“Of course it burned. Haven't you heard the wings?”
Brack regarded him for a moment without speaking. He was tall and slender; even his furs could not hide that build. His head shaved on the sides and the hair thick and a knuckle long in the center. The lanternlight on his face shining like fire on water in the dark of a starless night.
“You know, then,” Brack said at last.
“We feared. We didn't know. You never know until it's too late and knowing or not knowing is the same.”
Brack nodded once at that. “It's been here?”
“Not yet. But passing over. I've heard it half a month now. When did it come to the keep?”
“Four days ago. Fell on the tower and killed them. Lit the town. We saved what we could and ran. I stayed until they were gone and left myself. Buried the dead as if we'd be back, but the keep is lost.”
“Flown?”
“I don't see what you mean.”
“Was it flown?” the man asked. Looking at the sky now and that lanternlight also in his eyes.
“No,” Brack said.
“Ah.”
The spearman stepped forward again. His boots heavy in the snow. The smaller man beside him did not speak nor did he look as if he wished to. But his eyes were on the mountains and the sky equally, darting in something that was beyond simple fear.
“Why'd you come here?” the spearman asked.
“I'm looking for a man. My grandfather.”
“Your grandfather lives here?”
“If he's still alive, he does. This was the last place I left him.”
“Seems like we'd know if someone from the Ringed City lived here. You sure you have the right town?”
“I'm sure.”
“Well, how about you come on in and we get you a beer and a fire and we see what we can find.”
“I'd be grateful.”
“And then you tell us where it came from so that we can go out and kill it.”
Brack was silent. Thinking over this man and what he would do if faced with such a creature as that. Standing now tall and proud with the spear in hand and perhaps the only man in the village who would make that boast. Perhaps never bested by all who tried. As with men the world over, that bred confidence and confidence bred stupidity. Something that would come true in a rushing sort of way when the pieces fell into place, but which the man could neither know nor accept until the reality was forced upon him in all of its true horror and he could not deny it as his body turned to flame.
But none of that mattered as the world spun madly and so Brack nodded once and followed them into the village and the man with the half-shaved head looked at him in a way both unsettling and showing that they shared in this small corner of the world a secret only the two of them knew, but neither would speak for some secrets were best left in their graves with the bodies that covered them.
Chapter Two
In this pitted world of perpetual darkness she stood in her chains and looked above to where the light filtered in through the window and fell across to the distant wall and the shadows of the bars embedded in that light. It was a far off thing as if drowning and looking at the light that was the surface. She looked at it each day and it was always just as far.
All about her the stone of this old room and an ever-hanging dampness. The air itself heavy and the rock walls slick and growing from the gaps between the stones a thick and rotting moss. Vines with veins of red streaked through them as if blood beat in some massive and unseen heart. The droppings of bats and men upon the floor, and the smell of it.
The things she had grown accustomed to in her five years thus enslaved.
She could hear the sounds in the road above of horses on the stones and men talking and they were all filtered with the distance and faint. She had at first called to them and screamed and they had not responded. Perhaps unable to hear or perhaps simply more willing to ignore. To be on with that business which they had. Now she did not scream but just looked and listened and both sight and sound were the same.
And she waited. For what, she knew not. But she waited.
The chains bound her to the wall with iron rings, but there was enough play in those cold bonds to move slightly about the room. It was a deep and cavernous thing, the far end faded so entirely into black that she could not see what was there. At times she would hear sounds from that side as of someone breathing and then the sounds of eating and once, just once, a weeping sort of call. But her movements were just for a few yards from the wall and a few down the length of it, and she assumed that whoever was so ensnared across from her also had such limited confines.
She had once called out to them, as she had to the others. Never had there been a response. Not so much as an acknowledgement of the call.
Against her own wall there lay a thin cot of little more width than a blanket, a chamber pot of tin and a small wooden stool with uneven legs. Beneath that stool a single book that she could read for just an hour a day when there was enough light. She had read it so far six times and was reading it again.
Now in the dark she could sometimes read it, the pages recalled in her mind. But she waited for the light all the same.
She heard the key in the lock as she always did and turned to face the door. There was just one, at the western wall, set equally between her and whoever occupied this world with her. They always came from there and walked down a long stone path over a deeper pit, the bottom of which she had never seen, and stepped out onto the stone floor near her. As happened now, her attendant striding in a flowing white gown with gold trim and a slender gold band about one wrist.
The girl stopped in front of her. Looking down at the stone. “They're asking for you.”
“Let them ask.”
“Please give me your hands.”
She held out her hands obediently and the girl fit a key into one shackle and then the next, pulling them each apart and letting them swing back to strike loudly against the wall.
“Come with me.”
The first time this happened, she had tried to run. Not in the room, but as soon as she had gotten through the door. It was years ago and she could still remember the cry as she'd pushed the ageless girl aside and turned and run for the end of the hall and the beating of her heart and pounding of her breath on the stairs. The twisting and turning in endless and mazelike passages above, hearing feet all about her closing in, and unable to find the way out. Wanting in her panic to scream and claw at her own eyes and face but just running and running and then at last stepping out into the room where he waited for her. Seated as he was on that golden throne and grinning with the dagger in his hand.
She had not run since and she did not run now. Instead she walked with this girl and they crossed the stone walkway and she glanced down into the bottomless dark and stayed in the center of the stones. Waited at the door while the girl unlocked and opened it. Stepped through and into that hall and followed as she was supposed to follow and waited.
Always waited.
They bathed her and she lay naked in the warm water and closed her eyes and not for the first time wondered if she held her head below the surface if she could drown herself. Their hands now so gentle upon her with the soap and rags trying in desperation to pull her from the water, raking at her flesh and skin, but unable to draw her out. How long would it take until the world came rushing into blackness and was no more?
She did not know and she did not try. But she thought it always.