Ezekiel uncovered the lanthorn, set it down on the floor, and opened his coat. "I reckon I ought to tell you that I brung a pistol, too."
"I expected nothing less," replied Dr. Crow. His face, by lanthorn light, was uncharacteristically grim. He opened the satchel and extracted a small clay pot covered with a thin skin of leather. "This contains an explosive."
Then he took out another object, about the size and shape of a pomegranate. "This, also, is an incendiary device, a kind of grenado. You are a big man, but you appear agile. I assume, therefore, that you have an accurate eye and a good throwing arm. Yes? Then you will oblige me by taking this device into your keeping, and throwing it onto the witches' fire at the appropriate moment."
"Yes, sir," said Ezekiel, gingerly accepting the explosive. "But how will I know the appropriate moment?"
"You have revealed yourself as a man of some wit and imagination," said Dr. Crow. "I believe you will recognize the moment when it arrives."
He knelt down beside the firepit, removed several blackened boards, and scraped away the ashes underneath. Producing a trowel from his satchel, he dug a hole, and buried the covered pot about ten inches deep. Then he rearranged the wood and the ashes, so that everything looked undisturbed.
He stood up and dusted off his hands. "The hour is growing late. We had best climb up to the loft."
With the help of the "uncommon" rope ladder they ascended to the half-floor above. Dr. Crow pulled up the ladder after them, depositing it, along with the satchel, in a corner of the loft. Then he took the lanthorn and examined the floor minutely, until he found a large split in the wood, wide enough for him and his companion—if they knelt on the floor and peered through it—to view most of the floor below. "Now we can only wait," said Dr. Crow, as he extinguished the light.
It was not very long before they heard voices and a fumbling at the bar on the barn door. And there was nothing furtive about the approach of the Lüftmal witches. Those who arrived first spoke in loud, slightly tipsy voices, as though they had fortified themselves with ordinary spirits, for their meeting with the supernatural ones.
A creaking of hinges and a draught of fresher air announced the opening of the doors; there was a flicker of torch light, and two men and three women, cloaked and hooded, entered the barn. Once inside, they lowered their hoods.
Up in the loft, Dr. Crow heard Ezekiel draw in a sudden sharp breath, as though he had recognized someone and received an unpleasant surprise. One of the men carried in an arm load of twiggy wood, which he proceeded to place on top of the remains of the previous fire. He stepped back and allowed the other man to kindle the blaze with his torch.
The next to arrive was an ancient dame in a black shawl and dirty yellow dress, an ugly, lumbering old woman with a twisted lip and pendulous breasts. From under her shawl she drew a thick book bound in crumbling black leather.
"That will be the book in which new members of the Circle are required to write their names," whispered Dr. Crow. The witches were making so much noise down below that he and Ezekiel might have spoken aloud without fear of discovery, but he remained cautious. "The act binds them as no spoken vow could. There is many a poor man in Thornburg, unable to make a living for his very illiteracy, who would cut off his arm for this same skill with which your neighbors, fortunate in the attentions of some honest country clergyman, sign their miserable souls away."
Ezekiel nodded grimly. "Mr. Ulfson, the parson at Pfalz, I guess he'd break his heart, if he knew some of the names in that Black Book."
Members of the Circle continued to arrive: a woman and four men; and close on their heels, a sweet-faced girl and a handsome, swaggering youth, who came in hand in hand. "Isabel Winkleriss! I knowed she'd suffer through that scoundrel Martin Bergen, but I never thought he'd lead her into nothing so bad as this!"
About a dozen more came in, and then one of the men pulled the doors shut. "I make the count six and twenty," said Dr. Crow. "Something less than I had feared."
Ezekiel shook his head mournfully. "Less than I reckoned, too. But most of them I never suspected. Old Granny Hügel (that's the dirty old hag), I ain't surprised about her. But as for some others—"
"It is possible," said Dr. Crow, "that some are here merely because they feel safer within the Circle than without.
"But hush," he added, "I believe they are about to begin."
The witches continued to be as rackety as ever. Several of the women carried baskets or covered wooden pails, which they now began to open. Out of these baskets came chickens and rabbits, which the Circle proceeded to sacrifice in a series of rituals so lewd and bloody, they shocked poor Ezekiel to the very core of his honest being. Dr. Crow, however, watched impassively.
With these ceremonies and the sacrifices completed, Granny Hügel reached up under her ragged skirts and drew out a long, slender object like a spindle. It gleamed faintly yellow in the firelight, like a piece of well-polished bone or ivory.
"A carrier," hissed Dr. Crow. "This explains, at least in part, the depredations on your graveyard." He already knew something of these spindles: how they were usually carved from an arm or a leg bone, and nourished (for the carrier had a kind of unnatural life of its own) on the witch's own blood, sucked out through a raised bump, not unlike a nipple, inside the witch's thigh. "If any of your more honest neighbors are storing bags of wool in their barns . . ."
As Ezekiel and Dr. Crow looked on, the old woman put the piece of bone point down in a spot where the earth was particularly hard and smooth. She gave it a spin, as though it were a top, then withdrew her hand, squatting back on her heels to watch the carrier work.
It continued to spin, much faster than a top . . . faster and faster still . . . with a loud, unpleasant hum very awful to hear. The area around the carrier began to glow and shimmer, as if by some disturbance in the fabric of existence. And then, quite suddenly, the spindle began to fill with a thick, creamy thread, drawing it out of the very air, until the carrier grew so full that it over-balanced and fell to the ground of its own weight.
Very calmly, the hag picked up the spindle and began to unwind the wool. Another woman produced a large cloth sack, into which she began to stuff the stolen yarn, as fast as Granny Hügel could pull it from the spindle.
When all the yarn was in the sack, the process began again. The carrier spun around and around, magically transporting the wool. It fell to the floor, the hag stripped off the yarn, and then set it spinning once more. Someone in another part of the parish was being methodically stripped of his livelihood at the same time. And another family starved out, I make no doubt, for the sake of some petty grudge.
Meanwhile, some of the other witches were busy elsewhere. One of them, a man with brown skin and a sour face—whom Dr. Crow had no difficulty recognizing as one of the two farmers he had overheard talking at the inn—took a long knife out of his belt and thrust it into the north wall of the barn. He spoke a few guttural words and made some magical passes over the knife. Then he picked up a bucket and held it below the knife. A thin stream of milk came out of the hole in the wall and poured into the pail. When the bucket was full, the farmer took it down, and a woman brought him another pail.
"In the morning, one of your neighbor's cows, normally a good milker, will be unaccountably dry," said Dr. Crow. "Possibly, her udder will be inflamed, for the process is not a gentle one."
Milk continued to stream into the second bucket, until it, too, was overflowing. But this time, when the farmer withdrew the pail, nobody brought him another. The flow of milk went on for several minutes, soaking into the ground. Then it turned scarlet, like fresh-flowing blood.
"They mean to kill the cow," said Dr. Crow. "Do not fear, Ezekiel, we shall act very soon."
CHAPTER 23
Being most Regrettably Violent in its Character.
I believe," said Dr. Crow, "that we have seen all that is necessary." Standing up, he removed his cloak and his hat. He was just shrugging out of his coat when the doub
le doors of the barn flew dramatically open, and a draught of cooler air blew in. Dr. Crow stooped low again, so as not to be seen.
"Hark!" cried Granny Hügel. "Our Lord and Master is come to join our revels." The other witches immediately left off what they had been doing and formed a nervous semicircle around the fire, facing the doors.
A tall figure, very elegantly clad in a full-skirted coat of crimson velvet with a vast quantity of gold braid on the wide cuffs, strolled into the barn. He wore his plumed tricorn pulled low to shadow his face, so that it was impossible from the vantage point of the loft to make out his features.
Ezekiel drew in his breath. "It's the Dark One—Old Mezztopholeez hisself," he hissed in Dr. Crow's ear.
"I think not," came the whispered reply. "Neither the Prince of Darkness nor any other demon of the earth. Else why should he need to enter by way of the door?"
With a languid grace, the newcomer moved across the floor, raising black-gloved hands as if in benediction. Granny Hügel threw herself, groveling, at his feet. "Give us a sign, Master, reveal a wonder."
For answer, the figure in red stripped off a glove, flourishing—not the expected hand, but a scaly yellow claw with hooked talons.
Now it was Dr. Crow's turn to draw in a sharp breath. "Troll! That explains why fresh corpses disappear from your churchyard. But I had never expected to meet one so far south."
"Troll?" echoed Ezekiel. "But I always heard tell they was ugly and misshapen."
"Some are more obviously misshapen than others." Dr. Crow spoke directly in Ezekiel's ear. "Many have only a single deformity, which they may conceal or disguise. That he has chosen to reveal his argues that he has some exceptional hold over those deluded fools down below."
The old woman, after wallowing in the dirt for some time—and receiving whatever curse or blessing the troll had to bestow—rose to her feet and waddled over to join the others. Someone produced a silver goblet, and somebody else provided a long sharp pin.
As the cup and the bodkin passed slowly from hand to hand, each member of the Circle used the bodkin to pierce a vein in his or her wrist and the goblet to catch the sudden, unnatural gush of blood. When the cup was full, Granny Hügel presented it to the waiting troll. "Payment offered for favors given," rasped the hag.
The troll did not answer, but he took the stem of the cup between his talons, lifted it, and drank all the blood in a single draught. Then he extended the goblet to Granny Hügel. "It is not enough. I require more."
At his words, several of the women began to tremble. The troll raised his talon and pointed at one of the more comely females. "That one," he said.
With a faltering step, with eyes rolling back in her head as if she were about to swoon, the chosen victim advanced.
But now Dr. Crow was ready to take action. He removed his waistcoat, stood up in his full-sleeved white shirt and breeches. A large metallic medallion, suspended from a silver chain, glittered on his breast. He slipped a hand up his left sleeve and pulled a dagger out of some hidden sheath. "Come with me to the edge of the loft, Ezekiel, but stand a little back. It is not likely they will notice you, considering the distraction I am going to provide."
With the dagger in one hand and the medallion clutched in the other, he advanced to the edge of the loft. After a moment of hesitation, Ezekiel followed, bringing the grenado with him.
Down on the floor, they were all entranced by the drama of the woman and the troll. Up in the loft, Ezekiel was equally entranced by his companion's startling transformation.
Before the young farmer's astonished eyes, Dr. Crow's slender figure seemed to change and grow—taller—wider—brighter—so bright, indeed, that the light dazzled Ezekiel's eyes. Dr. Crow was gone: in his place stood a shining figure wrapped in garments of light, spanning the distance from the floor of the barn all the way up to the roof. Where Dr. Crow had carried a dagger, his gigantic counterpart wielded a tremendous jeweled sword.
The sudden blaze of light and heat finally drew the attention of the witches—that, and the thunderous beating of mighty rainbow wings. Granny Hügel gasped and staggered toward the fire. All of the women (and most of the men) shrieked in terror. Then people began falling to their knees, in abject submission. Only the troll remained standing.
Radiant Martos, the avenging Fate, brandished his gleaming sword. "Repent," he roared, in a deep, stormy voice, like lightning and thunder, like the fury of the wind on a wild night. "Vengeance is coming, and those who have not clean hands shall surely suffer."
It was then that Ezekiel—sensing that the proper moment had indeed come—flung the grenado into the fire.
There was a brilliant flash and a loud explosion, followed an instant later by a second, more violent blast as the firepot in the earth ignited. This second blast caught many of the witches and flung them into the air. They came back to earth again with so many sickening thuds. Some of them did not move again.
With shrieks and cries, all those who could scrambled to their feet and ran out of the barn. The troll led the exodus, his elegant crimson velvet blackened by the blast.
The barn caught fire in two places, but mighty Martos pointed his sword and spoke the words, and the fires were instantly extinguished.
Dr. Crow sat on the edge of the loft, dangling his legs. By the light of Ezekiel's uncovered lanthorn, he looked ill as well as weary.
"Do not stare at me in that fashion, my good Ezekiel, I do implore you," he said. "I am not Great Martos incarnate. It was an illusion, nothing more."
Ezekiel grinned sheepishly. "It were a mighty impressive illusion, that's certain. Said you'd put the fear of the Divine into the lot of 'em and that's just what you did."
He brought the satchel and the rope ladder over to the edge. He was about to attach the hooks and toss the ladder down, but then he stopped. "We use the ladder, we can't take it with us; we leave it behind—"
"If we leave it behind, the whole elaborate illusion will come to naught," said Dr. Crow. "If demons of the earth do not enter by way of the door, neither do winged Fates require the use of a rope ladder. Well, after all, it is not too great a distance. If we lower ourselves from the edge by our hands, we ought to be able to drop the rest of the way without any harm."
Ezekiel eyed his companion doubtfully. "Begging your pardon, sir, but you look done in. Do you really reckon you could manage that? Why don't you use the ladder? I can throw it down after you and then drop down myself."
"Yes, if you please," said Dr. Crow. "Undoubtedly that would be best."
Following this plan, they both reached the floor of the barn without sustaining any injury. "I suppose," said Dr. Crow, "that we are obligated to look at the bodies; one of them may yet live."
He bent down to examine the first corpse. "Granny Hügel. I am pleased to count her among the dead." Her unholy glee throughout the proceedings had deeply offended his sensibilities. Now the hag lay in an awkward tangle of arms and legs, in a pool of her own blood.
"Isabel Winkleriss . . . that I believe I may regret," he said over the next. "And her swain, Martin Bergen . . . that I shall have to consider."
As the need for action was past, he was rapidly undergoing a change in identity, from vigilante-saboteur to a man of compassion and compunction. It was one of the less comfortable features of his chameleon-like nature, this tendency on the part of his more ruthless personas to beat a hasty retreat once they had done their dirty work, and leave one of the gentler spirits to deal with the consequences.
He turned over the body of an old man. All the hair had been singed off the head, and the face was as black as soot.
"Rudolf Bormann," offered Ezekiel. "He were a bad one, beat his wife and starved his children. Tell you what, though: I'm mortal sorry we didn't get the troll."
"As am I," said Dr. Crow. "I feel certain he was responsible for much that we saw here. More often than not, these Circles never rise above the level of petty mischief—some of them, indeed, mean to do good—but with a gentl
eman troll of some learning to instruct them in the darker, more potent magics—"
"But why?" asked Ezekiel. "Why did he want to stir them up for? Why did he set them to robbing and tormenting their friends and neighbors?"
"To gain power over them," said Dr. Crow. "To gain power, by apparently bestowing power.
"They are a strange race," he continued reflectively. "Their origins are a mystery, for none of the ancient texts credit any of the Nine Powers with their creation. Some believe them a mongrel race . . . others, a breed of Men altered by evil magic." He walked over and picked up the silver goblet. "They relish no meat so much as the flesh of Men, but as for drink, the males prefer, above all else, to drink the blood of living maidens. Moreover, when the blood a he-troll drinks has been obtained from a girl who has been sealed to him in their version of matrimony, the troll is said to derive some special benefit."
He shrugged. "A troll superstition, perhaps, yet one they firmly believe. The male will often go to great lengths to find a girl and persuade her to marry him, usually a dairymaid or shepherdess: a big, healthy country girl, in whom the life force runs strong. But an unattached troll, as we have seen, can live equally well on blood obtained by other means . . . and of course on the flesh of the recently deceased."
Ezekiel shook his head. "Don't seem likely he'd find enough meat on the bones of a beggar. Don't seem like what there was would be very sweet."
"But paupers are buried without silver or gold to hallow the grave," said Dr. Crow.
Bending down, he scooped up Granny Hügel's Black Book. The cover was scorched around the edges, but it was otherwise undamaged. He opened the book and leafed through the pages, and Ezekiel came up behind him and peered over his shoulder. Though most of the book consisted of blank pages, it still contained many more names than either of them had expected. The first names—written in ink so old that it had faded to brown—were Matthias Woodruff, Rebeckah Hügel, and Rudolf Bormann.
Goblin Moon Page 21
