Arc 5: Chapter 18: Graveflower

    It took some doing, but we got Emma up the stairs and into the inner halls of the mansion.

    Those halls were carpeted, lined in metal braziers and decorated with paintings and tapestries, all of it old and lavish as anything I’d seen in a king’s court. Otherwise there wasn’t much to distinguish it from countless other noble dwellings I’d been in.

    Other than the brass pipes. They ran across the walls and ceilings like veins, riddled with holes of varying sizes and shapes. Did they all connect to that instrument in the foyer, I wondered?

    Did the whole forest connect to this place?

    We limped along in silence for a time. Emma, propped between me and Hendry, eventually broke it.

    “If no one else is going to say anything, I will.” I got the sense she was mostly just distracting herself from her injuries. “What the hell was that back there, Hendry? Since when were you strong as an ogre?”

    We went ten steps before Hendry spoke. When he did, his voice was subdued. “I’ll show you after we see to your legs.”

    Emma didn’t press him. Soon enough, I found an open room with light inside. It turned out to be a comfortable bedroom, with a clean bed replete with a curtain and a smaller adjacent room for washing.

    We got Emma into the bed, and I inspected the damage. Bad, as I’d thought. Not for the first time, I cursed that I’d lost my healing touch.

    You managed to call on a High Art not half an hour ago, I told myself. Maybe that’s not as out of reach as you thought?

    There were rolls of linen on a table, and other supplies. Hendry and I got to work, getting Emma’s legs clean, sanitizing the wounds, then wrapping them up. I didn’t question how this had all been readied so quickly. We were in a wizard’s sanctum, and I had seen stranger things.

    “Your leggings are ruined,” I told her.

    Emma lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not going to walk around without pants.”

    Almost on cue, Hendry opened one of the huge mahogany wardrobes. There were dresses inside. Emma sighed.

    “For now, just stay in bed. Maybe we can find something else.” I patted her on the shoulder before standing. Hendry and I were both covered in bite and claw wounds, which we tended to. When there was nothing left to do, Emma and I turned to Hendry.

    Hendry shifted uncomfortably. “It’s complicated.”

    “Our lives are complicated, Hunting.” Emma’s voice sounded heavy. Once the rage of battle had fully faded, exhaustion had taken its place. She’d lost a lot of blood, both from the wolves and her own Art.

    Taking a deep breath, Hendry steeled himself and lifted a hand to his left shoulder. He’d stripped out of his coat and vest, leaving just a brown tunic beneath. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the collar down to show us his bare shoulder.

    It revealed a gruesome sight. The flesh just beneath his collar bone was bruised nearly black and mottled, almost warped, forming a spiral shape of discolored tissue. It radiated out into angry scars, lumpy in some places and sunken in others. The bones of his shoulder and collar looked sharp and disfigured, as though straining against the skin.

    I suspected it went further. And much of it looked like bad burns.

    “That...” Emma swallowed, less flippant now. “That is where Jon Orley stabbed you?”

    Hendry nodded. “Yes.”

    He wouldn’t meet our gazes, his blue eyes fixed on some point in front of his feet. He licked his lips, then explained in a hasty, nervous voice.

    “After I was wounded, I lay in bed for a long time. I don’t remember much of it, but... I remember pain. Strange dreams. Some of Orley’s spear got stuck in me. It fused to the bone.”

    My own shoulder, the right, twinged. “Devil Iron.”

    Hendry met my eyes. “You know of it?”

    I gestured to my shoulder. “I got some of the scorchknight’s spear in me, too. My powers kept it from spreading. You could say it died before it could take root. I’m guessing it wasn’t the same for you?”

    Hendry looked sick as he talked. “Over the weeks after that, it spread through my bones. It started with my shoulder, then took the whole arm, then...”

    Emma shook her head, looking horrified. “Hen, are you saying... that all of your bones are made of iron now?”

    When he nodded, my squire spoke in a strained voice I’d never heard from her before.

    “How can you even stand!?”

    “I got used to it,” Hendry said, looking ashamed. “It’s... heavy. And it still hurts, all the time. I get stiff, and if I’m still too long it hurts a lot. I don’t know how I can still move.”

    I noted then how deep the shadows under his eyes were. I’d missed it before.

    No, I just hadn’t paid the boy much mind. I felt ashamed of that, then.

    “Devil Iron isn’t a natural substance,” I told him. “I don’t know much, but it’s a weapon crafted by the masters of the Iron Hell. I’ve never heard of it doing this before.”

    Considering, I frowned and said, “I don’t understand, though. The clericons should have been able to cleanse you of the taint. They did perform an exorcism, right?”

    Hendry shrugged. “It didn’t work.”

    “But—”

    His voice became flat. “It didn’t work.”

    I let it go.

    Turning to the door, I went three paces before Emma spoke at my back. “Where are you going?”

    I paused at the door. “To find Catrin.” I pointed down. “You two stay here, look after one another.”

    “We should stay together,” Emma argued.

    “You can’t move,” I reasoned to her. “And I’m not going to leave Cat out there alone.”

    I let out a sigh of relief. “Cat.”

    “Hey, big man.” Catrin smiled wanly. “What, thought I was a ghost?”

    I’d considered it. Instead of saying as much I tilted my head toward the door. “Emma’s wounded. Hendry’s with her. The Count is keeping us here as his guests tonight.”

    Catrin answered with a slow nod, still with that remote expression on her face.

    I took a step closer and reached out with my free hand to her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re—”

    She spoke in a curt voice. “Don’t touch me.”

    I froze. “Alright. I’m sorry.”

    She shook her head, taking a steadying breath. She was breathing a lot, I noticed, each one looking deliberately spaced and full. Focusing on being alive, I realized.

    “Don’t be sorry,” Catrin said. “I’m just... when he took me, the place I went... it’s hard to explain. It felt like I was there for hours.”

    It had been less than one since we’d arrived in the manor. “Did he hurt you?” I asked, feeling a ripple of anger shoot through me.

    “I never saw him,” Catrin said. “I was lost in this winding labyrinth. It was full of... things. Monsters, voices, shadows that weren’t shadows.”

    She ran a hand through her hair, then hugged herself. “It was a lot. I freaked out, lost my calm. I just managed to get my glamour back up a bit ago.”

    I knew she didn’t actually look like the attractive, lean commoner woman she seemed. I’d seen a glimpse of her true face once. A pallid, almost elfin thing with a mouth full of uneven fangs and crimson eyes.

    “You don’t have to hide it from me,” I said quietly. “If it’s hard, I mean. I won’t think less of you.”

    Catrin sniffed, glanced at me, then shuffled back against the wall. “I’m fine. Cross my heart.”

    I knew she was lying, but didn’t want to press. Before I could say anything else, I felt a shudder across my back, and the distant beating of a great heart. Something else had entered the room.

    “You should listen to the gilded knight,” Laertes rumbled from the door. “Do not hide your true self, child. This chameleon existence does not suit a Child of Ergoth.”

    My hand clenched into a fist around my axe’s grip. I took a moment to wrestle control over myself, then turned to glare at the Count. “Leave her alone. You’ve done enough.”

    The looming shadow of the vampire filled the doorway, hunching dramatically just to fit in the frame. His corpse eyes peered at me, mocking and hungry.

    “All I have done is show her the folly of this half life,” Laertes said in his guttural, rhythmic growl. “Within my labyrinth, I peeled back her flesh to see the spirit beneath. Free and wild, yet she sells her body and affections for the pleasure of insignificant men, lying with them like a lowly bitch hound mewling for warmth.”

    I could hear his rage quivering through the sonorous depths of his voice. “It is a mockery.”

    Catrin spoke before I could. “If you wanted to fuck me, Count, you could have just said as much.”

    I shot her a horrified look, but Catrin’s eyes were calm, remaining fixed on Laertes.

    The Count scoffed. “I have no taste for the fragrance of unbloomed roses. This mortal mask you cling to diminishes you, little bud. You are no mongrel changeling to languish between two worlds. You were born of grave soil and Corpse Moon’s light.”

    Catrin’s voice shot out with a cold anger I’d never heard in it before. “My parents were farmers. You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”

    “I know you are starving,” Laertes crooned, his overlong fingers curling together in front of his chest as though clutching at a rope. “I know you feel the vestiges of your accursed mortality dying within you. You weaken yourself to delay the inevitable, but this cannot be avoided, graveflower.”

    Catrin bared her fangs, thin and paltry looking compared to the wolf’s teeth cramming the Count’s mouth. “Shut up.”

    “I only speak a truth,” Laertes continued, sounding perplexed. “I did not create this reality, graveflower.”

    I stepped between them, clutching my shining axe tighter. “She asked you to leave her be, Count. I’m going to have to insist.”

    Laertes’s ghostly eyes went to me, then flicked down to my axe. He drew his beckoning claws back into the folds of his robes.

    “Such a strange damsel you have chosen to guard, knight of Seydis. She is no virtuous maiden to have earned such chivalry. Vermin and maggots have had their way with her.”

    “If you insult her one more time,” I said in a very calm voice, “I will kill you.”

    The Count’s voice hardened. “You would attack me after I have extended you guest right? The Alder’s fire would burn you past the brink of madness for that, paladin.”

    For a long while, none of us said anything. The Count stood in the doorway, huge and silent, his eyes wide with an almost feral malevolence. Neither of the two vampires breathed, so only my own exhales disturbed the dangerous quiet.

    Then, Laertes turned toward the hall. “I shall not disturb you further. We will speak in the morning, ser knight. Rest well.”

    He glided off with the sound of fur and cloth brushing carpet. I let out a breath of relief, then turned to Catrin. She was still holding herself, her expression miserable.

    “Let’s go,” I told her. “There are some rooms ready for us, and I want to check on the other two.”

    She nodded. “Alright.”

    I wanted to say more, to try and comfort her, but I could tell the Count’s words had shaken her. I decided to wait until she was ready to talk.

    Instead I settled with, “I’m with you, Cat. Don’t listen to him.”

    Catrin tossed me an uneasy smile. “He doesn’t scare me. Ugly cockwart.”

    But I could tell she was afraid.