Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-101 Page 11

  So began my sojourn in Keenspur House. As the head of the family had warned, few of his kin exerted themselves to show me hospitality. It might have been even more unpleasant if I hadn’t kept to my nocturnal habits, sleeping the mornings away and roaming the mansion late at night, looking for clues that had eluded me before, trying to imagine what had happened on the night of the murder.

  Any huge old pile, no matter how opulent, can turn into a shadowy, echoing, spooky place after the servants turn out the lamps and everyone goes to bed. So it was with the mansion, and perhaps it was that eerie atmosphere that prompted me to recall Venwell’s wide eyes and gaping mouth, and to infer what they actually signified.

  Marissa was wrong. The lad had frozen. Because he’d faced a supernatural assailant, and any man, no matter how well trained a swordsman, can succumb to terror in such circumstances.

  Yet Tregan swore the killing had nothing of the mystical or otherworldly about it, and much as he disliked me, he seemed sincere in his desire to identify the culprit, so what was I to make of that?

  I returned again to the suspicion that the thief dwelled within the mansion. I thought of our search, and one area we’d neglected. Because the family kept it locked, Baltes had the only key, and thus it scarcely seemed a likely or convenient hiding place. It was, moreover, the sort of place folk rarely visit by choice.

  But, though I still possessed no certainties, merely a collection of vague suspicions and intuitions, I decided I wanted to visit it, or at least inspect the entrance. I found an oil lamp that was still burning, lifted it from its sconce, and set off through the hushed, gloomy chambers and corridors. Portraits, busts, and statues seemed to glower as I passed, and suits of plate armor standing on display looked misshapen as ogres.

  Then a pair of figures skulked from the shadows to bar my path.

  It was Dremloc and his crony. Each was only half dressed, with feet bare and shirt unlaced. But despite the inadequacy of their attire, they’d taken the trouble to arm themselves. The flickering yellow light of my lamp gleamed on the smallswords in their hands.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “I’m here to help your family, I’m Lord Baltes’ guest, and if that’s not enough for you, Marissa would take it ill if you harmed me.”

  They didn’t answer, just stalked forward, further into the circle of lamplight, and then I saw what I’d missed before: their eyes were closed.

  Happily, I didn’t freeze, though I admit a chill oozed up my spine. Retreating, I set the lamp down on a table, drew my broadsword, and yelled for help. The Keenspurs spread out to flank me, then rushed in.

  Somnambulism didn’t hinder their swordplay. The slender thrusting blades streaked at me, and I dodged and parried frantically, meanwhile striving to keep either of my opponents from working his way around completely behind me.

  Even if I’d wanted to kill them, I didn’t dare, for fear of their kindred’s retaliation. But neither could I simply defend and defend until one of them got lucky and slipped an attack past my guard. I feinted at the crony’s face, and he jumped back. His retreat bought me a moment to concentrate solely on Dremloc. I parried his next thrust, feinted high, then made a drawing cut to his knee.

  To my relief, the blade sliced his flesh precisely as I’d intended. His leg gave way beneath him, and he fell. But, barring ill fortune, he’d survive and even walk again.

  I heard rushing footsteps as the other youth charged at my back. I spun, parried his thrust, stepped in close, and bashed his jaw with my weapon’s pommel. Bone cracked. He reeled, dropped, and lay motionless, his trance knocked into true insensibility.

  It was then that help finally came rushing into the room, in the persons of Baltes, Tregan, and six of their household guards.

  “By the Goddess,” Baltes said. He wore a robe, nightshirt, and slippers, but, like my assailants, carried a sword—in his case, the sword with the emeralds. “What’s happened?”

  “Milord,” I panted, “I regret this. But I had no choice. Your kinsmen attacked me.”

  “No,” said Dremloc, ashen, voice shaky, clutching at this bloody knee. No longer sleepwalking in any obvious way. “Don’t believe him. We found him looking at that jade statuette yonder as if mustering the nerve to pocket it. We told him to leave it alone, and he drew on us.”

  The fabrication startled me, and it took me a moment to reply. “That isn’t so. You and your kinsman were sleepwalking. Possessed, or under some sort of spell. You attacked me.”

  Despite the pain of his wound, Dremloc managed a laugh. “That’s stupid. Wyler and I were drinking and playing at knucklebones in my room. We got hungry, came downstairs to raid the larder, and found this Blue whoreson looking shifty.”

  “If that was the reason you left your quarters,” I said, “would you have brought your swords? The same influence that controlled you before is tampering with your memory.”

  Baltes looked to Tregan. “Tell me,” the Keenspur leader said, “if there can possibly be any truth to this.”

  “As you wish,” the warlock said. He closed his eyes, murmured under his breath, swept his hands through mystic passes, and swayed from side to side. The darkness flowed and thickened around us, and a bitter taste stung my tongue.

  Tregan opened his eyes once more. “There was no magic involved.”

  “No!” I said. “Somehow, you’re mistaken.” I pivoted toward Baltes. “Milord, do you truly believe I’d steal from you, when you already offered me gold, and I refused it? Is it likely I’d pick a fight where the odds were against me, in a house full of my adversaries’ kin? Or that I’d be the one to cry for help if I did?”

  Baltes scowled. “Perhaps it was simply ill will and folly that made the three of you brawl, and no one has the courage to admit it.”

  “No, Uncle,” Dremloc said. “I swear, it happened as I told you.”

  Meanwhile, I made the corresponding assertion in different words.

  “Master Selden,” Baltes said, “I suspected no good would come of having you here, and you’ve proved me right. In other circumstances, I might be inclined to punish you for it. But Pivar and the other Blues—former Blues, I should say—hold you in esteem, the wedding is only two days hence, and I’m loath to do anything that might stir the old animosities. So just get out.”

  “Milord,” I said, “I was about to follow up on an idea when all this happened. Apparently, our unknown enemy somehow discerned my intent, and used Dremloc and Wyler to stop me. That must mean the notion has something to it. I beg you—”

  Baltes’ hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “I’ve had enough of your foolishness! Go now, or I won’t answer for your safety.”

  I looked at all the Keenspurs and Keenspur servants glaring back at me, and I went.

  Afterward, I resolved to put the affair behind me. Since Baltes had discharged me, it was no longer any of my concern, and I’d been lucky to come out of it with my skin intact. But I’d never had much of a knack for minding my own business, and after a morning of moping and grumbling around my school, I went to see Pivar.

  He’d already heard I’d disgraced myself among the Keenspurs, but received me anyway, for the sake of the services I’d rendered him in the past. I told him my side of the story, and couldn’t judge if he credited it or not.

  “I’m glad you escaped unharmed,” he said, sitting on a marble bench in the conservatory where he often received callers, if their rank and business was such that formality was unnecessary. Sunlight streamed through the high windows, and the scent of verdure tinged the air. “But you can’t let go of it, can you?”

  I grinned. “You understand my foibles, milord.”

  “Well enough to realize you’re here because you want something of me. What?”

  “Can you tell me about the early years of the feuding? It was already well underway when I first came to Mornedealth, and I never bothered to learn the details.”

  “I don’t see the point of your learning them now, but all right. I have
time to chat for half a candlemark or so.”

  Some of what he told me, I did, in fact, already know. How the factions began as supporters of one or another racing team, silly as that seemed. But eventually the talk turned to a wizard named Yshan Keenspur.

  “He was their House mage before Tregan,” Pivar said, “from which you can guess that he was an older man. That, in turn, might lead you to imagine him as a prudent, cool-headed fellow who would try to prevent the rise of the factions, but you’d be wrong. He was one of the instigators, as rabid and bloody-minded a Green as ever was. Perhaps he simply had a choleric temperament, or saw it as a way to increase his family’s power. Or maybe he dabbled in Dark Magic, and it twisted his mind. There were rumors, but then there always are, whenever a sorcerer is disliked.”

  “What became of him?” I asked.

  “For all his powers, he came to grief in a street brawl, when three Blues set on him at once. He died trying to lay a curse on us. But so what? It happened long ago.”

  “Maybe not long enough.” I explained my suspicions, to the extent I understood them myself.

  Pivar shook his head. “You realize, the Greens—the Keenspurs, I mean—would find this allegation even more offensive than anything you’ve suggested hitherto.”

  “I suppose.”

  “On top of that, it doesn’t actually explain the theft of the tiara. According to your postulations, the culprit took it to rekindle the hatred between Green and Blue. But why would anyone anticipate that it would have that result?” He smiled a humorless smile. “Even if, somehow, that’s how it’s working out.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I have figured out what we ought to do next.” I told him.

  “No,” he said at once. “If I insulted Baltes and his kin with such a proposal, it could shatter the peace for good and all.”

  “Something dangerous is lurking in Keenspur House,” I said, “and you’re about to send your daughter to live there.”

  “But not immediately. She’ll marry there, but she and Baltes will spend their wedding night, and the following week, at his hunting lodge. Even if your wild hunch is right, that buys us some time. Let’s get the bride and groom wed, our two houses united. Then, perhaps, you and I can broach this matter, if you still deem it necessary.”

  It was the best he had to offer, so I tried to rest content with it. I failed.

  Every great house employs dozens of servants, but when it hosts a wedding, even they aren’t enough. The steward, cook, and groundskeeper all have to hire extra help, and accordingly, nobody expects to recognize everyone he sees.

  Thus, clad as a common laborer, my grizzled brown hair stained black as Marissa’s, with my sword, a pry bar, and a lantern hidden in a sack, I found it easy enough to slip back into Keenspur House. I then skulked to the one quiet precinct of the mansion, a chapel where a few votive candles glowed before icons, and stone stairs descended into the earth.

  I lit the lantern, strapped on my sword, and headed down. Before long, I came to a door of vertical iron bars. It was locked, but the fact did little to allay my suspicions. Magic that could turn sleeping men into puppets could likely manipulate a lock as well. I broke it with my lever and continued on.

  The steps debouched into dank crypts, festooned with webs the spiders spun to snare the beetles, and smelling faintly of incense, embalmer’s spice, and rot. The lesser Keenspurs lay behind graven plaques in the walls. The principal lords and ladies had their own private vaults, where stone sarcophagi, the lids often sculpted into likenesses of the occupants, reposed on pedestals in the center.

  I assumed Yshan had rated one of the latter, and found him quickly. If his marble likeness could be trusted, he’d possessed the sharp features characteristic of his line, honed beyond the point of gauntness. It gave him a look of fanaticism and spite, which the sculptor had accentuated by rendering him with glaring eyes and a scowl instead of the usual expression of serenity.

  I inspected the lid of the sarcophagus, trying to discern whether anyone—or anything—had opened it recently. I couldn’t tell. Not unless I opened it myself.

  Assuming I could. It looked damnably heavy for a lone man to shift. But I meant to try. I set the lantern down, then, with a dry mouth and sweat starting beneath my arms, tried to work the pry bar into the crack between cover and box. The iron tool scraped the stone.

  The lid flew up and to the side, like the cover of a book, straight at me.

  It could have shattered my bones, but my reflexes jerked me backward, and perhaps that robbed the impact of some of its force. Even so, the sculpted marble slab slapped me like a giant’s hand, knocking me into the wall. I fell, and the lid fell with me, crashing down on top of my legs.

  Meanwhile, Yshan, who had, by dint of either magic or prodigious strength, flung his graven image at me, reared up from the sarcophagus. He was relatively intact. The embalmers had evidently done their work well, and his box had protected him from rats and worms. But his face was shriveled, flaking, and streaked with black leakage. His right eye had gone milky, while the left had crumbled inward. A few slimy strings stretched across the vacant socket.

  He held a sword, and the glow of the lantern just sufficed to reveal a thick layer of grease coating the blade. When I saw it, I finally comprehended all that had eluded me before.

  But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Not with the dead thing stepping out of the coffin, and my legs pinned. I struggled to free myself, and managed to drag my feet out from under the lid.

  Just in time. Yshan’s sword flashed at my head, and I flung myself out of range. It was the only move that could have saved me, but it put the dead man between me and the doorway. Now, I had no choice but to fight.

  I scrambled up and snatched for the sword at my side. Yshan cut at me, and I parried.

  The impact jolted my arm, and his weapon nearly smashed through my guard. He was as unnaturally strong as I’d feared.

  In other circumstances, wary of his might, I might have fought defensively. But if I hung back, it would give him the chance to cast spells, and I feared that even more than the force of his blows. So I attacked hard whenever I was able.

  I drove my point into his chest, but it didn’t balk him even for an instant. Why should it, when he was already dead, his vital organs still and rotting? The only effect was to trap my blade. He whirled a backhand cut at my face. I ducked beneath it and yanked my sword free.

  He cut down at my head. Still in a crouch, I just managed to parry, and once again, his stroke nearly hammered through my guard, almost broke my grip on the hilt of my blade.

  But not quite, and I discerned that he’d struck with such ferocity as to shift himself off balance. I straightened up, feinted, deceived his awkward attempt at a parry, and slashed his one remaining eye from its socket.

  He snarled like a beast, exposing yellow teeth and dark, oozing gums. But he didn’t falter as most any mortal creature would have done. Instead, he struck back immediately, and his aim was as accurate as before.

  As I dodged, I thought, a hit to the vitals hadn’t stopped him, nor had blindness. What if nothing could? I struggled to quash the panic welling up in my mind.

  I opened my guard a hair, praying that he’d think it an error, not the invitation, the trap, it truly was. That he’d make a particular indirect attack I’d noticed he favored. It seemed likely. It was a combination well suited to exploiting the seeming defect in my defense.

  His arm extended, and I immediately stepped forward and to the side, without waiting to see where his blade was actually going. If I’d guessed wrong, it had an excellent chance of winding up in my guts.

  But I hadn’t. He made the move I expected, I avoided it, and placed myself on his flank in the process, surprising him. Before he could pivot to threaten me anew, I gripped my hilt with both hands and cut with all my might.

  I didn’t quite lop off his sword hand. But I shattered the wrist bones and left it hanging useless.

  Yshan
reached to shift his weapon to his off hand, but I was faster. I beat the greasy blade and knocked the hilt from his now-feeble grip. The sword clanked on the floor.

  Even then, with his terrible strength and resistance to pain and injury, he might have gotten the better of me if he’d simply assailed me like a wrestler. But he hesitated, and I cut at his leg. My sword bit deep, he fell, and I attacked the same spot twice more, until I was certain I’d done enough damage to keep him from getting up.

  Then I concentrated on his head, driving stroke after stroke into his skull while avoiding his flailing hand. Finally he collapsed and lay motionless.

  I studied the mangled, seemingly inert carcass for a few heartbeats, then turned and strode toward the exit.

  At my back, a harsh voice hissed rhyming words.

  The patch of floor beneath me turned to soft muck, treacherous as quicksand. I sank to my knees in an instant, and as I floundered, Yshan began a second incantation, no doubt to finish me off while the ooze held me helpless.

  I cast about, spied the open sarcophagus, and tossed my broadsword into it. Then I stretched out my arms, and, straining, succeeded in hooking my fingertips over the lip of the stone receptacle. I heaved with all my strength, and dragged myself up and out of the sucking slime. In the process, I noticed the tiara lying inside the coffin, not that I cared anymore.

  I grabbed my sword and leaped at Yshan.

  Some shapeless phosphorescent thing was rippling into full existence above him, but it vanished when I cut into his chin and silenced his conjuration. I finished removing his jaw, severed his head, cut the tongue out, and hacked off his fingers. Afterward, I still wasn’t certain he was altogether dead, but reasonably confident I’d deprived him of the ability to cast any more spells.

  That should have been the end of it. But I hurried back the way I’d come because I feared it wasn’t.

  Practitioners of Dark Magic don’t always pass from the world as easily as normal folk, especially if they leave a dying curse behind. While the feud between the Greens and Blues raged, Yshan had apparently rested easy. But the prospect of peace roused him, and he resolved to avert it.