The Darkangel Read Free Page B

Vengeance
    "Who will kill the vampyre?" said Aeriel softly, softly. The vehemence of her own words surprised her. She was kneeling beside the wide, low windows of the deserted alcove just off the empty dyeing chamber. Night outside was dark and still. Her mouth tasted like metal. She had not known she could feel such bitterness.
    She remembered waking hours, many hours after the sun had set, and seeing old Bomba along with some others of the servant women murmuring over her or moving quietly about the darkened chamber. Bomba had laid a cool, damp gauzecloth on her forehead.
    Time passed. And then, she remembered Eoduin's mother, the syndic's wife, shoving suddenly into the room, the women falling back deferentially, uncertainly before their mistress, who came to stand over Aeriel, white-faced and screaming: "So she is awake, now, is she—why wasn't I told? My daughter is dead because of you, worthless chattel!"
    The woman's hair was disheveled, her thin cheeks tear-streaked, her garments rent with mourning. Her face above Aeriel looked like Eoduin's, only older. One long finger she leveled at Aeriel. "Why could you not have protected my daughter? You should have given your life for your mistress." The woman's breast heaved in a sob. "Why could the vampyre not have taken you instead of Eoduin?"
    And then the sharp crack of the woman's hand against Aeriel's cheek, so sudden the tears sprang to her eyes. Startled murmurs from the servants, the syndic hurrying short-breathed into the chamber, pulling his wife away. "Come off, my dear. Such displays of grief are untowardly. You demean yourself before mere serving-women___" Then Bomba's great bulk bending over Aeriel again and fingering her stinging cheek gently with murmurs of "There, there, child. There."
    Aeriel beside the alcove window stared out into the night. Since her recovery she had kept as far from Eoduin's mother as she might. She thought then of Eoduin, the mistress she had served almost since before she could walk. She recalled it vividly: the aristocrat's young doted-upon daughter pointing her out to her father at the slave fair twelve summers gone and begging him to buy that one, that one. Eoduin, who had been her constant companion since—more friend than mistress, though a proud and a high-handed friend.
    Her only friend.
    Aeriel sighed bitterly. Now all things had changed. His daughter dead, the syndic planned to sell Aeriel soon—she had heard the servants' whispering in the halls—his wife demanded it. Aeriel thought of the provincial slave fairs in Orm: bids and shackles, confinements, blows. Here in the syndic's house, Eoduin had always protected her.
    She would be sold northward, she was certain of it, deeper into the hills. Here at plain's edge, owned servants were sometimes treated with tolerance. But it was worse in the mountain heartlands: tales of slaves beaten or worked to death___ It chilled her, thinking of it. Aeriel
    closed her eyes to the dark outside. I cannot live without Eoduin, she thought, and I would rather die than brave the slave markets of Orm.
    She pulled her tangled thoughts away from that, tried to think on other things. Already the village poets were beginning to sing of the syndic's hapless daughter, stolen away for the vampyre's bride. Yet with all their singing and moaning and murmuring in all the fortnight since, not one of Eoduin's friends or kith had stirred a step to climb the steeps again and confront her murderer. That is not justice, Aeriel raged silently, in despair.
    Holding the icarus' great black feather up before her face, she opened her eyes and stared at it. Its dull darkness absorbed and nullified the white and smoky lamplight. Without, the shade of night, now three-quarters of a half-month old, loomed blacker than birds' eyes.
    The white plain of Avaric gleamed faintly in the pale blue light of Oceanus.
    "Someone must kill the vampyre," she breathed, as to the feather, almost pleading; the quill's black plumage