Chapter 4 – discovery.
Eric dreamed. He was standing in the courtyard, his unhorse just a few steps away, its reigns dangling loosely from where its master had let them fall. The Castle loomed above them, a monument to beauty, to revivalism. His father's creation, although never destined to be remembered, shadowed effectively as it was by the sheer scope of the Neocount's other achievements. At eleven years he was old enough to understand that there were things more impressive than castles, but still to consider the imposing structure a fairly concrete proof of conquest. He could see the windows from where he stood, subtly stained so that they caught and turned the flashing light of dawn. A display of beauty that even familiarity could not entirely dull. The oldest son of the Neocount of Merentha stood in the sunrise, and it never occurred to him to make the obvious comparison between the tint of dawn and the shades of spilt blood.
The discomfort of his unhorse was the first indication that there was something wrong. There should have been people out to greet him, that was their practise when the youngest master of the house returned from a night away. It was early however, more so than he had returned in the past. His mother was abed, or so he imagined, and his siblings and the servants equally so. Eric was not sure what instinct had caught ahold of him to wake him so unnaturally, before the sun's warmth had even tamed the skies, but he had become aware of a powerful restlessness. A biting urge to move, to be away from the limiting constraints of roofs and buildings. The thought of waiting until a more conventional hour to make his disappearance had seemed unbearable, and so he had made his farewells, departing from the neighbouring household with a thrill of relief and freedom.
The thrill of riding had made up another of his earliest memories, the blood racing pleasure of danger and movement, and the conquest when one could master the nuances of the seat and remain in control of the horse beneath even as you flew. He was a natural, the beasts that were his father's creations responding automatically to his touch, as though they recognised in him something of the mastery of the one who was their maker. So it was that the discomfort of the horse alerted Eric as his own uncertain misgivings never could. Moving towards the creature, speaking softly, not fae commands, but whispered comforts, Eric felt his own unease mounting. There was something amiss, even in the comforting surroundings of his home he could feel it.. sense it, and perhaps some of his Father's fae sensitivity had indeed passed on to his eldest child, because Eric was aware of it. No longer carefree, as his mood had been when he had ridden out the night before, the heir to the Neocounty approached cautiously, the turreted manse that reflected so beautifully the burning light of a new day.
The door swung open easily beneath Eric's fingers. That was normal; what was less so was the silence, absolute and threatening that engulfed him as he stepped inside. There was a lifelessness to the stillness, and Eric felt himself caught in the grip of a sudden fear, powerful and irrational that there was something terrible stalking him, awaiting him through the familiar silent corridors of his home. He had to force himself to calmness, to stop himself from breaking and running. 'A Neocount does not run,' he had whispered to himself, shakily, trying by speaking them aloud to make the words the truth. And then with just a hint more of certainty ' A Tarrant does not run.'
The carpet muffled his steps as he made his cautious way forwards, instinct taking over and guiding him in the direction of his mother's rooms. He would not wake her, he told herself, he just meant to see that she was alright, and if by chance she was awake and concerned, reassure her of his safe return. The corridors seemed lifeless, the providence of a land trapped out of time. There was an Earth legend along those lines, Eric remembered. He had seen the book that had been Alix's birthday present, dog eared and much treasured, with the elaborately inked images, the most powerful the one spread across two separate pages; the beautiful woman, with flame red ringlets spread out elegantly across a canopied bed. He remembered still his sister's indignant questions on first receiving it 'Mummy is she dead?' Their mother's warm amusement, 'No, love, she is sleeping. Just sleeping.'
Eric paused outside the doorway to his Mother's room. He knew she was probably asleep and he did not want to disturb her... But... He knew instinctively that she wouldn't mind, and the instinct that had woken him so strangely was still very much with him. Guided by...he was not sure what, Eric gently swung the large door open. At first all he saw was darkness, the early sunlight not making it past the thick nuvelvet curtains. The bed was a dark shape towards the end of the room. The air smelt musty, undisturbed. He thought distractedly that Elsa would probably pause in her rounds to open the windows, her face set in an expression of amused indignation.
The maxim that stale air caused disease was one of her favourites.
As his eyes adjusted Eric could make out more shapes. The dresser pressed against the wall, above it the shadowed outline of the elaborately carved mirror that had been his Mother's Anniversary gift from their father. 'Not an original,' as the Neocount had told her softly, his half smile lending warmth to the usually distanced face, as he saw her undisguised delight. 'But a fairly accurate copy.' Eric had later overheard his Mother speaking to some of her friends, telling them of how the piece was a flawless rendition; unidentifiable from those lost in the Landing. It hung there now, reflecting the darkened corners of a shadowed room. Drawn by that selfsame instinct, Eric stepped closer into the centre of the room, allowing the door to shut softly behind him. He had to force himself to breathe evenly as the panic tightened painfully in his gut, on seeing that the bed lay empty.
His father's workroom was much as it had always been. The Realm of a scientist, and the Sanctuary, Eric was seldom allowed to disturb his father when he was engaged in his research, just as the servants were commanded to refrain from entering it in the course of their cleaning. Now he perceived the Earth relics glittering in their cases, but with none of the curiosity or the thrill of the forbidden that had imbued such visits before. This had been the last room he had looked in, being the place in which he felt the least comfort. He stepped through its desk spaces and work surfaces only now, that he had established what he had felt the first time he had stepped through the corridors. There was no one here. His brother and sister's rooms were in much the same state as his mother's; curtains drawn against the light, but beds unslept in. Alix's had been the strangest, his younger sister's seven years of accumulated clutter discarded on the floor as it was so often, but the bed cold and empty. He had met the eyes of a favoured teddy bear, cold and alien, and had backed in silence out of the room, the uncertain fear solidifying inside him.
Now he stood in the entrance of the second level of his father's workroom, certain both that he was trapped within the folds of some terrible dream, and that in here, amongst the cold instruments of dead science's equipment he would find his answers. There was unfriendliness to the carefully arranged shelves, he thought, it was like looking on a reflection of his Father's soul. Metholodical, brilliant, but at the same time imposing and somehow unapproachable. There were more names on the list of those his father had charmed than he could hope to remember, much less call to mind. None of that could change the fact that the Neocount was in his soul different from other men; distanced. Other. The consequence, Eric had come to understand, of the adeptitude that had set him so far apart. Eric's eyes fell on a candle, burnt all the way down to the bottom of the holder. It was cold now, he could immediately tell, what flame had once warmed it extinguished long ago. The sight and the thought left him feeling disproportionately cold.
When he saw the door he understood at once what it represented. The answer to the mystery of the change of his home from comforting haven to silent tomb. It stood before him, like a challenge. A doorway whose existence he had never before noticed. 'Anything can be hidden,' his Father's long ago words of instruction reached him softly in his mind, 'from the minds and eyes of those who do not know to look for it.' Eric understood by instinct that something of this nature had happened here; to cause the eyes of those who fell on this place to glance off it, to notice only the continuing wall, their perceptions influenced by his Father's will. He also understood that whatever Working had concealed it then had been lifted now. The secret lay before him, beckoning, challenging. Terrible.
A Tarrant does not run. His mind curiously distanced, his hand surprisingly steady, Eric reached for the door.
Darkness greeted him. Complete darkness, far more so than the shadowed lightlessness of the curtained rooms upstairs. This was a different thing, a primitive thing, and Eric recognised the difference. He also recognised that whatever Power had held sway here, it was banished now, these tendrils of Malevolence all that remained of his influence. He steeled himself, and closed his eyes, the Pattern of Working taking place in his mind. It was a simple Working, one that he had mastered several times in the past, when his mind had been in the right frame, and he accomplished it now. With a more or less imperceptible shifting the fae currents responded to his will, altering in their patterns until his need was satisfied. Light. Not the bright and reassuring warmth of fire, but illumination all the same, enough for him to see by. Aware of the risk of his courage faltering if he waited any longer, the heir to the Neocounty descended into the dark.
Belowground. The name reached his mind by some thought process he could not quite identify but Eric nonetheless knew it to be accurate. The stair which he had followed had been hewn out of the rock itself, following the natural foundations of the cave like formations. The architect had hewn the rock itself to suit his need and allow his passage, and although the construction had a very different feel to that of the exquisite revivalist towers of the Castle above him, he knew with a sinking certainty that they had been formed by the same hand. Had his Father created this passageway back then at the Castle's conception; a premonition of the darkness later to overtake him, even as he had carved out the floating beauty of the Seat that had seemed the mirror of his successes?
Or had it come later, an addition to the whole, created only after his quarrel with the king, his excommunication? Eric had been only nine then, old enough to understand that there was something wrong, that his father had become more withdrawn, more obsessed with the studies that had always been his fascination, but the understanding had only come later. With the disconnected parts of conversations overheard from the servants, and once from his Mother. They cursed the king, although they did so quietly, for what he had done to their master. And after the Incident.... Eric felt his dread increase at the memory of his Father, white faced, ashen, his brush with death having rendered his features sharp with exhaustion, as he was carried to his room. The defect was genetic, Eric knew, inherited from the Neocount's father, although as of yet his brother's had shown no signs of it. The failure one of the heart valves, growing gradually more dangerous, until it had loomed up in the spectre of death to threaten his Father's life at only twenty nine. Eric did not know if the same death waited inside his own body, as of yet unidentified and dormant.
The doorway before him was simple. After only a moment's pause, Eric stepped through it, the quiet whisper of running water sounding in his ears. He knew as he entered that this was it, the site of the wrongness, and he froze at the sight of the block, of simple stone that dominated the cave-like chamber around it. It was the single piece of furniture, and it drew his eyes with a dreadful fascination, although it was a moment before his eyes adjusted to the gloom enough to make out the figure lying sprawled upon it.
Stepping forwards, captured by the dreamlike nightmare of reality, Eric saw, in vivid detail the fall of a skirt, brown fabric, stained violently with red... His eyes rising to the still figure of a woman, beautiful, still. Her blood a dried stain pooling blackly against the stone and clotted thickly against the paleness of her exposed breasts. Hair falling down, rich and red, mingling and sticky with the tanglement of her blood. The figures of two more smaller figures, seen peripherally on the floor, their child limbs enter tangled, but his eyes were on his mother. His mother, bound tightly to the stone before him, the violence of her death horrifyingly apparent, a sacrifice to feed the hunger of the darkness, the malevolence he had sensed so strongly before. The Princess lies, spread out beautifully upon the bed, her dark hair spread elegantly across her pale shoulders, like the streams of drying blood...
Screaming Eric woke.
