by Nix, Garth
“You don’t think he will face us himself?” he asked, attempting nonchalance.
“Not yet,” said Tizanael, not making Terciel feel any better. “The attack on Far Upp took place yesterday. He could not be here so soon unless he shucked whatever body he has been using, and I can see no advantage for him to do that. In any case, this is neither the time nor the place to speak of it.”
She gestured for him to go, an emphatic “get a move on.”
As always, Terciel obeyed, stepping out into the darkness, his boots thudding on the hard-packed earth of what had once been a road. There was enough starlight to see the way, and already a hint of the moon promised more light to come.
Even with sufficient light, Terciel did not walk as fast as he might, pausing every now and then to look about and listen. He heard Tizanael from time to time, some distance behind, though she stopped when he did, so her footsteps were like an echo of his own. There were few other sounds, for this was a barren heath, with no branches to sway or leaves to rustle. Once he heard an owl call in the distance, a falling, high-pitched scream, and once he stopped for some time to listen to something moving up ahead, before he determined it was a small predator, a fox or a vatch.
Well after midnight, with the ice-ringed moon high above, he heard Tizanael closing the gap between them. He stopped and edged off the road to watch and listen. He could see his own moonshadow now, long and threatening, sprawling across the blank parchment of the road like spilled ink.
“Dinner,” said Tizanael, with no trace of irony. Dinner in this case meant a few minutes’ rest, hard biscuit provided by the Crossing Point Scouts, and a gulp or two of water from the bottle at Terciel’s side.
“We have made good time,” said Tizanael. She looked up at the sky, noting the position of various stars, and she sniffed the air as well. Her ability to fix their position seemed another, even more inexplicable magic to Terciel, though he believed her when she said it simply came from long experience traversing every part of the Kingdom, and a superb memory. He had a good memory, too, but he wasn’t sure it would ever be so well-filled as Tizanael’s, no matter how many years he spent adding to it. “Another two hours will see us at the seventeen-mile marker. We will be at the House by dawn. All being well.”
Terciel nodded, crumbs of the exceptionally tough biscuit falling from his lips. He washed down what he was able to chew off with a drink of water, slinging the bottle back over his shoulder as Tizanael indicated he should go on. It was too cold to stay still for long anyway. Terciel considered a Charter spell for warmth, but instead chose to pick up his pace, hoping movement would regain the warmth he had lost so quickly when he stopped.
He did cast the Charter spell for warmth, and one for invigoration, when they passed the seventeen-mile marker and found the Charter Stone a hundred paces behind it. By placing his hands on the obelisk that swam with tens of thousands of marks, Terciel was able to access the Charter more easily, effortlessly calling out the particular marks he needed, linking them together to make the spell and drawing them in a line from the stone into his arms and legs. Warmth blossomed from the glowing marks, spreading through every part of him, eventually making his fingers and toes and the end of his nose tingle with renewed heat. The spell for invigoration he drew in the air, a dozen marks coming easily from the stone. He breathed them in, breathing deep, sending the spell to the bottom of his lungs and thence into his blood.
Tizanael did likewise, though Terciel noticed she cast a different invigoration spell than the one he had used. Which she had taught him, along with all his other magic. He resolved to ask her about it when the opportunity arose. Tizanael did not like “chatter,” as she called it, when they were traveling. That had been drummed into him very early, right back to the dimly remembered time when she had brought him from Grynhold.
Reminded of this, Terciel spat out a crumb that had lingered too long in a corner of his mouth, before he walked on. The Scouts’ travel biscuit was awful, its consistency worse than its taste, but he still preferred it to salt fish. Even now, years later, neither he nor Tizanael had ever eaten salt fish again.
He was glad of the respite offered by the spells and the Charter Stone, for they had left the remnant road behind and the path that led onward was harder, climbing up the stony slope, soon becoming a series of steps that switchbacked up a steep hillside. Long, broad steps, cut directly from the stone in ages past. Here and there, strange symbols could be seen in them, when the moonlight fell just so, but they were not Charter marks, neither the active marks nor the drawings that were used to represent them. Tizanael did not know the meaning of these symbols either.
When Terciel had first passed this way with her, she had bitterly lamented the loss of so much knowledge when Hillfair was destroyed, the vast but insecure palace on the riverbank the Abhorsens had inhabited, back in more peaceful centuries when there were rarely any Dead to deal with, Free Magic creatures slumbered, and the House in the river was a forgotten relic of bygone times.
That was before the Queen and her daughters had been mysteriously slain in Belisaere, probably by the treacherous Prince Rogir, and the royal line destroyed. Ever since, various Regents had fought a losing battle against the rising forces of anarchy and disruption, born out of whatever had happened to the Charter itself with the death of the Queen and the princesses. It was something that all Charter Mages could feel without being able to identify, an absence or a void in the Charter itself, that defied investigation or even attention. No one could think about it for very long, and attempted discussions always faltered into unwilling frowns and diversions.
Halfway up the steps, Terciel felt the strange, icy tingle in his mind that indicated the presence of the Dead. He stopped at once. He heard Tizanael below, not stopping as she usually would when he did, but climbing up faster. She would have sensed the Dead, too. The Abhorsen was even more finely attuned to the presence of the Dead in Life than he was, a consequence of far more time spent in Death, as could be seen by the pallor of her skin, which was entirely leeched of pigment. Terciel had deep brown skin before he walked in Death, but he was pale now, too, the only trace of his original skin tone on his chest, around his heart. That had never changed.
He could sense only one entity. There was something odd about it. He couldn’t tell whether it had originally been human or not. Then he felt it shift and move, and realized that what lurked in the dark higher up the hill was a Dead human spirit spread among the bodies of several dead animals, probably weasels or stoats. A single, animating force occupying five or six corpses, who would move and think and act as one. Like a flock of Gore Crows, with a similar purpose, to serve as scouts or sentinels.
Tizanael came up behind him.
“Stoat fingers,” she whispered. “Not newly come into Life. I cannot feel the presence of any other Dead.”
Terciel nodded, still listening. He could hear the stoats every now and then. As far as he could tell, they were keeping to the higher steps.
He and Tizanael stood in silence for several minutes, both listening for movement, minds questing for any more signs of the Dead out in the living world.
“Eight stoat fingers,” said Tizanael. “But I can sense no guiding power behind them. There is no necromancer nearby. Can you hear anything save the stoats? My ears are too old for this.”
“Only the scrabbling of small animals,” whispered Terciel.
“They have been sent to watch us,” said Tizanael. “They will not dare to close. But be on your guard. There may be other dangers here, these minor Dead set to distract us from more powerful foes, perhaps even mortal enemies lying in wait. It is an old technique for ambushing Abhorsens. I will go ahead. Stay close.”
She drew her sword and unlatched the strap on the bandolier cup that held the bell Saraneth, the Binder. But she did not take it out, for a stumble in the darkness might prove more disastrous to the bell-wielder than any Dead. After a moment, Terciel drew his sword and undid the strap that c
overed Ranna. The Sleeper was generally a more forgiving bell, and powerful enough to overcome most opponents.
Charter marks glowed faintly on sword blades and bell bandoliers, soft, faint light that would not impinge on their nighttime sight.
Tizanael stepped up, and Terciel followed, close at her heels.
Chapter Seven
Elinor woke slowly and muzzily, constrained by sheets and a blanket that were drawn taut across her body, and tucked well in. She could smell carbolic soap, too, something she hadn’t encountered for a long time, ever since she’d complained to Mrs. Watkins she didn’t like it, whatever her governess thought of its disinfectant properties.
Mrs. Watkins. Elinor’s eyes snapped open and filled with tears. Pushing her arms out from the restraining covers, she brushed the tears away and looked around. As she’d already guessed from the carbolic smell and the practically lashed down red blanket over her, she was in a hospital ward. As she realized that, she felt a stabbing pain in her side, accompanied by several lesser aches along her left leg.
There were six beds in the ward, but the others were all empty. A nurse’s desk at the far end was unattended, and the big blue door beyond it was shut. There were several windows, but the curtains were drawn, and the ward was lit by gas lanterns on the wall, though only two of the four Elinor could see were lit, so it was not as bright as it could be.
She rolled over, grunting a little at the pain, and gratefully drank from a glass of water on the bedside table. There was also a handbell there. Elinor eyed it for a few seconds, thinking of Tizanael’s bells, the Dead Hands stopping in place and then moving as one, and everything that had happened. It hurt to stretch out her arm, but she reached for the bell and was about to ring it when the blue door at the end swung open and a nurse hurried in. Elinor let go of the bell and gratefully rolled onto her back. Her side hurt less that way.
“Miss Hallett! It is good to see you awake.”
The woman was some sort of superior nurse, Elinor knew from the commanding way she spoke and the splendor of her uniform. Her starched white hat had particularly broad wings, her red tunic had epaulettes with silver stars on them, and the watch pinned to the white apron over the tunic was gold with little diamonds on the face that winked in the gaslight.
“I am Matron Parkness,” said the nurse. She sailed over to Elinor’s bed and hauled the bedclothes tight again. “You must lie still. You have been sadly bruised with some nasty abrasions, several ribs cracked, and your wrists quite burned. All of which you will recover from perfectly well, but you must do as you are told.”
“What about the bullet wound?” asked Elinor. She remembered the shock of that sudden pain, greater than any of the other hurts.
“Bullet wound?” asked Parkness brightly. “You must have imagined that, dear. One of the abrasions is quite deep, perhaps a stone or something similar when you fell. But no bullets, fortunately.”
Elinor was about to protest this obvious falsity, but she held it back. There was something about the way Parkness was talking, a kind of flummery that she recognized from her own mother when she had been determined not to acknowledge the existence of some unpleasant reality.
“Where am I?”
“The county hospital, dear.”
“Which one?”
“Bainshire, of course. Where did you think?”
“Oh,” replied Elinor. “Cornbridge is closer . . . I thought it would be there.”
“It was considered better to bring you here,” replied Parkness obscurely. “Dr. Bannow will see you soon. Do you need the bedpan?”
“No . . . yes,” said Elinor, suddenly aware she did. “But I can go . . . I can go to—”
“No, you must stay in bed,” said Parkness. She drew the covers back and flourished a bedpan like she’d performed an amazing conjuring trick, though she’d simply picked it off the stand at the end of the bed.
Several minutes later, a thoroughly humiliated Elinor swore to herself that she would recover in record time, though Parkness had treated the whole process no differently than Mrs. Watkins would sewing on a loose button while Elinor stood still.
“And here’s the doctor,” declared Parkness, holding the bedpan up like some sort of sacrificial offering as she sailed majestically away, passing the doctor near the door with a breezy, “Good afternoon, Doctor. The patient is awake and has passed water.”
The doctor, an older woman wearing a nondescript white coat over a drab blue dress with a ruffled collar, nodded. She had two pairs of glasses stuck high on her grey hair, which was bundled on top of her head, but neither fell off with the nod.
Far more interesting from Elinor’s point of view was the Charter mark on the doctor’s forehead. Faint, and not currently glowing, but definitely the same as her own, and Terciel’s, and Tizanael’s.
Dr. Bannow saw her looking.
“Yes,” she said easily. “I, too, bear the mark, though I have few claims to being an actual mage, apart from some small knowledge of healing and prophylactic spells. That’s why you have come to my ward. The hospital authorities do not officially admit to the peculiarities that occur in Bain and other parts close to the Wall, but in fact must be prepared for them at some level. I represent that slight capacity to deal with magically induced wounds and the like.”
“But I was shot and bruised,” said Elinor. “Not hurt with magic.”
“The burns on your wrists suggest otherwise,” said Dr. Bannow.
Elinor lifted her arms so the sleeves of her hospital gown fell back. Her wrists were heavily bandaged, the bandages impregnated with some sort of yellowish paste.
“Oh,” she said. “Where the . . . the man . . . held me.”
“Not an ordinary man,” said Dr. Bannow. “A Free Magic sorcerer, I would guess. I found it very hard to force a spell of healing into those burns. But you helped me, even while unconscious.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Your own Charter mark is very strong, I suppose refreshed by the recent north wind. I found if I touched it I could access the Charter more easily. I don’t know why. I wish I knew more about Charter Magic in general. Often I can’t do any at all, unless I go up close to the Wall. Or when the north wind comes, which isn’t all that often.”
“Why don’t you go across the Wall, into the Old Kingdom?” asked Elinor. “Learn more?”
Dr. Bannow gave her an odd look before replying.
“Because I am too afraid, an entirely sensible emotion, I believe. I content myself with learning odds and ends, on the rare occasions someone who knows more than I do crosses my path.”
“Like the Abhorsens?”
“Oh, I wish! They are on another, higher plane entirely, when it comes to Charter Magic. I did meet Tizanael once, but she did not deign to teach me anything. She told me folk south of the Wall should simply move farther away and not meddle with matters beyond our ken. But that was years ago. I did hear she and the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting came south with the wind these last few days, but I did not see them. No, I have had to learn what little I know from the few Ancelstierrans who have the mark. Not counting the Crossing Point Scouts. They also do not teach what they know, not to civilians.”
“What about Magistrix Tallowe, at . . . at Wyverley College?” asked Elinor.
Dr. Bannow smiled ruefully.
“Abigail Tallowe took an immediate dislike to me and refused to share any of her knowledge,” she said. “I don’t know why. Perhaps she thinks she is special because she keeps message-hawks for some Old Kingdom folk, and passes on telegrams and messages, and so will not deign to fraternize with lesser people such as myself. Lie back now. I must examine your wounds.”
Elinor obediently lay back. Dr. Bannow drew a Charter mark in the air with her right forefinger. It hung there, glowing, and she tried to draw another mark next to it, but nothing happened and the first mark winked out of existence.
Dr. Bannow sighed and wiped her forehead. Even trying the spell had obviously wearied her.
“Oh well, I’d hoped it might work. A small spell, to make my hands aseptic. I will have to resort to carbolic soap. I won’t be a moment.”
She went to the nurses’ station and washed her hands to the elbow carefully in the tin basin there, the stench of carbolic acid strong in the air. Taking a clean towel from the shelf, she dried her hands and returned to Elinor.
As Dr. Bannow pulled back the covers and lifted Elinor’s gown, the young woman peered down at herself. Her left side was a mottled blue-black, and there was a bandage taped over what she knew was a gunshot wound. It ached but not unbearably so. The doctor carefully undid the bandage around her middle, peeled back the dressing, and bent close, sniffing.
“That’s healing very nicely. I managed a spell to clean and close it up, so it’s days ahead of where you would be otherwise. If only I could get the other doctors here to . . . well, that’s another story. I’ll replace the dressing.”
“It is a bullet wound, isn’t it?” asked Elinor as the doctor pulled the rest of the dressing off.
“What? Yes, of course. A big, slow bullet. An army revolver, I’d say a .455. You were very lucky it only grazed your side. A few inches over and you’d be dead.”
“The matron said I didn’t have a bullet wound.”
“Parkness? Yes, officially you don’t, so she has to go along with that, though she’s not as hidebound as she seems. She’s one of the few nurses who will help me with the ‘unusual’ cases.”
“Why ‘officially’?”
Dr. Bannow was painting the wound with a purple concoction and didn’t answer immediately. When she had finished, and replaced the dressing and bandage, she stood back and said, “Because the unacknowledged policy in Bainshire is to never officially acknowledge anything troublesome related to magic and certainly not to make any permanent record of it. I am curious how a bullet wound comes into that category, however, and as I haven’t been told very much, would you care to tell me exactly what happened to you? I can fetch us some tea.”