The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

Bishop tried to see what was in the cask, but all he could make out was billowing clouds, the color of gold, turbulent, whipping around and around. The racket was nearly unbearable now. Bishop picked up the wand and yelled over the racket, “Stop it!”

The noise stopped. It was quiet again—no, it was more than quiet, it was as silent as death itself. It was as if all life had been sucked out of this hole.

Bishop raised his hand and laid his palm over Merryn’s left breast. He felt her heart.

She said, “I’m still alive, I think. Is your heart beating as well?”

“Aye, it is, thank the saints and all their countless sacred bones.”

“I don’t like this,” Merryn said, and pressed herself closer to Bishop’s side. “Look inside the cask, Bishop. All those racing clouds inside. I don’t see anything else, no animals, all of them wanting to kill us. This is very frightening, Bishop.”

“I know,” Bishop said. “What does it have to do with the curse?” He looked at the wand, turned it over and over in his hand. “The cask is open, yet we can’t see anything.”

Suddenly, with no warning, the cask lid slammed down. Both Bishop and Merryn could have sworn that the key turned itself in the lock.

Merryn straightened, rose to her feet. She looked down at the beautiful, barbaric cask. She felt the dead silence recede, felt the life of air filling her lungs again, filling the hole, making things seem normal again, though, of course, nothing that had happened to them had been normal. All had been strange, beyond str

ange. She looked at that cask again. “Let me try, Bishop.”

He handed her the wand. Merryn felt the precious warmth that pulsed from the wood against her palm. “Open the cask,” she said, and pointed the wand at the key hole.

They heard a faint rumbling sound, animals running toward them, wild, out of control, but it was still distant, not right on top of them. Slowly, the rumbling grew louder and louder.

Merryn was ready to yell for it to stop because she could swear that those maddened animals were nearly upon them.

She said again, “Open the cask.”

The key turned very slowly. They stared at the cask, watching the lid come open, very slowly.

Sometime Else

The prince breathed out loud, fleshy snores, and his ancient limbs twitched and jerked. Brecia’s long, narrow nose pressed hard against his bony shoulder blade.

Mawdoor looked down at the pathetic ancient pair and slowly lowered his wand. He was sure they were the ones who’d found his demon father’s chest, but now, just looking at them—how could it be? The miserable ugly sots—just look at the woman’s narrow head and the old man’s bony chin. By all the gore-hungry gods, if that old crone had ever had any magic to even get near his chest, he would spit up peach pips. It was absurd to believe she could bring Brecia out to him.

He sighed. He would give her a chance, just until midnight tonight, and then he would know whether the old crone would die at the sacred stone circle, dashed down by ancient magic that knew no reason and no end, or die by his hand for her failure.

Slowly, Mawdoor took a step back, then another. He whispered, “Until tonight. If you do not bring her here then you will both die. And I will make them very unpleasant, your deaths.”

He sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out. He did this three times. Soon, all the old people asleep in the big room woke up and stared at him, standing there, sucking in great breaths, sucking deeper and deeper. Then he seemed to go round and round until he was moving so fast he was a whipping funnel, faster still, until he was only a blur. He whooshed upward to the very top of the big hall. To everyone’s astonishment and fear, he streaked out into the dawn sky through a long, narrow window, a window surely too narrow for a man’s body.

Brecia wanted to laugh at the very showy trick he’d just performed, but she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself and the prince. She pressed herself harder against the prince’s shoulder and whispered against his smelly old shirt, “What did you think of that? He wanted to kill us, but he held off. We have until midnight tonight beneath the full moon. No longer. So, what do you think?”

The prince snored. The damned wizard wasn’t pretending sleep, either—his snores were quite real, obnoxious and loud. He’d slept through Mawdoor’s performance. Brecia looked up to see one of the young women Mawdoor had brought to Penwyth standing in the middle of the room, staring upward to that narrow window.

She said, “How did he get through that small space?”

“He be a wizard, ye young beautiful maid,” said a gravelly old voice. “Have ye not two wits in yer head?”

The young woman slowly shook her head. “I guess I haven’t even a single one.”

A chorus of ancient voices rose. “Get ye to sleep, young’un! Think ye he will spin ye more of his tricks? Nay, he won’t. The master likes his sleep, he does.”

Apparently all wizards liked their sleep. Brecia pressed herself against the prince’s back again, his twisted old bones rattling with his snores.

Just after dawn on the morning of the full moon, Mawdoor looked at the two ancient, very ugly old people and said, “I trust both of you slept well throughout the night?”

“Oh, aye,” Brecia said, stretched and yawned. “We slept like the blue sarsen stones at the sacred circle.”