Kalyth screamed again as Idrelle moved into view and the Bright One kicked at her from the inside.
‘Kalyth!’ Idrelle’s voice broke, her hands raised and defensive, her own claws ready. ‘What are you doing?’ Idrelle stepped closer and the Bright One snarled and heaved. ‘You’re hurt! Stop it! Stop!’
Kalyth gasped as the Bright One flared, thundering into every vein, every muscle, every pore. He wrenched her arm so hard Kalyth’s claws shattered. Her fingers dislocated. The Bright One heaved Kalyth’s body upright and rushed towards Idrelle, mouth slung wide, teeth like daggers, hand a cluster of broken, splintered spears.
Idrelle fell back, but she was prepared this time and her arm slammed into Kalyth’s body as the Bright One attacked, knocking her away so sharply that Kalyth’s body flew into the air. For one suspended moment, Kalyth saw the moonlit sky above her, and felt the wind, cold and terrible, whip into every open wound.
Kalyth slammed into the boulder spine first. A rib shattered. Her belly bulged where a jagged wedge of stone pierced her. Viscera drooled out of her back and onto the ground. She tried to inhale and couldn’t. She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t move her legs. Her eyes were open, but blood was closing over everything. And there was Idrelle, kneeling over her and weeping.
Kalyth’s breath bloomed over Idrelle’s face, feverish and tasting like lost summers and blood and dying things. Idrelle watched as Kalyth’s eyes unfocused. She watched her best friend die.
Idrelle pressed herself against Kalyth’s ruined body and tried to beg the life back into her. She clutched Kalyth to her breast, the stump of her severed arm swinging against her side as she rocked her back and forth, back and forth.
She didn’t understand why this had happened.
She didn’t understand why.
Grief surged through her like a rainstorm, like a river. Every inch of her filled with it. She felt it like a thing alive. Like a thousand thousand somethings racing through her and wanting to fill her up. She felt it settle deep in her chest. She felt it grip her heart.
Idrelle wailed, low and long.
She held Kalyth until her body grew cold in her arms. As the silence stretched around her, Idrelle thought she heard a whisper. It didn’t sound like the Spirit Song. It was infinitely softer. Infinitely more mournful and deep.
Slowly, Idrelle stood. Cradling Kalyth’s body, she walked through the frozen landscape. But she didn’t walk towards the sylvaneth grove. Instead, she moved without thinking towards the blue-grey ridge, travelling west towards the outcasts’ camp where the land was rocky and still.
Just before dawn, it began to snow.
And the snow wasn’t white.
It was crimson.
Toshimichi felt a chill crawl through the hair on his arms as he stared up at the castle of Baron Eiji Nagashiro. The caprices of wind and sun had worn down the ancient walls, gnawing away at them like vultures picking at carrion. The outer battlements had crumbled away, lying in broken heaps around the foundations. Exterior towers were hollow shells, blank windows staring out across the desert, roofs reduced to skeletal beams and ragged patches of tile. The central courtyard was heaped with sand, great mounds that had drifted up against the inner walls. Only the central keep had managed to resist the elements, rearing up from the desolation in a series of tiered platforms with sharply angled overhangs and flared roofs. A narrow spire rose from its highest point and from its balcony a light shone, gibbous and forlorn.
The scholar clutched his robes more tightly, drawing them close about his body. The driving heat of the desert, intense even in twilight, could not offset the cold that gripped Toshimichi. His agitation was sensed by the demigryph that bore him across the sands. The half-bird clacked its tongue against the inside of its beak and stamped its feet in a display of uneasiness.
‘There is no harm for you there,’ Toshimichi told the animal. He stroked its feathered neck and tried to calm its anxiety. The demigryphs of Arlk were renowned for their endurance, but also for their obedience. The most prized had an almost empathetic bond with their masters, sensing the intent of their riders without the need for command. Toshimichi’s steed had picked up on his own reluctance to proceed. The animal, however, could not understand that sometimes a man must go where he did not want to go.
Sho Castle. Toshimichi had read much about this place… even before the deaths began. None of what he had read was to its favour. This, after all, was where the curse had started so long ago. His mother had had dreams of this place before she died. His brother had spoken of it that last night before he too…
Toshimichi focused on the beckoning light. He prodded the demigryph with his spurs and urged it onwards despite the feeling of dread that gripped him. ‘I am expected,’ he said. ‘Baron Eiji has sent for me. It is unseemly to keep a baron waiting.’
The demigryph slowly advanced towards the ruined castle. Each step made Toshimichi’s pulse quicken. The atmosphere of danger was palpable, but there was something else as well. The promise that had accompanied Baron Eiji’s summons.
The promise of answers.
The promise that the curse could be undone.
Few improvements had been made to Sho Castle since Baron Eiji had reclaimed the fortress. The keep was largely barren, entire sections closed off and unused. The great hall in which Toshimichi was conducted by the baron’s taciturn retainers seemed even more gigantic by dint of its scant furnishings. The long table that stretched across the middle of the room was its dominating feature, an opulent piece with ornate carvings of writhing dragons and fiery phoenixes adorning every inch of its surface. The chairs arrayed around it were similarly adorned, though their condition varied wildly from one to the next. Some gleamed with the lustre of care and polish while others were faded and scarred, pitted by worm-holes and worn down by neglect.
Though there were many niches in the walls for statues and trophies, only that directly behind the head of the table was filled. A suit of armour bearing the symbol of the Nagashiro clan squatted on a teakwood platform while a pair of crossed swords rested in the rack behind it. Toshimichi gave them only a brief glance. He knew what these pieces were meant to represent. He also knew that the real ones had been destroyed centuries ago.
That fact was clearly not lost upon the others who were gathered around the table. A hefty, sallow-faced man dressed in the extravagance of a cosmopolitan shook his head as he squinted at the armour and swords. ‘I know artisans who could make more convincing copies in their sleep,’ he chuckled. ‘Eiji should have spoken to me if he wanted some fakes.’
‘Perhaps the baron wished to have a less garrulous man handle so delicate a matter,’ opined a white-haired man seated near the end of the table. Pale and thin, dressed in the robes of a priest, he was almost the antithesis of the rich merchant. ‘You are quite boastful, cousin Masanori. Sometimes discretion is preferable to ostentation.’
‘He’ll fool nobody with those fakes,’ Masanori scoffed. ‘Even shut away in that temple of yours, Gunichi, you could tell they aren’t real.’
The dark-haired woman seated across from Masanori gestured to the armour with a delicate wave of her powdered hand. ‘Perhaps the only person Eiji is trying to fool is himself,’ she suggested.
Toshimichi nodded in agreement. ‘An interesting supposition,’ he said. He gave the woman an apologetic smile. ‘Do you know the baron well?’
The woman fingered the tassels on her silken tunic. ‘No,’ she confessed. ‘I have never met him. I only know what his brother told me of his eccentricities.’
‘That would make you Otami, Mikawa’s wife.’ The statement came from the head of the table. Seated in a high-backed seat was an elderly woman in white robes. Her silver hair was pulled back tight, held in place by a pearl-tipped pin. Her fingers were heavy with jewelled rings, the nails of her small fingers grown out to a length of several inches and sheathed in gold. About her neck she wore a simple chain from which depended an ivory carving of the Nagashiro clan symbol.
‘You are Mikawa’s mother,’ Otami said, a note of uncertainty in her voice.
‘I am the Dowager Nagashiro,’ the elder replied, pressing a finger to the ivory talisman she wore. ‘Mikawa was my youngest. He did not have a chance to introduce you to any of us before he was… taken.’ The last word fell from the matriarch’s lips as little more than a whisper. A haunted look entered her eyes and she looked anxiously at the shadowy niches all around them.
Toshimichi interposed himself into the awkward silence. ‘If you have never met the baron then I doubt you have met any of us. I am Toshimichi, a student of the sage Baram in the lamasery of Khult. The sombre fellow at the end of the table is Gunichi, a lay priest in the temple of Dracothion.’ One after the other, Toshimichi introduced the people gathered at the table. Masanori the wheat-trader. Hirao the demigryph breeder. Chihaya the brewer. Emiko the courtesan. Komatsu the swordsman.
‘Except for the baron himself, we who are gathered about this table are all that remains of the Nagashiro clan,’ Toshimichi announced when he was finished.
Komatsu stood up with such alarm that his chair went skidding across the bare floor. ‘What do you mean? What is this?’ The man’s hand closed around the grip of his sword as he glared at Toshimichi.
‘Anger will not change truth,’ the Dowager stated. She motioned for Komatsu to sit down, then turned her attention on Toshimichi. ‘You are certain of this? We have not yet seen Sugihara or his daughter.’
