Hold The Dark m-3

by Frank Tuttle

  I didn’t need the huldra to show me any semblance of fragility was mere illusion. She gripped her makeshift spear tight. Her breathing was steady. I could see her measuring the distance between me and the door and wondering if she could dart through it after making a stab at my ribs.

  She even had the money. Darla’s fortune, eleven hundred crowns in paper, still stuffed down the front of her ripped, soiled blouse. I knew they tried to take the money, tried to take her clothes-tried, and failed.

  “I tell ye I’ll gut ye, ye blood-drinkin’ get of a troll,” she said.

  “Pleased to meet you too,” I said. And then Ethel Hoobin sidled past me.

  “Martha!”

  “Ethel?”

  The rest of the Hoobins stormed in, and they all began to shout. A ragged cheer went up from the New People gathered outside.

  Ethel turned toward me, tears in his eyes.

  “You have done what you said,” he said. “You have saved our sister.”

  He saw the huldra. I know he did. Mama said later my eyes were glowing, red as coals and flickering like wind-blown embers. But Ethel Hoobin put out his hand, in a fist, and touched me on the chest, right above my heart.

  “Thank you.”

  Martha looked up at me, nodded and looked away.

  But even as Ethel led her out of the room, led her past me, Martha Hoobin kept her eyes on my hands, and her pitiful bed-post spear aimed square at my gut.

  The New People swept out, reached the stair, swept up it. Evis and his crew remained, though I noted they had doubled or tripled in number since I had gone into Martha’s room.

  A new voice rang out. “Boy!” it said, and I turned to see Mama clambering down the stair, the Hoogas bloodied and stiff haired on her heels. Mama carried an enormous meat-cleaver, hairs and bits of bone still clinging to the blade. The Hoogas bore traditional Ogre clubs-five-foot timbers, the striking ends festooned with nail-spikes and broken glass and the broken ends of bones. Both bore the signs of enthusiastic, recent use.

  “Boy!” shouted Mama, dropping to the floor with a ragged puff of breath. “Boy, I told you not to touch that thing!”

  I turned away. Evis saw, left the captive human priests and joined me outside the door at which dead Ameel Cant still beat.

  “It is done,” said Evis, when he was near enough to speak. “Martha Hoobin is going home.”

  The priests cried out, and were quickly and permanently silenced. Evis shook his head. “It is done,” he said, again.

  “You’ll let them go?” I said, nodding at the retreating New People. “What makes you think they will not rise up against you tomorrow?”

  Evis shrugged. “We fought at their side. We rescued their sister. They gave their word.”

  “And you think that’s enough.”

  “It shall have to be.”

  Mama came stomping up, wild-eyed and wheezing. She wiped her cleaver on the side of her bag and dropped it inside.

  “Boy,” she said, to me. “You ain’t dead.”

  I looked down upon her, saw, for perhaps the first time, how old and small and weary she looked. “No,” I said. I was beginning to see things, in the dark, again. I heard the faint rustles of the huldra’s patient whisper.

  Evis motioned toward his men, pointed toward the door that held Ameel Cant. Half a dozen halfdead trotted over, each bearing a crossbow and a twinkling silver bolt.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “That will never do.”

  Evis frowned. “She is mad. You have seen this before.”

  “I said no.” I reached, and a trickle of power answered, and I smiled. “I saw her. She has hands. She has her eyes. She may have been dead, but she cries. That is my price. You are not a monster, you say? Then take her. Feed her. Care for her. Restore to her the life that was taken, by those who share your hunger.”

  Evis lifted an eyebrow.

  “And if I do not?”

  I leaned down, so that my face was even with Evis’s. “Then I shall lead the day folk against your Houses. I shall speak the words that bring them out. I shall speak the words that will light the torches. I shall speak the words that will bring them down upon you, and I shall join them, and the fires shall burn and will still be burning when winter comes again.” I felt myself swelling, heard the huldra whisper. “Shall I begin?”

  Evis looked sideways, made the slightest of nods at Mama.

  She shouted something, threw a bundle of hair and twigs she’d had hidden in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes and spat.

  I laughed. I saw the bundle coming, brushed it aside as easily as one waves away a gnat. “Oh, no,” I said. “That’s not the way. But let me show you a spell I know.”

  I lifted my hand. The huldra showed me a hidden thing. I laughed at the thought of it, and I would have cast it forth, but for a subtle twisting in the dark, and a chill, and then the sound, faint, of a voice.

  Darla’s voice.

  I shrank. Memories came tiptoeing back, sneaking past the huldra’s dark fancies. Flames and fires, shouts and screams, and the smell of Darla’s hair.

  She is dead, said the huldra. Dead, gone, take your vengeance.

  Make.

  Them.

  Pay.

  Mama cussed, drew her booted foot back, kicked me.

  Hard, and then again, right below my right knee.

  “Don’t you listen, boy,” she croaked, her face turned to mine. “I know what it’s sayin’. I know what it wants. But you listen to me now, boy. It might be strong, but it ain’t smart. You are.”

  I saw flames, saw Darla, lolling and bloody and dead in my arms.

  Mama hissed. No words, just a hiss, and then she reached up and slapped me.

  “It knows your name, boy. But don’t you forget-it ain’t even got a name. It ain’t got nothing ’cept what you give it.”

  The huldra shrieked in rage. I held it tight, letting it make me tall again, tall and strong and knowing.

  Evis grabbed Mama, yanked her back. I lifted the huldra, made a sound that might have been the beginning of a long, secret word, and it was then that I saw something light and familiar amid the gathering shadows.

  Darla. My Darla. Faint and ghostly and wavering, a candleflame in a whirlwind. But it was her, and she spoke. Somehow, above the thunder and din of the huldra’s cries for vengeance, I heard her speak.

  “I am not dead.”

  And then she was gone.

  I froze, the unspoken word burning on my lips, the huldra raging and shaking in my hand, a maelstrom of strange, strong magics poised to leap from my fingers.

  I am not dead.

  I knew she was. I’d held her. I’d felt her body grow cold. I’d washed her blood from my skin.

  But-

  The huldra howled.

  I took the huldra, forced it to fall silent, strained and strove and bent it briefly to my will. I cast out my sight, soared above Rannit and the rain and the clouds, looked down upon the city from a great and impossible height.

  And then I spoke a Word wrenched from the heart of the huldra.

  Magics spun, darting to and fro amid the clouds, gathering, flocking, wheeling and turning and diving, finally piercing the rain and the dark to soar over Rannit’s sooty rooftops and black, flooded streets like a flock of playful shadows. Here and there they converged, sped away, circled. Here and there they exploded, diverging into a thousand paths, only to come together again in a single fluid rush of shadow upon shadow.

  And then, impossibly, they all came together, coalesced and settled, eagerly awaiting my call.

  Darla.

  “She lives,” I said, with some difficulty. I lowered the huldra, which burned in my hand, and met Mama’s bleary eyes. “Darla lives.”

  Evis kept his face carefully blank. “Of course she does,” he said, agreeably. Disbelief was plain on his pale dead face. “Let it go, finder. Let Mama take it.”

  I shook my head no.

  Mama began to weep.

  “You think me m
ad.” Normal words were hard to form. “But she lives. I have seen her.”

  “Then you don’t need that thing no more,” said Mama. She opened her bag, held it out to me, under the huldra. “Let me have it, boy. Before it’s too late.”

  Again I shook my head. “I have need of it yet. Darla waits for me.”

  “Damn, boy, it’s lying! Can’t you see that? It wants you to use it! The longer you hold it the less of you is left!”

  The huldra raged, still urging me to mayhem, still showing me images of Darla dying under a writhing mass of halfdead.

  “No.” The huldra struggled in my grasp, trying to pull away. “She needs me. I can save her.”

  Evis laid his hand on Mama’s shoulder, made some small sign to his men. “Permit us to accompany you.”

  I didn’t need the huldra to see the pity in his eyes.

  I shrugged. My shadows beckoned. The huldra buzzed and howled, but I squeezed, pushed its protests aside.

  “Follow, if you can,” I said. “The way leads into the dark.”

  I ascended, not bothering with the stairs, leaving a good portion of the floor above in sudden splintered ruin.

  I took a single step, and then another. I only barely felt timbers fall around me as I shouldered them aside, and then I was back above the rooftops, back inside the dark.

  My shadows waved to me, from across most of Rannit. Thunder and lightning played close about them, so close I grew suspicious. I coaxed another word from the huldra, spoke it, saw more shadows wheeling in the night-shadows similar to mine, but clothed in the will of another.

  I smiled. The huldra hushed. Grudgingly, it offered another word, showed me a way to hide my approach, to silence the echoes of my words. I made myself invisible. Invisible and as silent as the passing of time.

  I felt a questioning, a probing, a subtle touch emerge from deep within the night. I sidled away from it, watched it pass, chuckled at how easily I evaded being found. Memories came rolling back to me-memories of other walks in the dark, of other battles of shadow on shadow, of the way magics sprang so easily from my lips.

  There was more too. I saw strange rooms, felt the heat of strange fires, heard screams, heard a women beg for mercy. There was also laughter, and I recognized it as my own.

  I saw the Serge, saw flames sweep across it, boiling over dune and rock, leaping from sage bush to stunted dessert tree. Trolls fled, bounding, catching fire and screaming, too slow, too slow…

  And music. Music played on instruments I couldn’t name, formed of notes that sang of magic. I saw a flower, plucked it, made it wither in my hand…

  The huldra let slip the smallest hint of triumph.

  I pictured Darla. I remembered her laugh, her perfume, the way her skirt hugged her legs as she walked.

  I took what I needed from the huldra, pushed the music and the screams aside, struggled for a moment to remember my secret name. The huldra flashed hot in my hand.

  “Show me what I need, and only what I need,” I said.

  It seemed to me that the huldra laughed, harsh and dry, with the sound of old papers rustling.

  But it obeyed.

  I saw a row of three houses, set deep into the Hill. The windows were tall and wide and dark. The doors were barred, and bound with iron like garrison gates. The two outside houses leaned against the middle, as though exhausted, or asleep.

  I tried, but could not pass my sight beyond them.

  Words came, not mine, not the huldra’s.

  “Mark this place well,” they said. “Some call it Oddling. Few pass therein.”

  I questioned the huldra. It was silent, unhearing.

  I sought Darla.

  Shadows flew. The scene changed. I saw another warehouse, on the other side of the Brown. This one slanted down toward the river. Water ran from the back wall and across the floor and out the front. The roof showed light in half a dozen places.

  And there, beneath it, lay Darla.

  I shouted. Thunder broke. I charged toward her, a sudden flurry of shingles and loose timbers in my wake. She was alive, bound and struggling but alive, unless the huldra showed me a lie-

  I slowed, demanded the truth from it. It grudgingly and with some confusion confirmed what I saw. Darla had not been killed. The body I had held had been made to appear as if it were hers. By whom, the huldra could not or would not say.

  I went to her. I diminished as I walked. The huldra grew cooler, its words fainter, and I realized that as my hurt and rage lessened, so did the power of the thing I held.

  I found myself across the Brown, alone, my boots sinking into mud and cowshit, the rain beating on me like it meant to not only kill me but wash away my corpse as well. I squinted into the night, made out a few lanterns swinging on the wind, what might have been light from a few windows, what might have been a fire burning under a shed roof a stone’s throw away.

  Before me was a leaning warehouse, probably used to store hides or hooves or who knows what for the tanners upstream. And in there, somewhere, was Darla, alive and whole.

  But surely not alone.

  I had a wax-sealed tortoise-shell bent on devouring my soul. I reached for my army knife, but it was gone, lost somewhere in the rain. A smart man would have waited for Evis, would have gone for help.

  There was no light in the warehouse. It was just a blur in the beating rain. I waited until lightning showed me the way to a door, and then I made for it, leaving my right boot behind, gripped fast by the greedy sucking mud.

  I listened at the door.

  The place was quiet, aide from the beat and roar of the rain and rolls of angry thunder echoing within. I hoped the din of the storm had concealed my squelching one-booted march, then dismissed the thought entirely-what good was stealth to a man about to face vampires or sorcerers or hairy old Troll gods with nothing but a single faint hope and a boot full of rain?

  I shrugged.

  I knocked.

  Sometimes simplicity is the best approach.

  “I know you have Darla Tomas,” I said, in a shout. “Maybe you know what I have. Maybe you know what just happened to the boys downtown. If it’s true that bad news travels fast, then this news should have been here for hours, because it’s about as bad as news can get-”

  The door opened.

  Helpful lightning flared.

  Father Foon himself glared at me from inside. Behind him, lanterns were hastily uncovered.

  At his back were maybe two dozen men in red and black Church armor. Their swords were bloody, and some of their old-fashioned breastplates sported big dents. I could see at least two pairs of armored feet laying toes-up and still on the wet floor.

  Father Foon stopped gritting his teeth long enough to speak.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me,” I agreed. I pushed my way past him, smiled at the ranks of assorted gleaming blades that turned swiftly my way. “Where is she?”’

  “Where is who?”

  The huldra stirred, and I felt a tingling creep up my spine.

  “The brunette. Tall thin lady. I imagine by now she’s used bad language, and has probably made numerous suggestions as to what you can do with your mask and your swords.”

  Father Foon began to gobble out a denial, but the huldra whispered to me, and I parted the ranks of soldiers with a single quiet Word and brought my Darla, kicking and trying to scream around the gag in her mouth, up through the floor in a burst of warped, wet planks.

  “Hello, darling,” I said, as I drew her to my side. “Have these persons been less than polite to you?”

  Father Foon was pale. Pale as he watched Darla float and glide, pale as he saw the huldra in my hand, paler still as I let him see the light beginning to burn in my eyes.

  “I threatened you with damnation earlier.” His voice was suddenly quiet. “I did not expect to see it take you so soon.”

  I laughed and made the gag fall away from Darla’s mouth, made the ropes at her wrists loosen and drop. She touched me, wrapping
her arms around my waist, but then she drew them back, as if stung.

  “You did indeed,” I said. “Not so very long before you went forth intent on committing murder.”

  “This was not murder. We exterminated a nest of vampires.”

  “You exterminated the wrong nest.” I met Darla’s gaze, and she frowned. “The main party was downtown. Practically in the shadow of your steeple. How long have you known, Father? Was it just not worth getting your hands dirty until Hisvin got involved?”

  “We knew nothing until yesterday.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all? Why, Father, isn’t lying one of the sins you and your masked ilk are always babbling on about?”

  “Believe what you will,” snapped the Father. “We would not have borne such an abomination to continue, had we known of it. They used the sacraments of the Church, they will pay, rest assured they will pay.”

  I smiled. “Oh, they have paid. Priests and halfdead alike. By my hand, Father. By my hand.”

  Father Foon rocked on his feet, exchanged looks with a soldier, swallowed.

  “And what of her?” I asked, motioning to Darla, who stood close but refused to touch me. “Why was she not released from her bonds, after her captors were slain? Seems an odd way to rescue someone, leaving them tied and gagged. Unless, of course, you decided the best way to ensure her blessed and eternal silence was with a few swift blows from a churchman’s sword?”

  Father Foon blustered. The huldra whispered, showing me things, and I chuckled at the image of all his soldiers boiling in their armor.

  Darla caught my arm.

  “Markhat,” she said. “Look at me.”

  She pulled me close, wincing, as though my touch caused her pain. Later she would tell me it had, that my skin burned and moved under her hands, that as long as she touched me she heard strange echoes and snatches of odd words and long, lingering screams.

  “You fool,” she said, and she reached up and stroked my cheek. “Oh, you fool, what have you done?”

  “What I had to do.” My throat grew tight. “Had to make them pay.”

  “Pay?”

  “You were dead,” I said. “They killed you. Hurt you. I had to make them hurt.”