No. Not a shape.
A character.
Not one I knew. Not one that would be known to Evis or Mama or even the Corpsemaster.
I couldn’t remember its name or its significance. I didn’t even try. I had a lingering sense that merely knowing such a thing would injure me in ways far beyond that of the huldra or even the catapults waiting outside.
“Finder!”
“I’m here. I’m here.” I was having trouble talking. I spat out a short harsh word and then spoke again. “It is done.”
I didn’t know what I’d said, or why I’d said it is done. But as soon as I did, all around us, the artists started collapsing.
Easels went down. Artist’s tools and artists themselves fell clattering to the floor. A few moaned and blinked and looked around. Most simply settled down with weary sighs and fell into what I hoped were simply deep exhausted sleeps.
Evis turned about. A knife had found its way into his hand.
“Please tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“Old Bones.” I worked my jaw, found the right words. “Old Bones is sleeping. Right below us.” Parts of the dream scampered past—laughing children in the sun, a castle in the air, Buttercup playing in a marble fountain that bubbled with lights amid the waters. “They’ve been painting dreams. Old Bones’s dreams.”
“How?”
“Wasn’t the Lady. Wasn’t Hisvin. Old Bones herself. Patron of the arts.” I shook my head to clear it. “Gather up the paintings. Help me clear the floor. We need them in a circle.”
I heard myself say the words, but wasn’t sure why I spoke them.
“Like Hell we do. Markhat. Wake up. Remember what Hisvin said? We can’t let this thing out.”
“We won’t be letting it out. It’s going to let us in.”
“In? In where? In how?”
“The paintings. Prop them up in a circle, all around the room. Put this one in the center. A door will open.”
“A door? To where?”
Whatever knowledge had been impressed upon me ended.
“My head hurts.”
Evis regarded me warily. His knife was uncomfortably close to my liver. “I’m not surprised. Is that you in there? Tell me your fiancée’s name.”
“Darla. And she’s not my fiancée.”
Evis grinned. “Sure, pal. Whatever you say. Let’s get out of here before you start channeling dead alarkins again.”
I shivered. Stray images from the dream flitted about me, half-seen and fading.
Snores began to sound from all over the room. Serris moaned and stirred but did not awaken. “What about them?”
“Leave them. They’re as safe as they can be, these days. Come on.”
Evis tugged at my elbow. Even the gentle prodding of a halfdead has considerable power. I found my legs and made them move, and we left a roomful of snoring artists behind us.
The Lady met us at the end of the hall. Marlo was at her side, looking grim and determined. He had a bruise right below his right eye. His axe sported a fresh chip out of its handle, just below the head.
“I see you’ve been improving morale,” I said.
He glared. “I ain’t saying I much blame them, Finder. They’re scared. Things in the yard, soldiers dying, and that pair of catapults is set to throw any minute now.”
The Lady chimed in. “The House won’t stand long against them, Finder. You know that. I’m about to start moving people into the tunnels.”
“Better have a look around first.” I gave her a quick sketch of the cylinders rising from her lawn. “Not sure if they’ll have any presence underground, but if they do, you’ll want to keep your distance.”
The Lady nodded. I didn’t notice her paleness and exhaustion until then.
“For what it’s worth, Lady, I’m sorry about all this. I wish there had been another way.”
“This wasn’t your doing, Finder. And I apologize for your treatment by my household.”
I waved that off. “Forget it, Lady. They’ve watched their homes burn and seen their own killed. I don’t blame them for being scared.”
She nodded curtly. “Marlo and I will inspect the tunnels. I invite you and your party to join us, of course. You will not be attacked in my presence. I can assure you of that much.”
“Thank you. When and if the time comes, I’ll take you up on that.”
“Marlo.” And they were off.
I could feel eyes on us. And feel their intent. The ghost of the huldra chose that moment to intrude. It babbled on in words I didn’t know but in tones that were unmistakable – they seek to do you harm, so do them harm first. And it tried to show me ways to do just that, by coupling strange words with shapes traced in the dark.
I cussed aloud. Evis titled his head.
“Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”
And at that moment, I heard, from out on the lawn, the shouted word “throw.”
Thunk, as a rope was cut. A rush of wind, the agonized shrieking of timbers moving against each other, and then the ground-shaking thump as the throwing arm slammed into the stop and the contents of the basket were hurled toward us.
I dived for the floor, reached up to pull Evis down with me, grabbed only empty air.
The projectile struck.
The House shook. Stones broke. Timbers twisted and tore. Plaster sprang from the walls, clattering to the floor in hand-sized chunks, which then in turn shattered and skidded. Bits of the ceiling rained down, peppering my back and neck like a sudden hard rain.
Shouts rang out, and screams. Great rolling clouds of dust boiled down the hall.
Another impact, this one from the rear of the House, sounded. Plaster fell. I heard a monstrous shifting, as though a great mass of stone moved against another.
Evis hauled me to my feet. “Time to go,” he said, and when he set me down my feet were on the stairs.
We charged up them, through the dust. The shouting behind us grew closer and took on a decidedly determined tone.
I didn’t need any exhortation to hurry. Evis glided on ahead, cloak flapping, silver blade gleaming in his hand.
“There he is!”
I risked a glance backwards. A dozen of the Lady’s staff took to the stairs after me. There was no mercy in their eyes.
A pair of dark shapes leaped over me. They fell into the mob. Bodies flew. It was over in a pair of heartbeats, and the stairs were littered with groaning forms who puked and bled but nevertheless made a decent show of crawling downward and away.
Sara and Victor rose from the dust. “We made every effort to spare their lives,” said Victor. “I shall show no such restraint again.”
The hulda howled and called out for blood. I turned from the halfdead and followed Evis up the stairs.
We made it inside. The catapult crews shouted and cussed, preparing their engines for another round of mayhem.
Mama was at the hole by the window. “I figure these here walls are tougher than anybody knew,” she announced. “Still, two more throws from each, and they’ll be a knocking on yonder door. And that’s if the floor don’t cave in first.”
Darla was whispering with Evis. I didn’t need to guess about what.
“Boss.” Gertriss was eyeing me funny. “Boss, what have you been up to?”
Mama turned from her surveillance of the lawn and fixed her eyes upon me as well.
“There may be another option,” I said. “Hisvin and the people outside aren’t the only magical types involved.”
Darla came to my side. “What were you thinking?” she said. She ran her fingers through my hair, turned my face to hers, looked at me as if she were trying to stare inside my skull. “Are you crazy, Markhat? You don’t know what’s down there, what it might do.”
“Nobody does, oh light of my life. That’s one thing we’ve all got in common. But we’ve got something neither the Corpsemaster nor the spooks outside have got.”
Buttercup ran up to me as if summoned. I tousled her hair, and she squealed and smiled.
“Evis said—”
“I know what Evis said. And I appreciate it. I’m not saying we start propping up paintings and opening doors just yet. I’m just saying it’s another place to run, if all else fails. I haven’t counted the Corpsemaster out just yet.”
Mama came stomping up. Evis took her place at the spy-hole.
“Boy, you got less sense than any man I ever met. Hold this.” She stuck a dead robin in my hand.
“Mama.”
“Shut up. Gertriss. Take his other hand. Look.”
Gertriss took my free hand, shrugged apologetically, and closed her eyes.
Mama mumbled something too soft for me to catch.
Shivers ran up my spine.
“Oh my,” said Evis. “The Corpsemaster. I do believe you’ll want to see this, Markhat.”
We could all hear renewed shouting from outside. The telltale clinks of metal on metal joined them, and the hiss and thunk of arrows and bolts.
I tried to tear free, but Gertriss held fast.
“Still, boy, be still,” hissed Mama. She shook an owl at me with her free hand. Gertriss pawed at the air with hers.
“Something done touched you, boy,” said Mama. “You see it, girl?”
“I see,” replied Gertriss. Her eyes didn’t open. “Something old. Something that’s been buried.”
“Buried but not dead,” said Mama. “Restless in a tomb.”
I yanked my hands free. “We don’t have time, ladies,” I said. “What’s happening out there?”
“Men. Lots of them. They’ve just come walking out of the woods.” I couldn’t see Evis’s face, but I could hear the puzzlement in his voice. “They’ve attacked the catapult crews.”
“Are they winning?”
“Depends on your point of view.”
“Evis. Now is not a good time for cryptic.”
“They’re taking arrows and bolts by the dozen. Aside from one having his legs hacked off, they’re still coming.”
“What?”
“They’re getting slaughtered, Markhat. But they’re not dying. Or at least they’re not falling down like polite dead men tend to do.”
A flash so bright it lit up Evis in silhouette shone outside. He leaped back from the spy-hole, blinking and cussing.
“The cylinders,” he said, before I could ask. “Lit up. Like magelamps, but brighter.” He waved his hands in front of his face. “I hope this isn’t permanent.”
“Was that Hisvin too?”
Evis shrugged, still blind. “No idea.”
Screams rose up from outside.
Screams, and a wind. It built and rose and whipped and howled. It switched directions, it beat against the wounded House with fists of debris.
The walls shook. The floor beneath groaned as timbers shifted.
Buttercup dropped her dolls, stood and opened her mouth to howl.
Mama waddled forward and stuffed a huge chunk of taffy candy right into Buttercup’s mouth.
The banshee tried to spit it out, but Mama held her lips shut, and within a moment Buttercup was smiling and chewing and beaming up at Mama.
The wind intensified. Softer, wetter thuds joined the sharper pelting of rocks on the walls, and I realized the louder ones were the impacts of bodies carried by the gale.
Something smashed through the window. We scattered. Evis snatched up the rolling projectile and hurled it back outside. I don’t think anyone but Darla saw its eyes or blood-soaked beard, and though she stood close and took my hand she didn’t scream.
“Damn wand-wavers are gonna take the House down whether they means to or not,” shouted Mama. “I reckon it’s time.”
Lightning joined the wind, bolt after bolt, so many and so fast they lit the window with a constant, harsh light. I could see limbs whipping, debris flying, blinding bolts of light arcing down, shadows flying briefly in the instant between being born and being extinguished by the next furious bolt.
I heard words, in the thunder. The huldra exulted, echoing them, awash in the proximity and intensity of the sorcery being hurled just yards from my boots.
Something in the forest roared, louder than the thunder, louder than the ringing in my ears. It roared and it charged, and we all saw monstrous blood-oaks go down, saw them torn from the earth and cast aside as though they were brambles.
And then came the stones. They fell from the sky, each trailing acrid smoke that lingered in the air and swirled about and burned eyes and choked throats. The stones fell almost silently, save for a whistling, but when they reached the ground, they simply obliterated all they touched with a flash and a crack even brighter and louder than the lightning.
A stone struck the House, tearing through it from roof to cellar in the blink of an eye. The floor beneath us tilted. Timbers began to groan in a long, building, awful noise that that set my teeth on edge.
A sudden rush of falling stones fell about the thing in the forest. More trees went flying, as it rolled, and then it was still.
The rain of stones ceased. Then the lightning. Then the wind, which died as abruptly as it had been born, dropping its volleys of limbs and lumber in a single great tumble.
Evis dared poke his head through the shattered window.
He didn’t suddenly sprout arrows, so I let go of Darla and joined him.
Outside was ruin.
The catapults were simply gone. Only shallow craters remained. Bodies were everywhere. Many began to move as I watched, though with the clumsy, slow gestures of the stunned and the injured.
A single glowing blue stave lay alone on the blackened earth. As I watched, a man clad in beggar’s clothes stumbled toward it, picked it up, and carried it toward the woods, ignoring the showers of sparks the thing loosed at his head.
Evis shook his head.
“The one with the red scarf. See him? Over there?”
Evis pointed. I found the man he meant. He was on his back, a pair of longbow arrows lodged deep in his chest.
As I watched, the man sat up, snapped off both arrows with no apparent hesitation or pain, and then rose to his feet and picked up a sword before calmly and methodically beginning to slaughter any injured soldiers stirring in the yard.
“That’s not considered good sportsmanship,” whispered Evis. “Dead man or not.”
I shuddered. Because the red-scarfed man was certainly dead. As he was joined by a dozen of his brethren, and then more and more and more staggered to their feet, I realized why they all seemed so familiar.
They were dressed in rags. Some were barely dressed at all. All were filthy. Many were barefoot. But even in their disarray, there was something familiar about them all.