Carnival of Deepest Desire, Part 5
Bargains and Arrows
This serial is a sequel to North of Midnight. Carnival of Deepest Desire can be read as a standalone, but if you’d like to read North of Midnight first, click the button below.
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“Alexandra will be waiting for you here as soon as you bring me the vampire who can survive the sun,” said the Dulluhan, using his severed head to smile stiffly at Fake Dracula.
The vampire impostor responded with a deep bow. “I shall return presently.”
I’d lost track of time, but I was pretty sure it must still be daylight outside. After all, we’d been lured into this place shortly after sunrise. that meant the Dulluhan had to know “Dracula” was a fake vampire. The real thing couldn’t go out searching for Antonio in daylight. But I supposed the Dark Man of the Seelie Court couldn’t care less who the impostor was, as long as the impostor could pay his price.
I figured I was doomed. The others would never find me in this place where magical senses worked only for a short distance. I didn’t know how big the carnival/market was, but it seemed vast enough to make a thorough search impractical.
The red caps nearest the door parted to allow Fake Dracula to leave. But those guarding me remained uncomfortably close, ready to stab me with their pikes if I made any move to escape.
“What shall we do to pass the time?” asked the Dulluhan with feigned friendliness. “I suspect it will be a while before he gets back.”
I remained silent, guessing I was too valuable to him to have the red caps kill me for not making small talk. It was a trivial act of defiance, but it made me feel marginally better.
“I may have to leave you if another client shows up,” said the Dulluhan. “But I don’t imagine that will happen much before sunset. At that point, everyone will be able to see the carnival as if it were actually set up in the park. Even in a relatively small town, It’s bound to attract someone with unfulfilled desires.”
He was obviously trying to get a rise out of me, but I refused to give him that satisfaction. However, I couldn’t help remembering Carlos’s horror at the idea of such a carnival appearing in a place where kids played. That got me thinking about Khalid, who had become separated from me and the others before I got captured by the Dulluhan. Was he still all right? If this was where the Dulluhan did all his transactions, at least Khalid wasn’t here yet, which suggested he hadn’t been captured.
If only I were a seer! Some of Carlos’s friends had thought I might become one, but so far, all I had were magical senses, which were limited in a variety of ways. They were limited by distance and by potential obstructions, like the suffocating darkness outside.
From what I’d been told, the gifts of a seer were much less linear, not necessarily requiring proximity or personal connection to work. Back when I’d been a vampire hunter, blissfully unaware of the rest of the supernatural world, I’d felt a kind of tingle that signaled the presence of vampires and other dangers. That might have been a precursor to some kind of prophetic ability—or it might just have been an isolated intuition. In either case, I hadn’t felt it much once my magical senses awakened.
The Dulluhan kept prattling on, unconcerned at my lack of response. Tuning out his conversation and the threatening pikes of the red caps, I tried to learn what little I could about my surroundings.
The place was crawling with faerie magic of an intensely dark variety—unsurprising, given that it was probably constructed by beings like the Dulluhan. I couldn’t sense any vampires or Formorians nearby, so at least that was something. But the flock of gray birds I had seen when I entered the building continued to circle just above the roof. Their energy remained strange to me. I had no idea what animated them, except that it was nothing like the life force present in all natural creatures.
Much beyond the walls of this place, I could tell nothing, just as before. Even if I escaped through some miracle, where would I go? I had no way to navigate the surrounding void.
“You know, you’re wasting your time with Fake Dracula,” I said, figuring that if the Dulluhan was messing with my mind, it wouldn’t hurt to mess with his a little.
The Dulluhan, who had been far into a monologue about how much suffering any of the locals who came to the carnival might have to endure, stopped and stared at me through the severed head’s eyes.
“What makes you think that?” he asked with fake casualness.
“Because Antonio can wipe the floor with him—and his vampires, if any of them are left.”
“So, you know this Antonio?” he asked. “You’ve seen what he can do?”
“I could tell you much,” I said slowly. “For the right price.”
The Dulluhan laughed, a sound more like a death rattle than a normal laugh. “I already have you. What else could you offer me?”
“I can find Antonio for you,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady.
I had no idea whether I could find Antonio or not. When we first entered Carpinteria, he was nowhere in the several mile radius in which I could sense various types of magic. In any case, I would never lead the Dulluhan to him. But if I played my cards right, I might just be able to persuade the Dulluhan to let me leave this place in search of Antonio. Carlos, Shar, or Khalid might spot me on the way out. Failing that, more of Carlos’s friends were due to arrive once they dealt with the emergency they’d been handling. If I were back in the real Carpinteria, they could spot me easily.
Depending on a whole bunch of long shots wasn’t much of a plan—but it was all I had.
“I already have a deal with Fake Dracula, as you call him,” said the Dulluhan. “But if I were free to bargain with you, how could you find Antonio?”
“As I said, I will tell you what I know—for the right price.”
“What is it you want—aside from your freedom, of course? My deal with Dracula precludes that.”
“Freedom for my friends—Khalid, Carlos, and Shar. Let them leave unharmed, and you will have your answer.”
“Had you asked for something a little more modest, you might have gotten it. But I will not release three individuals of such obvious value for the mere answer to a question. Deliver Antonio to me, and I will free them.”
“Agreed.”
“You must swear an oath,” said the Dulluhan. “Bind yourself to fulfill your obligation to me, and I will let you try to recover him.”
Some aspects of the supernatural world were new to me, but I had learned that oaths sworn by and to magical beings were binding. If I broke the deal under such circumstances, I could lose my life—or worse. My only hope was to carefully word an oath so that it left me a loophole. I had no experience with that kind of thing, but I couldn’t think of anything else to try.
“I thought you already had an agreement with Fake Dracula and couldn’t make a bargain with me,” I said, stalling while I thought of a good loophole that wouldn’t be obvious to the Dulluhan.
“Antonio in exchange for you,” he replied. “But as long as I give you to him, he will be satisfied. In a way, I’ll be doing him a favor—paying his price without requiring him to fulfill his part of the bargain.”
I hadn’t thought of that angle. It might be harder to outwit the Dulluhan than I hoped.
“I swear that I will do my best to find Antonio and that I will return to you if I fail,” I said. That seemed a safe enough pledge. Most likely, I couldn’t find Antonio, anyway. But I might be able to get in touch with Carlos’s friends and get some reinforcements.
“That is not sufficient,” said the Dulluhan. “While you are out, you must also swear that you will not act against my interests in any way.”
An oath like that would prevent me from doing anything useful. But how could I back out now?
“That’s too vague. How am I to know what all your interests are? It would be easy to break the agreement inadvertently.”
The Dulluhan sighed. “Very well. Swear that you will not act against me in the matter of obtaining Antonio.”
That wording wouldn’t necessarily prevent me from reaching out to Carlos’s friends—but it would prevent me from keeping Antonio away from here if I found him. My original wording only committed me to finding him.
I was beginning to wish I’d never proposed a bargain in the first place.
“I will swear to that if you in turn swear not to harm my friends and to release all of them the moment Antonio sets foot in your domain.”
Now it was the Dulluhan’s turn to hesitate. It took me only a second to realize why.
“You were going to try to do something to them before I got back. I’ll bet you already have a buyer!”
The severed head frowned. “I will consider your proposal,” he said, ignoring me accusation. Then he turned and walked rapidly out of the room, leaving me with the red caps, who snarled when I tried to follow him.
The good news was that I hadn’t gotten myself into an impossible deal. The bad news was that I hadn’t gotten myself out of this place, either. I was in just as poor a position as when I started.
An arrow shot into the back of one of the red caps, hitting him with four successive explosions of different power—sunlight, hearth fire, love, and God’s blessing. The red cap screamed, dropped his pike, and fell to his knees. Blood gushed from his arrow wound.
Only Khalid’s arrows packed that specific combination of punches. It was one such arrowhead that powered my protective amulet. But how could he have found me?
The other red caps started shrieking and pointing their pikes at the doorway—where no one appeared to be standing. But another arrow flew, exploded against another red cap, and brought him down. Blood sprayed from his chest. Forgetting about me for the moment, the red caps charged toward the door. As they did, I looked quickly around.
In his haste to leave, the Dulluhan had forgotten my sword and amulet in the far corner of the room. I made a dash for them, and the red caps, pouring out the door in pursuit of their attacker, didn’t even notice.
I put the amulet around my neck, picked up the sword, and spun around to see what the red caps were doing. They had vanished, but I could hear their shrieks as they ran down the hall.
Khalid appeared right next to me so suddenly that I jumped.
“Sorry,” he said. “We better move fast. They’ll figure out there’s nobody in the hall pretty fast.”
“How—” I started.
“I dodged into the room before they got to the doorway.”
“No, I mean how did you find—”
“This place is pretty tricky, but my arrows retain a magic bond with the arrowheads in the amulets—like calls to like. Now, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“I don’t think there’s a back door, but we might be able to beat the red caps if we get out into that narrow hallway. They can only come at us one at a time,” I said.
The air filled with eerie bird calls—so many of them that they drowned out the red cap shrieks. I imagined they must have been from the gray birds I’d seen earlier, but why did they sound so loud now?
Khalid, who was pretty fearless for a fourteen-year-old, turned pale and trembled slightly. “The Sluaghs!” he whispered. “The narrow hallway won’t be much protection now. They’re small enough for several of them to attack at once. They…they feed on the pain of tortured souls. It is said that Death himself is afraid of them—”
He had more to say, but his voice was drowned out by the flapping of thousands of approaching wings.
“The Carnival of Deepest Desire” is related to the Spell Weaver series. (The action takes place between the sixth and seventh books, just after the end of “North of Midnight.”)
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