The Years of Longdirk- The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  "My sons also died in the war," she said. "They died bravely."

  The men exchanged puzzled glances. Admittedly a woman could be a wife and mother at fourteen, but Gracia was not much more than that even now. Could babies die bravely?

  She led her new friends directly to a shoemaker's dingy workshop, which was in predictable disarray, with heaps of old boots and buskins covering the floor. Obviously the invaders had helped themselves to whatever they could use and left their own footwear behind, and most of it was as disreputable as Toby's. Gracia, though, headed straight to a back corner and produced a brand new buskin of greater size than the rest, an adequate fit for his right foot. Its mate proved elusive. They had almost concluded that it had never existed and the cordwainer had died before completing a special order, when Hamish uttered a whoop of triumph and dragged the missing partner from under the ruins of the workbench. It was a little snug, but it would do.

  "I feel guilty robbing the dead," Toby complained, although he knew he was going to.

  "Oh, you must not care about that!" the girl said excitedly. "He does not grudge them to me, and I give them to you. So that is all right! Now we must find some better clothes for the senor. And the boy, also." She headed out of the shop, apparently unaware of Hamish's outraged glare or Toby's smirk. She was enjoying herself now. "This way! There are some garments that I believe will fit you. The senor is a very striking man!"

  She blushed at her own temerity and moved off quickly. Hamish made a snorting noise and rolled his eyes.

  This time she had to investigate several houses before she found the one she wanted. It had been home to someone almost Toby-sized, and no one had bothered to loot the clothes he had left behind in his tiny attic room. Even Gracia could not stand erect under the roof.

  "Obviously servants' quarters," Hamish remarked acidly.

  "A child's, a growing lad," Toby retorted. He found green-and-brown hose that fit when he cut the toes off, although they were uncomfortably snug around his calves and thighs, baggy at his hips and waist. The anonymous donor must have been wearing his jerkin the last time he went out, but he had left two shirts and a shabby brown doublet that could just close around Toby with gaps at the lacings. Even with the cuffs dangling above his wrists they were a big improvement on his previous rags, and Gracia was as thrilled as a child when he appeared in his new splendor. She wanted him to accept a flat cap of black velvet with a red feather in it, but he perversely insisted on retaining his steel helmet.

  "Now the boy," she said as they emerged into the evening light. "He will be harder to fit because he is so ordinary."

  Fortunately Hamish had his nose in a book by then and was so busy trying to walk and read at the same time that he did not hear.

  "What is the name of this place, senora?" Toby inquired.

  "Name?" She hesitated, looking up and down the street. "I believe the house we need is this way, senor."

  So she did not know the town's name, and that probably meant she could not read, because a little later in the looting expedition Hamish located some letters and announced that it was Onda. Gracia was also very vague as to how long she had lived there, but she had obviously explored it from cellars to chimneys, and her memory for what she had discovered was astonishing. Most clothes that would fit Hamish had already been looted, but she had noted and remembered a few shirts, hose, doublets, and even cloaks, and was able to lead the men to them.

  So they trailed around Onda after her, carrying the buckets, and she picked out the garments. None of them matched any other, some were bloodstained or impossibly soiled, but eventually Hamish was outfitted.

  "I feel like a court jester in this motley," he whispered as they followed their guide down a narrow staircase.

  "You look more like a looter," Toby responded glumly. Looters were hanged. Stealing made him feel guilty, even stealing from the dead.

  Gracia puzzled him. She made him think of a songbird in an invisible cage. Her attitude had changed from abject terror to absurd airs, so that she was issuing orders as if she expected to be obeyed without question, yet next moment she would be laughing and chattering like an excited child. She ignored the bodies in the streets except to lift her skirts when she stepped over them. At times she made nonsensical remarks about how much easier the senor's journey would be if he would just obtain some horses, and a moment later she would comment perceptively on the difficulty of finding anything to eat in the hills.

  When she had her new retainers outfitted to her satisfaction, she led them to little caches of food the looters had overlooked: beans, meal, onions, dried fruit, jars of oil, and a sack of hard wheat—most precious of all, because it would keep indefinitely. She had been dipping into it for her own use, but she expected Toby to carry off the whole bag, as well as all the other things she had loaded onto him. He was already feeling like a pack mule, but that did not stop her from detouring on the road home to top him up with bottles of wine and some firewood. Then she took her porters to the cistern so they could fill the buckets. Hamish was too laden with books to be much help.

  "The senor is perhaps hungry?"

  "The senora has not spoken a truer word since her naming day."

  "I am an excellent cook."

  "I hope you are also a speedy one, or I shall eat the firewood raw."

  Laughing at this brilliant wit, Senora de Gomez hitched up her hems and stepped over a dead child without seeming to notice it.

  Her little kitchen was clean, tidy, and cosily cramped with three of them in it, a bizarre oasis of domesticity in a city of death. She set half a bushel of beans to boil and rapidly peeled about a hundred onions. She put Toby to grinding the grain in a hand mill and Hamish to opening a wine bottle. By the time they had passed that around several times and he had opened another, the party became jolly. Toby's mouth watered copiously as the scents of food wafted around him—he could not remember his last good meal. Gracia bustled merrily, clattering pans while the fire crackled in the grate and her guests sat on their stools, awkward in their mismatched, ill-fitting finery.

  She put another stool between them, set a bowl on it, and began tipping food in. The men reached for it, burning their fingers and not caring. As soon as they emptied it, she would add more and they would start all over again. More wine bottles went around. She was as good a cook as she had said she was, considering the material she had to work with, and she had the sense to realize that her companions needed large portions. She helped herself to a few handfuls without ever sitting down.

  "It grows late." Hamish frowned at the little barred window. "We must be gone from here before sunset."

  Gracia's spoon paused in its vigorous beating of batter. "There is a room upstairs where the senores may sleep." She did not look at them. "There are no neighbors to gossip. Besides, it will be perfectly proper, because I shall be out." The spoon walloped against the bowl again.

  The senores exchanged glances.

  "I am concerned about the wraiths," Hamish said. "There are many unburied dead here and no spirit to care for them."

  "You need not worry about wraiths, senor. They have been attended to." She thundered her spoon in the batter.

  "I do worry about the wraiths. Wraiths drive men insane."

  "I have lived here for several nights, and they have not harmed me."

  Hamish looked skeptical.

  "What have you done for them, senora?" Toby asked quietly.

  Gracia flipped a drop of oil onto the griddle to test its temperature. "I have collected them." She added more oil and spooned out some batter.

  More glances. Women could be driven insane as easily as men, but Toby had been expecting something along these lines.

  "In the bottle?" The bottle was never far from her.

  Hesitation. "Of course."

  "Is this gramarye, senora? It is not a custom familiar to us in our homeland."

  "Have you had so much war and death in your homeland? No, it is not gramarye! How dare you suggest t
hat I would stoop to such evil?" But she still did not look at her guests.

  "Will you tell us the way of it, then?"

  She tipped more beans into the communal bowl. "Eat!"

  They ate in silence, while she plied them with tortillas and beans and onions, helping after helping. Toby felt as if he were filling an empty barrel. When at last they could eat no more, the light in the alley outside showed that the sun must be very close to setting.

  "Tell us about the wraiths, senora," said Hamish.

  "It is of no importance."

  He opened his mouth to protest—probably to point out that he regarded his sanity as of considerable importance—and Toby silenced him with a shake of his head. She responded better to him.

  "You are taking your sons' souls somewhere, senora? And these other souls also?"

  She promptly filled her mouth so she could not answer, but then she nodded.

  "This is a noble mercy, although I never heard of it being done before. Who taught you this skill?"

  After a moment she said, "My sons."

  Hamish rolled his eyes and looked around for his staff and bundle.

  "Where are you taking them?" Toby asked gently.

  She bit her lip, staring at him, and then seemed to decide to trust him. "To Montserrat, senor. There is a great tutelary there, just north of Barcelona. My sons asked me to deliver them to the spirit in the monastery at Montserrat."

  "You are traveling alone?" he asked incredulously.

  With a little more hesitation, she said that, yes, she was traveling alone.

  "This is a most fortunate coincidence. We are going to Montserrat. Will the senora permit us to escort her?"

  She gave him a smile as warming as a blazing fire on a winter night. "So that is why they told me to wait!"

  "Who told you, senora?"

  "My sons, of course!"

  Toby!" Hamish was glowering.

  Toby shrugged apologetically. He could not possibly let this poor child go wandering off alone again! It was a miracle she had managed to come this far without being molested.

  But Hamish's practical soul was much less impressed by this damsel in distress. "Tell us how you work this conjuration with the wraiths."

  "It is not your concern!"

  Toby said, "It should not be, senora, but if we are to be traveling together, then it might become so. The Inquisition, for example, might —"

  She froze, staring at him. The color drained from her cheeks.

  "We disapprove of the Inquisition," he added hastily and sensed Hamish shuddering at this indiscretion.

  "I have no dealings with demons!" Gracia cried.

  "Nor we, I assure you, but it takes only a whisper to start the Inquisition asking questions, and we all know how they ask questions."

  She looked down at the floor and spoke very quietly. "After the soldiers left Madrid ... I was the only one left, senor. They overlooked me at the end, when they slew the women. I hid under the bed where ... it was not my bed. I was the only one left, the houses were burning. I went to the shrine, and the spirit did not answer, so I knew they had taken it. I hunted everywhere for my husband and my sons, to bury them. All day I searched and could not find them. But that night my sons came to me. Their wraiths stood beside me—not as I had known them but as the men they would have been, tall and strong and handsome. They wept because their lives had been so short and they would never grow to that manhood. They wept more because they must evermore remain wraiths with no spirit to cherish them. They told me to take a bottle and gather up the souls, theirs and all the others, and carry them to the tutelary at Montserrat, for it would take them in and care for them always as if they had been its own people. That is what I have done, senor. There and anywhere else I found death. Is this a wickedness?"

  "No, indeed. It is a virtuous thing." He did not know if what she claimed was possible, but he certainly did not know that it was not. He dared not look at Hamish. No doubt Hamish could quote books on the subject.

  Gracia was relieved to have his approval. She smiled wistfully, her eyelashes glistening. "They still speak to me sometimes. Here I found much death, and it was hard for me to make the wraiths understand, because of the language. My sons told me to keep trying, to stay here for a while. They must have known you were coming, senor, a strong man to escort me through the troubled lands. But I think I have gathered all the souls in this town now. I shall go out again tonight to make sure. There may still be a few of the very little ones, I fear, who find it difficult to understand. They will not trouble you." She looked at him like a wounded plover.

  "I believe you. I shall sleep here tonight, then, with your permission." The hob would defend him, but it might not worry about Hamish. He stole a quick glance at his friend.

  "And I," Hamish croaked loyally, although he looked as if he could see the room full of ghosts already.

  7

  He had a lot more to say later, when the two of them were alone in the poky bedroom Gracia had appropriated for her use during her stay in Onda. The bed was too short for Toby and would not be wide enough for both of them anyway. He spread his blanket on the floor.

  "Toby, I thought you agreed we would not going to go to Barcelona?"

  "We can't abandon that child!"

  "Child? She's borne two children—or thinks she has. She's crazy!"

  "All the more reason to be kind."

  "Ha!" Hamish hurled the last of his clothes down and scrambled into the bed. "Kind? Child? She was dropping broad hints that she didn't really have to go out if the senor needed her and the boy could sleep in the dog kennel."

  "You're imagining things!" Toby stretched out on the floor and rolled himself up.

  "She wanted you to share her bed, and you weren't exactly ignoring her yourself. This is no time to start falling in love with a demented —"

  "You are being ridiculous and evil-minded!" Toby sneezed several times as his efforts to get comfortable raised dust from the ancient boards. "I am certainly not falling in love! I'm sorry for her, that's all." Memories of last spring ... Jeanne in the springtime ... disaster at Mezquiriz ... Agony in his throat. Never, never fall in love! Love was not for a man possessed. The dust was making his eyes water.

  "And you promised we wouldn't go near Barcelona." Hamish sounded aggrieved.

  "We can go around it. We'll cut overland, avoid the coast. That'll be just as safe as heading for Navarre. And if we find a convent, we'll leave her there, all right? Or some town with a tutelary that will care for her. Besides, I'm not convinced she's crazy at all. The wraiths don't seem to have molested her."

  "How could they?" Hamish said glumly, moving the candle closer and balancing a huge leather bound tome on his chest, a history of Aragon. "She was crazy before she arrived."

  "Is what she thinks she is doing possible?"

  "Not without gramarye, I shouldn't think. Ah, me! Demons last night, ghosts tonight? You won't mind if I read awhile?"

  "Not as long as you don't laugh too loudly."

  "If I cut your throat in the night, don't blame me for it." It would take more than a few hundred wraiths to distract him from a good, meaty book, but after a moment he said, "Toby? I realize that your vision, or whatever it was ... that your vision of Barcelona was pretty bad. I know you suffered. That doesn't mean you have to prove anything."

  "Prove what?" Toby asked his blanket. "Prove that you're not scared, I mean. I know you're brave."

  "Huh?" He could still smell that odious cellar, see the barbarous implements of torture, feel those cold manacles scraping his flesh. How long could a man endure being chained to a wall like that? How long survive in the cold and the dark? How long endure without sleep? And what happened after he broke, when he begged for release, telling everything, promising anything at all ... ? "What do you mean? That's an absurd backward way of thinking! Why would a frightening vision make me want to go to Barcelona? That's nonsense. Bloody demons! That's just as crazy as anything Gracia has said."

/>   Hamish grunted. "You needn't shout. Go to sleep, you big ox."

  Toby was awakened in the morning by a delectable odor of fresh-baked bread. Gracia was clattering pots downstairs. The candle had burned itself out, and Hamish lay fast asleep, the book pitched over him like a Gothic roof.

  Soon after that, the three of them walked out of Onda and headed north, over the hills.

  THREE

  The Hired Guard

  1

  Toby closed the door carefully. This dim, poky room was Master's workshop, where he did his hexing, and it held far too many fragile things that a big clumsy oaf like him might knock over—balances, mortars, brass instruments, bright-hued glass bottles, and a bewildering clutter of other mysteries, including a mummified cat. Dozens of books were heaped in disorder on shelves above the benches, but they did not look like the sort of books that would have pictures in them. The baron was stooped over a bench under the window. Rain streamed down the little leaded panes, and he had several candles burning, even in daytime.

  Toby?" he said without looking around.

  "Yes, Master."

  "Come and see this."

  Toby moved gingerly between a chair piled high with books and a globe of the world bigger than a wine cask.

  Master was poking a metal rod in a tiny brazier. "See this gem?"

  "Looks like glass. Master." It was hard to see at all on the bright-glowing coals.

  "It's rock crystal. But what matters is that the hob is inside that glass. That's where I put the hob, Toby. Immured, we call it."