“She lives,” I said, with some difficulty. I lowered the huldra, which burned in my hand, and met Mama’s bleary eyes. “Darla lives.”
Evis kept his face carefully blank. “Of course she does,” he said, agreeably. Disbelief was plain on his pale dead face. “Let it go, finder. Let Mama take it.”
I shook my head no.
Mama began to weep.
“You think me mad.” Normal words were hard to form. “But she lives. I have seen her.”
“Then you don’t need that thing no more,” said Mama. She opened her bag, held it out to me, under the huldra. “Let me have it, boy. Before it’s too late.”
Again I shook my head. “I have need of it yet. Darla waits for me.”
“Damn, boy, it’s lying! Can’t you see that? It wants you to use it! The longer you hold it the less of you is left!”
The huldra raged, still urging me to mayhem, still showing me images of Darla dying under a writhing mass of halfdead.
“No.” The huldra struggled in my grasp, trying to pull away. “She needs me. I can save her.”
Evis laid his hand on Mama’s shoulder, made some small sign to his men. “Permit us to accompany you.”
I didn’t need the huldra to see the pity in his eyes.
I shrugged. My shadows beckoned. The huldra buzzed and howled, but I squeezed, pushed its protests aside.
“Follow, if you can,” I said. “The way leads into the dark.”
I ascended, not bothering with the stairs, leaving a good portion of the floor above in sudden splintered ruin.
I took a single step, and then another. I only barely felt timbers fall around me as I shouldered them aside, and then I was back above the rooftops, back inside the dark.
My shadows waved to me, from across most of Rannit. Thunder and lightning played close about them, so close I grew suspicious. I coaxed another word from the huldra, spoke it, saw more shadows wheeling in the night-shadows similar to mine, but clothed in the will of another.
I smiled. The huldra hushed. Grudgingly, it offered another word, showed me a way to hide my approach, to silence the echoes of my words. I made myself invisible. Invisible and as silent as the passing of time.
I felt a questioning, a probing, a subtle touch emerge from deep within the night. I sidled away from it, watched it pass, chuckled at how easily I evaded being found. Memories came rolling back to me-memories of other walks in the dark, of other battles of shadow on shadow, of the way magics sprang so easily from my lips.
There was more too. I saw strange rooms, felt the heat of strange fires, heard screams, heard a women beg for mercy. There was also laughter, and I recognized it as my own.
I saw the Serge, saw flames sweep across it, boiling over dune and rock, leaping from sage bush to stunted dessert tree. Trolls fled, bounding, catching fire and screaming, too slow, too slow…
And music. Music played on instruments I couldn’t name, formed of notes that sang of magic. I saw a flower, plucked it, made it wither in my hand…
The huldra let slip the smallest hint of triumph.
I pictured Darla. I remembered her laugh, her perfume, the way her skirt hugged her legs as she walked.
I took what I needed from the huldra, pushed the music and the screams aside, struggled for a moment to remember my secret name. The huldra flashed hot in my hand.
“Show me what I need, and only what I need,” I said.
It seemed to me that the huldra laughed, harsh and dry, with the sound of old papers rustling.
But it obeyed.
I saw a row of three houses, set deep into the Hill. The windows were tall and wide and dark. The doors were barred, and bound with iron like garrison gates. The two outside houses leaned against the middle, as though exhausted, or asleep.
I tried, but could not pass my sight beyond them.
Words came, not mine, not the huldra’s.
“Mark this place well,” they said. “Some call it Oddling. Few pass therein.”
I questioned the huldra. It was silent, unhearing.
I sought Darla.
Shadows flew. The scene changed. I saw another warehouse, on the other side of the Brown. This one slanted down toward the river. Water ran from the back wall and across the floor and out the front. The roof showed light in half a dozen places.
And there, beneath it, lay Darla.
I shouted. Thunder broke. I charged toward her, a sudden flurry of shingles and loose timbers in my wake. She was alive, bound and struggling but alive, unless the huldra showed me a lie-
I slowed, demanded the truth from it. It grudgingly and with some confusion confirmed what I saw. Darla had not been killed. The body I had held had been made to appear as if it were hers. By whom, the huldra could not or would not say.
I went to her. I diminished as I walked. The huldra grew cooler, its words fainter, and I realized that as my hurt and rage lessened, so did the power of the thing I held.
I found myself across the Brown, alone, my boots sinking into mud and cowshit, the rain beating on me like it meant to not only kill me but wash away my corpse as well. I squinted into the night, made out a few lanterns swinging on the wind, what might have been light from a few windows, what might have been a fire burning under a shed roof a stone’s throw away.
Before me was a leaning warehouse, probably used to store hides or hooves or who knows what for the tanners upstream. And in there, somewhere, was Darla, alive and whole.
But surely not alone.
I had a wax-sealed tortoise-shell bent on devouring my soul. I reached for my army knife, but it was gone, lost somewhere in the rain. A smart man would have waited for Evis, would have gone for help.
There was no light in the warehouse. It was just a blur in the beating rain. I waited until lightning showed me the way to a door, and then I made for it, leaving my right boot behind, gripped fast by the greedy sucking mud.
I listened at the door.
The place was quiet, aide from the beat and roar of the rain and rolls of angry thunder echoing within. I hoped the din of the storm had concealed my squelching one-booted march, then dismissed the thought entirely- what good was stealth to a man about to face vampires or sorcerers or hairy old Troll gods with nothing but a single faint hope and a boot full of rain?
I shrugged.
I knocked.
Sometimes simplicity is the best approach.
“I know you have Darla Tomas,” I said, in a shout. “Maybe you know what I have. Maybe you know what just happened to the boys downtown. If it’s true that bad news travels fast, then this news should have been here for hours, because it’s about as bad as news can get-”
The door opened.
Helpful lightning flared.
Father Foon himself glared at me from inside. Behind him, lanterns were hastily uncovered.
At his back were maybe two dozen men in red and black Church armor. Their swords were bloody, and some of their old-fashioned breastplates sported big dents. I could see at least two pairs of armored feet laying toes-up and still on the wet floor.
Father Foon stopped gritting his teeth long enough to speak.
“You,” he said.
“Me,” I agreed. I pushed my way past him, smiled at the ranks of assorted gleaming blades that turned swiftly my way. “Where is she?”’
