She even had the money. Darla’s fortune, eleven hundred crowns in paper, still stuffed down the front of her ripped, soiled blouse. I knew they tried to take the money, tried to take her clothes-tried, and failed.
“I tell ye I’ll gut ye, ye blood-drinkin’ get of a troll,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you too,” I said. And then Ethel Hoobin sidled past me.
“Martha!”
“Ethel?”
The rest of the Hoobins stormed in, and they all began to shout. A ragged cheer went up from the New People gathered outside.
Ethel turned toward me, tears in his eyes.
“You have done what you said,” he said. “You have saved our sister.”
He saw the huldra. I know he did. Mama said later my eyes were glowing, red as coals and flickering like wind-blown embers. But Ethel Hoobin put out his hand, in a fist, and touched me on the chest, right above my heart.
“Thank you.”
Martha looked up at me, nodded and looked away.
But even as Ethel led her out of the room, led her past me, Martha Hoobin kept her eyes on my hands, and her pitiful bed-post spear aimed square at my gut.
The New People swept out, reached the stair, swept up it. Evis and his crew remained, though I noted they had doubled or tripled in number since I had gone into Martha’s room.
A new voice rang out. “Boy!” it said, and I turned to see Mama clambering down the stair, the Hoogas bloodied and stiff haired on her heels. Mama carried an enormous meat-cleaver, hairs and bits of bone still clinging to the blade. The Hoogas bore traditional Ogre clubs-five-foot timbers, the striking ends festooned with nail-spikes and broken glass and the broken ends of bones. Both bore the signs of enthusiastic, recent use.
“Boy!” shouted Mama, dropping to the floor with a ragged puff of breath. “Boy, I told you not to touch that thing!”
I turned away. Evis saw, left the captive human priests and joined me outside the door at which dead Ameel Cant still beat.
“It is done,” said Evis, when he was near enough to speak. “Martha Hoobin is going home.”
The priests cried out, and were quickly and permanently silenced. Evis shook his head. “It is done,” he said, again.
“You’ll let them go?” I said, nodding at the retreating New People. “What makes you think they will not rise up against you tomorrow?”
Evis shrugged. “We fought at their side. We rescued their sister. They gave their word.”
“And you think that’s enough.”
“It shall have to be.”
Mama came stomping up, wild-eyed and wheezing. She wiped her cleaver on the side of her bag and dropped it inside.
“Boy,” she said, to me. “You ain’t dead.”
I looked down upon her, saw, for perhaps the first time, how old and small and weary she looked. “No,” I said. I was beginning to see things, in the dark, again. I heard the faint rustles of the huldra’s patient whisper.
Evis motioned toward his men, pointed toward the door that held Ameel Cant. Half a dozen halfdead trotted over, each bearing a crossbow and a twinkling silver bolt.
“Oh, no,” I said. “That will never do.”
Evis frowned. “She is mad. You have seen this before.”
“I said no.” I reached, and a trickle of power answered, and I smiled. “I saw her. She has hands. She has her eyes. She may have been dead, but she cries. That is my price. You are not a monster, you say? Then take her. Feed her. Care for her. Restore to her the life that was taken, by those who share your hunger.”
Evis lifted an eyebrow.
“And if I do not?”
I leaned down, so that my face was even with Evis’s. “Then I shall lead the day folk against your Houses. I shall speak the words that bring them out. I shall speak the words that will light the torches. I shall speak the words that will bring them down upon you, and I shall join them, and the fires shall burn and will still be burning when winter comes again.” I felt myself swelling, heard the huldra whisper. “Shall I begin?”
Evis looked sideways, made the slightest of nods at Mama.
She shouted something, threw a bundle of hair and twigs she’d had hidden in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes and spat.
I laughed. I saw the bundle coming, brushed it aside as easily as one waves away a gnat. “Oh, no,” I said. “That’s not the way. But let me show you a spell I know.”
I lifted my hand. The huldra showed me a hidden thing. I laughed at the thought of it, and I would have cast it forth, but for a subtle twisting in the dark, and a chill, and then the sound, faint, of a voice.
Darla’s voice.
I shrank. Memories came tiptoeing back, sneaking past the huldra’s dark fancies. Flames and fires, shouts and screams, and the smell of Darla’s hair.
Mama cussed, drew her booted foot back, kicked me.
Hard, and then again, right below my right knee.
“Don’t you listen, boy,” she croaked, her face turned to mine. “I know what it’s sayin’. I know what it wants. But you listen to me now, boy. It might be strong, but it ain’t smart. You are.”
I saw flames, saw Darla, lolling and bloody and dead in my arms.
Mama hissed. No words, just a hiss, and then she reached up and slapped me.
“It knows your name, boy. But don’t you forget-it ain’t even got a name. It ain’t got nothing ’cept what you give it.”
The huldra shrieked in rage. I held it tight, letting it make me tall again, tall and strong and knowing.
Evis grabbed Mama, yanked her back. I lifted the huldra, made a sound that might have been the beginning of a long, secret word, and it was then that I saw something light and familiar amid the gathering shadows.
Darla. My Darla. Faint and ghostly and wavering, a candleflame in a whirlwind. But it was her, and she spoke. Somehow, above the thunder and din of the huldra’s cries for vengeance, I heard her speak.
“I am not dead.”
And then she was gone.
I froze, the unspoken word burning on my lips, the huldra raging and shaking in my hand, a maelstrom of strange, strong magics poised to leap from my fingers.
I knew she was. I’d held her. I’d felt her body grow cold. I’d washed her blood from my skin.
But-
The huldra howled.
I took the huldra, forced it to fall silent, strained and strove and bent it briefly to my will. I cast out my sight, soared above Rannit and the rain and the clouds, looked down upon the city from a great and impossible height.
And then I spoke a Word wrenched from the heart of the huldra.
Magics spun, darting to and fro amid the clouds, gathering, flocking, wheeling and turning and diving, finally piercing the rain and the dark to soar over Rannit’s sooty rooftops and black, flooded streets like a flock of playful shadows. Here and there they converged, sped away, circled. Here and there they exploded, diverging into a thousand paths, only to come together again in a single fluid rush of shadow upon shadow.
And then, impossibly, they all came together, coalesced and settled, eagerly awaiting my call.
Darla.
