“He said so. There’s a caravan gathering to go over the pass into Coronnan. We’ll be safe with them, but we have to get going. The journey is long. As it is, we might have to spend the winter in an abandoned monastery I know of on the other side of the pass. Find your daughter, Lady, and let us leave.”
The ground shook once again as if to emphasize his order. The roof above the lace workroom collapsed, sending bricks and beams spraying over the courtyard. Zebbiah crouched down with his arms over his head and neck until the avalanche of debris ceased.
“Jaranda!” the woman screamed. “Where are you, baby?” Panic filled her heart.
The pack beast brayed again in protest at the disruption. It kicked out and then threatened to park its rear end down on the cobbles.
Zebbiah cursed and kicked the creature to keep it on its feet.
“Jaranda!” she called again. She whirled about, desperately seeking a sign of her child.
“Here I am, M’ma.” The little girl skipped over loose cobblestones and fallen bricks from the far side of the courtyard, seemingly unconcerned despite the recent danger. She bounced a ball from the royal nursery.
The woman nearly sagged with relief. She crouched down and hugged her daughter close.
“Lady, you have never questioned traveling so far with me. You, a woman alone and unprotected. Me, a man you don’t know, have no reason to trust.”
“You have not given me a reason not to trust you. As you said, prejudices must be learned. I have forgotten everything.”
They stared at each other for a long silent moment, assessing, weighing, enjoying.
He looked away first.
“Jaranda, my love, I think I would like the name Trizia. Do you like that name? It means noble lady.” She pulled the little girl against her leg in a fierce hug, unwilling to let her stray again, even for a moment.
“You are M’ma,” the little girl insisted. She stamped her foot in irritation. “M’ma.”
“Trizia doesn’t fit,” Zebbiah added. He yanked the pack beast’s halter to start it moving.
“I thought you’d say that.”
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen,” Marcus counted out loud the number of bags of gold on the first bank of shelves.
He counted because Robb had told him to count. He could not think beyond the straight sequence of numbers, could not plan. If he stopped counting, he’d fall into deep despair.
Yet the more he counted, the heavier he felt. Each movement and thought became an effort. The gloaming pressed against all of his senses. Soon he’d not be able to hold his head up, stand, talk, eat.
“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.” He gulped back a sob.
The monastery trapped them. His luck and his magic had drained out of him. The future looked hopeless.
“Snap out of it, Marcus,” Robb barked. He spoke slowly as if he, too, swam through the thick air.
“It all seems so hopeless.” Marcus rubbed two gold coins together in his pocket while he paused. “All this gold stashed away, gathering dust. It could be put to such good use—rebuilding the University, stabilizing the economy, increasing trade.”
“Bribing nobles to make magic legal again,” Robb added with a grin. But his smile looked false. As false as the hazy light that dominated the entire monastery.
“And the gold just sits here! And we can’t get out to put it to use.”
“Every bit of information we gather is a step toward finding an exit.” Robb placed a comforting hand upon Marcus’ shoulder. “We’re magicians, trained to think, to plan, and solve problems. We can’t always trust in luck. If we plan it right, we’ll get out of here.”
Warmth and reassurance spread from Robb’s touch. Marcus absorbed it, fighting for a small glimmer of hope.
“We’ve got to make our own luck, Marcus. Maybe there is significance in the number and arrangement of bags. Perhaps these isolated shelves in the center of the room mask an exit we haven’t discovered yet. We won’t know until we investigate.”
“What is happening to us, Robb? I’m supposed to be the one who gives you cheer and encouragement. That’s why we work so well together. You think, I plow forward with infinite optimism, making up the plan as we go.” Marcus covered his friend’s hand on his shoulder with his own and squeezed to show his undying friendship—even in this terrible time.
“We’ve been in worse scrapes before. Remember that time in Hanic when that farmer caught us hiding in his byre with his daughter? He chased us bare-assed through his fields for almost a quarter league before we got our wits together enough to throw up magical armor?” They both chuckled at the memory. “Think about something pleasant for a while, rather than what we can’t do. Think about Margit. Margit always brings a smile to your face.”
“Margit.” Marcus tried to conjure her image in his mind’s eye. Bold and forthright, she had a minor magical talent and had used it in good stead as Jaylor’s spy in the royal household. Her dark blond braids bounced with life as she strode strongly through each task.
But she hated living indoors. And she hated cats; said they robbed her breath. When Marcus had seen her last, she had not known the nature of Queen Rossemikka’s problem—that a cat spirit shared her body.
But she had known her own heart and pledged it to Marcus.
A daintier blonde, more mature, milder of temperament and smaller of body superimposed herself upon Marcus’ inner vision.
Vareena.
“I bet Vareena likes cats as much as I do,” he said to himself.
He shook his head to clear it.
“I wonder if Jaylor has found a solution to the queen’s problem?” he mused rather than admit his sense of guilt and betrayal of Margit. He’d loved her and been faithful to her for two years and more. He’d never loved anyone for that long before.
“We won’t know what is going on in the capital or the University until we find a way to break the spell trapping us. Now count the bags. Count the pattern of their arrangement. Count the coins themselves.”
“And what will you be doing while I count?”
“Counting the graves of the ghosts. Searching the temple foundation stones for another exit. I have this odd feeling that something is missing. Something I should have noticed.”
Robb turned to retreat from the bookless library and froze in his tracks.
Alerted to danger, Marcus opened his senses and stared in the direction Robb looked—toward the back of the room into deep shadows from the overhanging gallery and more empty shelves.
And something else. A glittering mist that gathered and coalesced into a vague human shape. Dressed in old-fashioned robes of gold and brown, the figure carried a bloody sacrificial knife and a magician’s staff.
“Do you see what I see?” Robb whispered.
“I hope I don’t. That . . . that looks like a ghost. A real ghost.” His balance and perceptions twisted. He stumbled and clutched the gold-laden shelves for balance.
“That ghost looks very angry indeed!” Robb wasn’t standing easy on the roiling floor either.
“Run!”
Chapter 18
Marcus skidded to a halt on the slick paving stones at the end of the colonnade. He had to bend over to catch his breath. Still, icy bugs seemed to climb his spine. He imagined the ghost slicing into his back from the base of his spine upward.
Robb careened into him. They looked at each other, eyes wide. Marcus’ heart beat loudly in his ears.
Without a word spoken, they took off again, away from the buildings toward the graveyard and the foundations for the old temple.
Vareena stood just inside the gates, holding a covered basket—probably full of food.
“What ails you, Marcus, Robb?” Vareena gasped, clutching her throat in alarm. b “A—g-gho-ghost!” Marcus panted. He leaned heavily against the gatehouse wall as he drew in deep draughts of air.
“But you are the ghosts here. No one else,” she protested. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, tilting her adorabl
e little nose down.
Marcus reached out to smooth tight worry lines from her face. A barrier of burning energy repulsed his hand. He clenched it into a fist instead.
“We. Are. Not. Ghosts,” Robb stated breathlessly. “We did not die, leaving our spirits behind.”
“You only forget your passing, Robb. You are both truly ghosts,” Vareena insisted.
“No, we aren’t,” Marcus agreed with his friend. “That—thing—haunting the library is a real ghost. And it is royally pissed . . . um . . . I mean perturbed by our presence.”
“If there is truly another ghost in this place, why have I not sensed his presence? Why have I not seen him in all these past twenty years? I assure you, you two are the only ghosts currently residing here.” She placed her hands upon her hips and pursed her lips as if reprimanding errant children.
“I beg to differ, my dear.” Robb assumed his normal preaching tone, so obviously missing earlier today. “The entity we encountered in the library has most certainly staked a claim there. You admitted that you had not explored any part of the monastery other than the rooms occupied by your guests. The villagers shun the place unless required by you to make repairs, and even then they usually restrict themselves to the residential wing. Why should anyone have disturbed that thing other than your other guests who examined the building out of boredom, or seeking an exit. I can only presume they, too, were frightened away by this true ghost and did not explore further. Therefore, I must conclude that the answer to our quest for escape lies within the library.” Robb finally paused to breathe.
“I am not going back to that library!” Marcus trembled. “It wanted to carve out my heart with that sacrificial knife. Didn’t you see how much blood it dripped, how it reeked of the grave, and carried the chill of the void between existences?” Had he truly felt all that, or had his imagination filled in the gaps from old stories passed around apprentice dormitories late at night on Saawheen Eve?
“Yes, I did see all that and felt the same unnatural chill,” Robb said thoughtfully, tapping his teeth. He began to pace a serpentine path around Marcus and Vareena. “That is how I know it to be a true ghost.”
“A ghost is a ghost!” Vareena protested. “I shall prove it to you. You two are the only ghosts here.” She set down her basket, pushed past the two magicians, and marched back along the colonnade toward the library. Her footsteps echoed against the flagstones.
Marcus suddenly realized that he and Robb made no noise as they moved about the old place. Their boots with sturdy leather soles and hard wooden heels should clomp noisily with every step.
The gloaming seemed to absorb the sounds of their passing. He wondered if they stood on the edge of the void between the planes of existence. The sense-robbing blackness of the void when one first entered could also rob a man of his sanity if he did not have a purpose, a question to ask. Only when he held that purpose or question firmly in his mind did the multicolored umbilicals of life become visible. If one had patience and courage, a man could sort through the life forces that surrounded him in the void that represented all those important to him in reality.
Perhaps . . . If he could summon enough magic for a trip into the void, he could find a way home.
“Robb.” He stopped his friend from following Vareena with a hand upon his shoulder. No barrier of energy repulsed his touch as it did with Vareena. “Robb, maybe we are ghosts of a sort. Our boots make no noise, we can touch each other but not her. Perhaps we are at the edge . . .”
“True. Our condition is not normal. But we cannot pass through walls, we require food and drink—we both eliminate bodily wastes regularly. And we have no memory of injury or death. None of that indicates that we have left our bodies behind as we would in death or on a trip through the void. We have bodies. We just aren’t truly in one reality or another, but trapped halfway between.”
“Isn’t that what happens to a ghost? His body is in one reality and his spirit in another.”
“Our spirits and bodies remain intact. ’Tis reality around us that wavers.”
“You’ve got a point there. Let’s follow and see what Vareena conjurs up in the library.”
“An apt description, I believe.”
Together they caught up with Vareena as she pushed open the door to the library.
“I don’t remember closing the door. Did you close it, Robb?”
Robb shook his head and scrunched his face in a puzzled frown. “I believe the ghost wishes to be left alone.”
Marcus tasted the air with his magical senses. Dust, mold, stone older than time, staleness, and . . . and something sour tingling on his tongue that did not belong there.
“It’s waiting for us,” he whispered.
“Stuff and nonsense. I’d know if another ghost had come here. I’m a sensitive.” Vareena resolutely pushed the door open and stepped into the vast room. “Yoohooo! Anybody home?”
Her words echoed around the nearly empty room. Silence followed.
Marcus and Robb poked their heads around the door, Robb above, Marcus slightly stooped. Diffuse sunlight filtered through the dust in broken shafts. “The dust should have settled by now. There isn’t a breeze to stir it,” Marcus whispered.
“I know,” Robb replied.
“Look for the sparkles, for movement.”
Vareena walked around the free-standing bookshelves. Her skirts raised clouds of dust in her wake. It swirled and eddied, drifting to new locations. But none of her dust stayed in the air more than a moment or two.
The other dust—the stuff that lingered in the corner far away from her circuitous path—took on a vaguely human shape, the glint of red and metal showed the knife now tucked into his old-fashioned belt sash over yellow tunic and orange sleeveless robe. Brown trews and boots faded into the shadows, making him look almost legless. He made mocking faces at Vareena, waving his arms in a parody of drawing attention to himself.
Eventually, Vareena climbed the spiral staircase to the second-floor gallery. The gloating dust followed her only within touching distance of the cold iron structure. Then it jerked back as if burned.
“Behind you,” Marcus hissed at her.
“What?” Vareena turned on the sixth step, looking over her shoulder at them.
“The ghost. In the dust. Behind you.” Marcus held his breath, not daring to come closer, yet fearful for her well-being.
“I see nothing.” Firmly she marched up the stairs.
“She didn’t even look,” Robb protested.
“Perhaps she truly cannot see this ghost. Her sensitivities are limited, as is her magic.”
“I wonder if all of her other ghosts have been mundane,” Robb mused.
“If so, they might not have seen this ghost. If mundanes couldn’t find a way out, perhaps the solution lies in magic.” Hope brightened Marcus’ heart for the first time since coming here.
“But our magic has become quite limited by whatever force holds us here. Without a dragon to combine and enhance our powers, we may not have enough magic to break the spell.”
Ariiell loosened the ties of her gown and shifted the pillows behind her back. She sighed at the relief of pressure on her swelling belly.
Outside her bedchamber her father and stepmother continued to argue over her plight. Her father’s second wife wept more than she spoke. “Think of the disgrace of bringing that monster into our family. Everyone will know ’tis not a love match. ’Tis not even a good political move.” Lady Laislac choked out the words between sobs. “Better we send her to a convent overseas for a year and foster the baby elsewhere. It’s likely to be as hideous as the father.”
Ariiell frowned. Her stepmother repeated some of the arguments Ariiell had put forth against the marriage to Mardall. Arguments she expected and hoped to lose.
“My honor is as much at stake as the girl’s. She’ll never be able to make a more advantageous marriage. Whoever we pawn her off on will know she’s not a virgin and will renounce the marriage on the wedd
ing night.” Lord Laislac’s boots pounded the floor rushes into a distinctive path from his repetitive pacing.
Her father always won family arguments regardless of the wisdom or lightness of his position.
The best way for Ariiell to get what she wanted was to counter her father with the opposite of her goal. In four years of marriage, her stepmother had never learned that little trick. Her father’s wife deserved the unhappiness Lord Laislac dealt her every day.
“To bring that . . . that thing into the family!”
“That thing is blood heir to the throne,” Ariiell’s father reminded his wife.
“Precisely,” Ariiell whispered to herself. “Mardall will never take the throne. But as long as Queen Rossemikka remains barren, my child is next in line.” She smiled hugely, rubbing her tummy.
The baby kicked in response to the slight pressure. A good sign of the child’s health and vigor. Her mentor had promised the child would be normal.
“I will be the mother of the next king of Coronnan,” she whispered to herself. No sense in losing the battle with her father by stating the truth. “As soon as the marriage takes place and the child is declared legitimate, I must find a way to eliminate Darville. I’ll certainly be more successful than those idiots from the coven and the Gnuls who have bungled every attempt these last three years.”
She reached beneath the mattress for the book of poisons she had recently acquired. She wasn’t supposed to be able to read—no person other than the now outlawed magicians were allowed to learn the arcane art of reading and higher mathematics. But Ariiell had watched the family magician priest as he sounded out the letters and words on letters and reports. The priest was supposed to consign written communications to the fire as soon as he read them to the lord. A little sleight of hand had brought most of those messages into Ariiell’s possession.
Careful study had brought the words to life.
So now she plotted out ways to coat the inside of Darville’s riding gloves with a fast-acting poison. She’d need time to gather all the necessary ingredients. Time to insert herself into court life. After the wedding.
Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III Page 55
