Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater (33 page)

"I can't think like that." Chuggie walked faster.

She squeezed his arm. "We're leaving too. I'm probably not supposed to say anything, but it won't matter in a few hours. Besides, who are
you
going to tell?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Leaving? Steel Jacks had enough of Stagwater?"

"Magistrates interfered in Steel Jack affairs. To Non, that's some kind of contract breach. I give Stagwater two years of dwindling life before all the people are either dead or gone. Humans need law. Without law, there is no civilization."

"Not law. Without
beer,
there's no civilization," he corrected.

"Ha! See? You
are
in the mood for joking."

"What?" he asked. "That's not a joke."

"Oh. Well, what about your new dagger?" She bumped him lightly with her hip.

"You tell me, you're the blade worshipper."

"Can I hold it?" she asked.

Chuggie leaned away from her. "No."

"Does it have a name?"

"The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu, I'm told. I took it off the Gooch up in the Desecration."

"Can I at least look at it?"

"No," he said. Then, contradicting himself, he drew the dagger and held it up for her to see. As always, blood dribbled down his chin.

Fey Voletta's eyes flashed wide and bright looking at the bone blade. He turned it this way and that so she could see it, then slid it back into his belt.

Wiping the blood from his mouth, Chuggie said, "Are you happy now?"

"I'd be happier if you gave it to me."

He pulled his arm from her grip and put some space between them.

"Oh, come on now. I'm not going to try and take it from you. It probably wouldn't do anything for me anyway." She grabbed his arm again. "It sounds like it's pretty devastating in your hands, though. I only wish I could spend more time with you and your dagger."

"She only loves me for my dagger," Chuggie mused.

Fey Voletta laughed.

A few moments later, they stepped out on the street. Fey Voletta left him in front of the building while she fetched him a goat. A minute later, she returned pulling a bleating beast. She had flecks of blood on her pristine white robe.

Chuggie chose not to ask any questions. He mounted the goat and rode off with a wave.

"Until next time, lover man!" Fey Voletta called after him.

Arden Voss, being a surly bastard of a man, got no response upon ringing for his nurse. He often called for emergency assistance when he only needed a pillow fluffed or a blanket picked up off the floor. His long history of false alarms made his calls easy for the staff to ignore.

But this time, Arden's pillow and blanket weren't the problem. His blood boiled, but his fingers were almost too cold to move. His vision went bright and dark, fuzzy and clear. He moaned and drooled while he tried to get to his feet.

His legs turned to rubber. He fell. On his way to the floor, he bounced his head off his reading table, dislocated his knee, and broke his left wrist. He gasped for air as a cold layer of sweat squeezed from his pores.

The end had come, and he knew it. He closed his milky eyes and tried to block out the pain. He drew from it, absorbed his own suffering to enter the Pheonal trance one last time. He'd spent so much time there in life; his hope was to live there forever after death. If his body died while his mind walked that path, just maybe….

Swirling abstraction plunged his mind into the Pheonal realm. Light poured from above and darkness from below. They met in a swirling sphere of opposite forces. Light and dark, fire and ice, earth and air, love and hate, pleasure and pain, everything and nothing.

The sphere grew, churning faster and faster. Tendrils snaked out from it, a thousand faces at their tips. The faces opened their eyes with expressions of terrified confusion. Panic and horror soon followed as the tendrils whipped violently in the void.

The darkness grew below the sphere. Arden Voss felt its gaze on his soul. A creature of the dark stretched its oily claws toward the sphere and tore pieces away. With each rip of the claw, the light lost ground.

Eyes the color of blood peered at him from the dark, pulling his soul like a magnet. Another claw shot out toward him, snatching his awareness the way an owl snatches a mouse. It peeled his mind like screaming fruit.

Back in tangible reality, his body quaked and kicked. Shrieking like the damned, Arden Voss shed his mortal coil alone on the cold floor.

His mind, however, lived on in the Pheonal realm — the tortured plaything of a dark power — a power creeping ever closer to Stagwater.

The sky grew darker and darker as the day faded, and the clouds churned in the growing wind. The air carried a charge of electricity, and the occasional fat raindrop splatted on Chuggie's brow.

He lashed the goat to a tree at the edge of Shola's garden and scanned the perimeter. The quiet emptiness of the yard made the hairs on his neck stand up. No sign of Shola or the boy.

Three of the witch's scarecrows surrounded him without making a sound. Chuggie drew his dagger. They closed in as a fourth ambled in the direction of the blood maple, no doubt to warn Shola of Chuggie's presence.

"It can't be true," said Chuggie, but he didn't believe his own words.

In a flash, the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu tore into the advancing scarecrows. He ripped figure eights that carved the wooden men into thirds. Then he dashed after the fourth scarecrow.

He tackled it and pinned it to the ground.

It bucked and clawed, even after Chuggie tore its arms off. The dagger let him see that the scarecrow had the same black sparklers he'd seen surrounding Shola.

A frenzy of clacking and thumping erupted from around the bend. Mixed in with the ruckus, a rasping voice growled in a language he couldn't understand.

A pair of pumpkin-headed scarecrows leapt from the shadows. These weren't the same ones that did Shola's chores, however. These were thicker, sturdier, and taller. Their proportions were closer to a Steel Jack's than a man's. They sprung at him, but Chuggie rolled below their meat hook hands. In a single fluid motion, he thrust the bone dagger and cleaved the closest one in half.

The other scarecrow kicked at his head.

Chuggie grabbed what passed for the thing's foot, and yanked the scarecrow off balance. The wooden automaton landed on its back, flailing. Immediately, it began scrambling to its feet.

Chuggie chopped off its arms, then its legs. He sidestepped the jerking remains.

A bonfire danced at the center of the clearing, surrounded by a ring of torches. The fire illuminated an entire army of the heavy scarecrows. Chuggie felt like he just stepped into a pool of quicksand. Hundreds of the savage-looking scarecrows all stomped their feet in eerie unison. Their arms waved about, knocking against each other.

Most disturbing of all, each wore human clothing. If Non was right, these clothes were taken from the witch's torturgy victims. The garments had been stretched or torn to fit in any way they could. Some of the scarecrows wore tiny pants or little dresses, children's clothes, around their necks.

Shola fluttered her arms in front of a raging fire. She was no longer youthful and lithe. She wore the same clothes as when he'd left her, but they hung off her withered body revealing the scaly and wrinkled flesh beneath. Torchlight flickered off her face as she croaked her ancient chants.

Olin heaved heart-rending sobs. Pinned up to the blood maple, he hung much the same way he did when Chuggie first found him with Kale. This time, however, there were no ropes or chains. Four dead-eyed scarecrows held Olin's arms and feet. They took turns pulling him in different directions.

Shola screamed torturgy magic in her hoarse witch's voice, waving the goat-face purse about as she did. Even to someone who didn't understand her words, her hatred was unmistakable.

Chuggie saw all he needed to see. He broke from a jog into a sprint and streaked past the scarecrows.

Shola turned as he approached.

He dove through the air and slammed into her. They rolled together in a lopsided wrasslin' match. Using his own patented wrasslin' holds, Chuggie twisted around and got behind her, getting to his feet but keeping her on her knees. One hand clutched a thick knot of her hair. The other held the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu to her neck.

"Tell 'em to back off," Chuggie snarled in her ear.

With a wave of her hand, Shola commanded her scarecrows to back away.

"Have 'em let the kid down, too. Nice an' easy, or I feed you your tits."

Shola gestured at the scarecrows holding the boy. They dropped him roughly and lurched off to join the others.

Olin curled up into a ball and trembled beneath the tree.

"I thought for sure they'd have arrested you," she croaked.

"What have you done?" As he rasped in her ear, it was all he could do not to bite it off.

She gave a coughing chuckle. "All is pre-ordained."

"No, we choose."

"Even
you
murdered a man," Shola chortled. The sound was old and rancid. It crawled into Chuggie's ear and curled up like a maggot. "You have no choice when the evil enters you. How else can you explain it?"

"Guess I can't, but that don't mean I didn't have a choice. Now make your guys lie down." He pressed the blade against Shola's neck hard enough to draw a trickle of blood.

Shola raised her hands, and all the scarecrows dropped to the ground.

"Stagwater is a cesspool," she said. "If the gods won't destroy it, I have to take matters into
my own
hands."

Chuggie pulled Shola to her feet by her hair. "So you wanna play at bein' a god. Sure wish you'd told me that in the beginning."

"Spare me your puppy love!" hissed the witch. "How can you be so old and so naïve at the same time?"

"Maybe I am old." He yanked her over to where Olin huddled beneath the tree. "Maybe I'm naïve, too. I'm also lightning fast, deadly as drakana, and madder than the Hell of Screaming Teeth."

She cackled. "You won't kill me in cold blood."

"Why not?" He wrenched her face to point up at his. The blue eye he'd loved so much was replaced by a rheumy impostor.

"Because you love me," pleaded the voice of young Shola.

The sound of her youthful voice hit him like a three-ton hammer. It was all for her. What a puppet he'd been! He'd
wanted
it all to be true, so much so that he blinded his own damn self. He was Drought! How could he expect to hold anything close and have it live?

"I
loved
you!" he hollered in the rising wind. "We were going to leave this place and take Olin with us. Instead, you're torturin' him?"

"My power is growing." Her youthful voice tore through him. That voice clawed at his heart like a raven tearing at an eagle's nest. "Stagwater burns tonight. You can't stop it. Nobody can."

"Never fuggin' loved me," he spat.

"You're pathetic," she said. "Love is a whorehouse. It's a sick lie and a sad curse, shat down upon the world by laughing gods."

"Olin!" Chuggie put the witch on her knees again. "Are you okay, little man? I need you to get up. We have to leave, boss!"

The boy made no response.

 Shola's old crone voice returned. "
Olukhia sagosmet thungrol gothraga
!"

Olin yelped and flopped on the ground.

"What did you just do?" Chuggie yanked her hair back, exposing more of her throat.

"Your young friend there now believes you're going to kill him!" Her laugh bubbled out of her, more a cough than a chuckle.

Chuggie drew a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and smashed his anchor across the back of her head. He swore he felt her skull crack. She gave a bird-like squawk and thudded to the ground. He raised up the anchor, ready to bring it down on her brow to make certain she'd passed on. But he caught a hint of her autumn flower smell and couldn't drop the blow. He saw her in his mind, dancing naked under the autumn sun as red and gold leaves fluttered down around her.

Only the wind and the crackling fire disturbed the silence of the night. The scarecrows remained as still as the witch, but Chuggie kept a wary eye on them as he rushed to Olin and gathered him up in his arms.

"Say somethin', boss!" Chuggie shook the boy, but he got no response. "We're gettin' you outta here, kiddo."

Chuggie, with Olin in his arms, rushed away from the witch and her horde. If he could get back to his goat, he could get Olin to safety. He didn't get far before he heard Shola groaning behind him. He should've killed her. He'd hoped she'd be unconscious until well after they'd made their escape.

"
Kill them
!" Shola's lunatic voice rang out again at full force.

Dashing through the dark, Chuggie felt Olin squirming against his chest.

"No," the boy screamed.

"It's alright. It's me, Chuggie."

"
Noooo
!" shouted Olin.

"What's the matter with you, kid? I'm tryin' to get you out of here."

"You…," said Olin. "You brung me here.
You
brung me to this place."

"I didn't know, I swear," said Chuggie, struggling to keep hold of the boy.

Olin's response was only to scream and try even harder to kick free.

With dagger-sight, Chuggie perceived Olin's heart beating heavy and fast. The boy's mouth foamed, and his eyes rolled around like a wounded warhorse. He breathed short, rapid breaths, each a desperate gasp. Olin was in shock, and Chuggie could offer no comfort.

Chuggie understood that if he held onto Olin much longer, the boy would likely die in his arms. He might swallow his tongue or hyperventilate. His heart could simply give out. In any case, Chuggie had to let him go.

He let the boy stand on his own and took a step back. It pained him greatly to do so, but he told Olin, "Run!"

Olin took a nervous step backward. A flurry of leaves swirled around him.

Chuggie pointed south, saying, "Run that way, and don't look back! You understand me? You have to get away from here!"