by Mark Anthony
Travis stood—he felt trapped. He rushed to the window and threw it open. Frosty air billowed into the chamber. He should have asked Grace if she minded, but he wanted to feel the wind against his face. No, he needed to feel it, to feel that sense of possibility, that maybe everything would be all right somehow. He gulped in the cold air, then turned to face her. “So what do you think we should do?”
She rose from her chair. “I don’t know, Travis. I think … I think maybe this world needs us. Why else would we be here?”
They gazed at each other in silence, then a flat voice spoke a single word.
“Judgment.”
Travis guessed his own expression was as shocked as hers. He didn’t know where the word had come from, or what it meant. He hadn’t even thought about it.
“It’s late, Grace,” he said. “I should go. We can talk more tomorrow—if you want to, that is. And I’d like to see the door you found, the one with the Raven symbol.”
She shut her eyes, then opened them. “All right, Travis.”
He moved to the door, and she opened the way for him. Then the door shut, and he was alone in the corridor outside. Travis listened to the silence of the castle. A crisp wedge of moonlight spilled through a high window onto the stone floor. He supposed Melia would be angry with him. Then again, what was new about that? With a bitter sort of half smile he turned to go.
A crash sounded from the other side of the door.
Travis turned back and stared at the flat plane of wood. There was another noise—sharp, like something breaking. Terror plunged a stake through his body, into the floor, and pinned him cold and rigid to the spot. What should he do? He didn’t know. It was so hard to decide.…
A muffled scream pierced the wood and shattered Travis’s paralysis like glass. Instinct replaced indecision. He threw his body against the door, ignored the bright flash of pain in his shoulder, and burst into Grace’s room.
It scuttled toward her from the open window. Travis’s first reaction was to turn his head and vomit. The creature was utterly alien. The only image his groping mind could hold on to was that of a blurred juxtaposition of a wolf and a monkey. The thing was malformed, like a breeding experiment gone awry, its limbs twisted and trailing lank hair.
Despite its ungainly shape it moved quickly, alternating between loping on all fours and hobbling on its hind legs. The thing stretched spindly arms toward Grace and opened a blunt muzzle to display a mouthful of fangs. Fey light shone in its round eyes. It had backed her into a corner. Spittle flowed from its mouth.
“Hey!” Travis waved his arms. “Over here!”
It was a stupid thing to say, but there wasn’t time to think of anything witty. Grace looked up, shock written on her face, and the creature whirled around, hissing. Now that he had its attention he wasn’t sure he wanted it. He fumbled for the stiletto at his belt—the gem blazed with crimson light—but before he could draw the blade the creature sprang onto the high four-poster bed and peered down at Travis. He could not rip his gaze from it. The thing licked the mucus from its muzzle with a gray tongue and tensed its hind legs.
“Travis—run!”
Grace’s shout spurred him to action. He stumbled to the side, barely out of the thing’s path. A hot line sliced down his arm where its claw caught him. He tried to lurch around the farside of the bed, but a long arm snaked out, and thin, strong fingers caught his boot. He went down hard on the floor. The air rushed out of him with a painful grunt, and a fetid scent washed over him. He gagged and managed to roll over.
The creature crouched above him. Its matted hair brushed his face. He gazed into its eyes—they were hungry, and tortured, and horribly intelligent. Then it lunged for his throat.
Before teeth contacted flesh, the creature squealed and fell back. Dark blood oozed from a wound in its side. Travis jerked his head up. The iron poker that had been propped on the hearth a moment ago now dropped from Grace’s hands. She watched as, enraged, the creature sprang toward her.
Now Travis did have time to grab his stiletto. In one swift motion that surprised even him, he pulled himself to his knees and brought the knife down. The Malachorian steel sank easily into the thing’s flesh. It let out a shriek and arched its back. However, the blow had missed its spine. It whirled and jerked the knife from Travis’s hand. Twisted as he was on the floor there was no way to move quickly enough. He braced himself for the sensation of fangs ripping into his throat.
The beast went limp and, without a sound, slumped to the floor.
Travis looked up. Grace stood behind the creature, her face a marble mask, her hand smeared with black ichor. The hilt of a small knife protruded from the thing’s neck. With anatomical precision she had slipped the blade into the base of its skull and up into its brain.
“I guess medical school paid off,” Travis managed to say.
Grace only gave a jerky nod.
The sound of booted feet rang out. Travis staggered to his feet in time to see several figures rush into the room. First was the dark-haired knight Durge, followed by Beltan, Falken, and Melia.
“By the blood of the Bull!” Beltan said. “Are you safe, Travis?” He gripped Travis’s arm to steady him.
“I’m all right,” Travis said.
“No, you’re not,” the blond knight said, the line of his jaw hard. “You’re bleeding.”
Travis managed a wan smile. “It goes with the territory. Wasn’t that what you said?”
Beltan scowled. “You’re not a knight, Travis. I am. I should have been here.”
Travis didn’t know what to say. He was just grateful for the big knight’s grip.
Durge had moved to Grace. Now he saw the blood on her hand, and his brown eyes widened in dismay. “My lady! You bleed as well. And it is a fatal wound, no doubt.” He sank to his knees before her and bowed his head. “It is my fault, of course. You cannot possibly forgive me, and now it is too late.”
Grace let out a breath, and her trembling ceased. “Durge, I’m not going to die. It’s not even my own blood. I’m fine.”
The Embarran knight looked up at her, blinked, then cleared his throat. “Oh. Well, then. I am glad you are safe, my lady.” He stood and glanced at Beltan. “But like my fellow knight, I should have been here.”
Melia breezed past the two warriors with a soft rustle. “Actually, it seems Travis and the Lady Grace did well enough without you two.”
Travis glanced at Grace. Impossible, but somehow they both managed to exchange a smile.
A thought occurred to Travis. “Melia, how did you all know to find us here?”
The small lady gave him a sharp look. “When you did not return to our chamber, Falken, Beltan, and I set out to discover what had become of you. Nearby we ran into Sir Durge, who was on his way to call on the Lady Grace.”
Travis frowned. Something about this story didn’t add up. “But how did you know I would be here, in Grace’s chamber?”
Melia only arched an eyebrow and said nothing. Travis knew not to press the point.
Falken knelt beside the hairy tangle of the dead creature, and Melia followed him.
“How can this be?” she said with a furrowing of her brow.
“Feydrim,” Falken said in disgust. He stood again.
Melia cupped her chin in a hand. “First wraithlings, now feydrim.” She regarded the bard. “What creature is going to step out of legend next to trouble us?”
“I don’t know. And why was it even here?”
Now Melia turned her amber gaze on Grace. “Perhaps Lady Grace can tell us that.”
There was a long moment of silence as all turned their attention on Grace. She stood frozen, a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. Travis decided he was steady enough. He moved away from Beltan to the sideboard and poured a cup of wine. He took it to Grace and pressed it into her hands.
“It looks like someone isn’t happy about your playing the king’s spy,” he said.
Grace could only nod as she gulped
down the wine.
68.
Dawn slipped over Castle Calavere, hard and gray as a knight’s mail coat. Through a crack in the shutters that covered the window, Grace watched the dawn come. She had not slept.
Hours earlier, after Travis and the others had left her alone, Durge had said he would stand outside her door for the remainder of the night. The knight’s offer had embarrassed her, but not so much that she hadn’t accepted. It dulled the edge of her panic to know the somber Embarran stood, greatsword ready, just on the other side of the wall. However, rest was an impossibility. Grace’s eyes flickered to the wardrobe. How could she rest knowing that thing was in there?
She tried not to picture it but could not stop herself: its fur—like the rank, mossy coat of a tree sloth—and its spindly limbs, curled beneath it as if it were merely sleeping. She had started to protest when Falken told the knight Beltan to put the dead creature in the wardrobe, then she had bit her tongue. After all, she could understand the bard’s interest. She was a scientist. She knew the value of a rare specimen, knew that it had to be saved and protected.
Then again there was a difference between an abnormal organ floating in a jar of fixative in a medical laboratory and the still-warm carcass of a creature that had tried to rip her throat out with three-inch fangs.
She shivered. You should get the fire going, Grace. It would be a little ironic if you survived an attack by some mythical creature only to freeze to death because you were too stupid to put a log on the coals.
Bare feet soundless against rough carpet, she padded to the fireplace and tried not to notice the sticky substance on the end of the poker as she stirred the embers.
Once the fire was going Grace opened the chamber’s window, lifted the bar from the shutters, and threw them back. Durge had closed the shutters last night, but she supposed it was safe enough now to open them. Wasn’t it?
She leaned out the window, looked down, and breathed in air tasting like sooty snow. It was a long way down to the cobbles that paved the upper bailey, and the wall offered few cracks, fewer ledges, and no vines. Yet somehow the creature had climbed up and crawled in her window. She leaned back and pulled the casement shut.
Now what? It was still early, and the serving maids would not come by with breakfast for at least an hour. She decided she might as well get dressed. Not that there was any rush. Today was the first day of Valdath. The Council of Kings was to convene this midmorning. The nobles in the castle would be far too busy to speak with her. However, if she was lucky, she might get a chance to talk with Travis Wilder.
Then again, her record with her fellow Earthling was dismal to this point. First she had insulted him, then she had nearly gotten him killed. Experience told her she should just leave him alone. Yet she wanted to know more about the symbol she had seen carved on the door—the symbol he had said belonged to the Raven Cult. And about his conversations with Brother Cy and the purple-eyed girl, Child Samanda.
Grace moved to the chair where her gowns were heaped. At least Beltan had had the courtesy to take her clothes out of the wardrobe before he stuffed the body in. She chose a yellow gown she had not worn before, partly because the color was bright and cheerful, and mostly because it rested on top of the stack.
She was still adjusting the gown—a task that seemed never-ending—when she heard the sound of voices outside her door. One was gentle and lilting, the other a solemn baritone. The voices fell silent, then the door burst open, and something blue rushed into the room.
“Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry … if only I had known! Please tell me you’re well!”
Aryn’s pretty face was distraught, and her cornflower eyes bright with alarm. She ran and caught Grace in the half circle of her left arm. Durge stood in the doorway, his usual stony expression altered by a touch of surprise.
“I apologize, Lady Grace,” he said. “I should have knocked before Her Highness opened the door.”
Grace embraced her friend—
Yes, my friend. Is that so impossible?
—and shot the knight a wry smile over Aryn’s shoulder.
“It’s all right, Durge. You were supposed to guard against monsters, not baronesses. You’ve done more than I ever could have asked. I’m grateful—thank you.”
The knight gave a stiff bow.
Grace pushed Aryn away. She led the baroness to the window bench, and in calm words described what had happened the night before. Aryn’s face grew paler as she listened, and she gripped Grace’s hand.
“You were so brave,” the baroness said after Grace finished. “I don’t think I could have done what you did.”
Grace’s gaze dropped to the swath of blue cloth that draped Aryn’s shoulder and hid her withered arm. No, it was Aryn who was the brave one.
“Still, I don’t understand. Certainly this thing was sent to harm you and no other.” The baroness chewed her lip. “But why?”
It was a good question. “I’m not sure, but I think maybe it has to do with my spying for the king.”
Now Aryn sighed. “That could be. It is hardly common for an assassin to be sent to do away with one who has learned too much at court, but it is not unheard of either—although I should think it far more likely to happen in Castle Spardis in Perridon than here in Calavere.” Aryn’s eyes flickered to the closed wardrobe. “Yet even in Spardis, where every sort of skullduggery is practiced, I doubt they have ever witnessed an assassin like the one you describe. Who could have sent such a thing to harm you, Grace?”
“I think I can tell you that.”
Grace and Aryn looked up to see the bard Falken stride into the room. Behind him came Lady Melia, the knight Beltan, and, clad in the same shapeless tunic as the day before, Travis Wilder. Grace rose to her feet and glanced at Durge, who still stood beside the open door.
“No monsters, my lady,” he said. “Only Falken Blackhand and his companions.”
She slapped a hand to her forehead. “Yes, Durge. Of course. Thank you.” Grace made a mental note. Perhaps a few more instructions wouldn’t hurt the next time Durge offered to stand outside her door.
Aryn rose beside Grace. “Lord Falken.” Her words were breathless but bold. “The Lady Grace has told me what transpired here last night, yet I warrant King Boreas has heard nothing of it. We must tell him at once.”
Melia glided past the bard, toward the baroness. “Indeed? Must we?”
Aryn took an unconscious step back, even though she was the taller of the two and royalty. “Of course! The king must know of violence that has occurred in his own keep.”
Melia said nothing, her coppery visage as unreadable as it was beautiful.
“Don’t worry, Lady Aryn,” Falken said. “I plan on telling Boreas about the feydrim—him and all the other kings and queens. The Council of Kings needs to make a decision, and I’m hoping the body of this thing will help convince them of that. But it’s important the other rulers don’t think Boreas knew about it first, that he had information they didn’t. They all have to decide together in this.” The bard fixed his faded blue eyes on Aryn. “Will you agree, Your Highness?”
Aryn shook her head. “I don’t … but the king … I really should …”
Grace reached out, took Aryn’s good hand in her own, and gripped it. “No, Aryn, don’t tell Boreas. Not just yet.”
Aryn stared at her. Grace was surprised herself. It wasn’t as if she knew the bard. Yet maybe she did a little, through the things Travis had told her. Certainly Falken was wise and knew things the others didn’t. She kept her gaze on Aryn, then the baroness let out a breath and nodded. Grace squeezed her hand.
Falken grinned—he really was handsome in a wolfish sort of way—and made a bow toward Aryn. Then the bard glanced at Beltan. “Why don’t you retrieve our little friend?”
Beltan moved to the wardrobe. Grace didn’t want to look, but she craned her neck all the same as Beltan pulled the wardrobe’s doors open.
It was empty.
“By all the Ol
d Ones!” Falken swore, then he looked at Grace. “Did anyone come to your chamber last night? Anyone at all?”
Grace fumbled for words. “No—no one. I was awake all night.”
“No visitors came to Her Radiance’s door until yourselves,” Durge said. “And I barred her window myself.”
“Yet it is gone all the same,” Melia said. She ran a slender hand over the wood of the wardrobe, as if feeling for something, although for what Grace couldn’t guess.
“But who could have taken it?” Falken said.
“Maybe he did.”
Everyone looked up. It was Travis who had spoken. He had been silent the whole while, but now he stepped forward. His gray eyes were strange behind his spectacles: distant, afraid.
“Who do you mean, Travis?” Grace said. “Who took it?”
He flexed his right hand—the arm rested in a sling. Grace had bandaged the cut from the feydrim herself. It had not looked serious, but she did not want to take a chance with infection, not in this world.
“Him. The Pale King. In Imbrifale.”
Grace did not understand these words, but they sent a chill up her spine all the same.
Travis looked at the bard. “Wasn’t this thing one of his servants? Like … like the others, at the White Tower?”
Falken gave a slow nod. Travis pressed his eyes shut.
“Wait a minute,” Beltan said. “What’s this?” The knight bent and retrieved something from the bottom of the wardrobe. He stood, and Grace gasped. In his hand was a sprig of evergreen.
She didn’t remember stumbling, didn’t remember Durge catching her in strong, rough hands and easing her into the chair by the fire, didn’t remember Aryn pressing a cup of wine into her hand. The next thing she knew she was talking, the words tumbling out of her, as she spoke of the night she had awakened to the sound of bells, how she had wandered the castle and had spied small footprints in the snow, and had returned to her chamber to find on her pillow …