Sword and Sorceress XXVII

by Unknown

  “Don’t be making me out to be a witch, you idiot. I’ve never tried to bespeak the dead up there, so who knows if I have any talent at calming them. And you know as well as I do there’s only one reason why any outsider, bishop or no, would be so interested in our local haunts.”

  Herrin fidgeted a long moment. “All right, the bishop wants the gold, but not like you think. It’s part of St. Kyre’s gold and needs to go south to the cathedral. The Lord Bishop is here to retrieve it. He told me his Ring of Office was blessed by the saint himself and will lead him to the missing gold, but he still needs my knowledge of the barrow. And that’s why you have to spell the dead to stay quiet for a bit. Will you help me?” he added quietly.

  “I’ll bring you a plate of stew and a mug of ale, but beyond that”—she fixed Herrin with a stern stare—”I promise nothing.”

  All this was so wrong that Jenna didn’t know where to start. There was no easy spell to quiet the unquiet dead for starters, and living here all her life, she’d never heard of any connection St. Kyre. The gold was cursed—everyone knew that. It would take more than the Church’s blessing to make something good out of cursed gold? And the Church regularly warned people to stay clear of hauntings and call a Holy Exorcist. Why would the bishop downplay the danger of the barrow?

  “First off,” she told her brother, “you can’t continue masquerading as a priest because priests are bad for business. If you’re going to stay a while, I’ll bring you some workclothes and introduce you around as my brother here on holiday. Second off, you can’t be dragging me into this. Gran might have known how to help, but I’m just a barmaid with the odd charm or two at her command.”

  Herrin sighed. “But Gran knew everything about the barrow. I thought she might have told you before she... passed.”

  An awkward silence descended. Herrin hadn’t come home when Gran had sickened last year. Maybe he should have been there; maybe it didn’t really matter. Jenna had put it behind her. “Gran used to say that the barrow dead weren’t out for vengeance and walked only because they were cursed to guard the gold. I daresay that’s different from most exorcisms.”

  “Maybe so, though I don’t think the Church differentiates. I thought I might go up and poke around this afternoon.”

  Jenna cringed. “Poking around? That’s exactly the wrong thing to do. You stay put in your room... I’ll go.” Then she winced. She needed to stay out of this matter, not rush headfirst into it. But she would do it for her brother. Her gaze softened. “But it’s good to see you again, Herrin. It’s been too long.”

  #

  The holding at the top of the hill had gone to ruin ages ago, but partial walls still marked the placement of the curtain wall and the main keep. It was no grand castle in the lowland sense, just the rough border holding with a barrow built into the far side of the hill.

  Jenna circled the hill until she reached the low arch that served as the entrance. Was she really doing this? Apparently so. She always knew he’d have to test her talent one day. Among the clutter of notes Gran had left was a recipe for talking to the dead with some measure of protection. And if it had worked for Gran, then... well, it seemed a better plan than Herrin “poking around.”

  Stooping, she made her way to a central chamber lit by shafts cut in the hillside. She opened her basket and brought out a loaf of bread and thimble full of salt. These she placed on the stone plinth that stood in the middle of the chamber. “A gift for those who rest here,” she intoned as she broke the loaf in half and sprinkled the salt over it. “May you look with favor on me and mine and not begrudge us our time in the sun. For night comes to all, all too quickly.” Then she pulled out the kitchen knife and pricked her finger, letting one, two, three drops of blood drip down on the bread.

  From deeper in the barrow she heard movement and had to plant her feet to keep from fleeing. A bit of blood freely given was supposed to grant protection, but it granted nothing against the fear she was feeling. She gritted her teeth as the clanking of metal on metal drew closer.

  Shadows paused in the mouth of the tunnel leading deeper into the hill. “Why do you disturb our rest?” The words were a dry whisper that barely carried.

  “We may both have the same need,” Jenna said shakily. Though she had rehearsed this speech carefully, the words tumbled out chaotically. “My brother, a servant of the Church, has been sent to lay this barrow to rest, and I am blood-bound to help him.”

  A long exhalation issued from the shadowed figures. It sounded ominous.

  “But I know from my Gran,” she continued hastily, “that the dead of this barrow do not rise out of malice or vengeance, but from a curse placed upon them long ago.”

  “It is so. We must walk while our task remains undone.” One voice seemed to answer this time.

  Jenna seized on that. “Then perhaps the time has come for that task to be completed. To that end, I offer you my aid. I have no great power, but I can accomplish some small magicks. We could be allies.”

  Then she waited, doubt creeping over her. While all this made sense to her, how could the living know what motivated the dead? She still had the kitchen knife, but that was no real defense if the spirits turned on her.

  “Perhaps so,” the shadow hissed softly. “The world has turned in an unexpected way. When the moon is high, I shall come to you. Now go.”

  Leaving the bread and salt, Jenna retreated quickly, backing down the entrance tunnel until she reached the arch and the sunlight beyond. She took deep breaths to quiet her trembling body, then headed down the hill.

  #

  He arrived in full armor when the moon was as its peak. The few people in the common room noticed, but not the right things. They saw a helmeted soldier, an unwanted authority figure. They didn’t see that the armor was outdated, that the crest on his breastplate was that of a long-dead clan. They didn’t notice that the common room grew chill when he entered.

  Jenna gathered her courage and went to meet him just inside the door. “This way, sir,” she said, beckoning to a corner table where they could talk without being overheard. There were more secluded places, of course—the rooms upstairs, the stableyard, the cellar—but she didn’t want to be that private with a revenant spirit. It seemed prudent to have help within easy screaming distance.

  “Can you take ale?” she asked as he lowered himself into the chair. An odd question for a dead man, perhaps, but bread and salt seemed to have some appeal.

  “Not really”—his voice was fuller, not longer a whisper, but surprisingly light—”but a mug before me would bring back pleasant memories.”

  She hurried to the counter to draw a mug and set it before him. Then, hesitantly, she took the seat opposite him. He reached up a gloved hand to loosen the strap of his helmet, and she tensed. She really didn’t want to face whatever skeleton animated the armor, but there seemed no choice in the matter.

  The helmet lifted, and she held her breath, expecting the moldering worst. Then she exhaled in surprise. Several surprises, actually. Not only was the face perfectly intact with piercing blue eyes and aristocratic nose, but it was also the face of a woman.

  “You are surprised, I see,” she said, shaking a cascade of dark hair.

  Jenna forced a thin smile. “I was expecting more... decay. I am delighted to be wrong. This conversation just became much easier.”

  “You were not so wrong,” the revenant said with a very human-looking shrug. “This afternoon you would have seen bare bones and rusted metal, but the moonlight allows us the semblance of what we once were. Your kind always seeks us by day, though, and so sees us at our worst.”

  “My kind—you mean the living?”

  Another shake of her head. “Witches, sorcerers, and the like. Those who always think that the dead have power to share if the right deal can be struck.”

  “I’m not really a witch,” she said quickly, “just a witchblood.” The reference to striking a deal raised old warnings. Trust not the dead, the saying went, for
they will betray every bargain. And how many times had Gran said never to bargain with the dead? Give them gifts, but never bargain. “I have no interest in striking a deal,” she added, “or in power or in your gold.”

  “So I sense,” the woman nodded. “That is one reason I am here. I believe you can be trusted.”

  Jenna blinked. What an odd thing to say, considering it was the dead who couldn’t be trusted. “My reasons are exactly what I stated earlier. I see the curse as the adversary here, not you. I hope we can be allies.”

  “Refreshing.” The warrior raised the mug and seemed to take a sip, though she might have only been sniffing the ale.

  “How is it you are a woman?” Jenna blurted out, unable to keep the question inside any longer. “Warrioring is a man’s profession.”

  “In my day skill with a sword was valued, whether wielded by man or woman. But your Church long ago stopped girls learning the ways of war alongside boys. Pity that. A woman has a very limited place in your world.”

  The statement might have been an invitation to argue, but Jenna didn’t rise to the bait. She actually agreed with her guest, the more so since facing the world alone without Gran. “The world turns,” she shrugged. “What about the curse? It is said to be the gold.”

  “It is the gold,” the revenant said, lowering the mug again. “But not the barrow gold of local legend. Gold was stolen during the night watch from my lord’s strong room. He decreed that none of the guards of my watch could rest until the lost gold returned. And so we rise each night.”

  “But why would your lord’s decree last after death?”

  “In my time, lords were also wizard-lords, and such pronouncements carried arcane weight. It is good, I think, they all killed each other off. Mine was a grim age where souls were often placed in bondage.”

  “Ah,” Jenna nodded. It explained why there were so many of these haunted ruins. The Church exorcists would have secure jobs for decades to come. “And the exact wording of the curse?” That was important in these matters.

  “Ye shall not rest by day or night ‘til the gold returns—those were his exact words.”

  Jenna nodded, playing with interpretations of the wording a moment, then suddenly deflated. “But that was hundreds of years ago,” she said slowly. “There is no chance of finding that same gold after all this time.”

  “But there is,” the warrior insisted with a glint in her eye. “We can sense the gold that binds us. It went far to the south, beyond our reach, to the city of your kings. The thief bought a sainthood with it and they raised a cathedral to his name. There the gold remains, at least most of it. I sense a tiny bit of it has returned.”

  Jenna frowned. There was only one cathedral in the King’s City. “St. Kyre’s gold? Are you saying St. Kyre was a thief?”

  “Kyre the Liar, I name him. He deceived me greatly that night.”

  A flawed saint—that would take some rethinking. Wait—a bit of the gold had returned? “Would a golden ring blessed by Kyre be part of this stolen gold?”

  The revenant froze. “Ring?”

  “Yes, the Lord Bishop of St. Kyre’s has come north and intends to use his Ring of Office to find the rest of Kyre’s gold.”

  Jenna had heard of chilly silences, but now sitting across from a dead woman, she felt the temperature physically plunge. “I didn’t mean to offend, milady,” she said hastily.

  “I am a warrior, not a lady. I am Brechia. There you have my name.”

  Jenna blinked, startled. Names could be power, and it made no sense for this undead warrior to be suddenly so open. “Why—”

  “To show that I trust you. You sense my anger, but it is not aimed at you. I smell anew the gold-lust of long ago, and methinks it doth royally stink. A flawed bishop of a flawed saint in the village and a traitor of your own blood much closer.”

  “My brother isn’t a...” But Jenna fell silent as she thought about that. In a test of loyalty, would Herrin jump toward her or toward the Church? She actually didn’t know. His heart was good, but he could be dense.

  “It will come to a head soon,” Brechia continued. “Are you still committed to help us restless dead find rest?”

  “I am—but St. Kyre’s gold is far away in the cathedral and short of taking the bishop prisoner and holding him for a golden ransom, I see no way of getting it. And I don’t mean that seriously,” Jenna added quickly because that sounded a little too much like a plan. Dealing with the dead, she couldn’t afford to misspeak anything.

  “Here’s what we shall do,” Brechia said in a low voice. “Send a message to this Lord Bishop that the barrow hoard has been found. We are willing to exchange gold for gold.”

  If the dead were offering a bargain, it had to be a trap... but the bishop would have Herrin in tow on any excursion to the barrow. “But you can’t—” Jenna began, then fell silent. She had to avoid anything that sounded like the terms of a bargain. “I mean,” she corrected, “that the bishop would never go the barrow himself. Perhaps a meeting here at the inn.”

  Brechia gave a quick nod. “Arrange it.”

  #

  Jenna brought tea and porridge up to Herrin’s room when dawn had scarcely broken. “Wake up. We have to talk,” she said, coming through the door.

  Herrin raised his head blearily from the pillow. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “No, it’s early in the morning—that’s why I brought you a nice breakfast. And we really do have to talk. I know of a way to lay the barrow dead to final rest.”

  That brought him fully awake. He hopped out of bed in his nightshirt and came to the table by the window where she had laid out the porridge and rudleberries. “You found something of Gran’s?”

  “Not directly, but...” Jenna gave a sigh. “Gran knew how to talk to the barrow dead, so I—”

  “You conversed with the damned!”

  “Keep your voice down,” she snapped. “And yes, I talked with one of the soldiers cursed to haunt the barrow. She told me it’s all about stolen gold.” Deliberately she waited, knowing that should trigger a reaction in a gold hunter, if that’s what her brother was.

  “She?” Herrin sputtered. “A woman can’t be a soldier. It’s all against the natural order and...”

  Jenna let him ramble on, relieved that he was reacting to gender and not gold. Finally she interrupted. “Apparently the natural order was different in her day, but that’s not the point. If the gold is returned, the barrow dead can rest in peace, so they are willing to trade the barrow gold for the stolen gold that was taken south to the cathedral and—”

  Herrin gave a sudden start. “St. Kyre’s golden altar service? The one that sits in the cathedral vault and is brought out on High Days?”

  Oh. “Then all you have to manage is”—she spoke rapidly to get the worst of it all out at once—”bringing the altar service from St. Kyre’s for the exchange. I’m sure some goldsmith can create an equally wonderful altar service out of the new gold. You can even say that you need the pieces for a Church-mandated exorcism—all of which is perfectly true. How could the cathedral say no to that?”

  “Probably with a sharp sword through my heart,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Jenna, none of that is going to happen. The Lord Bishop would never turn over St. Kyre’s altar service. He has his own plan for obtaining the barrow gold anyway.”

  “Which is?”

  “No idea. But I know he’s interested in negotiation. Where and when?”

  “Tonight. Here,” Jenna said. The word “negotiation” sent a chill up her spine. It was just bargaining under another name.”

  “And even if I had St. Kyre’s gold at my beck and call,” Herrin continued, “you realize, don’t you, that the damned can only want a consecrated altar service for unholy reasons?”

  “I doubt that,” she said, but was thinking furiously. It was a little odd that the stolen gold just happened to be a consecrated and very famous altar service. Was she just being stupid? All she had was the w
ord of an unquiet spirit... and she remembered what Gran said about trusting dead men. Or women.

  #

  As the afternoon crowd thinned out with the coming of evening, Jenna’s unease grew. Brechia had a plan, the bishop had a plan, and the two were probably on a collision course. Her stomach knotted just thinking about it as she hung out freshly laundered clothes in the garden behind the inn. Then just before sunset, the Lord Bishop rolled into the stableyard with his Knights of the Holy Retribution.

  Jenna kept hanging and rehanging clothes to keep from going back inside. Her instinct said to flee and leave the Church and dead to each other. But Herrin was inside. She couldn’t just leave him.

  Finally at dusk, she went inside, leaving laundry and basket in the garden, feeling taut as a clothesline herself. At the door of the inn, she noted a salt line across the threshold, the type intended to keep dark things out. This negotiation looked well planned on the bishop’s part. Jenna whispered a quick charm as she stepped over the salt line to allow Brechia entrance. That would at least even the odds. Inside, Jenna studied the far corner where Herrin, looking edgy as a cat in a kennel, sat with the bishop. Again the man made her cringe. He might look gray-haired and dignified, but she sensed a cold darkness. As she served the meager evening crowd, Jenna noticed more salt lines at the windows.

  Three Retributive Knights circulated around the perimeter of the room with swords drawn while the Knight-Commander hovered near the bishop’s table. This was another man she didn’t much like, Jenna realized after watching him a few minutes. Too much death on his hands... and no regrets.

  Suddenly the outer door opened. A Knight stepped forward, then backed up as a verbal barrage hit him broadside. “Get out of me way, you great-assed fool! Can’t you see I’ve got work to do and don’t think I won’t take it out of your hide if you put me behind!”