by Jim C. Hines
Shroud pulled his hood over his head. The cloak was waterproof—all the better for removing bloodstains—which should provide protection against whatever was coming. Of course, if it was a contact poison, he’d have a difficult time removing said cloak without getting it on his hands.
It could be acid instead. That would be nasty. Acid from the clouds …
Come to think of it, Yog might not be directly targeting the people of Grayrock. Certain kinds of stone could be dissolved with simple vinegar. Maybe Yog planned to erode the dam from the sky and complete the work her nymph began. A little cloak wouldn’t save anyone from that.
Shroud snatched a shovel and started digging.
The first raindrops reached them right around the time the first shovel thunked against the small chest buried in a tangle of stone roots three feet belowground. Unlike the clouds, the rain itself had a faint reddish tinge, as well as an odd metallic smell. The stone branches and leaves provided a bit of shelter, but that wouldn’t last when the rain started falling in earnest. Most of the workers had left, despite Glory’s calling for them to stay and see the job through. Apparently there were limits to what the new Mayor could command.
“The tree has quite the hold on this thing.” Sterling jammed his shovel against another root and tried to lever it free, but the root was as thick as a man’s wrist. The shovel’s handle bowed and cracked. Sterling stumbled back. “The chest appears to be carved from stone as well, though the hinges are metal. A worthy challenge, but it shall not defeat—”
“Move.” Shroud tossed his shovel aside and pulled a small, flat crowbar from his pack. He dropped prone and reached into the hole, jamming the bar beneath the largest of the roots. He didn’t worry about precision or style, not with haunted clouds darkening the sky.
“You don’t have the leverage to break the roots from that angle,” Glory said.
“I’m not trying to break the roots. But metal hinges stuck in the damp earth all these years?” Shroud pulled the bar upwards, and one of the old hinges snapped. He moved the crowbar to the left, hastily repositioned the end below the second hinge, and repeated the process. Once both hinges were broken, he shifted his angle and wedged the bar into the crack beneath the lid, trying to shift it to the side.
Glory picked up one of the smaller pieces of broken root and held it out, displaying the striated rings in the centre. “This was once a living tree. The roots must have grown around the chest before it turned to stone.”
“You think whatever’s in the chest changed the tree?” asked Winter.
Shroud jerked his hands back. Never allow haste or fear to make you careless.
He set his crowbar aside and pulled on a pair of deerskin gloves. If they started turning to stone, hopefully he’d be able to yank his hands free before the spell spread to his flesh.
A woman screamed in the distance, somewhere near the town gate. Shroud cast a furtive glance at the others to see if the rain had begun raising welts on their skin or transforming them into monsters or stone statues. They seemed unharmed and relatively dry thus far.
He squeezed his hand through the gap in the chest. Whatever was inside, it wasn’t gold. He felt a hard, rag-covered bundle, about the size of a dagger. He shoved the lid with both hands, opening up more space.
Was he imagining the stone roots tightening around his wrist, trying to stop him?
“What is it?” asked Winter.
Shroud yanked the object free. “Shelter first,” he said, scurrying across the street towards a small cobbler’s shop.
Another shriek carried through the town. “I think you’re right,” said Glory.
They reached the overhang in front of the shop just before the rain began to assault the town in earnest, as if the clouds were a dam that had suddenly crumbled. More shouts followed: cries of pain and calls for help. Sterling put a hand to his sword and started forwards. Shroud and Glory caught him by the arms, holding him in place.
“The people are in danger,” Sterling said. “They need a Hero!”
“Will you be fighting the rain with that sword, then?” asked Shroud. “Because I’m pretty sure the raindrops outnumber you.” He waited for Sterling to stop pulling, then turned his attention to the bundle from the chest. The rags were old and brittle, caked in dust. They cracked like plaster as Shroud pulled them aside.
Inside lay a simple doll, similar in size and shape to the boy they had rescued, Ben, but made of stone. Faint lines along the surface suggested wood grain. The doll, like the tree, might have once been wood. He turned it over. Unlike Ben, this doll was hairless, but the simple features inked onto the face remained. “Another one. Maybe Yog’s just a very dedicated doll collector.”
“Is it alive?” asked Winter.
Shroud poked it in the eye. Nothing happened. He tested the arms and legs. They swivelled stiffly on their stone pegs.
“All this fuss is over an old doll?” asked Glory.
“I wonder if the boy’s going to end up like this,” said Shroud.
Winter snatched the doll from his hands. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
“None of us understands how this transformation occurred,” Sterling said gently. “But fear not, Lady Winter. Once we’ve vanquished Yog and her servants, we shall find a way to restore Ben to his proper form.”
Motion caught Shroud’s eye. He turned and nocked an arrow to his bowstring before his mind fully registered why. The figures down the street were too far away to see clearly, but their movements were wrong.
Shroud had spent years studying movement, learning how to disappear in plain sight, to become just another sheep in the herd. Movement told you if a person was anxious or confident, strong or weak, alert or distracted. This group moved with a determined stride through the rain, but their body language wasn’t quite human. They were too twitchy.
The whisper of steel sliding from its sheath told him Sterling had seen them too. Glory swore and said, “Is that who I think it is?”
The Mayor hurried towards them, surrounded by a dozen men. At least, they had once been men.
The rain had stained their clothes a watery red. They had tied rags around their heads like crude bandages. Their shoulders were hunched high enough to touch their ears, and their exposed skin had taken on a sickly pallor, like they were covered in old bruises.
“I think he’s contesting the recall,” said Shroud.
Three to four opponents for each of the Heroes. Not an impossible fight by any means, but potentially painful, and in addition to watching out for those spears, they also had to worry about Yog’s cloud-borne assault.
The spears give them the advantage of reach, but they’re walking in mud and water, which means their balance will be poor. Stay together as a group. They can’t all attack at once, though the ones with spears can thrust past their comrades.
Shroud pulled the bowstring to his cheek and waited. Even for citizens of Grayrock, the approaching fighters were disorganised and chaotic. The Mayor barked orders but seemed as eager as the rest to wade in and lay about with the short club he had acquired. His broken arm hung limp against his side. “They’re moving like redcaps.”
“How is that possible?” asked Sterling. “The man was human when Glory threw—when he fell from his office window an hour ago.”
“The letter from Brightlodge said the greencaps were created by blood-tainted ale.” Glory pointed to the sky.
“It appears Yog has improved her formula. Stay out of the rain.” Shroud loosed the bowstring and shot the nearest guard. The razor-edged Trollfang Broadhead arrow dropped the man where he stood. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the signal for the rest of the mob to charge, shouting and laughing incoherently.
They didn’t bother trying to avoid the flaming apple Glory lobbed into their path, and the resulting explosion sent two guards to the ground.
Winter’s magic turned the road to ice, and three more fell hard. “This is not proper parliamentary process!”
Shroud tossed a handful of six-pronged caltrops into the street. These were the new M. Cole variety he had picked up two weeks ago in Brightlodge. The barbed tips ensured that not only would they stab through the thickest soles, they’d stick and inflict more damage with every step.
“Try not to kill them.” Sterling’s sword slashed out, removing the tip of a spear. He slammed the hilt into his opponent’s jaw.
“Now you tell us,” said Glory.
Try not to kill them? What kind of suicidal, bleeding-heart nonsense is that? A man comes at you with a weapon, you leave his corpse on the ground as a warning to others. In fact, you could argue that by killing the first fellow, you were saving the lives of everyone who ran away.
With the ethics sorted out, Shroud shot a second guard at point-blank range. The remaining men pressed in around them, leaving him no room to shoot properly. He snatched a knife from his sleeve and stepped forwards, moving inside the range of the spears and jabbing the tip of his blade at exposed limbs.
There was an artistry to this kind of fighting, a constant movement not dissimilar to a dance. Shroud flowed from one partner to the next, leaving each with a kiss of his knife that blossomed red. He kept Sterling’s sword in the edge of his vision to make sure he didn’t inadvertently dodge into the way, and did his best not to block the magic Winter and Glory flung.
The dance ended abruptly when the butt of a spear struck the side of his skull, knocking him to the ground. Shroud rolled back towards shelter, pausing only long enough to hamstring another guard. Unfortunately, that pause gave the Mayor time to snatch up a discarded spear and close in. Shroud waited as the Mayor raised the spear overhead, then rolled to one side. The tip sank into the ground beside him. Shroud wrapped his arm around the spear for support and slammed the heel of his boot directly into the man’s groin.
Whatever magic had changed these people, their anatomy remained human enough. The Mayor’s eyes bulged, and he hobbled backwards, squeaking like a wounded rat.
The remaining guards fled, laughing and bleeding. All total, seven men lay scattered on the ground, the majority of them still alive. For the moment.
That one with the knife wound to the belly won’t last long. Kinder to put him out of his misery.
Shroud stood and brushed himself off. The rain was thinning, and the drops falling from the sky had begun to lose their unnatural colouration. Reddish mud stained his cloak. Some of it had splashed his shirt and skin. Where the water touched his body, the flesh itched like a healing sunburn.
“How many others do you think …” Winter trailed off, gesturing at the dead and wounded guards.
“That depends on who among these people had the sense to come in out of the rain,” Glory said sourly. “Which means half the town could be transformed by now.”
“Now, now. You shouldn’t speak that way about your constituents,” Winter said. “Is everyone else all right?”
Sterling had lost a bit of skin from the knuckles of his left hand, and Winter was sporting what would soon be an impressive black eye, but they were otherwise unharmed.
“I most certainly am not.”
Shroud spun, knife ready to throw. The voice had come from the stone doll, which must have fallen into the mud during the battle. Shroud grabbed it around the waist and wiped it briskly against his cloak to clean the worst of the mud. The doll responded by kicking him on the wrist.
“Rubbing me into your armpit is hardly an improvement, you arse-faced goon,” the doll snapped. The stone head turned with a grinding sound, and the doll surveyed the carnage on the street. “A magestorm. I assume Yog is behind this?”
“That’s right,” said Sterling. “What do you know about her? Why was she searching for you?”
“Who are you?” Shroud interrupted.
“My name is Kas the Undying,” said the doll. “I am … I was … Yog’s husband.”
CHAPTER 15
WINTER
You’re cute, but aren’t you a bit small for her?” asked Winter.
Kas studied each of them. His head turned stiffly, like that of a man crippled by arthritis. Every time he moved, the grating of stone against stone made Winter’s teeth clench. “She did this to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I finally saw the truth of what she was. What she had become. I tried to stop her. Yog didn’t take kindly to that.” He glanced at the moaning guards. “She’s improved her mixture since then.”
“What kind of poison did she use?” Shroud demanded.
“Not poison.” The doll chuckled, a sound like rattling pebbles. “Not exactly. It’s a potion she devised. She wanted a way to break the minds of Heroes, to reduce them to animals she could manipulate and control. She was always tinkering, trying to find a more effective blend. She never used to be able to deliver it in a magestorm, though. Last I remember, she was experimenting with frog secretions, thinking that might let the potion be absorbed through the skin.”
“We believe she’s using redcap blood,” said Shroud.
“That’s right. She once told me the first redcaps were a result of a bad batch, back when she was young.”
Winter stared. “Are you saying Yog created the redcaps?”
Kas made a shrugging motion with one arm. “Hard to say. She’d been around a long time when I met her, and her memory wasn’t the most reliable.”
One of the guards pushed himself to his hands and knees and reached for a spear. Winter casually froze his hands to the ground. “We thought you were dead when we dug you up. Or broken.”
“I was napping,” the doll snapped. “Until this buffoon dropped me in toxic muck.”
Shroud folded his arms. “If you’ve got a problem, I’d be happy to bury you and let you get back to your dirt nap.”
“Yog won’t stop now,” Kas continued. “The magestorm is only the beginning, to soften up her enemies. Next, she’ll send her Riders to attack the town.”
Winter nodded. “The nymph and the ogre.”
Kas stared. “An ogre? She’s fallen hard indeed.”
“We’ve sent them running once before,” said Sterling. “Should they dare to return, we’ll do so again!”
“Aye, but you weren’t fighting all these townsfolk last time, were you? Not to mention whatever other forces she might have gathered.” Kas looked around. “There should be a third Rider. Yog always said three was the number of power. She sought one with great strength of body, one who was the most skilled of their kind, and one with an indomitable Will. They held the spillover, the power she couldn’t contain within her own body.”
“We’ve received word from Brightlodge that the third Rider is a redcap,” said Sterling.
“Oh, Yog. What have the years done to you?”
“Does she really eat Heroes?” asked Winter.
“You’ve heard about that part, have you?” Kas nodded. “Heroes for their power, and children for their youth. I should have seen it sooner, but I didn’t want to believe. By the time I accepted the truth, she was almost unstoppable.”
“Almost?” Winter pressed.
“Her final meal was a Hero named William Grayrock. Bravest man I ever knew. He and I worked together to end Yog’s evil. William sacrificed himself, letting me take him to Yog as a prisoner. A ‘gift’ for my beloved wife. I poisoned him, cursed his very blood. When Yog feasted that night, she took the curse into herself. It weakened her body and splintered her power. But it wasn’t enough to stop her from doing this to me.”
Winter frowned. “How did you end up buried in the middle of Grayrock?”
“I don’t honestly know. I remember fleeing from Yog and her Riders, but these little legs don’t get you very far. I tried to use my magic to capture a mount. A hawk would have been ideal, but at that point, I’d have settled for a rabbit or a squirrel. I couldn’t do it. Preparing that spell for Yog had exhausted me. I passed out from exhaustion. Someone must have found me and assumed I was dead. I wouldn’t have been the first one Yog had done
this to.” For the first time, Kas sounded uncertain. “How long was I buried?”
“Let’s just say you had the world’s best nap,” said Winter.
“Long enough for people to forget about Yog, and for Heroes to fade into legend until very recently,” added Glory. “Were you … awake that whole time?”
Kas shook his head. “Only in the beginning. I tried to call out, but the chest was too thick, and warded against magic. They must have been afraid Yog’s spell on me could spread to others like a disease. I realised I was likely to be down there a good long time. Long enough for wood to begin to rot. I used what power I had left to transform my body to stone, hoping that would preserve my body until someone dug me up,” said Kas. “After that, I mostly slept.”
Glory nodded. “Your power leaked. It changed the tree to stone as well. And the chest.”
“Interesting.” Kas looked around, as if searching for his former tomb. “If the wards on the chest were keyed to me personally, that connection could have caused it to transform.”
“Can you change yourself back?” Winter asked, thinking of Ben.
“You think I haven’t tried?” Kas raised his little stone arms in exasperation. “I saw Yog reverse this spell once, long ago. Thankfully, it’s not something she can do from a distance. Otherwise, had she suspected I still lived, she could have removed the spell and left me to be crushed to death by the roots of that damned tree. If we defeat Yog, if I could search through her hut to learn how she cast this curse, I might be able to restore myself.”
A child screamed from the quarry side of town. People were dying out there. Winter peered at the clouds. “Is the rain safe?”
“Yog’s magestorms expend most of their power in the first minutes,” said Kas. “But the dregs of her toxin will linger in the clouds and the rain a while longer. Probably not enough to transform you, but it could make you sick as dogs.”