Anna von Wessen (35 page)

There came the quiet, but very pointed, clearing of a throat from behind them. They whirled about together, still clasped in one another’s arms, and with terrible fear writ upon their faces. This, then, was how Ephram viewed them, while standing some yards away from them, and looking as though he had been watching for more than a moment.

“Well,” said he. His voice was neither low nor loud; but was firm and filled with calm. His face betrayed no emotion whatever. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and a pair of empty eyes fixed upon his two daughters. He could not have appeared more cold, more phlegmatic. It was as if he did not even know them. The only indication at all that he had come with some sort of purpose, was the gleaming sceptre in his hand. You will remember this sceptre from long months ago, when Anna and Greyson were brought to the royal chamber to be questioned concerning Vaya’s awakening, and Greyson was tortured mercilessly with it. Anna and Vaya looked at it now very nervously.

“How very strange it is to see you here,” Ephram went on. “A most unlikely place, I think.”

Vaya held to Anna as if her father would attempt immediately to wrest her away. Her eyes flashed, the irises vanished, and they were filled suddenly with darkness. She gave a single, warning hiss.

“Close as you seem presently to be,” said Ephram, “I cannot but suspect that you have been shielding your thoughts from me for a long while now. Yet you forgot yourself, Vaya Eleria, when Anna’s call came to you. You forgot yourself so badly, even I heard her cry out! After that it was easy to follow.”

“You have been watching me,” Vaya said simply. She was annoyed; but she was not surprised.

“Of course I have!” returned Ephram. “You tell me that Anna did go in search of a Narkul village, the location of which she was fairly certain. You tell me that you know not what became of her; you know only that she has not returned. This is as improbable a
story in itself as one is likely to hear. That is – unless you were not being entirely truthful with me. I see now that you weren’t. So you tell me this, and then you disappear for whole days, without a word or a sign to me! What did you expect me to think? Well, to be true, I did not know exactly what to think. So, yes – I have been watching you.”

He turned his eyes from Vaya, and looked more closely at Anna. Still he held the Sonorin loosely in his right hand, and made no move to raise it. “I have thought your behaviour strange,” he said to Anna, “for some time now. You may have noticed that I was distressed, the morning I came to you in your chamber? Perhaps you did not – but in any case you did very little to reassure me. Then I find that you have disappeared without a trace? I go to your chamber to search for some hint, some clue – and I find nothing but a mightily strange scent, much reminiscent of a dirty dog. I think to myself, what dirty dog should have found its way into this chamber? And then I realise – none would have. So who can have poisoned it thus? I think of your strangeness, and I wonder. I wonder.”

He took a few steps nearer, and fixed his eyes more intently upon Anna. She returned his gaze boldly, and without the slightest sign of discomfort; but inside she was screaming, inside she was terrified.

“Now I find you here,” Ephram continued, “in the arms of my daughter. How came you to be there? Well, in itself it would not be enough to overwhelm me; perhaps I might even learn to accept it, much as I have always cared for you. But it seems this is not your only secret. There is blood, hot red blood flowing from your very skin – and I can hear your heart beat from where I stand. That smell, that smell from your chamber, it is even stronger here! How can that be, out in the open as we are? How can that be – unless it is you?”

Both Anna and Vaya were watching him carefully. Their thoughts were flying, they were conversing rapidly; and they considered that they were hiding it very well. But suddenly Ephram smiled grimly, balanced the Sonorin on his forearms, and spread his hands.

“I have been at this game,” he said, “much longer than either of you. Already I have punctured your thoughts, Vaya. You cannot shield them from me now. And yours, Anna – well, they are too twisted up in Vaya’s even to call them your own. I see everything now, my girls. The game is over. If you shift, I will find you. What you say without your voices, I will hear. It’s all over now.”

Despite this assurance, Vaya ordered Anna immediately to shift. They disappeared together from the spot; but not an instant later they both felt a strong hand clasped round the backs of their necks, which drew them from the whirling portal of air and space they had entered, and cast them none too gently to the ground. Both were struck upon their heads with the Sonorin, and suffered a long moment of intense pain. But Vaya, whose health was intact, rose quickly; and Anna, who was not so well, remained prostrate in a bed of leaves which smelt of death.

“You see you cannot run from me,” said Ephram. Vaya looked to him quickly, her face blanched with temporary madness. She had heard these words, you will recall, long years ago. She had heard them then, and had known them to be true. Neither did she doubt them now. Perhaps, if he did not have the Sonorin, she could try to take his head; but so long as he held it there was no chance. The only thing she could think to do was to move nearer to Anna, in order that she might ward off any additional blows Ephram
thought to give. She shook Anna by the shoulder, and tried to wake her, but she was fairly unconscious.

Though Anna could not hear him, Ephram began presently to walk in short circles around her, and to speak to her. “Truly it hurts me, Anna,” he said, “far more than it does you. But I must know.”

Vaya tried to shield her, but he merely knocked her away with the end of the Sonorin. He looked down at Anna, then, very sadly for a moment; but he followed by holding the Sonorin to the largest patch of bare skin he could find, which was that of her throat just beside her wound. Her eyes flew open in an instant, and she bolted upright, as though her entire body had been shocked with a volt of electricity. She could not move; and Ephram refused to lower the Sonorin.

“Stop!” Vaya cried, as she leapt forward in an attempt to take the thick silver sceptre, which was grown hot by its contact with Anna’s skin. There came the sudden odour of something burning; and Vaya would have sworn she saw a thin sort of smoke, rising from the hair on Anna’s very head. She screamed again for her father to cease, and took hold of the Sonorin with both hands. But it repelled her completely, and she flew some fifty feet through the air, to smash against a tree with a
crack
which sounded much like a gunshot. She fell for a moment, but rose up again with all due alacrity, and sped in a blinking back to the place where her father stood. He had been gazing so intently down at Anna, to view the effect of his ministrations, that he hardly noticed Vaya; and she succeeded in bowling him over. They fell then to fighting viciously – tooth and nail, and without mercy – over the Sonorin.

Their attention, however, was drawn suddenly away. There came a low growling from their right-hand; and when they turned their heads slowly towards the sound, as if afraid of what they should find there (for very different reasons, of course), they saw something which inspired the sharpest feeling of horror in the father; and the heaviest feeling of sadness in the daughter.

There stood just before them an enormous black beast, whose fierce growl shook the very earth beneath them, and who was slavering, and pawing the ground with a fury unrivalled. The sun was preparing itself to disappear over the thick green canopy of leaves to the West; but as of now it was still shining with a harsh red light over the earth, and it illuminated the dark creature like a flashbulb in the midst of a nightmare. Its great round eyes stood nearly out of its head, and seemed as if they were full of quicksilver. The pupils were hardly visible. They looked almost like the eyes of one who is blind; or perhaps as the eyes of a demon.

“Anna?” Ephram whispered. He clutched with one hand at Vaya’s sleeve; but she shook him away in disgust. So he struggled to his feet, and began to back away.

“Run, Anna!” Vaya cried. “Run!”

But Anna was not yet grown used to the beast; and while she stood looking upon the one who had called it out of her, with immeasurable rage coursing through her like venom, there was no listening to reason. She could scarcely even hear Vaya’s voice through the scalding haze that surrounded her brain. Her eyes were fixed only on Ephram. She snapped her teeth once at him, and seemed even to curl her upper lip in a sinister grin. Then she lunged.

But she hardly had time for vengeance. It seemed Ephram had positioned the majority of the guard round the side of the castle, and at his silent call they shifted directly to the spot. Anna had Ephram caught in her jaws, and was waving him roughly to and fro, while he beat at her face with his hard fists.

Vaya stood looking on helplessly, with the Sonorin grasped tight in her hands. But of course she could not wield it; for she was not Queen. This was the first time, in quite a long time, that she dearly wished she was.

The guard, which consisted presently of whole hundreds, rushed at Anna. Valo was positioned at their head. He came at Anna like all the rest; faster, even, with a look upon his face which bespoke of infinite joy and relief. Finally he had a reason to spurn Anna von Wessen – finally he had a reason to say, that
she
was not good enough for
him.
The weight of long years’ torment was lifted from his back, and he flew towards the slaughter that would at last set him free.

Anna turned on them all without fear, and readied herself for the attack; but while she was distracted Ephram was loosed, and he managed to take the Sonorin away from Vaya. She was on his heels with every move, and even tried to interpose herself between him and Anna; but again the mighty touch of the Sonorin felled her, and Ephram’s path was clear. While Anna was gauging the approach of the great gang of Lumaria ahead of her, she did not hear him coming up behind. He struck her several times with the Sonorin, before she could turn around; and even her own incredible strength was weakened by the powerful staff. She dropped to her knees – and Vaya knew that all was lost.  

XXXVI:

The Cage

A
nna came awake in a cold, dark place. For a moment she felt nothing, remembered nothing. There was no sensation in either her arms or her legs. She could not feel her head, or her face, though she knew – thought she knew – that both were suspended above her neck. She could not move a muscle. She had no idea where she was, or how she had come to be there. There was nothing, nothing whatever.

It was as though she had never been anyone at all. She searched the empty hollow which was her mind, and came away with naught. There were no memories, no sounds or images that she could call recollections. And yet, at the same time, she understood that such things existed.

Perhaps no one has ever lain in such darkness as she did that night. More likely many have. There was the blackness, yes, of the place where she had waked, damp and unyielding as a hole in the earth. It was as if a great stone had been rolled over her, never again to be moved.

But then – there was the sneaking suspicion (there were no memories, but there were suspicions, slinking and creeping suspicions that crawled beneath her skin, and made her uneasy) that even if she had found herself in a place utterly white, totally filled with light, still she would have been possessed by darkness. It had infiltrated the space behind her eyes, and was determined to dwell there as long as it was able. It spread across her brain like a chill fog, then stole down her throat to choke her. It seeped into her chest, and all through her limbs. It was a black and unknown sickness, contaminated with fear and doubt.

“What is this?” she whispered. “Where am I? What is this?”

No answer came – at first. But slowly, slowly, there came a small spot of light, just out of the centre of the darkness. In juxtaposition it was like a round white pearl upon a sheet of coarse black oilskin. It hovered for a moment in the distance, but as it drew nearer it cast a bright aura of illumination all round it, much like a great white sunburst encircling a halogen lamp at night. It seemed, too, as if a voice came with it. But this voice was soft, very soft, and Anna could scarcely make it out. She shook her head to clear the fog; and began to remember.

“Vaya?” she murmured. “Is that you?”

It came a little more loudly, and a little more clearly this time.

Not Vaya. Someone else.

“Who?”

The answer to your prayer.

“I said no prayer. I’ve not said a prayer all my life.”

You have said many. I heard them all.

“Then why did you never answer?”

You would not have heard me.

“I hear you now.”

You have changed.

“I haven’t.”

You have. You sought me, though you hardly knew it.

“But who are you?”

You know that already.

“I don’t!”

You can fight me if you like. I wanted only to let you know that I am here – that I am always here.

“But what’s that light I see?”

My light. The light I give the world; the light I give to you. It’s true they have locked you in a cage – but the darkness is your prison. Only the darkness binds you. Cast it off!

There was a pause. Anna thought very much that she felt a sweet puff of air against her cheek; and she raised her hand to touch it, wondering.

This is my breath,
said the voice.
Feel it make you strong again.

Anna gave a sudden gasp, as all at once the darkness began to dispel. In its place the spot of light expanded, and came to fill her up. With it all sensation returned again; but she could feel no trace of her wounds. She breathed deeply, in and out, and gained strength every moment.

Still there is work left to do,
said the voice.
Do my work – for you are mine.

The puff of breath grew larger, and stronger, till a rushing wind came to fill the hole where Anna lay. It washed over her like water, and rustled her hair gently before it vanished. The light was gone, too, and replaced by a sort of dim grey haze which permeated the air. Anna rose to her feet, and looked about her. Three dark walls enclosed her; but just ahead there was a door, inlaid with iron bars. She could see the Aera dangling from the crossbeam.

Still there was a recollection of the voice which had resounded all through her head. But the imprint it left in its wake, which had glowed with the same pearly whiteness it had brought at its arrival, seemed now to be fading. Anna shook her head once more; and had nearly forgotten. But still there was the strength which it had given, even if she could not remember whence it came. She looked to the bars, scratched at the Turin cinched round her neck, and wondered.

              ~

Aboveground Vaya hurried to and fro, driven to distraction and unable to be still. She had not tried to shift, before they came for her; for already they had taken Anna into the dungeons below the castle. So long as she was there, there was nowhere else to go.

Though her father attempted to speak to her, tried even to take her hand before the soldiers seized her, Vaya shunned him, and spit at him. So he spoke not another word, but surveyed silently the battle which ensued. Vaya razed scores of his guards to the ground; but before she could fall upon them in earnest, he shook off his motionless stupor, and went to work on her again with the Sonorin. She was rendered unconscious long enough to be confined to her own chamber. She opened her eyes to see the door standing wholly ajar, and an Aera hanging from the jamb.

She paced and stamped, shattered every breakable she could lay hands upon, and scratched her nails over her own skin so that she might cry out in pain. For a while everything appeared hopeless; but her wretchedness passed over, and she was moved quickly to fury. She could not think clearly while her head burnt, while it blazed as it did. She could never remember having been filled with such raging heat. All her life she had been cold, cold – every moment of every day, save for those she had spent in the warm circle of Anna’s arms.

This thought made her head snap up in sudden awareness; and again she cried aloud. She closed her eyes, and listened for the sound of Anna’s voice. But there was nothing.

She stared at the Aera for long hours. Sometimes she muttered quietly, much in the manner of a madwoman; and sometimes she screamed so loudly that she might well have roused the dead, with no dark words of magic whatever, in the mausoleum miles away.

“I can only damn myself,” she whispered. “If I had never forged that cursed object – my way to Anna would be clear. And all for what? Because I hated! Oh, how I’ve hated all my life! Everything, everything – until her. Wretched, wretched monster am I – but she has made me something else. I can almost see myself, just as she sees me. But I cannot feel her; I cannot hear her . . .”

“A most touching soliloquy.”

Vaya looked up, and saw her father standing just past the threshold of the chamber. He reached up to finger the Aera; and then stepped into the room.

“Yes, yes,” he said quietly. “A very poignant speech. You have said things I certainly would never have understood – had I not heard them from your own lips. Perhaps they would even have moved me to tears, were I capable of them.”

Vaya could hardly bear to look into his face, so entirely filled with loathing was she. “Why have you come?” she demanded. “Is it not enough to know you are destroying me? Must you witness it with your own eyes?”

“Destroying you!” said he. “How very melodramatic. You always were a most gifted actress, Vaya!” Here he frowned, furrowed his brow, and added: “How comforting it would be, to know it was only that which you were doing! For you to have acted out this strange love for Anna – merely for the benefit of your own amusement. At least that would make some small sort of sense! But otherwise –”

“You are evil,” Vaya pronounced with disdain. “Pure evil.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” he said thoughtfully. “But it is all I’ve ever known. You can be assured I’ll not change now.”

He was silent for a moment; but then suddenly he began to laugh. “Though it’s not,” he added, “as if I should have to explain it to you! It seems you’re no great hand at changing yourself, Vaya Eleria. This
does
make it twice now. Tell me – have you a genuine love for these beasts, or do you desire only to hurt me?”

First Vaya’s face fell; but then it turned to a mask most hard and cold, and she moved fearlessly towards her father, exuding a kind of palpable power and strength from which he involuntarily fell back.

“You call her a beast?” she demanded. “Short hours ago, she was your daughter of nearly a century! But then –” (here she grinned widely) “– I was yours of nearly two
–
and you had no trouble doing away with
me.
”

“If you cannot be civil,” Ephram said stiffly, “then our business is done.”

“And what is this
business
we have, Ephram?”

“I wish to retract my previous declaration. The game is far from over – and I have come to offer you an equal hand.”

“And why would you do that, I wonder?” She sneered, and added, “You can be sure I trust nothing you say.”

“That is fair enough, my dear, fair enough! But allow me to speak. Many years ago I performed a deed – a deed to which you referred not two moments ago – and I have rued it every day since. You doubt me? That’s no matter, I’ll go on. The truth is that the pain of that regret has stayed with me, has kept with me even since you’ve waked! These past hours I have been searching within the depths of my own self – however shallow those depths may be – and racking my brains to the point of utter torment. Yet that torment, you see, has reaped me a reward. I have learnt something since I saw you last.”

“Pray tell.”

“I have learnt, my dear, that I am wholly incapable of repeating that deed. Never again can these hands –” (he held them up for Vaya to see) “– steal your life away. What’s yours is yours to keep. And since that is the case, well, there can be only one outcome. You will find a way out of this room, clever girl that you are. You will find a way to Anna, I know. Perhaps you will even manage to free her. But about her, too, I have been thinking deeply – and I have settled likewise that I cannot kill her. I even tried; but I cannot. Not now, at any rate.”

He turned from Vaya, and started on his way from the chamber.

“That’s all?” she inquired loudly. “That’s all you’ve come for?”

“Quite all.”

“You’ll leave me here, without even a guard?”

“What would be the point? You would only kill them. You would kill them all, if there were five hundred.”

“True enough. But I would never have expected you to admit it!”

He smiled coldly. In an instant he had returned to her; tried to touch her cheek, but was bitterly rebuffed. His eyes were empty, and utterly dead.

“I have my duties,” he stated flatly, “and am obliged to see them through. But don’t think for a moment that I underestimate your abilities. And don’t think that I don’t love you for them!”

Again he turned from her; but she delayed him with a question.

“Answer me one thing more,” she said.

“Ask it, and I will judge whether I may answer.”

“Why did you go to Black Manor? What was your business with Josev?”

There was a long pause before he spoke. Finally he turned his head, just ever so slightly to the right; and said this.

“Before I left, I had only just learnt something very important. It was a thing which required immediate attention; but I wanted not to bring it to Koro, knowing as I do how difficult it is to tell secrets at Night House. I don’t mind telling you that I do not trust all those who Koro does. I fear that some of them whisper regularly into Balkyr’s ear, and softly enough so that even Koro does not hear. What can they gain from this? Well, I don’t know. Immunity in the case of war, I would expect. But anyway! As to what I learnt. It seems, Vaya, that the steward has been working against us for some time now; has been gathering the wild Lumaria so as to march against Koro and myself. He thinks he is hidden; but I see him well enough.”

He paused, here, and shook his head is rather a dismal fashion. “And to add to this,” he said, “there is Wolach. I know that it was he who slayed the babes. He has been watching me – watching all of us! He is waiting for something, biding his time. And I know now that he himself was Anna’s gracious host these recent days! And yes – from the look of her I know, too, that she was not a willing guest. But still she is the very thing which we all vow to hate!”

He turned his head slightly more, and looked into Vaya’s face, with a most tortured and unexpected expression upon his own. “What more can I do, Vaya?” he asked. “What more can be done for her? Things move quickly; and the holocaust of the Narken is imminent. As a Lumarian King, I cannot spare her. So run with her for now, if you can! Enjoy yourselves! But be sure I’ll not unlock the door for you.”

With that, he was gone. Vaya stood staring after him in astonishment. But it was not long before she shook herself, and forgot him. Then she turned once more to the open doorway, and fixed her eyes upon the Aera.

“If he has faith I’ll do it,” she whispered, “then by all that’s evil I will!”

She knew very well, however, what would happen if she came too near the doorway. To be sure this was no case of mind over matter; for the matter would triumph every time. No, no. It must be done some other way.

“I made you,” she said firmly, directing her words towards the dangling amulet. “Does it not follow that I can destroy you?”

She went to her bureau, opened the topmost drawer, and removed from its cobweb-corner a heavy bolt-gun. It had lain there since the day Anna taught her to fire it.

“Now let me see,” she whispered, as she checked the chamber for rounds. But she had not forgotten herself. It was fully loaded.

She looked for a moment at the gun, and then glanced round the room. “Perhaps,” she said, “this is the last time I will see it. What do I care not to lose? I think . . .”

After Anna’s disappearance at Magen’s Pass, Vaya had gone to her chamber to fetch her Turin, and had hidden it away in her own dressing table. She went to the table now, unlocked the drawer, and took from it the silver talisman. Beside it lay the golden ring upon the chain. For a moment she looked at it doubtfully, but then shook her head and took it, too. There was something, something she had been meaning for a long while to do with it. Perhaps, if they escaped, finally she would . . .

She gave herself a shake, and set her face. Slowly she approached the doorway, with her right arm extended, and the bolt-gun held tightly in her hand. With her thumb she cocked the hammer. She drew up the barrel till it was aimed at a dead-level with the Aera; and fired.

The shot resounded through the chamber. She thought the noise would send a company of guards directly to her door. It seemed, though, that her father had not lied when he said he meant to leave her alone. No one came.

She drew nearer to the doorway to inspect the amulet. She howled miserably when she saw it hanging there, perfectly intact and glinting in the torchlight.

She felt a boiling anger rise up behind her eyes; and hardly thinking, she reached wildly for the Aera. Her hand closed round it. Next moment she had flown into the farthest wall, knocked a great hole in the stone, and sunk all the way down to the floor, where she sat staring at her burnt, blackened hand.

She began to tremble, and her eyes crossed with fury. She pelted like a lightning bolt towards the doorway, but caught in the midst of it as though in a great, sticking spider-web, and could not loose herself, though she struggled mightily.

She knew hardly whence the words came, which flew next from her lips. She only continued to writhe inside invisible bonds, screaming and cursing; till finally, and for no reason which could be readily explained, she stopped, and was utterly still. Her anger vanished, and her breast was filled suddenly with what seemed a very great weight, which sank her wholly down.

“Help me,” she cried, with her face upturned towards the dark and distant ceiling. “Oh, someone help me! My strength cannot save me. I am lost.”