Marcellus looked up sharply. "Are you insane? Who can rest at a time like this? Who can–?"
His voice cut short as a ragged sob escaped him. The faces of his wife and daughter appeared in the darkness the way he remembered them, faces soft and seraphic with twin smiles. He wrapped his hands over his head and wept bitterly for losses so great they punctured from the inside out, tore open fissures the cold and unforgiving wind whistled through as it passed. He didn't realize he clutched Nyori in his grief until he sobbed into her bosom as she held him in silent comfort. Dradyn said nothing, a silent sentinel in the dark.
Memories were his only solace. His mind clutched them like a lifeline. His family was gone. They only existed in his mind...
"THIS IS A FINE STALLION, milady." He handed Evelina the bridle. "Though not yet completely tamed."
"Indeed, Sir Knight." Evelina held the reins firm as the stallion tried to toss his head furiously. "He is a Barbar, raised in the Sea of Sand. He is well spirited, like the man who was meant to own him."
"And who might this fortunate man be?"
Her head dropped a moment, her eyes downcast. "My father. He fell sick, and died swiftly."
Marcellus was silent for a moment as he looked at the young woman, aglow even in her sadness. "I am sorry for your loss, milady. I too lost a father, when the Gaelion pirates raided the coast. I know how it feels."
Her eyes met his, blue as the sky and just as lovely. "I have heard about you, Marcellus of Kaerleon. You are the one who drove the pirates into the sea; no matter what glory they give to Lucretius. They say death awaits the enemy who looks into your eyes. I look in them now, Sir Admorran. Am I to be afraid?"
He smiled. "They say what they will about me. It is of little concern. I thought I could find some satisfaction, some redemption by slaying those men. But in the end, when my enemy lay under my sword, I felt only emptiness. Now, I desire peace."
Sunbeams danced in her hair as her eyes widened. "Are you saying you will no longer be a knight, Sir Admorran?"
He slowly shook his head, knowing the answer. "No. No, I suppose I will always be a knight of Kaerleon. I do not know how to be anything else."
She gazed at him as if reading something he could not. "It fits you, you know. Being a knight fits you like the armor you wear. The people love you. They say Deis is with the battles you fight. They say you cannot be defeated."
"What do you believe?"
Her smile dimpled her cheeks. "That you are a man."
The wind scattered apple blossoms from the orchard. The pink and white petals flirted around them, some landing in Evelina's hair as if happy to adorn it.
Marcellus took her hand and bowed over it. "Forgive my rudeness, milady. I am Marcellus Admorran. It is an honor to meet your acquaintance."
She laughed delightedly, then curtsied formally. "I am Evelina Corinn. Thank you for bringing my horse back to me."
He patted the stallion's muzzle. "He is a fine animal."
Evelina paused, smiling as she stroked the stallion's luxurious mane. "He is yours if you want him."
Marcellus hesitated, looking at the powerful chestnut stallion longingly before shaking his head. "This is a lord's steed. I could not take such a gift from a lady without compensation. You could make a handsome profit were you to sell him."
She handed him the bridle. "I am in no need of profit, and he is too fierce for my liking. I don't want just anyone to have him. I want him to belong to someone who deserves him. You will insult me if you do not accept my offer, Sir Admorran."
Marcellus stroked the stallion's thick shimmering mane. "What do you call him?"
"Shadowdancer."
"SHADOWDANCER..."
Marcellus sat upright with a jolt. Daylight streamed in from the gaps in the doorway, and the dank odor of the abbey filled his nostrils. Nyori laid a few paces away, asleep under a heavy blanket. Her glassy staff lay beside her. Her face was peaceful, almost childlike in her slumber. He realized she must have been at the end of her strength after the long trek and the terrors of the previous night.
He felt ashamed for breaking down in front of her like that. Strange to think that despite her small frame she would prove to be stronger than I.
He looked around, but Dradyn was nowhere in sight. The brightness of the morning sun made him wince when he opened the heavy door. The snow-covered grounds magnified the light almost blindingly. For a moment, he wondered if the nightmarish events of the previous night happened; if his memory of the ordeal was a reality or the conjuring of his fractured mind.
Something gleamed beside him.
He snatched up the sword. The blood and ash that stained the blade exterminated any doubt or hope he had left.
Dradyn walked from around the corner of the stables with his spear propped against his shoulder, and a heavy cloak in his arms. He tossed it to Marcellus, who suddenly realized he was freezing.
"Are you ready, Milord Marcellus? I have searched the grounds. As I figured, the servants who could not escape have been slaughtered. The beasts responsible have gone underground to escape the daylight, including your wife and daughter. Or who wear their forms, I should say. Now is the time to destroy them, if they are to be destroyed."
Marcellus groaned from deep within. "I do not have a choice. My wife and child must be avenged. We must do what must be done." He looked back at the abbey. "Will Nyori be safe in there alone?"
"I am coming with you." Nyori stood in the doorway, resolute despite the weariness on her face. She propped her glimmering staff on her shoulder.
"Are you sure, Nyori? You look as if you can barely stand."
"We need to stick together." She gazed at him as if daring him to disagree.
Marcellus sighed. "Very well, Shama. Let us be about this."
The trio shouldered their weapons and strode toward the entrance of the forbidding manor, which stood agape like a ravenous mouth.
As one, they stepped inside.
Chapter 21: Nyori
Nyori almost regretted her decision to accompany Marcellus and Dradyn. It was one thing to talk brave, but once inside she had to see the bodies of Marcellus' servants scattered throughout the manor. The corpses were white as ghosts, the pallid flesh crisscrossed with purple veins. There were no wounds visible. The life had simply been drained from them.
She allowed her senses to expand as she did when she first entered the manor. She had immediately known that a threat lay in the house. It took her almost too long to realize that it came from Marcellus' wife. She realized why Ayna spent so much time training Nyori to hone her senses. They were the difference between life and death.
The darkness of the place nearly engulfed her. It was not the gloom of the shadows. It was the malevolence of what had invaded the home, the inhuman presence of the akhkharu that once again brought death and suffering as gifts to mark their presence.
Yet the sensation was subdued, as though the darkness slept. Nyori prayed that it would continue that way.
"We are here."
Dradyn gestured toward the door of the wine cellar. He hefted the spear and drew an oversized cleaver from his belt. "Be ready. They are usually sluggish after they've fed like this. But there is no sunlight down there, and should they awaken, they will still be a threat."
Nyori swallowed and looked at Marcellus, who nodded as if to assure her. His face was slick with sweat. She could only imagine what he was going through.
When Dradyn opened the door, Nyori tilted Eymunder forward. The orb flushed in response to her mental command, illuminating the stairwell and casting shadows away as they descended.
Bottle upon bottle lay in their racks, and casks lay stacked atop one another in neatly arranged rows. Nyori couldn't understand why a single person would own so much. Most of it was layered in dust, speaking of the years they had lain in the cellar.
What disturbed her were the fresh tracks across the dusty floor.
The sight she had dreaded came into view as they round
ed the last row of wine racks. Tables were pulled together, and upon them lay the men and women who were not truly men and women. They were akhkharu. They lay still as stone figures, but they still bore the warm and breathing flesh of the living.
Nyori gasped at the sound that emitted from Marcellus. He groaned like a dying man, clutching his chest as though to tear his heart out. Nyori followed his gaze and looked upon the slumbering figures of his wife and daughter.
Evelina was a marble statue, her cherubic features immortalized. Her eyes were closed, her face white as cream. Only hints of color blushed her cheeks, and her red-gold hair spun about her face as though woven at the Golden Loom of Nolavani. Her snowy gown was lined delicately with lace. Her hands clutched the small, vulnerable form of her Alexia to her breast. Alexia, whose body was whole and unbroken by the three-story fall. She lay as if in childish slumber, as if dreaming the ordinary, innocent dreams of children.
"Marcellus."
Dradyn gestured to the shadows in the corner of the room. "More bodies. You should see this."
"I have seen enough, Dradyn."
"It is a woman and a child, Marcellus," Dradyn said. He knelt in front of the bodies reverently. "It...it is the Lady Admorran and little Alexia. The akhkharu must have some way of taking on the faces of the slain."
Nyori quickly joined Dradyn and saw the truth. The two figures were distorted duplicates of those that lay on the table. Their skin was pallid, their veins blackened. Their bodies were tossed in the corner like dolls discarded by a careless child. Yet there was more truth to the face of their death than in the beauty of the creatures that took their forms.
She turned. "Dradyn is right, Marcellus..." Her voice trailed off.
Marcellus stared in the open eyes of the false Evelina.
"Marcellus." The akhkharu's voice cooed softly. "Do you truly mean to destroy us? To destroy your family in cold blood, the only ones you care for?" She raised questioning eyebrows at him. "The only ones who care for you?" She moved only her head, as though fearful any sudden movement might bring his sword upon her.
The other akhkharu had not moved. They continued to lay still as death, yet so lightly asleep that a whisper might awake them.
"She lies." Dradyn's voice was thick with rage. "They may wear the faces of their victims, but they are predators. Unless we destroy them, they will do the same to any others they come across. And I, for one, will not let this happen to another soul!"
Dradyn swung the cleaver down on the neck of the akhkharu that wore a stable boy's face. Blue flame bloomed from the corpse.
Marcellus clutched his blade as if it were his salvation. "Speak no more with my wife's tongue, fiend. I know you for what you are."
Evelina's eyes widened. "And what know you of the nature of my kind? Your wife lives, Marcellus. She and I are one. I know every bit of history between us. Every moment of our lives together. Do you remember, Marcellus? Do you remember all the years that we shared in love?"
Nyori gritted her teeth. "Don't listen to her, Marcellus!" She hefted Eymunder and advanced.
Evelina's eyes glowed like gas lamps when she turned. Dradyn gasped and stumbled against a row of casks, clutching his head. The cleaver fell from his hand.
Nyori shook her head as her mind dizzied and her vision clouded. Nothing seemed real except Evelina's face. Her voice rang in Nyori's head.
"You are the one ignorant of the truth, Shama. Did you believe that you were safe all this time? That somehow Marcellus could protect you? One of our Thralls was in the very party of Mandru that accompanied you across the Steppes. Our eyes are everywhere. There is nowhere you can go where we cannot see you. It was only a matter of time before the High Lady had you in her clutches. That time is now. See how easily I paralyze your champion? Slaying him will be child's play. Who will be around to save you then?"
Nyori pushed the voice away, focusing only on Marcellus, who stared blankly at Evelina as though struck dumb. Nyori concentrated on reaching him, focusing as she did with Eymunder.
Marcellus. You have to listen to me. Your wife is dead. Look, Marcellus. See what these creatures have done to her.
He shuddered as he forcibly tore his gaze away from the innocent mask that held him fast. Tears blurred in his eyes as he saw the bodies that lay sprawled in the corner.
"I'm sorry, Evelina. I should have protected you better. I should have been here for both of you." He steeled his face and raised his sword.
The false Evelina raised a forestalling hand. Her tone grew desperate, her face even more luminous, her eyes glistening jewels. "They all told her you had been slain. She wanted to die too. Don't you see? This way is better for all of you. You can all be together. Lower your sword and take my hand. You do not have to go on alone. Your family waits for you."
"No." Marcellus' voice was strangled, yet his grip tightened on his sword hilt. "My family is dead. You killed them, remember? Now you get to know how that feels."
Nyori turned away as the blade fell.
THE SKY HAD DARKENED by the time Marcellus finished covering over the graves. He had insisted on doing the work by himself, burying his wife and child together under a great statue of a winged woman who held a shield and stretched her sword toward an unseen menace.
"Evelina commissioned the statue for the garden," he said in a faraway voice. "To drive away the evil insects, she had said." His jaw trembled as he gazed at it. "Now it serves as a memorial of her love and laughter."
Nyori spent the rest of the day helping Marcellus and Dradyn bury the rest of the dead, nine in all. When finished, Marcellus returned to his family.
The newly turned earth stood in shock contrast to the white of the fallen snow, like ravens in a dovecote. Dradyn and Nyori quietly joined him. They stood in a silent vigil, not wanting to disturb Marcellus' grief as the blanket of twilight smothered the sun and the chill sank through their garments.
Finally, he spoke. "You should never have healed me, Shama. It would have been better had you let me die in the wild."
She laid a hand on his arm. "Marcellus...I'm sorry I could not warn you more clearly. It is hard to decipher what may come. My skills were not enough."
Marcellus placed his hand over his eyes, squeezing as though to stem his tears. "I am the one who should apologize, Nyori. I lash out at you, yet the blame is entirely my own. I am the one who left all that I loved behind to follow the whims of a madman."
Nyori's cheeks were damp with tears of her own. "I cannot help to think that I am to blame for some of this."
"Because of that staff that they seek to capture?"
She nodded miserably. "Yes. It is a long story, but you already know that it can enhance the powers of healing."
Marcellus touched his chest, and Nyori could tell his thoughts were of when he awakened in the storm. "Yes. It also exposed Evelina–" Her heart went out to him when he winced at the name. Clearing his throat roughly, he continued. "The akhkharu who slew Evelina, you revealed its true form with the staff."
"I don't know if that is its true form," Nyori said. "I think it is more that the akhkharu are two beings in a single body–one flesh and another that is intangible, a disembodied parasite that needs a physical host to survive. It empowers the host with uncanny abilities that a normal human cannot access. It is that incorporeal being that is exposed by Eymunder's light."
Marcellus gazed at her steadily, accepting what a normal man would call madness with menacing calm. "Is that why they want the staff so badly? Because it reveals them for the monsters that they are?"
She hesitated. "There is more to it than just that. Their leader believes that the staff can cure the akhkharu of their...need. They were Aelon once, Marcellus. Aelon who refused to leave during the Exodus. This curse of theirs keeps them alive, living through time without aging. But the Pale Lord wants to cure them, restore their former immortality. He needs this staff to succeed."
"Then why don't you give it to him?" Marcellus's voice was harsh, still bitter
from his pain.
Nyori stared at him. "Don't you see? They have weaknesses now. Banestone, daylight...limitations that force them to remain hidden. Imagine if they found a cure. What would stop them from completely dominating humankind?"
Marcellus gave a hesitant nod. "I'm sorry, Nyori. I did not stop to think beyond my own pain. You are right. But I do not think capturing your staff is the only thing these creatures seek. My king set me on the road to betrayal and death before you and I ever crossed paths. I had thought some political scheme was to blame, but now the picture becomes even murkier. Why do this to my family as well?"
Dradyn turned. "This must have been set up when they found out that you survived your capture, as a failsafe to destroy you here."
"But why?" Marcellus clenched his gloved fists until the leather creaked. "Who am I to be the victim of such a plot? I have to understand before I can act, Dradyn. Tell me all that you know."
Dradyn rubbed a calloused hand across his shaven head. "After you left, your wife would stop every patrol to ask of news of you. After a while, the Captain himself began to give the reports when the patrol passed by in the evening. Then he began to appear in the evenings alone. It didn't look proper, milord, for a man, no matter what his rank, to visit a married woman at that time, and alone. Gossip spread among the servants that the Lady Admorran had taken a...um–"
"Had taken a lover," Marcellus said tersely. "Go on."
"Yes, milord. I inquired some of the passing soldiers about the Captain. He was known to be a queer fellow. Never with the troops by day, but at night would appear out of nowhere no matter how far in the field they were. Sometimes he would appear with a woman who did not say a word to any but him. The men said he was pleasant enough, but lax for a Captain, as though he did not care what the men did. But men mysteriously vanished on his watch. They said he was foul luck. I never thought about it until now exactly, but it all makes sense."
The Eye of Everfell Page 25
