3

“How am I supposed to understand when you say so many words all at once?” Rinda complained. Suni had quickly tired of being the proper student—or perhaps she was upset that Rinda, in typical royal fashion, had showed a great deal of enthusiasm for teaching Suni the language of Parros, but had made no attempt to learn Suni’s tongue. Rinda soon despaired of the lessons. For a moment the two girls glared at each other, exasperated—then both broke into wails of laughter.

“I wish I had the Tongue of the Magi! Then I could speak any language I wanted to without all this fuss,” Rinda exclaimed. Suni sat down at her feet, looking up with undisguised curiosity at her pearl-white skin, platinum blond hair, and tall, slender frame.

It seemed that the first impromptu language lesson had ended in failure, so Rinda changed tactics to the more direct approach of body language.

“Where,” said Rinda slowly, pointing at Suni,“did you come from?” She pointed vaguely beyond the walls of their cell.

Suni tilted her head inquisitively, uneven locks of hair falling across her face, and then began to chatter and wave her hands. After numerous attempts, Rinda finally understood that Suni and a number of other Sem had been found by some of the keep knights as they were standing on a small sandbank in the middle of the Kes. Crossbow shots had killed several of them on the spot, while the knights had tied the rest of them in a line and dragged them away to the keep. As to why Suni and the other Sem had been in the river in the first place, Rinda could only assume that they were following some barbaric custom and hunting whatever nastinesses lived in the black waters that flowed through the wildlands.

Suni began to wave her arms again, this time seeming to indicate that others of her kind had been captured in this way by the knights many times before.

“You’re the first Sem I’ve ever met, Suni,” said Rinda, “so I don’t know everything about you, but I’m pretty sure that those lands beyond the Kes are what we call the real Marches, where all sorts of dark happenings go on, and the only god is Doal, who is evil incarnate! Is it not so?”

Suni gave Rinda a bewildered look, shaking her head.

“The Gohrans are our enemies, too,” continued Rinda, evidently not caring if she was understood. “They invaded Parros, and crushed the crystal city under their boots, ripping the silken curtains from our walls with their barbarous hands! There’s no way you could know this, Suni, so I’ll tell you. We— myself and my brother Remus, the heir to the throne of Parros—we stood there, holding on to each other for dear life as the black knights, the blue knights, and the red knights of Gohra cut down the palace guards. Then… then they slew our father, King Aldross—he was a peaceful scholar, and high priest of Janos! We saw them all fall and drown in a sea of blood.”

“Then Boganne, who had been our wet nurse, and Minister Riya came running up,” Rinda continued without pause. “And they told us that now, we were Parros’s last hope… last hope, Suni! Remus and I ran through the halls of the Crystal Palace—everywhere it was full of smoke—and then we came to a place we had always been forbidden to enter—the Spire of Janos!

“Boganne and Riya were in such a hurry, they kept rushing us, I remember, until we came to the Crystal Throne there underneath the spire. Then Riya reached out his hand just as the red knights came into the room, and one of them stuck his sword into Boganne’s chest, shouting ‘I’ve got them, the head of the prince of Parros is mine,’ and I grabbed onto Remus and we were falling—

“And then, I know you’re not going to believe me, Suni, but we were falling, and everything was dark, and I could hear Minister Riya shouting, ‘The grid has gone mad! Pity, great Jarn, pity on us!’ but he sounded so far away, and—”

Rinda stopped to catch her breath. “When we came to,” she continued at last, “Remus and I were lying on our stomachs in the underbrush near the Roodspring! Count Vanon said it was the work of black magic, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know what happened… I don’t know how Remus and I found ourselves running for our lives through the smoky halls of the Crystal Palace one moment, and out in the Marches—in the lands of Gohra—the next!

“Not that this made our lives easier in the least, Suni! Why, Remus and I had no idea where we were, even that we were in the Marches—we spent two whole nights with only prickly vasya bushes for a bed. We ate vasya berries and licked dew off the grass. It was only because we overheard some black knights passing nearby that we found out we were in the Roodwood Marches, the outskirts of the Mongauli archduke’s domain, and as close to the spirit-lands as we’d ever care to be. We found out that the black knights were riders on patrol from Stafolos Keep.”

“We were lucky, really,” Rinda admitted. “To survive two whole nights in the Roodwood—and then just when it seemed the black knights had caught us, that’s when Guin appeared. A leopard-headed warrior, straight out of legend—he only remembered his name, and a single word… ‘Aurra.’ Nothing else—”

Rinda’s mouth snapped shut.

A sudden change had come over Suni’s face. She abruptly stood up, wavering unsteadily, and held her hands out in front of her almost as though she were begging for mercy. Then she screamed.

“Aurra, Aurra! Aurra!”

“What is it?” Rinda exclaimed, bending over the little girl. “You know that word, ‘Aurra’? Tell me! What—or who—is ‘Aurra ? Do you know him? Do you know Guin?”

“Alphetto, reeni, imeeyaru!” Suni screamed. Rinda could not understand the language of the Sem, but the way these words were spoken made their meaning clear: “Alphetto-god, save me!”

“Suni, really!” Rinda said sternly, but then she saw how frightened the little Sem girl was and bit her lip. If this word “Aurra” alone was enough to strike fear into a Sem, what could its terrible meaning be? What fate could have left Guin with his memory robbed of all but that one word? Whatever it was, it seemed to hint at some dark history from the lost time when the warrior had become entrapped in his leopard mask, leaving him looking as though the goddess Irana had cursed him in her wrath.

“Suni! Please tell me—what is ‘Aurra’?” Rinda grabbed the terrified girl by the shoulder and shook her. “Was Aurra the one who left Guin to die in the Roodwood with that leopard mask on? Please, tell me, what do you know about Guin?”

“Imeeya! Imeeya!” shouted the little wildling, fearfully raising both her hands before her and twisting them together in the air.

This was all a little too much for Rinda. Her patience with Suni was running out. She shook her again, harder—when suddenly the little girl’s eyes went wide and her body became rigid in Rinda’s grasp. Her eyes grew white with terror as she stared at something over Rinda’s shoulder.

“What—“ Rinda noticed Suni’s expression and stopped shaking her. She had all but forgotten the ominous feeling of danger that had surrounded her since she entered the keep, but now it all came rushing back. “What is it… Suni?“ Rinda’s voice was low and trembling. The fear in the Sem’s eyes was so intense Rinda’s heart crept up in her throat and she froze, not wanting to look back over her shoulder at whatever it was Suni was watching.

But soon the fear of having her unprotected back facing whatever was behind her overcame her fearful immobility . Biting into her lower lip with her pearly teeth, she let Suni go—though she could still feel the little girl’s furry hands grabbing on to her for dear life—and then, slowly, she turned to face the wall.

Where was the wall?

A massive tapestry—its design impossible to see in the gloom of the chamber—hung behind her, and in the still air of the room it began to flutter, then blow away from an everwidening gap where the wall had once been!

Rinda grasped Suni’s little hand tightly in her own, unconsciously holding her breath. She could feel the girl’s violent shivering travel up her own arm. Rinda stared at the widening darkness; an unwholesome moldy stench crept into her nostrils.

“Who…Who’s there?” the princess asked, her voice rasping with fear, then tightening into a loud squeak.

For a second, she thought that the wall had opened into hell itself—that they were standing at the entrance to Doal’s audience chamber. The reeking stench increased, wafted on an unnatural wind. It brushed against Rinda’s cheeks, seeming almost conscious, alive; she had to close her mouth to keep from retching. She made the sign of Janos and a moan came unbidden to her throat.

Suddenly, a figure emerged from the black hole where the wall had been.

At first, it was a vague, glimmering outline that seemed fashioned out of the fabric of the darkness itself, but Rinda’s sharp eyes saw a human shape—at least, it might have been human—with a hood over its head and a long black cape mantling its body down to its feet. It was the cape that made the figure so hard to distinguish from the blackness behind it.

When the cloaked shape moved again, Rinda saw a face hidden deep in the hood, covered in hastily wrapped white bandages. A chill ran through her.

The Black Count!

Slowly, the cloaked form raised an unsteady hand, loose bandage ends fluttering down as it beckoned to them with malformed fingers.

“Alphetto,” moaned Suni, too frightened to scream.

The cold stone walls that confined them seemed nearer and nearer now, while the darkness of the one terrible exit yawned deeper and deeper. The apparition stepped closer, and the girls stepped back, keeping the distance between them until their backs were flat against the farthest wall. Not once did they take their eyes off the slow advance of the black horror before them.

An oppressive odor of decay now mingled with the stench of mold and seemed to clutch at the very breath in their lungs. The cloaked figure shuffled forward with what seemed like an incredible effort, holding out its hands as though it were blind in the dim light of the room. Rinda felt the bile rise in her throat again, and she shook with terrified loathing; but even as she did, a small, alert portion of her mind noticed that, although the shambling thing stood right in the path of the wind that blew against her face, the hem of its long cloak didn’t so much as ruffle in the air.

“Hiiih!” screamed Suni, finally breaking out of the spell that had held her frozen to the wall.

“Vanon…” the words choked in Rinda’s throat. She wet her lips.“Count Vanon—if you are truly Count Vanon…” Rinda tried to wring the words out of her unwilling throat, but they froze in her mouth.

The cloaked figure lurched to the side, then raised its arms as though it were praying—or begging for salvation—and suddenly, lunged for them!

“Aaahh!”

This time it was Rinda’s turn to scream. The cloaked figure shifted, and the bandages on its face slipped, revealing the most horrible, rotting black… gruel, thought Rinda. She could hardly have called it the remains of a man. It only took a heartbeat for all her sense of pride and seer’s bravery to abandon her, leaving nothing but a scared young girl where once had stood the little princess of Parros.

“H-Help!” Rinda shouted, clinging to Suni, their backs pressed to the stone wall, both of them screaming with hardly a pause for breath. The moving corpse, the impure monstrosity of rotting flesh, was terrifying beyond words, and the thought that this thing was human—a Mongauli lord, and master of Stafolos Keep—only made it worse. Yet the eye that stared at them through the gap in the bandages, half-covered by rotting, jet-black flesh, gleamed with an undoubtedly mortal need…it wanted something of them. But what?

“Hiiih! Hiiiii! Hiiiiii!” screamed Suni. Rinda shook her head, desperately trying to clear away the worsening stench of decay. The monstrosity closed the distance between them, its collapsed eye shining with unspeakable thirst and a mad craving. The bandages slipped off of the sloughing flesh of its arm, baring the bony hand of a corpse that clutched at the shoulders of the trembling girls.

Suni went limp in Rinda arms, leaving the young princess cradling the little girl. Rinda’s violet eyes were frozen on the apparition. She very much wanted to fall unconscious, too— anything that would free her from the sight of this horrible living corpse—but she knew that if she did, the thing would be able to do whatever it wished with her, and that fear kept her from slipping away. She simply stood frozen, and stared.

The broken, shapeless arms waved up and down, twice, three times, as if trying to give some signal. Then they came down, almost touching Rinda’s shoulder. Rinda saw a face more grotesque than any skull peering out through the ichor-stained bandages, and the powerful stench assaulted her senses with renewed force, draining all the strength from her limbs. But at the moment the long bony fingers made to touch her soft skin, Rinda’s surging fear broke the spell that held her motionless, and she gave a cry that seemed to rip right out through her throat.

“Stay away, demon! You touch me once and I’ll bite my own tongue off! Help! Somebody! Remus! Remus! GUIN!”

Then she screwed her eyes shut, and fell down atop Suni on the floor, covering her face with both hands so that she need not see the monster that approached her now like some grotesque parody of a lover in the throes of passion seeking to claim a kiss.

Then she heard it—Remus’s voice ringing in her head as clearly as her cry had rung in his.“Rinda! Where are you? I’m coming to save you! Rinda? Rinda!”

“Here, Remus! Up here! Help!” she shouted in reply. Even with her hands held firmly over her eyes, she could see the decaying claw reaching for her, the disease spreading to her skin where it touched her, causing her flesh to rot away… Rinda sobbed.

Then she heard a bell clanging. No, it sounded like many bells, all over the keep, ringing with a sudden fury and insistence that could only mean one thing—danger—danger far worse than an escaped prisoner or a wildfire in the Roodwood. The bells seemed to ring everywhere, pounding on Rinda’s ears without pause. Now she could neither hear nor see, so she slowly lifted her hands from her eyes.

“It’s gone!”

The black-cloaked apparition that should have been looming over her, its diseased body smothering hers, was gone—vanished into thin air as if it really had been a ghost.

Gone, too, was the opening in the wall behind the tapestry, which now swung slowly back and forth on its hooks. Rinda leapt to her feet and ran over to it, sweeping the heavy cloth to one side with her hand. Behind was only a flat, unbroken wall of heavy stone.

“But…but that’s impossible! I saw it open!” Rinda put her hand to her mouth in shock, her voice barely audible over the kang kang kang of the bells.

“1 know that foul stench was not my imagination! And that creature, that horrible creature! B-But how is it that we are safe, Suni? Wasn’t its disease supposed to ride on the slightest breeze? We were so close, surely we should have fallen sick by now—but we re fine! You saw it, too, didn’t you, Suni?” Rinda looked around in utter bewilderment, but there was nothing but the stone walls on every side, and the pealing of the bells that seemed alternately to come closer and to draw farther away, like waves on the shore: kang kang kang!

In between the ringing, she could hear faint sounds of commotion down in the keep grounds: swords clanging, the whinnying of horses, then screaming and shouting. Surely something was wrong down there! Then a voice rose clear above the pandemonium—

“The Sem are attacking!”

Rinda jumped forward as though she had springs in her legs. But there was nowhere to run, and, beyond wringing her hands together nervously, there was little she could do—she was still a prisoner in the tower.

The sound of the watchtower bell stopped suddenly, as though one of the Sem’s poison arrows had caught the bellringer in his throat and killed him before he could raise his mallet for one last ring. Rinda kept rubbing her hands together, crying out in frustration. Then she ran to where Suni lay like a discarded rag on the floor and took her up into her arms, rocking her and calling her name, anything to wake her up. Whatever was happening down there, she certainly did not want to face it alone.