Eventide (Meratis Trilogy Book 2) (39 page)

Nothing seemed important enough to talk about, and the subjects that were most important were off the table. Grief and anticipation hung heavy like fog in the air, muting sounds and dulling voices, and it was easier to sit in silence and hope that something came to answer the millions of festering questions.

When she wasn’t with them, Venn disappeared—to the stables, Jeff suspected, although he never went down to find out—and he and Cassie retreated to his room, losing themselves in each other for whatever time allowed. Although they had an escape route, there was no guarantee it would get them home in time. And even if it did, they were holding onto a fool’s hope that Andvell’s ending would be a happy one.

On the second day, Jeff took some time to himself to return to the library. The room had remained empty since Brady’s removal, no one ready to face the reality, but Jeff didn’t feel he could avoid it any longer. He craved the peace only a library could offer, and hoped some of Brady’s wisdom and reason might remain, infused in the books he loved so much.

When he entered, he felt a shock at the sigh of someone standing in the window. The shock faded to disappointment once he recognised William.

“Sorry,” said the younger man. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” Jeff assured him. “I just thought for a moment you were Brady standing there.”

William smiled, but Jeff saw the grief in his brown eyes, and the disappointment melted into sympathy. “I could never take his spot. This room won’t be the same without him.”

Jeff walked over to the desk and poured two cups of wine, handing one to William. “You managed to get away from your mother?”

William nodded. “I understand why she wants us home, but I needed a few minutes to myself. Life has changed a lot in the last week.”

“I hear you’re an enchanter,” said Jeff. “Is that the right word? Sorcerer? Wizard?”

William chuckled. “Enchanter is fine. I’ll make it work. Better than being associated with Raul in anyway.” He chewed on the side of his thumb. “I hope we hear something soon. The waiting is awful.”

Jeff couldn’t agree with him more, but he also worried that when the news did come he wouldn’t like what he heard.

“I’d better get back before mum starts to worry.”

“Take care of her,” said Jeff. “And, difficult as it is to do, have hope. We might win.”

William smiled again, a brief flash before his grief fell on him again. He took a last look and then left Jeff to his memories.

***

Later that night, just as the moon reached its apex, shouts started from somewhere in the Keep. After forty-eight hours of quiet, the sudden noise came as a shock, and Jeff jumped up from a restless sleep, his heart banging against his ribs. Cassie awoke as well, and they both froze.

Cassie reacted first, throwing off the sheets and hurrying into her clothes. She left the corset off, not wanting to bother with the laces, and grabbed one of Jasmine’s borrowed jackets instead to keep the midnight dampness out. Jeff followed her lead, tripping over his pantlegs in his haste.

Together they left the room and ran towards the shouting. There was no sound of battle to accompany the distress calls, and Jeff wondered if Raul was up to his old tricks, turning water into blood or straw into snakes.

Two young men in white tore down the corridor, looking over their shoulders. When they saw Jeff and Cassie, they stopped. “The death hall. Something is—gods, help!”

Jeff immediately thought of Brady and picked up his pace, his thighs burning with the unusual exercise. Cassie far outpaced him, and by the time they reached the hall, he was panting and out of breath.

Maggie stood in the doorway, presumably coming from the Haunt when she heard the shouts, and Venn stood next to her, looking out of place in all her blackness next to the white room with the white sheets and corpses in white pants and tunics.

Cassie jerked to a halt, letting out a gasp.

Jeff approached last. Four aides crowded together near the wall, murmuring to each other and pointing at the table in the middle of the room.

Where Brady had just sat up.

Chapter Twenty-Four

J
eff couldn’t help but jump and yell a loud series of curses at the sight of his friend rising from the dead. Through the lens of terror he could only see the walking corpses in the woods: the greying skin, the second black mouth across the neck, the milky eyes.

It took a moment for his vision to clear, and his brain to process the truth. Brady didn’t look like he’d been dead for two days. His skin was pale, but a faint flush of life still ran beneath the surface. His eyes were white, but not rotting, just rolled back in his head like he was about to have another seizure. His chapped lips moved with soundless words; not in any shapes Jeff recognised, but in a language all his own. Dressed in white, the scholar looked like a ghost.

A solid ghost, and one that apparently had somewhere to be.

Within seconds of raising himself out of the death shroud, he swung his legs over the side of the table and hopped down.

“Brady?” Jeff called.

He got no reaction. The scholar didn’t seem to have heard him, striding towards the door, his lips still moving.

“I don’t get it. Is he dead?” Jeff asked, unsure if he should be thrilled or terrified.

Maggie shook her head, her curls bobbing around her face. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He’s so limber. I think—” she hesitated, watched Brady strode past them. “The ritual. It must have worked!”

“What do we do?” Cassie asked, her face as white as Brady’s, her eyes large and scared.

“Go back to our rooms and get some sleep?” Jeff suggested, too awestruck to bother keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. “Follow him!”

They did, growing more curious and amazed as Brady hurried through the Keep, never missing a step in spite of his bare feet on ragged stones. They kept their distance, but soon it was difficult to keep up, his pace was so quick.

“He was dead, right?” Jeff asked Maggie.

“Definitely. I had the physician confirm it.”

“So this isn’t Brady?” Cassie asked.

They reached the front door and hurried after him down the stairs.

“It’s him,” said Maggie, her breath short with the exertion. “In order for the ritual to work, the one who performs it has to clear their mind of everything they are. Talfyr’s mind would take up too much space. When Brady died, the connection was made. It probably just took a few days for his body to catch up.”

“So is there anything of Brady left?” asked Jeff, still not sure how to feel about this development.

They crossed the bridge and continued to follow as Brady went into the stables.

Inside, the horses spooked. They reared up and screamed with terror at this half-ghost half-man in their midst.

The other four remained in the doorway, afraid of being trampled if any of the horses got loose. From his vantage point, Jeff could see the only animal to stay calm was Corsa, Corey’s white stallion.

Was it because he’d already been exposed to the walking dead, and recognised Brady as something different? Did it have something to do with the words Brady kept mumbling? Curiosity tore at Jeff’s patience, making him want to march up and give the scholar’s shoulders a sharp shake until he woke up and could tell them what the hell was going on.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said.

Jeff had to pull his attention away from Brady to remember he had asked her a question.

She sighed. “Maybe there is and they’ll find a way to share the space. If not…”

Jeff heard the unspoken words. It was possible his friend’s revival was only temporary. Once again Talfyr waking up in response to Raul’s magic.

Brady had led Corsa out of his stall and pulled himself up, bareback. They had to jump out of the way to keep from being run down as the stallion flew out, racing out of the courtyard towards the gate.

Cassie and Venn ran into the stable while Jeff and Maggie stayed at the doorway, watching Brady leave.

“You have to go after him,” said Maggie.

“I know,” Jeff replied, not relishing the necessity, but feeling a certain excitement creep up at the same time.

Maggie untied a leather pouch from her belt and placed it in Jeff’s hand. Jeff recognized it from six months ago when she’d unleashed the contents to bind the bear that had almost killed Jayden. The same binding spell that had almost smothered him on her front porch. He still remembered the way the blue smoke had clung to him, climbed up his body to restrain and choke him.

“Just in case,” she said. “Aim well.”

Cassie and Venn emerged from the stables, Venn riding Brady’s piebald and Cassie on the same mount she’d ridden from the palace. Between them, she lead Swish forward by his tether.

“Jeff, come on!”

“What are you doing?” Jeff demanded, growing flustered. “We can’t ride them like that. I’ll fall off!”

“If we saddle them, we’ll lose him,” Venn urged. She started to ride ahead and, after handing Swish off to Jeff, Cassie followed.

He tossed his head towards Swish, not sure which part of him was screaming louder—to pursue Brady, or to keep both feet on the ground.

“I’ll give you a boost,” said Maggie.

As much as he hated to accept her help, the other women were soon out of sight, leaving him little choice. He jumped, and between Maggie shoving and him heaving, he succeeded in finding his seat in very little time. Giving credit to Swish, the gelding remained still as Jeff floundered, pawing at the ground in his eagerness to leave. As soon as Jeff’s butt hit his back, the bay set off, catching up with Cassie and Venn at the gate.

Brady was already a dot in the distance, but in the moonlight, the white horse shone like a beacon, and the horses followed without trouble.

With the fast pace and the rough road, without any padding between his behind and Swish’s back, conversation was out of the question. Jeff could only concentrate on hanging on.

He couldn’t tell southwest from northeast to save his life, but Jeff had no doubts about where they were headed. What he couldn’t piece together was how the fuck Brady could come back from two days without a pulse and stay mounted as Corsa galloped at a pace he wouldn’t have believed possible in a beast not owned by one of the apocalyptic horsemen.

They rode without stopping until Swish was a sweating wreck between Jeff’s legs. Eventually even Corsa, who until that point had acted possessed by the same spirit wearing Brady’s body, waned, and the gallop eased to a canter and then to a trot, and finally they walked.

“How long is the ride from here into the mountains?” he asked Venn.

The three of them rode abreast in the wide lane, Brady a few metres ahead.

Venn considered, swivelling in her seat to take in the sights around them—the few unburnt homesteads that appeared, the barns, the country chapel—and said, “Two days. At a slow pace. But I’m pretty sure we’re already halfway there.”

“He’s in quite the rush,” Cassie said, watching Brady.

Jeff grimaced. “I don’t know if I want to find out the reason.”

Once Corsa had cooled and rested, horse and undead rider took off again. It took a bit more urging to get Swish and the others to follow the second time, but eventually they all flew down the road.

As the road curved to the east, the mountains appeared in the distance: grey, ominous, and snow-capped. Yet from down below they looked peaceful and not the site of any great war over the world’s future. The few villagers they passed greeted them with unease, no doubt wary of strangers after the carnage that had happened so close to their own strip of the country. Especially so soon after the army must have passed through.

Jeff longed for a meat pie. His stomach gurgled and grumbled, cramped and twisted, and as they headed for a full day without eating, he wondered what sort of shape they’d all be in when they arrived at their destination. But as neither Venn nor Cassie complained, he pressed his lips together and bore it with an attempt at the same stoicism.

By the time the sun dropped behind the mountains, they had reached the base of a path. Brady drew to a stop, and the others followed suit behind him.

“We’re not riding up that,” Jeff pleaded. He looked at the ragged rocky trail that cut through the side of the mountain, lining the edge of the drop down the side and sometimes appearing vertical.

As if in answer to his question, Brady dismounted and started up on foot.

“Nope,” said Venn, in actual answer to his question. “We’re walking it.”

She and Cassie dismounted, tethering the horses to an apple tree.

At least the horses will be fed. And happy. And safe.
Jeff wondered where the Feldallian army had left their mounts, and guessed they were all stabled in the nearby village. Where he was beginning to wish he had stayed. He gulped and slid off Swish, legs wobbling and thighs screaming with stiffness. His tailbone felt bruised, and he walked with a bowlegged gait until the muscles worked themselves out.

They tied the horses with the rest, and then started up the road.