“Yes!” I shouted, startling the dream away. “Yes, I want them punished. They murdered the two best people in the world, and I don’t care what I have to do to make them pay for it.” I was full of such hate and anger that I thought Captain Darzid would see right away how evil I was.
But he just smiled and said, “That’s more like it. I’ll help you grow strong enough that you can do whatever you want… even to men as powerful as Seri’s friends. Trust me. I know you don’t as yet, but I served Tomas faithfully for seventeen years, and I’ll do far, far more for you.”
“Help me avenge Papa and Lucy, and I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said.
“Exactly so,” said Darzid. “Come along now. The road to our safe haven will lead us through some strange places.” He pulled me up behind him on his great black horse, and we turned onto a road that was a ribbon of unmarked snow. My face felt hot, especially when I thought about Papa and Lucy, but inside all the rest of me was cold, and I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again.
“What is this place?” I asked the captain when we rode across the mud fields toward the bare white walls.
“This is the destiny of those who do not know their place in the universe.”
I didn’t understand him. It was an awful place, a burned-out ruin of a city, every building charred and broken, bones and skulls everywhere, even hanging from posts stuck in the ground. I’d seen ruins before. Papa had taken me to Vaggiere, a day’s ride east of Montevial, and to Mandebrol Castle, both destroyed by the Valloreans a long time ago. But those ruins had never made me feel sick and wretched like this one did. The bones were part of it. Anyone left alive-even if they were prisoners or wounded-would bury their dead. But then, not a blade of grass or a weed or a vine lived there, not a bit of moss, not a bird or beast or even so much as a spider or an ant creeping around. That made me think that maybe there had been no one left alive in that city.
We left our horses in front of what had once been a fine house, almost a palace. You could tell by the amount of stone fallen in on it and the broad steps that opened onto a grand commard-huge and round, paved in marble, with tall columns all around it. Lots of posts with skulls on them stood beside that house, and I tried not to look at them. The walls of the house were cracked and broken, some fallen away altogether. Charred roof timbers had crashed down into the middle of it. At least two people had died in the foyer, several more on the curved staircase that ended halfway up to the second floor.
“This was the lord of the city’s house. A sad place, is it not? I need to find something here before we can be on our way.” Captain Darzid’s boots clattered on the stone floor as we walked in, and his voice was very loud. I wanted to tell him to be quiet. It didn’t seem right to make noise in that house. But I didn’t say anything, lest he think me a coward.
We stepped over fallen pillars and tramped through frozen mud and dirty snowdrifts into a large courtyard in the center of the house. Lots of trees and plants had once grown in the courtyard-all dead stumps now, of course. Several statues had toppled over. Once I stepped right into a giant stone hand. From one corner of the cloister came a trickling sound. A small fountain was still running-the statue of a little girl emptying a pitcher of water into a shallow round basin. The pinkish color of the marble made her look almost alive. A stream of clear water ran from the pitcher to the basin of the fountain, and there was not a mark or a crack or a chip on any of it. The girl had a little smile on her pink marble face, like she knew she had escaped whatever happened to the rest of the city.
“Come along,” said the captain, when I stopped to look at the fountain. We climbed up steps that went nowhere, peered through doorways that had nothing on the other side of them, and pushed into dark holes under the fallen walls. “I’m looking for something like the little fountain back there, something that’s not burned up or ruined, but that has writing carved on it.” In and out we went until we must have covered every step of the house.
“It has to be here,” said the captain, kicking aside a charred timber. “They wrote it in stone, protected it with power, so it couldn’t be destroyed. Curse all Dar’Nethi bastards!”
Two days we searched that awful ruin for whatever it was Captain Darzid wanted. He said we were looking for writing that described a shortcut through the mountains to his friends’ fortress. I thought that surely we could have gone the long way around by the time we would find what he was looking for. We camped in the courtyard of the great house. I slept a lot of the time and had terrible dreams. Well, I called them dreams, but they seemed real. One was about Comigor, a vision so clear that I could smell the dry grass…
The tenants were tilling the fields. I could see them through the paned window on the stair landing. Nellia and James and the other servants were at their daily work. Nellia was singing. She always sang “The Warrior’s Child” in her rusty old voice when she sat with her sewing. I called out to say good day, but she didn’t answer, and the footman in the dining room looked right through me when I walked past him into the drawing room. Mama was there. She was very beautiful, dressed in white and wearing her favorite necklace-the one with the circles of diamonds all strung together. A harper played in the corner, and Mama was talking with her friends.
“Was there truly no trace of him ever found?” A woman in green with a crow’s face leaned toward Mama’s ear.
“None at all,” said Mama. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “The sheriff from Graysteve says that as no one has demanded ransom, we must assume he’s dead, I’m going to leave this wretched place forever. My poor lamb was such an unhappy child. It’s a comfort, in a way, a kindness that fate has saved him the pain of long life.”
“Come, Lady Philomena, enough of sad thoughts,” said a young man as he pulled her up to dance. Soon she was laughing again and drinking wine. Her diamonds sparkled in the lamplight as she danced.
“It’s as well the boy is gone,” said the woman in green to another woman. “He was so odd. I’ve heard rumors of murder and worse things… perversion… in this very house. The royal inquisitors were on their way when the boy disappeared…”
Another dream came, too, and like the other, it seemed more real than any dream. I knew all the people, but they couldn’t see me.
Two men-peasant men-were running through one of the rocky rifts that cut through the heath north of Comigor. One of the men carried a little girl in his arms. The other, an older man with a gray beard, was bleeding from a wound in his leg. The older man stumbled on a stone and fell. “A curse on the House of Comigor.”
“Hurry, Father Castor, they’re coming. We can’t stop.” The younger man was frightened. Choking smoke filled the air, and the young man couldn’t stop coughing. The little girl whimpered, and the young man pushed her face into his shoulder. “Hush, Ceillitta.”
“Go on with you,” said the older man. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can.” He pulled himself up to lean on the steep bank, unhitching a scythe from his belt.
With a sad curse, the young man gripped the older one’s shoulder, and then ran on down the gully away from the castle. He didn’t get very far. Riders wearing King Evard’s red-and-gold livery galloped along the edge of the rift and shouted when they caught sight of the men. Two soldiers slipped off their horses, slid down the bank, and cut off the old man’s head before he could cry out. Another pair of soldiers caught the younger man and dragged the little girl away from him. The rest of the troop came up, their horses’ hooves swirling up dust to mix with the smoke. They were laughing and mocking as they dismounted. Two soldiers held the young man by the hair and arms, and the others threw the little girl on the ground, pulled up her dress, and fell on her, one and then the other. The young man cursed and wept and strained to get free, while the little girl screamed, “Papa, Papa.” By the time they were done with her, her scream was just a dry bubbling sound. The young man was about crazy.