But his eyes were young, and alight with mischief. As he played, he watched them, returning their curiosity. When he reached the end of the tune, he took the flute away from his lips and smiled, bowing his head.
“Very pretty,” Julianna said.
“You have my thanks. A very good morning to you, travelers.”
Julianna nodded. “And you.”
Halliwell regarded the little man carefully. “Seems a long way from anywhere, if you don’t mind my saying, sir. A long way to travel to play your flute.”
The old man frowned, brown skin wrinkling even more deeply. “But of course this is not my destination, friend. It is only a place on the road, a spot to rest. But where are you headed, travelers? Forgive me for saying that you seem unlikely mountaineers. You are Lost, yes?”
“Very,” Julianna admitted. It earned her a wary look from Halliwell, but she forged on. “We are attempting to catch up to some friends who are also traveling this way. They followed the river, but we weren’t certain what dangers might be under the mountain-”
“And so you went over,” the old man said, tapping his flute upon his knee. “It is dark down there.”
Halliwell let out an audible breath and at last his hands seemed to relax. His whole body deflated a bit.
“We hoped to cross to the other side, to find wherever it is that the river comes out again.”
The old man looked at Halliwell. He brought the flute up to his lips and blew, a little trill of music drifting off into the air. Then he lowered the instrument and grinned again, his teeth crooked and yellow.
“Ah, but those you seek will not have reached the other side of the mountain.”
Julianna shivered. “What do you mean by that? Is there something in the river? In the tunnel?”
“There are many things in the dark water, lady. But you shouldn’t worry. The river would carry them through Twillig’s Gorge, where travelers are nearly always well met. The odds that the sentries would have killed them are very slim.”
Halliwell had frozen at the implication that Oliver might be dead. Julianna understood. Her own heart had trembled because she loved him, but Halliwell was afraid because if anything happened to Oliver, they had no hope of getting home.
“This gorge,” Halliwell said. “Can we reach it from here?”
“Certainly. Your present course will bring you there in time.”
Julianna shivered again, this time with happiness. A town of some kind, along the river. And if she understood the wrinkled old monk properly, Oliver would have almost had to stop there.
“Thank you,” she said. “So very much.”
“Not at all,” he replied, fingering the holes upon his flute. “The truth is freely given. But surely you must be hungry, yes?”
Something about the glint in his eyes when he said this gave Julianna pause. But Halliwell’s face lit up.
“Starved,” the detective said. “I don’t suppose you have-”
“Certainly,” the monk said.
With his flute in one hand, he leaped easily down from the rock, faster and more agile than seemed possible for one so ancient. When he stood before them, Julianna was startled by his size. He had looked small there upon his perch, but now she saw he truly was no larger than a child, perhaps four feet tall at most.
Halliwell seemed at ease, a grateful expression on his face. She wondered if the wrinkled little man’s age and size had caught the detective off guard. Certainly, he did not seem to pose any threat. His music had been beautiful, his face beatific, his voice calming. He had been nothing but kind and helpful.
But what had that meant: The truth is freely given?
The sprightly little man slipped behind the rock and emerged with a knapsack of the same gray cloth as his tunic. He set it on the ground, unlaced the ties, and reached inside, withdrawing first a small loaf of bread and then a single banana. Crumbs fell from the bread as he held it out, offering it to Halliwell.
Julianna frowned, staring at the banana. It was perfectly yellow, ripe, with only a hint of green at the stem. There was not a trace of a bruise on it, not a brown blemish on the peel.
The old man was traveling as well. This was just a stop along the way for him. If he was carrying food supplies, unless he had taken the banana off a nearby tree, it seemed incredible to her that it would be so perfect.
Incredible.
Small, wrinkled brown hands held out the bread and the banana. Halliwell wore a neighborly smile as he reached out to take them.
The truth is freely given.
Which meant some things were not given so freely.
“Ted, wait.”
Halliwell was about to pluck the food from the old monk’s hands. He glanced sidelong at Julianna, one eyebrow rising in a question.
“Don’t take them,” she said.
The old man’s eyes narrowed and he reached to put the banana in one of Halliwell’s outstretched hands. Julianna lunged forward, slapping at the old man’s wrist and knocking the banana from his grip. It struck the ground, where it instantly changed, transforming first into a flute, and then into a pale yellow serpent with a line of green diamond scales running down its back.
“What the hell?” Halliwell snapped, as the snake hissed and coiled, drawing its head back as though to strike. But it only swayed and watched them.
Halliwell and Julianna both backed away from the monk, staring at him. The detective’s hands bunched into fists.
“It’s in every fairy tale, Ted. Every legend,” she said, heart hammering in her chest. Julianna licked her dry lips and stared at the old man, who only regarded them coolly, still with that benevolent expression that had lulled them. “Meet a stranger on the road, you never take anything from them. Nothing. Especially not food. It costs something in those stories, and the cost is always something terrible.”
As they stared at him, the monk blinked once, and then he laughed softly. His grin widened.
And widened.
The sides of his face split, mouth spreading so far that the entire top of his head tilted back like it was on a hinge. His mouth stretched from ear to ear, and within were rows of yellow, crooked teeth. The front ones seemed ordinary enough, but the others were jagged fangs, long and thin, some of them broken and pitted.
When he spoke, his voice was like the hiss of the snake.
“How fortunate for you that the woman is with you,” the monk said. “And unfortunate for me. I would have had your right hand in trade, friend. And her body for my pleasure, had she partaken.”
Horror shook Julianna, yet the danger seemed to have passed. The man made no move to attack, nor did the hissing snake upon the ground.
“We’ll be going now,” Halliwell said, and he took a step backward.
The snake hissed.
The monk laughed and bent down to scoop the serpent into his hand, where it became a harmless flute once again.
“If you insist,” he said, the words stretched out by the vastness of his jaws. In his left hand, he still held the small loaf of bread. “But the bread is real. Have it, if you would. Your prize for surviving. Freely given.”
Julianna’s breath caught in her throat. “Freely given,” she said, looking at Halliwell. “I don’t think he can break his word on that. There are rules.”
“To hell with rules,” Halliwell said, still staring at the monster. “No thanks. We’ll pass.”
Julianna agreed. As hungry as she was, she could not have eaten anything this creature touched. They backed away slowly, watching the little man and his sack and his grisly smile. Only when they were fifty yards away and he had made no move to follow did they turn and walk normally again. They went quickly, glancing back every few seconds.
When they had gone so far that they could no longer see the rock, or the old man and his flute, Halliwell let out a breath.
“I owe you,” he said.
“Not a problem. You do the same for me, okay? We’ve got to keep each other alive.”