Lost Is The Night, Page 2

  The day she left home.

  “Miss you,” she said as a quiet prayer to herself.

  A drunken roar echoed down through the castle from above, breaking in on her thoughts. Cacea wished she could sleep for another few hours, but it was not to be. More banging and shouting followed, and then Bartell’s voice again, “Be out with you, Cacea, or I will have you flayed after your turn at table is done.”

  Aye, you would love to do that wouldn’t you, you old lech.

  “All right, Bartell, I am coming.”

  As she opened the door, she was almost knocked down by two boys running up the stairs with a sloshing wine-keg between them. Sweat stood out on their brows and their teeth ground together.

  Not the first keg they have carried to and from the Great Hall this night, Cacea thought, the feast must be going well.

  Bartell stood before her, a withered man in officious silks with a long, thin nose and a downturned mouth. His skin was as sallow as candle wax, often making Cacea wonder if a touch of fire would make him melt. He looked her over with eyes that were dim pebbles sunken into fleshy pouches. “Well enough, you are needed below. Nathe needs you to take up more of the hog for the guests.”

  Another drunken roar from above.

  Sounds like there are enough hogs up there all ready, Cacea thought.

  But one of those drunk, rich men could be her way out of this place.

  “Go on,” Bartell snapped, “unless you want Lord Barneth to grant you a ride on the Red Wheel.”

  Cacea felt her skin tighten at the suggestion. She knew what it felt like to have a man undress her with his eyes—all women did—but Lord Barneth was a man who went much further than that.

  She had felt him looking deeper whenever she was in his presence, imagining the skin coming off, her screams as the Red Wheel turned, and how she would become more red and wet with each successive turn. He did it to each of the women in the castle, she was sure, but that made it no less pleasant an experience to endure his salacious gaze.

  Cacea hitched her dress up and ran down the stairs to the kitchen. On her way, she passed a portal that led into the under-lit dungeons. She caught the faint smell of rot and damp wafting out from within.

  It’s in there, she thought, the Red Wheel. Somewhere in there.

  She ran faster down the stairs to escape the thought of it.

  Chapter Three

  Khale stood in the courtyard and eyed the doors that led into the castle’s inner keep. Many horses snorted in the stables and the squires of the noblemen sat around a brace of smouldering braziers, warming sausages and baking potatoes on the spitting coals. A few looked up and regarded the Wanderer with certain contempt. They might be of a lower class than their lords, but Khale was in a worse state than them. His brigand’s furs and leathers were ripe and filthy since travelling out of Colm to Neprokhodymh and then on to here. How long had it been now since he last changed his clothes?

  What I need, he thought, is a good, long, hot bath.

  The guard led him to the gates of the keep, and he rapped on the iron-studded oak of the great doors. The sound of locks being thrown echoed out, and then the doors were opening. The guard turned to Khale, saluted, and returned the way he had come.

  The Wanderer looked after the guard, still unsure.

  Khale crossed the threshold into the keep, and the doors closed behind him. He saw the guards standing on either side, watching him. They were not as at ease as the guard who had brought him in here.

  A man presented himself.

  “Good evening, Master Khale. I am Bartell, his Lordship’s steward, and I will attend to your needs.”

  Khale looked him over. Dressed in blue-green silks, he looked, for all the world, like an over-embroidered cushion. The wrinkles in his face wept dry tears of perfumed powder. When the man smiled falsely at him, the Wanderer saw familiar signs of a life spent eating too many sweetmeats and loqma cakes.

  Rotten on the inside, fragrant as morning on the outside.

  He could taste the sin hanging in the air around this one.

  “I am expected then?”

  “Indeed so. Lord Barneth has made special provision for you. You are his honoured guest.”

  “So I have been told. Do you have a place for me to bathe? And clean clothes for me to wear? As you can see, the road has been as trying on myself as on my garments.”

  The mannered reserve of the steward cracked somewhat as he cast an appraising eye over Khale’s clothing. The smell of it must have reached his delicate nostrils by now.

  Bartell recovered a little. “Certainly, Master Khale. We can attend to this for you. Do come with me, and afterwards you will do his Lordship the honour of attending the feast, yes?”

  Aye, he thought, I’ll honour your Lord, as long as he doesn’t try to honour me first.

  “Lead the way,” he said, and Bartell did.

  They ascended to a passageway that ran parallel with the outer wall of the keep. Khale could see Bartell’s eyes flicking nervously in his direction as they passed the sconces mounted into the walls. The firelight must have been reflecting in the reptilian taint of his eyes. No matter how many centuries passed, Khale never stopped taking pleasure from the discomfort of others when they glimpsed his true nature, cancerous as it might be.

  “These will be your quarters for the evening, Master Khale,” Bartell smiled, wanly.

  Khale peered through an opened door. The bedchamber was decorated with hangings made from wolf, stag, and mountain bear—the Barneth penchant for skinning the living proudly on display. Even the chests were draped with the skins of smaller animals.

  A steaming bathing tub of wrought iron awaited him, he saw, and a servant girl.

  Khale smiled crudely at her and said to Bartell, “Bring more hot water, and lots of it. I want to take my time here.”

  Bartell nodded and moved swiftly away.

  Khale shut the door behind him, exchanging glances with the girl. “And you are?”

  She fumbled a curtsey, “Cacea, my Lord.”

  “I’m no lord. I’m Khale. Call me nothing else but that.”

  “Yes, my Lor—yes ... Khale.”

  “What do you do here?” Khale cast his eyes around the room, thoughtfully.

  “I work in the kitchens ... I serve his Lordship and—”

  “No,” Khale said, looking at her, “I said what do you do here? Why are you in this place, this castle?”

  Her eyes fluttered uncertainly.

  “No one’s ever asked you that before, have they? No one’s been that bothered since you started working here.”

  “No ... Khale, they have not.”

  “Then it pleases me to be the first. Tell me, why’re you here? There are kinder lords and castles you could wait and serve in. Why come all this way to be at the beck and call of a man like Milius Barneth?”

  “How do you know I am not from these parts?”

  “Because I am a wanderer; did they not tell you that? I have travelled far, and I know the people of these pine forests and mountain-kingdoms are dark of hair and eye. Your eyes are clear as a morning sky, and your hair is honey and spun gold.”

  “My Lord is too ... too kind,” she stammered.

  He sighed hard. “And I asked you a question that you have still yet to answer.”

  “I came here because,” she paused, licking her dry lips, “because I wanted to.”

  “That’s all?”

  She nodded.

  “Ha! How different. Your family still lives? Your brother still breathes, truly?”

  “How did you know I have a brother?”

  Khale shrugged. “A well-fated guess. Well, does he?”

  She avoided his eyes, saying nothing.

  “I care not. Come, I must bathe.”

  He stripped stinking furs and ripe leather from his skin, and then unpeeled the worn remains of his boots and cast them all together in a pile. He stood before Cacea, naked and scarred. She did not avert her eyes thi
s time. They stayed on him, and he saw her pupils dilate, eating away at the fair blue of each iris. Her lips were pursed, and he could see a pulse at work in her temple.

  “Is something amiss?” he rumbled.

  She stepped over the mound of filthy clothes and pushed herself up against him.

  He felt her breathing; it was becoming deep.

  “When I was a young girl ... I saw my brother spear a boar in the forest. He didn’t know I was there, watching him from the bushes. All I remember is the muscles in his arms, how they were beaded with sweat, and how he thrust the point of the spear into the boar’s side. He drove it in so deep and so hard. The animal fell, squealing, spilling its blood and guts on the ground. I watched it die, thrashing in the dirt and the grass. Its eyes focused on me before they became glassy and still. I touched myself then, and I was wetter than I’d ever been before.

  “Afterwards, I followed my brother as he dragged the carcass back to our cottage. He hung it in father’s shed. I knew they would skin it and cure the meat later, after it had finished bleeding out. I crept into the shed, and under the boar’s corpse. I stood in the blood that fell from its body. It felt warm and good on me. I stood there until it painted my feet red. And then, I frigged myself so hard with my fingers that it hurt me through the night. But it was a good hurt, a sweet pain. I painted my shoes red in memory of that day, so I don’t forget it. I felt nothing for my brother, don’t wrong me by thinking in that way, it was just that day and what happened that marked me.

  “And you smell as that day was,” she said. “Sweat, blood, dirt, and death. I do not want to wash it off you, not yet.”

  Khale regarded her with his flickering yellow eyes. His smile was feral. “On the bed. Now.”

  Cacea climbed onto the bed, and Khale took her roughly, pinning her forearms with his thick, gnarled hands. Her eyes shone bright as his engorged spear thrust into her, withdrew, and thrust in again. He felt her eyes wandering over his scars, saw how wet her mouth was becoming at the sight of them. Letting her hands free, he felt them explore his body; she clung to him, she scratched at him, and not with the light scratches of a lover. Then, her teeth found his bicep, and she bit him—hard.

  Skin broke. Her teeth sank into his flesh. Blood ran. Khale felt her lips and tongue tasting the light wound.

  It bothered him not; he’d known men and women with darker tastes than this.

  When she was done, Cacea lay back with his blood drying on her lips, fingering herself and making satisfied sounds in her throat. Khale turned her over, without protest, parted her ripe behind, and took her as a man takes another man. She did not cry out as he pushed inside and finished himself. But he saw, when she turned back over, that she had been gnawing her lips to hide the pain. Her eyes held no reproach for what he had done.

  The door opened, and Bartell walked in with fresh clothes for Khale. He dropped them as he beheld the scene.

  “My Lord ...”

  “Leave them.” Khale said, standing naked before the steward. “I haven’t had my bath yet. Unless you want to join us.”

  “No, my Lord,” Bartell said curtly, and left with Khale’s brutal laughter in his wake.

  After Bartell had departed, Cacea bathed with him, and they talked.

  “So,” she said, “what do you do here?”

  “I crossed through the forest to shelter from the storm. I came to the castle and was told that the feasting here was in my honour.”

  “Then you are a lord.”

  “No, I am not. I am Khale—a wanderer, like I said before. I have no titles.”

  “And yet a lord like Barneth throws a feast in your honour? You are mocking me.”

  “Barneth’s no friend of mine, or of any man for that matter. I’d sooner give him the shit scraped from my boots than offer him my hand in fealty.”

  “But you’ll eat his meat, drink his wine, and fuck girls in his chambers?”

  “That is different. A man has his needs.”

  She laughed at that—and he saw something about her.

  A shadow, an echo, a memory from the time before white fire ravaged the world. He saw Cacea’s face and heard the words, “I bring thee a gift.”

  No, this cannot be.

  First, a lord’s feast in his honour.

  Now, a ghost of flesh and blood before him.

  Truly, in this place, madness lies.

  Chapter Four

  The Great Hall was overflowing in every way: with people, with steaming platters of meat and baked fruits, with sloshing kegs of beer and wine being rolled in as fast as the empty ones were rolled out. It had been a long time since Khale beheld such an orgiastic scene.

  “The feast is begun, indeed,” he said.

  His old furs and worn leathers were gone; in their place, he wore a black silk shirt and a waistcoat with embroidered silver trim. His trousers were loose-fitting and of a burgundy shade, tucked into fawn-skin boots. He’d found a belt with an ornate bronze buckle in a chest in his quarters. Though seemingly unarmed, he had slipped a small dagger into one of his boots. A two-handed sword was too cumbersome to wear to dinner, but to be without any form of protection was against his nature.

  He ran his fingers through his greying mane—now without tangles or animal skulls woven into its strands—as he approached the top table. He was better groomed than he had been in many moons, and it felt good.

  The air was close. Khale breathed it in, tasted the sweat upon it. The warmth of the revels permeated his skin and softened the aches in his muscles as he took in his surroundings. Noblemen and women sat at table; a few talking, many more caressing and groping one another as wenches and serving boys served them their meat and drink. The wood of the tables was shining with spilt beverage, and with the juices that ran from cuts of beef, lamb, chicken, and game. Gnawing mouths consumed them with relish. Light shrieks broke out as uncaring hands tore the cloth of a blouse or the silk of a dress, followed by deeper roars as the men called for their flagons to be refilled.

  Khale made his way through the tumult of the banquet, with few sparing him more than a glance. They were too drunk to care. At the foot of the Lord’s great chair, which rested just beyond the high table, the guard saluted him.

  Lord Milius Barneth looked down at Khale from the black oakwood of his high chair. It was carved into a likeness of the arms, legs, bare breasts and hairless openings of many women. It was grotesque. The death-mask face—hollow-eyed and tight-mouthed—that crowned the chair above Barneth’s head only served to complete the nauseating effect.

  The man who sat upon it was stout but had not yet run to fat. His black-velvet finery matched the dark curls of his beard. Blood-rubies gleamed in the silver rings he wore upon each of his fingers, they shone as black as his eyes, set in a face that was as squat and firm as his body.

  “Master Khale,” he said, in a low voice that was somehow audible over the din of the feasting, “you are welcome to the seat that is Castle Barneth.”

  “I am welcome? How so?”

  Barneth’s eyes flashed for a moment. “For doing the deed that others tried and failed to do.”

  Khale’s eyes cleared with understanding. “The death of Alosse.”

  “Yes, and his daughter, I assume. I am told she left Colm in your care.”

  Khale said nothing.

  “You have done me a service,” Barneth went on, regardless, “removing that old goat and his spawn made taking the city so much easier.”

  “It was not taken,” Khale said. “It was sacked.”

  “Taken. Sacked. Words are such little things for describing great deeds.”

  Khale met Barneth’s eyes. The abyss stared into him, and he stared back. This man was not bothered by the reptilian taint of his eyes. Leste had met his gaze as a gladiator meets an opponent. The Autarch had met his gaze as an equal. Barneth was something else—it was as if he were looking straight through the Wanderer, as if Khale were someone of no consequence. And, for a moment, he thought that he
saw a shadow flicker into being and pass across Barneth’s face; one which was not cast by the nearby firelight.

  Disquieting, Khale thought.

  Despite the warmth of the hall, he felt the cold of the rain again on his skin.

  “Will you not join us for the feast, Master Khale?” Barneth asked, his voice a dry whisper. “Your place awaits you.” The lord gestured to a chair at the high table. “Please, be seated.”

  Khale sat down without ceremony, certain he heard a muttering from the guard at his lack of courtesy. He could feel Barneth’s eyes on his back, but he was sure his rudeness had not caused the Lord’s staring. It was because Khale had been expected. Barneth was not a mage, Khale could tell, yet he had expected Khale at the feast. Some foresight, some devil’s tongue, had told him.

  What devil, and where was it now? Still hereabouts? Or fled?

  He turned to his left and to his right as the Barneth family introduced themselves. Their Lord did not stir from his chair to do the honours. Annera Barneth was a spectral creature in black silk threaded with white lace. Her son, Dion, and daughter, Lesa, took after their mother rather than their father. They shared the same watery, pale moons for eyes, drawn faces, and pinched lips. They sipped their wine and picked at their food. They cast glances often at the figure of Barneth. They touched each other too lingeringly and too longingly to be decent for a mother and her children. They looked at each other with the eyes of lovers, rather than of kin. They stared at Khale with open fear and did not speak to him. He wished he were not at the high table. It was a cold, high, lonely place, overlooking the heat and fire of the feast.

  Down below, he recognised some of the faces.

  Lord Hruth Farness was there, as expected. The self-proclaimed Regent of the Wetlands was gnawing upon a honey-basted hog’s leg and watching Khale at the high table with Barneth’s family, in the place that should have been his.