Cobweb Bride (21 page)

Beltain sighed. This was truly not to his liking but he had to proceed. “These two noble ladies—are they by any chance on their way to present themselves to Death as Cobweb Brides?”

Another long pause. Then Lord Mariseli, the larger of the two men, exhaled loudly, and said, before the baron could interject, “Why, yes, they are.”

“In that case,” Beltain said, “I may not allow you to proceed. I am under orders not to allow any potential Cobweb Brides to pass through this forest and the lands, by order of the Duke Hoarfrost, my father. Set down your weapons and surrender and I swear neither the ladies nor yourselves will be in any danger. I must simply take you to the Chidair Keep where you will be accommodated according to your noble rank. If you resist, I will be forced to injure you with mortal wounds. And yes, I will remove your limbs so that although at present you cannot die, you will be crippled—just as your unfortunate comrade-at-arms over there.” And he pointed to the fallen undead knight who sprawled in a barely moving mess with only one leg and one arm still attached to his torso, his body twitching and emptying of the last of his blood.
 . . .

“This is an outrage!” Baron Irnolas exclaimed. “We are knights under Imperial Orders, and we are sworn to lay down our lives for—” And then he grew silent. Instead, with a quick desperate movement his sword arm lashed out and he struck Beltain on the left side, blade slamming against his shoulder.

Beltain reacted swiftly, turning his torso to lessen the impact of the blow, yet could not avoid the strike completely. The blade did not pass the chainmail or the plate, and yet the impact of it was powerful enough that his left arm went numb momentarily and he knew that serious damage was done. But he ignored both the pain and the numbness and instead struck out with the blunt flat side of his own blade and delivered a resounding slam-blow against the top of the baron’s head near the ear. The blow was designed to disorient or even knock him out, and apparently it succeeded. Dazed, the baron teetered in his saddle. Beltain used that instant to push the knight backward, so that he toppled over. Beltain cried out to his men, “Net him! Quick!”

Meanwhile Lord Mariseli roared his anger and attacked Beltain who somehow parried him with his sword. Beltain’s powerful right arm received the bone-jarring impact and held—just barely. And the next instant they grappled, still in their saddles.

Fighting Mariseli was like being mauled by a bear, and it did not help his concentration at all that in that instant Beltain heard one of his men shout, “Hey, you, stop! My Lord, there are women escaping from the carriage!”

With a desperate gasp for air—for his chest was being squeezed by the giant knight—Beltain used a single burst of violent strength to free himself. He then twisted sharply, ignoring the agony in his wounded shoulder, and slammed his other shoulder and elbow like a battering ram into his opponent, shoving him backward and out of his saddle before this bear of a man could resume the grapple-attack. It was one of his trademark unbeatable moves. And this time again his men were there, with nets, and they confined the raging knight, so that he flopped like a bound whale on the snow and roared his fury on top of his voice.

Panting loudly, Beltain did not waste a moment, and rode around the carriage in pursuit of what looked like two desperate female figures bundled in expensive winter fur capes, running back along the road the way they originally came from. Several of his men had a head-start and were rapidly gaining on the escapees.

One of the ladies screamed, a shrill terrified voice, and then began to thrash in the arms of one of his men who was the first to catch up with her. In an instant she was joined by her companion, and the two screamed, so piercingly and incessantly, it seemed, that some of the men who had surrounded them held their ears while others cursed and spat in the snow.

Beltain’s mount carried him up to the group and he commanded in a tired and angry voice, for silence.

The ladies must have sensed his authority immediately, because they complied. Beltain squinted, seeing in the moonlight two pretty faces, frightened and yet proud in that indelible manner of the noble aristocracy. They were both shaking and breathless from all the screaming, but their expressions were unusually resolute, so that once again Beltain felt a twinge of regret at what he had to do, how he had to act.

“I am Lord Beltain Chidair,” he said. “You will not be harmed.” Unfortunately, his stern irritated voice did not soften the meaning of his words.

“Then have your men unhand me this instant!” exclaimed one of the women, dark-haired and more classically beautiful of the two. “I am Lady Milagra Rinon and my companion is the Lady Selene Jenevais, under the protection of the Emperor. You have neither the right nor the authority to prevent our free movement in these lands.”

Beltain watched the lovely shape of her face, the dark full lips, the moonlight-glittering eyes widened with outrage, and he thought,
In the name of God, please do not cry, oh do not start to cry
. . . .

But this one was a hard beauty, and there were to be no tears. Her steady gaze upon him did not falter. And her companion was apparently following her lead in all things, for she too held steady and her rounded childish face remained remarkably brave.

“Ah, Madam, my pardon,” he replied, his tone softening with weariness. “However, I regret that in this forest it is my authority and that of the Duke my father that stands. So, without much more unpleasantry and distress, for your sake I insist you comply. It’s getting late and rather cold. I ask you to come with me, and you will be treated respectfully, upon my word as a Knight of the Realm.”

“Hah!” the lady replied. “You, a Knight? That status will not be for long. Wait ’til the Emperor hears of this—this—”

But he ignored her sputtering and turned to his men.

“Check the carriage to see if anyone else is within. Then, assist these two Ladies of the Court back inside. The knights are to be kept bound upon their horses. We head back to the Keep.”

He turned his horse around and followed two of his men to the carriage, without looking back to see if his command was being carried out. He heard only small initial exclamations of protest this time, then silence. Indeed, thank God for small blessings—such as no female shrieking.

The carriage, a fine regal vehicle indeed, stood gaping open, and no one else was within. Satisfied with the cursory examination of its interior, Beltain turned away, intent on the moonlight and snow and allowed his men to handle the rest. The horses were rounded up, the now-perfectly-docile ladies escorted back inside as politely as possible.

Remarkable, really, it occurred to him suddenly, how docile indeed, how quiet they had become.

As though they had achieved their end.

W
hen the carriage rolled away surrounded by the escort of Chidair soldiers and their knight, when there was nothing else but snowfall and crackling of branches on both sides of the road, Vlau Fiomarre dared raise his head from the snowdrift in which he hid.

Next to him was
she
, the one he’d made into an animated corpse. She lay flat against the ground, just as he had thrown her, and he had piled fresh handfuls of snow upon her, burying her in the whiteness. Next, he had hidden himself practically on top, also digging into the snowdrift next to the roadside shrubbery, having covered their tracks the best he could while the commotion took place. While the two Ladies-in-Attendance had run, as instructed, in the opposite direction, screaming on top of their lungs to create the necessary distraction, he’d helped the Infanta from the carriage, then half-carried her stiff cold body up the small slope, praying in his mind they not be seen—while another detached part of his mind seemed to be looking down at himself with astonishment at the madness of such actions.

“They are gone
 . . .” he whispered eventually.

No response. Underneath the snow, she did not stir.

He rose and stood up, brushing the snow from himself, watching the spot where she was concealed.

It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he really buried her this time, and maybe she will now rest in true eternal peace, silent at last.
 . . .

At this thought something in his chest painfully twisted, a spasm of pain, followed by a corresponding tug at the back of his throat, forming immediately into a lump.

No
, he thought, swallowing the lump, the pain,
no, I will not sense, will not feel
—

In that instant the snow shifted and slowly she sat up, moving with peculiar effort and stiffness, then took in a deep shuddering breath which she used to speak. “My flesh
 . . . seems to resist movement. . . . It is the cold. . . . I . . . require . . . a moment.”

And he gave her the moment, watching her in cold horrible silence, as she sat, moving her hands and elbows stiffly. He did not offer assistance and she did not ask, as she then raised herself from the ground with supreme effort, then shook the snow from inside the folds of her simple coat. She adjusted it and her head covering, finally raising up the hood—not because she needed it, but to keep up appearances of someone living. Her hands moved oddly, like angular limbs of a doll.

“Thank you for your help,” she said unexpectedly. “You—you are—free to go now. I can no longer insist on keeping you at my side, because now everything has changed. Go!”

He stood for a moment speechless. In the moonlight he could see her pale skin and the great stilled eyes, unmoving, glittering with ice, for they had frozen in their sockets.

A terrible chill crept up his spine, separate from the chill of winter, for he realized that he was living the ultimate nightmare—he was alone in the moonlit night in the wilderness, with the shade of the one he’d killed, standing directly across from him. But for some reason all he could think of was the pitiful pallor of her skin and sunken cheeks, her small upright figure, and those great peculiar unblinking eyes, dark and fathomless and tragic in the glamour of the night.

“I will go with you,” he said. “You—will need protection in these parts, apparently. You will need someone to help you reach Death’s Keep.”

“No. I cannot have this,” she replied. “You and I are reconciled in my mind. It is over, truly. From now on you are to be free of any regret or guilt for your actions toward me. I have no control over your hatred of my family, but at least you will have no guilt on my behalf. And I bear you no ill will any longer, not even curiosity as to your motives. So, please . . . go.”

But he said, “No! I may be a dead man in the law, a dead man, but I am a man of my word. I’ve given you my promise not to escape.”

“This is not an escape. This is but the end of our reckoning.”

“Oh, but it is not!” he exclaimed then, taking a step closer toward her, staring directly into her eyes, so that if she had not been dead and stiff with cold she might have taken a step back. His dark eyes were fierce with intensity. “You have no control over hate, my hate, indeed,” he said, “and thus you have no control over me. I
choose
to stay. With you. Do you understand, daughter of Liguon?”

“No guilt
 . . .” she said. “I want no guilt.”

“No guilt!” he exclaimed. “No guilt, no guilt, no guilt! Only fury and hatred and retribution! You cannot get rid of me so easily as all that, not unto death even, for you are not the one to forgive me—only the Almighty can do that, and such a thing is not to be. Thus, a damned man, I follow you.”

This time she said nothing in reply. She merely turned away from him, and began walking slowly, her feet sinking in the snow, moving away from the road and deeper into the forest.

Panting hard with emotion, the vapor of his breath swirling white against the ice air, he followed her.

Chapter 9

“P
ercy! Percy! Peeeer-cy! Wake up!”

Jenna was shaking Percy who surfaced out of a dreamless deep sleep to a groggy state of confusion.

“Huh? What?” For a moment Percy did not know where she was, and thought she was in her own bed and it was her younger sister Patty calling her. “Go away, Pat . . .” she muttered, starting to turn over onto her other side, only to bump into a lump that was another warm body. . . .

Everything rushed back, and Percy came awake with a sickening sense of immediate reality, and lifted her head, squinting. They had been lying four to a bed in a small room in Ronna’s Inn, and the warm lump was none other than Emilie, still asleep and snoring softly into the pillow. On the other side of Emilie was another one of the girls, but Percy couldn’t tell who it was, since she was covered completely with the blanket.

Jenna had slept on Percy’s other side at the edge of the bed, but now she had crept out of bed and was whispering loudly, “It’s not Pat, it’s me, Jenna! You know, Jenna Doneil! Time to get up, an’ we oughta get going!”

“Oh, Lord
 . . .” Percy muttered, sitting up with a groan and rubbing her face. “It is even dawn yet?”

The shutters on the one small window of the room had been drawn and it was impossible to tell whether there was any light outside.

“Dunno,” said Jenna, “but we oughta get going! I just feel it, we need to hurry, hurry!”

“And that would be why?” said Percy in sleep-deprived irritation. She sat up completely and lowered her bare feet to the wooden floorboards. Ouch, the floor was freezing cold.

The night before had been an insane flurry of rushing about back and forth from the pantry to the kitchen and trying to cook breads and porridges for an inn full of hungry guests. They were all of them bone-weary when they finally managed to eat their own share, clean up the kitchen and drag themselves to beds.

While Percy and Jenna set about using the chamberpot, washing up, then putting on their clothes, layers upon layers, the other girls were stirring too. Emilie got up with a huge yawn, clutching her old tattered nightshirt tighter about her against the chill air of the room. The unidentified person on the farthest edge of the bed hidden underneath the blanket turned out to be Gloria Libbin, the Oarclaven blacksmith’s daughter, and she nearly fell out of bed, also seeming to forget where she was, initially.

Out in the hall, the inn was coming awake, and they could hear footsteps and voices. They came downstairs one by one and Percy and Jenna were the first of their group.

Ronna the innkeeper was already out of bed and Mrs. Beck got the lounge fireplace going and retreated into the kitchen to begin the day. “Morning, girls. Be sure to have a bite to eat before you head out,” said Ronna kindly, glancing at the two. “That goes for all of you.”

Jenna tugged Percy’s sleeve. “Are we going to be ridin’ in Grial’s cart again?” she whispered loudly.

“I don’t know, that would be up to Grial,” Percy replied. “She may not be going on past Tussecan. Remember, she only did us a kindness yesterday. It’s not like it’s our cart to do with as we please.”

“Well, child, it certainly
could
be your cart, if you ask me nicely.” The overly bright voice belonged to the familiar frizzy-haired woman, and Percy nearly jumped, turning around at the ringing sound of it.

“Good morning, pretties!” Grial said, pushing her way past them into the doorway of the kitchen, then dragging them by the hands inside. “First, a bite to eat, as Ronna says, or two bites. Maybe even three
 . . . or four. . . .” And then she broke into a cheerful cackle.

“Grial, what do you mean?” said Percy, taking a roll from a huge tray left over from last night, and sat down on the end of a bench at the cook’s table.

“Well, here is the deal, duckie. You go on and take my cart with the rest of the girls, while I stay here in town and visit a bit longer with Ronna, my blood relation. I entrust my darling Betsy and the cart to you, because I know you will take excellent care of her—the cart and Betsy, that is, both of them are a she, and both require excellent care. When you finish up that Cobweb Bride business, you come back here to Tussecan, to this inn, and just drop them off.”

Grial was smiling as she finished.

As she listened, Percy’s mouth slowly came open. “But—” she said eventually, “but I can’t do that! How can you say that, Ma’am? I mean, I am not sure I can . . . well, drive the cart into the forest, and what will we do when the road runs out and we have to go on by foot? And what do I do about Betsy’s feed? And what about rubbing her down in the cold and—and—”

“Oh, phooey! You’ll do just fine!” Grial exclaimed, taking a large mug of hot tea that Mrs. Beck came to pour for her. She then drew closer to stare at Percy across the table while Jenna watched them with excitement.

“Thing is,” Grial said in a conspiratorial voice, “let me tell you a little secret, girlie. That road—those roads, all roads and paths in fact—
they never end.
You might think they do. You might think they just narrow and fade and disappear in the hoary depths of the forest? Not so, not at all! They merely
go into hiding
, and you just have to search a bit harder to see them. Now, Betsy can always see them. Why? Well because she has a knack for it, and because she’s Betsy. So, if you have Betsy along with you, there will always be a road, and where there’s a road, there’s a cart—if you follow my drift. Just trust your instinct, and when you can no longer do so, allow Betsy to take the lead.”

Percy and Jenna were staring at Grial, mesmerized by her words.
 . . . Until Grial broke the spell by hitting the table surface with the palm of her other hand. She set down her mug, then got up to fetch some butter for the rolls from the pantry.

Percy opened then closed her mouth again, while a grin broke through. She glanced over at Jenna, saying, “Goodness, I guess then we have a cart!”

Jenna let out a happy squeal, followed by a series of squeaks.

“What’s all the shrieking?” Lizabette came into the kitchen, followed by Regata and the rest of the girls.

“We have a cart! We have a cart!” Jenna intoned with a huge grin.

“We do?” Catrine said. “Well, gracious us, that’s just grandiose, as me Ma would say—may the good Lord rest her! I never expected no cart for so long as we got it!”

“Me neither,” said her sister Niosta. “And the good eatin’ too.” And she grabbed two rolls from the tray.

“Grial’s just too kind, that she is coming along with us to the forest.” Lizabette took a hot mug of tea for herself and a plate of oatmeal and settled at the table.

Percy swallowed a chunk of her roll and looked up. “She’s not—not coming, that is. Grial said I can drive the cart and bring it back when we’re done with it.”

“You?” Lizabette set down her mug and stared at Percy over her sharp nose. “Why, that is just
 . . . odd.”

“Why?” said Percy. “I can handle the cart just fine. My Pa has one very similar, and a horse too.”

“But you’re—you’re—”

“I’m from a small village. A place where people drive carts. While someone like you is from a large town, and I’m sure you have better things to do with your hands than rub down a horse or pull the reins. Isn’t that right?”

Lizabette opened her mouth then thought better of it and went quiet. However she still had a displeased expression on her pinched face.

“Percy driving is fine with me,” Sybil said good-naturedly.

“Me too,” said Flor, who had just heard the news and came over to the table with her own bit of breakfast.

“Me three!” Emilie said, slurping her tea.

Gloria, coming to sit at the farthest edge of the table next to Emilie, just smiled.

T
hey set out on the road in the bluish dawn. Grial and Ronna stood at the doors of the inn and waved them goodbye as Percy climbed up on the tall driver’s perch and took the reins while the rest of the girls settled in the cart with their things and this time three of them remained to walk alongside it.

“Get along now! Whoa, Betsy!” Grial cried, and hearing her mistress’s voice Betsy reacted by starting to walk in her sedate powerful manner before Percy had a chance to gently adjust the reins. Soon they were moving down the street along the same main thoroughfare in the direction that led out of town, northward.

The streets were mostly empty at this hour, though there were occasional pedestrians and carts, and yes, several young women walking, who looked suspiciously like they could have been Cobweb Brides.

“Isn’t it exciting?” said Jenna, as she skipped and hopped every other step. “We are all going to be Cobweb Brides!”

“We can’t all of us be Cobweb Brides, Jen,” said Flor in mild amusement, walking alongside her.

Lizabette, riding in the cart, gave a snort.

Within a half hour they were close to the northern outskirts of town, since Tussecan was not a large place, no matter how it might have seemed the night before when it was bustling with supper-hour traffic and townsfolk. This early in the morning the air seemed crisp and actually bluish with haze, if you squinted to look.

Can air be blue?
Percy thought, as she watched the road and the surrounding red-shingled rooftops from her tall driver’s perch. It certainly seemed colored, or at least tangible somehow, as it swept the chimney smoke to rippling puffs, here and there, as she glanced around.

At last they passed the farthest outlying buildings, and the thoroughfare continued onward past empty fields on both sides, and occasional shrubbery. The sun rose, pale and veiled against the winter white sky, and just ahead of them was the dark shape of the looming Northern Forest. From the distance it looked like a streak of unresolved shadow against the northern horizon, but soon enough, they knew, it would become great trees, predominantly evergreen pine and fir. And then it would surround them.

Occasional young women were seen walking along the road. Some passed them, others—after asking where the cart was headed—dropped to an even walk alongside it.

“It’s safer in a big crowd,” said Percy to one or two of the stranger girls. “If you’re all heading to be Cobweb Brides, you might consider walking with us.”

“Do you know where to go?” asked one young skinny girl-child with a heavy accent, who trudged along the side of the road and stuck to their group.

“Not really,” said Percy calmly. “But we all know it’s somewhere North, inside that forest, and for now there’s this big comfortable road. So, one step at a time.”

“Sounds good to me!” replied the girl, with an olive-dark face and very black doe-eyes, speaking somewhat awkwardly. “I’m Marie, and I’m a’gonna walk with you, if you don’t mind.”

“We don’t mind!” Jenna put in, clapping her mittens together cheerfully.

Marie started at the sound, and Percy immediately felt sympathy for her, frightened and tiny and mousy-dark, in her much-darned poor excuse of a coat.

“Where are you from, Marie?” she asked, to put her at ease.

But the girl seemed to become even more flustered at the question.

“Are you from Letheburg?” Regata asked kindly. “Because that’s where Sibyl and I are from.”

“No . . .” Marie replied after a pause, blinking her eyes nervously. “We—my family lives in Fioren now, but before that, we came from . . . far away.”

“Farther than Duarden? I am from Duarden.” Lizabette said smartly. “It is quite centrally located, you know, in a small but prime area. Because if you keep going you will hit the Silver Court directly, and I doubt, from the looks or sounds of you—no offense—that you are from the Imperial neighborhood.”

“I—I am not from your . . . Realm.”

Most everyone turned to stare at Marie at that point.

“Please . . .” she said, “I hope you don’t mind, I have been living here in Lethe almost two years now—”

“Good heavens!” Lizabette said. “Are you from
Balmue?
Because your speech, that accent, why—”

“I—we came by way of Balmue,” spoke Marie, her voice almost breaking into a whisper at that point, “but that was in the end. First, we came down a big river, I don’t know what you would call it, but we call it
Eridanos—
”

“Gracious, that is in the Kingdom of Serenoa, is it not? One of the four kingdoms of the Domain, the other being Balmue our southern neighbor, and then even more south, and to the east, the Kingdom of Tanathe, and finally on the other side, south-west, the Kingdom of Solemnis.”

“Yes,
Serenoa
,” said Marie, and she pronounced it differently, more liltingly, and again everyone stared.

“Is that where you’re from?” Jenna said in wonder. “What’s it like?”

Marie’s alarm lessened somewhat and a wistful expression replaced her fear. “Beautiful! Yes, Serenoa is beautiful and green, and a little cold on the top, like your Lethe here, but very warm down below. It is the most northern part of the Domain, and the two share a border across the mountains. On the west, Lethe, on the east, Serenoa. But we had to go around, because no one can go over the mountains, so we went down and sailed the river Eridanos, and then crossed into Balmue, then we came back up north.”