River Into Darkness

by Sean Russell

  He would not allow himself to be taken into the shadow but instead drew the hand steadily, an arm appearing, then Anna, laughing.

  “But was it you all along?” Erasmus said, confused.

  “Not at all, it was a spirit. The ghost of Mother Green. But let us see what more might be found, for the night is filled with whispers. Do you hear?” She unstopped the jar again, and offered it to Erasmus, who took it this time without hesitation, excited by what he’d seen, by what might be revealed to him yet. Again the liquid filled him with its warmth, and he felt that sense of lifting. Rising like a cloud.

  Around him walls of stone rose up toward the stars. A ruin, Erasmus was sure. A ruin of such massive scale it seemed impossible that it had been built by men. Yet time had laid waste to it so that almost nothing was recognizable—and even so it seemed familiar. As though he had been here before.

  Kilty’s Keep, he thought, though it could not be, for this was a ruined castle. Yet Kilty’s Keep it was.

  A shattered stair came underfoot, and ahead he could see ghostly moonlight. Up again, and around a corner, and there, illuminated by the moon, a single tree, the only living thing in this dead city—and it bore white blossoms, gently waving in the breeze.

  Erasmus stepped forward but stumbled and fell endlessly, landing upon a surface soft and level.

  Lifting his head, Erasmus found himself lying atop a cliff, the moonlit land stretching out before him, windless and still—a stark geometry of fields and hedgerows, rivers and roads. And then movement. A dark line, like a flight of crows low over a road. But then they emerged from shadow into moonlight, and Erasmus could see two carriages racing as though pursued. And they bore no lanterns. Nor were there drivers. They raced on by moonlight, and there, upon the high after-seat, perched a small boy, staring fixedly ahead. Erasmus as a child, wearing his favorite blue frock coat.

  He scrambled up and fled into darkness.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Erasmus?”

  It was Anna. He knew her voice even if the shadow he could see did not resemble her at all.

  “I saw—”

  “Do not try to rise yet. Lie back and rest, Erasmus.”

  “But we have no time to rest. He has seen me! He travels toward us even now.”

  “Eldrich?” Erasmus felt her stiffen. “How do you know? Did you see the mage?”

  “I saw the carriage and another in flight across the countryside at night. No drivers guided them, nor were there coach lamps. Only a small boy—myself—sitting high up at the rear. But it was my—the manner of this small boy; so utterly fixated on the way ahead, so deadened of emotion. Like one given into madness and near catatonia, or a person in a trance.”

  He felt Anna sit back, suddenly very still. “It might mean only that he seeks us, which is hardly news. I . . . I must consider it. Was there anything more?”

  “Yes. I was wandering in a massive ruined city. Ancient, I thought it was, and built to a scale that men could hardly imagine—massive. I saw the glow of moonlight and went toward it, and there, in what might have been a courtyard, grew a single small tree, white blossoms waving in the ghostly light. And I heard singing, though no music I knew. A dirge, it seemed, a requiem. What does it mean?”

  “The city, I don’t know. The singing? A death, certainly. The white blossoms were king’s blood. The sign of the arts. Eldrich is near his time. That is what I think.”

  “But could it not be us? We have Landor’s seed, after all.”

  She nodded, and rocked him gently, singing softly.

  “Above the clouds, among the stars,

  Beyond the sacred mountain.

  Beneath the sun, beneath the world

  A gate lay ever open.”

  Forty-Six

  The mage traveled at a pace the countess would have thought impossible, but when drawn by horses sustained by the arts, the countryside swept past league by league. They had come down out of the hills in darkness, and followed the high road as it wound among field and wood toward the sea.

  The countess slept as best she could in the swaying carriage, nearly jarred from her seat more than once, and each time she opened her eyes found Walky poised to arrest her fall, as though he never needed sleep, or could not rest while another might need his attention. The perfect servant, always.

  After nearly being thrown from her seat for perhaps the tenth time, the countess tried to force herself into wakefulness. She squinted at the passing scene, sunlight and shade in rhythm as they passed down a row of evenly spaced trees.

  “Have you not slept at all, Walky?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve felt no need, m’lady,” he said, though the countess thought the old man’s eyes were a bit red.

  He is far older than you, she chided herself, and yet he sits awake seeing that you come to no harm.

  “Well, I’ve returned to the land of the living now, so you might rest if you’ve a mind to.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps, by and by.”

  She shrugged off the traveling blanket and rubbed knuckles into her eyes in a gesture that she thought terribly unladylike. She longed to stretch, but knew that would be going a bit too far.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just crossed the east branch of the Brandydrop River.”

  “My, but we are flying across Farrland! I don’t think my kestrel could manage it more quickly.”

  Walky nodded. “When the mage has need . . .”

  “Are Mr. Bryce and Lord Skye traveling with Lord Eldrich?” Since their meeting in the children’s room, two nights past, she had not heard from nor spoken to Eldrich, and she wondered now what he did and what the state of his mind might be. He had very pointedly not requested her company in his carriage.

  “Bryce and Skye have gone ahead to prepare Lord Skye’s ship. He keeps a small vessel for his own pleasure. Did you know?”

  She nodded. Skye’s foibles were much discussed in Farr society, and none more than his ship. There was a saying in Farrland that a man who would go to sea for pleasure would fight a war for a holiday. Travel by sea was looked upon as particularly evil necessity.

  “Mr. Walky?” the countess said, pitching her voice low, as though she might be heard above the rattle of the carriage. “Where is it we go? Is it Farrow? Is that why Skye prepares his ship?”

  A bit of pain crossed Walky’s face, as though it were terribly unfair of her to ask such questions of him. “We go in search of Erasmus. I know nothing more than that, m’lady.”

  She nodded, sitting back in her seat. She was having trouble believing that Erasmus was yet alive. The story she had heard from Clarendon and Hayes was so convincing. If he had survived the gorge, why had he not revealed himself to his companions? Had he been injured?

  “Do you believe Erasmus is still alive, Walky?”

  “The mage believes it, m’lady.”

  “But if it is true, why has he not revealed himself?”

  Walky shrugged.

  “Only the mage knows?” she asked, not really meaning to mock him.

  But Walky looked very serious, as though he did not realize she was quoting his own much-used phrase. “Even the mage does not know everything,” he said.

  The countess smiled. “You should rest, Walky. Who knows when you shall have the opportunity again.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was late night when the entourage of the mage entered Portsdown, a small port at the mouth of the Inglbrook, which was no brook at all but a broad river here where it met the sea.

  They disembarked almost immediately for a ship, all of them in a longboat. The countess could see Eldrich wrapped in an old-fashioned cloak, his collar up against the dampness. Even sitting, he seemed stooped to her, bent under the weight of the impossible tasks he had been left.

  She realized that s
he did feel a little sympathy for him. Perhaps a result of the choice he had given her—and that she had been unable to make.

  How crucial were the responsibilities he had been left? Important enough that one would destroy the life of a child? It was not impossible, she thought.

  A memory of being sought by the ghost children surfaced and she shivered. Their terrible, unhappy eyes, as they groped toward her, toward life. Would that she had been allowed to choose life for them. . . .

  But perhaps Eldrich’s choice had been no less difficult. She would likely never know, for he would not tell.

  They came alongside a small ship and proceeded quickly up the boarding stair. And then, after all their hours of urgency, they were told they must await the turn of the tide, for there was not enough wind in the harbor to allow them to fight the flow.

  The countess watched from a few paces away as Eldrich listened to Skye and his captain, a man who looked distinctly frightened by this apparition that had boarded his ship. Sailors, the countess knew, were superstitious by nature.

  “There will be wind enough, Captain,” Eldrich said, his musical voice distinctly odd here, upon the silent bay. “Indeed, there shall be all the wind you require—and more.”

  “But where do we travel, my lord? What course shall we set?”

  Eldrich strode to the binnacle, glanced down at the compass rose, and began to chant almost beneath his breath. He drew his hand across the bronze binnacle, and the green sea fire appeared at the deck, like a glowing wreath. It spread upward slowly, until the entire binnacle was wrapped in viridescent fire.

  “There,” Eldrich said. “That is your course.”

  The captain stood back from the sea fire, frightened into silence. Eldrich spun around and went quickly below, leaving the sailors muttering among themselves, faces ashen in the fading green light.

  Walky stepped forward, staring down at the glowing compass. “Due east,” he said calmly, as though this were an everyday occurrence. “Captain,” he said, nodding, and then followed his master below.

  In the ensuing silence a small zephyr fluttered the pennant at the masthead, and then hissed across the deck like the whispering of a ghost. It began to build into a breeze. Still muttering, the sailors scrambled up the rigging, crablike against the stars, stiff with fear of who had come aboard and the ill fortune that accompanied him.

  * * *

  * * *

  Her cabin was too small to pace, even if it had not been slanting at ten degrees and pitching slowly up and down. She hardly noticed how lovely the appointments of the cabin were, how unlike any ship she had heard tell of. Instead the closeness of the cabin reminded her of her situation, how trapped she truly was. Somehow the lodge in the hills had masked the truth, for she had the run of it and the grounds. But here, there was barely two square yards of cabin, and the little room felt claustrophobic.

  She could almost feel Eldrich’s presence, as though the heat of his body emanated through the thin bulkheads. She was sick of it. Sick of not knowing where they went, or why. Sick of rising in the night to be carried off to some unknown destination for some secret purpose. Sick of asking questions that no one would answer.

  It was as though she had wakened from a sleep, or thrown off an enchantment, and the reality of her situation had struck her.

  “Have I been bespelled the whole time?”

  Never in her life had she so felt like hammering upon the walls, as it was said prisoners did—beating upon the walls until their fists were bloody, the bones of their hands shattered—but tonight she could have.

  “This can’t go on,” she said firmly, taking herself in hand.

  Sweeping up her cloak, she threw open her door and went looking for the companionway up to the main deck.

  She emerged into a beautiful night, a near-full moon traveling into the west, the ship underway to a sailor’s wind and only the most innocent of clouds abroad. The wind had the warmth of the south in it and ran its fingers through her dark curls in a most gentle manner.

  She felt all of her pent-up frustration was suddenly illusory. The vast horizon spoke of a world without boundaries—world without end—and the magic of the night promised nothing but possibilities. She traveled with a mage, after all, the last of his kind, and magic enveloped them like the breeze. Anything might happen. Anything at all.

  I am going mad, she thought. One moment I’m ready to strike out and swim for shore—anything to escape—and then I feel I am truly blessed to be here. The most fortunate woman in Farrland.

  “Lady Chilton . . .”

  “Lord Skye. I thought there would be no one awake.”

  Skye nodded. “I have suffered the insomnia ever since I can remember. I think it is my dreams, they are so disturbing. . . .”

  In the weak light of the ship’s lanterns he appeared pale, his face drawn—as a man might who had wakened from nightmare into a situation hardly less strange.

  “These are dreams of your lost past?”

  He nodded. “But like so many dreams, when I awake, they are just beyond my grasp. But even so they are more numerous since I have come to the house of Eldrich, more numerous and even more unsettling. As though they were more vivid and even closer to the surface, yet still I cannot reach them. I do not mean to press you, Lady Chilton, but you mentioned that you might speak to Lord Eldrich about my request.”

  Yes, he always wanted something of her—and almost invariably she offered it, though it was never what other men wanted. “And I must confess I have not, Lord Skye, for which I apologize. It is not that I have forgotten or been remiss in any way. The opportunity has not presented itself, and if truth be known, I think I am hardly in the mage’s favor at the moment.”

  Skye nodded stiffly, the sadness that her words caused hardly masked.

  “Well, there is little hope that the mage would grant my wish, for as he made abundantly clear, I have nothing to offer in return. One cannot make a deal with a devil unless one has a soul to offer. I, apparently, do not.” He nodded off in the direction the ship traveled. “Where do we go now, do you know?”

  The countess shook her head. “Farrow, I assume.”

  “But those are the lights of a village in the distance,” Skye said. “We are sailing up the coast, not out to sea.”

  The countess was mildly surprised, but then why would she believe she could predict the actions of the mage?

  “Then I cannot say where we go.”

  “Or why, I take it?”

  She shook her head.

  “What is it, Lady Chilton, that you do with Walky in all these hours you spend together?”

  The question, and the way it was phrased, was so discourteous that she felt her face begin to flush with anger. But no sooner did the emotion rise then it seemed to have been carried away on the breeze. Like so many other things, the common politeness of Farr society was of no consequence in the house of a mage—who had little concern for such niceties himself.

  “I study the arts of the mages, Lord Skye,” she said, watching his face. But he was neither as surprised as she expected nor as she’d hoped.

  “Then perhaps I will not need the cooperation of Eldrich.”

  “I can assure you,” she said quickly, “that I have so little skill in these matters that I would not even know how to begin to recover what you have lost. I’m sorry, but do not look to me, Lord Skye. I have barely begun to learn even the language of the mages.” She met his eye. “And I have not the slightest understanding of what use the mage will put my paltry learning to.”

  Skye nodded, his hope, however slight, fading.

  They fell silent a moment, the breeze whispering around them, laden with the vowels of the sea and the silent language of human misunderstanding.

  “Skye?”

  It was the voice of Eldrich, and it startled the earl.

  Skye
backed away reflexively, and without even a nod to the countess, hurried below. She heard his boots scurrying down the companionway stairs.

  Eldrich wore his old-fashioned cloak wrapped about him like a shadow. Unlike Skye, his boots made no sound as he came and stood beside the countess at the rail.

  He said nothing for a moment, and the countess began to wonder if he had no more purpose than frightening Skye away.

  “Why do you torture Lord Skye?” she said impulsively. “He will do anything to have his memories returned.”

  “Skye? He has brought evil enough into this world without his memories. Do not waste your compassion on Skye, Lady Chilton. He is the scourge, the outrider of destruction. I would never have let him walk abroad if I’d not needed him to find my enemies. It is a strange irony, and a tragic one. No, Skye shall not have his memories. If I were as heartless as people think, I would murder him this night.” Eldrich’s voice actually sounded overwhelmed by fatigue, something she had not thought possible. Where was the music now?

  “He does not seem evil,” she said.

  He glanced at her, skeptically she thought. “No. Men seldom do. These larger-than-life, madly evil characters are generally the stuff of novels, I’m afraid.”

  The two remained a few moments in strained silence, mage and countess. She was about to curtsy and excuse herself, for it seemed that Eldrich had nothing to say to her, or if he had, would not say it. But then he broke the silence, his voice nearly a whisper.

  “We have bargained once, Lady Chilton,” Eldrich said, his voice flat and strained, “but it seems we must do so again. What will it take to have you fulfill your part?”

  The countess reached out a hand to the rail, steadying herself. Eldrich was making an offer of peace. It was unheard of. Her thoughts were suddenly awhirl, and she tried to force order upon them, not wanting this moment of advantage to go to waste. “If Erasmus is alive, what will you do with him?”