The question shook the creature and made it choke, until it spluttered, “Kill her? Kill her? The lass. No. No. She was an innocent. A charming innocent of a girl. A beautiful song about the house. She left me my bowl of porridge with a wee lump of butter every night. She put out cream on special days. She said soft thank yous for the work I did about the place. It was she who splashed the barley beer on the stone in the yard. No, no, no. Not me. It was him.”
“Him?”
The broonie indicated the darkness with a disdainful thumb. “The laird’s son. Nasty, nasty bit of work, that one. He lured her here, into this hole: a room made for the rotting-place of foemen, but it had been sealed off long ago. And still, he found it. He discovered the hints and rumours in the old house library, and went looking. He used this place for his fun. He hurt her, badly.” The fat lips snarled and spat. “All just to amuse himself.”
“And what did you do to him?”
A wide toothy smile crept on the creature’s face. “I was asleep. It was the wrong hour of the day for me. When I woke, I felt the misery, but it was too late. I could not save her. To make amends, I hurt him. Badly.”
“So now there are two ghosts here.”
“Two ghaists, aye. Caught forever in a last dance of pain.”
“Not forever,” answered Samakarantha. “They are bound by chains of pain and sadness and rage. But chains can be shattered.” He looked around, searching the darkness. “I will have to retrieve certain devices from my belongings first. I have freed similar sorrowful spirits before. It is not beyond my arts. But it will take some time, and it will tax me.”
“If you are a warlock, and if you can free her, then may it be so. Free her woeful spreet if you can, but not him. He doesn’t deserve it. No. No rest for him. Just her. If you are a goodly man, a kindly man, then work your ghaist-layings for her sake only. Let the nasty laird’s son rot in his own misery, forever and ever.”
“No. I cannot.” He shook his head. “They are strung together, twisted up in knots.” More solemnly he added, “It is the both of them, or neither of them. That is the choice.”
The broonie shrunk away into the darkness a few steps. He hunched up. His fingers twisted into writhing knots. His face showed starkly in the red light of the torch, though the rest of him was all but swallowed in darkness. “Both or none? Neither or both? Oh, what an awful choice.” For awhile he chewed his lip, then at long last he muttered. “Arg, so do it then, aye. Get it done. It seems to me that the misery has gone on too long. I canna stand the sickly noise of it any longer. It’s made this house sick, right down to its bones, and its bones are my bones. So it’s made me sick too, hasna’t?” His thick, leathery lips looked sour, as if he’d been sucking on limes and shrivelled wild apples. “You will do this?”
“Yes.”
“For what price?”
“None. The house is mine in the letter of the law. I have purchased it. I will not live in a place soaked with the shadows of the pained and the dead.”
A long sniff. “Arh, so, then get it over with. If you think ye are up to it?”
“I am. I will.”
“But once ye are done, ye need to take yerself gone and gusted, and take yer uncanny faraway spreets with ye. They don’t belong here.”
But Samakarantha only shook his head. “And that I cannot do. I have come here, to this city, with tasks in my mind and purpose in my heart. That which I will do, must yet be done.”
“Magicians,” muttered the creature. “Never will say a thing with one word, where ten can be used. Are yer paid by the utterance?”
“Something like that,” said Samakarantha, allowing a momentary smile on his face. “Can I call on you later? After I have performed the rites? I have questions.”
“You can beckon. Canna say if I will come. You can ask ye questions. Canna say if I will answer.”
“But if I lay the unquiet ones to rest first?”
“And here I thought there was no price.”
“I do not demand audience. I only remind you that a good deed done might warrant some consideration in return.”
The broonie thought long on this, and said, eventually, “Maybe. Maybe. We shall see, aye.”
“I suppose then I ought to proceed with the working of the art. And then, as you say: we shall see.”
Samakarantha felt relieved to leave the bleak little chamber behind. He thought about having it sealed off, just as it had been before, but also wondered if the scrawny faer creature would approve or not. It was an evil place, and even if the ghosts were given their rest, too much blood and pain had soaked the stones there. The rocks remembered the hurting. They were full of noises of misery. So much so, that it seemed a whole swarm of terrible echoes swirled after him as he left. They seemed to grasp at him and touch him with mist-fingers and ill-made hands. He proceeded back by the way he had come. He thought ahead to the ritual and the necessary workings. He considered what objects he would need, and the words that would need to be said.
Though as he passed through the stone circle he did pause a moment and wonder.
A stone circle under starry skies and winterbare branches. This had to be an old temple for the benighted and drear god-things of the north. It was a long way south. Though the borderlands of night-country had wandered over the years, had they not? Centuries ago they might well have stretched this far south. It was possible. So, what then was the connection between the brown faer man and the circle? Perhaps it was all coincidence. A house built atop an old temple, and the new residents of the house none the wiser for there being an heathen stone ring at the midst of their mansion. That seemed unlikely. A bit too much of a coincidence.
He felt troubled.
As he starting walking again, crossing the circular floor, a shadow detached itself from the gloom ahead and shambled into view. Samakarantha tensed, alarmed, but soon recognised the manservant, Scimminger. This house was putting him on edge. The ghost-things and the faer-creature were making him a little jumpy.
“M’laird?” said the old man.
“Yes?”
Scrimminger stopped short and looked around himself. A clear wrinkle of worry came over his expression. “These look to be something in the worship of the Old Night Carlin. I did not think the folk of the Sungilt Lands went much in for worshipping her sort.”
“We do not. These were here before I stepped through the door.” He waved a hand, expressively. “But hidden, I think? The magic I worked revealed the stones and the temple. What was this room before?”
“Just an old round bricked-over sort of storage place. I always thought it was for whiskey or wine perhaps. We always left it empty. Too much of a hassle, going up and down them long curling stairs.”
“And the chamber beyond the narrow tunnel?”
But Scimminger paled and would not talk about it, except to say. “That was walled up years ago. A bad place. No one talks about it. A bad, awful place. What, is it open again?”
“Yes, it is open now.”
Scimminger turned even more pale, which the magician had not thought was possible. “We ought wall it up again,” the servant said, stammering a little around the fringes of his words.
“I think it very likely, we will. However, first I will deal with the unseen things that walk there.” He tried a smile, but supposed that the warmth of his expression was mostly lost in the half-light of the torchlight anyway. “Was there another reason you have come looking for me?”
“Ah, yes, laird magus. There is. There is indeed. A messenger just now arrived from the Castle of Saltstone, up yonder. Your trick with the sorcery has been noticed. You are requested. The King himself asks an audience. At once.”
“Well, I suppose that is well. I did want an audience.” He adjusted the fall of his robes. “Still… it was rather a showy way of getting attention, and not what I had intended, but, I will not put out oars when fair winds present. Let us return ourselves to the upper chambers. I have business to see to first with the lost souls of this house, but I will go immediately to this king of yours once my work is done.”
“M’laird–I do not know what kings are like in your lands, but here, it is not sensible to make a king wait.”
“Oh, I agree. But it would be still less sensible again to earn the irritation of the creature that dwells in the stone and shadows down at the roots of this house. I have already promised I would perform an undertaking, and so it must be done. I will not break oath so easily, nor so recklessly. The king will have to wait, for the dead and the cursed will not. I will explain the details to the king, if it is perhaps a point he might not immediately fathom.”
This did not please Scrimminger at all, but he did not protest. He merely pulled at his collar a few times, and swallowed and at last found some words. “Yes, well, um, very good laird magus. Very good. I will have the message sent.”
He smiled. “Tell him that the king must wait, for the dead and the cursed will not.”
“As you say, m’laird sir.” And though he turned promptly to go back up the stairs, he clearly not at all pleased with this new undertaking.
Once the manservant was gone, Samakarantha set his mind to the task of understanding the misery and the sadness in the relentless dark. He needed to know it intimately, in order to tell the right kind of story, with words that will settle, and an intonation that will calm and bring rest.
It would take quite some application of the art, and he would likely be spent at the end of it.
Still, it must be done.