The Plague Knight and Other Stories

by Richard Lee Byers

  The fabrication startled me, and it took me a moment to reply. “That isn’t so. You and your kinsman were sleepwalking. Possessed, or under some sort of spell. You attacked me.”

  Despite the pain of his wound, Dremloc managed a laugh. “That’s stupid. Wyler and I were drinking and playing at knucklebones in my room. We got hungry, came downstairs to raid the larder, and found this Blue whoreson looking shifty.”

  “If that was the reason you left your quarters,” I said, “would you have brought your swords? The same influence that controlled you before is tampering with your memory.”

  Baltes looked to Tregan. “Tell me,” the Keenspur leader said, “if there can possibly be any truth to this.”

  “As you wish,” the warlock said. He closed his eyes, murmured under his breath, swept his hands through mystic passes, and swayed from side to side. The darkness flowed and thickened around us, and a bitter taste stung my tongue.

  Tregan opened his eyes once more. “There was no magic involved.”

  “No!” I said. “Somehow, you’re mistaken.” I pivoted toward Baltes. “Milord, do you truly believe I’d steal from you, when you already offered me gold, and I refused it? Is it likely I’d pick a fight where the odds were against me, in a house full of my adversaries’ kin? Or that I’d be the one to cry for help if I did?”

  Baltes scowled. “Perhaps it was simply ill will and folly that made the three of you brawl, and no one has the courage to admit it.”

  “No, Uncle,” Dremloc said. “I swear, it happened as I told you.”

  Meanwhile, I made the corresponding assertion in different words.

  “Master Selden,” Baltes said, “I suspected no good would come of having you here, and you’ve proved me right. In other circumstances, I might be inclined to punish you for it. But Pivor and the other Snow Lynxes--former Lynxes, I should say--hold you in esteem, the wedding is only two days hence, and I’m loath to do anything that might stir the old animosities. So just get out.”

  “Milord,” I said, “I was about to follow up on an idea when all this happened. Apparently, our unknown enemy somehow discerned my intent, and used Dremloc and Wyler to stop me. That must mean the notion has something to it. I beg you--“

  Baltes’s hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “I’ve had enough of your foolishness! Go now, or I won’t answer for your safety.”

  I looked at all the Keenspurs and Keenspur servants glaring back at me, and I went.

  Afterward, I resolved to put the affair behind me. Since Baltes had discharged me, it was no longer any of my concern, and I’d been lucky to come out of it with my skin intact. But I’d never had much of a knack for minding my own business, and after a morning of moping and grumbling around my school, I went to see Pivor.

  He’d already heard I’d disgraced myself among the Keenspurs, but received me anyway, for the sake of the services I’d rendered him in the past. I told him my side of the story, and couldn’t judge if he credited it or not.

  “I’m glad you escaped unharmed,” he said, sitting on a marble bench in the conservatory where he often received callers, if their rank and business was such that formality was unnecessary. Sunlight streamed through the high windows, and the scent of verdure tinged the air. “But you can’t let go of it, can you?”

  I grinned. “You understand my foibles, Milord.”

  “Well enough to realize you’re here because you want something of me. What?”

  “Can you tell me about the early years of the feuding? It was already well underway when I first came to Balathex, and I never bothered to learn the details.”

  “I don’t see the point of your learning them now, but all right. I have time to chat for a bit.”

  Some of what he told me, I did in fact already know. But eventually the talk turned to a wizard named Yshan Keenspur.

  “He was their House mage before Tregan,” Pivor said, “from which you can guess that he was an older man. That in turn might lead you to imagine him as a prudent, cool-headed fellow who would try to prevent the rise of the factions, but you’d be wrong. He was one of the instigators, as rabid and bloody-minded a Green Peregrine as ever was. Perhaps he simply had a choleric temperament, or saw it as a way to increase his family’s power. Or maybe he dabbled in black magic, and it twisted his mind. There were rumors, but then there always are, whenever a sorcerer is disliked.”

  “What became of him?” I asked.

  “For all his powers, he came to grief in a street brawl, when three Lynxes set on him at once. He died trying to lay a curse on us. But so what? It happened long ago.”

  “Maybe not long enough.” I explained my suspicions, to the extent I understood them myself.

  Pivor shook his head. “You realize, the Green Peregrines--the Keenspurs, I mean--would find this allegation even more offensive than anything you’ve suggested hitherto.”

  “I suppose.”

  “On top of that, it doesn’t actually explain the theft of the tiara. According to your postulations, the culprit took it to rekindle the hatred between Peregrine and Lynx. But why would anyone anticipate that it would have that result?” He smiled a humorless smile. “Even if, somehow, that’s how it’s working out.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I have figured out what we ought to do next.” I told him.

  “No,” he said at once. “If I insulted Baltes and his kin with such a proposal, it could shatter the peace for good and all.”

  “Something dangerous is lurking in Keenspur House,” I said, “and you’re about to send your daughter to live there.”

  “But not immediately. She’ll marry there, but she and Baltes will spend their wedding night, and the following week, at his hunting lodge. Even if your wild hunch is right, that buys us some time. Let’s get the bride and groom wed, our two houses, united. Then, perhaps, you and I can broach this matter, if you still deem it necessary.”

  It was the best he had to offer, so I tried to rest content with it. I failed.

  Every great house employs dozens of servants, but when it hosts a wedding, even they aren’t enough. The steward, cook, and groundskeeper all have to hire extra help, and accordingly, nobody expects to recognize everyone he sees.

  Thus, clad as a common laborer, my grizzled brown hair stained black as Marissa’s, my sword, a pry bar, and a lantern hidden in a sack, I found it easy enough to slip back into Keenspur House. I then skulked to the one quiet precinct of the mansion, a chapel where a few votive candles glowed before icons, and stone stairs descended into the earth.

  I lit the lantern, strapped on my sword, and headed down. Before long, I came to a door of vertical iron bars. It was locked, but the fact did little to allay my suspicions. Magic that could turn sleeping men into puppets could likely manipulate a lock as well. I broke it with my lever and continued on.

  The steps debouched into dank crypts, festooned with webs the spiders spun to snare the beetles, and smelling faintly of incense, embalmer’s spice, and rot. The lesser Keenspurs lay behind graven plaques in the walls. The principal lords and ladies had their own private vaults, where stone sarcophagi, the lids often sculpted into likenesses of the occupants, reposed on pedestals in the center.

  I assumed Yshan had rated one of the latter, and found him quickly. If his marble likeness could be trusted, he’d possessed the sharp features characteristic of his line, honed beyond the point of gauntness. It gave him a look of fanaticism and spite, which the sculptor had accentuated by rendering him with glaring eyes and a scowl instead of the usual expression of serenity.

  I inspected the lid of the sarcophagus, trying to discern whether anyone--or anything--had opened it recently. I couldn’t tell. Not unless I opened it myself.

  Assuming I could. It looked damnably heavy for a lone man to shift. But I meant to try. I set the lantern down, then, with a dry mouth and sweat starting beneath my arms, tried to work the pry bar into the crack between cover and box. The iron tool scraped the stone.

 
The lid flew up and to the side, like the cover of a book, straight at me.

  It could have shattered my bones, but my reflexes jerked me backward, and perhaps that robbed the impact of some of its force. Even so, the sculpted marble slab slapped me like a giant’s hand, knocking me into the wall. I fell, and the lid fell with me, crashing down on top of my legs.

  Meanwhile, Yshan, who had, by dint of either magic or prodigious strength, flung his graven image at me, reared up from the sarcophagus. He was relatively intact. The embalmers had evidently done their work well, and his box had protected him from rats and worms. But his face was shriveled, flaking, and streaked with black leakage. His right eye had gone milky, while the left had crumbled inward. A few slimy strings stretched across the vacant socket.

  He held a sword, and the glow of the lantern just sufficed to reveal a thick layer of grease coating the blade. When I saw it, I finally comprehended all that had eluded me before.

  But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Not with the dead thing stepping out of the coffin, and my legs pinned. I struggled to free myself, and managed to drag my feet out from under the lid.

  Just in time. Yshan’s sword flashed at my head, and I flung myself out of range. It was the only move that could have saved me, but it put the dead man between me and the doorway. Now, I had no choice but to fight.

  I scrambled up and snatched for the sword at my side. Yshan cut at me, and I parried.

  The impact jolted my arm, and his weapon nearly smashed through my guard. He was as unnaturally strong as I’d feared.

  In other circumstances, wary of his might, I might have fought defensively. But if I hung back, it would give him the chance to cast spells, and I feared that even more than the force of his blows. So I attacked hard whenever I was able.

  I drove my point into his chest, but it didn’t balk him even for an instant. Why should it, when he was already dead, his vital organs, still and rotting? The only effect was to trap my blade. He whirled a backhand cut at my face. I ducked beneath it and yanked my sword free.

  He cut down at my head. Still in a crouch, I just managed to parry, and once again, his stroke nearly hammered through my guard, almost broke my grip on the hilt of my blade.

  But not quite, and I discerned that he’d struck with such ferocity as to shift himself off balance. I straightened up, feinted, deceived his awkward attempt at a parry, and slashed his one remaining eye from its socket.

  He snarled like a beast, exposing yellow teeth and dark, oozing gums. But he didn’t falter as most any mortal creature would have done. Instead, he struck back immediately, and his aim was as accurate as before.

  As I dodged, I thought, a hit to the vitals hadn’t stopped him, nor had blindness. What if nothing could? I struggled to quash the panic welling up in my mind.

  I opened my guard a hair, praying that he’d think it an error, not the invitation, the trap, it truly was. That he’d make a particular indirect attack I’d noticed he favored. It seemed likely. It was a combination well-suited to exploiting the seeming defect in my defense.

  His arm extended, and I immediately stepped forward and to the side, without waiting to see where his blade was actually going. If I’d guessed wrong, it had an excellent chance of winding up in my guts.

  But I hadn’t. He made the move I expected, I avoided it, and placed myself on his flank in the process, surprising him. Before he could pivot to threaten me anew, I gripped my hilt with both hands and cut with all my might.

  I didn’t quite lop off his sword hand. But I shattered the wrist bones and left it hanging useless.

  Yshan reached to shift his weapon to his off hand, but I was faster. I beat the greasy blade and knocked the hilt from his now-feeble grip. The sword clanked on the floor.

  Even then, with his terrible strength and resistance to pain and injury, he might have gotten the better of me if he’d simply assailed me like a wrestler. But he hesitated, and I cut at his leg. My sword bit deep, he fell, and I attacked the same spot twice more, until I was certain I’d done enough damage to keep him from getting up.

  Then I concentrated on his head, driving stroke after stroke into his skull while avoiding his flailing hand. Finally he collapsed and lay motionless.

  I studied the mangled, seemingly inert carcass for a few heartbeats, then turned and strode toward the exit.

  At my back, a harsh voice hissed rhyming words.

  The patch of floor beneath me turned to soft muck, treacherous as quicksand. I sank to my knees in an instant, and as I floundered, Yshan began a second incantation, no doubt to finish me off while the ooze held me helpless.

  I cast about, spied the open sarcophagus, and tossed my broadsword into it. Then I stretched out my arms, and, straining, succeeded in hooking my fingertips over the lip of the stone receptacle. I heaved with all my strength, and dragged myself up and out of the sucking slime. In the process, I noticed the tiara lying inside the coffin, not that I cared anymore.

  I grabbed my sword and leaped at Yshan.

  Some shapeless phosphorescent thing was rippling into full existence above him, but it vanished when I cut into his chin and silenced his conjuration. I finished removing his jaw, severed his head, cut the tongue out, and hacked off his fingers. Afterward, I still wasn’t certain he was altogether dead, but reasonably confident I’d deprived him of the ability to cast any more spells.

  That should have been the end of it. But I hurried back the way I’d come because I feared it wasn’t.

  Practitioners of black magic don’t always pass from the world as easily as normal folk, especially if they leave a dying curse behind. While the feud between the Green Peregrines and Snow Lynxes raged, Yshan had apparently rested easy. But the prospect of peace roused him, and he resolved to avert it.

  He had the power to observe things at a distance, and so discerned a sword among the wedding gifts, its blade smeared with grease as such fine weapons generally come from the maker. He decided to switch the sword for the costly one his family had interred with him. Baltes and Lukinda had received such an abundance of presents that it seemed unlikely anyone would notice the substitution.

  Yshan emerged from the crypts late one night, had the bad luck to encounter Venwell, and killed him to silence him. He then gave his sword a more thorough cleaning than any common housebreaker, eager to flee, would have done. It couldn’t have even a drop of blood on it if it was to pass for a new weapon.

  He made the substitution, stole the tiara simply to bolster the impression that an ordinary thief had invaded the mansion, and returned to his vault. In the days that followed, the enchantments he’d laid on the emerald sword began their work. First, a glamour made Baltes yearn to wear the blade without delay. I’d felt the power myself, if only I’d had the wit to realize it. Next, its influence nudged the Keenspurs back toward the rancor of yore.

  While through it all, Tregan never sensed supernatural forces at work. Because Yshan had trained him, and held some tricks in reserve. Tricks that allowed him to operate without his successor detecting it.

  I doubted he was detecting anything now, either, and that meant I had to get upstairs fast. Because I suspected the warlock’s sword had a final trick to play.

  The Keenspurs were holding the wedding in their great hall, before hundreds of guests. Lukinda was plump, freckled, and pretty in her gown of shining white, the priest, avuncular in vestments of white and green. Baltes wore the emerald sword. From the looks of it, the ceremony was nearing its conclusion.

  “Stop!” I bellowed, starting up the aisle. “Lord Baltes, throw away your sword! It’s cursed!”

  Everyone turned to gawk at me, and I realized what a peculiar spectacle I must be, clad like a laborer, my legs filthy, a blade in my hand.

  Then Dremloc cried, “It’s Selden!” The dye in my hair wasn’t enough to fool him.

  Several of the Keenspurs rose to bar my way. “Get out of here, lunatic,” said one, hand on the hilt of his dagger.

  “You don
’t understand,” I said.

  Nor were they disposed to listen. As they advanced on me, and all the other guests gawked at us, Baltes whipped Yshan’s sword from its scabbard and lifted it to threaten his dumbfounded bride.

  The priest grabbed his arm, but he shook the man off and shoved him reeling. Nobody else saw, because they were all looking at me, and I could do nothing. The entire length of the hall, and the folk intent on ejecting me or worse, separated me from the altar.

  Which meant that despite all my efforts, Baltes would commit the atrocity Yshan had intended. Then the Snow Lynxes would rise up in fury, the Green Peregrines would have no option but to defend themselves, and any nobles who survived this day would prosecute the blood-feud for years to come.

  Or so it seemed. But it turned out that someone had heeded my warning after all. Marissa hurled herself at Baltes and grappled with him. She softened him up with a knee to the groin, then twisted his arm. The emerald sword dropped from his fingers.

  As soon as it did, he stopped struggling. “Merciful Angels!” he whimpered, his voice full of horror. “Merciful Angels!”

  By then, people were finally taking note of what was happening before the altar. I cast about and found Tregan. “The evil’s in the blade,” I reiterated. “Surely you can sense it now.”

  He peered at the fallen weapon, then growled, “Yes.” He muttered words of power, swept his right hand through a pass, and a ragged darkness swirled up from the sword. People cried out and cringed, but Tregan had the demon, if that was what it was, under control, and it couldn’t hurt us. It wailed as it withered away.

  Afterward came explanations, and reassurances to the frightened Lukinda and her understandably agitated kin. During the course of it all, Baltes, still white-faced and shaky, told me, “Master Selden, I owe you a hundred apologies. What can I do to make amends?”

  I grinned. “Finish the wedding, invite me to the feast, and give me a purse heavy with gold.”

  Marissa said, “I think I’m due a split.”