“Oh, very well,” he sighed. “If it will really make you feel better.”
William and Stephen lifted him carefully from the coach, placing him in his wheeled chair.
“Wait here,” I instructed Richard and the footmen, and wheeled my father towards the door as fast as I could. Hounsdiche ran just around the outside of the city wall, a long single row of houses backing onto open countryside. Sixty-six was about a far from the Bishop’s Gate as it could be, almost at the Olde Gate.
“Is this a physician’s, child?” he asked, looking perplexed as we drew closer. “It looks like a private house.”
His mind was still quick enough, I was glad to see. “I arranged a special visit,” I replied as though it were nothing to remark upon, and knocked at the door.
My father twisted to look around at the street and the moon in the sky. “Just how late is it, Serapia?” he demanded, eyeing me far more closely, and not without suspicion.
“Don’t worry, we’re on time,” I said blithely, keeping my face turned towards the door.
“Serapia, look at me,” he said, his voice growing still firmer. I ignored him, and fortunately the door opened then and Lord Vandalis looked out at us, smiling.
“Lady Serapia, welcome. This must be your father. Do come in.”
Alban frowned at Lord Vandalis, though it was rather dark for his spectral ear points to be visible. He turned one of the chair’s wheels as though he wished to return to the coach.
“Come on, pa,” I urged, wheeling him forward.
“Serapia,” said my father in a warning tone, as he was pushed inside. “If you have somehow arranged something above the order of normal medicine, you know quite well I will have no part of it.”
“Fear not, your grace, you cannot object to this,” said Lord Vandalis cheerfully, closing the door behind us. The elfin led us along the hall and to a flight of stairs. “I’m sure we can manage these,” he said. “I do my best work down here.”
“Serapia,” growled the Duke, “I shall beat you, I swear. I shall beat you and marry you to Sir Allen so you can get up to no more mischief!”
“Now, pa,” I said gently, “I am too young to marry and you are too weak to beat me. We’ll have you down the steps in no time.”
My father glowered at me as Lord Vandalis took the back of the chair, bumping it down the steps as carefully as possible, and I walked ahead, steadying it and preventing my father from falling forwards. There was nothing he could do about it. His impotence wrung my heart so much that if anything other than his healing had lain below, I could never have forced him in such a way.
“Here we are, then,” said Lord Vandalis when we reached the bottom.
I went through the doorway just before my father and stopped dead, feeling Raven freeze against me. “Run!” I gasped, turning towards him, but there was no possibility of him so much as standing.
“If there is danger, you run,” he said all in one breath. But I grabbed for the back of the chair regardless. Lord Vandalis took my arm and pushed me firmly into the room, wheeling my father in behind.
Five men stood within, dressed in long, hooded red robes. All five were painfully familiar. A pentagram covered the stone floor and an altar of crudely carved wood stood behind it, rimmed with lumpy candles and heaped with the dead and rotting corpses of animals. My neck burned with the evil of the place and I wondered if I’d passed through some sort of ward at the doorway.
I looked again at the so-youthful guardian, who no longer felt blank, oh no, no, no… Instead…the choking feeling that had enveloped Siridean…only a hundred times worse. A penny the size of the Queen’s golden coach dropped sickeningly in my mind. Too late. How could I not have felt it before? I’d shaken his hand! Oh. His gloved hand. Gloved and warded?
The elfin stopped beside a bench, and my father stared pale-faced at the scene before us. “Serapia, child, what have you done?” he whispered.
I threw myself down on the bench, arms wrapping around him protectively. “Nothing, pa,” I said, anguished. “They’re not meant to be here, nothing like this! Lord Vandalis tricked me and I took him for that which he is not! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, please forgive me!”
“I forgive you, child, it is not me I am worried about,” he murmured, his own arm snaking protectively around me.
The golden-haired he-elf put his hands on his hips and looked down at us, chuckling. “Are you so sure, Lady Serapia, that I cannot do what the oh-so-virtuous Lord Ystevan will not?”
“I know, Arathain, that I would have nothing to do with anything you can do,” I retorted.
“I see my dear uncle has been telling you tales about me. Unkind ones, no doubt.” He smiled at us, still a sweet-natured smile but with a much less pleasant light in his eye. “You asked me to help save your father’s life, Lady Serapia, so I intend to do so.”
My father’s grasp on me tightened convulsively, and his face paled even more.
Help us, oh help us! The burning heat at the back of my neck cooled slightly, soothingly, and I gripped my father’s hand, staring at the he-elf with all the contempt I could muster. “Fine, kill me,” I snapped. “But it will be entirely your doing, not that of my father!”
Arathain laughed merrily. “Oh, my dear girl. You asked me to save your father’s life, not his soul. And I would much, much rather smite his soul. See what I have acquired specially?” He waved a hand and one of the sorcerers brought forward a small, cloth-wrapped bundle that squalled slightly at being moved.
“Now, my dear duke,” went on the dark elfin, eyes now on my father. “Here is a small sickly babe that will be dead in a few days quite naturally. I have uncovered what these incompetent oafs could not,” he jerked a dismissive thumb at the sorcerers. “It is a sorcery that allows one living thing to be substituted for another of a similar kind. So here we have a baby girl and a half-grown girl, one of your blood, one not. But close enough.
“So here is how it is. All you need to do is kneel down at our so-powerful altar and perform the sorcery that makes this sickly baby the acceptable substitute for your own child. Nothing too arduous, just a prayer to our dark master and a few drops of your blood. Then, if you would rather these gentlemen see to the completion of the sorcery that threatens your life, you need do nothing more. You will live and nothing will die but a babe that will not survive anyway. What have you to lose?”
“My soul,” replied Alban, looking at the he-elf in disgust.
“Ah yes,” said Arathain, and there was nothing sweet-natured about his smile now. “But did I forget to say?” He reached out and tore me from my father’s side. Raven shot from my bodice and headed for his hand, tiny fangs bared. I snatched her hastily and stuffed her back out of harm’s way even as I myself struggled, twisting and striking at Arathain.
But Arathain’s fingers dug into each side of my neck and all the strength went out of me. I hung from his grasp helpless, like a limp doll. He shook me effortlessly, just hard enough to make my head whip from side to side and to prove that he could snap my neck like a twig if he chose. “I believe I did forget to say. If you do not do it, Serapia will die.” He flung me down in a heap at my father’s feet.
Alban dropped his face to his hands with a tortured groan. “Is this my punishment?” he whispered hoarsely. “Am I thus punished? Mercy, mercy…”
“Mercy is no fun,” said Arathain happily, spinning on his heel and going to tickle the chin of the squalling baby.
I managed to climb back up onto the bench to my father’s side. I pulled his head up and met his eyes. “You are not punished!” I told him fiercely. “This is entirely his sick doing, it is nothing to do with you. You must not go along with it, that is all. You must not!”
“Are you so eager to die?” smiled Arathain, from across the room.
I eyed him in a moment of wild calculation, then bolted for the doorway. I was his leverage. Without me, he had no hope of forcing my father to do anything. Arathain made no move to stop me,
though, and my suspicion about a ward was confirmed, painfully, when my headlong dive for the doorway struck thin air that was much the consistency of a brick wall. I stumbled back and fell to my knees, clutching my broken nose, Arathain’s laughter ringing in my ears as a red haze of pain momentarily obscured my vision.
“Enough of this,” said Arathain. He walked back to my father and crouched briefly, running his hands down the sick man’s legs. “You will stand for our dark master. Consider it a...gift.” He gripped the Duke’s collar and jerked him to his feet, dragging him into the pentagram.
My hand flew to my dagger, under cover of my cloak, then paused. Arathain was the one that really mattered but an assault on him was almost certainly futile and I didn’t dare waste my only weapon too precipitously. Reluctantly, I eased my hand away again.
“Tell him what to do,” Arathain ordered one of the waiting sorcerers, letting go of Alban, who wobbled slightly but stayed upright.
The sorcerer he’d spoken to shot a look at his fellows. The staring man who was their leader ignored him, moving to one tip of the pentagram, but the other sorcerers pointedly raised their eyebrows.
“Look, sir,” the sorcerer ventured, clearly emboldened by this. “Why are we doing this? What’s in it for us? We work for pay, you know.”
Arathain reached out a hand, seized the man’s head and turned it through one hundred and eighty degrees with a hideous crunch. He let the corpse fall and addressed the other sorcerers. “You will get your lives.”
The leader prudently gave a deep bow before speaking. “I assume your honor will fill in, come the ceremony?”
“I will fill in for you all if necessary, so get on with it,” said Arathain dangerously.
The remaining sorcerers hurried into their positions. One stood on the left of the altar holding the baby ready, another stood on the right with a large book, from which the Duke was clearly expected to read. Alban just stood there, legs shaking with the effort of remaining upright despite whatever the dark elfin had done to them.
“Don’t do it!” I cried, running forward, but the staring man blocked my path. “You will not do this for me! You will not!”
Alban still stood there, staring at the altar in a frozen silence.
“Your dear daughter,” cajoled Arathain. “Your dear dead daughter, if you do not do this. You shall watch me kill her!”
Alban shuffled an unsteady step forwards.
I stepped clear of the staring man, watching my father. Every ounce of my attention seemed to narrow in on him. Slowly, unwillingly, my hand crept under my cloak again and closed around the hilt of Siridean’s dagger.
“Your poor, poor Serapia, all dead,” Arathain all but sang.
Alban took another step towards the altar.
I gripped my dagger, agonized. I could not let him do it. I could not even let him take a final decision to do it, for that would surely damn him just the same. My clenched fingers shook around the hilt as I fought for the strength to save him from himself.
Alban took one final step so that he stood before the altar. He stared at the mass of rotting lifeless things that provided its powerful consecration to evil, his shoulders rigid.
The dagger pulsed under my shaking hand in a way that was not physical, an encouraging warmth that matched the beat of my pounding heart. My hand steadied and my eyes found the spot between my father’s shoulder blades. Concentrate. Concentrate... I eased the dagger from its sheath.
A final muscle-cracking moment of tension and Alban’s shoulders relaxed.
My hand relaxed as well and the dagger slipped back into its sheath. I did not lie to Ystevan. He will not do it. My heart sang, though my mind advised me to compose my own soul.
My father reached out and touched the gory altar cloth contemplatively with both hands. I stiffened in irrational but inescapable delight. Do it! I thought gleefully.
Alban did it. His fingers twisted swiftly into the cloth and he flung himself backwards, using his own body weight to provide the force he could not. The altar cloth and all its consecrating contents went tumbling to the floor, candles hissing and smoking as the fall snuffed them out. The sorcerers stared, frozen in shock and dismay.
Alban took advantage of the moment’s inaction to scramble up over the pile, yank his cross from about his neck and place it squarely down on the altar. He grinned savagely up at the sorcerers through a tangle of dark hair. He looked slightly mad. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he panted, “but I do believe your altar needs re-consecrating.”
That was all he had time for because the sorcerers were on him like a pack of mad dogs. They struck him to the ground and their booted feet began to slam into his frail body.
I ran forward desperately, but Arathain was on me in a flash. “Stop,” he ordered coldly, and the death of their associate must still have been fresh in the sorcerers’ minds, because they did so. With evident reluctance.
“Let the dear Duke recover himself,” said Arathain silkily, and despite his would-be calm I could feel his anger. “There is something very particular that he must watch.”
My father lay there, gasping, for so long that I began to fear that the blows might prove fatal. But eventually his breathing eased and he looked around him. Arathain smiled at me in terrible anticipation. Recklessly, I drew my dagger and stabbed at him in one quick movement, but it struck him much as I had struck the open doorway and skidded to one side.
He caught my wrist and squeezed viciously until the blade dropped from my hand. He kicked it away with a disdainful smirk. “Such a bold little girl, aren’t you?” he said, shifting his grip to my neck, so that I once more hung there helplessly.
Raven shot out again and I couldn’t stop her. The dragonet sunk her teeth into the dark elfin’s finger, but with a flick of his other hand, Arathain sent her flying across the room. She smacked into the wall with a squeak of pain and fell to the ground.
My father rolled halfway to his knees, struggling to rise, to reach us.
“I’m sorry, my dear Duke,” said Arathain. “But I believe I made your choices plain. You have refused the life I offered you. Now you will watch her die.”
“I think not,” said a soft voice from the doorway.
Arathain spun around, with me swinging from his grasp.
Ystevan stood there, his bow in his hand and an arrow drawn upon it. For one shocked second, Arathain remained motionless. Ystevan did not. The arrow slammed squarely into Arathain’s heart with a nasty thunk.
For a long moment Arathain stared back at the guardian, and there was nothing on his face but sweet-natured confusion. “Uncle Ystevan?” he whispered.
Then he crumpled to the ground, taking me with him, and did not move.
From my position with my cheek flat against the floor, I saw the last sorcerer dump the baby on the altar and dart for a door on the opposite side of the room, following his fellows. Ystevan finally seemed to notice their escape—he notched another arrow with breath-taking speed and almost casually dropped the man in mid-step.
Breathlessly, I flung off the lifeless hand and started crawling towards my father—until Raven’s warning screech drew my attention. She raced across the cellar full-tilt, her tiny, undeveloped wings spread for extra lift and speed. What had she seen?
With a soft ‘poof’ the fallen altar hangings caught fire, the flames licking up the wax-soaked wood with tremendous speed. Raven hurtled up the pile of rotting dead things and leapt onto the altar, flinging herself on top of the small, wriggling bundle that had been abandoned there...
I gasped in horror and struggled to rise, staggering dizzily. “Ystevan! The baby!”
Raven wrapped her wings protectively around the helpless infant, then the flames roared up over the altar-top, hiding them both. “Raven!”
Ystevan was already moving, but before he could reach them, my father launched himself up the pile and stretched into the flames. He pulled the dragonet-baby bundle out and rolled it to the bottom of the soft, damp, decaying
heap, then slumped against the altar, too weak to get clear himself.
“Pa!” I was on my feet, now, but I’d never get there in time.
Ystevan leapt over the baby and grabbed my father, using his momentum to propel them sideways and out of the flames. Another age-long moment as I hurried forward, finally shaking off the last lingering effects of Arathain’s nasty neck-hold, and I’d reached them, gathering my father in my arms.
“Serapia…” he murmured in a tone of overwhelming relief as he slipped from consciousness.
“It’s all right, pa,” I whispered, hugging him to me, then craning to look at Raven and the baby, to whom Ystevan had immediately returned. “Are they all right?”
Ystevan detached Raven with gentle fingers and set her on the stone floor. “This little one is as flame-proof as they come. Not a mark on her. This precious mite...” he gathered the baby in his arms, “...needs a little more attention. Though she is almost unharmed by the fire. Raven protected her well. But her health is very poor indeed.” He fell silent, his fingers tracing the baby’s limbs and torso.
Raven was already climbing dizzily up to my shoulder. “Raven, you were wonderful,” I told her. “You saved that poor baby’s life!” Raven just rubbed her little face against my cheek, as though more worried about me than her own heroics. “It’s alright. I’m fine,” I told her, then I pressed my face to my father’s hair in turn and held him close.
Wait... Raven had climbed down and was licking the Duke’s hands... Oh no, they were burned. Though it scarcely mattered now, did it? He was unconscious, and could not feel it. Would he even wake up again?
Ystevan had crossed the room and now knelt beside the dead elfin, his face a ghastly, expressionless mask. After several long moments, he reached out and slid the blank eyes closed.
“How can you still care about him?” I demanded, my voice ragged.
“He was a lost youngling,” said the he-elf softly. He stretched his hand over that dead face for a few moments, moving it from eyes, to ears, to hair, and I wondered if he was doing something that would camouflage the odd appearance of the body after the inevitable looting of spectacles, hairclip and ear studs.
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