Reisz nodded. Ord never used Reisz's family name except to signal that he, too, was very worried.
Myrmeen was already climbing the stairs, her boots trampling the vines underfoot. Krystin remained at her side, feeling a disquieting compulsion to stay close to the woman whose hair and eyes were identical to her own. Burke told Myrmeen to go ahead, that he and his wife would follow at a comfortable distance. Reisz and Ord were ordered to remain behind and watch for horse thieves. Cardoc went off to explore another section of the building but promised to remain within earshot.
"It's so much smaller than I remember," Myrmeen said as they reached the second-floor landing.
Krystin walked a few steps to the right and peered through the slats into one of the rooms. Frowning, she said, "I don't think you're going to find much. Look here."
Myrmeen went to her side and squinted as she bent slightly and stared at the ruins of what had been the main living chamber of a single-family dwelling. Staring at the demolished furnishings and piles of rotted wood strewn about, Myrmeen felt the urge to abandon the search. After all, she did not want to see her childhood home in such condition.
An urge that she could not resist propelled her forward. She led Krystin back along the gallery to a hallway at the top of the stairs, which had been scorched by flames. There were no rats or roaches, though she did find the occasional wisp of a spider's web.
"Can't we walk around this ledge?" Krystin asked.
"We can't get in that way. The front doors were all walled up after a few children died after running through the doors and not looking where they were going. The guardrail was a joke."
Myrmeen swallowed hard. She had known one of those children, an unfortunate little boy, and had been schooled with his sister. They both had lost siblings, and the experience had bonded them together.
"Myrmeen?" Krystin asked.
Shuddering, Myrmeen took Krystin into the hallway and turned to face a darkened central corridor that subdivided the second floor. "I don't know how safe this is. Let me go first."
"All right," Krystin said.
Myrmeen entered the black corridor, her hand against the wall as she found the spot where the passage angled to the left. She gestured for Krystin to follow. The girl entered the corridor, barely able to see Myrmeen's hand, which she clung to as she was led down the night-black avenue to a door that Myrmeen did not need to see to recognize. They heard the footsteps of Burke and Varina following behind.
"It's not locked," Myrmeen said as she pressed her weight against the door and shoved. The door came open easily and Myrmeen was shocked by what she found on the other side.
"Someone's still living here," Krystin said.
"Yes," Myrmeen said in a tiny, stunned voice. "I am."
The chamber they faced was decorated exactly the way Myrmeen remembered it from her childhood. A heavily worn sky-blue rug was thrown across the floor. Wx›den shelves and cabinets lined the walls. Oversized pillows, which her mother had woven and stuffed with feathers that she and Myrmeen had spent weeks gathering, lay on the floor beside a lute identical to the one that had disappeared with her father. There were paintings on the wall, and one in particular arrested Myrmeen's attention: It was a portrait of herself as a child, sandwiched in a happy, loving embrace between her mother and father.
"No," Myrmeen whispered as she fought back the tears that welled up in her eyes. Her trembling fingers grazed the painting's surface, lightly touching her dead father's hard, proud face.
Krystin wandered past the main chamber and called to Myrmeen from one of the two adjoining bedrooms. Myrmeen glanced at the rocking chair near the partially boarded up window, then at the chests shoved against the wall, the dining table, and the small kitchen. Food had been prepared here recently; she could smell the succulent aroma of chicken basted with imported spices from her father's village in far off Velen, near Asavir's Channel and the Pirate Isles.
"Myrmeen!" Krystin yelled.
Glancing at the doorway, where she expected to see Burke and Varina appear at any moment, Myrmeen wondered what was keeping them. She turned away and followed the sound of her daughter's bright, expectant voice. She felt as if she were no longer moving of her own volition, as if she were being dragged along by forces that she could not hope to control. Looking down, she became aware of the changing perspective and the steady motion of her legs, one before the other. A part of her was terrified to go any farther, but she had no choice. She reached the doorway to her old room and felt as if twenty years had vanished. Myrmeen stared at a living portrait of her early life, with Krystin playing her role.
The room was perfectly preserved. Krystin rolled on the bed, clutching the scented blankets to her chest. Myrmeen was stunned by the wealth of small items that she had forgotten about, such as a drawer in her nightstand that still contained the wretched love poems of her first suitor. On the dresser sat an empty vial of perfume that she had drained in an eight-year-old's attempt to emulate her mother's daily ritual of bathing and scenting her soft, beautiful skin.
Above the bed was a painting that caused her tears to finally burst free. The image captured on the canvas had remained in her dreams and fantasies for her entire adult life, though she somehow had blocked its origin. The portrait revealed a sky at twilight, where a soft, bluish white mist rose from a valley that was hidden by a rise in the foreground. A handful of pine trees stood as lone sentinels to watch a comet whip across the sky. Its trail entered the frame at the top, arced first to the right, then suddenly sped in a downward curve to the left, gaining momentum and intensity, to flare at the deep blue, starry sky where the veil of night slowly fell.
Myrmeen had dreamt of that rise many times. In some of her dreams, she made love with magnificent strangers on that fantastic landscape as the comet streaked by. In others, she lay there alone while a haunting melody played on a lute.
"What's wrong?" Krystin asked.
Myrmeen turned and wiped away the tears. "Nothing. This was a foolish idea."
"Tell me."
Pressing her lips together, hugging herself tightly, Myrmeen looked at the painting a second time. "My father gave me that painting. I still remember the morning he woke me up to look at it. Somehow he had put it up while I was still sleeping. It was a month after my sister had died. Stillborn. My father looked at me and said, 'You are that light for me. You rescue me from the darkness.'"
"What happened to him?"
Myrmeen shivered. The room was growing colder. "My father was put to death because his music displeased a rich man who had heard him play on the street and had requested a private audience. Father spent the entire previous night worrying over what selections to play for the man, and he had chosen a classical ballad for his lead. He had no way of knowing that the song had been a favorite of the wealthy man's wife, who had betrayed him and then 'took her own life' in shame for the transgression. The rich man had been certain that Father had been paid by one of his enemies to play that piece of music. He went into a blood rage, beating and kicking Father until he died. Father was a gentle man who had never learned to fight. Then the servants left the body in the streets and claimed that thieves had killed him before he ever arrived at the palace."
"But you got even."
"Yes."
Krystin nodded slowly. "Good."
Myrmeen was touched again by the deep feeling of loss that had plagued her for the last decade. She missed her family and looked to Krystin with hope.
A scream sounded from one of the other quarters.
"Varina," Myrmeen said in alarm, racing from her old bedroom, through the main quarters, to the corridor beyond.