The Fatal Child

by John Dickinson

  ‘I – I…’ gasped Padry.

  The pale head turned towards him as if Padry were a king passing sentence. And Padry stared at it open-mouthed. Thoughts tumbled in his head: the horror of the thing before him; the names, Talifer and Wulfram, the great names of the Kingdom-founders, linked in the glory of song; and the words of the murderer beside him – three hundred years in a hell you could not imagine.

  He almost shrieked and fled the room. But as his hands gripped the table, another, stronger image rose in his mind – of Atti, wandering blindly into shadows. It was these things she was groping towards, these things that had suddenly leaped to life in his sight. They were calling her from the darkness. And she was going to them – feeling her way into the pit where nightmare creatures roiled and watched her come …

  Atti!

  His mouth was open. His lungs drew air. As if from far away he heard his own voice speak.

  ‘I – will follow,’ he said.

  V

  Tears

  t is witchcraft,’ said Lex in the darkness.

  ‘I know,’ said Padry.

  ‘The men will not do this.’

  Of course they would not. Padry was not sure how he would either. He lay wide-eyed in his blankets on the floor of the hall of Lackmere, which was the only sleeping space the house could afford him. His mind seethed with doubts.

  I will follow, he had said, but he could not see the Path.

  Atti had gone ahead of him. He would have given his life to save hers. But could he give his soul? Witchcraft! He would have to acknowledge powers that were not the Angels. He was already acknowledging them. He might already be lost. And no power could offer him her soul in return. He was trying to bargain where no bargain could be made. What could he do?

  ‘Will you?’ he asked.

  Lex stirred in his blankets. By the light of the fire embers Padry could see his outline, propped on one elbow, looking away into the obscurities of Lackmere. Around them the hall glimmered faintly in the glow from the hearth. There was no sound but the low wind in the wall-slits and passages of the castle.

  ‘I admit I am becoming curious,’ mused Lex. ‘About this “King” who has no land, no men-at-arms as far as we know, who tells ancient princes to serve murderous knights, and to whom people from all ranks and places go in secret for judgement. I should like to see him, even if it puts my soul in peril.’

  ‘Do you think we are in peril?’ (Angels! Why could he not sound as calm as his own assistant?)

  Lex’s grunt might almost have been a chuckle. ‘As a priest, it is my duty to teach that this is the very gravest peril of all. But I wonder. Can witchcraft never do good in the sight of the Angels? I do not know. There is peace between Lackmere and Develin, it seems. How was this done? Also the peril to my soul seems somehow less real than the danger to my body if I return to Tuscolo without you. Lord Joyce will want my hide. So, no doubt, will a dozen others. I think I will come.’

  ‘Good. It will be a comfort to me if you do. I confess … I do not like this at all. The more I press myself into this thicket, the more its thorns drag at me.’ He frowned up at the rafters. ‘It was hard, to meet the killer of so many friends.’

  ‘I could tell. I have never seen you go so pale.’

  ‘Do you not feel the same?’

  The outline of Lex shrugged. ‘Remember I left Develin before the massacre. I had my reasons. Also I have seen many things since. And I do not think our host is at peace with himself.’

  Not at peace? cursed Padry in his thoughts. Nor should he be! The man should burn with guilt for the rest of his days. And then he should burn in Hell!

  He lay on the hard boards and looked up at the ember-glow on the ceiling. Everything seemed impossible. It seemed impossible that he should be here – fat old Thomas Padry, staring at his enemy’s roof, unbelieving of the things he had already seen and quivering like jelly at the thought of what might happen next. It seemed impossible that he should accept the help of the young diLackmere; impossible that he should ever find Atti. Impossible, above all, that he could ever rest again. Sleep was far away.

  ‘Why did you leave?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you leave Develin?’

  Lex took his time about replying.

  ‘I am not sure what happened,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I simply got drunk. But if so, no amount of drink has ever done it to me again. There was a moment on one of the Widow’s winter progresses – it must have been her last. I was sitting at a table, listening to the talk, and all of a sudden I seemed to be seeing the whole of the world from the inside out. I felt – ah well, it was different. I cannot describe it. It felt as though I was seeing things far more closely – almost as though I was inside them. And at the same time I could have seen everything, as though I was far, far off, and yet had the eyes of an eagle. And all the big things we worry ourselves over – kings and wealth and long years and good crops – I saw that none of that mattered. What matters is little things: laughing when you want to cry; putting an arm round a stranger – that kind of thing. And it matters at some times and not at others. Vast things, things we cannot understand, may turn because a man helps an old widow with her load. But only if it’s that man in that place and that widow. I don’t know if I’m making sense. I could not make sense of it at the time. But I left the school. In fact I had a horror of it. Everyone had become so depressed …’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘And I followed my nose for a bit. I became a clerk in orders. And, well, that’s the story.’

  ‘And now you administer justice which you think is not important, for lords whom you think are not important, in the name of a king whom you think is not important.’

  ‘Like our three-hundred-year-old prince, I must serve. To serve, I must use the skills I have. My skills are those that Develin gave me. You know that half your clerks passed through the school at one time or another.’

  ‘True.’ And typical of Lex that he should rank himself no higher than his colleagues, when without doubt he was worth any ten Develin-trained clerks. There was something unshakeable about him. Padry had seen that at the taking of Velis. He saw it much more clearly now. Perhaps it came from this very experience the lad described, back in the days when (as far as Padry had been concerned) he had been the chief ruffian and trouble-maker among the scholars of the middle studies.

  The just man follows the Path. He should follow it without fear wherever it leads him. Certainly he should not be quivering with fright when he is still safe, warm and (relatively) comfortable! Padry sighed and turned to try lying in a different position. His mind would not rest. He was angry – yes, angry – at the impossibility of it all! The chancellery, Lord Joyce, the Lady of Develin, Gueronius and his wayward wish to sail off into the distance – all the urgent voices that called him back! They had no right to stop him, blathering on about charters and all! What was the Kingdom beside a human soul? And if he was putting his own soul at risk, was it not fair to stake the Kingdom, too …?

  Why, why, why had she gone wandering off like this? This mad adventure! Her life was not hard. She had one of the most powerful men in the Kingdom watching over her. She was not stupid. She knew all that well enough. At fourteen she was almost a woman. Was she bewitched? Possibly. Who knew what witchcraft might do?

  But it was also possible that she was doing this of her own accord. It was like her to think about something all by herself, decide whether it pleased her, and then act on what she had decided! And he never knew what she thought until he found out what she had done about it. Like the toys he had brought for her last year, and had later discovered deliberately broken and tossed out with the rubbish. (Oh, Atti!)

  On the edge of sleep his mind seemed to divide. One part went on raging and sulking as if he were a prisoner kicking at the corners of his dungeon. But another just lay and watched himself stupidly, like a helpless observer who happened to be chained to the wall of the same cell. And he
wondered, as if it were a question of no real importance, who it was here that was really bewitched. Was it Atti, or was it himself? He had heard the warnings. Still he was going forward. He was like the soul that meets the Demon by the Path, who sees the evil and yet cannot help himself from hearing its voice. Eyes wide, mesmerized, he inches closer and closer to the fascination of his death.

  In his dreams the Demon wore the face of the child. And she said to him, ‘Thomas Padry, in this you have no will at all.’

  Melissa lay in a big house. It was the biggest she had ever known.

  It had one big room and lots of little ones down below. And then on top of those it had more rooms, reached by wooden steps running up from the lower floor. In one of these, on a pallet of straw, she lay all by herself. She had never slept alone in a room before, but the red knight had shouted at the people in the house until they had let him have one to himself, and then he had shouted at them again and buried the point of his knife in a table to make them let Melissa have one, too. ‘I’ve got to see she’s safe!’ he had roared, thumping his fist at every second word. ‘That’s safe from everyone!’ Melissa had been terrified because she knew what he could do. And now it terrified her to hear him bellowing drunk in the house below in the evenings, and to hear his snores through the thin wooden wall by her head at night. But at least she did not have to sleep in the same room as him.

  Outside her window there was a big green hill rising to the sky. That was all she could see. On the other side of the house, she knew, there was much more. There were huts and houses, lots and lots of them, covering an area bigger even than the whole of the clearing at home. And round them was a great wooden fence, taller than the red knight’s head. And beyond that was the water – a huge, sparkling lake of water, running on and on to the horizon. She had not known that it was possible to have so much water in one place.

  The woman who kept the house brought broth in to her. She did not let Melissa have very much but said there would be more tomorrow. It tasted very good and Melissa wanted more of it. She lifted her head so that her eyes could follow the pot. The pot was still in the room, because the woman who held it had stopped in the doorway, waiting for someone in the corridor to pass.

  It was two of the other women of the house. They were carrying an older woman who seemed to be sick. Behind them walked a girl about Melissa’s age.

  At once Melissa’s eyes left the pot and followed the girl, for the instant that she was framed in the doorway. Her face was pale and her dark gown was in tatters, but she walked (Melissa thought) like a proud buck deer. She was not helping the others or saying anything to them. She was letting them lead the way for her. Melissa remembered her long after they had all gone.

  She remembered the girl’s face clearly, smooth and pale and … well, it had made itself noticed, the way that a forest flower did peeping through the ragged ferns with its bright colours and shaped petals exactly in place. Mam had once told her that when people died and went to Heaven they all had beautiful faces and were never hungry again. Melissa, who had seen so few people her own age in her life, wondered quietly if somehow she had just glimpsed herself in Heaven, and if so, how close to dying and going there she was now.

  Knocks and noises and voices sounded all the time. The house was full. And outside, in the other buildings, there were yet more people. Some of them lived here. They farmed the fields, herded the animals and went out onto the lake in boats. And then there were even more people, who like Melissa and the red knight and everyone else in the house did not live here but had come to the town to wait. They were all waiting.

  They were waiting for the King.

  ‘Now Michael guard us,’ said Lex in the cool air of the dawn.

  ‘And Raphael guide our way,’ agreed Padry. ‘For we are far from home.’

  They left the stable, where their men-at-arms were preparing in silence for a return to Tuscolo, and led their horses across the courtyard to the gateway of Lackmere castle. Raymonde was waiting for them. He ran his eye over the mounts.

  ‘You must lead them today,’ he said. ‘It is not good ground for horses. They will be happier if you are at their heads.’

  Lex and Padry exchanged looks. What – walk, leading a beast, the day long? What kind of ground was this?

  ‘Highness?’ said Raymonde.

  ‘I am here.’

  The gaunt shape of Talifer emerged from the darkness of the gate-tunnel, which Padry could have sworn had been empty a moment before. He was again wearing his helmet. But the cloak hung loosely about him and in the early daylight Padry could see for sure how long his limbs truly were – long, and thin like a spider’s. No man had arms and legs like that. Padry guessed that for all their frail look they might be very strong.

  ‘These are the land-dues for my father,’ Raymonde said, handing the ancient prince a purse. ‘And say to him also that his house and his son still wait on his homecoming.’

  Talifer nodded silently.

  So, thought Padry. The Baron Lackmere was at the side of the ‘Hidden King’. What did that signify? A holding like Lackmere’s would not tip the scales of power in the Kingdom. But it was not nothing, either.

  Raymonde looked at Padry. Words did not come easily to either of them. An air of embarrassment hung between them.

  ‘I bid you fare well, Master Chancellor,’ said Raymonde eventually.

  ‘I – am grateful to you for our night’s lodging,’ Padry managed.

  ‘Are you? I am glad to hear it. Maybe one day you will yet be grateful that I breathe and walk the earth.’

  There was nothing Padry could say to that. He took his horse’s reins.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Talifer.

  Raymonde himself lifted the bar on the gate and pulled the great door inwards. They started forward. Lex, leading, stopped with an exclamation.

  The land had changed.

  They were not looking down on the thorn forest through which they had ridden the previous day. They were looking across a plain of dry brown boulders under a colourless sky. In the distance, in all directions, the ground rose and rose into what seemed to be a great wall of mountains, so that the horizon was far above their heads. The air was thick and heavy, a perpetual twilight. There was a strange humming in the air, so low that Padry could not so much hear it as feel it rising through his bones.

  Their strange guide had walked ten paces into the rocks and turned, waiting for them. Padry looked around helplessly.

  ‘That is your way,’ said Raymonde, grinning at him.

  With a dry clatter of hooves Lex led his mount forward. The sounds were distorted, as if the air through which they travelled were as thick as water.

  ‘What is this place?’ Padry heard him say.

  ‘It is the world as its mother sees it,’ said Talifer. He looked back at Padry. ‘Come.’

  ‘Those lights …’

  There were two lights, burning close together like low stars on what seemed to be a distant mountain ridge. One was a little brighter than the other.

  ‘Oh, that’s the dragon,’ said Raymonde, grinning more broadly. ‘But don’t worry. He doesn’t eat travellers. He’s too busy holding the world together.’

  A dragon? Padry took a step back. His eyes searched the dimness. He could see nothing – nothing that might not have been mountain wall, and the two lights that burned on the very rim like huge and distant fires.

  Dragons were an idea, a myth! They were an image for meditation. A dragon carved from walnut dangled at his own belt. They should not be a thing- a thing so vast that it could circle the whole world! What was this? It must be some trickery! It must be …

  Witchcraft.

  Panic rose in him as he dithered in the gateway. He gripped his horse’s reins. Lex and the monstrous guide were waiting.

  ‘Come,’ said Talifer again.

  With a jerk of will Padry stepped forward. His mount followed. The gate of Lackmere clattered shut behind him and disappeared. He stood in the mi
ddle of a brown waste that ran in all directions. There was no Path before his feet.

  She could not lie down for ever. She was not made that way.

  Melissa crawled from her pallet. The floor was smooth, but dusty and stained. For the first time she looked properly at the boards. Someone had cut those things from wood, she thought. They must have cut a whole tree to do it, and then cut the trunk into flat bits. How had they done that? You couldn’t do that with just an axe. And then they had somehow smoothed the flat bits down so that when she ran her finger over them, drawing a pattern in the dust, they were silky and splinterless to touch. She had not seen wood like this before.

  Last night she had wondered if she were near Heaven. But this wasn’t Heaven, was it? It wasn’t Heaven just because there were things she had not seen before.

  Her palms pushed the boards away beneath her. One hand went to the wall to steady herself. She got her feet together under her. She could not have said why she was doing this, when really there was no longer any reason to do anything any more. But she had spent every waking moment of her life doing things. Her body felt wrong, lying down when it was not sick. Besides, she had heard noises.

  In that strange day in a strange house, she stood on her own two feet.

  She was still wearing her smock – the same smock in which she had run from her home when the raiders came. The red knight had said that she stank. She supposed she must stink even more now. But there was no stream to wash in. She pushed the hair back from her eyes. She had nothing to tie it with. She listened.

  It was mid-morning. Daylight had come hours ago and she had gone on sleeping, just like the day before. The house was not quite still but she could tell that most people were out. This was the time when everyone was busy.

  Not everyone. She heard it again – the noise that had made her get up. It sounded like a harsh giggle, coming from one of the rooms nearby. But it wasn’t a laugh. It was something else.

  The giggle broke into coughing, and then became a thin whimpering that wavered and faded but would not die away.