Read Online The Curse of the Giant Hogweed by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online

Peter hurried him off. “Come on, Dan. You can think on the way.”
    “On the way to where?” Tim wanted to know.
    “I wish I knew. As far as I can tell, we’re still inside the cave.”
    “Not for long,” said Torchyld.
    “How do you know?”
    “It standeth to reason. Ye hag had firewood and herbs and a fresh-killed rabbit. I be no great and wisdom-stuffed druid like ye, but to me these things grow not in caves.”
    “But she was a witch, or some damned thing,” Peter argued. “Maybe she conjured them up.”
    “Conjured, hell,” Tim snorted. “The kid’s right. Come on, Pete, quit dithering. You’re the one who said we’d better leave.”
    “I know I did. I’m only wondering if we’d better take some torches to light our way. Our ambulatory flashlight doesn’t seem to be around.”
    “I be here.” This was the prissy voice they recalled from their weary trek through the cave. “Only I fear I glow no more. I be disenchanted, ye see.”
    The voice’s owner stepped forth from the cave. They found themselves faced by a man not more than four and a half feet tall. He was dressed only in a rude loincloth or kilt of something that looked like worn-out burlap, and his feet were bare. What hair he had was badly in need of a trim; his beard was so straggly it hardly seemed worth the bother of growing. He looked to be well on toward middle age, but that meant nothing, since middle age here could be anything. He was skinny and downtrodden-appearing. This was no doubt to be expected in a gone-out glow.
    “She disembodied me so she wouldn’t have to feed me,” he was explaining. “I must say it feeleth good to be back in mine own shape, such as it be.”
    “You’ll never be hung for your beauty, that’s for sure,” said Tim, rather pleased to have somebody in the group less physically prepossessing than himself. “Mind telling us who you are and how you got here?”
    “What care we how he got here?” Torchyld interrupted with that suave courtesy they’d learned to expect from a king’s great-nephew. “Can he guide us out?”
    “Oh yes, no problem,” said the ex-glow. “Just follow me, please. If ye don’t mind joining hands—mine be a bit grubby, I fear—and making a chain, it will be easier for me to lead you without a light. I ken every puddle and pothole in this weary, weary cave.”
    “But why should we trust you?” Shandy demanded. “Look where you landed us last time.”
    “Ye be all-wise, great druid, and I be ye lowliest wretch that e’er groveled along a cave floor. I perceive now that I erred by not leaving ye and thy co-mates to perish in ye dark or be crushed by ye hogweed. I most humbly crave pardon.”
    “M’yes, neatly put. What were you before you got disembodied? A lawyer?”
    “I was clerk to my liege, Lord Mochyn.”
    “The chap who became the—er—gentleman friend of that whatever-she-was?”
    “She was a cruel enchantress, great druid. If she had a name, I wot it not. She spared my life and that of my liege lord only on condition that we do her every bidding. We were the last of a band of ten travelers who had been caught like yourselves by ye giant hogweed and herded into her clutches. By ye time she tracked us down, she had already eaten two and salted down ye others for her winter’s store. Hence she was not enhungered, otherwise we had been devoured like them.”
    “How did you happen to be the last ones caught?”
    “Lord Mochyn had fled into ye remote fastnesses of the cave, thinking to escape her fell design. I followed him as was my duty, so we were caught together. She made him her leman and me her guide, to lure ye unwary to her lair and save her ye bother of having to chase them through ye darksome caverns.”
    “I see. It never occurred to you to lead them elsewhere?”
    “Nay, sire, I wot my responsibility to my employer.”
    “I see. You’re not—er—working for anybody else now?”
    “Not I, great druid. My liege be gone, ye enchantress