Twenty-Eight: A Korred Lullaby

  “Excellent work!” Ko-Rethal told his people. “And you too, dame Caiside.” He actually bowed to her. He turned to me and Freydis, then:

  “And I heard you too, also. You should have joined the line with Caiside, though. Ah well, next time. Now, we just wait until nightfall.”

  “How high does this tower reach?” I asked.

  “Four levels above this, I believe. If none have been knocked down since we were last here.”

  “You don’t think there will be any other creatures in here?”

  “No. The boggarts would not have shared the space with anyone. Either they would have chased out anyone else here, or vice versa.

  “Except for the haunts,” he added.

  At this, a shudder ran through nearly all the other korreds. It was like – I feel I shouldn’t say this, but it was something like a breeze blowing over a low field of young oats, rippling through them all as we stood above.

  “Come now,” Ko-Rethal admonished them. “I may as well speak plainly. We know there are very likely apparitions here, including our favorite one. That’s why we came, after all. We’ll be fine. One interesting night, tonight, with our human friends here speaking to our ghost, and sending him along, and then we paddle back tomorrow. Let’s start a fire and go outside and perhaps spear a mountjack or two.”

  The korred crowd broke up. Freydis and I decided we would explore the upper levels of the tower.

  “I will stay down here,” Caiside said. “I’ve had enough climbing and dancing for the day.”

  Freydis and I approached Ko-Rethal.

  “Your people did a fine job singing those boggarts off,” I told him.

  “As I said they would.”

  “We want to climb up higher in the tower.”

  “Go right ahead. I think you’ll find it empty.”

  “For this, though, we’d like to have those knives. Just in case.”

  “You would, would you,” he said. He reached up and tugged at his right eyebrow. “Well, yes, we’ll return them. You’ve come this far. And we still have the map, although I suppose you may not care about that.”

  “Well we’ll take it, when you hand it over,” I said. “We’re not throwing it away if we can help it.”

  “Good. After we speak with our blue friend. This may be our last night together, and tomorrow you’ll be outfitted again.”

  He sent one of the young korreds down to the boats to fetch our knives. Once we had them, we started for the stairway leading further up, which was to the right of the grand fireplace.

  Some of the korreds were bringing in wood; the boggarts had not laid in a store of it. Others had gone out the doorway which the boggarts had used, to hunt deer as Ko-Rethal had suggested. Still others napped around the edges of the great hall, in ones and twos.

  Freydis and I climbed. The floors above the great hall were as empty and apparently long-unused as the one right over the underground stream, where we had seen the scraps of old barrels and crates. The first one was just one room, with no interior walls, and it was much darker than the great hall because its windows – which were narrow to begin with, as one would expect with a fortress tower – had been boarded over. The floor was bare wood. There was no sign that the boggarts had ventured up here.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Genuine exploration of an abandoned tower,” Freydis said. “This is the adventure I’ve been looking for.”

  “You’re – not serious, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I’d prefer to get to that hoard tomorrow and be done with all this. Still, I suppose we have an obligation to explore an ancient keep.”

  “Haunted one, no less,” I said.

  “Let’s try the next level.”

  The floor above was much like the one we had just left. Again there were a few windows, but they were covered. Freydis approached one of them and pulled on the boards. She tried two more before finding one loose enough to open. It swung sideways, like a shutter. Light poured in, and I joined her.

  “Sun, and trees,” I said. We were now above the tops of some of the smaller ones. “Green trees, not gray ones.”

  “But Ko-Rethal still calls this the Drearwold?” she said.

  “Perhaps this is the more well-to-do part of it. And down there on the forest floor it’s probably still fairly dark. Certainly well-shaded.”

  And then an odd thing happened: The shutter she had opened started to swing back to the window. It was like a poorly-balanced door; but it had remained open for a long moment while we looked out, and also it was surprising that it swung as smoothly as it did.

  “Something wants this window blocked, I suppose?” she said.

  I pulled it open again; and again it stayed that way for some moments, but then closed by itself. And at the same time, I felt a presence; and discomfort, or anger.

  “I feel we’re not alone,” I said.

  “I do too, now. Let’s try one more floor up.”

  “You want to?”

  “Why not. We may never come here again.”

  Freydis led the way up to the next level. Here, it was even darker, with the windows boarded up more tightly, and there was an undeniable unwelcoming presence. The air was cool. We noticed a further odd effect with the windows: even though the boards over them left cracks, and light could be seen outside, it barely seemed to penetrate into the room. It was as if the stagnant air of the room turned it away; denied it entry.

  “I can barely see the stairway up to the next level,” Freydis said. “I think that’s it over there.”

  “Do you really want to go up there?”

  “I suppose not. I doubt there’s anything different up there. Anything different we would want to see, certainly.”

  We descended. As we left this dark room – I let Freydis go down the stairs first – I felt as if arms were reaching out to withhold me. I stayed right on Freydis’s heels.

  *

  As we reached the main hall again, all seemed bright and alive. For the time being at least.

  “Did I miss anything?” Caiside asked us. She was sitting before the fireplace, where the korreds had started a blaze. We told her of the disturbing climb up.

  “What an atmosphere, up there,” I said.

  “Like nothing I’ve felt before,” Freydis added.

  “It’s odd,” I told them. “You would think that the malevolent places in a tower would be down below, in its dungeons. Its bowels. And that the uppermost level would be the brightest, with their views of the countryside and so on. But with this one – the underground stream seems like home, now, and everything above this hall is just menacing.”

  “And this hall itself may be very different tonight,” Caiside said.

  *

  We prepared for another night sleeping among the korreds. They were spreading out their sleeping rolls, all more or less near the fire.

  “Should we bother trying to sleep?” I said. “It will be hard to nod off while we're waiting for it.”

  “The korreds look to be ready to try,” Caiside said. “I can too.”

  We settled down. After some time I heard Ko-Rethal speak to the ones who had been tending the fire.

  “Just let it burn down, no more logs. Yes, I know. I know. But that’s why we’re here. This is not a night to frighten away haunts with flames.”

  Ko-Rethal lay down, himself, among his people, and then after a moment chanted a song. His penetrating voice carried around the hall:

  Spelepike, Stillwold hike;

  korreds close eyes and we

  count all the cavern eels

  we’ve seen about.

  There are such schools of them –

  channels and pools of them –

  somniferosity

  soon knocks us out.

  “That will do for a lullaby,” he said.

  .

  .

  Spelepike and Stillwold are actual words).

  Harald the Norway king

  sailed to England to

  further his reach.

  Once ranging far off as

  Mesopotamia,

  this time he didn't get

  much past the beach.

  Notes on this one: