The Brat's Final Gambit

Sarah fled and was gone, disappearing ahead of him in the deepening gloom. Niam followed, unable to keep up. Beyond the thick tangle of ferns and vines, he saw that the trees opened up and the way became easier. “Sarah! Seth!” Niam yelled out. The words didn’t go very far as the trees and the thick canopy overhead seemed to swallow up all sound. In the clearing ahead, the black waters of Siler’s Lake stretched like a placid mirror in the darkening sky, and a girl’s prostate from lay supine upon the damp earth by the water’s edge.

Sarah.

“No,” Niam moaned. Looking around rapidly as he entered the clearing, he saw that he was all alone. Sarah’s body lay still and stiff, but something was off. Niam peered at her cautiously as he slowed. His stomach lurched when he noted the twisted angle of her head.

This was wrong.

Sarah had been found floating in the lake with her skull fractured just above her brow. Unable to bear the indignity of death’s broken posture, he trembled as he knelt beside her and gently covered the ugly lump at the base of her twisted neck with the lip of her blouse. Carefully, he cupped her cold chin in his hand and turned her head upright to a more natural position and gasped.

Bug’s cold eyes looked up at him instead of Sarah’s, expressing nothing except the utter stillness and finality of death. Somewhere in the distance he heard laughter. Salb . . . Kreeth . . . Bode . . . Card . . . their voices blended into a cruel chorus. Hit it harder with your head, feeb . . . follow those three brats and cause them as much trouble as you can . . . this isn’t over Maldies . . . Maldies the rat, Maldies the brat…

Niam shut the voices out. Instead he focused his disbelieving eyes on Bug. Beneath her hair, something black began to stir like a worm tattooed into her pale skin. It writhed and turned sickeningly. Niam jerked his hands away from her head as the worm’s sinuous form undulated into view.

Not a worm, Niam knew

Writing.

Just like the writing on the boxes at the Vandin camp. Spellbound, he watched as runes boiled out of her hair like a mass of angry fire ants pouring from their nest. Niam’s stomach suddenly felt full of rancid goat’s milk. He wanted to heave. Just before he did—

—Lightning flashed in the sky overhead, whiting everything out in sharp light as a bolt struck soundlessly nearby.

Something was different.

Niam stood in darkness. The terrible sickness in his stomach was gone, but the image of Bug’s innocent little face staring unblinkingly into the air remained. “Why is this happening to me?!” Niam shouted. Only silent darkness answered his cry. “You where there, weren’t you? You were there when my brother and sister died. You saw what happened to Corey!” he bellowed. “I’m sick of this! Show yourself! Who are you?“ Niam demanded. “Give me a way to fight this!”

Lightning flashed and Niam winced. He shielded his eyes against the light.

And something was different.

Niam now stood in the stable yard on the far end of Pirim Village. A ring of statues surrounded them. Tall men and women of stone stood gazing down with stern expressions.

Beside him, Maerillus held the stirrup steady so Corey could mount the horse. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t let Corey get up on the horse. “Don’t,” Niam tried to say, but his words evaporated into the air like steam on a cold day. “No!” he screamed, but nothing came out of his mouth. A quick, soft noise sounded behind him; he looked back. Between a gap in the statues, Salb hurled a pitchfork. Niam cried out again, but his words felt as heavy as stone in a throat too weak to force them out. The pitchfork sailed lazily trough the air. Trickling tears leaked from lidless stone eyes as Bug’s scream pierced the air. Niam moved to intercept the thing before it stuck the horse, but his arms and legs only responded in slow motion. Everyone around him moved at half speed. Corey turned, looked at him, and his eyes held no color, only flat white cataracts of death instead of pupils. Tiny black tendrils wriggled across his features like evil threads of hell-spawned gossamer.

The horse gave a spasmodic kick as the pitchfork struck with a flat thwack, and Bug’s scream accompanied Corey’s fall. The sound of it pierced Niam’s heart. Maerillus and Davin ran toward the body, but Niam hadn’t even finished his first step. “No!” He tried warning them. “That’s not Corey!” The not-Corey lay motionless for a moment, but Niam knew it would not remain so for long. Bug ran to its side. Maerillus and Davin skidded to a halt beside her. One of them exclaimed, “He’s not dead! Look—I saw him move!”

Niam strained with all of his might, but he moved no faster than molasses on a cold day. This wasn’t right.

“Give him room!” Davin shouted as the body started to quiver and jerk.

“Please,” he begged the stone visages, “help me.” The statue next to him wore a sad expression. From its chest an arrow protruded. Niam knew the man in life whose cold eyes stared ahead as blank as the stone they were cut from. In one the statue’s hands was a small crossbow. The other held a metal object that looked as delicate as a snowflake cut in an impossibly intricate pattern. “Jort . . .” Niam croaked

Nearby, the not-Corey raised itself as lines of terrible writing cavorted and skittered across his skin. The flesh beneath rippled as unhealthy things moved and stirred within. Niam’s stomach lurched. Nausea welled deep within his gut. His knees trembled with pain.

“Please help me,” he prayed.

The not-Corey now stood erect with erratic, tottering movements. It seemed to be slowly feeling out unfamiliar limbs for the first time.

“Please!” Niam croaked. “Help!”

The statue of Jort turned its head toward him and in a grating voice commanded, REMEMBER.

“Give me more to fight this!” Niam begged.

Lightning flashed overhead. “DONE!” all of the statues replied at once.

Another blinding flash cut the sky in half, and the light seared Niam’s eyes. Then all of the statues surrounding him cried out like thunder.

FEEL!

Their voices shook the earth.

Niam woke with a start. His stomach hurt. At its center sat a place hot and sour. Quickly, he leaned up and began rocking, praying the motion would soothe his gut. The room was cold. Coals tinkled in the hearth where a servant had left a large fire burning as Niam tucked himself in. Beneath the covers he shivered.

Rocking like this for a good while, his stomach finally settled enough to get up and move around. Outside the hallway was empty, though the two large fireplaces blazed merrily at each end of the long, wide hallways. Maerillus’s room lay next to this one. Across the hall two double doors marked the entrance to the other set of guest rooms on the family wing of the Sartor manor. Within one of those, Davin slept soundly—or at least Niam hoped Davin slept in dreamless peace. The floor above was reserved for Maerillus’s other siblings. Night staff were undoubtedly cleaning and making their rounds, but Niam wanted to be alone.

Quietly, he closed the guestroom door and padded back to the closet where a thick robe hung and a pair of slippers sat on a small shelf where his boots and another pair of dress shoes waited to be worn. Niam looked at them and grimaced. At least the only time he had to suffer such things strapped to his feet was at the trade conference—and with any luck, he would never have to help out at one of those again. The kinds of people that flocked to the trade conference made Niam itch and want to do things that usually got Maerillus worked up into a frothing fit.

Last year, for instance, a businessman with pretentions of wealth told Niam he ought to spend the rest of his life cleaning out Pirim Village’s privies for failing to bow properly. The man also made the mistake of leaving his coat where Niam could get to it unseen. He rode home with sheep’s dung in his pockets.

Maerillus spent days harping about the prank, and Mr. Sartor sat him down for a good, stern lecture. It wasn’t his fault, though. Or maybe it was. Nevertheless, the man deserved it.

Wrapped in a cloak, Niam walked to the door leading out onto the patio. The air outside was crisp and sharp. The Voice’s message stuck in his mind like a burr caught in a wool coat. Was the Creator trying to talk to him?

“You had to be there when they died,” Niam accused the source of the Voice. “They say the Creator is good, but you let them die.”

The night held no answer to these complaints. Niam was struck, however, by the similarity between the statues lining the edge of the patio at the rear of the family wing of the Sartor manor and the ones in his dream. All around the patio, famous kings and queens from history and mythology seemed to stand like sentinels guarding the stillness of the estate against any intruding motion. No dragons from the old tales or marauding Guldeen threatened the peace of the night, but only one scrawny boy who had a knack for trouble and a habit of leading his friends into danger.

“Wish I could have had one or two of you when that trall attacked us in the woods,” Niam said absently. He nearly jumped when someone in the darkness said, “Me too.”

Fearfully, Niam raised his fists, ready to hit the first thing that moved. “Who’s there!?” No sooner were the words out than Niam felt ashamed of his reaction.

“Just a little mouse eating in the cupboard,” Maerillus quoted a children’s nursery rhyme.

“That mouse never made the farmer mess his pants,” Niam said reproachfully.

“You don’t own the store on pranks,” Maerillus joked. Sleepiness was heavy in his voice.

“How long have you been out here,” Niam asked.

“Only a little bit before you came out. Couldn’t sleep either. Dreams again?”

“Always.”

Maerillus shook his head sympathetically. “There’s been a lot to dream about lately.”

“It’s always the Voice, Maer,” Niam said with a bitter sigh.

Maerillus looked away as if he didn’t know what to say. He and Davin were all too familiar with Niam’s antipathy toward the source of the Voice.

“So what kept you up tonight?” Niam asked after a moment of awkward silence.

Maerillus’s answer surprised him. “I’ve been thinking about Madeline.”

“It’s been on my mind, too.”

“I bet.”

“Still no word about Salb?”

“No,” Maerillus said with distaste. “Maybe we’re shut of him for good.”

“I doubt it somehow,” Niam said. “Kreeth’s involvement in this bothers me.”

“Me too,” Maerillus shuddered. “Ravel was up at the Vandin camp working for Kreeth. If I hadn’t overheard him at the barn and turned him, there’s no telling what we’d all be facing now.”

“I just wish we could have found out what he was searching for,” Niam told him.

“There’s no telling,” Maerillus said, but his voice dropped as he went on. “I meant to tell you—I heard Dad talking to Lord Joachim today before they left for Pallodine. Kine went back up there. He said someone had been raking through the ashes of the camp, which means that whatever it is Kreeth wants may not have been found.”

Niam’s mind turned furiously. “He did tell Salb he was looking for some kind of trinket.”

“Dad’s never liked him. He always said Kreeth would sell his mother for a bag of silver.”

“I just wish we knew how Kreeth’s involved—I mean, he couldn’t have gone up there and done all of that to the Vandin, and then set those boxes around the camp, could he?

Niam already knew the answer to his question before Maerillus said anything. Count Joachim had seen him in town while things were going crazy among the Vandin.

Maerillus just shrugged his shoulders and grunted. A troubled look gnawed its way across his face.

Niam sighed. “What now?”

“Lord Joachim said Ravel somehow got out of the Pit.”

“What!” Niam exclaimed loudly. His words sounded harsh in the cold stillness of the night. “He was let out?!”

Maerillus quickly put a finger over his lips and made a shushing sound. “You’ll wake my parents.” The Sartor’s back bedroom door opened out onto the spacious patio forty feet away.

“What did you hear?” Niam hissed.

“No one can figure it out,” Maerillus was obviously nervous. “The guards said he was in his cell that evening, but when morning role was done, Ravel’s cell was empty. No one saw anything though he had to pass three guard stations to make it out.”

Look . . . I’m sure he’s not going to show his face around here.”

“Are you certain?” Maerillus asked. “With things getting stranger and stranger by the week around here, I’m not sure what we can count on.”

“We will handle it if he does,” Niam said, unsure if there was anything at all that he could say that would make Maerillus feel better.

Silence fell between them as both drifted off into their own realms of thought. Bug sat at home grieving. The three of them had been to see her several times. Niam knew the look in her eyes the moment he saw her—the look that he had seen in his own reflection over the months following his brother’s and sister’s deaths. The day they first met, he had recognized a kindred spirit that made him want to protect her from people like Salb. Now his cheeks turned hot as the thought hit him again that he had failed her. He started all of this the day he snuck into the ruins of the abbey. If he hadn’t baited and taunted the bullies, things wouldn’t have gone this far.

Yet the source of the Voice knew and did nothing! Niam grew bitter—at himself, at nothing, at everything.

The Voice told him to feel and to witness. That was all Niam had done in every dream where he watched his sister run in terror for her life. He was forced to feel the killer’s vile presence in those dreams. He was a witness all right. Almost a casualty. To make matters worse, tonight he had to witness Corey’s death again, played out by something that was not Corey after finding Bug in his sister’s place by the edge of Siler’s Lake. He closed his eyes tightly at the memory of the wicked runic script pouring across the not-Corey’s face like a sinister swarm ants.

His stomach suddenly hurt. He was still too close to the dream. He felt the stirrings of nausea knocking at the doors of his guts again. Just like he felt the day he came face-to-face with Kreeth at the Sartor manor.

Niam’s eyes shot wide open. He must have made a sound because Maerillus looked over at him as asked, “What’s wrong?”

Niam cursed. “Wake Davin! Wake him up now!”

Maerillus’s face grew serious. “What’s wrong?”

“I should have figured it out by now,” Niam growled. “It’s Kreeth who’s behind all of this—he’s the sorcerer!”

“How can you be sure?” Maerillus gasped. “I mean, we know he’s not a nice guy, but—”

“He did it!” Niam insisted. “He killed my brother and sister!”