Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy)

by Vera Nazarian

  “Aye!” other voices responded. There was a tumult of more angry whisperings in waves.

  Suddenly a young boy’s voice sounded. “Can you help my bird?”

  The boy stepped out of the crowd of adults, jostling past a few townspeople. He was no older than seven, olive-skinned and tanned to a bronze, his skinny arms poking from the sleeves of an oversized white linen shirt, and his head was a tangle of unruly black hair that dearly needed combing. Who else would it be, thought Lady Calliope, looking at her youngest son fondly.

  “Flavio!” exclaimed his sister, Jelavie, giving him a hard flashing look. “What are you doing?”

  The boy stretched forth his hand and in its palm was a tiny, feathered shape of a young seagull. He stood before Percy and showed her the creature, feebly moving its broken wing.

  “I found it right there, near the water,” said the boy. “The dogs were going to grab it, but I grabbed it first! It’s dead, and cold, and I think its neck is crushed.”

  “Are you sure it’s dead?” said a man standing nearest to the boy, craning his neck to look.

  “It is dead,” replied the girl called Percy suddenly, staring intently at the creature. Her expression was full of compassion. “I can see its death shadow next to the little body.”

  There was more talk in the crowd.

  From her seat in the saddle, the Lady San Quellenne looked down at the girl steadily, evaluating her. “So, you can see the dead among us, is that so? Who do you see, then? Who is dead here?”

  Percy looked up at Lady Calliope, and there was a small pause, while the warm breeze blew, stirring their hair, and only a hundred feet away was the sound of lapping waves, just beyond the plaza.

  “Well?” said the Lady San Quellenne.

  “You,” said Percy Ayren. “You are dead, My Lady. I am sorry to say. . . .”

  Perfect silence. Lady Calliope froze.

  Next to her, seated on the other horse, the young Lady Jelavie started and then made a little sound. “What? Mother!”

  There was a commotion among the townspeople. Stunned gasps. The two strange noblewomen stood watching the proceedings, and one of them made a small stifled sound.

  “The bird,” Lady Calliope said slowly, never looking at her daughter, indeed, never looking at any of them. “Put it to rest, now.”

  Percy Ayren nodded, then gently averted her gaze from the Lady San Quellenne and merely with her glance seemed to reach out to the poor broken thing stirring in the palm of little Flavio’s hand.

  The soft breeze carrying with it a scent of salt from the sea stirred the seagull into a ball of moving feathers, and tangled the boy’s dark hair even more than it already was.

  When the breeze passed, the bird was motionless.

  Flavio gasped. “Oh!” he said. “I felt it rush away, like a magic spirit bird! It is really dead! It is—”

  And then he looked up to see his mother’s dead gaze upon him. And it sank in at last. He scrunched up his face into a contorted mess and then began to bawl.

  Seated on her own horse, a mere handshake away from her dead mother and her mount, Lady Jelavie San Quellenne was crying also, silently, her shoulders shaking, and great streaks of water running down her cheeks, while her face remained stern and proud and stonelike.

  Lady Calliope San Quellenne made the conscious effort to pull in the air into her lungs, and parted her lips, and spoke the words that had to be said at last, eventually, today, now. . . . “It is true, I am dead. I have—died four days ago. Just an hour past midnight—remember how very ill I had been that night? I died . . . but I was not sure at first, since I had been so ill for so long. But then, when I stopped hearing my own heart, and stopped needing to breathe or sleep or eat, I knew it then.”

  “W-why did you not say anything, mother?” Lady Jelavie uttered between sobs.

  “What is one to say upon such an occasion? Announcing one’s own death is not something that any of us have much experience with. . . . The world has become an impossible thing. And I did not want to frighten any of you, not when so much misery was here already. And then, places started disappearing. . . . I thought it best to wait, and make myself as useful as I can be, for all of you.”

  Lady Calliope turned at last, moving her neck slowly, to see her daughter’s grief. “Please, child, no more,” she said. “Think, how many dead mothers are fortunate enough to speak to their daughters and console them? It is a new thing, and it is a strange blessing, even while it is also a curse. Come, stop the crying this instant—and you too, Flavio, my little heart.”

  The murmuring townspeople in the crowd began taking off their hats and whispering condolences to their Lady.

  She in turned listened to their words lovingly. “I thank you, my beloved people of San Quellenne. And now, I relinquish myself and all that is mine to my daughter. Lady Jelavie is now the rightful Lady San Quellenne.”

  “No!” The young maiden cried. “I refuse it, mother! You are my Lady, and—and you are here, with us, and you are—”

  “No, dear heart,” said her mother. “My time is now in the past. I am but a corporeal ghost—fortunate and blessed enough to witness the transition, as no others could—those who had died over the generations, long before me. For no other San Quellenne Lord or Lady throughout history was as blessed as I, not until these past few days and the strange stopping of all death.”

  The dead Lady San Quellenne turned to look at the strange girl called Percy, whose coming here has precipitated this day of revelation. Percy was standing very quietly, looking at them all with a gaze of profound sorrow.

  “I believe you, and what you say, strange girl,” Lady Calliope said to Percy. “I believe that you can save us all, and lead us—as you say—through the shadows. Then, do it. Please. Help us! Help them!” And she stretched one pale arm to sweep it in a circle encompassing the crowd and the street and what was visible of dry land around them.

  Ad Percy Ayren nodded, seeing her, and seeing the now softly weeping young boy, and his sister, still wearing a face of stone, but the kind of stone that stands under a waterfall and has been drenched with the aerial spray, and has been made shining and eroded and forever marked. . . .

  “Tonight, just before twilight comes,” Percy said. “Have your people get ready, and come here to this street. Dress warmly. Come with your belongings and your animals, I beg you not to leave them behind, not to abandon them. . . . Do not tarry, do not be late, or you might miss the shadows, and then it may be too late, for the shadows themselves might come to you and fade this remaining land away.”

  “These people will be here as you say,” replied the lady.

  “I will wait for you,” Percy replied.

  The Lady San Quellenne noticed how Percy seemed to look out beyond the crowd, to the back, where the two strangers, the two women with their unfamiliar faces, stood, watching her. They locked gazes with the girl for an instant. And then the younger one of the two women slowly averted her stilled, dead eyes.

  Percy and Beltain returned to the D’Arvu villa to wait, while the afternoon deepened and the quality of the light outside warmed into the precursor of sunset.

  They had followed Lady Arabella D’Arvu and the Lady Leonora as they made their way back along the street that was now the seashore, walking several steps behind to grant them privacy. Leonora turned a few times and cast her bird-like fixed glance at Percy, then looked away.

  Within the villa, the count was where they had left him, seated alone in the parlor and his eyes were closed, while his woodcarving was set aside. He was not sleeping, for at once he opened his eyes and he glanced at them all and spoke quietly to his wife.

  They consulted in soft weary voices, while Leonora stood in the middle of the room, straight-backed as a pillar of salt. Her faint death shadow billowed at her side, next to the real shadow on the floor cast by the sun in the window.

  Percy and Beltain approached and Percy spoke evenly, addressing all of them. “Will you come with us
tonight, as I lead the local people from here?”

  Lady Arabella turned with a nervous expression on her thin sunken face. “We—we have not decided—that is, we need to think—”

  “You cannot stay here. . . . The town is an island now, completely cut off from everything. There will be no food, no means of leaving again, unless you decide to fashion a raft or boat,” Beltain interrupted, looking at the Countess and then the Count. “I urge you strongly to think well on this now. The Kingdom of Tanathe in its entirety may not be here tomorrow.”

  “But it would mean going to Death’s Keep!” The Countess began wringing her hands in distress. “My Leonora cannot—must not—she must not be forced to this—”

  “I promise you,” Percy said, “I will not force the Lady Leonora to anything against her will. Even in the presence of Lord Death, she will have her choice.”

  “I—”Leonora’s voice sounded. “I will come. But—no, I cannot die, not yet. My Lady Mother and My Lord Father, I cannot have you stay here and perish because of me. We will go to this—this otherplace. I will see Death and look upon him, and I will think. . . .”

  “Then, it is well, and it will be for the best, My Lady.” Percy looked upon Leonora kindly.

  The count nodded and then called his servants to gather their things yet again. Only this time, he directed them to leave most of their unpacked belongings behind, and choose only what was most essential.

  “Will it be cold where we go?” he said wearily.

  “Yes, it is Lethe, in the Realm. Death’s Keep is to be found from there, though I do not think you will necessarily end up in Lethe once we go there,” Percy spoke.

  Beltain meanwhile went to gather his own armor and knight’s attire, and to get Jack ready to ride.

  When sunset approached, they walked to the marketplace, leading horses behind them, and followed by a few servants carrying small items of personal value.

  The town of San Quellenne was a place of ghosts, suspended. In the fading cream-yellow sunlight trees moved in the breeze, with flowers that had been the same for days, neither ripening to fruit nor falling off. Leaves fluttered like lifeless eternal parchment.

  The D’Arvu family walked slowly through the sparse dappled shadows made by the trees, casting farewell glances at the place they had wanted to make their home but now had to abandon after only a day. Percy and Beltain followed them, keeping slightly back, with Beltain fully armored in his black plate and chain mail, leading Jack behind him. Percy had her winter coat on, even though the balmy air made it stifling hot and beads of sweat were on her forehead.

  Seagulls raced through the sparse trees around them, emerging through the branches clustered with greenery and on the other side where was the sea, casting themselves with hunger into the aquamarine waters and trying to hunt for fish that would not die in their beaks. They were all starving slowly, Percy thought, watching the maddened birds in their futile plight, sending up plumes of white spray as they struck downwards at the surface of the seawater.

  On the street that was a beach, a few small animals emerged, lean nervous squirrels, and packs of dogs with despair in their eyes. A small, skinny orange-and-white tomcat peered through the shrubbery. They scattered from the approaching men and women, and yet followed the passerby with famished looks.

  When they arrived at the market plaza, quite a few people had already gathered there, sitting on sacks of their belongings in the middle of the wide-open space. As soon as they saw Percy, every eye was upon her and their murmuring voices ceased.

  The sun cast long indigo shadows as it sank into the west, the top of its bloody orange sphere like an egg yolk floating at the horizon. Slender tree branches stood out in layers of silhouette against the sunset, and the sky faded from blue to damson.

  The denizens of the Castle of San Quellenne arrived last of all, the Lady San Quellenne and her daughter and son, all dressed simply—except for Lady Jelavie who wore a ruddy surcoat with a family crest over a suit of light armor, polished white metal, with a helm in the crook of her arm—with a few servants leading horses, and donkeys pulling a cart loaded with all that ever meant ‘home.’

  Lady Calliope headed directly toward Percy. Her long dress of pale cotton billowed around her, without sleeves to cover her pale flesh that death had leached of any residue of tan, and only simple open sandals were on her feet. She wore no straw hat this time, and her hair, rich russet with highlights of pale metal was gathered in a simple plait, and a small band of shimmering sun-gold sat on her brow, which upon closer perusal turned out to be a simple coronet of braided silk ribbon. Her eyes were dark rich brown, a warm hue, even in death. “It is difficult saying goodbye to the place were you lived all your life. So many memories. . . .” Her measured words came in an even, calm voice, riding her breath.

  Percy met her gaze and said, “Again, I am so sorry. I also left my small home village, though it does not compare to this green beautiful place.”

  “Let us wait then, and see if any more people come.”

  Percy nodded silently. Beltain caught her glance and there was patient strength in his slate-grey eyes. They stood thus, waiting, while the crowd gathered and the sunset faded.

  “How much longer?” asked Lady Jelavie, approaching Percy. She glanced briefly in the direction of the black knight, appraising his new armored look.

  “Soon,” Percy pointed to the long shadows. “As soon as the sun is gone, and twilight starts thickening, there will be some shadows that serve as passageways.”

  “How can you tell them apart from other shadows?” Jelavie was looking at Percy with a hard gaze, and her brown eyes, the same hue as those of her mother, were not warm at all.

  “I can feel their difference,” Percy replied, matching her gaze with her own steady one. “It is like grey mist. And then I move it apart by imagining it to be thus, and it becomes a space that can be entered.”

  “Ah, I do not quite believe you,” the lady dressed as a knight said. “How do we know you are not leading us into an enemy trap? The Domain and the Realm are at war, even if we know not why, nor do we like to make war ourselves, and Lord knows what awaits us on the other side—dark sorcery! Will you enter first?”

  “I will enter first,” sounded a rich baritone, and they both turned to look at Beltain.

  “You are an enemy knight of the Realm,” said Lady Jelavie, looking up at him insolently. “I see by your armor you are of a high rank. Will you slay our people as we pass through this sorcerous passageway of shadows and smoke?”

  “I am Lord Beltain Chidair, and I give you my word of honor you will not be harmed. If I had wanted to slay your people, they would be dead already,” he said softly, looking back at the lady with an unblinking stare. That same basilisk stare had cowered quite a few opponents on the battlefield.

  But Lady Jelavie was undaunted. Her slim hands in their elegant steel-braced gauntlets reached for the length of sheathed sword at her side. “Do not think, Lord Beltain,” she said, “that San Quellenne goes like lambs to the slaughter. I promise you, your treacherous task will be far more difficult than you imagine.”

  “Jelavie, please, stop. . . .” Her mother had come closer once again, moving with weary stilted footsteps that had grown more pronounced in awkwardness of stiff limbs, now that she was no longer hiding her condition, and Percy observed the soft resigned sorrow, a strange delicate sheen of it on her features.

  Jelavie frowned, but immediately nodded to her mother, and looked away from the black knight.

  In the next few moments, the sun sank beyond the horizon.

  It was the beginning of true dusk.

  The people in the marketplace shivered, glancing round them, for they too seemed to realize that the time of leaving was almost upon them.

  In all places where the trees and buildings stood close together, branches clustered to obscure all vestiges of sky’s glow, shadows were gathering thickly. Soon, in a strange manner of a wavering mirage, the air began to warp,
and Percy sensed an almost tangible pull at her death sense.

  “There!” she said, pointing to one end of the plaza, where the darkness had developed a rip into another place and the air was suddenly thick like mist. Already, nothing could be seen through it on the other side and beyond into the distant trees, only the mist itself existed, and it was a curtain of unrelieved grey.

  The people of San Quellenne started moving, rising from their seated positions on the ground, picking up their belongings.

  “Tell them to line up in single file, or in pairs, no wider,” Percy said to Lady Calliope San Quellenne. And then she looked at Beltain, and he met her gaze and nodded silently, his eyes intent upon her. The great back warhorse at his side made a snort as Beltain led him, alongside Percy, to the edge of the clearing and toward the curtain of grey mist. He paused momentarily, staring at Percy with a haunted look. “I am going ahead, and I will wait for you on the other side.”

  “Yes, and please take care of them as they pass. I will follow you all as soon as the last one of them goes through—”

  “I will go directly after him, the first of my people!” Lady Jelavie was standing behind them, holding the bridle of her pale grey stallion, almost of the same hue as the shadows.

  “Of course. . . .” Percy noted how the lady had unconsciously spoken the words “my people,” as though she were their liege already.

  The black knight simply nodded, and said, “Follow me.” He turned and walked into the mist, with Jack stepping behind him, and they were dissolved into nothing.

  Percy felt a sudden twinge of the same peculiar sense that she had discovered recently, a sensation of being left completely alone. She missed his presence in an instant, as if a part of herself had gone forward and left her behind.

  She did not dwell on it however, and stood aside, allowing Lady Jelavie to move past her.