On Toll's Witch Hill

By Morgan Smith

Nine short stories of fantasy and things that go bump in the night.

Smith's work has appeared in anthologies alongside works by Brandon Sanderson and Faith Hunter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan Smith
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021

Morgan Smith

Morgan Smith has been a goatherd, an artist, a landscaper, a weaver, a bookstore owner, a travel writer and an archaeologist, and she will drop everything to go anywhere, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Writing is something she has been doing all her life, though, one way or another, and now she thinks she might actually have something to say.

Book preview

1

Long Live the King

To be fair, there had been portents.

For three nights before the full moon, the hyenas had stood upon the heights and howled, and the common people in their outlying villages had huddled in their thatched houses and murmured prayers.

When the Horned Moon rose once more, blood-red over the trees, the star-crossed prayer-singers in the market squares began to raise the prices for their talismanic scrolls.

And by the time the winds turned sharply from the east, there was no wise woman left in the valley – they had all gone, it was said, to visit their daughters in the south, or to their sisters in the north. Wherever they had gone, they could not be found again.

But in the stone-carved palace at the centre of the city, the king paid these signs no heed.

Was he not the anointed of the gods? Had he not conquered the land? Did he not command all that was seen and unseen? Did not all the nobles assemble before him, night after night, in the great hall?

And yet…

They were already there, every one of the nobles of his realm, even the queen, waiting for him.

They always were – they came early and stayed late. A mark of respect: they waited on his pleasure, always.

Not like the old days, no.

Not like when his father had ruled, and he had had to wait upon him.

Not like when his brother, Namid, had gained his rank, either. He had to be ready to serve. Had to bow to the man who had grown up beside him, and who was, he had thought, just like him: squirming under the thumb of the one who had sired them, subject to his iron discipline and unyielding ways.

But Namid had changed, when he inherited the throne.

It hadn’t been the two of them against monstrous cruelty and restraint any longer. It hadn’t been both of them mired in that eternal round of duties and lessons, that regime of constant training for their own good.

It wasn’t the two of them, united in their hatred, anymore.

Almost from the moment the diadem had been placed on the new ruler’s brow, it had only been Kofi, the younger, unimportant son, the afterthought, left to live a life of restriction and routine. His brother had been free, at last, but he didn’t want to share that freedom, not with Kofi, not with anyone.

That was how his life had been and he had accepted it.

They all had. The common people groaned under the weight of the tribute demanded, but they continued to pay. The Negus of the City and the Maek-wans had simply followed, as they always did, the familiar paths to win the new king’s favour.

They did not like it, but they accepted it. It was how it was, how it would always be: it was the way of the world.

Until he found the Jewel.

He had been out hunting with a party of nobles and had gone a little astray, was even beginning to panic, thinking himself lost, when he saw it – a glint in among the scrubby bushes around the waterhole he’d stumbled upon. He’d assumed it might be a bit of cheap finery someone had lost, but it was nothing so mundane.

He had thought, at first, that it might make a good gift – something to get him a little approval, a little more trust, and perhaps, even some freedom. His brother was fond of unusual things, and the Jewel was certainly that.

A deep, smokey blue, with streaks of iridescent greens, reds, and yellows, it had sparkled and glowed with an inner fire – something only a king should possess.

Only a king… only a king… but what makes a king?

At night, in his tent, the Jewel began to whisper to him.

What makes a king?

Why should he not have been king?

Is not a king only a man, like any other?

Why should he not be that man?

I could give you more, the Jewel whispered. I could give you far, far more. Power. Wealth. That woman he is to marry – she could be yours. Why should she not? They will welcome you. They long for you. I can give you this, all of this. Only keep me safe, do as I tell you and keep me close, and I will give you everything.

In the end, though the thought had horrified him at first, it had been ridiculously easy.

A man does what he must. A king does what he likes.

It was in the spring that the dancer Yashilla had sent the letter to him.

She was newly arrived in the city, she wrote, and she longed to dance for him, to honor his greatness.

He had been angry, because he only found the letter by chance, lying on his throne-chair, instead of being brought directly to him, and it was in his mind to make an example of whoever had thought that this was a fit and proper treatment of a king’s correspondence. In the end, he did not, because he was so intrigued by the promise of this new entertainment that he forgot his wrath as he read.

Her name was unfamiliar, it was true, but then, it had been many years since he had wandered the streets or listened to traveler’s tales.

He roused the Jewel, asking for knowledge.

I don’t recall, the Jewel said, sleepily. It had been long and long since it had whispered to him.

But somehow, the king was positive he had once heard the name Yashilla and that she was, indeed, a famous and talented artist. A rarity.

Obviously, she should dance for him.

He gave his orders. A feast like no other, he said, and even the very air he breathed obeyed.

It had never been the common people who had worried him.

Freed from the heavy taxes of the old kings, they gave, and gave freely. Often, as he walked, alone in thought out in the courtyard, he saw the food they offered up, piled against the outer gate. Woven mats stacked with soft breads, baskets of marula fruit, even whole animals, sometimes, wrapped in palm leaves.

So much food – the court could not use it all, and mounds of it rotted in the sunlight.

Their gratitude touched him. The villages lived in harmony in their villages now, and no longer had to exhaust their energies in petty disputes needing the king’s attention, but still they gave freely.

He had seen them, though he pretended blindness, since they were too awed by his magnificence, the Jewel said, to acknowledge his presence.

They love you, whispered the Jewel. They bask in the knowledge that you protect them.

The palace servants made themselves scarce, too, invisible, as servants should be. Sometimes he heard them, shuffling through the halls and corridors, like leaves drifting on the wind.

The nobles…well, they had been angry, and frightened, at first. But the Jewel lay openly on his breast, gleaming hypnotically, telling him what words to say to ease their fears, and soon enough, they’d come to heel.

Now they waited. A faint susurration wafted through the hall; their murmurs of pleasure at his arrival.

And the queen? The queen was as she always was. Her jet-black braids were bound with gold and hung with gems, and her silk robes pooled around her feet in elegant disarray.

Her eyes glittered in the torchlight, watching him. She was always watching him.

They all watched him.

The dancer made him wait.

He paced the length of the dais, impatient and a little angry.

This was not how a common dancer, no matter how famous, should treat a king.

He had selected a very fine gemstone as her payment, but now he was reconsidering. He had a small gold ring. If she were very much later, or if she was not as talented as her letter promised, that trinket would be sufficient, he thought.

He sat, eventually, drumming his fingers on the arm-rest of his throne. The moon was almost at its zenith, and still, the dancer did not appear. He fingered the Jewel on his breast, and bethought himself of a silver arm-ring he did not much care for.

And then, suddenly, she was there, framed in the curve of the arched doorway, looking for all the world like a statue of carved Tamboti wood, polished to a gleaming brown, and dressed in a shift dyed the deepest indigo.

She stepped out from the shadows into the feast hall, and he heard the copper bells at her ankles chime, as she swept a low bow. Behind her came the musicians: her drummer, her flute-player, and a very young girl with a pair of netted rattles.

They looked terrified, as well they should. They had never been in the presence of such majesty, he surmised, and he was of a mind to be gracious, until he looked into the dancer’s face.

She was not afraid.

She was smiling, ever so slightly, as if something about his court amused her.

Lord king, she said.

His breath caught, then, for she was beautiful. Her body moved like water under her shift, and her face – her face!

Heart-shaped, with full, red lips, and the deepest, most unfathomable black eyes he had ever seen.

The musicians bowed. He barely noticed.

And then the dance began.

Yashilla stepped lightly, through the time-honoured measures that told of the respect people must have for their king, of glory and fame – all of the things which a king is heir to. It might have been just the formal custom for any dancer, but clearly she danced with a special purpose – he could feel it.

And why should she not? The Jewel had always told him how revered he was, how loved. In the early days, the Jewel had whispered these reassurances almost without ceasing, although, as he grew confident in his power, he had no longer needed that voice, and the Jewel had spoken less and less.

Now it scarcely spoke at all, save when he called to it. But he had called less and less over the years; he could not remember the last time he had needed or wanted that aid, save for that one query about the dancer. He needed no Jewel to help him now. There was peace and plenty everywhere; there must be, or else someone would have told him.

The drummer was good, he thought, as the rhythm began to subtly change. The flute-player, too – he wove his melodies between the beats so perfectly.

Yashilla’s feet were flashing in intricate patterns, as she moved in a circle around the chamber. She danced first for one noble, then the next, and for their wives beside them.

She was honoring each of them, and he was pleased by this, for was not their honor his own?

She threaded her way to the head of the long room.

She was dancing now for him alone. He heard the queen move restlessly beside him, the soft, sighing sound of cloth settling to the ground, but he could not look away from the beauty that swayed and turned before him.

The sound of the rattles shook suddenly through the music, like wind whistling around an umbrella-thorn tree, and