The Hag's Contract

Thirteen

Harrach, for all his size and strength, could move as softly as a cat when he wanted to. He chose to now. Testing each board in the staircase before putting his full weight on it, stopping for half a minute whenever he made the slightest noise, he moved steadily downward. The wizard knew they were inside his house, but he might not know where they were.

The staircase ended at a door. Harrach pushed gently with his fingertips, and it swung silently open on well-oiled hinges. He found himself looking down a stone corridor lit by a single flickering torch. Again he crept forward.

To his right, a door stood slightly ajar. Through the narrow gap he glimpsed movement. He smiled coldly. This was what he’d been waiting for.

After taking half a step back, he kicked the door open and leapt through, brandishing his sword. A quick glance showed him the room: a chamber with bright tapestries on the walls, scattered pieces of intricately carved wooden furniture, and several tables piled high with papers. A fireplace against one wall radiated a cheerful warmth. The center of the room had been cleared, and intricate geometric designs were drawn on the floor. In the middle of the design, behind a large wooden lectern upon which perched an open book, stood a tall, gaunt, almost emaciated man with a short gray beard the same color as his robes. His head had been shaved. He barely glanced up as Harrach burst in, but kept reading from the book and mumbling to himself.

Harrach almost laughed. It would be ridiculously easy to subdue this wizard. He raised his sword and charged. One blow to knock him out, a gag and some hand restraints, and then they could worry about rendering him harmless. Old stories told of blinded, tongueless wizards who were no longer able to practice their craft. Perhaps such a fate would suit this one….

Before Harrach had taken two steps, though, he felt someone grab his cloak from behind. He whirled—too late. One of the wizard’s servants, hiding behind the door, ripped his cloak away in a single quiet movement.

The talisman—

The wizard stopped mumbling, looked up, and spoke a single word. Immediately Harrach found himself unable to move. His arms felt leaden, and his legs became impossibly heavy weights. Something burred like a cicada in the back of his mind.

Distantly, as though in a dream, he heard the wizard speaking to his servant. As Harrach watched in mounting terror, the man moved forward and began to bind Harrach’s arms and legs with heavy ropes. The servant’s fingers moved deftly, and Harrach realized he’d never be able to free himself. He had a sudden, sick feeling of despair. He couldn’t even call out to warn Captain Evann.

At last, the servant finished tying him and moved away. The wizard said another word, and the heaviness on Harrach lifted. Finding himself able to move, he frantically struggled to escape.

“I’m shocked that you would disturb me,” the wizard said, voice thick with the guttural accent of Rzhlev, “in the middle of a spell. Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Fortunately no harm was done this time. And,” he went on, watching Harrach’s muscles bulge as he tried to break the ropes, “it’s no use fighting. Tying knots is about the only thing my people do well. They are rather … limited in their abilities. I have not been able to teach them anything they didn’t already know. But you and your captain … ah! There are so many possibilities.”

“It’s a trap, Captain!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “Stay back!”

The wizard laughed. “I’m afraid my men are already taking care of him. In a few minutes he, too, will be tied up. Then I’ll have my time to work on you both….”

Harrach glared at him. “Let me loose!”

“Do not be stupid—Harrach, is it?—and do not try to argue with me. Why should I bother when soon enough you will serve me gladly?”

He went to a table and sat, taking up a pen. Slowly, meticulous, he began to draw magical designs and patterns on a piece of parchment.

After a minute, Harrach stopped straining against the ropes. Instead, he studied the room, trying to find something, anything, to help him.

He noticed the stand on which the wizard’s book rested. It was tall, graceful, made of intricately carved wood … an art object, designed for beauty rather than function.

He swung his legs around and struck the stand’s base with his feet. It toppled easily. The wizard gave a sharp cry of dismay as his book fell into the fireplace.

Just as quickly, though, the wizard seized tongs and pulled the book from the flames. The covers were a bit scorched, the edges of the pages a bit blackened, but otherwise it appeared unhurt. The wizard sighed. He brushed it off gently, touching it like a man would touch the woman he loved.

Then he righted the book stand and moved it a more respectful distance from Harrach’s feet. “You really should be more careful,” he said. “Were I less benevolent of nature, I might well have killed you. However, you will serve me soon enough. Lie there calmly and wait. It won’t hurt for more than a moment.”

He bent over the book and began to read. The words were strange, harsh, guttural. Some seemed more sobs and wails than anything else, and all held an inflection that grated on Harrach’s nerves.

Harrach began to fight desperately against the ropes. He felt something wet on his wrists and realized he’d rubbed them raw and bloody. Perhaps, he thought, the blood might let him slip loose….

Still the wizard chanted. Tiny spots of black appeared in the air, each no larger in diameter than his thumb. Through them oozed ghostly, smoke-colored snakes. They seemed to writhe to the rhythm of the wizard’s voice.

Then they swarmed over Harrach’s body. He felt their cool, scaled hides sliding over his hands, his face, his eyes….

Evann heard Harrach’s warning cry just as he finished blinding the second fisherman. His friend was in trouble.

Backing up to the end of the hall, Evann darted forward, leapt, set foot in the middle of the first fisherman’s back, vaulted the second, and found himself at the head of the staircase once more. He started down at a trot. Behind him, the two creatures fumbled their way in pursuit.

He found the second floor as empty as he’d left it, and the first floor the same, with no sign of Harrach. That meant he had to have run into trouble in the cellars below the house.

Gripping his sword more tightly, Evann eased down the staircase. Even before he reached the last step, he heard chanting from ahead. He shivered, unnerved by the liquid, throaty sounds that the voice made. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before.

Taking the torch from its holder in the wall, he moved silently toward the open door ahead. Through it he could just see Harrach’s bound feet, and over Harrach swarmed the same black snakes he’d seen on the fisherman earlier that night.

No sense hesitating. Death or victory—there could be no alternative.

Plunging into the room, he found the wizard standing behind a tall, ornate lectern, reading aloud from an open book. The wizard didn’t glance up, didn’t stop his chant for a moment.

Evann leapt forward and brought his sword down in the crease of the open book. The blade sliced easily through the binding, shattered the lectern into so much kindling. The halves of the book flopped apart like a fish cut in two.

The wizard shrieked and dived after half of the book, trying to turn the page, trying to continue his chant uninterrupted.

Evann didn’t give him a chance. He thrust the torch at the wizard’s robes and set them afire.

Again the wizard shrieked, this time from pain and fear. As he tried to beat out the flames with his hands and half of the book, Evann turned to his friend.

The snakes had scattered to the corners of the room, filling the shadows with dim movement. He noticed another fisherman holding a club, but this one stood off in the corner, watching with vague indifference—waiting for orders. The wizard was too preoccupied to give any, at least for the moment.

Bending, Evann cut Harrach free. Harrach leapt to his feet, rushed to the table, and snatched up his sword and his cloak, with its protective talisman. Then he started for the wizard, face twisted with rage.

The wizard, though, had almost put out the fire. Evann seized his friend’s arm and forced him toward the door, despite his protests. He had no intention of fighting both the snakes and their master.

“Let go of me!” Harrach roared. “I’ll see him dead!”

Evann didn’t. “You can’t kill him,” he said, “or we’ll never find the others! Trust me, old friend.”

Harrach tensed, as if preparing to fight, then abruptly relaxed and nodded. The bloodlust had passed. Evann let go, and Harrach fled the room.

Evann pulled the door shut and wedged the end of the hallway torch between the door’s handle and the wall. Now that it couldn’t be opened from the inside, the wizard was trapped.

They paused and looked at each other, panting for breath. Harrach grimaced. “What now, Captain?”

“We try to get out.” He grabbed one of Harrach’s bleeding wrists and looked at the wound. The skin had been torn away in a complete circle around the wrist. It bled freely. Evann pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the wound, then tied it tightly to stanch the flow of blood. Harrach winced a bit, but said nothing. They’d both suffered worse than this before.

“Can’t have your sword slipping, can we?” he said.

As they turned for the stairs, a frantic pounding began on the door. The wizard shouted for help and called both their names.

Evann hesitated, glancing at Harrach. What sort of trick was this?

“What do you want?” Harrach called to him.

“Quickly, you must let me out! The snakes! The snakes!”

Evann heard a strange, half-stifled scream, followed by a thump like that of a falling body, and then nothing more.

He had a strange, uneasy feeling, and in his mind he could see the fisherman on the dock once more, the snakes swarming over him, pouring down his throat. The memory made him sick. He wondered if that was now happening to the wizard, if he were being devoured by the shadow fiends he had summoned.

Harrach looked uneasily at him. “Do you think—?”

He nodded. “Dead by his own magic.”

By dawn, the west wind had returned. It howled through the village, whipped down the alleys and narrow winding streets, and set the river’s waves running high and choppy.

At first light, Evann burned the wizard’s house. The dry wooden floors and interior walls caught at once, and flames and showers of sparks leapt high into the air, driven up like fireworks by the wind. Thick black smoke filled the sky.

Almost instantly, mourners began to fill the streets. Over half the village had suddenly and inexplicably collapsed and died: most of the adults and many of the oldest children. Evann said nothing, but knew these were the people whom the wizard had possessed with his snakes. Wolfgar and Breitt turned up dead as well. Somehow, Evann was not surprised.

The wizard’s house collapsed in on itself, sending more flames shooting high into the air. The surviving villagers meanwhile wound through the streets of Gletscherel Village in a long, disorderly procession, flailing themselves with branches cut from live oak trees, trying to drive away any bad spirits still lingering in their village. Their cries were sharp and pitiful.

Swallowing, Evann led Harrach back to their fishing boat. As Uwe cast them off, Evann watched the villagers assemble on the docks. The upturned faces of men and women alike were wet with tears. They rocked back and forth, back and forth, and sobbed. Clearly, they blamed him for what had happened, and for an instant, he let himself feel guilt. If he hadn’t killed the wizard, their loved ones would still be alive.

He felt a wrenching inside as he said, “Raise the sail!”

“Aye, sir!” called Harrach. The sail went up with a sudden whisper of rope and canvas, then cracked and snapped taut in the stiff breeze.

Evann forced his attention to Gletscherel Village once more. The townsfolk were staring at him. He thought of the shock and anger and betrayal they must have felt. He swallowed, feeling guilty.

“How was I to know?” he silently asked the heavens. If fate had been kind, if life could have for an instant matched the old fairy tales, the villagers might have lived on when freed from the wizard’s spell. But no, such miracles would never come.

Perhaps it would have been better to let the wizard live, he thought for a second. He shook his head. No. It’s better this way. These people, he knew deep inside, were better off dead than possessed. He only wished everyone in Gletscherel Village could understand.

He turned away, refusing to look at them any longer. Still he heard their wailing voices. The pale, pale faces of the children would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Come on,” he said to Harrach, to all the others in his suddenly grim-faced crew. They missed Lothar and Breitt as much as he did. “We still have to find Orin Hawk and save our king.”