“It seemed to me, Dragonsbane, when we did speak of wights before the door of Krastochilliam’s house, that I recalled aught… they are not my study, understand, and ‘tis long since I read the catalogs that list them – that list the sorcerers (for Wise Ones I will not call them) who summoned such creatures into being. Yet I recalled the Lady Taseldwyn, years ago now, speaking of one of the ancient sorcerers – Firienfel the Dark? Reschar Bone-Singer? – who wrought such a creature… I do not remember the circumstance of the thing.

  “But the Hag-Wight was called out of deep water, that much I do know – a deformed and hideous thing, and death to any that stayed it from its target. And I recall the Lady saying, that such things can draw power from the spells that are used against them, as well as from the power of their maker. The more powerful the mage, the greater the resistance of the wight to spells turned against it.”

  “Deep water,” said John thoughtfully, and fingered the still-wet fringes of the shawl over his shoulders. “You said you’d be able to read who called it, from the circles an’ things he drew… Could a mage call up a wight from a distance? Like, stand in his own chamber, or in some hidden place, or clear up in Deeping for that matter, an’ draw circles on the floor an’ burn the right powders, an’ the wight’d come out of its pool or cave, an’ go after whoever it’s supposed to go after…”

  “No.” This time there was nothing of contempt, or of a high-born gnome’s scorn for gossip and rumor, in the firm shake of his head. “The making of a wight is a delicate and tricky business. E’en more so, the summoning of one made by another. Wights – unlike golems, or fetches – are not mindless. But their minds are only shards – fragments – of the minds of the living souls that once they were. For this reason they are stronger, but the instructions given them, tangled and twisted within the spells of summoning – these must be exact. It taketh great skill, and great power, to summon, and to use, a wight, particularly a wight of this power. I would judge that the sorcerer who called the Hag-Wight – if indeed ‘tis she – did so beside the pool where the Wight herself dwells.”

  “An’ you’ve no idea where that might be?”

  “None. Surely, ‘twill be writ in the Lady Taseldwyn’s books.”

  “A job for me tomorrow, then,” sighed John. “But we may beat Jen to the quarry yet, m’lord, magic or no, if the marks by that pool will tell you which of your Council whistled the thing up out of the water.”

  “But why any of the Council—” began the old mage, shaking his head in distress.

  “Huntin’ a killer, you can’t go by why,” said John, feeling a kind of pity for the disillusioned, weary anger in the gnome’s voice. “It may point you in the right direction, but I’ve governed people an’ sat judgment on their court-cases an’ I’ve heard tales that no ballad-maker would touch for fear of bein’ disbelieved. There’s a million tom-fool whys in the world, an’ it comes down to how. Only one person could have drawn the marks that summoned this thing, whatever it is… God knows for what reason. We find the marks, we find the summoner. Then we can ask why.”

  *

  John spent most of the following day digging through Miss Mab’s library. Though Zarbochedronn assisted him in his quest, it yielded him little. His command of gnomish script was limited: indeed, the runes and letters of the gnomes changed not only from Deep to Deep, but from family to family, and altered greatly over time. Even working together, they found no volume, among the scrolls and codexes that stacked the shelves of the tiny rock-cut hole where the Wise One lived, that cataloged wights and those who had summoned them over the ages.

  With the Blue-Haired One he also visited the place where Miss Mab – the Lady Taseldwyn – had been found, unconscious, bleeding, and cold as death, on the second night after the new moon. It was, as Sevacandrozani had said, at a hub of passageways just within the North Mines, several miles – by twisting tunnel – from where the mine opened into the main cavern system of the Second Deep. The remains of Mab’s spell-circle still marked the floor, nearly eradicated now by the passage of many feet.

  “These northern delvings are the oldest in the Deep,” the old gnome told him, standing with arms folded at his side. “They follow the gold-seams deepest into the earth.” He looked better today, and seemed able, at least, to summon witch-light to illumine their search, though John noticed he still carried a lantern, in case weariness overcame him. “Parts indeed were closed off, when ‘twas found grues were breeding in them, coming in from none knew where. Ragoshar – who with the Lady Periozames wove the spells about the Steward’s bed and house last night – hath made a specialty of the lore of the North Mines, and knoweth their every tunnel and shaft.”

  “An’ I take it the spells were successful last night? I didn’t hear a peep…”

  “No wight or evil entered the house, nor e’en approached, so far as can be told. Yet the Steward still walks in dread, though he hath sent for his wife, and his daughters are in pitiable state of fear.”

  “Can’t say I blame ‘em.” John looked down again at the Lady Taseldwyn’s half-eradicated rune-circles on the tunnel floor, smeared with the stains of her blood.

  Especially as there’s no tellin’ whether the spells worked, or whether the Hag-Wight didn’t just have other fish to fry last night…

  Taseldwyn herself still lay in deep stupor, in the Grotto of Healing in the Yellow Halls. When John and Zarbochedronn went there, they found the Lady Periozames and another of the Wise Ones – a young and relatively slender gnome called Ekrekodare – at her side, weaving sigils and charms now not merely to bring her to consciousness, but to keep the life within her tiny body.

  “She is cold,” whispered the younger gnome, as John stood looking down at that withered little form among the pillows. “’Tis as if the thing that drew forth the magic from the spells of her protection, draweth it still, and with it the warmth of her life.”

  John glanced across the bed at Zarbochedronn, who was quietly in conference with Periozames; then at the dark archway that led further into the other chambers of the grotto. Shadow moved there. The gleam of pale, bulging gnome-eyes.

  He shivered. Was it Mab who was the target after all, an’ the wight just came after Anath because she was her student? Or was it t’other way round?

  An’ where does the poor widow come into it?

  An’ why does it keep goin’ back to the house of the Steward?

  When the guard captain Brabishanjo came, to lead him – by what he was certain were circuitous routes – back to the guest-house in the Second Deep, he was made again uneasily aware that he had not the slightest idea how to get out of the Deep of Ylferdun.

  That he was completely at the mercy of the gnomes.

  But the next things to do, obviously – he thought as he brought his notes on the hunt up to date in the guest-house – was to follow the ventilation tunnel itself (not something he wanted to do without Jenny at his side) and to have a look around the Lady Anathagantes’s room. With this in mind he crossed through the lamplit crystal garden, and descended its stairs and terraces to the house of Krastochilliam. He found the lamps there still lit, though the hour was again growing late, and two more of the Wise Ones were renewing the marks of protection about the Steward’s bed, and across the thresholds of his doors.

  “True, the spells of protection worked last night,” grumbled the Steward in his resonant alto voice. (How well did he sleep last night? John wondered). “Yet how can I be sure they will do so tonight, or tomorrow?”

  John noticed the gray-haired gnome was dressed in what had to be his best – crimson velvet so dagged and embroidered that he resembled nothing so much as an ambulatory rose that had been dipped in gold sequins – and that he kept glancing at the great ivory-gold-and-lapis clock in the hall, and at the doors, as if he expected someone’s arrival. His daughters, likewise adorned, with their braided hair wired two feet high, looked pale and shaken under their paint.

  Krastochilliam knew nothing of any jealousy or enmity towards his eldest daughter among the Wise Ones, or indeed towards her mentor. “She spoke naught of any such thing to me.” He stroked for a time the long gray braids of his mustache, and John was conscious of the glance Sellymanjes traded with Zurkymella then. Conscious of the sickened fear in their eyes. “But in truth,” went on the Steward after a time, “’twas only a six-month since my daughter entered into her studies in earnest, and in that time I have been… much taken with other matters.”

  He avoided the eyes of the two young ladies as he said it, and when he left the hall where they sat – the hall in which the Wise Ones had sat yesterday, though John found the count of days below the ground rather disorienting – Sellymanjes murmured, “Taken with that slut Nezbardina, he means!” Her heavily-jeweled hands twitched with nervousness. “No time hath he had for any of us, not the four-month since she entered this household, not the year that he hath been in her thrall.”

  A servant in the dining-chamber near-by dropped what sounded like a plate, and cursed as only gnomes can curse, and Zurkymella whirled about in terror, her hand going to her throat. She turned back the moment she realized what it was, but John saw that both daughters trembled, and when the great clock in the hall struck the hour, both pairs of bulging green eyes flicked from its gold-and-ivory dial to the garden door.

  “Our sister’s chamber is locked,” said Sellymanjes, when John asked to search it. “’Twas her custom, since Nezbardina has been in this house.”

  “She would go through both of our rooms,” added Zurkymella. “Looking for Mother’s jewelry – which was ours of right, though Father told her she might take of it what she would.”

  “Come, Zurkymella.” Sellymanjes took her sister’s hand. And to John, “Await us here. We shall fetch the key, and show you the way.”

  They pattered off into the lamp-blazing gloom, and were still gone, when voices came from the garden. A servant exclaimed, and the high, squeaky voice of a gnome-child cried, “May I sleep in my own bed to-night, Mama?”

  Krastochilliam swept into the parlor in a great swirl of velvet and bullion, and executed a majestic Jasmine In The Moonlight salaam – with a dozen grace-notes and floreos – as a gnome woman stepped through the garden door. His face aglow with love, the Steward exulted, “Nezbardina!” and held out his hands.

  The gnome-lady returned the salaam, with the polished lightness of a dancer.

  She was the ugliest gnome-lady John had ever seen. Her broad, flat-boned face gave the impression of having been glued together from the contents of a sack of potatoes. Her hair, the color of bluish-gray clay, was thick and brushy, for all it was braided, pomaded, and twined with enormous pins of gold and cloisonné. Her short, round body was heavily muscled under its flower-like layers of silk and her arms and hands were like those of some powerful beast.

  She and Krastochilliam fell into each others’ arms in an ecstasy of nose-rubbing and murmured words.

  John turned his eyes from them to the two stocky, green-haired, green-eyed little gnome ladies who stood in the arch of the hallway – their faces transfigured with jealous fury – and thought, I’ve been a fool.

  Quietly, he left the house.

  Quietly he strode through the garden with its trickling dark streams, and stopped in the guest-house only long enough to take up a lamp, and his sword.

  Quietly he climbed the slippery steep terraces to the exquisite tangle of fragile stone curtain that hid the cleft in the rock, into which that strange golden-haired vision of last night had disappeared.

  I’ve been a fool.

  He thought through what must have happened, as he followed the steep tunnel down.

  It was Mab’s special lore: wights, golems, fetches… an’ the sorcerers who called ‘em up to do their dirty-work. Evil mages whose spells rooted in hatred an’ jealousy an’ the fear of losin’ what they thought was theirs by right. What they thought should remain theirs forever.

  Of course she’d have a spell or a catalog or a grimoire of some kind. Academic, to her; the record of emotion and wickedness as far from her kindly soul as the beauty men see is from the beauty that calls to the hearts of the gnomes.

  Of course Anathagantes would pinch it the minute Mab turned her back.

  He wondered if he should have searched Anathagantes’s room before coming here but knew that whatever had been there, the dead lady’s two sisters would have taken away and hidden: ‘We’ll fetch the key’ my arse.

  Six months’ trainin’ – no wonder she got it wrong.

  He wondered what small cantrip of limitation, or of summoning, that angry, jealous young amateur had mis-applied or neglected, when she’d worked the spells to summon the worst and most powerful wight she could find record of, to destroy the one who had stolen her father’s love. John knew there were pigs on his farm more mageborn than himself, but he had watched his beloved Jenny study and practice and work with magic for over twenty years. Had listened to her as she taught their son. He was well aware how precise an art it was, and how devastating could be the consequences of carelessness or error.

  After a skidding descent of a final pitch-dark tube within the rock, he found himself in a wider tunnel littered with miners’ debris – broken baskets, fragments of shoring, dropped hunks of ore. He followed the slope of it downward, and, when it branched, sniffed the air in each separating tunnel. One smelled of rock and dirt and – distantly but disturbingly – of the musky stink of cave-grues. The other, the sour pong of still water that has never seen light.

  His heart pounding, John dug in his pocket for a piece of chalk and marked the way, its ceiling so low he had to walk stooped, his boots slipping wetly on the stone underfoot.

  I should turn back….

  I will when I’ve had a look round the place. When we come back here to deal with this thing, we may not have time to check the lie of the land.

  The cavern, when he reached it, was very small, a sort of blow-hole deep beneath the mountain whose steep sides funneled sharply to black water. Edging close, he found the one place where the ground leveled somewhat, and there he found a red silk shawl – gaudily embroidered with the flame and three gems of the Steward’s house – and the scratched remains of a protective circle drawn in iron and salt.

  Mab must’ve guessed. Known of Anathagantes’s hatred of her step-mother, an’ missed the grimoire or scroll or book her pupil had lifted.

  Guessed somethin’ went wrong with the summoning. Guessed somethin’ hadn’t been completed, when it killed another woman the daughters had been jealous of in the past. Guessed when it was drawn after the father they must have hated as well, for turnin’ his back on them.

  He knew he should be angry or disgusted or think, Serves the little bitches right. But the only thing he felt was a deep sadness, and pity for Anathagantes, and Sellymanjes, and Zurkymella, who could not imagine sharing their father’s love.

  Jen’ll know what to do…

  The lamp in his hand went out.

  Turning, he saw her like the faint luminosity of a cave-fungus, a skeletal bluish non-light.

  The Water-Hag.

  Delicate, slender, golden-haired, standing between him and the only path that led back up from the pool’s brink, reaching out her hand for him.

  He flung the lamp at her, fearing to touch her with his sword. Demon-killing runes were written in the blade and she might well draw strength from these. In any case a blade would have no effect on such a creature. He sprang up the rocks to his left and nearly slipped on the wet, slick limestone back down into her arms, leaped and grabbed for hand-holds, foot-holds, anything to get himself around her and onto the path again – Though God knows what I’ll do if I get far enough away that I’m not seein’ by the light she sheds…

  She grabbed at his ankle and the touch of her was icy, death numbing his leg to the thigh. He slithered and fell, barely catching himself on the ledge above the pool; rolled out of her way as she sprang down from the rocks like a panther. He dragged himself to his feet and fell again, and when she lunged planted his boot in her chest and shoved her back – the cold of her touch took his breath away.

  I’ll never get up the path…

  Witchlight flashed white on the rocks above and the Hag-Wight looked up towards it, and he saw her face perfectly calm, as it had been in the garden. Not mask-like, but simply relaxed, as if nothing of this had anything to do with her.

  John lunged for the path, staggered but forced his numbed leg to bear him, and the wight sprang past him up the rocks as he heard Jenny’s voice call out, “John—!”

  He flung himself and caught the creature around the thighs, yelling as he did so, “Don’t let her touch you!” He was aware, as she turned in his grip, that her gray garment was suddenly soaked with water, her long gold hair dripping – She must shed water when she materializes fully…

  Nails like claws raked his face, knocked his spectacles spinning and barely missed his eyes. The cold was like a knife in his chest. His weight dragged her to the ground and he twisted to get away from those tearing hands, without releasing his hold on her. “Jen, run for it!”

  Claws gouged his back. Strength like a bear’s flung him backward onto the rocks at the pool’s edge and she dove at him; he caught her wrists as her hands ripped through the black leather of his doublet as if it had been rag, tearing the flesh beneath. The witchlight brightened and past her, through that seaweed cloud of golden hair, he saw Jenny, still high on the rocks, fling something, something small that arced through the gloom and fell into the bottomless black water of the pool with a soft plink.

  The wight stepped back from him then, her delicate face turned aside. Her eyes were on the water, and had she been anything resembling a mortal John would have taken that moment of her inattention to spring up and push her into the pool. Hammered, beaten, bleeding as he was he could do nothing but lie on his back on the wet rock, trying to breathe.

  She gave neither him, nor Jenny, so much as a glance: not as if she had lost interest in them, but as if they had both ceased to exist. She took a step toward the rock edge, and seemed to collapse on herself, like a fountain when the pipe is cut. A crumpling column of water in which John had the fleeting impression of half-dissolved bones tangled with yellow hair.

 

1 2 3 4 5