Baroness of Blood

EPILOGUE

From the Diary of Baroness Ilsabet

The soldiers taking Shaul's body back to his family in Sundell never crossed the border. A mile from it, they encountered a fog thicker than any they had ever experienced, rising in the heat of the midafter-noon sun. That alone would have made them suspect sorcery. When the horses refused to enter it and the men who did were filled with fear, they retreated and returned to Nimbus Castle. I questioned them, but they said little. The fear I sensed in them made it clear the Seer's curse has not ended.

My soldiers burned Shaul's body that night. I watched the flames devour him, staying until his bones were no more than dust among the embers.

Even the fire couldn't diminish the thick night fog, though its smoke added a new denseness to it. I walked through it to the castle and up the stairs to my room, where servants had already closed and barred the shutters against the horrors of the night.

Now I rule a cursed land, a land much changed from the days of my father, a land isolated from its neighbors, utterly alone. Each night the fog covers it. My subjects close their doors and build up their fires in even the hottest weather, for there are creatures walking in the fog that had never before lived in Kislova, save in legends.

They speak of wights, of vampires and werewolves. And in the fog's thick shroud, even the dead walk. Arman and Emory have been seen feasting on sheep in the hills, the rebels of Pirie pace the deserted wharfs, and Sagesse's ghost has been glimpsed in the streets of Tygelt, filling the entire land with fear.

But in the daylight when I ride among my subjects with Jorani at my side, they cheer. They are unaware that I am the cause of all their terror, and that I am watching them, choosing my next victim with care.

Like Jorani and Arman before, I must feed-not on blood but on pain and despair. I take my victims to the room where Peto died and lives again. I let him witness each torture, watch Jorani's final kill.

Sometimes I think Jorani remembers killing my husband, but if he does, he keeps the memory to himself.