The Night Parade

by Scott Ciencin

  Krystin was about to hurl a heavy wooden container of ground pepper at the back of the girl’s head when Lucius grabbed her arm.

  “That is not civilized,” he said in deep, rich tones.

  “And you think I am?” she asked. “The cow has it coming.”

  Myrmeen glanced at her daughter. She was beginning to notice that they used many of the same phrases and wondered if Krystin was trying to emulate her. The thought appealed to Myrmeen and she smiled broadly.

  An hour later, they were riding toward the city’s gates, passing through another run-down neighborhood. Myrmeen drew up her mount’s reins, and Krystin held on tightly as the horse neighed and brought them to a halt. Cardoc had been riding beside her, taking point.

  “What is it?” Lucius asked as he raised his hand to signal the others to stop. The gaunt mage had followed Burke’s orders perfectly, maintaining his visibility at all times. “What have you seen?”

  “This place,” Myrmeen whispered as she nodded toward a large, U-shaped building across the street. “I didn’t even recognize the neighborhood, but that building is where my nightmares started. That’s where I was born and raised.”

  “Your family had that entire estate?” Krystin said with amazement.

  “No,” Myrmeen said. “The family that had the building constructed left when the area was taken over by the working class and the poor undesirables, like my family. When the estate was given to the city, it was turned into cheap housing.”

  “But you’re wealthy, cultured—”

  “That came later, much later.”

  “It looks abandoned,” Krystin said.

  Myrmeen nodded. The building where she had played as a child, where she had later experienced her first kiss, now appeared to be deserted. Vines covered the walls of the two-story dwelling and overran the courtyard. The fountains had dried up. Most of the windows were shattered and covered with boards. The balcony that ran the length of the second floor was stained with mildew and its railing was shattered in several places. Strangely, while the building had not been maintained, neither had it been vandalized. There were no signs that it had been overrun with families of squatters.

  “Why are we stopped?” Burke called. “What’s happening?” When no response came, Burke and Varina rode to either side of those riding point. Burke was surprised by Myrmeen’s softening features. The lines around her eyes and mouth, which had seemed to deepen over the past several weeks, appeared to vanish as she surrendered herself to the embrace of warm remembrances.

  “Did you want to go inside?” Varina asked.

  Myrmeen thought it over. Suddenly she heard her father’s warm, booming laughter as he went off to work on that last, fateful morning, riding off to a private audience from which he would never return. She had clung to that image for years, then forgotten it until just now, as she saw the window of the bedroom that once had been hers, in the building’s east wing.

  “Yes,” Myrmeen said, “for a moment. Then we’ll leave.”

  “I have no objection,” Burke said benevolently.

  Krystin turned her gaze to the sun. There were many hours of daylight left, so she did not allow her fear to overcome her. Reisz and Ord followed behind the four horsemen who led the party beyond a crumbling marble fountain, upon a stone walkway and deep into the central courtyard. In moments they were flanked by the two long arms of the building, and they dismounted before the easternmost of two sets of stairs, the only way up to the second floor.

  The curly-haired fighter tapped Ord’s shoulder. “I don’t like this,” he said candidly.

  “That’s the joy of riding with you, Roudabush. You don’t like anything.”

  Reisz nodded. Ord never used Reisz’s family name except to signal that he, too, was very worried.

  Myrmeen was already climbing the stairs, her boots trampling the vines underfoot. Krystin remained at her side, feeling a disquieting compulsion to stay close to the woman whose hair and eyes were identical to her own. Burke told Myrmeen to go ahead, that he and his wife would follow at a comfortable distance. Reisz and Ord were ordered to remain behind and watch for horse thieves. Cardoc went off to explore another section of the building but promised to remain within earshot.

  “It’s so much smaller than I remember,” Myrmeen said as they reached the second-floor landing.

  Krystin walked a few steps to the right and peered through the slats into one of the rooms. Frowning, she said, “I don’t think you’re going to find much. Look here.”

  Myrmeen went to her side and squinted as she bent slightly and stared at the ruins of what had been the main living chamber of a single-family dwelling. Staring at the demolished furnishings and piles of rotted wood strewn about, Myrmeen felt the urge to abandon the search. After all, she did not want to see her childhood home in such condition.

  An urge that she could not resist propelled her forward. She led Krystin back along the gallery to a hallway at the top of the stairs, which had been scorched by flames. There were no rats or roaches, though she did find the occasional wisp of a spider’s web.

  “Can’t we walk around this ledge?” Krystin asked.

  “We can’t get in that way. The front doors were all walled up after a few children died after running through the doors and not looking where they were going. The guardrail was a joke.”

  Myrmeen swallowed hard. She had known one of those children, an unfortunate little boy, and had been schooled with his sister. They both had lost siblings, and the experience had bonded them together.

  “Myrmeen?” Krystin asked.

  Shuddering, Myrmeen took Krystin into the hallway and turned to face a darkened central corridor that subdivided the second floor. “I don’t know how safe this is. Let me go first.”

  “All right,” Krystin said.

  Myrmeen entered the black corridor, her hand against the wall as she found the spot where the passage angled to the left. She gestured for Krystin to follow. The girl entered the corridor, barely able to see Myrmeen’s hand, which she clung to as she was led down the night-black avenue to a door that Myrmeen did not need to see to recognize. They heard the footsteps of Burke and Varina following behind.

  “It’s not locked,” Myrmeen said as she pressed her weight against the door and shoved. The door came open easily and Myrmeen was shocked by what she found on the other side.

  “Someone’s still living here,” Krystin said.

  “Yes,” Myrmeen said in a tiny, stunned voice. “I am.”

  The chamber they faced was decorated exactly the way Myrmeen remembered it from her childhood. A heavily worn sky-blue rug was thrown across the floor. Wooden shelves and cabinets lined the walls. Oversized pillows, which her mother had woven and stuffed with feathers that she and Myrmeen had spent weeks gathering, lay on the floor beside a lute identical to the one that had disappeared with her father. There were paintings on the wall, and one in particular arrested Myrmeen’s attention: It was a portrait of herself as a child, sandwiched in a happy, loving embrace between her mother and father.

  “No,” Myrmeen whispered as she fought back the tears that welled up in her eyes. Her trembling fingers grazed the painting’s surface, lightly touching her dead father’s hard, proud face.

  Krystin wandered past the main chamber and called to Myrmeen from one of the two adjoining bedrooms. Myrmeen glanced at the rocking chair near the partially boarded up window, then at the chests shoved against the wall, the dining table, and the small kitchen. Food had been prepared here recently; she could smell the succulent aroma of chicken basted with imported spices from her father’s village in far off Velen, near Asavir’s Channel and the Pirate Isles.

  “Myrmeen!” Krystin yelled.

  Glancing at the doorway, where she expected to see Burke and Varina appear at any moment, Myrmeen wondered what was keeping them. She turned away and followed the sound of her daughter’s bright, expectant voice. She felt as if she were no longer moving of her own volition, as if she were being
dragged along by forces that she could not hope to control. Looking down, she became aware of the changing perspective and the steady motion of her legs, one before the other. A part of her was terrified to go any farther, but she had no choice. She reached the doorway to her old room and felt as if twenty years had vanished. Myrmeen stared at a living portrait of her early life, with Krystin playing her role.

  The room was perfectly preserved. Krystin rolled on the bed, clutching the scented blankets to her chest. Myrmeen was stunned by the wealth of small items that she had forgotten about, such as a drawer in her nightstand that still contained the wretched love poems of her first suitor. On the dresser sat an empty vial of perfume that she had drained in an eight-year-old’s attempt to emulate her mother’s daily ritual of bathing and scenting her soft, beautiful skin.

  Above the bed was a painting that caused her tears to finally burst free. The image captured on the canvas had remained in her dreams and fantasies for her entire adult life, though she somehow had blocked its origin. The portrait revealed a sky at twilight, where a soft, bluish white mist rose from a valley that was hidden by a rise in the foreground. A handful of pine trees stood as lone sentinels to watch a comet whip across the sky. Its trail entered the frame at the top, arced first to the right, then suddenly sped in a downward curve to the left, gaining momentum and intensity, to flare at the deep blue, starry sky where the veil of night slowly fell.

  Myrmeen had dreamt of that rise many times. In some of her dreams, she made love with magnificent strangers on that fantastic landscape as the comet streaked by. In others, she lay there alone while a haunting melody played on a lute.

  “What’s wrong?” Krystin asked.

  Myrmeen turned and wiped away the tears. “Nothing. This was a foolish idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  Pressing her lips together, hugging herself tightly, Myrmeen looked at the painting a second time. “My father gave me that painting. I still remember the morning he woke me up to look at it. Somehow he had put it up while I was still sleeping. It was a month after my sister had died. Stillborn. My father looked at me and said, ‘You are that light for me. You rescue me from the darkness.’ ”

  “What happened to him?”

  Myrmeen shivered. The room was growing colder. “My father was put to death because his music displeased a rich man who had heard him play on the street and had requested a private audience. Father spent the entire previous night worrying over what selections to play for the man, and he had chosen a classical ballad for his lead. He had no way of knowing that the song had been a favorite of the wealthy man’s wife, who had betrayed him and then ‘took her own life’ in shame for the transgression. The rich man had been certain that Father had been paid by one of his enemies to play that piece of music. He went into a blood rage, beating and kicking Father until he died. Father was a gentle man who had never learned to fight. Then the servants left the body in the streets and claimed that thieves had killed him before he ever arrived at the palace.”

  “But you got even.”

  “Yes.”

  Krystin nodded slowly. “Good.”

  Myrmeen was touched again by the deep feeling of loss that had plagued her for the last decade. She missed her family and looked to Krystin with hope.

  A scream sounded from one of the other quarters.

  “Varina,” Myrmeen said in alarm, racing from her old bedroom, through the main quarters, to the corridor beyond.

  Three doors along the formerly darkened corridor had been opened. The closest door, six feet ahead and to her right, led to the rooms on the other side of the wall from Myrmeen’s old dwelling. A dull orange glow radiated from the doorway, partially illuminating the corridor. The next two doors that were open lay fifty feet away at either side of the corridor’s end, before the bend the mother and daughter had taken earlier. Shafts of murky sunlight burst from these rooms, intersecting like crossed swords. A long patch of darkness stretched between the light at the end of the corridor and the dull luminescence from the nearby doorway.

  Myrmeen suddenly became aware that she was not alone in the corridor. Something rose from the darkness and flew at her. Her view of the light at the end of the corridor was obscured by whatever had just taken flight, though she could not make out anything more than a vague, large shape in silhouette and could not tell how far away it had been when it began its flight. She could hear the beating of leathery wings and a steady, high-pitched squeal that grew louder with each passing second.

  From the rooms next to Myrmeen’s childhood home came Varina’s scream a second time. Myrmeen looked back into her old quarters as an explosion shook the corridor. Suddenly the wall separating her old home from the next apartment was no longer there. Myrmeen saw the wall disintegrate, the portrait of herself with her family suddenly destroyed. A glistening, pulsating tentacle twice the size of a man hurled Burke’s limp body through the opening that had been created. The bearded warrior smashed against the far wall, his heavy, armored body shattering the reproduction of her father’s cherished lute.

  Myrmeen heard the squeal before her grow more intense, and she redirected her gaze to the corridor. The flying creature was almost upon her. By the dull, caressing glow from the next apartment, she caught a glimpse of the monster in the light. But before her mind could assimilate what she had seen, the creature was upon her and she was overcome by its hot, sweet breath, which smelled of honey.

  She reached for her sword, but by then it was too late. Tiny hands clawed at the exposed flesh of her face as Myrmeen felt a strong hand dig into the meat of her upper arm. There was a sharp tug, and she was dragged out of the monster’s path. Myrmeen fell into her childhood home as the creature flitted past and disappeared from sight.

  Looking up, Myrmeen saw Krystin, then noticed that there was more light in the dwelling. Apparently, at the first sign of trouble, Krystin had run to the window and had been trying to pry loose the boards that covered it in a haphazard fashion. Gaps had been left between the wooden planks, allowing streaks of light to show through and illuminate the dwelling without revealing its secrets to the world. Krystin had been successful in removing one wooden board and a second seemed ready to give.

  “This is one of their lairs!” Krystin screamed. “You idiot, you led us right to them!”

  From the corridor Myrmeen heard the fluttering wings of the creature outside. Before she could react, it appeared in the doorway and hovered for a moment. In that instant, Myrmeen was able to see it fully.

  She was surprised by the strange beauty of the monstrosity. It had four clear, colorless wings with the intricate designs one might find on a butterfly’s wings. The creature’s body was black and gold, shaped in segments, with dozens of tiny arms branching off, each with distinctly human hands. She looked up at the creature’s face and saw that it was not the face of a monster at all, but that of a magnificent and beauteous child with red eyes containing black, catlike slits. Its pouting Cupid lips suddenly drew back to reveal sharp, glimmering, carnivorous teeth.

  Myrmeen heard a low groan behind her and knew what had captivated the monster’s attention. Although she was unwilling to look away from the creature as she drew her sword and rose to face her adversary, she had caught a glimpse of Burke’s unnaturally twisted body when she had been yanked into the room. He had been facing away from her, his head turned to the wall. His legs were bent at unnatural angles, obviously broken upon impact.

  Burke had been one of her first teachers after her actions had gained her the attention, then the assistance, of the Harpers who had helped her to bring her father’s murderer to justice. The cardinal rule that Burke had taught her about proper conduct during a battle was to never allow yourself the luxury of emotion. Step out of yourself, he had told her time and again. If a person close to you falls at your side, you can do nothing for them if you allow feelings to get in the way. Take care of the job at hand.

  Myrmeen looked at Krystin’s cold expression and realized that t
he child, at fourteen, already knew this lesson.

  She also heard a soft, wet, flopping sound and knew it was the tentacle. She had seen that it could not reach more than five feet into the main body of the room, and so Burke was safe from it. In morbid fascination, she wondered what the tentacle was attached to and what had spawned the dragonfly-child, as she now thought of the creature.

  “Stop dreaming!” Krystin said as she rushed forward and slammed the door shut on the creature’s face. From the corridor, they heard the telltale squeal of the dragonfly-child as it prepared to launch another attack. The door buckled with the impact as the monster slammed into the hard wood then fell to the floor. Its wings beat furiously and its tiny hands reached under the door, trying to gain access. Krystin smashed one of them under the heel of her boot. With a yelp of pain, the creature retreated from the door. Krystin threw the latch and locked the door tight.

  “I told you they’re not human,” Krystin said. “Not all of them. Why didn’t you believe me?”

  Myrmeen had other matters to think about. “Varina!” she screamed. “Where are you?”

  “Trapped,” a muffled voice responded from the next room, through the shattered wall. “Boxed into a corner. It can’t get me and I can’t get out. My husband! Myrmeen, is he alive?”

  Krystin ran to the other side of the room and returned to the task of prying loose the boards before the heavy glass window. She knew that their only avenue of escape was to break the glass, leap to the gallery, and lower themselves to the ground, where their mounts waited.

  Myrmeen had gone to Burke’s side and had placed her hand on the man’s neck. She felt a cool torrent of relief splash upon her as she registered a weak but steady pulse.