by Sean Russell
“I have had dreams of soaring like a bird,” Erasmus said, feeling he must reassure the man somehow. “And certainly, when inspired, many have said it seemed knowledge they had always known.”
“Yes, but these dreams and waking memories are so consistent, as though I spent my youth in another land. Much has been made of my manner of speech—it almost seems to be slightly accented. A result of my accident, everyone assumes. . . .” He looked at Erasmus over his shoulder, the starlight turning his mane of hair to silver, his face pale as snow. “Words come to me. Words no one has ever heard. They have no meaning, yet they are words nonetheless. I can feel that they roll of my tongue with great ease. And there is more. I remember characters—written characters—that I have never before seen.”
“Like those in Pelier’s painting?” Erasmus asked.
Skye looked back to the window, shaking his head. “No; unlike them. But neither are they like any script I know.”
Erasmus struggled to make sense of Skye’s words, to understand what disturbed the great man so. “Do you think you’re having visions like Pelier? Is that it?”
Skye shook his head, pressing fingers to his eye’s inner corner. “Perhaps. . . .” He paused, taking a long ragged breath. “But I fear it is madness,” he whispered.
Erasmus was stunned by this sudden admission. “You have the most celebrated mind of our time, Lord Skye. Certainly your thoughts seem lucid, utterly logical. And if you are having visions . . . celebrated men and women have experienced the same. The mages practiced augury. Pelier was not entirely alone.”
“Pelier went mad, you know—self-murdered.” The great empiricist raised a hand, touching fingers to the glass. He pulled his hand away suddenly, animating his slumping frame. “Do pardon me. It was not my intention to burden you with . . . this.”
Erasmus did not feel it a burden, though he didn’t understand why Skye had chosen to confide in him. Did it explain the earl’s interest in Pelier? Or was there something more?
“You cannot know what it is like to lose part of your life—your childhood. Years gone, and these fragments of memory—memories or dreams—floating up. They are like ghosts, but ghosts within. All so very strange.
“Do you know there are no records of my birth? I was a foundling, or so it is said. Though I have tried, I cannot find who my true parents were.” He hesitated. “I am a mystery to myself. A stranger, in my own way.” He fell silent again, moving his fingers over the glass, over the reflection of his face, Erasmus realized.
“Your parents have passed through?”
“Long ago.”
“Had they no friends? Someone must remember your arrival at your parents’ home. They had servants, a nanny?”
Skye continued to move his fingers, almost tenderly, across the cold pane.
“None I can find. The servants I remember had not been with the family long—my parents were not easy on their domestic staff.” Erasmus could feel the man’s burden of suffering in the silence. As distressing as Erasmus’ own.
“I—I’m not sure why you have told me this.”
“Nor am I.”
Silence again. Skye dropped his hand, but continued to gaze at the glass, at his reflection and the darkness beyond. He turned toward Erasmus, not meeting his eye. “I’ve taken enough of your time, Mr. Flattery. Excuse my ramblings. You and the others are safe—that’s the important thing. Pleasures of the evening to you.”
Erasmus barely made the door to let the man out, and once Skye had gone, he found himself staring at the same window as though something would be revealed to him there, or he would see what Skye saw. “How very odd,” he whispered. “What had he meant to tell me?”
Certainly Skye had been wrong about one thing. Erasmus knew precisely what it was like to lose his childhood. But what had Skye said? “I am a stranger—in my own way.”
Erasmus raised his hand to the glass to smear the slick of condensation and watched his reflection distort. And what was that he saw? A faint light? A wondering star?
Seven
The brook they camped beside chattered incessantly, the clatter of rocks rolling in the streambed. Aromatic pines scented the breeze and rippled in the gusts along the hillsides.
The beauty of the surroundings went unnoticed by Anna. She stared at the roughly drawn map again, considering. Could she make her way from here?
Her guide assured her that it was simple, the landmarks unmistakable, but still, she was born and bred to cities and tame countryside, not mountains and wilderness. She gazed over at her sleeping guide, the wind tugging at his hair, sun burnishing his young face.
“The sleep of grace,” she whispered.
He had been the woodsman she’d met upon escaping the cave. After Halsey’s sacrifice, she had returned to him, remembering his boast that he knew the hills better than most men knew their gardens. If he’d only realized where his immodesty would lead.
Anna folded the map with tenderness, as though it were the last letter of a beloved.
“Give me strength,” she whispered to no deity in particular. “If I am to survive, this is who I must be.”
In her years with Halsey and the others, she had been spared so much—so many burdens the others had shouldered.
“If I am to survive,” she whispered.
She looked again at the young man, his face softened by sleep. So content and trusting.
They had lain together the three nights since she had found him again. Anna had not protested. It felt good to be held, to have a few moments of oblivion, escape from her sorrow. There had been some guilt in her surrender as well, knowing what the future might bring.
I cannot tarry, she told herself. I am hunted.
She drew a long breath and forced herself to cross to her companion, sinking down by his head. Gently she smoothed his brow. Gently.
“You will always have your hills,” she whispered, but he did not stir.
Whispering phrases in Darian, she produced a small, silver blade. A tear fell onto the young man’s cheek, running off as though it were his own. In a quick motion she cut the carotid artery, pulling her hand away from the blood, watching it spread out onto the ground.
The brook sang its hollow song. Rocks clattering over rocks.
She put a hand to her face for a moment, horrified by what she’d brought herself to do. The knowledge that she was left no choice did not comfort her. A flutter, and her chough landed on a saddle, watching the proceedings with keen interest.
Dipping her fingers in the warm lake of blood, she made marks upon the man’s face, upon his chest. She spoke words in Darian and chanted mournfully, tears still falling onto his cheeks and mixing with the blood.
* * *
* * *
The rite lasted the morning. Time she did not have, but she was not yet as callow as a mage—as callow as she would have to become. Fire consumed the body, and smoke drifted up into the hills, releasing the woodsman to his mountains and the unfettered wind.
“Your spirit will always watch over this glen,” she said to the flames, the twisting pillar of smoke.
The ash she gave to the brook, to the river it would become, the distant lake, and then, one day, the sea.
“You will return as rain,” she said, as the brook turned the gray-white of spawn. “Or lie upon the hills as snow.”
The chough bounced from rock to rock in the racing brook, intent on what she did, inquisitive, its intelligent eyes aglitter.
“Yes, I have become a monster, too,” she said to her familiar. “As cold of heart as the carrion crow, swooping down upon the innocent to pluck out their eyes.”
“Chuff,” the bird said, releasing the single syllable with such conviction that one would think it an entire sentence, the articulation of avian thought.
“This man would have been my betrayer,” she said to the bird, he
r voice a bit plaintive. “If I had let him go, the followers of Eldrich would certainly have found me.” She paused, the chough’s cold eye meeting hers. “But why do I tell you? You don’t care what atrocities I commit—do you—cousin to the carrion crow?”
The bird tilted its head, staring at her one-eyed, as though struggling with the language of humans, then suddenly, dipped its blood-red bill into the murky water.
For a moment she stood appalled, then she thrust her hand into the milky waters and drank, tasting the salt of blood, the bitterness of ashes.
Eight
As the morning sun lifted, a line of shadow and light descended the hillside, illuminating each tree like a green flame.
Erasmus had wakened in darkness, too troubled to sleep, and at the first sign of gray, had stepped out into the sanitarium’s sprawling garden.
“I have become a troubled man,” he told himself.
He was troubled that morning by more than just the visit of Percy Bryce. His thoughts had turned to the countess, as though her company were a haven from the madness in which he found himself.
As soon as he had been able, he had sent a note to her, but no reply had come, and the silence was beginning to magnify his growing feelings of isolation. Certainly, she did not hurry to visit him or bring him comfort, and Erasmus was beginning to accept that it was but a night’s indiscretion, soon forgotten—by the countess, at least.
“‘The dove-gray wing of morning.’”
Erasmus, seated on a bench, turned to find Clarendon looking down from nearby steps, his wolfhound, Dusk, by his side.
“Ah, Randall! Is it Faldor? ‘Awash in dew drop stars,’ or some such thing. Is that the line?”
“Very nearly. You slept no better than I, I take it?” Clarendon put a hand on the great dog’s shoulder as if to reassure him that Erasmus was a friend.
“I managed a few hours, but then woke and could not stop my fevered mind. And I fear I have little to show for so many hours of concentration.”
Clarendon came down the stairs, favoring his injured knee a little. He lowered himself to one of the benches, Dusk sitting close by. The dog had found his master somehow, or perhaps having heard of Clarendon’s escape from the cave, some kind soul had brought the dog up to the sanitarium—either way, the beast had barely left his master’s side since the two had been reunited. “I have seldom experienced such indecision myself. We are being asked to take so much on faith. Could Eldrich not have provided even the slimmest of explanations? If the mage has perfectly good reasons for pursuing the followers of Teller, could he not at least have said so? Given us some justification? Farrelle’s ghost, but I am not one to be bullied, I will tell you that. It is not my nature to make decisions out of fear—or ignorance. One would think a mage would be wiser in the ways of men.”
Erasmus nodded. So one would think. “The mages have long used fear, or promise of reward, to motivate those who did their bidding. It would appear they think us little more sensate than beasts. They only seem to exhibit subtlety when manipulating those who are unaware. As though there is challenge enough, then. I’m afraid, Randall, that we’ll get no more explanation than we have. Whether we accept the priest’s reasoning, that the followers of Teller are a great danger to us all, is the question.”
Clarendon nodded, reaching down to gently massage his knee. “Yes. If Kehler had not corroborated some of what the priest said, I would reject his explanation outright. The man is the greatest blackguard I have ever met—and he has his own reasons for wanting to destroy Anna. I think him as capable of vengeance as any mage!” He paused, obviously tired yet, searching for his train of thought. “Kehler, however, has forced me to have second thoughts. And there is this entire matter of the disappearance of the mages. The only explanation I have heard that makes sense is that they are erasing magic for fear of the harm it will do sometime hence. Even Kehler had read about their augury—a cataclysm.” He met Erasmus’ gaze. “Do we accept the truth of this and go seeking Anna’s destruction, or are we merely grasping at any explanation that will allow us to survive? Are we motivated by cowardice?”
“I can’t imagine that you have ever been motivated by cowardice, Randall. Whatever your decision, it will reflect your integrity and courage. I confess, I trust your judgment in this more than my own.”
Clarendon looked at Erasmus for a moment, lost in contemplation. “Mr. Flattery, I journeyed with you down into the cave and saw you prove your courage repeatedly. Beyond all doubt. Who among us swam the Mirror Lake? Led the traverse above the falls? And went into the water-filled passage in the end? No, your courage is not in question. One act in childhood, Mr. Flattery, does not make the pattern of a life. Every man among us, I’m sure, has some act that they regret—that they feel was not an act of bravery. The rest of us were fortunate that our small acts of timidity resulted in no serious injury to those we thrust forward. No, you will not choose out of cowardice. I worry more that you might choose unwisely for fear of being timorous. That is a real danger and you must guard against it, Mr. Flattery.”
Erasmus was surprised at how grateful he was for this vote of confidence.
“Tell me, Mr. Flattery,” Clarendon began, his voice dropping, “what do you think we found down there? Oh, I know, it was the burial chamber of Landor, but was it somehow a passage? The gate to Faery, that Baumgere sought?”
“I believe Anna suggested as much, though why we should accept anything she said as truth I don’t know. But certainly it seems likely. It marked the place where the first mages emerged into our own world. Emerged like the Stranger of Compton Heath; if you believe in the Stranger. . . .”
Clarendon nodded. “What choice have I but to believe?” he said softly.
At that moment a tall woman appeared below them, walking along the edge of the man-made lake. She seemed to be seeking others, looking in at every bower, at each bench. Erasmus could almost sense a desperation in the way she moved.
Erasmus found himself rising from the bench to watch her. This movement caught her eye and she stopped, staring up at Erasmus and Clarendon. Quickly she began to toil up the small rise, and a moment later she appeared at the stairhead.
There she paused, as though suddenly shy or unsure of herself. Erasmus thought her a most interesting woman; tall and well formed, yet her hair was cut like a boy’s, her dress plain. In fact, now that he could see her well, he thought her a mass of contradictions: boyish; womanly; wearing a badly fitting dress of cheap materials, but over that a knitted shawl of fine silk in subtle color and design. This could be no one but the countess’ friend, Marianne Edden.
Erasmus felt the smile appear on his lips. The countess must be here as well, searching for him inside, perhaps.
“Mr. Flattery, I hope?” she said.
“Erasmus Flattery,” he replied, making a leg. “And you are Miss Marianne Edden, I take it? This is my friend, Randall Spencer Emanual Clarendon.”
She smiled at Randall, who made a low bow.
“It is an honor, Miss Edden,” Clarendon said, “for surely I have read all your books, some of them twice, and I will tell you, they are all improved by a second reading.”
Marianne nodded at this, hardly seeming to register the compliment.
“Is Lady Chilton here, as well?” Erasmus asked, both relieved and entirely flattered that the countess would come to visit him.
“No, Mr. Flattery. That’s just it. The countess is gone. Run off. And I am worried beyond the ability of words to describe . . .” She hesitated, glancing at Erasmus’ companion.
“Shall I leave you?” Clarendon asked softly.
“If you don’t mind?” Erasmus asked, and with a gracious bow the small man brought his dog to heel and was off.
Erasmus felt the sudden need to sit, dreading what Marianne might say next.
Marianne came and sat on the adjoining bench. “It is strange beyo
nd all measure,” she began. “The countess went off in a carriage at a moment’s notice and left not a word of explanation. This is utterly unlike her, I will tell you. And this just a day or two after Averil Kent came by late at night with the strangest story.”
“Kent? What has he to do with this?”
“Well, it is not a short story, but I will try to explain. You see, Kent had apparently seen the countess entering a carriage outside our door late in the night. And she was dressed for the bed. He thought her manner so strange that he made shift to follow her.” She went on to tell of Kent finding the countess returned to the house, but appearing to sleep sitting up, and then all that had happened since.
Erasmus only shook his head, feeling so utterly without resources, without hope in this matter. He had been barely a pawn of the mage—someone whose life could be tossed away without the slightest concern. What did this woman expect him to do?
