“Necromancer! Give the dark rider back his soul!” Witchie’s voice sounded puissant and terrible in the night. She was a crone old as earth, holding a serpent the size of a python by the tail.
But Bissel had not lowered his hammer. Blood-red fire it flamed, forge fire, and it battered at Kabilde, and Kabilde flattened his hazel-yellow head and shrank back. For the first time the trickster spoke.
“Try to take it from me,” he said, and Bobbi glimpsed the glint of his grin in his beard, and his voice was more dangerous than Witchie’s because it was darker. This man was the villain, all greed, his heart blacker than the night all around.
“Give the dark rider back his soul!”
“Just try to get it.”
And the black-handled hammer changed in Bissel’s callused hands. It was the black staff, the death wand. And then Bobbi saw looming behind the Amishman his more true form, saw the long robes black as his heart, and she knew another of the trickster’s many names. The warlock. A necromancer is one who deals in death. Witchie risked more than her power here. She risked her life—
Witchie attacked.
“By all the mysteries of the ancient Twelve!” she invoked in a strong voice. “By the three highest names!” And the white light redoubled, seeming to blaze as much from her stumpy body as from her staff, and the golden serpent Kabilde swelled taller than the scrub. Light and serpent beat against Bissel’s power. But the black staff, the death wand, though it never moved, exuded an essence, a choking aroma, that they beat against in vain. It clouded like an umbra around Bissel, a black shadow that even the whitest of light could not penetrate, and Witchie could not seem to gain. Witchie would wear herself out, and then it would be the trickster’s turn.
Bobbi found that her hands were clenched, her fingernails digging into her palms. Witchie had said, she, Bobbi, had powers. She had to do something; she couldn’t just stay hidden and watch. Even though Witchie had told her to stay where she was. Even though she was scared.
At the edge of the battle Shane stood dully, taking little interest. Not even spooked, as any proper horse would be by the clamor, the weirdness, blaze brighter than any lightning, chilling scent of death in the air. Not Shane any longer, not even a mustang. Something—tamed. Something—castrated …
Shane!
Bobbi burst from her hiding place and ran to the horse, her back to Bissel—she didn’t care any longer what he did to her. She could think only of Shane. Those blue eyes, so dim and clouded.… She had to save him. Facing the horse’s head, she placed her hands one on each side of it, by those eyes. “Shane!” she begged.
Nothing happened. And if Bissel had been holding his hammer he would have blasted her by now. She didn’t care.
In her mind she recalled a sweep of black hat brim over eyes that blazed with blue fire, so much unlike the hurtful, spiritless ones before her.… Thinking of that rider clothed in black, the man with a straight-browed face and broad shoulders under a black silk shirt, she laid her forehead against the black mustang’s forehead and cried out, “Shane!”
Something exploded inside her closed eyes. Something exploded under her touch.
She sprawled to the ground, and Shane the black horse was rearing up over her, gigantic in the night, breaking his tether, springing forward, but not at her—he was charging, an embodied vengeance, straight at Bissel, and though he was black in the black night he shone, he gleamed in a way the shadowy villain he faced never could; he lustered like silk. Bissel gave a barking shout and stood with his hammer in hand again; he swung it. A bloom, a blood-red chrysanthemum of sparks spread at its sheening head, and even where she lay on the ground Bobbi felt the numbing shock, as if the smith had made her and the whole world his anvil to strike. Witchie shrieked. Kabilde writhed, convulsing. Shane’s head plunged as if he had taken a slaughterhouse blow on his forehead. The horse crashed to his knees. Bobbi thought he would go down all the way and lie still, a mustang killed for dog meat, a body on the concrete floor. She wanted to help him somehow, but she had no strength, she could not move—
Except to cry out. “Shane!” she yelled.
And he was up again, lunging at his enemy, and Bissel’s hammer was upraised again, this time close enough to strike with hard steel and a blacksmith’s strength. But Kabilde was there, huge, his ivory-colored fangs fastened onto Bissel’s arm, and Witchie was there, and Shane was rearing, striking out with iron-shod forehooves. And the hammer flew away into the blackness of night somewhere, and Bissel fell and lay still.
For a moment everything seemed to stop. Shane stood by the body. Witchie stood dwarfed by her own magic, awash in white light, holding a giant serpent. Bobbi stared, not comprehending very well why the red fire and the black smell of death were finally gone.
Then she struggled up and went to Shane, running her hands over him as if checking him for injuries, unbuckling the halter with its length of dangling tether from his head and hurling it away. He was puffing, his nostrils flared nearly into circles, but she could see he was more roused than exhausted now. He was Shane again, and he was all right. And when Bobbi looked around her, Kabilde was a carved walking stick again, Witchie was a spraddle-legged old woman again, her white light gone. Bobbi saw her by the light of the stars and the new moon.
The new moon holding the old moon in its arms, the bad omen. “It must have been for him,” Bobbi said to Witchie, pointing briefly at the moon and then at Bissel.
Lying at her feet, the man groaned. Bobbi jumped straight backward farther than she would have thought possible.
“He’s not dead,” Witchie scoffed. “Land’s sake, girl, it would take more than that to kill the trickster. We would never have got the better of him if we hadn’t come on him in his sleep.”
“Good grief.” Bobbi stared at her, not wanting to believe it. The battle had been terrifying enough as it was.
“He would have changed shapes if he’d had time to gather himself.” For the moment, Witchie’s voice had gone glassy dry, like Kabilde’s. “He would have had some of his deceptions ready for us. As it was, all he could do was stand and fight.”
“I—I wish he was dead, but I’m glad Shane didn’t kill him.”
“He has killed men for less,” said Witchie darkly. “But this one is for the Twelve to deal with.”
Shane swung around to face Bobbi and nuzzled her briefly. His nostrils were quieting. Bobbi’s hand went to his forehead and rested there a moment. “You were awesome,” she said to him.
“Speak for yourself, girl,” grumbled Witchie. Bobbi ignored her.
“Where are you going to go now?” she asked Shane softly, knowing he would not answer her. “What are you going to do?”
Witch Hazel Fenstermacher stumped up and stood in front of her, peering at her. “The question is, girl,” she declared, “where are you going to go?”
“With him!” Her hand still lay on Shane’s forehead. But at her words he tossed his head to shake it off.
“You can’t stay with the dark rider for long,” Witchie said. “Nobody can. He comes into your life, and then out he goes again.”
“But I have to take his shoes off!”
“Shane can take care of himself. Always has.”
And I have to turn him back into a man, she was thinking. Whether he wants it or not. So he’ll be safe. Or … maybe other reasons … She did not say what she was thinking. She said only, “The entanglement …”
“Them cards was laid a while ago. Things might have changed. Think, Bobbi. Think about yourself. Are you still so dead set against making your peace with your grandpap?”
She felt a storm of nameless, muddled feeling at the mention of her grandfather. Not hating, she knew that, as she knew Grant Yandro was not evil. Far from it. He had done nothing worse than say some hurtful words. But—but … There was something she could not get past.
“I can see you ain’t ready.” Witchie looked around at the dimly moonlit night as if for a clue. “I wish I had the cards. Bob
bi, think.”
Wearily Bobbi did. The sight of Samuel Bissel lying unconscious on the ground distracted her. She felt as if he was somehow going to get up and hurt her, and she didn’t know where to go to get away from him. “There’s nowhere,” she said. “There’s nobody.”
Nowhere in the world she wanted to go, nobody in the world who—who—
There was one who had loved her once, maybe, when she was a tiny baby.
“My mother’s not far from here,” Bobbi said. “But she’s no use.” A hidden bitterness hardened and twisted her voice. “She’s loony. She thinks she’s Scarlett O’Hara.”
Witchie swayed where she stood, and for the first time Bobbi saw Mrs. Fenstermacher use her walking stick as such. The old woman steadied herself with Kabilde, as if her props had been knocked wobbly, and her mouth dropped open, and she seemed to be having trouble getting her breath. Shane stretched his long head toward her anxiously, and for a panicky moment Bobbi tried to remember things she had heard about CPR. Then Witchie found a gulp of air and gasped, “That’s it!”
She lurched forward. Bobbi grabbed her by the arm, afraid she was actually going to fall, but Witchie seemed not to notice. “That’s it!” she repeated. “The red card!”
“Huh?”
“Huh, hell! The red card!” Annoyed, and therefore much more herself, Witchie pushed Bobbi’s steadying hand away. She firmly took her accustomed cookstove stance. “The one at the juncture next to the dark rider’s, the one I couldn’t interpret! Red, don’t you see? Scarlet! Scarlett O’Hara! She’s the one you’re tangled through!”
Bobbi didn’t really see. But Witchie didn’t have a chance to explain, because from somewhere down the mountain floated the sound of sirens, drawing closer. Witchie jerked her cornstarched chins in annoyance.
“Either the law tracked us here by that simple-minded gypsy, or somebody saw the fireworks and called in an alarm.”
“Well, let’s get moving!” Bobbi exclaimed.
“You get moving. Take Shane to your mother.” Witchie gave Bobbi a shove to emphasize the order. “Go! Ride!” The girl looked at her wildly, then scrambled onto the black horse.
“Wait,” commanded Witchie. “Take Kabilde.” She scuttled to Shane’s side and held the pow-wow staff up to Bobbi.
“No!” In sheerest fear. But then Bobbi tried to make it sound as if she had other reasons. “I—I couldn’t take your staff. You’ll need it! What if Bissel—”
“Bullshit, girl! You want the cops to get hold of it? Take it!”
Crunch of gravel, along with sirens and roaring engines, sounded down the lane. On Shane’s back, Bobbi sat frozen. She would sooner have lifted a live rattlesnake than touch Kabilde, after what she had recently seen.
Witchie reached up, grabbed Bobbi’s slack hand and put the walking stick into it, hard. “Git!” she decreed fiercely. “Run!”
It was Shane who ran, and Bobbi was on him, with a hand tangled in his mane and the pow-wow stick hanging heavy in the other.
He carried her away. Through the gone-to-scrub pasture he thundered, dodging young hickories and maples under the light of a horseshoe moon, and he plunged into the truer, darker forest just as headlights were brightening the sky.
The fire trucks roared into the clearing and stopped near the parked buggy, but found nothing except an unconscious Amishman and a muttering old woman searching for her purse. They could get no sense out of her. She seemed witless. There were scorch marks all around the Amishman, but no fire. It was anyone’s guess what had happened to him. His horse seemed to be gone, they noticed that, but they didn’t notice the black-handled hammer lying at some distance in the darkness.
PART 3
The Old Man of the Mountain
Grant Yandro looked out of his cabin at the rain. He should have been out and doing, rain or no rain, but he seemed to have no gumption since Bobbi had gone off. It was a week to the day since the girl had run away, and even to Grant, who prided himself on being a strong thinker, the rain seemed not just rain at all but a weeping of the world. Sky, doing what he couldn’t let himself do. Old fool that he was.
On the bare, wooden table stood the coffinlike wooden box he had given the girl, and after a moment he turned slowly back to it. For the past few days, feeling that he had to do something, Grant had been looking at random through the clippings and photos and notes inside it, Wright’s things, as if the remnants left by the son might somehow tell him something about the daughter, something he needed to know in his heart to get her back.…
Between two fingers, not for the first time, Grant Yandro lifted the yellowed newspaper clipping, Wright’s only published poem.
“The old gods live in hidden forms.
In the autumn night the wild geese fly,
A cat roams under the bloated moon,
The gypsies ride the highways still,
Somewhere the horses run wild.
The cunning mustangs defy you on the mountains.
You have heard the dragon roar in the dark …”
“What nonsense,” the old man muttered, dropping the clipping to the top of an untidy pile, though he had in fact sometimes heard strange noises in the dark. He did not like the night, and he regarded sleeping as an unpleasant necessity. He had uneasy dreams whenever he slept. They troubled and annoyed him, and he took care not to remember them. The way people sometimes told tales of ghosts and supernatural things annoyed him as well. Simple-minded Dutchmen and their talk of hex … He let no thoughts of such nonsense enter his head. Never had. Never would.
A knock sounded at the door, and without waiting for an answer the Dodd boy came in out of the rain. Travis had been spending a good deal of his time at the Yandro cabin since Bobbi had disappeared. The boy seemed to feel somehow to blame because he had been the last one to see her.
“Morning, Mr. Yandro,” he said awkwardly.
Grant nodded. Travis sat down across the table from him, knowing without asking, by the set of the old man’s face, that there had been no further news of Bobbi, not since the police had picked her up at Veto and lost her. Travis looked over Grant Yandro’s head out the window, and the old man knew without saying anything that Travis was thinking the same thing he had been thinking a few minutes earlier. And hating to think it, the same way. That Bobbi was out in the chill rain somewhere.
“She’ll be fine,” Travis said, meaning, I hope she’s OK.
“Hell, yes,” Grant Yandro grumbled, promptly and with more conviction than Travis had been able to muster. “She’s a Yandro. Wherever she is, she’s damn well fine.”
Silence, except for the patter and trickle of the rain.
Grant Yandro added quietly, “I just hope she forgives me and gets her butt back here sometime before she’s old and gray.”
Travis got up to go out. “Time for school, boy?” the old man asked him.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure.” Travis lifted a hand in a hesitant goodbye and let himself out. A moment later Grant Yandro saw him walking down the lane toward the bus stop, disappearing behind trees. The boy carried no books. But then, it was not unusual for a boy to bring no books home.
The last thing Grant Yandro would have thought was that he was watching the departure of another runaway.
Chapter Fifteen
Bobbi laid her head against Shane’s neck and felt her heart go hot.
To keep her head from being hit by branches in the dark, her eyes from being injured by twigs, that was why she rested her head on the horse’s neck. Stallion who was Paladin, Zorro, Dark Rider. But feeling the pull and surge of the hard muscles as Shane galloped, the rhythmic rocking of the body between her knees, she thought briefly of the arms of Shane, the man, around her, and her thighs seemed to turn to water, and she pushed the thought away.
Shane slowed to a walk even before the sirens were out of earshot. Bobbi knew then how bone-tired he was. Cautiously she sat upright on his back, her left hand shielding her face.
“I can walk,” she said
to the black, pricked ears showing in front of her, blacker and more shining than the night.
Faintly the globe of the staff in her right hand began to glow, and in it Bobbi could see Shane’s face. Shane the man, dimmed as if he stood in twilight. His forehead, deeply shadowed beneath the brim of his black hat. The straight lines of his face, weary. But his fire-blue eyes blazed as bright as ever, seeming as always to consume her, to take her in, so that she could see nothing but Shane. And all the while the horse between her knees walked on.
“A man’s got to carry his burdens,” Shane the man said to her, “and pay his debts.”
“Bullshit,” Bobbi said promptly, though her heart had started pounding like a hundred hooves at the sight of him and she would not have thought she could reply. “I don’t plan to be anybody’s burden, and you don’t owe me a thing.”
Shane said, very low, “I owe you plenty. What you done back there—”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re tired. I’ve been sitting in a car. Let me walk.”
“Proud as a stud with seven mares,” said Shane wryly. The low, tight tone had left his voice. He spoke easily, friend to friend, and Bobbi retorted in the same way.
“You should talk!”
“Have some sense, Bobbi! What if the posse comes? You got to be on me and ready to go.”
He was right, and she knew it, and she sighed. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But as soon as it’s daylight, we start looking for a place to hole up so you can get some rest.”
The Hex Witch of Seldom Page 15