by Nix, Garth
A Sending who had been sitting on the end of the bed got up as he moved, bowed, and exited. A few minutes later, it returned, and a minute or two after that Tizanael came in, several Sendings behind her, one with a breakfast tray.
“I’ll take off the poultice now,” said Tizanael. “Then you will be able to move around. Try not to jar your arm.”
Terciel nodded. Tizanael expertly lifted the poultice, which appeared to be made of layers of cabbage leaves sewn together interspersed with an herbal decoction of which a major ingredient was honey. It smelled nice. It had also been heavily spelled. There were still fragments of short-lived marks fading away on every part of it.
“There’s a stick by the headboard,” said Tizanael. “Used to belong to the Abhorsen Bannatiel, I believe. If you lift and twist the head anticlockwise, there’s a dagger in it.”
Terciel craned his head around to look. A heavy bog-oak stick with a bronze handle in the shape of a marsh bird’s gently curved beak leaned against the back of his pillow.
“After you’ve had breakfast, I want you to study this spell,” continued Tizanael. She snapped her fingers, and a Sending stepped forward and placed a sheaf of papers on Terciel’s lap. It was the good, very white linen paper, and carefully written on it in Tizanael’s familiar hand was line after line of symbols, representing Charter marks and the shorthand for how they should be joined together.
Terciel saw at a glance he only knew half of the marks, or less. He sighed, leaned back, and shut his eyes.
“I’m wounded, Aunt,” he said. “And I don’t know most of these marks. You’ll have to show them to me. What’s this spell for anyway? And yes, the pain is less but still present, thank you for asking.”
“The pain would be no less for my asking,” replied Tizanael. “And I would not trouble you with this if there was time to spare. A message-hawk came this morning. The Charter Stone at Middle Upp has been broken, the villagers slaughtered, the bodies missing. Kerrigor is gathering an army and we cannot allow him to grow any stronger. The spell is one of those to armor oneself against the effects of Free Magic. I wish you to study the marks you do know so when I come to teach the rest of them tomorrow, the learning will go faster. I do not expect you to master the spell by yourself. I think you also should study the book on how to use the chain. I will bring that tomorrow.”
Terciel opened his eyes again and forced himself to sit up completely, ignoring the pain in his leg and arm. He gestured at the Sending with the tray to come forward.
“What do I get for breakfast? Sweet rolls and fruit?”
“Porridge,” said Tizanael. “Simple fare for the hurt.”
Chapter Seventeen
Elinor woke in sudden fright, sitting up straight in bed. For a moment or two she was disoriented, not knowing what had woken her. It was early in the morning, before dawn, and though there was some moonlight coming through the window, not enough for her to see the face of her alarm clock. She reached over and clicked on the bedside lamp, relieved by the comforting light. It was a nightmare, she thought, and hoped it didn’t mean they were going to start their regular appearances again.
Then she heard the noise that had woken her repeated, and it was definitely not a dream. A quick tap-tap-tap on her door, followed by a hushed voice.
“Miss Hallett!”
A man’s voice.
Elinor leapt out of bed and rushed to her wardrobe, flinging it open to grab the leather scabbard that held three of Ham’s really sharp throwing knives, the ones they didn’t practice juggling with. She slung it over the shoulder of her flannel nightdress and drew one of the knives, holding it ready to throw or stab.
She was glad she always locked her door, though it was only a small comfort. She knew it could be kicked in easily enough.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“Albert, the assistant gardener. Only I’m actually a Crossing Point Scout. Major Latimer put me here to guard you.”
“What! Who?”
“We think Hedge is here. You have to get somewhere more secure. Edric’s gone to telephone, our troop is in the village, but it’ll be half an hour before help comes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” snapped Elinor.
“Hedge! The Free Magic sorcerer who shot you at Coldhallow House. We saw him.”
Albert sounded frightened. Elinor retreated to the far side of the room, the knife in her hand, her heart hammering. She pulled back the cuffs of her nightgown and looked at her wrists. The scars had faded before to near invisibility, but they were vivid again now, looking more like fingerprints done in red paint than ever, though they didn’t hurt like they had the night before.
The night before. The shadowy figure slinking away, and her wrists burning. Was that in response to the sorcerer’s proximity?
“I’m going to unlock the door,” she said. “Wait a second and then step in, one step, but no more than that. I am armed.”
“Yes, miss,” came the loud whisper. “Hurry!”
She crossed the room, flicked the key, and stepped back again, knife ready to throw.
The young gardener who came in was the new one Hazra fancied. Though Elinor would not have called him handsome, he did have a cheerful, capable face. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his early twenties, wearing a rough brown suit, with a revolver thrust through his belt, and a scabbarded sword bayonet on his hip. His flat cap was in his hand and he was indicating his forehead, where a golden Charter mark glowed.
“Test my mark, miss, you’ll know I’m all right.”
Elinor looked at him warily. She felt no new pain in her wrists, and his mark looked as it should. She slid her left foot forward and turned her body, reaching out with her left hand as she kept her right hand with the knife back, ready to strike.
Albert reached forward, too, very slowly, with two fingers extended. They both touched foreheads at the same time, and sighed together with relief and relaxed as they made contact with a true mark and felt the Charter beyond.
“I don’t understand,” whispered Elinor. “The Free Magic sorcerer’s name is Hedge?”
“That’s what I’ve been told, miss,” whispered Albert.
“Why would he be after me?”
“Don’t know, miss. We was told to keep an eye out for him and given his description, that’s all.”
“Scarecrow thin, but neither tall nor short,” said Elinor, remembering. “Forty or so, and the top of his bald head shone in the rain.”
“Yes, that’s him. Me and Edric, we were put on the duty. Do a walk-around every four hours at night. It was Edric saw him first. We need to get inside the main school. Safer there.”
“Let me put on a coat and my boots,” whispered Elinor. She returned her knife to the sheath and laid the case of knives on her bed, before quickly shrugging on an overcoat, socks and boots, and a fur hat she’d succumbed to from a catalogue one of the Bain women’s outfitters sent to the school every month. She slid a very small knife, another one of Ham’s, into her boot top, slung the throwing knife scabbard over her shoulder again, and drew one of the blades to hold ready.
She was afraid, but she was surprised to find that fear was not the primary emotion inside her. She felt determined, the knife in her hand light, as if it wanted to leave her hand. Next time she saw the sorcerer, Elinor swore she would throw first, and not miss.
“After me, please,” muttered Albert. “Stay back a few paces.”
He grinned at her, a grin that she felt was as much to bolster his own courage as strengthen hers, and added “At least there’s no wind from the North” before drawing his revolver to carefully creep down the stairs.
Elinor followed, wondering what her housemates in the other bedrooms would think if they happened to open their doors and look out. The mere presence of a man might be more shocking to them than the fact he was armed.
For a moment, she wondered why she was not shocked herself. But she wasn’t. Everything changed that day at Coldhallow
House, that last day, not least Elinor herself. She wasn’t sure what she was to become, but it was not someone who would be shocked by the unconventional.
It was cold outside, though the air was still. There was a frost on the grass, spreading on the edges of the paved path. Albert paused outside the house, listening, looking up toward the great dark bulk of the main school building. The lampposts spread small pools of illumination, but there were swaths of darkness in between. The moon above was a slim crescent, providing little light, and there was high cloud dimming the stars.
Albert gestured for Elinor to follow and moved forward, hunched over, walking off the path so he was more shadowed. At the corner of the larger house, where those school servants who lived in were housed, he paused. Elinor crept up closer to him.
“Where did you see this Hedge?” she asked. For an instant she almost giggled at that. Asking a gardener where he’d seen a hedge. But she suppressed it. It would be too easy for laughter to become hysteria. She had to hang on to her resolve, not let the fear that underlay it come to the surface.
“He was watching your house earlier,” whispered Albert. “Then he went back to the cricket pavilion. We think he’s been hiding there. I had to wake you in case he came back.”
They moved together to the northern wall of the library, slinking along it. Elinor’s shoulder grazed the brick and she felt strangely comforted by the solidity of it, something familiar in this strange night.
From there they crossed the quad, walking on the forbidden grass rather than the path. Light spilled out from the windows at the eastern end of the northern wing, where the kitchen was and the bakers must have already begun their predawn preparations. It was enough to see the way. One of the windows in the Great Hall to the south was also lit from inside, presumably so the quad would never be truly dark. The girls were not allowed outside after ten o’clock, but teachers occasionally worked very late or had to go into the school very early.
Albert was heading for the main doors from the quad into the central building when Elinor felt a sudden pain in her wrists, that awful burning pang.
“Stop!” she hissed. “He’s here!”
Albert crouched very low, sidling into the deeper shadow by the wall, into the soft earth of the fallow flower beds. Elinor followed him. She had to breathe through her nose to stop herself audibly panting with sudden, short panicked breaths.
“Where?” whispered Albert. He had his revolver up, elbow locked to his side, his left wrist under his right in the approved fashion.
“Close,” whispered Elinor. “I don’t know exactly. The burns he made on my wrists, they ache when he is close.”
They stayed still, both listening intently. Albert moved his head very slowly from side to side, staring into the darkness on the far side of the quad.
They both heard the heavy door begin to open before they saw it. The left-hand leaf of the great oak-and-iron doors, a twin to the front doors of the school. Light spilled out from the corridor behind, silhouetting a man who stepped out a few paces. Backlit, it was hard to make out what he looked like, but he was shorter than the sorcerer Elinor remembered, and broader, and he had sandy hair.
“Albert?” he said in a low voice, but still above a whisper.
Pain spiked in Elinor’s wrists. She started to grab Albert’s coat as he rose up and stepped out, but missed. He took one more step forward, calling out with no attempt to keep his voice down.
“Edric!” replied Albert. “Look out, he’s here somewhere!”
The man in the doorway shimmered and changed, becoming suddenly taller, thinner, and more menacing. It was not Edric. It was Hedge, who had sorcerously taken on the soldier’s shape.
His hand flashed up, and something like a fire arrow sped from it and struck Albert in the chest, hurling him back. He smacked into the wall and fell to the earth, oily flames licking over his torso. The awful hot-metal stench of Free Magic assaulted Elinor’s nose and throat.
Elinor threw her knife and while it was in the air drew another and threw that and the next, the first striking as the other two followed. She heard the meaty thunk of it hitting flesh, and thought the sorcerer staggered under the impact, but the two following either missed or were dodged or somehow misdirected.
Hedge did not fall down, though Elinor was sure she’d hit him in the chest, with one of Ham’s most dangerous knives, which were made from a single piece of steel. They looked like particularly long and heavy arrowheads, with a short handle, the steel diamond-hatched for grip.
She lost a couple of seconds scrabbling for Albert’s revolver, but couldn’t find it and instead drew his sword bayonet, snatching it away as the flames spread farther across his body. He had been killed instantly, she knew, because there was a dinner-plate-sized hole where his heart should be, the void filled with fire.
When she looked back, Hedge was no longer in the doorway.
Elinor dropped onto her stomach and crawled backward along the wall. The sword bayonet couldn’t be thrown, and the knife in her boot surely wouldn’t do anything if one of the much larger knives had failed to wound him. She would have to get close and stab him, somehow avoiding the spell that had killed Albert, and the sorcerer’s burning grasp.
For a moment she thought about screaming for help, but immediately realized she mustn’t do that. The most likely people to respond would be the First and Second Form girls in the dormitories above her, and they would be killed en masse. Even if teachers came, what could they do? They would also be killed.
Albert’s fellow soldier, Edric, must already be dead. But if he had managed to make his phone call first, there was a chance proper help was already on the way. All she had to do was hide long enough, Elinor thought. If Edric hadn’t got through, surely the dawn and exposure would make Hedge withdraw, even if it was only for the time being.
But what if he didn’t? What if he killed whoever got in the way? Innocent schoolgirls, or teachers, or gardeners?
Elinor thought of Ham, and Mrs. Watkins, and Cook, and Maria, and even her mother. She gritted her teeth and slowly rose up to a crouch and started toward the open, well-lit back doors, her body tensed to duck aside or dive to the ground if Hedge appeared.
She was halfway across the quad, just past the covered-over well, when she heard a noise behind her, the rattle of a latch. She whirled around as a baker leaned out of the kitchen window she’d just opened, her nose sniffing, and saw the body of Albert and the fire still burning in his body.
“Oh! Oh! Fire! Fire!”
A chorus of voices inside the kitchen answered her, soon shushed by the senior-most of the kitchen staff present, shouting matter-of fact orders about fire buckets and the “newfangled alarm.”
Elinor ran to the back door, the sword bayonet ready in her hand. More lights were coming on along the north wing. The kitchen door slammed open and bakers hauling fire buckets of sand rushed to Albert’s body. Bells began to jangle throughout the school, not the calm toll of the tower bells to mark lesson periods, but the harsh rattle of the newer electric alarm.
The cry of “Fire alarm! Fire alarm!” began to echo everywhere, and lights sprang on in every building.
Elinor ran down the main corridor. There was a body by the front door, which was open. A young, sandy-haired man in clothes like Albert’s. There was a revolver on the floor near him. As she ran closer, she saw he was not burned, but he lay in a huge pool of blood, his throat cut from side to side.
The door to the school secretary’s office was open. Elinor sneaked a glance in, saw nothing, and jumped in on a diagonal, to surprise any ambusher. But there was no one there. The candlestick telephone that usually sat on the desk was on the floor, and a noise like a warbling bird was coming out of the earpiece. Elinor shut the door behind her and locked it, then picked up both parts of the telephone and retreated behind the desk before holding the earpiece to listen, positioning the receiver in front of her face. She’d used a telephone only a few times before. Coldhallow House
did not have one.
“Porrock! Is anybody there? Anyone? Porrock! Is anyone there?”
It was a man speaking, loud and slow. This was followed by an ear-piercing whistle as whoever was at the other end tried to make a sound loud enough for a chance passerby to hear and pick up the telephone.
“I’m here,” said Elinor, too fast. “We need help, the two soldiers are dead—”
“Slow down,” said the man. “Help is on the way. Who am I speaking to?”
“Elinor Hallett. I know you won’t believe me but there is a Free Magic sorcerer—”
“We know, Miss Hallett. This is Major Latimer of the Crossing Point Scouts. You said Albert and Porrock are dead?”
“Albert is, and Edric I think, I don’t know Porrock.”
“Edric Porrock and Keren Albert . . . Are you safe where you are?”
“I don’t know. I’m in the school secretary’s office, I’ve locked the door.”
“What is that racket I can hear?”
“The fire alarm bells. Albert was set on fire by the sorcerer.”
“Fire alarm? Are the pupils evacuating?”
“Yes,” said Elinor. “What will . . . what will Hedge do?”
“I don’t know,” said Latimer, his voice redolent with apprehension. “My first troop should be there very soon. Once he sees them he should run. I have other units coming, and the police, but from farther away. I’m in Bain myself. Has the fire brigade been called?”
“I don’t know,” said Elinor. She was shaking now. It was difficult to hold the telephone steady in front of her mouth. “The fire . . . it was magical, it stuck . . . it stuck on him.”
She heard Latimer quickly ordering someone to do something about the Bain Fire Brigade, before he came back to her.
