Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (56 page)

The next morning the boys were up early. With all the chores required to keep the inn functioning as a smooth operation, it was a rare day indeed that they were allowed to take off and spend fishing, but both Isandora and Andar felt it was important that the boys have a day to themselves to have some fun and catch a few fish. Besides, they both felt it might afford Bramwith the opportunity to talk about the death of his father with his best friend, now stepbrother, and help him to get some closure to the obviously mixed feelings he had towards him.

On the banks of Walder Creek they lounged, bait in the water. Ubri lay on his back, chewing on a long piece of sweet grass, studying the clouds. “Hey Bram,” he called to his friend, who was sitting a few feet away trying to sort out a giant bird’s-nest in one of the lines. “Look at
that
one, it looks like a giant turtle. See, there’s the head, and it even has four legs and a tail.” Ubri looked over at him. He continued to struggle with the tangle in the line, not looking up. Ubri glanced at his face, which was suddenly twisted in rage. Bram threw down the line and stomped up and down on it, all the while screaming,
“Stupid, stupid, stupid line
,
why won’t you straighten out?”
He continued to jump up and down on it until he fell down in exhaustion. Ubri looked on with a puzzled expression on his face, wondering why his stepbrother would get this upset over a tangled fishing line.

He got a bite, and his own line pulled taut. “Bram,” he called out, “I got one, and it feels like a really big one. Give me a hand.”

The fish made a series of runs, each time the line chafing and cutting into Ubri’s hands. “Ouch,” he cried out. He whipped off his shirt and wrapped his hands, which were already bleeding. In the end, he hauled the fish closer and closer to shore where Bram waited. “Gotcha,” he cried, grabbing it by the tail and dragging it backwards up onto the shore. Ubri at this point couldn’t have cared less. He was too concerned about the injuries to his hands. There were several deep cuts that were bleeding profusely. Bram looked up towards him, his face beaming, obviously happy as could be that they had beached this monster of a fish. He noticed Ubri staring at his bloody hands, and his expression turned from joy to dark anger. He drew his belt knife and plunged it into the fish. He did it again and again, shrieking, “Bad fish. Bad fish. I
hate you
, you rotten, putrid, moldy old fish. Die fish. Die fish. Rotten fish.”

He kept it up until what had been a trophy fish, capable of feeding a family of four for two meals, was now a mess of bloody flesh and guts. Ubri, meanwhile, got his hands wrapped up and sat quietly watching the frenzy, wondering all the while what had overtaken Bram that was causing him to act in this way. He wanted to tell him to stop, that he was ruining a beautiful fish, but he kept silent. When it was over, Bram sat back and stared at the tangle and mass of the bloody carcass. His face bore a look of wonder. It was the look of someone who has witnessed a miracle.

“Bram …
Bram
! Hey Bram.”

Bram looked at Ubri, his expression still detached.

“Bram,” said Ubri. “What did you ever want to go and do a thing like that for? That was a champion fish. It was the biggest one we’ve ever caught, and now it’s ruined. Jees, Bram.”

Bram looked at him with a twisted smile. “Maybe I should do the same thing to you,” he said. “Lucky boy that has always had everything. Lucky boy to catch the biggest fish. Lucky boy with the beautiful mother and the handsome father. Maybe I should do the same to
all
of you … ”

He brandished his knife in a threatening fashion, waving it around and around in small circles. Now Ubri felt terrified. He had never seen Bram act any such way. He looked carefully at his eyes. They did not seem to be focused on this world. They were the eyes of someone possessed.

He turned and raced back a few steps, stopping abruptly and turning back. “Bram,” he shouted, “what’s gotten into you? You’re acting crazy. Is this what you want? To see me and my family,
our
family Bram, killed? Or suffer? Bram. Quit it! Quit it
right now
!”

In a split-second Bram’s countenance changed, and his eyes seemed to be once again focused on the here and now. He looked down at the macerated pile of what used to be a fish in front of him and grinned sheepishly. “I sure made a mess out of that, didn’t I?” he asked quietly. “I guess I got confused for a second.” He turned genuinely remorseful. “I’m sorry, Ubri,” he said. “I forgot who I am. With my dad dying and all... I don’t know… ” He sat down hard and began to softly cry.

In the stillness of the moment, with not another sound to be heard except that of his best friend and stepbrother weeping, Ubri could not help but be moved. Cautiously, he approached him and put his arm around his shoulder, keeping a watchful eye on the knife, which Bram still held despite his collapse. “I know,” he said, gently removing the blade from his hand. “I know it must be hard for you right now, Brother. We
are
brothers you know. Your father didn’t want you to have these feelings, he couldn’t help himself, I imagine… you know… ”

He hugged him for a long time, thinking there was a lot in there.

If Ubri had known how
much
was in there, he would have turned and run for home.

Turman Pandieth, Seth Queslian, and Mandel Ott crouched by the bank of one of the rivulets that led out of the swamp and dumped into Round Lake.

Something was out there. They could sense it. The feeling was palpable. The all-night trudge had proven nearly overwhelming, and they were almost out of the Burnfast mixture that smoldered in the inner pockets of their outer longcoats.

The rivulet was a slow moving stream the color of bilious vomit. Slime balls dotted the surface like so many pimples. The smell was one of rot. There was no sound except for that of their breathing. No animals would be found here. This was a place of death. Even the shoreline was devoid of the usual plant growth that normally crowds a water’s edge, for to set down roots here was to suck pure poison out of the earth.

“We have to cross this,” whispered Turman. “We have to make it by this stinking stream if we are to have any chance of finding the old woman’s place.”

“How are we going to manage that?” asked Seth.

“Carefully,” muttered Mandel.

“There is something in there,” said Seth. “I can feel it. It is there as sure as we are standing here. Can you feel it?”

Both nodded in response. “Is there another way?” asked Mandel.

“No,” said Turman. “This is it. To turn back now will be sure death for all of us. We’ll freeze to death before we ever make it back to the cabin.”

As if to try and make them reconsider, the waters of the stream swirled near the middle. Something was in there, without question. Something big.

“Well, I don’t know about you,” said Seth, “But I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of this slog through nothing but mud all night. And I’m tired of freezing my butt off. I say we split up; twenty yards apart. That way, whatever is in there will have less of a chance to get all of us.”

“Assuming there’s only one of them,” said Mandel.

Seth grunted and moved away slowly along the bank of the stream, his eyes never leaving the water. When he had gotten around twenty yards away, Mandel got up and started along as well. When the spacing met Turman’s approval, he motioned with his hand to start in. All drew their short swords, although none believed they would be of much use against whatever was in there. Turman took the first step. He was surprised that the water was pleasantly warm, and the bottom, which he had thought would be the same mud through which they had been trudging ahead for hours now, was actually firm. He glanced quickly at his comrades and noticed that they too seemed to be experiencing the same footing. He was about halfway across when something bumped his leg. He thought for a moment that he had merely run into something but, no, whatever it was, was gone. He forced himself to loosen his grip on his sword. A tense fighting hand made for poor swordplay. Again he glanced at Seth and Mandel. They were about halfway across as well.

Suddenly the waters erupted like a malignant geyser, sending spray high into the air. But nothing touched him again, so he raced for the far shore, now only yards away. He looked towards Mandel and Seth, but a foul, greenish-brown mist between them obscured his view. He had just placed his first foot on shore when he heard the scream. Up he scrambled onto the bank, and now he could see Mandel, high overhead, in the grip of some sort of huge tentacle and being waved about like a rag doll. Seth, having made it to the far bank as well, had dropped his sword and was nocking an arrow. Turman Pandieth sprinted towards him and did the same. Together, they let fly a number of them, one after the other in rapid succession, most striking the thing with no obvious effect. Turman yelled, “
Keep shooting
,” grabbed his short sword, and charged back into the water, screaming, “
For the Prince!
” where he began to slash and cut at the monstrous arm that held Mandel helpless high above them. Every blow buried itself deep into the flesh of the thing, and he was rewarded with the appearance of a thick, black, slimy fluid that he assumed was the monster’s blood. It didn’t look like he was having much of an effect on it, however. And after several strikes his sword arm began to tire. It was then that another tentacle shot out of the water and wrapped itself around his sword arm at the wrist. It happened so quickly he didn’t have time to change hands, although he tried, his sword falling into the stream.

He drew a dagger from his belt and started to plunge it over and over into the coil of the beast when yet another much larger tentacle wrapped itself around his waist, picked him up completely out of the water, and tossed him up on the far side of the stream bank some twenty feet from shore where he tumbled and rolled to a stop. Quite shaken, he sat up. He reached for his boot knife but it was gone, having been lost in the struggle. He glanced towards Mandel and Seth. They too were sitting on the bank of the shore that they had wanted to reach. They too were weaponless, but looked to be unharmed.

“That’s crazy,” he thought. “Why didn’t that thing simply kill us all?” It didn’t make any sense. It surely could have slain them easily.

“That will do, that will do,” a voice called out. “You have had enough fun for the day. Go and tend to your wounds. Go on. I will be back to visit with you later. You did a good job, a
fine
job. I am proud of you.”

Seth and Mandel limped to the side of Turman. All were badly battered and bruised up.

“Follow me,” said the old woman, who turned without further ceremony and began to walk away. Turman nodded to the other two, and they all fell in step behind her. In a matter of moments all three were overcome by feelings of exhaustion. Turman found himself yawning. Soon, they all walked along as though in a trance, incognizant of where they were, in what direction they were going, or why. All awareness of their surroundings faded gradually as she ensnared them deeper and deeper into the spell that she wove, using incantations, dust, and the like.

Turman woke up first, sitting straight up and reaching for his short sword, which was absent from his side. He looked quickly around, having no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.

They were in a small, one-room log cabin, not unlike the one in which the Prince, Norma Webb, and Ettan Cooke were now housed. But this one had the comfortable look of a residence with a full-time occupant. There was a dining area with a table and four chairs, a bed that looked like it probably belonged to the strange woman whom they had encountered the day before, and a small but striking fireplace in which burned a cheery fire. And if that were not enough, there was a roast cooking. The smell was overwhelming, and he found he was ravenous.

He nudged both Seth and Mandel with his foot, noticing for the first time that his boots were missing. He looked at his clothes, which were nothing like those he had been wearing the day before. These were soft and clean. The colors were garish: Greens and golds and purples. They were adorned with many of the same pastoral scenes he had observed on the cloak of their rescuer; garments for sleeping, not for fighting. Seth and Mandel woke up, staring curiously at their surroundings and the outfits in which they were dressed. “What do you make of this, Turman?” asked Seth.

“You might want to turn that meat,” came the soft voice from the loft above them. She climbed slowly down the ladder. Finishing the last rung, she turned to face them. “We want it to cook evenly now, don’t we?”