Blind Date A Book 2020 – Book #8
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Chapter 1
Darn Rylace’s Bedchamber and a Bejeweled Sword
The morning her kingdom fell to the dead she sat on her bed with her legs folded under her, while listening to a story she thought would ruin her life. Nothing special was supposed to happen that day, so she wore a common dress for lessons. It was the dead man’s eyes she would remember most as her family and her life were ripped apart.
Princess Darn, third child and first daughter of Rylace – the Regent of Valahark, wished every day for her routine to be disrupted in some dramatic way. She wished it more in the morning, when it would make the most impact on the day, and usually resigned herself by evening to the unwavering pattern of her life as a child of the Regent, a stern and busy man, who served the role of acting ruler of the land, until the return of the Lost King.
She had no more faith in the Lost King’s return than she did in the slightest crack forming in the monotony of her lessons and trainings and duties. The Lost King was dead before she was born, and all his possible heirs with him. Dead people never returned, except in legends or fairy stories. This is what she believed, anyway, and this is what Darn Rylace, Princess of Valahark, wished for every morning right up until the morning the dead and bloodied cook sank his teeth into her second brother’s neck, over the artery.
It was not the most pleasant of days, but before long it wouldn’t be the worst it could get, either. She knew the cook was dead because of the look in his eyes. She had seen death before, even from the shelter of the High Palace. It, death that is, had always been lying down and not moving before the morning the dead rose and invaded the home of the Regent, with routine shattering horror. The eyes were pale and lifeless as they slid about in the cook’s sockets above the deep, dark bite mark gouged into the flesh of the cook’s cheek.
Darn saw the death in the colorless eyes, but she did not understand it. Thomas was droning on about wars and rumors of wars to the east. He said he might get to ride out with a royal diplomatic contingent while their oldest brother, and heir to the Regency, Folerice, visited with his wife’s father in the minor kingdom of Salsteer across the green-blue lake to the southwest they called the Garnett Sea.
Later, Darn would wonder if her niece and nephews went with Folerice on that trip or stayed behind in the palace the day of the dead invasion. She would not wonder this until it was far too late to check. It was probably too late by the time the cook shambled into her bedchamber unannounced.
Thomas rested his hand upon a decorative, bejeweled sword sheathed at his hip. It was a thing to communicate wealth rather than a threat or for practical use in battle. Darn was about to find this out for herself, firsthand.
When she looked into the dead eyes and the bite mark in the cook’s face, she had been ignoring her brother’s words and wondered instead which of them, she or Thomas, would have to marry one of the heirs from the kingdoms to the east once it was time to close out the latest session of wars. If it was Thomas, the new wife would come to live in Valahark.
Darn liked Folerice’s wife, Melody. Melody had been fourteen and Darn twelve at the time of the wedding. Darn was now sixteen. Melody’s wedding was like getting a new sister, only nicer and less boring than her real sisters.
But if it was Darn who had to marry, she would move to a different land and possibly have to learn a new language. The fact that the languages of the east, spoken and written, had seeped into her lessons of late bothered her a great deal. She knew this would be her life eventually, but there was always hope of wars dragging on or other disruptions to routine popping up. Thomas traveling with diplomats did not bode well for her hopes, and this is what she thought about while Thomas bragged, until her room was painted in blood.
There was this other thing, too.
The first four children, including her two older brothers and Phillip, two years younger than her at fourteen, had the same mother as Darn. Their mother was gone now, and her father had remarried for the last three of his children. The East was a place of banishment, and Darn thought surely that must be on Thomas’ mind as well. Even under his coy grin and his dreams of adventure as a prince in a foreign land, he had to think about where their mother might be out there in all this war.
Aldusa was the name of the new Queen Mother, the mother of the youngest prince and princesses. It was a commoner’s name, Darn thought in bitterness. She realized she could not remember her own mother’s name. She used to know it, but she had not thought about it for quite some time. It embarrassed her to admit she had forgotten. She bet that Thomas would remember.
She never had a chance to ask, though, because of the dead cook.
Darn studied anatomy, which she found distasteful and thought of as the business of those who killed for coin and flag, not the sort of thing a princess would ever need – should ever need. She knew the wide passages of arteries in the neck and everywhere else in the bodies of men and women. She therefore knew it was an artery the teeth of the dead cook bit through because of the spray of blood across her linens and walls.
Thomas drew his sword after three tries while the dead cook locked his teeth together on the prince’s neck. The fingernails were incredibly clean and manicured as they dug into Thomas’s tunic. The decorative sword cleared the sheath, finally, with an awkward twist of Thomas’ elbow, as he bent nearly backward in the cook’s grasp.
The point of the rapier-style sword whipped past Darn’s cheek, close enough for her to feel the wind of it and to see a flash of light below her eye along the platinum shaft of the weapon. It shocked her as much as the violence and bloodshed, in what should have been the safety of her bedchamber in the High Palace, so much so that she clapped her hand to her cheek and wiped for blood. Her cheek might have been one of the few surfaces in this corner of her room not splattered at that point.
Thomas kicked one foot, flailed his free arm in the air with his fingers curled into a terrified claw, and swung the sword wildly back over Darn’s bed where she sat on the bloody linens. This time she rolled away, spotting her dress with Thomas’s blood, as the point of the sword slashed through the air where her head had been an instant earlier.
She tried to scramble around the end of the bed and away, but her brother continued to wave his sword blindly. Darn dropped to her knees and dodged another slash. The sword hoisted above her and stabbed downward this time. No time to get away. She rolled underneath the bed instead, and the metal point rang off the flagstone floor of her third story bedchamber.
From under the bed, she watched the blood rain down in thick drops which pearled on the stones. The cook was missing one boot. They shuffled backward, away from Darn’s bed. One bare foot and three boots smeared the droplets in red sweeps through their path. They crashed into her vanity and spilled her implements off the sides. A hand mirror from distant northern lands shattered out of its silver frame. A jar of cream blasted open and splattered the table legs of the vanity. Another container popped its lid, and fine powder dusted the floor in a wide spill and turned to grimy paste where it met the excesses of her brother’s blood.
She looked at the broken glass cover of the mirror between her and the door. She needed shoes. She reached out from under her bed for her slippers, but then stopped. She felt around her sides in the darkness under her bed. In the dust, she found a pair of boots she wore on days of riding or hiking. The servants had neglected their dusting. At least they had not come to her room to chew apart the royal family, as the cook had.
Riding had been a part of her training for a while. The saddle was a relatively new invention within Darn’s lifetime, brought from the North to Valahark through trade, and had been perfected by the tanners and leatherworkers in the kingdom. She never remembered riding without one though. She had boots to match all her personal saddles, even though she seldom rode anywhere except in circles around the palace grounds.
My brother is dying … being eaten … by the cook!
Sewers weren’t that old of an invention, either, for that matter.
Thomas … eaten alive in my bedchamber … while I hide under the bed trying to put on boots.
The High Palace had one of the oldest systems in the world, but the capital city had a sewer system built into the tunnels under the streets within the last couple generations. Darn didn’t like to think about what life must have been like in the days of the Regents who preceded her father.
… back before the cook murdered Thomas while I hid.
Her mind kept trying to go to more mundane musings, as she laced her boots in the cramped space.
Darn finally shook herself out of her muddy shock and cried out, “Guards! Someone?! We’re under attack!”
Thomas’ sword clattered to the floor, but there was no response to the alarm from the princess under her bed. She scrambled out from under the foot of her bed, below the window, with the shutters open to the morning air and light. Her window overlooked the practice yard for the knights and squires. She could see the edges of the city below the keep walls and, on clear days, the fields beyond for several miles. It did not occur to her until much later that she might have called for help from that window or that seeing the entire city in advance of trying to escape might have provided valuable intelligence on the state of the kingdom. However, she did discover most everything she needed to know as she stood and watched the cook finally tear the flesh away from the ravaged side of her brother’s neck.
The cook released Thomas’ body as he chewed. Thomas fell limp and flat into the mess of powder, cream, glass, and blood. The cook leaned down to attack Thomas again as the monster chewed on his mouthful. The cook stopped short though and turned his pale eyes onto the princess.
Those eyes were all wrong. They were animalistic, cold and unthinking. They were the eyes of spreading death and merciless violence. They were empty, but they were hungry.
The cook had rips through his clothing and deep bite marks and wounds under each tear in the cloth. Someone had taken bites out of him before he did the same to Thomas.
The beast of a man stood between her and the door to her bedchamber. She hoped to see guards come crashing in to take down the attacker for her, as they should. She needed to press a cloth or linen to the terrible wound on her brother’s neck. If he stood any chance of surviving, she had to stay the bleeding to give the physicians, healers, and barbers a chance to work. She had to deal with this terrible obstacle herself first, though.
The cook abandoned Thomas and lumbered for the princess. His bare foot kicked Thomas in the shoulder and the cook stumbled. Darn broke for the door, feeling shame mixed with her terror as she decided to try to escape and leave Thomas helpless. The cook regained his footing and grabbed for Darn. She ducked the first grab and backed away from the cook’s side, but also farther from the door. The cook clawed again, and she dodged out of reach. As he came for her, the princess dove and slid on her knees through the mess, toward her vanity and her brother’s body. She grabbed up the sword by its decorative handle and spun around, at the ready.
The cook came fast, with no regard for his safety, and she went for his heart. She clutched the hilt in both hands and drove the point home on the left side of the man’s chest, over the heart. The cook’s own forward motion slid the sword through his chest and heart. He kept coming instead of falling, though. His teeth snapped together, and he grabbed two handfuls of her long brown hair. As she felt the pain in her scalp, she wished she’d had more time to braid her hair up before all this started.
Her back hit the wall, and the cook moved down the sword toward her. His teeth snapped closer to her face. His breath stunk and was cold as winter. Darn braced her forearm against his chest, and then into his throat, to hold him back. He kept opening and closing his jaws, trying to bite her.
She lifted a boot and stomped down against one of his knees to break it back the wrong way. She heard and felt something snap and the cook wavered on his feet, but he did not act as if he felt it nor noticed the new injury.
Darn growled in concert with the cook, in frustration, and dropped her weight suddenly. He still had her hair, but she rolled away anyway and fought through the pain of it. The cook’s face slammed against the wall as he tried to lunge in to bite her. She yanked her hair free of his grasp and pulled the sword out of his chest as she rolled to her feet again.
She tripped on Thomas’ feet and landed on her backside. Her dress was marred at the knees and back now. He grabbed for her, but she rolled away and up to her feet again.
The cook charged with a wild limp from the knee she had cracked for him. Darn sidestepped and gritted her teeth as she slashed the deadly point of the sword across his throat. She did not care for the cook’s life anymore, but she was no killer. He had been a loyal servant before and a kind enough man. She knew he had three or four children down in the city. This treachery was not a mortal kind, bought with coins and lies. He was no assassin by nature. This was some form of madness, and Darn hoped it had not come from the food. Perhaps the bite of an animal, although the scratches and bites on the cook’s back had the half moon shape of human teeth.
This made no sense.
Dawning on her slowly as the cook turned, she realized he had not yet fallen from his open, wounded throat. The skin hung down in flaps, and she could see the cords working within, as the man growled like a sick animal instead of speaking like a human. She stared at the wounds and stared into those horrid, pale eyes. There was no life left in him and yet he refused to fall and be still.
He charged again. She faked toward the door and he turned to meet her. Darn sprinted the other way and around faster than his busted knee would allow him to respond. On his slow turn, she took advantage. Darn stabbed through his back at the level of the left kidney. No barber, and few healers, could save a man from such a wound. Yet, he continued to turn.
She circled about the room to keep his back. She stabbed into the other kidney this time and gritted her teeth again as she prepared to do an uncivilized thing. She whipped the sword while it was planted inside the man, in order to rip a “C” shaped wound on the way out.
One of the squires, a bobbed and straw-haired boy named Jessie, had told her that secret when she asked in passing why the squires carried their tiny knives. The knight training the squires that day had walloped Jessie across the head for speaking in such a way to a princess. Darn’s face had turned red from surprise, and she had left Squire Jessie to the punishment. Her face was red again, but from exertion this time.
The cook finished his turn, unfazed by the fatal wounds to his kidneys. He grabbed at her again. She swept her hair back over her shoulders and backed away as she circled the edge of the room. He lunged, and she stabbed for his liver. She whipped another “C” for good measure. He kept coming. She slashed open his belly. She struck for the heart again, and then both lungs.
He still came for her. Nothing. Nothing would stop him. Those eyes and these wounds … He could not be a man any longer. The eyes were dead, and he continued to attack through every injury. He was some sort of ghoul, set upon her and her family to keep attacking until they were all dead. This was some form of evil magic too powerful for her to overcome alone with no training in war or monsters, and only a decorative sword with which to defend herself in her bloody bedchamber.
She ran around her room, and he was on her again. Darn jumped onto her bed and ran across it in her boots, from headboard to foot. The covers threatened to tangle her feet, but she lifted her boots and pumped her legs until she leapt off the end ahead of the ghoul.
She found herself in a corner, across the room from the exit, as the ghoulish cook stumbled through the light from the window, toward her. As the light reflected off the milky eyes of the creature, she thought that perhaps, if she could not kill a thing which was already dead, maybe she could blind it so that she would be somewhat harder to find.
Darn raised the sword, her hands shaking as she struck for the eyes.
But she missed.
The point met the bridge of the cook’s nose and the shaft bent with the flex in the metal. He grabbed for her again and unhinged his jaw to take a bite. The sword slipped, and the point drove into the tear duct of the cook’s left eye. Her stomach turned at the sight, and she was thankful she had not eaten. The stab would have been deadly to any ordinary man, but she feared it wasn’t enough to even blind a ghoul.
She dropped down and rolled away from the corner before the beast could take hold of her hair again. She tried to bring the sword with her, but it was wedged in the cook’s head and in the corner of the stone walls.
She abandoned it and crawled away, unarmed. Bits of glass bit into the heels of her hands, but Darn hardly noticed as she looked at the body of her brother, unmoving, and the door of her bedchamber, unguarded.
“I can’t stop him,” she whispered, “and I can’t save you. I’m sorry.”
Darn took to her feet and prepared to flee from her room to save herself. She looked over her shoulder to see how close behind the ghoul was. The cook had started to turn, but this time he halted. He fell to his face with the sword still planted in his skull. The weight of his body snapped the sword against the floor. The hilt shattered, and jewels of all sizes tumbled around the mess and gore across her bedchamber floor.
The ghoul went down and moved no more.
“The eyes?” Darn shook her head. Was that the weakness of this species of monster? “The head? … The mind. Wound its brain and mind …”
Her eyes went wide and she ran for her bed. She pulled the ruined linens off her mattress and turned toward her brother. But she was too late to do anything with them to stop his bleeding.
Thomas’ eyes had closed, and his mouth hung open. He lay in an awkward position; all the color had drained from his flesh with his blood. The wound across his neck was broad and ragged. No more blood pumped from the broken artery, which meant his heart had ceased to work. His spirit vacated his body.
“I’m sorry I was no faster, no better, and no more true, Thomas.”
She dropped her linens in a heap and ran from the room. She burst through the door into the passage and cried out, “Guards. Come quickly. We are under attack! Prince Thomas is dead. Help!”
Her voice echoed in both directions and then died against the stone. No hail or cries followed. No footsteps or motion greeted her plea. The walls were as dead as the bodies in the room behind her. She shuddered at the thought and took a few steps further down the passage.
Princess Darn stopped again. “Hello? Anyone? Father? Phillip? Alexander? Stephanie? … Nora? Is anyone still here? Please!”
Something stirred behind her, and there was a crash.
She whipped around to find the other end of the passage still empty. “Whoever is there, come out and show yourself or …”
She had no idea how to end that sentence.
The door to her chamber slammed against the wall, and she cried out in surprise. Thomas reeled out and held onto the wall.
“Thomas?” She took a step toward him.
He lifted his eyes, as pale and lifeless as those of the cook turned ghoul. There was nothing of her brother left in him. No memory of their lives together, or any other thought within his head, except violence and hunger. Those terrible eyes stared at her, and through her, at once.
He staggered toward her and she turned away to run. As she fled ahead of the ghoul now using her brother’s body to chase and attack, Darn wished she had another sword with which to pierce his mind and lay him to rest.
For now, she ran.
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