The Wicked Day (10 page)

“And me,” chimed in a nearby skull. “I was a hero.”

“And me!”

“Don’t forget me,” said a skull. It twisted on the iron strand and Jute could hear the grate of metal against bone. “I was a hero as well. I’d a horse and a sword.”

“You’d nothing,” sneered the skull beside it. “Can you remember a single thing in that empty head of yours? You’d a nag and a broken blade that did better service chopping firewood than necks. You were better as bread.”

“Weren’t we all,” said the first skull. But then it laughed, and it bared its jagged jaw at Jute. “It ain’t the bread that’s important, boy. It’s the teeth that bites it. He chews, he does, like boulders smashing on boulders. Got quite the gnashers, he does.”

“Quiet,” said the creature, and the skulls fell silent, though Jute could feel their eye sockets staring at him. The figure stared down at Jute, not moving or blinking.

“Fine as dust,” said the creature after a while.

Then the massive head turned toward Declan.

“What have my dogs brought me?”

The voice came alive with sudden hate, though it still whispered in tones so quiet that Jute had to strain his ears to hear.

“Farrow. . .”

The enormous bulk of stone shifted one step forward. The face lowered until it almost touched Declan’s, but the man did not move. He hung there, apparently lifeless and insensible. The skulls clicked together in excitement.

“I had three sons. Three sons of stone I raised on this mountain. The wind wore away the crags and time wore away the sons of men into countless generations of death. But my sons grew strong. I fed them on blood and flesh and the bread of dead men’s bones. We lived on this mountain when the Rennet River was birthed high in the peaks, when the deep springs dug their way up into the light, when the river flowed down into the plain below and carved its valley to the accursed sea. We were old then, my sons and I. This land was ours. Ours, from the cold crags where the dragons sleep beneath the ice to the sands blowing in the south. Even to the shore we held sway, though there were eyes in the sea always watching. I hate the sea.”

The ogre paused and Jute thought he saw the thing shiver. The smallest of trembles, like an earthquake so slight that it might have been no more than the ripple of grass on a hillside, so slight that only a mouse would have pricked his ears at it.

“The sea,” said the ogre, not even looking at Declan anymore. “Wearing away my stone without my leave. Stealing it from me and grinding it into sand. May the darkness take the sea. All of Tormay was mine, and yet it is stolen away in little bits. Licked away by the sea, worn by the wind, thieved by those dirty little men crawling about like ants. I’ll kill them all. Death was our servant once, and it’ll be again. Aye, once again. It’ll all be mine, once again.”

“It’ll be yours,” chimed in a skull.

“Aye, yours,” cackled another.

“We’ve heard! We’ve heard the voice in the dark. Promise this. Promise that. Whisper, whisper, whisper! Busy as bees, ain’t we?”

“Silence,” said the creature.

The room was silent again, except for the dripping water. Jute tried to breathe shallowly, willing the stone monstrosity not to turn its lifeless face back toward him. He couldn’t stand another glance from those eyes.

“My sons wandered south, Farrow. They carved their place under the mountains. And you brought death to them, so many years ago. The shadows told me. I heard them dying, whispers and echoes from mountain root to mountain root until it came to me here. My three sons. My foolish three sons. Who knew iron could cleave stone? But I’ve a stone knife that needs sharpening. It’ll cleave flesh. It has before. I’ve been saving it for you. I've been waiting.”

The thing turned without haste, shambling toward the stairs. Jute shut his eyes tight and listened to the sounds of stone creaking on stone, dust drifting down from the steps, the horrible clicking of the skulls, and then blessed silence.

“Oh, mercy,” said the ghost. “Mercy, my poor nerves. I can’t stand this. Knives and cleaving. There’s bound to be a great deal of screaming. Oh, woe is me. How I wish I were back in my snug little attic. Why oh why did you ever speak to me? You wretched boy! A curse on all curses!”

“It’s all well for you,” said Jute. “You’re already dead! What was that thing? It’s going to kill me! Help!”

“Bread, specifically,” said the ghost. “You’re going to be baked into bread.”

“An ogre,” said a voice. “That was an ogre.”

Jute turned in a thrill of delight, swinging on his chain. Declan! The man’s voice was weak and his head was still slumped down on his chest, but he had spoken, nonetheless.

“You’re alive!”

“Barely,” said the man. He took a deep breath and raised his head. One eye opened to fix Jute with a bloodshot stare. “Listen to me. You’ve little time left. Ogres don’t play with words. They never lie. They can’t be untrue to their nature, just as a stone can only be a stone. He’s going to kill us and grind us into bread. Roast us on his fire. You have to escape. Listen to the ghost. Save yourself. Perhaps he won’t chase you. He has good reason to hate me, not you.”

“I can’t,” said Jute. “I can’t feel my hands.”

“You must.” Declan’s head slumped forward again.

“You must!” chorused the ghost. “It’s quite simple. Grab hold of the chain and climb. You’re a thief, aren’t you? Aren’t thieves always climbing things such as, I don’t know, drain spouts and walls and gates and trees, whatever it is you climb. A chain can’t be any more difficult. Climb, you lazy boy. Climb!”

“I can’t.”

“You can and you will!”

Grinding his teeth together against the pain, Jute tried to grasp the chain with his swollen fingers. He pushed up on his tiptoes. Willed his fingers to close. Agony lanced down his arms. Clenched on the chain with one hand, inched the next hand up higher. Willed his fingers to clench once again.

“You can do it!” urged the ghost.

But he couldn’t. His fingers refused to cooperate, and he slid back down the few, hard-won inches and jounced with a sickening jolt on the hook.

“It’s no use,” gasped Jute.

He closed his eyes. Dimly, he heard the ghost wailing at him. The darkness in the cellar grew deeper. It was as heavy as the stone of the ceiling and walls. Weight pushed down on him. There was nothing left to do but die. He was empty inside. And yet there was something. A breeze stirred in the back of his mind. It blew the dust from his thoughts. The coolness of its touch soothed his pain. His mind cleared. The weight lifted, reluctant at first, insisting that stone was stone and it could not be moved. But it could be moved. The breeze blew harder now, filled with the memory of sky and endless light, regardless of night and clouds and blindness.

Jute opened his eyes. The breeze picked him up as gently as a feather. The hook swung free. He fell to his knees, sobbing with relief. He tore with his teeth at the rope binding his wrists. It was to no avail, but the breeze plucked the rope free strand by strand, as delicately as a girl’s braid separated one hair at a time. Jute stumbled to his feet. He tried to lift Declan up and off the hook, but he could not. The man’s body was a dead weight.

“Hurry!” implored the ghost. “Hurry, oh hurry, hurry!”

The breeze swirled around Jute. It lifted his arms, lifting Declan until the man fell free onto the floor. His eyes were closed and his breath rattled between his teeth.

“Wake up!” said Jute.

“Leave him,” said the ghost. “He’s dead already. No need to lug around dead bodies. No need to upset the ogre any more than he already is!”

“You’d desert him so easily?” said Jute.

He strained to lift Declan. The breeze came to his aid again. Pushing at him from behind, tugging at his collar, propping him up. This time, however, there was a nervous urgency in its touch. Jute found himself on his feet—he was not sure that his feet were touching the ground at times—dragging Declan’s impossible weight up the steps. They emerged into a long, gloomy hallway of stone. It stretched off in either direction.

“Which way?” said Jute.

“I don’t know,” said the ghost. “How am I supposed to know? Why am I supposed to know everything? Just because someone’s a professor, it doesn’t mean they know everything about anything. I know a bit too much about ogres! I know spells for getting rid of warts and giving ‘em, and I know all seven of the best recipes for roast goat to be had in the Mountains of Morn, but I don’t know which way we should go down this hallway. I don’t, I tell you! I don’t!” Here, the ghost, obviously overcome by the situation, burst into tears and stamped up and down, wailing all the while.

“Shh,” said Jute, horrified at this. “The ogre’ll hear you.”

“Ohh-h!” wailed the ghost. “The ogre! He’ll slice your throat with his knife, chop you up into a thousand bloody bits, and bake you into bread, all because of me. I’ll be the death of you. It’ll be all my fault. Oh, how can I live with myself? I can’t stand it!”

“Will you be quiet?”

And the wind came to Jute’s aid once again. It blew past him, heading down the passage, and he thought he heard the sound of grass waving in its movement, of branches bending in a breeze, of sky and space and an end to the crushing weight of stone.

Come away outside,

Outside and out from under the weight of things.

Where things neither wither nor fade

And the emptiness is full of light

And again you shall see the sky.

Come you away.

Rejoice!

Despite the dreadful gloom of the ogre’s haunt, Jute could hear joy in the wind’s voice. Joy and laughter and a sense of sky that started as a speck of blue in his mind. The blue grew wider and wider as if it rushed toward him (or he was rushing toward it) to engulf him in the sheer unending delight of the sky. Of a horizon that curved past itself into colors so fantastic that they could not be described.

Jute followed the wind, was carried by it, as he himself carried the slack weight of Declan’s body. Was it he who carried the man, or the wind? No, surely it was the wind. They rushed down the dark and noisome corridors of stone, past iron doors and caverns filled with countless years of evil. Armor and weapons rusted in piles, shrouded in dust and the tangled threads of spiders who had long since moved on to livelier spots—all that were left of hero after hero who had braved the Morns in hope of fortune and fame. Heaps of gold and silver shone, even in that ill light, though the metal gleamed with muted and ill-concealed malice, as if the touch of ogre hands had forever contaminated it. Nowhere in all those twisting passageways was there a bone to be seen, but everywhere there was a fine, white dust. It had little to do with stone but everything to do with the skeletons of hopeful young men who had come to this mountain on the strength of their dreams. The dust stirred in the wake of the wind and Jute’s hurried footsteps. It clung to him and would not be dissuaded by either his sudden nausea or the sneezes he tried to muffle against his sleeve.

“Shh!” said the ghost, deciding to momentarily return to its senses. “Do you want to get us killed?”

Stone steps led up into a faltering light, clearing and brightening somewhat. Jute’s spirits rose. The wind chuckled in his mind. They were now in an enormous cavern, its ceiling blackened with soot and its walls hung with tattered banners in moth-eaten disarray. Some of them were no more than threads and dust, held together by spiderwebs. A fire smoldered on an open hearth in the center of the cavern. Coals stared from deep within the pile of ashes. A spit hung suspended over the fire, skewering a strange, contorted mass that had been charred into oblivion. Jute shuddered and looked away. Perhaps it was only a deer.

“Hush,” said the ghost. “What’s that noise?”

They both stopped, though the wind tugged nervously at Jute. It already knew what the noise was. It was a quiet grating sound. A rasping grind that came and went in odd intervals. And in the spaces between the grating, Jute could hear a different sort of sound. A humming croon. A deep voice that sang of stones and blood and slow, sharp things and death. And quieter beneath it all was the punctuation of clicking skulls.

“Save us!” said the ghost, trying not to scream. It stuffed its hands into its mouth and trembled.

A red light shone from a door, and through it Jute could see the massive form of the ogre, back turned and bent over a spinning stone wheel. It held a blade in its hands and sparks flew from the edge. The flames of a forge burned beyond the ogre. Slabs of iron ore lay in piles beside the burning pit, but, massive as the ore was, more massive still was the creature bent over its brightening blade.

“Look there,” said Jute. “Just inside the door, leaning against the wall. That’s Declan’s sword, isn’t it?”

“One sword looks like another,” said the ghost. “Anyway, no time to stop and dawdle. This is not a nice neighborhood. Hurry up! Hurry up!”

“No, wait.”

To the ghost’s horror, Jute set down Declan’s inert body (rather, the wind set down the body) and crept over to the doorway leading to the forge. He was confident in his own silence. He would not make a sound, and the wind fell silent around him, holding its breath and watching. The ogre’s back was like the back of a mountain, cast into shadow by the light of the forge on its other side like the red setting sun. The sword was within reach now. It was Declan’s sword. Jute recognized the battered leather sheath. It leaned against the wall, propped beside a sheaf of rusting spears. He reached out his hand and, as he did, heard a rasping sound that set his teeth on edge. The sound of bone scraping against iron.