“I know. I helped put out your fires,” she replied and dressed quickly. Following him down the stairs, she paused in the kitchen to steal a knife and a second bag of the inn’s coins, then followed him into the night.
She gripped his hand, holding it tightly in fear. They waited until the moon was hidden by one of the few clouds in the sky, then crossed the Timori Road. They traveled past locked barns and glittering, ice-coated fields. If they kept a quick pace, they would likely reach Viktal by midday. Once there, Jon hoped they would be safe. The town was large, and near the forest where the hags lived. His father wouldn’t be foolish enough to seek him so close to their lair.
On the edge of the forest, he saw the first faint tendrils of silver mist, reaching like ghostly fingers through the bare trees. He pushed Sondra behind him and slowly retreated. The mist followed, keeping its distance, driving them back toward town. “Why doesn’t he attack?” Sondra asked in a tense whisper.
Jon shook his head. He had no answer until they reached the road. As their shadows crossed it, they heard the sound of flint being struck. Torches suddenly flared, blinding his eyes. He heard voices, men rushing toward them, their boots crunching on the ice-coated snow. “Run before they see you!” Jon told Sondra.
“Never!” Sondra cried and moved beside him, her knife gripped in her hand.
The men carried ropes and a cage. Though Jonathan had the power to destroy them, he wouldn’t use it. He’d had enough of burning and death.
“Protect yourself,” Sondra cried, holding her knife in front of her.
There was still a way out for both of them. Jon began the same incantation he had used to hold Andor and Ivar apart. Once he’d finished it, they could run for the trees. Midway through the casting, though, the mist thickened and encircled him. He cried out, not in pain but in amazement; Morgoth’s frozen touch stole the words to his spells. “I take back the power I have given you,” Morgoth’s voice whispered. The bundle of spellbooks was ripped from Jon’s belt and disappeared into the glowing fog.
Jonathan reached for his knife. Before he could raise it, the men were on him. He fought fiercely, wounding two before, by weight alone, they brought him down.
Once subdued, Jon didn’t struggle. Nonetheless, they beat him to near senselessness before they tied him and wedged his body into the goblin-size cage. Only when he was securely held did one of the men finally ask, “Are you the one who did the killing?”
“I was responsible,” Jon answered and shut his eyes. He knew what they planned to do to him. It was less than he deserved.
Dirca worked alone through the evening, waiting for Andor and Ivar to return. At last, she slammed the doors to the dining hall, dropped into a seat beside the huge wooden table in the kitchen, and tried to plan how she could face tomorrow and the days to come. Not so long ago, she had been a carefree, generous woman. Now she was a bitter, despairing crone.
Perhaps it was because she had little control over anything else. Andor and Ivar had gone. Sondra, locked in a room upstairs, was half insane with grief. And Jon, the only one she truly cared for, was to be executed. Dirca saw no way to save him; judging from the story he’d told, he saw no way either.
And what would become of her? She couldn’t manage the inn alone. She was old, barren, joyless. Aside from her wealth, who would want her now?
The latch on the kitchen shutters rattled. As she refastened it, she thought she saw a pale shape flickering in the dark moon-shadows. Through the wind that cracked the frozen trees, she heard a man call her—a sound sharp and empty, a hopeless cry for help.
“Dirrrrrca.”
The sound tugged at her will. She began walking to the outer door, where she saw her reflection in one of the glass cupboard doors. She turned and backed slowly toward the barred doors, toward the hall where the men were assembled.
“Dirrrrrca.”
He could see her! Even through the walls, he could see her! She blew out the candles and stood in the center of the room, frightened, but somehow charmed by the voice.
“Dirrrrrca.”
The darkness didn’t hide her. Instead, it magnified the sound of her name, the painful need in his voice. Dirca moved slowly through the darkness to the door and pulled it open. A rush of cold air flowed past her, bringing with it a heaviness, a promise of death.
A glowing figure waiting there.
“Dirca.” The man smiled, and stepped inside.
She moved back. He followed, saying in a voice so soft he hardly seemed to speak at all, “I can give you everything you desire. All you need do is promise to serve me, to do whatever I ask.”
“Everything?” She looked into his eyes, and doubt vanished.
“Even Vistani curses are simple to undo,” he said and smiled. When he did, he looked much like Jon, but stronger and more beautiful. She tilted her head up and blinked coyly as he pulled her body against his. He pressed his lips against hers, sucking her breath in, pushing his own into her.
What was he doing! It seemed to Dirca that his breath filled her body with the promise of life. She went limp, letting his arms support her, letting him control her as no man ever had. When he finally released her and began to give her instructions for the following night, she didn’t protest. She had never felt more beautiful, less alone. When he left her, the feeling remained, as real as the promise he had made to her.
On the table beside her, he left a tiny vial of clear thin liquid. She hid it in the rear of the cupboard to wait until tomorrow evening. Now it was nearly dawn. Time to sleep. She laughed as she climbed the stairs, hoping that she would dream of him.
The men put Jonathan in the same small barn where they had kept the beasties for sacrifice. His cage was so small he was forced to lie sideways with his knees pressed against his chest, his hands chained. Though he was guarded, no one approached him. They feared him, he thought, and even now their fear gave him a surge of pleasure that sickened him. In two nights he would be burned. It was better that way.
Maeve came to see him soon after he was taken. He heard her outside, imperiously ordering the guards to leave so she could talk to him in private. He’d expected her visit; now that she had achieved her triumph, she would naturally gloat.
“A beautiful fox, you called me,” she purred from the darkness outside. “Am I not beautiful still?”
Maeve stepped into the lamplight. She had melted some of her jewelry to create a golden mask studded with lapis and polished gems, a mask that hid the top half of her face. Her hands were encased in black-tooled leather, with only the delicate fingertips and brightly painted nails exposed. They seemed as graceful as ever, but he detected the lumps, molded flat by the tightly fitting leather. She wore flowing and colorful clothes, with a high neck and long sleeves. Jewels hung over the fabric, laying unevenly over the shoulder that had been stabbed.
“Does the town pity you?” he asked.
“Yes. But your death will prove my faithfulness to the hags, and they will lift my curse. I’m sure of it.”
“Then you will go on providing sacrifices to them?”
She frowned, wondering no doubt how he knew the truth about her. But she didn’t ask. Instead, she turned to a new taunt. “Perhaps I’ll go to Sondra and offer to free you if she will come and stay with me, love me as your mother did, change as your mother did.” She laughed at his silent fury, then added, “Tell the town what you wish. The fools will never believe you.”
He enjoyed the small victory he received from the uneasiness in her voice. As he watched her go, it seemed her legs had become uneven, her posture slouched and stiff.
During the struggle on the road, Sondra had wounded two of the men before they wrenched the knife from her hand and dragged her, screaming every curse she could recall, back to Linde. Once she was locked in a room in the inn, with a guard sitting outside her door, she lay across the bed, silent at last, mourning everything that had been lost. In spite of her grief, she wouldn’t admit defeat. As long as Jonathan still
lived, there was hope.
In the evening Dirca brought her a sumptuous meal—leek soup, some of the smoked duck they had been saving for what should have been a midwinter feast to celebrate her marriage, sweet carrots, and fresh rolls. Most precious of all was the small carafe of cloudberry wine, enough for two glasses. The meat had been cut, the rolls already spread with butter and honey. The only utensil on her tray was a large soup spoon. “They don’t trust me, do they?” she asked.
“You fought as best you could,” Dirca told her in a voice soothing, gentle, unlike any tone she had ever used with Sondra before. “You’ve had a tragic day. I know you’ve never liked the taste of wine, but drink it anyway. It will dull the pain and help you rest.”
Sondra reached for her aunt’s hand, nearly upsetting the tray in an effort to take it. Dirca grabbed the carafe, holding it steady.
“Dirca! Isn’t there any way you can help me leave here? Perhaps together …”
“I’ll try to think of one, child.”
“Oh, please! We must do something. We both love him so much!”
“Aye, we do,” Dirca agreed.
Sondra poured a glass of the wine and sipped it. “Odd how much better it tastes than before,” she said.
“I’ll come back for the tray. Perhaps by then one of us will have devised some escape,” Dirca responded and left without saying good-night.
As soon as Dirca had gone, Sondra drank all the water in the pitcher beside her bed and doubled over her chamber pot with her fingers down her throat, heaving long after her stomach was empty.
She wouldn’t have tasted the poison in the wine if she hadn’t noticed the change in her aunt when she mentioned Jon—a coldness in Dirca’s tone, a resolve in her expression that reminded Sondra of how Mishya looked in the days before he died, the way Andor seemed before he vanished. The creature—Jon’s father, Sondra reminded herself—had awakened some evil in her aunt as well.
A flash of insight told her exactly what her aunt had planned, and what she must do now. She tiptoed to the door and listened, hearing only the harsh breathing of the man sitting in the hall. She knocked on the door.
“Stand away!” the man called. When she replied from the opposite side of the room, he slid back the bolt and came inside. “What is it?” he grumbled.
“The wine. I’ve never liked the taste, and in the open carafe it’ll spoil by morning. Would you like it?”
“Trying to bribe me, eh?”
“I couldn’t help him even if I were free.”
He nodded. “That’s the best way to think, girl. There’s three men guarding your lover night and day and nothing you can do about it.”
She looked sad. He patted her arm as he took the glass and carafe. “There’s nothing I can do either,” he said, “except to say a prayer that the gods are kinder to him than the village elders have been.”
“Thank you,” she said and looked at her feet, dabbing her eyes with her napkin.
After he had locked her in once more, she sat on the floor with her head resting on the door, listening to his breathing slow to the pace of sleep. The snores grew softer, ever softer until they abruptly stopped.
She picked up her spoon; the wooden shutters were soft enough that the hinges could be easily removed. With no guard to hear her, she set to work. At last, one of the shutters was free.
She opened them only a little way and looked out on the night. Torches were burning at the center of the festival ground. There, men worked to enlarge the fire pit and clear away the ice-coated snow for a place to dance. How many would sing the festival songs, she wondered? How many would dance? The town was like a family, and many villagers had been Jon’s friends. How would they feel when they burned Jon, slowly as they had the goblin? Would they believe his pain and screams would please the resting earth? Morgoth would delight in what they felt.
The covered porch was beneath her, its sloped roof coated with ice. Once she was out the window, her feet would dangle over the edge. An uncontrolled fall would be dangerous, but she had nothing from which to fashion a rope. They hadn’t even given her a blanket, and she certainly needed her clothes. Wedging the spoon between the shutters to hold them closed, she went to her straw mattress. With only her teeth for a tool, she gnawed a hole in the ticking so she could rip the heavy fabric into strips of cloth. Then, as silently as she could, she slid the bed beneath the window.
It took hours for the men outside to finish their work and leave. The town lay silent beneath its shroud of snow when Sondra finally attempted her escape.
The ice broke beneath her feet, slipping off the roof in a single sheet that made a dull sound as it struck the snow. Icicles followed. Most fell into the snowbank, but some knocked against the carved porch rail, loud as the rapping of an insistent guest. It seemed useless to be quiet—far better to be quick—and, drawing up the slack, Sondra estimated the distance, gripped the rope, and let her body slide over the edge. The rotted ticking broke under her weight, and she fell hard into the snowdrift. The sharp end of an icicle stabbed into her thigh. She stifled a scream as she pulled at it, and it broke off in her hand. The shards inside the wound would melt from the heat of her body soon enough.
She had done it, she was free!
Keeping close to the ground, she began moving toward the side of the inn. The front door opened and two men came out, their torches held high to light their way home. The ragged end of the broken rope swayed in the wind. The icicles and her footsteps were plain in the snow. One of them paused and pointed at the rope. As Sondra ran for the rear of the inn, their cries of alarm echoed with the clanging bell in the town square. Soon the entire village would be searching for her.
Sondra’s leg throbbed. She knew she could never outrun the men. Her only hope was that someone had left the inn’s rear door open and that the kitchen was empty. She cut to the well-packed path that led to the door, slipped inside, and locked it. Wiping the water from her feet with her cloak, she moved through the dark kitchen to the hidden doorway to Ivar’s cavern.
The only light in the passage came from a few narrow cracks in the dining hall wall. Once the curved staircase began, there was only darkness rising to meet her. With her back against the stone wall, Sondra descended—good leg first, wounded second. She had intended to stop at the first turn and sit and wait for the men to give up their hunt when she sensed someone following her—someone who knew the way as well as she. There was a creak on a stair above her, the nearly inaudible sound of stealthy, even breathing.
“Who’s there?” she whispered. No reply.
If there was to be a struggle, Sondra wanted it to be well out of earshot of the men in the rooms above her. She went down another turn. Without pausing in her nearly silent descent, she twisted her cape into a thick spiral of cloth, laid it across the stair behind her and went on.… one step. Another. Another …
Behind her, a woman cried out and fell. Before Sondra could get a firm hold on the stone wall, a body slammed against her, bringing her down. They slid together down the steps to the next wide landing.
“Dirca, is that you?” Sondra whispered. The only reply was a shift in the air as a hand brushed against her hair, metal glancing off the stone wall beside her head. Sondra kicked her attacker away, and, rolling onto her side, she slid farther down the stairs.
Sondra couldn’t hide her labored breaths any longer, but neither could her attacker. She couldn’t see who pursued her, but was also protected by the utter darkness. Sondra quickened her pace down the stairs until she reached a wide step that sided a sheer drop to the cavern below. With her back against the opposite wall, her knees against her chest, she listened to the creak of the stairs. Fabric brushed her bare legs, and a knife blade cut her calf. She kicked out, shoving her attacker sideways over the edge.
It wasn’t a lethal fall, though from that height it might have been. When Sondra reached the bottom of the stairs and lit a torch, she saw Dirca lying dazed on the stones, her knife well out of reach.
Sondra placed the blade in her belt and, retrieving her cloak from the stairs, wet the hem in the pitcher of water Ivar kept on hand. She returned and dabbed at the wound on her aunt’s head.
When Dirca’s eyes finally opened, she didn’t recognize where she was until she saw Sondra kneeling above her. She tried to rise, moaned, and lay still.
“You are my mother’s sister. We are both alone,” Sondra said, the simple words asking all the questions she had no time for.
“I was forced to kill my infants,” Dirca responded, her words broken by the pain. “I should have loved you like … the daughter I could never have.… Instead I let bitterness grow until I tried to kill you …”
“Shhh. Morgoth did this to you. Now, we must hide until the men stop their search, then we’ll save Jon.”
“Child, you don’t understand. Morgoth wanted you alive. He intended the poison for the guard, but I gave it to you instead. He wanted me to bring you here. I disobeyed. Now he’ll come for me and for you.”
“Then we’ll leave here together. If we’re caught, we’ll tell the village elders everything we know.”
“They won’t believe us.”
“We can try. Can you walk?”
Dirca tried to sit up, but cried out and lay still. “I can’t move my legs!” she said.
“Then I’ll go and bring the men here.”
“Morgoth’s coming. I can sense him. Listen. Feel.” Sondra heard nothing. The sudden sense of dread she felt seemed only an echo of her aunt’s fear until it began to grow, taking on a life of its own within her. She sucked in her breath and looked down at her aunt.
“Even if I survive, I won’t live long like this. I don’t want to sit and helplessly wait for him to come. You don’t know what he’s like, child. What he’ll do to me. If you care for me at all, you will—” Dirca began, her breathing ragged from terror and agony.
“… do what must be done,” Sondra finished for her.
As Sondra lifted the knife and prepared the quick, killing stab to the throat, Dirca whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Tapestry of Dark Souls Page 24
