Dead Souls

by Campbell, Ramsey; Warren, Kaaron; Finch, Paul; McMahon, Gary; Hood, Robert; Stone, Michael; Mark S. Deniz

  The change back was as quick as the previous transformation. In a blink, the puddock was gone and a bone-thin and naked man, all malformed and gangly, was sitting on the stool, a snarl on his face.

  “If you expect me to sit at yer table and have a chum-chummy dinner with you, then yer a stupider, more dunderheaded...”

  Dughall began cutting off a hank of bannock. “The sausage and white pudding are hot, and the whiskey's from a good year. And yer not going anywhere. I'm bigger and faster and nastier, I wager. Now put some clothes on.”

  They ate in silence. The wee man stared at Dughall and Dughall eyed the wee man.

  “What's your name?” said Dughall, eventually.

  “Not telling. It'd give you power over me, wouldna it? It's how that bastard, Eideard, got me. He found out my name.”

  “What do I call you then? How about Puddock?”

  “You're a hate-worthy cretin.”

  Whereas Dughall sipped his whiskey, the wee man gulped it. Each time the mug was emptied, Dughall obligingly refilled it.

  “You know,” said the wee man, after the fifth mug. “You're not shuch a bad host really. I mean you threaten me with a knife, then you go and tie me up, and let me get all sunlightified, but ashide from that, you're not shuch a bad host.” He swayed a little, and Dughall refilled his mug.

  After the seventh mug, the wee man was singing merrily, after the ninth he was snoring. Dughall fetched the silver net, which was still lying on the floor where it'd been dropped. It was slippery to the touch, and cold. He went back to the hearth room and looked down on the sleeping Puddock. Now, how had the wee man done it...?

  As Dughall cast the net and dragged it through the air above the wee man, he considered what he was planning, and it thrilled him. It made his heart skip. It made his pulse run. He felt alive. Really and truly alive. He'd owned his own dreams again, for the first time in months, and though it had just been a few hours, just a few dreams, it was enough to spark the rebuilding of his heart and mind and soul.

  The wee man's dreams were dark and nasty. Dughall saw them flicker and move, as the net caught them, and was able to study them still more carefully as he emptied the net into a spare coal-sack. Mostly, the dreams concerned the many and various ways that Eideard, Thegn of Dalquhairn, might die horribly. There were one or two dreams about Dughall too, but these he discarded, onto the floor where they flopped about before dissolving away to nothing. He only wanted the dreams concerning Eideard.

  When he was finished, Dughall considered letting Puddock sleep unfettered, but decided it was too much of a risk. He tied up the wee man's hands and tethered the end of the cord to a beam. Pudduck was so drunk that he barely stirred.

  Then, Dughall went to bed. He lay awake for a while longer than he wanted, thinking things over. There were still three nights until tax-day. Would it be enough?

  ****

  “It's not enough.” The Puddock spoke suddenly, so that Dughall started.

  “Sorry?”

  “It's not enough, is it? The Thegn will be expecting a full bottle of potive and yer've only got three night's worth of dreams from one soul.”

  Dughall said nothing. It was the morning of tax day, and Puddock was sitting at the table, untied now. He seemed to have enjoyed the free food and whiskey, and had stopped trying to run off at every opportunity on the second day. Dughall had moved the table so that it sat always in shadow.

  “I know what yer've been doing. Collecting my dreams when I'm asleep. I know cause I feel better. Lighter.”

  Dughall considered this. “I thought you'd feel worse. Grey and stretched thin, like rained-out clouds. Like how I felt.”

  Puddock sighed. “No. Yer dreams are mostly good — but my kind know only nasty dreams. My dreams, they weigh me down. Yers free you.”

  “I see.”

  “Use whiskey.”

  “Hm?”

  “Whiskey is a sort of false dream.” Puddock leaned closer and sniffed the bottle that was full of the dark and churning stuff of his own nightmares. “It can be used to water down dreams, and Eideard will never know. I've done it a couple times when I came up a bit short at the end of the month.”

  “Will it kill him, your dreams?”

  “Probably not.”

  “It will be bad for him, though, won't it?”

  “Aye, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Thank you.” Dughall took one of the many bottles of whiskey he'd bought over the last couple days, and poured it into the dreams. He then gathered Puddock's rotten old cloak around his shoulders and pulled down the hood. By hunching himself up and stooping he was able to make himself something approaching the size of the wee man.

  Puddock watched all of this with an unimpressed air. “You need to hobble more. When you go into the castle ask to see the 'Thegn's Librarian'. He has no librarian, it's a sort of password. He'll expect you to grovel and fawn a lot, so do it. Make your voice more wheezy. You'll not be safe until he's got all of that stuff down his gullet. Oh, and take the net too. You’ll want it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just take it and go. You’ll know when it’s wanted.”

  Dughall didn't have time to argue. He tied the net to his belt. “Thank you.”

  “Idiot. I'm not telling this to you for your own good sake. If you fail, that bastard Eideard will think I've betrayed him. He'll cast a hex and summon me, and there'll be long hours of torturing and hot irons and sharp needling things.” His head drooped a little. “Long hours.”

  “Thank you,” said Dughall, again.

  A sigh. “You're welcome.”

  As Dughall left, the wee man said, “and, good luck,” before pouring himself another cup of whiskey.

  Dughall decided to keep up his disguise from the moment he left the door, so it took him almost all morning to limp from his village on the shores of Linfern Loch, to Dalquhairn town. With the hood pulled so low, he could barely see the people moving around him, let alone the high walls and timbers of Thegn Eideard's fortress.

  The guards at the keep did not seem suspicious, perhaps they recognized the sight and smell of the old cloak. When Dughall asked for The Librarian, one of the men nodded and said, “You know the way.”

  “I gots lost last time,” said Dughall, in a weak voice. Then, as an afterthought he added. “I hates it, getting lost.”

  He couldn't see, but he thought the men were probably sneering or rolling their eyes at one-another, given the span of silence that followed. “Right,” said one of them, eventually, and he accompanied Dughall down a series of corridors to a large black door. “Here you are then. Don't get lost on the way out.” The guard walked off.

  Dughall checked to make sure his gutting knife was good and loose in its sheaf. He wasn't stupid, and he wasn't sure this was going to work. It was best to keep the knife handy. Then, tentatively, he knocked on the door.

  A voice came from within, muffled, “It's about time.”

  Dughall pushed the door open. He entered what seemed to be a luxuriant room, judging from the richness of the rugs and the richness of scented smoke and good food smells. He dared not raise his face. Falling to his knees, Dughall held the bottle out, and made some small noises that he hoped were suitably pathetic.

  Within a moment, the bottle was snatched from his hands.

  “You're getting fat,” said the voice, gruff and rumbling. It was Thegn Eideard. Dughall recognized his voice from the monthly Proclaiment, when disputes and felonies were adjudged. “If you've been skiving off to feed your face, I'll have you skinned alive and thrown in a pit of lampreys.” A pause. “And I’ve been noticing that some of my servants have been uppity these last few days. It's almost like they're remembering their free will. One might even think that they have a few dreams of their own again...you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, you ugly little toad? You wouldn’t have been taking a holiday, would you?”

  “No, my glorious Thegn. It is perhaps something to do with a passing movem
ent of the stars. A temporary change, no doubt.” Dughall had long ago noticed that travelling cunning-men and soothsayers blamed a lot on the stars, which seemed unfair to him, as the stars didn't do much other than sit in the sky and twinkle. Still, the explanation seemed to assuage Eideard.

  Dughall listened to the sound of liquid going down a throat. There was a pause, then a sniff. “Tastes different.” But then the glugging drinking continued. For a time there was quiet.

  “You can go now.”

  Dughall got up to leave.

  “Wait!”

  He froze.

  “Turn around. Face me.”

  He turned, slowly.

  “Next time, do try to harvest some sweeter dreams. That lot was bitter and...and...” Thegn Eideard made a choking noise. “You...you...you can't have...I spellbound you...” He gasped. “Poison...poison!”

  Dughall gave up the pretence. He threw back the cloak and stood up straight. His knife was in his hand too, but he didn't need it. Eideard was staggering. He grabbed hold of the edge of a table, slipped and fell to the floor. “Poison!”

  While Eideard writhed on the floor, Dughall glanced around. It was a room full of richess and treasures, but on second glance it was also a room full of strange and frightening things. There was a human skull on the Thegn's desk, and what looked like a human skin stretched on the wall like a rug. Bones and roots and other tools of witchcraft lay piled on shelves, demoniac symbols splodged the walls, and what Dughall took to be a circle of magic was marked out on the floor in the red-brown of old blood.

  Thegn Eideard had stopped moving now. He lay still, gasping, his eyes wide open. Dughall approached him cautiously, then crouched over the lord. Dark dreams chased over the surface of the man's eyes. Would he be trapped forever in the nightmare web of Puddock's dreams? Would he live over and over again the many and varied horrid deaths that Puddock had dreamed up for him? Dughall was wondering it if would be kinder to just slit the Thegn's throat when he noticed that there was a change occurring.

  He saw it first in the face. The cheeks that had been full and ruddy, were now sunken. His bristly beard was growing lank and thin. Then the whole of his body changed, contorted, shrank. It was when Dughall heard the bones of the lord's feet popping and snapping as they twisted into malformed lumps, that he was certain.

  “I see.”

  Dughall unhooked the silver net from his belt and threw it onto the still unconscious lord. “You'll always have the means to capture your own dreams and escape the nightmares for a while. You'll have the means to give those dreams to someone else, too, but how does a man catch his own dreams, even if he owns the right sort of net? You can't. And I wager you'll never trust another to do it.”

  Before he left, Dughall collected everything that looked like it might be a tool of the unhallowed arts and threw them all into the fire that was roaring in the hearth. He didn't want Thegn Eideard to have any of his black arts handy when he awoke.

  As Dughall was throwing the last skin-bound book onto the fire, Thegn Eideard began to stir and groan. It seemed the dreams were wearing off. It was time to leave, before the Thegn woke up enough to properly fix an image of Dughall's face in his head. There was no point in tempting revenge.

  The guards gave Dughall no trouble on the way out of the fortress, and he took off the cloak as soon as he was safely outside the town walls. He walked home with it under his arm, enjoying the sunshine, listening to the blackbirds singing their own stories from the trees.

  “It's done,” said Dughall, as he pushed open the door. “You knew, didn't you? You knew what would happen to—”

  Slumped at the table was the blue-grey corpse of a stranger...an old man. His hair was a white halo and his skin was so wrinkled it looked like scrunched up leather. He was ancient, but human. Cupped in one hand was a mug of whiskey and on his face was a smile.

  ****

  goldenthread

  Elizabeth Barrette

  Something wakes me from my slumber. The emptiness in my heart is an ache I remember all too well. The air of the cavern stirs around me. It smells of brimstone. I hear the clink and crunch of coins underfoot. Dust rises and swirls.

  At last you move into the field of my vision. Your armour glitters in the sunbeams that fall through chinks in the stone. You kneel beside me, pull off your helm and set it on the carpet. Ah, of course you are handsome. Your hair is black, I see, your eyes as well. Your fingers follow the threads of red and blue beneath your knees.

  I stand before you, naked. I know what you see — my golden hair, my sapphire eyes, my ivory skin. I would be strange to you regardless, even if you had not found me like this.

  What are you doing here, beauty, you ask of me?

  I do not reply.

  You touch me. The heat of your flesh seems to burn. I clear my throat. Dust, cobwebs — you brush away my resistance, just like that. Your fingertips pluck my heartstrings. I vibrate. I can no longer remain silent. I cannot sing, so I must speak.

  My voice emerges, creaky with grief and disuse, but still sweet as a girl’s. Startled, you jerk away — I fall silent — but soon you compel me to begin again.

  I suppose I should begin at the beginning. I was born in Chakor, the land of the moon-loving birds. Perhaps you have heard of it. Then again, perhaps not. My parents bore only two children, my elder sister and me. They named us Nishikiran and Haimikiran, that is, Ebonthread and Goldenthread. She was as dark as I am fair, her hair as curled as mine is straight.

  When we had grown old enough to turn the heads of men, our mother sent for the matchmaker, and the matchmaker sent a man. His name was Dayit. He came to marry my sister. He courted Nishikiran with silks and sweet pastries and jewels. Yet his eyes went to me whenever I passed by, and I could not resist. My heart lay itself at his feet like a flower.

  Nishikiran noticed, although we never did anything improper. One day she called to me … Come, sister, walk along the river with me. It was freezing but I went. I thought she wanted to talk about her wedding. I still remember the twelve yards of silk that our mother bought for her, as red and blue as this rug.

  Instead, my sister pushed me into the Ganja. I could not swim. Nishikiran knew this. I cried and called out to her. I beat at the water with my hands, kicked at it with my feet. My sister stood watching as the current carried me away. Soon the water closed over my head. I drowned. Nishikiran had killed me.

  But it did not end there. No, no. That would be too easy, too simple. That would be too sane.

  Did you know that the soul takes a while to roll free of the body? Have you heard that it can take hours to find a new place on the Wheel? No? Ah, but you should. You are a hero; you may need to know such things.

  Before the sun quite closed the door of the day, I was found. A musician had gone to purify himself in the sacred waters. He pulled my body from the icy river. I heard him weeping over me, muffled as if from a great distance. I thought it very foolish, for he did not know me. It would have been decent for him to build a pyre and send my ashes on their way. He did not.

  Instead, he cut the bones from my body and the hair from my head. He took gold from the ground and golden wood from a tree. He took the ivory of an elephant. From the wood and bone he made a harp, tall and fair, its front-post the figure of a woman with sapphires for eyes, its pins and inlays of ivory and gold. He strung it with the fine strands that had given me my name — and he called the harp Goldenthread, though he had never heard it said. Perhaps he was a mystic.

  Certainly he was a wizard, for he cast a spell on the harp that bound my soul to the musical instrument. Never again need I take my turn on the Wheel, he said.

  The first time he touched my heartstrings, I thought I would die. It was as it is with you — I could not keep silent — the voice poured out of me like a river. I had a beautiful voice in my youth. I do not blush to say that even now. My family said that I sang like a moonbird. So I sang to him what had happened to me, and he wept afresh, his fingers tremb
ling on the strings.

  He carried me up the river. I did not want to go. I did not want to dishonour my family. I would have begged him to stay away, but I could not speak unless he played along. The musician went to my father’s house. It was quite a fine house, with tiles all around the door, and sandalwood screens in the receiving room. I had loved it once.

  My mother and father sat in their stuffed chairs. My sister and her soon-to-be husband sat beside them. They looked at me without recognition. The musician they greeted with polite welcome.

  His name was Sarang, he said, and he wanted to play a song for them.

  Then he began to touch me. Oh, I longed to stay silent, but I could not! The music swelled inside me and I had to release it or burst.

  I see my mother, dear as dear;

  I see my father, never fear.

  I see my sweetheart, one last time,

  Who does not know his own bride’s crime.

  I see my sister, in her gown,

  Who pushed me in and watched me drown.

  Then it was done. The song sung, the tale told; my family knew at last what had happened to me. They must have believed it an accident before.

  Now there will be justice, Sarang said.

  Yes, my father said, justice for a foul sorcerer who came among them with lies and curses!

  I think he was simply too surprised to respond, my poor musician. Steel flashed as my father drew his talwar, the curving sword soon buried in Sarang’s belly. I fell to the floor. Blood soaked into the carpet. I could see it from where I lay. My sapphire eyes pointed that way. I watched Sarang die. There was no one to make a musical instrument out of him.