Old Dark Things

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

  "Who is it? Who is it? Who disturbs the all-powerful Snoro at such a rude hour?" Shambling towards the door, Snoro dragged a rough-woven cloak of wool about his bony shoulders. The loud, impatient knock came again, an insistent thud-thud-thud. It was like a small echo of the hammering thunder that still rattled the night. "Alright, hold your horses." Snoro gurgled a displeased snarl under his breath as his unnaturally long, nimble fingers drew back the bolt and then opened the door a small breadth. He was still considering what vile curse he would visit upon the idiot swineherd, shepherd or milkmaid who dared to upset his sleep when his eyes settled on a familiar shadow. "You?" He grinned and opened the door an inch more. "You. Well, well, well, now here's a pretty surprise. Of course, can't say as I haven't been a anticipating your, hmmmm, visit." He wormed his tongue over his sharp teeth. "Seeing as how everyone who's got an ill to cure comes to me in the end. Everyone."

  In the rain-drenched night he was little more than a broad shouldered, dripping shadow. An explosion of lightning tumbled through the heavens and painted everything in a thin pallor of white. In that moment Kveldulf's eyes looked darkly black and hungry.

  "An ill to cure? Even if that ill is another mortal life?"

  "Even if so," sniggered Snoro. "Who am I to argue with the troubles and obsessions of your folk?"

  "Will you admit it then? The poison that saps the Eorl's life is yours?"

  "Yes, yes, yes," Snoro waved a hand at him. "And what of it? Do I slip the venom into boorish husband's ale? Do I powder my neighbour's cabbages with poison, a neighbour whose paddocks I covert? Am I the malefactor, who wishes the Eorl dead? No. Of course not. I am no guiltier of murder than the blacksmith, the sword-grinder, the fletcher of war-bows. For I am but the purveyor of a weapon for the weak." He even allowed himself a flourished bow as he said this, as the best, most grandiose of merchants do. "The great equaliser that none are strong, powerful or rich enough to cheat."

  "Who has paid you to poison the Eorl. Tell me, hunchback."

  "Or what?" spat Snoro. He ran a finger over his crooked nose and through the tangle of the hair on his lip. He bit at the thick nail briefly, then, slowly let a smile creep over his lips. "Remember, Kveldulf, I've a bit of your dream-self in a pot on my shelf. Anger me, and you will never walk on two legs again. Stupid ulfhednar. You come here. You make demands of me? What then has happened to you? What makes you so bold?"

  "Not bold. Just weary. Weary of tricks and riddles. Weary of much more. I used to think myself a cursed man. Now I wonder if I am a man at all. So I am weary of myself, and perhaps I am a little reckless because of it. So, tell me, Snoro, who has paid you to murder the Eorl? I will not ask again."

  Lifting his heavy brow and wetting his lips with a brief dab of the tongue Snoro grinned maliciously. "Why, if you must know, it was the Eorl's daughter."

  "Which daughter, Snoro."

  Snoro could see violence building up like storm clouds behind Kveldulf's eyes, and quickly mollified his words, "But, perhaps I must be more honest, eh? Perhaps I must salve my painful conscious?"

  "I will not listen to your worming words, Snoro. Tell me: who have you been selling the poisons to?"

  "Now that was you asking again. You told me you wouldn't do that." He shook his head. "What is a man worth, if he cannot keep his word?"

  Kveldulf's eyes narrowed to two staring points, enkindled red by the firelight that spilled through the narrow gap in the doorway. He said nothing then, but his right hand fell upon the hilt of one of the wicked looking knives that hung at his belt.

  Snoro sneered. "You are right huntsman. You are no longer human." Kvedulf winced. That stung him. "It is said by some that a man who wishes make his heart cold for battle or murder should drink a potion brewed from adder flesh and wolf's blood. There is more than a little wolf's blood throbbing in your veins now, I think."

  The shadow took a step back and hunched its shoulders. His breath made heavy, ghastly clouds upon the crisp air as rain pattered about him. Not a word was spoken, as he stood, staring, angry and seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

  "Oh dear," taunted Snoro, "You are troubled." Snoro gazed up and met Kveldulf's staring, angry glare, but as soon as their eyes meet it felt like looking at the bleak, starved eyes of a hungry beast. Snoro shuddered and looked away. Suppressing a sudden rising twinge of fear, he said, hurriedly, "do you know what I feel for you? Pity. You are nothing but a sad, misery of a creature... and yet... and yet I am not without kindness." There was no flicker of change on that grim mask, so, with no way to know how well his words were working, Snoro dug out his most charmed, most wise, most benevolent of tones. "I have been busy. I have read through all the old tales, and scoured my doomsayer book. And I have found a... how shall I put it... a remedy for your particular condition." There was a slight tremor about Kveldulf's eyes. A minuscule focusing of attention. "Aha, I see I've your ear. Now, I think we should talk. Of curses. Of hopes. Of dreams. Of prices to be paid." Snoro shut the door, only to open it a heartbeat later, "I'll be back in a twinkle."

  He almost hopped with delight over the musty old floor rugs to the sagging, warped wooden shelf that was thickly laden with crude clay jars, and turquoise vessels, small black and gold-dust boxes. Running his finger delicately along the shelf he found what he wanted. An unassuming and very small clay bottle. He cradled it in his thin hands like a newborn kitten. Going back to the door he nudged it open and peeped out.

  "Ah, how good of you have decided to be civil and stay waiting. No one ever said of Snoro that he does not strike useful bargains." Tentatively, slowly, Snoro reached out his long-boned hand and slid the pot out into the cold, night air. He dangled the bottle between pinched fingers, letting it sway back and forth. "This is it, but what is it? It is a cure for all that ails you my friend. All that ails you. For a good swallow of this little nostrum will be enough to give you one night of wondrous, beautiful, godlike... humanity. Sleep, huntsman. Sleep, but without the dreams. And you know what dreams I speak of." He thrust the bottle out a little farther. "It will draw you back into yourself, and keep you there. Here, take it, it's yours. The first bottle is free. Given of my own free will. The ugly business of haggling over further medicinals? Well, let us leave that for later, hmmmmm?."

  Slowly, like a wolf sniffing a baited trap Kveldulf reached, carefully, tentatively his fingers brushed the vessel and began to close on it.

  Snoro's breath grew heavy with anticipation as the word, "Lovely, lovely, lovely," slipped from his misshapen mouth. "And there is more. Yes, you could drink this potion and suppress the magic that courses in your blood, but there is another way to be free of your demons forever. The curse was given to you by another."

  Kveldulf's eyes lit with weighty interest. "So it was."

  "And this other one. This sire, it is still alive."

  "Perhaps."

  "Ah," Snoro wagged a finger in the air. "But the other, the curse-giver must be alive for if the curse-giver were to die--if your sire were to die--then you would return to your own mortal self. But, I hear you ask, how can you kill that which cannot die. How can the curse be broken?" He grinned and let show all his sharp teeth. "I have that answer too, my friend. With my help you can track down the curse-giver, the progenitor of your hex, and then, well, all we need then is a way to kill the unkillable. Only--nothing is unkillable, not really. I have found a way to put an end to her too. Hey presto, poof!" Snoro mimed an explosion with his thin, dancing fingers, "Death. And the sorcery is then lifted from you. Hmmmmmmm?"

  Kveldulf was caught in thought. He held the bottle in his hands and ran a thumb over it, feeling it as if to make sure it was still real.

  "If you really do have a way to kill her, then you also have a way to kill me."

  "Now, now," said Snoro, "this is all quite unexpected, and of course you'll need time to think things over. Should we meet again? Say in a day's hence? Two? Three?" But as he licked his dry lips, and waited for an answer, his attention w
as drawn to a movement outside, down the hill a ways. Two birds flew crying and flapping into the air from where they had been roosting in a small leaf-barren tangle of hawthorn. Something had disturbed them. Snoro had no more than a moment to look in puzzlement at the black shapes wheeling away, squawking, before something else, a swifter blur, long and narrow, shot from the sky, and struck the door.

  Quivering from point to goose-feathers, a sturdy arrow was protruding from the wood. That arrow had been meant for Kveldulf, but the huntsman it seemed had caught some sense of the danger before Snoro had, and dodged aside. In a blink he flashed out a knife and vanished into the night. There was a sudden cry of human voices in the dark, a clamour of struggle and a shriek of pain. Snoro stumbled back from the door in bewilderment, forgetting entirely to bolt it. When it swung open violently to let in a dishevelled, stinking, filth-stained man, Snoro gave a short, startled squeal.

  "You," snarled this wiry-haired, desperate-eyed madman. That one word was forced through a mouth that was a waste of rotted teeth and blood-raw gums, couched in a blackish beard grizzled by grey. "Squirm and the end will only take longer and be more painful." In one hand he held a heavy, clumsy looking mattock with a head of black, flaky iron on the end of an grey haft.

  "Kveldulf," shrieked Snoro, "Murderer, murderer! Help me." But perhaps the huntsman was unconscious, run off, or simply just struggling with some other assailant. Snoro realised that the dirty madman at his door had no bow or quiver. There must be at least two of them, then. Dimly, Snoro realised he was hearing other cries in the night. The sounds of other harsh-throated men. The madman with murder glowering in his eyes stalked closer.

  "Blood and venom," spat Snoro as he scrambled away, then stood wriggling his claw-nailed fingers anxiously, and casting his gaze about for some weapon. He edged farther into his cave buying precious moments as he did. "What riches have you come here to steal?"

  "Nothin", least you can offer the juice of life itself, or a cure to all poisons."

  That confused Snoro. Backing up against a table he disturbed several bundles of parchment and an ink-jar, and together they went tumbling to the floor. The ink was ox-blood red and left a vivid mock-wound in the stone where it shattered.

  "I might," mumbled Snoro.

  "I doubt I ought believe you, seeing as you'll say right anything to live." The man raised the mattock over his head and brought it down. Snoro leapt away from the heavy arc and the mattock's blade gouged a great chunk out of the rocky floor. For a dark moment, Snoro gawped at the hole in his floor and imagined that had been his head instead. Anger bubbled and churned. "Get from my house," screeched the Nibelung, "Be gone, cretin, least my wrath be stirred to sorcery. For I know more than herb-charms and bile-cures. I know the oldest runes taught by the gods to their children. Anger me not."

  Heedless, the attacker came on, and raised his mattock to his chest. "Make it easy on yourself beardling. One clean blow, and it will be over. Squirm, and I will cut you up a bit at a time."

  Hissing like a cornered ferret, Snoro scuttled back and bared his sharp teeth.

  Hefting the mattock once to adjust its weight, the madman leapt into an onrush and bellowed. But it was the curve of pitch-black iron that Snoro watched with horror, as it rose up into the air.

  Muttering and snarling, Snoro trembled. His eyes rolled back in his head until only the bloodshot whites would have been visible. His crusted lips began to issue sounds that no mortal tongue should. The words were cat-wails. Raven-hisses. Crow-caws. Wolf-howls. Each piled one on top of the other, and each a burning mote of power that left strands of pale smoke that smelled of juniper as it struck the air.

  Foam and spittle dribbled from his lips as the blind-staring Snoro pointed one very hairy, very trembling finger at the oncoming man. A force passed between them. Power, from deep in Snoro's soul, poured out and spanned the distance. For a moment the assassin simply stopped dead still. His arms felt lank. The mattock hung limp and useless at his side. Then as Snoro watched, his body thrashed as if unseen talons struck and clawed him. Darkness as hot and flickering as fire began to consume his flesh and smoke gathered in a sickly, burnt-smelling mist. The madman managed only one hoarse-croaked cry of pain. A moment after Snoro's chant subsided something scorched, and withered and lifeless fell to the floor in front of him.

  Just vaguely, through watery eyes, Snoro made out the silhouette of another man lurking just beyond the doorway. This one did not charge headlong, he prowled forward as careful as a cat. This one no doubt had just seen Snoro put an end to his friend. But now the Nibelung was hunching forward, shuddering and spitting up blood. He was weary, but not quite spent yet. Not yet lost. Opening his bloodied mouth Snoro snarled and raised one veiny hand. The door flung shut with a great thud at the touch of his power and the latch dropped into place.

  Haggard, panting, Snoro stumbled over the last few moments in his head. He saw what had happened. Kveldulf must have had men with him. Hired killers? Perhaps they had betrayed the huntsman and prey alike? It didn't matter.

  The first blows rained down on the door. A timber splintered and gave, allowing something black and heavy and sharp to sink an inch through the wood.

  No time, no time, he repeated this over and over in his head as he found a sack in which he threw a small strongbox of valuables and his heavy tome of leather clasped with brass. The Book must be saved, even if nothing else could be salvaged. The various things he picked up at first seemed oddly slick and wet before he realised with a dry smile it was his own blood and saliva that wetted his chest and hands. Never being a fool in a trade where fools die young, Snoro had in his early days, fallen back on the earthy-skills of his kind and chiselled out a bolthole, concealing it behind a small chest. It would take the axeman some time to hack through the door, and more time to realise the quarry had slipped out the back. Snoro allowed himself a grin. Like a big, stupid dog barking down one hole, while the fox sneaks out another. But who had sent the assassins? Where could he turn?

  Pausing briefly, before crawling into the bolt-hole he took one last look about. He would miss the old place. "Ah," he spat. "I was getting restless anyway." With a swift kick he overturned the iron fire grill from the hearth, tipping hot coals and burning logs over the floor. Smoke curled immediately from the rugs and scattered parchments.

  As he crouched down, going on hands and knees into his bolthole, he gathered together and tried to calm his thoughts. Rosa. She would conceal him from would-be killers. That one was greedy and too deep in his debt. To the Toren Vaunt then. To Rosa.

  -oOo-

  Evening was just two hours off. Outside, the rust-eyed owls who hunt the small, tremulous creatures were flitting back to their nests; the earth-mist crept from the streams and hollows; the night-dew pearled each leaf and blade; and within the Toren, Rosa lay asleep.

  For sorcery wearies the soul.

  And so she slept, sprawled upon a pile of furs and feather pillows, her dress a spread of crimson velvet folds, her hair, still bound, was tied with ribbons of a matching red. And she dreamed. Her dreams were not the dreams that walked with bodies of their own, but still her dreams could wander to all the haunts, and far places that any person's dreams may go.

  Her dreams that night wandered far afield, to illusory lands where lady musicians play shawms carved from the bones of fabulous beasts. To mist-haunted mountains, and over stormy seas, to ivory-sanded deserts, and to temples in which golden bells hang by delicate chains, and priests recall in song their timeless prayers. She dreamed of herself in enchanted halls, and strange, terrible darkness, and there in that shadow her dreams were caught up upon a sullen wind that stalked those dark places, and she imagined herself back in the Toren Vaunt, up, up, upon a wind that wished to join its brothers squalling about the spires. And there her dreams lingered, and though perhaps her soul felt chill and ill at ease, and wished to leave for illusory fields again, the dream thought it better to linger in the storm-wracked airs awhile, and revel in the n
ight.

  "Rosa."

  She spun about. Where was he? His voice was hollow and distant, as if heard wandering through a curtain of something thick, soft and drowsy. She dreamed she stood out upon the dizzying edge of the Toren above a sea of wind, below an ocean of clouds. The wind tore through her dress and tangled her long pale hair. He came to her out of the storm. His face was drawn, pallid and sunken, and glistened with a cold, slick sweat. He moved painfully, agedly, his skeletal fingers were knotted by swollen knuckles and his ugly, old man's mouth opened again, and said her name. "Rosa."

  "Father," she replied and wondered in the dreamer's confusion how he could be out of bed. A snake of lightning rent the stormy air, and gave his eyes that odd, unnatural brightness that she so well remembered from his sickbed stare.

  "Rosa. I would be with you."

  "No Father. I think you should go. I know not where, but go, and far away. Forever."

  "I love you."

  "Not a father should love a daughter."

  "I would be near you."

  "Too near. Always too near."

  "I would have you, and treasure you."

  She turned her face from him and shut her eyes tight, but dreams cannot cry.

  "Do not pretend me to be nothing." His voice rose to fury now, angry like the storms, raging like the sky, it became shrill, shrieking, filled with a venomous violence that made her suppress a shiver. "I am not to be disregarded. I am Fainvant, the Eight Eorl of Vaunt. Master of all that lies between the River Weeping and the Hills of the Deepling Dusk. Take no heed of me? Close your eyes to me? No, I'll not have that. I will be near you, Rosa. You will be ever at my side."

  "Keep away from me. Do not touch me, do not touch me ever again." Gathering together all the strength of mind she had, Rosa said, "I forbid it."

  He was imploring. "Rosa!"

  She said nothing, but closed her mind to him, and slid away from that strange nightmare voice. Back through the layers of dreaming, through the colour of the childhood songs, through the hue of summer days, through the shape of moonlit clouds until weakly, grudgingly she awoke trembling.

  The fire had burned low, and the feeble glow cast neither warmth nor good light. Rousing, she clutched her arms about her body and gritted her teeth. Cold, she thought, the room is too cold. So, getting unsteadily to her feet she resolved to go to the guards by the door, and ask that they bring up a bucket of hot coals from the kitchens to put under a heap of good dry wood on the hearth.

  Before she could do so, he mind began to clear and she realised with cold, blistering clarity that her father was dead. For a moment, she was numb, not sure what to think about this. Then, she shuffled through her halls and took herself to the small room where the stained glass window was just gleaming in the first light of a new day. Casting around, she found a block of stone that she used to prop open one of the heavier doors, and without even thinking, she threw it at the window. It exploded in shards of colour, flying out into the dawn air.

  "Good riddance," she hissed to herself. His gift to her was smashed, tinkling and dribbling bits of glass. Her fathers gifts had never been without expectations, and he had wanted more from Rosa than a father should. The hate was churning and raging in her gut.

  Let left the small room then, shut the door on it, and decided to go and ask for coals, as she had first planned to do. But as she pushed open the door, an unexpected sight meet her. The two men who stood by the door were deep in conversation with Ermengarde, who, it struck Rosa at once, looked paler, and greyer and older.

  Ermengarde raised red-edged, swollen eyes to Rosa and shook her head. "Oh dear," she said, "oh dear, you have been crying."

  Rosa brushed a finger to her cheek and found a trench of dampness there.

  "I have terrible news, Rosa. I knew not whether to wake you, but, now... well... your father... the Eorl... into the arms of the Lady of Sunlight and Brightness."

  "Father is dead." She said it so flatly, that she was worried the guards and her aunt might be suspicious. She tried to pretend some emotion and found that she could not stomach the pretence.

  Ermengarde nodded. "Yes. Just a short time ago. The Eorl is dead... and... and so too is the hound to which Lilia's... curative... was given. My brother, your father is dead," said Ermengarde in a voice that strained to hold steady, "so too is the hound. And Lilia...Lilia, oh my poor little girl. My poor little niece... she," but she did not finish the sentence. Instead she made a hasty curtsy, and said almost too quiet to hear, "The Eorl is dead. Long life to Rosa, Lady of Veld."