Elfling (U.S. Edition)

by Corinna Turner

  ~+~

  “I’m just going for a stroll this morning, stretch my legs,” my father told me. “You can ride Hellion, but the head groom must ride with you.”

  “I’ll take Hellion out later,” I replied, “and walk with you now.”

  So we strolled gently around the gardens, a groundsman sauntering some distance behind with his yew bow over his shoulder, thus removing the need for the Duke to carry the heavy crossbow.

  “He’ll probably know by now that he’s failed, and he’ll know that we’ll know it was him,” my father told me gravely. “He’ll be truly desperate and he may try again. We must both be very careful.”

  “For how long?” I inquired meaningfully.

  “Until my arm is better,” replied the Duke, significantly.

  We walked along the top of a steep, long rise. An oak tree stood at each end, and the Duke stopped under one of them and crouched down. Staring rather absent-mindedly at the house, his fingers picked up one acorn after another, quickly discarding most of them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, after watching him for a moment.

  He started and looked quickly at the acorns. “I’m just finding one that will grow strong.” He picked up one from the small pile he’d been keeping. “See how healthy this one looks?”

  I pursed my lips as he took his acorn and continued along the rise. Certainly it looked healthy, but so did all the others and he hadn’t been looking. I crouched down and picked up an acorn, turning it in my fingers. This one seemed all right—I put it aside. This one looked a bit rotten. That one looked very good; a perfect specimen...but as soon as my fingers touched it I somehow knew that it was rotten, rotten inside, in the core, and it would never grow. My fingers recoiled from it. Did the back of my neck prick slightly? So. That must be it.

  I rose and walked on after my father, my heart pounding with sudden excitement. It was not just me then, in the whole of anywhere, who felt these things. My father must feel them too. But I didn’t say anything. Even if my own experiences hadn’t impressed it so firmly on me that such things should never ever be mentioned, my father’s evasion made it clear that he also did not want to speak of it.

  My father had paused to bury his acorn carefully in a little rockery that stood in the middle of the rise. It looked quite new, so I guessed that we stood on Gallant’s Rise. But we walked on in an easy silence, without any mention of Warrior.

  I pondered as I walked, though. My father spoke with certainty of the existence of elfin and dragons, and I rather thought he shared my strange senses. Perhaps I could tell him about Siridean. Might he even be able to explain what had happened, how Siridean had died?

  But no sooner had the impulse formed, than it withered again, as long-held caution reasserted itself. What had happened with Siridean was so very, very…strange…and ultimately very, very incriminating. The two logical conclusions were surely that I’d imagined it all—that I was insane—or that I’d killed him myself—and simply sought to cover it up with an outlandish tale.

  Surely my father would not think either—I’d told him all the worst things I’d done, after all…

  And yet.

  And yet quite apart from my life-long conditioning to never, ever, ever mention anything at all uncanny, the thought of planting even a seed of doubt, a seed of distrust, in my father’s mind was too horrible.

  I wasn’t risking my new-found relationship with my father for something that was past and gone. I’d lived with the not-knowing all these years. I could go right on not-knowing.

  ~+~

  CHAPTER 20

  SACRIFICE

  Christmas Day dawned clear, crisp and fine. We rode out together before breakfast, as usual, and the horses’ hooves crunched in the frost. We didn’t talk much as we rode, for my attention was wholly absorbed by Hellion. Only the other day he’d seen a swishing branch from the corner of his eye and clearly thought it a whip, for it had been a mile and a half before I’d been able to pull him up. He was fast though; it had been quite a ride. I didn’t want to let him get going like that today; it was too slippery underfoot.

  His last owner must have been some young idiot who thought brandishing a whip and having a horse that sweated and plunged looked good. I quelled my anger for this unknown individual, who named his horse Hellion. All the same, by and large, I was able to keep him under control, and when we got back to the stables, my father commented, “You’ve not had him long, and he is improving.”

  I was still glowing when we went to church—confession before Mass, for Christmas had fallen on a Sunday—and afterwards I was a trifle relieved, when I finished my post-Communion prayers, to find my father sitting on the bench waiting for me. More often than not, he spent at least half of Sunday lost in prayer, and he gave me a slightly wry smile for my surprise.

  We had a fine goose for Christmas dinner, and I actually caught the Butler licking his lips as he served the meal. The Duke ran a traditional household, and the servants would feast on what was left, unlike some households, which were starting to cook separate—and vastly inferior—meals for the servants. I did not approve of that.

  When we were both full of goose and Christmas pudding, and Raven was actually giving tiny snores from my shoulder, we sat in the living room and exchanged a few little presents. Before long there was a knock on the door and the servants, their own Christmas dinner finished, filed in to receive their gifts. I gave my maid Susie a pair of silk handkerchiefs, for she was an excellent maid, despite my having had to ask her to do my hair rather more practically, since it kept falling out mid-gallop.

  Later in the day, I drove down to the urchin home to oversee the distribution of several crates full of oranges, one per urchin, including day attenders, which caused great joy. My father accompanied me, bringing a sack which turned out to contain raisins! Profligate indeed, there being minor gentry who could not afford such delicacies.

  I’d been supervising the home closely but from a distance, and I was very pleased that already the first, least immoral boys and girls had been placed as stableboys, apprentices, scullery maids, and sewing girls, and managed not to disgrace themselves, and more importantly, the home.

  In the evening, we sat by the fire and took it in turns to read favorite passages from books, eating a few raisins ourselves. That was, until, after being enrapt in a particularly gripping extract, we looked back up to find that Raven had emptied the dish.

  ~+~

  My father, I thought a few days later, after catching sight of some papers on his desk, was a true subscriber to the idea of not letting the left hand know what the right hand was doing. He being the right hand, and I the left.

  I’d known he was involved in charity, but not the extent. Already I had seen papers listing the impressive sums of money with which he endowed various charitable institutes each year. And I knew that he was the sort of benefactor who was as much a curse as a blessing to any less moral institutions, for he visited one each week to check where the money was going. But now I saw the details of a very reasonable acreage on the far east of the city, beyond the Tower, which he was, and clearly had been for some time, engaged in covering with almshouses. I looked at the designs and approved.

  “Have you got your nose in my papers again,” inquired my father from the armchair beside the fire in a rather long-suffering tone, without raising his head from his book.

  I flushed slightly and moved away, but remarked a trifle slyly, “Nice little houses.”

  He made a dismissive noise and continued to ignore me. I smiled to myself. He was so delightfully modest about his charitable works. I couldn’t help poking him a bit.

  I took my set of keys from my belt pouch and shot him a look.

  The clank drew a glance from him. “What are you carrying those around with you for?”

  “I was afraid there might be one missing.”

  “One missing?” he echoed. “Why ever would you think that?”

  “Well, I was giving Raven
things to count; it’s a sort of game,” I explained, “and I suppose it’s good for her learning. And I had her counting the keys. She likes doing it because she gets to turn them on the ring, one at a time, and I saw the rusty marks on the ring, where the keys had been lying for a long time before you gave them to me, so I had her count them.

  “I wasn’t really paying attention, but she began to make a fuss, so I counted them myself, and I saw what was bothering her. There’s the mark of one key on the ring that’s not on the ring, if you see what I mean. It looks far too recent to be the one for that spooky old storeroom that was lost years ago. So I’m afraid I’ve lost one, but I can’t think where.”

  A rather long silence greeted this account, then after a moment my father blinked and raised his head. “Sorry,” he apologized for his inattention, before saying succinctly, “Safe key, child, it’s the safe key.”

  “Oooh,” I said, understanding. “Of course. Good. What my mother would have said if I’d lost a house key...!”

  The Duke laughed at my relief, and I laughed with him. But Raven glowered so sullenly at Alban that I almost began to fear she might, rather belatedly, be getting jealous.

  I glanced again at my father. The fire and the candelabra beside him threw him into sharp relief and he looked thinner than he had been. No doubt his wound accounted for it, that and the winter’s cold. My dream niggled still, but that was ridiculous and I refused to dwell on it.

  Perhaps I’ll have a word with the cook, I thought, smiling to myself.

  ~+~

  I stroked Raven’s little crest as Susie brushed my hair. The three little pointy ridges were growing sharper. I might have to start being careful not to cut myself.

  My mind drifted. It was a Sunday, and we had been to church earlier, as normal, and chatted with our local acquaintances afterwards. I could not help remembering the staring man. He had been there again, looking at me. I didn’t think my father had seen him; he had been in a rather technical conversation with a learned gentleman that had been quite beyond my comprehension, hence my wandering attention. But the staring man, he had not been in church, I was sure of it this time. It was silly to let it bother me, but...I really didn’t like that man.

  Susie had laid down the brush, so I shook myself and bade her good night. The maid left, and I knelt by the bed for a while—my mother...my father...Siridean...the poor—before climbing in and blowing out the candle.

  ~+~

  I woke with a start. It was pitch black inside the curtains of my bed and I stayed still, listening, wondering what had woken me. I heard a slight scuffing sound, like a shoe on a rug. There was someone in the room. Was it Susie, having forgotten some small task and hoping to complete it before morning? My father, looking in on me with paternal fondness? Surely not, the quality of the silence told me how late it was, or rather, how early. Then I realized Raven was pressed against my neck, shaking. It was a stranger. An assassin?

  I reached out to my bedside table for my dagger, just as arms thrust aside the curtains and seized me. I drew in the breath for a scream, cursing inwardly. There were nearly two score other people in the house, my very first action should have been to scream, not reach for a weapon. Now a hand wrapped around my mouth, choking off any sound. I tried to bite it, struggling, but when the hand slid away to evade my teeth, a rough piece of cloth was slipped in instead, like a bit into a horse’s mouth and knotted tightly behind my head, pulling my hair painfully. Now the only sounds I could make were ineffectual indeed.

  I still had one hand free, and I used it to grab Raven and stuff her down the front of my nightgown. Raven would certainly attack this man without some alternative instruction, and one blow of a man’s fist could smash her fragile little body. Then that hand was also seized and as I was dragged free of the clinging curtains, I realized in horror that there was more than one of them. When I kept up my struggles, my arms were twisted painfully behind me and I was dragged stumbling across the room. A hooded lantern was opened slightly, allowing some light, and I recoiled violently as I recognized the staring man from the churchyard.

  I flailed about, desperate to somehow make noise. Kicking out with my legs, I struggled to send a table or chair crashing to the ground. The staring man, lantern in hand, calmly kicked me in the knee with painful precision and my leg buckled under me. Forced to hop on one leg or be dragged, I knew that all hope of making noise was gone. I would have freely admitted that I was terrified. But puzzled as well. If my uncle had sent these men to kill me, why were they bothering to gag me? That suggested they were kidnapping me.

  Of course. My father was an extremely wealthy man, and my uncle must know perfectly well that he doted on me. This was a kidnapping. My uncle might give me back if my father paid the ransom, but more likely he meant to keep me as a permanent source of revenue. He was a fool to try it, for my father would surely destroy him the moment I was either recovered or beyond recovery, but that didn’t change what was happening.

  We had reached the bottom of the stairs by then and I had a sudden thought. Raven! Raven could fetch my father. But how to tell her? I felt Raven run down the inside of my nightgown and drop from the bottom, to streak away into the darkness, her grey form invisible, and to my relief, unnoticed. It was not the first time I had suspected my pet of being a bit of a mind reader, but I had no thought for it then. I was too busy wondering where they were taking me.

  I’d expected them to hurry me out of the nearest exit, but they were taking me down, down to the basement. We went past the kitchens and I felt a flash of hope. My leg was recovering and if we went in there, I might be able to kick over a stack of pans large enough that someone might still hear.

  But we did not go in, we continued along the subterranean passages, past storerooms and the servant’s dining hall, until finally we stopped outside a door. I frowned, my nape crawling. It was that door, the one with the lost key, the one where the workman had died...

  But the staring, lantern-carrying man produced a key and put it into the lock. It turned stiffly, but it turned. I almost stopped struggling as a terrible thought hit me.

  The safe key! There was no way my father would have kept the safe key on a ring of keys that rust proved had lain in a drawer for years and years, a location no doubt known by every house maid who had ever dusted or cleaned in that room. When he’d opened the safe to give me my mother’s jewels he had taken the key from about his person and I’d wager that was where he’d always kept it. There was still a key to this storeroom and he had it.

  But how had my uncle gained a copy? My thoughts grew increasingly desperate as I was dragged through the door. Well, it had lain in that easily accessible drawer for years, I reminded myself, that was no mystery. But why had my father lied to me?

  This rather plaintive question died in my mind as I saw that we had entered not a small storeroom, or even a larger storage chamber, but a passage. No doubt it ran to outside of the grounds, perhaps to London. What father of a young (or not so young) daughter would put such a key in her hands, or even wish her to be aware of such a passage’s existence?

  I breathed more freely with regard to my father, whom I prayed would soon be racing to my rescue. I found myself calculating in my head how far Raven might have gone. She was fast as a mouse, but it would take even the fastest mouse some time to reach my father’s bedchamber from the hall. Now she might be racing along the upstairs corridor, I thought, as we continued our swift journey along the passage. Now she might have reached his door, but how could she open it?

  Did she know of, or could she find, any mouse hole through which she could fit and so reach the inside of the bedchamber? How long would it take her to find such a hole? How long would it take her to wake my father and make him understand he must follow her? Then I felt a sudden pang of fear for my father. There were three men here and would he even pick up a weapon, or would he assume some sudden illness or accident had struck me and rush out after Raven unarmed?

  And where
was this passage going? I’d assumed it would lead to somewhere beyond the park walls, but if it did, it would have to start going upwards soon. We must be deep down below the grounds by now, yet the passage showed no sign of rising. Finally we reached another solid wooden door and passed through it. We were on a balcony, along which I was swiftly led to where a flight of steps descended a short way to a large, circular, dome-ceilinged stone room. Maybe it really was some sort of innovative storeroom, or had been once. There were two more men there, but I recognized this with only a flicker of dismay, for I was too busy taking in the room itself, a room that struck horror to the core of my being and made my stomach churn. My nape felt like it was being crushed in a vice.

  Blood red tapestries adorned the walls, depicting unearthly beasts doing depraved, unthinkably violent things to people. A wooden table...no, an altar, stood in the centre of the room, wood dark with horrible stains, and age-yellowed animal skulls and bones lay discarded on the floor around it. Torches flickered in brackets between those loathsome tapestries and I did not need to see the pentagram painted on the floor, one point at the altar, to know what I had entered. This was a temple, a temple for devil worshippers, for Satanists, for sorcerers, those most damned of the damned.

  I had been stumbling down the steps between my captors, too numb with shock to struggle, but now I yanked away and tried to run. I almost got free, then my nightgown was seized again, and I was dragged roughly down the steps backwards and pushed into the middle of the circle. I faced them warily, feeling like the beast that has nowhere to run to.

  What was this place doing here? How could this evil place be here, below my father’s house? He knew that man; did he know this was here? If he had the key, could he not know it was here? He would come and save me, wouldn’t he? This couldn’t have anything to do with him, I just couldn’t believe it, I just couldn’t!