Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (22 page)

The town of San Quellenne was a place of ghosts, suspended. In the fading cream-yellow sunlight trees moved in the breeze, with flowers that had been the same for days, neither ripening to fruit nor falling off. Leaves fluttered like lifeless eternal parchment.

The D’Arvu family walked slowly through the sparse dappled shadows made by the trees, casting farewell glances at the place they had wanted to make their home but now had to abandon after only a day. Percy and Beltain followed them, keeping slightly back, with Beltain fully armored in his black plate and chain mail, leading Jack behind him. Percy had her winter coat on, even though the balmy air made it stifling hot and beads of sweat were on her forehead.

Seagulls raced through the sparse trees around them, emerging through the branches clustered with greenery and on the other side where was the sea, casting themselves with hunger into the aquamarine waters and trying to hunt for fish that would not die in their beaks. They were all starving slowly, Percy thought, watching the maddened birds in their futile plight, sending up plumes of white spray as they struck downwards at the surface of the seawater.

On the street that was a beach, a few small animals emerged, lean nervous squirrels, and packs of dogs with despair in their eyes. A small, skinny orange-and-white tomcat peered through the shrubbery. They scattered from the approaching men and women, and yet followed the passerby with famished looks.

When they arrived at the market plaza, quite a few people had already gathered there, sitting on sacks of their belongings in the middle of the wide-open space. As soon as they saw Percy, every eye was upon her and their murmuring voices ceased.

The sun cast long indigo shadows as it sank into the west, the top of its bloody orange sphere like an egg yolk floating at the horizon. Slender tree branches stood out in layers of silhouette against the sunset, and the sky faded from blue to damson.

The denizens of the Castle of San Quellenne arrived last of all, the Lady San Quellenne and her daughter and son, all dressed simply—except for Lady Jelavie who wore a ruddy surcoat with a family crest over a suit of light armor, polished white metal, with a helm in the crook of her arm—with a few servants leading horses, and donkeys pulling a cart loaded with all that ever meant ‘home.’

Lady Calliope headed directly toward Percy. Her long dress of pale cotton billowed around her, without sleeves to cover her pale flesh that death had leached of any residue of tan, and only simple open sandals were on her feet. She wore no straw hat this time, and her hair, rich russet with highlights of pale metal was gathered in a simple plait, and a small band of shimmering sun-gold sat on her brow, which upon closer perusal turned out to be a simple coronet of braided silk ribbon. Her eyes were dark rich brown, a warm hue, even in death. “It is difficult saying goodbye to the place were you lived all your life. So many memories. . . .” Her measured words came in an even, calm voice, riding her breath.

Percy met her gaze and said, “Again, I am so sorry. I also left my small home village, though it does not compare to this green beautiful place.”

“Let us wait then, and see if any more people come.”

Percy nodded silently. Beltain caught her glance and there was patient strength in his slate-grey eyes. They stood thus, waiting, while the crowd gathered and the sunset faded.

“How much longer?” asked Lady Jelavie, approaching Percy. She glanced briefly in the direction of the black knight, appraising his new armored look.

“Soon,” Percy pointed to the long shadows. “As soon as the sun is gone, and twilight starts thickening, there will be some shadows that serve as
passageways
.”

“How can you tell them apart from other shadows?” Jelavie was looking at Percy with a hard gaze, and her brown eyes, the same hue as those of her mother, were not warm at all.

“I can feel their difference,” Percy replied, matching her gaze with her own steady one. “It is like grey mist. And then I move it apart by imagining it to be thus, and it becomes a
space
that can be entered.”

“Ah, I do not quite believe you,” the lady dressed as a knight said. “How do we know you are not leading us into an enemy trap? The Domain and the Realm are at war, even if we know not why, nor do we like to make war ourselves, and Lord knows what awaits us on the other side—dark sorcery! Will you enter first?”

“I will enter first,” sounded a rich baritone, and they both turned to look at Beltain.

“You are an enemy knight of the Realm,” said Lady Jelavie, looking up at him insolently. “I see by your armor you are of a high rank. Will you slay our people as we pass through this sorcerous passageway of shadows and smoke?”

“I am Lord Beltain Chidair, and I give you my word of honor you will not be harmed. If I had wanted to slay your people, they would be dead already,” he said softly, looking back at the lady with an unblinking stare. That same basilisk stare had cowered quite a few opponents on the battlefield.

But Lady Jelavie was undaunted. Her slim hands in their elegant steel-braced gauntlets reached for the length of sheathed sword at her side. “Do not think, Lord Beltain,” she said, “that San Quellenne goes like lambs to the slaughter. I
promise
you, your treacherous task will be far more difficult than you imagine.”

“Jelavie, please, stop.
 . . .” Her mother had come closer once again, moving with weary stilted footsteps that had grown more pronounced in awkwardness of stiff limbs, now that she was no longer hiding her condition, and Percy observed the soft resigned sorrow, a strange delicate sheen of it on her features.

Jelavie frowned, but immediately nodded to her mother, and looked away from the black knight.

In the next few moments, the sun sank beyond the horizon.

It was the beginning of true dusk.

The people in the marketplace shivered, glancing round them, for they too seemed to realize that the time of leaving was almost upon them.

In all places where the trees and buildings stood close together, branches clustered to obscure all vestiges of sky’s glow, shadows were gathering thickly. Soon, in a strange manner of a wavering mirage, the air began to warp, and Percy sensed an almost tangible pull at her death sense.

“There!” she said, pointing to one end of the plaza, where the darkness had developed a rip into another place and the air was suddenly thick like mist. Already, nothing could be seen through it on the other side and beyond into the distant trees, only the mist itself existed, and it was a curtain of unrelieved grey.

The people of San Quellenne started moving, rising from their seated positions on the ground, picking up their belongings.

“Tell them to line up in single file, or in pairs, no wider,” Percy said to Lady Calliope San Quellenne. And then she looked at Beltain, and he met her gaze and nodded silently, his eyes intent upon her. The great back warhorse at his side made a snort as Beltain led him, alongside Percy, to the edge of the clearing and toward the curtain of grey mist. He paused momentarily, staring at Percy with a haunted look. “I am going ahead, and I will wait for you on the other side.”

“Yes, and please take care of them as they pass. I will follow you all as soon as the last one of them goes through—”

“I will go directly after him, the first of my people!” Lady Jelavie was standing behind them, holding the bridle of her pale grey stallion, almost of the same hue as the shadows.

“Of course.
 . . .” Percy noted how the lady had unconsciously spoken the words “my people,” as though she were their liege already.

The black knight simply nodded, and said, “Follow me.” He turned and walked into the mist, with Jack stepping behind him, and they were dissolved into nothing.

Percy felt a sudden twinge of the same peculiar sense that she had discovered recently, a sensation of being left completely
alone
. She missed his presence in an instant, as if a part of herself had gone forward and left her behind.

She did not dwell on it however, and stood aside, allowing Lady Jelavie to move past her.

The young lady knight cast one look behind her, and the blue-twilight of the town of San Quellenne, its shapes fading already into the coming evening. She saw a line of townspeople behind her, and somewhere far in the back stood her mother, holding Flavio by the hand.

Jelavie waved at them, and then exclaimed loudly, “I am going now, follow me, everyone! Stay together, and be on your guard! And Mother, Flavio, be sure to come quickly, do not tarry!”

The Lady San Quellenne merely gazed at her, never taking her eyes away, and there was a small gentle smile on her lips as she nodded at her daughter, just once. The little boy meanwhile, waved energetically with his hand and looked excited to be going on an adventure.

Jelavie turned her back on them, took in a deep breath, and then stepped bravely into the mist, holding on to her horse.

She was gone, faded into nothing.

The townsman standing right behind her with a satchel and a large bag, paused only for a moment in indecision. He glanced at Percy standing there. But she smiled at him lightly and said, “Go on, it is very easy. Just a few steps, a little mist, and you will be on the other side. I’ve done this many times now and I still have the nose on my face to prove it.”

The man relaxed at her words, and nodded, then took a step forward and passed through into the mist. He was followed by a family with small children, several other men and women. And then one by one they all came.

Percy stood and watched as townspeople and peasants of all ages walked past her, in a quickly moving line, carrying belongings and tools of their trade, leading pack animals, small carts and wheelbarrows, and glancing at her with careful occasionally mistrustful looks, while at other times they were looks of hope. Quite a few of them had death shadows accompanying them.
 . . . A priest passed by, dressed in a long habit and carrying a bag with holy items from the church. He glanced at Percy, then recited a prayer and stepped forward into the mist.

In minutes, the marketplace plaza emptied.

The last ones remaining were the family D’Arvu and their servants, and the Lady San Quellenne and her son.

“We will see you on the other side, Percy Ayren,” said Count Lecrant, giving Percy a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “Thank you, my child, yet again for saving us. For, I do know what you are doing.
 . . .
Thank you.
”

She nodded, somewhat flustered, watching the D’Arvu servants begin to pass through, single file.

Lady Leonora and her mother paused momentarily. Leonora gave Percy a troubled stare, then said resolutely, “I am going.” And she stepped into the mist.

The Count and Countess D’Arvu started to follow, when Lady Calliope’s voice sounded. “Flavio San Quellenne!” she said to the boy. “Take this nice lady’s hand now, and go on ahead of me.”

The boy, gently pushed forward by his mother, turned around and stared at her with a questioning look, and at the same time a look bursting with excitement.

Lady Calliope leaned down, with unreadable eyes, and gave his forehead a light kiss. She then pointed Flavio to Lady Arabella D’Arvu. “Go on now! I’ll be just a moment, then right behind you.”

Lady Arabella paused only an instant, her look briefly startled, then wordlessly took the boy’s hand in her own and smiled warmly at him and then looked up and smiled somewhat wistfully at his mother.

“Go on, Flavio, my heart!” his mother said, standing next to Percy.

The boy made a chortle of delight and then ran forward, pulling Lady Arabella behind him. The Count D’Arvu followed them, and they were swallowed by the mist.

Percy and the Lady San Quellenne were the only ones left.

Percy looked at the lady before her, and she could see everything in her expression, all the things she had held back before the others.

“My Lady,” Percy said softly. “You are not coming.
 . . .”

Had the woman been living, she might have sighed. Instead she merely watched Percy with unblinking resigned eyes, completely at peace, in the blue cooling twilight of San Quellenne.

“No, I am not. How can I, when this—
all
of this—is me? For I am San Quellenne. I can never leave.”

“But what if everything, all of San Quellenne is gone? Would you risk disappearing into the unknown alongside it, all of it?”

For a few long moments the lady spoke nothing. She glanced around her at the town, the trees, the deep violet sky overhead beginning to fill with stars in the east. And then she pointed to the south where a faint glimmer of the sea was visible, ghostly waters moving with white-capped waves of phosphorescent foam. . . .

“Do you know,” Lady Calliope said, “that there used to be an island there once? Only a few days ago—back then, more than a few miles out there where the land used to be just yesterday, yes, beyond it, beyond the original beach? Yes, there was the Island of San Quellenne. Just a few times a year, when the tide receded, you could wade to it along a sandbar.
 . . . But most of the time it was surrounded by deep water. It had tall white cliffs, and on top of the cliffs, a garden of paradise, so green and lush it was. There was also Saga Mountain, a pale white peak, covered with wild shrubbery and heather and honeysuckle. My husband was buried on Saga Mountain. He lies there, in the shadow of a cedar tree—that is, he lay there. For Saga Mountain was the first thing gone. And then the island.”