PULL ME UNDER - Fear Of The Dark - Twenty-Two
[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]
Twenty-Two
Lauren’s two little Stenyan maids accompanied her in the cart, and she practised their language with them. It was strange, because while she spoke and thought in Dvarri, the English hadn’t gone… and yet she couldn’t teach them Dvarri. The language just formed without thought for rules or grammar. But the girls were picking it up just by paying attention, little sponges.
Irynna and the men rode out in the cold, bickering softly with each other, Tanner siding with Irynna in almost all things just to get the rise he thrived for out of Ddun. One day Ddun really would strangle him to death.
The further they rode from the camp, the less Ddun was hers. The closer to the city, the more he belonged to the army he was raising. If they could just stop, half-way between, and forget everything else was happening—where would she fit, after they arrived, would she be brushed off and forgotten ‘til the kid popped out?
Maybe she would sleep in the castle, get over her fears like some sort of masochistic exposure therapy. It was connected with Meired, somehow, and Lauren sensed the bitch was just biding her time—and there was no question Tanner triggered the portal, that odd sensation told her so, a subtle tickle under her skin.
Something else confusing—Ddun said it was what he dreamt, and he hadn’t dreamt it since, which was a relief… It was familiar to her, too, though not because she dreamt it—she had been in it, too. Seeing it again dredged up the memory.
You’re thinking yourself in circles. She put the spindle down and stuck her head outside the cart. The air stung her face, so cold, she didn’t know how the horses were moving at all.
Tanner climbed back into the cart, had a sound sleep leaned against cargo. His right arm in a sling, his dominant hand—it would hamper his ability to fight—he might not have to, not until he was healed at any rate, and that might buy him some time if Meired’s horde appeared at Kaddusk’s doorstep… And Lauren knew there was a horde. She just knew. Maybe they’d arrive at Kaddusk and have to hop from the cart swords swinging. She hated that she was always able to imagine the most unlikely, and horrific, scenarios.
You’re thinking again.
Uneventful days passed until the tents and city smoke loomed, the frozen lake and blue-hazed mountains the prettiest part. Sharing Ddun’s horse, her arms tightened at his waist and eyes widened at how sprawled the place had become since she left. The population had exploded, and Ddun had been the one elected to run it… No wonder he snapped and ran. He was a fighter, not a bureaucrat. Even as she wondered at how the place could support so many, more were riding in, glancing curiously as they passed (especially at Irynna, who went nowhere without her falcon and dressed like a man.)
Yol was perched up on a lovely stick and happy to be there.
Lauren felt the baby quicken, a sprite little flutter, and she retreated back into the cart to relax. She slept until the sounds of the capital were too loud to ignore, men shouting in rhythm as they practised efficient methods of killing, their cart stopped for Ddun to come in and talk with her.
“I have to go on ahead. Tanner, you’ll be with me. We have to find Rudda and Borga and talk with the elders at the castle. You well enough?”
“Give me some of that bark and I’ll go wherever you want.”
“Behind you in the satchel. Lauren, you’ll be taken to my tent first, you’ll stay there until I get back. Alright?”
“What about Irynna?” She asked.
“No one is permitted in my tent but you. Sorry, she’ll have to find something else to do.”
“I’ll find my brothers!” She called from outside.
Lauren shrugged, it was all set. Already she felt as she did months ago, only fatter. The cloying stink in the air of sweat and shit and food cooking, it made her morning sickness threaten to return. Ddun had his mask propped up on his head, and whether it was on or off, people will recognize him, and he would be theirs.
***
In contrast to the warm-toned stones of the castle walls, Rudda looked a heightened shade of green with illness. He fumed at Ddun and Tanner as if they were boys being disciplined by a disgruntled father, ready to take out a switch on their backs. He was gaunt and looked like he might retch any second. “You were gone too long, Ddun, too long! I thought you only wanted to go for a day, two at most to clear your head. Ho, you really left me in a twice-damned bind.” He belched, and it smelled foul. He didn’t acknowledge it. “Everyone is sick. I’m sick, Gods damn me, and I haven’t been able to rest with you gone.”
Ddun tapped a finger on his thigh. “What’s the illness?” Should he send Lauren away so soon after arriving? She had barely gotten off the cart…
“I don’t know if it has a name. The elders think it’s the bad air, too much industry. I leave offerings to the air spirits and beg forgiveness on behalf of the city, I pray to the Sky Father at the temple every day and—look at me.” He mopped sweat off his brow with a cloth.
“Have any of the men succumbed?”
“Some. Enough. Too many.” Rudda was too ill to think. Ddun was sure the numbers were exact on some parchment somewhere, he would have to seek it out.
Tanner scoffed. “I can guarantee you it’s not ‘bad air.’ It’s men eating with their dirty hands after they shit. Don’t share food with anyone, and make sure the ones cooking are clean, boil all the water before drinking. Tell the elders. Tell them I’m a fucking wizard, and I know.” Ddun was taken aback at Tanner’s bold forthrightness, and Rudda simply stared at him. Ddun agreed to advise the elders, and looked down at his own dirty fingernails while he thought about it. Not already, she can’t go. He flexed his fingers and put them back in his lap.
The Yamnoyuk man had said something about a plague in Kisku, but it had to be coincidence. Too many people gathered in winter. That’s all.
“So why are you so devout, Rudda? What happened to you to make you such a believer?” Tanner’s face went crooked with a poorly repressed grin. That was a much more familiar idiocy out of Tanner’s mouth.
“I am your superior, you louse, and anyway, that’s none of your business.”
“Tit for tat, I’ll tell you a story if you tell me one.”
“What is it that Lauren gestures at you when she wants you to shut your mouth?” Tanner put up the middle finger from his fist with a laugh and an uncouth chew of the bark in his mouth. Rudda returned the gesture before returning to the topic at hand, facing Ddun. “You really should not have gone. Not for so long.”
“We were sidetracked,” Tanner said. “If you didn’t hear, Ddun’s in the family way.”
Ddun wasn’t sure if smiling was most appropriate at the moment and stealthily wiped it from his mouth with a pet of his beard. That woman got him forgetting his politeness.
“Congratulations. Look, fewer riders are returning from the south and the ones that do, their reports are all conflicting. Some said they saw the forests being cut, some say they’re still standing. Some say they saw Kisku burning, some say they could see the army readying itself, some say everything is fine. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m the one insane. Either some of them are lying spies or—”
Ddun’s thoughts of Lauren were crowded out by Rudda’s words. “They’re all bewitched. We’ll half the scouting parties to the Kisku lowlands, to save the men and make sure they travel in extreme discretion.” He finally took up the tea from the tray at the centre of the three men. They were alone in the feast-hall, Borga and the others not having arrived yet, and he expected to look behind him and see the corpse of the summoned demon still there. The castle workers had done a fine job with the mess. Still, seeing these walls, the fresh damage to the pillars and a layer of red ochre paint over the floor, perhaps to cover a stain, it was still very real in his memory. Do they feel the same? “I’m more inclined to believe the strangest of the reports, after what Tanner and I saw.”
Rudda sighed over his own sip of tea. Shivering, coughing, he replaced the mask over his face. “I have to retire. Wake me in a hour and we’ll continue.”
“Let’s try that door,” Tanner suggested once Rudda was out of earshot. Ddun agreed. If they could get it open without Lauren, that was one less stress for her. Tanner led the way, and Ddun could see that waver in the air over exposed skin for a brief moment as if Ddun’s eyes crossed, that halo that was so evident on Lauren, and it was unnerving to see it thick on Tanner now, stronger than before… it made Ddun’s mouth go dry. He followed Tanner through the narrow corridor, brushing past guards who stopped to press themselves against the wall for Tanner and Ddun to pass unimpeded.
At a tight staircase, Tanner descended the worn stone steps two at a time. Ddun lowered his mask over his face, unsure of what might greet them. At the bottom was an iron door, Tanner was taking his arm out of the sling. There was a lamp hanging to their right, still held oil and a small bit of wick. Ddun dug out his tinderbox from his belt pouch to light it. Holding it aloft, it showed the wrought iron bars and a hint of the contents of the room beyond it.
Tanner gave the door a shake, the iron clashing against itself with an echo up the stairwell. Stretching up, squatting down, examining the edges, looking for secret locks or weaknesses. He rattled it again, and then paused for a moment, frowning. He looked down at his hands.
Ddun’s skin went cold to watch, though he didn’t know why. If something was wrong, his free hand rested on the hilt of his sabre. Tanner had stopped chewing, too concentrated on his fingers. “Do you see this?” he asked Ddun.
He could not, they were just hands. Tanner flexed them with a sharp inhale.
“Are you hurt?”
“No… no.” Tanner pressed his left hand over the lock, holding his palm there, longer than it took for Ddun to smell flesh burning. He wanted to leave this place. Tanner’s face was contorted in pain, but with a popping sound Tanner fell forward, catching himself on his feet after a stumble into the room, only, and Ddun’s blood drained from him to notice, the door was still shut tight. Ddun rattled it, and Tanner stood, looking back at Ddun while shaking his hand to cool it. “I opened it, come on.”
“You didn’t, I can’t get through.” He hit the bars to prove his point, and Tanner grabbed at air and swung his arm back and forth.
“It’s open, look!”
Ddun saw nothing but what was before him, he couldn’t pass through.
“Tell me you can hear the rusty hinges.”
“I hear nothing.”
They were both struck motionless with confusion, Tanner with an increasingly uncomfortable look in his eyes, his left hand shaking and Ddun could see the blisters shining in the lamplight. “Okay, okay, pass me the lamp, then.” Ddun put it through the bars and Tanner took it in his right hand, flinching at the motion his arm made to lift it. The bark could only do so much.
Ddun watched uselessly as Tanner walked past the collection of things, picked up a small axe to tuck in his belt, there were other guns but Tanner mumbled one reason or other why they were no use to take, hesitated over certain small objects that Ddun would have assumed were of little consequence, but seemed to darken Tanner’s face to look upon. “Just worry about the scrolls,” Ddun said firm but calm. Tanner nodded, tossed small bits of paper down. In the span of a blink Ddun could see that waver again, as Tanner turned away, like a trick of the light that vanished him so quickly Ddun questioned if it happened at all… but he did want to leave, his legs tingled to flee. Instead, he waited while Tanner stooped over the haphazard piles of loose vellum sheets and scrolls and ancient books, tucking what he could under his arm and passing them back through the iron door—through, making Ddun sweat. Magic did not appeal to him, squeamish to be so near it. He had to admit, though, it was a clever lock Meired put on the door.
They would have to return for the rest. Tanner moved sluggish, drooling yellow. He wiped at it with the back of his shaking hand, bent to grab what he could and Ddun took the rest, blew out the lamp and returned it to its hook.
The guards they had passed stood at the top of the stairs, waiting for them with blades drawn behind their shields. This was an element that Ddun was far more comfortable with, and he was prepared to drop the scrolls to withdraw his sabre, even as he saw the strange glow from their eye sockets, tendrils of smoke twisting up from behind the masks. There was something amiss—were they possessed?
“Get back to the hall,” Ddun said.
No movement.
“We will kill you both if you do not move.” There was a steady rhythm to Ddun’s words as if speaking to children. All his unease at what he had been seeing, killing them would bring much needed catharsis.
“We don’t need to kill them,” Tanner said, a slurring of his words. “I just need to break the spell.”
The guards stood like silent golems.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I propose we kill them.”
The guards had no reaction, one way or the other, as if they didn’t hear their words at all.
With careful movements they put down their treasures, a hollow tumble of scrolls as they rolled back down the stairs. The guards remained unmoving. It was too narrow of a stairwell, too awkward for Ddun to use his sabre, choosing instead a thick knife. The curved blade glinted the small amount of light that shone down to them, eager to meet flesh. Tanner removed the hatchet from his belt, freshly acquired, and braced himself. One at a time, too narrow of a space to move together.
Tanner put his hand on Ddun’s shoulder, an incredible heat through his thick wool shirt, and pressed Ddun to the side of the stairwell like a punch. Once Tanner was ahead, Ddun held his breath to watch, muscles tense and heart thudding in his ears. “Last chance boys, I suggest you run,” Tanner said, but the guards didn’t run in the direction intended and Tanner was forced to rush the nearest of them, charging the side of his body into the shield and continuing on with momentum, crushing the man against the far wall of the corridor, ragged tapestries billowing at the gust. Tanner’s axe threw splinters out to demolish the shield before striking at the body underneath, a swiftness in him that didn’t allow for the guard to swing an arm in defence. Meanwhile, at his lower vantage, Ddun went for the legs under the shield of the guard before him, and his knife met with a wet crunch into the bone with the strike. On the floor of the corridor, the guard now beneath him managed a swing, and as Ddun made to move against the action Tanner struck the killing blow, his axe met the guard’s face, splitting the mask in two and throwing blood out through the cracks in the wood. The arm fell limp on route to Ddun and the sword fell with a singing clatter to the stone floor.
Neither of the guards had made a noise, no cries of pain, no gurgles of bloodied breath to gasp their last. It was a pathetic show, and as the light faded from their eyes they were clearly dead and clearly human. Tanner regretted having to kill the innocent men, face low and words barely audible. “I could have broke the spell. I know I could have.” They went to collect the scrolls, careful not to smear them with too much blood, and returned to the feast-hall, where Tanner promptly found a cushion and curled up on it, fell asleep shivering.
***
Rudda looked down at Tanner. Crossed arms and uneasy, shifting from foot to foot.
Saliva tinted by the bark still held in Tanner’s cheek stained the cushion, beaded sweat shone on his skin, lit by the warm flicker of the lamps nearby. His hand was badly burned in the shape of the door’s lock and it reminded Ddun of the burns Lauren had when she had flown. It was settled to him, then, they did both possess something within them; in Tanner it awoke when they went into that dark void, that had to be it.
Tanner stayed where he fell, like cowards neither Rudda nor Ddun wanted to move him. The thought of Tanner being a witch left dread in Ddun’s heart. He didn’t feel that with Lauren, but then, he had never been frightened of her power, not the way others were. She wouldn’t be carrying his child if that were so.
“If Lauren is a witch, what does that make him?” Rudda asked.
“I’ve heard stories,” Ddun mumbled into his hand as he rubbed his beard, “that when magic is in a man by birth, they can’t even be called a witch for the terror they invoke. It’s a rare thing.”
“That’s what I mean. What do we call him?”
“We don’t call him anything. He’s still Tanner. But if he has magic in him, and if Meired is after the crown…”
“Spirits have the crown. If the witch has it, she’s in league with dark spirits indeed.”
“Lauren,” Tanner mumbled, body remaining still. “I want to see my s-sister.”
“He lives!” Rudda knelt to examine Tanner more closely, yet still keeping distance. “Should we carry him?”
Ddun’s hand moved from his beard to rub the back of his neck in his discomfort as he acquiesced to the situation. “Lets put him in a proper room.” He fished the bark from Tanner’s mouth so as not to have him choke, and instructed Rudda to the legs while he took the shoulders.
“I want to see her,” it was barely above a whisper as they carried him to a room next to Rudda’s, with its own hearth and decorated in furs and tapestries, empty clothes chests and boxes and rolled carpets in stacks as if someone had treated it as half a storage room since the last occupant graced it. He lay limp on the bedding until the two went to leave, when he cried out for them to stay, eyes still shut.
“I need to get Lauren,” Ddun said, “if you want to see her.” His skin crawled, and he could see Rudda fidget as he stood, skin turning pallid. “Alright?” Rudda and Ddun exchanged glances, even while Rudda wore his mask Ddun could see the hunter did not want to be in that room. Neither did Ddun. He didn’t want to be anywhere in the castle, he wanted to be as far away from Kaddusk as possible.
Tanner didn’t answer, and Ddun turned back to the door.
“Again?” Lauren said as she walked through the shimmer where the door was supposed to be. “It’s like he’s begging for Meired to come back to the castle.”