Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

He heard servants talking out in the corridor; there was no escape that way without being seen. Throwing on an old cloak, he knelt and felt at the panel that led to his cousin’s room. As Korin had warned, he couldn’t open it from his side, but Brother could and did.

Korin’s room was similar to his own, but the hangings were richer and done in red and gold. He also had a stairway from his balcony down to the gardens, and Tobin made use of it to escape unseen.

As Ki had feared, Porion kept him at practice half the afternoon. The shadows of the thin pines were stretching into their chamber by the time he finally returned to their room.

“Tobin, how are you?”

There was no answer. He went to the bed and pulled back one of the heavy hangings, thinking his friend must still be asleep, but found the bed empty.

Puzzled, Ki looked around the room. There was the discarded jerkin; Tobin’s sword and bow still hung on the carved rack where he’d left them. There were a dozen places his friend could be, and normally Ki would have been content to wait for him to show up or to meet him at the nightly feast, but Tobin’s sudden illness had left him uneasy in his mind.

Just then he caught the scuffing of feet on the balcony and turned to see Tobin framed in the brightness of the doorway. “There you are!” he exclaimed, relieved. “You must be feeling better.”

Tobin nodded and walked quickly into the dressing room, waving at him to follow.

“How are you feeling? You still look pale.”

Tobin said nothing as he climbed to the top of the old cupboard that stood in the dressing room.

“What are you doing?” Tobin wasn’t acting himself, Ki thought. Perhaps he was really ill after all. Even the way he moved seemed odd, though Ki couldn’t quite say how.

“Tob, what’s wrong? What’re you after up there?”

Tobin twisted around and dropped a dirty cloth bag into Ki’s hands. The move brought them face to face for the first time since Ki had come back to the room.

Ki looked up into those black, staring eyes and began to tremble. This wasn’t Tobin.

“Brother?”

In the blink of an eye, the other stood just inches in front of him. The spirit’s face reminded him of a mask—it was as if some ham-fisted carver had tried to model Tobin’s face, but forgotten to put in any kindness or warmth. Ki thought suddenly of his own dead mother lying frozen in the loft all those years ago; he’d pulled back the blanket and looked into her face, seeking in vain for the loving presence he’d known. It was the same now, looking for Tobin in the face of the demon.

In spite of his fear, he found his voice again. “You’re Brother?”

The spirit nodded, and something like a smile twitched its thin lips. The effect was not a pleasant one.

“Where’s Tobin?”

Brother pointed to the bag. His mouth didn’t move, but Ki heard a faint whisper like wind blowing over a frozen lake. He goes to Lhel. Take this to him quickly!

Brother vanished, leaving Ki alone in the lengthening shadows holding a dirty cloth sack that wasn’t empty.

Lhel? Tobin had gone home? But why? And why would he leave without him? Ki’s hand found the carved horse hanging at his throat as he fought off the hurt feelings that came with such questions. If Tobin had gone without him, then something was terribly wrong and, if that was so, then Ki’s place was at his side.

But he left without me—

“Tharin. I should go tell Tharin, perhaps even Porion—”

No!

Ki jumped as Brother hissed at him from the shadows beside the doorway. It was a sign, seeing Brother at last. Tobin must be in very great danger indeed if the ghost was appearing to him. He’d better do as the thing said.

In this, at least, he had luck on his side. In the hours between duty and mess, the boys were free to do as they wished. No one would give a squire a second glance as he went between Palace and stables carrying his master’s arms for repair.

Taking only their swords and the mysterious bag, he went out to the stables. Here his fears were confirmed. Gosi was gone. If Tobin had left mounted, there was no hope of catching up with him now. All he could do was follow.

“You might have shown yourself a bit earlier,” he muttered as he saddled Dragon, hoping Brother was lurking close enough to hear.

A tale of a squire’s errand in the city suited the Palatine guards, and another got him past those at the harbor gate. Night was falling fast and there was no sign of Brother to guide him now, but there was moon enough to light his road. Turning Dragon’s head to the west, he kicked the roan into a gallop along the high road and prayed to Astellus to guide his hooves safely in the dark.

There were few riders on the roads at night, and fewer yet slight enough to be Tobin, but Ki couldn’t help staring hard at every stranger he overtook.

Near midnight he stopped to rest his horse at a stream. Only then did it occur to him to look inside the bag.

It was near that same hour that Tharin found a very distraught Molay at his door.

The crescent moon guided Tobin home. By its light he put the sea at his back and retraced the rivers and roads that led west to the mountains. Perhaps Gosi remembered the way, too, for they took no wrong turning through the night.

Tobin had fear to keep him awake, and the strange pain that swelled and changed as the moon pulled him onward. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all and he pushed the horse into a gallop for miles at a time. Then it would close in on him again and Gosi would wander along the grassy verge while Tobin carried a basin of dull red fire sloshing between his hipbones. Eyes half closed against it, he thought of Niryn and his handful of flame at the royal tomb.

As the night dragged on, the pain often rose through him, digging in under his breastbone and spreading out beneath his skin, making his flesh hot and cold by turns on his bones. The blood in his trousers had dried, but near midnight his chest began to itch down low, between his nipples. When he reached in to scratch, his fingers came away dark and wet.

Plague plague plague. It thrummed with the beating of his heart.

Plague bringer.

Lhel must have some cure. That must be why he’d been given the vision telling him to go to her. Perhaps hill witches knew of some healing that the drysians and the royal healers of Skala did not.

They’d all heard the tales. In the port cities the death-bird plague chasers nailed plague bringers in their houses, along with anyone else unlucky enough to be there when the first victim was discovered. If anyone survived the illness, they could prove their health by breaking free.

He was a plague bringer.

Lhel had foreseen it.

Would they nail the Old Palace shut?

In the darkness his imagination conjured an army of deathbirds settling like carrion crows on the Palace with hammers and pouches of nails over their shoulders, like the workmen who’d come to the keep.

Would they follow him and nail up the keep, too?

They could put him in the tower. He’d wear their mask and be a bird like the ones who’d been his mother’s only companions—

All through the long night his thoughts chased themselves round in an endless circle. He was almost surprised when he saw the jagged teeth of the mountains rising against the star-crusted sky so close ahead of him.

The first glow of dawn was warming the sky at his back when he rode through sleeping Alestun. Gosi was stumbling and blowing under him. Tobin had passed from weariness into a numbed, dreaming state and began to wonder if he would suddenly open his eyes and find himself back in Ero after all, nailed in his room by the deathbirds. Or perhaps he was really following the trail of his visions to that underground room guarded by the deer.