Celia Friedman: Crown of Shadows

“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Help me. Please”

The memories were coming now, like they always did at night. Seeping into his brain like some dank poison, corrupting his senses. Was that real blood, there on the carpet? Was that the smell of death in the air? He whimpered softly and tried to fight it, but he lacked the strength.

Blood. Splattered everywhere. Drops of crimson glistening in the lamplight like a thousand cabochon garnets, scattered across the rug and the floor and the clawed feet of the great table. Blood that dripped from —

Dripped from —

“No!” he whispered. “Please. Not that.”

Blood that pooled at the feet of the great chair, blood that coursed down in thin rivulets over the fine novebony carvings, blood that dripped from his brother’s head where it had been thrust upon the sharp strut of the chair, impaled as if on some warrior’s spear....

His eyes squeezed shut, his body spasmed into a foetal knot of terror. The memories hurt. God, they hurt! Wasn’t there any way to stop them? “Anything,” he whispered, shivering violently. “Not again. I’ll do anything. Stop them!”

The room was a study in carnage, disjointed fragments too horrible to absorb: Imelia’s body, laid out across the great table. Gutted. Betrise’s long hair strung out like silk in a pool of blood, yards from her body. Dianna. Mark. Abechar. All the Tarrants, every single one of them except him—every brother and sister and cousin that had ever laid claim to the name, down to the last helpless infant in its own crimson puddle—and watching over all of it, as if from some grisly throne, his brother Samiel. Samiel, elder and heir. Samiel, self-proclaimed Neocount of Merentha. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets now, as if what they had gazed upon were too terrible for human sight; the blood smeared on his face made his contorted expression doubly unreal, a parody of human terror.

For a moment Andrys was too stunned to react. Then sickness welled up in him, sickness and terror and raw, unadulterated horror. Doubling over, he vomited. Again and again until there was nothing left in him to bring up, and even then his body continued to spasm. As if somehow the effort might squeeze him dry of fear, as well.

Only then did he become aware that there was someone else in the chamber: a tall figure, dark and silent, who stood halfway across the room. Malevolence was so thick about the figure that it was almost visible, and the cold that emanated from it chilled the tears on Andrys’ face. Though the shadows of the room obscured its expression, its purpose was clear. Man or demonling, it was his family’s murderer. And it was watching him. Waiting.

Panicked, he fell back as far as the wall behind him would permit. Knocking over a chair as he did so, which skittered across the blood-slicked floor and at last fell across his sister’s outstretched form. “Who are you?” he cried. His voice was strained and broken, like his nerves. “What do you want?"

For a moment the figure was still; in the chill silence of the room Andrys could hear his own heart pounding wildly. Then the dark form stirred, and in a voice as smooth and as refined as silk pronounced, “I am the first—and only—Neocount of Merentha."

Fear made Andrys’ bones turn to jelly; he would have fallen, had not the wall held him upright. “The first Neocount is dead,” he gasped. “Dead!” Nine hundred years in the grave, he wanted to say. To shout. But the words wouldn’t come out.

"Hardly,” the figure responded. “But that was the story your father preferred, and so it passed for truth in your schooling. The illustrious Reginal Tarrant! He thought that if he kept you ignorant he might somehow make you safe.” The shadowed head turned to the side briefly as it gazed upon Samiel’s ruined head, then back again. “It didn’t work, of course. It never does."

The figure took a step toward him. Terror caused Andrys’ bladder to spasm suddenly, and hot urine trickled down his leg. He wished he could die right here and now, and not wait to be killed like ... like that. Like Samiel, and Imelia, and Mark. Dear God, not like that, please oh please....

But the figure stopped, as if knowing that another step would be one too many for Andrys’ frayed nerves. “He knew the truth.” The figure indicated Samiel. “The firstborn has always known the truth. That was one of the conditions I set for this family, when I first decided to let the line continue. And when he placed the coronet of this county on his head, when he laid claim to the title that wasn’t his to take, he knew what the price of that would be."

It took him a minute to understand. To believe., “Is that it?” he choked out at last. “All this ... because of that? Just for a title?"

He could sense anger stirring within that dark, faceless form: not hot, like human rage, but as chill and as biting as an arctic wind. “I gave this family life,” the figure pronounced acidly. “And I dictated the conditions under which it would be permitted to endure. I spared your ancestor when it would have been just as easy to kill him, not out of human compassion but because I was curious to see what the descendants of my blood might accomplish. And so I left you my lands, my keep, my wealth, my library—whose true value is beyond your imagining—all these things and more, a treasury beyond measurement. Only two things were forbidden to you . .. and one of those you insist on claiming. Eight times now.” A sweep of one black-cloaked arm encompassed the carnage. “Consider this a reminder."

"You killed them all for that?” he whispered feebly. “Because of Samiel’s mistake? All of them?"

For a moment the dark figure regarded him in silence. Andrys was acutely aware of the filth that soiled his shirt front, the urine that had plastered one pants leg to his flesh. Shame flushed his cheeks, hot blood suffusing death-white flesh.

"His mistake was defiance,” the figure said coldly, “which I will not endure. As for my methods ... I find that the harder the lesson is driven home, the longer it is likely to last. Remember that, when you raise your own heirs."

Heirs? For a moment he couldn’t remember what the word meant, or how it might apply to him. His heirs? He had no children yet. And never would, if this creature killed him —

Then it sank in. All of it.

Images of the Survivors rose up before him. Haunted figures whose biographies were shrouded in mystery, who had survived to continue the family when all others died of sickness, or in war, or (the records were unclear) in some terrible accident.

Or were slaughtered.

Like this?

Oh, my God, Andrys thought desperately. Let this be some drunken dream. Let me wake up in the back room of some tavern to discover that I passed out and had a nightmare, just a nightmare, please, God, just that....

"I see you understand,” the figure observed. “I trust you will not be so foolish as to repeat your brother’s mistake."

He turned away from Andrys then, meaning to leave him alone with the carnage. To make his peace with his fate, if he could. But as he turned, a shaft of moonlight fell across his features, illuminating them. Illuminating a face —

“No,” he whimpered. “No!”

Illuminating a face so like his own that he screamed, he screamed, he started screaming and he couldn’t stop, because suddenly he understood—he understood- he knew what kind of dark vanity might drive a man to murder his entire family except the one child who was most like him, knew it without being able to put a name to it, knew it even though his soul burned from the understanding of it. And he knew that every time he looked in the mirror from now on he would see that face, not his own, that those eyes would stare out at him from his own reflection, terrible empty silver eyes so like and unlike his own, eyes that had looked out upon the vast expanse of Hell and found its terrors wanting —