She lunged forward, steel flashing. Her sword bit deeply into the shoulder of the advancing changer. A few drops of blood spattered on the ground, on her hand, and ate hungrily into both. The awful wound closed around steel, burnt it away. Kethra found herself clutching only a sword hilt. The creature grinned down at her with a face rapidly becoming more and more like that of her dead lord.
"Keeethraa . . . have you missed me? Cooome, and embrace for old love's sake . . . "
It had caught hold of her arms and now began to squeeze. Her coat split down the back. Bones creaked. Arie started toward her with a cry, but Bender held him fast.
"Warder!" The Highborn's voice cracked off the stonewalls. "It takes its form from your memories. Think of something else!"
The creature faltered, its face beginning to lose definition. With a snarl, it thrust Kethra aside.
"Soooo . . . the Master's toy. What do you remember, changeling?"
Arie saw its features begin to alter again as it shambled forward, cheekbones becoming more pronounced, silver-gray eyes widening. Jamethiel went back a step.
"I deny you," she said hoarsely. "I damn you."
Her hands jerked up, bandaged fingers separating stiffly. With horror, Arie saw her start to make the Darkwyr sign in reverse.
Bender caught her arm and sent her spinning backward. She collided with Arie, knocking him into the wall. The stones against his back felt strange—sheet ice over deep water, about to crack. He pushed both Jamethiel and himself away from them.
Bender completed the mirror sign. The wind stopped. Cold grew. In the uncertain light, it looked as if what little flesh the man still had was melting away as from someone years dead, but his hands held the sign without a tremor.
The changer had halted uncertainly in front of him. Now it reached out as if to grab the man, and its own fingertips shriveled at the touch. It turned, snarling, thwarted. Behind it lay Kethra. She had fallen against the wall at the edge of the light. Arie could see her left arm and the lower part of her body clearly, but the rest was indistinct. Instead of stones behind her, there seemed to be pavement, stretching back out of sight, marked with strange patterns. Kethra was straining to pull herself out of the darkness. She would not succeed before the changer reached her.
Without thinking, the boy released Jamethiel's arm and slipped past Bender. The face and form of the changer were in motion again even as he threw himself between it and the Warder.
"Cripple," it said, almost in Kethra's voice. "Worthless little cripple." Then it burst into long peals of jeering laughter.
"Shut up, mother!" he screamed at it. "Shut up, shut up!" He swung his crutch.
The pain of splinters ripping into his palms as the shaft was wrenched out of them brought him to his senses with a gasp. It was towering over him, chuckling now with a sound like bubbles rising through quicksand. He stared up at it, too appalled to move.
Behind him, Kethra staggered to her feet.
"Now!" cried Jamethiel. "Hellbender, bring it down!"
The man dropped his hands. Kethra swept Arie aside. The changer had half turned at the sound of the Highborn's voice. Now it swayed and toppled as both Bender and the Warder hit it simultaneously. Each pinned down an arm. Arie, to his amazement, found himself trying to control one of its legs. The limb slowly writhed in his grasp. He felt a terrible strength gathering in it.
Jamethiel dropped to her knees beside the misshapen head. She tore the white scarf off her hand, hooked her fingernails in the half closed wounds, and ripped them open. Blood spiraled down her wrist. Bender forced the changer's mouth open and she held her hand over it. Blood streamed off the heel of her palm down into the working throat.
The changer gagged, and then it convulsed. A knee smashed into Arie, knocking him two paces down the corridor. Caught by a whiplash arm across the face, Jamethiel staggered back into the wall under the torch. Her head struck the stones sharply. Bender drew her clear.
Convulsion followed convulsion. Nessa's gown was ripped apart in seconds. Beneath it, the pale flesh twisted and writhed, as if each sinew was a separate thing. There was a dull crack as a bone snapped in the midst of a muscular contraction, then another and another. Still, it wasn't until the shattered end of a femur tore its way out through the side of one leg that the thing began to scream. There were words mixed in that rush of agony and dark blood. The changer was begging for death, begging despite its torment in the correct ritual terms. Only a Highborn would use that formula. Only a Highborn had the authority to grant what was asked.
Jamethiel stood over it, her bruised face very still. "Bring me fire," she said in a low voice. "Hurry."
Bender took the torch out of its socket and put it in her hand. She extended it to the distorted thing on the floor. Its hand shot up and gripped the burning wood. Flames leaped down the ruined sleeve of the gown. In an instant, fire clothed the entire form. Flames spread, covering walls, floor, ceiling, and yet none of them burned. It was as if the shadows themselves were being consumed. The heat and stench of the pyre drove Arie and the others back to the western foundation. It was there, when at last the flames and the unnatural wind died together, that they realized Jamethiel was not with them.
They found her sitting on the stairs, hands clenched together with no regard for the torn flesh. Orange light from the fire-timber hall spilled down the steps around her, casting her shadow black on the floor. Bender stood in it. Of course, thought Arie with a kind of light-headed omniscience, that's because he has no shadow of his own. Kethra regarded the Highborn belligerently, fists jammed on hips.
"Well?" she demanded.
"That all depends," said Jamethiel bitterly. "As you may have noticed, I nearly got you killed. That damned sign. I always was too quick with my hands. This time, at the very least it would have cost me my soul or Bender his—if he still had one. Instead, I've killed a Highborn, one of my own blood, with my blood. Set one to catch one, eh? Perhaps, after all, there isn't that much to choose between two shades of darkness."
Kethra regarded her soberly for a minute more. Then she unknotted the black scarf of office around her neck.
"I make my choice," she said and, taking Jamethiel's injured hand, carefully wrapped the cloth around it.
* * *
ARIE WOKE the next morning in a corner of the lower hall, groggy with wine and dreams. He remembered finding Jamethiel on the steps and the long climb upward. He remembered his mother and the Highborn sitting at the head table drinking the last of the wine, talking through the last long hours of the night while the storm slowly spent itself outside. He thought he remembered scraps of their conversation:
"A keep is more than its Highborn. My brother and I still agree on that, if on little else."
"The boy is weak. Brave, yes, but weak."
"So am I—physically. Strength isn't everything. Then, too, he sees things, true things. A singer with the sight can be very powerful, very . . . dangerous."
"To you?"
"Perhaps. Someday he may see more in me than I care to know about myself, but no one can stop a true song or, I hope, a new idea."
"Still, a half-Kendar lord . . . "
That last must be a dream. Arie had fallen asleep to the sound of their voices. His last clear memory was of a fur robe dropping over his shoulders.
At last he opened his eyes, and found that not all the warmth of his makeshift bed came from the robe. The gray bitch lay curled up beside him. Her right paw was bandaged and there was a lump on her head. Something in the protective curve of her great body told him that the hound had been assigned a new master. Timidly, he reached out and stroked her gray flank.
It was still very early morning, barely past daybreak. Most of the Kendar still sprawled snoring on the floor and Nessa kept her solitary state, but a voice spoke in the courtyard. It was Kethra, pledging the rider's cup. Arie threw off the robe. He and the hound limped to the door together.
Jamethiel sat her Whinno-hir in the courtyard, one hand s
till wrapped in the Warder's black scarf resting on the mare's neck. Bender and Kracarn waited nearby, one as inscrutable as ever, the other clearly feeling very ill-used. Kethra was offering them the cup.
Jamethiel saw Arie and smiled. "Mind you," she said to the Warder, "no promises. All I can offer is a new possibility, and hope."
"Hope." Kethra put her hand rather awkwardly on Arie's shoulder. "Yes, we can live on that—as long as necessary. In the meantime, a month from now I and my son will come south to your brother's council. Then, if Arie wishes it, he will stay with you for a while. There are things you can teach him that I can't."
"Do you wish it?" Jamethiel asked.
Arie could only nod.
"Very good. Your songs will help us all push back the darkness. In a month, then!" She raised her bandaged hand in farewell, turned the mare, and in another minute had disappeared through the main gate.
"A month," said Kethra. "Not much time. Still, we will make it count. You will sing for us often, I hope. The shadows have been too long in these halls."
They went back into the keep together, the Warder, the lame boy, and the gray hound.
A BALLAD OF THE WHITE PLAGUE
An introduction to "A Ballad of the White Plague"
This story is an oddity: one of my rare, non-Jame pieces. I was challenged to write about Sherlock Holmes, so I did, although the result is less detective than gothic. Its genesis was a conversation at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention, when friends linked tuberculosis (the so-called "White Plague"), vampirism, and a particularly gruesome nineteenth century folk song. I took it from there.
P. C.
" 'Denn die Todten reiten schnell' " Holmes quoted in a sudden, mocking voice. " 'The dead travel fast.' My dear Watson, we are not dead yet, but that may soon be remedied if you overturn us in a ditch."
I was almost startled enough to do exactly that, so long had it been since last he had deigned to speak to me—as if our current plight were entirely my fault!
Lightning flared to the north, broken forks seen through a black canopy of oak leaves, and a moment later thunder rolled down on us like a run-away cart full of rocks. The pony's hooves clattered nervously on the rough stones of the old roman road. Our rented trap bounced and swayed. With nightfall, a cold wind had pushed aside the heat of the August day, and now we stood a good chance of being half drowned, if not pelted with hail or struck by lightning.
"My dear Holmes," I said, mimicking his tone to cover my own quite natural nervousness. "You must admit that our situation approaches the gothic, if not the ludicrous. Lost in the wilds of Surrey! What time is it?"
"The dead of night," he replied in a hollow voice. "The third watch. The witching hour."
"In other words," I said crossly, "about midnight. At this rate, we will never make Bagshot in time to catch the last express to London."
"It was your idea to drag me off for a drive in the country."
"And yours that we return through this wretched wilderness . . . oh really, this is too much!"
"The children of the night!" Holmes quoted again, listening to the distant howl. " 'What music they make!' "
The howl ended in a most unromantic yelp, some exasperated farmer probably having clouted the hound. We were, after all, only five or six miles from civilization, cutting across the woodland that surrounded Surrey Hill. Sandhurst lay to our southwest, Ascot to our north, and Bagshot to our east. If we followed the Roman road far enough, we would rejoin the world, but not in time to return our rented trap and catch the last train home or, it seemed, to escape a drenching. On top of that, Holmes was in a strange, wrangling mood that made me long to shake him.
"You may jeer at my romantic tastes and complain that I reduce your cases to mere sensationalism," I snapped, "but you yourself have just quoted from Burger's 'Lenore' and Dracula. Now, admit: sensational or not, Bram Stoker knows how to tell a tale."
Holmes snorted. "A tale of arrant nonsense. The living dead . . . ha! Some people will devour any story if it is sufficiently fantastic, as your readers have repeatedly proved. Sometimes I wonder how gullible you yourself are. Next, you will claim that, once upon a time, we really did confront a vampire in Sussex."
"I never thought so, anymore than you did. That was real life, not fiction."
"I am glad that you acknowledge the difference," said Holmes tartly.
"Nonetheless," I said, pursuing my own thought, "there are sometimes curious coincidences between the two. For example, take names: Carfax Abbey, where Stoker's undead monster lay hidden in his coffin by day, and Lady Francis Carfax, whom we plucked living from the tomb only a month ago."
When Holmes made no reply, I shot him a look askance. The brim of his hat was pulled down over his eyes, and his chin had sunk into the collar of his gray traveling-cloak, leaving only the predatory hook of his nose. He was ignoring me again.
I knew that the Carfax case still bothered my friend. At first, I thought that that was because he had so nearly failed to deduce Lady Francis's whereabouts in time to prevent the villainous Holy Peters and his female accomplice from burying her alive. As it was, we had barely removed her from the coffin in time to prevent her asphyxiation from the chloroform with which she had been drugged.
The Carfax case took place in July of this year [1902].
Soon after, I moved to my own rooms on Queen Anne Street and for a fortnight did not see my friend. When we met again, I was disturbed by his haggard appearance. He had not been sleeping well, he said, and muttered something about a recurrent dream. In it, his fear apparently was not that the lady would fail to escape her premature grave but, oddly, that she would succeed.
For the intensely rational Holmes to admit to any dream was rare. Far worse was his tacit admission that one was actually robbing him of his sleep. True, I had known him to stay awake for days on end when working on a case, but this case was over, successfully solved, if at the last minute.
It had crossed my mind that Lady Francis might have stirred a latent taphephobia in Holmes. By 1900, the fear of premature internment had grown to epidemic proportions. Recently, an elderly female patient had presented me with a first edition of Tebb and Vollum's Premature Burial and How It May be Prevented. If she died while in my care, so great was her fear of waking in the grave that she strictly charged me to cut her throat before allowing her to be buried. Glancing through the book's bibliography, I had counted no less than 120 works in five languages on the subject, in addition to 135 articles, 41 university theses, and 17 pamphlets published by the "London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial." By God, that gave me nightmares, before I ever heard of Lady Francis Carfax.
But Holmes had never shown any such weakness, nor did it seem likely with his cool, almost clinical approach to any case. In short, I was at a loss to know why the Carfax affair still haunted my friend, and I was worried. Hence my ill-fated attempt to divert him with a country drive.
"Turn here," said Holmes suddenly.
I could see no crossroads, but to the right there was a dark break in the trees. At a tug of the reins, the pony swung down off the causeway, the trap lurching after him. We would end in the ditch after all, I thought, but then the wheels crunched on unseen gravel. We were following a hidden drive through a tree-lined tunnel of darkness. High grass swished around the pony's legs. Branches scraped the trap's sides. The first fat drops of rain began to tap imperiously against the over-arching leaves.
"Holmes, I don't think that this is the road to Bagshot."
"No. It is, however, the road to shelter, if you don't mind a ghost or two."
I was about to demand what he meant when we emerged from the trees. Ahead, indistinct against the dark flank of Surrey Hill, sprawled an enormous building. Then a lightning flash revealed my mistake: the house itself was fairly small, a country manor in the Georgian fashion. Surrounding it, however, like a series of broken eggshells set one inside another, were the ruins of at least three far older structures
. Then the darkness fell again like a thunderclap, and again the house seemed huge and misshapen, devoid of light or life, yet watching, waiting.
The wind swooped and rain came spattering down, mixed with a handful of stinging hail. As I secured the pony in the lee of the house, Holmes disappeared inside. Following, I hesitated in an entry way as black as the bowels of the earth, stinking of wet wood and rot.
"Holmes? Holmes! Where are you?"
His voice came hollowly from within: "Welcome to Morthill Manor."
As I groped toward him, the storm breathing loudly down the hall at my back, his words reached me in snatches:
"The name or some variation of it . . . said to date back to Neolithic times, designating the huge barrow mound which itself is the hill. Druids . . . circle of standing stones within the oak grove on its summit . . . 60 A.D., human sacrifice there to ensure Boadicea victory in her revolt against the Romans . . . Following her defeat, Roman soldiers slaughtered the priests, overthrew the stones, and cut down the sacred oaks to build a country villa . . . said to have sealed Celtic infants alive under the floor as foundation sacrifices . . . Watson, you spoke?"
Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry Page 18
