Siege Perilous

by Nigel Bennett

"Not like that. Dad said you'd only been hurt, but everyone's supposed to think you were dead so they could do stuff to catch that guy. Real spy stuff. Dad told me not to, but I watched the news. Was that really you going off the bridge?"

  Richard had also seen the bouncing, fuzzy amateur video taken by a tourist who happened to have his camera in the right place at the right time. After a distant pan of both falls from the Canadian side, the view swept jerkily along the gray river to the bridge, where a puff of smoke and fire suddenly erupted, and a black flailing figure shot clear of the explosion and fell, turning once before hitting the water. It amazed Richard how quick it had been in actuality compared to his nightmare memory of the experience. Seconds. There and gone.

  His identity was yet to be revealed, for which he was grateful, but there was no doubt in his mind that Charon would have seen the circus many times by now. Probably having a good gloat.

  "Yes, that was me."

  "You don't look hurt."

  "In truth, I'm sure I broke every bone in my body. I just heal fast."

  Michael grunted, noncommittally. "Did you have to have shots?"

  "Don't remember."

  "Did you have a nurse?"

  "Sort of, and she was very pretty." Richard wondered again how much Michael knew, but not to the point of asking. When it came down to it, his condition and outré diet weren't all that important to their relationship.

  "I miss Aunt Sabra." Michael leaned over against Richard as he used to when he was much smaller. He put his arm around the boy, knowing the contact would reassure.

  "So do I."

  "She didn't hurt, did she?"

  "The doctor said she was completely unconscious. She wouldn't have felt anything."

  "I miss her . . ." Michael's voice went up and then the tears came. His sobs were quiet, but enough to wake Bourland. His eyelids cracked open, a questioning expression.

  Richard put a finger to his lips and opened his palm outward to sign that he'd look after things. "It's all right," he whispered, holding his godson.

  He waited for his own tears to come. One would have to have a heart of stone to listen to such crying and be unaffected.

  And apparently his had turned to granite.

  Nothing.

  * * *

  Richard dozed himself, only dimly aware when Michael got up, sniffling, to turn off the TV and wander into the kitchen. Domestic noises as the boy made a snack. Mourning or not, he was growing, packing food away like a starved squirrel. Bourland snored on the other couch. Good, he needed the rest.

  Sabra's memorial service was tomorrow.

  Bourland had managed to keep a low profile for Sabra despite her being the victim in the much publicized hospital invasion. Interest in the incident had been thoroughly knocked aside by the bridge explosion, so the media was likely to be busy elsewhere. Her family could grieve for her in private. Richard could not be there, though, since he was dead himself. In case Charon had agents on the watch.

  Bloody bastard.

  Michael finished in the kitchen and returned to the living room. Richard opened his eyes enough to see the boy gather a pile of pillows into the corner by the bookshelf, turn on a handy light, and pull the entire stack of comic books onto the floor with him. He liked to read himself to sleep. With a large bowl of popcorn and a canned soda for company he settled in for a marathon session. Richard eased back, dozing again. In between Bourland's snores he could hear the solid thump of their heartbeats. So long as they continued, all was—almost—well.

  He ached for her . . .

  "My lord, you must come now." The Abbot of Glastonbury himself shook Richard awake. Knowing what it meant and hating, hating it, he roused from his bed in one of the dim cells and followed.

  It was just coming to sunset. Richard felt the pressure of the day's eye on him like a great searing weight. Soon it would lift. Too soon.

  The chamber to which the abbot led him was clean and comfortable as could be made. In one corner three monks murmured soft prayers. Candles burned against the approach of night. There was a tall window in the west wall that looked out on green flat fields. The sun stared through like a curious pilgrim. On a low bed facing the window, well padded with many coverlets, lay a very old, old man. He wore a simple dark robe like the others, but on one finger was a gold ring proclaiming his rank in the Church. His white hair had been carefully combed, spread evenly on the pillow. Snow in the summer.

  Tears welled so in Richard's eyes he could barely see. The abbot seemed to understand, took his arm, and led him over. Ignoring the harsh orange orb of the sun, Richard knelt on the stone floor by the bed and wiped his sight clear.

  "How now, Dickon?" whispered the old man, blue eyes staring up. He'd gone blind in the last months and raised a gaunt, questing hand.

  Richard took it, too conscious of the brittle bones beneath the thin skin. He pressed his lips to his brother's fingers. "I am well, Edward."

  Edward made no further speech for some while, his breast rising and falling under the wheat-colored linen sheet. With each fall, it seemed to take longer and longer to rise again. Richard willed him to continue.

  The fading sun was fever-hot on one side of Richard's face. He leaned close to murmur to his brother. "There is yet time. I can help you."

  Unexpectedly, Edward puffed a very quiet laugh.

  "I can. Please. Let me spare you."

  "Spare me from heaven? No, thank you, Dickon. I look forward to it. This life hurts too much."

  "That will vanish. You will be restored. I promise."

  "We've had this talk before. You know how it ends. I always win." He hummed another laugh.

  "You love the Church so much, think of the good you can do by sustaining your life. You can be young again."

  "I've a perfect body waiting for me already." Edward's sightless gaze drifted toward him, a flash of sorrow in their blue. "You only hurt yourself by clinging so hard to this flesh, and that comforts me not. I'm ready to let it go. It is my time, and it is all right. Ask your lady. She agrees with me."

  "Edward, I need you. You're my only family."

  "I am not, just the only family you like."

  "Please . . ."

  "Richard, listen. This is what is to be. Accept it and know I am happy. I will not turn my path this time. You've chosen yours and I mine. I love the light too much to give it up for more life on this side. My Lord calls me, let me pass to Him with a joyful heart."

  Richard could stand it no longer and bowed his head and wept hard, his own heart breaking.

  "There now, Dickon, there now . . ." He reached across with his other hand and stroked Richard's hair until the storm eased. "I feel the sun going. Would you lift me? I want that warmth on my face."

  As gently as he could, his eyes streaming, Richard gathered Edward up as though to look on the sunset. His brother's once strong body was as light as a child's. He eased the white head against his shoulder, and settled in, arms protectively around him.

  "That's better," said Edward, his voice barely up to a whisper. "This is good. You know, I have a very dim memory of . . . I think Mother held me like this . . . I was so little, though. It might have been a dream . . ."

  Richard held him and watched the sun for them both.

  "Richard?"

  "I'm here, Edward. Right here."

  "Richard, it's getting late." Bourland shook his shoulder.

  He blinked at the unfamiliar room, the frail-looking furniture, the stranger in the odd clothes bending over him. The past and present slewed chaotically over one another in his mind, until things sorted themselves into their proper place. Fifteen centuries slid away in seconds. By the time Richard sat up the safe house looked normal to him again.

  "The services are at nine," Bourland reminded. "I know you can't be there, but—"

  "I'll manage." He rubbed wearily at his growing beard and wondered if he should shave.

  Why was his face wet?

  * * *

  Richard stood
solitary in a snow-covered cemetery, a black-clad figure blending with the tree trunks and ornate tombstones. He watched the quaint little nineteenth-century chapel from a distance, waiting for the service within to end. The only attendees in the family's pew that morning were Bourland and Michael. Nearby would be Bourland's school chum Frank, and standing back by the door the Boris and Natasha couple. To anyone else so small a gathering might have seemed pitiful and sad, but Richard knew Sabra would have preferred it that way. She'd looked on death as a passage to something better, and he believed that himself, but it was hard, cruel hard on those left behind.

  The silence in his mind was the worst. How he missed her voice. In the past it now and then had annoyed him when she'd disrupt his thoughts with a comment or say something that would set him off into laughter at an inappropriate time. He'd give anything, go through anything, to bring her voice back again. A few words, a moment to tell her he loved her, to say good-bye. If she could only tell him she was all right, that all was well.

  He'd once been on a tour of a cave in the Ozarks, and to make a point about the place, his guide had shut off his flashlight. The dark was so profound, even Richard's eyes perceived nothing, only phantom afterimages of light, which soon faded. The place was as quiet as it was black, and he was aware of the hundreds of feet of rock between himself and the surface. Without that light he would wander and perish—eventually—trying to find his way out.

  Sabra's voice and spirit were gone from his soul the way the light was gone from that cave.

  Only a matter of time, he thought, looking at the surrounding graves in the soft snow.

  By listening hard he could just hear recorded music coming from the little gray stone building. He managed a tiny twitch of a smile, catching the faint strains of "In My Life." Sabra had loved that song. Lennon and McCartney's words and music pierced him through and through with their simple truth.

  The sky was heavy and grayer than lead. It began snowing again, though the fall was soft, the flakes coming straight down in the thick, windless air. Richard was glad to be out here. Better to be under the sky in the cold than in the chapel, haunted as it must be by the spirits of the dead along with those who sorrowed after them. Thousands of others had passed through before him, and he would have felt, or imagined he felt, their combined presences. He couldn't bear the idea of sitting quietly, listening to the priest uttering the same terrible words yet again.

  It had been nearly impossible the last time, when he sat in there for Stephanie and her little girls, Elena and Seraphina. He'd held together for Michael's sake, and because Sabra had been with them. Richard had buried and mourned for hundreds he'd dearly loved and lost, but he would go mad if he had to do the same for Sabra. Not her, never for her. He'd thought of another way to deal with her loss. All he had to do was hang on long enough. See to it that Charon was shot screaming into hell, and then . . .

  A rush of dry flakes swept around him, a random breeze stirring them up . . . but not quite. Otherside wind. He turned, bracing, expecting an attack.

  Instead of his enemy, a tall woman strode toward him out of the flurry, hands in the pockets of her long coat. Her strong, sturdy figure seemed to coalesce from the flying snow and the black trunks, growing more solid the nearer she got. She was wrapped in many layers of protective clothing. Some of it looked very new. Her western-style boots were well-worn, though.

  She came close, pulled off the knitted muffler that covered her brown face, and smiled up at him.

  He caught his breath, recognizing She-Who-Walks.

  He'd not seen her for a couple of years, but she'd never been far from his thoughts. His lover, his sister, his brown-eyed daughter in blood, chosen for him by Sabra to share their dark Gift. Of all the people on the planet, only she truly understood the depth of his grief. He embraced her hard, and she murmured to him in her own language. He did not know the meaning, but recognized words of comfort and love.

  They clung to each other, standing like stones themselves among the graves and silence, and something within him suddenly cracked and shattered under her gentle touch and voice.

  He felt it like a physical blow. His knees gave way. She-Who-Walks held him tight, kneeling, too, in the snow. Finally, agonizingly, his tears came. His pent-up grief flooded forth.

  He clung to her and sobbed, sobbed like a child.

  * * *

  "While I'm away from Kingcome Inlet, you should call me Iona," said She-Who-Walks. "I travel light. It's easier to carry."

  "Is that your name rendered in your language?" Richard asked. Though intimate on many levels, he yet knew little about her. She struck him as being decades more mature than when he'd last seen her. Something to do with her serenity. She wore it like a warm blanket.

  She chuckled. "It's Celtic, Greek, or Welsh—depends on what you want. I like the Celtic. It means 'from the king's island.' Fits well. The Dark Mother suggested it for me before she left to live here."

  They sat side-by-side on a wooden bench off one of the winding paths. The chapel was behind them; only grave markers were within view. An appropriate place for the dead to talk.

  She-Who-Walks (he strove hard to say Iona in his mind) also possessed the gift of Sight. She'd seen the visions that Michael had been projecting.

  "There have been no others since the Dark Mother's death?" she asked.

  "None. Did they come from Sabra?"

  "No. They were from the Goddess. Warnings."

  "What are we to do?"

  "Our best."

  "That's not what I meant."

  She gave him one of her little smiles, the kind that made her eyes dance. "I know. It's better not to ask what to do until the time is ready. That will be soon. Today."

  He waited for her to continue, but she looked out over the stones. The snow still fell, and flakes stuck in her lashes. How he'd missed her. "I hoped you would come," he said.

  "How could I not?"

  "If I'd been able to phone you . . ."

  "Not in that place." The idea amused her. Her home was one of the spots for which the word "isolated" had been invented. "I knew I would be needed when the vision with the stone house and the snake came to me. That's when I left home. Took a long time to get here. Sure like your weather." She meant it. The Vancouver area was very wet. Snow was a delight to her.

  "Michael had visions before that."

  "Yes. Not as strong as that one. The Dark Mother was looking after those lesser ones for him."

  "I didn't know. She should have told Philip. He's been troubled that they were hurting Michael."

  "She was looking after those on Otherside. He wouldn't have understood."

  "He does now. I've told Philip everything, my history, everything."

  "About me, too?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Good. We need him."

  Again he waited for more information, but none came. She seemed content to enjoy the gray, dark day, like him, ignoring the cold.

  "Why is Charon doing this?" he asked. "Do you know?"

  "He's dying. He's doing all he can to stop it."

  "Dying?"

  "Cancer. He should have died weeks ago. It's his path, but he wouldn't take it and began fighting it. He's eating power and souls to put it off. He shouldn't do that. Big mistake."

  "Dear God. Now it makes sense. It's funny, but Philip said he was a cancer in the gene pool. . . . If we'd only known sooner. Sabra said his protections had been broken by the fight with Sharon Geary."

  "That's what I felt, too. It left him vulnerable to the Dark Mother's Sight and she to him."

  "But he acted first. The car crash. Where was Charon when he caused it?"

  Iona looked at him. "He didn't cause it. That was the Goddess."

  Richard went very still. Shock. He couldn't have heard right. "No. it couldn't possibly . . . no."

  "It was—"

  "Did you have the vision of Sabra's accident?"

  "Yes. And it was bad to see, but I knew it was to protect
her." Iona continued to look, the appalling truth in her dark eyes, until he had to turn away.

  "Why?" He wanted to roar his fury, but held himself to a whisper. Shaking.

  "You know why. To protect her. The crash was meant to happen. Charon had nothing to do with it. Otherwise the Dark Mother would have gone after him. Tried to stop him."

  Richard choked on suppressed rage. "The Goddess did that? Hurt her own priestess? And her death? Why did the Goddess allow her to die?"

  He got another long look. "You know there are some things even the Goddess has no influence over."

  "My bitterest lesson," he snarled.

  Iona did not offer comfort or distraction. "If she had not been in the crash, she would have gone after Charon and lost. The Goddess would not have been able to save her from him. He'd have fed from her soul until it was gone. Some things are worse than dying; having your soul eaten is one of them."

  "She could have sent me in to stop him. I'm the warrior."

  "Then you'd have both been lost, then Michael, then others. This was the only path that had life, not death for them on it. And her soul is safe, now."

  "I wouldn't know that. Her voice is gone from my heart."

  "You will hear it again, Dark Father."

  Not on this Side, he thought.

  "What is, is," she stated with a shrug. "We may not like it, but there's always a reason."

  Nearly his own words to Bourland. Why was it that teaching a truth to another was so much easier than learning it for oneself?

  "What about Sharon Geary?" He told her of his dream. "I thought she was with the great snake, but before I could be sure, I was taken to that green land. I think it's Glastonbury."

  "Then it must be. The snake god could be protecting her."

  "From what?"

  "Many things. They're in a bad place, but even drained or hurt by the soul eater man, the god has certain untouchable powers. He will use them to bring himself back if he can. Maybe bring her along."

  "That or the dreams are my own wishful thinking. Wherever she is . . . can we help her?" He was afraid to hope for Sharon's safe return, but if her soul could be set free . . . that would be something salvaged.

  "We will try. Soon. There are very big powers involved, and they're being disrupted. Charon is eating them, upsetting the balance. He is like a bucket with a hole that grows. The more he pours into himself, the faster he empties. Soon there will be nothing but the hole itself. He will turn everything inside out, and that will turn the whole world mad."