“Wow,” Lacy said, when they were alone. “This is something, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Luke replied.
“You guess? Come on, really? Look at where we are, Luke! This is like one of your stories! I mean, I’m all excited, now that I’m over my shock and not wandering around like a moon-struck cow. I can’t even imagine how you feel.”
Luke shrugged.
“You’re doing that a lot lately,” Lacy said. “Maybe I can make you a little more definite about something…”
She moved closer to him, and slid her arms around his waist, her face turned up to his, lips slightly parted.
“I’m tired,” he said, and pulled away from her embrace. “I think I’ll go lay down.”
When he woke, the room was in shadow, and for a moment, he felt the panic start to set in. But then the flickering light of a candle caught his attention, and the cave that he was sure he was in faded away to become the comfortable bedroom again. He lay there staring at the flame, remembering times when he would have given anything for the mere sight of one.
There was no more sleep coming for him this night. The habit of being up all night, even if it meant more pain and fear, was a hard one for him to break. It seemed to be getting worse, if anything. He felt more of an affinity with the darkness than he did the light, as if that was where he really belonged now. A creature of the night, for however many more of them he had left.
Lacy was lying in the bed, her back toward him. He listened to the soft sound of her breathing for a moment. His hand came up, lifted toward her back as if he would stroke it, but then dropped back gently to the bed. He sighed, sat up, and swung his legs over the edge.
She didn’t stir when he left the bedroom and started down the stairs. Luke wasn’t surprised. With everything that had happened, he was sure she was as exhausted as he was. Let her sleep, she needed it.
Downstairs, he found Thaddeus, sitting quietly in the corner, his dark eyes glinting as they watched Luke.
“What the…? What are you doing here?” Luke hissed.
“I came to talk to you,” Thaddeus said, his voice loud in the silence of the cottage.
“Shh! You’ll wake Lacy.” Luke glanced back up the stairs, sure that he would hear her rising from the bed. For some reason that he couldn’t define, he didn’t want her to get up and see Thaddeus here.
“No, she’ll sleep until I say otherwise, as will the Hound,” Thaddeus said.
For the first time, Luke noticed Daisy, curled up on the floor near the stairs. She hadn’t made a sound when Thaddeus must have entered, and showed no sign that she knew either of them were there now.
“What did you do?” Luke asked.
“A simple spell. Nothing harmful, I assure you. But we needed to talk, and we needed to do it undisturbed.”
“Damn it! You can’t come in here and do something to Lacy like that!” Luke could feel his anger rising at the thought. How dare he? He and Lacy were people, to be respected and treated as such! Not lab rats here for the amusement of some immoral…
“Peace,” Thaddeus said. “I swear to you that no harm will come to her. I simply thought it would be less cruel this way.”
“What do you mean? What would be less cruel?”
“Than for her to hear what we will talk about, of course. You have the mark on you, Luke Roberts. I can see it, as surely as you can see it on me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luke replied, but of course, he did. He had felt it when he had first seen Thaddeus, that feeling like there was a wire in his brain, humming and sparking with electricity. It had faded somewhat, but he could still feel it whenever he looked at Thaddeus.
“You do. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“What if I do? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Of course, it does. It means you know as well as I do what is coming. I’ve seen the dozens, maybe more, that are arrayed against us. You have intimate knowledge of just one of them. Can you imagine the might when that many are gathered together? Do you honestly believe that any of us, including Solomon, would have a chance to survive an attack like that?”
“No,” Luke said, vehemence in his voice, glad to finally say it out-loud. “No, alright? There is no chance. Not for you, or your lord, or Solomon, or this whole place. Lacy and I are going home.”
“And do you think they won’t come there when they’re finished here? Why do you think one was there in the first place? It was no rabid animal separated from its pack. It was sent there, as a scout. Solomon may have killed it, but too late. They know they can go there now, and that they have a whole other world to take as their own.”
Luke sank down into a chair, burying his head in his hands. “Then we are done for. I’ve felt that ever since the thing came, but I thought…I hoped…that it was just my mind playing tricks again.”
“It’s the truth. But, perhaps your hope is not misplaced.”
Luke’s head came up. “What hope? You said there was none.”
“There isn’t, for most. But for you and me, it could be different. I already know that they’ll use me to manage things among the Folk for them. To ensure that they have what they need for years to come. In return I’ll be rewarded, and more importantly, I’ll be allowed to live and to stay free. They’ll need the same thing on your world and it could be you. I believe it’s why you weren’t killed.”
“And be some kind of Judas? No. I won’t do that. I’m not a coward.”
“Saving yourself, and those you love,” Thaddeus glanced up the stairs as he spoke, “is no betrayal. If anything, it has a certain nobility to it.”
“Justify it all you want, it’s still what it is.”
Thaddeus sighed. “I was hoping to talk sense into you. But if you won’t see the inevitable for what it is, then I can’t help you. You, and she, will end with the rest of them. I hope for her sake that the Nightwinds kill her quickly. They have ways of drawing these things out…as I’m sure you know.” He rose to leave. “Goodbye then, Luke Roberts. I hope the end comes for you both quickly.”
Luke watched him stride across the floor to the door, but his mind was already far from there. Into the near future, watching as the Soul Gaunts overflowed everything, and pulled Lacy from his grasp. He could hear her cries as he was held helpless to do anything about them.
“Wait,” he said quietly. Thaddeus stopped, his hand on the door handle. “What do I have to do?”
“Come with me and talk to the man who has shown me what is coming. Let him take the measure of you, and perhaps you can be of use, and saved as well.”
“And if I don’t, there is no hope for us.”
“Worse. I believe that if we who have been marked do not do this, we will suffer worst of all.”
“Why me?”
Thaddeus shrugged. “Because you were there? A target of opportunity, perhaps. Why was I chosen? It doesn’t matter. What matters now is what we do.”
Luke stood and looked up the stairs again. Daisy still made no movement at all. “You swear she’s going to be alright?”
“From my spell? Yes. As soon as we leave here, I will reverse it. Well, once we get a little further away, so that the Hound won’t sense us. More than that, I can only say what I have.”
Luke glared at Thaddeus for a moment, then glanced at the stairs again. Up to where Lacy lay sleeping, unaware of the terrible choice that was being forced upon him. He could betray everyone he knew and save her. Or he could stay faithful to his own kind, and watch as she was tortured and killed in front of him. He had already been shown a small piece of what that would be like.
In the end, it was really no contest. He nodded, and followed Thaddeus out the door.
CHAPTER 44
“I don’t like this,” Shireen said. “Not one bit.”
“Neither do I, but what are we going to do about it?” Orlando spoke quietly, pitching his voice so that Shireen could hear him, but not Jediah and Florian who rode a
head of them.
Two guards from House Whispering Pines had the lead, a position that Shireen would normally have fought for, but now she wanted to ride behind, where she could see what was happening. She knew the two guards well enough to know that they were competent. Not up to Towering Oaks standards, but able to handle any ordinary threats that may appear and since it was daylight she didn’t think they had to worry about Soul Gaunts. At least, not until they had arrived at House Rustling Elms.
“We should have waited for Solomon to come back,” she murmured.
“That’s the point though. If Solomon brings back his sword, Jediah and Florian are going to be less inclined to try to talk to this ‘advocate’ guy, whoever he is. They both know it, so they’re hoping that maybe Thaddeus is right and they can get it settled before he gets back.”
“That’s another thing. You felt it too, right? Thaddeus was off. Something happened to him in there that changed him.”
“Of course, it did,” Orlando said. “How could it not have?”
“I’m just worried…” she trailed off, not wanting to say it out loud.
“That he’s been compromised and is working with the enemy? You’re not the only one to think that. I’m pretty sure that Jediah, and even Florian, are thinking the same thing.”
“Then why are we even doing this?”
“On the off chance that they can save lives. Let’s say that we’re all wrong, and Thaddeus isn’t turned. Isn’t it worth a discussion? Before we send soldiers into a battle that’s going to kill a bunch of them?”
Shireen sighed. “Of course. But I still don’t like it.”
“As I said, neither do I. But what do we know? We’re just grunts.”
He smiled at her, but Shireen found it hard to return. Her entire inner being was shouting at her that this was wrong, that it was a set-up. She had learned to trust her instincts over her years as a scout. At times when the trail had grown cold, she had been able to follow it anyway, trusting to subtle clues that her subconscious picked up without her even being aware. It was one of the reasons she was trusted by Jediah so much. And when you combined that with Orlando’s ability to reason through any situation, and to stay methodical and rational…there wasn’t much that they couldn’t do.
It grated on her nerves that Jediah hadn’t even consulted her before making this decision. But then again, this was a bigger deal, a much bigger deal, then anything that she had ever encountered in his service before. Maybe now was the time that the Head of House needed to step forward and make a decision based on his gut feeling, and his experience.
Yeah, that was it. For all that Shireen trusted and believed in her own abilities, she respected Jediah’s above all others except perhaps for Solomon’s. And he too had thought that this parlay was worth trying.
It was time to be a good soldier and do what was expected of her. Follow orders, protect both her Head of House and Lord Florian, and trust in the better judgement of her leader.
She was still working this out in her mind when the horses ahead of her pulled up sharply. They had arrived, but the Rustling Elms compound was nothing that she had expected.
The bodies that had littered the ground were gone, leaving no sign that the area had once looked like a slaughter-yard. But more than that, there was also no trace of blood or gore anywhere. Shireen looked around wildly. How was this possible? Some of the pools of blood had been thick and soaked into the dirt. The stones that lined some of the paths had been splattered with it, not to mention the plants that had leaves that looked as if they had been dipped in red paint.
Where had it all gone?
“What the…?” Orlando was looking around him with the same confusion on his face that she was sure was on her own.
“This is quite different from what you described,” Jediah said.
“I don’t understand it,” Orlando said, still looking around in disbelief. “This whole area…the bodies…”
“It appears that our presence was anticipated,” Florian said. “I’m not sure if I should be comforted or not by the fact that they cleaned up.”
“It’s more than that,” Shireen said. “How did they clean up? The bodies, sure, that I can understand. But how did they get rid of all the blood?”
“There’s more here than the Soul Gaunts,” Jediah said. “That much must be true. Now the question is, what is it? And what does it mean for us?”
“Only one way to find out,” Florian said. “We do what we came to.” He took a deep breath and sat up straighter in the saddle as he looked at the shut doors in the main tree of the compound.
Shireen suppressed a shutter as she followed his gaze. The last time she had gone up those steps had led to horror and loss. She wasn’t eager to revisit, and still had no faith at all that anything other than that waited there. But she remembered her promise to herself, to let those in charge make the decisions; no matter how stupid she thought those decisions were.
“How do we play this?” she asked.
“We go knock on the door,” Florian said, “and see who opens it.”
“And if we don’t like who answers?” Orlando asked.
“We run,” Jediah said, startling Shireen who never thought she would hear those words come from him. “Don’t look so shaken, Shireen. We’re here to talk, not to fight. I’m not vain enough to imagine that the six of us can defeat dozens of those things. We’re here to find out if there is any truth to Thaddeus’s words. If there are, fine, we’ll talk and try to keep open minds. But if that door opens to Soul Gaunts, we get out of here, and come back when Solomon has found his sword.”
“Agreed,” Florian said. “Be ready for anything, all of you.”
The short climb up the steps to the door of the tree was the hardest that Shireen had ever taken. Her chest was tight, and the bright day seemed to be overcast, although there were no clouds visible through the leaves of the trees around them. There were only three steps, but it took what felt like hours to climb them, and yet in an instant, they were there.
Jediah stepped forward without hesitation and banged his fist on the door. There was no response from inside. The doors didn’t open, and there was no sound of anyone approaching. He knocked again, to the same lack of response. Then, putting one hand on the hilt of his sword, he tried the handle. The doors were firmly locked, and only shook slightly in their frames as Jediah tried to open them.
“Hm. Maybe they don’t want to talk after all.”
They waited another moment and then moved off, down the steps and back to where their horses waited. The beasts shifted nervously, telling Shireen that there was danger here still. Sometimes, animals had better sense than Folk did.
“Now what?” Shireen asked.
“We have two choices,” Florian said. “We either leave here and wait for Solomon to come back, or we stay here and try again.”
“I’m not a big fan of the waiting here option,” Orlando said. “If we linger too much longer, the sun will begin setting, and I’m not keen on being near a bunch of Soul Gaunts in the dark.”
“None of us are,” Jediah said, “besides which, we didn’t come here to be kept waiting like beggars on the doorstep. We’re the Heads of our Houses! If this ‘advocate’ can’t be bothered to answer the door, then so be it.”
Shireen was glad to hear it, not only because she also didn’t want to hang around until dark, but because of the fire in Jediah’s voice. That was her leader, the Head of House that she knew and was honored to serve.
They began to mount their horses when there was a noise from the tree. Shireen paused with one foot in the stirrup and looked around. With a creak that made it sound as if were hundreds of years old, the door opened. They watched as a tall, thin man, dressed in black robes with a hood thrown over his face came out.
“I am sorry for the delay in getting out here,” he called, his voice deep and cultured. “I was resting when one of the Nightwinds came and told me there were guests at the door. I thought it
better to open it myself and avoid any misunderstandings.”
He reached up and pushed the hood back, revealing a tanned face, with long white hair. From his features and build he could have easily passed as one of the Folk, but Shireen had never seen him before.
“Please,” he continued, “won’t you come in?”
Shireen almost laughed at that, in spite of the fury that the comment caused to rise up in her. Who did he think he was? He stood there and invited them into a house that he had taken over, ruined, and massacred the people of.
“I think not,” Florian said, “but we would like to speak with you. Out here, in the sunlight, if you would.”
“Of course,” the man said, walking down the steps. “I can understand your hesitation. Earned or not, the Nightwinds do have a…shall we say, dangerous...reputation.”
“I would say it’s earned,” Jediah said. His voice sounded rough next to the smooth voice of this man, and the practiced dignity of Florian’s.
“That may be so,” the man conceded. “They are horribly efficient predators, after all. Only a fool wouldn’t be careful around such animals.”
“Ah,” Florian said. “Animals. And yet Thaddeus told us that you claimed they are simply a misunderstood race of people.”
The man smiled. “And how is my friend Thaddeus? I do hope he is recovering from his ordeal.”
Jediah started to speak, but Florian motioned him to silence and took the lead himself. Shireen was glad. Jediah was a fearsome warrior, and a great leader, but Florian was much more the diplomat, more suited to bandying words. If action was called for, then Jediah would step into the more prominent role.
“Thaddeus is recovering well, thank you. But I find it strange that you would admit to his having undergone any sort of ordeal.”
“Why is that? He did. Before I knew he was here, some of the more wild Nightwinds had gotten at him. It was regrettable, but Thaddeus came to understand it as the acts of a scared and hungry predator. Nothing more.”
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