At the Queen's Command

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Wurms had eaten riders before, or so the stories said. The riders had always been evil, unsavory men—again, according to the stories. It always seemed they had provoked the wurms into it and deserved their fates.

  Then Mugwump surfaced again, a sputtering man draped across his muzzle. The Prince waited for the head flip that would propel the man into the air, then a quick snatch for another bite. The tail flicked and Mugwump sped toward the shore, a wave breaking high as he came up out of the water and straight onto the snowy lawn.

  Vlad instinctively ran over, gathering Gisella behind him, shielding her with his body. “Don’t run. He might see you as prey.”

  She held onto his shoulders, shivering. “Yes, my lord.”

  Mugwump lowered his head, letting the man roll to the ground. The wurm stared at the Prince, the golden eyes full of curiosity. The wurm nosed the man again, flipping him over onto his stomach, where he vomited and started muttering a psalm.

  Vlad raised a hand, uncertain of what do to, but perceiving no threat. “What is it? What am I missing?”

  The wurm’s eyes half closed, then he turned and trundled off to the wurmrest, head held proudly high.

  Is that it, or is that what I want to see?

  Nathaniel and Kamiskwa, came running over, guns in hand. The Altashee knelt by the man Mugwump had rescued. The man vomited again, then gathered himself on all fours. “Ain’t supposed to breathe drink. I will be fine.”

  Vlad looked at Nathaniel. “Who did Mugwump kill?”

  “Ain’t like he killed him. I done that. Twice.” Nathaniel shook his head. “Etienne Ilsavont. He was a pasmorte like his father. Your bullet worked like a charm.”

  “You shall have to tell me everything. First, however, we should get inside and fetch your companion some dry clothes.”

  The large man’s wet beard and clothes made him look like a half-drowned cat, though his smile attested to his good spirits. “I don’t reckon you’ll have much more than a sheet will fit me, but I would be obliged for a lend of one while these things dry.”

  “Nonsense. My father was a large man. There is a trunk in the attic. I am Prince Vladimir, by way of introduction, and this is Princess Gisella of Kesse-Saxeburg.”

  The large man’s eyes widened, then he came up on one knee and bowed his head. “Pleased and honored, Your Highnesses.”

  Nathaniel slapped the man on a soggy shoulder. “This is Makepeace Bone.”

  “Ah, the man wounded at Anvil Lake.”

  Makepeace got up again. “T’weren’t nothing, Highness. Just got all meat, no bone.”

  Nathaniel’s smile slowly evaporated. “Anvil Lake’s where we got the pasmorte.”

  “Any word of Captain Strake? I sent Jean off to trade for him.”

  “He’ll be a bit late for that, Highness.” The woodsman swallowed hard. “Captain Strake ain’t coming back.”

  The Prince took them up to the main house and left Kamiskwa, Makepeace, and Nathaniel to build a roaring fire in the dining room’s fireplace. Gisella set herself the task of arranging food and drink. Vlad dispatched Baker to close Mugwump in the wurmrest and watch him, firing up the boiler as the day drew to an end.

  He took it upon himself to go to the attic and retrieve clothes. Without too much difficulty he located the wooden chest and opened it. He unfolded a shirt and held it up. It might barely fit. He also found trousers and doubted they could be buttoned closed, but they would have to do. Below them he found a folded blanket, which he also pulled out.

  A small packet of letters fell to the floor. They had been tied with a ribbon, which had been sealed with wax. The seal bore the imprint of his mother’s signet, and the letter on top had been addressed to his father in her hand. By riffling the corners, however, he saw other letters in his father’s hand. The paper looked old and the date on the first letter marked it as being older than he was.

  Blushing for reasons he could not fathom, he hid the letters back in the chest and returned to his guests. Makepeace’s wet clothes got hauled into the kitchen to dry while the large man sat wrapped in a blanket, his feet perilously close to the fire.

  Gisella and a serving girl arrived with mulled cider and stew, bread, and cheese. Vlad offered whiskey, which Nathaniel accepted, but Kamiskwa and Makepeace refused. They chatted pleasantly while the men ate, with Gisella effortlessly playing hostess. Once they had finished their stew, she cleared the bowls, then returned to sit quietly at Vlad’s side.

  Nathaniel reported on the expedition and confined himself to important facts—or the facts he thought the Prince wanted to hear. He described the battle with the pasmortes in a bit more sanitized detail than he might have in the past, occasionally glancing at the Princess as he did so, but Vlad understood what he was doing and found the information fascinating.

  “You say Ilsavont acted as if palsied? Limbs would shake, overall weakness?”

  “’Cepting his mouth, which ran just fine.”

  Vlad stroked his chin. “I had hoped the iron would kill them outright, but debilitating them also works. I wish I’d had a chance to examine him or even this Hisser.”

  Makepeace shook his head. “Poor little feller. He was scared most all the time. Didn’t mind lugging the travois for a piece, though.”

  “That’s interesting. You’re saying the pasmorte followed your orders?”

  “Just hitched him up, told him to follow.”

  “Told, or commanded?”

  Makepeace tugged on his beard. “Come to think on it, my voice did rise a mite.”

  “Very good.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “But now Ilsavont, he didn’t take no orders at all.”

  “No, I gathered that, and this is what I find interesting. We know the pasmortes, some of them at least, can work magick. Ilsavont and his father both maintained some of their personality and could shoot. I would hazard a guess that your Hisser could not have. Logic and reason are critical for doing complex tasks. Following orders, however, only requires obedience. Tell me truthfully, gentlemen, did Hisser exhibit any behavior that would mark him as being more intelligent than, say, a dog?”

  “Cain’t say as he did.”

  Makepeace smiled. “I reckon if he’d had fur, I might have even petted him.”

  “And there was a discernible difference between him and Ilsavont in terms of decay?”

  Kamiskwa nodded. “None of the lesser pasmortes had been fresh from the grave. Ilsavont was killed when they took Aodaga.”

  Vlad’s eyebrows knitted together. “Would you have known Ilsavont was pasmorte if he had not mentioned it?”

  Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed for a bit. “I don’t reckon I would have. He was pink and warm, didn’t have no bits fallen off.”

  “Most peculiar, and yet I wonder…”

  Gisella squeezed his shoulder. “What is it, my lord?”

  “Just a thought. I shall need to do some reading on it.” His left hand rose and covered hers. “Your speculation about distance from du Malphias having an affect on his magic is also interesting. Enchantments have been known to diminish over time. Distance, then, would make sense, too—though the implication that he can work magick at range disturbs me.”

  Vlad sighed. “And to the other matter, there is no doubt Captain Strake is gone?”

  “Him, someone who escaped with him, and seven Ryngians near as we can make out.” Nathaniel looked down, refusing to meet the Prince’s gaze. “Me and Kamiskwa should have gone after him. I was just scared. We lost him to the winding path.”

  Gisella leaned forward. “Please, what means this ‘winding path’?”

  “It’s a place in the forest, many places, really. You see a path that goes on forever and you get lost in it.”

  She nodded. “We know these places. The forests of Kesse have them. Die Dunkelheitplätze. Children, they get lost. They say devils live there. There are stories of the children returning later, generations later, thinking they have been gone for no time at all.”

  �
�Ain’t no returning from the winding path.” Nathaniel glanced at Kamiskwa. “Lessen you’re Chief Msitazi.”

  Kamiskwa’s eyes tightened. “My friend says he was afraid. This is not so. I told him we could not go. He was brave. I was not.”

  “Now that ain’t so, Kamiskwa.”

  “You know it is.”

  Vlad held his hands up. “Gentlemen, your courage is not to be questioned. The three of you killed four times your number in pasmortes and killed at least three Ryngians. Had the trail ended at a deep crevasse, you would not have leaped in. Death on the winding path would be just as certain. The spirits here are not so kind as they are in Kesse-Saxeburg. And your mission was not to rescue Captain Strake, but to gain information, which you have done admirably.”

  He stood. “Mr. Bone, I shall require from you a complete inventory of what you lost when your canoe was destroyed. I will replace everything. I shall even have Temperance Bay’s finest gunsmith make a gun to your specification.”

  Makepeace smiled. “Well, Highness, if you make that Queensland, I been fancying—not coveting, mind you—fancying that there gun Nathaniel’s been toting around.”

  “Done. Until it is finished, I shall offer you the lend of any piece I own.” Vlad smiled. “Though I know it is an imposition, I should ask the three of you to remain here, as my guests, for however long you wish. A week at the minimum. I am certain there are questions I shall have, and details I wish to confirm.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “I reckon we can do that, though my fancy clothes are in Saint Luke.”

  “I promise you, gentlemen, you’ll have no need for such. We’ll not be having other guests any time soon.”

  “I need to begetting word to the Frosts.” Nathaniel sighed. “I done promised them I’d bring Owen home. It’s on me to deliver the truth.”

  “Agreed, but your trip can wait. I will need you, and the information we compile will make his sacrifice worth it.”

  The next day Vlad interviewed each man separately. He teased out extra details about pasmortes, which he compiled in a notebook. The idea that they could be killed by crushing the skull or shooting them in the head suggested du Malphias was stimulating something in the brain to animate the creatures. He carefully chose that word so as to avoid thinking of them as alive.

  He’d torn through his library and found an interesting collection of treatises by a Tharyngian surgeon who had traveled with the army during the Tharyngo-Alandaluce War two decades earlier. He described, in clinical detail, the nature of head wounds in a variety of patients and the symptoms his patients exhibited. He coupled this with highly detailed descriptions of brain dissections where he purported to identify the structures that governed certain functions.

  One, which lay lodged deep in the brain, above the stem, but not in the higher brain, he identified as the Gland of Miracles. He indicated that it, deeply set as it was, was the portion of the brain which enabled one to access magick. He included some tables that purported to show that magick users had larger Glands of Miracles than others, but his statistical sample had been ridiculously small. He so believed his thesis, however, that he had openly advocated inserting a needle through the ears of criminals to destroy that gland, assuring readers it could be done with minimal impairment of other functions.

  Vlad’s study led him to divide pasmortes into two classes. One were low-functioning creatures who were converted after an extended postmortem period. Their outer brain had decayed to the point where they were not capable of much more than following orders. If the Gland of Miracles, set deep inside, was one of the last portions of the brain to decay, it would allow for this sort of pasmorte.

  The other pasmortes clearly had been brought back before much, if any, decay had set in. The Prince caught himself thinking about their being alive and not just reanimated. The fact was that very few people died instantly. Death was a process that look a long time, and ample were cases of people who had been believed dead and had later awoken to find themselves in a casket or being lowered into a grave.

  What if du Malphias did not reanimate these people, but brought them back from the very brink of death? Some impairment consistent with their injuries made sense. The Laureate could have mistaken that for symptoms of brain damage, hence his belief they were actually dead. It could be that they were returned to life through magick healing, which was not unknown, but was rare and never before conducted so thoroughly.

  But that can’t be true. While Ilsavont’s palsy was consistent with spinal cord injury, none of the three explorers had mentioned his being in pain or bleeding from the wound. That, coupled with the low-functioning pasmortes moving sluggishly in the cold, suggested a depressed metabolism. The things really were just reanimated corpses.

  Or, at least, Ilsavont was.

  A savage storm blowing in from the east prevented Nathaniel from heading into Temperance. Vlad did not envy his having to deliver the news and resolved to go with him to visit the Frosts. Given the nature of that visit, neither was anxious for the storm to end.

  The storm did require the boiler to be fired up around the clock and Make-peace volunteered to help man it. “Well, now, I done some praying and thinking. Seems if Mugwump wanted to make a meal of me, I’d long since be et. I reckon God has plans for him and me, so this is God’s work I’ll be doing.”

  Mugwump, for his part, remained silent on matters of theology, but took to Makepeace’s presence easily. He never splashed him and always looked up when the man came to relieve the Prince. Baker reported that Mugwump seemed sulky when Makepeace left and, as nearly as Vlad could figure out, he was hoping the big man would be bringing him another pasmorte as a snack.

  Exactly why Mugwump had gone after the reanimated corpse remained a mystery. None of the Prince’s books explained that behavior. Mugwump had resumed his normal diet and ate with his usual enthusiasm.

  Three days after the storm had begun to blow, it broke. As the stablehands were hitching a team to the Prince’s coach, a lone rider, his horse steaming, galloped into the yard. He leaped from the saddle, tossing Nathaniel his reins, and dropped to a knee. “Forgive me, Highness. I’ve just come from Temperance.”

  Vlad flicked a finger. “Up, please. You’re Caleb Frost.”

  “I am, Highness.” Caleb caught his breath. “Please, sir, I have a message. It’s Captain Strake, sir.”

  The Prince nodded. “We know.”

  Caleb blinked in surprise. “You do?”

  “Mr. Woods brought the news. Terrible thing. Tragedy.” The Prince shook his head. “We were just heading into Temperance to let your family know he’s dead.”

  “No, sir, that’s not it.” Caleb laughed aloud. “Captain Strake. He’s come back to us. He’s alive!”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Otherwhen

  The Winding Path

  One step onto the winding path and the world changed. The wind’s whisper became the unceasing crash of breaking glass. With every footfall the powdery snow hissed and popped as if it were burning coals. The sky, where it peeked through between trees, became a luminous grey the likes of which Owen had only seen once before, on the voyage to Mystria. Sailors had pointed at the horizon, paled, and prayed.

  Left arm tucked tightly against the hole in his side, he draped his right arm over Quarante-neuf’s left shoulder. The pasmorte supported him with an arm across his back. Owen remembered to close his left eye. “Only use your right eye.”

  The pasmorte’s voice came listlessly. “It doesn’t matter. Their magick does not affect me.”

  Behind him came shouting and two more shots. One hit Quarante-neuf in the lower back. He grunted. He twisted, putting his body between the Tharyngian soldiers and Owen. Owen peeked past and continued sidling along the winding path.

  The Tharyngians spread out, their faces serious. An officer snapped orders. The two men who had shot reloaded their muskets with quick and efficient motions. But as they came to reinsert their ramrods beneath their barrels they slowed
. Their intensity slackened, their ferocity melted into wonder. Their hands opened and guns fell forgotten.

  Owen dared not open his left eye for fear of being seduced by whatever the Ryngians saw. Small creatures with spindly limbs, woven from branches and decorated with moss and mushrooms, played coy games of hide and seek. They peered from behind trees, the light melody of giggles playing through the air. Men laughed and darted forward, stumbling. They emerged from the snow, faces covered, laughing all the more in that tone men reserve for acknowledging their foolishness before women they desire.

  Military discipline vanished. The officer bowed, sweeping off his hat, then straightening. He offered a gloved hand to a gnarled dryad. He took the creature into his arms as he might a Duchess at some grand Feris gala. They began to dance—he, surprisingly well for wearing snowshoes. His men scattered, chasing other phantom lovers further into the woods.

  “We have to get away from them.” Owen turned back south, then stopped.

  Another of the creatures had emerged. Whereas the others had been made of sticks, this one had stout saplings for limbs and the bole of a tree for a body. Where branches might have topped it, lightning-blasted wooden spikes formed a crown. The creature sat there, knees drawn up, arms wide, eyeless and yet clearly watching them.

  Words formed in low murmurs, seeming to vibrate up through the ground. “You know the dangers, yet you come. You do not seem stupid.”

  Owen removed his arm from Quarante-neuf’s shoulder and stood as straight as he could. “There are things outside the path which are worse than whatever fate awaits me here.”

  “The abomination.”

  The creature referred to du Malphias’ fortress, and a moment’s thought revealed why. The walls were formed of this thing’s bones, and its creation ate into his domain. The pasmortes, mindlessly pursuing directives, might well have carved into places men would have avoided by instinct alone.