Lady Of Regret (Book 2) Page 3

  “Dusk is hours off!” Loro shook beaded water from his bald pate, wrung out his hood, and pulled it back up.

  “Not so long as that,” Rathe said.

  He guided the gray through an ice-edged stream tumbling out of a treacherous gulley to join the river. Once across, he drew rein to search the chasm of fractured gray rock. A croaking raven took to wing from a briar thicket. A yearling stag lifted its head from the stream, a warning snort steaming from its nostrils. Stunted evergreens grew everywhere, holding to fissures with roots like contorted fingers.

  Loro sighed, slumped in the saddle, took a forlorn sip from his flask. “I’m cold, hungry, and have not had the pleasure of a bitter ale longer than is proper. Gods!” he called skyward. “Grant me a great soft wench to warm my bones!”

  “Keep an eye out,” Rathe said. “I cannot give you women or ale—and by all gods, I’ll not tend your bloody stones—but if we find a cave or hollow, or perhaps a few trees fallen together, we can have a dry night.”

  “I beg for plump teats and a cozy tavern, and you think to offer me a moldy cave or a spidery woodpile? Are you a simpleton, or a man without heart?”

  “If you crave affection,” Rathe said mildly, “head back down the trail, rope one of those woolly goats you missed putting an arrow into this morning, and——”

  Rathe cut off at a noise behind them.

  As one, the men drew their swords.

  “What do you see?” Loro asked.

  “It’s what I heard that troubles me.” Rathe had not seen any figures in the mist of late, but the watched feeling had only grown stronger the longer they wandered through the mountains.

  “Must have imagined it,” Loro said dismissively. “With this river, why, it’s nigh impossible to hear myself think, let alone hear anything else.”

  Rathe raised a hand for quiet. As with the branching gullies climbing into the mountains, the river gorge was all of sheer rock dotted with mossy outcrops and small, bristly spruce. No more than a hundred paces at its widest, there was nowhere to hide, unless a man could pass for a tree or a lichen-crusted stone.

  “What do you think you heard?” Loro asked in a hollow voice.

  “A hoof scraping over stone, maybe a sword clearing a scabbard,” Rathe said. It had been a faint sound, barely heard for the river. All at once, the raven winged into the mist, and the stag vanished into dense underbrush.

  Loro peered into the shifting fog. “King Nabar’s men?”

  “Being as they chased us into the mountains in the first place, who else would it be?” Rathe did not let on that this menace felt different than what he had felt with the shadow-man. Or any man, for that matter.

  “We fled into the mountains,” Loro corrected. “We could have escaped to anywhere.” It was a sore point for him that Rathe had chosen to go north through the Gyntors, instead of toward the Sea of Muika by way of the warm, grassy steppes of Qairennor. “Something tells me those fellows had sense enough to avoid following us here.”

  “King Nabar put a large enough bounty on my head to make any man throw aside his fear of this place.”

  “Why should Nabar care about you? It’s not as if Lord Sanouk was loved in Cerrikoth, let alone the king’s city of Onareth. Might Nabar wants to give you a reward.”

  Rathe dismissed that possibility with a shake of his head. “You were with me when the bounty hunters tried to kill us in the south. Aside from that, Lord Sanouk was Nabar’s brother, and I killed him. That Sanouk deserved worse than death for the things he did means nothing to the king. Nobles of every stripe frown on the killing of fellow nobles, unless it is they who are doing the killing.”

  “Aye,” Loro said slowly, “but it could be others are hunting us, now. Mayhap something else entire. You and I both saw the fright in the eyes of the folk at Valdar, when they spoke of dead cities in these mountains, all haunted by the souls of men cursed through black sorceries. Gold does a man no good, if he’s dead.”

  “Men tell tales,” Rathe answered, despite having seen some of those tales come to life and attack with a vengeance. He had fought them, a Shadenmok and her demon hounds. And while strange and terrible, those creatures had died like most everything else he ever poked a blade into.

  Loro studied the back trail a long time. “You asked who I thought could be after us, but I ask what is after us.”

  Rathe tried to swallow, but his throat felt dry. He abruptly sheathed his sword. “I want to escape this gorge before nightfall.”

  “Aye,” Loro agreed, but kept his sword out.

  They picked along the rough trail for another two hours. Loro’s complaints resumed, and Rathe kept constant vigil. He saw and heard nothing more to alarm him. Neither did he find a likely spot to camp, or any chance they might climb out of the gorge. It was not the first night they would spend in the open, but he did not relish another.

  As they navigated a sharp bend in the river, Loro reined in hard. “Gods!”

  Rathe, who had been looking over his shoulder, followed Loro’s gaze. His mouth dropped open in surprise. “Seems we’ll not be sleeping cold, after all.”

  Chapter 4

  The ancient wall stretched across the river gorge. Looming battlements capped with darker stone showed the wear of brutal eons. A vaulted tunnel constrained the course of the river to one side of a colossal barbican gate fashioned after the prow of a ship. Round and tapering, twin drum towers flanked the gatehouse, their tops notched like shattered crowns. A portcullis and wooden gates once guarded the entrance. Time had crushed both. Rotted beams, planks, and pitted iron banding lay where they had fallen. Remnants of the portcullis hung like rusted teeth. Through the gate, mists hugged the ground.

  “Ho the gate!” Loro called. His voice boomed hollowly into the distance. A raven croaked in reply.

  “Unless the dead speak,” Rathe said, “I would not look for an invitation.”

  Loro shot him a hard look. “Would it trouble you to not say things like that?”

  Rathe shrugged. “Who but the dead would live here?”

  “Doesn’t seem so bad to me. And waiting out in the weather is not getting us any warmer.”

  Rathe ushered Loro forward with an inviting gesture. “Lead the way.”

  Loro grinned wryly, backed his big red horse down the trail. “You’re the Scorpion and the Champion of Cerrikoth. Simple soldiers such as myself do not lead such valiant men as you.”

  “Neither of us are the men we were,” Rathe said, guiding the gray through the tangle of wood and iron outside the gate. The ceiling of the gatehouse soared above them, its shadows aflutter with bats just coming awake. Sleek black rats scurried over the floor, climbed atop iron sconces disfigured by rust. He counted it a good sign that he saw no bones lying about, either of man or beast.

  Beyond the gate, the way widened into a cobbled road, its length cut by deep ruts. Rathe guessed the fortress must have once been a center of bustling commerce and travel. If so, prosperity had come and gone, long centuries before.

  He drew rein, searching. Blocky stonework channeled the river, and rose twenty feet up the walls of the gorge to become walkways lined with stone rails. Marching into the fog, rows of footbridges held aloft by thin pillars spanned the river, joining the two sides of the strange fortress. Some pillars had fallen, but most stood intact. Hard seasons had rounded every surface, giving the place a weary, slumping look.

  “Smell that?” Rathe asked.

  “Aye, river and moss,” Loro answered, peering around.

  “There’s something else … wood smoke.”

  Loro scanned the highest footbridges. “Mayhap a fellow traveler took shelter.”

  Rathe was not so sure. “People might live here. If so, they might not welcome us.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” Loro said, “I’d think you want trouble to come down on us. Asking for it all the time, you are.”

  “Trouble is what I’m trying to avoid,” Rathe said, remembering the stories told in Valdar. �
��We’ll make camp at the far gate. If there’s anyone here who mistrusts strangers enough to attack, we need to be away quickly.”

  Loro did not argue the point, and followed after Rathe.

  The rushing river, and the echoes of their horses’ hooves, made listening for furtive sounds impossible. Keeping an eye out proved nearly as useless. Mist hazed everything, and with the sun going down, only a faint pink glow showed above them.

  “I smell roasting meat,” Loro said, perking up.

  “As do I.”

  “Mayhap someone will share their meal? I’ve a hunger for lamb, hot bread, and gravy by the bucket.”

  “Be still,” Rathe warned, stomach turning at the thought of eating anything in such a desolate place. If he had a desire, it was to be gone. Second to that, he wanted to fill his hand with steel.

  After a mile, Rathe had to admit they had not entered a fortress, but a forsaken city. At regular intervals, steps led from the cobbled roadway up to broad porticos built around unbarred doors that led into the walls of the gorge. Beyond these, all lay black and still. Walled gardens might have once held flowers, but now housed only weeds. The sensation of being stalked fell on him again, stronger than ever. Vague shadows drifted through the mist, always vanishing when he looked directly at them. He resisted the urge to heel the gray into a headlong gallop out of the city.

  When a little man tottered down a set of steps and into the road, Rathe and Loro drew up short. Bent almost double, the stranger faced them, propped against a gnarled staff he held in a clawed hand. He brushed back his tangled white hair to reveal a pair of pale, hooded eyes. His clothing was threadbare and dark with grime.

  “Friends!” he piped, voice reedy. “Well met! Yes, well met, indeed. Long has it been since my people and I’ve had guests in Deepreach.”

  “Fitting name for a city fashioned after a ditch,” Rathe murmured, looking around but seeing no sign of anyone else.

  “Gods be damned,” Loro gasped. “The smell of him could gag a boar.”

  Rathe tried to ease his horse closer to the man, but the gray tossed his head, and would not budge. “Well met,” he said, offering their names.

  “I be Tulfa,” said the little man with a bow that made him tremble, as if pained. He straightened, came a hesitant step closer, making the horses prance. Tulfa pushed his hair back again, eyes widening. “Fine animals. So fine. Yes, fine indeed!”

  The way the crookbacked fellow went on, showing far more excitement than caution, made Rathe edgy. All the more for the way he kept licking his dirty lips and sucking back drool. “I’m afraid we’re just passing through, Master Tulfa. I wonder, can you tell me how far until we are out of Deepreach?”

  Tulfa’s eyes narrowed to slits, befouled lips turned down at the corners. “No.”

  “No call for rudeness,” Loro admonished.

  Tulfa gave himself a shake, and was again a jolly, filthy old man. “No, no. You mistake me. Dark is coming, you see, you see? The road is not safe at night. No, no. Not safe at all. Not at night. ‘Tis never safe when shadows lay thick and cold over the land.” As he spoke, his voice dropped lower, and his face changed again, showing fear.

  “His wits have departed him,” Loro said quietly.

  “He’s no more dangerous for all that,” Rathe answered, hoping he was right.

  “Where are your friends, Master Tulfa?” Loro asked.

  “Friends? What friends? There’s only Tulfa in Deepreach. Yes, yes, only Tulfa! Tulfa is the only one left!”

  Loro rolled his eyes, and Rathe shifted in the saddle. “Beg pardon,” he said. “I thought sure you mentioned there were more of you.”

  “There are!” Tulfa hooted. “Tulfa and the shadowkin! Come, Tulfa will feed you!”

  “I suppose he might count shadows as friends,” Rathe said quietly.

  “If I might ask,” Loro said to Tulfa, looking more interested, “what sort of food do you have, here in Deepreach?”

  “Why, meat, my good Loro! Yes! Yes! Tulfa cooks juicy meat on the bone! Only that and naught more!” The little man scuttled up the steps with far more nimbleness than he had shown coming down. He paused every third step to grin and wave them on.

  “Where are you off to?” Rathe asked, when Loro slid out of the saddle.

  “To supper. You heard the man. He has meat on the bone. If so, he must also have a better place to sleep than under the sky. And,” he added with a lecherous wink, “mayhap one of these shadow folk is a she who would like to tempt me to sin.”

  Rathe wanted nothing to do with shadowkin, but, despite himself, the smell of Tulfa’s cooking had roused his hunger. He could not recall the last decent meal he’d had…. Except that he did remember, and who he had shared it with. Outside the wooden walls of Valdar, Nesaea had served him a dinner of roast pheasant within her wagon, an elaborate and fanciful conveyance fashioned after a wheeled galley. She had shed no tears, nor countered his judgment, as he explained his decision to be away. Her disappointment, though, had shone in eyes so blue as to be violet. Not for the first time, he wished he had decided on another course, one that included Nesaea, his goddess of snow and silver.

  Rathe pushed Nesaea away, much as he had before. As he had told her then, she and her troupe were safer far from him.

  While he and Loro unsaddled the horses, Tulfa kept up a constant chatter. “You’ll want to tie your beasts here,” he said, standing near a row of barrel-size vases. “Tulfa has no grain, but there’s plenty of grass, you see, you see?” He ripped up a handful to show them. Only after Rathe and Loro nodded, did he let the tuft fall to his bare feet as grimy as the rest of him.

  “How long have you been here?” Loro asked, stacking his gear just inside the doorway.

  Tulfa fingered the point of his chin. After a moment of deep contemplation, he said, “Forever! Why, yes! Forever and ever!”

  “Surely you are not so old as that?” Rathe said, adding his gear to Loro’s. He tried to keep his distance from the old man without appearing to do so, but Tulfa bounced nearer, bringing his stench with him.

  “I was a boy when I came to Deepreach,” Tulfa said. Up close, his eyes proved to be a shade of blue Rathe had never seen. Almost white. “So, yes, forever and ever!”

  “I’m famished,” Loro interrupted, rubbing his belly. It did look a touch smaller than Rathe remembered. “If it’s no trouble, lead us to your hall.”

  “To feast! To feast!” Tulfa cried merrily. “Yes, follow Tulfa, and Tulfa will feast you! Meat on the bone! Yes, meat on the bone for all!”

  With a queer shuffling, skipping gait, Tulfa led them deep into the mountain, through a twisty warren of vaulted corridors. Scant few torches lit the way. With the memory of barely escaping Lord Sanouk’s catacombs not so long ago, Rathe began building a map in his mind.

  In some bygone age, workers of stone had chiseled arabesques into the walls. Where those ended, friezes of gods and rival demons took their place. Small niches sunk into the dressed stone held assorted bits of armor, or busts of past kings and storied warriors. Where Rathe would have expected cobwebs and dust, he was surprised to find burnished helms and breastplates, and sculptures crowned with fresh garlands of tiny flowers. Tulfa might not have been one for personal cleanliness, but he kept a tidy house.

  When they rounded a corner and found the torches had burned out and left behind a sea of chilly darkness, Tulfa rapidly tapped the butt of his staff against the floor. “Tulfa will lead you! Yes! Yes! Listen to the staff, and follow Tulfa!”

  And off they went, bustling deeper into the earth, until coming to a well-lit corridor. Loro whistled between his teeth when they neared a headless statue of a naked woman. Rathe swatted his hand away before he could caress her breasts.

  “A man should appreciate fine art where he finds it,” Loro protested, looking abused. Tulfa favored him with a mystified expression, and Rathe glared. “Never mind,” Loro snarled, waving them ahead.

  The farther they went, the smell of savory spices
and roasting meat grew stronger, making Rathe painfully aware of his hunger. “I don’t care if Tulfa’s cooking rats,” he whispered to Loro, “I’ll eat them.”

  “No! No rats for friends of Tulfa!” Tulfa said over his shoulder. He paused near a torch, pale eyes gleaming under thick folds of skin. “Oh, no. No rats! Never rats! Not for Tulfa and the shadowkin. Not for Tulfa’s friends. Come friends! Come along!”

  “He’s spry enough, I’ll grant you,” Loro murmured. “But can you see him putting an arrow into a stag and dragging it here?”

  “Never,” Rathe admitted. “But I expect there are hares and the like in these mountains.”

  “We have guests!” Tulfa called, wheeling through an archway aglow with warm light. “Guests for dinner! Yes! Yes! We have guests!”

  Before they reached the chamber, Loro halted Rathe. “We can still turn back.”

  As Loro had seemed so eager before, that suggestion surprised Rathe. “Why should we?”

  “If you’ve missed it, brother, this codger is off his head. I don’t trust him, even if my belly does.”

  “My trust has grown thin of late, as well,” Rathe agreed. “But he’s an old man, and a short way from being a cripple. He’ll not trouble us.”

  “I’ll eat his food quick enough,” Loro relented, “and give thanks for whatever Tulfa provides. Afterward, we’ll have to keep a watch, lest he decides to drub us in our sleep and rob us.”

  Tulfa poked his head round the corner, his face lost in shadow. “Come along, friends! Come along!”

  “I’ll take first watch,” Rathe volunteered, and strode into the chamber.

  He had scarcely crossed the threshold when he halted. With a murmur of awe, Loro joined him. Rathe had expected an empty chamber, but found a colonnaded great hall fit for a wealthy lord. Gleaming bronze lampstands drove back all shadows. Tapestries, moth-eaten though they were, adorned soaring walls with scenes of the hunt and forgotten battles. Assorted banners emblazoned with unfamiliar coats of arms hung from stone balusters that girded high galleries. Some showed extreme age, their colors faded, looking as if they would crumble at the gentlest touch. Others were fresher, smeared with dark maroon smudges that brought to mind bloodstains.