by T. A. Miles
Two years later, Korsten still had Renmyr and his sanity, but for how long? Discretion was one thing, but this level of deception, the stress it put on both of them … there was nothing natural about it.
Korsten was brooding about this over eggs and sausage when Renmyr staggered into the dining room. He leaned in the door frame for a bit, like one whose equilibrium was off due to exhaustion and a terrible migraine, then found his way to the opposite end of the table, where he dropped into a chair and moaned into one hand. He was too good at this. For an instant even Korsten was inclined to sympathize with him. He decided to play along. “I told you not to drink so much.”
“And you might tell me not to beat my aching skull against a stone wall,” Renmyr answered grumpily. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to listen.”
“Breakfast, sir?” Donnel asked the rakish noble.
Renmyr glared at the aging manservant. “Do I look like I can eat anything, you old fool?”
Donnel glanced at Korsten, who offered a mildly apologetic expression before instructing him to leave with a nod. The elder stepped back from Renmyr, performed a taut bow at the waist, then marched himself to the kitchen, where he could secretly complain to the cook about his ill treatment.
“Keep that up, my lord, and we’re both going to wind up on the street,” Korsten teased when Donnel was out of earshot.
Renmyr sat slowly forward. With his head still in his hand, he said, “I dreamt that I was with a beautiful redhead all night.”
Korsten didn’t approve of his early morning risk taking, but said coolly, “You were drunk enough, I imagine she was quite lovely indeed, up until the moment she kicked you out of her stall.”
Renmyr peered at Korsten over the tips of his fingers. He might have had more to say, but for the interruption provided by the porter.
“Excuse me, sir,” the spindly young man said from the doorway.
“Yes, Markam, what is it?”
“Visitor, sir.”
Korsten exchanged a quick glance with Renmyr. “Did the individual give a name?”
Markam, just sixteen and relatively new to his position, was putting a maximum effort into his posture. He said more stiffly than professionally or respectfully, “The gentleman from before, sir. Master Merran was his name. He’s come again, sir.”
“Thank you, Markam. Tell him I’ll be with him shortly.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said and was gone in the next instant.
Renmyr didn’t say anything right away, so Korsten did. “Persistent fellow, isn’t he?”
“For all of this effort,” Renmyr replied testily. “There had better be a demon stalking the streets.”
“Ren….”
In the next moment, Renmyr stood and stalked off, headed no doubt for the parlor. Korsten sighed quietly and followed suit.
Merran was indeed persistent, becoming impatient. He was standing this time rather than sitting and he looked noticeably urgent, eager about something. It wasn’t in his movement or mannerisms or even in his expression really. It was in his eyes, behind them. Something was direly amiss.
“Well, Master Merran,” Korsten said civilly as he and Renmyr entered the parlor. “It seems as if your persistence has paid off. Allow me to introduce you to Lord Renmyr Camirey.”
The two just stared at each other for several moments. There was an instant, unexplained mutual disliking there, as if old enemies had been reunited after years of warring at a distance. It didn’t make any sense and Korsten was on the verge of interceding verbally when Merran looked at him and said, “I appreciate this gesture, but I must meet with the presiding head of the ruling household. Come with me and I will show you why.”
Korsten didn’t know precisely what he expected to be shown at the edge of the southern woods, but he knew it wouldn’t be anything pleasant. He found himself grimacing ahead of time as he rode beside Renmyr and behind the black-clad Merran. He was glad Renmyr had come, though he looked angry, distrusting of this peculiar visitor to Haddowyn. Korsten thought that he shared his sentiments, but there was something about Merran that made him curious, as if he was belatedly experiencing that same feeling the self-professed mage claimed to have felt upon their first meeting. They had never met before, he was sure of it. But why did he feel like he should know him? It wasn’t anything that Renmyr had to be concerned about, of course, but it was unsettling all the same. He’d like for this strange business to be over with, sooner rather than later.
“What exactly is it you plan to show us?” Renmyr finally asked. He was demanding again. He had a helpless way of doing that. It was in his blood.
Merran didn’t so much as glance back at him. He said simply, “Proof.”
“If it’s another body,” Korsten decided to say. “Perhaps you ought to have brought Constable Hedren. This isn’t really my—”
“I seek an audience with Lord Camirey,” Merran reminded, hinting impatience. “Shall I go directly up to the manor?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Renmyr answered darkly.
“Then I shall have to convince you that there is truth to my claim and importance to my cause.”
“You mean hunting demons,” Renmyr said, just short of mockingly.
“Yes,” Merran replied without hesitation. “The mages at the Seminary have been devoted to the task, to keeping the Vadryn’s numbers under control, for hundreds of years.”
“At what point were they resurrected from their bloody deaths?” Renmyr asked directly. “Or is there another Vassenleigh in Edrinor that was afflicted by Crimson Plague nearly a hundred years or so ago?”
Korsten chided Renmyr with a glance, but otherwise listened to Merran’s response.
“Would it comfort you to know that in some regions Crimson Plague was also a way at explaining away what men didn’t want to believe?”
“What do you mean?” Renmyr snapped, fast growing impatient with this character.
When Merran said nothing, Korsten offered what explanation he could. “Crimson Plague earned its title by the way it induced excessive and incessant bleeding in its victims. A severe skin rash led to sores on the flesh that would come open and bleed profusely, often causing the victims to bleed to death. But not before fever and madness took them, causing them to rise out of their deathbeds and attack whomever or whatever was in the room with them. They behaved often as if they were possessed by devils. Would you be trying to say, Master Merran, that they were?”
“They weren’t possessed by devils,” the man replied and there was suddenly some hope for his sanity. However, his next words dashed that hope and all of Renmyr’s patience as well. “They were victims of the Vadryn, a large number of them. An army, you could call it.”
“A lie, I choose to call it,” Renmyr retorted. He pressed his mount close to Merran’s large white beast and took him roughly by the arm. “What are you doing in Haddowyn? What do you really want with my father, you….”
Renmyr’s anger faltered. His grip on Merran slackened and the man slipped easily away, taking his mount only a few paces more before stopping beside a sight grisly enough to make Korsten cover his nose and mouth immediately.
The body appeared a man’s. An elderly man’s perhaps, the hair that wasn’t dyed with blood appeared mostly gray. His throat and much of his chest had been torn open, as if some wild and particularly powerful beast had leapt out of the woods at him and taken him fiercely to the ground. His eyes were still open in shock, his jaw slack and stained with his own blood. The state of the victim seemed to absolve Merran of any guilt. Surely, no man could have done something like this. Perhaps he could have trained a beast to do it, a large dog, but why would he?
“Wolves could have done this,” Renmyr suggested, his thoughts evidently in sync with Korsten’s. He halted a fair distance from the grotesque example of death splayed before them, glaring at Merran, who dilig
ently ignored him.
Korsten drew a glance from Renmyr as he reined in beside his lover’s horse and dismounted. Trusting his own well-behaved Teah not to panic or bolt after taking in the stench of blood and whatever elements keen to only an animal’s faculties remained in the air, Korsten stroked the mare’s neck soothingly one time and otherwise let her be. He took careful steps toward the corpse, once again bringing his hand to his face. The scholar in him enabled him to look upon the body with a critical eye, at least for a moment. He was no physician, but he knew enough to know that no blade or human hand had done this to the old man, whose face, now that he looked at it up close, appeared as a gruesome caricature of Areld Rolce.
“Seryline’s father,” Korsten announced, biting back bile as it threatened to rise. “He … must have come looking for her. He’s wearing his sword, but it doesn’t look as if he had time to draw it.”
“The Vadryn are quick,” Merran offered. “But more than likely the demon responsible for this held him enthrall. Less trouble for the human body it will have chosen to wear.”
Renmyr snorted derisively.
Korsten looked back at him, more for the purpose of escaping some of the foul air and scenery than to admonish. He found solace and security in Renmyr’s returned gaze and even though he had not been seeking comfort, he held onto it while speaking to Merran. “A human body? Are you suggesting that a man did in fact kill Areld and that animals have since ravaged the body?”
“Your hearing is disturbingly limited for a scholar,” Merran said, drawing Korsten’s gaze and Renmyr’s glare. “The Vadryn did this. If there is no one else missing from your town, then it latched onto the soul of a wanderer, or perhaps someone no one would notice disappearing frequently or acting strangely. With that soul, in that body, it will continue to feed … to kill, until it is stopped.”
“How?” Korsten asked dubiously. “By killing the poor soul it’s latched onto?”
Merran’s unnaturally blue eyes regarded him far too seriously. “It must be ousted from the body, pried from the soul it presently clings to. Preferably while the possessed still lives. Killing the individual supplies the Vadryn with a last meal, so to speak. It ingests the life as it is extinguished, providing itself very potent nourishment and a last surge of strength. It becomes that much harder to destroy. Escape means the taking of another soul.”
“This is fool’s talk,” Renmyr decided. “Korsten, tell me you are not seriously listening to this twaddle.”
Korsten was scarcely given the chance to glance at Renmyr as Merran continued.
“These woods are not sparse, not deprived of sufficient prey for its predators. Wolves do not attack a man unless starving and they are not habitual scavengers. Wolves did not do this, not before or after the man’s death.”
Korsten glanced down at the body of Areld Rolce, considering the logic in spite of himself and Renmyr. He looked again, sure that he saw the old man’s pale eyes blink. Impossible, Korsten dismissed, feeling more than a little puerile. He’s….
Areld Rolce bolted suddenly upright. Then, quicker than he ever had been in life, he lunged at Korsten, latching onto his leg with both hands and pulling him off balance. Korsten fell on his tailbone, gasping more from utter shock than from pain, though a strong jolt of it attacked his spine upon impact. His rational mind kept insisting that this wasn’t happening and that therefore there was no pain. That didn’t stop Areld from trying to inflict it, however.
The elder’s eyes were wild, devoid of all reason and sanity. He clawed up Korsten’s leg with unnatural strength, digging his fingers through clothing and into flesh. His bloodied jaw hung open, revealing teeth longer and sharper than they should have been.
Instinctively, Korsten began to kick, causing Areld’s shoulder to jerk and his head to snap briefly back, but otherwise utterly failing to stop his progress. It took him several instants of pure terror to realize the efforts of others to assist him. Renmyr grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him up and back while Merran drew a slender blade from beneath the folds of his black coat and sliced off the head and then the arms as the dead man continued to grope at his victim.
Korsten was still kicking, trying now to shake one of the severed hands off his boot. The other had fallen off on its own. “Gods, get it off me!” he shrieked helplessly, too sickened and terrified to be ashamed of the near womanly tone his voice had taken.
Renmyr lowered him just enough to reach forward and bat the partial limb away. Korsten clutched at him with a desperation almost equal to the suddenly animated corpse Areld had become and when Renmyr settled back he curled into him and heedlessly leaned against his shoulder. Renmyr didn’t stop him, but continued to support him and even caressed his hair with a comforting hand.
“I heard screams,” someone said and Korsten stiffened. His panicked breaths froze in his throat and he drew slowly back from Renmyr, folding into himself and looking at the ground instead of at Hedren, whose sudden speechless state may have been attributed to more than Areld’s freshly slain corpse.
The ride back to the house had been unbearable, both physically and emotionally for Korsten, who realized as the terror wore off that Areld, or whatever he had become, had done damage in his mindless attack. At the stable he practically fell off of Teah. Hedren made a point of assisting him to the house, almost ordering Renmyr away, then practically flung him into Donnel’s care as they entered through the kitchen. Korsten squeezed his eyes shut against helplessly forming tears and allowed his servant to guide him to the dining room table, away from the crowded kitchen, made claustrophobic with the addition of so many riled bodies.
“Milord Kor, are ye all right?” Penna called after him after overcoming her initial shock at seeing all of them piling into her kitchen.
“No, he damned well isn’t,” Hedren said acidly, sounding far more angry than concerned, perhaps disgusted as well. “Get back to your dishes, woman, and stay out of our way!”
“Well!” Penna huffed. And she might have conked the suddenly churlish constable with the skillet presently in hand if Renmyr had not stopped to console her with assurances that Korsten would be fine.
That wasn’t like Renmyr. Everyone was acting strangely, and Korsten felt like it was his blame. He didn’t have to get so near to Areld. He didn’t have to panic. Korsten sank into a graceless heap of self-blame and irritably refused Donnel’s further attempts to assist him.
It was then that Merran knelt in front of him while Hedren began to pace and Renmyr still hadn’t come out of the kitchen. He used the fingertips of one hand to prod Korsten’s knee, which felt not only swollen, but severely burned as well, and with the other drew a smaller blade than the one that had cleanly dismembered Areld … or his monstrous counterpart. “I have to expose the wound to properly heal it,” he informed while his patient hissed in reaction to the pain.
“Fine,” Korsten permitted irritably, wondering what the man imagined anyone could have done without exposing the wound.
Merran saw to his task quietly and efficiently. Korsten was glad to have an excuse to look away from the nasty, purplish scratches marring his pale flesh just below the knee when Hedren began to bark at him.
“This is just splendid, isn’t it?” the constable said with a glare that reminded Korsten too easily of Sethaniel Brierly after discovering just why his sixteen-year-old son wasn’t going to marry his closest colleague’s daughter. “People getting murdered in the woods, then getting up in broad daylight with half their insides hanging out of them! Clawing at people like ravening animals! I can’t tell you that I know what I saw….” He fixed Korsten, who was sufficiently disarmed by the nature of his tirade, with a frustrated scowl, then lowered his voice to almost a hiss. “But I know it shouldn’t be!”
“I didn’t think you saw the whole thing,” Renmyr said, finally coming into the dining room with a bottle of wine and a glass, seeming not at all con
cerned that the constable might have discovered them; him and Korsten, together.
“I saw it,” Hedren answered crossly. “Didn’t want to believe it, so I pretended I didn’t. But I’ve been thinking about it since we started back here. Makes me sick. Makes me wonder if I haven’t gone mad, but that—well, I don’t give a lame pony’s ass what he saw!” He jerked a finger at Merran. “But you saw it, Renmyr. And you, Korsten. I heard you shouting clear enough. Pretty damned sure I didn’t imagine that.”
Korsten wondered what else the constable was implying with that last statement, then winced and almost cried out again as fresh pain lanced under his skin. “What are you doing?” he demanded, watching in horror as Merran used the tip of his knife to make tiny slices over the already damaged flesh.
Merran was scarcely distracted from his meticulous efforts. “The creature left fragments of itself beneath the skin. They must come out, else you’ll become infected as well.”
“Fragments?” Korsten muttered, accepting the glass of wine Renmyr handed to him. He swallowed a large portion of it without even thinking. The numbing warmth of the alcohol began to move through his body, but didn’t have as much effect on the pain as he’d hoped.
“What had you in the woods this morning, Constable?” Renmyr asked while Korsten stared morbidly at the operation being done to his leg.
“Areld’s wife came to me,” Hedren answered. “Said he’d gone hunting last night—hunting for Seryline’s killer, without doubt—and that he hadn’t come back. I went to look for him. I suppose I would have been smarter to go straight to you, eh, Master Merran?”
Merran didn’t answer. He plucked a sliver of something from one of the freshly bleeding scratches on Korsten’s leg. It appeared slightly larger than a fingernail filing and very much like it came from a fingernail. Areld’s fingernail … a dead man. Korsten thought he was going to be ill. He drank the rest of the wine and held the glass out for more. Renmyr helpfully refilled it.
