“Dead, my lord.”
Burne stared at him, He put a hand over his wine cup but did not throw it. Atrix, his eyes on his morning shadow, scented the castle for more turmoil, terror; the only storm, it seemed, was among them. “Dead of what?”
“He came—he came earlier, before dawn. He was wounded, babbling—no one realized for a while who he was—no one expected the messengers back—”
“What,” Burne barked, “happened?”
“He said—they never reached Chaumenard. They never got out of Pelucir alive. He was the only one to escape it. He was old enough to recognize it.”
Blood drained out of Burne’s face. He lifted his hand stiffly from his cup, closed it; his thumb had left an indentation in the gold. “Tell me,” he said harshly, “what he recognized.”
“The Hunter of Hunter’s Field.”
The King’s face relinquished all expression. “Talis,” he said to Atrix. Atrix dropped his face into one hand, murmuring inarticulately.
“Talis is in the Queen’s wood,” he answered, lifting his head again. “Of all of you, he will be safest. Burne—”
“Is this what Talis conjured up in the keep?”
“Yes. No. Yes.”
“The Hunter of Hunter’s Field? He was in there alone with Talis? What do you mean, yes and no—” He stopped abruptly, reaching out to Atrix, in a sudden plea against his own thoughts. “It was your spellbook—”
“It was my spell,” Atrix said. He had to wait a moment for anyone to understand, and then a moment or two longer, for anyone to believe him. Then Burne took a step back from him, and the air everywhere was streaked with silver, catching a blinding fire from the morning light. Even Burne’s sword was out, motionless as if it were spellbound, an inch away from Atrix’s breastbone.
Atrix bowed his head. “It would be just,” he said softly. “And even welcome. I won’t fight you. But—”
“Talis,” Burne whispered; the sword shook slightly in his grip, then inched forward to stop over Atrix’s heart.
“Yes.” Atrix looked at the blade, and then at Burne; any spark of sorcery, he knew, would ignite the hall, and leave them fighting ghosts again, in terror and despair. “Kill me later,” he suggested to Burne. “You need me now. I will be back. Even in Chaumenard, I live on Hunter’s Field.”
He waited, motionless, for the weight over his heart to ease, begin to lift, before he disappeared.
Fifteen
Saro opened the unnamed book.
It was late; the King’s hunt had returned long before; supper and its confusion of plates and pots and tales carried down the stairs, coming in the back door, was long over. For the second day since Talis had disappeared, the hunt had returned without him. The King had retired in fury and despair to his chamber, slamming the door so hard, the boom down the long stone passage sounded, servants said, like one of the prince’s explosions. Supper—roast, peppered venison, tiny potatoes roasted crisp, hollowed and filled with cheese and onions and chive, cherries marinated in brandy and folded into beaten cream—sailed over the tray-bearer’s head and splashed a lively patchwork across a hundred-year-old tapestry on the wall behind him. Brandy was taken up, and later, another tray, which at least made it through the door. Dirty pots came to an end, fires were banked, the last of the spit-boys wandered in from his night prowls, and settled on the stones. Saro, napping beside the cauldron, was roused by the silence. She pulled the book from its secret place.
Dawn found her face-down between its pages. She shoved it hastily back under the cupboard as the spit-boys, groping, half-asleep, sat up to toss wood or. the fires beneath the bread ovens. The head cook entered later to the smell of hot bread, followed by hall-servants and yawning undercooks, and the tray-mistress, red-eyed and grim.
“Hunt,” the head cook said tersely. The dogs were barking in the yard. “Again. Take up bread and cheese, smoked fish and cold, sliced venison. Mince the rest of the venison for pie. Also onions, mushrooms, leeks. Take up spiced wine.”
Musicians crowded into the kitchen, dressed for the hunt; they chewed blearily on hot black bread, venison, cheese, their instruments tucked under their arms, their faces alert for any impulse of the King’s. Saro filled the wash-cauldron. A corner of the book caught her eye; she nudged it farther under the cupboard with her foot.
“We scoured the south wood yesterday,” a trumpeter said in answer to the tray-mistress’s query. “We sounded fanfares for deer, hare, grouse, quail. But not one for the prince. Wherever he is, he’s either hidden or beyond eyesight. But the King will run dogs and horses and hunters into a ghostly hunt before he gives up trying to see what can’t be seen.”
The tray-mistress closed her eyes and shook her head wordlessly. She opened them a moment later. “Saro,” she called, and Saro gathered the loaf pans to wash them.
The end of the day’s hunt filled the kitchen with feathers, as grouse and pheasant and wild duck, their cloudy eyes staring at unseen things, were plucked, beheaded, stuffed and spitted. Hare, squirrel and deer were skinned, gutted and left in the cold-meat pantry; tanners took away the pile of skins outside the door, while the yard dogs squabbled over offal.
“It’s a war with the wood,” the tray-mistress muttered crossly, as the sweeper slowly swept blood and water into the drains. “Shooting everything that moves. Let’s hope he misses Prince Talis.”
“It’s fear,” the head cook said, calculating as he spoke, his eyes on the raw meat inside the pantry. “The venison can be smoked, the small game will do for cold pies for the hunters. It’s memory of loss and hunger. He’ll be saner, when the messengers reach Chaumenard and the mages come.”
“Magic,” the tray-mistress said tightly. Even the spit-boys glanced up from their fires at the word. “Again in Pelucir. But I suppose there’s no help for it.” She turned abruptly, clouted a mincer across the head with a wooden spoon. Already sniffing from onions, he only ducked and sniffed harder. “Get to work, brat, or I’ll toss you on the offal pile. Something about this has me strung up and simmering. Waiting. And remembering. I keep feeling a shadow inside my bones.”
“The mages will come soon,” the head cook said absently. “Sauce. Orange and honey for the duck, pear and onion for the pheasant.”
Saro’s hands slowed; she stared at soap bubbles, trying to fit mages into her vision. Help for the prince, protection against the night-hunter seemed to fit nowhere, not in the kitchen, not among the trees in the wood. “Mages” seemed a dream word, meaningless: The more she looked for them, the more rapidly they vanished, like the airy palaces of bubbles in her cauldron.
“Saro!” a spit-boy cried, and she turned to gather the dripping-pans.
She sat up that night until the fires around her turned into a ring of bright, watching eyes, until the words in the book, always incomprehensible, turned nearly invisible as well. Still she clung to the book, her eyes heavy, unblinking, waiting for the chains of letters, the words skipping across the page like stones across a brook, to speak.
They remained as mute as she.
She touched her lips, and then the words. No one in the kitchen cooked up great platters of words to be eaten, but somehow an inexhaustible quantity of them came out of people’s mouths. Those in the book had as much to do with eyes as with lips; they vanished when not looked upon; tears changed them, and wind, and fire. Her eyes dropped wearily; the watching eyes glowed bright and disappeared. The book vanished, though she felt it in her hands. It remained silent. Perhaps she needed to form words in her mouth before she could form the words on a page. Undercooks consulted great volumes of recipes, smudged and stained with oils, sauces, flours. They argued over them, cooked from them, words made into food, and sent them up to be eaten. She touched her mouth again, half-dreaming, and desperate. One hand slid away from the book; the hand remembered, it seemed, before she did, what it had picked up in the keep and put in her pocket. Even in the fading light it gleamed, a single letter, a graceful scrollwork of gold. She li
fted it to her mouth, her eyes closing, raw and gritty with weariness. Words had to get into her somehow, to get out again. She yawned, inhaling, and tasted bitterness and gold, a letter without a sound.
She saw the night-hunter watching her within the fiery circle of eyes.
She jerked herself awake, her mouth open, trying to make a sound. Nothing stood in the red, fuming hearth light. The spit-boys snored, shadowy, fire-limned lumps; the mincers whimpered in their sleep. Still her heart pounded its own language of terror, until the vast dark kitchen, smelling of smoke and rising bread, calmed her with its insistence of familiar things. At last she moved, closed the book. As she lay facing it, one hand straying under the cupboard to touch it, she swallowed again the unfamiliar taste of gold.
The night-hunter stood over her. She saw his dark, masked eyes, the dark moon rising in his horns, his face rippling slightly, as if she saw him reflected in water at the bottom of the cauldron. He said, Drawkcab. His black hounds howled at the word. Drawkcab, he insisted, through the noises of the hounds, staring down at her. A jewel of blood gleamed at one corner of his mouth. Drawkcab, he said a third time, and the baying of the hounds rose, became pure and metallic as the voices of horns.
She woke with a start, hearing horns.
It was a fanfare at the gate, in the early hours before dawn. Spit-boys, sleepily kindling the oven fires, glanced toward the sound.
“Someone wanting in,” one breathed, and another answered, lifting his head sharply above his fire,
“Mages, it must be. The mages of Chaumenard.”
They learned, at breakfast.
Servants took up silver urns of chocolate, trays of butter pastries, hams glazed with honey and sliced thin as paper, eggs poached in sherry, birds carved out of melons and filled with fruit. They came back white as cream. The tray-mistress listened to their babbling a moment, then sat down slowly, her own cheeks, under the strawberry veins, as colorless as suet.
The head cook said sharply to the head servant, “Sit down. Speak slowly. Who is up there, and why is no one eating?”
“Messengers. Messenger.”
“From Chaumenard?”
The servant shook his head. The head cook sat down suddenly on a stool. “Only one came back,” the servant whispered. “Of those the King sent out. They were stopped. At night, before they reached the border. The steep, rocky hills, where the pass narrows, and the road overlooks half of Pelucir.”
“What happened there?” The undercooks had crowded around the head cook; no one else moved, except the youngest of the choppers and peelers, who, uneasy, sought safety beneath the tables. The hall servants were clustered together around the head servant. The tray-mistress, rolling her pristine apron in her fists, carried it to her mouth.
“Something—someone stopped them. Something.”
“What?” the tray-mistress snapped, like the pitch exploding in the fire, and a spit-boy jumped. The head servant, his face grey, lined, beneath his yellow hair, stared back at her dully.
“A man. A mage. A hunter. His horns like black lightning, a black moon rising in them, hounds and horse shaped out of night, with fire between their teeth. He would not let them pass into Chaumenard.”
The tray-mistress made a sound into her apron. The head cook said quickly, “Brandy. Are they dead?”
“The messenger didn’t wait. They all turned and ran. He was the only one to return. He was old enough to recognize the Hunter, and that’s what’s being said up there. That it was the dark making that killed the King’s father. The messenger died this morning.”
The tray-mistress covered her eyes and rocked a moment. She reappeared, to grip the brandy bottle and drink. Her eyes, usually shiny as beetles’ wings, looked sunken and dull. The head cook, wordless in the silence, drew breath audibly.
“After so many years? The sorcery made for that battle still exists?”
“They recognized it,” the head servant said softly. “Those who saw it kill on Hunter’s Field. The messenger heard the others shouting, as he ran.”
He took the bottle from the tray-mistress and drank. The head cook reached for it.
“We must bring a mage here to deal with it.”
“We had a mage,” the tray-mistress said heavily. “That White Wolf.”
“He’s been searching for the prince. He’ll deal with this too—he told the King that before he vanished. He is the greatest living mage.”
There was silence again, in the kitchen. Other servants came down, bearing trays of uneaten food. The head cook gazed at the trays, his face tight. “Cook the eggs until they harden, and roll them in minced sausage. The ham will keep for when the King hunts again. Mash the melon in sweet wine and strain it for cold soup—”
“He can’t go hunting,” the tray-mistress breathed in horror. “Not with that out there.”
“With that and Prince Talis out there together, he’ll go,” the head cook said tersely. “If that’s what drove the mage and the prince out of the keep, then the mage will be around somewhere. He’s Atrix Wolfe, not some fly-by-night magician. He knows to guard the heir of Pelucir.”
“If he can,” the tray-mistress said starkly. “If he’s able.” She shifted slowly off the stool, her eyes wide. Gradually they focused on the plate-washers, and, for an instant, on Saro, who had turned away from her pots and stood as still as if she understood. “Plates!” the tray-mistress snapped; the plate-washers whirled, bent over the cooling water. “Pots!” But Saro had already vanished headlong into her cauldron, scouring dripping-pans from the hams, and baking trays from the pastries. The head cook, not seeing her face, forgot her listening eyes.
Drawkcab, the water deep in the cauldron said as it weltered against the sides. She felt her lips move, shaping sounds. It was a spell, a message, a riddle, a warning; a terrible, magical word. She could no more say it than she could say “liver sausage.” But he had come into her dream and said it to her. Or her dream had spoken to her, out of his image. She scrubbed fiercely at pork grease, the word echoing in her head now instead of in the water. She felt the odd prickling in her eyes again, for it was as meaningless to her as the words in the prince’s book.
The King called a council later that morning. Plates of sweetmeats, nuts, tiny seed cakes, were returned to the kitchen untouched; pitchers of cold spiced wine returned empty.
“No one’s eating,” the tray-mistress said fretfully. “And what is this dent in the bronze tray?”
“The King kicked it,” a servant said morosely. “He’s boiling and about to froth.”
“He’s frothing,” another servant said, returning with goblets. He wiped a sheen off his face and added starkly, “He’s calling the hunt for noon. He thinks something terrible—he says the monster came out of the prince’s spell-book, and that Atrix Wolfe wrote the book—so he thinks—he says that Atrix Wolfe made—”
“You’re babbling,” the head cook snapped. “Nonsense. Cold ham, herb bread, mince pies, red wine. The King may throw it to the dogs. At least it will get eaten.”
The hunt returned, to everyone’s relief, at twilight. As if preparing for siege, it had cut a deadly swath through the wood, bringing back so much game that the head cook ordered the smokehouse fires lit again, and sent spit-boys out to hang venison and wild duck above the flames. He sent stew and game pies to the supper hall, salads of spinach and radish and bacon, hot black bread, simple, heavy fare that the hunters did not reject. There was more eating than talking, the servants reported. There was no news.
Saro washed pie pans, bread pans, stewpots, frying pans, until, looking around dazedly, she found a world scoured of dirty pots, and very quiet. Sitting in the shadow of her wash cauldron, she waited stolidly for the spit-boys to come in from the night and bank the fires. They settled finally, and began to snore. She drew the book from under the cupboard and set it across her knees.
She did not open it.
There would be, she knew, the same tantalizing drawings of mirrors and mandrake roo
ts, goblets and flying birds. The same clean, precise lines of letters and words that might as well have been spider webs, or splotches of cooking oil, for all they said anything to her. She leaned back against the cupboard, gazed wearily at the hearth fires. She watched little flames spring up now and then out of the darkening embers, like ghosts, like memories of fire, until, half-dreaming, she forgot that fire had a name, and saw only bright random blossoms of color spring up, out of shimmering red and dark, flow gracefully from shape to shape, then burrow down again, hide among the rustling embers, where something restless would snap and fling a sparkling swarm of insects or stars into the air.
Darkness curved across one hearth, hiding half of it: a massive, heavy black that her hands knew as well as her eyes. Sitting still, she felt its rough, familiar swell against her palms as they pushed against it, and its unwieldy weight against her hip as she tilted it, and dirty water slapped the sides and spilled.
She felt its strength in her, its solid, unyielding shape, that resisted any change, unlike the fire that danced to every breath of air and had the power to change whatever it touched. Her mind shifted between them, exploring them: the great bubble of iron that held water, air, dirty pots, visions, in its hard, protective embrace; the fire that ate shadows, and bone, and shone like love in the spit-boys’ eyes, and like death in the dead swan’s eyes.
They entered her as nameless things: She made herself as strong and unyielding as one, as brilliant and fluid as the other. Her bones were made of iron cauldron, her heart beat with wings of fire…
Saro! she heard someone call, from far away: the tray-mistress, or a spit-boy with a dripping-pan. She built the iron bubble around her. The voice, as light and pure as the horn’s voice, crumpled against the iron. Later, she followed the path of fire around the kitchen, saw how it hung mothlike, quivering, in the curve of a copper pot, how it changed the shape of candle wax, making something cold and stiff go warm as tears, and spill, sculpting itself as it cooled. Curious, she let her mind flow into the wax, fall with it, harden again.
The Book of Atrix Wolfe Page 15
