This was an actual garden at some point. There are dry patches of grave-gray earth where plants and flowers once grew, stone benches to sit and contemplate, empty pots carved from the same black rock as the mountain face.
In the middle of it all, the tree stands, gripping what lies within its roots.
The stone table stands heavy, rooted. The sword lies upon it, as red as blood. Too much light moves along its surface, dancing like sunbeams on water. I set the candle down and climb up on the table, crouching. The scabbard leans against the edge, unused.
I sit down next to it and lean over.
The blade is right there. I am looking straight down, but it reflects the tree and the sky and the winking stars as they awaken in the night, but there is no sign of me.
I can’t see my own reflection in the steel.
Gingerly I touch the flat of the blade. It doesn’t feel like metal, harsh and cold to the touch. The surface is slightly warm, and it feels more like stone, if there’s a difference. It makes no sense, whatever it is.
My hand rests on the grip. I close my fingers around it, feeling the wire press into my palm.
Something happens. A jolt. It’s like it bit me.
I pull my hand back, but it won’t let go. It won’t move, either. Budging just slightly, it feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Then I finally manage to peel my hand away. My skin is raw and chafed, like a rug burn. It stings.
The first snowflake kisses my burning skin, and then another and another. I look up to watch them drift through cold, dead branches, and shriek in alarm, stumbling back from the tree.
The dead tree has borne strange fruit.
Dead men hang in the branches, the points driven through their bodies in a macabre display. Heart pounding, I stumble back and trip, and go down hard on my backside. When I look up the snow has picked up speed, falling faster and faster.
“You again.”
I whirl and throw myself to my feet, dancing back. Where did that come from?
Turning on my feet, I stop when I see her. The woman steps out from behind the tree, ignoring the feet swaying above her head. Her face is cloaked in darkness inside a deep hood. I can see her chin and pale, cold lips.
“Me again?” I gulp. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
She laughs, dark cloak swirling around her as she moves, circling me. I keep my eyes on her, glancing at the sword.
“Oh, that won’t help you,” she says.
A pale hand traces down the length of the blade. Her fingers are thin and white as snow, her nails an inky blue black.
“Who are you?”
“Who am I? Who are you?”
“Okay, we can stop this now. I’m sorry I touched your sword.”
She darts toward me and I break into a run, pointlessly circling the tree. I turn back for only a second but when I look ahead she’s there. I skid to a stop on icy stones and breathe in frozen daggers. It’s cold.
Hands like frozen steel grip my head, hard nails digging into the flesh of my cheeks. Some terrible, clenching terror keeps me from looking at her face. I look up instead, and scream.
Conrad dangles from the branches, fresh blood trickling from his chest where the branches have run him through.
I jerk loose of the thing gripping my cheeks and yank her wrists away. I fall to the ground, and behind me the doors are open.
The doors are open.
Twenty feet tall and solid iron, they yawn wide into a dark cavern. Dark only for a moment. I take one step inside and a light rises, falls, rises, falls. It pulses bright and soft, bright and soft, calling me forward.
The second sword is stuck point down in the ground, leaning at a drunken angle. Except it’s not a sword. It’s solid crystal, perfectly shaped and carved into a weapon with a long hilt, though slender and made for a woman’s hand, and a blade as thin as a reed but deadly sharp.
I run in and grab it. A hard yank and it comes loose from the ground with a soft noise, and I turn to face my pursuer.
“Put that down,” she says. “Take your filthy hands off it. It’s not for you.”
She lunges for me and I raise the weapon high, screaming.
Then Conrad’s fingers dig into my shoulders and he shakes me, hard.
“Roxanne!” he bellows.
I wake in a room full of people. Conrad, his daughters, Adrian, the old man they called the doctor. Marta and Bors lurk outside.
I wriggle in Conrad’s grasp but he doesn’t let go.
“I’m awake,” I pant, and my mind screams at me that I was awake the entire time.
Conrad kneels on the bed and takes me in his arms.
“You wouldn’t stop screaming. How did you hurt your hand?”
I glance down at my palm. It’s red and raw, chafed…or burned. It stings.
The doctor takes it in his palm. His shaky hands hold mine, and I wince when he touches my raw palm.
“What is it? What happened to her?”
“A burn,” he says. “Not severe. Perhaps it will blister, but not if I apply a salve. I’ll prepare one. Bring her.”
I must have fallen asleep in my clothes. I’m still wearing the green dress.
Except I was not sleeping. I know I wasn’t. I know like I know that I’m in this room, that Conrad has pulled me into his lap.
The doctor isn’t long in returning. More spry than he looks, he appears again with a squat little jar full of foul smelling white-gray ointment and smears it all over my hand before wrapping it in linen.
At least it makes my skin stop burning. The throbbing dulls, my hand weirdly cool.
“Leave us,” Conrad says.
Everyone files out. Saska gives me a curious look before turning and walking with her brother.
Conrad closes the door and sits on the bed beside me. I hold my hand in my lap. It’s a useless club of bandages for now.
“How did you burn yourself?” he says.
Some stupid girly part of me is excited that he sounds so concerned. Not concerned, even, frightened. He can’t seem to take his hands off me right now. He caresses my shoulder.
I lean against him and he doesn’t draw back.
“I had a weird dream. I found a secret passage in the library…”
I tell him all of it. The passages, the sword, the weird woman, the crystal blade. He listens intently, nodding but saying nothing.
“There is no passage in the library. There’s no suit of armor on display there. All the armor in the castle is in the armory.”
“I know. It wasn’t there when I was with Nina and Adrian. It seemed so real, though. I just had to pull on it and everything opened up.”
Conrad slips a stray lock of hair away from my eyes, turning it in his fingers.
“You’re frightened.”
I am. I think I am. I’m not sure what I feel. A strange excitement pulses in my veins, swirls in my heart. My fingers twitch, even the burned ones.
What’s happening to me?
“Stay with me,” he says.
I snap out of my reverie and smile dully at him then force my expression neutral.
“In your room?”
“Yes. I’ve already sent for proper clothes for you. It seems I mustn’t take my eye off you for too long or you go wandering. You must have been sleepwalking. You probably burned your hand on a brazier or a candle.”
I nod. That makes sense. I was sleepwalking while I had some weird dream. The courtyard is just creepy.
“Come, let me show you.”
When we reach his rooms I step out onto his balcony and look down. There are no corpses on the tree and the big iron doors are solidly closed.
“What’s in there?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am,” he says, resting his hands on my shoulders. “I swear by my mother’s grave, I’ve never been beyond those doors. For all I know they lead nowhere, to bare rock.”
I nod and turn to face him.
&n
bsp; “Are you alright, now?”
“I think so. I was screaming?”
“Yes. I couldn’t understand you. The servants sent for me.”
“I thought you knew everything that happens here?”
He frowns, and leads me back inside. “Sit, would you?”
While I curl up on his deep couch, he stacks split wood and starts a fire. When it picks up and starts to warm the room, he sits back beside me, sinking into it.
“You like a big fire.”
“I hate cold,” he says, eyes still closed.
In the warm firelight, Conrad is gorgeous. His skin is just this side of pale, his unbound hair molten gold, shot through with streams of silver. I resist the urge to play with it, just barely. Instead I inch closer.
He doesn’t pull away from me.
“I was nineteen years old when I picked it up for the second time. The first, it hurt my hand and it was so heavy I couldn’t even lift it. My father looked me in the eye and told me, ‘Do you see? Never touch it.’ Until he passed it to me I never did. Do you see?”
“I think so. It hurt your hand?”
“It was like it bit me. It left a welt on my palm for a week.”
I shudder, thinking of my own hand. I flex the fingers against the bandages and feel the ointment squeeze against my skin.
This time I shift closer, so close my leg brushes his calf and I can rest my hand on his arm.
Best to just ask him straight out.
He doesn’t look up.
“Conrad, please. What is that thing? What in God’s name is it?”
“That depends on which god you mean,” he says.
My grip tightens.
He sits up and pulls me close, resting his head against mine.
“If I tell you, I will sound stark raving mad and you will go screaming from this room and never return.”
“I doubt that.”
He sighs, a long, weary sigh, and holds me all the tighter.
“Let’s forget about these things. I have a proposal for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“Stay with me until the moon turns, and then go. Leave.”
“Why is it so important that I leave?”
He pulls me closer.
“It’s not safe for you here.”
I sit up and pull away from him, just slightly.
“Did I have a dream, or didn’t I?”
“There’s no knight guarding any hidden passage in my library that I know,” he says. “Yet things have changed. Perhaps there was once a knight. I think it was a dream, but here truth can become dream and dream can become truth. It was a warning of what is to come.”
I tense in his arms and press against him.
No, no it can’t be, I won’t let it.
“Conrad,” I say. “Just tell me. I won’t think you’re crazy or hate you. I promise. Talk to me.”
“It’s difficult,” he says. “I have many ghosts. They crowd around me every hour of every day, whispering in my ear.”
I look around the room and press up against him.
“That was a metaphor.”
“Oh.”
Conrad shifts his weight, sits up to lean toward the fire. I lean in next to him, shoulder to shoulder, watching him mull it over, chew on it.
Just when I think he won’t speak again, he begins.
“This castle was built in the year thirteen hundred and eighty-three. My ancestor sought a commanding view of the valley floor, his new lands granted him for his service in war against the Turks. He carved his seat from the very living rock of the mountain, meaning to use the stone he quarried to build the walls.”
A chill runs down my spine. It hits me just before he says it.
“The doors weren’t put there, they were found. They were already in the rock. All of it was. The tree, the garden, everything. When the quarrymen hit the tree with their picks, the picks broke.”
“What about the sword?” I ask.
“It was behind the doors. No one knows how they came to open. My father did not tell me and I think his father did not tell him, back to the beginning. The only thing I know is that the von Grauberg who built the castle emerged from within the mountain with a new blade, and a new wife.”
A new wife.
“What kind of new wife?”
“A woman,” he says, almost a grunt. “They usually are.”
I snort.
“The first Count von Grauberg became a terrible tyrant. His law was cruelty and his judgment was dark and terrible. Men guilty of petty crimes would be executed by impalement upon the tree and left there to rot. The castle became an awful, haunted place.”
Shivering despite the heat of the fire, I press to his side.
“Then what?”
“The count’s son by his first wife took up his father’s sword, for were he armed with it, no man could slay him. He struck down the madman in a single blow and had him mounted on the tree for all to see.”
“What happened to the woman from the cave?”
“Gone. Vanished.”
I shiver.
Gone. Vanished.
Is she?
None of this makes any sense. I shake my head, realize I’m trembling.
“Why can’t I leave?”
He frowns. “If you try to pass the border, you will find yourself back here. I remember once I asked the very same question. It was not long before my father passed. I was yet a boy. I rode my horse to the border in daylight on some random day and galloped straight past, stones be damned. I found myself back inside, riding in the opposite direction. It’s as if the world ends at those stones.”
I swallow, hard. My head is swimming, my hand throbbing.
Did I die in the crash? Is this some weird afterlife? I can’t figure out if it’s supposed to be heaven or hell.
“When the moon goes black and I have to leave, why don’t you come, too? Go with me. Bring your kids. Let someone else be count.”
He glances toward the window.
“I of all people can’t. It won’t let me.”
I look out, past him, at the stars.
“How did it come to you?”
“My father died,” he says sharply. “That’s all there was.”
He stands up, pulls away from me.
No, I’m not letting this go.
“Tell me what happened.”
He walks out to the balcony and leans, looking down.
“Eliara. My first wife’s name was Eliara. My father went mad, called her a witch. He had he tied to the tree, was convinced if he executed her the curse would be broken and we’d all be free. I wrestled his blade away from him and cut him down, and married her. She was already pregnant with Saska, our first child. I couldn’t give her my name, she was conceived out of wedlock, but Adrian I raised as my heir, and Nina,” he sighs.
It all spills out of him at once. I touch my hand to his back and he tenses, then relaxes. Turning to me, he says, “My family history is one of grief and madness. My grandfather died of natural causes, but he was bedridden for ten years. He killed his own brother. It goes back farther than that. Half of my family tree cut its branches from the trunk. I spend my days wondering what will bring Adrian to kill me. Will I even know the madness has taken me?”
I swallow, hard. What the hell am I supposed to say to that?
“You don’t seem mad or crazy to me. You’ve been nothing but kind to me.”
I trail off and we look at each other.
He’s been nice to me. He cut down a dozen men with his red sword right in front of me. When the dark moon comes, he grabs that thing and rides out into the dark to do God knows what.
“You are afraid of me,” he says, so sad my heart goes cold.
“I am. A little. I admit it,” I say, “but I don’t think you’re a bad person.”
“You haven’t asked me what happened to my first wife.”
I shudder. He feels it, the little tremble of my hand, and sighs, turning from
me.
“Take the bed. I’ll sleep out here.”
“No, don’t,” I say, grabbing his arm. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He weighs that for a moment. He looks at me and touches my arm, glances down at my hand.
“If only to keep you from wandering off again. The trunk is still there. Call to me when you’ve found a nightgown.”
I slip into his bedroom, weave around the bed, and go through the trunk until I find something. I sort of hoped he’d hidden some skimpy lingerie for me to model for him, but it’s all so practical.
Compared to the dress I wore all day, at least, this is somewhat revealing. It hangs to my ankles but leaves my neck and shoulders and arms bare, and I’m wearing nothing beneath it.
“Conrad?”
He steps into the room and shrugs out of his jacket.
I should step out. He thinks about saying something, I can see it in his eyes, but doesn’t. I turn around, facing away. He coughs, and when I turn back he’s stripped to the waist in loose trousers and his bare feet.
He heats up the brazier with hot coals from the fireplace and its warmth radiates throughout the room. The wind howls outside.
“When will it snow?” I ask him as he draws the blankets back.
“Winter comes fast and hard here,” he says. “Soon.”
I giggle.
He gives me a quizzical look. I crawl into the bed and settle on my side, curled up. He lies on his side.
Conrad is very tense. He holds his back straight, his arms at his sides. I touch his shoulder and he rolls over to face me, moving close.
Then he sits up and leans over me, blowing out the candle on the table with a sharp puff of air. He lies down beside me, close enough that I can feel his breath.
His hand takes mine, fingers curling gently around my palm.
This time my sleep is quiet. Mostly.
I jerk awake a few times. Something warm pressed into my hand. It must have been Conrad touching me in his sleep. He’s as gorgeous in the dark as he is by light.
Slipping closer to him, I turn away.
By morning he’s taken me in his arm, pulled my back to his chest, my hips to his. I am awakened before him, nudged out of sleep by the strangely pleasant sensation of his erection pushing into my back.
When he does wake up he snaps back quickly and rolls over. I stop myself from laughing and smile instead, then lie on my back while he stands up.
Count On Me Page 12