“Are you awake, Father?” she called as she entered the cavern.
“For hours. You didn’t have to bring me a meal, I would have come when you rang the bell.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“And speak of last night?”
“I didn’t tell the men the truth,” Sondra said.
“I knew that when you came here,” he responded.
“I saw the beasties after they killed Mihal. I couldn’t do anything, not even cry out. I was such a coward!”
“Coward?” Her father laughed, then added, “I’m not teasing you, child. After surviving years of terror in Gundarak, you can’t call yourself anything but brave.”
She heard the somber tone of his last words and understood how hard it was to remind her of those days. “But I couldn’t even call for help,” she added.
“The things you saw are the beasties the Tepestanis fear. They are smaller and hairier than most goblins, but goblins they are. When we fled Gundarak, we were pursued by creatures far more loathesome than they. On that journey, no matter what horrors you glimpsed, you always did as I ordered and kept silent,” her father replied. “Perhaps you learned to hold your screams too well. But a coward, Sondra, you could never be.”
She kissed him and started toward the stairs. “Everyone will understand if you don’t go to the harvest today,” Ivar called after her.
Everyone but me, Sondra thought. “I want to go,” she said, refusing to look at him lest he see her fear and know that in this, at least, she lied to him as well. Before she reached the kitchen, she paused and wiped away her tears. Though her father hadn’t realized it, he’d burrowed right into her. Right to her secrets.
Dirca and Andor were dressed and in the kitchen when Sondra returned to it. “There’s an odd smell in the air,” her aunt commented, wrinkling her nose in disgust and stirring the embers beneath the oven. “If you vented the stove wrong again, it will ruin the dough. You should have learned by now.”
Sondra stiffened more than usual from the rebuke. For the first time, she realized she had no way to explain her missing dolls, or why she had burned them. “Perhaps the beasties blocked the flue?” she suggested. She watched anxiously as her aunt stooped and picked up a scrap of tattered blue lace from the floor, fingering it as if trying to remember where she had seen it before.
“Sondra, did you burn something in …” her aunt began, then recalled where she had seen this lace before. “Sondra, where are your dolls?”
Sondra paled and flinched even before her aunt’s hand shot out, slapping the side of her face so hard that she fell against the table in the center of the room. Her aunt’s hand was raised, ready to strike again when Andor gripped her arm. “Dirca, the dolls were hers to destroy.”
“Destroy!” Dirca held the lace in front of his face. “This scrap of lace is all that remains of my mother’s wedding gown. Sara wore the same gown when she married Ivar. When the fabric began to rot, Sara used its lace for the doll clothes. She even made the doll with her own features. If Sondra hadn’t wanted her mother’s gift, she should have given it to me. I would have cherished it. Poor Sara, poor dead Sara, to have such an ungrateful daughter!” She faced Sondra as she finished, her fury clear in her eyes. “Tell me you’re sorry,” she demanded.
Sondra, her hand on her bruised cheek, said nothing. Dirca reached back to strike her again but, seeing her husband prepared to stop her, walked stiffly from the room instead.
Andor poured a glass of cider and held it out to Sondra. Though she knew he was waiting for some explanation of what she had done, she had nothing to say. She drained the juice quickly, put on the wool coat her aunt had woven for her, and went to join the others already at work on the cloudberry harvest.
It wasn’t a task she would have relished, even before last night’s terrors. She dreaded the deep forest and the things that dwelt in the shadows beneath the trees. In Gundarak, children weren’t allowed to venture near the woods. Those who disobeyed were killed or, worse, simply vanished without a trace, leaving families unwilling to hope and less willing to mourn.
Here things were different, her father said. Even so, the dark woods looked the same as those of Gundarak. The lurid stories the Tepestanis told of the “wee beasties” and the evil spirits that kidnapped the wicked all came back to her with a new, sharper terror. Those were the things she had seen at the inn last night; “beasties” was far too harmless a name for them. Before she left to join the harvesters, she placed a knife in her belt. The goblins might terrify her, but she vowed that she would fight back if attacked.
Because she left the village later than the others, Sondra was told to join a group of three young women harvesting beside the river, just outside of town. As she hurried to reach them, she spotted a flash of white on a narrow footpath leading to the river crossing. The figure was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
“Arlette!” she called, thinking she had seen one of the Linde girls, who always wore undyed skirts. “Arlette! Is that you?”
Arlette returned her call, her voice coming from the riverbank. Nervous, Sondra ran down the path toward the river, slowing her pace before she came into view of the others.
The day was thick and damp. Sondra stripped off her wool outercoat and, as soon as her pails were full of berries, went down to the river and let the cool water run over her wrists and through her hair. She lifted her head, letting the water roll slowly down her back from her dark ringlets. The bells on the cattle pastured nearby added a pleasant clanking to the afternoon’s work. The berry-pickers were chattering in the woods behind her, and Arlette began a lecture to two younger girls.
“It’s little wonder Mihal was attacked,” Arlette told them, her voice loud enough for Sondra to hear. “There’s been plenty of beasties in the forest over the last week. They know the harvest is near. They’ll pick off stragglers if they can and lick the bones clean. They never touch the face, though. Odd how choosy they are.”
The goblins want us to recognize our dead, Sondra thought. Suddenly, the words Arlette spoke seemed less a taunt than an omen. The harvesters should have all been made to view Mihal’s body. If they had, they wouldn’t be running off alone like the one in white she had noticed on the footpath. Sondra stood up and began to walk toward the others, intending to describe what had happened to Mihal. She reached the wood’s edge where the voices had been.
But the other girls had vanished.
“Arlette!” she called softly, lest goblins hear the fear in her voice. No one answered. She listened, but heard only the faint breeze in the treetops, bees drinking the sweet juice from crushed, fallen berries.
Someone giggled near the riverbank.
“Arlette?” Sondra called again, her voice somewhat louder, her body tensed, ready to flee.
Someone giggled again, the laugh far too young to be Arlette’s. The girls were playing a trick on her, nothing more. Furious, Sondra picked up her full buckets and headed back toward the inn. After traveling only a few feet into the forest, she saw scattered berries, an overturned pail. Her uncle would have paid good coin for these. None of the girls would have dropped them as a joke.
Something had taken one of the girls.
Sondra grabbed the pail and ran to the clearing. Once there, she called sternly to the younger girls. The pair came out of their hiding place, still giggling until they saw Sondra’s shocked expression, the empty pail. “Arlette is missing. We’re going back to Linde to get help,” Sondra said. When they reached the cleared land at the top of the bank, they were in sight of town. There, Sondra turned and called Arlette’s name. The only response was a rustling in the trees that might have been the wind or …
Sondra had a sudden vision of Arlette, surrounded by goblins, struck mute by the sight of them as she herself had been the night before. “I’ll stay here in case Arlette comes back.”
“You must leave with us,” the older of the pair said. “The beasties will take you, too.”
Sondra pulled her knife. “I have this. Now run!”
I’ll be alone only a little while, Sondra told herself as she called Arlette’s name and scanned the woods for some sign of the girl. Unlike poor Mihal, she was sober and prepared. Her knife was sharp, and she knew how to use it. “A little while,” she repeated aloud, though the words gave no real comfort.
She thought that if the goblins came, they would take her quickly, as they had Arlette. She didn’t anticipate that they already knew her weakness. They knew she couldn’t scream.
With a sudden gasp, she realized that they were watching her. Their intense red eyes glowed in the forest and by the bank, in the weeds and behind the bushes. She glanced back fearfully toward the inn, but no one was in sight. She tried to scream, but only a hoarse hiss emerged.
The beasties began moving forward. A half dozen came one by one from the forest to stand around her. Though she couldn’t be certain, the last looked like the goblin she had faced in the inn.
Taller and less hairy than the others, he seemed more human. In his dark hands, he held the red and white remnants of a corpse. It was small and delicate, undoubtedly Arlette’s. As Sondra’s eyes widened with horror, it threw the body on the ground in front of her. The corpse’s middle finger was missing. The gold ring that had once shone so beautifully on Arlette’s hand now hung on the rope belt the goblin wore, holding a crudely fashioned leather sheath. The goblin pulled a knife from the sheath, holding it before him so Sondra could admire the magnificent carvings on the handle, the sharpness of the curved blade that had once been Mihal’s.
She was determined she wouldn’t die as easily as Arlette had died, wouldn’t feed them as Mihal had fed them. She raised her knife and waited.
In the heartbeats before her final battle, something unexpected happened. Three huge wolves appeared on the edge of the clearing. They stood silently, their attention fixed on the goblins rather than on Sondra, who was trying desperately to be brave. The goblin leader pointed, stammering, toward the wolves, and the others turned. They gasped.
The wolves crouched and prepared to spring. With harsh, high-pitched shrieks, the goblins scattered into the trees, and the wolves bounded after them. Sondra stood, dazed by the suddenness and strangeness of her rescue. A youth about her own age climbed the bank toward her, clawing through the drooping strands of the river willows.
His shirt was white, his breeches pale gray, and his hair shone like silver when the diffuse sunlight struck it. He must have been the pale figure she had seen on the path earlier. She marveled that he would roam the hills alone. “Did you summon the wolves?” she asked. The words sounded foolish when they came forth, but she had heard her father speak of such a spell.
He shrugged. “I was prepared to do far more. Thankfully, more wasn’t necessary,” he replied. His voice, like his face, was beautiful.
“You aren’t from Linde?”
He shook his head.
“Then where do you live?”
He smiled and shook his head again. “I can’t tell you.”
She wished he would say something more, but men were shouting her name in the woods. With a last look at him, she called to her belated rescuers. As she did, the youth stepped backward into the concealing shadows of the trees.
As always, dinner was served in the inn’s dining room. Andor, Dirca, Ivar, and Sondra sat at one end of a long table. The empty seats on the other end always made Sondra feel like guests had failed to come to dinner. Guests or relations. She hated the evening meal. It made her think of her dead mother and the family she had left behind in Gundarak.
Tonight the memory was stronger than usual. Her aunt ate in silence, still fuming about the burned dolls. Andor seemed reluctant to speak to Sondra lest he invite his wife’s fury. Her father also looked disappointed about the dolls and—more specifically—Sondra’s carelessness in the forest. But he was willing to forgive her, especially after the two tragic deaths so close together.
After they had eaten, Sondra described the youth she had met in the forest and how he had saved her from the attack. “You didn’t mention the boy to the men who found you,” her uncle commented. “Why?”
“He worked some spell on the animals. He didn’t want to be seen, so I kept him secret. I’m only telling you because you might know something about him.”
“He’s called Jonathan,” her father said. As he spoke the name, Dirca rose suddenly, collected the plates, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Her uncle’s gaze followed his wife with a fearful intensity. Thinking her aunt disliked the boy, Sondra came to his defense. “He saved my life,” she said.
The men waited a moment. When Dirca still didn’t return, Sondra’s father asked, “Did he say he had summoned the pack?”
“No, not exactly. Maybe he flushed them from the woods.”
“Wolves?” Andor asked. Ivar suppressed a smile.
The men questioned her a few more minutes, then began, in stiff and veiled terms, discussing the boy.
Thinking she might hear more from a less conspicuous vantage, Sondra cleared the rest of the dishes from the table. As she carried the dishes into the kitchen, she saw her aunt closing the cupboard where the wine was kept. There were tears in Dirca’s eyes, but when she noticed Sondra, her expression hardened. Without a word, she left the room. Even before Sondra burned the dolls, Aunt Dirca had disliked her. Why, Sondra neither knew nor dared ask. But she constantly looked for clues.
Sensing that Jonathan might provide some answers, Sondra took her time wiping the glasses and returning them to the cupboard. The whole time, she stood near enough to the doorway to hear the men talk about him.
“… came himself. He asked if there might be work here for the boy,” her father was saying. “They believe Jonathan can’t stay with them forever, or he’ll never have a real choice in his future. They’d like him to come here, if only for a little while.”
“What’s he able to do?” Andor asked.
“Read … write …”
Her uncle snorted. “We’ve little use for those skills in Linde.”
“… hunt … track … He’s a wild creature himself when alone in the woods.”
“We could use a good tracker,” Andor admitted, thinking of Arlette and the other children lost at harvest. “But Sondra’s story troubles me. The boy didn’t admit to summoning the wolves, but if he did work some spell … well, I don’t want attention drawn to us. Can you assure it?”
“If the boy has talent, and Leo assures me he has, it may be difficult to keep him from practicing it. Nonetheless, he’ll have to obey me, or I’ll teach him nothing.”
“What does he know of the Guardians?”
“Only that they’re hermits. The monks believe he can’t truly choose to join them if he knows more.”
“They’re foolish old men!” Andor exclaimed.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Remember how I lost Leo so many years ago?”
Her uncle didn’t reply. “I’ll ask Dirca if she minds him staying here,” Andor finally said.
Sondra thought this a good time to tiptoe back to the cupboard and close the door. A moment later, she walked past the men and up the stairs to her room.
The moths and flying white beetles were thick outside. She heard them beating against her shutters as she undressed by the light of a single candle. Blowing it out, she went to bed and pulled the covers around her, thankful the roof above her was made of tile.
She lay awake a long time, thinking of Jonathan and the effect his name had on her aunt. Though Sondra was old enough to be courted and think seriously of marriage, Jonathan seemed far too young to be a suitor. Nonetheless, he attracted her far more than Mishya or the other Linde boys. And she longed, more than anything, to see the silver-haired boy again.
In a room down the hall, Dirca also lay awake, sipping the wine she had brought from the kitchen. She remembered those few weeks so long ago when she thought she had a son. In all the years since, she had always embrac
ed the comforting thought that the boy was nearby, that some day he would return to her.
Then fate gave her a new child; not the child she wanted, but a child, nonetheless. She wished she had remained in Gundarak and helped her sister raise the girl. If she had held Sondra when she was an infant, had watched her grow, she might have felt some affection for the headstrong stranger imposing on her life now. Instead, she looked at Sondra and thought of her own little girls, lost to fate so long ago.
They would have been obedient, beautiful, loved.
It had been months since Dirca had drunk this much of the potent Linde wine. It made her dizzy. Tomorrow, she would carefully add water to the bottle so Andor wouldn’t guess how much she’d consumed and, worse, how much the loss of Jonathan still affected her. If he sensed her sorrow, he wouldn’t let the boy stay with them.
“But you have Sondra here,” she reminded herself once again in a soft, bitter whisper, as if the girl were less her niece than her rival. Both sought the affection of someone neither of them really knew.
At night, my soul wanders the ancient halls of the keep, helpless to do anything but observe the Guardians’ lives, listen to their concerns. They believe my son may have the calling, as if he would ever stand with them and hold me back from the world.
My son asks about his father sometimes. When they cannot evade the truth, they lie. I whisper to him that he must be certain to remember that.
That night at dinner, Jonathan told the monks about the goblins and the wolves. He made it clear that, if he hadn’t led the wolves to the scene, the girl would’ve certainly been killed. He hadn’t used magic to lead the wolves; they had mysteriously followed him. And he’d managed to obey Leo’s admonition despite the urge to see what he could do—to feel the power coursing from his mind to his hands and through them. He could’ve destroyed the goblins with a few words, a quick gesture. Instead, he held back. Though he’d disobeyed the Guardians’ orders when he left the lands around the fortress, he expected some praise for his discretion. Instead, the monks disapproved, Mattas most vocally.
Tapestry of Dark Souls Page 12