by Baen Books
“We moved the afflicted in here,” he said. “All the Storm’s End visitors already went home.”
Scratch marks were visible on the floor where beds had been unceremoniously dragged. A half-dozen souls drowsed upon those beds, all scarcely breathing.
“The mayor was the first,” said Lazarevic. “He fell asleep, murmuring about seeing his wife again, and couldn’t be raised for days. When he died, we didn’t think twice, since he was old. But then went the miller, and then the clerk, and now these farmers.”
I pricked two of the sleepers with a needle. Not a stir. “How many dead?”
“Four.”
I didn’t need to test with hazelwood to see that a curse was in effect. The question instead was what kind of curse.
“I don’t see the latest body.”
“He’s out back.”
We went out back. There, in a disturbed circle of grass, lay a corpse with windblown hair.
“You left him on the ground,” I said, approving.
Lazarevic misapprehended my intent. “We didn’t want to interfere with the investigation.”
I kneeled, as well as Zaleski’s dress allowed. I looked for bites, for trauma. I found none. I touched a stick of hazel to his extremities. Sure enough it blackened, crisping at the edges, like it had been thrown into a fire. So then I turned the man over to inspect his face.
The eyes were gone. Burned out of his skull, seemingly from within, if the burn patterns told true. I felt a sudden nausea. That was ridiculous, I told myself; I’d seen death before and in far nastier flavors. Why should it get to me now?
Perhaps because this was a familiar face. “It’s Karol,” I said. “The miller’s son.”
“It figures you’d recognize him, and not me.”
I didn’t take the bait. “When’s the last time someone saw Karol alive?”
There were plenty of people to ask by then; at least a dozen onlookers clustered around the door. “Just after sundown, the innkeep went to bed. Come the morning we woke up and here Karol was.” He added, “Now the innkeep’s sleeping, too.”
I weighed options. Lots of monsters manifest in Molovia. A noon-maid’s touch could strike a man dead in seconds, if he said the wrong things. But a noon-maid rarely came out in autumn, and never at night. A Vila was possible, but no one had seen one for years. “Might be a Polevik,” I decided. “Karol always had a drinking problem.”
That drew a few ungrateful mutters from the thickening crowd. Which told me Karol’s habits hadn’t much improved in the years I was gone. I didn’t blame him; there wasn’t much else to do in Molovia but drink, when the storm was up. An especially vindictive Polevik might have cursed the whole town as punishment.
This is your fault, I heard, on the wind. My fingers twitched and my eyes searched, but I found nothing.
I asked the crowd, “Who’s the biggest drinker in town?”
No one spoke. A lot of them looked a certain way. I noticed the priest standing there and sighed.
“I suppose you’ll do,” I told him.
“For what?”
“You catch a monster the same way you catch anything else. With bait.” I told the priest, “You’re going to sit out here all night and drink.”
The priest smiled, flask already in hand. “Onerous. But I’ll try to soldier through.”
My bait caught worse things than I bargained for.
#
Polevik:
These grass-haired dwarfs appear promptly at noon or night, dressed only in white and black. Born from the passing of a bitter spendthrift, they loathe the lazy and the indolent. A farmer asleep on the job or a drunkard lazing in the field might find themselves cruelly murdered by a Polevik’s hand. They are, however, often propitiated by gifts.
(From Astronarius’ ‘Monsters of Molovia’)
#
Waiting for the night I dozed. The dream was vivid.
My husband Serafin stood on the highest of our town’s high peaks. Scaling it is perilous, but from the top the whole of Molovia reveals itself. On clear days we could see the next town over, clouds roiling in the lowlands in between. On those nights we watched the stars. I sat cross-legged beside him of an evening while he showed me the constellations, and spoke the stories of their naming. I am not sure at what point my interest shifted from the stories to the man who told them. The change was gradual, too slow to notice, as water wears down stone. Only by weeks and months did my heart’s armor erode. Serafin was a clerk, but he dreamed, I think, of navigating the ocean.
In the dream, Serafin spoke. I listened. My sister Agata joined us halfway through, with a bright laugh that warmed my heart. I spoke some question, when it was all done, and we moved to descend the steps, near as steep as ladders.
My foot slipped. I fell. Farther, and farther, through mist and wind and fog . . .
#
I startled awake.
Wind stirred my hair. I was sure I’d left the inn room’s window closed, but it was open. I might have worried, but a knock interrupted.
“There’s an old couple here to see you.”
Lazarevic’s voice, from the hallway. “I’m getting dressed,” I lied. Then realized it was a good idea.
I fixated on the mirror. Not for reasons of vanity, but because I never had much luck with the lacing on my hunter’s coat without being able to see it. Unfortunately, this forced me to reflect on just how many scars I’d accumulated over the years, and why I always insisted on hats.
Finally the coat button caught. “Did they give names?”
Lazarevic recounted them. My parents’ names.
I’d wondered, of course, whose will would break first, mine or theirs. I had imagined a wintry spell of disregard, them not noticing me, my not noticing them, and finally some kind of halfhearted apology upon my leaving that I would deign to halfheartedly accept. I hadn’t been ready for an earnest and open greeting.
I peered through the window and there he was waiting, my old father, marginally older, silver hair turned white and eyes drooping deeper beneath a wrinkled brow. My mother, severe in a church-approved dress that surely choked around the collar. No sign of my sister, which would have been the only pleasant detail; had she finally been married off? Bad enough that father kept sending letters that I ignored; far worse that my sister Agata never sent anything at all.
There was no way to leave without running into them. I stepped out.
“Teresa,” he started.
“Father,” I answered.
“We were hoping you’d come to dinner.”
They were my family. Would it be so bad, I wondered, to give them a second chance? I studied the lines of my father’s face, waiting, though for what I could not say.
Then I remembered the old words, exchanged in anger. I stepped right past him.
I was on the hunt, I consoled my conscience. Family could come later.
#
The priest passed out sooner than I expected. Liquor spilled from the flask and stained his trousers. I did not help. I waited to see if a spirit took offense.
An important quality in my profession is the ability to forgo sleep. Much that is ill can only be met by moonlight. I waited until dark settled deeply. Fingers of mist slithered in silence beneath the bridge. My knees creaked temperamentally, but I kept the vigil all the same. Kept it until the sky turned and the pole-star rose. Briefly I wondered if the locals were deluded, if there was no monster, and whether the Mother sent me just to illustrate her point about thoroughness in investigation.
Then came the butterfly.
Gold were its wings and gold its eyes. The same color as the lights I saw on the train. Entranced, I watched it alight upon the priest. Its wings beat once, twice. Then, ever so slowly, it dissolved—turned to faintest crumbling dust.
The sleeping priest shed his own body. As a soul might detach from flesh, a golden spirit stood up from the chair, leaving skin behind. The spirit was younger, head full of hair, waist bereft of paunch.
Yet it was unmistakably the same priest.
Eyes unseeing, the spirit rose, expressionless. Up into the sky it drifted, until it looked like a glittering star. More lights lifted from the houses of the town. Dozens, at least. I suspected they all took the shape of men.
Could I intervene? Would it make things worse or better? Surely no Polevik did this.
A hand seized my wrist. My eyes widened and I nearly drew my sword. But I held back.
I was, after all, looking at my sister.
“You didn’t come to dinner,” Agata whispered, crouched behind a tree.
“I’m busy,” I whispered back, which was true, but also made me feel about twelve.
I looked back to the sky. The moment had passed. The shades were gone. The only stir was a murder of crows dozing in the trees nearby, moonlight catching off their silvered beaks.
Agata had scarcely aged. I suppose she’d been living here, in a land perpetually shaded and idle, whilst I’d hunted across two continents. Perhaps she hadn’t even had children. Her eyes were the green of damp moss, her dress blue and loose and simple.
“Mum and Da waited hours for you,” she said. “They love you, you know.”
“They have a strange way of showing it.”
“It’s been seven years, Teresa.”
“I don’t have the patience to sit and hear about how my absence ruined harvests, or how I could have been schoolmarm for the village children, or how I was responsible for—”
“You couldn’t have known you’d get Serafin killed,” Agata murmured, quieter than a whisper.
“I did not kill him,” I told her, hands so tense they hurt. Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes, he wouldn’t have died if he’d married her, instead. But this was not the time. “We’ll talk. Later. I’m busy trying to save your fucking lives.”
“Our lives don’t need saving.”
I might have said more. But then came the butterflies.
They came over the edge of the butte, a glittering golden cloud. Dozens. Hundreds. They did not hurry. Tiny wings beat steadily; it would have been stately, had I not seen the priest before.
I dreaded what might happen at their touch.
“Teresa,” my sister started.
“Go,” I told her, stepping forward. “Go home and close the door.”
While she fled I drew the Blade.
On the butte’s edge I stood, weapon held on high. My eyes narrowed with focus. Wind began to howl about the steel. Moment by moment, it built more thickly, more violently. I held until my wrists ached, until a tempest wreathed the sword.
Then I cut.
The wind soared through night-dark air, a distortion visible to the eye. It slammed into the wall of butterflies. Their flight turned erratic.
My throat caught in a moment’s surprise. They did not simply turn aside. They turned to pieces. The butterflies disintegrated into a cloud of golden, dusty pollen.
Distantly, something shrieked.
The pollen fell about the nearby trees. It dusted the wings and beaks of crows.
One by one, golden light blossomed in their eyes. The whole murder twisted their heads in unison. They stared at me, unmoving, unblinking. A faint wind ruffled their feathers. Intellect glimmered cruelly in their gaze.
One bird is a nuisance, I reflected. A murder is named so for a reason.
From the tree, they dived. My leg was near fully recovered from the striga’s claw, so I was quick on my feet, in trousers instead of skirts. I danced backwards as I cut. One stroke severed two birds from breast to wing.
The golden color vanished from their eyes, snuffed like a silent candle. Diminutive bodies hit the earth, bleeding, unmoving. I darted behind a tree.
Claws tore skin and bark alike. I couldn’t afford to hold back.
The Blade sparked and the night brightened as from lightning. I swung. Black wings parted before me, cleaved in twain.
I immediately felt an ache, bone-deep. I let the Blade ease the pain, knowing that would eventually make it worse. All power has a price.
Birds wheeled, above and below. More caws echoed from distant buttes; they’d surely be here soon. I needed to be inside.
I darted for the nearest bridge.
But I didn’t make it across.
In the sky hung the shape of a woman. Her skin was white like statuary, bloodless. Her eyes were the green of hard-cut jewels. A drape of gauze hung about her shoulders, insubstantial, halfway wrought from the wind and mist itself. Her toes blurred in the breeze.
Hatred smoldered in her eyes.
Definitely a Vila, I remember thinking.
Her drapery flared and fluttered. Wind whipped the grasses of the mesa and rattled shutters in the village. She gathered air about herself like armor—then pointed at me with a solitary finger.
The wind hit me like a carriage. A wall of pressure flattened my coat against my body. My cheeks rippled. My eyes screwed shut. Slowly, I gave ground, step by painful step, until I teetered at the very edge of the bridge, clutching desperately to rope.
The Vila clenched her fist. Currents wrenched my fingers, one by one, until my grip on the Blade slipped. It fell into the abyss, down into midnight dark. Weakness hit me instantly, harder than the storm.
Wind howled. Bridge-ropes flailed. I reached for them—reached until they popped from their moorings.
The bridge fell, and me with it.
So here we are, I thought. I was afraid to die, surely. But even more, I was angry. Bad enough that I’d failed. Worse that everyone at home would see me fail. They’d all been proven right. Teresa’s bad judgment killed her man, and now it killed her. A bitter draught to swallow.
I struck the earth.
#
But I didn’t die.
I lay in a cemetery, built on the low ground far beneath the mesa. The constellations were fading, but I saw the sign of the Hierophant, whose eye gleams bluest of all stars. I remembered the way Serafin told that story. His grave lay down there, somewhere.
I figured my spine shattered, my limbs immobile. But I soon realized I’d moved my neck to gaze upon the headstones.
A breeze breathed into my ear. Go back to the city.
Spared. I’d been spared by the Vila. A monster had looked upon me, taken my measure, and found me not worth killing.
I was definitely not including that in my report.
Everything hurt. Her wind had softened my fall, it was the only explanation, but “soften” is a relative word, falling from such a height.
Only by sunrise did I find my feet. One of the dead crows brushed my time-scuffed boots. I picked it up and trudged for the station.
The militiamen barely tried to stop me. They stared, agape.
Step by step I trudged the stairs, to the very peak of the mesa. Morning’s light had not yet burned away the dew that clung to grassy earth. I stepped past the houses, all the way to the far end, to an old blacksmith’s abode. He’d be up by now, the old workhorse, probably complaining about breakfast. I did not knock when I opened the door.
And sure enough, my father puttered about the kitchen, the sun coming in sideways through the windows.
I thrust a bloody, beheaded crow upon the table. “I brought dinner.”
I allowed myself to faint.
#
Vila:
Wrought of air and magic, the Vila dwells in the narrow space between life and after-life. Beautiful and terrible, she is marked by capricious jealousy, born from the passing of frivolous or love-struck ladies. No two are fully alike. Some change shape, some intoxicate the mind, some dance upon the wind. To possess her hair or flesh is to command her. To burn it is to slay her. Vila are among the most powerful monsters, often obsessed with worthy men.
(From Astronarius’ ‘Monsters of Molovia’)
#
“I had the strangest dream,” I heard my mother say, before I managed to open my eyes. The grandfather clock, our one luxury, quietly clicked.
“You’re not the only one,�
�� said Lazarevic. Who’d invited him?
“I remembered being young again, with Jakub. Lovely days. But then I became a bird. Can you imagine? Teresa was there, but when I saw her, I tried to eat her. She fought me. Hurt me.”
I heard the familiar sound of my father pouring ale. “Dreadful dream.”
“I had the same one,” said Lazarevic. “Half the village did. Were you even asleep?”
“No,” my father admitted. “Thought of my girl out there with whatever-it-was kept me awake. I should have gone after her.”
“That wouldn’t have helped,” I spoke, my voice rasping.
The three of them all descended to fuss over me. They prodded scrapes and cuts and dirt-marred hair. They ignored my complaints. My mother ran her fingers across my scalp, sighing out sympathies.
I quailed with irrational fear. They’d taken my hat away. I tried to push them off, but I couldn’t manage.
My mother’s fingers traced the three deep furrows that run across my skull, the wide claw-marked scars where hair will never grow again. Pink-colored ruts, carved through twisted and half-burned flesh. My vanity could scarcely endure it.
Serafin, I suddenly remembered, bought my very first hat. When I caught onto the wide-brimmed hats of city ladies, he made it his mission to see that I would have the best of their kind in Elik.
“It’s not so bad,” my father lied, not unkindly. “You don’t need to cry.”
“I don’t have the time to cry.” Seven years hadn’t been enough. I didn’t mean to slow down, now.
“Goodness,” said my mother. “I’m going to get all misty. You’d better pour me an ale, too.”
“And me,” I croaked.