Bloodstone (9 page)

Gareth frowned. His master seemed distracted, and the words he spoke sounded like riddles old Melfick told when he had a pint too much ale. He hunched his shoulders at Ulerroth’s grip, but it only tightened. “Agree to what, sir? I don’t understand.”

He heard the hiss of the innkeeper’s exhalation and sensed Ulerroth straightening. The thick fingers kneaded his bones again. “The Shadow Man wants you to serve him.”

Was that all? Ulerroth was afraid to send him to do again what he’d already done? It was hardly worth sweating over. “All right. I’ll bring up his tray again, as long as he wants me to.”

His master’s fingers dug into his shoulders, preventing his attempt to turn. “Gareth, boy, it’s not that simple.”

The heaviness of the words made a knot clench in Gareth’s stomach. It was a large knot, much like the one that had intruded there when Ulerroth first told him his mother was dying. His knees shook. He swallowed. “What then, sir?”

Ulerroth sighed. “He wants to take you with him...as his manservant...when he leaves tomorrow.”

The knot pushed against Gareth’s throat.
He wants me? To go with him? Tomorrow? But he’s barely met me. And you’re all scared of him. I am too...sort of...although he hasn’t done anything to me except, except I can feel him watching me sometimes.

“Why—why me, sir?” he whispered.

The innkeeper’s shoes scuffed on the floor. “Probably, boy, because you’re blind.” He cleared his throat, hesitated, then continued in a low voice, “You see, it’s said that to look on him unveiled is to—is to be struck with such horror that you’ll go mad. Or die.”

His saturated tunic clinging to his body, Gareth stood before the third door on the left, the one at the end of the corridor. Ulerroth had said, more than once, Gareth didn’t have to accept the Shadow Man’s proposal.
But if I don’t—what then?
The possibility of harm coming to his master, Freth, and Nell made him shudder again.

Even so, the White Boar Inn of Ar-Deneth wasn’t his real home, not the tiny cottage with the sun-hazed windows where fragmentary memories of the man he thought of as
father
dwelt. And Freth was hardly an adequate substitute for his mother. Most days, she ordered him around, scolded him for his mistakes, and otherwise ignored him. Ulerroth showed more patience, but Gareth suspected it had been prompted as much by the innkeeper’s interest in his mother as by nature. Still, the man had remained kind after her death and fulfilled his promises to her.

Gareth’s fists clenched and unclenched as memories flooded his mind. It hadn’t been easy listening to the bed creaking in the room above his pallet and knowing it was his mother who lay on it under Ulerroth’s bulk. It hadn’t been easy delivering a tray to a musky-odored room, knowing within it his mother served a man who’d hired her body. It hadn’t been easy knowing how she earned the coin that kept them alive while his own body stirred with new urges, his limbs lengthened, and hair sprouted where none had grown before. It hadn’t been easy, but he could have endured, if only—

Tears welled in Gareth’s eyes, burgeoning behind his lashes and oozing between them. They burned, but he let them come, let them fall in rivulets of warmth down his cheeks and drip from his chin.
His mouth opened in a sob, but no sound passed his lips.
Mother, why did you bring me here...and die?
Overcome with misery, Gareth stuffed his fist into his mouth and sank into a heap on the floor.

****

Footsteps. I know I heard footsteps.
The man listened to the silence, then opened his mouth wide and exhaled a yawn, one that culminated with a huge stretch of both arms over his head. His shoulders popped and he rotated them absently, enjoying the languid feel of rested muscles.
I haven’t slept that well in—what is it—weeks?
He sat, thoughts purposely blank, and savored the rare joint quietude of mind and body.

All too soon, he became aware of a new sound, one he couldn’t at first identify. He frowned, rising from the chair he had slept in. Morning sunlight, by the reflected quality of it, glimmered through the shutter slats. It allowed his gaze to locate the remains of his evening meal still spread on the table.
Ulerroth, it must be Ulerroth...but he would knock, wouldn’t he?
His frown deepened. He checked the folds of cloth over his face, the fastenings of his cuffs, and the position of his hood, listening all the while.

It was breathing, yes, but irregular breathing. And not quite the short, bated pattern of someone about to commit a crime, he decided, relaxing his grip on his knife. No, this was more uneven, the inhalations huge, the exhalations jerky, ending with a faint wheeze.

Resting a gloved hand on the latch, he leaned closer, wondering first if the person was ill, then why a stranger’s health should concern him.
By Kiros, why did he have to pick my door to be sick in front of!

Scowling, he strode part way across the room, turned. The sound nagged at him like a thought just under the horizon of consciousness, near enough to glimpse, too far to apprehend. Something about it, though, made his stomach clench and his throat tighten. Irritated by the sensations, he stalked to the door and jerked back the latch.

The boy sat crumpled on the floor, his face blotchy, his fist jammed to his mouth. He blanched at the sudden swish of the opening door.

He’s terrified. Frightened to death of me.

The man’s stomach twisted like a rag in a washer-woman’s hands. “Get up, boy.”

The boy gulped down another sob. A brilliant flush swept up from his throat. Ducking his face into his sleeve, he wiped furiously. “Y-yes, sir.”

“Come in.”

He watched the boy take a position halfway to the table. Despite overhanging hair obscuring most of the boy’s face, his cheeks and eyes were puffy. Again, the man’s stomach clenched.

Are you feeling...sympathy?
said the Voice in his head.
How pathetically novel.

I’m angry, damn you! He fears me when he’s the one who should least do so. When he’s the one, the one I need.

So, tell him.

His lips compressed. “What has Ulerroth told you?”

The boy suppressed a sniffle. “That—that you want me to—to be your manservant.”

“What else did he tell you...about me?”

A quiver rippled through the hair dangling over the boy’s face. He swallowed. “That to look on you is to—is to...”

The man’s cheek twitched under the cloth concealing it. “To go mad with horror?” he said through gritted teeth. “Or, more mercifully, die?”
Oh, you were clever, Syryk. Gifting me with the power to put my victims out of their misery, yet withholding from me, your victim, that very same gift. But you wanted me to suffer, didn’t you? By all the demons in Beggeth, I know you did!

He inhaled a steadying breath and forced his fingers to withdraw from the indentations their nails had dug into his palms. This was not the time to vent his bitterness. This was the time to move to ease it, and in the manner chance alone had provided. A sardonic smile tugged at his lips.
But you forgot one thing, mage. You forgot that Perrinor—old, blind Perrinor—was the only one to look into the Demon Master’s face...and live to tell the tale.

He focused on the boy. “You have no need to fear, though, do you? After all, you see only shapes, or so you told me.”

A shiver rattled through him. What if he were wrong? What if the boy’s vision were sharper than either of them guessed?

He’ll die, and then you’ll know, won’t you?

The man shuddered. It was the first of the risks. Sweat trickled between the blades of his back. His fingers flexed within their leather skin. Sucking in his upper lip, he licked salt from it.
I have to do this. I have to know if it’s possible.

“Well? That is what you told me, isn’t it?”

The boy nodded, slowly.

The man’s pulse raced at his temples, making him light-headed. His mouth had gone dry, but he forced himself to salivate, to moisten his lips, and to swallow. Ignoring tremors in his wrists and elbows, he raised his hands to his shoulders. One hand tugged at the hood, drawing it fold by fold from his head until it lay like a collar around his neck. The other wrapped fingers in the hem of his face-covering. It hesitated, trembling, while he blew out a breath. The room was dim, but there was enough light to know for sure.

By all that’s holy, I hope I’m right.

Closing his eyes, he withdrew the cloth. A whisper of breeze from between the shutter slats caressed his naked cheek. It was startlingly cool without the filter of his hood. He tried to inhale it, but his lungs seemed constrained, bound in some way, and wouldn’t expand. With what breath he had, he said, “Look at me.”

When he opened his eyes, the boy was slowly raising his head and turning toward the sound of his voice. Ghostly in the dimness, the boy’s searching gaze touched him, flicked away, returned, held.

A ripple of panic surged through the man. “Do you see me?” he breathed.

The boy’s brows furrowed. He blinked. “Your shadow, I think.”

He forced a swallow. “Nothing more?”

The boy shook his head.

The man breathed. Exploding lights dotted his vision, but he ignored them, holding onto the table while his heart regained its rhythm. When his legs no longer quivered, he released the table and replaced the cloth over his face. “You’re safe, Gareth.”

The boy seemed to wilt. The man shoved a chair toward his fumbling hand, and the boy slumped into it. “I—I’m sorry, sir, but I—I just...”

“Rest, boy, and listen. I’ll tell you what I require of you.”
Your voice, your company, a human presence. Something... good...to keep me sane.

****

Gareth performed his midday duties mechanically, his mind so full his head ached. Ulerroth kept his distance and even Freth didn’t scold him for spilling milk when he bumped the pitcher against a chair back. Still, at the odd moments when one or the other’s presence diverted his attention, it was because of an odor that insinuated itself into his nostrils.
They’re afraid of me, too, now that I’ve been with him.

He didn’t want to leave Ar-Deneth, but he had the vague feeling he could no longer live here in the same manner he had all winter and spring. He was no longer simply Ulerroth’s least servant, no longer the stranger’s son, an insignificant blind boy who used a staff to tap his way about the fringes of village life. Now he was set even farther apart because he’d been where others could not go—and lived.

But I haven’t seen him! Don’t you people understand? I can’t!

Gareth dumped his load of wood into the iron rack next to the common room fireplace and slumped down beside it. He rubbed his forehead, wishing the tightness behind it would go away. Outside the thrown-open shutters, cart wheels sloshed through a puddle and a mule brayed complaint. He heard the joiner’s dog bark and, immediately after, the owner’s shouted curse. It was familiar music, the sounds of everyday life in Ar-Deneth.

What will I hear up there in the Wehrland? In the place he calls Drakkonwehr?

Gareth hugged his legs and rocked back and forth. He didn’t want to cry again. It was bad enough he’d done so once today. Worse that he’d been caught at it. He flushed and ground his chin into his knees. That would keep it from trembling. He wished he could do the same with his memory, but nothing he tried prevented the Shadow Man’s words from filling his mind again...

“There is only one important rule,” the Shadow Man was saying. “You must not touch me.”

Gareth frowned. “Not touch you, sir? But sometimes—”

“Yes, I know. Sometimes you’ll need my assistance.” There’d been the sound of footsteps and the swish of heavy cloth. “Even so, you’ll hold out your hand or speak, and then wait for me to touch you first. Is that clear?”

Gareth nodded, remembering the peculiar game of a day earlier. His hand had been caught then, prevented from contacting the body he knew stood only inches from it. Why? He could think of only one reason, and it made his stomach shrivel to half its size. “Is there—could I be hurt...?”

“There’s danger, boy, in everything associated with me,” the Shadow Man said, startling him with his nearness. “Remember that, for your own sake, and I’ll be able to protect you.”

His tone had made the hair rise on Gareth’s arms.
Even now, hours later, his skin still prickled at the memory. He rubbed his arms, wondering why, toward midnight, he should be willing to ride into the Wehrland with a man called Shadow. The simple answer involved the safety of his friends.
The true answer,
he thought as the tightness in his forehead migrated to his chest,
is that there’s nothing to hold me here except a mound of earth.
And even that was disappearing. He flexed his fingers, remembering the cool, fibrous feel of the vegetation rapidly reclaiming the winter-turned soil over his mother’s grave.

Gareth’s eyes stung. He squeezed them shut, holding the lashes scrunched so tightly colors behind the lids turned from yellow to orange. Then he stood and, blinking several times, shuffled out of the common room to finish what tasks he owed his former master.

****

The late afternoon sun warmed Mirianna’s shoulders. It soaked into her hair and leaned heavily on her neck, making her nod
. I shouldn’t sleep,
she told herself each time she twitched awake, but the rhythmic motion of her mount’s gait lulled her eyes shut again. They’d been traveling the last hour over a level stretch of trail and it was all too easy to trust her mount’s sense of direction. Even so, she was sure it wasn’t a sudden change in slope or pace that this time brought her head up with a jerk. The gelding’s pink nose still bobbed stoically behind the swishing tail of her father’s chestnut. And his horse still trailed obediently behind the rump of Pumble’s pack animal.