“And killed them all!” That was a story I could get behind.
Caedmon nodded gravely. “Yes, she killed them all. And then she killed their families, down to the last child, still in the cradle. And then she killed their generals and their families, their nobles and their families, the leading townsmen who had supported their war efforts by taxation, the merchants who had sold them arms, and even the cooks who had fed them. A bloody great slaughter of virtually everyone who had had anything to do with their treachery.”
I blinked at him. “Damn.”
“Oh no.” Caedmon looked at me, his eyes gleaming. “We’re not to ‘damn’ yet.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Do I want to hear this?” I asked him.
He cocked a head. “I don’t know. Do you?”
I debated it. But I’d polished off the bird, and I’d come this far. “Yes. Finish it.”
Caedmon obliged. “After the slaughter, it is said that Alfhild had a great caldron made, out of the basin of the large fountain in front of her castle. In it, she cooked up the flesh of the perfidious, boiling them whole, and then served them to those she’d seen fit to spare. They were forced to continue the feast well into the next day, until every scrap was consumed, and they had utterly devoured the bodies of their relatives and friends.”
Okay, I thought sickly. Really glad I’d already finished that bird.
I drank wine.
“I’m guessing there was some payback?” I said.
“Not at first. Having thoroughly cowed what was left of her old ‘allies,’ she absorbed their lands into her own, and turned the entire production capacity of her new realm to war. She had one enemy left, you see.”
“Your ancestor.”
He nodded. “My great-uncle, in fact. Who she believed had bribed her supporters to turn on her, in order to prevent the cost and loss of a war.”
“Had he?”
Caedmon shrugged. “Probably. War is expensive and he had a great reputation for parsimony, and such things are commonly done. But Alfhild was apparently not one to understand subtlety, or perhaps she simply wanted to continue her expansion, now that she had the means. In any case, it was her undoing.”
“Because your uncle was so clever,” I guessed, only half joking.
Caedmon was no slouch.
“Well, of course.” He smiled. “But it was also a factor that Alfhild didn’t stop to consider that she had just killed most of the coalition’s experienced generals, and that many of the ones remaining secretly despised her. Their troops surrounded her as she took her place on the battlefield, and when my uncle gave the signal, everyone turned on her at once. His troops watched her own people take her down.”
“And Alfhild?” I leaned forward. “What on earth did they devise for her?”
“What on earth indeed.” Caedmon’s voice had taken on a slightly vicious edge. “For her crimes, it was determined that killing her would be poor justice. She would simply reincarnate, and where would we be then?”
I frowned. “Nowhere. I mean, assuming all that . . . stuff . . . is even true, she wouldn’t remember anything, right?”
A blond eyebrow lifted. “Ah, but there’s the rub, as your Shakespeare would say. For some of our people claim to experience flashes of past lives. I myself once had an incredibly vivid dream of what it feels like to be a tree, shivering in the wind. It was quite . . . sublime.”
The conversation was making me vaguely uncomfortable all of a sudden; I wasn’t sure why. “People dream all the time,” I pointed out. “And some feel incredibly real, when you’re in them.”
“And when you come out?”
I didn’t answer, thinking of a few I’d had lately.
“Ah, well, you’re probably right,” Caedmon said, toying with the knife I’d been using to eat apples, when I’d had any apples. “But I have heard a young child give a battle cry from a long-dead language while playing with his friends. And seen a girl weaving a pattern she thought she’d invented, but which was once the standard of an ancient king. And watched a bard sing a song that hadn’t been heard in ten thousand years, and quiet an entire hall.”
And, for a moment, so did I. A huge hall of gray stone rose up around me, with tables running along three sides, and an old man—or a fey, I guessed—sitting on a stool at the center, and slowly rising to his feet along with his song. It echoed off the walls and out the windows like a blaze of trumpets, startling several birds from the rafters. While among the fey, food trembled on spoons untasted, wine went undrunk, and the whole chamber stayed utterly silent, mesmerized by the long-lost ballad come to life once more.
Then the image winked out, as abruptly as it had come, leaving me blinking and swallowing and shaking my head.
Damn, I wished he’d stop doing that!
I drank wine, and wished for something stronger. This sort of thing happened around Caedmon occasionally, and it was . . . unsettling. At least with Dorina, I’d actually seen the stuff; I just didn’t remember it. But with Caedmon . . .
Sometimes Caedmon freaked me out.
I caught him watching me, and I shook my head to clear it. I wanted to ask if he’d done that on purpose, but if he hadn’t . . . I didn’t want him knowing that Dorina could pick up his thoughts, even stray ones. Caedmon was as secretive in his own way as a master vamp, and I didn’t think he’d care for that.
“So you’re telling me you’re a believer?” I said, a little hoarsely.
“I’m . . . open-minded. I know you humans think us so old, me especially”—he flashed a grin—“but it doesn’t seem that way to us. Quite the contrary; there never seems to be enough time to experience all of life’s wonders. I take some comfort in the idea that, perhaps, we will have a second chance.”
“And Alfhild? Did she get a second chance?”
He gave a quick bark of laughter, but there was no mirth in it this time. “No. The view was that she’d already had one, and no one wanted to see what she would do with a third! And not just in this life; they were also worried about the next. What if she came back? What if she remembered? Would they ever be safe? Would their families?”
I narrowed my eyes. “So they did . . . what? Take her back to the tower to molder some more?”
“No. They took her to Earth. And killed her here, it was said, in front of a great throng of those she had wronged. My great-uncle swung the blade himself, lest any of his people be targets for her partisans’ revenge. And afterward, her bones were burned, releasing her spirit into a cold, alien world, ever to walk unfamiliar pathways, moaning and crying and dreaming of revenge she’ll never have. For she can never now go home.”
I shivered; I admit it. The story was bad enough, but Caedmon’s delivery was worthy of an Oscar if they have one for “seriously creepy.” And then he suddenly stopped, dead still, and turned to stare at something outside the tent.
“What is that?”
I dropped the wineskin and grabbed the knife. “What is what?”
“Not sure, but I feel a sudden chill . . . something ominous . . . something cold . . .”
I started to head out, but he grabbed my arm.
“No, wait. I think . . . I think . . . oh. Oh no!”
“What is it?”
“Dory—”
“What?”
“I think it’s Alfhild!” And then he lunged at me, from zero to a hundred in about a nanosecond, and I jumped and yelped and smacked him, over and over, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.
“You bastard!”
“I assure you,” he gasped, “my parents were married with great ceremony!”
I smacked him some more. It did not appear to help. “Some bedtime story! Do not tell Aiden that one!”
Caedmon grinned at me from the floor, where he’d ended up. “Well, not until he’s older.”
“Not at all! Or God help you if Claire finds out!”
He watched me from under spilled golden hair. “Claire must stop smothering the boy. I understand her concern; we all do. And it is not without merit. But keeping him here, on Earth, tied to her apron strings—”
“He’s a year old!”