As if replying to his fear, the bushes near the river rustled. “Leave the bait!” Alden cried. They dropped Jon and ran.
Josef felt hands close around his ankles. As he fell, he twisted onto his back, intending to fight. Some creature, larger and darker than any of the Tepest goblins, covered him. Clawed hands and feet tore at his limbs while the muzzle forced his head up and ripped the scream from his throat.
Jon crawled to the top of the bank, then turned to see the creature that had come to his aid. The thing sat beside Josef, its wolf head digging into the flesh of the dead boy’s neck, its human hands with their brightly painted nails undoing the laces of the shirt.
“Maeve?” Jon called softly.
The werewolf turned, her head cocked, acknowledging her name for just a moment before turning her attention to her kill.
Alden ran to the center of town before he realized he was alone. The cottage doors were all barred. The shutters were latched. The only light came from the inn, the only sounds festival songs sung by late-night revelers.
“Josef?” he whispered into the darkness.
No reply.
He should go home, sleep, pretend he didn’t know what had happened, but he knew that no one would believe him. He and Josef had been together all night. They’d been seen by everyone.
“Josef?”
“Alden,” someone whispered back. Alden whirled.
Jonathan, bruised and bleeding, stumbled forward. In spite of the beating, his words were spoken evenly in a whisper so low that Alden had to strain to hear them. “Josef’s hurt. I left him by the river. I thought you’d prefer to help me than have me go to the inn, take the others back, and explain what happened.”
Jonathan was the last person Alden should trust. He knew it, but the knowledge was buried well below his fear. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to focus on what he should do.
“I know about Vladish,” Jon whispered.
The threat hardly concerned him, Alden decided.
After he found Josef, he’d make sure Jon never passed his knowledge on to anyone. Nodding silently, he followed the silver-haired boy.
Jonathan stopped on the edge of the festival fire pit and pointed to the blackened bones of the caged goblin. The creature seemed more human now, stripped of flesh, its small, skeletal hand clutching the bars of the cage. Jon looked at it a moment, then said, “The beasties are prowling the edge of town. Fire will keep them at bay.”
“Fire,” Alden repeated emptily. Some niggling voice in his mind told him the silver-haired boy had placed the word on his tongue, that Jon was directing his thoughts. But he couldn’t resist the suggestion. He pulled a pair of pitch-covered torches from the stack beside the fire and lit them in the embers. Holding them high, he followed Jon into the dark forest, starting at every flickering shadow around him.
“Josef?” Alden called, his voice soft with fear.
Soon, Jon pointed at the ground beside him.
Alden raised the torch and stepped forward. At the base of a tree, he saw part of one hand, half a face, the other bones stripped and stacked into a small, circular pile. His face white, the torch shaking in his hands, Alden looked from the remains to Jon.
“You knew!” he said.
Jon nodded but didn’t speak. His face was rigid with concentration.
“I’ll tell them you knew!” Alden said.
“Will you?” Jon asked. The torches Alden held grew hot, burning his hands. He flung them down in front of him. As he did, Jonathan’s hands pointed outward, streams of flames shooting from his fingers.
The tendrils circled Alden, pulling like yarn circling a skein. Alden froze, fearing the flames would catch his clothes. He measured the length of his life in heartbeats, yet couldn’t find the breath to scream.
Alden’s eyelashes were singed, the burning hair on his arms leaving needle-pricks of pain on his skin. Jonathan pulled his hands apart, tightening the deadly knot around Alden’s body. In agony, Alden breathed in the flames, letting out his last breath with a long hiss that might have been the beginning of a scream.
Two were dead. One other still lived. Dry-eyed and furious, Jon returned to the inn to plot his revenge. He entered through the back door, meeting Sondra in the kitchen.
“Where were you?” she asked then, noticing his bloody lip and the cuts on his face. Her concern turned to anger. “Was it Mishya?” she asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time that thug—”
“It wasn’t Mishya,” he replied coldly.
“Sit down. I’ll get a basin and some warm water,” she said, trying to sidestep Jon’s strange anger.
She had just begun dabbing at the worst of Jon’s cuts when the front doors to the inn slammed inward. An elder whose house was close to the river stood in the doorway, his two sons behind him holding torches.
“Beasties!” an elder cried, his words echoed by his sons. “Beasties killed someone at the river.” Whatever words followed were drowned by the sounds of men running from the inn, following the torch bearers to the riverbank.
Mishya was among the last to go. With an odd smile, he stood to follow the others. Then he noticed Sondra at the kitchen door, and Jon standing behind her. Sondra sensed his sudden fear and, when she looked over her shoulder, saw hatred smolder like cold fire in Jon’s eyes. Whatever she glimpsed there dissipated in a moment though. Mishya ran after the others.
Jon returned to the table. “Mishya beat me while the others held me,” he told her. “Afterward, he ordered Alden and Josef to drag me to the river. They were going to tie me there for the goblins. Before they could, the goblins came. I ran.”
“And people call the goblins beasts,” she whispered. She looked away, stunned by what she had just said, then cleaned his cuts as quickly as she was able. “Come upstairs,” she said. “The men mustn’t see you, not with the way your face looks now.”
Outside his door, she paused, “I was the only one in the kitchen tonight. If I am questioned, I’ll say you were with me for the last hour.” Her hand brushed the bruise on his forehead. “The hour after Mishya attacked you.”
“I don’t need your lie.”
“I’ll lie anyway,” she said and kissed him. He intended to respond with a chaste show of affection, but the emotions that night had roused in him were too new, too strong. He ground his lips against hers, unaware of her panic until she used all her strength to shove him away. He knew what he had done only from the fear in her expression as she wiped his blood from her lips with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words held no sincerity. When she didn’t reply, he went into his room and closed his door.
Jon had seen Maeve’s secluded cottage before, but the morning following the festival was the first time he’d really noticed it. Whatever charm it once held had faded like the paint on its shutters. The shutters were cracked, the roof in need of repair. Vines had claimed the garden wall, and the garden gate was missing one of its hinges. The place was the ghost of a happier past, of abandoned dreams.
As Jon lay belly-down in the brush near the river, wondering if he dared accept the woman’s invitation, the cottage door opened and one of the village elders came out. Maeve followed, her bright orange gown glowing in the morning sun. Her parting kiss was as deep as the one she had given Jon last night, though her eyes were open, and she stared over the elder’s shoulder at the place where Jon was hidden. A small, private smile danced lightly on her lips as the man said good-bye. After her visitor left, Maeve went inside, leaving the door open behind her.
What can I hope to discover here besides more shame? Jon wondered. Nonetheless, the woman had hinted that she had information for him. He followed her in.
Maeve didn’t turn to meet him. Instead she sat at her cluttered dressing table, combing out her tangled hair in front of the gilt-edged mirror. “I expected you last night, if only to thank me,” she said, her eyes fixed on her reflection.
“And when I didn’t come, you found another
to take my place?”
“I had my choice of any man at the festival. Perhaps I’ll choose Mishya next. Would you like that?”
He sensed danger in her response and glanced at the open door. “I’ll take care of him in my own good time. Now tell me about my mother.”
“Very well.” Hair arranged, she began slipping thin golden bracelets on her wrists. “She stayed with me. I was her friend.”
“You destroyed her.”
She faced him for the first time, her violet eyes wide but far from innocent. They held a blaze deep inside them that spoke less of passion than insanity. Her laugh convinced him of it. “Did they tell you that, those Guardians of the cloth? Oh, don’t look so surprised that I know of them. The tales are clear enough that I can recognize one of them in the flesh. I even know their names—Leo, Dominic, Hektor …”
“No one told me,” Jon interrupted.
She laughed again. “Well, perhaps my kiss convinced you. Was my passion so terrible?”
“Did you destroy my mother?”
“I cared for her. I wanted her to be with me always, like a beloved sister. I don’t think that was so wrong. If she had stayed, you would have been raised here with us, instead of in that dreary fortress with those foolish men. The pair of us would have seen to your education. Wouldn’t you have preferred that?” She stood and walked toward him, challenging him to deny it. He didn’t move until she tried to touch him. Then he backed away, not out of fear but loathing.
“They ruined you,” she said bitterly. “Just as they ruined your mother, filling your mind with guilt as they did hers. Tell me, do you deny your power as she did?”
“Power? I have no power.”
“No? I know that you work with Ivar at night, there in his smoke-filled cave beneath the inn. I know what you do there as well. And I know what is kept there, just as I know what is kept in the fortress from which you come.” She must have seen the amazement in his eyes, for she waited for his question. When it didn’t come, she frowned and supplied a cryptic answer. “Knowledge,” she said. “And power. All you have to do is take it.”
“Why do you tell me any of this?”
“So you know you can trust me, if the need arises. Though Ivar’s a fool, we have a kinship of sorts; we are both outcasts from our lands, both more than we appear to be. Tell him what I told you, if you wish. It’s of no concern to me. But if you’re wise, you’ll keep silent, for your own sake.”
She turned back to face the mirror, looking once more at her reflection. A dismissal, Jon realized, and left her. She appeared to take little notice of his departure.
Winter came so early to the land that year that the townsfolk spoke of having two seasons rather than four. The snows came only days after the festival, smothering the grazing hills with thick gray drifts indistinguishable from the cloud-swept sky. Winter was a desolate emptiness into which only the bravest hunters dared venture. Some returned with game. Others were lost, frozen, devoured flesh-and-bone by winter-starved goblins.
And in the darkness of winter, the stories began. Part of a hand, half a face—enough for a father to identify his son. While most believed that Josef’s death had been nothing more than the beasties retaliating for the festival sacrifice, others recalled that Jon’s face had been battered and cut on that same night. Sondra reported seeing wolves in the forest when Arlette had been killed, and there were wolf prints in the river mud on the morning after the festival.
Connections enough for conjectures at the Linde hearth-fires. Few took the rumors seriously. The most vocal opponents noted that Mishya, who had lost his chosen mate to Jonathan, started most of them. Others noted, as honestly, that Sondra had found a far better mate. Nonetheless, the stories continued, fueled by boredom and isolation.
A small group of townsmen kept the inn alive. With no travelers on the road, the inn served few meals, rented no rooms, washed and polished only occasionally. The regulars still requested Jonathan to sing, but otherwise, his days were idle.
Jonathan used his free time to increase his knowledge of the arcane, spending hours alone in Ivar’s cavern, memorizing spells he was forbidden to use, not even on dark nights far from the curious eyes of Linde townsfolk. While fire spells fascinated him most, he began learning more subtle incantations, spells that no one would notice, not even Ivar.
With a quick word, a quicker gesture, Jon could set Andor and Dirca to quarreling. As their argument grew more bitter, Jon reversed the spell, and found the couple hugging one another a few moments later, Andor whispering loving words as he stroked her hair. The inn’s patrons asked Jon to sing more frequently, laughing at the happy words, crying at the sad, tipping him graciously for each song. He hoarded the coins he received, along with those left by his mother.
As the days passed, Jonathan thought of Maeve’s words more frequently. He considered visiting her, but the desire he felt for her held him back. The guilt that desire aroused made him more attentive to Sondra than he otherwise might have been.
As for Sondra, she glowed in Jonathan’s presence. One night, after they had spent hours together, shoveling snow off the covered porch and stick roof, he looked at her, standing with the snowflakes glittering in her dark hair. He took her hands and blurted words he had often thought of saying. “I love you. Will you marry me?”
She laughed, kissed him, and was about to reply when she remembered that such an open acceptance was hardly considered proper. “You must ask my father first,” she said.
“Come with me,” he said and pulled her inside the drinking hall where Ivar was mopping puddles from the melting snow on the roof. “I want to marry your daughter,” Jon told him, pleased by the sudden happiness he saw in Ivar’s expression.
“Nothing would please me more,” Ivar said. “Announce your betrothal immediately, if you wish. There’s still time to make a gown for vow-taking with the other couples at the winter festival.” Ivar pulled wine goblets from the glass-doored case behind the bar and poured four glasses of cloudberry wine. “Go get your aunt,” he told Sondra, “for the toast.”
Sondra found her aunt upstairs mending sheets and happily told her what had happened. “Since you are my closest female relative, would you take my mother’s place at the toast and give your blessing?”
Dirca’s reply was cold. “The boy was raised by old men. What does he know of women? What does he know of children and responsibility? You’ve moved too fast, girl. It’ll bring you grief in the end.”
Sondra scowled. She wanted to remind Dirca that her own first marriage had hardly been a happy one. Instead, she went downstairs, preparing an excuse for her aunt’s absence from the traditional betrothal toast. Before she could give it, Dirca followed her into the hall and lifted one of the glasses. Her aunt’s mouth was set in a grim, resigned line, her eyes fixed on Jonathan as she gave her approval to the match.
Jonathan’s studies had progressed at an astonishing pace. Unlike Leo, who had always been frightened by his pupil’s ability, Ivar was pleased, though a bit puzzled by Jon’s incredible talent. Finally, admitting he had nothing more to teach Jonathan, he encouraged the boy to begin working alone in the cavern.
Jon usually laid a fire in the hearth for warmth, but the light came from cold, glowing balls that floated above his shoulders, illuminating the scrolls he read. Sometimes he sensed a presence in the cavern, as if some airy creature struggled to make itself heard or seen. When he focused on it, the presence faded.
One night, when Jonathan was placing his most recent reading back on the shelves, a shadow touched a scroll near the bottom of the pile. Jon moved his hand over the spot, but the shadow remained. As he crouched to study the odd trick of the light, the shadow flowed into a narrow crack in the cavern wall. Jon heard a whisper coming from the darkness beyond, soft as a breath of air, and as indistinct.
“Who’s doing this?” Jon called, scanning the cavern, seeking the intruder. “Ivar …?” he added, then cut off the thought. Ivar wouldn’t try to frig
hten him with such a childish display. No, the shadow was something else, a spirit that perhaps sought contact. His attention returned to the crack. Kneeling in front of the opening, he directed one of his luminescent balls of light into the space.
A scroll was hidden there. Jon had never read any of the scrolls Ivar forbade him to touch, but this wasn’t one of them. Perhaps Ivar hid this one before Jon came, then forgot about it. He pulled it out and noted that its edges were yellowed and brittle. He untied the twine and unrolled it. With the lights dancing above his shoulders, he began to read, struggling to comprehend the strange dialect, the faded, trembling scrawl of its creator.
We came here together, fleeing one evil for another, wandering at last into the southern regions where only the dead dwelt. There, we built the temple, each doing his part. When we finished, we sealed the walls in the old way and kept the doors closed and locked, save on the nights of the ritual. Through our prayers and vigilance, the treasure within cleansed the village, freeing us from the evil around. But we should have expected our peace to be short-lived; we had never known real peace before.
Evil came in the comely guise of a white-haired youth who entered our village one morning. Visitors always came in the evening, always remained with us through the hours of darkness and left at dawn; the dead in the land were jealous of the living and would slay those who traveled by night. We didn’t ask the white-haired stranger how he had traveled by night. Instead the village fed him, let him eat our simple food and drink our water, watched to learn what kind of creature he might be.
He commented on the beauty of our hills and town, on the carefree life of doors left open, children free to roam. And he loved our magnificent shrine. His words were as fair as his form, but we knew their deceit.
We learned he was the young ward recently taken by the lord of our homeland. Some said he had been sold by his parents for an incredible sum. Others believed his parents had been murdered and the child taken. All rumors agreed. The youth had power, not only the sorcerous power of his master, but an innate power to see into human hearts, to twist desires.
Tapestry of Dark Souls Page 16