Cobweb Empire (26 page)

“Good morning . . .” she
muttered, scrambling out of bed, and heading straight for her
clothing, while trying not to meet his gaze directly.

“Good morning to you, girl,” he replied in a
calm voice. “Hope you are well rested. There is snow in the pot
ready to heat up, together with some bark I managed to procure.
Nothing edible unfortunately, so it will have to wait once we get
on the road.”

“How bad is it out there?” she whispered,
thinking of the usual knee-deep drifts against the door back at
home in Oarclaven, and the blanketed roads on the days after heavy
snowstorms.

“Bad enough,” he retorted. “But none of it
matters. We are going forward today, no time to waste.”

He finished stirring the kindling and then
straightened. “I’ll wait for you outside while you dress.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” she replied hurriedly,
clutching her clothing. “I will be quick!” Her entire face was
flaming now.

“Take your time.” And he went outside.

T
hey had the hot
tea to warm them up, finished dressing, and were outside on
horseback within the half hour.

The snow had fallen at least two feet deep
all around, and once they came out of the house, there was no frame
of reference except for the occasional shrubbery and trees and the
rising winter sun which cast its impotent light from a washed out
blue sky, free of overcast. Percy had to wade through knee-deep
whiteness to get just a few paces past the front door, holding her
skirts up in order to take each step, while Beltain’s much taller
metal-booted legs left deep imprints. He had brought out Jack from
the barn, and even the great warhorse took each step with massive
legs sinking, shook its tail and mane in displeasure and snorted
every few breaths.

The black knight lifted her up in the saddle
with an effortless hold of his metal-clad arms, so that Percy did
not even know it was coming. Then, just as quickly he was up in the
stirrups and seated behind her on the saddle. He wore his black
cloak, and its folds separated Percy from the icy cold metal plates
of his armor.

She once again rested sideways against him,
but there was something inexplicably different about his manner—a
new subtle reserve and stillness. Beltain made a point of barely
making bodily contact with her, held himself stiffly, and his metal
vambrace-clad arms on both sides of her took care to encircle
without touching her, while his gauntlets kept the reins. As for
his face, he kept his head turned directly ahead, eyes upon the way
before them, and what she could see of his lean unshaved jaw and
lines of mouth was expressionless stone.

“Where will we go?” Percy asked, as they
moved slowly through the open field.

“In general, south,” he replied, looking
ahead. His baritone sounded close against her ear, and again it
seemed to go all through her to the bones. She was so acutely aware
of every point on her body, the feel of the saddle underneath,
every spot where his cold hard armor pressed against
her. . . .

Stop thinking, do not
think. .
 . .

“We need to find a road,” she remarked. “So
much snow!”

“The road is there, just beyond those fields
and the shrubbery. The hedge growth defines it. See how it curves
along.”

And indeed, as she allowed her eyes to take
in the general linear pattern of the growth, it seemed to flow in
the outline of a roadway. And then, in the hazy distance there were
dark shapes it the form of remote settlements.

“Oh, I think that must be Fioren town, just
there, far along the way.”

“Very likely so,” he replied. “Fioren is the
next town south of Letheburg.”

“I have an uncle in Fioren!” exclaimed
Percy. “It’s my father’s older brother, Uncle Guel. I met him only
once when he came to visit. He and his wife have an apple orchard
in town. I’ve never been to Fioren before—”

“We have no time for detours, but if your
uncle lives on the way and does not mind visitors, we can stop for
a quick meal.”

“Oh . . .” Percy hesitated.
“I don’t know. He was very nice when he came, but he is a bit
fancy, and, well—his wife Carlinne and their boy, my cousin, Martin
are a little stuck up—I don’t want to impose.”

“Then we won’t. An inn would do, and I have
coins enough to pay. But we need to find food eventually.”

A lone hawk circled overhead. Percy’s gaze
swept up to take in the washed-out blue sky of morning, and
suddenly, it was as if heaven itself pressed down on her with all
its infinite layers, and she had a choking sensation of vertigo. An
otherworldly wind swept inside her mind and pulled at
her. . . .

Percy gasped and went very still.

The black knight noticed her strange
reaction and turned his head to glance at her. “What is it?”

“Oh! So many
dead!
” she replied in
stunned wonder.

“What?”

“I am not sure—suddenly I feel something new
in the distant south, a whole great overwhelming number of death
shadows! They came into being just now, in the last few minutes, so
many of them, thousands! And all in one place, it’s why I can feel
them!”

“Dear Lord, I did not know,” he said,
looking at her intensely. “I had no notion you could feel the dead
all around us so much. Even when they are out of sight?”

“Oh, yes. I always feel them a little bit,
since the world is filled with mortals, after all. There are dead
things everywhere around us, little dead things. Even now, under
the snow. . . . It’s like a prickling in the back of
my head. It is how I feel
her
out there, the Cobweb Bride. I
know her in particular, for she has been singled out to me by Death
Himself. But—”

And she turned her face to him, her eyes
dilated with intensity. “But this is different. So many have died
just now, that it’s as if a whole lake of death has flooded, nay,
an ocean, and all in one place.”

“And is it where we are heading?” he asked.
“Must we?”

“I—I think so. . . .”

“In that case, Percy Ayren,” he said in a
grim voice, “you’ll need to make ready.”

Chapter
13

I
t was time to send
the birds.

Ebrai Fiomarre moved silently through the
remote north wing corridors of the Palace of the Sun. It was only
half an hour since the entirety of Trova Square became a field of
slaughter for an army of thousands upon thousands. And with some
deadened part of himself he still heard their voices and ringing
tandem strikes, the hum of strange butchery filling the expanse
with reverberating acoustics. And then they had
marched. . . .

The onlookers from the Palace, the myriad
windows and balconies, and all around the edifices of the square,
were suspended in a strange impossibility, a kind of psychic
stillness. They had mostly fallen silent—first in disbelief, then
in horror—a few were shaking, some weeping, holding their mouths
and faces, others praying. They were witnessing a unique moment in
history. Never before had it known and never again would Trova
Square know such methodical mass atrocity enacted upon a friendly
army by their own, of their own free will.

Yet, was it indeed free will that moved them
to this act? Or was it
her
influence upon them, taking away
all truth of will and choice, all rational awareness of what was
real, of what was duty and what was madness, and binding their mind
to her own?

Ebrai walked with a blank demeanor,
encountering almost no one in the corridors.

Rumors had spread all over, and the Sapphire
Court was stunned, broken, impossibly empty. They hid all over the
Palace and in houses overlooking the square and outlying streets.
Soft muted weeping came from shuttered windows. Many of the
Trovadii had come from remote parts of the Domain, each of the four
Kingdoms having sacrificed their best and brightest sons to the
highest honor of Sovereign’s brilliant military service. But even
more of them had been local—sons and brothers and husbands.

They who witnessed the slaughter this
sunrise, were seeing their own loved ones fall before their
eyes.

Ebrai himself had not expected this; had not
had any warning. He was present for each of the preliminary war
councils, watched the Field Marshals discuss strategy with the
Sovereign over great maps. Watched them place tiny painted figures
of tin and pewter soldiers to mark battle movements and formations.
And not once had he heard this part of the plan, the part where the
orders were given to take their own lives.

No wonder the three distinguished generals
had looks of such desperate intensity, such impossible poised calm
when he last saw them alive in the Palace at
her
side.

What had she done?

Ebrai turned a few more corridors along an
older terrace, and found himself ascending a stair of old marble,
well polished by generations of feet, up to the uppermost level of
the Palace, almost near the roof. Here, perched in a remote
forgotten spot were the small apartments allocated by the Sovereign
to Micul Fiomarre, his father.

Micul Fiomarre had been living here for
months now, in the subtle role of a man touched by tragic fate and
diminished in his senses. After being marked as a traitor by the
Emperor of the Realm, he had thrown himself at the mercy of the
House of Avalais.

The Sovereign took him in out of amusement,
and Fiomarre the Elder expected no true trust from her, only an
opportunity to remain and fix himself firmly in this position. He
immediately demonstrated that he was not quite in his right
mind—but not so much that he was perceived as an outright madman,
merely enough to be considered an eccentric given to periodic fits
and turgid moods in-between relative clarity. And as such he took
it upon himself to show an obsession with cultivating flowers in
his apartment near the attic and upon the small rooftop terrace
given him.

“As long as he does not decide to cast
himself off the roof, he may do as he please,” the Sovereign had
announced casually. But there was not a moment of doubt that Micul
Fiomarre was continuously under surveillance, or that the Sovereign
ever underestimated him. Thus, Fiomarre the Elder had to play a
very subtle game of real quasi-insanity, and took his horticultural
pursuits very seriously. His terrace roof and greenhouse was soon
overflowing with plants and flowers of all hues and varieties. In
addition, he made a point of requesting strange varieties of seeds
and grain of every sort, attempting to plant and nurture new
hybrids, and scattering more than half of what was brought to him
underfoot and all over the rooftop garden, so that soon flocks of
birds came to roost nearby. Thus, under the guise of eccentricity,
he somehow managed to acquire and keep a number of carrier pigeons
and other winged messengers that pecked alongside the wild birds of
the Sapphire Court.

Ebrai Fiomarre reached his father’s
apartments and knocked softly on the door in the designated manner.
Moments later, the door was opened by a tall dark-haired man in his
late middle years, bearing a strong family resemblance but with
heavier brows, graying temples, and a receding hairline.

He did not look well at all.

Ebrai was particularly concerned, knowing
how soon this came in the wake of the recent hard news of his
younger brother Vlau having committed that unfortunate atrocity at
Silver Court, taking the life of the Emperor’s daughter—all because
of a mistaken impression, all because he could never be told the
honorable truth of their spy status and their true loyalty to the
Imperial Realm. When their father learned the news of his second
son’s murderous act, he was taken genuinely ill for a day, despite
putting on his usual mask of composure. And now, for the first time
he was showing signs of a real decline in his focus, health, and
faculties.

“Good morning, father,” Ebrai said, and
entered, closing the door behind them then locking it from the
inside. But even here, in the relative privacy of confined
quarters, there was the possibility of surveillance—for the walls
of the Palace had ears; political factions always vying for
advantage, each with their own agenda and various degrees of
loyalty to the Sovereign—and thus they had to continue in their
act, even between themselves, speaking half in code and half in
bitter jest.

On this day, even Micul Fiomarre was shaken,
having just observed the slaughter in Trova Square from his rooftop
terrace, and his grim pallor and lines of exhaustion went deeper
than usual.

“Not a good morning, my boy,” he replied,
taking one second too long to decide what kind of mood to portray
on this occasion. And then he settled into his character. “The rain
was a strange color today, Ebrai, my boy. Looking outside, it
painted the cobblestones red. Come with me up to the garden, and I
can show you. At least my flowers were untouched, thank
heaven.”

“There was no rain this morning, father,”
said Ebrai in a calm voice, but looking at him with eyes that were
wrung of all life.

“No rain? How strange, then. I could’ve
sworn I saw droplets of red flying every which direction. They made
rosy rainbows in the sun, for it rose quickly, just now, and it
shone so very brightly through the downpour.”

“Let’s go up on the roof, father and see
your garden.” Ebrai then picked up a few pieces of parchment lying
in the corner and a quill and inkwell. “Here, let me carry your
drawing pages with you, and you can sit and sketch your flowers in
the sun.”

“Very thoughtful of you, dear boy. And how
have you been, son? I don’t see you much these days, what with you
having to attend the lovely young woman who rules this country.
Where is she, by the way? All in good health?”