Bloodstone (14 page)

Mirianna eased her elbow from the table and rubbed where the jolted edge had bitten into it. The table’s vibrations echoed along her nerves the way Ulerroth’s outburst echoed in the high-ceilinged room. The innkeeper was a substantial man, capable of knocking heads if the order of his establishment was disturbed. Yet sweat glistened on his forehead and she noticed his gaze wouldn’t settle, not even on the scattered stones.

“Well,” Tolbert said, clearing his throat as he removed his hands from the table, “this gem hunter will take gold, won’t he?”

Ulerroth wiped his face with his apron. He laughed, but the sound only made Mirianna shift in her chair. Something about his manner made her skin crawl. “Papa, perhaps we shouldn’t—”

“Listen to her.” Ulerroth leaned across the table. “Forget this gem hunter. He won’t let you find him anyway. He—” He hesitated, as if noting their startled expressions, and grinned—a quick, humorless show of teeth. “He doesn’t like people.”

“But I must have the bloodstone. These simply aren’t enough.” Tolbert looked from her to Ulerroth. “The Master of Nolar insists.”

The innkeeper shoved his chair back, thrust himself out of it and paced the mantel wall. “Look, I can’t help you. The Shadow Man—”

“The Shadow Man?” Mirianna breathed. The name sent a shiver of sensation down her arms. In her mind, an image wavered, an image of blackness...a tower of blackness. And a voice as deep as the night.

“The Shadow Man?” Tolbert’s eyes widened. “But I thought he was only a winter’s tale.”

“He is.” Ulerroth paused to lean against the fireplace and wipe his face once more. “Except for once a year when he comes here to trade with me.”

“But who—or what—is the Shadow Man?” Mirianna recovered enough to ask.

“No one knows.” Tolbert scratched his cheek. “A being like the shadow of a man, if I remember the story correctly.”

Mirianna swallowed. The memory of the faceless shape and voice enlarged, vivid in all of its darkness. “Go on,” she breathed, knowing with an odd, prickling certainty her vision and the being they spoke of were one and the same.

Ulerroth gripped his chair and placed it before the table again. “Black Mage spawn,” he said, sitting down heavily, “let loose, some say, when the last mage tried to raise the Dragon.”

“People blame all sorts of the world’s ills on that incident,” Tolbert said. “You’d think, after all these years, they’d realize what’s happened since has something more to do with their own actions.”

The innkeeper merely nodded, his gaze focused on his hands, which cupped the table’s edge. “Everyone agrees it was Durren Drakkonwehr and Errek Eolan who trapped the mage Syryk at the Dragonkeep.”

“And none of them were ever seen again.” Tolbert straightened in his chair as if that pronouncement ended the discussion.

Ulerroth, however, stretched out a hand and fingered the bloodstones. “The Stone Dam that Kiros set in the high pass at Herrok-Eneth ages ago, to separate the good land from the evils of Beggeth, was destroyed that day, obliterated from the face of the mountain when it broke. The River Ar didn’t flow for days. And smoke covered the sun. It was dry and hot and dark, even this far down the mountain, and the ground trembled. Then the Krad came, those ancient scourges of Beggeth, through the crack in the mountain where Herrok-Eneth fell. They overwhelmed what was left of the Dragonkeep and poured into the Wehrland, rampaging like they had in Shadowtime before the warrior Kiros first drove them out and sealed the pass against them.”

Mirianna shivered, but not from cold or fear. She knew the Deeds of Kiros, knew well Owender’s
History of the People
. What made bumps rise along the underside of her arms was the innkeeper’s voice, the way its quiet awe propelled her backward to childhood, to hours spent listening to the storyteller in Nolar and absorbing the ancient chants and tales of Shadowtime, Dawntime, Dragontime, Dragon’s End. She knew the tales, but she knew them as a child knows them—as tales to be fantasized about while testing the balance of a bejeweled weapon in her father’s workshop. The deeds were too distant to be real, the places mere names that tasted oddly sweet on the lips. Only the Wehrland was real. Only the Wehrland and the strange being who had stolen the head of her horse—and given it back again.

The innkeeper’s sigh brought her attention back to his bulk. His expression distant, he rolled the largest stone back and forth with a fingertip. She watched the red aura shift with each movement.

“In Shadowtime,” he mused, “we had great warriors like Kiros. In Dragontime, we had Koronolan and the Hero Mages. At Dragon’s End, Koronolan gave us his sons and their sons forever after them as Dragonkeepers. He gave them his own sword, the Sword of Drakkonwehr, to keep the beast sealed forever beneath Drakkonwehr fortress. Now that the last of the Drakkonwehrs is gone, and the Sword with him, what do we have?”

“Black Mage spawn, shadows, and other such unnatural creatures,” another voice said before Ulerroth could answer his own question.

Rees leaned against the wall at the foot of the stairs, his hair tousled and his tunic entirely unlaced. He scratched absently at golden chest hair exposed between the loose thongs. He looked, Mirianna thought, like a cat who’d just feasted on quail. Or, much more likely, a man who’d just risen from a shared bed.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Rees fixed her with a gaze that lingered too long on her breasts. “Now, I offered to tell you that story, remember?”

Mirianna flushed.

With an insolent grin, he pushed away from the wall and strolled to the table. Hooking a chair with one hand, he swung it into place beside her and straddled the seat. His thigh, thick and hard, pressed against the length of hers. She tried to pull away, but her father’s knee on the other side kept her hemmed in. Rees dropped her a look from half-lidded eyes, then turned his grin on the two men.

“Now, what’s this talk about unnatural creatures and such?”

“The Shadow Man.” Tolbert leaned forward. “He brings Ulerroth his bloodstone. He was here only yesterday, but he didn’t bring enough. We have to hurry after him and ask him to find a few more pieces because—”

Rees held up a hand. “Did you say, the Shadow Man?” His brows lowered and, alongside her thigh, Mirianna felt his muscles tense. “Are you referring to that—that
thing
that drives men mad and steals women to couple with and kill?” His gaze slid to her. “Young women. Unmarried women. Women fond of going off alone.”

Her face burned, as much from the gaze that flicked from her breasts to the V between her legs as from the implication in his words. Her fingers clenched in her skirt.

Ulerroth colored. He balled his huge hands into fists. “He does nothing of that while he’s here. Nothing except—”

Rees’s head snapped up like a hound scenting rabbit. “Except what? Take a woman?”

The innkeeper stared at his hands. “There’s some that would go,” he mumbled, “for gold.”

Rees’s mouth curled into a sneer. “For gold, eh? Small compensation for coupling with a fiend.” He leaned toward Tolbert, his expression conspiratorial. “I hear he has to drug them.”

Ulerroth slammed his hands on the table. His brows bristled like thunderclouds. “Nothing of the sort happens in this establishment! The Shadow Man does nothing wrong while he’s here.”

“Nothing wrong! What about those three men? That happened right outside this very inn, didn’t it?”

Ulerroth’s color deepened. He avoided Rees’s stare and tugged at his tunic collar. “Two,” he said, his voice gruff. “There were only two. And the fools tried to rob him.”

“They died, didn’t they?”

“What of it? Any man with gold would have killed thieves who came at him in the night.”

Rees snorted. “Would any man with gold have killed them without touching them?” He lounged back in his chair. “Everyone knows they were found dead with looks of horror frozen on their faces. And not a mark on them.”

“You’ve been listening to tales.” Ulerroth dashed an arm across his forehead. The dark arm hair came away wet. “That was years ago. You know how stories spread.”

“I was listening to your serving maid, telling me about the fiend that was here only yesterday.” Rees rotated his head and fixed his gaze on Mirianna. “And in your room, too.” He leaned forward, a feral gleam in his eyes. The charm he wore swung free of the hair it had nested in and spun, glittering. “Tell me, how did you like sleeping in
his
bed?”

Panic stirred in the pit of Mirianna’s stomach. She remembered all too vividly the weight of Rees’s body grinding hers into the earth, the pressure of his arms pinning hers beside her head, the taste of his hand clamped over her mouth, the sensation of helplessness, terror, loss. Her skin crawled. She wanted to bolt, to overturn the table and run. Rees’s eyes, and the pleasure evident in the widened pupils as they basked in the terror broadcast from hers, held her rooted to her chair.

“You bastard spawn of a Krad!” Ulerroth lunged across the table, seizing Rees by the tunic and toppling both of their chairs. “The Shadow Man comes, he trades, and he harms no one! I’ll not have a dung beetle like you spreading lies about my establishment or any of my customers! Do you hear me?”

Rees shrugged out of Ulerroth’s grip and made a show of straightening his tunic. “Lies, Ulerroth? How can they be lies when everyone in Ar-Deneth knows you do more business in one day the fiend’s here than you do in a month without him.”

A muscle under Ulerroth’s moustache twitched. His fingers flexed at his sides, curling and uncurling. Color washed in waves across his face. “Get out!” He jabbed a finger at the stones scattered across the table. “Buy your gems and get out! All of you! Now!”

Mirianna stood up slowly. Her father, beside her, fumbled with his gold pouch. “I—tell me your price.”

“That’s right. Tell him your
price
, demon trader.”

The innkeeper’s fists bunched. Mirianna feared—hoped—he would smash Rees’s face. Ulerroth had the bulk and sinew to give the cocksure Master of Nolar’s man the beating he deserved, but the innkeeper slowly straightened. “I’d wish for a Krad to cut out your heart and eat it, but I’d hate to disappoint the beast.” Seizing a handful of coins from Tolbert, he turned on his heel and stalked into the kitchen.

Rees brushed at the sleeves of his tunic as if to remove clinging dirt. “Demon trader! Brothel for unnatural creatures!” He shuddered. “Pick up your stones and pack. Meet me in the stable.”

Vibrating with the emotions that still charged the room, Mirianna could do no more than watch Rees mount the steps two at a time and disappear around the corner at the top. Part of her wanted to rage at him for his obnoxious accusations. Another part asked if it was wise to remain in a place frequented, if not by unnatural creatures, then by those with similar unsavory reputations. However much Ulerroth tried to minimize the charge, he had not, for all his anger, denied its truth. And Rees, despite his faults, was only looking out for their welfare, wasn’t he? Even the appearance of consorting with evil could brand a person, and she and Tolbert, with no other family to shield them, had little enough protection from that. Rees was right, of course, but—

Beside her, a chair scraped. She turned and saw her father tie a thong around the opening of his gem pouch. Lifting the thong ends, he tried to fasten them behind his neck. With a sigh, she said, “Let me,” and tied a double knot.

Tolbert responded with a wan smile and tucked the pouch inside his tunic where the precious stones would lie next to his skin. “Come on, lamb.” He touched her hand. “We’d best pack.” With a sigh, he left the common room in which they should have been spending days, not hours, and mounted the stairs.

Mirianna followed him to the landing and turned to her room. Inside, she drew up short, instantly aware of darkness shrouding the ceiling beams. Gloom draped over them in folds, insinuating itself like the heavy canopy of a bed into the lighter space below. Shadows lurked in the room’s corners and stretched dark fingers around the legs of the chair, the table, even the bed.

She swallowed, but no saliva dampened her dry throat. The gloom, the shadows had been there before, hadn’t they? Or did they seem thicker, denser, more substantial now she knew who—or what—had inhabited this room?

She wished she’d opened the shutter. She could open it now, but the window lay farther across the room than her belongings. With every instinct screaming at her to avoid contact with even the smallest shadow, she inched her way across the chamber toward her pack. As she did, her attention riveted on stains spotting the floorboards. She’d seen the stains before, hadn’t she? Or did she only now notice them because—because—

Because they might be blood?

Dizzy, Mirianna put out a hand to steady herself, touched the bedpost, and jerked back as though snake-bitten.
He
had lain here.
Here!
In the very mattress hollows Mirianna’s body had settled so comfortably, under the very blankets her body had snuggled, the possessor of the voice whose reverberant tones still struck echoes within her body had spread his limbs.
He,
the dark, faceless being who prevented her horse from bolting, had intimately occupied this very space.

Sensation shuddered through her, a strange shivery…
flush
that penetrated deep into her woman’s core and left it damp and throbbing. Her knees weakened, and she swayed forward, drawn by an inexplicable desire to lower herself inch by inch to the bed and lie upon it. That same strange desire directed her to raise her arms above her head and open her legs so that she lay, spread-eagled and quivering, while the velvet shadows of late afternoon descended like drapery and enveloped her. Powerless to do otherwise, she closed her eyes and completed the seal.

At once, her lover materialized. He leaned over her, his dark shape haloed by golden haze filtering between shutter slats. The mattress sank under his weight as he stretched full length beside her. The scent of sun-warmed wool and leather filled her nostrils, trailed faintly by something...sweet, she thought, like crushed white clover.