“Tell him to go to Hell.”
The Lady’s hirelings whirled to find her leaning wearily on the stair. Marlo was at her side, holding her upright.
“This House has stood for three hundred and seventy years,” she said. “Stood through Elves and Trolls and fires and storms. How dare any of you decide this is the day we turn into a House of cowards.”
The Lady’s eyes flashed. “Tell him,” she said, to me.
“Nothing doing,” I shouted, at the door. “No banshees for you today. I’m also told you can go to Hell. Furthermore, a suggestion was made that your mother was a donkey. I myself dispute that last part, because-”
Something struck the door. The timbers buckled visibly inward. The makeshift barricade shifted and groaned.
The Lady stiffened. Marlo opened his mouth to issue a protest, but too late. She raised her hands, made a gesture that blurred the air, and spoke a harsh strange word.
Outside, men screamed.
The Lady sagged. Marlo caught her. She smiled weakly back at him.
“Another of Grandmother’s old spells,” she said. “Not mine. I’m fine.”
There was a thud outside, as something large and heavy was dropped. The screaming continued, growing weaker. Men shouted.
I smelled burning flesh.
Evis came gliding down the stairs, halting a respectful distance from Marlo and the Lady.
“Finder,” he said. “Accompany me.”
I put Toadsticker back in my belt and shouldered my way through the mob. They didn’t like it, but no one got in my way.
The Lady pulled herself together and started exhorting her troops. I sidled past her and accompanied Evis upward.
“Developments?” I whispered. The Lady was talking about courage and honor. I remember the same pep talks from my Army days, and after reflecting on the contempt we’d harbored toward those same speeches I knew she was wasting her breath.
“I think so,” he said. “Good news for us, for a change. Looks like the Corpsemaster has decided to start his show.”
I let out a sigh of relief. Part of me had been wondering if Hisvin had just gotten bored with the whole affair and had simply gone home to have a drink and curl up with a good book.
“You sure it’s Hisvin?”
“It killed a couple of soldiers while you were engaged in diplomacy. It’s Hisvin, all right.”
We reached the third floor and left the stairs. Evis darted down a hall, took a right, stopped at the third door, knocked softly in a one-two one-two pattern.
Locks clicked. I could hear furniture scrape the floor as it was pulled away from the door.
Finally, Gertriss peeped out. “Boss,” she said. More scrapings, and then she opened the door wide enough for us to squeeze through.
Mama and Darla were on the floor, playing dolls with Buttercup. At sight of me the banshee leaped to her feet and sprang across the room to hug my knees.
The door shut behind us, and Gertriss threw the lock and then put a hastily improvised bar across the middle of the door.
“This the room Marlo gave you?”
“No, it isn’t. But everyone knew about that room. This is one smaller, but the walls are thicker and that door is a solid piece of blood oak. I thought we’d be safer here.”
I gave Gertriss a smile and disentangled Buttercup.
“Good thinking. You’re getting a promotion, first thing tomorrow.” I tousled the banshee’s hair and turned her around. “Go play, honey. The grownups need to talk.”
Darla held out a doll with corn-silk hair, and Buttercup squealed and leaped for it.
“Over here,” said Evis. He was standing by a window. The window itself was covered over with a burlap sack. Marlo lifted the corner of the sack and motioned me forward.
Someone had pulled away the window frame on the right side, and had managed to go through the inner wall and pull away a chunk of limestone the size of my fist, leaving a hole we could see through.
Mama cackled, suddenly beside me. “Have a look, boy. We ain’t the only ones with sorcery troubles now.”
I put an eye to the hole and prayed it hadn’t been noticed from the ground.
It hadn’t, mainly because the people on the ground had more pressing matters to attend to.
Something had broken through the scorched turf about twenty feet from the wall. From my vantage point, I could discern that it was a smooth, glassy cylinder of some dark material. The top was flat. Earth and burnt grass still rested on it.
It was maybe five feet in diameter. And it was still rising, albeit slowly.
About it were shouts and one long, agonized scream. I couldn’t see the source of the screams, but I could see soldiers keeping well beyond it shouting and loosing arrows and yelling for wand-wavers.
The arrows they loosed simply vanished. I never heard them strike the cylinder, never saw then ricochet off it. They just ceased to be.
As did the screaming, suddenly, and with a certain air of mortal finality.
Two wand-wavers on black mounts came galloping up. They consulted with the soldiers, who still loosed volley after volley of useless arrows at the thing.
After a few moments, one of the wand-wavers dismounted, produced one of the blue-headed staves they favored, and cautiously approached the cylinder.
He made a few waves with his staff. The head of it began to glow and trail mist. He called for the arrows to cease, and they did, and the blue radiance from his staff engulfed him, and he kept walking.
I didn’t see what happened next. The top of the rising cylinder blocked my view of the black-robed figure, and then there was a flash, and shouts from the soldiers beyond.
Another flash. Another scream. The other wand-waver leaped from his horse and set his staff alight and hurled a bolt of blue at the cylinder, but the screaming didn’t cease and the light joined the arrows in silent oblivion.
The second wand waver hurled another pair of useless bolts at the cylinder, but he kept his distance.
The screaming of his comrade reached an agonizing peak, and then it too was snuffed out, and there was a moment of stunned silence from the soldiers in the yard.
Inside the cylinder, something moved, thrashing about as though trapped in dark fluid.
More movement, slowing, and a man’s bare hand pressed itself to the inside of the cylinder, struck it once in a useless attempt to break free, and then slid slowly out of sight.
I let the burlap sack fall back down over the hole.
“It’s not Hisvin’s usual style, but it’s certainly effective.”
I nodded. The screams echoed in my mind. Despite their murderous intentions concerning us, I felt a moment of pity for the fallen wand-wavers. They hadn’t died well.
“I imagine he’s trying to keep them from putting a name to the enemy.” I turned from the wall. “Using magics he isn’t known for, to keep them from deciding it’s him.”
“Probably,” replied Evis. “Of course, that means we’ll be the only ones who do know. Lucky us.”
I shrugged. Being privy to another of Hisvin’s secrets was a worry for tomorrow.
“Look on the bright side,” said Evis. “Maybe it’s not the Corpsemaster at all. Maybe the ruckus has made Old Bones begin to stir.”
“That’s the bright side?”
Evis laughed and grinned. “At least we’re not the only ones with worries. Any enemy of my enemy, you know the rest.”
Footfalls sounded in the hall outside. Lots of them. Someone tried the door, found it locked, gruffed something about a key.
Even Buttercup had the sense to be quiet. She looked up at me, her doll in her hand, her expression touched with an oddly adult worry.
Boots stomped away. All of us, banshee included, let out a collective sigh of relief.
“This isn’t going to end well.”
“Hush,” snapped Mama, at Evis. “Where’s them other halfdead? I reckon we all ought to be in the same place, come the time.”
“They’re nearby. Believe me, they’ll make their presence known, should anyone try to breach this door by force.”