by James Lowder
One of the three soldiers entered the wagon and closed the door behind him. There was no threat of revolt; the prisoners either stared at the armed man with wild, unfocused eyes or averted their faces whenever he looked their way. No one spoke as the wagon lurched into motion. Gesmas wondered if they had all lost their tongues-until he realized that most were likely deaf from months or years of exposure to the banshees’ shrieking.
Once the bedlam of Nedragaard receded, the steady tread of the horses began to sooth Gesmas. It seemed that his truthfulness had saved him after all. He was out of Azrael’s grasp, going to a place where he would have a chance to keep himself alive. Work in the mines would be hard, maybe fatal, but he might live long enough to escape. His leg would disqualify him from the most treacherous digging. He might even get the opportunity to care for the ponies and other animals that hauled the carts. That had always been his true calling, anyway.
Gesmas shook his head. His duty was to free himself, cross back to Invidia and make his report. Even without the notes, he now knew enough about Soth to satisfy Lord Aderre.
A thud against the wagon’s thick side startled Gesmas out of his musings. A second and a third drew the guard’s attention. He turned to peer out the door’s barred window. An instant later he slumped backward, onto the heap of wounded. A white-fletched arrow protruded from his eye socket.
Prisoners retreated from the arrow as if it might pull itself from the gory wound and fly at them. Their incoherent shouts were drowned out by the sudden screaming of the horses and the pained groan of wood as the wagon struck something. It careened wildly for a moment, then flipped onto its side.
Gesmas reacted quickly enough to brace himself for the impact. It didn’t help much. He lay stunned within a bleeding, moaning tangle of limbs. Dazedly he heard the splintering of wood, felt the pile shift as bodies were removed. He kept still, knowing it was better to play dead, to gather his wits and his strength, until he knew what was happening.
The prisoners, both the living and the dead, were removed one by one. Gesmas heard a few words of Elvish spoken, instructions mostly. The dialect was one he’d not heard before. It was thick with gutturals, far removed from the musical language of the city-dwelling elves. The Iron Hills wildings, he realized with a shudder.
The sun was finally rising, the dawn reaching into the wagon through the breach. Gesmas tracked the play of shadow and light across his closed eyelids. There was no telling how many wild elves moved in and out, leading or dragging away the prisoners. He listened intently. Men were weeping outside, and a large fire had begun to crackle. There were no screams, but soon the weeping and the growled Elvish commands dwindled, until only the sounds of the fire were left.
Then he smelled it: the awful stench of burning flesh.
Gesmas opened his eyes and found himself alone in the shattered wagon. The light of the Sithican dawn streamed in through the ragged hole where the door had been. He rolled onto his stomach and crawled slowly toward the breach. Each carefully considered movement seemed to take an hour. Every creak or scrape made his teeth clench until his ears rang from the pressure.
“The fire’s for the dead,” said a voice at the spy’s shoulder.
Gesmas shouted in surprise and spun around. In the shadows at the very back of the wagon, where Gesmas himself had lain but a moment before, stood a tall, masked figure. His form was mostly obscured by a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. They, like his mask, his shoes, and his finely tailored breeches and coat, were all of a uniform hue. It was not a color so much as the ashen remnant left when all color had been leeched away.
The stranger held out his gloved hands, empty palms toward the spy. “Don’t be afraid, Gesmas. I didn’t intend to startle you.”
“Who the hell are you?”
He reached for his mask. Gesmas had seen its like before-padded cloth, the large hooked nose hollowed to hold flowers or herbs or whatever else the wearer thought might ward off plague. “You don’t know me,” the stranger said. His voice was melodious, the accent cultured. “I’m a tradesman hereabouts.”
As the mask came away, Gesmas thought for the briefest of instants that no face lay beneath, only smooth flesh the same pale color as the stranger’s clothes. He blinked and saw that he’d been mistaken.
The man would have been considered handsome in any land Gesmas had traveled, and more besides. His fair hair framed proud features. Deep-set eyes returned the spy’s nervous gaze with a twinkle of good humor. “I knew the fire, or rather what the elves have sizzling upon it, had frightened you. I wanted you to know that the flames weren’t your fate.”
“I’d rather you tell me how to get home from here,” Gesmas said. “Actually, I can find my own way.”
He turned back toward the door, but found the way blocked. The stranger stood framed by the gaping hole, haloed by the rising sun at his back. In the light, his pale clothes proved not so uniform; everything he wore was spattered lightly with crimson, from the tip of his hat to the little case he now held in his gloved hands. Carefully he opened the pale leather like a book. Inside, displayed in several neat rows, were a shoemaker’s tools. The tacks, the snips, the small hammer, even the needles and thread had been wrought from pure silver. They, too, were flecked with gore.
“The Bloody Cobbler,” Gesmas whispered.
The Cobbler nodded and removed a knife from the case. The blade glinted in the sunlight. “I want you to know that I’m sorry about this.”
It was pointless to run, useless to fight. Gesmas knew that. But he had so taken on the mantle set upon him by Lord Aderre, the role of spy and relentless seeker of facts, that not even his fear could prevent him from asking, “What are you?”
“Actually, I’m a who, not a what? The Cobbler leaned close and whispered his name into the spy’s ear.
A grim smile spread across Gesmas’s face. “Of course.”
“I wish there were another way,” the Cobbler said as he raised the blade. “But you only get so many chances to walk your intended path.”
Later that day, when a group of huntsmen discovered the ruined prison rig, the white-fletched arrows told them most of the tale. Elves allied to the White Rose had attacked the wagon. As was their way, the Iron Hills wildlings took whatever prisoners remained alive and burned the dead, so that the corpses could not be raised through necromancy to serve Lord Soth. The horses were butchered for food. Anything of value from the hitch was stolen.
��� They found the body of Gesmas Malaturno within the shattered wagon. His arms had been folded gently over his chest. A look of peace graced his haggard face. Even his twisted leg lay straight, as if death had released him from that lifelong scourge and blessing. The white-fletched arrows did not explain this death; the only wounds upon the spy’s body did.
Cleanly, carefully, the bottoms of Gesmas’s feet had been cut off.
Three
White roses filled the chapel. They framed the windows and doors, dangled from the rafters on ribbons, floated in glass globes upon the altar. Their fragrance drifted through the room, soothing even the most troubled heart.
White roses were rare in Sithicus. No gardener could cultivate them. They grew wild only in the most isolated reaches of the Iron Hills, deep within the territory controlled by the feral elves. Ganelon didn’t know how his friends had gathered together so many for the ceremony, but their unlikely presence didn’t surprise him. Ambrose, Kern, and the rest of the miners had performed even more miraculous feats in his name. Ganelon did not doubt they would stand against Lord Soth himself in the name of friendship. If his bride wanted white roses for their wedding, his friends would make certain they brought her every bloom in the land.
Helain had reserved one particular flower for her hair. It was neither the largest nor the most perfect, but something about the rose had captured her eye. With her usual impulsiveness, Helain decided it would be the only flower she wore. The white petals contrasted sharply with her red tresses, a snow sculpture floating upo
n a cascade of liquid flame.
The ceremony was brief and elegant. Ganelon wound a simple silken cord around one wrist as he spoke his vows. Gently he took Helain’s hand and waited for her to bind herself to him.
Her fingers trembled as she wrapped the cord around her own wrist. Ganelon looked into Helain’s blue eyes to reassure her. He found confusion there and the shadow of something dark and fleeting, something he did not recognize. She hesitated a moment before opening her mouth to speak her vows. What emerged from those tender lips was a scream.
Ganelon reached for Helain but pulled back in sudden pain. The cord around their wrists had become a rope of bloody thorns. Ganelon called out for Ambrose, for Kern and Ogier, but they did not reply. His friends had fled the chapel, leaving only their shadows behind. The dark forms lingered, surrounded by roses that had all turned black.
Helain was still screaming when Ganelon awoke. Sleep fogged his thoughts. Dazedly he wondered if he might still be dreaming. He’d had them before, horrible dreams within dreams in which he thought he was awake, but wasn’t.
No. Ambrose was at Helain’s door, speaking soothing words to her. “We’re here to protect you,” the shopkeep said in his soft wheeze of a voice.
“Needle and thread,” Helain shrieked. The spy’s path. Don’t you understand? The spy’s path!”
Stiffly Ganelon rolled off the hard wooden bench. He found himself standing upon a blanket, which Ambrose must have covered him with some time during the night, only to have it kicked off onto the floor. Ganelon wished he’d kept himself wrapped up; his feet and legs ached with cold.
“Helain, are you all right?” Ganelon called. He knew she might not answer, but to ask Ambrose instead of her would be to admit that she was truly lost to him.
The shopkeep held up a hand, a halfhearted warning to keep Ganelon back. The young man came to the door anyway. It wasn’t that he lacked respect for Ambrose; his heart would not allow him to abandon Helain to her pain. “What is it, dear heart?” he asked through the small barred window.
Like a wary animal, Helain slowly backed away from the door Her red hair all but covered her eyes. She cautiously swept aside matted bangs and stared at Ganelon. “Who are you?”
The question cut him like a blade. Even in the worst of her delusions she had recognized him, if only as a fond acquaintance. Before Ganelon could respond, Helain’s features softened and she laughed. The sound was bright and clear. “You’re looking very handsome this morning,” she said, “even if you do need a shave.”
Ganelon glanced at Ambrose and found his own astonishment mirrored on the older man’s face. The question was far more lucid than any Helain had posed in the last few weeks. Her laughter was more amazing still. Neither man had heard that sweet sound for almost a year, since she’d shown the first signs of incipient madness.
Smiling broadly, Ganelon turned back to the little window. “You never did like it when I skipped a day with the razor.”
“You’re mistaken,” she noted flatly. “We’ve never met before.”
As swiftly as his spirits had been raised, they plummeted. “Don’t you know me?”
“Ambrose said that you were here to protect me,” Helain replied, “but I’ve never seen you before. Do you work the mines?”
The young man stifled a sob. “I’m Ganelon. We were to be married-and will be, just as soon as you get well again.”
Helain clamped her hands over her ears. “I will not hear talk of love,” she said. “I cannot.”
“But you must, because I love you.”
She screamed, not so much in fear as in grief. Ganelon thought briefly of the banshees that haunted Nedragaard Keep. He could almost hear an echo of their keening in Helain’s cry. Had he not been so overwhelmed by his own sorrow and concern, he would have wondered at that insight, since he had never been near the keep and had heard of the unquiet spirits only in stories.
Ganelon felt Ambrose’s hands upon his arm and let himself be steered away from the door. “You should not have told her that,” the shopkeep said. “You know how it upsets her.”
“Why?” said the young man piteously. “What have I done to her that she cannot bear to hear those words?”
There was no answer to this question, at least none that Ambrose or Ganelon or any of the other people who cared about Helain had been able to discover. A few days before she was to marry Ganelon, Helain had fallen ill. At first Ambrose had dismissed it as a fever brought on by all the excitement. As her guardian, he saw to it that she rested. Everyone expected her to recover in time for the ceremony.
The subsequent weeks and months saw Helain’s condition worsen. For a time Ambrose feared she had contracted the plague, though he never let the possibility that he might catch the fatal sickness keep him from her side. With the help of Ganelon and a few of the more courageous miners’ wives, he attended to her physical symptoms, which eventually abated. It was not the White Fever that had Helain in its grips, but some malady of the mind. For a full turning of the calendar the madness tormented her with paranoid delusions, kept her sleepless for days then plunged her into such profound slumber that she could not be roused by any means.
Through it all, Ganelon had proved constant. It had never been his nature to commit to anything unreservedly. He’d held a dozen jobs at the mine, none for very long. Only the support and tolerance of friends like Ambrose kept him fed. He missed shifts, slighted his duties, and disappeared for days, carried along by whatever “adventure” caught his attention. It was no easy task for Ambrose to keep the impulsive young man from the notice of Azrael’s pit bosses. Somehow, though, he managed.
Ganelon’s devotion to Helain, to their mutual happiness, was the only repayment Ambrose needed. Even after she fell ill, the youth never wavered, never let his wanderlust draw him far from the mine. In fact, Ganelon dedicated himself to the stricken Helain with such fervor that Ambrose feared he, too, had been possessed by a sort of madness, but it was nothing less than the frenzy of passion.
“Best we leave her to herself,” Ambrose said after he and Ganelon had sat together in silence for a time. He drummed stubby fingers on the bench. “We should get to work. The sun’s up, and so are our customers.”
Ganelon nodded but didn’t follow the shopkeep down the stairs from the balcony to the store. He sat with his head bowed, listening to Helain’s screams and to the mundane sounds of Ambrose readying his shop for another day. Soon her shrieks dwindled to sobs, then whimpers. All the while, Ambrose went about his work, opening barrels and shifting crates. He was moving the wooden chairs used for the previous night’s prayer meeting when Ganelon finally pulled on his boots, walked to the rail, and looked out over the ordered chaos below.
The large, dimly lit two-story room served as store, warehouse, meeting hall, and gathering spot for the people who worked the Veidrava salt mine. The miners and their families thought of the store as belonging to Ambrose, though he only ran the place. Like everything else of value in Sithicus, the shop really belonged to Lord Soth. The master of Nedragaard Keep had never seen the store or the mine, but his stunted seneschal visited often enough to keep that fact fresh in their minds.
“With the new stock of cloth from Borca, it should be a busy day,” Ambrose called up to Ganelon. The shout brought on a fit of coughing, a reminder of the weakness in the older man’s lungs from years of working in the mines. Still wheezing, the shopkeep unbarred and opened the front door. He expected to find customers queued impatiently.
He found his stoop deserted.
Ambrose stepped outside. As was his habit, he kept close to the door, within the confines of the building’s early morning shadow. His years below ground had left him unaccustomed to sunlight Unlike the other men who’d survived their time in the pit, he had never reacquainted himself with it. As eccentricities went, this was unusual, even for a place of backbreaking, soul-deadening toil like Veidrava. But the shopkeep’s kindness had long ago eclipsed this quirk in the locals’ minds.
Squinting against even the weak light of dawn, Ambrose looked around. A group of miners’ wives, dressed in coarse clothes of a uniformly drab style, milled together on the opposite side of the wide gravel road. They met the shopkeep’s eyes but did not return his waved greeting. “What’s the matter now?” he wondered aloud.
“Sheep do not traffic with wolves,” answered a soft voice.
Ambrose turned to find himself facing a petite, gray-haired woman dressed in the brightly hued clothing of her tribe. “Magda Kulchevich,” he said. “As always, I am pleased to see you.”
Ambrose did not wonder how the woman had got behind him without making a sound, or why the miners’ wives kept their distance. Madame Magda was raunie of the Wanderers, the small Vistani tribe that roamed the wilds of Sithicus. They were fortune tellers and traders and thieves. The locals shunned them, until they needed some shady work done. Then they were glad to pay the Vistani’s fees, whether the price was reckoned in silver or blood.
Ambrose limited his dealings with the Wanderers to barter of the more mundane sort. “What have you for me today?” he asked, gesturing for the matriarch to enter his store. “Blankets? Some jewelry?”
“Would you accept anything more esoteric?” she asked. Before he could reply, she laughed in the way a mother laughs at a child’s silliness. “Of course not! You wouldn’t even take a charm to help the mad girl.”
“You can help her?” Ganelon called out. He bolted down the stairs four at a time. “Ambrose, why haven’t you told me about this?”
There are few creatures beyond the help of the Vistani,” Magda said.
The shopkeep grabbed Ganelon by the arm. Their aid comes at the peril of her soul,” he whispered. “Leave it be.”
Magda shook her head. “No need to hiss, Ambrose. I know what you think of my people. Who knows, you may be right.”
She turned to Ganelon. Her green eyes called to him as the sea beckons a mariner; they were full of mystery and adventure and even peace-but it was the peace of death. “You think that love will save her. Sometimes love makes things worse.”