by Veras Alnar
That night they went through the lonely tower and closed any open door or shutter. It was an extreme response but Lord Guain reminded them that diseases were the least of their worries.
“Bandits,” Lord Guain said, “rival Lords and even unemployed knights are surprisingly vigorous when they know of a holding that's suffered sudden misfortune.”
“It would be an ambitious lot of bandits to attack a stone keep,” Fulk said, “without knowing in advance of its interior.”
“Who is to say bandits aren't responsible,” Lord Guain said, “they could have herded miasma into the town, or rats carrying disease, poisoned water, the options are limitless.”
“Edgen and Hune do hate each other I'll give you that,” Fulk said, “We're right on the river, who can say if it's not a royal plot. What do you think Amis?”
“I defer to the son of a bandit prince in matters of schemes,” Amis said.
“Goodness,” Lord Guain said, “more bitter than monkshood.”
“He's got a lot on his mind,” Fulk said, “like how he'll wield his fancy sword with arms so thin, if he should find it in the town.”
“Shut up,” Amis said, through gritted teeth.
“Well, I know where I would look first if I thought it was stolen,” Lord Guain said, archly “were you a knight for hire, Amis?”
“No,” Amis said.
“Fought in any wars as hired militia?” Lord Guain said, unabated.
“No,” Amis said.
“He'll not tell you,” Fulk said, “not unless you throw him in the dungeons with only bread and water and even then, you might have only a skeleton left in a day dismissing your questions with the gape of its eyes.”
“Shut up!” Amis said, with emphasis.
Lord Guain sighed mightily, “and I suppose so steady a friend wouldn't tell his secrets to just anyone, would they?”
“I still have my honor as a man, my lord,” Fulk said, smirking, “and in this hell, there's naught to pay the devil with or any friends I would think to trust.”
Lord Guain was clearly frustrated by this but he pressed no further. Amis hunched his shoulders against any questions and looked firmly away from Lord Guain's prying eyes. The clever Lord was watching him for tells betraying his old life, and those were always the hardest to hide.
“Then let us at least eat together, before bed,” Lord Guain said, “if not as friends then at least my guests. Amis, would you mind helping me?”
“I suppose,” Amis said, “my lord.”
As it was, supper was pantry stores of bread and cheese and a few sad looking pears pulled from the fall stores. Staring at them with some longing, as Amis hadn't been allowed fruit, he cut them up into slices and put them plain on plates.
“Honey and spices,” Lord Guain said, his tone amused, “have you never made pears before?”
“I wasn't allowed to have them,” Amis said.
“It must have been a mean kitchen you were brought up in. Here,” Lord Guain opened a small wooden box, “there are spices from all over the world here, bought at great expense. At worst, we could probably sell them to survive for another few months if we had a way to get to Fairfax.”
“These would pay for the running of a keep?” Amis said, aghast.
“Oh yes,” Lord Guain said, “and in the right market, even more. But here, take the sticks and grind them over the pears and add the honey. I'm looking for the better wines.”
Amis did as he was told and it looked so pretty and smelled so fine he wanted to eat them straight away. Instead he brought them out along with their dried and seasoned venison and cups and nearly toppled over when he saw Fulk leaning back in a chair strumming a lute.
“Where were you,” Amis snapped.
“Pilfering a lute,” Fulk said, “how am I supposed to curry favor from our lord without a song? Sit down Amis and close your mouth, it's catching flies.”
“I didn't know you played anything so fancy,” Amis said.
“Now you do,” Fulk said.
“Do you think Lord Guain will allow it,” Amis said, tartly, “perhaps he doesn't like music.”
When Lord Guain walked into the hall, he was carrying a large number of bottles and noticed Fulk's lute straight away.
“Oh that's a wonderful idea,” Lord Guain said, setting the wine on the table, “after dinner, I would surely appreciate some music to brighten these dour halls.”
Fulk smirked in Amis direction, as if to say 'see?'
It left him rather sour.
The food was decent but to Amis' immense disappointment when he bit into a pear it tasted only like slightly flavored paste.
“Are they stale?” Lord Guain asked, noticing his distaste.
“No,” Amis said, prodding one with a fork, “it just tastes like...sweetened air.”
“But the wine and meat are fine,” Lord Guain said.
“Oh yes,” Amis said, “they're good. The wine is lovely.”
“I'll eat them if you don't,” Fulk said.
“I'm not giving you my fruit!” Amis snapped.
He crammed several in his mouth and chewed with some distaste and swallowed, he supposed the spices added something but it wasn't how pears were supposed to taste. Perhaps so long without them had dulled his taste buds into dust.
“Perhaps illness has dulled your tongue,” Lord Guain suggested.
“I'm not sick now,” Amis said, irritated by his coddling.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, Lord Guain turned to Fulk.
“What songs do you know, grave master?” Lord Guain asked him.
“Many, my Lord,” Fulk said, “but if you'd like, I can sing something a lot more rare than Ulsfr's Last Days. I thought you might fancy something about your keep, here.”
“A song about Garstwrot?” Lord Guain said, looking terribly eager.
“More about Garstwren,” Fulk said, “that rapscallion who founded this place. I don't think anyone else would know it but I met a man on the road who had offered a translation, in exchange for another song. He was a foreigner you see, came from the south and had a lot of strange ditty's no one had ever heard of. So I gave him a version of the Song of Elaine that was a bit unusual in exchange for this one, a little known lament about times long past.”
“I should very much want to hear it,” Lord Guain said, eyes shining.
“I can sing you some,” Fulk said, “but it's enormously long since it came from the druids and they're a long winded lot, like to spend more of the night singing songs than sleeping especially at feasts.”
Fulk raised his lute and clicked his tongue as if to clear his voice. When the song began, Amis was slightly dismayed to realize that Fulk could actually sing.
Leave me under the bower of a red rose,
Where the water meets the nettle,
In the places where Garstwren stepped,
Where the earth has never settled;
Let me fly with the devils,
And sing from the reddened windows,
Hearing gentle cries from the crows,
As my lover becomes endowed,
With the love Garstwren espoused,
For those who flew on brooms,
Nude and breasts exposed in air,
When they stroked his hair with their fine combs,
Draw me to your dying breast,
As He wept with Orgum's head,
And leave me under the dying oaks,
Or carried across the fens,
Then let me lie as Ulsfr did
On Garstwren's glorious throne of dread.
Fulk ceased his singing and Amis felt like a lump had formed in his throat. The song had been slightly discordant though very comely, but it didn't feel like so much as a tune to play to cheer oneself as a spell being cast.
“That's...awfully sinister,” Amis said.
“It was magnificent,” Lord Guain said, with passionate intensity, “is there any more?”
“Oh yes,” Fulk said, “several more stanzas about Garstwr
en's comely features, like his cloven hooves and blood stained teeth. Along with a bit of naughty poetry about the formidable nature of his bits and the satisfaction of all the witches he cavorted with. They're a rather more ribald lot in the south, it would have gone over well with their old kings hearing all that kind of debauchery.”
“I must know all of it,” Lord Guain said, “has it been put to pen?”
“Not by me,” Fulk said, “but I still have the vellum he traded. I suppose since I know it by heart I could part with it, for a price. Not in gold, mind. Something tradable.”
The earth rumbled under their feet and Amis found himself feeling most uneasy after hearing such a strange song.
“Who knows what sort of world we'll find after leaving this keep,” Fulk said, “if the Kings have offed each other, if one has taken over. Or if some other crew has swept in from east or west.”
“You're a pragmatic thinker,” Lord Guain said, “Some mutual agreement can be reached, I'm sure. Amis, you may do as you will, Fulk and I can handle the kitchen and the nature of his payment.”
Amis felt a keen sense of dismissal, he wasn't a singer or a poet and therefore he was much less useful than everyone else, just like always. He left the hall without a word and decided to pilfer a candle from the kitchen and peer into the dark courtyard.
The ashes had stopped falling for the moment but the gray snow-like covering was even more unsettling at night. In the darkness Amis could just make out the glinting white bones of an ancient horse resting in the grass and see the closed up well beyond, almost entirely engulfed in darkness. With no moon or stars it was almost like an abyssal hole had swallowed up half the keep in its deep maw.
After the discomfiting view, the dark of the solar room upstairs gave Amis a shiver. Unlike the downstairs these were chambers meant for occasional use and they were more stony and less embellished, the perfect sort of place for a ghost to appear. Fulk had come in early, seeing his trepidation and prodded him in the back giving him a terrible fright.
“You bastard!” Amis said, “if I'd had my sword I'd have cut off your head on accident! And felt not a smidgeon of guilt!”
“I've no worries now then,” Fulk said, his crooked smirk glinting behind his held candle, “those thin arms without their metal were never very strong.”
Amis looked away, he wouldn't play the game Fulk so enjoyed. He would try not to make a further fool of himself by getting angry.
But the image of the ghost wouldn't leave him, what was she if not Lady Anna? Or if she wasn't, what dread thing had been done to keep her from her eternal rest? It was an unpleasant thought and Amis wished his mind wasn't so keen on thinking about it. Lord Guain was in his room in the solar above, besides Fulk who was of no help at all, Amis was entirely alone.
The bed however, was certainly a magnificent consolation prize. He hadn't slept in a bed so fine since...since...he wouldn't think about it. Amis ran his hands over the carved wood and marveled at its strength and beauty. Roses and lions, the taste of whatever master had last owned the keep.
“Not jewels or fine clothes,” Fulk mocked, “but a bed that does you in for a thief.”
“Shut up,” Amis said, kicking off his shoes.
Fulk laughed, high in his nose in an obnoxious fashion.
“Don't forget to tighten the ropes,” Fulk said.
Looking under the bed Amis made sure his bedding was secure, his straw strong smelling and the cushions warmed with the hot rocks from their fire. He had forgotten almost everything but it came back to him. Far better than he had ever had in his father's wretched, threadbare house sleeping in hay piles on the floor.
“When would you have ever slept in something like this,” muttered Amis.
“Because of a woman,” Fulk said, “of course.”
“Of course,” Amis said bitingly, hardly thinking it was true.
It was an unbearable luxury. Laying on the feather mattress and soft pillows Amis felt a sudden wave of anxiety overtake him. He had been avoiding thinking about it all day. Tomorrow they would go into the town and they would know. The deathly silence emanating from outdoors was a poignant reminder that all was not well in Garstwrot and might never be again.
IV
After what felt like ages of turning and writhing, Amis finally fell asleep and dreamed. Worse still, he dreamed all the way back to the beginning of his troubles.
He was in his mother's house, its stone walls rising high and higher as they had when he was a little boy. Their tilted walls leaned down towards him but not in safety, rather as a prison he couldn't escape. He recalled his father's face as he welcomed him into town, cold and reserved. The distant way Martin treated him, pushed into a room separate from the family and left alone on an uncomfortable pile of straw missing his old bed. And finally worst of all, the fire lit face of Durgia the blacksmith's daughter, his most darling lover, who looked at him with a strained kind of pity.
“Keep your arms straight,” she had said, “and it will be easier for you both.”
His arms had wavered holding his sword, it had seemed so heavy. And down beneath him laying on a stone table, like the one Durgia's father used to kill the winter pig, was a writhing pile of swaddling.
“One strike,” Durgia said gently, “make it clean.”
It was impossible, he trembled so badly he missed the first time. Sweat was getting on his brow, he felt weak. He knew it was the first inkling of his terrible illness. The baby's wail became a horrendous sound loud as an animal, screaming like a cacophony of voices with their weapons drawn and raised. Searching for him as he stumbled through the dark, crashing through trees and dying, so alone and so desperate in the barn.
With a start and drenched in sweat, Amis woke up in bed. He took in several heaving gasps and helplessly wept against his pillow. He expected to hear some mocking from Fulk if he'd been awake but when he turned his head after his tears had dried, he noticed that Fulk's bed was empty.
And yet, Amis had a strange feeling that he wasn't alone in the room.
Feeling slightly ill from fear, Amis could hear a sound under his bed. The embers of the fire had burned low and it seemed as if the room was engulfed in a darkness far deeper than nighttime. The scratching sounds continued and Amis steeled himself, he would not be called a coward by anyone even in his own head. He leaped over and tore up the low hanging blanket to reveal....
Nothing.
There was nothing under his bed, not even very much dust had gathered. But the scratching grew louder and Amis had a mind to think it was actually coming from the fireplace. All manner of fears and imaginings flitted through his head but when he reached the bricked up front he noticed that some false back had been put into place, just like the blocked up rooms upstairs. When his hand gently pressed the warmed back some plaster came away just like in the old hallway. Then the scratching reappeared but came from behind him and shifted along the walls like a moving wave until it went silent. Turning around sharply, Amis let out a shriek when he saw who was standing on his bed.
It was the white woman, the ghost of Lady Anna.
“Garstwreeen,” she hissed in a drawn out voice, impossible and inhuman.
The scratching began to reach a fever pitch, it was almost pounding it was so hard against the plaster backing of the fireplace. Without Fulk to assuage him that it was only a dream, Amis was terrified, he shrank back. The ground under his feet rumbled and rattled, shaking the shuttered windows of the room.
“GARSTWREEN”
The woman shrieked, rending her white dress and exposing her chest covered in effervescent blood. It ran everywhere like white hot fluid, spilling all over the sheets and floor. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she made the most horrific, agonized faces. Her chest heaved, her body trembled and shuddered as if she were being stabbed again and again with such force he could see her organs heave inside her chest.
Amis screamed, he clamped his hands over his eyes.
All went silent.
Shaking like a leaf he peered through his splayed fingers, he was relieved when he saw no one and felt his own sweat sticking to his brow. There was nothing of the ghost only the bed Amis had rumpled by leaving all himself. He pressed his hand to his forehead; he could still be feverish. It must be that he was still sick. His imagination was unleashing itself and crushing into his own foolish guilt.
But then from the hall more scratching came and this sounded like a din of little animal feet skittering along the floor followed by a tinkling, feminine laugh. Sweat soaked and shaking, Amis tried to gather his strength and assure himself. It was only nothing, he would find Fulk or Lord Guain playing a trick and all the nightmares would be quelled and put in their place. He had to be sure of it because if his sanity had snapped he'd have no way of knowing by himself.
When he opened the door he was alarmed at the hallway's intense blackness, it was so dark even the shuttered window that dripped moonlight seemed swallowed up. Touching the walls with his hands he made his way nearly blind towards the direction he thought was Lord Guain's bedroom in the main upper solar, however, no doors could be seen. But just as he was about to turn a corner and go down the spiral staircase he saw the sliding shape of a beautiful, violet cape slither through a crack in the door. The skittering steps increased and Amis knew, with growing dread that someone was coming up behind him. Harsh, hot breathing blew past his ears and the tiny feet grew heavier until they were almost a thudding. Staying still out of fear more than anything else, Amis could feel the gentle caress of a tail slipping between his bare knees. His night shirt nearly stuck to his back and yet against it, he felt the delicate trail of nails. It might have been a woman's hand except when Amis dared look to his side a great clawed hand was next to him.
He screamed and whirled around.
There was nothing but skittering in the dark but he was lost in the keep, no where to be found until daylight he was sure of it. The footsteps thundered around him and he felt it again, the lizard-like tail between his legs sweeping around it. Then he heard a snort and felt some animal breath next to his cheek.
“GARSTWREN”
He heard in his ear, like a thunderous rumble from the earth.