Winterbourne's Daughter

by Stephanie Rabig

  "Thank you so much, Jyotsana. If we can... after we get him out," Emeline said, "we plan on journeying to Village-by-the-Sea. Will you and your husband join us?"

  Jyotsana beamed at her, relief shining in her eyes. "Of course."

  Then Lisette opened the carriage door and the three of them piled out. "Kolya," Jyotsana called to the driver. "Back to the castle, please, as quickly as the armorharts can go."

  "Yes, Princess." He smiled at Emeline and the others and gave them a nod, and then he took up the reins again.

  *~*~*

  Lady Yelena listened to several of the other loyalists continue to shout at each other and wondered if it might be a better idea to have a cask of wine brought up and then drink the entire thing herself. It might at least do away with this damnable headache.

  Young Ilari was far too immature and, well―horrifying to rule. In these past days, she had shown signs of surpassing even Thibault's cruelty. The guards reported that she'd ordered them to drain the protesters they'd arrested of their very blood.

  She could not remain as queen.

  Beside her, Andriy took her hand and gave her a reassuring smile. She smiled back, and then looked over to her daughter Olya as she spoke.

  "The truth of the matter is that we have never seen this situation before! The Goddesses have chosen no one for us, presumably so they can see how we go about deciding the matter ourselves. Is shouting and carrying on like children making them proud?"

  "And what do you suggest we do, then?"

  Before her daughter could answer, someone outside the room cried out, an agonized sound. Many of the loyalists shrank down into their seats, while several others jumped up, facing the doorway as they drew their blades.

  Yelena pushed her children back when they started to stand, hissing at them to stay down.

  Then the heavy doors flew open, letting in something that never should have been able to exist. It resembled Ilari, but the way it moved was wrong, and its eyes leaked blood. The entire room fell into a horrified silence.

  Then the thing inhabiting the former queen darted forward, nails ripping open the throat of the closest loyalist, and the silence and temporary paralysis in the room shattered, everyone shouting and moving at once.

  "What is it?" Olya gasped. "Mother, what―"

  "I don't know," she said, tearing her gaze away from the thing as it cut a loyalist in half as she tried to run away. "Come on!"

  She fled with her children, leading them to a small door at the far end of the room. She wasn't sure where it led; few even paid attention to it. She had discovered it during a wedding celebration years ago when Olya had gotten bored and started exploring. She had made it about three room-lengths down the darkened tunnels before becoming frightened and crying out for help.

  Given that the only other exit was currently blocked by that creature, Yelena could only hope that this led to safety.

  Her children weren't the only ones who followed her; several other loyalists piled in after her, the last one shutting the small door and drowning out the echoing screams coming from behind them.

  Hunched over, Yelena moved as quickly as she could, her hands in front of her to feel for walls or curves in the tunnel. Finally, her hands hit an obstruction and she felt around, grasping a handle. She shoved the door open and found that the tunnel ended in a bottlery.

  "Come," she said. "We'll get upstairs, go to―"

  The rest of her words cut off with a strangled curse when she heard a shout of fright coming from above them. She looked up the curving stairs and heard soft footsteps approaching and high inhuman laughter.

  "Run!" she whispered, pushing her children ahead of her, pointing them down the hallway to the dungeons. Most of the doors there had thick, sturdy locks; all the better to commit horrific crimes in privacy. While before she had bemoaned the practice, now she could only hope that those locks would provide a significant barrier to the oncoming creature. She ran down the hall after them, stopping when it divided into two branches.

  Here. If the thing came toward the dungeons instead of going to the courtyards, then she would be waiting. Would lead it away from Olya and Andriy.

  "Go!" she ordered. "Hide, and whatever you do, don't make a sound."

  Olya shook her head. "That thing'll kill you; you can't―"

  "This isn't a debate," Yelena said She tugged her children close, tears coming to her eyes as she gave them each a kiss on the forehead. She'd always done that at bedtime when they'd been small, singing lullabies and telling stories until their eyes finally closed. Olya never wanted to go to bed because she was certain something exciting was going on that she was missing, and Andriy was unable to go to sleep because he still suffered nightmares from what he'd gone through in his old home.

  Her daughter opened her mouth, started to say something, and then just grabbed her brother's hand and ran after the loyalists.

  It would be all right, Yelena told herself, trying to ignore how her whole body was shaking. The creature would turn the other way; it wouldn't find her. And she would go to her children, seeing them safely out of the death trap this castle had become.

  And then she would come back. The dungeons here were never empty; people needed help. She would make certain that they didn't remain here, chained up and at the mercy of whatever had been released into their midst today.

  *~*~*

  The bricks blocking the passageway slowly slid out of the way, and the three of them tensed, half-expecting to be confronted by guards regardless of the effort Jyotsana would have made.

  Instead, the light coming from the open doorway revealed an empty room. An odd, pungent scent hit Emeline's nostrils, and she looked to the full tub in the corner. "Is... is that..."

  "Blood," Vasya confirmed. "Watch your step." A mirror had been broken here, and the shards littered the floor.

  Then someone outside screamed. Vasya and Lisette stepped forward, while Emeline instinctively took a step back toward the tunnel.

  "What's happening?" Emeline whispered.

  "I don't know," Vasya said. The scream ended on a pained sob, and he headed out to the hallway, Lisette at his side. The bodies of three guards lay in the hall, torn to pieces.

  Emeline covered her mouth with her hands. "Ohh no." She turned away from the bodies, could still smell them, and that would have made her sick had she not been struck by a sudden realization. "Jyotsana."

  "What?" Lisette asked, wincing as she slowly made her way around the fallen guards.

  "She's here because we asked her to come back. Otherwise she'd be in the village. I have to find her."

  "We're not splitting up," Vasya said.

  Emeline shook her head. "You two get Gennadi; get back to the tunnel. I'll meet you there. Besides, she said there's a loyalists meeting today. If they don't know what... if whoever's done this hasn't reached the Great Hall yet, they have to be warned."

  Lisette finally nodded and pulled Emeline into a quick hug. "Be careful."

  "I will," she said, moving briefly into Vasya's arms before she ran for the stairs.

  *~*~*

  When Yelena heard footsteps, she tightly closed her eyes. The footsteps were slow, measured, not the panicked running of moments before. Someone hunting along with that strange beast?

  Opening her eyes again, she clenched her fists. They would cause little to no damage to the thing she'd seen in the throne room, but if it had a human companion, perhaps she could injure them before she was struck down.

  Then two figures rounded the corner, and she gasped in recognition. She ran forward, throwing her arms around the former king's daughter. "I saw you struck down!" she exclaimed. "How did―"

  "He saved me," Lisette replied simply, and Yelena saw the look the two of them gave each other then, saw the way their hands were clasped tightly together, and she smiled.

  "I am so glad to see you safe. Both of you. My children and some of the loyalists are hiding in one of the dungeon rooms. Could you please check on them
and make sure they're all right?"

  "You should hide as well," Vasya said.

  "No. If I can buy them a few more moments, then I will." She looked up at Vasya, searching his face, and for the first time in many years, he actually met her eyes. "Once I valued my own life above anything else. I don't any longer."

  He took her hand, held it for a moment before stepping away from her and moving toward the dungeon doors. "Be safe."

  "You as well," she said, and as the two of them walked out of sight, she leaned against the wall and quietly began to cry.

  *~*~*

  Emeline ran through the Great Hall, holding back the urge to shout Vasya and Lisette's names. She had to get them out of here.

  She had expected disbelief from the loyalists. Possibly even an argument.

  She had not expected carnage. The table was laid out, bodies strewn on top of it, and the enormous chandelier was spattered with blood.

  She started to run through the doorway, stumbling to a halt when her daughter stepped out in front of her.

  "Ilari?" she gasped. Something was wrong with her eyes, with the way she held herself―

  Then she smiled, a mouth full of needles, and Emeline backed away, holding her small blade in front of her like a shield. It seemed insignificant now.

  "What happened?" she whispered, unable to stop the words even though she doubted she would get a coherent answer out of... out of whatever this was. The creature inside her little girl just chuckled as it advanced.

  Can't outrun it, Emeline thought. Can't defeat it in a fight, not when it could do this to so many people.

  Desperate, she dropped the knife and grabbed the Dwarves' bracelet out of her dress pocket instead. As Ilari lunged for her, she locked the talisman around Ilari's wrist.

  The needles in her mouth turned outward, clawing Ilari's face apart, and something dark and shapeless poured out of her nose and mouth, pushing her eyes out of their sockets in its rush to escape. Ilari's body slumped to the floor, blood coating her face, and the thing that had been in her flowed up the wall and to the window, disappearing in the sunlight.

  *~*~*

  Vasya gave a decapitated body a wide berth as they made their way down the hall.

  They'd heard terrified crying from some of the rooms, but here in the halls all they'd found were corpses, and one lone survivor with a missing eye babbling about "the dark thing".

  Lisette walked beside Vasya, clutching the book that had brought her life tightly against her chest. "Ohhh," she muttered, pressing a hand over her mouth. She was fairly sure those were entrails draped from the candleholders on the walls.

  Guards. From the scraps of clothing she'd seen, the murdered ones had been guards. It made sense, in a horrifying way―someone who wanted to take over and didn't care how it was done would kill anyone who stood in their way.

  But Gennadi hadn't been there to fight, she thought. She hoped. If Ilari hadn't ordered him to the dungeons, then he would have gone against the invader...

  Vasya stepped into the first dungeon room, finding it empty.

  In the second room, they found seven loyalists, cowering behind one of the experiment tables.

  "Are you all right?" Lisette asked. "Which of you are Lady Yelena's children?"

  "We are," a girl said, bounding to her feet and helping a boy to his. "Is she all right?"

  "She was safe when last we saw her."

  "Good. That... that's good," she said, smoothing her skirt. "Are you searching for other survivors? Do you require our help?"

  Lisette shook her head. "You've been safe here so far," she told them. "It would be best to stay."

  "Are you staying as well?" the boy asked.

  Vasya shook his head. "We have to find Gennadi."

  "Gennadi? Then I will most certainly help you. He came to my aid once, and―"

  "You would be Andriy, then," Vasya said. "I can say with certainty that Gennadi would rather you remain safe than lose your life while trying to pay back a favor. Stay here."

  Andriy frowned but nodded, and Lisette quietly shut the door.

  In the third room, they found him.

  He hung from manacles on the wall, dried blood marking a multitude of cuts. His chin was touching his chest. There was a full pitcher of water on the table in front of him, a full glass, but Lisette didn't understand why until Vasya tilted his head up and slapped him lightly. His lips were cracked and bleeding. Another form of torture, then.

  Lisette set the massive book down on the table and picked up the glass instead, trying to tilt some of the liquid into Gennadi's mouth. For a moment he didn't respond, and then he coughed, straining against the manacles for a few seconds before lucidity came back into his eyes and he looked at them.

  "What―what are you...?"

  "Emeline sent us," Lisette said. She carefully gave him another drink as Vasya scoured the room for a key.

  "She... she's safe?" he rasped. "Ilari told me―she said that the hunters she sent out―"

  "Shhh. Just drink."

  His main question answered, he did so, and then Vasya was there as well, holding a ring of keys and trying one after another. Finally the lock came undone, and both of them moved forward to keep him from dropping to the floor.

  "Who did this?" Lisette asked. "I killed Grisha; I―"

  "Ilari. Couple of the guards... helped when they got bored."

  "I'm so sorry," she whispered, picking up the book. "Can you walk at all? If we help you? Something terrible is roaming this castle and we have to get out."

  He nodded, struggling to his feet and leaning against her heavily. Then he reached out, grabbing a bloody, hook-shaped knife from the table. "I'm all right."

  Vasya went ahead of them, and they made their way up the stairs, Lisette keeping one arm tight around Gennadi's waist.

  They started away from the stairs, and then Vasya froze. "That room," he said, voice barely above a whisper, tilting his head briefly to the right, to a small room across from the head of the stairs. "Go. Hide. If there's a passage out through there, take it."

  She half-walked with Gennadi and half-pulled him, realizing once they were inside that the room was a dungeon guard's quarters, bare save for a lantern and a small cot. There was no window.

  Lisette closed the door, started to go to the lantern, and then an inhuman scream had her covering her ears and almost crying out from the sheer wrongness of it. Then the door itself was ripped into pieces, letting in light from the hallway and a view of something Lisette hadn't believed in since childhood. It was the thing under her bed, the monster in the forest, the demon creeping up behind her on a dark road at night. And it smiled.

  She shrank back, and behind her she could hear Gennadi scrambling for cover that wasn't there, and then Vasya swung his sword and embedded it deep in the nightmare's side.

  The dark, shifting thing yowled and turned on him, knocking him into the wall, and Lisette opened her book, forcing herself to look away.

  She recognized what it was, what it had to be. A Shadow.

  Shadow. Page 632. "Come on, come on," she whispered.

  "I'll be cursed," Gennadi muttered, sounding dazed. "Guess Vasya finally met his match, huh?"

  And she looked up, and saw that it was true―the Shadow was toying with him, nothing more; no matter how hard he fought, it just seemed to regenerate itself, seemed to―

  Then Vasya swung at it and hit it in the neck, lopping off its head. Another scream came from the body as the head rolled across the floor and Lisette covered her ears, watching as the thing faded down into a black tarry puddle, dripping into the cracks in the stone.

  Vasya leaned against his sword, breathing heavily.

  "No," Lisette said, looking to her book again. "It can only be sent to the Nothing by the one who created it."

  "Don't care where I sent it, long as it's gone."

  "It's not! Here, it says a Shadow can only be dismissed with the use of its name; Vasya―"

  He raised his swor
d again, but the thing materialized behind him and he wasn't able to dodge in time. It grabbed hold of him and spun, pitching him down the stairs. Lisette screamed.

  "Oh, no need to remind me you're there," it hissed. "I'll get to you soon enough. Give me a moment, pretty thing, it's been so long since I last got to skin anyone..."

  It floated down the stairs, and Lisette shoved the book at Gennadi. "It was created by a princess of Abaya named Eshanti. Read!"

  "Lisette, no―"

  She snatched up the curved knife he'd taken from the torture chamber and ran for the stairs, taking only two or three of them before she leapt, because it was crouched in front of Vasya now and she wouldn't let it get any closer than that. She landed on the thing's back, driving the blade into one eye and then the other, slashing and cutting at its face.

  "Impatient, are you?" it asked, through a mouth that had just had a blade stabbed through it only a few seconds ago. "Very well."

  Survival instinct kicked in then, telling her to let go, to get away, just run, but it was too late. The thing reached completely around itself in a way no arms should've been able to twist, and it grasped her own arms and pulled her completely through its form, dissipating into smoke for just an instant save for its grip on her, talons puncturing her skin in small fiery dots.

  She saw motion out of the corner of her eye but couldn't spare any time to try and look closer because the Shadow was holding her high, laughing, and she knew her time was at an end and there would be no enchanted coffin to save her. Vasya was awake now, motions sluggish but he was moving, trying to get to his sword.