"A cold, cold morning," commented Jimothy, the wagon driver, happily. He shivered and sighed. "I don't quite like the snow, but my daughter sure does. The sweetest little thing, my Linda is." He turned to head to his passenger; his fat, stupid face had a smile on it, between two rosy cheeks. "Have I told you about her, Sir Elbert?"
You've told me dozens of times, you bloody idiot. Elbert kept his vitriol to himself, however. The fool was too stupid to insult, anyway. He could say little Linda was destined for the whorehouses in Lesser Vior when she was grown, and the driver would giggle or utter something along the lines of: "Oh-ho-ho, whatever you say, sir!"
But it was a waste of strength to test Jimothy. Ebernathy's head pounded; any talk, he felt, would only bring more discomfort. When the driver received no response, he went on about his insipid family. "Oh, she is the light of my life," Jimothy continued, "she got her looks from her mother. Lucky her! But I can't be that hard to look upon, can I? My own father was quite handsome in his youth. My mother used to say that all the time."
Ebernathy stared out of the carriage window, ignoring the driver's ramblings. The snow fell lightly, and the treetops of the woods were heavy with it. On his feet, Ebernathy wore maroon leather boots and gloves. He also wore the thickest woolens he had and his favorite hooded cloak, black as a crow.
He could still smell the shit Yosef had smeared on it that night when he and his friends pillaged his shop. Had he not liked his cloak so much, he would not have spent hours scrubbing and perfuming the stain. Damn that Yosef, thought Elbert, next time I see him, I'll split his bloody head open. But not before he tells him where his gems are, of course.
Jimothy was muttering about his favorite foods to eat during the colder seasons.
"Oh, how I love pies filled with blueberries. What warms your belly, Sir Elbert?"
The question seemed to make his head throb even harder. Ebernathy sighed heavily, irritation growing. "Anything," answered Ebernathy curtly, shifting in his seat to find comfort. "I'll hear no more of your ramblings. Wake me when my stop nears."
"Yes, Sir Elbert, I will," said Jimothy, the mirth in his voice gone.
The sleep that took him was oddly quick and deep: so deep, he dreamt. He was running again or at least trying to run. His legs felt like wood. Despite his efforts, he moved as slow as a turtle. Behind him was a great black bear with three heads. One of them was Ashferth, whose mouth foamed through pointy teeth. Next to him was Yosef, who snapped his rotting gob.
The third head frightened him the most, for its visage was least human. This one's jaws opened like a snake's, as if ready to swallow him whole. Its tongue split itself in three ways, with each tip opening to let green venom ooze out of them. Solid black eyes wept dark pitch, but not out of sadness; the unholy grin it wore spelled its joy in the hunt.
Though, even with its monstrous features, Ebernathy knew who she was. He looked ahead, hoping the beast would vanish if he ignored it as he ran away hopelessly.
"You lost them," the third head barked, "you let them slip from your grasp. Make it right. Make it right!"
"I will!" Ebernathy shouted to the wood of the forest he was stumbling through, not daring to look back at his chastiser, "I will! Please, it is all I will do, mistress. I praise you every night. I don't need to die."
The beast landed on his back; he felt the claws on him, scraping away his skin. He felt his blood run down his back and sides as the ravaging carried on. Though he couldn't feel pain, he felt the force of the torture: the weight of the beast made it hard for him to breathe. He found himself screaming: "HELP! SOMEONE HELP!"
All went dark, and suddenly someone spoke to him.
"Sir Elbert." It was Jimothy, shaking his arm gently through the window to wake him. He recoiled from the driver's hand when he returned to the world. "I apologize, sir." Jimothy opened the carriage door for his passenger. "We are here."
Elbert nodded at him. "Thank you, Jim," he said with a smattering of friendliness. A small part of him was grateful for being woken. His headache was gone. The terror he suffered in his slumber humbled him as well: instead of tipping two dents to Jimothy, he gave him four.
"Oh my!" Jimothy was more surprised than happy with his tip. "That's almost double what I usually get, sir."
"It is double," he corrected. He stepped out of the carriage and headed towards the hidden path: between two oaks, one bearing the sigil of the Waif carved on the trunk.
"I shall see you on the return, Sir Elbert," said Jimothy as he returned to his seat, "at noon, yes?"
Ebernathy didn't deign to confirm; it was always noon, and the driver knew it. Without looking back, he trudged down the narrow path.
It was easy to get lost; he kept his eyes to the ground for the slightest hint of his previous steps from other visits.
But he was not alone in this part of the Managor's Wood. Eventually, he would meet an attendant. He hoped this one's body was less repulsive than the last one. After walking nearly a mile, he met the poor soul. Much to his disgust, this was the most mangled one he'd seen yet.
The man's belly was opened, closed, reopened, and sealed again; the red scars looked like numbers and letters written over each other. The stitching barely held the skin together, corrupted fluids seeping out of the puckered flesh. A vibrant red rose, planted over its heart, shed a petal after every heartbeat. Lashed over its face was a yellow-painted mask made of roughly-cut wood: there were no holes for the eyes, but there was one for the mouth. The lips had been removed, revealing his teeth that appeared larger than that of a normal man's. One dogtooth was abnormally longer than the other.
"Cuh …" it breathed out more than spoke, "El—ert. Ef—fer—nathy. Cuh…Cuh…"
"Oh gods," Ebernathy swore quietly to himself, seeing a viper's eye sprout from the center of the rose. "I'm coming."
It seemed to understand. Turning, it led the rest of the way to their mistress. The servent had a limp, which drew Ebernathy's attention to its right leg: it was purple and veined with black. Pulsing boils growing on the calf looked ready to burst and spill its corruption onto the snow.
As he followed, he felt stupid for not turning and running. He knew how angry the mistress might be for his failure to keep the Esper pair from escaping. I'm going to become like that freak ahead of me. Ebernathy's headache returned, and his heart pounded heavily in his chest.
He dropped to his knees. Easy, he told himself, stay calm. The attendant stopped in his tracks. Ebernathy stood up fast, lest the creature becomes suspicious. "I'm all right," he called out, "I follow you."
It's that damn Yosef, Ebernathy told himself, yes, yes, yes, Yosef set them free. That damn Yosef. You'll get yours, you idiot. Not me, for I've done nothing wrong. The thought made him sigh in relief and even made him giggle at his absolution.
They finally reached the glade. The mistress stood over her altar: a slab of black stone with a flat, even surface. Upon it was a doe, bleeding from many wounds. Had he not seen the wolf's corpse lying on the ground, Ebernathy would have assumed the mistress was the hunter.
The guide went ahead and kneeled, signaling Ebernathy to approach.
He walked close enough to be heard if spoken to but far enough to not interrupt her study. Kneeling, he kept his silence. He showed as much reverence as he could. It was like being a child again, praying in the temple of the God in the Stars. It wasn't a sanctimonious crone and her switch threatening him here, however.
Silently, she kept to her work, Ebernathy watching on. Her hands were in the doe's belly, shifting the innards as the animal still drew breath. Every now and then, the beast shuddered and twitched. When its thrashing became too violent, the mistress need only to place a bloody hand over its head to calm it, whispering words Ebernathy didn't understand. To her right, three women pallid women, wearing nothing but sacks over their faces, stood by her, almost completely still. Their bodies had been altered by the mistress as well. Her expression disturbed him the most; she had the look of fascination and contentment on her face as if adoring a sleeping child.
Stopping suddenly, she leisurely raised her head. The mistress smiled at him as a way of greeting. Her long brown hair flowed in the cold wind, snowflakes landing in it. She was a beauty, to be sure, as Ebernathy would expect from a Nepheri, but she was just as frightening. She shivered not, though all she wore was a thin, threadbare chemise; her workings had it smeared with the blood of her patient.
"Brother Elbert," she chastised in a friendly tone. Pledging his loyalty to her, the mistress had taken to calling him "brother." She pulled a hand free and took a few dark seeds from a bowl on the altar. "One as close to me as you need not lower themselves." Her hand looked to press the seed deep in the doe's guts. "It would please me if you stood."
"Yes, Mistress Rayhanei," Ebernathy said, returning the smile and rising, "I mean no offense. Forgive me."
The mistress tilted her head at this, a look of wonder passing over her beautiful and blood-stained face.
"Forgive you?" Rayhanei mused, "Is there something I must forgive?"
She knows. She has to, yes? But she wants to hear it from my mouth, thought Ebernathy, I hope this isn't because she is angry with me.
"The Esper bearers," Ebernathy said after swallowing his spit, "they…" he began, but then remembered how to save himself, "someone freed them. I was betrayed. I know who did it, too." He smirked and let some anger seep into his tones. "That bastard, Yosef, does not what is coming to him." By the look on her face, Ebernathy knew he said too much.
"And what is coming to him, brother?" Rayhanei asked, not unkindly. Ebernathy would have welcomed even a little harshness in her voice. His heart began to pound again, and sweat began to bead upon his forehead.
"Yosef," he said softly, "he interferes with your plans for this doomed world. I think he took them. Some believe—no, know—the power their seed carries. They intend to breed them like dogs, and make themselves the masters of their pups."
The mistress tutted at this. "They know much about power, but less of how to handle it." Rayhanei reached deep into the doe, making it squirm in response. "The Esper is unlike any other Nepheri and far unlike any man." She slid her arms out of the doe's belly, and in her arms was a fawn. "It must be me to give birth to such a being." Enamored by the neonate, she fell silent. When the admiration ended, another attendant, this one showing the same scars upon her belly as the guide had, came to help the mistress. "I am still learning, but I am close. I will take it from them." Rayhanei let the servant take the fawn, and she went around the altar to stand before Ebernathy. The doe finally lay still, its torment over.
"Yosef will be found," Ebernathy promised her, "and he will tell me where they are."
"You need not worry about that, brother," Rayhanei assured.
"Has he been found?"
"No, but he will be. I understand there was animosity between you two. You may deliver the justice when we take him. I want you to take back what we lost."
How does she know that? Ebernathy wondered with fear.
"Sister Wilca," Rayhanei called to a woman in black sackcloth. She came to them, pulling back her hood. It, indeed, was Old Wilca, the same one that would roam the streets, mad and selling her trinkets. She wasn't so mad after all.
"Mistress," muttered the old woman. From under her robe, she produced the armless doll she sold to the boy, Vyncent. "Take it, Elbert. He's touched it." She whispered some words of enchantment and handed the doll to Ebernathy. When he took the toy into his hands, its eyes began to glow but died out when he turned it. "When both eyes are alight," Old Wilca began to explain, "that means you are facing them, no matter how far they are."
"Did you happen to see where they went?" Ebernathy asked Sister Wilca.
"A few days ago, I saw them leaving the Well of Blood with two Nepheri. I followed them until they left the city gates."
All this while I was away at Greater Vior, brooded Ebernathy. "So they left the city," said Ebernathy, "where to?"
Sister Wilca didn't deign to answer but pointed at the doll instead, smiling.
"Right." Ebernathy turned to Rayhanei. "I will not fail again."
The doe, letting the snow cover it on the altar, shook violently. It kicked at the air and barked. The noise it made was loud; some birds were startled and flew out of the surrounding trees. Ebernathy stood in horror as he watched the doe thrash; it had far more energy than he expected a dying creature to have.
The bones beneath its snow-covered skin splintered and snapped from inside. Black blood spewed out of its mouth and open belly as the violence continued. Twisted horns sprouted from its eye sockets, leaving its eyes to liquefy and drop onto the corpse of the wolf. A rib broke through the skin, and the shattered end grew into a point. The innards that spilled out during its throes slithered back in; some guts wrapped around the outside of the body, corrupted fluids easing out to moisten the fur. When Ebernathy stepped back and viewed the mutant as a whole, he noticed that it was growing; it was now almost double its size.
When the doe faced him, its new, gleaming horns pointed at him, he let loose a small scream and wet himself.
But the doe was not interested in his flesh; it fell off the altar and began to feast on the wolf instead. Rayhanei calmly approached the monster and caressed it as if it were a house cat.
"You may leave, brother," Rayhanei said, still petting her beast, "I know you will not fail me again." She lifted her head and faced him; her gold-speckled brown eyes began to glimmer. "Make it right."
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