Slaves of the Night

Chapter 1

Kaisa

Olavin Castle looms high and dark in the distance. The ice forms a thick fog, wrapping the three turrets in a soft blanket of ice and darkness. A lone raven circles overhead. It's early in the afternoon, but the sun is already abandoning us to the long winter night, and it will not return until ten tomorrow morning. The snow here makes everything clean and fresh, wrapping the land in a frigid blanket for the endless winter nights. Soon the sun won't rise at all, for days even we won't glimpse it, or so the books say.

"Get your head in, your eyes will freeze," Essie tugs me back into the back seat of the car. This road is cleared, but barely. Our rather gruff driver informed us that after the next snowfall it won't be cleared at all. And we'll be stuck in the castle until spring.

"I wanted to see it---there, just through the fog—" the ice fog we've been informed. It descends most nights and wraps the coast of Lintukoto, literally the edge of the world. The north country is far from forgiving, but it is magical. They say the veil is thinner up here, it's so close to the top of the world. We've been journeying three weeks, and I haven't felt this much magic in the air since we left home.

"Yeah, nice and creepy. I'll bet it's haunted," Essie says. My handmaid is a realist, not imaginative, and I keep telling her she has the second sight like I do. If she thinks something's haunted, it probably is. She says she'd know if she was having visions. I say she's so practical she'd miss it and assume it was something she'd thought of herself. I think I'm right.

"They say the prince's dead wife walks the grounds," our driver grunts. He's rarely spoken since we got off the train in Amsterdam.

"Really?" Essie, happy and excited at the prospect of getting to fight a ghost.

"Didn't she die of the plague?" a year ago. Meaning six months ago my parents arranged for me to marry the Prince of Lintukoto. He's several years my senior and already has two daughters. But he needs a son to inherit the thrown therefore he must have a new, young, virgin bride. Me. I'm the third daughter of a king from a far away, dusty place, so suitably young and well bred. It'll be good for Ilara, my father said, don't you want to help your country? Not really, I replied, I liked reading and being on my own. Yeah, he didn't like that answer. So I was betrothed and arranged to be shipped off to the coldest place on earth that people dare to live. The prince was nice enough to send coats for us. I thought it was weird. Now I don't. The thick, wolf's fur coat is quite warm and despite the heat of the big car, I am glad of it.

"She did. A year back. The little princesses both pulled through, by the grace of the gods," he says, making some sort of sign on his chest. My new fiancé is of a different religion than me. I've tried to study it but all the gods and things are confusing, compared to my one. I also don't plan on converting, but my mother said I'd have to pretend.

"So why would she walk the grounds? Wouldn't she be at rest if illness took her?" Essie did study the religion, Ukkilsm, rather extensively but then she does everything. I'm sure she's got a better grip on it than me.

"Most folk believe the young princess was murdered, and she haunts the halls to take revenge on her killer," the driver, who introduced himself only as Erik, says.

"Did the police do an investigation?" Essie asks, leaning forward eagerly, she's always wanted to fight a ghost. This is very exciting for her.

"The Captain of Guard's not to be trusted---if you say I said that I'll deny it—but he's a funny one. I knew him when he was just a lad---word is he was taken by the faerie folk, and all who deal with the faerie aren't to be trusted," he says.

"I thought there weren't any faeries since the last world war?" Essie asks.

"All sorts of things survive out there in the ice and snow, things we don't speak of, mind. All I'm saying is, that man Herr Kyllo isn't the sort of person one trusts. The King's probably the only person who does trust that man, everyone else just fears him. It would do you girls well to stay out of his way."