Arc 1: Chapter 14: Dark Things
I left Catrin in the foyer and followed Quinn up several flights of stairs and through a winding series of corridors. The castle was dimly lit and cold. A silence filled the halls, so deep that the echoing clicks of my and the Mistwalker’s boots seemed a violent intrusion. The halls were clean, lined with faded carpets and hangings depicting what I imagined to be scenes from House Falconer’s history.
I lingered by one such tapestry, which showed a knight brandishing a broken spear as a dread wyrm threatened her, curved teeth flickering with sickly flame. It was a strange image, seemingly not fashioned to glorify. The knight looked old, tired, and afraid. The dragon was an enormous thing, its jaws large enough to swallow the warrior — no larger than my thumb in the image — whole. Yet it was to her my eyes were drawn, and not the fell thing which dominated the wall.
That was not to say the dragon itself was uninspiring. It was captivating in a grotesque way, a thing all of cancerous scale and bursting horn, wreathed in fire and the souls of its victims, stylized — or so I assumed — by the artist as disintegrating skeletal shapes. Unlike the knight, who was simplistically portrayed, the wyrm was done in gruesome detail.
I inhaled deeply and — for a moment — found I could smell the sulfurous reek of it, hear the painful grinding of its ill-formed mass.
I had never laid eyes on a dragon. It was a memory of older knights, I was sure, echoing through the power sewn into me.
Quinn made a noise of impatience. “Baron’s waiting. You’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the art, I’m sure.”
I lingered a moment longer. “This has been here a long time.” I studied the brass workings the tapestry had been hung on. They were badly weathered, affixed to the wall for generations. “I’ve rarely seen a dragon depicted like this. The Church frowns on it.” I’d last seen something similar in Seydis, in the Gilded City itself before it burned.
Quinn eyed the tapestry nervously and shuffled, clearly eager to move on. “Imagine you’re going to see a lot of things the Church frowns on here, stranger.”
I reached out to feel the material of the hanging, but stopped just before laying my fingers against it. I didn’t want the subtle impression of realness I’d gotten from the ancient work to become something more visceral, as had happened when I’d felt the troll’s death. This wasn’t the time for that.
I turned back to the Mistwalker, who waited with a bemused patience, one eyebrow lifted. He gave me a long, appraising look. “Not going to ask your story, stranger. All the Baron’s guests got one, and they’re all fit to give me bad sleep. Still, it was odd to see Cat bringing you in. Skittish, that one, and she’s avoided getting too involved with all of this.” He waved a hand at the castle around us. “You one of her regulars or something?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”