He bent over the book and began to read. The words were strange, harsh, guttural. Some seemed more sobs and wails than anything else, and all held an inflection that grated on Harrach’s nerves.
Harrach began to fight desperately against the ropes. He felt something wet on his wrists and realized he’d rubbed them raw and bloody. Perhaps, he thought, the blood might let him slip loose….
Still the wizard chanted. Tiny spots of black appeared in the air, each no larger in diameter than his thumb. Through them oozed ghostly, smoke-colored snakes. They seemed to writhe to the rhythm of the wizard’s voice.
Then they swarmed over Harrach’s body. He felt their cool, scaled hides sliding over his hands, his face, his eyes….
Evann heard Harrach’s warning cry just as he finished blinding the second fisherman. His friend was in trouble.
Backing up to the end of the hall, Evann darted forward, leapt, set foot in the middle of the first fisherman’s back, vaulted the second, and found himself at the head of the staircase once more. He started down at a trot. Behind him, the two creatures fumbled their way in pursuit.
He found the second floor as empty as he’d left it, and the first floor the same, with no sign of Harrach. That meant he had to have run into trouble in the cellars below the house.
Gripping his sword more tightly, Evann eased down the staircase. Even before he reached the last step, he heard chanting from ahead. He shivered, unnerved by the liquid, throaty sounds that the voice made. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before.
Taking the torch from its holder in the wall, he moved silently toward the open door ahead. Through it he could just see Harrach’s bound feet, and over Harrach swarmed the same black snakes he’d seen on the fisherman earlier that night.
No sense hesitating. Death or victory—there could be no alternative.
Plunging into the room, he found the wizard standing behind a tall, ornate lectern, reading aloud from an open book. The wizard didn’t glance up, didn’t stop his chant for a moment.
Evann leapt forward and brought his sword down in the crease of the open book. The blade sliced easily through the binding, shattered the lectern into so much kindling. The halves of the book flopped apart like a fish cut in two.
The wizard shrieked and dived after half of the book, trying to turn the page, trying to continue his chant uninterrupted.
Evann didn’t give him a chance. He thrust the torch at the wizard’s robes and set them afire.
Again the wizard shrieked, this time from pain and fear. As he tried to beat out the flames with his hands and half of the book, Evann turned to his friend.
The snakes had scattered to the corners of the room, filling the shadows with dim movement. He noticed another fisherman holding a club, but this one stood off in the corner, watching with vague indifference—waiting for orders. The wizard was too preoccupied to give any, at least for the moment.
Bending, Evann cut Harrach free. Harrach leapt to his feet, rushed to the table, and snatched up his sword and his cloak, with its protective talisman. Then he started for the wizard, face twisted with rage.
The wizard, though, had almost put out the fire. Evann seized his friend’s arm and forced him toward the door, despite his protests. He had no intention of fighting both the snakes and their master.
“Let go of me!” Harrach roared. “I’ll see him dead!”
Evann didn’t. “You can’t kill him,” he said, “or we’ll never find the others! Trust me, old friend.”
Harrach tensed, as if preparing to fight, then abruptly relaxed and nodded. The bloodlust had passed. Evann let go, and Harrach fled the room.
Evann pulled the door shut and wedged the end of the hallway torch between the door’s handle and the wall. Now that it couldn’t be opened from the inside, the wizard was trapped.
They paused and looked at each other, panting for breath. Harrach grimaced. “What now, Captain?”
“We try to get out.” He grabbed one of Harrach’s bleeding wrists and looked at the wound. The skin had been torn away in a complete circle around the wrist. It bled freely. Evann pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the wound, then tied it tightly to stanch the flow of blood. Harrach winced a bit, but said nothing. They’d both suffered worse than this before.
“Can’t have your sword slipping, can we?” he said.
As they turned for the stairs, a frantic pounding began on the door. The wizard shouted for help and called both their names.
Evann hesitated, glancing at Harrach. What sort of trick was this?
“What do you want?” Harrach called to him.
“Quickly, you must let me out! The snakes! The snakes!”
Evann heard a strange, half-stifled scream, followed by a thump like that of a falling body, and then nothing more.
He had a strange, uneasy feeling, and in his mind he could see the fisherman on the dock once more, the snakes swarming over him, pouring down his throat. The memory made him sick. He wondered if that was now happening to the wizard, if he were being devoured by the shadow fiends he had summoned.
Harrach looked uneasily at him. “Do you think—?”
He nodded. “Dead by his own magic.”
By dawn, the west wind had returned. It howled through the village, whipped down the alleys and narrow winding streets, and set the river’s waves running high and choppy.
At first light, Evann burned the wizard’s house. The dry wooden floors and interior walls caught at once, and flames and showers of sparks leapt high into the air, driven up like fireworks by the wind. Thick black smoke filled the sky.
Almost instantly, mourners began to fill the streets. Over half the village had suddenly and inexplicably collapsed and died: most of the adults and many of the oldest children. Evann said nothing, but knew these were the people whom the wizard had possessed with his snakes. Wolfgar and Breitt turned up dead as well. Somehow, Evann was not surprised.
The wizard’s house collapsed in on itself, sending more flames shooting high into the air. The surviving villagers meanwhile wound through the streets of Gletscherel Village in a long, disorderly procession, flailing themselves with branches cut from live oak trees, trying to drive away any bad spirits still lingering in their village. Their cries were sharp and pitiful.
Swallowing, Evann led Harrach back to their fishing boat. As Uwe cast them off, Evann watched the villagers assemble on the docks. The upturned faces of men and women alike were wet with tears. They rocked back and forth, back and forth, and sobbed. Clearly, they blamed him for what had happened, and for an instant, he let himself feel guilt. If he hadn’t killed the wizard, their loved ones would still be alive.
He felt a wrenching inside as he said, “Raise the sail!”
“Aye, sir!” called Harrach. The sail went up with a sudden whisper of rope and canvas, then cracked and snapped taut in the stiff breeze.
Evann forced his attention to Gletscherel Village once more. The townsfolk were staring at him. He thought of the shock and anger and betrayal they must have felt. He swallowed, feeling guilty.
“How was I to know?” he silently asked the heavens. If fate had been kind, if life could have for an instant matched the old fairy tales, the villagers might have lived on when freed from the wizard’s spell. But no, such miracles would never come.
Perhaps it would have been better to let the wizard live, he thought for a second. He shook his head. No. It’s better this way. These people, he knew deep inside, were better off dead than possessed. He only wished everyone in Gletscherel Village could understand.
He turned away, refusing to look at them any longer. Still he heard their wailing voices. The pale, pale faces of the children would haunt him for the rest of his life.