Free Bloodstone by Helen C. Johannes Page B

sir?”
    Ulerroth sighed. “He wants to take you with him...as his manservant...when he leaves tomorrow.”
    The knot pushed against Gareth’s throat. He wants me? To go with him? Tomorrow? But he’s barely met me. And you’re all scared of him. I am too...sort of...although he hasn’t done anything to me except, except I can feel him watching me sometimes.
    “Why—why me, sir?” he whispered.
    The innkeeper’s shoes scuffed on the floor. “Probably, boy, because you’re blind.” He cleared his throat, hesitated, then continued in a low voice, “You see, it’s said that to look on him unveiled is to—is to be struck with such horror that you’ll go mad. Or die.”

Chapter Six
    His saturated tunic clinging to his body, Gareth stood before the third door on the left, the one at the end of the corridor. Ulerroth had said, more than once, Gareth didn’t have to accept the Shadow Man’s proposal. But if I don’t—what then? The possibility of harm coming to his master, Freth, and Nell made him shudder again.
    Even so, the White Boar Inn of Ar-Deneth wasn’t his real home, not the tiny cottage with the sun-hazed windows where fragmentary memories of the man he thought of as father dwelt. And Freth was hardly an adequate substitute for his mother. Most days, she ordered him around, scolded him for his mistakes, and otherwise ignored him. Ulerroth showed more patience, but Gareth suspected it had been prompted as much by the innkeeper’s interest in his mother as by nature. Still, the man had remained kind after her death and fulfilled his promises to her.
    Gareth’s fists clenched and unclenched as memories flooded his mind. It hadn’t been easy listening to the bed creaking in the room above his pallet and knowing it was his mother who lay on it under Ulerroth’s bulk. It hadn’t been easy delivering a tray to a musky-odored room, knowing within it his mother served a man who’d hired her body. It hadn’t been easy knowing how she earned the coin that kept them alive while his own body stirred with new urges, his limbs lengthened, and hair sprouted where none had grown before. It hadn’t been easy, but he could have endured, if only—
    Tears welled in Gareth’s eyes, burgeoning behind his lashes and oozing between them. They burned, but he let them come, let them fall in rivulets of warmth down his cheeks and drip from his chin. His mouth opened in a sob, but no sound passed his lips. Mother, why did you bring me here...and die? Overcome with misery, Gareth stuffed his fist into his mouth and sank into a heap on the floor.
    ****
    Footsteps. I know I heard footsteps. The man listened to the silence, then opened his mouth wide and exhaled a yawn, one that culminated with a huge stretch of both arms over his head. His shoulders popped and he rotated them absently, enjoying the languid feel of rested muscles. I haven’t slept that well in—what is it—weeks? He sat, thoughts purposely blank, and savored the rare joint quietude of mind and body.
    All too soon, he became aware of a new sound, one he couldn’t at first identify. He frowned, rising from the chair he had slept in. Morning sunlight, by the reflected quality of it, glimmered through the shutter slats. It allowed his gaze to locate the remains of his evening meal still spread on the table. Ulerroth, it must be Ulerroth...but he would knock, wouldn’t he? His frown deepened. He checked the folds of cloth over his face, the fastenings of his cuffs, and the position of his hood, listening all the while.
    It was breathing, yes, but irregular breathing. And not quite the short, bated pattern of someone about to commit a crime, he decided, relaxing his grip on his knife. No, this was more uneven, the inhalations huge, the exhalations jerky, ending with a faint wheeze.
    Resting a gloved hand on the latch, he leaned closer, wondering first if the person was ill, then why a stranger’s health should concern him. By Kiros, why did he have to pick my