Cobweb Bride (2 page)

Then the blade was withdrawn.

Searing agony.

An instant of vertigo, that should have been followed by instant oblivion.

But Duke Hoarfrost, Ian Chidair, mortally pierced twice, remained alive. And alive, he screamed in impossible pain.

He screamed, while blood came spurting out of him, from his back and his chest, from the hole near his kidneys, and past the clenched jaws and into his mouth so that he tasted his own serum and bile, choked on it, while his lungs were filling rapidly so that he was now drowning.

And yet, slowly Duke Hoarfrost turned around. Staggering in the saddle, he faced the slain knight who once again sat upright in his own saddle, and who held a broadsword covered with Hoarfrost’s blood. The dagger remained lodged in Chidair’s back.

“No!” Beltain, his son, cried. “No!
Father!
Oh, in the Name of God, no!”

Duke Hoarfrost gurgled, unable to breathe. And then, with a supreme effort he threw himself at the enemy knight.

The two of them went down from the impact. Neither one cared any longer that to be unseated meant they would likely be unable to rise up and mount again—that it meant sure death.

What difference would it make when they were dead already?

Or,
undead
.

For neither of them could possibly be alive.

The impact of two bodies collapsing against the ice resulted in a slow fissure, then a growing crack. Their warhorses stumbled, yet managed to regain footing and scrambled away to a safe distance, while all around, the Chidair knights backed away, leaving a perimeter around the collapsing ice.

Down the incline and into the churning sludge the two fallen men slipped, weighed down by the immense poundage of their armor, still grappling with each other as the thick waters closed overhead, bubbling.

Within moments there was only stillness. The ice pieces gently bobbed on top of the sludge.

“Holy Mother of God
 . . . have mercy upon your loyal servant Ian Chidair and receive him unto your bosom,” Beltain whispered, crossing himself. He removed his helmet in grief and in final honor of his fallen Lord father. In the dark, his eyes were without an end, places leading only into hell; his hair, like filaments of the night.

Some distance away there were various sounds of retreat. Goraque soldiers returned to their own side of the lake, while straggling figures of Hoarfrost’s men started to fall back to the place where the Duke himself had just sunk in the waters so near the shore.

In the darkness it was not clearly visible that some of these men should not have been walking upright. Indeed, many did not realize their own condition, feeling only numbness and winter closing in, and attributing it to the circumstances of battle. From the shores came the reserve troops, soldiers carrying torches to illuminate the scene of battle, for at last it was true night.

“Soldiers of Chidair! All of you now my men—good, brave men,” Beltain continued, his face illuminated with the angry red flickering of torches. “I promise to you, his death will not go unavenged. I now count on your loyalty to—”

But his words tapered off into silence. Because in that moment the ice at the shore of the lake began to shudder, and then was shattered violently from the inside . . . out.

It was broken by the blow of a metal-clad fist emerging from the lake itself.

The fist was followed by an arm, and then another. The two hands tore and pounded at the ice, until it cracked and shattered, and the hole widened, became the girth of a man’s body, then wider yet. At last a human shape burst forth, sputtering and gasping, then throwing up water mixed with blood upon the shore.

He stood up, the waters coming up to his waist. Then, bracing himself with his arms he crawled out and lay upon the surface at the edge of the hole, clad in mail and a soaked darkened surcoat that should have been faint blue, the color of frost.

He had lost his crested helmet underneath the ice of the lake. But the hair plastered to the skull with ice water was unmistakably that of the Duke Hoarfrost, Ian Chidair, Lord of the west lands of Chidair within the Kingdom of Lethe.

He lay twitching upon the ice, while lake water and the last vestiges of his own blood came pouring out of the fissures in his body. And then he slowly raised his head.

Illuminated by the torches of his own soldiers, a pale bloodless face of the man they knew and served looked at them impassively.

He was like a god of Winter, white with a bluish tint. The water was freezing into true ice upon the planes of his face, rimming his brows and hair with dead crystalline whiteness.

Duke Hoarfrost stood up, while many, including his own son, reined in their mounts to move away, and foot soldiers took an involuntary step back and unto the shore, away from the ice.

“Father?” Beltain Chidair whispered, his voice cracking. “Are you my father? Are you
 . . .
dead?
”

And the man before him parted his frozen lips, and then spewed forth more brackish water and the last taint of living blood. He then moved one awkward hand behind him to pull out the dagger from his back.

“My . . . son,” he croaked. “I . . . don’t know.”

D
eath’s third stop was intimate, and once again no time had elapsed.

In a poor house with a badly thatched roof, no attic and a drafty ceiling of old wooden rafters—one of the most decrepit dwellings in the village of Oarclaven, in the Dukedom of Goraque, which in turn lay within the Kingdom of Lethe—an old peasant woman lay dying.

She was Bethesia Ayren, possibly older than the elm tree growing in the back yard. She was a widow, the mother of two sons one of whom owned this house, and the grandmother of one grandson and three granddaughters. It was a rather small family, as peasant families went.

Bethesia had been beautiful in her day, with cream skin and bright auburn hair that was long and soft as goose down, and shimmered as apricot silk in sunlight. She wore it loose once or twice when a maiden, and it had caught the eye of a passing lordling’s handsome son. As a result, Bethesia was made to braid her hair tightly, cover her head with discreet cotton, and was married soon after to Johuan Ayren, a solid young man of a respectable village family.

Very quickly after that she gave birth to a handsome boy. Bethesia’s husband was a kind and fair man, and he took the boy and treated him as his own. Eventually a second son was born, and this one resembled the father in his plainness and kindness.

By the time Bethesia and Johuan grew old but not quite decrepit, the older son, handsome Guel, had prospered and married an apple orchard owner’s daughter who bore him a healthy son, and the three of them had gone to live in the large town Fioren, just south of Letheburg. It was the second son, Alann, who had remained with Bethesia and his father, to care for his aging parents. Johuan died shortly after, and there was no one but Bethesia and Alann to tend to the crumbling house and the small plot of land with the field and the vegetable garden.

Alann took a wife then, and she resembled his mother in many ways. Niobea was a beautiful woman from Fioren who had the mixed fortune to work as a lady’s fine seamstress. She married poor Alann Ayren because no one else would have her after she too had caught the roving eye of her lady’s son and could not avoid his even more roving hands.

In the lady’s household Niobea had been taught how to read in order to entertain the mistress at her sewing, and thus acquired a fine taste. Niobea gave long and elegant names to her peasant daughters as they were born almost one right after the other, with not a son in sight.

The eldest daughter, whose father may or may not have been Alann, was called Parabelle. She was fair like a field of flax, and delicate like imported porcelain in the fancy town shops. Her hair was rich and bountiful, a sea of dawning pallor with a hint of amber and gold—several shades lighter than her grandmother’s had been, but of the same glorious texture, falling like a cloak around her when unbound. Her body was slim and well proportioned, and as she approached womanhood she stood nearly as tall as her father. Even when she worked in the field at Alann’s side, the sun was kind to her. It ripened her apple-golden, and her skin did not lose its fresh elasticity, or its delicate sheen. Belle was beautiful indeed, and they came to call her thus. Additionally she was obedient, humble, intelligent and soft-spoken—a perfect daughter and granddaughter, loved dearly by all.

The second daughter came two springs and a half later, plain and dull, and was given the name Persephone. It was as though all beauty, all the life juices have been wrung out of Niobea in the birthing of Parabelle, so that none of it was left over to imbue Persephone with energy.

Percy was a sickly child, somewhat dull-witted and slow, likely to stop her work and stare at shadows, at nothings. She was darker, her hair of an indeterminate color somewhere between brown, black, and ash. Her skin and face were anemic pale—not frail in a lovely way, but unhealthy. She burned readily in the sun, unlike her older sister, and soon enough would be peeling and covered with red welts. Eventually they made her wear an additional cotton scarf in the field, to cover most of her face and her neck, not to mention shirts with extra-thick long sleeves.

Percy was also stocky, with a straight waist that would never be willowy, leaning to fat, and clumsy like a dog let loose in the house. She broke crockery every other day it seemed, so that her mother Niobea sometimes cried just looking at her, for she knew that to get her a husband might be an impossible task. Worst of all, Percy was a willful child, and would ignore tasks she had no heart for. “Good for nothing,” Niobea called her, “a clod, a stubborn idiot girl.” And Niobea prayed for a more graceful child next time.

Indeed, because nature always seeks a balance, beauty returned to the family. The third daughter came three summers later during the autumn harvest, and she was an angelic child who promised to be as beautiful as the eldest. Niobea spoke a prayer of thanks and named her Patriciana.

Patty was not as exquisitely beautiful as Belle, but she made up for it in vivacity and energy. A child with ruddy cheeks and curly chestnut locks, before she was old enough to work she ran around the house singing and wailing and laughing. And she tormented old Bethesia with stories and questions, until Belle would gently scold her while her mother would hide a smile and give her an apple and tell her to run and play outside.

Often, as little Patty came outside after the mild scolding, Percy would be working in the vegetable patch, and she would wave and beckon. And as soon as Patty settled down next to her ungainly dirt-covered older sister, Percy would resume pulling the carrots and pruning the spinach leaves, appearing so intent on her task. But eventually, without fail, Percy would launch on a strange tale, usually filled with frightful creatures and mysterious happenings, all of it told in an oddly compelling voice, and using root vegetables like puppets, for colorful props.

They grew together thus, until Belle was eighteen, Percy sixteen, and Patty an energetic thirteen year old.

It was then that their grandmother’s time drew to a close, and Bethesia lay dying.

Evenings came early in winter, and ailing Bethesia was laid out in a corner bed, as far away from the drafts as possible, and wrapped in several old woolen blankets. The fireplace had been lit early, a mixture of dry and sodden logs and twigs crackling and sputtering angrily with smoke, as the wind outside howled and gusts of it came tearing down the filthy chimney. The windows were shuttered tight but it was not enough to keep out the winter cold, so Belle—now a willowy maiden, beautiful despite the grey homespun dress and work-calloused fingers—went around the house and stuffed additional bunches of folded rags in all the crevices and along the windowsills.

“Why is it so dark, child?” suddenly came from the bed in the corner, as Bethesia spoke in a faint rasping voice. “And why is it so quiet?”

Belle stopped her task and came quickly to her grandmother’s side.

Lying against the lumpy pillow covered with faded cotton that was worn thin from endless washings, Bethesia’s wrinkled face had turned white-grey. Eyes the color of coals reposed deep in sockets of bone and skin, and her withered hands had been bent into gnarled claws by arthritis. Belle held them now, feeling the cold fingers. They were like branches of the old snow-covered elm outside.

“It is dark because a storm is rising,” Belle said gently in a melodic voice. “I’ve lined the shutters tight and lit the fireplace.”

“Gran, can you not see the fire?” a younger voice sounded, as Patty came forward from her place at the wooden table where she was mixing buckwheat flour batter and peeling stale turnips for their evening meal. Patty’s bright eyes and cheeks were warmed by the light of the flames, and her nose had a smear of dirt from the tubers she’d been cleaning.

Their mother, Niobea, a gaunt, middle-aged woman, sat in another chair in the corner, holding a long piece of homespun that she was quilting with precise deft movements of a seasoned seamstress. “Might as well light us a candle, Patty,” she said. “It
is
too dark.”

Niobea’s greying hair was concealed by a simple woolen scarf, where it would once have been decorated with a lace bonnet. There was no more lace to be had, and the last of it, left from her younger days, yellowing and tattered, was stored in an old treasure trunk underneath their bed.