“A simple question they could answer,” replied Helder, “for they are simple indeed.” Haldor laughed. He always found his twin’s jokes amusing, no matter how coarse or witless they seemed to others. Viorel did his best to chuckle, though he could arouse little such sound from his chest. Merriment was in short supply among the brothers, their souls weighted by the burden of the quest they bore.
Was Eleyna alive or dead? The corpse of the cyclops would indicate that she lived. And they had not found her body. Meanwhile, the drunkards in the village tavern maintained a stoic silence against Viorel and Marius’ interrogations, saying that there had never been in their town a girl, any girls, denying the existence of the feminine species as a whole. They were so uncooperative that Viorel couldn’t help but sense something behind it, some event which the town as a whole was repressing their knowledge of. Something none of the villagers wanted to be reminded of.
The innkeeper was young and long-limbed, with a shock of oddly red hair, though he was fully as stoic as his customers. He offered them a reasonable rate on a room with two beds, nothing more than that and nothing less. Viorel had brought Marius with him, and the twins Helder and Haldor as well, leaving Linas to watch over Kai and Cristian back on the good ship Mudflat.
On the third day of their prodding, wheedling, and questioning, Viorel had nearly given himself over to despair, and was in the process of collecting his thoughts over a tall mug of the village’s bitter ale, which was of poor quality. Like the village itself, the ale had no name. Also like the village, it was dark, gritty, and unpleasant, and offered no succor to Viorel in his grief.
“So,” Viorel asked the man to his left along the bar, the thick drink slurring his speech, “have you perchance noticed any young girls passing through town, possibly in the company of unpleasantly irritating dandies?”
The man snorted loudly, and slapped his hand on the counter in front of Viorel. He wore a thick coat of dark canvas, to ward off the frequent, heavy rains that swept the area this time of year. Viorel tried to examine the man out of the corner of his eye, but the best he could get was a sense of hair and an odor of pickling spices. Perhaps the hand slap was a signal, Viorel thought. It was, certainly, the most dramatic response he had yet achieved here. Anyhow, everyone in the tavern was well aware that Viorel wanted information. And in exchange for information there was only one thing the man could be signaling for. Viorel counted out five silver pennies and laid them on the counter with a slap of his own hand.
Waiting until the bartender was on the far side of the room, polishing mugs with his back turned, the man took the pennies and whispered in Viorel’s ear. “Your life is in danger. Meet me tonight, along the docks, alone.”
Viorel knew that the sea spoke a language all its own, that only a few men could interpret fully, and then only after years of training. But listening to the surf he often imagined he could hear messages intended for his ears only. “The blue flower blooms in the east,” the sea would tell him, or something equally cryptic. Tonight his inner ear could hear it repeating just “Trust not. Trust not. Trust not.” The short, choppy waves of night repeated the words as they hit the breaker rocks, over and over again. The words echoed in the darkness, through the starless sky, and through Viorel’s mind.
“You need to leave town, tonight.” The voice was so close that Viorel jumped back in fear, waving his torch about him. The man in the dark cloak had approached so stealthily that Viorel hadn’t even noticed. Or perhaps he had been too wrapped up in his stupid thoughts about wave sounds.
“Who are you?” Viorel asked. “I’m in danger, and I need to leave? How do you know/”
“It’s not hard to guess at,” the man told Viorel. “Anyone who knows the people of this town would be aware of the same. The priests are restless, after the debacle a fortnight ago. And the catch is bad, so the fisherman suffer. All look for fresh sacrifices to offer, to make things right. And foreigners make the most convenient sacrifices.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Only because I don’t wish for this town to stain its hands with any more blood. We have killed strangers before, and paid far too great a price. So you and your brothers must leave, leave this place and never come back.”
“I do appreciate your concern for my well-being,” Viorel said. “But you think us too helpless.” Viorel gave a quick whistle, at which his three brothers emerged from behind nearby rocks. Marius carried a thick sword which glinted devilishly in the thin sliver of light offered by the clouded moon. Helder and Haldor’s blades were sheathed, but they way their kept their hands at their belts left no doubt that they were similarly armed.
The man in the cloak looked to the left and right, saw the armed men approaching. “So,” said Viorel, drawing his long knife. “You do not wish us come to harm. I appreciate that, I do. We wish the same for you. But you have to understand, our quest is most desperate. We will do whatever is necessary to find our sister.”
Viorel moved his knife back and forth, catching the torchlight and casting it about capriciously. “You can have us leave your town, forever, just as you say you wish. But first you must tell us everything you know of the girl who passed through here two weeks past. What was done to her in this place, and where was she bound?”
The man decided to break left, kicking sand up into Viorel’s eyes and torch. The man skidded, sliding at Helder, whose caught him and dug his feet into the damp sand. In a moment Haldor had tackled the man as well, sending all three rolling to the ground. After a brief struggle, the twins held the man pinned down, while Viorel let his knife’s point kiss ever so gently against his neck.
“Tell me,” Viorel said.
The man spat, hitting the flat side of Viorel’s blade. “The girl, and the old woman. They brought nothing but ruin to our village. I am glad we are rid of them, and glad that you are foolish enough to seek them out, so that soon we will be rid of you.”
“What old woman do you speak of?” asked Marius.
In the morning’s first pale light, Marius and Viorel crept to the beach again, to the sheltered cove where Endrossa’s cottage lay. They had learned its location from the threatened man, along with scattered reports of Endrossa’s activities. “She was a witch, pure and simple,” he had said. “It was our folly to allow her to remain nearby, but no man in the village would stand against her.”
But in the cove what they found was nearly ruins, logs soaked with years of salt water, a few metal implements rusted out by many tides. The cottage was empty, the door knocked over, and the insides filled with sand.
“That man must have been simple,” Haldor said. “It is not possible that someone could have lived here, as close as two weeks ago. It has been abandoned for years.”
“Curious, indeed,” said Viorel. He looked south, inland, to where the great forest stretched over hillsides too numerous to count, and into which, if the report they had was to be believed, the trail of their sister Eleyna now led.
Feed
Zilch.