The pelting white all about him grew thicker until he could not see more than a Bearpace or two, and it tried to hide the Urwa. It would fail.
The blowing air tried to stop his walk. It would fail. He knew.
The Bear had no concept of time, and little of distance, only knowing that light came, then dark, only knowing that something was near or far.
He lumbered far. He knew far.
He lumbered until the white and the blowing air erased all Urwa spoor. He roared and bit the white, clawed the white, bit the blow, clawed the blow. The scent of the Urwa was gone.
The Bear sat on a hillock, the last place he had smelled Urwa. Here he would wait until the two-legs came in his footsteps.
White howled about him. He waited.
White grew thinner. Howl grew less. He waited.
The blow stopped pushing and just breathed little. He waited.
The white stopped. Light would come. He knew.
Light did come. The two-legs did not come. Something was wrong. He knew.
He thought of Urus….
And a dark shimmering came upon the beast, and swiftly it changed, altering, losing bulk, gaining form, and suddenly there in the deep snow sat a giant of a Man: Urus.
Urus stood and looked at the sky. Dawn had come. He remembered much of what the Bear had done, for Mankind has the capacity to do so, whereas Bearkind has much trouble envisioning the acts of Man.
Mountains loomed about, and from the knoll Urus could see five ways that Stoke and his minions might have gone, five ways they could have escaped.
And where were Riatha and Aravan, Gwylly and Faeril? Surely they could not have fallen that far behind.
The Sun rose.
Urus scanned up the vale until it twisted from sight. Where are they?
A sudden foreboding filled his heart, and he knew that ill had befallen his comrades. And Urus the Man roared his anger, wrath twisting his face beyond all recognition as he raised his clenched fists unto the sky and bellowed the name of the enemy—“Stoke!”
His shout flew out among the mountains, and the mountains hurled it back—
Stoke!…Stoke!…stoke!…stoke!…stoke…stoke…toke…oke…o…
CHAPTER 22
Stoke
4E1430 to 5E988
[The Past Millennium& a Half]
“The Baron is dead!” Amid the clatter of returning horses the cry rang throughout the keep.
Baroness Lèva looked up, her startled breath drawn inward through clenched teeth. Steelshod hooves rang on cobbles, and the shouts of stable men and riders alike echoed in the bailey. Voices rose and fell, intelligence lost amid babble. Boom! Doom! The massive outer doors of the main keep boomed open, echoing throughout the great building like the knelling of doom, even in the remote chamber of the Baroness. Lèva set aside pen and parchment and composed herself, turning from the desk to face the doorway. Approaching footsteps rang upon flagstone, and she braced herself.
A knock sounded. “Enter,” she called. A tall, rawboned Man dressed in begrimed hunting garb, a smear of dried blood high on one cheek, trod into the room, his hard stride bearing him across the stone floor. As he stopped before her and bowed slightly, his silver-shot dark hair fell ’round his bearded face. “Lady Stoke, Baron Marko is dead. Slain by a boar.”
Lèva’s heart leapt for joy—At last!—yet in no manner did she let such pleasure cross her thin-faced features. Instead, her voice was cold. “How, Kapitain? Through what dereliction of your duty did you let him die?”
Janok’s eyes flew wide at this deliberate accusation, yet he swallowed his anger as he looked upon this ice-eyed, black-haired bitch. “The Baron ordered us to stand aside and he faced the boar alone. But the shaft on his spear snapped, and the beast slew him.”
“I would have that spear, Kapitain. I would see the weapon which failed to serve. I would have it destroyed before my very eyes.”
Janok bowed his head in assent.
“And the boar, what was its fate?”
“Dead, Baroness. Slain by my own spear as it gored the Baron.”
Drifting up from the courtyard came the clatter of horses ridden out through the gate, and then hooves pounded off, galloping down the reach of the high mountain road leading away from the keep. Lèva turned her head toward the open window. “Kapitain, where do they ride?”
Janok smiled. “They ride for Aven and Vancha.”
Her thin lips drawn white in fury, the Baroness wrenched her face toward the Kapitain. “I gave no orders!”
“Nay, madam, but I did. As Kapitain of the Keep, it was my duty. The Baron’s brothers, his heirs, must be informed.”
“Out!” Lèva spat. “Out!”
Again, Kapitain Janok bowed slightly. As he withdrew, a sardonic smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
When he was gone, the Baroness swept the papers from the desk in rage. Meddler Janok! Sending word to the brothers! Lenko now Baron lest I somehow…somehow…Oh, why did I not anticipate this and take measures? Lèva leapt to her feet and paced the floor. What to do? What to do? She stopped before the fireplace and stood staring at the grating. Calm down! Calm down! First things first: when the broken boar-spear is burned, the evidence will be destroyed. Lèva knelt at the hearth and with her own hands she kindled a blaze. Flames leapt upward. But what to do about Lenko? Lèva crossed to the bell cord.
When the maidservant appeared, the Baroness stood at the open window. “Pick up that mess at the desk. Then send a runner to bring to me the foul weapon that failed to protect my husband. And tell Madam Orso to attend me here,” she ordered, not shifting her glacial blue gaze from the surrounding massifs of the dark Skarpal Mountains.
* * *
“She wishes to bear a child within six months.”
Pale, long-fingered hands reached up, lifting cowl back and away from a white face, the shaven head giving it an ugly, skull-like aspect. Yellow eyes stared forth from beneath hairless brows, sight shifting from mother to daughter and then to mother again.
Lèva felt her blood run chill, and she looked away from the gaunt Man, if indeed Man he was, summoned here by her mother, though how, Lèva could not say.
His voice was whispery, seeming somehow ancient, belying his youthful frame. “Tji need an heir to Baron Marko.” His words formed not a question, but a statement of fact instead. “Else tji cannot control the estate, the lands, the wealth.”
“Yes. We need an heir,” answered Koska. The older Woman was somewhat shorter than her daughter but otherwise as narrow-faced and thin, her hair black as well, though her eyes were dark—black as a pit, said some.
Again his voice came soft. “To control the estate.”
Koska shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. Yes. To control the estate.”
“A male child,” added Lèva, glancing at her mother but not at the Man, turning away from his yellow-eyed countenance. “In Garia, a girl child has no status as heir.”
“What would tji give?”
“What do you ask?”
“For tji, Madam Orso, what tji have given before when summoning me.”
Lèva shivered, as if spiders crawled across her flesh. Koska gritted her teeth, then jerked her head up and down once, no more, agreeing to his terms.
“For aun daughter, a place to stay as long as jai desire, and to be tutor to mai son.”
Lèva gasped and turned to the Man, the dregs of her soul shuddering at the sight of him. “Your son? It will be your son?”
The Man nodded. “Baron Marko Stoke is without heir. His brother Lenko is next in line of succession. None else but jai can give tji a child, a male child, to be born within six months. To go to a Human Man and get with child will depend on chance: first, that tji and he are fertile together, as tji and Marko were not; second, that if tji do bring forth a child from such a mating, that it be a male. Regardless, a child born of Humankind, even if it were a male, would come entirely too late to be the fruit of Marko’s loins, and tji would lose the estate t
o Lenko in any case.
“Nay, if tji would have a male child arrive in such time that it could have been sired by Marko, it will need be mehr who sires it.”
Lèva turned to her mother, fear in her eyes. Madam Orso slowly shook her head. “There is no other way. Lèva. You must truly be pregnant, for Lenko will bring his own personal physician to verify such. And the physician will be present at the birthing as well, for should the child be still-born or female, then Lenko will be heir.
“You must submit to Ydral if you would keep the estate.”
Revulsed, slowly Lèva nodded, agreeing.
Ydral smiled, then stepped forward and savagely rent the clothes from Lèva’s body, hurling her naked to the stone floor, holding his long-fingered white hands over her mouth, muffling her shrieks.
…And when he was done with her, he turned to the waiting mother.
* * *
Lèva spent much of the next six months locked in her room, all sharp instruments forbidden. At night her yowls and yammerings filled the keep, and in the day she wept uncontrollably and babbled in unalloyed fear of something or someone hideous and grasping, but what or who it was none knew or would say. That she was pregnant was plain, and by the size of her it could be no other but Baron Marko’s get, as Madam Orso claimed.
Baronet Lenko came from Aven, and among his entourage was his personal physician, who verified that in spite of her madness Lèva was indeed pregnant and would deliver in a few short weeks. Lenko was enraged, yet would stay for the birth.
On the other hand, the younger brother, Baronet Marik, remained in Vancha, not bothering to come to pay his respects to his dead sibling, and instead sent word that if aught happened to Lenko, then and only then would he return to Garia.
And in the isolated chambers atop the east tower of the keep, a strange Man came to live: a Man who kept to himself and was never seen in the day, though sometimes at night he was espied stalking the shadowy halls and high ramparts of the keep, and some said they saw him coming down from the roofs above; a Man who always wore a cowl, and none ever saw his face; a Man who filled the rooms with scrolls and tomes and arcane instruments and peculiar animals; a Man who performed strange experiments in the nighttide, the animals shrieking in terror. Yet Madam Orso, mother to the Baroness, said that the Man was physician to Lèva and would assure a live birth and ordered that he not be disturbed, and so he was let be.
The weeks dragged by, the Baroness shrilling in the ebon dark, lamenting in the wan light, growing larger with child even as she sunk deeper into madness. She was attended by both Ydral and by Lenko’s physician, Brün: Ydral at night, Brün in the day. And Ydral gave her concoctions to drink, some clear and sparkling, others dark and bubbling; while Brün tried to soothe her with herbs.
Lèva went into labor in the nighttide, and amid wild shrieks gave birth in the pit of the dark. It is said that the birth of the child was marked by two ominous events: an attending midwife ran screaming from the birthing chamber, babbling of demons and a mouth filled with fangs—she was never seen again; white-faced and shaking, Brün came forth from the room, and at the very moment he reported to Lenko that it was a male child, Brün fell stone dead. Whether none, one, or both of these tales are true, it is not now known. What is known, however, is that Lenko stalked into the chamber to see the child for himself. Lèva, pale and trembling and quite mad, cowered in the corner of the childbirth bed, the sheets drenched with sweat and birth water and blood. Madam Orso bore a cup of liquid to her gibbering daughter. Hooded Ydral held the child, wrapped in soft blankets, and as Lenko approached, Ydral passed an arcane hand over the child’s face. When Lenko lifted the blanket to see for himself the visage of the newborn Baron, what he saw was a babe seemingly normal in all respects but one: the child had yellow eyes.
Béla, they named him—the new Baron Stoke.
The year was 4E1430.
* * *
After Béla’s birth, Ydral called upon guards to surround the child, and Kapitain Janok was made personally responsible for the newborn Baron’s safety. And at Ydral’s suggestion and Madam Orso’s orders, Lenko’s entourage was forbidden to approach the babe, for if little Béla died— through whatever means, natural or contrived—Lenko would then be Baron. The Baronet himself was not permitted to see the child alone, and in fact was guarded whenever he was in the same room as the baby. Raging, Lenko stormed from the keep the very next day, setting forth for his bartizan in the Grimwall above Vulfcwmb in Aven.
Within a week Mad Lèva was dead. How she died is a mystery, yet rumors were rampant. Poisoned by her own mother, said some. Slain by Ydral, claimed others. Yet the most prevalent rumor of all was whispered by those who had heard the shrieks of the fleeing midwife: the new Baron was born with a mouth full of fangs, and as a result he suckled blood mingled with mother’s milk, draining unto death his own dam. Adding credence to this rumor, in the following months wet nurses also vanished, and so the tale persisted throughout the years, gathering strength with age.
But even though Lèva died and nurse maids disappeared and none knew the fate of the vanished midwife, others ridiculed this tittle-tattle—for had not Madam Orso herself said that the mother had been too weakened by the birth of such a healthy son? Was it not a common occurrence in Garia that Women died in childbed? Besides, Baroness Lèva had been quite mad. And had not Koska also told that the nurses had run dry and had returned to their distant homes? Faugh! any could see that little Béla’s mouth was normal, though his yellow eyes did give pause—Eyes of a demon, it was whispered.
With the death of her daughter, Madam Orso became the child’s Regent, holding court at night, ruling in the name of Baron Béla, though many muttered that Ydral was the true power within the Barony, for it seemed that no decision of importance was made without Koska leaning over to the hooded one to receive his whispered advice.
It was said that Madam Orso was a wanton harlot, cavorting with any and all, taking Man after Man unto her bed, sometimes more than one at a time, and debauching Women as well. Whether or not these tales are true, it is a fact that as Béla grew, his maternal granddam aged at a rate faster than her years.
Ydral became the child’s tutor, taking him under his wing. Béla was an apt pupil, spending long nights within the tower, there where the animals shrieked in rage and fear and pain.
Rumors bred rumors as Béla grew, whispers of cruelty and torture and acts of perversion. Servants crept about the keep as if fearing for their lives, scuttling from view whenever Koska or Béla or Ydral drew nigh. Doom and oppression rode in the haggard eyes of the staff, and many longed for the old days when Baron Marko ruled with an iron fist, for if a job was done right, then he let be, and if done wrong, a lash or two or a kick in the face wasn’t all that bad, eh?
But Marko was dead, and Koska ruled in name though Ydral ruled in fact, and little Béla was a yellow-eyed monster.
The Skarpal Mountains ’round about became a place of terror, a place where Vulgs howled in the dark where no Vulgs had howled before, a place where Gritchi and Durdi now dwelled, Foul Folk of yore. Landowners locked themselves in at night, driving their livestock into byres and cotes and sleeping alongside the beasts. And although they asked the Regent for succor, she sent none, telling them to fend for themselves. But even though the keep sent no protection, still the tax collectors came for their due, backed up by the force of arms.
All agreed that even dead Marko, hated as he was, had been a better ruler by far than what now sat on the Chair of the Barony.
Slowly, slowly, the Barony slid into dissolution. Just as did Koska. Just as did Béla. Driven by a yellow-eyed Man…if Man he was.
* * *
When Béla turned fourteen, Ydral showed the young Baron his true nature, and thereafter Vulp howls—Vulg howls—echoed from the tower, to be answered by like calls from the surrounding mountains. And some of the servants reported seeing a hideous winged creature flying through the night.
And in the surrounding
countryside, people began to disappear in the darkness, only to be found the next day, murdered.
At age fifteen, almost sixteen, someone wounded Bèla, ran him through with a sword. The next morning the terrified servants awoke to discover Kapitain Janok’s remains strewn across the battlements, as if he had been torn asunder by a wild beast. Yet his eyeless, earless, tongueless head they found mounted on a pole.
It was rumored that an assassin had attempted to slay Béla, yet whether it was Janok who had tried but failed, or had merely failed to prevent the attempt, none knew, and certainly none would ask.
Béla healed rapidly, for he was a Cursed One. Yet thereafter, none of the servants or soldiers were permitted to bear weapons in his presence—that is, none of the Humans were permitted to do so.
There came a night when he realized his terrible pleasures were not enough to sate him, and in the shadowy chamber atop the tower he confronted his mentor.
Ydral turned from the tome he was studying to look at Béla, yellow eyes staring into eyes of yellow. “My son, there are things even more delightful than tji have done so far. There are things more…complete.”
Béla stood and waited, his eyes glinting in the lantern light.
“I call it…the harvest.” Ydral rose and walked to a chest. From it he took a narrow, flat, leather-covered box. Opening the clasp and raising the lid, he withdrew a long, thin-bladed knife. “Had we a victim, I would show you how to flense flesh, how to flay. And yet delay death for the most exquisite time…. Had we a victim.”
At that moment Madam Koska Orso stepped into the room.
* * *
After Madam Orso’s disappearance, Béla took the reins of the Barony into his own hands.
Now, by all the demons, said some, now that a true Baron Stoke sits on the Chair, now things will be different.
And they were.
Different.
Dwellers from nearby steads and villages began to disappear at an alarming rate. Over the next five years, delegations went to plead with the Baron for aid, and he blamed all on the Gritchi and the Durdi. But after the audience, those who stayed until the safety of dawn returned to their villages and steads and told of distant tortured shrieks in the night, shrieks sounding like those of people in pain beyond imagining.
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