Sakwi walked in the lead along with Synten and his son. Although the mage said little, to avoid panicking the farmer, Jonmarc was certain that the land mage was using his power to sense for traces of magic.
Jonmarc followed. No one had claimed that the missing dead were dangerous, but he had found over the years that it was much easier to negotiate with a sword in hand. Sior and Gabriel followed, but they each took a meandering route that often left the path. Both the
vayash moru
and the
vyrkin
had heightened senses, and Jonmarc wondered what, if anything, they were picking up from the trek through the fields. But if either of them sensed
anything amiss on the short walk from the village, they said nothing.
“There,” Synten said, pointing. They had walked along the edge of several fields that were almost ready for harvest. The ground rose on the other side of the fields, and Jonmarc could see several squat, stone buildings set into the hillside. It was grassy and open from the edge of the fields to the crypts, though forest edged the entire area. Jonmarc scanned the tree line for danger, but saw nothing.
“Where were you and where were the dead?” Jonmarc asked, turning to Synten’s son.
The young man blushed scarlet. “Molly and me were over there, around the bend of the trees,” he said, leading the way. If his trysting place had been a secret before, it was no longer. The set of Synten’s jaw told Jonmarc that the farmer would have a few choice words with his son in private, later.
They followed the young man around a copse of trees. The village and part of the fields were now out of the line of sight. “We’d made a place in the grass over there,” the young man said, licking his dry lips nervously. “We weren’t looking at the crypts. No reason to pay them any mind.” He paled at the recollection. “We heard something coming through the woods. Making an awful racket. Sticks cracking, leaves rustling. I grabbed a stone and got up, thinking it might be a wolf, or a pack of dogs. But it was my uncle. My dead uncle.”
“How did he look?” Sakwi probed.
“He looked dead!” The young man’s voice was close to panic.
“Did he recognize you?”
The young man calmed enough to think for a moment. “I don’t think so. Mind, we got out of there quickly! I didn’t stick around to ask questions. But he looked blank, dazed. And he moved oddly, stiffly. Like one of those puppets on strings that the traveling bards had at the inn one time. Only there warn’t no strings, and no puppet master.”
“Not one you could see,” Sakwi murmured. The land mage moved away from them and began to walk slowly along the tree line. He was slightly built, and in his brown robes, he blended in among the trees. He stopped for a moment as a violent coughing fit racked his thin body, but he held up a hand to forestall help. “It’s nothing. Nothing,” he protested, and took a wad of herbs from a pouch beneath his belt to put beneath his tongue. In a few moments, the coughing ceased and Sakwi continued walking.
Gabriel and Sior followed him at a distance. “There are footprints here,” Sior said. “They smell of the dead. Many scents. Perhaps a dozen.”
“Not fresh dead,” Gabriel added. “There’s more than scent here. There’re bits of flesh and grave clothes in the grass and on the twigs. If they’d arisen as
vayash moru
, that would not be so.” A note of relief was in his voice. “No,
vayash moru
didn’t do this. If the old dead had really been brought across, they would have risen within the first few nights after their burial. And they wouldn’t rise in a group. That’s not our way.”
Sakwi continued his walk toward the crypt in silence. Jonmarc, Synten, and the young man followed. Even at a distance, Jonmarc could see that the crypt had been sealed.
“You closed the crypt?” he asked.
Synten nodded. “When he rushed in babbling like an idiot,” he said with a nod toward his son, “I had to go. My wife begged me to stay home; it was growing dark. But if Midri really had risen from his tomb, well, I needed to see for myself. So I brought out my neighbors, and we took our torches and scythes. There wasn’t anyone in sight when we got here, but the crypt was open. That’s why we thought someone had stolen the bodies. I figured my son just saw them being carried off and lost his head.”
“I need to enter the crypt.” Sakwi’s voice startled them. The land mage stood near the crypt door, running his hands along the entrance without touching the stone. “I want to see how it was disturbed.”
Gabriel and Sior moved the heavy door easily, using their preternatural strength. The door was as large and thick as Synten had said, and Jonmarc had no doubt that two men would struggle against its weight unless they were quite strong. Jonmarc and Gabriel ventured in first. Having a torch in an unfamiliar crypt made Jonmarc just slightly more comfortable; in the unlikely event that the tomb robbers had been
vayash moru
, the torch would deter an attack. And just in case anything still lurked within the tomb, Gabriel’s
vayash moru
reflexes were a good defense.
As Synten said, the first room of the crypt was empty. Bits of torn shroud littered the floor. While the entrance to the crypt was made of cut and fitted stones, it was clearly designed to fit the entrance of a natural cave. Flat spaces had been carved into the rock, wide enough to lay a body. The niches were empty, but along the ground, the tokens left behind by grieving loved ones remained. Clay pots,
strings of beads, homemade toys, or well-worn hunting gear lay undisturbed, although the bodies of the people for whom the gifts had been meant were gone.
“Look there,” Sakwi said quietly, pointing. Crudely drawn onto the walls of the crypt were the same runes they had seen at the inn.
“Well, that makes it pretty certain that either the Black Robes from the inn were here, or their friends were,” Jonmarc said.
They moved through the first room and into the next. The crypt smelled of death and moldering cloth, but there was a cold air that told Jonmarc that the passageway eventually led into caves below. “How large is this crypt?”
“It’s very old,” the farmer replied. “My family has worked this land for five generations, and all our dead are buried here. The same is true of my neighbors, who share the crypt. No one goes into the lowest levels; they were filled with bodies long ago. But my father told me once that there are thirty-two rooms. Eight faces of the Sacred Lady, times four for the Light Aspects. A good number to settle the dead.”
“Do the caves go beyond the crypt?”
Synten frowned. “I haven’t explored them, but I’ve heard it said that when the crypt was made, the men blocked up the back to keep out the rats and scavengers.”
Gabriel raised his face to the stirring of cold air. “The passage is no longer blocked.” He vanished before anyone saw him move, and returned a few moments later. “The tomb is empty. There are runes like these all along the passageways. I found where stones once blocked off the rest of the caves. They’ve been removed.”
“And the grave offerings? Are they gone, too?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Everything else is in its place. In the lower levels, where Synten says no one has gone in years, there were fresh footsteps in the dust. They led back into the caves, beyond where it was blocked.”
“So the dead that I saw were only part of it?” Synten’s son was wide-eyed, and his voice cracked with terror. “You mean that the rest are wandering around somewhere, down in the caves?”
“My guess is that whatever animated them drew them to it along the easiest route. The newly dead close to the door came out that way, and the older dead went toward the back.” Sakwi looked thoughtful. “Or perhaps, they were all meant to go to the caves, and those in the front didn’t respond properly.” He looked up at the others. “It would take a powerful blood mage to move so many bodies, but remember, they’re puppets, not capable of thought.”
“They’re still dead and moving. That makes them a problem.” Jonmarc’s jaw clenched. “What I want to know is, why? Why did the Black Robes want the bodies? From what you say, they wouldn’t be easy to use in battle. If they can’t think for themselves and they can’t move without magic, then someone has to move them, right? It would take a lot of mages—and a lot of magic—to operate that many ‘puppets’ in any kind of battle, and I can’t imagine they’d move with any skill.”
“They wouldn’t need skill if terror would do,” Gabriel replied quietly. “Soldiers are leery to strike down the bodies of their kin. And while you’ve become somewhat accustomed to the dead and the undead, many mortals are not so calm about such things.”
Skilled or not, dozens of puppet-dead would create
chaos on a battlefield, Jonmarc knew. They would also spark panicked riots in any city. “I don’t get it,” Jonmarc said, shaking his head. “This seems big for the Black Robes that we’ve fought. Until now, they’ve taken people,
vayash moru
, and
vyrkin
for the blood they need for their magic. They’ve disturbed the barrows, but that made sense if they were trying to draw on old magic. But these dead aren’t special. They weren’t mages. They didn’t have any magic. What do they gain from stealing the bodies? And why go to the trouble to use magic to make them walk? Why not just tear down the rocks at the back of the caves and carry them out?”
Sakwi met his eyes. “Find out who gave the Black Robes their gold, and you might find your answers.”
The ride back to Dark Haven went by quickly. The night was cool, and a nip in the air warned that colder weather would come soon. The exchange in the village was troubling, and Jonmarc knew that, come daylight, he would be back at the crypts with as many mages as he could find, hoping to track either the missing dead or the blood mages who troubled their rest. But even the
vayash moru
counseled caution in the darkness, and Jonmarc wasn’t of a mind to argue.
“
Skrivven
for your thoughts,” Sakwi said from beside him.
Jonmarc smiled. “Looking forward to a good Moon Feast dinner, to tell you the truth. Carina put Carroway in charge this year, and so I won’t be surprised if we have a celebration worthy of the palace.”
Sakwi chuckled. “It would be nice to end the evening on a happier note. Did you know that Carina asked me in
to have a look at Carroway’s hand? It’s much improved; perhaps Macaria can persuade him to play tonight.”
“He’s lucky. I’ve seen men stabbed through the hand before, and most of them never got back enough movement to play an instrument. Some of them were lucky to hold a knife or make a fist.”
Sakwi shrugged. “While most people would say it was worth it to save the heir to the Margolan throne at any cost, it would be a great shame to lose so fine a bard as Carroway. Even when you were all outlaws, he gave the best performances I’ve ever seen.”
Jonmarc chuckled. “And more than once, he earned the coin to keep us fed and get us a place to sleep when we were trying to stay out of Jared’s dungeon. I won’t argue with you—he’s talented, and it would be nice to see him get patched back up.”
“Of course, a good meal never hurts. Fresh bread, candied squash, baked early apples,” Sakwi mused. “Corn and roasted chicken and a blueberry cobbler if we’re lucky.” He sighed, smiling. “Ah yes, it’s good to be visiting a manor on a feast day,” he said with a grin.
“You’re out of luck if you were hoping to see the same kind of spectacle they put on in Principality City,” Jonmarc replied. “No burning cornstalk men in Dark Haven.”
“Why not?”
“Because in other times, when the
vayash moru
weren’t so well received, such burnings usually involved one of our number, staked through the heart and wrapped with dry leaves and branches and set to burning.” Gabriel had ridden up alongside them, and the look in his eyes gave Jonmarc to guess that the other had seen such things done.
“You mean when Shanthadura was worshipped.”
Gabriel nodded. “The rituals date from then, but whenever the
vayash moru
become feared or hated, someone remembers the old ways. Worship of the old gods is just an excuse for hatreds long nurtured.”
“Not this time,” Jonmarc said, setting his jaw. “Not if I can help it.”
Dark Haven was alight with candles when they arrived. An offering of cider and freshly baked bread lay within a protective circle drawn in the center of the courtyard around a great oak tree ringed by candles. A silver disk hung suspended from the oak, in honor of Istra, the Dark Lady, the patron Aspect of Dark Haven and the protector of outcasts and
vayash moru
. The manor house windows glowed, and even at a distance, Jonmarc could hear music and voices. Games of chance and cards were especially favored this holiday, and Jonmarc was certain the festivities had not waited for them to begin. Despite the conversation, his mood lightened. Tomorrow be damned; tonight he would celebrate. He’d spent too long on battlefields to miss an opportunity to enjoy a feast. The next battle would come soon enough.
Carina was waiting for him. She stood, framed in the doorway, watching as Jonmarc and the others gave their horses to servants to tether and headed for the broad stone stairs. Her gown of yellow and orange made the green of her eyes even more striking. Now, her expression was tense.
“I was worried when you were late.”
Jonmarc took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head, brushing back her short, dark hair. “Unexpected complications,” he said. Her swollen belly made it difficult
to hold her close, and he let his hand fall protectively to her abdomen. It was a reminder that new responsibilities lay ahead, and an even greater obligation to keep those who depended on him safe from harm.