Роберт Асприн - Forever After

“Simply put, General Blaid,” Granny continued, “we want your rope because it’s useful for our charms and spells. Usually, one must search carefully to find a hanging, but you are a stormy petrel indeed.”

“I see,” Domino considered. “Reasonable, as long as you don’t deplete our stores overmuch. It might even prove useful to have your band trailing my own — the Lakes are a dangerous and magical region.”

“Yes,” Mel agreed, “they are, but you have braved them before and are traveling at a — cautious — pace.”

Domino glared at him. “What are you saying, Sorcerer? If you are implying that I am derelict in my duties I will have you hanged.”

An excited whispering rose like a sudden wind around the fire circle. Domino caught fragments: “Ooh, finger bones! ”The skull for me!“ ”Hair! Hair and fingernails!“ ”I want his robes.“

Mel blanched then growled, spitting into the fire so violently that a rainbow of sparks erupted.

“Tut-tut, children,” Granny soothed “Now, General, I am certain that Mel was implying nothing of the sort. Here, as a token of our good faith, let me read your future.”

She tottered to her feet. Leaning heavily on her staff, she began drawing circles in the dust and sprinkling them with powders shaken from sacks she plucked from her braided rope girdle.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” she crooned with a surprisingly gentle smile for Domino. ‘That’s because you’re a girl, sweetling. Must have thrown Kalaran’s precognitors all off when they were working with frogs and snails and puppy dog tails — that’s what boys are made of, you see.“

Domino smiled wryly. “Nice to have been of help, even if that is all over now.”

“Hush,” Granny said, twisting her gnarled fingers over the pattern. “Let us see what the future holds for you.”

Half doubting, half fascinated, Domino held her breath as the brown sugar and cinnamon began to glitter and steam, shedding an aroma of baking cookies.

“I see a long road and trees swinging with bandits,” she began.

“Some foresight,” Mel sniggered.

Domino stretched slightly, thumped him once behind one ear, then caught him as he crumpled. Spite snorted. No one else seemed to notice.

“The trail ends thrice,” Granny muttered, struggling for each word, choking over each syllable. “Once on the road, once in the Lake, once in a high-vaulted room. I see you both succeed and fail. You will keep what you should lose and lose what you hold to be most true.”

Mel moaned, flopping on the dirt by the bonfire. When his hand brushed a bit of hot ash, he yelped and sprang to his feet with surprising agility. As his foot scattered Granny’s magical drawing, the crone collapsed unconscious over the ruins.

“Granny!”

Domino lifted the old lady like a rag doll (although she’d never had a rag doll, except for target practice) and set her gently on a pallet that had appeared as if by magic by the fire. The crone was already stirring. Domino settled her and the crone sipped with brave intensity on the cup of honey sweetened tea that a bright green goblin brought.

“Necrotica would have words with you,” Granny whispered, “a warning for you — a gift to go with my prophesy.”

Domino refrained from commenting on the value of Granny’s prophesy. She had little faith that anything so contradictory could be significant except in the most general sense.

“Where is this Necrotica?” Domino replied. “I will listen to her warning, but do not expect me to heed some feeble attempt to turn me from doing as Prince Rango has commanded.”

“Brave words, General,” came a raspy, whispery voice from the darkness, “but my warning has naught to do with your mission from the Prince. Rather it concerns the consequences of your own actions.”

“Speak,” Domino said, gritting her teeth against yet another admonition about the Company’s pace.

“I am a necromancer,” the voice continued, “a specialist in enchantments concerned with the dead. Your Company’s actions profit me in many ways, therefore I believe you are owed fair warning about the danger that you are releasing on the very countryside you seek to protect.”

“Riddles.” Domino snorted. “All your type speaks in riddles — I suspect to cover ignorance. I am a plain-speaking soldier, Necromancer. I have fought creatures both natural and unnatural so am not easily cowed. Speak your piece without this skulking or I shall go my way!”

“So rudely is it said that Colonel Dominik Blaid spoke to the Sea Hag,” piped the green goblin from where it was refilling Granny’s cup. “More balls than brains they said then, but I think that the Hag knows.”

“Yes.” There was a motion in the darkness and the emaciated elven woman Domino had glimpsed before stepped into the light.

“So I recall.”

Domino quirked an eyebrow at Necrotica. “An elf who deals with the dead? I thought that your people were interested in natural things like weather, animals, and flowers.”

“So we are.” Necrotica’s smile threatened to split her taut skin over her high cheekbones. “And it was in trying to raise the ghost of a flower that I first discovered my talent and power. It’s a living. Answer me a question, General Blaid. Do you know why most hangings are done at crossroads?”

“No, I never considered it.”

Necrotica fingered the circlet of tiny carved skulls that dangled from one enormous ear. “I had thought so. The reason for the custom is so that the ghosts of those executed will have difficulty picking the route taken by their killers. Since most haunts become bound to the location of their death, this mixing of routes traps them.”

“And these hangings that I have been ordering,” Domino said, “have been out in the open and we have been traveling slowly.”

“Yes,” Necrotica whispered. “I have trapped some of the ghosts and ripe eating they were indeed, but there will be more than I can handle if you do not cease your executions.”

Domino leaped to her feet, whistling for Spite.

“Never! justice will be done, Necrotica.” She grasped Spite’s mane and vaulted astride without waiting for the horse to kneel. “We will simply build crossroads.”

The elf gaped and the other Magical Folk chattered and twittered in amazement, all but the green goblin, who rolled on the ground, nearly sick with laughter.

“She would! She would!” it peeped.

Domino waved her farewells. “Thank you for your warnings and prophesies — and for the tea. As long as you abide by our agreement, my Company’s protection is extended to you all. Defy me and we will find rope enough to have you.”

Seth had dinner waiting when she returned to her tent.

“I fed him,” the boy said with a toss of his head toward Jord, whose silhouette was visible within the lamplit tent, “so that he could study more.”

“Very good, Seth,” Domino said, sparing him a pat on the shoulder. “How are your studies?”

“Fine, I guess,” he said, scuffing the dirt with one foot, “but I’d rather have a sword and a bow and a horse than learn to be a clerk.”

“Am I a clerk?” Domino asked, ripping into her roast pheasant with teeth and hands.

“No, sir!” the boy said with shock and admiration. “You’re too much of a man for that!”

“But I can read and write and cipher,” Domino said, wiping her greasy hands on her trouser legs, “and my father, General Blaid, insisted on this as part of my training as a soldier.”

“Am I training to be a soldier?” the boy asked, something suspiciously like joy in his level voice.

“You might be,” Domino replied, “and you might find yourself getting at least a bow to go with your horse if I hear from Bysha and Colum that your lessons are going well.”