“Rahvyn—”
A brilliant light exploded into the sky, so bright that it readily outshone the moon, so painful that he groaned and lifted his arms to shield his eyes. Stumbling back, Sahvage sought the protection of the stone walls of the castle, and when he was under their cover, he attempted to sight what he could withstand of the celestial being.
Whate’er it was traveled across the velvet heavens, eclipsing the twinkle of the stars, seeming to suck up all illumination from overhead. And as it reached the horizon to the north, there was another brief intensification—and then it burned out to nothing.
In its departure, all was as it had been before.
Except no, that was not true upon the earth. None of what was around him was as it should be.
And Rahvyn was wrong.
She had not freed him with her departure. She had framed him for the killings she had wrought against her abductors.
None would believe that he had not dispatched Zxysis and his guards as they had been: His reputation within the Brotherhood not only justified the nomenclature he had been given upon his birth; it preceded him where’er he went.
The bodies in the great hall. Zxysis’s o’erhead, skinned as an animal, pierced as a carcass. And whate’er else had been done to whome’er else had hurt Rahvyn. All would be accorded unto Sahvage, and thus the glymera would come looking for him, demanding explanations he would not be able to provide. And the Brotherhood would be put in an untenable situation, for they knew what he was like in the field—and they knew what his charge had meant to him.
They would also know the whispers of the village around the castle, the old females and young who spoke of magic in the forests and inexplicable happenings in the town.
To protect his charge, Sahvage had been content to accept the curse of being called warlock when he was as far from being one as any mortal. And besides, Rahvyn’s magic had been harmless . . . or at any rate, naught to be afraid of.
He closed his eyes and pictured Zxysis.
No more for the harmlessness.
Thus, nay, Sahvage was not free, no matter what his cousin maintained. Her actions had condemned him to death—
With an abrupt pivot, he turned to the way he had come.
And then he set off at a run.
As he came up to decapitated guards, he leapt over the bodies and the blood. Onward, still, he went, unto the steps he had at first ascended . . . and past them farther into the castle’s lower levels.
When he came upon the storage room he had awoken in, he took a torch inside and placed it in a mount just within the door. Going over to his coffin, he put his weapons down and replaced the lid as it had been—and it was then, courtesy of the torch’s frothing light, that he noted the warnings that had been carved into the wood. A cursed dead was herein, the symbols announcing it on all sides.
Sahvage looked around. Then promptly removed the lid once more—and picked up bags of flour that were close by, three of them, four of them, more of them still, laying their weight where his body should have been. Finally, he lowered the lid and used the stone from a grinder, wrapped in a sack, to hammer home that which he had disrupted. Finally, he retrieved the scabbard he had purloined. Utilizing its stout point, he carved his name in the lid and on the vertical panels, for that had not been among what had been inscribed.
Reshouldering the rifle, he took the torch and returned unto the corridor. Checking both ways, he confirmed that the resonant quiet persisted—although that would not last. Superstition would keep vampires away, and humans likewise, but only for a time. The greed of thieves would soon enough overwhelm their senses of self-protection, and there was much to be pilfered from within. And this would serve his purposes. In the course of such trespassing, his coffin would be found, and of all the things within the castle walls, it was the one that would not be touched. No soul would want to assume dominion over such an artifact. Yet word would get out.
Eventually, the Brotherhood would find his final resting place, but whether they accepted the remains—or whether they would discover his duplicity? Who could say.
Sahvage, however, would not be around to ascertain the outcome of his purported dead body. Instead, he was going to search for his cousin until he found her, and then, when she was thinking with proper logic, he would ensure that the pair of them stayed hidden. And his supposed death would ensure that was possible—
Tap.
Just as he was about to run off, Sahvage turned to the sound.
Tap. Tap.
In the unnatural quiet of the castle, the soft noise stood out far more than its soft volume would have permitted under any other circumstances.