Felan swallowed, wishing his hand would steady, wishing for a sip of white wine like that in the Knight’s cup or simply a drink of water. At his hip hung a water flask, but he dared not move to reach for it. The draconian at the door had stripped him of every weapon. He’d endured the dry, cold touch of the creature’s clawed hands, its reeking breath on his cheek as it grabbed away the knife at his belt, the bow and quiver across his back, even the small eating knife everyone in this part of the country carried as a matter of course. He felt that disgusting touch even now, even as, standing before the Knight’s table, and he felt the draconian’s reptilian eyes still on him. He didn’t doubt that reaching for the flask would be a mistake.
He said again, “My lord.”
At the bar, the taverner looked up, an old elf with thickening jowls and thinning silver hair. No one but these four, taverner, Knight, draconian, and Felan, occupied the large common room. Lord Thagol had taken up residence here and made it his command post for the region. If this were another Knight, Felan might have wondered whether the human missed the comforts of the capital, the glittering towers, the good food and quarters. This Knight out of Monastery Bone, though, bore the look of one used to the lack of comfort and the imposition of discipline. Here, in the Waycross, he looked like a man in his element, poring over maps and messages, waiting for the reports from soldiers. He’d been here all the summer long, the winter before, and back to the end of autumn. In all that time, the owner of the tavern hadn’t had payment for the food and wine Lord Thagol demanded for his Knights and draconians, and no elf for miles around came to dine at his tables or drink at his bar. The poor taverner had the pinched, white-eyed look of a man who sees ruin ahead of him.
Felan waited, and Sir Eamutt Thagol put another check mark on the map, his face white in the flickering firelight and shadow. His lips compressed in a thin, hard line. Beside his hand the crystal inkpot looked like a small carafe of blood. Now he set aside the quill pen, moved the inkpot aside with the side of his little finger. When he finally looked up and met Felan’s eyes, the elf’s knees wobbled. His blood changed to ice, washing through him so that he thought the horrible cold would stop his heart.
“Remind me. Do I know you?” the Knight asked.
In his mind Felan heard a sound like footsteps so clearly he almost turned to see who’d come up behind him. He swallowed again, this time harder.
“I am Felan of the Northern Dales, my lord. I—I don’t—we have never met. I have brought a letter—a paper.”
Sweat ran on him now, soaking his shirt. In his mind, he heard the footsteps coming again. He looked over his shoulder, very carefully. No, the draconian stood at its post, a tall, reeking presence in the shadows by the door.
Felan held up the paper, in the dim light seeing the sweat stains on it. None of the ink had been smeared though. He’d taken care to preserve it in a condition to be read. When Thagol took the paper, his fingers brushed against Felan’s.
“M-my lord,” the elf gasped.
Lord Thagol read. The lines were few, the message clear. The bearer was to receive compensation according to the measure of his worth.
“What,” the Knight asked, “shall I use to measure your worth?”
Felan regretted coming. He wanted to run, to risk that bolting the room, flinging past the draconian and out the door. He held still. “I have valuable information, my lord.”
Thagol looked up. Felan thought, as others before had thought, that the man’s face was so pale it looked like a burn scar. The Knight’s eyes seemed flat, dead, and empty. Felan had to lock his knees to stay standing in place. In his head the footsteps stopped, as though a searcher had come close to what he was looking for.
“And that information is …?”
“The outlaws... the ones they call the Night People. I—I know about them.”
The Knight remained silent, staring.
“I—I have entered their trust, my lord. I know how they work. I know—” He stopped and swallowed, trying to ease his parched throat. “I know that they sweep out of the forest and do their foul work, and I know they vanish into it again, invisible. They are not invisible, my lord, and they are not such an army. The leaders, at the core, are only four.”
Lord Thagol raised a pale brow, interested now. “Four?”
“Only that, my lord. These four are the heart of the trouble in the forest. They plot, and they plan, and they are the ones who call for other men and women to fight and then send them all away again when the work is done.” He looked around nervously. “I know where they are tonight, my lord, and I know they’ll stay there for a day or two.” Emboldened, he moved closer to the table and put a finger on the place a little north of the Brightflow. “There is a glade here, surrounded by tall pines. You wouldn’t think to look for it. From any direction it looks like more forest with no clearing to see unless you stumble upon it. This is their hiding place for now. They will move again soon, either to gather a force to strike or simply to move. For now, they are there, planning. Hiding. Just the four.”
Just the four. Cut off the head, and the twisty, slippery creature preying on this once-quiet corner of Beryl’s captive kingdom would die. Lord Thagol smiled. Felan heard the hiss and sigh of the hearth fire. He glanced at the taverner who did not meet his eye.
“You know this,” Thagol said, “because you have gained their trust? How?”
“I—I worked with them. For a time. For a while.” He spoke hastily now. “Until I saw how wrong they are. Now I am here.”
Lord Thagol tapped the parchment. “With this.”
“I had it from one of your Knights, my lord. When I told him what I knew, he sped me on to you.”
“Very wise of you both,” Lord Thagol drawled. “You won’t mind if I question you a bit more closely, will you?”
Felan opened his mouth to speak. The icy fear that had chilled him upon entering the Skull Knight’s presence now clamped around his mind with terrible grinding claws. They spread each thought wide, as though each were a book. They plunged deep, the icy claws, tearing at his mind. Felan could not do anything but scream.
The draconian turned, barely interested. At the bar, the taverner shuddered and poured himself a drink. The bottle rattled against the glass. No one noticed, and Felan’s scream went on and on, far past the point where his voice turned to rags and blood choked him.
An instant later, he fell to his knees, onto his face at the feet of the Skull Knight, voiceless and begging for mercy.
Like a glacier, the ice in his mind withdrew, and the elf Felan lay in the rushes on the tavern floor, blood trickling from the sides of his mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. His message had been delivered and accepted. Lord Thagol looked at the taverner and suppressed a yawn.
“I didn’t really question him all that closely, you know. All was as it seems, and he is a turncoat. But…” He shrugged. “Well, it seems he was a bit weak-minded.”
He jerked his chin and the elf came out from behind the bar. He dragged the corpse across the floor, silently cursing the blood trailing behind and grumbling about how he’d have to go off to the well now and fill a bucket to clean the floor.
The draconian stepped away from the door with laughter that sounded like snarling. The door slammed shut, and the elf dragged Felan’s body all the way across the dusty dooryard and behind the springhouse where cheeses hung and jugs of milk cooled. He left it there and went to find a shovel. He was all the rest of the day digging in the earth behind the springhouse, far enough away from the spring itself so that the water wouldn’t undermine the mean grave. No one bothered him or called him back to his tavern. Lord Thagol had matters of his own to consider, and he didn’t care about the concerns of taverners or turncoats. The taverner buried the dead in peace, and when he was finished he covered the raw earth with piled stones. Wolves didn’t run often in this part of the forest, but the elf wouldn’t take the risk of the grave being disturbed.