by E. D. Baker
"That can't be right," I said, shaking my head. "I don't think that's really Bradston. Ask the mirror again, but tell it to show you the truth. I don't use magic mirrors myself, but I've been told that they aren't always reliable, especially when they get older."
"Oh, I'm sure this mirror is right," said the banshee. "It was given to me when I became a banshee. It has to be right every time."
"How old is it?" I asked.
The banshee shrugged. "At least a few hundred years, I expect."
"Then it may not be accurate anymore. Please try it again," I said. "We really need to know about Bradston."
The banshee looked from me to the mirror and back. "I suppose it won't hurt to try, although it's just going to show us the same thing again. Mirror, show us the truth about Prince Bradston of Upper Montevista. As he actually is this very minute."
The image of the boy and the dancing trolls disappeared and a gray fog swirled in its place, fading away to show three figures seated on the floor of a small cave. The picture grew larger as if we were moving closer to them until they looked as though they were in the room with us.
"There's Bradston," I said, "and those must be some of his captors." Two trolls sat beside the boy, who was laughing so hard that he had to hold his sides. The trolls seemed uncomfortable, as if they didn't understand what was going on but didn't like it nonetheless.
Eadric laughed out loud. "Now that's Bradston. He's making fun of the trolls. He's probably teasing them about something they've done. I should know. He's acted that way around me often enough."
"How is that possible?" asked the banshee. "He was dead in the other image. How do I know which one is right?"
"I'm sure the second one is. The boy in it is acting like the real Bradston," said Eadric.
The banshee wrung her hands. "Yes, but what about all the images I've seen over the years? Those people were about to die. I went to warn their families and they did die, just like I'd foreseen. But if there are two images . . . Is it possible that they wouldn't have died if they hadn't been expecting to because of what I'd said? This is terrible! What am I going to do now? If they died because of something that I did . . ." Wailing and tearing at her hair, the banshee fled down the hall as the image faded from the mirror.
Eadric took my hand in his and turned it over to kiss my palm. "Thank you for showing me the real Bradston. That first image had me convinced that he was dead."
"I know," I said. "I almost believed it myself. Those poor people, if what she said was true . . ."
Eadric shuddered. "Let's get out of here before she comes back. I shouldn't have believed her, but lies are harder to discount coming from a magic mirror. I prefer fighting trolls to listening to a banshee. Ferdy and I can handle trolls just fine," he said, patting his sword again.
"I'm sure you can," I said, and I turned my head so he wouldn't see my smile.
Ten
It was nearly noon when we left the banshee's castle. We started out by following the row of pine trees that she'd mentioned. Stone markers showed that an old road had once run beside them, but it had long since fallen into disuse and was mostly overgrown. Because we still couldn't find anything to eat, we continued walking long after we normally would have stopped. When darkness fell and the pine trees melted into the rest of the forest, we asked Li'l for help. She was happy to lead us and flew off to look around.
The night was well along when we reached the village that Li'l had found, making the few candles still burning in the windows a welcome sight. Grouped around a small central field, a cluster of narrow houses with steeply pitched roofs had been built so close to each other that they seemed to present a united front to the surrounding forest. Only a narrow gap separated the houses, leaving barely enough room for two people to walk side by side.
"I hope there's an inn here," said Eadric. "And I hope they're still serving supper."
I yawned and brushed my hair out of my eyes. "And I hope they have some rooms available after we've eaten."
"I hope they have a nice bucket of water," Shelton said from inside my sleeve. "And maybe a little salt to add to it."
"I'll see you later," said Li'l. "I don't like inns. There are always too many people there who like to hit bats."
After walking the length of the path that led between the houses without seeing an inn or anyone to talk to, Eadric declared, "We're not sleeping outside tonight. This village is too close to the troll's mountain. Anything could be in these woods." Picking the closest house, he rapped on the door with his knuckles. The thump was so loud in the otherwise silent night that I was sure everyone in the village must have heard it.
I gasped when a man stepped out of the shadows only a few feet away. "May I help you?" he asked with an odd accent to his words. The light from the windows did little more than outline his shape in the gloom, and I couldn't help but feel uneasy.
"We're seeking lodging for the night," said Eadric, stepping between me and the man. "Is there an inn close by?"
The man chuckled, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "No inns that you could reach tonight. However, I have some empty rooms that I let out to travelers. Will it be just the two of you?"
"Yes," said Eadric, placing his hand on Ferdy's hilt. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt ill at ease around the stranger. "And if we could arrange for supper as well. . ."
"Of course," said the man. "I'm sure my wife can come up with something."
I took Eadric's hand as the man led us to the largest house in the village. As narrow as the others, it was two stories tall with a pair of windows on the upper floor that looked out over the street. Despite the candles flickering in the windows, it didn't look as if anyone were home. I drew back when the door opened to a dank, earthy smell that seemed out of place indoors. "Are you all right?" whispered Eadric as he tucked my arm in his.
"Yes," I said, "but this house-—"
"Right this way," said the man, leading us into the large front room. A table had been set with two trenchers and two mugs as if we'd been expected. I looked around, thinking we were alone in the silent house, and was surprised to see a grizzled old man watching us from the corner by the hearth. "My neighbor, Humphrey," said our host, who I could now see was fair-haired with pale skin and piercing blue eyes. There was a whisper of sound, and a young woman with the same coloring stepped into the doorway of another room. "And this is my wife, Sulie. She'll see to your needs. My name is Corbin. Please sit. Sulie will have your supper ready soon." With a nod to his wife, the man disappeared out the front door.
We took our seats as the woman set a pitcher of ale on the table. "I'll have the food ready in just a minute," she said. "Drink plenty of this nice stout ale. It builds up the blood."
"Aye, that it does," said Humphrey as Sulie left the room. "That ale is good for you. I've had my fair share over the years and I'm still here." He laughed when he said this as if at a private joke. "Where do you hail from?" he asked, wiping his eyes.
"I'm from Greater Greensward." Wondering if I should tell him about Eadric, I glanced across the table and knew right away that my prince wasn't going to be any help. He was downing his ale as if he hadn't had anything to drink in days, and didn't seem to be paying attention to anything else.
It wasn't until the young woman set clay bowls in front of us that Eadric looked up. "Here you go," said Sulie. "This'll put meat on your bones and thicken your blood."
"Looks good, doesn't it?" said Humphrey, but he was looking at me, not the food.
The bowls held a thick stew filled with some kind of meat and chunks of vegetables. I'd given up eating meat after I'd turned into an animal the first time, but I was too hungry to go without eating anything. Swallowing the chunks of carrots and potatoes as fast as I could, I tried not to think about their meat-soaked flavor. Eadric, however, had no such problem. After finishing his stew, he reached for what remained of mine. While he ate, I chanced to look around the room and caught the old man watching me. I fidgeted under his
gaze until Eadric had scraped my bowl clean.
"Eadric," I said under my breath. "Perhaps we could see about those bedchambers now."
Sulie had already left the room, but Humphrey must have heard me, because he called to the young woman, saying, "They want to go to bed!"
"Of course you do," she said to us, wiping her hands on her apron as she came out of the room in the back. "You must be tired after such a long walk. I'm sure you won't have any problem falling asleep."
"How do you know we walked a long way?" Eadric asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Because everywhere is a long way from here," Sulie replied, laughing. "Now, if you'll follow me . . ."
Eadric glanced at the empty bowls. "I wasn't finished eating."
Sulie shrugged, saying "I'm sorry, but that's all there is. We weren't expecting company." Then turning to me, she added, "Your lad has a hearty appetite! I like that in a man."
Humphrey laughed again, and I could feel his gaze on my back as I started up the creaky stairs. He'd made me uncomfortable, although I couldn't say why, so I was relieved when we reached the landing and the old man could no longer see us.
There were four doors on the second floor and Sulie showed us to two of them. Neither of the rooms was very big. Eadric gave me the larger one, but was soon back, knocking on my door. I let him in, wondering what he could have to say now when he hadn't spoken a word during supper.
"I think you should come to the other room," he said. "Its window is small and has a shutter on it. The bed will be easier to move, too."
"Do you want to trade rooms?" I asked, not sure what he was saying.
"Not at all. I'll stay there, too. I think I can defend it better if it comes to that."
"Defend?" I said. "What makes you think you'll need to?"
"Because something's not quite right about this place. Did you notice that there are no roads going in or out? And I think it's odd that ordinary people would want to live so close to the trolls' mountain. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some sort of agreement worked out with the troll queen. Maybe they tell her about everyone who's passing through, or maybe they turn them over to the trolls in exchange for their own safety. Those stories about trolls killing travelers are true, you know."
"And you think shutters would keep us safe?" I asked.
Eadric shrugged. "They're better than nothing."
"Fine," I said. "But I get the bed. All I want is a good night's sleep."
We were about to leave the room when Li'l flew in through the open window. "There you are!" she said, landing on my shoulder. She was out of breath and I could feel her little heart pounding.
"What have you been up to?" I asked, following Eadric from the room.
"I was looking for bats," said Li'l. "I just wanted to meet them and ask if they knew anything about the troll queen. The whole village smells like them, but I couldn't find a single one."
"That's odd," I said. "Where do you think they went?"
"I don't know. That's why I was looking for so long. This is a nice room," she said as we stepped into the other chamber. "It reminds me of a cave."
"Yeah," said Eadric. "Me, too." The room was small and dark, with one tiny window and a narrow bed. It was situated over the room where we'd eaten, and I could hear people talking below us. "I closed the shutters," Eadric continued. "I'm going to push the bed in front of the door to block it."
"Why?" asked Li'l. "What are you afraid of?"
"Eadric thinks the people in the village might have told the trolls about us," I replied.
"Really?" Li'l fluttered to the window and landed on the sill. "Then we should take turns watching." The little bat shuffled from one side to the other, peering through the cracks in the shutters.
I helped Eadric move the bed. We were shoving it against the door when a clock somewhere in the village chimed midnight. "Did you hear that?" I asked.
"You mean the clock?" said Eadric.
"No, what came after it. They were talking downstairs, but they stopped when the clock chimed. They didn't stop when it chimed before. Wait!" I held up one finger to silence him, listened for a moment, and said, "Humphrey just said, 'It's time,' but he didn't say what it was time for."
Eadric looked puzzled. "How can you hear that?"
"I needed to talk to a butterfly a few days ago, so I had to have extra-sharp hearing."
"Uh-huh," said Eadric. "I believe that, coming from you. Maybe when he said, 'It's time,' he meant it was time to go to bed."
I cocked my head to listen. The stairs creaked as someone climbed them, just as they had for us. "Maybe, except..." The creaking grew louder and I could hear a difference. "There are more people now. At least five or six."
"Would you look at that," Li'l said, peering out the window again. "All those people are coming this way."
I edged past the bed to peek out the crack in the shutters. It was true. The doors of the village had been thrown open, and everyone was heading toward the house where we were staying.
"Psst, Emma," whispered Eadric. "Look at that."
I turned away from the window. Someone was on the other side of the door trying to push it open, but it barely moved an inch before smacking into the bed.
"Whatever you do," I told Eadric, "don't open the door. I have a bad feeling about this."
Whoever was on the other side hesitated, then tapped on the door and said in a pleasant voice, "It's me. Corbin. I've come to see if you need more blankets. Just ask me in and I'll give them to you."
"We're fine," I said. "The night is warm."
"I've brought you another candle as well."
"We don't need another candle. We'll be going to sleep soon," I said.
"Then open the door and we can have a nice chat about what you'd like for breakfast."
"Maybe we should . . . " said Eadric.
"Don't you dare move!" I spat at him, then called to our host, "There's no need. Whatever you normally make would be fine."
Something scrabbled at the shutters, sounding like a mouse in the walls. "Emma," said Li'l. "I think you'd better see this."
"What is it now?" I muttered, bending down to peer out the crack again. I couldn't see at first, because something was in the way. Then it moved and the moonlight showed me a man floating in midair, poking ineffectually at the shutters. There were other people there as well, people who would have seemed normal if they hadn't been floating outside a second-floor window.
"Are those people supposed to have teeth like that?" Li'l whispered, peering out the shutter beside me.
"Only if they're vampires," I whispered back. They were fangs, not teeth really, and they looked out of place on the middle-aged woman and the little girl who leered at the shutters as if they knew we were watching from inside.
"Come join us," called the woman. "We'll have a party and you'll be the guests of honor!"
"I bet," I muttered, and then I turned to my friends. "Don't worry. We're safe in here. Garrid told me that vampires can't come in unless they're invited. Just don't open the door or the window. We'll be able to leave in the morning when they go to sleep."
"Some of them are bats," Li'l said. "Or at least they are now."
A cool, dank vapor filtered into the room through the shutters. I peeked out again. Sure enough, there were bats outside flying side by side with the floating vampires. I was still watching when there was another puff of cool, dank air and a littie old lady with a kindly face turned into a bat.
Corbin, or whoever was on the other side of the door, started knocking loudly, demanding to be invited in. Eadric faced the door with his arms crossed and his legs braced as if awaiting the onslaught of an army. Convinced that no one was about to come through that door, I turned back to the window in time to see Li'l struggling to open it.
"What are you doing?" I said, slapping the shutter closed again.
"Didn't you see him? Garrid has come looking for me. I have to go to him!"
I shook my head and bent down to
take a peek. "That's not possible. How could he be here?"
"Did she say that Garrid's here?" asked Eadric. "We could use another strong arm. Maybe we should let him in."
I turned back to Eadric in disbelief. "Another strong arm that happens to belong to a vampire? I don't think so. He may be Li'l's mate, but do you really think he'd side against a village full of... Li'l, wait! What are you doing?"
In the moment that I'd had my back turned, Li'l had pulled the shutter open enough that she could squeeze her tiny body through. As I watched in horror, she darted into the night sky and was lost in a flurry of bat wings and jubilant voices.
"Li'l!" I cried out, but she was gone . .. and back again in an instant with a familiar bat in tow. It was Garrid. If I hadn't been a bat before myself, I never would have recognized him, but I'd learned to tell the difference on more than one frosty night excursion. Garrid was a particularly handsome bat, just as he was an exceedingly handsome man.
"Emma, quick!" shouted Li'l. "Let us in!"
I couldn't lose my little friend, not after all we'd been through together, so I opened the window just wide enough to let her in and . . . in came a flood of bats, all of them vampires except one.
Two bats whispered sweet nothings into each other's ears. The rest came straight for Eadric and me.
"What the . . . !" shouted Eadric as a cloud of bats covered him from head to toe. I could see him fighting them off as a similar wave knocked me away from the window, against the bed, then down to the floor. My first thought was that Garrid had betrayed us. The second was that I'd have to use magic to save my Eadric. I was holding my arms in front of my throat, trying to fend off their fangs while furiously working on a spell, when a voice shouted, "Off them! They're my friends!" and all the bats fell away.
It was suddenly so quiet in the room that I could hear Eadric's ragged breath as I tried to catch my own. I sat up, jerking my hand away when it touched the leathery skin of a bat. Then a firm grip enclosed my fingers, and Garrid the man was helping me to my feet. "Sorry about that," he said before turning to Eadric. "It didn't occur to me that they'd follow me, but you know how it goes. Invite one vampire in and they think it means everyone's welcome."
