Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 19

A scream ripped through the soft dawn of the hospice like a sword through flesh. I sat up abruptly, bumping my elbow on the chair where I'd drifted off in the dark hours. "Earth's bones!" Rubbing my elbow, I stepped over my discarded books and shuffled across the cluttered room to peer out the open window, expecting an uproar. But the only noise beyond Papa's quiet breathing was the screech of two magpies arguing with a squirrel outside the window.

Shadows still lurked in the cloisters. A sleepy attendant carried an early breakfast to her charge. Her demeanor was so ordinary, her purposeful steps so slow and steady, that there was no need to ask her what was the alarm. She hadn't heard it.

What poor wretch had reason to produce such a cry? If the sunlight had not been filtered through the dark green leaves of the cherry tree, and if the warm air had not smelled of moisture and roses, I might have believed I was back in the desert, listening as another slave was sealed into his collar. I shuddered. Must have been dreaming.

So, shake it off then . But as I pulled on my boots and jacket and slipped quietly out the door to play the next round of my spying game, that scream clung to my spirit like a wet cloak.

I squeezed through a laurel hedge and wedged myself between its thick tangle of branches and the trumpet-flower vines that covered the stone wall surrounding a private garden. The wall is not at all "high , I reminded myself as I dug my hands and the toes of my boots into the mortar and eased upward, keeping my back firmly against the thick hedge. You're as like to fall off as you are to sit in D'Arnath's chair . I detested heights.

The heavy dew on the dark leaves quickly soaked my trousers and tunic. From the top of the wall, only slightly more than my own height, I could have scrambled into the sheltering branches of an elm tree and looked down into the private garden of the resident the young Lord came to visit, able to observe surreptitious comings and goings at the garden door as well as hear what might be spoken thereabouts. But I had never made it farther than halfway to the top, so I never saw anything. I could only listen.

In two months of listening, I'd heard not a single admission of evil at that door. No hint of treachery or nefarious schemes. I'd heard more laughter and good wishes than curses, and not a single instance of torture or murder. Indeed, the only devious plot I had discovered was the man who lived in the hospice secretly teaching the young Lord's skinny friend to read.

A pair of robins fluttered into the elm tree, and a rabbit or a squirrel rustled in the old leaves. After half an hour of listening I was ready to move on to my next observation post. But just then I heard the garden door open.

". . . supposed to meet her at dawn. I'm surprised he didn't wake you." This was the older man, the one who lived here, the man my father swore was—or had once been—the Prince of Avonar.

"No matter. My guess is he didn't sleep much after last night's work. If I'd not been hammered flat, he'd likely have had me out riding like in the days at Verdillon." This was the skinny young man from Gaelic.

"A foul business, Paulo."

"Aye, my lord. I'll get the letter where it's going. Any other messages?"

"Tell her . . . tell her I'll try to write her this week.

And now Gerick's helped me get organized, perhaps I'll get some work done on the manuscript. But she shouldn't depend on it. It's so difficult. . . ." His words were laced with the same weariness I'd heard in my father's voice.

"She understands, my lord. You know she does."

"Take care of her, Paulo. And watch out for yourself. If what Gerick's guessed is true . . ."

"I will, my lord. With my life as you know."

I held still as hurrying footsteps crossed the grass. As always, he bypassed the gate that opened into the public path and slithered over the wall not ten paces from my position. Only when he dropped into the grass and hurried away did I breathe again. I heard what might be a sigh from the far side of the wall and nothing more.

One question answered. The young Lord . . . Gerick . . . wasn't there. I had been surprised when I first heard his name. I'd never thought of him having one. Gerick seemed quite ordinary, quite human, for a person who was neither. It fit the mask he showed to the world. But what lay under that mask was the mystery that was driving me balmy.

I had intended to follow the young Lord and the Lady to Maroth, staying with a cousin of my mother's while pursuing my mad quest, but the Zhid attack in Avonar had scared the sap out of me. I had lurked about the side lanes until I saw the Lady safe in the palace, and then I rode back to Gaelie and the hospice and Papa as fast as I could get there. I would do what service I could for Gondai, but I could not face Zhid.

The attack presented me with more unanswerable questions … such as why the Zhid would risk killing one of their "gods." And why could D'Arnath's daughter, a woman with unparalleled power, not defend the two of them? She seemed more concerned with getting back the jewelry they stripped from her than defending herself or her lover. As for the young Lord, he had fought like a man defending his soul.

I had long given up on sorting out his motives at wooing the princess. Marriage would give him no power over the Bridge. I had suggested to my father that the devil might be planning to corrupt the next Heir as a child, the same way the Lords had corrupted him. But my mouth often said things I didn't believe. Papa asked me why I refused to countenance the only thing that made sense of the evidence: the handsome young man was head over heels in love with the royal young lady. Pigheaded, as always, I didn't deign to respond. Some answers were just impossible to accept.

No sooner had the young Lord returned from Maroth than he caught me off guard with his little speech of gratitude. Furious with myself for letting down my guard, I trailed him up and down the road to Gaelie until I thought I would scream if I saw that guesthouse one more time. I was convinced his presence posed a danger to Avonar, but, in truth, my heart was no longer in the hunt.

Papa's condition had deteriorated severely. He'd become irritable and snappish, complaining that I was gone too much, or that I was hovering over him as if he were a child. He called the food tasteless and the wine foul. When his irritation grew almost to the breaking point, he would collapse into sleep for long hours at a time. It was almost impossible to rouse him. Throughout all the agonies he had suffered over the past five years, he had never issued the least complaint, but when an afternoon storm blew raindrops through a window onto his book, he threw the volume across the room and let flow a stream of invective that should have made the air turn dark about his head.

Both Papa's faculties and his spirits did seem to improve the longer I stayed with him. After a few days I asked what had been bothering him so. He had no memory of the incidents at all. A few more questions told me he remembered nothing of the past weeks, and, in fact, believed I had only just returned from Avonar!

I sat with him for a long time after he'd gone to bed that night, exhausted from a day of nothing, and I watched his sleep grow restless and uneasy. My mulish conviction that I could change the course of villainy felt incomparably ridiculous as I looked upon the only person in the world I actually cared about.

Tomorrow , I'd said to myself. Tomorrow I'll tell the Lady about her lover, and I'll ask her what's wrong with my father, and then I'll put aside everything but what's most important .

I stayed the night at the hospice, so I could go to D'Sanya first thing in the morning. And that was the morning I woke to the man screaming.

I lowered myself the leg's length back to firm ground and wandered over to the stables. That's where they most often met—the young Lord and the Lady. But only F'Syl the groom was about. On most days I would spend an hour talking to F'Syl, just to prove his ferocious appearance didn't bother me, even though it did. Today I just waved at him, wandered casually along the path around the stable, and poked my head into a little-used back door. The Lady's gray stallion stood in its box, and in the next one over, the young Lord's latest mount, a powerful chestnut gelding. So he hadn't ridden back to Gaelic The rest of the day at the hospice proceeded little differently from any other. I moved through the quiet activity as if I were invisible. Spying was easy there. Eyes were always controlled. No one wanted to intrude. As in any great house, the kitchens were always busy, the attendants carrying meals to those who preferred to keep to themselves, while a few people made their way through the cloisters and gardens to the perfectly appointed dining rooms. In the afternoon one or two of the residents meandered over to the library or the artisans' workshops in hopes of finding amusement, but they rarely stayed for long. Not one of the residents could pay attention to an activity for more than a few minutes at a time. Most stayed close to their apartments.

"Excuse me." I accosted the consiliar, who stood beside the dining-room door. "When might I be able to speak with the Lady in private? I have some urgent news for her."

"Her day's schedule has changed somewhat," he said, polite and concerned as always. "I'll inform her that you wish to speak with her, and she'll summon you when she has time. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Of course." A few more hours' observation might be useful.

A small carriage rolled through the gates about that time, and the Lady went out to greet newcomers. She wore her filmy white gown and her ever-present bracelets and rings, smiling as if they were the only people in the world and bestowing on them the favor of her unending conversation. Nowhere did I see or hear any evidence of a disturbance. Though the heart-twisting scream still echoed inside my head, I became convinced it had been a nightmare—the screeching magpies, perhaps, entwined in my sleep.

The young Lord did not show himself throughout that day. Five visits to the stables assured me that his horse was never taken out; nor was the Lady's. The Lady attended a musical performance in one of the public gathering rooms in mid-afternoon. She listened attentively to the musicians plucking at citterns and harps, but never once looked about to see where was her constant companion of the past eight weeks. She never sent any messages to his father's apartments. Never asked for him. Never received any message. So she, at least, knew where he'd gone.

The day passed into evening. Where was the man? I'd never seen anyone so efficient at killing. Four severely broken corpses left in the alley in Avonar, and he carried no weapon larger than an eating knife. Had he killed his father's attendant, too, the man found sprawled in the paddock like a starved rabbit?

By the time the hospice settled for the night, I had received no summons from the Lady. Unable to face my bare room in Gaelie with the sagging bed and flyblown window, I chose to spend the night in my father's apartments again. He fell asleep early on. I went walking in the sultry night. I'd left my horse tethered in a grassy copse of alder and oak saplings. So, as my thoughts and fears churned, I led her to a stream and let her drink and graze.

I had to give over this responsibility. How big a fool was I to think I could decipher the plots of a Lord of Zhev'Na on my own—I, who bore no talent, only suspicions and a paltry skill for sums?

The moon hung low in the east, blurred by a drifting cloud, and the wind was rising, making the dark outlines of the trees thrash and bustle as I hurried back toward the hospice buildings. My feet headed directly for the Lady's house. I didn't care that it was late. Her lamps yet burned, and she had always encouraged her guests or their families to come to her at any time.

Unlike on most nights, the Lady's front gate was closed and locked. But I knew another way into the grounds, through a service gate on the east side of the garden. It had been very convenient for spying, buried discreetly as it was in the hedge and the wall. Though it was normally kept locked, I had discovered that by sticking my narrow blade through the iron scrollwork, pushing in with my hand on the smooth bar on the outside of the gate, and lifting up the bottom with the toe of my boot, I could dislodge the mechanical latch on the inner side. Tonight the small gate stood wide open.

Of course, I wasn't planning to barge into the Lady's house uninvited. But as I climbed the wide steps at the main entrance, ready to tug on the bellpull, I heard fragments of conversation from a second-floor window open just above me. One speaker was a woman and the other, fainter, scarcely hearable, was a man.

"Please, D'Sanya . . . must listen . . ." In an instant I knew that the scream that had waked me that morning had been no dream, and that this hoarse and desperate speaker was the one who had made it. Who was he? What had happened? I had to know.

"… deceived me . . ." The woman was furious.

Finding a secure foothold on a ground-floor window ledge, I scrambled up to a second-floor balcony, then crept along a stone ledge toward the open window. A deep violet glow illuminated the windowpanes.

Only when I stopped to catch my breath did I even realize what I'd done. I jammed my face into the stone wall and suppressed a moan, promising myself that I would listen only for a moment and then scoot right back down to the safe and solid earth.

". . . time, has come. I've decided on your sentence." My spine shriveled when I heard the tone of the Lady's voice, my own fears seeming quite small all of a sudden.

"Beg me," said the Lady. "Grovel, so I can scorn you. Weep, so I can ignore you. I will bury you in the place where you were hatched, and you'll live forever with what you've done."

Not for the first time in my life I wished I were taller. My toes clenched inside my boots as I willed them to stay on the narrow ledge while I stretched for the windowsill just above my head. Come on , I told myself. Reach. The ledge is plenty wide enough. You won't fall . The flagstone terrace seemed very far . . . wickedly far . . . below me. But I was determined to see.

I levered myself upward. When I poked my head around the lead-trimmed glass and peered over the sill, flickering beams of sapphire and violet light dazzled my eyes. My stomach curdled—height-sickness surely—and I closed my eyes and rested my head on the sill, gulping air to fight my nausea.

By the time I could open my eyes again, the colored light had vanished. But fifty guttering candles left murky yellow pools on the tiled floor. The illumination was sufficient to identify the chamber as a lectorium—a sorcerer's workroom. Long tables lined the walls. Alongside rows of jars, flasks, small tins, and boxes lay piles of silver and brass rods, blocks, and sheets. Off to my right, in the corner of the outer wall, stood a massive hearth.

In the center of the room stood another long table. On it lay a dead man. I believed he was a man from the shape and size of his boots, which were pointed toward the window, and I believed he was dead from the way his arm drooped from the side of the table, his flaccid hand sporting three elaborately jeweled rings that glinted dully in the candlelight.

For a moment I debated whether I should try to climb through the window and take a closer look or perhaps raise an alarm. Surely the Lady knew he was dead. Perhaps she'd gone for help, yet no Dar'Nethi would leave a dead man abandoned. Before I could decide what to do, my toe slipped off the ledge.

I clung to the windowsill, scrabbling to find the invisible strip of stone below me. The only visible foothold was the outsloping edge of roof tiles to my right, across an impossibly wide gap of stomach-churning emptiness. Desperate, unable to find the ledge, I stretched my boot toward the roof, wedging myself between the edge of the roof and the opened casement. With a jolt, my boot slipped once more, breaking off a piece of a red clay roof tile and sending it crashing to the terrace below. I hung there breathing heavily.

"Get out of here."

For a moment I thought the harsh whisper came from the man on the table, but I knew every aspect of death, and there was no possibility that person was anything but dead. Someone else was inside the room, deep in the shadows where the dying candlelight no longer reached. Though he spoke quietly, I knew at once that he, not the man on the table, had been the one arguing with the Lady, the one who had waked me with his cry of anguish that morning.

"Hurry. Go," he said again.

"Why?" I suppose his whispering convinced me that he had no more authority in the Lady's house than I did.

"You've no business here with your spying."

"And you? What are you doing here? Nothing good, I'll wager."

"I am no concern of yours."

"I can judge that for myself." I twisted around, pulled up, and hooked my elbows over the sill, my boots relinquishing the slight reassurance of the roof edge in favor of imaginary footholds on the smooth-dressed stone.

"What's happened here? Who are you?" I refused to make any guesses as to the identity of either the dead man or the voice from the shadows.

Just then, I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel paths out in the gardens, and a few shouts. A woman's nasal voice called out, urgently. ". . . something breaking … an intruder . . ."

From inside the room, the man whispered again. "Get away from here. Not down. Go over the roof to the southwest corner. Where the roof joins the downslope from the cloistered walk, you'll find a rain gutter. It drains into an overgrown corner where the dustbins are kept."

His breathing was harsh and unhealthy, and I wondered again if the speaker was really the man on the table after all, but just on the verge of death.

"Do you need help?"

"Demonfire, will you just do it? I won't have you— Just go. If you value your life, do as I say."

Torches flared into life around the corner of the building. Someone shouted that the side gate had been left open. More shouts of warning. I was becoming more interested by the moment in the escape route he described, though truly, I told myself, I had nothing to fear from the Lady. Only embarrassment at prying into her business. Only a reprimand for violating the single strict rule of the hospice. Vasrin's hand, what if my father was dismissed from the hospice or I was forbidden to visit him again?

I glanced downward and swallowed hard. "There's only one problem. . . ."

"What now?"

"Heights. There's no possibility I can get from here to the roof, much less traipse about on it. I'm about to toss my dinner just where I am."

"You're about to— Earth and sky!"

The shouts were coming closer. I clung to the wall, praying they wouldn't look up. My right boot started to slide slowly down the smooth stone, and my heart slid upward into my throat along with my stomach contents and a choking moan. A well dressed man carrying a torch jogged to a stop far below me. But just as my fingers quivered and slipped, and my knees turned to mush, I experienced a mind-ripping reversal.

All at once every sense screamed at me: my skin was on fire, my ears deafened by a roaring tumult that could have been an avalanche on Mount Siris. My vision went out of focus, and then slammed me with a blinding cascade of images until I thought my eyes would be torn from their sockets. Worst of all, my hands screamed in pain as if the cool stone windowsill had been converted in an instant to molten steel. Their strength ebbed until I knew I must let go and fall to my death.

But these sensations passed more quickly than I could encompass what was happening, and then they were replaced by . . . something else. With a burst of strength I gripped the sill, halting the treacherous sliding of my boots. Then I lowered my feet slowly until they touched the narrow ledge below. I astonished myself with my own facility, flattening my face against the wall, clinging like a spider and creeping along the ledge until I could reach for the roof edge and swing my legs up onto it silently. Unfortunately this action resulted in my face pointing downward, right off the edge of the roof. I suppressed a moan of terror.

But the sight of a second servant conversing with the first and not yet looking upward gave me a motive to retreat and incentive enough to try it, though it was not at all the route I would have chosen with the slightest sober reflection. I slithered backward up the rough clay tiles, gradually rotating until I was pointed up the pitch of the roof. Then I crawled upward, catching the buttons of my tunic on the arced edges of the tiles, cutting my hands on a broken one, holding my face close to the curved tops that stretched before me like a miniature mountain range.

As soon as I was out of sight of the guards, I scrambled to my feet, and, not believing my own temerity, I ran lightly across the roof. I didn't seem to give even a thought to which direction was southwest, but my instincts were right as I found myself in the valley between the pitch of the Lady's roof and that of the cloisters that stretched off toward the main house. I followed the white stone rain gutter, and with no more care than if I had been taking a walk in a garden, I dropped off the low-hanging edge of the roof into the dark, weedy corner where the sickly-sweet smell of rotten fruit and stripped bones told me the dustbins lay. I landed right in the center of them, the only place I could have landed without knocking them over in a servant-attracting din.

I sped out of the wood-fenced enclosure and through the waning night, taking a long way around the gardens until I was sure I was not pursued. Not wanting to wake my father, I huddled in the corner of his garden and waited for the pounding of my heart to subside. Not too long afterward my knees turned to water and my bones to porridge, and I felt sick and weak and wholly unable to explain how I'd done what I'd done. I'd heard of the surge of the blood that makes men and women capable of deeds well beyond the limits of their strength and endurance when faced with great danger to those they love. But I had been in no such extremity of dread, only a cowardly fear of heights and a yearning to avoid the embarrassment of breaking my neck in a place where I had no right to be.

I rolled over and heaved up my well-churned dinner into the well-tended begonias. Somewhere in the midst of this humiliating collapse, I acquired the idea that I had to go to Avonar and tell someone about what I'd seen. But it seemed so ludicrous, I didn't pay it the least attention.

When the sun came up, I went in to Papa. He was still sleeping soundly, so I warmed the water in his bedside pitcher and cleaned myself up a bit. The night had been so strange; I was almost surprised to see my own ordinary face in the glass. How could I ever have run across a roof? I got height-sick when I climbed a tree any more. I knew exactly when it was I had lost my ease with heights—on the day I sat quivering in the highest branches of my favorite reading tree, mortally terrified that I would fall from my perch and land in the pool of my mother's blood.

My father slept late. Unable to contain my curiosity long enough to submit my adventures to his sensible review, I wandered into the public rooms of the hospice, watching and listening for any sign of the Lady. Or any alarm about screaming men or dead ones. Or anything. I saw nothing but the usual busy morning of a great household, servants and attendants bustling about, a few residents and a few visitors, all with averted eyes, settling in their accustomed spots in the library or the sitting rooms.

After an hour of drifting about the place, keeping my ears tuned for any interesting word, I started across a small courtyard only to encounter the consiliar Na'Cyd speaking to a tall distinguished woman who stood twisting a kerchief in her fingers. In the ordinary event, I would have turned back to respect their privacy, but on one of her hands the woman wore three rings— elaborately jeweled rings identical to those worn by the dead man in the Lady's chambers. I hurried past them to the doorway on the other side of the courtyard. Once through the door, I stopped and pressed my ear close to the door opening so I could hear what was said.

". . . only this morning," the consiliar was saying. "She'll be away for a fortnight or more, but said to tell you that she will certainly join you in Avonar for G'Dano's funeral rites."

"The Lady was so kind," said the woman, sobs making her speech breathy and uneven. "Insisting it was not my fault, even though I was the one who hesitated to bring him here. He was so brave in his illness, I thought, perhaps—as Prince Ven'Dar says—we should accept it as a part of his Way. But when he could no longer speak to me— If I had only brought him here a few days earlier."

"You must have no regrets, mistress. The Way still winds through this gentle place. Even the Lady cannot help everyone who comes to her door. Come, permit me to stay with you as you stand vigil with the good G'Dano." He took her arm and led her through the cloisters into the house.

All right, so the man on the table had been gravely ill and died before the Lady could help him. That was reasonable enough. A great number of those who came here were on the brink of death. Why had I been so quick to assume foul play? Why had I allowed someone else . . . someone who wouldn't even show his face . . . to convince me to run away like I was some sort of criminal? I needed to tell the princess why her lover kept his gloves on all the time. A fortnight . . . perhaps I should ask Na'Cyd where the Lady had gone, so I could follow her.

Uneasy and exhausted from my adventures of the sleepless night, I dragged myself back to my father's apartments. It was almost midday. Papa was sitting in his garden absentmindedly dabbing at a bowl of soup with a soggy piece of bread. When I bade him good morning and kissed his thinning hair, he didn't even look up.

"Papa, I need your advice …" I told him what had happened. He nodded and made murmuring noises of interest.

"So, what if the man in the room was him ? What if he was stealing something or doing something awful and he's trying to make me look like the thief? If I find the Lady and warn her . . . what if he's there and accuses me?" I stopped pacing and knelt in front of my father. "Papa, what should I do?"

"I'm sorry, dear one, what did you say?" His face was loving and sympathetic, but absolutely uncomprehending. "Will you stay for supper, then? Is something wrong?"

I laid my head on his lap, and he patted my ugly hair. "Of course I'll stay, Papa. Nothing's wrong. I just need to sleep for a while. Then we'll have supper and play sonquey." Or perhaps we could pull out a pack of lignial cards and explore what vagaries of Dar'Nethi inheritance could explain why a Speaker's daughter could not unravel the simplest puzzle without coming to the conclusion that she was dreadfully worried about a monster she had vowed to expose.

I threw myself on Papa's couch and dropped off instantly, thrust without delay into an incredibly vivid dream. I was frantically trying to climb a mountain of red clay, and had a constant, unshakable sensation that someone was looking over my shoulder, but every time I'd turn to look, no one was there.

Just after sunset I awoke to find Papa dozing by the fire. I emptied the basket of bread from his untouched dinner tray, laid a brightly woven blanket over his knees, and then kissed him and left by way of his garden. Cramming the bread in my mouth, I slipped through the deserted courtyards to the Lady's house. If she was truly gone away, and no one could or would answer my questions, then I had no choice but to seek answers for myself.

Though the thin clouds to the west still showed golden edges, the house was dark. I reached for the teardrop-shaped crystal that dangled from a silken cord, waiting to chime a magical bell somewhere within the house. But after a moment's consideration, I drew my hand away without touching it. A fiery abrasion of my skin when I tried the door latch informed me that even my mechanical skills weren't going to get me into the house by way of the door. The upstairs window was still ajar, though tonight it was as dark as all the other windows.

Telling myself that my feats of the previous night had proven that I needn't be afraid, I started the climb. My knees wobbled like reeds in a storm. As I clung to the stone wall like a terrified leech, I couldn't even imagine how I'd been able to muster the strength or nerve to lever myself from the windowsill to the corner of the roof.

Toes on the ledge, fingers gripping the sill, I raised my chin above the sill. The long table in the center of the room was vacant. No one was inside that room. I hoisted myself up the rest of the way, threw a knee over the sill, and tumbled most ungracefully through the window. Various body parts hit the tiled floor with a thump. I hissed as I straightened one knee and discovered I'd overstretched it in the fall. With a muffled clank a metal candlestick toppled onto some cushions that I had knocked from the window seat. Otherwise the house was as silent as a crypt.

I sat still for a moment. Convinced I was alone in the house, I cast the weak light from my hand and looked around. The proportions of the room seemed designed to deceive the eye. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep forest green that drew the walls close. Yet the measure of the floor was generous, and huge mirror glasses hung on each side wall so that where I had seen fifty candles on the night before, there might actually have been only ten. The corner hearth was actually a small furnace.

I poked around the neat ranks of jars and bottles and boxes that sat on the dark wooden tables that lined the side walls under the mirrors. Scattered across the table were a number of tools—chisels and files, shaped metal pincers, and engraving tools—various items of gold and silver jewelry, and some odd narrow strips of bronze bent into shallow arcs half the length of my forearm. A lovely bronze figure of a horse in full gallop, about as tall as my hand, had fallen to the floor in between open sacks of sand and powdered plaster. Its flying tail was sadly bent.

On the wall opposite the window was a broad door I assumed would open on a passageway, and there was another, smaller door on the right wall. Each had an intricately engraved brass lock that refused to yield to touch or knifepoint. There was little else to be seen, no further answers to be found, and no way to leave except by the way I'd come in.

Foolish to come here. What had I thought to find? My skin burned just thinking about what I could possibly say if the princess came to the door: "Have you no abandoned dead man here, my lady? Have you no tortured ghosts who can reach out with immaterial hands to show me across your roof and into your dustbins?"

Hurriedly I put the toppled candlestick and disturbed cushions tonights, When I raised my handlight high to make sure I'd left nothing out of place, a glint of metal caught my eye from the farthest corner of the room. A thick, heavy chain dangled from an iron ring embedded in the high ceiling, the end of it well above my head. Still and somber, the dull, brutish chain looked out of place beside the fine and delicately worked ornaments lying about the room. As I drew closer, it seemed to point like a warning finger at what lay below.

I crouched down and held my light close to the blue-black tiles. Directly below the chain lay a clotted pool the color of ripe blackberries with a pale seepage around it. Smaller spatters had already dried to a deep rust color. A few steps away lay an oddly shaped wire device—a small frame with five protrusions, each having a small sharpened blade on the end. I picked it up to examine it. The blades—fingers on the palm-sized frame—were stained dark. I dropped it on the floor and clamped my hands tight under my arms, screams echoing in my soul, my head like to burst with darkness.

A crumpled paper lay in the corner. I retrieved it gingerly, only to discover it was no paper, but a wadded pair of gloves, a man's fine leather riding gloves, stiff with dried blood. That the gloves belonged to the one who had cried out in my mind, the same voice that had whispered to me from the shadows, insisting I leave the Lady's house, I had no doubt.

Before the lingering glow in the west had faded, I found myself astride my horse again, heading toward Gaelie—only I didn't stop there, but rode all the way to Avonar.