I tried to speak. My throat was tight as stone.

“I shall awaken it, Captain. Only for tonight. It will trouble you no more, on the sunrise. But tonight, you will walk, and you will seek out these maps, and the Creeper’s remains, and you will hasten to bring them all here to me. That is, I’m afraid, an order. Do you understand me?”

“I do.” It was my voice, but the words were not mine.

The huldra stirred, waking, restless, eager to walk again after sleeping for so long.

I tried to fight it. I did. But I might as well have fought a thunderstorm or wrestled a cloud.

The Corpsemaster smiled, and spoke a long strange word, and the huldra cried out in triumph. I rose, up and up, towering above roof and limb and sky, though never losing sight of the Corpsemaster’s tired old eyes.

I turned, clouds in my face, and I stepped over the crooked house and began my night walk to Pot Lockney.

Chapter Nineteen

Rannit lay wide beneath me. Here and there, lights shone. Here and there, fires burned. Soldiers scurried like beetles. Halfdead crept, thinking themselves hidden in the dark. From my vantage, they shone like scuttling fireflies.

I took a step, moved a mile. My footfalls shook the earth, but caused no damage to the structures upon which I trod. The huldra whispered to me, telling me how I might crush them, and I heard words, but did not speak them.

I walked. Halfdead flickered beneath me. Their lights lit up the Hill, giving it the appearance of a busy bed of ants.

I saw other lights too. Brief, faint glimmers of radiance that fled from my path. The huldra named them as they vanished-Ricoth, the Storm, Nellie Witch-hands. Rivals of Hisvin, fleeing my path, though they could neither see me nor sense my form.

Rannit was filled with sorcerers that night.

I chuckled at their scampering. A sound like thunder filled the sky. I raised my hand, and lightning met my fingertips, and on a whim I cast it down, wheeling and roaring, right into the muddy face of the Brown.

I laughed. The huldra urged me on. My stride took me across whole neighborhoods with each step. Cambrit passed beneath me, tiny and dirty and dark.

I crossed the Brown. Bridge clowns gripped the rails in fear, their wary painted faces turned upturned at the empty sky. The Hill was down there, and Avalante, but I had no time to tarry.

I left the city, skirted the west wall, turned north. The huldra whispered, telling me to avoid stepping in the Brown, to keep to the forests on either side.

I gazed toward Price, felt my sight extend. I could see all the way there, if I wished, but the huldra warned me against it, as other eyes were even now peering south, toward Rannit.

I reduced my stature, pulled in the fog of power that rose off me like steam. Maps, I remembered. Maps and maps and a dead man’s head.

The words ran singsong through my mind. They seemed to amuse the ghost of the huldra, and before I knew it, I was whistling a melody I’d never heard and singing the song in my head.

Maps and maps and a dead man’s head…

I sang it all the way to Pot Lockney.

Rain stung the back of my neck and washed like ice water down my face.

Maps and maps and a dead man’s head…

Plegg House. It stood before me, warped timbers and moss-covered roof lit only by flashes of lightning.

And there, near the house, was a long straight pole, and atop it was the Creeper’s head.

Maps and maps and a dead man’s head.

I grew until I could pluck the head from the pole, as if I were out picking grim fruit from the garden of nightmares. The rain had washed all the blood away, but the Creeper’s eyes and mouth were open. Closer inspection revealed that Mama, always one for drama, had propped them open with twigs.

I held the Creeper’s dead face close to mine. The huldra showed me the last vestiges of the dead man’s magic, which still shone weakly in the backs of his eyes.

Maps and maps and a dead man’s head.

I laughed. Thunder rolled.

Mama came stomping onto her porch, cleaver in her right hand, dried owl in her left.

“Boy, what’s been done to you?”

“Good evening, Mama. I’m here for the maps. And this.” I hefted the head. “The Corpsemaster sends his regards.”

“I knowed you’d never be rid of that damned thing. I’m sorry, boy. Well and truly sorry.”

“Yours was not the fault,” I said, the words strange on my lips. “But no matter. It is done.”

“Aye. It is done.” Mama lowered her cleaver. “Maps are in here. I’ll fetch them. You’re a mite too tall to go indoors.”

I nodded. Mama shuffled away, leaving me whistling in the rain.

I tossed the Creeper’s head up into the air, caught it as it fell, tossed it again, much higher this time.

Mama trundled back onto her porch, her arms full of rolled-up papers, each tied neatly with bits of yarn.

“You ought not to be doin’ that,” she said. “It ain’t right.”

I caught the head with a laugh. “As you wish.” Mama put the rolled maps down just inside the wall of water dripping off her roof. “Wait and I’ll get you a sack.”

“We’re in no hurry.” My voice came from the dead man’s head after the huldra showed me a word that would move his lips. Mama snorted and whirled.

The rain intensified. I could have stopped it. I could have sent it back into the sky, drop by drop, trickle by trickle.

Mama emerged again, a burlap sack in her hand. She trundled to the edge of her porch and held it open, out in the rain.

I dropped the Creeper’s head inside.

“The sooner you get back to Rannit the better,” Mama said. “You remember how long it took to get shed of that thing, the first time?”

“I do. And I won’t be so eager to be rid of it again, I think.”

I whispered a word, and the rain stopped.

Mama shouted something, and it started again.

I laughed. Mama put her back to me and slammed her door in my face.

I caught up the Corpsemaster’s precious maps, and took a pair of steps, and reflected on how lovely was the Moon, shining high above the tattered racing clouds.

I did not go immediately back to Rannit.

I knew the Corpsemaster would not be pleased. I knew, but the prospect of the Corpsemaster’s displeasure no longer troubled me. So I made for the Brown instead, and when the waters thereof washed about my knees, I turned my face north and walked, sending great sprays of muddy water far into the wilderness on either side.

The frantic huldra warned me against searching for the Regency. But I held fast to my fancy, and it had no choice but to follow. When it railed threats that it would remove itself from me I laughed, knowing them empty.

So we walked. I took on a new shape, one that rendered me invisible to any sorcerous persons watching.

Magic I might have tricked, but not nature. Birds flew as I passed. Deer bolted. Bears turned from their fishing and fled. A single bold owl refused to flee, following instead, and I chuckled as I recognized Mama Hog’s hand upon it.

I cast my vision north as I walked. The huldra reluctantly showed me how. Far, far up the Brown, I could see dim shapes in the darkness-square, graceless bulks that wallowed and bobbed in the water. Three shining figures moved among them, casting a harsh radiance that made it hard for me to see.

I withdrew my sight, lest I be caught out. Even though the rough-hewn barges I saw numbered in the hundreds, I was not daunted. Such fragile things. So easily broken.

At last, I caught sight of the Regency and its barges, churning their way steadily against the current, a wake of dark smoke trailing behind. Her decks were dark and her windows covered, but her smokestacks coughed sparks and I could see her easily in the lightning that flashed about her.