Then the narrow space filled with a figure; not easy to see in the half-light but there all the same. She paused a moment, watching him, or was she waiting for him to make up his mind? If she was, she quickly lost patience.
‘Come through,’ Bea called, waving him towards her. ‘We’re waiting for you.’
And pushing one foot forward, then the other, Marcel followed her out of the darkness.
‘MARCEL,’ CRIED LONG BEARD, enveloping him in a lung-bursting hug. ‘You found the magic to bring my girl home. Thank the shadows. But what possessed you to go back into Baden Dark when you could see for yourself what a terror it was?’
Marcel freed himself and staggered back a pace or two in the narrow fissure where they were all gathered. He was caught off guard by Long Beard’s question and floundered about searching for some excuse, any excuse at all.
‘The book,’ he said finally, almost shouting the word in relief. ‘I found out it had come from Baden Dark. You said it yourself, anything from that world must remain there, so I took it back.’
‘And these two came with you,’ said Long Beard, making the next link in the story by himself.
‘Er … yes, then we couldn’t get back, you see,’ Marcel went on, grasping at the first nonsense that came to mind. ‘The magic … the magic had changed somehow, yes that was it, except just now I seemed to find the way.’
His skin prickled with tiny beads of sweat as the ludicrous story spilled from his lips like too much rain into a bucket. The look on Kertigan’s face showed he didn’t believe a word, and Long Beard was frowning at this last part too.
‘Whatever the reason, you had no business in Baden Dark. If you enter these tunnels again, you will answer to me,’ he said solemnly.
Marcel hung his head as he was expected to. ‘I’m sorry, Long Beard. I’ll never return to Baden Dark. That much I swear. Let’s close the barrier now and I’ll put the strongest wards I can in place to stop another breach.’
With this done, Long Beard was satisfied at last.
‘You three must be starving,’ he said, and at the mention of food the growl in his voice softened. ‘Kertigan and I had to take that fool of a dominie back to the light, so we replenished our supplies and came back to wait for you. Just as well by the look of you, Marcel. You can hardly stand.’
It was true. Sealing the breach had once again exhausted him, but while Kertigan and Long Beard prepared a meal for them by the light of the torch, there was one task he must deal with immediately. He signalled to Fergus and took him aside, Bea knowing to join them without being asked.
‘Nothing we saw in Baden Dark must ever be known in the Mortal Kingdoms,’ he said.
‘You don’t need to remind us,’ Fergus assured him curtly. ‘Not a word.’
‘Not even in passing. It’s best that we say as little as possible, especially to each other in case we’re overheard.’
There was no need for Marcel’s warning in the hours that followed, for once they began the arduous climb they had little breath for talking. Marcel’s magic was needed to light the way above so Kertigan and Long Beard had both hands free to help him climb. Feeling helpless and so dependent upon the others was another humiliation. Learn from the least of things and when you are at your lowest, Rhys Tironel had counselled him in Noam. Was it only a week ago he’d been there? The Grand Master would smile if he could see Marcel taking his advice at last. In the meantime, he climbed, each thrust upwards an agony for his thighs.
Then Kertigan shouted in excitement, ‘I can see the ledge! There, jutting out above us. Do you see it? We’re almost at the top.’
The clambering from rock to rock might be over but there was still quite a way to walk and all of it uphill.
‘We’ll rest a while here,’ ordered Long Beard, and he lit a torch as Marcel settled himself beside Bea and Fergus. ‘We have enough of these to light our way out, Marcel. Save your strength.’
What a relief to lie in the dust with no call on his magic. Marcel watched the flame dance shadows on the rocky walls and listened as Kertigan and Long Beard discussed the way ahead. The two male voices rumbled back and forth amid the echoes.
‘You’re awfully quiet, Bea,’ said Long Beard at last. ‘And why that long face? You’ll be out of these tunnels before much longer.’
Bea found enough words to be polite, but no more. She was doing as Marcel had asked, of course, but now that they were no longer panting from the climb, Marcel saw how this made a new difficulty for him. Here he was, sitting beside Bea, the danger over and his heart heavy with so much to say, and he couldn’t utter a word of it.
Silenced by his own command, Marcel found a different sadness ready to invade his thoughts. King Pelham was dead, and since their safety now seemed assured, he could no longer hold back the grief of a son who had lost his father. He carried that grief alone for what remained of their journey, so weighed down by it that he didn’t bother to look up when the first daylight touched the sides of the tunnel ahead. Only when they were outside and he could feel the sun on his face did he let the joy of journey’s end take hold of him.
‘I’ve never been so glad to see clouds,’ said Fergus, bathing in the light. ‘The blue of that sky has to be the most beautiful colour in the world.’ And, despite their differences underground, the cousins hugged like a pair of playful bears.
They broke apart, keen to draw the others into the celebration, only to find that Long Beard and Kertigan had made for the shelter of the nearest bush. They waited there, barely visible on the side away from the sun.
They were elves. Of course they would seek the shadows, Marcel reminded himself. What of Bea though? Where was she? He found her looking away from him, towards the two of her kind. As he watched, she turned back towards him, and Fergus too, since he was standing close. He wanted to call to her: Only half of you is elf, Bea. You can choose — the daylight or the shadow.
Her eyes came to rest on his own, as though she had heard him, and he wondered for a moment if he had conjured a spell without willing it, a spell that let them speak while no one around them could hear a word.
Whether Bea knew what was in Marcel’s mind or not, she broke off the silent stare between them and went to join her grandfather. With Long Beard’s body blocking more of the light, Marcel couldn’t see her at all.
‘Come back to the Hidden Village with us,’ Long Beard said. ‘We must decide what to do with your Dominie Suskin. Right now he’s tied up and blindfolded and more than a little frightened by young Frances and Marigold. I told them to stand over him and discuss which part they would like to eat once he’s been roasted over the fire.’
Fergus laughed at this mischief and set off towards the elves. Bea came out of the shadows to join him, smiling at the thought of her grandfather’s torments.
‘Wait,’ Marcel called. ‘We can’t stay. There are things I haven’t told you; things my magic let me know. We’re needed in Elstenwyck as soon as we can get there.’
Bea sent him a harsh look, half-disappointment and half-suspicion. She thinks I’m jealous again, of the way she’s come out to stand with Fergus, Marcel thought, but he couldn’t explain himself, not with Long Beard and Kertigan so close.
Was she right; was it jealousy? After all that had happened since he’d tried to conjure the love spell, was he still in its grip? As soon as he let the question free in his mind, he knew it wasn’t true. He hadn’t called Fergus back to keep him from Bea’s side. Nicola really would be searching the roads and the sky every hour for a sign of them. What filled him instead was the same deep sense of loss he’d known when he’d first decided to stay in Baden Dark. He understood better now what it was he’d lost, but this didn’t ease the sadness he felt with every breath that passed painfully down his windpipe to pool inside his heart.
‘But I was planning a banquet to mark your safe return,’ Long Beard complained and he looked ready for an argument as long as his beard.
Marcel felt the resolve hardening in h
im now that he was in his own world again, and when the elves saw they couldn’t change his mind, Long Beard said, ‘We’d better take you to where that ugly horse of yours is pastured.’
Kertigan led the way. After half an hour of following paths they couldn’t have found themselves, Fergus was the first to spot the mottled grey body among the gorse. Gadfly’s head bobbed up at the sound of their approach, inquisitive and accusing as ever. ‘Where have you been?’ she seemed to say.
‘Can you give her wings?’ Fergus asked Marcel.
His voice held a hint of gentle concern that had been missing before now. The open air was warming his heart as well, it seemed, or perhaps he simply didn’t want the magic to fail suddenly when they were so high above the ground.
Marcel held Gadfly’s head between his hands and imagined the pristine feathers emerging from her flanks. So beautiful. He was amazed by them all over again each time they appeared. He searched for the mare’s innermost desire and felt it almost immediately, as hard as a stone in his thoughts.
‘You haven’t changed. You never feel doubt, do you, Gadfly? In that heart of yours you’re an eagle commanding the sky. It’s one of the joys of my magic that I can let you live out your dreams, even for a short time,’ and while he was speaking these words, the wings began to appear, as white and magnificent as ever.
Gadfly twisted her long neck to inspect them, then returned her gaze to Marcel, asking wordlessly why he had seemed so unsure.
‘Doubting your own abilities from time to time isn’t a bad thing,’ he told her and that, at least, was something he could smile about. The magic was returning to him; he could feel it, fresh and new, as though he was learning to use it for the first time.
‘We’ll need the edge of the escarpment to get into the air,’ said Fergus, practical as ever.
‘It’s not far,’ Kertigan told them. ‘Follow this stream down through the gorse and the cliff is on the other side of those trees.’
In only a few minutes they would have the rushing wind in their faces and see the plains of Elster far below. Then he would tell Fergus of Pelham’s death and the need to reach Elstenwyck would grow even stronger. Duties awaited them. Their lives were about to change in ways they could barely imagine. It was time to go, time to say their farewells.
Marcel looked at Bea. There was room for her on Gadfly’s back. He wanted to ask her, could almost hear the words in his ears: ‘Come with us, Bea. Come to live in Elstenwyck where I can see you every day’; but his tongue didn’t say them. Other words had to be said first, and there had been no opportunity for them to speak alone.
Kertigan shook their hands, then Long Beard, and finally it was Bea’s turn. She took a hand each, tugging their faces down to her own. First she kissed Fergus on the cheek, then Marcel, lingering, he thought, a little longer with her lips to his skin. There were words too, but Marcel didn’t hear them. His mind was too full of those he couldn’t say: Come with us. Come with me!
Gadfly wasn’t one for sentiment. Pulling away in the direction Kertigan had pointed, she forced the young men to follow. After a dozen steps, they looked back and found that Long Beard and Kertigan had vanished.
Not Bea, though. Not this time. She stood in the sunlight, her dull brown dress already hard to make out against the dark tones of the undergrowth, but her skin shining for them both to see. She looked behind her for a moment — Long Beard must be urging her to drop out of sight — but she defied him and turned her face towards them again.
The trail down towards the escarpment was difficult for human feet and even harder for a horse’s hooves. They guided Gadfly slowly, looking back when they could, Marcel especially. Each time he did, Bea was still there, watching them steadfastly and calming her elvish blood so they could see her.
The deep dread of loss came to Marcel again, growing harder in his chest with each step he took. This was worse than the grief he felt for his father. This wasn’t the loss of death, but a living grief, all the more painful because hope hadn’t yet died. She might come to him still; she might run down through the gorse calling his name. Once he might have used his magic to make it happen. Now he wondered if magic could take away the pain instead.
No, some things were terrain for the human heart alone. ‘Not magic but wisdom,’ he whispered.
Bea was only a shape on the mountainside now. Much further and he wouldn’t be able to make out the features of her face. He stopped to take in every detail, aware that this might be the last time he saw her.
‘Marcel!’ Fergus cried. ‘Through the trees. Can you see? There’s farmland in the distance.’
Marcel turned to look, just the briefest glimpse, and yes, Fergus was right. In the hazy distance he could make out the fields on the plains below. Then he was staring back at the mountain again, but this time there was no one to see.
Epilogue
MARCEL’S STORY BEGAN IN the high country of Elster, not so far from the mountain of the elves, in a tiny village called Fallside where Nicola and Fergus had been sent before him. He didn’t know, when he first opened his eyes in Mrs Timmins’ foundling home, that he had been born with sorcery in his blood. These stories have told how he came to discover it and what he used it for.
Those stories are over now.
Oh, there are some things the reader might like to know that happened afterwards, but none were as dangerous or as exciting as what has already been told. His sister, Nicola, was crowned queen in their father’s place and, with Marcel as her Master of the Books, she ruled for half a century; a time that is remembered in the embroidered scenes of the great tapestry as the high point of the kingdom’s history. At first the old chancellor guided her decisions, but when he died, ten years into her reign, a well-trained replacement was ready to take his place: the queen’s cousin, Lord Fergus.
So there is nothing more to tell … except perhaps, for one quiet incident that occurred little more than a month after Queen Nicola’s coronation. It is not recorded on the tapestry, nor written down in any leather-bound books. How could it be, when only two people know it took place and neither of them has ever told the story to another? One of them was Marcel, of course, since it happened in his private chamber in the north tower of Elstenwyck’s palace.
He had spent the entire morning in the Great Hall where the chancellor had presented an emissary from one of the Outer Kingdoms. War had whispered its ugly promises into the ear of an ambitious ruler who had sent his ambassador to test the young queen’s resolve. Nicola had acquitted herself well and the emissary would take word back to his master that Pelham’s daughter was not the easy prey he’d imagined.
At noon, Marcel had slipped away to his room to eat alone and listen for the flapping wings of a pigeon. He stood by the window, hoping to see the bird first, but though he spotted a number of pigeons, none descended to the ledge where he waited. A sound did catch his attention, however, not in the sky above nor from the cobblestoned courtyard below, but from behind him: a deliberate tap against the wood of a bookcase. Which one? There were many, after all, in a chamber crowded with books. He let his eyes roam the room and found nothing.
‘Termagant,’ he called softly.
No, it wouldn’t be her. She’d given up taunting him now that she had a litter of kittens to teach her cunning ways. If necessary, he could use his wizardry to locate the intruder, but he used such powers sparingly since his return from Baden Dark and always in the service of his sister.
The tapping sounded a second time, from the other side of the room. Marcel could barely breathe yet his heartbeat seemed to have doubled in a matter of moments.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said.
After a moment or two a familiar voice replied, ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘You’ve come after all. I thought I’d never see you again. It’s been awful —’ He was hurrying his words, sounding like a fool. At this rate he would scare her away again. ‘Long Beard will be worried about you, and that woman who takes care of you.’
‘Nerrinder knows where I am, and Grandfather too. They know why I’ve come, as well. To ask you a question, Marcel.’
One question. Was that all? Would the rest of his life depend on a single answer? He couldn’t see her, didn’t know which bookcase she was using to remain hidden. Rather than stare into space like a blind man, he went back to the window where he looked down into the courtyard and waited.
Bea moved again without him picking out the slightest disturbance. When she spoke this time, she was closer.
‘When we were leaving Baden Dark, after Fergus and I had gone through the breach, you stayed behind. You were going to close it up again, weren’t you? I could see it in your face. You were going to stay with Arminsel after all.’
‘Yes,’ he answered with simple honesty.
‘But you didn’t. That’s the question I’ve come to ask, Marcel. Why did you come back to the Mortal Kingdoms?’
He could tell her of the loyalty he owed to Nicola; he could tell her of his duty to Elster; he could say he’d listened to his father’s wisdom in the moments before it became part of the great tree. But none of these was quite the truth. He thought suddenly of the Book of Lies, imagined it hanging in the air before him, listening to his answer. Would it glow reddish gold or would it fan its pages back and forth until it found a space for his words?
‘It was you, Bea, your voice, the way you stood in the breach and called me to join you. When I saw you there, I knew that power and riches would never mean anything to me, not even the wisdom that Arminsel would have given me. You were worth more to me than any of those, and if that was true then I wouldn’t be tempted by Arminsel the way Gannimere was. I would live out my vow. I was free.’
Would she believe him? She had no special book to help her know he was speaking the truth. He’d answered her question but he had more to say and, since his words were greeted with a long silence, he took the chance at last to tell her.
The Book from Baden Dark Page 26