Excerpt: Lordship

“How do you feel?” the High Minister asked.
“It still hurts, but it’s a numb pain, your Holiness,” William reported. “But I’m tired. We’ve all had a terrible fright today.”
“I will pray for you, my child,” said the High Minister.
William shook his head. “Pray for the prince. Pray for my wife. I’ve had enough grace for a lifetime; I need no more.”
“Grace is not a finite resource,” said the High Minister. “But I shall do as you ask; your wife and the young prince have my prayers tonight. May the Lord of All send Somnia to grace your sleep with pleasant dreams tonight.” Having invoked the Lesser of sweet sleep for William’s sake, the High Minister stood up. He touched William on each shoulder and then the forehead, making the sign of the triangle over him, and then his eyes fell again on William’s right palm, which was laying face up on the bed. A brief concerned expression passed over his face, but he waved to his assistant and left the room.
William did not remember much more consciously after that. He fell asleep soon, for his body was wracked from the day’s events.
But it was not Somnia who visited that night, if any Lesser visited him.
What he recalled was an almost seamless transition into what only could have been a dream. The thing he remembered next after the silence from the High Minister’s departure from the room was the candle burning down, and the room growing dark.
Shadows extended across the icons on the walls; the ceiling, painted with scenes from scripture, darkened like thunderclouds gathering before a storm.
In a corner, behind the shadow of a standing gilded candelabra, he saw something moving. He heard a surrendering, agonized whimper and moan, and then something dropped from the shadows in the corner. There was a sickly thud, and then he saw a shape roll out from the corner of the room. A pale hand extended, slightly curled, toward where he lay. It was delicate in form, with all the grace of a lady. And following it was a cinereal face, smothered in dark hair that cascaded over it like the draping of a funeral shroud. The woman was dressed in a black chemise, which had been torn from her irreverently, so that it was in shreds over her body. Blood fell over her breast in a shining course, glimmering in the moonlight that filtered into the room from who knew where.
William pulled the sheet off himself to better see and perhaps to help her, if she could be helped. And as he sat up, he saw her face more plainly. But the shadows stretched over her, and a man in an all-encompassing cloak stepped out over her body, his face hooded. But William could see the man’s piercing eyes directed at him, leveled menacingly. He slowly pulled back the hood, and William recognized his eagle-like nose, his glowing red eyes. William tried to cry out, to call upon the Lessers for aid at the very least, but something pressed on his chest, pushing out the air before he could use it to his own means. And Duke Vlansky, without seeming to have moved, was suddenly beside him. As William fought for breath, Vlansky descended upon him. Pain seared through William’s body as the vile duke’s hot, putrid breath and wolfish teeth pierced into his leg, but still William could not scream. Desperate for an escape, William pushed his right hand against the invading duke. Vlansky screamed a hellish scream; it was like nothing William had ever heard from man or beast, half moan and half devil’s cry of the night. William’s palm burned, seared, scathed. The agony coursed through his body like his very blood, but his eyes fell upon the stricken figure of his wife on the ground.
And her eyes opened, but they glowed like her father’s eyes. And, still dripping blood and disfigured as a corpse, she began to crawl toward him, and she tore her father away from him. She bored down on William, pressing down on his chest, holding him still while pain coursed through him, wracked his body.
And William woke up, but although his leg and hand burned, they would not move for him. Everything around him was still. The phantoms of the night were gone, and he could barely see the icons in the room because there was no more moonlight. And then the moment was past, and he gasped, suddenly able to move. He looked at his hand, holding it before his face so that he could see it with so little light. It was still marked with the triangle. His left hand went down to his thigh. The dressing was still there, and still clean. But the wound still hurt.
He rolled over and went to sleep.