by Sean Russell
The motion in the painting was astonishing, manic. The clothes of the figures billowed and swirled, almost seeming to move as you looked, which she could only bear to do for a few seconds at a time.
“Kent did this? A prophetic painting?”
The mage nodded, his attention on the canvas.
The countess gestured at the figures. “Who . . . ? Who are they?” she asked, her words seeming to spin away on a wind.
Eldrich shook his head. “That is what we were discussing. The woman would seem to be you.” He reached out his hand, pointing a long finger. “Do you see this? The dark area? Your curls, I think. Though, if you tilt your head, they seem to be nothing but burned leaves and shadow afloat on the wind.” He tilted his head experimentally. “The man is another question. Walky believes it is Kent, though I am not so sure. I think I see something of Erasmus in the stance, the silhouette, but who can be sure? See this, however.” He gestured again. “That is the top of a column and a broken lintel. Like the Ruin of Farrow, though Walky believes that is mere wishful thinking. Do you see?”
“Yes. That is a column, I am sure. And it is carved with some . . . I don’t know. Shapes that I cannot identify. Yet see this corner of sky! Kent told me that Pelier was unsurpassed in his treatment of cloud and sky, but look at this! I think Pelier has a rival, after all.”
The mage cast an odd glance at her.
“Look closely at this woman. You have gazed into a looking glass—is it the Countess of Chilton?”
She tried to focus on the figure, but the more she tried to concentrate, the more the figure seemed to disintegrate. To see it at all she had to look away slightly and place the figure at the edge of her vision, as though it were not real but made up of the windborne leaves and detritus. “I don’t know. The truth is that others always see you most clearly. What does Walky think?”
“He is not sure,” the mage said, an edge of despair in his voice. “Perhaps it is you.”
“But what do the other elements mean? Is that not a king’s blood blossom in the woman’s hand? And the column—These things must have meaning.”
“Must they?” Eldrich stared at the painting, his usual unreadable countenance observably sad. He turned and walked away a few paces, then returned his attention for a moment. He sighed and threw himself down in a chair.
“I think Kent’s price was too high, for he gave me nothing in return.”
“Then the portraits meant nothing?”
The mage glanced up at her, raising an eyebrow. “No, they might yet have their use. We shall see.”
His peevishness seemed to drain away from him as he sprawled in the chair, and suddenly he seemed fragile and tired, his dark, unsettling eyes sunken. For a moment he laid his head back and closed his eyes.
The countess felt her anger return as she looked at him, sprawled rudely in a chair, concerned only with the world of Eldrich. “Not everyone you use performs as you would like, do they? Perhaps, after all, coercion is less effective than willing participation.”
His mouth turned down, as though he grimaced in pain.
“I have neither the time nor temperament to win people over,” he said. “My task is more crucial than that.”
“Nor do you have the respect for others that it would require.”
He opened his eyes and regarded her almost coolly. She felt herself step back, but checked herself there.
“And what, pray tell, is all this? Have I offended your delicate sensibilities in some way?” He raised his eyebrows, the mockery appearing.
She felt her own anger boil up. “You would have offended the ‘sensibilities’ of every civilized person, if they only knew what you did.”
He tilted his head slightly, the eyebrows arching up again.
She could not bear the mockery a moment more. The smugness drove her to fury. “You used children—children!—on this sacred quest of yours! How could you set an innocent child afire, and leave another to bear the guilt of it all his years? It is . . . unspeakable. It is the act of a monster. A despicable, heartless monster! And you look to me for comfort? You who feel no remorse. How could you prey upon children? How could you?” She drew a ragged breath, fingernails tearing the flesh of her palms because her fists were so tight.
Eldrich continued to stare at her, apparently unaffected by the outburst—as though he were mildly interested in the behavior of some animal.
“How could I?” he said, the mockery strong in his tone. “It was not difficult. I am a monster, after all. A man who surrendered his heart to become a mage.” His gaze was suddenly not so disinterested. “How could I expect understanding from you—a spoiled child of a decadent class. You have never made a hard decision in your life. After all, what color gown you choose to wear is hardly earthshaking. Do not go on to me about what a monster I am. I would sacrifice a thousand children to accomplish my task. I would sacrifice you and every member of your inbred class, and they would be no more able to understand it than you. Now leave me in peace.”
She stood appalled by his declaration, sure that it was not exaggeration. He would do it, and more. For a second she stood her ground, but then saw the futility of it and left with as much dignity as she could manage, as though she had hardly been wounded at all.
* * *
* * *
She perched on the miniature throne in the playroom surrounded by the landscape of a pampered childhood—a room outside of time. Twilight cast soft shadows across the floor and walls, imbuing the room with melancholy, though she could not say why.
It was here that Hayes had told her Erasmus’ story—his time with the mage and what had happened. How Percy had been engulfed in flame—the screams Erasmus heard in his dreams even as an adult. If she closed her eyes, she could see the child burning. . . .
“I cannot be what he asks,” she whispered.
Since her argument with Eldrich, she had felt a peculiar lassitude. What would she do now? Go back to her old life, all memories of this strange chapter of her days gone? Go back to worrying what color gown to wear to a ball? His words had cut her more deeply than she liked to admit.
“I have led a frivolous life,” she said. Yet somehow it had brought her here.
Perhaps I cannot leave, she thought. I am bound to fulfill my part of the bargain, though what that will entail is still far from clear.
She looked around the room, the carriage and its rocking-horse team journeying endlessly toward make-believe. Reminders of the childhood that was stolen from Erasmus and his companion, Percy.
It was true that Eldrich had his childhood stolen as well, and had been subjected to the random cruelties of Lucklow. . . .
She shook her head. It did not matter. Generals did not send children of ten to fight their battles.
“One does not judge a mage by the laws of men, anymore than one would judge a falcon by the ways of a sparrow.” Walky’s words came back to her. “He has duties and trusts that we can barely comprehend.” But did he? What, beyond this obsession to erase all knowledge of the arts, all real memory of their practice? “You must understand this one truth of mages, m’lady. He cannot afford the luxury of humanity. His duties are too grave for that. It is a calling that one pursues at great price. One surrenders one’s heart to become a mage.”
In this, at least, Eldrich had been more than successful.
Across the room a movement caught her eye.
Who has found their way in here? she wondered.
A shadow moved, and the countess froze. The wolf?
But, no, it was something else; a small phantom of starlight and darkness—a child . . . and then a second.
The countess heard her own indrawn breath.
They stood near the tiny coach, a boy and girl, difficult to discern, but certainly there. And they looked about as though lost, clinging to each other’s hand, their moonlight-eyes wide
and filled with sorrow.
“The children for whom this shrine was made,” a musical voice said softly.
The countess started. Eldrich stood a few feet away.
“But what are they?” she asked, overwhelmed with an inexplicable desire to have peace between them, and unsettled by these spirits appearing before her.
“Ghosts, you would call them. Spirits of the dead children.”
She looked around the room and realized this was what had disturbed her all along. The room was a shrine, not a museum. The children were dead.
“How old?” she whispered.
“Three and seven,” he said softly.
“Why do they appear now?”
“They often appear when I am near. They are drawn to my talent for the arts. It is surprising you have not seen them yourself before now.”
The countess watched the two children wander among the treasures of their childhood, forever unable to touch them. “They look so . . . lost.”
“They seek a way back to life,” Eldrich said, “but there is no path that can take them there.”
“So they will wander here always?”
“Always? No, but for many lifetimes.”
The countess could not take her eyes from these apparitions. She felt a tear tremble on her lashes. “How unbearably sad.”
“Yes, but I can release them,” he said softly. “Would you have me do so?”
She glanced over at him, but the mage did not look her way.
“What would become of them?”
She saw his stooped figure shrug. “What becomes of anyone?”
A silence.
“They suffer,” Eldrich whispered. “Can you feel it?”
She nodded. Yes, they suffered, but it was not oblivion they sought.
“I will release them from that suffering if you will say but a word.”
“Why is this choice mine?”
“Because you believe such decisions are easily made. What will you have me do?”
Nearer the children came, and though they were drawn to Eldrich, to his power, their eyes could not find him.
“I will leave you to consider,” he said and was gone into shadow. She heard the door latch tick.
And before her the children were distraught. They felt him go, all their futile hopes disappearing with him. And then they sensed her, as though she were a lesser light that they had not noticed. They came toward her, mothlike, hands outstretched and groping. She backed away in horror, and still they sought her. A moment more and she fled the room, scattering a shelf of poppets as she went.
Forty-Two
The ringing of bells sounded from all points of the compass. Samual Hayes and Fenwick Kehler stared out into the darkness where occasional sails would slip by, ghostlike in the fog.
“It is the Lochwinnie fishing fleet, or so I heard someone say.”
Hayes nodded. A slight breeze moved their ship over a calm sea, and though a fog surrounded them, overhead the stars shone clear among the sails.
Kehler nodded his head toward a solitary figure who stood farther along the rail: Brother Norbert.
“Why in the world did Rose force the man to accompany us? I’m sure this will be nothing but another ‘false Anna.’”
“Well, clearly, to see if Anna’s spirit does appear to him.”
They both laughed, and tried to cover it up.
“Do you know, Hayes, I believe the stains on his robes are from birds!”
Hayes laughed softly. “I’m quite sure they are. He told me that his monastery houses mostly swallows now, and he is merely tolerated by them. ‘I am the one making my home in their eaves,’ is how he put it. For all his eccentricities he is a good-hearted soul. If all of Farrelle’s priests were like Brother Norbert, I think I might respect the church more.”
An odd, vaguely human sound bubbled up from the water, surprising both Kehler and Hayes. Something bobbed in the fog.
“Martyr’s balls . . .” Kehler whispered.
The object, barely visible, was long and thin with an uplifted round end. The sound of soft laughter emanated from it.
Then Hayes chuckled. “It is a gull on a log. A laughing gull, so called, or so I would guess.”
They watched the apparition, so like a drowned man, float past, and then Kehler nudged his friend. “Look at our mystic.”
Brother Norbert was leaning well out over the rail, his eyes wide, straining to see through the mist.
“Perhaps that was really Anna, but our unschooled senses could not perceive it,” Hayes offered.
Brother Norbert turned to them then, his eyes no longer wide, face collapsed into grief. Both Kehler and Hayes went quickly down the deck to him.
“Did you see?” he rasped, barely able to find a voice.
“A log ridden by a gull,” Hayes said.
The priest shook his head, half-collapsed against the rail. Kehler took the man by the arm to bear him up.
“No, ’twas a man.” Brother Norbert was sobbing softly. “A drowned man, young and fair. Crying for his brother lost, swept down to the sea, to the breathing, shoreless sea.”
“Pryor?” Hayes said, incredulous. It was no apparition, just a gull on a log. He had seen it clearly himself, as had Kehler.
“What a tragic end for one so young,” Norbert said, “what a terrible thing—caught up in matters beyond him, with people whose concerns were far greater than his own. The concerns of the world.” He fell down upon his knees, bent over like a man in agony. “May he find peace,” he said, and made a sign to Farrelle. He began to pray, mumbling in Old Farr.
Hayes backed away, a bit disturbed by what went on, and realized that Kehler did the same. A few paces back he came abreast of Clarendon, who stood looking on solemnly, Dusk at his side.
“Has Anna found him?” he asked softly, his voice heavy with melancholy.
“No, he has had a vision, or so I gather. It would seem to have been Pryor.” Hayes gestured out toward the sea. “Yet Kehler and I saw the same thing—a laughing gull perched upon a log, half-hidden in the mist. Hardly unnatural. It seems the man’s visions spring from a fertile imagination.”
“But that is the nature of visions, and visionaries. What you see will be perfectly mundane, but what they see—Do not discount the vision because you did not see it, for you are not given to visions, Mr. Hayes. Nor you, Mr. Kehler. This must be why Rose insisted the man stay with us, for there was time yet for the visions to appear. If he has not seen Anna in a few days . . .”
“Then you believe this, Randall?” Kehler said.
The small man nodded, his wolfhound nuzzling at him for more attention. “Oh, I believe many strange things—have seen many strange things. After all, when I was but a boy, I saw a mage appear and take my world away. I have crawled into the very bowels of the earth in search of impetuous friends, and found the tomb of a mythical mage, perhaps even the gate to Faery, and many other things besides.” He shook his head, the fringe of hair pale in the starlight. “Perhaps Anna will appear to him yet. Perhaps even Mr. Flattery.”
“But what if she doesn’t? What if neither of them appear?”
Clarendon shrugged. “Then I will allow myself to hope that Mr. Flattery is yet alive, for it is terrible to lose all of one’s friends at once.” He looked at Hayes and Kehler, meeting their eyes for the first time since his encounter with Eldrich. “You two go carefully. I could not bear to lose everyone dear to me.” Saying nothing more, he turned away and disappeared into the shadow of the sails and the mist that drifted over the rail.
* * *
* * *
It was much later, the night waning, when Hayes woke and could not entice sleep’s return. Finally he rose and climbed up on deck. He heard the sound of sharp tapping on the planks, and Dusk appeared, gamboling, licked his hand, then bounded back into
the shadow of a sail. It was here that Hayes found Clarendon, leaning on the rail, which rose to chest height on the small man.
“Have you been awake all this night, Randall?”
Clarendon nodded.
Hayes put a hand on his shoulder. “I should not speak, Randall, for I have no experience in such matters, but even so, I cannot bear to see you waste away. It has been a very long time. Can you not give her up now?”
His words were met by silence. Hayes took his hand away, fearing that he’d caused offense.
“It is easier for you,” Clarendon said softly, “you can forget. Everyone forgets—in time—even the loss of a cherished wife, a child. Memories lose their vividness, and healing begins, for part of healing is the forgetting, the softening of memories. But I forget nothing. I can see Lizzy as clearly as if she just spoke. I hear her voice—as real as yours, Mr. Hayes.
“Time wears everything away—mountains, men, and certainly the recollections of men—but my memories are the one rock that will not wear away. Time will not touch them, Mr. Hayes, I don’t know why. To me, Lizzy left this morning, Mr. Flattery but ten minutes past. To heal from loss, you must forget a little, and I cannot. It is the curse Eldrich named it, and I wish it on no man.
“But do not concern yourself overly on my account, Mr. Hayes. I will not heal, but nor will I founder. No, I am made of good timber—old, gnarly oak. I shall keep myself afloat, even if Mr. Flattery could not. We owe it to him.”
Dusk came up and set his chin on the rail at his master’s elbow, docile, sensing the sadness. Clarendon stroked him slowly.
“Is there nothing that anyone might do, Randall?”
“Take away my memories. . . . But even Eldrich could not manage that. It is always good to have solid friends in difficult times. That is quite enough. Quite enough, Mr. Hayes. Now get some rest, if you can. I fear our road will grow more difficult before it’s done.”