HOW THE SHADOWS FEASTS
vii. of black dogs and pale horses
the fourth night
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THE HORSE APPROACHING THE CONVENT WAS PALE AS DEATH.
It seemed to melt with the night and the glistening snow flying beneath its hooves. From its nostrils streamed the mist that covered the woods in its eerie shroud, and at its feet, a hundred eyes like embers shone from the faces of sable hounds. Their howling muzzles were blazing, spitting saliva like liquid fire while they followed the wrathful call of a hunting horn.
The one that clearly had to belong to their blue-eyed master holding his deadly weapon high that could rip apart body and soul alike.
With the sound mingled the chime of bells, promising a legion of beasts lurking in the dark behind: The elegy of the Wild Hunt.
Saskia froze.
They are coming for me. The inevitable death waiting since she heard that prophecy finally caught up with her.
"Perhta, keep me—" but the arrow prayer died away unfinished.
Their mistress would not care to keep in her sheltering light what belonged to the darkness. Like the beasts of the Wolf Nights, Saskia was only fit to crawl in Perhta's shadows.
She knew she should've run back inside as fast as she could. But neither her feet nor her mind obeyed her screaming instincts.
Eyes wide and heart jumping, Saskia waited for this dead rider to reach her and pierce her heart and soul finally.
However, the instant the flames circling the convent illuminated him, the cruel imagery disappeared. Shadows burned away by a sacred light. Or a hallucination slain by truth?
There, from the misty night, emerged Prince Anyan von Jakona. The stranger, almost as pale as his horse himself, presented a slightly unsettling sight, but there was no horn or weapon in his hand, his mount breathed warm air, and the black dogs following did so calmly.
They looked all too similar to the demonic hounds that were there before and the one that broke into the convent. However, they were clearly no infernal creatures now.
Where a wild hunter had been a lonely pilgrim stood.
"Isn't it late to seek Perhta's advice now, lord?" Saskia called out to him, swallowing tears and the dull feeling of dread while all she wanted to do was scream into the night to bring Katinka back.
How she managed to hold together the shattered pieces of herself, she did not know—but they pierced her hands nevertheless.
Anyan slid off the back of his horse but stayed where he was not crossing the circle.
"You know that's not what brought me here, Sister."
A shiver ran down Saskia's spine.
We will meet again very soon. So soon?
Heart still pulsing agony through her veins with every aching beat, Saskia could not bring herself to care truly. Strange hunter or blue-eyed demon, madness or a haunting—nothing of it mattered anymore. The only truth that did so was that Katinka was lost.
"What did so then?" she asked dully, maybe too quietly to be understood across the distance.
But the prince did.
"Freedom, Sister. Peace."
"This is the last place you would find that," Saskia answered, still not attempting to get closer to him. "If you wish I'll light a blessed candle in your name, lord."
"I'm not talking about candles." Anyan's eyes turned contemptuously towards the flame that did not paint any warm glow onto his face. The shadows it repelled seemed to leave nothing but a figure as delicate as a breath of frost.
Silent fear crept back into her frozen bones.
"Then you may search yourself for freedom and peace. Go pray to the gods, to Perhta."
The sigh that escaped his pale lips sounded like a sweet mockery of sorrow. "They will not hear me, I fear."
"I cannot help you with that. They don't answer my pleas as well."
"It's the lot of the cursed."
Curse?
The horse's tail swished nervously as it eyed the little flames glowing in the dark. It looked as translucent as its master.
An icy wind brushed Saskia's cheeks and got tangled in her hair, but she did not care for the cold. Her eyes stayed fixated on the candles fearfully, as she hoped—prayed—they would not extinguish.
"Who are you?"
"I already told you. A hunter."
"Hunter of what?"
To this, Anyan simply smiled.
The thin scar that parted one half of his face and glowed like liquid silver now twitched with the expression, suddenly making him look cruel.
"I think you should go now, lord," Saskia forced out of her dry throat, already turning back to the door. Please, Perhta, keep out the shadows ...
The white runes glowed in the dark like a silent promise of shelter. Never had their edges and curves looked more beautiful to Saskia, and never had the thought of feeling herself locked behind them appeared more comforting.
"Is that all you will do for your little fawn, too?" Anyan's voice rang out through the night, thundering with taunt.
Already at the threshold, Saskia abruptly stopped.
What?
"While her sacrifice will keep the Wolves fed, you will only light a candle and pray to the Bright Mother like a tame, good daughter, desetnitsa?"
Feeling every word sinking into her skin like a dagger, Saskia's nails dug into the door frame, and she welcomed the pain of wooden shivers in her soft skin.
Saskias voice trembled from rage, grief, and fear as she repeated her question. "Who are you?"
Though she barely heard her words herself, she knew Anyan would.
"The Master of the Woods. The one who freed you. The one who tried to comfort you. The one you saw at midwinter," he answered.
At midwinter midnight, in front of the old sanctuary at the snow-clad crossroads, where you might glimpse your soulmate. Before the snow melts, you will find a soulmate in a devil with no heart.
Turning around, eyes burning with the fire of the Bright Mother Saskia, met his gaze from afar that now truly shone like that of a creature far from human. Even von Jakona's white, blind eye held some eerie light in it.
"You are a demon," she spat. "A devil with no heart."
Perhaps it was unwise to disgruntle such a creature. But what worse than what already happened could await her? For once, she thought to feel her power giving her strength if only for keeping out this monster.
But it was only the horse that seemed to snort in displeasure while Anyan von Jakona softly shrugged. "A heart can be a treacherous thing."
"And now you are here to do what? Mock me? Levy the sacrifice you demand for your listening to prayers never meant for you?" Saskia took a few steps back, ignoring the concerning fact that she did not feel the snow on her bare feet anymore.
"Fine. Take it. Whatever it is, and be it my life. Take it and leave, demon."
"I cannot." For the first time, she thought to hear something like genuine sadness in the voice that had spoken from the night and the hound's mouth. "I am bound to this place and all its misery."
So am I, as it seems.
"It's dangerous. Someday her curse will bring us all suffering, Borut" Saskia had overheard her stepmother tell her father shortly before he sent her to the convent.
Back then, she had wanted to deny it. It—I could never harm anyone! Saskia had thought.
Oh, how wrong she had been.
"Is this why you haunt me? Murder travelers? Feed innocent people to the Oder?" Saskia snapped. Why else would Katinka have left if not because this creature drove her mad with fear?
In the flickering candlelight, she almost expected Rogdai's blood still on his pale hands, Polnoch's words resonating in her head. Demons. The Wild Hunter. The Master of Wolves.
Anyan tilted his head, similar to the demonic hound in the chapel. "And who is to blame for all that, desetnitsa? Rogdai was a cruel lord and an arrogant fool disrespecting the Nights of Smoke and all their servants. He did not listen to my warnings, so the creatures of the dark took him.
"As for your little fawn, she was taken by that braggadocio Silvan von Winterthal. A poor excuse of a prince who proudly claims to enforce power that has never belonged to him. He found himself a few stupid dogs to push around and calls them an Order of Wolves."
Each of his words dripped from hatred, sending a thundering wind through the treetops. It reflected in his irides as well glowing like blue fire—the eyes of a devil.
Our Prince of Wolves would do better to seal his doors very well at night, Saskia thought shivering—and a wicked part of her hoped he would not.
"We share the same enemy, desetnitsa," Anyan said, and those words resonated somewhere in Saskia's heart. Foolish and desperate as it was it wanted them to be true.
"Why would I trust a creature of the shadows?"
Boldly, she took one step further, looking Anyan straight in the face. Now so close, Saskia could see that the fires didn't reflect in his eyes. Abandoned by its warmth, they stayed icy and pale.
"We both are." The demon's lips curled into a smile before all humor left his expression and with it, all cruelty. "Did I ever harm you?"
Yes, Saskia wanted to answer. But she knew it would have been a lie. It was her father who sold her to a cruel lord. It was Mother Gesa who beat her and taught Katinka fear and self-loathing. It was Prince Silvan and the Order of Wolves who punished her without mercy.
Still, she could not bring herself to tell the truth.
However, this demon seemed all too human now. And almost real. If not for his translucence where the blessed candle's light touched him, his face was that of a man. Warm flesh and sharp bone.
If Silvan looked like a creation from the Winter Mountains, Anyan resembled their true frozen heart, carved from the oldest part of the glacier where no living creature had ever been and that never a ray of sunlight had touched.
You cannot trust demons ...
"How much do you want your friend back?"
"Katinka ...," speaking her name alone felt like something sacrilegious as if that was a right I had already lost and thus it hurt like a curse. Hot tears streamed down Saskia's face.
"...she will be dead by sunrise." It was a truth too ugly to fill the silence of the night.
"Do not weep, desetnitsa. She is not lost yet." Anyan raised his hand as if to touch her, but stopped in mid-motion. Whatever he wanted to do, the flames would not let him.
"I offer you a deal. Her freedom for mine. What are you willing to give for her?"
"Everything," Saskia breathed.
This time, her step was more careful, tentative even, as she drew closer to the invisible line that was the last thing keeping them apart. She wondered what would happen if she crossed it.
Perhaps she was already frozen, dreaming of this madness.
"Your life?"
"It will end here anyway."
Saskia reached out for him, almost feeling the wall in front of her that granted her safety. But was it when she could be the Order's next victim any time? Was it worth anything without Katinka?
"Your heart?" Anyan asked.
"If I have one left, all its rottenness is yours now."
"And your soul?"
"It's cursed already."
Why not give it to a devil with no heart and see if this soulmate of yours would tear it in half—or bring her back from the brink of death, eventually?
"You are not afraid of what will become of you?"
Why would she? Saskia had already brought misery to others, even the only person she had left in this cold world. Caught up trying to protect her petty life and what held it together, she had turned into worse than Mother Gesa, worse than what they saw in her. She had become a curse herself. What could there be that was worse than that?
"No." Finally, she crossed the line, her numb fingers touching his to seal their pact. It felt like part of her died right here on a snowy field somewhere between shadows and light. "To get her back I will become as monstrous as I must."
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17 577 words
milestone 3 ✗