Cobweb Empire (4 page)

She then opened the door slowly, and it was
all dark inside. No hearth light, no tallow candle, nothing.

Percy felt a sickly pang of nausea in her
gut, felt her insides twisting. But she took the first step forward
and then the next, finding herself in the large barn-like area that
the Doneils used on the first floor for their livestock. The family
raised everything from goats, geese, and chickens, to cows. And
they engaged in everything from selling eggs and milk to
butchering.

Percy’s footfalls made a slight crunch
against the brittle hay and rushes strewn on the floor, and she
inhaled a metallic unpleasant scent.

There was—she could hear now—a constant
shuffling noise in the back near the wall, and Percy was suddenly
infinitely grateful there was no light.

She soon realized she did not need it.

She could see
through
the dark.

The small, squat, quadruped
death
shadow
of the young pig stood cowering pitifully in the corner.
While next to it, in the darkness, something lurched against the
wall and bumped softly, quietly, to no end. . . . It
was what was left of the animal’s damaged
body. . . .

Percy felt a terror, the scraping
finger-claws of winter slash across her own innards, petrifying her
into a moment of impossible ice and immobility. Vertigo came, and
she felt a pull at the top of her forehead on both temples, a
sudden prickling that raised every hair on her
body. . . it was as though her conscious
self
was
detached and floating high overhead near the wooden beams, just to
get away, screaming to be far, far away from this, all of this—

She took in a sharp cutting breath, and then
advanced forward, despite herself.

The world narrowed to a focus.

Percy Ayren reached the corner of the back
wall, and leaned forward, while a now-familiar ringing gathered all
about her, the darkness congealed, and the grand tolling of bells
echoed in her mind, as the power rose inside her, like well water
surging. With one hand she reached for the small
shadow
,
feeling its tangible thickness and layers, and ran her fingers
gently against an ethereal hide, calming it, loving it, stroking
it. . . .

With the other hand, Percy reached for
something that was better left undescribed, feeling clammy cold, a
slippery horror of broken flesh and bone and slick bristling
hide.

Metallic smell was everywhere, rising.

And then she pulled the
shadow
and
guided it into the remains of the animal—feeling the two connect,
touch, blend, for one brief instant only, as a circuit of energy
was completed, and she was its third point, a conduit.

The pig shuddered, in infinite relief, and
then its poor body expired, falling to the floor in a lump of
permanent silence.

Percy stood over it, breathing fast as
though she had just run some distance. And then she turned around,
and went outside, into the growing daylight.

T
hey returned to
the Ayren house, with Jenna dancing every step and exclaiming in
crazed joy, “Oh, it’s free! Oh, thanks be to Dear God in Heaven!
Oh, Percy, you did it, I knew you would, I just
knew
it!”

Percy walked in silence, looking straight
ahead, her expression grave. As they passed neighbor houses, she
noted with her peripheral vision how people stared at her, oh, how
they stared! From her to the happy and hollering girl they looked.
And in moments, many approached to ask Jenna what had happened.

“The pig is dead! It’s finally dead! Oh,
it’s at peace at last! Percy helped the pig pass on! She did it!
Just like she helped her Gran, she helped—”

“
Hush!
That’s enough, quiet already!”
Percy hissed, seeing how Jenna was telling the whole neighborhood
things that could be taken all kinds of bad ways, dangerous
ways.

“What has Percy Ayren done?” asked old
Martha Poiron, in a quavering but very loud voice, standing at her
door in her usual dark brown dress and grease-splattered apron, as
they passed the Poiron house. “What have you done, Percy? What in
Lord’s name is going on? Will someone tell me what is going
on?”

Percy reluctantly came to a stop. She could
not just walk by old kind Martha without a response, without at
least meeting her rheumy old eyes. She stood, gathering herself for
speech, while her temples still carried an echo of grand bells.

But Jenna took Percy’s hand and replied
first, smiling with pride. “Percy has helped the pig die! The one
that couldn’t die! It’s at peace now!”

“What? You mean that sorry thing that Nick
Doneil had trouble with and beat to a pulp?” The speaker was Jack
Rosten, a large muscular man with a scraggly wheat-colored beard,
on his way to the workshop.

Jenna turned to see him there, and
immediately her smile fled and she herself shrank away. Jack Rosten
and her Pa had a horrid deal between them that Rosten’s second son
Jules was going to marry her in exchange for some livestock, as
soon as spring came. Jack Rosten was hard and mean, and his sons
were even worse.

“Let’s go, Jenna,” said Percy in reply. She
then grabbed Jenna’s arm and pulled her after her, saying,
“Morning, Mistress Martha, it’s nothing,
really. . . .”

“Hold it, girl!” Jack Rosten called behind
her. “That’s not nothing! Hold up, I say! Did I hear that right,
you did something to make the pig
die?
”

“Forget the pig! Didn’t you hear? Last
night, she killed her own grandmother!” This time the speaker was
Rosaide Vellerin, another neighbor, and the biggest gossip in
Oarclaven.

Just their rotten luck, thought Percy.
Rosaide, standing with her arms folded in satisfaction, in her own
front yard next to Martha’s small place, also happened to have a
longtime feud with Percy’s mother. And she really took pleasure in
putting down the Ayrens whenever possible—which was, to be honest,
not that common, since the impoverished family had a reputation for
decency.

Percy walked rapidly, dragging Jenna behind
her, hearing Rosaide yell in her wake. “Have you no shame,
Persephone Ayren?”

When they made it to the Ayren house, there
was Alann Ayren, together with Father Dibue and Niobea, talking
quietly on the porch, and the soldiers moving around in the
backyard among the smell of wood smoke and roasting sausage.

“There she is!” said Niobea. Her face was
hard and pale in the light of morning, and she looked exhausted and
sleepless.

“Where have you been, Persephone, child?”
Alann said, far more gently.

Father Dibue, the village priest, was a
large, ruddy-faced man with straw-colored hair, a jutting chin and
coarse features. The hood of his coat was as usual worn over many
layers of closely wrapped grey shawls against the cold, on top of
the woolen habit, since he was always on the go, and spent so much
time outside, walking from house to house all day long.

“Good morning, my child,” said the priest,
looking at Percy, and his expression was wary but his eyes not
unkind.

“Good morning, Father,” said Percy, stopping
before them, since she had been addressed. “And,
Pa . . . and Ma.”

“Your Grandmother has indeed passed on. May
the Lord have Mercy on her soul, and may she rest in His Bosom and
in all Heaven’s Light,” said Father Dibue with a tired sigh,
deciding not to beat around the bush. “And I am told that somehow
you had something to do with it.”

“Yes,” Percy said simply.

The neighbors were watching them. And the
soldiers in the yard had come around to stare, some still holding
chunks of bread and sausage and mugs of tea.

“Would you kindly explain to me what exactly
you
did
, Persephone?” Father Dibue continued. “I realize
you’ve been to Death’s Keep, and something happened there. What
does it mean exactly, now, that you’re Death’s Champion? Don’t be
afraid to speak the truth, girl.”

“I am not entirely sure, Father, but it
means, I think, I can help the dead pass on.”

“But how? I do want to understand you
better, you can imagine how unusual, how unnatural this whole thing
is—I of course must make certain it is God’s Hand at work here, and
not the
other
—”

Percy felt her head filling with remote
cold, and a wave of now familiar darkness. And then, just as
quickly it receded, and she blinked.

“Well, speak up, daughter!” Niobea said
loudly. “The Holy Father asked you a question, and you must answer
him now!”

“I am sorry, but I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know what it is,” Percy said softly. “I only know that it
feels like the right thing to do. I see death’s shadows near the
dead. I bring the two together, that is all. If that is indeed
God’s Will—that the dying be granted peace in one way or another,
even if Death Himself has stopped and cannot do his work here on
earth, and if I have been given this ability, then—then I do not
see how it could be wrong.”

“Now, you do realize how presumptuous that
sounds, child?” said Father Dibue, after a long pause. “It is
presumptuous indeed for a mere child of your age to presume to know
what is God’s Will at any given moment. While I do understand our
present difficulty—that the world is placed in very strange
circumstances right now—but given such a thing, it is especially
important that we carefully examine this from the proper angle of
faith and righteousness—”

“There is nothing more to examine, Holy
Father,” came a powerful baritone from the back. It was the black
knight, standing fully dressed except for his heaviest armor plate,
holding a steaming mug in one hand. His head was bare and the top
of his wavy brown hair shone in a soft nimbus, full of golden
highlights in the morning sun. The overnight rest had done him some
good, for, except for a new shadow of stubble, his face was smooth
and composed, without the strain of weariness of the previous
day.

“The girl tells us she has been given this
ability to ease the dead,” Lord Beltain went on, “and I see nothing
wrong with it, considering what else is going on in the world
around us.”

Father Dibue bowed his head respectfully.
“True enough, it is not as if the girl is going around randomly
murdering anyone.” And then he glanced momentarily with new alarm
at Percy. “You cannot do that, can you, my child? That is, you
cannot simply kill a healthy person from a distance?”

Percy frowned. She was at a complete loss as
to how to respond.

“I would think,” the black knight again
spoke in her stead, “that being Death’s Champion is an honorable
circumstance, and murder is not a part of her gift.”

“Percy is a good child,” said her father
suddenly. “She means no harm to anyone, I can promise you.” And
speaking thus, Alann worriedly looked back and forth from the
priest to his wife to the knight. So far, the discussion had not
taken a dangerous turn, but he had a bad feeling about it,
considering that a minor crowd was once more beginning to gather
around them, as more and more neighbors and other villagers
congregated on the street. Various murmurs were heard, and Rosaide
Vellerin and her big mouth were recognizable more than once above
the voices of others, together with the utterances such as
“shameless hussy” and “witch” and “unholy doings.”

Father Dibue decided to make a quick
conciliatory decision on the matter, since, to be honest, he was
generally overwhelmed by the events of the past week. The priest
was infinitely weary, even more generally confused, secretly
frightened, and had no desire to incite a mob. All things
considered, what Persephone Ayren had done was no more terrible and
no more unnatural than what was the present alternative for the
suffering dead.

“And so I see,” said the good Father wisely.
“Furthermore, I have examined the late Bethesia Ayren’s mortal
remains, especially her countenance, and she appears to be as godly
and peaceful as possible under the circumstances. This tells me
that her soul is with the Lord, and since I myself had administered
the Last Rites earlier, all is as it should be. It is therefore
safe to rule out any influence of witchcraft, or any other unholy
means in this case—”

“But what about the pig?” Someone on the
street yelled out.

“What—What’s this?” the priest asked.

“She made the Doneil pig pass on, just
now!”

Father Doneil’s brows rose, and he looked
back at Percy with newly rising concern. “Is this true?”

“Percy only helped the pig!” exclaimed Jenna
Doneil, at Percy’s side, meanwhile clutching at the front of her
own coat and dress, as was her fretful habit. “And she didn’t just
do it on her own, I asked her to do it, Father!”

Percy nodded silently.

The priest exhaled in some relief, recalling
the horror of that incident. “Then, it is all the same,” he said.
“If I remember right, that was a terrible thing that had happened.
So, it is indeed God’s Will that the creature is now at rest. And
now, enough, I declare, I am quite satisfied that all is well
here.” He nervously handled the rosary in his fingers, and pulled
out his mittens from a voluminous pocket. “Master Ayren, Mistress
Niobea, have you all the burial arrangements in hand? Yes? Good.
Let me know when you expect the funeral, and I will perform the
mass. . . . Now I think we have all seen enough
here, and I will be on my way—”

“Thank you, Father,” said Alann Ayren,
handing the priest his payment in a small pouch.

The priest took it matter-of-factly then
picked up his large bag from the porch. “Wonderful! And so, I wish
you all a good and blessed day, Master, Mistress, and you, of
course, My Lord—”

As he came down the porch, nodding to
everyone, and then walked past Percy, Father Dibue briefly placed
his large meaty hand on her forehead, and gave her a loud blessing.
“Fare thee well, my child, Persephone Ayren, never falter from the
path of righteousness, and always do the Lord’s bidding, now!”