Page 8 of Eldritch
“You lied to me,” Lord Rydainn rasped, anger tight in his throat. “A fortnight, I’ve traveled in search of him, only to be met with more of his victims. What kind of chase have you put me on?”
The stranger didn’t bother to respond, didn’t look up from the tankard in front of them, or acknowledge Father at all.
Lord Rydainn slammed his fist against the table, sloshing the stranger’s drink, and still, they didn’t so much as twitch. “I want an answer! My boy gets worse with each passing day!”
With a sharp yank of Zevander’s scruff, the elder Rydainn pulled him into the booth after him, as he took a seat across from the stranger. Even with Zevander sitting head on, the face opposite was hidden in the depths of that hood.
“You’re toying with me. And I want my coin returned,” the boy’s father kept on beside him.
“No.” A raspy voice like that could only belong to a woman much older than Zevander’s father.
“Then, you will tell me where to find Cadavros. I must find him before the king’s men. They will put him to death for his crimes. Tell me, or I will drag you to my home and feed you to my boy and his spiders.”
The stranger chuckled. “I gave you a vision. You failed to follow through.”
“Do you know who I am? My wife? One word to the king, and you’ll be?—”
“If you possessed so much power, we wouldn’t be talking now. Would we, Lord Rydainn? Your king has forsaken you. Otherwise, I suspect you’d be at home, enjoying solstice eve with your belovedwife.” The tankard disappeared into the depths of her hood, as she lifted it and slurped a sip. “You can’t go to your king. Not when you’ve betrayed him.”
“I am begging you. Help me. Give me another vision.”
“And if you find him? What then? What would you have him do?”
“Look at him!” Lord Rydainn yanked away the mask on Zevander’s face. “Look how it’s begun to spread!”
The hood angled just high enough that Zevander could make out a single, pale green eye that almost glowed from the dark depths within.
“His curse worsens,” his father said past clenched teeth.
“It isn’t the sablefyre that has robbed your son’s handsome face.”
“What, then? If you know, tell me!”
In Zevander’s periphery, he caught two men approaching the table. Kingsguard, given their polished armor and weaponry. He tugged at his father’s tunic, but the elder Rydainn only swatted him off.
“Are you aware he tried to consume my son as a baby? He attempted to swallow him whole!”
The elder Rydainn’s words would’ve sent a rippling shock through Zevander, if not for the guards who were quickly closing in on them—he’d heard the story of having been thrown into the flames a number of times, but never that part. The boy’s muscles tensed when his father didn’t seem to pay attention to the new arrivals, until they were standing alongside them, and again, Zevander tugged at his father’s tunic.
“Lord Rydainn of Eidolon,” one of the guards announced, and the voices in the tavern quieted, all eyes shifting toward their table.
His father looked the soldier up and down. “What is the meaning of this?”
One hard yank on Zevander’s shoulder threw him from the booth out onto the floor, where his knees smacked against therotted wood. Rough hands hauled him to his feet, and Zevander wriggled in their grasp, as one of the men held him captive.
“Enough! What is this outrage! I am a former captain of the Hexmen, and I demand an explanation!” His father struggled to scoot himself out of the booth, before shooting to his feet, where he was seized by the other guard.
“You are under arrest by order of the king.” The guard turned his attention toward the strange, cowled woman. “Is this the boy?”
“It is.”
“He is under arrest, as well.”
“Not the boy.” Her wrinkled and mutilated hands flattened on the table. “The boy stays with me.”
“Thekinghas placed the boy under arrest.”
“No!” The cloaked woman growled and shot to her feet, the hood she wore slipping back to reveal the most grotesque deformities Zevander had ever seen, as if plucked from the most terrifying nightmares. Deep scars, far worse than his own, crossed her face over ruined lips. The other eye he hadn’t been able to see in the depths of her hood stared back as an obsidian orb, as if it’d been stained by ink. “He is mine! You swore that he would remain with me!”
