The Glass Casket (2 page)

“I’ve already had a morning walk,” she said. “I went over to see Tom off before they left on their expedition.”

Her father shook his head. “That search party is premature. You’ll see, they’ll find those soldiers hard at work up there, and then they’ll feel the fools for wasting a full day on such a trek.”

“Father,” Rowan said, suddenly remembering the travelers who came to the door last night. “Who were they?”

There had been something about the trio that had riled her father, and even now, books pressed against his chest, he seemed more of a nervous schoolboy than the respected scholar he was.

He bit his lip and averted his eyes. “Yes, I’ve been meaning to speak with you about that,” he said. “I rarely
ask anything of you, you know that, but I’m making a request of you now. Do you understand?”

Taken aback by the intensity of his words, she nodded.

“Those people are dangerous, Rowan, and you are not, under any circumstances, to speak with them.”

Rowan shuddered. “Dangerous?”

Her mind drifted back to the family of three that had appeared at their garden gates as if players in some distant dream. They were not from the mountain provinces; that was immediately clear. They wore bright colors and spoke with a strange accent that reminded Rowan of what it must sound like to hear the crash of the sea upon the shore. The man and woman were tall, and Rowan could not see much of them under their cloaks, but the third traveler was a girl who had thrown back her hood and stood gazing up at the sky, exposing the whole of her face to Rowan’s eager eyes.

Roughly Rowan’s age, the girl had been beautiful in the way that a crisp apple was delicious—almost too sharp, but with an underlying sweetness that makes its jaggedness seem merely bright. She was tall, with red lips and raven hair pulled back into a tight braid, and from where Rowan had sat perched in her window, the girl’s dark eyes seemed to sparkle. Rowan’s father had gone out to speak with them, but Rowan had been unable to hear his words. After a brief exchange, her father, clearly agitated, proceeded back inside and locked the door behind him.

“But what did they want?” Rowan asked.

“That’s not your concern,” he said, furrowing his brow.
“I’m hoping they’ve left the village by now, but if you see them about, I want you to avoid them.”

Rowan opened her mouth to speak, but her father brushed past her. “We’ll talk later, Daughter. I’m due to deliver some papers to Ollen Bittern.” And with that, he strode out of the yard, his blond hair flopping in the winter breeze.

Rowan stood staring after him, disconcerted by his uncharacteristic brusqueness. Catching movement on the western wall, she turned, hoping to see her little bluebird, but there atop the stones, she saw an enormous crow, its wings frayed and its eyes black as night. It was said that before the crows came to Nag’s End, fairies and wood sprites and other forest things lived openly in the woods. But death rode in on the black wings of the crows, for a fairy hatchling is a crow’s favorite food, and it was upon the birds’ arrival that the benevolent forest things began disappearing, wicked ones lingering in their stead.

Hearing footfalls coming through the snow, Rowan turned to see Emily stalking toward her, a stern expression on her face. Emily was only a few years older than Rowan, but she’d been acting like Rowan’s nursemaid since she herself had been in milk teeth. Emily’s mother, Antonia, had been Rowan’s actual nursemaid, and since Rowan had grown up without a mother, Antonia had raised the girl as her own, the three of them eating dinners together at the kitchen table while Rowan’s father, more often than not, kept to himself, translating texts in his study. But now Antonia was gone as well, taken the previous year by fever, and although Rowan adored her father, it often felt as
though she and Emily were the closest thing either had to a real family.

“You’ll catch a chill out here. What are you doing, anyway? Waiting for Tom?”

Rowan shook her head. “He won’t be back just yet.”

“I heard your father talking to you,” Emily said, concerned. “You saw that family last night?”

“I did.”

Emily shook her head, disapproval in her eyes. “Strange, your father telling you not to talk to them.”

Rowan nodded, hesitant. “He says they’re dangerous.”

“Does he?” Emily raised an eyebrow. “And did he tell you who the girl is?”

“No, though she was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Like a rose, she was. But he didn’t tell you who she is?”

Rowan set her hand on her hip, her patience growing thin. “Emily, don’t be tiresome. Clearly you have something you want to tell me. Who is the girl?”

“She’s your cousin,” Emily said.

The words came like a jolt to Rowan’s heart. Her cousin? Her father had never told her she had a cousin. Something felt very wrong. Trying to collect her thoughts, Rowan walked through the snow toward the northern wall of the yard. Behind them, ice-capped mountains climbed toward the sky.

She needed to speak with Tom. That morning, when she’d said her farewell, she’d told him about the mysterious strangers from the night before, but she hadn’t known then that the girl was her own cousin. She wondered what Tom would make of it all.

Emily linked her arm with Rowan’s and stared up toward Beggar’s Drift. “I have a bad feeling about that mountain, I do.”

“So do I,” Rowan said.

From behind them came a cry and a tremendous beating of wings as the great black crow pushed off from its perch and hurtled up into the sky. Rowan shuddered. She had the strong sense that somewhere up on that mountain Tom was in terrible danger. She wrapped her cloak tight against the winter chill, hoping for some sign that everything would be okay, nearly certain that everything would not.

Tom and Jude stared at the journal, neither sure what to make of it. They could hear their father beginning to organize the men, and when he called for his sons, Tom set the journal down and stepped outside, Jude in tow.

“Right. Fan out, everyone,” his father said, sending groups off in various directions. As the men dispersed, Wilhelm looked to his sons and lowered his voice. “Stay close,” he said. “Something’s not right here.”

Tom nodded and started after the others, leaving Bartlett the tailor to puzzle over the tear in the tent. Tom’s eyes swept across the landscape, white as far as he could see, and up ahead to where the men were moving like animals, fear evident in their bodies. He turned to speak with Jude, but there was no sign of him. No doubt he’d headed off on his own as soon as the moment had presented itself.

In the distance, among the nearly naked trees, Tak Carlysle was waving his hands above his head, trying to get the others’ attention. Tom set off running, and even before he reached Tak, he could see the trail of blood, crimson against white, leading into the trees beyond.

That was where they found the first body. It took all of Tom’s restraint not to cry out when he saw the snow mingled with frozen blood and bone. He turned away and closed his eyes lest he lose his breakfast in the snow, but his father was watching, so he forced himself to look again upon the corpse. The man’s tongue had been torn from his mouth, his eyes gouged from their sockets, and wounds of varying size and depth covered his body, as if he had been set upon from every direction.

“Animal attack,” Dr. Temper was quick to say, for he knew their minds would drift somewhere worse given their whereabouts.

Tom’s father cleared his throat. “We need to keep looking. We must find the others.”

With no tracks to follow, the men set out through the trees in grid formation, Tom’s belly clenching ever tighter at the thought of what might lie ahead. They had gone only a short distance when little Natty Whitt, no more than fourteen and a little slow in the head, began shouting for the others.

Natty stood over what appeared to be four sets of clothes, folded and stacked neatly. They were covered in blood.

Tom’s father shook his head. “Holy Goddess. What happened here?”

That was when they heard Jude’s voice ring out from behind a thick line of trees.

“Over here!” he called, and Tom gritted his teeth, not wanting to see what his brother had found.

They were all there, the four other missing men, spread out in the snow. They were naked, save for their undergarments, and as far as Tom could see, they bore no injuries. It was almost as if they had disrobed and lain down in the snow, where they had quietly frozen to death.

Tom looked away as Dr. Temper examined the bodies.

The cause of death was clear. They had been frozen solid, victims of the elements.

“But this is lunacy” was all Tom’s father could say. “No man would allow himself to freeze to death.”

Dr. Temper raised his eyebrows at Tom’s father. “Goi Parstle,” he said, careful to use the honorific. “Are you doubting my assessment?”

“Please,” Wilhelm said, raising his thumb in apology. “I meant no disrespect. But surely there must be some explanation.”

“They must have been attacked,” Paer Jorgen said, and since he was the only village elder in the party, the rest of the men fell silent. “Something tore into that tent back there, and that first man, clearly he was mauled by an animal.”

Bartlett the tailor, who had examined the tent at length, nodded, wearing an odd expression. “About that,” he said. “I don’t think something did tear into that tent. I think something tore out of it.”

Tom shivered at the notion.

Wilhelm Parstle furrowed his brow. “You’re certain?”

“It looks that way.”

“Are you saying,” Tom asked, his voice cracking, “that these men, they clawed their way out of that tent?”

“Yes.” Bartlett nodded. “I think that’s exactly what they did.”

Paer Jorgen shook his head, fear evident in his eyes. “No. No, something is not right here. There is something we are not seeing. It must have been an animal—attacked while they were sleeping.”

“The tent was torn from the inside,” Bartlett insisted. “As if they were trying to escape something.”

The men stared at one another as they considered this, all momentarily speechless.

“What was it they sought up here?” Jude asked, his voice cutting through the silence. The men turned to look at him—Jude seldom spoke, and when he did, he could be counted on to say something controversial. “Does anyone know? If we knew why they were here, perhaps we could figure out what happened to them.”

Paer Jorgen shook his head. “They are royal soldiers. Their business is not our own. When it comes to the king’s city, it is always best not to question. And I see no reason why we should. It was a wolf, plain and simple. Granted, we haven’t had a wolf in these parts for years, but only this morning Mama Lune told me of a recent spate of moose killings up north in the old territories. With the mild winters we’ve had, it’s possible that the population is expanding and venturing out of range.”

“I’ll give you the first man, but what about these others?” Jude argued. “They have nary a scratch on them.”

“Mind your place, Jude,” his father chastised before the boy could embarrass him further.

Jude balked. “I’m supposed to accept that a wolf did this?”

“You dare to argue with me?” Paer Jorgen’s face was growing red as he spoke.

Jude raised a thumb. “Our purpose is the same, Paer Jorgen. I want to know what killed these men just as you do. Our people live at the base of this mountain. Don’t you think it best that we explore every possibility before we cease our questioning?”

The old man took a step toward the boy, and instinctively the others took a step away. “And what experience have you with wolves? You were barely alive when the wolves took the Flywit children.”

“I thought the Flywit children disappeared,” Jude challenged.

“You will stop contradicting me. A wolf mauled that man.”

Jude clenched his jaw. “And I suppose a wolf simply encouraged these men here to remove their clothes and lie down nice and still in the snow like that. You’re right,” he said, slinging his gun over his shoulder and walking into the woods. “That must have been it.”

Tom moved to follow his brother, but then thought better of it. His gaze fell to the bodies, so pristine, blanched the same color as the snow. There was something wrong about
the tableau before him, something he could not quite place. He leaned in to take a closer look but was pulled from his reverie when his father grabbed his arm.

“Tom, Paer Jorgen is speaking.”

Tom looked to the elder, who was mid-argument. Something would need to be done with the bodies, and the men were already engaged in a dispute over what that thing was to be.

“… they may be the king’s men, but it is our mountain,” said Paer Jorgen, his lips pursing with anger.

“Yes,” whispered Natty Whitt. “The Goddess would want them to rest.”

“What does our mountain goddess care for the king’s soldiers?” Goi Tate spat. “These same soldiers enslaved her people and drove her underground. I say send word to the palace city. Let them deal with the corpses. Theirs is a sea god. Let them have their ocean burial to sate him. They’re not our responsibility.”

“But we can’t leave them out in the air like this,” Bartlett said. “We can’t leave them for the elements. Think of their bodies, what the scavengers will do to them.”