by Travis Peck
A few moments passed, and the ravinor moved along the hallway, unaware of the feast in close proximity directly above it. Hossen waited for the footsteps to fade away, then he shuffled closer and gestured that Lerius could ask his questions now so long as he kept it quiet.
“What in the Taker’s name has happened?” Lerius did not manage to keep the anxiety from his voice.
“You’ve been asleep for three days,” Hossen whispered. “You were attacked from behind after you struck down Marelle. Mikel was obviously not dead, though the wound in his neck looked fatal. He wasn’t turned yet. Seeing his son lying at your feet must have unhinged the man, and so he attacked you.”
Lerius was shocked. I’ve been asleep for three days?
Hossen continued speaking, “He grabbed up his son and walked out of the room. He didn’t look twice at either of us. I don’t think he was in his right mind; understandably, after what he had been through. That’s when chaos broke loose on the streets. I haven’t been able to quite figure out what happened. I don’t know if there was another ravinor attack, or if there were others who had survived the initial attack but didn’t seek out help? Either way, there was a terrible clamor outside, and people started to scream and run back to their homes.”
Lerius fought against the panic rising inside him. If this account was true, and he had no reason to doubt it, then Deepbrooke was the center of a major ravinor infection. One that, this long after the initial outbreak, must have spread like wildfire throughout the entire village.
Hossen paused and took a sip from the ladle before he proceeded. “I ran downstairs and barred the door, then I headed back up to check on you. You were still out cold, but you were burning up. I don’t need to be a healer to know what that means. You had some scratches on your arm that were flaring up, and I knew I couldn’t leave you lying in one of the rooms. It would only be a matter of time before the ravinors broke into the inn, and then they would find you. So, I hauled you up here to the attic storeroom—there’s a trap door that opens up, and I pulled the ladder up after us.”
Lerius was surprised the lanky, old innkeeper had been able to get him up a ladder to the storeroom—and said as much—grateful to the man for rescuing him from ravinors.
Hossen bobbed his head in acknowledgement and cleared his throat, clearly a modest man—quite rare for an innkeeper. “Once I got you up here, I put you on the pallet there and kept watch,” he gestured toward the vent that Lerius had noticed was the only light source. “I’d say that Deepbrooke is no more… Everyone has either fled, been killed, or were bitten and turned… Or they’re holed up like the two of us. When you were in the fever’s grip, you were twitching and muttering in your sleep something fierce. I thought you were going to burn clean through, but luckily we had a day of steady rain.”
The healer knew that he would have died if it hadn’t rained so much. A man could not last more than a few days without water, especially while battling against the ravinor fever. Lerius could just make out the slow, life-saving drip of water from the roof.
Hossen noticed his gaze. “I drilled that when I first heard it raining. The bar on the door only lasted the first night. Since then, I think there have been a few ravinors who’ve taken to nesting down below. I knew I couldn’t get down to the main floor’s lower pantry for food and water, so I improvised. I had been meaning to bring some of the stores from up here back down to the kitchen, but I never got around to it—thank the Giver.”
“In any case, your fever broke a few candles before you woke up, and here we are.” Hossen finished the account with a small grin on his face. Every innkeeper enjoyed telling a tale, and Hossen was no different, especially when recounting a story in which the teller had saved the sole audience member’s life.
Lerius studied the shallow scratches that ran along his forearms. The healer had thought that the immature, newly turned ravinor boy wouldn’t be able to infect him without the more developed claws of an older ravinor. Clearly, he had been mistaken. He hadn’t been able to focus too closely on his wounds while in the midst of battle against a ravinor, after all. Once again, he was struck by how lucky he was to have survived when so few others had.
Lerius had heard that when a person recovered from the ravinor infection, they became immune to future infections. As rare as it was for someone to survive a ravinor infection, it was doubly so for that person to then survive a second attack in order to confirm the hearsay. He’d known of one person who had been scratched by a ravinor, then had fought through the fever and miraculously survived. A few years later, he was killed—mauled and eaten—by a ravinor flock; his theoretical immunity, unproven.
Through occasional conversations with other healers, he had heard of a few instances where a survivor’s immunity was successfully test. But it was always a healer who heard it from another healer, and so on, so Lerius was unable to verify any solid details. He had no plans of being attacked and wounded by a ravinor again if he could help it. Given the circumstance he found himself in, though, he feared he would have proof one way or the other soon enough.
“We only have food for another day here. If it doesn’t rain more tonight, we’ll have to try to get more supplies tomorrow,” Hossen said while he took inventory.
Standing up on weak and trembling legs, Lerius shuffled over to the vent. The horizontal slats gave a partially obscured view, and he wished it could provide more light. It was all he could do to walk across the room on his fever-weakened limbs.
It was nearly dusk outside. Several lingering gray clouds, which marred the otherwise clear night, sent down one last drizzle before dissipating. There was no sign that any useful amount of rain was coming their way soon enough to refill their dwindling water supply. The main street, in fact the only real stone street, ran through the heart of Deepbrooke from north to south. Deepbrooke was not a large village. On a normal night, there would be some people out on the streets at this time. Usually, there would be children outside who were finishing up their play before being called to dinner. The odd dog or cat would be lazing about, heating themselves on the sun-warmed stone.
This was far from a normal night. Taking a closer look, Lerius saw a cluster of figures in the alley between two shops, Wendel’s Supply and Mistress Jesser’s—a fabric shop. The sun, close to setting now, cast no rays upon this alley, and likely hadn’t since midday. A perfect place for a ravinor—or ravinors—to lie low while awaiting the departure of the sun.
Lerius counted half a dozen figures in the alley, but he could not see all the way to the end of it. There could well be more, and there was no shortage of places where other ravinors could find shelter throughout the town. Their one saving grace was that Deepbrooke’s population was small, no more than three hundred people. But if all three hundred were turned, that was little consolation. Lerius was hopeful that there might be others like them, who had been able to hunker down somewhere safe. But if they were out there, they would probably be in dire need of food and water. Not every safe place would have an inn’s pantry to draw from. Others would have had to venture out to scavenge for nourishment. He began running through a list in his mind of where people might have found sanctuary in Deepbrooke.
There were plenty of attics and cellars around town, but those same places were exactly where a ravinor would try to make its lair. Hidden from the sun during the day, ravinors, like any creature, would try to stay out of the rain if given half a chance. Ravinors were not terribly bright, no matter how smart their old human selves had been, but they had a great sense of smell, if not quite so well as a hound, and it was certainly adequate to track down a group of hidden townsfolk. A stout oaken door standing between a few ravinors and a meal would not last long.
Lerius was certain that the ravinors knew that he and the innkeeper were up in this attic, but they couldn’t figure out how to reach them. Yet. He and Hossen might have a difficult time getting out of their hideaway undetected. The healer remembered something from a publication by Mon Lyz
ink that mentioned how newly turned ravinors did not immediately form up into their flocks. In an area that was full of young ravinors, there would be a number of the creatures who were not yet part of a group. This could be advantageous for them.
Also, according to the same document, Mon Lyzink wrote of his belief that a ravinor that belonged to a flock was much more dangerous than a lone ravinor not yet accepted into a group. Flocked ravinors would inform the others of a potential meal. Whereas, a lone ravinor would charge straight in. This might sound like the more dangerous of the two, but one ravinor could be killed, or, at least, outwitted and outmaneuvered. A flock, on the other hand, would coordinate their movements, and if one found something, then it would report what it had found back to its flock. This would make evasion much more difficult.
In Deepbrooke, with so many new ravinors about, this flock-forming was still underway. So he hoped. The group in the alley disturbed him, though. They might well be the beginnings of a flock. If that group caught their scent, they would be hounded by those creatures until they were killed.
“Aye,” Hossen said, hovering over Lerius’s shoulder to get his own view. “I’ve been watching them.”
“Are they the same ones who have been inside the inn?” Lerius asked, concerned that they were already being stalked.
“Unfortunately, it is, and there were only three the first night that they came in. Now, I can’t tell how many more there are. Maybe a dozen hidden back in that alley,” Hossen speculated, reaffirming Lerius’s own fears.
Hossen slapped him on the back. “Are you hungry?”
Lerius smiled for the first time since waking in the attic. “Starving.”
Hossen nodded and went to prepare their meal. Lerius followed. He did not want to be reminded of what awaited them, down below or outside, until he had a good meal in his stomach. He couldn’t guess what they would be eating, but he was pleasantly surprised by the fare that he saw in the dim light.
There were two small loaves of dark bread and a whole wheel of sharp yellow cheese—a Deepbrooke specialty. Also, there were sausages for the two of them, and a few jars of what he thought looked to contain olives—one of his favorites. But, of course, there was a dilemma.
“We can eat all this now, and have a few bites left over in the morning before going out to find more. Or, we can spread this out over a day or two and hole up here while we wait for more rain.” Hossen made it clear, by the display of such an unexpectedly appetizing meal, which option he believed to be the best.
“Better to go tomorrow with a full stomach,” Lerius said. “I need a hearty meal to regain my strength or else I won’t be much good to you.” Lerius thought he was thinking logically, but the sight of all that food, and his growling stomach, may have influenced his decision.
They tucked in, and soon only a meager portion for breakfast was all that remained of the feast. Lerius sat back, leaning against a canvas-covered stack of unknown pieces of furniture. He popped another olive into his mouth and belched as loudly as he dared. Hossen grinned back. Nothing improved a man’s outlook like a full stomach.
After nearly a candle of doing nothing but leaning back and resting, content and full, Lerius realized he must have drifted off for a time. The attic storeroom was now almost pitch black. The full moon in the clear night sky shone through the slats of the vent. It gave just enough light to allow them to navigate their way to the chamber pot located on the far wall without crashing into any obstacles. And Lerius had to do just that. After he was done, he crept over to the vent, taking care not to make the floorboards shift under his weight. He did not want to wake Hossen, nor draw any attention from the ravinors that may still be lurking below.
The view was much the same as it had been earlier. The light from the moon illuminated the street, and he was certain that no one—no human, that is—was out there. Even the alleyway where the group of ravinors had been milling about was now clear. Lerius was at first relieved to find them gone, but then he began to think about what they might be up to instead, and he wished they were still where he could keep his eyes on them.
It was eerie seeing the town so devoid of life. This late at night, in normal circumstances, nobody would have been out anyway, but there was still a palpable sense of wrongness in the air. Lerius knew that Deepbrooke had, for all purposes, ceased to exist. He dearly hoped that some of the townsfolk had escaped the cruel fate of ending up in a ravinor’s stomach, or worse, becoming one of the creatures.
A candle or more passed with the healer staring out into the once-welcoming town. Lerius cursed at himself when he realized that he had allowed his mind to touch once more upon the fever dream. He relived the strange dream over and over again. He shuddered at the memory of the hulking wraith who had chased him down the endless corridor. And, even now, he had to focus to prevent a physical reaction from occurring by the remembrance of the queen’s beauty and seductiveness. The collective ravenous gaze from thousands of black-eyed ravinors would surely haunt him to the end of his days.
Although the image of the temptress queen was unforgettable, it was the recollection of the sweet and kind voice of the angel that was turning into an obsession. She had brought him back from the precipice of a doomed existence. He knew that he would hear it every night—the sound of his savior. He would compare that soft voice to the voice of every woman he would ever meet, and be disappointed when it did not belong to his angel. He knew that was foolish, despite his knowledge that his dream had not been just a dream.
Not just a dream? Certainly not. It did not have the feel of a normal dream, or even a nightmare. He had had his share of bad dreams when he was a young child that had caused him to wake up screaming and running for his parents’ bedroom. But even those dreams had not stuck with him as vividly as his fever dream. It felt like it was a memory he was recalling. A memory that he had lived through, even though that was an impossibility. The memory of ravinors surrounding him, biting and clawing, made him shudder. And now he was hiding in an attic with Hossen—Deepbrooke all but destroyed—and his own chance of survival dropping by the candle.
The healer could not shake the queen’s words. She had seemed so real; she spoke of others that had been there before him, and that more would appear there in the future. Could this be some sort of fever-induced hallucination that embodied the infected human’s struggle against becoming a ravinor? Lerius had witnessed many turnings during his time training to become a healer. Each time, the patient—whether they would recover or not—seemed to have terrible nightmares. And many of them would flail and mutter during their fever dream—much like Hossen had described Lerius doing while he was fighting off his own fever.
Lerius had to inform Mon Lyzink about this. The famed scholar had spent his entire life studying ravinors and anything to do with them. Of course, if he already knew, then Lerius would have wasted many days of travel to get the information to him. That was assuming he could get out of Deepbrooke, and assuming he could find the scholar who was frequently far afield observing his subjects.
The healer made his way back to his makeshift pallet and settled in to get what sleep he could before morning. He desperately needed rest, though he was feeling better now that he had some food in his stomach. Tomorrow would see him and his companion outside the safety of the attic and into whatever perils awaited them. He had a sneaking suspicion that even though he couldn’t see any ravinors on the street, they were still out there, scouring the area for any survivors. Sleep came hard, but when it arrived, it spilled him into dreams of ravinors. Thankfully, nothing as terrifying as the fever dream had been.
Chapter Nine
IFO’S EYES SNAPPED WIDE open, and he lurched upright in his bed, his longknife held at the ready. Faint light shone through the window as the early dawn sun rose over the horizon. His room was the same as he had left it. He had slept poorly, and the nightmares had not let him relax. Several times during the night, he had awakened, longknife poised to strike. He dreamt of ravinors c
ircling him, closing in, seeking his flesh to eat, or trying to infect him so that he would become one of them.
After the restless night, Ifo was impatient to get started toward Styr. He splashed some cold water onto his face from the porcelain basin on his nightstand, scrubbing the sleep away as best he could. He got dressed, putting the various straps and harnesses for his knives in the correct positions. He added throwing stars to his belt in a small leather case; this allowed for quick access, but still kept the projectiles secure and hidden. Next, he belted on his shortsword. The stiletto and the crossbow were the only weapons remaining in his travel bag.
Ifo was as heavily armed as possible for the road ahead with what gear he had available. Though it did not fit his fighting style, Ifo found himself wishing for a full suit of plate armor. Also, a long pike or halberd for a weapon along with a large shield to keep between himself and any ravinors. He shook his head. There was no guarantee they would even see a ravinor between Wesin and Styr, but somehow Ifo knew his time without encountering one of the creatures face to face was about to come to an end. He just needed to make sure it was not his end.
Breakfast was prepared and being served to patrons as he came down from his room. The common room was filling up as customers were trying to get an early start to their day. Scanning the crowd, Ifo saw Arin Trevan waving from a table in the corner.
“Good morning!” Trevan greeted him. The lumberman appeared to be in good spirits.
“Morning,” Ifo answered as friendly as he could after last night’s abysmal sleep.
“I took the liberty of ordering you some kof,” Arin said, “and we should be getting our meals straight away.”