She paused, waiting.
“What do you want?” he asked her. “You did no wrong to me, and I none to you, I think.”
“I just wanted to see you in the dusk,” she said, “to see if the shadows made you look like they say that prince did. To see if you might be his by-blow, as some whispered. Shadow-born. Demon’s get.”
“Do you think I am?” She puzzled him. She was cleaner and prettier than she had been before, better cared for in both dress and manner, and while she did not seem precisely friendly, neither did she seem spiteful.
“You’re not what you seem,” she said, turning away. She took three steps before turning back to look at him. “There was nothing in those ruins, not even shadows, because there was no moon to make shades. But if you want to hear the weeping of ghosts, go to Ravnholt Manor.”
Because of the cool weather and the clouds, the abandoned path leading to Ravnholt Manor was not at all overgrown or difficult to pass except for some fallen branches and a thick cushion of leaf litter. He came into the clearing at midday two days after his departure from Lavas. He discovered eight graves dug beside a chapel that was just big enough to seat a half dozen worshipers beside its miniature Hearth. From a distance, the mounded graves still looked fresh, but that was only because so few weeds had grown in the dirt. It wasn’t until he came up close that he saw how the earth had settled and compacted. A deer’s track, its sides crumbling, marked the corner of one mound. A rat sprinted away through the ruined main house, whip tail vanishing into a hole in the rubble. Otherwise it was silent.
No. There. He heard a faint honking and, looking up, saw a straggling “v” of geese headed north, not more than a dozen. He put a hand to his face, feeling tears of joy welling there, and he smiled. Rage and Sorrow snuffled around the fallen outbuildings. There was a weaving shed, a privy, two low storage huts, and a trio of cottages. The byre hadn’t burned, but its thatched roof had fallen in. Alain poked through the rubble of the longhouse with his staff, but he found nothing except broken pots, a pair of half eaten baskets, and the remains of two straw beds dissolving into the ash-covered ground.
A twig snapped.
“What do you want?” asked a voice from the woods, a man hidden among the trees. The voice seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
“Just looking for the four women who were taken from this place by bandits.”
He felt a breath, an intake of air, and threw himself flat. An arrow passed over his head and thunked into a charred post behind him. Barking wildly, the hounds charged into the trees. By the time Alain scrambled to his feet, he heard a man shrieking in terror.
“Nay! Nay! Call them off! I beg you! Anything! Anything!”
Alain pushed through the brush to find Sorrow standing on top of a man. His right wrist bled where Rage had bitten him. A bow carved of oak lay on the ground atop a fallen arrow. The man writhed, moaning and whimpering, as Sorrow nosed his throat.