Tam took a last look at the chapel as they rode north the next day. She wondered which of Grandual’s misappropriated gods had been worshipped there, and why, assuming there were others who knew the Tetrea were false, belief in them persisted. Most people, she figured, sized up the truth when it came knocking, decided they didn’t much like the look of it, and shut the door in its face. And who could blame them, really? Better to worship a fictional Summer Lord (who had a kick-ass beard and threw a damn fine parade every year) than his factual counterpart: a druin who’d killed his own daughter to resurrect his dead wife.
A bank of heavy grey clouds rolled in, and by midmorning it began snowing again. Tam was no farmer, but she’d have bet her lute the weather would get worse before it got better.
The bard waited patiently as Rose and Freecloud rode knee-to-knee and conversed between themselves for the better part of the morning, but when Rose cantered up to speak with the Warden, Tam reined Parsley in beside the druin’s grey.
“It’s tomorrow,” she reminded him. “Who was Astra’s son?”
Freecloud grinned. He’d drawn his cowl up over his ears, and without them to soften his appearance, he looked decidedly feral. His eyes—which changed to suit his mood, she’d noted—were a pale blue. “Lastleaf.”
“I figured,” she said.
“Because he’s the only other druin you know?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Lastleaf—or Vail, as he was named at the time—was born sickly, and grew into a spiteful child. His father despised him, probably because the boy reminded Vespian of his awful sin. But Astra doted on him. To her, Lastleaf was a miracle. A balm to ease the pain of her broken heart. She never again tried to take her life, but even still … Her previous resurrections had taken their toll. She began dabbling in necromancy, and soon became obsessed. It’s said she would kill servants who displeased her and then bring them back as loyal puppets. If necromancy is an art, which I’m not saying it is, then Astra was its greatest master.”
The storm abated as the Warden led them into a broad defile. Steep cliffs climbed to either side, their upper reaches lost in a wintry haze. On the trail ahead, Brune and Cura were playing a game of Cyclops. The shaman clapped a hand over the left half of his face. “I spy, with my cyclops eye, something that is white.”
“Snow,” said the Inkwitch.
Brune withdrew his hand, blinking above his gap-toothed grin. “Lucky guess.”
Freecloud peered up as he spoke. “Inevitably, the Exarchs discovered Vespian’s secret, and when they did they rebelled, thus beginning the war that would seal their doom. The Dominion was broken, the capital besieged, and while Vespian rushed to defend Kaladar’s walls, his slaves—humans and monsters both—revolted as well. They overwhelmed Astra, who was a formidable warrior in her own right, and killed her.”
Parsley was starting to lag, so Tam gave her ribs a gentle nudge. “But Vespian brought her back, right?”
“He would have, yes. Except Lastleaf stole Tamarat and fled the city.”
“What?” Tam’s disbelief drew the word out slowly. “Why would he do that?”
“To spite his father. Or because he knew what his mother was. What she might become if Vespian managed to revive her.”
It was Cura’s turn to cover one eye. “I spy, with my cyclops eye, something that is … white.”
“I just did white.”
“So?”
“Snow,” Brune tried.
“Guess again. Idiot.”
“This snowflake?”
“Nope.”
“That snowflake?”
“The Archon was furious,” said Freecloud. “He abandoned Kaladar to its destruction, interred his wife’s body until such time as he could reclaim Tamarat, and set out after his son. Lastleaf, meanwhile was hiding out in the Heartwyld. He spent centuries there, evading his father’s agents, befriending its inhabitants, and laying the foundation for what would one day become the Heartwyld Horde. By the time Vespian caught up to him, Lastleaf had become too powerful. The Archon escaped, but was mortally wounded. Which was how Saga found him.”
“And that’s when he gave Vellichor to Rose’s father?” Tam knew this part. Everyone knew this part. The dying Archon had offered up his weapon on one condition: that Gabriel use it to kill him before he succumbed to his wounds. She’d never wondered why until now.
“You said Vespian’s weapons were tools. Does Vellichor do something?” she wondered. “I mean, besides, you know …”
“Carving doors between worlds?” The druin looked amused, but then scratched his chin as though pondering something. “Gabriel said once that if a druin is slain by Vellichor’s blade they will return to our own realm—or to a fragment of it, anyway—an everlasting memory of what we had, and lost.”
“Do you believe that?” Tam asked.
His ears perked hopefully. “I’d like to.”
“My teeth!” Brune shouted, still trying to pinpoint something white.
“No.”
“Your teeth?”
“How the fuck could I spy my own teeth?” Cura snapped.
“Tam’s hair!”
“Damnit.”
“So what does any of this have to do with the Brumal Horde?” Tam asked. “Or with the dead rising all over Kaskar? I mean, if you’re telling me the gods are a joke then you’d better damn well have a punch line.”
The druin blinked. “Did you just come up with that?”
She hadn’t. It had occurred to her last night as she was falling asleep. “Uh-huh.”
Freecloud’s expression was equal parts dubious and impressed. “When Saga fought against Lastleaf at Castia he was carrying three swords. One of them was Scorn, a rare gift from his father. Another was Madrigal, which he took from the Exarch of Askatar, and I took from him. The last was Tamarat. When it became clear to Lastleaf that his rebellion had failed, he took his own life.”
Now that was news to Tam. According to every bard between Endland and the Great Green Deep, Rose’s father had slain the self-styled Duke of Endland in single combat, with sixty thousand mercenaries there to witness it.
And how many people would swear they saw you kill a cyclops? Tam asked herself. “I still don’t—”
“He used Tamarat to do it,” said Freecloud.
It took the bard a moment to process the words, and another to respond with one of her own. “Oh.”
Ahead of them, Brune slapped a hand over half his face. “I spy, with my cyclops eye …”
Freecloud’s eyes had grown dark as they spoke; they were the leaden grey of stormclouds now. “I believe the Winter Queen has come back from the dead,” he said, “and that she—not Brontide—is leading the Brumal Horde.”
“… Ruangoth,” Brune announced. His neck was craned, his uncovered eye fastened to the towering citadel rearing from the mists ahead of them. “I spy Ruangoth.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Grudge
Because Grandual had once been plagued by roaming monsters, Tam had seen more keeps, castles, and fortresses on their journey than she could count, but every one of them paled in comparison to the stark majesty of Ruangoth.
It was imposing and alien, a soaring spire of what looked liked raw obsidian. Every fractured pane gleamed black, violet, green, or blue, reminiscent of the aurora that sometimes glowed on winter nights beyond the Rimeshield’s frosted limits. The centre spire was surrounded by concentric battlements of descending height. The whole thing resembled a colossal flower, its towering style rising from a swell of black petals.
It was almost dusk by the time the band navigated the ring of fortifications and reached the courtyard at the spire’s base. No groom dared the rising storm to assist them, so the band stabled their mounts themselves before following Hawkshaw across the yard and entering the castle through an unlocked servants’ door.
They found themselves stamping snow from their boots in a kitchen dominated by a four-sided hearthstone column. Some
one had stoked a fire inside it, but there were no staff present that Tam could see.
There was, however, a great big turtle coming at them with a cleaver in its hand.
Tam screamed, put an arrow to string with a speed borne of sheer terror, and shot it in the chest. The arrow cracked off its mottled plastron, pinged from a hanging pot, sparked off a stone column, and splintered on the ground between Roderick’s legs.
“Hold!” Hawkshaw imposed himself between Tam and the turtle, whose reaction to being shot mirrored someone who’d accidentally spilled gravy on an already soiled sweater—it merely frowned down at the latest gouge in its shell. “This is Grudge,” said the Warden. “He’s the steward here.”
Brune was laughing—either at Tam’s reaction, or at Roderick, who’d crossed his knees and was covering his crotch with both hands.
Freecloud stepped forward to examine the creature, careful to stay beyond the reach of its cleaver. It was roughly the size of Brune, with bowed legs and stubby arms. Its head looked like a lump of stone at the end of a long, wrinkled neck, and behind its puckered beak Tam spotted one or two teeth, which suggested it may once have possessed an entire mouthful. Its nostrils were cavernous holes between huge, heavy-lidded eyes that blinked sluggishly as it beheld the newcomers.
“An aspian.” Freecloud’s voice was breathless with awe. “I’d thought there were none left in the world.”
The aspian’s head swivelled toward the druin. “Eh?” it said.
“I said I thought the Great Mother’s hatchlings were—”
“I was chopping carrots,” the turtle announced with an old man’s croak.
The druin’s ears wilted visibly. “I see …”
Hawkshaw scratched the iron-shot whiskers below his snowmask. “Grudge,” he said, “show the lady’s guests to their quarters. I’ve a report to make. And put that cleaver down before you slit your throat.”
“I’m going to put them … in the soup.”
Cura bristled. “Put who in the soup?”
“I think he means the carrots,” Rose pointed out.
The Warden sighed impatiently. “GRUDGE!” he shouted into the turtle’s ear (or at the side of its head, anyway, since it didn’t have ears), “TAKE THEM TO THEIR ROOMS! Breakfast is a bell after dawn,” he told the rest of them. “I’ll come for you then.” Hawkshaw turned and stalked off. His boots left shimmering puddles on the stone floor behind him.
The steward watched him leave, blinking several more times before remembering he’d been assigned a task. He set the cleaver down beside a pile of diced carrots and took up a brass lamp from the counter beside him. “This way,” he said. The band started after as he turned, but then stopped as the turtle wheeled ponderously back toward them.
“Eh?” he asked.
No one moved. Grudge’s rheumy eyes blinked once, twice, before finally he plodded off in the direction Hawkshaw had gone.
They followed the doddering steward through Ruangoth’s expansive interior, though he moved so horrendously slow that they were forced to loiter in his wake. At every branching path Grudge would raise his lantern and peer down each shadowed avenue, before finally (and, it often seemed, arbitrarily) choosing one and dawdling onward.
The Widow’s citadel was as majestic within as it was without. Though the lords of Diremarch had lived here for generations, they’d done little in the way of redecorating. The rooms were cavernous, the ceilings panelled with murals depicting ancient druins doing ancient druin things, which tended to involve drinking, fornicating, and holding random objects (scythes, sheaves of wheat, lightning bolts) above the hunched backs of prostrate slaves. The hallways were wide enough for the entire band to walk abreast, and Grudge led them up several broad (and excruciatingly long) stairways.
The entire place was eerily quiet. They’d been in transit for almost half an hour and Tam had yet to see any servants or soldiers. The sconces set along the walls were thick with dust; only the steward’s swaying lamp kept the darkness at bay. Their footsteps echoed in the emptiness, scampering out ahead of them and creeping up behind.
Brune whistled, and the shadows whistled back at him. “I’d heard the Widow let things slide when the Marchlord died, but this”—he brushed his hair aside, gazing up into the gloom of an airy gallery—“seems like a waste of a perfectly good castle.”
“Be careful we don’t lose him,” warned Rose, indicating the aspian with a nod. “We’ll be lost in the dark otherwise.”
“Lose him?” Roderick scoffed. “Lose him? Gods almighty, I’ve seen thieves drag themselves to the gallows faster than this one!”
“Eh?” Grudge stopped and turned, bathing them all in flickering lantern light.
“Heathen help us all,” sighed the booker, doffing his hat and pushing his mop of greasy hair back between his horns.
“IS THERE A BATHROOM SOMEWHERE?” Cura yelled.
The aspian cocked his block-shaped head. “Eh?”
“A PRIVY?” she tried. “A LATRINE?”
“A SHITHOLE?” suggested Brune, which earned him an exasperated glare from Rose. “What? Some people call it that.”
The old turtle nodded. “Just … ahead,” he promised.
Just ahead turned out to be a quarter of an hour later. The aspian lurched to a halt at an intersection, peering past his feeble light into the dim recess of each branching hall. He blinked slowly (he did everything slowly) and then mumbled, “Eh,” more to himself than anyone else. “I seem … to have taken … a wrong turn.”
The entire band groaned as one. The Inkwitch, standing with her knees together, looked as if she were considering squatting to pee right then and there. Even Freecloud tugged an ear and sighed like a sulking child.
Eventually they became aware of a low, rattling wheeze. The aspian’s wide mouth crinkled at the corners.
“A jest,” he rasped, and went so far as to very … slowly … wink. “The hatchlings of Bentar … are known for … our quick wit.”
Roderick muttered something under his breath. Tam caught the words not and fucking and quick and anything, so she had a fair idea as to what the satyr had said.
Grudge lifted his lantern to indicate the passage on their left. “This wing here … is yours.”
“What, the whole wing?” Rose asked.
The aspian bobbed his sagging neck. “Yes,” he said. “Take whichever rooms … you wish. I shall see you all … at breakfast.”
Having fulfilled his duty, he turned a tedious half circle and ambled off in the direction they’d come. Tam wondered briefly if aspians were as long-lived as their reptilian counterparts. She hoped so, or else they’d waste half their lives getting wherever it was they were going.
Cura, desperate to relieve herself, had already disappeared down the hallway. “See you at breakfast!” her voiced echoed back to them.
Their designated wing consisted of more than a dozen spacious rooms, including two dining halls, a kitchen, four bedchambers, a library, and three lavishly decorated areas that seemed suited for nothing more than sitting around on expensive, albeit dusty furniture. Several windows had blown open, allowing snowdrifts to pile in some rooms and cold drafts to haunt the halls like ghosts. Since Grudge appeared to be the castle’s only servant, there were no fires lit, but plenty of things (stacked kindling, moth-eaten bedsheets, paintings of pastoral countrysides) on hand to burn. They found a stash of cold wine and hard cheese in the pantry, and since the quality of both were improved by neglect, it turned out to be, as Roderick put it, “Quite the lucky find!”
Rose and Freecloud took the largest bedroom, while the satyr ensconced himself in another, slamming his door while grumbling about the shameful lack of maids to seduce. Brune claimed a bed as well, and Tam assumed Cura would want the last, so she laid her bedroll out on the library floor.
She went to sit by the window, watching snowflakes swirl beyond the frosted pane. She drank some wine and chewed a strip of Brune’s thrice-salted beef jerky, which made her wish her
wine was plain old water instead.
She thought about Ardburg—farther away now than it had ever been—and had a sudden yearning to be back in her old bed, to hear her father’s voice beyond the bedroom door as Threnody’s tail tickled her face. She cried for a while, because she was young, and lonely, and terrified of the future.
After that she started browsing the shelves. She leafed through a book about the Fall of Kaladar, then found another speculating on the disappearance of the Exarch Contha following the destruction of his golem legions. She set it aside, thinking Freecloud might want to read it, and then replaced it, figuring he probably wouldn’t.
Tam groaned at the weight of a volume entitled The Hatchlings: A History. Its brittle pages told the story of Bentar, the Great Mother of the aspians, whom Freecloud had mentioned in the kitchen earlier. The Great Mother had accompanied the druins (as a beast of burden, naturally) when they first came to Grandual—the only member of her species to survive the cataclysm. Bentar had given birth to seventy-seven hatchlings, and the book went on (in excruciating detail) to tell the life story of each. They were listed alphabetically, so Tam thumbed her way to the entry on Grudge.
Grudge, Hermonious, it read. Born seventy-first of seventy-seven. Shell-brother to Shrack, Timanee. Perished (undocumented) during the Battle of Ter—
A hiss drew Tam’s attention to the shelf above her head. In the space from which she’d pulled the tome was a skeletal rat with white-fire eyes. She screamed (though she doubted anyone heard her) and swung the book, clipping the creature’s skull and knocking it to the floor. She pounced, slamming the hatchlings’ heavy history again and again onto the undead rodent. Once its bones were shattered and its eyes burnt out, she hit it six more times to make sure it was dead.
So that was it for sleeping alone in the library.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Monsters Under the Bed
Tam carried her bedroll into the hallway. Her eyes searched the darkness for demon-rats, but the only light she saw was a flame’s red-orange glow flooding the hall up ahead. She walked toward it, and found herself in a lavishly furnished parlor where Cura was sitting cross-legged before a whispering hearth. The summoner was hunched over, little more than a shadow against the fire’s light, so Tam couldn’t tell what it was Cura was doing until she was just behind her.
Bloody Rose Page 21
