The Banshee's Walk

by Frank Tuttle

  Outside, men screamed.

  The Lady sagged. Marlo caught her. She smiled weakly back at him.

  “Another of Grandmother’s old spells,” she said. “Not mine. I’m fine.”

  There was a thud outside, as something large and heavy was dropped. The screaming continued, growing weaker. Men shouted.

  I smelled burning flesh.

  Evis came gliding down the stairs, halting a respectful distance from Marlo and the Lady.

  “Finder,” he said. “Accompany me.”

  I put Toadsticker back in my belt and shouldered my way through the mob. They didn’t like it, but no one got in my way.

  The Lady pulled herself together and started exhorting her troops. I sidled past her and accompanied Evis upward.

  “Developments?” I whispered. The Lady was talking about courage and honor. I remember the same pep talks from my Army days, and after reflecting on the contempt we’d harbored toward those same speeches I knew she was wasting her breath.

  “I think so,” he said. “Good news for us, for a change. Looks like the Corpsemaster has decided to start his show.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Part of me had been wondering if Hisvin had just gotten bored with the whole affair and had simply gone home to have a drink and curl up with a good book.

  “You sure it’s Hisvin?”

  “It killed a couple of soldiers while you were engaged in diplomacy. It’s Hisvin, all right.”

  We reached the third floor and left the stairs. Evis darted down a hall, took a right, stopped at the third door, knocked softly in a one-two one-two pattern.

  Locks clicked. I could hear furniture scrape the floor as it was pulled away from the door.

  Finally, Gertriss peeped out. “Boss,” she said. More scrapings, and then she opened the door wide enough for us to squeeze through.

  Mama and Darla were on the floor, playing dolls with Buttercup. At sight of me the banshee leaped to her feet and sprang across the room to hug my knees.

  The door shut behind us, and Gertriss threw the lock and then put a hastily improvised bar across the middle of the door.

  “This the room Marlo gave you?”

  “No, it isn’t. But everyone knew about that room. This is one smaller, but the walls are thicker and that door is a solid piece of blood oak. I thought we’d be safer here.”

  I gave Gertriss a smile and disentangled Buttercup.

  “Good thinking. You’re getting a promotion, first thing tomorrow.” I tousled the banshee’s hair and turned her around. “Go play, honey. The grownups need to talk.”

  Darla held out a doll with corn-silk hair, and Buttercup squealed and leaped for it.

  “Over here,” said Evis. He was standing by a window. The window itself was covered over with a burlap sack. Marlo lifted the corner of the sack and motioned me forward.

  Someone had pulled away the window frame on the right side, and had managed to go through the inner wall and pull away a chunk of limestone the size of my fist, leaving a hole we could see through.

  Mama cackled, suddenly beside me. “Have a look, boy. We ain’t the only ones with sorcery troubles now.”

  I put an eye to the hole and prayed it hadn’t been noticed from the ground.

  It hadn’t, mainly because the people on the ground had more pressing matters to attend to.

  Something had broken through the scorched turf about twenty feet from the wall. From my vantage point, I could discern that it was a smooth, glassy cylinder of some dark material. The top was flat. Earth and burnt grass still rested on it.

  It was maybe five feet in diameter. And it was still rising, albeit slowly.

  About it were shouts and one long, agonized scream. I couldn’t see the source of the screams, but I could see soldiers keeping well beyond it shouting and loosing arrows and yelling for wand-wavers.

  The arrows they loosed simply vanished. I never heard them strike the cylinder, never saw then ricochet off it. They just ceased to be.

  As did the screaming, suddenly, and with a certain air of mortal finality.

  Two wand-wavers on black mounts came galloping up. They consulted with the soldiers, who still loosed volley after volley of useless arrows at the thing.

  After a few moments, one of the wand-wavers dismounted, produced one of the blue-headed staves they favored, and cautiously approached the cylinder.

  He made a few waves with his staff. The head of it began to glow and trail mist. He called for the arrows to cease, and they did, and the blue radiance from his staff engulfed him, and he kept walking.

  I didn’t see what happened next. The top of the rising cylinder blocked my view of the black-robed figure, and then there was a flash, and shouts from the soldiers beyond.

  Another flash. Another scream. The other wand-waver leaped from his horse and set his staff alight and hurled a bolt of blue at the cylinder, but the screaming didn’t cease and the light joined the arrows in silent oblivion.

  The second wand waver hurled another pair of useless bolts at the cylinder, but he kept his distance.

  The screaming of his comrade reached an agonizing peak, and then it too was snuffed out, and there was a moment of stunned silence from the soldiers in the yard.

  Inside the cylinder, something moved, thrashing about as though trapped in dark fluid.

  More movement, slowing, and a man’s bare hand pressed itself to the inside of the cylinder, struck it once in a useless attempt to break free, and then slid slowly out of sight.

  I let the burlap sack fall back down over the hole.

  “It’s not Hisvin’s usual style, but it’s certainly effective.”

  I nodded. The screams echoed in my mind. Despite their murderous intentions concerning us, I felt a moment of pity for the fallen wand-wavers. They hadn’t died well.

  “I imagine he’s trying to keep them from putting a name to the enemy.” I turned from the wall. “Using magics he isn’t known for, to keep them from deciding it’s him.”

  “Probably,” replied Evis. “Of course, that means we’ll be the only ones who do know. Lucky us.”

  I shrugged. Being privy to another of Hisvin’s secrets was a worry for tomorrow.

  “Look on the bright side,” said Evis. “Maybe it’s not the Corpsemaster at all. Maybe the ruckus has made Old Bones begin to stir.”

  “That’s the bright side?”

  Evis laughed and grinned. “At least we’re not the only ones with worries. Any enemy of my enemy, you know the rest.”

  Footfalls sounded in the hall outside. Lots of them. Someone tried the door, found it locked, gruffed something about a key.

  Even Buttercup had the sense to be quiet. She looked up at me, her doll in her hand, her expression touched with an oddly adult worry.

  Boots stomped away. All of us, banshee included, let out a collective sigh of relief.

  “This isn’t going to end well.”

  “Hush,” snapped Mama, at Evis. “Where’s them other halfdead? I reckon we all ought to be in the same place, come the time.”

  “They’re nearby. Believe me, they’ll make their presence known, should anyone try to breach this door by force.”

  Mama chuckled, sat, and laid a whetstone against the blade of her meat cleaver. “I’m thinkin’ they’ll do just that, first time that there cat-a-pult throws and cracks a wall. When that happens, it ain’t gonna be them soldiers we got to worry about. No sir. It’s gonna be every man jack under this here roof, aside from the Lady and that fool man of hers.”

  “I know it.”

  Mama didn’t look up. Her whetstone scraped hard against the bright steel.

  “You ready to spill blood to keep that there banshee alive?”

  Darla hugged Buttercup close to her. “Mama!”

  “It’s got to be said, young ’un. Are you?”

  “Nobody takes the banshee. Nobody kills the banshee. I’ve got reasons. It’s better if they aren’t discussed.”

  Mama nodded. “So be
it.” She held her cleaver up to the dim candlelight, squinted along its edge. “I’m ready, then.”

  Gertriss put her ear to the door. “They’re gone,” she announced. “Down the stairs. Boss, what about making a run for the tunnels?”

  “It may come to that. But not yet.” I never liked being herded. One thing I’d learned from being chased by Trolls across hill and dale, during the War. Never take the obvious route, when another presents itself. The moment you let your enemy dictate your next move, you’re on the road to an early grave.

  Or, in this case, a very old tomb.

  “Stay here.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Nope. Evis. You say Victor and Sara are watching this door?”

  “They’re watching me, actually, but I can arrange for a change in assignment. Should I?”

  “You should. You and I have business downstairs.” Both Darla and Gertriss turned to protest. “Absolutely not,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Evis will be with me. I’ll be fine. There’s still one avenue we need to explore, and I can’t guard a whole parade now that the household is up in arms.”

  “He’s right,” said Mama. “But, boy. When them soldiers start taking down the walls. We head for the tunnels, fight our way down, if’n we have too. Meet you down there if you ain’t with us. That sound about right?”

  “Just about.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doin’, boy.”

  “Always, Mama.”

  I gave Darla a kiss, Gertriss a quick hug and Evis and I quietly unlocked the door.

  We dodged panicked bands of the Lady’s staff all the way downstairs. We couldn’t avoid them any longer at the first floor landing, but having a grim-faced vampire clutching a long silver blade in each pale hand by one’s side does give would-be attackers pause.

  “We ain’t aimin’ to die for that creature you brought in here,” said the man I’d punched in the face earlier.

  “I’m not planning on dying either.” I kept walking. The half-dozen of them gathered at the foot of the stairs fell back. “You really think they’ll let you just walk away even if you do give them the banshee?”

  “Ain’t got no reason to think otherwise.”

  “Fools.” Evis spoke in a raspy hiss. “The banshee’s presence is the only thing keeping you alive. Otherwise they’d have killed you all with magic at the start.”

  No one dared dispute Evis. He made big vampire spooky eyes at the mob, and they made way with admirable haste.

  We passed through them without incident, though they grumbled and cursed at our backs.

  I led us down the hall to the gallery. Evis glanced sideways at me, bemused.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “How about we just take the ladies and make for the forest tunnel right now?”

  I shook my head. “I’m guessing their sorcerers can follow Buttercup, at least to some extent. You and Evis and Sara could outpace horses. But Mama? Me? You know we can’t outrun cavalry.”

  Evis frowned but opened the door.

  “The Corpsemaster will have a conniption fit,” he observed. “Do you really think trying to communicate with some ancient force of nature is really a good idea? That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it? Even considering the historical evidence that suggests such efforts are generally fatal?”

  The artists were still hard at work, still arrayed in silent standing ranks.

  Most of them, anyway. Serris was slumped in the floor, breathing but otherwise motionless. A male whose name I couldn’t recall was snoring on his side toward the front of the room.

  I tried to waken Serris, but only managed to produce a brief unfocused stare and a few twitchings of her fingers.

  “They’ll all be down before long,” whispered Evis.

  I agreed. Some of the hands that still moved across their canvasses were visibly trembling.

  I gently pushed Serris aside, found her brush, managed to scrape most of the dried paint out of the worn bristles. I took up her paints, lit a fresh candle, and turned my gaze toward her canvas.

  If she’d been depicting a subject, it was one I couldn’t discern. There were lines of grey, touched with crimson, across a black background.

  “Finder,” said Evis. His ashen halfdead face wasn’t made to express concern.

  “Watch my back. Give me ten minutes. Hit me in the head if I start painting bowls of fruit.”

  Evis cussed.

  I dipped my brush in blood-red paint, and put it to the canvas.

  And then I closed my eyes. I thought about Buttercup, thought about her playing with dolls, running, laughing, like the children in the paintings I’d seen painted in that very room.

  I thought about Buttercup, and I hummed the tune, and remembered the words—

  “Don’t you fret child

  Don’t you cry,

  Mama’s gonna make the black-birds fly.

  And when those black-birds fly away,

  Mama’s gonna make you a bed to lay…”

  Chapter Twenty

  Evis put his hand on my shoulder and shook it.

  “Markhat! Markhat, wake up or I swear I’ll start pulling off ears.”

  I blinked. I dropped the brush. I forgot I was holding a board filled with paint and spilled the whole works down the front of my shirt.

  “Markhat!” Evis slapped me. I shook my head and raised my arms, just in case he hadn’t been exaggerating about the pulling of ears.

  “I’m back, I’m back. Easy.” I found a rag and dabbed at the paint that covered me.

  “Back? Where the Hell were you?” Evis glared at my canvas. “Markhat, what have you done?”

  He held the candle close, and I saw too.

  I’d painted. I tried hard to remember what I’d painted, or why. You know those dreams, the ones you wake up from, the ones that instantly start to fade as soon as you try to grasp them and hold on?

  I’d painted, though. I’d painted a white ring that took up most of the canvas. In the center of it was a strange white shape.

  No. Not a shape.

  A character.

  Not one I knew. Not one that would be known to Evis or Mama or even the Corpsemaster.

  I couldn’t remember its name or its significance. I didn’t even try. I had a lingering sense that merely knowing such a thing would injure me in ways far beyond that of the huldra or even the catapults waiting outside.

  “Finder!”

  “I’m here. I’m here.” I was having trouble talking. I spat out a short harsh word and then spoke again. “It is done.”

  I didn’t know what I’d said, or why I’d said it is done. But as soon as I did, all around us, the artists started collapsing.

  Easels went down. Artist’s tools and artists themselves fell clattering to the floor. A few moaned and blinked and looked around. Most simply settled down with weary sighs and fell into what I hoped were simply deep exhausted sleeps.

  Evis turned about. A knife had found its way into his hand.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” he said.

  “Old Bones.” I worked my jaw, found the right words. “Old Bones is sleeping. Right below us.” Parts of the dream scampered past—laughing children in the sun, a castle in the air, Buttercup playing in a marble fountain that bubbled with lights amid the waters. “They’ve been painting dreams. Old Bones’s dreams.”

  “How?”

  “Wasn’t the Lady. Wasn’t Hisvin. Old Bones herself. Patron of the arts.” I shook my head to clear it. “Gather up the paintings. Help me clear the floor. We need them in a circle.”

  I heard myself say the words, but wasn’t sure why I spoke them.

  “Like Hell we do. Markhat. Wake up. Remember what Hisvin said? We can’t let this thing out.”

  “We won’t be letting it out. It’s going to let us in.”

  “In? In where? In how?”

  “The paintings. Prop them up in a circle, all around the room.
Put this one in the center. A door will open.”

  “A door? To where?”

  Whatever knowledge had been impressed upon me ended.

  “My head hurts.”

  Evis regarded me warily. His knife was uncomfortably close to my liver. “I’m not surprised. Is that you in there? Tell me your fiancée’s name.”

  “Darla. And she’s not my fiancée.”

  Evis grinned. “Sure, pal. Whatever you say. Let’s get out of here before you start channeling dead alarkins again.”

  I shivered. Stray images from the dream flitted about me, half-seen and fading.

  Snores began to sound from all over the room. Serris moaned and stirred but did not awaken. “What about them?”

  “Leave them. They’re as safe as they can be, these days. Come on.”

  Evis tugged at my elbow. Even the gentle prodding of a halfdead has considerable power. I found my legs and made them move, and we left a roomful of snoring artists behind us.

  The Lady met us at the end of the hall. Marlo was at her side, looking grim and determined. He had a bruise right below his right eye. His axe sported a fresh chip out of its handle, just below the head.

  “I see you’ve been improving morale,” I said.

  He glared. “I ain’t saying I much blame them, Finder. They’re scared. Things in the yard, soldiers dying, and that pair of catapults is set to throw any minute now.”

  The Lady chimed in. “The House won’t stand long against them, Finder. You know that. I’m about to start moving people into the tunnels.”

  “Better have a look around first.” I gave her a quick sketch of the cylinders rising from her lawn. “Not sure if they’ll have any presence underground, but if they do, you’ll want to keep your distance.”

  The Lady nodded. I didn’t notice her paleness and exhaustion until then.

  “For what it’s worth, Lady, I’m sorry about all this. I wish there had been another way.”

  “This wasn’t your doing, Finder. And I apologize for your treatment by my household.”

  I waved that off. “Forget it, Lady. They’ve watched their homes burn and seen their own killed. I don’t blame them for being scared.”

  She nodded curtly. “Marlo and I will inspect the tunnels. I invite you and your party to join us, of course. You will not be attacked in my presence. I can assure you of that much.”