Marcellus. You have to listen to me. Your wife is dead. Look, Marcellus. See what these creatures have done to her.
He shuddered as he forcibly tore his gaze away from the innocent mask that held him fast. Tears blurred in his eyes as he saw the bodies that lay sprawled in the corner.
"I'm sorry, Evelina. I should have protected you better. I should have been here for both of you." He steeled his face and raised his sword.
The false Evelina raised a forestalling hand. Her tone grew desperate, her face even more luminous, her eyes glistening jewels. "They all told her you had been slain. She wanted to die too. Don't you see? This way is better for all of you. You can all be together. Lower your sword and take my hand. You do not have to go on alone. Your family waits for you."
"No." Marcellus' voice was strangled, yet his grip tightened on his sword hilt. "My family is dead. You killed them, remember? Now you get to know how that feels."
Nyori turned away as the blade fell.
THE SKY HAD DARKENED by the time Marcellus finished covering over the graves. He had insisted on doing the work by himself, burying his wife and child together under a great statue of a winged woman who held a shield and stretched her sword toward an unseen menace.
"Evelina commissioned the statue for the garden," he said in a faraway voice. "To drive away the evil insects, she had said." His jaw trembled as he gazed at it. "Now it serves as a memorial of her love and laughter."
Nyori spent the rest of the day helping Marcellus and Dradyn bury the rest of the dead, nine in all. When finished, Marcellus returned to his family.
The newly turned earth stood in shock contrast to the white of the fallen snow, like ravens in a dovecote. Dradyn and Nyori quietly joined him. They stood in a silent vigil, not wanting to disturb Marcellus' grief as the blanket of twilight smothered the sun and the chill sank through their garments.
Finally, he spoke. "You should never have healed me, Shama. It would have been better had you let me die in the wild."
She laid a hand on his arm. "Marcellus…I'm sorry I could not warn you more clearly. It is hard to decipher what may come. My skills were not enough."
Marcellus placed his hand over his eyes, squeezing as though to stem his tears. "I am the one who should apologize, Nyori. I lash out at you, yet the blame is entirely my own. I am the one who left all that I loved behind to follow the whims of a madman."
Nyori's cheeks were damp with tears of her own. "I cannot help to think that I am to blame for some of this."
"Because of that staff that they seek to capture?"
She nodded miserably. "Yes. It is a long story, but you already know that it can enhance the powers of healing."
Marcellus touched his chest, and Nyori could tell his thoughts were of when he awakened in the storm. "Yes. It also exposed Evelina—" Her heart went out to him when he winced at the name. Clearing his throat roughly, he continued. "The akhkharu who slew Evelina, you revealed its true form with the staff."
"I don't know if that is its true form," Nyori said. "I think it is more that the akhkharu are two beings in a single body — one flesh and another that is intangible, a disembodied parasite that needs a physical host to survive. It empowers the host with uncanny abilities that a normal human cannot access. It is that incorporeal being that is exposed by Eymunder's light."
Marcellus gazed at her steadily, accepting what a normal man would call madness with menacing calm. "Is that why they want the staff so badly? Because it reveals them for the monsters that they are?"
She hesitated. "There is more to it than just that. Their leader believes that the staff can cure the akhkharu of their…need. They were Aelon once, Marcellus. Aelon who refused to leave during the Exodus. This curse of theirs keeps them alive, living through time without aging. But the Pale Lord wants to cure them, restore their former immortality. He needs this staff to succeed."
"Then why don't you give it to him?" Marcellus's voice was harsh, still bitter from his pain.
Nyori stared at him. "Don't you see? They have weaknesses now. Banestone, daylight…limitations that force them to remain hidden. Imagine if they found a cure. What would stop them from completely dominating humankind?"
Marcellus gave a hesitant nod. "I'm sorry, Nyori. I did not stop to think beyond my own pain. You are right. But I do not think capturing your staff is the only thing these creatures seek. My king set me on the road to betrayal and death before you and I ever crossed paths. I had thought some political scheme was to blame, but now the picture becomes even murkier. Why do this to my family as well?"
Dradyn turned. "This must have been set up when they found out that you survived your capture, as a failsafe to destroy you here."
"But why?" Marcellus clenched his gloved fists until the leather creaked. "Who am I to be the victim of such a plot? I have to understand before I can act, Dradyn. Tell me all that you know."
Dradyn rubbed a calloused hand across his shaven head. "After you left, your wife would stop every patrol to ask of news of you. After a while, the Captain himself began to give the reports when the patrol passed by in the evening. Then he began to appear in the evenings alone. It didn't look proper, milord, for a man, no matter what his rank, to visit a married woman at that time, and alone. Gossip spread among the servants that the Lady Admorran had taken a…um—"
"Had taken a lover," Marcellus said tersely. "Go on."
"Yes, milord. I inquired some of the passing soldiers about the Captain. He was known to be a queer fellow. Never with the troops by day, but at night would appear out of nowhere no matter how far in the field they were. Sometimes he would appear with a woman who did not say a word to any but him. The men said he was pleasant enough, but lax for a Captain, as though he did not care what the men did. But men mysteriously vanished on his watch. They said he was foul luck. I never thought about it until now exactly, but it all makes sense."
Marcellus nodded grimly. "He is the key, then. The wraith mentioned another name. Vivienne. That could the name of the woman who visited this Captain. Did you find out which Captain it was? What battalion?"
Dradyn stared. "It was the Lord Captain of the Imperial Guard, milord."
"Captain Pariot?" Marcellus seized Dradyn by the collar. "I had just spoken with him before the king gave me my orders. Are you sure, man?"
Dradyn was a head taller than Marcellus, who was a tall man. He was also much broader across the chest, with knotted muscles in his heavy arms. Nyori figured he could have pushed Marcellus back as if he was a child, but Dradyn only shook his head. "Rodell Pariot was demoted, milord. There is a new Lord Captain. A man called Anon Misral."
Marcellus exhaled, slowly relaxing his grip. He looked embarrassed as he released Dradyn. "Only the king can appoint a Lord Captain."
"Yes, milord. His Majesty King Lucretius dismissed Pariot and gave Anon his station, a stranger with no history known to anyone I've spoken to. Just one more example of his mad behavior."
"Strangers in the night," Marcellus muttered. "Strangers in the night."
"Milord?"
"There is only one thing for me to do, Dradyn. When you buy from the slaughterhouse, you must pay the butcher's price. Well, I have bought more than I can swallow. So the butcher must be paid."
He looked into the distance, where the dying sun cast the sky red. "I intend to do just that. Pay back all that is owed. I do not ask that you come with me, for I ride most likely to bloodshed and death."
"You ride to Kaerleon?" Nyori asked.
Marcellus stared in that direction, his expression dark. "I do."