Never Trust a Dead Man Read Online Free PDF

unstuck from itself, but he didn't want to appear greedy and selfish—not to a witch who could balance a ball of light over her head and who had an inclination for hitting. "Thank you," he said, offering it back still half foil.
    "Go ahead and finish," she said. "It's plain water. I haven't bespelled it"
    It hadn't occurred to him to worry that a witch might give him water tainted by witchcraft. Until she said it. He finished the water anyway, for whatever harm there was in it was already done. "Thank you," he said again, much subdued.
    "You're welcome."
    He glanced around the corpse-lined cave and both wondered about and flinched from the thought of what she might want from the dead.
    Elswyth took pity and answered the question without making him ask it. "For one of my spells, I need a lock of hair from a man newly dead. I heard that someone had died in Penryth on the other side of the wood, so I came to the burial caves." She glared at him through narrowed eyes. "I hope you're not the one they were talking about. You won't do at all.
Did
somebody think you were dead?"
    "No," Selwyn assured her. "Farold is the dead man." He waved in the general direction. Farold had most definitely begun to smell, a sickly sweet odor from off to Selwyn's right. "I'm here as punishment for killing him—
not
," he added in the same breath, "that I
did
kill him. But I was accused of it." He didn't know what to make of the look Elswyth was giving him. Did she believe him? Or, considering that she was a witch, would she prefer to hear that he really was a murderer?
    She said, "So your townsfolk accused you of murder and condemned you to die here alongside your victim?"
    Not knowing where—if anywhere—lay hope of rescue, Selwyn nodded.
    Elswyth said, "Sweat from the brow of a condemned man is an ingredient in several spells. May I?...in payment for the water I gave you? I very much believe in payment for favors granted." She was already rummaging through her pack.
    Selwyn looked at her in horror. She didn't care: Murderer or innocent victim of justice gone awry, it made no difference to her. He was sweating despite the cold as she took a piece of unbleached wool from her pack and blotted his forehead with it.
    "Good," Elswyth said. She folded the cloth and placed it in a small wooden box. "Fine. This will do. Now shall we discuss what you'll pay me for leading you out of here? I assume you
do
want to leave—unless you are so overcome by feelings of guilt that you believe you deserve to die this way."
    "I told you," Selwyn said, "I didn't do it."
    She waited, without reaction, for his answer.
    "Of course I want to get out," Selwyn said. "I'll do anything you want if you'll help me."
    She smacked him on the side of the head. "That," he heard her say once the ringing in his ears began to fade, "is for being too foolish to bargain. So be it. You owe me a year of your service: housework, chopping firewood, fetching ingredients for my spells, whatever I ask. For a year."
    "No," Selwyn said, suddenly realizing what he might have gotten himself into.
    "Too late. You already agreed beforehand. You're lucky I'm in a good mood and didn't say you owe me your entire life." She shook her head. "Foolish boy," she muttered, getting to her feet. "How was an old woman like me to keep you from following me out anyway, for free?" Just the thought of how foolish he'd been drove her to hit him again.
    Selwyn saw it coming, but—seeing how foolish he'd been—he didn't even try to duck.

FIVE
    The witch Elswyth took a knife from her pack and once again held the edge of her cloak up over her nose. She sniffed. Once was enough to find Farold. All Selwyn's flailing about in the dark—walking into walls and risking the ire of the spirits of the dead that he stumbled over or into—had taken him fewer than a dozen steps from where the burial party had originally left him.
    "Wait," Selwyn whispered in horror, looking at Farold's dangling arm. "He moved."
    Elswyth