by Anthony Huso
Discreet bits of Sena’s outfit had been swept up and whisked away.
“I’ve commissioned breakfast,” said the seneschal. A bowl of neatly rolled washcloths steamed in his hand like an offering. Two servants erected a set of carved dressing screens, set a stack of plush towels on the table and promptly disappeared. There were slippers and soap and a basin of scalding water at the ready. “King Lewis has arrived from Vale Briar . . . on schedule. The weather is mild so I set him in the north portico.”
A silver tray floated in, laden with coffee, toothbrushes and the morning’s freshly toasted paper.
Along with the Herald, a copy of The Varlet’s Pike lay ominously on the tray. Caliph picked it up, bemused by what story it could contain that would prompt the seneschal to actually purchase such a scandal sheet specifically for the High King’s eye.
When Caliph read it, he was stunned not so much by the content of the article as by the speed of its being turned into print.
A source inside Isca Castle indicated that the seventh of Kam brought the return of the High King’s witch. Refusing to be named, the source claimed the grand hall was the site of an alleged voluble reunion between the High King and his mistress who disappeared late last week.
When asked exactly what voluble meant, the source replied, “I wish they’d save their disgusting sybaritism for the bedroom. They ought to be restrained . . .”
A note was stuck underneath this text, penned in Gadriel’s precise hand that read, Don’t worry. I’ve already found the source of this leak and the culprit has been terminated from our employ.—G.
Well, thought Caliph, I guess I haven’t won over all the staff after all.
King Lewis was reading the same page when Caliph met him twenty minutes later on the portico. The gleaming corpulent man smiled and rose ponderously. He laid the paper aside and shook Caliph’s hand.
“Freedom of the press.” He grinned.
Caliph returned the smile, noticeably abridged and chilled. “Interesting preference in journalism. I’m sure The Varlet’s Pike can offer you several good wallows at my expense. Would you like me to order you a subscription?”
“No.” Lewis fanned his palms. “Already have one, thanks.”
“Great. To be honest I’d hate to itemize that one on the books.”
“You’ve gotten comfortable quickly.” Lewis resumed his seat and hoisted a jelly roll.
“You think so? That’s funny. Comfortable is one of the few words I would not have used to describe my position.”
Lewis bit and chewed and spoke before he swallowed.
“I heard our meeting is being put off until tonight?”
“I’ve arranged a hunt today . . . for your entertainment,” said Caliph. “This evening, after we return we can discuss the business that’s brought you to Isca.”
“How excellent!” Lewis’ voice dispensed disingenuous surprise. “And the prince of Tentinil has come?”
“Yes. Prince Mortiman and several others. Like you, they’ve very recently arrived . . . by zeppelin.”
Lewis took another bite.
“Absolutely ticky!”
The morning sun fired the interior of the castle battlements like a kiln. Its fingers stretched down slowly to warm the men waiting in the courtyard.
They were mounted on horseback, dressed in traditional Naneman hunting clothes.
Caliph had asked Sena to come—an invitation she readily accepted.
Over the last several hours an irrational umbrage had slithered back into his heart, springing from the notion that Sena had returned to harvest her own exoneration.
He tried to chase the feeling away, but it remained. A stigma of suspicion that blurred the once crisp light in which he held her. She hadn’t really stolen anything. She had asked for his forgiveness and he had given it. How could he now begrudge her?
And still . . .
His heart was full of worms. The smell of fresh crap smacked the air as Mayor Ashlen’s horse deposited a steaming pile on the cobbles.
Ashlen rested comfortably in his saddle holding a long dazzling spear, huffing steam.
His son rode beside him and the barons of Bogswallow and Glantingmire with their sons added up to an even eight. With the simultaneous arrival of Caliph and Sena, Prince Mortiman, King Lewis and his personal guard, the final tally rose to thirteen.
Chatter focused on Prince Mortiman and the war front while servants led hunting dogs from heated kennels into the chilly court. Mortiman winced at every question and Caliph thought he looked happy that the dogs were barking too loudly to continue the conversation.
“The High King has the right idea,” Marsden said whimsically. He was already lit from several early brandies and his words were injudicious. “Bring a mistress and if the hunt is slow—”
“The hunt will not be slow,” said Sheridan. He was the oldest son of the baron of Bogswallow and a member of some obscure cabinet. “I can smell the fetch of the kill.”
You smell your flask, thought Caliph.
“Let’s ride,” King Ashlen shouted, raising his spear. “To hunt the minds of the peasants for this fearsome beast.” The fact that they were after a monster made the outing less of a diversion in the eyes of the press. If they had been going out strictly for sport, the papers would have had a heyday.
The hunting party roared. They followed Ashlen out of the Hold, onto West Wall Road and away from the city, up into the hills.
The hounds seemed to glide before the horses.
Caliph supposed that none of them (himself included) really believed a creature haunted the foothills, but he was glad to get out, to escape for even a few hours. Horse claws provoked the marshy spice of fallen leaves and trampled turf. Clammy, fenny odors soaked the pungent air above the hills.
“Is that the old Howl estate?” Caliph heard Marsden shout. Caliph answered that it was.
The hunt meandered far above the old keep, twisting into ravines choked with bracken.
They crossed numerous gullies carved by seasonal runoff, taking occasional switchbacks to avoid rampant undergrowth. Invariably they turned uphill again.
At ten o’clock the party lunched in a clearing at the north end of Summit Wood. Afterward, they followed a beast track south. It felt unsettlingly primitive to be surrounded by horses and soughing woodland things after so much time in the city. Caliph checked his pocket watch as if to make sure the gears were still spinning.
An hour later Baron Marsden’s sons, Meredith and Garrett, downed two boars. The dogs cornered them and a concentration of spears finished them off.
The hunt was about to turn home with its kill when Vaughan, Kendall’s youngest son, discovered strange tracks in a nearby meadow. Everyone rode up to have a look.
The grassy patch where the tracks were located overlooked Stonehold. Far below, Isca sprawled in a halitus of gray and brown mist beside the sea.
“Come see these,” Vaughan called to his brother.
Sheridan dismounted and stood with his hands braced on his knees.
“Odd,” was all he had to say.
King Ashlen and his son Newl stood at the far end of the meadow. They had followed the tracks from one end to the other and were holding the dogs on leashes, allowing them to sniff and whimper.
“The thing runs with a wide limping gait.” Vaughan pointed through the grass. “Mother of Mizraim! Look at that! It’s like it runs on two feet and uses a hand to help push itself along!”
Prince Mortiman jumped from the stirrups and paced between the marks. “Three strides to its one,” he declared.
Sheridan shrugged.
“It stands to reason not all the farmers are crazy. They’ve seen something up here and we’ve found the proof.” He made a bit of a ridiculous show with his arms.
Caliph looked at the footprint closely. King Lewis crouched beside him and touched it as though skeptical.
The indentation was narrow and long and deep. The heel and the balls of the foot were hardly wider than a man’
s, but their length nearly doubled any boot among them. The toe impressions were also thin and long. Occasionally a tiny hole poked the ground a finger’s breadth from the tip, as though a nail curved sharply down at the end of each digit.
The handprints followed the right side of the tracks nearly six feet from the footprints. They were different with every stride. Sometimes the thing had supported itself on the backs of its knuckles, sometimes on the side of the palm. One clear handprint was found in a spot of mud between patches of grass. Fingers two and a half times the length of Vaughan’s and a palm that was surprisingly small, spread out under the men’s eyes like the mark of a giant spider someone had mashed into the clay.
The hunting party divided and agreed that half would follow the tracks one way and half the other.
King Ashlen and his son along with Baron Marsden and his two boys went with King Lewis and his guard. Caliph, Sena, Baron Kendall, Sheridan, Vaughan and the prince took the rest of the dogs across the meadow, traveling in the same direction as the creature.
The sun had already drifted into late afternoon and the autumn day was quickly losing heat. Sena rode closer to Caliph now. She held her spear across her hips.
Despite the altitude, the underbrush remained oppressively thick. The horses had to wade through it and the ground was invisible.
They weren’t following tracks anymore. But the dogs had traveled ahead. Their yelping tinkled off the mountains like broken glass.
“They’re following something,” Kendall said. He added emphasis to “something.” “If the creature came this way though it’s damned uncanny. Foliage is undisturbed.”
Sena looked at the crushed trail behind them and then ahead at the quiet, untrod bracken.
“With strides like those, I doubt we’ll catch it even horsed,” Vaughan said. “We’ll be lucky if the hounds don’t fall down a fissure.” He looked over his shoulder.
Caliph read his thoughts. If we turn back now, it will still be dark by the time we reach Isca.
He drew up on the reins and began to call in the dogs. They were trained from pups to ignore food even when they were starving should their master call.
It was quiet out in the mountains. Hundreds of leagues of unexplored valleys and ridges crumpled the land of the Healean Range. There must have been thousands of square miles for any kind of creature to hide.
Caliph called again.
He noticed Prince Mortiman looking at him in a kind of charmed way and felt suddenly uneasy.
Sena was looking at him too. Looking at the prince looking at Caliph. The bizarre momentary triangle made Caliph shift in his saddle as a gust of wind ruffled his hair. Mortiman cleared his throat musically and gazed off into the distance.
Caliph made one last attempt to call the dogs in.
The mountain air had turned cold. The tip of his nose was growing numb. He looked back at Sena; saw her face tense and pale. Jealousy? Or was she as nervous as he was?
A shuffling stirred the undergrowth.
“Ahh, here they come.” Sheridan clapped his gloved hands.
But the sticks and dying leaves parted for only one hound.
Caliph jumped down, his voice a whisper. “By the trade wind!”
Blood matted the animal’s coat and a great chunk of hide had been torn from the top of its head. One ear was missing altogether. It stood panting steam, whimpering softly.
“We need to go,” said Sena.
Caliph tore a strip of cloth from a roll in his saddlebag. “I’ll have to carry him.”
Sena sounded desperate. “We need to go now!” She turned her giddy horse around and began walking it the other way. Her terror was contagious. Vaughan, a trained woodsman, sat looking anxiously into the trees. He cocked his head slightly as though listening to something no one else could hear.
Prince Mortiman held his spear, hands clenching and twisting around the haft.
“I can’t just leave him,” Caliph said.
His ears picked through every sound. The falling leaves, the shush-shush of wind in the bracken. Nothing strange disturbed the mountain woods but he felt a slight involuntary shiver.
Sena’s voice drew his attention. He looked up, saw her eyes: wide, blue and frightened. “Caliph. We. Have. To. Go!”
She kicked her horse. Its bouquet of tails snarled. It coughed viciously and stamped its claws into the clay. Even these intimidating creatures seemed to grow nervous as evening sucked away the day.
Prince Mortiman turned his horse around and lashed its reins.
Sheridan seemed impatient. “Come on, Dad.”
The baron of Bogswallow raised his eyebrows at the High King.
“If we don’t want to be left, we’d best let your animal find his own way home.”
Caliph abandoned his work with a sigh. He buckled his bag and hurriedly pulled himself back onto his saddle.
“This is ridiculous,” he hissed.
The daylight faded as Vaughan and his father watched both ways while Caliph got his horse turned around in the thick brush.
But as the High King negotiated the terrain, he felt his well-anchored skepticism begin to crumble. Old familiar fears rose out of memory. He urged his horse into a gallop. Surreal tentacles seemed to morph and lengthen from behind.
Something snapped inside Caliph at the exact moment that the horse truly began to fly, as though the fear of rider or beast had somehow infected the other.
Clawing from the darkness of his past as much as from the mountains, a nameless horror bore down on Caliph Howl. It had eyes. Greedy, leering eyes. And teeth slick with the blood of dogs.
CHAPTER 36
Caliph lashed the reins on the mad snarl of horseflesh beneath him. Branches blurred: a delirious black net above the shred of claws. He felt like he was eight again. He felt nauseous.
He couldn’t tell whether he was tumbling or sliding or falling down the mountainside. A dry corn leaf, blown high above the valley like a runaway kite, wobbled through the air.
Down, down, down. The horse leapt a gully, scrambled for its footings, found balance and charged on. Down into forests of dying autumn where the bitter ale of fermenting leaves curdled air. Down where sunlight grew lost and confused. Down into nightmares he had forgotten long ago.
He had no idea where Sena and the others were. As though a mental tie had snapped on an overburdened wagon in his mind, a carefully stacked mountain of irrational fears rumbled down behind him. They burst forth in an avalanche, tumbling after his horse into the foothills.
Like a child running from the dark, there was no why. It was fear of the darkness. Nothing more.
Stones clattered on the steep grade. The horse roared. Its claws divorced ground. Everything grew silent for one eternal moment as the sky and trees spun past Caliph’s eyes. He watched the branches pass in slow revolutions like great black swatches of funerary lace.
The muted muddy tones of autumn twirled past him. Rough bark. Ragged leaves. Sticks and stones. The black markings of ghostwoods, like a million sinister eyes, stared at him from pallid faces.
They watched him fall.
He should have died in the mountain woods of the Healean Range. He should have cracked his legs or neck in half or crushed his skull on numberless boulders.
Instead he landed in a deep patch of decomposing leaves that had accumulated in a wash where two hills met.
Like a dart thrown at a board he landed miraculously, standing up, planted to his shins in spongy compost. Behind him, his horse lay silent as though exhausted by the long run.
The rational part of Caliph’s head yammered at him to stop, but instinct drove him on. He forgot the freakish rarity of his landing, relinquished one of his boots to the suction of the bog and fled on foot.
Away!
He galloped with an uneven gait. His unshod foot tore against fallen branches and stones. He cursed. He could feel the darkness behind him, a creature that mimicked his limp, pushing itself over the ground. He could hear it clawing t
hrough the leaves, hunting him between the blackened trunks.
Without looking back he sprinted up one of the wooded hills and began down the other side. From behind, he heard the heavy sound of pursuit change to an echo of his own feet shredding leaves.
The thing moved fast—faster than he could run.
Tears from sprinting in the cold blurred Caliph’s sight. But up ahead, something gleamed. Something the light picked out at odd angles. Pink flat shapes standing in crooked rows amid the saplings.
Caliph coughed up, nearly choked on a sour laugh.
His bare foot felt like it was on fire. Icy tasteless air burnt his lungs. Limping, cackling at the irony, he stumbled into the Howl burial grounds.
His voice escaped, broken and dissonant from his parched throat. It snagged in the trees. He whirled, nearly blind, jerked the safety ring counterclockwise, and drew his chemiostatic sword with a crackle of green.
A flurry of dark cloth filled his vision. Something flew through the air. It had launched itself just before he turned around. A black-and-gold shape struck him heavily in the chest, sending him sprawling amid the graves.
His sword, jolted from his grasp, did mindless cartwheels on the spot, sent its bolt of electricity harmlessly into the ground.
The creature pinned him with expert efficiency. Everything went black.
“Caliph? Caliph? It’s okay.”
A cloak’s heavy folds parted revealing a yellow sky, shadowy branches and a disheveled but gorgeous halo of golden hair.
Sena’s lips gasped, forming airy words just above his face. Her body pressed him into the carpet of leaves.
Even though Caliph’s horror had already given way to dazed surrender, his mind, for some unaccountable reason, had snagged on the memory of their struggle in the library.
His hand fumbled reflexively for his sword but it was stuck in the ground several yards away.
“I think you’re bleeding,” she wheezed.
She was real. Caliph’s hideous exhaustion-strangled laugh echoed through the trees. He closed his eyes and began to cough.
“Thirsty—”
“Me too. The water is a hundred yards back with my horse.”
