Never Trust a Dead Man

Page 6

He set the body - with its arms now folded properly across its chest - back into the wall niche, which he thought meant they would be ready to leave the cave.
Apparently not.
"What?" Farold demanded. "No prayer?"
Elswyth sighed - loudly - but waited.
Selwyn gave Farold what his uncle Derian had spoken at the cave mouth: "He was a good boy, with a lot of years ahead of him."
"That's it?"
Selwyn was ready to cope with annoyance. But Farold sounded so dejected, Selwyn didn't have the heart to point out that he'd done a fairly good imitation of Derian. Nor did he think it appropriate to say: "Here lies Farold. He wasn't as bad as a skunk dying under the porch." Instead, he said only, "It's distracting, with you standing there listening."
"I'll be happy to help," Elswyth offered, "when we set you down for good."
Farold didn't take amiss what sounded, Selwyn thought, much like a threat.
Still, even then, leaving wasn't easy. Farold, in the bat's body, had as much trouble flying as he had had trying to stand upright.
"Let the bat's mind take over," Elswyth recommended. "It knows how to fly."
"It doesn't have a mind to speak of," Farold said. "It only wants to go outside to eat bugs with the rest of the swarm."
'"Swarm'?" Elswyth repeated contemptuously.
"Flock, herd, whatever a gaggle of bats is called."
"Colony," Elswyth said. "A group of bats is called a colony. I was about to say you're thinking too much, but never mind."
"Eat bugs and leave droppings," Farold scoffed. "Big thinkers."
"Hang upside down by their toes," Elswyth added, making a lunge for him.
Apparently the malice in her tone and the sudden movement frightened Farold enough that the bat's mind was able to take over. He fluttered up to Selwyn's shoulder, leaving - as he had said - bat droppings along the way.
Selwyn didn't protest. He was in no humor for anything that would delay just getting out of the cave. "You can practice once we get outside," he told Farold. And, to Elswyth, "It's all right, I'll carry him."
"You'll carry the pack, too," she reminded.
Selwyn reached down to pick up the pack, which was heavier than he had anticipated, and bulky. He needed a moment to swing it across his back and adjust the ropes across his shoulders - which made Farold grumble at the inconvenience of having to move to his other shoulder - and by then Elswyth had started without him.
"Don't lose her," Farold complained. Everything Farold said came out sounding like a complaint.
"Oh," Selwyn said, as though the thought had never occurred to him. "All right then."
Farold missed the sarcasm and just muttered, "Dumb twit."
Elswyth led them deeper into the cave, the light above her head bobbing with her quick sure steps. The awful smell lessened, for the bodies this far in had rested here a very long time and were mostly dust The way narrowed and became even more twisty.
And then Elswyth ducked her head and stepped sideways through a crack, and her magic light winked out.
"Now you've done it," Farold told him.
There's nothing worse than a traitor, except a traitor with a bat's night vision: Farold lifted off his shoulder and abandoned Selwyn to the dark.
Selwyn hurled himself at the crack. He could feel it with his fingers, but even when he turned sideways as Elswyth had done, he couldn't fit through.
The pack, he realized; it was the pack that was bumping against the wall, blocking him. He swung it off his back and held it in his right hand, edging his left shoulder into the crack. He scuttled sideways, feeling rock at his back and his front. There was no time to delay for panic at the prospect of getting wedged between immovable rock: He was sure Elswyth would never have the patience to come back for him. Two shuffling steps. Three. And then the walls of rock were gone, both the one his back was scraping against, and the one before his face.
He was still in darkness, but he could make out shadows, and darker shadows, which meant more light than there had been before. Best of all, the air was crisp and clean, smelling of fallen leaves and apples. He tipped his face upward and saw pinpricks of light.
He was outside, looking at the night sky.
Elswyth smacked him on the back of the head. "Are you going to stand there all night gawking at the stars?"
She couldn't ruin his mood. He was outside. He wasn't going to die after all. Or at least not within the next day or so. Or at least not that he knew of. And, anyway, it wouldn't be all alone in the dark, surrounded by those who had gone before him.
He was outside.
And even the fact that there was no sign of Farold couldn't diminish that. He trusted that Farold would have the sense not to wander far.
"This is very inconvenient, you know," Elswyth told him, taking the pack, as though she hadn't carried it all the way here without him, as though she hadn't been in the habit of carrying it herself before she met him. With her finger she traced a circle on his forehead. "Seven days before the circle closes," she said, using the voice that he already recognized as her voice of power. She walked around him, her finger still touching so that she made another circle, this one going around his head, from his forehead, over his right ear, around the back, over his left ear, back to his forehead. "Seven days, then you will be drawn to me." She moved the finger down, over nose, lips, chin, and neck, then off to the left, where she made a circle over his heart. "Seven days, and you will have to come to me." She laid her palm over his heart.
Selwyn felt the beat alter, the rhythm shifting - he suddenly knew without knowing how he knew - to match hers.
She withdrew her hand, adjusted the backpack, and started walking.
"Wait," Selwyn called after her. He'd never been here before, on the far slope of the hill that held the burial cave; he'd never heard of this second entrance. But he could get his bearings by the tall hill that was called the Grandfather because it somewhat resembled the profile of an old man with a beard. "Penryth is that way."
"Go that way," Elswyth called, without even looking back. "Come to me in seven days."
So she wasn't going to stay to get him out of any trouble he might get himself into: He could have guessed that. "But I don't know where you live." Selwyn took several steps to keep her within hearing. "Beyond the wood, did you say?" Not that that helped: The whole area was heavily wooded. The only witch he had ever heard of nearby was in the village of Woldham, but that one was tiny and stooped and gnomelike, by all accounts, and had only one good eye. Elswyth, though white haired and wrinkled, stood tall and straight, and he hadn't noticed that either of her eyes was cloudy.
"In the wood," Elswyth corrected. She turned then to look at him. "You will find me." She gestured toward him, then toward herself, resting her hand against her own heart. Selwyn's heart did an odd, almost-painful flutter. "In seven days, you will be drawn to me irresistibly. You will be unable to keep from finding me."
She let her hand drop, and Selwyn's heart stopped its frantic racing, his head cleared of the buzzing that had suddenly filled it, the muscles in his arms and legs stopped throbbing, and he could catch his breath.
Elswyth turned once more, and Selwyn would have let her go, but something smacked into the back of his head.
"I just can't manage those landings," Farold said. "And gnats and midges taste terrible. Have you ever tasted gnats or midges? Why couldn't you have made me a fruit-eating bat? What's the plan? Are you going to let her go before you have a plan? That doesn't sound very smart to me. What if you need her magic again, and you've gone and let her go?"
Finally, someone had said something that got Elswyth's attention. "Do you need another spell?" she asked, coming back.
Selwyn could guess where that conversation was heading. "No," he assured her.
"Yes," Farold said, settling once more on Selwyn's shoulder.
Selwyn snapped at him, "You want to deal with her, you make your own arrangements."
"I don't need her magic," Farold said. "You do." Before Selwyn could object, Farold continued, "I can walk - so to speak - right into Penryth, and not a person is going to recognize me. Is that your plan? To have me listen outside people's windows and hope to overhear someone saying to himself, 'Ho hum, last Tuesday 1 murdered Farold and nobody knows it What will I do for fun next Tuesday? Maybe I'll murder Bowden,' and then I can tell Bowden that whoever-it-is is going to murder him and we can lie in wait and catch him trying, and then he'll admit to killing me, and so everyone will know you weren't the one, and you can come back? Is that your plan? Because as soon as anybody sees you, how do you think they're going to react? I think they're not going to listen to a thing you have to say, and they'll decide they can't risk putting you back in a cave you obviously are capable of getting out of, so they're just going to go ahead and stone you or burn you or chop off your head - which they may or may not get right the first time, since they don't have any experience at it."
Elswyth said, "The bat makes sense."
"Well, that wasn't my plan," Selwyn said.
"What is?" both Elswyth and Farold asked together.
Selwyn tried to think.
"He needs a disguise," Farold said.
"That doesn't have to be magic," Selwyn said.
"Where are you going to get a disguise without magic?" Farold asked. "And how are you going to be sure people don't see through it unless she magically changes you?"
"Fine," Elswyth said. "For another year."
"I didn't say yes," Selwyn protested quickly.
"I suppose you could go back in there" - Farold waved a bat wing back toward the burial cave - "and get different clothes by stripping one of the bodies. And maybe somebody was buried wearing a hat, and you could pull it down over your face and hope nobody wonders why."
"Six years, seven years," Elswyth said. "Not that much difference. But I don't have all night for you to make up your mind."
Selwyn hated being rushed.
"Maybe you could shave your head," Farold suggested. "Do you think anybody would recognize you if you shaved your head? Not that I have a blade, of course, excepting the one in my back if no one removed it. But someone probably did, or my body wouldn't have lain flat. I could pull your hair out, one strand at a time."
"I do have other things to do," Elswyth said. It seemed as though they were determined not to give him a moment of silence to think. "I'm gathering supplies for a very important spell. If you delay me too much longer, I may get grumpy and raise the payment to two years."
He was being pressured into a too-hasty decision, Selwyn knew it.
"I have an idea," Farold said eagerly to Elswyth. "You could make the two of us look like wealthy merchants from the East. Give us silks and jewels and gold."
"I am not," Selwyn said, "giving up a year of my life so that you can try to impress people with fancy clothes."
"Fine," Farold said, "have her disguise you as a wealthy merchant, if you think no one will wonder why a wealthy merchant is carrying a bat along with him."
Elswyth settled the problem. "I couldn't disguise you as a person anyway," she told Farold. "You're a bat. You're this big." She gestured with her two hands not very far apart. "There's not enough of you to stretch out" - she spread her arms - "to human size."
"Hmpf," Farold said.
Elswyth looked at Selwyn. "I could make rich-looking clothes for you, but I can't actually make you rich."
And what would a richly dressed merchant be doing, all alone, without any merchandise, in a small village like Penryth? Selwyn said, "Why don't you just give me different clothes, different color hair..." He gestured helplessly.
"Different eyes," Elswyth finished, "bigger nose, smaller mouth..."
Selwyn nodded.
"For a year's service?"
She was determined, he realized, not to give him the excuse that he hadn't actually accepted her bargain. "For a year's service," he agreed.
"People will get suspicious if you have a bat with you," Farold warned.
He just wanted a disguise, Selwyn thought. "Let them get suspicious," he said. If he was lucky, maybe somebody would catch Farold and wring his neck.
Chapter Eight
Selwyn asked for pilgrim's clothes, which made Farold - who'd been incessantly whispering into his ear, "Rich merchant's clothes" - cry out in disgust and flutter away. But Selwyn felt his choice was sensible. In all of his life, he had rarely seen strangers. Penryth was too small to attract newcomers; and it wasn't on a trade route, so even people passing through on their way to someplace else were infrequent Most of the strangers he had seen had meant trouble: renegade soldiers, bandits who occasionally turned up in the most heavily wooded section of the road to Saint Hilda's, the two feuding wizards - banished from the king's court for incompetence - who had been competent enough to nearly level Orik's tavern. But Selwyn remembered that when he was a child a small group of pilgrims had traveled through on their way to the shrine of Saint Agnes of the Lake. They'd worn rough-spun robes and sandals, and those who'd been on pilgrimages before had badges and emblems and necklaces of seashells to show where they'd been.
Now at the last moment he thought to ask, "And could I be a clean pilgrim, please?"
Elswyth said, "Pilgrims aren't known for cleanliness."
"They're cleaner than this," Selwyn said, mightily aware that he stank. He had gotten used - he had thought - to the smell of death. But now that he was out of the cave and within hope of once more in his life being clean, the lingering smell of death on him was becoming intolerable. "A little road dust is fine."
"We need water for the spell, anyway," Elswyth told him.