The Years of Longdirk- The Complete Series Read online

  "I need you conscious, but silent. Must I gag you, or can you be trusted?"

  He hesitated and the soft fingers curled. Nails dug into his flesh. "You will be silent! If you cause me trouble, I shall make you endure such agony as you have never imagined. Is that clear, Toby?"

  "Yes," he whispered.

  "You do believe me now?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Remember that you are destined to hang. I am saving your life. Cooperation will cost you nothing except minor indignity." Her scarlet lips curled in mockery. "And you have so very little dignity left!"

  With a chuckle of satisfaction, she rose and returned to her table. The four men showed no sign that they had heard a word.

  Demonic possession? As a kid, he had believed stories of demons taking over people's bodies. Later he'd decided that being possessed by a demon would make an excellent excuse for doing anything at all, so he'd stopped believing. Now he wasn't so sure. When the hexer said he would not see the demon, she implied that she was going to conjure it inside him. In the morning Toby Strangerson might inform the laird that he had changed his mind and would be a loyal servant to Lady Valda; the laird would let him depart as a free man—but how free? And would he be a man at all? What were these four voiceless, masked figures? Were they really human? Would he be another of those?

  Lady Valda returned, clutching a vellum scroll. "Hold your breath and lie still." She placed a shod foot on his chest and put her weight on it.

  He heaved with his shoulders and dislodged her. She stepped down hurriedly to regain her balance. She made a tutting sound of annoyance. "Don't be foolish, bay. This is your last chance! If you do not cooperate, I shall make you scream at the top of your lungs for a solid hour. A husky lad like you can endure my weight for a few minutes."

  She stepped up and stood full on his chest. She weighed less than he had expected. He could breathe. The manacles dug into his wrists and back, but the pain was bearable, if it did not last too long.

  She unrolled the scroll. She read out a proclamation in a guttural language he did not know. It went on for several minutes, the words roiling around the chamber, raising a deep echo he had not noticed before. When she finished, the silence returned. Could a silence grow denser?

  She stepped off him and walked back to her table. He drew a long breath. He had a horrible suspicion that his living body had just been dedicated as a sacrifice to ... something.

  For a while after that, she did not touch him. She walked around him several times, sprinkling various powders from small vials, each time repeating a formula in that same harsh tongue. The flames on the four candles seemed to grow longer. The four human candlesticks never moved. If they blinked, Toby did not catch them at it. She placed a pinch of powder on each of his shoulders, on his heart, his forehead, his sporran. After her next visit to the table, she knelt down beside him, heedless of the damage the rough rock floor could do to her fine gown. She laid the little golden bowl on his chest as if he were a table, and he sensed that the preliminaries were over. How could a man be so cold and still sweat so much? Evil had come to the glen. Terrible things were about to happen.

  She had brought the dagger back, too. The quillons were silver, elaborately inlaid with dark red stone. The pommel was a startling yellow gem as big as the top joint of his thumb. She raised both arms as high as she could, clasping the dagger by its quillons, point down. If she dropped it from there, it would go straight into his heart. Her lips moved, but this time she made no sound. She seemed to be addressing the weapon itself, or offering it to some unseen presence near the roof. The jewel on the pommel glittered, reflecting the candlelight. Her victim listened helplessly to his own breath and the thud of his heart.

  He noticed ... No, he refused to believe ... Admit it! The chamber was growing brighter. The vault of the roof was in clear view and parts of the rock walls shone wetly. The candle flames had become almost invisible and the jewel no longer glittered. It was the source of the new light, glowing with an impossible internal brightness. Everything he had seen until now could be cynically dismissed as mere playacting, but that baleful radiance blazing from the dagger could not be denied. It was uncanny. This was real gramarye. Soon the gem was too bright to look upon, illuminating the whole chamber to the farthest corner.

  The hexer completed her silent incantation and leaned over him. He wondered what horror was coming next. He saw mad exultation in her eyes, but she seemed unaware of him now. He was only part of the furnishings, an altar for her art. She slipped her left breast out of her dress. Holding it steady with one hand, she cut it with the dagger—an easy, offhand slash at the underside, almost contemptuous. She showed no sign of pain, indeed she watched the blood trickling into the golden bowl with a smile of childlike pleasure.

  He felt the warmth of it through the metal. He shuddered and closed his eyes. His heart pounded. His head pounded, too. He wondered if he was about to faint. That could not be just his heart he was hearing. Faint and far away, a drum had begun to tap.

  Was that part of her gramarye, or could it possibly be a hope of rescue? Had the laird guessed what sort of guest had infested his house? Or perhaps the shrewd old steward, who had seemed so glum? Dum . . . Dum . . . Someone was sounding a tattoo. Rousing the guard to rout the evil from Lochy Castle?

  Toby felt the bowl being removed from his chest and opened his eyes quickly. Valda had covered herself, but a spreading dark stain on her bodice showed that the wound still bled. She was holding the bowl in one hand, making passes over it with the dagger, mouthing silently. When she was done, she set the dagger aside by laying it on his belly, as the nearest convenient shelf. He tried not to move at all then.

  The drum drew closer, but it did not come from the stairway. It seemed to be inside his head. It could never be the fusiliers. That drummer was not of his world. Sweat trickled across his forehead and along his ribs.

  "Aha!" The hexer was gazing at him. Her eyes shone with insane excitement, her red lips were drawn back. "You feel it already?"

  She dipped two fingers in the blood and drew a mark on his chest. It felt cold as ice. Another dip, another mark. . . . She was concentrating hard, tongue between her teeth, inscribing some arcane symbol on him. The cold of it burned his skin. A steady yellow light blazed from the dagger, but he could feel no heat, only the winter cold of the sigil. She worked outward—around his nipples, curving down his ribs, up to his collar bones, down almost to his navel.

  Dum . . . Dum . . . Thundering, the drumming filled the chamber with its relentless steady beat, and now he knew it for the thump of his own heart, magnified to madness. Was this the sound of death? Why so loud? And why so slow? Dum ... Dum ... Dum .. . Stop! Stop!

  "There!" The hexer cried out in triumph, yet she was barely audible through the pulsing beat. She set the bowl aside. "You hear me, my love? It is almost done!"

  She took up the dagger with her bloody hand. Whatever else she said, Toby heard only the grotesque drumming of his heart. He tried to move and his muscles failed to obey him. Nothing happened at all. He could only stare at the woman's lips moving as she lowered the dagger. She laid the point on the sigil she had drawn on his chest and added another line, cutting his skin to add his blood to hers. He did not feel it. Another ... he saw her eyes widen in sudden dismay. She raised the dagger as if to strike.

  Shift...

  A boy lay chained on a rock-carved floor—a huge and husky boy, but still only a boy, his eyes and mouth stretched wide in terror. He was bare-chested, his body inscribed with obscene demonic heraldry that flickered and glowed as if it were some foul living fire. Beside him knelt a woman in a rich gown, clutching a dagger whose pommel also flamed with loathsome internal light. Standing guard around them, four shrouded figures that were men and yet not men. The hands clutching the candles were human, the eyes were human, but within the robes swirled darkness like living smoke.

  The boy's shoulders heaved and his hands came free, a few links of rusty chain dangli
ng from manacles around his wrists. Even for his size, those hands were big, the hands of one who had milked cows in his youth. A massive fist slammed the woman aside as if swatting a bug. She sprawled bodily; the dagger flew off and its yellow light went out.

  The drum thundered on; there was no sound but the inexorable beat of the drum. Dum . .. Dum . .. Dum...

  The boy reached up and gripped the collar around his neck. One of the robed things dropped its candle and dived for the dagger. It leaped back across the chamber in a single bound, robe flapping like bat wings, landing on its knees beside the boy in a move that would have crippled a human. It raised the dagger to strike at his heart.

  The boy had snapped the collar. One of his hands moved impossibly fast. It caught the attacker's wrist and jerked it forward. The robed figure sprawled prone over him, the dagger striking the floor beyond. The hand shifted to the thing's bearded chin, its mate came down on its shoulders ... there was a momentary pause, and then the cowled head bent back at an impossible angle. The roiling internal darkness shriveled and waned. The hands hurled the carcass away like a discarded pillow.

  All light disappeared as the other three watchers dropped their candles and fled to the stairs. Pitch blackness filled the cellar, yet somehow it was visible. Every stone in the barrel ceiling showed in the dark, and dampness shone on the ancient chisel marks of the rock walls as if revealed by bright moonlight or the eerie lavender of a frozen lightning flash.

  The boy sat up and reached down to his right ankle. Fingers gripped the steel fetter, muscle bulged, tendons flexed. The cuff snapped open. The hands moved over and freed the other ankle also. Those were Toby Strangerson's hands and arms, but they had more than Toby Strangerson's strength, more than mortal strength.

  The drumming pursued its steady, unhurried beat. The boy was on his feet, flashing across the floor in pursuit even as the last cowled figure was disappearing up the stairs. He caught the robe, dragged its occupant back. He lifted the thing, swung it, shattered its head against the wall, dropped the body, and stepped over it to follow the others. He raced up the stairs without a change in the overriding beat: Dum ... Dum ...

  The last two robed henchmen slammed the metal gate from the far side. That should have made a noise to rouse the entire castle, but it was inaudible under the irresistible drumming. The men collided with table and benches as they struggled to reach the guardroom door.

  The boy took hold of the gate. The thick bars resisted, the arms swelled, iron bent. The gate changed shape, came loose bodily in a shower of rust and fragments of stone. The cowled men had gone, leaving the door open. As the boy passed the mirror, he turned his head and paused to look at his reflection—large, curly-haired, bare from the waist up, rusty bangles on his wrists. Bleeding scratches adorned his neck and ankles. The arcane sigil on his chest had gone dark and become merely a pattern drawn in blood. His juvenile face bore an idiotic simper of satisfaction, the face of one who had no worries and never would have.

  Toby Strangerson stared out of the mirror in horror.

  The boy swung a fist to meet another fist and the mirror shattered between them. He trotted forward, out the door.

  The courtyard, also, was bright with the mysterious lavender radiance. The two cowled things were struggling to open the postern gate, but the boy ignored them and crossed to the stables. All the horses and ponies should have been in turmoil, but they dozed in their stalls, paying no heed to the eldritch light or the drummer's deafening beat. The boy took a bridle from a peg and moved along the line to the laird's pride, the white stallion whose name was Falcon.

  Toby Strangerson had no experience with horses. He had ridden ponies a few times and watched the fusiliers at their dressage, but that was the limit of his experience. The stallion jerked its head up and rolled its eyes, then calmed at a touch on its neck. It took the bit without resistance. It let itself be backed out of its stall and led from the stable, ignoring the thunder of the urgent drum. There was no other sound in the world: Dum . . . Dum...

  The postern gate stood open. A flash on the battlements released a puff of smoke, but the range was far too great for a pistol. Where the ball went was immaterial. Falcon stepped through the gate. The boy sprang lightly to its back.

  With his sure hand steadying its reins, the stallion raced down the road, leaving the castle far behind. Responding to the touch of knees and bare feet, it turned aside and made its way across country, soaring over walls, never faltering, never putting a foot wrong. The landscape rushed past, illuminated partly by fitful moonlight, but much more by that demonic blue glow, while an irresistible drummer beat slow time.

  5

  Reality returned with a crash. The drumming stopped. The light cut out like a snuffed candle. Toby awoke from his trance to instant darkness, full of motion and sound and an icy wind. Starting to slide, he grabbed at the horse's mane with both hands. Falcon shrilled in terror, stopped dead, and sent its rider spinning through the air. He smashed to the turf with a jarring impact. The horse kicked and bucked for a few moments, then thundered away across the fields.

  Toby lay and stared at the whirling moon. Where was he? How had he come there? The events in the cellar and his departure from the castle seemed like the most improbable of nightmares. He had watched himself from the outside, yet what he had seen was so sharp and clear in his mind that he could not doubt it. Obviously Lady Valda's conjuration had gone seriously awry, resulting in the escape of her stalwart victim, who now lay flat on his back and half stunned, somewhere in Strath Fillan.

  The moon steadied in the sky—the clouds had almost gone and a pale misty ring in the sky told of frost. He felt cold seeping into his body. It brought welcome relief from a collection of aches and pains he could not begin to catalogue. He might have just lain there, slowly freezing into a blessed numbness, had not his teeth begun to chatter noisily. Grunting, he checked that all his limbs moved, that he was still breathing, if only just. He heaved himself upright and looked around. He saw stony pasture, silver with hoarfrost, but right ahead of him was the grove, with the jagged spire of Lightning Rock glittering in the moonlight.

  Well, of course! Although he was already shivering hard enough to fall apart, Toby laughed aloud. That was what had gone wrong with Lady Valda's conjuration— she had been messing with the witchwife's little lad! The hob had taken offense at a demon intruding in its glen. The hob had intervened. It had demolished her gramarye, brought the boy home. He had Granny Nan to thank, undoubtedly, but he must thank the hob itself, too. He had money now, so he could buy it some shiny trinket as a token of his gratitude.

  First, he must head for the cottage. Even if the soldiers came looking for him again—and that was by no means certain—they could not possibly arrive soon. No mortal rider would travel as fast as he just had. That had not been Toby Strangerson on the horse.

  He was a mortal man again now, though, and he had urgent troubles: biting cold for one, outlawry for another. He was still liable to be hanged for murder, and when the carnage in the dungeon was discovered, he could expect to be impaled as a demon, as well. Most urgent of all was the loathsome sigil on his chest. He supposed that it must be the demon's way of identifying him, or its password for entry. He had no wish to be repossessed. Tearing up handfuls of frosty grass, he wiped at the bloodstains until the marks were well smeared and the sign was illegible. If demonology was at all logical, then that ought to block any effort by the demon to return. He found two shallow cuts, but they were nothing to worry about.

  Standing upright was.

  Even when he was on his feet, it took more effort to straighten. He had lost his bonnet when the Sassenachs threw him onto the horse's back, and now he had lost his pin as well. Pulling his plaid over arms and shoulders, he set off around the copse at a stumbling run.

  Granny Nan had said she was leaving. Whether or not she had gone, the door would not be locked, for it had no lock. He could blow up the fire or light another. From the position of the moon, sunri
se was still a few hours off. He had a small start on the inevitable hue and cry. The Sassenachs would be looking for a man on horseback until Falcon calmed down and went home or was found in the morning. They might not come looking for him at Granny Nan's right away. He felt light-headed and battered, as if he'd fought two bouts in quick succession. What he needed most was sleep, about three days' solid sleep. Or a square meal and then sleep. If he ever sat down—if he ever got warm again—he would just fall over and snore. In the morning the soldiers would find him there, still snoring.

  Would the soldiers come looking for him? Lady Valda had been killed or stunned. The cellar was full of evidence of her black art. Two of her adherents had been slain, chains snapped, an iron gate mangled like a string bag. An untrained farm lad had taken the wildest horse in the stable and ridden off bareback—there was real gra-marye! The castle would be in an uproar of terror.

  He wondered if Lady Valda was now shackled in the dungeon in his stead. It was an appealing thought, if not a very probable one. Lady Valda might be dead. Or Lady Valda might be alive and using more gramarye to reassert her control over the laird and the garrison. Did she still have a need for the stalwart young man? Spirits knew! To try and outguess the hexer was ridiculous. Or outguess a demon, either. Blocked in its efforts to possess Toby, it might have settled for Lady Valda. He did not even know if there were male and female demons, or whether it mattered. There were all sorts of possibilities.

  Assume, though, that Lady Valda was not in control. What would the laird do to counter an outbreak of diabolism in the glen? He would believe the witnesses who had seen the demon ride off in Toby Strangerson's body, so he would order it hunted down and an iron spike driven through its heart. Most likely he would also send to a sanctuary—Dumbarton or Fort William or even Glasgow—for an adept to come and exorcise the castle. Whether the exorcism would succeed, of course, was another matter. Cowshed or palace, if a demon took up residence in a place, it usually had to be abandoned. Many a deserted ruin in the Highlands testified to the truth of that.