Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (21 page)

I
t took but an hour to convince Lady Calliope San Quellenne that this stranger, this peasant girl who called herself Death’s Champion, was not entirely mad, but was someone who could help in this strangest predicament of their lives.

“My Lady!” said the girl, stepping forth from the crowd, “Begging pardon for what might seem like impertinence, but I am Percy Ayren, and I am come from very far away. But I believe I can help you.”

She began speaking and the things that came out of her lips were the stuff of stories and nonsense—or would have been thus only a few weeks ago, if not for the impossible events of the most recent days which the Lady San Quellenne had herself witnessed.

“I can walk into the shadows and emerge in Death’s Hall,” said the girl. “And I can take all of you and your people there. It is a neutral grey place, and Lord Death himself will send you onward to where you might want to go from there—at least I think he can be convinced to do so. Indeed, Death is the one who sent us here.”

“And why exactly
are
you here?” asked Jelavie, astride her horse and at her mother’s side. “Why should we believe anything you say?” For once the Lady San Quellenne did not disapprove of her daughter’s outspoken commentary, and shared the sentiment.

At the edge of the crowd, a pair of nobly-dressed women, one of them likely the mother of the younger, were staring very worriedly, watching the stranger girl. Lady Calliope had noticed them previously, for they too were strange new faces here in town, but now she astutely noted there was some kind of connection between them and this girl who had emerged with her strange claims.

Meanwhile the girl paused for a moment before replying to Jelavie’s apt question. She was plain and stout and simply attired, and as she glanced around the crowd, Lady Calliope saw her being observed intently by a tall imposing young man with a composed handsome face who towered over most of the men present. He had the look of a nobleman, and he too was a stranger she had never seen before—what was it suddenly? They had not seen so many new faces over a matter of weeks in San Quellenne as seemed to be gathered here now. . . .

The girl named Percy looked around the crowd and then she said, “I can help your dead to pass on. If there is anyone here who has a relation who needs relief from mortal pain—I can grant it.”

The townspeople were all speaking, and it was suddenly a sea of angry voices raised.

“What dark things are you saying, girl? This is blasphemy! We are presently cursed with no death, ’tis true, but what can someone like you do?”

“I already told you who I am,” she replied in an even voice that suddenly got strong—while the young nobleman took a step closer toward her, glancing at her protectively. “As Death’s Champion, I have been given this ability to help you. Is there anyone among you who will give me a chance?”

“What, and let you defile our poor dead even more? You are mad, girl!” a ruddy-faced townswoman cried hoarsely. “My husband has been dead for days now and I am glad to have him with me for the extra work he can put in! I’ve no one else to help, what with five heads to feed and two infants, and he doesn’t even need to eat! Not so bad to be dead, yet still be here with us, I say!”

“Aye!” other voices responded. There was a tumult of more angry whisperings in waves.

Suddenly a young boy’s voice sounded. “Can you help my bird?”

The boy stepped out of the crowd of adults, jostling past a few townspeople. He was no older than seven, olive-skinned and tanned to a bronze, his skinny arms poking from the sleeves of an oversized white linen shirt, and his head was a tangle of unruly black hair that dearly needed combing. Who else would it be, thought Lady Calliope, looking at her youngest son fondly.

“Flavio!” exclaimed his sister, Jelavie, giving him a hard flashing look. “What are you doing?”

The boy stretched forth his hand and in its palm was a tiny, feathered shape of a young seagull. He stood before Percy and showed her the creature, feebly moving its broken wing.

“I found it right there, near the water,” said the boy. “The dogs were going to grab it, but I grabbed it first! It’s dead, and cold, and I think its neck is crushed.”

“Are you sure it’s dead?” said a man standing nearest to the boy, craning his neck to look.

“It is dead,” replied the girl called Percy suddenly, staring intently at the creature. Her expression was full of compassion. “I can see its death shadow next to the little body.”

There was more talk in the crowd.

From her seat in the saddle, the Lady San Quellenne looked down at the girl steadily, evaluating her. “So, you can see the dead among us, is that so? Who do you see, then? Who is dead here?”

Percy looked up at Lady Calliope, and there was a small pause, while the warm breeze blew, stirring their hair, and only a hundred feet away was the sound of lapping waves, just beyond the plaza.

“Well?” said the Lady San Quellenne.

“
You
,” said Percy Ayren. “You are dead, My Lady. I am sorry to say. . . .”

Perfect silence. Lady Calliope froze.

Next to her, seated on the other horse, the young Lady Jelavie started and then made a little sound. “What?
Mother!
”

There was a commotion among the townspeople. Stunned gasps. The two strange noblewomen stood watching the proceedings, and one of them made a small stifled sound.

“The bird,” Lady Calliope said slowly, never looking at her daughter, indeed, never looking at any of them. “Put it to rest, now.”

Percy Ayren nodded, then gently averted her gaze from the Lady San Quellenne and merely with her glance seemed to reach out to the poor broken thing stirring in the palm of little Flavio’s hand.

The soft breeze carrying with it a scent of salt from the sea stirred the seagull into a ball of moving feathers, and tangled the boy’s dark hair even more than it already was.

When the breeze passed, the bird was motionless.

Flavio gasped. “Oh!” he said. “I felt it rush away, like a magic spirit bird! It is really dead! It is—”

And then he looked up to see his mother’s
dead
gaze upon him. And it sank in at last. He scrunched up his face into a contorted mess and then began to bawl.

Seated on her own horse, a mere handshake away from her dead mother and her mount, Lady Jelavie San Quellenne was crying also, silently, her shoulders shaking, and great streaks of water running down her cheeks, while her face remained stern and proud and stonelike.

Lady Calliope San Quellenne made the conscious effort to pull in the air into her lungs, and parted her lips, and spoke the words that had to be said at last, eventually, today,
now
. . . . “It is true, I am dead. I have—
died
four days ago. Just an hour past midnight—remember how very ill I had been that night? I died . . . but I was not sure at first, since I had been so ill for so long. But then, when I stopped hearing my own heart, and stopped needing to breathe or sleep or eat, I knew it then.”

“W-why did you not say anything, mother?” Lady Jelavie uttered between sobs.

“What is one to say upon such an occasion? Announcing one’s own death is not something that any of us have much experience with. . . . The world has become an impossible thing. And I did not want to frighten any of you, not when so much misery was here already. And then, places started disappearing. . . . I thought it best to wait, and make myself as useful as I can be, for all of you.”

Lady Calliope turned at last, moving her neck slowly, to see her daughter’s grief. “Please, child, no more,” she said. “Think, how many dead mothers are fortunate enough to speak to their daughters and console them? It is a new thing, and it is a strange blessing, even while it is also a curse. Come, stop the crying this instant—and you too, Flavio, my little heart.”

The murmuring townspeople in the crowd began taking off their hats and whispering condolences to their Lady.

She in turned listened to their words lovingly. “I thank you, my beloved people of San Quellenne. And now, I relinquish myself and all that is mine to my daughter. Lady Jelavie is now the rightful Lady San Quellenne.”

“No!”
The young maiden cried. “I refuse it, mother! You are my Lady, and—and you are here, with us, and you are—”

“No, dear heart,” said her mother. “My time is now in the past. I am but a corporeal ghost—fortunate and blessed enough to witness the transition, as no others could—those who had died over the generations, long before me. For no other San Quellenne Lord or Lady throughout history was as blessed as I, not until these past few days and the strange stopping of all death.”

The dead Lady San Quellenne turned to look at the strange girl called Percy, whose coming here has precipitated this day of revelation. Percy was standing very quietly, looking at them all with a gaze of profound sorrow.

“I believe you, and what you say, strange girl,” Lady Calliope said to Percy. “I believe that you can save us all, and lead us—as you say—through the shadows. Then, do it. Please. Help us! Help them!” And she stretched one pale arm to sweep it in a circle encompassing the crowd and the street and what was visible of dry land around them.

Ad Percy Ayren nodded, seeing her, and seeing the now softly weeping young boy, and his sister, still wearing a face of stone, but the kind of stone that stands under a waterfall and has been drenched with the aerial spray, and has been made shining and eroded and forever marked. . . .

“Tonight, just before twilight comes,” Percy said. “Have your people get ready, and come here to this street. Dress warmly. Come with your belongings and your animals, I beg you not to leave them behind, not to abandon them.
 . . . Do not tarry, do not be late, or you might miss the shadows, and then it may be too late, for the shadows themselves might come to you and fade this remaining land away.”

“These people will be here as you say,” replied the lady.

“I will wait for you,” Percy replied.

The Lady San Quellenne noticed how Percy seemed to look out beyond the crowd, to the back, where the two strangers, the two women with their unfamiliar faces, stood, watching her. They locked gazes with the girl for an instant. And then the younger one of the two women slowly averted her stilled, dead eyes.

P
ercy and Beltain returned to the D’Arvu villa to wait, while the afternoon deepened and the quality of the light outside warmed into the precursor of sunset.

They had followed Lady Arabella D’Arvu and the Lady Leonora as they made their way back along the street that was now the seashore, walking several steps behind to grant them privacy. Leonora turned a few times and cast her bird-like fixed glance at Percy, then looked away.

Within the villa, the count was where they had left him, seated alone in the parlor and his eyes were closed, while his woodcarving was set aside. He was not sleeping, for at once he opened his eyes and he glanced at them all and spoke quietly to his wife.

They consulted in soft weary voices, while Leonora stood in the middle of the room, straight-backed as a pillar of salt. Her faint death shadow billowed at her side, next to the real shadow on the floor cast by the sun in the window.

Percy and Beltain approached and Percy spoke evenly, addressing all of them. “Will you come with us tonight, as I lead the local people from here?”

Lady Arabella turned with a nervous expression on her thin sunken face. “We—we have not decided—that is, we need to think—”

“You cannot stay here. . . . The town is an island now, completely cut off from everything.  There will be no food, no means of leaving again, unless you decide to fashion a raft or boat,” Beltain interrupted, looking at the Countess and then the Count. “I urge you strongly to think well on this now. The Kingdom of Tanathe in its entirety may not be here tomorrow.”

“But it would mean going to Death’s Keep!” The Countess began wringing her hands in distress. “My Leonora cannot—must not—she must not be forced to this—”

“I promise you,” Percy said, “I will not force the Lady Leonora to anything against her will. Even in the presence of Lord Death, she will have her choice.”

“I—”Leonora’s voice sounded. “I will come. But—no, I cannot die, not yet. My Lady Mother and My Lord Father, I cannot have you stay here and perish because of me. We will go to this—this
otherplace
. I will see Death and look upon him, and I will think. . . .”

“Then, it is well, and it will be for the best, My Lady.” Percy looked upon Leonora kindly.

The count nodded and then called his servants to gather their things yet again. Only this time, he directed them to leave most of their unpacked belongings behind, and choose only what was most essential.

“Will it be cold where we go?” he said wearily.

“Yes, it is Lethe, in the Realm. Death’s Keep is to be found from there, though I do not think you will necessarily end up in Lethe once we go there,” Percy spoke.

Beltain meanwhile went to gather his own armor and knight’s attire, and to get Jack ready to ride.

When sunset approached, they walked to the marketplace, leading horses behind them, and followed by a few servants carrying small items of personal value.