Frieda cast the spell without thinking. There was a brilliant flash of light. The boys were gone, small frogs hopping on the ground where they’d been. They panicked a second later, completely discomfited by the sudden change. Frieda understood. She’d had trouble coping the first time someone had turned her into a frog too. Bile rose in her throat. The aristocratic bitch who’d cast the spell had also talked about putting her in her place. And now…
She muttered a summoning spell, yanking the runaway frogs back to her. “Two things,” she said. “First, the spell will wear off shortly, but if you ever touch another woman without her permission, you’ll become frogs again. Permanently. And second…”
The frogs stared at her, quivering. “And second,” Frieda repeated, “you’re all going to work on the dig. Report to the cursed village tomorrow, or you’ll be cursed.”
She turned on her heel and walked away. Hoban would be pleased to have some labourers and he probably wouldn’t ask too many questions. Even if he did… Frieda smirked, feeling some of the ghosts of the past fade away. It wasn’t the first time the village louts had ganged up on a woman alone, she was sure. They’d been a little too practiced for it to be their first time. They deserved punishment. They deserved…
And none of them will ever know the spell won’t linger, she thought. Ivanovwould probably make a fuss, when his son whined to him, but who cared? It wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. They’ll treat their women a little better in future.
Chapter 3
“They’re very good workers,” Hoban observed, three days later. “But they’re not very willing.”
Frieda shrugged. Hoban hadn’t asked too many — or indeed any—questions when the seven lads had turned up to work, the day after Frieda had turned them into frogs. Ivanovo had put together a face-saving story about the lads volunteering to work, and Hoban had apparently accepted it without bothering to wonder why the village had sent the strong backs it could ill afford to lose. Frieda hadn’t bothered to say anything about it. She didn’t know how she felt about the whole affair, let alone how her boyfriend would react if he knew the truth. It was odd to feel ashamed of something she couldn’t help, but… she was ashamed. Would he have even looked twice at her if he’d known where she’d come from?
“They’ll do,” she said, tartly.
It was hard to care about the village losing the lads for a few weeks. She suspected most of the female villagers would be quietly pleased, even if it was a possible death sentence. The harvest had to be gathered, the crops picked and hidden before the taxmen descended like a horde of locusts to take everything they could find.
“When they’re done, they can go back to their lives.”
Hoban gave her an odd look. Frieda scowled to herself. It had been a mistake to return home. She could have stayed away and kept thinking that, perhaps, her family missed her, that her parents regretted sending her away. Instead… she felt dead and cold, her soul twisting in dull pain… it was funny, she reflected, how she would almost have preferred to have their hatred than their attempt to use her, as tiny as it had been. Why should she help a family that had sold her to an uncertain fate? Why would she?
She put the thought aside as she surveyed the ruined village. It was odd to think her father had hailed from the burnt or rotten buildings in front of her, the remnants of an ancient community steadfastly refusing to rot into the ground and give birth to new life. The stories had never been clear on precisely what had happened to the village, although there’d been no shortage of rumours. Everyone agreed there’d been a firestorm, and the village had been scorched clean of life, but beyond that…? There were whispered stories of monsters striding out of the darkness, of shadowy creatures and evil sorcerers burning the land to ash… she shook her head. No witnesses had lived to tell the tale. It might remain a mystery, one of many casting a long shadow over the Cairngorms. She quietly accepted she might never know the truth.
Emily would never be satisfied with a mystery, Frieda thought. She’d be trying to unpick it until she found an answer.
A shiver ran down her spine as she raised her eyes and looked towards the dig. The workers were grumbling — she knew they were muttering to themselves, even though they kept their faces under tight control — and doing as little as they could get away with, but the mystery ruins were slowly being exposed. Frieda shivered, again, as she looked at the thing. It was still hard to even look at it, as if her eyes refused to accept it was there. The sight made her think of something Emily had once told her, a story about five blind men who’d touched an elephant. Every time she looked, she saw something different yet part of a greater whole. She couldn’t figure out how the pieces went together…
She shivered, a third time. The thing didn’t feel human. Hoban had told her of ancient tomes and ruined castles and weird things on the wrong side of the Craggy Mountains, but the artefact in front of her was different. She could feel it, no matter how she tried to turn away and hide. Her head ached just looking in its general direction. The artefact was playing games with her perception. It was both immensely huge and infinitively tiny, so big it dwarfed her and yet so small she thought she could pick it up and put it in her pocket. She wanted to tell the louts to bury the artefact, then declare the entire region permanently barred to human settlement. And yet, she knew she couldn’t. The diggers would never agree.
Hoban took her arm. “Are you alright?”
Frieda flinched, then cursed herself. “Yeah,” she managed. Couldn’t he sense it? The artefact was fundamentally wrong. “I just feel a little dizzy.”
“There’s water in the tents,” Hoban said. “We could go there…”
“Maybe later,” Frieda said. She knew he didn’t want water. He wanted to make love… she wondered, wryly, what his team would make of him slipping off to make love to her before dismissing the thought. She’d grown up in a world where she’d been uneasily aware of her parents having sex — there’d been no privacy for anyone, not in the wretched shacks — and she’d never liked it. “I think…”
She glanced up as she saw a man picking his way towards them. Her teeth clenched in a flash of sudden instinctive hatred. Sir Wheaton — the knighthood was probably assumed, along with the name — was King Harold’s enforcer. King Harold. Frieda tried not to snort in disgust, although it wasn’t easy. The king had an entire string of grandiose titles, but his realm was smaller than the average city state… her lips twitched, remembering the vast lands King Randor of Cursed Memory had bequeathed Emily. She could lose half her holdings, and half again, and she’d still have far more lands than the local monarch. She supposed that was why he’d given himself so many titles. It disguised the fact he was little more than a local bully-boy.
“My Lord,” Sir Wheaton said. He was making a very clear attempt to present himself as a sophisticate and failing miserably, like a young girl who’d learnt her social etiquette from books rather than her elders. “I trust everything is in order?”
Hoban nodded, curtly. He didn’t like Sir Wheaton either. The man had arrived to serve as the liaison between the diggers and the monarch, but he’d spent most of his time prowling the region rather than staying still. Frieda was sure he was preying on the villagers, which showed a certain lack of common sense. He’d hardly be the first person to vanish in the forests, his body lost forever. And yet… she grimaced. She didn’t want to think about it.