There was nobody he could really talk to, and with his fear bottled wordless inside his own head, he felt totally unable to act. Instead he languished like some ridiculous princess waiting for her prince to return. Insight into the problem did not provide a solution. Peter laboured heavily up the stairs. At Veleur’s room he stopped, listening to see if Giffen was following. The house was totally silent. It was true that Giffen seemed to be up and around the house at any time of the night, in the library, the kitchen, or even glimpsed wandering in the darkened garden.
Peter turned the knob and stepped into the hushed room. It felt like when he was young, going into his parent’s bedroom, a quiet, polish-scented room that seemed alluring and frightening all at once. He looked down at the bed with the cover thrown back. Had Veleur truly been lying in bed whilst he sat anguished outside the door? He walked to the wardrobe. Veleur’s clothes hung in rows of silky black.
He reached out and stroked the empty sleeve of the shirt hanging from the laundry basket. It was one of Veleur’s favourites, made from some kind of very fine, soft wool. Without even thinking, he picked it up; it became such a small wad of cloth between his palms. He wandered about the room, kneading the soft cloth with his fingers. It didn’t really make him feel any better -- it was more like probing a loose tooth. But the sensation of trespassing built up, and Peter went back out into the hallway.
Perhaps what he should do was charge off to be reunited with Veleur. There was only a slight flaw in that plan: he had no money, no idea where Veleur was, and even less of a notion what the League would do if he left the relative security of Scott House.
His stark and empty bedroom seemed too unwelcoming. There were no curtains on the windows and nothing other than a bed and a pile of clothing beside it. Peter stood in the doorway and realised he was still holding Veleur’s shirt balled tight in the palm of his right hand. It still smelled faintly of spice and frost, Veleur’s own distinctive scent. With his eyes closed and the shirt pressed to his nose, Peter felt faintly better, but then the pervading sense of unease returned, this time with a dizzying nausea and a feeling of damp heat throughout his whole body.
He started to walk again, without even thinking about it. He found himself at the back door, and he went out into the cavernous night. It was with a feeling of detachment that he began to walk across the wet grass. It was like walking in a dream and watching his own actions. He wondered where he was going. The air was cold, and it was hard to see his way by little more than starlight.
He knew the path quite well now, up the hill and through the small clearing to the fence that surrounded the old churchyard. He hoped this time that he might see them, the spectral nuns. But he had made this trek several times and was all but convinced that they were nothing but a delusion invented by his unconscious mind. Having lost Veleur’s shirt somewhere along the way, the fingers of his left hand curled around the wet, rusted iron of the pale.
It occurred to him that he must be standing at the very edge of Scott House’s protections. If the League wanted him, they could just reach out and grab him. But then, if that was what they wanted, they had been given plenty of other opportunities. He began to hear something very faint. A sound that echoed, a faint pulse he could feel through the soles of his feet. It was like voices, not calling, but talking in conversation. But no matter how he strained, he could not properly hear them; there was some barrier that muffled and distorted the sound.
He sat down with his back against the corner of the old stone fence and his shoulder leaning against the iron pale. This seemed to be the closest he had to a place where he belonged. Not the house, not even the church -- just an old fence he’d propped up and wired together. Perhaps because it was the only useful thing he’d done in months. Peter wondered if he should have just become a builder or a gardener, to spend his days putting things right -- doing a job of work that could be seen at the end of the day.
It was getting colder, and a light rain began to fall, flattening Peter’s shirt against his skin. He tried several times to rouse his mind to thought, but it seemed as frozen as his body. There was only one thing he was sure of -- when he had seen Veleur, touched him, he had known that they were meant to be together. He had known it was destined and not been shaken from that feeling. That was what had allowed Veleur to behave so badly.
He was looking fixedly across the graveyard and saw a familiar -- unhappily familiar -- figure striding through the trees.
“I see you did nae take the hint,” Archer said in a peculiar blend of Aussie twang and Scots burr. “We’re on to you.”
Peter intended to stand, to speak, but found he did not move at all. He stayed seated, with his knees pulled tight to his chest and the wall behind him. It was like some form of total paralysis. The muffled conversation ceased, and all he could hear was the wind and Archer’s laboured breathing. The pale seemed to tremble against his shoulders. He could not even move his eyes as he saw the blur of Archer’s hand reaching for him, and the distant figure of Veleur running swiftly towards them through the trees.
Peter remembered feeling that he just wanted Archer to go away; he just wanted to push him away. There was a warm rush of power and then a bright flash. Nothing touched him but a recoiling breeze. Veleur stopped short. Archer sprawled flailing at his feet, but the elf just stepped over him and continued forward. He knelt, peering into Peter’s eyes, and very tentatively grasped him by the shoulder.
“Peter?”
He still could not move, and the impulse to even try was fading below a numb complacency. He felt someone, something looking after him and protecting him. It was like a warm hand hovering over him.
“Peter, look at me, say something.” Veleur shook him gently. He hardly moved, but Veleur pulled back his hand as if stung. Archer scrambled to his feet, but before he got much closer Veleur spun to confront him.
“What have you done?” Veleur shouted. There was a most uncharacteristic panic in his voice.
“Nothing! Did you see what he did to me?”
Peter saw nothing more than their blurred forms at the edge of his vision. There was a sound of scuffling.
“If I ever see you put your hands on him ...” Veleur hissed.
Wolfy arrived and wrenched the two apart, but Peter’s eyes were becoming dry and fogged. As vision gave way to vague shadows, he heard Mary Rosalina’s small, dry voice with perfect clarity.
“I think he can hear us now.”
Mary Helena’s booming voice broke in. “You have to take us with you, Peter. You’ll be going soon, and it’s very important that we are there.”
“We are going to have to possess you, son,” said Mary Clare in her more rounded tones. “You’ll hardly know we are there.”
As much as he struggled, Peter wasn’t able to articulate any reply. Where was he going? How did they know? Why did he need to take the Marys?
“We’ll look after you, Peter,” Mary Rosalina said. “We will be with you, but there is something stopping you from seeing us properly. It should be easier once we are with you.”
He started to feel very cold. The chill set in over his heart and then hardened and began to spread in creaking lines out across his body.
“Are you sure, sisters?” Mary Clare asked. “There is a barrier here; it fights us.”
“We must be there,” Mary Rosalina insisted.
“We must be there at the end,” Mary Helena replied. “If there is to be any hope.”
He was shocked by a sudden jerk and blinked to find Archer’s face close against his. The cold sensation started to ebb, and the very air seemed to be sucked from his lungs. He could feel something coiling in the air around him. There was a flash of fur, and a shriek cut the air.
For the first time, Peter felt entirely in control of himself again. He stood, albeit unsteadily. Archer was pushed back from him again, but this time under the weight of a pack of baying spectral hounds. The dogs seemed to leap, one after the other, straight out of Peter’s own che
st. There were seven of them total, each exiting with a distinct jolt. Only the fading edge of disorientation kept him from panicking.
The dogs leapt through the air and rebounded off Archer’s chest with palpable force. As they leapt back into the air, they faded away, except for the last, which landed lithely upon the ground and rounded upon Archer again with a mean look in her blue eyes. She wasn’t a particularly large hound, somewhat larger than a whippet and similarly built. She was white all over but for her drooping red-brown ears. There was a look in her eyes that was old and wise, and Peter had a strange feeling the spirits of the nuns were no longer in the old pale, but had taken on a rather more ambulatory form.
The others were all there. Roman ran to Archer’s side while Wolfy and Bear watched without interfering. Giffen, as usual, seemed vaguely amused, as if everybody was there just for his entertainment.
“I told you!” Archer shouted. “He is one of them! He is already trained. He is a spy for the League!”
Roman held him back, searching the young man for any sign of injury, but it was clear to see that only Archer’s pride had been harmed. And his temper hadn’t improved any.
“Some of your ghosts?” Giffen asked mildly. His aplomb seemed to pour oil on the turbulent mood.
“Gabriel hounds,” Peter said quietly. The remaining dog stayed stubbornly corporeal, trotted to his side, and sat.
It was definitely a Gabriel hound, creatures described in some of the ephemeral scriptures as white, with red ears and bell-like voices. There was one for each cardinal sin, and the angel Gabriel used them to hunt down sinners and drag them to hell. Of course, they weren’t real, just a myth given flesh, like many of the apocryphal saints and the million and one fragments of the true cross. They made for a nice painting, but it was rather unnerving to have one burst from your chest.
The hound lay down at his feet, looking entirely pleased with herself. Archer struggled, pointing to Peter. “We can’t let this ...”
When he took one step forward, the hound growled low, like metal scraping upon stone. The resulting silence was broken by Giffen.
“We will all go back to the house now,” he said. “And this time ’round you will all shut up and listen for a change. I have a few things to say.”
Oh, good, Peter thought as he sank to his knees, somebody else with something to say. I wonder when they might get around to listening to me. He felt Veleur’s slim arms catch him, and the dog didn’t make a sound about that.
Chapter Eight
Peter felt immensely tired. He didn’t sit down because he knew the moment he did, he would be asleep. But the ground never seemed to be quite where he expected it, and his footsteps faltered as he tried to regain his balance. Veleur hovered next to him uncertainly.
Bear sat on the sofa, looking at the white dog. There was also a lot of talking going on, but Peter wasn’t really following it. He heard Giffen cut through it all as he pointed to Wolfy. “Sit.”
Then to Archer and Roman: “Sit.”
And then to Veleur: “Get him to sit down before he falls down.”
Peter slumped onto the sofa. His eyes immediately drooped closed, and his head came to rest on Veleur’s shoulder.
He could hear Archer’s sulky voice from the far corner of the room. “You’re saying that wasn’t him. Look at him.”
“It went through him,” Veleur said. “But it wasn’t him. Couldn’t you see that? Something came out of the ground -- or not the ground, but the fence ... somehow. Then it went into the dog.”
“You’re insane, man,” Archer insisted. “Something came out of the fence and turned into a dog.”
“It isn’t a dog,” Bear added vaguely.
“What the hell is going on here?” Wolfy snapped.
“I have a novel idea,” Giffen said. Peter wrestled his eyelids open to see Giffen standing at the centre of the room. “Let’s try asking Peter.”
Brilliant. Finally everyone is here and listening, and I can’t even focus my eyes.
Veleur was tense against his side. “It was Mary Helena and the others. They were bound in the pale like ...”
Then it snapped into place. The ‘binding of Antonius’ made a barrier by fixing the willing spirit of the dead into a structure of the earth.
“... Like Patrick made the wards of Eire. It was the last thing he did; it had to be, because he is part of it,” Peter said.
Archer began, “There’s no such thing as ...”
“Ghosts, yes. Well, this isn’t exactly being a ghost. It’s about impressing your will upon something. Making a pattern that repeats and recreates itself across time so that it never fades away.” Peter leaned forward, his head clearing somewhat. “But the Marys could separate themselves from the pale ...”
His thoughts were going off in too many directions. If the spirit could be separated from the binding, then the binding could be destroyed. But the Marys said they had to come with him because ...
He looked over to the dog, which Bear was still regarding.
Bear noticed the silence and looked up. “This creature is made out of Peter’s potential as an earth host; it is given substance and maintained by drawing upon his strength. I am not entirely sure that is safe, for either of them.”
“Either of them?” Wolfy asked.
“The dog is an intelligent entity of some sort. If I had to guess, I would say it is some kind of spirit.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” Archer muttered. “So now we have two unknown ‘entities’ inside the house, doing Gods know what.”
“Enough,” Roman said firmly. “It is clear to me that nobody knows what to make of Peter, including Peter himself.”
“The League have some idea,” Peter added. “They contacted me once I was here, after leaving me alone ever since I left them. They wanted me to be here. I can only guess their reason or how long they planned it.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Did they just see the opportunity when I left? Did they contrive that I be left alone with Veleur in the first place ...?” Had they, in fact, been behind many events in his life as far back as his adoption, or earlier?
“Why would they want you here?” Bear said. “How could they predict it? They could not know Veleur was your partner. There is no way a person’s destined partner can be predicted or located except by fate.”
“Or chance,” added Giffen.
“I don’t know what the League knows. I was never one of them, but I suspect there is something here that they want. My best guess is that there is something here, probably something from the library of the historian Merrin -- part of her investigations into religious magic.”
“Christian occultism is a joke,” Roman dismissed. “Merrin was a brilliant woman, but she wasted her efforts on such nonsense.”
“Christian magic is what Saint Patrick performed on Ireland,” Peter persisted. It was becoming clear that almost everyone in the Society had something of a blind spot when it came to how best to oppose the work of Patrick. You simply couldn’t fight something without understanding how and why it was built. Blind hate wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
Roman sniffed. “Patrick hit on something more by chance than desire. It was a fluke. The Christian philosophy simply does not lend itself to direct working of magic.”
“I rather suspect you are falling afoul of a doctrine there,” Peter said with open irony. “Why should magic skills differ from all others, favouring one faith or creed? Or do your gods deliver them straight into your hands as a chosen people?”
“Perhaps in a way they do, and you really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Peter leaned his head back against the sofa and regarded Roman, so upright and stern-looking in his dark, tailored suit. There was something unyielding about the man who looked down on Peter in more ways than one. Roman glared at him, and Archer scowled by his side like a protective mastiff. Giffen had one hand held near his mouth as if physically holding back from speaking.
“Feeling y
ou are one of a special few is always a dangerous path to take,” Peter said.
“You sanctimonious --” Roman began.
Giffen raised one hand. “I think Peter’s idea about the books has merit. What do you think, Bear, Wolfy?”
Bear stood. “It is worth looking into, but Peter’s state with regards to his magic is a more urgent issue. This apparition is drawing on him. He burns with excess fire, but that will soon be exhausted.”
“He was separated from his partner very soon after his powers were fully awakened,” Giffen said tersely. “Which made the awakening late and, well, says something about the nature of the bond. Normally I would seek some answer in my sight, but star by star, the light has gone out. The destiny that is being hidden from me is very close upon us. What little time we had has been largely squandered.”
“And so what would you have done?” Wolfy snapped, her golden eyes flashing.
Giffen pointed at her. “I would have looked to the safety of my own home before seeking to help others. Tania would have understood if you had spoken to her of what was happening here, and there are others she could have called.” He pointed to Veleur. “Having the fortune to find my partner, I would have stayed with him and believed in him, no matter what the rest of the world said.” Turning to Bear: “As the one Tania meant to take the lead in this house, I would have made my position clear, made a decision, and not left the situation drifting, as you have.”
“Who died and made you queen?” Archer grumbled.
Giffen turned to Roman. “Put a muzzle on him. There will be no more violence on these grounds.”
“Giffen is right,” Bear said. “Tania meant well, but I am not the right person to be in charge; it goes against my nature. I have let myself be swayed by those who spoke loudest, not those who made the most sense. It is Giffen we should listen to here.”
Maewyn's Prophecy: Pilgrim Heart Page 7