, and apparently sodomy, you are now under arrest.”
The words were dreamy. Before a blow to his head ushered him into blackness, he could hear the guards gawking at them.
“He’s got a cunt for a mouth!”
“I’m not touching ‘im, it may be catching! Looks like the pox!”
Thirty-One
Nebanum was already awake when Rhone regained consciousness in the dank stone room. His wrists were aching in their iron shackles. Light trickled down through a sliver of a window which was street level. Nebanum was watching the shadows pass by it.
“I used to see people sliding food through that window. I wonder if they knew they were just feeding rats.”
The chains held Nebanum’s arms above his head. Rhone was luckier, his were held just above his shoulder. A calamity of squeaking erupted and Rhone saw several rats twisting and fighting over a rotten pile beneath the sliver of light.
“I hate rats,” Rhone said.
His cheeks pulled and were sore when he spoke. Nebanum saw him wince.
“They tried to untie you after they chained you up. Bastards. I told them it was pointless but they had to find out for themselves.”
On the adjacent wall, opposite the window, another prisoner was chained. His opalescent skin showed that he had expired recently.
“Excuse me sir, when do they serve dinner?” Nebanum asked the corpse, grinning. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Did they hurt you?” Rhone asked, ignoring the joke.
“I don’t think they appreciated my remarks about their mothers and sisters.”
“Be serious, Nebanum,” Rhone heard his voice shake.
“I’m alright, my love.”
Tears blurred Rhone’s eyes. The room smelled like rot and the air tasted like a bog.
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand. We’re caught.”
Rhone’s stomach sank. He pulled at his hands but the iron bit him. He hadn’t expected any give. Tears ran behind his flayed cheeks, impossible to wipe away.
“I don’t want to die here,” Rhone whispered.
“We won’t.”
Death became tactile as the days passed in the dungeon. Only once were they spoken to. A guard had asked Rhone where his cock had run off to and if he’d like to taste what he’d been missing. Somehow Nebanum had energy enough to grin with his nightmare mouth and offer his services, earning him a kick in the ribcage.
The pattering of blood started against the wall, the cruelest torture of the dungeon. The street that ran topside of the window was at the very end of Cardinal Alley. The blood never reached Rhone’s outstretched foot. He found himself praying to feel the tautness of drying blood on his skin just once more.
With malnourishment, consciousness and perception
of time waned. Many times, Rhone was sure he would not wake from his next sleep—if it could be called sleep. His fainting spells brought on by hunger exhausted him. True sleep—relaxed, healing, and precious—would not come.
Rhone was also convinced that Nebanum had died several times, each painful and overwhelming. His body had little water to spare, he’d ceased urinating and instead of tears there was only pain. A gasp or sign from the skeletal figure across from him would assure him of life. Not true life.
The dreams that his faintings would conjure were terrible and unyielding. He would dive into vats of boiling wax and watch his skin float around his red arms; he would run from shadows in the pale forest and always trip; hands would reach into his stomach and return with fistfuls of viscera. The dreams would spill into his waking state, torturing Nebanum or providing him with a ghastly Mary to plow. After Mary’s first arrival, she would come constantly. She would dig her butchered sex into Nebanum’s groin, she would take him into her toothless and pustule filled mouth, slobbering spit, blood, and life onto her corpselike body. She would come to Rhone grinning, fingers teasing her black hair and red sex, don’t you want to fuck me? I’ll make you feel good, oh! Your cock is gone... I guess you can still watch...
Rhone’s body felt as though it had tripled in weight when in reality it had lost. A calm began to swell in his mind. He could see the rope, back in Yorne, approaching his face and rising over his head. The coarse fibers scratched his neck. Mary was standing with Nebanum—the only audience to his execution. Nebanum whispered into Mary’s ear and she giggled. She spoke:
“He wants to know if you expect to be saved again.”
“Help me,” Rhone replied. Nebanum whispered to Mary again and again she giggled. One of her hands was restless in her crotch.
“He wants to know if you’re going to keep getting caught.”
“No, I won’t, Nebanum, please...”
Mary spoke without Nebanum’s whispers, “He wants to know if you’re worth his time.”
“Yes! Please!”
Between blinks, Nebanum vanished. Only Mary watched. The solid beneath his feet gave way and the rope grabbed his neck. Mary’s face was within inches of his own. As she spoke, her rotted mouth warped and turned into her ravaged sex, still speaking and reeking. Her voice filled with sand and shouted into Rhone’s head.
This will be twice I’ve saved you pathetic mongrels. Your debt to me is mounting by the second. I’ll expect a quarter of your tithes for the next two hundred years.
The red gash birthed large black scorpions; skin pulled at the bridge of the nose and across the cheeks. Puffing and dripping, crawling with glistening claws and stingers, sickeningly sweet, Simalla shed his Mary coat, body twitching as he continued his chastising:
You can’t comprehend the risk I take coming here, you selfish fools. Simalla will save us, we can do as we like because Simalla will save us. Never again. This is it. Enjoy it. I don’t care how much Allisieri likes you, this is the last time.
Rhone woke, choking. He coughed and lurched, his body racked with pain and atrophy. Something was lodged in his throat. Nebanum watched helpless as his companion struggled just out of reach. Rhone felt a dislodge, a budge, then, finally, in a shroud of mucous and dark blood, an oblong object thudded onto the stone floor. It bloomed, revealing an iron key and the jagged runes of the lambskin.
The sudden burst of activity left Rhone out of breath and in a state of lightheadedness he didn’t know was possible. Through the spots and pinpricks of light in his eyes he looked at the slick key at his side. His hands were shackled by a single chain threaded through an iron loop on the wall. As he raised his left arm, his right hand was able to drop and retrieve the small and heavy key he had regurgitated. For small things, heavy is good.
“Rhone...” Nebanum sighed.
Rhone didn’t reply, instead saving his energy to work the key into the lock at his wrist. Lubricated by his own fluids, the iron slid in and released the wide, wrapped band of iron from his raw wrist. He faltered at his first attempt to stand. Heart racing, he crawled across the stony floor. Rats scurried about, upset by the sudden movement in their domain. Rhone released Nebanum, allowing his arms to hang at his sides for the first time in nearly a month. He groaned and winced. Rhone stroked his forehead and gave him lipless kisses on his clammy brow.
“We have to leave... We have to leave...”
Rhone and Nebanum were suffering the same symptoms they’d had in the smoke den of Nettleham; muscles screaming, skin crawling, head swirling.
“What about the gate?” Nebanum wheezed after they had gotten to their feet, using each other for balance.
Rhone felt for the keyhole on the other side of the gate. It was unmistakably larger than the key he held in his hand but he knew it would fit. It had to fit. He stuffed the key in and turned it. Nothing. An echo of a closing door came from the stone hall. He tried again, removing the key and clinking it back into the too-large hole. Its teeth chattered inside the cavity, not long enough to stimulate the right spots. The lock was unsatisfied. Footsteps echoed down the stone corridor. He frantically jiggled and twisted the key, forcing himself on the lock to no avail. It was too late. A short jailer, the one who’d offered to rape Rhone, stood dumbfounded as the two skeletons fiddled with the lock to their cage.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” he asked, taken aback.
Fury swept aside his surprise. How dare anyone try to escape his jail. He withdrew his walnut club and stormed the gate. His blows against the iron bars caused Rhone and Nebanum to stagger back. He unlocked the gate and stepped inside. The jailer's eyes were widening with lust and frenzy; he gripped the heavy wooden baton suggestively.
“And here I was thinking of offering you boys some wine tonight,” he grinned.
Suddenly his hungering smile dropped and his eyes fell from his prey. One of his meaty hands clutched his chest. The baton fell to the floor with a muted patter. Nebanum moved to retrieve it. He stood upright, staggering with the movement of blood through his weakened veins, and let the dense wood fall onto the back of the jailer's head. The man fell onto the stone floor; a new meal for the rats. Both panting, Rhone and Nebanum watched the blood run from the crack in the man’s head. A black scorpion, shining with fresh blood, crawled from the jailer's gaping mouth.
Baton in hand, Nebanum led the way through the stony corridor. Adrenaline had allowed them to forget their emaciated state for the time being. Slowly they ascended the cold stairwell. The door at its mouth was ajar; it was the jailer's quarters. Inside it was something so wonderful that Rhone and Nebanum nearly wept: food. Boiled meat sat moistly, partially eaten on a dull plate. A goblet of wine was also on the table, near the bottle. Rhone and Nebanum inhaled the meat and wine blindly and without pleasure. The sudden stock hurt their stomachs but it wasn’t the aching, dangerous hurt of starvation that had plagued them for the last few weeks. In addition to the small wooden table and chair, the room housed a bed and a wardrobe. Rhone moved to the wardrobe as Nebanum locked the other door. Though they were noticeably taller than the jailer, the clothes he owned fit reasonably; there was even a scarf for Rhone to hide his face in.
Nebanum concealed the baton under his new coat. They stood at the other door in the jailer's quarters. Their bodies were running out of energy.
“I might need help if we come across anyone else,” Nebanum said.
Rhone held the carving knife that was on the table, “Don’t worry.”
The darkness in the hall was pierced by a single hanging lantern. They moved through the dense air. We’ve come this far, Rhone thought, we can make it. The hall turned. Voices came skipping across the stones. They had no choice but to move towards them.
“No, no, no, that’s all wrong. Lord Cadfael had a child with his cousin. Me wife’s sister’s friend is a chambermaid at the castle. She said that baby looks like a goblin.”
“Your wife’s sister’s friend? Must be true then, eh?”
> “I’ll bloody well keep me information to meself if it ain’t appreciated.”
“Oh, come off it; it’s appreciated. Are you going to Pott’s for dinner tomorrow night?”
“If I could think of a way to get out of it, I would.”
“That wife of his is a real bear, eh?”
The two men were leaning out a window, smoking and talking to the night. Across the room was Rhone and Nebanum’s salvation: a door to Cardinal Alley. Rhone could taste the droplets of animal blood in the air.
“We’ll just have to run,” Nebanum whispered, nearly inaudible, “you first.”
Rhone looked at the door, then at Nebanum. His dark eyes were exhausted. They had aged ten years in the dungeon. Jutting cheek bones lengthened his face and sunk his eyes. His mouth hung and the jewelry inside glistened in the firelight. Rhone pressed his teeth to his lips. A smile, the kind of smile Nebanum used to wear before—before the alterations, before the rituals, before Nettleham even—revitalized his face.
Rhone prepared to dash and Nebanum waited behind him. He ran. The room moved around him quickly. He heard one of the guards shout, “Hey!” but he kept running. The room was long but eventually he found the door. It opened amiably and the night embraced him enthusiastically. I love the dark, Rhone thought as he twisted and turned through the dark alleys he knew by heart, I love the dark and the dark loves me. I’m going to hide so deep in darkness that they’ll never find me.
Thirty-Two
Panting like dogs in a dank alley, Rhone and Nebanum sat against a cool stone wall. The alley was narrow and difficult to find for those not accustomed to sneaking around at night. They were confident they’d lost the guards, but remained still and silent nonetheless. Eventually, the physical toll of their escape clashed with their diminished state and they slept.
Rhone was awakened by something squirming in his coat’s pocket. He opened his eyes to see a haggard man, toothless and reeking of ale. When the man saw that the corpse he was looting was indeed alive, he stumbled backwards, squawking like a bird, and scampered off down the dark alley. It was day but the narrow alley was dim.
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