My aim had improved since the nightmarish time in the Vingaard Mountains. The dice skittered between the rocks, tumbling to rest somewhere in the high weeds that lined the path we followed. It’s anyone’s guess what that final cast read.
Chapter Eighteen
As we approached the Khalkist mountains the grim signs of the Scorpion were everywhere. The rising ground was burned ahead of us—deliberately, not as if by wildfire or something natural and blind. Wide swaths of blackened earth lay in front of us, then land relatively untouched where the only sign of violation was the occasional dark, unrecognizable symbol freshly burned into the rocks rising from the borders of our trail. It began to snow as we ascended the western inclines of the Khalkists. But even the snow would not settle on the scars of the foothill fires, as though the spots were still warm. As we reached the mountains proper, the mists descended and the snow receded behind us.
It was there that we saw the first of the pikes. They leaned on the eastern horizon like dark standards or banners, but something in the way they drooped—like thin branches laden with heavy fruit—caused us to rein in our horses, to come to a stop on the narrow road.
Bayard squinted eastward, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand. He turned to me, his face pale.
“I cannot see what they are,” he said, “but I have my suspicions.”
Before I could ask, he started toward the dark, slanting needles ahead of us. The severed heads on the ends of the pikes had been dead some time. It was the horses who knew them first, snorting and rearing. The mules sat on the trail and refused to budge; only a strong Sir Ramiro and a firm riding crop got them going again. I can’t say that I blamed them. The dried and withered faces had sunken in upon the skulls. From the designs of the helmets—the kingfishers, the roses—I could tell that they once sat atop Solamnic shoulders.
“An old Nerakan strategy,” Ramiro explained, guiding his skittish animal around the first of the pikes. “A sign to your enemies to come no farther.”
“Have they been set here long?” Alfric asked apprehensively.
Ramiro did not answer as we filed along the path, winding between the grim warnings. But when his hand moved to the hilt of his sword, it was sign enough.
Perhaps the mist around us was thicker than we had thought. Perhaps knowing we had crossed into the mouth of the old Chaktamir Pass, scene of bloody history both noble and best forgotten, had set our thoughts to wandering. But none of these reasons could explain the castle and its sudden appearance. It was as though the mist solidified, that at one moment the fog began to take on the substance of stone. Startled, Alfric brought his horse to a sudden stop, sliding in the frost and gravel. My mare and Brithelm’s mule piled into the horse from behind, and Bayard had to move Valorous deftly aside to avoid the tangle of horse, mare, mule, and Pathwarden, all limbs and eyes, looking up to the heights of the castle.
“This looks familiar,” Alfric ventured.
“Perhaps that’s because it’s drawn to the plans of Castle di Caela, boy,” Sir Robert snapped. So it was.
It stood, a big gray castle, a huge tower at each corner of its large, rectangular courtyard. As the last reddening light of the sun struck the flag on the tall southwest tower, our eyes were drawn by the play of red and black in the castle standard.
Sable scorpion statant on a field gules.
A black scorpion on a red flag. Simple and bloody and daunting.
“The Scorpion’s Nest,” Sir Robert breathed. “We’re nearing the end of this.”
Sir Ramiro and Sir Robert reined in their horses beside us.
“It is. As I live and breathe, it is. Castle di Caela, stone for stone!” Robert exclaimed.
“‘Somehow those illusions have delivered him a castle,’” Bayard breathed, quoting something I should have remembered but could not. “How predictable of old Benedict, if Benedict it is, to model his castle, down to the very crenelations and to the mortar itself, upon the one castle he knows intimately, has known for over four hundred years.”
“It is an outrage,” Sir Robert stated.
“It is also not real, and therefore nothing to trouble yourself over, Robert,” soothed old Ramiro.
“And easy to find our way around,” Brithelm insisted. Everyone turned and looked at him. He stood calmly amid the rocks, looking up at the castle as if he were a general taking stock of his siegecraft. He took his eyes from the castle and rested them on Sir Robert.
“Benedict’s had his eye on Castle di Caela for centuries. He knows it intimately. It’s no challenge for him to slip undetected through the halls of the keep, but we know Castle di Caela, too, and if the Scorpion’s copy resembles it more than outwardly, that resemblance is to our advantage. That is, when we’re inside.”
Thinking of the swamp and its illusions, I hurled a rock toward the walls ahead of me and heard it clatter against the stonework.
Solid, this time.
“You mean we’re going in?” Alfric whimpered, glancing behind him down the trail.
“Hush, Alfric,” snapped Sir Ramiro. “We’re at his damned gates, after all.”
A flutter of wings and the soft gurgling sound of pigeons descended from the wall off to our left. Over there, somewhere near the main gate of the castle, the huge birds, purple and glistening with a dirty metallic shine, were coming to light on the battlements.
There was movement, then a dim outcry from somewhere within the walls.
Bayard drew his sword, and the other two Knights did likewise. Alfric ducked behind his horse and drew his menacing long knife.
Bayard turned to me.
“You, too,” he admonished softly. “It’s about to begin.”
I drew my sword.
Begin it did, in a new and unexpected form.
I had been prepared for satyrs, for some other half-human, half-beast arrangement such as the Scorpion seemed fond of throwing against his enemies—minotaurs, perhaps, or even the lizard men of whom legends had arisen lately.
But not prepared for centaurs.
We had dismounted because of the steep climb, and we were leading our horses toward the castle gate. Then it opened, and two of the creatures issued forth, lumbering unsteadily, almost drunkenly toward us over the rocks and the incline. I wondered for a moment about the truth of the old proverbs about centaurs and wine. Then the smell that reached me stopped my wondering entirely. It was a smell of neither wine nor spirits, but of mold and dried vegetation and decay. The smell of a swamp—but the smell of a deeper decay beneath all that moss and mud and vallenwood and cedar—the smell when dead flesh, left exposed to the air and the moisture and the unseasonably warm autumn days, begins to rot.
“Walking dead!” Sir Robert exclaimed. “Spit into the sunlight by Chemosh!” He stepped toward them warily, followed by Bayard, then Ramiro.
I waved my knife as menacingly as I could, though I had no idea what earthly good a piece of cutlery would do against creatures of such size.
A whistling sound arose from their throats, as though they mocked the act of breathing or had forgotten how to breathe.
They were now close enough that I could see the wounds.
Who saw them fall, Kallites and Elemon. I remembered Agion’s story.
Riddled with arrows as though they had walked through a gathering of archers.
Who saw them fall.
Still in the side of the larger—Kallites or Elemon? I could not remember the details of the tale—arrows were imbedded to the nock, to the feathers. With the smaller it was as though the arrows—feather and shaft entirely—grew from his chest and shoulders.
My companions raised their swords as the centaurs stumbled blindly into their midst, flailing with their huge arms and the clubs they carried.