by Ken Hood
Dum... Dum... Thundering, the drumming filled the chamber with its relentless steady beat, and now he knew it for the thump of his own heart, magnified to madness. Was this the sound of death? Why so loud? And why so slow? Dum... Dum... Dum... Stop! Stop!
"There!" The hexer cried out in triumph, yet she was barely audible through the pulsing beat. She set the bowl aside. "You hear me, my love? It is almost done!"
She took up the dagger with her bloody hand. Whatever else she said, Toby heard only the grotesque drumming of his heart. He tried to move and his muscles failed to obey him. Nothing happened at all. He could only stare at the woman's lips moving as she lowered the dagger. She laid the point on the sigil she had drawn on his chest and added another line, cutting his skin to add his blood to hers. He did not feel it. Another... he saw her eyes widen in sudden dismay. She raised the dagger as if to strike.
Shift...
A boy lay chained on a rock-carved floor—a huge and husky boy, but still only a boy, his eyes and mouth stretched wide in terror. He was bare-chested, his body inscribed with obscene demonic heraldry that flickered and glowed as if it were some foul living fire. Beside him knelt a woman in a rich gown, clutching a dagger whose pommel also flamed with loathsome internal light. Standing guard around them, four shrouded figures that were men and yet not men. The hands clutching the candles were human, the eyes were human, but within the robes swirled darkness like living smoke.
The boy's shoulders heaved and his hands came free, a few links of rusty chain dangling from manacles around his wrists. Even for his size, those hands were big, the hands of one who had milked cows in his youth. A massive fist slammed the woman aside as if swatting a bug. She sprawled bodily; the dagger flew off and its yellow light went out.
The drum thundered on; there was no sound but the inexorable beat of the drum. Dum... Dum... Dum...
The boy reached up and gripped the collar around his neck. One of the robed things dropped its candle and dived for the dagger. It leaped back across the chamber in a single bound, robe flapping like bat wings, landing on its knees beside the boy in a move that would have crippled a human. It raised the dagger to strike at his heart.
The boy had snapped the collar. One of his hands moved impossibly fast. It caught the attacker's wrist and jerked it forward. The robed figure sprawled prone over him, the dagger striking the floor beyond. The hand shifted to the thing's bearded chin, its mate came down on its shoulders... there was a momentary pause, and then the cowled head bent back at an impossible angle. The roiling internal darkness shriveled and waned. The hands hurled the carcass away like a discarded pillow.
All light disappeared as the other three watchers dropped their candles and fled to the stairs. Pitch blackness filled the cellar, yet somehow it was visible. Every stone in the barrel ceiling showed in the dark, and dampness shone on the ancient chisel marks of the rock walls as if revealed by bright moonlight or the eerie lavender of a frozen lightning flash.
The boy sat up and reached down to his right ankle. Fingers gripped the steel fetter, muscle bulged, tendons flexed. The cuff snapped open. The hands moved over and freed the other ankle also. Those were Toby Strangerson's hands and arms, but they had more than Toby Strangerson's strength, more than mortal strength.
The drumming pursued its steady, unhurried beat. The boy was on his feet, flashing across the floor in pursuit even as the last cowled figure was disappearing up the stairs. He caught the robe, dragged its occupant back. He lifted the thing, swung it, shattered its head against the wall, dropped the body, and stepped over it to follow the others. He raced up the stairs without a change in the overriding beat: Dum... Dum...
The last two robed henchmen slammed the metal gate from the far side. That should have made a noise to rouse the entire castle, but it was inaudible under the irresistible drumming. The men collided with table and benches as they struggled to reach the guardroom door.
The boy took hold of the gate. The thick bars resisted, the arms swelled, iron bent. The gate changed shape, came loose bodily in a shower of rust and fragments of stone. The cowled men had gone, leaving the door open. As the boy passed the mirror, he turned his head and paused to look at his reflection—large, curly-haired, bare from the waist up, rusty bangles on his wrists. Bleeding scratches adorned his neck and ankles. The arcane sigil on his chest had gone dark and become merely a pattern drawn in blood. His juvenile face bore an idiotic simper of satisfaction, the face of one who had no worries and never would have.
Toby Strangerson stared out of the mirror in horror.
The boy swung a fist to meet another fist and the mirror shattered between them. He trotted forward, out the door.
The courtyard, also, was bright with the mysterious lavender radiance. The two cowled things were struggling to open the postern gate, but the boy ignored them and crossed to the stables. All the horses and ponies should have been in turmoil, but they dozed in their stalls, paying no heed to the eldritch light or the drummer's deafening beat. The boy took a bridle from a peg and moved along the line to the laird's pride, the white stallion whose name was Falcon.
Toby Strangerson had no experience with horses. He had ridden ponies a few times and watched the fusiliers at their dressage, but that was the limit of his experience. The stallion jerked its head up and rolled its eyes, then calmed at a touch on its neck. It took the bit without resistance. It let itself be backed out of its stall and led from the stable, ignoring the thunder of the urgent drum. There was no other sound in the world: Dum... Dum...
The postern gate stood open. A flash on the battlements released a puff of smoke, but the range was far too great for a pistol. Where the ball went was immaterial.
Falcon stepped through the gate. The boy sprang lightly to its back.
With his sure hand steadying its reins, the stallion raced down the road, leaving the castle far behind. Responding to the touch of knees and bare feet, it turned aside and made its way across country, soaring over walls, never faltering, never putting a foot wrong. The landscape rushed past, illuminated partly by fitful moonlight, but much more by that demonic blue glow, while an irresistible drummer beat slow time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Reality returned with a crash. The drumming stopped. The light cut out like a snuffed candle. Toby awoke from his trance to instant darkness, full of motion and sound and an icy wind. Starting to slide, he grabbed at the horse's mane with both hands. Falcon shrilled in terror, stopped dead, and sent its rider spinning through the air. He smashed to the turf with a jarring impact. The horse kicked and bucked for a few moments, then thundered away across the fields.
Toby lay and stared at the whirling moon. Where was he? How had he come there? The events in the cellar and his departure from the castle seemed like the most improbable of nightmares. He had watched himself from the outside, yet what he had seen was so sharp and clear in his mind that he could not doubt it. Obviously Lady Valda's conjuration had gone seriously awry, resulting in the escape of her stalwart victim, who now lay flat on his back and half stunned, somewhere in Strath Fillan.
The moon steadied in the sky—the clouds had almost gone and a pale misty ring in the sky told of frost. He felt cold seeping into his body. It brought welcome relief from a collection of aches and pains he could not begin to catalogue. He might have just lain there, slowly freezing into a blessed numbness, had not his teeth begun to chatter noisily. Grunting, he checked that all his limbs moved, that he was still breathing, if only just. He heaved himself upright and looked around. He saw stony pasture, silver with hoarfrost, but right ahead of him was the grove, with the jagged spire of Lightning Rock glittering in the moonlight.
Well, of course! Although he was already shivering hard enough to fall apart, Toby laughed aloud. That was what had gone wrong with Lady Valda's conjuration—she had been messing with the witchwife's little lad! The hob had taken offense at a demon intruding in its glen. The hob had intervened. It had demolished her gramarye, brought the boy h
ome. He had Granny Nan to thank, undoubtedly, but he must thank the hob itself, too. He had money now, so he could buy it some shiny trinket as a token of his gratitude.
First, he must head for the cottage. Even if the soldiers came looking for him again—and that was by no means certain—they could not possibly arrive soon. No mortal rider would travel as fast as he just had. That had not been Toby Strangerson on the horse.
He was a mortal man again now, though, and he had urgent troubles: biting cold for one, outlawry for another. He was still liable to be hanged for murder, and when the carnage in the dungeon was discovered, he could expect to be impaled as a demon, as well. Most urgent of all was the loathsome sigil on his chest. He supposed that it must be the demon's way of identifying him, or its password for entry. He had no wish to be repossessed. Tearing up handfuls of frosty grass, he wiped at the bloodstains until the marks were well smeared and the sign was illegible. If demonology was at all logical, then that ought to block any effort by the demon to return. He found two shallow cuts, but they were nothing to worry about.
Standing upright was.
Even when he was on his feet, it took more effort to straighten. He had lost his bonnet when the Sassenachs threw him onto the horse's back, and now he had lost his pin as well. Pulling his plaid over arms and shoulders, he set off around the copse at a stumbling run.
Granny Nan had said she was leaving. Whether or not she had gone, the door would not be locked, for it had no lock. He could blow up the fire or light another. From the position of the moon, sunrise was still a few hours off. He had a small start on the inevitable hue and cry. The Sassenachs would be looking for a man on horseback until Falcon calmed down and went home or was found in the morning. They might not come looking for him at Granny Nan's right away. He felt light-headed and battered, as if he'd fought two bouts in quick succession. What he needed most was sleep, about three days' solid sleep. Or a square meal and then sleep. If he ever sat down—if he ever got warm again—he would just fall over and snore. In the morning the soldiers would find him there, still snoring.
Would the soldiers come looking for him? Lady Valda had been killed or stunned. The cellar was full of evidence of her black art. Two of her adherents had been slain, chains snapped, an iron gate mangled like a string bag. An untrained farm lad had taken the wildest horse in the stable and ridden off bareback—there was real gramarye! The castle would be in an uproar of terror.
He wondered if Lady Valda was now shackled in the dungeon in his stead. It was an appealing thought, if not a very probable one. Lady Valda might be dead. Or Lady Valda might be alive and using more gramarye to reassert her control over the laird and the garrison. Did she still have a need for the stalwart young man? Spirits knew! To try and outguess the hexer was ridiculous. Or outguess a demon, either. Blocked in its efforts to possess Toby, it might have settled for Lady Valda. He did not even know if there were male and female demons, or whether it mattered. There were all sorts of possibilities.
Assume, though, that Lady Valda was not in control. What would the laird do to counter an outbreak of diabolism in the glen? He would believe the witnesses who had seen the demon ride off in Toby Strangerson's body, so he would order it hunted down and an iron spike driven through its heart. Most likely he would also send to a sanctuary—Dumbarton or Fort William or even Glasgow—for an adept to come and exorcise the castle. Whether the exorcism would succeed, of course, was another matter. Cowshed or palace, if a demon took up residence in a place, it usually had to be abandoned. Many a deserted ruin in the Highlands testified to the truth of that.
Even from Fort William, an acolyte would not arrive for a few days. In the short term, the laird would seek advice closer to hand. The local authority in such matters was the glen's witchwife, Granny Nan.
Toby decided that the situation held some interesting irony.
But he still had not solved the problem of where he could seek refuge, or even hide out until another night gave him a slim chance of escaping from the glen. He was an outlaw, a murderer, and credibly believed possessed. No one would dare shelter him. He bore the scars of fetters on his ankles and neck; he had rusty metal cuffs on his wrists.
He wondered if he was still under the protection of the hob. Its influence would not extend beyond the limits of the glen, and it might have forgotten about him already. Hobs were fickle, not to be trusted. All the same, it was a hope to cling to. It was all he had.
Twigs crackled underfoot as he neared the door. Then his heart lurched. Dismay! Moonlight shone on wraiths of smoke coiling up from the chimney—far more smoke than would come from any fire Granny Nan ever set. She must have company, or intruders.
For a moment he dithered in despair. Then he decided that whoever had come visiting, it could not be the English. If it was a bunch of Campbell neighbors and they decided to turn him in, then he could have a little enjoyable exercise. He limped over to the door, lifted the latch, and ducked in under the lintel.
There was no one there. The extravagant fire crackled and sparked, shedding a joyful light. The warmth of it reached out to him like a lover's arms, or what he supposed lovers' arms would feel like. But there was no one there. He shuffled across to the hearth and eased himself to the floor. At once he began to shiver and shudder and break out all over in more goosebumps than he would have believed possible. He rubbed his feet, trying to work some life back into them.
Granny Nan's chair was empty. Her bed was empty. The bundle she had prepared for him lay in the corner where he slept. Nothing seemed to be missing: the kettle on the ingle, the two black pots hung by the chimney, the crocks on their shelf, the loom. A list of everything in the room would not fill one sheet of paper. Ah! Her bonnet hung on its peg, but her cloak was gone. And his bonnet was hung in its place! That was the most welcome sight he had seen all night. Granny Nan must have found it after the soldiers left. But where could she be?
She had said she was going away. None of the villagers were rich, but they cherished their witchwife. She had pulled most of them from their mothers' wombs. She had tended their sicknesses. If she had announced that she needed care in her last years, then someone would have agreed to take her in, no question. Someone would have come with a cart to fetch her—Iain the miller, or Rae the butcher, or someone.
Someone had put logs on the fire not very long ago, someone accustomed to burning peat or broom, not wood, so perhaps the glen had a new witchwife. Until tonight Granny Nan had never mentioned choosing a successor, but she had been acting so strange these last few months... Other women had taken over the midwifery. The glen did not lack for widows. One of them must have agreed to serve.
She would not have gone far without her bonnet. The logical conclusion was that she had slipped over to visit the hob—perhaps introducing the new witchwife, or inducting her, doing whatever was required. She was taking a long time about it. Toby must go and find her.
He should also find the salve she used for scrapes and cuts, but he lacked the energy to move. His thawing limbs ached and throbbed, which was the penalty for coming back to life. He was also starting to feel intensely sleepy. His eyelids were as heavy as rocks. He must not sleep! He turned around to roast his back and stretch his legs. First, he must find another pin for his plaid, and he thought Granny Nan had a spare somewhere. Then find her and thank the hob. Then decide where to run and start running. The idea was an impossibility, but his only alternative was death.
He was still facing the door when it opened and the men came in with drawn swords. Their eyes were filled with the same hatred and accusation he had seen earlier that night in the eyes of the soldiers.
CHAPTER SIX
Plaid-clad Campbells crowded the cottage. The first in was Iain Miller, faintly coated in flour so that he seemed like a fat ghost in the firelight. His plump hand looked absurd holding a sword, but that same hand had wielded that same blade at Leethoul with deadly effect. No eyes more deserved to be called piggy, but they glinted with the same d
angerous shrewdness as a boar's.
Behind him came Eric Smith, who was broader but shorter, whose arms shamed even Toby's. No one would question his right to hold a sword—his hand was crooked and twisted from long years of hammering, but the smith was the strongest man in the glen. He had been bareknuckle champion for ten years and could still be, if he wished. When words led to deeds, it was usually Eric who took the combatants by the scruffs of their necks and dunked them in the burn.
Then came Rae Butcher... bushy black brows, shaggy black mustache, usually a hearty smile and a joyous greeting, but somber now.
These three were understandable, for they were the unofficial leaders, men who would take charge whenever there was trouble that did not involve the laird—especially in these troubled times when the laird was a stranger and a suspect traitor. Toby thought of them as Brains, Brawn, and Blarney.
Surprisingly, there was a fourth: the peg-legged Kenneth Tanner, leaning on his cane. Nobody thought much of that souse, so why was he here?
Toby pulled up his knees and dragged his plaid over his shoulder again, resisting the temptation to stand. He was taller than any of them. They were armed; down on the floor he was less likely to provoke violence.
"What's happened?" he demanded sharply. "Where's Granny Nan?"
"Suppose you tell us," Iain Miller said.
Toby raised his hands to show the manacles. "I don't know! I escaped. I just got back here."
"The Sassenachs did not take her?"
"Of course not! Even English must know better than to meddle with a witchwife."
