She nearly dropped her tin cup filled with fresh water as she saw a flash of lightning in the distance. The heavy clap of thunder made her jump. Varina instinctively reached out to put her hand on the girl's arm in a comforting gesture, then stopped herself, remembering the way Krystin had swatted her hand away the last time.
Myrmeen moved closer and sat down beside Krystin. "I hate the storms, too. I have a lot of terrible memories tied to storms like this one."
"I suppose you're going to tell me all about it," Krystin said nastily, resisting Myrmeen's attempts to distract her from the storm.
"No," Myrmeen said. "I'd rather talk about you. I'd like to know why you're afraid of storms."
Thunder rolled, somewhere close. Myrmeen tensed. So did Krystin. "Why should you care? You're not my mother."
Myrmeen flinched. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. "Who are your parents, then?"
Krystin appeared to shrink into herself. She set the cup down and hugged herself. Myrmeen tried to get the child to look in her direction, but Krystin shook her head. Despite the way it frightened her, she would not take her gaze from the storm. "I don't know," she said in a small voice.
"Who raised you, then?" Myrmeen asked.
She swallowed hard, shuddered. "Monsters." Suddenly, Krystin came to life. Expectantly, she asked, "Are you people with them?"
"Who?" Burke said. "The monsters?"
"No," Krystin replied, shaking her head as if she were being ridiculed and no longer cared. She bit her lip and said, "The demon killers. The hunters who are killing off the Night Parade's monsters."
Ord grinned. "We killed four of them last week."
Krystin sank to her knees and planted her hands on her thighs in awe. "Four? That many. At one time?"
"Yes," Burke said, getting some idea of Ord's destination. The younger man was trying to find a way to make Krystin show them some respect. With a smug laugh, Burke placed his hand on his wife's back and said, "I expect we'll be up for a few more before we leave Calimport."
A shudder passed through Krystin. Her expression changed to one of sheer panic. Without warning, she scrambled to her feet and bolted to the partially open tent flap. Lucius turned and grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, pinning her arms at her sides. She began to scream and wail incoherently, shouting phrases in a language that no one understood.
Myrmeen went to her. "Krystin, what's wrong? We're not going to hurt you."
Krystin kicked at the mage's legs, then leaned down and bit the fleshy part of his arm. He winced at the pain but did not let her go.
"Stop that," Myrmeen said. "Lucius is your friend. We all are."
"Let me go!" she screamed. "You didn't say we were going back there! That's where they live. That's where they hide. That where they do things to you!"
"Krystin, we have to go back to Calimport. There is a man who has to be paid for his services. Once that's done," she said, looking back at the Harpers, "then we'll leave."
Reisz nodded, closing his eyes then opening them slowly.
"I'm sorry." Krystin started weeping. "You're not stupid. I'm sorry I said that. Just don't take me back there."
Ord laughed. "It's just an act. Look at her, she's-"
"She's terrified, Ord," Myrmeen said, the yellow slivers in her rich blue eyes appearing to burn with the flames of her anger. Ord looked away.
Krystin's body relaxed as she watched Myrmeen. She turned her face in Cardoc's direction. "I won't try to run. You can let me go."
Sensing the truth in her tone, Lucius released her.
She turned to him and said, "I'm sorry about your arm."
"It will heal," he said, "unlike some wounds you cannot see that sometimes take a lifetime to heal."
Myrmeen nodded. He had been looking at her as he spoke. She placed her hand on Krystin's shoulder. The girl did not try to force it away. "What did they do to you? What did those monsters make you do?"
"I'd find people for them," she said, lowering her head in shame. Myrmeen guided Krystin back to the circle, and they sat with the others. She kept her arm around the girl, and the shivering fourteen-year-old did not protest.
"Those creatures don't need humans to do their work for them," Reisz said. "We've seen them. They can pass for human at any time."
"Some of them can," Krystin said darkly. "Not all."
"So you found people for them," Myrmeen said. "Then what happened?"
"Don't you know?"
Myrmeen shook her head.
"You don't know what the Night Parade monsters do to their prey? How they survive? What they live on?"
The Harpers were silent.
"Really?" she asked in stunned disbelief. "But you wish to make war on them. You slaughter them without understanding the reasons for what they do."
"It sounds as if you're defending them," Ord said as he saw their dinner fire slowly die.
"No," she said. "No, kill them. Kill them all, if you can. I just don't think you know what you're dealing with."
"So tell us," Myrmeen said.
"You're not the hunters," she said. "You're not the ones that have been seeking them out and killing them for the past two years."
Ord raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say-"
"Enough," Burke said. "No. We are not the ones. We only arrived in Calimport a short time ago."
Krystin buried her face in her hands and drew a sharp breath. She laughed a hollow laugh and shook her head in amazement. "How many of you are there? What's the size of your army?"
"Why would you ask us that?" Myrmeen said.
"Because I only see six of you in this tent," Krystin said slowly. "And I can guarantee there are over six thousand of the monsters in Calimport alone…"
Outside, the rain began to level off. The storm rolled on, moving deeper into the desert. A sharp crack of lightning sounded in the distance.
Within the tent, Burke stoked the fire. He felt comforted by the warmth and watched the reddish orange glow of the flames as he quietly said, "Tell us everything."
Krystin nodded and began to speak. Myrmeen listened to her daughter's words with mounting fear. She gained an education into the nature of an evil that astonished even her jaded sensibilities, and the thunder that eventually followed sounded like a promise that the storm soon would return.
Eight
"That is all I can give you," Myrmeen said.
Pieraccinni sat behind his desk, regarding the pile of coins and jewels before him with an amused expression. "I know I said a small token of faith would suffice, but I didn't expect it to be this small."
"You'll get all that's coming to you," Myrmeen said stiffly as she stood before the merchant. "Or do you not trust the word of Myrmeen Lhal, ruler of Arabel?"
Pieraccinni's gaze slowly rose from the riches on his desk to the piercing stare of the magnificent brunette. Her unusual blue-and-gold eyes were hard and unyielding.
"Why do I get the feeling you told Dak something very similar before you lopped his head off?" he asked.
Myrmeen leaned forward. "Perhaps because he tried my patience, too."
The bald merchant of arms and men leaned back, rocked in his chair, and laughed. "If you ever get tired of your post in Arabel, I hope you will consider giving me a chance to employ you."
"In what position? On my back or bent over your desk?" Myrmeen asked bitterly, tired of thinly veiled propositions.
Pieraccinni shook his head and opened his hands. "As a negotiator. You are far too suspicious."
Myrmeen glanced around the room. There was movement from behind the red satin curtains of his four-poster bed. "Somehow I find it difficult to accept a serious job offer from a man who keeps a bed in his office."
Pieraccinni pursed his lips. "No one told you? No, from your expression I see that they did not. I never leave this room. I have a rare malady that keeps me here."
The statuesque adventurer stepped back from his desk.
"Don't worry. What I have is not
contagious and what I've told you is public knowledge." He tapped his shining, bald pate. "What I suffer from has been diagnosed as a disease of the mind, but that does not make its effects any less real. If you were able to drag me beyond those doors I would collapse with fits and seizures within a minute's time. Of course, you would first have to get me out there."
Myrmeen heard the scrape of weapons sliding from scabbards. She glanced back at the shadowy figures behind the blood-red curtains. "The twins are highly protective?"
"They are, along with all my employees. Not one of them has ever had it this good before. They don't want their comfortable lifestyle to be ruined, and they are aware that my skills are all that ensure their continued employment."
"I understand," Myrmeen said.
"All I want from you is the promise that the next time you have business in Calimport, you will come to me first."
Myrmeen reached out and shook Pieraccinni's hand. "You have my word."
"And you have your daughter. May your life with her be as rewarding as it will be interesting."
Walking to the door, Myrmeen stopped midway. "That sounds like a warning. Do you know something I don't?"
"I have five sons and two daughters," Pieraccinni said. "Believe me when I say you are embarking on your most challenging and perilous adventure yet."
Myrmeen knocked twice and the doors swung outward. She left Pieraccinni's chamber without another word. The doors slammed shut behind her. The boy, Alden, appeared from a secret doorway at the other end of Pieraccinni's room. He hurried inside, rushing to the bald man's desk.
"I have need of your special skills," Pieraccinni said. "Assign Marishan your duties, then follow Lhal and her group. I want confirmation that they have left the city."
"You will have it," Alden said agreeably.
Outside the Gentleman's Hall, Myrmeen joined the Harpers. Krystin nervously glanced at every shadow, though it was midday and the sunlight was glaring. The child had made her rescuers promise that they would enter the city and leave once more while the sun was there to protect them. The nightmare people despised movement during the day.
Myrmeen had not given Pieraccinni all of the riches she had secreted in the city. She left many of the caches in place as a contingency in the event that she one day returned to Calimport, but she said nothing of this to the others.
The group stopped at a nondescript eatery for one last decent meal before the long ride to Arabel. They were greeted by a fiery-haired serving maid whose pleasant smile faded as she caught sight of the Harpers. They had been in the desert for several days without bathing or changing clothes and they had the look of ruffians.
"A private table might be best," she said as she took the small group to a pair of tables near the kitchen and promised to return shortly with tankards of ale. As she left, the girl was stopped by an older woman, who whispered in her ear, eyeing Myrmeen and her crowd suspiciously. The red-haired girl shook her head and raised her voice as she said, "You're right, of course. I would have thought their kind would keep to the Hall."
Krystin was about to hurl a heavy wooden container of ground pepper at the back of the girl's head when Lucius grabbed her arm.
"That is not civilized," he said in deep, rich tones.
"And you think I am?" she asked. "The cow has it coming."
Myrmeen glanced at her daughter. She was beginning to notice that they used many of the same phrases and wondered if Krystin was trying to emulate her. The thought appealed to Myrmeen and she smiled broadly.
An hour later, they were riding toward the city's gates, passing through another run-down neighborhood. Myrmeen drew up her mount's reins, and Krystin held on tightly as the horse neighed and brought them to a halt. Cardoc had been riding beside her, taking point.
"What is it?" Lucius asked as he raised his hand to signal the others to stop. The gaunt mage had followed Burke's orders perfectly, maintaining his visibility at all times. "What have you seen?"
"This place," Myrmeen whispered as she nodded toward a large, U-shaped building across the street. "I didn't even recognize the neighborhood, but that building is where my nightmares started. That's where I was born and raised."
"Your family had that entire estate?" Krystin said with amazement.
"No," Myrmeen said. "The family that had the building constructed left when the area was taken over by the working class and the poor undesirables, like my family. When the estate was given to the city, it was turned into cheap housing."
"But you're wealthy, cultured-"
"That came later, much later."
"It looks abandoned," Krystin said.
Myrmeen nodded. The building where she had played as a child, where she had later experienced her first kiss, now appeared to be deserted. Vines covered the walls of the two-story dwelling and overran the courtyard. The fountains had dried up. Most of the windows were shattered and covered with boards. The balcony that ran the length of the second floor was stained with mildew and its railing was shattered in several places. Strangely, while the building had not been maintained, neither had it been vandalized. There were no signs that it had been overrun with families of squatters.
"Why are we stopped?" Burke called. "What's happening?" When no response came, Burke and Varina rode to either side of those riding point. Burke was surprised by Myrmeen's softening features. The lines around her eyes and mouth, which had seemed to deepen over the past several weeks, appeared to vanish as she surrendered herself to the embrace of warm remembrances.
"Did you want to go inside?" Varina asked.
Myrmeen thought it over. Suddenly she heard her father's warm, booming laughter as he went off to work on that last, fateful morning, riding off to a private audience from which he would never return. She had clung to that image for years, then forgotten it until just now, as she saw the window of the bedroom that once had been hers, in the building's east wing.
"Yes," Myrmeen said, "for a moment. Then we'll leave."
"I have no objection," Burke said benevolently.
Krystin turned her gaze to the sun. There were many hours of daylight left, so she did not allow her fear to overcome her. Reisz and Ord followed behind the four horsemen who led the party beyond a crumbling marble fountain, upon a stone walkway and deep into the central courtyard. In moments they were flanked by the two long arms of the building, and they dismounted before the easternmost of two sets of stairs, the only way up to the second floor.
The curly-haired fighter tapped Ord's shoulder. "I don't like this," he said candidly.
"That's the joy of riding with you, Roudabush. You don't like anything."
Reisz nodded. Ord never used Reisz's family name except to signal that he, too, was very worried.
Myrmeen was already climbing the stairs, her boots trampling the vines underfoot. Krystin remained at her side, feeling a disquieting compulsion to stay close to the woman whose hair and eyes were identical to her own. Burke told Myrmeen to go ahead, that he and his wife would follow at a comfortable distance. Reisz and Ord were ordered to remain behind and watch for horse thieves. Cardoc went off to explore another section of the building but promised to remain within earshot.
"It's so much smaller than I remember," Myrmeen said as they reached the second-floor landing.
Krystin walked a few steps to the right and peered through the slats into one of the rooms. Frowning, she said, "I don't think you're going to find much. Look here."
Myrmeen went to her side and squinted as she bent slightly and stared at the ruins of what had been the main living chamber of a single-family dwelling. Staring at the demolished furnishings and piles of rotted wood strewn about, Myrmeen felt the urge to abandon the search. After all, she did not want to see her childhood home in such condition.
An urge that she could not resist propelled her forward. She led Krystin back along the gallery to a hallway at the top of the stairs, which had been scorched by flames. There were no rats or roaches, though she did find the occasio
nal wisp of a spider's web.
"Can't we walk around this ledge?" Krystin asked.
"We can't get in that way. The front doors were all walled up after a few children died after running through the doors and not looking where they were going. The guardrail was a joke."
Myrmeen swallowed hard. She had known one of those children, an unfortunate little boy, and had been schooled with his sister. They both had lost siblings, and the experience had bonded them together.
"Myrmeen?" Krystin asked.
Shuddering, Myrmeen took Krystin into the hallway and turned to face a darkened central corridor that subdivided the second floor. "I don't know how safe this is. Let me go first."
"All right," Krystin said.
Myrmeen entered the black corridor, her hand against the wall as she found the spot where the passage angled to the left. She gestured for Krystin to follow. The girl entered the corridor, barely able to see Myrmeen's hand, which she clung to as she was led down the night-black avenue to a door that Myrmeen did not need to see to recognize. They heard the footsteps of Burke and Varina following behind.
"It's not locked," Myrmeen said as she pressed her weight against the door and shoved. The door came open easily and Myrmeen was shocked by what she found on the other side.
"Someone's still living here," Krystin said.
"Yes," Myrmeen said in a tiny, stunned voice. "I am."
The chamber they faced was decorated exactly the way Myrmeen remembered it from her childhood. A heavily worn sky-blue rug was thrown across the floor. Wx›den shelves and cabinets lined the walls. Oversized pillows, which her mother had woven and stuffed with feathers that she and Myrmeen had spent weeks gathering, lay on the floor beside a lute identical to the one that had disappeared with her father. There were paintings on the wall, and one in particular arrested Myrmeen's attention: It was a portrait of herself as a child, sandwiched in a happy, loving embrace between her mother and father.
"No," Myrmeen whispered as she fought back the tears that welled up in her eyes. Her trembling fingers grazed the painting's surface, lightly touching her dead father's hard, proud face.
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