by Dave Duncan
"I hate to think what I would be now if you hadn't brought it to Valda's lair. How did you know about it?"
Hamish smiled wanly. "When I was looking for coins with Fergan's head on them, before the prizefight . . . remember? You gave me your sporran to care for and told me to look through it."
"So you guessed that was where the power came from? Why in the name of demons didn't you say so?"
The smile became a triumphant grin. "I assumed you knew and didn't want to talk about it, of course! I am discreet, remember? That's what you told the king. And when you went tearing off in the night without it, I knew there was dirty work afoot."
"I can never tell you how grateful I am. I mean that!"
Hamish perked up to listen to new noises on deck, then turned and rose on his knees to look out the window again. He paused. "By the way, why did you tell yon king laddie that I killed the Krygon creature?"
"It was you who picked up the dagger and ... "
Hamish was shaking his head.
But... "Then who did?"
"The hob! You shouted at me to get the dagger, but I couldn't find it—it was in the fire—the table and all that stuff... I was looking for something else, a table knife or a fork . . . and your foot was almost into the stove. . . . Then I passed out from the smoke. But you managed to open the casket... No?"
"No."
"Oh ..." The boy's voice cracked. "The dagger jumped out of the fire and shot right into the creature's back—all by itself. I saw it, Toby!"
"I don't understand! The hob was locked up in that hexed box of hers. I didn't get it open until after."
They stared at each other. It made no sense.
"Unless ... demons and hellfire!"
He had it—whereas Hamish looked more like a startled rabbit than an owl.
Toby groaned as the implications sank in. "Didn't Lady Valda say that sometimes it's easy to make a switch? And when she tried to plant another soul in me, if the hob didn't like that..."
"Toby! No!"
"Yes! We've had it all backwards! Valda, too! That's why she couldn't find Nevil's soul in me—it was locked away in her casket."
"And that's why the hob still has free will!" Hamish shouted. "It's incarnate, not bottled. . . . Oh, demons, Toby!"
Father Lachlan had been horrified at the idea of him carrying a hob around on a chain. What would he say to carrying a hob around in his heart?
Now the presence of the hob suggested very sinister possibilities. Toby tried to laugh, without noticeable success. "Rory told me was I was a human hob! That's it! I'm possessed after all—possessed by the hob."
Hamish nodded morosely. "So you can't just drop it in the sea."
"I'm stuck with it!" Spirits! He was possessed by a hob! That might be better than being possessed by a demon, but not necessarily. The hob had no sense of right or wrong. It was childish, wayward, capricious. This hob might be even worse than most, because this hob, unlike all others, had decided on its own initiative to venture forth and see the world. He knew how it reacted to drums and thunderstorms—suppose someone started firing guns near him? It was totally ruthless, as Crazy Colin had discovered. It had made him lust after that absurd broadsword, dreaming of slaughter and mayhem. And it had been present at the prizefight, after all! It had probably enjoyed that roughhouse tremendously, perhaps even keeping him fighting and suffering long after he should have collapsed under Randal's battering, and today's battle with the demons, too—it had intervened only at the last moment. Very funny!
Father Lachlan had warned that it might drive him insane, or go insane itself. And Hamish's appalled expression confirmed that he could see all the terrible possibilities. Possessed by a hob!
Toby forced a laugh. "Well, what of it? I can't throw it overboard, but I can always get it exorcised at a sanctuary. Do you hear that, hob? You behave yourself from now on! And you cheer up, my trusty friend. We're on our way to see the world, aren't we? That's what we both wanted, isn't it?"
Hamish brightened and nodded.
The door opened. Toby hastily thrust the amethyst back under his plaid.
"Time to get to work!" Captain MacLeod announced cheerily. "We'll have no lazy layabouts on board this ship!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" Hamish piped brightly.
"Aye. First you both must sign the log. Means you agree to be bound by ship's law." The sailor chuckled. "And that means whatever I say it does!"
He pulled a large book down from the shelf and spread it on the desk. He uncapped the inkwell, wrote a line with a squeaky quill.
Toby did not enjoy having people watch him write.
Hamish must have noticed his expression. "My friend's hands are still swollen, sir. Can I sign for both of us?"
The captain shrugged. "Aye, as long as he makes a mark. Don't use the name that's on that Sassenach poster, 'cos other eyes may pry in there. Use whatever names you want to be known by. Your mothers will not be writing to you here." He stepped back and began unlacing his cloak. "That's a demon of a fire in the town!"
Toby winced. "Terrible."
The sailor eyed him thoughtfully. "You're a very fortunate young man, you are—escaping from demons and all. Glad to have luck like yours on board."
"He just blunders around," Hamish said from the desk—apparently he could talk even while writing. "I get him out of trouble when he needs help. Here, er..." He passed the quill to Toby and wriggled quickly out of the way.
Toby rose and leaned over the log book, squinting at the crabbed scrawl.
Hamish Campbell of Tyndrum, it said.
And underneath that—he spelled out the letters:
Longdirk of the Hills, his mark.
He turned his head to regard his self-appointed secretary, who was poised at the door—ready to flee if necessary, but gazing at him with a wild mixture of mischief and anxiety and boyish glee.
Toby grinned back. He had found the new name he sought, obviously. It would do.
So Longdirk of the Hills proceeded to make his mark.
Demon Rider
I am most grateful to Clélie Rich, without whose help the spells would have been quite incomprehensible, even to demons, and thus the ending would have been very different.
King Nevil, universally known by then as the Fiend ...
[In August 1522] Queen Caterina fled and Barcelona opened its gates…. After a merciless wasting of Aragon and Navarre, Nevil invaded Castile. When his guns began bombarding Toledo and his hexers rained down thunderbolts, King Pedro surrendered. Although the Fiend had never granted quarter to any foe in the past, he allowed Pedro to retain his throne after doing homage for it and renouncing his allegiance to the Khan. Caterina and her sons were handed over in chains and never heard of again, but the usual gruesome rumors were probably well founded….
Undoubtedly the most surprising clause in the treaty was the second, which dealt with a matter seemingly too trivial to mention in a document so weighty—it must have puzzled contemporaries as much as it intrigues modern historians. King Pedro agreed to hunt down an insignificant outlaw identified as "Tobias Strangerson, otherwise known as Longdirk." He was to be put to death "in a fashion appropriate to those possessed by demons," and his body, clothes, and possessions were to be handed over promptly to the Fiend's agents…. Nevil himself then withdrew from Spain….
The Fall of the Khanate in Europe
Jeremiah Hammer,
Oxford, 1932
ONE
Journey's End
The door of the crypt swung open with a long creak of rusty hinges that echoed through the black interior like a groan of despair. Iron-bound timber thundered against stonework and stopped; the booming reverberation faded into a tread of boots as a soldier entered, wearing the scarlet sash and gold-hiked sword of an officer. He carried a lantern, but after a few paces he had to stop and hold it motionless in the fetid air until its flame burned up more brightly. Then the darkness crept away behind pillars and back into corners, going grudgingly, as if
unwilling to expose the horrors it had been concealing—chains and manacles and intricate machinery for inflicting pain.
When he could see adequately he walked the full length of the chamber and played his light over the fetters and pulleys. He confirmed that the staples were securely anchored in the ancient stonework and that two wooden buckets had been provided, as he had ordered. He set the lantern in an iron sconce on the nearest pillar and waited, impassively ignoring both the pervasive stench and the gruesome furnishings lurking in the shadows.
Soon marching footsteps approached the door. A dozen soldiers entered, clanking mail and weapons and chains, clumping boots, raising the echo again. They herded their solitary captive as if he were some fiercely dangerous monster. Admittedly, he towered a head taller than almost any of them and had shoulders like battlements, but he was unarmed and four men held chains from the fetters on his wrists and ankles. He offered no resistance as he was hustled along to the end of the crypt, being intent on keeping his unshod toes away from all the heavy boots around him.
He wore only a short doublet, faded until its original checkered pattern was barely visible, and hose so ragged that they ended at his ankles. His brown hair was thick and curly, although the relentless Spanish sun that had burned his face to walnut had perversely bleached his beard almost to gold. His face was more notable for strength than beauty—square-jawed and heavy-browed, stubborn and self-willed—yet the steady hazel eyes were surprisingly unhostile, even as he was being manhandled. He seemed quite resigned to what was happening.
His captors turned him. Four of them thrust him back against the wall and held him there. Under the captain's watchful eye his fetters were secured to staples near the floor and the chain joining his wrists to one above his head. Only then did the men holding him relax and step back. As a final indignity, the captain himself came forward and drew his dagger to sever the laces that attached the prisoner's hose to his doublet and then cut the hose themselves in half so that they fell as useless rags around his ankles, leaving him naked below the waist. One of the soldiers placed the empty bucket midway between his outspread feet.
The officer dismissed the squad. They marched out, leaving the door open. Silence and relative darkness returned, with only the single lantern burning in its sconce. Captain and captive looked at each other without expression.
"I do hope you are not frightened to be left alone with me." The large young man spoke in an awkward mixture of Catalan and Castilian, and his accent for both was atrocious.
"I do what I am told, senor. Do you wish a drink of water?"
"Thank you." The young man seemed surprised by the offer. He drank greedily when the captain took a dipper from the second bucket and held it to his lips. The water would be fresh, for it had been drawn from the well less than an hour ago. He spilled some as the dipper was removed, and shivered.
"You are cold, senor," the officer said tactfully.
"Just frightened."
"I think not, senor. I can recognize fear. In Queen Caterina's day, we did not treat men so." He turned away, ashamed. Even the Inquisition allowed a prisoner to keep his private parts covered—except when he was actually being tortured, of course.
Obviously waiting for something, the soldier began to pace from left to right and right to left, never going very far away. The prisoner had no such option. He could only stand there against the slimy stones of the wall, shivering from time to time as the damp bit through to his bones. Then steel links would clink and the captain's head jerk around.
After twenty minutes or so a faint glow beyond the door announced the arrival of two men in civilian clothes, who advanced along the crypt, their cork-soled shoes making little sound. The first was a flunky carrying a lantern and a stool, the second a man of ample girth, which was emphasized almost to absurdity by the sumptuous, many-colored garments of a noble. His shoulders were padded out to twice their natural width, his features upholstered with rolls of fat. He walked with an affected, mincing sway, wielding a jewel-topped cane and sniffing a posy of flowers. When they reached the end the servant put down the stool and departed, taking the lantern with him.
The soldier drew his sword in salute. "Your Excellency, the prisoner has been secured as you instructed."
"Knowing you, I do not doubt it, Captain Diaz. There is a lot of him, isn't there?"
"He is a fine-looking man, your Excellency."
"Did he cause any trouble?"
"None at all. He displays commendable courage."
The nobleman frowned at this blatant admiration. "Close the door when you leave. I will knock when I am ready. See that it is guarded by six men at all times. The prisoner is to be inspected every two hours and given water if he wishes it. See he is well fed. He is a large man, and we must keep his strength up, you understand?"
"Oh, I understand completely. Excellency." The captain's tone was perilously close to insolence. He saluted again and marched out. The door groaned and slammed, filling the crypt with echoes.
The newcomer turned his back on the prisoner and strutted away until he reached about the middle of the chamber, where he raised a hand to his mouth, spoke softly, turned around once to the right and twice to the left, and said something else. Thereupon the blocks of the barrel-vaulted ceiling began to glow with a pale, gentle lavender light that grew rapidly brighter until the entire cellar was clearly illuminated. That was gramarye.
The change was no improvement, for it revealed the fungus and rat droppings in the corners, the glint of moisture on walls and floor, the meager barred slits that admitted little air and no light. Worse, the macabre furnishings that had hitherto been mercifully invisible were now in plain view. Most obvious was the notorious rack, a table of massive timbers with a windlass at one end, but the vises, braziers, and metal boots were every bit as ominous—as were the mysterious metallic contraptions that had no obvious purpose and therefore challenged the imagination to supply one. Walls and pillars were festooned with chains, whips, rods, pincers, branding irons, knives, and pulleys. No known means of generating unbearable agony seemed to have been overlooked.
The visitor paraded back with his finery now displayed in glory: a knee-length cloak of crimson velvet lined with sable over a hugely inflated jerkin of blue and gold satin, whose sleeves were puffed, slashed, and embroidered, and which gaped at the front to display a decorated and padded codpiece. The hose above his buskins were crimson, bulging over his fat calves. His hat was flat and wide, shadowing his features, and his hair was gathered in a cowl of golden net. He settled on the stool, sniffing his posy to avoid the stench of the room. In a plump face of indiscernible age, smoothly shaven and powdered with flour, his eyes were barely visible, lost in slits between pads of fat, but he smiled with thick scarlet lips.
"So we meet at last, Tobias Strangerson, known as Longdirk."
"Oh, thank the spirits!" said the prisoner. "Someone who speaks English! My lord—your Excellency, I mean—there has been a terrible mistake. My name is William of Crieff, a sailor from Scotland, and I don't know how —"
His Excellency laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement. "Still you do not give up? Master Longdirk, I am honored to meet you. There is an old saying that journeys end in lovers' meetings, but sometimes they can end in enemies' meeting, also. It has been a long time, has it not?" His voice had a guttural, Germanic rasp.
The young man shrugged to concede defeat, rattling chains. "Yes it has. Excellency." His expression gave away nothing.
"I am, of course, Karl Fischart, Baron Oreste of Utrecht, currently King Nevil's viceroy for Aragon."
"I know you," the prisoner said simply. Possibly his eyes glinted a little.
"Indeed?" Oreste spoke more softly than before. "You continue to surprise me, Toby, even now. How do you know me?"
"You were pointed out to me in Bordeaux."
"I was that close? Astonishing! Yes, it has been a long chase, but I have you now, and I do not think you will escape this time." Sequins
sparkled on his hat as he looked around the crypt. "I apologize for the accommodation—this odious cellar belongs to the Inquisition, of course, and I regret to say that they use it. Please understand that I do not intend to apply any of those revolting instruments to your flesh, young man. I have other ways to obtain what I need. I put you in here because this chamber happens to be very carefully warded, and in an unusual way. As you saw, it will permit one to use gramarye with immured demons." He spread out his fingers, and the rings flashed in spears of red and blue and green. "But it suppresses the weaker powers of incarnates. I hope this interests you. I am not boring you, am I?" If he was gloating, at least he was being polite. He might have been at home on his estate, speaking graciously to one of his retainers.
"Not at all. Excellency. I welcome the company." The prisoner was responding with suitable deference, neither defiant nor groveling. He shifted his weight from his right leg to his left. He had been given enough slack that he could bend his knees a little or move his hips, but the cold was his worst torment at the moment. The cramps and exhaustion were still to come.
"Ah, be careful, Toby! You may regret my presence soon enough and find solitude preferable. I always enjoy a worthy opponent. I admit I underestimated you at first, of course—a lowborn bastard from some remote Highland glen, ignorant, barely literate, never been away from the cows before. When the Scottish Parliament rushed through a special act condemning this unknown boy to death without trial on the grounds that he was possessed by a demon, I really thought your eggs were scrambled. Who could blame me?"
"It was your doing."
"Parliament? Yes, I did use a little influence there, I admit. But the possession was Lady Valda's fault, wasn't it?" The fat man chuckled. "I congratulate you sincerely on besting her. She had eluded me for ten years."
