The old drunk staggered across the cobblestones and careened into the lead horse of the party that had just turned onto the street, causing the stallion to throw its rider, a tall man in the uniform of the imperial bureaucracy. Glaven Cray hit the ground as his attendants ran up.
“Are you all right, sir?” his secretary asked.
“No bones broken, thank God.”
Two soldiers wrestled the drunk before Cray. The man’s beard might have been white, but now it was as filthy as his hair and skin. He stank. And he was covered with flies.
“What’s your name?” Cray asked.
The man just kept on mumbling while slapping at the insects crawling over his skin and clothes. Cray surveyed the crowd that had been drawn by the commotion and singled out a shopkeeper, asking, “Why is this idiot running around loose?”
“Oh, Dagget’s harmless, lord. Entertaining, too.”
“That I find difficult to believe.”
The man shrugged. “Sober him up, lord, and ask his story. I cannot say how much of it is true, but I doubt you will be bored.”
“I hope you are correct, sir,” Cray replied. Amusement of any sort was hard to find so far from the capital. He turned to the soldiers. “Bring Mr. Dagget along. Make him presentable. I will call for him later.”
The party wound through narrow lanes for another quarter of an hour before reaching the best inn available, a crooked structure with a wide veranda. Cray dismounted wearily, handing the reins to a stable boy. A hot bath, however, invigorated him, as did a decent meal. Tossing the bread trencher on which the supper had been served to the dogs, he joined his secretary and the lieutenant of the guard detachment on the porch for a sampling of the local ale. Presently, the lieutenant went to the back of the inn and returned with the old man. Dagget was sober now, and cleaner, too, having been subjected, clothing and all, to a bath. Yet flies still swarmed around him.
“I instructed Mr. Dagget to be made presentable,” Cray said.
“Aye, sir,” a soldier replied. “We took a brush to him, sir, but it didn’t make no difference. Damned vermin must like the old bastard.”
“Let us hope the feeling is mutual,” Cray remarked. Then he addressed the old man, “I am told you have an interesting tale to tell.”
“I wouldn’t describe it so, sir. In any case, those who wish to hear what I have to say usually provide for my thirst.”
The insouciance amused Cray. “Pour him a small one,” he instructed. Dagget accepted the mug and drained half of it. Then he slapped at the insects buzzing around him, killing a few but making little impact on the swarm. When he lifted his gaze, there was something bewildering in it. Cray wondered if it had been wise to ask for the old man’s story.
***
I were a lad just before the war ended, fifteen years old but ancient already, having watched the murder of my family by the horde. We was a farming clan, you see, with acres near the border, and when the ponies galloped across the river with their riders caparisoned in scarlet leather, well, we were right in their path. How I escaped is another matter, as is how I lived. Eventually, I staggered into an imperial refugee camp. This was a large chunk of hell, miles of tents hemmed in on one hand by the city walls and on the other by barren foothills, good enough for the trolls that lived there but quick death for anyone else. Refugees wasn’t allowed in the city itself, neither. I suppose the government were afraid of rioting and I didn’t blame them. Which ain’t to say I didn’t see the city, because I did, admitted by a forged pass provided by Ergot Scrive, who was a fence. Each afternoon, he’d meet me and a couple other boys by the gate and lead us through the checkpoint, pass out our assignments, and dispatch us to thieve for him. Ergot took most of what we stole and paid us only a fraction of our loot’s real value. Usually, we’d return to the camp with little more than we’d started with, but even so, this was more than other refugees had. The pittance kept us alive. Then Ergot summoned me and Farley Spry and told us he had arranged an important appointment.
“Dagget,” Ergot says to me. “Farley,” he says to Spry. “A good client requires the services of a couple of stout lads for a special project.”
“What kind of project?” I asks.
“I know little, save it involves the retrieval of hidden wealth. Needless to say, we will all be well compensated.”
Scrive’s client seemed ordinary, plump and round and with a broad face soft as pudding. Maybe he was forty, or maybe fifty, but one fact was clear, because of the robes he wore and because of the shape of his hat—it were a wizard we’d be working for. Spry was fearful, but I told him to shut his mouth since I figured wizards were men like any others except for their calling. I couldn’t have been more wrong, at least where Yarely Obrin were concerned. But we never guessed what he had in mind until it were too late.
Obrin explained our assignment when we arrived at his own residence, a gaunt structure built flush to the city walls. “I have discovered a cache of valuables hidden a thousand years ago,” he says to us. “It consists not only of gold and jewels, but also of precious artifacts. I have disabled the security devices. Unfortunately, the trove is situated in a place too narrow for me to access due to my girth. You lads, however, will be able to pass where I cannot go. Follow me?”
“Aye, sir,” I said, as did Spry.
This tied in with what Ergot Scrive had already told us, and Obrin’s size was self-evident, so neither of us suspected a thing as Obrin led us further into the house and down several flights of stairs while chatting amiably of the curiosities we were to retrieve. We scarcely noticed when the wainscoting gave way to rough stone or when the carpeting was replaced by rock and the ceiling became studded with stalactites. The house, you see, was connected to the network of caves underlying the whole geography of the area.
Then we entered a chamber with architecture stolen from nightmares, a labyrinth of spires and outcroppings. The last sconce had dimmed behind us and the sole illumination was the luminescence issuing from Obrin’s eyes.
He slid a hand into his robe and withdrew a knife. Then Obrin flicked out the blade and nicked my cheek deep enough to draw blood.
“Why’d you do that, Mr. Obrin?” I asks him. “What did I do?”
“Do, Dagget?” he replies, bringing the knife to his lips and licking my blood from the metal. “Why, you’ve done nothing. You’re a good lad, and you, too, Farley. You’re choice boys, exactly as Scrive promised. I am sure you both will be quite toothsome.”
With this happy observation, Obrin clawed his hand upward, causing the cavern to come alight, iridescence burning at the tip of each stalagmite and stalactite, as if they were candles. But what caught my breath weren’t this wizardry but what the light allowed me to see. Skeleton upon skeleton were attached by chains to the rock, three score or more, some in rags, some just pristine bone without flesh, some wearing a little skin, and some just scattered parts.
Then the wizard caught us in a spell, forcing our bodies to his will.
“Mr. Obrin, sir, just say the word and we’ll oblige,” I says.
“We’re your lads, Mr. Obrin,” Spry agrees.
“That’s most kind,” comes the reply. “However, eternal life requires a diet of human meat, and I am determined to live forever.”
I slipped my wrists into a pair of manacles and locked them with a dreadful rasp, securing myself among the skeletons as Spry went to a stone table in the center of the cavern and lay down on it. Somehow, I found my voice again. “Mr. Obrin, sir, a moment.”
“What is it now, Dagget?”
“Mr. Scrive will worry if we’re late getting back.”
“Never you mind, Dagget,” says Obrin. “Ergot and I have an understanding. He is relieved of the boys who are poor achievers, that is to say, unfortunately, you and Farley, and he is also compensated for his trouble. And I…well, you will see.”
As the wizard turned toward Spry, a crowd of flies rose from the decay and surrounded me, some alighting on my skin, some continuing a maddened flight around my head, some crawling into my ears and into my hair. I swatted them, but more arrived each time I killed one. I didn’t think so at the moment, but the flies was a true blessing, diverting my attention from what Obrin was doing. He had begun dismembering Spry, slicing a leg and an arm from his torso, then separating the limbs into their components down to individual fingers and toes and stacking the parts in neat piles.
The strange thing was Spry wouldn’t die. He continued screaming long past the point where Obrin’s ministrations should have killed him.
The wizard skewered Spry’s left thumb on a metal fork, roasted it with an incantation, and consumed it. He did the same with the remainder of the fingers. This meal satisfied Obrin’s appetite. He wrapped the rest of the severed limbs in butcher’s paper and tied the bundle with twine and tucked the package under an arm.
“Dagget, Dagget,” he says. “I must return to town on business. But I promise to come back before too long.”
“You—you ate Farley,” I stutters.
“Part of him, true. Cannibalism is a regrettable requirement of immortality. That’s just the way it is. Together, lad, you and Farley will provide me an additional five years of life, for which you have my gratitude! Thank you, boy. Yes, thank you!”
The wizard adjusted the bundle and entered the tunnel leading back to the city. Most of the light went with him. I called to Spry, but he did not answer. I don’t know how long I lay there, sometimes wrestling against the manacles, sometimes lethargic. In that vast space, the tiniest sound took on meaning. Even the buzzing of the flies seemed important, as if someone was whispering my name.
“What do you damned insects want?” I asks, entertaining myself with the conceit that the flies were capable of conversation. “Is it, perhaps, you wish me to remain quiet? Forgive me my ill manners.”
“Shut your mouth, Dagget,” comes the reply. “Shut it and listen.”
“Who’s there?” I cries out. “Show yourselves!”
“Be still, Dagget, be still.”
Slowly, I grasped it were the flies that was talking to me. Not with mouths and tongues but by the communal modulation of their buzzing wings, which worked together as they flew to gel into consonants and vowels and syllables and complete words.
“Who are you?” I asks. “What do you want?”
“Who we are is what you are. Boys, we were, boys like you. Like you until Obrin used us. Used us and turned us into flies. Deathless flies. Flies with the souls of boys who cannot die. Boys reborn as flies. Flies forever after, like you, Dagget. Like you.”
“Not like me,” I says. “I’m no fly.”
“Not yet,” they hum. “Not yet, but soon, unless you heed our learning, promise to do our bidding, and overcome mad Obrin, then release our souls from bondage. Release us and let us die.”
“I vow it, good flies. Dagget’s not broken his word yet.”
“So be it,” they says. And then they settled upon one link of the manacles, like some living beard. I didn’t know it at the time, but flies feed by vomiting. They retch acid upon their food, dissolving it into liquid, which they suck up. This was what the flies were doing to the metal except they wasn’t eating it. Only softening the iron, so I was able to break free. I staggered to Spry.
He was still breathing despite lacking an arm and a leg, preserved by Obrin’s magic. But his eyes were rolled up and he did not respond to my voice.
Obrin had left behind the knife with which he had dissected Spry. I closed my fist on its hilt. “What should I do, good flies?” I asks. “Kill the bastard when he returns?”
“Impossible,” they says.
“What then?”
The flies buzzed close and told me nothing material could kill Obrin. He was truly heartless, not simply in the ordinary manner of being vicious, but because he was literally without a heart in his breast. Long ago, the wizard had hidden the organ within an egg guarded by trolls. Only by finding that egg could I gain power over him.
This wasn’t pleasant news. Trolls ain’t pretty. Their shaggy heads and their dark-adapted eyes are unmistakable, as are their loose ears and the thin sounds they make. But I ain’t implying trolls is animals. Some say they once were men since they use swords and tools and herd flocks of eyeless birds and rats. They live in clans led by a female, who is queen and mother to her subjects. It was the she-troll herself who had the wizard’s heart in her care.
“She hungers always,” whispers the flies. “Hungers for that best of delicacies, hungers for the flesh of man. This present you must bring her, gift her with what is most welcome. Gift her with a haunch of man meat, and so distract her from her task.”
“A haunch of man meat?” I asks, looking at Spry, hoping I had misunderstood the flies.
“You cannot help him, but he can save you. Save you from the same fate. So take it, Dagget. Take the knife and do what you must.”
I don’t know how long I stared at the blade before placing the tip on Spry’s knee. It slipped easily into the skin and through muscle. Spry, apparently unconscious, thankfully remained quiet throughout the operation. The incision did not bleed.
“Sorry,” I mutters as I separated his lower leg from the rest of him. “I’ll make it right for you, Spry, see if I won’t.”
Then I hoisted the limb over my shoulder and set out into the bowels of the earth. Soon I was in darkness, and I fumbled ahead, guided only by the whispering flies, who would tell me when to turn left or right or go straight, when to jump over chasms, when to climb up or down or worm through cramped passageways.
Then the flies says, “Your clothes, Dagget, take them off, for trolls are near and will know you by them.”
That weren’t their only requirement. The flies guided me to a pile of troll dung and charged me to smear myself with the foul stuff, so the trolls would mistake me for one of their own. The flies was right, too, since soon I came upon a troll and lived to tell of it. I didn’t see the thing, but I smelled it, and it smelled me, and as we passed each other, I felt the touch of its nose on my cheek, greeting me as you and I might wave when we encounter one another on the street.
Then I were able to see again. I’d descended into the trolls’ domain, which they lit sufficiently to suit them, never more than one lamp every score of yards.
I entered a gallery with a pit in its center that teemed with blind rats with hairless tails. Fearing I’d come to harvest them as the trolls did, they seethed to a far corner and did not stop squealing until I left the room. The next chamber, however, held worse things than rats. Trolls ain’t choosy about what they eat. The beetles carpeting the floor were delicacies to them. There weren’t no way forward except through the mess of pallid insects. Their bodies crunched beneath my naked feet as I blundered onward. After that was a room draped with dusty silk on which lived spiders. Thousands of spiders, small spiders and huge spiders, bald spiders and spiders with bristly hair. I dodged the webbing as best I could and eventually scrambled past the final drapery. At this point, I noticed there was fewer flies than before. Many had remained behind with the spiders.
“No matter,” answers the flies. “Death is nothing to us because we cannot die, forever reborn because of Obrin. Reborn again as flies.”
Soon the swarm regained its strength, and the flies again led me forward. I heard the she-troll long before I saw her. Her wailing was a fevered shriek. She were hungry, repeated the flies, she were always hungry. I must have gone crazy then, because I only nodded wisely, shifted poor Spry’s leg to my other shoulder, and stepped briskly into the den of the queen troll.
She were a mottled creature, flabby and pendulous, her face a horrid sack of features. It was obvious she thought me to be one of her own tribe, come with a savory present because long ropes of drool began coiling from her mouth.
I held Spry’s limb before me and waved it from side to side. The queen troll’s nostrils twitched and her head swayed back and forth as she focused on the meat.
I kept the leg just out of reach but close enough to tantalize. Her pink eyes tracked it while her ponderous hindquarters shuffled with impatience. According to the flies, she was sitting on Obrin’s abnormal egg. I had to lure her off it.
I edged forward until the leg was touching her snout. The queen troll strained to bite it, but I pulled back before she could. This proved too much for her to bear. She lurched after the leg, but I retreated, causing her to come after me. Then I swung the limb in a slow arc and tossed it a dozen yards away. The queen troll ran after it. Soon she had her teeth in Spry’s leg and was gnawing contentedly.
There was a leathery egg on the rock where she had been sitting.
I picked up the thing and backed away. The orb pulsated in my hand with the beat of the heart within.
“We have it,” says the flies. “We have it now, Dagget.”
“That we do,” I says, thinking the worst were over, but it wasn’t. Because now the she-troll understood something were amiss. She howled, not from hunger, but from apprehension. Soon, the den filled with man-trolls, some unarmed but others bearing swords and clubs. It were the very fact there were so many of them that preserved me from the initial onslaught, since they got in one another’s way and I were able to wrest myself a blade and turn it upon the throng. But I knew my luck wouldn’t last.
“What now, friends?” I cries to the flies. “What’s we to do?”
“The egg, Dagget,” they says. “Squeeze it and call Obrin. Call him and force him to our will.”
I pinched the wizened egg until blood oozed out. There was an immediate reaction. The rock itself shook to a roar of pain. Then came the sound of footsteps so immense that they, too, caused the ground to scream. Yet Obrin entered the chamber like any ordinary person, glancing around with a vague bit of a smile. “Why, Dagget,” he says. “It’s an unexpected pleasure to chance upon you here.”
“Choke it,” I says. “Let’s get things straight between us, Mr. Obrin. I have something belonging to you, which is to say, your heart. Let’s chew on that, and continue from there.”
Holding the egg before me to ward off sorcery, I pinched the thing again. The wizard clutched his left arm and clawed at his chest. It felt good to hurt Obrin and to this day I believe what I done weren’t no more than he deserved, less in fact. But I eased off when blood seeped from his ears.
“Well, then, Mr. Obrin, sir, I reckon you’re willing to attend me without no back talk. First off, clear these damned trolls out of here. I can’t hardly hear myself think.”
Obrin signaled limply to the trolls, who shambled hurriedly away. When the last of them had skulked off, I says, “Now to the situation. I didn’t care for what you done to my friend, Spry. Make him right, the way he were, all in one piece. Get me, Mr. Obrin? Don’t tell me it ain’t possible, because I got the highest appreciation of your ability.”
Obrin dutifully made a string of passes that caused a geyser of sparks to coalesce into the outline of a human body, the embers becoming solid, leaving behind Spry himself. At another agitation of Obrin’s fingers, new limbs sprouted in place of the missing ones and within minutes Spry were whole again, with not even scars to certify what he’d endured. Then his eyes fluttered open.
“What’s this? Where are we? And what’s Mr. Obrin doing there?”
“Never mind,” I says. “Take it from me, Spry, you wouldn’t care to know. Now set down out of the way. Mr. Obrin and I have business.”
“Yes,” whispers the flies. “Now’s the time, Dagget. Time to keep your promise, time to free us from this evil and let us die.”
But I was drunk with the knowledge that I could submit Obrin to my will with the littlest pressure of my fingers. I says to him, “Get Scrive here, Mr. Obrin.”
The wizard summoned more incandescence, which became Ergot Scrive. The fence quickly grasped what were happening. He strode forward and says, “Dagget, you’ve been up to mischief. Give me that thing quick, if you know what’s good.”
“No, Mr. Scrive,” I answers. “You listen to me now, like Mr. Obrin. You done me and Spry wrong, and I aim to make it right.”
“Wrong?” he asks. “Wrong? I treated you lads like you were my own sons. I fed and clothed you and put money in your pocket. Where would you be without me?”
To this day I’ve yet to meet a man as convincing as Scrive. That I survived weren’t due to any strength of character but because the flies recalled me to myself, their buzzing drawing my attention to the fact that there weren’t just one insect orbiting me, or two, or three, or a dozen, but scores. My rage burst forth and I screams, “Do it to him, Mr. Obrin. Hurt the bastard.”
For the first time, Scrive became conscious of peril and he wet his lips nervously while turning to the wizard and saying, “Now, Yarely, you’re not intending to listen to the boy?”
“Unfortunately, Ergot, he has the best of me.”
The wizard caused energy to envelop Ergot Scrive and slice into him like knives. Scrive howled at the first cut, but there were no escaping Obrin’s spell. I enjoyed watching him being carved up. The flies did, too.
“Now’s the moment,” they whispers. “Seize it now and free us. Seize it and slay us, release us into death.”
“Yes, yes, good flies. That I will, just as I said. But first I must take care of one last thing.” I turned to the wizard. “Mr. Obrin, I figure it’s only right that me and Spry get repaid for what you and Scrive done to us. I want money, right here, right now.”
“Money, Dagget?” he says. “Why, nothing could be simpler.”
Obrin unleashed an incantation that filled the space with treasure beyond dreams of avarice. There were ingots of gold and gold pieces, necklaces of gold and gold rings, bars of silver and silver ornaments, precious jewels, figurines of ivory and jade, pearls the size of plums. Spry gave a great cry and began sifting through the coins and gems. I, too, were overwhelmed, just as Obrin had hoped. He weren’t slow in taking advantage of my bewilderment, edging forward and grabbing my wrist in such a way that I could neither open my fingers nor close them.
He put his face next to mine and hisses, “You think Farley and Ergot had the worst of it, did you, lad? Well, Dagget, you have another think coming.”
I flailed wretchedly, unable to free myself but at least keeping the egg out of reach. Soon we were wrestling, first him on top and then me, until we were gulping like fish as we scrabbled for footing upon the treasure. Then Obrin got a grasp on my neck and wouldn’t let go. But the flies swarmed upon his face, biting until he had to release me in order to swat them away. I knew my life were measured in seconds or minutes.
Obrin was pressing me flat on my back, my hands pinned above my head. Finally, I managed to force open my fingers a little. I did my best to aim the egg toward my mouth, but it wobbled to within an inch of my lips and came to a stop.
The wizard understood immediately what I was trying to do.
He butted my head with his own in an attempt to stop me, but I ignored the pain and stuck out my tongue, trying to reach the egg.
It rolled to one side. Obrin battered my face again. Finally, the egg rolled sufficiently close. And then I—I didn’t think about it. You’ve got to understand. You’ve got to believe. I weren’t thinking clearly.
I sank my teeth through the leathery shell into the organ the egg contained. Bitter fluid spurted into my mouth, but that didn’t stop me from tearing at the heart and eating the tainted stuff while Obrin had seizures with each bite I took.
The heart were so putrid that my gorge rose, but I choked it down, savoring each swallow as it robbed the wizard of vitality. And then life ebbed from him, like it does from every mortal, leaving behind an inert husk. I were so dazed that it took a while for me to understand he were dead. And I were so pained by a multitude of scrapes that it were some time before I took pleasure in having survived.
But then the whispering of the flies reminded me of what I’d done, of what I’d left undone, of what I’d neglected to do.
***
Night had fallen while the old man spoke. Cray stared at his mug, discovering it empty, and glanced toward his secretary and the guard lieutenant. Both men wore expressions as unfamiliar to him as the thoughts within his own mind. It required effort to break the silence.
“Pour him another,” Cray instructed.
His words recalled the others to themselves. The lieutenant asked, “Mr. Dagget, what of the gold?”
“The gold, young man? Spry and me, we took the gold, every last grain. What else was we to do, leave it for the trolls? Made us rich, although I used up my share years ago. Spry, however, he put his part to good exercise. Lives in the capital in a fine mansion. Changed his name, too. You’d recognize it if I was to tell what it were.”
“And the flies—what about the flies?” Cray’s secretary asked.
“The flies?” asked the old man. “Why, sir, it is as you see. Here they are, all of them. Willem and Jon and Felix and Garth and Julian and Darwin and the others…” He slapped at the insects as he named them, crushing the small bodies and wiping the remains on his shirt. “Yes,” Dagget went on, “my friends are with me. I kill them every day, but it ain’t of no use, seeing as how they can’t die, not for long. Why, here’s Felix back already, returned from the grave, so to speak.”
“There was nothing you could do for them?” Cray asked.
“Nothing. I spent my youth and Obrin’s gold searching for a way to end the damned enchantment. I hunted down sorcerers and witches and grand wizards and hedge wizards and magicians of every stripe. But not one could touch the spell, it were so potent. Obrin were a filthy paragon and there ain’t a man alive who is his equal. No, sir, because of what I done, because of my greed, because of my gluttony for vengeance, because of how I was corrupted by the power I held, they’re flies still, and flies they’ll remain for a hundred years or ten thousand years, until the magic leaches away and allows them the respite of real death.”
The old man glared madly into the dark, his eyes stained with tears. The motion agitated the insects. Cray thought he heard words in the buzzing but wasn’t sure.
After a moment, he said, “The flies must hate you very much to have haunted you for so long.”
“Hate?” Dagget said. “No, sir. That ain’t it. Them flies is my friends. They forgave me long ago. But I’ll learn you something remarkable, sir. You might even think it amusing, if you’re a man of irony.” He stared from one to another of his audience. “The flies forgave me long ago,” Dagget repeated. “But, you see, sir, the thing is…I can’t forgive myself.”
