by Darryl Fabia
The Fairy-Blood Curse
Duncard was the least favored page that the knight Ser Grund ever had. The boy was too slow at times in bringing a horse blanket or a sword, and his master was impatient. Often Grund sent him to work the stables on good days, for the horses never complained, and to clean Grund’s keep on bad days, as then he was close to Grund all the time, and the knight had a mean fist. Sometimes he didn’t bother to remove his gauntlet before chastising the boy, and while Duncard showed promise with a sword, Grund swore the boy would be polishing armor for all his days if he could not learn to be dependable.
One evening, as Duncard sat polishing his master’s armor, a tiny fairy came passing by the window of the armory and saw the bruises across the boy’s face. “Dear child,” the pixie said, her glow reflecting off the steel breastplate. “What ever have you done to deserve such a beating?”
“I am too slow with the master’s needs,” explained Duncard. “Be it his armor or food, or perhaps the stables need fresh straw, I need a fist to my face in order to learn haste.”
“Pain will not teach what you need,” the fairy said, fluttering close to Duncard’s face. “I am Kechaeli. I see no lack of urgency in your eyes, but only the lack of will and courage to make things right. I see this master is only restraining you, but we’ll teach him to help you in whatever way he might.” A magic staff appeared in the fairy’s tiny hands and she tapped it against the knight’s armor to cast a fairy-blooded spell. “This magic is a living curse that will morph and interpret the feelings and words in the air, and it knows arithmetic too. I will be watching. Have Ser Grund hold his armor and let him say what he likes, for a curse will arise to claim him.” A tiny kiss dotted Duncard’s cheek and Kechaeli fluttered out the window like a heavenly butterfly.
Excited with the prospect of revenge, Duncard hurriedly polished until the armor was clean, and then brought the breastplate to Grund. “See, master, the armor is clean,” he said, handing it up to the knight. “Armor fit to die in, wouldn’t you agree?”
He hoped that Grund would concede and so the curse would kill him, but Grund scoffed, boxed the boy’s ears, and said, “No one wishes to die in their armor. I will make my enemies die in theirs while mine protects my life, and so when I die, it will be in my bed where I belong.”
Not to be discouraged, Duncard looked at the armor and said. “But does it not look so clean you could eat from it?” he asked, hoping the armor would sprout a mouth and devour Grund.
“I suppose,” the knight said, reluctant to praise Duncard much. No sooner had the words left his lips than a bountiful feast sprang from the breastplate. Stuffed mushrooms and peppers, roast lamb, baked bread running with gravy, and many more dishes piled from the armor, onto its steel surface and onto Ser Grund. When the floor was covered in fine food, the knight reeled back a gauntleted fist and struck Duncard three times, leaving bloody cuts on the boy’s cheeks. “That’s for mischief, for foolishness, and for wasting my time!” Grund thrust the armor against the boy’s chest, his hand still on the breastplate. “You take this back to the armory and you polish it so fine that I can see my face in it. Off with you!”
Duncard trudged away with the armor in his arms and took his place on the armory bench, wiping away food and beginning to scrub the breastplate clean once more. “If you are watching, fairy, I feel I’ve been tricked by this curse,” he said. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and polished and polished, and slowly the breastplate began to gleam.
Yet just when Duncard thought he was done, he noticed a spot on one side of the chest that he could not rub out. It grew worse with every heavy stroke of his cloth. A similar spot appeared on the other side of the breastplate, and then a line that resembled a nose, and finally a longer line like a mouth emerged along the bottom of the plate. Duncard dropped the cleaned armor in horror when he recognized Ser Grund’s face in the breastplate.
“Release me, you witch-boy!” the master howled. “I’ll have your head for this!”
“You will never have his head,” said a deep, ominous voice that seemed to quake from within the armor. “You will remain in this breastplate, an observer, lest you wish to protect the boy and show yourself a true knight. When you have guarded Duncard from the same number of blows as you have struck upon him since he met you, then you shall be a man once more.”
With that, the voice of the living magic faded, and Duncard was left alone with the armor wearing a face. He bundled it up with whatever food he could carry and ran away from Grund’s keep, all the while listening to the curses and threats from his pack that no one else seemed to hear. As he gained some distance from the keep, he heard bells and shouts—people were searching for Ser Grund. He did not know what might become of the keep and the town, but he could not stay. He took his armor and found another castle, where a knight was in need of a page. The people there took him in, gave him room and board, and expected him to keep armor clean and bring what the knight needed. Duncard did all that he was asked, and in time his swordplay was noticed.
Years passed. Duncard became a squire in his adolescence and he wore Grund’s armor into battle alongside his new master. The kingdom was beset by barbarians from the northern hills, said to be half-trolls on their mothers’ sides, and while Duncard took his time reaching the front line, he was no less brave than any other man. His sword crossed with axes and hammers, blocked curved blades and wooden clubs. When the battle was done, he remembered the cure to Kechaeli’s fairy-blood curse, but there were two problems. One, the boy did not know how many times Grund had struck him, and two, not a single blow had connected with the boy’s armor. He had slain many barbarians though, half-troll or not at all, and was honored at the right hand of his new master.
Other battles passed and Duncard’s swordplay only grew finer, keeping his life safe before any weapon could find his armor. He rescued a woman from a village and married her. A healthy son was born and Duncard was called upon to be honored by the king, to become one of his knights. His life seemed perfect now, except for the face in his armor, which terrified his enemies, but had not been given the chance to guard him. On the evening before Duncard was to be knighted, he found tears running down the face of his armor and took pity on his old master. “Ser Grund, why do you weep?” he asked.
“Your swordplay is magnificent,” Grund said. “I never noticed before, but in the heat of battle, and seeing it before my steely eyes, I couldn’t ignore it any further. But for me, it is too good! If no enemy ever finds your armor, I will never be free. I wish to see my family again and to hold my wife in my arms, and to shake your hand and ask your forgiveness, as a man and not a piece of armor.”
Duncard did not know if this was trickery or sincerity. He didn’t like the idea of opening himself to an enemy’s attacks, especially when they wanted to take his life, but Grund had been in the armor for many years now. If nothing else, he felt the old knight deserved to see his family, and planned to take Grund for a visit home once the knighting ceremony was over.
The next day, Duncard bowed before the king, was patted on each shoulder by the king’s sword, and swore his service to the royal family and the kingdom. “I wish to award you a keep to hold your squires and pages, your family and theirs,” the king said. “More importantly, I need a good man to hold that fallen territory, a dark stain on my bright kingdom. This place was once the home of Ser Grund, a knight loyal to my service, but now I fear evil has taken the land. Ride to the keep and cut the wickedness from within. When this is done, the keep shall be yours.”
Out of earshot from the king and court, Ser Duncard told Grund all he’d heard. “We’ll set off to our old home at once,” the new knight announced. The next day, he put on the armor of Ser Grund and rode back toward Grund’s keep, hoping the situation was not so dire as the king believed.
Arriving at the edge of town, Duncard and Grund noticed an unsettling quiet. No one laughed or shouted, no dogs barked and no birds sang. The houses looked fine, if a bit dusty, but n
o one peered from the windows or roamed in the streets, as if the town surrounding the castle had been suddenly abandoned. The keep was certainly not abandoned—firelight shown in the windows of the main hall and Duncard rode his horse through the entry gate to see what had happened here.
“Call for my wife,” Grund said. “Call for my children, my servants. Call for anyone.”
Duncard shouted the names he remembered, but received no answer. He dismounted his horse and stalked the keep’s main hall, bellowing names until he supposed the people were gone, and if any evil remained, it would have pounced on him by now. Then he and Grund heard a sickly, wet laugh echoing from the back of the keep, near the kitchens and the dungeon pits.
In the kitchen on a stool sat a squat, round woman in a black cloak, with a scrunched up face and a staff knobbed by a red human skull on one end and a white skull on the other. “I hear you calling names,” she cackled. “But I have seen no soul here besides my sister for many months. What fun it is that you’ve visited us. I am the witch June, and my sister is September.”
“Where are all the people?” Duncard asked, drawing his sword.
“Some escaped, some were eaten by my sister,” June said, hopping off her stool. “She remembers the names of all she’s devoured. If you wish to know, you must seek her in the deepest of the dungeon pits. Do as she commands and your questions will be answered.” The little witch hobbled through the kitchen and another hall, to where the stairway to the pits descended. “Have a drink,” she said, offering Duncard a pitcher of beer. “I find it helps to be drunk before speaking with my sister and this special brew will slosh you in one swig.”
Duncard thanked the witch without meaning it and carried the stone pitcher with him. “Do not drink that,” Grund said. “It’s likely cursed or poisoned. I don’t trust these sisters.” Duncard did not drink, no matter how much he would have cared for a beverage after the journey.
They descended the steps, passing empty cell after empty cell, the bars rusted and blanketed by cobwebs, yet Duncard did not see a single spider. At the bottom of the pit, he found a bed big enough to hold ten men and their wives, and a large, dark lump took up most of the space. When Duncard stepped closer, a white face looked up from within the wriggling mound.
“So, my sister has sent me a man,” September said, crawling naked to the edge of the bed. She was as thin as her sister was thick, but just as short. The great lump filling the bed was her dark hair, piles and piles of it. The nude, ghastly woman beckoned Duncard closer. “Not any man, but a knight in shining armor. Come, ser. What do you wish to know?”
“Your sister tells that you’ve eaten many of the people from this keep and town,” Duncard said. “We—I wish to know if you’ve devoured certain names.” And he told her the names of Grund’s wife and children.
“My memory is tied with my happiness, for the happier I am, the better I remember.” September grinned maliciously. “Wed and bed me, and we will make many children, and from their mouths, they will speak the names of all whom I’ve consumed. Then you will have your answers and I will have a husband at last, so we will both get what we want.”
Duncard stared hard at the little witch and realized her hair was not human hair, but spider legs, tiny, wriggling, countless billions and billions of spider legs, all alive and twitching. “No, I won’t be marrying you, for I have a wife and, well, circumstances.”
The young knight had no need to justify his refusal further and September didn’t wish to hear. Her plume of writhing spider legs swelled across the pit’s bottom, crawling after Duncard as he darted up the stairs, his armor clattering all the way. Behind him, the stone steps were torn apart by the scrabbling legs and the witch’s mad pursuit.
“Spill the drink!” Grund shouted, and Duncard did as he was told. The needling legs found the wet steps hard to grip, and could not tear them apart to slow Duncard’s climb from beneath his feet. He reached the top of the stairs before he realized he’d lost his sword in the chase. Yet when the spider legs came grasping for his head, Grund’s steel tongue slashed upward from the mouth of the breastplate, blocking the legs’ strike. Again and again, the tongue lashed and beat at them, until the only spider legs left were those falling apart from September’s scalp.
With no spider legs to defend her, Duncard grasped the witch by the neck. “Tell me, does your sister have any tricks we should fear?”
Normally September would have lied, but the snarling face on Duncard’s breastplate coaxed the truth from her. “Her staff bears two skulls,” the naked witch said. “The red skull drains all the blood of anyone whose flesh it tastes. The white skull pours a slick poison, made from the blood, that will slither down your throat and twist your stomach in knots the moment it touches your tongue.”
Leaving the witch in the dungeons, Duncard went back to the kitchen, swordless, but not without armor. He found June standing on her stool, with her two-skulled staff readied in her little hands. “So, you are not my brother-in-law, nor my sister’s next meal, but no matter—you’ll taste a fine brew!” First she aimed the white skull at Duncard’s mouth, but Grund’s tongue knocked the blow away, and his armor face twisted at the taste of the witch’s poison. Then the witch thrust the red skull at Duncard’s arm, but it bit down only on the hard steel of his protective breastplate.
Just then, Grund’s face vanished from the armor and Duncard was left to face June by himself, with no sword and no ally. The witch sneered, lunging with the white skull again, but not a drop of venom poured out. Instead, a soft, milky fluid dribbled, building in a narrow column until it rose taller than Duncard and took the shape of a man—Ser Grund, as he was the day he became part of the armor. Turning quicker than Duncard ever could, he snatched the staff from the witch’s hands and sent the red skull biting after her face. It drained the blood from her small body and filled the staff with poison. Grund then took the staff and loomed over Duncard.
“For seven years, I have lingered in that armor for the curse you put on me,” he said. “For seven years, I have not seen my wife and children, I have missed my home, all from you, and they may be dead. Would this place be as safe and sound as I left it, I would marry my youngest daughter to your son when they both came of age, and our united families would serve the king from our home here. That future may be gone, of course. I’m no liar and you’ve gained my respect for your swordsmanship, but if I cannot find my family, I will murder you and take yours. So you’d best find them now.”
Duncard hurried back to the dungeon pits, where his sword rested on the ruined stairs near the naked witch September. The witch might have known who she’d eaten and where to find Grund’s family, while the sword gave Duncard a chance to fight Grund. He picked up the sword and brought it to September’s neck. “Where is his family? I cannot wed you and I will certainly never bed you, but you can have your life if you’ll answer.”
“And if I ate his family, what then?” the witch asked. “I will be killed, and then you will be killed, for his grudge is strong and any righteousness of your vengeance has been undone by us sisters, come to this keep without a keeper in the black of night, hungry and merciless and merry in our hunt. I ate them all, skewering every squealing babe and sucking the meat from their bones. What will you do—keep your honor and die, or find some way around this? I have ways, ser. Many ways.”
Duncard knew his last magical agreement had cost Grund greatly, far worse than he deserved, and yet he could not give up his life, his wife, and his son. “He has your sister’s staff,” Duncard said.
“But not my sister’s wit.” September led Duncard back up the stairs, to where Grund waited. “If you wish to free your family and see them once more, you must take the staff to the highest point in the keep and break it across your knee. The skulls are those of two mystics whose power hides secrets in the world. You will see your family when the staff is broken.”
Grund wasted no time taking the staff up to the highest tower of his keep and smashing it
over his knee. The skulls shattered at each end, spilling their lifeblood and deadly brew. His family did not appear—instead, a tiny pixie flew up from the town and Duncard recognized her as Kechaeli, the fairy who had helped him curse Grund all those years ago.
“You have cut my youngest daughter’s hair, slain my eldest daughter though she stood not past your waist, and now you’ve broken my staff,” the fairy bellowed, her voice thundering from the clouds like that of a dragon the size of a mountain. “Woe to you, cursed by the fairy-blooded. Woe to you, for your family is dead. Woe to you, for the boy has stolen all and will live amid our blood, while you will cease to live at all.”
Before Grund could snatch the pixie from the sky, September kicked his legs and sent him tumbling off the castle. Duncard was left with the small witch and her perplexingly smaller mother. “Twice we have saved you from your former master,” Kechaeli said, fluttering in Duncard’s face. “A third time he will come for you, this time to ruin your family as a specter. You must mix blood with us, like it or not, and have children of the fey whom you will not understand, whom will live long beyond your death, and whose faces will haunt your life.” The little fairy smiled. “Still, you’ll live and be loved, and September will dine no more on human flesh, but blossom with motherhood like the harvests of her namesake.”
Duncard felt he had little choice—he had saved himself twice through dark deeds and would not leave his family to suffer. He hid the small witch away before bringing his family and squires to the keep and filling the town with merchants, blacksmiths, and farmhands once more. When all seemed right again in the town, and his wife and son were settled into their new home, Duncard visited September’s bed in secret castle chambers in the night. During the day she appeared as a lady in waiting, a sister of a friend, Duncard told his wife, though his wife doubted the strange woman would ever find a man.