Ulerroth re-settled his bulk in his chair. “He came with his mother last fall. Just before snow closed the pass.”
The man picked up his spoon. “Your cook...is she—?”
“Gareth’s mother? No.” The innkeeper studied his hands. “Pretty woman, Leah. She used to cook, years ago, but found she made more upstairs.” He gestured to the darkness above.
The man’s fingers tightened around the spoon. Unbidden images filled his head, images he pushed away even as he pulled the bowl of stew closer. Forget what was. That door is closed.
“She did, too,” Ulerroth continued in a wistful voice, “until one lucky trapper offered for her hand. I never expected her to say yes, but that was in those dark days right after Herrok-Eneth broke when we all thought the world was about to end. I guess she didn’t want to be alone. She stayed up in the mountains after he died, till the Krad got too close. Not long after she and the boy got here, the winter fever took her.” He stared at the fire for a moment, then shook off his reverie and pulled from beneath his apron a square of soft black cloth. “What do you have for me this trip?” he asked, smoothing the cloth flat.
The man unfastened the gem pouch from his belt and laid it on the table.
The innkeeper weighed it in his hands. “This all?”
“Some pouches of gold dust, too,” he said, maneuvering a spoonful of stew between folds of cloth, “and a handful of garnets.” He’d long ago mastered the art of eating hooded, but it didn’t allow for looking up. Nonetheless, the weave of the cloth concealing his features was just loose enough for him to see through it almost as clearly as through the small holes positioned over his eyes. Without lifting his head, he watched Ulerroth open the gem pouch and pour its contents onto the cloth.
The innkeeper’s breath hissed between his teeth. Rising, he broke a taper from the overhead wheel and lit it at the fire. He propped the candle in an empty tankard and surveyed the rainbow of gems glinting against the black fabric before he sat down again.
“Ah, bloodstone.” His fingers made directly for the oversized gem. “Lovely, lovely,” he murmured, holding it up to the candle flame.
The man watched a faint speck of red fire dance across the innkeeper’s swarthy face. “There are five other, smaller ones.”
“Good. Wonderful.” Ulerroth picked up a large lapis and examined it. “The usual terms?”
He intended to say no, as usual, but flat out and early this time, before Ulerroth had a chance to misunderstand. For weeks, he’d rehearsed it, played the scene over and over in his mind. The amount of payment didn’t trouble him. Ulerroth was as fair a man as any he’d dealt with over the years, and fairer than some. There would be plenty of coin, not that he had much use for it beyond what he spent in this place. Nor was he concerned for the cost of room and board for himself and his horse or the cost of supplies provided with credit from the gems. It was the other, the third part of Ulerroth’s standing offer he had to refuse, but this traitorous body fought to keep the word from passing his lips, and it would continue to fight him every moment he stayed in this place.
The realization made the food taste like iron in his mouth. It was only that—he forced himself to chew and swallow another mouthful of stew—it was only that he was still so damnably human. Even after all this time.
“We’ll settle tomorrow night?” the innkeeper said, sweeping the gems back into the pouch.
The man nodded. Tomorrow. He would burn until then. Damn this body!
****
“I’m not serving that—that Shadow thing again!” Freth said as she sloshed water into the hearth kettle. “Sitting there in the dark like some giant black-winged bat—” Gareth heard the shiver in her voice. “‘Put the food there,’ he says. ‘Leave.’ Well, glad I am to go, that’s certain.”
She plucked the carrot from Gareth’s hands. “Scrub harder. They’re not clean enough.”
He nodded and picked up another carrot.
“He’s been coming here for years,” Nell, the serving girl, said from his left. “Always just past midsummer, too.”
Gareth heard crunching and guessed she’d taken one of the carrots from his bunch.
“Well, you’d think Ulerroth could tell him just once that the place is full.”
“He won’t.”
“Why? He’s told it to others he didn’t want staying here.”
“He brings bloodstone. There’s not many that do.”
Freth pushed Gareth’s hands from his pile of cleaned carrots. “That’s enough, boy. Fetch more water.”
“All right.”
“And a handful of apples from the cellar.”
Gareth nodded. He wiped his hands on his tunic and pushed away from the table.
“Bloodstones or not, he gives me the shivers. Why, I’ll wager he sleeps hanging upside down from the rafters,” Freth said as he tapped his way to the door. “You ever been up to his room?”
“Not while he’s there. Although I hear,” Nell added in a low voice, “Ulerroth’s offered him some women desperate enough to go.”
“Not for gold!”
“What else?”
Gareth stepped outside and closed the door on their whispering. The conversation made him flush, remembering moans and rhythmic creaks he’d heard more than once coming from the upstairs rooms. Ulerroth was not above renting rooms by the hour. Some nights all the rooms were full, and Gareth had to deliver trays of ale, bread, and cheese to the threshold of each. There was a smell that emanated from rooms so engaged, a musky smell like that of a dog in heat. The smell made Gareth’s palms sweat even now, only remembering it.
****
The Master of Nolar waved his servants away. He sat unmoving while, with hushed whispers, his personal attendant hustled the others through wide oaken doors. He listened for the sound of the latch and then, after a shuffle of footsteps, the silence that told him he was finally alone. Even then, he sat for some minutes more, his eyes closed.
Anyone entering would have said he was meditating. Or dozing. They would have assumed the day-to-day pressures of mastering his realm took its toll on a man of forty winters, despite the well-muscled look of his patrician body. He allowed a faint curve of his lips. Others might think so, but they would be at least partially wrong.
The Master of Nolar opened his eyes and flexed his fingers. Managing this realm was a chore, but planning was much, much more demanding. He reached for a thong lying just under the lace collar of his tunic and tugged gently. From the space between his chest hair and his undertunic, he withdrew a leather pouch. He opened the pouch and placed the single item within, still warm from his body, in his hand.
In the candlelight, it shimmered like water filling his palm. Long as a finger, the faceted column rose like a pillar of ice from a jagged base to a chipped and cratered peak. He rubbed his thumb-tip gently back and forth across the broken base.
As he did, the column began to glow from within, first yellow, then purple, then blue. At a murmured word, all three colors appeared at once, each highlighting a facet of the column. With a minute turn of his wrist, the colors shifted facets, interchanging again with each additional movement. Repositioning the object between thumb and index finger, he raised it slowly to eye level. At another murmured word, the colors vanished.
He smiled at a faint, dark, human-like shape writhing within the column’s core. “How kind of you, Master Brandelmore, to buy this piece of crystal and cut yourself handling it. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever have a body again. So generous of you to shed just enough blood I could trade places with you. Pity you don’t have the talent—or knowledge—to reverse the spell.”
He leaned back in the chair and stroked the salt and pepper goatee covering his chin. He’d never grown one himself, but perhaps he should have. This one provided such an astonishing array of tactile stimulation, and he’d gone so long without any such stimulation. “And how convenient that you’re about to be wed.” He laughed. “How convenient, indeed.”
With an absent flick of the wrist, the imposter palmed the crystal, shutting off its light. No, even planning wasn’t that difficult when events fell so neatly into place. It was the waiting, the damned, interminable waiting. And I’ve waited too long already!
He unclenched his fingers and watched blood ooze from three small cuts the crystal column had made in his skin. The dark, deep red droplets shone like gems. His heartbeat quickened, slamming into the walls of his chest. Soon. Very, very soon.
Chapter Four
The man drew on his gloves and cuffed the sleeves of his tunic tightly over each wrist. He felt around the edge of each jointure, making sure no sliver of skin was exposed. When satisfied, he reached out in the darkness and located a folded piece of soft cloth. This he slid carefully over his head, centering it so the slit sat over his mouth and the two small holes opened over his eyes. Reaching out again, he touched folds of coarser cloth. Picking these up, he draped them over his head like a deep, muffling hood and fastened the ends to his tunic shoulders. Only then did he strike flint and light a candle.
The flare of light was like an intruder, sending its nosy glance into every corner of the room. It showed him the tabletop marred with indentations where previous occupants’ knives had stood, tip embedded, hilt ready to the grasping hand. It showed him the fireplace with the missing mantel stone, the floor with its warped boards and dark, circular stains of spilled wine.
Or blood.
His thoughts seized the idea, eager for anything to divert his gaze from the dark-shrouded northeast corner of the room, and the bed he’d tried for hours to sleep in. Instead, he forced himself to wonder how many murders had been committed in this chamber. Ulerroth was not known to discriminate among his customers. Gem buyers, sellers, and thieves alike frequented Ar-Deneth and lodged at this very inn.
Tonight, however, he had the upstairs entirely to himself. It was not that he worried about thieves the way other men with gems or gold in their pouches did. Only a fool would try to rob him.
Only a fool who knew nothing about the Shadow Man, said the Voice in his head.
The Shadow Man! His fists clenched at the table’s edge. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? He raised his hand and swung at the candlestick.
Light cart-wheeled around the room, flashing up, down, across his face-covering, and then...nothing but the heavy thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk of the candlestick rolling across the floor. He leaned against the tabletop, his breath echoing thunder in his ears. Why the demon did I do that? Light, dark...nothing changes what I, what this body wants to do here.
A scurrying sound penetrated his hood, and his attention snapped to his door, to the hall beyond it. The supposedly empty hall. His breath came light and quick as his senses identified the slow—tentative?—approach of footsteps. He could expect Ulerroth, disturbed by the candlestick’s noise, but this tread was too soft. Much too soft.
Under the door, breaking the bar of faint light cast by the single hall torch, stretched a shadow—a slender shadow, cast by someone who tapped three times on his door and held her breath.
By Kiros, a woman!
“Go away!” he growled before his body—this damned body—could propel him toward the latch.
“Please, sir,” she whispered through the thick wood, “don’t let Ulerroth send you anyone else! My child’s ill and I need…I need the coin.”
“I don’t want a woman,” he said, panting as though he’d run half a league uphill, digging his fingers into the table’s edge to keep them from reaching for the door and opening it.
Outside, she burst into a wail of despair.
“Damn it all to Beggeth!” He dug one hand into his coin pouch, seized a handful, and slung them at the gap under the door. “There! Now go! And tell Ulerroth to send no one else!”
There was a scrabbling noise, knees thumping floorboards, a faint “Thank you!” and then retreating footfalls. Only when he was sure she was gone did he unclench the fingers of his left hand from the table’s edge. He groped for a chair and sat in it.
Gold. What fools people make of themselves for it. It never failed to amaze him that Ulerroth could find women desperate enough to risk their sanity, their very lives, to spread their legs in a darkened room for a man they did not dare see, a man they would know only as the shadow haunting their dreams, their nightmares.
And mine, too, even though I refuse. If only that could stop the dreams, the memories, but he’d had years to learn nothing would avail, and the sensations would gather, just as they were now, and sweep over him. He could pretend he was only imagining how hundreds of bodies had since used the bed in the corner, but that was a lie. This body, this damned body’s own actions had infused this room with the one memory he forced himself yearly to confront.
She’d been young, pretty, and new at selling herself. An altogether enticing package, even if she hadn’t been a gift from his men that night. Still, he ought to have refused, but he’d been a slave to this body all those years ago, and she’d made him forget, for a few hours, what he shouldn’t have forgotten, shouldn’t have put off doing, because the delay had cost him.
Everything.
His stomach convulsed. He let it churn, accepting, even savoring, the waves of disgust surging through his body. You deserve this. You knew how it would be, once again facing down temptation. Like sweat, the taint would cling to his body until he could return to the pool to cleanse himself once more.
He rose abruptly, located another candle and struck flint. His gloved hands shook in the wavering new light. He stared at them, forcing them to still. Are you afraid, flesh? You brought me here. I’ll buy the supplies to feed and clothe you another year, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give in to these, these base animal urges!
****
Mirianna emptied the waterskin. The dribble that leaked out barely covered the bottom of her cooking pot. Not enough for her father’s nightly tea and certainly not enough for the morning meal. She’d have to go to the stream they’d camped beside to fetch more. Tossing the waterskin and another empty one over her arm, she walked quickly beyond the firelight.
Twenty feet through aspen saplings, Mirianna broke into a cleared area lit by a rising half moon. A dark ribbon of water snaked through the center of the hollow, glimmering here and there as it rippled over submerged rocks. She slip-slided down the ravine, her boots crunching on gravel thrown up by spring floods. The ground leveled out, and she stepped from rock to rock to the water’s edge and knelt on the lip of a buried boulder.
She’d filled the first bag and was lowering the second into the stream when she heard the clatter of a falling stone. In the space of another heartbeat, she heard two more tumble down. Her breath locked in her throat. Someone—some thing—was behind her.
She ought to panic, to scream—if only she had breath—but some instinct, some deep knowledge held her still, silent. Then, as if impelled, she freed one hand from the waterskin and inched it toward the knife at her hip. Her other hand, immersed in snowmelt water, automatically contracted around the skin’s mouth. She eased back on her haunches, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet.
Gravel showered into the stream.
Mirianna spun. The full waterskin, powered by the force of her rotation, flew ten feet and connected with a splat. Not waiting to see if the intruder fell, she bolted for the trees.
A sputtered string of curses halted her halfway up the ravine. Turning, she saw Rees clamber to his feet.
Starlight silvered the hair plastered to his head and glistened like a moon-in-miniature from the crystal disk he wore around his neck. Water dripped from the tunic sleeves he held out to her. “What in the name of Beggeth did you do that for?”
He’d startled her, but she didn’t want to tell him that. Instead, “Maybe…maybe I thought you needed cooling off,” slipped out of her mouth.
“It’s not funny.” Rees snatched up the water pouch. “I could have been a Krad.”
“I know.”
She drew a shaky breath and pointed to the waterskin he was refilling. “Wouldn’t that have worked just as well if you were?”
Rees grunted. He tied off the pouch and reached for the one she’d already filled. “You shouldn’t have come here alone.”
“It wasn’t far.” Looking down, she noticed the knife still gripped in her hand. Her knees shook. She sank to a rock on the ravine’s side and, with trembling fingers, sheathed the weapon.
Both waterskins slung over his shoulder, Rees climbed the slope. “It’s my job to protect you. I wish you’d let me do it.”
Mirianna glanced at the hand he held out to her, and then up at his moonlight-shaded face. His eyes resided in the darkness somewhere, and she could catch no glint of expression. Still, she could sense by the change in his tone that his mood had altered. Cold water doesn’t affect you for long, does it?
Leaning away from his hand, she rose and started to climb the bank. “As long as you have those, you might as well carry them back to camp for me.”
His hand caught hers just above the wrist. It was a wet hand. And cold.
Mirianna halted and rolled her eyes. I should have climbed faster. Now we have to go through this foolishness. Every one of her father’s customers had looked at her with the same expression Rees wore, as though she were a gem they coveted, a lovely prize to be added to their collection. She was heartily tired of that look.
“Is that all you’d like me to do for you?” He stepped closer on the slippery gravel. “I can think of a number of things we could do together...in the moonlight.”
“Rees,” she said, fixing him with a cool, steady gaze. “No.”
His brows puckered. “No?”
She pulled her wrist free. “No.” Catching up her skirt, she climbed the gravel bank.
She was nearly at the top when Rees caught her arm again. “Maybe I didn’t say that right. Let me try again.” Dropping the waterskins, he pulled her into an embrace. “You’re a pretty woman. I like what I see.” He leaned toward her and, closing his eyes, breathed deeply. “I like what I smell, too.” His hand traveled down her back, found one rounded buttock, and squeezed.
Bloodstone Page 4