by Tad Williams
“I cannot say,” Geloë rasped. “But we should return to tell the others, in case Josua did not see. We must be concerned with any strangers now, be they friend or foe.”
Vorzheva shuddered. Her face was still pale. “There are no friendly strangers on these grasslands,” she said.
The women’s news was enough to convince Josua that they could dally no longer. Unhappily, the company shouldered their few possessions and set off again, following the course of the Ymstrecca east alongside the border of the now-distant forest, a thin dark strip on the misty northern horizon.
They saw no one else all afternoon.
“These seem like fertile lands,” Deornoth said as they searched for a spot to camp. “Isn’t it strange that we have seen no people beside that lone rider?”
“One rider is enough.” Josua was grim.
“My people have never liked it here, so near to the old forest,” Vorzheva said, and shivered. “There are spirits of the dead beneath the trees. ”
Josua sighed. “These are things I would have laughed at a year ago. Now I have seen them, or things even worse. God save me, what a world this has become!”
Geloë looked up from where she was making a bed of grass for young Leleth. “It has always been the same world, Prince Josua,” she said. “It is only that in these troubled hours things are seen more clearly. The lamps of cities blur many shadows that are plain beneath the moon.”
Deornoth awoke in the deeps of night, his heart beating swiftly. He had been dreaming. King Elias had become a spindly thing of grasping claws and red eyes clinging to Prince Josua’s back. Josua could not see him and did not even seem to know that his brother was there. In the dream Deornoth tried to tell him, but Josua did not listen, only smiled as he walked through the streets of Erchester with the terrible Elias-thing riding his back like a deformed baby. Every time Josua bent to pat the head of a child or give a coin to a beggar, Elias reached out to undo the good work when Josua had passed, snatching the coin back or scratching the child’s face with dirty nails. Soon an angry crowd followed behind Josua, shouting for his punishment, but the prince went blithely on, unknowing, even as Deornoth screamed and pointed at the evil thing riding the prince’s shoulders.
Awake on the benighted grasslands, Deornoth shook his head, trying to pull free from the clinging sense of disquiet. Elias’ dream-face, wizened and spiteful, would not leave his mind. He sat up and looked around. All the camp was sleeping but for Valada Geloë, who sat dreaming or pondering over the last coals of the dying fire.
He lay back and tried to sleep, but could not for fear the dream would return. At last disgusted by his own weak-heartedness, he got up and quietly shook out his cloak, then walked to the fire and sat down near Geloë.
The witch woman did not look up at his approach. Her face was red-splashed by firelight, eyes staring unblinkingly into the embers as though nothing else existed. Her lips were moving but no sound came forth; Deornoth felt a chill creep up the back of his neck. What was she doing? Should he wake her?
Geloë’s mouth continued to work. Her voice rose to a whisper. “... Amerasu, where are you? Your spirit is dim... and I am weak ...”
Deornoth’s hand stopped an inch from the witch woman’s rough sleeve. “... If ever you share, let it be now ...” Geloë’s voice hissed like the wind. “Oh, please ...” A tear, scarlet-shot, trickled down her weathered cheek.
Her despairing whisper drove Deornoth back to his makeshift bed. He did not fall back into sleep for some time, but lay staring up at the blue-white stars.
He was awakened once more before dawn—this time by Josua. The prince shook Deornoth’s arm, then lifted his handless right wrist to his lips, gesturing for silence. The knight looked up to see a clot of darkness to the west, thicker even than the general obscurity of night, approaching along the line of the river. The muffled sound of hoofbeats rolled toward them over the grass. Deornoth’s heart raced. He felt on the ground for his scabbard, and was soothed only a little by the feeling of his sword hilt beneath his fingers. Josua crawled away to wake the others.
“Where is the witch woman?” Deornoth whispered urgently, but the prince was too far away to hear, so he crawled over to where Strangyeard lay. The older man, sleeping lightly, was awake in a moment.
“Be still,” the knight murmured. “There are riders coming.”
“Who?” Strangyeard asked. Deornoth shook his head.
The oncoming riders, still little more than shadows, split almost noiselessly into several groups, sweeping wide around the encampment. Deornoth had to marvel at their silent horsemanship even as he cursed his party’s lack of bows and arrows. A folly, to fight with swords against mounted men—if men they were. He thought he could count count two dozen attackers, although any estimate was dubious in this half-light.
Deornoth got to his feet, even as a few shadowy figures around him did the same. Josua, nearby, drew Naidel from its sheath; the sudden hiss of metal against leather seemed as loud as a shout. The surrounding figures reined up, and for a moment utter silence fell once more. Someone passing a stone’s throw away would never have suspected the presence of a single soul, let alone two forces at battle-ready.
A voice broke the stillness.
“Trespassers! You walk on the land of Clan Mehrdon! Lay down your arms.”
Flint rang on steel, then a torch blossomed behind the nearest figures, throwing long shadows across the campsite. Mounted men, hooded and cloaked, surrounded Josua’s band with a ring of spears.
“Lay down your weapons!” the voice said again in thickly-accented Westerling. “You are prisoners of the randwarders. We will kill you if you resist.” Several more torches flared alight. The night was suddenly full of armed shadows.
“Merciful Aedon!” Duchess Gutrun said from somewhere nearby. “Sweet Elysia, what now?”
A large shape pushed toward her—Isorn, going to comfort his mother.
“Do not move!” the disembodied voice barked out; a moment later one of the riders walked his horse forward, his spear point lowering, catching a glint of torchlight. “I hear women,” the rider said. “Do nothing foolish and they will be spared. We are not beasts.”
“And what about the rest?” Josua said, stepping forward into the light. “We have many here wounded and sick. What will you do with us?”
The rider leaned down to stare at Josua, momentarily exposing his hooded features. He had a rough face, with a shaggy, braided beard and scarred cheeks. Heavy bracelets clinked on his wrists. Deornoth felt his tension ease somewhat. At least their enemies were mortal men.
The rider spat into the dark grass. “You are prisoners. You ask no questions. The March-thane will decide.” He turned to his fellows. “Ozhbern! Kunret! Round them in a circle to march!” He wheeled his horse to supervise as Josua, Deornoth, and the others were herded at spearpoint into the ring of torchlight.
“Your March-thane will be unhappy if you mistreat us,” Josua said.
The leader laughed. “He will be more unhappy with me if you are not at the wagons by sun-high.” He turned to one of the other riders. “All?”
“All, Hotvig. Six men, two women, one child. Only one cannot walk.” He indicated Sangfugol with the butt of his spear.
“Put him on a horse,” Hotvig said. “Over the saddle, no matter. We must ride fast.”
Even as they were prodded into movement, Deornoth sidled closer to Josua. “It could be worse,” he whispered to the prince. “It could have been the Norns who caught us instead of Thrithings-men.”
The prince did not reply. Deornoth touched his arm, feeling the muscles tense as barrel staves beneath his fingers. “What’s wrong, Prince Josua? Have the Thrithings-men thrown in with Elias? My lord?”
One of the riders looked down, mouth set in a humorless, gap-toothed grin. “Quiet, stone-dwellers,” he snarled. “Save your breath for walking.”
Josua turned a haunted face toward Deornoth. “Didn’t you hear him?” the prince wh
ispered. “Didn’t you hear him?”
Deornoth was alarmed. “What?”
“Six men, two women, and a child,” Josua hissed, looking from side to side. “Two women! Where is Vorzheva?”
The rider slapped a spear butt against his shoulder and the prince lapsed into anguished silence. They trudged on between the horsemen as dawn began to smolder in the eastern sky.
As she lay on her hard bed in the darkened servant’s quarters, Rachel the Dragon imagined she could hear the gibbet creaking, even above the howling wind that skirled through the battlements. Nine more bodies, the chancellor Helfcene’s among them, were swaying above the Nearulagh Gate tonight, dancing helplessly to the wind’s fierce music.
Nearer at hand, somebody was crying.
“Sarrah? Is that you?” Rachel hissed. “Sarrah?”
The moaning of the gale died down. “Y-yes, mistress,” came the muffled reply.
“Blessed Rhiap, what are you sobbing about? You’ll wake the others!” Beside Sarrah and Rachel, there were only three other women now sleeping in the maid’s quarters, but all five cots were huddled together to conserve heat in the large, chilly room.
Sarrah seemed to struggle to compose herself, but when she answered her voice was still shaken by sobs. “I’m ... I’m afraid, M-mistress Rachel.”
“Of what, fool girl, the wind?” Rachel sat up, holding the thin blanket closely around her. “It’s blowing up a storm, but you’ve heard wind before.” Torchlight bleeding beneath the doorway revealed the faint shape of Sarrah’s pale face.
“It’s ... my gammer used to say ...” The maid coughed wetly. “Gammer said that nights like this ... are when dead spirits walk. That you ... you can hear the voices in the w-wind.”
Rachel was grateful for the darkness that hid her own discomforted shiver. If there ever would be such a night, tonight seemed a likely choice. The wind had been raging like a wounded animal since sundown, wailing among the Hayholt’s chimneys and scratching at the doors and windows with insistent, twiggy fingers.
She made her voice firm. “The dead don’t walk in my castle, idiot girl. Now go back to sleep before you give the others nightmares.” Rachel lowered herself back down onto her pallet, trying to find a position that would ease her knotted back. “Go to sleep, Sarrah,” she said. “The wind can’t hurt you, and there’ll be work in plenty tomorrow, the Good Lord knows, just a-picking up what the wind’s blown down.”
“I’m sorry.” The pale face sank. After a few sniffling minutes, Sarrah was silent once more. Rachel stared upward into the blackness and listened to the night’s restless voices.
She might have slept—it was hard to tell when all was in darkness—but Rachel knew that she had been listening to a sound beneath the windsong for some time. It was a quiet, stealthy scratching, a dry sound like bird claws on a slate roof.
Something was at the door.
She might have been sleeping, but now, suddenly, she was terribly awake. When she turned her head to the side she could see a shadow slipping along the strip of light below the door. The scratching became louder, and with it came the sound of someone crying.
“Sarrah?” Rachel whispered, thinking that the noise had awakened the maid, but there was no response. As she listened wide-eyed in the dark she knew that the strange, thin sound was coming from the hallway—from whatever stood outside her locked door.
“Please,” someone whispered there, “please ...”
Blood pounding in her head, Rachel sat up, then silently placed her bare feet on the cold stone floor. Could she be dreaming? She seemed so very wide awake, but it sounded like a boy’s voice, like ...
The scratching took on an impatient quality which quickly began to sound like tearfulness—whatever it was, she thought, it must be frightened, to scratch so ... A wandering spirit, a homeless thing walking lone and lorn on this blustery night, looking for its long-vanished bed?
Rachel crept closer to the door, silent as snow. Her heart labored. The wind in the battlements stilled. She was alone in the dark with the breathing of the slumbering maids and the pitiful scraping of what stood beyond the door.
“Please,” the voice said again, softly, weakly. “I’m scared ...”
She traced the sign of the Tree on her breast, then grasped the bolt and drew it back. Though the moment of choosing was past, she drew the door open slowly: even with the choice made, she feared what she would see.
The solitary torch against the far corridor outlined the faint figure, its thatch of hair, its scarecrow-thin limbs. The face that turned to her, startled eyes showing their whites, was blackened as though burnt.
“Help me,” it said, staggering through the doorway into her arms.
“Simon!” Rachel cried, and beyond all sense felt her heart overflowing. He had come back, through fire, through death....
“Si ... Simon?” the boy said, his eyes sagging closed from exhaustion and pain. “Simon’s dead. He ... he died ... in the fire. Pryrates killed him....”
He went limp in her arms. Head whirling, she pulled his sagging form through the doorway, letting him slide to the floor, then shot the bolt firmly home and went looking for a candle. The wind cried mockingly; if other voices cried within it, there were none that Rachel recognized.
“It’s Jeremias, the chandler’s boy,” Sarrah said wonderingly as Rachel washed the dried blood from his face. In the candlelight, Jeremias’ dark-socketed eyes and scratched cheeks made him seem almost a wizened old man.
“But he was a chubby thing,” Rachel said. Her mind was boiling with the boy’s words, but things must be done one at a time. What would these useless girls think if she let herself go all to pieces? “What’s happened to him?” she growled. “He’s thin as a stave.”
The maids had all gathered around, blankets wrapped as cloaks around their nightdresses. Jael, no longer as stout as she had once been, owing to the greater burden of work all the remaining girls shared, stared at the senseless youth.
“I thought someone said Jeremias ran away?” she said, frowning. “Why did he come back?”
“Don’t be foolish,” Rachel said, trying to tug Jeremias’ tattered shirt over his head without waking him. “If he had run away, how would he have gotten back into Hayholt at the middle of night? Flown?”
“Then tell us where he has been,” one of the other girls said. It was a measure of Rachel’s shock at Jeremias’ entrance that this near-impertinence went completely unremarked-upon by the Mistress of Chambermaids.
“Help me turn him over,” she said, working the shirt free. “We’ll put him to sleep in ... Oh! Elysia, Mother of God!” She fell into astonished silence. Sarrah burst into tears beside her.
The youth’s back was crisscrossed with deep, bloody weals.
“I feel ... I feel sick!” Jael mumbled, then lurched away.
“Don’t be a fool,” Rachel said, regaining her composure once more. “Splash some water on your face, then bring me the rest of the basin. This wet cloth alone won’t do. And take that sheet from the bed Hepizibah used to sleep in and tear strips for bandages. Rhiap’s Pain, do I have to do everything myself?”
It took the whole sheet and part of another one. His legs had been scourged, too.
Jeremias awoke just before dawn. His eyes at first roamed the room without seeing anything, but after a time he seemed to regain his wits. Sarrah, sadness and pity shining through her homely face as though it were glass, gave him some water to drink.
“Where am I?” he asked at last.
“You’re in the servant’s quarters, boy,” Rachel said briskly. “As you should know. Now, what sort of mischief have you been up to?”
He stared at her groggily for a moment. “You’re Rachel the Dragon,” he said at last. Despite their weariness and fright, and the lateness of the hour, the chambermaids were hard put to suppress their smiles. Rachel, strangely, did not seem angered in the slightest.
“I’m Rachel,” she agreed. “Now, where have you been, bo
y? We heard that you ran away.”
“You thought I was Simon, ”Jeremias said, wonderingly, staring around the chamber. “He was my friend—but he’s dead, isn’t he? Am I dead?”
“You’re not dead. What happened to you?” Rachel leaned forward to brush Jeremias’ tangled hair out of his eyes; her hand lingered for an instant on his cheek. “You’re safe now. Talk to us.”
He seemed about to slide back into sleep, but after a moment he opened his eyes again. When he spoke it was more plainly than before. “I did try to run away,” he said. “When the king’s soldiers beat my master Jakob and drove him out the gate. I tried to run away that night, but the guards caught me. They gave me to Inch.”
Rachel frowned. “That animal.”
Jeremias’ eyes widened. “He’s worse than any animal. He’s a devil. He said I would be his apprentice, down in the furnaces ... in the forges. He thinks he’s a king down there ...” The boy’s face screwed up, and he suddenly burst into tears. “He says he’s ... he’s Doctor Inch, now. He beat me and ... he used me.”
Rachel leaned forward to blot his cheeks with her kerchief. The girls made the sign of the Tree.
Jeremias’ sobbing diminished. “It’s worse than anything ... down there. ”
“You said something, boy,” Rachel said briskly. “Something about the king’s counselor. About Simon. Say it again.”
The boy opened his brimming eyes wide. “Pryrates killed him. Simon and Morgenes. The priest went there with troops. Morgenes fought with him, but the chamber burned down and Simon and the doctor died.”
“And how could you know that?” she snapped, a little harshly. “How could such as you know that?”
“Pryrates said so himself! He comes down to see Inch. Sometimes he just brags, like about killing Morgenes. Other times he helps Inch ... h-hurt people.” Jeremias was having trouble. “Sometimes ... sometimes the priest takes people away with him ... takes them when he goes. They don’t come b—back.” He fought to catch his breath. “And there’s ... other things. Other things down there. Terrible things. Oh, God, please don’t send me back.” He grasped Rachel’s wrist with his hand. “Please hide me!”