by T. A. Miles
Suddenly he recalled the Vadryn. Fear crept up on him. Merran may have been wrong about Renmyr, but there was still another demon in Haddowyn. Unless he was wrong altogether and the only beast plaguing the city had died with Markam and Hedren, having killed Areld and Seryline Rolce as well. Perhaps the peculiar illness Edmore and Loel suffered from was nothing beyond unexplained.
Loel…. Gods, someone is going to have to tell Hedren’s family what happened. It will have to be me, after I’ve made certain Ren is safe. Please … be safe.
Korsten pressed on, through the chill, damp air, toward the large stone house that could be seen from the base of the hill, looming above the tree line. It had never seemed ominous to him before, and now it did. Always before, with Renmyr there, it could have been a palace in Heaven. Now it seemed to stand upon the threshold of Hell’s depths. If Merran had tried anything and failed, Renmyr would have come to Korsten, to see if he had been harmed by the lunatic mage, if for no other reason. Korsten was sure of that. Donnel hadn’t said anything about Renmyr having come and gone. And Korsten knew as well that if Renmyr had seen him as he was this morning and possibly the entire previous day—not asleep but unconscious due to stress and fear—he’d have stayed. He’d have stayed because he loved him. Demons didn’t love people. They used them. At any rate, Renmyr’s absence meant that Merran had either changed his opinion or been successful or…. Korsten was having difficulty coming up with alternative scenarios. He decided to stop trying and proceeded through the woods at a moderate pace. Teah was cooperative, as if she knew how important it was for him to get to his destination as quickly as possible. She carried him to the gates without hesitation or complaint, though she must have been tired after the long journey uphill. Korsten managed only to pat her neck in gratitude before a strangely simple fact demanded all of his attention.
The gates were open. No one was on watch.
“What have you done?” Korsten wondered aloud, looking about for any sign of the mage or any individuals who may have been his victims, cast into sleep by some spell or another. It didn’t take him long to find the guardsman, slumped at his post. “Bastard.”
Korsten dismounted, noticing that Teah chose now to get a bit antsy as he lead her through the open gates, toward the man rendered unable to watch them. He meant to tie her to the iron fencing and proceed across the grounds on foot, until he arrived near enough to the guardsman to see that he was not slumped against the wall asleep, but rather dead. His throat had been torn out, hidden previously by the way his head had fallen forward, so that his chin touched his chest. In his shock, Korsten slackened his hold on Teah’s reins and she left him. He watched her galloping back for the woods, loosely recalling the fact that she had not reacted to Areld’s corpse with such fear. She must have sensed something else, something worse.
Did that mean Merran was right, at least in that the second demon was here at the manor? Did that also mean that he had failed to destroy it? Could the mage truly be dead this time and if so, what about Renmyr?
The option of walking back to Haddowyn and enlisting aid didn’t occur to Korsten. Almost as if in a trance and almost without fear, he went ahead without Teah. There was no fear strong enough in this world that was going to drive him back without knowing what had happened to Renmyr, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel that fear hammering in his veins.
The front yards were empty, but that was nothing odd, especially so early on a cloudy morning. The abandonment of the stables was distressing, however. Korsten didn’t stop to investigate, but he saw no movement anywhere near them and unless the horses were unaware, they were dead. There were no sounds of protest from animals that should have been either agitated or afraid. It was deathly silent across the grounds.
The notion of equine as well as human corpses littering the stalls made Korsten queasy and made him wonder if an animal could be infected the same as people were after suffering the Vadryn’s bite. That made him wonder just how long it had been since the guard died and whether or not he would be awakening soon, crazed and hungry.
Korsten turned as he walked to be certain no one nor anything was following him, then jogged toward the main house, treading over grass and path alike, along with any flower beds that lay along the most direct route to the front door. He would be more than thrilled to suffer Lady Camirey’s squealing at him for tromping through her flowers, because she would have to be alive in order to do it. Gods, please, let her be alive. And her family as well … all of them.
At the wide front door, a pair of thick oaken barriers, Korsten paused a moment. He placed both hands upon the wood, drew in a breath and held it while silently praying, then gave a firm push. He met no resistance. The door slid not quite silently open and Korsten stood looking in at a familiar place suddenly made unfamiliar with its eerie stillness and lack of residents to greet him. Not a single servant or one family member entered the foyer or even walked past it in the large hall beyond it.
Korsten stood idle for a moment, as if remembering to be afraid. A shudder ran the length of his spine and left him feeling even colder. He wondered if he should call out to anyone and in the next moment decided not to. After pushing one hand slowly through his hair, made limp by the lingering mist outside, he took cautious steps into the house.
He cleared the foyer without any people to distract him, either living or dead, and stood in the open room beyond, looking over the grand, sweeping staircase directly ahead. He visually followed the ascent of the stairs toward the ceiling and the chandelier above him, where a multitude of tiny flames yet burned. They should have been snuffed in the night. The same servants who were mysteriously absent now should have performed the deed.
Korsten brought his gaze slowly back down, overlooking tasteful displays of painting and sculpture as his attention settled on the quiet emptiness to either side of him. To his right, around the distant corner, there would be a wide passage lined with Ithan’s collection of antique armor and weapons, interspersed with his wife’s taste in florid tapestries. To Korsten’s left, a trilogy of arched entryways introduced the ballroom.
The place we met, he thought, wishing dearly that Renmyr would come out of wherever he was hiding and let him know that everything was all right. Since his lover failed to make an appearance, Korsten walked toward the ballroom, hating the hollow sound of his lone footsteps upon the polished floor. Even if they had all been killed, why were there no bodies at the front of the house? Unless it had happened very late, after everyone, even the servants had retired. Everyone except the individuals responsible for putting out the lights. Unsuspecting souls who may not have gotten to the front hall before … events unfolded.
Korsten found his imagination too keen at a time like this. Finally he could bear the silence no longer. “Hello? Lord Camirey? Anyone?”
He peered in at the wide open expanse that was the ballroom. A wall of arching glass windows displayed a wondrous view of Lady Camirey’s rose garden outside. Along the walls there were benches with plush cushions. Three crystal chandeliers dangled overhead, offering no light at the moment. In the shadow created by the grayness outside, Korsten imagined light from seven years ago.
He hadn’t wanted to be here, but his uncle had insisted. After a year’s worth of impersonating a phantom, hiding in the library, scarcely emerging to take meal or bath or rest, the introverted seventeen-year-old was finally going to make his appearance before Lord Camirey. Korsten didn’t want to anger his uncle and he didn’t want to be deliberately unfriendly, but he quickly learned that he didn’t have anything to say to anyone. Being thrust back into society reminded him too suddenly and too much of home. He was desperate to get back to his library, but forced to endure. He did so on a bench beside one of the windows, where he could look over his shoulder at roses. They were in bloom, their petals lined with silver in the moonlight.
Silver … like Renmyr’s eyes.
Renmyr was fou
rteen at the time, already a very handsome young man, but Korsten was seventeen and miserable and therefore unable to see him as anything more than another spoiled child of dozens at the evening affair. Also, Renmyr was a year and a half away from attaining his full height and for that brief period of their lives doing nothing more than intersecting, the three years between them were obvious. Korsten was much taller and still thinner. He never used to eat that much at home in Cenily. Here, in Haddowyn, he’d all but taken to starving himself. At the time it wouldn’t have mattered to him if he had faded away to nothing. Even then, Renmyr cared. He simply had an odd way at showing it.
“What are you doing there like that? You look like you died and somebody propped you there.”
“Perhaps I did,” Korsten recalled saying, scarcely having glanced at the boy who would grow into the man he would love more than anyone or anything in this world.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” the very young Ren informed him. “And only a ghost would have answered me if you died.”
“Aren’t you clever?”
Renmyr continued, undaunted as ever. “My mother puts a lot of effort into these events and you’re going to upset her. That means that when you and the others go back to Haddowyn, I’m going to have to hear her moaning and weeping.”
“Tell her I’m admiring her flowers, if she asks. Now please, leave me alone.”
“Tell me your name first.”
Somewhat tersely, he said, “Korsten Brierly.”
“Oh, you. I wondered if you actually existed. I was beginning to think Master Fand imagined that he’d taken in a relative. Either that or you came to him deathly ill and he didn’t want to speak of it.”
“Thank you for your concern, now good night.”
“I never said I was concerned.”
Korsten remembered all too well the moment he finally took a genuine look at his antagonist and noticed just how handsome he happened to be for one so young. Raven black hair … a face neither too wide nor too slim with a slightly squared chin … sharp silver eyes, their unique color made all the more apparent with thick, dark lashes … and a straight nose with a vaguely aquiline aspect to it. He was truly magnificent and, to a seventeen-year-old Korsten who’d been recently disgraced, he was too young and the wrong sex. Of course, he’d already learned that women were the wrong sex as well, so with loneliness as his only option there was no reason to stray from it even for a moment, even for one so brilliant as … “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say what my name is.”
An intractable brat. “Well … whoever you are, if you’re not concerned then you should have no trouble leaving me alone.”
Renmyr shrugged back then and let Korsten be with neither of them having any idea what was to come in just a few short years.
Korsten emerged from memory with the foolish notion that if he sat upon that same bench again that maybe Renmyr would come to him as he had before. Reason stopped him from actually testing such a ridiculous theory, but it did not quell the resurgence of fear as he recalled that Renmyr might have been in this house somewhere, wounded or dead. He abandoned the ballroom and walked directly across the hall, down the passage adorned with armor, crossed swords, axes, and spontaneous tapestries of gardens visited by unicorns or other mythical beasts, and to Ithan’s study. He knocked first, out of habit, then recalled the circumstances and slowly opened the unlocked door.
“Lord Camirey? Ithan? It’s Korsten.” The wide room furnished with a desk and an abundance of comfortable chairs for guests of the political variety as well as close friends, appeared empty at first glance. A second glance stopped Korsten’s retreat and had him rushing to the form lying motionless on the floor just behind the desk. “Ithan!”
The man was dead. Korsten realized that as soon as he kneeled beside him and turned his bleeding body over. The lord of the manor was in worse condition than the guard outside, nearly unrecognizable. The unreality of that blatant fact rendered Korsten frozen and silent.
After several paralyzed moments, he forced himself to look away. “I’m so sorry,” he said, to Renmyr as well as to Ithan. Angry as they made him sometimes, Renmyr did love his family and Korsten had come to love them as well.
Deciding that he didn’t want to face Ithan’s possessed corpse, Korsten fished carefully through the dead elder’s pockets until he found keys. He locked the study on his way out. Silence and abandonment closed in on him again. Sadness joined them while he stood alone in the passage … alone in a house that should have been waking with the sounds of bakers in the kitchen, children, some of them Renmyr’s young cousins, others fosterlings, eager to play before the day’s chores or duties began. Where were they now? Why was this house so still … and empty? And what of the other buildings on the grounds? Were they as abandoned? The entire family, all of the servants, the soldiers not stationed throughout town, and even the animals could not have been killed or vanished. He refused to believe it could be possible for something like that to happen.
“Renmyr!” Korsten shouted just as tears were escaping. His voice tapered into sobs, muffled behind his hand. The unreality of the situation was overwhelming. “Ren … what’s happened here? Where are you?”
In the next moment, he forced himself to stop crying. This wasn’t helping Renmyr and it wouldn’t help him either if something decided to attack. He blinked back the excess moisture after wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, which he proceeded to rake through his falling curls.
How long? How long before these poor murdered souls awakened as murderers themselves? When that happened, inside the house was probably the very last place Korsten would want to be. In spite of the apparent abandonment in the front portion of the building, he knew well that the manor housed well over forty individuals and there was no telling how many guests any given family member might have been entertaining when whatever unholy event took place here unfolded. That wasn’t even to mention the nearby barracks and other structural attachments to the manor itself. He wondered if people had actually fled. Maybe the soldiers had evacuated family members, but surely someone would have reported to Hedren’s men or to Korsten himself.
Korsten continued back to the main hall, suddenly wishing he’d come across Merran alive. He had no talents in magic, barely an understanding of what the Vadryn were truly capable of, and he wasn’t even…. He stopped to pull down one of a pair of ancient blades hanging on the wall beside a brightly painted shield. The short weapon wasn’t as light as he preferred a sword to be, but it wasn’t as heavy as some of the others surely were, nor as awkward as an ax would have been. He tested the blade’s edge with his thumb and found it still sharp. Undoubtedly it wouldn’t sever a head or any limbs from a body, but perhaps it could inflict enough pain or damage to enable escape. It would have to do, regardless. Korsten moved on with one worry somewhat satisfied. The others grasped for attention at the back of his mind like cold, needy fingers.
Upstairs, he found the first large group of bodies. Six evident servants and two of Renmyr’s adult cousins lay strewn down the length of the second hall Korsten explored once conquering the grand staircase. He was in tears by the end of the passage, sobbing into his wrist, losing his grip on the sword he’d carried from downstairs. He’d known all of these people. True, some of them had only bobbed their head at him in passing, but they’d passed him many times in the corridors of the house, virtually his second home in Haddowyn. All of them were dead now, murdered gruesomely by a beast that should not have been real. The Vadryn belonged in books and children’s stories. Not here … not at home.
Korsten forced himself to go on. For an immeasurable period of time he wandered the passages of the manor, feeling as if he were wading through blood. This was mass murder. A slaughter committed by the unholiest of creatures. Now, for the first time, he understood the severity in Merran’s eyes. Even after seeing Areld dead and Hedren di
e, even having seen one of the beasts at work, it seemed a dark fantasy. A nightmare, from which he momentarily believed he had awakened. He would never awaken from these images. They would haunt him until the end of his days.
At the first space clear of the dead, he staggered up to the wall and vomited. Between his tears and his disgust, he was sicker than he’d ever been. He blew his nose and wiped his mouth on his handkerchief, dropped it, then literally pushed himself a total of four more steps before he fell against the wall a second time. He couldn’t stop crying. Though he was too tired to be distraught to this degree, the tears kept coming. His lungs ached from sobbing, as if his own chest had been torn open as well, just like the victims behind him … and ahead of him, he was sure … surrounding him….
His legs felt weak and heavy, as if his muscles had liquefied. He let go of the sword he’d been carrying and sagged to his knees.
They’re all dead. Oh, gods … why … why all of them? Why any of them? Why did you let the demons come here? Father of Heaven … why? And Renmyr … did you take him from me as well? Was it your plan that I should look upon his corpse? It wasn’t enough that I was born the way I am … with a woman’s heart in a man’s body? It wasn’t enough that my father disowned me, but only after shaming and berating me with his cold austerity and his insistence that I become what he wanted in a son. I suppose you found that funny. That and giving me Renmyr, who I could never have truly had anyway … only to take him, like this? And why like this? Why Renmyr … when you could have taken me?
Korsten brought his hand to his face, blocking out only some of the sight and smell of death. As with Hedren’s murder, he could still see the red behind his eyes, literally. As if he’d stolen a hasty glimpse of the sun, the intense color burned his vision, even in darkness. Gods … take me, else I will surely find my way to you. I can promise you that. You will torment me no more in this world.