Wheel of Time MUD

“The girl was always weak,” Marika San Germaine opined as she sipped tea from her porcelain cup, contempt all but dripping from her words. Colette had always hated that cup. It was one of a pair, fine porcelain from the isles of the Sea Folk, bone white and painted with blue periwinkles and rimmed with gold. Like her mother, the cup was chipped, faded, and along way from the Cairhienen high society it had once graced. Marika had been on the losing side of one of the many schemes that bubbled below the surface of that unhappy city. Colette didn’t quite understand exactly how, or for what, but when she had been a toddler her mother had been exiled and come to Verne to plot her return. That plotting had lasted years, and its failure had borne bitter fruit. Colette was no part of her mother’s ambitions but had become the scorned scape goat of their failures.

“I fear I worked her too hard,” Mother Cathcart replied, sipping her own tea from the twin of the hated mug.

“You have done so much, and look at you, ruddy with health. No Zavia, the girl is weak, I’ve always said so, no use to anyone, Light I wish I had a son instead, a son might be of some use.” It sounded cruel but Colette had suffered such invective too often to be offended. Mother Cathcart, Marika was the only woman in the village arrogant enough to use her first name, did look healthy. Some of the lines that had marred her face were gone, and her hair was coming in thick and red at the roots, the rheuminess of her eyes had faded clear and she looked sharp and alert. That healthy look made the bile in Colette’s stomach roil and her fingers tremble. There was something wrong with Mother Cathcart, it wasn’t just that she looked younger it was hat she looked somehow… over ripe, like an apple that turns it’s deepest shade of red after it has begun to rot.

In the days after her discovery at Martel’s farm Colette had fallen sick. It wasn’t the plague, but an ague of some other kind. By turns her body flushed hot or ran to icy chills, one moment she was ravenous, the next it was all she could do to keep down her bile… and the dreams. She clutched her sweat soaked bed clothes around her and prayed against the dreams. Always she saw the cat, peering at her from the dark, its eyes glowing that noxious plague yellow. Sometimes snarling to expose its golden gums and the sweet decayed fruit smell of its breath. Sometimes it leaped at her, its jaws distending impossibly wide until somehow it morphed into Mother Cathcart as a young woman, beautiful and horrible with unnaturally pale skin and burning yellow eyes. Sometimes the bodies of Agatha and Joans Martel would rise from their frozen embrace and demand to know what she was doing in their cottage, the door slamming shut as they reached for her with shrunken skeletal fingers. Colette squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the tears with an effort so familiar it made her tear ducts sting.


“How do you fare girl?” Mother Cathcart asked from the door of Colette’s small room. Colette shivered and pulled her blankets close. The floorboards creaked as the Reader crossed them to lay a smooth hand on Colette’s brow. The urge to recoil was almost overpowering but Colette mastered it by locking her body into a ricktus. Mother Cathcart peered down at her with a look of sympathy on her too smooth face.

“The fever is still on you child, have you been taking your medicine?” the Reader asked. Colette nodded her head, her throat suddenly too thick with terror to speak. If Mother Cathcart noticed she made no comment, merely setting a bottle of cloudy liquid down on the table top.

“Another day, two at the most, and it will break, I know it will. I will welcome your help in my hut, there is still so much to do,” the reader crooned. Colette nodded and tried to smile, and the Reader squeezed her hand and left the room. She waited until she heard Mother Cathcart take her leave and then, very deliberately poured the contents of the vial into the chamber pot.


Colette woke after midnight, the fever broken. She could hear her mother asleep in the next room, the snoring brought on by too much apple brandy unmistakable. The dreams had been worse than ever, and she scratched her forearms in memory of where a giant yellow cat had ripped its claws. She couldn’t go on like this. Rising from her bed she dressed quietly, shrugging into her cloak and pulling on her shoes. Outside the night was cold and crystal clear, the panoply of stars blazing down. Colette thought about simply running away, what terrors could the road hold which would compete with those she felt all around her in this plague ridden place. None, save the knowledge that if she ran now, the dreams would never desert her. She had to unravel this mystery, had to either confirm her suspicions, or scatter them as the idle spinnings of an overstressed mind. Carefully she lifted the sash of her window and stepped out into the night.

Snow crunched under Colette’s feet as she approached Mother Cathcart’s hut. Firelight flickered balefully from within, proof that despite her long absence the Reader had found firewood enough to keep at her craft. Somewhere in the darkness a wolf howled and the hair on Colette’s neck rose in primal fear. She should go home, forget all about this, or better yet simply run off into the dark and never look back. She swallowed hard, there was no going back now. She crept towards the hut, her breath steaming in front of her. The wolf howled again this time so close Colette thought she could make out a silhouette at the forest edge less then fifty yards away. The door of the hut banged open and Mother Cathcart appeared, a boarspear gripped in her hand.

“It is mine, flee or I will have you as a rug!” the Reader yelled. Colette covered her mouth with her hand and ducked into the nearby barn to hide.

“Do you hear me golden eyes!” the Reader shouted. Colette felt her heart hammer against her chest as she pulled the door closed behind her. Golden eyes, had Mother Cathcart been yelling at the wolf? A cold hand fell across her shoulder. Colette spun, a scream tearing from her throat as she found herself looking into the frozen face of a corpse, an icy body fell onto hers and she struggled against the unyielding weight of it, lashing out with her balled fists. A second body fell on her, vacant eyes staring at her, vacant yellow eyes. There were dozens of bodies all around her and Colette remembered belatedly that this was the barn where the corpses had been stored till spring, the whole harvest of the village.

“Who is there?” Mother Cathcart demanded, her voice coming from the opposite end of the barn. Colette froze in terror, picturing the woman standing in the doorway, illuminated by the moonlight with boarspear in hand. She squirmed under the corpse, fear overmastering disgust. The smell of cold death and the sweet fruity reek of the plague corpses threatened to make her gag.

“I can hear you in here…” Mother Cathcart crooned, her footsteps padding along the floor of the barn. Colette froze in place, going limp like a corpse.

“Come on out and we can go inside for tea, it isn’t safe to be abroad with these wolves about,” the reader cajoled. Colette lay still, trying desperately to ignore the feeling of dead flesh atop her as the Reader came closer and closer until Colette could see her boots mere inches away. Mother Cathcart let out a disappointed sigh.


“Colette dear, this would have been so much easier if you had just taken your medicine,” the Reader sighed, and rammed the boar spear down at the girl. Colette screamed and twisted, thrusting the nameless corpse between them like a shield. The tip of the spear hit it and stuck in the icy flesh. Colette leaped to her feet and scrambled away. The Reader pulled the spear free and slashed with the point, catching Colette across the back and scoring a line of red hot pain from scapula to hip. Colette shrieked and fell to all fours, scrambling like a dog for a few steps before getting to her feet and sprinting the length of the barn, trying to ignore the learning faces of the stacked dead. She reached the door and swung the heavy door shut, it nearly made it home before Mother Cathcart caught up, hitting it with her full weight. Neither woman was heavy but the Reader outweighed Colette and seemed half mad beside, the force of the impact sent Colette sprawling into the snow, ice crystals cutting at her cheek. Sobbing she staggered to her feet and stumbled, more or less at random, into the hut. This time she did manage to slam the door and throw the bolt. Mother Cathcart hammered against the door with the butt of her spear and Colette backed rapidly away. Blood was running down her face, and the back of her legs, her entire back felt like it was on fire, and her heart was hammering in her chest like a chicken in a wicker cage. The wolf howl came again and Mother Cathcart cursed. Colette backed away from the door and turned looking to find a weapon of her own, though what a knife or cleaver might do against a boar spear she had no notion.


The hut was as she remembered it, several pots of the vile smelling fluid she had helped create bubbling away on the fire, filling the space with the fungal reek that now seemed to somehow smell yellow. In the center of the room, the rug which covered the floor had been rolled up to reveal a trapdoor which lead to a space below, light poured from the trapdoor, as though a great fire were below. There was a scrape of metal as the blade of the boarspear ran along the door jam and began to lift the latch. Colette screamed in terror and stepped backwards, her numb foot catching the rolled rug. There was a sickening sensation of falling and her head cracked against stonework as she tumbled through the trapdoor and down a set of stairs. Colette found herself sprawled on a floor of damp fieldstone. It must once have been a cold store or a large root cellar, nearly the size of the hut above. Every nook and cranny of the space was illuminated. Oil lamps stood in every corner, others were stacked on improvised shelves of rough lumber. In the center of the room was a horror. It was a pale thing, plaid white and smooth as the burrowing worms that lived in the old oak. It was manshaped though it took a moment to resolve that as it was chained atop a large boulder, secured at ankle, wrist and throat with heavy iron chains. It had no eyes and its mouth was open in a continual silent scream. Several broken arrow shafts protruded from its body but that was far from the worst damage. Its tendons had been cut, and long slashes had been made in its arms and legs, leaking black brackish blood down into gore stained collecting trays, dripping the way maple sap fell from the taps in the early spring. It turned to look at her. How it looked without eyes she didn’t know, but she had never been more certain of anything than of the thing’s cold, hateful regard. It opened its fang filled mouth and said something. There was a moment of catatonia. Colette found herself cowering in the far corner of the cellar, heedless of the heat of oil lamps all around her. The thing on the slab was thrashing as Mother Cathcart stepped past it, the point of her spear leveled at Colette.

“Sniveling girl,” the Reader cursed, her habitual expression of calm detachment replaced with a mask of hate and contempt that would have unmade Colette if she hadn’t just looked upon the abomination on the slab.

“You were so much more use when you were helping me brew up my little potion,” the Reader sneered.

“Potion… you mean poison…” Colette half sobbed, her mind wheeling for something to grasp other than the insane reality she now found herself in. At any moment she expected a cat with yellow eyes to leap on her, and to wake up in her own bed, but there was no such release to this torment.

“At first I tried to feed it animals but it hungers for more… select meat,” Cathcart explained, nodding her head towards a porcelain basin that contained bloodied lumps which could only be human organs. The smell of the place crashed in around Colette, blood, burning oil, spoiled flesh, and an alien almost reptilian smell. She gagged and vomited, emptying her stomach in a single convulsive heave.

“And you boasted of having such a strong stomach,” Mother Cathcart mocked.

“What…what is it….” Colette gasped, spitting to clear her mouth of the taste of her own ejecta.

“Oh Colette,” Mother Cathcart tsked, “there is much I could teach you, but the time for lessons is over.”

The Reader, her hands no longer old and wizened, drew back the spear, its point blazing in the light of the dozens of lamps. Outside the sound of a wolf's howl came again and the creature on the slab thrashed in response. Mother Cathcart’s eyes flickered towards the abomination just for a second. Colette seized the nearest lamp and pitched it at the Reader. Mother Cathcart instinctively swung her spear to parry the missile. There was a crash of breaking glass and a dull whump as the oil inside burst into a flaming rain that spattered across the Reader. Mother Cathcart screamed and staggered backwards against the white thing on the slab. Howling with vindictive joy it sank it’s teeth into her calf, ripping free a gobbet of flesh with the same worrying motion an eel would have used. Mother Cathcart, the arm of her dress on fire, screamed in agony and stumbled back, blood pouring down her leg. She collapsed sideways into on of the shelves and sent a half dozen lamps tumbling to the ground. Fire erupted around the older woman, engulfing her dress and adding the sickening smell of burning hair to the olfactory assault of this hellish oubliette. Flames roared as more lamps caught fire and the thing on the slab began to thrash as tongues of fire began to blacken its horrible pale skin. Colette scrambled to her feet and ran up the stairs, her arm thrown across her mouth against the heat of the air that now threatened to scorch her lungs. Reaching the top of the stairs she threw herself out of the door and into the snow, half mad with terror and the rest of the way from the pain of the cut across her back and dozens of minor burns. In the last few moments before she lost consciousness she heard two sounds: The roar of the flames, and the screams which she hoped belonged to the abomination, but she knew, in her heart, did not.