3

⁠—⁠—⁠— III ⁠—⁠—⁠—

Remus blinked in the dim light of the chilly prison cell. The only light trickled in through a small aperture set high in the wall. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, the features of the room became apparent: various furnishings haphazardly scattered about, chairs with skins thrown over them, a water jug atop a small desk. It seemed that their captors were not out to make their stay needlessly uncomfortable.

“Guin?”

From outside, Remus could hear the heavy bar on their door being lowered, followed by footsteps receding down the stairs.

“Guin? Why did they take Rinda away from us? Is she all right, do you think?”

Guin had been taking advantage of his extraordinary height to peer out of the high window on his tiptoes, but there was nothing to see but the dusky forests of the Marches stretching in all directions, with the barren wildlands beyond, the purple mountains forming a distant backdrop. The scenery was split into two halves by the inky flow of the Kes River. It was a desolate view that gave no comfort. The one area of the forest that seemed lighter than the surrounding woods was doubtless the area where the Roodwood had burned the night before.

“I don’t know,” said Guin, turning away from the window.

“But…” Remus’s eyes grew more anxious, and he rubbed his hands together nervously.

“You cannot help her by worrying about it, so don’t,” Guin growled. “Your sister is brave. She can deal with most things.”

“But that horrible Black Count—” Remus began, but suddenly slapped his hand to his mouth.

“What is it?”

“What’s that noise?”

“Just the guards walking outside.”

“No, it was something else!” Remus tilted his head, listening intently, then pointed at the left wall of the chamber.“It’s coming from over there. Listen, there it is again!”

Guin looked, but he could neither see nor hear anything unusual in the direction Remus was pointing. He turned back toward the boy with a doubtful shrug of his shoulders. Remus, eyes wide as a torris hare’s, grabbed his arm and pointed at the wall again.

“Hear that? It sounds like… something scratching at the wall!”

“Hmm…” Guin responded, now noticing the strange noise.

“What is it?”

“Torqrats, maybe.”

“But…”

Guin had marked before this that, even though they were called the twin Pearls of Parros, there was a great difference between Remus and his sister. Perhaps his sister’s assumption of the role of leader had dampened his spirit, made him used to following, but it seemed that the young boy was indeed a great deal more shy, delicate, and impressionable—a young bird that had yet to shed its last downy nest feathers.

Guin laughed. “There’s nothing that mere rats—” but then he abruptly broke off too and looked at the wall, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

The scratching sound, like something gnawing on the wall with sharp teeth, had stopped, and now a loud thumping sound like something hitting the wall from the other side had begun. Guin’s eyes shined as he stared at the wall, and he seemed not to notice Remus’s hands grabbing on to his waist.

“That is no mere torq rat.” Guin growled so low Remus could barely hear him. “Not unless the giant rats of the Marches have some sort of fiendish intelligence to match their size. Torq rats might gnaw at a wall, but I’ve never heard of one pounding on a wall to send a message to someone on the other side.”

“Guin,” Remus whispered, “maybe there’s someone in the next cell.”

“Ah,” said Guin, and there was no need for him to say more, because at that moment, a part of the wall that they had been watching gave way, and a chunk of rock popped out and fell into their cell.

Guin reached out his arm and snatched the rock out of the air before it hit the floor, lest it make a thud that would attract the guards’ attention. Then, through the small, inches-wide hole from which the stone had been dislodged, they heard the sound of stifled laughter.

“Finally.” The man’s voice coming from the other side of the wall was young and spirited, with a little cockiness and mischievousness thrown in. “Now we’ve a fine window for talking.”

Remus’s eyes opened wide and he looked as though he was about to say something, but Guin put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him back up against the wall to the side of the opening, and waited. He would not let down his guard until he was sure this was not some trickery of the Black Count Vanon.

Hearing no response from their room, the voice on the other side of the wall became doubtful. “Hey! Hello in there!” Whoever it was, he sounded a little impatient. “You mean to tell me there’s no one there? But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Just a bit ago, when I was dozing, I woke up to a great many footsteps coming up the tower, and the racket of men walking in their armor. Then your door opened and shut, and the lock came down with a crash—that’s what really woke me up. So speak up, I know you’re in there!”

Guin and Remus looked at each other. Guin remained suspicious; but nothing about the voice—although it sounded irritable and perhaps a bit arrogant—suggested that the speaker meant any harm to anyone. “Hey! Can’t you hear me? Or are you scared, and not talking? Or did you just get through one of that rotting freak’s special torturing sessions, and lack the strength to talk? If that’s the case, then just groan for me! Or perhaps you’re waiting for me to make my introductions. Fine, then, I know my manners, and it’s common knowledge by now that I stood right before that creepy keep-lord in all his rotting pestilence and told him what I thought of him—losing my armor and sword and getting thrown in here as a result. My name’s Istavan, Istavan of Valachia. I was a mercenary in Torus only a few days in the Mongauli army when they sent me out here to this graveyard. Listen, I don’t know what matter of man you may be, but this Stafolos Keep—this is no place for the living.”

“What do you mean?” Guin, forgetting himself, rejoindered. He tried to speak as clearly as he could, but when the voice on the other side of the wall spoke again it was filled with suspicion.

“Ah, there is someone there! But what a voice! Could you be one of the witless giants of Taluuan in the north? Or a Lagon barbarian, a demon of Nospherus? You speak as though your mouth was full of the raw flesh of your enemies! Well, no matter what you are, you don’t want to be in here. Even if the lord of the keep wasn’t a pus-filled heap of decaying flesh, I mean. I’ve been a mercenary since I was twelve years of age, and I’ve seen my share of bastions and battlefields; I’ve lived in places no better than a pig sty, I have. But these cold walls, they—hey, I told you who I was, now it’s your turn. How did you end up getting thrown in here?”

“My name is Guin.” Guin made a great effort to pronounce every word as clearly as possible. “I was taken in the Roodwood by knights from the keep, and now it seems that the Black Count would have me fight for him in the tourneys in Torus.

“It makes sense,” said Istavan, his voice regaining some of its earlier friendliness. “That old pus-bag is set on making his fortune wagering on the slaves he’s always collecting. You’re not in such a different position from us mercenaries. You haven’t, er, promised your sword to the Archduke of Mongaul, have you?”

“I have promised my sword to none but myself, as far as I know.”

“That so? Then I’ll let you in on a secret. Look, I’m getting out of this accursed keep soon, like tonight, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll escape when I do, too. If you don’t, mark my words: you’ll have every accursed stone in the place coming down on your head.”

“What do you mean?“ Guin put his hand lightly on Remus’s shoulder to calm him, motioning for him to sit against the wall beside him. Then Guin pulled up a chair next to the hole, and sat with his legs crossed.

“This keep is cursed, that’s what!” the mercenary continued, rather cheerily. “I’ve lived off the scraps of war since I was a lad of four, and when I was twelve, I pilfered me a suit of armor and became a man, a mercenary, in my own right. That’s why when I say I’ve got survival instincts honed to the point of supernatural clarity, you’d best believe it. They got to calling me ‘the Spellsword,’ you know, on account of my surviving like magic no matter what hell-spawned horror awaited in the deadliest of battlefields. That’s why you’d better listen when I say there’s a demon haunting this keep. Aye, the dark clouds of misfortune are sweeping in to cover these halls even as we speak.

“Maybe the pestilence comes courtesy of the bandaged keep-lord, or maybe he’s just a part of some larger, darker evil. Be that as it may, Guin, the place is cursed. I heard it whispered in the mercenary quarters often enough: nobody knows what’s going on in that black tower. Even the count’s personal guards dare not go near the place. But one thing’s for certain—there is something going on in there, and what that something is… well, I’m in no hurry to find out!”

‘’There is some proof?” said Guin with great interest.

“Aye, that there is, and coming from the count’s personal tower guards no less,” Istavan Spellsword replied. “It happened just before I first arrived here with my squad. It seems that the three youngest of the tower guards just disappeared within the space of three weeks. All were last seen near the entrance to that black tower. Then horses went missing, then servants on duty, then even the old steward who had served Count Vanon faithfully for years, even after the count was sent out to his exile in the Marches. It was right after the steward vanished and the rumors started to fly, that the black knights began going out on secret missions, a different group each time. The knights would leave at dawn and return at dusk, with two or three other figures riding between them, covered in cloaks. Of course, as soon as the secret missions began, the strange disappearances at the keep stopped, just like that…and there wasn’t a single mouth without its share of rumors as to why.”

Guin said nothing.

“You know, I once heard—I believe it was a sorcerer from Torus that told me—that the only thing that eases the pain of the black plague is nothing other than the warm flesh and blood of a living human.”

He paused, but still, Guin was silent.

“I may be the ‘Crimson Mercenary,’ Istavan Spellsword, but my supernatural sense for danger doesn’t come from me sharing my soul with a demon, as some of the rumors would have it. It’s just that I can see things that other people can’t—or that they pretend not to see; and when the facts are spread out too thin, I can bring them together to form patterns. So how do I know the keep’s not long for this world? Because the count’s gone through all the sacrifices he can get from the homesteaders and hunter families living around the keep, and the last time he sent the black knights out on one of those secret missions they came back with five or six… people, if you can call them that, who weren’t each of them more than three feet tall. When one happened to fall off the horse they had put him on, his gag slipped and I heard him cry out ‘Alphetto! Alphetto!’”

“Alphetto?”

“The wildling god,” whispered Remus. “Alphetto is the name the Sem barbarians who live in the wildlands of Nospherus give to their god.”

“By the grassy knees of the plains-god Mos!” Istavan exclaimed. “Tell me sooner if there’s two of you in there!”

“Shh!” Guin clicked his tongue to silence him. “I won’t go into the whys or hows, but I have been imprisoned here with a child, and another child that was with us—a girl—was taken away at the door. You may escape if you will, Istavan, but I must first save that girl.”

“Guin!” Remus grabbed the leopard-man’s hand. After a short while, the voice on the other side of the wall returned.

“So this girl was taken away, by herself?”

“Yes. It seems they have taken her to a room by herself.”

“Then she’s done for.”

“Done for?” cried Remus in a panicked voice.

Suddenly, there was a sound of something like the butt of a spear being slammed into their cell door from the outside, and a guard shouted, “Quiet in there!” There was silence for a while, and then the prisoners resumed their discussion in low voices.

“Know what I think?” said Istavan, seemingly unconcerned about the guards. “They put that girl in a separate room because they’re going to use her for… you know what.”

“No!” said Remus, trembling. “I won’t let that demon wring the blood out of my sister for one of his vile salves!”

Guin laid a comforting hand on Remus’s shoulder. Istavan, on the other hand, continued talking as though he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care about the boy’s distress.

“If that’s the case, we’ve even less time than I thought. Aye, truth be told, I’m getting a bit nervous. You see, when I realized that it was only a matter of time before the Sem tribes came to rescue their comrades, or even take the keep in one massive bloody raid, I made a plan. I’d badmouth Count Vanon to his face, and he’d get so mad with me I’d be sent back to the capital of Torus before you could say ‘Dismissed!’ See, I’m no recruit. I’m just a mercenary in the Mongauli army. The only one with the authority to punish me is General Gudoh in Torus. But the problem is, I sort of overdid it…or maybe the Black Count never had a mind to follow military guidelines in the first place. In any case, instead of sending me back to Torus with the first message convoy, he pronounces me a criminal and throws me in this place. No doubt he plans to wring my blood out too and call it an execution, eh? But I’m not worried, I’ve been in worse before. Know ye, that Istavan Spellsword was born holding a gem in one hand. The old muse in town said that I would grow to become a great man and one day hold the reins to a kingdom in my fist, just like I did that gem. That’s my destiny, see, and I believe it. Right now I might be just a mercenary with only a notch or two on my sword, but one day I’ll rule this place, all of it, and no blood-sucking ghoul is going to get in my way.”

“Anyway,” he continued,“I’m breaking out of this place between sundown tonight and sunrise tomorrow, and you two—”

“We three have good reason not to want to die here either,” said Guin, deep in thought, crouching close to the opening in the wall so his voice could be clearly heard. “Istavan, you said you’ve traveled around the world. In all your travels, have you ever heard of a place, or person, named ‘Aurra’?”

Remus, chewing his lip nervously, looked over at Guin. It seemed as though he and his sister had been traveling with this strange man forever, as though ages had passed since he came walking out of the woods, a warrior straight out of legend, ferocious and yet at the same time strangely vulnerable, pitifully robbed of his memory, his very identity, remembering only a few words that formed vague links to his past even as they reminded him of all he had lost.

“’Aurra,’ you say? I can’t say I know any country or town called ‘Aurra.’ Sounds like a woman’s name to me,” the mercenary mused, happy to have this distraction from the dreariness of the cell. Suddenly, he gave a gasp and jerked away from the opening.

“ByJanos’ wrinkles!” he shouted, his voice suddenly high-pitched with alarm. “By Janos of the two faces! By the wisdom of the Elder and the will of the Youth! What in hell’s name have I been talking to?”

Guin realized belatedly that, caught up in the conversation, he had moved to where his leopard head was visible through the opening, from which Istavan’s curses now came tumbling one after the other, each more colorful and elaborate than the last.

“By the three-and-a-half curls of Jarn Fate-Weaver’s tail! What manner of beast have I been talking to? The half-man god Cirenos himself, or an unborn ghoul of the Marches? Was I on the verge of clasping hands, or paws, with something more hideous than the fiends I fought on patrol? I spent time as a mercenary in the City of Cripples, Canaris, itself—but never did I see there the likes of what I see now!”

“I…I am—” began Guin, but the mercenary, changing his tone abruptly, cut him off with an urgent whisper.

“The guards, they’re coming! Bringing us our evening meal, no doubt. I’ll leave the question of just what you are for later if you’ll be so kind as to put that stone back where it fell from. If the guards see what I’m doing, I might as well be trying to stop the mighty Kes from flowing with my two hands for all the good my escape plan’s going to do me.”

“Right.” Guin quickly lifted the stone and set it back in place—and just in time, because as he was moving to sit on the long bench near the wall, they heard the heavy footsteps on the tower stairs divide into two groups as they reached the landing. One paused before the chamber where the mercenary was held. Guin could hear the small window set high in their neighbor’s door creak open and a rough voice shout “Dinner!” At the same time, he heard the echoing metallic noise of the bar on their own door being lifted, followed by the slow scraping sound of the door opening.

The men standing in their doorway wore the black armor of the Marches patrol, each of them holding a torch in his hands. It was then that the prisoners first realized that dusk was coming—no, it had already arrived. Their room had been dark to begin with, and now the light coming from the small high window was a dim violet. The torches cast wavering silhouettes of the soldiers and the prisoners on the stone walls of the cell, and despite the flickering torch-flames, the room was filled with the melancholy chill of the gloaming hour.

“You, come with us,” snapped the captain. With his faceplate down, it was impossible to tell whether he was the same man that had captured them in the forest.“My lord wishes to test your strength and skill.”

At the same time, two of the knights stepped into the room and grabbed Guin by the arms with gauntleted hands.

“Guin!” Remus cried out and started to stand, but the captain shoved him back down. Then the jailer entered the room from behind the captain and placed a plate of meat and a lump of something that looked like mashed grains on the low table, and beside it, a jug of Gohran grape wine—dinner for one.

“Only the leopard-man,” said the captain, and made a motion with his hand for the captive to be taken away.

Guin, with his usual air of unconcern, allowed himself to be led out of the room. It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action; and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, returning again to perfect calm when the fight was over.

Thus it was that Guin left the room with the knights in complete calm and silence. The heavy stone door closed behind them, the heavy bar dropped, and Remus was left in the cold room all alone. The knights had left one of the torches for him in a sconce on the wall, but that merely served to send creepy shadows skittering across the room, playing upon his mind until he was sure he could see demons lurking in the corners.

His friend and guardian Guin taken away, his twin sister parted from him for the first time in his life, the young crown prince of Parros rolled up into a miserable ball atop the long bench, unable to touch the food on the table in front of him. The knights that had taken Guin away had gone back down the stairs, and all was quiet, when Remus once again heard that scratching sound, then the sound of the rock being pushed carefully from the other side of the wall.

It was followed by the mercenary’s voice: ‘’Grab it from that side, will you?” Remus hurriedly reached out and grabbed onto the stone, almost falling over backwards when it slid easily out of the opening into his hand.

With the small window reopened, Remus could see by the torchlight two sparkling black eyes peering through. Then the young, rather taut face of a man came into view on the other side of the wall.

“What’s wrong, kid?” whispered the mercenary, wiping the grease from his meal off his lips with the back of his hand. “They take away that leopard-man?”

“Yes,” Remus answered, his voice choked with tears.“Th-The Black Count is going to make him fight, to…to test his strength and skill.”

“Ahh, right.” The peculiar way the mercenary spoke gave the impression of someone who feared little, and worried even less. “Well, at least it doesn’t sound like they’re going to kill him, eh?”

Istavan stared through the opening, checking out Remus’s room by the torchlight, until he spoke wonderingly. “Hey, kid, you look miserable! Eat some of that food, I don’t think our host wasted any time mixing his black plague into the gravy. If he wanted to kill us, he’d do it by sword.” The mercenary grinned and pointed with his scarred finger to the plate on the table behind Remus.

“By the way you’re dressed, I’d say you’re no local homesteader’s child. Am I right? So how did you end up hiking around with that monstrosity, and why did the black knights bother bringing you back, too, when they caught him? That creature… By Doal’s arse, I knew the Marches were bad, but not this bad! It’s a veritable nest of fiends out here! I mean, what is he?”

“Guin’s a good person,” said Remus, glaring at Istavan through the peephole. The mercenary continued as though he hadn’t heard the boy’s protest.

“I’d eat that food if I were you. You need your strength, and if you don’t want the living blood wrung out of you, you’ll help me. I’ve pulled enough stones out of my wall here to make a way out of this cursed tower, but I’ve no way of getting from up here down to the Kes River without breaking my neck. Here, I want you to pass me the sheets of the bed in your room through this hole. I can’t make a long enough rope to get me out of here with just the ones I’ve got. I mean, I could make the strips thinner, but then it wouldn’t be enough to support my weight, you see?”

“The Kes River? Whatever would you do down there?” asked Remus. But he began feeding the sheets through the hole as requested.

“I haven’t any plans for when I get down there, kid,” said Istavan, chuckling. “All I know is that the black Kes runs right underneath these windows, and in order to get out of here, that’s where I have to go. Look, you worry about eating that meat and grainball. The first thing you learn as a mercenary is that you can’t do anything on an empty stomach and do it well.”

Remus did as he was told, occasionally peeking into the next room to watch the “Crimson Mercenary” tearing the bed sheets into long strips with his tough fingers and teeth, then deftly winding the strips into a surprisingly sturdy-looking rope ladder. Sitting there, listening to Istavan grumble about the jailer not giving him a torch, lining up curses and spitting them out while he worked on tirelessly, it struck Remus how different his life was now, when just a few days ago he was the Crown Prince, protected and safe in the Crystal Palace. A teardrop rolled down his cheek.

The sun had sunk completely below the horizon, and the moon shone bluish-white on the treetops, and still Guin did not return. After finishing his ladder, Istavan in the other room returned to his bench and, drawing a skin over himself and saying something about conserving his strength, fell straight asleep. And where was Rinda? Outside was the Marches forest—where they had spent the last two nights—stretching black into the distance, hiding dangers and horrors unknown. Mysterious shadows flew over it.

Remus curled up on his own bench and prepared to spend a long, uneasy night alone for the first time ever in his short life. Who could have known that Jarn Fate-Weaver, with his long beard, horse’s hooves, thrice-and-a-half-curled tail, and single eye that saw through to the end of time, had chosen that very moment to quietly begin turning the little wheel of his loom? For what Jarn weaves is the longest and most intricate of tapestries, and the ones who make up its pattern are always unaware that they walk on the threads of destiny.

Guin did not return; and Istavan, who had seemingly forgotten all of his plans for leaving the keep that night, was sound asleep. Black clouds, the harbingers of a great storm, wrapped around Stafolos Keep, and the dreams of the soldiers were colored with the shades of fear, as around them another night grew quietly deeper on the Marches.