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A logo for the 21st century. We love the historic St. John logo that's been on the cover of the print magazine for decades. The Internet is a different medium, though, and we think it's time to punch up the decor of our electronic eyrie with a bit of "New Weird" (to, um, coin a phrase).

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commentary by Leo Grin

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On January 22, 2006, at a desolate crossroads in the windswept cowtown of Peaster, Texas, a gathering of men stood reverently in a chill downpour. These weren’t local ranch hands or mud-soaked oil riggers, they were fantasy fans — editors, scholars, and aficionados, from places as far away as Washington DC, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Each had journeyed hundreds of miles through sleet and rain on a Quixotic quest of tribute. For exactly one hundred years earlier, in that isolated Texas hamlet, the ailing wife of a grizzled frontier doctor gave birth to a man whose name still echoes like a grim knell across the fantasy genre’s dreamscape.

The father of Sword-and-Sorcery. The creator of Conan.

Robert Ervin Howard.

That same morning, sleepy-eyed readers of The Washington Post were treated to a book column by popular critic Michael Dirda, who seized upon the occasion of Howard’s one-hundredth birthday to review Del Rey Books’ sumptuous new series of fully-illustrated, textually-restored Conan books. Dirda assured readers who harbor a dislike for pulp fantasy that “approached as guilty pleasures, [the Conan stories] can be wonderfully entertaining,” then made a measured case for Howard’s literary worth. “Howard’s Conan chronicles,” Dirda wrote, “are... studies in the clash of Barbarism and Civilization. In Howard’s grim and all too realistic view, the barbarians are always at the gate, and once a culture allows itself to grow soft, decadent or simply neglectful, it will be swept away by the primitive and ruthless.” He ended with a judgment that is old hat among fantasy fans, but one which many critics and academics are only now belatedly acknowledging: “Apart from Fritz Leiber’s tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, sword and sorcery adventures don’t come any better.”

Amen. As criticism goes, Dirda’s insightful analysis is a far cry from sixty years ago, when playwright H.R. Hays greeted Howard’s first American hardcover appearance — the now-classic 1946 Arkham House release Skull-Face and Others — with a scathing review in The New York Times titled “Superman on a Psychotic Bender.” Of course, Dirda’s no long-dead, forgotten blowhard — he won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Clearly, time and age have been good to Robert E. Howard. The man whom H.P. Lovecraft christened “Two-Gun Bob” left us a large, fascinating body of work encompassing not only the birth of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre, but also the misery of the Great Depression, the bittersweet memory of the American frontier, and the millennial sweep of War and Time and History. Howard’s work is increasingly perceived as a modern continuation of the gloomy, homegrown literature pioneered by giants such as Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and London. For decades known as one of the Big Three Weird Tales writers, he is now also being studied and respected as a Texan writer, a 1930s writer, and a classic American writer.

My, how times have changed. A few decades ago, critics and reviewers dismissed Conan as adolescent fantasies for perpetually adolescent minds. Exciting and action-packed and passionate? Yes! But Art? Literature? Fuhgettaboutit. Granted, not everyone thought that way.

Fritz Leiber’s REH criticism was uncommonly perceptive, and remains as useful now as when it was written decades ago. [He coined the term Sword-and-Sorcery, now being considered for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary to describe the Conan stories.] And most fans have never heard the great anecdote L. Sprague de Camp relates in his autobiography Time and Chance, about his enjoyable afternoon spent in Tolkien’s garage study, drinking and conversing with the legendary fantasist. When the subject turned to Howard, de Camp fully expected Tolkien — an infamous curmudgeon when it came to modern fantasy — to dismiss the Texan out of hand, if indeed he had read him at all. But to his surprise, Tolkien not only confirmed that he had read Howard, but admitted without shame that he “rather liked” the Conan tales — high praise indeed coming as it did from one of the harshest critics of the field. Still, the likes of Leiber and Tolkien were exceptions. According to most of Howard’s fellow professionals, his work was forever marred by its pulp roots and his legendary psychological problems.

Today, such opinions are as outdated as a ’59 Edsel. The cheap, gaudy paperbacks of yore are now deluxe illustrated volumes lovingly restored to match Howard’s original typescripts. Fantasy authors routinely credit Howard as a seminal influence revered among their ranks. Critical books and magazines have prompted teachers to finally include Howard on reading lists and syllabi. (I recently read a feature about one such teacher in the Antelope Valley Press, a popular Southern California newspaper with a readership of 250,000 — apparently his assigning Howard to students as extra credit caused a stampede to nearby bookstores, making Howard a sellout for miles around!)

To readers whose last experience with Howard was reading Conan as a teenager, all of this may seem shocking. But to those of us who have been enmeshed in Howard studies for a long time, getting face-time in The Washington Post from a Pulitzer Prize-winner is merely the latest in a string of breakthroughs for the Texan.

Back in the late 1960s, when science-fiction grandmaster L. Sprague de Camp ushered the whole Conan saga into paperback for the first time, the resulting surge in Conan’s popularity created a tidal wave known ever since as the “Howard Boom.” It was a heady time for fans — virtually everything Howard ever wrote was published in one form or another. Incomplete stories, high school newspaper articles, juvenilia — nothing was too unfinished or just plain bad to stick into a paperback and foist upon Conan fanatics. Boxing tales, westerns, and detective stories were all encased in covers deceptively hinting at Sword-and-Sorcery pleasures, each emblazoned with “By the creator of CONAN!” Readers were grateful for the deluge, even while lamenting that some critics were judging Howard not by his best work but by haphazard paperbacks containing his very worst writing, stuff he never intended to publish.

As the Howard Boom died out in the early ’80s, scholars quietly went through a decade of sifting through all of this new material and reëvaluating his reputation. Those who came to Howard as Conan fans often left with a newfound respect for his poetry, westerns, crusader tales, horror, and boxing stories. Crucially, a well-reviewed critical book called The Dark Barbarian appeared in 1984 from a respected academic press. Meticulously assembled and edited by critic Don Herron, it intelligently covered the whole of Howard’s output, demonstrating that the creator of Conan could and should be taken more seriously. A few years later, several volumes of Howard’s letters were published by Necronomicon Press, showing “crazy” Howard in a light few had fathomed: as a savvy businessman, a frequent, wide-ranging traveler, a good friend, and a passionate literary artist all-too-aware of the way people perceived him.

As time passed, Howard’s hometown at long last began to preserve the legacy of their most famous resident. In 1986, a group of fans and civic leaders in Cross Plains combined forces to establish Robert E. Howard Days, a festival that takes place the second weekend each June to celebrate Howard’s life and work. Over the years it has grown into a vastly entertaining mini-convention hosting over a hundred fans, complete with tours, panels, awards, a banquet, and viewings of all the places about which Howard worked, traveled, and wrote. The original house Howard lived and wrote in has been beatifically restored into one of the country’s most charming literary museums, prompting its addition to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Once a forgotten figure in Cross Plains, Howard now is the town’s shining light.

The same year Howard Days began, his former girlfriend Novalyne Price-Ellis, then an elderly retired schoolteacher, published an autobiographical book called One Who Walked Alone about her years spent dating REH at the end of his life. The volume revealed Howard to be a much more conscientious and dedicated craftsman than even his most ardent fans had suspected. Howard’s passion for the history and culture of his beloved Southwest, his trenchant explanations of the thematic threads tying together his oeuvre, and his insistence on the artistry underlying his pulp writing opened up new avenues of study. When in 1996 the book was made into a critically praised film titled The Whole Wide World, starring Renée Zellweger and Vincent D’Onofrio (the movie appeared on over fifty critics’ Top Ten lists for that year), Howard’s appeal broadened outside his fantasy roots yet again, sometimes attracting fans in strange places. (For instance, in recent years I have noticed a number of new women at Howard Days — apparently The Whole Wide World has been screened on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Network cable channel so often that it has made Howard a romantic figure among housewives!)

Because of his letters, Novalyne’s book and film, and various other interviews and evidence, Howard’s personality has now been radically re-defined in the minds of fans. Previous generations took it at face value that Howard was, in a word, nuts — a crazed, paranoid eccentric living a schizophrenic life comprised of half reality and half fantasy, whose writing poured out in lengthy marathon fits of genius that eventually culminated in a senseless Oedipal suicide. Today, much more is known about Howard’s life and motivations, and the old gossipy tales have lost their power to convince. By degrees, the dominant image of Howard the Crazed Nut has given way to Howard the Misunderstood Artist. By the time John Milius recorded his interview for a new Conan the Barbarian DVD in 2000, gleefully recounting all the silly old canards of a schizoid Howard haunted by the ghost of Conan and holed up in a boarded-up house with a shotgun sweating his terror-filled nights away, most fans knew better than to believe any part of the tale.

Throughout most of the ’80s and ’90s Howard studies were going gangbusters, yet the publishing of the actual stories was moribund, lost to legal wrangling among various parties intent on gaining control of Howard’s valuable literary properties. Conglomerates with money to burn brought Conan back in a series of ill-advised projects. From a risible Saturday morning cartoon to lame comic-book retreads to a wretched live-action television show, each attempt to recapture the Boom magic flopped among fans, who pined for more faithful and intelligent fare geared to match their newfound respect for the author.

The Boom’s pimply-faced teens had grown up, and no longer would they gobble down the latest tripe passed off as “faithful to Howard.” They wanted the real thing, presented with the class that the author deserved.

Eventually, they got it. One by one the lawsuits were settled, the lawyers faded away, and it became possible to publish Howard in something resembling a principled fashion. In 1996 Baen came out with seven paperbacks containing much of Howard’s non-Conan output, but scant advertising and publicity combined with corrupt texts doomed the series to only moderate success and no reprintings. Efforts by English publisher Wandering Star to produce lavishly illustrated and textually pure volumes of Howard’s best work, a “Robert E. Howard Library of Classics,” were more successful. Six books have been released to date, all widely praised for their scholarship and presentation. The stunning quality of these expensive collectors’ volumes attracted the interest of Del Rey, who is now filling bookstores with affordable trade-paper and hard-cover editions of each. It was this series, specifically designed to promote Howard as a classic American author worthy of critical attention, that caught Pulitzer Prize winner Dirda’s attention and prompted his Washington Post piece.

In the wake of Wandering Star and Del Rey, other publishers began filling the marketplace with an array of riches that have fans talking delightedly of a second Howard Boom. Wildside Press is currently producing a ten-volume hardcover set encompassing all of Howard’s classic Weird Tales works, and they have other volumes out dedicated to his detective, crusader, humorous boxing, and western tales. Last year Bison Books, a prestigious academic press based at the University of Nebraska, released five elegant hardcovers of Howard’s best non-Conan work, each edited and introduced by a longtime Howard scholar. Girasol Books, a pulp reprint house based in Canada, has released two massive books containing Howard’s complete Weird Tales output (including not only stories, but also all of his WT poems and letters to the editor), with the pages scanned directly from the pulps in facsimile form, exactly as they appeared in "The Unique Magazine" more than seventy years ago.

And all of that just covers Howard’s original stories. The previously mentioned critical anthology, 1984’s The Dark Barbarian, has just been reprinted by Wildside Press in an affordable paperback edition, and in 2004 the same press released a captivating sequel titled The Barbaric Triumph. A book of Howard’s complete poems — all seven hundred of them! — is in the works, set to be illustrated by famed Hellboy artist Mike Mignola. Several new Howard bibliographies are coming out next year, their gargantuan proportions a testament to the amount of Howardia produced over the last few decades. And scholar Mark Finn just completed the first full-length biography of Howard since 1983’s seminal work in the field, Dark Valley Destiny by L. Sprague de Camp. Titled Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard and weighing in at almost four hundred pages, Finn’s tome will hit bookstores in November. The buzz is that it’s good; watch for it.

Publishers are not the only ones pushing Howard in the modern marketplace. A Swedish media conglomerate, Paradox Entertainment, has spent the last few years buying up multimedia rights to Howard’s work, and they are gung-ho about reintroducing Conan and other characters to a whole new generation of fans. On the live-action front, a Bran Mak Morn movie has already been greenlighted, with movies based on Solomon Kane and Conan also in various stages of pre-production. As for animated films, a full-length feature based on the Conan tale “Red Nails” is nearing completion. Video games, Hyborian pastiches, comics... in all of these areas Howard and Conan is being re-seeded into the pop culture sphere almost faster than one can keep up.

And let’s not forget the fans. The long-running organization REHupa (The Robert E. Howard United Press Association) has entered its thirty-fourth year of continuous existence, and various editors are producing books, chapbooks, and literary journals at an impressive clip, using modern production techniques to eclipse in both quality and quantity the mountain of material published during the first Howard Boom. An example: my own semiprofessional journal, The Cimmerian, pays three cents a word, appears bi-monthly (monthly during this centennial year), and is focused like a laser on Howard’s life and work. I say that any author supporting a paying market for literary criticism seventy years after his death has done something right.

So, is this really a second Howard Boom? I think so, yes. Quieter than the halcyon, Frazetta-illustrated ’70s for sure, but perhaps in the final analysis a more mature, more permanent phenomenon. It’s undeniable that Howard has broken through the glass ceiling of “mere pulp writer” and into the permanent realm of cultural and literary relevance shared by fellow adventure authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dashiell Hammett, and Ian Fleming. There is no doubt in my mind this trend will continue, with Howard creeping further into arenas where he used to be persona non grata. For the first time, one is seeing REH panels at academic venues such as the yearly PCA/ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association) conference. He’s also starting to be included in critical books released by mainstream academic presses, such as the recent Conversations with Texas Writers (University of Texas Press, 2005), a book where Howard had the distinct honor of being the only dead author represented.

Perhaps most tellingly, Howard has gone international in a serious way. Forty volumes of his work, including minor miscellany such as his autobiographical novel Post Oaks and Sand Roughs, have been published in France alone. Russia has seen a hundred Conan books, both original Howard and pastiche, while countries as varied as Germany, Italy, Poland, and Japan all have REH available in translation and enough fans to make each new edition a viable publishing proposition. Once the new movies hit Hollywood’s increasingly internationalized marketplace, followed by the previously described onslaught of centennial publishing detritus, who knows how Howard’s worldwide popularity and literary reputation will be affected? Will we someday see Robert E. Howard and Conan join fellow pulpsters Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and H.P. Lovecraft in prestigious venues such as The Library of America? I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Nor I daresay would Howard’s many fans, scholars, and professional champions, all of whom have known for some time that his best work is eminently worthy of such honors.

Authors who remain read over the decades have a way of aging like fine wine. A hundred years on, Howard has yet to lose his foothold in the minds of appreciative readers, and every year he gains new supporters in academic and critical circles. New generations are primed to rediscover Conan and his brethren all over again. Now that we’ve reached the end of Howard’s first century, it’s worth asking what the next hundred years will hold. What do you think — will 2106 pass with REH finally forgotten along with the pulps that spawned him? Fifty years ago, the possibility of Howard’s reputation surviving the vast majority of his best-selling contemporaries was remote. But that was then. Nowadays, the future is looking pretty bright for lovers of Sword-&-Sorcery, and for the brilliant Texan who conjured the genre out of the darkness for us.

Happy Birthday, Two-Gun.

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Leo Grin is editor of The Cimmerian, a paying semiprofessional journal dedicated to the study of Robert E. Howard and his work. Contact him at editor@thecimmerian.com.
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original fiction by Natalia Lincoln
Copyright (c) 2006 / May not be reproduced without permission

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"THIS STORY COMES from my spine, girl!” The raspy old voice rumbling out of the stump scared Tadpole right off her seat.

Shrieking like a forgotten teakettle, Tadpole dove off the stump of the Killing Tree, skinning her knee as she landed. The hem of her calico play dress flipped up immodestly around her dark brown thighs. Scrambling, she tripped over a swollen tree root and sprawled on the grass again, the wind knocked clean out of her.

“Quit hollering and listen up!” Voice so wicked and gritty Tadpole thought its owner must have ate bugs and gravel for supper. “Now, everybody knows bones don’t talk without some shaking, and you just stomped on mine good and hard.”

Slender long shadows raced over the grass. Still gasping for air, Tadpole flopped onto her back. Stumps don’t have bones! she thought. But things under them might....

She stared up into twilight, the deep sky a shattered windowpane. Bare black branches struck into it like lightning — the limbs of a phantom tree writhing and clattering above the place the limbless stump had always squatted.

“Dogs gonna howl and babies gonna bawl, skirts gonna hike and trousers gonna fall, tails and tongues gonna wag, the whole world going to whore itself out just to see these dead bones stop jigging and settle back down!” growled the stump. Or what was under it.

Tadpole got enough breath back to scream “Mama!” Scrambling to her feet, she hauled ass downhill, away from the cackling tree whipping in a wind she heard but didn’t feel. Across the long field, or cut through a patch of marsh?

Shortcut! Tadpole burst through a wall of reeds. Dead grasses hissed against her bare shins. Panting, she gulped a cloud of skeeters as her feet squelched into marsh, spattering her dress. She spat, slapping at her face, pell-mell, bug-blind, sweaty.

Out of the marsh and onto dirt road, lazy lights blinking on as dusk fell, down the street home she ran. Drowsy lamplight in the kitchen window. Mama’s yellow-kerchiefed head bent over the stove. She mopped her dark brown face with a dishrag as Tadpole banged through the back yard and up wooden bungalow stairs, past the screen door. “Mama! Mama, there’s a haint under the Killing Tree!”

Mama put down the dishrag. Her calm hushed Tadpole’s shouting. Pots bubbled on the stove, steam wafting from greens, oven promising buttered biscuits. Tadpole flung herself around Mama’s waist, burying her face in Mama’s red-checkered apron.

Beyond the kitchen, the radio switched off. Wearily, Papa came in from the parlor, floorboards creaking under his muscled solidity. His brown head shone bald in the yellow light. He sat at the kitchen table, absently spreading his left hand over the stained wood, ring finger ending below the second knuckle. “Girl, we chopped that old son-of-a-bitch down twelve years ago in ’26, when your grandmam was still living and you wasn’t yet.” Tadpole remembered Grandmam cooking at the same stove, her wire-rimmed spectacles fogging in the steam. “Your Grandmam fought bravely in the hanging days, didn’t care what the so-called lawmen tried to do to her. Now there ain’t no Killing Tree no more, just a stump.”

“Even stumps got roots, Paul.” Mama patted Tadpole’s back and tweaked one of her braids. “Roots going way underground.” She sat down across from Papa.

“You can’t hang a man from a stump,” said Papa stubbornly.

Tadpole tried to snuggle into Mama’s lap, but Mama gently pushed her up with a groan, hugging her to her side. “You’re getting too big, child.”

A little ways off, a low voice droned and chanted.

Mama tightened arms around Tadpole. Tadpole went stiff as an old bone. “Mama, you never said there wasn’t a haint under that stump.” Footsteps crackled in the unraked front yard, crunched on pebbles towards the back, penned-up yardbirds clucking in alarm.

“Who’s there?” Papa barked. He gripped the arms of the chair, his left three-and-a-half fingers working nervously. Fixing to barge out the door, his legs tensed.

The singing reached the door. “— washed in the Blood of the Lamb.”

“Aunt Alethia!” yelled Tadpole. Mama loosened her grip and laughed.
Mama’s sister strode through the door, hair pomaded into a slick, elegant pompadour. She wore her Sunday best, a store-bought cream-colored silk dress with just a hint of shoulder pad. A brooch of tiny blue flowers was pinned to the lapel of her matching blazer. “Who’s coming to the revival with me?”

“I am!” shouted Tadpole.

“No, you ain’t,” said Mama, planting her hand on her hip, “ ’til you scrub yourself gleaming. You ain’t fit for company, much less church.”

I could wash off in the Blood of the Lamb! Holding her joke inside so it couldn’t earn her a swat, Tadpole ran to the washroom around the corner from the kitchen, as Mama swiveled hand and hip at her sister. “ ’Lethia, how come these things always start so close to suppertime?”

Tadpole drowned Aunt Alethia’s explanation in the wooden wash-basin on the floor. Holding up handfuls of her dress, she splashed bare feet into suds still warm from another bath.

Skirts gonna hike . . .

Tadpole almost dropped her hem into the water. Impatiently, she peeled the dress off and laid it over the hamper. No haints admitted at revivals, she thought sternly. She scrubbed the swamp off her legs with a washcloth, hard, the way Mama scrubbed.

She ran to her room, clutching a towel around her, and jumped into her Sunday dress. By the time she got to the kitchen, Mama had the biscuits out of the oven and a few buttered and ready for Tadpole.

“Eat ’em up now, Theodora,” said Aunt Alethia, the only one who called Tadpole by her Christian name. “There’ll be doughnuts and cider at the revival.” She sounded apologetic. Tadpole saw Mama’s mouth twist ever so slightly. Aunt Alethia must have too. “Now Elaine, it’s just one night.”

Tadpole gobbled down the biscuits, fiery and flaky, rich with butter.

Then Aunt Alethia took her by the hand and they stepped out into the fall-fragrant dusk, crickets in hoarse choir.

The air was cool. It would burn feverish in the revival tent. Tadpole remembered last year: hundreds of black straw fans labeled GOOD SHEPHERD FUNERAL PARLOR waving back and forth, thunder of piano and choir, a sea of flowered hats, air electric with excitement. It was funny to watch grown men and women running down the aisle, dancing jitterbug, falling blissfully. Aunt Alethia called it “slain in the Spirit.” Sounded scary, before Tadpole saw it.

“Does Jesus protect us from haints?” asked Tadpole.

“All except the Holy Ghost, honey,” smiled Aunt Alethia, “and that’s a living spirit, not a haint.” She waved at a neighbor going their way, then peered down at Tadpole. “Why you worried about haints?”

“There’s a haint at the Killing Tree.”

Aunt Alethia’s smile disappeared. “Ain’t much resting in peace going on up there,” she muttered. Determined, she pushed the corners of her mouth back up. “Prayer and my Jesus can beat any haint.”

In the gathering crowd, they kept on where the paved road ended, flanking trees bearded in kudzu and drifting curly dry leaves on the dirt road ahead. Tadpole heard the music before they reached the clearing, where two tents lit up the evening. Voices like trumpets filled the air. The music and its crazy joy lifted Tadpole like a feather floating on a single long breath.

“Two tents?” she asked Alethia. “They only had one last year.”

“Maybe one’s the quiet tent. The prayer tent.”

How quiet can it be? wondered Tadpole. “I wanna go see.” Her hand slipped out of Aunt Alethia’s.

“Not now, sweetheart,” said Aunt Alethia. “Let’s get settled first.”

They headed to the big tent. The music and the roar grew, yawned, swallowed them. Smell of caramel popcorn rose in the air. The canvas entryway flapped back and forth, admitting people, spitting them out.

Tadpole ducked in. Music boomed. Laughter and clapping, hats and flowers, hot sheen on a hundred rainbow hues of dark skin. Lots of strangers. All friendly, but strangers.

Tadpole glanced behind her. “Aunt Alethia?” she hollered, the words lost in the hubbub. Her aunt was nowhere in sight.

Outside. Plunge into cool air again. Had she gone to the right tent? Tadpole ran to the other, saddle shoes pinching her feet. No music from this tent. She punched the canvas flap open, jumped in, and froze.

Rows and rows of empty chairs. An aisle down the middle led to a card table. At the table sat an old woman in wire-rimmed spectacles. Tadpole recognized her immediately.

“It’s all right, child, you ain’t lost. Come here, Tadpole,” said Grandmam.

“Grandmam?” Tadpole sucked in a breath, teetering between running out of the tent or into her arms. “Are you back? You ain’t a —”

“No, Tadpole. I’m a messenger.” Grandmam smiled her old sweet smile, her teeth like little pearls. Not a smile a haint could fake. Skittish, Tadpole picked her way down the aisle, the Sunday dress fluttering around her knees.

Warm brown eyes shone expectantly out of the wire rims.

“I shouldn’t sit in your lap, Grandmam. Mama says I’m getting too big,” Tadpole explained, not sure she wanted to touch Grandmam quite yet. Off in the other tent, the choir swelled.

“Last time I seen you, true, you were much more tadpolish. Now you a young lady,” agreed Grandmam. “Still not old enough to be a Theodora, though.” Her eyes twinkled, then sobered. “But you old enough to hear what’s gotta be heard, and do what’s gotta be done. Your mama don’t work root magic no more, only kitchen magic, for you and your papa. I can show you what to do, but I can’t do it for you.”

Roots? “The haint at the Killing Tree?” squeaked Tadpole.

“Fraid so, dear.”

“What I’m supposed to do about a haint, Grandmam? I already screamed. He knows I’m scared of his cold bones dancing.”

“ ‘He’? How you know the haint’s a he?”

Tadpole stopped. “I don’t.” She put a hand on her hip. “How you know it’s a she?”

“Cause I watch over my children and everything that touches them.” All the warmth of the home hearth was in her smile. “Now listen, child. That haint can’t pass on because your Mama’s got something that belongs to it.”

“Why don’t Mama just give it back?”

“She can’t no more. She lost her second sight, and without her second sight, she can’t see what to give back. Or even why.”

“But Grandmam, I don’t have any more pairs of eyes than I got!”

Grandmam gave her a sharp, darting look. Not anger, but necessity. Papa had looked at Tadpole like that once, when she’d almost fallen through a frozen lake, and he’d grabbed her arm with saving swiftness. “Tadpole, why do you think you can see me?”

Tadpole’s belly felt upside-down, as if she was standing on a cliff’s edge. “But you’re here, right?”

“Always have been, girl, always will be. But you’re coming of age now, coming into your birthright. And I’m a show you what most folks only look past.” Grandma rose from her folding chair, no longer faltering from rheumy joints, Tadpole saw. Backbone straight as a young tree, Grandmam stepped to the rear of the tent and flung open the canvas.

Evening crept in, sweet warm breezes playing with a cooler undercurrent. From the other tent, the piano pounded joyfully, a low rhythm under the full choir, jubilating. Stars blinked sleepily. Light from the two tents fell pale on the dark field, pushed back by the oncoming night.

“What do you see, child?”

“I don’t see nothing, Grandmam. Just you and me standing outside a tent.”

“I know you see this fine fall night, and that’s something, not nothing,” Grandmam said gently. “But now, look ahead for a while, and don’t move a muscle.” Tadpole did as she was told.

Slowly the darkness began to dance, dim red shapes burning and flapping on the edges of her sight. “I see . . .”

“Hush, child. A minute longer.” Tadpole waited, hardly breathing. “Now. When I say ‘Go,’ turn your head quick, just a bit, and let your eyes follow.”

The little hairs on Tadpole’s arms rose.

“Go!”

Tadpole turned her head.

For a split second, so brief she disbelieved it, she saw a bright tall house, sunlight glinting off towers. Night and doubt swallowed it.

“Did you see them?” whispered Grandmam.

“Towers?”

“Try again.”

Tadpole blinked. She let her eyes reach far into darkness, heart pounding. Turned her head, fast.

In all the windows of the great house, on all the towers, danced a host of people. Some wore old-time clothes, some modern; some even wore flowing robes of emerald, yellow, crimson. On their brown upraised arms shone gold. On the walls behind them hung colorful tapestries and wooden masks.

They flashed and disappeared.

“I saw them,” said Tadpole firmly. Grandmam nodded. “Who are they?”

“Your forebears, child. Watching over you. I’m the youngest in that house.” Grandmam laughed. “And that house just the beginning of your sight, Tadpole. Keep your thoughts free and your memory sharp, and you’ll see many wonders. This world has so many.” She sighed; whether in regret or satisfaction, Tadpole couldn’t tell. “Mind now, you going to need that sight soon. Have those eyes and ears peeled for strangers.”

Tadpole’s flesh prickled. “But I saw plenty of strangers already tonight.” The revival! Where was Aunt Alethia? She’d almost forgot....

“This stranger,” said Grandmam, “is stranger than all strangers. Now go on back, child. This ain’t the last of me.”

“Back?” Tadpole’s eyes fluttered open. Onstage in the crowded tent, the robed preacher strutted to the slow tempo of a joyous song. Tadpole was sprawled out on the aisle, Aunt Alethia cradling her head.

“Slain in the Spirit,” crooned her aunt. “Oh, child, I knew you could feel it.”

Tadpole didn’t tell Aunt Alethia about the grand house or the forebears. Her aunt seemed supremely proud to have a niece who’d been slain in the Spirit, and Tadpole didn’t know what to make of what she’d seen, anyhow. Maybe I dreamed in the Spirit. But most dreams were nonsensical, and came when they pleased, not when she asked.

When the altar call came, Tadpole went down the aisle to the front of the tent with her beaming aunt. Basking in the ecstatic glow of the music and the blessings pouring out from onstage, she knelt with all the brothers and sisters. This is like the house of forebears, only everybody can see everybody. Why don’t the forebears appear to anyone but me?

Of course, Jesus didn’t appear to everybody, either. And He was good and powerful.

Maybe Jesus could find the haint, and Tadpole wouldn’t have to see it herself. After all, Jesus loved her. And everyone was a friend in Jesus now, not strangers anymore.

The music slowed to soulful, the choir swaying. The throng rose, some staggering to their feet, some with tears in their eyes. They held hands and sang, then turned, went back up the aisle and out into the night.

Stars were bright now, sharp-edged crystals of ice, and the fall air crisp. Cinnamon, apple cider, doughnuts and coffee scents mingled, steaming sweet from the buffet table set up outside the tent. Tadpole thought the singing might have called down a little bit of heaven onto the table.

The brothers and sisters laughed and joked now, sipping coffee or cider in paper cups. Children ran through the forest of grown-up legs and around the buffet table, peeking out from under the white tablecloth. Recognizing some kids from school, Tadpole screwed up the boldness to go ask if she could play too. Everybody was friendly now.

In the midst of the crowd, Tadpole glimpsed a stranger.

Her hatless hair was swept up as elegantly as Aunt Alethia’s, wound in tight, smooth rolls back from her temples, just over her ears, into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. The rolls looked like the rounded ears of a panther Tadpole had seen at the circus. High cheekbones made her chin seem pointy. Her eyes were golden, her skin a creamy dark chocolate, gleaming black against the clean white dress she wore.

The lady never stood alone. Every few minutes, a different man came up to her, looking like he was about to get down on his knees and beg. Then another man would tap him on the shoulder. They all ended up slinking away like dogs with their tails between their legs.

Aunt Alethia pressed a sugared doughnut into Tadpole’s hand. “Eat up, child, I got to get you back to your Mama. It’s past midnight.” She read Tadpole’s expression, stared at the spot Tadpole had been riveted to. “What do you see?”

Tadpole almost pointed, but remembered that it wasn’t polite. “I thought . . . I saw somebody,” she stammered, and crammed the doughnut into her mouth.

“Easy!” said Aunt Alethia. “That doughnut ain’t trying to run away, you know.”

“Sorry,” Tadpole said through cinnamon and sweet dough.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full! Come on now, we got to get home.” Aunt Alethia took her by the hand that wasn’t full of doughnut and hustled her away from the table, hastily calling good night to everyone.

How I’m going to find out what that haint wants? thought Tadpole desperately. Oh Jesus, Grandmam and all my forebears, tell me what to do —!

But Jesus didn’t pop up in a cloud. Grandmam didn’t speak from a burning bush. Aunt Alethia only believed in the Holy Ghost, Mama’s second sight was gone, and Tadpole suddenly felt small and alone.

Mama was waiting up for them when they clattered up the back stairs. “Did she behave?”

Tadpole had licked her fingers clean of sugar. She looked appealingly at Aunt Alethia.

“Theodora got right with Jesus,” Aunt Alethia told Mama, winking at Tadpole.

Mama gave Tadpole a wondering smile. “You did? That’s my girl.” Her eyes lingered a moment longer, then she shook her head as if dismissing a thought. “You hungry, child?”

“No,” said Tadpole. Who could be? Something was wrong. “Where’s Papa?”

Mama stirred uneasily. “Taking a walk.” She glanced meaningfully at Alethia. “He’ll be back later. Time for bed, honey.”

“But, Mama, I’m not sleepy.”

“Child, a day will come when you’d sleep through the night and half the day if you could. Til then I got to put you to bed ’fore I put my own self to bed, and I’m already fixing to drop right here. Go get in your nightgown now, hear?”

“What about the haint?” blurted Tadpole.

Aunt Alethia put her hands on her hips. “You still scared of haints? After seeing the power of the Lord? Ain’t no haint coming past this doorpost.”

Mama pulled Tadpole to her and hugged her fiercely. “She’s right. No haints in this house. Now go get ready for bed.”

But Papa ain’t in the house either. More awake than ever, Tadpole knew it was useless to argue. She’d have to scout out the haint on the sneak. She shuffled out of the kitchen and went past the washroom to her bedroom. After she changed into her nightgown, she crept back just around the corner from the kitchen, gripping the wooden doorframe outside.

Mama and Alethia, half-whispering.

“. . . know how he gets any time there’s a revival,” said Alethia. “I wish he’d put it behind him. It was ten years ago, and he’s still sulking about it, boozing, making you and the child fret.”

“He always comes back.” Mama was crying. “He ain’t leaving me, I know. Never. And it ain’t all his fault.”

“Girl, that’s what women always say. You got to put your foot down.” Alethia’s dress rustled. “I’ll go see if Theodora’s in bed.” Tadpole slipped into the washroom. She plunged her hands into the tub.

Alethia appeared in the doorway, stifling a reproach at the sight. “Good girl. I’m a tuck you in. Your Mama will be in to kiss you later.”

Tadpole toweled her hands off and trotted obediently behind Aunt Alethia. She jumped into bed. Its springs squeaked. Lying down, she closed her eyes. Light out and a kiss on her cheek.

She waited ’til the floorboards announced Aunt Alethia’s departure. I got to find that haint, but I can’t go walking. Tadpole opened her eyes and stared at the cracked ceiling. Stared until the cracks disappeared and the plaster swam into starlit waves.

Grandmam, Tadpole called silently. She sniffed. Fragrance stole through the air, not delicious like food, but pleasant and distantly familiar.

Something surely magical.

Van Van, whispered Grandmam’s voice. Incense. Your Mama burning incense for the first time in years. She be fearful. Not all her sight gone....

Tadpole breathed incense.

“I used to play piano, a long time ago.” Papa? Tadpole almost jumped out of bed at the sound of his voice, but only quivered, not daring to move. Then she saw: trees trailing kudzu; four feet crunching slow over dirt road.

The elegant lady with her swirled-chocolate hair, and Papa.

“Played for a gospel choir,” said Papa. “Meant to go on the road with them, just bolt from this town, but —” He held up the hand with the short ring finger.

“I been missing a bone myself for a long time,” purred the lady, her voice not gritty anymore, but just as wicked as it was below the stump. “Just one bone in the right place wouldn’t do me no harm, no harm at all.” She put her arm around Papa’s waist, parting her lips, her head nearing his neck....

“Papa!” screamed Tadpole. The haint’s head jerked up. The sight of them disappeared into the plaster ceiling.

Mama at her bedside. “Hush, baby, it’s all right.”

“Mama, it ain’t all right! The haint’s got Papa!” Comforting words formed on Mama’s lips: just a dream. “I saw them stepping . . . stepping out under the vines!”

The words on Mama’s lips crumbled. Mama’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
She reassembled the words carefully. “It’s just a dream. Mama’s going to make dang sure of that. Go back to sleep.” She pushed herself up from Tadpole’s bed, moving purposeful and slow. Out in the hallway, low voices: “...coming right back... can’t be wandering so late... go along?... no, stay with her, make sure she doesn’t...”

Lantern light swinging in the hallway, stealthy footsteps and darkness again. “Mama!” Tadpole called, slipping out of bed. “Don’t —”

Aunt Alethia blocked the doorway. “Theodora, get back in bed.”

“But —”

“Now.” Her aunt took a step towards her, large in the dark.

Tadpole backed up, got under the covers. Alethia sat on the chair just inside the door, arms folded.

Swallowing, Tadpole squeezed her eyes shut and thought as loud as she could: Grandmam and all my forebears, help me. Help me find what that haint needs to leave us be.

She opened her eyes, stared into the ceiling again. Nothing. She turned her head quick, as Grandmam had told her. Still nothing. Nearby, Aunt Alethia shifted on the chair. Do I have to be alone to see? Tadpole asked silently.

Grandmam’s words returned: Keep your thoughts free and your memory sharp....

Tadpole closed her eyes to picture the grand house and the forebears, letting imagination fill in the gaps in memory. Soon the picture had a life of its own, the ancestors’ music and laughter audible, real enough to walk into.

Earth warm, dry beneath her bare feet. Tadpole walked.

Light cloth rustled at her ankles. She glanced down. A robe like the forebears’ covered her now, its pattern a dancing jumble of brightly colored moons and suns and strange faces. Flutes and drums cut from living wood played ancient music. Creatures in the trees surrounding the house hooted and screeched and warbled in reply.

Grandmam and all Tadpole’s forebears gathered silently round as she neared, as though to protect her.

A figure in blazing white approached them from the woods. Her coal-black face was set in anger.

“What do you want from our family, haint?” cried Tadpole. The haint came on, brazen. One of the ancestors set the butt of his wooden staff in the earth. She stopped, daring no closer.

“What do you want?” repeated Tadpole.

“If your Mama don’t give me back what’s mine,” spat the lady, “I’ll take what’s hers!”

“What does my Mama have of yours, haint?”

The woman tore her white robe in two. She stood naked in the sunlight. Tadpole recoiled, but knew she was safe with her forebears behind her.

As the white robe fell to the ground, the woman shrank into herself. Now a black cat stood before them, golden eyes like embers, tail lashing. “She has a bone of mine.”

Grandmam gasped. “Elaine laid the Black Cat Bone trick!”

“What’s that?” whispered Tadpole.

“I want it back,” said the cat. “Give it to me or I’ll take the man she hoodoo’ed into sticking ’round.”

“You already got his fingerbone, cat,” snapped Grandmam.

“That don’t help a cat none. And it wasn’t my idea, but Elaine’s. Her trick worked as good as she planned, only not as pretty as she wanted. But killing a black cat for its magic bone ain’t pretty, either.” The cat licked its chops. “At least he lost that finger helping chop down the Killing Tree. Now. One of you gotta find me that bone ’fore I’ll go home and stay put.” It stared insolently at Tadpole.

“I’ll find you your damn bone,” said Tadpole. “Then you got to give me my Papa back and leave us alone.”

“Once that bone is mine again,” answered the cat smugly, “he ain’t bound to you no more.”

“Papa loves us,” yelled Tadpole. “He’ll be back in spite of you.”

Abruptly, cat, forest and ancestors vanished. Tadpole blinked. Bedroom walls faded in around her. Dazed, Tadpole sat upright in bed, sheets rustling. Aunt Alethia’s snore broke off, then resumed.

I bet that bone is under Mama’s bed, thought Tadpole. She had crawled under it once playing Hide and Seek.

She glued her eyes to Aunt Alethia. Head leant back against the wall, her aunt was fast asleep.

Tadpole smoothed back the covers. Put a toe on the floor. Slipped out of bed entirely. Dashed silent and scared past her snoring aunt, out the door, and around the corner to Mama’s and Papa’s bedroom.

Dropping to her hands and knees, she cocked her head to look under the bed, lifting the coverlet.

Small chest. She crawled as quietly as she could underneath the bed, grabbing the chest, prying at the lock.

The screen door squealed. Tadpole froze.

Footsteps raced to Mama’s bedroom. Fear-charged, Tadpole stopped breathing.
The coverlet lifted, and Mama’s face peered under the bed. Her hand groped for the chest. Tadpole hoped beyond hope it was too dark for Mama to see her.

Mama slid the chest out from under the bed. The coverlet fell again.

“Come out, child,” said Mama’s voice, not loud, but commanding. Shaking, Tadpole scooted out from under the bed, Mama’s lantern filling the bedroom with flickering light. Mama held her chin high, a mixture of anger, dignity, and regret transforming her face. “We got to undo this thing.”

Fumbling with a tiny bag of worn green cloth around her neck, she produced a key. She fitted it into the lock and opened the chest, pulling out another worn cloth bag. She undid a knot and spilled the contents out on the coverlet.

A ball of wax, some purple string knotted many times, scraps of paper, lint, and, finally, a thin bone not quite the size of a finger fell out. Aged scent of Van Van.

Mama went limp. “That bone wasn’t even stuck in the wax or knotted in the string no more.” She laughed abruptly. “I suppose he could have left for real a while ago.”

“I told that haint Papa loved us,” said Tadpole.

“He does, child.” Mama kissed her. “Now let’s go to the Killing Tree and bury this damn bone.”

* * *

Natalia Lincoln, a writer of dark fantasy and science fiction, is the recipient of Odyssey Fantasy Workshop’s highest Gandalf Grant. Her most recent publications appeared in the Best of Epitaph, as well as the science fiction, fantasy, & horror anthology, Circles in the Hair. The Mirror, her dark fantasy novel set in modern New York and medieval Eastern Europe, awaits publication. A second work, Ambassador Orange, is in progress. Natalia is a founding member of the science fiction, fantasy, & horror writing collective, CITH. She also plays keyboards and sings for Unto Ashes, a New York City neo-medieval band who just returned from their first German tour.

READ THE WHOLE STORY...

original fiction by Richard Parks
Copyright (c) 2006 / May not be reproduced without permission

---

THERE ARE PATTERNS in the world, false and real, for those who think long enough to discover them. One such is that certain places tend to attract certain creatures. Farms are usually infested with farmers; palaces with royalty; mountain caves with trolls; and tombs, if they be of a certain quality, with wights.

One such tomb was in the Abandoned Lands, and the one such wight who lived there was known as Uldun. That is to say, he knew himself to be Uldun, there being no one else about. The king was there, in a manner of speaking, but he had been dead many years before the wight came to live with him. A wight will seldom live with a king under any other circumstances, that being the pattern that developed between kings and wights.

There’s a pattern between human beings and tombs as well: if one human were to place treasure in a tomb, sooner or later another human would try to take it out again. Which brings us back to wights, specifically Uldun. He knew about that pattern. It was very inconvenient. He said as much to the human who came, torch in hand, down into the king’s tomb on a cold winter day.

The fair-haired human blinked in the weak light. He was young, near as Uldun could judge, and dressed quite sensibly against the cold. He nervously gripped a torch in one hand and a rather battered sword in the other. “What . . . what did you say?”

Uldun sighed. “I said that it was very inconvenient to receive visitors unannounced. Though I suppose, being a thief, you wouldn’t have considered that.”

The human looked affronted. “I’m no thief!”

Uldun shrugged, though it was doubtful the human could see him well enough there in the gloom to tell. “Well, perhaps not until you actually steal something. Which isn’t going to happen so long as I’m here. Your soul can thank me later for its salvation. Your body will have precious little reason to thank either of us.”

The human held out his sword. “I’ve come for the treasure, you foul creature. I have no quarrel with you, but if you attack me you’ll regret it!”

Uldun sighed with disgust. “You insult me and yet say we have no quarrel? Typical. As for the regrets, take a look to your left.”

The human was plainly reluctant to take his eyes off the patch of gloom near the head of the king’s bier where Uldun lurked, but he risked a quick glance in the direction the wight had directed.

“Oh, my . . .” he said, and for a moment seemed to forget all about the wight. There were stacks of bones against the left wall of the tomb: skulls, leg bones, arm bones, finger bones. Here and there a rusted sword broke up the pattern, but only just.

“I don’t suppose you really thought you’d be the first?” Uldun asked. But the interloper had thought as much: that was clear enough. They all did. Uldun continued, “That’s all the reward you can expect for your trouble: to share a tomb with a king. Is it worth it? Ask yourself that before you speak of regrets.”

The young man shivered, but he did not retreat. “What are you?”

“Good question,” Uldun said. “I suppose you could just say that I’m a tomb wight and let it go at that. But what is that? Wight simply means ‘creature,’ so that doesn’t really help much, does it? It’s not like saying ‘ogre’ or ‘troll’ or even ‘farmer,’ which are fairly specific terms. I and my kind remain nebulous. Quite an advantage, when you think about it.”

“Not knowing what you are? How is that an advantage?” the intruder asked.

Frightened as the young man obviously was, he still managed a bit of curiosity. Uldun was beginning to feel a bit intrigued, and frustrated too at not being able to put a label on the young man other than ‘thief’ or ‘interloper’ or such. Not that the problem had ever come up before. Usually he’d killed his visitors before they developed any kind of name-basis relationship.

“Why? For the obvious reason: not knowing what I am removes any limits to what I may become. Look at me.” Uldun shuffled a little closer to the light. The interloper took a step back, but that was all. Uldun blended back with the darkness. “So. What did you see?”

“A v-very fierce creature with great knotted arms and long teeth.”

Uldun laughed. “You’ve just described a ghoul.”

“You mean you’re a ghoul? You said —”

“That I was a tomb wight. I did and I am. Now try again.” Once more Uldun came just close enough to the torchlight to cast a shadow. “What now?”

“A very small creature with spindly arms and long black hair.”

Uldun nodded. “Less specific this time. Could be a pisge. Could be a phooka. Shall we try again?”

The young man shook his head. “You’re just trying to trick me!”

“Not at all. I tell you plainly — be you strong as an ox, I’ll be as strong as an ogre. Be you strong as an ogre, I’ll be as strong as a mountain giant. How can I trick you? I’ve told you exactly what to expect of me. The very least I’ll do is rip your head from your body. Anger me with more insults and I’ll rip your tongue out and stuff it up your backside beforehand. Now. Do you still want the king’s treasure?”

The young man was practically in tears. “Yes.”

Uldun knew it was time to kill the intruder, but the tears were unexpected. Being always unexpected himself, he found the trait in others fascinating. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I don’t want to die!”

“Then don’t. . . .” Uldun paused. “What is your name, anyway?”

“Karl.”

“I’m Uldun, by the way, and as I was saying — don’t die. Turn around. Leave. I’ll even forgive your insult if you promise not to say such things again.”

“I can’t.”

Uldun frowned. “Can’t promise or can’t leave? Aren’t your legs working?”

“I can’t because I need the treasure.”

“It doesn’t belong to you,” Uldun said.

“Nor to you,” Karl said. “Nor to the king, whoever he was. He’s dead, and so owns nothing.”

Uldun sighed. He knew he should just rip the youth’s head from his body rather than explain, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d even bothered to learn an intruder’s name before doing the same. Perhaps that alone was reason enough for due diligence where Karl was concerned.

“You don’t understand, young man, and I’m not sure I can explain this but, before I kill you and as a courtesy, I will try. I’ve stepped forward twice, and now it’s your turn. Come see the treasure you ‘need’ so much.”

Karl stepped forward, and for the first time the torchlight fully illuminated the contents of the tomb.

The king was covered in gold.

Uldun heard the youth gasp in surprise. As a tomb wight, Uldun had the talent for knowing, at least in part, the mind of the sort of person who would despoil a barrow. He watched closely for the gleam of greed and obsession that he knew so well to come to Karl’s eyes. To Uldun’s considerable astonishment, it never did. There was something Karl wanted, yes, that was plain enough. But it wasn’t the gold, at least not directly. Uldun’s fascination with his guest grew.

“It’s lovely,” was all Karl said.

Uldun nodded. “It should be. I spend enough time dusting it. Unless you have a great deal of experience with tombs you wouldn’t know this, but dust and debris tend to cover the contents of a burial over time. Yet this is my home; I like my surroundings to be tidy. Unfortunately it just makes the treasure easier to find and more attractive.”

Karl turned away from the gold and put his full attention back on Uldun. “Yes, but why dwell here at all? It’s a tomb in the absolute middle of nowhere! It’s no place for a living creature, if such you are.”

“That’s where you are mistaken, and that is my point. I am a wight. You say this treasure belongs to no one and is thus free for the taking. That too is an error. It is a wight’s nature to seek out tombs, just as a badger uses a burrow. Whether the badger digs the burrow himself or finds one abandoned, it will defend either as his home. Will you count me less than a badger? What creature is required to allow a predator into his home without a fight?”

“I have no choice,” Karl said.

“And why not? Look!” Uldun waved one taloned hand at the king in exasperation. “Armor of beaten gold, jeweled sword, crown of pearl and gold. Are you a king? Noble?”

Karl shook his head. “I am a farmer’s son.”

“I guessed as much. Unless you plan to turn mercenary you don’t need armor at all, and golden armor is very poor protection, believe me. It is soft and very heavy, and every hand on the field would turn against you to possess it. As for the gold itself, where would you spend it? Why would you wear it? Where could you hide it so thieves would not find it, or some local lordling not take it from you on some pretense or other? As a king’s final tribute or a barrow wight’s pride, it serves well enough; for one such as you it is useless!”

“Not quite useless,” Karl said. “It would grant me the one thing I want in this world.”

“And what would that be?”

“Elana.”

Uldun blinked. “Oh. A woman.” Finally it was out in the open. Mystery, so far as Uldun was concerned, solved. “Your girl will not marry you without gold. Of course, I should have guessed.” Uldun pitied the young man, but he was still going to rip his head off. The sooner the better, he felt, and end the poor lad’s misery. Uldun slipped forward.

“Elana would marry me with nought but the clothes on her back!” Karl said, clearly offended.

Uldun hesitated. “But you just said . . .”

“That the gold would grant me Elana, yes, but it’s not Elana who is the problem. It’s her father. He wants her for the miller who, to be fair, has a far better living. I’d even step aside for Elana’s sake, but the miller is a toad of a man who would treat her ill. I can’t let that happen, so I need the treasure to convince her father that I’m the better match.”

“Well, that’s all very sad, but you can’t have the treasure, and here we are again.”

Karl held out his sword. “Don’t take me too lightly. I plan to give a good account of myself.”

“I’d expect nothing less. Still, it’s really too bad about that awful sword. It won’t be much help.” Not that it would have been in any case; Karl didn’t even know how to hold the thing properly.

“This is Elana’s father’s own sword! He served two years in Prince Lucian’s city garrison.”

Uldun had started to move forward again, but again he was brought up short. “Young man, I hope you’ll pardon my interminable curiosity, but didn’t you just say that Elana’s father was set against your suit?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why on earth would he ‘help’ you by lending you that sword? Or did you steal it?”

Karl, once more affronted, shook his head. “I told you I’m no thief! Elana’s father said it was foolish to go into the Abandoned Lands without a weapon.”

Uldun forgot all about killing the silly youth. He realized he was now after bigger prey. “And how did he know you intended to go at all? While it’s probably common knowledge that there are tombs in the Abandoned Lands, the location of any one of them is most definitely not. You honestly think he’d put off the wedding while you muck about for years in this wasted land?”

“He swore he would. Elana’s father —”

“Told you where the tomb was in the first place. Of course. This was his idea, yes?” Uldun didn’t even need Karl’s answer; he knew what it would be.

“Well . . . yes. In his youth he sometimes hunted here. Apparently he found this place by accident.”

“And you didn’t think it strange, that he knew the exact location of a royal tomb and never came to look for himself?”

Karl frowned. “Well, there wasn’t any assurance that the tomb hadn’t already been plundered. It was a chance, he said, and that was all.”

“But there was such assurance,” Uldun said. “Me.”

“How could he have known about you?”

You’re no hunter, Karl, but that girl’s father was. How could a hunter not know what to find in a badger’s den? Uldun thought, but he said nothing more directly on the matter. “Doubtless you’re right, but I’m afraid that sword has seen better days.”

“It’ll have to do,” Karl said.

Uldun picked up a stout stick that he kept handy for shoring up stones and thrust it out at Karl. Karl, as he expected, was young and quick enough to attempt a parry. The sword clanked against the staff and then broke at the hilt. The blade went flying and clanged to a rest against the stones of the tomb wall. Karl stared at the broken hilt in sheer panic.

“As a barrow wight, I’m also a good judge of metal,” Uldun said. “I saw the flaw in that blade right away. Still, I’m sure your girl’s father wouldn’t have known.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Karl said, looking resigned. “No help for it now.” He dropped the useless hilt and settled himself into wrestler’s stance.

“I see you’re still determined,” Uldun said.

“Yes,” Karl said. “Let’s settle this.”

“Indeed. Though it occurs to me that there may be another way to do that.”

“There is? How?” Karl kept his stance, but there was a small gleam of hope in his eyes. Uldun nodded. He could work with that.

“You need treasure to win your girl’s father’s blessing, yes?” Karl nodded, and Uldun went on, “But does the treasure have to come from my home?”

Karl frowned. “Well . . . no.”

“Fine then. I happen to know that, a short distance from here, there is a small cache of gold coins hidden. Nothing like the king’s treasure here, mind you, but as much as you can carry and more than enough to convince Elana’s father of your worth. Far easier to hide and to spend, too. They are not part of the king’s treasure and thus no concern of mine. Is that satisfactory?”

Karl, still wary, stood up straight again. “Yes, of course. But why would you help me?”

“Because it’s my nature to defend my home, as I said; and I alone will judge the best way to accomplish this. However there are three things I will ask of you in return.”

“What are they?” Karl asked.

“One: that you never reveal to anyone where my home is. I get enough adventurers stumbling across my threshold as it is.”

Karl shrugged. “Easily done. I’ll never come back to this place; and I would certainly never send anyone else, knowing that you await them here.”

Uldun smiled. The youth was so completely lacking in guile it was almost frightening. “Two: Tell no one about me.”

“As for the first request: done, and gladly. What’s your third condition?”

“Elana’s father will believe that the gold came from this tomb. There’s no reason to tell him otherwise.”

“But that would be a lie of sorts, wouldn’t it?”

The wight shrugged. “Not necessarily. In a way, the treasure did come from your visit to the tomb. Isn’t that so?”

“Well . . . yes,” Karl admitted. “I don’t understand what difference it makes.”

“Perhaps none; time will prove one way or the other,” Uldun said. “Will you promise?”

“If those are your conditions then yes, I agree to all. But how will I know you’ve told me the truth about the gold?”

“When you find it, of course. If you do not, feel free to return and chastise me for it. You’ll know where to find me.”

“That I will,” Karl said, and sounded as if he meant it.

Uldun couldn’t help but wonder if Karl would really be foolish enough to return. Part of him actually wanted to know, and considered steering the lad false the first time. Yet Uldun was fairly certain that, if he misled the boy once, he might not be so trusting the second time. It was a chance he didn’t want to take. When he described where the secret cache was hidden, Uldun was very careful to make his directions plain and accurate.

Karl took his leave of the wight then; and Uldun settled down to wait, patient as only a wight with eons of time on his hands could be. Eventually, another visitor came to the tomb. Not Karl. An older man.

This one carried a much better sword, but it was sheathed. He walked confidently into the tomb, torch in one hand and bag for treasure in the other. He stopped, frozen, as Uldun stepped into the torchlight.

“He said . . .” The man started to speak, but his voice trailed away.

“No, he didn’t say, I fancy. Or you didn’t ask. Either way, the result is the same. You didn’t happen to bring a piece of the wedding cake? No? Pity.”

“What are you??”

“You know what I am. I’m what you expected Karl to find here. But he wasn’t a threat, really. He never wanted the treasure, but you did and you do. You knew it was here, but you never thought there was a chance to get it. You were right, you know.” Uldun held up the two pieces of Karl’s borrowed sword, and smiled with every long, pointed tooth in his head.

“Yours, I believe?”

* * *

Richard Parks lives in Mississippi with his wife, three cats, and more books that he’ll have time to read in this life. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, among other places. His first collection, The Ogre’s Wife, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. His second collection, Worshiping Small Gods, is being published by Prime Books.


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