“What’s going on?” Arista heard Thrace’s voice and walked toward it.
“What’s wrong, Thrace?” The princess found the farmer’s daughter and the deacon in the main hallway. The girl was dressed in her thin chemise nightgown. They both looked concerned.
“Your Highness!” the girl called to her. “Do you know what is happening? Why was the bell ringing?”
“The contest is starting soon, if that’s what you mean. I was on my way to watch. Are you feeling better? Would you like to come?” Arista found herself asking. She was aware of the irony, but being with Thrace was not the same as being escorted by Bernice and Hilfred.
“No, you don’t understand. Something must be wrong. It’s dark. No one would ring the bell at night.”
“I didn’t hear a bell,” Arista said, pulling the cloak over her shoulders.
“The village bell,” Thrace replied. “I heard it. It has stopped now.”
“It’s probably just part of the combat announcement.”
“No.” Thrace shook her head, and the deacon mimicked her. “That bell is only rung in emergencies, dire emergencies. Something is terribly wrong.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing. You forget. There is practically an army outside just itching for their chance to fight. Anyway, we certainly can’t find out standing here.” Arista took Thrace’s hand and led them out to the courtyard.
Because it was the second night, the event had moved into full extravagance. Outside, the high grassy yard of the manor’s hill was set up like a pavilion at a tournament joust. The raised mound of the manor’s motte offered a perfect view of the field below. Colorful awnings hung stretched above rows of chairs with small tables holding steins of mead, ale, and bowls of berries and cheese. The archbishop and Bishop Saldur sat together near the center, while several other clergy and servants stood watching the distant action unfolding on the hillside beyond the castle walls.
“Oh, Arista, my dear,” Saldur called to her, “come to see history being made, have you? Good. Have a seat. That’s Lord Rufus out there on the field. It seems he tires of waiting for his crown, but the vile beast is late in showing this evening and I think it is making His Lordship a tad irritated. Do you see how he paces his stallion? So like an emperor to be impatient.”
“Who is to come after Rufus?” Arista asked, remaining on her feet, looking down at the field below.
“After?” Saldur looked puzzled. “Oh, I’m not sure, actually. Well, I hardly think it matters. Rufus will likely win tonight.”
“Why is that?” Arista asked. “It isn’t a matter of skill really, is it? It is a matter of bloodline. Is Lord Rufus suspected of bearing some known ties to the imperial family?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact he has claimed such for years now.”
“Really?” Arista questioned. “I have never heard of him ever making such a boast.”
“Well, the church doesn’t like to promote unproven theories or random claims, but Rufus is indeed a favorite here. Tonight will prove his words, of course.”
“Excuse me, Your Grace?” Tomas said with a bow. He and Thrace stood directly behind Arista, both still appearing as nervous as mice. “Do you happen to know why the village bell was rung?”
“Hmm? What’s that? The bell? Oh that, I have no idea. Perhaps some quaint method the villagers use to call people to dinner.”
“But, Your Grace—” Tomas was cut off.
“There,” Saldur shouted, pointing into the sky as the Gilarabrywn appeared and swooped into the torchlight.
“Oh, here we go!” the archbishop shouted excitedly, clapping his hands. “Everyone pay attention to what you see here tonight, for surely many people will ask how it came to be.”
The beast descended to the field and Lord Rufus trotted forward on his horse, which he had had the foresight to blind with a cloth bag to prevent it from witnessing the pending horror. With his sword held aloft, he shouted and spurred his mount forward.
“In the name of Novron, I—the true heir—smite thee.” Rufus rose in the stirrups and thrust at the beast, which seemed startled by the bold confidence of the knight.
Lord Rufus struck the chest of the creature, but the blow glanced away uselessly. He struck again and again, but it was like striking stone with a stick. Lord Rufus looked shocked and confused. Then the Gilarabrywn slew Rufus and his horse with one casual swipe of a claw.
“Oh dear lord!” the archbishop cried, rising to his feet in shock. A moment later the shock turned to horror as the beast cast out its wings and, rising, bathed the hillside in a torrent of fire. Those in the yard staggered backward, spilling drinks and knocking over chairs. One of the pavilion legs toppled and the awning fell askew as people began to rush about.
With the hillside alight, the beast turned toward the castle and, rising higher, let forth another blast that exploded the wooden stockade walls into sheets of flame. The fire spread from dry log to dry log until the flames swept fully around, ringing the castle. It did not take long for those buildings close to the walls, those roofed with thatch, to catch, and soon the bulk of the lower castle and even the walls surrounding the manor house were burning. With the light of fire surrounding them, it was impossible to see where the Gilarabrywn had gone. Blind as to the whereabouts of the flying nightmare, and feeling the intensity of the heat growing all around them, the servants, guards, and clerics alike scattered in terror.
“We need to get to the cellar!” Tomas shouted, but amidst the screams and the roar of the flames devouring the wood, few heard him. Tomas took hold of Thrace and began to pull her back toward the manor. With her free hand Thrace grabbed Arista’s arm, and Tomas pulled both back up the slope.
In shock, Arista put up no resistance as they dragged her from the yard. She had never experienced anything like this. She saw a man on fire running down the slope screaming, thrashing about as flames spiraled up his body. A moment later, he collapsed, still burning. There were others, living pyres racing blindly about the yard in ghastly brilliance, one by one collapsing on the grass. By instinct, Arista looked for the protection of Hilfred, but somewhere in her soup-like mind, she remembered she had ordered him to remain on guard in her room. He would be looking for her now.
Thrace held her arm in a vise grip as the three moved in a human chain. To her left she saw a soldier attempt to breach the wall. He caught on fire and joined the throng of living torches, screaming as his clothes and skin burned away. Somewhere not far off where the fire had spread to the forest, a tree trunk exploded with a tremendous crack. It rattled the building.
“We have to get down in the cellar,” Tomas insisted. “Quickly! Our only hope is to get underground. We need—”
Arista felt her hair blowing in a sudden wind.
Thrump. Thrump.
Deacon Tomas began praying aloud as out of the smoke-clouded night sky, the Gilarabrywn descended upon them.
CHAPTER 12
SMOKE AND ASH
Crawling out of the well into the gray morning light, Hadrian entered an alien world. Dahlgren was gone. Only patches of ash and some smoldering timber marked the missing homes, but even more startling was the absence of trees. The forest that had hugged the village was gone. In its place was a desolate plain, scorched black. Limbless, leafless poles stood at random, tall dark spikes pointing at the sky. Fed by smoldering piles, smoke hung in the air like a dull gray fog, hiding the sky behind a hazy cloud from which ash fell silently like dirty snow, blanketing the land.
Pearl came out of the well. Not surprisingly, she said nothing as she wandered about the scorched world, stooping to turn over a charred bit of wood, then staring up at the sky as if surprised to find it still there now that the world had been cast upside down.
“How did this happen?” Russell Bothwick asked no one in particular, and no one answered.
“Thrace!” Theron yelled as he emerged from the well, his eyes focusing on the smoking ruins atop the hill. Soon everyone was running up the slope.
Like the village, the castle was a burned-out hull; the walls were gone, as were the smaller buildings. The great manor house was a charred pile. Bodies lay scattered, blackened by fire, torn and twisted. The corpses still smoked.
“Thrace!” Theron cried in desperation as he dug furiously into the pile of rubble that had been the manor house. All of the village men, along with Royce, Hadrian, and even Magnus, dug in the debris, more out of sympathy than hope.
Magnus directed them to the southeast corner, muttering something about the earth speaking with a hollow voice. They cleared away walls and a fallen staircase and heard a faint sound below. They dug down, revealing the remains of the old kitchen and the cellar beneath.
As if from the grave itself, they pulled forth Deacon Tomas, who looked battered but otherwise unharmed. Just as the villagers had, Tomas wiped his eyes, squinting in the morning light at the devastation around him.
“Deacon!” Theron shook the cleric. “Where is Thrace?”
Tomas looked at the farmer and tears welled in his eyes. “I couldn’t save her, Theron,” he said in a choked voice. “I tried, I tried so hard. You have to believe me, you must.”
“What happened, you old fool?”
“I tried. I tried. I was leading them to this cellar, but it caught us. I prayed. I prayed so hard, and I swear it listened! Then I heard it laugh. It actually laughed.” Tomas’s eyes filled with tears. “It ignored me and took them.”
“Took them?” Theron asked frantically. “What do you mean?”
“It spoke to me,” Tomas said. “It spoke with a voice like death, like pain. My legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore and I fell before it.”
“What did it say?” Royce asked.
The deacon paused to wipe his face, leaving dark streaks of soot on his cheeks. “It didn’t make sense, perhaps in my fear I lost my mind.”
“What do you think it said?” Royce pressed.
“It spoke in the ancient speech of the church. I thought it said something about a weapon, a sword, something about trading it for the women. Said it would return tomorrow night for it. Then it flew away with Thrace and the princess. It doesn’t make any sense at all, I’m probably mad now.”
“The princess?” Hadrian asked.
“Yes, the princess Arista of Melengar. She was with us. I was trying to save them both—I was trying to—but—and now …” Tomas broke down crying again.
Royce exchanged looks with Hadrian and the two quickly moved away from the others to talk. Theron promptly followed.
“You two know something,” he said accusingly. “You got in, didn’t you? You took it. Royce got the sword after all. That’s what it wants.”
Royce nodded.
“You have to give it back,” the farmer said.
“I don’t think giving it back will save your daughter,” Royce told him. “This thing, this Gilarabrywn, is a lot more cunning than we knew. It will—”
“Thrace hired you to bring me that sword,” Theron growled. “That was your job. Remember? You were supposed to steal it and give it to me, so hand it over.”
“Theron, listen—”
“Give it to me now!” the old farmer shouted as he towered menacingly over the thief.
Royce sighed and drew out the broken blade.
Theron took it with a puzzled look, turning the metal over in his hands. “Where’s the rest?”
“This is all I could find.”
“Then it will have to do,” the old man said firmly.
“Theron, I don’t think you can trust this creature. I think even if you hand this over, it will still kill your daughter, the princess, and you.”
“It’s a risk I am willing to take!” he shouted at them. “You two don’t have to be here. You got the sword—you did your job. You’re done. You can leave anytime you want. Go on, get out!”
“Theron,” Hadrian began, “we are not your enemy. Do you think either of us wants Thrace to die?”
Theron started to speak, then closed his mouth, swallowed, and took a breath. “No,” he sighed, “you’re right. I know that. It’s just …” He looked into Hadrian’s eyes with an expression of horrible pain. “She’s all I’ve got left, and I won’t stand for anything that can get her killed. I’ll trade myself to the bloody monster if it will let her live.”
“I know that, Theron,” Hadrian said.
“I just don’t think it will honor the trade,” Royce said.
“We found another over here!” Dillon McDern shouted as he hauled the foppish scholar Tobis Rentinual out of the remains of the smokehouse. The skinny courtier, covered from head to foot in dirt, collapsed on the grass, coughing and sputtering.
“The soil was soft in the cellar …” Tobis managed, then sputtered and coughed. “We—dug into it with our—with our hands.”
“How many?” Dillon asked.
“Five,” Tobis replied, “a woodsman, a castle guard, I think, Sir Erlic, and two others. The guard—” Tobis entered into a coughing fit for a minute, then sat up, doubled over, and spat on the grass.
“Arvid, fetch water from the well!” Dillon ordered his son.
“The guard was badly burned,” Tobis continued. “Two young men dragged him to the smokehouse, saying it had a cellar. Everything around us was on fire except the smokehouse, so the woodsman, Sir Erlic, and I all ran there too. The dirt floor was loose, so we started burrowing. Then something hit the shed and the whole thing came down on us. A beam caught my leg. I think it’s broken.”
The villagers excavated the collapsed shed. They pulled off a wall and dug into the wreckage, peeling back the fragments. They reached the bottom, where they found the others buried alive.
They dragged them out into the light. Sir Erlic and the woodsman looked near dead as they coughed and spat. The burned guard was worse. He was unconscious, but still alive. The last two pulled from the smokehouse ruins were Mauvin and Fanen Pickering, who, like Tobis, were unable to speak for a time but, other than numerous cuts and bruises, were all right.
“Is Hilfred alive?” Fanen asked after having a chance to breathe fresh air and drink a cup of water.
“Who’s Hilfred?” Lena Bothwick asked, holding the cup of water Verna had brought. Fanen pointed to the burned guard across from him and Lena nodded. “He’s not awake, but he’s alive.”
Search parties spread out and combed the rest of the area, finding many more bodies, mostly those of would-be contestants. They also discovered the remains of Archbishop Galien. The old man appeared to have died not from fire, but from being trampled to death. His servant, Carlton, lay inside the manor, apparently not content to die by his master’s side. Arista’s handmaid, Bernice, was also found inside the manor, crushed when the house collapsed. They found no one else alive.
The villagers created stretchers to carry Tobis and Hilfred out of the smoky ruins to the well, where the women tended their wounds. The old common green was a charred patch of black. The great bell, having fallen, lay on its side in the ash.
“What happened?” Hadrian asked, sitting down next to Mauvin. The two brothers huddled where Pearl had once grazed pigs. Both sat hunched, sipping from cups of water, their faces stained with soot.
“We were outside the walls when the attack came,” he said, his voice soft, not much louder than a strained whisper. He hooked his thumb at his brother. “I told him we were going home, but Fanen, the genius that he is, decided he wanted his shot at the beast, his chance at glory.”
Fanen drooped his head lower.
“He tried to sneak out, thought he’d give me the slip. I caught him outside the gate and a little way down the hill. I told him it was suicide; he insisted; we got into a fight. It ended when we saw the hill catch on fire. We ran back. Before we reached the front gate, a couple of carriages and a bunch of horses went by at full gallop. I spotted Saldur’s face peeking out from one of the windows. They didn’t even slow down.
“We went looking for Arista and found Hilfred on the gro
und just out front of the burning manor house. His hair was gone, skin coming off in sheets, but he was still breathing, so we grabbed him and just ran for the smokehouse. It was the last building still standing that wasn’t burning. The dirt floor was soft and loose, like it had recently been dug up, so we just started burrowing with our hands like moles, you know. That Tobis guy, Erlic, and Danthen followed us in. We only managed to dig a few feet when the whole thing came down on us.”
“Did you find Arista?” Fanen asked. “Is she …”
“We don’t know,” Hadrian replied. “The deacon says it took her and Theron’s daughter. She might still be alive.”
The women of the village tended the wounds of those found at the castle while the men began gathering what supplies, tools, and food stores they could find into a pile at the well. They were a motley bunch, haggard and dirty, like a band of shipwrecked travelers left on a desert island. Few of them spoke, and when they did, it was always in whispered tones. From time to time, villagers would weep softly, kick a scorched board, or merely wander off a ways only to drop to their knees and shake.
When, at last, the men were bandaged and the supplies stacked, Tomas, who had cleaned himself up, stood and said a few words over the dead, and they all observed a moment of silence. Then Vince Griffin stood up and addressed them.
“I was the first to settle here,” he said with a sad voice. “My house stood right there, the closest to this here well. I remember when most of you were considered newcomers, strangers even. I had great hopes for this place. I donated eight bushels of barley every year to the village church, though all I seen come of it was this here bell. I stayed here through the hard frost five years ago and I stayed here when people started to go missing. Like the rest a’ you, I thought I could live with it. People die tragically everywhere, be it from the pox, the plague, starvation, the cold, or a blade. Sure, Dahlgren seemed cursed, and maybe it is, but it was still the best place I’d ever lived. Maybe the best place I ever will live, mostly because of you all and the fact that the nobles hardly ever bothered us, but all that’s over now. There’s nothing here no more, not even the trees that was here before we came, and I don’t fancy spending another night in the well.” He wiped his eyes clear. “I’m leaving Dahlgren. I s’pose many a’ you will be too, and I just wanted to say that when you all came here, I saw you as strangers, but as I am leaving, I feel I’m gonna be saying goodbye to family, a family that has gone through a lot together. I … I just wanted you all to know that.”
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