By Sylvian Hamilton

by Max Gilbert

  'Is there no one here but yourself then, and the garrison, and the old heathen?'

  'Well, there's the lady; she never leaves her room either. There's a fat slut that serves her, serves the garrison too, all corners. But they're all scared spitless of the old man! It's my belief he's a sorcerer, I sign myself to the Trinity every time he comes to my mind.' Suiting action to word, he crossed himself and devoutly kissed the crucifix he wore on a silver chain. 'God and Mary and Patrick protect us from all evil,' he said.

  'Amen,' said Straccan. It was almost dark now and he wondered where Miles and Larktwist were waiting. At least Bane was here, ready if needed.

  Bane was settled comfortably in the hall, throwing dice. He had brought his own--or, rather, a pair borrowed from Larktwist guaranteed to give him an edge. He'd lost a sum sufficient to endear him to his companions and was now teaching them 'the latest game from France', at which he intended to lose yet more, before eventually winning a respectable amount; not so much as to arouse undue suspicion, but enough to show a profit. The others crowded round the flat stone slab on which Bane had chalked the game's ground, a square divided into smaller squares decorated with serpents, dragons and siege-ladders. A little pile of ragged half- and quarter-pennies went back and forth among them. The carter was in the stable with his doxy, and Bane had supped on scorched mutton wondering who got the ducks. (The cook, his sister and Magnus.)

  'What this game needs,' said Bane, casually, 'is a drink to wash the dust off my luck.'

  'Mine too. Will, run down and tell Sandy we need another jug of ale!'

  'Ale?' said Bane, with a slight sneer. 'I was thinking of this.' He produced the carter's reserve bottle, stolen and hidden in his capacious pocket. 'Whisky.'

  Good fellowship and a hefty swig from Bane's bottle compelled the captain to produce a similar bottle of his own, and the new game proceeded, noisily enough for Straccan to hear it in the gatehouse where FitzCarne was at last snoring on his pallet. From the window, which looked out for miles over the dale, not a light could be seen. Crawgard felt like the only human habitation left in all the world.

  Out there, according to his sleeping host, the Queen of Faerie and her Court would be riding even now, passing like a mist of stars threaded with music, unseen by Christians, bent on their cold, malicious sport. Elf-archers would shoot the farm dogs that gave warning of their coming. Nimble elf-maids would steal sleeping babies, as yet unbaptised, leaving in their place in the cradles bundles of rags, roots and dead leaves, casting their callous glamour on the substitutes so that for days after, poor bereaved mothers would nurse and rock and sing to the things, while husbands, families and neighbours feared them mad. Elves it was who called up the marshlights to lead night travellers to swampy death, and blighted the barley as it grew, and charmed axe-blades to turn on woodcutters. They soured and clotted the milk in cows' udders in the byre, and laid tanglefoot spells on the paths and trackways, so that horses stumbled, and people afoot fell in the mud. Their hatred of humankind was very great, and only the cross of Christ could baffle their tricks. Fitz-Carne, a mine of faerie lore and an unstoppable story-teller, had kept going until, in desperation, Straccan feigned sleep, fearing he would otherwise talk all night.

  As silently as possible, boots in hand, Straccan tiptoed to the door and down the steps, praying they wouldn't creak. At the foot of the stair he sat and put his boots on. He crossed the yard, pausing by the open stable door when he heard a woman laugh inside. A man's voice mumbled something in reply, and Straccan could hear hay rustling. Moonlight through the door silvered limbs in a flurry of amorous activity. He glided past and climbed the donjon stair.

  Just before he reached the main door, there came a sound from above. He couldn't make out any words, but after a deep-voiced cry there was a pause and then a strange droning chant accompanied by piping---an extraordinarily disquieting sound that stopped him in his tracks. It came from a narrow window on the top floor.

  There was nothing to see. Nothing moved in the moonlit night. There seemed no reason for the hairs to prickle and lift at the back of his neck and the sweat to run cold down his sides. For a moment, impossibly, he thought he smelled snow coming, and sensed air shifting, not behind or before him, but above. It was cold, so cold that the breath crackled in his nostrils as if it was midwinter.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it was gone. The chanting and piping stopped. The June night was warm but Straccan was shivering. He crossed himself. Damn that garrulous idiot, Fitz-Carne, with his spooks, he thought angrily. What in the name of hell just happened? His heart was thudding, and it was some minutes before he could move on up the steps and peer in through the half-open door of the hall.

  There was a small group of men, Bane among them, clustered round the table over some sort of game. The stair continued, spiralling inside the wall now, to the chambers above. If Gilla was here, that's where he would find her. Ghost-like, he faded in through the door on to the inner stair, swiftly up, round the curve, out of sight of the hall.

  At the first door he paused. No sound. He eased it open and was greeted by the smells of stale sweat, urine and sickness. He was in a large bedchamber, stone-chill and fireless, its windows shuttered but with enough moonlight filtering through cracks and round edges of the shutters to show the towering mass of the curtained bed.

  A woman's voice from the bed said, 'Marget?'

  'No, Madame.'

  The voice, now shrill with terror, began babbling prayers in a mixture of bad Latin and Norman French. Straccan shut the door and moved to the bedside, his eyes searching the darkness for the shape within the curtains.

  'Madame, I mean no harm! I'll not hurt you.'

  The babbling stopped on a catch of breath, and a thin strong hand clamped on his arm, making him jump.

  'You're real,' she said. 'I can touch you! You're a man!'

  'Of course I'm real,' he said, puzzled. 'Did you think I was a ghost?'

  'No. I know all the ghosts here,' she said. 'They do no harm. Poor lost things. When I die, shall I join them, do you think?'

  'I don't know,' he said, disconcerted. 'Are you the Lady de Soulis, wife of Lord Rainard?'

  'Oh, hush,' she said sharply. 'Don't speak his name! He'll find us, if you speak his name. Naming calls, has no one told you that?'

  'No, Lady. I don't know what you mean.'

  'That's why I lie here in the dark. I could have lights, you know. I could have hundreds of candles if I wished; he is rich enough. But even he can't see in the dark, he can't see me here.'

  FitzCarne was right, he thought, the poor woman was wood-mad. Gently he patted the hand that quite painfully gripped his wrist. 'Madame, I am looking for my daughter, Gilla. Is there a child here at Crawgard?'

  'Your daughter? No, no child here. Why should she be here?'

  'I think Lord Rai-- your husband, I think he has her.'

  'Not here. Perhaps at Soulistoun. Is she young? That creature of his, Pluvis, he's the one who steals children. Ugh! He used to bring them here, but I forbade it. That was long ago. Is it spring?'

  'It's June, Madame.'

  'Summer already? I've not seen a summer day for seven years.'

  'Are you too ill to leave this room?'

  'I'm afraid, afraid to be out there, under the sky. It isn't heaven, you know.'

  'What isn't?'

  'The sky! It's hell. Holy Church teaches that the devil and his realm are under the earth, but that's wrong. Hell is in the sky, among the stars.' Her free hand began patting about on the smelly quilts. 'Where is it? Have you taken my charm?" She began to cry, a thin weak sobbing.

  'What charm, Madame? Let me strike a light, then you may find it.'

  'No! No light! I told you! Here, here it is!' She clutched something and touched his hand with it--it felt like a warm stone.

  'Yes, you're just a man. I thought you were, but I have to be sure.'

  'Madame, are you certain there is no child here?'

  'No child, no. My son
was here a while ago, but he's no child, and he's gone away again. He came to say goodbye to me. He begged me to have candles, you know. But he has never seen the devils. I've seen them. They come down from hell, when that infidel wizard summons them. I heard him a little while ago. I felt their bitter breath.'

  'Madame, I must leave now,' Straccan said, gently trying to prise her grip loose. She resisted.

  'I can't let you have my charm,' she said distractedly. 'It's the only one I've got.'

  'I don't want it, Madame.'

  'Don't you? Are you another of his creatures, then?' She snatched her hand away. 'Flesh and blood, no demon, but you're one of his people! I should have known! He sent you here!'

  Straccan stood up and backed away from the bed. 'No, Madame, I'm not one of his people. I am sorry to have disturbed you. God be with you.' He shut the door behind him, glad of its thickness, for even if the mad woman cried out, no one would hear, not with the racket downstairs. So that was Soulis's wife, poor lady. And she was sure Gilla was not here. But she might not know. How could she know, shut in that room in the dark? A hundred children might be brought and slaughtered here without her knowing.

  Up the stair again. Another door opening into another bedchamber. No one there. Two small rooms in the thickness of the walls full of chests and boxes, some roped, others standing open, books and clothes inside, the dry smells of fleabane and lavender. He reached the top floor. The door opened silently on to a muffled darkness. Straccan tugged the heavy curtain aside. A reek of spices overlay a smell of rottenness. The room was high, narrow and hot –two glowing braziers accounted for that. At one end of the room was a low bed, a tumble of soiled cushions and grubby blankets. At the other end, a table was littered with parchments and books, and a small shrivelled man sat in a big painted chair. He held a pen in one hand; the other rested on the open pages of a massive volume. He wore the robe and corded headdress of a desert Arab, and with revulsion Straccan saw that although the hand wrote steadily, the man's eyeballs were rolled back and only the blind whites showed.

  There was no one else in that foetid place, and certainly Gilla was not here.

  Straccan's boots made no sound on the rugs, nor did the old man look up to see who had come in; he went on writing. When Straccan drew his dagger and laid its point to the writer's scrawny neck, the scribbling hand did not cease and the blind eyes did not flicker.

  'Who are you?' Straccan spoke in the tongue of the desert people. The wizened little mummy went on writing. Straccan looked at the pages, not recognising the script; it was similar to the Arabic he was familiar with but not the same. He took hold of the wrist of the writing hand and lifted it. The flesh was cold and dry, and he felt a nauseating dislike of the skin he touched, dark yellow, wrinkled and papery like a shed snakeskin. The fingers continued to wag, the pen to write invisible signs in the air. Straccan dropped it. The man must be drugged. An empty beaker lay on its side among the parchments. He sniffed it. A pungent smoky odour, but no drug that he knew.

  He walked round the table, looking at the scattered parchments. Many of them were very aged. There were bundles of that curious Egyptian stuff, papyrus, and wax tablets, as well as some ancient-looking dirty clay slabs covered with impressions like the tracks of birds. Among the clutter, he spotted a familiar bronze cylinder, green with age, engraved with a spiral of strange symbols. He reached for it and fingered the star on the lid. How in God's name did that get here? It must be the same one, there surely couldn't be two! He twisted the lid off, and yes, there was the icon.

  A yellow hand shot out and grabbed the cylinder. Straccan, shaken, saw the white eyes move and turn black, shark-like, lightless. The old man gabbled something he did not understand and scrambled to his feet, making not for the door but for the nearest brazier on to which he flung a handful of black glittering powder. Thick smoke rose. Straccan felt his sanity waver as shapes from nightmares and beyond nightmares began forming in the smoke. The chamber, so hot a few moments ago, suddenly seemed winter-cold. The old horror was giggling, drool on his chin. Straccan, chilled to the bone, snatched the cylinder back from the feeble hand, tore the door curtain aside, saw a key hanging beside the door, snatched that and got out of the room.

  He'd moved faster, he thought, than he'd ever moved in his life. He locked the door behind him and leaned against the arrow slit in the stair wall, sucking in clean air. He'd not breathed in much of the hallucinogen, and his head cleared quickly.

  He crept down the steps, past the open door into the hall where the gambling had reached the rancorous stage and was promising to get physical, and ducked out of sight through the outer door. As he crossed the yard he heard the sharp scrape of a pike against stone atop the tower, and the watchman began to cough, ending with a curse. A few minutes later he was back in his bed, listening to the champion's peaceful snoring.

  Chapter 29

  Straccan left at dawn, with just the yawning champion to see him away, naturally unaware of the Arab's whirlwind departure an hour later, escorted by two of Crawgard's bowmen who'd almost rather have been skinned and salted than ride with Lord Rainard's pet sorcerer. They were even more unhappy when they realised which road he was taking. He didn't utter a word, and no one could have understood him if he had.

  When the kitchen boy, bringing breakfast, unlocked his door, the old man had pushed past him and scuttled down the steps straight out to the stable, where a frightened groom found him saddling Sir Bertran's prized Arab mare.

  As he spurred furiously through the gate, two of the garrison, less lucky than the others, grabbed bows and helmets and followed cursing. If any harm came to him, Lord Rainard would have them killed.

  Straccan made his way along the river path to where Miles and Larktwist had camped overnight. All was peaceful, Miles shaving while Larktwist fished; there were already four trout lying on a leaf-lined bark platter, and as Straccan arrived Larktwist pulled out a fifth.

  'What news?' Miles called, waving his razor.

  'Cilia's not there.'

  'I'm sorry,' said Miles. 'There's no doubt?'

  'No.' He recounted what had happened at Crawgard, but did not mention the strange episode the previous night when the summer evening had turned to mid-winter for a few fleeting moments. He was almost sure he'd imagined that, but now and then, on the very edge of his disquieted vision, the nightmare shapes of the old man's lair lurked. When he tried to look straight at them, like faint stars they were gone.

  Before long they heard the rumble of Magnus's wheels and the wagon lumbered into view.

  'Have you had breakfast?' Straccan asked Bane, when Magnus, pocketing his second sixpence, had rattled away with an occasional pig-like squeal of ungreased axles.

  'If you can call it that,' said Bane grumpily. 'That oatmeal just makes a man hungry.'

  'How about some fine fresh fish?' Larktwist said, bearing the platter, now with eight trout, up to their fire.

  'Jesu,' said Bane admiringly. 'That's what I call a catch!'

  'The river's full of them,' Larktwist said. 'You could pull them out all day. You want to help me clean them?'

  'Not especially,' said Bane, 'but if it means they'll be cooking quicker ...' He and Larktwist went into a private huddle: Bane returned the borrowed dice and counted out a share of his winnings.

  'So what do we do now?' Miles asked, as they packed up their camp after breakfast.

  'We'll make for Soulistoun,' said Straccan. 'I asked FitzCarne about it. It's Soulis's chief demesne, east of here towards Edinburgh. I don't know what else to do. Gilla may be there, please God.'

  They rode east, and in the late afternoon, to Straccan's frustration, Miles's horse cast a shoe, which slowed them down. Luckily the road was soft, and after a couple of miles they saw smoke over the trees. A farm perhaps, or a village. A village it was, and a blacksmith in it, cheerful at the unexpected business coming his way.

  'Bane and I'll ride on,' said Straccan. 'We'll keep to the road and find a place to camp tonig
ht. You follow when you're done here.'