Merlin did not check his dive, but became a viper and slithered down after her, blinking back the clots of flying earth and ducking under tangled roots in her wake.
He nearly jammed his fangs into her hind end when she shrunk into a nightcrawler and slipped between his jaws, breaking once more for the surface.
Merlin became a stout brown rat and scrabbled after her.
This time Nimue changed into a raccoon, too big for his maw but small enough to scuttle under the bushes of Carteloise.
Weary of this play, Merlin grew into a yowling panther and crashes heedlessly after her. He pounced to trap her beneath his claws, but she sprang for a birch tree and mid-leap became a gray squirrel that skittered up the pale trunk. Merlin crashed into the tree as a young black bear, jaw popping, sable claws raking the bark and shimmying up just beneath her.
She grasped a bough and jumped into open space, turning into a quick little sparrow. Merlin followed as his namesake. Hunting hawk and prey plunged through the canopy like shark and sea lion navigating the grasping, scraping treachery of a dense coral reef.
Merlin had not had such fun in years. Nimue had grown strong indeed. He watched her fleeting tail feathers with his yellow hawk’s eyes, mind racing to guess her next move as he gained, talons curling in anticipation.
Would she become a fly and zip through his grasp or drop spinning from the sky into a body of water as a turtle?
She made for a particularly thick tangle of oak branches and a few seconds before she crashed into it, folded her wings and plunged downward.
She was exhausted. It was a pity to end so lively a chase in fatigue, but Merlin closed the distance.
Suddenly she let the wind fill her wings, but they were no longer a sparrow’s. They had become the leathern skin of a small bat.
She climbed, and miniscule, slipped deftly through the dense knots of oak wood and Merlin, taken by surprise, smashed fully into them like a moth that had fluttered thoughtlessly into a spider’s web.
Dazed, he hung there for a second and strained his eyes.
Nimue was gone.
Merlin hung in the branches for a few seconds, catching his breath and stifling the urge to screech giddily before he became a man again and dropped down to the forest floor.
“Damn it.” He hissed and turned to go and find his robes.
***
Balin crossed the threshold of the graveyard and stumbled through the tangled weeds and tombstones to the fresh open pit. What if Lorna Maeve were the body in the shroud? Then his quest was already at an end and the hunt for Garlon meant nothing.
He did not hesitate, but leapt down into the foggy grave. Straddling the bent corpse in the bottom, he tore open the head wrappings.
He laid bare the face of Count Oduin’s maid, stark white, an expression of petrified terror forever on her face. He felt a pang of guilt at the rush of relief that flooded his heart at the sight of the dead woman. He had never even learned her name. He looked up to see Garnysh and Brulen looking down at him. He raised his hands, and they hoisted him out of the grave.
“Look, Balin,” said Brulen, waving his hand across the sky, which was now purpling like a healing bruise. “The sky is lightening. Dawn is very near.”
“We go now,” Balin said and left the cemetery without waiting for protestation or encouragement.
Moments later they were back in the foyer.
Balin sprang for the stair and gained the landing, Garnysh and Brulen right behind. Their swords were drawn, though they knew it was bootless. If any threat appeared, Balin would have to deal with it alone. He peered down the passageway, found the first of four doors, and kicked it open savagely.
An empty bedroom, the grand bed strung with a canopy of old webs.
Onto the next. Brulen urged caution. Garnysh urged him on.
This one a grand master bedchamber, well-tended, and Balin noticed the windows were shuttered and locked, the cracks filled with pitch against any possibility of intrusion of light.
Nothing in the next room, and the fourth was a door leading to a staircase.
The tower rooms.
A cold sweat passed over Balin’s body and he felt the chill of the grave. The sword had shone him falling to his death from the window of a high tower.
Was it this tower? Was his own death upon him?
They ascended unopposed, and that made their progression all the more sinister. There were fresh footprints on the dusty stair, and the way was torch-lit.
They came to a landing where two staircases continued on in opposite directions.
Balin chose the right-hand side, and they came at last to a locked chamber door. Balin struck off the lock with his sword in a shower of sparks and glowing iron.
He pushed the door open and strode inside. If death waited for him, let it come now.
The room was well kept. Another bedchamber, and in the bed two figures lay entwined and apparently naked beneath the red coverlet, a man and a woman.
A strangled exclamation escaped Garnysh’s lips, and he shoved past Balin.
The man was one of the pale knights, and the auburn-haired woman resting her face against its bare chest opened her blue eyes at the intrusion and furrowed her brow at the sight of them. There was alarm, but she did not throw off the creature’s arms and flee the bed for Garnysh.
“Ettard?” Garnysh stammered, leaning on the edge of the bed, as if stopping himself from collapsing upon it.
“You came? All this way?” Ettard exclaimed. Then threw her head back into the pillow and began to softly giggle.
The sound caused her paramour to stir and open its red-black eyes.
Garnysh already had his sword out.
He raised it and brought it whistling down. It cut Ettard’s laughter short in her severed throat. He swung down twice more before Brulen took a hold of him and pulled him away.
The knight, surely the Sir Guthkeled one of his subordinates had mentioned, sat up in alarm, covered in his mistress’ blood.
“Whore!” Garnysh shrieked, throwing Brulen off him. “Whore!”
Balin looked aghast at the bloody mess on the bed. Sir Guthkeled was meticulously picking the matted hair from Ettard’s ruined face. Dark red tears were leaking from its unholy eyes. Balin looked over and met Garnysh’s eyes.
“Why?” Garnysh yelled, his voice rising into an ever-sharper pitch. “Why, Balin?”
Garnysh saw the window at the far end of the room. Like the others they had seen, it was shuttered and filled. He charged it without another word and dove at the casement. The bulk of his steel-clad body shattered the flimsy wooden shutter.
The first light of dawn had risen beyond, and once Garnysh’s body had cleared the window and gone noiselessly into the void outside the tower window, those newborn rays coursed like floodwaters through a broken levy and fell full upon the gruesome bed.
Sir Guthkeled raised one pale arm to its face against the light, and then its skin flared with golden fire, blackened instantly to cinder, and blew apart with a rustle like a pile of leaves. The thing never had time to scream.
Balin stumbled and Brulen caught him.
“Garnysh, you damned fool,” Brulen muttered.
“I didn’t…” Balin whispered. He was stunned at what Garnysh had perpetrated. Yet, had he, Balin, listened to Brulen, perhaps Garnysh would not have found them. Was he culpable?
Brulen gripped his harness and dragged him stunned from the room.
“Come away, Balin!” he choked.
They stumbled down the stair to the connecting landing and Brulen gasped.
Balin was still looking back toward the charnel room. Down in the dimness, looking up into the sunlit doorway, he could just make out the blood staining the bed skirt. The thought in his mind was, had he appeared as monstrous as Sir Garnysh when he’d slashed the head from the Lady Lile in Arthur’s dining room?
That was when a female voice rasped, “What have you done?”
Balin looked and saw standin
g at the top of the opposite stair in the doorway of the room above, the Leprous Lady, ghostly and luminous in her trailing white veil and barbette, face and arms wrapped in swaddles of altar white linen, but for her dark eyes, obscured behind the fog of the veil like shadows. One protruding crooked, yellow-nailed finger emerged from the bandages, bubbling with angry red and white sores, pointing down at them accusingly, seeming to carry in its cracked tip all the pestilential rot that crept beneath the foundation of this dilapidated fortress.
Balin gripped his sword. His heart felt as if it would implode, retreating in horror into itself. His skin prickled. He wanted to shrink within his armor.
The Leprous Lady advanced.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Balin steeled himself, and his armor rang lightly as he moved unconsciously shoulder to shoulder with Brulen against the satanic apparition looming above them, the Leprous Lady Verdoana, blood drinking mistress of the Aspetta Ventura in the black heart of dread Carteloise.
To Balin, the gentle clink of their armor touching sounded like the ring of the altar chimes, signifying the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. Somehow, it gave him hope.
Let me die here, he thought, with my brother, against this unspeakable evil. This is how life should go.
He readied his sword, but could not find any voice to defy her. He merely waited for her to unmask, show some terrible true form and unleash all her hellish powers upon them.
“Where is the Lady Ettard and Sir Guthkeled? Why do I smell blood from their chamber and see the sun?” she asked, raising one arm to bar her already shaded eyes from the indirect light spilling into the hall from the bedchamber behind them.
Balin knew he need only get her into the light. She would perish as had the seducer, Guthkeled. He took a step forward.
“Wait, Balin,” Brulen whispered. “Look. Is that not your lady?”
He blushed, even in the anticipation of battle to hear her called so, but his heart thrilled to see Lorna Maeve appear behind Verdoana in the doorway, gripping her own bandaged forearm.
“Sir Balin!” called Lorna Maeve.
The Leprous Lady turned to regard her. “Do you know these knights, who have shed blood in my sanctuary?”
“This is the Sir Balin we told you of,” said Lorna Maeve, looking down with confusion from him to his brother. “The other is his mirror image.”
“Brulen, my lady,” said Brulen. “The blood you smell is that of a lady named Ettard, spilled by our companion, Sir Garnysh, who has thrown himself from the tower.”
The diseased fingers of Verdoana clenched into fists and slipped once more beneath her veil. “Twisted, foul murderer!” she rasped. “She was the guest of my captain, Guthkeled. Why was she slain?”
“My lady, Garnysh told us Guthkeled had stolen her, that she was his bride.”
“Falsehood,” said Verdoana. “Her father was Duke Hamel. He promised her to that unworthy knight to seal a political alliance. She loved Guthkeled.”
“That thing?” Balin burst out.
“That thing, Sir Guthkeled, was a great hero in his home country,” said Lorna Maeve reproachfully. “He contracted his curse from another and fled many years ago, driven off by his people for his affliction. The denizens of this castle are to be pitied, Sir Balin. This is not a fortress of monsters but a haven for the accursed.”
“My lady, this creature has ensnared your mind,” said Balin.
“No, Sir Balin,” came another voice, that of Count Oduin, who stepped out of the room, unharmed. “The Lady Verdoana has granted us her hospitality, in exchange for a service.”
“Last night she was set to cast you from her tower to your death!” Balin challenged.
“A regrettable action,” said Verdoana.
“But not of Lady Verdoana’s volition,” said Count Oduin, stepping forward. “I volunteered to play hostage in the hopes of stopping more bloodshed, but I fear I am responsible for a terrible misunderstanding, We warned the Lady you would come looking for us, Sir Balin, but alone. The Lady mistook you for the three knights who had been hounding Sir Guthkeled and his men. Had I not insisted on being blindfolded, I should have recognized you. I’m ashamed to admit, I’m terribly frightened by tall heights.”
“But your servants on the road! And your maid lies dead in the cemetery!”
Oduin sighed heavily. “The cursed knights defended themselves from my servants, who would not see the Lady Lorna Maeve and I delivered into their hands. As for Irena, she grew hysterical last night when the custom of the castle was explained to her.”
“She resisted to her detriment,” Verdoana croaked, “and like your Garnysh, brought about her own end. She thought submitting to the custom would damn her soul.”
“She killed herself?” Brulen asked.
“You don’t believe this!” Balin exclaimed, wheeling on his brother.
“Sometimes a sword is not the tool a knight needs, Balin,” Brulen whispered.
“What is the custom you speak of?” Balin demanded.
“Pity me, knights,” Verdoana rasped. “For I would submit no one to such evil were I not compelled. In my youth I was as lovely as this lady,” she said, indicating Lorna Maeve at her side, “and I drew the unwelcomed attentions of a wizard named Klingsor. When I spurned him, he cursed me to this undeath and incarcerated me within these walls, from which I cannot pass.”
She lowered her masked head, as if relating her doom physically pained her. Lorna Maeve laid a hand upon her bent back and drew her into a comforting embrace.
“Only the blood of a pure maiden of a certain bloodline can free her,” Lorna Maeve continued, “and so for years her servants, all who have been similarly afflicted though by various means, have set out and waylaid women on the road through Carteloise Forest, to try and break their mistress’ curse.”
“Bless the Lady Lorna Maeve,” said Count Oduin, “she kept her wits and opened her heart, where others, as Irena and Garnysh, acted from fear and hate. We are not prisoners here.”
Verdoana sobbed softly, and two bloody stains had appeared on her veil, near her hidden eyes.
“You let that…that…witch drink your blood?” Balin exclaimed.
Brulen touched his arm but said nothing.
“I am a witch of sorts, remember. It is only blood,” said Lorna Maeve, with a shrug, “and haven’t I given plenty of the same already to Count Oduin’s stricken son? I pitied this lady and wanted to help her. In exchange, she offered us her hospitality for the night.”
“Yet I fear now that hospitality will be rescinded thanks to Sir Garnysh’s lamentable actions,” said Oduin. “Perhaps we should spend the daylight distancing ourselves from Carteloise.”
“Never by me,” cried the Leprous Lady, drawing herself aright. “But Guthkeled was beloved by my knights, and I am their mistress only in name. His destruction may overwhelm their pity, and I have no true power over them. They can leave this castle. I cannot. Alas, that I cannot vouchsafe your safety.”
“We will depart, Lady,” Oduin said.
“We just leave her?” Balin exclaimed, trembling so that his sword shook. This woman and her knights were evil abominations. Driven to evil, perhaps, but evil nonetheless. How could he turn from this stair, knowing she or her knights would be in that slaughter room above as soon as they departed, lapping the blood of Ettard from the walls like plague dogs?
“We will go below and find our horses,” said Brulen, drawing him away.
“But they’re abominations!” Balin hissed.
“Not by choice, brother,” Brulen counseled.
“Is there so great a difference?” He growled, looking over his shoulder at the lady in white.
“Yes, very great a difference,” said Brulen, “between deliberate evil and evil by necessity.”
“What is the necessity? They kill that they might live! How many maidens will fall victim to her or her knights? We should burn this castle in our wake. Were I so afflicted, I should stand in the sun and be done
with it.”
“Then, by your own beliefs, you would be damned as a suicide,” said Brulen. “The Lady Verdoana does not kill. She seeks her own salvation, as do we all, in our own ways.”
As they descended the stairs, he heard Lorna Maeve recite quietly:
“Turn aside, White Lady,
And do not come whilst we slumber
Lest you come arm in arm with easy Death.
White as desert bones,
White as ash sifted from the pyre,
White as the Lady who walks alone.”
The horses proved to have been well tended in the stables behind the keep. Balin and Brulen gathered up their saddles and gear and made them ready to ride out, while Oduin and Lorna Maeve took a pair of palfreys and saddled them.
Balin’s heart burned in the shadow of the evil keep. He wanted only to be gone from it. After their night of horror, he once more felt the wedge between himself and his brother, who worked lightly, untroubled.
Count Oduin and Lorna Maeve’s acceptance of the Leprous Lady and her knights vexed him too. He felt as though he were out of step with the whole world. He felt alone.
“Your traveling companions are unique,” Brulen remarked when Count Oduin and Lorna Maeve had ridden across the courtyard to wait by the gate. “I never expected you to keep such level-headed company.”
Balin said nothing. Level-headed? The world was mad. He sought for some anchor to grip and found that he did feel some relief now that the Count and especially Lorna Maeve were safe. It figured his brother found their strangeness praiseworthy.
“The lady is especially interesting,” Brulen went on, smiling wryly, teasingly at his brother.
“Keep quiet,” Balin said lowly, reddening, not wanting to think of the humiliation of the previous night. “She is in mourning.”
Brulen looked her over as she rode away.
“She will not be in mourning forever.” He looked closely at Balin, until Balin’s face split and he smiled and shook his head. “Where are you bound now?”
“To Lystenoyse,” Balin said. Despite everything, he wanted to invite Brulen to join them. Nothing would make him happier.
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