Legends of the Riftwar (98 page)

‘Come in,' Malachy said. He wiped his hands and stepped toward the door. The Baron rose from his chair and put aside his book.

A very nervous and greasy-looking mercenary opened the door and advanced a half pace into the room. His posture was absurdly deferential.

‘Sorry to interrupt yer worships,' the man said, bobbing in an almost continuous bow, eyes flickering to the geometric shapes on parchments pinned to the walls, to things chalked on the
floor, to books and instruments.

‘The, uh, the children…'

Lyman closed his eyes; he'd known it was going to be bad, but if something had happened to those children heads would roll. ‘Ye-sss?' he said aloud.

‘They've, uh, the little brats have escaped, yer worships.'

The Baron shifted his stance and Lyman knew without looking that he was giving the messenger a look that might cause a strong man to faint. This fool was not a strong man. The wizard moved to defuse the situation.

‘You mean they're out of their room,' Lyman said calmly. ‘In point of fact they cannot get out of the house.' Speaking over his shoulder to the Baron he said, ‘I've made arrangements.' He turned back to the mercenary. ‘So they'll be somewhere in the house.' Flicking his hand in a gesture of dismissal he said, ‘Go and find them. And, mind you don't harm them. I very much doubt you'd like the consequences if you so much as scratch one of them. Do you understand?'

The man nodded and backed out, bowing, pulling the door closed after him.

Lyman shrugged. ‘Damned nuisance!'

Bernarr frowned. ‘Indeed,' he said coldly. He sat down again. ‘Why do you have so many at one time? We won't need another one for at least a week.'

The wizard bit his lips and looked thoughtfully at the Baron. Then he went over and pulled a chair close to the one in which Bernarr was sitting. ‘I've been collecting them for several reasons,' he admitted. ‘One, it's not that easy to find a child born on the day your lady…entered her present state. And though the spell we found to extend her life by using the life-energy of these children has at least kept her condition from deteriorating, well,' he extended his hands palms up and shrugged, ‘it hasn't improved it at all.'

‘I thought that I saw something the last time,' Bernarr said. He stared into the distance as though remembering. ‘A twitch of her mouth, and a finger, I'm sure I saw one finger move, ever so slightly.'

‘Mmm, mm, yes, just possibly,' Lyman agreed. ‘But we need more, much more, my lord. After all, our goal is to free her completely, is it not?'

Bernarr's eyes shifted toward the wizard and narrowed. ‘What is in your mind?' he asked in a slow, quiet voice.

Lyman rubbed his hands excitedly. ‘The very book that you're reading gave me the idea,' he said. ‘If we can raise a life-force powerful enough we may well succeed in curing and waking your lady.'

Furious, the Baron lunged forward, grasping the front of the wizard's robe in his gnarled hand. ‘Why have you not told me this before?'

‘Because I did not know about it,' Lyman said with a sick smile. ‘We only just acquired that book, you know.'

The Baron let him go and leaned back in his chair. ‘Show me!'

Nervously, the wizard took the book, sped through the pages and presented it to the Baron once he'd found what he was looking for.

Bernarr studied the text, frowning over the curious antique phrasing. Then his eyebrows rose and his mouth opened.

‘Seven times seven,' the wizard babbled. ‘A mystical number, you see.'

‘Forty-nine?' Bernarr said in disbelief. ‘Forty-nine! Are you mad? Why not nine times nine? That, too, is a mystical number.'

‘Unnecessary,' Lyman said with a wave of his hand. ‘The effect isn't increased if the number of sacrifices is larger.'

‘It sickens me to murder these children one at a time!' the Baron exclaimed. ‘But…forty-nine? We will be awash in blood.'

‘What I think will increase the effect,' Lyman said as if he
hadn't heard the Baron's objections, ‘is to sacrifice them all at once.'

Bernarr stared at him. ‘Forty-nine at once? Is that what you said?'

‘Yes. You see we'll create a means to collect all the life-force at once and direct it to your lady. Such a large jolt is sure to do the trick.'

‘Are you suggesting that we recruit forty-seven helpers in such a bloody act?' Bernarr looked at him warily, as though uncertain about the wizard's sanity.

‘Gods forbid!' Lyman exclaimed. ‘No, no, that wouldn't do at all. The blow must be struck absolutely simultaneously in all forty-nine cases. One could never co-ordinate that, even if your helpers practised for weeks.'

Interested in spite of his disgust, the Baron asked, ‘Then how do you propose to accomplish such a thing?'

‘I've designed a machine.' The wizard jumped to his feet and went to the work table. He returned with a roll of parchment and spread it on his knees. ‘You see,' he indicated several points on the drawing, ‘when the original blow is struck all the other knives descend as well.'

Bernarr leaned over the drawing, studying its particulars. ‘But how can you be sure you'll have enough pressure?'

‘That's what these cylinders are,' Lyman said, indicating them on the drawing. ‘They're twenty-pound weights and, of course, the knives will be extremely sharp. So?' He looked at his patron. ‘What do you think?'

‘Fascinating,' Bernarr murmured. Then he shook his head. ‘But I cannot like it. Bad enough to take them one by one, but this many at once will draw attention.' He thought for a moment, then shook his head again. ‘No. I don't see how we can do it.'

The wizard drew back, affronted. ‘Well, of course, the ideal solution would be to use a child born at the exact instant that
your lady was endangered. That would have been your son.' He looked at the Baron with a stiff-lipped frown. ‘But, unfortunately you impulsively made that impossible. Didn't you?'

Bernarr glared at him. ‘Well you might have said something at the time,' he pointed out.

Lyman sniffed. ‘Perhaps,' he said. ‘But you didn't trust me then and might not have listened. And you were understandably distraught; another man might have succumbed to a paternal impulse and kept the child while letting his beloved go, but you saw the boy as the cause of her death–' a black look from Bernarr caused him to amend his statement, ‘–her unfortunate condition, and had him disposed of.'

Something flickered across the Baron's face and not for the first time Lyman wondered if there was more involved in that choice than he understood, even after all these years. He said, ‘Still, a terrible waste.' He thought for a moment. ‘Hmm. Do you know where they buried him? Perhaps I can do something with the bones.'

Bernarr thought about that. ‘I don't know,' he said at last. ‘I wasn't interested at the time. And you've never mentioned it before.' He frowned. ‘I will ask the midwife. She still lives in a nearby village. She will know what was done with the creature.'

‘Excellent, my lord,' Lyman said, smiling. ‘And do keep the plan and think about my other suggestion. I fear that without your son it may be the only way to bring your lady back.'

 

Baroness Elaine woke with the feeling that someone had been calling her name. But now there was no sound and the call, if there had been one, was not repeated. Her thoughts were slow: even the breaths that she took seemed unnaturally spaced and Elaine wondered if she were dreaming.

She felt weak: that was the first physical sensation she was aware of, then the pain. It tore into her like a furious cat, digging
into her vitals with sharp claws and teeth that ripped and chewed. Elaine wanted to writhe, wanted to scream in agony, but she couldn't. She couldn't even open her eyes, or so much as twitch. Trapped in the darkness behind her eyes, she screamed in her mind, begging for something to ease the pain, for someone to come and help.

This wasn't like the terrible birth-pangs, which came in waves of agony cresting higher and higher; they were over. Elaine was sure of that: she had heard the crying of her child.
I saw his face
, she thought. The memory brought comfort, or at least took her mind from the pain. But not for long–the pain wouldn't be denied and she wanted to weep, but she couldn't.

She could feel her life flowing away slowly but irresistibly. It terrified her. She struggled to hold on: she wanted to live! She wanted to see her son grow to manhood. She wanted Zakry!

Elaine imagined him holding her hand and telling her to be strong. His touch seemed so real that in spite of everything she was briefly happy. Then the pain bit deeper and in her mind she screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Soon she was begging for death.

But death never came. After a while Elaine lapsed into darkness until at last both she and the pain were gone.

The magician looked up.

‘It's not a complicated spell,' Lyman Malachy said, when the preparations were complete. ‘But it's tricky. The degrees of similarity must be delicately balanced.'

He looked aside at his…employer? Host? Friend? Benefactor? Someone who'd given him shelter for seventeen years, and let him carry on researches which would be…frowned upon…in most places, at least. No, he amended, it would get him hanged or burned alive in most places.

They were alone together in the room, with only the candle's flame for company; certainly, the remaining castle staff were used to that. They were probably the best-paid domestics outside the great cities and the households of the greatest lords; and they weren't much as far as quality went. But, like the household guards, they were paid as much to ignore what they heard and saw as they were to render service.

The magician's mouth quirked slightly as he drew his robe more tightly about him–the spring rains were heavy tonight, a thrush-thrush-thrush sound on the shutters and the streaked diamond-
pane glass of the windows; he would have liked a cheery fire himself, but Bernarr cared nothing for the damp chill of this stone pile.

Gold can do many things
, he thought. Even overcome superstitious fear among servants and soldiers. But it cannot make a fortress a comfortable place to live.

Bernarr waved a hand that trembled ever so slightly. ‘Yes, yes. The brat must bear a similarity to both me and my lady Elaine, and your spell will find it,' he said. ‘Damn the midwife! I gave orders that the brat be disposed of!'

Lyman nodded downward at the three shallow gold disks with their thin crystal covers, each about the size of the circle made by a man's thumb and forefinger. Silver and turquoise, platinum and jet made complex inlays on the inner surface of the gold. Above that was a thin film of water, and on that floated a needle. Each of the three needles was wound about with a hair–for the needle of the central disk two hairs were twined around it, crossing each other; the crystal covers kept the whole undisturbed.

‘However, it may be fortunate that she disobeyed,' Lyman said. ‘A pity that we could not get more details from her, but this will do as well–better, for the knowledge it brings will not be seventeen years stale.'

Lyman rose and shook back his sleeves. His eyes closed, his lips moved, and his hands traced intricate, precise patterns over the central casing.

While the man Bernarr still thought of as a ‘scholar', rather than ‘wizard', conjured, he remembered the first night they had met.

It had been the night of the big storm, hills and walls of purple-black cloud piled along the western horizon, flickering with lightning but touched gold by the sun as it set behind them. The surge came before the storm, mountain-high waves that sent fishermen dragging their craft higher and lashing them to trees and boulders, and to praying as the thrust of air came shrieking
about their thatch. When the rain followed it came nearly level, blown before the powerful winds. The onslaught accompanied his beloved going into labour with the little monster they were now trying to find. His joy at the impending birth of a son caused him to be generous in offering hospitality to the stranger, an odd-looking man with protruding brown eyes and a large nose, made to seem enormous by avery weak chin. He appeared a few years older than Bernarr, in his middle to late thirties, but Bernarr was uncertain about his true age, for he appeared much the same as he had when he had first arrived some seventeen years before.

Lyman had introduced himself as a friend of Bernarr's father, a correspondent who had never met the old Baron in person, but who had been consulted by Bernarr's father occasionally on matters of scholarship. Most specifically, the purchasing of old tomes and manuscripts. He had come to enquire as to Bernarr's intent with the library, not knowing if the son shared the father's enthusiasm for scholarship and wishing to purchase several works should the son not wish to continue caring for the collection. He had been pleased to discover that Bernarr shared his love for learning.

And then had come the news that the Baroness was having trouble with her delivery, Bernarr remembered.

His memory brought Bernarr's remembered pain. He leaned back, swearing. Then he saw the two hairs twined about the central needle were writhing, like snakes–snakes which disliked each other's company. They wriggled away from the floating needle, pressed to opposite sides of the casing, and then went limp again.

That's about the most emphatic case of non-similarity I've ever seen
, the magician thought, his face impassive.
If there's one thing certain, this pair did not make a child together.

‘What does this mean, Lyman?' Bernarr snapped. His eyes glinted with suspicion: when it came to matters concerning his
wife, the Baron of Land's End was rather less than sane.

As I of all men know
, Lyman thought. Aloud he continued: ‘Ah…my lord Baron…could it possibly be that you have another child? One fathered before you met the lady Elaine?'

That stopped Bernarr's anger; instead he shifted a little in his chair, and reached for his mug of hot, spiced wine. ‘Well,' he said, his eyes shifting. ‘I was a man grown before I wed…thirty summers…a wench now and then…and of course, for all I know–'

‘Of course, my lord, of course; we're men of the world, you and I,' Lyman soothed. ‘But it would make the twined hairs incompatible with the nature of the spell, you see. That is why I begged another of your lady's hairs. The spell will not be quite so sharp, nor function over quite so great a distance, but it should still function.'

He stood, moving his hands over the left-hand casing.
And I'm not going to use the one with only your hair, my lord Baron, because I suspect it would be quite useless for our purposes
.

 

Bram halted as he came to the crest of the hills and looked down on Land's End. The city was familiar enough: he'd made several visits. He tried to see it as Lorrie would.

The first thing she'll need is money
, he thought.

He grinned, despite his anxiety, and the ache in his legs. He hadn't wasted any time on the journey, and he was more than ready for sleep, not to mention ale and food. She wouldn't get far on the few coppers he'd hidden under the mattress of his bed. While Bram's life savings, he had a short life so far, and by city standards it wasn't much. He suppressed an idle thought: he'd had daydreams about her lying in his bed, right enough, but not in quite that fashion.

He shifted the bow, quiver and rucksack into a slightly less uncomfortable position and strode through the usual throngs
to be found on a road so close to the city gate. If he remembered rightly, there were a couple of horse dealers not too far outside the north gate.

 

‘Help you, lad?' the horse-trader said, looking up.

He was standing with a cob's forefoot brought up between his legs, examining the hoof. The sturdy little horse shifted a little when it thought he was distracted, and began to turn its head–probably thinking of taking a nip at the man's rump. The trader elbowed the flank beside him, and Bram reached out with the stave of his yew bow, rapping it slightly on the nose.

It gave a huge sigh and subsided, and the trader let the hoof down with a dull clomp. ‘Thrush,' he said over his shoulder to the cob's owner. ‘You should know better than thinking a dip in tar will hide an unsound hoof from me, Ullet Omson. I'll not have him, not even if you treat the thrush and bring him back; not at any price. He's vicious.' The disappointed seller led his animal off and the man turned to Bram. ‘And how can I help you?'

‘I'm looking for a girl,' Bram said, and then blushed under his ruddy tan as the horse-dealer roared with laughter, looking him up and down.

‘Well, I'd say you won't have much trouble, even if your purse is flat,' the man wheezed after a minute, ‘for you're a fair-looking lad. But that's not my stock-in-trade. Fillies and mares, but only the hoofed sort. M'name's Kerson, by the way.'

Bram gave his own and shook his hand, and to no surprise found it as strong as his own, or a little more.

‘She'll have sold a gelding,' he said. ‘Not more than three days since. A farm horse, saddle-broke but more used for plough work, and well past mark of mouth.'

He went on to describe Horace, whose markings he knew like
his own: the two families had swapped working stock back and forth all his life.

‘Wait a minute!' the trader said. ‘Why, yes, I bought the beast–but from a young lad, not a girl. Could he have stolen it?' He frowned.

Well, of course she's passing for a boy, idiot!
he thought.
She can't be going about countryside and town in your old breeches as a girl in boy's clothing, now can she?
‘No, I know that lad,' Bram said.

The trader shrugged. ‘He seemed a nice enough young sprig; pretty as a girl, though, and a few years younger than yourself. Friend of his came out to enquire about the horse just today.'

Friend?
Bram thought, cursing himself.

‘Overheard the lad who bought the horse talking to a gent who purchased another. Seems the boy is foster-brother to Yardley Heywood's granddaughter and they're staying with her aunt. Anyway, the two of them rode out together about midday, heading north. The lad mentioned that his friend had sold the animal to me…' The trader received a puzzled look from Bram but continued, ‘He said the girl who owned the beast originally was also staying with the Heywood girl.' Fixing Bram with a narrow gaze, he asked, ‘Are you sure that horse wasn't stolen?'

‘Hmm, pretty sure,' answered Bram.

He wondered at who that lad might be and why he'd buy Horace to go riding north, but decided to focus instead on where Lorrie might be. ‘Where would I find this young lady, Yardley Heywood's granddaughter?'

The trader gave directions. Bram hurried on into Land's End, his head whirling. He'd expected to find Lorrie lost, or hiding in some cheap inn. And she'd made a friend? A wealthy one, too, from the sound of it. And what of Rip?

 

Elaine stirred. She was still uncertain of the state in which she dreamed, for she knew she must be dreaming. There had been
pain in the dreams at first, but after many awakenings Elaine was able to distance herself from the pain. Never easily; it demanded attention and refused to be tamed, but for a time she could go beyond it and feel it as a distant thing. She endured these times, straining to hear if anyone was nearby. Sometimes she'd make out the croak of a night-bird, or perhaps a distant shout. But otherwise she seemed to be alone.

It puzzled her. She was the Baron's lady and she had just given birth. Where was everyone? Why didn't someone help her? How long had she been like this? And most horrible, was this how she was going to be for the rest of her life?

She knew her body lay unmoving, or at least she suspected that much. So she assumed she had become trapped in some sort of elaborate dream, but one which had a connection to the waking world.

The pain had been her first conquest, and then had come the terrible thing that had tormented her. Time was difficult to measure: she was certain many hours, even days, had passed since she had given birth to her child. Perhaps she was struggling with an illness contacted in childbirth, or a fever that had come after delivery.

Whatever the cause, she had struggled, surfacing to something that resembled consciousness then lapsing into periods of vagueness in which memories floated. Sometimes she experienced images so strong she wondered if they were real, perhaps the sort of prophetic visions some witches or holy women were reputed to have; or perhaps echoes of a distant past, or someone else's memory. Then came the blackness again. Two things were constant, the blackness and the pain.

Between the periods of blackness, Elaine called for help in her mind, raging and shouting and wishing evil things to happen to her husband who had abandoned her like this. Once she felt something touch her body. The cold touch, the sense of something
slimy gliding across her skin, beneath her gown: a violating intimacy, uninvited and repulsive. Yet she could do nothing about it. Was that horrible touch real, or a memory? The fear and outrage that accompanied the sensation was real, for she remembered crying out in silent revulsion,
Leave me alone!
And the touch had gone away. Had it returned, or had the next merely been the memory of the first touch? She couldn't tell.

Over time, her mind grew stronger and the fear and revulsion turned to anger and calculation. Occasionally she remembered a conflict, a moment of defiance when she had rejected something that had oppressed her, but she couldn't recall the details. Vile things had been tormenting her and she had somehow attacked them; she conjured up images in her mind of the vile things having bodies and with hands formed by her mind she reached out and gripped them. They tried to flee but she tore at their substance, rending and tearing until they were but shreds and strands that seemed to evaporate into nothingness, leaving behind a lingering cry of pain and fear.

She had sought for something beyond the pain and the cold intruder, as she thought of the evil, slimy touch. Then she had found them, things lurking in the corners of the estate.

She sensed their presence, shocked, fearful, indignant that anything could harm them; they were hiding from her. Soon she would sleep again for she was very tired. But she wanted another, wanted very badly to destroy them all. Yet though they lurked nearby she could find none of them. She must make them come to her. Between periods of darkness, she plotted in her dreams. Lucidity came infrequently, but she realized that if she was dreaming, she could dictate the rules of this dream, and she would have it out with these lurking shadows in her mind.