Ombria In Shadow

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Lydea felt words as rich and unexpected as jewels fill her mouth: Magic, spellbound, illusion, ghost, toad, sorceress. She got up after a moment, and brought Ducon the cooling mug of broth she found on her tray.

  “We’re in the underworld,” she said. “Drink this.”

  FOURTEEN

  The Labyrinth

  The owl-eyed man returned first to the Black Pearl’s library. Mag, slumped on her feet behind the book shelves, her face against a musty pile of manuscripts, blinked senselessly at his taper light. She was thirsty and disoriented; she had no idea if an hour or a day had passed in that silent, changeless room. Accustomed to adjusting in peculiar situations, she did not betray herself with so much as a mouse’s rustle against the manuscripts. The man lit more candles and began leafing through a book from the shelves on the other side of the room. The door at the bottom of the stairs, whose lock had resisted every barbed pin in Mag’s hair, stood open. She felt her body tense, preparing to emerge unexpectedly through the nearest armed ghost. In the second that the man stood transfixed and staring at the apparition, she would run down the stairs and slam the door behind her.

  That would imprison him in her place. Or would it? Would he simply burst out and chase her down the halls, shouting for Domina Pearl? During the moment she wondered, he slapped the book abruptly shut and blew out candles. He was careless; one wick sprang to life again as he clattered briskly downstairs. The door clicked shut behind him. Mag slumped despairingly. Then she realized that she was no longer in the dark.

  She stepped out cautiously, noiselessly. Two spells demanded solutions now instead of one: the locked door, and Ducon Greve. One precluded the other; both were imperative. She pulled books down hastily, searching at random for either spell: to unlock a door, to unpoison a man. She left careless fingerprints everywhere, knowing with cold certainty that Domina Pearl would more likely find her first.

  Despite her urgent tasks, odd things in the books snagged her attention, clung to memory. She found hints of complex and extraordinary aspects to the history of Ombria, as well as tantalizing suggestions of what strange brew of exotic succulents and insects might keep Domina Pearl alive, or something resembling alive, long past anyone’s memory. When the candle began to sputter, she put the books hastily back on the shelves and crept behind them again. She did not dare light others; she might as well toss books onto the floor as leave a ring of melted stubs around the room. The candle died. Again, she waited. In the dark, one persistent image came to mind and refused to budge: Ducon dying in a back alley or among the weeds on an abandoned pier, while she, equally alone and powerless, stood trapped by books and unable even to open a door.

  She heard steps in the room beyond and readied herself to spring out and run past whoever came up. But the door opened and locked again before the steps came up. She swallowed a brief, startling stab of tears. She leaned gently against the shelves, quieting the sharp-winged dragonfly of fear that darted and hovered and darted through her. Domina Pearl’s ancient, dead-moon eyes would not miss her twice.

  But it was the man again, his steps anything but furtive. Again, he did not stay long; again he left a candle burning, as if he intended to return soon. She watched him choose his book and turn to go. She moved soundlessly behind the shelves, her hands rising to find a suitable pin. She would follow him down, force herself through behind him; the barb at his throat would persuade him to silence.

  She saw what he had left on the floor as she passed through a ghost. The blood shocking through her brought her to a halt. He moved quickly in that moment; she heard the door shut as she stood staring at the floor. A plate of cold roast beef and bread lay beside the lighted taper on its stand, along with a pitcher of water and a glass.

  Eat me, they said. Drink me. She swallowed, startled and wary. The Black Pearl had seen her, and had sent him with spell-riddled food and drink. Only that could explain it; he would not dare risk secrets from Domina Pearl. And Mag, her mouth as dusty as the old tomes, did not dare drink.

  She didn’t. But neither did she hide when he came up again. His quick, noisy tread told her clearly how lost she was within the secret palace, how far from help. She sat on the floor next to the untouched food and water, her face withholding expression as his flame fell over her. She felt his own surprise like a touch on a web between them. Whatever he expected, she thought, it was not her.

  He said, “She doesn’t know you are in here. I brought the food and water from the kitchens, not from her.”

  Mag was silent, studying him, wondering if he truly hid things from Domina Pearl. She gave him a little piece of herself, the sound of her voice. “Who are you?”

  “Camas Erl. I often work in libraries. A misplaced book, the scent of melted wax catches my attention. Domina Pearl had other things on her mind.” He settled himself down on the floor, grunting a little as he folded his long legs. His yellow eyes, rayed with streaks of hazel, were curious as a bird’s, “I am the prince’s tutor. Before that, Ducon Greve’s.”

  “Ducon,” she said hollowly, remembering. “He is dying.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been searching for him everywhere.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Faey’s waxling,” she answered impatiently. “The sorceress. If you are close enough to Domina Pearl to share secrets with her, then you must know the sorceress who lives underground.”

  His eyes refused to say if he knew her or not. “But why does she want to kill Ducon?”

  “She was paid to, by a manticore. She made a poisoned piece of charcoal.”

  He whispered something, running fingers through his hair, dragging a strand out of the tie at his nape. “Charcoal. That would do it. He fairly eats it when he draws. Are you sure about the manticore?”

  “I didn’t see it. Faey recognized it.”

  “Does this Faey know a manticore from an apple core?”

  “If it’s worth knowing.”

  He grunted softly. “Why don’t I know her? Domina Pearl is aware of her, you say?”

  “Domina Pearl has sent to her for spells. Please,” she begged, “if you let me go, I can look for him.”

  “Domina has her own ways of finding people. That might be simpler.”

  Mag’s skin chilled at the thought. “She would ask how you know Ducon is dying. You would have to tell her. She’ll unmake me if she lays eyes on me. She warned me once before. I’ve been with Faey long enough to know what that means.”

  He grunted, still gazing at her, uncertain and uncomfortably probing. “You have no reason whatsoever to trust me,” he said abruptly. “I wouldn’t. Except, for the moment, two things. Domina Pearl does not want Ducon dead, and neither do I. The second thing is this.” He tore a piece of crust from the bread, washed it down with a swallow of the water from the pitcher and wiped his mouth. “It’s harmless. For now, I’ll keep all this from Domina Pearl. Where have you searched?”

  She told him.

  He refused to set her free, even after she described in vivid detail the places Ducon frequented. He only promised, “I’ll find him. He must be out there. He’s nowhere in the palace.”

  “Please—”

  “Domina Pearl won’t find you. She rarely comes here. In this palace, libraries are the most private places.” He seemed to see the sudden, raw determination behind Mag’s eyes. He rose quickly, picked up the single burning candle from the stand, and walked backward as he spoke. “If you stay quiet, I’ll leave this lit for you on the bottom step. If you move, I’ll leave you in the dark, and I will summon Domina Pearl.”

  Her fists tightened, but she did not move. “Just hurry,” she said tersely.

  She unclenched a little after he had gone, enough to eat something, and resume her incessant reading, for nothing about Camas Erl indicated he might know how to reverse death by toad.

  The manticore, she learned in her random, harried leafing through the Black Pearl’s books, belonged to an ancient family, close kin to the Hous
e of Greve. Evidently the lord or lady bearing the name Sozon had it in mind to whittle away secretly at the heirs to the crown, which did not entirely explain the attack on Ducon, who would not have inherited anyway. She had paused briefly to ponder the elusive logic of that, as though it were some mathematical problem, when her head snapped backward against leather bindings worn as soft as lambskin with age. She slept without moving, without dreams.

  Camas Erl walked into her sleep and woke her. The candle he had left her had burned out. She made some sort of noise, a broken question, as she gathered her complaining bones together. He shook his head.

  “I didn’t find him.”

  His face was patchy, sagging tiredly. The flame lit stubble, chestnut and salt, along his lean jaws. She pulled herself into herself, suddenly cold, huddling within the shapeless wool. She gazed at him, her eyes stunned, luminous.

  “Then he’s dead.”

  “How do you know?” He touched her when she did not answer, shook her a little, lightly. “What was the poison in the charcoal?”

  “It was from Faey’s toad. I have been trying to find an antidote in the books.”

  “How long ago did she make it?”

  “I don’t know, anymore. Days.”

  He rubbed his eyes wearily, baffled. “No one in the palace has seen him in days. I looked everywhere you told me to look and a few places you didn’t. A woman in a brothel told me he had been there a night or two ago. He seemed ill, she thought. He said he was only drunk, but he was cold as death, and he would eat nothing.”

  Mag shivered. “Cold as toad,” she whispered. She reached for the pitcher, drank from it; water sloshed, waking her further. She washed her face with her wet skirt, and straightened the pins in her hair. Then she said with grim desperation to Camas, “Domina Pearl will kill me if she finds me here. She told me so once before when she caught me spying on her. You must let me go before you tell her about Ducon. Unless you’re angry with me for helping Faey with this, and you want me dead.”

  “You helped her?”

  “I couldn’t stop her. So I thought I could find Ducon in time, exchange the magic charcoal for an ordinary piece. But I couldn’t find him, I couldn’t, though I’ve looked everywhere—”

  “What,” Camas Erl asked, his wide eyes no longer an owl’s, but fiercer, fixed and predatory, “exactly are you?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, reckless with the truth. “What are you? You know Domina Pearl’s secrets and yet you hide things from her. What does she want? What do you want? What is the Black Pearl?”

  He was silent, thinking, a furrow trowelled across his forehead. “The Black Pearl,” he said finally, “is a piece of the underside of history. The dark side of the moon. The shadow it casts across the earth when it eclipses the sun. She is, shall we put it, something that should have vanished long ago, but didn’t. I have a passion for the history of Ombria, which leads me in strange directions, because it is not simple. You are one of the stranger things I’ve run across in my journey through the labyrinth of history. You and your sorceress who lives underground. She made you, you say? You are her—what? Her waxling?”

  “So she says.”

  “And you? What do you say?”

  Mag was silent. She held herself tightly, motionlessly, her arms around her knees; the tutor held her eyes. After a long time, she heard someone, herself and not herself, answer, “I don’t know. If I say I am human, then where do I belong? And if I am not human, then where did I begin?”

  “I will let you go,” he told her very softly, “if you tell me how to find you again. And how to find Faey.”

  “What do you want with her?”

  “To know her. She is part of Ombria. To learn what she is, where she comes from.”

  “She won’t like being studied.”

  “I can be very discreet. There’s little time to talk now. I’ll give you a chance to leave the palace before I suggest to Domina Pearl that she should search for Ducon. If you find him alive, send word to me. I’ll tell her that I found him. She’ll do what she can to heal him, even if she has to pay your sorceress to undo her own spell.”

  “Faey has done that before,” she answered heavily. “It will cost.”

  “Domina Pearl will pay.”

  “Why? Why would she care that much about the bastard son of the House of Greve? Faey thought she would be the one to kill him.”

  But he finished his instructions without answering her. “If Ducon is dead—” He hesitated, then said flatly, “If you find him dead, tell anyone. It won’t matter.”

  She nodded, rising stiffly, and waited for him to lead her down, unlock the door. But he wasn’t finished with her yet. He held his taper between them, lighting both their faces, and asked curiously, “Why weren’t you afraid of them? The ghosts in here? Why didn’t you run the moment you saw them?”

  “They’re only ghosts. I was raised among them, down in Ombria’s past.”

  She saw the light and longing flood his eyes, as though she had told him of some great treasure buried deep beneath the city. He asked sharply, “How will I find you again?”

  She told him. He said nothing more as they went down the steps; he unlocked the ensorcelled door and set her free.

  FIFTEEN

  Charcoal and Wax

  Ducon dreamed, and woke remembering.

  In his dream he followed a tall white-haired man through the crowded streets of Ombria, whom he always seemed about to overtake, and who always eluded him. Shop doors opened; people pushed between them; street urchins being chased by an irate confectioner for the sweets in their hands careened wildly across his path. A duel fought with sudden, savage intensity in front of him forced him to stop. He watched the pale head move farther and farther away from him with never a backward glance while the duellers whipped mercilessly, relentlessly at each other, their rapiers weaving patterns of silver that froze in the air across his path into a shimmering wall of blades. He cried out desperately to the distant figure, “Wait!” He found himself alone, walking the maze of hidden rooms within the palace toward the place where, he knew with absolute certainty, the stranger who wore his face waited.

  He woke before he reached it.

  He remembered, before he opened his eyes, the face that had formed unexpectedly on his paper, as if it had come out of the charcoal instead of him. The face had been one of many unpredictable sketches. Where was it now, this charcoal that glowed in the dark?

  Where, for that matter, was he?

  He opened his eyes finally. Lydea, whom he had last seen lying beside him in a hideous cap and a beer-stained apron, was sitting in a chair beside his bed. Apparently, her clothes had also offended the eye of the mistress of the mansion; she now wore a gown of rich green velvet, of a stark simplicity that hadn’t been fashionable for a hundred years or so. Only her face and fingers were visible. She seemed to be in the midst of contemplating her fate, but she turned quickly as though she had felt him wake.

  She touched his face, then lifted his head a little and held a cup of water to his lips. His mouth tasted of charcoal, he thought as he drank; he wondered if he had swallowed it.

  “Explain to me again,” he begged, “why we are here.”

  She had told him once before; it had been like listening to a vivid, improbable dream. This time, he kept his attention on the path the charcoal took from the sorceress’s cauldron to Lord Sozon’s servant, and somehow into the box he carried with him when he drew.

  “The poison was in the charcoal,” Lydea said. “It seeped into your skin.”

  He nodded. “I’m told I get it everywhere. I never notice.” The simple movement, the few words, took their toll. The pain, a drowsing beast, began to stir in his head. He tried to ignore it. “Where is it now?”

  “Where is what?”

  “The charcoal.”

  She looked bewildered. “I don’t know.”

  “There was a wooden box. In my coat pocket.” He formed words with infinite ca
re, trying not to disturb the beast.

  She opened her mouth, then rose without asking why. He saw his torn, bloody clothes lying across a chest. She picked up his coat. One pocket held a lump of rubble; the other, hanging by threads, was stained with an explosion of colors.

  “What was in the box?”

  “Paints. Pieces of charcoal.”

  “It must have been crushed beneath you when you fell.” She put the coat down and came back to him. “Don’t worry. You’re safe from it.”

  His eyes filled with tears of pain, of impatience at his weakness. He whispered, “I loved what it drew.”

  He slept again. This time, in his dreams, a monstrous and beautiful sorceress slung him over her back and carried him across the arid wasteland of some immense cavern. Upside down, breathing in the cloudy fabric of her sleeve, he tried to bargain with her for that piece of charcoal.

  “I’ll draw your face with it,” he offered at one point.

  “Which face?” she asked him. And then her raucous laughter echoed off the stones around him and he woke.

  Or thought he woke: the sorceress still loomed over him. He recognized her, though she wasn’t wearing the face in his dreams, or even the face he had glimpsed above Lydea’s when she had knelt beside him in the rubble and said his name.

  The sorceress wore her power like a great cloak of many colors, only visible if he did not look straight at it. It flowed and billowed all around her, in the corners of his eyes; it filled the chamber and spilled beyond the door, beyond her house, he guessed, like a second river beneath the world, like wind. The face she wore, tempestuous and beautiful, was a mask, nothing.

  He whispered, “No wonder you laughed.”