by Sean Russell
Skye continued to stare down into the gorge, as though listening to voices in the darkly flowing river. “Because until I know, I will always be a stranger to myself. A kind of changeling. People are in thrall to their pasts, you say. One can be equally in thrall to a mystery. Imagine if several days of your life could not be recalled—not a thing about them. Would you not wonder? Would you not imagine all manner of incidents that might have befallen you, or things that you might have done? Imagine that you had committed some terrible crime, something so revolting that your mind could not bear to look upon it? Such things happen to men who fight wars. They see such atrocities that they can no longer recall entire battles—yet they dream of little else and waste away because they cannot bear to sleep.
“Who was I before my accident? I was adopted, but from where? Do you see? I am a changeling, a man who sees things others do not: my laws of motion; the naval gun; and much else besides. I am different, marked. Appearing from nowhere as though created whole in my teen years. And you counsel me to abandon my search?” He was gripping the stone of the wall with both hands, but now he loosened his hold, his shoulders sagging. “No, if Eldrich can unlock my past, then I will live with the consequences. They cannot be worse than what I experience now.”
There was nothing to be said to this, Marianne knew. No argument would convince Skye to change his course.
“But what of me?” Marianne said softly. “You may choose your course, not even knowing if Eldrich will grant your request, yet you advise me to turn away. Who are you to decide for me, as though I were a child? I will tell you in all modesty, Lord Syke, that there are few people in all the land more calculating than I. Everything I have ever done or been has been weighed upon a scale that balances with a precision most cannot imagine. You talk of being created whole as a youth, but I am my own creation, and made myself whole even later in life. Marianne Edden, the eccentric genius that everyone knows something of, is my greatest character, created with perfect attention to detail. I have a colder heart than anyone knows, and yet I am willing to risk everything to be reassured my friend is unharmed. I have only one friend, you see—a thousand admirers and passing acquaintances, but one friend only. And as you say, I am willing to take great risks, not just to prove my loyalty, but because I will be forced to live with the knowledge if I shirk. I have lived with my calculation, my flawed heroine, long enough, I do not want anything more to haunt me.”
The whisper and weave of the river flowing. A breeze making small banners of locks of her hair.
“Be up before sunrise,” Skye said. “Bryce likes to be on the road at first light.”
He walked away without saying good night, though she felt no insult. They were alike, she and he, hidden in among the population, appearing as others did, yet as different as crows raised in a nest of doves.
Twenty-Seven
Kent was let into the room by Walky, who stood guard over his master’s privacy with a dedication that no royal guard could equal. The painter stopped inside the door and waited for the mage to take notice of his presence.
Eldrich bent over a book at the table, a breakfast roll in one hand that he nibbled periodically without seeming aware of this action—as though his body had learned to seek sustenance of its own accord.
The two portraits—one on the easel, the other on a chair—were turned toward Eldrich, as though he had been viewing them, and Kent found that he suddenly craved the man’s approbation. Had he no opinion? Did mages have no concern for such trivial matters as art? Any art but their own, that is.
“You are ready to travel?” the mage said. As was apparently his habit, he did not look up at Kent as he spoke.
“I am.”
Eldrich seemed to nod, though perhaps it was only a random movement. Kent was not used to being treated as though he were not there—not in recent years, at least—and he did not much like it.
“Then I shall pay you your price, Kent,” Eldrich said. He rose where he stood, eyes still fixed on the book. Only reluctantly did they give this up, and the mage turned his disturbing gaze upon the painter.
“You realize that you cannot go from this place knowing what you know?”
Kent felt his eyes shut for a moment. He called up a vision of the countess, her touch. Her lips. The sounds of her pleasure, her passion.
Elaural. . . .
“Kent?”
The painter nodded. “Will I remember nothing?” he asked in a small voice.
Promise me you will not provoke him, the countess had asked. And he had promised. But now. . . .
He looked up at the mage, half a head taller than Kent, even though Eldrich seemed to stoop a little.
“Nothing,” the mage said.
The pain was so great that Kent shut his eyes again. “Then the price is too great. You receive your portraits, but I lose everything.”
“Hardly everything,” Eldrich said, his musical voice hardening. “I have let you have your life in exchange. Have you forgotten?”
“I do not value it as highly as I believed.”
“Have you never heard that it is unwise to try the patience of a mage? Especially over things of little consequence.”
“Matters of the heart mean more to men,” Kent answered, not caring what happened. Who was this man to steal away his precious memories?
Eldrich looked at him and shook his head. A smile might have flickered across his face.
“For your insolence I should send you forth from this place.” He stopped, took a long, calming breath, and let it out in a sigh. “Flames, Kent, you are young. I will leave you this,” he said. “You shall not forget your rather overvalued feelings.” He held up a hand. “Say a word, and I will withdraw my offer. Show some wisdom, Kent.”
The painter looked into the eyes of the mage and thought that perhaps there was a trace of humanity there—not much more—but a trace.
The mage wove a pattern in the air with his hand, and began to speak words that Kent did not know. He felt himself falling . . . into a star-filled sky.
* * *
* * *
The lodge was clearly not used just for the hunt. There was every sign that the people who owned it spent significant time here as a family. Without nosing around too much, one could chart the progress of the children—and not just by portraits. The countess was sure there were two girls and a boy. She found their cast-off toys and games, as well as signs of other pursuits—the kind that parents insisted on because they were “improving.” In rather mysterious ways in some cases, or so the countess thought.
One large room was set aside for a children’s playroom. She had found it soon after they arrived, but had not visited it again. There was something about its atmosphere of abandonment that affected her. Childhood, not so much lost as repudiated. She remembered it, that impatience to become adult. And look where it led. . . . No, children had the best of the bargain, she was sure.
Why Eldrich had asked to meet her here, she did not know—an odd request. But then very little about the mage’s household could be called ordinary, at least by the standards she was familiar with.
The countess pressed open the door to the playroom, and stood looking in for a moment. As always, she carried a candelabra, for the halls were unlit, Eldrich and his servants apparently having little need, and even less affection for light. But this room was lit, by candles and a lamp or two. Still she hesitated at the door, the feeling of loneliness growing, though she could not say why.
Kent was gone. And she was alone in this strange world, as Erasmus had been as a small boy.
Looking into the room, with its playhouse and dolls, its toy carriage drawn by a team of rocking horses, caused a terrible sadness to settle over her. A woman without child, she thought, by way of explanation, but knew it was not the truth, or only a very small part of it.
A music box began to tinkle, slightly o
ut of tune, and too slow. She went in, and found Eldrich looking down from his great height at the music box on a miniature table. A girl in a long skirt and a dashing soldier spun on the top, dancing in the candlelight.
As was his habit, Eldrich did not look up as she entered, but continued to regard the tiny dancers—his mind elsewhere, the countess was certain. Focused on this great task that he wrestled. The task left to him by the other mages. She thought he looked more forlorn than usual, and that was saying a great deal.
While she waited to have her presence acknowledged, the countess let her eyes wander the room. On her previous visit she had not noticed the border painted high around the walls. It depicted a well-known children’s tale, with its magic doors, wise wizard, and heroic children caught up in the strange events. She thought the section depicting them riding a raft down a torrential river was the best.
Shelves of poppets stared out at her from an open cabinet, their too-large eyes seeming to regard her with a certain malicious glee. Toy swords and shields stood at attention in a corner, beneath falling banners, their colors faded. Shadows, sharply defined, slanted among the blades and for some reason these seemed more solid than the objects that cast them.
The rocking-horse team, drawing a coach large enough for small children, made the countess wish she were small enough to play in it herself. It was so perfectly wrought; painted a vivid blue with wheels of yellow. Two large dolls sat inside, traveling endlessly across this children’s landscape.
Popidon, Popidon where do you go?
Down to the sea to see the men row.
Popidon, Popidon why do you weep?
The boats are ashore, the rowers asleep.
“It is an odd little museum, is it not? Such effort focused on preserving childhood. Did your parents keep such a shrine to your younger years?”
The countess shook her head, looking over to find Eldrich gazing at her.
“Nor did mine. But then I had so little childhood to feel nostalgic about for I was sent off to the house of the mage when only seven.”
The music box wound down so that the last few notes sounded like afterthoughts, the dancers barely twitching to this dying fall.
Eldrich had been taken away as a child, like Erasmus. It had never occurred to the countess before that this would be the case. Indeed, it was almost impossible for her to imagine the mage other than he was now.
“I have always said that having no childhood was a blessing, for it saved me from this current fashion for constantly complaining about one’s younger years. No, everyone should have been sent off to serve a mage and saved us this endless prattle, that’s what I think.”
He fell silent, and began a slow circuit of the room, stopping here and there to contemplate one object or another.
The countess saw the room differently this time. It was not the children’s abandonment that struck her, but the parents’ efforts at preservation.
Eldrich paused before a wizard’s cap and staff, and to the countess’ surprise he actually picked up the staff. He studied it a moment, then thumped it once on the floor, speaking words of Darian as he did so. The head of the staff glowed with a soft green light, like sea-fire, and with this he etched the letter E in the air, where it hung for a moment before fading, as did the glow on the staff. Eldrich put it carefully back in its place and looked up at her. “It still works,” he said, and then continued on his rounds.
The countess was too surprised to laugh. What was this? Charm from the mage? She did not think he even knew what it was. Irony, tending to sarcasm, seemed to be the closest he ever stood to humor.
Eldrich continued on his rounds. “Why have they preserved this room thus, do you think?” he asked.
The countess looked around her. “Museum” was a good description. But it was more than that. It was homage to a time, an age of life, as well as to children who had obviously been very precious to their parents.
“Despite the current vogue for complaint, there is a nostalgia in our culture for childhood. We forget all its trials and frustrations and remember only the days when the mundane world and the world of make-believe had very thin walls between them. That is what I think; we remember the magic, the stories, the hours of play—if we were lucky enough to spend our hours in play.”
Eldrich nodded, seeming to consider this.
“Do you long for such a world?”
The countess had never thought of it in such terms. Did she? “We all long for simpler times,” she said, wondering where this conversation was going, and why Eldrich had summoned her here. “There is very little magic in people’s adult lives,” she said. “Very little to surprise.”
Again the mage nodded. He stepped behind a marionette theater, and one of the marionettes hanging there suddenly raised its drooping head. It looked around.
An arm lifted, as though relearning animation. It almost seemed to shrug its shoulders, as though working out the stiffness from so many years of inactivity. It took a few uncertain steps, then suddenly found its confidence. It did a little jig and threw up its hands, leaping for joy.
Eldrich looked up from his puppeteering, his eyes running sadly over the room and its contents. “I wonder if the children feel the same way about childhood as their parents? It is a critical lesson of life, knowing when to move on, when one’s time is done.”
The marionette slowed in its motion, like a music-box figure running down. Its head fell slowly to one side, limbs collapsing, and again the near-human figure hung lifeless.
With some care Eldrich hung the marionette back in its place, and without another word went out, leaving the countess alone.
She sat down on a tiny chair and felt her shoulders begin to shake. Why had she agreed to help this man? Was it really this promise of prolonged youth? She looked around the room at the preserved treasures of coddled childhood.
It is a critical lesson of life, knowing when one’s time is done.
But youth had less to do with her decision than she realized at the time. Curiosity had taken its part, but even more than that was a sense that there would be purpose. Her life would have purpose.
For what had she been doing with her given days? What would she ever do?
She looked around the room again, seeking the feeling of childhood, the state of it that was somehow lost within her—yet it eluded her.
And here she was, in the house of a mage, with magic all around her, and she did not feel as she did as a child. Had she moved on? How could she know that it would all be so deadly, so grave? And yet she was not entirely clear what Eldrich would do. He would erase all of the mages’ arts from the world, for reasons that were not perfectly clear. And she might play some part in this. She . . . And so she stayed, while others fell away. Erasmus. Kent. Marianne. Even Skye. And she stayed with this man—this near-human, feeling his contained desire for her. Wondering what purpose long-dead mages had created her for, and if Eldrich made a mistake believing he could turn her to his own uses.
Odd to go through life so convinced that one knew who one was and for what purpose one was intended, and then suddenly to discover that this was not true at all. Like an artist discovering that their art was larger than they; perhaps even overwhelming.
She stayed to find out who she was and prayed she would not be overwhelmed.
Twenty-Eight
Anna looked back down the long valley, thinking the situation was a great deal less than perfect. It was all a matter of distances, of timing. She would see them first—assuming they came down this path, and she had left as many signs of her passing as possible to draw them on. If there was no fog, the smoke from her fire would almost certainly alert them.
When they crested the rise, she would play at being surprised—and herein lay the problem. The distance from her camp to the river had to be gauged with precision. If they caught her before they reached the gorge . . . Wel
l, she did not like to think about what that might mean. No, they had to pursue her, be almost upon her when they broke through the last trees at the edge of the chasm . . . and then it would be too late. She knew the cliff was there, and trusted they did not.
Anna had studied that final stretch of trail with great care. There was no margin for error.
She threw another piece of wood on the fire and walked back up the rise to resume her vigil. A swallow cut an arc through the air and disappeared into the wood, reminding her of Brother Norbert and his promise—which brought her some small comfort.
* * *
* * *
Pryor bent low to the ground, touching the marks with a finger. He moved on, still crouched, glancing up to see where the trail led.
“They’re recent,” he said, standing straight for the first time since he had found his brother’s pyre. “Yesterday, late, ’twould be my guess.”
“But is it she?” Hayes asked, hoping, perhaps, that it was not. That he would not be forced to decide.
The guide nodded, taking up his reins and swinging quickly up onto his mount.
Erasmus looked around at the others, not all of whom were as ambivalent as he. Deacon Rose spurred his horse on and took up a position immediately behind Pryor. It was clear what these two would do; but what of the others?
* * *
* * *
Deacon Rose stood in the center of the narrow trail, holding up his hand, a finger to his lips.
“Smoke,” he said, his voice low, if not an actual whisper.
Erasmus dropped down from his saddle. “Are you saying we’ve found her?”
The priest nodded. “Unless it is some other.” Rose and Pryor had ranged ahead of the others, widening a gulf that Erasmus knew now would never be bridged. If they captured her, he would have to perform the ceremony Percy had left him.