Brown River Queen

by Frank Tuttle

  He kept shouting, calling her name. In desperation, he reached up and took her hands.

  As soon as they joined hands, he stopped shouting. His feet began to move in time with hers. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth.

  His eyes lost focus.

  They twirled silently away, and were gone.

  “It’s a geas,” said Mama. She spat. “Damn, these here people is liable to dance ’til they’re dancin’ on nubs.”

  A woman brushed past us and joined the dancers in a jerky, tortured path across the floor, her hand held up to a partner who wasn’t there.

  More are being called. I cannot stop it.

  I took Darla’s hand, motioned to Stitches. “Would something like this need a hexed object?”

  Damned if I know.

  I spied something on an empty table just beyond the range of the dancers and took a couple of steps to get a better look.

  A small ornate chest, all brass and dark wood, sat on the table. Atop it, two tiny dancers spun in an endless circle.

  “Stitches. Do you see that?”

  Before Stitches could reply, Mama trundled past me. She brought her poker down on the music box with a wild yell.

  The mechanical dancers danced on, unbroken.

  Mama howled and swung her poker sideways. It struck the music box with a clang and bounced out of Mama’s hand, leaving the box intact and in place.

  Mama hacked away with her cleaver, which raised sparks and left deep gouges in the table but couldn’t land a solid blow on the music box. Mama cussed and adopted a two-handed stance that probably would have decapitated Trolls but merely left her huffing and puffing as she circled the music box, swinging.

  Stitches marched up beside Mama and brought her staff down hard on the clockwork dancers. There was a crack of thunder and Mama stepped back, still wheezing and puffing.

  The tiny dancers danced on, unharmed.

  This artifact must be summer-born. Stitches backed away from it. I advise keeping your distance.

  “Markhat.” I turned, recognizing the voice and having no idea how the Regent had come to stand beside me. “The huldra. Give it to her.”

  His creature oozed up, smiling at me, her right hand outstretched. It should have been covered in blood. There wasn’t a drop to be seen.

  I hauled the false huldra out of my pocket and handed it to her.

  She took it. We touched, just for an instant, and I had to fight not to jerk my hand back. Touching her was touching something far, far colder than the coldest winter ice.

  She held the huldra in her right hand. Black talons emerged from her fingers, a tiny drop of venom glistening at the tip of each. She squeezed her hand, and one by one her talons penetrated the black wax that sealed the false huldra’s tortoise shell.

  When her talons were buried in the wax, she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and howled, writhing like a devil right out of the Book.

  “Damn,” said Mama, summing up my emotions quite well.

  It straightened, opened its eyes, and pushed the huldra back toward me, its talons withdrawn. I thought about the venom and snatched up a discarded linen napkin and shoved the damned thing back in my pocket.

  About us, men rendered mad by a walking corpse’s touch, screamed. Dancers in the grip of a deadly spell moved, pirouetting and spinning and swaying, their eyes wide with terror. Gunshots rang out sporadically—pop pop pop—and I heard wood splinter off in the dark.

  “I believe I shall retire for the evening,” said the Regent. He offered his creature his arm, and she took it, still smiling that deadly small smile.

  They walked through the dancers, untouched.

  Stitches pulled me and Darla away from the music box.

  I am unable to determine its method of selection, she began. But given time—

  Screams arose from our right, and a small band of revelers who had taken refuge behind a makeshift barricade of tables and gambling machines broke into sudden panicked flight past us.

  Mama cussed and raised her cleaver. Stitches spun her staff, causing it to shine a bright blood red and emit a high-pitched whine.

  Evis moved to stand at my side. He held an enormous double-barreled rifle, to which a light was attached. He aimed it toward the far wall.

  I squinted, but saw nothing save for shadow.

  Mama Hog followed the light too, and cussed.

  “Don’t look,” she shrieked. “Don’t nobody look!”

  I looked. It was just a shadow in a roomful of shadows. Darker, perhaps.

  Deeper.

  My mother appeared, in the same threadbare apron she’d worn, I supposed, every day of her life.

  She waved and smiled. I’d taken a step before I realized what I was doing, before I remembered burying Mom in a poor man’s boneyard on a rainy day in winter.

  Mama stamped hard on my foot.

  “Dammit, I told you not to look!”

  I turned away, more angry than afraid.

  Darla turned to face me, tears in her eyes. I’ve never asked who she saw. She’s never told.

  Screams sounded. I glanced that way, saw a man in an old Army dress uniform being dragged into the shadow by a dozen pairs of emaciated hands.

  When he reached the place where the wall should have been, his screams simply ceased, and we faced nothing but shadow once again.

  An ethereal interface, said Stitches. One born of blood sacrifice.

  “What the hell? I don’t see any corpses.”

  I too am puzzled. But I estimate at least ten deaths would be required to commence the process.

  I groaned. “Would they have to take place all at once?”

  No. But we have not had ten fatalities all evening, by my count.

  “The accidents during the Queen’s construction. The curse. Damned if it wasn’t a curse after all.”

  Our internal investigation revealed no foul play in any of the accidents.

  “We can ponder that later.” Evis motioned toward the shadow. “If it’s what I think it is, where does it lead?”

  “Leads to Hell itself,” muttered Mama. She charged suddenly toward the shadow, tackling a woman in waiter’s garb before she could get close.

  I joined her, dragging the woman back though she fought and begged.

  Darla threw a glass of water in the woman’s face when we wrestled her back to the stage. Evis ordered a pair of halfdead to take her to her room.

  “The other corpse,” I managed, winded after my struggle with the woman. “She’ll probably rise too.”

  “Already has,” replied Evis, who kept his eyes on the shadow. “Guards heard her banging around in the closet where they’d stashed the body.”

  “They go nuts too?”

  Evis shook his head. “Hardly. They nailed the door shut without opening it. They knew dead when they saw it.”

  “Bright lads.”

  Evis nodded. “What do you think would happen if I laid this rifle barrel right against that music box and pulled the trigger?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  Evis sighed. “I hate it when you’re right, Markhat. Didn’t scratch the thing. Got any ideas?”

  “One crisis at a time.” I gestured toward the shadow. “What about putting a dozen of your men in a half circle around that with their backs to it? To keep people from wandering too close?”

  He barked orders. Halfdead took their places, horror at their backs. If any of them were fearful they didn’t let it show.

  One drunk wobbled up, shouting to someone only he could see and trying to sidle past. He got a rifle butt to his face for his trouble. A waiter grabbed him by one leg and dragged him off to safety.

  I caught Darla staring at the shadowed place again. “No,” she said before I could ask the question. “I’m not looking into it. Just at it. And honey, I believe it’s getting larger, by the minute.”

  Evis glanced at Stitches. “Is it?”

  Stitches aimed her glass staff that way. The metal vanes
whirled.

  Yes. Its boundaries are moving. I may be able to slow it down. But I cannot halt its expansion entirely.

  A bony hand emerged from the dark, groping blindly about. Another joined it, grasping at empty air with fingers that dropped flakes of desiccated flesh.

  Stitches hurled a sizzling arc of crackling light full into the shadow, right over the heads of the Avalante soldiers. The skeletal hands withdrew but the darkness remained.

  One of Evis’s halfdead soldiers broke from his post about the shadow, walking jerkily toward us, as though injured or ill. His rifle fell from his grasp as he drew near.

  “Damn,” said Mama. “Didn’t think I’d see no halfdead get called to dance.”

  Evis opened his mouth to protest, but the halfdead brushed past us, his dead eyes wide and dry, his mouth open as if trying to speak.

  He took his place amid the other dancers, and began to spin and turn.

  “That isn’t possible,” said Evis.

  I beg to differ. Stitches stared, eyes moving back and forth like those of a dreamer, behind her tight-sewn eyelids.

  The capture of dancers is increasing in frequency, at a rate that appears commensurate with the expansion of the shadow.

  “So we can either be grabbed by whatever is in the dark, or be forced to dance until our legs wear down to stumps, is that it?”

  Not entirely. That which lies beyond the shadow is beginning to emerge. In doing so, it is inducing small but fundamental changes to the nature of reality within the Queen’s shield.

  “The air feels funny,” agreed Mama with a frown. “So somethin’ is aimin’ to choke us out?”

  It appears so. If I am correct, the changes exerted by the shadow will soon render our reality compatible with that which lies beyond.

  “Which lets them just stroll out and snack on the dancers,” I said.

  Stitches nodded. Unless I collapse the shield.

  “Doing that leaves us open to an ambush by Hag Mary and her pals,” said Evis. “Someone has thought of everything.”

  A new pair of skeletal hands appeared from the growing shadow. Evis barked a command, and his ring of foot soldiers turned and fired.

  Finger-bones shattered and flew.

  Something in the dark howled with laughter.

  A door slammed. I heard shouts, arguing, a man’s voiced, raised and furious, and a woman’s, soft but stern.

  Lady Rondalee herself took the stage.

  “The band can’t stop playing,” she said to Evis. “Am I right that those folks can’t stop dancing?”

  Evis nodded. “You should get to your room,” he said. “It isn’t safe here.”

  Lady Rondalee laughed. “Child, it’s not safe anywhere on the Brown River tonight. But I was hired to sing and sing I shall. Maybe I can do some good that way. Ease these poor souls’ pain.”

  Evis frowned. Mama spoke before he could.

  “I reckon we all best be doin’ whatever we can, and no mistake,” she said. “If’n you knows the risk.”

  “All too well.” The Lady Rondalee smiled down at Mama. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hog.”

  “Likewise, Lady of Bel Loit.”

  And the Lady Rondalee began to sing.

  She didn’t have music. The musicians were playing, all right, in that their hands were moving and they were making noise, but it was just noise now—tooting and twanging and discordant strumming.

  The Lady Rondalee didn’t need music. She carried her own deep down in her voice, and when she sang the dancers slowed and the musicians slumped, panting and sweating, but able to steal just a moment of precious rest.

  Evis gave orders. In a moment, the recorded music began to play, and the Lady used it, her voice soaring and soothing with the foreign, melancholy tune.

  “She’s buyin’ us some time,” said Mama, glaring at the music box. From the look on her face, I could tell she was weighing the risk of taking one last spiteful swipe at it. “We’d best be about puttin’ it to good use.”

  Darla dodged out of the way of a new dancer. “Mama, how is she doing that? Slowing them down, I mean?”

  “Don’t know. They got their own magic, down Bel Loit way. I’ve heard the name Rondalee. They say she can sing up hexes like nobody’s business.”

  On stage, the Lady Rondalee must have heard, because she bowed and smiled, never missing a beat.

  I hauled Darla away from the weary dancers and back to our makeshift cauldron, Mama and Evis and Stitches in tow.

  Armed halfdead prowled the deserted casino. More skeletal arms began to emerge from the dark. Evis forbade his men from wasting ammunition by firing on them. He held a quick conference with a trio of black-shirted day folk, and they hurried toward the main doors and out into the night.

  “Let’s get this done,” said Evis, glaring at our boiling stew pot. “Stitches, Mama, how much longer?”

  Another hour, perhaps an hour and ten.

  Mama dropped to her haunches and started poking at her pile of trinkets and herbs. “‘Bout the same, I reckon.”

  Another vacant-eyed reveler raised a ruckus by tangling with the halfdead trying to keep people away from the stricken dancers. The new dancer broke free and started twirling while the halfdead watched helplessly.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “What if I throw yonder music box into the shadow?”

  “How you reckon on movin’ it at all?” Mama shook her shaggy head. “I tell ye, boy, it might as well be bolted to the floor.”

  “Mama. That rope that got you here. Still got it?”

  Mama nodded. “Right here in my sack.” She wanted to ask me what made me think a banshee-hair rope would be able to pull the music box when she couldn’t budge it, but she was wise enough not to ask it aloud.

  I was glad. Because I didn’t have an answer. For all I knew a rope woven with Buttercup’s golden locks wouldn’t do a damned thing against a magical item of such potency, but then again I doubted even a summer-born Elf suspected a banshee was nearby.

  “I need it, if it’s handy.”

  “If it please ye.” Mama rummaged in her burlap sack, withdrew a number of ragged dried birds, and finally produced a tangle of what I first took for twine.

  She pitched it to me.

  “You call this a rope?” It was as thick as a pencil and already beginning to unravel here and there.

  “At two pence a foot, you’re damn right I call it a rope,” said Mama. “I weren’t aimin’ to pull no millstones.”

  I sat and started untangling the mess. Mama went back to her piles, muttering all the while.

  “Angels and horses,” said Evis, lifting his weapon. “Stitches, can you spare a moment?”

  The darkness on the wall disgorged a human skeleton—whole, complete, and animated. It bore a long, curved sword, and managed to take half a dozen tentative steps toward the nearest of the Avalante guards before an invisible barrier halted its advance.

  Another bony revenant stepped from the shadow, and another, until a dozen of them pressed against a wall we couldn’t see.

  Elemental constructs, said Stitches. I presume they are the vanguard for more sophisticated entities which cannot yet exist in our world. She sounded almost disappointed at the pronouncement. Still. The volume of influence is expanding more rapidly than I expected.

  “If we shoot them, will they fall?”

  Yes, if they suffer sufficient structural degradation. Make your shots count. Their numbers could range from finite but uncountable, to practical infinity.

  Evis barked an order. Rifles cracked. Bones splintered and skeletons fell.

  Immediately, more began to march out of the dark. This time, they advanced half a step farther than their now-broken brethren.

  A new pair of dancers lurched toward the stage. Evis’s men made no move to stop them. While I watched, another halfdead joined the dancers, his black cloak rendering him nearly invisible as he moved.

  Another volley of rifles sounded, and another wave of bo
nes fell, only to be replaced by twice their number. I fought off the urge to open fire myself, and concentrated on unraveling Mama’s damp tangle of banshee-hair rope.

  Two of the three men Evis sent outside came racing back. One was bleeding from a chest wound. The other was wrapping his bloody hand with a towel while he whispered to Evis.

  I saw it in his eyes before he could speak. “I sent them to the piston deck,” he said as they left to tend their wounds. “The wheelhouse is gone. Full of that.” Evis pointed to the shadow. “Can’t get below decks either. Shadows and bone-men where the hatch used to be.”

  The Queen’s pistons still beat beneath my feet. I could hear the wet slap of her wheel faint above the music.

  “We’re still moving.”

  “She was built to be unstoppable.” Evis fired, causing Mama to cuss and a skeleton man’s skull to explode. “Damn it, Markhat. Is this stew-pot and that contraption the best we’ve got?”

  “No.” I’d been waiting for the right moment and decided this one was as good as any. There were people milling about. The odds that one of them was our Elf probably wouldn’t be improved by waiting. “We’ve got this.”

  I pulled the false huldra out of my pocket and held it up for all to see.

  Mama sprang to her feet, yelling and cussing. Evis took a step back, genuinely startled.

  The last time I’d held a huldra—the real one—I’d nearly killed Evis and Mama both.

  “Damn, boy, have you lost your mind?” Mama reached into her bag with both hands and pulled out dried, ragged bird-corpses by the handful. “You know that cursed thing will eat you alive!”

  “I was told you destroyed it,” said Evis. “I was told it was gone forever.”

  “It’s the only way, Mama.” I lowered the thing. Everyone on the floor had seen and all were listening. “Even it might not be enough by itself. But with this rig and Stitches’s help, I’m going to add Elf meat to my stew-pot by sunrise. Wait and see.”

  Mama shook birds at me and muttered softly. Evis kept his rifle aimed at the floor, but I could almost see him trying to decide how quickly he could bring it to bear if I showed signs of being taken by the huldra.

  Darla made a remarkable good show of trying to grab the thing. When I resisted, she pretended to weep, keeping her fists balled over her eyes so no one would notice the lack of tears.