The gate stands proud, defiant.  It is constructed of bone—tiny bones pressed tightly together—bleached shards littering the ground everywhere, and wherever they touch the ground, no life grows.  The darkness makes it difficult to discern much beyond it, but as best as she can determine, its only guardian is a human infant of twisted form and ugly demeanor, squat and dirty.  To pass through that gate, she must defeat him.

He sneers at her approach and waddles forward to block her passage.

The Brackish longbow feels awkward in her hands.  Even at this distance, she would prefer almost any other weapon.  Cautiously, she nocks an arrow and pulls back on the string.  There is something about attacking this child, this infant that makes her feel uneasy.  She wishes there was a simple, quick way she could do it.

The baby spits in defiance of her and raises a tiny bow of his own.  They fire almost instantaneously, and both arrows miss by wide margins.  Caidryn closed her eyes just before she fired—she didn’t even see where her arrow went—but she hears the guardian’s ricochet into the darkness behind her.

Cursing, she rushes forward, risking exposure to get a better shot.  The baby fires again and misses.  Standing mere yards from him, she towers over the infant child.  Even as he hurries to load another arrow into his tiny bow, Caidryn takes aim and fires.

He rocks backwards violently as the bolt hits him in the forehead, just above the right eye.  Caidryn holds her breath and waits.  He moves.  The arrow didn’t kill!  Slowly he squirms and looks around him in bewilderment.

Caidryn frowns and steps closer.  He appears different now.  Smaller, younger, and certainly less malignant and deformed.  Helpless.  Beautiful.  As opposed to the walking, cursing creature before, this child is pure.  He is so young now, he can barely sit up on his own, much less stand.  The terrible shaft of her arrow sprouts bloodily from his skull.  He looks up at her, pain and fear in his eyes, and her heart catches in her throat.

The child is her own son, lost so many years ago!

What has she done!  Tears well into her eyes as she examines him and the injury she has caused.  He is dazed, barely conscious, and obviously suffering.  Not knowing what else to do, she grasps the arrow and tries to pull it out, violently jerking the baby nearly to his feet.

She lets it go, and he flops back to the ground, struggling, too weak even to cry.  She begins to weep.  How could she have done such a thing?  No, no, she thinks.  It wasn’t her fault.  What she shot before was not her son.  How he became this way, she does not know.

As she watches him writhe in agony, crying soundlessly, she decides the only thing she can do for him is to end the pain as quickly as possible.  Holding the shaft so as to steady it, she pounds on the end with a mallet, trying to drive it deeper into his brain.  His head snaps backwards with each blow, but the arrow doesn’t seem to move.  It is lodged too tightly in his skull.

Grabbing at the base of the shaft, she desperately jerks the arrow up and down, hoping somehow to cut away at her son’s brains and kill him that way.  She succeeds only in breaking the arrow off, leaving only a tiny wooden stump erupting from his forehead.

Caidryn stares at the broken haft in her hand and cries even harder.  The infant lays at her feet, seemingly senseless, but still alive.  What else can she do?  The broken arrow has no chance of piercing his skull again.

Then she remembers she once heard that the eyes are the easiest, quickest way into the brain.  She realizes she could drive the broken end through the eye.  Her hands trembling with sorrow and fear, she carefully places the splintered tip at the corner of his eye and prepares to drive it in.

His eyes blink.

Oh dear God, he’s still conscious!

Caidryn wakes with a scream of terror.  It is the same bed, the same room.  Her son is long since gone.

By Bàs and Johlpa, Cassibodua and Howler, she has to get out of this place!

* * *

Guiromélans stands at the boundaries of the castle.  At least, they are the boundaries told to him by the tyggskin, the limits of the circles’ wards.  It remains to be seen if the Masks told the truth.  The demon-disguised-as-Baldruus did speak one truth, however:  Should he choose to uncover the Median, it would reveal the exact locations of those circles.  Guiromélans touches the precious artifact within his tunic but leaves it where it is.  He is not yet ready to learn what it has to say.

Those Masks where his friends.

Or his friends were Masks.

Guiromélans shakes his head.  No, that is unlikely.  His friends were replaced.  Something happened to them while he was bound to that tree.  Or afterwards, when he was unconscious.  He looks up at the castle.  Whatever it was, it probably happened to them in there.

At least it makes sense now.  His friends’ strange behavior was due to the Masks’ efforts to act human.  But how could they have known so much about him?  How could they act as convincingly as they did?

Either his friends are still inside that castle—in which case, it is his duty to help them—or they were turned into those creatures—in which case, he has already helped them.  And there is yet someone else for him to rescue inside.

His body is tired and weak—both with his struggles with the tyggskins as well as with the tremors—but he dares not delay any longer, lest the tremors return.  Lifting both saber and saddle, he seeks and finds his window, but there is no woman standing in its frame today.  It would be too much to expect, he supposes.

Taking a deep breath, he walks forward.

 

The stables are empty, even the ubiquitous hay having long since rotted or blown away.  He finds the carcass of a horse in one stall, years dead, but certainly not centuries dead like this castle.  By the moldering saddle and silks he finds draped over the door, he learns it was a knight’s steed.  Guiromélans tries to discern the coat-of-arms on the ruined cloths but is unable to.  It doesn’t really matter.  Based on the location of this island, the man was almost certainly Muttese, possibly Söderkarl.

Guiromélans tours the outside grounds briefly.  All of the guardhouses are locked or otherwise bar his entry.  Though the castle itself appears to be in good condition, the smaller buildings circling the main keep are showing their age.  Most have collapsed beneath the weight of their roofs and the unforgiving winters that plague these southern lands.  Many were made only of wood, and they lay in splintered heaps.  He finds a place where the ruins have been disturbed recently and immediately recognizes the wood scraps.  This is where Baldruus and the others got their firewood.

There are no signs of life.  No humans, no birds, not even rats.  Long-dead grass stalks brush at his legs and hips.  He finds many fresh footprints, but they were almost certainly made by his tyggskin companions.  Now that he’s found plenty of firewood, it seems finding food will be the problem if he chooses to stay here.

The great doors to the main hall stand invitingly open, allowing centuries of dirt and debris to collect inside.  The doors are of metal-reinforced hard wood, built to withstand fire and battering rams, and were intended to serve as the palace occupants’ last defense.  Guiromélans examines the build of the castle carefully.  Should any invaders get this far into the enceintes, the defenders would most certainly be in a tight fix.  Closing these doors would only delay the inevitable… unless there was a secret means of escape elsewhere.  Such as a hidden boat launch?

He takes the first two steps towards the entrance and stops.  Around the doors, carved into the stone walls and the flagstones at his feet, are a series of immense concentric circles.  These were not part of the original castle but were added much later.  Glyphs and letters wind and wove around and through them, scripted in a language Guiromélans does not recognize.  They are as close to screams-turned-letters as he has ever seen.  He can almost feel his Median trembling at their evil.

He may have passed through many wards to get this far, but this is the first he’s actually been able to see.  He is sure, this is the most powerful of them all.  Breaking this circle will almost certainly change everything.

Guiromélans is considering exploring further before venturing inside—perhaps to find a different way in—when a small sound from the blacked hall inside reaches his ears.  He pauses, peering hard into the shadows of the hall within.  There is a rustle, followed by another.

Guiromélans takes a step forward, the last before the circle, and calls into the darkness, “Ho there!  My lady?  Do you need help?”

The smell inside is stale and old, with the tang in the air of something having long since rotted away.  The hall is dim and dreary.  Great frames hang from the walls, mounts for tapestries that have long since disintegrated or been looted.  Furniture, both stone and wood, lay scattered all about.  At the center of the room, just before all detail is lost to the darkness, a great mound stands… and something moves.

Guiromélans leans in as close as he dares, “Ho!  You!  Is there someone there?”

There is a clatter, like wood on wood, and then tense silence.

“Oh dear, oh dear…”  Guiromélans isn’t sure if he hears or imagines the tiny Ehrech voice.  “Hungry, hungry, she is always hungry…”

“You!” Guiromélans shouts, “I hear you!  Come closer!”

There is another clatter, and Guiromélans is now able to make out a figure working its way around the mound.  He can see little other than its jerky motions.

“You!  I see you!  Come here!  Maybe I can help you!”

The figure gives no indication that it hears him.  Instead, it meticulously makes its way around the mound.  Guiromélans sighs and looks around him for a rock.  Finding a suitable specimen, he picks it up and throws it inside.  His aim is true, and it strikes the shambling figure somewhere in its dark recesses.

It cries out, falling on to the mound and cursing politely in Ehrech and High Muttese.  The voice is temporarily lost as the mound collapses under its own weight with a series of resounding crashes and clatters.  Pieces scatter about with surprising velocity, and something large and round tumbles awkwardly towards Guiromélans.  He watches impassively as it rolls to one side, settling at last in a heap of debris by the door.

It is a human skull, lacking the lower jaw.  The orbit of the left eye is crushed and splintered, as if by a violent blow.  Scraps of flesh, fossilized and grayed, still cling to the insides of the nose and eyes.

Guiromélans’s mouth tightens.  “What could have happened here?” he murmurs.

“Yessss,” a hiss of breath as if from a charnel house utters from behind him.  “Come in and find out?”

Guiromélans tries to turn, quick-drawing his saber for a killing cut, when something powerful pushes him through the doorway.  He crashes onto the dirty floor, leaves and dirt and bones crushing beneath him.  Rolling onto his back, he sees the doors of the castle and the rain clouds outside.  Wind whips through the trees, stirring the leaves and brush.  There is a dark figure in the doorway, standing haughtily.  He can only make out the blood-black eyes glaring hungrily before everything… changes.

 

“What is the MEANING of this?” the lady exclaims, aghast and outraged.

Guiromélans casts around him frantically.  Beneath him are polished marble flagstones, proudly chipped and scarred by the mailed and spurred boots of countless brave ritters.  Torches and tapirs burn in brackets on the walls, and ornate candelabras glow throughout the room.

Men and women in garments worn centuries ago stare down at him.  Their clothes are nothing less than works of art.  Cloths of twisted gold and silver, silk, gems, and cauaros ivory.  Every woman is dressed to display only her best assets—proper Medianist moral norms seem to have no place here—and every man is armed.

In their eyes are mixtures of surprise, fear, disgust, and anger.

“You, sir!” a heavy voice commands.  “Account for yourself!”

This voice, as well as all others around him, is of High Muttese, though the accents are archaic.

Guiromélans rolls to his feet, forcing many around him to back away.  A huge ritter suddenly stands breast-to-breast with him, the renowned Muttese fury burning in his eyes.  He is dressed with coats-of-arms upon each shoulder, a sash across his shoulder and around his waist.  By his ensigns, he is certainly a fráuja, perhaps even the ruler of this castle, but it is the heavy, primitive Muttese broadsword at his hip that Guiromélans is most concerned about.

“I beg your pardon,” Guiromélans mutters in High Muttese.  Ragged, dirty, covered in blood both new and old, he is acutely aware of how he must appear to all this finery around him.

“Beg?” the ritter roars, “Jái, you will beg, you filthy Purity dog!”

Guiromélans has no interest in joining in a fight—surely not until he understands what is going on and how he came to be here—but still he pauses.  Purity?  Why would this man think he was from the Kingdom of Purity?

“I only wish to leave,” he stammers, looking around for an avenue of escape, “I only—”

“Peace!” a woman’s voice interjects.  “Be kind to him, good Sir Odovakar!  He is a guest here just as you are!”

“He is a cursed Raven!” the fráuja, evidently Odovakar, roars at the interfering lady.  “A low dog of that King EroBernd!”

Guiromélans’s eyes flicker between the two.  She is an older, matronly qéns, obviously drunk and clearly unimpressed by the ritter’s blustering.  Her gown, nearly priceless with gems and rare cloths, is stained with tiny flecks of sanguine liquid.  Dark wine, Guiromélans presumes.  Her face is overly made-up, thick paints covering deep lines.  She examines the Raven with kindly, haunted eyes, “He is a guest of our Lord.  And Raven or not—King EroBernd be-damned—he is Ehrech!  Can you not tell by his manners and voice?”

“Who are you with, villain,” the ritter growls and grumbles, but now without as much heat, “that you would soil this gathering with your presence?”

“Forgiveness, lord,” Guiromélans bows in his best cortesia fashion, “My heart regrets the disgrace my presence imposes upon this party but not the rage it fires in your heart.  This is the apology I offer.  Address me in proper fashion, if you wish to seek further satisfaction.”

The ritter nearly performs a double take before he allows the qéns to hustle Guiromélans away.  There is a slight smile on his face as he returns to the attentions of his own lady.  Just for a second, there is frightened desperation in his eyes.

“We are gratified by your presence, Sir knight,” the qéns twitters, clinging happily to his arm, “We feared the Seas were too rough for you to make it!  I must ask, when did you arrive?  And is there a lady to take your arm?”

Guiromélans stops and takes her hand.  “Lady, the means of my arrival were most unexpected and sudden,” he admits, “But I must ask, though my speech may betray my Ehrech homeland, how would you know I was of the Order of the Raven?”

She looks up at him in surprise, “My lord!  I know of no one else who would dare wear the Ebony Bird!”

Guiromélans’s eyes follow her gesture, and he is dumbstruck by the garments he sees.  In place of the bloodstained sailor’s rags he has worn for days, he now wears the grays and blacks of the Black Templars, personal bodyguards to King EroBernd nearly 400 years ago.  Prominent on his breast are the trinity emblems of the Order:  the three raven’s heads.  The clothes are clean, warm, and comfortable.

These clothes.  The Order of the Black Templars?  King EroBernd?  The Kingdom of Purity?  Everything about this place would imply it was nearly 400 years ago!  Hoël and Kahedin were the only Prophets.  The Seven Kingdoms were not yet born.  The Endless Wars have not yet begun, and the lands to be Ehre and Mut have just begun their struggles with the soon-to-be EroBernd Empire.

Sudden panic sets in as his hands leap to his breast, but though his clothes have changed, the comforting weight of the Median remains.  Reaching for his saber, his hand closes around its pommel.  The qéns steps back in surprise as he draws it.  Its jagged edge shines in the firelight.  Some things have changed, while others stayed the same.

“Oh my!” the qéns gasps as she studies the damaged blade, “It must have been a difficult journey!”

Sheathing his sword, he quickly looks around the hall.  Unlike the ruined castle, the doors of this place are closed tightly, the halls are clean, the furniture and tapestries intact.  There are nearly 200 knights, lords, and their ladies milling about, conversing, boasting, laughing.  Near the end of the hall, masked ministerialis play music Guiromélans recognizes from his childhood.  Servants, also masked, pass through the crowds, delivering freshened urns of wine and beer and clearing the emptied ones.  All wear featureless, black masks, without openings for the eyes or mouth.  Guiromélans’s eyes narrow.  Everyone—servants, guards, acrobats, minstrels—all are masked except for the guests.

Masks.

Carefully, Guiromélans moves away from the protesting qéns.  “Excuse me, my lady, but I must find my companions.”

“Companions?” she exclaims, following him closely.  “So you didn’t come alone?”

Guiromélans moves swiftly through the crowd towards the main doors.  He can see two guards before them, standing so lifelessly they might as well be statues.  “I believe they are inside this castle.  Perhaps they… came before me?” Guiromélans hazards as he walks.  “A young lady—Brackish, but for the most part tamed—a child, and a… servant of ours… a sorcerer.”

Guiromélans hesitates when he nears the guards, but when they fail to react to him, he steps past and presses his hands against the heavy doors.

“Three of them?” the qéns wonders as Guiromélans struggles to open the doors, “I know of the two, but not the child.”  She sighs expansively.  “They were with you?” she clucks disapprovingly, “Most uncivil, most uncooperative.  His Lordship was most unhappy with them!”

Guiromélans freezes in his efforts and slowly turns to her.  “What do you mean he was unhappy?  What happened?”

“Why, they were dealt with!  Just as anyone would be if they tried to disrupt His party like they did!”

Guiromélans strains one last time against the doors before surrendering.  They were built to withstand the onslaughts of an invading army, but in this case, Guiromélans suspects they are more intended to keep the people in than ward off invaders.

“Yes, yes,” Guiromélans snaps impatiently, “but what does that mean?”

The qéns stammers, flustered by Guiromélans’s sudden heat, “I’m sure only His Lordship knows!”

Guiromélans steps back and examines the doors, “I need to leave.”

“But you just got here!”

“Nevertheless, I need to leave.  Know you another way out?”

“No!” she exclaims with surprising panic, “I’m sure His Lordship would be most displeased with anyone leaving before the end of His party!”

Guiromélans’s eyes flash to the clothes of qéns and the nearby soldiers.  He supposes this party has been going on for a very long time.  “Yes, I suspect he would,” he sighs.  “However, as soon as I find my companions, we will be on our way.”

The qéns gasps in shock and fear, “You mustn’t!  You’d be dealt with!”

“So I’ve gathered,” Guiromélans murmurs as he looks around.

If this castle is typical of those 400 years ago, this Great Hall would occupy the majority of the first floor.  Passages at the back and sides would lead to other areas, such as the kitchens, guardroom, or servants’ quarters.  Other passages would lead up or down, to the royal sleeping chamber and the dungeons respectively.  The sleeping chamber above would also be a single, large room where the fráujas and their guests would retire.  Privacy was a scarce commodity in places like this.  Many chambermaids could live their entire lives without ever leaving the royals’ bedroom.  The dungeons below would be more… complicated.  Guiromélans also remembers there to be four towers and two additional wings.  Only the Prophets know what they might contain.

In all, it would not take too much time to search, but Guiromélans suspects there is no need to hurry.  It seems he has all the time in the world.

He slides through the crowds, heading for the passage at the back of the hall.  It would seem to be the most likely candidate to lead to the upper chambers.  There, he also hopes to find the passage that would lead him to the hidden docks on the water far below… if they exist.

He is nearly halfway across the room when the music of the ministerialis explodes in a great fanfare.  All attendees stop what they are doing and rush to the back of the hall.  Guiromélans is momentarily trapped by the press, and he struggles to break free.  “What is this?” he demands, “What is this!”

“It is the Lord and His Lady!” the qéns whispers in his ear, somehow having followed him, “Soon, the party will begin with a great feast!”

“Begin?” Guiromélans exclaims, “What do you mean?  Didn’t it begin a long time ago?”

Carried by masked porters, the Lord and Lady emerge from the great doors at the back of the hall.  The Lord is dressed as a Muttese kjennink, the woman as his kjeene’jin.  He gestures silently, magnanimously to his guests, making a great show of his joy at their attendance.  His face is painted grotesquely white, a great gash of a smile painted in red.  Between his red lips, his teeth jut out, shining whiter than any white face paint.  His kjeene’jin sits at his side, looking sad, tired, her face unpainted and unadorned.

Around Guiromélans, the guests begin to stir nervously.  Their faces have broken into wide grins, almost as if to mimic their host’s, their cheeks and eyes quivering with the strain of holding such impossible expressions.  There is laughter and cheers, but Guiromélans is sure he also hears the occasional cry or sob, quickly hushed away.

With pantomimic exaggeration, the Lord gestures to his left and then to his right.  When all appears to his satisfaction, he slowly raises his hands.  The crowd around Guiromélans almost quivers with anticipation—or is it fear?—as they watch those hands.  They hover above his head, taunting, teasing, before coming together like a thunderclap.

With a gasp, the crowd parts to admit rank after rank of masked servants, each carrying trenchers of quivering, bloody flesh and bone.  Where did they come from?  There must be other doors he hadn’t seen.

Guiromélans recoils in horror at the initial sight, but his blood freezes when he recognizes the human carcasses the meal consists of.  Many of them twitch as if still alive as the crowd falls upon them with a roar.

The face of Sir Odovakar moans with terror as teeth and nails tear eagerly into his flesh.

“It begins,” the qéns whispers sadly, “and it begins again.  It always begins, and it never ends!”

She gives Guiromélans one apologetic look before rushing forward to the meal.

The kjeene’jin merely watches with eyes that are too old to cry any longer.

 

The royal sleeping quarters are a murderous nightmare.  Bodies, some freshly slain, others much, much older, lay strewn about, laying in haphazard piles, draped across furniture.  It seems a great battle—or a terrible slaughter—occurred here, and no one has made any effort to clean it up.  It appears as if many bodies have been partially eaten.

Guiromélans stops in puzzlement.  Some of the dead he recognizes from the party below.  How can that be?

Beds are scattered across the room, their linens stained black and brown with ancient blood.  The royal bed stands near the center, so often used for something terrible that it sags in the middle with its grisly weight.  Thick blood is soaked through its sheets, sprayed across its drapes, and pools on the floor beneath.

Guiromélans is wondering where to begin looking when Balen appears before him.  There is no leaping from the shadows or gradual materialization from the Æther.  The child simply appears.  One moment there is nothing, the next, he stands before him.

“Guiromélans!” he cries.  The boy is filthy and gaunt.  He looks starving.  “Yer here!  Quick!  I’ve found Caidryn, but—”

Balen stops short, glancing past Guiromélans to the stairwell.  With a curse, he vanishes again.

Guiromélans leaps forward, seeking the child with his hands, but finds nothing.  He is questioning if he even saw the child, when a soft, woman’s voice surprises him.  “My lord, knight?”

Guiromélans whirls around to see the kjeene’jin standing in the stairwell.  Her hands lightly clasp each other with nervousness, her head tilted to one side.  She is beautiful, lonely, and strangely old.  “Were you speaking with someone?” she asks tentatively.

“No, my Lady,” Guiromélans answers, “Only the voices from my past.”  He hesitates before adding, “My apologies for being up here without permission.  I did not wish to invade anyone’s privacy.”

She shakes her head as if this were the least of her concerns.  “It is of no matter.  The castle in its entirety is open to our guests… except for the kitchens.”

“Kitchens?” Guiromélans asks with surprise.

Her eyes drift around the room, settling at last on an ornate wall panel inlaid with gold and silver.  “My Lord,” she stammers, “does not feel it appropriate for individuals of His guests’ rank and position to occupy such common locales.  Other than there, you may go as you wish, speak to who you wish, enjoy and revel in the… pleasures we have to offer here.  You are free to do as you wish, my Lord Raven… so long as you are in attendance for the commencement of the party.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.  And how often does your party begin?”

Her lips twitch, “Every hour, my lord.  Every hour, it opens with a feast, and all must attend.  Else, they are punished.”  She takes a couple tentative steps towards him, and her eyes narrow, “You look familiar.  I’ve seen you before… outside the castle?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are new here?  A new guest?”

Guiromélans nods, “I just arrived.  I was looking for two of my companions—”

“So many new guests!” she sighs, though it may have been a sob, her delicate hands fluttering around her face.  She looks at him with wild eyes, “It would be well for you not to stay here, knight.  If would be well for you to leave before the party begins!  Forget these companions and get away… while you can…”  A lock of her hair has escaped from her coiffure, and her roaming fingers pull at it insistently.

“I shall,” Guiromélans agrees, “but only after I have found my companions.”

“It may then be too late,” she sighs, “Only those whose spirits are pure can escape.  Those who stay too long… do not remain pure.  To remain… puts you at risk.”

Guiromélans frowns.  The doors were locked to him already.  Can it be of no surprise if he is already trapped?  He has known for months that his spirit is corrupt.

Carefully, gently, he removes his Median and holds it up to her.

* * *

Shackles bind him at the wrists and ankles, stretching his body long across the table.  He is stripped bare, and the cold air of the room makes him feel all the more vulnerable.  His testicles shrivel and shrink with fear.  Powerful enchantments bind his stone, and for the time being, it does not answer his call.

“The truth, witch,” an emotionless voice says, “is that we know your heart better than you know it yourself.”

Baldruus grits his teeth, mentally trying to prepare for the ordeal.  What questions will they ask?  What torments will they inflict upon him to get the answers they desire?

“This will be no inquest,” the voice states, as if reading his thoughts, “so much as it will be an education.  We shall teach you the answers to the questions, yes?”

“No!” he shouts, struggling hopelessly.  “I know you!  I know the answers you want!  You will not find them in me!”

“There.  You are wrong, and we shall show you.”

Gloved hands touch his belly, cupping his genitals, silently promising future torments.  “Where shall we begin?”

Baldruus closes his eyes and murmurs the mantras of Centering he was taught as a child.  Calming words to calm a frightened stone.

“You claim to worship all, you claim allegiance to none,” the voice says, “but you betray yourself in a time of fear?”

“W—what?”

“Who do you worship?  These words you speak…  Whose are they?”

“They are mine!” he shouts.

“Whose are they!”

“Mine!” Baldruus screams through his mounting fear.

“That is the wrong answer.”

Images flash before his eyes.  Skin of wizened, desiccated nature.  Head without eyes and ears and mouth, with only the suggestion of such features.  The torso floats before him.  Great glowing crystals in the place of arms and legs.  His mouth echoes the word he hears silently around him:  Cruth.

“No!” he sobs, jabbering the mantras even faster.  Slowly, he feels his stone begin to stir.  If he can only—

“Unacceptable,” the voice warns.

He does not see the knife, but he feels its slick edge slide into his flesh.  At first there is no pain, but quickly, the tearing burn grows.  He screams and screams as he realizes what they are doing.  Fingers and blades probe into his belly, cutting, pulling, carelessly.

A glove hovers over his face, soaked in his blood and bile.  A tiny black clot is held in its fingers.  It is his stone.  “This is the price of dishonesty.  Delusion.”

Baldruus screams, not so much from pain now, but from stark horror.  What have they done?  There is an emptiness within him now, a vacuum.  His stone is gone!  His stone is gone!

“A void where once power hid.  A void.  What shall we fill it with?” the voice asks above the screams.  “Answer our questions, and we shall fill it with purpose and hope.  Refuse, and we shall fill it with something else.”

Baldruus shrieks, thrashing mindlessly at his bonds.

“Who do you worship?”  The voice repeats.  “Who do you worship?”

Baldruus does not answer, cares not to, dares not to.

“Answer,” the voice warns, “Answer lest you be punished further.”

“I don’t know!” Baldruus screams, “I don’t know!”

A rat falls upon his belly.  In horror, he watches as it sniffs at the blood around his wound.  It’s whiskers tickle the raw, outraged flesh.  Its nails are strangely sharp against his skin.  Just as suddenly, an iron bowl is dropped over it.  Its base is lipped, as if to hold liquid or other contents.  A bowl atop a bowl?

“No!” Baldruus screams.  “I told you!  I told you the truth!  I don’t know!  I—”

His tormentor at last leans forward and looks into Baldruus’s face.  “Self deceit is unacceptable,” Guiromélans intones.  Blue tattoos writhe across his face.

With a nod from the Raven, red-hot coals pour into the top of the metal bowl.  Instantly, Baldruus feels the metal heat and burn.  He hears the trapped rat shriek in distress and discomfort as the heat above begins to burn.  It scrabbles around, seeking escape from the heat.  It finds it.

Baldruus screams as he feels the rat burrow into his wound.

* * *

The bedroom revealed but one decorously concealed stairwell, behind the ornate wall panel inlaid with gold and silver.  Guiromélans was greatly disappointed however to find it led to the kitchens and not the clandestine jetty he had hoped.  The greatly forbidden kitchens prove to be far from the house of horrors he had feared.  It seems whatever carnage occurred in this place, the kitchens were somehow overlooked.

Guiromélans carefully picks through the abandoned pots and dead-cold stoves, wondering why the evil of this castle would want him to avoid this place.  What is here for it to fear?  Flecks of ancient charcoal still hide in the mortar between the stones, hardly a threat to a castle in the possession of Masks.  Blood, from beef and lamb and paqa and others, still stain the chopping blocks.  Knives still hang from their pegs, waiting for use, dulled with age.

Guiromélans grasps one of the dangling blades, his thumb thoughtfully testing its edge.  Age he wonders suddenly?  Why of all places would this room show the passage of time and not the others?  Can it be that the power of these Masks cannot extend into this room?  And if so, why?

Slowly, his eyes look down at himself.  His Black Templar finery has been replaced by the stained and torn garments of a disgraced pirate captain.  It is true!  This room is a sanctuary.  If he can only get Balen and the others in here—

“Oh dear, oh dear,” a familiar voice murmurs in Ehrech, interrupting his thoughts.

Guiromélans turns to see a decrepit form shuffle into the kitchens.  His ruined clothes—hardly more than rags—hang loosely from his emaciated limbs.  His spindly arms clutch an arm-full of debris.  This, he drops on a table with much relief and slowly begins to pick through it.  “Oh dear,” he sighs, “She is always hungry, always hungry.  Don’t know what I’ll do!”

“YOU!” Guiromélans shouts with such force that the living skeleton seems to be nearly blown over by it.  Stalking forward, he grabs the man by the arm and turns him  “You!  I saw you in here, just before I entered this place!  You’re real!”

The man’s sunken face peers into Guiromélans’s with abject terror.  A long graying moustache and beard conceal two quivering lips.  Guiromélans recoils from the cold, bone-like feel of the man’s arm.  Looking into his face, he realizes he is much younger than he expected, perhaps only a decade older than he.  But his condition…

“No, pleeeeease!” the withered man wails pathetically, “Pleeeease!  I’m sorry!  Don’t punish me, pleeease!  I won’t come in here again!  I won’t!  I promise!  She was hungry, that’s all!  Hungry!”

Guiromélans hesitates before taking him by the shoulders again, the feel of his bones so close to the skin being somehow repulsive to him.  “Stop it!” he insists, each shake rattling the man’s head violently.  “Brace up!  I do not serve the Lord!  I am not with the Masks!”

The man cowers momentarily, but then his eyes carefully read Guiromélans’s face.  His beard shakes as his lips and chin work feverishly.  “Who are you, you?” he gasps at last, “What, what are you doing here?”

“I am Sir Guiromélans, Vavasour of Orqueneles and Raven to the Superbus Tyrannus.  I am here quite by accident, I assure you.”

The man’s yellowed eyes flash, “Then you must escape!  You must escape before the Lord knows you’re here—”

“He already knows I’m here.  The doors are closed to me.”

“Ah, then there is much sorrow for you.  Much, much sorrow.  You are trapped here just as I was, trapped, trapped.”

Guiromélans’s eyes narrow, “Who are you?”

His eyes dart around, as if in search of an escape.  “I am Dagnin.  I was Dagnin… I was, I was,” he replies in a small voice, “Sir Dagnin, knight of Lièns.”

“Of Ehre,” Guiromélans murmurs.

Dagnin looks away, “Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

Dagnin’s attention roams around the room, “Came looking for glory, yes I did—quite the warrior I was—didn’t find it, oh no, not here, not here.  Found something else I did.  Learned much, I did.  Valuable, valuable lessons.  Much about me, much about the Lord,” his watery eyes focus suddenly on Guiromélans, “much about you maybe too?”

Guiromélans reflects back to the stables and the horse that died there.  This man has been here for years.

“Why didn’t you escape?  Your soul wasn’t pure?”

Dagnin barks a sharp laugh and then grows solemn.  “Oh, not pure.  Filled with pride I was.  Filled with arrogance.  Anger, pride, violence.  I was knight, knight.  Better than others, yes?  The Lord showed me I was wrong.  Oh, yes!  My soul was wicked, so He kept me, He did.  Kept me, taught me, tasted me.”

“And there is no other escape?” Guiromélans asks incredulously, “I find that hard to believe.  His power isn’t total.  This room is proof of that.”

Dagnin shakes his head.  “Escape, yes, but only if you kill His Lordship, yes.”

“Challenge him?” Guiromélans scoffs, “Of course!  Why haven’t you done that?”

Dagnin’s tortured face crumbles, “Challenge, yes.  I tried, but the Lord knew me too well, He did.  Saw what I was inside.  Terror, terror, so much terror.  He showed me things, took me places, dealt with me.  I don’t want to challenge Him no more.  I go to His parties now, and He is happy.  No more punishments.  He calls me the Coward Knight… coward… and I accept that.”

Guiromélans steps back and studies the pitiful, emaciated creature.  “You actually eat at those feasts he presents?”

“Sometimes, sometimes,” he murmurs, looking at the floor, “I find things too, in the castle, I find things.  There are bits and pieces, people and things.  I find, I eat.  I find, I eat.  Some times things come in, get lost.  I eat.  The Lord gives me good meals sometimes, but I always come here to eat.”

Guiromélans examines the stack of trash Dagnin has brought in.  It consists primarily of wood, bones, and a dead rat.  “You bring what you find in here so you can see what you’ve really found?”

“Some times I eat it, some times I don’t,” Dagnin admits shyly, “…but I always eat it.”

“So you’ve never faced this Lord?  You’ve never tried?”

Dagnin shudders, “Never.”

“Dagnin, I must tell you something.  I don’t share your fear of this creature, and I plan to kill it.”

“You cannot!” Dagnin gasps with shock, “He is a powerful shade!”

Guiromélans shakes his head, “I don’t know what that means.”

“For a shade to be as powerful as the Lord, He must have one foot in life and one in death, in life and in the Underworld!  To kill Him, Him, you must sever both anchors!  It cannot be done!  He is too mighty!”

A great uproar erupts in the main room outside.  The music flares, announcing the arrival of the kjennink and kjeene’jin.  The time for the next banquet is drawing near.

“Dagnin, is there anyone else here with you?”

“Me, me, just me,” he sighs distantly, “All the others passed on to mere shadows long ago… long, long ago… long before I came here…  Just shadows and Masks left now.”

Guiromélans suddenly grabs the stricken knight and pulls him close  “No, Dagnin!” he urges, “There must be others!  Others newly arrived, like me!  You must tell me something!  When you first came in, you were speaking of her being hungry.  Who is that?  Who were you talking about?”

“She was hungry, hungry,” Dagnin mumbles, his eyes rolling in their sockets as Guiromélans shakes him, “She didn’t like His Lordship’s parties either, so she was dealt with.  But so pretty, so pretty.  Dagnin couldn’t let her go hungry?”

“Where is she?” Guiromélans hisses, shaking the trembling knight, “Where—”

The doors to the kitchen swing open.  Guiromélans releases the knight and turns around.  Though they do not enter the room, the Masks stand at the brink and wait for him.

Guiromélans reaches for his saber and prepares to fight.  Then he is struck from behind.

* * *

She approaches him just as he remembers her, slight, gentle, vulnerable.  Her eyes reveal understanding, wisdom, and sluttish hunger.

She is dressed in the gown he most favored, black silk to accent her raven’s hair, flashing silver when the light strikes it just right.  She is dark-haired and dark-eyed—with a supple body that is not voluptuous enough to be considered truly beautiful—but it is the way she moves, the words she speaks, that truly beguile her men.

With her silvered tongue, she weaves gentle spells of laughter and stories and pleasure.  Clever debates and teasing arguments, using points and facts that in her sweet naïveté she doesn’t realize are 2 decades out-of-date.  She is innocent, yet wise.  Unassuming, yet brilliant.  Nurturing, yet poisonous.  Angelic, yet condemned to damnation.

“My Lord,” she gasps with surprise when she sees him, her face suddenly glowing with pleasure behind her sellâria’s makeup.  “I thought you were in Ehre!”

He doesn’t speak.  Instead, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her, just as he’d always wished.  Her lips are soft, moist, eager and accepting, her breath and tongue tasting of mint and fine wine.  He kisses her once, and then again with more passion.  Her hands slide around his waist, across his doublet and over his shoulders.

He presses her close against him, feeling her taunt body meld against his, and kisses her jaw, her ear, her throat.  He tastes the scented oils that anoint her soft skin, inhales the deeper odor of her hair and her body.

“My Lord, Guiromélans!” She whispers, not quite a gasp, not quite a laugh, as she clutches at his back and hair, “What has gotten into you?  What has happened?”

He pauses, burying his face in her small bosoms, nearly weeping with too many emotions to identify.  “I love you, Esmeree,” he gasps.

No, this isn’t right.  This never happened!

The black-haired witch faces him without fear, her hair blown by the Ymyl Gwland winds.  In her Brackish braca and Palpi scimitar, she is every bit the barbarian queen the rumors claimed her to be.  At her side rides her consort and bodyguard (and lover?), the rebellious Leper King Gronw.  Rixueramos Naw rides at Guiromélans’s side, and the two Brackish warlords glare at each other with naked hatred.

“Guiromélans,” she pleads.  “This is not necessary!  I left the Seven Kingdoms almost a year ago!  My presence in the Bracklands should no longer be offensive to Primate Klemm.  This conflict is pointless and wasteful!”

“I am not one to second-guess the wishes of my lord or my Primate,” he hears his lips answer.  “The severity of your crimes and the depth of your evil has driven them to these measures.  That is explanation enough for me.”

“My lord, you know my character.  I am not capable of such crimes as you imply.”

Guiromélans shakes his head, knowing what’s coming but unable to stop himself.  “No, lady.  That was the discord that soured our previous meeting.  I thought I knew your character, but I realize I never have.”

“You have, Guiromélans!” she insists, “If only you can see that!”  She surveys the endless ranks of his soldiery behind him.  “Guiromélans,” she says at last, “Know you the vows of chivalry?”

“Of course I do,” he snorts.  “I would not be knighted, much less a Raven, if I did not follow them precisely.”

“What were they again?  A knight must love God and be willing to spill his own blood for Him…”

“What is the purpose of this?” he asks.

“He must possess loyalty and justice,” she continues, “Protect the poor and the weak…”

“I must remain pure in flesh and spirit, be abstemious,” he growls, “and avoid the sin of lechery.”

“He must strive for candor, and he must flee from pride,” she finishes and then frowns in thought.  “What were the last vows?  Please remind me.”

Guiromélans stares at her for a long time.  At last he says flatly, “I must never witness false judgment or treason.”

She inclines her head as she looks up at him.  “That must be part of that ‘champion of justice’ pledge you claim to enforce.”  She settles her pony and asks, “And what was the last vow of the knight, oh mighty Raven?”

Guiromélans tries to speak, tries to recite those last fatal words, but they stick in this throat.  He fights, struggling both to speak the words and to not speak them, for he knows, if he does, they will set in motion the events that lead to his downfall.  He gasps and coughs, his eyes beginning to bulge.  One hand rises to his collar.  Both Naw and the Leper King stare at him in surprise as he chokes and spits.  Frowning, the girl raises her hand, “Guiromélans?”

It is the opening the treacherous rixueramos was waiting for.  “Betrayal!” Naw suddenly bellows to all who can hear, “She casts spells upon the Cathubodua!”

In a flash, the Rixueramos’s spatha is drawn, and he spurs his horse towards her, intent on cutting her down and ending this war before it can begin.  Gronw’s horse surges forward as well, and the two Bracks clash, sword against sword.  Their horses collide violently, and both men tumble together to the ground.

“No!” Guiromélans finally screams, but it is too late.  His armies are rushing forward, drums and trumpets sounding.  Cannon and rifle resound all around him.  Naw rises to his feet, his spatha red with the blood of his former vassal.

It is over.  The dream of peace is over.  Any hope of saving his love is over.

Without thinking, Guiromélans’s hand goes to his sash and draws his pistol.  Esmeree’s beautiful, surprised eyes are the last things he sees before he pulls the trigger.

No!  It didn’t happen that way!

Rain drives down.  All around him, the bodies of the Leper King’s cings lay among the rubble of his razed dunum.  The main hall has partially collapsed, its tower crushing one corner.  Within the ruins, he can hear the sounds of feminine sorrow.

“Fuck them,” a dark Brackish voice sneers.  “Fuck them both.  Let them watch each other.”

Tucking his saber close to him, Guiromélans ducks beneath a fallen rafter and slips inside.

A circle of cings stands around a bloody display.  Their lord, Naw, stands with them.

“What is this?” Guiromélans demands.

In surprise at his arrival, the nearest Bracks step aside.  The witch lays bloodied and beaten in the mud, clutching at a tiny slip of a girl.  The wounds on her would have killed any man, but somehow the witch still lives.  And now the Bracks want to rape them?

“We caught the boduus witch,” Naw hisses, somewhat deflated, “and her unholy offspring.”

Guiromélans looks surprised, and when he looks down at his love, Esmeree, his eyes cloud with sadness.  “I had hoped you fled,” he says solemnly.

“No such luck,” she gasps.

Naw leans close to the Raven.  “We were about to have some sport with them, yäh?”

Guiromélans’s face flinches slightly.  “Sport?”

“Please, Guiromélans,” she pleads, clutching at the young girl.  “Don’t let them.  She’s my daughter!”

Unexpected anger flares in his heart.  She pleads?  The witch pleads?  What right does she have to appeal to his gentler nature now?  Many times before has he pled with her, only to have her brush his heartfelt words carelessly aside!  How arrogant of her to assume she can touch his heart after breaking it so thoroughly!

The Primate is right.  She is evil.  She is dangerous.  No more will he let this witch cloud his mind and enthrall his heart.

Guiromélans suddenly leers.  “Your daughter?” he laughs.  “Such a fine young girl, and you haven’t married her off yet?”

All hope dies in the witch’s eyes, “No, please, Guiromélans…”

He falls on her heavily, crushing her chest with his weight.  In her wounded state, her arms have no strength to fight him off, and his gloved hands close around her slender white neck with little resistance.  “This is for leading me here!” he hisses as he begins to squeeze.  “This is for making me spend good men to bring you back!  I shall make sure everything you love will suffer!  Your daughter will never again know pleasure or happiness, I assure you!”  As Esmeree’s eyes cloud over, he spits in her face, “This is for my heart and my love, you whore!”

“Nooo!” he screams, clutching at his face and hair.

Caidryn throws him off her violently.  He tumbles to the floor, stunned and confused.  When he finally finds his bearings, he looks up to see her kneeling on a bed, clutching at her throat and retching.

“My God!” Guiromélans moans, “What did I do?”

“Yä fuckin’ BASTARD!” she croaks.  “First yä tries tä kiss me, then yä tries tä kill me?”

“Oh, God!” Guiromélans shouts, rushing to her side, “I didn’t know!  I—I thought you were…  It—it was a dream…”

With a snarl, she marshals her strength and strikes him with the back of her fist.  He tumbles back to the floor, surprised and hurt.  When he looks up, she is sliding off the bed, a heavy candlestick in her hands.

“I told yä I’d never again be na man’s whore!” she hisses.  “Now yä goin’ tä see why!”

“Caidryn, wait!” Guiromélans shouts, raising his hands.

She swings the stick downwards, and he hears the bones in his left hand snap.  The second swing strikes him in the shoulder.  The third glances off the side of his head and nearly knocks him unconscious.

Guiromélans lurches for the bed, trying to crawl over it, trying to somehow escape, to find respite from the merciless blows.  His hands scrabble across the linens as blows rain down upon his back, cracking his ribs, gouging his flesh.  His hand closes around a familiar grip.  As his consciousness drains away, he moves by instinct.  Turning, he thrusts his jagged saber into Caidryn’s throat.

* * *

The party is unchanged.  The guests hardly acknowledge Guiromélans’s return, much less his absence.  He has been dealt with, and they know better than to speak of it.  Lord Odovakar and his lady bow at his passing.  He is no longer a stranger to this party.  He is a guest.

“Do not fear, knight,” one lady whispers sympathetically, “The banquet comes soon…”

Small consolation.

He staggers through the hall in a daze, not sure of what is real or dreamed, his past nightmares still clouding his memories.  He knows it is just what the Masks want—to turn everything into a dream, an illusion—where nothing but the Lord’s will exists.  It is an easy trap to fall into, and Guiromélans struggles with the decision.

So easy, so easy to just let go.  To forget his shame, to feast upon the flesh of the others, to dance and sing and celebrate the beginning of the Lord’s grand masque, over and over and over.

After all, what else does he have to do?

Something tugs at his belt.  Looking down, he sees a filthy child looking up.  He blinks.  Who is this urchin?  His face is familiar.

“Cathubodua Guiromélans?” he asks.

Guiromélans’s lips move silently.  “Who—” he whispers.

“It’s me!  Balen!  Are yä OK?”

Guiromélans blinks and shakes his head.  The boy is still here, still alive.  He is still unharmed.  The Masks cannot touch him because his soul is pure?  Automatically, his hand reaches into his jacket and produces the Median.  The boy smiles cautiously as he holds near his face.  The Median shines as if new, glowing with the child’s purity.  With a flick of his fingers, Balen sends the orbits spinning.

The boy is pure of heart, pure of spirit.  The Masks cannot touch him.  The shade’s illusions do not affect him.  Only he sees this place for what it really is.

“How… how long?” Guiromélans finally asks, quickly putting the artifact away before it can cast its judgment upon him.

“Yä was locked up fer a day,” Balen grimaces.

Guiromélans shakes his head, “Felt like a lot longer.”

“I heard yä screamin’, but I couldn’t open the door.”

“Never mind that.”  Guiromélans looks around the hall, at the guests, at the finery.  “Look around, Balen.  What do you see?”

Balen squints as he follows Guiromélans’s directions.  “I sees lots of garbage and buachar.  It’s dark, sä’s it’s hard tä see much else.  There’s a big pile in the middle.”  He shrugs, “Just a big, dirty, empty castle!”

Guiromélans nods, “Is there anyone else here that you can see?  Do you hear anything?”

“Nage,” he says shaking his head.  “Just yä, and the rats and the other things…  Sometimes I sees the other one, the skinny man.  He’s scary.  Sometimes I sees the shadows.  That’s when I runs away!  They comes after me!”

“It is good that you do.  Anything else?”

“Nage.  Sometimes yä walks around like yä don’t sees me!  Yä and the skinny one.  Sometimes yä just walks around and around the big pile in the middle.  Sometimes I hears yä whisperin’, like yä were talkin’ tä someone…”  He grows silent for a moment before adding, “Sometimes I hears Caidryn and Baldruus screamin’.  They’re still locked up in the towers.”

Guiromélans frowns, “Towers?”

“Yäh!  That’s where they sent yä!”

Guiromélans looks around him at the guards.  They must not be real Masks, else Balen would see them.

And his companions, they’re still being punished?  Can it be that this shade deems them a greater threat than him?  The thought wounds his pride more than anything else.

True to the lady’s promise, the crowds of the party begin to stir with anticipation.  The party will begin soon.

“Balen, do you know where they are?” Guiromélans asks quickly over the growing noise, “Can you find their cells?”

“Yäh!  Easy!”

The flourishes blare as the doors to the upper floor bursts open.  Their porters carry in the kjennink and his kjeene’jin on their bier.

“Stay close to me!” Guiromélans shouts over the din, “And tell me what you see!”

Balen frowns as he hustles to follow the knight, “Why are yä shoutin’?”

Guiromélans ignores the boy as he moves closer, shoving lords and ladies aside.  The kjennink’s painted eyes have already picked him out from the crowds.

As Guiromélans nears the bier’s first porter, he draws and cuts in one fluid motion.  Slowly, the masked servant slides apart in two pieces, without a sound, without a flinch.  Almost as an afterthought, blood wells from the pieces only after they’ve hit the ground.

Strangely, the kjennink’s bier hovers where it is, though there is no longer a porter to carry its corner.

The kjennink stares down at him.  His kjeene’jin merely watches with sad eyes.  “You have been warned, knight,” he says, “and still you disrupt My festivities?”

“I am through with your festivities,” Guiromélans states.  “I’ll have no more to do with them.”

“Then you will be dealt with, for there is no leaving.  None are excused from My party until it is over.”

Guiromélans raises his saber, “Then I intend to end this party.”

With its grotesque make-up, the shade’s face is a parody of bemused surprise.  “Truly?  I have been here for a long time, knight, and many before you have tried.  You think you will be different?  Is your spirit pure?  Is your conscience clean?  Would you still be here if they were?”

“I place my faith in God, Mask, and it is through His power that you will die.”

The Mask shrugs, “An interesting approach.  We shall see if it is successful, yes?”  One perfectly manicured hand reaches out and snaps its fingers.  The crowd parts as porters push through, carrying heavy bronze pitchers.

Guiromélans glances down to see the child shying away.  “What is it?  What do you see?”

“It’s dark, soft, shapeless,” he shudders, squinting as if staring at a bright light.  “Like somethin’ that washed up from the sea.  It’s got two… calliacus.  One’s sittin’ next tä him in the air, shinin’ bright like a light.  It’s draggin’ other dark one on the ground.”

Guiromélans stares back up at the Lord.  For a shade to be as powerful as it, it must have one foot in life and one in the Underworld.

His ears eagerly catch the familiar sound of drink being poured.  Turning, his mouth goes dry as he watches the masked servants pour out a deep red liquid into goblets.

“Shall we drink before the duel?” the Lord teases, “It is of the old ways.  A gentleman’s gesture?”

The Mask’s hand embraces one of the goblets and carries it up to its pointed nose.  It inhales deeply.  “Ah.  A fine vintage.  97 of Hoël’s Age?  The beginning of the Plague of Lies.  The fall of the Endless Empire.”

It offers the cup to Guiromélans.  “Shall we drink, Raven?”

Guiromélans stares at the wine with terror.  Already his hands have begun to shake at the thought of the rich drink, the burning alcohol.

“Raven?” the Mask mocks, “Will you not drink?  It is customary for knights to do so before a duel.  Are you not a Raven?  Are you not a knight?”

Guiromélans glares up at the Lord, nearly his whole body shaking.  The Mask smiles.  “Have you shame, knight?  Are you unsure?  Perhaps you are just a man, weak and flawed?  Could this be?”

The Lord leans back in his chair, “Admit to Me your weaknesses.  Confess your shame, and perhaps I’ll allow you and your companions to escape.”

“Never!” Guiromélans shudders.  “My shame is between me and God.  It is not for your ears.”

“Only between you and God?” the Mask insinuates.  “Isn’t there one other?  A young lady, perhaps?  A beloved witch?  How does it feel to know that God sided with her?  How does it feel to know that she refused your offers of mercy, resisted your efforts at redemption, and in the end, beat you on the battlefield?”

Guiromélans is silent, staring at the offered goblet, struggling with his urgent desire.  His flame of shame still burns brightly, and he knows only the cool liquid of the drink can quench it.

“Tell me, knight—if you are a knight—what is the final oath of chivalry?  What was it you did to her to cause so much shame?”

“Don’t touch it!” Guiromélans hears Balen hiss, “It’s reachin’ fer yä!  Don’t let it touch yä!”

Guiromélans’s eyes suddenly snap up from the goblet to the shade.  “The last oath?” he says, looking from the kjennink to the kjeene’jin and smiling without humor, “The last oath is one I shall never again abandon.”

With a great upwards cut, he slices the goblet in two.  Red wine spills across the floor like blood.  The Mask howls in pain and surprise as a great pseudopod of black flesh materializes out of thin air and falls to the ground.  Black slime oozes across the flagstones from where Guiromélans severed it.

The porters haul the kjennink’s bier away as the Lord screams and rages.

“I challenge you, demon!” Guiromélans shouts after it.  “I challenge you for ownership of this castle!  For ownership of these people!  I am going to end this masque!  Your rule here is over!”

The kjennink sneers in fury, its painted face turning it into a parody of human emotion.  “Yes!  We fight!  I shall show you your weakness!  I shall show you your shame!  You will be dealt with, and you will suffer!  In the end, you will envy the fate of the Coward Knight!”

Guiromélans backs up, leading the boy away.

“Och fi!” Balen hisses in terror, “Yer goin’ tä fight that thing?”

Guiromélans nods grimly, “To save you and Caidryn, yes.”

“But it’s big and soft, like a big bag of wet shit!”

“You still see the two spheres?”

“Yäh!”

“Well, its weakness lies in them.”

“If yä can’t sees them, how’re yä goin’ tä gets them?”

Guiromélans shrugs and smiles.  “Maybe you can guide me?”

As the kjennink leaps from his bier, Balen backs further away, fear shining in his eyes.  “Yäh, I’ll guides yer hand…”

Guiromélans turns his attention to the themoch.  Except for the three tyggskins earlier, he’s never faced a Mask before.  He wonders what he can expect.  Without a word, it approaches him.  The rest of the guests stand transfixed, staring in wonder at their Lord.  Guiromélans slips around and through them like they were statues.  They seem not to care that a melee is about to begin in their midst.

The shade stands just out of Guiromélans’s reach, and slowly, the rage builds in its eyes.  It’s skin swells and blackens, rising upwards through the neck and into the eyes and temples.  Caked makeup flakes off in heavy chunks and falls across its breast and onto the floor.  Its fingers stretch and fatten, dangling in a long heavy mass, until a mace and chain of impressive size is held in its hand.

Guiromélans fidgets slightly with his saber, testing for reaction.  When he gets none other than that baleful glare, he asks, “You have something to say?  Or shall we just get on with it?”

The rage explodes from the Mask without warning, its mouth splitting impossibly wide as it roars with a fury that shakes the hall.  Its form shimmers, and for the briefest of moments, Guiromélans sees a great, black mass, tentacles arching towards him like an attacking squid.

He leaps backwards, his saber flashing around him defensively.  Several times, he feels it connect with rubbery flesh, but for the most part, he catches nothing but air.  Tentacles like invisible blades flash around him, cutting him deeply in many places before he can escape their reach.

Guiromélans staggers away, clutching at his wounded arm. Even as he tries to grasp what has just happened, he sees the Mask storming towards him, spinning that massive spiked ball with impossible ease.

He ducks past the swinging ball and is forced to weather another storm of unseen blades.  He cuts frantically, sometimes connecting, before he has to leap away again to avoid the next swing of the mace.  There is no way he can block or parry such a weapon.

He steps on something wet and slick and nearly falls.  Risking a glace down, he sees a sliver of rubbery flesh, stained with black blood.  So he is wounding it!  If it bleeds, he can kill it.

“The mace!” Guiromélans screams, “Balen, the mace!  Is it real?”

“What mace?” the boy shouts, “Look out!  It’s reachin’ fer yä!”

The mace’s next swing strikes a nearby lady, crushing her body into an unrecognizable pulp of broken bones and bleeding flesh.  Real or not, it certainly seems solid.  Obeying Balen’s warning, Guiromélans shies away again.  He is rewarded with the hissing sounds of the tentacles cutting nothing but air.

Guiromélans is moving too fast, too recklessly, paying too much attention to his foe and not his surroundings.  Without warning, he collides with a table, knocking it over and tumbling to the floor with it.  Scrambling on the ground, he grabs one of its legs and rolls it over him.  The fusillade of tentacles rain down on him, cutting his legs and chipping wood from the table.

“Cathubodua!” he hears Balen scream, “Yer caught in the trash heap!”

Guiromélans smiles briefly.  At least it is real trash and not illusionary.  Using the table as a shield, he leaps to his feet and charges.  Blows batter him from all sides, and something pierces him deeply just above the hip.  Moaning, he sweeps the table aside, hoping it clears the tentacles with it, and thrusts with his saber.  The jagged blade strikes home, and the Mask screams.

The next thing Guiromélans sees is that great mace swinging towards him.

He ducks and dives, but it is too late to avoid the blow.  It catches him on the left shoulder and arm, and he feels half the bones in his body shatter.  He tumbles across the floor and lays in a stricken heap.

“Guiromélans!” Balen screams, but the Raven cannot answer.  His vision is dimming with shock, but his mind struggles for awareness.  There is something he’s missing!

He watches as the Mask slowly, triumphantly approaches him.  Behind him, he hears Balen screaming something about the monsters coming.  “Run, Balen!” he groans with as much strength as he can muster.  “Get away from them!  Don’t let them catch you!  Run to the kitchens!  They can’t get you there!”

The kjennink glances up as he hears the boy flee and then looks back down at his quarry. “It is of no matter, you must know that, Raven,” the themoch says.  “He cannot stay in there forever.  There is no food, no water.  If he comes out, My tyggskins will get him.  If he doesn’t, I shall just send in the Coward Knight.  Good Sir Dagnin does My bidding well, yes?”

Guiromélans is silent, watching the way the Mask drags that mace behind it.  Balen saw no mace, but what then did the Mask hit him with?

“And what shall We do with you?” it wonders, “Slay you?  Enslave you?  Break you?  Serve you as Our next meal?  What would be the greater indignity?”

Guiromélans looks into the Mask’s eyes, “Look into my heart, demon.  Know this.  I will never serve you.  Shame or not, you will never break my faith.”

The Mask’s expression twitches, and then it roars with fury again.  Without preamble or warning, the mace flies up on its chain and smashes downwards, intent on crushing Guiromélans beneath it.

It is just what he had hoped for. With the last of his strength, he rolls aside, screaming as his broken bones grind beneath his weight, and the mace smashes into the stone floor next to him.  Guiromélans’s sword lashes out…

And strikes the chain.

There is a wet pop as the blade cuts through a rubbery substance.  The kjennink’s eyes widen in surprise as it staggers backwards, staring at the thick blood pumping from its severed umbilicus.  On shaking knees, it stands and sags and sinks to the floor.  Legs splayed out, it sits and stares at the Raven.

The two stare at each other as consciousness slowly fades.

 

“He wakes!”

Guiromélans moans and reaches for his sword, and instantly regrets it.  Pain like he has rarely experienced rocks his body, and sweat breaks out all across his skin.

Caidryn cups his head in her hands and stares at him, “Yä wakin’ in our care seems tä becomin’ a regular thing, uh?”

“Just don’t let me stab you through the heart,” Guiromélans moans, “and no eating of my skin… or castration… or public ridicule… or—”

“Nage,” Caidryn says, understanding, “There’s na nightmares here.  Yer awake, and this place is real… or at least much of it is.”

“Balen?” Guiromélans asks, “Baldruus?”

“I am well,” Baldruus answers, crouching down so as to be in the Raven’s view.  “My spells are healing you, but it will take time.  I am weak.  My power is weak.  Balen is nearby.  It was good that he found us when he did.”

Guiromélans blinks.  “Found you?  How could that be?”  Slowly his hand inches around, looking for his sword.  These can just as easily be more tyggskins, just like the first set.

Caidryn nods to something out of Guiromélans’s sight.  “The themoch.  When yä killed it, the nightmares ended, our doors were unlocked.  Many of the tyggskins fled.  Baldruus killed a couple more.  Most of the illusions went too.  Balen found us in the tower and brought us tä yä.”

The shade dead?  Guiromélans looks up at the sorcerer.  “Can I stand?  Can I walk?” he asks with urgency.

Baldruus feels painfully around Guiromélans’s shoulder and side and then shrugs.  “It’s your body,” he says at last.  “If you want to try it.”

“Help me,” he says without hesitation, grabbing Caidryn’s arm for support.

With the help of her and Baldruus, Guiromélans rises to his feet.  He moans and sways with the pain as gravity pulls his injuries in new directions.  “Easy, now,” Baldruus warns, but Guiromélans just waves him away.

The hall is just as he remembered it to be before he was forced inside.  The floor is covered with centuries of dirt, the walls with ruined tapestries.  A small fire burns wood shingles gathered from outside—evidently, the doors are now open—evidently, the power of the circles has been broken.  At the center of the room is a huge pile of trash and skeletal remains, probably piled there over the years by the Coward Knight.  Next to the heap lays an emaciated blackened body.  There are no arms, but countless clawed tentacles sprout from the torso.  Next to it, the severed black orb lays like a deflated ball.

Standing nearby is the kjeene’jin.  She is so white, in this dark place, she nearly glows.  She looks at him with sad eyes and a worried smile on her face.  “You!” Guiromélans gasps in surprise.

Baldruus glances at her almost as if she’s an interesting piece of artwork, “Yes.  Most of the spirits were released when you killed the Mask.  This one stays.  She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t move, though she does seem interested in you.  Perhaps this was her castle?  Perhaps she is grateful for what you did?”  He shrugs, “I can try to exorcise her if you like?”

“No, no,” Guiromélans says hurriedly.  “And the other one?  The knight?”

“The madman?” Baldruus asks.  “The one who fed us, yes.  He has hidden himself in the kitchens and refuses to come out.  He says he’s sorry for hitting you, by the way.”

With help from Caidryn, Guiromélans straps on his saber and takes up his Median.  Limping towards the Mask’s body, he observes how the kjeene’jin’s eyes follow him.  Kneeling, he proffers the Median to the Mask and watches as it turns to rust.  Guiromélans shakes his head as he puts it away.

“What is it?” Caidryn asks, “What does that mean?”

“It means,” the kjeene’jin’s spirit says sadly, hollowly, “that the themoch still lives.”  Caidryn nearly jumps out of her skin at the voice.

“Shades of this power have two links,” Guiromélans says, nodding, “I destroyed only one of them.  It still has a link to the world of the living.”

“The way for you is clear, Raven,” the kjeene’jin says.  “Escape while you can.”

“And if we do?”

“Eventually, the Lord will regain His power,” she says distantly, “and the parties will begin anew.”

“Then we leave!  We leave now!” Caidryn announces, leaping to her feet.  Without waiting for a reply, she dashes off in search of Balen.

The kjeene’jin smiles sadly at Guiromélans.  “Do not mourn for me.  Sir Dagnin will keep me company until then.  Despite it all, I believe he is a good man.”

“What is this?” the flabbergasted Baldruus finally sputters, “Who are you?”

“I am kjeene’jin of this castle.  I have reigned here since before the Skudd claimed my lands.”

“What happened here?” Guiromélans asks quietly, still staring down at the body of the Mask.

“Betrayal,” the ghost moans, “Murder.  My husband threw a great ball on the eve of our departure.  The waters had finally surrounded our land, the peasants had fled, our power and wealth were gone.  At my husband’s behest, all of our neighbors—allies and rivals alike—were to attend one last gathering.  At the announcement of the meal, our guards fell upon them in a great slaughter.”

“Why?” Baldruus asks in surprise.

“We are Muttese,” the ghost says with a sad smile.  “There were larger issues, perhaps, but my lord’s main goal was simple vengeance.  Our dynasty was destroyed.  My husband could not live on the graces of others.  His pride would not permit it.  To him, it was the only way.  It is irony… or justice… that my husband was one of the first to fall in the melee.”

“Did you know anything about these plans?”

“Oh, yes.  Of course.  I myself invited several members of my own family to attend.  My cousin was one of my kjennink’s greatest rivals.  My hands are just as red with blood as my husband’s.”

“And the murders, the power of that fury unleashed, summoned the themoch,” Guiromélans says.

“Yes.  It made itself quite comfortable, taking on the guise of my kjennink.”

“But why the kitchen?” Guiromélans asks.  “Why was it immune?”

The kjeene’jin’s face twitches with a new, deeper sorrow.  “My children with their nurse sought refuge there during the fighting.  She was a stone-summoner and cast spells of protection and safety.  They did not protect them from the mob, but it seems they did protect them from the shade.”

Caidryn hustles Balen into the room, “We’re goin’, yäh?”

“Yes,” Baldruus says as he moves to gather his supplies.

“No,” Guiromélans answers.

“What?”

“We’ll not leave until this shade is dead.”

“But how’re yä goin’ tä do that?” Caidryn shouts, a tinge of fear entering her voice.

“We must sever its link with the realm of the living.”

“Yäh?  Yä has all the sense of a cauaros!  How’re yä goin’ tä do that?”

Guiromélans slowly, painfully draws his saber and looks at the kjeene’jin.  “Your Lord asked me what my shame was, Lady.  What it was that drove me to such pain.  What it was that ultimately led me to question my own faith.  It is the question whose answer will return me to the status of Raven.”

“And what is your shame, good knight?” she asks.

“My shame was that at a time of greatest need, I violated the last oath of chivalry, and this I will never do again!”

The kjeene’jin smiles at him, a smile of relief, a true smile, perhaps her first in centuries.  “And what is this oath, knight?”

“The knight must never deny protection to a lady or maiden.”

And Guiromélans drives his saber into the kjeene’jin’s heart.