Serovek swung out of bed and padded naked to the wash basin and pitcher on the table near the shuttered window. Sleep eluded him and galla dogged his dreams. In the suffocating darkness of his bedchamber, he imagined their ravenous gibbering ghosted against his ears.
He cracked open the shutters to let in the fading moonlight cresting the tops of stately firs that marched in ranks down the slopes of the mountain into which High Salure was built. Its pale illumination allowed him to light a candle with a piece of char cloth. The wick sputtered to life under his hand, casting a small pool of light onto the table.
A crackling noise inside the pitcher warned that the cold pebbling his skin, steaming his breath, and making his toes curl against the stone floor was deep enough to skim a layer of ice on the water. Serovek tilted the pitcher and filled the basin before plunging his hands into the water and splashing his face.
The bracing cold made him gasp but also obliterated the last lingering threads of the nightmare still entangled in his mind. The revenant whispers of vanquished demons disappeared with them.
This wasn’t the first time he’d abandoned the comfort of his bed or the occasional bedmate to contemplate the sliver of horizon just beyond the rocky terrain of his mountain home. Then, as now, Serovek wished the illusion of easy-going strength he cultivated was real. He strove not to crouch in a corner, knife in one hand, as the memory of malevolent shades swarming the ruins of Haradis in a cacophony of screeching madness pursued him. On the worst nights, he wanted to screech right along with them.
Long months had passed since he’d returned to High Salure, human once more, whole in body if not necessarily in mind or spirit. The galla were gone, immured in their ethereal prison by the efforts of five warriors and the sacrifice of one. Cold reason was not enough to extinguish the guilt that sacrifice engendered.
Dawn peeked around the mountain’s edge as he dressed in a heavy tunic and breeches, tugged wool stockings onto his chilly feet and slipped on a pair of worn boots. The bed, with its pile of soft covers, didn’t tempt him. He’d simply toss and turn again or lie on his back staring into the dark until the restlessness drove him mad.
A flicker of motion at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he strode to the small scribe’s desk set in one corner where an array of scrolls and ink bottles spread across its surface. An unfurled sheet of parchment, trapped under a river stone at one corner, shivered in the draft whirling in from the partially open window.
Serovek tapped it down with one finger to hold it still. The scrawl of words in black ink were barely visible in the predawn gloom, but he didn’t need to read them to know what they said. Their message remained burned in his mind from the previous evening when he'd read it before the hearth in his hall.
Lord Pangion,
* * *
I hope this message finds you in good health. Since your return of my brother’s body to his family’s care, we have received a request from the Jeden Order to have him brought to the monastery there. We wish to adhere to this request as we feel the monastery was more Megiddo’s home than my estate, which he only occasionally visited.
* * *
Unfortunately, we don’t have the means or the people to spare to transport Megiddo to the Lobak Valley where the monastery resides. As such, I ask this favor of you, a comrade of my brother in the galla war: provide an escort of your men from your garrison to accompany Megiddo’s body to the monastery, where we hope his spirit might find some measure of peace in knowing he’s among his brethren.
* * *
Your servant,
* * *
Pluro Cermak
The message, polite and to the point, offered nothing on its surface that might inspire nightmares—other than Megiddo’s name and that of the galla. If he were honest with himself, Serovek had suffered many a sleepless night prior to the letter’s arrival. What was one more in the long procession?
He traced the curves and loops of Pluro Cermak’s script across the parchment with one finger, lost in thought. He suffered no reluctance at providing the escort Megiddo’s brother requested. It was the least he could do, though he wondered what