A Treasure of Bone & Promises
was a storm of fury. This one was going to murder him as soon as his back was turned.
Well, he thought, do not turn your back and do not show fear. Even vicious curs can be cowed. He shoved the cracked stoneware plate aside. The remaining sausage was cooling in its bed of congealing fat and he wasn't feeling hungry enough for it any more besides. Reaching across the table he dragged a parcel along the tabletop. It was heavy, wrapped up in an oilskin rag, and it ground noisily against the wood. Flipping the wrappings open one corner at a time he revealed the old-fashioned sword of pattern welded bronze. With a dismissive wave at the sword he said, "This sword no doubt had a name and has done some great dead or another. It has some subtle spells of venom and savagery woven into it: the man I took it from claimed that when it was made it was dripped with the poison of nine serpents and quenched from red-hot to coldness in the blood of nine wolves." He gave a slight shrug. "And who knows? It may even be true. Regardless, this is your sword now. You're going to need it to do the task I'm setting you."
"A sword?" said the woman. "I thought..." she halted.
"What? That I'd want another of you village clouts to drop my things and break them? That I'd want someone for my bed?" He snorted at her. "My manhood hasn't done anything more exciting than dribble piss these last twenty years. No. I'm not in want of a slave. I want a hero. You need to go kill a monster."
"What?"
"Go kill a monster. You deaf?" He flicked a glance at the fetch. "Have you brought me this clod-headed dunce as a joke?" But the fetch only shook as if it were laughing. "Heh. Be that way then," said Mannagarm.
"I'm no dunce."
"What?" The young woman, what-was-her-name, had said it, quiet, carefully.
"I'm no dunce. And that's why I'm so speechless. Go kill a monster? Have you addled? Are your wits gone?" Her eyes shot to the sword and Mannagarm didn't need magic to read the thoughts going on behind her gaze.
"None of that now!" he snapped. He had to put an end to her urges to kill him. He eyed her and considered argument, cajolery and threats but he was forced to arrive at the irrevocable conclusion that he was no longer a very convincing person to look upon. Old and withered, sour smelling and gap-toothed, he was not the image of one who had mastered the bleak arts. He needed to show her he did have those arts. He would need to dredge up some charm and put that on her. It would hurt him badly.
He got up and while he walked to the hearth he let several more of his protective wards and spells unravel. He could not maintain them and do this next bit of sorcery. He felt oddly naked with so many of his spells loosed and tattered, flapping about in unseen threads of magic.
Bending down hurt his back and his knees, but he scooped up a handful of the greasy ashes and carried them back to where the girl was sitting at the table. She had been watching him the whole time and her eyes were flicking to the sword and back to him.
"Now," he muttered, as he stood over her, "none of that." He wetted his free thumb in his mouth, dipped it into the ash and said, "As so shall you do unto me, so shall be done unto you. Blood of my blood for blood of your blood. Bile of my bile for bile of your bile. Hurt of my hurt for hurt of your hurt." He could see that she wanted to move away but the tendrils of magic enwrapped her and she could not move. Her eyes were wide as he painted a symbol on her forehead. It made him queasy to think about the symbol and he felt the urge to retch as soon as it was done and he was looking at it. "So be it," he hissed, and with the palm of his hand he wiped the ash into a smear of grey and black. The symbol was gone but the magic held. It was stark in the air between them to his eyes, though anyone without a sorcerer's sight would not see the threads that now connected her and him. He leaned closer to her while she was still reeling from the effects of the spell. "If you try to do me harm, whether through action or inaction, pain and hurt will redouble upon you. If you do not believe me, take that sword and try to strike me down. You'll be on the floor in agony before the blade falls. Rest assured of it, my brave young lass." With a "Hrumph" he sat down in his own chair again. Idly, he stabbed at the sausage with a table-knife until the young woman finished blinking like a startled animal and seemed to come back to her senses.
"What did you just do to me?"
"It's a spell of binding. Nothing fancy." He gave up on the sausage. Cold anyway. "Try to hurt me and the spell will hurt you. Disobey me, and the same. Trick me, or deceive me, or do anything at all against my good, and it'll be the same. Don't be foolish, and don't play the tricksey one with me either. I'll have half an eye on you no matter where you go, and if you try to sneak off without finishing up your, hrm, chores, I'll have your skin, I will." He let his out-breath make a hissing noise. "Oh, rest assured, I most assuredly will."
-oOo-
Caewen sat as still as if she had been hobnailed into her chair. She wasn't sure if it was the old man's magic or no more than her own fear. Her skin crawled with hate and resentment just looking at him. Mannagarm the Witching-man had found her after all the years of useless hiding, and now he had sent for her. The only thing she was determined to do was protect the secrecy around her brother now. Although, she realised, if old Mannagarm saw through the red chalk marks in the cellar and sent his shadow-thing to get her, then surely he knew about Tul too.
She felt sick at the thought.
Quickly, she shot a glance at the sword lying on the tabletop, the blade shimmering dully in light. The fingers of her right hand twitched. Almost, she reached for it then, but she held back. Mannagarm was watching her too closely and he had put that smudge of ash on her forehead. It felt cold. As he chided her and scolded her, she let herself raise a hand and touched the greasy ashes. They felt cold and the skin of her fingertips tingled as she drew them away.
What had he done and how long would it last? Caewen knew nothing about magic. Nothing at all. She'd spent her whole life afraid of the power it had given one man over a whole village, but she didn't know anything about it. Was a spell forever? Would it fade? And by what means did Mannagarm work his charms.
She considered the man.
He was not impressive in any deep and ancient way. He did not look as if he had the blood of eldritch creatures or faer folk in his veins from days gone by. In short, he did not look magical at all. And yet she had seen the shadow-thing—the fetch he had called it—and she could see as clear as sunlight that Mannagarm had mastery over unearthly powers. But if it were merely an art, she thought, an art like any other, like embroids or blacksmithy or rope-making... then could anyone learn it? Could she?
This thought hovered in the front of her skull like a fly buzzing against a curtain. Could she? How does one go about learning magic?
As she watched the old man shuffle clay pots around on a shelf looking for something, sayings tumbled over one another in her head. Meet swords with swords. Use a witch to find a witch. Wizard's fire is not doused in pond-water.
As she thought these things Mannagarm found what he wanted, and seemingly ignorant of her murderous ideas, he clunked two items on the table: a small bottle of redware pottery sealed with beeswax, and a wooden fluting-pipe. Indicating the bottle he said, "this has a rare unguent," with a sharp wave of the hand. "The boiled and reduced fat of the burach bhadi. It is a sort of nine-eyed eel... or leech...? I have never seen one living. Dangerous things. They are called sometimes the wizard's shackle for the counterspells they have naturally in their flesh. Rub this ointment into your eyes and you will see through illusions… for a time… rub it in your ears and you will hear no lies, which will be useful, I suspect, for you may otherwise be malscrunged by the creatures in the Twilight Lands where the Wisht live, and maybe the Wisht themselves." He sucked at his teeth, considering this. "They are illusory folk, as I have heard. As for the wood-pipe, you need only blow a note and I will know where you are. You will need it to summon me when you task is done."
"The Wisht-Folk?" she ventured.
"Hm. Oh, yes, The Wisht. I plain forgot. I need to bestow your quest. That would be the
right phrasing, would it not?" And then he launched into a rambling instruction involving talking rooks and a pass through the northern mountains and a land beyond where eerie folk dwelled in their charm-woven halls under skies of everlasting twilight. When he finished, muttering about goules to kill, he seemed to be exhausted of words. He fell silent. She didn't dare to make a noise as she watched him. His eyes drooped fraction-by-fraction. Like any other old, doddering man he seemed to be nodding off.
With a jolt that shook the table, Caewen snatched at the sword. It was as heavy as ten fire-pokers to lift but she brought it in one sweeping arc above her head with strength fuelled by fury. But as she swung the blade down at the top of his skull a pain unlike anything she had ever known sprung through her skin. It jarred her bones and threw her to the ground. It felt like being punched in all her joints and she was dazed for a moment, staring at the soot-stained rafters as her thoughts tried to regather themselves.
She didn't know what had just happened, though soon enough the thin and grey-whiskered face of the old warlock hove into view.
"That was foolish, wasn't it, lass? Even when my thoughts are wandering and my eyes are hooded, my spells are not sleeping. If you try to do me