Murderer in Shadow

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “That’s all right, Ware.” Ravyn forced a grim smile. “It seems time has vindicated Old Albert’s opinion. Mabel mentioned acolytes, and a piece of evidence seems to corroborate that, but…”

  “It is a common practice, I can tell you that much, sir,” she said. “If a magician…” She again coloured. “I know how ridiculous it all must seem to an outsider, but…”

  “No, no, go on,” he said. “The practices of any people always seem odd to those not raised in or acclimated to those ways. Believe me, Stafford folk are often more silly than words can convey, some more than others.”

  She nodded in agreement, though more to side with Ravyn than in actual belief. Having had a taste of the outside world, she could not shake her newly acquired impression that all villages, Knight’s Crossing in particular, were filled with yokels, and that Stafford was inhabited by the urbane, the sophisticated and the witty.

  “If men who style themselves magicians feel they are without worthy issue, it’s common to apprentice a boy who is worthy. Some families actually try to get their sons apprenticed to a magician. Sort of reflected glory, prestige and power, I suppose.”

  “Lemuel Stryker,” Ravyn said. “Worthy or not?”

  Ware chuckled. “My gran knew him. Asked her out, he did, but she sent him off with a flea in his ear. Said he weren’t worth the spit it would take to put him out if he caught on fire. And his son, whom my mum knew, was just as bad, or so I heard. Both idiots.”

  “Neither of them suitable to wear Ezekiel’s mantle?”

  She nodded. “With one as unworthy as the other, it would be a wonder if the elder Stryker didn’t take on an acolyte.”

  “What about three acolytes?”

  “Only a very powerful magician would dare do that.”

  “Like Wizard Ezekiel?”

  “Even people who chose to have nothing to do with the magical universe, either through disbelief or aversion, were wary of him,” she said. “From what I heard, stories from Mum and Gran, from the tales whispered by other kids when I was growing up, he might feel one acolyte could not do justice to his power, but it is dangerous.”

  “In what way?”

  “Envy, mostly, one feeling superior, or closer to the Master, maybe wanting to be Master over the others, or perhaps coveting the Master’s power and possessions, chancing the peril of rousing his wrath,” she said. “It’s dangerous when magic gets mixed up with human emotions. Sometimes a deadly brew, you might say.”

  “All Ezekiel’s family believed they were magicians?”

  “To one degree or another, so village talk went.” She shifted in her chair, conscious now of the watchers behind her, of her sharing secrets with a strapper. A detective chief inspector. she reminded herself, but a strapper nonetheless. “But different magics.,”

  “Men’s magic versus women’s magic?”

  A slight nod, a deep frown, then: “Yes, somewhat, but it goes beyond that. There is magic that men work, the power in rituals of stone and sky, and magic that women hold as their own, like talking to the Crone or understanding the powers of herbs. But there is also magic peculiar to a person’s nature, such as summoning elementals, kenning the future through a mirror, or drawing down the moon. Then there are darker gifts.” She paused, gazing steadily at Ravyn, trying to detect the slightest hint of mockery or ridicule from the man. “Curses, demons, calling forth the dead – not all can, nor would they want to. Magic calls for sacrifices, not of others, but of one’s self. The greater or darker the magic, the more one loses his own humanity.” She shifted uncomfortably, feeling hot gazes at her back. “I really can’t say more. I’ve said too much.”

  Ravyn nodded. “I understand. As far as anyone knows, or will ever know, we were discussing the events of the day, aspects of the old case now reopened.”

  “I must go now.”

  Standing, she reached into her pocket. Her fingers touched a thick square of parchment. The intricate blood-symbol traced on its surface burned into her flesh. She felt suddenly distracted. She saw him stand, saw him offering his hand, perhaps to show others this had simply been a meeting of colleagues, a subordinate reporting to her superior at the close of one case, the reopening of another. She shook his hand and smiled, but the handshake was as instinctive as the smile. It would be an easy matter to slip the parchment into his coat pocket unseen, as she had been ordered. He would never notice, would not be looking for it. He trusted her, she was sure. How could he not after she had shared so much?

  “We’ve only discussed the case, nothing more.”

  “Thank you, sir.” As they shook hands she moved closer. “I do appreciate that, sir. I’ll check out all the vehicles I can first thing in the morning. You can count on me, sir.”

  “I’m sure I can, Constable.”

  Her hand lingered in his a moment, then she pulled away.

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night,” he said. “Thank you. For everything.”

  She hurried off.

  Ravyn watched Ware make her way to the door, watched those who noted her departure, watched those who ignored her, or seemed to. At the door she paused and looked back, face white as the moon. Then she was gone, lost in the immensity of the night.

  Ravyn sat. The pages of Dale Stryker’s grimoire returned to shimmer translucently in the air before him, and he studied them minutely, unseen and unsuspected by others.

  * * *

  Outside the Broken Lance, Constable Hillary Ware staggered to the nearest car, leaning forward, bracing herself against the still-warm bonnet. She gulped in lungsful of cooling air. Rubbery legs nearly failed her. She wretched without substance. Only the bulk of the vehicle kept her from slipping to the ground.

  The sickness passed after a few moments.

  She reached into her pocket.

  The parchment square quivered in her palm, or it may have been no more than her hand trembling. Under the sodium glare of the car park lights, the blood was black as squid ink. The parchment became dust, dust carried away by the breath of the night.

  What had she done?

  You’ve proved yourself worthy of the uniform, she told herself.

  She had also, she knew, sealed her own doom.

  When the world stopped spinning and strength returned to her legs she made her way out of the car park. She saw no one about.

  She wanted nothing more than to go home, but first had to visit the constabulary. Later, she would seek the haven of Shield Cottage. There, she would be protected from all harm behind the unblinking eye of the Elder Sign. Her father had carved one at the head of her infant bed, and she had always drawn great comfort from knowing she was ever watched over by powers older than humanity’s brief tenancy of Earth.

  Some things never change, she thought. Nor should they.

  Passing the village green, she averted her eyes from the stones though she felt them watching her, silent and eternal. She turned up the lane leading to her office.

  She came into view of the constabulary and breathed a sigh of relief. Superintendent Heln’s vehicle was gone.

  Thank the gods for small favours.

  Chapter 12

  The Beckoning Past

  Except for a few lights glimmering like stars through a misty night, Knight’s Crossing was wrapped in darkness. The room was unlit behind Ravyn, his window thrown open, and he felt as if he gazed across a vast delta valley. Sluggish rivers of black oily water snaked among islands, though he knew the rivers were merely narrow lanes and byways, the islands only cottages and shops.

  How many, he wondered, had the protection of the Elder Sign? Who believed, and who dared not disbelieve?

  He also wondered about Hillary Ware. Could she still harbour a fear that he and Stark had come simply to see her fall? Even after he had told her in no uncertain terms they had not?

  She seemed a confident young woman, well suited to serve as the resident constable. Inexperienced, of course, but all he had seen of her marked her as eminentl
y competent. Karen Ramsey held her in high regard, and when it came to penetrating to the essence of a person’s character, he trusted her more than he did himself.

  Yet Ware was still uncertain of him, perhaps herself as well. If these seeds of doubt were not self-sown, who was the sower?

  And if the purpose of their meeting in the pub had not been for the reason she stated, what then? Ravyn’s mind fairly burst from the pressure of unanswerable questions. He leaned his palms against the window’s sill and stared into the clotted darkness.

  His eyelids fluttered as he let memories flood his consciousness, let fall the barriers that kept moments in time separate. He listened to snippets of pub conversations, saw and heard Vogt and Ware and Knox and Mabel Link, watched anxious searchers scurry across the farmstead so many regarded with dread and curiosity, and walked once more the dim corridors of Venture Cottage. Fragments of the grimoire swirled like snow. He heard Highchurch utter lies, and he examined newspapers thirty years vanished.

  He cried out almost in pain at Catherine’s smile.

  His fingers gripped the sill, nails digging deep into soft wood as he kept from falling forward. Breathless, he put all memories back in their pigeonholes and out of his thoughts. He exhaled a deep sigh, let go of the sill and staggered back to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Rarely did he let the past and present mingle so freely, and for good reason. Of all his memories, recollections of Catherine were the most difficult, both to manage and to endure. Except for three days annually, beginning in happiness, but ever careful to draw the curtain before the final tragic act, he kept all thoughts of her veiled from his conscious mind. Just as her smile was undimmed by time’s flow, so were his agony and grief.

  He and Catherine were making the final preparations for their wedding when the Stryker case broke, but it had nothing to do with him. He was a newly minted detective constable assigned to a series of burglaries in Stafford. They had talked about the case, but so had everyone else. Indeed, that summer, at least for a brief period, it was all anyone talked about. An isolated village, long considered odd even by Hammershire standards, splashed across tabloids, with wild tales of black magic, human sacrifice and demons – of course it held the public’s imagination…until it didn’t.

  “He’s spying on us again,” Catherine said.

  “Who is?”

  “Cousin Giles.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m going to give that rascal a piece of my mind.” She started to stand, then sat. “Gone. I wish he would leave us alone.”

  “Are you sure he was there at all?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Probably overheard you ask about the Stryker case.”

  “Maybe, but still…”

  “Might think I have some insight into the case, but it’s none of my concern. It’s far from my mind.”

  “Oh, yes, the burglaries.”

  “Not at the moment, dearest.” Taking her in his arms, he kissed her. “Right now, they are far from my mind as well.”

  Catherine smiled. “What is on your mind, DC Ravyn?”

  “You,” he said. “Forever.”

  Ravyn let the soft lips pressed against his return to their place in memory, but with the greatest reluctance. The pressure upon his lips lingered even after the memory was gone, moist and fragrant as a breeze of the night. He wiped away a tear.

  Despite his ability to recall everything seen, read or heard (he refrained from pub quizzes for obvious reasons), Ravyn did not see himself as being truly intelligent, certainly not creative. Having all facts at hand did not, in itself, make it any easier to see connections between disparate events. At times, however, setting memories into a sort of random motion resulted in new ideas, just as new particles were created in the haphazard collisions within the chambered heart of a cyclotron, the Twenty-first Century’s ‘wheel of fortune.’

  But why Catherine?

  Why that moment?

  What was his mind trying to tell him?

  Perhaps nothing more, he finally decided, than that the past was better left in the past. That, however, was more easily desired than fulfilled. Not only was yesterday ever close at hand for him, but this was Hammershire County, a place where change came slowly if at all, where the past often intruded upon the present, and where old things sometimes refused to die.

  * * *

  PC Hillary Ware woke with a start, surprised she was still alive. She lifted her head from her crossed arms and felt a cool moist breeze against her face. The door of the constabulary had blown open, was swinging softly back and forth. She rose, then snatched at the flying sheet of paper pinned by her arm. After a moment’s consideration, she folded and tucked it into her pocket rather than destroy it.

  She had escaped being killed while slumbering insensible and unprotected, but that meant nothing. Dawn was a long ways off. She might yet hear the Crone whisper her name.

  Fatigue brought on by the long day’s search had combined with stress to weaken her. First, Heln had pulled up to the constabulary at dusk; then, as she set out to trap Ravyn, the hex-parchment had been put in her hand and orders given to place it on Ravyn. After fleeing the Broken Lance, neither task completed, she only intended a momentary rest after finishing her statement.

  She extinguished the desk-lamp.

  “Is someone there?”

  Silence met her call, but an expectant one, as if a listener heard, but did not answer. She stood by the entrance, one hand on the door, the other on the jamb. The night was unrelieved by moon or star. A low ragged mist kept her from seeing more than a few feet.

  This was ridiculous, she decided, her standing there, fearful of remaining in the office, terrified of venturing into the night. Turning, she went to her desk, unlocked and opened the drawer, and pulled out the silver necklace her father had crafted for her Awakening on her thirteenth year. The argent Elder Sign glimmered in the dimness. It was the work of a master artisan, the last thing her father created before the Crone whispered his name at the crossroads.

  She gazed at it with affection, reassurance and embarrassment. This was the first time she had removed the necklace since returning to Knight’s Crossing. Before reporting for training in Stafford, she locked it away. Other recruits would have seen it, would have asked about it. She could not have kept it hid. And then she would have had to admit she was an ignorant and superstitious fool of a girl, something they would surely already suspect when they found out the village of her birth.

  And she had lied to her mother. She was not stupid enough to go to foreign parts, she had argued, without protection from dark forces and the darker deeds of men. She feared her mother’s Sight might see through her mendacity, but she accepted the word of a daughter who never lied about anything; secrets were one thing, everyone had those, but lies were altogether different.

  She felt ensnared, not only by her own lies, but by deceptions forced upon her. If only she could have made a clean breast of it to Mr Ravyn. If only he were not an outsider.

  Her lips tightened to a thin grim line. If she wanted to escape all entanglements, she would have to free herself. Heln was gone, so that would have to wait, but the greater peril was in the village she had sworn to protect.

  She put the necklace around her neck, fastened the clasp, and tucked it beneath her blouse. The metal, which should have felt cool, was warm against her skin, and the pendant Elder Sign burned. She felt its power flow through and around her. She closed and locked the door behind her as she stepped into the night.

  A vague greyness loitered in the east. She had slept longer than she realized. The promise of dawn did not, however, bring any light. Instead, it seemed to heighten the darkness, as a sliver of light on a standing stone’s edge only served to deepen the shadows beyond.

  Ware headed toward the village green. She could not shake the sense that she was being watched, not by the elemental powers that were ever about, but by human eyes. As she passed, she glanced in the direction of Ventur
e Cottage, and paused.

  The structure was swathed in gloom and silence, squatting at the back of the garden Henry Winsell could not tend without fearing the sky would fall upon him. The curtained windows were a lighter grey against the darkness of the cottage, but the door was a deeper black. It was, she realized, open.

  She paused at the gate, glanced longingly toward the village’s centre, then took out her torch and set along the path. She played the beam right and left, but nothing lay hidden in the overgrowth. The door swung wide.

  “Mr Winsell?” Her voice was soft as she called from the open doorway, but boomed in her ears. “Mr Winsell? It’s Hillary…” She paused. “It’s PC Ware, village constable.”

  The stillness of the cottage remained unbroken. She stepped in and closed the door, but did not turn on the lights. The beam seemed weak as she played it over the old furnishings. She searched all the rooms of the cottage quickly, then went out back into a garden even more overgrown than the front.

  Henry Winsell was not to be found, alive or dead.

  It was a dark night, bereft of stars or moon, and the mist clung like cobwebs. Winsell was known to roam on such nights, but Ware thought it unlikely he would set out so soon after the unpleasantness with Lebbie Rodgers and his mob. And, even had he decided to venture out, he would not have left the door wide open.

  The cottage held no sign of violence. No furniture had been overturned, nothing seemed out of place, and there was no sign of blood. Every indication was that Henry Winsell had left home of his own volition, and had irrationally left the door open to his enemies, new and old.

  In seemed the only answer, extrapolated from available facts.

  Except it was impossible.

  Unless… Ware paused in her thoughts. How did she know the unfortunate Winsell was an agoraphobe? She had deduced it from his actions and reactions, confirmed now by what he had confessed to Ravyn, but was it true? She had checked his background with Stafford CRO when the Drinkwater boy went missing, but that only told her he had no form, no record of arrests or convictions. He was an outsider, not from London, she had discovered, but Denby Marsh, but an outsider all the same.