Corambis (48 page)

“Well, not ghosts exactly,” I said. “Those don’t necessarily have anything to do with magic. But necromancy isn’t
merely
bringing the dead back to life, and the dead aren’t the only nonliving things that can hold, and twist, magic.”
Cyriack and Corbie were staring at me now with even greater alarm, and I brought myself sternly back to order. “But my
point
is, unless you are very very stupid and invite it in or otherwise open yourself to it”— as I had done, more than once, but there was no need to tell them I was speaking from personal experience—“it cannot harm you. Most of magic is in your intent, after all.”
Not to them, of course, poor lambs. They thought it was all quantifiable, that it had some objective existence apart from their own perceptions. But perhaps they were learning better.
“So,” Cyriack said. “You think we should . . . examine the body?”
“It’s what you do, ain’t it?” Mildmay said.
“Yes, but I didn’t . . .”
Know,
he did not say.
“Oh for pity’s sake,” said Corbie, shaking herself like a dog coming out of the water. “If it hasn’t hurt you before, it won’t hurt you now. Come on.”
She stepped boldly up to the table and there foundered— not so much, I thought, on lack of courage as on lack of experience. She glanced sideways at Cyriack and said, almost shyly, “I don’t want to mess up your research.”
“Oh,” Cyriack said. “Oh. Right. Yes. No, she should be perfectly stable, if Adept Chellick’s spell has worked correctly. Which, of course, it may not have.” Concern for his specimen got him up beside Corbie, and he said, in a more normal tone of voice, “I haven’t really had much of a chance to look at her. I’d better, um . . . Is it all right if I take notes?”
“Why are you asking me?” I said. “It’s not
my
bog body.”
He said, “Right, right. Back in a minute,” and darted away. Corbie continued to stand, both hands pressed palms down on the table, as if she was trying to prevent it from flying away. I looked over at Mildmay, who gave me a flat, green, indecipherable look back and then pushed himself to his feet and came over to the table, where he looked at the body critically.
After a moment, he said, “She don’t look very old.”
I looked at her face, at her small clutching hands. “You’re right. She doesn’t.”
“And look,” he said, bringing his cane up and using it, very very gently, to press her chin up from its position tucked against her chest. “She was strangled.”
“How—” Corbie began explosively, and then she saw what Mildmay had seen: brown against brown, there was a rope around her neck, much too tight against her skin to be anything but the instrument of her death.
Cyriack came back then, and Mildmay said, without looking up, “How many of these bog people died of being strangled?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“C’mere,” Mildmay said, and Cyriack came and looked.
“Oh,” he said, “but that’s symbolic. The old word for ‘bog’ means ‘strangling water.’ ”
“That ain’t a symbolic knot,” Mildmay said, nudging again with his cane, this time moving aside the flat braided strands of the woman’s hair. Then he said, “Oh, shit, that ain’t rope, neither.”
“Her own hair?” I said after a long moment.
“Still attached to her head,” Corbie said. She looked rather sick.
Cyriack reached forward, touching the woman’s throat very lightly. From the point of contact with his fingertips, the dark brown dissolved from skin and hair, showing her as tawny as any living Corambin, and the rope around her neck indubitably her own hair. And with the contrast of color returned, it was possible to see the broken hairs where her murderer had knotted her death viciously against her skin.
Gideon died by strangling. I was glad, now, that I had not been allowed to see the body.
“But she doesn’t look . . .” Corbie didn’t finish that sentence, either. We looked at the woman’s twisted, crumpled face.
“She don’t look like much of anything,” Mildmay said. “And I s’pose we wouldn’t, neither, after being in a bog all this time.”
“Well, no.” Cyriack opened the notebook he’d brought with him and began taking notes in a very small, very precise hand. “To answer your question, not all the bodies have ropes around their necks, of their own hair or otherwise. I’d assumed they’d all drowned, because why strangle someone if you’re going to throw them in a bog anyway?”
“Well, it makes it easier to do the throwing,” I said and got horrified looks from Corbie and Cyriack. Mildmay just bumped me very gently with his shoulder and changed the subject.
“So, this whole strangling with her hair thing, could it be where the noirance is coming from?”
“Not in and of itself,” I said, “although it certainly helps to explain why it has
persisted
all these centuries. Clearly, like the necromancers in Mélusine, they knew the thaumaturgical effects of violent death.” “The thaumaturgical effects of violent death?” Cyriack was staring at me. “None of them is pleasant,” I said.
“Never mind that,” Mildmay said, and jabbed toward the table with an impatient finger. “What about her?”
I looked at the noirance wound about the corpse like ribbons. “They must have anchored it somehow . . . I never would have thought of using architectural thaumaturgy on a person.”
Mildmay gave me an odd look. “Ain’t that what your tattoos are?”
It took me a moment even to understand what he meant, and then I looked down at my hands, feeling as if I’d never seen them before. He was right. The blue eyes tattooed on my palms (
Miss Leverick says sailors think blue eyes are good luck,
Mildmay had said last night), tattooed and then pressed to another Cabaline’s palms in the final step of the oath- taking. Tattooed and sworn and unfading, and why had it never occurred to me that architectural thaumaturgy was
exactly
what they were?
“Yes, well,” I said, hastily grabbing after my wits. “That’s neither here nor there. Cyriack, did the ancient Corambins practice tattooing?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard,” Cyriack said. He looked doubtfully at the bog body. “I suppose we can look.”
If she had had clothes, they had not survived with her, except for sandal laces still wrapped around her calves. Cyriack did his small magic on her arms, her thighs; when he touched her left shoulder blade, something that I had taken merely for an effect of her centuries in the bog resolved itself into a series of circles scored into her skin.
Not merely circles. I looked closer, holding my breath against the stench. “A labyrinth,” I said. “They marked her with a labyrinth. Mildmay, weren’t you telling me that there are labyrinths all over Corambis?”
“That’s what the lady said,” he agreed.
“Know of any labyrinths associated with your bogs?” I asked Cyriack.
He’d gone back to writing notes. “I, um. I’d have to ask Adept Gower, and
he
’d probably have to ask his friend who’s collecting stories for him.”
“You mean like all the people who said if you got something evil, you give it to the bog?” Mildmay said.
Cyriack twitched and smudged his notes. I wished I’d been here for that earlier conversation.
“That’s certainly what it looks like happened with this poor woman,” I said. “They put all their darkness on her.”
“And gave her to the bog,” Corbie said.
“Yes. And gave her to the bog.”
“Sacrifice,” Cyriack blurted and then looked as startled as if the bog body herself had spoken.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“When Mr. Brightmore was here”— and there was a story I wanted, but I would ask Kay rather than Cyriack—“he said that the magic these people practiced was probably based on sacrifice, as the Usara’s magic still is.”
“The Sacrifice of the Caster,” Corbie said, almost inaudibly.
“It’s a very potent force,” I said, as neutrally as I could. “And I told you, the thaumaturgical effects of violent death, while not pleasant, are profound. When they did this, they meant it to stick.”
The conversation failed, and we watched silently as Mildmay picked up the sheet from where Cyriack had left it and draped it over the dead woman.

That night, Mildmay read d’Islay to me while I paced around the main room of our apartment. I was not attending very well, and after the third time he’d had to ask me twice for a definition, he put d’Islay aside, very carefully— and one of the reasons I loved him was his gentle reverence for books. I hadn’t taught him that; as far as I knew, he’d always had it. He asked, “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

“No,” I said honestly, which amused him. I could hear that in his voice when he said, “You wanna tell me anyway?”
“Violent death.”
He understood; I saw it in his eyes when I glanced at him. And then he very visibly braced himself and said, “Could you bring Gideon back? If you wanted to?”
I stopped pacing, staring at him. Finally, I said, “How long have you been sitting on
that
idea?”
He shrugged. “I just wondered.”
Which did not answer my question, but I decided to accept his sidestep— decided I really didn’t want an answer. I began pacing again. After a while, I said, “I suppose I could. I mean, if I weren’t under the binding- by- obedience. I think I know enough of the theory, and I could always consult the Mulkist books in the University library if I needed to. But what I brought back . . . it wouldn’t be Gideon.”
He said nothing, watching me with those feral green eyes.
“It would be a memory of Gideon,” I said. “A pattern of Gideon as he was. Not . . .” I thought of Prince Magnus, trapped forever and eternally at the age of fourteen, and I sat down heavily beside Mildmay on our swaybacked couch. “It wouldn’t be Gideon, who rubs your back when your muscles ache from coughing, or Gideon, who writes snippy notes in the margins of books of thaumaturgical theory, or Gideon, who . . .” I swallowed hard.
“Say it,” Mildmay said softly.
“Gideon, who kisses me openmouthed,” I said in a rush. “Gideon, who butters biscuits for me even when he’s mad at me. Gideon, who . . . who . . .”

“Say it.”
“Who loves me,” I said, and it hurt like tearing my heart out through the ribs of my chest. “Gideon loved me and I can’t have that back, no matter what I do.” I was crying, and I didn’t know when I’d started. “I can’t have him back and I miss him so much. I miss him so fucking much.”
“I know,” Mildmay said, and he put his arm around me, letting me hide against his shoulder, knowing, as I did, how dangerous, how fundamentally unsafe it was to confess to love. “I know.”

On Venerdy, Mildmay returned to his program of reading to Kay Brightmore; on Domenica, the Institution being closed, I finally gave in to my curiosity and accompanied him.

Kay Brightmore was being kept in the old nursery, where he was incongruous against the pale yellow walls and brightly colored, if shabby, rugs. He was transparently pleased to hear Mildmay’s voice, and welcomed me as close to warmly as I imagined he got. I asked after Julian; Kay said, “He is well, although Murtagh is being very foolish. Is not as if Julian can choose whether he will be aethereal or not, so is no sense in punishing him for it. But Murtagh has forbidden him to go to the Mammothium and is talking of withdrawing him from the University.”

“That seems . . .”
“Unusually shortsighted in a man as canny as the Dragon of Desperen Field?” Kay was pacing the length of the room as easily and rapidly as any sighted person. “Yes. He seems to consider the matter a personal affront. And I fear my sister Isobel is particularly ill- suited to be either a peacemaker or a comfort. Julian has been coming to me.” His tone invited us to share the joke, and I had to admit, he seemed as alien to those roles as he said his sister was.
“And you ain’t sent him off with a flea in his ear?” Mildmay said. He crossed the line of Kay’s pacing and settled in a battered wing- back chair near the arched windows.
Kay made a noise deep in his throat, exasperation and compassion and amusement all combined. “Is not the boy’s fault. And as far as I can tell, he has no one else. His friends seem to be all magicians.”
“Cyriack,” I said. I followed Mildmay’s example and sat on one of the window seats.
“With whom Murtagh has forbidden Julian to have any further contact.” Kay sighed. “And I am a little dubious, I confess, as to Thrale’s . . .”
“Yes, exactly,” I said.
“And in any event, the matter is moot, as Julian is both very obedient and, I think, unwilling to put Thrale’s friendship to any sort of real test.”
“Poor Julian,” said Mildmay.
“Yes,” Kay agreed. “But enough! What new witlessness has Mr. Otway in store for us this afternoon?”
“You aren’t impressed by Otway?” I said.
“Bah. Has done nothing save sit in a room in Esmer and write a book.”
“Scholarship is also a kind of action,” I said.
“But is not even scholarship,” Kay said. “You would not believe the errors he makes.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Mildmay said. “Ain’t that how history works?”
I twisted to look at him. “What do you mean?”
As always, direct attention discomfited him, and he looked down at the book in his hands. But he said, “Just— I dunno, but it’s like storytelling, ain’t it?” He glanced up to see if I’d understood him, and interpreted my expression correctly because he looked back at his hands and continued, “You know. One guy tells a story, maybe about something that’s really true, and the next guy says it wasn’t like that, it was like this. And then a third guy who’s been over in Pennycup hearing how
they
tell it comes in and tells it his way. And after a while nobody knows the truth no more, and they just go with what sounds best.”
“Well,” I said, “history isn’t
supposed
to—”
“Oh, come on,” Mildmay said. “This all happened, what? A thousand indictions ago? You weren’t there. I wasn’t there. Otway wasn’t there. Nobody knows. So you tell the best story you got and people argue with you. That’s how it works.”
Kay snorted, clearly unconvinced. “Then he should say he knows not. Should not pretend to be speaking the truth.”
“You do that too often, and nobody hears the story,” Mildmay said. “I mean, it’s all lies anyway. Even if I tell you a story about something that happened to me, I’m not telling the truth.”
“You aren’t?” I said.
“Course not,” he said. “I mean, I ain’t
lying
— unless I am, but that’s different— but it ain’t what really happened.”
I wrestled with that for a moment, and he said, “Okay, look. I told you what happened at Nera, right?”
“Mildmay, do we have to—”
“Nera?” Kay said. “You mentioned it once before, but was not time to inquire.”
“Okay,” Mildmay said and sat up straighter. “Let me tell the story again. And then we can talk about whether it’s true or not.”
“I don’t—”
“Felix, for fuck’s sake. I don’t come out of this one any better than you do.”
I felt myself go scarlet and looked down at my hands. A defensive gesture we shared. Lovely.
“So,” Mildmay said, taking my silence as permission, “me and Felix were trying to get to a place called the Gardens of Nephele, because he’d been hurt in his mind, and the wizards there were the only people that could help him. Problem was, the Gardens were farther from Mélusine even than Esmer is, and we didn’t really know the geography or nothing. And we had a bunch of other problems, too, but they ain’t important. So we were walking, along of not having the money for nothing better, and trying to keep away from the Imperial dragoons, and Felix was . . .” He glanced at me.
“Insane,” I said. “You can say it. I was insane.”
“You were hurt,” Mildmay said. “And besides, the part where you were hearing the ghosts wasn’t about you being crazy.”
“Hearing ghosts?” Kay said, double- checking—I thought— to be sure he’d understood Mildmay correctly.
“Crying people,” Mildmay said, picking the story up again. “He said he heard crying people, and he had to help them. And I didn’t know how to stop him without hurting him worse, so I just followed him to where he said his crying people were, and it turned out to be Nera.”
“And what
is
Nera?” Kay said.
Mildmay raised his eyebrows at me, inviting me to supply the footnote.
I said, “Nera was the capital of the empire of Lucrèce, which was even older than Cymellune. It was conquered, razed, and annihilated by another civilization. They slaughtered everyone in Nera. Some of them they raped first. The emperor they forced to watch while he bled to death from a spear in his stomach. They burned the bodies like cordwood, giving them neither honor nor peace.”
Kay had stopped pacing. “You sound as if you were a witness.” He had not turned his head toward me, but I could feel his attention.
“He dreamed it,” Mildmay said. “That night. Because his crying people were the ghosts of all the people that got murdered, and they needed us to help them.”
“How can one help the dead?”
“Well, it kind of depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“On what they believed when they were alive. These people believed that if they could walk a labyrinth, they could find the way to the White- Eyed Lady, and she’d let them rest.”
“The White- Eyed Lady?” Kay said, almost uneasily.
“The Kekropian goddess of death,” I said. “Her cult is proscribed but still apparently flourishes. My . . . my lover was a devotee.”
“A goddess worshipped with labyrinths? As our Lady is?”
“I dunno,” Mildmay said cautiously. “I don’t know nothing about your goddess.”
“Oh, it matters not,” Kay said, shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever was troubling him.
“She ain’t a bad goddess,” Mildmay said. “I mean, not like the God of the Obscured Sun.”
“I pray you,” Kay said, beginning to pace again, “continue your story.”
Mildmay looked at me. I nodded. I suspected Kay was bothered by the labyrinth under Summerdown, with the murderous engine at its heart, and unless we could offer either comfort or proof, it was better to leave that subject alone.
“Well,” said Mildmay, “I told you the ghosts needed a labyrinth, and the nightmare Felix had that night about Nera made it pretty clear that we needed to give ’em one. So we spent that next day making a labyrinth by pulling up grass. Best we could do. And it worked. Because the ghosts used it. But the problem was . . .”
I watched Kay turn toward him.
“The problem was, the ghosts made Felix a promise.”
“A promise?” Kay said softly, almost whispering.
“They promised him he could go with them. And if he did, he could find his friend who’d died when he was a kid.”
“My only friend,” I said. “My . . . my sister in spirit.” For surely if there could be spirit- ancestors, there could be spirit- sisters. And that was Joline.
“Hey,” said Mildmay, “who’s telling this?” But he wasn’t angry. “So the ghosts had told him that, and he believed it. And he wanted to go.”
“But wouldn’t that mean . . .” Kay trailed off uncomfortably.
“Well, that was what I figured,” Mildmay said. “So I wouldn’t let him. I beat the crap out of him, to be perfectly fucking frank, and pinned him down until the ghosts were gone. I didn’t know what else to do.” He paused, then sighed and said, “So that’s the story.”
“All right,” Kay said. “But is
not
the truth?”
“Well, I left some shit out,” Mildmay said. “Like the rainstorm. And I didn’t know about Joline.”
“And you still don’t know,” I said, “whether the ghosts were real or just my delusion.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure they were real. But, here. Here’s a thing that means this story can’t
ever
be the truth. I don’t know why the ghosts made Felix that promise. I don’t know if they just wanted somebody else to be dead along with ’em, or if they were trying to do something nice for him, or if it was all lies and they were really, you know, the ghosts of blood- witches or something, and what they wanted all along was to get him in that maze with them.”
“That seems rather far- fetched,” I said.
He shrugged. “But it could be true. Unless you remember something that says it ain’t.”
“I don’t really remember Nera at all. Except that nightmare. And I remember wanting to go to Joline. I thought you were Keeper, because you wouldn’t let me.”
“Because I hurt you,” he said.
“Because I was insane,” I said, and realized too late how sharp my voice had become.
But Mildmay didn’t even blink. “So, see, I was there, and I’m telling the story, and I’m trying to tell the truth, but I can’t get all of it. Because I only know what
I
saw, and I know I didn’t see what really happened, because I can’t see ghosts. And it’s gotta be a septad times worse when you’re talking about something like a battle, where nobody can see all of it, and everybody sees something different, and you know, you gotta feel sorry for the guy who has to try and make sense of it and write it down.”
“Maybe,” Kay said grumpily. “Is still ridiculous.”
“Most human endeavors are,” I said.
Kay thought about that, up and back. “I suppose that’s true. Are all creatures of folly. Very well, I will be more tolerant of Mr. Otway’s idiocies.” He pointed, accurately, at Mildmay. “Read.”
Mildmay, who had been patiently holding the book open all this time, bent his head and began.