“We don’t get too many travelers along this road,” said the proprietress. “ ’Cept in the honey season, and then it’s mostly buyers going up to Honey Creek, but surely you aren’t one of them.”
“Umn,” said Liaze, shaking her head but offering nothing more.
“Regardless,” said the innkeeper, “I’ve stew in the pot for tonight, and I’ll cook you breakfast afore y’leave in the morn.”
“Speaking of leaving, how far is the sunwise border from here?” asked Liaze.
“Oh, now, most of a day on a horse, if y’re goin’ direct sunwise.”
“I am.”
“Well, you take care, going that way, for I hear there’s strange doings down t’th’ ruins.”
“Strange doings?”
The woman shrugged. “J’st a rumor, now. Som’thin’ about ghastly goings-on.”
“Ghastly?”
“Spirits, maybe, or ghosts. I couldn’t say which. But- pshh — ’tis j’st a rumor. Most likely some’n havin’ their fun.” The woman turned and started for the common room. “Come, mademoiselle, I’ll fetch you your food.”
As Liaze sat drinking weak ale and eating her stew-a hodgepodge of beef, tubers, and beans, all cooked together with a seasoning of salt and pepper and a bay leaf or two, along with other herbs-she pondered what the proprietress had said. Can the ruins she speaks of be the same ones that Leon has said would be my first landmark? If so, what might be afoot in that place? Ah, Liaze, you will not know until you get there. And even if there are strange doings, still you have to pass nearby.
The next morning after breaking her fast Liaze settled her bill and went across to the stables to retrieve her horses. She laded the geldings and stepped into Nightshade’s stall to saddle him. “I hear there’s something about the ruins along the sunwise border,” she said to the stablehand.
“ ’At’s wot they say,” replied the man, “though I don’t know what it can be. Started about a moon ago. Haunting, I think some’n said. You plannin’ on going there?”
“Nearby,” said Liaze. “Down through a vale along the sunup side.”
“Well, ain’t no one lived there for uncounted seasons,” said the man. “Not since they fled the place.”
“Fled? Who?”
“Who fled? Them wot lived there, ’at’s who, or so the tales tell. Seems a wizard or warlock cursed the place long past.”
Orbane? “Did this wizard or warlock have a name?”
“ ’F’he did, I know it not.”
Liaze moved to Pied Agile’s stall. “Is there ought I should know or be wary of?”
“Well, I’d steer clear o’ that place, ’f’I were you, ma’am. It’s got an evil reputation.”
“Because of…?”
“I dunno what it’s because of, ma’am, j’st that it’s not a place to visit.”
Liaze led the mare from her stall and then tethered Nightshade after, and then the geldings to him. She paid the hostler and led all outside. As she mounted up, the inn proprietress stepped out onto her porch, and she and the hostler watched as Liaze rode away. As the princess came to the end of town, she angled the mare toward the sunwise border and kicked her into a trot.
In midafternoon Nightshade’s ears pricked forward and he snorted. Liaze looked back at Pied Agile now in tow, and her ears as well as those of the geldings were pricked forward too. What are they hearing? she wondered, but then the sound came to Liaze:
It was a distant yelling, as of a single voice crying out.
On Liaze rode, and the shout became louder, and finally, as Nightshade broke out from the forest and into the open, the sound came clear.
A howling. Someone is howling in rage or fear or grief, or is it in agony instead? And whence comes it?
Straight ahead, the land fell away into a forested vale before her and toward a marge of twilight at the far end; a glittering stream tumbled o’er rocks at the bottom of the dell. Down in the notch a tangle of trees marched up the steep slopes to either side, but to the right and on the very brim of the vale and amid a twisted snarl of woods stood a vine-covered castle, or rather the remnants of one.
And it was from there the yowling came.
And the words of Lady Skuld echoed in Liaze’s mind:
Instead ride with the howling one
To aid you on the way.
He you will find along your quest.
He is the one who loudly cried.
He will help you defeat dread Fear,
But will not face Fear at your side.
Liaze frowned. Can this be the howling one? Someone within that wreck? But then she recalled the hostler’s warning. “Well, I’d steer clear o’ that place, ’f’I were you, ma’am. It’s got an evil reputation.”
Liaze sighed and said to the black, “Evil or not, my lad, I cannot let this pass,” and she reined Nightshade toward the ruins.
26
Circling ’round to come at the remains from a less tangled way, Liaze urged Nightshade forward. And as they approached the snarl of woods surrounding the ruins, louder came the yowling. The stallion seemed to take it in stride, but Pied Agile and the geldings snorted in apprehension and drew back on the tethers, dancing and sidle- stepping nervously. “All right, all right, I’ll not force you to go,” said Liaze, and she reined the black to a halt and dismounted. “Besides, I doubt you can work your way through the beringing clutch I see ahead.” She tied the animals to a nearby tree, and strung her bow and took up her quiver, and loosed the safe-keeper from her long-knife in case the blade were needed.
“Ward the others, Nightshade,” she said, patting the stallion along his neck, “while I find out just who or what is wailing like a grieving banshee.”
She nocked an arrow to string, and then slipped this way and that past clawlike limbs reaching out to grasp.
Now and then beyond the branches and boles Liaze caught glimpses of the castle: walls whose upper reaches were broken, rubble lying at the foot; turrets with missing shingles or holed roofs; thick wooden outer gates that gaped wide; and, on the upper levels, curtains, tattered and gray with age, stirred in the windows like uneasy wraiths.
Clearly, it’s been abandoned a goodly while, for it seems more damaged from neglect than from ought else. And did the stableman not say whoever it was that had lived here had fled? Yes, I recall: “Who fled?” he repeated my question and then answered: “Them wot lived there, ’at’s who, or so the tales tell. Seems a wizard or warlock cursed the place long past.” Liaze caught another glimpse of the ruins and again the threadbare curtains wafted in and out. Can it be ghosts or spirits possess the place? Is that what the wizard did-call up a haunting?
Liaze pressed forward, her eyes her main defense against lurking foe; her ears were now useless, for the closer she had come, the louder the howling, and all other sounds were drowned under that wail.
Now she reached the outer wall, where vines grew upward thickly, their tendrils digging deep into the mortar, bringing slow ruin to the bastions. She made her way through the open and age-worn outer gate, and across a leaf- littered stone courtyard she stepped, and weedy grit and dirt ramped low against the walls of the main hall, blown there by winds long past. And here, too, the inexorable fingers of vines climbed upward and grasped at the stone to gradually erode away its strength.
Liaze paused for a moment and looked for the spoor of a beast or beasts, for, given the howling, this place might be the lair of one or more such creatures, but she found no tracks, and there was no odor of a den.
The castle door was open, its wood also badly weathered: all the softer parts were eroded away, leaving
