Anna von Wessen (27 page)

“What do you want from me?” she asked him again.

“We have had near misses before,” Filipovic answered. “Several times we were certain we should be killed; and nothing but good fortune kept us from it. Kept
me
from it, that is. You remember when the three were killed in the castle grounds, by the two Narken? Well, those were
my
men – and those were Weldon wolves. What jeopardy my head was in that night! With you there, however, I should never risk again. I should triumph always.”

“Never!”

Filipovic shrugged. “Then I will go to Ephram.”

Anna was silent for a little. “I must think on it,” she said finally.

“Take all the time you desire. I will come for you, next time we go to the gate. If you refuse me then – I shall tell Ephram all.”

“Well enough,” Anna muttered, as she turned to go. But then she paused; and looked once more to Filipovic. “You never answered my first question,” she said.

“And what was that?” Filipovic spat.

“Who gave you that wound?”

His countenance twisted in angst. “In the middle of the night,” he said, “Vaya Eleria descended upon me like a fury. If she did not hate you so, I would have thought it was for your own sake!” He paused; and very likely he would have wept then, were he capable of it. “For something other, then,” he went on, “or perhaps for nothing at all. But it was she who made me thus.”

To better comprehend his misery, you must remember what we told you, while Greyson sat in the mausoleum beside Vaya’s tomb. It was Filipovic, you will recall, who tended Vaya through the years; and it was only he who harboured a love for her, which was at all comparable in magnitude, fancy, and senselessness to Greyson’s own. Therefore her recent treatment of him (work which must have been done, by the by, in the hours while Anna slept; with Vaya’s arm removed temporarily from its place round her shoulders, only to return again before she woke) broke the very heart within his dead and frozen breast.

“If I did not wish for Ephram to think that you had done this to me,” he added bitterly, “then I would go straight to Koro, and have her beheaded.”
Anna did not reply to this threat; but merely sifted once again through her thoughts, and came away with a single question more. “And who was it,” she asked, “who told Ephram that false tale?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Who told him that Severyk struck me the first blow?”

Filipovic’s white lip pulled back in scorn. “Who do you think?”

“Not Hyro?”

“And who is
Hyro?
”

“Hyro is the wolf you tried to kill.”

“Ah! Then yes – it was he.”

Anna spoke not one word more to him, but turned upon her heel, and flew. There seemed nothing for it now. Filipovic was like a spider sitting in the corner of a web; and he had pulled Anna into it, without delay, and without hope for escape. Her only solace was the thought of the jagged black stitch at his throat – and the possibility that it was not quite as tight as it seemed.

XXVIII:

The Answer

S
everal days passed, for Anna, in a haze of unconsciousness and indifference. She sat alone for long spaces, and turned Greyson gently away when he came to call. Vaya came to her daily, and lay beside her in the warm sunlight; but Anna seemed unable to voice or display her thoughts coherently, even for Vaya.

She grew hungry, now, almost every day, but not always could she find the opportunity of sneaking food from the kitchens. Therefore she lived, for a little, in a near-constant state of what felt very near starvation. But of course she could not go on in this way. It was Vaya who proposed that she must find some other way to feed herself. She began taking to the forest at night, sometimes to slay a deer, or sometimes to fell one of the plump cows which wandered round the empty fields.

And it is worth noting, here, that there was far more guilt attached to the business of feeding upon these defenceless woodland creatures (into whose eyes she could not help looking before she killed them; and in which she seemed to see dark pools of sympathy, feeling and intelligence, of amounts infinitely greater than anything she had ever believed to be possessed by humans). Probably we will not find ourselves very much outraged at this, familiar as we all must be with the deficiency from which the majority of our fellow man seems to suffer, in areas of both intellect and common decency. It is far easier to love a dog, or even a fish, than it is to love our own brother.

But that is beside the point. Or perhaps it is directly in line with the point . . . No

matter.

Anyway. Though Vaya at first pressed her very adamantly, Anna would not allow her to accompany her into the forest, loath as she was for her to see what monstrosity her dining had become. Very far was it from the King’s table, laid with a spotless white cloth, and decked abundantly with food gotten by someone else. The feeling of shame was a persistent one, now, for Anna; and accustomed as she had always been to the boundless fear and respect (or, if not the latter, then certainly the former in infinite amounts) of her peers, she could not get her bearings in this strange new world, where aught she did could gain her only hatred, and death.

Doubtless you remember, too, that Vaya did make an oath to explain to Anna all she conjectured; but she spoke no more about it during those days, and Anna could not bring herself to ask the question. Nevertheless, her sickness grew gradually worse. Such is the way with awful things, you see. Our failing to understand them, unfortunately, does not bar the way for them to afflict us, just as frequently and terribly as they wish. So it was with Anna.

It seemed that Filipovic’s hateful face floated before her constantly, grinning and mocking her. When she slept, she dreamt of Magen’s Pass, and of Fililpovic’s band crouching in the dark behind it, ready to slay the wolves who sought admittance there. She woke in a chill sweat, panting and shaking. It was when she envisioned herself there, positioned beside Filipovic, and waiting just as he did – with no way to escape for the chains of her own secrets – that she woke screaming.

After nearly a week, weary of this cycle of self-violence, she took once again to accepting Greyson’s visits. They fell, as was their old wont, to sitting together all through the morning; falling asleep in the afternoon; and then playing at billiards in the evening. And though Anna did all she could to stifle the effects of her returning illness, this time Greyson did not fail to take heed. But he only asked once whether Anna wished to see Teo; and upon her nearly taking his head for the mere inquiry, he was thereafter very diligent on the subject of keeping the name of the mender from his mouth.

Perhaps we have sketched Greyson, thus far, as something of an example of the village idiot. But be assured that he was no such thing; that he knew very well something strange was taking place within Anna, and that it had naught at all to do with anything Teo could cure. Therefore he worried for her, and perhaps spent more time with her than ever – but he asked not a single useless question more.

“Greyson,” she said to him one day, “it has been a very long while since I’ve played the piano. Will you bring me one tonight?”

He did not ask why she trembled as she spoke, or why she was so weak that she appeared scarcely able to stand. He only replied, “I will do even better than that. I shall bring you one now.”

He disappeared for several minutes, and returned presently, hefting a grand piano, carved all in black oak and polished to a remarkable sheen, in both of his hands. “Where to put it?” he grunted.

Anna directed him to place it in the very centre of the room. Then she sat down before it, and began to play. Greyson settled himself on the bed, and listened very intently for a while; but after that he fell asleep, and the familiar way in which he murmured in his slumber, came to mingle with the soft notes floating up from the piano strings.

When she returned from the forest in the dead of night, she sat alone at the piano till Vaya came, loosing haunting strains of music into the heavy, silent air. Cold tears ran all down her face, and fell upon the ivory keys. 

But one night Vaya did not come. Anna awaited her till dawn, and received nothing but exhaustion and despondency for her efforts. Yet she could not lie down; she could not sleep. She felt unbearably lonely. Somehow, though, she wished for it to be so. She was in some measure glad that Vaya kept away this night, and avoided weighting her own thoughts with the desolation of Anna’s. Anna knew that it was too great a burden to request Vaya to carry; and therefore it would hardly do, to complain when the comfort of her presence was taken away.

As the light in the chamber grew bright, Greyson poked his head through the door, and looked very earnestly upon Anna, sitting oblivious at the great black piano.

“What’s that you’re playing?” he asked.

She made him no answer.

He puckered his mouth, and queried, “Is that ‘Endless Love’?”

Anna reached for a book which lay on a corner of the piano, and lobbed it at Greyson’s head. He groaned piteously, rubbed at his skull, and retracted his head from the door. He did not come again that day.

But that night Anna slept with her head laid on the piano, full to the throat with venison that she had cooked in the dark of the forest. After so many years of consuming raw flesh, she found a novel pleasure in skewering her supper upon a rudely fashioned spit, and toasting it over the flames of a little fire. After her meal she slumbered soundly, her pale face shining like a snowdrop against the black wood, and a bloodstain showing over her shirt which she cared too little to hide away. It was in exactly this position, then, that she felt something touch her face. She leapt in a moment to her feet, at the ready to
fight. But when she saw Vaya, sitting there upon the bench where she herself had just dozed, she crumpled down at once, and dropped her head to Vaya’s shoulder.

“Where have you been?”

“I have been at the Weld,” Vaya answered, her voice muffled because her lips were pressed to Anna’s hair. She paused for a little, and sat silent, her arms wrapped tight around Anna, and her eyes shut fast.

“Why didn’t you tell me you would go?”

“I knew not how to explain – though I promised you I would.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Here,” said Vaya, pulling slightly away. “Let’s play.”

She put her fingers to the keys, and motioned for Anna to do the same. So they began to play, changing the tune repeatedly, but always in harmony with one another.

“Do you understand by now,” Vaya asked, without stopping, “what you are?”

Anna was silent.

“You know what it all means?” Vaya persisted.

But Anna would not reply.
She merely gazed at the side of Vaya’s face, which appeared so dark in the half-light of the chamber. Anna could see the gleam of one of her black eyes, fixed intently upon the piano, and seemingly unwilling to turn towards herself. It was clear that she thought very seriously of something; but for the moment she kept it hidden.

“You know already,” said Vaya, “that once I had a child named Tirymus. When he was born, he looked as any child looks – whatever race it be. But when I pressed a hand to his chest, I could feel that his heart did not beat. I thought, then, that he was like me.”

“But he wasn’t?”

“Not quite,” Vaya answered quietly. “Usually – since their sires found the way to their human forms, that is – a Narkul shows no signs of the wolf, till at least two years old. But when it is in the throes of death, most times it will exhibit indications of its true nature. When I put the knife to Tirymus’s throat – as I moved to take his head, and the blade cut in – much to my surprise the blood began to flow. His body grew hot, and his heart took up a beat. In some places, dark patches of hair sprang up – and just before he died, his eyes turned silver. He was, you see, like his father; but also he was like me.”

“How could that be?”

Vaya turned, still with some reluctance, to look into Anna’s eyes. “The moonlight,” she said, “does the same. Always their eyes shine silver in the even light. So do yours, now.”

Anna recoiled.

“There has never been a precedent for this sort of thing,” Vaya continued. “A Narkul has never been transformed into a Lumarian. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. The only reason I can tell you what’s happening to you – the only reason I know, is because of Tirymus.”

She looked at Anna with hollow eyes. “It is very hard to tell you these things,” she said. “Though I have known them for some time – I could not tell you. It was exactly this, it was seeing your poor face pained this way, that kept me from it.”

“No,” Anna hissed, as she got slowly to her feet, and moved away from the piano. “It cannot be. It is not true!”

“It’s true enough,” Vaya rejoined calmly, her fingers moving again over the piano keys, and a few notes drifting through the air, sounding to Anna very mournful, and serving only to increase the uncomfortable eeriness of the moment.

“You were hardly a year old,” Vaya went on, “when Ephram found you. Therefore none ever knew just what you were. When the mazhin was added to your blood, the ‘Narkul state,’ if you will, never developed as it ought to have done. Only now, after more than seventy-six years, does it come to show itself.”

Anna raised her hands to her head, and began pulling wildly at her hair. She looked to Vaya, who had ceased playing, and was sitting with her back to Anna, as if she could not bear to turn and face her.

“How – how can you sit there?” Anna demanded. “How can you sit there and tell me, as if it . . .”

But she could say nothing else.

“You asked me that night,” Vaya returned, “for an answer. I have given it to you.”

“But why even come? Why even come to tell me – why tell me yourself, if you’re only going to sit there . . .?”

She continued to back away, till she had reached the window by her bed. She sat shaking on the sill, and was very near convulsing, when Vaya came to her. Anna looked helplessly into her face, and clutched her in desperation.

“Though I knew it,” Vaya said softly, while running her fingers through Anna’s hair, “though I knew it and did not say – did not show you – I could only condone doing so, because you knew, as well. You must admit that you have known, Anna, that you have known for a long time.”

“Known?” Anna echoed dully. “Known that I am a Narkul? Or an Endalin – perhaps you might say that?”

“I know the Narken too well,” rejoined Vaya; “and therefore I know, that you are no Endalin.”

“What matter which?” Anna murmured.

Suddenly her chills subsided, and were replaced by what seemed a terrible fever. Depression was conquered, as it will be, by fury. What had she done to call this upon herself? What had she done?

“What a question!” she cried, as she struck a fist down against the bedside table, smashing it all to bits. “What a senseless question! What have
I
done! What have
I
done . . .?”

Her earlier weakness was succeeded by uncontrollable strength. She put a hand through the window, looked giddily down at the blood released by the motion, and spun away from Vaya as she tried to draw near. She took up a chair, and crushed it against the wall. Her temperature soared, and her heart thudded painfully behind her ribs, till it felt as if it were striking them, splintering them . . .

There came the sound of a sharp snap, and Anna fell suddenly to her knees, holding her chest with both hands. The sensation was an agonising one.

Vaya tried to pry Anna’s hands away from her chest; but Anna rocked backwards, and flung herself out of Vaya’s reach. She clutched like a dying woman at her heart, as a fierce wave of pain came surging round it. Each moment the pain grew worse, and her grip tightened upon her ribs, till she felt another of them break under her struggling fist. She cried out, and fell to the floor. 

“Anna!”

The power fell out from under her, much like a trap-door, all in an instant. She lay unmoving, fought to raise her head, but merely quivered as Vaya took her in her arms, to lay her upon the bed.

“You cannot let yourself get so angry,” Vaya said to her. “You will only hurt yourself.”

Anna could not answer. She only wrapped her hand round the fabric of Vaya’s shirt, and pulled it towards her. She breathed heavy, shallow bursts, and nearly wept from intolerable pain. One moment she was looking into Vaya’s gleaming eyes; and the next she had fallen into a swoon, at which the entire chamber grew all of a sudden very dark, and Vaya nearly disappeared. Her whole breast pulsed with a deep, sharp ache. She breathed, in and out, and felt the broken bones scraping inclemently against the soft stuff there.