Dreams of Darkness Rising (15 page)

It might be for the best, though my soul is wracked with trepidation at the idea. I mean Inkas-Tarr will protect me and in six years time  maybe things will have changed
.

This man of darkness  will never forget Emelia. Tell me, what did you see that day?
Emebaka asked.

I...I am not sure. He was doing something in the grave. Oh Emebaka, how has this happened to me? What’s going on?

Something is coming Emelia, I can feel it. Something dreadful. Something dark. A storm is looming that will shake your world apart and you will need strength to make those choices.

Help me. Help me make them
.

I can not—they are yours to endure
.

Emelia clutched the wall, a surge of consternation coming upon her. Her breathing was rapid and shallow and with effort she reined it in.

Could she truly have run off that night in Cheapside? Was that her god-given chance to avoid the trip to the macabre world of the Air-mages? It felt at times as if her life was the dream and the imaginings of the night her true existence.

How had she escaped on that night? She’d pushed the thoughts to the rear of her mind, afraid to question the surreal events in Cheapside. But the apprehension of moving to the Enclave was dragging it kicking and screaming back to her consciousness.

It just doesn’t make any sense, Emebaka. I am certain that I was destined to die that night.

You can clearly change your destiny then
, Emebaka replied.

But how did it happen? It seems all hazy and vague, like my recall is shrouded in mist. Perhaps it was some sadistic trick by the sorcerer, chasing me down only to let me live a little longer. So he could feed off my terror.

That doesn’t make sense
.

What does though? I could fantasise that I am so interesting to the Arch-mage that he put some glamour on me, to protect me. But who am I but some curio for his collection? Am I just looking for some fantastical explanation? Maybe there was a crack in the wall that I fell through?

But it didn’t feel like that did it?

It’s all so...distant now. Did I dream it? Is it my imagination impinging into reality like in my dream the other night?

There was no reply from Emebaka and Emelia rubbed her eyes. Her head ached with all this introspection. She longed for a quieter time when all was simple and the biggest challenge of the day was lighting the fires in the morning before your fingers went numb.

She shuffled down the corridor, the heavy bucket straining her arm. At the corridor’s far end were the stairs that would take her back into the Keep’s depths and back to the frostiness that now pervaded her days in the kitchens.

Something was odd about the archway to the stairs. Something was missing, she thought, as she neared it. It came to her: there was no guard on the stairs today. Presumably when Lord Ebon-Farr was not in residence they didn’t have to post one at the entrance to the corridor.

A sound of clattering boots echoed down the stairs as she approached them. The pace was fast, as if someone was running full tilt down the spiral staircase from above. She hesitated and then a strange feeling came into her, like a waking dream. In her mind’s eye she could see a barking wild dog, all matted fur and sinew, its teeth bared. A sense of unease twisted in her belly. She turned and went back into the corridor, looking around urgently for a place to conceal herself. The noise of the footsteps was coming towards her quickly.

She pulled back the nearest tapestry. There was a recess behind the tapestry made for storage and she squeezed in amongst the upright, stacked benches.  The heavy wood still had the odour of dried wine and bodies on it and she pressed her face in fear against the wood, hoping that the strength of the timber would stay her shaking.

The sound of boot steps indicated someone had emerged into the corridor. An almost animalistic panting and sobbing could be heard. She could smell fumes of drink seeping around the edge of the dusty tapestry. Her heart thudded in her ears, sounding as loud as a war drum in the eerie silence.

The boots clicked on the wooden floor of the corridor as their owner passed the tapestry then they stopped. With a wrench of horror Emelia realised she had left her bucket in the corridor.

Emelia held her breath and stood like a statue. The silence seemed to stretch endlessly, like the vastness of lower Eeria running to the horizon. She had no idea who was beyond the thick cloth of the tapestry save that every instinct told her they were dangerous. It struck her that perhaps it was the Dark-mage come to kill her, his black sorcery eating her face like the chill winds that had gnawed over the ages at the stones of Coonor.

Emelia’s breath was about to explode from her chest when the person in the corridor laughed bitterly and kicked the bucket over. Foul brown liquid sloshed under the tapestry and onto Emelia’s worn leather shoes, soaking the chapped material with debris and dirt. She held down the nausea as the stench struck her and the owner of the boots cursed again.

“Blasted servants! Buckets lying around, damn them. Is this some sick joke? Oh Torik, what have I done?”

Emelia stifled a gasp; the voice was Uthor’s sneering patter.

Uthor stomped off down the corridor and Emelia chanced a quick look as his footsteps faded. He was dressed in a green velvet doublet and dark orange tights, the former hanging open as if it had been ripped. His normally flushed face was pale and wan, his hair a dishevelled mess. The young lord turned and entered his rooms at the far end of the corridor and slammed the door.

Emelia stooped to pick up the tipped bucket and looked in dismay at the large pool of grime soaking into the wooden floor. She would need more water to clean it all up, which meant a descent to the kitchens and a trip back up with aching arms. What was wrong with Uthor and why had her dream appeared to her so vividly?

She left the corridor and descended the staircase towards the garrison level. For the second time that day she heard the sound of boots on the stairs but in this instance it was perhaps a dozen of them running from the first floor to the ground level accompanied by yells and shouts. Curiosity came upon her and she came down the staircase on the tail end of eight soldiers. They ran along the lower corridor to the inner courtyard and the gates of the Keep.

Emelia followed them through with a sense of foreboding, her slender form unnoticed in the panic. She passed through the inner courtyard and through the gates of the Keep and into the  square that lay in front of the tall building. The rain pattered around the gathering crowd and in the distance the peal of thunder echoed along the bleak avenues. Two-dozen people were in a circle around something on the cobbles and she could hear screaming. With a jolt she realised it was her friend Abila that was screaming, one of the soldiers holding her back as she yelled. She was red in the face with mucous and tears running like a torrent down onto her dress.

Sarik was in the crowd as Emelia pushed her way through, feet sliding on the wet cobbles, desperately needing to see what was there. Her mind raced as images of her dream came back: the rooftop, the wild dog, a jackal, the lamb, her friend.

“Don’t look Emelia, don’t look,” Sarik said, his face contorted in horror.

Crumpled on the cobblestones of the square, her body oddly angled, was Sandila. A dark pool of blood spread slowly and inexorably away from her dead body, mixing in with the puddles..

The lamb, she thought. Sandila was the lamb.

Chapter 6    Funerals and Forts.

Windstide 1920.

A dozen candles cast their dancing light over the walls of the shrine yet their amber glow did not warm the chill of the place. The heat of the gathered bodies faired no different nor did the small brazier that lit the far end of the room. Emelia felt as if she would never know the comfort of summer’s warmth again.

Lord Ebon-Farr had generously allowed the service to be held in the tiny shrine that served the garrison. It was a dank and musty place, tucked away at the rear of the building. Its solitary window opened out through the sheer back wall of the Keep. The wall fell precipitously away to the foot of the mountain, thousands of feet below.

What would it be like to leap through the window and fall almost without end? Emelia thought. It was a macabre notion, given the nature of her friend’s demise.

The priests of Torik had not matched Lord Ebon-Farr’s kindness. The acolyte who normally preached within the shrine had refused to give the service. He regarded it as sinful that the deceased was both with child and had undoubtedly taken her own life whilst wracked with shame. It was fair to say that this was the general consensus of opinion, as difficult as it was for the other housemaids to believe of their friend—a friend who had lit up their daily lives like a beacon.

Emelia’s eyes were dry as she gazed across the small shrine, crammed shoulder to shoulder with the other girls. Her tears had gone, dried in a near constant flow of grief. Now all that was left was an anger and a fury that simmered and throbbed within her at the injustice of all of this.

The elderly attendant of Torik droned words of prayer at the far end of the shrine. His face was like an old boot, worn leathery skin stretched tight with a shock of grey hair. Emelia knew that he was normally responsible for cleaning the shrine and maintaining the candles and brazier for the acolyte. Mother Gresham had clearly offered him some recompense for his ‘sermon’, dismayed that a proper priest wasn’t amenable. He stumbled over his words like a nervous suitor but no-one really cared. All were relieved that someone was simply saying them.

In addition to the snuffling servants were Mother Gresham, two cooks and two of the soldiers, their stoical faces betraying occasional flickers of emotion. Captain Ris was also there and Emelia still struggled to meet his eyes. Torm stood in the corner, seeking solace in the shadows. By Emelia’s side was Abila, their prior frostiness having thawed in the heat of their grief.

It was grief like none she had ever known. Emelia considered she had had some experience of loss in her fifteen years of life. She had endured the ache of separation from her childhood home, albeit a ramshackle shack on the edge of a beach. She had a sense that her servitude had lost her what a childhood should have been: full of love and fun and the warmth of a father’s smile or a mother’s hug. She considered she had lost free will as now her only real freedom was that of her imagination and her dreams. Yet in retrospect she was deluded, for true loss, true sorrow, was an ache more terrible than she realised could happen. It was the ache of what would never be, the ache of all the “if only”, the ache of the “should have.”

The first night, when she’d finally forced the image of Sandila’s broken body from her mind she had fantasised, as was her want, about how she might have changed things. Perhaps if she had kept Sandila talking that hour longer, perhaps if she’d not run in panic that day in the lower city and gone with Sandy to the wise woman then her friend would never have come up to the Great Hall to talk that morning. She replayed the scenario in her mind a dozen times and in all the day-dreaming Sandila was alive and laughing at the end.

Her eye caught Torm’s gaze. He smiled slightly and then looked towards the shrouded shape that was Sandila. Emelia stared at the amorphous form, a white sheet covering the broken body; the husk that her departing spirit had left. She had heard from Abila that Mother Gresham had bullied and begged enough coins to pay for Sandila to be interned in a mass grave in one of the lower city cemeteries, a great boon for a foreign girl in servitude. Coonorians buried their dead in deep holes hewn into the rock and only the rich had the luxury of privacy in their final resting place. Abila had been confused at Emelia’s lack of joy at this news, interpreting it as distorted grief rather than Emelia’s memory of her last trip to a cemetery.

Emelia’s ruminations about her imminent move to the Enclave and her ever-present fear of the dark sorcerer had been suppressed by the tide of grief. Sandila had loved life so very much and a fire was smouldering inside Emelia now: a passion to live, a burgeoning desire to experience something beyond the stifling chambers of Coonor.

The ceremony was drawing to a close now and as was the custom the attendant was lighting the spirit lamp. It consisted of a small candle held by a wire frame to a large paper lantern, in this instance decorated by Gelia and Annre. The attendant gestured to Emelia and she stepped forward and took the lamp. He then turned, walked to the window and flung it open, the breeze making the candles flicker.

“Thus we guide your spirit to the eight winds of Gracious Torik,” the attendant said. “Lord of the air, Master of the great breeze and Father of the storm we pray to thee to lift the essence of this poor girl, taken too soon in our mind yet never too soon for your great realm. Torik, Air Father, hear our prayers.”

Emelia leaned from the window and the early morning air sent her dress billowing. The icy wind finally elicited tears. She released the spirit lamp and it flew from her grasp and soared into the sky, its light flickering as it took Sandila’s soul to the peace of the heavens.

The room was silent for a minute before Mother Gresham began rounding up all the girls and sending them back to work, clucking how even in death Sandila could instil laziness all around. Emelia did not miss the thickness in her voice as she gruffly bossed the maids about.

Emelia stared out of the small window, the panoramic view like a majestic tapestry before her. She would give anything just for a month to walk to that horizon and back rather than around in this rock pool of Coonor. That last conversation with Sandila still played in her head. Her time was running short before she left for the Enclave. It would be tomorrow morning and all this would be a bitter memory fading like the tapestries in the upper corridors.

Run away, Emelia, let us run away
, Emebaka urged.