Mr. Budge closed the door behind him and silently motioned her to a window seat in the wall opposite. This was so mysteriously unlike the sober and sensible Budge that Sera was intrigued.
"I received a letter this afternoon from my friend Mr. Gumley. You will recall that he spent some years in Katrinsberg?" said the tutor, lowering his voice. "He knows nothing of any man going by the name of Skogsrå, but—and this is really most intriguing—he does mention a man exactly answering the Jarl's description: a Colonel Jolerei as he was called, who lived for some time in Katrinsberg, where he acquired a reputation for—well, I will pass over the details—they are hardly proper for you to hear. Let me just say that he was not the sort of man that it would be seemly for you or your cousin to know."
Budge reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew a letter. He looked through it, selected a page, and handed it over to Sera. She accepted the paper and read carefully through the description that it contained, once, and then a second time.
"It certainly sounds like the same man," she said. Turning the page over, she read aloud, "'Half trolls as they are called—though indeed they are no more mongrelized than the race as a whole—more nearly resemble the race of Men, and most of them sport but a single deformity: a snout like a pig, a tail like a cow, a birdlike claw in place of a hand . . . ' My dear sir, what is this about?"
"A discourse on Nordic folklore. Mr. Gumley's style, as you may observe, is inclined to be incoherent. I do not perfectly understand why he began his letter with an account of these superstitions," said Budge. "They do not appear to be in any way relevant to the subject of Jarl Skogsrå. I believe that the race of trolls—if not absolutely mythical—has at any rate been proven extinct."
"I have heard the same," said Sera, adding with a smile, "but only think, Mr. Budge, this may provide an explanation for Lord Skogsrå's lameness. Dear me, the Jarl might have feet like a goat!"
"I believe," said Mr. Budge, somewhat sternly, "that cloven hooves would be comparatively rare. According to Mr. Gumley's account, a solid hoof like a horse is rather more common, with the lower limb correspondingly deformed."
Sera grew sober once more. "Your friend has certainly provided us with disturbing information, but nothing I can possibly repeat to Elsie. She has far too generous a mind to give any credit to malicious gossip, and I fear that is how she would view Mr. Gumley's account."
"I quite understand," said Mr. Budge. "But surely the fact that he has changed his name since arriving in Marstadtt, in some sense supports our suspicions that Skogsrå is an adventurer."
"Indeed it does," said Sera, with a sigh. "But Elsie would not accept that, either, not on the basis of what may well be a chance resemblance."
Yet she was remembering that Lord Vodni had also mentioned the city of Katrinsberg, and between the Baron and the Jarl there appeared to be some ancient enmity. This being so, Sera resolved to question Lord Vodni at the first opportunity.
Not until the following morning did Sera find that opportunity to speak with Lord Vodni in private. And then it was necessary to preface her questions with an explanation of her conversation with Budge on the day of the picnic, and to produce the letter containing so perfect a description of the Jarl, though the name was not the same.
Lord Vodni was again dressed for riding, and Sera had encountered him outside the stables, which were located at some distance from the house, between the lake and the woods. "I knew him some years back in Katrinsberg," said Vodni, turning over the paper which Sera handed to him. "And he was then known as Haakon Jolerei . . . but there is nothing sinister in that, I can assure you. Jolerei is the family name, and his older brother (who was then the Jarl) was still alive. Whatever else I might be tempted to say concerning Lord Skogsrå, he is certainly no imposter. His family is well known in Nordmark, and indeed, I believe there is even a distant connection with my own."
Sera did not know whether she ought to be relieved or disappointed. "But these rumors of wicked deeds and immoral habits?"
"Those I am inclined to take rather more seriously," said Vodni. "Though I never actually heard anything against him, I have never liked this Skogsrå. I could scarcely tell you how, but I have always entertained an impression that he was somehow . . . an unwholesome man to know."
He glanced over the writing on the back of the page. "You needn't pay any heed to that," said Sera. "As you can see, it has nothing to do with Lord Skogsrå."
"You think not?" said Vodni. "But I think that it may have a great deal to do with Lord Skogsrå. You have, Miss Vorder, as I must suppose, led a sheltered life. You would not know that there are actually men who—at least in a metaphoric sense—might be said to devour young women alive. Haakon Skogsrå may be one of them."
He frowned thoughtfully. "I believe that I should speak to the Duchess. Yes, she must certainly be informed. And I shall write to my cousins in Katrinsberg and ask them what they know. In the meantime, madam, you must say nothing to anyone, certainly not to Miss Elsie—who would not believe you, and moreover, would almost certainly repeat the story to the Jarl himself. If Skogsrå had reason to suspect that we know these things, there is no telling what rash action he might take."
Sera was utterly appalled. "But my dear sir! While we wait to learn more, Elsie may well marry Lord Skogsrå!"
But Vodni shook his head. "There can be no danger of that. A promise to wed, perhaps—but a promise can be easily broken. Such, indeed, may already exist privately between them. But your cousin is not of age, and she cannot marry without her father's consent.
"We must assume that she is safe for this time," he said, with a reassuring smile. "They cannot wed until Elsie returns to Thornburg."
CHAPTER 35
Containing much Speculation as to the history
of the Sorcerer in the Coffin.
Jenk woke in the middle of the night, sweating and trembling in his bed under the eaves, staring up at the peaked ceiling. He knew that the moon was waning, was shriveling away to a tiny splinter of light—there was no cause, no cause that he knew to account for his present agitation.
The hours went crawling by. Try as he might to relax, sleep continued to elude him. At dawn he rose and left his bed, dressed by candle light, and sidled down the stairs.
Jenk slipped the key into the lock on the laboratory door. Something . . . something was stirring at the back of his mind. He turned the knob, opened the door, and went into the room. He set his candle down on the table by the coffin.
Slowly, he lifted the lid of the casket, stood staring down at the face of the sorcerer. Dead or dreaming? he wondered, not for the first time. With a sigh, Jenk reached for one of the books: a thick volume bound in faded red leather, with the sign of the Scolos, the two-headed serpent, stamped on the cover. He placed it carefully on the sorcerer's breast.
This particular volume inevitably fell open at the same page, as though the information written there were of particular interest to some previous scholar. Jenk had read the book through, but until tonight he had scarcely given a thought to its contents. It bore no relevance to his search for the Stone. But now—now that he had all but abandoned hope of bringing his experiments to a successful conclusion, now that he was desperately seeking some new interest, some new quest to enlighten and occupy him—one passage from this book kept running in his mind. He scanned the page, looking for that passage.
" . . . but of the Island of Evanthum, and of the People, and most particularly of her Priests who were also Great Adepts," Jenk read aloud, "much has been preserved in Secret records. They built a great Temple to the Moon Goddess, encircled by three Walls: the first of Brass, the second of Tin, and the innermost of Orichalcum. And they Erected there a Statue in her Likeness, ninety feet high, and Adorned with ornaments of Nacre, Sea-ivory, and Pearl, being the gifts of the Sea, with which they identified her. Many other Wonders they wrought besides."
Jenk shook his head; this was not what he was looking for. He skipped on ahead. "Their Astrologer
s knew the movements of the Planets and of the Stars and could predict their Courses for a Thousand years. Their Alchemists had discovered the secrets of Transmutation, and of Immortality. They were a Proud and Mighty Race.
"Yet they were Dissatisfied. For the Empire of Panterra also flourished, and her Adepts rivaled the Adepts of Evanthum, and her Astrologers rivaled their Astrologers . . . and in All Things of which the Magicians of Evanthum had gained the Mastery, so, too, were the Panterran Magicians also Masters, save only in those Matters which they had Determined were not Meet or Wholesome for Men to meddle with."
Jenk skipped over another long paragraph. He knew what it contained—a lengthy explanation of the dispute between the Rival Adepts, in which the Panterrans had scolded the adepts of Evanthum for presumption, and the Evanthians mocked the Panterrans' cowardice. The Panterrans ended by warning their rivals of the dangers of that presumption, which the magician-priests of Evanthum had taken for a threat.
He turned over another page. "Accordingly, they set out to Destroy Panterra utterly, with Spells both Mighty and Terrible, and the Panterrans, being men of Honor and Reason themselves, and expecting a like Virtue in others, were not Prepared for Treachery. Taken by Surprise, they were Helpless to avert their Doom. A great Wave overwhelmed the Island, and Panterra vanished beneath the Waters.
"Yet though the Land was lost and many Thousands of Lives, a very few were Saved, and they were Men skilled in Magic, though not among the Men of Highest Good Will, for all the Priests and Great Philosophers had Perished in a futile effort to Rescue as many of their Countrymen as possible. Thus it was proven that Virtue is no protection and the Mighty will always have their Way. The men who had escaped were Vengeful men and determined to Destroy Evanthum in the same Manner that Panterra had met her End."
While Jenk read, Caleb came quietly into the room, carrying tiny Eirena on his shoulder. The bookseller glanced up. They were an odd pair to be sure: Caleb so grizzled, gnarled, and worn-looking, Eirena so small and dainty—yet some deep sympathy existed between them, a sympathy which Jenk could not begin to fathom.
Caleb moved around the laboratory, tidying the clutter on the long table, picking up a broom and sweeping the floor. When he chanced to come too near to Jenk, the homunculus made a fearful sound deep in her throat. Since the incident of the candle flame, Eirena had conceived a tenor of Jenk, a terror which the intervening weeks had not diminished.
Jenk went on with his reading. "Yet the Priests of Evanthum, expecting Vengeance, were Prepared. They had taken measures to ensure their own Survival. And though they were willing to Sacrifice the lives of their Lesser Countrymen, yet they had Resolved to preserve all the Wonders and the Riches which they had Gathered. Therefore, when the Wave Came to Overwhelm the Island, the Priests of her Temples had already taken Ship for other Lands, and they had set a Spell upon the Island that though it Sink beneath the Waters, yet it should Rise again in three-hundred Days. But this Spell, being performed in Haste, went somehow Awry."
There was such an undercurrent of excitement in the bookseller's voice. Caleb stopped sweeping and listened to Jenk read.
"In the Nations of Euterpe the Story spread and so it has Come Down to the Present day, that the Land of Evanthum was Lost indeed, Never to Rise again. Yet in Ynde and Llyria they tell the tale Differently, saying that Evanthum did Rise and Continues to Rise, every three-hundred years, whereupon it Remains above the Water for the space of Seven Days. And they say, also, that any man arriving by Chance or Design, in good Time to See the island Arise, might land his Boat and Walk the Streets of Ivory and of Pearl, exactly as Men did of Old, and marvel at the Wonders so miraculously Preserved, and perhaps even Discover the Secrets of her Adepts, which were carved on Ivory tablets in the Temple of the Moon. But whether this story be True, no man has Proven, for even among Scholars and Philosophers, there is no agreement as to the Year and the Season when Evanthum sank into the sea, and as for the location of the Sunken Kingdom, it is not to be found on any Map."
"That's an old story," said Caleb. "Nothing there I ain't heard afore, and in nigh the same words. Nor you, neither, I reckon."
"'The gift of the sea, and not of the river,'" Jenk said softly. "Those were my words, on the night you brought the coffin to me. An unconscious echo of this old story? Yet it seemed to me then, I did not know why, that any connection between this coffin and the sea was vastly important. Then, too, there is the little piece of narwhal ivory—sea-ivory—which our departed friend holds so closely between his fingers."
Caleb rubbed the back of his neck with a knotted hand. "I did wonder, the night we brung the coffin in, whether it were buried in the ground proper to begin with and only come out when the earth shook and the river flooded, or a sea burial come in on the tide."
He shook his head. "But the look of the box is against that notion—they don't build them near so fine, just to tip them into the sea. No, and they don't float, neither, them shipboard coffins. They're weighted so they sink right down to the bottom."
"But perhaps this one was meant to float," said Jenk. He turned back to the page he had been reading. "The exact date when Evanthum will rise again from the sea is unknown, yet one might attempt to fix it within a decade or so. By my calculation, the next Emergence may be expected some time around the end of the present century. That is . . . supposing that we choose to believe the story at all."
Jenk stood silently for a time, turning the matter over in his mind. He felt as though he were poised on the brink of some revelation. "We are old men, Caleb, and do not expect to live until the end of the century; yet it is not impossible, not entirely impossible. But let us imagine that we had both of us been born a hundred years earlier. Let us imagine that we had some special knowledge which allowed us to calculate the exact time and place of the next Emergence—more than a century in the future."
Caleb scratched his chin. "Guess we might gain some satisfaction, anyways, from passing the knowledge on, from knowing that the thing we knew might be of use to some great-grandchild of my Jed or your Sera."
"Indeed," said Jerk, closing the book. He felt a rising excitement, as though he drew nearer and nearer to some hidden truth. A secret: greater than the spell which had enabled them to create the homunculus, perhaps even greater than the stone Seramarias. Was it possible that, in his failure to compound the Stone, he was about to make a discovery of even more profundity?
"But imagine," he said, continuing to choose his words carefully—for he always took great care in everything he said to Caleb these days, never knowing what chance word or expression would send the old river man off into a rage, or set him sulking and glaring suspiciously—"imagine in your own place, or in mine, a different sort of man . . . a man estranged from all his kin, a man who knew nothing of natural ties of blood or affection. For a man of that sort, even such cold satisfaction as you describe would be denied him. Unless he could cheat death somehow, spend the next century in a dreaming oblivion—remote from the flesh yet not permanently sundered from it—neither dead nor alive."
As Jenk spoke, a picture began to form in his mind. He saw the sorcerer in his laboratory, making his preparations, casting a mighty spell, falling down in a semblance of death. But the body, though tenantless, remained uncorrupted. He saw the magician's assistants prepare the corpse, sew the eyelids shut, give their master a proper laying out, so that no questions should be asked later. Jenk imagined them, when the time came for burial, placing the magician in a splendid casket along with his books, and taking that coffin secretly down to the sea. He saw the coffin launched into the water, there to ride for a hundred years or more, while the little piece of narwhal ivory in the sorcerer's hand acted as a kind of talisman to bring the body to the proper place at the proper time.
"It explains much which I have been unable to explain in any other way," Jenk mused out loud. "And if the tale of Evanthum itself be not true, yet it is still possible that this man, this magician as he appears to have been, neverthel
ess believed it to be true, and cast such a spell as I have described in order to be present at the next Emergence, and 'Walk the Streets of Ivory and of Pearl, exactly as Men did of Old, and marvel at the Wonders so miraculously Preserved.' Nor should we forget those secrets carved on tablets of ivory in the temple, which I am persuaded would be of the greatest interest to such a man as I have described."
Caleb goggled at him in patent disbelief. "But to do that—to do what you said he done—why, he'd have to know more of the secrets of life and death than any man living."
"Indeed," said Jenk, just above a whisper. "Indeed he would. A great adept. And I wonder, I cannot help but wonder, if it might be possible to communicate with this man, in spirit at least. We possess his body, which must form a vital link, also his books, his medallion, all lending power to our invocation."
Caleb took a deep breath. "That's Necromancy you're thinking of. That's a dangerous art, and one we never reckoned to dabble in."
"We never attempted it before, certainly, but speaking for myself . . . I have thought of many things these last few seasons, which I had never previously considered. And we have the spells, Caleb, in Catalana's Book of Silences, which lies here in this very coffin."
"Aye, but if'n we did conjure him up, what then?" Caleb asked uneasily. "Who's to say he'd want to help us? Who's to say he'd take kindly to us for disturbing his rest afore time? Guess he wouldn't tell us nothing!"
"Ah," said Jenk, "but I believe that he would. I think he would be prepared to do great things, reveal marvelous secrets to the men who had his body in their keeping—who had the power to destroy that body, and by doing so bring all his spells to naught."
Caleb began to catch a little of his excitement. "You could be right, Gottfried. I'll not deny, you could be right. But it's a risk, that's certain. You sure you want to take it?"
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