Rathe hurled a table into the path of the clamoring horde, and darted after her. A tankard soared past his head, another pelted him square in the back. He was thanking Ahnok that no one had thrown a knife, when a twirling blade streaked by his ear and thudded into the wall.
Then he and Loro, hard on the heels of Horge and Yiri, ducked into a narrow hallway, raced down its length, burst through a ramshackle door and out into the night. Yiri wheeled down the alley and scampered into the woods. The rest followed. Rathe darted behind a screen of brambles, as the villagers came howling out of the Gelded Dragon.
“Keep low, and hold your tongues,” Yiri warned, slapping a hand over Horge’s quivering lips. When he nodded, eyes bulging above her fingers, she let him go.
Without another word, she began creeping quickly through the dark forest. Behind them, the villagers were spreading out, some bearing torches, others beating the brush.
Yiri led them deeper into the forest, and the commotion at their backs faded. They soon came to a game trail, where she paused to listen for sounds of pursuit.
“
Did
you kill Wull and the others?” she demanded, voice low.
Looking back the way they had come, but not seeing anyone, Rathe nodded. “They gave us no choice. They wanted your brother,” he added, when it seemed she would start cursing them for idiots.
She chewed her bottom lip. “You should have told me sooner. We could’ve been well away by now.”
“Is there a safe place?” Loro asked.
“Not this side of the mountains,” Yiri said. “Best to fetch whatever Jathen wants, and be done with it.” She looked at her brother. “And what does the good monk want?”
When Horge swallowed, his throat clicked. “The … the Keeper’s Box.”
“No,” Yiri snarled. “’Tis not his to claim.”
Rathe, who had not been paying close attention, spun at her harsh tone. “What’s so special about this box that you would sacrifice your brother’s life for it?”
“I don’t know that there is anything special about it,” she said, gaze wavering with the lie. “What concerns me is that Jathen has the Heart of Majonis, and now also wants the box.”
“What difference does that make?” Loro asked.
“Only one power can seal such a box, and that power comes from the Heart of Majonis.”
Rathe studied the young woman. “Why should sealing a box concern you?”
Yiri drew a deep breath. “Because such a seal is unbreakable and everlasting, save for those who sealed it.”
Someone yelled close enough for Rathe to duck down. He whispered, “It could well be that Jathen intends to seal something that
should
be hidden away. Besides, I gave my word that I would help him find what he wanted. As you know where this box is, you’re going to take me to it.”
“No,” Yiri said firmly.
“You
must
help,” Horge pleaded. “If Jathen doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll hunt us to the ends of the world. His reach is far, sister. Too far to escape.”
“Do not tell me what I already know!” Yiri snapped.
“A decision is in order,” Loro said, nodding to the line of torches bobbing through the forest.
“Trouble will come of this, brother,” Yiri warned.
“Aye,” Horge said. “But mayhap it’s a trouble we should have faced long ago.”
“Mayhap you are right,” Yiri said, eyes narrowed with smoldering anger. “But know you set us on a dangerous road, one we have avoided for good reason.”
“There be a time and place for all things,” Horge said softly. “Mayhap the time for retribution, at long last, is come.”
Before Rathe could ask what they were going on about, Yiri waved for them to follow her.
Chapter 24
Fira reined in. “Surely we’ve traveled far enough to stop for the night?”
“I suppose,” Nesaea answered, a little put out. They had made good time in the days since leaving Skalos, but it seemed Jathen’s directions were inaccurate. By her estimation, they should have reached Ravenhold just before dusk. Now it was the middle of the night, and she saw nothing to indicate a fortress lay nearby.
Sitting astride her horse, Nesaea held aloft an Eye of Nami-Ja to light the mountain trail. Overhead, the boughs of lightly frosted firs blocked the sky, and their trunks marched off in all directions until merging with the darkness. She swung the orb, seeking a likely campsite.
“There,” Fira said, pointing to a small clearing at the narrow fringe between light and dark.
Nesaea would have preferred to get farther from the trail, but decided if bandits were about, they were not likely to wander around in the forest so late. She guided her mount off the trail and into the forest, wary of hidden holes and roots that might upset the horse’s footing. Once to the clearing, she dismounted in a patch of grass.
“Maybe I’m suspicious,” Fira said, unsaddling her horse alongside Nesaea, “but it seems to me that Jathen might have led us far astray. Despite wanting to bed us, I think he hopes to never see us again.”
Nesaea recalled the desire in his eyes, then his curt dismissal. Whatever his amorous thoughts concerning her and Fira, getting rid of them had taken precedence. And, other than a word of caution, he had readily sent them off to a place he had first suggested was dangerous. “Not only does he hope to never see us again, I do not think he expects to.”
Fira paused in rubbing down her mount with a handful of grass. “You think he is walking us into a trap?”
Nesaea held silent, considering. She knew only a little about the Way of Knowing, and less about the monks who resided in Skalos. She did know they could not be trusted. They were men who sought forbidden and elusive knowledge for the sake of seeking and possessing it. To what purpose, no one knew. Anyone who came between the monks and a perceived treasure was considered an opponent fit only for destruction. “Not a trap,” Nesaea said slowly. “I believe he sent us to our death. At least, what he believes will be our death.”
“Why would he?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? My guess is he wanted to be rid of us, and whatever awaits us at Ravenhold is the easiest way to make that happen.” She wondered if there could be a higher reason, but did not see it. Likely, Jathen wanted to dispose of any and all who came poking their noses where they ought not be poking.
“That filthy whoreson,” Fira cursed. She took a calming breath. “Do we go back and gut the treacherous bastard?”
Nesaea hesitated. “After Ravenhold.”
“Why would we go there, if that’s where he thinks to be rid of us?”
“Because we might be jumping to conclusions,” Nesaea admitted.
“Seems a fool’s risk.”
“Not if we’re cautious.”
Fira accepted that, but not without a fair bit of harsh murmuring.
After they tended the horses, Nesaea used flint and steel to kindle a small fire ringed with stones. Better to not have a fire, but it was so damnably cold, and her fingers so damnably stiff.
“Tea?” Fira asked, pulling a tiny black pot from her saddlebag. With more than a little skepticism, she added, “I trust the monks of the Way of Knowing must know all there is to know about good tea.”
“Naturally,” Nesaea said, tone matching Fira’s. She had found that most folk who claimed supreme knowledge about one subject or another, rarely knew more than anyone else.
While the water and tea heated, Nesaea nibbled some of the hard travel bread they had gotten from the stores of Skalos. She hoped the tea had a better flavor. The fire slowly warmed her, at least the front half. She counted any warmth a blessing. Soon, her eyelids grew heavy.
“You look tired as I feel,” Fira said, handing over a wooden cup brimming with dark tea.
Nesaea wrapped her fingers around the cup for warmth, and breathed deep the fragrant steam. Some of her doubts began to fade about the monks’ understanding of good tea. At the first sip, she knew she had misjudged them, at least on one score.
“Gods,” Fira sighed, eyes closed, a smile turning her lips. “I’ve never had better.”
Nesaea opened her mouth to agree, but the words stuck in her throat, and her eyes went wide. A pair of pale figures were sneaking out of the forest behind Fira. Before her tumbling cup struck the ground, she had leaped up and drawn her short sword.
Fira reacted in a soundless blink, flinging her tea aside and diving over the fire. She came up beside Nesaea with steel in her hand, shocked gaze roving. “What’s wrong with them?”
Not having an answer, Nesaea saved her breath.
The figures, a young woman and an old man, wore tunics and leather breeches, but no shoes. Their overlarge eyes bulged obscenely, glistened like oiled onyx. They came closer, until Nesaea could make out black veins crawling under pallid skin. Red sores pocked the scant flesh of their arms and legs, climbed up their necks to their cheeks. Where those wounds dotted their brows, Nesaea saw yellowed bone.
“Plague,” Fira yelped, backing away.
The old man’s mouth worked, making a breathless hiss. The woman reached out with a hand of bones hung with garlands of rotten skin. If there was life in the pair, it did not wear a face Nesaea recognized.
The horses began jerking at the lead ropes, stomping nervously. Nesaea heart jumped when she looked that way. More figures were escaping the forest, young and old alike.
Fira shot her a fearful look. “Do we fight?”
You cannot kill what is already dead.
The unspoken thought hooked in Nesaea’s mind.
The first woman had shuffled closer, ragged feet churning through the campfire’s coals. With her came the overpowering stench of something hauled from the lightless depths of a mire.
“Nesaea!” Fira quailed, taking another step back, head whipping back and forth. “They’re all around us!”
After she passed through the fire, the plague-ridden woman’s pace quickened, the smell of charring meat proceeding her. She reached, bony fingers curling, sagging strips of skin dripping foul brown fluid. Her black eyes locked with Nesaea’s. In them shone the absence of everything.
“Nesaea!” Fira shrieked.
Gagging, Nesaea hacked off the dead woman’s arm at the elbow. And dead she must be, for no blood jetted from severed veins.
Still the woman came on, grasping with the other hand. Nesaea braced her feet, her blade slashing a deadly pattern across the woman’s throat, chest, and belly. Head bobbling on a neck cut half-through, lungs fluttering behind broken ribs, belly spewing loops of rank innards, the woman’s pace did not falter.
Nesaea avoided a swipe of naked finger bones, twisted with all her strength, sweeping her blade sidearm. With a crunching screech, steel ripped through the woman’s neck. Her head hit the ground, bounced over a litter of pine straw, came to rest against the base of a tree. Depthless black eyes rolled, seeking.
Nesaea’s revulsion turned to horror when the fingers of one hand closed around her throat. The headless woman had not stopped. Nesaea buried her blade into the corpse’s middle, once and again. Skeletal fingers squeezed, cutting off her air.
The old man knocked Nesaea and her foe to the ground. He wriggled over the top of them, a rapid slithering that pinned Nesaea’s thrashing limbs. His drool splashed over her lips, ran over her tongue. The taste was death and corpses. His panting, gurgling hisses burrowed into her head, wrapping her tight in ropes of panic. Sightless eyes regarded her, came closer. Festering lips peeled back from the old man’s teeth, his tongue darted and flicked, a lurid kiss, slobbering, tasting, savoring.
Far away, Fira’s screams rose higher, then cut off. Darkness came for Nesaea, falling over her in gray waves, piling on until all went dead as the black eyes filling her vision.
Chapter 25
The foursome tromped through the forest for the rest of the night, climbing into the forested hills overlooking Wyvernmoor. At dawn, they reached the hovel Horge and Yiri named home. After supplying Rathe and Loro with a meager bite of food and a skin of water, the odd pair bustled them back outside. Yiri admonished them to keep a sharp eye for pursuers, then slammed the door in their faces. Rathe was of the mind that the villagers had turned back long since.
“I don’t trust Yiri,” Loro said bluntly.
Rathe looked over the rudimentary pile of rock and timber where Yiri and Horge lived. It had a roof of moldy thatch in need of replacing, but inside there had been a massive fireplace to quickly cut the chill from each of its three rooms, and to provide ample light for the central room. Shelves stocked with foodstuffs, earthenware containers and other oddments, reached from floor to ceiling. One wall seemed wholly dedicated to Yiri’s craft.
“Nor do I trust her,” Rathe admitted. She had done something to him back at the Gelded Dragon, but try as he might, he could not remember anything untoward. “When we met Yiri,” he said slowly, “did anything
happen
?”
Loro gave him a curious look. “How do you mean?”
“Did she
do
anything to me?”
“Well,” Loro said taking a contemplative swig from his flask, “she read your fortune, said something about your curse being lifted.”