by Veras Alnar
“Are you saying the dead infant with the missing head was killed on accident?” the man shouting was a labourer.
Durgia knew the man as Otto from the farm next to hers, he wasn't a bad man but not particularly brilliant.
“No,” Durgia desperately replied, “Otto listen to me, he's not clever enough to have done it! He's too simple in the brain! Remember what happened last Sunday? He can hardly get to Fairfax market without getting lost along the way, it's not him that's done it! Please!”
“Get the gate,” Otto said, “we'll get him to be sure he won't do it again.”
“No!” Durgia shouted, “that was my baby! If you want to call someone a murderer then call me that, not him! He's an idiot! A fool! You all know him! He just did as I asked!”
The men all quieted their shuffling suffering under some confusion, if Durgia had her own infant killed that was a confusing state of things because she was clearly not the Fairfax killer. The thunderous sound of horse hooves caused all the men to move out of the way. Reyna sat on his horse, his face a picture of sternness.
“What the hell have you done now, Durgia?” Reyna said.
“God forgive me,” Durgia said, her lower lip trembling, “I just wanted out of this place and he did what I couldn't! I'll thank him forever!”
Her father's face turned pale and then almost purple.
“Where's Amis,” Reyna shouted, “where's that little rat! I'll skin him myself!”
Ellie who was clinging to Durgia's arm pointed to the barn. Reyna went in and then returned a very shaken and pale man. He crossed himself and looked to the heavens but instead found his eyes on the shadowy shape of Garstwort keep.
“He's dying,” Reyna said, “God or the devil will take him.”
Durgia trembled all over and Ellie tried to comfort her. Neither of them had wanted this, Amis should have been freely riding along the highway on Martin's good horse. They weren't supposed to have been surprised and Fulk had scarpered away so quickly that Durgia had no idea where he might be to attest to Amis' role in their doings.
“You stupid, stupid girl,” Reyna said, “get on that horse. And you! You men, you've got the wrong man. There isn't a bone in Amis' body that could meet such ridiculous schemes as disappearing children from the village. A murderer he may be but a small time, pathetic, dying one that should be pitied and not reviled, as the devil is surely sewing his sack as we speak to carry him off. Go on with you!”
The men grumbled for lack of violence but they relented and Durgia mounted her father's horse to ride with him while Ellie was left behind.
“Take care of him for me,” Durgia demanded, “get him a priest.”
In the barn under the hay, Amis writhed in delirium at the height of his fever. The milkmaid Ellie came in, she let out a horrified gasp at his condition.
“The men all left,” Ellie said, shaking with fear, “Durgia told me to look after you. I think we ought to get a priest-”
“No don't!” Amis voice, though weak cried out loudly enough to hear, “call Durgia. If I die tonight, I want the last person I see to be her.”
Twisting in the hay, Amis felt the agony of his thin body against the hardened ground more keenly than he had ever before.
“She's with her father,” Ellie said, “they'll find Martin. I'm getting a priest!”
She crossed herself devoutly and ran from the barn her feet splashing through the wet puddles.
Amis didn't want his father, he wanted his lover. And what good would a priest do considering what he had done, it would be foolish to ask for absolution now. He didn't want heaven or hell he wanted away from Garstwrot and now, after coming so close to his much longed for freedom, he was to be denied.
Long moments passed and Ellie never returned to his side but just as quiet as a mouse, a spindly man pushed aside a few loose planks of wood and crept inside. The lanky figure made his way over to the dying Amis and crouched next to him.
“Made a cock up of it,” Fulk said, “didn't you? As per usual, I shouldn't have expected any less.”
Fulk leaned over Amis and held his black hair between his fingers, as if checking its quality.
“You left us,” Amis tried to say, flailing his hand limply, “abandoned her. What sort of man are you?”
But his words came out gasping and weak and Fulk began to cut part of Amis' hair away, sawing it off with remarkable speed. It was a strange thing to do, though Fulk was known for stealing bits of dead people he could sell Amis hadn't yet stopped breathing. He attempted another weak flail to push the grave master away.
“I'm not dead!” Amis said.
The bang of the barn door had Fulk scampering.
“Damn!” Fulk hissed in annoyance.
“Don't leave me here,” Amis said, “you bastard!”
Putting his finger to his mouth, Fulk shushed him and quietly crept out by crawling under the place he'd come through near the barn wall.
“Oh god,” Ellie said, when she sat down a bowl of water and a linen cloth, “I think he's gotten worse. What am I supposed to do?”
She nobly tried to cool his brow despite her hands shaking terribly. It was her kind attentions that frittered him away until Amis knew nothing and sank into an overwhelming dark.
Night turned into dawn and then into late day. Amis woke up with a start and somehow, terribly, knew everything was different. Something was desperately wrong. Nothing moved in the barn; not a sound echoed from anywhere. Amis felt the most incredible ache in his body and struggled to right himself. His shirt was plastered to his back from his sick sweat and his head pounded with lingering fever. He managed to get himself upright and crept towards the door, peering out.
There was no one outside, or rather, there was absolutely nothing around him but the most exceptional stillness.
Amis checked the hay for his sword and cursed when he found it missing. He wavered on his feet, still so terribly weak. His hand trembled in front of his face, his wrist which had never been stout was pathetically thin and bony. He touched his forehead, which felt cool but sticky. For longer then he could remember, he had been affected by frequent illness but nothing so bad and swift moving as what had done him in the night before. That wicked night, which would forever haunt his nightmares he was sure of it.
The sunlight hurt his eyes when he left the barn but he persisted and looked for a horse. There were none to be found and nobody nearby to ask for help. Dread settled, thick and worrying. No noises came on the wind, not even the sound of carts rattling in the town. As Amis staggered towards the farmyard road he fell over something laying in the field. When he put his hands to the ground to right himself, he realized what it was and reeled back in horror. Its skin was desiccant like a beetle's empty carapace, its face was distorted but he knew who it was. It was one of the men who had chased him last night, the laborer Otto laid dead on the ground. And as he looked around he saw others littering the ground where he fell, all the town's rabbling men from the night before tumbled where they had been walking, their torches ashy and burnt into the field.
Staggering away from them in shock, Amis looked up at the darkening sky. Ash began to fall from it like snow and a few, stray crumbs landed on his nose. He sneezed, the sound like a bellows in the silent field. Beneath his feet the earth began to rumble, a low deep sound that vibrated through the staggered sprigs of wheat that had just been planted. Looking up from the ground as the light began to chase towards the horizon at the ending of the day, Amis saw the great shadow of Garstwrot keep crawling along the hills like a clawed and shadowy hand. There were no lights leading anywhere along the roads but there was one from a distance, red and flame like, in the window of Garstwrot keep.
With some misgivings, Amis supposed he'd best head there where at least some other person might be still alive. The elderly Lady Anna was mistress of the town and surely, she would help him and she might not have heard already of his supposed crimes. It was best to keep walking, that way he could pretend that
what he surmised had happened to the town might still be unsure. That the dreadful truth he would find should he stumble into Durgia's house, might not be real.
He had no choice but to walk towards the red light from the ancient keep and hope that what his heart of hearts insisted must be real, simply wasn't.
II
The trees shuddered in the wind and the smell of burnt ash subsided. From the sky gray specks fell like gentle snowflakes and landed on everything until they covered the land in a drab coat. At the heart of the keep as dawn gave way to day, a singular man stirred.
Positioned with hands crossed over his chest and covered in a dousing of light pink petals, he opened his eyes slowly. He pulled the wreaths of flowers from his hair and yanked the heaps of roses from his bed and dumped them unceremoniously to the floor. He blinked in the red, hazy light that burned through his shuttered window, wondering if he was dreaming until it faded into a soft afternoon glow. Stiffly, he made his way upright and to the windows, throwing open his shutters.
There was not a sound and not a single soul was in the courtyard, only the crooked aspen tree that shivered in the light breeze. Delicately dressed in sunlight the ancient, desiccated bones of a long dead horse could be seen white as pearls dappling the courtyard like a strange folly and further on a blocked up well nearly embraced in shadow.
There was no one alive in the keep but him.
“Oh,” he said, whisper quiet, “how wonderful.”
There was a desiccated man sitting at Lord Guain's desk who had died while putting his dry, bony fingers to pen and paper.
I regret to inform thee, Lady Anna of Lorix, that Lord Guain has died of unknown causes...
While chuckling at the unfinished missive, Lord Guain pushed the corpse over and off his chair. Sitting down at his ornate table he checked his own reflection in his morning mirror. To others he had long blond hair, arresting eyes of green and a handsome face that showed only enough of his thirty-eight years to seem refined. He was Guain of Garstwrot, the handsome lord of the keep. But to himself, he felt much older and looked like a rose on the poise of bursting its own bloom before withering away and scattering its petals.
At his table he washed his face with fine linen dipped into a bowl that had been used last night to dab his brow, he filled the bowl with some scattered petals and made himself a wash basin that gave his skin some gleam of cleanliness. The jewels of his fingers were collected from their resting place and his fine clothes carefully done up, in the practiced way he had learned when one had no servants to do it for him. The richest and most lovely white with delicate golden hems offset his long, curled and golden hair. His leggings and boots were of the purest, palest blue along with his fine kid gloves, which he decided he wouldn't wear today and instead attached elaborate cuffs of gold to the end of his sleeve. They were very delicate and had been made in Adelaide, the country of his childhood.
When he was dressed he plucked a small stemmed rose from the pile and held it between his two fingers, letting the light shine through its reddish body.
“And in Garstwrot where no flowers grow,” Lord Guain recited, “only the bones are left to say, where a man has been or lived and gone.”
A strange burbling sound erupted from his throat; it was a sound that mimicked joy but had its roots far more in madness. Dropping the flower to the floor, Lord Guain exited his chambers and began examining each room along his hall. The main living area of Garstwrot was actually quite small, as huge portions of the keep had been shut up many centuries ago, including a great spiral staircase that had once been used by servants to traverse its back hallways when the keep had been at its most occupied. There were only five rooms now but a six and seventh had their doors blocked up upstairs.
All along the floor above him were strange shapes in ash like cloven footprints whispering a path through the upper blocked up door. The moment Lord Guain opened the door to the main hallway they began to disperse, so delicate even the gentlest breeze blew them away.
“And in its deepest halls the beasts of Garstwren still play,” Guain said, “their eyes red rimmed with longing for their favorite clay.”
The rooms would remained blocked up, their chill unwelcome in Lord Guain's empty hall. All that was left was the great hall, the kitchen and the vestibule. When Lord Guain threw open the door to the vestibule he was, to his great surprise, greeted with a dinner knife at his throat.
“Who are you then,” a quiet voice asked him.
A man was the attacker but not one he was familiar with and the soft, low pitched voice was filled with a tremulous intensity.
“I'm Guain of Garstwrot and this is my house,” he said.
“Amis of Garstwrot village,” the man said, slowly removing the blade, “what the devil are you doing here?”
“I was trying to find the servants,” Guain said, “and shouldn't you be calling me my lord?”
“Forgive me for my impudence,” Amis said, his gloomy eyes downcast, “my lord.”
There was some bite to his words, a barely veiled contempt. When Lord Guain turned to see the face of his would be attacker, he was taken aback. Sallow skinned and beaky he looked nothing like the general denizens of the village. Amis' long thin face also looked haggard and worn, though by the general lines of his mouth and cheeks he couldn't have been much more than twenty. His long black hair was a bit wild and cut strangely on one side. But his eyes were the most unusual in their almond shape and graced by dark, arched brows lending him a feint whisper of foreign comeliness. Their color was of darkest brown but in their depths was a smattering of rich red cadmium as if speckles had been flicked from a painter's brush.
“My lord,” Amis said, “the town, I think it's been-”
It was the young man's frown that gave it away, the sharp boned cheeks and scowling thin mouth that bore a certain family resemblance to the one Lord Guain had seen before. If Lord Guain had been a man with fewer disciplinary traits, he would have let out a whoop of triumph. Instead he merely smiled, serpentine, at what he had discovered.
“I know,” Lord Guain interjected, “I guessed as much considering the state of things in here. Has anyone followed you? How did you get in?”
“No one to follow me, that I could tell,” Amis said, “and I crawled in through a hole in the outer wall.”
“That hole was miniscule,” Lord Guain said.
“I'm very thin,” Amis admitted, “but I did pull out a few more bricks.”
“And you haven't seen anyone, no one at all, even once you got inside?” Lord Guain said.
“There was nothing to see but death through that awful kitchen,” Amis said.
“Show me,” Guain demanded, heart beating wildly in his chest.
“Over there,” Amis said his eyes lowered.
It had been quite some time since Lord Guain had seen the kitchen, his servants had handled the day to day so skillfully he had rarely been called to attest to its efficiency. But what a kitchen it had become! The corpses laid strewn about covered in dust; clawed hands poised in mid chore. Two ladies were slumped over their bread bowls at the table while one had collapsed while stoking the fire. Everything was just as gray and ash as clouds before a storm.
“They look like dried up ghosts,” Amis said, as his quiet voice trembled slightly, “what could have done this?”
“What do you think?,” Lord Guain asked.
“As if I knew,” Amis said, “plague, maybe?”
“Perhaps,” Lord Guain said, “regardless, there's no more we can do for them except pray for their eternal souls.”
“I'm not very good at praying,” Amis said.
Lord Guain said, “I suppose you wouldn't be.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Amis said, his tone frosty.
“There hasn't been a church in Garstwrot in at least a thousand years,” Lord Guain said.
“Oh,” Amis said, “everyone just goes to Fairfax on Sunday if they have a mind to, it's a prettier town than this.�
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“Did you?” Lord Guain said.
“No,” Amis said, “not lately.”
“Then perhaps we'd best leave prayers for the dead in more skilled hands,” Lord Guain said.
They left the bodies where they lay and closed the door behind them.
When they were in the side hallway, Amis stopped and began breathing heavily against the stone wall and pressed his hand to his forehead. After a few moments he pulled from a ragged looking pouch tied around his waist, a pipe. He yanked open the tiny window in the hallway and then lit it up with a fine looking flint striker and after inhaling some breaths, regarded Lord Guain with nothing less than the greatest of suspicion.
“Are you well?” Lord Guain asked.
“I was sick,” Amis admitted, “I thought I'd died at first, when I woke up.”
“Fever?” Lord Guain said.
“Something like that,” Amis said, “I wasn't feeling well for some weeks but it seemed to come on strong after-”
The mouth clamped shut again and his eyes were lowered in pensive revery. His pipe was still burning but it seemed he had lost interest in it and dumped the ashes from the window. It was difficult to tell what was pipe ash and what was ground, the pale flakes had been falling from the sky so steadily.
“-a shock,” Amis finished, awkwardly.
“It's all right,” Lord Guain said, “well, it's not all right. But there's nothing we can do about it, can we? It must have been a brutal pestilence to do such a thing to an entire town.”
“A pestilence?” Amis said.
“A great pestilence hit the east a few months ago,” Guain said, “we thought it best not to notify the village heads yet as it was so very far away. It must have come in on the ships far faster than we'd thought possible.”
Amis glanced at the floor, “do people normally look like that after a plague? I've never lived through one.”
“After some time in the elements,” Lord Guain admitted.
“I'm sorry,” Amis said, “these are your servants and your friends.”
Amis winced and pressed his hand again to his forehead.