River Into Darkness

by Sean Russell

  Anna came and sat on a rock across from the dancing flames. She could see the woman more clearly, now, and was less sure of her age. Fifty? More? She shifted, great doughy rolls moving beneath her arms, visible through her blouse. The woman was thrice Anna’s weight, she was sure. And she had borne a child—at this late age?

  “You look sad, child,” the woman said, her voice grandmotherly and filled with concern. “Sad and frightened.”

  Anna did not answer, although she found herself wanting to tell her troubles to this woman, as though a complete stranger could put her massive arms around Anna and bring comfort, protect her.

  “My friends,” Anna said, then stopped.

  “He watches,” Kells had said, and the thought stopped her from speaking.

  The woman nodded, her smile wavering. “They are among the whisperers,” she said softly, nodding. She looked down at the babe at her breast, making soothing noises. “There my sweet child. There, there. It’s only a wee slip of a girl. She can’t harm the likes of you.”

  The woman looked up and gave Anna a tight smile. “It is a terrible, gathering storm. But what can we do? A gale can’t be outrun. Even the birds, carried on its winds, fall exhausted at last. Sea birds swept a hundred miles inland, fall on ploughed fields, and are turned into the earth. Their sea memories weeping into the soil.” She shook her head. “It is the way of the world. The way, the way.

  “But why am I telling you, daughter? You journeyed through the earth’s darkness. Only the darkness of the soul is more complete. There, most are lost. The one who seeks you—that is his failing . . .”

  “Eldrich? Is that who you mean?”

  But the woman looked down tenderly to the child again, and apparently did not hear.

  “I suckled him,” the woman said, not looking up. “Nourished him. Saw the light grow in his eyes. The light of the world.” She shook her head. “Breaks a poor woman’s heart.”

  “What does?” Anna said, confused. Was the woman making sense but the king’s blood was muddling her brain, or was the woman raving?

  Anna shook her head, pressing her eyes closed.

  “What is it, child?”

  Anna half-expected the woman to be asking this of the baby, but when she opened her eyes, she found the woman’s kind gaze upon her—filled with concern.

  “I don’t know where to go.”

  “But you must. You must. He cannot live without me,” she looked down at the baby again, clucking her tongue, and smiling. “Nor you,” she said. “Women are the way to life. No other. Aye, by moon and tide, we are the way.”

  The warm light of the fire danced across the old woman, across the folds of the skirt that covered her massive legs, like the trunks of trees.

  The woman took the child from her breast, which appeared like a great pendulous moon, and Anna could see crimson scars, a drop of blood forming on the nipple. Calmly the woman pulled her clothing into place, and then her smile brightened.

  “See what a beauty he is,” she said. “See the look in his eyes. Was there ever more promise than that?” The woman leaned forward, tugging back the swaddling folds.

  But there, wrapped in white, lay a bundle of dried thistles and thorns. No child at all.

  “Ah, look at how he smiles at you. You see what a pretty girl she is? Yes. Means you no harm at all.”

  Anna stared in frozen horror, and then the chough’s wing brushed her face as it dove, screaming between them, fluttering above the flames. Anna was up, staggering away. She stumbled into the swaying wood, the grasping branches.

  She fell, but as she stretched out her hands toward the ground, she seemed to tumble through and was suddenly spinning among the stars, their brittle voices echoing coolly in her ears.

  * * *

  * * *

  The hanged man. The drowned man. The earth mother. Anna knew all the symbols, as did anyone familiar with even the lesser arts. Water, the stuff of life. There were poems that used the same imagery. Essex had made much of death by water. Death by life.

  But what it all meant in her case was unclear.

  Banks had drowned in the cave, so it was no surprise that he had appeared to float up out of the earth. There is a price, he had said. She shivered at the memory. A price for what? For her escape? A price to be paid for all the lives lost that she might go free? He might have even meant there was a price for entering Landor’s chamber. Or stealing the seed. Who knew what charms the great mages had left on their chamber? They might be working their wickedness even now.

  She flipped open Halsey’s book again, holding it closer to the fire, trying to make out the fine hand. There had been no records set for travel that day, the day after augury and her dream vision. Anna did not think she had been more exhausted upon her escape from the cave.

  Still, if she was correct in her assumptions, she was back on the trail that would lead her down into the lowlands—or at least into the right valley.

  She read the carefully inscribed Darian, many of the passages followed by Halsey’s explanation. The section on dream visions was not particularly enlightening. The only thing she learned was that her particular emotions during the vision could be significant, but as her emotions had seemed deadened and terribly confused, she was not sure what to make of them. Certainly, after the fact, she had been left with a feeling of dread, which might mean nothing. Or so she hoped.

  Kells strangling in the tree was another enigma. Kells, who had always been the most articulate of them. The hanged man was usually the innocent, falsely accused, though not always. He could be paying for his crime—relating to Banks’ foreboding “there will be a price.”

  He watches, Kells had said. He listens. Eldrich, undoubtedly. She didn’t doubt that it was true. The mage had somehow known their visions. He knew they watched Skye, and Erasmus, though that was easier to understand—the man who so resembled Teller.

  Could he be watching yet? She had not known it had even been possible, so best to assume Eldrich still knew more than he should. But did he know she would escape the cave? Was that part of his plan? She would carry the seed out to him? But Halsey had betrayed him?

  Anna shook her head. Her mind was too overcome by fatigue to muddle through these questions. If Eldrich knew something of her visions, then how would she set her course? What depth of understanding in the arts this indicated! More than she had ever thought possible.

  Death by water . . .

  She could not shake the dream vision out of her mind. The earth mother who spoke as though she had brought the mage into the world. Or perhaps the mages. An image only. Not reality. But still what had that part of the vision indicated? The half-mad woman suckling a bundle of thistles and thorns. The lacerations and, most significantly, the drop of blood forming on the nipple. She suckled her infant with blood.

  Anna put her head in her hands, and closed her eyes. The world still seemed to be spinning. She could bear no more. Erasmus and the others were after her, Deacon Rose among them, she was sure. Now was the time for speed. If she could only stay to the path . . .

  She felt sleep overcoming her, bewildering her senses. Thoughts connected oddly to emotions. She sank down on the ground in the dull glow of her fire.

  A sharp pain in her chest roused her. Looking down she found a thorn embedded in her breast, a crimson tear forming at its base.

  Twenty

  The storm blew itself out by night and left only ravaged clouds scudding on the trailing wind. The travelers had found their horses and pressed on, but by mid-afternoon stopped to rest their mounts and let them graze in a small meadow. Each of the travelers had slipped off on their own, apparently requiring time to themselves.

  Both Kehler and Hayes fell asleep in a sheltered place warmed by sunlight. In the cold stream Deacon Rose bathed and performed his ablutions and meditations, while a much subdued Pryor saw to the horses. Erasmus went
looking for Clarendon.

  The little man had said almost nothing since overhearing their conversation the night before, but he would meet no one’s eye and rode behind, snubbing Hayes’ and Kehler’s attempts to engage him in conversation.

  Erasmus had chosen to leave the man alone, feeling that Clarendon would need to nurture his hurt for a while before his more rational side began to assert itself. After twenty minutes of looking, he found the dwarf settled with his back against a fallen tree, writing in the sunlight.

  Clarendon looked up warily when he heard footsteps, but his face brightened when he saw it was Erasmus.

  “Well, at least you, Mr. Flattery, defended me against the disparagement of that cursed priest,” Clarendon said. “He will work to undermine us, to divide us, for he knows we are strong when we stand against him and his scheming.”

  Erasmus crouched down, feeling the ground which was still wet from rain. “Actually, Randall, I don’t think it was Rose who began the conversation. I don’t know how much you heard.”

  “Only you coming to my defense, Mr. Flattery, though it seemed you had your own doubts of me as well.” He squinted at Erasmus as though expecting an explanation or perhaps an apology.

  Erasmus opened his mouth but could find nothing to say. It was true; he had expressed doubts about Clarendon.

  The small man nodded, staring off toward the edge of the meadow. For a moment he said nothing, the bitter look on his face slowly softening.

  “The truth is, Mr. Flattery, you were not so far off the mark. I have not told you my story—not all of it anyway. Not for dishonorable reasons, I assure you, but only because . . . I have not lived the common life of a man of my time.” He shook his head as though confused by his own decision. “I have experienced things that others would likely not even believe.” The little man fell silent, his shoulders drooping suddenly, his face stretched as though in pain.

  “Randall, it is your story. You need not share it with me if you’d rather not. Trust that I do not doubt your intentions for a moment, nor do I doubt your friendship. We survived the cave together, and that told me more of Randall Spencer Emanual Clarendon than a complete and detailed history could ever tell.”

  Clarendon’s face softened a little. “You are a friend, Mr. Flattery. A gentleman as the term was once used.” Clarendon looked down, his gaze coming to rest on the paper in his lap.

  Erasmus’ eyes followed this glance, and he realized that the script was Darian.

  “The text on the walls in Landor’s tomb,” Clarendon said, shrugging. “I cannot read it, but even so my powers of recall allow me to recreate it—perfectly.” He tilted the page toward Erasmus. “I thought it should be preserved. I don’t know why. Perhaps one day you will make sense of it, Mr. Flattery.”

  Erasmus reached out and put his hand on Clarendon’s shoulder. “Even if I understood the words, it is unlikely that we would ever truly grasp the meaning. That is one of the odd things about men—we so often miss the meaning. The story you told us that night at your home, Randall . . . the meaning was clear, the emotional truth there for anyone to hear. The facts,” he shrugged, “facts should not be mistaken for truth.”

  Twenty-One

  Three vertebrae, a dozen small willow wands, a tiny wolf head formed of gold, shells, a desiccated wasp, feathers, a butterfly wing, raven’s beak, fire opal, garnet, a thimble of tin. A bit of colored string terminating in a noose, four flat stones, a crystal, the tooth of a carp. A ring of hair bound in ribbon of red, a braid of leather, a signet ring, the tail of a rat.

  All these were spread at random across the table, and leaning over it, the mage, lost to the world.

  The countess took a chair, keeping her silence, not expecting to be acknowledged. She looked at all the objects on the table, and except for the golden wolf, thought they looked like nothing so much as the treasures of a small boy. A child’s hoard of precious nothings.

  Yet this man, who had not a trace of childhood left in him, pored over them as though nothing in the world mattered as much.

  After perhaps half an hour of being ignored the countess cleared her throat and said, “Augury?”

  No reaction, and then slowly the head nodded, the dark curls barely shaking.

  She was about to leave, though had made no motion toward rising from the chair, when Eldrich finally spoke.

  “Not really augury in the truest sense. I don’t know what one would properly call it. I’m sure no one in the world practices it but me. It is a useful complement to augury. It is properly called, well, the Paths might be a Farr equivalent.” He waved a hand at the collection of odds and ends spread across the table. “Imagine that each object represents an event, a point in time or a person—perhaps even a place. All but the wands and the string—well, the string is more complex than that. The wands represent paths, though sometimes arrangements of objects indicate paths as well. These paths can be geographical, though more often they are paths through time.

  “See how the wands are all different lengths and thicknesses? That is not accidental. Now imagine that time moves in one direction—different each time you cast the Paths, but discerning the direction time moves is one of the easier tricks to learn.

  “All the objects on this side represent events that are already past. These in the center are due at any moment, some today perhaps. And this side of the table is the future—or the futures. More than one is indicated, unfortunately.” He put his hand to his chin and resumed his contemplation.

  Some moments passed and the countess began to think that was all the explanation she would receive, but then Eldrich spoke again, still not raising his head.

  “Nothing is fixed except the past, and that is open to interpretation. Each time the Paths are cast, it is different. Each time an event is overtaken, decisions made, it changes.” He held his finger above a jumble of objects—a smooth stone, the butterfly wing, and a wand. “Here is a locus, a way-point. This is the critical juncture. From here events can unfold in different ways. This wand that touches the stone comes from the past—the path taken to get here. But look at the array of wands fanning out from here. The string is near, and this trail of objects looks like stepping stones. Five possible directions at least.” He shook his head. “This juncture . . . this is the point at which the ones I sought entered the cave. When cast before, all these paths terminated here.”

  “But Erasmus was in that cave.”

  “He was.”

  “But you told me he was alive and unharmed.”

  “And that was true. But he was never meant to have escaped. Yet he did. They all did.” He went on as though this lie meant nothing. “Augury is a bit like gambling, you see. The odds of rolling a die to the same number five times consecutively are very slim. Yet it can happen. Men can escape a cave believed inescapable. Now the pattern has altered radically. It continues beyond the cave; but goes where . . . ? This course,” he indicated a wand leading to a white stone curled within the tail of the rat, “it leads to disaster—utter and complete. It must be avoided at all costs.”

  “But what is this disaster, do you know?”

  “The escape of my enemy, aided by my servant, or so I believe.”

  “Who?”

  “Erasmus, I think, though it could be Bryce.”

  “But your servants are so loyal. Walky.”

  “Ah, yes, but Bryce and Erasmus are not Walky. They despise me.” Before she could form her next question he answered, “It was necessary.

  “Along this path, to the white stone, she escapes with my servant—the white stone is from a river, and water is life. Along this, to the wolf, she comes to me. See this . . . it terminates at the wasp. On this path I believe she dies with another, for the wasp is a twin. But look how the white stone and the wasp are almost connected by the string. As though the path where she dies and the one where she lives are connected. . . .”
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  “What does it mean?”

  Eldrich shook his head. “Even I do not know.” He almost brushed one of the objects with a finger, though it was clear he was careful not to disturb them. “But if this path is followed, it will mean Erasmus has betrayed me.”

  “So he will escape. . . .”

  “Escape? He can never escape.” Suddenly he was still. “No. That is not true. He escaped the earth when I believed it impossible. I have watched Erasmus Flattery all of his life. I would have told you that I knew, almost without doubt, the course he would take through the years. But now . . .” The black curls shook, his focus riveted to the table and its peculiar array of deadly whatnots.

  The countess could hardly credit what she was hearing. Was this not Eldrich? Was it not the mage who moved all around him while he remained still? Yet he sounded like a man filled with doubts, a bit desperate, even melancholic. A man. Not this superior being that she had come to believe in.

  “And where am I on these paths?” she asked, surprised to hear her voice emerge as a whisper. “Or am I too insignificant to appear?”

  Eldrich lifted an elegant hand, indicating a willow wand with a long finger. “This is your path,” he said.

  She bent forward to see what was indicated, and saw the wand—perhaps the longest on the table. It led directly and unmistakably to the golden wolf. The countess felt her eyes shut for a second—as though the inevitability were unbearable. As though her freedom to decide had been stolen from her long ago and she had realized it only in this instant.

  “Do not look so,” Eldrich said, regarding her for the first time. “It is not that you have no choice—it only indicates what your choice will likely be. Do you see? Erasmus and the others escaped the cave. A man named Halsey self-murdered to thwart me. Self-murdered, which I had not thought him capable of doing. Nothing is carved in stone. But this . . . it is what you will likely choose.”