He slips loose.
“God forgive me.”
He unsheathes the sword.
I stumble back as a wave of cold swirls around me, buffeting my dress. The blade glows red in his fist, the thin, reedy sound I heard earlier growing to an almost satisfied thrum.
Resting the flat of the blade in his hands, Conrad lowers it onto Adrian’s body then takes the boy’s hands and curls them around the grip. They tighten there, trembling, as if crushed against the hilt by invisible hands holding them tight.
Adrian groans, a rattling, pained noise bubbling out of his throat along with a thin, foamy pink stream of blood down his cheek.
“He needs a doctor, not a sword,” I shout, tugging Conrad’s arm. “Whatever this is, it’s crazy.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Saska says. “It’s our only hope. He’ll die, Conrad. Then what will you do?”
“Enough,” he roars. “Out, both of you out, back outside. I’ll stand vigil over him.”
“If you stay, I stay.” I grab his wrist.
He doesn’t shake loose.
“Saska, out,” he says.
As she strides off, he looks at me, pained.
“You will wish you’d left. I beg you, go.”
“Whatever’s happening, I’m not letting you face it alone.”
He pulls me into his arms and watches his son.
Something is happening. My skin begins to crawl.
It starts at his hands. Something flows from between the gold wire wrapping the sword’s grip, an inky-black ichor that clings to Adrian’s skin. It slides over his body, flowing into the pulsing wound on his shoulder, under his shirt. The sword’s light is a steady pulse, rising and falling, rising and falling.
“What’s it doing?” I whisper.
“Healing him,” Conrad says, moving to sit on one of the stone benches. “It has that power.”
“That’s incredible,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “All its gifts are poison. This is no different. For this it will exact a heavy toll on us. I only hope that it took enough tonight.”
“Took?”
He looks at me then away, pained. I press closer, slipping my arms around his bare middle.
“Raiders set on the village. They came from the east, I don’t know where. They set fire to the fields and the village. It will all be burned by morning.”
I frown.
“Wait,” I say. “Where’s your brother?”
“He left a few days ago and hasn’t returned. I know what you are thinking. You’re probably right.”
“It was him?”
Conrad nods, terribly weary.
“Why?”
He moves to the ground and leans back against the bench. I sit beside him and stare. The…stuff coming out of the sword is thickening around Adrian’s body, like the roots of a tree growing into his skin, pulsing with the same red light as the cursed blade.
“I can’t tell anyone,” Conrad says. “There’s no one to tell. I don’t dare.”
“What what’s like?”
He takes my hand.
“You can tell me,” I whisper.
He squeezes. “It’s like a shard of broken glass in my mind. I hear it. It’s never silent. Begging me, cajoling me, pleading with me, insulting me. When I sleep it’s there in my skull, polluting my dreams with its promises and oaths and snarling threats.”
“The sword? You mean it talks?”
“Not the sword. The thing inside the sword. The one that feeds on the souls of anyone I strike down with it. It’s not their blood it wants, it’s their very essence. The cold you feel from it isn’t true cold, it’s a pull on your soul. It is evil, and yet…”
He looks at Adrian as he lies still, barely breathing, the sword wrapping his body.
“Look what I’ve done,” Conrad says, his voice on the edge of sobbing.
My stomach sinks.
“Oh God. This is my fault. If I’d made him leave, we wouldn’t be here now.”
Conrad looks at me now, and I wilt, but he takes me by the shoulder and pulls me in.
“No. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
His whole body shakes.
“You want the truth. You begged me. So the truth is given. I warn you one last time, you will not like what you hear.”
I swallow, and think.
Something is wrong. I pull back from Conrad just slightly, then press against him once more.
It’s getting dark, but the sun should be coming up. There are no stars in the black sky, no moon. The only light pulses from the sword, growing stronger as the dark gets hungry. Soon it’s pitch black.
A candle flickers to life somewhere in the courtyard, then another. A lamp lights. The flames are pale and sickly and cold and give no heat.
I press closer to Conrad. In the pale light even he looks sickly.
“How are you still so beautiful even here?” he says.
“Tell me the truth,” I say.
He closes his eyes. “I am not the man you think I am. I led you to believe an ancestor of mine built this castle. That is only half true, in the barest sense.”
I gulp down my dry throat. My hands shake a little. “Ah, what do you mean?”
“A man’s father is his ancestor, is he not?”
I sit back and stare at him.
“You said this place was built over six hundred years ago. Your father couldn’t have built it.”
“He did. I was only a boy when we came here. These lands belonged to no one but themselves, in those days. My father was a knight, but he was also a mercenary. He served the overlord of Harkania well. The nobility here all came from Germany—invaders and conquerors. That is why we speak the German tongue with each other and the village folk speak another.”
This is insane, but he says it so earnestly.
“Then how are you still alive? Is everyone else…are you immortal? Are you all ghosts? Am I dead? Did I die in the plane crash?”
He winces at the urgency of my questions, and shakes his head.
“No, it’s not like that. Listen to me and I will tell you the story.”
I nod and rest against his shoulder, watching the sickly red light pulsing from his son. Adrian’s feet stir, his toes jerking in the air.
“The villagers warned my father against building his castle on the mountain slope, but he didn’t listen. The ground is too open; even the low hills aren’t as defensible. He had a vision of a fortress impregnable, unable to be assaulted from above thanks to sheer cliffs and impassable mountains, with a commanding view of every approach and an impassable dry moat. So he set about building it.”
Conrad shrugs. “The easiest source for the stone was the mountain itself, and a natural table in the rock needed to be carved out and expanded, so father hired quarrymen and craftsmen to accomplish just that. When I was ten years old, the doors were found.”
He glances back at them, and slips his arm around my waist.
“Father spent half a year trying to open them. Everything in his power, he tried. Prying, battering, ramming. In those days, explosives were unknown to us.”
“He got them open.”
“No, they opened for him. When the witch appeared. She was beautiful, the most stunning woman I have ever seen, tall and slender and long of limb, high breasted, with a face that ached to look upon, but her eyes were terrible and cold, the red of old rust.”
“Or dried blood,” I whisper.
“Aye. My mother passed after giving birth to Manfred, so my father took the beautiful woman to wife. She opened the cave for him, and when he went inside he emerged with the sword he named Blüdjager in his fist, terrible and red.”
“Then what happened?”
“At first, things were better. The land grew so lush it was scarcely believable. Crops grew too fast, yielded two harvests in a season when there should have been one. People flocked under my father’s protection to build a home in this new paradise. Then things began to change.
Villagers would go missing. Workmen disappeared from the castle. The walls sprung up around this place first, then the towers. My father had the door sealed, kept the only key for himself, and built outward. Then the bodies began to be found. Sapped of warmth and blood.”
I shudder. “What did you do then?”
“Nothing. I was a coward.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. Fourteen. Age is such a strange concept to me now.”
“You weren’t a coward. You were just a boy.”
He clenches his fists. “In those days fourteen was a man. It doesn’t matter. I did nothing. Things grew worse. Father communed with his witch in this dreadful place, and more people disappeared. Serving girls, mostly. They’d vanish. People began to leave. The castle was like a haunted place, shunned. One night I chanced the battlements to watch, to see what horror he and that vile creature perpetrated.”
“What was it?”
I look over at the sword lying on Adrian’s body.
“It was vile,” he said. “I won’t speak it, but when I saw what they did upon that stone table, I knew I had to make an end of it. I was sixteen then. Much of what I’ve told you was true, only a different sort of truth. I was betrothed to the daughter of another noble, and she’s here, she’s Katerina. I got a village girl with child and she had Saska. My father would have burned her alive if I hadn’t stopped him. He was mad. It ate his soul, his mind. I did the only thing I could. I took up my father’s sword and cut him down. One stroke. Parted his head from his body.”
Conrad’s hands shake as he stares into them. He runs them through his hair but still they quiver, until he clenches his fists.
“I ran the witch through with the red blade and killed her. With my own hands I dug their graves and buried them here beneath the stones. My father and that thing. As she died, she pronounced the curse.”
“What curse?”
Conrad looks at me. “To endure. I am the only one who remembers. I’ve watched it happen countless times. The castle smashed, burned to ashes, my people put to the sword, the villagers slain by my grasping, greedy brother and his lust for the power he thinks I wield. He will come again and reduce this place to nothing, and for the thousandth time I will cut him down with that thing and it will begin all over again…when the moon turns. That is why you must leave. I’ll take you to the borderland as I said, and you will ride as far and as fast you can.”
My head spins. This can’t be real. This can’t be right. He looks like he’s telling the truth, but it sounds insane.
“What about the stuff?” I blurt out.
“Stuff?”
“The things in the storeroom under the keep.”
He frowns. “I know of no such storeroom.”
He’s telling me the truth. I can feel it.
“I can show you. I’ll take you to it.”
“We can’t leave,” he says. “She won’t let us leave.”
The pulsing red light grows more intense. The darkness is deep, consuming. I swear I can feel something moving in it, circling around us. When I look over my shoulder I can’t see the walls anymore.
There is a groan, a terrible black sound of metal on metal. The iron doors swing in, opening into a deeper darkness than I have ever seen.
“Roxanne,” Conrad says, gripping my arm. “Stay away from it.”
I shift in his grip, looking past him into the dark.
“Do you see that?”
A light pulses inside, sweet and pure, like the first promise of a new day. I rise to my feet, and Conrad grabs me.
“I see nothing,” he says, pulling me gently down to him. “There’s nothing but evil in that place.”
“Why did the doors open?”
“I don’t know,” he almost shouts, defeat in his voice. “It can’t have you. Stay here with me.”
The light grows but doesn’t illuminate. I can’t see anything inside. Conrad holds tight, and I hold tight in return.
The light pulses against Adrian. He coughs, his body shaking.
Conrad launches to his feet, holding my hand as if he’s afraid I might slip off and run into the cave anyway. The mouth yawns wide, the light growing in its throat. As he pulls me to the table, I wonder where he buried his father and the…witch, if I’m treading on them even now. I edge closer to Adrian, alongside Conrad.
“Stay back,” he says.
He takes the hilt of the sword and pulls. The thick tendrils of…something resist him, clinging to the boy’s body. Adrian groans, shifting on the table as Conrad tears the sword up, and away. The tendrils peel away like dying leaves, curl on themselves, and collapse into smoke, drifting on the wind.
The dark recedes from the sky, opening above the tree, rolling back like clouds. The doors closed when I wasn’t looking. Conrad takes the weapon and shoves it into its sheath, grimacing as if it’s fighting him.
Adrian stirs, rolling onto his side. Conrad slips his arms under his son and sits him up. His eyes open.
“Where?” he says.
“You took a wound. I carried you from the battle.”
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter. Can you walk?”
“I think I can.”
He puts his feet down and I get under his other arm while Conrad supports him. We walk him to the gate, where Conrad opens it and guides us through then locks it. He leaves the sword behind, leaning against the table.
Outside, we find the courtyard teeming with people. Saska looks up from where she tends to a wounded man, her arms bloody to the elbow. The old doctor is doing his best to help.
Smart girl. She set up a triage, had the guards put up tents to house people. The mood brightens when Conrad appears with his son.
“I must remain here, Roxanne. Will you take him to his rooms? Bors! With her.”
The big guard leads me up. By the time we climb the tower and help Adrian into his room, he’s almost walking on his own, even if he’s shivery and pale. I help him to a seat, and sit beside him.
“Are you alright?”
He looks at me. I glance at the big guard.
“Wait outside.”
Bors nods and steps out, pulling the heavy door shut behind him. It booms and leaves us alone.
I can’t stay long. Adrian needs to sleep. He all but crawls to his bed and flops down on it sideways. I sit beside him and rest my hand on his cheek. He feels cold, so I pile some logs in the fireplace and…
I have no idea how to make a fire.
“Striker and flint,” he croaks.
I find the rock and piece of metal. Banging them together against some straw eventually gets it to catch. The fire grows, and I step back.
Adrian is half asleep. I brush his hair back and sigh.
“Do you remember anything?”
He shakes his head.
“It’s alright. Sleep.”
Reluctantly I leave him. He’s under guard; he’ll be safe. I nod to Bors as I step out and head down the stairs. It hits me now just how exhausted I am. I haven’t slept all night, after all that.
Conrad stalks through the yard giving orders, a jacket open over his bare chest. I edge close to him, expecting him to order me to go off and rest, but he smiles warmly and is glad for my company.
It takes all day to get the yard in order. By then I am so tired I can barely stand up, and it’s not even dark yet. Conrad walks up to the top of the outer wall and looks out. I stand behind him, fighting off blinking fits of sleep trying to grab me and pull me down. I lean on him.
Smoke still curls up from the village and fields.
“We have almost all of the harvest in,” he says. “We can feed ourselves for some time, but the rebuilding…” he says, then looks down. “There will be no rebuilding. I say these words like an actor playing a part, but in my heart I know we have little time.”
I stare out at the smoke and the embers in the fields until he sighs.
“I promised you the truth. I must deliver what I owe. Sh
ow me this storeroom you spoke of.”
I nod, yawning, and lead him on. As we near the keep, I feel more and more awake. Inside, the villagers are already setting up bedrolls. Conrad moved the women and children into the great hall itself, anticipating an attack.
I lead him down to the baths, to the second stair. When we reach the bottom, he stops me, glancing this way and that.
“These rooms aren’t used,” he says, lifting his torch. The light flickers through the dark, and shadows dance across his face. Dread fills his eyes.
“This way,” I tell him.
The door swings open easily. He ducks under the low lintel to step inside, and I am just on his heels. He edges inside slowly, looking around.
“What is all this?”
I wait in silence while he circulates the room. “These things are from outside.”
“Yes. My world, I think we could call it. If we wanted.”
Conrad swallows hard. “I never brought these things here. Where did they come from? What does ‘does Dallas’ mean? Who is Dallas and what does Debbie do to him?”
“It’s, uh, complicated,” I tell him. “Listen, what is all this stuff? Who brought it here if you didn’t?”
“I don’t know,” he says warily.
“What about the guns? Some of your guys have guns. How did they get them?”
He looks lost.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Things… The moon turns, things are the same again, but they’re different. It’s as if they’ve always been here. These objects have always been here.”
He looks around, truly lost.
“You said you owed me truth.”
“I swear that is what I am giving you, but this isn’t the truth I meant. Come with me.”
“Where?”
“The library,” he says softly.
A shiver goes up my spine. I follow him up, up the stairs, to the third floor of the keep and to the library. He opens the door and ushers me inside, pulling it closed behind him.
“I lied to you before. There is a secret passage. The castle is a warren of them. I just don’t know where they all go. After the castle was built, my father fed the builders to the sword, so they would never share its secrets.”
He strides to the door, to the place where I thought there was a suit of armor with a pull rope inside. In its place now is another bookcase, until Conrad muscles that one out from the wall, grunting. Behind it there is a rope, after all.
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