Blood of the Fold

He marched through the shields inside, knowing that the others would be blocked when they arrived. The five of them would be upset he hadn't waited for them. Well, maybe the next time they would wake him if they saw lights in the Keep.

Shrouded in his mriswith cape, he made his way upward, toward where he had seen the lightning hit the Keep. He avoided passageways that he could sense were dangerous, and found other routes that at least didn't raise the hair at the back of his neck. Several times he sensed mriswith, but they didn't come near.

In a wide room with four corridors leading from it, Richard stopped. Several doors stood closed. One had a trail of blood leading to it. He squatted and inspected the smeared trail of blood and determined that it was actually two trails; one leading into the room, and one leading out.

Richard flung open the mriswith cape and drew his sword. The clear ring of steel echoed down the corridors. With the point of the blade, he pushed the door open.

The room was empty, but it was far from ordinary. The wood floor was scorched. Sooty, jagged lines were seared into the stone as if an enraged lightning storm had been trapped in the room. Most puzzling, though, was the stone block of the walls; here and there huge blocks of stone hung halfway from the wall, as if they had come near to toppling out their place. The room looked like it had nearly come apart in an earthquake.

There were blood splatters all over the floor, and to the side a big pool of it, but because of the fire that had blackened the floor, it was all dry as dust, and told him little.

Richard followed the trail of blood from the room until it led to a door to the outer rampart. He stepped out into the cold air and immediately saw the splashes of of blood spilled across the stone. It was recent — within the last day.

Mriswith, and parts of mriswith, littered the windswept rampart. Even though they were frozen, now, they still stank. Against one wall, a good five feet up, was a huge splat of blood, and below it, on the ground, a dead mriswith, its scaled hide burst open. If the spray of blood had been on the ground, instead of the wall, Richard would have thought it had fallen from the sky and been killed from the impact.

His eyes gliding over the mess, Richard thought it looked like what was left when Gratch fought mriswith. He shook his head in dismay, wondering what had happened.

He followed a trail of blood to a notch in the crenellated wall and found blood staining the stone to each side. He stepped into the notch and peered over the edge. It was a dizzying sight.

The stone blocks of the Keep plunged nearly vertically, flaring slightly toward their foundation far below, and beneath that the stone of the mountain itself fell away for what looked to be several thousand feet. From the notch in the wall, a trail of blood ran down the face, disappearing in the distance below. There were several big splotches in the bloody trail; something had gone over the edge, smacking the wall on the way down. He would have to send soldiers out to see what, or who, had gone over the edge.

He ran a finger through different trails of blood at the edge; most of it reeked of mriswith. Some did not.

Dear spirits, what had happened up here? Richard pressed his lips together as he shook his head. He drew the black mriswith cape around himself and vanished as he pondered, thinking, too, for some reason, about Zedd. He wished Zedd were here with him.

CHAPTER 42

This time, when Verna saw the little flap open at the bottom of the door, she was ready. She dove toward it, shoving the tray aside and putting her face against the floor, trying to see out.

"Who's out there! Who is it! What's going on? Why am I being held here? Answer my questions!" She could see a woman's boots and the hem of a dress. Probably a Sister who cared for those in the infirmary. The woman straightened. "Please! I need another candle! This one's almost gone!"

She could hear the disinterested footfalls vanish back up the hall, and then the sound of the door and the big bolt being dropped into place as she ground her teeth and pounded her fist on the door. Verna finally slumped down on the pallet, comforting her hand. She had been pounding the door too often, of late. Her frustration was overcoming her sense, she knew.

In the windowless room, she had no idea anymore if it was day or night. She assumed that they brought her food in the day, and so tried to keep track of time in that way, but sometimes it seemed they brought food only hours apart, and at other times she was nearly starved to death before they brought it. She sorely wished they would do something about the chamber pot.