When the Villian Comes Home

by Gabrielle Harbowy

Some hours later, Borquil and Irashtal crouched in a ditch no more than a day’s walk from the Wall. He could feel that dread structure. It lay at his back, of course, for he would not look upon it ever again, if possible.

  “You should not have betrayed me, slave. Had you brought the poison as I’d asked, you would not be in this position now.” Her shoulders shook. She was weeping, he supposed, but no sound emerged. Her voice belonged to another now. He tried not to think about that too deeply.

  “At least, that woman kept her side of the bargain, eh? Getting us out of there.” Not that the Southerner had had a choice. Magical bargains made dishonesty impossible. “We’ll head north until we find some loyalists to protect us from the Revolution. We could make our way to a port, maybe...”

  Irashtal turned around. He flinched, expecting hatred, but her eyes were pleading. She climbed up onto her knees in front of him and clasped both hands as if in prayer.

  “Oh, there’s no need for that, Rashy! You know I can’t free you. But help me get somewhere safe, and I promise I will consider it.”

  Her teary eyes narrowed. Then she eased her ugly old body onto the ground for sleep.

  “I should get some rest too,” he muttered. A long, long journey lay ahead of them.

  5

  When Borquil woke again, he was alone. He cursed himself for a fool. He should have used the words of command to make Irashtal stay by his side. If she moved out of earshot, he couldn’t give her orders any more. The only thing that might bring her back was the chance that he would utter the words of unbinding. But her absence told him she had finally given up hope of that forever. He cursed himself again until he remembered that she couldn’t even sing for him anymore. Foolish Borquil! “She would have slowed you down,” he muttered.

  Then he heard a noise from behind. “Irashtal?”

  He didn’t want to turn around, to face South. He had to force himself, although he kept his gaze too low to see the clouds above the Wall.

  His slave had returned after all, but she had not come alone. The four Southern men stood beside her. They held a spear with another woman’s head on top of it, her traitor’s blood dripping down the shaft.

  Unlucky Borquil hadn’t the strength to resist. He didn’t even beg. Unlike the woman they had killed, none of these men spoke Northern and he had forgotten Southern Speech almost entirely. Nor, with the revolution going on, were there any nearby friendly garrisons to come to his aid.

  They dragged him along to the base of the wall and into a brush-covered tunnel beneath it.

  The temperature dropped half-way along. A part of him found this strange. It had been so warm down South when he’d been a boy. The family used to sleep during the hottest parts of the day while servants wafted them with fans. There had been fruit trees and exotic birds. There were wild cats large enough to hunt antelope and all of it was beautiful, the colours rich and wild. That’s what he saw in his dreams on the nights Irashtal sang for him. That’s where he went.

  Up ahead, an angry grey daylight appeared. He didn’t want to advance, but his legs carried him forward. He felt light, as though relieved of some burden. He hadn’t cried since he was a boy, yet tears now rolled down his face. He shrugged off his captors and walked forward by himself like a man so fascinated by the cliff that he allows himself to tip forward.

  Somebody shivered beside him in the tunnel: his slave. In this weak light he could still imagine her as she once was: a lithe, golden skinned beauty, her eyes flashing with humour; saucy sometimes, when mother was out of the room. Gentle. Kind. She had begged him not to sell out their homeland. She had wept and wept.

  “But I’ll have nothing if I don’t do this!” he’d said.

  “No, my love. You’ll have me, you’ll always have me.” And to prove it, she had sworn her soul to him then and there. Sworn it to him in order to save their people. Lovely Irashtal. Sweet girl. And he had tasted the words on his own lips, his own promise bubbling to the surface and almost, almost set free to float happily on the air. Oh, Irashtal!

  The men allowed him to pause ten paces from the entrance. He touched the slave under her chin. “You are free, lady. I am sorry.”

  She spat in his face.

  He looked at the warriors behind him. “I am sorry, sirs.” They spun him roughly around. Poor Borquil, unhappy Borquil! They faced him South. And then they brought him home.

  In 2007, PEADAR Ó GUILÍN published his first novel, The Inferior, which the Times Educational Supplement called “a stark, dark tale, written with great energy and confidence.” Foreign editors liked it too, and translation rights were sold to a dozen countries. A direct sequel called The Deserter, was published in March 2012. Peadar is also the author of numerous short stories that have appeared in anthologies such as When the Hero Comes Home, as well as in magazines and podcasts. Peadar’s website is www.frozenstories.com.

  DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL

  Jim C. Hines

  At first, I didn’t recognize the land around me. Blackened ash and burnt stumps covered the earth as far as I could see. Saplings and weeds proved at least a year or two had passed since the devastation, but it was a far cry from the thick wilderness I remembered.

  “I think he’s waking up.”

  I started to turn around, then froze when I spotted the ruins. Crumbled bricks lay scattered to one side of a broken, six-sided foundation. In the remains of the doorway, I could see huge iron hinges bolted to the floor. The trick entrance was only one of the traps I had designed for Tarzog the Black, while he tormented me with false promises to free my wife and son. I had barely eaten or slept for almost seven years as I worked to perfect his temple to Rhynoth, the Serpent God. This was my masterpiece, broken and scattered.

  I rubbed grit from my eyes, then stared at my hands. The skin was pale, pulled tight around the bones like dried leather. My nails were cracked and yellow. When I poked my palm with one finger, the indentation remained for almost a minute.

  I was bare-chested, dressed in rough-spun trousers and my old sandals, though the straps had been replaced with thin ropes. I pressed a sickly yellow hand against my chest. My heart was still as stone.

  I had always wondered why Tarzog’s dead slaves took their resurrections so calmly. Now I understood. Whether it was a side effect of the magic or my mind’s way of rebelling against what had been done to me, I felt nothing but a strange sense of detachment. Looking at my dead body, I felt like a puppeteer staring down at a particularly gruesome marionette.

  “I told you I could do it.”

  The speaker was a young girl, no more than seven or eight years old. She wore a dirty blue gown and a purple half-cape with a bronze clasp in the shape of a snake. Behind her stood a slender, dark-haired woman, the sight of whom made my dead balls want to squirm up inside me and hide until she went away.

  “Zariel,” I said. Tarzog’s necromancer looked far more ragged than I remembered. Gone were the night-black cloak of velvet, the silver claw rings decorating her left hand, and the low-cut leather vest. Her skin was rougher, her hair grayer, and she wore a simple traveling cloak, lined with dirty rabbit fur. To tell the truth, she smelled rather ripe, and that was coming from a corpse.

  “What happened?” I asked. My memories were blurred, full of gaps. Another side effect of being dead.

  To my surprise, it was the little girl who answered. “This wasn’t the real temple. Daddy built the real temple about a half day’s walk from here, in the jungle.”

  I stared, trying to understand. “Why would he—?”

  “Prince Armand knew about Daddy’s plans to summon Rhynoth. So Daddy built this place as a trap. When Armand and his men finally got to the heart of the temple, Daddy was going to collapse the whole thing on their heads. But Armand and his men showed up early. They burned Daddy in his own temple, along with anyone they found wearing his crest.” She touched the bronze snake at her
throat.

  Was that how I had died? No, I would have remembered fire. Death had been quick, but quiet. I clutched my stomach, recalling the pain of my insides twisting into knots. I had a vague memory of stale raisin pudding, even worse than our usual fare. I remembered dropping my spoon... “He poisoned me!”

  “Of course he did. Daddy poisoned everyone who worked on his temple. That way only he knew all the secrets.”

  If he had killed me... Tarzog was too smart to let my wife or son go after that. He wouldn’t risk them coming back to avenge me. I closed my eyes and fought despair. Gradually, the rest of the girl’s words penetrated my grief.

  Daddy. I stared. “You’re Tarzog’s daughter. Genevieve.”

  “Jenny.” She smiled and nodded so hard her blonde hair fell into her face. I remembered her smaller and pudgier, a wobbly child with a miniature whip she used on trapped animals, imitating Tarzog’s overseers. According to rumor, her mother was a slave girl who had abandoned the newborn baby and tried to flee. She had been caught, executed, resurrected, and gone right back to working on the temple.

  “We should go,” said Zariel. “This place isn’t safe.”

  Jenny stuck out her tongue. Had anyone else done it, Zariel would have had their eyes for a necklace and their tongue for a snack. But Zariel simply turned and began walking.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the other temple,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes at my stupidity. “I’m going to summon Rhynoth, and then we’re going to destroy Armand and his people. They all helped kill my Daddy, so they can all rot in Rhynoth’s belly.”

  I stood, barely hearing her words. I kept seeing my family, dead and forgotten beneath the rubble. No doubt by Tarzog’s own hand. He was never one to delegate that sort of chore. Without thinking, I lunged forward and wrapped my withered gray fingers around Jenny’s fragile throat.

  The next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground, a good fifteen feet from Jenny and Zariel. Jenny folded her arms.

  “I should kill you for that, but I worked hard to resurrect you. Zariel’s been teaching me.” She flashed a gap-toothed smile. “Do it again, and I’ll make you rip out your own innards with your bare hands.”

  I wiped ash and dirt from my palms. Jenny’s magic had shattered several ribs, and the bones ground against one another as I stood. Fortunately, death seemed to have minimized my ability to feel pain.

  One thing was clear: Jenny was definitely Tarzog’s daughter.

  5

  We had walked more than an hour before I worked up the nerve to speak to Zariel. This was a woman who had eviscerated children and sacrificed whole families to maintain her power. But I had to understand what was happening if I was to have any chance of stopping them.

  “Why did she resurrect me?” I asked.

  “You designed the first temple,” Zariel said. “Tarzog followed the same plans for the real one, including all of your traps. If you get us in, Jenny and I can conserve our power for more important things.”

  Jenny’s power. I touched my ribs. “I didn’t realize she had that kind of magic.”

  “I’m still a beginner at death magic, but I got all of Daddy’s serpent powers when he died,” Jenny said, running back to join us. “I’ve got the birthmark and everything. A snakehead, just like Daddy’s, with fangs and everything. I’d show you, but it’s not in a place you’re supposed to show to boys. Not even dead boys. The prophesies of Anhak Ghudir say only one with the mark of Rhynoth can awaken him from his endless sleep.” She tugged Zariel’s robe. “Did you remember the blood?”

  Zariel sighed and drew a small, glass tube from an inside pocket.

  Jenny turned to me and made a face. “I have to drink the heart blood of a virgin to control Rhynoth. Fresh blood is okay, but after a while it gets clotty and clumpy.”

  I nodded, remembering how Tarzog had scoured the countryside for virgins in preparation. At first he planned to drain the blood of a few babies, but further reading ruined that plan. The spell required an adult virgin, and those were harder to find than you might expect. Especially once word got out that Tarzog needed virgins. I imagine the midwives were plenty busy the next year. “So which one of you found a girl to—”

  “No girls, silly,” Jenny said, chewing a hangnail on her thumb. “They always have lovesick boys who try to rescue them. I had Zariel kill a priest. They’re celebrate—”

  “Celibate,” Zariel said, her voice pained.

  “Yeah, celibate. All we had to do was find one who had taken his vows before he got old enough to mess around.”

  Zariel slapped Jenny’s head, hard enough to make her stumble. “How many times have I told you to stop biting your nails?”

  I glanced around. We had left the scorched remains of Tarzog’s land behind, entering the rocky wilds that surrounded Frelan Gorge. Tall pine trees cooled the air, while tangled roots fought to cling to the uneven stone. The insects were thick here, and they seemed especially attracted to my dead flesh, though none were daring enough to bite me. Instead, they orbited my body, buzzing in my ears and darting past my eyes. I began to wonder if Jenny had raised me simply to draw the bugs away from her.

  “How did the prince destroy Tarzog?” I asked.

  Zariel scowled. “Tarzog was a fool. As Armand’s men fought their way into the temple, Tarzog ordered me to take Jenny and flee. Together, we might have destroyed them all. Instead, he stripped himself of my power and wasted precious time on his whelp.”

  I glanced at Jenny, half afraid to see how she would react, but she only shrugged. “Zariel’s right. Daddy was stupid, so he failed. I won’t.” She skipped ahead, then turned around. “Do you think Rhynoth will like me?”

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I looked to Zariel.

  “The prophesies say the god’s gratitude will be like a ne’erending fountain upon the one who calls him from the earth.”

  “I hope he’ll let me ride him,” Jenny said. “I’ve never had a pet before. Daddy had a cat, but he burnt up when Armand attacked. He was a nice cat. Daddy carried him everywhere.”

  I remembered the beast, a black, long-haired ball of fur and claws. He used to sneak into the dungeons and piss in the straw.

  “I tried to raise him,” Jenny went on, “but he bit me. So I crushed his skull and scattered his remains.”

  Movement to the side saved me from thinking up a response to that. Two men in the green and silver livery of Prince Armand leapt from the cover of the trees. Both had longbows drawn. One kept his arrow pointed toward Zariel, while the other aimed at me. Not that a regular arrow would do much against my dead flesh, but perhaps Armand was smart enough to outfit his men with blessed weaponry. He had fought Tarzog’s dead warriors before, after all.

  “Speak one word, and it shall be your last,” warned the man watching Zariel.

  “No!” Before anyone else could move, Jenny ran in front of Zariel and threw her arms around the old sorceress. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  “Get away from her, kid,” said the second soldier. “That’s Zariel. The black-hearted bitch murdered more innocent—”

  “Bitch is a bad word,” Jenny said, her dark eyes wide. She held up her arms, and Zariel picked her up, smiling.

  Both soldiers now aimed their bows at Zariel. “Put her down, bi— Witch.”

  I opened my mouth to warn them. To beg them to fire. A single shot would pierce both Jenny and Zariel. Jenny’s magic might be able to destroy me, but she couldn’t stop an arrow in flight.

  “Stay back, zombie!” The nearest man fired, sending an arrow through my throat. Pain shot through my spine, and I flopped onto my back. Armand was indeed smart enough to prepare his men. I wondered how long it would take the power in that arrow to penetrate my dead bones, dissolving Jenny’s spell. Strange, to feel both terror and longing for true death.

  Then bot
h soldiers began to scream. I managed to turn my head enough to see that their bows were gone, transformed into writhing, hissing serpents. Already one had sunk its fangs into the man’s forearm. As I watched, the other soldier flung the snake away and turned to flee. The snake was faster, darting forward to bite him just above the boot. He hobbled away, and the snakes slithered back toward Jenny.

  “Follow him,” Jenny shouted, squirming out of Zariel’s grasp. The necromancer disappeared after the soldier.

  Jenny walked over and wrapped her small hands around the arrow in my throat. Flesh and muscle tore as she yanked it free. She brushed her fingers over my wounds, and I could feel the skin begin to seal. By the time I sat up, the holes were closed. My ribs felt whole again, too.

  “Pretty good, huh?” she asked. “I like snake magic better, though.” She reached down, and one of the snakes coiled around her arm. The scales were purple, with a stripe of bright pink down the underbelly. “They’re not real, though,” Jenny said sadly. She wrapped her little fingers around the snake’s neck and squeezed. The snake crumbled away, like chunks of burnt wood.

  A panicked shriek told me Zariel had caught up with her own prey. Jenny’s face brightened. “Make sure you cut off the heads,” she yelled. She glanced at me. “Daddy always taught me to cut off their heads or burn the bodies. You have to be sure they’re dead. If you just push them over a cliff or poison them and leave them to die, they always find a way to come back.” She tucked a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “It’s in all the stories.”

  She grabbed my hand and tugged me onward. “Come on,” she said. “Zariel can catch up once she finishes playing.”

  Hand in hand we continued through the woods, followed only by gurgling screams.

  5

  We stopped near sundown to rest and eat, though my body didn’t seem to need either. Zariel used her magic to lure a pair of rabbits from the woods, then Jenny conjured tiny snakes to bite them. The snakes might have been magic, but the poison was real, and the rabbits spasmed and died before they could hop more than a few feet.