by Dave Duncan
Rain was beating the trees harder than ever. The keeper limped ahead, leaning on his staff. Father Lachlan and Hamish followed him, deep in talk. Toby brought up the rear with Meg. Huddled in her cloak, she was just as irksomely chirrupy as she had been the previous morning, but worrying about Rory.
"He can't have gone far," she said.
"I expect he'll be waiting for us up at the shrine."
Had he wanted to ask the spirit a few private questions?
"I'm not very happy about the shrine," Meg said. "It's easy for you—you were brought up with a hob—but I'm nervous!"
Did she think he wasn't? He was scared to a jelly, but he would die before saying so. The idea of an adolescent hob was very unsettling.
"Don't worry! It isn't going to do anything. We're just going to thank it for saving us from Lady Valda and ask it some questions."
Toby supposed he wanted to hear the answers.
They walked on in silence. He could think of nothing to say. What did one say to girls? Meg's crush on him was flattering, and also very disturbing. He was not experienced in friendship, let alone love.
Meg raised her head to peer at him, blinking as the rain fell in her eyes. "Are you going to ask if you're really King Nevil?"
"I thought you were asleep."
"I heard some of it. Are you?"
"No."
"Pity. I would like to be friends with a king." She looked down quickly.
"Not that one, surely?" World traveling must already have made Toby bolder, for he added, "Don't you like me just as myself?"
"Oh! Yes ... of course."
Good. What was the right thing to say next? Meg made him feel like a clumsy, lumbering ox, but if she didn't mind being seen with a man who must weigh twice—or three times—what she did, then why should he mind? She was a jewel: small and sparkly and full of fire. If he tried to say so, she would laugh her head off. Men couldn't say such things.
"When I am restored to my throne, you can be the belle of the court." Coward! Humor was cowardice. He took her hand. It was icy. She did not pull it away. He closed his great paw over her tiny fist to warm it.
"Does Master Glencoe really think you are Nevil?"
"No, I don't think so. He was just talking nonsense. It's rubbish."
But... There were buts.
Meg plodded on in silence.
"There's no reason to believe it," Toby protested. But that name, Susie ... He had not told Rory that; Rory had told him. "Nobody can explain what happened between Nevil and Valda. If she demonized him, then why did she disappear? Why did he banish her?"
"Something went wrong with the gramarye. Or the demon possessed Nevil and then turned on her." Either the tanner's daughter had overheard most of the arguments, or she had been giving the matter much thought on her own.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But then why has she come back now? Why wait ten years?"
"She lost all her demon slaves and had to go hunt down more? Or she has been gathering more gramarye somewhere, learning how to restore him. I mean, she still had Nevil's soul bottled in a jewel, and she chose you to be ... to ... A very good choice, of course."
"Thank you." He remembered her words in the dream: See the fine young body I found for you, my love. More than the cold trickle of rain inside his plaid made him shiver. "But Father Lachlan says he's never heard of anyone being possessed by a mortal soul."
"He also admitted that Lady Valda must have forgotten more evil than he's ever known, didn't he? He wouldn't say it was impossible."
Yes, Miss Campbell had been listening! "He also said that a man possessed by a demon has superhuman powers that a man possessed by a mortal soul couldn't have."
"And you do?" Meg asked quietly.
"I ... No, of course not." But he had found the way out of the bog. But he had bent iron bars to escape from the dungeon. "Even Rory had to admit that Nevil was a superlative horseman and I ride like a sack of coal." But that first time, bareback on Falcon, hurtling across country by moonlight. . . Too many buts. There was a hex on him, or a demon inside him. He felt soiled, unclean.
"You heard Hamish, didn't you?" he protested. "He asked me all sorts of things about the glen—the names of Dougal Potter's children, what Rae Butcher's shop looks like ... I answered correctly. I'm Toby Strangerson, not King Nevil!"
But he might be both.
"Do you think I'm not me?" he demanded miserably.
"You never held my hand before it happened."
"Is that a sign of evil?"
"No. it's a big improvement!" She grinned up at him and he discovered he was smiling.
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for not doing it before or sorry for doing it now?"
"Um ... sorry I can't hold both of them."
That won him another smile. Her smiles were lovely.
He seemed to be doing all right.
Talking with girls was not all that much harder than talking with boys.
7
At close quarters, the cliff was as rotten as old deadfall, pitted with numerous holes. The path led to the largest: the shrine.
Rory was sitting on a rock just inside the mouth of the cave, munching an apple. He tossed the core away without explaining where it had come from. He ignored the keeper's angry glares, smiling blissfully. He looked well rested, but at some point in the small hours he had found time and opportunity to shave. He also looked drenched to the skin, and he had not achieved that inside a cave.
"Morning all! fine day for a battle—wet the Sassenachs' powder. Longbones, why did you bring that preposterous sword?"
"For the battle, of course." Again Toby cursed himself for cracking jokes. The rebel would guess how nervous he was.
It wasn't just the spirit that was making him nervous, either. He had not meant to bring the sword. He hadn't even realized that he'd strapped it on his back until it thumped on his bruises. Then he'd wanted to take it off—and hadn't got around to it. He could believe he was possessed when he thought of the sword, or else that it was a demon sword and had hexed him.
Rory glanced around the group. "It's customary to make an offering. If you don't have anything suitable, I can lend you some money. That's always acceptable— isn't it, Father?"
He had addressed Keeper Murray, but Father Lachlan spoke up hastily.
"Of course. I brought a book of poems by Wilkin MacRobb."
Meg produced a small brooch. Hamish hesitated and then pulled out a tiny penknife in a leather sheath. Toby would have wagered real silver that it had been a going-away present from his mother, a hint to write often. As for Toby himself, he knew what he would offer. He met the inquiring glance blandly and shrugged.
Rory stood up. "I suggest you be our spokesman, Father Lachlan. The rest of you—stay silent unless you are addressed directly."
So spirits, unlike hobs, spoke to people?
The little acolyte seemed ominously worried, fiddling constantly with his spectacles. "Father Murray and I were discussing... We do not plan ... Even if the spirit does determine that Tobias is possessed ... as you know, I do not expect that . . . but we do not intend to ask for an exorcism, unless the spirit offers one." His smile at Toby might have been intended as reassurance but wasn't.
The implication was that a country doctor might be allowed to diagnose Toby's sickness, but treatment would require the services of a skilled surgeon in a city. Suppose the spirit decided to try its hand anyway? Did an adolescent elemental yearn to be a big, grown-up tutelary?
Rory gestured to the keeper. "Lead on, then."
Father Lachlan said, "Wait!" He wrung his hands. "Tobias, I must warn you that you may be going into danger. A spirit is not like a wisp. The wisp can be mischievous or spiteful; it cares only for its own whims. The spirit knows the difference between good and evil. It is benevolent. It means well. It looks after the glen and cares for its people. That is the problem! If it detects evil in you, then it may... It may take drastic action."
Toby felt all his
muscles knot up. His fears were not groundless. He heard his voice come out very harsh: "It may protect you by killing me, you mean?" Unclean!
The dumpy little man nodded unhappily. "I do not expect this, my son, but you should know that the possibility exists. If you do not wish to enter the shrine, then we shall understand."
One morning, years ago, a little orphan bastard had called in at the tanner's shop in Tyndrum on an errand for old Mara Ford. Kenneth Campbell had been very drunk. He kept the boy there for hours, babbling about Leethoul, the Battle of the Century, how he had taken a musket ball through his leg, and how he had almost bled to death before he was brought to the surgeons. In the next few days the leg had turned black and begun to rot. Horrified, disgusted, fascinated, the boy had stayed to listen.
"They made me decide!" the tanner said, between his incoherent mumbles. "They said if they left it on, it would poison me, and I would die. They said I had lost so much blood already that if they cut it off I would probably die anyway. Then they asked me what I wanted them to do. They had a great butcher's saw there, and men standing around waiting to hold me down. Can't go near Rae's shop without seeing the saws "and thinking of that day."
"And you told them to cut it off?" the boy asked, horrified.
"I did. I told them I couldn't stand the smell of it. And it still hurts! It isn't there, but I feel its ghost, and it hurts, hurts all the time..."
Now the boy was a man and it was his turn to make a decision.
Everyone was waiting. Meg and Hamish were aghast; even Rory was frowning. Murray Campbell's face was a granite outcrop.
"If I am possessed," Toby said, "then isn't a quick death the best thing I can hope for?"
Father Lachlan blinked over his spectacles. "Well, unless the demon can be removed ..."
"Would it let itself be exorcised? Would it let me approach a sanctuary? I think I can walk into that cave-let me go and ask the spirit!"
"Very well, my son," the acolyte murmured, nodding to the keeper.
The keeper limped forward without a word and the others followed in single file into darkness.
Toby waited until the end, but Rory waved him ahead, bringing up the rear.
He might be going to his death. He might never walk out of this hole.
Why? Why was he doing this? Was it courage? He did not feel very brave. Or was it cowardice? Was he craven like Kenneth Tanner, who had chosen mutilation over the chance to remain a whole man? Was he just afraid to live with uncertainty, desperate for superhuman reassurance that he was only mortal?
This would be his third trial in three days. The Laird of Fillan had tried him for the murder of Godwin Forrester and found him guilty. The elders of the village had tried him for the murder of Granny Nan and acquitted him. Now an immortal would try him for the crime of being possessed.
The still air felt warmer than the wind outside. It had a dead, stony odor, but the absence of rain was a real joy. Someone, at some time, had leveled a path, which wound to and fro like a snake, gently descending into the hill. A rail had been spiked to the wall to guide supplicants; the wood was worn to silky smoothness by the rubbing of countless fingers. He could see nothing ahead except Meg's cap, which was a paler shade than her plaid. He could hear only a faint shuffle of feet and rustle of cloth. There was no echo at all. He sensed that the roof was rising and the tunnel spreading, and he decided that the walls he felt nearby were probably only fallen boulders.
He wondered how safe the roof was, and whether the spirit ever dropped rocks on unwelcome visitors.
Then the others were stopping, edging into a line abreast, silhouetted against a faint glimmer of light ahead. The path had widened into a smooth floor. He stood with Meg on his left and Rory on his right. Taking their cue from the adepts, they all knelt. The rock was flat as ice on a bucket.
His eyes adjusted with maddening slowness. The cavern was huge—far larger than he had expected. He began to make out marble columns and carvings, a strange white stonescape of incredible beauty. Curtains of ice draped the walls. Pointed pillars hung from the roof, masking the source of light, which must be a shaft leading eventually through to daylight. Other columns rose from the floor, except that there was no real floor. He was suspended halfway up the side of the chamber. Overhead hung the toothed ceiling, but downward the chamber was equally rugged, with great white fangs fringing a funnel-shaped pit, from whose heart poured even more light than came from above. It was like nothing he had ever seen or imagined. The spirit must have worked for centuries to make this unearthly abode for itself.
Somewhere water was dripping.
Meg's hand found his, tiny in his grasp. Her fingers were shaking. He squeezed to convey a comfort he did not feel.
The shelf was completely flat and level. It ran all around the cavern, sometimes wide, sometimes very narrow. It was incredibly thin—how could anything so frail even support its own weight, let alone the weight of the worshipers kneeling on it?
Water dripped irregularly: Plop... plip, plop... plop... plip, plip, plop... plop...
Suddenly the lower half of the chamber rippled in spreading circles and Toby's head swam with vertigo. He was looking at a pool, a small lake—kneeling on a shore, not a shelf. Crystal-clear water lay exactly level with it, reflecting the roof. The light from below was the light from the chimney above, bent back by the mirror.
"Great Spirit of Shira!" cried Murray's raucous voice. "I bring you supplicants, who come in reverence and good will!" He was at the far end of the line. He had drawn a flap of his plaid over his head to conceal his face. The cavern swallowed his voice without a hint of echo.
"Hear our prayers, Spirit!"
There it was. At the far side of the lake, just over the water—a shimmer. It was a mist, a shower of faint sparkles, a hint of smoke, but not unlike the hob at Lightning Rock. Toby's skin broke out in sweat and goosepimples.
"They bring you offerings!" the keeper screeched. "First, Lachlan of Glasgow, whom you know, a holy man!"
Father .Lachlan tossed his book out into the pool. It landed with a splash, sending circles floating outward, rippling the phantom reflections. For a moment it bobbed and floated, and then sank in silence.
But while the surface was disturbed, Toby saw through it. The pool was very shallow, paved everywhere with ancient offerings. He saw all sorts of things: shoes, tools, candlesticks, bowls and goblets, carved figures, little precious things that worshipers had been able to bring with them and dedicate to the presiding spirit. Now they were all white stone. For centuries the immortal must have accepted offerings and preserved them by turning them into white stone to match the rest of its shrine.
The water stilled, the shiny surface again hiding the hoard beneath, but now the ghostly shimmer hovered over the place where Father Lachlan's book had submerged, as if the spirit was examining the sacrifice.
"Hamish Campbell of Fillan, a distant kinsman of my own."
Hamish's penknife made a tiny plop, sinking instantly. The ghostly glimmer of the spirit moved to inspect it. Toby could only just detect it, and he wondered if anyone else had noticed it at ail. Meg did not seem to be looking in that direction.
He leaned forward a little. Staring almost straight down, he could see the bottom through the illusion of space. He made out a baby's shoe of pure white marble. What story could that tell?
"Meg Campbell of Fillan."
Meg tossed her brooch only a little way and the glimmer drifted closer.
"Tobias Strangerson of Fillan."
Now! Toby reached up and dragged the straps over his head. He took the great sword in both hands .. . and froze.
This is right! I must be rid of this thing before it perverts me utterly and I wreak devastation with it.
But it had been a gift ... it would not be right to throw away a gift. If he was possessed, then throwing it away would solve nothing. One sword would do as well as another.
He hugged the blade and its clumsy wooden scabbard to his chest, u
nwilling to part with it, unable to make the effort.
This is a massacre sword. My arms and strength could do infinite damage with a blade like this. Give the terrible thing to the shrine, and it will never kill anyone again.
If he was only human, then the sword was meaningless. If he was a demon, then he could easily find another. Throwing it away would be a foolish gesture, perhaps even a deception. That might even make him relax his guard, thinking he had disposed of the problem when it was really still there. His fascination with the crude broadsword was a constant warning, and he would be safer keeping it by him as a reminder....
Plop ... plip, plop... plop, plip...
Do it now! Quickly!
He raised it overhead with both hands.
Plop, plop, plop...
Sweat trickled down his face. The others must all be watching in bewilderment. How long could he hold that weight up there?
Hours, probably. The spirit ... He thought it was watching him, and such delusions were the toes of madness.
Help me, please!
He heard no answer but he knew what the answer must be: Help yourself!
He swayed back to throw and again his muscles locked.
If I do not do this thing now, then I am damned!
So go ahead and be damned! Start by chopping off Rory's head. Then run Meg through and ... Ugh! Demon sword!
He jerked forward, hurling the monster from him like a deadly snake. A spasm of pain almost pitched him face-first into the pool. Done it!
The sword spun across the lake, struck the rock wall on the far side, and seemed to fly apart as the scabbard broke open. Water flew up, splashing over the stone draperies and cornices. Tiny waves rushed out, lapping over the edges of the platform. Two narrow planks of wood floated, but the blade had gone.
The spirit stayed where it was, a misty glimmer hovering above the surface a few feet away from him.
"And one already known to you!" Murray cried.
Rory tossed something into the pool without taking his eyes off Toby. There was not enough light to reveal his expression.
"Accept these, their humble tokens!" the keeper brayed. "Guide them in goodness. Holy Shira, hear their prayer!"
