Perfect Shadows

chapter 22

As the door closed behind the madman who had captured him, Poley frantically sought a means to escape. The door was bolted and barred, and there was no window. Even the candles were burning dimly in that airless space—the candles! He wormed his way up the rough stones of the wall to his feet. The candle was too high for his hands, bound behind him, to reach. He almost sobbed in his frustration. Desperately he knocked the candle from the ledge with his shoulder, but the fall put it out. He turned to the second candle, on a higher, but narrower ledge. Carefully he nudged it over with his chin, gaining a painful burn on his cheek, and filling what air there was with the stench of his burning beard. Not daring to breathe he backed away. His luck returned to him, the candle guttered for a moment, then the flame burned high in the spilled grease. He tried to ignore the blistering pain in his wrists, and the sweat that ran into eyes, but the pain was unendurable and he jerked his hands from the flames. The sudden strain parted the strands that held him.

One of the servants came in then bringing the prisoner a tray to break his fast, but when she pushed the door open he fell on her, snatching the heavy tray from her hands and hitting her hard with the edge of it. She fell dead, her slender neck snapped like a flowerstalk, and he made his escape into the vast park surrounding the manor.

Poley had set off for the gates even as an unearthly howling broke out behind him, only to lose himself in the blowing snow. It was no more than a half hour before he found himself in a clearing in the wood, and realized with dismay that he was lost. He hadn’t seen the grey shapes that followed him, circled and surrounded him, until one of the wolves darted in and nipped at his calf, where his hose was thin and torn. He had seen them then, so many shadows in the snowy air, and he screamed. As if they had been awaiting that signal, the pack closed in, and the smell of death had filled the air as the dying man’s blood scalded the snow. Soon the wolves drifted away, leaving nothing to show what had occurred but a few scraps of rag and bone, and a patch of bloody ice, soon covered by the fresh falling snow.