by Kate Elliott
“Chryse!” Sanjay dived for his wife, tackling her, and they fell tangled onto the ground.
Maretha, hearing his shout, followed the line of his gaze. With a cry she flung herself on top of her husband, shielding him.
The arrow had already been loosed.
Professor Farr, looking a trifle confused, began to turn. The arrow impaled him through the chest.
A sudden, blanketing stillness dropped over the woods, permeating each leaf, each blade of grass, the air itself, even in a remote way the stars far above. Mist roiled in the distant gaps between trees, illuminated by the now-risen moon so that it seemed that an assembly of mute ghosts had gathered there. The hush was so complete that there might only have been the five of them in the entire land.
Out of the forest, appearing out of the mist with the eerie abruptness of an unnatural creature, came a stag, imperious in its silence. It paused on the edge of the glade, surveying them as if passing judgement. It lifted its head. In a nearby tree, a bird chirruped and broke into song. The stag turned and bounded away into the trees, soon lost to sight in the uncanny fog. An owl hooted.
“Father!” cried Maretha. She rose and ran to the professor, knelt beside him. “Father.”
He moaned a little. His eyes did not open, but his hand groped along the ground until he found hers. “I did love you, Maretha,” he breathed. It was his last breath.
She began to weep. “He did love me,” she said in a low voice, to anyone and to no one. “As much as he was capable of love.”
“It’s starting to rain.” Chryse rolled to one side to get off her husband. “Oh, Sanjay. You’re hurt!”
He sat up, winced. “It’s not bad. It will heal, love.”
“Here.” She ripped at her dress until she had torn off several strips. “Wrap this around it.” She kissed him. “You idiot. What were you doing? It was—it was like there was a curtain between you and us, all a blur.”
“I must be attracted to hopeless causes. I couldn’t just stand by and let them kill him.” He had to stop a moment. “Good thing it didn’t hurt like this when it happened,” he muttered in a voice made ragged by pain.
Chryse laid a hand on his arm, but her gaze lifted to the earl. He was sitting now, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He looked completely drained of emotion, energy, and resolve. “I would have,” she said in an undertone, and she looked away from him, from her husband, ashamed.
“What did you say, Chryse?” Sanjay asked.
She hugged him fiercely. “Nothing. Nothing. You will be all right?”
He smiled, a bit wanly, but with gentle obstinacy. Around them, the light rain misted down, a low hush through leaves, dissipating the fog. “Of course I will. I may be sweet, but I’m stubborn.”
Chapter 25:
The Healer
MARETHA KNELT BY HER father for a long while, weeping with quiet dignity as she prayed to Our Lady, Healer of Sorrows. Chryse knelt beside her for some time, rose finally and went back to help Sanjay bind his wound. The earl did not move.
Eventually the rain slowed and ceased. The moon had risen high above the trees, its light diffused through the last autumn leaves, giving the forest floor a grey sheen. Chryse pulled Sanjay to his feet and supported him as he hobbled over to Maretha. But she had already stood and was wiping the last tears from her cheeks with her fingers. Her father’s body had vanished.
For a moment Sanjay and Chryse just gaped. The place he had lain was apparent: crushed grass, a stain of blood.
“The forest took him,” said Maretha. Her voice was calm but there was a disturbing quality about her eyes as she turned to look at them. “We may as well go back.” Chryse handed her her dress and, wordlessly, she put it on, then looked past them toward her husband.
Sanjay, watching her, wondered at the intensity of her gaze—he could not read what emotion lay behind it. “You saw the figure, too.” It was more statement than question.
“Yes.” She walked away from them, over to her husband.
“Was that what it was?” asked Chryse. “I just remember hearing—” She shook her head. “I’m not sure it was even a sound, only that for an instant I knew something was behind me.”
“I wonder.” Sanjay shifted. His weight was heavy on Chryse’s shoulders. The two of them stared at Maretha as she stopped beside the earl but did not speak or touch him. “I wonder if she had an instant to decide whether to save her father or her husband—and now regrets the choice.”
“Pierced by an arrow.” Chryse shuddered. “Do you remember the bonfire at High Summer’s Eve? And the effigy they burned on it?” She examined the dark forest and the thin globe of moon above. “How are we going to get out of here? I’m completely lost.”
Maretha had still not spoken, but now the earl stood and followed her when she walked back to Chryse and Sanjay.
“I think we had better go back,” Maretha said. She appeared far too matter-of-fact. Her face had a tight, over-controlled tautness. “It will be dawn soon.”
“How will we find the entrance?” asked Chryse. “And how can we possibly find our way back through that labyrinth?”
“I know the way,” said Maretha.
The earl stood so meekly behind her that it seemed a charade until one saw the look of stunned despair on his face, panic suppressed only by the knowledge of the complete devastation this place had wreaked upon him and his powers.
They went slowly through the forest. Sanjay used the spear like a cane, but his progress was slow. The first filtering of light had just begun to penetrate the deep of night when they came to a low hillock where gaped a dark opening, blacker even than the night sky. Two lanterns sat on the turf outside it.
Maretha, picking up the lights, led them down the steps with complete confidence. Chryse had to support Sanjay. At the bottom, Maretha halted. She stood still in intense concentration, as if she was tasting the air.
“I’d like to sit down for a moment,” said Sanjay. Chryse helped him lower himself to the cold stone floor. She knelt beside him, resting her head against his right shoulder. The earl had moved away from them to stand in the darkest corner. He had not yet spoken a single word.
“There’s someone else down here,” said Maretha.
Chryse got up and went to stand beside her. “What do you mean? Who?”
Maretha did not answer immediately. She listened, and Chryse laid a hand on her arm and listened with her.
Sanjay sighed and put a hand on the floor to push himself up. His palm touched cloth, closed around a hand-sized object. He picked it up, found himself holding the velvet pouch in which they had first discovered their cards. He could feel the shape of cards inside.
“Chryse.” His voice was low as he slipped the pouch into the pocket of his coat next to his half of the cards. “You must have dropped this.”
Her attention was elsewhere; she did not respond.
As he began to push himself up, he felt a hand at his waist; the earl had returned to help him.
“Thank you,” said Sanjay once he had gotten himself balanced with the main part of his weight on his unwounded leg. He leaned back against the cold stone wall.
The earl’s expression was an astonishing mix of fierce pride and utter hopelessness. “Thank you,” he murmured, as if the words offended him. “You saved my life, and now you thank me for such a trivial—” He halted, perhaps as much surprised by the raggedness of his voice as lost for words.
“—kindness?” supplied Sanjay, smiling in the dimness.
The earl looked at him as if he had no idea of the meaning of such a word.
“There!” Maretha clutched Chryse’s free hand in a tight grip, starting forward abruptly.
Chryse held on to her and dragged her to a stop. Out of the dark recesses of the maze echoed a gunshot.
“Evidently we’re not done yet,” said Sanjay with all the dry humor of an old campaigner. He hobbled forward, the earl at his side.
“This way,” said Maretha.
Julian thought it prudent to stop back at camp to get his pistol before they went down the eastern entrance. Kate got extra lanterns for herself and the children to carry. Dusk was gathering as they started down.
Kate went first, followed closely by an unnaturally subdued Mog and Pin; Lucias came after them. He walked in a kind of stupor, his eyes wide and staring. Julian, behind him, guided him easily enough with brief words and the occasional pressure of his hand, but he never responded directly to questions. As they descended, he muttered words under his breath that no one else could quite make out, although once he said, quite distinctly, “He is not of this land.”
In the square room at the base of the staircase they found a fresco that, winding around all four walls, depicted the crowning of the young king by the young queen at the Midwinter Festival of Lights.
“Looks like you, Lucias.” Kate held her lantern close to the central figures: a black-haired young woman in a bell-shaped flounced skirt and a tight, revealing jacket and a fair young man dressed in stiff leggings and laced sandals.
“I cannot see him,” said Lucias clearly. His face showed white in the lantern light. His eyes seemed unfocused.
“Can’t see ’oo?” demanded Mog.
“Shh, stupid,” hissed Pin. “Can’t you see he’s spelled?”
“Pin,” said Julian severely, “a young lady does not use the epithet ‘stupid’ when speaking in public.”
“Cor!” breathed Mog at the same moment that Pin shrieked. Neither reaction was in response to Julian’s admonition.
In the center of the room stood a slim pillar of white stone. A small, straight, thin-bladed knife of finely-chipped obsidian rested on it.
Mog and Pin reached for it simultaneously.
“Don’t touch that!” shouted Julian, coming forward from the doorway. He held onto Lucias with one arm as he walked to the middle of the room.
“What is it?” asked Mog. He had clasped his hands behind his back as if it was the only way he knew to resist the temptation. Pin had both her thumbs in her mouth,
Julian reached out tentatively and touched it. It felt smooth and cold, a perfect blend of primitive materials and sophisticated worksmanship. He picked it up. “I don’t know. Some kind of knife.” He licked his thumb and tested the edge. “Quite sharp.”
“Nothing,” said Kate. She had walked the entire perimeter. “No entrance. What have you got?”
Julian held it out for her to examine.
“Holy Son. If I didn’t know better I’d call that a scalpel. Here.” She put out a hand to take it. “Let me see. It’s a curious design, but no less effective for that, I’d wager—”
“Look!” shouted Mog and Pin at the same moment. Kate and Julian glanced up to see the wall fell away to reveal a staircase that led down into black depths.
Lucias pulled free of Julian and moved like a sleepwalker towards the stairs. “She is veiled.” His voice was a strangled whisper. “Veiled, or not here yet. But all power is hers.”
He was on the third step before anyone moved. Kate ran after him, and Julian grabbed the children’s hands and tugged them along. It was dark, quite dark, even with Kate’s lantern a soft beacon before them, illuminating the light shock of Lucias’s hair as he led the way down. It was also still, stifling hot air untouched by freshness, and silent. Only Lucias’s muttering broke the hush. They reached at last a small circular chamber at the base of the stairs.
Kate paused, wiping her brow, to let Julian and the children catch up with her. “It’s empty, except for that painting. I don’t see a door. That looks like a very ancient version of the Physician card of the Gates.”
“No, it doesn’t,” began Julian. “It looks like the man on the ice—I can’t remember—”
Lucias had hesitated only a brief moment. Now he kept moving forward, straight into the wall.
“—it’s not a wall at all,” finished Julian, and he and Kate and the children hurried after Lucias.
They let Lucias lead them through dark corridors, Kate directly behind the youth, Julian at the rear sheparding Mog and Pin before him. Once Julian thought he heard the rustle of heavy cloth behind him. Kate paused, twice, at side corridors, but the soft noise of low, agreeable feminine laughter was, she decided, only her imagination. Mog and Pin whispered furtively to each other. Only Lucias seemed undisturbed, oblivious to the darkness, intent on some path he alone could detect.
They went further and further in, wandering a maze of tunnels until finally, as they rounded the curve of a long bend and found themselves at a branching of four corridors, Julian halted. “Do you know, Kate, I’m thoroughly lost. I sincerely pray that you are not in a similar case.”
Kate laughed, a low chuckle. “And as you are an unrepentant sinner, Julian, I fear that your prayers are unlikely to be—”
Mog screamed. Pin darted past Kate and knocked into Lucias.
A flicker of a shadow moved in one of the corridors just as the shattering explosion of a pistol shot rang in the closed space, deafening. Pin, with the instinct of a child brought up in gutters and back alleys, threw herself flat. Lucias was already off balance and now he reeled backwards from the force of some impact and collapsed against the wall.
Kate yelled and raced forward, swinging her lantern like a weapon. The steel blaze of a pistol muzzle glittered in lantern light as it came down hard on Kate’s head. She dropped as swiftly as Pin, but as a dead weight.
A second shot sounded, followed by a muffled cry that gurgled to silence. A body fell to stone and tumbled out into the light of Kate’s fallen lantern. Blood leaked out along the cracks between the stones on the floor.
“Bloody hell,” swore Julian. A barest waft of smoke drifted up from his pistol.
“Cor, guvnor,” said Mog with awe. “You took him right o’ the throat.”
“Kate!” cried Julian, propelled forward by some utterly compelling emotion. He let his pistol fall as he sank to his knees beside her. “Kate! Son’s mercy, Katie, answer me!”
She stirred, making a sound halfway between a curse and a groan, and began to push herself up, slowly.
Julian embraced her, pulling her into his chest. “Oh, Katie my love,” he murmured into her hair. “Thank the Mother.”
Kate was unsure whether she was hallucinating or simply suffering the after-effects of a blow to the head. Julian held her as tightly and tenderly as any lover might, and he trembled as he held her, as if in the throes of a fever.
“Julian,” she said in a weak voice. Her head throbbed.
He tilted her back enough that he could look into her face. With a sense of disorientation, as if the ground had dropped away from beneath her and yet she did not fall, she recognized the look of concentration melded with brilliancy in his eyes as he gazed at her for what it was: the look of a man in love.
A moment later he had controlled his expression and composed himself to look at her with cool concern. “I trust you will live,” he said. She knew him well enough to hear the effort it took for him to keep his voice calm.
“I daresay,” she replied, and was shocked by the shakiness of her voice.
“Lucias been shot,” said Pin in a fascinated undertone. “Come look, Mog. ’Spose he’ll die?”
“Bloody hell.” Kate jerked up.
“Let me help,” said Julian solicitously. He lifted her up and set her on her feet gently.
“Thank you,” she replied, a little constrained. She released herself from his grip with a delicacy brought on as much by her own confusion as by the sudden look of vulnerability about him. “We’d better see to Lucias.”
“Of course.” He toed the corpse with a fastidious nudge of one boot. “Do you know this man? He’s in typical laborer’s garb, but he’s much older than any of our people.”
Kate was already beside Lucias, one hand on the youth’s wrist. “He’s alive. I can’t tell whether the bullet went into his chest or—Do you have a knife, Julian?”
Before he could reply
she grasped at her coat pocket and removed the obsidian scalpel. Carefully she cut Lucias’s shirt away from his body and peeled it, matted with blood, back from the skin. Lucias gasped and his head moved, but he did not open his eyes. The wound opened below his collarbone.
Kate touched the torn skin cautiously.
“He ain’t goin’ to die, is he?” asked Mog. His voice broke on the word “die” and he suppressed a sniffle.
“I don’t think so. Julian, come hold him down. I don’t like the look of this ball, but I think I can get it out easily enough, and then we’ll take him back to camp and wash the wound out properly.”
Julian did as he was told, and Kate, using the scalpel with a deft hand, parted the muscle just enough to slip an edge in and lift out the ball so swiftly and gently that there was scarcely any more bleeding.
“Give me your cravat,” she said, not really aware in her concentration of her tone of voice.
Julian smiled slightly, but the elegant folds were quickly destroyed and Kate used the linen to bind the wound.
“You’re really very good, Kate,” he said as she sat back on her heels to survey her work. Lucias stirred, opened his eyes, and closed them again. The deep hush, the darkness beyond, seemed to foster intimacy within the dim circumference of illumination. “I always wondered why, after your parents disinherited you, that you didn’t just study to be a physician—there was nothing to stop you then.”
She did not look up at him. Her hand cupped the light curls of Lucias’s hair. “I suppose at first I was resigned to losing it.” She shrugged. “Later, I never had the means to pay for my education and live at the same time.”
“You might have come to me, Kate,” he said, a little reproachful.
“Always as your debtor, Julian?” she asked, softly. “Is that always the only course left me?”
Silence lowered down on them like a heaviness emanating from the ceiling. Mog and Pin crept ever closer to Julian, huddling against each other. Lucias breathed evenly. On either side of him knelt Kate and Julian, each with head bowed. The flame of the lantern cast constantly moving highlights across their faces.
