by Anne Bishop
Nothing fell out or sprang at her. In fact, she had no idea what the little room was used for. She closed that door and tried the next one. Pantry. That was promising—especially when she saw a few canning jars on the shelves. She closed that door too, then tried the last one, on the other side of the kitchen.
The moment she touched the doorknob, she felt uneasy. “Rainier.”
He came over and settled into a fighting stance. She opened the door slowly, prepared to resist anything that tried to push it open fast.
Nothing.
As she pulled the door all the way open, Rainier took a cautious step forward. Then another.
“Looks like we found the way down to the cellar,” he said.
A vibration in the doorknob, in the door’s wood, as he took another step closer to the top of the stairs.
“If we were in a book,” he began.
“One of us would be dumb enough to take a candle and go down into the dark, scary cellar, where something would be waiting to gut the dumb one.” The doorknob rattled, pulling against her hand. “Rainier, get away from there!”
He spun and leaped clear just as the doorknob yanked out of her grasp and the door slammed shut.
“And the dumb person, having reached the bottom of the stairs when the door mysteriously slams shut…,” Rainier said.
“Is not only locked in with one of the Bad Things, he’s also in the dark because the whoosh of air blows out the candle.”
Rainier raised his eyebrows. “He?”
She smiled at him. “Of course the dumb one is a male.”
“Of course,” he replied sourly. But he smiled.
She took one of the chairs that were around the kitchen table and wedged it under the doorknob. When she looked at Rainier, he was no longer smiling. “There’s a spell on that door,” she said.
She saw his hesitation, his frustration. He wanted to Craft-lock that door and keep the nastiness that was hiding in the cellar locked in the cellar.
She glanced at the children. They’d come closer to the table—and the available light—but still hadn’t said anything.
Back to the pantry. Neither of them sensed any power or Craft around that door, but Rainier still braced himself against the door to hold it open, and she didn’t argue with him.
She slipped the stiletto under her belt, took two jars off the shelves, and returned to the table. Using her jacket sleeve, she wiped off the jars, then held one closer to the candles to get a good look at what was inside. “Peaches.”
How long had the jars been there? How long did canned fruit last? Not much dust on them. The witches who had created this place would have wanted food handy in case they got hungry. Most likely, these were leftover supplies.
Using the tip of her stiletto, she pried the lid open on one jar. The pop of the seal breaking was a good sign, so she picked up the jar and sniffed. Smelled like peaches, but…Was she getting a whiff of something else?
After wiping her stiletto on her trousers, she poked at the peach slices on top.
“Why are you poking those with that dirty old knife?” Ginger said.
“Mind your tone, girl,” Rainier growled. Then he added on a psychic thread, «Why are you poking around? The seal was good, wasn’t it?»
«It was good,» Surreal replied. «But do you really want to trust a good seal when there were three Black Widows in this house?»
“I’ll find a bowl,” Rainier said.
He did, and used his shirttail to wipe the dust out of it.
Wasn’t much food to share between them, Surreal thought as she dumped the contents of the jar into the bowl. But a little food and liquid would help postpone the time when they’d have to use Craft to get to the supplies they were carrying and—
“What’s that?” Sage asked, leaning closer to the bowl. “Are those grapes in there?”
“Mother Night,” Rainier said, turning away.
She felt her gorge rise, but she stared at the mouse heads mixed in with the peach slices.
“So,” she said too softly, “no water, no food. And nothing we can trust.” She set the jar down, then slipped her stiletto into the boot sheath and picked up one of the candles. “Time to see what’s upstairs.”
“What’s down there?” Ginger said, pointing to the cellar door. “You didn’t go down there.”
“And we’re not going to,” Rainier said. He picked up the oil lamp, then used the poker to point at the table. “One of you take the other candle.”
“There might be food down there,” Ginger said. She walked over to the door and pointed dramatically. “I’ll go down there if you’re too afraid.”
“You do that, sugar,” Surreal said. “But I’ll only tell you this once. From here on, we’ll do our best to protect you from whatever is in this house, but we won’t protect you from your own stupidity. You want to open that door after we’ve told you not to, you go right ahead. If something comes after you, you deal with it or die.”
“You have to—”
Something on the cellar stairs suddenly hit the door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Ginger ran back to the other girls.
“Guess that answers the question, doesn’t it?” Surreal said.
“Guess it does,” Rainier replied. “I’ll take point. You watch our backs.”
“Done.”
They didn’t get to see the first big surprise. No matter. There would be plenty of opportunities for them to meet that one. And now that they were climbing the stairs to the second floor, they were finally starting the interesting part of the adventure.
FOURTEEN
Using Craft, Daemon flung open the Hall’s front door, almost hitting the footman, who scrambled out of his way. Beale, wary but determined, stood in the center of the great hall. A prudent position, Daemon thought as he strode toward the man. He couldn’t avoid noticing the butler’s presence and yet the man wasn’t in his direct path.
“Lord Khardeen has been waiting to see you,” Beale said.
“Not now,” Daemon growled as he headed toward his study. He needed a few minutes to settle himself before he went to Halaway—and also take care of the other worry that had occurred to him on his way back to the Hall.
Hell’s fire! He hoped that message reached Lucivar in time. He could have contacted Yaslana on a psychic thread before leaving the landen village—he was strong enough to reach the Ebon-gray from any part of Dhemlan when his brother was at home—but they didn’t use that kind of communication for casual matters at that distance. Sensing that something was wrong, Lucivar would have ignored the words and responded in typical Eyrien fashion: he would have headed for the location from which the message had been sent—and he would have ended up at that damn house. Sending a written message had been a gamble, one Daemon hoped he wouldn’t regret.
Before he reached the study, Khardeen stepped out of the informal reception room.
“We need to talk,” Khary said.
“I don’t have time, Warlord,” Daemon said as he opened the study door. “Beale, I need to get a message to the Keep. Find the fastest messenger within easy reach.”
“Make time,” Khary said.
He choked on the instinctive desire to lash out at any Warlord insolent enough to use that tone of voice when addressing a Warlord Prince. But because this was Khardeen, Warlord of Maghre and husband to the Queen of Scelt, he held on to his temper with all the slippery self-control he could command at that moment.
Last year when Jaenelle was secretly building the webs of power that would cleanse Hekatah’s and Dorothea’s taint from the Blood, he had stood as a wall between her and her First Circle—and had broken the trust of every other male who served her. It had been Khary’s willingness to accept him again that had persuaded the other men in Jaenelle’s First Circle to give him another chance. The friendships were still tentative, but they wouldn’t exist at all if Khary hadn’t made that first gesture. So he looked back at the man who still had a powerful influen
ce with the rest of the dominant Warlords and Warlord Princes in Kaeleer.
“Give me five minutes, and I’ll deliver your message myself,” Khary said.
Khary wore the Sapphire Jewel. Except for Beale, who wore Red, there was no one at the Hall who could get a message to the Keep faster. And there was one advantage to sending this particular Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord instead of a Red-Jeweled butler—Beale would have to talk to the High Lord, but Khary could talk to “Uncle Saetan.”
“Five minutes,” Daemon said as he walked into the study.
He hurried to his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. By the time Khary walked into the study, he’d scribbled his message and was sealing the folded paper with wax.
“If this is about the spooky house…,” Daemon began as he pressed the SaDiablo seal into the wax.
“In a way, but mostly it’s about Jarvis Jenkell and the other spooky house. The one I don’t think is meant as an entertainment for children.”
Daemon froze for a moment. Then he wrote a name on the front side of the message before saying, “What do you know about the other spooky house? And why would a landen mystery writer be involved?”
“Maybe because the writer was raised as a landen but is actually Blood.”
Daemon straightened up and watched Khary pour two glasses of brandy from the decanter on the corner of the desk.
Khary handed a glass to him, then took a sip from the other and shrugged. “It happens. Not all the Blood live the way you do. Or the way I do, for that matter.”
“And how do I live, Lord Khardeen?” Daemon asked a little too quietly.
“This is a dark house. The people who live here use Craft for all kinds of mundane things without thinking about it—lighting fires; using candle-lights, which require power, instead of candles or oil lamps; warming spells to supplement heat from fireplaces in the winter; cooling spells to make things comfortable in the summer. Anything a landen needs fire or ice to accomplish we can do with a spell and power. This place was designed as a home for dark-Jeweled Blood, and the reason so many things here require Craft is because you all need safe ways to siphon off some of the power. The Jewels provide a reservoir, but even they only hold so much.”
Khary paused and took a long swallow of brandy. “But as deep as your power is, there are others on the opposite end of that scale. They’re Blood, but their well of power is very shallow and is used up quickly. They would be almost as helpless as a landen in a house like this that requires using Craft for even simple things. Those Blood often form their own community within a Blood village in order to harness their limited power to better advantage.”
Khary sat down, stretched out his legs, and crossed them at the ankles.
Since it looked like Khary was settling in until they discussed all he came to discuss, Daemon gave in and sat in the chair behind the desk.
“Fine,” Daemon said. “Not all the Blood have a seemingly inexhaustible well of power. Not all the Blood live in mansions the size of a small village. Not all the Blood are wealthy or come from aristo families. I am aware of all that, Khardeen. What does any of this have to do with Jenkell?”
“There’s a wide, deep chasm between a dark-Jeweled Blood and a landen,” Khary said.
“That psychic chasm is just as deep and wide between a half-Blood and Blood,” Daemon said.
Khary shook his head. “That’s what the Blood in Terreille may have been taught, but it’s not the reality. At least, not here in the Shadow Realm. In truth, when you’re looking at the difference between someone who is full Blood with very little power and a half-Blood, that psychic chasm is more like a rift that can be spanned, and it’s more like a crack between a half-Blood and a landen. There’s a difference between Blood and landen, to be sure, but that difference isn’t always as noticeable as you might think. So sometimes, for whatever reason, Blood will live in a landen village. They can pass for landen in ways that you or I never could. And since they do have just that little bit of something extra, they usually live quite comfortably.”
“They take control of a landen village?”
Khary made a dismissive sound. “They’re no doubt successful enough in their chosen work, but most prefer to live quietly and not call too much attention to themselves, since calling attention to themselves by trying to dominate a landen village would also bring them to the attention of the more powerful Blood living in the same part of the Territory. You’d have to check with the Dhemlan Queens, but in Scelt the Queens are aware of any Blood who have chosen to live in landen villages.”
“So they live in a landen village; they marry—and have children,” Daemon said, beginning to see where Khary was heading.
“They do. And if the full Blood was a generation or two back and the secret was kept a secret…”
Daemon considered that. Two half-Bloods marry—and neither has power, so neither is aware of the potential for power. No reason for them to think their children would be Blood. No reason to recognize a spark of power and train that child as even the weakest Blood child would be trained.
“How would Jenkell have found out he was Blood?” Daemon asked.
“Maybe it started as professional jealousy when Lady Fiona’s stories about Tracker and Shadow became popular. It was after her books began receiving as much notice as his that he began writing his books with a Blood character.” Khary’s eyes took on that distinctive twinkle that was usually a prelude for his causing a little mischief—or just enjoying someone else’s efforts. “Fiona tends to avoid Jenkell at literary gatherings. It seems he resents the fact that she was able to ‘acquire’ one of the kindred and he could not, despite his considerable success as a novelist.”
Daemon felt a flicker of dry amusement in response to that twinkle. “Hasn’t anyone told Jenkell that the acquisition isn’t done by the human?”
“Even if he knows, I’m not sure he cares,” Khary replied. “This is guesswork and most of it comes from Fiona, based on things she’s observed or overheard at gatherings where Jenkell has also been present. Fiona says he changed while he was writing his first Landry Langston story. That he seemed more demanding and yet less confident.”
“The first story was the one where the Langston character discovers he’s Blood.”
Khary nodded. “Wouldn’t be that hard to find someone who would tell Jenkell how to make the Offering to the Darkness—at least in general terms. Some might have been willing to tell him because they like his work and enjoyed the thought of providing research for a story. And there are always some who will do a great many things in exchange for a generous stack of gold marks.”
“So Jenkell made the Offering, thinking he was just going through the motions—and discovered he was Blood.” Daemon shook his head. “Damn fool was lucky to come out of it in one piece.”
“If he did come out of it in one piece.” Khary drank some brandy, his blue eyes fixed on Daemon. “He didn’t expect anything to happen. He wasn’t prepared for anything to happen. And he did grow up in Little Terreille, so he may not realize—or believe it even if he was told—that after he discovered what he was, the Blood would help him understand the power that flowed in his veins, even teach him some basic Craft so he could use that power safely.”
Daemon drained his glass, then set it aside. “This is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with the other spooky house?”
There was no twinkle in Khary’s eyes now. “We think Jarvis Jenkell is creating a place as vengeance against the Blood.”
A short flight of stairs to a landing. Turn and go up the other flight of stairs and reach the second floor. How in the name of Hell could it take so long, and why did the stairs seem to be going off at an angle? And where did the damn draft come from that blew out the candle, leaving her in the pitch-dark since she was not going to use Craft to relight it? And why couldn’t she see the lamps or the other candle?
And if he was at the top of the stairs waiting for her, why didn’t Rainier answer her
?
Daemon poured another brandy for himself, refilled Khary’s glass, then settled back in his chair. “Explain.”
Khary scrubbed his curly brown hair with the fingers of one hand, then cupped his glass with both hands. “This is guesses based on rumors and hints. Fiona kept insisting that she didn’t know anything.”
“But…?”
“Since Jenkell’s other books were read and well received by both Blood and landens, he was stunned by the Blood’s reaction to the Landry Langston stories.”
“Because we found his portrayal of the Blood so excruciatingly bad it was amusing?” Daemon paused and considered. “If he’d just found out he was Blood while he was writing the first story…”
“Then the story was a barely disguised announcement to the entire Realm that he was Blood—and no one realized it. Especially the Blood.” Khary drank some brandy. “So a few months ago, Jenkell began hinting about the story for his next Landry Langston book.”
“His character gets trapped in a spooky house?” Daemon guessed.
“I believe he called it a haunted house, but the same idea. Except that his character would be fighting for his life against traps and dangers instead of being entertained by a few illusion spells. Anyway, a few days after that, the story started spreading that Jaenelle was creating a spooky house—and before someone warned Jenkell to hold his tongue, he was spewing that Jaenelle had stolen his idea. Fiona was at that writers’ gathering, so she approached Jenkell to assure him that his idea of a haunted house would be vastly different from anything Jaenelle would consider, since he was writing a mystery story and Jaenelle was creating an entertainment for children. But he seemed offended that a ‘White-Jeweled bitch’ would dare talk to him. Then he said something about how unjust it was that a mediocre writer like her could be acquainted with the Queen of Ebon Askavi and he wasn’t even given the courtesy of an audience with the Lady. He left the party right after that and hasn’t been seen since.”
Daemon opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed the book he’d stashed there. A copy of the second Landry Langston novel, sent to him by Jenkell. The inscription read, “From one Brother of the Blood to another.”