In The Shadow Of The Beast (34 page)

A great howling rent the sky just then. Its
source was distant, but the noise was carried to him crisp and
clear on the night air. A tortured animal sound filled with rage,
filled with bloodlust.

He looked up, directing his sight to the
source of the sound, and--

Sigourd’s eyes flickered open, fluttering
and squinting into the bright light of the morning sun as it
shafted down upon him. He was back in the village of the wulfen.
Back in a strange bed with Isolde mopping attentively at his brow
and Arook standing hidden in the shadows. And there was the other
as well. The one who called himself Bael. He was there too watching
from the doorway. The bastard responsible for Cal’s murder. Sigourd
would open his eyes fully and they would all be there, looking down
at him with their varying expressions of concern and expectation
and loathing.

Except when he did open his eyes to look
upon the new day they weren’t there at all. That moment had already
passed. Looking about, Sigourd discovered that he had awoken in a
make shift lean to. Constructed very recently of sticks and
branches to keep him sheltered from the elements. He rested on
little more than a bed of leafy branches piled atop the naked
earth. The the iron rich tang of damp soil, and the heady aroma of
smoke from a nearby fire crept upon him.

Who had brought him here?

Sigourd tried to sit up, and it was only
then that the pain lanced through him. His whole body ached. His
limbs, his muscles, his very bones felt as if they were composed
entirely of raw nerve endings. But most of all his face was a
concerto of conflicting agonies. It felt wrong too. Sigourd traced
his fingers along the contours of his features oh so gently. Half
his face felt like it had been dipped in hot wax, which had run and
dripped before cooling to set upon him.

He heard voices from nearby. People talking
quietly, out of sight beyond the wall of the lean to.

Sigourd struggled to his feet, pushing
through the pain in his limbs through sheer force of will. While he
was laid out there on the floor of the forest he was vulnerable. He
needed to get upright, to find out where he was and what had
happened to--

--a glittering flash. As of firelight
glinting in the polished surface of a cold blade--

Sigourd was still for many moments, hunched
over with one hand pressed against the trunk of the tree under
which he sheltered so that he would not fall, he stood immobile as
the memories came rushing back to him. The blazing village, the
wulfen braying in terror as they wee slaughtered at the hands of
soldiers from his own household. His uncle’s butcher, Huron, their
swords flashing in the firelight. The blazing ruin of one of the
mighty red trees crashing through the foliage toward him as he lay
trapped. Had Sigourd dreamed all that too? He wasn’t sure of
anything.

The voices again, carried softly to him on
the slight breeze, brought Sigourd out of his reverie.

He limped out from under cover of the lean
to, holding onto the branches thereabouts for support. It appeared
he was deep in the heart of the forest. He was surrounded by
endless rows of trees, the canopy here so dense that the bright
sunlight was only permitted the most meager of access, shafting
down through the trees in fantastic spears of light that fell here
and there about the place. On the distant horizon, knifing into the
clear blue sky, the snow capped Ash’harad.

They appeared much further off then when
last he had seen them. Evidently he had been transported some
distance while unconscious.

Two people sat nearby, huddled over a small
fire that gave off feeble whisps of blue smoke as damp wood burned
upon it.

Sensing movement ahead of him, Jonn Grumble
looked up from his place before the fire. Seeing Sigourd he was
quiet for a moment before a broad grin split his grubby, bearded
face.

Isolde turned suddenly to see what had taken
Jonn Grumble’s attention from their quiet conversation. She inhaled
sharply when she saw what the wild man had, surprised and overjoyed
to see Sigourd standing before them.

She jumped up from her place by the small
fire and rushed to him, taking Sigourd carefully in her arms she
held his gaze for a long moment, searching perhaps for some hidden
truth there. Finally she leaned in and kissed Sigourd tenderly upon
the lips, holding him in her loving embrace for many moments
more.

The trio sat around the small fire, its
meagre warmth giving off little in the way of actual comfort. It
was perhaps more of a focal point for their conversation. A means
of drawing their collective experience together under the umbrella
of a shared concern. Their fears of what horrors would unfold next
in this gruesome tale. The wulfen had been scattered or
slaughtered. Arook was dead, and Bael had escaped into the
forest.

Really, the conversation was taking place
between Isolde and Jonn Grumble. They threw back and forth the
facts of their situation, hypothesizing based on the available
information, and speculating about the things they didn’t know or
weren’t so sure of. Sigourd had said little since his awakening,
preferring to keep his own counsel for the time being.

Both Isolde and Jonn believed that another
massacre was around the corner. But they weren’t sure from which
side or when it would come. Jonn Grumble felt certain that The
Baron was hell bent on prosecuting a war, on driving his forces
into the belly of the Eastern Fringes to root out and exterminate
the other wulfen tribes scattered about that cursed land.

Isolde believed that Bael was intent on
waging a war of his own. A guerrilla conflict in which he and any
of his surviving bandits would descend from the mountains to lay
waste and to slaughter the human settlements near the border. They
had no idea how close they were to the truth.

Isolde and Jonn had dug for the better part
of a day to pull Sigourd out of the blackened debris. When they’d
finally found him he was half dead and half burned.

They’d fled into the deeper forests, careful
to cover their tracks in case of pursuit by one party or another.
There they’d had lain low for near two weeks, and Sigourd had lain
unconscious that entire time. With his wulfen physiology working
hard to heal the horrific burns he’d sustained, he’d healed up as
well as could be expected. But the scars would never fully fade.
The left side of his face was riven with fused tissue that had been
too badly damaged for even his post human anatomy to restore to its
original vitality.

All trace of the beautiful boy that had left
Corrinth Vardis on a quest of unyielding love had vanished. In his
place was an altogether more stoic individual.

Isolde and Jonn Grumble both had noted
quietly to themselves how something had changed in Sigourd. Not
just in the physical sense. But something deeper. As if on a level
hidden within the chambers of his heart some of his youthful
vitality had been replaced with a core of cool volcanic rock. He
was simultaneously both more and less than he had been before
arriving in the Ash’harad. But the Eastern Fringes had a habit of
doing that to men. Breaking apart their souls and leaving ought but
fragments to be scattered to the four winds, or else remaking them
into something the All-mother never intended.

Sigourd sat between Jonn Grumble and Isolde,
quiet in the fashion of his new sensibilities. For some forty
minutes while the others had talked he had stared into the
flickering flames of the timid fire before them, polishing with a
piece of napped leather the ornate vambrace affixed to his forearm.
The delicate filigree and polished stones set into that vambrace
seemed to dance with a light of their own. The device had not left
Sigourd’s person once since it had been gifted to him.

When he had finally voiced an opinion on the
subject of what would happen next, of what their chosen course of
action should be, he spoke with such quiet authority that the
others hadn’t for one instant thought to question his evaluation of
the situation.

‘
Bael wishes to make a
statement large enough to draw the other tribes to his banner,’
said Sigourd. ‘He won’t waste time on the massacre of small
settlements along the borders. He will head west, to Corrinth
Vardis. There he intends to murder my family. He will force
humanity into a conflict that he has no hope of winning. The spark
that ignites his doomed revolution.’

‘
He’d have to be suicidal
to attempt a direct assault on the palace,’ said Jonn Grumble.
‘That place is harder to get into than a nun’s
knickers!’

Isolde looked up as the import of Sigourd’s
words took her, ‘In two nights time, when the moon is full, Bael
and whatever forces he has assembled will be able to effect The
Change. En masse they will be a force to be reckoned with even for
a fortified palace. Bael is no fool, he won’t attack directly, at
least not unless he believes the advantage is his.’

‘
Well he’s got nearly two
weeks head start on us,’ offered Jonn. ‘Now we know where he’s
going how are we going to find a way of getting there ahead of him.
I’ll be dammed if I know any way of crossing those cursed mountains
faster than how we came over ‘em.’

Sigourd looked up from the flickering fire
before him, casting his eyes into the shadowed darkness of the
forest beyond their small camp, ‘I know,’ he said.

Veronique hadn’t slept well since the night
her son had disappeared. In fact, her sleepless nights had started
before even then. When the stranger had appeared in her chambers to
confront her and her brother. To warn them of his intention to lure
Sigourd away.

‘
Stranger’ was a
questionable term to use in reference to that man. He wasn’t really
a stranger at all. She’d met him once before, and she’d known well
enough what he wanted the moment she’d seen him at court all these
long years hence.

She had sensed his inhumanity even from
across the crowded throne room, and when he’d stood before her and
The Baron on the night of the fire moments before half the palace
had been leveled, she’d known for certain what horrors lay coiled
beneath the surface of his human guise.

His face came to her now, floating into her
unconscious mind along with the faces of Sigourd and....one other.
She had tried to forget that last face, couldn’t even bring herself
to say his name. She had tried to push it out of her memory for
almost twenty years. But it had stayed lodged in her heart like a
thorn. Every time she looked at her son she saw him, and the thorn
had worked itself a little deeper.

Those floating faces brought with them pain,
the kind of pain that constricts the lungs, that makes it difficult
to breathe. The sort of pain that crushes the joy out of a person
not immediately, but over the course of years, decades. Slowly,
agonizingly.

Veronique awoke with a start, her heart
pounding in her breast as she cast about her darkened chamber in a
moment of panic. She was convinced that someone was in here with
her. Someone was watching her from the shadowed depths of the large
room. Strange shapes loomed out of the darkness before, silent and
watchful. Her eyes, wide with fear, began slowly to grow accustomed
to the surrounding gloom.

It was several terrifying moments before
Veronique realized was alone after all. The looming shapes were
only her gowns and other fabrics draped over the tall furniture.
She allowed her breath to escape in a relieved whisper.

As Veronique began to regain some measure of
composure there came a noise from the corner of the room. Suddenly
her heart was hammering again. Something moved behind the curtains
of the tall window above the desk where Veronique would sit as hand
maidens combed or braided her hair. A gentle breeze billowed the
curtains very slightly as Veronique stared into the gloom, and
something rolled across the desk.

Of course it had been overly warm in her
room the previous night. She’d left the window ajar to allow a
small breath of air into the chamber. Now something had gained
access through that window, and was waiting for her on the other
side of the heavy velvet drapery.

The moments ticked by, the object on the
desk rolled again in the wake of another gentle gust. It rolled
right off the edge of the desk and fell quietly to the floor.

The thing behind the curtain moved suddenly,
and Veronique had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stifle a
scream.

There was a quick, mad flurry from behind
the curtain, as of wings thrashing the fabric, and a sound like
some great bird taking flight from the window’s ledge. Then all was
quiet once more.

Veronique slowly lowered her hand, deciding
that such timid behavior was unbecoming of a lady of her position.
She steeled herself enough to climb from her bed and padded bare
foot over to the window. The stone floor was cold against the soles
of her feet.

Tentatively, she reached out to take hold of
the velvet. She breathed deeply to steady her nerves before ripping
the fabric aside to reveal...nothing.

Stepping back from the window, Veronique
bent down to retrieve the object that had rolled from the desk onto
the floor. A small scrap of rolled parchment, held in place with a
single brass band. It was the type of communique used by those who
employed birds to deliver their messages. The palace had a flock of
its own at the disposal of those senior enough to benefit form
their convenience.

Delicately sliding off the brass band,
Veronique unraveled the small parchment and began to read.

CHAPTER 19

The journey
back...

The stone skipped across the lake, two,
three, four times, ruining its perfect stillness with concentric
circles of ripples that radiated out and away from each place it
touched the darkly glowing water. The fifth time the stone touched
the lake it disappeared beneath the surface, leaving behind ought
but more of the expanding ripples.