Dennis McKiernan: Once upon a dreadful time

“Tore apart, she was.”

“How?”

“By the prince’s very own hands, I hear.”

“What’ll it be, Goody?” asked the barkeep.

“A toddy,” replied the old woman.

“How could someone tear a body apart with nought but their bare hands?”

“ ’F he were an Ogre, he could,” said someone.

“Non, the prince be no Ogre,” said another. “ ’Stead, I deem

’twere a sword what took her down.”

“Where d’y’ say this happed?” asked another still.

“Here you are, Goody. That’ll be a copper.” The old woman fetched a coin from the small pouch at her belt.

“The Winterwood: that’s where it happened. That’s where the prince was.”

“The Winterwood, you say?” asked a large, bulky man, just then joining those nigh the fireplace. “Why, then, that’d be Prince Borel.”

“Oui, Gravin,” said someone. “Weren’t you listening to the tinker?”

“Don’t be getting snippy, Marcel. I was in the pissoir.” At the naming of the Winterwood and Prince Borel, the old woman turned an ear to the conversation.

“Oi, now, what is it you really know, Tinsmith?” asked Gravin of the lanky man standing before the flames.

The stranger shrugged. “Rumor, mainly, though there seems to be something to it. Quite a few were speaking of it as I made my way sunwise.”

The onlookers waited. The tinker sighed and turned and faced the throng, his dark beard and hair still damp from the drizzle outside. “It seems Prince Borel and his lady were travelling to his manor when they were assaulted by someone-”

“Someone?”

“Oui. The rumors say it was either a fiend of Enfer , or a vile mage, or a maleficent witch.”

The old woman’s dark eyes widened, and she leaned forward, the better to hear.

“And then. .?”

“Well, they were in the Winterwood when the attack came, and apparently the attacker was torn asunder.”

“By the prince?”

“By his woman?”

The tinker shrugged, but Gravin said, “Most likely it was

by his Wolves. Savage they are, I hear, when the prince be threatened.”

“What about his sword? Couldn’t he have cut the attacker up with his sword?”

“Non,” replied Gravin. “The prince, he doesn’t carry a sword. Just a long-knife and a bow, or so they say.”

“What about something like a Bear? I mean, there’s a rumor that a Bear sometimes is seen in the company of the prince.” The pot-mender shrugged and turned back to the fire.

A momentary silence fell upon the gathering, and the old woman cleared her throat and asked, “Did the attacker have a name?”

“Arr, a meet question, Goody,” said the barkeep. “Did the attacker have a name? I mean, mayhap we can riddle out whether it were a fiend, a mage, or a witch.”

The tinsmith sighed and said, “The only thing I heard was that it was one of Orbane’s acolytes.”

At the naming of Orbane and an acolyte a gasp went up from the gathering, especially from the old woman, followed by a pall of silence.

But then the tinker added, “I think it was someone called. .

now let me see. . something like, Wrenlybee, though that isn’t it at all.”

The old woman’s cup slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a clang. “Wrenlybee? Do you instead mean Rhensibe?”

The tinker turned and slowly nodded. “Ah, oui, Goody, I think that was it. Rhensibe.”

With a screech, the old woman flung a hand out toward the stranger, her fingers clawlike, her wrist twisting. The man gasped and clutched at his chest, and fell to his knees, and men drew back in startlement and fear, though one, Gravin, sprang to the tinsmith’s aid.

Wailing, the old woman spun ’round and ’round like a dark,

whirling wind and hurtled toward her bundle of twigs. She snatched it up, and-lo! — no bundle it was, but a besom instead.

Out the door she slammed, ere any could seem to move.

“Witch!” cried Marcel, and leapt in pursuit, the others charging after, all but Gravin and the tinker, who yet wheezed and said, “Someone dropped an anvil on my chest.” Outside, no old woman did the men find, though across the face of the moon a ragged shadow darted.

. .

“I was up and away ere they could act,” muttered Hradian.

“And when I searched in my dark mirror for Rhensibe, all it showed was a scatter of bones there in the Winterwood snow.

Borel will pay for this, I swear.”

Hradian’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud chorus of croaking from the mire, as if every toad and every frog were sounding an alarm, though no alarm this, for swamp creatures fall silent when danger draws nigh. No, this was something else-a signal, a calling-and the bogland was filled with a racking din.

“Ah, good. Crapaud has done his job.”

Again Hradian waited, and once more her mind fell into thoughts of revenge. “Next was Iniqui. Her end came at the hands of that slattern Liaze. But how, I know not. All was fiery when I sought Iniqui, nothing left, there below a frigid, obsidian mountain. . ”

. .

Carrying a broom-a twiggy besom-over one shoulder and a rucksack slung from the other, the small child wended through Market Square, looking at this, purchasing that, especially mosses and herbs and oddities. Strange things for a child to want, now, weren’t they? Or so the goodwives asked themselves.

Regardless of whispered comments, the child meandered on, filling her satchel with odds and ends-dried lizards, living newts, sheep’s eyes, and other peculiarities. Why, one might think she was a- Ah, but that could not be. She was nought but a child after all.

The day was dim and damp, the low-hanging clouds grazing the tops of even the meanest of buildings. Yet this was mountain country, and often did clinging air and misty vapor curl through the town; one merely needed to be bundled against such. Nevertheless, it was market day, when farmers and mendicant friars and merchants and other such gathered to trade or sell their wares. Occasionally a swindler or cutpurse would show up, but the local men quickly took care of such unsavory riffraff.

At one corner of the square, two men sat at a table, an echiquier between them, other men standing and watching as the echecs game went on, quiet conversation among them.

The girl paused when she heard one of the onlookers utter a particular name.

“. . Liaze, they say.”

“And where did this come from?” asked one of the men.

“I heard it over at the Poulet Gris .”

“Ah, pish, what do they know? ’Tis nought but drunks who frequent that place.”

“Well it was but a rumor.”

“And this princess and a rooster killed a witch?”

“Pecked her to death, I shouldn’t wonder,” muttered someone.

This brought a round of laughter from them all, quickly hushed as one of the players scowled up from the board. When the bystanders fell silent, that player then moved his tower and said, “Check.”

It brought a mutter from the onlookers, for they had not seen it coming. It was after all a revealed check rather than one from a direct move.

Long did the opponent ponder his options.

Finally, one man whispered, “Did this witch have a name?”

“Iniquitous, I think.”

Behind them the child shrieked, and there came a cold blast of air, and when the men turned, no one was there, though the clouds just above swirled in turbulence, as if something had shot through at speed.

. .

“I didn’t realize it then, but now I believe the obsidian mountain must be where the key was forged.” Hradian ground her teeth. “Stupid, stupid Iniqui. She should have known there is a much easier way. She died for her stupidity, and for that Liaze shall pay.”