Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Sorcerer's Widow

Then Ezak started untying the ropes that secured the canvas cover that protected the contents of the wagon, and a sense of foreboding crawled up Kel’s back and seemed to pull his shoulders inward. “Ezak?” he called.

“Sssh!” Ezak replied. “I’m trying to find…ah, there it is!” He flung back a corner of the canvas, then reached down into the wagon.

A high-pitched, inhuman voice screamed, very loudly, and kept screaming. Kel clapped his hands over his ears and turned to look at the door of the inn, expecting to see a dozen armed guards spilling out.

No one emerged; the inn remained quiet and dark. Meanwhile, Ezak was saying, “Hush! Shut up! Stop it!” He was bent down, his hands flailing wildly at something Kel could not see.

Then the screaming stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. Kel blinked, his ears ringing. “What was that ?” he asked. His words sounded very faint in his own ears, in marked contrast to the unearthly wail that had just ended.

“I don’t know,” Ezak said. “It started when I touched the…the whatever-it-is, so I thought maybe I could make it stop the same way, so I just kept hitting it-”

An unfamiliar voice interrupted him, and Kel and Ezak both stopped talking as this new voice said half a dozen incomprehensible words, then fell silent.

For a moment after it finished no one spoke, but at last Kel asked, “What was that ?”

“The…it’s the same thing,” Ezak replied. “The big talisman.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know,” Ezak said. “I don’t even know what language that was.”

“Ezak, how can a talisman talk? It doesn’t even have a mouth!”

“I know. I mean, I know it doesn’t have a mouth, I don’t know how it can talk. I didn’t see anything move, but I’m sure that’s where the voice came from.”

“But how?”

“Magic, of course,” Ezak said, regaining some of his confidence. “It must be sorcery. That should bring a good price!”

“Why? We don’t know what it said!”

“Well, if we find someone who does -”

The talisman spoke again. Kel thought it repeated the exact same words it had said before, and once again, when it had completed its single sentence it stopped.

“Maybe that’s all it knows how to say,” Kel said. “That’s not very impressive. I saw a wizard do something like that once; he made a mouth appear on a piece of cloth and say six words. But they weren’t words in any known language, and the wizard’s apprentice told me it always said the same six words, but not always in the same order.”

“Maybe,” Ezak said. He was leaning over, staring down at the talisman. “But some of those little squares on the top are glowing. Blue ones.”

Kel hesitated, torn between curiosity and caution. “Do you think it’s safe? It won’t…turn us into lizards, or something?”

“How should I know?” Ezak said. “But it hasn’t hurt us yet, and I was whacking it all over when it was screaming at us.” He reached over the side of the wagon, and tapped the big talisman.

There was a sudden clatter, and Ezak jumped back, falling off the bench and tumbling awkwardly over the wagon’s tongue to the ground. Kel started to run to his friend’s aid, then froze where he was and stared.

The talisman was climbing out of the wagon. The ribs on its sides had unfolded into black-clawed, spider-like legs, and it was pulling itself up over the wooden side. It looked utterly monstrous in the dim light and deep shadows, the orange lantern light gleaming from its metallic sides while a faint blue glow shone from its top, and Kel had to clamp his jaw to keep from screaming.

When he trusted himself to speak, he exclaimed, “Ezak, what did you do ?”

“How should I know?” Ezak said, lying sprawled where he had fallen. He pushed himself up on one elbow and watched as the thing lowered itself to the ground, hanging by two of its many legs until three or four of the others were solidly braced on the hard-packed earth. Both men fell silent and merely watched, unmoving, as the talisman, or creature, or whatever it was, arranged itself on earth of the stableyard. Kel counted twelve legs, each ending in several fingers-not the same number on each, nor for that matter the same shape. Some were big crablike claws, others were long needles, and others were a variety of other shapes he could not make out clearly. He was not entirely sure of the number of legs; he thought the low light might be hiding one or two more.

Then the thing spoke again, still in that unknown language but different words, and then it began running. It did not run like a spider, or like anything else Kel had ever seen; its legs seemed to dance, and then it was moving.

It moved fast . Before Kel could really get a good look at it, it was out the stableyard gate into the night.

Startled, not thinking about any danger, Kel ran after it, but quickly gave up-it was already a good fifty yards away, visible only as a cluster of faint glowing blue dots vanishing down the road in the distance. He turned back, and saw that the inn door was open. A woman was standing there, holding a lantern-and looking at him.

He hung his head, but did not attempt to hide, or pretend he did not know why she was there. He could not see her face in the dark-she was not holding the lantern in such a way as to illuminate it-but he judged from her height that it was Dorna, rather than Irien. He walked slowly back to the inn.

She stood in the doorway and watched, and when he had drawn close enough that she had no need to shout, she said, “Which one was it?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Well, judging by the sound, someone disturbed some of Nabal’s magic, and here you are, Kel, looking as if you were chasing something but couldn’t catch it. I’m guessing that one of the talismans woke up and flew off somewhere. Which one was it?”

“It didn’t fly,” Kel said. “It ran.” She stepped out of the doorway, and he noticed that she was fully dressed, in a good green dress; that was probably why she had not come running out sooner.

Her tone, which had been fairly casual, turned more serious. “Damn,” she said. “Which one?”

“I don’t know what it’s called,” Kel said. He held out his hands about a foot and a half apart. “It was about this big, and it grew a dozen legs and crawled out of the wagon and ran away.”

“Did it have lots of little colored squares on top?” Dorna asked. She sounded worried now.

“Yes,” Kel said. “Some of them were glowing.”

“Oh, blast ! Why did it have to be that?” She seemed to be talking to herself, but then her attention returned to Kel. “Glowing yellow? Or red?” He could hear tension in her voice.

“No; blue.”

“Just blue? All of them were blue?”

“Yes. Well, all the glowing ones.”

“Oh.” She relaxed slightly. “That’s not so bad, then.”

“It’s not?”

“No.” She held up the lantern and peered about at the empty road and the sleeping village. “I don’t know how in the World you woke it up as safely as that, though.”

“ I didn’t touch it!” Kel protested, before he realized what he was doing.

She turned to look at him. “Oh,” she said. “It was Ezak?”

“I don’t know,” Kel mumbled, looking down at his feet.

“Oh, of course you do,” Dorna replied. “Huh. If he managed to properly wake up a fil drepessis , maybe he really is a sorcerer. Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Kel said-more or less truthfully, this time.

“He’s still in the stableyard, isn’t he? Probably stuffing talismans in his pouch.” She sighed. “Come on.”