The Night of the Solstice (22 page)

“Sure,” said Charles. He stood a few steps away, opposite Janie, arms folded tightly. Claudia, very pale herself, sat and blinked as if she could not focus her eyes.

Alys's hand shook as she released the tiny sorceress's wrist. “It'll be okay,” she said again. “I learned CPR. I can—you can live even if your heart's stopped for—”

Janie bent over and pulled at Claudia. “Come on.” Her eyes, meeting Alys's over Claudia's brown head, flickered toward the Gold Staff on the floor. It was black and rusty once more, looking like nothing so much as an old fireplace poker.

Alys stared at it for two heartbeats. Two of her own heartbeats; Morgana had none. Then she nodded at Janie.

“Take her out,” she said.

Claudia, understanding, began to sob. The vixen
ran up to the staff, sniffed it, and backed away, stiff-legged, bristling. Then she began to streak back and forth wildly across the room, cursing Cadal Forge and all sorcerei, the children and all humans, and Elwyn and all Quislais.

“Stop it!” Charles recoiled at the noise, looking frightened. “Alys, why don't you do something? She'll be all right. She's
got
to be all right.”

“Don't be a fool, boy.” The vixen had come to a ragged halt at last, crouching under the table. But despite the harsh words there was no asperity left in her voice—only pain. “Didn't you see what she did? Closing a Passage—the greatest of Passages—at the very height of its power! Slamming it shut and locking it tight with the moon still rising! And before that. Taking on the whole Society by herself,
and
a Red Staff,
and
a councillor—and with you to protect as well. Anyone else would have given you up to save your world, but not she. She was a fighter all her life.”

Alys flinched at the “was” and flinched, too, remembering that she, Alys, had at one time been willing to give Morgana up to save her world.

Appalled, Charles rounded on Elwyn, who had been hovering at the edge of the group like a luminous dandelion. “You,” he said harshly. “With your sky-bolts and your immortality. She's your sister. Can't you do anything?”

Elwyn looked bewildered. She cocked her head to one side and then opened her lips. But it was Alys who spoke and she spoke to Janie.

“Quick,” she said, in a voice she herself did not recognize. “Get a glass of water.”

Janie didn't turn. “She can't drink. Alys, she's—”

“Get it,” whispered Alys.

When Janie came back Alys's hand trembled, clenched around what she had taken from her pocket. She had lost the dagger and she had lost the serpent. She would never see Arien Edgewater again. But as she unwrapped the packet of waxed paper and drew the silver-veined flower out, her hands suddenly steadied. She crushed the flower into the glass and bathed Morgana's pale, still face with water. The scent of Arien Edgewater's pool rose around her, sharply sweet. When she had finished she put the Gold Staff
in Morgana's hand, and stepping back, she sank to her knees before the sorceress to wait.

“Please,” she said softly to no one at all.

Slowly, one by one, the others knelt around her. Even Elwyn, after an uncertain look at Charles, faltered and joined them. But Morgana's lashes were dark crescents against the lifeless pallor of her face, and neither breath nor heartbeat stirred her body.

The vixen bowed her red-gold head and whimpered.

And then something magic happened.

Almost as if awakened by the vixen's cry, a tiny glimmer of gold rippled down the rusty staff. As they watched, unbreathing, another joined it, and another. Like sparks on a wire, like shining beads of molten gold, the glimmers raced and multiplied until the entire staff was alive with them, swarming, throwing a pattern of light on Morgana's face.

In that shimmer of gold they saw the deathly pallor retreat from the sorceress's cheeks. The shadows around her eyes faded. And then her lips parted and her breast rose and fell with the intake of breath.

They were still on their knees, encircling her, when the sorceress opened her eyes. She looked at them in surprise, then quickly took a deep breath, one hand fluttering to her face. Her astonished gaze fell on the glass, which still held a few drops of water and the remains of the flower.

“Malthrum!” she cried. “But which of you could possibly—” And then for some reason she looked at Alys. “Never mind,” she said, sinking back, still looking at her. Then, quietly: “I thank you.”

Alys swallowed and nodded, her cheeks hot. And the others, as if suddenly released from paralysis, broke into joyous hysteria.

The vixen leapt onto Morgana's lap, and then off again, rolling on the floor like a puppy. Charles embraced Janie, who was wiping her cheeks with a look of mild surprise, and then—to be quite fair—he embraced Elwyn, too. Everyone was laughing and crying and shouting excitedly until Morgana's voice cut through the pandemonium.

“Hold, hold!” she said, struggling to a sitting position. “I don't mean to sound ungrateful—I am
not—but would you all kindly hold your peace? Thank you. Before we all give way, there is something vitally important that we must do. We must search the house for any sorcerei who remain.”

Everyone looked involuntarily over his or her shoulder.

“Yes,” said Morgana. “My wards won't hold much longer, if indeed they have held this long. And now that the mirrors are closed there's no sending anyone back to Findahl. Leave this little one—Claudia, is it?—with me, and I'll see she's all right.”

The serpent, thought Alys, as everyone moved to obey Morgana. She had been right in her suspicions; now the Passage was closed for good, and it was gone forever. She told herself it was for the best, that a Feathered Serpent could no more live on Earth than she could live in the Wildworld. But in the midst of telling herself this she remembered its bright black eyes and felt the weight of its tail coiled trustingly around her wrist, and her throat ached.

She met Charles and Janie back in the living room.
Morgana had taken Claudia and the water glass into the kitchen.

“Did you see any sorcerei?”

“Not a sign of one. How about you, Janie?”

“Well, there certainly are none in this house. May I ask if you expect to find them under the rug?”

“No.” Alys straightened. “I was just looking—don't you remember that red thingummy Cadal Forge had? The jewel.”

“It went into the mirror with him.”

“No. It went by me. It ought to be here—”

At that moment she was interrupted by a siren.

The three of them looked at each other and stiffened.

“Sounds like a whole convention,” said Charles as another siren joined it, and another.

“Sounds like they're coming
here
,” said Janie.

Charles ran to the front of the house and returned, breathless, to peer through the living room curtains.

“I think they're surrounding the house,” he shouted grimly, over the noise.

“Let them come around back like anyone else,”
said Morgana's
voice from behind them. “The wards have fallen and it will be some time before I can raise them again.” Although the sorceress supported herself against the kitchen doorframe, both she and Claudia looked greatly recovered. “That front door hasn't been opened in over a century,” she added, slowly crossing the room and easing herself into a large chair by the hearth.

From the back drive brilliant lights pierced the curtains, shifting and moving, and then fixing. Suddenly all the sirens stopped. The dead silence was eerie.

“After all we've been through—oh, I can't believe this,” said Alys. “First the Society, now the police. It's like a joke.”

“I see five cars out there,” said Charles, letting the curtains fall back into place, “and those rifles are no joke.”

Alys helplessly turned to look at the small sorceress. “Morgana,” she said, swallowing, “we've run into the police before. I don't know how to explain. . . . It's all gotten so
complicated
—”

“Ah,” said Morgana. “I see. Let me think.”

Just then a voice from outside crackled over a loudspeaker, causing all four Hodges-Bradleys to jump. “Alys—Charles—Janie—oh, Claudia,” said the voice. “Darlings, if you can hear me, please, please, give yourselves up.”

“Mom!” said Alys. She, along with the others, had started toward the door, only to stop short in dismay and frustration. “Morgana …” said Alys, gasping.

“All right,” said Morgana. “Come here and listen.”

Outside, the full moon had reached its apex, shining down on the fortresslike old house on the hill. It shone serenely on the five police cars fanned out on the old house's back drive, it reflected off the metalwork of the car doors behind which ten officers alertly crouched, and it picked out glints of silver on the barrels of the rifles those officers held aimed toward Fell Andred. It just touched the edge of the loudspeaker that Dr. Hodges-Bradley held as she knelt, weeping, with the police lieutenant in charge, and it added its force to the searchlights turned on
Fell Andred's back door until the doorway was lit brighter than day. And, as that door slowly opened, it illuminated something else.

Behind the lieutenant ten rifles snapped into position, five searchlights swung, and fifteen officers stiffened, ready for anything. And then, from all around, there was a universal murmur, like a hushed, long-drawn-out “Whaaat?” and rifles were slowly lowered as the men and women who held them craned their necks to get a better look.

In the doorway, in the moonlight, gazing fearlessly into the searchlights with wide-open eyes, was a young girl. She wore a flowing gown of iridescent colors, and her face was impossibly, inhumanly beautiful. Her hair, which fell unbound in waves to her knees, was palest silver.

Ten rifles dangled from unheeding hands as officer after officer slowly rose to stare in wonder.

Elwyn Silverhair looked around at them and smiled.

“You,” she said, pointing. “And you, and you. Come inside with me. You have been granted an audience.”

*   *   *

“First,” said Morgana to the lieutenant and Dr. and Mr. Hodges-Bradley, “I must ask you to smell this leaf.”

“What?”
began the lieutenant, but then he broke off and pulled his head back sharply, blinking and wrinkling his nose.

“Unpleasant, I'm afraid,” agreed Morgana. “But it will make our conversation so much easier.” The sorceress sat erect in her thronelike chair by the fireplace, with the richly woven cloak Alys had fetched from upstairs about her shoulders and the Gold Staff across her knees. The leaf which Janie had brought at her direction from the cellar was crushed between her outstretched fingers.

“You see,” she continued calmly, as Dr. and Mr. Hodges-Bradley also began to gasp and blink, almost losing their frantic grip on their children, “I am a sorceress, and this is my house. And these four young people, whom apparently you have been harassing, are under my protection.”

The lieutenant, spluttering angrily, was rubbing
at his eyes with his sleeve. “What the—” All at once he broke off and lowered his arm. On his face fury gave way to surprise and then to mild embarrassment. Alys looked at her parents and saw that it was the same with them. All three of the human adults were glancing about apologetically as if they had suddenly awakened from a nap during dinner.

“I—I'm sorry.” The lieutenant looked down at the vixen, who sat regarding him with eyes like narrow slits of gold, then turned back to Morgana. “You were saying?”

“I was saying that far from being criminals, these children have done both me and your city a great service. They have risked their lives to rid this world of a rather serious menace.”

“Menace, ma'am?” said the lieutenant.

“A sorcerer who forced his way into this world in order to destroy it.” Morgana explained briefly about Cadal Forge and the Society. “But have no fear, he has been vanquished and is now an extremely handsome specimen of modern art. I plan to turn him sideways and hang him over the sofa.”

Everyone followed her gesture to the great mirror behind her, and Dr. Hodges-Bradley tightened her grip on Claudia.

“Oh,” she said, quietly. “How horrible.”

Morgana turned back sharply with narrowed eyes. Then she dropped her gaze. “Well, yes, perhaps it is,” she murmured tiredly. Alys was suddenly aware of the effort it was costing the little sorceress to keep erect.

“In any case,” she resumed, looking up again, “you can see that your concern over our welfare is needless, lieutenant. I think you may go back to your officers.”

“Ma'am, I hardly know what to say to them.”

Morgana smiled. “Have no fear. You see, that was Worldleaf I gave you to smell. A breath or two of its essence and you are able to perceive the truth in its purest form, despite the clouds of old prejudices. However, the effects don't last. Truth in its purest form is lost and only vague impressions remain. In a short time, you will forget what I have said, and all that will remain is the conviction that these four
children are somehow heroes. You will tell your officers a perfectly plausible story which you have invented in your own mind.”

“I see, ma'am.” The lieutenant hesitated. “And, ah, just when do you expect it to wear off?”

“I should say about—now,” said Morgana, watching him.

The change that came over the three adults' faces now was similar to the one they had undergone before. They blinked and looked briefly disoriented. Then they recovered.

“And so, if I have explained everything satisfactorily—”

“Oh—yes, ma'am. I just—now that's odd—” The lieutenant was gazing at his blank notepad in perplexity. “I wonder why I—that is, I'm glad to have this thing cleared up at last. We'll keep an eye out for intruders like the one you mentioned. I remember the description—I think… .” Frowning and muttering to himself, he made his way to the door.