by James Lowder
He tried to recall how he’d come to this place. Bird song and distant laughter chased away the vague thoughts before they could coalesce into memories. It didn’t matter. He was safe here.
“As it should be,” said a cool, lovely voice. “You are only truly safe with someone who loathes you absolutely.”
At the sound of Helain’s voice the drowsiness lifted from Ganelon. Heart racing, the young man struggled from the sylvan bed. His leg brace foiled his attempt to stand quickly, and for just an instant, sunlight dazzled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw her.
She sat upon the green, her face aglow with madness. The smile upon her face was so wide that her dry lips cracked and bled. For all its prominence, though, that smile was empty. So, too, were her beautiful blue eyes, which stared blankly down at the thing cradled in her lap.
One of Helain’s hands rested upon his scabrous cheek. The other stroked her own tangled red hair. “You freed me,” she said as she bent to kiss the creature’s chancred lips.
A cry of horror finally welled up from Ganelon’s soul. “Helain!” he wailed.
Helain gasped and shrank bank. Chuckling, the creature raised its misshapen head from her lap. “Ah, roused at last,” the thing said, glancing down at its own swollen crotch in case the double entendre had eluded Ganelon. It hadn’t.
As he looked upon the creature’s corrupt visage, the memories flooded back-poor lost Bratu, capture by the Vistani, Inza’s magic and the torture she’d promised when that sorcery failed to make him break the oath he’d sworn to the Bloody Cobbler. This creature had rescued him, pulled him through the shadows even as the Vistana raised the red-hot poker to his face. The Whispering Beast. He and Helain were in the hands of the Whispering Beast.
“G-Get away from her,” the young man stammered.
The Beast pushed himself to a crouch. Helain immediately threw her arms around his sunken chest. “What makes you think she wants to be left alone?” he asked. “I doubt she was ever this affectionate with you, little boy. If she was, it was wasted effort.”
With one filthy hand, the Whispering Beast broke Helain’s clinging embrace. He stood, revealing himself in all his hideousness.
He was starvation thin, taller than any man Ganelon had ever seen. Stringy hair covered his entire frame, gray-white where dirt and excrement hadn’t matted it. Arms that seemed to bend the wrong way hung down past his knees. The hands at the ends of those misshapen limbs were graced with slender fingers that constantly twitched and traced vulgar patterns in the air. Those agile digits hinted at the most horrible thing about the Beast. Underlying the corruption were the faint remnants of a beauty so profound it could not be hidden by any amount of grime.
A leer split the Beast’s twisted visage-yet his face, too, held vestiges of magnificence. His simian skull, all but fleshless at the crown, had the high cheekbones of a noble-born elf. Weeping sores all but obscured that feature, just as an orange rheum dulled his bright, piercing eyes. The pus welled at the corners and filmed the orbs. From time to time, it drooled down his cheeks, tears of festering corruption.
The sight of this malignant creature so transfixed Ganelon that he did not notice the crowd gathering around him. The hillside was filled with lunatics. They crawled toward the Beast like supplicants, hands outstretched, eyes averted. The creature smirked at their reverence and spat upon those who got too close.
Finally, when the mob was ready to close in, the Beast lifted the grim necklace from the tangle of his hairy chest. Upon that chain of fire-blackened steel dangled thirteen human ears. He raised one of these gruesome ornaments to his lips and whispered into it. As one the madmen screamed. Whimpering and barking like whipped mongrels, they disappeared over the top of the hill.
Helain, too, fled. Ganelon turned to pursue, but found befouled fingers wrapped around his arm.
“The best part of the joke is the poor ninny didn’t even hear what I said.”
The slaughterhouse stench from the Beast made the gorge rise in Ganelon’s throat. The young man pulled away, gagging. “She’s not yours,” he managed to gasp as he fell to the ground.
“Technically correct,” the Beast replied. “No one properly condemned her for breaking her oath. In a more practical sense, however, she’s been mine from the moment she vowed to love you forever.”
“Helain still loves me!” Ganelon shouted angrily.
The Beast rolled his eyes. “You still haven’t figured it out? Helain loves the man you were, the daring dolt who swept her off her feet. After you got all safe and promised never to do anything dangerous again, she found you, well, boring.”
“I did that for her.”
“Don’t you feel foolish, then,” the Beast sneered.
Ganelon wept. The Beast watched him for a moment, disdain clear on his horrible face. “Wipe away those tears, little boy. The wronged lover act won’t play with me.” He leaned close. “I know that you’ve dreamed of breaking the promise to stay by her side. You’ve practically frothed at the mouth at the thought of roaming the countryside again.”
The Beast held up one of the severed ears and placed it over Ganelon’s. The young man could feel the maggots dripping off the dead flesh as the Beast whispered, “If you weren’t so stone stupid, you’d realize how faithless you’ve been to poor Helain. Why, a cynic might even think you were glad she went mad and ran off. It gave you an excuse to be a hero again.”
Ganelon shoved the Beast away. “I’m taking her away from here,” he said.
“I told you: She likes it here. She thinks so little of herself, she’s only at home with someone who detests her.” The Beast thumped his hollow chest. “No one loathes the false more than I do.”
His thoughts awhirl, Ganelon turned away. He looked out over the hillside, still strangely green when all the rest of Sithicus had long ago browned with autumn’s first frosts. “If not to rescue Helain, why was I brought here?” There was silence for a moment, then the sound of the Beast’s laughter. Ganelon turned back, an accusatory finger leveled at the creature. “I won’t be mocked,” he shouted. “I won’t-”
The rest of Ganelon’s angry rejoinder died on his lips. The Whispering Beast was no longer alone. It crouched subserviently at the feet of a figure in a pure white robe. Her face, her hands, and every inch of her frame were concealed by the habit.
“You were brought here at my insistence,” the figure said. “I am the White Rose.”
Her voice was gentle, loving, yet thick with a penetrating sadness that overwhelmed even Ganelon’s broken heart. She moved toward him with an unhurried step. Even so simple an action as walking betrayed her grace and her station. She was clearly accustomed to setting the pace, not following another’s lead. Ganelon wasn’t even aware that he had bowed to the Rose until her hand, clad in a white silken glove, appeared before his down-turned eyes.
“M’lady,” he said and kissed the proffered hand.
In the shadow of her hood, a slight smile flared and faded. “How gallant,” the Rose said lightly. “I have obviously chosen well. Come, let us talk of adventure.” She began to walk slowly to the crest of the hill.
“And of justice,” the Beast noted. He’d taken up a deferential station, loping along two steps behind the Rose.
“Justice, as always,” the Rose confirmed. She reached down and stroked the creature’s fleshless pate. The Beast leaned into the touch like an affection-starved hound. The sight made Ganelon’s skin crawl.
“You kept your word to the Cobbler, Ganelon,” the Rose noted without preamble. “You did not tell that monstrous gypsy where she might find the Beast’s lair. She would not have forced it from you, even with the tortures she had planned.”
Ganelon did not ask how the Rose knew. The Beast seemed able to look into his heart, to know things that Ganelon hid even from himself, so there seemed no reason why she could not share that power. Instead, the youth merely noted, “I swore upon my love for Helain. There is nothing I value more highly.”
The Beast chortled, but the Rose silenced him with a gesture. “It is not in the Beast’s nature to understand the dark urges that plague all mankind,” she explained, “only to punish those who give in to them. I, however, appreciate those dark desires all too well. You appeal to me because you have fought them and won.”
“For now,” the Beast added.
The White Rose nodded but once. “For now. Yet that is sufficient for me to make you my servant.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Ganelon said, “but why should I serve you?”
“Because I can free Helain from this place,” the Rose answered simply.
The trio topped the hill. Upon the slope of the facing rise lay a vast and complicated hedge maze. Their vantage allowed them a clear view of the figures within that leafy labyrinth. Even in the deepening shadows of late afternoon, their distant movements were easy enough to distinguish.
Some wandered aimlessly, sobbing dry tears of penitence. Others paced back and forth along the same small span. Still others crouched in corners, heads clamped between their hands, as they moaned or sang or shrieked their sorrow. This was the racket that Ganelon, in the bower’s languor, had mistaken for laughter and bird song.
“They can find their way in and out of the maze,” the White Rose noted, “where a sane man who entered there would never return. It is the power of madness, perhaps-or the whims of the gods.”
The Beast sidled up to Ganelon. His overlong arms dragged in the dirt as he moved. “Take that as a warning,” he hissed, “in case you thought to storm our midden and steal our maiden.”
Ganelon’s mind reeled. It was all too much. He struggled to put this strange new knowledge into some perspective, but the feel of something wet and warm on his neck distracted him. He reached up with trembling fingers, which came away red with blood. The wound from Inza’s dagger. He felt the ear, found the lobe missing. There were new, thick stitches there, but they must have come undone.
He stumbled, but the Rose’s strong hands steadied him before he fell. “The Vistani were cruel to you,” she noted, “and you’ve only had a few days to rest.”
“Days,” Ganelon repeated dazedly.
The Rose took him by the arm and gently guided him down the hill toward the maze. “In a day or two more,” she said, “you will be ready to undertake a journey on my behalf.”
At a touch from the Rose, Ganelon’s wound stopped bleeding. She spoke of trifles as they walked, refusing to let the conversation drift back to the journey she had mentioned. Her only reply to Ganelon’s direct questions about the matter was, “It will be easier for you to comprehend once you see.”
With an ape’s ungraceful gait, the Beast careened ahead to the edge of the maze. The few lunatics on the hillside itself scattered at his approach; they ran howling for the safety of the labyrinth, though none moved quickly enough to get there before their tormentor. When Ganelon and the White Rose finally arrived, the Beast was squatting upon one unfortunate. He’d propped his muddy feet on another, a bald and blubbering Vistana whom Ganelon recognized instantly.
“Bratu,” he said as he moved to help the man.
The Beast bared long yellow fangs pitted with decay. “Don’t interfere,” he snarled, “unless you’re willing to take his spot.”
“He’d be better off with the Vistani,” said Ganelon, a look of disgust on his face.
The Beast leaned forward. “What makes you think so, hero?”
“They would care for him,” Ganelon replied. “Inza said-”
“You’re taking the word of that twisted piece of work?” the Beast exclaimed. He kicked Bratu away. The brawny man scrambled up to the thick hedge, which parted just wide enough to admit him. After he’d passed through, the rift closed again.
“Inza only wanted the goon back to finish him off,” the Beast continued, “to silence him for good before he got beyond her reach.”
Ganelon remembered the glee on Inza’s face as she came toward him with the hot iron. “She’s the one who pulled out his tongue.”
“Inza would have killed poor Bratu if her mother hadn’t yet been alive,” the Rose noted. “As leader of their caravan, Magda could have exiled her, cast her into darkness. There is no Vistana alive who does not fear that.”
“There is no creature alive that does not fear its mother’s wrath,” the Beast added without a trace of humor.
“And now Magda’s dead,” Ganelon said, recalling the rumors they’d heard at the mine. “That makes Inza the Wanderers’ raunie. She can do what she wants.”
“Bright boy!” The Beast got to his feet, and the madman he’d been perched upon crawled away along the hedge maze’s border. The thicket eventually opened and swallowed him as it had Bratu.
“Actually,” said the Beast as he came to Ganelon’s side, “you and the gypsy make a fine pair. You’re both worse Oathbreakers than anyone here. You just haven’t been caught-yet.”
The White Rose dismissed the loathsome crea ture with the wave of her gloved hand. “See to the cauldrons,” she said. “It’s getting dark.”
The Beast loped off along the maze’s perimeter. Every few steps, he lifted his gory necklace to his lips and spoke into one of the ears. Ganelon could scarcely imagine what it was that the Beast said. He was certain, though, that he never wanted to hear for himself.
Twilight had settled upon the hills, and the cries of the madmen wandering the maze had taken on a singsong quality. For all its discord, the sound had an underlying motif. It was a chant, Ganelon realized. The lunatics were passing the song between them. Each uttered a few words before letting it pass to the next.
The White Rose turned toward the hedge, and the wall of green opened wide to admit her. She took Ganelon by the arm. “Come,” she said and led him toward the break.
He hesitated, the Rose’s earlier comments about the maze still fresh in his mind. “No fear,” she said. “You are safe from the labyrinth’s magic so long as you stay with me.” After a slight pause, she added, “Or perhaps you are already mad, and the maze will welcome you.”
Ganelon sputtered a reply, but the Rose’s gentle laughter drowned it out. “My apologies,” she said lightly. “Too much time in the Beast’s company has tainted my sense of humor. You may trust me when I say that you are safe in my company.”
The hedgerow closed behind them the moment they passed through. Ganelon felt a powerful wave of vertigo wash over him as the thick bushes knit together. He looked back at the seamless wall of greenery. There was no trace of the gap where they had entered. He wasn’t even certain he was facing the right direction to retrace his steps.
The hedges were thick with roses, both black and white. The flowers’ fragrance was overwhelming, even stronger than in the bower. Ganelon’s disorientation grew more profound. He could only keep moving if he focused on the White Rose, her firm hand on his arm and the soothing lilt to her voice.
“We are agents of a justice older than Sithicus, older even than Soth,” she began. “We are here to remind the Knight of the Black Rose that such justice reaches even into those places hidden from the gods.”
“I don’t see what I can do to help you,” Ganelon said. “I don’t really understand any of this.”
“That is no surprise. You’ve been drawn into this struggle in ways not even we could have predicted.” The Rose plucked a white bloom from the hedgerow. When she spoke again, that immeasurable sadness had returned to her voice. “Epic events, like blind giants, will trample upon even the innocent unlucky enough to stumble beneath their tread.”
A pale glow suffused the path ahead. It reached above the tall hedges to drive back the lowering night. As Ganelon and the Rose walked on, the air grew close. Swells of heat washed over them. A thin sheen of sweat formed on Ganelon’s brow, and his lungs ached from gasping in the superheated air.
At last they turned a final corner and saw the source of the strange light and the awful heat.
There, at the labyrinth’s heart,
stood a pair of mammoth cauldrons. They were five times a man’s height, as wide around as a mine shaft. Scaffolding surrounded them both, the ramps and platforms concealed behind an ornate latticework of gorgeous metal flowers. Even as Ganelon watched, wild elves bustled up the scaffolding of the nearest cauldron, sacks of white roses upon their backs. They emptied the bags into the pot and hurried back down. All the while, the chatter of the madmen in the maze wove together as a chant that underscored the weird rite.
The second cauldron was the root of the blasting heat. A roaring fire raged within the huge iron pot. On the ground surrounding it lay a few sacks of roses-not white or black, but red. Such flowers were impossible to grow in Sithicus. Even blooms smuggled in from Invidia or Barovia blackened within a day or two.
The White Rose gestured toward the rare blossoms. “That is how you can aid us, Ganelon,” she said. “The second cauldron has been purified and stands ready. We only need flowers enough to fill it.”
At the puzzled look on Ganelon’s face, the White Rose merely held up the pale bloom she had plucked from the hedge. The flower merged with the white moon overhead. “We’ve already brought Solinari to the heavens. When Lunitari shines its crimson light upon Sithicus, Soth will stand ready to receive our sentence. But we must hurry. As we speak, soldiers from Invidia are on the march, moving into place to besiege Nedragaard Keep.”
“Even if I knew where to find enough red roses to fill the pot, I couldn’t carry them back here by myself.” Ganelon slapped his leg brace. “I can’t ride, and I’m not even certain I could walk very far.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” whispered a voice in his ear. The smell of the Beast’s breath struck him an instant later. “Always sniveling about yourself. Well, don’t think twice about it, little boy. You stay home and play with your brace. I’ll take care of Helain.”
Ganelon lashed out with a spinning backhand. The Beast didn’t move or flinch. Casually he caught the young man’s fist in one grimy paw, then pulled him close. The two were face to face as the Beast said, “It’s about time.” He held Ganelon there for an instant longer, orange-filmed eyes glittering with perverse delight. “Maybe you can help us after all.”