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Ellery looked up to find Lord Millard standing at the top of the steps. He was dressed, but he looked tired and dishevelled.
“What is going on with those bloody hounds?” he demanded, and Ellery turned back to the dogs who now filled the entrance trying to get as close to Nara as they could. With all their jostling, he thought she might fall. He reached for her, but one of them yipped at him as though he should stay away. “Why are you not sleeping?”
“Is it nighttime?” Nara asked, but her focus was on the floor around her, the clamouring hounds blocking her view. The stones were no longer visible, and Ellery wondered if that was some trick of the old man’s to get them back. Perhaps he hadn’t destroyed any at all. Ellery thought of the times they had been dropped, almost lost, and had remained unmarked.
“Lord Orman called us out,” Ellery said.
Lord Millard blinked tiredly and turned away from them. “Shut them up,” he growled, although his voice didn’t hold the same power it had before.
“Do you think he was living with what came before, or was Orman trying to confuse us?”
“I don’t trust anything he says,” Nara replied softly, the hounds settling around her. “I don’t trust what I see.”
“There was something here,” Ellery agreed, although he still wasn’t sure what that had been. The walls certainly appeared solid enough now. “Did you injure him?” he asked.
She shook her head, holding something in her hand. Ellery moved through the hounds, who allowed him to approach her, and opened her fingers. Inside was the pouch, and she nodded before he could ask, as though to indicate they were all returned.
He ran his fingers through the coat of the nearest beast, feeling the calming effect of it, and he understood these hounds had taken on the role the stones had played in their lives before. But he also knew the stones were still important.
He pushed through a door off the hallway and into a small room, a drawing room perhaps. It was cool and covered in dust, as though the light hadn’t reached it in a very long time.
Nara followed him in but stood by the door as the hounds pushed past her. The beasts headed towards the empty fireplace, looking from it to him, and he wondered what magic they thought he had. It wasn’t a space he had seen before, but he’d had limited time in the manor the first time, and Nara had only been interested in her own room on their return.
“Mother’s drawing room,” she explained. “She was rarely in here,” she added, looking around. Ellery wondered if more memories were returning and what that meant about this life, this place. Nara put her hand to the back of a chair, but she didn’t sit or even appear as though she wanted to be here. Then she strode forward, sliding her sword into the sheath. He was tempted to stop her, to ask to see it and what hint of the old man might be on it.
She sat down amongst the hounds, appearing as though she hadn’t slept in days. They moved around her, and Ellery noticed the worn rug beneath her, although it wasn’t as worn as the rest of the house. He wondered how long it had been since someone had entered this room, or this manor at all.
It had been a tired place when he had first come. Worn and poor, he had thought, guessing that to be the reason the lord had sold his daughter to the old man. Although now Ellery wondered if he’d had any choice at all.
He watched her lie down amongst the hounds, resting her head against one of them. As she closed her eyes, they looked from her to him, their eyes solid black in the dim light of the room. It was night, and he looked to the window, where an orange glow allowed enough light to see inside the room. He walked to the window, wondering what part of the estate lay beyond it. There was nothing but the distant glow.
In a way, it was as though the fire tree was calling. Ellery had felt that way at the rear of the house when they had come out of the cellar, as though the fire tree was calling him despite not telling him it was time to go. He couldn’t smell the smoke, he thought, trying to see if he could make out the tree through the wavey glass. And then he could smell smoke, and he turned back to the room and the fire blazing in the fireplace.
It was different, a different scent to this smoke than the fire tree. There was nothing in the world that smelt like the fire tree, and yet when he was beneath it, he wasn’t surrounded by smoke; he barely saw it, if at all, but the smell of the flames was there.
Now he could smell a fire, and Nara was curled with the hounds before it. She shivered a little in her sleep, and one of the hounds pressed closer against her back. Ellery wanted to hold her, but instead he sat in the chair Nara had put her hand to not long ago. It was narrow, designed for a smaller frame than his, the back tall and straight.
It was comfortable, and as he leaned back against it, one of the hounds at the edge of the group stood up. It padded slowly towards him, sat beside him, and rested its head over the arm of the chair almost into his lap. He ran his fingers through its fur. The hound’s solid black eyes should worry him, and yet they didn’t.
In the comfortable warmth of the fire, Ellery’s eyes pulled closed, and he wondered how close they were to the fire tree.
Ellery thought he was walking through a manor house very similar to the one Nara had grown in, but it was different in that it was bright and clean. It didn’t appear so tired and threadbare. A young woman walked ahead of him, her hair a similar colour to Nara’s, long and loose down her back, her dress heavy and thick. He didn’t think it the same colour as Nara had worn that first time he had seen her. The silver hair comb tucked into her hair was the same. It caught the light as she picked up her pace, and he noticed she had bare feet.
She ran out into the sunshine and across the grass, the hound at his side loping along a little faster as he tried to keep pace with her. Once they hit the sunshine, he expected her to turn and smile at him, and he still expected Nara’s face. Yet as she looked over her shoulder while she ran, it was fear he saw—and not Nara. She was very similar; he was taken back to the icy caves and the woman they had met there.
This woman was younger, but it was the same face. He held up a hand to reassure her that he wouldn’t hurt her, but she turned back, lifting her skirts and running faster. The hound growled, and he turned to look over his shoulder to see a man following. It could have been the old man, but he appeared different. He was younger, fitter, and yet he carried the same walking stick. It didn’t touch the ground as he hurried after them.
She stopped then, as though giving up. She straightened, her body stiffening as she turned slowly, something gripped in her hand.
“There is nothing to run from,” the lord said, his voice smooth and young. If this was Nara’s mother, then Orman would have been older. Ellery shook his head, trying to understand what he was seeing, and the hound growled.
“You are not what you appear to be,” the young woman said. She sounded confident and strong, although she didn’t appear it. She shook more and more.
“You can help me with that,” he said.
She shook her head then, her hair loose about her face. He took a step towards her, and Ellery was no longer between them but standing to the side.
“You can,” he said, his voice low and friendly, and for a moment Ellery forgot what Orman had been. The monster he had served for so many years.
She held out her hand, the stones clear in the sunshine. He closed his hand over hers quickly and gripped tight. It was how Ellery had held Nara and her stones so many times, but this was not searching for an answer—this was something else.
The lord grinned, and something shifted. His hair, dark in the sunlight, became lighter. He released his hold on her and stepped back.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
“I helped,” she whispered, but she seemed sad about it. “You wanted to know what you are.”
He shook his head. “I’m stronger than that.”
“Are you?” Her voice shook, and there was no longer any heat in the sunlight. Ellery wondered if she was shivering from the cold or if this was some power she had.
Lord Orman appeared to grow older by the second, his hair greying. A beard formed, and his shoulders stooped. But he straightened and shook his head, and the grey receded a little, more like a peppering through his hair.
The woman took a step back. Ellery could feel her fear, and the hound’s hackles were up.
And then he was sitting back in her chair before a fire, watching Nara sleep amongst the hounds. His fingers twisted through the fur of the hound watching him from his lap. He gently scratched between its ears. He ran his hand over the arm of the chair and looked back towards the dark window.
Was she the one who had promised Lord Orman, and her daughter was to pay the price? It appeared that if Nara’s mother had made any promises to him that night, they had not been good ones. That the lord would be cursed, although he appeared to hold more power than Ellery had realised.
She had been running from him in that moment. In that life. Ellery wasn’t sure what he had seen, if it was a memory like those that had been reminding Nara of a life she hadn’t recalled, or if it was someone else’s. He looked down at the hound again, whose solid eyes appeared to be focused on him only. Was she sharing them with him too?
He stood then, brushing the hound aside and heading back out into the cool hallway, certain that the door was open and the evening air was moving through the house, although he couldn’t be sure of that. Had it been this cold before? The idea of the ruins returned. He was here for a reason. He had left the comfort of the fire and the certainty that Nara was safe to look for the stones, even though he was certain they were safe in her hands again.
If Orman was tied in some way to the stones, which the memory he had seen implied, then the old man would want to collect them, to find them and take back what she had taken from him. Ellery wasn’t confident she had done that. Nara had heard whispers of what was to come. Ellery had used the stones to find her, and the message he had heard was to run. To take her and flee as far away as they could.
The stones had never provided a defence, nor a way to end any of the creatures they had found. The monsters placed there for them. He and Nara learnt from them perhaps, but the lessons were usually loss and death and heartache. Ellery had held one, hadn’t he? Black and shiny, reminding him of the stone he had collected for Nara one lifetime. Was that the first time? He had thought they remembered every life, but the memories were not quite right. The swords, for one thing. He drew his sword now. The hound growled at the door, and he looked back to find it watching him, or at least it appeared to be.
He thought of the black stone creature in the mountains, the solid eyes that gave no indication as to where it was looking. Although the other stone creatures had been the same, their eyes solid, Ellery had sensed where they were looking. He had understood them better. He lit up the sword. The door that led out to the front of the building was shut, a large bolt drawn across it. He wondered if that would keep out what they did not want to enter.
Was Lord Orman one of those things? He was a man they couldn’t stop. He had continued to return, whether Lord Millard wanted him to or not. The idea of promises seemed real in that moment, that there was more tying them together than either man had explained. If the mother’s curse had been passed down, why was the wren not a suitable substitute? She might not have had the sight or understanding of the stones that was needed.
If that was what it was. The stone floor was clear before him in the light of the sword. There was no wet, dark mark on the stones, which Ellery had been so certain was an indication that the old man had been injured by Nara’s sword. There had been blood on that as well, when she had slipped it back into the sheath. Once she was awake, he would look at it and see what could be made of it.
For now, he was looking for any sign of the jade stones. When he closed his eyes, he could hear them bouncing across the floor. Orman had appeared to destroy one so easily. He could have done so before, if he had held the stones for any length of time.
Ellery sighed, looking at the pristine area as though it wasn’t where they had been before. He returned to Nara still sleeping amongst the hounds before the fire. Five of them. He looked around for the other and found it behind him. It stepped forward and dropped something from its mouth. A stone, he realised as it bounced across the floor towards the fire. Before he could pick it up, one of the sleeping hounds reached out a paw and put it over the stone.
When it lifted the paw, the stone was gone. Ellery sat heavily where he was. He was so tired, and despite the changes and differences in this life, they were no closer to any answers. As he blinked, his eyes grew heavy. He thought the animals around them changed as they had in the field, becoming darker and more monstrous. He and Nara were surrounded by them, no matter where they went or which life they were in. He glanced at her, hoping she wasn’t one of those monsters too.
They had too often thought themselves to be dead in some way, or altered by their deaths, and they had been, but whether or not that made them monsters, Ellery could no longer tell.