Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

  Charity was singing in her warm contralto as she set a battered and well-seasoned cauldron on the fire and began to put herbs, scrubbed root vegetables, and some jointed pieces of meat into the simmering water. Cooking was a holy mystery to most of the Brabazons, and Indigo’s own skills were limited; but as the stew began to bubble in earnest, and Charity thrust some tubers skewered on peeled sticks into the fire’s embers to roast, the others, in ones and twos, began to drift towards the fire, lured by the rich aroma. As they settled down, faces were cast into dramatic shadow by the flamelight; chestnut hair and copper hair and fire-orange hair glinted; talk was warm and comfortable. Only Stead was missing: Indigo thought she could glimpse his distinctive hair among a group of men who were talking by one of the other fires.

  “What’s to eat?” Rance asked as he sat down on the grass.

  “Mutton,” Charity told him.

  “The same one that Forth and Cour—?”

  “Yes, and don’t let me catch you saying anything about it to anyone in Bruhome!” Charity admonished, then frowned at the two eldest boys. “Sheep stealing—I’m ashamed of the pair of you!”

  Forth grinned. “Not too ashamed to eat the spoils though, eh, Chari?”

  She tossed her head. “What’s done can’t be undone. Now: keep still, and let me make sure everyone’s here.” She began to count; it was an unnecessary but familiar ritual. “Forthright, Courage, Modesty, Temperance, Fortitude, Harmony, Honesty, Truth, Gentility, Moderation, Duty, Piety. Then Indigo, Grimya and me—that’s everyone except for Da.” Satisfied, she started to ladle stew into bowls.

  “Da’s over there, with some of the other travelers,” Cour volunteered, pointing. “Burgher Mischyn’s there, too; I think he’s making some sort of speech.”

  “Better not disturb him, then.” Deftly Chari speared a tuber out of the embers and prodded it cautiously to see if it was cooked through. “Forth, get some ale, please.” She handed a brimming bowl to Indigo.

  For a while then there was a comfortable silence as everyone turned their attention to the food. Indigo was savoring her last tuber, which she’d soaked in the stew gravy, when a footfall announced Stead’s return. He lowered his bulk down between his two eldest sons, and grunted thanks as Charity filled another bowl and passed it to him.

  Forth studied Stead’s expression for a moment, then frowned. “Da? What’s amiss?”

  Stead spooned up a mouthful of stew and washed it down with ale before replying. “You might as well know now as later,” he said gloomily. “The Autumn Revels have been cut short. Just three days, starting tomorrow, and it’ll all be over.”

  Only Duty and Piety, who were too young to grasp the significance of Stead’s words, failed to react. The rest were appalled.

  “Three days? That’s hardly time to do anything!”

  “What sort of takings can we hope to get in just three days?”

  “We’ve been preparing for Bruhome for months—”

  “We’d relied on it to keep us in coin through the winter—”

  And Forth’s voice, cutting through the others with the question that mattered most of all. “But why, Da? What’s happened?”

  “It’s the harvests.” Stead took another swig of beer; he seemed to have lost interest in the food. “You know the rumors we’ve been hearing about a blight? Well, they’re true. Burgher Mischyn’s been telling us the whole tale.”

  Glances were exchanged. Cour said, softly, “Those withered vines we saw …”

  “It isn’t just the vines,” Stead told him. “It’s the hops, the apples—even the pastureland’s getting affected. And no one knows what’s causing it. The plants just turn pale, then white, then wither and die. The farmers hereabouts have already lost half their hop harvest, and now it looks as if the grapes and apples are following suit. And it’s happening to some of the stock beasts, too, where they’ve been grazed on afflicted pastures. There’s new reports of it coming in every day, Burgher Mischyn says. So nobody feels much like celebrating.”

  Modesty leaned forward, twisting her hands together. “But surely it can’t last, Da? Maybe there’ll be a bad year, but come winter the disease is sure to die off along with everything else. Why should they cut the revels short? People want cheering!”

  “If it was just the harvest, Esty lass, I’d agree,” Stead said. “But it seems there’s been other rum happenings in the district.”

  “What sort of happenings?”

  Stead pursed his lips. “To begin with, there’s an illness going about the town. Like a kind of sleeping sickness, Mischyn says. Those who get it just fall asleep and won’t wake up.”

  Charity looked at him in alarm. “Da, we might catch it!”

  “It isn’t the catching kind. Mischyn should know: his own son’s down with it, and his goodwife’s been tending the boy day and night without any ill effect on her. But it’s like the crop blight—they don’t know what it is, or where it comes from.”

  “There must be a town physician,” Indigo put in. “What does he say?”

  “He’s in no position to say anything. He’s got the sickness—been asleep for nine days now. Ach, what was the word Mischyn used?” Stead snapped his fingers, searching for inspiration. “C … something …”

  “Coma?”

  “That’s it. Coma. But they’ve no idea why. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s been people disappearing.”

  Silence fell, and astonished faces stared at him around the circle of firelight. At last, Rance said: “Disappearing?”

  Stead nodded. “Here one day, gone the next. Shepherd went up on the fells, didn’t come back that evening. They sent searchers but they didn’t find him. Man set out to meet friends at a tavern: didn’t arrive at the tavern, hasn’t been seen since. Another man went to bed with his wife one night and woke up next morning to find her gone, with nothing but a shawl missing from among her clothes.” He shrugged eloquently. “Gone, all of them. Just gone.”

  Indigo felt tension crawling through her. She glanced obliquely in Forth’s direction and saw that he, too, was disquieted. She guessed what he was thinking, and a silent communication from Grimya confirmed it.

  He, too, is remembering the horseman we saw on the road, I think, the she-wolf said. Could there be a link between them?

  It’s possible. She recalled the dead-white face, the blank eyes that seemed to stare uncomprehendingly into another world. And the purpose. Above all, the dreadful aura of purpose.

  Stead was speaking again. “Whatever’s afoot here, it’s more than anyone knows how to cope with,” he said. “I’ve known Burgher Mischyn since before you three youngest were born, when he’d only just succeeded to his own Da’s brewery, and in all those years I’ve never seen him in such a taking as he is now. He’s frightened.” He looked at Indigo and raised an ironic eyebrow. “You asked me earlier, lass, what was amiss when we came through the town. Now you know—and if you’d been to Bruhome before today, you’d have seen the difference in the people’s mood. They’re all frightened. And I can’t hardly blame them.”

  “So what are we to do?” Cour asked.

  “What we always meant to do, so far as we can. The revels are still to take place even if they’re subdued, so, like Esty said, we must do our best to cheer the good folk and help ’em forget their troubles for a while.”

  “And hope we can earn enough to see us by,” Charity added.

  “Exactly.” Stead stared down at his bowl of stew. It had grown cold and begun to congeal, and he set it aside, refilling his ale mug instead. “You younger ones should be abed. And the rest of us’d do well to get a good night’s rest. In the morning we’d best look at the show we planned to do and see whether there’s changes ought to be made. Wouldn’t do, would it, to perform something that might offend the townsfolk’s sensibilities with all this going on.”

  It was a tacit dismissal, and although the older Brabazons seemed disposed to argue, something in Stead’s demeanor made them think
better of it. Slowly, reluctantly, they all rose and went to attend their last chores; Harmony, the third eldest girl, chivvied her younger sisters towards the second caravan where all the women slept, and Indigo helped Chari and Esty to wash bowls and spoons at the river and then stamp out the fire.

  As the last embers died and the camp circle sank into starlit darkness, Chari looked up at the sky. “I think we’d best sleep in tonight,” she said thoughtfully. “When there’s no cloud, the small hours can get cold this time of year.”

  That wasn’t her only reason for seeking the security of the caravan, and Indigo knew it; but she made no comment, only nodded agreement. They started towards the van, Grimya padding at Indigo’s side, and had almost reached the steps when a hand came out of the gloom and touched Indigo’s arm.

  “Indigo—before you sleep.” It was Forth. He drew her aside, ignoring Chari’s exasperated look as she walked on, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You were thinking the same as me, weren’t you? When Da told us about those people vanishing.” He paused, scrutinizing her face. “Well? Do you reckon those benighted souls we saw on the road might be the ones who disappeared?‘’

  Indigo hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, Forth; I do.” She glanced towards the van. Chari had gone inside. “But I don’t think we should say anything about it to the others.”

  “Cour and Rance have already worked it out for themselves. Esty too, if I know her. And Da. It was written all over his face.‘’

  “None the less—”

  “I know; I know. Look, I’ll say nothing to anyone else unless they say it to me first. But I think we should keep our eyes and ears open in the town tomorrow. And in particular, watch for anyone who looks too pale for their own good.”

  It was a sensible enough suggestion. “Yes,” Indigo said. “I agree with you.”

  She would have started on towards the van, but Forth seemed reluctant to end the conversation. Suddenly, he said:

  “About the sickness—there was a word for it; you knew what it was …”

  “Coma.”

  “Yes. What does it mean?”

  “It’s like a very deep sleep,” she told him. “A kind of trance. The victims still live, but it’s as though their minds are in a kind of limbo.”

  “Ah.” Forth chewed his lower lip. “You mean, they’re not aware of anything around them—just like those travelers?”

  Indigo’s pulse had quickened to a discomfortingly rapid beat. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly like those travelers.”

  The night was peaceful, and the caravan’s interior dark and warm; but Indigo couldn’t sleep. She lay at the edge of the tangle of cushions and rough blankets spread across the floor to form the bed she shared with the six Brabazon sisters, watching the infinitesimally slow wheeling of the stars across the sky beyond the open half-door. At her back, Esty snored softly; Gentility and Piety, the two youngest girls, had whispered and giggled for a while before a sleepy but sharp admonition from Chari silenced them; now there was no sound but Esty’s throaty, rhythmic breathing.

  Indigo couldn’t stop thinking about what Forth had said, and about the link between the vanishing townsfolk, the four entranced travelers on the road, and the mysterious illness. Forth was right: coma was the key word, and a disquietingly apposite description of the oblivious, unswervable wanderers.

  She turned on to her back, staring up at the van’s painted ceiling. Blighted crops and pastures, looking as though the very stuff of life had been leached from them. Animals, suffering a similar fate. Human beings, bleached, drained, walking or riding the roads as if in a trance. Disappearances. A sleeping sickness. It was a progression, she thought; each stage leading to the next in an awful parade.

  And her subconscious mind was crying out, almost screaming to her, as it told her that, somewhere at the back of this increasingly convoluted mystery, lay the hand of a demon.

  The pattern of star-shadows on the ceiling shifted suddenly, and Indigo looked back to see that Grimya had raised her head and was watching her. In the dark, the wolf’s eyes were faintly lambent.

  Indigo? Are you awake?

  I can’t sleep, she communicated. I can’t stop thinking, Grimya. My thoughts won’t let me alone.

  Is it what Forth was saying?

  That, yes. And more.

  Grimya rose quietly to her feet, a silhouette against the square of the door. Raising her muzzle, she sniffed the air. It is a good night. No wind, and I can hear the river talking. Why don’t we walk for a while?

  Aren’t you tired?

  No. You know I love the dark hours.

  Indigo glanced over her shoulder at the soundly sleeping Esty, then carefully eased herself out from under the blanket that covered her. She unlatched the lower half of the door—the faint click didn’t disturb anyone—and followed Grimya down the steps and out into the night.

  The scents of extinguished fires, grass, animal dung, and the river mingled in her nostrils as she stretched her arms to loosen muscles cramped from lying still. The air had an autumnal chill, but her knee-length robe was protection enough, and the grass beneath her bare feet was soft and pleasant. They skirted the silhouettes of wagons and tents where other travelers slept, and walked down the gentle slope to the river’s broad, shallow bank. In the vegetation at the water’s edge something rustled and splashed; a water-fowl paddled away, complaining briefly, and Grimya’s ears pricked with a hunter’s instinct before the bird swam out of reach and she subsided. Indigo sat down on a reedy tussock and stretched her toes to the water, watching the ripples glint in the starlight as they spread out into the slow current.

  For a few minutes they simply sat in companionable silence; until Grimya voiced the question that Indigo had not wanted to ask herself. The she-wolf was more than telepathic: she could also speak aloud, though her voice was guttural and halting, and long ago she had determined, through an odd but somehow dignified sense of pride, to use that talent whenever there was no one but Indigo to hear her.

  She said: “Have you ll…ooked at the lodestone?”

  “No.” She smiled, but a little bleakly. “I haven’t been able to summon the courage. We know it was leading us towards Bruhome, but now …”

  “You th—ink it may show that we have reached our d … destination?”

  “It’s what I fear. And I don’t want to involve the Brabazons, Grimya. They’ve been true friends to us, and I remember all too well what’s befallen those who befriended me in the past.“

  “These have been good times,” Grimya said somberly. “It is s-sad to think that they must end.”

  “I know; and that’s another part of it.” Indigo looked out at the slow-moving river.

  “Perhaps they need not; at least not yet,” Grimya suggested. “We don’t know for sure what the stone says. Not until we look.”

  Indigo didn’t want to look; she knew what the lodestone’s answer to her question would be. But Grimya’s gentle admonition was fair: the moment couldn’t be postponed for ever.

  She raised a hand to her neck and drew out the leather pouch on its thong. The stone—small, smooth, and unremarkable—fell into her upturned palm. Even in the dark the tiny golden pinpoint within was clearly visible: after a few moments she held it out for Grimya to see. Her face was expressionless.

  Grimya looked, and said, “Ah …”

  The tiny gold eye was no longer pointing westward. Instead, it had settled at the stone’s exact center.

  They had reached the end of their journey.

  For a long time neither of them spoke. Grimya watched her friend with troubled eyes, reading her thoughts but unable to say anything that would be of any comfort. The tracking was done and the hunt was about to begin: here in this peaceable rural backwater something dark and evil was waiting for them, and they must turn their backs on the quiet idyll of the recent past and, once again, face a new manifestation of the horror that Indigo had released from the Tower of Regrets so long ago. The third of the seven demons was sti
rring. And, no matter what the cost, it must be found and destroyed.

  Something glinted on Indigo’s cheek, and Grimya saw that she was crying. But there was neither anger nor despair in her tears; they were simply a release, an acknowledgment and acceptance of her destiny and a wistful regret for the quiet interlude that must now come to an end. The wolf blinked, trying to think of some words of sympathy, but before she could speak Indigo wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.

  “I’m all right, Grimya. Don’t fret.” She looked at the moisture on her skin, noting abstractedly that the starlight made it gleam like silver. Silver … the color of her own weakness, the sign of the flaw within her that was, perhaps, the greatest danger of all. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to banish the unwonted image of a face she had seen all too often in her dreams. A child’s features, cat’s teeth like pearls in the small, cruelly smiling mouth, silver hair a soft nimbus, silver eyes calculating and mocking. It had been a long time since the creature she called Nemesis, the unholy symbiote born of her own dark nature and released to independent life, had crossed her path. Her last glimpse of it had been from the deck of the Pride of Simhara as she sailed away from the great eastern land of Khimiz, and she could still remember the hatred in the creature’s eyes, and the sense of silent promise that that encounter would not be their last. Nemesis lived only to thwart her quest and lure her from her resolve, for with the destruction of the last demon it, too, would die. And Nemesis’s touchstone was silver …

  Suddenly the night felt cold, and the sleepy river flowing so smoothly between its banks seemed to take on a faint tinge of menace. A little way off, the reeds rustled; Indigo started to turn her head, then stopped, half afraid that if she looked, her tired mind might translate the sound and movement into something less innocent than the caprices of the breeze. Silver stars in the sky; silver reflections on the water. She shivered, and reached out to bury her hand in the rough, comforting warmth of Grimya’s fur.