Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  The mansion had no roof. No curtains graced the stark windows; no sign of habitation softened the grim spires of crumbling chimneys. The place was a skeleton.

  And yet light shone out of the dead windows like the weird blue fire of the boglands, and strange music played, and vague silhouettes danced and turned and curtsied in the hall.

  In Roddy’s conscious mind, she had reasoned out the trick. This mad scene was all staged, a play made of darkness and superstition, to scare the militiamen into staying safe by their fires while Geoffrey’s rebels moved the guns from the mansion into the mountain passes.

  And the ghoulish diversion worked. It worked too well. In the deeper reaches of Roddy’s being, she felt a chill such as she had never known before.

  November Eve. The night the fairies danced with the dead.

  The carriage drew up before the great doors and came to a halt. In a black sweep, Faelan was on the ground and turning back toward her, holding out his hand. She took it, stepped down, and looked up at her husband.

  If ever she had thought to imagine Finvarra, the King of the Fairies of the West, it would have been Faelan in that moment, with the wild moon in his eyes and the music behind him and the luminescence that touched him like a crown of living light.

  “Lassar,” he said. “Cailin sidhe. Welcome home.”

  She looked beyond him to the great, gaunt, haunted ruin.

  Home.

  Oh, God, she thought. God help me.

  Chapter 14

  She supposed, much later, that legends began with less. A hundred years from now, they would speak of Finvarra’s ball, and the way the hills had echoed with fey minuets and glittered with the ghostly torches of the departing guests. The way a man feared to look over his shoulders to find the source of footsteps behind him. The way a force of one hundred gallant West Country militia had known better than their foolish officers to interfere with fairy business.

  Three men, a captain and two lieutenants, came to grief that night while trying to investigate. One was found in the morning by the little lake in the bottom of a mountain coum, having fallen, the broken condition of his body told, from the cliff eight hundred feet above. The second—what was left of him—was buried near the clear spring where wolves, so the official report stated, had sprung upon him. The unofficial whisper was that there had been no wolves in the barony for decades; that he had been torn to pieces by something far, far worse—while his horse, like the others, had wandered home unscathed.

  The third man, the captain, had come riding up just as Roddy descended from the carriage. His loud hail was more indignant than frightened, but when Faelan took no notice of him, only guiding Roddy toward the moss-covered stairs, the soldier’s voice faltered a little. At the top of the steps, Faelan paused, turning back.

  The officer’s horse was dancing under a tight hand as the man looked over his shoulder behind him. “Armstrong,” he’d shouted, amid the drifting music and the fog that had begun to roll in thick fingers up from the glen. “Logan!”

  There was no answer, no pair of armed, red-coated riders at his back. He swore and faced the house again, spurred his horse forward where it seemed loath to go. “Your name, sir,” he demanded.

  Faelan smiled. The mist hung about his head, gleaming from the light behind. “I have many,” he said. He held out his free hand. “Will you join us?”

  Unable to come closer without mounting the steps, the captain hesitated, and then swung impatiently off his horse. The animal shied as he did so; reared and tore the reins from his hand. The captain’s urgent soothings were useless: while the carriage horses stood, carved still as white marble, the soldier’s mount twisted backward, bucking as if to dislodge a devil from its back, and plunged down the hill into the fog.

  Faelan stood unmoving, smiling yet with that strange knowing smile.

  The captain swung toward them. With the same startling, crystalline impact that Roddy had experienced on the ride through the militia camp, she felt her talent return. The captain’s disconcerted anger and chagrin throbbed in her head. He strode up the steps and confronted them.

  “In the King’s name,” he snapped, “identify yourself.”

  Faelan laughed. “Call me the east wind,” he said lightly. “My lady’s name is Flame.”

  The soldier frowned nervously. He could barely see Faelan’s face against the pale light from within the open door. “What nonsense is this?”

  “The east wind,” Faelan said, in a voice that tangled with the music floating past them. “The demon wind. It blows tonight.”

  In spite of himself, the captain glanced toward the east, where the mists slid up from the dark below.

  “Join us,” Faelan said again.

  His hand closed on Roddy’s arm. She turned with him, driven by the hard grip on her elbow, the only thing that seemed real in the whole unearthly scene.

  Beneath the arched doorway, leprous with black lichen, shadowy figures danced to the ancient music in the hall. A faint haze silvered everything, made the dark corners darker and the candlelight deathly pale. Without Faelan’s hand on her, propelling her forward, no force on earth would have made her join that spectral company, with their faces paste-white and their mouths painted murderous red, and the elegance of five decades past streaked and moldering on their bodies.

  But she, like the dumbfounded captain, was swung up in the haunting dance. Faelan bowed, dragging her down in a curtsy when she would have stood gawking at the burned-out shell. Three stories rose above them, open to the lowering sky, and dead vines crawled where fine curtains should have hung. Roddy felt the brush of lifeless fingers at her back, and then—as Faelan’s punishing grip controlled her start—saw the rotting silk that draped in tatters along the walls, swaying as the dancers passed like the strands of a drowned maiden’s hair.

  She danced, clinging to the reality of Faelan’s bruising touch. The captain’s rising panic was at one with her own; she could not separate them, or bring her mind to focus on the knowledge that this was all an illusion made of night and fog. When a wordless gentleman with a wooden smile pressed wine into the officer’s hand, Roddy tasted the sweet, convulsive gulp he took to rally himself. A lady’s cold fingers touched his hand, and Roddy felt the same chill pass down her spine. She glanced that way, seeing his partner from two minds at once: from Roddy’s view, a beauty like a winter night, all frozen stars and stillness, while in the captain’s befuddled brain the lady’s face was skeletal and strange, too difficult to comprehend in the gleaming, mist-tricked light.

  The room began to sway then, to rotate slowly around her head. From a distance, she saw the captain’s scarlet coat begin to blur, and felt the buckling of his knees. Caught in his mind, she stumbled too, hanging on to Faelan’s arm for one dizzy moment before the soldier crumpled—slowly, slowly—so slowly that it seemed a more fantastic dream than any that had gone before. She saw him for one instant, a red pool like bright blood on the ballroom floor, and then the shadows claimed her too, and darkness closed around her.

  She woke to the cool breeze on her face. Her body seemed disconnected from her mind; she had to fight to open her eyes, and her fingers would not move when she bade them.

  Someone spoke. It was an important voice, one she thought she should know. “She’s stirring,” it said. “Senach—God, thank God—will she…”

  The voice swirled and faded. “…winter planting,” it said the next time she made sense of it. “I’ve seed spuds coming in from Kenmare. Enough for tenscore cows’-grass. No more than that…”

  She spun in and out of odd dreams: cattle and ghostly dancers and huge mountains of potatoes.

  “…he’s after wakin’ up.” Another voice spoke in a light rasp, like the touch of the wind on her cheek.

  And, “Aye,” said the first. “I can see him moving.”

  She struggled to hold her eyelids open; to find reason in this babble.

  “Hush…hush…” The words were close, a warm breath in her ear.
“Little girl, little love…be still.”

  She wanted badly to please that voice. For a moment she stopped struggling. The confusion in her mind began to sort itself, to separate and order. The dreams of walking ghosts belonged to another, she realized, and the stiff spine and cradled shoulders were her own.

  “How do you feel?” the gentle voice inquired close to her ear.

  The tone filled her with a flood of comfort and security. “You’re so nice,” she mumbled.

  The support beneath her shoulders shook softly in silent laughter. “A vote of confidence.”

  Her eyes wrenched open at last, and shut again instantly against light that seemed blinding. The arms around her tightened.

  “Rest awhile, little girl. Rest here awhile with me.”

  “No. Let her wake, m’lord. That’s the way now.”

  Pain was sparking through her limbs as she tried to move. She made a little complaining moan.

  “Oh, aye, it hurts a bit, do it not? All night sleepin’ on the hard cold floor.”

  Roddy opened her eyes again. Another pair, empty blue, stared into hers and through her. From his position several feet away, Senach smiled. The world seemed to right itself. Roddy drew her shoulder blades together and yawned. She shifted and sighed and laid her cheek against rough wool. For a moment, it was enough to know that the firm chest beneath her belonged to her husband.

  She drowsed safely in his arms, listening to morning sounds. Somewhere in the distance a cow was lowing, and choughs called and sea gulls mewed, circling closer by. After a while she lifted her head and looked around.

  They were in a broad place behind a low wall, very close, it seemed, to the sky. To both sides stretched a parapet that fell away to a great depth, forming a huge, sheer-walled rectangle of stone beneath them. The wild countryside lay in a sweep of olive-green and silver all around. Three stories below she could see the militia captain sprawled on the ruin’s broken floor.

  As they watched he dragged himself onto his elbows. Roddy frowned as memory began to return to her. She felt a little twinge of fear as she realized that once again she was alone in her mind; that neither Senach nor Faelan nor the soldier below was open to her talent.

  That had not been true the night before. It had been the overwhelming power of her gift that had dragged her down with the captain. She blinked, staring at the officer’s red coat as he sat up and looked around groggily.

  “You drugged him,” she said.

  Faelan’s hand came over her mouth with an impact that rocked her head backward. “Be still,” he breathed harshly into her ear.

  Roddy nodded, and he slowly released her. Senach remained gazing into empty air, with that seraphic smile on his brown and wrinkled face.

  She could guess the soldier’s confusion, the sensation of waking in an unfamiliar, unexpected place. Early sun warmed the cracked marble where specters had danced; a chough landed on a broad, bare windowsill and sidled along it, fluffing glossy black plumage with a coarse cry.

  The captain had lost consciousness in a nightmare. He woke to morning peace and sunlight that mocked such macabre dreams.

  It took him a long time to stand up. When he did, he tottered and fell back to one knee. He gathered himself and tried again, successfully this time. From their hiding place high above, Roddy watched with gradually warming sympathy as he blinked in confusion and cast a despairing look around. She saw him look down at his feet and then up at the tall, ruined walls. Faelan’s arms flexed just slightly as the man’s bleary gaze passed over their hiding place.

  In time, something like reason seemed to direct the captain’s movements. He began to look more closely around the floor. They could still see him after he stumbled out the great arched door, down on his knees in the overgrown drive.

  “Looking for wheel marks,” Faelan whispered into her hair. “He’ll only find his own horse’s prints—three hooves shod and the near fore missing.”

  She looked up, a question in her eyes, and he ruffled her disarranged curls.

  “Success for our hero, little girl. There was a signal fire on the pass just before dawn. Geoff’s guns made it across.”

  Finally, with a weary and baffled set to the shoulders beneath the red coat, the officer stood straight and rubbed his palms across his face, and then began the long hike down the hill toward the sea.

  For many minutes after he had gone, no one spoke. At last, when Roddy thought she could hold back her questions no longer, Faelan’s hold on her loosened. He pushed her back and gently kneaded the nape of her neck with his thumbs.

  “Stretch the knots out, my love,” he advised. “We’ll break our fast on the way.”

  It was an appropriate introduction to her husband’s estate, Roddy thought wryly. A day of fog, a night of enchantment, and then a week spent camping out like savages under the shadow of mountain crags. When finally the three scruffy hobbies clipped into Killarney, she looked back at the mist-crowned cliffs and valleys with relief and vast regret.

  They were beautiful, with a beauty that was an ache in the mind. She held them to her heart, those days with Faelan among the moody peaks: some tranquil with the mobile, melting mists; some grim with blue storm and bare rock. She had seen the land that her husband loved as she never could have from the well-sprung coach that carried her on her second, official, entry.

  This second trip held none of the mystery of the first. “English,” Faelan said of their mode of travel as they settled in under soft wool rugs. Which meant, Roddy began to understand, comfortable, efficient, and insulated. The mountains and bays were scenery, lovely subjects for a lady’s watercolor that flowed past too quickly. The militia was respectful, unsuspicious—a mere pause on the road in which Roddy was allowed to venture forth from the carriage under a soldier’s protection to view several small antiquities: a souterrain, a pillar stone, and a few rocks said to be early tombs.

  Far above them on the mountainside she could see the dark outline of the great, ruined mansion. Faelan, strolling behind the anxious young militiaman who guided her among the rocks, seemed to take no notice of it.

  Roddy wondered what had become of the captain who’d gone to the fairy ball.

  “Why, look at that,” she said, in a breathless, overblown imitation of a new bride. “My lord, is that the house?”

  Faelan settled back against a boulder. “What’s left of it,” he said with a teasing smile. “I’ll build you another posthaste, my dear.”

  “We had a fine scare a sennight past.” The young soldier looked quickly at Roddy, eager to tell the tale, but torn between impressing her with the story and frightening a delicate lady.

  “What was that?” Faelan asked as he pulled a snuffbox from his pocket and took an idle pinch. Roddy frowned at the tiny enameled box. She’d never seen Faelan take snuff before.

  The question was encouragement enough for the soldier. “Lost three men, sir,” he said importantly. “Well, two. Not from my company, m’lord, no, sir. ’Twas the Fifth; a captain and his lieutenants went up to investigate some lights in the hills, m’lord—on account of all the smuggling in these parts, don’t you know. Not that Your Lordship would be apprehensive to them doin’s, oh, no. But like that; there was some of their men as wouldn’t go with ’em.” He stopped, suddenly realizing that this refusal of duty hardly reflected well on the militia, and decided to concentrate on the ghostly aspects of the story. “Bein’ ’twas November Eve an’ all,” he said, lowering his voice to emphasize the drama. “’Twas a wee bit eerie, do you see? There were talk o’ ghosts, and a carriage, real as you or me, that run through camp like the divil out o’ hell was pursuin’ it. I didn’t see that; I don’t know as I believe that part, but I was there when they brung in that lieutenant’s body, an’ that was after bein’ real enough, beggin’ your pardon, m’lady. An’ the captain, he come draggin’ in, and he’d run plain mad—talkin’ ghosties and white ladies an’ such.” The young soldier drew a breath, and said more heartily, “Colonel Bu
rns—he put a stop to that. He sent his man downcountry quick. ’Twas makin’ some o’ the lads jumpy, do you see. Not me. I’m from Castlebar. But some of them as is thick with the local lads, they said ’twas the fairies. They said that mad captain was after describin’ the king of ’em himself, an’ the lady all in white his beauteous queen that he’d stole from her bed an’ left a log in her place.”

  “Fairies,” Faelan said. “Good God.”

  The militiaman laughed, a sound that did not quite cover his own uneasiness. “Oh, aye, m’lord. Oh, aye.”

  Faelan played with the enameled box. He slanted a look toward Roddy. “Do you have any more questions, Lady Iveragh?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, my lord.”

  He straightened, tall and easy, his dark elegance a sharp contrast to the fresh-faced militiaman from Castlebar. The soldier was preparing to offer his escort when Faelan stepped casually in front of him and took Roddy’s arm for their return to the carriage.

  A few miles past the militia camp, the new road ended. White-haired and patient, Senach stood waiting with a pair of fine hunters to carry them over the old track that mounted the forbidding hill ahead.

  Roddy found herself uncomfortable. In the daylight, Senach seemed no more than an old, old man, but still he eluded and somehow seemed to interfere with her gift, drawing all consciousness into his silence. She did not want to meet his eyes, sightless though they seemed to be. He helped Roddy to mount, and brushed her hand with his feathery fingers.

  “Ye cain’t hear me, can ye, my lady? ’Tis no matter,” he said softly. “’Tis a wee thing.”

  Roddy jerked her fingers away. “What do you mean?” she asked sharply.

  “Ye know. Ye know me meanin’, my lady Lassar.” He patted her dappled gelding, and the animal bent to nuzzle his shoulder. “Remember the horses.”

  A peculiar panic rose in her, a fear of something she could not name. She looked up and saw Faelan and his mount already opening distance between them. “I don’t—” She looked again at Senach, and his blank eyes caught hers for an instant that was an eternity.