Death Comes To All (Book 1) (38 page)

He
walked over to the bed, which was covered with a thin sheet of the
strange, unknown material he had seen covering everything downstairs.
He slowly removed the sheet, careful not to get any of the dust that
coated it on the mattress underneath. Once the mattress was
uncovered, he dumped his gear on top of it.

I’ll
leave my things here until I’ve had a chance to clean the rest
of the room,
he decided.

Obviously
his companions had only cleaned the rooms they were staying in. There
hadn't been nearly that much dust in the room that Raine was using or
in any of the hallways.

Aside
from the bed, there was very little in the room. There was a small
stand that sat next to the head of the bed. Like the bed, this small
table was also covered with a sheet. Unlike the cheerful colors of
the downstairs rooms he had seen, the walls of this room were painted
a dull, flat white.

There
were two paintings in the room, one on the wall to the left and one
on the right wall opposite it. Bane couldn't tell what they were
under the layer of dust that coated them. There was also another
small door along the back of the wall to his left, likely leading to
a closet of some sort, he assumed. Along the right wall was a small
brick fireplace.

He
ran the back of his hand over the glass that protected one of the
paintings, revealing a portrait of a young woman in a long, mint
green dress. She was sitting on some sort of bench, which was
completely white, and swung freely on an iron chain. The woman's dark
hair hung passed her shoulders, falling across her ample bosom.

Could
this be a portrait of a real woman who had once lived in this very
home, or did she only live in the artist's imagination,
he
wondered
.
Either way, the woman portrayed was
exceptionally beautiful.

Raine
came to the door a moment later, carrying a small bundle in her
hands. "I've brought you clean sheets, a blanket, and two
pillows," she started, then glanced around the room.

"I
forgot just how much dust was in the unused rooms," she
commented. "There's a straw broom downstairs that you can use to
clean up. It's in a closet in the back of the kitchen. There are also
a few rags there that you can use to dust off everything else in
here. I don't know if you want to do that now or wait until after we
eat, but I would recommend you clean things up a bit before you go to
bed tonight. Do you want to get the firewood from Raiste's room now?"

Bane
shook his head. It wasn't really all that cold yet, in his opinion.
He had gotten used to traveling outside in the elements. In here,
where the wind couldn't reach him, it didn't feel cold at all. Most
likely he would close the window before going to sleep that night,
but he didn't think he would need much else.

"Is
there any sort of lamps or lanterns in here?" he asked instead.
The sun had gone down completely by this point, and though the light
from the moon shone brightly into the window, he knew it was only a
matter of time before it had moved on, plunging the entire room in a
blanketing darkness. He would need some form of lighting before that
happened.

"The
people who lived here before must have used some other form of
lighting," she answered. "Possibly some of the technology
from ancient times that no longer works. I don't really know. When
Raiste first came here he added the oil lamps downstairs, and I had
put one in my room when I came. We'll have to put one here in this
room too, now that you're here. I don't know if we'll be able to get
to that tonight. We should probably get you that firewood after all.
Even if you don't need it for the heat, it can still provide you
enough light to see by."

Bane
had no other choice but to agree. They had too much to do that night
before they could sleep as it was. He followed Raine to the end of
the hall, where she had said Raiste slept. The inside of Raiste's
room was not much different than his own, though not nearly as much
dust. A large stack of firewood, small logs that would easily fit
into the small fireplaces that seemed to be in each of the bedrooms,
was placed next to the fireplace. Bane took about half of the logs,
surely enough for a few days, and brought them back to his own room.

Raine,
who had left him once she was certain that he had found what he
needed, met him at the door to his room. She carried a small bottle
of fish oil in one hand, the same that they had used in the lamps
that now lit the rooms downstairs, and a handful of dried grass to
use as tinder in the other. Undoubtedly his companions had kept a
supply of the precious oil stored away, awaiting their return.

Once
Bane had placed a number of the logs in the fireplace she poured a
small amount of the oil over the top of the logs and put the tinder
underneath the pile. Bane took out his knife, cut several small chips
of wood out of one of the remaining logs, and handed them over to
her. These she placed over the tinder. Once the tinder caught fire it
would catch the smaller pieces of wood and, with the aid of the oil,
the fire underneath should not have any trouble lighting the rest. As
dry as the firewood was, she knew it would not go out once she lit
it.

"If
you're not going to clean in here now, you might as well wait until
you are ready to start working in here before lighting it,"
Raine suggested. "Otherwise it will just be burning in here
without any real reason."

"I
think I'll wait until after I eat to start cleaning," he replied
after giving it a moments thought. "I'm starving!"

Raine
laughed. "Well, I'm sure that Raiste probably has dinner ready
by now."

The
two of them went downstairs, Raine leading the way. When Bane walked
into the living room he noticed a definite difference between this
room and the others he had been in. The walls were dark brown, made
to mimic hardwood, though Bane could see that it was clearly made of
some other substance.

The
fireplace, a huge structure of dark red brick, was easily three times
the size of the fireplaces in the bedrooms upstairs. Bane wondered
where the smoke from all those separate fireplaces went. He had only
seen two smokestacks from outside, but admittedly he hadn't really
been looking for them.

Like
the rest of the rooms he had been in, the floors seemed to be made of
shining, heavily waxed wood, or a very good imitation of it. In this
room there didn't appear to be any dust on the floors at all. Bane
spied a broom in one corner, leaning lightly against the wall.

Raiste
must have already swept up in here while we were upstairs,
he
thought.

Several
chairs lined the walls, each boasting a small table between one and
the next. Near the center of the room, facing the fireplace, was a
large, brown leather sofa. Directly in front of the fireplace lay a
bearskin rug, made from the skin of a massive white animal.

That
thing is huge!

At
first Bane thought the coat of the animal must have been dyed that
color, but then he recalled one of the lessons his mother had taught
him. Far in the north such creatures actually existed. He just barely
remembered that lesson; he had not really paid much attention to it
at the time.

While
she had said they were larger than any other bear alive, she had also
said that they lived in the frozen wastes at the very top of the
world. He never planned on traveling to such lands, so never expected
to actually see one. He didn't think it was a lesson he would ever
need to remember, and was surprised that he recalled it now.

Could
this be one of those monsters,
he wondered?

The
creature's head was still attached, and glass eyes stared vacantly
from its skull, frozen in time forever. Claws, nearly as long as his
fingers, protruded from paws as large as his head.

Surely
whoever had killed such an amazing beast must have been a great
warrior indeed.

Above
the fireplace hung a thick spear, perhaps nine feet long overall,
with a foot long, teardrop shaped blade on the end. Two additional
blades stood sentinel from the base of the spear tip, reminding him
of the horns that sat upon his father's head. Bane understood what
the two blades on either side of the main tip were for, though he was
not sure how he knew it.

They
are for holding fast whatever the hunter hits with his spear, so a
fast moving, heavy animal can’t ride up the spear and gore the
man behind it.

"I'm
afraid there's not much variety in our dinner tonight," Raiste
said as they walked in.

He
gestured to a spit that sat over the fire. From it a small pot on a
hook hung from one side, and the carcass of some unknown animal was
impaled on the other.

"I've
made a vegetable stew for Bane and I from the food that Raine had
bought. I also took out one of the salted pork pieces for you, Raine.
I know you had hoped to save them, but we didn't have enough time to
hunt tonight, and you need to eat something. I tried not to use too
much of it," he added apologetically.

"Thank
you," she said simply. "I would have suggested the pork if
you hadn't already started it. Tomorrow I'll do some fishing, and
maybe a bit of hunting. Are those salt barrels still in the back of
the kitchen?"

"Yes,
and we didn't even have to worry about there being any bad meat in
them. It looked like something got into them while we were gone, and
whatever meat was inside is gone now. That's a blessing really. If
anything had been left, we might have had to throw away the entire
barrel. We can safely store whatever meat we take, enough to last us
through the winter.

"Bane,
tomorrow I'm going to show you some of the various edible plants
around here. You've already seen the orange grove, and that's in the
farthest reaches of the lands where I've found fields that were once
cultivated. I'm not sure if the orange grove was part of this estate,
but I do know that several things were once grown around here, much
of it in the immediate vicinity. I'll show you things that are close,
and we can go out to the orange fields the day after. There are
literally hundreds of mason jars down in the basement. I think that
the people who live here bottled their own produce, or they had
servants who did that for them anyway. Regardless of what they used
them for originally, we can still use the jars they left behind."

Bane's
first bite of the amazing stew made him once again think of something
his mother had said to him. "A stew is only as good as the
spices you put in it," she had said.

Raiste
had certainly learned that lesson somewhere along the way. The
vegetables in the stew were nothing out of the ordinary, however the
spices that his friend had added fit together in a perfect blend.

Raine
seemed to be enjoying the pork just as much as he was the stew,
though Bane had no idea if the meat was heavily spiced or not. The
group hadn't been using many spices before their trip to the city. It
seemed that Raine must have purchased enough to last them through the
winter when she did her shopping. Why his companions waited this long
to use the spices was beyond him.

Perhaps
they just didn’t feel like rummaging through the packs to find
them while we were traveling,
he guessed. Regardless of the
reasons, he appreciated those spices now.

Trick
joined Raine in her meal. The small creature had been hidden from
Bane's sight since they had first arrived. It had flown in the door
when Raiste opened it and had disappeared. Now that there was food
available their little friend joined them, laying along the back of
the leather couch right behind Raine's head.

From
time to time as she ate she would feed him small pieces that she
broke off for him. There was certainly enough to go around for now,
and Bane was certain that they would have more coming in the next
day. Raine would either go hunting or fishing, while Raiste showed
him places to gather food he could eat. He was certain that the woman
would bring something in.

She
hasn’t failed yet anyway.

Once
he was finished eating, Bane grabbed the broom from where it sat in
the living room corner and headed upstairs to his room. The moon was
still shining into his room slightly, enough that he could make out
the outline of the furniture and the fireplace at least. A moment
later, with a quick strike of steel to flint, he had a merry little
blaze going.

The
light wasn't as bright as he would have liked, but it was enough for
him to clean up a little. He could take care of anything he missed
the next day, once the sunlight outside provided better lighting. He
quickly swept as much of the dust as he could into a little pan,
emptying it out the window each time it was full. After he had loaded
the pan over a dozen times, he decided that he had removed enough of
the dust that he could sleep there for the night.

I
can clean more tomorrow.

Putting
his bags on the floor, he fitted the sheet to the bed, placing the
blanket over the foot of the mattress. He was fairly certain that he
wouldn't need the blanket that night. The fire, small as it was, had
heated up the room quite well. Even with the open window it was still
warmer than he was comfortable with. Still, he was certain that
sleeping in a bed after spending so much time traveling was going to
be more comfortable than what he had gotten used to, regardless of
the temperature.