The Stone of Farewell (7 page)

“Tell me he is not some ghost...” the Rimmersman continued, then was almost thrown to the ground as the body of the pikeman began to thrash beneath him. “Hold him down!” Einskaldir shouted, trying to keep his face away from Ostrael's head, which whipped from side to side, the teeth snapping shut on empty air.

Deornoth dove forward and clutched at one of the slender arms; it was cold and hard as stone, but still horribly flexible. Isorn, Strangyeard, and Josua were also struggling to find handholds on the wriggling, lunging form. The half-darkness was rich with panicky curses. When Sangfugol came forward and wrapped himself around the last unprisoned foot, hanging on with both arms, the body became quiescent for a moment. Deornoth could still feel the muscles moving beneath the skin, tightening and relaxing, mustering strength for another try. Air hissed in and out of the pikeman's distended, idiot-mouth.

Ostrael's head craned out on his uplifted neck, his blackened face swinging to look at each of them in turn. Then, with terrifying suddenness, the staring eyes seemed to blacken and fall inward. A moment later, wavering crimson fire blossomed in the empty pits and the labored breathing stopped. Somebody shrieked, a thin cry that quickly fell away into choking silence.

Like the clammy, crushing grip of a titan hand, loathing and raw dread reached out and enfolded the entire camp as the prisoner spoke.

“So,”
it said. Nothing human was left in its tones, only the dreadful, icy inflection of empty spaces; the voice droned and blew like a black, unfenced wind.
“This would have been much the easier way... but a swift death that comes in sleep is denied to you, now.”

Deornoth felt his own heart speeding like a snared rabbit's, speeding until he thought it might leap from his breast. He felt the strength flowing out of his fingers, even as they clutched at the body that had once been Ostrael Firsfram's son. Through the tattered shirt he could feel flesh chill as a headstone but nevertheless trembling with awful vitality.

“What are you!?” Josua said, struggling to keep his voice even. “And what have you done to this poor man?”

The thing chuckled, almost pleasantly, but for the awful emptiness of its voice.
“I did nothing to this creature. It was already dead, of course, or nearly so
—
it was not hard to find dead mortals in the ruins of your freehold, prince of rubble.”

Somebody's fingernails were cutting into the skin of Deornoth's arm, but the ruined face gripped his gaze like a candle gleaming at the end of a long, black tunnel.

“Who are you?” Josua demanded.

“I am one of the masters of your castle... and of your ultimate death,”
the thing replied with poisonous gravity.
“I owe no mortal answers. If not for the bearded one's keen eye, your throats would have all been quietly slit tonight, saving us much time and trouble. When your fleeing spirits go squealing at last into the endless Between from which we ourselves escaped, it will be by our doing. We are the Red Hand, knights of the Storm King—and He is the master of all!”

With a hiss from the ruptured throat, the body abruptly doubled over like a hinge, struggling with the horrifying strength of a scorched snake. Deornoth felt his hold slipping away. As the fire was kicked up into fluttering sparks, he heard Vorzheva sobbing somewhere nearby. Others were filling the night with frightened cries. He was sliding off; Isorn's weight was being pushed down on top of him. Deornoth heard the terrified shouts of his fellows intertwine with his own hysterical prayer for strength...

Suddenly the thrashing became weaker. The body beneath him continued to flail from side to side for long moments, like a dying eel, then finally stopped.

“What... ?” he was able to force out at last.

Einskaldir, gasping for breath, pointed to the ground with his elbow, still maintaining a tight grip on the unmoving body. Severed by Einskaldir's sharp knife, Ostrael's head had rolled an arm's length away, almost out of the firelight. Even as the company stared, the dead lips pulled back in a snarl. The crimson light was extinguished; the sockets were only empty wells. A thin whisper of sound passed the broken mouth, forced out on a last puff of breath.

“... No escape... Norns will find... No ...” It
fell silent.

 

“By the Archangel...” Hoarse with terror, Towser the jester broke the stillness.

Josua took a shaky breath. “We must give the demon's victim an Aedonite burial.” The prince's voice was firm, but it clearly took a heroic effort of will to make it so. He turned to look at Vorzheva, who was wide-eyed and slack-mouthed with shock. “And then we must flee. They are indeed pursuing us.” Josua turned and caught Deornoth's eye, staring. “An Aedonite burial,” he repeated.

“First,” Einskaldir panted, blood welling in a long scratch on his face, “I cut the arms and legs off, too.” He bent to the task, lifting his hand axe. The others turned away.

The forest night crept in closer still.

Old Gealsgiath walked slowly along the wet, pitching deck of his ship toward the two hooded and cloaked figures huddling at the starboard rail. They turned as he approached, but did not remove their hands from the railing.

“Be-damned-to-Hell stinking weather!” the captain shouted above the moaning of the wind. The hooded figures said nothing. “Men are going down to sleep in kilpa-beds on the Great Green tonight,” Old Gealsgiath added in a conversational roar. His thick Hernystiri burr carried even above the flapping and creaking of the sails. “This be drowning weather, sure enough.”

The heavier of the two figures pushed back his hood, eyes squinting in his pink face as the rain lashed at him.

“Are we in danger?” Brother Cadrach shouted.

Gealsgiath laughed, his brown face wrinkling. The sound of his mirth was sucked away by the wind. “Only if you plan to go in for swimming. We're already near the shelter of Ansis Pelippé and harbor-mouth.”

Cadrach turned to stare out into the swirling twilight, which was dense with rain and fog. “We're almost there?” he shouted, turning back.

The captain lifted a hooked finger to gesture at a deeper smear of darkness off the starboard bow. “The big black spot there, that's Perdruin's mountain—‘Streawé's Steeple,' as some do call it. We'll be slipping past the harbor-gate before full dark. Unless the winds play tricksy. Brynioch-cursed strange weather for Yuven-month.”

Cadrach's small companion snuck a look at the shadow of Perdruin in the gray mist, then lowered his head again.

“Anyhap, Father,” Gealsgiath shouted above the elements, “we dock tonight, and remain two days. I take it you'll be leaving us, since y‘paid fare only this far. P'raps you'd like to come down dockside and join me for a drink of something—unless your faith forbids it.” The captain smirked. Anyone who spent time in taverns knew that Aedonite monks were no strangers to the pleasures of strong drink.

Brother Cadrach stared for a moment at the heaving sails, then turned his odd, somewhat cold gaze onto the seafarer. A smile creased his round face. “Thank you, captain, but no. The boy and I will remain on board for a bit after we dock. He's not feeling well and I'm in no hurry to rush him out. We'll have far to walk before we reach the abbey, much of it uphill.” The small figure reached up and tugged meaningfully at Cadrach's elbow, but the monk paid him no attention.

Gealsgiath shrugged and pulled his shapeless cloth hat farther down on his head. “You know best, Father. You paid your way and did your work aboard—although I would say your lad did the heartiest share of it. You can leave anytime afore we hoist sail for Crannhyr.” He turned with a wave of his knob-knuckled hand and started back along the slippery boards, calling: “—but if the lad ain't feeling well, I'd get him below soon!”

“We were just taking some air!” Cadrach bellowed after him. “We'll go ashore tomorrow morning, most likely! Thanks to you, good captain!”

As Old Gealsgiath stumped away, fading into the rain and mist, Cadrach's companion turned and confronted the monk.

“Why are we going to stay on board?” Miriamele demanded, anger plainly displayed on her pretty, sharp-featured face. “I want to get off this ship! Every hour is important!” The rain had soaked even through her thick hood, plastering her black-dyed hair across her forehead in sodden spikes.

“Hush, milady, hush.” This time Brother Cadrach's smile seemed a touch more genuine. “Of course we're going off—nearly as soon as we've touched the dock, don't you worry.”

Miriamele was angry. “Then why did you tell him... ?”

“Because sailors talk, and I'll wager none of them talk louder or longer than our captain. There was no way for keeping him quiet, Saint Muirfath knows. If we'd given him money to keep silent, he'd just get drunk faster and be talking sooner. This way, if anyone's listening for news of us, they'll at least think we're aboard the ship still. Maybe they'll sit and watch for us to come off until it sets out again, back to Hernystir. Meanwhile, we'll be quietly ashore in Ansis Pelippé.” Cadrach clucked his tongue in satisfaction.

“Oh.” Miriamele considered silently for a moment. She had underestimated the monk again. Cadrach had been sober since they had boarded Gealsgiath's ship in Abaingeat. Small wonder, since the voyage had made him violently ill several times. But there was a shrewd brain behind that plump face. She wondered again—and not for the last time, she felt sure—what Cadrach was really thinking.

“I'm sorry,” she said at last. “That was a good idea. Do you really think somebody is looking for us?”

“We would be fools to suppose otherwise, my lady.” The monk took her elbow and headed back toward the limited shelter of the lower deck.

 

When at last she saw Perdruin, it was as if a great ship had risen out of the unquiet ocean, coming suddenly upon their small, frail craft. One moment it was a deeper blackness off the bow; in the next, as though a final curtain of obscuring mist had been drawn away, it loomed overhead like the prow of a mighty vessel.

A thousand lights gleamed through the fog, small as fireflies, making the great rock sparkle in the night. As Gealsgiath's cargo-hauler glided in through the harbor passages, the island continued to rise above them, its mountainous back a wedge of darkness pushing ever upward, blocking out even the mist-cloaked sky.

Cadrach had chosen to remain below decks. Miriamele was quite satisfied with the arrangement. She stood at the railing, listening to the sailors shouting and laughing in the lantern-pricked darkness as they furled the sails. Voices rose in ragged song, only to end abruptly in curses and more laughter.

The wind was gentler here, in the lee of the harborside buildings. Miriamele felt a strange warmth climb up her back and into her neck, and knew without thinking what it signified: she was happy. She was free and going where she chose to go; that had not been true for as long as she could remember.

She had not set foot on Perdruin since she had been a small girl, but she still felt, in a way, as if she were returning home. Her mother Hylissa had brought her here when Miriamele had been very young, as part of a visit to Hylissa's sister, the Duchess Nessalanta in Nabban. They had stopped in Ansis Pelippé to pay a courtesy call on Count Streáwe. Miriamele remembered little of the visit—she had been very young—except a kind old man who had given her a tangerine, and a high-walled garden with a tiled walkway. Miriamele had chased a long-tailed, beautiful bird while her mother drank wine and laughed and talked with other grown people.

The kind old man must have been the count, she decided. It was certainly a wealthy man's garden they had visited, a carefully-tended paradise hidden in a castle courtyard. There had been flowering trees and beautiful silver and golden fish floating in a pond set right into the path....

The harbor wind gained strength, tugging at her cloak. The railing was cold beneath her fingers, so she tucked her hands under her arms.

It had been not long after the visit to Ansis Pelippé that her mother had gone on another journey, this time without Miriamele. Uncle Josua had taken Hylissa to join Miriamele's father Elias, who was in the field with his army. That had been the journey which had crippled Josua, and from which Hylissa had never returned. Elias, almost mute with grief, too full of anger to speak of death, would only tell his little daughter that her mother could never come back. In her child's mind, Miriamele had pictured her mother captive in a walled garden somewhere, a lovely garden like the one they had visited on Perdruin, a beautiful place that Hylissa could never leave, even to visit the daughter who missed her so....

That daughter lay awake many nights, long after her handmaidens had tucked her into bed, staring up into the darkness and plotting to rescue her lost mother from a flowering prison threaded by endless, tiled paths....