And he merely waited.
He waited, not sure for what, sitting there, knowing no drowsiness, no weariness—nothing, in fact, for his body had become a distant and thick layer of something between him and everything
else
around him. When dawn began to seep in past the shutters and the thick brocade curtain, he again made the supreme effort of straightening himself in order to rise. With measured steps he moved to the window, drew the curtains apart, opened the shutters, and just watched. . . .
He watched the coming of the light.
B
eltain was awakened out of an abysmal deep sleep by the touch of a wide palm against his shoulder—gentle yet firm, and familiar. His old valet, Rivour, was shaking him lightly, whispering, “My Lord, very sorry to wake you, but your father wants to see you.”
Beltain groaned, taking a deep waking breath, immediately feeling the post-battle soreness, the numerous bruises around his ribs, and the fierce sting of minor gashes and scratches that covered most of his body and face. Then, slowly he turned on his back in his warm large bed, moving carefully to stretch his muscled hands up past the coverlet. He flexed his battered swollen fingers with difficulty and pushed his dark brown hair out of his face.
“Damn . . . it’s too early,” he said hoarsely, yawning wide until something painful tugged at his jaw—another cut ending in a bruise. His brow gathered into a frown. And then, as the realization of everything came to him, “Oh, God . . .” he said.
Although he’d been weary to the bone, all sleep fled as his mind engaged, filled with clarity, and with it came terror.
. . .
His father. His father was dead.
The battle. They were all dead, yet they were
not
.
He remembered everything—the fighting drawing to a close, the strange silence and then the ending of all that was ever normal with the world. He saw his father fall and
die
and then come back, a frozen creature of ice, breaking out of the lake, then coming to resume his command and riding home in the torch-light, their homecoming, the sounds of weeping all through town. . . .
Oh, God.
. . .
Beltain sat up in bed, ignoring his injuries, swept his longish hair out of his face once more, then rested his face, its well-formed planes and lean angles, in his large hands and took in a shuddering breath, then smoothed his brow.
Rivour observed him with concern on his wrinkled face.
Another breath and Beltain pulled himself together. He turned the focused gaze of his slate-blue eyes to his friend and confidante of many years. There was enough resolve on his earnest face to push back the shadow of uncertainty that lurked in the background of his mind.
“How is . . . my father?” Beltain asked.
Rivour shook his head. “Hard to say, my Lord. He
. . . speaks, moves. But—”
“But he is not exactly himself. I know.”
“Is he . . . ?” The unfinished question hung in the air between them.
“I don’t know,” Beltain responded. “I don’t understand any of this—deviltry or God’s curse or whatever it is. But while he is able to command, it is my duty to obey him as a son.”
“I understand, M’Lord.” Rivour nodded, then proceeded to lay out fresh clothing.
“Ah, by Heaven, I wish there was time for a bath
. . .” Beltain muttered as he rose from the bed, still wearing the same tattered and stained tunic and longjohns that had gone under his knight’s armor the day before.
Rivour observed his condition and the fouled bed with distaste, and again shook his head. “A bath would indeed be appropriate. Why did you not call me last night to help you out of this?”
“I don’t remember. . . . I think I came here and passed out. After all that happened.”
“Ah.
. . .”
Beltain used the chamberpot, then poured cold water from a pitcher and leaned over the basin in the corner to wash his face. As ice water came in contact with his sensitive skin, he grimaced and cursed.
“I’ll call up a bath, you are in no condition to go anywhere,” said Rivour.
“But if he expects me—”
“No matter. I’ll come up with something to relay to His Grace, to stall him for an hour. For the moment you need a physician’s attention and that bath.”
And with those words Rivour exited the bedchamber in a hurry.
A
n hour later, after a brief soak in a tub of scalding-hot water, followed by the application of salve and bandages in many places over his body, Beltain was cleaned up, dressed in a comfortable shirt, jacket, and trousers worthy of a duke’s son, and then made his way through the Keep to see his father.
“Where have you been, whelp?” Hoarfrost greeted him, the cheerful nature of his words marred by the wheezing measured sound they made and the accompanying strange mechanical rumble of his chest. Duke Ian Chidair stood before the window of his chamber, silhouetted against the bleak daylight. The air in the room was thick and heavy, and Beltain recognized a faint sweet scent of putrefaction.
“Forgive me, my Lord Father,” Beltain replied as he took several controlled steps to approach him. “I came as fast as I could. My wounds—they needed to be cleaned—”
“Your wounds!” Hoarfrost roared.
And Beltain realized what he’d said and how it sounded . . . here and now. And so he bit his lip and remained quiet, while the Duke neared him, smelling of brackish lake water and old blood.
Hoarfrost slowly circled his son who stood looking straight ahead of himself, stiff as a post and taller than his bulky father by only half a head.
“Wounds, eh?” muttered the Duke, craning his neck only, while his face remained motionless and grey-white, and his eyeballs sat still in his eye-sockets like glass marbles.
“I am
. . . sorry,” whispered Beltain.
The dead face drew very close.
“Look at me, boy . . .” he hissed. “You see a dead man, don’t you?”
Silence.
And then, “I . . . don’t know, my Lord.”
“You lie!” exclaimed the animated corpse. “You always did lie poorly, which is a credit to you, my boy. But come now, don’t be afraid of your own father now.
. . . Am I dead to you?”
Beltain inhaled a shallow draft of the putrid air. “Yes
. . . I believe you are dead. I saw you fall, Father, I was there. Yet somehow you are still here, just as all those other men who were struck mortal blows yesterday.”
“Ah, yes.
. . . What a riot it was. Ugly and treacherous. A true day of death, and yet. . . .” Hoarfrost slowly turned away from his son and again approached the window. “You know I cut him down first,” he mused. “That knight of Goraque who then struck me in the back when I turned, thinking him done. He struck me. He should have been dead. The bloody whoreson killed me after he was killed already, killed and dead and—”
“I know,” Beltain said. “I watched it happen. Forgive, my Lord, that I was only a span of a horselength too far from you to stop him. Forgive me.
. . .”
“So, what am I then? What am I? A specter or a skeleton?”
Beltain lowered his gaze down to the level of his father’s chest and waist, but now his eyes were taking in the grisly torn tunic and blood-clot stains and—he had to look away again, anywhere else, safe, anywhere.
“Well, whatever I am, I might be full of holes but at least I have all my limbs. Did you see some of those other poor bastards, coming home in pieces? Eh, did you see? Now, that’s a real hell of a way to go, or should I say,
not
go.”
“Is there something I can do for you now, Father, some way I can alleviate your
. . . pain?”
Hoarfrost made a sound like a grunt, and more air escaping his chest added a polyphonic hiss. “There’s no pain, boy. At least that’s a blessing. No, nothing you can do for me anymore. I feel—if you can call it that—like a barrel filled with piss-flat beer. Just a weight of stone. Can’t smell or taste anything, though I’m sure this body of mine’s beginning to reek.”
And then Hoarfrost expanded his chest and let out the air in a deep bass roar. Beltain almost jumped at the sound of it.
“Argh!” the Duke bellowed, then raised his hands squeezed in two fists to shoulder level and higher, moving stiffly until they were at the level of his head. And then he started to chuckle softly.
The chuckles became guffaws. Whistling with air, Hoarfrost laughed, while his son watched him in silent horror.
“I feel damned nothing!” Hoarfrost cried. “And now that I think about it, it’s not a bad thing, to feel nothing! I like it! No gout, no back or gut ache, no battle bruises, no hunger, no thirst! Not even the smallest desire to rut with a wench!”
He turned to Beltain with a crooked broken attempt at a smile. His dark eyes burned with a strange stilled intensity in their sockets that somehow managed to be more frightening than anything else about him previously. “Well, boy, look at me, and tell me I don’t cut a fine figure! Oh, and don’t for a moment think that since I’m a reeking corpse you are the new Duke around here. Not so fast, whelp! For as long as I still move and can open my mouth to speak my will, you still owe me fealty.”
Beltain raised an earnest gaze of wounded pride. “You are my Lord and Liege, Father! Have I ever not obeyed you? How can you doubt me! I swear I am yours now and always. I don’t understand this, whatever has happened to you, to our men, but I know that when you speak, I will obey—for as long as you are able to command. I can have no claim while you are in this world.”
“Ah . . . Good, boy, very good. In that case you and I have an excellent understanding. Indeed, you and I, yes—we’re going to have a real time ahead of us, the time of our life, you might say. Because whatever this is, it makes us invincible. And you know what that means?”
Hoarfrost suddenly brought his fisted right hand forward and through the old glass of the window.
As the glass shattered, letting in the freezing cold winter air from the outside, Hoarfrost laughed, and then continued smashing his fist like a hammer against the razor shards.
Beltain watched his father with an unreadable expression.
Even without the outside air, the world had grown very cold.
I
n the first bluish glimmer of dawn, Percy walked slowly down the narrow rutted street of Oarclaven, past neighbor houses. Her bulky well-wrapped feet crunched against the fresh powder of snow that covered the road with a deceptive blanket of smoothness. The basket of food made an uncomfortable weight in her mittened hand.
There were a number of neighbors who were also up and about at this early hour. She could hear voices coming from the shuttered windows and see thin slivers of light between the wood planks from breakfast hearth fires being lit. Smoking chimneys filled the cold air with pungency.
And then, as she turned the corner and approached the Doneil house where the worst of yesterday’s excitement had taken place, there was Jenna Doneil. She was coming down their porch, wrapped up in many layers against the cold, carrying a small travel sack.
Percy paused momentarily, then raised her hand to wave at the girl.
Jenna looked up, froze for an instant, then hurried down their snow-covered front walkway to meet her on the road.
“Morning,” Percy said, pausing to stand before the Doneil house. “You heading where I think you’re heading?”
“Yeah . . .” Jenna nodded. “Pa and Ma say I have to go and be a Cobweb Bride, if he takes me. . . .”
“Yes, same here.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I,” said Percy. And then, added. “But, are you sure you’re of an age to be a bride? How come you have to go? I thought you’re a whole year younger than my little sis Patty.”
Jenna raised her swaddled white face and there was a fierce expression in her eyes. “I am old enough,” she said in a defiant twelve-year-old whisper, as though anyone from the house could hear her. “I got breasts already. Well, some. . . . And anyway, my parents think I’m old enough, cause Pa was gonna have me be promised to Jack Rosten’s second son by spring so that they could get the bull and the two sheep.”
“Oh, now that’s a shame.” Percy started walking again, and Jenna trailed after her, matching her strides. “The Rosten boys are trouble, aren’t they? And the second son, what’s his name?”
“Jules.”
“Right, Jules. He’s not that much older than you.”
“He’s gross. . . . And he has crooked buckteeth and he pulls my skirt and always pinches me here an’ there. I’d rather die than go with him. But Pa says I have to. . . . And besides, I am afraid to stay in our house now, after yesterday—you know.”
“I see,” Percy said, thinking of the poor squealing pig from the night before and whatever happened to it, and indeed not daring to take that path of imagination any further. As they passed the main street there seemed to be a number of other girls and young women headed variously up the roads.
“Do you think they are all going to be Cobweb Brides?” Jenna said.
“I don’t know. It’s possible many of them are.”
“Are you . . . I mean, do you know where . . .” Jenna began, then grew silent momentarily. “Do you know where you’re supposed to, well . . .
go?
”
Percy turned her head to look at the girl at her side. She pursed her winter-chapped lips, licked them to warm against the unrelenting dryness of the ice air. “We’re supposed to head north, is what we’re told. Into the Northern Forests. And then we look around for Death’s Keep.”
“How are we supposed to do that? What’s it look like?”
Percy moved her basket over from one hand to the other to free up her hand closest to Jenna. She then took the younger girl’s smaller mittened hand and gave it a squeeze. “I have no blasted idea,” she said. “But how about you and I go looking together? You can walk along with me all the way, and we won’t get lost.”
Jenna’s face beamed, and she turned to look up at Percy. “Oh, can I? Because I don’t know if I can figure out this north any farther than the next town. Pa says it’s right if I go east on the big road toward Tussecan. But after Tussecan there’s just the one fork in the road and then I don’t know. . . . And I don’t even know Tussecan all that well, I only been there twice.”
“After Tussecan we can ask the locals. We’ll figure it out,” Percy replied.
“Thanks for being nice to me, Percy . . .” Jenna whispered. “Everyone always says I am daft or feeble or skittish-crazy and jump around too much. I am no good, except to help Pa when he butchers. . . . But—”
“Well, now you can help me,” said Percy with a smile. “I wasn’t looking forward to walking alone, and this way neither of us will be scared. Right?”
“Right!”
“And probably neither one of us will get picked as a Cobweb Bride, so we can walk back home together too.”
Jenna nodded and her posture relaxed visibly.
They continued walking, following the turns of the road heading east through town. As the day grew lighter, Oarclaven came alive, and Percy waved to familiar people who waved back. The mood was somber however, and smiles came uneasy or not at all. Seemed peculiar to think about it now, in the light of day, but only last night there had been the weeping and the panic as the young women ran and hid or else entreated their families to be spared the grim fate.
. . .
“Percy?” Jenna said as they passed the Murel bakery where the strong warm aroma of fresh bread poured forth like fairy joy on the blistering wind. “What if we just ran away? Instead of going to the Northern Forests, I mean. Who’s to know?”
“Hmm . . .” Percy replied, as they paused momentarily to watch the baker’s daughters set out fresh golden crusty loaves on the display at the windowsill. She noticed that Flor, the eldest, was moving about with red-rimmed eyes and not even bothering to wipe her flour-dusted face or hands on the apron as she laid out the flaky pastries on the lacy doilies. For a moment she looked up and a desolate face met Percy’s. She nodded in greeting, then cast her gaze down and resumed her work.
“I think Flor Murel’s been told to go too,” Percy said quietly. “Probably has to finish up her morning chores first, then, if she walks fast, she might even catch up to us on the road.”
“Percy!” Jenna was tugging her arm.
“What?”
“Let’s not go north, Percy, please!” Jenna started whispering. “We can just turn around and go roundabout but the other way! We can go down to Letheburg instead! I never been to Letheburg, and they say the Royal Palace there is so grand, like a whole ten houses! We can stay there, and maybe find a place to live? And we can eat pastries and never have to worry about anything, and we don’t have to go looking for any old stupid Death—”
“Hmm
. . .” said Percy again. “That does sound like a fine idea, especially in your case. You’re a young one and shouldn’t be involved in this mess. Maybe you really ought to head to Letheburg. But for me—let me think here for a moment. . . .”
She walked about ten paces, looking very much deep in thought, while Jenna threw anxious glances at her and occasionally rubbed her frosted pink nose with her mittens.
“Here’s the thing,” Percy said. “You know how Death has made it that nobody dies until he gets his Cobweb Bride, right? And my Gran Bethesia’s been on the verge of going for a long time now, but she cannot. And she’s suffering. And then there are all those other people who should be dead but aren’t. And the animals too, I bet. . . . So, unless I at least
try
to do something to help them, all these people—and animals—may never get their blessed rest. Who knows what’s a person’s fate in this world? Maybe one is meant to try. Or—I can only speak for myself. It would sure be nice to just run away and hide out while all this is happening. But I know I can’t just abandon Gran and let some other people do the hard work to put things right with the world.”
Percy glanced at Jenna at that point, to gauge her reaction.
Jenna was frowning, as though she hadn’t properly thought about it. “The animals too . . .” she muttered.
“Yes. The ones that got hurt and now cannot pass on.”
“Then . . .” Jenna whispered, her face intense, “we probably better not run away.”
Percy nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking too. It’s just something that has to be done. And—I don’t know about you, but when the time comes for my soul to face the final reckoning, whatever it is, I’d go with a lighter conscience, knowing I haven’t run away from something that was mine to do.”
“We’ll go on to Tussecan,” Jenna said.
“Now
. . . you’re sure? You could turn around and head back right now. I probably ought to insist you do. It’s not right for a little girl—”
“I am
not
a little girl!” Jenna sputtered.
And she did not say anything else for the rest of the hour, as they made it to the outskirts of town and began walking on the wide mostly empty road that became a thoroughfare.
The world was white and grey, with occasional spots of black that were tree trunks or dots of hunter birds crossing overhead. At times the shadow-flitter that was a red robin or a crested cardinal burned fiercely in the branches. The shoulders of the road were fringed with large snowdrifts over pasture and occasional fields, with sparse evergreens on either side. Now and then a cart clattered past them from either direction and they would stand aside to let it pass. But it was not a good idea to stop for too long, else the cold got to them.
In the winter you had to keep moving, Percy knew. Even though they were bundled well and still reasonably warm, and the sun was still rising out there somewhere in the dull morning sky, the wind continued being sharp.
And as the hours passed and the day advanced, she knew it would only get worse.
V
lau Fiomarre stood in the royal bedchamber before Her Imperial Highness, the Infanta Claere Liguon. He had been brought in rusted shackles from the dark and winter-cold holding cell down in the bowels of the Palace. There he had spent the night in absolute darkness chained by the wrists to the freezing stone wall, his face swollen with the beating, his elegant court clothing befouled and his jacket torn by the handling of the guards.
And now even the faded daylight seemed too glaring for his sensitized eyes.
Or maybe it was merely the sight of her. . . .
He had
killed
her.
And yet, here she sat, the accursed Liguon whelp, before a window in this chamber. She was still wearing her court dress from the night before, stained deep red-black with the blood from the mortal injury he had inflicted upon her shallow breast. On her head, the elaborate silver-platinum wig, and on top, the bejewelled Crown. Her chest, waist, that of a wooden doll, a mere twig. Her neck—
A surge of cold familiar hatred washed over him as he remembered the intense focused moment of no return—pulling out his concealed dagger and striking her underneath her tiny rudimentary bud of a breast on the left side, directly in the heart.
In that instant the two of them became a single point, the center of all—swept inward into one thing by the centripetal nature of the connection, in the middle of the glittering Silver Hall, surrounded by the grandest court in history of the Realm. He remembered the feel of his knife going in. Just a slight resistance.
. . . Saw the precise moment of the emergence of the deep crimson stain, at the same time as he glanced up momentarily and was fixed, branded, with a look of her suddenly dilated eyes—two great, deep, smoky things.
It touched him, just for that one instant, her dark strange innocent purity of pain.
And then the world twisted, narrowed in a funnel, drew in even closer, until he could see the dust motes in the air and there was a roar they made, swirling . . . everything coming at him, filling his ears.
It was then he felt a fierce triumph, and a culmination of himself—his life, his next breath, nothing mattered now; he was done. A life for a life; his tragedy-consumed family at last avenged.
The screams in the Hall, the sudden tumult and chaos of rushing figures converging upon the Infanta as she must have collapsed—though he could never quite see, nor did he care—pounding agony of blows upon his face, his chest, his ribs, his back, guards grappling him down onto the floor as he struggled in fierce exultation, not because he had any hopes or notion of escape but because struggle he must; it was the only thing left to him, to go out like a firecracker, a comet of fury, an angel of final judgment.
And then, through it all, her heard her voice.
“Why?” she had asked him, as she stood upright somehow.
And he, maddened by the intensity of the moment, screamed insanities and his fury upon her, screamed things he could not recall now, something about death to the Liguon, Death to the Deceiver and his filthy line. The words came forth from him as gushing blood had come from her to stain the mirror-polished parquet floor.
“Why?” she had said. “What have I done to you?”
What had she done? What had the Imperial Crown done to his tortured blameless father who had remained loyal to the last? To his destroyed mother, to him and his brothers and sister? The stupefying horror of the things he could say now; they would pour out of him like black blood, in anguish.
. . .
But no—his only reply again was a raving epithet devoid of substance. “Die, Liguon!”