(eng) Liane Merciel - Ithelas 02 by Heaven's Needle

Author:Heaven's Needle [Needle, Heaven's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

The tracks were too scuffed to follow. Someone had brushed them out, replacing disturbed rubble where they’d gone and flattening dead grass in false trails where they hadn’t. Bitharn might have been able to pick out the true trail, given time, but the day was waning quickly and she had no wish to linger in Carden Vale after nightfall. Not after Kelland had identified some of the tracks as belonging to maelgloth.

There was no one else living in the town. All the shops and homes were shuttered, if not simply falling where they stood. Bitharn had peeked into a few of the abandoned buildings to see if anyone might be hiding inside.

In one home, she’d found the mummified bodies of three children, dressed in their Godsday best and lined up on a straw pallet. They should have rotted—Carden Vale wasn’t cold or dry enough to preserve bodies, and it had rained almost every day since Bitharn arrived—but they hadn’t. She could see their bones, strangely dark under thin-stretched skin, like sunken logs glimpsed in a frozen lake. Their lips peeled back from blackened gums in rictus smiles. There were no wounds on their bodies, but their clothes had wrinkled where they’d been dunked in water and left to dry. An empty basin, rimed white to the rim, rested nearby.

She’d found the mother slumped in the next room. The dead woman, as unnaturally preserved as her children, sat on the floor with her back to the wall. Rust red tracks ran in forked rivers from her wrists. The knife dangled from her fingers, caked to her palm by dried blood.

No struggle. No broken furniture. Just a mother and her three drowned babies, resting peacefully where they’d died.

After that Bitharn stopped going into the houses.

There weren’t any bodies outside, but there weren’t any signs of where they’d gone either. Bitharn scowled in frustration and straightened from her crouch. She raked her hands through her hair, tugging a few golden strands loose from her braid.

It was no use. If she’d had the eyes of a hawk and the nose of a bloodhound, she might have been able to find them, but she was only human and there was no hope for it. The sun was going down, and maelgloth would come out with the stars. Time to go. Hoping that Kelland had had better luck, she headed back to the inn.

The knight was sitting in the Rosy Maiden’s common room, as he’d been since dawn prayers. Papers and books fanned over the table in front of him. Some were from the town’s chapel, some from its gaol. All had been collected by the Celestians who had come to Carden Vale before them, and who had fled in such a hurry that they’d left their books behind.

Kelland had spent the day reading those pages, searching for something that might tell where the Celestians had gone or what had befallen the town, while Bitharn hunted for tracks and the Thornlord sifted through the memories of Carden Vale’s dead.

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