His Lordship Possessed (10 page)

talk more—”

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“Do shut up, Charmian.” He used the fl ame to light

a small row of candles inserted in the back of the device.

As soon as their wicks caught, he adjusted a row of small

mirrors, and several shafts of light merged and formed a

glowing circle on the hanging board.

“Th ere is a diff erence between spirits and specters,”

Dredmore said as he placed a cylinder lined with tiny,

silverblack-etched glasses in front of the rows of candles.

“We didn’t know what it was, not until after the war.” He

switched on the machine.

My eyes widened as a fl ickering picture appeared on

the white board. In it tiny fi gures of soldiers marched

across a fi eld toward a forest, and they moved just as if I were standing there behind them, watching.

“Th e illuminator uses a zoopraxiscope to show many

images in succession,” I heard Dredmore say.

“Th en it needs a shorter name.” Angry as I was, I

couldn’t stop watching the moving pictures. “Who are

they?”

“A regiment in the North country.” Dredmore left

the machine running, picked up a fi re iron, and poked

at the logs in the hearth, creating an updraft of orange

and yellow sparks. “Your grandfather and my father were

among them. Th ey were friends once.”

“Lucien, your father is titled,” I said. “I know he’s

exempt from service. Th ink of a better lie.”

“Lady Travallian was my mother, and her husband

recognized me as his heir, but Jack, the man who sired

me, was a commoner.” Dredmore came to sit on the

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fl oor beside me. “He was also a tintest, attached to your

grandfather’s regiment.”

Having such a large, dignifi ed fi gure at my feet

seemed ridiculous, especially when I couldn’t kick him in

the head, but it wasn’t as if I could change seats. “Is that why Lord Travallian disowned you and left the title to his

nephew? Because you’re a bastard in truth?”

“No.” He curled a hand round my calf. “After I

discovered that Jack was my father, and what he could

do, I told my mother’s husband to disown me, and I cut

all ties to my family.”

Th e rub of his thumb against the bare back of my knee

made me grit my teeth. It also made my shoulders turn to

pudding. “How noble of you.”

“Before I reached my majority, Jack came to see me.

He told me how he and my mother had met, and why she

married Travallian. He explained what had happened to

him during the war.” He glanced up at me. “My father

was a Lost Timer. So was your grandfather.”

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For all his obsession with sciences and mech, my father

had dearly loved history. Each night, when he came to

tuck me in, he’d tell me a story about strange people and

their forgotten worlds, as if they were faeriestales. He

particularly loved the mysterious and unexplained, like

how the Nile people had built such enormous pyramids,

or why four hundred Norders had vanished overnight

from their fi rst Torian settlement.

Da had mentioned the Lost Timers to me once,

too, and now I searched my memory until I recalled

something of what he had said. “Th at was what they

called those soldiers who went missing in Britanny during

the war. Th ey got lost in some forest and weren’t seen for

months.”

“Th at is how it began.” Little prisms, cast off by the

glass cylinder as it turned, slid down Dredmore’s face and

chest. “Ordinarily the regiment’s tintest remained behind

the lines to protect their equipment, so my father wasn’t

even supposed to be with them. Th e depth and breadth

of the Bréchéliant made it impossible for Jack to capture

the fi ghting from a safe distance, and he was obliged to

follow the regiment into the forest. He thought he would

be safe if he stayed in the trees.” His voice went hollow.

“He didn’t know what was waiting for him . . . for all of

them.”

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A deep suspicion began to gather inside me as I

looked at the moving picture again. It had started over

from the beginning and was showing the men crossing

the fi eld. “Is this your father’s work, then?” I asked,

nodding toward the board.

“Th e original ambrotints were his. I had copies made

smaller to fi t the device.” He glanced at it and then got

up to change out the glass cylinder, replacing it with

another.

Th is time, the moving picture showed the soldiers

creeping through the trees, sometimes looking back as if

they sensed we were following them.

“Jack told me that from the moment he crossed over

into the forest, he felt as if something were watching

them,” Dredmore said. “When it grew dark, he began

packing up his tinter to wait to shoot until he had

morning light, but then there was light. Strange light that

came out of nowhere.”

Strange indeed. On the board I watched bizarre

glowing streaks darting behind the trees, and while the

silverblack on the glass ambrotints rendered all of the

light gray, the faster the streaks moved, the brighter they

seemed to fl ash.

“Lampfl ies,” I murmured to myself as the soldiers

came upon a dense grove of old oaks and more lights

began fi lling the moving picture. “A swarm might look

like that.”

“I thought the same,” Dredmore said, “until Jack told

me the frost a month before the battle had already killed

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off all the insects.”

I felt impatient. “Th en what were they? More specters?

Leg-sprouting candles? Dancing Yuletide trees?”

Th e moving picture stopped as Dredmore changed

cylinders again. New images appeared which showed the

soldiers taking fi ring positions behind the oaks’ immense

trunks.

“Your grandfather assumed, not entirely incorrectly,

that the lights were torches being waved by the Talian

forces. As you see, he ordered his men to take up

defensive positions in an old oak grove. He had no way

of knowing that the lieutenant leading the enemy troops

toward the grove from the other side thought the English

were doing the exact same thing, and had put his men in

identical positions. Which is all they wanted.”

Th e moving picture started again from the beginning,

showing the soldiers following the lights and then

taking cover from them. Dredmore said nothing until I

prompted, “Th ey?”

“Th e trees.” He switched off the machine and blew out

the candles. “Th ey took them.”

“Th e
trees
took them.” I was right; he was mad.

“Th ey seized every soldier on both sides of that

grove. Th ey pulled their bodies into their trunks. Th ey

swallowed them whole.” Dredmore went to the mantel,

bracing one arm against the carved, polished wood to

look down into the merrily crackling fl ames. “Th e men

had to become part of the trees so that the Aramanthan

trapped inside could possess them and escape.”

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And for this he had trussed me to an armchair? He

couldn’t be drunk; he’d barely touched the gin at Rina’s.

Harry’s sudden appearance certainly hadn’t frightened

him out of his wits. No, whatever had addled his brain

must be more serious than grumpy ghosts and the blue

ruin. “Lucien, I’m sure your father saw some terrible

things during the war, but really. Man-eating trees?”

“Th e oaks had been bespelled long ago. No,” he added

when I looked away, and came to loom over me. “You

will listen to me this time.”

“Very well.” I was annoyed, but he was an unbalanced

deathmage, and if regaining my freedom and preserving

my ability to breathe meant catering to his insanity, then

I’d make a decent show of it. I glanced up. “I’m listening.

Tell me the rest of this faeriestale.”

“Faeries didn’t build the Bréchéliant,” he said. “It

was the haven of the Druuds, the old high priests who

protected humanity. A thousand years ago, they saved

the world by putting an end to a civil war being fought

by the Aramanthan. Th ey combined their powers to lure

all of the warring immortals and their minions into the

forest, where they bound their spirits to enchanted stones

and cast their bodies into the oaks. Th ey then warded the

forest itself to prevent anyone from entering it.”

“Using magic that, oh, didn’t work.” I controlled an

impulse to begin tapping my slipper by nudging the edge

of the Turkish rug with one toe. “How awful for them.”

“Th e spells didn’t fail.” He walked over to an antique

standing globe displayed beside the heavy tapestry

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window curtains, and with a nudge of his thumb set the

little sphere to spinning. “Th e world changed. Over the

centuries, weather, fl oods, and earthquakes created new

paths round the old wards into the Bréchéliant. Th e

soldiers on both sides simply stumbled onto them.”

I again marveled at how magic always seemed to

evaporate at the most convenient moments. “Tragic.”

Dredmore stopped the globe. “Time had changed

the immortal prisoners of the grove as well. Nothing

remained of their bodies except dust. Th eir immortal

spirits endured, however, trapped as they were in stones

used by the Druuds to imprison them. By that time they

had learned what they needed to escape.” He came to me,

and absently tucked a stray piece of my hair behind my

ear. “Can you guess what it was?”

“A woodman’s ax?” I guessed. “Lightning? Termites?”

“Hosts, Charmian.” He popped a matchit and lit the

lamp nearest my chair. Th e frosted glass diff used the

fl ame into a soft amber glow that gilded every edge in

the room. “Living bodies that could house and transport

their spirits.”

“So when the soldiers came, these imprisoned spirits

dragged them into the trees so they might use them like

carris.” Did he even realize how ridiculous he sounded?

“Is this when the white rabbit makes an appearance

and leads them and a little gel into a garden of talking

fl owers?”

Instead of growing angry again, he smiled a little. “I

said almost the very same thing to Jack. He told me that

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at fi rst none of the soldiers who came out of the forest

truly believed what had happened to them. It seemed

like nothing but a long, bad dream, until they discovered

exactly how much time had passed, and how greatly they

had been changed.”

Dredmore setting me on fi re suddenly didn’t seem as

bad as before, and once I convinced him to release me

from the chair I’d have to make a run for it. Th e window

latches were the heavy, solid sort that were inclined to

stick; it would have to be the door. “I suppose their feet

had been turned into roots, their arms into branches, and

their hair into bird’s nests.”

“Th e men found they could move objects, start fi res,

even see into the future,” he said, and touched a center

spot on his brow. “From here, simply by thinking it.”

“Mind power.” I sighed. “Of course it would be that.

Couldn’t exactly walk about with roots for feet, could

they? Imagine the dirt they’d track everywhere. And the

cobbler’s bills.”

“You agreed to listen,” he reminded me. “Some of

the spirits—indeed, most of them—wanted to atone for

the great damage they had infl icted on the mortal world

during the mage war. Th ey guided the soldiers they had

taken to take up their normal lives again, and to use

their mind powers discreetly and wisely. Th ey formed

a secret association so they might help and govern each

other. Th e less benign spirits were not so benevolent, and

wanted to kill the spirits of the men they had possessed so

the bodies would be theirs alone. To avoid another war,

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the two groups agreed to go their separate ways.”

“After which they all lived blissfully ever onward,” I

guessed, eyeing the high shine of the waxed cherrywood

fl ooring. When I ran for it, I’d have to be careful to

keep to the rugs or my slippers would have me skidding

straight into a collection of botany books.

“Th e group of men who hosted the benevolent spirits

went back to England and called themselves the Tillers,”

he told me. “Th e others withdrew to Talia, and became