The crypt dwelled beneath the tower where the Council slept. Tam thought it interesting the living dreaming peacefully above the tormented dead. 

He couldn’t wheel the dead cart down the steep stone steps, so he cradled Sile’s body wrapped in Duncan’s blanket and brought her to rest on the castoff table from the Council’s dining chamber he’d used to prepare the other bodies on. 

He sponged the rain off the girl with a rag and wrung her hair dry. With his nimble fingers, Tam sewed the slit in her back closed after extracting the nub of oak (he would use it for kindling later—or had intended to with the eight other nubs from the eight other dead girls now laid aside in one corner). Over Sile’s horrible, glaring, lidless eyes, he placed a pair of flat white rocks with painted-on blue pupils.  

Before he could rewrap Sile, this time in burial cloth, he felt a prickling on his neck and knew he was no longer alone in the crypt. 

“He’ll be wanting another. Don’t you think, Tam?” 

Deirdre was the only one who ever used his real name. 

“But by God’s mercy, another will be denied him,” she growled, puffing her chest, crossing herself. 

“Yes, Mother,” Tam replied obediently. 

Deirdre placed her soft wrinkled hand on Tam’s forearm, stopping him from wrapping the cloth around Sile’s ashen face. 

“Lili wishes to see her daughter one final time before she is to be laid to rest. She will be down before long.” 

“Yes, Mother.” 

Tam left the girl’s face uncovered and stepped aside. He stood there wringing his wrists, uncomfortable with waiting, not quite sure what else he should do. He stood four feet taller than the women of Castle Blae, but he wasn’t suited for his large frame. He was graceless when he wasn’t toiling. Deirdre’s second and now only chid, Tam was his mother’s pride and joy. By default it often seemed.

Other mothers, Deirdre knew, would have treated Tam like he were a burden, but she saw what those others couldn’t. Where they saw clumsiness, she witnessed precision. Where they saw ugliness, she witnessed beauty. They saw a monster, but to her it was only her son. 

She would never have grandchildren. That was a barb in her heart. But she had Tam and she didn’t fault him for his misfortune. 

The fire was an accident and she thanked the Lord and the Holy Mother that her son was spared from death and everlasting damnation in the pits of Hell. He was fourteen when it happened and his special soul had not yet been brought into the light of the Divine. That was before the coming of the word of God to these lands. Tam would have gone to Satan, an unclean sinner. 

Now, having been washed in the sacredness of Eve’s river, he was cleansed, though his road to reclamation was still miles long. He was put to work, because he had to earn his way, just like the rest of them. 

Avalon was fought for, not simply given freely. 

“This man is no man at all,” Deirdre spat. “He’s the foulest demon this castle has ever been plagued with. Shortage of food—come what may, Lord and Mother will provide. But him?” 

She sighed and placed her hands on her waist. 

“If your brother were alive, he would know what to do.”

“We all know what to do, Mother,” said Tam, surprising Deirdre. “When the serpent comes to tempt you, you cut off its head. You don’t take the offered apple and invite damnation.” There was blame in his words whether he knew it or not.

Deirdre’s lips curled in anger. To Tam she was the one who looked like a demon right then. “Baltair wouldn’t dare speak to me that way, so why should you?”

Tam sunk back against the stone wall, repentant and moaning. “Apologies, Mother. I meant no offense.” 

Deirdre composed herself, becoming the warm, love-giving matron again in a frightful instant. “Besides, Tam, we can’t expend the time, nor the women to go in search of this bloodthirsty conjuror. Especially not out in Birnam Wood. Any party we send would surely vanish, even one that is heavily armed. No, it is best that we stay within the castle’s walls, as we have been, where we are safe. Eventually, this demon will slip and we will have him. This one—” she motioned to Sile’s corpse “—did not heed curfew, snuck out, and…well, now look at her. She was dissident and suffered gravely for it. But we shall not hold her sins against her, the poor dear.” 

Her speech was the exact same from when Tam stood over the first girl who’d had her spine removed, and, eight victims later, nothing had changed. 

This time, however, the Council would see its eldest member brutally chastised and overruled for the third time in as many weeks, her voice heard less and less. And things were going to change in Castle Blae, damned if they weren’t. No more of this Wait And See shite. No more hiding in the safety of their fortress which wasn’t truly safe at all. 

Against Deirdre’s will, they would take the fight to the God of Rain. They would dance the dance of death in Birnam Wood.