by Greg Bear
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I wanted to apologize for running away like that.”
“No apology needed,” Helena said. She seemed subdued. She opened the door wider and invited him in, then left the door open and blocked it with a brick. “It must be rough on you. Confusing.”
“I guess. Anyway, that’s no excuse to act like a little kid. To be rude, I mean.”
“I’m glad you came back,” she said, standing a few feet away. “Would you like to sit?” They sat and Helena bit on a thumbnail, watching him but not really seeing him.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She seemed to reach a decision and leaned forward, staring at him earnestly. “Michael, will you swear something for me? Double swear? Because I’m taking a big risk.”
“What risk?”
“Will you swear?”
“Swear to what, Helena?”
She stood nervously and paced in front of him, waving her arms as she spoke. “You’re a sweet fellow, but you didn’t understand what we meant yesterday. You know how strange you are, being taken care of by Breeds and so on.”
“I guess,” Michael said.
“Don’t guess. Do you know?”
“It’s strange to me, that’s for sure.”
“Well, it’s even stranger for us. Nobody from here—I mean humans—has ever been given that treatment before. So it makes us wonder, are you a double agent or what? A Sidhe who just looks human?”
“I’m not a Sidhe,” Michael said, laughing.
“No, I don’t think you are. You sweat when you’re nervous.” She giggled and placed her hand reassuringly on his shoulder, letting the fingers linger, gripping him. “So you have to swear to me, you’re not a double agent, you’re not a plant or whatever put here to catch us.”
“I swear,” Michael said.
“Your eyes look so human,” Helena said. “Such a nice green color. What’s happened to you since yesterday?”
Michael blinked at the change in subject. “I found a place to live in Halftown.”
“Oh, where?”
“You wanted me to swear. I did. So what next?”
Helena kneeled down before him. “You know Savarin. He’s a scholar. There are other people you haven’t met, except one of them came to see you that night they gave the dinner. When you came to town. A short, heavy fellow with black hair.”
Michael didn’t remember him.
“Well, anyway, he saw you, and thought sometime we’d have to decide whether to contact you.”
A bell rang in the town plaza. Michael went to the window to listen.
“So you’re contacting me,” he said.
Helena stepped up beside him. “That’s the warning bell,” she said, her voice quavering. “Alyons is here, or some of his riders. So I’ll tell you quickly. We found a cache of Sidhe metal. Never mind where. Some people here are keeping it, making it into… things. A piano, for one. What I wouldn’t give to hear a piano again! But they won’t let us play it, of course, until after—” She stopped abruptly, her face paling. Hoof steps sounded in the narrow alleyway. “Michael!”
“What?”
“Are they after you, or did you bring them here?”
“I’m not one of them,” Michael said. She grasped his arm.
“They’re outside!”
Alyons and two of his coursers paced at leisure on horseback toward the door at the end of the alleyway. Alyons glanced up and spotted Michael in the window. Michael pulled back.
“Antros! Your presence is requested!”
“They do want you,” Helena said.
“It looks that way.”
“Oh, don’t tell them anything. I’m so frightened. Where will they take you?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. He stepped out into the hall and looked the opposite way. If he could only get back into that mindset again—He turned to Helena and took her hand clumsily in his, having to grasp it twice before holding it firm. He had a crazy urge to laugh. “A piano, eh?”
“Shh!”
“That’s not what I had in mind, but I guess that’s pretty subversive.”
“Man-child!” Alyons called.
He kissed her hand and felt a flush of pride mix with his fear. A Sidhe appeared in the door at the bottom of the stairs. Michael unceremoniously pushed Helena back into her room and shut the door. He stood at the top of the steps, looking down on the courser with what he hoped passed for imperious disdain. “What do you want?”
The courser began climbing, giving no answer. Michael looked to either side of the Sidhe, wondering if he could play the uncertain flower down the stairs. There was only one way to find out. With all his speed and concentration, he dashed down the steps, trying to send a shadow to one side and swerve himself to the other. The courser grabbed him without hesitation and placed him under one arm as easily as if he carried a trussed pig, then turned and marched out the door, presenting him to the Wickmaster.
They exchanged a few words in Cascar and Michael looked directly at Alyons.
“So you’re learning from the Crane Women,” the Wickmaster said. “But not too well.”
The courser spoke again and they laughed. “Never make a shadow when there are only two ways to send it,” Alyons advised. He hefted his wick and motioned for Michael to be tied behind his horse. They skillfully reversed the horses in the narrow alley and left with Michael in tow. He looked over his shoulder and saw Helena at the window, her face pale. His hands were tied by the trailing rope; he could do nothing. For a moment, he had feared the Sidhe would take her, as well.
They pulled him out of town, walking their horses just fast enough to keep him half-running. They joined another group of four, making a total of seven Sidhe, and jerked Michael down the road to the Isomage’s mansion.
Chapter Nineteen
The troop led Michael up the path to the Isomage’s house, jerking sharply on his rope as he fell back. Alyons dismounted and went inside while the others waited, silent and aloof even from each other.
After some minutes, Alyons emerged and took the end of Michael’s rope. He reeled it in until he stood just two feet from Michael, towering over him. “She wants to speak with you, man-child.” His expression was stony and his eyes seemed fixed in their sockets as he turned away, pulling Michael by his tied and outstretched hands. Alyons seemed to be in a state of controlled rage, which perversely made Michael more optimistic; if the circumstances weren’t to Alyons’ liking, perhaps he wasn’t in as much trouble as he’d thought.
The interior of the house was as he remembered, only darker and cooler. The sun was now on the horizon. The day had been particularly short.
The staircase led up into brighter light from the narrow windows along the entry way. Lamia stood on the balcony, her tiny, finely molded hands gripping the railing.
“Is he down there?” she asked.
“As you requested,” Alyons said, his tone dripping contempt.
“Send him up to me.”
The Wickmaster took his time undoing the rope, his long corded fingers cool against Michael’s arms. “Go,” he said. He gave Michael an unnecessarily hard push and pointed up the stairs. Michael ascended, rubbing his reddened wrists and watching the daylight grow dull in the upper reaches. He didn’t fancy staying in the house after dark, but even less did he fancy traveling with the coursers at night, or walking back to the town alone. He met Lamia on the landing.
A change had come over her. He could see it even in the fading light. Her skin was waxen, her face tighter, as if she wore a restraining mask. Around her eyes, scaly patches had started to flake away and her hands were criss-crossed with tiny thin wrinkles like cracks in bread dough. He stopped five paces from her. Lamia made no move toward him, instead regarding him with a wavering gaze. She seemed deadly tired.
“You grieve me, boy,” she said softly. “I set you a task and you run from it.”
“I don’t like being a slave,” he said.
“You�
�re… no… slave.” Her voice carried bitter humor. “You’re freer than I am, freer than Alyons down there.” She gestured with a trembling hand and immediately returned it to the railing to support herself. Michael stared down into the lower floor’s gloom. Alyons stood at the foot of the stairs, head bowed, twisting the rope and coiling it in his fingers.
“They keep trying to kill me,” Michael said.
“Who, the Crane Women?” Lamia tittered, a dead dry sound of rolling pebbles. She motioned for him to come closer. He hesitated and she made as if to reach out with one hand and strangle him. “Closer!” she growled.
He moved one stride. She edged a few inches along the railing, making it creak beneath her weight. Her arms bounced in slow, oily waves beneath the fabric of her gown. “They are teaching you how to stay alive.”
“I can stay alive on my own, in Euterpe with all the others.”
“You will not stay in the town. The town is for fools, cowards too afraid to make their own way.”
“I’m not too afraid.”
“You’re too stupid to succeed, then.” She lowered her voice and pushed back from the railing, tottering for one awful moment. “You require tempering.” Michael retreated two steps in case she fell; he saw her as a poorly balanced sack of venomous fluids, about to topple and burst. But Lamia kept her balance. “Come with me,” she said. “We have to talk alone.”
She wobbled and thumped through a doorway leading to a second floor hallway. This part of the house seemed in better condition than the ground floor; as far as he could tell in the twilight, the walls were unmarked, and the floor was carpeted, muffling her ponderous steps. She reached out with her left hand and pushed wide a door, motioning for Michael to enter first. He sidled past her and stood in a broad empty room. Lighted candles were placed high on all four walls in sconces at intervals of several feet. The floor was hardwood, brilliantly polished. A second Lamia labored upside down in the depths of the wood as she followed him. She closed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
“Are you sick?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her small eyes, enclosed in scaly flesh, saddened as she looked beyond him at the empty room.
“You have a duty, boy,” she said distantly. “Have you learned more about this house, about the Realm?”
“A little,” Michael said. “Not nearly enough.”
“You know that the Isomage lived here?”
He nodded, “I don’t know who he was…Was he David Clarkham?”
“Is, boy. He is.” Her lips formed an upward-tilting curve suggesting a smile. To each side, the skin of her cheeks separated in fine cracks. “You know that he wishes to save us?”
Michael shook his head. “Why isn’t he here, then?”
“He was driven off by his enemies. I told you. The battle that destroyed this entire plain. They forced all the humans in their control to live here afterward, in desolation and pain. I’ve never been to the town; I cannot leave this house. But from this house I have a… small influence. In my cursed condition, I can help. Do you understand?”
“No.” There was pleasant defiance in his ignorance. It warmed him.
She rolled her hips and dragged her legs to the middle of the room. He caught a whiff of her odor, unpleasant and dead sweet, like decaying flowers. “You must not defy the plan,” she said. “The Sidhe opposed to us simply wait for their chance to…” She shook her head and the skin of her neck crackled.
“Then why do they give you any power at all?” Michael asked.
“They cannot hurt me more than they already have. There is a treaty over this land, over the plain. We suffer our punishment, but if they make any further moves against us, the treaty crumbles… and a power buried deep in the land is unleashed against the transgressors. There is a stalemate. To the Sidhe, it seems we are defeated. Perhaps we are… and perhaps not. But should humans break the treaty…” Her voice trailed off again.
“Why am I so important?”
“Important?” She spat on the floor, then walked to the spot where her spittle beaded on the polished surface and with infinite pains, bent down to wipe it with the hem of her gown. Her skin crackled again as she returned to her upright posture. “You are not crucial. You are simply a messenger. But to help at all, you must survive. You must continue to train with the Crane Women.”
“Do I have any choice?”
Lamia turned her back on him. “I have some influence over the Wickmaster; but only some. If you do not return to the Crane Women, he will take charge of you. What he’ll do with you, I don’t know.”
“No choice, then.”
She swiveled slowly, in grotesque parody of a pirouette. Michael looked at the far wall and saw a long, horizontal bar mounted beneath the candles—a practice bar for dancers. “May you never know how cruel life is,” she said. “Or what can be lost… and yet remain alive. Go back to the Crane Women. Resume your training.”
Michael stood silent in the candlelight, then turned and left the room. He descended the stairs and stopped before Alyons, who let the rope fall free from one hand.
“Jakap?” the Wickmaster asked. The rope unwound like a struggling snake.
“Lamia orders me to go back to the Crane Women.”
“She orders nothing,” Alyons said. “I am Wickmaster.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Michael said.
The Sidhe leaned over, bringing his face level with Michael’s. “You are right, man-child. I can’t hurt you if you do as she wishes. But step out of line, just once…”
“Wickmaster!” Lamia stood by the balustrade, limned by the faint glow from the dancing room. “Obey the Pact.”
Michael dodged the Sidhe’s grasping hand and walked out the door. “I’ll ride back,” he said, trying to conceal the tremble of anger and fear in his voice.
“On which horse?” Alyons asked, closing the front door with a solid thump. “Where is your horse?”
“Your horse,” Michael said.
Behind him, Alyons barked a short laugh. “My horse. Such a beautiful and golden horse, such a temptation, my horse… even for humans. Mount then, Antros, show us your skill.”
Michael touched the golden Sidhe horse delicately, then mounted as he had been instructed. He wondered idly if it were possible to steal the horse, and decided that would be very unwise. But his feet kicked out of their own volition, gouging the animal in the flanks.
The landscape, locked in long, gray twilight, suddenly blurred around him. The horse’s flesh became like flowing steel under the saddle and between his calves, and Michael felt an incredible pulse of power as they streaked along the road. His body seemed to melt and he grasped the horse with his arms and legs in sheer terror, shouting for it to stop. His words were drowned in the wind.
Michael had an impression the coursers were right behind him, but when he tried to turn and look, the landscape made such bizarre gyrations that he closed his eyes.
Suddenly, everything settled. He clung to the back of the horse to keep from sliding off. They stood on the mound, the horse’s breathing shallow and steady. It jerked its head and shivered. He slid from the saddle and barely managed to land on his feet.
Alyons’ mount rejoined the coursers standing around the Crane Women’s hut. The horses’ skins gleamed in the furnace glow from the window; the Wickmaster’s cape reflected the myriad tiny glimmers in the dirt of the mound as he dismounted from a borrowed animal. The courser without a horse ran gracefully and swiftly over the road and across the creek, stopping at the edge of the mound.
Banners of dark glided up from the horizon, announcing night.
Spart emerged from the hut, glanced at Michael without comment, and turned to Alyons. They spoke in Cascar for several minutes. Michael shivered in the river of cool air flowing from the south. The coursers murmured among themselves.
Nare called to him from the window. He walked unsteadily to the hut. The Crane Woman’s luxuriant hair was animated by a current of wa
rm air flowing through the window and caught the inner glow, forming a golden nimbus around her face.
“To Lamia?” she asked. Michael nodded. “Is she different?”
“She’s sick, I think. Her skin’s all patchy.” He was relieved. Apparently he was not going to be chided for running away. “I didn’t want to come back,” he said, the words tumbling out all at once.
“Of course,” she said. She closed the window.
Alyons glided aboard his horse and the coursers moved off slowly into the dark. For a moment, Michael stood by the hut, then returned to his own shelter. Biri was nowhere to be seen. There was no one to talk to, not even a target for defiance.
He thought of Eleuth and Helena. He hoped Helena wasn’t worried—and then hoped she was. He pondered his own neutral feelings. All emotion seemed to have drained out of him.
“Wait and see,” he said again and again until sleep overtook him.
That night, before sleep, the darkness behind his eyelids roiled with thoughts of home, the Isomage’s mansion, the flaking rims of Lamia’s eyes. He awoke before dawn and listened to the humming sky. As the humming faded, he peered out his door to see a pale band of gray on the horizon. Clouds had moved in during the night, and though the air wasn’t exceptionally cold, flakes of snow were falling. The flakes melted as soon as they touched the dirt.
Eleuth came from Halftown about an hour later, wrapped in a light shawl and wearing knee-high boots. She carried four buckets of milk, as on the day Michael had first seen her. He stood in front of his hut but she barely looked at him as she walked past. Biri watched both of them from his door. When the buckets had been deposited outside the Crane Women’s hut, she began her return trip.
“Eleuth,” Michael said. She stopped, still not looking at him. “I couldn’t come yesterday.”
“So I heard.”
“I want to thank you.” Those words sounded particularly callous, as if his need to say them belied their meaning.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I heard Alyons took you from the human town.”
“I’m fine. I’ll try to see you today.”
