Dominic watched her go down the hall to the room where Morgain lay. He did not for a moment believe that she had told him everything she’d seen that night on Barren Tor. One thing he was certain of, however. She had not recognized him as the rider she’d seen in the midst of the moor’s desolation. It was there that he’d traveled by a secret way between Mag Mell, the Vale of the People, and the mortal realm. How the Black Rider of Vedresh had crossed was a question only Forgall could answer. Dominic made his way to the grotto.
When the King of the People at last appeared, the sun had all but sunk below the western horizon. This time, when Dominic went down on one knee he spoke first. “You did not tell me everything, my king,” he said.
“Is this how you speak to me? What have I not told you?”
“You did not inform me that someone else has crossed into this world from the Deathless Realm.” Dominic raised his head. He wanted to see the king’s face when he spoke, little good though it might do him. Not for nothing was he known as Forgall the Wily.
“Someone else? Who has dared?”
When Dominic told him, the king paled behind his brown beard. “Vedresh .. . Vedresh has crossed into this realm? Impossible.”
“The boy lies in an upper chamber, his forehead scarred by the wyvern tail whip. The woman too has been chased. He only missed her by a fortunate chance.”
“How can this be?” From nothing, the king conjured a stool, beautifully carved with runes of wisdom. He sat down heavily, his hands on his thighs. To look at him, despite the silk of his tunic, one would almost take him for a farmer, tired after a day’s toil, taking his ease at his own hearthside. That is, if one overlooked the lines of tension about his eyes and brow and the fact that he sat on the very edge of the stool.
“I know little of spells and enchantments, my king, but may it not be possible that when I crossed over, some loophole was left open?”
Forgall smiled, a little patronizingly. “No, that is not possible. When I beguile time and space, nothing happens that I do not will to happen.”
“Yet Vedresh is here.”
‘This can only mean that she has learned how to send her soldiers into this realm. Vedresh must be the first, the experiment. Once Matilda knows she has succeeded, she will send others.”
“Let them come!” Dominic said, the prospect of battle heating his blood. “I will do your bidding in the face of a thousand such!”
“Go mildly, good knight, go mildly. I will think what is best to be done. Guard the woman and the boy. Come again tomorrow and I will tell you what I have decided.”
“I could flee with Clarice,” Dominic said. “Vedresh would surely follow. ...”
“Clarice?” the king asked, his eyebrows raising high. “You have grown wondrous great with her if she makes you a gift of her name.”
Dominic said, “It is difficult to think of her as ‘Lady Stavely.’ She is young to bear such a title.”
“I saw her once, you know.” The king crossed his legs and sat back a trifle. A wooden goblet, carved of oak, appeared in his hand. Though plain stuff, it was cunningly turned so that it caught and seemed to absorb the golden light that poured through the grotto. “A mere child, she was. She came riding down one of the hills not far from here and had the fortune, good or ill, to disrupt one of our revels. Even as a child only on the cusp of womanhood, she was lovely.”
“Interrupted a revel? I thought.. . why did you not kill her?”
“Kill her? I am not Boadach. He would have done it quick enough—left her lying a blasted, twisted thing on the heath. Or mayhap he would have taken her sight, or maimed her mind so that she became a thing of horror. I have known him to do all these things and more to your poor mortal brethren.”
“Then what fate did you set her?”
The king drank while Dominic awaited an answer. He felt that Forgall was debating within himself. “We erased all memory of herself, taking her mind back to that of a child. I believe her family thought her mad, but she did not suffer. Every day was joyful for her. She was too beautiful, almost like one of our own, to destroy.”
Dominic could believe that Clarice had touched the heart of the king. “She seems well enough now.”
“So she is. Thanks to Blaic. He defied us all to bring her back to herself. It is to that misplaced kindness that we owe all our misfortune now. Were it not for that, and the outcome, Matilda would never have crossed into our realm and become one of us.”
“I have not asked before, my king. Now I must know. How is the woman, Clarice, linked with our enemy, Matilda?”
“I may as well tell you. Il may keep you from falling into a trap that she is not even aware she has set,” Forgall raised his hand to prevent Dominic’s protest. “You may have dwelt for many years in the Realms of Gold but you are still a human. You may fall in love despite yourself. Do not make that mistake for no joy can come of it. Clarice Stavely is Matilda’s daughter.”
“Her daughter? The hag’s daughter?”
Forgall chuckled and Dominic threw him a glance of dislike. “You have not seen her, good knight. I have. She is not as beautiful as her daughter, but she is no creature of nightmare. Her heart is dark; her face is fair.”
“You should have told me this before, my king.”
“Do you presume to dictate to me? I told you what you needed to know, no more, no less. You may take what I tell you now as a warning. Your blood is human and it can all too easily warm to a woman of your own kind. I would tell you the same if Clarice Stavely were a hag herself, for it is not in beauty alone that love is found.”
“I am in no danger,” Dominic said, bowing.
Dominic thought of Clarice as he’d seen her last, her golden hair slightly disheveled as though by the hand of a lover, her blue eyes enhanced by the twilight colors of the soft shawl she’d put about her shoulders. He knew she had pride, yet he’d seen her charm as well. How could she be the child of a woman whose greed and violence had brought Mag Mell, haven of Peace and Beauty, to the brink of war?
Chapter Seven
Morgain lay in his bed, feeling as though he were floating on the ocean. The pain in his head that had made him cry like a baby earlier had all but vanished, thanks to some potion Camber had tipped down his throat. Most likely laudanum, Morgain mused, remembering a tooth-ache from some years previously. The stuff they’d used then to quiet him had given him the same strange sense of distance from his own emotions and body.
The bed seemed to rock up and down, not unpleasantly, but in the manner of a boat under sail. He could hear a repetitive sighing, like the sound of the wind and the waves. A gentle, soothing sound, it should have made him sleepy, as should the sedative. Strangely enough, he felt quite wide awake.
Opening his eyes, he sat up stealthily. No voice cried out upon him. Pringle had charged him to stay in bed, but there wasn’t any point in just lying there sleeplessly hour after hour.
He peeked out from among the damask curtains hung around his bed, Pringle slept, her cap pushed askew by the supporting wing of her armchair beside his bed. Her soft burring breaths were the sound of the sea-breeze. Morgain smiled, not unkindly, at the absurd picture she made, her plump hands resting atop her round stomach.
It felt and smelled late. A stalwart sleeper, Morgain had rarely been up past ten. His school did not encourage late hours and he’d always been glad to seek his bed. It gave him an illicit thrill to be out of bed so long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He swung his bare legs out of bed and stood up, delighted to find that his head did not ache. His stomach, however, was empty enough to gurgle. Maybe he could find a little something...
A candle burned on the small table next to Pringle. He picked it up and walked over to the square mirror that hung above his bureau. Holding the candle high, he saw his bloodless reflection. It was as if the ghost of some murdered twin had come up suddenly before him.
“Coo-er. ...” he said, peering closely. The line of the wound in his forehead looked b
lack by candlelight, the track of the doctor’s black silk thread adding a particularly horrid touch. His face was so deathly pale it seemed almost to glow, while his eyes appeared to have sunk to the sockets. One bore the beginning of a fine black eye.
“Wait ‘til Harry Lasham sees this!” he said aloud, then threw an anxious glance at Pringle. She sniffed and muttered but went on sleeping. Morgain turned again to his reflection and the thing smiled back at him with a death’s head grin. “He’ll be green,” he said more softly. “Pea green.”
He raised his hand to touch the bruise on his forehead, just where his hair sprang back off his forehead. “Mother won’t like it,” he said. “With luck, it’ll be gone before she comes home.”
A bit of incautious pressure sent a throb of pain through him that not even the drug could stop entirely. He felt a little sick, so he promptly touched the same spot again.
He set the candle down on the bureau, suddenly weak as a kitten. The bed seemed to be much further away than when he’d so blithely left it. He staggered back to it, his bare feet cold. Lifting the covers to swing them under took almost the last of his strength. He felt nauseated, worse than he had after devouring green apples and potted meat sandwiches. He thought about calling Pringle, but it wasn’t the nurse he wanted.
“Mother . . .” he whispered, feeling the tears gather at the outside corners of his eyes. He blinked and they trickled coldly down, wetting the hair at his temples. Morgain closed his eyes, hoping that would stop the unmanly tears.
He’d been hit before, by the bullies at his school during the first six months of his sojourn there and at least once or twice by a master—for impertinence. But his father had never struck him nor had any stranger. He could not imagine why anyone who did not know him would want to harm him.
For a moment, he seemed to hear the thunder of the hooves and feel the tightness in his chest as he fought for breath. Then the shadow of the horse fell over him and he saw the rider raise his arm. What a strange shape his whip had been! Thick, scaly, with an arrow for a tip... it had lashed down out of the sky and he’d not even had enough air in his lungs to scream.
Who was the rider, Morgain wondered. A madman? A monster? The hand that held the whip had looked human enough, though the nails had been perhaps a trifle long. He didn’t want to think about the “thing” that sometimes populated his imaginary landscapes to the detriment of his citizens, yet now that he’d begun to think about it he couldn’t seem to stop.
Even Pringle’s chatter would be a welcome diversion to the direction of his thoughts. He drew breath to call her, but stopped with a squeak before he’d forced the first syllable out, suddenly too frightened to speak.
A window rattled. A floorboard creaked in the hall. Some fragment fell, landing with a sound no louder than a whisper, in the chimney. Pringle’s little noises seemed to grow noisier, as though something bigger than the nurse were breathing in time with her. The light of the candle on the bureau seemed too dim and far away to reveal whatever it was that he suddenly felt was right inside the room. Did that shadow move?
A deep instinct held Morgain frozen to the mattress. He bit the edge of one of his pillows to keep from crying out. A tiny moan escaped him, but Pringle—usually so attentive—still did not wake.
He squeezed his eyes shut and waited, with the helpless trembling of a rabbit in a trap, for the horror that stalked him to strike again. It was all the worse, in that he knew what to expect this time.
Long, shivering moments passed. When Morgain couldn’t stand another second of suspense, he peeped through his lashes. No dark figure stooped over his bed to strangle him. His relief was such that at first he hardly noted the change in his bedchamber.
He sighed, a long, long release of unbearable fear. Stretching out arms and legs, he reached into the cool recesses of the bed linen, feeling drowsily comfortable. His next deep breath brought with it the wild scent of pine needles and an entire lack of the smells of camphor and hartshorn.
Morgain’s eyes popped open. He sat up in bed, realizing that over him—where once a painted ceiling had provided shelter—there was only sky. Not a sky of night, either. It arched over him, a pure, clean, dizzyingly deep blue. Hugely tall trees swayed and whispered above him to a breeze only they could feel.
His bed of polished oak, complete with the initials he’d carved into the bottom right bedpost to try his first pocketknife, stood in the middle of a forest. There were spongy pine needles underfoot, the detritus of the great trees, taller than a mast-oak. Here and there, where sunlight fell to the forest floor, other trees had taken root in the shadow of the giants.
As he looked around, a small woodland creature of a sort he’d never seen before, stopped to observe this oddity, waving its long-fingered paws about as if to say “My goodness me!”
Morgain laughed, for the creature looked like nothing so much as Mrs. Wisby exclaiming over a bit of gossip, only Mrs. Wisby wouldn’t be wearing a little black loo-mask like this fellow. His laughter frightened the creature and it ran off with a peculiarly humorous waddle.
When Morgain had finished laughing, he realized that his headache had gone, quite as if it had never been. He still felt very hungry, however. As if to call his attention to this problem, his stomach let out a gurgle that flushed a chattering flock of birds from their roost behind him.
Morgain started in disgust as a pattering sound fell to the counterpane all around him, but it was not what he’d feared. The birds had dropped nuts on his bed, though not one had fallen on him. Morgain shrugged. Nuts were better than nothing.
He cracked one, using two others. To his awed surprise, he did not find a nut-meat, but a tiny jam tart no bigger than the end of his finger. Realizing that in a dream nothing could harm him, he ate it.
In a few minutes, there was nothing left but empty shells. Morgain licked a bit of strawberry off the corner of his mouth and looked about him for something to drink. No more birds flew and the small creature he’d seen before did not seem inclined to return with a pitcher of milk or a cup of tea.
Morgain swung his feet out of bed and stepped out onto the carpet of pine needles. They were surprisingly soft beneath his bare feet. Glancing down, he saw that, though most of the needles lay tossed about in a chaotic muddle, some of them formed chevrons and that these interlaced needles formed a path. It began small at his feet, but within a few yards the braided-together needles formed a path about two feet wide.
He began to walk forward until he reached the trees. Morgain glanced back over his shoulder, feeling a little hesitant about leaving his bed behind. It was, after all, the only familiar thing in an unknown landscape. However, he could not think of a way to bring it with him.
One clearing lead to another. Morgain thought he could hear the sea, but it was only the tossing of the wind in the trees. When he stepped out into the second clearing, he saw that the grass had been cut very short. It tickled the soles of his feet and he laughed.
As if his laughter had been a signal, the doors appeared. One instant there was only the short grass ringed by trees; the next, the doors. They were immensely tall, made of some dark gray stone that had been so highly polished that Morgain could see his reflection in their smooth places as he approached.
There were not a great many smooth places. Nearly every inch of the doors seemed to writhe with incredibly intricate carving. He could not trace even one line to its conclusion for everything was lost in a tangle of birds, flowers, small beasts, and vines.
Morgain could not imagine how long it would have taken for someone to carve such things. The second thing he’d done with his new pocketknife had been an attempt to carve a dog for his mother. It had taken him days and that had merely been a block of wood.
The round, smooth texture of the stone door nearest him seemed to invite his touch. His mother had often entreated him to “look with his eyes, not his fingers” and as always she was wise. He’d no sooner run his finger over the slightly oily stone, than the d
oor swung open, nearly striking him! If he’d not jumped back, he would have received the door on his nose.
All was silent, even the breeze having died. Morgain peered into the opening. His forehead wrinkled with confusion and he noted dimly that his wound had stopped hurting altogether.
Surely—surely—-what he saw was the back garden at Hamdry? There was the big larch, the statue of that Frenchman, and the tennis ball he’d lost last summer.
He poked his head in a bit further, noting that the sun shone brightly on the stone, yet when he’d left it had been nighttime. He wondered if he walked in through the opening, would he find himself at play? That would be amazing and an end to loneliness.
“No!” someone said from very close at hand.
Morgain jerked back, casting a guilty, yet relieved, glance around. At this moment, he’d be happy to see the least unsympathetic housemaster or the gruffest tutor. “Who’s there?”
No voice answered. While he was thus looking about him, the doorway had closed. Nothing he did—not even a kick that bruised his toes—made it open again.
Slowly, he made his way back to his bed. Suddenly, he felt quite sleepy. He lay down under the clothes and must have shut his eyes for only one instant before deciding that he’d given up too soon. Perhaps he should try once more to open the doorway. But his foot had no sooner touched down on the pine needles that he found it instead on his own bedside rug. Pringle peered at him from under heavy eyelids. “You must lie down, Morgain. Doctor Danby made that very clear.”
“Oh, but Pringle, I’m so thirsty.”
When Clarice came to spell Pringle in Morgain’s room, she found her yawning and blinking red eyes. Clarice would have felt more guilty about the nurse’s long, sleepless vigil were it not that Pringle herself had insisted on taking the night watches.
“How is he?’ she asked in a low voice.
“Very well, so far as I can see. He’s hungry and thirsty, though I brought him a cup of tea last night.”
“Tea? Was that wise, Pringle? Tea is rather stimulating.”
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