Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  “No,” Yiri said firmly.

  “You must help,” Horge pleaded. “If Jathen doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll hunt us to the ends of the world. His reach is far, sister. Too far to escape.”

  “Do not tell me what I already know!” Yiri snapped.

  “A decision is in order,” Loro said, nodding to the line of torches bobbing through the forest.

  “Trouble will come of this, brother,” Yiri warned.

  “Aye,” Horge said. “But mayhap it’s a trouble we should have faced long ago.”

  “Mayhap you are right,” Yiri said, eyes narrowed with smoldering anger. “But know you set us on a dangerous road, one we have avoided for good reason.”

  “There be a time and place for all things,” Horge said softly. “Mayhap the time for retribution, at long last, is come.”

  Before Rathe could ask what they were going on about, Yiri waved for them to follow her.

  Chapter 24

  Fira reined in. “Surely we’ve traveled far enough to stop for the night?”

  “I suppose,” Nesaea answered, a little put out. They had made good time in the days since leaving Skalos, but it seemed Jathen’s directions were inaccurate. By her estimation, they should have reached Ravenhold just before dusk. Now it was the middle of the night, and she saw nothing to indicate a fortress lay nearby.

  Sitting astride her horse, Nesaea held aloft an Eye of Nami-Ja to light the mountain trail. Overhead, the boughs of lightly frosted firs blocked the sky, and their trunks marched off in all directions until merging with the darkness. She swung the orb, seeking a likely campsite.

  “There,” Fira said, pointing to a small clearing at the narrow fringe between light and dark.

  Nesaea would have preferred to get farther from the trail, but decided if bandits were about, they were not likely to wander around in the forest so late. She guided her mount off the trail and into the forest, wary of hidden holes and roots that might upset the horse’s footing. Once to the clearing, she dismounted in a patch of grass.

  “Maybe I’m suspicious,” Fira said, unsaddling her horse alongside Nesaea, “but it seems to me that Jathen might have led us far astray. Despite wanting to bed us, I think he hopes to never see us again.”

  Nesaea recalled the desire in his eyes, then his curt dismissal. Whatever his amorous thoughts concerning her and Fira, getting rid of them had taken precedence. And, other than a word of caution, he had readily sent them off to a place he had first suggested was dangerous. “Not only does he hope to never see us again, I do not think he expects to.”

  Fira paused in rubbing down her mount with a handful of grass. “You think he is walking us into a trap?”

  Nesaea held silent, considering. She knew only a little about the Way of Knowing, and less about the monks who resided in Skalos. She did know they could not be trusted. They were men who sought forbidden and elusive knowledge for the sake of seeking and possessing it. To what purpose, no one knew. Anyone who came between the monks and a perceived treasure was considered an opponent fit only for destruction. “Not a trap,” Nesaea said slowly. “I believe he sent us to our death. At least, what he believes will be our death.”

  “Why would he?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? My guess is he wanted to be rid of us, and whatever awaits us at Ravenhold is the easiest way to make that happen.” She wondered if there could be a higher reason, but did not see it. Likely, Jathen wanted to dispose of any and all who came poking their noses where they ought not be poking.

  “That filthy whoreson,” Fira cursed. She took a calming breath. “Do we go back and gut the treacherous bastard?”

  Nesaea hesitated. “After Ravenhold.”

  “Why would we go there, if that’s where he thinks to be rid of us?”

  “Because we might be jumping to conclusions,” Nesaea admitted.

  “Seems a fool’s risk.”

  “Not if we’re cautious.”

  Fira accepted that, but not without a fair bit of harsh murmuring.

  After they tended the horses, Nesaea used flint and steel to kindle a small fire ringed with stones. Better to not have a fire, but it was so damnably cold, and her fingers so damnably stiff.

  “Tea?” Fira asked, pulling a tiny black pot from her saddlebag. With more than a little skepticism, she added, “I trust the monks of the Way of Knowing must know all there is to know about good tea.”

  “Naturally,” Nesaea said, tone matching Fira’s. She had found that most folk who claimed supreme knowledge about one subject or another, rarely knew more than anyone else.

  While the water and tea heated, Nesaea nibbled some of the hard travel bread they had gotten from the stores of Skalos. She hoped the tea had a better flavor. The fire slowly warmed her, at least the front half. She counted any warmth a blessing. Soon, her eyelids grew heavy.

  “You look tired as I feel,” Fira said, handing over a wooden cup brimming with dark tea.

  Nesaea wrapped her fingers around the cup for warmth, and breathed deep the fragrant steam. Some of her doubts began to fade about the monks’ understanding of good tea. At the first sip, she knew she had misjudged them, at least on one score.

  “Gods,” Fira sighed, eyes closed, a smile turning her lips. “I’ve never had better.”

  Nesaea opened her mouth to agree, but the words stuck in her throat, and her eyes went wide. A pair of pale figures were sneaking out of the forest behind Fira. Before her tumbling cup struck the ground, she had leaped up and drawn her short sword.

  Fira reacted in a soundless blink, flinging her tea aside and diving over the fire. She came up beside Nesaea with steel in her hand, shocked gaze roving. “What’s wrong with them?”

  Not having an answer, Nesaea saved her breath.

  The figures, a young woman and an old man, wore tunics and leather breeches, but no shoes. Their overlarge eyes bulged obscenely, glistened like oiled onyx. They came closer, until Nesaea could make out black veins crawling under pallid skin. Red sores pocked the scant flesh of their arms and legs, climbed up their necks to their cheeks. Where those wounds dotted their brows, Nesaea saw yellowed bone.

  “Plague,” Fira yelped, backing away.

  The old man’s mouth worked, making a breathless hiss. The woman reached out with a hand of bones hung with garlands of rotten skin. If there was life in the pair, it did not wear a face Nesaea recognized.

  The horses began jerking at the lead ropes, stomping nervously. Nesaea heart jumped when she looked that way. More figures were escaping the forest, young and old alike.

  Fira shot her a fearful look. “Do we fight?”

  You cannot kill what is already dead. The unspoken thought hooked in Nesaea’s mind.

  The first woman had shuffled closer, ragged feet churning through the campfire’s coals. With her came the overpowering stench of something hauled from the lightless depths of a mire.

  “Nesaea!” Fira quailed, taking another step back, head whipping back and forth. “They’re all around us!”

  After she passed through the fire, the plague-ridden woman’s pace quickened, the smell of charring meat proceeding her. She reached, bony fingers curling, sagging strips of skin dripping foul brown fluid. Her black eyes locked with Nesaea’s. In them shone the absence of everything.

  “Nesaea!” Fira shrieked.

  Gagging, Nesaea hacked off the dead woman’s arm at the elbow. And dead she must be, for no blood jetted from severed veins.

  Still the woman came on, grasping with the other hand. Nesaea braced her feet, her blade slashing a deadly pattern across the woman’s throat, chest, and belly. Head bobbling on a neck cut half-through, lungs fluttering behind broken ribs, belly spewing loops of rank innards, the woman’s pace did not falter.

  Nesaea avoided a swipe of naked finger bones, twisted with all her strength, sweeping her blade sidearm. With a crunching screech, steel ripped through the woman’s neck. Her head hit the ground, bounced over a litter of pine straw, came t
o rest against the base of a tree. Depthless black eyes rolled, seeking.

  Nesaea’s revulsion turned to horror when the fingers of one hand closed around her throat. The headless woman had not stopped. Nesaea buried her blade into the corpse’s middle, once and again. Skeletal fingers squeezed, cutting off her air.

  The old man knocked Nesaea and her foe to the ground. He wriggled over the top of them, a rapid slithering that pinned Nesaea’s thrashing limbs. His drool splashed over her lips, ran over her tongue. The taste was death and corpses. His panting, gurgling hisses burrowed into her head, wrapping her tight in ropes of panic. Sightless eyes regarded her, came closer. Festering lips peeled back from the old man’s teeth, his tongue darted and flicked, a lurid kiss, slobbering, tasting, savoring.

  Far away, Fira’s screams rose higher, then cut off. Darkness came for Nesaea, falling over her in gray waves, piling on until all went dead as the black eyes filling her vision.

  Chapter 25

  The foursome tromped through the forest for the rest of the night, climbing into the forested hills overlooking Wyvernmoor. At dawn, they reached the hovel Horge and Yiri named home. After supplying Rathe and Loro with a meager bite of food and a skin of water, the odd pair bustled them back outside. Yiri admonished them to keep a sharp eye for pursuers, then slammed the door in their faces. Rathe was of the mind that the villagers had turned back long since.

  “I don’t trust Yiri,” Loro said bluntly.

  Rathe looked over the rudimentary pile of rock and timber where Yiri and Horge lived. It had a roof of moldy thatch in need of replacing, but inside there had been a massive fireplace to quickly cut the chill from each of its three rooms, and to provide ample light for the central room. Shelves stocked with foodstuffs, earthenware containers and other oddments, reached from floor to ceiling. One wall seemed wholly dedicated to Yiri’s craft.

  “Nor do I trust her,” Rathe admitted. She had done something to him back at the Gelded Dragon, but try as he might, he could not remember anything untoward. “When we met Yiri,” he said slowly, “did anything happen?”

  Loro gave him a curious look. “How do you mean?”

  “Did she do anything to me?”

  “Well,” Loro said taking a contemplative swig from his flask, “she read your fortune, said something about your curse being lifted.”

  “Truly?”

  “Aye.”

  “And after?”

  Loro pondered that, as if not quite sure himself. “We gathered at a table in the common room, ate Master Gilip’s rabbit stew, then I let him lie to me about dragons. After, we drank and made merry with a few wedding guests who grew thirsty after so much dancing and singing, those same scoundrels who later turned on us.” He gave Rathe a concerned look. “You don’t remember any of that?”

  “I recall her taking my hand … and then men talking about some women, the Hunting Bitch.”

  “You lost half the night,” Loro said, growing concerned. “Jathen warned you might have lapses. How do you feel now?”

  “Well enough,” Rathe said, surprised to find it so. It seemed a weight had been lifted from him, a burden he had not known he carried.

  “Mayhap she did break that curse,” Loro said, shrugging.

  “I don’t believe in curses.”

  Loro chuckled. “Not believing doesn’t change the truth of a thing.”

  “You a philosopher, now?”

  “Shit on that, brother,” Loro said, hiking a leg to break wind.

  Rathe could not help but laugh. He laughed all the harder when Loro joined in, roaring and clapping his knee.

  “This is no time for mirth,” Yiri admonished, exiting the hovel with a plump haversack slung over one shoulder. Buried under panniers and supplies, Horge came out after her, a look of bemusement on his narrow face. Together they made a pair of pitiable youngsters, both clad in rags, their hair long, black, and matted; one stern, the other perpetually worried. But they were not youngsters. In truth, they were a handful of years older than Rathe.

  Rathe and Loro shared a look, and laughed harder.

  “Let’s be about this,” Yiri ordered sharply, turning on her heel and stalking toward the back of the hovel.

  “Where are you off to?” Rathe called between guffaws.

  “To the Keeper’s Box, you blithering fool. Sooner done, the sooner we can be shut of each other, and Jathen.”

  Rathe sobered. “Just so.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Horge said, after she vanished. He seemed about to say more, but instead began doling out panniers, waterskins, and blanket rolls between Rathe and Loro.

  “Thought you said Samba knew the way home?” Loro asked, settling the load on his shoulders.

  “Aye, he does.”

  Rathe made a show of glancing around. “Then where is he?”

  Horge shuffled his feet and mumbled, “Samba must’ve taken the long way home.” Before any more questions could be leveled at him, he abruptly set off after Yiri.

  A trail behind the hovel led high into the mountains. Shady cool forests welcomed them, the sun-dappled still broken by flitting songbirds and the occasional chattering squirrel.

  When Loro remarked on the peacefulness, Horge said, “Midsummer is pleasant as it gets, hereabouts. Come winter, the Iron Marches freeze solid. Men burrow through snow as rats through walls. If winter lingers, men grow weary of drinking and sleeping, and go mad.”

  “Sounds like a place to escape,” Rathe said, wondering just how far off winter was. Last he could remember of warmth had been in Onareth, just after King Nabar spared him from the headsman. Of course, all that was before Rathe killed Nabar’s brother. A long time, it seemed, but only a pair of months had passed, maybe a touch longer.

  Horge shrugged. “’Tis home.”

  Rathe walked in silence, wondering if he was destined to spend the rest of his life running from Nabar’s men, never calling any place home, even one as grim as the Iron Marches. It was a thought for another time. For now he had purpose, and maybe one purpose would lead to another. At present, that was enough to keep him placing one foot in front of the other.

  Near midday, after following a rising trail up the rugged spine of a ridge, the foursome dropped into a narrow vale. A stream cut through it, braced on either side by a grassy meadow strewn with tiny-blossomed wildflowers. On the highest edge of the meadow, within easy walking distance of the stream, a pile of charred rocks and blackened timbers showed where a house had once stood. The stout chimney had fallen in years past, and lay like a forsaken shrine.

  Yiri motioned for them to stay behind, then veered toward the rubble

  “Where’s she going?” Rathe asked.

  “To retrieve the Keeper’s Box,” Horge said.

  Yiri hesitated just beyond the ruins, seemed to draw something in the air before her face. She was too far off to decipher the words, but Rathe made out something spoken in a guttural tongue that made his skin creep.

  “What devilry is that?” Loro asked, his suspicion palpable.

  “There are wards against intrusion,” Horge said, unperturbed. “If she doesn’t drop them, they would burn her to ash.”

  Rathe arched an brow. “Only she can enter?”

  “There are some who could break the barriers Yiri built, but only a few.”

  Loro looked around nervously. “Are there many such folk in these lands … sorcerers, witches, and the like?”

  “Are there none where you come from?” Horge countered.

  “We have our court magicians,” Rathe said, “but theirs are tricks of deception, sleight-of-hand.”

  “There are seers, also,” Loro put in. “But of true and powerful magic? Such as that is for stories.”

  “I would like to visit these lands,” Horge said. “They sound peaceful…….”

  While Loro and Horge talked, Rathe watched Yiri. At her gesture, a pearlescent dome shimmered over the rubble, and just as quickly vanished. Yiri lowered her hand and cautiously stepped forward. S
he spoke to the air again, and a curl of mist rose from the ground, almost invisible under the sun. Something about what she was doing, some sort of witchery, and likely the true reason Jathen had not retrieved the box himself, brought to mind a nightmarish image of a creature with four faces.

  “How did you know to find the box here?” Rathe asked, distancing his thoughts from the unsettling pictures in his mind, doubtless spawned by some hellish dream he had forgotten.

  Horge’s bottom lip trembled when he spoke, and a sudden tearful sheen wetted his eyes. “I really cannot say.”

  Loro gave him a hard look. “Which means you know, but refuse to explain.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Horge said, refusing to meet Loro’s eye.

  “Keep lying,” Loro warned, “and I’ll begin to believe we are not the friends you claim us to be.”

  Horge looked at his sister, and Rathe followed his gaze. The mist she had been talking to was gone. Now she busily poking through the scorched rocks where the hearth had once stood.

  With an aggrieved sigh, Horge said, “This was our mother’s home, where Yiri and I were born. The night it burned, our mother perished.”

  “Gods and demons,” Loro blurted. “You mean to say, she burned alive?”

  Horge shook his head, looking more hesitant than ever. “She was dead before the flames turned her to ash, her throat cut at her own table. Mother Safi, folk used to call her to her face, while naming her a devil behind her back. But when need compelled them, they came in the night, full of shame, and bearing pleasantries and kitchen scraps for her cures. Swearing poverty, never did they bring silver or gold. They took more than they deserved, and ever did Mother Safi give, happy to do so.”

  “You said her throat was cut,” Rathe said slowly. “Were you there, when it happened?”

  Horge swallowed, rubbed his thin nose. “Aye. I was but a child, less than four years, but I remember it still. The girl sliced her ear to ear, like a hen for the pot. After Mama fell into the hearth and caught fire, Yiri took us into the forest. For long years, we lived as we could, stealing and hiding, until Yiri began telling fortunes hereabouts, and earning coin.”