Carpe Jugulum

  “Shut up. Anyway, I can see a lake. I think I can sort of angle across toward it.”

  At this speed it will be like hitting the ground.

  “How do you know that? I don’t know that. So how do you know?”

  Everyone knows that.

  Vlad appeared alongside Agnes, lounging on the air as though it were a sofa.

  “Enjoying it?” he said.

  “It’s fine so far,” said Agnes, not looking at him.

  She felt him touch her wrist. There was no real sense of pressure, but the fall stopped. She felt as light as the air again.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said. “If you’re going to bite me, then get it over with!”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t be having with that!”

  “You did it to Granny!” said Agnes.

  “Yes, when it’s but against someone’s will…well, they end up so…compliant. Little more than thinking food. But someone who embraces the night of their own volition…ah, that’s another thing entirely, my dear Agnes. And you’re far too interesting to be a slave.”

  “Tell me,” said Agnes, as a mountaintop floated by, “have you had many girlfriends?”

  He shrugged. “One or two. Villages girls. Housemaids.”

  “And what happened to them, may I ask?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. We still find employment for them in the castle.”

  Agnes loathed him. Perdita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive.

  …but Nanny said if the worst came to the worst…and then he’ll trust you…and they’ve already got Granny…

  “If I’m a vampire,” she said, “I won’t know good from evil.”

  “That’s a bit childish, isn’t it? They’re only ways of looking at the same thing. You don’t always have to do what the rest of the world wants you to do.”

  “Are you still toying with her?”

  Lacrimosa was walking toward them on the air. Agnes saw the other vampires behind her.

  “Bite her or let her go,” the girl went on. “Good grief, she’s so blobby. Come on, Father wants you. They’re heading for our castle. Isn’t that just too stupid?”

  “This is my affair, Lacci,” said Vlad.

  “Every boy should have a hobby, but…really,” said Lacrimosa, rolling her black-rimmed eyes.

  Vlad grinned at Agnes.

  “Come with us,” he said.

  Granny did say you need to be with the others, Perdita pointed out.

  “Yes, but how will I find them when we’re there?” said Agnes aloud.

  “Oh, we’ll find them,” said Vlad.

  “I meant—”

  “Do come. We don’t intend to hurt your friends—

  “Much,” said Lacrimosa.

  “Or…we could leave you here,” said Vlad, smiling.

  Agnes looked around. They had touched down on the mountain peak, above the clouds. She felt warm and light, which was wrong. Even on a broomstick she’d never felt like this, she’d always between aware of gravity sucking her down, but with the vampire holding her arm every part of her felt that it could float forever.

  Besides, if she didn’t go with them, it was going to be either a very long or an extremely short journey down to the ground.

  Besides, she would find the other two, and you couldn’t do that when you were dying in some crevasse somewhere.

  Besides, even if he did have small fangs and a terrible taste in waistcoats, Vlad actually seemed attracted to her. It wasn’t even as if she had a very interesting neck.

  She made up both minds.

  “If you attached a piece of string to her I suppose we could tow her like some sort of balloon,” said Lacrimosa.

  Besides, there was always the chance that, at some point, she might find herself in a room with Lacrimosa. When that happened, she wouldn’t need garlic, or a stake, or an ax. Just a little talk about people who were too unpleasant, too malicious, too thin. Just five minutes alone.

  And perhaps a pin, said Perdita.

  Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall.

  There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who’d been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger sett would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armor. The Lancrastians didn’t go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit.

  One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight, and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either…

  Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies. There was a pear-shaped rock beside it.

  Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn’t want to obey.

  “Dinna scanna’ whista,” said the rock.

  It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men really looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he’d had when he was a child.

  “The Kelda says,” said a cracked voice by his ear, “that ye…must get…ready.”

  Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks.

  “Ready? For what?”

  “Good.” The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. “Craik’n shaden ach, Feegle!”

  The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical.

  A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him.

  “Er…I say…” Verence murmured.

  The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames.

  “Yin!” said the old pixie.

  “I say…that’s aimed right at my…”

  “Yin!” shouted the Nac mac Feegle.

  “…ton!”

  “Ton!”

  “Um, it’s, er, right…”

  “Tetra!”

  The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked.

  When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear.

  The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again.

  “Now ye must walk awa’. Noo!”

  The Feegle let Verence go. He took a few tottering steps and collapsed on the floor, but the pixies weren’t watching him.

  He looked up.

  His shadow twisted on the wall where it had been pinned. It writhed for a moment, trying to clutch at the arrow with insubstantial hands, and then faded.

  Verence raised his hand. There seemed to be a shadow there, too, but at least this one looked as if it was the regular kind.

  The old pixie hobbled over to him.

  “All fine now,” he said.

  “You shot my sh
adow?” said Verence.

  “Aye, ye could call it a shade,” said the pixie. “It’s the ’fluence they put on ye. But ye’ll be up and aboot in no time.”

  “A boot?”

  “Aboot the place,” said the pixie evenly. “All hail, your kingy. I’m Big Aggie’s Man. Ye’d call me the prime minister, I’m hazardin’. Will ye no’ have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waitin’?”

  Verence rubbed his face. He did feel better already. The fog was drifting away.

  “How can I ever repay you?” he said.

  The pixie’s eyes gleamed happily.

  “Oh, there’s a wee bitty thing the carlin’ Ogg said you could be givin’ us, hardly important at all,” he said.

  “Anything,” said Verence.

  A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a quill pen.

  “It’s called a signature,” he said, as Verence stared at the tiny handwriting. “An’ make sure ye initial all the sub-clauses and codicils. We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk,” he added, “but we write verra comp-lic-ated documents.”

  Mightily Oats blinked at Granny over the top of his praying hands. She saw his gaze slide sideways to the ax, and then back to her.

  “You wouldn’t reach it in time,” said Granny, without moving. “Should’ve got hold of it already if you were goin’ to use it. Prayer’s all very well. I can see where it can help you get your mind right. But an ax is an ax no matter what you believes.”

  Oats relaxed a little. He’d expected a leap for the throat.

  “If Hodgesaargh’s made any tea, I’m parched,” said Granny. She leaned against the anvil, panting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand move slowly.

  “I’ll get—I’ll ask—I’ll—”

  “Man with his head screwed on properly, that falconer. A biscuit wouldn’t come amiss.”

  Oats’s hand reached the ax handle.

  “Still not quick enough,” said Granny. “Keep hold of it, though. Ax first, pray later. You look like a priest. What’s your god?”

  “Er…Om.”

  “That a he god or a she god?”

  “A he. Yes. A he. Definitely a he.” It was one thing the Church hadn’t schismed over, strangely. “Er…you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Why should I mind?”

  “Well…your colleagues keep telling me the Omnians used to burn witches…”

  “They never did,” said Granny.

  “I’m afraid I have to admit that the records show—”

  “They never burned witches,” said Granny. “Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn’t run away. I wouldn’t look for witches bein’ burned,” she added, shifting position. “I might look for witches doin’ the burning, though. We ain’t all nice.”

  Oats remembered the Count talking about contributing to the Arca Instrumentorum…

  Those books were ancient! But so were vampires, weren’t they? And they were practically canonical! The freezing knife of doubt wedged itself deeper in his brain. Who knew who really wrote anything? What could you trust? Where was the holy writ? Where was the truth?

  Granny pulled herself to her feet and tottered over the bench, where Hodgesaargh has left his jar of flame. She examined it carefully.

  Oats tightened his grip on the ax. It was, he had to admit, slightly more comforting than prayer at the moment. Perhaps you could start with the small truths. Like: he had an ax in his hand.

  “I wa—want to be certain,” he said. “Are you…are you a vampire?”

  Granny Weatherwax appeared not to hear the question.

  “Where’s Hodgesaargh with that tea?” she said.

  The falconer came in with a tray.

  “Nice to see you up and about, Mistress Weatherwax.”

  “Not before time.”

  The tea slopped as she took the proffered cup. Her hand was shaking.

  “Hodgesaargh?”

  “Yes, mistress?”

  “So you’ve got a firebird here, have you?”

  “No, mistress.”

  “I saw you out huntin’ it.”

  “And I found it, miss. But it had been killed. There was nothing but burnt ground, miss.”

  “You’d better tell me all about it.”

  “Is this the right time?” said Oats.

  “Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax.

  Oats sat and listened. Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he’d had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armor would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them.

  “The phoenix doesn’t lay eggs,” said Oats at one point. This was a point a few points after the point where he asked the falconer if he’d been drinking.

  “She’s a bird,” said Hodgesaargh. “That’s what birds do. I’ve never seen a bird that doesn’t lay eggs. I collected the eggshell.”

  He scuttled off into the mews. Oats smiled nervously at Granny Weatherwax.

  “Probably a bit of chicken shell,” he said. “I’ve read about the phoenix. It’s a mythical creature, a symbol, it—”

  “Can’t say for sure,” said Granny. “I’ve never seen one that close to.”

  The falconer returned, clutching a small box. It was full of tufts of fleece, in the middle of which was a pile of shell fragments. Oats picked up a couple. They were a silvery gray and very light.

  “I found them in the ashes.”

  “No one’s ever claimed to have found phoenix eggshell before,” said Oats accusingly.

  “Didn’t know that, sir,” said Hodgesaargh innocently. “Other-wise I wouldn’t have looked.”

  “Did anyone else ever look, I wonder?” said Granny. She poked at the fragments. “Ah…” she said.

  “I thought p’raps the phoenixes used to live somewhere very dangerous—” Hodgesaargh began.

  “Everywhere’s like that when you’re newborn,” said Granny. “I can see you’ve been thinking, Hodgesaargh.”

  “Thank you, Mistress Weatherwax.”

  “Shame you didn’t think further,” Granny went on.

  “Mistress?”

  “There’s the bits of more than one egg here.”

  “Mistress?”

  “Hodgesaargh,” said Granny patiently, “this phoenix laid more than one egg.”

  “What? But it can’t! According to mythology—” Oats began.

  “Oh, mythology,” said Granny. “Mythology’s just the folktales of people who won ’cos they had bigger swords. They’re just the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain’t going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else. Give me a hand up, Mister Oats. How many birds in the mews, Hodgesaargh?”

  The falconer looked at his fingers for a moment.

  “Fifty.”

  “Counted ’em lately?”

  They stood and watched while he walked from post to post. Then they stood and watched while he walked back and counted them again. Then he spent some time looking at his fingers.

  “Fifty-one?” said Granny, helpfully.

  “I don’t understand it, mistress.”

  “You’d better count them by types, then.”

  This produced a count of nineteen lappet-faced worriers where there should have been eighteen.

  “Perhaps one flew in because it saw the others,” said Oats. “Like pigeons.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, sir,” said the falconer.

  “One of ’em won’t be tethered,” said Granny. “Trust me.”

  They found it at the back, slightly smaller that the other worriers, hanging meekly from its perch.

  Fewer birds could sit more meekly than t
he Lancre wow-hawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons clamped around the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot.

  Granny reached out toward it.

  “I’ll fetch you a glove,” said Hodgesaargh, but she waved him away.

  The bird hopped onto her wrist.

  Granny gasped, and little threads of green and blue burned like marsh gas along her arm for a moment.

  “Are you all right?” said Oats.

  “Never been better. I’ll need this bird, Hodgesaargh.”

  “It’s dark, mistress.”

  “That won’t matter. But it’ll need to be hooded.”

  “Oh, I never hood wowhawks, mistress. They’re never any trouble.”

  “This bird…this bird,” said Granny, “is a bird I reckon no one’s ever seen before. Hood it.”

  Hodgesaargh hesitated. He recalled the circle of scorched earth and, before it, something looking for a shape in which it could survive…

  “It is a wowhawk, isn’t it, mistress?”

  “And what makes you ask that?” said Granny slowly. “After all, you’re the falconer in these parts…”

  “Because I found…in the woods…I saw…”

  “What did you see, Hodgesaargh?”

  Hodgesaargh gave up in the face of her stare. To think that he’d tried to capture a phoenix! At least the worst the other birds could do would be to draw blood. Supposing he’d been holding it…He was overcome by a very definite burning desire to get this bird out of here.

  Strangely, though, the other birds weren’t disturbed at all. Every hooded head was turned toward the little bird on Granny Weatherwax’s wrist. Every blind, hooded head.

  Hodgesaargh picked up another hood. As he fastened it over the bird’s head he thought, for a moment, that there was a flash of gold from underneath.