Samhain Publishing

No secret stays buried forever.

A Markhat novel.

When patron of the arts Lady Erlorne Werewilk hires Markhat to identify the parties who are stealthily mapping out the Lady’s estate by moonlight, Markhat anticipates the usual—greedy relatives or rapacious neighbors plotting a land grab. After all, muses Rannit’s most feckless Finder, the Lady runs a colony filled with young artists. Aside from snits over color and perspective, how dangerous could a squabble over a backwoods house possibly be?

With new partner Gertriss in tow, Markhat takes the Lady’s case. Before the first night is done, the house is visited by murder, mayhem, and the haunting wail of what may be a genuine banshee, come to herald not just one death, but the deaths of all within. Trapped in a house under siege, Markhat must make a desperate gamble with an old enemy to win the race to unlock the secret that lies beneath the Lady’s lands. And find a way to turn that secret against the powerful forces converging on House Werewilk.

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Copyright © 2010 Frank Tuttle
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication

It had been a fair-sized camp. I’m thinking twenty men. There’d been six three-man tents, four of the much larger tents we’d called officer’s halls in the army, and then a single massive tent that had been filled with rows of long tables.

There had been numerous cook-fires. They’d set up a temporary corral for the horses. They’d had six wagons.

And they’d been very careful to leave absolutely nothing behind. What they hadn’t carried out they’d burned.

I found a stick and poked through the ashes. They’d burned papers. Lots of papers. And tools—I found hammer handles, I found shovel handles, I even found a handful of half-burned pencils, the fancy kind, with gum erasers stuck to the blunt ends.

“Who the Hell burns perfectly good pencils?”

“What?”

Gertriss had crouched down beside me. I hadn’t noticed. I chided myself for letting my attention lapse while pilfering the enemy camp.

“Look what I found.” I waved the pencil stubs. “They left in a hurry and burned what they didn’t feel like packing.”

Gertriss frowned. “You know those fancy figuring machines, the ones with the wires and the beads?”

“An abacus?”

“I found one of those in yonder fire. Aren’t they expensive?”

“They are. Odd.” I used my stick to move aside ashes, put my hand down on the ground beneath them. It was dry, and still faintly warm.

Gertriss put her hand down beside mine.

“They left late yesterday, didn’t they?”

“Pretty close, I’d say. Right after they killed Weexil.”

Gertriss shivered. “And he’s gone now?”

“Afraid so. Maybe somebody up the chain of command didn’t approve of them leaving corpses behind.”

“Marlo is waving, Mr. Markhat.”

I looked up. He was. Lady Werewilk was on her knees beside him, poking at something on the ground with a long thin dagger.

Crossbows and daggers. “I’m surprised she doesn’t clank when she walks,” I muttered.

Gertriss giggled. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she said. “But she has some of the most interesting items, Mr. Markhat. Look what she gave me.”

From the top of her boot Gertriss revealed a good five inches of slim steel. The blade had been blackened to prevent it from flashing even in firelight, but the razor-sharp edge glinted and shone.

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that what the ladies are wearing to Court this year?”

Gertriss pushed her black dagger back down. “We’d better go.”

Marlo was dancing an angry little jig by the time we arrived.

“Nice of ye to drop by. Thought you might need to see this.”

We knelt by Lady Werewilk, watched her stir the ashes with her blade.

“There,” she said. Her knife coaxed something solid out of the ashes.

It was a finger. A skeletal finger, attached to a skeletal hand, a hand which had been stuck upright in the ground, buried, and then burned.

The burned bones jerked. The dead fingers flexed. It made a fist, and then relaxed, and then it start turning on its wrist, fingers grasping at ash and empty air.

I threw Gertriss back with one arm, shoved Lady Werewilk down on her side with the other. Marlo bellowed, eyes full of murder, his axe turning and preparing to swing my way.

I leaped to my feet and whacked him hard and straight in the gut with Toadsticker’s hilt. He didn’t go down, but he did back up.

“Get back.” I kicked at the skeletal hand and missed.

It extended a bony forefinger, pointing it right at me.

And then the banshee sang.

She howled. She keened. Buttercup rent the air with that penetrating howl of hers, and she was somehow at my side and she gave me a pitiful little yank, as if trying to pull me away.

Marlo bellowed and brought up his axe, slashing at Buttercup.

Buttercup screamed, and was gone.

I brought Toadsticker down on the hand with all the strength I could muster. Ashes flew. The bony finger pointed.

And that’s when I felt the fingers close around my neck.

Close, and begin to squeeze.

Marlo caught on. He swung his axe down, brought sparks when he struck Toadsticker, but failed to damage the bones.

I tried to tell him not to bother, that the spell had been sprung, but I couldn’t speak.

Gertriss spun me around, and I felt her hands on my throat, but she couldn’t feel the hex choking me, much less grapple with it.

I let go of Toadsticker and stepped away. The spells our sorcerer corps had cast in the Army always had limited ranges. I took a useless pair of steps back, but could feel no lessening of the grip around my throat.

The traps left by our sorcerers were always designed so that by the time the victim realized what was happening, flight was simply too late.

I couldn’t speak. My lungs were burning. My vision was beginning to blur.

Gertriss was screaming at me, as was Marlo. Their voices were growing fainter.

Run into the forest and hope I got beyond the choking spell’s range before I died. Or…

I rummaged in my pocket. Darla’s charm was there.

My world was getting dark. I tried to draw in air, couldn’t. I resisted the urge to flail at the invisible hands closing around my neck.

Instead, I took out the charm, threw it at the skeletal hand.

The charm lay next to the bones, unbroken.

I remember dropping to my knees.

I remember Gertriss holding me up.

And I remember a bright flash. But that’s all. Just a flash, and the echoes of Buttercup’s final cry echoing in my mind.

And then the tightness at my throat circled all around it, and I fell a long time through the dark.