Wistril Compleat (15 page)

Now Markhat is trapped between the powerful
Dark Houses of the halfdead and three determined Trolls.

THE MISTER TROPHY

Copyright 2008 Frank Tuttle

"Somebody sicced a Troll army on me, Mama," I
said. "I'm betting it was you." No one but Mama knew my haunts that
well.

Mama Hog grinned. "The Walking Stone found
you, did he?"

"He did," I said. "And his friends." Mama
motioned me inside. I went, and she shut the door.

"Smells like you're brewing up something
special, Mama," I said, while she settled her stooped old bones
into a chair and motioned for me to be seated as well. "Wouldn't be
Troll after-shave, would it?"

"Might be a drought to shut smart mouths,"
said Mama, brushing a tangle of matted grey hair out of her face.
"Then where would you be, boy?"

"Out of work." I shoved the owl aside and
picked up a worn deck of fortune cards.

"What's in my future, Mama?" I asked.
"Trolls? Gold? Angry vampire hordes?"

The old lady snorted. "The halfdead are no
joke, boy," she said. Her eyes might be old, but they're sharp as
knife-points, and they glittered. "No joke."

I plopped down a card. "Neither are Trolls,
Mama," I said. "This bunch might wind up losing their tempers.
Soon."

"They might," said Mama Hog, her voice
softening, losing some of the old-hag put-on rasp. "Certainly so,
if they find that which they seek."

I threw down another card. "So you know?"

"I know."

"They tell you?"

"They told me."

I shuffled, cut, tossed down a card. "So who
else knows? Eddie? The Watch? Who?"

Mama Hog smiled and scooped up the three
cards I'd tossed out. "No one else knows," she said. "I told them
to trust you, and only you."

"You told them that? Mama, why in the Nine
High Heavens did you tell them that?"

"Your fate and their task meet now, Finder,"
she said, her eyes bright and hard in the candlelight. "Meet, and
mingle, and merge."

"Drop the carnival sooth-sayer act, Mama," I
said. "It won't wash with me."

She slammed a card--one of my three
cards--down on the table, face up in the flickering light.

I could just make out the worn, faded image
of a man running away, a sack slung over his shoulder. Coins
dribbled out of a tear in the sack.

"Greed," said Mama Hog. "Flight. Abandonment.
How much can they pay you for your soul, Finder?"

"I don't know, Mama," I said. "How much do
you charge for fate?"

The second card went down. Crossed daggers
glinted against a half-full moon. "Vengeance," hissed Mama Hog.
"How many lives will you waste to avenge a single death?"

"Six," I snapped. "Maybe five, if it's wash
day."

The third card hit the table. On it a
skeletal hand beckoned, bony forefinger crooked in invitation.

"Death," I said, standing. "Even I know that
one. Death, the Final Dancer, the Last Guy You'll Ever See and Boy
Will You Hope There's Been a Mistake."

Mama Hog stood as well. "Jest if you will,
Finder," she said. "But take care. You stand at a crossroads. One
way leads to the dark."

"How much do I owe you, Mama?"

Mama Hog went stiff. All four feet of her
puffed up and for a moment I honest to gods thought she was going
to slap me. Then she let out her breath in a whoosh and broke into
chuckles.

"No charge to neighbors," she said. "Even
disrespectful unbelieving smart-mouthed jackanapes who don't know
their friends from their boot-heels."

"My friends don't usually send feuding Trolls
to my door, Mama."

"This one did," she replied. "Now get out.
I've got an appointment."

I stomped blinking into the street, telling
myself that Mama's cards were just so much tattered pasteboard and
third-rate flummery.

The street stank, and in the absence of my
Troll friends, it bustled. Wagons creaked, carriage drivers cussed,
horses snorted, and everywhere people rushed back and forth,
hurrying against the daylight so the night people could have the
city by night.

A man passed in front of me, a sack slung
over his shoulder, just like on Mama's card.

I fell in step behind him all the way to
Haverlock.

HOLD THE DARK

Quiet, hard-working seamstresses aren't the
kind that normally go missing, even in a tough town like Rannit.
Martha Hoobin's disappearance, though, quickly draws Markhat into a
deadly struggle between a halfdead blood cult and the infamous
sorcerer known only as the Corpsemaster.

A powerful magical artifact may be both his
only hope of survival-and the source of his own inescapable
damnation.

Markat's search leads him to the one thing
that's been missing in his life But even love may not save him from
the darkness a strange magic has unleashed inside his own soul.

Enjoy the following excerpt from "Hold the
Dark!"

HOLD THE DARK

copyright 2008 Frank Tuttle

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I jumped, spilled warm beer and felt my head
begin to throb.

Mama's voice rang out. She tried the latch,
cussed and shoved hard at the door.

I threw the bottle in the trash bucket and
managed to get out of my chair and to the door before Mama broke it
down.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," I said, fumbling
with the latch. The daylight through my bubbled-glass door-pane was
faint and yellow, more blush of dawn than actual morning. I yanked
the door open. "Damn, Mama, it's barely daylight-"

She pushed her way in beside me. The look on
her face-it's never a good look, mind you-was worried and grim and
if I didn't know her better I'd say it was frantic. "Boy," she
said, huffing and puffing. "Boy, where you been?"

I shut the door.

"Right here sleeping. Why? Where's the fire?"
She fell heavily into my client's chair, her hands tight around the
neck of that big burlap sack she sometimes carries. Once she let a
little snake crawl out of it and get loose on my desk. I'd told her
to leave it at her place from then on. "You ain't been here all
night." She opened the bag and started rummaging around inside it
as she spoke, and I got that lifted-hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck
feeling I'd always gotten when the Army sorcerer corps had aimed
new hexes at us troops.

"Whoa," I said, harder and louder than I
meant to. "You got mojo in that sack, Mama, you'd damn well better
leave it there. I took hexes in the Army because I had to, and
you've slipped a few on me because I didn't see them coming. But
hear this, Mama Hog. No hexes. Not today. Got it?"M

She clamped her jaw and met my stare. I could
see her hands moving, see the beginning of a word form on her
lips.

Then she sagged and let out her breath.

"Wouldn't do no good anyhow." She pulled her
hands out of the bag and tied it shut with a scrap of twine.
"Wouldn't do no good." When she looked back up at me, she had tears
in her eyes.

"Mama, I didn't mean-"

"Ain't you, boy. Ain't nothin' you said.
Ain't nothin' you done."

My head pounded. I took a deep breath and ran
fingers through my hair, which was wild and stiff and probably
bleached white from Mama's soap. "What is it, then? What's got you
so upset?"

"I seen something. Last night. I seen
something bad."

"I thought your cards were clueless where
Martha was concerned."

"Wasn't about Martha." She wiped her eyes and
leaned close. "Was about you."

"Tell me."

She shook her head. "No, I can't tell. Can't
tell 'cause I still can't see real clear." She shuffled in her
seat, and I knew I'd caught her in a lie.

"Tell me what you can."

"Cards. Glass. Smoke. Bones. All come up
death, boy. I called your name and a whippoorwill answered. I
burned your hair and saw the ashes scatter. I caught blood on a
silver needle and saw it turn toward your door." She shivered, and
her eyes looked tired. "Ain't never seen all them things. Not the
same night. And then, when I saw them dogs tearin' at your
clothes-well, I thought you was dead for sure."

"I'm not surprised. I came pretty close, just
after midnight. Maybe that's what you saw."

She shook her head. "I reckon not. Something
still ain't right about all this, boy. I oughtn't to be seeing some
things I see, and ought to see things I don't. We got a sayin' in
Pot Lockney-it's them things under the water what makes the river
wild. Somethin's messing up my sight on this. You reckon you know
what it might be?"

I shook my head. I had suspicions, but they
weren't for anyone but Evis to hear.

"I don't know, Mama, but I will tell you
this. The Houses are mixed up in this, somehow."

She snorted. "Figured that."

"Maybe not that way. At least not all of
them." I gave her just enough of the night's festivities to steer
the Watch and the Hoobins toward Avalante, should I have a fatal
boating accident in the next few days.

None of that helped her state of agitation.
"Running around after Curfew with vampires?" she shouted. "Boy,
have you hit your fool head?"

I had to agree, at least partly. But I'd
lived. Thanks partly to Evis, who was probably pacing anxiously in
a well-appointed crypt across the river.

"Look, Mama, I've got to go. But there's
something you can do. For me. Maybe for Martha."

She gave me a sideways look, nodded.

"I'll need a hex. A paper hex. Something I
can tear. Something you'll know I've torn, just as soon as I've
torn it. From twenty, thirty blocks away. Can you do that?"

She frowned. "I reckon."

"Good. And I'll need you to talk to Ethel. I
need you to tell him we may need men to get Martha. Men who'll
break Curfew. Men who'll fight. Men who'll keep their mouths
shut."

"How many?"

"All you can get." I was hoping for
fifty.

Mama nodded. "You think you know where Martha
Hoobin is?"

"Not yet. But when I find out, we won't have
much time. She's got maybe four days left. That's all." A thought
struck me, and I held up my hand to silence Mama's unspoken
question. "Humor me, Mama. What's special about the night four days
from now?"

She frowned. "Special what?"

"I mean is it some old rite of spring or
solstice or something. Is there going to be an eclipse? Will the
skies turn blood red and rain frogs-that kind of thing?"

"Nothing special about it at all. It's
Thursday. There's a new moon. Might rain."

"That's it," I said, aloud. "New moon. No
moon. Darkest night of the month."

Vampire picnic day.

Mama saw, and the same thought occurred to
her.

"Damn, boy," she piped. "I done told you I
seen death! Death on your name. Death on your blood. Don't none of
that mean nothin' to you?"

I rose. "It does. But look again. You see me
telling Ethel Hoobin I quit? You see me leaving Martha Hoobin at
the mercy of those who have her? You see me just walking away?"

She gathered her bag. She rose, and she was
crying when she hit the door.

I sat. "Whippoorwills," I said, to my empty
chair. "There aren't any whippoorwills in Rannit. Haven't been in
years."

None sang. Ogres huffed and doors began to
open and slam outside and old Mr. Bull's broom started its daily
scritch-scritch on his pitiful small stoop. Rannit came to life,
sans portents and whippoorwills, vampires and doomsayers. I
listened for a while and then got up, combed my hair and headed
across town to speak with Evis about corpses, new moons and
ensorcelled silver combs.