Laurell Hamilton - Never After

“You run ahead,” Mickel said, in a voice far deeper, and more arrogant, than the one he had just been speaking with. “Let your village know that the Traveling Troupe of Twister Riddle has arrived for their pleasure, and that tonight they will be dazzled, astonished , and mystified. ”

The boy gulped. “Magic?”

“Loads of it,” Mickel replied. “Cats chasing kittens will be coming out of your ears by the end of the night.”

“Or more silver!” he called, when the boy began running down the road, halting only long enough to come back for his sheep, which had scattered up the hill behind him, herded by the much more diligent dog.

Patric chuckled quietly to himself, while Mickel gave Sally an arch look. “Warming up the crowd is never a bad thing.”

“That was an expensive message you just purchased.”

“Ah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ve performed for many important people.”

“I’m surprised, then, that the rest of your troupe left you behind, even for the promise of yet more riches.” Sally frowned. “I also thought actors were supposed to be poor.”

“We’re immensely talented.”

“Is that how you afford such lovely horses?”

Rumble coughed. “These were a gift.”

“A gift,” she echoed. “You’ve been south of the mountains, then.”

Mickel gave her a sidelong look, followed by a grim smile. “You have a keen eye, lady.”

“I have a good memory,” she corrected him. “And I’ve seen the breed.”

“Have you?” he replied, with a sudden sharpness in his gaze that made her uncomfortable. “So go ahead. Ask what’s really on your mind.”

She frowned at him. “The Warlord. Did you see him?”

Rumble started to chuckle. Mickel gave him a hard look. “We performed for him.”

Heat filled her, fear and anger and curiosity. Sally leaned forward. “I hear he sleeps with wolves in his bed and eats his meals off the stomachs of virgins.”

Patric laughed out loud. Rumble choked. Even Mickel chuckled, though he sounded incredulous, and his nose wrinkled. “Where did you hear such nonsense?”

“I made it up,” she said tartly. “But given how other men speak of him, he might as well do all those things. Such colorful descriptions I’ve heard. ‘Master of Murder. ’ ‘Fiend of Fire’—”

“Sex addict?” Rumble said, his eyes twinkling. “Ravisher of women? Entire villages of them, lined up for his… whatever?”

Mickel shot him a venomous look. Patric could hardly speak, he was laughing so hard. Her face warm, Sally said, “You disagree?”

“Not at all,” he said, glancing at Mickel with amusement.

Sally drummed her fingers along her thigh. “So? Was he truly as awful as they say?”

“He was ordinary,” Mickel said, with a great deal less humor than his companions seemed to be displaying. “Terribly, disgustingly ordinary.”

“Or as ordinary as one can be while eating off the stomachs of virgins,” Rumble added.

“This is true,” Mickel replied, his eyes finally glinting with mischief. “I can’t imagine where he gets all of them. He must have them grown from special virgin soil, and watered with virgin rain, and fed only with lovely virgin berries.”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” Sally said, but she was laughing.

Mickel grinned. Ahead, there was a shout. Children appeared from around a bend in the road and raced toward them. The boy who had been given the silver mark was in the lead. Sally thought they resembled little sheep, stampeding.

“Damn,” Rumble said, slowing the mules as Patric whirled his horse around and galloped back to the wagon. “You and your bright ideas.”

“Brace yourself,” Mickel said.

But Sally hardly heard him. She had looked up into the sky, and found ravens flying overhead; a handful, soaring close. She swayed, overcome with unease, and touched her throat and the golden chain that disappeared beneath the neck of her dress.

Two of the birds dove, but Sally only saw where one of them went—which was straight toward her head. She raised her hands to protect herself, but it was too little, too late. Sharp claws knocked aside her hood and pierced her scalp, ripping away a tiny chunk of hair. Sally cried out in pain and fear.

Her vision flickered. Inside her head, she glimpsed images from her dream, which swallowed the wagon, and Mickel, and the sun with all the steadiness of something real: a silver frozen lake, and a woman sleeping within a cocoon of stone, her head dressed in a crown of horns. An unearthly beauty, pale as snow.

But the woman did not stay asleep. Sally saw her again, standing awake within a dark, tangled, heaving wood, gazing from between the writhing trees to a castle shining in the sun; an impossibly delicate structure that seemed made of spires and shell, built upon the green lush ground. But in the grass, warm and still, were the fresh bodies of fallen soldiers, so recently dead that not even the flies had begun buzzing. Amongst them stood women, strong and red-haired and bloody. Staring back with defiance and fury at the pale queen of the wood.

Sally felt a pain in her arm, a sharp tug, and the vision dissolved. She fell back into herself with a stomach-wrenching lurch, though she could not at first say where she was. The sun seemed too bright, the sky too blue. Her heart was pounding too fast.

Mickel’s fingers were wrapped around her arm. She peered at him, rubbing her watery eyes, and was dimly aware of the other men watching her, very still and stunned; and the children below, also staring.

“I wasn’t screaming, was I?” Her voice sounded thick and clumsy; and it was hard to pronounce the words.

Mickel shook his head, but he was looking at her as no one ever had; with surprise and compassion, and an odd wonder that was faintly baffled. Blood trickled down the side of his face. He looked as though he had been pecked above the eye.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“I got in the way,” he replied, and reached out to graze her brow with his fingers—which came away bloody. Sally touched the spot on her head and felt warm liquid heat where part of her scalp had been torn off. Pain throbbed, and she swallowed hard, nauseous.

“You are a curious woman,” Mickel said quietly. “Such a story in your eyes.”

“Magic,” Rumble muttered. “When a raven sets its sights…”

But Patric shook his head, and the older man did not finish what he was going to say. Mickel murmured, “The raven who attacked you spit out your hair. I could almost swear he simply wanted to taste it… or your blood.”

The children scattered, melting away from the wagon. Perhaps afraid. Sally did not want to look too closely to know for certain. She shut her eyes, feeling by touch for the hem of her skirt. She tore off a strip of cloth, and bundled it against the wound in her head.

“I should go,” she mumbled.

“Rest,” Mickel replied. “Dream.”

No, she thought. You don’t understand my dreams.

But she lay down in the wagon bed, thinking of ravens and her father, and her mother, and little girls with wild hair and wilder eyes; and slept.

Sally danced that night. It was not the first time she had ever danced, but it was the first beyond the watchful eye of home, in a place where she was not known as the eccentric tatterdemalion princess—but as Sally, who was still a mystery, and unknown, without the aura of expectation and distance that so many placed on her. If anyone recognized her face—and there were several older women who gave her and her clothing sharp looks—no one said a word.

And no one seemed to be aware of the encounter with the ravens; nor commented on the wound in her head. She thought the children must have talked, but the people of Gatis were either too polite, or too used to strange occurrences, to make much of it.