Nightfell Games (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 5)

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  The innkeeper was a wizened raisin of a man with ghostly white hair and a wispy beard.

  "Greetings and salutations," said the innkeeper. "Newlyweds lookin' for a blessin' a fortune?"

  "Nay, good sir," said Ben. "We're historians from Philadelphia come to visit the site of the great Battle of Kings Mountain. Some say that the Revolutionary War turned on that battle."

  "The battle?" asked the innkeeper, clearly disappointed. "Yes. We've got that, too."

  An itch between my shoulder blades told me someone was watching us. Feigning that I was admiring the woodwork of the inn, I walked in a lazy circle around the room, taking a moment to warm my hands beside the fire.

  Not bothering to hide his staring was a man in a preacher's wide brimmed hat. I let my gaze drift over him before returning to Franklin's location.

  "Two rooms, then," said the innkeeper with a nod of finality.

  Before Ben could answer, I spoke up, "One. We're brother and sister. Our father taught us letters and the art of the past."

  The innkeeper shrugged and grabbed a key.

  Once inside, Ben whispered with a playful hitch in his grin, "This is quite unexpected, though I gather this isn't a ploy to get me alone, since you've had many an opportunity before."

  "I don't like this place and thought it'd be safer together. There was a man watching us with an unhealthy interest from one of the tables," I said.

  "Yes, there's something strange going on here. The innkeeper seemed disappointed we weren't headed to 'receive our blessings on the mountain.’ That phrase implies someone lives there, or there is a holy place," said Ben, rubbing his chin. "Either way, we'll find out in the morning."

  "I think we should go tonight," I said.

  "Are you certain? Climbing a mountain at night seems quite dangerous," he said.

  "I think waiting until morning will be worse," I said.

  "Is this one of your prophecies?" asked Ben.

  I opened my mouth, considering for a moment to lie, but then shook my head. "No. Just a feeling about that man in the inn watching us and what the innkeeper said, though I hate to leave the steam carriage untended. I know we paid the innkeeper to keep it in the barn, but we'll need to get back to Philadelphia after this."

  Ben gave me a wicked grin. "Don't worry about that. I brought a few things with me from the Thornveld."

  Chapter Five

  We took our supper in the dining room. The meal was roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. The man in the preacher's hat was no longer lurking at a table, but Ben reported a few men watching him when he went to prepare the steam carriage for unwanted inspectors.

  We waited until the sun had set to climb out our first floor window. Ben brought a lantern, but we didn't light it until we were a good quarter mile from the village.

  "The innkeeper said this path takes us up to the site of the battle. Is this where we want to go?" he asked.

  "Can you give me a moment? I want to see if the prophecies might tell me something," I said.

  Ben nodded solemnly and walked down the path with the lantern, leaving me alone. Suddenly, I was aware of how chilly it was between the trees. A night creature made a hunting screech from somewhere nearby, startling me.

  When I thought Ben was far enough away, I pulled out the bird-skull. There was enough reflected light from the lantern that I could make out the white bone on my palm. I felt pretty foolish for what I was about to do.

  "Zora," I whispered.

  Nothing happened. The bird-skull, as it should have, stayed completely motionless.

  "Zora," I said, a little louder. "Zora, can you hear me?"

  "Stop squawking in my ear," the bird-skull said, and I dropped it.

  When I picked it up, it tried to spit out the dead leaf stuck in its mouth. I removed the leaf when I realized it had no tongue to unlodge the intruding foliage.

  "You said you have knowledge," I said.

  "Yes," said Zora.

  "I need your help," I said.

  As the bird-skull spoke, I was unnerved by the way it shifted across my palm. The scratchy bone tickled my hand.

  "Demanding, aren't we. First you shove me into your pocket without another word and then ignore me for two days, and then you want something without even bothering with the niceties. Have we no manners?" asked the bird-skull.

  "Forgive me...Zora," I said. "I don't know how to treat you. This is the first time I've encountered a talking skull."

  "Treat me like you would anyone else," said the skull.

  "Then, please, accept my humblest apologies for ignoring you," I said, biting my lip as I tried not to snicker. "I'll try to do better next time."

  "That's better."

  I sighed. "Can I make my request now?"

  As the skull answered, I imagined it inclining its head in a deferential manner. "You may."

  "Do you know what it is we seek on the mountain?" I asked.

  "Of course," said Zora.

  "Can you tell me what it is?" I asked.

  "I can, but I won't. It's enough that you're on the right path. Keep going up, the way will find you when it's time," said the bird-skull.

  "That doesn't sound encouraging," I said.

  "I'm not here for encouragement. I'm here to guide you," it said.

  "Why?"

  The skull answered right away. "Because."

  I didn't bother asking another question. I could sense I would get nothing but deflection. But what else did I expect?

  I tucked the bird-skull back into my pocket and returned to Ben. He scrunched up his face at me when I came into the light.

  "Were you talking to yourself back there?" he asked.

  "It helps me understand the prophecies," I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  I marched past him, shaking my head. "We're on the right path. That should be enough for you, but keep your weapons ready."

  Ben held out the lantern, indicating I should lead the way. By his skeptical expression, he hadn't believed my explanation. I wasn't ready to tell him the truth in case I found out the skull really didn't talk.

  I marched ahead of Ben, the flickering orange light of the lantern bobbing shadows across the path. Occasionally, forest creatures burst away from our advance, crashing through the undergrowth in a scrambling effort to get away from us.

  The darkness did not worry me, despite Zora's warning that the way would find us. Maybe it was something from the prophecies leaking into my subconscious, letting me know that finding whatever it was we sought would not be dangerous. Or were we marching towards some unspecific doom? It was distant enough not to be concerned about. This, of course, could have been a trap, but the patient struggle of finding my way up the path without walking headlong into a spider web distracted me enough.

  It was Ben who saw the lights. We were deep into the night, right on the other side of midnight by his pocket watch, when he forcefully whispered my name, stopping me in my tracks.

  I saw them even as I turned my head. They were off to the left, west if I still had my reckoning.

  Lights might have been too strong of a word to describe them. It was too specific and defined, as if there were a finite number that could be counted. Haze might have been a better way to describe it, though it kept to a defined area.

  Maybe it was like the cloudless night sky, resplendent in its many galaxies, except made small and dispersed through the trees.

  We headed towards it. I was in the lead with the lantern shuttered to hide our approach. My outstretched hand served to knock away the branches. I took care not to injure Ben when I let them go.

  The nearer we got, the more I had the impression of a barrier. A faint keening, like a high-pitched whine so high I could barely hear it, made me squint. I kept thinking I would understand what it was that we approached, but the receding distance didn't dispel our ignorance.

  When I stepped past the threshold, the noise ended, and turning without seeing Ben, I panicked. I nearly ran back into t
he darkness until Ben stepped through the barrier.

  He waggled his nose. "I think it's like the Thornveld."

  I nodded slowly. "Some magic holds this place."

  After snuffing the flame of my lantern with licked fingers, we journeyed forward. Roughly, a hundred feet later, I stopped.

  "These trees are Earth trees. Our trees. Not like the Thornveld's trees which have no equivalent on Earth," I said.

  "Maybe we're not completely through the barrier, or this is something else," he said with a lazy shrug.

  We found an antler a dozen steps further. It was smallish with two tines. Ben kicked it with his boot. The noise was abnormally loud.

  "I think you shouldn't do that again," I said.

  His half-formed frown seemed to indicate he agreed with me, despite the ridiculousness of the notion.

  We found a second antler not much further than the first. It was larger, bone dead, no velvet. My father hunted the white elks in the Karelian region north of Lake Lagoda, so I could guess the size of the creature based on the antlers and doubted that it'd come from these woods.

  With no further comments, but shared glances, we moved on, content that we would find whatever we were looking for ahead.

  The next few antlers were only steps away from each other. Ben pointed to a set hanging in the lower branches of an oak tree. Before long, we had to step through a blanket of discarded bones.

  So busy was I taking care not to let them entangle my ankles that I didn't see the woman until she made a faint whistle between her open lips, a perfect imitation of a brush bird, letting us know she was there.

  In a clearing ahead, the female warrior perched upon a fallen tree that was clumped with oyster mushrooms. The light that came from nowhere seemed to rest cleanly on her brow. She had dark, lustrous hair bound into a braid that hung comfortably over her shoulder and dark skin. Her eyes were folded at the corners.

  The studded armor with iron pauldrons she wore had once been rust red by the faded edgings, though it easily could have been deep brown. It shifted with her movements like a second skin. A fine bow with black fletched arrows in a quiver rested against the log along with a saber in an ornamental sheath.

  I recognized her features from the peoples east of Moscow. The ones that lived and hunted on the steppes and descended from the great Genghis Khan.

  She seemed in her mid-thirties, but the way she gazed at us, patient and weary, spoke of an age much greater than her appearance.

  "You come to see wise-woman," said the warrior in broken English.

  I caught Ben's expression of curiosity before answering. The innkeeper had mentioned the giving of blessings. It must be this wise-woman who was their source.

  "Yes, we come seeking her knowledge," I said.

  "Then you must defeat me," she said, clearly nodding towards me rather than Ben as she slid off the log.

  When her feet crunched into the leaves, I realized she was taller than Ben and built like a wrestler, with lanky, powerful arms.

  "You're much larger than I am," I said. "It would be an unfair fight."

  "Tell me," she said. "Tell me how we fight."

  "First, your name. I am Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova," I said, though I wasn't sure why I used my formal name.

  "I am Khutulun Tsagaan, daughter of Kaidu Khan," she said, "and I already know who you are. Grandmother has told me."

  Except she didn't say grandmother, not in English, anyway. She used a word that I was only vaguely familiar with since I didn't know the language of the steppes. But it sounded like the Russian word, Baba, which had additional meanings all its own.

  "I assume we must have a contest. By hand, or weapon, or bow?" I asked, indicating the weapons leaning against the log with a sweep of my hand.

  She strolled into the clearing with the confidence of a mountain withstanding a sparrow. Each movement had been cleansed of waste, until nothing but the essence remained. I sensed the extent of her preparation and instantly understood that she was of an age much greater than I originally thought. The Khans had not ruled the steppes for many centuries, having been brought to heel under Tsar Ivan, who ruled in the 1500s.

  "How old are you?" I asked.

  Her callused hands rested on the worn leather belt around her waist. She didn't answer, so I was left with my own discomfort.

  "By hand, blade, bow," she said eventually, then with a ghost of a smile that only caught one corner of her lips, "or stones."

  Though I was a skilled swordsman, I knew without a doubt that her skill far surpassed mine. Maybe I could gain some advantage using my magic, but I wasn't sure if that would be construed as cheating.

  Since I could neither wrestle, nor use a bow with any skill, I decided that I really only had one reasonable answer. I might have hesitated longer except that the way Khutulun had said "stones" made me think it was in my best interest to choose that contest.

  "I choose stones," I said.

  The warrior woman's gaze flickered with excitement and relief. I sensed an anticipation that could only be described as bone weary.

  Khutulun walked behind the mushroom covered log and produced a worn dark wood box. She took a blanket and spread it between the antlers.

  She motioned for me to sit on one side of the blanket. Ben's shrug was unhelpful, so I took the place she offered.

  Khutulun set the box between us. It was carved with scenes of battle, the fine craftsmanship displaying the agonized faces of the wounded with frightful clarity. The central scene showed a woman with a slain enemy warrior draped across the neck of her mount. She rode with a fearless glee on her lips.

  "That's you," I said, pointing to the woman carved into the front.

  Her acknowledgement spared no movement, consisting only of an intensity in her gaze.

  She opened the box, revealing two sets of seven stones. They were rounded and oval. Khutulun arrayed them between us in two lines. The farthest stone to my left was jet black and they got lighter towards the right until they were a faint gray.

  She said a phrase in Russian that I translated for Ben, "Pain stones."

  "That doesn't sound promising," said Ben, after clearing his throat.

  Without explaining, Khutulun handed me a gray stone, the one on my far right. She took the matching stone across from it.

  After a few seconds, I felt a tingle in my hand as if I'd slept on my arm. The painful needles increased in intensity, but then leveled off. I didn't enjoy holding it, but it was nothing compared to the pain I endured using my sorcery.

  "Each stone is progressively worse?" I asked, receiving a nod from Khutulun. "When do we move to the next one?"

  "When you are ready," she said.

  The game seemed simple enough. Whoever could endure more pain was the winner. I supposed that I couldn't wait her out. She was older than a few centuries, at least, and had had time to hone her endurance. If I was going to win, I needed to push her limits.

  Rather than grabbing the next stone, the one second to my right, I grabbed the middle one, skipping two stones. Once I had it in my grip, I almost dropped it when a grin broke across Khutulun's face. I swore a tear had started to form in the corner of her eye before the pain hit and I almost blacked out.

  I shook the spots out of my vision and concentrated on Khutulun's round face. I tried to drink in her features to distract myself. It felt like my arm was being slowly crushed in a vise.

  Khutulun, on the other hand, appeared unaffected by the pain. She stared back with that patient grin on her face, an unexpected emotion considering the circumstances. She held the stone as if it were a hot cup of tea to be sipped rather than a conduit of torture.

  Knowing I couldn't wait, I picked up the fifth stone as I set down the fourth. The shock of agony left me hunched over my knees. The pain was an unresistable force bearing down on me. My arm was being flayed by a thousand unseen knives.

  Even the use of my sorcery wasn't like this. That pain was brief. Like a stab into the fl
esh and an ache after. Holding onto the stone was like holding my arm in a hot fire.

  Through the tears in my eyes, I saw Khutulun motion towards the sixth stone. The gesture was eager, which confused me further. I didn't think she was taunting me. She, too, was in pain, her slightly chubby face contorted, but she seemed willing.

  I thought about releasing the stone. Letting it fall away and enjoying the sweet relief that would flood in right after. It would be easy to let go. Whatever truth this wise-woman could help us with wasn't worth the pain I was enduring, especially when I knew without a doubt that I could not best this Khutulun. Not when she had many centuries of experience to smooth away the rough edges of her life.

  It was then I understood her strange reactions. Understood them as if we were sisters. I knew what those long looks meant, that eagerness combined with an ancient exhaustion.

  Though I knew it would cost me, I picked up the sixth stone while dropping the fifth. It was almost completely black.

  If I'd thought the pain had been unbearable before, I learned what that really meant. I felt that I'd been cast into a burning hot sun, somehow alive so that the torment might continue. I didn’t hold the sixth stone for long. Seconds, maybe. At most, a half-dozen breaths.

  But that brief time lasted an eternity. My consciousness had been seared into ash.

  I awoke to Ben Franklin shaking my shoulders, a grave expression on his face.

  I was aware that I was laying half off the blanket. An antler was pushing into my thigh, but it barely registered as an inconvenience compared to the pain stones.

  In fact, I didn't answer Ben when he was speaking to me, not because I couldn't, but because I didn't want to. I reveled in the absence of pain, as if I were lying in a bath of pleasure oils.

  "Kat. Kat. Are you well?" asked Ben, his voice finally cutting through the haze.

  "I'm...alive," I said, then I remembered the contest. "But I lost."

  Something in the way that Ben glanced across the blanket told me otherwise. He helped me sit up, increasing my lightheadedness.

  Khutulun lay slumped onto her side, a jet black stone resting on each palm.