The Barrow Lands Bards Page 3

and I shut the door hastily.

  "In hot," the voice said. I edged toward the bath and prodded at the oven door; an iron portal that was painted to look like wood. Inside were logs on a fluffy bed of ashes and a few scraps of bone.

  "Please!"

  I sifted my fingers through the ash and grabbed what I found. It was a large tooth -- a fang of some sort. As I held it, I heard it sigh with relief. "Yes! I help you. You help me. Take! You take, I help!"

  Talking body remains weren't that unusual, and some of them such as the harp from the breastbone of Princess Goldenhair were quite famous for it. In the presence of any strong magical field, the nonliving sometimes came to life. I looked it over as I brushed dusty gray ash from its surface.

  It was about the length of my hand -- almost a dagger -- with a flat surface on one side and a rounded surface on the other. Along the back were tiny spines that were as sharp as knifepoints. It vibrated gently in my hand.

  One good turn always deserves another, so I placed it in my scrip and grabbed my harp case. "Put cloth in water. Poke fire," the tooth advised. "They think you boil away."

  Now that was a good idea. I tossed my old cloak into the water and poked the oven fires up high. The room would soon be oppressively hot, and if I was lucky they would think I'd boiled away to nothing. I raked a few of the other bone scraps out of the oven. They didn't seem to be inclined to talk, so I tossed them into the kettle as well.

  The window was too small to crawl out of, so I quietly opened the door and crept into the hall. I hoped there wasn't a magical guardian waiting to shout a warning.

  A candle bent its flame toward me, flickering like a questing dog on a scent trail. I froze.

  "Tamelohday," the tooth in my belt pouch said, and the flame stood up straight. “You go on now. Watchdog sleep.”

  I walked down the hall. "Turn right," the tooth advised and I entered a nightmarish hall where the heads of things eaten by the manor's owner hung from plaques on the wall. There were stags and horses and humans and elves and elephants and things with horns and frills and feathers -- things I'd never seen before. At the very end of the hall were the heads of three ogres... and a blank plaque that was probably intended for me. I shuddered and tiptoed past.

  The knocker on the door eyed me, but the tooth said "Lamelohday," and the thing froze into cold iron. I passed through and ran to the stable, which was dimly lit by a few sputtering oil lamps. My faithful pony was there in the first stall, and it was only a matter of minutes to saddle and bridle her.

  "Take blue," the tooth said. I looked around and saw an ugly blue nag in a dirty stall at the end of the barn. It was the color of a china pot and had skinny legs and huge hooves the size of dinner plates. Its neck was thin and its huge head hung wearily. I wasn't sure that it would be able to stagger more than a few yards without dying.

  Still, this was the Barrow Lands. If a magical talking tooth said to take the half-dead nag, then it would be very stupid to ignore the advice. The horse rolled its eyes as I came up and tried to kick. "Use gold," the tooth said. I grabbed a golden rope that hung from a nearby peg and looped it over the beast's head. It calmed down though it snorted and snapped its heavy jaws once and flattened its ears as I tugged on the makeshift halter. I led it to my pony.

  "Ride blue," the tooth said.

  "Where's the saddle?" I asked wearily.

  "No saddle. Ride."

  "Where's the bridle?" The last thing I needed was the nasty nag deciding to run back to its stall.

  "No bridle. Ride."

  I looped the rope around the blue nag's head in a makeshift bridle, then gathered my pony's reins.

  "No take. Make us slow," the tooth said, but I flattened my own ears.

  "This is MY pony and I'm not leaving her to be eaten!" I growled.

  "Sorry you be," the tooth said.

  "Shut up!" I replied and scrambled up to sit on the back of the blue horse. The beast was nearly twice as tall as my pony, and the ground suddenly seemed a very long way down. I tapped my heels on its flanks and it lunged forward. My pony whinnied at the tug on her bridle as the big blue horse pulled her forward. Then we were galloping thunderously past the manor house. The stone lions growled and roared as we passed and I heard the servants shouting behind me as we passed through the gates and thundered down the midnight-dark lane lined with trees. The huge black birds that were roosting there began to lift their heads and flap their wings.

  "Pony make you slow," came the warning from the depths of my pouch.

  I gritted my teeth in anger. One of the heads on the trophy wall belonged to a little gray pony. "I'm not leaving her to be eaten." But there was a heavy beat of wings behind us and I could still hear the servants' voices --and fainter than that, the hiss of something like a great snake. The big horse strained to pull her along at his speed. A dark shape from the sky swooped at us and I ducked out of the way.

  "Jamelohday," said the tooth and the blue horse swerved from the road and nearly unseated me. We crashed through vines and thickets, and thorns caught and tore my clothes and hair and left long bloody scratches on my arms and hands and face but the fluttering of wings faded behind us. The servant's voices, though, seemed to be a bit closer behind us and the hissing sounded louder than it had before we plunged into the trees.

  Then we were out of the trees and running along a muddy riverbank. My pony stumbled and again the tooth said, "Pony make you slow. You be dinner"

  I slowed the big blue horse up a bit but refused to let go of my pony's reins. "You be dinner," said the tooth, again. I was getting tired of the refrain.

  "We'll see," I said, and wheeled the blue nag towards the water. Rivers were boundaries, marking the limits of where things could go and this one was deep and cold and wide and strong. The current swirled strongly around the hooves of the horse and pony.

  "Namelohday," the tooth said and suddenly there was a band of solid darkness that rose gently from the river and spanned the rest of the water. I urged the animals up and they climbed it eagerly and trotted across the bridge. I looked down at it. The magic made it look like some kind of gleaming black stone, spun from the fabric of night. I glanced behind us and saw the bridge melting away just a little beyond the blue horse's hooves. There were shadowy shapes at the edge of the river that I thought might be the servants. They rushed toward the water and then shied away, as though the flowing river was made of fire. The lord of the manor's magic couldn't travel beyond the river.

  As we stepped off the magical bridge, it faded into the night and I heard shrieks of frustration from the far shore. It was tempting to stop, but I needed to put some distance between myself and the river, just for safety's sake. I slowed the blue nag to a walk. Ahead was a short stretch of meadow and a faint gray line that looked like the road to the Red Hills. To the left was the small pile of boulders that we called Giant's Cairn and ahead I could barely make out the lumpy shape of the hills.

  I reined the horse to a stop and turned to listen to the night. The wails of the servants had faded, the hiss was gone, and I saw and heard no black birds. The tooth was silent. I yawned and tapped the horse's sides, and he walked forward. It had been a narrow escape. When I reached the festival, I would give Worche a part of my earnings and my heartfelt thanks.

  "So, tooth, you helped me. How can I help you?" I asked, but the tooth was silent. I lifted it out of my traveling pouch and looked at in in the faint light of the stars. It had lost what little life the manor's magic field gave to it. Things that stayed in an area of concentrated magic could develop lives and personalities of their own and could exist outside the realm where they came to life. But the tooth hadn't been lying in the oven long enough to give it full life, If I was a High Bard, I could have reawakened it with a song, but such things were beyond my poor talents. When we reached Diamandia, I would take the thing to the High Bard Dadefell and see what could be done for it.

  I blinked my eyes sleepily and almost fell off the horse.

  Sleep
was critical. I couldn't go on much longer. There was a thick patch of grass on the road beside a sandstone boulder. I reined the blue horse to a stop and slid off. Both animals lowered their head to the grass and began to eat hungrily, something they would never have done if there was danger nearby. I took an old vest out of my backpack and rolled it into a makeshift pillow. I took out ropes and pegs from my saddlebags and tethered both horses in the middle of the grass and then curled up with my back against the sandstone and promptly fell asleep.

  Eldritch Myst