Mira (2 page)

Gathering her courage, she stood up, brushed herself off, and marched into the darkness again.
 
This time she kept one hand on the wall and one above her head, in front of her, in case the ceiling dropped again.
 
It wasn’t long before the hall curved, and the packed dirt beneath her bare feet changed to stone.
 
Mira bent down to touch the ground and found that it felt like stonework; like the floor had been carved.
 
It certainly didn’t feel like natural stone.
 
Fascinated, she traced one pavestone with her fingers.
 
What fear she had left was replaced with curiosity, as she stood up and continued to follow the wall through the darkness.

Farther into the cave, the wall changed to the touch.
 
The stone went from rough
ly
hewn to carve
d
like a castle wall.
 
Just like the floor,
she thought.
 
Mira moved more quickly down the hall.
 
She wasn’t afraid of the ceiling dropping again, so she put her hand out in front of her like a blind man feeling for obstacles in his path.

When her hand on the wall ran across wood, she stopped.
 
Mira’s breath increased as she felt the wooden slats under her hand, held together by ironwork and bolts.
 
Sliding over the surface, her hand found the doorknob.
 
Heart pounding in her chest, Mira wondered if she found him.
 
That wasn’t so hard,
she thought with a strange, smug sense of accomplishment.
 
She turned the knob, and the door opened onto more blackness.
 
“Hello,” she called, but there was nothing.

Mira stepped slowly, blindly into the room, hands held out in front of her.
 
She almost fell over, when her foot hit something with a loud thud that echoed out the door and down the hallway.
 
She knelt down and felt some kind of crate.
 
On her hands and knees Mira reached out around herself and found that there were a number of crates scattered around the floor.

She was about to leave the crate where it was and try to move around it, when the thought occurred to her that she may have found a store room.
 
Mira pushed the lid off the crate and found it full of fabric of some kind.
 
She crawled around on the floor groping about until she found another crate and pushed the lid off that one.
 
This crate contained jars.
 
It is a store room
, her thoughts raced excitedly.
 
When she ran into a wall, she felt her way up and found shelves.
 
One at a time she carefully felt her way along the shelves.
 
There were books, small boxes, small jars, more fabric, paper, scrolls.
 
Finally she found what she was looking for, a lantern.
 
There were several lanterns on that part of the shelf.

She pulled down one of the lanterns and felt the weight of it.
 
She guessed it already held oil in it.
 
Now all I need are matches
.
 
She felt her way along the shelves until she found some bags that would fit in the palm of her hand.
 
Running her fingers over the soft material she prodded each bag to guess at the contents, trying to find what she needed. The first one held something small and round, the next something square.
  
She didn’t know what the things were but they weren’t matches, so she moved on.
 
She was about to give up, when she found a small light bag that held what felt like numerous tiny sticks.
 
The matches were on the shelf almost directly under the lanterns.
 
She smiled and shook her head. as she took one of the thin wooden sticks out of the bag.
   

Mira paused, holding the match in her hand.
 
The lantern was ready.
 
She would finally be able to see where she was going.
 
It was strange, but a funny kind of fear pulled at her stomach again.
 
She had been so obsessed with what she was doing that she almost forgot why she was in this dark place.
 
Suddenly it felt as if she was being watched.
 
He could be right next to her, and she wouldn’t know it.
 
Her mind raced irrationally.
 
She imagined striking the match and having an evil face appear in the light staring at her.
 

“Hello,” she called meekly into the dark.
 
Maybe I don’t want to see
, she thought.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she scolded herself.
 
The sound of her voice was comforting.
 
Mira struck the match on the floor and lit the lantern.
 
To her relief, when light flooded the room, all she found were opened crates and shelves of stored goods.
 
If she didn’t know better she would have thought that she was in some domus store room.
 
Not in a cave, deep in a mountain, looking for a vampire who would inevitably drain the life out of her.
 
Not that the idea of being in a castle wasn’t strange either.
 
Hell, where else would a vampire live?

Mira took another deep breath, held the lantern out and left the room.
 
It was much easier going now.
 
The light gave her confidence.
 
It turned out that the rumors were correct.
 
There were quite a few halls that criss-crossed, now that she was in the manmade section of the tunnels.
 
How am I going to find him, s
he asked herself, as she looked down several hallways.
 
She couldn’t see any more doors and all the halls looked basically the same.
 

 
She tried listening carefully down the halls for some noise, but didn’t hear anything.
 
“Hello,” she called down one of the halls, her voice stronger than before.
 
The only sound she heard was her own “hello” echoing back at her.
 
She called down one of the other halls.
 
Again her voice echoed back.
 
When she called down the third hall it was different.
 
“Hello,” she called again.
 
“No echo.
 
There’s something different down there, stopping the echo.”

Mira rallied her courage and strode down the hallway.
 
After a short distance and a couple turns, she found doors.
 
Staying herself to face the worst, she opened the first door and held up the lantern.
 
The room appeared to be a library of sorts.
 
Books lined shelves against the walls, and several shelves were freestanding in the middle of the room.
 
A well used chair and a table stood on a threadbare rug.
 
A large assortment of papers and writing things lay scattered across a small desk, and a pile of crumpled papers heaped up against the wall in one corner.
 
Mira stepped back into the hall.
 
“What kind of vampire assassin collects books,” she whispered.
 
“And writes poetry,” she added in confusion, looking at what was written on the papers.

Leaving, she closed the door behind herself and continued down the hallway.
 
Tapestries hung on the walls between the doors.
 
Most of them were battle scenes, elaborately woven and well kept. Mira started to open another door, when a sound caught her attention.
 

At first she thought she may be losing her mind.
 
Metal ringing?
 
Sword fighting clanging
?
 
She followed the sound of metal crashing against metal.
 
It was all so strange.
This was never covered in the lessons
, she thought.
 
The clashing noises became louder, as she walked down the hall.
 
When she came to the large double wooden doors at the end of the hall, the sounds stopped. She half thought that he must have heard her coming.
 
Light streamed from under the large carved, wooden, double doors that filled the end of the hallway in front of her.
 

Mira’s stomach churned.
 
She hadn’t eaten breakfast, and she could feel bile rise in her throat.
 
She wished that the clanging would start again.
 
The silence was dreadful.
 
Finally she reached out and turned the well worn handle on the door.
 
It released easily, and the door swung silently in, letting light fill the hallway from the multitude of candles in the wrought iron chandelier that hung from the high ceiling.
 

Mira didn’t really see him at first.
 
She was looking for a monster; some pale, gaunt, angry beast that would fall upon her and drain the life from her body.
 
What she saw was much different.
 
Rillan ap Tiernay was tall, muscular, clean shaven, and well dressed.
 
The stories described him as noble and brave, before he was made into a vampire.
 
Mira, like those who came before her, believed that the man of legend changed when he was turned into a bloodsucking assassin.
 
Obviously she was wrong.
 
His dark blue eyes were set in a handsome, tanned, angular face which was framed with black hair.
 
He wore leather armor, brown breeches, and boots.
 
He could have been any man from one of the nomadic hunter tribes to the north.
 
A sword leaned against a dummy standing next to him.
 
It was dressed in armor as well and held a severely battered shield.
 

Rillan was larger than most of the men in her village.
 
Legend told that he wasn’t originally a druid, nor was he from her village.
 
He was one of the warrior classes in the druid nations before the militant civilizations to the south had assimilated them.
 
He came to the druid’s inner sanctum seeking a way of vengeance against the onslaught of would be conquerors.
 

Although Mira committed the legends to memory, she always questioned them to some extent.
 
Her people, being a logical culture, had long held the belief that stories often changed or were exaggerated over time.
 
Heroes became more heroic, and villains became more evil with each retelling.
 
It was hard to say how much of the original stories were true.
 
Only in recent decades
,
had her people begun writing the histories down.
 
Lord Tiernay’s story was centuries old.
 
He was probably the only one who still knew the truth of it.
 

Just as she was measuring him, he stood measuring her.
 
She knew what he would see.
 
She never thought of herself as anything special.
 
Whatwasw
W
orse
,
;
she had been wandering around in the dark and had fallen on the ground.
 
Her hand and knees were scraped, dirty, and bloody.
 
She had no hair brush, and hadn’t washed in days.
 

“Come in girl.”
 
His accent was heavy, guttural, and strong
,
;
as if he barely spoke the language.
 
“You’ve been more resourceful than most of the others.
 
I believe you are the first to actually find a lantern and get here without being lost in the labyrinth for a few days.”

Mira found herself annoyed by the comment and almost forgot she was afraid.
 
“Do you find it amusing to let us grope about in the dark, frightened and lost for several days?”

Rillan walked toward her.
 
His purposeful strides made her wonder if this was it.
 
He was going to bite her.
 
She let out a yelp and fell back against the door, dropping the lantern on the floor with a clatter.
 
His ice blue eyes bore into her.
 

 
“No,” he replied low and warning.
 
“I don’t find it amusing.
 
However, I do find that after a few days, even my company is looked upon as a welcome alternative to being alone, hungry, and thirsty in the labyrinth.
 
Usually when they see me after the darkness they don’t jump in fear.” He stepped back from her, giving her enough space to relax a bit.
 
“Like you did.”

Mira felt a little ashamed.
 
“I didn’t—
 
I mean I’m not—“
 
She stammered, trying to find the words to explain why her lessons hadn’t properly prepared her to take on her duties with more strength.

He cut her off.
 
“I’m used to it.” As he spoke he stepped toward her again
,
.
 
T
t
his time as a person would approach a frightened animal.
 
Cautiously, he leaned in and breathed heavily.
 
Mira got the impression that he was smelling her.
 
When he pulled away
,
his pupils bled into the rest of his eyes until they were solid black.
 
Then he blinked, and it was like she had been seeing things.