Delusion

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “This drains more than just Essence. It drains the other thing. That, we can keep for quite a while, held captive in the opals we all wear, the living stones.”

  “What do you mean, the other thing?”

  “We don’t name it. The soul, perhaps? The Essence is universal. It is in everything and flows in and out, continuously. This other thing, it is not universal. It is the essence of the individual. We take it, and it makes us strong, stronger than you can imagine!”

  A wave of nausea swept over him.

  “We have flocks of commoners, like sheep. The rabble who think they are in charge in Germany harvests them for us, pens them, and they are ours for the taking. Ah, wait until you experience it. I will guide you.” Her hands snaked over his body. “It is better than the act of love,” she whispered.

  Onstage, Fee had placed her head in a box, and Phil was gracefully skewering it with an ice pick, a knitting needle, and a bayonet. Such realistic blood flowed that a woman in the front row fainted. Then, above the box, Fee’s disembodied, ghostly head floated in a fresh haze of Joey’s smoke bombs, sneezed, and broke character long enough to thank the many who blessed her before speaking a few prophetic words. Then the stage went black.

  “What is more,” Hildemar said, “you can give it as a gift. Drain a commoner, my adored one. Take his life, take everything he is, and give it to me! I will save it, here”—she touched the large opal nestled in the hollow of her creamy throat—“to use against out enemies.” She was panting, and Arden saw the opal jump as she swallowed hard, salivating in anticipation.

  Arden stood in the darkness, concealed by the Fräulein’s magic but feeling as if he were trapped in a horror show, on display and under judgment.

  Then the lights snapped blindingly on, and in the glare a figure slowly resolved, luminous and pure as light itself, dressed in a silver-tinged white gown, a crown of yew berries atop the coiled braids of her hair.

  What could Arden do? He knew the Fräulein’s strength, knew if he challenged her, she could very likely kill him now, with no one being any the wiser. And not just kill him but take his life, take it for her own. He’d always been told that in death, one rejoined the Essence. What, then, if one was sucked up, eaten, then used for evil?

  He looked at Phil, strapping herself into a straitjacket, telling the volunteer from the audience to pull it tighter—tighter! Then chains, crisscrossed over her chest, and finally a slinglike harness that seemed held in place by no more than friction and the gradient between her slim waist and lush hips. Eamon and two other local swains hauled her up, hand over meaty hand, until she was ten feet up in the air, the belled skirt held mostly in place by a set of reverse garters she’d devised. They tied the rope to a ring in the wall.

  Fee slipped lightly from the wings, almost brushing Arden’s arm, but they were in the curtain’s midnight velvet folds, and even without magic, they were concealed from her. She carried a large metal plate, from which protruded a half-dozen wicked-looking steel spikes as long as her forearm, and placed it precisely under the serenely dangling Phil.

  Finally Fee crouched and lit a candle, adjusting it so the dancing flame licked the rope, sending up curling tongues of smoke. Arden forced himself to remain calm as he realized that, within only a matter of moments, the rope would be burned clear through, sending Phil plummeting down onto the deadly spikes.

  “She would do,” came the serpent voice in his ear.

  He followed her gaze to Phil. “No, that’s the descendent of Godric Albion I told you about. The Essence cannot touch her.”

  “A pity. But it can touch the rope that holds her, no? Or the candle.” A shining silver worm of Essence undulated from the Fräulein’s fingertips, and the flame jumped and burned brighter.

  “No, I won’t let you!” He grabbed her arm, expecting to be immediately smitten by her power. But she only cocked her head.

  He knew he couldn’t stop her attack, so he said, “She...desperately wants her powers back. She hates her life, now she knows what she could be, and I know if only I could find a way to restore her link to the Essence, she’d join our side.”

  “That’s the girl who struck the Kommandant. Bergen says she hates the Germans and would do anything to keep England from being conquered. We tried to have her killed, you know. It seemed like she was going to stand in our way.”

  “She would have, until she understood what she was, what she should have been, if Godric hadn’t been stripped of his power. Now it’s only commoner Germans she hates. She deserves to have her birthright restored, don’t you think?” And though it killed him to say it, he added, “And she’s half mad for Hereweald, so she’ll follow wherever he leads.”

  “Hmm. Interesting.” The flame returned to normal, but already it had eaten through a chunk of the rope.

  From above came a rattle and crash as Phil’s chains fell to earth. A cheer rose, but there was still the straitjacket to go, and as far as Arden could see, there was no trickery to it, only skill. And skill might fail.

  “So it will be another, then. Have you picked your victim...your sacrifice...your gift?”

  “I’d rather have you,” he said huskily, pulling her close so she wouldn’t see his anxious glance at Phil. The shoulders of her straitjacket were definitely looser, but he didn’t think she’d make it. Nearby Fee crouched in the wings, watching her sister intently.

  Phil had freed one long flopping straitjacket arm and dragged it wrenchingly over her shoulder. Would she make it? Arden began to hope—but no! The sling around her hips was beginning to slip!

  The Fräulein pulled herself from Arden’s embrace. “Another loyal magician is always welcome. And I think you said she has a sister, too? Yet another soldier for our cause—or else a hostage for her sister’s good will. I will have to consider. Arden! Why do you look at her like that?”

  Too late, he schooled his expression. The Fräulein’s lovely face twisted cruelly, and the candle flame leaped up, consuming the rope until Phil twisted on the barest thread. Arden’s hand reached for the Fräulein’s throat, even as he began to call upon the Essence to save Phil. Before he could, a shrill whistle sounded from somewhere onstage as Phil, writhing in her struggle to free herself, was enveloped in a sudden acrid cloud of smoke, and fell . . .

  Nothing matters, Arden realized with a terrible numb descent. Nothing matters but her. Not the college. Not the Essence.

  Now nothing matters at all.

  His fingers touched the Fräulein’s throat, though he knew it meant his death. He felt dead already.

  Then the smoke cleared, and the spikes were empty: no body, no blood. Phil, borrowing a trick from Fee, had vanished.

  Whatever it takes to live, he decided, dizzy and light in the incredible new altitude of relief. I will do what I can for Rudyard, for the sake of the Essence, but now it is for her, above all. He looked fleetingly at the spiked place where Phil was so astonishingly and absolutely not, and again turned his attack into a fierce caress.

  “See how clever she is, even without the Essence, Fräulein.” he said, pretending indifference. “Won’t she do splendidly as your servant, or as a reward to one of your magicians? You say there’s such a shortage of women, and you want to keep the line as pure as possible.” He pinned her against the wall, shifting the curtain. “What a prize she’ll be to you—Godric Albion’s descendant! The one who started it all.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was deceived; she melted into him with such practiced abandon.

  “Shall we go someplace we can be alone?” he murmured, as the thunderous applause began to peter out. Phil had not yet produced herself, and the illusion hung suspended, incomplete.

  “No one can see us here,” she said, fondling him, then broke away with a sigh. “But I should go. I have things to see at Stour and must report back to Dresden almost at once, to prepare the attack. You will discover when the magicians will all be gathered in the manor, so we can strike?”

  “As soon as I can.”<
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  “And then we will rule England, together. But first—you’ve forgotten about my gift.”

  “Really, we’re both in a hurry—”

  She stiffened. “Do it at once, before I doubt your loyalty, Arden,” she said, without a trace of her erstwhile softness.

  He still needed all the details of the attack, and she’d never tell him if she had the slightest doubt. “I’ve never done it before,” he said, stalling. “Is it difficult?”

  Her smile returned, slowly, creeping like a lizard. “You’re afraid? Oh, silly boy, I forget how inexperienced you are! You’re like a virgin with his first woman, aren’t you! I will guide you. Pick one.”

  The audience should have been begging for curtain calls, standing and cheering bravo, tossing paper flowers. But only Fee stood onstage, baffled, uncertain whether to to follow her generations of training and force the show to go on, even if Phil was lying with a broken neck on the triple layer of mattresses under the hastily opened trap door set just before the mirrored image of the deadly spikes.

  “Pick one. I swear, you have never known a feeling such as this!”

  Arden closed his eyes and made his choice, reaching down from the stage wings to the first row, where frail Mrs. Abernathy sat, her eyes bright with excitement in their fringe of deep wrinkles. She was the oldest one in the village, Arden reasoned, half blind, wholly deaf, and subject to small strokes at the slightest provocation. If he must do evil, at least let it be the lesser evil. One old woman at death’s door, for hundreds of magicians.

  Fräulein Hildemar placed her hand on his arm, and he felt a part of her flow through him in a way he’d never before experienced. It was cloyingly intimate, almost unbearable. Her Essence, and as she’d said, something else, some elemental part of her, coursed into his body as he stretched out to drain Mrs. Abernathy. He felt the old woman’s Essence enter him in a hot rush, followed by a quicksilver chill as he sucked away not just her life but her very self.

  It was incredible. He felt...he felt...ah, he had no words for it except that he felt—everything! Sensation rushed at him as if for the first time, everything in its purest form. The air around him seemed abuzz with energy, colors shifted to new vibrancy, and the Essence seemed to flow into his every pore, making him preternaturally aware of every living thing near him, including, like a drink from a spring, Phil herself, near and safe and alive.

  “Now give it to me!” Hildemar breathed as the old woman’s head nodded to her breast, gently as sleep.

  Arden abandoned himself. This is not me, he thought. Only Phil can return me to myself. And if she won’t . . .

  Hildemar sighed, shuddering and ecstatic, then drew herself up, her eyes luminous. “Even an old harridan like her makes me feel a thousand times stronger. Did you taste it?” She licked her lips and touched the great opal that danced with a more vibrant fire. “Now that you have a feel for it, you can do that whenever you like. The commoners—they’re ripe fruit for your plucking.” She kissed him, and he could feel the Essence swirling in her, unnaturally vibrant, raging like a fever.

  If I had that, I could defeat you, Arden thought. He looked across the gathering, and the life forces seemed to tug at his will with a siren song.

  No, only for Phil would I do such a thing... and in so doing, I would certainly lose her.

  “To victory,” Hildemar saluted him.

  “To victory,” Arden echoed weakly as Hildemar took her leave, walking through the wall.

  Arden remained, shaking and as empty as if Hildemar had drawn away a part of his own soul, still hidden from all the world...except for the pair of wide blue-green eyes framed by tumbled scarlet hair that bored into him for one more instant before she ran onstage to bow, whisper a word into Fee’s ear, and dash off into the frozen white night.

  Chapter 22

  I should have killed him then, she told herself as tears froze on her cheeks. How had I not known who that woman was? Rapp’s description came back to her—the stunning woman with the Sonnenschein hair, bedecked with opals. She was the wicked demon who’d tortured Rapp, who had infiltrated Stour to lure gullible magicians with her promises and wiles, who no doubt murdered Rapp for failing to kill Phil. Or—Phil’s old suspicions rushed back—had Arden do it for her.

  Oh Arden, Arden, how could you do it?

  At least he hadn’t seen her, and she could place the responsibility into another’s hands. She didn’t have a great deal of faith in Rudyard’s ability to take action against the Germans, but he had a history of secretly getting rid of rebellious magicians. As soon as Rudyard heard this, he’d do what he did with errant journeymen and have Arden eliminated.

  The tears came harder, and she swore to herself they were only tears of fury.

  I’ll tell Rudyard, and then I’m leaving. I’ll be eighteen in a few months, and then I can be a Land Girl, or a Wren, or work in a munitions plant. Anything to get away from here. I’ll rent a place for Fee and me. She won’t care where she lives; her whole life is waiting now, and she can wait anywhere.

  If anyone had asked her, she would have said she’d never feel anything again. All the same, after ten minutes of dragging herself through the deepening drifts, she began to shiver violently. She’d only thrown a light evening coat over her stage dress, and her shoes were silver ballet slippers.

  I can’t get word to Rudyard if I freeze to death first, she thought, as pragmatic as if she’d never felt love’s life-altering touch. She changed her course to stop at Weasel Rue, only slightly out of the way to Stour.

  He doesn’t know I heard him, and he didn’t see me, so I have enough time.

  He had seen her, though. He had no inkling that she’d overheard any of his plotting with the Fräulein, but he saw her rush offstage into the swirling snowstorm, and without thinking of the consequences, only knowing that he had to, he pursued her, as the wolf leaps for the baited hook strung in the tree, in the lust for what sustains him. He needed to be close to her, needed the reassurance of her presence, after what he’d done. He couldn’t tell her anything, of course, but if he could only hint, with a look if nothing else, that she must wait, and all would be well, and if she would only answer that with a look of her own, however banal their conversation might be...then he might be able to survive the next few days.

  Just out of sight, he trailed her through the snow, a quarter mile behind.

  Phil let herself into the farmhouse and collapsed just past the threshold, exhausted from rage and bitter disappointment. She couldn’t feel her fingers and wished she couldn’t feel her toes, because they were suffused with a pulsing pain. The fireplaces were all out, and the abandoned house was almost as chilled as the outside. She knew she needed to get warm, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

  The door swung open behind her, and she looked up gratefully. Phil had never dreamed Fee would follow her, the darling! But it wasn’t Fee.

  Arden closed the door behind him and watched her, dark eyes intent under winged black brows. Not taking her eyes from him, she reached into the pocket she’d sewn into her costume and pinched the small razor blade between her thumb and forefinger.

  “I had to see you,” Arden said. “I’ve been—busy—and I wanted to be sure . . .” He swallowed hard. Phil didn’t think he’d blinked once since he entered. “You asked once if we were friends.” He moved toward her, looking so tortured, she longed to take him in her arms. But she squeezed the tiny blade more tightly. “I wanted to tell you that I never—”

  “What a liar your face is, Arden,” she said, and sprang.

  She slashed at him, raking his chest in a shallow gash, then grabbed hold of the lace at his throat to pull him into a close embrace, her blade striving for his exposed neck.

  It was all going as perfectly as a well-rehearsed stage stunt—to Phil’s surprise, because she hadn’t really expected to win—and Arden’s blood would have been soaking the hay-strewn floor, if not for the fact that her benumbed fingers had dropped the razor in her fir
st attack, and she found herself doing nothing more deadly than caressing his bare skin. Still, luck did not entirely desert her, and Arden tripped as he tried to evade her, hit his head on the mantel, and lay dazed.

  Her fingers feeling like potatoes, Phil scrambled for the razor. She could have cut his throat—she knew she could have, then, in the heat of passion. But now, as she climbed on top of him, straddling his chest and pressing the razor to the beating hollow at the base of his throat, she wasn’t sure.

  I can do it, she thought doubtfully. I just have to work myself up again first.

  “Clever, am I?” she said, slapping him. No, she thought, it should be a punch. I want to hit him so hard I break my fingers. “Clever enough to be her servant—or whore to some German magician?” She slapped him again, which for some reason was proving more satisfying after all. Now all he has to do is curse me or spit or struggle, and in goes the blade.

  But he didn’t struggle. He only looked at her, his cheeks cold-flushed, his black hair coming loose from its tight queue. He was memorizing her, possessing every part of her, so that when he returned to the Essence, perhaps some small trace of her might remain with him.

  “You traitor! You rotten son of a bitch. We trusted you! I trusted you!” She slapped him again and pressed the knife harder, until the tender hollow welled and filled with blood, a sacrificial spring. “How could you betray England like that?” A renegade tear fell from her eye to his. “How could you betray me! Fight, damn it! Fight me so I can kill you!”

  “My life is yours,” he said softly, and as if the knife weren’t digging into his throat, he reached up to touch her temple, her cheek.

  “Stop it!” She pulled away.

  “It has been yours, since the first day we met. I begrudged it to you, until today. Take my life, Philomel.”

  The sound of her whole name made another tear escape, to tremble, ridiculously, at the tip of her nose.