Blackfoot

by W. R. Gingell

  There was no courtyard there. Instead, there was a very richly furnished room and a very surprised Mordion. Annabel stared at Mordion, and Mordion stared at Annabel, one of his brows rising.

  Bother! said Blackfoot, in vexation. And to think how close we were to being out safely!

  “There you are!” said Annabel. “I’ve been looking for you!”

  Mordion’s other eyebrow went up. “Of all the things I expected you to say, that was not one of them,” he said. “If I’d known you were looking for me, darling, I would have made myself more readily available. It’s very bold of you, by the way, to stand so easily in reach! Or do you think that another spell will save you?”

  “Hah!” said Annabel. “As if I didn’t know you can’t get past the doorway!”

  Mordion’s face didn’t change, which would have worried Annabel if she hadn’t noticed how very much it hadn’t changed. As if it had frozen in that look of mocking superiority. If there was anything Annabel knew about, it was hiding feelings behind a blank mask.

  “Now what makes you say that, darling?” he said.

  Annabel threw her lot recklessly. “You can’t get past any of them, can you? You keep trying to get me to go through them instead. Well, I won’t, so don’t waste your time.”

  Mordion’s face unfroze enough from its mocking superiority to fade into a humourless amusement. “You’re surprisingly clever sometimes, little cow,” he said.

  Blackfoot hissed; but Annabel, who was accustomed to being called worse by Peter—and calling him worse herself—and who much preferred an insult to one of Mordion’s sickeningly smooth darlings, smirked.

  “That’s the thing about cows,” she said. “You think they’re big and stupid, so you get too close to them. You forget they can kill if people get between them and their calves.”

  “Who is the calf in this scenario, I wonder?” Mordion’s eyes were very bright. “Your little friend, Peter? The cat, perhaps? Shall I tell you a few things about him?”

  “Don’t bother,” said Annabel. “I wouldn’t trust you to tell the truth, anyway. You might as well spare your breath.”

  “Now darling–”

  Annabel looked at him in dislike. “Don’t call me darling.”

  “That’s not very polite of you.”

  “It wasn’t very polite of you to try to use me in a spell, either,” retorted Annabel. “What have you done with Peter?”

  Unexpectedly, Mordion laughed. “Peter Carlisle? I? Nothing. You might as well ask him what he did to me.”

  “I can’t,” said Annabel, all at once more furious than she’d ever been in her life. Mordion had taken Peter, and now he was joking about that, too. “I can’t because you took him away! What have you done with him? Where did you put him?”

  Mordion smiled at her quite pleasantly and said: “Wouldn’t you like to know? It seems to me that’s rather valuable information. What can you give me in return?”

  “Nothing,” said Annabel bluntly. “I haven’t got anything.”

  “I beg leave to differ, darling. You have one thing I want very much.”

  Nan! Blackfoot’s voice was distinctly annoyed, and Annabel wondered why until it occurred to her that she’d been ignoring his voice since the shock of seeing Mordion so suddenly. Nan, pay attention to me! You should walk away now. When he smiles like that, only bad things follow.

  “I know,” Annabel said. “But I can’t do anything about that.”

  Mordion threw a quizzical look at her. “On the contrary, darling: you can do a great deal about it.”

  “What?” Annabel blinked at him, then frowned. “What are you talking about? Look, can you be quiet for a minute? Blackfoot is talking.”

  There was a quiet kind of hui hui hui floating around in her mind. It took Annabel a moment or two to realise that Blackfoot was snickering.

  “What?”

  His face! giggle Blackfoot. I never thought I’d see an expression like that on his face! Nan, we really have to work on your communication skills: in particular, your habit of blanking me out as entirely as you’ve just blanked out Mordion, whenever you walk into a situation that startles you.

  “Yes, but not now,” Annabel objected. “We’re too busy for that.”

  “We are,” agreed Mordion, leaning against his doorframe in an invasive kind of way that made Annabel want to back away. She didn’t, because she didn’t want him to know how much afraid of him she really was. Instead, she glared up at him as he smiled charmingly at her and said: “Darling, do please keep your cat out of our conversation: I can’t imagine he has anything important to add to our discussion and I’d really rather discuss it with you.”

  “Blackfoot quite often doesn’t have anything important to add to the conversation,” Annabel said, as bluntly as before. “He just likes to make remarks. What have you done with Peter?”

  “Ah,” sighed Mordion. “So we’re back here again! There’s something you’ll have to give me if you want to see your young friend again.”

  “What? What is it you want?”

  Mordion’s dark blue eyes laughed at her through his lashes. “You, of course! What else would I still be wanting from this castle?”

  “You want me to swap myself for Peter? How will that make me able to see him again?”

  “That was a slight shading of the truth,” admitted Mordion. “You will see him again; it’s just that you won’t see him for a great deal of time. You’ll have to resign yourself to knowing you made a great sacrifice, and that he’s safe.”

  Peter won’t be safe, warned Blackfoot. No matter what he says, Mordion will not leave any of us in the castle alive after he has you.

  “I see,” said Annabel slowly, as much to Blackfoot as to Mordion.

  Mordion smiled lazily at her, a provocative, teasing thing. “Who knows, darling? We could get along very well together.”

  “That won’t work,” Annabel said. “I’ve seen you when you were all smudgy and catty and human at once. It wasn’t very pretty. Also, why are you flirting with me? I’m fourteen. That’s disgusting.”

  Mordion shrugged with no sign of any emotion other than faint amusement. “It’s usually quite successful. Very well, the truth, then: you and I will not get along well. It will take decades for you to die, but you will almost certainly die at some stage. Nor will you die well. In fact, your death is unlikely to do more than bring me much closer to a great deal of power.”

  “All right,” said Annabel. “You’ll have to let me think about it.”

  “A surprisingly prosaic attitude. Don’t you care about the well-being of your friend?”

  Annabel shivered a little. “Yes,” she said. “But I also care about what happens to him after I’m dead. So you’ll have to wait a bit longer before I give you an answer.”

  “Don’t wait too long, darling,” said Mordion, smiling a sparkling smile at her. “Don’t forget that if you wander into any parts of the castle that are mine, I won’t need to bargain with you. Just step through one wrong door way: you’ll be mine, and Peter will be mine.”

  “I’ll remember,” Annabel said, and there was a certain grimness to the sick feeling in her stomach. “You won’t see me again until tomorrow.”

  9

  Annabel slept badly. Her dreams revolved and twisted until they were nightmares, where a vast blackness chased the Caliphan up and down shifting castle halls until it subsumed him, then turned and chased Annabel and Peter. She woke far too early, sweating and shivering, with her pencil and sketchbook clutched tightly in damp hands, and spent the early morning sketching the Caliphan out of the blackness by way of comforting herself. That made the shivering go away, but the unease still slithered unpleasantly up and down her back, so Annabel occupied herself with drawing elegant castle walls around the blackness in her sketchbook, making a core of darkness to her castle sketches.

  By the time Blackfoot also woke, stretching and yawning, Annabel was feeling better.

  Well, Nan? he said. I
trust you’ve spent the night thinking better of your rash actions yesterday.

  Annabel, who hadn’t in fact thought about Mordion at all, came to the startling realisation that her decision was already, irrevocably, made. Perhaps it had been made some time during her consolatory drawing time: perhaps she had already decided before that. “We’d better get some breakfast,” she said. “Then we’ll find Mordion. Perhaps you should stay here, Blackfoot.”

  No need, Blackfoot said, and Annabel couldn’t decide if his voice were resigned, exasperated, or frustrated. Once Mordion gets his hands on you, there’s nowhere in the castle I’ll be safe. If it comes to that, there’s nowhere in the Two Monarchies that will be safe for me– or anyone else. You won’t save either Peter or me by giving up yourself to Mordion.

  “I know,” said Annabel. “But it’ll give you a good running start from here. If you stick with Peter, you’ll be all right. What will Mordion do with me?”

  Oh, so now you’re asking that? This time, it was certainly exasperation in Blackfoot’s voice. I thought you were prepared to go to your fate in wilful ignorance.

  “Yes, but I don’t understand,” complained Annabel. “Grenna was always using me in spells, too, and they both used me in the one that brought Mordion back. Is Mordion going to use me in his spells? Why? Can’t they use just anyone?”

  The thought left a horrible chill just under her skin. It had been bad enough being used by Grenna in spells that killed animals: Annabel didn’t think she could bear to be used in spells that stripped people of their magic and killed them. It was bad enough that Grenna had died that way; and Grenna, it could be said, had deserved to die in that way.

  Mordion will certainly use you in his spells, said Blackfoot, and his voice was particularly flat. You’re a useful commodity, after all.

  “It’s because I don’t have magic, isn’t it?” Annabel said. “Peter says I have a little bit, but I don’t think so. There was a thing my real parents used to keep around my wrist, like Peter’s string spell, and Grenna always had trouble keeping track of me at first. I think she put something on me so that no one else could find me like she did.”

  You have a particularly dense lack of magic, Blackfoot agreed. That young whelp might think he does what he does by clockwork and talent, but he’s been working with the best enhancement field in the Two Monarchies, and that combined with his natural overflowing of magic– well, it’s exasperating, really.

  “Yes, but absence of magic creates a vacuum. What about that?”

  It constantly astounds me that that is largely the sum of your magical knowledge, Blackfoot said, in exasperation. If you’d known a little more– no, if you’d known that well enough, instead of repeating it parrot-fashion every time someone mentions it–! Well, Nan, we might not be in this situation!

  Annabel felt her chin trying to crinkle, and pushed the feeling away. There was no time for tears today. Instead, she said in a voice that was as cool as Blackfoot’s was hot: “Why are you trying to pick a quarrel with me? What did I do?”

  You– oh, never mind, Nan. I’m sorry. We won’t quarrel today. Just don’t expect me to go along with your plan without doing a little planning of my own.

  “All right,” agreed Annabel, because what could a cat do, after all? She’d never seen Blackfoot do anything but the smallest of magics that Peter had been able to dismiss with a snap of his fingers. “But tell me about Mordion first.”

  Very well. Then I’ll tell you a very curtailed version of a tale involving a princess, a spindle, and far too many cats.

  The castle was even more inclined to playing tricks that morning. Stairways led to dead ends, suite doorways opened into wardrobes, and although there was a truly astounding amount of tunnels dimpling the walls around them, the only place those seemed to lead was back on themselves.

  Blackfoot, who had stalked away into the first without waiting to see if Annabel was following, at first expressed his disapproval by stalking straight into the next tunnel entrance without stopping. Later, when they walked for fifteen minutes and emerged only two steps away from where they’d originally started, this disapproval became more clearly marked by a series of increasingly sour remarks at the back of Annabel’s mind.

  “Why are there tunnels if they’re only going to take us in circles?” demanded Annabel pettishly. “The last one was there to save us from Mordion, but since we didn’t really need saving from him, that was pointless, too! Why are there so many! Wait! Why are you going into another one?”

  The first one wasn’t completely useless, Blackfoot said, disappearing into the next tunnel. If Mordion had been able to get through the doorway, it would have been very useful.

  Annabel, annoyed to find herself in yet another winding tunnel and unwilling to concede even that much, said: “Yes, but he wasn’t.”

  Well, Nan, if your theory that it’s the castle doing all this is correct, perhaps you should be paying attention. The castle obviously doesn’t want you meeting with Mordion, or tunnels wouldn’t be turning in on themselves.

  “It’s probably just in a bad mood this morning because we woke it up early by stomping about on its stairs. Blackfoot, I think this tunnel has lost its way.”

  Blackfoot, after a brief silence, said: Perhaps it’s confused. We seem to be surrounded by rather a lot of stonework that wasn’t here yesterday. It’s been growing ever since we stepped into this tunnel, and now the tunnel doesn’t know how to get out again.

  “But the tunnels appear in the walls! How can they not get back through?”

  That’s what I’m trying to figure out, muttered Blackfoot. It may simply be the perennial case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, but there does seem to be rather a larger amount of concentrated darkness in this area than there was yesterday. Perhaps the castle is beginning to confine the blackness to its centre.

  “This tunnel goes through the squishy stuff? Why didn’t you tell me!”

  I assumed that you would rather not know. Ridiculous, I know, but it occurred to me that you would panic.

  “I’m not panicking!”

  Of course not. You’re calmness itself. Nan, must you step on my tail?

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!”

  I’d rather be carried if you’re going to make a habit of stepping on me, added Blackfoot, and although Annabel was perfectly well aware that he was only saying it because he knew she would be comforted by holding him, she still picked him up. Let’s see now, he said, when he was making a warm, furry weight against her stomach. Straight ahead now, I think.

  “It’s all black there, too,” Annabel said, but she took a few tentative steps forward anyway. The darkness didn’t grow any less, but the tunnel did seem to twist and turn less than it had previously. She walked onward, Blackfoot held tight in her arms, and was relived to find herself stepping out of the tunnel just a few minutes later. It was so much of a relief to get out of it that Annabel was able to ignore both the circumstance that it was strangely difficult to take that one step from darkness into light, and the circumstance that they were again back exactly where they had started. Opposite them was the very tunnel mouth by which they had entered.

  “This is ridiculous,” said Annabel, when she had her breath back. “Don’t go down any more tunnels!”

  Blackfoot tut-tutted soothingly at her. You can put me down now. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten: I trust you brought sausages?

  Annabel, with a wary look at both tunnel ends, scuttled further away and sat down with her back to one of the walls. From there, she could just see the insides of the walls before they vanished into darkness.

  “There are, you know” she said, unwrapping a handkerchief full of bread, cheese, and sausages. “There are more walls in there than there were yesterday. Yesterday the castle was moving about, but all the rooms were normal-shaped rooms. Now they’re just a little bit smaller toward the centre of the castle.”

  It looked familiar, in fact. Annabel gazed at
it for some time, wondering what it was about those walls that was so recognisable, but they were only walls, after all: just like every other wall in the castle, with nothing unusual about them except their placement.

  Sausages, Nan, reminded Blackfoot, and Annabel put one down for him.

  “You said yesterday that Mordion is hundreds of years old,” she said, through a mouthful of bread. “How did they manage to turn him into a cat, then?”

  It’s not really something you can foresee, Blackfoot said reflectively, being turned into a cat. I don’t think he was expecting it.

  “Well, how did you come across him, then?”

  That? Well, that was something of a rash decision on my part. Even as a cat he looked like trouble, and I was already pretty familiar with the kind of things that he got up to. It was more of a glancing carom, actually: I bounced off him and found you, and by then it was obvious that he was looking for you. I thought it would be a good idea if he didn’t find you.

  “Because of my–” Annabel stopped, and then started again defiantly; “because of my lack of magic? You were afraid he’d use me to amplify the little bit of magic that he did have, and change back to being a person again.”

  He never really stopped being a person, Blackfoot said, even more reflectively. Well, as much of a person as he ever was. Being an animal over the course of several years doesn’t change the person bit of you. It was more that he wanted to change his form back: there are certain limitations to being a cat, after all.

  “It’s a pity we couldn’t stop that,” said Annabel sadly. “Things would have been so much easier.”

  Blackfoot finished a sausage and licked his paw. Yes. I was rather expecting to be able to stop that, as a matter of fact. I’m still not sure how things went so badly.

  “Don’t worry,” Annabel said, patting his head. “You couldn’t have stopped it. I don’t blame you.”