Ombria In Shadow

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He rose. His hand hovered an instant near her cheek, but he turned and left without touching Mistress Thorn.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Thrice a Fool

  Mag, returning to the palace in the silvery light of dawn along with the milk and carts from the market, slipped into the kitchens with a couple of groaning baskets of squash in her arms, deposited them in a likely place, picked up a bucket and cloth along the way, and left through a different door. For once she had dressed carefully, in something plain and dark. She endured the bleak stares of what seemed endless lines of Domina Pearl’s guards, standing as stiff and mute as mile-posts along the hall. They did not question the drudge with the hunched shoulders and lowered head going to clean up a spill. She went down the first stairway she could into the unguarded lower quarters, where she would have passed Ducon without lifting her head if he had been a step ahead of himself.

  As it was, he rounded a corner just as she hurried past it and they met precipitously, with a clang of bucket. Ducon, gripping Mag’s arm to keep her upright, bent speechlessly to rub his shin. She stared in amazement at the fish-bone hair while the bucket rattled across the floor and rocked gently to a halt.

  Ducon let go of Mag finally. He seemed to take her silence for a drudge’s timidity, or fear of being punished for having been tripped over. He barely glanced at her, just reached for the bucket absently, his thoughts already proceeding down the corridor. The dry floor caught his attention. Water did not make its own way to those parts of the palace; an empty bucket made no sense. He looked at her for the first time.

  He didn’t speak immediately either. He took her arm again, moved her a step or two closer to the nearest spray of tapers along the wall, and studied her. “Hair,” he murmured finally. “A pile of straw and full of pins. Eyes the color of walnut shells…” His voice trailed away; he looked suddenly puzzled, as though he had remembered her from some dream, perhaps, or within a different light. She felt it too. It was what had drawn her there, that sense of recognition. “Mag,” he said finally, and she nodded.

  “Why do I feel I know you,” he wondered, “when I have never met you before?”

  “I don’t know.” She stood rigid under his scrutiny, still startled by being seen before she chose. The hall was shadowy beyond the taper lights, and, but for their hushed voices, very quiet. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “You came looking for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Faey know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  He shifted slightly, as though to hide her from invisible eyes. “This is the last place you should be.”

  “I know.” Her hand closed tightly on the locket hidden beneath the drab wool. “But there is no one else to ask about the charcoal.”

  He slid his own hand into a pocket as though to touch something familiar, reassure himself. “Faey made it,” he reminded her. “You could have asked her.”

  “Faey doesn’t know everything. She says that you see with more than human eyes, but she doesn’t understand why. Maybe she doesn’t remember why; she must be as old as Ombria.”

  He was silent, studying her again with his inhuman eyes. “Perhaps it’s because you’ve lived underground and with her magic all your life,” he commented obscurely.

  “What?”

  “There’s something unhuman about you, too.” He pulled the charcoal out of his pocket impulsively, then considered it ruefully. Faint, glittering colors washed over it in the candlelight. “I wish I had the time to draw you. Maybe that would answer some questions.”

  “You have drawn me,” she said. “But not with that.”

  His silvery gaze flicked to her again, surprised. “Have I? Surely not. I would have remembered you.”

  “You drew me in a tavern, the day Royce Greve was buried. I wore a long black veil; it hid my face.”

  “That was you?” He regarded the drudge with amazement. “That mysterious, elegant woman in black?”

  “That was me. You were surrounded by young nobles who were trying to persuade you that it might be a good idea to kill both Domina Pearl and Kyel and put you on the throne instead.”

  His face grew taut. “You heard that.”

  “I followed you to the pier.” She looked away from him, suddenly inarticulate. “I had a decision to make. About you. About myself.”

  “I remember,” he said, his gaze indrawn now, expressionless. “Lydea told me that you were spying on me. Trying to make some decision about whether I should live or die.”

  “About whether or not I should help Faey dispose of you,” she amended. “As it was, I had no choice. I meant to meddle with her spell during the making, but she gave me no chance; I tried to steal it, but she hid it; I searched everywhere for you to warn you, but I couldn’t find you—”

  “Why?” he asked abruptly. “After what you heard in the tavern and on the pier, why would you try to help me?”

  “That night after the funeral when you were summoned to stay with Kyel because he was having nightmares, I was trapped under his bed.” Ducon, astounded, tried to speak; nothing came out. “I couldn’t leave because of the guards. Kyel trusted you. You lay awake all night watching while he slept. You go everywhere in Ombria; you’re not afraid of anything.” She looked down at the bucket he had picked up for the drudge. “Not even kindness.”

  He was staring at her. “You see my life far more clearly than I do.”

  “It made no difference in the end,” she said. “I couldn’t rescue you from Faey.”

  “She rescued me herself. After she tried to kill me.”

  “That was business.”

  “But why reverse her own spell and let me live?”

  “That,” Mag sighed, “was Faey. Even I don’t always understand her.”

  “Ambiguities,” he said nebulously. “Like the charcoal. It drew such magic that I couldn’t put it down. It would have been the death of me, but I would have fought before I parted with it. And you. Spying on me and trying to save me from sorcery when I didn’t even know you existed. Lydea told me that she would have died on the streets but for you. Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “That is what I hoped you could tell me” She slid a finger beneath the neckline of her dress, snagged the fine gold chain. She opened the locket, turned the thin, gold-framed leaves of glass until she came to the charcoal. “Someone left me like the morning bread in a basket on Faey’s doorstep. I was wearing this, she said, when she found me. I’ve seen the drawings you’ve made with the magic piece of charcoal. I hoped this might be magic, too. I thought—I thought maybe it might hold my mother’s face.”

  He made a soft sound, took the locket from her to look more closely. He brushed the charcoal recklessly with a finger. “Perhaps it does… How strange. Blood, a rose petal, and charcoal. There’s a story.”

  “I know. But what? Please,” she begged. “Draw with it. Now, if you have the time.”

  “Time is what I don’t have this morning.” He paused as a door near them opened abruptly and a portly woman in black hurried down the hall away from them, keys chiming at every step. He closed the locket carefully, put it back into her palm. “The Black Pearl ordered me to bring Camas Erl back from the undercity. How did he find his way down there? Does Faey know he is there?”

  “Yes. I brought him to her.”

  “You—”

  “I was searching for you in the secret palace after Faey sent you the charcoal—”

  “How did you find your way there?”

  “I saw you come out of the door in the wall beside that great, fat urn.”

  “You’re everywhere,” he said, astonished again.

  “Well, I went too far that day. I got trapped by Domina Pearl in her library. She locked me in without knowing that I was there. Camas Erl found me. He freed me, but he asked me questions, and he made me promise to take him to see Faey.”

  “So that’s how,” Ducon breathed. “But why?”

  “
He has some idea—He thinks—” She shook her head bewilderedly. Another door opened and closed; he drew her away from the taper light. “He’s treacherous and rash and he doesn’t make much sense. Can’t you leave him down there? You’re safer with him wandering among the ghosts.”

  Ducon shook his head. “For now,” he said evenly, “I must do as I’m told.” He took her arm again, and caught an amazed stare from a young woman tying her apron as she passed them. “But wait for me—”

  “Where?”

  He led her around the corner, down the hall. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. We’ll see then what comes out of your charcoal.”

  He pushed open one of the endless, identical doors. A woman still in her nightgown and bent over a basin raised her dripping face, startled.

  “This is Mistress Thorn,” he said to Mag. “Rose, to you. Don’t leave this room before I come back.”

  He closed the door. The woman cupped water in her hands and splashed away the mask of soap to reveal her true smile.

  “Mag!”

  She told Mag, in a harried fashion as she dressed, why she was disguised and under the same roof again as the Black Pearl. Mag peered closely, but could find little trace of the helpless, grieving beauty who had flung her sapphire heels into the sunflowers. Faey had done her work too well. Breakfast tapped at the door; Lydea shared it with Mag. They passed the teacup back and forth while Mag showed her the locket, and explained why she had come searching for Ducon.

  Too soon, Lydea rose. “I must go. I’ll be alone with Kyel until Ducon returns. Do you know other languages?”

  Surprised, Mag nodded. “A smuggler taught me.”

  “Mathematics?”

  “The baker’s wife.”

  “History?”

  Mag’s mouth crooked. “I live with it. Why?”

  Lydea studied her, a thumbnail caught between her teeth. “I wonder—” Her hand dropped. “No. I’d never be able to explain you to Domina Pearl. But I wish you could help me tutor Kyel; I know so little.”

  “You know more than he does,” Mag guessed. She watched Mistress Thorn straighten a cuff, touch a hair pin. “You look—you look—”

  “I know. So Ducon says. If only I could feel the way I look.” She turned to Mag, held both her shoulders lightly, and her eyes. “I know you like to wander, but don’t. It’s far too risky. Ducon may be back before I am. Until then, there’s a stack of history beside the bed.”

  She left. Mag sat down on the bed and stared blankly back at the blank walls.

  The halls grew silent again. Domina Pearl, Lydea had said, would be busy in her council chambers all morning. Ducon might be gone half the morning or all day, depending. Mag had passed the enormous urn with the secret door behind it before she ran into Ducon. She could slip into the hidden palace for an hour and no one would be the wiser. She had seen the drawings Ducon had left in Faey’s house; they hinted at some mystery in the empty rooms and shadowy doorways. The mystery had flowed through the charcoal and onto Ducon’s paper. It seemed a living thing, that stick of ash and spit, a blind eye that saw invisible wonders and reflected them onto paper. Ducon himself had sensed the marvels; only that could explain all the shadows he drew. As though he expected that, by rendering shadow onto paper, he might peel away the visible darkness and illumine the mystery behind it.

  But—“Once warned,” she whispered, “no fool. Twice warned: once a fool.” And she had been thrice warned, by Faey and Ducon and Lydea. So against her inclinations, she stayed put. Inspired by the thought of charcoal, she riffled through the books beside Lydea’s bed, not in pursuit of history, but for a likely page. She found one finally, a blank flyleaf in the back of a book. Coaxing the charcoal out of the locket proved a simple matter; it fairly leaped into her hand when she turned the open locket upside down and tapped it. She handled the charcoal carefully; it was scarcely bigger than her thumbnail and no thicker than three leaves of the heavy, deckle-edged paper. Unlike Ducon’s charcoal, it did not glitter. But it did surprise: the first few lines it drew seemed to come out of itself rather than anything on Mag’s mind.

  She stopped, studied the lines. An indifferent artist, she could still have drawn a face that a child could recognize: an oval, two dots and a smile. But what came out of the charcoal was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a human face. It looked mostly like a small whirlwind. She hesitated, not wanting to whittle away the magic on nonessentials before Ducon returned. But the corner she drew with seemed as sharp as ever. Curious, she let the charcoal roam at will again across the paper.

  She paid no attention to the distant, rhythmic crashes at first; they were, for all she knew, part of the daily life of the palace. What the charcoal drew seemed chaotic, unrecognizable, but it fascinated her, for occasionally she could put a name to something in that chaos: a ringed finger, an ear. As though someone were forming or falling apart in the whirling dark. It was only when the din grew near enough to separate into coherent sounds—a door banging open, a sharp voice, heavy, booted footsteps—that she realized she was in trouble.

  She stood up as the door of the room across from Lydea’s was flung open. Paper and charcoal slid to the floor. She glanced desperately around the room, found the only possibility: the untidy bedclothes on the unmade bed. She had barely pulled them, sheets and all, into her arms when Lydea’s door slammed open.

  The Black Pearl stared at her. She dipped a hasty curtsey, and emitted the faint squeak of the terrified drudge. But the ancient eyes were not deceived. They recognized, after all those years, the secret-eyed waif who had swallowed a heart.

  “You,” she said acridly. She stepped into the room. Her guards crowded the doorway; there was no place to run. The locket hung open against Mag’s dress; the strange drawing had landed at her feet; the charcoal, whole and seemingly unused, lay on the floor beside it. Mag’s thumb and forefinger were black with it. Her eyes lowered, she felt Domina Pearl’s face close to hers, smelled the odd, musty scent of her. The Black Pearl ran a claw into Mag’s hair, jerked her head up. “I warned you about spying. You should have listened.”

  She caught a finger on a barbed pin then, and hissed. Mag stared, overcome by curiosity. What came out of the bony, wrinkled skin looked more yellow than red. She had lost a thumb, Mag saw then. Her face, stiff with rage, looked odd, as Faey’s did sometimes when she first awoke: unfinished, missing a bone or a nostril. The Black Pearl had misplaced an eyebrow. And an ear, Mag realized with astonishment. Then she felt the blood slide completely out of her face.

  She stared at the drawing. So did the Black Pearl, searching for her missing ear. She made a strange noise with her teeth, like a door hinge groaning, and ground the flake of charcoal beneath her boot heel until there was nothing left but a smear of black powder across the floor-board. Then she picked up the drawing carefully, as though her missing pieces might fall out of it. Mag felt her eyes sting suddenly, and closed them. A few more moments, and something vital might have been sucked out of Domina Pearl into the drawing. If only she had begun it sooner, or if she had listened sooner and hid…

  The locket chain bit into her neck and snapped. The Black Pearl pushed her roughly toward the door. “Take those pins out of her hair,” she said to the guards. They held her, following orders ruthlessly and efficiently, until Mag’s hair fell down and she was blind with unshed tears. She refused to blink; tears fell anyway, revealing a floor littered with barbed, jeweled pins to greet Ducon when he returned for her.

  “So the waxling learned to cry human tears,” the Black Pearl said. She seized Mag’s hair again, found her eyes. “Did the sorceress send you here with that charcoal? Did she make it? Is she plotting against me?”

  “No—” Mag gasped; the talons in her hair shook her silent.

  “She is beginning to get in my way. She traps Camas Erl in the ruins of history; she sends you to pick at me like a vulture. Let’s find out, shall we, exactly how much you are worth to Faey. If she truly cares for you, she will come and ge
t you. Then I’ll have you both, trapped in a place beyond the reach of time, where there is no history and the only ghosts are mine. You and you,” she added to two guards, “wait here and bring me whoever comes through that door. The rest of you: take her and follow me.”

  The guards surrounded Mag, seized her arms, her hair. The Black Pearl led them through an unfamiliar door into the secret palace.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lost and Found

  Ducon, having fallen blindly into the underworld, remembered only the door through which he had left it. On the sign hanging above the door a pair of elegantly gloved hands parted as though to reveal some marvel; bubbles of blistered paint floated between them. The tiny glove shop was surrounded by hulking warehouses, pools of water and blood from a slaughterhouse, and stained wagons bringing fresh hides to a tanner and taking tanned hides away. Whether or not the shop had ever sold a pair of gloves was as dubious a matter as whether anyone in pursuit of them would have ventured down such a bleak and stinking street.

  Inside the shop, there was nothing but a hollow of walls and a stone stairway attached to the threshold and leading directly down to the river. Ducon saw the lamps along it still lit in the early morning hour. A sound below made him pause until he recognized it from his feverish stay in the sorceress’s house: the rhythmic heave and sigh of gigantic bellows that was Faey snoring.

  He was midway down the steps when the snoring stopped.

  The sorceress was waiting for him at the bottom. She looked dishevelled, still half-dreaming, her face vague in the gentle lamplight, perhaps not all there. She yawned, voluminously and noisily, patting absently at the billows and snarls of her hair. It was completely white. One of her lovely eyes was turquoise, the other emerald, as though she had groped for them and put them on in the dark. Just beyond light, and just within his eyesight, Ducon glimpsed the glowing, restless currents of her powers that never aged, never slept.