by Mary Corran
‘But it was you who found a way out.’
She began to laugh, relief making her light-headed. ‘Are we arguing about who’s to blame now?’
He grinned. ‘If you like.’
‘Oh — get going!’ Putting her feet down on the muddy bottom of the river, she found walking less painful than she had feared. With a wave, Mallory strode off, dripping, in the direction where they had left the horses, about a mile east.
Half-swimming, half-wading, Asher followed, making slow progress and growing colder by the minute. With Mallory gone, less pleasant thoughts crowded her mind; their whole journey had been misconceived, for whatever reason, and her disappointment in their failure was acute: what she had said was true — she had no idea where to start again.
What was it the Oracle said? ‘Within your compass lies the means to pierce the veil.’ That suggested a disguise of some kind surrounding the girl, but what? The possibilities were endless. Could the prophecy mean that perhaps she would stumble on the answer by luck, or did she already know it, but was unaware of what she knew? She lifted a hand and found the talisman at her neck, warm against her skin. She needed help in deciphering the puzzle.
Yet help there had been; whether it had sprung from her own intuition or from some other source more deeply buried, something had told her that the flames were their only hope of escape, just as the same inner warning had rejected the false security of the cave.
Asher shivered. There was too much she did not understand, could not understand. ‘Look — or lose’, the Oracle had said.
It would be a great deal easier if she knew what to look for.
Chapter Eleven
A night’s rest at Kepesake and large quantities of soothing ointment did much to restore Asher’s ease of body, but little to appease her mind. She spent most of the morning in her room, keeping out of sight while Mallory received a long line of petitioners in the estate office; watching the many familiar faces of the villagers from her window, she was sure what her next course of action should be, but considerably less certain of its execution.
I don’t believe we came back here for no reason; therefore, the answer must lie in the Oracle’s prophecy. ‘In what was’ — that was the key. But which was? In her present surroundings it was easy to immerse herself in the past, to remember back to the time before her marriage to the many happy days she had known at Kepesake. What clue to Vallis’s whereabouts could possibly lie hidden in those memories? She racked her brains, increasingly frustrated as the hours passed and she came no nearer a solution.
Eventually, she took her difficulty to Omond in his attic chamber, who greeted her civilly and listened with close attention while she repeated the prophecies of the Oracle, nodding as she detailed her conclusions.
‘Interesting,’ he commented, when she had finished. ‘But somewhat inconclusive. I am not convinced your interpretation is the correct one. If you will forgive me for repeating myself, I think you miss the point. “See the shifting shadowlines” — that, of course, is a reference to your latent gift for divination.’
‘I told you,’ Asher said irritably. ‘It doesn’t exist, and if it did, I wouldn’t want it.’
‘That is an irrelevance.’ He surveyed her with detached interest. ‘You will find no solution to your difficulty in denial, as you must already have discovered. And I see you do not wear the ring I gave you.’
Asher wished he had not noticed the omission. ‘It didn’t work. Last night, I felt it again — the watching. I had the ring on at the time.’
‘I see, although I am not entirely surprised. As I surmised, your own immunity to the magnetism of such warding stones unfortunately works against you in this respect.’
Asher sighed. ‘I wish I knew what he wanted, whoever it is.’
‘What do you propose to do now?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve tried, but get nowhere. I’ve no idea where to look, if the solution to the riddle really does lie in the past.’ Some of her frustration came into her voice. ‘I feel that so far I’ve done nothing but cause trouble for everyone.’
‘Your encounter with the Saff girl near the camp suggests otherwise,’ Omond observed. ‘Without your assistance, she would unquestionably have been taken; perhaps that was your purpose in returning here. Who knows what part she may play in the balance of luck in our lives in the days to come?’
Asher nodded, for that was in accord with her own thoughts. ‘I wondered, too. It seemed to me our lives touched briefly, for a reason. But that had nothing to do with finding Vallis.’
‘And do you believe this search the sole justification for your existence?’ Omond inquired caustically. ‘In the course of our lives there are many points at which we may be of service to others, intentionally or no, and whether we are aware of it or no. In your pursuit of Vallis you may accidentally touch on many other matters outside your immediate concern, but they are no less important for that.’
‘How can you say that? Everything I’ve done so far is wrong.’
‘That remains to be seen. I maintain that your chief difficulty lies within yourself. If you could forgive yourself for a very natural mistake — and your assumption the girl in the camp was the one you sought was perfectly understandable — then you will find your answer. No one blames you for the error, except yourself.’
‘No?’ Asher gave him a wry smile. ‘How can I tell? I used to be so sure of everything.’
‘Wherein lies your problem,’ Omond interrupted her impatiently. ‘You have a good mind, child, use it!’ Learn to accept the inevitable, rather than fight against it and waste your energies. What must be, will be, but not everything is of great matter. Preserve your strength for what obstacles can be overcome.’
‘That sounds like something my mother used to say.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘It goes too much against the grain, Omond. I’m not a fatalist.’
‘And you find self-recrimination a more profitable exercise?’
The acerbic question caught her unawares, not least because the implied criticism was just. ‘Sometimes!’ she said, stung.
Omond peered down his nose. ‘You will find what you seek, child, but only if and when you have the courage to admit to yourself what is true and what is false. Do not allow your wishes to lead you astray.’
‘How can I tell?’
‘Is there nothing you have hidden from yourself? Nothing in your past you should remember, even if it gives you pain?’
She turned away. ‘It may be.’
‘Then let the memory come; think of what was, and what came from it.’ There was compassion in his voice, but Asher did not respond to it. After a moment, Omond went on: ‘The Oracle said that in this the choice was yours, but I think you must choose at least to look.’
‘Perhaps.’ Asher struggled against denial. It was as she feared, that there would be no place left to hide from the period of her past she could barely endure to acknowledge existed.
‘Child — ’ But Asher ignored the appeal in his voice and took a hasty leave of the diviner, retreating with her thoughts to the silence and solitude of the library on the ground floor.
Lewes. Is that what it means, that I must see him again? But what part could he possibly play in all this? She was reluctant to name him even in her thoughts, but allowing herself to remember him gave her no startling moment of revelation. He was a man without conscience, who saw the world solely in terms of status and possession, and who had treated her as if she were less to him than one of his dogs. She wondered what there was in Lewes that made him choose to exercise domination through violence, what inadequacy persuaded him that force should earn him respect. Nor was he unique; there were many like him in Venture.
Asher let out a bitter laugh. Was Amrist the Conqueror so very different? His ambitions might lie along a grander scale, but the impulse seemed to her very much the same.
All I ever wanted was to have control over my own life, not other people’s. Is there a flaw in m
en, that they feel this need for dominion? But that was to fall into the trap of believing them all alike, and Mallory at least had shown himself to be a little different; if bound by custom, his authority stemmed from a sense of responsibility, not the desire for power. Or — was he really different? His motives might be more acceptable to her, but was the intent not the same? Or did the Fates really make us physically the weaker sex for their own amusement, while giving us minds to know ourselves of equal value with men, but not to them; we work as hard, or harder, our intellects are as capable. Is it all a joke, to make us vulnerable, and to make men hate us? For what else but hate could make them behave towards us as they do? Or was the joke the other way around, that the Fates should dictate that men should create a world of their own choosing, then spend their lives squabbling endlessly for possession of it? In Petormin, it was said that girl babies were often killed at birth, so poorly were they valued by custom. Asher wondered what they would do when the imbalance in the population grew so extreme there were few women left to bear children. Would they then value their women more highly, or would they simply become a more prized commodity, gifts to be given out to the winners in some game of power?
‘Within your compass lies the means to pierce the veil.’ That was what the Oracle had said. A veil suggested disguise, something deliberately hidden. But the rest of the lines of the prophecy — did they suggest Asher would fail in her task unless she was willing to tear down those veils she had erected, those behind which lay Lewes, and the year of her marriage, and all the horrors of that time? She believed that was what Omond had meant. Must she remember it? Or was even that not enough, and she must actively confront the past in the person of Lewes himself?
She could not bring herself to believe it. Lewes hated her, perhaps more than she him. He would have greater cause, now, after Mallory’s denial of Harrows as his inheritance.
Yet, surely, what she feared most was, by the very nature of the Fates, what they would destine for her? If it was true they were malign more often than generous, this would be their pleasure.
Was she too great a coward to face Lewes? Or should she leave her future entirely to the Fates and make a choice with what she wanted to be free will? The decision felt instantly right, sliding into place in her mind as neatly as if a niche had already been prepared for it.
Tonight. It must be tonight, or I won’t be brave enough. The die was cast, she thought; she had thrown down a gauntlet to Fate, to know at last what was real and what only her fears.
The remainder of the day went by too fast and too slowly for Asher. Having made her decision, she found herself more and more unwilling to keep to it, as if the inner sense that had helped her the previous day was warning her against her own folly. After wandering restlessly about the house, she found herself returning to the library after dinner, staring at the embers of the fire; it was still too early to retreat to bed, and she had no inclination to do so, knowing what task awaited her.
‘Are you all right, Asher? You seem pensive.’
Mallory had come in without her noticing, and she looked up, startled. ‘Yes, thank you.’
He took the chair opposite hers, sinking into it with a weary sigh. ‘Fates, I’m tired. I expect you are, too. I’m sorry you’ve been tied to the house all day, but with all the comings and goings to the estate office it was too risky for you to be about.’
‘I didn’t mind.’
‘There’s still tomorrow. What would you like to do? Perhaps we could find a way for you to visit Harrows?’
His thoughtfulness was nearly her undoing. She was powerfully tempted to admit to her confusion and ask his advice, but she did not. She had placed herself in the hands of the Fates, and only they should intervene now. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, affecting a yawn. ‘I think I’ll go to bed, if you don’t mind. I can hardly keep my eyes open.’
‘Stay and talk a little longer,’ he invited. ‘I’ve hardly seen you all day.’
‘I’m too tired to be good company.’ She softened her refusal with a smile. ‘Good night, Mallory.’ She made as if to rise.
‘Asher?’ he said. She paused. ‘You would tell me if you were worried or troubled?’
Something in his expression, perhaps hope, perhaps a wholly unexpected depth of feeling, made her catch her breath. ‘Of course,’ she said, forcing lightness to her tone. ‘There’s nothing.’
He looked at her a moment longer, then nodded absently. She left him, wondering if she had fooled him even for a minute; she was hardly a great actress. But it did not matter; he had not pursued the question. She made her way upstairs to her room, wishing she could go back, but at the same time proud she had sufficient strength of will to resist the temptation to take the easier path.
Am I being even stupider than ever before, or is this all predestined by the Fates?
She moved to sit by the window, looking out across the fields and the common to Harrows. No lights shone in the farmhouse. The night air was cold enough to keep sleep at bay and the skies were clear. Images stirred in her mind, of a night six years ago, of shadows weaving across a darkened path which lay out there among the fields. Coward that she was, she had tried to bury the past and failed. Now it arose to haunt her waking as it had haunted her dreams, and she could no longer run from it. If she did, she would spend the remainder of her life running, not only from Lewes but from herself; for what else was her life in Venture if not an escape? It was only now, at a distance, that she could see that truth for herself.
I’ve been wrong about everything else. What if this, too, is wrong? Her old confidence had deserted her, and she was aware of strong doubt, torn by opposing compulsions which both urged her to pursue the path she had chosen, yet at the same time warned her of danger, perhaps even a threat to her life.
If I don’t go, I shall never know.
That would be worst of all, perhaps to regret forever that she had not possessed the courage to confront the ghosts of her past and conquer them. The day after tomorrow they would leave Kepesake, and she could never return; it was now, or never.
The long hours of waiting gave her too much time to think. Asher was grateful when, well after midnight, she was sure everyone in the house was finally asleep and she could leave her room.
At each corner, as she crept along the passage, as she slipped down the stairs, she thought of it as testing Fate. Would someone hear her and come out? Was Mallory still up, listening for her? If a door opened, would that be a sign? But nothing happened, and she reached the ground floor unhindered, glad to be on the move. The big house was eerily silent, and each sound of shifting timbers made her start nervously in the dark as she made her way along the narrow corridor at the rear of the house leading to the estate office.
She had been afraid it would be locked, but luck, or some other Fate, was evidently with her, for the door opened with only a faint creaking at the hinges. The room was as she remembered it, filled with a clutter of papers and ledgers, boxes filled with documents relating to the estate, but she concentrated on the desk, finding her way to it by moonlight, opening the top left-hand drawer where the keys had always been kept. Her heart leaped as she felt inside, and was rewarded with the cold touch of metal.
They must be here.
There were a large number of assorted keys in the drawer, providing her with an embarrassment of choice, but she took a chance selection over to the light of the window and spared a moment to bless the estate-steward: all of them were neatly labelled. Quickly reading the inscriptions, she discarded her first choices and returned for a second bunch; this time she was more fortunate, finding three keys to Harrows. She chose the largest, the one that opened the back door, then replaced the rest in the drawer, shutting it carefully.
She left the office and tried the side door next to it; it was bolted, but the latches were well oiled and the bars drew back easily enough. Opening the door, she stepped outside and into the gardens.
Cold air struck at her, even through her
thick dark skirts and tunic, and she was glad of the dark-coloured scarf that covered all. She hesitated, knowing there was still time to drawback, tempted by the prospect of warmth and comfort in contrast with a lonely walk in the chill of the night. Now or never. Would Mallory forgive her if he knew what she was doing? More to the point, could she forgive herself if she did not go? Sighing, she moved away from the house; look or lose, it was all in the hands of the Fates.
To her right lay the orchard, and beyond it the wall surrounding the house and gardens; the gates would be shut and locked, but such barriers had never deterred her in the past and would not now. She remembered the time Callith had dared her to walk at midnight through Death Hollow, where the ghost of a murdered man was supposed to rise when Abate was full. Asher almost laughed at the memory of how she had run all the way to Kepesake once it was over, climbing the wall, tearing her skirts in the process, to throw stones at Callith’s window and prove she had kept their bargain. She had encountered no ghosts but her own fears, but had invented a story for her friend, filled with eerie sounds and muffled wailings, which had terrified them both for weeks.
She slipped among the trees and was at once impaled by further stabs of memory; how many times had they stolen into this orchard, climbing the trees and eating the unripe fruit (an activity strongly forbidden, which had added powerfully to its charms), enjoying the suspense of wondering whether they would be found out? These shadows, at least, held no terrors for her, and she felt her courage returning as she reached the wall, moving with remembered ease; her foot reached up automatically for the foothold they had always used, a gap made by a broken brick, and she scrambled up and over without difficulty. This had been their private route, hers and Callith’s, as familiar as her own home.
Home. I’m going home. Her eyes filled with sudden, unwanted tears, and she blinked them away.
The path they had worn was overgrown now, from disuse, and Harrows was invisible, shrouded from sight by the shrubs and bushes of the common grazing ground of the village which divided Kepesake from her home. What had once been a well-trodden track was now no more than a faint trail, a lingering memory. Asher felt her excitement rising as she began the walk along the path, experiencing a longing for home so intense it seemed impossible she could have hidden such a hunger from herself for so many years. Just once more to wander about the familiar rooms, to feel the comfort of the house where she had grown up, to know there was a place where she had once belonged, was a lure too strong to resist. In two more years, Mallory would have to cede Harrows formally to Lewes, and she could never enter it again; she would be legally dead. Asher of Harrows would cease to exist, and there would only be Asher of Venture, who had no past and no place that was truly home.
