Hiding
The magician looked up.
‘It’s not a complicated spell,’ Lyman Malachy said, when the preparations were complete. ‘But it’s tricky. The degrees of similarity must be delicately balanced.’
He looked aside at his . . . employer? Host? Friend? Benefactor? Someone who’d given him shelter for seventeen years, and let him carry on researches which would be . . . frowned upon . . . in most places, at least. No, he amended, it would get him hanged or burned alive in most places.
They were alone together in the room, with only the candle’s flame for company; certainly, the remaining castle staff were used to that. They were probably the best-paid domestics outside the great cities and the households of the greatest lords; and they weren’t much as far as quality went. But, like the household guards, they were paid as much to ignore what they heard and saw as they were to render service.
The magician’s mouth quirked slightly as he drew his robe more tightly about him—the spring rains were heavy tonight, a thrush-thrush-thrush sound on the shutters and the streaked diamond-pane glass of the windows; he would have liked a cheery fire himself, but Bernarr cared nothing for the damp chill of this stone pile.
Gold can do many things, he thought. Even overcome superstitious fear among servants and soldiers. But it cannot make a fortress a comfortable place to live.
Bernarr waved a hand that trembled ever so slightly. ‘Yes, yes. The brat must bear a similarity to both me and my lady Elaine, and your spell will find it,’ he said. ‘Damn the midwife! I gave orders that the brat be disposed of!’
Lyman nodded downward at the three shallow gold disks with their thin crystal covers, each about the size of the circle made by a man’s thumb and forefinger. Silver and turquoise, platinum and jet made complex inlays on the inner surface of the gold. Above that was a thin film of water, and on that floated a needle. Each of the three needles was wound about with a hair—for the needle of the central disk two hairs were twined around it, crossing each other; the crystal covers kept the whole undisturbed.
‘However, it maybe fortunate that she disobeyed,’ Lyman said. ‘A pity that we could not get more details from her, but this will do as well—better, for the knowledge it brings will not be seventeen years stale.’
Lyman rose and shook back his sleeves. His eyes closed, his lips moved, and his hands traced intricate, precise patterns over the central casing.
While the man Bernarr still thought of as a ‘scholar’, rather than ‘wizard’, conjured, he remembered the first night they had met.
It had been the night of the big storm, hills and walls of purple-black cloud piled along the western horizon, flickering with lightning but touched gold by the sun as it set behind them. The surge came before the storm, mountain-high waves that sent fishermen dragging their craft higher and lashing them to trees and boulders, and to praying as the thrust of air came shrieking about their thatch. When the rain followed it came nearly level, blown before the powerful winds. The onslaught accompanied his beloved going into labour with the little monster they were now trying to find. His joy at the impending birth of a son caused him to be generous in offering hospitality to the stranger, an odd-looking man with protruding brown eyes and a large nose, made to seem enormous by a very weak chin. He appeared a few years older than Bernarr, in his middle to late thirties, but Bernarr was uncertain about his true age, for he appeared much the same as he had when he had first arrived some seventeen years before.
Lyman had introduced himself as a friend of Bernarr’s father, a correspondent who had never met the old Baron in person, but who had been consulted by Bernarr’s father occasionally on matters of scholarship. Most specifically, the purchasing of old tomes and manuscripts. He had come to enquire as to Bernarr’s intent with the library, not knowing if the son shared the father’s enthusiasm for scholarship and wishing to purchase several works should the son not wish to continue caring for the collection. He had been pleased to discover that Bernarr shared his love for learning.
And then had come the news that the Baroness was having trouble with her delivery, Bernarr remembered.
His memory brought Bernarr’s remembered pain. He leaned back, swearing. Then he saw the two hairs twined about the central needle were writhing, like snakes—snakes which disliked each other’s company. They wriggled away from the floating needle, pressed to opposite sides of the casing, and then went limp again.
That’s about the most emphatic case of non-similarity I’ve ever seen, the magician thought, his face impassive. If there’s one thing certain, this pair did not make a child together.
‘What does this mean, Lyman?’ Bernarr snapped. His eyes glinted with suspicion: when it came to matters concerning his wife, the Baron of Land’s End was rather less than sane.
As I of all men know, Lyman thought. Aloud he continued: ‘Ah . . . my lord Baron . . . could it possibly be that you have another child? One fathered before you met the lady Elaine?’
That stopped Bernarr’s anger; instead he shifted a little in his chair, and reached for his mug of hot, spiced wine. ‘Well,’ he said, his eyes shifting. ‘I was a man grown before I wed . . . thirty summers . . . a wench now and then . . . and of course, for all I know—’
‘Of course, my lord, of course; we’re men of the world, you and I,’ Lyman soothed. ‘But it would make the twined hairs incompatible with the nature of the spell, you see. That is why I begged another of your lady’s hairs. The spell will not be quite so sharp, nor function over quite so great a distance, but it should still function.’
He stood, moving his hands over the left-hand casing. And I’m not going to use the one with only your hair, my lord Baron, because I suspect it would be quite useless for our purposes.
Bram halted as he came to the crest of the hills and looked down on Land’s End. The city was familiar enough: he’d made several visits. He tried to see it as Lorrie would.
The first thing she’ll need is money, he thought.
He grinned, despite his anxiety, and the ache in his legs. He hadn’t wasted any time on the journey, and he was more than ready for sleep, not to mention ale and food. She wouldn’t get far on the few coppers he’d hidden under the mattress of his bed. While Bram’s life savings, he had a short life so far, and by city standards it wasn’t much. He suppressed an idle thought: he’d had daydreams about her lying in his bed, right enough, but not in quite that fashion.
He shifted the bow, quiver and rucksack into a slightly less uncomfortable position and strode through the usual throngs to be found on a road so close to the city gate. If he remembered rightly, there were a couple of horse dealers not too far outside the north gate.
‘Help you, lad?’ the horse-trader said, looking up.
He was standing with a cob’s forefoot brought up between his legs, examining the hoof. The sturdy little horse shifted a little when it thought he was distracted, and began to turn its head—probably thinking of taking a nip at the man’s rump. The trader elbowed the flank beside him, and Bram reached out with the stave of his yew bow, rapping it slightly on the nose.
It gave a huge sigh and subsided, and the trader let the hoof down with a dull clomp. ‘Thrush,’ he said over his shoulder to the cob’s owner. ‘You should know better than thinking a dip in tar will hide an unsound hoof from me, Ullet Omson. I’ll not have him, not even if you treat the thrush and bring him back; not at any price. He’s vicious.’ The disappointed seller led his animal off and the man turned to Bram. ‘And how can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for a girl,’ Bram said, and then blushed under his ruddy tan as the horse-dealer roared with laughter, looking him up and down.
‘Well, I’d say you won’t have much trouble, even if your purse is flat,’ the man wheezed after a minute, ‘for you’re a fair-looking lad. But that’s not my stock-in-trade. Fillies and mares, but only the hoofed sort. M’name’s Kerson, by the way.’
Bram gave his own and shook his hand, and to no
surprise found it as strong as his own, or a little more.
‘She’ll have sold a gelding,’ he said. ‘Not more than three days since. A farm horse, saddle-broke but more used for plough work, and well past mark of mouth.’
He went on to describe Horace, whose markings he knew like his own: the two families had swapped working stock back and forth all his life.
‘Wait a minute!’ the trader said. ‘Why, yes, I bought the beast—but from a young lad, not a girl. Could he have stolen it?’ He frowned.
Well, of course she’s passing for a boy, idiot! he thought. She can’t be going about countryside and town in your old breeches as a girl in boy’s clothing, now can she? ‘No, I know that lad,’ Bram said.
The trader shrugged. ‘He seemed a nice enough young sprig; pretty as a girl, though, and a few years younger than yourself. Friend of his came out to enquire about the horse just today.’
Friend? Bram thought, cursing himself.
‘Overheard the lad who bought the horse talking to a gent who purchased another. Seems the boy is foster-brother to Yardley Heywood’s granddaughter and they’re staying with her aunt. Anyway, the two of them rode out together about midday, heading north. The lad mentioned that his friend had sold the animal to me . . .’ The trader received a puzzled look from Bram but continued, ‘He said the girl who owned the beast originally was also staying with the Heywood girl.’ Fixing Bram with a narrow gaze, he asked, ‘Are you sure that horse wasn’t stolen?’
‘Hmm, pretty sure,’ answered Bram.
He wondered at who that lad might be and why he’d buy Horace to go riding north, but decided to focus instead on where Lorrie might be. ‘Where would I find this young lady, Yardley Heywood’s granddaughter?’
The trader gave directions. Bram hurried on into Land’s End, his head whirling. He’d expected to find Lorrie lost, or hiding in some cheap inn. And she’d made a friend? A wealthy one, too, from the sound of it. And what of Rip?
Elaine stirred. She was still uncertain of the state in which she dreamed, for she knew she must be dreaming. There had been pain in the dreams at first, but after many awakenings Elaine was able to distance herself from the pain. Never easily; it demanded attention and refused to be tamed, but for a time she could go beyond it and feel it as a distant thing. She endured these times, straining to hear if anyone was nearby. Sometimes she’d make out the croak of a night-bird, or perhaps a distant shout. But otherwise she seemed to be alone.
It puzzled her. She was the Baron’s lady and she had just given birth. Where was everyone? Why didn’t someone help her? How long had she been like this? And most horrible, was this how she was going to be for the rest of her life?
She knew her body lay unmoving, or at least she suspected that much. So she assumed she had become trapped in some sort of elaborate dream, but one which had a connection to the waking world.
The pain had been her first conquest, and then had come the terrible thing that had tormented her. Time was difficult to measure: she was certain many hours, even days, had passed since she had given birth to her child. Perhaps she was struggling with an illness contacted in childbirth, or a fever that had come after delivery.
Whatever the cause, she had struggled, surfacing to something that resembled consciousness then lapsing into periods of vagueness in which memories floated. Sometimes she experienced images so strong she wondered if they were real, perhaps the sort of prophetic visions some witches or holy women were reputed to have; or perhaps echoes of a distant past, or someone else’s memory. Then came the blackness again. Two things were constant, the blackness and the pain.
Between the periods of blackness, Elaine called for help in her mind, raging and shouting and wishing evil things to happen to her husband who had abandoned her like this. Once she felt something touch her body. The cold touch, the sense of something slimy gliding across her skin, beneath her gown: a violating intimacy, uninvited and repulsive. Yet she could do nothing about it. Was that horrible touch real, or a memory? The fear and outrage that accompanied the sensation was real, for she remembered crying out in silent revulsion, Leave me alone! And the touch had gone away. Had it returned, or had the next merely been the memory of the first touch? She couldn’t tell.
Over time, her mind grew stronger and the fear and revulsion turned to anger and calculation. Occasionally she remembered a conflict, a moment of defiance when she had rejected something that had oppressed her, but she couldn’t recall the details. Vile things had been tormenting her and she had somehow attacked them; she conjured up images in her mind of the vile things having bodies and with hands formed by her mind she reached out and gripped them. They tried to flee but she tore at their substance, rending and tearing until they were but shreds and strands that seemed to evaporate into nothingness, leaving behind a lingering cry of pain and fear.
She had sought for something beyond the pain and the cold intruder, as she thought of the evil, slimy touch. Then she had found them, things lurking in the corners of the estate.
She sensed their presence, shocked, fearful, indignant that anything could harm them; they were hiding from her. Soon she would sleep again for she was very tired. But she wanted another, wanted very badly to destroy them all. Yet though they lurked nearby she could find none of them. She must make them come to her. Between periods of darkness, she plotted in her dreams. Lucidity came infrequently, but she realized that if she was dreaming, she could dictate the rules of this dream, and she would have it out with these lurking shadows in her mind.
Elaine pretended to sleep; suppressing all thought, she waited. Eventually one of her enemies came forward to test her and Elaine grabbed it.
She squeezed it and it howled, yanking her this way and that as it tried to flee. Finally it came to some sort of barrier and began to drag itself through. Elaine held on, trying to drag it back so that she could get a better grip on it. But this one was stronger than the first had been and persisted in its struggles. Finally it dragged her right up to the barrier, leaving very little of itself in her imaginary hands.
It was like being pressed against something hot and hard, yet she could feel herself slipping through and gripped the thing in her hands tighter. If she lost her grip she didn’t know where she might find herself, but she didn’t want to be in worse case than she already was so she held on for dear life.
Suddenly she could see! Elaine was so startled that she released the thing she’d been clinging to. It was daylight, but there were candles all around her bed. Then she felt herself rising, light as dandelion fluff and with no more control; she struggled to stop her ascent and succeeded only in turning over so that she could see below her.
Elaine found herself staring at her own body lying on the bed. Am I dead? she wondered. She had heard tales of people floating over their bodies, seeing mourners or visions of their homes before being taken to Lims-Kragma’s Hall of the Dead. Such tales were told by those whom the healing priests had recalled the instant before their transition from life to death.
Then she saw her chest rise, ever so slowly: but she was breathing! She examined herself closely. She didn’t look at all well. Am I dying? She panicked and tried to bring herself closer to her body, waving her arms as though swimming, then realized that she had no physical arms. She had no body around her! The shock of that realization caused an instinctive reaching out, as if trying to grip her own physical being with her spiritual hands. Suddenly, she was back inside her body, back with the pain and the long, slow silence. Her tormentors were gone: she could feel that she was alone again. Then, suddenly, like a candle being snuffed out, awareness was gone.
When awareness returned she understood; the ‘dreams’ as she had thought of them were her mind leaving her body, while the waking stages had been her mind being trapped within. She must learn to control this ability, to set her mind free, she decided.
How long it took she did not know but with much concentration, Elaine found that she could leave her body behind and
float from room to room, going through walls and floors as though they were made of water.
The manse was dirty and nearly deserted. The few people she found were the kind of mercenary scum that even her father wouldn’t have hired, yet many wore the garb of the household guard.
Her enemies still lingered, but they never came near her any more. Sometimes she seethed at the thought of what they had done to her and hunted for them. At other times she was almost grateful to them, for they had shown her the way out of the darkness and the pain. Mostly she wanted to see them, to find out what they were. Then she’d decide what to do about them. Were they supernatural beings? Or ghosts? Or agents of some other power?
Where is my baby? she wondered suddenly. Then was amazed that the thought hadn’t occurred to her before. How could she forget her only child? Her little boy. She must find him.
But it was too late, she could feel herself being pulled back. Elaine didn’t even fight any more, she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. At least she didn’t have to be there all the time. Before she was sucked back into her ailing body, she saw that the candles had burned down quite a bit.
When next she woke she heard the voices of children! A girl’s voice echoed in the distance, calling to her. At once Elaine found herself in the corridor and for the first time in a long time sensed the presence of those horrors who had abused her so. She called out, This way! Round the corner of the hallway came a small group of children, two girls and two boys. They looked exhausted as well as frightened.
Hovering over them, Elaine saw her enemies for the first time. They looked like tendrils of black smoke, writhing and twining in and out of a central blackness, and they projected fear and an icy cold.
This way, she called again, pointing toward the door of her chambers. Over and over she shouted to them. At last one of the girls seemed to understand, leading them to her door. They piled into her room and slammed the door shut behind them.
Elaine swept toward the black cloud furiously, snatching at one of its tendrils. It pulled back, retreating slightly, keeping just close enough to tease. Rather than waste her energy, Elaine went back to her room and hovered protectively over the children, pleased by their presence, delighted by the littlest one; he was perhaps seven or eight years of age, and despite being very frightened, he carried himself well.
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