Vere, Fastolf, and Baldwin all began walking toward it when Morgan said, “Where are you all going?”
“We’ve been walking for five days with almost no break,” Vere said.
“You heard the android,” Morgan said. “We’re only eighteen hours away.”
Instead of being insulted by being called a thing rather than being referred to by his name, Pistol remained staring without expression. His eyes focused only in the direction of CamaLon.
Vere said, “And we’ll be dead on our feet when we get there if we don’t rest. How much help will we be to anyone if we can’t function?”
Morgan saw the look in Vere’s eyes, saw she wasn’t trying to cause problems, wasn’t excited at the thought of drinking and thieving in the lodge.
“All right,” she said, “We rest for two hours,” but the group was already crossing the bridge, passing over the moat without seeking her permission. With a groan, she turned and crossed the bridge as well. Pistol waited at the edge of the bridge, content to remain where he was until needed again.
The planks were thick, made of wood from the surrounding forest. Through the tiny sliver of a gap between each plank, they could see the movement of little creatures the size of their fingers, swimming in the pond five feet below.
The cabin’s front door was also solid wood, the same as everything else. It gave a loud groaning creak when Traskk pushed it open.
Inside, the cabin looked more like a miniature fort than a house. There were stone blocks and ornaments like the castles of old had been decorated with. A great room revealed wooden tables and benches and a pair of fires, one on either side of the hall, to keep guests warm.
“Welcome!” a woman with slightly pink skin said, coming down the steps from the second floor. “I welcome you to our humble dwelling.”
“What is this place?” Vere asked. “I’ve never seen this inn before.”
“We are fairly new,” the woman said, smiling and holding her hands out to show off the cabin. “The Scyphozoans attract many a tourist. We offer guides to take people into the forest to see the spirits, as well as lodging when they return.”
“And drinks?” Fastolf said. Then, seeing Morgan’s eye dart toward him, he cringed and made sure Vere was in between him and the woman who liked to tear his ear off.
“We’re only going to be here for two hours,” Morgan said to Fastolf. “You should get as much rest as you can.”
“Do you know of a Green Chapel or a knight in these regions?” Vere asked the hostess.
The woman stuck her lower lip out in concentration, then smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of either before.” Her voice was melodic when she spoke, as if singing the answer. Then she walked off to get Fastolf a drink.
Traskk sniffed around, offered a subdued growl, then sat down at a bench and put his head down on a table. Vere sat beside him and did the same. Within seconds, both were sound asleep.
But Fastolf, and even more surprisingly, Baldwin, walked around to every corner of the inn, looking at all the holographic pictures on the walls and the prehistoric weapons on display, rather than trying to get some rest.
“I’m sorry for my friends,” Morgan said to the host. “How much will we owe you for resting here?”
The woman seemed insulted by the question. “You will owe nothing! You are guests. You only pay if you stay the night or go on one of the tours.”
“But—”
“Only if you go on a tour!” the woman sang again.
“Well, we’ve seen enough Scyphozoans for a lifetime,” Morgan said, then bowed and sat at a table next to Traskk and Vere. She thought about calling out to Fastolf that he better not get in any trouble, but his ear was purple and swollen and she knew he understood what would happen if her sleep was interrupted by his foolishness. That was the last thought she had before she too closed her eyes.
A moment later she heard a second woman coming down the steps. Opening her eyes just long enough to assess the woman, Morgan saw that she looked almost identical to the first woman, except that her eyes were bright yellow instead of blue. The second woman looked just as harmless as their host. With this thought in mind, she let herself drift off to sleep.
“We have even more interesting things upstairs,” the second woman said to Baldwin and Fastolf. “Our third sister is also up there.”
“Triplets?” Fastolf said, and the second pink woman smiled and nodded.
Without another word, Fastolf, whose legs had been tired from walking for nearly five days, now skipped every other step as he made his way up to the second floor. Baldwin, not seeing the harm in looking around a little before he tried to rest, also climbed the steps.
When they got to the top of the steps, they saw a hallway with two doors on either side. The woman who had escorted them up the steps took Fastolf by the hand and walked into the first room with him.
Before closing the door, she said to Baldwin, “My sister is in the next room down the hall.” Then the door shut.
Rather than going directly to the next bedroom, Baldwin opened the door opposite from the one Fastolf had just gone into. Fascinated by all the images and weapons on the wall, he walked into the middle of the room. In the dark, he slowly passed from one wall to another so as to ensure he didn’t bang his leg against something that was hidden in the dark, grinning like a child as he did so at all the fascinating relics and pieces of history he was seeing on the walls.
Across the hall, in the privacy of their own room, the woman with pink skin and yellow eyes motioned for Fastolf to sit on the bed. He smiled and did as he was told, but before he could sit down she pushed him and he fell flat on his back.
“I—” he started to say but then she climbed on top of him.
For the first time in his life, rather than be excited at the prospect of being so close to an exotic beauty, he thought about his bruised and mangled ear and the woman downstairs who would tear it completely off if he got into trouble.
“I can’t,” he said, holding his arms out.
The woman smiled, tried to kiss him, but was once more pushed away. To entice him, she released a knot from her belt, causing her shirt to open slightly more than it had been before.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that—”
“It’s okay,” the woman said in her singing voice, her smile not wavering. “Maybe you would like my other sister more?”
Without another word, she got off of him, walked to the door, then disappeared. Fastolf was so tired he preferred to close his eyes and sleep than to follow after her, but just as soon as his eyelids shut another woman was in front of him.
This one had pink skin that was a shade darker than the other two. She had on the same outfit, but her hair was dark—almost the same color as Morgan’s and Vere’s—rather than blond like the other two sisters. Unlike the previous women with their yellow and blue eyes, this woman’s eyes were silver. He immediately thought of Vere. Rather than excite him, the idea made him moan in sadness, reminding him they had both lost two friends and wouldn’t be able to laugh or joke for a long time to come.
“What?” the woman said, approaching, brows furrowing for only an instant before returning to a completely pleasant face. “Do not worry, you. I will take care of everything.”
Outside their room and across the hall, Baldwin had seen everything the first room had to offer. He closed the door behind him and walked quietly down the hallway to the next room, across the hall from where the other hostess was supposedly waiting for him.
The entire cabin, no matter what room he was in, had a peculiar smell. He supposed it was impossible for a dwelling surrounded by a moat in the middle of the forest to not have such a smell, but when Baldwin opened the door to the fourth room, a different kind of odor hit him. It wasn’t dank and mildewy like the rest of the rooms. It was rotten. Rotting.
“Oh my,” he whispered, looking for a light.
On the walls, he could see outlines of more weapons and prehi
storic relics. He ignored the smell long enough to step inside the room and look for a candle or light switch. When he heard rustling down the hallway—Fastolf and the woman—he ignored that, too.
The rustling was indeed Fastolf. Alone with the third sister, he was discovering that the one with silver eyes couldn’t be as easily dismissed as the other two. The woman’s lips were only inches from his mouth. He could smell the sweetness of her breath each time she exhaled.
But whereas the other women had reminded him of the pain Morgan would dish out if he acted out of line, this woman and her silvery eyes reminded him of the woman who was asleep downstairs, plagued with sadness. Thinking of her torment reminded him once again of its reason: a woman they had both known for six years, convulsing on the ground until she died. And this, only a day after Occulus had also died.
The hostess’s tongue revealed itself ever so slightly. He closed his eyes and told her he would prefer to be alone.
The woman gave a slight hum of irritation, but even this was musical. Then she smiled and said that maybe he would enjoy someone else. He started to say that wouldn’t be necessary but the woman was already gone.
Or so he thought. He didn’t see her, but he also hadn’t heard the door open or close. He looked at the door and the rest of the room to see if she was there, but in the darkness he couldn’t be sure if fatigue was playing tricks on him. Without another thought, he closed his eyes and stopped worrying about it.
Just as quickly, another woman was on him. This one was a light cream color, with black eyes instead of silver. And whereas the other women had smiled and been accommodating, this one stormed across the room, used one hand to pin Fastolf down, then sat on top of him.
“What are you doing?” he said, but the woman used her other hand to cover his mouth. He pushed it away and said, “I thought there were only three of you.”
Without answering, her hand went over his lips again, preventing him from saying anything else.
When he tried to ask a question, her hand went from playfully keeping him quiet, to forcing his mouth closed. And when she leaned in to kiss him, he noticed that while her eyes weren’t silvery, her teeth were. He reached a hand up to push her face away but instead of pushing at a solid cheek or jaw, his hand seemed to squish into the side of her face.
“Huh?” he said, his speech muffled through the palm of her hand that still covered his mouth.
Her fingers locked even tighter around his mouth. His heart was racing. Something wasn’t right.
At the end of the hallway, on the other side of the inn, Baldwin tried to figure out what could possibly smell so foul. Maybe this was where they kept the soiled linens before they were laundered. But the odor went beyond dirty sheets. As a practicing physician, he had smelled death and decay, and this smell, while different, certainly rivaled those.
Unable to find a light switch or a candle, he turned on the charge to the blaster that Morgan had given him in the forest. He wasn’t comfortable holding the weapon. He had rarely had to fire one and had never hit a living target, but even he knew how to let the blaster keep an active charge so the side of the weapon glowed. Using it as a lantern, he saw vague, shadowy shapes come into focus. He saw a bed, a wardrobe, a collection of sacks. He squinted, holding the blaster out further. No, they weren’t sacks at all. They were… they were…
Squinting, he took a step forward.
They were bodies.
“What the…” he whispered.
Moving closer, he saw three men, all middle-aged, stacked with care in the corner of the room. The men had human-looking bodies: two arms and two legs, all the correct proportions. And yet there was no similar quality in their skin and faces. Instead, their skin looked like dull metal. Their faces looked like they had turned soft, the bones that helped form their cheeks and forehead having turned to jelly.
His eyes widened. There was only one thing in the galaxy which could do that to another living being: the venom of a Siren. Their saliva wasn’t meant to be lethal. Not to their own species, at least. It was meant to aid in their species’ procreation. The only two types of alien in the galaxy that could withstand a Siren’s toxin were also shapeshifters. Every other life form that came into contact with their saliva died a painful, gruesome death as their bones turned soft, eventually suffocating to death as piles of loose skin and tissue.
Baldwin heard a yell from down the hallway, but when he turned to leave the room, one of the hostesses was in front of him. She bared her fangs, which, while being much shorter than Traskk’s, were still longer than anything Baldwin wanted to see pointed at him. From one of her teeth, a drop of silvery liquid glistened.
Without hesitation, he brought his blaster up to shoot at her. Before he could squeeze the trigger, however, she changed shapes, turning from a beautiful woman with high cheeks and bright eyes, to a paper thin sheet that slipped easily through the floorboards and was gone. He was so scared he began firing the blaster straight down where he had last seen her.
Down the hallway, he heard Fastolf yell what he had already figured out: “Shapeshifters!”
That was when blaster fire broke out everywhere.
51
A Classic-Z cargo hauler, one of the largest known ships in the galaxy, made its way across space. Slightly bigger even than an Athens Destroyer or a Solar Carrier, it only had a crew of five or six people, along with a complement of androids. The ship had no weapons, no armor, and no defensive measures.
All it did was carry materials from one part of the galaxy to another. The few times one had fallen under attack it had always been by pirates trying to steal their cargo. Yet this rarely happened because the freighters were always in CasterLan or Vonnegan space and would be protected by each kingdom’s respective navies.
The captain of the Classic-Z saw the fleet of one hundred ships ahead of him. Since he was in CasterLan territory, on his way through the Tevis-84 portal to drop off a load of materials at Edsall Dark, he knew the ships would leave him be.
Only they didn’t.
The fleet of Athens Destroyers left the cargo hauler alone until it came within cannon range. After it did, the ten closest Athens Destroyers powered up their starboard cannons and unleashed a volley of shots that tore the freighter apart.
Boxes of supplies drifted out into space. Bins of merchandise from the other side of the galaxy dispersed in various directions. Some would be found and salvaged by pirates. Some would become space junk for eternity.
After the Classic-Z had been reduced to pieces of charred metal, the Athens Destroyer at the rear of the fleet sent a single flare out toward its remains. A second away from hitting part of the destroyed ship, the flare erupted into light, displaying a purple war hawk, its wings spread. Behind it, red the same shade as the bird’s bloody beak and gold the same shade as its eyes.
52
Vere was awoken from her brief sleep by three laser blasts shooting through the ceiling and landing in a line right next to her feet. Without saying a word, she jumped back and opened fire at the ceiling, knowing that her own blasts would also pass through the wood and hit whomever or whatever was shooting at her.
Traskk jumped back from the table, his tail accidently slamming against the edge of a bench and throwing it across the room. He and Morgan joined in shooting at the ceiling. Bit by bit, the ceiling gave way until there were giant holes not only in the ceiling, but in the roof of the inn. Soon, Vere and the others could look up and see not just sections of the second story but also treetops and stars.
A second round of shots came down from above, hitting close to Vere and the others. With every shot, splinters of wood flew in every direction and the smell of singed lumber made its way through the cabin. Panels on the floor, walls, and ceiling disappeared into ash or were burnt black. Through it all, Vere heard Fastolf yelling “Shapeshifters!” over and over and wondered how many more times he would say it before he just shut up.
A thought struck her then and she signaled for
Morgan and Traskk to pause in their shooting.
“Fastolf?” she called once there was calm.
One of the sets of laser blasts from upstairs paused, then she heard her friend say, “Vere?”
“Where are you?”
“Upstairs. Where are you?”
“Downstairs.”
“Where’s Baldwin?”
The second source of blaster shots also paused, then Baldwin yelled out, “Upstairs too. Down the hall from Fastolf.”
With none of the blasters sending streaks of laser back or forth any more, Vere leaned over and looked directly up at one of the holes where she had been returning fire. Baldwin was there, his back pressed against the wall, with no place to retreat if she had fired a little further to the right. When he saw her, his shoulders collapsed in relief and he dropped his blaster.
Morgan took a couple steps in the opposite direction, looked up, and said to Fastolf, “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot your fat ass.”
Fastolf yelled, “I didn’t do anything to get in trouble, I swear!”
Traskk sniffed the air, then growled. Before he could do anything else, one of the hostesses jumped on his back and tried to bite down on the closest part of him. In a flash, before her teeth could make contact with his leathery skin, Traskk’s tail smacked her all the way across to the far side of the great room. Before hitting the wall, though, she changed shapes and dissolved into the wood panels.
Just as quickly, another of the Sirens fell from above, the form of a thin sheet sneaking through the narrow lines. As she fell from the ceiling to the floor she changed into the shape of the hostesses and she too was on top of Traskk. Vere and Morgan both held their blasters up to shoot the bounty hunter off his back but he was spinning and thrashing too quickly for them to get a clean shot.
The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) Page 19
