The Knight's Tale (3 page)

“Thomas,” said Hamus, oblivious or indifferent to his
son’s glare, “take Sir Ridmark to my solar. I would speak with him
in private. Father Linus, headman Ulacht, you may wait here.”

Thomas took Ridmark to the solar and then departed.
It was a comfortable room with stuffed chairs and polished wooden
tables, and the windows had a good view of the village and Rzoldur
upon its hill. There was a carafe of wine upon a sideboard, and
Ridmark reached for it…

The door opened, and Ridmark looked up, expecting to
see Sir Hamus.

Instead, Lady Gwenaelle glided alone into the
solar.

Ridmark’s throat went dry, his world seeming to focus
upon her.

“Do you know what it is like,” she said, her rich
voice full of pain, “being married to that indolent old fool? Of
having to share a bed with that fat slug?” She stepped closer, and
the smell of her perfume filled his nostrils.

“My lady. We’re alone,” Ridmark said, “this is not
appropriate…”

“I’ve dreamed of a knight coming to take me away from
all this,” said Gwenaelle, putting her delicate hands upon his
shoulders, the touch making his heartbeat hammer like a drum.
“Please, take me with you. Do you know how much I’ve wanted a man,
a real man, and not that pompous old fool?”

Her lips parted as she leaned closer, about to kiss
Ridmark. His body screamed for him to seize her, to bury his hands
in that thick red hair and pull her close, to crush her slender
form against him as he pulled her out of that gown…

Ridmark had enough wit left to realize that was a
very bad idea.

“Ah,” Ridmark said, stepping back. He considered
pushing her away, but realized that if he touched her once he might
not be able to stop himself. “Yes. Very good. Well. My horse. I
need to see to my horse.”

Gwenaelle frowned, puzzled. “But surely the grooms
can attend…”

“No!” Ridmark said. “A true Knight of the Soulblade
does not entrust the care of his horse to another man. Otherwise
I’ll have to walk, and for a knight to walk is simply
undignified…”

Ridmark realized that he was rambling, and he turned
and made for the great hall just short of a run. A nagging voice in
his head urged him to go back, kiss her, and see what happened.
Nevertheless, he had the peculiar feeling that he had just escaped
from some deadly danger.

The danger of a scandal, likely. For a Swordbearer
and a son of Leogrance Arban to commit adultery with a knight’s
wife would be a very grave crime, and Ridmark knew that if remained
alone with Gwenaelle he would wind up committing adultery wtih
enthusiasm.

Ridmark returned to the great hall and saw Sir Hamus
slumped on the high seat, snoring. Sir Thomas stared at his father
with annoyance, while Ulacht, Father Linus, and Sempronius waited
nearby. Old Gotha wondered along the wall, muttering to herself and
brushing at the tapestries.

“Flies,” she said, “flies everywhere! They breed like
flies!”

“I see you have realized,” said Sir Thomas, “that my
father is not up to the task of dealing with these
disappearances.”

Ridmark looked at the snoring old man. “Apparently
not.”

“As much as it galls me to ask for help from a
southern noble,” said Thomas, “we need your help, Swordbearer. We
must have the help of a Swordbearer. My villagers and the orcs are
ready to tear each other apart. If one more child disappears from
either village, it will be a bloodbath.”

“So you don’t think,” Ridmark said, glancing at
Linus, “that the orcs are behind the disappearances.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Thomas. “This is the
Northerland. All the old horrors might have been hunted to
extinction in the south, but this is the edge of the realm. There
are so many things that prey upon both men and orcs here.”

“Bacon!” announced Gotha to no one, brushing dust
from a tapestry showing the first High King’s duel with his
treacherous nephew Mordred. “Fresh bacon! With some cheese and
biscuits, please. Yes, lovely, thank you. You’re all just bacon, in
the end, all of you.”

“Then you have a suspicion?” Ridmark said.

“Aye,” said Sir Thomas. “I think the orcs tunneled
too far in their mines and reached the Deeps, and something has
come up from the darkness below the soil. Maybe an urvaalg, or
perhaps an urshane.”

Ulacht growled. “We are not fools. We would know if
we dug into the Deeps.”

“Aye,” says Thomas. “But you slew an urvaalg outside
the village, and many of the beasts of the dark elves can turn
invisible or take different shapes. The creature could be lurking
in the mines unnoticed, feeding on the children and sowing discord
among us.” He shook his head. “There is another possibility. A
sister of one of the disappeared children reported seeing ghosts
near the tombs in the caverns below the hill. I thought it a
childish fancy…but it is possible that someone among, human or orc,
is dabbling in forbidding arts, and has called up some horror from
beyond the grave.” He spread his hands. “I leave it to your
judgment, Swordbearer. Something preys upon my people. Where shall
we hunt for it?”

Ridmark considered, trying to remember everything he
could about creatures of dark magic. Both of the possibilities Sir
Thomas had suggested seemed likely, and Ridmark had heard of
similar things happening even in his father’s quieter lands. But
the last thing the Magistrius Sempronius remembered before his
poisoning was walking near that dark elven ruin atop the hill.

“I wish to investigate the dark elven ruin,” Ridmark
said.

Sir Thomas frowned. “Why? It has been centuries since
the dark elven princes were defeated and the urdmordar overthrown.
Horrors lurk in such ruins, I know, but this one has been empty for
years. Often the villagers store seed crops there.”

“The Magistrius Sempronius was poisoned,” Ridmark
said. “The last thing he remembers is walking near that ruin
several weeks past.”

“I thought he seemed more lucid than usual,” said
Thomas, scowling at the old man, who gave the knight an affronted
glare. “Very well. I have no other ideas, so we might as well look
there. I shall accompany you.”

“And Ulacht,” growled Ulacht.

“Very well. Magistrius, Father Linus, stay here,
please,” said Thomas. “If the villagers get riled up, we’ll need
someone to calm them.”

Father Linus seemed embarrassed, no doubt remembering
his argument with Ulacht outside the village, but Sempronius
offered a grave nod.

Ridmark left the keep’s great hall, Sir Hamus’s
snores and Gotha’s incoherent rambling filling his ears. With the
headman and the knight, he climbed the rocky hill towards the dark
elven ruin. The lessons of Ridmark’s childhood flickered through
his mind. For long millennia, his tutors had said, the dark elves
struggled against the high elves in wars that lasted uncounted
thousands of years. Then the urdmordar came, destroyed the high
elven kingdoms, and made vassals of the dark elves and the pagan
orcs.

But then humans came from Old Earth and overthrew the
urdmordar, and now dark elven ruins stood scattered throughout
Andomhaim, haunted places of evil reputation. Sometimes the evil
reputation was just a rumor.

Sometimes it was more than justified.

“Here we are,” said Thomas they reached the crest of
the hill and the base of the ruin.

The ruin had once been a small fortress of white
stone, with delicate, soaring towers and graceful arches. Yet it
looked wrong to Ridmark, the angles and proportions strange, and he
suspected that looking at it for too long would give him a
headache. The dark elven sense of aesthetics was unsettling to
human minds.

“Long ago,” said Ulacht in a hoarse voice, “the orcs
of Khaluusk served the dark elven lord who lived here, and that
lord in turn served the urdmordar, and we prayed to their gods of
shadow and death. Then the High King and his Dominus Christus came,
and we followed them instead.”

“But this place has been empty for centuries,” said
Thomas, “and even the last of the treasures were carted off long
ago.”

“Then why,” said Ulacht, “does Ulacht see so many
tracks?”

Ridmark didn’t have the orcish headman’s skill as a
tracker, but Ulacht was right. Dozens of tracks went back and forth
in the dirt before the entrance to the central tower.

Thomas shrugged. “The peasants made them, no doubt,
when they came to get the seed crop stored here. That doorway goes
to the cellars below the tower.”

“It’s early spring,” Ridmark said. “The weather is
not yet ripe for planting.”

“And why,” said Ulacht, “did the peasants not wear
their shoes? Barefoot humans made these tracks, Ulacht thinks.”

Again Ulacht is correct. Bare human feet made those
tracks, and Ridmark could not imagine why so many people had come
here barefoot in the chilly weather.

“Perhaps they’re left over from the summer,” said
Thomas, but Ridmark heard the doubt in his voice.

“The winter would have blown the tracks away,”
Ridmark said, looking up at the sky to think.

And as he did, he heard a peculiar sound coming from
the doors to the ruin’s great hall. 

The laughter of children at play. 

A shiver went through Ridmark. Maybe some children
were simply playing in the ruins. But with both Victrix and Rzoldur
in fear from the disappearances, that seemed unlikely.

“Follow me,” Ridmark told the others. He drew
Heartwarden, and after a moment’s hesitation, Sir Thomas drew his
own blade. Ulacht, of course, had been carrying his club the entire
time.

The doors to the hall had long since rotted away, but
the interior was gloomy, despite the walls of white stone. The only
light came from narrow windows high above, throwing pale shafts of
light through the murk. There was no furniture, save for a massive
stone throne upon a dais at the far end of the hall. Once a dark
elven lord sat there, ruling over his vassals and slaves. Sacks of
grain and corn rested against the walls, and Ridmark realized that
the villagers did indeed store their seed crops in the ruin.

“There’s no one here,” said Thomas.

Ulacht scowled. “It does not smell right.”

“I think…” Ridmark began to say, and a woman walked
into sight around one of the piles of heaped sacks.

She was naked, her body gaunt and pale. Her ribs
flexed against her skin as she drew breath, the joints of her hips
clenching and unclenching as she walked. She looked about twenty,
with stringy red hair and eyes that were glittering green slits in
her emaciated face.

The woman stopped a dozen paces away, standing before
the throne, and gazed at Ridmark. His first thought was that she
was a madwoman, but that did not seem right. He would have expected
a naked madwoman to show fear of three armed men, but she only
looked curious, even pleased. For an instant she reminded Ridmark
of a wolf regarding a deer.

“Madam,” said Thomas, “clearly, you are not well.
Come with us and we shall find you some clothing and food.”

The woman opened her mouth…and the sound of four or
five laughing children emerged from her lips.

Ulacht raised his club, and for the first time
Ridmark saw a hint of fear on the old orc’s face.

“I am very hungry,” said the woman in Latin, her
melodious voice a contrast to her wasted appearance, “but I’m not
really one of the true people yet. Soon, but not today, sadly. I’ve
been very faithful. If I’m obedient and faithful and keep secrets,
then I’ll become a goddess and get to keep pets of my own.”

“I do not understand,” said Thomas.

The woman snapped her bony fingers. “Oh, yes, of
course. I forget that you really are animals. It must be horrible,
to be as stupid as you are all the time. But it won’t worry you for
much longer.”

She took a step forward, and Heartwarden began to
glow with white fire in Ridmark’s hand.

The woman was either a wielder or a creature of dark
magic.

“Swordbearer,” said Ulacht, voice thick, “I
think…”

The woman looked at Heartwarden and made a childish
sound of glee, like a girl presented with a sweet. “Oh, you’re the
one! Mother said you might stop by! She’ll reward me for this.”

Her face rippled, and all at once her features
changed. Six additional shining green eyes appeared on her forehead
and temples, and a pair of black pincers erupted from the sides of
her mouth. Blood-colored talons, long as daggers, burst from her
fingers.

Ridmark realized that they were in deadly danger.

The woman was not a human but a spiderling, an
offspring of a human man and an urdmordar. She would possess
supernatural strength and speed, along with the ability to use
venoms of varying kinds – which perhaps explained Magistrius
Sempronius’s hallucinations.

“We were supposed to save the pets for the final
culling of the herd,” said the spiderling, “but I suppose Mother
won’t mind. Kill them!”

The air rippled, and two hulking urvaalgs appeared on
either side of the spiderling. They sprang forward with terrible
speed, one making for Sir Thomas, the other heading for Ulacht. The
spiderling woman herself began to whisper, gesturing in front
her.

She was casting a spell.

Ridmark had a split second to act. He decided to help
Sir Thomas with the urvaalg attacking him. Ulacht was a veteran
warrior, and Ridmark was not sure if Thomas had faced a foe as
dangerous as an urvaalg before.

The urvaalg sprang upon Thomas, driving the knight to
the ground. Thomas managed to get his shield between him and the
urvaalg, which kept the beast from biting his head off. The urvaalg
raked at the shield, its talons tearing splinters from the thick
wood.

Fortunately, Thomas held the urvaalg’s attention,
which made it easy for Ridmark to step forward, Heartwarden a blur
of white light in his fist, and take off the urvaalg’s head. The
misshapen head rolled across the white floor, the body thrashing,
black blood jetting from the stump of its neck. Ridmark kicked the
corpse off Thomas, left the knight to get to his feet, and raced to
aid Ulacht.