by Terry Brooks
“Do me a favor,” the sorcerer said to him. “You remember the Highlander I asked you to direct to Dark House a few weeks ago?”
The boy nodded.
“If you see him again, if he flies into Wayford, alone or with others, I want you to come at once to Dark House and let me know. Can you do that?”
The boy nodded once more, but didn’t say a word.
“You’re certain you can do this? You understand what I am asking. I don’t want the Highlander to know what you are about.”
“I understand,” the boy said.
“There will be something in it for you, if you do as I say.”
The boy nodded, but didn’t respond. A bit slow, Arcannen thought to himself, but reliable. Though he wondered suddenly how Paxon Leah, on his earlier visit, had managed to find a way into Dark House without alerting his guards. Had the boy told him?
He dismissed the idea; the boy would never risk the consequences.
He left the airfield behind and walked down the streets of the city, eschewing carriages and horses, feeling the need to stretch his legs and wanting to be alone. Passersby gave way to him, most moving all the way over to the other side of the street. He knew they were frightened of him, and it pleased him to see them demonstrate it openly. It was always better to be feared than respected. Respected men could be approached; they could be talked to and reasoned with. But feared men were simply to be avoided; reason and small talk were out of the question.
He walked not to Dark House, but a short distance farther on to where Mischa’s home was located on the second floor of a seemingly empty building. He took a few moments standing on the walkway of a side street where he could make certain no one was watching him, then crossed to the other side and moved quickly down the alleyway. The lock on the outer door of the building was familiar to him, and he released it easily. Once inside, he passed into the hallway beyond and went up the stairs at its end and down a second hall to Mischa’s front door.
There he paused, listening to the quiet before knocking softly—one loud, three soft—the agreed-upon signal. Time passed, then the locks released, the door swung open, and Mischa stood there looking out at him.
He was surprised at her appearance. She never looked particularly well, because she was old and withered and worn. Still, she almost always seemed composed and steady, even in the most stressful of times. Not today. Today she looked haggard beyond anything he had ever seen, her features contorted, her mouth twisted in a grimace, her eyes ablaze with intensity and raw emotion.
He jumped to an immediate conclusion. “You’ve killed her,” he said.
The grimace turned into something even more horrible. “Likely she’ll kill me first. Come inside.”
The crone turned away and walked into the living area without a glance back. Arcannen followed, closing the door behind him. “She’s all right, then?”
She wheeled back, and the sharp eyes fixed on him. “That depends on your point of view. She’s where I want her to be, but she is strong, that one, fighting me every step of the way, and I can’t be sure at this point if I’ve persuaded her or merely captured her attention for a time.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Mostly, it’s aggravating. She has a strong mind—much stronger than anyone else’s I’ve worked on. She has a core to her that defies explanation. There’s something there. What is her history? What is there about her that might explain this?”
Arcannen shrugged. “You know the family. Kings and Queens of all Leah once, now simple folk. The brother wields the sword, compels the magic by virtue of his bloodline. Maybe she could, too. Maybe that’s her strength.”
“Strength, yes. But are you assuring me she has no magic?”
“None that I know of. But most of what I know was recently learned. Only since I became aware of the sword. It seems the girl talked about it regularly at the tavern, though apparently no one there paid much attention. Even the tavern owner, who was the one who told me about it, insisted it was just another legend, another wild tale. Where was the proof that this weapon was anything special? It was nonsense. But I knew better. That was when I first began considering the possibility that I could acquire the weapon by holding her for ransom, and then you could turn the boy to our cause by altering his mind as you are altering the girl’s. Of course, that’s all changed now.”
Mischa shook her head. “Well, there’s something more to her than what’s on the surface. I don’t like it. She should have succumbed by now. But she’s still hanging on, clinging to something I can’t identify. We may have her convinced of what is happening and who is to blame, but it would be a good idea if we set her to her task as quickly as possible. The longer she lives outside my influence, the more likely she will come back to herself when we don’t expect it.”
“Perhaps you need more time with her?”
She gave him a look. “If I do much more to her, I will break her entirely. Then she will be useless. What we need is to keep her close another day and then speed her to your chosen destination and put an end to this business.”
“Another day? I think we can manage that. But are you sure that is enough to do the job?”
“I’m not sure of anything, sorcerer. I’m working with smoke and mirrors. I’m groping in the dark. But I have the skills and the experience, so don’t you worry yourself. I’ll make her our cat’s-paw. I’ll turn her to our uses and set her abroad to be the weapon you intend.”
“Let me see her.”
The witch hesitated. “Very well. But only for a minute and only through the doorway. You cannot enter the room; it would disturb the magic’s workings. The skein is delicate and complex. Only I can enter until its work is done.”
Arcannen nodded his agreement, and she led him down the hallway to the back rooms, stopping at the last door on her left. The door was closed, but flashes of light shone from beneath it, illuminating patches of flooring.
She looked back at him. “Say nothing when I open the door. Do not move from where you stand.”
Again, he nodded, irritated by now. Did she think he knew nothing of the magic she worked?
But he held his tongue, intent on making his own determination about how matters were proceeding. Mischa grasped the latch and carefully lifted so that the door swung open wide and everything within was clearly revealed.
The entire room was crisscrossed with bands of wicked green light, all of it pulsing softly. The bands ran everywhere and in no discernible order. Chrysallin Leah lay on a bed near the back of the room, her body covered in a thin sheet. The lines wrapped all about her, and it seemed as if many passed through her body. She twisted and squirmed in their grasp, her movements feeble and ineffective. She moaned softly, and sporadically she emitted small gasps.
Arcannen nodded to himself. She was deep in the nightmares Mischa had conjured for her, caught up in visions that would shape her thinking. She believed herself to be in the hands of the gray-haired Elven woman and her henchmen, being tortured and disfigured in an effort to divulge something of which she was unaware and they would not reveal. Her fear and rage were being directed toward her tormentors, deliberately and exclusively, and particularly toward the Elven woman.
He had seen enough. He nodded to Mischa, who closed the door softly and secured the latch. “She comes to us more and more, Arcannen,” the old woman said. “Her thoughts and actions become less and less her own and more and more ours. She will do what she is being trained for when the time comes. You could see it for yourself.”
“But she resists?”
“More than I would like. But not enough to change the eventual outcome. Another day, perhaps two, and she will be unable to function using free will. She will become our puppet, and she will do what she is being conditioned to do. Trust me.”
He trusted no one, but he nodded anyway. “Let us hope so,” he said. He turned away. “Come get me at Dark House when she is ready. I will take charge of her then and speed her on her way.
”
He went through the house and down the hallway to the stairs without looking back.
SEVENTEEN
IN SPITE OF WHAT ARCANNEN MIGHT HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT the boy, Grehling was anything but slow. When the sorcerer departed the airfield and walked past him on the way into the city, the boy once again deliberately kept his head down and his eyes lowered so as to pretend to be absorbed in his work. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking about the conversation that had just taken place. Why was the sorcerer so interested in the Highlander’s return? Knowing what had transpired during his first visit, it seemed unlikely Paxon Leah would consider coming back again. Yet Arcannen seemed to think it was possible.
And where was the other going now? Back to Dark House? Alone and on foot and without his guards? That was odd. He had seen Arcannen come and go from the airfield countless times over the years, almost always traveling by horse or carriage and with his collection of bodyguards close at hand.
But not this time. Grehling wondered why.
He waited until Arcannen was safely past and out of sight before lifting his head to look in the direction the other had gone, wondering again what he was up to. Because leaving as he had, alone and on foot, suggested he was up to something that he wanted to keep private.
He glanced over at the sorcerer’s airship, where the crew was dropping light sheaths and pulling down radian draws, securing the vessel in place. The guards Arcannen kept for protection milled about, looking bored and disinterested. Curiosity nudged the boy’s thinking, prodding at him like the poke of a finger against his arm. What was going on?
Almost immediately he found himself thinking back to the previous day and his sighting of the witch Mischa creeping about as she left for Dark House from her rooms in that all-but-empty building she occupied. He couldn’t have said why he connected the two—besides knowing that the witch was in Arcannen’s service and he had seen the two with heads bent close on more than one visit to the pleasure house—but he sensed he might be guessing right.
With the airfield safely under his father’s watch and no work that demanded his immediate attention, there was nothing to keep him from finding out if he was right. So he abandoned his task of repairing the skiff engine, told his father he was walking into town to look for spare parts, and set out. It was an obvious indulgence, a way of satisfying his curiosity and maybe seeing something he shouldn’t—an attraction for any fourteen-year-old boy—but he gave in to it readily with a boy’s excitement at embarking on an adventure. He didn’t do so with foolish disregard for the danger he was risking, because he understood that well enough, but he didn’t shy away from brushing up against it, either.
Down through the city he went, and he had only gone a short distance when he caught up to the sorcerer. Hard to mistake that tall, black-cloaked form, and he began following at a safe distance, staying out of the center of the roadway and up against the buildings. Arcannen didn’t slow, didn’t turn aside, and didn’t glance around. Apparently, he was unconcerned about the people around him, and after a while Grehling began to think he had been mistaken.
But as they neared Dark House, Arcannen paused at the corner of a side street, the one that Grehling knew led to Mischa’s building, and took a long, slow look around. The boy was already pressed back in the shadows by then, out of view of the sorcerer, little more than a part of a building wall. He stayed there for a long time, not bothering to try to peek out until he was certain Arcannen had moved on.
A quick glimpse confirmed that he was right about where the sorcerer was heading, and he began following him once again, more cautiously now, aware of the other’s heightened watchfulness. But Arcannen must have been satisfied he was alone; he had already moved down the side street and was out of sight. Grehling hurried after him and by the time he caught up to him again, close enough to see what he was doing, Arcannen had moved all the way down the alley to the exterior door of Mischa’s building, released the locks and latches, and was disappearing inside.
Standing on the side street across from the alleyway, Grehling considered his options. He had satisfied himself that his hunch about Arcannen was accurate, but he still didn’t know anything about the reason for the visit. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with Paxon Leah, even if the Highlander wasn’t here. Of course, he hadn’t been here the last time Arcannen had told the boy to keep an eye out for him, had he?
But Paxon’s sister had, a prisoner in Dark House.
It was too far-fetched to believe she was a prisoner again, but Arcannen might have found another way to lure the Highlander to Wayford. Whatever the case, it was worth waiting around a bit to see what might happen next. All he had to do was be careful not to be seen.
So he moved down the street a short way and ducked into a second alley in which boxes had been stacked near a refuse bin. From there, he could see the entrance to the alley Arcannen had taken without being seen from across the street in turn. He hunkered down, put his rear end on the ground and his back against the building wall, and waited.
Grehling was slender, almost bony, not very tall or muscular—sort of your average fourteen-year-old. If he had to get away quickly, he could run very fast. He was good at following without being seen, at getting into places that were locked up, and at thinking things through in a thorough and logical way. He was something of a wizard himself when it came to airships, able to take them apart and put them back together almost mindlessly. He could fly them, too. He was a better pilot than his father; his father had said so. But if it came to a fight, he was in trouble.
He was afraid of both Mischa and Arcannen, and he did not want to be found by either of them. So he made sure the alleyway in which he was hiding opened at both ends—which the one leading to Mischa’s door did not—so that he had an escape route if he needed one. He would have loved to go up to the door of Mischa’s building, pick the lock, and have a look at what was inside, but he knew such an intrusion was far too risky to attempt. For now, at least, he would have to make do with watching and waiting.
The minutes slipped away, and Arcannen did not reappear. The boy grew impatient, but stayed where he was. He occupied his time with thinking about Paxon and his sword. Grehling really admired that sword, and he wished he could have it for his own. But he imagined it was a family heirloom, passed down from father to son, and Paxon would never part with it. He wondered if he could find a sword like that for himself. Was such a thing possible? He couldn’t imagine there were too many weapons of that sort lying around waiting to be found.
He was still daydreaming when a flicker of motion from across the street caught his eye, and Arcannen reappeared. Grehling, sitting quietly behind the refuse heap, watched as the sorcerer reached the opening of the alleyway and turned toward Dark House. The boy could see his face clearly, but could not read anything into his expression. He waited until the other was out of sight before rising and moving to where he could see the black-cloaked form disappearing from view.
He wondered what he should do. But there really wasn’t anything more he could do at that point, and he had almost made up his mind to return to the airfield when he heard a door slam from across the way and backed quickly out of view once more. Seconds later Mischa appeared, pausing at the head of the alley to look about, just as Arcannen had done moments earlier, before turning the opposite way the sorcerer had gone and shuffling quickly up the street. Grehling edged out from his hiding place so he could see where she went, watching as she continued on up the street until she was out of view.
The boy hesitated. Here was his chance to have a look inside the building. It was risky, but maybe the risk was worth it. Who knew what he might find? What if the sword was in there? Paxon’s black blade? What if Arcannen had stolen it and was keeping it hidden there?
He crossed the street quickly, dashed up the alley, and stopped when he reached the door. The only lock was on the latch plate, and he could tell at a glance it would not keep him out. He us
ed the pick set he had been carrying with him since he was ten, and he had the door open in seconds. If the witch had used magic to secure the entry, he would have been in trouble. But there didn’t seem to be any present. Not that he could know for certain, of course. Still, when he tried to enter, there was no problem. Good enough. If they found out later someone had broken their wards, he wouldn’t be there anyway.
Inside, he looked about. The entire ground floor seemed abandoned. He followed the hallway to the back of the building and the stairs that led to the second floor. He remembered the location of the window where he had seen the light the previous night when he had caught the witch slipping out. He would look there first.
It occurred to him suddenly that if she was only going out for a few minutes and intended to come right back, she might not think it necessary to use magic to secure the premises. He thought he might be wise to hurry his investigation. The only way down from the second floor was by using the stairway or going out a window. Whatever happened, he didn’t want to be caught up here when Mischa came back.
He went up the stairs to the second floor and turned down the hallway to where the witch’s rooms were located. He stood before the door and put his ear against it, listening. No sounds were audible. He tried the handle. Locked. Again, he produced the picks, working the locks cautiously until he heard each release.
Pushing down on the handle once again, he opened the door and stepped inside. He was standing in a space with a couch and two chairs, a small dining table, and a stove. A hallway farther back led to several closed doors. He glanced around, assuring himself there was nothing lurking in the room’s deep shadows before he started down the hall. He stopped at a pair of closed doors, one on either side of the corridor. From beneath the door on the left, flashes of wicked greenish light were visible.
Now he was afraid. Really afraid. There was magic at use inside that room; he was certain of it. But he had no idea what sort of magic; he could not know what he would find if he opened the door to see. He was carrying no weapons, and he wasn’t big enough to stop much of anything that might come after him. He wondered suddenly if he had overstepped himself by coming in here in the first place. Maybe he should have let well enough alone until Paxon reappeared—if he was coming at all—and tell him what was happening and let him decide what needed doing.
