Never Trust a Dead Man (5 page)

Elswyth's eyebrows went up skeptically, but she didn't contradict him. "What are you asking?" she asked.

"I'm asking that the year I promised to give you be delayed, until after I've proven my innocence."

"And what are you offering in return?"

Selwyn tried to evaluate her, as she so clearly kept evaluating him. "More time?" he asked hesitantly.

"Another year," she agreed.

Selwyn's heart sank. But if he could survive a year in her service, surely he could survive two.

Elswyth said, "You will give me two years of service for delaying the start of that service until tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow morning?" Selwyn squeaked.

"You asked for tonight."

"But that was to explain to my parents," Selwyn said, "not to undertake to prove my innocence."

She held out her arms to show she was being open and generous. "How long? If you never succeed, does that mean you will never fulfill your obligation to me?
There must be a time limit, after which you will come to me whether you have achieved your quest or not." Selwyn was about to say he supposed that was fair, when she said, "One week. In exchange for one more week of freedom, you will give me a third year."

"But—"

"If you haven't accomplished what you propose in one week, what makes you think you'll ever be able to? If you feel, at the end of that week, that you are close to proving your innocence, come speak to me about it, and we'll see what can be arranged."

Selwyn had a vision of the entire remainder of his life spent in her service.

"Agreed or not?" Elswyth asked.

"Agreed," Selwyn said, for he had no choice. "Except—"

This called her back as she was once again beginning to turn to leave.

Elswyth sighed loudly, as though she was the one who kept losing in this bargaining. "What?"

"What would it cost me to buy a spell from you?"

Selwyn didn't at all like the smile she gave him at that.

"What kind of spell?" she asked.

"A spell to prove my innocence."

"You will have to be more specific than that," she told him.

Selwyn considered. There were only two people who knew for a fact that he was innocent: he himself and the murderer. He cast a nervous glance at Farold's shrouded body. Well, actually, counting the dead man, that made three. He swallowed hard and said to Elswyth, "You know a great deal about dead bodies."

"I'm well read," she told him with a wildly innocent smile.

"Do you know how to bring the dead back to life?"

"No," she said. But she paused to deliberate. Selwyn held his breath, which had nothing to do with the smell. She said, "Well, perhaps. But only temporarily. And it depends..."

Selwyn could hardly get his voice to work, knowing he was getting himself into the darkest sorceries. He asked, "On what?"

Elswyth counted out on her gnarled fingers, having to go around the magic light. "The right ingredients. Which, by coincidence, I do happen to be carrying with me." She moved on to a second finger. "The amount of time the dead has been, in fact, dead." She, too, glanced at Farold. "Which, in this case, may be a complication." She moved on to her third finger. "And the willingness of the dead to come back."

Selwyn said, "I will give you yet another year of my life to raise Farold from the dead for me, just long enough so that he can publicly proclaim that I didn't kill him."

"Oh, no," Elswyth said, almost laughing at how ridiculous that offer was. "The casting of this spell will cost you three years all of itself, whether your Farold chooses to heed its call or not."

Three years!
Selwyn thought. Without assurance that it would work. On top of the one year he had already agreed to for Elswyth's showing him out of the cavern, and another for not starting his service immediately, and ... He said, "If Farold clears my name tonight, I won't need the extra week we discussed."

Elswyth gave that smile he was growing to dread. "But you already agreed."

Selwyn gritted his teeth.
Six years.
But what other choice had he? He nodded.

Once more Elswyth put her magical light over her head to free her hands. "Bring the body here," she commanded Selwyn.

"You mean, touch him?"

Elswyth smacked him on the side of the head. "If you tell me that you can magically transport him without touching him," she said, "I'll apologize for that."

Selwyn took many gulps of air, and flexed his fingers, and closed his eyes and wished that he would awake from this terrible dream. But in the end he had to walk over to where Farold's body lay, and he had to get his hands under the weight of it, and he had to pick it up—all loose and floppy as it was.

"Don't worry," Elswyth said, "he won't start to fall apart for several more days."

Selwyn began to gag, though he hadn't eaten since earliest morning a full day and a half ago.

Elswyth pointed to another body, set in the wall and resting on a litter. "Bring me some of the wood from that one's bier."

It would do no good to protest. Dry pieces broke off easily in Selwyn's hands—this body had lain here a long time. Selwyn whispered an apology to it, anyway

"Kneel down," Elswyth said, "and don't break the circle."

"What circle?" Selwyn started to ask, but Elswyth was already scratching a mark on the rocky floor with a sparkling stone she had gotten from her pack, a circle that was big enough to enclose her, Selwyn, and Farold, as well as the wood he had brought. Next, she arranged this wood into a neat little pile, and she set about trying to strike a spark, using flint, steel, and a bit of flax.

"Can't you start a fire magically?" Selwyn asked.

"One can't use magic to make magic," Elswyth told him. "And every time you speak, you drain energy and make the spell weaker."

Selwyn wasn't convinced she didn't say that only to keep him quiet, but he stopped asking questions, just in case.

Once Elswyth got a fire going, she pulled a little clay pot from her pack and placed that on the heat. She emptied two vials into the pot: one a clear, bright red liquid—
like melted rubies,
Selwyn thought; the other a thick blackish purple substance that she had to shake out of its container. It made a rude sucking sound when it finally wriggled out, then landed with a noisy
plop
in the already-simmering red ingredient. There was a loud
hiss,
a blue cloud of smoke, and a nasty smell that momentarily made Selwyn forget the smell of where he was.

Elswyth unwrapped Farold's blanket again and cut off another hank of his hair.

His skin had an awful greenish cast. Without even realizing it, Selwyn slid backward on his knees. Glowering, Elswyth grabbed hold of his wrist before he broke the circle. She had talked of the dead person's willingness to come back, and Selwyn had been amazed, assuming any dead person would be glad to be alive again, even temporarily. Now, seeing the state of the body they were asking Farold to come back to, Selwyn wasn't so sure.

Elswyth placed Farold's hair into the pot, along with various leaves and powders from her pack. Lastly she pulled from her pack a human leg bone, dry and white. She waved this, wafting over Farold the still-blue smoke from the clay pot, and began to call Farold's name.

Selwyn was light-headed, even without the smoke.

In a low singsong, she apologized for disturbing Farold's rest and told him that his friend—which Selwyn had never been—needed him. "You died an untimely death," she chanted, "cut short, unfairly, unfairly. Your grieving friend seeks your aid to unmask your murderer."

She tipped Selwyn's head, forcing him to look at Farold, which he'd been steadfastly trying to avoid. She handed him the bone, setting the other end down on Farold's forehead. "Come back," she said, which Selwyn imagined she meant for Farold, even though she was looking at him. She gestured, and he realized he was to repeat her words.

' "Come back,'" he squeaked.

"Use these ingredients...," Elswyth said, wafting the smoke.

"'Use these ingredients...,'" Selwyn echoed.

"And my strength..."

That
explained why she was having him help. But Selwyn repeated the words: "'And my strength ...'" Was it just his imagination, or did he really suddenly feel weaker? There was no other choice, he reminded himself.

"And enter into this body," Elswyth finished, gesturing for him to make sure the bone stayed touching Farold.

' "And enter into this body.'"

But at the very moment Selwyn spoke, there was a sudden noise in the cave, a commotion. His body jerked involuntarily, ready to fend off attack.

It was only the bats, once more stirring as, outside, daylight faded and nighttime settled. In a moment Selwyn had recovered from his start, but then one of the bats—so clever and agile the night before—fell into his lap.

"Ahh!" Farold's voice screamed, small and many octaves too high. "What have you done?"

Selwyn looked down at the bone Elswyth had handed him, which he'd unwittingly raised off Farold's brow, and which—even now—was pointing straight up, up to where the cloud of bats above swooped and swarmed and flew beyond the curve of the corridor, deeper into the cavern. Leaving one behind.

Elswyth reached over Farold's perfectly still corpse and over the bat that fluttered and raged and tried unsuccessfully to right itself. She smacked Selwyn hard. "Fool!" she cried.

The bat was having trouble standing upright. Unable to get its balance, it kept flapping its wings, but this caused it to rise slightly off the ground, at which point it would squawk, stop flapping, drop back to the floor, and tumble over. Then start all over again.

"
Fool?
" the bat repeated after Elswyth, its voice tiny but definitely Farold's. "
Fool? Fool
doesn't say the half of it!"

Selwyn offered a steadying hand to keep the bat from tipping over.

In appreciation, the creature kicked him. But then it began hopping about, one tiny foot lifted, yelping, "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! You big bully!" It tried to kick Selwyn with the other foot, and flopped onto its back.

Selwyn held out his finger, and the bat reluctantly took hold and pulled itself upright, using the tiny little thumb at the edge of its wing as a hand. Selwyn looked from the bat with its huge ears and large fleshy nose to Farold's corpse, to Elswyth. "What happened?" he asked helplessly.

"
'What happened?'
" the bat shrieked. "
'What happened?'
What kind of fool question is that? Selwyn Roweson, you dumb twit, even
you
should be able to see
what happened.
You dumb twit." Still holding on to Selwyn's left: forefinger, it kicked at the bone in Selwyn's right hand, missed, and found itself—both feet off the ground—dangling by its thumb from Selwyn's finger.

Elswyth, naturally, sided with the bat. She snatched the bone from Selwyn and shook it at him. "Didn't I tell you to keep this pointing at the corpse?"

"Well, actually," Selwyn corrected, "you didn't so much tell as show—"

She smacked him on the head with the bone.

"Yes," he agreed for safety's sake. "Yes, you did."

"Then why did you go and point it at the bats?"

"I didn't do it on purpose," Selwyn said. "It was just, the bats made a sudden noise that frightened me."

"Frightened you?" both Elswyth and the bat shrieked at him. Elswyth pointed the bone at the tiny bat and yelled at Selwyn, "Look at him. He's about as big as your finger. What, precisely, do you find so terrifying that you had to go and muddle the spell?"

"The
noise
startled me," Selwyn protested. Why did she always make things out so that he sounded like a fool? "I wasn't frightened of
one
bat." He decided against mentioning that the whole swarm of bats was a little more intimidating than one all by itself. Most likely Elswyth wasn't intimidated by any number of bats, and she looked ready to use the bone on his head again. He said, "So Farold's spirit returned to the wrong body? It went into this bat's body? Can we redo the spell?"

"No," Elswyth said in a tone that indicated, once again, he was a fool. And, to Farold, she said, "Bats can't stand, so stop trying."

"As though it's not bad enough being dead," the bat complained, still clutching Selwyn's finger and jumping up and down with rage, "now I've got to be a rodent, too?"

"I'm sorry," Selwyn said.

"Actually," Elswyth said, looking thoughtful, "you're not."

Selwyn and the bat looked at each other. "Who's not what?" the bat demanded. "He's not sorry?"

Elswyth shrugged. "That I have no idea about. But you're not a rodent."

"I'm a bat."

"That's a different thing entirely. Bats have mouselike faces, but they're in a completely different order from rodents."

"Thank you very much, professor." The bat spit on the floor. "Now there's a thoroughly useless piece of information to add to this whole mess. I
look
like a rodent, I
feel
like a rodent—who are
you
to tell me I'm
not
a rodent, you ugly old witch?"

Selwyn saw the flash of irritation in Elswyth's eyes. He pulled back his hand so that the bat could try to escape, but it stood its ground, wobbly but defiant.

Elswyth raised the bone, which was big enough to send the bat—or Farold, or Farold in the bat's body—back to where she'd just summoned him from. But she took pity on his small size and, instead, hit Selwyn.

"No wonder someone murdered you," she told Farold as Selwyn rubbed his leg but didn't dare complain that this latest attack had been unfair. "You're a very irritating little snippet."

The bat stood motionless for a moment. "That's right," it finally said, much subdued. "I
was
murdered. That was how I came to be dead. I remember hearing you call me, and that's why I came back."

"Right," Selwyn said, glad to be back on the topic they needed to be on. "We called you here so that you could tell us who did it."

The bat that was Farold said, "I thought you called me here so that
you
could tell
me.
"