“You can do it!” urged the ghost.
But he couldn’t. His fingers refused to cooperate, and he slid back down the few, hard-won inches and jounced with a sickening jolt on the hook.
“It’s no use,” gasped Jute.
He closed his eyes. Dimly, he heard the ghost wailing at him. The darkness in the cellar grew deeper. It was as heavy as the stone of the ceiling and walls. Weight pushed down on him. There was nothing left to do but die. He was empty inside. And yet there was something. A breeze stirred in the back of his mind. It blew the dust from his thoughts. The coolness of its touch soothed his pain. His mind cleared. The weight lifted, reluctant at first, insisting that stone was stone and it could not be moved. But it could be moved. The breeze blew harder now, filled with the memory of sky and endless light, regardless of night and clouds and blindness.
Jute opened his eyes. The breeze picked him up as gently as a feather. The hook swung free. He fell to his knees, sobbing with relief. He tore with his teeth at the rope binding his wrists. It was to no avail, but the breeze plucked the rope free strand by strand, as delicately as a girl’s braid separated one hair at a time. Jute stumbled to his feet. He tried to lift Declan up and off the hook, but he could not. The man’s body was a dead weight.
“Hurry!” implored the ghost. “Hurry, oh hurry, hurry!”
The breeze swirled around Jute. It lifted his arms, lifting Declan until the man fell free onto the floor. His eyes were closed and his breath rattled between his teeth.
“Wake up!” said Jute.
“Leave him,” said the ghost. “He’s dead already. No need to lug around dead bodies. No need to upset the ogre any more than he already is!”
“You’d desert him so easily?” said Jute.
He strained to lift Declan. The breeze came to his aid again. Pushing at him from behind, tugging at his collar, propping him up. This time, however, there was a nervous urgency in its touch. Jute found himself on his feet—he was not sure that his feet were touching the ground at times—dragging Declan’s impossible weight up the steps. They emerged into a long, gloomy hallway of stone. It stretched off in either direction.
“Which way?” said Jute.
“I don’t know,” said the ghost. “How am I supposed to know? Why am I supposed to know everything? Just because someone’s a professor, it doesn’t mean they know everything about anything. I know a bit too much about ogres! I know spells for getting rid of warts and giving ‘em, and I know all seven of the best recipes for roast goat to be had in the Mountains of Morn, but I don’t know which way we should go down this hallway. I don’t, I tell you! I don’t!” Here, the ghost, obviously overcome by the situation, burst into tears and stamped up and down, wailing all the while.
“Shh,” said Jute, horrified at this. “The ogre’ll hear you.”
“Ohh-h!” wailed the ghost. “The ogre! He’ll slice your throat with his knife, chop you up into a thousand bloody bits, and bake you into bread, all because of me. I’ll be the death of you. It’ll be all my fault. Oh, how can I live with myself? I can’t stand it!”
“Will you be quiet?”
And the wind came to Jute’s aid once again. It blew past him, heading down the passage, and he thought he heard the sound of grass waving in its movement, of branches bending in a breeze, of sky and space and an end to the crushing weight of stone.
Come away outside,
Outside and out from under the weight of things.
Where things neither wither nor fade
And the emptiness is full of light
And again you shall see the sky.
Come you away.
Rejoice!
Despite the dreadful gloom of the ogre’s haunt, Jute could hear joy in the wind’s voice. Joy and laughter and a sense of sky that started as a speck of blue in his mind. The blue grew wider and wider as if it rushed toward him (or he was rushing toward it) to engulf him in the sheer unending delight of the sky. Of a horizon that curved past itself into colors so fantastic that they could not be described.
Jute followed the wind, was carried by it, as he himself carried the slack weight of Declan’s body. Was it he who carried the man, or the wind? No, surely it was the wind. They rushed down the dark and noisome corridors of stone, past iron doors and caverns filled with countless years of evil. Armor and weapons rusted in piles, shrouded in dust and the tangled threads of spiders who had long since moved on to livelier spots—all that were left of hero after hero who had braved the Morns in hope of fortune and fame. Heaps of gold and silver shone, even in that ill light, though the metal gleamed with muted and ill-concealed malice, as if the touch of ogre hands had forever contaminated it. Nowhere in all those twisting passageways was there a bone to be seen, but everywhere there was a fine, white dust. It had little to do with stone but everything to do with the skeletons of hopeful young men who had come to this mountain on the strength of their dreams. The dust stirred in the wake of the wind and Jute’s hurried footsteps. It clung to him and would not be dissuaded by either his sudden nausea or the sneezes he tried to muffle against his sleeve.
“Shh!” said the ghost, deciding to momentarily return to its senses. “Do you want to get us killed?”
Stone steps led up into a faltering light, clearing and brightening somewhat. Jute’s spirits rose. The wind chuckled in his mind. They were now in an enormous cavern, its ceiling blackened with soot and its walls hung with tattered banners in moth-eaten disarray. Some of them were no more than threads and dust, held together by spiderwebs. A fire smoldered on an open hearth in the center of the cavern. Coals stared from deep within the pile of ashes. A spit hung suspended over the fire, skewering a strange, contorted mass that had been charred into oblivion. Jute shuddered and looked away. Perhaps it was only a deer.
“Hush,” said the ghost. “What’s that noise?”
They both stopped, though the wind tugged nervously at Jute. It already knew what the noise was. It was a quiet grating sound. A rasping grind that came and went in odd intervals. And in the spaces between the grating, Jute could hear a different sort of sound. A humming croon. A deep voice that sang of stones and blood and slow, sharp things and death. And quieter beneath it all was the punctuation of clicking skulls.
“Save us!” said the ghost, trying not to scream. It stuffed its hands into its mouth and trembled.
A red light shone from a door, and through it Jute could see the massive form of the ogre, back turned and bent over a spinning stone wheel. It held a blade in its hands and sparks flew from the edge. The flames of a forge burned beyond the ogre. Slabs of iron ore lay in piles beside the burning pit, but, massive as the ore was, more massive still was the creature bent over its brightening blade.
“Look there,” said Jute. “Just inside the door, leaning against the wall. That’s Declan’s sword, isn’t it?”
“One sword looks like another,” said the ghost. “Anyway, no time to stop and dawdle. This is not a nice neighborhood. Hurry up! Hurry up!”
“No, wait.”
To the ghost’s horror, Jute set down Declan’s inert body (rather, the wind set down the body) and crept over to the doorway leading to the forge. He was confident in his own silence. He would not make a sound, and the wind fell silent around him, holding its breath and watching. The ogre’s back was like the back of a mountain, cast into shadow by the light of the forge on its other side like the red setting sun. The sword was within reach now. It was Declan’s sword. Jute recognized the battered leather sheath. It leaned against the wall, propped beside a sheaf of rusting spears. He reached out his hand and, as he did, heard a rasping sound that set his teeth on edge. The sound of bone scraping against iron.
High up on the slopes of the ogre’s shoulder, beside the towering pile of its neck and head, a tiny skull inched its way around the iron strand. The eye sockets peeked down at Jute, and it seemed as if they were filled with the red light of the forge.
“Oh, master,” said the skull. “I spy a
mouse. A sneaking, thieving mouse!”
The ogre turned.
“Run!” screamed the ghost.
Jute grabbed the sword and fled. In that one instant, there had been time to see the ogre’s awful eyes glaring down at him, the forge spitting out sparks and heat, and the blade in the ogre’s hand shining blue along its edge. The floor shook under him. He could hear the pounding of the ogre’s feet.
“Run, run, runrunrun!” shrieked the ghost.
“Run, run, run!” giggled the skulls. “Run, little mouse! Run as fast as you can!”
The ogre did not say anything, and Jute, of course, did not say anything either, for he had no breath for anything other than running and trying not to scream. Something whipped through the air behind him. And then the wind picked him up. His feet left the ground, still windmilling madly. Dust blew past him. Dimly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Declan’s body tumble head over heels, bounce painfully off a stone outcropping—well, it looked painful to Jute, but it was doubtful whether the man felt it, as he looked decidedly unconscious—and then fly past him to go sailing up a flight of stairs.
The ogre bellowed in fury.
“Death take thee!”
The stairs shook. Rocks tumbled down from the ceiling. Sudden light blazed across Jute’s sight. It was so bright he could not keep his eyes open. The brilliance burned past his eyelids with dazzling images of red and white and sunbursts of gold. He had a glimpse of a mountainside falling away into nothingness, of a blinding expanse of snow, of sky and the dark line of trees marching across the slopes below like the advancing guard of an army. The wind surged up into a howling roar. Jute fluttered in its grasp, as helpless as a feather. The wind blew through his mind. The mountain shook, and he heard the thunderous crash of rocks falling and the dull boom of the earth sliding away.
And then the wind set Jute down as a gently as a mother would lay down a sleeping infant in its cradle. He opened his eyes and sat up. The sun shone down from a clear sky. He felt its heat on his face and radiating from the stone beneath him, but the shadows of the forest and the deep crags below him looked dreadfully cold. Snow lay all around. The hawk settled next to him in a flutter of wings.
“That was rather close,” said the bird. He nipped at a crooked feather and then nodded in satisfaction. “I was beginning to think it was the end of you. And of Tormay.”
“Where were you?” said Jute, furious and happy at the same time.
“Oh, here and there,” said the hawk. “Here and there. Don’t splutter like that. You look like an outraged infant about to spit up its mother’s milk. You figured it out. The wind woke, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Jute, still spluttering, “I suppose. But—”
“But that’s precisely the point. You can’t always be depending on me, regardless of the severity of the straits you find yourself in. Although I must admit, being in the clutches of an ogre (one of the oldest ogres in all of Tormay) is a somewhat severe strait. You have to learn to do with what you can do, and that includes the wind. We should’ve done better by avoiding Ostfall. Nasty place. I remember now, better late than never, ogres used to hold sway over a great deal of the western Morns. Villages would pay tribute to them, and there were quite a few instances of peculiar offspring among the people. But that was long ago.”
“I could’ve been killed!” shouted Jute.
“Tush.”
“But—!”
“Bosh!”
“When you’re done shouting at each other,” said the ghost, popping out of a nearby snowdrift, “what are you going to do about Declan?”
The boy and the hawk both turned, shamefaced. The rock was larger than Jute had first noticed, for it stepped below him to a shallow ledge and then beyond that into a sweep of stone that fell away down the mountainside. Declan lay sprawled on the ledge. Jute scrambled down toward him. The wind blew past him, and he heard impatience and excitement in its tone.
“He looks cold,” said Jute, forgetting his anger at the hawk. He touched Declan’s hand and it was indeed cold.
“Cold he may be,” said the hawk. “And cold he is, but the sea is even colder still.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Yes,” said the ghost. “What do you mean by that? What has the sea to do with us? Brr! Wretched sort of cold, that is. I remember a day spent fishing for flounder or, er, some kind of fish. Who cares? It was fish! Started out fine and dandy, as all stories do that end horribly, and then up came black clouds and wind and the surf pounding away I caught a miserable cold.” The ghost sneezed in evident enjoyment of its memory.
“Never mind what I mean,” said the hawk, “for it isn’t mine to explain.” And the bird bent over the man’s head to whisper in his ear. Both Jute and the ghost edged closer to listen, but they were not close enough to hear.
The wind hushed its voice, for it heard what the hawk said. Out across the horizon, two days’ journey to the west, a wave surged higher on the shore than the surf had gone in many a day. Fishermen mending their nets on the sand were caught unawares by its advance and came up sputtering in the foam, to the amusement of their drier and safer fellows.
Declan stirred. He opened his eyes and sat up.
“I was dreaming,” he said.
Declan looked around him in sudden and dawning dismay, at the fields of snow and the mountain slopes that stretched away on either side. His hand reached to his collar to feel at the necklace there. He sat in silence and gazed west, but the eyes of man are not strong enough to look over such a distance to see what he wished to see. If the hawk had mounted high into the sky over the highest peak of the Mountains of Morn, even his keen eyes would not have reached the sea.
“I was dreaming,” he said again.
“But are you well?” said the hawk.
Declan gazed at his hands unhappily. The gray pallor of death was gone from his face and his skin was already burned red by the cold and the wind.
“Well enough,” he said.
“All well indeed,” said the ghost. “And what if, one day, we find ourselves in similar sorry straits without you conveniently nearby, master hawk? What then? Shall we just sit by and watch the poor man die? At least teach young Jute here the words. The full power of language doesn’t seem to work with ghosts. It’s our lack of definition, our ghostliness, I suppose.”
“Your point is taken,” said the hawk somewhat sourly. “Here, then, it’s a simple thing. The mere mention of the sea will prove a powerful tonic for whatever ails Declan, but it must be said in an older tongue. Brim ond mere. Will you remember those words? I warn you, they mustn’t be spoken with careless intent.”
“Brim ond mere,” said the ghost greedily. “Delightful. I think I knew these words once, yes, it's coming back to me now. Of course, of course. Careless intent? Never. Now, you try it, Jute.”
“Brim ond mere,” echoed Jute.
“No,” said the ghost. “More emphasis on the last word. Brim ond mere!”
“Brim ond mere!”
“Silence!” said the hawk.
The snow shifted in creaking groans around them, drifts warming and collapsing down into water to reveal the real and awful depths of the white fields. The rock on which they sat trembled. A bank of snow on their left slid away in a whisper that grew in tumbling fits and sudden, soft thunder to a rumbling roar as it bounded down the mountainside, growing and gathering to itself more and more snow as the avalanche careened toward the tree line below.
“If that had happened above us,” said Jute. He did not finish his thought but looked higher up the mountain in alarm.
“Words are dangerous,” said the hawk, glaring at the ghost. “None more so than the older tongues, for they reach back to the eldest tongue of all, in which language a word defines the nature of a thing, rather than the thing defining the word. Once the word’s known, the thing itself is controlled, and this is a terrible danger.”
“Yes, yes,” said the ghost in sulky tones. “Th
e strictures of naming. I taught that class many times when I was alive. I could teach it in my sleep.”
“Then you’d do well to remember,” said the hawk. “Asleep or otherwise.”
“It was Jute who said it,” mumbled the ghost. “I’m just a ghost. There’s no power in a word when I say it.”
Happily, they discovered that the wind had kindly deposited not only Declan’s sword on the rock slab, but also both their packs and a bewildering assortment of treasure. The sun shone brightly on the silver and gold, so brightly that the flash could be seen from miles away, for the wind had scoured the trove clean of the dust of hundreds of years.
“The ogre will be missing his baubles, I think,” said the hawk, and then he added, somewhat sadly, “the wind always did have an eye for shiny things.”
“We can’t just leave it all lying here,” said Jute. He scrambled over the rock to sit on his haunches by the shining sprawl. “Someone’s bound to take it.”
“Squirrels?” jeered the ghost.
“I reckon this’d go for a nice price in Hearne.” Jute picked up a red stone laced about with gold filigree as fine as spiderweb.
“Leave that be,” said the hawk. “There’s no telling when an ogre gets its hands on something. It changes, and never for the better.”
“Aye,” said the ghost. “Leave it for the squirrels. They’ll crack it like a nut.”
After some discussion, mainly between the hawk and Declan, they decided it would be quicker to head up the mountainside rather than backtrack down into the Rennet Valley and so find the pass to Mizra. It was bitter, cold work, trudging up those snowy slopes. Jute fell into a daze as he followed in the path that Declan trod. The crags rose around them as they climbed, for the Mountains of Morn reached up like the points of spears into the sky and their peaks were unscalable. Dimly, as if from a distance, Jute heard the hawk and the ghost arguing about the history of the duchy of Mizra and finer points, such as whether or not the city of Ancalon predated that of Hearne, and the degree of autonomy of the mountain hamlets on the eastern slopes of the Morns. The cold worked its way deep into Jute’s bones. It would be a fine thing to fly over the mountains and be done with the journey. What good was being the wind—what on earth did it mean: being the wind?—if he could not fly about when he wanted? Jute tried to step into the air as he had done before, but his legs felt as if they were made of lead.
The Wicked Day Page 8
