The Master of Heathcrest Hall

by Galen Beckett

  Fortunately, the parish where he had been living with his cousin was to the southeast, and not behind the lines of war. Yet approaching the city was no simple task given all the soldiers on the roads. The last thing Dercy wanted was to be caught and taken before a witch-hunter, so he had used illusions to keep himself concealed as he traveled. Of course, this meant he had to go on foot rather than by horseback, which meant the journey took several days.

  “But you’re not supposed to be doing illusions anymore,” Eldyn interrupted him. “You said you had broken the habit. Yet now you say you used illusions to get into the city. I saw you conjure another back there, when you pulled down that curtain of darkness.”

  “And a good thing he did, too,” Coulten said, probing his frizzy crown. “I think my hair was parted by one of those bullets. If the soldiers had gotten a clearer view, I don’t believe I’d be here now.”

  “It’s all right,” Dercy said, meeting Eldyn’s eyes. “I won’t ever be conjuring phantasms for amusement anymore—for my own or anyone else’s—but I have enough light to spare for a few illusions when needed. I’ll tell you about that later. For the moment, suffice it to say that a well-timed phantasm or two helped me slip through a gate and into the city.”

  Once inside the walls, Dercy proceeded to the Theater of the Moon, and there learned that Eldyn had gone missing. That was when he checked the broadsheets and saw Eldyn’s name.

  “I didn’t tell the others about it,” Dercy said with a sigh. “Riethe in particular would have gone lumbering like a bull into Barrowgate to save you, and would have gotten himself captured in the process. But there’s one person at the theater who has some wits, and that’s Lily Lockwell. I was astonished to find her there, but very glad as well. She knew I was intending to look for you, and she told me I should seek out someone she knew—a magician—to see if he could help me.”

  “Rafferdy,” Eldyn said, amazed at Lily’s good sense. “She told you to go find Lord Rafferdy.”

  Dercy nodded. “So she did. But when I slipped into his house in Warwent Square, I didn’t find your friend there. Instead, I found these two.” He nodded toward the magicians across the bench.

  “And quite a start you gave us when you appeared out of the shadows like that,” Coulten said with a somewhat nervous laugh.

  “Sorry about that,” Dercy said with a smirk that indicated he wasn’t sorry in the least. He looked back at Eldyn. “I heard them formulating a plan to rescue you from the gibbet, so I revealed myself to them, and told them I was going to help whether they wanted me to or not. Though I suppose it’s they who helped me, really. I’m not certain how I would have freed you without that trick of theirs.”

  “And I’m not certain we would have escaped without your trick,” Wolsted replied, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Well, I’m very glad for all of you,” Eldyn said. He lifted a hand to his neck, which was sore where the noose had chafed it. “But, while I do not wish to sound ungrateful in any way, I am puzzled why Coulten and Wolsted here should have given one whit about my fate when we have no connection.”

  “Ah, but we do have a connection!” Coulten exclaimed happily. “You are a friend of Lord Rafferdy’s, correct? Well, we are also companions of his.”

  As the carriage raced through the city, Coulten explained how he and Wolsted had been hiding themselves at Rafferdy’s house on Warwent Square ever since Invarel was closed, for they had been unable to pass beyond the wall of the Old City to reach their own abodes in the New Quarter. Just yesterday, someone had slipped a letter under the door of the house. Presuming it to be some urgent missive for Rafferdy, they decided to read it, thinking they could pass along its contents to him by means of their black books—devices, they explained, which allowed them to communicate over long distances.

  Only upon reading the missive, they knew they would have to act on it themselves. The letter said it was imperative that one Mr. Eldyn Garritt, who was an acquaintance of Lord Rafferdy, be rescued before he could be hanged at Barrowgate the following day.

  “But who was the letter from?” Eldyn asked, amazed by this.

  Coulten shook his head. “I’m afraid we don’t know. It wasn’t signed, and there was no address. Yet we decided we had better act upon it.”

  Eldyn found this all very remarkable. “I am flattered to know I have been the subject of concern by such a mysterious personage,” he said. “Yet I confess, I hardly know why I am so important as to warrant such attention.”

  Wolsted cleared his throat. “Meaning no offense to you, Mr. Garritt, but I believe it isn’t necessarily you yourself which is of such great import. Rather, the letter referred to something in your possession. Namely, a key.”

  Eldyn could only frown. “A key?”

  “Yes, a key that opens a particular door located within the house of Sir and Lady Quent on East Durrow Street.”

  All at once Eldyn understood. They could only be referring to the wooden leaf that Rafferdy had given him for safekeeping—the object that unlocked the door through which Lady Quent had passed to a place that was not upon this world at all, but rather on the moon of another. Quickly, he explained these things to the others. Dercy’s eyes grew large as he did, while Coulten clapped his hands.

  “That must be it!” he said. “But do you have the key with you?”

  “No, it is in my room at the Theater of the Moon, on West Durrow Street.”

  “Then let us go there at once to retrieve it, and then proceed with all haste to the house of the Quents.”

  Eldyn pressed a hand to his brow, trying to make sense of all this. “But why is it so urgent that we do this? Why do we even need to open that door in the first place?”

  “Because,” Coulten said, his expression growing solemn, “if we do not unlock the door this very morning, then Lord Rafferdy will not be able to come through it. For the letter told us to send him a message, telling him to find a way through the door.”

  Rafferdy? But why would he be coming through the door? None of this made any sense; his head was filled with a fog of confusion.

  Well, he would simply have to believe that whoever had written that letter knew what he was doing. After all, it was because of this mysterious person that Eldyn wasn’t presently hanging from a rope in Barrowgate. He turned to look at Dercy beside him.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “These two helped us greatly today, so I think the least we can do is return the favor.” He grinned, his green eyes sparkling. “Come on, let’s go get this key for these fine magicians.”

  Eldyn grinned in return, while at the same time Coulten leaned out the window of the carriage.

  “To the Theater of the Moon!” he called to the driver. “And hurry!”

  AT LAST the morning fog lifted, and warm sunlight shone down upon the grove of Wyrdwood as the trees drooped and fell still.

  Rafferdy slumped to his knees beside the mossy stone wall. His arms ached from raising them above his head for so long, and his tongue was as dry and cracked as the leather of his boots from speaking runes of magick over and over again. He could not stop shaking.

  That he was alive was a cause for wonder. He had watched as the black branches bent down to grasp Lieutenant Beckwith and drew his lifeless body over the wall, into the grove. Rafferdy nearly suffered the same fate a moment later. More branches had cracked like whips, wrapping themselves around him, and lifting him up. He had felt his boots leave the ground.

  Had the trees managed to take him over the wall and into the grove, he surely would have perished like Beckwith and Hendry. Fortunately, though the branches tangled around his limbs, they had not covered his mouth, and he was able to call out several runes of protection. His House ring had flared, and blue lines of power snaked and sizzled along the branches. As if paralyzed by this shock, the trees released him, and he had fallen hard to the ground at the foot of the stone wall.

  Quickly, the branches had begun to reach out again, c
reaking and groaning as they bent over the top of the wall, straining to reach him. But by then he had managed to use the heel of his boot to draw a rough circle in the moist turf, and he was uttering a torrent of arcane words in an endless incantation. Time and again the branches reached for him, and time and again they recoiled as blue sparks hissed around them.

  How long he had maintained the circle of protection after that, fending off the fury of the trees, he was not certain. Hours, he supposed. Whatever the duration of the ordeal, he doubted he could have maintained his efforts much longer. And even if he had, it would have done him no good; for only now did he see that the wall was riddled with cracks, and here and there stones protruded outward. Clearly root and limb had been attempting to break through the wall to reach him.

  Only they hadn’t. And now, in the daylight, the trees finally drowsed as the power of Gauldren’s ancient spell, the Quelling, did its work.

  Leaning upon the wall, Rafferdy slowly gained his feet. For a minute he stood there, steadying himself. Then he turned around and, for the first time since the trees assailed him, looked down the slope to the foot of the hill, to the place where his men had been scrambling to make some sort of stand against the approaching company of Valhaine’s soldiers. He saw no lines of soldiers, no clouds of smoke from the barrels of rifles. Here and there he could make out a brown shape sprawled upon the trampled grass, but not nearly enough to account for all of the men who had been in his company. That was good. It meant that at least some of them had survived.

  Unlike Lieutenant Beckwith or Corporal Hendry. Damn the lieutenant! Had Beckwith not been so impatient to retrieve the supplies—and had he not then rashly shot the witch—both he and Hendry might yet be alive. What was more, Rafferdy could have run down the hill to shout orders and arrange his men in a proper defense against Valhaine’s soldiers.

  Except Rafferdy knew it was not Beckwith he should be damning, but rather himself. He was the one who had allowed Beckwith and Hendry to ride ahead. He was the one who had failed to realize the enemy soldiers had indeed turned to pursue them, bolstering their numbers along the way. Rafferdy had started to let himself think he really was something of a soldier. Now he saw what that conceit had cost them.

  Turning his back to the Wyrdwood, he stumbled his way down the slope to the base of the hill. He came upon a young man in a brown coat lying facedown in the grass. It was one of his own men. One by one, Rafferdy went to the other bodies scattered around. There were eleven in all, most of them wearing brown coats, but a few in blue.

  He turned around in the center of the battlefield, shading his eyes with a hand, trying to understand what had happened. Valhaine’s soldiers had surely had the upper hand. They had outnumbered Rafferdy’s company, and they had the element of surprise. The rebel soldiers might have retreated up the hill to gain higher ground, but there were no bootprints in the moist grass to indicate they had done so.

  Yet that could only be expected. The men would never have retreated up the hill, not with the trees at its summit thrashing to and fro in what anyone could have recognized was a Rising. Which meant the rebels had been trapped between the approaching soldiers and the furious Wyrdwood. They should have been slaughtered.

  But they weren’t, and as Rafferdy continued to survey the scene, the reason became evident. By the impressions of boots and hooves left in the soft dirt of the road, it was apparent that Valhaine’s men had never finished closing the distance to the rebel company. Instead, they had turned around and gone back the direction they had come. It could only mean one thing.

  They had run away from the Rising.

  That Valhaine’s men would turn their backs to an enemy and flee down the road astonished Rafferdy. But after all the stories that had been circulated about the Risings in Torland, and about the way Morden’s forces had made alliances with witches, Valhaine’s men must have feared the rebels were going to use the Wyrdwood against them. Faced with such a terrible prospect, they had turned and fled.

  For their part, the men of Rafferdy’s company had been no less afraid of the thrashing of the Wyrdwood. From the manner in which the mud of the road was churned, it was obvious they had rapidly departed the scene as well, making off in the direction of Pellendry-on-Anbyrn, as had been their original plan.

  Amid this disaster, that was one bit of excellent news. The company could not be very far ahead of him—hours at most—which meant if Rafferdy hurried he would be able to catch up to them before they reached Pellendry. He might have a chance after all to make up for his errors, and to help his men survive what battles lay ahead.

  Despite his urgent wish to catch up with the remainder of his company, Rafferdy took a while to see to the bodies of those who had fallen. He did not have the time to bury them, but he could make sure they were arranged with some degree of respect. Thus he dragged them into a line, shoulder to shoulder, and put each man’s hands upon his rifle. Each soldier still had his bedroll on his back, and Rafferdy used these to cover the bodies, for he was cognizant of the crows circling overhead. He paid the same courtesy to the enemy soldiers who had fallen, though he left them where they lay.

  Once he had finished this grisly task, he wiped the sweat from his brow and began his march east down the road. It was his hope he might see his horse wandering about in the aftermath of the battle, and with it under him make better time.

  After only a few dozen steps his hope in this regard was at once realized and dashed, for he saw a large gray shape lying off to the side of the road. It was his horse. By its bent and bloodied foreleg and the bullet hole in its skull, Rafferdy could deduce the manner of its death. With no rider at the reins, it had broken its picket line and had run away from the dual terrors of the battle and the Rising. Only in its mad flight, it had broken its leg and foundered. As they marched from the scene, Rafferdy’s men must have come upon it, and shot the beast to put it out of its misery as they passed.

  Rafferdy sighed as he knelt beside the fallen horse, and he stroked its neck. Well, at least there was some small good to be gained from this ill, for Rafferdy’s pack was still tied to the horse’s saddle. He opened it to retrieve only the things that were most precious to him, for he needed to remain unburdened so as to travel swiftly.

  Thus it was he took his cup and his knife, and extra bullets and caps for his pistol. He took the onyx box as well, which still felt strangely hot within its wrappings, and put it in his coat pocket. Finally, he dug into the depths of his pack, then pulled out his black magician’s book.

  The book gave a jerk, leaping out of his hands.

  Rafferdy stared at the black book. It gave another twitch upon the ground. In the past, Rafferdy had sometimes heard a rattling emanate from the drawer in the writing table in his parlor at Warwent Square. By that sound, he always knew when a message written with particular urgency had appeared upon the pages of his magician’s book.

  The book twitched again, and Rafferdy snatched it up. Hastily he spoke the runes of unlocking, then opened the book with fumbling hands. He turned past the last few messages that had appeared on the pages of the book, ones penned by Coulten and Trefnell and the other members of the Fellowship of the Silver Circle, stating that they remained in hiding and were well.

  It had been some time since these messages had appeared—so long that Rafferdy had begun to fear the others were no longer safe. But at least one of them remained free at present, for there was a new message in the book now, one that had not been there before. Then, as Rafferdy read the writing upon the page, his relief was exchanged for a concoction that was equal parts wonder and dread.

  You must discover a gate and pass through it to the way station on Arantus, the message read. Look within any stands of Wyrdwood you come upon. One of them is bound to have a gate in its midst. Your ring will lead you in the right direction. But you must make haste, for the final hour draws nigh, and she has need of you.

  Again Rafferdy read the brief message, trying to make some sense of it. Whi
ch of the magicians of the Fellowship had written it down in his black book just now, causing it to appear in all of the others’ books? And to which of them had the message been directed?

  The writing looked like Coulten’s, but those words hardly sounded like something he would say. And as for the intended recipient, Rafferdy could only think the message was directed at him. After all, none of the other magicians in the Fellowship knew about the ancient way station on Arantus. Or at least, he hadn’t thought any of them knew. But clearly, from the wording of the message, Coulten did now. Only why was Rafferdy to try to find a gate to the way station?

  He didn’t know, but his eyes fell upon those last words once more. She has need of you.…

  Like the book, his heart gave a jerk. Who else could the message be referring to? Who else was familiar with the way station? And who else was worth journeying to a distant moon to aid?

  “Mrs. Quent,” he said aloud.

  Rafferdy shut the book and stood. He turned and gazed back the way he had come, and at the thick stand of gnarled trees that crowned the hill. He knew that there were arcane gates hidden within various stands of Old Trees around Altania, just as there had been within the Evengrove. Like the way stations on Tyberion and Arantus, the gates dated to the first war against the Ashen in the distant past. Mrs. Quent had passed through such a gate to reach Heathcrest Hall. Or at least, that had been her intention upon stepping through the leaf-carved door in the house on Durrow Street.

  Now Rafferdy had to find such a gate himself. Was it possible there was one here, in this very grove? There was one way to find out.

  Your ring will lead you in the right direction.…

  Rafferdy tucked the book into his coat pocket, then dashed back along the road to the foot of the hill. Arms and legs pumping swiftly, he climbed to the top, and soon stood before the wall again. There was not a breath of wind, and the branches of the trees drooped over the top of the wall, listless in the warm brightness of day.