Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  Recalling what the rook had told him about strangled cats, Dylan rose hastily and grasped the little animal. It went boneless and purred passionately. He carried it to the front of the house and put it out. Morel followed him, dry-washing long hands anxiously. Dylan decided not to ask how the cat had come through the walls.

  They went to a small room with a decent bed in it, and Morel brought a ewer of water and a basin, a soft towel, and a robe of woady blue. He left Dylan to his ablutions and thoughts.

  Stripped to the skin, Dylan washed himself as thoroughly as he could, removing the stink of sweat from the ambassador’s overheated chamber, and the offensive smell of fear as well. He had been frightened without realizing it, he decided. Then he dumped his filthy hose into the basin and poured the rest of the water over them. The simple domestic chore comforted him, and he hung the wrung-out hose on a hook on the wall to dry as best they could before he donned his other pair. He scraped the mud off his boots and sighed. They were almost ruined, and he would have to find another pair. He donned the loose robe which was a bit short in the arms but not uncomfortable, and put his belt and pouch back on. His sword he left with his packs.

  As he was about to leave, a faint mew attracted his attention. Dylan turned toward the sound and a tumble of lean kittens appeared out of the comer of the room. There were five, all black and white, about three months old. They scrambled over to him and rolled at his feet, displaying their soft tummies in wanton abandon. He rubbed them as he wondered where the devil they had come from. The comer where they had appeared seemed solid enough. They fawned and purred and made small attacks on his fingers.

  A bear he could understand, but cats? Something nagged at his memory.

  Finally he dragged it up. One of the cats in the granary at Avebury had clawed him, and as his mother washed the wound she had said, “Cats only pretend to be domesticated. They never are, and the man with dominion over cats might well rale the world. Only he would be a woman, for men as a rule prefer a faithful dog.”

  “All the wild things of the world are yours to command, beloved Dylan.” Beth had said that as he slept on her lap. So he told the kittens to stay put, and they climbed onto the bed all in a heap and fell into the profound sleep of their kind.

  The table was set for two when he returned to the eating room, and Morel had changed his robe for another. There was a slab of beef in the center of the table, a sight which would have set Dylan’s mouth a-water a week before. Now it made him faintly queasy, and he was glad to see there was plenty of bread and cheese, a platter of fruits and another of boiled carrots and onions, plus a fragrant mushroom pastry. Morel went into the kitchen and came out with a pot of stew—rabbit or chicken by the look of it.

  “Pray, be seated, Monsieur le Sable. And excuse the poorness of my table. I was not expecting guests and—”

  “It seems a feast to me. I have supped on nuts and berries for three days.” Dylan was suddenly ravenous anil impatient with meaningless amenities. He served himself some steaming vegetables before they cooled and took his spoon. Nothing had ever tasted so delicious as carrots and onions and a slab of heavy bread.

  “Some stew? A slice of beef?”

  “No, thank you. I find flesh does not sit well in my belly. It is a flux, perhaps. From the water.”

  “Ah, bon! I do not care for it myself.” He rose and whisked the stew and beef out of the room and returned with a custard in a crust, rich with plump currants and dried apricots. They ate in silence, Dylan wolfishly, Morel with more restraint. From time to time cats appeared out of the walls, and Dylan rose and removed them without request, putting greasy fingerprints on their soft fur from the fat in the crusts of the pies.

  Replete, Dylan asked, “Will you not tell me, Monsieur Morel, what has brought this plague of cats into your abode?”

  Pers Morel looked somewhat apprehensive and peered at the comers of the room. “It is a curse put on me by some foul witch,” he answered without conviction.

  “A witch? Surely you jest. Some old woman mumbling over her simples.”

  “Ah, the race of witches must have declined in Albion if that is what you think they are.”

  “But, surely that is all foolish superstition.”

  “Magic is very real.”

  “Yes, but it is for Kings, not women!”

  “For Kings?”

  “Well, Arthur of Albion has a magic harp and fearful pipes as well. I have seen them in the cathedral. They say the pipes can lay waste a city—throw down its very walls and set the roofs ablaze.” Dylan hoped he was not overplaying his part. “That, at least is the claim of silly peasants. I have never seen it myself. But that is quite a different matter than cats in the woodwork.”

  “It does not disturb you?”

  “Monsieur Morel, I saw a pretty woman age a thousand years and tear out a man’s throat. I have no surprise left within me.” He cut a piece of cheese with his eating knife and did his best to appear too stupid to be frightened. “Paris is a very odd city,” he added, as if the locale might explain these strange events.

  Morel chuckled. “Yes, it is. More than you will ever know. This particular witch is a cousin of mine, and we fell into dispute over a small matter. Thus, the cats.”

  “I see. Or rather, I do not, but it hardly matters. Now, tell me of this keep where I shall find this scabbard and shake the dust of Franconia from my feet.”

  Morel turned his head to one side and studied Dylan, looking like a puzzled hawk. “Very well.” He cleared a place on the cloth and used the end of his spoon to indicate a rough map. Dylan suspected it was all too easy, and that some trap lay along the way, or that the keep housed brigands. Still, he could not think of any reason for his host to wish him ill, so he pretended content and more sleepiness than he felt and went off to bed as quickly as was polite.

  His room was aswarm with cats large and small, all mewing and purring and staging mock battles. He sighed, undressed and told them to be quiet, then climbed into bed. In moments he was smothered by a living blanket of rapturous felines, pressing their warm bodies upon him in ecstasy. He tried to push them away, but they persisted and he finally fell into a sweaty sleep.

  By morning there were more than a hundred cats in the small room, sleeping on his packs and the bed, climbing the bed curtains, wrestling, and preening their soft fur. Dylan re-dressed in his own clothes, and exited the room as quickly as possible, for it was quite rank with the territorial markings of various toms. They surged into the hall when he opened the door, and flowed along like a furry stream. He was surfeited with feline affection and felt quite sorry for Pers Morel. He led them to the front door and shooed them into the still quiet street.

  When he turned, Morel was standing behind him. “You are very kind, monsieur.”

  Dylan shut the great dragon door and smiled. “It is nothing. You have been a kind host.”

  “I have sent for a horse. It will be here soon. Meanwhile, let us break fast with some gruel, and I will give you food to take with you.”

  Dylan agreed to this plan. He was eager to be gone, as eager as Morel probably was to see him leave. Within the hour he was mounted upon a decent steed and headed north out of the city. Dylan felt his spirits lift as the spires of the cathedral of St. Denis—where they would soon lay to rest the body of Louis VIII—faded from view amidst the trees. The road failed into a track, and the track into the faintest of trails between the great, silent oaks. The careful, polite Dylan of the night before slipped away and was replaced by another more earthy soul. The forest was alive with creatures eager to mark his progress, and he was certain no gold-crowned monarch had ever been so cheerfully honored. He found, too, that he felt less uneasy about his wildness.

  Towards nightfall he found the keep that Pers Morel said held the scabbard. It was a square structure with towers at each comer and a squat and ugly one at its center. It was in good repair, the stones well mortared, and clear of growing vines along the walls. The gate was ajar, and
he rode into the courtyard and dismounted.

  Dylan led the horse into the stables and rubbed it down with some ancient, but clean, straw. He whistled a little as he worked until he realized how silent the place was. It was an oppressive silence, as if the stones of the walls were listening to him, and he decided he didn’t much care for the place after all. The absence of creepers on the walls seemed somewhat sinister now.

  He came out of the stable with his packs and headed for the donjon. The door was open, since it barred from the inside, and it moaned on its hinges as he pushed it aside. The central hall was quite empty except for some old bones. It was already too dark to explore much, so he looked for something to make a fire with. There was not so much as a scrap of wood within the building, and he dropped his packs and went back outside. The courtyard yielded nothing burnable, so he took some straw from the stable and decided to see what sort of fire one could make from bones.

  The place loomed over him as he munched his dinner of dried fruit, cheese, and day-old bread. The fire light seemed to be consumed by the darkness of the keep, and his skin began to prickle. The noiselessness seemed to grow, until he could hear nothing but the thump of his own heart.

  Dylan scraped his boot across the flagstones and there was no sound. A bone exploded on the grate, and he heard nothing. He strained his ears and lost for a moment the sense of his own heart and breath. In a panic he gripped the hilt of his sword and peered into the shadows. The darkness flowed into the fireplace and the light seemed extinguished. He reached a hand towards it and felt the warmth, so he knew it still existed.

  He tried to reach into himself for some means to counteract the darkness, and heard, far away, the faint murmurs of earth beneath the stones. It was not a happy sound. Was this what his mother had heard so many years ago when she fought the Black Beast of Avebury? How awful, how dreadful a noise. He wanted it to stop. It hurt!

  Dylan felt an agony seize his chest, a sense of something biting his heart. He put his hand to it and felt nothing, heard nothing. / am dying.

  The thought grew, and he could feel his lungs deflate, his heart surrender to the now grotesque pain. He screamed and heard nothing—except a whisper of laughter.

  Dylan crawled, each movement an agony, towards the place where the door had been. He could not feel the stones beneath his hands and knees, and was not even sure he moved except for the cold pain. Twice he stopped and lay unmoving on the unfelt floor. Each time he heard the echo of a snicker, and with a kind of dumb rage clawed his way up again. He snarled into the darkness, or believed he did.

  The third time he collapsed, he knew he had died and that it was fruitless to struggle onward. It was such a quiet death. He slipped into the darkness and the stillness. The anger leaked away and became despair, and that too abandoned him to utter emptiness. The void swallowed him.

  X

  Fejool the Fool unfolded himself from the rock where he had been contemplating this and that for several days. His fellow salamanders scolded him for behaving in a manner unbecoming his two millennia, but he had never found any reason to give up all the games of his youth and turn to permanent solitary meditation. Surely there was more to life than that.

  The ring of hammers and the roar of bellows echoed from the forge cave nearby. He flicked his long tongue out to taste the air. It was acrid with fire smell and ash tang, and he pulled his tongue in again. He looked up and down the corridor cautiously, for if any of the White Folk caught sight of him they would try to capture him, to drain his blood for quenching and boil his flesh for soup. They probably would not succeed, but it would cause a ruckus, and right now he did not want to be seen. He would save his teasing for another day.

  He was about to contravene the direct commands of Master Dimoolja, the current head of his tribe, and interfere in the concerns of the White Folk. It was not a decision he had made lightly, and he was still hesitant. It had been a very long time since the folk had gone on a real salamander hunt, but on the last occasion they had reduced the race to a mere remnant. Fejool was not such a fool that he wanted to start that sort of trouble. Dimoolja was an old

  bore, and his mind sometimes wandered, but Fejool did not consider him stupid.

  He remembered the first time he had seen the young woman, Aenor. She had been wrapped in some ugly cloth, carried by four fainting half-breeds, three of whom expired shortly after relieving themselves of their burden. She had been in some sort of daze when she sat up from her wrappings and there was a dark bruise on her wide brow. He had been folded into a wall, unobserved by the miserable kidnapper who remained alive.

  “Get up,” he had told the girl. “You can walk the rest of the way yourself.” He gagged and retched. “Cursed sheep coat,” he muttered.

  Aenor had staggered to her feet and leaned her hand against the wall of the corridor. “I cannot see.”

  “It is a just punishment for all the trouble you are, you miserable creature.”

  She had cringed away from the ugly words and put her hands right on Fejool’s soft snout. It was a light touch, and she had curled her face in puzzlement. She put a tentative finger out and ran it along the ridge of his nose. Fejool was ecstatic. He had never felt anything so wonderful and he exhaled joyously.

  “I smell . . . spice,” Aenor said.

  “By Elpha’s milkless teats, there is a filthy salamander peering out of the rock! Come along, you wretched thing.” He had prodded her side with a baton.

  Aenor stumbled forward. “It didn’t feel dirty. It was so soft. No cloth could be so fine. You are hurting me.” “Good! I would like to kill you for all the trouble you are. The Queen must be mad. Move, clay girl.”

  “Farewell, nice creature,” she had whispered as she stumbled before her tormentor.

  Fejool, entranced and unmindful of the danger, had flowed through the rock parallel to the girl and her captor, holding his breath so his presence would not be noticed. She had fallen several times and cut her hands and knees on sharp rocks. Aenor had moaned but given no other sign of her distress and had finally arrived in the blinding light of the Queen’s presence, a dirty, tired, bruised female in a tom and filthy garment which barely hid her nakedness.

  Fejool had withdrawn then, and backtracked the route, pausing to taste the blood which had smeared on the rocks and then to examine the dead abductors and the odd cloth upon the floor. His age was more than two thousand years, and for the first time he had some glimmer of the strange thing the White Folk sometimes sang of, the thing called love. It was such a new and wondrous experience that he had curled up in a stone and meditated for several months. Later he had tried to tell his fellows about it, but they just snickered at him and his new foolishness.

  Often he had entered her chamber when no one was about. When she was absent he had rolled in her bedding to taste the sweetness she left, and when she was present he had rested his head in her lap while she stroked his nose. She had seemed mindless at first, speaking in single words, and he had discovered something of hatred. But always Aenor had been gentle and tender. Slowly her mind had returned, and with it hints of power. She had not known it herself, and he possessed no words to explain it to her. Rock he knew, and a thousand salamander lays, and these he shared as the only gift he had. Fejool rejoiced in her every small rebellion, and kept her company.

  I am a fool, a very prince of fools, and I should not meddle in the affairs of the White Folk. With this thought he flowed into the rock and out into the crystal cave where she now slept. The entrance was blocked up by a spellbound door from the King’s forges—not song spelled, but made of blood and death—and he wrinkled his nose at the stink of it. The air was dry to his taste.

  Fejool slithered across the floor and paused beside Aenor’s body. Her soft, golden hair was gossamer glass and her flesh was like warm alabaster. One hand rested across the great green stone which the White Folk so coveted, and the other was upcurled as if she might stir at any moment. She was, he thought, fairer than all the songs of
the White Folk.

  He paused and looked around at the strange evidence of her power, the odd growths which had sprung from her first song. They were mineral now, blue and yellow jewels, but something of the life of them still remained, frozen in stone. The tiny waterfall was a tumble of crystal upon the wall.

  Fejool gave a soft grunt. He breathed his spicy breath into her face, a favorite way he had of waking her when she still dwelt in the Queen’s court, but she did not stir. He could taste the cold, bitter flavor of Angold’s song upon Aenor’s still and stony flesh. Then he pushed his snout against her cheek and touched his sensitive tongue to it. A minute drop of saliva rolled out.

  Aenor opened her eyes slowly, as if she rose from a deep and profound slumber. For a second she stared at him blankly, and Fejool almost despaired. He could never forget her wretched mindlessness in their first times together. Then she smiled and lifted her hand from the jewel to caress his soft flesh as she had on their earliest meeting.

  “Fejool, my dearest friend.” It was a croon, a minor song, a benediction. “Once again you save me.” Aenor sat up and embraced the salamander, brushing kisses against his nose. The tiny waterfall gushed down the wall with a cheerful tinkle and the strange green smell of her flowers filled the air.

  Aenor made a face. “There is something rotten in here. And it seems to be me. Ugh. What a stench.” She withdrew from the salamander and made a wiping gesture across her body. Her hand filled with crystal shards and she looked at them and grimaced. The crystals were twisted and coiled into hideous shapes and their color was a greyish red, like the feces of some diseased monster.