Dhulyn stood motionless, her head to one side. “Stand further back,” she asked. “Out of the light.”
“What light?” But he moved.
Dhulyn crouched down on her heels and examined the ground from one side, at a shallow angle. She measured something with her spread fingers, and finally laid her dagger next to it. She shook her head, moved slightly, and examined another spot of ground, to Parno’s eyes identical with the first. Placing her feet carefully, she paced to the far side of the clearing. Again she spread out her hand and measured something. She stood and let out the breath she’d been holding.
“There are two sets of tracks. The ones we’ve seen before, here and here; and a second set, there and here. This,” she pointed at the first spot she’d measured, “is one of the false prints we’ve already seen. These,” she indicated the line she’d followed across the clearing, “these were made by a real animal.”
“You can tell this by moonlight? Sorry,” Parno held up his hands, palms toward her. “Of course you can. Which are the prints of the killer? Could this be the curse?”
“To answer your first question I need the light of day to examine the wounds. As for the second, a wild animal, in and of itself, does not constitute a curse,” Dhulyn pointed out. “And besides, if it was the daemon of the legend, why attack this poor fellow? No, these tracks belong to some native creature, something like the snow leopards in the southern mountains, only larger.”
“I always thought they were legendary.”
“I assure you, they are not.”
Parno grinned, sure that his Partner could see him. “You’ve got that look again.”
“What look would that be?”
“The I’d-like-to-kill-someone look.”
“Don’t I look that way all the time?”
Next morning the camp was like an anthill doused with water. Much exclaiming, much scurrying, much backing and forthing, much calling upon the gods, and precious little in the way of practical activity. Both al Difor cousins looked shocked by the news of the old servant’s death, and both showed signs of stiffness, as if this was the first day of travel and not the seventh. Or as if they’d fought with someone in the night. Dhulyn tapped out a rapid rhythm on her sword hilt. Impossible to know which had been out of camp killing servants.
When they were once more on the road, Dhulyn and Parno separated the two cousins; Dhulyn rode at Naru al Difor’s side.
“You were out of your tent again last night. You are not the first to think that hiring Mercenary Brothers frees you from acting in a reasonable manner. If you do not stay in your tent, one of us will stay in it with you. Is this clear?”
Naru shook his head slightly from side to side, as if he wanted to argue with her, but when he spoke, it was to change the subject. “I wish I had not lost Bertol. He has been with me since childhood. If his death was meant for me, I sorrow that it found him instead.”
“If it consoles you at all, his death wasn’t brought about by your family’s curse. His killer was no great wolf.”
“Was it not?”
Dhulyn didn’t know what to make of the look on the man’s face. By daylight she had seen the unnatural look of the bite marks, but that still did not explain which cousin … She sighed. “Tomorrow will see us out of the pass.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
* * *
The mood in the camp was subdued after the activity of the evening meal had ended. The al Difor cousins were sitting a little apart from the others, Naru stabbing at the air with his finger, Simka frowning and shaking his head. Their quarrel made the servants nervous and no one asked Parno to bring out his pipes, as they had done every other night on the road.
Finally, Naru leaped to his feet. “What are you saying?”
Simka was up as well. “I only said you should have left Bertol at home. He was too old for this kind of journey.”
Dhulyn circled around the still seated servants to approach the cousins from the far side.
“So his death is my fault, is that it?” Naru swung his fist at his cousin, but the inexperienced blow barely grazed the younger man’s face. Simka defended himself with an equal level of clumsiness. By this time the two had abandoned the common tongue entirely and were shouting in Berdanan so fast that Dhulyn could only pick out the odd insult here and there. Approaching from another angle, Parno moved a dumbstruck servant to one side and reached out to yank Naru out of what danger there was.
“Wait,” Dhulyn called out. Parno stopped instantly and trotted round to her side. “Let them fight,” she added in the night watch voice. “We’ll step in before the point of apoplexy.”
Parno shrugged in agreement. “They’re too clumsy to do each other much damage.”
Even as they spoke, increased anger turned Naru al Difor’s face a dark red, his breath grew shorter and shorter, until it seemed he could not draw another. This time, when Parno stepped forward to put a stop to things, Dhulyn did not hold him back. Before Parno could reach them, however, Naru al Difor fell to his hands and knees, and Simka stood looking from his fists to his cousin and back again.
“I never touched him!” He even approached closer, hands outstretched to help Naru to his feet, but stopped, frozen in his tracks. There came a heavy ripping sound, like canvas sails tearing in a high wind, and a most unusual smell.
Dhulyn, her lips pursed in a silent whistle, grabbed Parno by the wrist. Naru al Difor didn’t appear to need anyone’s help. In fact, Naru didn’t appear to be Naru any longer. Where the merchant had been on hands and knees, struggling for breath, stood the largest wolf Dhulyn had ever seen. His fur was thick and dark, except for some light dustings of gray.
Naru must dye his hair. The totally irrelevant thought passed through Dhulyn’s mind as she grabbed a quarterstaff from one of the guards fleeing into the darkness under the trees.
Meanwhile, the wolf had leaped, pushing Simka to the ground and snarling into his face. Dhulyn ran forward, calling out and swinging the staff around in a blow that landed square on the beast’s sensitive nose. It backed away, howling, far enough that Dhulyn could put herself between him and Simka.
“Kill it! What are you waiting for? This is the beast that killed the servant.”
“Professional courtesy?” Parno hauled the man away with a grip on his upper arm. “After all, she is Dhulyn Wolfshead.”
“How long can she keep the beast at bay?”
Parno glanced upward. “We’ll have to hope long enough. When the moon sets we’ll have less light to fight him by, and she will tire eventually.”
All the time Dhulyn faced the wolf—fencing him in with quick strokes of the staff—she spoke to him in the soft voice she used to calm frightened horses. He’d begun to settle, his pace slowing, when an arrow came whizzing out from the trees. One of the guards had chosen that moment to remember he’d retained his bow. Dhulyn knocked the arrow aside without taking her eyes from the wolf. But in doing so, she stepped backward onto a metal cup, dropped by one of the servants as he ran away. She regained her balance in an instant, but in that instant the sand-wolf leapt, knocking her to the ground.
Like the old servant, Parno thought.
But unlike the old man, Dhulyn landed cleanly, managing to keep hold of her staff. As the muzzle came down, she thrust the staff into the sand-wolf’s jaws, as one puts the bit in the horse’s mouth. Parno stepped forward, sword raised, but stopped after only one pace. She would not thank him for killing their client.
She still spoke softly, calling Naru by name, switching to the Berdanan tongue. Finally, the beast calmed enough to stop snarling and simply stand still, its eyes flicking from one human to another, before fixing them on Simka. Dhulyn rolled out from under its paws.
“What is she doing? Why doesn’t she kill it?”
“I’d say she’s earning our pay, wouldn’t you?” Parno’s statement was met with a look of utter disbelief.
“Look,” Dhulyn said. “He likes you. Shall I let hi
m come nearer?”
“Keep it off me. Keep him off!” Simka huddled behind Parno, holding to the back of his sword harness. Parno pulled the man forward by the scruff of his neck.
“Now you know why your granny really moved the family.”
* * *
Whether the moon had anything to do with it or not, it wasn’t until it had set that Naru al Difor returned to his usual shape.
“I always knew he was greedy,” Naru said as he watched them truss and gag his younger cousin. “I never thought he’d try to kill me.”
When the sun rose, there was some talk of resting another day where they were, considering the very little sleep anyone had had during the long night before, but no one really wanted to stay where Naru might become an enormous sand-wolf at a moment’s notice. Consequently, it was later that same morning that they began their descent from the Guadil Pass.
“You say you didn’t believe?” Naru twisted round in his saddle to check on his cousin, slung face down over the back of his own horse.
“Not at all,” Dhulyn admitted. “I thought it was your cousin trying to kill you, using the family legend as a way not to be blamed.”
“Well.” He glanced back again. “It appears you weren’t wrong.”
“And neither were you,” Parno said. “There is a curse, just not the one you expected. Not that anyone could have expected it.”
“I’ve read about such things,” Dhulyn admitted. “But I always assumed they were tales alone.”
“Did any of these tales explain why I’ve never changed before? Why I don’t change all the time?” He shivered. It would be a long time, if ever, before he stopped waking up shaking.
Dhulyn shook her head. “They often link the change to the moon, but obviously there is more to it, otherwise you would change everywhere. Putting together what I’ve read, and the histories of your family, there must be something about the Guadil Pass itself. One account does suggest that great pain or stress can bring on the transformation.”
“Between worry, fear, anger, and the physical stress of the altitude, I’d say that’s the explanation.” Parno, at least, was satisfied.
“But Simka didn’t believe in the curse, did he?”
Dhulyn shrugged.
“And he did not change his plan when I hired Mercenary Brothers. How could he be so stupid?”
“Greedy, ambitious people often are.”
Naru nodded in a way that told Dhulyn he’d encountered such things before. “Why did the change not come to my cousin as well?”
Dhulyn exchanged a look with her Partner. “In truth? I’d wager my second-best sword he isn’t the son of your mother’s brother.”
Eyebrows rose and mouth fell open as Naru realized what she was saying.
Parno patted their client on his shoulder. “Would you like us to tell your uncle?”
The Witch That Wasn’t
Leah Webber
A man walked through the door to Esther’s cell covered head to toe in oiled leathers and clutching a black-bound book in front of him like a shield. One frantic step in and the door slammed behind him, making him jump. The various charms hanging all over him jingled in the musty dark. They obviously didn’t like him enough to give him the benefit of a lamp.
Esther sighed.
“Look, are you going to tell me why I’m—”
“You are not permitted to speak!” the man shrieked. His voice bounced dramatically off the bare stone walls.
“Because why?” Sitting on the hard stone was making Esther’s rump ache and she was cold and tired.
The man commenced frantic waving with one hand. “Your tongue will be still! You cannot cast your vile death magics upon me! I am of the White Watch! Dark magic will never cast out the light!”
“As stimulating as I find your company, I’m pretty sure if I could do vile death magics I wouldn’t be trapped in here right now.” She propped her chin on one hand, thoughtful. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure this whole dungeon would be deathified by now.”
A faint glow started somewhere in the cover of the book. It floated freely up from the man’s hands, which started making complex gestures at her. “By my sacred bond with Ores, who rules the day and sees into every shadow, I take your powers of speech. I seal you under sun and sky and bloody stone. I BIND YOU!”
Esther blinked. “Yeah, no. Not happening.”
The man blinked back. The book thudded to the ground, its light fading.
“I mean, solid effort, but that was never going to work on me.”
“Hideous witch!” he screamed, pointing a finger at her.
“Now, that is just uncalled for. I mean, my nose is sort of crooked, but—”
“You will pay for what you’ve done!”
“Which is WHAT, exactly? You people grabbed me out of the bar with no warning—I didn’t even get to drink my beer, by the way, and I’d been saving up for that for a solid week. I paid in advance! Then you drag me down here and dump me in a moldy dark cell, and every time I try to talk, someone threatens me with glowy magic fingers. What exactly have I done?”
The jingling began again. The man was shaking, sending all his little charms tinkling. “E-ESTHER WARKLIN—”
“Worklin.”
The man froze. “What?”
“It’s Worklin, not Warklin.”
The man’s eyes widened. The book shot up, brighter than before and humming loudly. His finger arrowed straight for her eyes, his shoulders thrown back, chin tilted up. “ESTHER WORKLIN, THE BLACK BLADE OF SINDARIA, I BIND YOU BY YOUR NAME! I HOLD YOUR SOUL ENSLAVED! DARK TO LIGHT, MOON TO SUN, TREE TO EARTH, YOU ARE IN THRALL TO ME!”
The echoes rattled the cell’s stones a bit, shaking free some dust to cloud the already close air. Esther coughed, rubbing the grit out of her eyes with her sleeve. “Gods, could you not? My allergies are already hating me in here.”
He snatched the book out of the air, genuinely puzzled. He looked at her, then at the glowing book. He gave the book a shake, thumping the cover as if he could knock the magic back into alignment. Its glow intensified. He looked at her hopefully.
She shook her head. “Sorry, no.”
The light went out with a pop, but not before she saw the blooming horror in his face. “The bindings don’t work on you.”
“Solid analysis.”
“You’re too powerful.”
“Seriously? No. Come on, now. Would I even be here if I was the all-powerful Blade of Sindartha?”
“Sindaria.”
“Right, that. This is obviously just a terrible mistake.”
A stone dropped out of the ceiling and bopped the man neatly on the head. He crumpled to the ground.
Esther gaped in surprise. “What the actual fucking hell? Just, how?”
She reached out to poke him to see if he was still alive and he recoiled. He started screaming, a long, incoherent wail of terror. The door flew open. Large meaty arms reached in, glommed onto him, and yanked him back into the hallway. The door slammed, leaving Esther in darkness once again. The wails quickly receded down the hallway and silence descended.
Esther stood, dusting off her pants and smacking a spider from its hopeful perch on her knee. She walked to the tiny barred window in the door.
“You know that wasn’t me, right?”
Silence. Either the guards were too afraid to talk or they’d all made a run for it.
“I’m pretty sure he knocked that stone loose himself, with his boomy lighty enthrally spell. That didn’t work, because nothing magic works on me! I am the opposite of a witch here! … Hello? I’d really like to know why I’m in here! Hello?”
Silence.
“For gods’ sake, can’t ANYONE answer a simple question around here?”
“Well, that depends on what you want to know.”
Esther spun, knocking an elbow on the door in her haste. Then she had to divide her attention between hissing and holding her throbbing elbow and staring at the nondescript m
an who had somehow appeared in this place where that was supposed to be impossible.
He looked around the drab little cell with obvious distaste, arms wrapped around his torso as if to keep its ickiness from getting on him.
“They certainly do know how to cater to stereotype, don’t they? If this was any more gloomy and damp and covered in spells against black magic … wait, you’ve broken the wards … well done, you!”
Esther blinked at him. “Do I know you?”
The man perked up. “Now THAT is an interesting and worthy question. Not even in the philosophical blowhard ‘Can any of us really know anyone?’ sense, but in truth. Because the answer is yes, but no.”
Some of the sting was leaving her elbow, so she stopped rubbing it and braced her back against the door. “I’m fairly certain it can’t be both.”
His smile broadened. “Oh, but it is, and only because you are who you are. The great Esther Warklin, Black Blade of Sindaria—”
“I keep telling people, I’m really not.”
“Yes, I know. I heard you say that, too. I assure you that you both are and are not, currently, the Great Black Witch of the West.”
Esther sat, back against the door. “Okay, I’m very confused now.”
“To be expected! All will be explained in due course, but we need to get out of here first.”
“I’m not against the idea … but, how, exactly?”
“Your policy covers post-incarceration extraction if you notify us of the possibility in advance of the felonious spellcasting and reserve a ward breaker. It’s quite expensive, but you always did have foresight.”
This was becoming surreal. “My policy.”
“Anyway, let’s go. I like to leave them guessing how you got out. You let them see the trick behind the magic and then the next time they’ll build to type and we have a devil of a time getting the next mage out.”
“And we wouldn’t want that.”
Guilds & Glaives Page 12