Free Sword and Sorceress XXVII by Unknown

“Enjoy
it for the few minutes you have left to you.”
    Jenna swallowed hard. It was as if she
could hear Gran whispering old warnings once again. Beware the casual
assumption, Jenna. Magic works on the exactness of words, and there are traps
and opportunities within a single word. “But this ring is your path to
eternal rest. Your dead wizard-lord never said ‘all the gold’ must be returned,
just ‘the gold.’”
    Brechia’s eyes widened as she digested
that. Then her gaze turned cold again. “And now you will use this”—she nodded
at the ring—”to bargain gold for gold?”
    For the briefest of moments, it was
tempting. Jenna didn’t want to be a serving wench all her life. Then her
grandmother’s whisper— They will betray all bargains . “No, not a bargain,”
Jenna blurted out quickly. “A gift freely given to send you to eternal rest.”
    Brechia’s shuttered expression shifted
to surprise. “Truly?”
    Jenna nodded and placed the ring in
Brechia’s hand.
    A long sigh emanated from every revenant
in the room.
    It was working, Jenna realized. From a
sloppily worded curse, she had pulled a spark of hope. And once the revenants
believed, anything was possible. That was also the way of magic. Already the
armored warriors were drifting away, eager for their final rest. Brechia also
moved toward the door, but then she turned and beckoned. “A word, if you
please, Jenna.”
    Jenna wasn’t exactly pleased but couldn’t
exactly refuse. She stepped away from the table with its two corpses and
followed Brechia out the door.
    “You’re clever, I’ll give you that,” the
revenant said when they were alone in the stable yard. “You avoided every
pitfall and produced an outcome no one could imagine. And because you did it
with a gift, I am obligated to repay that gift before I go to my rest.”
    Jenna tensed. Would she get the barrow
gold after all? A gift for a gift.
    “A word of advice from the grave, so to
speak,” Brechia continued. “You have the knack for dealing with the dead and
that’s a rare talent. You seem to understand that being trapped among the
living after death is a curse. With all the unquiet dead scattered about this
land, you could take that talent on the road and bring peace to both the living
and the dead.”
    “I doubt the Church would want a village
witchblood meddling about when it has its own exorcists.”
    “You misunderstand. You could become a
Church exorcist.”
    “I hardly think—”
    Brechia gave an impatient snort. “You’ve
just saved a room full of people from the vengeful dead, Jenna. In the business
of exorcism, that’s all the credentials you need. And it doesn’t hurt to have
the backing of the Knights of the Holy Retribution, and I daresay you’ll have
the very full backing of those three you just saved. You can even take your
dim-witted brother along as an assistant to keep him out of trouble.”
    Jenna mulled it over. The idea actually
had merit. “And with the barrow at peace, there’s no reason to stay.” She gave
a snort. “It might be smart to leave before word gets out and all the gold
hunters arrive.”
    “Gold hunters?” Brechia drawled in mock
surprise. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
    Jenna frowned. “The gold. With no more
dead guardians, the barrow will become a free-for-all.”
    “Ah, but there’s hasn’t been gold up
there in centuries. Kyre stole it all.”
    “But—” All the gold hunters over all
those years... it was all a ruse for the dead to feed off the greedy? Jenna
swallowed hard, remembering how she had almost walked into that same trap a few
minutes ago.
    Brechia glanced up the hill toward her
rest, then turned with a cryptic smile. “Last word of advice—don’t ever trust
the dead.”
    Forever Is A Long Time
    by
Melissa Mead
     
    Here we have
another fairy-tale creature: a selkie. Melissa is good at taking traditional
fairy-tale elements and transforming them, and this story is no exception.
    Melissa
Mead