The Silver Knight Read Free Page A

to open the lid.
    He walked slowly toward the altar. Wide, solid pillars painted in red and blue joined in simple arches on either side of him. The roof was timbered and undecorated. The narrow windows were paned with small quarries of plain glass. Cold and damp seeped through the stone pavement, seeming to chill his toes through his boots.
    A narrow grille set into the floor drew his attention. Sufyan paused and examined it for a moment before he lost interest. He shivered and looked back at the bell tower. A colored rope hung from the loft, its end coiled around a hook set into the wall. He felt the urge to pull on it to see if ringing the bell would summon the blood-fiend. Already he regretted his impetuous offer to stay in the church and help the silver knight.
    It had seemed like a good idea at the time, a way of escaping more of that piss-poor ale and the enthusiastic attention of the villagers. He'd decided this so-called fiend was nothing supernatural but wholly the work of human agency. Sufyan imagined it was a ruse dreamed up by a local gang of smugglers, who used superstition to scare away the villagers. The knight was probably their ringleader, who set up yearly meetings in the church under the guise of battling the blood-fiend. And as for the local man who'd died... he'd obviously spied on the smugglers and had been caught and killed as a warning to the villagers to stay away.
    He, however, was no mere peasant to be tricked so easily. Sufyan felt confident that he could take on a handful of smugglers and expose this cunning deception. Perhaps the Prince Bishop would reward him for uncovering the trickery. Sufyan already knew what he would ask for as recompense—six months taken off his current sentence.
    The cold seemed to deepen around him. The flames in the lamps closest to him guttered as a breeze whispered through the church. It brushed his hair, and Sufyan felt his skin tighten in response. No wonder the villagers believed in the story of the blood-fiend; their church was as cold as Hell and had all the welcome and atmosphere of a charnel house.
    He turned back to the altar, thinking to tuck himself into the priest's niche where it'd be warmer. As he strode forward, he realized he was no longer alone in the church. A slender figure dressed in silver mail knelt in a tiny chapel to the right of the altar.
    Sufyan frowned. How had the knight got past him? It was impossible—unless, of course, he'd been within the chapel all this time. Annoyed, Sufyan approached, glancing at the little chapel. In appearance as plain as the rest of the church, it differed in only one respect—its window, paned with red glass in myriad different shades. To him, it looked like a jumble, a window made of off-cuts from some larger work, but even though the sun had gone from the sky, still a light shone through the red window and brought color to the silver knight's pale expression.
    Hands clasped in prayer, his helm on the floor beside him and his face lifted to the window, the knight remained motionless, as if unaware of Sufyan's scrutiny.
    Sufyan stared at him, noticing everything—the style of the mail, the shape of the spurs, the worn scabbard, and the glinting hilt of the sword. The knight's long surcoat was quartered white and gray, the only identifying emblem a serpent coiled around an oak tree, sewn in silver thread.
    It was not a symbol Sufyan recognized. English lords had a fondness for dragons, lions, and other noble beasts. The serpent seemed an unlucky creature, although he had seen it used before on Italian arms. Perhaps the knight was a mercenary from Padua, Venice, or Milan.
    Even in profile, Sufyan could see the knight was both young and beautiful. In the twilight of the church, the knight's skin looked pallid, as white and cold as frost, and yet it shone with the soft bloom of good health. Dark hair, disordered by the helm, ruffled over his forehead to frame features sharp and bright even in repose. He had