The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Good Lord, Holmes. . .” Watson said, stunned.

  Like Watson, Nan had remained skeptical until she heard the details. What reason would a respectable woman have had to make up such an unbelievable tale? It sounded like the old myth of the incubus, and no one in the modern world would believe her wild tale. They would immediately assume that she’d . . . well . . . that this had been a completely willing and mutual seduction.

  No, no one would believe her.

  No one, that is, except someone who was a true magician, or knew one. And none of them would risk exposure for the sake of helping some foolish wench who’d dared to leave the sacred protection of her husband and wander outside in a strange village alone.

  And that made her wonder. Had she and Sarah just escaped the same fate by always being together? Or if Holmes had not approached her that first evening, would she have met this villain?

  Holmes tapped one long finger on the table, recapturing her attention. “This was by no means the end of it. I put my ear to the ground, put some discreet advertisements in the Plymouth and London papers, and received four more letters from ladies with identical stories on the condition of anonymity. One such tale is extraordinary. But five? It passes the bounds of reason. And the first thing I thought, now that you have opened my eyes to the world of the supernatural, was—”

  “A glamorie,” said Watson, interrupting him. “That’s the ancient word for it. It’s a sort of lust-spell. It clouds the mind of the victim until all she—or he; it can be put on a man as well as a woman—can’t think of anything but pleasing the caster. Good Lord!”

  Silence reigned for a moment, the muslin curtains stirring in the breeze from the open window, until a nightingale outside the window broke it.

  “Indeed,” said Holmes, nodding solemnly, his brows slightly creased. “So the first thing that I thought when I heard about your missing children and the fact that there might be magic involved was that it was exceedingly unlikely there were two such practitioners of dark arts in the same area. Although I did not want to think about what use this devil was making of children—”

  “It’s horrible, but not as horrible as what you are contemplating,” Watson said hastily, interrupting him.

  Holmes’ brow cleared a little. “Well, that is something, at any rate.”

  “And by Jove, it does sound like your man and ours are one and the same!” John continued. “Because now the reason for taking those children is stunningly clear. He’s using them like a battery, Holmes. You remember that blackguard Spencer, who was using spirits for the same purpose? One can use the living as easily as the dead, as long as one can control them. He has not got enough power of his own to enable him to cast the sort of strong glamorie that will completely overpower the will. So he is using the children to give him the power to cast a glamorie over women strong enough to overcome every semblance of sanity and reason they have—and, it sounds like, enrich himself at the same time.”

  Nan had been thinking quickly. “He has probably been at this for some time. We know, thanks to the chief constable of Yelverton, that more children than usual have gone missing out here for about four years. He probably started longer ago than that, using his abilities to seduce women no one would believe anyway, and who would probably not put up much resistance, since they are—well, accustomed to shabby treatment. Barmaids, scullery maids, servant girls. Then he set his sights higher, and discovered he needed more magical strength in order to overpower a woman who was more likely to resist him. Somehow he learned he could drain this power from others who have the power in them, even though they might not be aware they were magicians, and hit on captive children, unable to resist him, as the perfect—cows, if you will. He must have been collecting them for these past four years, until now he can work his will as fast as they can recharge his powers.”

  Holmes nodded. “I believe your speculations are correct, Nan. I’ve laid eyes on the man, Watson. More than that, I’ve befriended the fiend.”

  “What?” exclaimed Watson. “How?”

  “I’ve been in disguise, camping rough on the moor in the guise of a tramping fellow, and doing my best to make the close acquaintance of every ne’er-do-well and tramp in and around this village, in hopes of finding him.” Holmes traced a little circle on the tabletop with his index finger. “I’ve bought them drinks, I’ve listened to their boasts, and I finally came across one ‘Ansel Anglin’ who swore in his cups that he could have any woman he cared to, no matter her station. In fact, I befriended him so thoroughly that he took me into his confidence. And that was when I got actual proof that he was the man I sought.”

  They all leaned forward. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Sherlock!” exclaimed Sarah.

  Sherlock made a little face. “I was winkled, and only the fact that I am not a magician makes this less than an utter shame on my part. He said he needed another set of hands to help him haul some ‘supplies’ back to his cottage on the moor. And I agreed to help him today, early this morning. And therein lies the problem. I know I did so. I can’t remember doing it.”

  They all stared at Holmes, dumbfounded.

  “How is that even possible?” Nan demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Holmes replied, looking exceedingly pained, as if the admission actually hurt him to make. “I can only think that he must have cast another spell to make me forget everything that happened after a certain point when I was with him and his ponies, riding out to his home, and before I found myself riding my hired nag back, somewhere on the moor near enough to Yelverton to see the smoke from the chimneys in the distance. Everything in between is a blank. I only know I was doing something because of the lapse of time, and the fact that I was outside of the town. Is that a spell that is possible?”

  “It is,” Watson confirmed. “It’s another sort of spell that works on the mind like a glamorie. I know how I would have done it; as a Master, I could simply control you the moment I cared to, perhaps within sight of my combe, and make you see only what I wanted you to see. In this case, nothing, until I released you within sight of Yelverton. So either the memories never existed at all, or he did something else and the memories vanished, and I very much doubt even Nan can retrieve them.”

  Sherlock glanced and Nan, who shrugged. “I don’t think so,” she told him. “If what I am sensing from John is correct, the memories are completely excised, like cutting out a bad piece of ribbon and splicing the ends together. He obviously did this to keep the location of his cot a complete secret.”

  John nodded. “And if he has a very limited budget of power to draw on, he can probably only cast one strong spell at a time. This would be why he doesn’t make the women he abuses forget what happened after he has had his way with them. He’d be much safer if he could do that.”

  Or he relishes the control it gives him over them even after they are out of his orbit, Nan thought angrily. He knows that for as long as they live, they will have to live with the memory of him taking liberties with them.

  “Confounded clever,” Holmes said sourly. “And if I should confront him about it, he’ll likely laugh that I drank too much of his scrumpy to remember what happened. He’s getting bolder, Watson. Before, he was hiding. Now, he’s counting on his power and the reluctance of the women he despoils to talk to keep from being caught.”

  It was an angry silence in the room now, and for similar if not identical reasons. Suki was just angry this man was getting away with hurting people. She and Sarah and probably Mary were enraged that this rapist had felt himself absolutely free to do whatever he wanted to any woman he chose, and probably thought it only his due. Holmes—well, Holmes hated injustice more than anything else in the world, and this was a terrible injustice. And Watson—

  Watson had been thinking, by the look on his face, and so had Nan, both of them thinking past their rage. She got up first, and got John’s map.

  She spre
ad it out over the table. “Blue is for the places where we magicians cannot ‘see’ anything, and Mary’s sylphs also cannot see and cannot enter. You’ll recall that evil man Spencer had set up exclusionary wards of that sort around his lair. It takes a very powerful magician to do that for himself, but lesser magicians can accomplish the same thing by layering protection atop protection over the course of time. We were told by Robin Goodfellow that people have been doing that in isolated spots all over Dartmoor for as long as there have been humans living here. We reckoned that although this man is not strong in himself, he had found one of those places. Not knowing which one he was in, we found and had begun investigating them today.”

  “And red?” Holmes asked.

  “And red is the location of people known to be ‘witches’ by the locals,” Nan finished. “Because we could not be certain that this man had not managed to get himself a reputation as a witch.”

  Holmes nodded.

  John got a pencil and put an “X” through the one in Yelverton itself where Ganmer Dolly lived, the one outside Yelverton where Gatfer Cole lived, both of which were marked by red and blue dots, and put a third “X” through the blue dot that represented Maude Rundle’s cottage. “As you know, we eliminated these three today, and little Helen Byerly and the girl we only know as ‘Rose’ is in the third of these locations.”

  “And those three cannot be the cottage to which I was taken,” Holmes noted.

  “True. And being the methodical man that you are,” Watson continued. “I am certain that you noted the time that you left Yelverton, how fast the horse was traveling, and the time that you found yourself outside of Yelverton again with part of your memory missing. Given that, you can probably give us an arc of the farthest possible point you could have ridden to, assuming that you spent at least half an hour unloading whatever you helped transport.”

  “What if the fiend took a roundabout way?” Mary objected. “In order to throw off any attempt to backtrack?”

  “Given that I know the man fairly well, I think that unlikely,” Holmes said. “He is supremely self-confident. He often boasts that he has tricked people ‘who think they are smarter than he is.’ And he is impatient. He is always in a great hurry to get whatever he has in his head that he wants to do accomplished. I think he would count on his magic to muddle his trail, rather than take a route that would require more time.”

  Sarah snapped her fingers. “That’s especially true if he didn’t actually have the power to take over your memory when you two rode out!”

  “What are you suggesting?” Watson asked.

  “That he didn’t work his spell the way you thought. He waited until Holmes was in the cottage, and cut out the memories then!” Sarah exclaimed.

  “Well,” John replied after a long moment to think. “It is true that I have heard Earth Magicians can work the trick that way. Especially if they also have a touch of Psychical abilities like yours, Nan.”

  “When did you say he came to you and asked for help?” Sarah asked.

  “As I said, the night before—early in the evening, just before sundown, in fact,” Holmes told her. “Then he said he’d see me in the morning, and left before I could buy him another round—” Holmes’ brows rose. “Clever girl. I see where your thoughts are taking you. He surely had a prime plum to pick that night, one that he expected would bring him a pretty piece of money as well as other satisfactions. Plucking that prize would expend all his magical energies, and in addition, he would have to wait till morning in order to buy what he wanted with his stolen money and bring it all back to his lair. And he needed my help because he expected to be able to buy more than he could reasonably transport by himself. That left him a problem—whatever confederate he chose would know where he lived. But he knew that all he had to do was get back to his cot, and he’d be able to restore himself enough to take my memories. Well done! Nan, have you a notion of how long it takes him to recharge from the children’s power, based on Helen’s memory?”

  “Well, she didn’t exactly have a watch,” Nan replied wryly, “But I can make a good guess. I’d say about half an hour.”

  Holmes took the pencil from Watson and began scribbling on the edge of the map. “It’s like a confounded schoolboy’s mathematical problem. If the train starts at the station at 11 o’clock and travels at twenty miles an hour. . . .” he muttered, looking at his sums, then to the map, then erasing a number and substituting another. Finally he got a total he thought he liked. “Have you got a bit of string about you?” he asked, looking from John to Mary and back again—presumably because it was their room.

  Mary laughed. “No woman is ever without a bit of string, Holmes,” she chided, and went to her traveling workbox. She brought him a spool of heavy cotton thread of the sort used to mend “cluny” lace.

  “Confounded useful creatures, you ladies are,” he said, accepting it. “No wonder Watson married one.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” all three of the ladies present chorused.

  He tied the pencil to the end of it, then measured out a length of the string against the scale on the map and bit it off, put his thumb on the loose end in the center of Yelverton, and drew an arc on the map with the pencil.

  “There you are,” he said. “Wherever that cottage is, it will be within and probably along that arc.”

  They all contemplated the result as the nightingale caroled. There was only one blue dot within that arc, lying so close to the penciled sweep that you could not have gotten the edge of a penny between it and the graphite.

  * * *

  “We shouldn’t leap into this,” Watson said, staring at the map, at Nan’s sketches of the cot and the combe, and sometimes into space. “We need a solid plan.”

  Nan rubbed her temple. Part of her wanted to rush out there and murder the bastard while he slept. Impossible to do, of course, for he surely had protections, if only a locked door—but it was what she wanted to do.

  “The obvious, and simplest, approach is to attempt to get to the door unseen, then rush the door and take him by surprise,” said Mary, who looked just as impatient to murder him as Nan.

  “And what if the door is locked?” said Holmes. “Just because most moorland folk do not leave their doors locked even when they leave their homes, it does not follow that this man will do the same. In fact, I would be extremely surprised if he did not keep his door locked except when he is doing something out of doors, or using the earth-closet. He already lost one child; he’s unlikely to take that chance again. And he is the sort that would trust no one, especially not now. After all, he stole my memories to keep me from finding him again.”

  “What if I—” Suki began. Holmes quelled her with a look. “I will not risk your life, Suki, and if he catches a whiff of the rest of us, he will certainly use you as a hostage.”

  “And therein lies the problem,” said Watson. “He has a dozen hostages, all secured in a farther room. If we accost him at his cottage, even with my pistol, he will have the upper hand, and he can and will use any or all of the children as a distraction or a human shield.”

  Nan’s head ached, and that pie was not sitting easily on her stomach.

  “Or he can just bolt into that inner room, lock the door, and murder them all to get enough power to make an escape,” Nan pointed out. “The only reason they are still alive is because he needs to keep them alive as a constant, reliable source of power. If he’s cornered, he has no reason to do that; he can drain them to death while we try to break in, then—could he get enough power to kill us?” She looked to Watson.

  “Kill all of us? Probably not. A Master could, but he is not a Master, or he wouldn’t be using the children as he is, he would be getting power from his Elementals. But he can certainly render all of us unconscious with the power gained by draining a dozen children to death, which would enable his easy escape.”

  “Oh
Lord,” Nan moaned, as something else occurred to her. Tomorrow Helen’s mother would be expecting a missive, brought by Neville. And what was she going to say? “What am I going to send to Maryanne Byerly in the morning? I can’t tell her we’ve found Helen; I can’t risk this devil finding out about what I told her! He could come to Maryanne and force her to tell him where Helen is!”

  “You’ll lie to her,” Sherlock said, steadily. “You’ll tell her only that you are still certain her children are alive, and that you are slowly eliminating possible miscreants. Tell her any more than that and she’ll do what any mother would do—she’ll rush into Sheepstor to find someone that knows the way to Maude’s cottage and in a few hours all of Sheepstor will know she’s found Helen and where Helen is. You’ll put Maude, Helen, and Maryanne all in terrible danger.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. There was absolutely no question that this was exactly what would happen. Gossip flew like the wind, even in a place as isolated as Dartmoor. “I hate this,” Nan replied.

  “But you’ll do it,” he countered. “Now, let’s find a way to bring this demon to justice.”

  “Go to the chief constable?” asked Suki. “Bring a whole herd of perlice down on t’ bastard?”

  There was a certain amount of glee in her voice, and Nan knew why. She’d missed out on the massive raid on Spencer’s lair, and desperately wanted to be part of another.

  “That would just cause the same problem as before, Suki,” Watson said patiently. “You have seen these stone cottages. They have walls like a fortress. The man can just lock himself in with the children, kill them all, and use the power he gains to escape.”