Dark Magic (34 page)

“Brand,” she said, stepping out from the trees where she had been hiding throughout the confrontation. “Lord Rabing, I mean. May I speak with you?”

“Of course,” answered Brand.

“Silence, gross woman!” said Piskin gruffly. “You will attend me shortly, I’ve all but concluded my business here. I won’t have you interrupting your betters. It’s simply rude, even for a peasant girl.”

“Silence yourself, Piskin,” she returned crossly. “We’ve come to the point of parting ways, I believe. This is the Haven, is it not?”

“It is,” said Brand, watching the two of them. “Although we stand within the Deepwood, the Berrywine runs only a mile or two east of here.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said. She turned to Piskin. “We’ve reached the Haven, and I’ve been delivered into the hands of its Champion. I can’t think of a better way to call your part of our bargain finished, Piskin.”

Piskin made an annoyed gesture, flapping his hand at her. Mari advanced and stood near Brand, whose eyes stayed upon the manling. It was quite possible, he knew, that this entire sequence of events was some kind of elaborate ruse. Perhaps, stealing the axe was still the other’s goal.

Mari found Telyn and stooped, trying to administer whatever aid she could. Brand decided he could trust her, and would offer her what protection he could. She was, after all, the reason he had come on this ill-fated expedition.

“You have not yet stipulated your third requirement,” said Brand. Time was pressing. His heart and Telyn’s still beat, but for how much longer? Already, he felt himself sway upon his feet.

“How interesting! How fine a point of my existence this moment is! Shall I request that you kneel before me, axeman? Shall I request you bequeath me the axe?”

“As I said, that is impossible.”

“Ah, but I have only to wait, don’t I? Should I desire a second Jewel, another richly deserved boon for the Wee Folk, it will be mine within the hour.”

“You would not be able to carry it. Not physically, or mentally. Two Jewels—neither properly attuned—you would be lucky to survive a single hour.”

Piskin smiled and nodded. “That makes two of us, does it not, my friend?” He chuckled, enjoying his own joke immensely.

Brand’s brow tightened and again he knew if the matter wasn’t decided soon, he would have to slay this manling, if only to prevent him from torturing any more of his folk. Perhaps Mari would yet walk out of these woods alone, the sole survivor of this dark night.

Piskin sensed his mood. “No feeling for humor, you louts. Very well, the third and final stipulation is that I be allowed to travel the Haven freely, with no form of interference from you or your axe. I must also be allowed, as a changeling, to indulge myself in my natural calling.”

“You mean you wish to steal babes?” asked Brand, taken aback. He had not thought of this wont, not among all the dark ideas he had considered.

Piskin tsked and tutted. “Harsh words,” he said, shaking his head. “I only wish to be comforted by a few of your finest maids. Why, I ask for no more than what any infant would want. Surely, you won’t deny me this simple pleasure in trade for the life of your own lady?”

Brand stared at him. Piskin was indeed a monster. He hesitated, thinking about it. “I can’t do this thing.”

“Hold,” said Piskin, taking a step forward. He leaned excitedly, sensing weakness.

Could it be, thought Brand while he watched the manling, that securing this disgusting indulgence was his primary goal?

“Don’t decide with haste!” said Piskin. “Remember, your own woman lies here in the balance. What’s more, if I simply wait, I may have my pick of your mothers anyway.”

“If you should fall, Lord,” said Mari suddenly from behind Brand, “I will take up your axe myself and cleave this little blighter in two!”

Brand smiled with half his mouth. Somehow, he believed her.

“There’s no need for any of this unpleasantness,” said Piskin. “I’ll add this to the offer as well: none of the Rabing clan’s children will be touched. Nor shall your babe be touched, girl. I’ve had quite enough of your embrace for a lifetime.”

“Take the deal, milord,” Mari hissed at Brand’s back. “Without you, we are all lost anyway.”

Brand turned his eyes to look at Telyn. She had a deathly pallor. She had not moved nor made a sound since the goblin captain had driven home his cursed dagger.

“I accept, but you must bring any stolen babes to my clan, that we may care for them. You are not to dispose of them in the River or the wood,” said Brand. As he said these words, he wondered what new dark path he had set his foot upon.

“We have a bargain, Axeman!” said Piskin. “Stand well back. My hound thirsts.”

Piskin set to work, loosing his Blood magic immediately. He began by methodically stabbing every nearby body. A few moaned and squirmed, not yet corpses. A great ball of blood formed over his head and floated behind him and his hound. The bloodhound, for its part, licked the open wounds of every corpse greedily.

“So much blood,” cackled Piskin. “Surely even you, my pet, will be sated tonight!”

Brand watched, sickened, as the healing ball came to them and he bathed Telyn in it, allowing its sticky embrace to repair limb, skin and punctured organ.

After a few minutes of bloody, stinking work, four silvery points twisted out of their bodies, one from Telyn and three from himself. The points clinked upon the ground and wriggled there like exposed worms. The metallic points died slowly, as if they were indeed worms, twisting upon a hot slab of sunlit stone.

Chapter Thirteen

The Dead Speak

Oberon had but one call yet to make. This last one, the most crucial, would tip the balance of power clearly in his favor, should he be successful. He had little to offer the Dead, however, except a great bounty of new minions.

Even Oberon, ancient and knowing as he was, did not seek the Dead without trepidation. Of all the folk of Cyrmu, they were easily the most mysterious. Their motivations were strange—twisted. They did not seek to build. They did not seek to destroy. Some thought they sought rest, but why then did they occasionally march upon the land and the floor of the sea, slaying all that stood before them?

Any sane being feared the Dead and their awesome power. If they all arose at once, how could the living hope to prevail against them? What generation of any folk were not outnumbered by all their passed on ancestors, should they decide to rise up from their cold slumber and slay their own descendants?

The Dead felt nothing, most of them. Not sorrow, remorse, joy or pity. Certainly pain and mercy were beyond them. Those times they had marched in the past—and Oberon was old enough to remember several such events—they had devastated all that stood in their path. They had
consumed
the living, adding them to their own ranks as fresh troops with every bloody yard of ground gained. They had only been stopped by some failure within their own multitudes, some signal to sleep once more.

It was quite mysterious, and Oberon quailed somewhat, for only he knew the real nature of what he attempted to release. But such was his desire to return things to their rightful balance, with the Shining Folk clearly dominant, that he was willing to risk the entire world. Some would think him mad, but then, other folk commonly considered all the Fae to be half-mad at best. Oberon smiled grimly at the thought. Perhaps there was a grain of fact in their judgment of his people.

One of the many benefits of immortality was that you eventually learned, after some millennia, where things lay. In this case, he knew where the Dead had gone to ground, where they had sought refuge from the random buzzing of the living. A spot where they could rest, relatively undisturbed for one lazy century after another.

The Dead Kingdoms were empty of the living, but most of their citizens had never left. They had simply been interred. One spot, in particular, had a catacomb of note. A fantastic affair, full of a thousand layers of dusty skulls, cobwebbed archways and segmented, scuttling things.

Castle Anwyn had been the greatest of all nine of the destroyed castles of the Dead Kingdoms. Only a dozen miles from Castle Rabing, it was said to have suffered more than any of the other great structures of stone.

It was at Anwyn, amongst the blasted, tumbled masonry and cratered earth, that Oberon found a particularly soupy spot in the land. He stood atop a great granite head that sat in a pocket of mud. The head, an effigy of King Arawn in life, was in a sorry state. The statue’s great eyes bulged at horrors unseen. Its great mouth, from which had once poured sweet water, was cracked and obscenely agape.

It was into this granite orifice Oberon crawled and soon vanished from the light of day. Behind the mouth was a brass throat, still intact nine centuries after it had ceased to pump water for the people of the square. The throat was dry now, but it still led downward, to a place forgotten by man and beast. All had forsaken this kingdom, save the few immortals old enough to recall this place as it had once been, a place of glory and achievement brought low in a terrible war.

As Oberon slid down the brass throat, careful to not slice himself in twain on the jagged fittings that were worn and snapped with age and destruction, he thought of how the world had changed. Once, this spot had been a wonder to visit. Even his own people, sly and cunning in their ways, had been impressed by human ingenuity. They were not builders, his people. Craftsmen yes, none could make a better pair of shoes or a sharper lance. But they tended not to build huge impressive structures. His folk lived closer to the land, often without anything grander for a home that a treetop with leaves woven into a nest, or a hollow spot inside a great tree, or—nothing at all. A bare clean spot upon the grass did as well as any featherbed for many of his kind.

So different were the humans and the Kindred from the Fae. Perhaps such differences helped drive them to war occasionally. But he knew that wasn’t the main cause of strife. The primary motivator of all war was always the same in Cymru: The Dragon’s Eyes. They drove men and Fae alike mad, whether they possessed them or desired them, it was all the same.

The irony of this thought, given the nature of his present quest, caused a rippling laugh to erupt from his fine thin lips.

Reaching the bottom of the ancient brass throat, he found only enough water left in the cistern to splash lightly over the tops of his shoes. He landed lightly, and on his feet. He brought out his blade and stood crouched, listening. One never knew, in such places, what might be disturbed by the passing of a living person, even one so whisper-footed as he.

Nothing stirred, save a few collected drops of water from the ceiling of the cistern, so he continued on his way. He had far to travel.

Below the plumbing and the wells, he found the dungeons, which were best bypassed. Most likely, their contents were long since faded to dust. But if something there still stirred, it would be well-thought to circuit around. He found a hidden spot, another shaft once used for sewage which led much deeper down to the catacombs proper. It was there he collided with his first obstacle.

A single beast, made up of many churning legs and a thick black carapace, sensed him in the dark and felt for him, waving sensory appendages. Oberon quickly removed those, but except for a mild hissing, the beast had no reaction. The centipede came for him, sensing him in some other fashion that was not immediately apparent, for the thing had no eyes.

Unerring mandibles sought his flesh. He found that his blade, as fantastically sharp as it was, could not slash them away. He bounded upward, onto its back, and before it could curl around and jab him and tear his flesh, he slipped his blade between the armored interlocking curves of its back. He flicked his weapon side to side, and in an instant the work was done. The creature fell apart into two, thrashing halves.

Oberon bounded away again, satisfied. The thing would not die for a long time, he suspected, but it was no longer capable of effective locomotion. And so he left it to squirm and hiss in the darkness.

His second encounter was entirely different and more dangerous. To prevent grave-robbers, a group to which he might be considered a member, the builders of this deep place had set upon the walls and ceiling a great variety of small dark holes. Each hole led to a reservoir of black dust, something vicious left over from the ancient wars.

He triggered one such trap by placing his foot carelessly upon a cobble that shifted fractionally under his foot. Feeling the shift, and thusly warned, he sprang back, doing a complete backward flip before landing upright.

Using the tiny light of his glimmering blade, he saw the black dust, floating between the stones of the archway. He retreated further. One nostril full of that stuff, he knew, and his lungs would turn to bubbling slag. He sought and found another route around the traps, avoiding the slightly ovoid-shaped cobbles that triggered them.

Then came the Great Stair. As if built for underground dwelling giants—and perhaps it was—Oberon came to the top of the stair and looked down, vexed and uncertain. He had already spent many hours in this place. Could it be he wasted his time? If he traveled downward another mile or so, he knew, he would reach the chamber where King Arawn had been unsuccessfully put to rest. But would the king still be there, puttering about, having simply waited for this visit for a dozen centuries?

Oberon tapped his fingers upon his face. He was within the other’s realm now, so he decided to call upon him. For that strategy, this spot was as good as any other.

“King Arawn? I, King Oberon, would have words with thee.”

His eyes slid about the dark cavern for several seconds. Water dripped.  Somewhere, a tiny underground breezed sighed. Pebbles ticked as they fell upon larger stones.

He lifted his blade aloft for what little light it gave. He peered around the cavern and down the great spiraling steps, each cut stone block a dozen feet wide and three feet lower than the last.

It was there, in the mirror-polished surface of the blade, that he caught the reflection of something approaching from behind.

Oberon gave a hop, landing atop a spherical knob that crowned the banister that followed the Great Stair down into the abyss from which it came. The banister was as tall as a man and far thicker. As he hopped, he spun, so that he might turn to face the thing that approached him.

It was not, he was sorry to see, King Arawn.

He recognized her, however. His pulse quickened, for not even the Lord of the Fae was completely immune to the deathly charms of the Shining Lady.

“Lady,” he said, bowing deeply at the waist and sweeping his cap from his head. “Has your lord sent you to treat with me?”

“You are no King,” said the other.

Oberon blinked in annoyance. Ever were the Dead sticklers for formality. He supposed it was in their nature to be so.

“Perhaps I overspoke the case,” he said smoothly, replacing his cap upon his head.

“Why have you come?”

“To speak with your King, as I have said.”

“The Dead do not wish to be disturbed,” she said, floating a yard closer.

Oberon swallowed. He did not close his eyes, however, as others did to evade her power. He faced her unearthly beauty and gazed into her ethereal eyes. His gaze met hers, and his eyes burned, but he kept them fixed. His chest pounded, and there was a rushing in his ears. He thought vaguely, with idle amusement, that this must be what it was for a mere human to face one of the Fae.

“Lady, excuse my rudeness, but I must ask your purpose.”

“Milord?”

“I know that you are the consort of the King, but not his Queen. Therefore, you do not speak for Arawn.”

There was a moment of cold silence between them. It seemed to him that she flowed less softly, that her lips were less perfectly pursed into a puckering shape for sweet kissing. Could she be angered? He could not be sure.

“You speak truly,” she said at last.

“Then I must ask, are you here in an official capacity? Has your King sent you to me, to entreat in his name?”

Another hesitation. “No. I wish to entreat with you personally.”

Oberon chuckled and shook his head. “I’m sorry, milady. I mean absolutely no offense, but I can hardly imagine another of the living better equipped to resist your charms—as intensive and lovely as they may be.”

“No. You misunderstand. I ask you—not for myself. I ask you—not for the Dead.”

“Then, milady, for whom do you speak?”

“I speak for the Living.”

Oberon chuckled at the irony of her statement. “Very well!” he said, hopping up and putting his hands on his bent knees. “And we are glad for your patronage, I’m certain.”

“You mock, but still I will ask.”

“And what, pray tell, do you ask of me?”

“To give over your folly, elf lord. To take your foot from the path you are on, before you lead all the Living into destruction.”

And so Oberon gazed into her eyes curiously, more deeply than before. He saw there something that surprised him. He saw within her, ghost though she might be, an unexpected, earnest concern. He knew that she spoke the truth, as she knew it. That she felt concern. Such an emotion he had never known among the Dead, as it was rare enough in his own folk who still breathed. She did not seek to deceive him, he felt, for after a so many centuries of life, he had grown quite good at divining a lie.

Troubled, he straightened his mocking stance and faced her squarely. “I thank you for your concern, milady. And in truth, it troubles my heart. But I am determined, and will not be swayed from my path.”

“Then I can only hope that you fail, elf,” she said. With these words, she faded from sight, turning to vapor, then mist, then a wisp of cold air.

Oberon faced the Great Stair again. He began to hop down them, two at a time. If his fate were here under the earth, he would rush to meet it, he decided.

At long last, he reached the burial chamber of King Arawn. The chamber itself was daunting, built as it was out of a thousand bones, each pressed and folded into shape. Strangely, although the floor was uneven, it served as well as might wicker to walk upon. He found King Arawn on a slab of marble in the midst of this odd room. A pile of bones he was as well, as if to match his surroundings. His white robe had rotted away and his crown had slipped from his fleshless pate. A silver rod lay across the curve of his ribs to be clutched by twin fans of laced finger bones.

Oberon spoke the name of King Arawn thrice, and the bones did stir.

“Who disturbs my rest?”

“It is I, Oberon, King of the Elves.”

“The elves serve no king,” said the other, irritating Oberon on a fine point of formality twice in one day.

King Arawn was up now, and faced the elf. He took a step forward, and used his rod as an old man would use a cane, leaning heavily upon it.