Sword and Sorceress XXVII (7 page)

As she crossed the room, she gathered
herself inward as Gran had taught her to look at the problem with more than her
physical eyes. She had time, but only a little. What was it that needed to
happen? What wish would set all this aright?

The dead needed to find final rest and
haunt no more—that one was easy.

The bishop and his knights needed to go
without unleashing Holy Retribution—also easy.

Then it became harder. She wanted Herrin
safe from the Church, not only from foolish exorcisms and greedy bishops, but
also from the mind-numbing training that was turning him into a stranger.

And for herself, she wanted... what? A
life of laundering and waiting tables? It seemed not, though she had believed
so only a few days ago. Now that she knew she could bespeak the dead, it seemed
foolish to ignore the talent.

She dug deeper under the surface and
sensed other intentions bubbling in the room.  Brechia wanted rest, but also
harbored anger against the greed that had condemned her to centuries of unrest.
But when she concentrated on the Lord Bishop, a chill crept up her spine. He
would never trade gold for gold, which left only one currency for treating with
the dead—blood.

She stared at the positioning again as
the Knight-Commander resumed his post, standing sword drawn behind Herrin. Her
stomach clenched. The plan all along had been to offer blood-price for the
gold, literally sending a boy to the slaughter. And Herrin had not a glimmer of
his danger. She seated herself warily across from the bishop. At close
quarters, the darkness in the man was unmistakable. She distrusted immensely
whatever plan he had in motion.

The bishop focused on Jenna. “My
seminarian tells me you can converse with the dead,” he began.

Herrin had revealed that? Was this the
betrayal Brechia had warned of? She glanced at her brother across the table and
he stared back miserably.
I’m sorry
, he mouthed silently. No, this was
misplaced trust, not betrayal. Herrin had no concept that a bishop’s robe could
hide a black heart. And now she was expected to negotiate her own brother’s
sacrifice. She had to do something, even something rash. “Milord Bishop,” she
said. “You won’t be leaving here with any gold from the barrow.”

The Lord Bishop flicked a cold eye her
direction. “For a barmaid of no breeding,” he sneered, “you seem very sure of
yourself, young woman.”

A sudden movement startled her. Jenna
turned her head to find Brechia pulling over a chair to join them. “Having a
little chat, are we now?” Brechia drawled. “I’m in for that.”

“I
am
sure of myself,” Jenna told
the bishop, “because it would be ill if people found out that their favorite
saint was a thief who stole a fortune and bought himself a sainthood... as some
people hereabouts remember. And Milady Warrior of the Barrow”—there, it was out
in the open—”there will be no blood-price paid here tonight because—”

“This better be convincing,” Brachia
commented archly.

“—because you stand within striking
distance of a chance at eternal rest.” It was pure bravado, just talking to
forestall the worst

Brachia’s expression turned unreadable.

“Ah, a revenant in mundane disguise,”
the bishop said, his eyes narrowing to slits. If he was disturbed by a dead
presence at his table, he hid it well. “We have business to discuss. Blood for
gold, that’s the bargain I offer.” He gestured and the Knight-Commander raised
his sword to Herrin’s neck.

No! Jenna pulled the kitchen knife form
her apron and plunged it into the man’s sword arm. With a howl, he dropped the
sword, blood spurting across the tabletop.

The temperature in the room plummeted. And
from the shadowy corners of the common room, figures emerged—warriors in
antiquated armor. They swept across the room and were upon the Knight-Commander
in two blinks. It happened so fast, he couldn’t even scream as his life-force
was drained by the revenants. He dropped to the floor, a withered husk.

No one moved, but the terror in the room
was a palpable thing. “So you want to bargain, Milord Bishop,” Brechia
announced to the stone-quiet room.

“Take them all, take them all,” the man
wheezed, his smug façade finally shattered.

“Oh, we shall,” Brechia smiled. “Starting
with you.”

As the dead pounced again, all Jenna
could think was
trust not the dead, trust not the dead
over and over. How
could she have been so stupid to start down this path?

A moment later, the bishop was a dry
husk dressed in silken in robes, the suddenly shrunken flesh drawing his face
into an obscene rictus smile. But on his hand, the golden Ring of Office
gleamed brighter than ever. If she squinted just a little, Jenna could see
threads of light stretching from the ring to the revenants, binding them all
together. This was indeed part of the stolen gold.

A chance at eternal rest—that’s what she
had spouted in desperation a moment ago, but it might be truer than she
thought. She reached across the table and slipped the ring from the withered
finger just as Brechia was reaching for it. “By finder’s right, I claim this
ring as my own,” Jenna said quickly.

Brechia gave her an ominous stare. “Enjoy
it for the few minutes you have left to you.”

Jenna swallowed hard. It was as if she
could hear Gran whispering old warnings once again.
Beware the casual
assumption, Jenna. Magic works on the exactness of words, and there are traps
and opportunities within a single word.
“But this ring is your path to
eternal rest. Your dead wizard-lord never said ‘all the gold’ must be returned,
just ‘the gold.’”

Brechia’s eyes widened as she digested
that. Then her gaze turned cold again. “And now you will use this”—she nodded
at the ring—”to bargain gold for gold?”

For the briefest of moments, it was
tempting. Jenna didn’t want to be a serving wench all her life. Then her
grandmother’s whisper—
They will betray all bargains
. “No, not a bargain,”
Jenna blurted out quickly. “A gift freely given to send you to eternal rest.”

Brechia’s shuttered expression shifted
to surprise. “Truly?”

Jenna nodded and placed the ring in
Brechia’s hand.

A long sigh emanated from every revenant
in the room.

It was working, Jenna realized. From a
sloppily worded curse, she had pulled a spark of hope. And once the revenants
believed, anything was possible. That was also the way of magic. Already the
armored warriors were drifting away, eager for their final rest. Brechia also
moved toward the door, but then she turned and beckoned. “A word, if you
please, Jenna.”

Jenna wasn’t exactly pleased but couldn’t
exactly refuse. She stepped away from the table with its two corpses and
followed Brechia out the door.

“You’re clever, I’ll give you that,” the
revenant said when they were alone in the stable yard. “You avoided every
pitfall and produced an outcome no one could imagine. And because you did it
with a gift, I am obligated to repay that gift before I go to my rest.”

Jenna tensed. Would she get the barrow
gold after all? A gift for a gift.

“A word of advice from the grave, so to
speak,” Brechia continued. “You have the knack for dealing with the dead and
that’s a rare talent. You seem to understand that being trapped among the
living after death is a curse. With all the unquiet dead scattered about this
land, you could take that talent on the road and bring peace to both the living
and the dead.”

“I doubt the Church would want a village
witchblood meddling about when it has its own exorcists.”

“You misunderstand. You could become a
Church exorcist.”

“I hardly think—”

Brechia gave an impatient snort. “You’ve
just saved a room full of people from the vengeful dead, Jenna. In the business
of exorcism, that’s all the credentials you need. And it doesn’t hurt to have
the backing of the Knights of the Holy Retribution, and I daresay you’ll have
the very full backing of those three you just saved. You can even take your
dim-witted brother along as an assistant to keep him out of trouble.”

Jenna mulled it over. The idea actually
had merit. “And with the barrow at peace, there’s no reason to stay.” She gave
a snort. “It might be smart to leave before word gets out and all the gold
hunters arrive.”

“Gold hunters?” Brechia drawled in mock
surprise. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

Jenna frowned. “The gold. With no more
dead guardians, the barrow will become a free-for-all.”

“Ah, but there’s hasn’t been gold up
there in centuries. Kyre stole it all.”

“But—” All the gold hunters over all
those years... it was all a ruse for the dead to feed off the greedy? Jenna
swallowed hard, remembering how she had almost walked into that same trap a few
minutes ago.

Brechia glanced up the hill toward her
rest, then turned with a cryptic smile. “Last word of advice—don’t ever trust
the dead.”

Forever Is A Long Time

by
Melissa Mead

Here we have
another fairy-tale creature: a selkie. Melissa is good at taking traditional
fairy-tale elements and transforming them, and this story is no exception.

Melissa
Mead lives in Upstate NY. Her stories have been in SWORD & SORCERESS 23, 24
and 26, IGMS, Daily Science Fiction, and other places. She’s a member of SFWA,
Codex, and the Carpe Libris Writers Group (http://carpelibris.wordpress.com).

****

The old woman everyone called Grandma
Seeley stopped beheading perch and glanced out the front window. A rowboat
bobbed near the opposite shore, beyond the scrap of island that hid her home
from casual view.

“That’s Kim’s.” Grandma Seeley swept the
fish heads and tasty innards into a bowl for later, saving out the filets. “Whatever
possessed the girl to try coming over here just when the wind’s picking up?”

Grandma Seeley called to the Waters.
This lake, nestled in pine-forested mountains so unlike her low, flat homeland,
didn’t respond to her as briskly as the sea would have, but it roused enough to
carry the rowboat on a smooth path to her door.

Kim looked like she’d needed the boost.
Her face was pale, and she hunched over, ankle-deep in cold lake water, as she
made her boat fast to a handy stump.

“You’ll ruin your shoes, child,” Grandma
Seeley said.

“Grandma Seeley, I really need to talk
to you.”

“Come in and talk, then. I’ve just put
some fine perch on the fire.” Grandma Seeley led the way to the house, and Kim
followed.

Inside, the perch were just about ready.
Kim looked toward the fireplace grill, then at her, wide-eyed and alarmed.

“That’s an awful lot of fish. You weren’t
expecting me, were you? I didn’t tell anybody. And Zack promised he wouldn’t
either.”

Saying her boyfriend’s name shattered
Kim’s carefully-held calm. Tears slid down her face. Grandma Seeley sat on the
shabby plaid couch and patted the seat beside her. Kim dropped onto it,
shaking.

“I’m in such trouble. I didn’t mean to.
Zack didn’t mean to. He said he loved me. He was wearing that sweater- you
know, the one I gave him last Christmas. And then… then he wasn’t wearing it,
and we…” Kim choked and gulped air like she was drowning. Grandma Seeley held
her while she sobbed. “Dad would never forgive me. He doesn’t even like us
kissing. When he finds out, he’ll hate me forever.”

“Oh sweetheart, “forever” is a long
time, even for an old lady like me. Your father loves you. Forever is too long
to be without the people you love.”

“But I can’t go home! You have to let me
stay here.” When Grandma Seeley didn’t respond she added “Or else I’ll just
take the boat and head upriver.”

Grandma Seeley sighed. “Well, put on
these slippers and have warm feet and a full stomach for now at least. No point
in letting the fish get cold.”

Kim was normally as enthusiastic about
fresh perch as a seal would be, but now she shoved bits of fish about on her
plate.

“Among the Selkie, wasting food like
that would get you bitten,” said Grandma Seeley with a gentle smile.

Kim didn’t smile back. “This is no time
for those old stories. This is serious.”

Grandma Seeley changed tactics. “Kim, is
your father really such an ogre? He never seemed so to me, back when he’d bring
you here because you were too little to handle the boat by yourself.”

Kim slapped herself on the forehead. “I’m
so stupid! As soon as he realizes the boat’s missing, this is the first place
he’ll come.” The girl ran for the door, slippers flapping. Grandma Seeley
hobbled after her, and heard a scream from the beach.

“The boat’s gone! What did you do with
it? This isn’t funny!”

Kim ran back and forth on the empty
beach, looking in vain for her rowboat. Even the rope that had tied it had
vanished. Grandma Seeley looked more closely, and shivered. Hands had loosed
that boat, and their owner had left no footprints.

“Kim, come inside.”

“How’d you do it? You don’t have a
phone. You couldn’t have called somebody. Where’d you put the boat?”

Grandma Seeley dipped her fingers in the
lake water, grabbed hold of Kim, and traced a cross on the girl’s forehead.

“Let go! What are you doing?”

“Come away from the water, child.
Please. This isn’t their place, they don’t belong here, and I don’t know why
they’ve turned up now, but it can’t mean well for us.” She tried to tug Kim
back to the house.

“Why, I’m here because yon fair maid
cried seven tears into the sea, of course,” said a male voice.

Grandma Seeley turned around slowly,
with Kim clinging, white-faced, to her side. Elused bobbed chest-deep in the
water, his sealskin peeled back to his waist, his human face as boyishly charming
as ever.

“This is a lake, not the sea,” Grandma
Seeley said, marveling at the steadiness of her voice. “It’s many a long mile
from home, and there are no seals here, let alone selkie-folk. So if Laird
Morcant sent you all this way to claim this girl, I’m afraid you’ve come for
nothing.”

Elused shook his sleek head. “I came
alone, and I came for you, Feidlimid.”

Grandma Seeley startled at the name. She
shook her head. “Armel called me Felicienne, and he’s so long dead that even
that name has faded to a ghost.” Heat rose to Grandma Seeley’s face. “Devil
take you, Elused, can’t you see I’m old?”

The selkie’s dark eyes filled with
sorrow. “I know you had no choice but to go with that trapper, that taker of
skins. But why did your daughter here never return your own skin to you, as
daughters always have?”

“I’m not her daughter, buster,” said
Kim. Her voice was harsh, but her face was bright with wonder. “Is it really
all true? About the seal-people, and having to marry guys who take your skin,
and being immortal and able to change shape and all that?”

“It is,” said Elused. “Feidlimid has
been gone so long that the others thought her dead, perhaps killed by that
trapper who stole her skin…”

“I gave Armel my skin, Elused,” said
Grandma Seeley, holding the sealman’s hurt gaze. “I know selkie men can never
be faithful, just as we selkie women must always be. It’s in our blood. Armel
promised to stay with me all his days, and he did. He never took any sealskin
but mine, and we had no children to return it to me.”

“I searched for you all his days,” said
Elused, with a solemnity she’d never heard in his voice, or any seal-man’s. “Though
the others shunned me, though I knew you must be trapped without your skin, I
searched. I would have come sooner, had there been tears to call me.”

Kim wiped her eyes with the back of her
hand. “I’ll miss you, Grandma Seeley.”

“Who said I was going anywhere? Even if
I had that wretched old hide, this mortal body’s too far gone for me to wear it
as it’s meant for wearing. And you heard him: the selkie believe I wedded a
butcher. Your mortal tales don’t mention that selkies have sharp teeth, and
bite when they’re crossed. I’m dead to the tribe, and if Elused won’t go back,
so is he.”

“You’re a hypocrite,” said Kim.

“What?”

“You want me to go back home, but you
won’t!”

“Kim, sweetheart, I wedded a trapper. A
seller of hides. The others will kill me for that. Your father’s a good man. He
loves you. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“This guy says he loves you. What have
you got to be afraid of?”

“Listen to the child, Feidlimid,” said
Elused.

Grandma Seeley turned her back on both
of them and stormed into the house. Let Kim’s father get the loan of another
boat and come fetch his daughter. Kim would go home, Elused would wheedle his
way back into the tribe with that eternal charm of his, and all would be as it
was.

She sat rocking by the fire, listening
for the chug of a motor or the splash of oars. Nothing came. She looked out the
front window, and gasped. Kim stood bent-backed on the wee scrap of island,
with Elused watching her intently. Grandma Seeley hurried down to the beach
just as Kim straightened and shouted “Got it!” She held up a tattered brown
bundle.

Elused laughed aloud. “She’s daughter of
your heart if not your body, Feidlimid! Guessed right off that your man would’ve
hid your skin on this wee skerry, in his sight but not ready to your hand. Did
you never think to look there?”

“Did you never think that I might not
want to? That I might want to finish the life I chose?”

Elused looked wounded. “Come, put it on.”

Grandma Seeley shook her head. “How’d
Kim get out there? And where’s her father, who should have been here long
since?”

Elused shrugged. “I carried her—as
tenderly as though she were a babe, don’t you worry! And her father, well, I
asked the waves to rock him gently for a while, so the lass could say her
farewells to us.”

“It’s so soft,” Kim said wonderingly.
She unfolded Grandma Seeley’s sealskin. It tumbled nearly to her ankles in
folds of silvered golden-brown.

Grandma Seeley shivered. “No. It’s been
too long.”

A glint came into Elused’s dark eye. “Then
the lass should wear it. A pity it should be lost because its owner died
mortal.”

Kim’s eyes got wide. “I could? I could
be a selkie like you, and be immortal and beautiful, and not have to worry
about mortal stuff anymore?”

“Try it,” said Elused. “Just wrap it
about you and jump in the water, there where it deepens.”

“No!” Grandma Seeley cried, but Kim
swathed herself in the skin, closed her eyes, and jumped.

The skin tangled about her mortal limbs,
as Grandma Seeley had known it would. The old woman kicked off her shoes, dove.
and swam to the thrashing, choking girl’s side.

“I’ve got you, Kim. Relax.”

The dragging weight on her arms lifted.
Elused was holding Kim up on the other side, and he actually looked frightened.

“I thought it would work. Truly. I meant
her no harm.”

“Just take Kim back to shore.”

Kim wrenched away from him, throwing her
arms around Grandma Seeley and nearly sinking them both. “No! I’m not letting
that liar touch me again.”

Grandma Seeley glared at Elused, who
looked abashed. The sealskin twined about her ankles, caressing.

“For the love of the Lady! You’ll all be
the death of me. Kim, sweetheart, can you tread water for just a minute? When I
come up, put your arms around my neck and hold on.”

She dove, shedding her housedress. The
sealskin wrapped itself around her, but she pushed it away from her face. Let
the seal’s body carry Kim to shore, but her face, her mind, herself- that would
remain human.

Ah, but the water was gentle, welcoming.
And in the skin’s embrace, her old bones no longer ached.

She shook the alluring thoughts away and
surfaced to pull Kim ashore. Elused followed, more subdued than she’d ever seen
him.

“Make yourself useful,” she said once
Kim was shivering on the beach. “Go inside and get us both some dry clothes. I
can’t manage the steps in this shape, and well-mannered humans don’t traipse
about in the altogether.”

Elused took the hint and wrapped his
sealskin about his waist before he left the water. Grandma Seeley noted with
envy and admiration that he was as young and spry as ever. He returned with a
motley assortment of human clothing, and turned his back while Kim dressed
herself in a pair of Armel’s old trousers and a sweater. Grandma Seeley looked
at the raincoat he’d brought her, shook her head, and wrapped her sealskin,
warmer than anything a human could knit, snugly about her shoulders.

“I meant you no ill, Miss,” Elused said
to Kim, staring at his feet. “I only thought that if Feidlimid refused her skin
it might pass to you. I’ve been a long time alone, and pining for company.
Loneliness is a terrible thing for an immortal.”

“Forever’s a long time,” Kim agreed,
looking at Grandma Seeley.

“Elused, tell the waters to bring Kim’s father
here,” Grandma Seeley said. “He must be nearly frantic.” She pulled on her
sealskin, all the way.

“Your muzzle is gray,” said Elused,
shocked.

The seal shook her head, and Grandma
Seeley’s face showed through. “Now do you see? I married a trapper, a
seal-killer, and I got old. Some things can’t be undone. And there’s never been
a selkie man on this good green earth who could think beyond his own pleasure.
Now leave us both alone.”

She dove, deep into the green-gold
waters of the lake. Fish flashed away from her. Weeds brushed against her.
Water throbbed in her ears.

No one swam to greet her, or to threaten
her. Elused had spoken the truth- he was the only other selkie in these waters,
so far from home. The waters were the only thing there to welcome her back to
herself.