CHAPTER 1. THE LEGACY OF THE GRAY LION (Part 6 - Finale)

  Karl stood in the deep shadow of the archway leading to the pantries, invisible in the gloom. He hadn't dared enter the kitchen so as not to disturb the moment, but he saw everything. He saw the last of the Prust line take off the priceless treasure, the symbol of power and magic, and wrap the dying son of a servant in it.

  The old butler felt a lump rise in his throat. Pride. Burning, painful pride mixed in his chest with fear. He had served this house for half a century. He remembered them all. Duke Pavus, Cohen's grandfather, was a rock. Cruel, direct, unbreakable. He wouldn't have given up the skin. He would have overturned the city, burned the healer's house, shaken the soul out of the Magistrate, but taken the medicine by force. Duke Lert, Cohen's father, was a blade. Shining, sharp, but brittle. He wouldn't have lowered himself to pleas; he would have sold the last jewels but saved face.

  And Cohen... Karl watched the receding figure of the young Baron. Cohen walked quickly, hunched from the cold, hugging himself. Without the skin, he seemed quite thin, almost transparent in this damp corridor.

  “You are a true son of your line, boy,” Karl whispered soundlessly. “And that will be your undoing.”

  The inability to bend. That was the curse of the Prusts. They broke, but didn't bend. Pavus didn't bow his head to old age and died on a hunt. Lert didn't bow his head to the new power after the coup, didn't seek compromise, and was exiled here, where dampness ate his lungs in three years. Cohen didn't bow his head to Hoof. And now he gave away his last warmth, remaining alone with the icy castle.

  “Righteous. Self-sacrificing. Foolish,” the old man thought with bitterness. “History goes in circles. The father coughed blood, and the son will go the same road. Tomorrow he will come down with fever. And in a month, I will bury the last Prust next to his ancestors, and the line will end.”

  The thought of his charge's death (and Karl secretly considered Cohen his grandson, having taught him to walk and hold a wooden sword) spurred the butler. He couldn't take back the magical skin—it was saving Toby. But he couldn't let the Baron freeze.

  Karl turned and, shuffling on painful legs, hurried to the far end of the corridor, to the door of the old quartermaster's pantry. The key had been lost long ago, but the lock had rotted, and the door opened with a strained creak. Inside, it smelled of dust, dried herbs, and mouse droppings. Karl raised his candle stub.

  The shelves were empty. Anything valuable had been sold or eaten long ago. But in the far corner, on a nail, hung something dark and shapeless. Karl approached and took down the heavy object. It was an old guard's sheepskin coat—a *tulup*. Crude sheepskin supplied to the castle garrison twenty years ago. Time had not spared it. The coat was dirty, greasy at the collar. One sleeve was eaten by moths into holes. The hem had been gnawed by rats who made a nest in the lining. The coat reeked of old cheap tobacco (*makhorka*), the sweat of long-dead soldiers, and mustiness.

  It was clothes for the rabble. Dirty, stinking rags. To offer such a thing to a Baron, an aristocrat by blood, was an unheard-of insult. Five years ago, Karl would have ordered this rag burned. But now, the old butler pressed the coat to his chest like a jewel. The sheepskin was thick. Heavy. And despite the holes, it held warmth.

  “Forgive me, My Lord,” Karl whispered, shaking dry rat droppings off the shoulder of the coat. “Pride won't keep you warm. But this squalor will.”

  He threw the heavy, stinking fur coat over his arm and hurried to the stairs. Every minute counted. The Baron was now in the Small Drawing Room, by the open window (Karl knew the master's habit of seeking answers in the dark), in the draft. The old man climbed the steps, panting, feeling his heart pounding. *Just let me make it,* he thought. *Just don't let him do anything foolish. Just don't let him catch his death of cold.*

  He carried salvation. Not magical, not shining white. Dirty salvation smelling of tobacco and rats. A symbol of what their great house had come to. But if this coat allowed Cohen to survive this night, Karl would put it on the Baron himself, even if he resisted.

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  The butler reached the second floor. The corridor met him with the howl of the wind. The door to the drawing room was ajar, and a grave cold pulled from there. Karl quickened his pace, breaking into a shuffling run.

  ***

  Cohen was on his knees before the fireplace. His hands, stained with soot, trembled, trying to strike a spark with flint and steel. Beside him lay a pitiful handful of splinters he had chipped with his own dagger from a chair leg. *Snick. Snick.* A spark fell on the tinder, it began to smolder, giving tiny hope, but a damp draft from the open window killed it instantly. The wood hissed, mocking him.

  “Burn... Come on, burn...” the Baron whispered through chattering teeth.

  He was frozen to the bone. His thin shirt stuck to his body; the icy air of the kitchen still stood in his lungs. The door creaked. Cohen didn't turn, continuing to strike the flint with the frenzy of the doomed.

  “I'm busy, Karl.”

  “Leave it, My Lord,” the butler's voice sounded soft, almost fatherly. “The chimney is clogged. You'll only fill the room with smoke.”

  Karl approached from behind. In the gloom, he seemed a shadow. “Stand up, sir. I beg you.”

  Cohen stood, leaning on the mantelpiece. His legs wouldn't hold him.

  “I'm cold, Karl,” he admitted, and in this admission, there was no more pride. “I'm damn cold.”

  “I know, son. I know.”

  The old servant unfolded what he had brought. The heavy, coarse soldier's sheepskin coat covered the Baron's shoulders. The sheepskin, stiff as tree bark, lay as a weight, pressing him to the earth, but instantly cutting off the icy air of the room.

  Cohen instinctively pulled the flaps closed, burying his nose in the collar... and immediately recoiled, grimacing. A thick, staggering bouquet of smells hit his nose: cheap soldier's tobacco, stale sweat, dust, and the sharp, musky spirit of a rat's nest.

  “Karl...” the Baron choked. “What is this... This is rags from the guardhouse! It's older than me! It stinks like a drunk stableman!”

  “It's sheepskin, My Lord,” Karl replied impassively, fastening the single surviving button on his master's chest. “It is warm. And cold does not distinguish titles. Wear it.”

  Cohen wanted to rip this filth off himself. His aristocratic nature rebelled. Wear guard's rags? Him, Baron Prust? But then his body betrayed him. A wave of warmth went down his back—rough, prickly, but living warmth. The shivering began to subside. Cohen exhaled convulsively and wrapped himself tighter in the stinking fur.

  “You're right,” he said dully. “Thank you. Now I look like the king of beggars.”

  He walked to the window, dragging the long hem of the coat on the floor. “We need money, Karl. Urgently. Toby needs better food than water broth. We all need food. What's left?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “There can't be 'nothing'!” Cohen turned sharply. “The Library? Books are worth money!”

  “Damp. Fungus ate the bindings last year. No bookseller will take them.”

  “Weapons in the armory? Old halberds?”

  “Rust. The metal crumbles in your hands.”

  “Furniture? Oak tables?”

  “Rot. Woodworm.”

  Cohen struck the windowsill with his fist in despair. “But the land! We still have the land! The villages of Lower Moss and Windy Slope. It's November. They harvested. The tithe! We haven't collected taxes for two years. Let them pay in grain, geese, even turnips!”

  Karl was silent. The silence dragged on, becoming heavier than stone vaults.

  “Karl?” Cohen sensed something wrong.

  “There is no one there, My Lord,” the butler said quietly, looking at the floor.

  “What do you mean 'no one'? Dead? Plague?”

  “Left. Back in September, before the rains. Baron von Seitz, our neighbor to the south... he offered them protection. He fixed their mill and gave grain for sowing. They harvested and went to him, the whole world of them. Took the livestock, took the carts. The villages are empty, sir. Only wind walks in empty huts there.”

  Cohen staggered as if punched in the gut. He slid down the wall, sitting right on the windowsill.

  “Left...” he whispered. “Betrayed. Traded me for a sack of grain and a whole mill.”

  This was the end. Absolute, hopeless finale. He had no subjects. He had no money. He had no food. He had only a crumbling castle, a sick child downstairs, and an old servant nearby. And a stinking sheepskin coat on his shoulders.

  “Is this really it?” he asked into the void, looking into the inky darkness outside the window. “Is this how the line of Prust ends? Freezing in our own shit and oblivion? We didn't even die in battle. We just... rotted.”

  Karl didn't answer. There was nothing to say.

  Cohen looked East. To where, a couple of kilometers away, the sinister veil of the Rotting Swamps began. Usually, nothing came from there but dampness and fear.

  “Better if the dead came,” the Baron grinned bitterly. “At least some glorious death. With a sword in hand.”

  And at that moment, the Darkness answered.

  First, it was a sound. A low, rumbling hum. Not like thunder, not like wind. It was rhythmic, mechanical, alien to this world. It vibrated in the glass, in the floor, in the Baron's very chest. *R-R-R-R-R-UMMM.*

  Cohen frowned, peering into the night. “Karl, do you hear that?”

  And then came the Light.

  There, in the east, from the direction of the impassable swamps, where there were no roads, where even wolves drowned, two Eyes flashed. They were blindingly white. Not yellow like torch fire, not dim like the moon. It was a cold, piercing, blue-white light, brighter than a thousand stars. Rays cut through the fog like swords. They swept across the ground, snatching bushes and ravines from the darkness with unnatural clarity.

  The two "suns" moved. They were approaching the castle, breaking brushwood. The hum grew, turning into the roar of an unknown monster.

  Cohen and Karl froze at the window.

  “What is that, My Lord?” whispered Karl, and for the first time in many years, superstitious horror sounded in his voice. “A dragon? A Spirit of the Swamp?”

  “I don't know,” Cohen answered. His hand instinctively reached for his belt, where a sword should have been, but found only the rough sheepskin of the coat.

  The light was getting closer. It was already flooding the foot of the hill. Shadows from the trees darted in panic.

  “Whatever it is,” said Cohen, and in his eyes, extinguished a second ago, a wicked, desperate spark suddenly flared. “It bodes nothing good.”