The Night Parade (19 page)

There was no storm; there had been no storm.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

There was one person who would remember Caleb Sharr: Melaine, a fellow hunter for the Night Parade, a girl who was a year younger than Krystin. Melaine had been Krystin’s responsibility on several occasions when she had made mistakes. Krystin had put herself at risk to prevent their keepers’ wrath from falling upon the girl. She wondered why she had not thought of Melaine earlier; they could have rescued her, taken her away from the life of horror that she had known practically from birth.

Of course, there was a danger that Krystin would fail, that the keepers would capture her again. The creature that had served as her master had been named Byrne. For a moment she was curious to learn if he had been the old man whose face had come to her in flashes of memory.

Why do you even have to ask these questions? she wondered. You remember Byrne. He had scorpions for arms and snakes for teeth. His tail had been wrapped around your tender throat a thousand times and his eyes held the secrets of twilight, the end of humanity, the beginning of something new and repulsive.

That was not entirely true, she reminded herself. Sometimes he was human. He even appeared handsome and kind. Did he change, or did he create illusions? It did not matter. He was one of the nightmare people; that was all that was important. He would die with the rest of them.

An hour later, she arrived at the estate where she had been housed for the better part of her childhood. The building was deserted, overrun by weeds that clung to the sides of the two-story building. She stared at the estate in shock.

Not possible, she thought. This is not the way I remember it. The iron gate surrounding the estate had been rusted shut, and she was forced to climb over it. The dogs that had prowled the grounds were silent. Deep down, a part of her knew that she had heard the barking of Byrne’s hounds for the last time. The estate had changed to an impossible degree. She had been here less than a month earlier, just before the desert raiders had taken her from the streets that had been her home after she had left the estate.

She heard a rustling behind her. Krystin spun and drew one of the daggers Myrmeen had begrudgingly allowed her to keep. When she saw the figure standing before her, she lowered the knife immediately.

“Malach Byrne is dead,” the child said in a singsong voice, her head tilted to one side, her body as thin and drained as a wilting flower. “Malach Byrne is my Daddy, and Malach Byrne is dead.”

“Melaine,” Krystin whispered in shock.

“Daddy’s dead, Daddy’s dead,” Melaine sang. She stopped suddenly when she saw Krystin, a gasp of terror choking off her words as if hands had closed about her throat and were strangling her into eternal silence. The child was dressed in rags. She carried something in her hands that appeared to be the scalp of a man. Long, stringy hair was woven between her pale fingers.

“Melaine, what’s happened?” Krystin said.

“Who are you?” Melaine spat, clutching the black, hairy object to her breast as if it were a toy she had played with in her childhood. Her eyes were the pale gray Krystin had remembered, her features plain, her small nose upturned.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

Melaine backed away, her small, bare foot catching on the root of a large tree. She fell back, the impact knocking the wind from her. Krystin rushed to her side and placed her hands on Melaine’s arms. The young girl tried desperately to wriggle out of Krystin’s embrace, but she was weak and malnourished, her flesh mottled with bruises and sores.

“Melaine, it’s Krystin. I’m your friend.”

“Daddy’s men will find you. They’ll hurt you. They won’t let you touch me, they won’t!”

Krystin tried to hold back her tears, but she could not restrain the racking sobs that escaped her. “Melaine, we’ve been friends all our lives, please!”

“Daddy’s men will find you. Daddy’s dead, but his men will find you. They can’t find me. I’m too smart for them. They want to take me away in a cart, like they did him. They want to bury me in the ground, or burn me. I know, I’ve seen. I followed them. I watched them. I know what they are. I know what they want to do with me!”

“Melaine, please, don’t you know me?”

The straw-haired girl stopped wailing long enough to look into Krystin’s face. Sanity briefly flickered in her eyes, then the light of reason faded and her head came up suddenly, her teeth snapping like those of a ravenous animal. Krystin let her go and flung herself back to avoid the attack. Melaine sprang to her feet with unexpected grace and ran off, singing, “I don’t know you, I never did, I never will. I only know Daddy, and Daddy’s dead, but before they burned him, I took his hair, and soon, and soon ; . .”

Her voice trailed off, and Melaine quickly vanished into the night. Krystin sat for a long time and allowed herself to cry for the friend she had lost. Finally she could cry no longer. Her strength drained from her, Krystin returned to the gates, managed to drag herself over the top, and began the long walk back to the inn.

Along the way, she felt drawn to a certain house at the end of a deserted street. Candles burned within the house. A party was in progress. Krystin heard people laughing. She stole close to the window, then looked inside. The man she had been looking for was dancing with his wife while several of his friends laughed and applauded.

“Impossible,” she whispered. He should have been dead.

She remembered finding this man for the Night Parade. He had been insanely jealous and suffered from an all-consuming fear of losing his wife to another man. A handful of human-looking creatures had attached themselves to him like leeches wearing the faces and forms of newfound friends. In this capacity, they had manufactured lies about his wife’s infidelities and told him that they could not turn away while his wife made a fool of him. He had murdered his wife, then himself, and the Night Parade had feasted upon his anguish.

Krystin returned to the inn without allowing herself any further detours. She arrived ten minutes before the Harpers returned, quiet and shaken after their escape from the harbor authorities. Only Ord sensed her distress, and when he tried to find out why she was upset, she pushed him away.

The next day, Myrmeen woke Krystin and insisted that the child share morningfeast with the others. Krystin moaned and complained that she was not hungry and only wanted to be left to herself, to sleep.

“There’s nothing planned for today,” Myrmeen told her. “Why don’t we spend it together?”

“Yes,” Krystin said dully. “I suppose.”

She had spent the night in a deep, dreamless sleep. The visions that had been troubling her waking hours did not intrude. All she wanted was to return to that blissful state of oblivion, but she knew from Myrmeen’s tone that the woman would not be put off. Myrmeen was making another one of her concentrated efforts to play mother to Krystin. The girl knew that Myrmeen’s pleasant smile was forced, her words carefully rehearsed. Nevertheless, she did as Myrmeen requested. They spent the morning touring the markets, with Lucius maintaining his invisibility and watching them at a comfortable distance.

They stopped before a merchant selling clothing from the eastern nations and Myrmeen said, “I had a scarf like this once.” She ran her hand across a brilliantly colored length of cloth that displayed a beautiful golden dragon. A sigh of disappointment sounded from her. “Unfortunately, our gold is running low, not something I’m used to dealing with.”

“Like abstinence?” Krystin said. The words had surprised Krystin. She had no idea why she had said them.

Myrmeen’s pleasant mood faded. “You have quite a mouth on you, you know that?”

Krystin shrugged. She had wished that Myrmeen would simply talk to her rather than at her. Their conversation consisted of sporadic bursts of speech followed by lengthy, unbearable stretches of silence. In the marketplace, with so many people noisily haggling over prices, Krystin could not evaluate the quality of the silence between Myrmeen’s words. She needed something to think about, something to take her mind from the startling revelations of the previous night. Arguments with Myrmeen had become a normal, almost comfortable way to spend her day.

“What is your problem?” Myrmeen spat.

“You are,” Krystin said without thinking.

Myrmeen grabbed her arm and fought down her impulse to slap the girl with the back of her hand. “By the gods, you’re lucky we’re in public, the way you speak to me.”

“You want to hit me? Go ahead. I don’t care. I’ve been beaten by the best of them. There’s nothing you can threaten me with that’s going to make me care. You don’t know anything about me. You haven’t even asked. I had a life before we met—a terrible one, but a life. My life.”

“So did I!” Myrmeen howled.

They both stared at one another. Krystin did not need to gauge the quality of the silence this time. She could see the confusion and anger in Myrmeen’s eyes, along with the guilt that had motivated her in the first place. The chasm between them was widening with every quiet moment.

“What did you, um,” Myrmeen said haltingly, “what did you want to tell me?”

“Nothing,” Krystin said with a tired laugh. “Nothing, Myrmeen. It doesn’t matter.” Say that it does, she thought. Say that you want to know. Let me tell you who I am. Stop thinking about who you want me to be.

Myrmeen was silent.

“What about the scarf? You were about to tell me something,” Krystin said.

“No. Like you said, it’s not important.” Myrmeen sounded tired and defeated.

They continued through the marketplace in silence and soon allowed themselves to be separated by the crowd. Krystin did not object; even with Myrmeen beside her, she felt more alone than ever.

Krystin found a merchant selling tiny brass figurines. The statuettes were of elven folk. They were taken from a collection of stories that had been read to her by Madame Childress, the woman who had tended to the daily needs of Byrne’s hunters at the estate. Krystin never knew if Childress was a Night Parade member or not. The woman had shown the children compassion and light, even as Byrne had embodied the shadows that always appeared to be watching them. Her memories of that place were vivid and overpowering.

The estate was overrun. Melaine didn’t know you. And the storm is coming closer, Krystin. You can feel it.

“May I be of assistance?” a voice asked.

Krystin looked up to see a muscular, sun-baked blond man with a dark-haired child in his arms. The little girl he carried buried her face in his chest and took only a quick peek at Krystin. From the glimpse that Krystin had of the child, she could tell that the three-year-old would be a devastating beauty when she grew up.

“I was admiring your handiwork,” Krystin said.

The man laughed and hefted the girl into the air. He kissed her forehead. “You see, my dear? I’m not the only one who thinks you’re pretty.” The man looked back to Krystin. “Or were you talking about my other handiwork, the ones on sale before you?”

Krystin smiled. “Your daughter’s very beautiful.”

The girl peeked out, chanced a slightly longer look at Krystin, then turned away and held on to her father for all she was worth. The man grinned.

“She’s very shy,” he said. “She’s adopted.”

Krystin asked the man if he had ever heard of Malach Byrne or his daughter, Melaine.

“Yes, it is very sad,” he said. “Malach secured his fortune in the wake of the great storm—he was a builder. The city needed builders at any cost. He was a good man, though a trifle vain. He lost his hair and insisted on wearing a wig to make himself look younger.”

The hair Melaine clutched to her breast, Krystin thought. The fact that she had not sliced it away from his cold flesh was comforting to Krystin.

“When did he die?” she asked.

“A year ago.”

Krystin flinched.

“His daughter was never found. They say she hides somewhere in his old house. New tenants do not stay long. They are certain the place is haunted. I saw poor Melaine once at the outskirts of town, picking through refuse for her evening meal. A poor, sad child, no longer sane.”

“A year,” Krystin repeated dully. In her memories, Byrne had been alive three weeks ago.

“Dear miss, forgive me for inflicting sadness upon you. There are happier subjects. My figurines, for example. Each comes with its own personal story, which I will tell you—”

“I have no gold, I’m sorry.”

The man smiled gently. “If I did not need to feed my princess and keep the roof above our heads, I would gladly part with one of them for you.”

“No, you’ve given me all I need. I thank you.”

Krystin turned and left the merchant, waving good-bye to his retiring young daughter. She envied the girl the life of love and happiness that would stretch before her in the coming years, then realized that there were no guarantees in life. A totally unselfish thought, something that even she would admit was quite unusual for her, came in that instant:

May she always know happiness. Don’t worry about me. Protect the girl.

She stopped in the marketplace and wondered if that had been a prayer to some god or another; if so, it had been her first. Perhaps exposure to Myrmeen and the Harpers was changing her after all.

Suddenly a glint of green fire caught her attention. She stopped and found herself captivated by a beautiful emerald pendant. The item hung from the fat arm of a dark-haired woman who had her own booth in the marketplace. Several other necklaces were displayed on the woman’s pale, meaty forearm, but it was the emerald pendant that arrested the girl’s attention. Upon closer examination she realized that it was a locket. As she stared at its polished surface, Krystin began to see images form. Suddenly the world fell away. She was no longer aware of the crowd surrounding her, of the suffocating shroud of voices that had hung upon her. For a single, precious moment, all that existed in the world was the locket.

Within its emerald depths, she suddenly knew, lay the answers that she so desperately sought. A face began to form as she stared at the locket, the face of the old man from her waking dreams.