Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  ‘ ‘Where do I find what I seek?” He was not sure her mouth could form a human tongue, for she looked like a hideous fox.

  “Let me go.” It was blurred but understandable.

  “Tell me.” He twisted the rope a bit.

  “Aargh! Beast! Foul monster.” A fine rufus-colored fur began to grow from her cheeks and upon her throat.

  “Tell me.”

  Huge black eyes stared at him, full of mute hatred. “Fool! He will destroy you.”

  “Who?”

  ‘‘Stay here, with me.” She wriggled her body in a parody of provocativeness. “I will make you forget. I am beautiful.” She crooned the words and spittle drooled onto her gown.

  “You grow less lovely each moment.”

  Genevieve lifted her hands to her face and touched her features. She gave a little scream. “No, no. You have broken it. How could you?” A tear rolled down a furry cheek. The reddish color began to fade into ashy grey.

  “Where is the scabbard?”

  “I must be beautiful. 1 must. Have pity, have pity.”

  Dylan might have wavered but for the look in her eyes. “You seem to be growing old before my eyes, demoiselle. I fear if you do not speak quickly you will turn into a

  crone.”

  “Old.” A sound like laughter. “Old! I was old a thousand years ago. Go to Pers Morel at the House of the Bleeding Dragon. He knows where your precious scabbard is. I hope he turns you into the dog that you are. Now let me go, before I am ruined.”

  Dylan believed she was telling the truth, but he did not release her. Instead he dragged her, still choking, into the stifling library. Giles de Cambridge goggled at the pair of them.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “I thought you should see what your precious ward really looked like,” Dylan replied.

  “Genevieve?”

  “No, no. He has cast an evil spell upon me. Quick. Cast a fire upon him.” She covered her face with one hand as she spoke, and her voice was rasping and rusty.

  Giles waved his bonelessly plump hands about in meaningless gestures. He stared stupidly at them and repeated them. “I never was very good at this,” he said weakly. “I say, Dylan, my boy, this is not very funny. It is not good manners to go about choking ladies half your size.”

  Dylan could see that the fair hair beneath the coif and veil had faded to white and seemed to be falling out. The hands were raddled with age too, and he let her go, albeit reluctantly. She sprang away and leapt upon the ambassador’s huge body. She buried her teeth in his throat and blood spilled down into her mouth.

  “Gently, gently, my dear. Do not be greedy.” It was the last thing he said before she tore his throat out.

  The Genevieve-thing staggered away, ripping at her gown and screaming. The cloth tore and revealed shrunken breasts and a wrinkled belly. She moved towards Dylan, face smeared with blood and eyes gleaming. Her legs gave way and she crawled towards him while Dylan backed away and drew his sword. It was unnecessary. Her flesh began to rot away and in a minute she lay still, a thing neither human nor beast. The stench was incredible and he gagged.

  Dylan grabbed his packs and went towards the door as quickly as he could. He paused for one last look. The body of Giles de Cambridge had shrunken to skeletal proportions, as if the flesh he had so much of minutes before had melted in the heat of the room. Of Genevieve de Lenoir there was nothing but a tumble of bones and the remains of her garments. I wonder what she was, he thought, and left.

  IX

  Dylan found the street outside in shadow as the day began to fade. His heart, he found, was pounding as if he had run for miles, and his mouth was dry with a foul taste in it. He moved down the street away from the ambassador’s residence as nonchalantly as he could, but several hard-faced servants from nearby residences eyed him askance. A rook took flight from a nearby roof and landed on his shoulder with a thump and a rough caw. A mean-faced valet gave them a look that boded no good as he withdrew into a house, and Dylan wished he were not quite so large and noticeable.

  He stroked the bird’s glossy feathers and felt a fresh flutter of a black despair touch his mind. He had always been subject to odd moods, sudden fits of morosness, sometimes for no apparent reason. They were, his parents assured him, just something in his Hibernian blood. When it happened at Avebury he went for a long ride or lay by the river until it passed. In London he would have repaired to some alehouse to drown his sorrows.

  Here, in Paris, he felt alienated from everything and oddly guilty. He had not been in this city a day and three people were dead, two were wounded by an angry bear, and an alehouse had been burnt to the ground. Dylan wanted to howl like a wolf.

  He walked towards the river out of a need to keep moving more than with any purpose. The rook nibbled at his ear and croaked avian secrets into it. Dylan heard and understood them almost without noticing.

  He reached the river bank and turned west awhile. Then, without full awareness, he crossed the bridge to the lie de Paris and found himself before the doors of the cathedral. Although the huge square towers he had seen as he walked with Pierre-Louis seemed complete from a distance, close up it was obvious the work would not be done for many years to come. There were three sets of double doors, but only one of them had the tympanum carvings over them in place.

  Dylan could hear the voices of workers nearby and the sounds of their tools, but he could not see anyone. He walked through the first doors into the narthex. It was long, longer than Westminster’s, perhaps, and a priest was saying mass in one of the many small chapels along the side walls. He spotted Dylan and the rook and glared at them.

  Dylan slipped behind a pillar and wondered what he was doing here. Then he saw a little chapel on the other side which had columns covered with stylized leaves. Inside it was a small figure of the Virgin, her serene face radiating beneficence. Unmindful of the large bird on his shoulder, he went into the chapel and knelt before the statue.

  Praying had never been an easy task for him, and he found it was just as difficult as ever. He was too active and impatient for such things. All he could think of was Help me. Forgive me. He bent his black head forward in mute supplication. After a time some of the peace of the place seemed to steal into him.

  A hard foot booted his behind. Dylan turned quickly and the rook dug its claws in and flapped its wings to maintain its balance. It was the priest, a tight-mouthed, half-starved crow of a man in a well-worn and filthy habit.

  “You cannot bring your dirty bird into God’s house!” Bits of spittle flew from his mouth.

  Dylan wiped one off his face and stood up, angry. It certainly was not making his life simpler to have half the livestock in Paris leaping up to do him homage. The priest cowered a little when he saw how tall Dylan was.

  “Dirty! Look at yourself before you throw mud. Why, you are filthier than the Seine.” Dylan pushed past him, leaving the priest gabbling with fury, and went back outside. He crossed the river again and wished the Parisians would do as good work on their bridges as they were doing on their cathedral. A beggar whined at him.

  Dylan stood undecided for a moment. “I do not suppose you know a place called the House of the Bleeding Dragon, do you?” he asked the bird. The rook cawed and the tender spots on Dylan’s skull throbbed. He listened intently.

  Surely, surely. I am the most knowledgeable rook in all of Paris. I am the king of all the rooks in Paris. All other birds bow to me, I know where the best carrion is. The King is dead, you know. Just this past hour.

  He continued gossiping in this fashion for some time. Finally he said, The House of the Bleeding Dragon is a very bad place. The carrion there is good though, if you tike cat. He strangles cats, you know. Kittens too. Not much meat on a kitten. It is better to let them grow a bit.

  “Show me the way,” Dylan commanded.

  It is a bad place, O Lord. Surely, surely. We go up river a little. Here comes a messenger to tell the priests the King is dead. He was not a go
od King. He was not a bad King. Perhaps the carrion will be better with the new King. Into this street. They burn a lot of carrion in Paris. A sad waste. A terrible waste. Perhaps the new King will not burn so much. See the house with the acorns on the door. The stingiest man in the city. Never any garbage. 1'urn here. A mouse would starve in that house. Are you sure you want to go to the Bleeding Dragon? I can take you somewhere with good garbage. Quality stuff. You don’t want to go to a bad place.

  “I must go there.”

  If you must, you must. It is at the end of the street. You cannot miss it. Now I must go pay my respects to the King, even if he was not a good King. Farewell.

  The rook departed in a flap of great wings as bells began to toll across the city. Dylan watched its flight for a moment, then continued up the street. A great metal door with a wounded dragon upon it caught his eye. It was a cunning piece of work unlike anything he had ever seen before. The blood dripped out in red droplets against the golden surface of the door. He peered at it in the fading light, but it was neither painted nor enamelled. The droplets were rubies as large as quail’s eggs, and he was amazed that no one had prised them out. Such an ostentatious display of wealth was remarkable, and he noticed that the eye of the beast was an enormous sapphire. It seemed to stare at him in agony, as if the spear thrust into the scaled chest was painful. He almost lifted a hand to touch the creature, thinking of Melusine, then shook the feeling away.

  Dylan lifted the wooden knocker and rapped. After several minutes the door opened, and a pale man stood before him. He was very tall, and his eyes were like bits of amber. Dylan saw that he was cloaked in an odd aura—a cool, pale light—and while this reassured him that he was not dealing with another creature of Shadow, he was also faintly uneasy.

  “Yes.” The man’s voice was even, yet musical, in that single word.

  “I seek Pers Morel.”

  “Then you have found him.” Morel did not move, and though his voice had a seductive quality, Dylan thought it faintly chilly.

  He paused a moment, unsure where to begin. “I have come from the house of the Albionese ambassador, Giles de Cambridge, and it was suggested that you might be the person to enlighten me in a certain matter.” It was, he felt, a statement his mother would have been pleased with, being entirely true but avoiding all the dangerous issues. Dylan had an intense longing to see her again, and stand before her, proud and clean. She, he realized, would not have agonized over the Shadow-struck boy or the Genevieve creature, or at least not for long.

  “If he has sent you to buy the—”

  “No, this is a personal matter.”

  “I see.” The amber eyes darkened almost to ruby and Dylan felt something like a feather brush his mind. It was gone almost before it arrived and Morel’s eyebrows rose. They regarded one another in mutual puzzlement.

  “Very well. Come in.” It was a grudging and ungracious welcome.

  “Thank you.” He crossed the threshold and looked about. The walls of the room they stood in had been whitewashed and painted with a most remarkably lifelike forest. The very leaves seemed about to tremble with an unseen breeze. He did not recognize any of the trees, however, and that was a little puzzling. The trees of Franconia were not so different from those of Albion as these were from any tree he had ever seen. Perhaps they are Greek trees, he thought.

  “I like your indoor forest,” he commented.

  Morel stopped in midmovement and turned a startled stare at him. “Why, thank you. So few people notice it.” The words were stiff and the voice had lost its power. He gave Dylan a deep, piercing look, then shrugged.

  “Too busy worrying about taxes, I suppose,” Dylan replied.

  “Ah, yes. The eternal occupation of the Parisian. Gold. A trumpery metal, at best.” Morel’s voice had recovered its quality of warm silk, but Dylan mistrusted it now. The man might not be evil, but that did not mean he was good either.

  “If you have a surfeit of it.”

  “Come this way.” Morel led Dylan towards the back of the house and into a small eating room with a big table and several chairs. “Pray, seat yourself. I will bring wine and we will talk.”

  Dylan didn’t really want any more wine, but apparently no business was conducted in Paris without it. He removed his packs and settled down, his sword resting along his long thigh awkwardly. Morel returned with cups and a crystal flagon of exquisite beauty. It was rosy, though whether from the wine or the glass he was not sure, and shaped like some curious reptile neither dragon nor serpent. It seemed to be steaming slightly through the mouth of the beast which was also the spout.

  Morel poured and seated himself. “Now, how may I aid you, sieur.”

  It was a polite demand that he make himself known to his host, and Dylan had a moment of reluctance. He could almost hear his mother: You do not give your name to every Tom, Dick, or Harry, especially if they seem to have any Shadow about them. Or if they seem different. Never reveal more than you must.

  Morel had no Shadow on him, but he was certainly different. But to lie irked him. He was Dylan d’Avebury, and proud of it. Still, he had his share of nicknames: Dilly from his younger sisters and Sable as Eleanor called him when his black moods were upon him. Foolish names but suddenly dear to him.

  “I am a knight of Albion and I am on a quest. My friends sometimes call me Sable, because I am so dark for an Albionese.” That was true enough, as far as it went.

  “I see.” Morel sipped delicately and Dylan copied his gesture. The wine was warm as blood, and almost the same color. “And what is the nature of this quest?”

  “There is a scabbard with a pattern of interlace and jewels which I seek.” He traced the interlace upon the surface of the table with both forefingers, surprised at how clear his picture of it was. For a moment he saw a serpent’s head covered with tiny braids all plaited together and knew where upon its body the scabbard had once lain.

  Beady jeweled eyes stared at him, and he realized that in drawing the pattern he had drawn his grandmother into the room. The face was both human and reptile, and she gave him something like a smile before the vision vanished.

  If Morel had seen the manifestation of Orphiana, the Harth Serpent, he gave no indication. “How . . . quaint. A quest.” He made it sound stupid and childish. “I had no idea the chivalry of Albion still pursued such fancies. No doubt there is a maiden. Tell me, is she fair?”

  Dylan was stung by his contempt, and the wildness stirred within him. His temples throbbed and his palms itched maddeningly. He took a deep breath. “I would not know. I have never seen her.” He looked directly into Morel’s eyes, and after a moment the man dropped his gaze. His hair was as black as Dylan’s own, but smooth and straight, and it grew from a sharp peak in the center of his brow, so that when he lowered his chin he resembled a bird of prey.

  “I have indeed heard of this scabbard. It lies in a keep beyond the city, to the north.” Morel paused and lifted his head. “It is some distance, too far to reach before night, unless you are foolhardy. So, you will be my guest. We will dine together and talk. In the morning we will find you some sort of horse and send you on your way.”

  Dylan could not see anything immediately wrong with this plan, for although he did not doubt that Morel was certainly dangerous, he could not see any danger to himself. Unlike the fair Genevieve, Pers Morel did not set his nerves thrumming. His strangeness was of a different order than the woman’s had been.

  “How did you come to me, by the by?” Morel asked. “The demoiselle de Lenoir thought you would be the one person who would be able to help me.”

  “I see." The words had a faintly sinister cast to them, though Dylan was not sure if it was directed at him or the woman. “She . . . ah . . . sent you here voluntarily?”

  “Not precisely. I had to persuade her.” If a noose of licorne hair can be called persuasion, he thought to himself.

  “You must be a remarkable young man, then. At least I have never managed to persuade that youn
g woman to do anything she did not already wish to do.” He pondered possibilities. “I cannot see what mischief she might . . . ah, well. No matter. How is she? And sieur de Cambridge?” “Dead.” He couldn’t think of a plausible half-truth, and the tale would serve to distract his host’s attention for a while.

  “Dead? Are you certain?”

  “As much as one can be. We were in the library and I was looking at these strange books he has collected. I must say, I do not consider charms and spells to be the sort of thing a gentleman indulges in.” He mimicked the faintly priggish tones of Arthur’s chancellor. “The demoiselle began to look quite ill. Her hair began to fall out and she rushed upon the ambassador and bit his neck, i do not think, monsieur Morel, that she was quite human. In a minute he bled to death, and she fell to the floor and perished. I have never seen anything like it.” He let some of his very real shock show in his voice.

  ‘ ‘Incroyable!’ ’

  “Quite. She said something I did not understand— something about being broken, or that something was broken. Perhaps it was something in one of those books. I left hastily and went to the cathedral to pray for their souls—and my own.”

  Morel’s eyes gleamed redly. “Something in one of those books, you say.”

  “I do not know, of course, not being conversant with such matters, except to know that only a fool plays with magics. Give me a good sword over a magic stick any day.” He hoped his imitation of a yokel knight was not too obvious, but Morel seemed to accept it.

  “Can you recall what book he was consulting?”

  “It was very large and had a leather cover of grey.”

  “How large?” Dylan opened his arms to demonstrate the dimensions of the ambassador’s innocent household account book, marveling at how simple it was to misdirect a suspicious mind. “I never sold him that!”

  “No, monsieur?” Dylan affected polite uninterest.

  “Ah, I weary you, do I not? Here, I will take you to the guesting room, that you may refresh yourself. We are of a size, though my shoulders are less wide. If it will not offend you, I will lend you a robe of my own for the night. And I will prepare a small repast.” Morel gave a tiny gasp as a small brown cat materialized out of the wall and walked towards them purposefully. “If you would be so kind, monsieur, to remove that beast. They make me quite ill, you see.”