Of the Fate of Lord Kromfier amp; his Paladins we know No-thing, but for a Squire who be trample amp; be forget as dead. In the Blood of his Folk he lie, by-pass amp;forget by Daemon-kind. He hear in the Dark much of Awfulness, then crawl to tell all to a Lay-priest before he be perish of his many grave wounds. Before he breathe last, the Squire speak of the great Screams that. .
Something tapped at a window.
Lord Godefroy looked up through his pince-nez, his habitual frown deepening. He sat motionless in the halfgloom, the old volume propped in his lap on a crossed leg, and waited. Light from the oil lamp's flame flickered once across the steady darkness.
The tapping came again, fainter now. It was from the corridor to the entry hall.
Lord Godefroy took a slow, deep breath, though he didn't need to, and exhaled through his nose in silent rage. The yellowed bookmark was carefully fitted into place, and the volume reluctantly set aside on the tea table.
Lord Godefroy treasured his history books, and the early evening, after the sun had fallen and all was still, was his favorite time for reading.
He quietly got to his feet, the spell of the moment broken. Something always happened. He never got to finish that book, and he had been trying to read it for the damned knew how long.
There was but one thing to do about it.
Lord Godefroy left the room in no great hurry. He had all the time in the world these days. In the soundless hall, out of reach of the lamplight in the study, he shuffled through darkness that cloaked him like a second skin. Faint moonlight lit the bare tree branches outside on the lawn, seeping through the streaked and aged windows that opened into the old mansion.
The tapping came once more. Lord Godefroy stopped by the second of eight tall, black-framed windows. There he waited again, all patience, staring down at a dirty corner windowpane through his thin lenses.
A long, whiplike branch swayed gently into view, pushed by the cold wind and lit by the white moon. The briar swung close, then struck the windowpane with a faint tap.
Lord Godefroy reached for the briar. His right hand and ruffled sleeve, colorless as the moon's rays, slipped through the dirty pane of glass to seize the branch. He felt the thorns but no pain from their pricking, felt the wind but not the bitter cold. He was long beyond that now.
"Suffer now, dear wretch," he whispered with bared teeth to the briar in his hand, then willed his words to happen.
The briar writhed with the jolt of the Touch and tried to curl away from him, but too late. It withered and broke apart into rotting dust before it could escape his grip, reduced to blackened debris. Lord Godefroy fancied the briar even gave out a cry of agony like an animal as it did, though in a voice too small to be heard.
The entire briar bush then collapsed, its shattered stems and leaves scattering out of sight. It was dead to its last root, a ruin that would feed no worm.
Lord Godefroy pulled his hand back through the old, streaked glass. The satisfaction he felt at the briar's demise was a cold glow inside him, new snow where his heart had been. To his discomfort, though, the emotion passed quickly and left him feeling hollow, useless. Lord Godefroy squinted out the window at the empty space where the briar had grown. His teeth clenched together in frustration.
The briar's death was not enough anymore to satisfy. It was far too easy most times to dominate and punish. His Touch would age any living being by decades in mere seconds; plants and small animals suffered and died too rapidly for him to take a lasting pleasure in their agonized struggles. People were different — their deaths were more satisfying by far. One gained a sense of genuine accomplishment in hewing them down, the treacherous and ungrateful mongrels. Humans were like waste matter, vile trash to be disposed of in vile ways. Abruptly, almost unwillingly, Lord Godefroy remembered the feel of the mattock in his hands, the smell of manure and blood, the sound as the mattock bit into her soft flesh —
Something creaked overhead. Startled, Lord Godefroy blinked and looked up at the vaulted ceiling. Only motionless shadows gathered there.
What had he just been thinking of? The powerful images had fled. He strained for the memory but caught nothing. Was he becoming senile even in this form? He looked down at the window and remembered the briar, but nothing else. Nothing moved on the lawn outside in the moonlight. Reminiscing, perhaps. .
With a slow look around, Lord Godefroy left the corridor. He looked behind him twice before entering the study again, then closed the double doors with a thump of finality.
Back in his study, Lord Godefroy stopped by the tea table next to his favorite chair and stared down at his book. It was no use to pick up his reading; his mood was spoiled by the interruption. Perhaps tomorrow night there would be time. He lifted the old brown tome in his hands and headed reluctantly for a bookcase.
I've done this before, he thought, too many times before. Each time he wanted to relax and take a few moments to himself, something ruined it. Something would pay with its life for the interruption, but then he wouldn't be in the mood for his favorite book, for which he had paid so much to that leech, Marian Attwood. Served the old mongrel right to be run down by his own horse, laid up in bed a cripple and a pauper when he died at last.
That wouldn't happen to me now, thought Lord Godefroy. He paused before the bookcase, looking up to locate the space among the books from which he'd pulled his favorite history. Five shelves up, only three feet beyond his reach.
He willed himself up, his slippered feet leaving the faded red carpet. Not a sound, he marveled; not a sound. Flying was the easiest thing. He came to a stop at eye level with the shelf he wanted, then glanced over his shoulder and saw how small the rest of the room looked as he hovered above it, so near the ceiling.
Lord Godefroy almost smiled. Though his frame was still bent and his face furrowed with three-and-a-half score years, the aches and creakings of his once-rotting body were gone. He felt no pain now, none at all. And he could fly, fly like a leaf from a dead tree, fly like smoke from ashes.
And he had the Touch now, too. A handy thing, that Touch.
The oil lamp's flame flickered in its glass prison. Something moved in the shadows to Lord Godefroy's right. He flinched, almost dropping his book, and threw up a hand to shield his face from a blow.
No blow came. Slowly, he lowered his arm. It was just a shadow, a shadow on the wall over the coat rack. It flickered in the light as he stared at it, then was gone. A flaw in the lamp's glass, or a cobweb, perhaps.
Lord Godefroy realized he was breathing very quickly,
almost panting. Mortified, he stopped it at once. He didn't need to breathe. It was a weakness. He had no weaknesses now. Humans were weak, but not him.
He lowered himself to the floor and straightened his posture, sniffed abruptly, then turned to a wall mirror to smooth his high-necked shirt and long black coat sleeves. He glanced up at the space over the coat rack as he did. Nothing. He sniffed again and regarded his reflection severely. His behavior did not become the lord of Mordent, master of the Gryphon Hill and Weathermay estates. If he was now a god in his own domain — as he surely was — then he should act the part.
Perhaps it was time to look at his mail. It would have been delivered around noon, while he was out walking the borders of his property. He nodded to himself in the mirror and left for the dining room.