Dream Magic (10 page)

But what else had he seen in their e
yes that night? Guilt? Possibly even a glimmer of fear? What had they hidden from him? He had to find out.

Slet turned and began to dig. The woman in white stood behind him, all but forgotten. He dug until his calloused hands bled, and
he kept digging.

When at l
ast he found the bottom of the second cold grave, a soft rain had begun. The water fell over his back and soaked his unkempt hair. With bleeding, grimy fingers, he pried away the tiny door of the tiny casket and saw what laid there inside.

They’d killed it.

A troll lay in the tiny box. It could not be anything else. A furry monster with mad, staring eyes and a mouthful of sharp teeth. The strangling cord was still wrapped around its neck, as tightly wound today as it had been the day his child had met death.

“And now you know,” said a soft voice behind him.

Slet wept openly. His tears mixed with rain and dirt and formed a slurry of mud all around him. He’d not wept since Annelida died. From that day to this, he’d been stern and snarling—but this was too much.

“Who did this to my son?” Slet wailed.

“Your Aunt Mattie, that’s who. Look into your heart. You know I speak the plain truth.”

He shook his head.
Matilda had always been kind to him. Perhaps, he thought, she’d done this horrid deed to save him from the pain he felt right now. He hadn’t thought he could grieve any more for his lost family—but he’d been wrong. The pain was fresh again.

“Witch,” he said. “You’ve done your worst. You’ve had your fun. Now, leave me in peace to bury my family again.”

“Not quite yet,” she said. “I have another task for you.”

He turned to look back at her. The Jewel at her neck shone like the sun, despite the black rain around them.

“What else would you have of me?”

Morgana
pointed down into the dark grave.

He followed her gesture, and his jaw sagged, and he slowly shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

Suddenly,
she stood close to him, but he could not turn to look at her. He could not do anything but stare at his son lying in his grave.

“The cord,” she said, her hot breath puffing into his ear, “you must remove it.”

Slet felt her hands on his arms, fingers curling around his biceps. Her nails sank into his flesh, but he didn’t feel the pain. He didn’t feel much of anything. He stared at the strangling cord. It was leather, and thick. Three thongs braided together formed the cord, which had been twisted tight with a stick. The stick had wound up close to the troll’s small head, making the neck loll to one side as if broken.

“No,” Slet whispered again.

“Do you believe your Aunt did the right thing? Do you approve of this murder? Would you have done the same?”

“No
t that,” he admitted with a whisper. “I could not have done it.”

“Good
…now, remove this desecration from your child. Unwind the cord.”

Face trembling with horror and sorrow, rain and tears dribbling from his nose
together, he climbed down into the grave. When he crouched upon the crumbling casket, he reached down into the grave and lifted his dead infant from its resting place.

* * *

Trolls are creatures apart from all the rest. They have habits and natures both strange and foul. The being that Slet took into his arms was furred and stiff. It did not feel alive or as if it had ever
been
alive. It felt like a stone wrapped in a thick wooly coat of black hair.

As he unwound the cord from its neck, he stopped weeping. He felt numb. It was as if he had no direct contact with the world around him—as if he moved in a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

The cord was stiff with age. The braided leather thongs had changed after being in the cold ground for years, becoming brittle and flaking as he forced them to move. Strangely, the creature the cord had strangled so long ago had not likewise rotted. Slet’s fascination with what he was doing was so great that he didn’t ponder the implications of this.

“That’s good,” said the witch, crouching near him. “Now, lay the child down on the earth—gently! Let those raindrops fall upon its brow. They will do it no harm, and may do it some good.”

At this, Slet managed to look at her with a frown. How could rain do his child any good? The tiny creature was as dead as a cat in a drowning bag.

He almost managed to open his mouth and speak these words when he heard something, and his eyes were dragged back to his son’s bestial face.

What he saw then shocked him as greatly as the moment he first had laid eyes upon the wave of dead-things shambling toward him up the High Street a decade earlier.

The eyes were open. They were yellow, and each had a large black vertical slit for a pupil—like a cat’s eyes. There was no life in these eyes, no breath in the lungs—but they were open, and they looked glassy, as if life had only just left the body of this tiny, pitiful thing.

“My son is a dead-thing?” he asked in horror.

“No, fool,” Morgana said. “You didn’t get far in school, did you boy? The child is a troll. Trolls can’t be killed forever by cords. It takes fire or acid to destroy their bodies permanently.”

Slet stared at her, then turned back to the body lying in the mud before him. “He’s alive?”

“Not yet, but soon.”

“Has he been in pain all this time?”

She laughed. It was an unpleasant sound, almost a cackle. “How should I know? Ask it if you dare when it draws breath again.”

Slet stared at the witch. “Why are you doing this?”

“
All will be clear soon. Here now, we haven’t much time. I’ve got the cage ready. Put it inside now.”

“A cage?”

“Do you want a feral troll, fresh-murdered, in your arms as it awakens? He won’t understand you are his papa. He’ll tear your throat out.”

Reluctantly, Slet did as she bade. He put his small furry child into a cage of hardwood with silver bars and she shut the door, yanking her fingers back.

It was just in time. The creature inside, who’d been motionless a moment before, launched itself after her hands. Morgana pulled them away, but not quickly enough. A curving, hook-like claw caught the back of her hand and laid it open. She hissed with displeasure.

The troll was up on its haunches,
glaring at them through the bright metal bars of its tiny prison.

“Damnable thing!” she
cried. “I’d burn you right now if I didn’t need you so!”

Somehow, these words goaded Slet to action as nothing else had. He stood suddenly and grabbed the woman by the wrists. She stared at him in surprise and rage.

“Let go of me!” she hissed.

Slet almost did as she ordered. He wanted to—he
had
to. But managed to hold onto his own mind for a few seconds longer before he released her.

“If you harm my son, I’ll kill you,” he said matter-of-factly.

He found he wanted to slay this woman more than he’d ever wanted to kill anyone in his life. Although he wanted to clutch her throat and strangle her, to make her suffer every moment of pain his child had once endured, he could not do it.

Instead, he released her.
Both of them stepped apart, breathing hard and glaring. The Jewel at Morgana’s neck glimmered, and Slet staggered back another step, almost stumbling. There was a contest of wills, but it was uneven. Slet’s eyes dropped to the ground and became as glassy as the tiny puddles of rain that had formed everywhere on the ground.

Quietly watching this scene was the troll at their feet. He did not speak, but he watched them both carefully.
His curved claws gripped the bars that caged him, and he strained at them. The bars held despite his efforts.

“One more
task, and you will be freed, wretched man of the Haven,” Morgana said.

“What would you have me do?”

She lifted her arm and pointed upslope. His eyes followed her gesture. There, at the top of the hill, was the old Drake Crypt. It had been sealed years back, after the Storm of the Dead. Inside, horrors were said to abound.

Slet’s face fell and his expression changed from murderous to fearful. “I can’t go in there. No one can. Lord Rabing—”

“Is absent and a fool to boot,” finished the witch. “You’ll go into that crypt and find what sleeps there. You’ll bring it back to me. At that point, you’ll be free of me, and I of you.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll force you slay your own son again. A true death, this time.”

Slet shook his head. “You could never force me to do that. I have no hopes, no dreams, no fears. I can’t be enticed like a maiden to dance until my heart bursts.”

Morgana sneered at him and lifted his lantern. She poured out the oil upon the cage. The liquid ran down over the top of it, slicking the troll’s fur and sliding down the bars.

“If one flame touches this—” she began.

Slet made his move. He lunged at her, arms extended to their fullest. If he could knock her flat—

But she touched her Jewel and a flash of light struck his eyes. The troll and he
both hissed and reeled, blinded.

“Back, fool!” she cried. “If you try that again, I’ll
smash the lantern on this cage and burn the little monster inside to ash!”

Slet
staggered away. His eyes were squinched shut, and they could not see in any case.

“All right,” he said. “Mercy witch, I’ll do as you sa
y. But you must promise not to—”

“NO!” she screeched at him. “No more words from you
! Silence, I command it!”

Slet opened his mouth, but only tiny croaking sounds issued. He could not speak.

“Now, go to the tomb and bring back the Black Jewel. I will give you ten minutes. If you don’t return, I’ll burn this little devil alive.”

Slet
fell to his knees, dizzy. A moment later, he could see fuzzy outlines of his surroundings again. His vision was returning. He struggled to his feet again, but slipped in the mud and almost slid into his child’s grave. Gathering himself, he rose and headed for the crypt. He did not know what he would find inside.

He’d sworn to Lord Rabing and the Constabulary never to open the tomb, whic
h was heavily locked and warded—but that promise was to be broken this eve.

He fumbled with the jangling keys and tried them in each of the heavy locks. These were not simple,
Haven-built locks, the sort of thing that kept a fisherman’s sons from pilfering a jug of corn whiskey. They were forged by Kindred Mechnicians. They could not be picked, nor opened at all by people unskilled. Slet had been trained to use them when he’d taken the job, but that was long ago.

“What’s the
matter?” screeched the witch.

Slet was startled to realize she was near. He had not heard her approach. He glanced over his shoulder.

He found his numb lips worked again, and he could speak. The spell had passed.

“The locks are complex. One must hold down triggers and catches while twisting the correct key.”

“Damn Rabing. Damn his eyes! What was he thinking?”

“Perhaps of you, trying to make off with the
Black Jewel.”

She twisted her lips at him, and left him to his work. After several minutes, he managed to get the last lock free of its creaking hasp. He swung open the grate, and the rusted hinges squealed and groaned in protest.

He turned back at this moment. “I know something of the Jewels,” he said to her. “They are jealous servants, and two will not have the same master.”

“You let me worry about that. Go get it. I’m growing impatient.”

Slet took a last look around at the dark hillside where he’d spent many unhappy years. They now seemed like a halcyon time of plenty compared to this sorry moment. Then he turned his back upon the surface world of life, sun and wind. He entered the black tomb.

The first thing he noticed as he
crunched down the carven steps was the stillness of the crypt. Sounds from the outside world above were swallowed up and deadened immediately upon entering here. He could barely make out the steady drumbeat of the rain outside, and the wind lashing the trees was only a whisper.

In this new world, the
re was little for the senses to grasp. His ears rang with the stillness. The earth and stones were cold and the only odor was that of ancient dust.

There was also an uneasy stillness
to the crypt which he felt rather than heard. It was as if the walls were waiting to take a breath, but did not yet dare to do so.

He dug in
to the pockets of his leather pants and brought out a candle stub along with some matches. As a grave digger who lived alone on Cemetery Hill, he never went anywhere without both of these essentials.

After rasping a few match heads over the walls, he managed to strike one alight. He touched it to the tiny blackened wick and a dim yellowy light soon flickered over the walls.