“Oh!” Faeline parted her mouth in comprehension.
“Yes indeed, you see how it is!” Hecate said. “And because Persephone very likely intends to get to the Underworld, she wants to have the use of this Throne of mine, in case she cannot get past Lord Death and forcibly use his.”
“Oh dear . . .” said Lizabette. “Cannot you take this chair away somewhere else and hide it?”
Hecate licked her lips and smiled. “This chair cannot be removed from this room,” she said. “You are welcome to try! You can certainly move it around the parlor, and turn it every which way, to get comfy as you sit. But you cannot remove it outside. It has been here a very long time. Indeed, if I recall correctly, far longer than Letheburg!”
The girls observed and listened in rapt amazement.
“And now, ladies,” Hecate suddenly changed the subject, “it is time for me to head on out there and meet the inevitable—you all stay indoors, keep up the pie making, and be sure to get plenty of hot tea to keep you warm, and keep that fireplace crackling. It’s going to get very chilly today!”
And before any of them could blink, Hecate was gone.
Chapter 10
Percy took Beltain’s familiar warm hand, and squeezed it, and at the same time shut her eyes. . . . And the next moment they were in Tanathe.
They had just left Death’s Keep. Hades, seated in his usual manner on Death’s Throne, had simply received the blue jar from Percy, placing his slim ebony fingers with their sharp claws around the glazed thing of pottery, his hand closing around it gingerly. And immediately the jar faded before their eyes into nothing.
Hidden away into Shadow. . . .
“I thank you, my Champion,” said the dark God raising the gaze of his heavy and somehow empty eyes. “But now you must return and complete your task. The Cobweb Bride awaits—go to her. And this time, bring her here to me. Do this one last thing. . . . For if you do not, the world will fade and collapse that much quicker.”
He motioned with his elegant hand wearily—indeed, Hades seemed even more stonelike than usual, and somehow diminished in his aura of rich darkness—and then the Hall dissolved around them and they felt the sudden blast of fresh lukewarm morning air of Tanathe.
At first glance they appeared to be in the garden of the D’Arvu villa. But something was different. The air was moist, rich with the smell of the sea. . . . Meanwhile, the sounds beyond the trees of the garden were the splash of water against rock and the cries of seagulls.
Percy glanced around her, seeing a not-so-distant mirror-bright shimmer of a great body of water through the dappled sunlight of the tree branches. “Oh!” she said.
“Wait, Percy!” Beltain took her hand and drew her to him, so that she turned and took a step toward him, placing her other hand on his chest. She felt his warm skin and the strong beating heart through the fine linen fabric. The morning light played through the trees and cast a gilded shimmer over the planes of his face, its new stubble, and the heart-wrenchingly beautiful dear eyes, open as the sky.
“Percy . . .” he said. “Before we go in there, promise me one thing—you will not leave me again, not like that. Please, promise!”
She gazed up at him, drowning in his gaze, and feeling the boundaries of the air and the flesh shimmer and become translucent in a moment of vertigo. “I will never leave you, Beltain.” Her words came out effortless, but at the same time a bittersweet sense was inside her, somewhere deep, and she was not sure why.
“No matter what happens,” he said. “Even now, I know not what is happening—or what will happen—what has come to pass here, for I can feel that something is different here, something—”
“Yes,” she said, putting her hand up to stroke his cheek gently.
He leaned in closer to her, and his mouth pressed against her forehead, sealing, branding her skin with a warm sacred touch.
They stood, fixed in a moment of nothing but sun and living silence and the nearby splashing waters of a world that was inexplicable and unreliable, and a mystery, even a few feet beyond the reach of their senses.
“My Lord . . .” she whispered, her face against his chest, tears beginning to well in her eyes. “My . . . Beltain.”
“My Lady,” he replied. “Always.” And then he raised his fingers to softly wipe her eyelashes, and in the next instant his lips were upon her shut eyelids, like a soft gentle dream.
Just behind them a seagull cried harshly, bursting through the greenery, and its rending screech made them come apart.
“I am not sure what has happened here,” Percy said. “I am almost afraid to know.”
They walked carefully through the garden, along a small gavel path, and emerged near the façade of the house. The gatekeeper’s small house was only a few feet in the distance, before the long drive past the front gates began. But as Percy happened to turn in that direction, instead of the scene of a small street past the gates and neighbor houses across the road, she saw a short beach, with waves lapping at the roots of solitary remaining trees and shrubs, and beyond it open water and the sea, stretching to the horizon. . . .
The street with the houses was gone. And so was most of the town of San Quellenne.
“This is truly hard to believe, even now, seeing it,” Beltain said, gazing past the driveway and the gates, at the newly created beach. “But the street must have disappeared as all the rest of things. We’ve seen this everywhere, land fading into shadows—the strange occurrences we have encountered all over the Realm and now the Domain.”
“We must go inside! I hope the D’Arvu family is still here. . . . Oh! Leonora! What if she—” And Percy tugged Beltain by the hand and rushed toward the house.
Inside was dark and cool, and the door was unattended by any servant. Percy’s footsteps rang against the stone floor, as she rushed into the main parlor, and to her relief saw Count Lecrant seated in his chair, fiddling with a piece of carved wood and a knife, while a pair of servants moved soundlessly through the room at their tasks.
“My Lord!” exclaimed Percy, with a swift curtsy. “You are here! And what of Lady Leonora?”
“Percy, child!” said the Count with a lukewarm semblance of a smile coming to him, seeing her and Beltain, and rose from his seat, dropping his carving. “Ah! Lord Beltain! The servants did not find you in your room, so we thought the two of you had disappeared the same way as has everything else around here! I am very glad to be mistaken!”
“What has come to pass here?” Beltain asked. “We were gone briefly in the morning to—walk in the garden,” he added, not willing to reveal the real details. Percy glanced at him with gratitude in her eyes.
“It appears, we cannot seem to avoid this same blight that has been happening all over,” said the Count, no longer bothering to hide his despair. “I am told by servants that most of this town had gone overnight, blocks and entire neighborhoods fading one by one, and so has the majority of the countryside south of here, all the way to the shore. Indeed, you can see the waters lapping across our street! There are a few half-drowned trees if you walk out further, and a number of spots that appear to be water-bound islands, isolated and cut off by the sea from the rest of land. It is intolerable! Even the castle of San Quellenne is now a small island plateau on a rise, and, I am told, everyone in the neighborhood that’s still left here is getting ready to depart—where to, it is uncertain. But we must go also—I suppose, we must, and we shall—”
“Where can you go?” Percy said. “Indeed, My Lord, where can anyone go to escape this? Since every and any part of the land might disappear next!”
“That, I know not.” The Count D’Arvu sighed deeply, and nodded to one of the servants. “Go fetch the Ladies,” he said with an empty, world-weary gaze. “My noble spouse and daughter—they have gone down the street—the part that is still here, still above water—to listen to a group of townspeople and the local Lady—the Lady San Quellenne, who has called them all out to gather in the marketplace—what’s left of it.
I believe they are discussing what is to be done now. I—” he paused. “I did not choose to accompany them in this particular matter. For, what’s the use? We cannot escape, any of us. Not any more. We’ve run so far already, and apparently we cannot run away from the world itself. Thus—we must depart immediately—or we must not. . . . Oh and yes, I do know that my daughter is dead. I see it very clearly now.”
Count Lecrant became silent, and turned away. He sat down and picked up his piece of wood, the knife, and resumed the whittling handiwork.
Percy and Beltain exchanged glances.
“So you do understand, Count Lecrant, about Lady Leonora’s condition?” Percy looked at him, speaking in a soft voice. “I am so very sorry. Abysmally sorry. . . .”
“Yes,” the older man replied without looking up from his task, “so am I.”
Percy understood him in that moment, for it was clear he had given up.
There was a loud splashing of water from the direction of the street, and a small makeshift raft of a few planks of wood tied with rope floated by, with an old woman and two children seated upon it, and a small sack of their belongings. The greenish waves were lapping at the raft and it floated low and did not appear that it would remain seaworthy for much longer, as it swept past them and the abbreviated beach and onward down the street.
“I’ll go look for her,” Percy said suddenly. “The Lady Leonora—I will go to her now.”
Beltain nodded and they simply walked past the Count who never looked up, out of the parlor, and outside into the daylight.
Through the trees, the sea was an expanse of shattered mirrors in the sunlight, and the balmy air swept around them, imbued with a bitter tang of salt.
Percy reached out with her death sense and she searched for the presence of Leonora’s death shadow.
There it was, somewhere out there, nearby.
Percy went after it.
They walked rapidly along the street-turned-beach sandbar, a few blocks into a smallish plaza that was the center of town, normally the site of the marketplace.
A few emaciated stray dogs ran past them along the streets and alleyways that opened as they passed. One of the dogs was dead, with a tangled mange coat, and Percy could see its wistful death shadow following from the rear as the dog lagged behind the others, yet followed them unfailingly with its last recognized instinct of “pack.” The living dogs did not pay attention to it for as long as it kept some distance, but once it got too near at one point the closest dog growled slightly and the dead one stayed back the same distance, watching them with sorrowful eyes.
A small crowd of townsmen, about three dozen, had gathered to the side near one of the rows of stalls, and in the center on a pale grey horse sat a young lord in a light hunter’s hauberk, with a sword belted at the waist. Brazen hair was gathered in a long plait and pulled back from a deeply sun-bronzed elegant face, that of a youth. At the youth’s side, atop a bay horse was a lady, mature and matronly, seated in a large comfortable side-saddle, and wearing a wide brimmed straw hat over a long thick braid of dark hair.
The young lord was gesticulating and speaking, and his voice was that of a maiden—brash and commanding, yet a maiden nevertheless.
Percy blinked from the sun as she and Beltain approached the gathering, and saw the two D’Arvu women, the Countess and her daughter Leonora, at the edge of the crowd.
“—and it will require all of you to make use of whatever wood at your disposal to make rafts, and do it as soon as possible, by tonight!” the maiden-dressed-as-a-lord was saying loudly. “We don’t have much time, for tomorrow more of the land might be gone, and the sea will take us. It has already closed us off completely from the rest of the mainland, and I expect it will only get worse.”
“But Lady Jelavie,” a man spoke up from the crowd. “How are we to make enough rafts for everyone? If we pray, mayhap the Good Lord will hear us and keep us safe.”
“Have we not been praying all along?” the armed Lady Jelavie exclaimed, sweeping strands of brazen hair that the breeze moved into her eyes, bright with energy and anger. “Father Suell has grown hoarse from saying Mass and the church candles are burning, day and night. If the Good Lord has not heard our prayers by now, I don’t expect more praying will make any difference. Indeed, how much prayer is required before one is heard—”
“Jelavie, please have care how you speak,” said the older matron lady.
“My Lady Mother, forgive my words, but I am only trying to help these people.”
“What of the ill and the elderly?” someone else said. “How will they stay afloat on makeshift contraptions? I doubt, My Lady, that we could manage—”
“Not to mention, there is very little binding rope to be had! The rope maker lived in the part of town that’s now gone, and he and his shop with it!”
“It is unfortunate, but you are welcome to whatever stores we have in the Castle,” said the older matron lady. “Take what you need, come. We have left the gates open for you.”
“Oh, Your Ladyship, thank you!”
“Aye, Lady Calliope, thank you indeed!”
But the matron raised one hand up in a tired informal gesture. “It is the least we can do. San Quellenne will not let its people perish, even if these are the last days, and the world itself ends around us.”
“What do they think to do?” Percy whispered to Beltain, as they approached the edge of the crowd discreetly. “Rafts will not be enough to save them and take them inland! Not all of them and their belongings and their poor animals!”
He nodded, with a grave look. “From what we can see, the sea is vast, and is likely thus in all directions, surrounding us. This part of the land has become a small group of islands. Any boats they might’ve had available along the old shoreline are now gone, so they must make rafts or new boats if they are to leave anywhere. They would never reach the distant northern land otherwise. And even with rafts or boats, it is questionable.” Beltain pointed. “Look there, see the haze in the north? I think that’s where solid land begins, the farthest place that the sea has not swallowed yet. They need great ships, not flimsy boats made overnight.”
“Beltain!” Percy took his hand in a sudden energetic clasp and glanced into his eyes with the warm living gaze of her vaguely swamp-hued eyes. “I have a mad notion how to save these people—all of them. And it will not require rafts.”
It took but an hour to convince Lady Calliope San Quellenne that this stranger, this peasant girl who called herself Death’s Champion, was not entirely mad, but was someone who could help in this strangest predicament of their lives.
“My Lady!” said the girl, stepping forth from the crowd, “Begging pardon for what might seem like impertinence, but I am Percy Ayren, and I am come from very far away. But I believe I can help you.”
She began speaking and the things that came out of her lips were the stuff of stories and nonsense—or would have been thus only a few weeks ago, if not for the impossible events of the most recent days which the Lady San Quellenne had herself witnessed.
“I can walk into the shadows and emerge in Death’s Hall,” said the girl. “And I can take all of you and your people there. It is a neutral grey place, and Lord Death himself will send you onward to where you might want to go from there—at least I think he can be convinced to do so. Indeed, Death is the one who sent us here.”
“And why exactly are you here?” asked Jelavie, astride her horse and at her mother’s side. “Why should we believe anything you say?” For once the Lady San Quellenne did not disapprove of her daughter’s outspoken commentary, and shared the sentiment.
At the edge of the crowd, a pair of nobly-dressed women, one of them likely the mother of the younger, were staring very worriedly, watching the stranger girl. Lady Calliope had noticed them previously, for they too were strange new faces here in town, but now she astutely noted there was some kind of connection between them and this girl who had emerged with her strange claims.
Meanwh
ile the girl paused for a moment before replying to Jelavie’s apt question. She was plain and stout and simply attired, and as she glanced around the crowd, Lady Calliope saw her being observed intently by a tall imposing young man with a composed handsome face who towered over most of the men present. He had the look of a nobleman, and he too was a stranger she had never seen before—what was it suddenly? They had not seen so many new faces over a matter of weeks in San Quellenne as seemed to be gathered here now. . . .
The girl named Percy looked around the crowd and then she said, “I can help your dead to pass on. If there is anyone here who has a relation who needs relief from mortal pain—I can grant it.”
The townspeople were all speaking, and it was suddenly a sea of angry voices raised.
“What dark things are you saying, girl? This is blasphemy! We are presently cursed with no death, ’tis true, but what can someone like you do?”
“I already told you who I am,” she replied in an even voice that suddenly got strong—while the young nobleman took a step closer toward her, glancing at her protectively. “As Death’s Champion, I have been given this ability to help you. Is there anyone among you who will give me a chance?”
“What, and let you defile our poor dead even more? You are mad, girl!” a ruddy-faced townswoman cried hoarsely. “My husband has been dead for days now and I am glad to have him with me for the extra work he can put in! I’ve no one else to help, what with five heads to feed and two infants, and he doesn’t even need to eat! Not so bad to be dead, yet still be here with us, I say!”
Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) Page 18