One Bright Star to Guide Them (3 page)

“Vital forces? You serve the Winter King!”

“I serve knowledge! Secret, hidden, precious knowledge! You can know this knowledge as well, and learn these arts — drink from the cup I drink from, Tommy! It is only bitter in the mouth for a moment, and then your tongue goes numb, and there is nothing you are forbidden after that to eat, no forbidden fruit is denied to you! You can eat glass and nails and human flesh and pig droppings and–”

Thomas held up the silver key. It caught the light from the windows and sent bright little dots dancing across the walls and ceiling of the dark room.
“Silver key I hold in hand; undo this chain! So I command!”

Nothing happened.

“Dammit,” he muttered to himself, “really thought that would work.” Tommy scowled and said to the cat on his shoulder, “Can I not free him without his consent?”

The cat did not answer, but looked at him with yellow eyes half-lidded, sardonic. An ear twitched.

Tommy extended his hand toward the other man, beckoning. “Come with me, Rich! Leave this place! It will be like when we were children again!”

Richard shook his head. “You must join me, Tommy. You cannot escape.” As he spoke, the setting sun vanished, smothered by the rising cloud. It was very dark now, the only light entering the room came from streetlamps far below reflected on the ceiling, and the sliding beams from passing motorcars.

Tommy let his hand fall. “Then goodbye, Richard. And I am truly sorry.”

Tommy turned his back on his childhood friend. The doorway to the huge office had been a double door of some dark wood. Now the doors stood open, and in the threshold, outlined against a dim light from the empty secretary's anteroom beyond stood what seemed to be three men in police uniforms.

Richard jumped forward, grabbed Tommy's arm with one hand, and with the other, grabbed for the silver key. “My master! Come, and take him! The Key-bearer is yours!”

But the black cat leaped, and landed on Richard's face, clinging to his hair and forehead with its forepaws, raking his nose and lips and cheeks and chin with its hindpaws. It only took a second before there was blood running into his eyes and his lips were torn. Richard screamed and swatted the cat away. Tybalt spun in midair as gracefully as a ballet dancer and landed on his feet, looking for all the world as if nothing had happened at all.

Thomas pointed the key at Richard and twisted it.
“Chains unseen, freely put on, grow stern and strong. I tighten thee. So says he who holds the key.”

It was as if the muscles in Richard's arms and legs were suddenly seized with cramps, rendered stiff and motionless. Richard shouted and cursed, hopped on one foot for a moment, and fell heavily to the ground. The carpet was thick, but his skull still met the floor with a loud noise, and he groaned as drops of blood from his face trickled down.

Tybalt walked counterclockwise around Tommy, once, twice, thrice. The cat said, “Little Tommy, my charmed circle can put aside the curses of my world, but I cannot aid you in this battle. Against men, only the weapons of men prevail.”

“These creatures are not men. I can see the threads that hold their faces in place.” Tommy raised the silver key.
“Let part the cloud that shrouds all eyes, let lies be viewed without disguise; unveil, uncurse, disperse, dispel! By this key I thee compel!”

The images of the three policemen turned into black smoke and parted to the left and right, staining the leaves of the door. Now what stood in the doorway were three hooded figures. The one on the left was slender and girlish, but had the head of a moray eel, with cold, unblinking eyes, blue as sapphire stones. The one on the right was wearing a wolf mask, but his eyes were visible through the eyeholes. They were mad and trembling, red-rimmed with inflammation, as if nightmare, drugs, or famine kept sleep away. The one in the middle had a mask of brass locked on his face, glinting in the light reflected from the ceiling.

Thomas raised the key and pointed at the middle figure. “You are not the Faceless Warlock. He is dead. He was trampled to death beneath the Wisest Centaur's hoofs when he tried to turn into a serpent and wiggle down a rat hole. We all saw it.” He gestured with the key, and the brass mask fell off. Beneath was a face that might have been human, but it was green as a gooseberry, hairless and earless, with eyes with strange square pupils. A familiar face, for all that it was inhuman.

The green man twisted his grisly and colorless lips in what might have been a smile. “Yes, yes! Little Tommy! All grown up, are we, yes!”

“Kicktoad? Is that you? The Warlock's apprentice?”

His voice was like bubbles rising in a swamp. “Kicktoad no more, Little Tommy! I am called Bufotenine the Great now, yes I am. Apprentice no more, but Master! Yes!”

“We let you out of the black cabinet! All the Warlock's bad dreams were locked in there, and we heard your screams!”

“You saved me, yes, but then you left the world and returned to yours here, and what was I? Prince Hal was crowned Halcyon the Tenth, yes, King of all the Realm of Vidblain between Mount Whitecrown and the Sunset Sea. Yes! He assumed the throne of his fathers and ruled with justice and peace. Yes, he did! But there was no post in his court for me, was there. Was there? What was I but an apprentice who betrayed his master, a no one, a warlock with no spells, no chants, no charms, yes? So I returned to the ruins of the Warlock's Tower, yes, I did, did I: and there I found his charming wand, undiscovered, undestroyed, carven with nine mystic runes. Yes. I resumed my studies.”

“But we saved you! Penny did not trust you, but I used the key to open the nightmare cabinet! And– and–”

“And you should have listened to her, perhaps, yes? The nightmares gathered like bats in the black cabinet are all mine now, yes, all now little shrieking slaves that belong to me. Yes, they are. And they are not my only slaves. Meet two old friends of yours! Here on my left hand is Jasconius, daughter of Aspidochelone, a sea leviathan from the Ocean of Midnight, in the far northern regions of my world, where the sun never rises. I have forced on her a new shape, that she may walk on two legs like a daughter of Eve while she is here on your land; but she retains the strength of the sea. Here on my right is Donnergarm son of Monagarm. Ah! He never told you his father, did he, yes?”

Tommy said, “But Jasconius aided us when the White Ship sailed by breathing out the Fog of Slumber and putting all the enemy fleet to sleep. And Donny! Little Donny! The boy who could turn into a wolf cub! The only good werewolf in the world, the birds called you! You helped us! You traced the footsteps of the ice maiden through the woods, and helped Richard find the lost sword! You are the good guys, all three of you are!”

“Once, perhaps. Once, yes! But no longer,” said the Warlock. “We have outgrown your childish adventure, yes? Outgrown your dreams. They serve me now. When they serve me well, I send them visions of ecstasy and they awake refreshed and strong; when they fail me, they see nightmares from the seventh pit below the pits of pain.” A flock of batlike shapes, flickers and snatches of shadow, came out from beneath his cloak and filled the room, but none of them touched Tommy. It was as if an unseen wall formed a cylinder around him, a barrier they could not pass.

Now the Warlock frowned. He bent, and picked up the brass mask, and affixed it to his face again. Now his voice echoed strangely, and it seemed as if a second voice were speaking his words with him. “You would measure yourself against the dark wisdom? The triple magic circle you have made about you can keep out my chanted charms and spoken spells, but not fangs of wolves nor fogs of sleep.”

Tommy held up the key. “Donny! Jass! Listen to me! I can free you from the spells that bind you! I can unlock the chains of dream and stupor! But you have to ask! Just ask!”

In answer, Donnergarm threw aside his hooded outer robe. Beneath he wore a wolf pelt about his naked limbs and shoulders, which he clasped shut at his neck with a twist of his hands and a whispered curse. He leaped into the air, and the wolf pelt closed from neck to groin suddenly. His limbs twisted and shrank and were coated with fur.

It was a wolf that landed on Tommy and knocked him out of the unseen circle warding him. Immediately, the flapping shadows were all around Tommy, and a sick, slow, dreamlike sensation of horror entered his mind and soul, as well as a fear that made him want to weep.

On his back, he saw Tybalt sitting on the bookshelves above him, looking down with golden eyes. “Follow me, Tommy. Leap out the window. I will forefend you from the fall.” And nimbly the small cat jumped through the window, which strangely vanished like a bubble popped, the glass simply gone as if it had never been.

The wolf leaped on Tommy, but Tommy, despite the nightmarish fears clouding his mind, took the wolf by its shaggy throat with one hand and thrust him back on his haunches. Tommy rose, and the key glittered in his hand. Suddenly the black pelt parted, opened by the power of the key, and a wolf mask fell. Beneath it was a gray and lined and weathered face, well-burnt by wind and sun, and a black beard hid his jaws and chin; only his upper lip was shaven. He face was loose and weak, a man past the noontide of his life in whom the lamp of hope is doused. He was too surprised to raise a hand when Tommy punched him in the stomach. Donnergarm doubled over, and Tommy kicked him in the head with his boot.

Thomas spun toward the window and looked down. The drop was fifty or sixty feet. What floor was he on?

Tybalt was sitting calmly on a cornice nearby. “Leap, Tommy, or be taken.”

Thomas grimaced, and hesitantly stepped up on the sill. The distance to the ground seemed further than it had a moment ago. Dizzy, he clutched the lintels to either side. The winged nightmare swirled about him like autumn leaves in a gale, until he could not see the ground. He could not bring himself to leap from the building.

He hurled the silver key from him, so that the enemy could not claim it. It twinkled like a falling star. He lost sight of it somewhere in the gulf of air between him and the dark road below.

“Constrain, confound, confuse, hold fast! So speaks the voice from the brazen mask! Your fear is full, your faith is weak! No man withstands when the Warlocks speak!”
The voice that rang through the cold air was not Kicktoad's soft and bubbling voice, but something older, something colder, a voice of terror that Tommy remembered from long ago. He could feel the spell tightening around him like so many spider threads, and he no longer had the key to free himself.

He found he was too afraid to move. Whether it was the nightmare sensation of the black batlike scraps that swirled around him, or his own common sense and common fear, Tommy simply could not make himself leap sixty feet to the ground.

“Jump!” said the cat.

Tommy jumped. But he jumped the small, safe distance down from the sill, backward into the room, instead.

He turned and Jasconius, the sea serpent, was standing next to him, her eyes like two blue lamps. Without a smile, she opened her mouth, and vapor filled his vision, and the smell of the sea filled his nose, and Tommy could neither see nor breathe. If he hit the floor when he fell, he did not remember it later.

His dreams were nothing but nightmares, terrifying images of pursuit and capture and a mocking black panther, daring him to leap to his death.

The new year had come and gone, and February was approaching before he found her.

For four long months, Tommy had searched for Sarah Truell. Fifteen years ago, she married a serviceman named Delacourt and changed her last name, after which the Royal Navy had moved him from one post to another, making it difficult to track her down. She lived in a little row house outside the Navy yards in Dover, with the tiniest strip of garden before the front door. Her house was the only one sanded and painted, bright and cheerful, along the whole row: her house alone still wore its Christmas lights. A white birdbath, filled now with ice, was surrounded by neat flowerbeds, filled now with snow, in the center of her tiny lawn. Her neighbors had rubbish poking through the white hillocks of their yards, and an abandoned hulk of an auto was rusting, coated with icicles, in the street nearby.

Despite the years, she recognized him at once and invited him into her little home, exclaiming in surprise how fit and strong he looked for a man his age, and how he had kept his hair. Inside it was breathlessly hot. Her rooms were thronged with bookshelves and hung with many potted plants. Every table had some fragile vase or piece of bric-a-brac upon it. There were small delicate statues and intricately carven music boxes, of which she had a large collection. The house was crowded, as if being squeezed together by converging walls, but prim and neatly kept.

Thomas was surprised to see how old Sarah seemed, how cautious and slow her movements were. She was not yet forty, younger than Thomas, yet her hair had gone all gray, and she wore it on a bun knotted tightly on her head. She listened carefully to the story Thomas told, but was distracted several times by seeing Tybalt climb among the bookshelves, afraid he would knock down a crystal piece or tiny lamp.

“What? Go out on an adventure? Like when we were children?
By star, by stone, by shining spear, I call upon the gathered hosts of light…
Like that? Oh, it would be charming! Those days were so sweet. But I cannot help you, Tommy. Who knows what might happen if I did?”

“Richard pretended not to remember anything. At first. He said it was a game we played. But how can you stand idle, Sarah, knowing what our dread foe is? Have you forgotten?”

“Oh, I remember everything,” she said wistfully. “At times I still recall the perfume of the flowers when they bloomed, after the Winter King and all his troops were beaten in the Battle of Glad Valley.

“The snow all vanished in a torrent of clear water, streaming down the hillsides, sweeping away all the vile things left by the white wolves and trolls; and where the knights of the Summer Land strode singing, flowers sprang up and barren trees burst suddenly to green, like a thousand springtimes rolled up into one. The floods washed all the bad things into the sea, but any house which had hung a wreath or pine-branch on its door was safe, and not even their eaves were damp.”