Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (23 page)

Callistan carefully laid
the leather back over the window and made his way to the stairs.

It was time to get some
answers.

The grass was buoyant
and springy and it added a lilt to Callistan’s steps that he did not feel. It
was a short walk from the house, over the small bridge that forded the stream
and up to the hill. As he walked, Callistan noticed that the colours were not
so bright as he had once thought. When he had crested the hill behind the house
that morning, the land had been caught full glare in the dawn sun, and
everything had seemed vibrant and full of life. Now the greens seemed
washed-out and diluted, and the bright flowers he had seen from a distance
seemed nothing more than pale imitations of their summer glory.

Approaching the hill,
Callistan thought he could hear rushing water nearby. He noted that the earth
was still damp from the rains of the last few days and his boots slid in the
mud several times as he climbed. His feet tore grass from the ground and left
brown scars on the hill as though a wild beast had savaged it, but eventually he
reached the top. There was a low wooden fence, built to keep out idle pests,
and he leapt it with ease, ducking as a fat bee buzzed by on its way to find a
suitable flower. It was late in the year for bees, but the sight of the busy
insect reminded him of summer and happier times — still formed of
faceless, nameless memory, but happy nonetheless. Ahead, through the thick
tangle of overgrown greenery, he could make out the figure of Raiya and a
smaller silhouette by her side. His heart should have leapt at the sight of his
son but the dread in his stomach had a firm grip and it sucked the joy from
him.

He cleared the denser
trees and waded through a knot of thick gorse, ignoring the tiny, thorny blades
that slashed at his knees. Raiya and Farilion had their backs to him and were
looking down at something that he could not see. As he closed on them, he could
see that Raiya was weeping and that Farilion was covered in patches of mud as
if he had been playing. Callistan reached them and put a hand on Raiya’s shoulder,
then looked down at the object of their attention.

There in a patch of
hastily and clumsily cleared grass, was a grave.

His breath caught in his
throat, then escaped as a low sob that he could not stop. It was a small grave,
dug for a child, and the soil on top sat clumped and thick, not properly
stamped down, nor lined with stones to keep out scavengers. The weeds and
shrubs had been cut back only as far as they needed to be and looked as though
they were merely awaiting another bout of rainfall so that they could stretch
out and seize back the stolen land.

Farilion looked up at
him with that expressionless, removed look, so mastered by the young during
moments of grief. Callistan wept then. He let go of his wife’s shoulder and
sank to his knees ignoring the cold press of wet mud against his leggings. He
tore at the invading plants with his bare hands, oblivious to the scores of
tiny scratches and welts. He heaved with sorrow and then fell forward until his
brow touched the loose soil that covered his daughter, and his tears salted the
earth so that nothing might grow atop this child of his that had been taken
from him.

Callistan did not know
how long he lay there but when he sat up he was alone and it was dark. He
frowned. He hadn’t heard them leave. Why had Raiya not told him about this?

Rage struck flint to
steel and his cheeks burned hot with anger, but he fought it down and did what
he knew he must. He followed the sound of water and found a narrow river
nearby. He gathered stones from the banks and carried them back to lay them on
the grave, pressing down on the wet soil with sodden boots and then arranging
the stones neatly on top. He thought that Mela should have a headstone and knew
that he could not make one now, so he resolved to do it first thing in the
morning. All thought of flight was put on hold as he stumbled back to the house
and away from the labyrinth that the orchard had become. His anger had abated
some but it still squatted dark and ugly in the pit of his stomach.

He marched inside and
made straight for their shared bedroom, and there his resolve crumpled and his
throat grew thick, for Raiya lay curled on the bed like a wounded animal,
crying and holding on to Farilion’s tiny frame. She turned when he entered and
her face was a picture of wretched misery. Silently Raiya ushered her son from
the room and then, after she had asked Callistan to close the door, it all came
out in a rush.

Mela had caught the
lung-fever, Raiya said. She had been down to the coast to stay with a friend,
and when she returned she had been pale and shivering. Raiya admitted that she
had panicked at first, but she had thought it best to isolate the girl, keeping
her in her room and banning the others from going near her, lest they catch the
deadly fever too.

“She was so weak,” said
Raiya. “She fought hard, as only your daughter would, but in the end it was too
much for her.” Raiya leaned in to Callistan as he held her and he breathed in
the too-strong scent of cloves. It reminded him of death, though he knew not
why. Mela had died two days ago, at the age of twelve, and Raiya had buried her
in the orchard, carrying the small body out herself, without the aid of the
servants. Mela had loved the orchard. “I’m so sorry, my love. I should have
told you sooner, but you had such strange news and I did not know what to do.”

Callistan stroked her
hair and shushed her and suddenly felt very empty and tired. He only wanted to
sleep. Raiya looked up at him and kissed him. The force of it shocked him, but
it was welcome and it helped him forget his grief as he had forgotten so many
other things. Suddenly she bit his lip and Callistan gasped, tasting salty
blood in his mouth. Raiya’s tongue was a slippery, searching eel and
Callistan’s mind was a whirl of confusion. He pulled away from her and he saw
the hurt in her eyes, shot through with a hunger that scared and excited him in
equal measure.

She stood smoothly and
reached behind herself to untie her skirt. It fell to the floor and she was
left only in a long cotton shift that glowed yellow-white in the candlelight,
the hem reaching down to her creamy thighs. She reached up and loosened her
copper-coloured hair and then shrugged the shift off of her shoulders so that
it dropped down to join the skirt. Callistan ran his eyes up her body, past the
smooth shapely legs and the fiery mound of hair where her thighs met, over the
flat, milky skin of her stomach and up to her small but perfectly formed
breasts, as pert as a kitten’s nose.

He felt lust stir in his
loins and reached up to grab her, but she batted his hands away lightly and
brushed past him. He propped himself up on one arm and watched the sway of her
buttocks, marvelling as the shadows played across the dimples at the small of
her back. She disappeared into the hallway. Callistan was shocked at her
brazenness, but then the house was dark and largely empty and she would return
soon. Wouldn’t she?

He sighed and lay back
on the bed. The pain was there, lurking behind his eyes, but he didn’t want to
think about it now. It would come back with a vengeance soon enough and he did
not want to speed its return. He hadn’t had a woman in — well, he didn’t
know how long — but now he was with
his
woman and he could delay the grief for a little longer before it swamped him.

He dangled his arm over
the side and swung it back and forth, aware that he was shutting out something
important. It was as if he could hear it banging at the door to come in. He
swung his arm quicker, as if he could waft the guilt away, and it brushed
against something sharp that bit into him. Callistan swore and drew his hand
away, sucking at the scratch and rolling off the mattress. There lay a long
handled knife that he did not recognise. It was tucked just under the bed and
did not have a sheath, and suddenly, like the sun shining through morning mist,
Callistan’s eyes were opened.

For all was not as it
seemed.

He stood and ran into
the hallway. It was dark and as empty as it had been before, but now the
shadows held a menace that made his skin crawl. He ran to his left, through the
archway and into the dining room with the large wooden table and out into the
cool night air.

Crucio was gone.

He swore and his mind
raced. When he had found Raiya earlier, after she had run from him, it had been
in the bedroom. She had been crouched by the bed and now he knew that she had
been going for the knife.
Does a wife
reach for a weapon on the return of her husband?

Callistan ran around the
side of the house that struck out into the darkness like a jetty. This was the
servants’ quarters and in daylight you could make out the difference between
the new pale stone of the main house and the annex where the servants lived and
worked. Now they were one great mass, turned grey by the night. He wanted to
call out but some instinct urged caution, and instinct had kept him alive so
far.

He rounded the corner
and crashed into something hard, falling with a curse. He turned to see what
had tripped him. It was a wooden wheelbarrow, plugged full with shiny mud, the
surface of which had been flattened into clay by the rain so that it was smooth
and unlined. Callistan stood and stuck his finger into the cool mud, leaving a
small depression. The sight of Mela’s resting place came to him: churned mud
and lumpy soil without any stones to cover it. Raiya had said that Mela had
been buried two days ago, but it had rained since then. His heartbeat was
suddenly very loud in his ears.

She had been lying. It
was a fresh grave. And Farilion… the mud on his clothes.

Callistan searched
frantically for a door to the servants’ quarters that he knew should have been
somewhere nearby. He scratched at the stone with his hands, unable to see
anything in the darkness except flashes of creamy skin and hair the colour of
fire. Finally his fingers found the wooden door and it was unlocked. Callistan
crept inside. “Cyna,” he hissed and then stopped as his boot slid in something
liquid. He closed his eyes and crouched to see what it was, but he knew what he
would find. It was a body, large and wet with blood and still warm to the
touch. Cyna’s body. Callistan struggled to draw breath and had a sudden urge to
be outside. He stood and ran back to the door, stumbling over the threshold and
staggering out into the night.

There was the jingle of
a chain and a large shape loomed at him from the shadows. Callistan
instinctively reached for his weapon but it was not there. He cursed and raised
his hands defensively, until the shape in the darkness lumbered close enough to
reveal itself. It was Crucio, eyes wide and white and ears flat with fear. The
poor beast was still tied by his muzzle to the hitching rail, but something had
scared him enough for him to rip it from the ground and flee, dragging it along
behind him. Callistan caught the horse by the traces and soothed him. Crucio grunted
softly and calmed visibly, so Callistan moved down his body, feeling for the
falcata he had placed there. He was desperate to have the comforting weight of
wood and steel in his hands.

It was gone. He swore.
Perhaps the horse had shaken it loose in its panic. Callistan turned and looked
at the pale house behind him. He would have to go back inside and find a
weapon.

Raiya had seemed so real
just moments before, but now it was clear that she was something else. He did
not want to say it, didn’t even want to think it, yet the thought was there and
the horror was lapping at the shores of his sanity. He swallowed and ruthlessly
suppressed thoughts of anything other than the task at hand — the benefit
of a soldier’s iron discipline.

Crucio snorted and then reared
with an all too human scream, knocking Callistan on to his back as something
sharp whistled through the air where his head had been. Callistan grunted, the
wind blown out of him as he impacted on the hard earth, but he recovered
quickly, rolling to his feet and spinning away from his attacker. She came at
him again, falcata held high and that beautiful face of hers twisted and
distorted with an inhuman fury. She swung the blade downwards, aiming to cut
him in half, but it was a wild blow and he skipped back easily, careful not to
slip in the mud.

She attacked once more,
naked and spattered with filth, and he sidestepped her clumsy slash. Callistan
backed away quickly and let her approach him. He knew now for certain that his
wife, his beautiful Raiya, was dead, and that this thing before him was simply
another cruel parody.

The slipskin strode
towards him, both hands firmly wrapped around the falcata’s hilt. But this
creature was not trained in combat. It was lashing out, putting all of its
fears and frustrations behind its swings, and therein lay his advantage.
Callistan abruptly stopped his retreat and the slipskin began to run, loping
forward on those long legs to bury the blade in his body. Callistan took a step
to the side and slipped in the mud, and the slipskin screeched in horrid
triumph. But the slipskin had been fooled and Callistan had not slipped at all.
Rather he had found a firm footing, and as the stolen falcata came whipping
towards him to cut him in half, he threw himself forward so that he went under
the blade and his shoulder crunched into the slipskin’s midriff. He felt her
ribs break, and not knowing if that would do anything other than superficial
damage, he threw himself on top of her writhing form and began to beat at her
face, Raiya’s face, with his bare hands. He closed his eyes so that he did not
have to watch, but every blow felt as if he was tearing something inside.
Eventually the struggling beneath him stopped and he knew he had to look, if
only to see if he had won.