“Something,” Woodard Raine had said. But this guy looked human. My stomach kept on flipping over as I went back down the stairs. There was nobody else in the stairwell or the lobby of the building. I was glad of that.
As I’ve said, the best way I’d ever found to confront powerful magicians was to not be overly impressed by them. Act normally. So I kept my tone light as I went out into the square through the front door.
“Hey, that was a neat trick. With the arrowhead, I mean,” I called to him. “What exactly is that thing?”
The old geezer remained in place. The sharp flint kept on being twirled between his fingers.
“A Mohawk chieftain, a great warrior in his day, shot me through the heart with it once, just before I ripped his insides out.”
Which sent another shock through me, although I tried not to show it.
His voice came as a dry, cool whisper from his wizened lips. There was something hoarse and very old about it. And an underlying gravelly quality as well.
I stopped dead, about three yards away from him. And felt my eyebrows raise.
“Excuse me?”
“After word of that had spread,” he continued, barely noticing I’d spoken, “the Iroquois Nation never raised a weapon against me. Never once. Never again. A lesson that you newcomers, even after several centuries, have yet to learn.”
His gaze shot upwards momentarily. I didn’t dare look back, but I knew that Cass was at the window with the shotgun at her shoulder. I could almost feel her, watching us. This guy had noticed her as well. But his attention dropped back to me, next instant. He was choosing to ignore her.
I stared at him more closely, taking in his height and beanpole narrowness all over again. His skin seemed faintly grimy. I had already taken note of how extremely straight his posture was. But he looked somewhere in his mid-seventies. Should a man so old stand quite like that?
His face looked hawkish and imperious under all that silver fuzz. There seemed nothing special about it. Except …
There appeared to be something odd about his mouth. About his teeth. I couldn’t quite be certain. And his eyes, partway hidden in the shadow of his hat. They were very pale, and it was hard to tell which color. But one detail about them captured my attention. The left pupil seemed to be twice the size of the right. It winked at me, like a camera lens. Was there a faint, strange brilliance, a tiny fiery glow, within it? I just wasn’t sure.
The crows behind him, cawing loudly, flapped up from the statue suddenly. They circled, and then vanished. When I looked back at the old man, though …?
They seemed to have left some of their dark color behind, when they’d departed. He had borrowed it, perhaps. Shadow hung around him far more heavily, by now. As though he’d stepped into this place out of the darkness of the previous evening, bringing some of it along with him.
He peered back at me, waiting for me to say something more. What he’d said made no sense at all. Mohawks? I kept on trying to hide how unnerved I was feeling.
An idea occurred to me. I glanced at the flint again.
“You didn’t drop that accidentally last night, did you?” I asked.
There was a calculating look deep in his eyes, and I had noticed that as well. This was someone who did nothing just by accident.
He pressed his lips together.
“You were announcing yourself, like a calling card.”
“Very good,” he said.
And then he did something that genuinely startled me. He stopped twirling the arrowhead, held it up to his lips. Then put it in his mouth and swallowed it.
I could see the bulge as it slid down his throat. Remembered how sharp its edges had been. But he didn’t seem in the tiniest bit discomforted. His eyes were laughing at me as the shape dropped lower, disappeared.
And when his mouth had opened … had his teeth been filed down to sharp points? Or were they naturally like that?
I could hear Cass push the window open wider, obviously alarmed as well. But I raised a hand quickly, before she could do anything else about it.
My breath was hissing in my lungs. What exactly was I standing in front of? The few pedestrians around us, I could see, were giving us a wide berth, glancing at us oddly. Even they had noticed there was something wrong.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Just putting it back where it belongs, Ross.”
And how did he know my name?
“Have we met?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Devries. But you know what I am called.”
My head reeled slightly. What was he talking about, if this was the first time we’d come face-to-face?
“You’ve seen it,” he added.
“Where?”
His brow creased a touch.
“Oh, Mr. Devries! I’d assumed you were the observant type, more than capable of putting two and two together.”
But I was already observing more than he had recognized. My own gaze had, a few times, flickered down to his old dog. It was pale, with diseased-looking brown patches on its hide. Its eyes were a gently glinting green. And its big belly was hanging on the flagstones … but was that a large, deep bruise I could make out? A deep gray color, just like …?
It looked back at me balefully, its snaggled jaws mashing together, and let out a snarling noise that sounded a touch familiar. A chill ran through me, and my pulse worked a little faster. What was all this? But, not sure what was going on as yet, I simply stood my ground.
The only thing I really knew about this guy was that he owned that arrowhead. And scratched on it there’d been some lettering. So …
“Saruak?” I tried.
“Bingo!” It came almost as an abrupt laugh. “I knew you could do it!”
Then he peered at me expectantly, like I ought to welcome him to town.
“And where are you from?” I asked.
“Around these parts, originally. After that? Nowhere in particular. I travel a lot, you see”
“What do you do, exactly? And what brings you here?”
“As to the first, the Iroquois tribes used to call me ‘Matchi Manitou.’”
I knew what that meant. ’Evil spirit.’ That’s crazy, was my first thought. Such a thing could just not be. But when you considered where we lived …?
His features stiffened, as though he’d heard that.
“The Penobscots, who knew me first, had another name for me. Quite hard to translate. But roughly, ‘The Dancer in Dreams.’ As for your second question … well, it seems a pleasant place, this town. I thought I’d hang around a while.”
Which was not how people usually reacted to Raine’s Landing, and I told him that.
Laughter flickered in his eyes. “I understand that. Yes, I know.”
I studied him all over again. He remained passively still under my gaze, his face blank, like he had absolutely nothing that he wished to hide. How much did he know about this place?
“Did you kill all those people last night?” I asked him outright.
His expression didn’t even twitch.
“Is this how you treat newcomers? You’re being very rude.”
“You’re saying you didn’t?”
Saruak shrugged. “It hardly matters, either way.”
I thought of all those butchered people, their dead faces staring. And it was of no consequence to him? When I tried to speak again, it felt like a fishhook was embedded in my throat.
“Because?”
“I’ve seen so much death, down the centuries. A human life, passing? -- is like a drop of rain hitting the soil. A perfectly common occurrence. One that happens several hundred times a minute.”
Which didn’t sound like any philosophy I wanted to subscribe to. But how old, precisely, was this Saruak claiming to be?
My gaze dropped back to his ugly dog.
“My guess? It wasn’t you personally doing the killing last night, was it?”
Once more, his face split with delight.
“Spot on again, Mr. Devries! I knew that you were one of the sharper tools in this particular box! Meet Dralleg.”
And he reached down, patted the beast’s head. It blinked at me, its eyes seeming to glow a little brighter.
“Strange name for a dog.” I commented.
“Strange dog,” he grinned. “But I’m wasting my breath. You’ve already guessed that.”
It couldn’t do what it had done in that form. But another native concept came to mind -- shape-shifter. I wondered how safe I was, standing here. Any moment, it might change back into that creature in my office.
But it just sat there like a miniature blimp with half the air let out. My lip curled.
“Where did you find something like that?”
“I didn’t. I thought him up. Dralleg is a product of my mind.”
“That’s some imagination you have.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
I was getting angry with his flippant manner. “Why did you kill all those people?”
“You’ve already asked.”
Which was no answer. I just gazed at him.
“To prove a point,” he told me.
Copyright © Tony Richards 2008.
