FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  As for the villagers, they all seemed to defer to the blacksmith, which was curious. Perhaps it was because he was the strongest, or just because, being in a trade that had “trade secrets,” he seemed the most important to them.

  But when facing someone wearing a uniform and an air of unquestioned authority, he became almost comically deferential. Regrettably with that deference came being tongue-tied.

  “Just start at the beginning,” she coaxed. “When you all first noticed something wrong, no matter how trivial it seems.”

  He mumbled something. It was a little hard to understand his accent; although what he spoke was similar to Valdemaran, the way the words were pronounced wasn’t always the same. She thought it sounded like “I can’t remember.”

  “Sure ye can, Benderk!” one of the others urged, studiously not looking at her. “Ye were the first t’say! ’Twere the Shadows.”

  “Sounds like a wee laddie’s boggles,” Benderk mumbled. At least, that was what she thought he mumbled.

  “Tell her, Benderk! Tell her ’bout them Shadows up at Stony Rill! How they was on’y there at twilight, lurkin’ like, but then they was them there rustlin’s and whisperin’s on’y no one was there, an that was by broad day! An’ then it weren’t jest whisperin’s but noises t’make the blood cawld, gibberin’s and gurglin’s an a mad laugh ’at made th’ dogs run away! Tell her!” The speaker was the fellow that sold the local ale; he had brought a barrel of it, and now he plied Benderk with a mug and a refill, and Benderk evidently found courage therein, for he finally raised his eyes to Elyn’s and pretty much repeated what the ale-seller had said.

  “We mun know these parts, Lady,” he added. “We mun know every beast an’ bird in forest. Nothin’ never made no noise like that. Nor cast Shadows like the ones at night, neither. Nor man, nor beast we ever seen cast shadows like that. Half again as tall an’ broad as me, an’ I be no scrawny ’prentice. On’y hunched over, like. “ He rounded his shoulders and tucked his head down between them by way of illustration. “An’ we never saw the Things, on’y Shadows, an’ fer all their bigness, left no tracks we could find. So we left Stony Rill alone, an’ that seemed t’satisfy it. Reckoned we leave them alone, they leaves us alone.” He shrugged, shamefaced. “We bain’t fighters, Lady, and this be edge of Pelagir Hills. Uncanny things come out of there, but bain’t mean no harm, so—”

  She nodded. “A sensible way to deal with things,” she said soothingly. “I take it there was nothing much any of you needed up at this Stony Rill?”

  He shook his head. “Kids liked t’play there i’summer, but didn’ take but hearin’ that laugh once for ’em t’find ‘nother spot of cool water t’paddle in. We’re not lackin’ i’ water.”

  Well that was the truth. They must have crossed thirty streams of varying width, depth, and strength to get here.

  “But obviously something else happened?” she prompted.

  The man nodded, and the others shuddered. “They’re comin’ into village, of nights.”

  “You’ve seen them with your own eyes?” Somehow Elyn doubted they had. And sure enough, one and all, they shook their heads emphatically.

  “But we hear them!” The words came out in a whisper. “Between th’ houses, howlin’ and gibberin’, and in the mornin’, not a sign of ’em. Not a footprint, nor hoofprint or pawprint. Th’ dogs an’ cats, they all hide when they hears it. An’ afore we started lockin’ ’em up at night, we lost some beasts to ’em. Heard ’em cry out, and in mornin’, was gone, an’ no trace of what took ’em.”

  There wasn’t much else that Elyn could get that was useful out of them. Just “You’ll hear ’em fer y’self,” seemed to be the only answer.

  Despite the fact that the youngsters were burning even more to question the villagers, Elyn let them go back to their homes. For one thing, the closer it got to sunset, the more nervous the villagers became, and she didn’t want to have to cope with a load of hysterical people wanting only to get behind their locked and barricaded doors. For another, she was curious to see if “They,” whatever “They” were, actually did turn up tonight. Their absence might well tell as much or more than their presence. There was no reason why something supernatural would hesitate to manifest with the Heralds here. But if “They” were not supernatural, then whatever or whoever it was that was doing this might well be cautious about showing itself—or themselves—right now.

  Once everyone was cleared away, Elyn set about making sure that the wagon, the horses, and the Companions were all set up for a stay of some duration. The villagers had kindly moved in bedding straw and fodder; horses were not exactly housebroken, so before they could all get themselves involved in a long discussion of what might be going on, Elyn got them to work arranging things inside the threshing barn. She put Rod to maneuvering the wagon against one wall, and assigned Arville to making a stabling area for the horses against the opposite wall. Once the wagon was in place, Rod tied up the horses in their corner.

  “We may be here a while,” Elyn pointed out. “And there’s enough room in here that anyone who would rather sleep outside the wagon certainly can. It might be a bit colder, but it won’t be as stuffy, and we can always set up the stove to keep a limited area warm at night.”

  But Alma clearly wanted to talk about “haunting,” and she had already made up her mind about it; Elyn could see it in the set of her jaw and the furrowed brows. “We need to work out some way to trap these people,” she said.

  “The villagers?” Elyn said, raising an eyebrow.

  “No of course not! Whoever is running this deception on them!” Alma said crossly.

  “And you’re so certain it’s a deception?” Elyn countered. “I’m not convinced one way or another. If it’s a deception, what’s the motive? And if it’s not—then what are these things? Their behavior matches some of the descriptions of the creatures controlled by the Karsite priesthood.”

  “The D-d-demons?” Arville stammered.

  Ryu’s ears went straight up and his eyes widened. “R-r-remons?” he echoed.

  “But only some of those descriptions, Herald Elyn,” Rod said deferentially. “Not all of them. And we are an awfully long way from the Karsite Border. I can’t see any good reason for them being here, if that is what they are. And it could just be some new creature from the Pelagirs. Some things from there are friendly.”

  Ryu thumped his tail, tongue lolling.

  Elyn shrugged. “I am not convinced either way. What I am convinced of is that we need to proceed with great caution. The last thing we want to do is make things worse.”

  Alma opened her mouth to protest, but never got so far as uttering a word. As if something had been listening outside, there came one of the strangest and most hair-raising noises that Elyn had ever heard in her life.

  Not loud enough to be called a howl, and far too loud for a moan, it seemed to reach to some instinct deep inside Elyn and evoke a chill terror. It had a similar effect on the others too. Arville yelped and dove under the wagon, joined there by Ryu; Laurel screamed. Rod and Alma both went white to match their uniforms, but headed for the door of the barn with looks of determination on their faces.

  “No! Leave the door alone!” Elyn ordered. Arville and the kyree hugged each other and shuddered. The noises multiplied, and Laurel looked around for a weapon, then clutched at her little dagger as if it was going to be adequate to defend herself with. Her sword and war gear were in storage in the wagon, still, along with everyone else’s, and only Elyn wore a sword at the moment since during the interview it’d been a sign of rank.

  Alma and Rod had their hands on the door already and prepared to fling it open, only to find it had been shut tight, barred from the outside.

  The noises were joined by maniacal laughter as Alma and Rod hammered on the door and tried to break it down, then tried the door opposite with the same results.

  There were no windows or hatches in the upper part of the building, or they probably would have tried
to go out that way. The two draft horses were thoroughly unnerved by now, straining at their tethers, tossing their heads, and rolling their eyes. Arville finally climbed out from under the wagon, shaking, to go and try to calm them down. Elyn joined him; eventually they had to resort to pulling bags over their heads; the horses stopped trying to bolt, but stood transfixed, shaking as hard as Arville.

  The Companions were as unnerved as their Chosen.

  ::We can’t tell what it is,:: Mayar said to Elyn, as the four of the Companions arrayed themselves facing the two doors, preparing to fight anything that burst through. ::We’ve never heard anything that sounded like that before.::

  “Let’s break the door down!” Rod shouted over the noise. “Let’s make a ram!”

  But it was Alma who stopped him before he could wrench the wagon-tongue off the front, or try to pull down one of the interior supports. “I don’t think we can,” she said. “And it’s not our building to break down.”

  “It’s just noises,” Elyn pointed out, fighting her own instincts to run, or fight, or both. “No one is calling for help, and nothing is trying to break in here. Alma’s correct, we haven’t the right to wreck this place just to confront what’s out there. Besides, breaking the door down will be noisy, and by the time we got out, whatever is making those sounds will probably be gone.”

  “It’s j-j-just trying to scare us,” Laurel said, though her teeth were chattering.

  “It’s doing a g-g-good job!” Arville replied.

  And then, just as suddenly as the noise had begun, it stopped.

  They waited a moment, and then another, before Rod and Alma rushed for the door.

  It was still barred.

  Alma kicked it in frustration, bruising her toe. She looked as if she would have liked to swear, but a glance at Elyn seemed to quell that idea.

  They waited, but the noises didn’t resume, although the door remained barred from the outside. The moments crept by, then a candlemark; it felt like more, but they had a marked candle out and burning when the meeting started, and that was all it was. Finally Elyn spoke, making them all jump. “It’s entirely possible that the villagers locked us in themselves.”

  Rod scratched his head. “We didn’t try the door after they left,” he admitted, “But why?”

  “Remons!” said Ryu, impatiently, as if they were all feeble-minded. Arville nodded.

  “But we’re supposed to be the ones getting rid of whatever it is!” Alma protested. “It makes no sense for them to lock us in!”

  “It also makes no sense for a demon or a ghost or anything else like them to be stopped by mere walls,” Rod added.

  “It may make no sense, but according to everything I’ve read, the Karsite demons clearly are stopped by walls.” Elyn could only shake her head at all the contradictory evidence. “Perhaps there is some magical boundary set about the buildings here.”

  Her nerves were slowly settling, the horses were quiet again, enough so that she and Arville pulled the bags off their heads. But they were so soaked with sweat—as were the Companions—that they needed a thorough rubdown and blanketing, lest they get a chill. After that, failing anything else to do, since it seemed futile to keep trying the door, they went to lie on their bunks or bedrolls after blowing out the various lanterns and candles, leaving only the two night-lamps mounted on the front of the wagon burning with their wicks turned down. Elyn set the younger Heralds on short watches, and she was acutely aware of the stiff silence in the building, the sort of silence that meant everyone was staring up at the ceiling or the bottom of a bunk, listening with every fiber, waiting for a resumption of the horrible noises.

  But nothing happened. And after what seemed like an eternity of staring into the darkness, she must have fallen asleep, because she woke with a start to hear the doors opening.

  The doors!

  She very nearly broke her neck scrambling out of her bunk and stumbling out the door at the rear of the wagon. The first thing she saw was Alma throwing open the doors on a grey dawn, frowning heavily. There was no one outside.

  “I laid awake all night, listening, and finally I decided to get up and try the door,” the young Herald said, scowling. “There was no one there. And the door wasn’t barred anymore.”

  Elyn turned her attention to the kyree, who, with his presumably keener senses, would have heard what Alma didn’t. “And did you hear anything?”

  The kyree shook his head. Elyn chewed her lip thoughtfully. By this time the others were clambering out of the wagon, rubbing their eyes sleepily. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she pointed out. “Someone intimately familiar with this place could easily slip up to the doors and unbar them.”

  “Maybe they could slip up to the doors, but slide the bar out without a noise?” Laurel asked doubtfully.

  “Let’s find out,” replied Rod, and Alma nodded. “Look here,” he continued, examining it, “If you slide it, yes, it makes a noise.” He demonstrated; the bar was one that slid into four cast-metal carriers, rather than dropping down into them. “But if you lift it a little—“

  This time the bar made not a whisper of noise as he moved it.

  “That doesn’t rule out ghosts or demons,” Laurel protested.

  “Maybe not, but my money is on common men.” Rod’s chin was set stubbornly, which did not at all surprise Elyn. Rod hated supernatural explanations and usually managed to avoid them entirely.

  “Nevertheless, logic dictates that we go about this assuming that either could be true.” Elyn turned to the four Companions. “You lot are better suited to look for the supernatural than we are, so I suggest you pursue that, while we investigate human interference. Now, let’s get some breakfast going and discuss where to start.”

  Since it had begun, as far as they could all tell, up at the little stream called Stony Rill, that was where the five of them headed. This time Rod and Alma were determined not to be caught off-guard. Well, so was Elyn, but she wasn’t making it as obvious as they were. If they got any more square-jawed with determination, she would be able to split logs with their chins. There were times when that was tempting.

  Arville and Ryu slunk along like a pair of reluctant cats, heads swiveling this way and that with every sound in the woods. Laurel was the only one that looked normal, though that was superficial; Elyn knew her well enough to know that she was walking on eggs, so to speak, and the least little thing would set her off.

  Elyn frankly did not know what to expect. They reached the spot where the villagers had told her that the “Shadows” were to be seen, and saw exactly nothing. She and Alma searched the area around the little pool that the Rill formed before it spilled over and went on its way, looking for swampy areas, odd plants, vents in the ground, any sign of anything that could account for hallucinations, and found nothing.

  Alma even pulled off her boots, rolled up her trews, and went wading in the pool, peering into the water. Elyn wasn’t sure what she was looking for, although she did spent quite a long time at it, and gathered up some rocks and a sack of sand. Finally she clambered out, got dry and pulled her boots back on. “I think we should go upstream,” she said. “Maybe there’s something there. Swamp gas or something that only drifts this way when the wind is right.”

  Rod nodded. “That seems like a good idea to me.”

  Elyn gave Alma a close look. She had a notion that while Alma wasn’t saying anything, the young Herald thought she might have discovered something intriguing. But Alma wasn’t one to say anything until she was sure of herself. Annoying, but the girl was stubborn, and until she was ready, there would be no prying it out of her.

  With a stifled sigh, Elyn motioned onwards, and the five of them, with their Companions and the kyree threading through the underbrush on either side of the stream, made their way along the banks of Stony Rill. A few times more, Alma paused as something seemed to catch her eye, stooped, and picked up what looked like some gravel from the streambed. But still she said nothing.


  Meanwhile there still didn’t seem to be anything that could have been mistaken for these “Shadows,” and no wildlife making odd noises that could have been taken for maniacal laughter.

  Elyn was busy trying to keep an eye out for plants and fungi she knew were poisonous and gave hallucinations, when Rod suddenly said, “Is that a boundary marker? No one said anything about anyone living up here—“

  “That’d be because that worthless lot down at the Stone’d like to fergit I be still alive,” said a harsh voice.

  It startled all of them. Ryu and Arville yelped in an almost identical pitch. The Companions all threw up their heads and snorted. Laurel squeaked, and Elyn jumped back just a little. Rod’s back stiffened, and Alma clutched the bag of rocks and sand she was holding as if she was prepared to use it as a weapon.

  From between two trees, out of a shadow Elyn certainly had not suspected was holding a person, stepped a man. Balding, grey-haired, but powerfully built and clearly still fit, he had a bow with an arrow nocked to it, and although he was not yet aiming it at them, it was very obvious that he had no compunction about shooting them.

  “Did that pack of scum send ye up here?” he spat. “I got no use fer them. I don’ need their help, and I don’ want their company. Did they send ye here because I run off their brats? I got my rights! They was tramplin’ all over my property! Thievin’ brats, stealin’ fruit, honey an’ shrooms, poachin’ my game, aye, I ran ’em off! I’ll do it again too, at th’ end of a pitchfork!”