Read Online Bloodstone by Helen C. Johannes - Free Book Online Page A

words hung in the air between them. Then Ulerroth’s face flushed crimson. “I’ll not—I’ll not—Gareth’s just a lad! You’ll not use him to—to—!” He strode to the door and swung round again, fists clenched. “By all the hosts in the Wehrland, I’ll not let you use that boy!”
    The man closed his eyes. His gloved fingers gripped the edge of the table and squeezed until he felt each separate grain of wood imprint itself on his flesh. “Bite your tongue, you seven-times fool,” he said in a voice whose softness threatened more than a bellow. “I wouldn’t harm him any more than you would.”
    When he opened his eyes again, he saw the innkeeper standing a few feet away, face white despite the color blotching his cheeks. His mouth worked like that of a beached fish, but no sound emerged.
    “How much do you really know about darkness, Ulerroth? You trade with me and fancy you’re flirting with the realm of the damned. You hold me up to your friends and customers and make coin of the connection, but how much can you really know of Beggeth if you think I’d be capable of something as evil and twisted as coupling with a boy?”
    He straightened, rising to his full height as fury filled him. Lifting his hands to his hood, he gripped the edges of it. “I could show you the handiwork of evil, and then, fool, you’d know the truth!”
    “No! Don’t!”
    The plea penetrated his consciousness slowly, as something akin to a distant but jarring sound, like the cry of a dying kitten. For a moment, he blinked, disoriented. Then his gaze focused on two protectively raised, hairy arms and a cowering, apron-clad body.
    Backed against the door like a cornered rabbit, Ulerroth whimpered, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—you can have what you want, just don’t—!”
    What? Plunge you into hell? Are you afraid to join me there? But the moment, the mood, the fury was gone. The man forced his fingers to relax, to unwind from his hood, to release it. His limbs felt oddly drained, heavy as lead. Seeing the chair close at hand, he pulled it out and sank into it.
    “I want the boy as my manservant,” he said, finding the words as weighted as his extremities. “After all, Ulerroth, what better match could there be than a blind boy and a shadow?”
    The innkeeper slowly unbent his bulk. The corners of his mouth twitched as if trying to form a grin and failing. “When—when you put it that way...”
    The man heard the door open and snap closed. Go, yes, and leave me be. You think you know what I’ve done, and so do I, but neither of us really knows anything. And I’m too tired to care. He licked his gloved finger and thumb tips and snuffed out the candle. When the acrid smoke dissipated, he leaned forward on the table, rested his head in the crook of his folded arms, and slept.
    ****
    Mirianna awakened slowly. Her head felt heavy, as if she hadn’t slept, yet here she was, still rolled in her blankets and the sky already light. I must get up and put the water on to boil. Peeling off bedding with stiff fingers, she struggled to a sitting position.
    “She’s awake,” a man’s voice said.
    She frowned. What was a stranger doing in the cottage at this hour? Did her father already have a customer? She rubbed sleep from her eyes and saw the cottage’s loft now ringed with birch bark. Disoriented, she turned to look for her father and found him puttering by a fire.
    “Ah,” Tolbert said, smiling, “just in time for tea and porridge.”
    Tea and porridge. Mirianna closed her eyes as the mundane image brought her firmly into the present. “Why did you let me sleep?” She pushed free of the remaining bedding.
    “Rees thought it was a good idea.” Her father ladled out a bowlful of gray mush.
    He would, she thought, then wondered why she thought so. Like bits of a dream, the events of the night shuttled through her mind. The memory of his hand on her breast brought her fingers rushing to her bodice, but, to her