by Tim Pratt
"Possibly," Hrym said. "They could just be bubbles of swamp gas."
"Aren't you the optimist? I think it's more likely they're treacherous flying monsters that live on fear."
"It's lucky you're utterly without fear, then," Hrym said.
"I think you said ‘fear' when you meant ‘scruples.' As long as the wisps stay over there, though, they don't worry me."
He returned to camp, and found Obed had acquired fish—the priest even spoke, briefly, to praise the quantity and quality of edible wildlife in the local streams. They passed the evening as usual, with Rodrick finally driving Hrym into the center of the campsite to keep watch before going to sleep.
Sometime very deep in the night, Rodrick woke with an unusually powerful need to urinate. Probably because of the steady constant sound of water all around him, from the river on both sides to the moisture dripping off the trees—he'd even dreamed of exploring some subterranean ruin that was half-submerged in a sunless lake. He glanced around the camp, and saw that Obed and Zaqen were both sleeping soundly. Another perfect opportunity for horse-and-gold theft that he must, once again, forgo taking.
He went a little ways from the camp to relieve himself against a tree ...and then heard a snatch of song.
Rodrick closed his trousers, frowning, then touched the knife at his waist. Singing, in Loric Fells. That couldn't be good. Were there any such things as river sirens?
Obed's protective wards were potent. Nothing much larger than a raccoon could breach the perimeter of the island without all sorts of alarms being raised. Rodrick went to investigate, listening as hard as he could for another snatch of song, but there was nothing.
Until he reached the edge of the island. There, seated on a stone overlooking the water, was a woman dressed in furs of white and brown, her hair shining black in the moonlight, a lute in her hands, gazing at the river like a poet in the midst of composing an ode. She turned her face to Rodrick, and it was just the kind of face he liked best on a woman: pretty, sharp-featured, with eyes that hinted at intelligence and perhaps a bit of mischief. But when she saw Rodrick, those eyes widened, and she dropped the lute, which bounced off the rocks and splashed into the water. "Who are you?" she cried. "What are you doing on my island?"
Chapter Nine
The Witch's Island
Interesting," Rodrick said. "Let me see. You're not a succubus, are you? You'd be more seductive, then, I think—more overt, showing less fur and more flesh. I've seen you from the back, so you're not a huldra, one of those fey who look like beautiful women from the front but resemble hollow trees from behind—I killed one of those once, in a barrow mound of all places. You could be a doppelganger taking on the form of a woman you once met—or killed once—though I thought doppelgangers were more interested in preying on human society, so it's unlikely to find one here in the wild. Or—"
The woman drew herself up haughtily. "I am the last survivor of Loric's own expeditionary force, and I have settled on this island because the fishing is good, and because trolls do not like to swim. I didn't expect to ever see another human again, and while I understand that you view me with suspicion—"
"No, sorry," Rodrick said. "I explored this island when my people made camp. There was no one settled here."
"There is a cave—"
"No, there's not," he said, almost gently. "And we have a priest with us who assured me there were no thinking creatures on the island. Which means you came from the outside, and are trying to get in. I imagine you're sitting just beyond the perimeter of the priest's magical wards, aren't you? Hoping to lure us out and pick us off one by one, no doubt."
The woman sloughed off the furs around her shoulders, revealing a damp, white linen shirt that was mostly unbuttoned. She sat down on the rock, leaning backward, thrusting her chest out at him. "Do you find me comely?" she said.
"Of course. I'm enjoying the view immensely while I can. I expect you'll turn into something less attractive soon—perhaps a woman with the head of a tiger or a jackal? I've heard of shapeshifters like that."
"Perhaps I'm just a very beautiful witch." She tossed her hair and fixed him with a sultry stare, her foxlike face more amused and mischievous than ever. "I'll grant you that my intentions are not kind, but why are you so sure I'm an inhuman monster?"
"Because you're too exactly my type of woman," Rodrick said sadly. "And I haven't done anything good enough in my life to deserve that kind of luck, chancing upon such a woman in a place like this." After getting a last eyeful of her bosom, he started back toward the center of the island.
"Where are you going?" Her voice was less mellifluous now, and had a harsh, peeved tone.
He turned back. "To wake my friends. We are a small party, but not without resources, and I'm sure one of them will have a better idea of what you are, exactly, and how to banish you, or slay you, or whatever seems appropriate. But in thanks for the display of tantalizing cleavage, I'll give you this opportunity to leave here unharmed. Be gone before I return with my allies, and I won't pursue you."
She leaned forward and spat onto the rocks. "You are no fun at all, man. I like to play with my food first. But in the end, I'll overcome my disappointment, and eat you just the same."
Rodrick snorted. "Go on, then. Pass through the wards. I understand the results will be something to see. Our priest said something about flesh melting off bones, internal organs flinging themselves outward at great velocity, and so on. I think our wizard wove in a few spells of her own, and she has a taste for acid, tentacles, and other unpleasantness. If you do decide to charge me, please take on a less pleasant form first—it would spoil my fantasies immensely to see a body as lovely as yours so terribly mutilated."
The monster didn't seem particularly disturbed by Rodrick's description of the pain that awaited her. "Wards, yes, I sense them. Glyphs inscribed on stone, carved into the trunks of trees. It's thorough work. I applaud your priest. The island is terribly well protected." She sighed. "So I'll just have to do away with the island." The not-a-woman rose and walked backward until she stepped cleanly off the rock, and fell into the water.
Rodrick had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd been outsmarted somehow, a sensation familiar from countless bad nights at countless gaming tables. What did she mean?
He realized the answer a moment later, when the island began to sink.
∗ ∗ ∗
"Hrym!" Rodrick shouted. "Zaqen, Obed, we're under attack, the island is sinking!" He stumbled into the camp, which was already being inundated by frothing water, and saw his warnings were hardly necessary. Zaqen and Obed were moving swiftly about, rescuing what they could from the inrushing waves.
"Report," Obed snapped, throwing his bedroll over the back of a nervous horse. The beast lifted its hooves out of the water, one at a time, as if unsure how it had come to be standing in a puddle.
Rodrick snatched Hrym up from the water, which had risen halfway up the length of his blade. "There was a woman—well, she looked like a woman, a beautiful one. She said she wants to eat us. The wards kept her out, but then she somehow made the island sink—"
"Nature magic," Zaqen said thoughtfully, looking at the water streaming around her calves. "If I wanted to sink an island, I might try raising the water level, or turning the rock underneath it to mud, though I'd have to swim down to do it ..." She glanced at Obed. "A hag?"
"Likely." Obed stripped off his robe and went striding naked off into the gloom.
"Where is he going?" Rodrick said, baffled.
"Our wards are sinking along with the island," Zaqen said. "I imagine he's going to see what he can do about that. Do you think Hrym could conjure some more solid ground for us?"
"Plunge my tip into the water, Rodrick," Hrym said. "This is a bit tricky. I don't want to trap your legs in the ice."
Thinking about the woman—the hag?—coming upon them all frozen fast in ice, animals and humans alike, was horrifying. That would be like setting out a buffet for her. "Then concent
rate, Hrym." He touched the sword to the surface of the water, which was now up to Rodrick's ankles.
There was a long moment when nothing much seemed to happen, and then there was a pressure against the bottoms of Rodrick's feet, and he began to rise, wobbling to keep his balance.
"A sheet of ice," Hrym said, and Rodrick thought crazily that the sword's voice should have sounded more bubbly, the way his own would if he tried to speak while his face was submerged in water. "The ice floe is floating, now, but I'll anchor it when I can ..."
The camel took a couple of steps, and the ice tilted, reminding Rodrick of a summer afternoon spent out on a lake on a wooden float when he was sixteen, kissing and more with a beautiful girl, and the way the float would tilt this way and that as they rolled around. Had they tipped the float over, and fallen in the water? He couldn't remember. If they had, he was sure they'd splashed and laughed.
If this float tipped over, there would be less laughter. And probably more splashing.
Zaqen soothed her camel still, and the horses seemed to ponder whether they should plunge off the ice into the water or stay put, and decided to stand their ground. The trees all around them sank by degrees until their branches began to disappear under the water, and Rodrick was glad they'd chosen a clearing for their camp. If they'd been underneath branches, the sinking tees would have pressed them down and pushed them underwater to drown, or crushed them against Hrym's sheet of ice. The sight of the vanishing trees was incredibly surreal.
The icy platform stabilized, Hrym freezing it solidly to the bottom of the lake, Rodrick presumed, forming pillars of magical ice beneath them. "That's as good as it gets," Hrym said, and Rodrick pulled the sword from the ice.
"I've heard there are tribes in the north that put their elderly members on ice floes and send them drifting out to sea to die," Zaqen said. "I suppose it's more practical than trying to dig a grave in the ice."
"Should I make a bridge to shore?" Hrym said.
Rodrick considered. "If we run, whatever's waiting out there will chase us. She sank the island because she wanted us to panic, to try to swim away, so she could strike in the confusion. I think we should stand our ground, and wait for her to make a move first."
"You're the one with experience in battles," Zaqen said. "If you say that's the best path, I trust you. I'll keep my eyes open for something to kill."
"Where is Obed?" Rodrick scanned the water. "Do you think he's ..."
Zaqen shook her head. "He lives. I would know if he'd died. We have a ...connection. He is a very good swimmer, and has spells that allow him to move easily in the water, and under the water, without needing to emerge for breath. I'm sure he's doing his best to save us."
Rodrick grunted and turned slowly in the center of the icy platform, looking for danger. There was no sign of the hag, but the will-o'-wisps across the river began to bob toward them, and Rodrick cursed. "Those damn things."
"Hmm," Zaqen said. "They feed on fear, you know. You must be afraid. They sense it."
"Maybe the horses are frightened," Rodrick snapped.
"Mere animal panic doesn't interest them," Zaqen said. "They have more refined tastes." She walked to the edge of the platform. "Hello, cousins!" she called, and one of the balls of bluish light floated closer to her. Zaqen bowed her head, and the two of them seemed to confer.
"Is she talking to that thing?" Hrym said. "It's a floating ball of horrible magic. Look, it's got a skull at its center—that thing doesn't have bones at all, certainly not humanoid ones, but it's gotten the idea that skulls are frightening, so it presents the image of one."
"Skulls are frightening," Rodrick said. "I live in terror of having my own skull exposed prematurely."
The will-o'-wisp bobbed, almost like a woman doing a curtsy, then floated away to rejoin its fellows, which withdrew to the far bank again. Zaqen came over, rubbing her hands together briskly. "There, that's done."
"You speak their language?" Rodrick asked.
Zaqen raised one furry eyebrow. "Will-o'-wisps speak many human languages, generally, though they're more conversant in Aklo—that's the tongue of certain creatures with ancestors from, let's say, outside this world. It's a tongue I've also mastered in the course of my arcane studies. They saw I did not fear them, and because they couldn't eat me, they consented to negotiate instead. They're going to stay nearby for a bit, in case the hag attacks. Or hags—they tell me a coven of them call this river home, several lesser hags led by an even crueler and more vile mistress. The wisps will wait and see if we're driven into, what was it, ‘paroxysms of delicious terror.' But if we survive, they'll move on. I told them about the Worldwound, how the demon lord Deskari is spreading terror on a vast scale not so very far away, and they were grateful for the information. Nobody ever tells them anything, you know."
Rodrick shook his head. "I don't understand how you could have a civil, productive conversation with creatures so evil—"
Zaqen looked genuinely surprised. She put her hand on Rodrick's arm. "Why do you call them evil? All right, so they wish misery and horror on all sentient life, but that doesn't make them evil. They're just ...different. It's not their fault they feed on the psychic energy of fear. They didn't choose their own biology. Driving people insane with terror is a necessity for them—fear is their agriculture."
"I'd call that a decent working definition of ‘evil,'" Rodrick said, but before they could argue further, the waters on three sides of them began to froth and churn, and three creatures, nearly identical, rose from the water. They were hags, Rodrick knew, though he'd never seen such creatures in the flesh—two of them were just a bit shorter than Rodrick himself, thin, so hunchbacked they made Zaqen seem a marvel of anatomical engineering. Those two had hair like rank seaweed falling across their hideous faces, their flesh the green of rotten meat in the moonlight.
The third hag, who stood taller than Rodrick despite her own terrible hunch, had black skin that looked not so much horribly warty as armored and solid as iron. She wore a belt of small human hands, and her claws made a sound like rusty metal as they clashed together. She grinned at Rodrick, her teeth as filthy and stinking as a drain.
"Greetings, traveler," she said, in the same voice of the beautiful fox-faced woman on the rock. Then she winked.
Chapter Ten
Claws in the Night
Zaqen didn't hesitate, just flung out her arm and sprayed a stream of acid at the hag nearest her. The hag dove aside, splashing into the water and vanishing from sight, only to reemerge a few feet away and renew her assault.
Rodrick advanced on the greater hag with Hrym held before him in guard position, all too aware that he couldn't face this hag without turning his back on at least one of the others. Still, flinging a few spikes of ice or even freezing a hag's feet to the floe would even the field—
The mistress of the hags surged forward, lashing out with her claws, and Rodrick lifted up Hrym to block. Her reach was astonishingly long, though, and she managed to scratch his side with one of her black talons, raking down from beneath his rib cage nearly to his hip. Just a scratch, but Rodrick stumbled back, hissing at the pain and dropping his guard.
"Steady on," Hrym said, and Rodrick struggled to raise the sword again. Actually fighting with a sword wasn't exactly his strong point; he seldom needed to do more than wave Hrym around and pose dramatically. Hrym was doing his best to make up for Rodrick's failings, sending a cone of icy wind toward the hag, who adroitly dodged it. Rodrick gritted his teeth and swung Hrym in her direction, flinging a spear of ice at her and slashing her arm, which trickled a thick black substance in lieu of blood. He was dimly aware of Zaqen battling another hag, flashes of greenish light appearing off to his right as she lashed out with spells. The horses and even the camel had panicked, plunging off the ice and trying to swim for shore.
Hrym was humming by then, icy vapor billowing up and down the length of his blade, working up to one of his truly impressive magics. The sword's true capabilities we
re not fully known to Rodrick—perhaps not even to Hrym himself—but with enough time and effort Rodrick knew the sword could summon rains of hailstones the size of grapefruit, freeze enemies in solid blocks of magical ice, and perform other icy wonders.
Someone struck Rodrick from behind—the unattended hag, presumably—and he stumbled forward. Then the hag leader was upon him, smashing his arm aside—and Hrym flew from his nerveless fingers, hit the water, and instantly sank.
Rodrick stared at the place in the water where his best friend and greatest weapon had disappeared. The sword could not move on his own. The best he could do was spin a cocoon of ice to make himself float, but they'd discussed the drawbacks of such a defensive move often—Hrym would then be at the mercy of the current, drifting wherever the river did, perhaps so far Rodrick could never find him. The sword would more likely wait on the river bottom, hoping to be retrieved—
The hags converged on Rodrick.
Right. He had more pressing issues than his lost friend at the moment.
He reached for the knives at his belt and slashed out with both hands, hoping to hamstring the hags, and struck home both times, making them hiss and back away. His blades were enchanted with a little charm that made their cuts unusually painful, as if the metal were coated in salt and lemon juice and bee venom. He had no illusions that he could battle these two hags with just a pair of lightly enchanted daggers, though. "A little help!" he shouted.
Something broke the surface beyond the icy platform, and the hag that Zaqen was fighting fell back into the water, shrieking. Had she been attacked by some kind of river monster? Or was Obed finally doing something useful? Whatever the cause, that hag's misfortune freed up Zaqen to help Rodrick, and she loped across the ice, reaching out with an arm that seemed to extend impossibly far, stretching out as if made of soft candle wax. She held a small, pale wand—one of Obed's magical toys, no doubt—and touched the smaller hag on the leg. The monster hissed and tried to scuttle away, her leg turning from green to gray and dragging behind her, as if it were in the process of turning to stone.
