“Rhiannon? You finished?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
The man clasped her forearm kindly. “Are you all right?”
“I will never be all right.”
She frowned and stood, then fell back into her seat as a cold wind blasted through the tavern, stirring even the unconscious drunkard for a sleepy-eyed speck. The drunk resumed his nap and so failed to notice the strange fellow who entered. Rhiannon wasn’t sure what to make of him. A wide-brimmed hat with a feather in it hid his features in shadow, and the man shyly tipped his face downward, intensifying the effect. Rhiannon could see only a strong, smooth, white chin. She wondered from where he had come. The man’s cloak—ripped, threadbare, and gray from wear—spoke of hardship and a long outdoor journey. Slipped over his pauper’s jerkin and trousers was what appeared to be a woman’s harvest frock with a rectangular embroidered neckline. Queerer and queerer still, she thought. What a sight he made. He looked like a child who’d broken into his mother’s boudoir, a cross between a dandy, a dame, and also a gentleman, because of his height and carriage. Intrigued, Rhiannon watched the stranger as he walked through the tavern toward her. His steps were long and stork-like, but still graceful enough to suggest good breeding. He approached the bar, folded his large well-groomed, incredibly white hands, and addressed the people beside and before him.
“Greetings. I have come from afar to see the festival. It is rare to find such joy in a world on the brink of madness.”
Even his voice had a certain off-kilter elegance. Although he spoke clearly and with sharp inflections, as a nobleman would, his words seemed to carry on for too long. Greeetings. Afaaar. Odd. Watchful and silent, Rhiannon arranged the many bizarre aspects of the man in her head. As they were almost shoulder to shoulder, she noticed he smelled of cinnamon and dried sweet fruits. Odder still. She wrapped herself more securely in her shawl—it was as if the man had brought the cold inside with him. The bartender must have been carrying out a similar appraisal, for he rubbed his arms and did not speak at first.
“Can I get you something, sir?” he asked finally.
“Only some information,” said the stranger.
The bartender pointed behind him to a wooden plaque with embossed lettering that was nailed above the shelves of bottles. Rhiannon had a peek at an aristocratic nose and cheekbones as the man lifted his head.
“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my spectacles,” he said.
“It says, ‘You can’t stay if you can’t pay,’” replied the bartender unpleasantly.
“Oh.” The stranger sighed. “I do apologize, but I left all my crowns back at the tavern where I’m staying.”
“With your specs?” asked Rhiannon, believing none of it.
“Where are you staying?” pressed the barkeep.
“Down the road…” replied the stranger. “I shall be going, then.”
Tired, hunched, and sapped of his royal grace, the stranger rose and shuffled toward the door. Rhiannon, strangely affected by his queerness and his sadness, the broken posture that suggested he was the saddest man in Geadhain, felt torn by his leaving. Rhiannon made a living out of reading and feeding the needs of men, but this one she couldn’t decipher. Although he dressed like a tramp, he certainly didn’t smell like one. It was possible he was disgraced, or on the run. Anything, no matter how fantastic, could be true these days. She wondered about his story; on an uneventful evening, this stranger was the most intriguing thing around. Perhaps her cider got the better of her, but Rhiannon called to him as he reached the door. “Stay for a drink. My treat. You can pay me with your story. A man wandering alone in a world on the brink of madness, as you call it, must be mad himself.”
“A little,” replied the stranger, hesitating.
After a heavy, drawn pause, during which the stranger held the door ajar and filled the tavern with bitter gusts, he made his decision and wandered back to the bar. Reluctantly, the barkeep produced a goblet and filled it with the spiced beverage Rhiannon fancied; he did not ask what the stranger wanted. The barkeep slid the drink toward the stranger, then gave Rhiannon a shrug as she produced some crowns. These will be collectors’ items soon, she reflected as she slid the coins across the counter. The bartender stood there, watching the pair for a while. The stranger didn’t speak.
“You can leave us be, Terry,” said Rhiannon, and turned to the stranger. Even when not seducing for hire, Rhiannon couldn’t subdue her charms. She leaned on an elbow and pushed out her corseted bodice, emphasizing her breasts. She threw back her deep brown tresses, which were curled and luxurious as the hair of a wild mare, and brushed them to one side. She batted her eyelashes and pouted. All of her wiles were for naught, however, for the stranger did not look up from the bottles flickering with lamplight—the ones lower to the ground, as once more he’d hidden his face. The barkeep left the two alone, as requested, and buzzed about the tavern, waking and shooing the drunk, putting chairs atop the tables, and sweeping the floors. It was quite late, Rhiannon realized, well past the witching hourglass.
“Thank you,” said the stranger after the long silence. He pushed his goblet toward Rhiannon. “For the drink. I don’t think I shall have any, though. My stomach has been disagreeable lately.”
“More for me,” said Rhiannon, and emptied his cider into her cup. She took a few swigs, which warmed her with bold, tingling fire. “So, where are you from? And where are you headed? You have the look of a wandering man.”
“I have wandered far, yes.”
“From?”
The stranger pursed his blue-gray lips. At length, he said, “Menos.”
“Ah,” she sighed. Rhiannon reached out her hand and touched one of his for an instant—but she pulled it away immediately, for he felt as cold and sleek as ice. “You have the look of a Menosian man of means, certain choices in fashion notwithstanding. You’re one of the survivors, then. I heard that a few made it out. I thought they would all have been flown back to Eod by now. How did you escape the roundup?”
“Eod?” asked the stranger.
“Yes. Did they not tell you? At those camps or whatnot?”
“I…I don’t remember much.” His head hung down, and his shoulders slumped. Rhiannon, stricken with pity, touched the cold marble flesh of his forearm, and was hit by another shiver. “I was lost for a while. Very lost. When I awoke, the world had changed.”
Benjamin’s Ghost, thought Rhiannon. The old bardic song with countless incarnations. In one popular turn, Benjamin was a lad lost in war who returned to an empty tavern in his hometown one eve and struck up a conversation with his childhood love. But this was many years after the war had ended, and his beloved had grown up and was no longer the girl he’d known. She did not recognize him, as it had been so many years since they had last seen each another. At the end of the tale, though, when he turned to leave, he whispered, “You’ll be in my heart, forevermore.” These, the very words Benjamin had told her before leaving for the war. She had called for him, and he had turned, though truth had broken the illusion, and before her was a rotted, ravaged corpse that reached for her, telling her how much he loved her. It was an awful tale, and Rhiannon quickly banished it from her mind. Still, as she looked around for Terry, who must have gone outside or upstairs, her intense anxiety remained. Rhiannon stopped touching the stranger and tucked her hands in her lap.
“H-how long? Were you away, that is?”
“I think…” The stranger drummed his fingers on the wooden counter. “A few weeks? A month? Perhaps less, or more. I have no idea. I wandered—from what felt like this world to the next, then back again.”
This world to the next? Nervously, and with a forced giggle, she blurted: “But you’re not a ghost?”
“No. Not a ghost. Just a citizen of the Iron City. Tell me, what have I missed in my waking-sleep?”
Rhiannon relaxed—apparently he was no specter, just a traumatized man. “Not much; the world is rather quiet now. Eod and Menos have settled their
ancient feud and are now sworn allies.”
“Allies?”
“Against Brutus, who has reportedly left Central Geadhain—though I bet he’s not gone far and won’t be gone for long. And also against the wicked queen of Eod, who was responsible for the fall of your city. Every mercenary in the known world now tracks that villain and her lover, and they will meet with justice soon.” Rhiannon drank most of her cider. Her fingers, belly, and toes tingled with warmth. Her tongue felt as loose as rubber. She nudged the somber stranger. “My name is Rhiannon, by the way.”
“Sorren,” he replied.
Rhiannon pondered the name and guffawed drunkenly. “The Iron Queen has a son by that name. Though I doubt you’re he!” One could not live so close to the Iron rule without knowing of its royals.
“Doubtful.”
“Good to meet you, then,” she said, regaining her composure.
“And you.”
A distant rustling and dragging, like that of wet bags of leaves being hauled by lazy workers, distracted Sorren. He was nearly blind but for his auric impressions and now had difficulties with touch and taste. All surfaces felt fuzzy: if a banquet had been laid before him, he would have made the most embarrassing gaffes, mistaken a napkin for a filet, and he was sure it would taste the same. However, his olfactory and auditory senses now regularly exploded with new and extraordinary information. So, although his vision was impaired, he could perceive the world in an almost three-dimensional manner using his interpretation of colors, sounds, and smells. Thus along with the sloppy dragging he heard, he caught swampish odors and fouler rotten stinks that reminded him of the reek of his recently excreted black organs. It was death he smelled—and it was somewhere close, and moving.
“Pardon?” he asked; the woman had been gently pestering him about something.
“I thought I might have overstepped your bounds of privacy,” said Rhiannon. As Sorren stole a glimpse at her misty crimson form—the color of passion and fiery temperament, he thought—he noted a purple twist of melancholy. She continued, “Don’t feel that you must answer. I wanted only to understand what befell the Iron City. No one seems to know, and the rumors that I have heard…I mean, they’re nightmares. They can’t be true. Escaping Menos…I know things must have been difficult for you, whatever your story. I felt a weight on you when you entered. That’s why I asked you to stay for a drink. It was probably silly of me to think that ale or cider would cure you of the terrors you have seen.”
“Nothing can cure my terrors.”
Rhiannon slurped the final drops from her cup and continued her drunken rambling. “I imagine that is true. Doubtful there’s enough drink in the world to black out that horror. An impenetrable fog of ash. Noises made by neither man nor beast. The dead risen and hungry for flesh—”
Sorren leaped from his seat and grabbed the woman by her shoulders. “What? What was that about the dead?”
Rhiannon squirmed in his incredibly powerful grip. “Unhand me!”
A hallucination of a bloody squirming woman flashed in the gray field of Sorren’s vision: the irrepressible face of one of his victims; Samantha had been her name. Immediately, Sorren released Rhiannon, stammered apologies, and backed away. “I-I’m sorry. I shall go. I should never have touched you.”
“Damn right!” Rhiannon threw her chalice at him. As the goblet had no aura, Sorren caught only the shrieking whistle of its toss and so didn’t raise his hands to block his face. Rhiannon was practiced at being indignant and hurling objects at men: gents who wouldn’t pay, her father when he’d come for her. Her cup struck the stranger square on his head and knocked off his hat, which twirled under a table. Sorren reeled and acted like a man assailed by bats, and Rhiannon at last saw what he’d been hiding: his unwholesome paleness, his sneer of yellow teeth, his eyes of ink-filled glass. Kings above, here was fuking Benjamin himself! He’d lied! He was a ghost. Rhiannon was less afraid than she would have expected to be in this situation. Still, she grabbed her stool and pointed its legs toward the monster.
“What are you?” she asked.
Sorren recoiled from the woman. What could he possibly say?
AAARRGGH!
“What was that?” exclaimed Rhiannon.
It hadn’t come from the stranger; it was the scream of someone being murdered. The rational side of her terror, the one clutching onto the edge of survival, knew that the scream belonged to Terry. Sorren, meanwhile, could hear the slurping of thousands of wet—or partial—feet walking through mud, snow, and filth. For obvious reasons, Sorren had chosen the most remote tavern he could, a place at the southwest fringe of the city limits where none of Vallistheim’s celebratory fires would blaze and reveal his monstrousness. He wondered how many dead, shambling persons it would take to conjure that cacophony. Some of Menos? All of Menos? While Sorren froze, more screams came, some from far away, others from close by. Straining to listen, he heard a parade of evil: flesh ripping, guts splattering snow, wood shattering, people howling as if on fire, women and the youngest of children wailing—their cries cut short as teeth and bony claws ended them. Evil had arrived in Heathsholme. At last, Death’s army had begun its march. What of Vortigern, then? As Death’s vessel and prisoner, did that mean his brother was here? Would Vortigern be marshaling the horde?
Rhiannon could not yet hear or smell the rancid cloud as it rolled through Heathsholme, bringing with it a thunder of murderous screams and a rain of blood. Rhiannon had used the moments in which the dead man had stalled—busy pondering or some such thing—to smash her stool up into makeshift weapons. She now brandished a jagged stake at the monster before her. Suddenly, she realized he was not the only threat. Something began thudding against the walls. The door behind the bar that led to the storeroom and cellar rattled; but at least it was barred by a sturdy piece of oak, which Rhiannon didn’t think would be easy to break. However, the front door was another matter, and she had no idea what lay past the pensive monster in the winter night outside.
“M-move!” she demanded, thrusting her stake as if it were a sword. “I’ll drive this right through you, I swear!”
The man wore a look of bleak sadness. “I would welcome that end. If it were time. If I had performed my penance. But I cannot accept your mercy now. I must find my brother. I believe he may be out there. I shall see.”
Sorren strode to the door—on either side of it, the shuttered windows started to flap as things pushed against them. Rhiannon realized what waited for her beyond these walls were likely more horrors, more dead, and probably ones less cultured and sorrowful than this fellow.
“W-wait!” she shouted. “You can’t leave me here to die!”
Sorren could, and knew he should. He placed his hand on the door, which felt to him like a thick tangle of cotton. Once he pushed it, the creatures on the other side would flood the building. The putrid musk of their rotting bodies, which filled the room like a cabbage-and-sewage fart, suggested there were at least a dozen of them. Rhiannon’s odds were grim.
“Please!” she cried.
There was a certain pining sharpness to a woman’s speech before she died. Sorren was all too familiar with the sound, and he noticed it now in Rhiannon’s voice. His supernatural hearing amplified the agony into a horn of pleading blown into his head, and he buckled. Sorren was a monster; he couldn’t feel mercy. Or at least, that was what his rational self told him. However, Sorren’s instinct, his black prune of a heart, made a choice for him and moved his body. A gray wind struck Rhiannon, and she lost her grip on her stake. The wind held her in a basket of ice and smelled sweetly of dried herbs and spices. A spike of fearful realization impaled her: it was no loving wind that had spirited her away; rather, she was trapped in the arms of the dead man. Just as she’d begun to thrash, she was half dropped, half eased down onto a bed of snow. Rhiannon struggled to her feet, swatting at the monster who no longer restrained her. The monster had saved her, taken her far from danger, she soon discovered. Her arms, head, and heart fel
l in despair as she saw what had become of Heathsholme. Faint, she fell against the scratchy bark of one of the dead trees surrounding the snowy summit upon which they stood.
Down below, Heathsholme glowed with more brightness than the brightest Vallistheim Rhiannon could recall. Yet these were not fires of celebration, but of death and horror. Whole fields laid with straw for the festival had been set alight in what seemed like a blasphemous tribute to Vallistheim. Real people, not effigies, now burned in the wild, consuming bonfire that had spread from building to cart to barn. Small shadows ran hither and thither away from larger spots of moving black. Even through the veil of snow and distance, Rhiannon could tell they were people being chased by the dead. Although nothing made sense when the world broke, there were those able to accept madness in their minds, to find the reason in the unreasonable. Rhiannon was one such person. She looked upon the growing, radiant ruin, shed what tears would come, and numbly said goodbye. Farewell, Heathsholme. Farewell, city of my troubled youth. I did hate thee, but I shall mourn the bright embers of your flame.
Throughout her somber vigil, the dead man had remained quiet, pondering. He knelt in the snow, stared, sniffed, and read the colors in the kaleidoscopic chaos happening beneath him in the valley.
“Vortigern is not here. I cannot smell him or sense his spirit. I think that Death divides her army. Perhaps many hands are needed to harvest many fields…or perhaps a number of different enemies are out in search of the same spoils…And what of the wolves I’d seen, and their red queen? I sense now that they are another enemy as terrifying and doom-bringing as Death and her brood. I must find Mother, and warn her,” he mumbled.
Rhiannon recognized the name the dead man mentioned: the deceased son of the Iron Queen. Losing her slippery hold on sanity, she hugged her prickly tree more tightly. “What is happening?”
Sorren’s black gaze was impossible for her to hold. “To the world? I think everyone is being judged. I think the world and its makers are sick of us ruining their creation. I’ve been responsible for my share of evil. I’m sick of myself.” Sorren stood and strode toward the cowering woman. “I need to know where my mother is. I must find her and let her know of the forces I’ve seen, and of what has happened to her sons.”
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 50