The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter

by Michael J. Sullivan

  “And how do you know your history isn’t a lie?” Royce asked.

  Mercator grinned. “I’m older than I look, a lot older. That’s one of the things about mir. We live a long time. Not so much as elves, I suspect, but longer than humans. My mother lived to be four hundred and fifty. She could remember Glenmorgan and his Second Empire. Age gave her the wisdom to conclude that our long life was a gift turned into a curse by a world filled with ignorant hate and bad timing. My grandfather Sadarshakar Sikara was born in 2051 and lived for five hundred and sixty-seven years. Can you imagine that? He remembered the birth of Nevrik, the Heir of Novron, and the appointment of Venlin as the Archbishop of Percepliquis, and he witnessed the fall of that grand city. He was in Merredydd at the time, a province established for the myr who chose not to live with humans.”

  She leaned in, placed a hand to the side of her face, and whispered, “Rumor has it the myr were a bunch of bigots.” She laughed as if it was a joke, but Royce couldn’t tell if it was ironic or just silly.

  “If you’re the descendant of such an esteemed family, why do you look so . . .” Royce hesitated.

  “Calian?” Mercator glanced at her hands and nodded as if she’d expected the question. “When Merredydd fell to barbarians, Sadarshakar brought his family here to what was then called Alburnia. Few survived, and Sadarshakar took a Calian woman as his wife. The situation didn’t improve, and my mother married a Calian man.” Mercator drew back the shawl off her head and pulled on her nappy hair. “Which makes me arguably more Calian than mir. A highly respected combination, I must say.” She laughed again, managing to find humor in every tragedy.

  Royce could understand that, at least.

  “Fact is,” she said, “I learned history from someone I trust . . . my grandfather, who witnessed the events firsthand. That’s how I know. Tell me . . . Royce, is it? How do you know about the history of your people?”

  “I actually don’t care,” Royce said. “All of this clearly means a good deal to you, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Doesn’t matter whether your version is true or not. I’m here to do a job, not debate ancient history. Now, if you want to talk about something, I’d love to hear where the duchess is.”

  Mercator shook her head. “Sorry. She’s the only good card I still hold. But she’s safe and unharmed, as this letter attests. I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve grown to like her. She’s . . . different.”

  “It was worth asking,” Royce said. He gazed out at the plaza once more, trying to decide if he was pleased or irritated with the number of celebrating people. They complicated everything, which was both good and bad. “We probably—” Royce saw movement where there shouldn’t have been any.

  The plaza was still a swirl of activity—dancers spun, acrobats tumbled, jugglers tossed, spectators clapped, and children ran—but overhead, nothing should have moved. Too dark for a bird. Too big for a bat. Royce looked up at the front of Grom Galimus. The great doors were huge but dwarfed by the massive bell towers on either side. Above those doors stood a row of sculpted figures of robed men. Then came the oculus of the great rose window. Next, a colonnade of pillars and arches, and above that, and still only halfway up, was a pediment upon which perched a series of gargoyles.

  “What’s wrong?” Mercator asked, craning her neck, trying to see what he saw.

  “Thought something mov—”

  They both spotted it then. The third gargoyle from the left flexed its wings.

  “I’m not from here,” Royce said. “Is that normal?”

  “Of course not. It’s—oh no!”

  The gargoyle’s head turned. Like so many others, this figure was monkey-like with powerful hunched shoulders, the wings and face of a bat, and saber-like fangs. As it looked down at them, Royce noticed that the eyes had been sculpted to look decidedly evil, but he guessed that was how he’d have seen them, regardless of what the artist had carved—because the gargoyle looked right at him.

  Royce expected it to shove off the side of the cathedral, spread its wings and dive. Instead, the beast began to climb down the front of the church, moving awkwardly at first but gaining balance and skill as it descended, until it moved with monkey speed, leaping from pediment to column.

  “Run!” Mercator shouted at Royce.

  “Why did you kill Nym?” Griswold Dinge asked Hadrian. The dwarf sat across from him in the little room.

  With Nym dead, Selie preparing for his funeral, Villar gone, and Mercator off to meet with the duke, the dwarf—the last of the civic leaders—had apparently pulled guard duty. Hadrian was glad Erasmus Nym’s widow wasn’t there, as he was certain Seton’s story didn’t absolve him of that accusation. If anything, it cast more doubt, and he’d preferred to deal with an angry dwarf rather than a grieving widow.

  “He didn’t kill Erasmus,” Seton affirmed faithfully.

  The three sat cozy and close in the stone cellar, which was littered with rat droppings. Griswold had bound Hadrian’s hands behind his back. As an added precaution, he held a naked dagger. His manner wasn’t overtly threatening, but the menace was there.

  “She’s right. I didn’t kill the Calian.” Hadrian smiled, but his charm had no effect on the dwarf.

  “Oh yes, even though you were right on his heels during your pursuit, someone else came out of nowhere and took his life. Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “I honestly have no idea what killed him,” Hadrian said.

  “Don’t you mean who?”

  “Seemed more like a what. All I know is he was dead, and his face was gone. It looked like it had been chewed away. I only knew it was him because of the clothing and the box he had been carrying. Didn’t seem like a typical murder to me.”

  “He didn’t kill Nym,” Seton asserted again.

  “And how in the bloody name of all that is holy do you know that? He spared your life; so what? He also butchered a pile of men; you said so. Your own words show he’s a killer, no innocent little lamb here. And his story about Nym missing his face is beyond belief.”

  “No, it’s not,” Seton said, “and it’s not because he spared my life that I believe him.”

  This caught the dwarf’s attention and he turned, revealing a little gold earring piercing his left lobe. Decoration? Mark of a sailor? Wedding gift? Hadrian knew so little about the small folk that he felt not only stupid but ill-equipped to help himself, much less his cause.

  “So what makes you think he didn’t kill Erasmus?”

  “Killings where people are mutilated the way he described have happened before.” Seton said. “That’s the reason the nobles wear blue.”

  The dwarf shook his shaggy head. “Bah! The nobles are skittish. The streets are dangerous. Not every person butchered in the alleys is a victim of—”

  “I’m not talking about the recent murders.” Seton’s voice lowered and grew several degrees more serious. Her eyes supported the shift in tone, growing solemn. Hadrian found it odd to see so much darkness in a face that looked so young. “I’m talking about Throm Hodinel.”

  Griswold squinted his eyes. “Who now?”

  “Throm Hodinel. He was the curator of the Imperial Gallery. Some said he was a relation to the Killians, a distant cousin or something. I saw his body the day they found it at the feet of the statue of Glenmorgan. And his face was a mess. They had to identify him by his clothing because . . .” Seton hesitated, her eyes focusing on Hadrian as if he knew the answer.

  “Because his face had been chewed off,” he answered.

  Seton nodded. “Actually, it wasn’t just his face; a large portion of the man had been eaten. But yes, his face was gone. So were a good number of his bones.”

  “Sounds like wolves,” Griswold said.

  “Inside the gallery?”

  The dwarf stared at her skeptically. “I’ve never heard this story.”

  “It happened before your time.”

  The dwarf tilted his head and studied her more intently. “How old are you?”r />
  She grinned at him. “Throm Hodinel died fifteen years before you were born.”

  This raised the bushy brows of the dwarf. Griswold looked to easily be in his forties, maybe older. Seton wasn’t a teenager, wasn’t human, and if what she said was true, she was decades older than Hadrian. Adding these truths to the embarrassing fact that he hadn’t initially recognized her, Hadrian realized that while he had misjudged women before, this time marked a whole new level of stupidity.

  “Throm Hodinel wasn’t the only one,” Seton went on. “Every few years someone dies the same way. It’s almost always a noble, or someone suspected of being an illegitimate child of one of the old-world dukes, usually male, and always within a few miles of Blythin Castle. The murders happen at night or around dusk in a heavy fog, and in every case, the victims are eaten. Some are only eaten a little, others are almost completely devoured, but their face is always gone.”

  “You’re speaking about the Morgan. Villar told me that was a myth,” the dwarf said.

  “Villar doesn’t know everything.”

  “Where is Villar?” Hadrian asked.

  “Don’t know.” He spoke the words slowly, not looking at either of them. The statement caused the dwarf to frown, and his considerable brows knitted the equivalent of a full sweater.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Griswold looked up but didn’t answer.

  “Griswold, what aren’t you telling us?” Seton asked.

  “Riots are a bloody business. If something went wrong, if our people were in jeopardy, we wanted protection. We needed a backup plan. So we could intercede, if necessary. But only if necessary.”

  “Is that what the three of you were meeting about?” Hadrian asked.

  “For the most part, yes. But I also needed to give Erasmus his supplies.”

  Hadrian nodded. “The box. I found it with Erasmus’s body, but it only contained some rocks, just gravel. The way he carried it, you’d think it was dangerous.”

  “In the hands of a skilled dwarf, dirt, stone, metal, and wood are all dangerous.”

  Hadrian felt that rope ought to be included on that list, as his wrists were starting to ache and his hands throbbed. In binding him, the dwarf had exhibited a level of skill that his people were known for when creating stonework or anything mechanical.

  “I don’t understand,” Seton said.

  “Of course you don’t. How could you? It’s old magic. Older even than you. Older than Rochelle, older than Novron.”

  “What are you talking about?” Seton asked.

  “Do you think only mir hold the claim to ancient secrets? For all your age, our collective history goes back far beyond yours. Before Novron and his empire, before the mir, before humans, the Belgriclungreians lived and thrived. I’m talking about the days when only full elves and dwarves roamed the lands, when Drumindor was the world’s greatest forge. There was a time when we had a king, an age of greatness, an age of wonder. They say it was Andvari Berling and King Mideon who did it, but the magic predates even them. It goes back to the gods of the ancient giants, to the ones known as Typhins. They were prohibited from having children of their own, according to legend. But they found a way to bring forth life from earth and stone. A magic they used to create the giants themselves. My people discovered that secret, but because it was outlawed by the gods, it was forbidden. Only once was it attempted, and that was during the War of Elven Aggression when King Mideon saved our people. Elves had used their magic to crush the Tenth and Twelfth Legions on the Plains of Mador, and then Mideon called on the legendary Andvari Berling and asked him to crack the forbidden scrolls and make a weapon that could defeat the elves. Some say Andvari never succeeded; others claim he did, but that something went terribly wrong. They claim it was his failure, rather than the attack of the elves, that actually defeated the Kingdom of Mideon and laid waste to Linden Lott.”

  “What did King Mideon ask this Andvari to make?” Seton asked.

  “The only real magic our people ever had.”

  “Which is?”

  Griswold paused a moment. Then a twinkle flickered in his eyes and he leaned in and whispered, “A golem, a protector made of stone.”

  No one in the plaza had noticed the gargoyle come to life. All eyes were on the acrobats, the dancers, or the juggler. Mercator nimbly raced through the oblivious crowd. For someone who claimed to be old, the Calian mir moved as well as the acrobats they dodged. She and Royce ran through the ring of dancers, breaking the chain of clasped hands, causing a disturbance. Like rambunctious children running through an adult party, they turned heads and provoked shouts. Royce was reminded of his youth. Fleeing had been a daily occurrence back when he survived by picking pockets in the squares of Ratibor. Just as wind was a bird’s ally, crowds were his. They provided cover as well as opportunity, but just as too much wind could kill a bird, too dense of a crowd could jam him up, lock him in, and give his pursuer the chance to catch up. Being able to read a mass of people, to see the patterns and guess the timing, had made the difference between getting away and losing a hand.

  Royce was older now and out of practice, but it didn’t take long to rediscover the familiar skills and remember old techniques. Mercator did a fine job of finding and exploiting holes as well. Anticipating openings, she managed to stay out ahead. She looped the fountain, heading for the steps of the gallery. He wasn’t sure what her plan was, but then Royce wasn’t certain about the extent of the danger. Seeing a gargoyle come to life was disturbing, but the fact that Mercator felt the need to flee was the real worry. Why, was something he could ask her later. As it turned out, why was answered sooner than expected.

  People pointed at something behind Royce, then the screams started, and finally he understood why Mercator was making for the steps of the gallery. The plaza was like a river where a dam had burst upstream. He needed to reach the safety of the bank before the rush of the flood. Whatever the gargoyle was doing, it had caused a panic, and the once happy crowd turned into a mindless mob as people began to push in a frantic attempt to get away.

  A man bowled over a woman and her daughter, causing him to trip and fall to the ground, where he, too, was stepped on. The juggler and the dancers were consumed in the tidal surge. Royce and Mercator reached the marble steps of the gallery just as the wave burst. She wasted no time running to the big bronze doors. Royce finally saw her plan and was once more impressed by the level of strategic forethought. And she was a mir.

  If she knew, she could say the same about me, couldn’t she?

  The gallery wasn’t as big as Grom Galimus, but it was still large and almost entirely made of stone. There weren’t any ground-floor windows, and its doors opened out. Royce and Mercator would only have a few seconds to get inside. The swell of the crowd fleeing whatever mayhem had ignited their stampede would realize what Mercator had: The gallery was protection from this storm. If Royce and Mercator were inside when that happened, the bottleneck would inhibit the gargoyle . . . brilliant.

  “Locked.” Mercator pulled angrily on the door. “You can open it, right?”

  “How’d you know?” Royce knelt at the door, making a quick study of the basic lever-tumbler mechanism.

  “Anyone expecting a severed finger seems the sort to have a background in theft.”

  Royce inserted his curtain pick into the keyhole. Lifting the lever, he popped the latch. Although the process had taken only seconds, the crowd moved faster than Royce had expected; a mass of revelers-turned-stampeding-herd pushed up behind them. Unable to pull the door open wide, the two barely managed to slip in before the pressing weight of the mindless crowd slammed it shut again. Part of Royce’s cloak was caught, and he freed himself by ripping it in half.

  The two looked back at the pair of bronze doors, backing slowly away, listening to the muffled cries of the terrified crowd that grew louder as the seconds passed. The interior of the gallery was tomb-quiet and dark, but Royce knew the building and remembered the room. He’d
been there only the night before. This was the rotunda with the murals and paintings, odd artifacts on pedestals, and that big chariot with the stuffed horses yoked to it. The strange beast he’d seen from above he now saw from level ground. This was the proper viewing position for everything, and from there the dragon hoisted overhead was suitably terrifying.

  “What is that thing outside?” Royce asked.

  “A golem.” Mercator’s eyes remained fixed on the doors as the two backed away. The fear on her face did nothing to convince Royce that they were safe. “Dwarven sorcery, old, deep, evil magic.”

  “That thing was a statue a minute ago. What is it now?”

  “Still a statue—in a way.”

  “It was after us, right?”

  “Still is.”

  “Can it get in here?”

  Mercator looked up at the broken window in the upper colonnade where the night before Royce had chased Villar. “I think so.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what a golem is. I hate getting visits from total strangers.”

  Sitting in the chair was aggravating the pain in his arms, so Hadrian switched to the floor where he could stretch out his legs. Seton helped him, brushing away a pile of rat pellets.

  “What does ancient dwarven magic have to do with you, Erasmus Nym, and Villar?”

  Griswold reached up and ran fingers under his beard, his lower lip jutting out. He paused there, and Hadrian thought he might not say anything. “We doubted our forces would be enough to prevail against the duke and the city guard. We needed more. We needed what Andvari offered King Mideon.”

  “I’m guessing that’s knowledge you can’t pick up just anywhere,” Hadrian said.

  Griswold nodded and addressed Seton. “Do you know about the Night of Terror?”

  “That was centuries ago,” Seton said.

  Griswold scowled at her. “And I suppose you were there?”

  “Before my time. Even before Mercator’s, I think.”

  “One cold night, mobs came into Little Town—that’s what they called our ghetto back then—and set our houses on fire. Everyone was dragged into the street for a beating. Almost a hundred of my people died on the same night that the rest of the world calls Wintertide. Strange way to celebrate the rebirth of the sun, don’t you think? In the aftermath, the elders found a way to protect us. At that time, the city was under construction, Grom Galimus only half built. My people did the stonework. Cheap, skilled labor is what we were. The archbishop commissioned many sculptures, and we were happy to oblige. Right under his nose and with his blessing, we created weapons that we could call on in time of need.”