Holger wanted to grab her, when she curved and floated beside him. He needed his entire will to say, with such overdone casualness he was sure she would pounce on it, “Well then, keep this blade as a souvenir of myself.”
“I shall find many ways to thank you, bright lord,” she promised. She was about to continue unlacing him, with fingers that kept playfully straying, when he took the dagger back and tested the edge with his thumb.
“Pretty dull at the moment,“ he said. “Let me ashore and I’ll whet it for you.”
“Oh, no!” Her smile turned predatory. She wasn’t used to humans, wherefore his clumsy acting could fool her, but neither was she stupid. “Let’s talk of more likely things.”
“You can hold my feet, or tether me, or whatever,” he said. “I do have to get into the air to sharpen this knife. Such metal requires the heat of a fire, you see.”
She shook her head. With a wry grin, he relaxed. It had been a long shot anyway, and for the moment, with this supple creature beside him, he wasn’t sorry to have failed. “As you wish,” he said, dropped the knife and laid his hands on her flanks.
Perhaps his lack of insistence deceived her. Or perhaps, thought Holger, not without an inward exasperated curse, his destiny had too much momentum to end here. For she said, “I have a grindstone among my sacrifices. Will that not serve? I understand such a device will sharpen a blade.”
He fought down a shiver. “Tomorrow.”
She darted from his embrace. “Now, now,” she said. Her eyes glistened. He had noticed that lunatic capriciousness in the Faerie folk too. “Come, you should see my treasures.” She tugged his hand.
Reluctantly, he followed. The pike glided behind. His throat was almost too tight for speech, but he managed conversation: “Did you say the barbarians make you offerings?”
“Aye.” Her laughter jeered. “Each spring they troop hither to do worship and cast into the lake that which they think will please me. Some does.” She parted a living arras. “I bring the gifts here to my treasury. The foolish ones are always good for a jest, if naught else.”
Holger was first aware of the bones. Rusel must have whiled away many hours arranging the parts of skeletons in artistic patterns. The skulls which studded that lattice had jewels in their eyesockets. Elsewhere were stacked cups, plates, ornaments, looted from civilized lands by the heathen or not unskillfully made by their own smiths. In one corner was a disordered heap of miscellaneous objects that must also have been considered valuable by the tribesmen (if they were not simply sloughing their white elephants off on the demon)—water-ruined books from some monastery, a crystal globe, a dragon’s tooth, a broken statuette, a child’s sodden rag doll at which Holger found his eyes stinging a little, and junk less identifiable after long immersion. The nixie burrowed into the pile with both arms.
“So they give you humans,” said Holger, very softly.
“A youth and a maiden each year. I’ve really no use for them. I’m not a troll or a cannibal woman to enjoy such meat, but they seem to think so. And the sacrifices do wear the most beautiful costumes.” Rusel threw him a glance over her shoulder, as innocent as the look of a cat. She had no soul.
With a surge of strength under the white skin she hauled the grindstone forth. The wooden framework appeared rotten and the bronze fittings were badly corroded; but the wheel did still respond to the crank. “Aren’t my baubles pretty?” she asked, waving her hand around the room. “Choose what you wish. Anything, my lord, just so you include myself.”
In spite of the bones, Holger must force his words: “Let’s take care of the dagger first. Can you turn the wheel?”
“As fast as you like. Try me.” Her look suggested he was welcome to try anything. But she planted her feet on the sand and whirled the crank till he felt a vortex in the water. More loud than through air, the drone entered his ears, and the whine as he laid the knife to the wheel.