Five years ago
Bel took the vials and jars out of her knapsack and placed them on the table, one after the other. It was a motley collection of clear and tinted glass in various shapes, made even more so by the array of fluids and powders contained within. Most of the former were clear or a light brown, and the latter came in shades of white.
Masildi looked on in growing horror as Bel pointed to each, rattling off their contents. “Skunk essence. Wolf urine. Clove oil. Ammonia. Capsaicin powder. Cinnamon oil. Lye. Powdered sulfur. Cat urine.”
“Stars, Bel…This is…This is disgusting.”
Bel resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. That would be pejorative and would run counter to what she was trying to accomplish. Convincing people meant bringing them along, not judging their thinking.
“Look. I know this isn’t pleasant, but animals make their way in there from time to time. Some lair there. Others are lured by the scent of potential prey. You don’t want to be surprised.”
“‘Isn’t pleasant’? You certainly have a gift for understatement. I am not covering myself in…in any of this,” Masildi replied, disgust still registering on her face. “I can handle myself. I don’t need to smell like… Stars! I don’t even know what this would smell like.”
Bel stood firm. “Look, you don’t have to use all of these. I only needed the first two. But going in there with nothing to mask yourself could attract unwanted attention, and this way you have options. This isn’t the Ritual, Masi! It’s a whole night.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll take your gross alchemy kit with me if it will get you off my back!”
“Good,” Bel replied tersely, not rising to the bait. She quickly but carefully placed the collection back in the sack and held it out to Masildi. Her friend grabbed it and slung it roughly over her shoulder.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. The usual warmth in Masildi’s voice was gone, and irritation had filled the vacuum. She left quickly, without saying another word and without looking back.
Bel never saw her again.
Three years ago
Bel awoke to an urgent pounding at her front door. She looked around groggily, it slowly registering that she had dozed off. It was a rare Starday where she had the afternoon off.
Her flat was one of the smaller ones in the tenement house, and much more cramped than the quarters she used to share with her family, but it was clean, reasonably well maintained, and mostly free of pests and vermin. It was also relatively free of furniture. Most importantly, though? It was hers. She could barely afford it, but sleeping alone instead of with a colony of roaches meant living on the financial edge.
The pounding continued, unconcerned that she was not fully awake.
“I’m coming!” she yelled, hoping that it would be enough to make the noise stop while she got to her feet.
Mercifully, it did just that. Bel reached the door and cracked it open, leaving the security chain in place. She kept a dagger mounted on the inside of the door where she could grab it quickly in case of trouble. If someone really wanted to get in, they’d probably not knock at all, but there was no sense in taking chances. Trouble was rare, but this was still Diamond Lake.
Alina’s face was visible through the narrow opening.
“Alina!” she exclaimed. She was still groggy, and the unexpected appearance of her old friend left her flustered. She fumbled with the chain at first but got it unhooked. Alina wasted no time coming in, pushing the door open and pushing Bel back with it.
“Bel! Who is leading the Night Walkers these days?”
“What?” was the best she could manage. Bel was just getting her mental footing, and Alina had knocked her off it again.
“The Night Walkers, Bel. Who is leading them?”
“There are no Night Walkers, Alina. Not anymore. Not since…” Bel let the sentence die. There was no need to finish it.
“Are you certain? There’s no one trying to start them up again?”
Bel shut the door, finally recognizing that it was still open. “I mean, we were never as secret as we thought we were. Half of the town knew there were kids running around out there. They just didn’t care enough to try and stop it. If someone was doing that, we’d all hear about it. What is this about?”
Alina bit her lip and took in a deep breath. “Sergiu heard a rumor that someone is planning to spend a night in the Cairn.”
If Bel wasn’t fully awake before, she was now. “What?! Who? For Stars’ sake, why?! When? Stars, we have to stop it!”
Alina snorted. “You are asking questions I don’t have answers to. I was hoping you had heard something. And, I agree with you. Problem is, we don’t know who to stop, or even when they are going to try.”
“Who else have you told about this?” Bel asked.
“So far, I’ve only spoken to you. Sergiu is asking around, too. He’s trying to find Eduari. Sergiu heard it from Hassi, and Hassi said he heard about it from them.”
“Eduari? I know where they are.”
Bel and Alina found Eduari at the Lakeside Stables, grooming one of the horses.
“Bel. Alina,” he said warily, looking back and forth between the two. “Stars, Alina, I haven’t seen you in ages. What are you doing here? What are the two of you doing here?”
Bel never really got along with Eduari. He was prickly, frequently a jerk, and quick to verbally cut someone else down for whatever offense he deemed them to have committed. But he had earned his spot in the group like everyone else, so she had respect for his skills, and for his nerve.
Alina answered him. “We heard a rumor that someone is planning to spend a night in the Cairn.”
“So what? Several of us did that.”
“The last one that tried it died, Ed,” Bel answered angrily.
“She died because she told her idiot watchers they could wait in the house. She wouldn’t listen to anyone, not even you. She even sent your little gift bag with them!”
“She died,” Bel repeated, raising her voice, “because doing this was always dangerous and stupid, and our luck finally ran out!” Respect for his skills and nerve didn’t automatically imply respect for him, personally, and she didn’t have a lot of it.
Alina intervened before their exchange could escalate. “Don’t be an ass, Ed! Spending the night in there was always a bad idea. You know it. I know it. Bel knows it. So, who is it? Is someone trying to resurrect the Night Walkers?”
Eduari snorted derisively. “The Night Walkers. Why did we ever think that name was cool?” He saw Alina’s expression darken, and quickly added, “No, Alina, no one is trying to make more Night Walkers. It’s just someone trying to prove themselves as tough as we were. That’s all.”
Bel stepped forward and glared at Eduari, her feet apart, hands on her hips, and elbows out. She cut an imposing figure, and he flinched as she spoke. “Who, Ed. Give us a name!”
“Lennick Grasu, OK? He’s just some kid. I don’t even know him. But you’re too late, because I heard he’s doing it tonight.”
The two girls looked at one another, a silent exchange passing between them. And then Alina said, “Fuck.”
Bel and Alina dashed out of the stables, breaking into a moderate run. It was a pace they could both sustain for a significant distance, a skill they had honed from night after night under moonlit skies.
“Bullshit, we are ‘too late’,” Alina said as the stables retreated. “We can’t stop them from going in, but we can sure as stars yank them out!”
“Agreed! I’ll run home and gear up. You find Sergiu. We can be there a couple hours after nightfall.”
“I’ll meet you in the square.”
Gearing up didn’t take Bel very long. Keeping a bag packed and ready to go was another one of her old habits, and she was in and out of the tenement in less than five minutes. She arrived at the square first but didn’t have to wait long for Alina to show. She had found Sergiu, and he was jogging beside her.
“Bel,” he said as he came to stop.
“Sergiu,” she replied.
It had taken almost three years, but he had eventually warmed up to her. Just in time for he and Alina to leave the Night Walkers and run off to get married, just like everyone but the two of them knew they would do, eventually.
“Good to see you,” Sergiu said. “Now let’s go save this jackass from themselves.”
It had been six years since Bel had been here. For Alina and Sergiu, it had been even longer. Without the regular visits by Night Walkers, there had been no one to trample the weeds, clear the underbrush, or cut back the vines and roots that draped over the entrance. Even knowing exactly where it was, the Cairn was difficult to find until they were nearly on top of it.
“Well, this place has certainly gone to shit,” Sergiu said quietly.
They were studying the entrance carefully from a distance, crouching behind a tangle of bushes. The waxing gibbous moon provided just enough light for them to see.
“We had to let the landscaper go,” Bel said, dryly. “I don’t see any watchers, do you? Did this kid really come out here alone?”
“Let’s get a closer look,” Alina suggested.
Alina and Sergiu lit the lanterns they carried with them and swept the clearing in front of the Cairn as they approached. It was weird to see former Night Walkers using light like this, but they were searching for someone, not playing games in the dark. To do a proper search, you needed to be able to see.
“There,” Sergiu said, pointing to a patch of crushed weeds. “Looks like they were here recently. Either they abandoned their friend, or something scared them off.” He studied the trails of flattened grass and bent stems. “They came in this way, walking. Then one walks off to the cairn; I assume that’s Lennick. And there: two sets of tracks, much more recent than the others, running away. Roughly towards town. We took a more direct route in, so they probably didn’t pass near us.”
“I see a set of tracks over here, too,” Alina said, about twenty feet off to the side. “They aren’t coming from town. Seem to lead in, then back out.”
“That is not good.”
Bel didn’t wait for either of them to act. She ran into the entrance, calling out, “Lennick! Lennick! Are you in here?” Her voice echoed down the long hall. There was no reply.
“Bel! Wait!” Bel heard Alina and Sergiu scramble into the entrance and saw her shadow dance ahead of her as their lamps bounced with their footsteps. She was running far ahead of them because she didn’t need a lamp to see in the dark.
Bel stopped at the junction and checked both alcoves. The was nothing in the one to her left, but in the one to her right she saw a young boy crumpled on the ground. He wasn’t moving.
“Up here! Hurry!” she called out. She bent down to him and saw that he was unconscious and taking ragged breaths. There was a gash on his forehead, and blood was starting to pool on the ground. “He’s hurt! Bad!”
Alina and Sergiu reached the junction and light filled the alcove. The blood was more obvious now, as was the wound. It looked like he’d been hit with a rock. Said rock was on the ground a couple of feet from him.
“He’s been attacked,” Bel said.
“Yes, we can see that,” Sergiu replied, annoyed.
“Who or whatever did this,” Alina said, looking at the rock, “wasn’t really trying kill him, if that’s what they used.”
“They weren’t trying not to, either. You two prop his head up.”
“That could hurt him worse,” Alina said.
Sergiu pulled a vial out from his waist pack and kneeled to the ground. “If he bleeds out here, which he seems to be doing very fucking quickly, he could die. We need to get this in him.”
He pulled the stopper from the vial. Bel supported the boy’s neck while Alina lifted and turned his head.
Sergiu poured the contents into the boy’s mouth and said, “Now tilt his head back so it goes down his throat.”
Bel had heard of healing potions, but she had never seen one, much less seen one in action. Within seconds, the gash on his head had not only stopped bleeding, but had disappeared entirely. The boy spasmed and coughed, spitting out some of the liquid. Then his eyes fluttered open.
“What… What’s going on?” he asked in a raspy voice. “Who are you?” He looked disoriented, and about five seconds from a full-on panic.
Bel gave him a smile and spoke in her most soothing voice. “It’s OK,” she said. “You’re safe.”
From behind her came Sergiu’s voice, as diplomatic as ever. “We’re your rescuers, asshole.”