Dreams of Darkness Rising (67 page)

***

Jem pulled Kervin roughly to his feet.

“What in the Pale’s name is going on, Kervin? You were supposed to stay by the library. That dead guard is going to bring half the Godsarm down on our heads any minute.”

“Then I’d suggest we tell that to Emelia when we find her. It was hardly my fault. Real life gets a bit chaotic, Jem, not all nice and tidy like you prefer.”

Jem glared in fury at Kervin, angry because he knew him to be right. Where should he go? If Utrok gained the crystal then all was lost. Yet Emelia was bewitched and lost in Goldoria City. She’d be dead before dawn.

“I’ll find her,” Kervin said, as if reading his thoughts.

“You will not,” Jem said. “She’s my responsibility.”

“Right. Your responsibility. She’s not a little girl, mate. She’s a grown woman and whether you are her master, or mentor or whatever you bloody wizards call it I’ve still got the better chance of finding her.”

“She’s a Wild-mage, not a deer gambolling in the forest.”

“City or woods, I’m still a tracker and you know that well enough. Added to the fact that you are the only one with the ability to fight that mage. Use that enormous brain of yours, Jem, come on! You don’t need Hunor to tell you all the time.”

Jem flushed then gritted his teeth. “Damn you—alright. Go find her. We’ll meet you at the docks. Please be swift. She...she means a lot to me.”

Jem turned and ran from the courtyard, leaving Kervin stood alone. He let the rain sooth his scorched chest.

The deluge diminished as he stood there, listening to the sounds of distant screams and yells from the library. The moons began to emerge from the dark clouds, the tri-colour adding to the amber lamplights. The red light of the Pyrian moon glinted in his eyes.

“She means a lot to me too, mate,” he said and turning he began to track his quarry.

Chapter 14  Childhood’s End

Sunstide 1924

“I am sorry, Lord Aldred, my orders were quite specific, your father is not to be disturbed,” the guard said, his broad frame blocking the door to the chamber.

“I am not of a mind to discuss this further, soldier,” Aldred said, his face flushed with the heat of anger.

Aldred darted to the left and, as the armoured guard stepped to block him, he twisted and grabbed the mail hauberk. The guard struck the floor with a crash.

He yanked open the door and burst into the room. His father sat at his large desk, reading a letter which he had just slit open with a bronze letter opener.

“My lord, my apologies…” the guard said, scrambling to his feet.

The baron waved a jewelled hand. “It is of no concern. My son is, as ever, determined to disturb my running of affairs. Leave us, we shall be fine.”

Aldred glowered at his father as the door closed. The baron had a fresh dressing on his shoulder.

“Where did you acquire the wound?” Aldred asked. His face was smeared from tears of grief and rage.

“Not that it is your concern, but I injured it whilst riding. Your little displays of independence are getting tedious, boy. What is it you wish to say?”

“My friend, Livor, he—is dead.”

The baron rose and strode from his desk to the window. After a minute of silence he said, with a flat voice, “I had heard as much. An absolute fiasco—I am considering whether to insist that Smithson relieves Hawkson of his duties in the town.”

Aldred swallowed, fear was seeping through his red haze like oil leaking from a barrel.

“It was hardly his fault. The creature knew about the trap.”

The baron stiffened, his back still facing his son.

“How?”

“You tell me.”

The baron turned. “Take care now, Aldred. You tread on dangerous ground.”

“Curse you, father. What have you done? What have you become? Does mother’s memory mean so little to you?”

“Silence! It was her softness that has made you so weak. You want the truth, boy? It was in her death that I saw the mirror of my own mortality. I saw it and I chose not to creep so meekly into eternity!”

“In Mortis’s name, he was my best friend!”

Aldred lunged across the room and grabbed his father’s tunic. Fury fuelled his strength as he wrestled the baron, intent on nought but throwing this imposter to the floor. The two thudded into the wall then twisted back into the window sill. Aldred’s hands closed on his father’s throat, squeezing with a fervent power. The baron’s good arm was pinned under him as he leaned precariously through the window.

Wind blew Aldred’s hair as he sobbed, choking his father.

“Aldred. Stop. Help me.”

Aldred eased his grip, his anger dwindling.

“Please help me,” his father said. “It’s like a disease, consuming me. Each day I come closer to the shadow. Help me, I am fading and soon none of me will remain. Break the curse, I beg you.”

Aldred stepped back in horror, his hands lifting. For an instant he could see the face of his father as he had always been: stern yet fair, reserved yet proud, loving and disciplined.

Yet in the next breath it was gone, battered back by a visage of evil. The baron dove at Aldred, grabbing at his mud-smeared clothes. The two careened back into the desk.

“You weak fool,” the baron said.

Aldred fumbled behind in panic and found the letter opener. He stabbed the slim blade deep into the baron’s neck. The baron staggered back and a ripple of dread ran through Aldred. By Mortis, what had he done?

The baron stood before him, his breathing heavy. He removed the blade from his throat with no more effort that a child pulling a thorn from its hand. Aldred’s eyes were wide; it was one thing hearing the accusation of his father’s curse, it was another thing entirely to witness it.

The baron tossed the letter opener to the table.

“This, then, is the gift—the gift of eternity. And its cost? The blood of a few peasants. Blood so that I may live on forever, with such a fierce cold power coursing through my veins. You can not fight this magic, Aldred.”

“The Pale take you. I shall tell the king,” he said petulantly.

“He’d not believe you. No, he’d no doubt think it some ploy you were employing to gain your inheritance prematurely. In any case, he will have enough on his plate soon enough.”

“Then the wizard and the warrior that come to hunt the beast. That come to hunt you.”

“They will arrive to find the culprit executed.”

“Who..?”

“Why the Eerian knight of course. Evil foreigners are always a good scapegoat. After that I shall be more subtle in my...nocturnal wanderings.”

“Damn you. Is there not a shred of humanity in you?”

“A tiny part that fades more each day, like ink in an aging book,” the baron said. “Curse me all you like, boy. I am cursed already. Now go from this place that was once your home. Go far away. I have no need for an heir. No need for a son. I tire of warning you. If you cross me again you will share Korianson’s fate.”

***

Aldred struck his room like a whirlwind, a maelstrom of emotions inside his mind. Surges of hatred for his father merged with despair at the loss of Livor, with self loathing at his own cowardice, with an aching sense of dread at the prospect of departing forever from his home. He grasped his ripped shirt and doublet and, with a curse, shredded them off. His sword lay on his bed, where he had tossed it on his return from Eviksburg and with a roar he seized it and swung it wildly about him.

Wood splintered as he hacked; the Corinthian urns shattered; the rich Mirioth drapes around his bed were slashed like paper; his clothes fell in tatters like the leaves of autumn. Tears and snot ran down his reddened face as he cast his sword to the floor with a clatter.

Then his grief came in sobbing waves and he collapsed face down on his bed. It wracked his body, like he was a doll shaken by a furious child. The warm wet patch under his face felt comforting, dark and moist, like a cave he could hide within. Weariness crept through him and for what may have been a second or an hour the room became distant and removed as his breathing slowed.

He jolted awake, his face red where he had lain. In the corner of the room sat Jirdin.

“J—Jirdin. How long...I mean, have you been sat there the whole time?”

“Since you entered, master Aldred. Don’t be concerned, I’ve seen you in more shameful positions than that.”

Aldred blushed—he did not need reminding of the incident with Henrietta Scormanskin on his sixteenth birthday.

Jirdin was flicking through Livor’s small notebook. With a shudder, Aldred saw the splatter marks of dried blood on its cover.

Jirdin peered closely at the journal as if reading Aldred a bedtime story. “There are a number of ways the vampyr may come into being but ultimately all come from a ghast. The ghast, a vampyr lord, is a dark wizard whom has invoked ancient and potent sorcery, tainting their eternal soul as a price for fearsome powers and tolerance of physical assault by mortal weapons.

“Vampyrs may be slain by a number of methods with varying reliability (see later notes) but for those who wish to be cured, that is relieved of the curse of vampirism, there is but one perilous solution. And that is the death of the ghast from whom the vile magic originated, whether that sorcery was as subtle as the mystical bite or as elaborate as a blood curse. For each vampyr ever created bears some part of the ghast’s essence within him that ties him to the vampyr lord and the lord to him, diminishing the might of the ghast some small degree (extract Creatures Foul and Fair, Hirhil Bethman c1425).”

“But Quigor was slain at the Feast of Blood,” Aldred said. “Why does the beast not then become human again?”

The servant rose, closed the book and then approached Aldred. He said nothing but sat by the side of the boy on the large bed.

“Unless Quigor was not the ghast, but a catspaw for some enchantment,” Aldred said. “Perhaps the blood curse was worked through the ogre spell book, from Quigor’s master. Damn it, I heard his name—Garin. He must be the ghast.”

“And why would you want to cure the creature and not slay it, master Aldred?” Jirdin asked.

“Because the creature is the baron—my father. He is cursed, though it shames me to say so willingly. You must not tell a soul, Jirdin, for he would kill you without remorse.”

The old servant sighed and then smiled affectionately at Aldred. “You are ever kind. I am proud to say you are your mother’s son. I suspected as much of your father, for there is little that comes or goes from this castle that I do not know of.”

“How could he have done this to us? Brought this on our house?”

“The judgement of youth is often spoken too swiftly,” Jirdin said. “Your father was a good man once, a caring father and fine husband. Remember him as he was then, when he was to you as a god is to the pious. It was grief that slew him. It is like a festering wound, grieving. The poison spread, like black spidery tendrils, through his soul. And each time he thought of your mother it killed a bit more of him until all that remained was a husk, a shadow of the man he once was.”

“And now I am to leave, Jirdin, for he has banished me and, in truth, I can’t bear another night in this castle. Its walls are echoes of my past, taunting me with memories of summers much farer than this.”

“It will be a long journey for you then. The man you seek is in Artoria.”

Aldred was startled by this observation. How on earth did Jirdin know about Hunor’s intermediary in Artoria?

“The man I seek?” Aldred asked.

“The ‘runt’—Argas Enfarson. It was he who arranged for Quigor to come to Blackstone. Argas has lived in Keresh for the last few years and through him I suspect that you will find Garin. I shall prepare your packs and armour now, my lord.”

Aldred watched as the servant began sifting through the remnants of the room. It made sense to travel to Artoria, yet there was one more thing on his mind.

“I have a final task before I leave, Jirdin. Can I confide further in you?”

Jirdin paused, his back to Aldred then nodded.

“The knight—the Eerian. I saw him secretly a few days ago, with the help of Ekris. If I could somehow free him then I know he would swear his sword to my task—both finding the Thetorian Hunor and slaying Garin.”

Jirdin scratched his chin. “Then you may have my aid for what it is worth.”

“No, Jirdin. If you become embroiled in this then it will mean your life.”

“And what is my life when you have moved on?” Jirdin said. “I served your mother for her whole time in this world. Were that all I had done, I would be as happy as any man had a right to be. She lit my soul then as she does now, like a flame that never dwindles. And from her I have served you, seen you grow to manhood and I know now that there is nothing left for me in this house of stone. The faces change by the day and my time for the greatest rest comes swiftly.”

“You...you could come with us.”

“I am too old for such a journey,” Jirdin said with a laugh. “Humour the Thetorian fire in me and allow me the privilege of righting an injustice with you before I slope into an eternity of peace in Mortis’s arms.”

Aldred hugged the servant tightly, drinking in the distinct odour of lavender and sandalwood that Jirdin’s pipe left lingering on him.

“Then it is agreed,” Aldred said. “Our first step is to send for Ekris. It would seem both his talents are once more required.”

***

The air in the stairwell had the stagnancy that came with depth. Aldred tried not to think of the tons of rock that surrounded him, the only passage through being the stairwell he lingered in, pacing like an expectant father.

He wore his chainmail and tunic, his sword at his side and sweat soaked into the undershirt, cultivating an itch he couldn’t quite reach. Jirdin had been at least five minutes, he was certain, though time flowed as sluggishly as the air around him. Distant echoes of the barracks crept like a ghost from above.

The sound of footsteps made him jump and his hand slipped to his sword. Jirdin hobbled up the stairs, his breath coming short and sharp like nails on a washboard.