Jimmy the Hand

by Raymond E. Feist

  She sensed her enemy lurking in the corridor, but it did not attempt to enter. It was only then that she saw the warding on her walls, traceries of light, of command, of this-shall-not-change. Perhaps someone had heard her pleas for aid after all.

  As she listened to the children talk she found that they were desperate to escape. It saddened her that they found her as terrifying as the entity in the corridor, but she supposed she couldn’t blame them. If only I could help the poor little things. Elaine peered into the corridor; the thing snickered at her and she withdrew.

  As she looked around her room she sensed an older warding and sought it out. She went through the wall and rediscovered the hidden passageway there. Her husband had shown it to her the day he installed her in these rooms. ‘They go all through the manse,’ he’d said.

  She saw the youngest boy staring at that wall, and something in his eyes told her he was on the verge of understanding. She spoke to the girl who had led the others to her rooms, telling her about the passageway, telling her the key was in the sculpture on the wall. Soon she could see that she was listening. She got up and went to the carving, testing all the little projections until she found the right one. Oh, bright child! she thought.

  Then she was out of time again, being drawn back to her body. She might never find out how this ended and was frustrated indeed. She wished she could wake up for good.

  When she next awoke, Elaine wondered about the children, especially the girl who seemed to hear her. As she pictured her she suddenly found herself beside her. This had happened before, but she had no control over it. She would think of some person or place and find herself there, but only within the confines of the manse. She’d never yet been able to even enter the rose garden. But she did have access to everywhere and everyone inside the house. Except for Bernarr. When she thought of him she found herself in the presence of a much older man. An uncle or cousin, she’d assumed, since she knew his father was deceased.

  She didn’t really mind that he never came here any more; she hadn’t loved him and she didn’t miss him. But she did want to see her baby and her little one must surely be with the Baron. She sighed and the candle one of the boys was holding flickered.

  ‘Be careful!’ the oldest girl almost cried, her voice sounding very loud in the passage.

  The younger girl, the one who sometimes could hear Elaine, whimpered, but was bravely holding back her tears.

  Elaine’s heart melted for her. They were all covered with streaks of dust and looked exhausted and the food-sack tied to the older girl’s belt looked sadly empty. Poor little things, she thought. They needed a refuge, but her rooms wouldn’t do. She frightened them, and the old man who looked like Bernarr slept there.

  “S’not my fault! There’s draughts,’ the boy holding the candle said, his youthful anger at being blamed for something he didn’t do overriding caution and the need for quiet.

  The others said nothing but watched the stub of the candle anxiously. It was plain they were afraid of being left in the dark.

  Elaine remembered a place they could hide that should do very well. Bernarr had brought her there just after she’d arrived. ‘It is warded so that when you wish to be private no one will bother you here.’ He’d smiled proudly. ‘It shall be your own sanctuary.’ She’d felt no need at all for such a place, but he’d been so proud of his gift that she’d smiled and leaned up to kiss his cheek, a kiss he’d claimed with his lips.

  ‘Come with me,’ she whispered to the girl who seemed to hear her. ‘I know a place where you’ll be safe.’

  Neesa stood up, looking down the dark passageway. Her crying stopped and she smiled.

  ‘What is it?’ Mandy hissed; her eyes glittered in the candlelight as she tried to look in every direction at once.

  ‘Let’s go this way,’ Neesa said like someone in a dream. ‘It’s the right way.’ She walked off.

  Kay and Mandy looked at one another, but Rip pushed himself to his feet and started after Neesa. ‘C’mon,’ he said impatiently.

  Mandy got up and followed. ‘You coming?’ she threw over her shoulder at Kay.

  Rip was moving carefully so as not to put out the candle, their only source of light. ‘Wait!’ he said to Neesa and his breath blew it out.

  Mandy gasped and Kay cried out in fear.

  ‘Don’t make noise!’ Rip admonished. ‘I’m in front of you. Hold hands! We’ve got to stay together.’

  ‘It’s your fault!’ Kay snapped.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rip said tiredly, ‘it was going out anyway. Be careful! Right, everybody here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kay muttered, fear reducing his voice to a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Rip said. ‘Every time Neesa’s had this feeling it’s led us somewhere safe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call this safe,’ Kay sneered.

  ‘It’s safer than the halls,’ Rip reminded him, ‘or the room we were locked in.’

  ‘We can’t get out!’ the other boy shouted.

  ‘Shhh!’ Mandy said. ‘We couldn’t get out before either. Unless you’ve got a better idea put a stopper in it, Kay.’

  They were silent then, moving carefully in the pitch-darkness. They slipped down corridors so narrow they had to turn sideways and went up and down stairs both narrow and creaky until at last Neesa brought them to a halt.

  ‘Here,’ she said softly.

  The others stood still and listened to the sound of her apparently patting the walls. There was a muffled click and they all flinched as a narrow crack let in a blinding light. Then Neesa impulsively pushed open the panel and led them through. She squealed with delight at what she found.

  Though everything was covered with dust and the air was stale from long disuse, the room was undeniably cosy, and well lit from a high window.

  ‘We won’t run out of candles here,’ Mandy said, smiling.

  Everywhere they looked there were candlestands with branches of candles in them. There was a full scuttle of sea-coal as well. Plumply cushioned chairs and sofas abounded and there was a feeling of peace about the place.

  ‘Now all we need is something to eat,’ Kay said. ‘And water. Got any feelings about that?’

  Rip raised one eyebrow and was immediately pleased with himself for having done so for the first time. So instead of getting annoyed at the other boy’s attitude he thought about the question. ‘Yes,’ he decided. He picked up the empty sack and looked at Kay. ‘Want to come?’

  For an answer Kay plucked two candles from a stand and lit them from the strikebox. He wasn’t about to refuse to do something the younger boy was willing to try.

  Rip peered out through the hole in the carving. This is fun! he thought. His young mind had a problem understanding all the terrors that were around him since he had awakened in this place, but spying on people from a hidden location was something he could finally grasp, and it felt like a game to him.

  The secret passages turned out to have a lot of doors and peepholes. The narrow corridors felt a lot safer than the old room had. He shuddered, turned and put his finger to his lips, and then put his eye back to the hole.

  He saw a really big room again; but then, most of the rooms were. This one had windows open, and he spared them a longing look. There was a long table set for a meal with fancy metal tableware, not wood and crockery, not even pewter, but real silver. An old-looking man was sitting at the head of the table, talking to two other men who stood with their caps in their hands.

  Rip’s lips pursed. Those were the men who’d taken him and brought him here. He could tell by their voices. They looked cruel, and scary, too. A third man sat with his back to the hole, silent.

  ‘Take this,’ he said, pushing something across the table at them.

  One of the men reached out, then pulled his hand back as if the little thing had burned it. ‘Magic!’ he blurted.

  ‘Of course it’s magic, you fool,’ the old man said. ‘The needle points at the man you are to take for me.’r />
  The other seated man spoke, his voice smooth and soothing and somehow reminding Rip of the stuff his mother sometimes smeared on burns, or when you got stung by poison-oak or nettles. ‘It’s entirely harmless, I assure you,’ he said. ‘You need merely follow the needle’s point. It may lead you on a long chase—the man in question may be as much as fifty miles away—but it shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘And the pay is good,’ the older man snapped. ‘More than for all the others.’

  One of the standing men nudged his companion; he picked up the small thing from the table reluctantly and wrapped it in a rag, tucking it into his belt.

  ‘It’s a man this time?’ he asked. ‘Not a boy?’

  ‘He should be just seventeen,’ the old man said, turning his head aside. For a moment Rip saw how sad he looked, and felt a little sorry for him. His voice sank, so that the boy could barely follow it. ‘Just seventeen . . . he should be tall, perhaps fair-haired, perhaps brown.’

  ‘We’re yer men,’ the standing man said. ‘For six hundred, we’re yer hands and fingers, m’lord.’

  ‘And when you bring him in, put a bag over his head. I have no wish to see his face. None!’

  ‘Then how’ll ye know it’s ‘im, sir?’

  The smooth-talking man said, ‘That needle will only point at one person in this entire world. That is who you will bring here. Now go!’

  They both bowed low; after a moment the old man and his companion followed them, talking.

  ‘Oh, good,’ Rip whispered, and opened the door a crack. It was set into the panelling, and even Mandy would have to stoop to get out of it. ‘All right—come on—they’re all gone!’

  The four children scampered out into the room. Rip almost stopped as he felt them again, the bad ones, but he was hungry. Mandy and Neesa ran straight to the table and began to gather food up in handkerchiefs; bread, cooked chicken, pastries stuffed with vegetables. Rip and Kay didn’t stop for that, although it smelled very good; instead they raced over to the door.

  They cracked the door and peered through, waiting while the girls grabbed up as much food as they could carry. Rip wanted to stick his head out into the hall, but resisted the urge.

  Kay grabbed his arm. ‘I can feel something coming,’ he whispered.

  ‘Me too,’ Rip said. He had a sick feeling in his stomach, as he had in the room they’d been locked up in; and it was getting worse.

  Without a word, they stuffed the candles back in their pockets and bolted for the secret door; the girls were already through, eyes wide, and all of them gave a sigh of relief as the panel clicked closed.

  Immediately they all felt better too; the sense of peering malice went away as if the stuffy darkness of the secret passage was part of another world.

  I wonder why it’s always like this when we come out of the passageways? Rip thought.

  Then Mandy started unfolding one of the napkins. ‘What did you get?’ he asked eagerly as they started their trek back to their safe room.

  FOURTEEN

  Abduction

  Jimmy reined in.

  He’d followed Jarvis Coe all the way around the lands belonging to the great house they’d seen, from sea-cliff edge to sea-cliff edge, a long ride in a rising wind that reminded you with every step that spring was young.

  A long trip and an unpleasant one. The only way to find out if they’d gone beyond that skin-crawling feeling was by testing; one step in—run away!—one step back—perfectly normal.

  ‘What is it?’ Jimmy asked, struggling to keep his old nag from bolting like a racehorse.

  ‘Nothing good,’ Coe answered.

  Jimmy snorted. Brilliant! How fortunate that he had someone along to tell him that. The awful feeling seemed to have no end. He certainly wasn’t going to try climbing up the cliff face to see if the way to the manse was clear from that direction because it probably wasn’t. He’d long ago learned not to squander his energy.

  ‘Ever felt anything like it before?’ he asked.

  Coe turned to look at him. ‘Ever been in a haunted house?’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Oh, you’d notice,’ the older man said. ‘As I recall, it feels a great deal like this.’

  After a moment of contemplating his companion’s broad back Jimmy asked, ‘When were you in a haunted house?’

  ‘Long story,’ Coe said without turning his head and then lapsed into silence.

  Jimmy grunted in irritation. This seemed to him to be a perfect time for a long story. Because, except for those soul-curdling moments when they went too close to the manse, he was bored stiff. If they kept on like this he was going to be grateful for the distraction of his aching arse.

  They reached the edge of the cliff and Coe sniffed the wind, looking out over the white line of snarling surf where sea clashed white-green on rocks and the blue-grey waves topped with foam beyond. ‘There’ll be weather tonight,’ he said. ‘We need to find ourselves some shelter.’

  ‘I guess asking at the manse is out,’ the young thief muttered.

  Coe gave him a wry look and turned his horse, heading off across the ring of forest and through it, into the cleared fields beyond. The line of . . . unpleasantness . . . nowhere reached the cultivated land, but it had little embayments well into the woods and rough moor kept as barrier and hunting grounds for the manor.

  Jimmy sighed and followed, feeling the oppression on his spirits lift as they came back into land that bore the sign of man, not to mention sheep, goats and cattle. All he could see from this lane—it was too narrow and irregular to be called a road—was a rising field of something green, probably young grain, and a ridge lined with tall trees.

  ‘I don’t think that was even your typical haunted house,’ he muttered.

  ‘Not quite,’ Jarvis Coe said grimly.

  Even then, Jimmy felt a little startled at his tone. Coe was looking back towards the fortified manor, and his mouth was a hard line; his right hand kept straying to his breast, and the young thief thought that there must be something beneath the cloth—an amulet, perhaps.

  ‘In the meantime, the day’s mostly gone and if we’re to find out what’s happening, we need shelter,’ Coe said. He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Unless you’d rather ride back to Land’s End?’

  ‘If you’re staying, I am,’ Jimmy said, flushing. ‘I gave my word.’

  Coe smiled, then more broadly at Jimmy’s scowl. ‘No, lad, I’m not laughing at your keeping a debt of honour,’ he said. ‘I’m just remembering some situations I got myself into with promises, once. The more credit to you.’

  He reined his horse about and Jimmy followed. The setting sun made it hard to look west—not something that was often a problem in Krondor, where tall buildings were more common. Despite that, Coe led them to the junction of two lanes in that direction, and cocked his head to one side.

  ‘Ah, I thought so,’ he said. ‘There’s a brook there. Hear it?’

  Jimmy tried; all he could make out was rustling, whooshing, crackly sounds of wind through vegetation, birdsong, and a lot of insects. But . . .

  ‘That tinkling sound?’

  ‘You’ve a good ear, Jimmy.’

  ‘Thank you, Jarvis,’ he said.

  ‘Well, in the country, where a road or path crosses water, chances are you’ll find folk living,’ the older man said.

  They rode down the lane through a belt of trees that arched over the road; it reminded Jimmy of an alleyway, in that you wanted to look seven ways at once to make sure nobody was sneaking up on you. The trees all seemed of the same size, and most were in rings around thicker stumps.

  ‘Coppicing,’ Coe said, noticing his puzzlement. ‘If you cut an oak or beech, a ring of saplings comes up from the stump. Leave them ten years, and they’re good firewood, or the right size for charcoal, or for poles, and when you cut them you get more coppice shoots—think of it as farming trees. Another sign we’re near some dwellings.’

  Ah, rural mys
teries, Jimmy thought a little snidely.

  Jarvis pulled up near the footpath that led to a small cottage. ‘That’s a farmstead off that way,’ he said, pointing to a haze of smoke. ‘But we’ll stop here. A cottager will be more glad of a few coins, and more likely to be gossipy.’

  He rose in the stirrups. ‘Hello the house!’ he called.

  The cottage lay a hundred yards or so to their right, in the direction of the manor; a huge oak overshadowed it.

  Which isn’t hard, Jimmy thought. A small bush would overshadow it.

  The building was a single storey of wattle-and-daub, whitewashed mud plastered over interlaced branches and poles; the steep roof was thatch, with an unglazed dormer window coming through it above the doorway like a nose. Smoke trickled out of a stone-and-mud chimney, and a shed of the same construction stood not far off. The large vegetable garden beside it was newly planted, the dark soil as neatly turned as a snake’s scales, and a nanny-goat stood in a small rail-fenced pasture beside a young sow; a few chickens scratched around the plank door of the modest home.

  ‘Hello, strangers,’ a man said, as he turned from latching the wicker garden gate with a twist of willow-twig.

  He had a spade in his hand, oak with an iron rim; he smiled as he set it down against the fence, but that put his hand within reach of a billhook leaning against the same barrier. That was a six-foot hickory shaft with a heavy hooked knife-blade socketed to the end, a common countryman’s tool but also a weapon at need; some soldiers carried them, although military models added a hook on the back of the blade for pulling mounted men out of the saddle.

  The man himself was in patched and faded homespun breeches and shirt, barefoot, and no longer young, but tough as an old root from his looks.