The Man In The Wind (2 page)

       The effect was more unnerving than Iris could have explained. She fought the urge to step back, because despite his height and his air of reanimation, he wasn’t moving to threaten her. Instead, he spoke three words into the void between them. His voice was soft, but it carried.

       “Who are you?” The fact that the prisoner—for it was clear now that he was, in fact, captive—was the one asking the sensible questions did not go unnoticed by Iris Deleone. She chewed her lip thoughtfully.

       “Shouldn’t I be asking you the same?” The stranger gave her the look of one who was trying to decide whether or not she was serious. She noticed that his face held a peculiar ageless handsomeness that was almost weirder than the rest of him.

       “I was here first.” The juvenile simplicity of his answer threw her off. She narrowed her eyes.

       “Fine.” She hesitated. Was there anything she could tell him that wouldn’t make her look bad? Briefly, she considered the possibilities. Oh, I was just lost in the tundra and happened to find my way here. Actually, I’m a distant half-cousin of the king. Twice removed. You wouldn’t know me from pictures.

       It was ridiculous. In fact, the whole thing was. But she had gotten herself in far too deep. She sensed that he knew this as well. And as he was obviously being contained in this awful shelter, she doubted he was on very pleasant terms with the king.

       What did she have to lose, really? Only…everything. She sucked in her breath and told the truth. There was just something about him that inspired honesty. Whether it was the sharp ultramarine eyes or that uncomfortably chiseled jawline, she couldn’t say.

       “I came to steal stuff from Serberos,” she said plainly. At that, the man’s formerly impassive face changed, his eyebrow quirking upward. “But then I saw footprints on the stairs, and I followed them to that door.” She shrugged. “I’m a thief. Are you happy now?” There was no reply. The girl folded her arms. “I’ve told you my story, so tell me yours.” She was not happy about the way in which he had so deftly backed her into a corner, although she had to admit she’d made it pretty easy for him. He looked away from her, up toward the window.

       “I don’t really remember,” he said. Somehow, the answer didn’t surprise her. Fixing her eyes upon him to show she wasn’t about to back down, she tried another tack.

       “Have you got a name?” His eyes returned to hers.

       “It’s Rai.” She already knew that was all she was going to get.

       “I’m Iris.” She tapped her lock pick against her lower lip. “As long as I’m here, I might as well ask: Do you know anything about the treasure room?”

       “That’s where you’re headed?” He paused. “You won’t get in.” The finality with which he gave his decree left Iris mildly insulted.

       “They all say that,” she said. “I’m sure it’s been said about the castle, too. And yet, here I am.” Again, an impression of passive incredulity slid across his features.

       “I should know,” he added. “I’m the one who worked the magic that protects it.” That stopped her. She hadn’t bargained on any magic.

       “What?” She stared hard at him. It wasn’t part of the plan, but new challenges always piqued her interest. “What kind of magic?”

       “It is…forbidden.” Rai spoke as though he had to draw the word unwillingly from his own mouth. She frowned. Apparently he had been strictly instructed never to discuss the nature of the enchantment with anyone…which was why she knew she had to find out. She inched toward him.

       “And what does that mean?” He had one pale eye on her, watching, wary, like a hunted animal.

       “I’m not at liberty to say.” He must really have beaten that secret into you, the girl thought, not without pity. The second she came within arm’s reach, she put her fingers out and touched his arm, gently. He actually flinched. An odd compassion struck up in her heart. For all his stony silence and cold gaze, Rai was afraid of her. He was probably afraid of everyone.

       “Do they hurt you?” she asked. Her voice was considerably softer, but Rai’s jaw tightened as soon as the question left her lips, and she knew the answer would be yes.

       “Not anymore. They’re too cowardly.” She looked straight into his face.

       “Are you trying to intimidate me?” He blinked. “Because it’s not working. I’ve dealt with worse than you.” The shift in her demeanor surprised him. He glanced down at her hand on his arm. How long had it been since someone had touched him so willingly?

       “It’s death magic,” he told her. He was deeply impressed by her brazen courage, the way she spoke to him as if they both belonged in that cramped tower cell. How she had managed to get there was of no concern to him; he barely ever saw anything beyond the castle walls, and his memory of the outside world was blurred and ever fading. He was so inured to the idea of lifelong solitary confinement that had he realized she would ultimately save him, he never would have believed. But even then, as he repaid honesty with honesty, his salvation was being born as a notion in the far corner of Iris’ mind. “The area around those chambers is full of skeletons. If you try to enter, they will arise and kill you.” Before she could say anything, he continued. “There is nothing you can do. You can’t harm a thing if it’s already dead.”

       “You did that?” she asked. “That’s what you do?” He nodded slowly, expecting the familiar look of revulsion that always came with the understanding of his power.

       “That and other things.” He regarded her searchingly, waiting for the moment in which she’d recoil from him.

       It never came. In lieu of disgust, her eyes were shaded with something like sadness. The heavy truth had just dawned on her. “So that’s how it is,” she said quietly. “The legends aren’t about Serberos at all. They’re about you.”

When Iris was a child, Serberos Akaryas had figured prominently in the sort of bedtime stories that were told by parents in hopes of scaring good behavior from their children. Without fail, the grizzled old king played the villain, and as his bitter life stretched longer, the tall, grim tales about him seemed to inch closer and closer to the truth. As was often the case with childhood reprobates, he was popular among the boys, who embellished and retold the stories with gleeful abandon. There was occasionally some debate over which was the best, but as far as sheer grisliness went, only one stood out enough to claim the prize.

       No one knew for sure exactly where the legend of Volikar’s “dead army” had come from, but by the time Iris was in school, it was a fixture of folklore across countries. War had long ago succumbed to a peace that was so far stable, if not guaranteed, and so all accounts of the hellish militia were second and third-hand, eavesdropped from a stranger, or told by a friend of a friend. Many, especially the mothers, discounted these reports entirely. “Just monster stories,” they would say, speaking in the well-worn platitudes of the sheltered. “Boys will be boys.” Still, the rumors persisted.

       Iris was nine when she heard about the Legion of Death, as it had come to be called, for the first time. She and a group of others were clustered in the sun on the long, sloping lawn of their private school, listening while a boy named Dante Cypriss gave his rendition of the tale. He was ten, deadly serious, and his telling left something to be desired. He spoke like he was reciting a campfire ghost story—and in some sense, he was, his captive audience huddled close around him.

       “They say only half of the soldiers are really alive, did you know that?” Solemnly, the members of the circle shook their heads. Dante Cypriss nodded gravely. “It’s because he collects the ones he kills, and the friendlies, too. Just picks ‘em right up off the ground.”

       “But…how? I mean, they’re dead…right?” The question came from a girl in braided pigtails and thin, round glasses, a patch of freckles splashed across the bridge of her blunt nose. Her forehead was furrowed in anticipation of Dante’s answer. He hesitated.

       “Well….they were. But then they aren’t anymore.” This explanation was just vague enough to be satisfactory, and they all fell into silent contemplation. Was it possible for corpses to get up and walk again? But at such a tender age, the dark implications of such a story remained mostly beyond their grasp, and so talk gradually shifted back toward the mundane: homework, or tests, or who liked who. For Iris, however, the story stuck in the back of her mind, putting down roots, like a tree.

       Rai nodded, in a way that very much recalled the sober young face of Dante Cypriss. “So the Legion of Death,” Iris said. “It exists?” He smirked wryly.

       “Is that what you call it?”

       “When we were kids,” she said, a little defensively. He shrugged.

       “He doesn’t call it anything. But, yes.” A protracted, heavy pause. “And yes, I made it.”

       “Why?” She was watching him with the intent expression of a pupil, having all but forgotten about her original purpose.

       “Why do you think?” he asked. For the first time, his voice was slightly sharp. She took her hand off his arm. When he continued, the edge had disappeared. “I had no choice.” Thoughtfully, he amended his statement. “I have no choice.”

       “Are you indebted?” Rai looked at her carefully then, his azure eyes seeming to bore straight through her. She resisted the urge to step away.

       “You’re interested?” he asked. “At the end of the story, you will walk out that door and we will never meet again. What’s the point?” The girl pursed her lips. The thought engendered earlier—that of his rescue—was drifting slowly to the forefront of her consciousness. He saw that she was thinking and said no more.

       “How long have you been here?” she asked, without meeting his eyes.

       “I don’t know.” Truthfully, it was getting very difficult to conjure up any image except that of the room in which they stood. He kept this to himself.

       “Will you ever be free?” To this, he knew the answer.

       “No.” Her green-grey gaze flicked to his face, alight with a bright, daring spark.

       “Shall we change that?” As soon as he realized what she meant, a tight, unfamiliar emotion began to gather in his chest.

       “It would be infinitely more dangerous for you to leave with me,” he told her. She shrugged. Again, he glanced toward the window, but he didn’t move, or make any indication that he was going to accept her offer. After a minute of nothing, Iris rolled her eyes.

       “God, it’s like you want me to leave you in this shithole.” She turned away, toward the exit. “Come on. I decided for you. We’re out of here.” Halfway out into the narrow hall, she looked at him and said, “I assume you won’t repeal the magic around the treasury for me.”

       “I can’t,” he said, with genuine apology. “The unbinding of the spell would attract too much attention.” She didn’t seem fazed.

       “I figured it would be too easy, but that’s okay. You’re the most valuable thing he’s got here anyway.” Side by side, they scooted along the wall, toward the open chamber. As soon as they emerged, Iris took a quick look around. Like before, all was empty. “This is almost too simple,” she remarked lightly. “Is there a catch?” Although she was still careful as she retraced her steps down the winding path, she moved with much less trepidation than before.

       “The only time anyone ever comes up here is when he checks on me in the morning and at night. At sunrise, he will discover my absence, and once he has…” He trailed off. An irrational fear had cropped up in his thoughts that if he told her the consequences of these rash actions, she might return him to his confinement.

       “What?” Her voice broke through his apprehension.

       “He will hunt us down.” 

       No more was said.

       They could feel the drafty winter air coming around the final corner; Iris had left the door of the abandoned chamber open just a crack, but the wind had blown it ajar in her absence. Rai pulled it shut behind him, and for just a moment, a creeping uneasiness crawled across the girl’s skin. He was a master of the dead, and he had just locked the door. She crossed to the window, putting as much space between them as she could, and looked out onto the desolate landscape below. Even now, the prints she had left were gone, covered over by a new layer of snow. She looked over her shoulder.