Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (28 page)

Now, kneeling in the Hidden Chamber of the Black Guild Brotherhood, Jarod looked up over the heavy table. On the right side of the table, with its tip pointed at Jarod, was a long, narrow knife with an incredibly sharp edge sitting next to a solitary lit candle. On the left side of the table were an enormous round of cheese and a basket of fresh bread. Directly behind the table sat the hooded figure of the Shahanshah himself, Jep’s face obscured in shadow as he gazed upon the
Initiati.
Behind the Shahanshah on the wall hung the Secret Flag of the Black Guild Brotherhood: a black field embroidered with the symbol of five blades—signifying the five edicts of the Guild and, some say, the five cards dealt to each player.

“Bring the
Initiati
forward!” the Shahanshah decreed.

Harv and Joaquim glanced at each other. Both were also wearing their ceremonial cloaks but had not bothered to pull their own hoods up. Joaquim shrugged.

“He
is
forward, Supreme Shahanshah,” Harv said.

The hooded figure seated behind the table shifted slightly so that the front of his hood could be raised.

“So he is,” Jep said in a booming voice. “Is he willing to take the oath?”

Harv nudged Jarod.

“I am,” Jarod answered, his voice nearly breaking in his excitement.

“Has his metal been tested in the Black Guild forge?” Jep’s voice more than filled the basement room with its drama. The eighteen other members of the guild wished to themselves that he would tone things down a little but knew it was a forlorn hope.

Joaquim answered. “His metal has not been . . . has not been . . .”

“Tried by our forge!”
Harv prompted under his voice.

“Has not been tried by our forge!” Joaquim finished with a grateful glance toward Harv.

“Place him in . . . LIMBO!” Jep’s voice shouted dramatically as he pointed emphatically at the basement door, “where he shall stay until the
Corpus Brothus
can determine a suitable test of his worth!”

The blindfold was placed back on Jarod at once and he was led through the door and into an extra storage room, sat down on a chair, and told to wait for the decision of the members as to his test.

“How long are you going to keep him in there, Jep?” asked Harvest Oakman.

“Until I get a winning hand,” Jep said, gathering up his cards.

“That could be a long time,” Mordechai said, pushing a pair of silver coins toward the center of the table.

Joaquim nearly choked on his cider as he snorted, “Hey, maybe that could be his test—waiting for Jep to actually win a hand?”

“Laugh all you want,” Harv said, fanning out his cards and examining them with care, “but we’ve got to come up with something for him to do.”

“What about running through the town in a dress?” Joaquim offered. “That’s always been a good one.”

“That’s just because you want to make the dress,” Mordechai said in droll tones.

“Well, if I did, he’d be the prettiest
Initiati
we’ve ever had,” Joaquim replied, tapping his own cards on the table.

“We could have him ride the water wheel three times around on Bolly’s Mill,” Harv said, pushing his own silver coins forward. “The water’s cold enough and it’s always a lot of fun to watch.”

“Didn’t we do that last time?” Mordechai asked.

“Yeah,” Joaquim said, “and I believe it was
me
that was doing the riding.”

“You looked so good doing it, too,” Mordechai smiled.

Jep had kept quiet for the most part and let the conversation flow around him. The truth was that he liked Jarod but resented Livinia’s bullying him into inviting him into the Black Guild just so Vestia could have a respectable beau. This was his Black Guild Brotherhood, his one refuge from all the cares of his normal life, and now that special place was being invaded too.

So he had thought long and hard about what kind of trial to put Jarod through . . . not so much for his torture but so that he might really earn the right to be here apart from Livinia’s insistence.

“Well, I think I’ve got it,” Jep spoke up.

Everyone at the table looked up and, as word was passed among the other tables, the general murmur of conversation died. All eyes turned toward their Shahanshah as he took a long draught from his mug of ale.

“That old summer house—the Forgotten Manor,” Jep said. “It’s a strange old place and the whole town thinks it’s haunted. What if he spent the night out there?”

A cold silence greeted the Shahanshah.

“What’s wrong with that?” Jep demanded, putting his cards facedown on the table.

“But . . . it
is
haunted,” said Jesse Hall in a quivering voice. Jesse was a teamster at Bolly’s Mill.

“Oh, that’s just fairy talk,” Jep said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He picked up his cards again. “It’s just an old empty house! Besides, we won’t actually have him spend the night out there . . . we’ll march out there with him, tell him he has to spend the night. Harv, you go with Joaquim over to his store and get some sheets of muslin—enough to cover you up. Then, while we’re out there, the two of you go in the back, cross through the salon and into the front hall. Hoot him up as though you were spirits in the house, and when he runs out we’ll tell him he passed. If he’s got enough man in him to go in the front door, that’s good enough.”

“So,” Harv asked, “you want us to go now?”

“No,” Jep said, tossing a few more silver coins into the middle of the table. “Not until we’ve finished this hand.”

Flaming torches fluttering in the night, the men of the Black Guild Brotherhood, still clad in their ceremonial cloaks and hoods, marched down the Meade road and turned north to follow the overgrown and abandoned road that wandered into the Norest Forest. Pushed before them was a decidedly upset Jarod Klum doing his best to counterfeit some semblance of bravery, his hastily acquired bedroll squeezed in the crook of his arm. Jep Walters’s firm hand was on his shoulder, pressing him ever forward down the dark road to a darker end.

The Black Guild Brotherhood came at last to stand before the imposing edifice of the Forgotten Manor, its columns and blackened windows barely illuminated by the dim light from the guttering torches.

“What is it?” asked Plix.

“Sure, it’s an invasion, it is!” Glix said, peering out the window from the darkened room in the north wing. “Torches and all!”

“Should we be waking the constable, then?” Dix asked anxiously.

“And get him all bothered again? Forget it!” Glix said. “Gather all the clan. We’ll handle this lot ourselves!”

“But will you look at that one!” Plix said, pointing. “He’s going to the front door!”

“Then we’ll cut him off . . . go through the house ourselves.”

Plix’s eyes went wide. “But the constable said—”

“Who’s in charge here, Plix?” Glix answered at once. “I’m head of the clan, not the Constable Pro Tempore. Gather the sheets, boys. We’re on the haunt tonight!”

• Chapter 19 •

The Frightening

Jarod could not stop shaking. He was squeezing the woolen bedroll under his arm so tightly that he thought he might have pressed it flat. He desperately wanted to close his eyes and run away, the combination of which he somehow knew was wrong. It would probably result in his running into a tree, but it was, nevertheless, how he felt.

The forbidding edifice rose before him, a dark, malevolent shape against the moonlit clouds racing on the wind. Leaves skittered across the wide, stone steps. His own shadow, cast by the torches of the Black Guild Brotherhood behind him, rose enormous across the face of the building, leaving the entry door completely dark.

How did I get into this?
his mind raced.
How do I get OUT?

He knew in his heart the answer to the first question. When the invitation had been extended to join the Black Guild Brotherhood, it had nearly made Jarod believe in miracles from the Lady of the Sky. Sobrina and Lucius were going to be married the following month, the banns having been read before the town by Father Pantheon shortly after the Fall Festival’s conclusion. This would leave Jarod free to court Caprice properly—but it still left him with the problem of what offering of worth he might put in his Treasure Box to take to Caprice and her father as the bride price. Then came the invitation to join the Black Guild Brotherhood—which practically everyone acknowledged to be the most influential society in the town—and it looked like the key to prominence in the community. Social connection might not fit in his Treasure Box, but it certainly would open doors all over town for him and show Meryl Morgan that Jarod was himself a prize worthy of his daughter.

As to the second question, his mind was desperately searching for an answer. He had feared the Forgotten Manor and quaked at hearing stories of the place since he was old enough walk. Tales of the family who once lived there, all horribly murdered in their beds. Tales of warrior spirits who had taken up residence in the halls after they were unable to return to their own homes. Tales of wishes gone bad accumulating in the halls until they awoke and wanted only to ensnare the living with them in their despair. Tales more recently of the ghost of Dirk Gallowglass, whose headless body no doubt now roamed the halls. Any who entered would surely be most horribly tortured by the spirits that haunted the abandoned ruin, losing their sanity and having their souls slowly devoured by the darkness!

Jarod gulped.

Do it for Caprice . . .

The young man blinked. He was not certain if someone had whispered it to him or if he had simply thought it.

Do it for love . . .

Jarod drew in a breath. Somehow he found that his feet were moving him forward. They carried him up the broad, stone steps to the front door of the Forgotten Manor.

He reached for the handle and pulled the creaking door open.

An abyss of blackness was on the other side.

Jarod stepped into it.

“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Joaquim said from under his muslin sheet.

Harvest Oakman and Joaquim Taylor were both standing on the west side verandah draped in white cloth taken from Joaquim’s stores. Necessity had required that they cut holes in the cloth through which they might see, which left Joaquim complaining about how he was ever going to get the Black Guild to pay up for ruining the cloth. Those considerations, however, had been set aside by the terror of standing at the dark manor’s back door.

“Well, you heard the Grand Pashashashasha,” Harv replied in a voice only marginally more steady than his companion’s. “We just go in these doors, run straight through the salon and into the hall on the other side. We give Jarod his little scare and then we follow him out the front, easy as you please.”

“Easy enough to say,” Joaquim stuttered through chattering teeth.

“Soon begun, sooner done,” Harv said, both for his own benefit and for that of his friend. “Let’s get this over with.”

Harv pulled open the door, gave Joaquim a push, and followed him inside.

Glix had just banked the fire in the drawing room. Throughout the room floated the sheets that had once protected the furniture, now suspended in the air by the pixies.

“All set then, boys?” Glix called out with determination as he flew up in front of the assembled haunting.

“Right enough,” Plix replied, “but old constable told us not to go into that part of the house . . . I mean, what if it
is
haunted, Glix?”

All motion of the false spirits in the room suddenly stopped.

Glix paused, considered, and then shook his head as he spoke. “There’s no spirits in this house, boys. The constable knows us pixies right well, and he’d never bring us to a place that’s haunted—him knowing what a dreadful great fear we have of the dead. So there’ll be no more talk of spirits! Follow me, lads! Let’s do some haunting of our own!”

Glix pulled open the door and flew into the pitch darkness of the narrow gallery leading to the main hall.

Jarod stood still in the center of the main hall. Dim light filtered in from the full moon through the dirty windows high on the wall behind him. The hall was two stories tall and once must have been beautiful. Twin staircases curved upward at the far end of the hall to a balcony on the second floor. Numerous doors led off to the left and right to destinations that Jarod did not care to guess. Cloth-draped furniture was scattered everywhere.

The muted wind was the only sound.

Jarod stepped into the hall farther, wondering just how far in he would be required to go. He stopped in the center of the hall at a cloth-shrouded round table and decided that the only real condition he had been told was “inside” the house, and that meant he could probably get away with standing all night next to the front door.

He was just turning back.

The north door from the gallery burst open. Out poured the faint glowing form of spirits, their outlines like flying sheets flapping and cracking as they flew into the hall.

Jarod yelped! All conscious thought left him in that moment and he forgot how to find the front door. He backed away from the onrushing apparitions, his back pressed against a door on the south wall.

Suddenly, at the top of the stairs, two more ghostly forms materialized. These were larger in form and had taken on a heartier, more corporeal form. Their keening was deeper, too, and both appeared to be wearing boots.

The first spirits wheeled in the air, confronting the second pair of spirits as they both came to a sudden stop halfway down the stairs.

The flying spirits all shrieked an ear-splitting keening!

The two booted spirits screamed back!

“They’ll be coming out any minute,” Jep Walters assured the remaining assembly of the Black Guild Brotherhood. “Then we can all get back to our secret meeting—I left a pretty good winning streak and I don’t want it to go cold.”

A single cry from the house pierced the air.

Jep smiled with satisfaction. “That’s Jarod . . . we’re about finished now.”

A bone-chilling, cacophony of screams filled the air, all coming from the house. Mordechai Charon and many others would later swear they saw glowing spirits flying behind the windows all around the front door.