Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (50 page)

Brynlee noticed Tavia’s jaw tightening in
anticipation of the pain to come.

“This should teach you,” Rose said. Then, as
though a brilliant idea had struck her mind, she handed the whip to
her guest. “Sir Dunmore, I seem to recall you have a knack for this
sort of thing. Would you mind disciplining this clumsy young
girl?”

Sir Dunmore grinned. “With pleasure, my
lady.”

In that moment, all the preconceived notions
Brynlee had of Sir Dunmore faded. A refined knight he appeared to
be, but as his eyes filled with a cruel lust she realized that he
was no gentleman at all.

“Come here, girl!” he said.

Tavia stepped toward the man. He bent her
over his lap, pulled up her dress and yanked down her knickers,
exposing her bare bottom to further humiliate the girl. Using the
leather whip he lashed her across the cheeks, leaving a bright red
mark, and causing Tavia’s body to jolt and yelp at the pain.

Brynlee stood by with Korah, flinching at
every painful smack.

“Well,” Rose barked at them, “don’t just
stand there like two dawdling fools, clean up this mess!”

She sat back down, crossed her long legs,
and sipped her tea as she watched Sir Dunmore savor his moment.

Brynlee cleaned up the spilled cakes while
Korah collected the shards of the broken plate.

With his arousal now at an obvious frenzy,
Sir Dunmore tossed the leather whip onto the table and flipped
Tavia up over his shoulder. She cried as he carried her off the
rooftop and down the stairs, inside to one of the bedrooms where he
slammed the door.

“Well done, both of you,” Rose said, once
Brynlee and Korah had finished cleaning up the mess. “It should be
obvious by now that I expect nothing but perfection from my girls.
The smallest slip, the tiniest trip, is a most unflattering thing
on a young courtesan, and not something I will tolerate.”

She pointed to Brynlee. “You are far too
knowledgeable for someone of your age. Where did you learn how to
do this, and don’t tell me it’s because you read.”

Brynlee shoved her nervousness down deep and
forced out a confidence that she didn’t come anywhere close to
feeling. “I was raised in the castle of Aberdour, mistress. My
mother was a cook there, my father a blacksmith for the King’s
Shield, and I a servant to Lady Lilyanna. I was schooled by the
same tutors who taught her children.” She stopped, hoping the
dashes of truth she’d sprinkled in with her lies would be enough to
fool the clever mistress.

Rose eyed her as though sensing deception.
“A remarkable privilege for a young servant girl.”

“The Falls were very kind to me,
mistress.”

“Do you miss your life there?”

The question cut to the core of Brynlee’s
heart, unearthing memories and feelings she had long kept buried.
She would’ve answered had it not been for the lump in her throat
that seized her voice.

Rose smiled. “It’s obvious that you do. I
want you to consider my palace your new kingdom, Emma. As of this
moment you are my head girl. I want you teach the others how to
properly serve a meal without bumbling and ruining the fine
reputation of my establishment.” She looked at Korah. “You have a
fine reputation as well, young lady. More than once has a man come
to my house singing your praises. I’ve brought you here to shape
you into the finest courtesan in the realm, and to help me instruct
some of these other promising young ladies. Starting with this
one.” She caressed Brynlee’s cheek and offered a charming, but
fiendish smile.

Brynlee felt a cold shudder run down her
spine. Her life, she knew, had suddenly changed, and not for the
better.

“Move quickly, my child!” said Sister
Eeliana.

Dana ran from the bedchambers of Duktori
Bendrosi just as the abbot leaned over his bedside again and
wretched into a wooden bucket. She was relieved to be out of the
bedroom, away from the stench and the awful sight of the duktori’s
mangled hands and feet. Pounding in her chest was an urgency to
reach the kitchen before any more grains were consumed by
anyone.

It was probably too late. If the duktori had
been poisoned by food it had happened days ago. If any others were
infected they would be showing signs soon enough.

Dana emerged from the dormitory building and
sprinted down the street toward the chapel, through the garden just
off the east wing, and into the dining hall. Breakfast was long
over, but two male lay servants sat at one of the long wooden
tables hunched over bowls of broth.

“Don’t eat the bread!” Dana shouted.

She charged into the kitchen. Sister
Marleenious and one of the lay servants, Lenasa, were rolling
dough.

“Don’t eat the bread!” she said again. “No
flour. No grain.”

The women stepped back from the dough,
lifting their hands to their shoulders as though it were
poison.

“I knew it,” said Sister Marleenious. “He’s
got the fire in him.”

“How is he?” Lenasa asked.

“Not well,” Dana continued, panting.

Marleenious swept her pudgy forearm across
her brow, her hand leaving a trail of white powder above her blue
eyes. “Allgod have mercy. The fire. If–if the duktori is sick… if
he… then surely us?”

Prior Gravis swept into the room, his robe
trailing along with his billowing black velvet vest cloak. There
was a look of controlled concern upon his weathered face. He
instructed the cooks to show him where the flour and grains were
kept. Dana followed them into a dark room surrounded by cold stone
walls lined with wooden shelves packed with food and cooking
ingredients. Upon the floor sat brown sacks of wheat and flour.

Gravis cut into one of the bags and pawed
through the white powder. Next he tore open a grain bag and raked
through the kernels until he found a tiny black pod. He lifted it,
exhaling long and slow.

Lenasa gasped and covered her mouth. “Then
it is true. The fire will soon be in us all.”

Gravis gestured with his hand for calm.
“That’s not necessarily true.” He pointed to the sacks of flour and
grain. “This needs to go. All of it.”

“All of it?” the cook asked, shocked.

“Every bit.”

“The duktori,” Lenasa said, “is he going to
be…”

Gravis just shook his head.

Sister Marleenious closed her eyes and bowed
her round head, a second chin forming on her neck. Her lips began
to mutter quick prayers, the words of which Dana couldn’t hear.

But she didn’t have to hear them to find
them irritating.

A developing hatred was growing inside of
her for how the nuns and priests were always so quick to turn to
their religion for help, like it was a giant support beam in a
storm. Whenever there were signs of inclement weather they would
seek the aid of a some giant, invisible esoteric spirit that Dana
didn’t understand. The Allgod, they called him,
Kintiere
in
Efferousian, which meant King Bear. They prayed to him day and
night, and, regardless of whether or not he answered, they always
seemed to find peace.

Sometimes Dana found it hard to be sure if
she wasn’t just jealous.

She followed the prior back to the duktori’s
bedchambers on the top floor of the dormitory. His bedroom was
large, but plain, and lightly furnished with just a few
necessities. Everything looked old, from the dusty bookshelves to
the mangy bearskin rug to the desk by the bow window, the top
corner of which was covered in a small mountain of old melted
candle wax.

The abbot lay in a wide four-post bed on
mottled sheets, his elderly face ashen. She watched as his feeble
body convulsed and contorted underneath a patchwork blanket of
faded reds and yellows. She could see the toes of his gangrenous
feet, black and misshapen, protruding at the end of the bed. At one
point it appeared as though his right leg had stopped moving
altogether, but then Dana realized that it was because the infected
appendage had fallen off.

The monastery’s doctor and several nuns
continued to tend to him, even though everyone, including Bendrosi,
knew that there was nothing they could do.

Dana stayed by the duktori’s bedroom all
afternoon, afraid to leave lest Gravis, the doctor, or the nuns
tending to him needed her. Once his body had excreted all of its
fluids and the infection caused by black wheat grains had finished
ravaging his body, Dana moved down stairs.

She cried in silence as she walked outside,
eager for fresh air that didn’t reek of fecal matter and human
sweat. Her hands were clammy, her throat tight, and her stomach was
dancing as if a swarm of butterflies had been stirred up within
it.

She grabbed her bow from the barn and
stomped across the road, the ground muddy and pocked with hoof
prints. Turkey vultures, the fingerlike fringes of their wing tips
unmistakable on their black silhouettes, wheeled above as though
they knew death was in the air.

Dana retreated behind the barn to sling
arrows at targets in the hope of calming her nerves.

With the duktori gone, Prior Gravis was in
charge. She tried not to think about what implications that had for
her and her brothers. Gravis had never wanted them at the
monastery. He had never condoned the violent training that Khalous
put the boys through, and Dana feared he would send them away at
the first chance he got.

She notched an arrow and drew back the
string of her bow. The draw weight was too light, decreasing the
range and power of the projectiles. Granted it was little more than
a hunting bow, but in her grief she craved for a more refined and
violent weapon.

Her fingers released the string and the
arrow surged toward the target, hitting the center, as usual. She
inhaled satisfaction, enjoying the wave of power she felt coursing
through her limbs.

“Do you ever not hit the center?” Pick asked
as he sauntered around the corner of the barn.

Dana drew another arrow out of the quiver at
her hip. “Sometimes.”

“I’ve never seen you miss,” he said.

“You obviously don’t watch me practice
enough.”

She loosed the second arrow, which landed
next to the first one in the center of the target.

“You’re too modest,” Pick concluded.

Dana leaned on her bow and shut her eyes as
more tears ebbed their way to her cheeks.

“If I’m intruding I can leave you be,” he
said.

“Bendrosi’s dead,” she managed to say.

Pick walked over to a small maple tree and
leaned against its trunk. “I figured he wasn’t going to last much
longer.”

Dana didn’t like how Pick seemed so calm
when inside her was an inferno of rage and fear and
uncertainty.

“Are we going to have to leave now?” she
asked after a moment.

Pick was quiet as he gazed up at the swaying
branches of green leaves above him. “Maybe. But the Allgod will
take care of us. You just wait and see.”

Her teeth clenched at his words. “How can
you say that?”

Dana ripped an arrow from her quiver,
notched it, and let it fly. It struck the target just left of
center.

“I’m sorry?”

She huffed. “The Allgod. I’m sick of hearing
about the Allgod.”

“He was the god of your father, was he
not?”

“I don’t know what my parents believed,” she
said, which was a lie. Both of her parents were ardent believers in
the god of the ancient High King Vala Hull, a being commonly called
the Allgod. What she didn’t know was why.

“I do. Your father was a man of deep faith.
He would often pray with the soldiers, and he—”

“Well it’s not what I believe,” she
blurted.

“Why not?”

She had no answer at first. “I don’t
know.”

“Do you believe in the ancient gods?”

She scrunched her face at him. “Please.
Ancient superstitions, that’s all they were.”

Pick chuckled and crossed his arms. “I won’t
argue with that. My mother was from Tranent. Her family was
faithful to the Middies, Cuir and Cotch, allegedly the gods of
sunshine and earth.” He shook his head and smiled. “Her father
never once raised a successful crop.” He laughed.

Dana only frowned. “I can’t believe that the
Allgod is who they claim him to be, benevolent and kind, not while
someone as evil as the Black King ravages my homeland.”

Pick nodded. His understanding eyes helped
Dana relax.

“What do you believe?” she asked.

He slid down to the grass. Breaking off a
piece of straw he tucked it into the corner of his mouth to gnaw
on. “Hope. Love. It’s hard to say, I guess. I grew up being told
about Edhen’s ancient gods—the Northern Gods, the Southern Gods,
the Middies—but they seemed silly to me. The Allgod, I don’t know,
he seems real. This peace they have—” he waved his hand toward the
chapel, “—it’s real too. I don’t understand it, but in it I find
hope, and that gives me the strength to face another day no matter
how bad things get.”

Dana didn’t know what to make of Pick’s
words. Her analytical mind couldn’t wrap itself around something as
vague as faith, not when everything in her life was falling
apart.

She filled her target with a few more arrows
in quick succession before she realized that her bow was not going
to relieve the anxiety she felt inside.

She watched from the barn later that
afternoon while the priests and nuns of Halus Gis, along with the
lay servants, orphans, and refugees honored their deceased leader.
They celebrated his life with songs and words of prayer.

The duktori’s body was taken deep into the
crypt below the chapel. There he was sealed in a private room where
he would remain until his bones were ready to be added to the great
macabre mural they called The Ossartes, or The Place of the Honored
Holy.

Up until the burial ceremony, Dana had only
heard about the frightening display of old bones in the underground
room. Halfway through the burial she decided she never wanted to
see it again.