Текст книги "The Banshee's walk"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Nineteen

The catapults didn’t burn.

I hadn’t really thought they would. The timbers were too green, and the crews managed to get the fires out far quicker than we’d hoped. Worse, the ropes Lady Werewilk had ruined with her sorcery were being replaced on two of the engines as we watched, which meant they’d be ready to start tearing down our walls by sunset. Two catapults would wreck the House just as effectively as three.

All our efforts might have bought us another few hours of safety. No more.

I hoped Hisvin’s bag of tricks was deep and potent.

Evis dared the top floors long enough to measure the reflective spell’s descent, and placed it at about a foot an hour. That gave us maybe forty hours before we’d be forced into the tunnels. It also meant the army outside would need to pull back. We couldn’t see the edges of the spell, so we had no idea how far it extended, or if even the deep woods tunnel would carry us beyond it.

We could hear the soldiers outside, winding the catapults again, using a team of Lady Werewilk’s plowing oxen to speed the process. The soldiers in the yard ambled freely about now, sometimes shouting at us, or hurling debris at the door amid hoots of laughter. All the outbuildings were burned or aflame, and I could hear half a dozen women sobbing as they realized the smoke they smelled was the smoke from their burning homes.

Aside from Marlo and Evis, no one spoke to me. Oh, they glared and they whispered, doubtlessly laying the blame for their current ills at my feet, but they dared not call me out directly. I kept Toadsticker in plain view just in case someone got brave.

An hour passed. Outside, ropes were wound, wagons were parked, men idled or ate or sharpened their blades.

Somewhere a clock was striking off the third hour when they finally approached Lady Werewilk’s door and the moment I’d been dreading arrived.

“In the house,” called a man. He had a faint accent I couldn’t place. “You’ve got something we want.”

The Lady was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Marlo. I ignored the glares of the household staff and shoved my way close to the heap of furniture stacked in front of the door.

“We’re all out of turnips,” I shouted. “But if it’s onions you want, you can have all you can carry.”

“I’m not going to ask more than once.”

“Ask for what? You haven’t been very clear about what it is you’re after. We simple country folk simply don’t understand your subtle big-city ways.”

Something struck the door. I guessed it was an axe. Behind me, the gardeners and cooks and carpenters were beginning to hiss and mutter.

I turned to face them, whipped Toadsticker out of my belt, and grinned.

“Anybody else wants to take over, step right up. Otherwise shut it. What’ll it be?”

They inched back. I heard feet on the stairs, heading for the Lady’s room, but that was just fine by me.

“Give us the banshee.”

“The what?”

“The banshee. Give it to us, and you live. Make us come and get it, and everybody dies.”

“So you have no interest at all in onions?”

“You’re dead,” said the man outside. “How long do you think those walls will stand? My engineers tell me three throws from each ought to open you right up.” He raised his voice, making sure everyone around could hear. “Why die for the banshee? It’s not even human. Give it to us. Or die. Your choice.”

The muttering behind me got suddenly louder. Words emerged.

“Why not?” said someone.

“Ain’t ready to die,” said another.

“We can take him,” said a third.

I put my back to the nearest clear patch of wall.

They rushed me. Two carpenters. Two gardeners. A stable boy. A woodsman. Two had swords, the rest held makeshift clubs.

Had they been soldiers, I’d have died there, right by the Lady’s big red doors. But they came in a bunch, elbows touching, feet nearly tangled, eyes mad with more fear than fury.

I sidestepped, brought Toadsticker up horizontally, deflected a pair of clumsy overhand blows, landed a solid kick on one knee and a nice hard punch in a beer-reddened face. Bodies collided, one fell, another went down with him in a sudden tangle of limbs. I thumped the woodsman on his cheek with the flat of Toadsticker’s blade and gave a carpenter a long shallow cut across his forehead and the stable boy dropped his club and ran and it was over as suddenly as it had begun.

They scrambled away. The man outside shouted again.

“Give us the banshee.” He struck the door again. “Last chance.”

“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.”

Mama chuckled, sat, and laid a whetstone against the blade of her meat cleaver. “I’m thinkin’ they’ll do just that, first time that there cat-a-pult throws and cracks a wall. When that happens, it ain’t gonna be them soldiers we got to worry about. No sir. It’s gonna be every man jack under this here roof, aside from the Lady and that fool man of hers.”

“I know it.”

Mama didn’t look up. Her whetstone scraped hard against the bright steel.

“You ready to spill blood to keep that there banshee alive?”

Darla hugged Buttercup close to her. “Mama!”

“It’s got to be said, young ’un. Are you?”

“Nobody takes the banshee. Nobody kills the banshee. I’ve got reasons. It’s better if they aren’t discussed.”

Mama nodded. “So be it.” She held her cleaver up to the dim candlelight, squinted along its edge. “I’m ready, then.”

Gertriss put her ear to the door. “They’re gone,” she announced. “Down the stairs. Boss, what about making a run for the tunnels?”

“It may come to that. But not yet.” I never liked being herded. One thing I’d learned from being chased by Trolls across hill and dale, during the War. Never take the obvious route, when another presents itself. The moment you let your enemy dictate your next move, you’re on the road to an early grave.

Or, in this case, a very old tomb.

“Stay here.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope. Evis. You say Victor and Sara are watching this door?”

“They’re watching me, actually, but I can arrange for a change in assignment. Should I?”

“You should. You and I have business downstairs.” Both Darla and Gertriss turned to protest. “Absolutely not,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Evis will be with me. I’ll be fine. There’s still one avenue we need to explore, and I can’t guard a whole parade now that the household is up in arms.”

“He’s right,” said Mama. “But, boy. When them soldiers start taking down the walls. We head for the tunnels, fight our way down, if’n we have too. Meet you down there if you ain’t with us. That sound about right?”

“Just about.”

“I hope you know what you’re doin’, boy.”

“Always, Mama.”

I gave Darla a kiss, Gertriss a quick hug and Evis and I quietly unlocked the door.

We dodged panicked bands of the Lady’s staff all the way downstairs. We couldn’t avoid them any longer at the first floor landing, but having a grim-faced vampire clutching a long silver blade in each pale hand by one’s side does give would-be attackers pause.

“We ain’t aimin’ to die for that creature you brought in here,” said the man I’d punched in the face earlier.

“I’m not planning on dying either.” I kept walking. The half-dozen of them gathered at the foot of the stairs fell back. “You really think they’ll let you just walk away even if you do give them the banshee?”

“Ain’t got no reason to think otherwise.”

“Fools.” Evis spoke in a raspy hiss. “The banshee’s presence is the only thing keeping you alive. Otherwise they’d have killed you all with magic at the start.”

No one dared dispute Evis. He made big vampire spooky eyes at the mob, and they made way with admirable haste.

We passed through them without incident, though they grumbled and cursed at our backs.

I led us down the hall to the gallery. Evis glanced sideways at me, bemused.

“You’re not serious.”

“You have a better idea?”

“How about we just take the ladies and make for the forest tunnel right now?”

I shook my head. “I’m guessing their sorcerers can follow Buttercup, at least to some extent. You and Evis and Sara could outpace horses. But Mama? Me? You know we can’t outrun cavalry.”

Evis frowned but opened the door.

“The Corpsemaster will have a conniption fit,” he observed. “Do you really think trying to communicate with some ancient force of nature is really a good idea? That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it? Even considering the historical evidence that suggests such efforts are generally fatal?”

The artists were still hard at work, still arrayed in silent standing ranks.

Most of them, anyway. Serris was slumped in the floor, breathing but otherwise motionless. A male whose name I couldn’t recall was snoring on his side toward the front of the room.

I tried to waken Serris, but only managed to produce a brief unfocused stare and a few twitchings of her fingers.

“They’ll all be down before long,” whispered Evis.

I agreed. Some of the hands that still moved across their canvasses were visibly trembling.

I gently pushed Serris aside, found her brush, managed to scrape most of the dried paint out of the worn bristles. I took up her paints, lit a fresh candle, and turned my gaze toward her canvas.

If she’d been depicting a subject, it was one I couldn’t discern. There were lines of grey, touched with crimson, across a black background.

“Finder,” said Evis. His ashen halfdead face wasn’t made to express concern.

“Watch my back. Give me ten minutes. Hit me in the head if I start painting bowls of fruit.”

Evis cussed.

I dipped my brush in blood-red paint, and put it to the canvas.

And then I closed my eyes. I thought about Buttercup, thought about her playing with dolls, running, laughing, like the children in the paintings I’d seen painted in that very room.

I thought about Buttercup, and I hummed the tune, and remembered the words-

“Don’t you fret child

Don’t you cry,

Mama’s gonna make the black-birds fly.

And when those black-birds fly away,

Mama’s gonna make you a bed to lay…”

Chapter Twenty

Evis put his hand on my shoulder and shook it.

“Markhat! Markhat, wake up or I swear I’ll start pulling off ears.”

I blinked. I dropped the brush. I forgot I was holding a board filled with paint and spilled the whole works down the front of my shirt.

“Markhat!” Evis slapped me. I shook my head and raised my arms, just in case he hadn’t been exaggerating about the pulling of ears.

“I’m back, I’m back. Easy.” I found a rag and dabbed at the paint that covered me.

“Back? Where the Hell were you?” Evis glared at my canvas. “Markhat, what have you done?”

He held the candle close, and I saw too.

I’d painted. I tried hard to remember what I’d painted, or why. You know those dreams, the ones you wake up from, the ones that instantly start to fade as soon as you try to grasp them and hold on?

I’d painted, though. I’d painted a white ring that took up most of the canvas. In the center of it was a strange white shape.

No. Not a shape.

A character.

Not one I knew. Not one that would be known to Evis or Mama or even the Corpsemaster.

I couldn’t remember its name or its significance. I didn’t even try. I had a lingering sense that merely knowing such a thing would injure me in ways far beyond that of the huldra or even the catapults waiting outside.

“Finder!”

“I’m here. I’m here.” I was having trouble talking. I spat out a short harsh word and then spoke again. “It is done.”

I didn’t know what I’d said, or why I’d said it is done. But as soon as I did, all around us, the artists started collapsing.

Easels went down. Artist’s tools and artists themselves fell clattering to the floor. A few moaned and blinked and looked around. Most simply settled down with weary sighs and fell into what I hoped were simply deep exhausted sleeps.

Evis turned about. A knife had found its way into his hand.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” he said.

“Old Bones.” I worked my jaw, found the right words. “Old Bones is sleeping. Right below us.” Parts of the dream scampered past-laughing children in the sun, a castle in the air, Buttercup playing in a marble fountain that bubbled with lights amid the waters. “They’ve been painting dreams. Old Bones’s dreams.”

“How?”

“Wasn’t the Lady. Wasn’t Hisvin. Old Bones herself. Patron of the arts.” I shook my head to clear it. “Gather up the paintings. Help me clear the floor. We need them in a circle.”

I heard myself say the words, but wasn’t sure why I spoke them.

“Like Hell we do. Markhat. Wake up. Remember what Hisvin said? We can’t let this thing out.”

“We won’t be letting it out. It’s going to let us in.”

“In? In where? In how?”

“The paintings. Prop them up in a circle, all around the room. Put this one in the center. A door will open.”

“A door? To where?”

Whatever knowledge had been impressed upon me ended.

“My head hurts.”

Evis regarded me warily. His knife was uncomfortably close to my liver. “I’m not surprised. Is that you in there? Tell me your fiancee’s name.”

“Darla. And she’s not my fiancee.”

Evis grinned. “Sure, pal. Whatever you say. Let’s get out of here before you start channeling dead alarkins again.”

I shivered. Stray images from the dream flitted about me, half-seen and fading.

Snores began to sound from all over the room. Serris moaned and stirred but did not awaken. “What about them?”

“Leave them. They’re as safe as they can be, these days. Come on.”

Evis tugged at my elbow. Even the gentle prodding of a halfdead has considerable power. I found my legs and made them move, and we left a roomful of snoring artists behind us.

The Lady met us at the end of the hall. Marlo was at her side, looking grim and determined. He had a bruise right below his right eye. His axe sported a fresh chip out of its handle, just below the head.

“I see you’ve been improving morale,” I said.

He glared. “I ain’t saying I much blame them, Finder. They’re scared. Things in the yard, soldiers dying, and that pair of catapults is set to throw any minute now.”

The Lady chimed in. “The House won’t stand long against them, Finder. You know that. I’m about to start moving people into the tunnels.”

“Better have a look around first.” I gave her a quick sketch of the cylinders rising from her lawn. “Not sure if they’ll have any presence underground, but if they do, you’ll want to keep your distance.”

The Lady nodded. I didn’t notice her paleness and exhaustion until then.

“For what it’s worth, Lady, I’m sorry about all this. I wish there had been another way.”

“This wasn’t your doing, Finder. And I apologize for your treatment by my household.”

I waved that off. “Forget it, Lady. They’ve watched their homes burn and seen their own killed. I don’t blame them for being scared.”

She nodded curtly. “Marlo and I will inspect the tunnels. I invite you and your party to join us, of course. You will not be attacked in my presence. I can assure you of that much.”

“Thank you. When and if the time comes, I’ll take you up on that.”

“Marlo.” And they were off.

I could feel eyes on us. And feel their intent. The ghost of the huldra chose that moment to intrude. It babbled on in words I didn’t know but in tones that were unmistakable – they seek to do you harm, so do them harm first. And it tried to show me ways to do just that, by coupling strange words with shapes traced in the dark.

I cussed aloud. Evis titled his head.

“Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”

And at that moment, I heard, from out on the lawn, the shouted word “throw.”

Thunk, as a rope was cut. A rush of wind, the agonized shrieking of timbers moving against each other, and then the ground-shaking thump as the throwing arm slammed into the stop and the contents of the basket were hurled toward us.

I dived for the floor, reached up to pull Evis down with me, grabbed only empty air.

The projectile struck.

The House shook. Stones broke. Timbers twisted and tore. Plaster sprang from the walls, clattering to the floor in hand-sized chunks, which then in turn shattered and skidded. Bits of the ceiling rained down, peppering my back and neck like a sudden hard rain.

Shouts rang out, and screams. Great rolling clouds of dust boiled down the hall.

Another impact, this one from the rear of the House, sounded. Plaster fell. I heard a monstrous shifting, as though a great mass of stone moved against another.

Evis hauled me to my feet. “Time to go,” he said, and when he set me down my feet were on the stairs.

We charged up them, through the dust. The shouting behind us grew closer and took on a decidedly determined tone.

I didn’t need any exhortation to hurry. Evis glided on ahead, cloak flapping, silver blade gleaming in his hand.

“There he is!”

I risked a glance backwards. A dozen of the Lady’s staff took to the stairs after me. There was no mercy in their eyes.

A pair of dark shapes leaped over me. They fell into the mob. Bodies flew. It was over in a pair of heartbeats, and the stairs were littered with groaning forms who puked and bled but nevertheless made a decent show of crawling downward and away.

Sara and Victor rose from the dust. “We made every effort to spare their lives,” said Victor. “I shall show no such restraint again.”

The hulda howled and called out for blood. I turned from the halfdead and followed Evis up the stairs.

We made it inside. The catapult crews shouted and cussed, preparing their engines for another round of mayhem.

Mama was at the hole by the window. “I figure these here walls are tougher than anybody knew,” she announced. “Still, two more throws from each, and they’ll be a knocking on yonder door. And that’s if the floor don’t cave in first.”

Darla was whispering with Evis. I didn’t need to guess about what.

“Boss.” Gertriss was eyeing me funny. “Boss, what have you been up to?”

Mama turned from her surveillance of the lawn and fixed her eyes upon me as well.

“There may be another option,” I said. “Hisvin and the people outside aren’t the only magical types involved.”

Darla came to my side. “What were you thinking?” she said. She ran her fingers through my hair, turned my face to hers, looked at me as if she were trying to stare inside my skull. “Are you crazy, Markhat? You don’t know what’s down there, what it might do.”

“Nobody does, oh light of my life. That’s one thing we’ve all got in common. But we’ve got something neither the Corpsemaster nor the spooks outside have got.”

Buttercup ran up to me as if summoned. I tousled her hair, and she squealed and smiled.

“Evis said-”

“I know what Evis said. And I appreciate it. I’m not saying we start propping up paintings and opening doors just yet. I’m just saying it’s another place to run, if all else fails. I haven’t counted the Corpsemaster out just yet.”

Mama came stomping up. Evis took her place at the spy-hole.

“Boy, you got less sense than any man I ever met. Hold this.” She stuck a dead robin in my hand.

“Mama.”

“Shut up. Gertriss. Take his other hand. Look.”

Gertriss took my free hand, shrugged apologetically, and closed her eyes.

Mama mumbled something too soft for me to catch.

Shivers ran up my spine.

“Oh my,” said Evis. “The Corpsemaster. I do believe you’ll want to see this, Markhat.”

We could all hear renewed shouting from outside. The telltale clinks of metal on metal joined them, and the hiss and thunk of arrows and bolts.

I tried to tear free, but Gertriss held fast.

“Still, boy, be still,” hissed Mama. She shook an owl at me with her free hand. Gertriss pawed at the air with hers.

“Something done touched you, boy,” said Mama. “You see it, girl?”

“I see,” replied Gertriss. Her eyes didn’t open. “Something old. Something that’s been buried.”

“Buried but not dead,” said Mama. “Restless in a tomb.”

I yanked my hands free. “We don’t have time, ladies,” I said. “What’s happening out there?”

“Men. Lots of them. They’ve just come walking out of the woods.” I couldn’t see Evis’s face, but I could hear the puzzlement in his voice. “They’ve attacked the catapult crews.”

“Are they winning?”

“Depends on your point of view.”

“Evis. Now is not a good time for cryptic.”

“They’re taking arrows and bolts by the dozen. Aside from one having his legs hacked off, they’re still coming.”

“What?”

“They’re getting slaughtered, Markhat. But they’re not dying. Or at least they’re not falling down like polite dead men tend to do.”

A flash so bright it lit up Evis in silhouette shone outside. He leaped back from the spy-hole, blinking and cussing.

“The cylinders,” he said, before I could ask. “Lit up. Like magelamps, but brighter.” He waved his hands in front of his face. “I hope this isn’t permanent.”

“Was that Hisvin too?”

Evis shrugged, still blind. “No idea.”

Screams rose up from outside.

Screams, and a wind. It built and rose and whipped and howled. It switched directions, it beat against the wounded House with fists of debris.

The walls shook. The floor beneath groaned as timbers shifted.

Buttercup dropped her dolls, stood and opened her mouth to howl.

Mama waddled forward and stuffed a huge chunk of taffy candy right into Buttercup’s mouth.

The banshee tried to spit it out, but Mama held her lips shut, and within a moment Buttercup was smiling and chewing and beaming up at Mama.

The wind intensified. Softer, wetter thuds joined the sharper pelting of rocks on the walls, and I realized the louder ones were the impacts of bodies carried by the gale.

Something smashed through the window. We scattered. Evis snatched up the rolling projectile and hurled it back outside. I don’t think anyone but Darla saw its eyes or blood-soaked beard, and though she stood close and took my hand she didn’t scream.

“Damn wand-wavers are gonna take the House down whether they means to or not,” shouted Mama. “I reckon it’s time.”

Lightning joined the wind, bolt after bolt, so many and so fast they lit the window with a constant, harsh light. I could see limbs whipping, debris flying, blinding bolts of light arcing down, shadows flying briefly in the instant between being born and being extinguished by the next furious bolt.

I heard words, in the thunder. The huldra exulted, echoing them, awash in the proximity and intensity of the sorcery being hurled just yards from my boots.

Something in the forest roared, louder than the thunder, louder than the ringing in my ears. It roared and it charged, and we all saw monstrous blood-oaks go down, saw them torn from the earth and cast aside as though they were brambles.

And then came the stones. They fell from the sky, each trailing acrid smoke that lingered in the air and swirled about and burned eyes and choked throats. The stones fell almost silently, save for a whistling, but when they reached the ground, they simply obliterated all they touched with a flash and a crack even brighter and louder than the lightning.