Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  She and Jakyr had finally come to open quarreling. Last night they’d actually started shouting at each other. Lita had taken exception to Jakyr harnessing up the vanner and cutting the path to the cleft with him. Lita seemed to think that only she had enough experience with the vanners to do such a thing, even though Jakyr had clearly known exactly what he was doing, and the vanner had returned to the stabling frisky and in fine fettle.

  It seemed that Lita was angrier than ever. He must have missed something while he’d been sifting dirt.

  “What’s going on?” Mags whispered to Amily, who was assiduously working on mending some of Dallen’s barding where the stitches had broken. He settled down next to her, enjoying the feel of the fire on his front instead of his back.

  “This time Jakyr is in the wrong, and he won’t admit it,” Amily whispered back. “The vanner is a little lame this morning. It isn’t bad, and Bear thinks he’ll be fine in a couple of days, with poultices, but it turns out the plow is supposed to be pulled by two horses, not one. The vanner probably didn’t notice he’d pulled his hock muscles until they stiffened up overnight, he was so glad to get out into the sunshine. Now Jakyr won’t admit that he was wrong for using only one horse, wrong for not checking him periodically as they plowed, and wrong for just rubbing him down and blanketing him instead of checking all four legs for pulled muscles before he left the horse alone. If the leg had been properly wrapped and poulticed, the horse wouldn’t be lame today.”

  “And Lita is gonna glare at him until he apologizes.” Mags nodded. “Well, I didn’t find much, but it was pretty spooky back in that cave. I kept feelin’ like someone was watchin’ me.”

  Amily’s eyes widened a little. “I was exploring those sleeping tunnels, and I felt the same!” she exclaimed, this time loudly enough that Lita looked up. “I even thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye! I—I usually don’t get feelings like that. Is there something about these caves, do you think?”

  “Well, lots of people died here,” Mags said, repeating his own earlier thought. “Lots of ’em were people the bandits were holdin’ prisoner. I dunno, you’d’a thought if anyplace’d be haunted, the mines I worked would’a been, and I never actually felt or saw anything there but . . .”

  “But ghosts are supposed to be the spirits of people who have unfinished business, things unresolved,” Amily put in, her brows creasing. “If I had died working in that mine, I wouldn’t be able to get away from it fast enough, but the people the bandits killed—maybe they didn’t feel that way.”

  “Or maybe they did, and it’s just weird shadows and echoey sounds and us having nerves on edge cause Lita and Jakyr can’t stop pickin’ at each other,” he countered, pitching his voice low again, since she was starting to look a little frightened.

  “Mags!” called Lita at that moment. “Come over here where the light is good and look at this.”

  Obediently, he got up and moved over to the warm place near the kitchen stove, where Lita had set up her favorite lantern, one that used some clever glass balls to magnify the amount of light the candle put out. Lita was holding one of the stone bits he’d found into the light. She’d been rubbing the dirt away with a moistened cloth and had finally gotten it clean. “Does this look familiar to you?” She held it flat on the palm of her hand so he could see it clearly.

  He stared at it in astonishment. He hadn’t thought anything of finding what looked like a dirt-caked agate pendant, because it was smaller than the piece he remembered all too well. But now that he saw it clean, he realized this was a miniature version of the amulets that his kidnappers, and the men who had taken Amily, had all worn around their necks. Amulets that he knew had some sort of nasty spirit in them, one that could completely take over a person. One that could kill!

  He wanted to shout at Lita and slap the thing out of her hands—but Dallen and Jermayan were still dozing quietly in the corner, and hadn’t reacted to it, and he himself wasn’t feeling the angry, sullen presence he had always sensed around those talismans. So though it looked the same, maybe it wasn’t the same. Cautiously he touched it with one finger.

  It was only stone. There was no presence, no spirit. There was, however, a crack running right through it. Maybe when it was broken, whatever had been in it had gotten out.

  “It looks exactly like the things Levor and Kan-Li had around their necks,” he said, furrowing his brows. “The men that kidnapped Amily had them, too. There was something bad in those, but—” he shook his head. “I can’t feel anything from this. It’s just a stone.”

  “I thought it looked like the ones we took from those corpses,” Lita replied. “I didn’t get a real good look at them, because they got whisked away for the Archivists to try to match up with drawings in the records. You say this one is dead, though? You’re sure?”

  :Dallen?: he called, instead of answering.

  :I’m following. It’s just a bit of agate. Nothing special about it except that it is rather pretty, and the carving is exceptionally well executed.:

  “Dallen says it’s harmless,” he reported.

  “It’s a very handsome piece, and the carving is exceptional,” mused Lita, echoing Dallen’s words. “If this is a piece from the hands of your blood relatives, they are remarkable craftsmen.”

  “Well, I wish they’d use that skill for somethin’ else,” he said dryly.

  “I’d like it eventually if you don’t want it,” Lita told him, “But I think you should keep it for now. It might unlock some more memories for you.”

  She handed it and a bit of cloth to him; he wrapped it in the cloth and thrust it in a pocket. She might be right, but he wanted to be absolutely certain that what seemed inert wasn’t actually sleeping before he mucked about with it. Or that it wasn’t going to form some sort of channel that a bad spirit could come through.

  On the other hand, the only way this piece could have come here was through his parents. So at long last, he really, truly, had something of theirs.

  “I can understand if you decide you want to keep it,” Lita continued, and smiled at him. “It’s the first thing you’ve ever gotten that was from your parents. If you only want to lend it to me so I can have it copied, that would be fine.”

  “Aye,” he said, slowly. “I think that’s what I’d like to do.”

  “Can I see that?” Jakyr had come up behind him while they spoke. Lita frowned fiercely and looked as if she would like to tell him to go away, but Mags handed him the bit of agate. Jakyr turned it this way and that, studying it. “I can copy it now, if you like. The carving, at least. I’ll do some rubbings and some wet-paper pouncings. That would be quite clear, and it would be easy for you to study. If that is acceptable.”

  He spoke stiffly, as if there were something behind his words that he was absolutely adamant about not saying aloud. Lita eyed him and slowly lifted an eyebrow. Mags was afraid she was going to say something sharp, but instead she said “That would be most helpful, thank you.”

  “Mags?” Jakyr asked.

  Mags shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  The Herald took the bit of stone off to the van, where most of the supplies for writing were kept. Mags tilted his head to one side and gave Lita an inquiring look. She was twisting a strand of hair around one finger.

  “Well,” she said, finally, “stiff-necked bastard that he is, that’s the closest I’m going to get to an apology from him, so I expect I had better take it.”

  • • •

  “...and I coulda sworn someone was watching me,” Mags concluded, as they all dined on smoked-venison soup and flatbread. “I ain’t never gotten that kinda feeling afore, except way back when . . . when that half-crazed assassin turned up in the blizzard, only we didn’t know he was at the Collegium at all. And when there was something just watching me, down at the pawnshop. But the thing at the pawnshop never moved from where it was, and this moves all the time. Sometimes it’s there when I’m alone in the back caves here, and sometimes it’s over
at the treasury cave.”

  “It might be just that you associated the blizzard with a feeling of being watched, so since there’s a blizzard, you feel like you’re being watched,” Lita said reasonably. Then she frowned. “Except . . .”

  “Except what?” Mags asked, sharply.

  “Except I’ve gotten that feeling myself, recently,” she admitted reluctantly. “Under the same circumstances, when I am alone in the back caves. I almost wish now that talisman you found did have some trace of a spirit in it, because then I could put it all down to the presence of that.”

  “Well, it’s not just like the feeling I had at the Collegium,” Mags amended. “None of them talisman spirits liked me. At all. This don’t give me any feeling of bein’ hated. Just . . . watchin’.”

  “Well . . .” Bear flushed a little. “Make that me, too. Only when I’m alone. I just put it down to that I’d rather not be living in a cave. But . . . aye. Never when we’re out of here, only when we’re in here. It’s been going on for a while for me, since before the snow—more than once when I was walking around in the valley getting some air. And one night before the snow came, I could have sworn I saw someone off across the valley when I went out for a good look at the moon to reckon the phase. But I figured it was just a trick of the shadows. It was night, it was dark, and it was over near one of those little groves.”

  Jakyr sighed. For a moment, Mags was dead certain he was going to scoff at all of them. “Much as I hate to add my name to the company of the haunted, I’ve been getting the same skin-crawling, someone-is-watching feeling myself. Only when alone. And just about every time I have been alone, whether it was in the caves or in the valley. Jermayan says he can’t sense anything and hasn’t smelled anything, and never have I wished so much for a good hound in my life.”

  :I have nothing for you,: said Dallen. :I have noticed you get that sensation when you are alone. You are never somewhere I can come. Perhaps it is a spirit.:

  “Dallen says the same,” he reported. “I dunno what to say. Except the last time I got the feeling watched feeling without any nastiness attached, remember, I ended up getting kidnapped.”

  Jakyr chewed that over. “I fail to see what anyone would want with all six of us, nor how they would manage to hold us without an army, nor how they would get us out of a snowbound valley at all, but I’ll take that under advisement,” he replied. “So everyone be cautious.” He glanced at Mags. “I’d like to ask you not to go to that treasure cave, but that doesn’t seem fair, and it isn’t as if Dallen couldn’t get to you in a heartbeat if something happened.”

  “The time I got kidnapped, though,” Mags added, “The feeling was always in the same place. Like there was some kinda invisible eye over me. An’ this—it’s all over, like I said. And it ain’t just me.”

  “Forewarned is forearmed,” Jakyr said. “And speaking of which—until this goes away or we figure out what it is, everyone go armed.”

  Mags had no argument with that. “Yessir,” he said, as the others nodded.

  • • •

  As if talking about it had dispelled the watcher, the next morning Mags went out to the “treasury” cave and felt absolutely nothing, even though he had the talisman—if that was what it was—in his pocket.

  He went back to sifting through the dirt, wondering if there really was a watcher, and now it was gone, if it had understood it was being talked about and decided to withdraw, if it was some sort of haunt and only needed to be acknowledged—

  —or if it had never existed in the first place, and was the product of people with a great deal of imagination and nerves on edge from being confined so closely together.

  On the other hand, maybe the point had been for him to find that talisman in the first place. It might have been the spirit of one or another of his parents, wanting him to find this little piece of his heritage. Why not? Spirits never lingered unless they wanted something. Maybe as long as the bit of stone had remained lost, they couldn’t rest, but now that he had it, they were ready to go on to whatever reward they were bound for.

  And maybe I can come up with about a hundred stories if I keep thinking about it, he admitted to himself. That was the danger of having too good an imagination. He could all too easily remember all the horror stories he had told himself about devils and monsters in the mine, ready to take him away. Even now, those memories made him shiver.

  And that was when a blast of frigid air from the cave mouth nearly blew out the fire and knocked him off balance.

  He jumped to his feet, but that was no inimical spirit that was screaming around the mouth of the cave. That was a very real and very bitter wind, and it was driving ice and snow right in here, past the turning of the tunnel and deep into the cave.

  His first thought was to fight his way back to the living cave. But Dallen stopped him in his tracks before he got more than two paces toward the door.

  :Don’t. This is worse than the last storm; this time the hills aren’t protecting the valley. Jakyr just went to the mouth of our cave with Jermayan; the wind nearly bowled him over, and it’s completely white out there. You can’t see a thing. You’d be lost in a moment.:

  As if to underscore that, another blast of icy air slammed into the treasury cave, bringing with it a thick skein of snow.

  :All right. I’m gonna go in deeper, the wind’s getting me here. Looks like it’s a damn good thing Amily talked me into bringing stuff with me.:

  He moved the fire, first thing; he got a pot and gathered as much of the wood and coals as he could from the struggling blaze. Then he picked up the lantern and moved on, going far into a twisting passage that effectively foiled the wind, to a place where the air grew warmer, warm compared to a cave’s usual temperature. Looking around, it seemed he had found what might have been the bandit chief’s own “quarters.” It was a wider spot in the tunnel. There was a blackened spot on the floor that showed where fires had been built before, and there were four of the sleeping nooks spaced around the walls.

  This was as good a spot to set up as any, and better than out where he had planned on camping. He left the pot on the blackened spot and dragged the rest of the pots in their box down to set beside it. He moved all of the firewood that would fit into one of the “sleeping nooks,” then brought the hay and blankets down to build himself a bed in another, and gradually got things roughly arranged into a comfortable living space. He tried to ignore the fact that there was yet more unexplored passage beyond this, though the dark tunnel did bother him a bit. He didn’t much like being exposed on two sides, even though one of those sides was now pretty effectively blocked by the king of all blizzards.

  Once he was set up, he’d dumped out the pot of coals and gotten a respectable fire going; then he ventured down that unexplored passage a bit farther. It narrowed, then widened again, and a sort of small side cave budded off it. There he was rewarded by a single-hole latrine nook. And this one had a basin that was served by a trickle of water from the rock above, a tiny spring, perhaps coming from the source of their water in the living cave. He tasted it cautiously, and it seemed sweet and good. So he wouldn’t have to melt snow for water.

  That’s an improvement, he thought dryly. All the comforts of home.

  There was still more passage beyond the latrine, but at the moment, he was disinclined to go farther. He had a lot to do.

  When everything was set up, his fire was warming the small space pretty well, and he had done all that he could, he surveyed the space that was going to be his home for the next couple of days with resignation. He was going to get rather tired of meat and vegetable pies . . . but there were worse things to have had with him. These would be easy to heat on a rock at the side of his fire. He could make hot tea. He had a book. It wasn’t a total disaster.

  And I ain’t gonna be there if Lita and Jakyr go at each other again, he reminded himself. That . . . that might be worth a couple days of samey-same food an’ no Amily.

  At least the feeling of b
eing watched was still gone.

  Maybe it don’t like snow any more than I do.

  • • •

  He woke to tend his fire—he knew he would have to be very careful with the fire in such a confined space. He was sleeping on very flammable hay, after all. One jumping coal and he would awaken in a very bad situation. He also was the only one here, and if he let the fire go out, he’d have to get it started again with a firestriker in the black dark. Then he went back to sleep.

  He woke a second time. He could still hear the wind howling, faint and far, raging at the entrance. He poked at Dallen and got the equivalent of a sleepy grunt, so evidently everyone else was sleeping too. He made himself a cup of tea and went back to sleep again.

  The third time he woke, he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep again, so he ventured back toward the front of the cave, wrapped tightly in his cloak. There was some pale light reflecting off the back wall of the cave ahead, so he knew it must be daylight. But the wind was still raging out there, and Dallen didn’t give him any indication that he should try to fight his way back, so he went back to his warmer den, already feeling chilled.

  More tea, a sketchy attempt at cleaning himself up, a meat pie, and he was left contemplating several hours of wakefulness and nothing much to fill them with. If it hadn’t been so cold in the treasury cave, he might have gone back to sifting through the sand for more fragments, but that wind would cut you to the bone, even that far inside the cave entrance. He deeply pitied anyone who had been caught out in that and hoped no one had. He was not tempted to use his Gift to try to find out, for what could he do to help anyone he found?

  As he sat back down in his bed nest, he felt something in his pocket poke at his leg. The talisman, of course. He wondered if Lita had been right, if it could help him unlock more of those memories.

  :I don’t see any harm in you trying,: Dallen said in unprompted response to the thought. :I’ll guard you from here from anything nasty you wake up, assuming that you do. You really aren’t any farther away from me than if you were in your stable room and I was out in the Field.: