by Sean Russell
He shook his head. “No. I am too old. Too old and no longer strong. It falls to you, Anna. That is clear to me now.”
She sat quietly, trying to absorb what he was saying. Certainly this is why she had taken the risk of coming here. To find an ally, and to have his council.
“There is something more,” she said. She went to the window and threw it open. Making the noise one might make to attract a pet, she leaned out, searching the shadows. “There! Do you see?”
Halsey came and stood beside her. “I can’t make it out. What is it?”
“A chough, I was told. Much like a rook or a crow. It greeted me as I left the cave and has accompanied me ever since.”
Halsey stared out into the darkness. “A familiar,” he said. “Teller be praised. Such a thing has not happened since the days of Alan Dubry.” He looked at her, his eyes shining. “Perhaps your vision was not wrong. Skye opened a door, and see what we have found?” He shook his head. “Who among us would not accept the greatest sacrifice to make a mage? A mage at this point in history.”
She turned away from the window. “Don’t say such a thing. Everyone, even Banks . . . No, I could not live with such a thought. That I had sacrificed them all to my vision. . . .”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “But you did no such thing, Anna. You could not have known. But even so, no one would have hesitated. A mage. A mage who will live beyond Eldrich. It is the dream we hardly dared to dream. You, Anna, will preserve the arts. You will rediscover what has been lost.”
She moved away, perhaps unable to accept the responsibility.
“The cost was too great,” she whispered.
“It was great, yes, but all the more reason to seize this opportunity. Let no one’s sacrifice be in vain.”
She nodded. There was wisdom in this, she was sure. Such a cost. Something must come of it. “Then what are we to do?” she said softly. “How must we proceed?”
He turned back to the fire, but his eye lit upon the seed and lingered. “We must vanish again. Perform the rites that will hide our escape from anyone using the arts to seek us. We must begin tonight.”
“But I am so tired—” Anna began to protest, and Halsey turned on her.
“Tonight!” he said firmly. “Eldrich is near. Already he has almost destroyed us. I fear that it is this seed he seeks. Perhaps it has been this seed all along, for let me tell you something, Anna; this seed must be Landor’s own. Do you understand? Not seed that was cultivated in this world, but which came from beyond. We have long known that the seed lost its power from one planting to the next—but this . . .” He gestured to the precious bundle. “Use it sparingly. And it must be cultivated—as soon as you can manage.”
Saying nothing, Halsey disappeared, returning a moment later with a book. This he passed to her. “Here are some few things I’ve set down these past years. Knowledge that you do not have. It is in Darian, so there was little chance that it would have been understood if it had fallen into the hands of another.”
“But why give me this now?”
“We cannot know what might happen. Now come quickly. We will perform the ritual and leave no trace of our flight for the mage or his servants. No one will be aware of us again until it is too late.”
Quickly, they prepared the few things they would need to travel at speed. Horses were saddled, burdened with baggage, and led away from the house lest they sense the arts and bolt.
Halsey began to light candles. Seven tapers were arranged in a pattern on the floor, and then he took a scented oil and marked the walls with Darian characters. Using the same oil he began tracing a pattern on the floor, chanting as he did so.
“You will perform the enchantment,” he said as he completed the pattern.
“But . . .” she began to protest, and then realized that he was right. She was the mage emerging: the spell would facilitate the process, and certainly now her powers outstripped Halsey’s own.
She took up ashes from the fire and sprinkled the still warm powder evenly over the pattern. When she was finished, she made seven marks upon her face with the ash and then moved to the pattern’s center.
“Curre d’ Efeu,” she began. “Heart of flame. . . .” The enchantment was not long but it was rather intricate and required precise motion and control. Once Halsey prompted her, for her mind still suffered from fatigue, but she carried on, knowing the importance of what she did.
Fire erupted in the hearth again, and when she placed a hand near the floor and spoke, she drew a line of flame out from the logs. It spread around the pattern.
She was into the spell, to the point where it would be dangerous to stop, when a fierce tapping drew her attention. The chough was at the window, frantically beating its wings and beak against the glass.
Anna blocked out the sounds, the questions.
Halsey spoke unexpectedly, his deep, gravelly tones forming Darian with an authority that none of the others had ever mastered. But what was he doing?
The room seemed so far away, the world so remote, so dreamlike. Halsey sprinkled something over the pattern, holding an object in his hand—an object of dread.
And then the realization gripped her, dragging her back to the world, to the present.
“Halsey!” she called out, but he raised the hand that held the dagger and continued in his efforts—sprinkling blood from the wound at his wrist along the pattern.
“What are you doing?”
“Do not stop,” he said, not looking up from his task. “Go on, child. You will ruin us both.”
And so she continued, chanting a long string of words, drawing up the candle flames.
Halsey stopped, suddenly, just as she reached the spell’s end. “Eldrich found me,” he said, his face contorting in pain and guilt. “I was to wait here to be sure that none of our people emerged from the cave—a simple task, for Eldrich was all but sure no one had survived. For this small service I would be rewarded—something greater than I would have expected.” He shook his head, a tear streaking his cheek. “But when I saw you . . . alive.” He met her eye for a second, begging something. “Eldrich has put his mark upon me, Anna. I can never escape him.” He began to speak Darian, a spell she did not know. The fire in the pattern rose up suddenly, and the characters on the walls burst into flame. He called out, and before Anna realized what he would do, the old man plunged the knife into his own breast.
He turned toward her as his knees buckled. “You are free,” he whispered, and toppled into the rising flames.
For a moment Anna stood transfixed. Unable to believe what she saw. Unwilling to believe the horror of it. All of them gone. Every one.
Alone. She was utterly alone.
And then a crashing against the window drew her, and she saw a tiny dark eye beyond the glass, and realized that the spell no longer offered protection. With one final look back at Halsey, enveloped in flame, she swept up her skirts and fled.
Two
Without a sign from anyone, the mage’s procession of two carriages had rolled to a sudden stop, leaving the countess wondering what apparition they had encountered now.
Eldrich stepped down to the gravel and disappeared soundlessly into the wood.
The countess watched him go. As silent as a shadow, she thought, and shivered.
For the first time she saw all of her traveling companions: Walky, of course; a darkly handsome man of perhaps thirty; the drivers; and four other servants. The mage’s entire entourage.
The drivers saw to their teams, and the others stood about in isolated silence, as though casual speech were forbidden to the followers of a mage.
Silence, the countess thought. He lives in the silences.
Under the pretense of finding the least obstructed view of the stars, she edged closer to Walky, finally catching his eye.
“What goes on, Mr. Walky?” she whispe
red.
The little man shrugged, put a finger to his lips, and slipped away before she might speak again. Thus chastened, she found an outcropping of stone at the roadside and made it her seat, vowing that she would never become as servile as these others.
Why have I agreed to this? she wondered again, though not yet sure what she had involved herself in. The ancient woman at the roadside—herself: the Countess of Chilton—the mere thought of this apparition quelled all of her doubts for a moment. She closed her eyes, trying to drive out the image—a woman pathetic in age and loss of mental faculties.
Better any fate than that, a voice inside her warned.
But there was more. A certain feeling of inevitability, a crumbling of resistance—the feeling of giving one’s self up to a seduction, to another. And to desire.
Desire.
But was it real, or was she merely under some form of enchantment?
A shadow flowed out of the wood and onto the road: Eldrich’s wolf.
She heard her breath catch and she froze in place, as though it were a wild beast and she its prey. For a moment it paused in the starlight, slowly turning its head as though searching, and then it darted into the wood again.
The countess let out a long breath. What did he want of her?
The moon sailed among the stars, illuminating the solitary clouds that passed before it. From deep within the wood a nightingale burbled its liquid song. The countess tried to silence her inner voice. To be aware of the night. Traveling with a mage would require that she learn patience and attentiveness. And silence.
She did not know how long she listened to the winds’ whispered conversation, observed the heavens, before Eldrich reappeared—two hours, perhaps three.
The stooped silhouette crossed to Walky and the handsome man. She could hear them speaking; words like stones dropped into a brook and just as comprehensible. The three conferred briefly, and then Eldrich went directly into his coach.
Walky came to her.
“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened?”
“The unforeseen,” Walky said hoarsely. “Come. I will ride with Lord Eldrich and the countess, if you will allow it.”
She nodded, smiling at this odd gesture of consideration. As he took her arm and led her toward the carriage, the countess could see the others releasing the team from the second coach, which they began to turn around in the narrow road.
They are going back, she realized, as she stepped up into Eldrich’s carriage.
They moved off as she settled herself.
At last, she could bear this dismissive silence no longer. Her anger boiled up, and she drew a long breath. “What has happened?” she asked, feeling her heart beating—like a child asking forbidden questions.
Dark silence was her answer, and she felt her anger boil over. Did he treat everyone with such disregard?
“There is a hunting lodge,” the mage announced, his musical voice betraying no trace of emotion. “Not distant. We will stop there.”
It was a concession, she knew, though hardly informative. Only where and what, not why.
* * *
* * *
The countess should not have been surprised to find that mages cared little for the niceties of property rights. Walky and the servants quickly had the building open and began setting it to rights, as though it were their own. Lamps were lit, fires built in the hearths, sleeping chambers aired and beds prepared.
And where am I expected to sleep? the countess wondered. She stood before one of the hearths, warming her back, her arms crossed stiffly before her. I feel as uncertain as a young girl, she thought. But there is not a petal of romance in the air.
Will he want me? That was the question. The desire was there; palpably so, but would Eldrich give in to it?
With other men she would know. Their intentions were easily divined, but the mage was not like other men.
Walky appeared from a dark hall. It seemed that Eldrich and his servants had no need of light—a strange thought. No need of light.
“A chamber has been readied for you, Lady Chilton,” he said, taking up a candle.
She remained by the fire a moment more, suddenly reluctant to leave its warmth.
“Where is Lord Eldrich?” she asked, her voice oddly hollow in the massive room.
“Engaged,” Walky replied.
Still the countess did not move.
“The mage is involved in matters of great import, m’lady,” he said. “Matters that are little understood by others.”
“So you do not know what goes on?” the countess asked.
Walky nodded. “I know very little, I’m afraid. Best Lord Eldrich answer your questions.”
“He does not seem much inclined to answering questions.”
“All in good time, m’lady,” he said. “All in good time. One cannot rush a river, but wait and the stream will carry you where you wish.”
“Rivers flow in only one direction, Mr. Walky,” she said, not heartened by his choice of metaphor. “And I fear I have the patience of a mortal: I like my answers immediately.”
“It is something you will adjust to, m’lady,” he said softly and gestured for her to follow.
“Perhaps,” she whispered to herself. Eldrich’s words came back to her. I am one hundred and thirty-three; all other estimates you have heard are wrong.
The countess was but five and twenty.
* * *
* * *
She sat in a window seat before the open casement, her knees drawn up and clasped by woven fingers. A nightingale trilled its melodious song, and unknown insects added strange counterpoint.
The hour was unknown to her. Late, no doubt, but still she did not proceed to bed. She perched in the window listening to a nightingale offer enticements to a mate.
At least he sings, she thought. A shred of gallantry.
The bed, with its curtains and coverlets folded back, took up a much greater place in her consciousness than in the room itself. And it offended her somehow, like a statement of presumption.
“What does he want of me?” she asked the night, and leaned her head back against the cool wood. She closed her eyes and felt such sweet relief. The air seemed seasoned with such a complex fragrance. She drank it in deeply, as though hungry for it. Late. So late. And she was but five and twenty.
* * *
* * *
She awoke to a touch on her cheek. A kiss? Opening her eyes, she found Eldrich standing between herself and the bed. Oddly, this did not startle her at all. Indeed, she did not feel quite herself—as though she floated in time, somehow.
“Do I dream?”
“There are those who claim that life is nothing else,” he answered, the music of his voice touching her, stripping away the last cords of gravity binding her to the world.
“The nightingale . . . he has stopped.”
“Yes.” His eye did not waver, but remained fixed on her—not unkindly, but not kind either.
“What will you do with me?”
A smile, like the shadow of a winging bird. “What would you have me do?”
Yes, what? “I cannot bear to be left wondering. I cannot. . . .”
His gaze did not waver. “No,” he said quietly, a voice like a soft wind, “it is a terrible thing.”
Three
Kent walked his lame gelding along the black river of road, and contemplated his own recklessness. One did not canter by night along a road known for its potholes and washouts. Not with the moon hidden by overcast, stars visible only through tears in the cloud.
He patted his mount’s nose, trying to calculate the distance to the next travelers’ inn. Not far in miles, though several hours at this pace. Some knight off to save the fair lady he had turned out to be.
Kent crept along the road in the faint starlight, aware of the
precipice to one side. The sound of flowing water floated up to him and increased the illusion that he walked along the dark surface of a river.
He stepped, mid-calf, into water, and brought his lame mount up short. Cursing, he peered into darkness, trying to gauge the width of the washout. To his right, the river of road seemed to have overflowed its bank and the substance of night whirled there in a slow eddy.
It was a spring, he realized. In that backwater of darkness would lie a drinking trough and a fount where humans might slake their thirst and take their rest upon stone benches.
“I think this will be our inn this night,” he explained to his gelding, as he led it into the liquid shadow of the trees. Here both horse and man drank.
Kent tethered his mount where it could reach the grasses growing at the margins of the wood, and sank down onto a stone bench, pulling up his collar against the small wind. Daylight was some hours off, but Kent could not sleep. Thoughts of the countess haunted him. An image of a large carriage charging through the hills, drawing farther and farther away from him.
It even occurred to him that his horse’s lameness might not be entirely natural. He snorted. No. Certainly that had been the result of his own imprudence, not the arts of the mage.
He shifted, seeking greater comfort, but the stone refused to yield.
Is the countess Eldrich’s lover? he wondered again. Willingly his lover? He did not think so. Certainly she had been horrified when told she had been in the company of a mage. That had not been an act.
He stared up at the stars, picking out the constellations and trying to see new shapes in them, then giving them appropriate names. The Dragon became a woman weaving: the Weaver. The Twins, with some stretch of the imagination, became a carriage. And the Hunter could be nothing but a Mage.
Does he know I pursue him? Kent wondered. Is it possible?
Just then, the gelding whickered. He could feel its excitement in the dark. His first thought was wolves, yet then he realized the gelding’s reaction was not fear but anticipation.
