Worlds Unseen

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  “We live in slavery,” the old man said. “Yearly taxes will starve our lives; the Man Tax will take our families. Fight them then or fight them now, we will fight.”

  The Ploughman motioned toward a group of thirty or so men: those who had gathered with him in the farmyard. “These at least have an obligation to fight with me, though I would not force them,” he said. “They are my tenants. I am their lord. The rest of you own Zarras as your landlord.”

  “He has our lands,” a younger man said. “You have our loyalty. You have fought for us. We will fight for you.”

  “If we win,” said the changing voice of a boy who was barely a man, “perhaps the Emperor will listen to us.”

  “Perhaps he will kill you,” the Ploughman said.

  There was silence.

  Libuse moved from the wall and came to stand by the Ploughman. “Enough now,” she said. “You have your army.”

  “And there is much to do,” the Ploughman finished.

  * * *

  Pat and Mrs. Cook were in Mrs. Korak’s kitchen when Maggie returned, picking at bowls of porridge. Maggie and the farm boy had left the mound ahead of the Ploughman, slipping away while the rebel leader spoke with a few of his men.

  Maggie pushed open the wooden kitchen door. The warmth of the hearth and the smell of food wrapped around her and she yawned.

  “Tiring morning, was it?” Pat asked. Maggie ignored her and glanced at Mrs. Korak, who was eagle-eyeing her. The farmwife looked down and pounded a lump of dough as Maggie brushed past her.

  “They’re going to Pravik,” Maggie whispered. Mrs. Korak nodded and pounded harder.

  Maggie sat down next to Pat. Mrs. Cook shoved a bowl of porridge in her direction. Pat had stopped eating, and was looking at Maggie with one eyebrow raised.

  Maggie stirred her porridge. “I don’t know how much I should tell you,” she said, finally. “I followed the Ploughman to council this morning.”

  She was interrupted by the clatter of hooves in the yard. A boy poked his head in the door and said, “Ploughman’s back! Twenty men with him.”

  “Good boy,” Mrs. Korak said. “Go take the horses. On with you!”

  The boy darted back outside. “Twenty,” Mrs. Korak said. “His leaders. There’ll be more talking today. And eating.” She grimaced. “There’s porridge enough for all, anyway.”

  Maggie, Pat, and Mrs. Cook sat quietly while boots stamped and voices filled the next room where the Ploughman and his men gathered around the long table. Libuse entered the kitchen after a few minutes.

  “Twenty-three, Mrs. Korak,” she said.

  The farmwife shook a spoon threateningly. “I’ll teach that boy to count one way or another. Twenty-three. Do their lordships require porridge with or without milk?”

  Libuse smiled. “Without is fine, I’m sure. We mustn’t overtax the cow.”

  “If my kitchen’s going to feed them, they’ll eat milk,” Mrs. Korak said. “I’m not stingy.”

  “Of course not.” Libuse laughed.

  Mrs. Korak laid out two dozen wooden bowls on the counter and began ladling porridge into them. Mrs. Cook jumped to her feet to help, following Mrs. Korak’s lead as she added milk to each bowl.

  “Double in that one,” Mrs. Korak said as Mrs. Cook added milk to the largest of the bowls. The farmwife picked up the bowl after Mrs. Cook had filled it and handed it to Libuse.

  “For the master,” she said.

  Maggie and Pat stood to help carry the bowls into the rough dining room, leaving their own breakfasts half-eaten on the kitchen table. The Ploughman had a roll of paper spread out in front of him, and on it he had drawn a map. Maggie’s eyes fell on it as she set breakfast down before two of the men.

  Surprised, she saw the intricate layout of Pravik Castle and the area around it. Even for one as new to the Eastern Lands as she, the castle and the streets at the head of the plateau were clearly recognizable. The question leaped into her head, though it didn’t come out her mouth—how long had the Ploughman been preparing to attack Pravik? He had fought the suggestion that he do so, yet he owned detailed maps of the city.

  Self-consciously Maggie began to leave the room, but the Ploughman held up his hand. “Please,” he said. “Stay. All of you.”

  Pat, Mrs. Cook, and Libuse lingered near the door.

  “We have made the decision to rescue the professor, no matter what it cost us,” the Ploughman said. “But we need someone in the city. Someone to keep their finger on what is happening. We need to know dates and times, how the trial goes. Maggie, as you have spent time in the city, I thought perhaps…”

  “I’ll go.” It was Pat. She stepped forward. “Maggie helped rescue Libuse. The police could be looking for her.”

  “I don’t think they saw me clearly enough to know what they’re looking for,” Maggie argued.

  “They’ve never seen me at all. I’ll get a job with a theater, as a seamstress. I’ve done it before. And if it’s gossip you want, there’s no better place to get it.”

  The Ploughman looked across the room to Libuse, then nodded. “You’ll leave today,” he said.

  Pat tried to smile and did not entirely succeed. “Good,” she said.

  * * *

  The council dispersed later that afternoon. The early morning chill had given way to sunny warmth, and Pat and Maggie grew tired of hanging around the house. Mrs. Cook had rolled up her sleeves and charged into the kitchen to foist her help upon Mrs. Korak an hour before, and Libuse had disappeared after the Ploughman and his men rode away.

  “I’ve no right to hanker after excitement, I know,” Pat said. “I’ll have plenty of it soon enough. But if I don’t find something to do I’m going to shrivel up. Let’s go for a walk.”

  So they did: out over the brown fields behind the barns. Crows and small birds disdained to pay them any mind as they wandered through the remains of the harvest. They had nearly reached a small, lonely tree on the far side of the fields when Pat shaded her eyes.

  “I think that’s Libuse under that tree,” Pat said. “Do you think we’d better leave her alone?”

  Maggie didn’t answer. Something about the lone figure drew her. Libuse was kneeling on a carpet of fallen leaves with the tree’s thin branches spread out over her head. Pat saw Maggie’s intent and touched her shoulder, then stopped to wait for her.

  Maggie approached Libuse quietly and soon saw that she was kneeling before a grave. There were tears on the princess’s face, and all at once Maggie regretted intruding. But she did not have time to leave before Libuse spoke to her, without looking.

  “You remember the wounded boy from the riot?” Libuse asked. Maggie knelt down beside her and nodded.

  “He was the Ploughman’s brother,” Libuse said. “I did all I could to keep him alive, but…” She struggled to regain control of herself. “When the Ploughman was very young, his parents were killed in an outbreak of disease. They might have pulled through, but the winter was cold, and the taxes had taken more than they could afford to give. There was an older brother as well, and this one—” She indicated the grave. “This one was a baby. One day the soldiers came to collect the Man Tax. The older brother was thirteen, and they took him.

  “The Ploughman was left to take care of his brother. The tenant farmers on his land helped however they could. As he grew older, the Ploughman vowed to repay them by treating them as brothers and not as slaves. They grew to love him. His own people, and the tenants of Antonin Zarras, look to him as their voice. As their defender.”

  “Are there no other landholders here?” Maggie asked.

  “Not in this part of the world,” Libuse said. “Zarras’s father bullied and stole and plundered until he held titles for all the Eastern Lands except the Ploughman’s little plot of ground. Antonin Zarras is not much older than the Ploughman, you know. They knew each other once.”

  She grew quiet, and with her fingers she touched the gravestone. “But it was for this one he fought, most of
all,” she said. “To make a better world for him. And now we may make a better world, but he will never see it.”

  Maggie knelt down beside the princess. A biting wind whirled through the tree branches, out of place under the warm sun. “What sort of better world will the Ploughman make?” she asked.

  “A world where the people have a voice,” Libuse said.

  “Is that all?” Maggie pressed. “In the university…”

  “In the university they have time and luxury to make great plans and dream great dreams. Out here people are too busy surviving.” Libuse smiled grimly. “The university students would like to see the Empire itself brought down. But they can’t do it. Not with their talk. The Ploughman cares nothing for all that, yet he strikes the first blow. And who knows where it will end?”

  Maggie fingered the scroll inside her coat. “I know we’re only trying to rescue an old man,” she said. “And maybe the storm will blow over. So why do I feel like we’re about to change the world? To shatter peace forever?”

  “It is the peace of death we break,” Libuse said. The tone of her voice told Maggie she was quoting someone. “The people cannot continue to live in slavery.”

  Libuse grew quiet and distant, and said, “I suppose I’m a university revolutionary at heart. If I could have my way there would be no Empire. The Ploughman speaks of a world where the people rule themselves, but I fear that too. I long for a ruler. One who will be merciful and just. Who will be good, truly good. Life would be so small if we were all we had. We need something—someone—to make us look up.”

  “To take us beyond ourselves,” Maggie said, understanding completely.

  Libuse smiled, and for a moment her eyes shone. “To make us believe in beauty and wonder and goodness. To fill us with awe. How long since I have been filled with anything close.”

  “How wonderful it would be to have a king like that!”

  “I am not sure that any such person exists,” Libuse said, and sighed. “In the ancient days, my family ruled a kingdom very different from the Empire. Sometimes I wish I could have seen it—I think it must have been a paradise, where kings and queens were different from the overlords of our day. But then, sometimes, I am glad that I can’t.”

  “Why?” Maggie asked.

  “Because I’m afraid it would not be any different than it is now,” Libuse said. “I am afraid that people would be just as selfish and cruel and power mad as they are today.”

  Maggie looked down and felt the scroll again, and with her eyes dancing she said, “Perhaps the King of the Worlds Unseen will come.”

  Libuse looked partly amused, partly disturbed. “Jarin Huss’s exiled lord of the ancient days? He is a myth.”

  “How do you know?” Maggie pressed.

  Libuse threw up her hands. “I don’t know! How can I? That is just the trouble. I would dearly love to believe in him. But I have no reason to. Even if he did exist, he has been away so long… why would he come back?”

  Maggie had no answers, but she suddenly pulled out the scroll from her coat.

  “What is that?” Libuse asked.

  “A very old document,” Maggie said. “Huss says it is five hundred years old. As old as the Empire.”

  “Can you read it?” Libuse said. Maggie passed it to her. The princess unrolled it carefully and looked at the strange characters with a furrowed brow.

  “I can’t,” Maggie said, “but Huss can. He says it is signed by Lucius Morel himself.”

  Libuse looked up and met Maggie’s eyes. “Tell me the significance of it,” she said.

  “It is a covenant,” Maggie said. “Binding the evil powers of the Otherworld to the Empire. It says that the Empire will rule the world by the power of the Otherworld until the leaders of that world’s evil come to claim it. The forces of the Otherworld work through the Order of the Spider.”

  “Huss has spoken of them,” Libuse said. “He has always said that they hold great power, and that somehow they hold sway over the Empire itself. He has long spoken of them as our true enemy. But I am not sure that they exist, either… even Huss has never seen such a person face to face, except for one woman who he thinks belonged to the Order.”

  “I have seen them,” Maggie said. “I have seen more of the Otherworld than I want to. And all of it has been so black.”

  No, Maggie realized even as she spoke the words, it had not. Huss’s tale of the King—Marja’s words of one who shone like all the heavenly lights together—those things had not been black. They had filled her with the “awe of beauty and wonder and goodness” that Libuse longed for and could not believe in. She thought of the black-robed stranger who had met her in Huss’s burned out house. A fiery thrill coursed through her as she recalled the power of the song that had flowed through her then. Above all, Mary’s song had not been black. Wild and free and powerful, but not black. Suddenly she thought that she could sing again, that she wanted to sing again. She could weave such a song that all of the glory and beauty of the ancient days would wash through the farmyard like a tide, and no one could stand in its wake and not believe.

  Behind them, Pat cleared her throat. They turned to see her pointing to the farmhouse, far over the fields. “Looks like the Ploughman has returned,” she said.

  Libuse gathered her skirts and stood. There was nothing more to say. Together they walked back to the farmhouse.

  * * *

  “You will arrive after dark, but the gates of the city will still be open. The men will take you to an inn where the service is reasonable.” The Ploughman reached into his cloak and drew out a small leather pouch full of coins. “This should keep you till you find work. I’m sorry there isn’t more.”

  Pat took the pouch and thanked him. “I am ready to leave,” she told him.

  “Then say your good-byes,” the Ploughman commanded gently. “You ride in ten minutes.”

  Maggie reached out and put her hand on Pat’s shoulder. Across from her, Mrs. Cook did the same. For a minute they stood in silence. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, say something,” Pat burst out. “I can’t stand to have all this emotion hanging over my head.”

  Mrs. Cook said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “Yes,” Pat said. She hugged Mrs. Cook tightly. Mrs. Cook sniffled and wiped her eyes when Pat let her go.

  “Doesn’t really seem fair, does it?” Maggie said softly. “We’ve only just come together again, and now you’re leaving.”

  “I won’t be away long,” Pat said. “Anyway, I volunteered. I want to do this.”

  The two young women hugged each other tightly. Maggie whispered, “Be careful. And send us back only good news.”

  “Take care of yourself, too,” Pat answered. “No more disappearing. Stay by Mrs. Cook. She’d die of loneliness without you.”

  “Enough of that,” Mrs. Cook interjected. “I can handle myself with or without a couple of scamps like you. My life would certainly be quieter without you.”

  Two men arrived in the courtyard. Pat was swept up in the bustle of preparing to ride. Before either Maggie or Mrs. Cook had a chance to say anything more, Pat was riding across the fields in a flurry of dust.

  Maggie slipped her arm through Mrs. Cook’s. Just before she disappeared into the tree line, Pat turned around and saluted farewell. Maggie and Mrs. Cook returned the salute, and Mrs. Cook smiled.

  “She never could stay in one place for long,” she said.

  “Did you worry about me terribly when I was gone?” Maggie asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Cook said. “Would I have come after you if I hadn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I thought perhaps you had some other reason for coming here.”

  “What other reason would I have?” Mrs. Cook said. “Besides the fact that Pat was going, and I couldn’t bear to be alone again.”

  “Well…” Maggie faltered and continued. “You were a member of the council. I can’t help wondering—did seeing Old Dan and Lord Robert again make yo
u miss the old days?”

  Mrs. Cook became suddenly very quiet, and she waited a long while before answering. “I don’t really know. Worlds unseen—well, who wouldn’t be fascinated with such an idea? To tell you the truth, Maggie, maybe I did start to miss the council days. But if I did, it wasn’t on account of Old Dan, or Lord Robert either.”

  “Then what did it?” Maggie asked.

  “The girl,” Mrs. Cook replied. “Virginia Ramsey. The minute I laid eyes on her, with her wrists bound and her face so deathly pale as to drain the blood from your own face, I thought to myself, ‘That girl is hope. And someone is trying to kill hope.’ I suppose that’s a very odd thing to think, but there you are. If you hadn’t been missing still, Maggie, I would have gone after Virginia myself.”

  “Hope,” Maggie repeated. Into her mind flashed a phrase that Jarin Huss had read to her: When they see beyond the sky… take these Gifts of My Outstretched Hand; Weave them together; I shall come.

  “She sees beyond the sky,” Maggie said. It took her a moment to realize that Mrs. Cook was looking at her strangely.

  “What did you say?” Mrs. Cook asked.

  “‘When they see beyond the sky,’” Maggie said. “It’s a line from an old prophecy. Jarin Huss read it to me.”

  “I remember,” Mrs. Cook said abruptly. “Lord Robert thinks like you do. He said Virginia was Gifted.”

  Mrs. Cook stopped and wiped her eyes ferociously, and Maggie waited for her to continue. But the elderly woman was done speaking, and she wandered off to the kitchen saying something about Mrs. Korak needing help with supper. Maggie watched her go with troubled eyes, but she did not go after her. Somehow she knew that she ought not to pry.

  * * *

  Maggie awoke that night to the sound of horse hooves in the yard. A faint blue light was coming in one of the windows—the moon, Maggie thought, and remembered that there was no moon on this night. But no, she must be mistaken. Moonlight was undoubtedly shining through the window.

  She climbed softly out of bed and tip-toed to the window, expecting to see one of the Ploughman’s riders in the yard. It was late, and for a moment she wondered if there was trouble.

  When she reached the window, her eyes opened wide. Her fingers reached up and lightly brushed the window pane as though she would touch the being outside.