System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 197
Night in Fortress Amavet carried a biting chill. Ignatius’s bloated, wine-softened body was wrapped in a thick padded coat, and even with a leather hot-water skin gripped in both hands, he kept shrinking his neck and shivering.
He threw several more logs into the hearth in succession. Yellow flames surged up, the fire burning stronger at last, and only then did warmth begin to seep back into his limbs.
“I will not hide it from you, masters. Since the time of my ancestors, Jennifer and Leon, house law has decreed that Fortress Amavet be governed by women.” Ignatius looked across at the two Witchers on the sofa opposite. At present, only the three of them remained in the top-floor bedchamber.
“More than a hundred years have passed, and the exact reason can no longer be traced. But when I was a child, my mother once told me ... this rule was laid down to commemorate Jennifer Verrieres’s outstanding contribution to the founding of the family.”
Roy pondered that for a while. The custom was strange. Yet when he tried to pin down exactly what was wrong with it, nothing came clearly.
He tapped the back of his own head with one finger, indicating the spot to Ignatius. “Then the other two branches of the Verrieres family, do their members bear the branding ... the birthmark?”
“You have already guessed the answer,” the lord replied without hesitation. “They do not. When I was five or six, a few collateral relatives still lived in the castle. Out of curiosity, I checked them. A dozen or so in all. Not one of them had any mark anywhere on their bodies. I am certain of it.”
“Mary told me the same, that the mark belonged to our branch alone.” Ignatius looked up toward the ceiling, and a trace of pride came over his face. “It was a blessing. A lucky birthmark.”
A lucky birthmark?
The answer took the Witchers by surprise.
What they had taken for a vicious curse was spoken of by Ignatius’s elders as a blessing?
The irony was almost obscene.
“Masters, you both look rather pale,” the lord said, his heart tightening. “There is something wrong with the mark? Yes ... you said as much earlier?”
“With all respect, my lord, Letho and I think the exact opposite. That mark is no symbol of good fortune...”
The Witcher laid out his reasoning. When he finished, the flesh of the lord’s swollen cheeks trembled, and he said in a shaking voice, “By your account ... my ... my ancestors were cursed by some powerful Sorcerer, and that is why the mark appeared ... and then passed down the bloodline to their descendants? The final aim was ... to wipe out my family?”
“What else would explain it?” Roy shot back. “How do you account for the fact that the two side branches bear no mark at all, and their lines have flourished far more strongly than yours?”
Ignatius fell into a daze. He could hardly imagine that the words his parents had drilled into him since he was old enough to understand might hide a truth wholly opposite to what he had always believed.
That mark he had always taken such pride in, was it truly the curse of a Sorcerer laid upon mortals to destroy them?
“How can that be? Why would Mary deceive me?”
Ignatius sank weakly into the sofa, still unable to believe it.
“My lord, did you never doubt it?” Roy’s gaze seemed to cut straight through him. “The Verrieres family register says it plainly enough. Every member of your branch came to a bad end in later life. Did you never once question that ridiculous tale of a Lucky Birthmark? What luck has it ever brought you?”
“It has brought you nothing but misfortune.”
Ignatius began to think in earnest. Looking back over his life, it was true, no great good fortune had ever come to him. Instead, one by one, his family had died around him, and in the wake of it he had surrendered himself to ruin, drinking day and night until his health was destroyed.
Even his line would now go on no further.
“Masters...” Ignatius shook his head, his face bitter with weariness. “I am the baron of White Orchard, yes, a nobleman. But I am a mortal man all the same ... I have never dealt with Sorcerers, never with Sorcery ... I could not possibly have linked the two.”
“You may not have understood it, but that does not mean others were equally blind. My lord, the collateral branches left the castle for a reason. Perhaps they found signs of something amiss.”
“Did they? Then why did they never warn me?”
“How should I know? Ask your parents.”
But Mary and John were long dead, and a chill silence settled over the room.
“This mark ... truly is ... a curse?” Ignatius’s face was full of pleading. “And how can it be broken? I beg you, save me.”
“I have never seen a curse of such power,” bald Letho said regretfully. “The only way to break it would be to find the one who first laid it.”
“Master...” Ignatius’s voice tightened all at once. “More than a hundred years have passed since my first ancestors. The one who cast the curse is still alive?”
“Do not judge Spellcasters by common standards. There are Sorcerers well past a hundred years old in plenty...” Letho tapped his fingers against the table in a steady rhythm. “My lord, the one behind this may even now be watching the course of your family from somewhere unseen.”
“I have done everything you asked. The diagram has been returned to its rightful owners, and I have sincerely bowed and begged forgiveness from Master Kolgrim. I hope the two of you will keep your word and help me uncover the one behind all this, as swiftly as possible.”
“If you cooperate, we will do what we can,” Roy said. Then he paused. “Take us through the rooms on the upper floors. The dead members of your family once lived there, did they not?”
The lord hesitated briefly, then nodded. “Only ... be careful. Do not damage any of my family’s possessions.”
...
Deep into the night, the servants of Fortress Amavet had all gone to sleep. The attendants who usually cared for Ignatius had also been dismissed. At this point, only the guards on the lowest floor remained awake on watch.
That silence suited Ignatius perfectly. Carrying an oil lamp, he led the two Witchers out of the bedchamber. The corridor beyond was dimly lit. Apart from the lamps hanging outside each room, illuminating only a narrow patch of space, most of it lay in shadow.
The lamp cast the shadows of the three of them across the walls, huge and distorted, unnaturally grotesque.
Outside, faint insect-song drifted in. It mingled with the echoing tap, tap, tap of footsteps in the corridor, and with a cold draft that wandered from one end of the hall to the other, letting out strange, mournful sounds like a woman weeping.
Ignatius halted before a door. “This was Mary Verrieres’s room.”
The Witchers nodded. The room nearest the lord’s own chamber belonged to his mother.
Creak.
“No one has slept here since Mary died two years ago. But the servants still come once a week to clean it.” Ignatius looked melancholy, even wistful. “Masters, be careful. Don’t damage anything.”
The room was unexpectedly clean and simple, with no needless ornament. On the wall opposite the soft bed hung a striking half-length portrait of Mary Verrieres.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.