Mark of the Black Arrow

by Debbie Viguié

  It was a simple request, spoken clearly.

  He was commissioned by the church to care for the dead in the moment of their passing. It was his duty, sacred and undeniable.

  Without a word he stood and left the young man with his Tessa.

  * * *

  “If I had known it would feel like this, then I would have suggested sacrificing everyone.”

  “Don’t act giddy.”

  “Is it unbecoming?”

  “No, little prince, it is annoying.”

  “I feel drunk.”

  The Sheriff lifted a jeweled knife from the table, one used to break wax seals on missives and epistles. He turned it in long slender fingers, spinning it in a sunbeam from the window. The faceted crystals refracted the light, shooting it around the study in a dozen colors.

  Prince John leaned forward. “Pretty.”

  The Sheriff flipped the knife into his fist and drove it into John’s arm.

  The finger-length blade punched through skin and muscle to strike bone. John stared at the knife protruding from his arm.

  He sniggered.

  Then giggled.

  Then both of them laughed.

  * * *

  Cardinal Francis swayed on his feet. The world around him moved in jumps and starts seen through a haze of exhaustion.

  He’d spent the last several days first at the infirmary and then moving through the courtyard and various hallways that had been used when the sick began coming in droves. He did what he could to help with the physical burden of caring for the sick and dying, and spent much of his time making hard decisions about distributing provisions.

  Francis did not want to attend this secret meeting. It was the least of his concerns in the face of such suffering. Yet Will and Marian had been insistent, and so he now made his way to the cell they’d been using for months.

  Looking left and right, up and down the hall, he entered the room. Everyone was there before him, already seated.

  No one stood as they normally did, and exhaustion was stamped on every face. Friar Tuck pulled the chair out beside him, gesturing for the cardinal to sit. The rotund monk had been in the thick of caring for the sick, and it showed in looser-fitting robes and the dark circles under his eyes.

  Marian had spent her days here, as well, doing much the same as the rest, providing comfort as best she could and assistance to the brotherhood. The exertion had made her paler, her skin nearly ivory white and stark against the dark of her tresses. Darkness smudged under her eyes and gave her beauty a haunted quality.

  Alan’s body curled, weary of being straight as he’d spent every moment combing through the nearby parts of Sherwood, using his vast druidic knowledge to locate any medicinal plants to be had, attempting to replicate a healing elixir mentioned in the legends of the land.

  Robin had grown darker still, pulled into himself. Any time not spent holding Longstride Manor together was devoted to hunting like a fiend, trying to help provide nourishment to be given to the sick. He’d driven himself to the brink of his prowess, but had no ability to stop. He scowled, arms crossed, looking eager to be gone again.

  Only Will Scarlet showed no sign of stress or strain—if anything, the troubled time had burnished him like a coin in a pocket. He leaned forward.

  “This is the prince’s fault.”

  No one spoke.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “We heard you,” Friar Tuck said.

  “And?”

  “And there’s nothing we can do about him right now.” The monk pushed away from the table. “We all have tasks to perform.”

  “Wait!” Scarlet said. “Hear me out. He is behind this plague, he and the Sheriff. Perhaps if the prince was… gone… the plague would be lifted.”

  Friar Tuck rounded, slamming his hands on the table and leaning over it.

  “This is a plague, Will Scarlet. No matter how it started, I don’t think it can be stopped by… what? By killing a man? Even if he is the one responsible.”

  The cardinal laid his hand on Tuck’s arm.

  “Listen to him,” Marian pointed at them. “He’s not being foolish. We know from the prophecies that Cardinal Francis has shared with us that an evil splinter will poison the land. Perhaps it is time that splinter was plucked out. Perhaps, as with any splinter, once it is removed then the flesh can heal.”

  Friar Tuck sat back down, and Scarlet continued.

  “I have overheard even more conversations between the prince and the Sheriff,” he said, his words carefully measured. “This pox isn’t their ultimate purpose. It is evil magic they have made to destroy the spirit of the people. They have something even more terrible planned. I am sure of it.”

  Francis blinked the exhaustion from his mind. “Did you hear anything about how to stop this sickness?” he asked. “Anything about its nature that may help us?”

  “No.”

  “Then we are doing all that we can.” He stood. “We must continue our efforts.”

  “But if they are responsible, then surely this can be stopped?”

  “That may be true,” the cardinal replied, “so it becomes your task to find out how. You remain in their confidence. Until then, we can only carry on ministering to those who have been stricken. We dare not make a move against the prince. Not now. We have too much else to worry about. And I can’t condone murder, no matter what type of monster he is.”

  “But…”

  “Will Scarlet!” Francis roared. The younger man’s eyes widened. “People just outside that door are suffering. Either they are dying, or losing someone they love dearly. Do not call us back here until you have found a way to stop this.”

  “I did not mean…”

  Robin stood, cutting his cousin off.

  “You’ve spoken your peace, now go back to the castle,” he said. “We have work to do.”

  He walked from the room without a second glance.

  * * *

  “It does not work. We might as well be pouring water down their throats.” Friar Tuck pulled his fingers from the neck of a man growing cold in death.

  “No help with the fever?” Alan asked.

  “Just enough to ease the delirium, so they are fully aware when death comes.” He stood and thrust the jar at the bard. “Your potion is a failure.”

  Alan took the jar, its contents sloshing. “I sought help from the local medicine women and hedgewitches…”

  “Find better help,” the monk growled, shoving his finger towards the container. “That is no good.”

  “There was no help. They are gone,” Alan said. “All of them. This was my own meager attempt at medicine.”

  Friar Tuck looked at his friend, feeling a hard twinge for insulting his effort. It was swallowed up the moment he looked around the room at the dead and dying. He sighed.

  “Has there been progress locating the elixir?” he asked. As he did, Alan’s jaw tightened.

  “If there was, would I have brought you this pitiful attempt?” he replied sullenly.

  “No, I don’t suppose so.” Tuck knew what this might mean, and the thought chilled him to his soul.

  * * *

  The shadows twisted around him. With every step they seemed to slither out from under his foot just before it touched the ground. He was used to the shadows back in Sherwood, which almost seemed alive thanks to the movement of the sun and the wind that rustled through the trees. This was different. These shadows had substance, a kind of weight to them.

  No one else moved in the castle. It was quiet and empty, unlike anything he’d ever seen in it before. The whole place felt bewitched, a weird energy in the night air. He would hear whispers and every time he turned, sure that someone was behind him, he found an empty hallway. Yet the whispers continued sliding over each other, even as the shadows did, just soft enough that most moments he doubted he was hearing them at all.

  Perhaps it was simply his own blood, rushing through his hearing in the dead quiet.

  He rememb
ered a childhood game he had played with Marian in these very halls. Hide-and-seek, it had been. In his memory, the palace seemed alive then, full of light and merriment. Even his father was less stern when he was there, and his mother had glowed like a radiant angel as she laughed and talked with others. Those days seemed like the echo of a distant memory, though, and it was hard to reconcile them with the present.

  Ah, Marian.

  His chest tightened at the thought of her. Had she known what he was doing, she would have tried to stop him. She would remind him that he would be killed. If not in the immediate fray, then he would surely hang later.

  If he looked into her eyes, he would turn from this path.

  That was why he couldn’t tell her. That was why he couldn’t tell anyone. What he was doing was right. It might save them all. All except him, of course. His father wouldn’t be surprised. He’d comment that Robin’s temper had been destined to bring him to a bad end.

  Let the old man be right about this. He could go to the grave with that and so much more on his conscience, as long as he was able to free England from the tyranny of the usurper. Saving the people—particularly his well-meaning friends—was all that mattered.

  The truth was, Will had been right. The prince had brought this upon the people and the prince needed to be stopped. One way or another. He just prayed that Marian had been right, that removing John would be like removing a poisoned splinter, and that the land, the people, could begin to heal. At the very least he hoped no more devilment could be rained down upon them as his friends searched for a cure.

  A door opened and Robin flattened himself against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe. A servant exited the room, scurrying down the hall in the other direction carrying an empty food tray. Robin paused, waiting until the girl was out of sight. He was pretty sure he recognized her. Chastity. She’d been with them, hiding and seeking so long ago.

  She must’ve come from Marian’s room.

  It wasn’t good, the fact that Marian was taking her meals so late and in isolation. He’d have to speak to her about that. It made it possible for someone to harm her, and for her absence to go unnoticed until it was too late.

  He shook his head. After tonight he wouldn’t be around to warn her. Then again, after tonight she would have no reason to fear. So he continued on, sliding silently past her chambers. He almost entered, the doorway pulling at him, drawing him like a moth to a candle flame.

  All he wanted before he died was to see her face once more.

  He gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep going. The sooner this was over, the better off she and the others would be. He came to a set of stairs leading down into the king’s bedchamber.

  Just thinking about the prince, tainting all that belonged to King Richard, made his blood boil. The cowardly wretch hid behind Locksley and his tax collectors and the Sheriff and his soldiers. The people suffered because of them all. Strike off the head and the body would cease to function. There might be short-term chaos, but he trusted the remaining lords to handle it until Richard’s return.

  Just outside the heavy door he paused. He drew his dagger from his belt. The prince did not deserve a swift death, but he would receive one nonetheless. He paused and pulled the hood up, concealing his face, though he knew it was a useless gesture. He reached out a hand and tried the door.

  It swung inward easily and silently on greased hinges. Robin stepped inside, closing it quietly behind him.

  The room was much darker even than the hallway had been, and it took a long moment for his eyes to adjust. The whispering took on an urgency. Maybe whatever was making the sound was unhappy that he was there.

  He took three steps forward and the whispering changed into a low moaning that caused the hair to rise on the back of his neck. There was something unnatural at work here. He didn’t have time to think about it, however, so he pushed it from his mind. His eyes were drinking in the dark and translating it for him to see.

  His prey lay in the bed on the far side of the room.

  Asleep.

  Robin strode quickly forward, his footfalls light on the stone floors and undetectable to human ears. Years of hunting in Sherwood had taught him to be as silent as one of its wild predators. He was halfway to the bed when something grabbed at the back of his shirt. He spun, knife raised, prepared to slash at whoever was there.

  There was nothing.

  He turned back, setting his jaw. He closed the rest of the gap between him and the king’s bed. Prince John lay on his back, eyes closed and lightly snoring. Robin raised the knife high and brought it down with all his might, aiming for the black heart beneath him.

  An inch from the body the knife slammed into something. The jolt vibrated up Robin’s arm, enraging muscle and nerve from wrist to shoulder. Pain slammed into him and he lost his hold on the knife. It toppled over and hovered just above the prince as if on a cushion of air, then slid away like rain off a leaf.

  It clattered on the floor.

  Invisible hands grabbed Robin and threw him backward, pinning him to the wall next to the door. The voices that at first had whispered and moaned now screeched, screaming into his ear. The sound slipped under his eardrum and into his head, vibrating in his skull. He writhed in anguish as white-hot knife cuts slashed behind his eyeballs.

  A sinister laugh cut through the noise.

  The prince rose off the bed and gained his feet without ever having sat up. He glided toward Robin, feet not touching the ground. The laughter grew louder, more maniacal as he drew near.

  “Think to murder me, would you, outlaw?” the prince said. “You’re not in the forest now, protected by your spirits. You are in my world, and I can assure you that the spirits here are under my command.”

  Something struck Robin in the stomach, then the chest, feeling like tiny fists. They drove into him, punching deep, driving to bone where they stayed. The pressure was intense. He thought his bones would snap at any moment.

  Then it changed.

  The pressure opened up.

  Then the biting began. He couldn’t see anything but he felt teeth, tiny, razored teeth, chewing into his skin. Panic crawled into him—something he’d never felt before. It was alien, foreign, and inescapable, digging hooked claws into his psyche. Prince John spat out a word, guttural and inhuman, and something sharp as a knife slashed him across his left thigh.

  He struggled not to cry out.

  “What have you sold yourself to?” he asked, grinding his teeth together to keep a scream from following the words out of his mouth.

  More laughter came pouring out of John, along with more shadows that filled the room all around him.

  “I am the master here,” the prince said.

  Robin pushed the panic away, driving it from his mind. It still sat in his skull, waiting to pounce and destroy him, but he had to think. His bow and quiver were still strapped to his back. He had them in case he’d needed to fight his way in, or had been lucky enough to try and fight his way out. He twisted an arm behind him, struggling to reach an arrow. He couldn’t even lift the arm over his head.

  His fingers scratched at the leather, pulling at the knot in the quiver’s stitching.

  Slowly the prince slid closer and Robin twisted, pulling, clawing, his fingers beginning to bleed. The knot began to give, little by little. At last he could wriggle a finger in there, his fingers pricking against the sharp edge of an arrowhead. He dug deeper, trying to widen the hole he had made.

  “You have been quite a bother, outlaw, but now you have come to me. Your arrogance, your presumption, shall be your own undoing.”

  Keep talking…

  Robin closed his eyes, breathing a silent prayer as he pulled on the arrow with all his might. He was still being hit and scratched. Something bit him just over the fourth rib on his right side and he couldn’t contain the cry of agony as he felt the flesh being torn from him.

  “You are nothing,” John hissed, standing in front of him now. “And now you wi
ll return to the nothing from which you came.”

  The arrow slid free, dropping through his fingers. He caught it just below the fletching and opened his eyes.

  “After you.” He thrust with the arrow. It struck, catching the prince in the throat. The man hissed in pain and fell back. The forces pinning Robin to the wall disappeared, and he dropped to the ground. Pushing through the pain, he scrambled to his feet. The prince pulled the arrow out of his throat and dropped it to the ground.

  There was no blood.

  Robin grabbed hold of the door, opened it, and flung himself into the hall. The weapons he had were no match for the prince. He had to warn the cardinal and the others. They needed to know what he had seen. He would have given his life to end the man’s tyranny, but now he had to live to help them find a way to stop the monster he had just faced.

  Moving rapidly, he was up the stairs and into the main hall when he heard the door open behind him.

  “Guards!” The voice was piercingly sharp.

  Robin wondered why. It would be easier for the monster to chase him down and finish him. Perhaps the prince didn’t want to risk having anyone else see him as he truly was.

  He ran down the corridor, his mind racing, trying to plan an escape route. Every step brought pain that threatened to drop him at any moment.

  He needed help.

  He didn’t know where in the blasted castle his cousin might be. He couldn’t call out. So he searched for a doorway as he stumbled, looking for anyplace he could hide. Noise began to fill the halls behind him, the guard roused by the prince’s calls.

  He wasn’t going to make it. He would never find his way out. And he was getting weaker with every step.

  He would be captured and killed, and no one would know.

  Marian. He could at least warn Marian. That way someone would know, and be able to warn the cardinal. Without conscious thought he turned toward her room, stumbling his way down the hallway.

  * * *

  His hand was on the door when she opened it. He fell inside, crashing to his knees and clenching his teeth in pain. He pulled himself into the room and she slammed and bolted the door.

  “Robin!” she gasped, dropping down next to him. Her eyes swept over him, taking in his injuries. He was bleeding on her floor, and he wanted to say something, tell her he was sorry. The world swam before his eyes, until all he could see was her face. “Who did this to you?”