“He will hunt you down,” the magus said, finally. “Captain Bream is not a man to forget an enemy. Or to forgive.”
David remembered the Berok bodies in the dirt, the metallic smell of blood in the air.
He’s right, Matt said.
“Nobody would have to know,” the magus said simply.
David looked down at the unconscious man, slumped against the rock. “I would know,” he said, slipping the knife into the sheath and tucking the Stone into his tunic. It felt warm against his skin.
Despite the blue sky and the bright sun there was a chill to the air on the beach and a breeze coming off the water. We were already too far from the hotel for me to go back for my jacket.
“Are you sure?” Jacqui asked again, as I rubbed my hands on my upper arms, which were crossed over my chest.
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
Truth is, I was better than fine.
We were just strolling down the shore, moving slowly for David, well away from the crowds, probably miles from the hotel.
But it was the fact that it was the three of us, just walking, that made the day feel so special.
The day hadn’t started out well.
David had had another rough night—three seizures after I had finished the book. His worst night since he had come out of the hospital. Jacqui handled the first two with the cool control I had come to expect from her.
With the third seizure, I was in motion before I even realized that I was awake, before Jacqui had turned the light on. Suddenly I was down on the floor where we had made a bed for David. He was strong, and I whispered soothing words to him as his body surged and snapped with a mechanical, electrical force, coiling and uncoiling.
I noticed Jacqui looking down at me, her face pale from sleep. “Go back to sleep,” I whispered. “I’ve got him.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then lowered her head back to the pillow, still facing us, her eyes watching, then slowly closing.
As he calmed, I took him into my arms, rocking gently back and forth, murmuring to him, my voice pitched low and soft. I kept thinking, If we make it through this … if we make it through this …
I waited until his breathing had slowed before I lowered him back to the pillow, untangling his legs from the covers and smoothing them over him.
Standing up slowly, I paced in place to burn off the pins and needles in my legs. According to the digital clock on the bedside table, it was 5:47. I had slept in.
I turned off the bedside lamp. Jacqui moaned and shifted in her sleep. In the sudden darkness, the patio door was a rectangle of pale blue-grey, shrouded by the curtains. I settled into the easy chair, pulling my jacket off the back of the desk chair and draping it over myself.
There I sat in the slow-dissolving dark, listening to my family sleep.
When I woke with a start, momentarily not sure of where I was, the clock on the bedside table read 10:17. Jacqui was smiling at me, her eyes dark and shining in the soft light, still nestled into the pillow.
“You never used to hear him at night,” she said. “He’d be crying and you’d sleep right through it.”
“You were nursing,” I said. “I didn’t really feel equipped.” It felt like nostalgia, not like she was accusing me of anything.
She smiled. “I’d be worrying about him waking the neighbours and you’d be there, snoring away.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Not that long.” She shifted under the covers. “You’re not writing,” she said, matter-of-factly.
I shook my head. “No. It just doesn’t seem that important right now.”
Her response surprised me. “That’s too bad.”
I was speechless.
“I hope that’s not a permanent change,” she said. “That would … that would be a shame.”
We were slow to get moving. I made a pot of coffee while Jacqui showered and brought in the copy of that morning’s Oregonian from outside our door, laying it face up on the desk so she would see it when she came out of the bathroom. Jacqui, who normally avoided the newspaper when we were at home, loved to read the local paper when we were travelling.
I changed into fresh clothes and ran a comb through my hair. I figured I’d have a chance to shower sometime before my meeting with Cat.
Jacqui stopped me at the door as we were heading out for breakfast—David was already standing out in the hall. “Are you sure you don’t want your jacket?”
I glanced back into the room, thinking about the way the sun had felt on my shoulders as I smoked on the balcony. “No, I’ll be fine.”
After having breakfast at the café where I would be meeting Cat later, we started walking up the boardwalk. It wasn’t quite as excessive as Coney Island or Venice Beach, but it had some of the same carnival feel to it. Even on a supposedly quiet weekend in early June the boardwalk was packed with people, the air heavy with the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy.
We took it slow, content to drift along, Jacqui and me holding David’s hands between us, pointing things out as we passed. The tide was coming in, and a cool breeze skated along its surface, riffling the sand, bringing up gooseflesh on my arms.
The crowds thinned out as the boardwalk became a sidewalk along the upper edge of the beach. We turned onto the beach, continuing our slow amble in the fine sand.
David had always been impossible to contain whenever we went to a beach, racing to the water’s edge to play games with the incoming waves, dropping to the sand to examine castles left behind, relics from children earlier in the day, or to start building his own, or just exploring every nook and cranny, every shell and piece of seaweed.
To see him there, in that bright afternoon light, walking an unflagging straight line, his footprints perfectly uniform and regular behind him, cut through me like the wind.
Jacqui was obviously feeling the same way.
I tried to look at her, but she had turned, perhaps deliberately, to gaze out at the water, her hair playing softly around her face. I wanted to freeze the moment, of her looking away, unreadable. It touched me with a sadness I did not fully understand.
It all came down to this, today. There was nothing left to read, no more forestalling the inevitable. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon. How would David fare tonight, now that the book was done? I thought of Matthew Corvin, and the lines of care on Carol’s face. Was that the future? Or would Cat Took be able to help?
We walked up the beach in silence, our steps slow, falling a little behind our beautiful boy, watching him in the sun. Jacqui’s fingers slid between mine.
Somehow, the hours slipped away.
“Shit,” I muttered as I glanced at my watch. It was already 3:37.
“Late?” Jacqui asked.
“A little,” I said, starting to panic. “I have to—”
She smiled. “You go,” she said. “We’ll take our time back.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to make it back to the restaurant in twenty minutes, never mind get the shower I had been planning, or take some time to collect my thoughts and plan my strategy. “I’ll meet you at the hotel?”
“That sounds good,” she said. Her smile grew strained. “Bring good news.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll see you later, sport,” I called up the beach after David.
He was still walking.
“Not much longer now,” the magus whispered, his voice barely audible over the creaking of the oars and the waves buffeting the side of the boat.
David was lying as flat as he could against the hull, covered by the blanket that the captain had left him, and by the magus’s cloak. He had almost laughed, about an hour before, to see the old man in just his grey tunic and trousers. The magus had seemed practically naked, tiny and grey. Like a mouse.
They had been rowing two full days, through the bright of the sun and the dark of the waning moon, taking turns at the oars. The distance had passed more quickly than the magus had an
ticipated, and despite his exhaustion David felt his spirits lifting as the landscape took on the familiar, lush green of the coast. He almost wept when he sniffed a trace of the sea on the breeze.
“None will stop or question a magus,” Loren had explained at their last landfall, home now so close that David could almost taste it.
He wondered where this familiarity, this desperate yearning for a place he had never seen, was coming from.
It’s Dafyd, Matt guessed. You’re in his body—they’re his memories. His emotions.
That makes sense, he thought. But then—
“… but a boy who was last seen riding off with a company of the King’s Men will draw undue …” the magus was saying.
David shook his head, trying to catch up. “Are we going to the abbey?” he asked, hoping that the magus hadn’t already discussed this.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I’m concerned, though, that the Queen might have observers in place, in the event that her plan went somehow awry.”
“Because that’s where you would most likely go, if you had the Stone.”
“Which means it’s the one place we cannot go,” the magus concluded. He was silent, thoughtful.
“We could go to the tavern,” David said quietly, tentatively making the suggestion as an image of Arian flashed through his mind, a sudden yearning tugging at his heart. David tried to shake off the sudden onrush of emotion.
Dafyd is coming home, Matt said quietly. Maybe he’s getting stronger. His thoughts coming more to the surface.
David tried not to think about the possibility, about what it might mean when Dafyd was home. Would his memories, his feelings, his life, crowd out David’s?
“Isn’t that where Captain Bream found you?” the magus asked.
David nodded. “So the Queen will think we would never go back there.”
“Nonetheless, they are probably watching it.”
“There are ways in where we won’t be seen,” he said, surprised at the words coming from his lips.
The magus thought for a moment. “It’s likely no more dangerous than any other place we might hide ourselves. And we can send someone to the abbey to alert them of our return.”
David felt like cheering.
They had agreed that David would hide while they were still on the water, and lead once they reached the streets of Colcott.
The longer he spent on the cold boards, though, the less agreeable David found the arrangement.
“Not much longer now,” the magus whispered. “We’re almost across the channel.”
David wanted nothing more than to pull off the cloak covering him, to sit up and watch the crossing. That sight, of the castle dominating the sky, growing larger and larger as he approached, was one of his favourite sights in the world.
Dafyd is getting stronger, David said, trying to separate himself from the memories that were crashing into his own.
It’s natural that Dafyd’s memories would be stronger about this place, Matt said. When you were out there in the wilderness … he had no experience of those places.
Maybe … David said. But does that mean that I’m getting weaker?
The closer they drew to the castle, the less he thought about his mother and father, his house, Liam, Nolan. Instead, he found himself thinking about seeing the tavern again, his mother, Tamas. Arian.
What happens if Dafyd comes back and I just fade away, once the story ends?
Matt had no answer, and in the silence David felt crushed by his fears, the dread he had been able to push down in the headlong rush through the past few days. He reached for the lump of the amulet inside his tunic, wrapping his fingers around its comforting shape and warmth as he pulled his knees closer to his chest.
“Stay still,” the magus hissed. “We are nearing the wharf, and there are two guardsmen there.”
David pressed himself flat against the bottom of the boat as he felt it slow in the water. He could almost hear the drag of the oars.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the magus said, his voice loud and strong.
“What business do you have at this hour, greybeard?” asked a voice, muffled to David’s ears where he huddled under the cloak and blanket.
“Is that what guards are being taught these days?” the magus said. “To show such disrespect to one of the brethren?”
“I … I was …” The voice faltered.
“He meant no disrespect, sir,” came another voice, rushed and conciliatory.
“Whether he meant it or not,” the magus said, “the disrespect was there and plain.” David could hear the anger, the threat, in the old man’s voice. “This is your first posting, is it not? Weeks out of the academy and assigned to the townside dock in the dead of night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you like it to be your last?” the magus said, his tone threatening. “One word from the abbey and you’ll both be shovelling dung in the stables, alongside your captain, who has obviously taken too light a hand with your training.”
David thought suddenly of Tamas, and of how the worst punishment the magus could threaten these men with was a fact of life for his friend.
“Is that what you want?”
“No, sir,” both men snapped in crisp, martial harmony.
“Then I would suggest you keep a civil tongue, and show the proper respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
And then the boat was in motion again, sliding silently through the water.
“We’re almost through the outer wall,” the magus muttered. To anyone still watching, he would have seemed to be talking to himself.
David waited until the boat came to a stop and swayed under him as the magus stepped out. The scrape of a rope. The shudder as the boat bounced against a rock wall.
A moment later, the magus spoke. “There’s a door on the far side of the wharf …”
David was already in motion, throwing off the cloak and blanket and clambering out of the boat, shuffling across the wharf, keeping low. He waited silently in the darkened entry of the tunnel to the streets above as the magus slowly and calmly reached into the boat for his cloak, and spent several too-long moments fixing it around himself. The wharves—a huge, cavelike room of arched stone, lit with a multitude of torches and crowded with small boats rocking gently on the water—were empty, but David was keenly attuned to the silence, fearful of the sound of steps or voices.
The magus reached into the boat again for the book, straightening his robes as if he had not a care in the world, before ambling casually toward the doorway where David waited.
“I wanted to be sure that we don’t have any eyes upon us,” he explained as they started down the stone corridor, his voice pitched low.
“The guardsmen, you mean?”
“Them. Someone else. Who knows? Better to be safe.”
They hurried upward through the tunnels that ran from the wharves to the city above. It was a maze, but David—Dafyd—knew the way. As they rounded each corner, he reflexively lowered his head in case there was someone there.
As they neared the street level, they started to pass other people in the corridors. He recognized the fat, stumbling butcher, his face florid and his eyes glazed with drink, his hand wandering freely on the body of a girl Dafyd had seen in the tavern on numerous occasions.
“Good evening,” the magus said as they passed in the narrow tunnel.
The butcher grunted.
“I would guess that they had spent the evening at your mother’s,” the magus said, once the couple was out of earshot.
“Just another night at the Mermaid,” David said, realizing that he had no idea what night of the week it was.
“Which means we must be getting close.”
And sure enough, the next turning brought them to a doorway opening onto a narrow street not far from the tavern. The air was cool and smelled of smoke and the sea, garbage and people. David felt his heart leap in his chest.
Dafyd’s heart. Dafyd’s chest.
>
Cat Took was waiting for me outside the restaurant. I wouldn’t have known it was her, but she was holding a copy of Shining Swords and Steel against her chest. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting her to be quite so young. Or attractive.
I extended my hand as I stepped toward her. “Cat Took?”
She smiled and shook my hand. “Christopher Knox.”
“Sorry about … this,” I said, trying to gesture at myself, aware of the choppy, broken quality of my voice. I had run the last couple of blocks. “We were taking … a walk on the beach … and time got away from us.”
“That’s all right,” she said, smiling warmly. “You’re on vacation. You shouldn’t have to rush around to talk about old books, of all things.” She glanced leadingly at the door.
“Of course.” I held the door for her, and followed her into the restaurant.
I sat down across from her, trying to keep from looking at the silver chain that disappeared behind the V of her neckline as she sat down.
“So are you enjoying your vacation, then?” she asked, as we waited to be served. Her voice was touched with the faintest hint of an English accent.
“I am, actually,” I said. But that immediately felt wrong to say. “Well …”
The waitress arrived. I ordered a coffee and instinctively reached for my jacket pocket.
“Shit,” I muttered, before I could stop myself. No jacket.
“What?” Her smile creased into a look of concern.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and feeling stupid. “I don’t have my notebook.”
“Is that a problem?” she asked, her smile returning.
“No, no. I should be fine.” Forcing a brave face, not wanting to let on just how out-of-sorts I was suddenly feeling. I carried my notebook with me everywhere—to not have it for this meeting felt like I was missing a limb.
The waitress brought our coffees, and the action of adding cream and sugar, which I normally didn’t take, helped conceal just how flustered I was feeling.
“So,” she said, and I realized that she had been watching me, her eyes green and wide. “You were going to tell me why you weren’t having a good vacation with your family.”
Bedtime Story Page 41
