Thirteen days. Thirteen days until the destruction of the world.
"Where do you want to go, my lady?" Michael asked.
Nikol glanced around the clearing, slowly darkening with the coming of night. The dazzled bewilderment was fading, a numbness and lethargy that was not so much a weariness of body as it was a weariness of spirit that made her feet seem too heavy to lift, her heart too heavy to bear.
She had only one thought. "Home," she said.
Michael looked grave, opened his mouth, probably to protest. Nikol knew what he was going to say, stopped the words on his lips with a glance. Her manor castle, which had been in her family for generations and had housed the three of them in far happier days, had probably been attacked and sacked and looted by goblins. She would return to find the castle charred and gutted, a ghastly skeleton. She didn't care. The castle was her home.
"It's where I want to die," she said to Michael.
She started walking.
Brother Michael was astonished to discover the castle had been left in relatively good repair, perhaps because the goblins had decided to make it their base while they despoiled the countryside. Noting from a distance that the castle was still standing and was not a burned-out hulk, Michael was more than half convinced that the goblins were still around. A day's watching persuaded him that the goblins had moved on, perhaps in search of richer pickings. The castle was empty.
Inside, he and Nikol found a horrible mess; both gagged from the stench, fled back outside to fresher air. Filth and remnants of dread feasting choked the halls. The heavy oaken furniture had been axed, used for firewood. Curtains had been torn down. The ceremonial armor was gone, probably being worn now by some goblin king. Yule decorations and the tapestries had been desecrated, burned. Vermin roamed the halls now extremely loathe to leave.
The villagers and manor tenants all had fled and had not come back, either out of fear of the goblins or because they had nothing to which to come back. Not a house remained standing. Stock had been slaughtered, granaries raided and burned, wells poisoned. At least most had escaped with their lives, if little else.
Michael gazed at the destruction and said firmly, "My lady, Sir Thomas's manor is a fortnight's journey. Let me take you there. We can travel by night…"
Nikol didn't hear him, walked away from him in midspeech. Stripping off her armor, she stacked it neatly in a comer of a blackened wall. Beneath the armor she wore the cast-off clothes of her brother that she had worn when the two of them practiced their sword work together. Binding a strip of torn linen, found hanging from a tree limb, around her nose and mouth, she entered the castle and began the thankless task of cleaning.
She was vaguely aware, after a time, that Michael was at her side, attempting, when he could, to take the more onerous tasks upon himself. She straightened from her work, brushed a lock of her ragged-cut hair from her face, and stared at him. "You don't have to stay here. I can manage. Sir Thomas would be glad to have you."
Michael regarded her with an air of exasperation and concern. "Nikol, don't you understand by now? I could no more leave you than I could fly off into the sky. I want to stay. I love you."
He might have been speaking the Elvish tongue, for all she understood him. His words made no sense to her. She was too numb, couldn't fed them.
"I'm so tired," she said. "I can't sleep. It's all hopeless, isn't it? But, at least we'll have a place to die."
He reached for her, tried to take her in his arms. His face was anxious, his expression worried.
"There is always hope…"
Nikol turned away from him, forgot about him, began again to work.
They made preparations in order to survive the coming Day of Destruction. That is, Michael made preparations. Nikol, once the castle was clean, sat, talking and laughing, in the room where she and her brother used to sit during the long evening hours. She sat, doing nothing, staring at the empty chair across from hers. She was biddable, tractable. If Michael found some slight task for her to do, she did it without comment, without complaint, but then she would return to her chair. She ate and drank only if Michael put the food into her hand.
He was gentle with her at first. Patiently, he tried to coax her back to the life she was fast leaving. When this failed, his fear for her grew. He argued, shouted at her. At one point, he even shook her. Nikol paid no attention to him. When it seemed she thought of him at all, he was a stranger to her. At length, he grew too busy to take time to do more than see to it that she ate something.
Michael was forced to spend his days roaming the countryside, foraging for whatever the goblins had left behind, which wasn't much. He found a stream that had not been fouled and, though he had never been taught the art of fishing, managed to catch enough to serve their needs. He knew nothing about setting traps, nor could he bring himself to snare small animals. He had not eaten animal flesh since he had come to serve the goddess of healing. He was knowledgeable about berries and herbs, wild vegetables and fruits, and these kept them alive. Although the strange, hot wind that blew incessantly day and night was rapidly drying up the land, he set in a store of food that could feed them for a long time, if they ate sparingly.
And he firmly put aside the chilling thought that, unless something happened to shake Nikol out of her dark melancholia, he would have only himself to worry about.
He prayed to Mishakal to help Nikol, to heal the wound that had not touched the flesh but had torn apart the woman's soul. He prayed to Paladine as well, asking the god of the Solamnic Knights to look with favor upon the daughter who had fought evil as valiantly as any son.
And it was, or so it seemed at first, Paladine who answered.
They had no visitors; the countryside around them was deserted. Michael watched for travelers closely, for he desperately wanted to send a message to Sir Thomas, to warn him of the coming destruction and to ask for whatever aid the knight could give them. No one came. The thirteen days dwindled to nine, and Michael had given up looking for help. At twilight, the stillness was broken by the sound of hooves, clattering on the paved courtyard.
"Hail the castle!" shouted a strong, deep voice, speaking Solamnic.
The sound roused Nikol from her dread lethargy. She glanced up with unusual interest. "A guest," she said.
Michael went hurriedly to look out the window. "A knight," he reported. "A Knight of the Rose, by his armor."
"We must make him welcome," said Nikol.
The Measure dictated the treatment of a guest, who was said to be a "jewel upon the pillow of hospitality." The honor of the knighthood bound Nikol to offer shelter, food, whatever comfort her home could provide to the stranger.
She stirred, rose from her chair. Glancing down at her shabby men's clothes, she seemed perplexed.
"I'm not dressed to receive visitors. My father was very strict about that. We always put on our finest clothes to honor the guest. My father wore his ceremonial sword…"
Looking around, as if she thought a dress might materialize from out of the air, she caught sight of her brother's sword, standing in its place upon the weapons' rack. She buckled the sword about her waist, and went to make the guest welcome — her first voluntary actions in days.
Michael followed her, silently thanking this knight, whoever he was, whatever his reason for being here. The man obviously had traveled far; his black horse was coated with dust and sweat.
Nikol entered the courtyard. If the strange knight was shocked at her shabby appearance, he politely gave no indication. In this day and age, perhaps he was used to the sight of impoverished members of the knighthood. He drew his sword, held it to his helm, blade upward, in gesture of salute and peace.