by Dave Duncan
The town was larger than Toby had expected. It had no freestanding fortifications, but the outer houses faced inward and their backs presented an unbroken wall of masonry to visitors. The road led to a gate, which had been reduced to charred scraps of timber on half-melted iron hinges—obviously by gramarye, not cannon. Clutching his staff and peering around warily, he limped in behind Hamish, who strutted forward, all eagerness to explore.
No dogs came yapping, no chickens scurried, no goats bleated. The country trail became a steep and rutted mud-floored alley winding between tight-packed stone houses, two or three stories under red-tiled roofs. Most doorways stood open on dark interiors; most of the barred windows were shuttered. The ground was littered as if the contents of the houses had been thrown out into the street: broken furniture, smashed pots, rags, dead cats, shattered rain barrels. Seemingly the place had not been put to the torch, for the usual reek of ashes was missing. In its place was a sickly scent of decay that grew steadily stronger as the visitors advanced. They passed the remains of a body, then another, both far enough decayed for the bones to be visible. When they reached a fork, with neither branch providing a view of anything except another bend and flights of steps, Toby veered right and Hamish followed his lead as usual.
"May be able to find food here," Hamish whispered, "real food, not just zitty oranges."
The idea was mouth-watering. "If it's fit to eat. What's that noise?"
Hamish cocked his head and then shrugged blankly. "Starlings?"
Together they rounded a corner and reached a little open place, a cobbled plaza where four or five alleys met. Arcades of gloomy arches surrounded it, and on the far side stood the grandest building of all, the sanctuary, with a tiled facade, marble steps, and a little minaret. The jumble of litter was even thicker, comprised of broken casks, furniture, merchants' stalls, and general rubbish—and a heap of corpses in the center. Here the people had been rounded up and massacred. Bodies were piled head-high, distended like barrels by the sun, swarming with grotesque black shapes that were the source of the puzzling noise—crows and bigger things that might be kites or vultures. They squabbled and shrieked, crawling over their feast in search of juicy tidbits.
The visitors' arrival sent them aloft in a wild flapping. Scores or hundreds of black birds whirled upward, raising dust, darkening the sky. Others, so bloated by their feast that they could not fly, flopped around amid the carnage, trying to escape, while a tide of rats swirled across the cobbles and disappeared into the arches and buildings. The airborne flock gradually settled on rooftops to scream at intruders like living gargoyles, nightmare guardians in a town of the dead.
Toby closed his eyes until he could breathe again and his stomach writhed less urgently. Then he risked another look. The carrion feeders had ripped the uppermost bodies to shreds of meat on white bone, but there were many layers underneath. He wondered if King Nevil himself had been here in this plaza, supervising the slaughter.
"Throats cut, mostly. It would be quick. We've seen worse." Impalements were worse—people left to die on posts. In some villages they had been burned alive, or hung up by their feet, or staked out along the road for miles, and there were other ways to inflict slow and painful death.
"Don't be so sure," Hamish mumbled through the hand he held over his mouth and nose. "Women on top, see? Children next, men at the bottom. How long do you think the women lived after they saw their children die? Hours? Days?"
"Too long, I'm sure."
Yes, the women were bad, but the children were worse—children with rotting green faces, eyes missing, teeth grinning maniacally where the lips had been torn away. There were dead animals in the heap, also, mostly dogs and cats, of course, because the victors would have driven off the livestock or just eaten it.
That thought of eating made his insides lurch again. This was the first settlement they had seen in weeks that had not been burned to the ground. He turned his back on the atrocity and spun Hamish around also, to face the alley.
"Let's explore." His legs were still stiff from his hours in Oreste's dungeon. He needed a rest from walking, even if it must be in these nightmare surroundings.
"As long as we're away before dark!"
"Obviously. I hate looting, but I'm going to take anything I can use."
"They have no more use for it," Hamish agreed.
"Let's start by seeing if we can find water and something to eat."
Hamish choked. "I'll eat outside the gate."
"If you want. We do need food. And clothes. Why don't you start hunting?"
"What are you going to do?" Hamish peered at him suspiciously.
"I'm going to visit the sanctuary."
"It won't be there!"
No matter what Toby ever suggested he could rely on Hamish to shoot back objections, usually very logical objections. Sometimes they were wonderfully sensible and he had to overrule them anyway, although he hated doing that. Hamish was an equal partner now, but he had always been senior deputy in charge of objections. Sure enough:
"The tutelary won't be there, and even if it is, what's happened to its town may have driven it completely insane, so it'll attack any stranger on sight, and even if it isn't, you know what the hob will do to you if you try this, but we can't risk having you injured here, so there's no reason to go there at all; its pointless and dangerous, so I'm going to come with you, and why are you laughing?" He pouted, hurt and resentful.
"Just nerves," Toby said, for it seemed inhuman to be amused by anything in this terrible place. "Yes, it's a long shot, but worth a try. If there is still a spirit to tend the souls of the dead, then we can spend a night undercover for a change. I don't think there's any real danger. And if the hob gives me trouble, I'd rather you were out of it so you can come and pick up the pieces afterward."
He strode off around the plaza, holding a hand over his nose and trying not to look directly at the hill of rotting corpses. Soon he had to slow down, because the piled junk made treacherous going for a man whose buskins sported more holes than a lace shawl. He stepped between timbers with nails in them, broken glass, broken crockery, scrap iron. If the hob reacted to the spirit as it had in Bordeaux and other places, he would soon find himself rolling in all that. But even before he started he had been about as close as he had ever come to a sanctuary and the hob had raised no objection. Sometimes he could tell when the hob knew a spirit was nearby, although that did not always work—he had felt no premonition of the demon in the orange grove. He certainly felt none now. Almost certainly, Hamish was right and the tutelary was gone.
Birds fluttered and shrieked. The stench made his head swim, but he came at last into the cool shadow of the archway. He almost turned to see if Hamish was still there, watching over him, and decided not to. If he was, it would embarrass him to know that his intentions were so transparent; if he wasn't, there was no point.
Toby stepped through the space where the doors had once hung, then waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim, cool light of the high-vaulted chamber. So this was a sanctuary, was it? Before the rebels came it might have been very beautiful, although in an ornate Spanish style that would have seemed alien to an ignorant Scottish Highlander. Now it was a ruin, a singularly repellent one. The invading army had smashed everything breakable and then used the place as a latrine, leaving a deep layer of excrement on the floor and splattered over the walls. Stained glass, frescoes, and carvings had all been smashed. At the far end, where there would have been an altar and probably a throne, there remained only bare stonework above a heap of ruins.
No, the tutelary had gone, for no spirit except a demon would tolerate this ugliness and filth. Furthermore, since no spirit ever left its own haunt willingly, it must have been raped away by a hexer and perverted into a demon itself. Tutelaries made the worst demons of all, Father Lachlan had said, because they were wise in the ways of men. It need not have been Nevil himself who worked this abomination—he had many hexers in his service—but it might we
ll have been. Doubtless the former benevolent guardian of this sad little town now resided in a jewel somewhere, perhaps on the rebel king's own finger. A spirit once dedicated to the welfare of its people was now given over to hate and destruction.
Obviously Toby's harebrained plan to rid himself of the hob was even less likely to work than he had expected. Had he found the sanctuary bereft of its tutelary but intact, then he would have shown all its beauty to the hob and tried to persuade it to remain there. He did not know if it could voluntarily quit him without killing him, but it would have been worth a try. It still was.
"Hob? Fillan! I'm talking to you." Could it even hear him or understand? Probably not. "This is a sanctuary. People lived in this town once, many people. Others would like to come and live in the houses, but they cannot if the place lacks a spirit to care for them. If you choose to remain here, then people will come and repair it and make it beautiful again. You see on the walls and the ceiling? They will repair all the pretty pictures for you. They will bring offerings and praise you for helping them."
He heard nothing, felt nothing. He said what had to be said:
"If you can only leave me by stopping my heart, then I will pay that price. Let me die and you will remain here. This will be your house."
No response. The hob either did not hear or did not understand. Or else it wanted to continue traveling the world, because it was peculiarly crazy, even for a hob.
With a sigh, Toby turned away from the desolation and walked out into the brightness. Hamish had not moved from his place in shadows at the far side of the plaza, keeping watch. The birds were back at their feasting.
6
The first houses they investigated had been thoroughly looted, the furnishings broken or deliberately fouled, including the water casks, which had long since dried out anyway. Whether demons or mortals led by a demon, the invaders could have destroyed everything more easily with fire, so they must have taken pride in their work and wanted to leave evidence of their thoroughness.
Toby's canteen was long empty. A town must have a supply of water, and the rain barrels could not possibly be adequate. There would be a spring or a cistern of some sort, but would the demons have poisoned it?
Moving together in ever-grimmer silence, they turned a corner into a tiny yard and almost knocked over a girl coming out. She leaped back with a scream and then continued to retreat. She was short and slight, dressed all in black: a long skirt and a sleeved blouse. Her cloth bonnet was tied under her chin to conceal her hair and ears, leaving only her terrified face exposed. Incongruously, she had a bright-colored pottery bottle hung around her neck on a cord, and this she clasped to her with both arms as she backed away, staring at them in horror
"Senores! Do not hurt me." Her voice rang shrill and cracking with terror. "I will submit! I will do anything you say, and I can cook for you, too, or wash your clothes. Anything, senores! There is a bed upstairs, senores, and I will not resist, if you promise not to hurt me and not to tell your friends. I will be just yours, yes? Just the two of you. And you will not —"
"Stop!" Toby howled, turning his back. "Hamish, speak to her."
Hamish went down on one knee. "Senorita!" he said, speaking Castilian, as she had. "We mean you no harm, no harm at all. We have no friends with us. We are foreigners, but we are loyal subjects of the Khan, not the Fiend. There are just the two of us, and we do not molest women. We will not touch you. Please do not be alarmed."
How could she not be alarmed in this place, trapped by two strange men, and one of them a giant? What horrors had she experienced to make her react so? She had expected to be raped before she even knew they were foreigners.
"I will do anything you want, senores, but please do not hurt me."
"We shall not touch you, senorita. We are honorable men. You have nothing to fear from us."
"You are not soldiers?"
"No, we are merely travelers, men who honor and respect women."
Cautiously, Toby looked around. She had backed against the wall, very small and vulnerable, arms crossed across her breasts and that inexplicable bottle. Her face was sickly with fright. She was scarcely more than a child.
Hamish rose and bowed. "I am Diego Campbell Campbell. We are visitors from a faraway land. We will not harm you, I promise."
"I am Gracia Arnalt Arias de Gomez."
"Senora de Gomez, I am at your service. May I have the honor of presenting my friend Tobias Longdirk Campbell?"
Toby bowed also. "Your servant, senora." She did not look old enough to be married, and her black garments implied mourning—a widow? He did not know what to say next.
Hamish came to the rescue, more proficient with words in any language and especially words to women—not that he was much of a ladies' man, although he tried hard enough, but Toby was most certainly less of one. "You also are a stranger here, I think?"
She nodded, staring at him with the huge dark eyes of a cornered rabbit. Why was she wearing a bottle? It was ornamental, not practical everyday ware, glazed in whorls of red and green, fitted with a handle through which the thong was strung. The mouth was corked, but the way it lay on her breast and the way it moved when she did suggested that it was empty.
"Then we may have interesting tales to exchange. Senora, my friend and I are very thirsty. May two weary travelers beg the mercy of a cup of water?"
She nodded, shooting a hasty glance at a dark doorway.
"We shall wait out here." He strolled over to a flight of stone steps leading up to another house and sat down. By the time Toby had joined him Gracia had vanished indoors.
"She probably has fourteen brothers and three uncles in there," Hamish growled, watching the door. "Women don't travel alone."
"Unless she's the last survivor."
"She's from Castile."
"She's been here for some time, though." The little yard was the first clean place Toby had seen in the town, sunlight and shadows on ancient stonework, barred windows, two weathered doors broken off their hinges and one whole. It had been tidied and swept. "I wonder why the wraiths haven't driven her away?"
"If she offers you roast pork, refuse politely."
"Don't be obscene!" To compare that sweet child and the creature in the orange grove was utterly repugnant. "She may have jumped out the back window and run away already."
Hamish shrugged cynically. "She's from somewhere near Toledo, I think. Not a great lady, more than a peasant."
Toby could not have guessed that much, but Hamish had an ear for languages. He had known Latin as well as Scots and Gaelic before he left Scotland. Since then he had picked up a working fluency in Breton, langue d'oïl, langue d'oc, and Castilian, although even he had been stumped by Euskara. Soon he would be jabbering away in Catalan like a native. They were all variants of either Gaelic or Latin, he would explain solemnly, as if that were obvious. He was Diego now because he enjoyed translating his name into the local tongue: Hamish, James, Seamus, Jakez, Jacques—Diego.
Gracia reappeared, struggling two-handed with a bucket. She set it down in front of the men and retreated quickly. She was no longer wearing the bottle. Without rising, Hamish slid to his knees and reached for the cup under the water. He drank, refilled it and passed it to Toby, both of them being elaborately courteous, making no sudden moves. The water was sweet and fresh.
"You are wounded, senor." The girl was staring at Toby's swollen wrists, which had been bleeding again. Anyone could guess those wounds had been made by manacles.
"Just, um ... How do you say 'scrapes,' Hamish? They are nothing, senora. But I should clean them if you will tell us how we may refill your, um, fetch more water for you."
"There is a cistern. If the senor will permit me to tend his injuries?"
That hint that she was regaining her confidence was welcome and must be encouraged, however much Toby disliked being mothered. "They are only scratches, senora. You are very kind." He held out his hands.
Gracia approached as warily as a de
er, producing a rag she must have brought for this purpose. She barely took her eyes off his face as she washed away the blood, and he felt her fingers shaking, but she was more deft than Hamish would have been.
He thanked her and insisted he did not need bandages.
"The senor was also limping?"
Hamish had not noticed that! It was true that Toby's ankles were in worse shape than his wrists now, but he could not reveal those without removing his hose.
"My buskins do not fit well," he said. "We have walked a long way." His buskins were falling apart. What chance did he have of finding a pair to fit him in this ruin of a town?
Gracia seemed to accept the explanation, and she was gaining more confidence by the minute. "I can find the senor a new pair!" she said eagerly.
"To fit me?"
"I believe so. If the senor will excuse me a moment?" She hurried off into the house again.
"You know," Hamish said thoughtfully, "if you can get hurt in these visions of yours, then one day you may come back dead!"
Oh, he had just realized that, had he?
"If they're the hob's doing, then it won't kill me." It had never worried about hurting him, though.
Gracia returned with a black cape trailing from her shoulders. She carried an empty bucket, but she also had the bottle hung around her neck again. "If the senor will be so kind as to follow me?"
Toby took the bucket and moved to her side, leaving Hamish to empty the first bucket and follow behind. She was ignoring Hamish completely, but she seemed to have lost her fear of Toby, for she shot a few hesitant smiles up at him, which he returned. He felt overwhelmed by her softness, her femininity. He admired the slight bulge in the front of her blouse and thought he could detect a scent of roses from her. A single dark curl had escaped from under the edge of her bonnet, but most of her hair was tied in a long braid, encased in a tube of black cloth that hung down her back. She was a reminder that there were still decent, honest people in this terrible world, vulnerable people.
Hamish, meanwhile, kept trying to flank the lady on the other side but was balked by the narrowness of the road. That did not stop him from talking. He explained dramatically how he and Toby were refugees from the war and had never been part of the Fiend's army. That was not quite true, but true enough. Gracia responded by telling her story. Toby missed much of it, but he gathered that she had lived in a little village called Madrid, two days' walk north of Toledo, where her husband, Hernan Gomez Ruiz, had been keeper of the shrine. The rebel army had sacked the village and stolen the spirit away. Her husband and brothers had died. She did not mention what had happened to her.