The Wizard of London em-5

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then again, it hadn’t been Sarah who had been the one to experience those old memories either. Maybe that was what was making the difference this time.

  An’ I don’t get too sympathetic ‘bout her havin’ ghosts move in…

  It was no use turning to the birds for advice either. Both Grey and Neville had responded with the mental equivalent of a helpless shrug. Nan got the feeling that neither of them felt as if they had enough information to give a good answer. Like Nan, they didn’t like the idea, but they had no good reason to oppose it.

  Still, on the other hand, Nan was also tempted. It felt as if this was something she ought to be doing. They were only going to investigate. If there was anyone or anything bound to Earth there, surely Mem’sab and Sahib ought to know about it. And if there wasn’t, then the nasty feelings ought to be cleaned up and Mem’sab and Agansing ought to know about it. Nasty feelings could affect people that were sensitive to them, and might cause a mischief.

  There was a third aspect to this, which was that somewhere deep inside her, Nan felt as if there was a grown-up person chafing to be out and doing things. She couldn’t explain this feeling, but it was definitely there, and growing stronger all the time.

  She had to wonder if Sarah wasn’t feeling the same. Maybe that was why Sarah was so adamant about doing this.

  “What can it hurt to just go and look?” Sarah asked at last. “We went and looked before and nothing happened. We won’t do anything, just look! I want to fix it ourselves if we can, but not this time.”

  Nan grimaced, but she had to think that Sarah was right. “No touching the bridge and reading it, then?” she asked cautiously.

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Just going there and getting the feeling of things without touching anything. Maybe we can take care of this by ourselves and maybe not, but we won’t know until we look it over.”

  Nan sighed. She had been losing this battle since it began, and there was no point in pretending otherwise. She might just as well give in now as later.

  “All right,” she said, shrugging. “We can go and look. But nawt more!”

  To her credit, Sarah did not lord it over her friend as some might have. “Then let’s go now, today,” she urged. “Before anyone thinks we might and tells us not to.”

  Nan raised her eyebrow at that. Sarah meant “Mem’sab,” of course; there was no one else they had told about the bridge. And Sarah was sounding just a touch rebellious. That was a change. Sarah? Rebellious?

  “I’m tired of waiting for things to happen to us,” Sarah added unexpectedly. “I don’t see any reason why we have to sit here and wait for trouble to find us, when we can go scout it the way a hunter would and know what’s coming before it gets here!”

  Nan blinked. Put that way—She brushed the grass stems off her skirt and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said decisively. “Mem’sab ain’t convinced more trouble ain’t comin’ an’ I don’t know as buildin’ up ‘igh walls and sittin’ behind ‘em is such a good notion.”

  Now Neville finally roused from his own indecision and quorked enthusiastically. Grey just sighed. But she didn’t seem inclined to want to stop them, so Nan took that as tacit assent. She followed Neville as the raven flew ahead, in their usual pattern of going to a tree within calling distance, waiting for the girls to catch up, and going on to another tree.

  It didn’t take them nearly as long to get to the bridge as it had the first time they had wandered out that far—but the first time, they had been doing just that, wandering, with no set purpose and no real hurry to get anywhere. As they approached the structure, it seemed to Nan that the uneasy feelings began at a point much further away than the first time.

  “Was it like this, this far away before?” Sarah asked, in an uneasy echo of Nan’s own thoughts.

  Nan shook her head. “Dunno,” she replied dubiously. “Could be ‘cause we’re expectin’ it this time. Could be ‘cause we know what’t’ look for. Could be misrememberin’.”

  They stood on the road, in the shade of a giant oak tree, and regarded the bridge carefully.

  When you shut off those bad feelings, there was nothing about the bridge to give anyone cause for alarm. It was a perfectly ordinary structure made of yellowish stone, arcing over the river. It had three low stone arches, and ended in four squat, square pillars, two on either side of the span. The river was smooth and quiet, flowing by lazily. There were no sinister shadows in the bright sunlight shining down on it.

  But when you let yourself open to those feelings, it seemed as if there ought to be sinister shadows everywhere, and dark forms lurking behind the pillars. Now even Sarah began to look dubious and uneasy, as if she had just decided this had been a bad idea, but wasn’t going to say so.

  Nan, on the other hand, was now determined to get to the bottom of all of this. Never mind that she’d been against it before, now she wanted to know just what it was that was at the root of all this.

  “I’m gettin’ closer,” she said shortly, and whistled for Neville to come to her. He landed on her outstretched arm and jumped to her shoulder.

  She kept her eyes wide open, and pictured herself peering cautiously through a hole in a wall as she approached the bridge one slow step at a time. It was at the third step that she began to make something out.

  It wasn’t just memories. There was something there!

  The feelings came first, with the sense of a presence.

  It wasn’t like the horrible thing in Berkeley Square, though—this was hunger, a great void of need and of loneliness, but not anything that Nan would have called “healthy.” The closest she could come was to those few times when her mother had gotten maudlin drunk and had hugged her too tight and cried about what an awful mum she was, when all the time she wasn’t so sorry that she wouldn’t go right out and spend supper money on gin as soon as she sobered up. And this was to that experience as the sun was to a candle.

  Another step, and Nan saw what it was, or saw something, anyway. Woman-shaped and shadowy, draped in veils, and a vast pit of greed and despair so deep that Nan knew if you fell into it you’d never get out again.

  And she had something.

  She had a little girl.

  Not a living little girl, but another shadow shape, like a sketch made in white mist, a little ghost girl. The shadow woman held the girl ghost, who struggled soundlessly against the shadow arms that held her, eyes wide open in panic, mouth open too, and no sound emerging though it looked as if she was shrieking in terror. The shadow woman, horribly, was crooning a lullaby to the ghost girl, and even as Nan watched, the ghost girl began to fade into the shadow woman. It looked as if the shadow woman was devouring it or absorbing it and the ghost girl grew limp and stopped struggling a moment later.

  “No!” Nan shouted. She reached down blindly for a stick, and came up with a sword in her hand. As she brandished it, she saw that Sarah had come to stand beside her, with both hands raised over her head, white light coming from them. Neville had flown down to land on the ground between the girls and the shadow, and Grey, grown to four times her natural size, was beside him, feathers fluffed and growling.

  The white light from Sarah’s hands lanced out, not to touch the shadow woman, but the ghost girl. The fading outlines of the ghost girl strengthened, and she renewed her struggles.

  “You let ‘er go!” Nan shouted again, flourishing the sword. “She ain’t yours, you let ‘er go right now!”

  The shadow woman, who had until this moment, ignored the girls, now turned her attention on them. Eyes like coals burned in the midst of her veils, and a terrible wail burst from her, a sound that brought with it fear and anguish that battered against Nan until she could hardly stand.

  Sarah did drop to the ground, and the light from her hands went out—but when the wailing stopped, she struggled to her feet again and held her hands above her head, and the light once again shone from them.

  Still holding the struggling girl ghost, the shadow woman took one mena
cing step toward them. Freeing one hand, she made a casting gesture, and Nan felt as if there was a hand seizing her throat, choking the life from her. Neville and Grey shrieked with anger, and flew at the shadow woman, but could not touch her, while Nan tried to shout, and could get nothing out.

  She dropped the sword/branch, and clawed at the invisible, intangible hand, as her lungs burned and she tried to get a breath. Her vision began to gray out—

  “Not so fast, my unfriend, my shadow wraith!” cried a fierce young voice that brought with it sun and a rush of flower-scented summer wind—and blessedly, the release of whatever it was that had hold of Nan’s throat.

  She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath at the same time that she looked to her right. There, standing between her and Sarah, was Robin Goodfellow. He wore the same outlandish costume he’d worn for the play, only on him, it didn’t look so outlandish. He had one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and Nan could actually see the strength flowing from him to her as she fed the ghost girl with that light, which now was bright as strong sunlight.

  The ghost girl thrashed wildly, and broke free of the shadow woman’s hold, and that was when Robin made a casting motion of his own and threw something at the shadow form. It looked like a spiderweb, mostly insubstantial and sparkling with dew drops, but it expanded as it flew toward the shadow woman, and when it struck her, it enveloped her altogether. She crumpled as it hit, as if it had been spun out of lead, not spider silk, and collapsed into a pool of shadow beneath its sparkling strands.

  The ghost girl stood where she was, trembling, staring at them.

  “She’s stuck,” Sarah said, her voice shaky, but sounding otherwise normal.

  Grey waddled over to the ghost girl, looked up at her, and shook herself all over. Neville returned to Nan’s shoulder, feathers bristling, as he stared at the shadow woman trapped in Puck’s net.

  “She doesn’t know where to go, or how to get there, or even why she should go,” Sarah continued, pity now creeping into her voice.

  “Oh so?” Puck took a step or two toward the ghost girl, peering at her as if he could read something on her terrified young face. “Welladay, and this is one who can see further into a millstone than most… no wonder she don’t know where to go. Hell can’t take her and heaven won’t have her, but there’s a place for you, my mortal child.”

  His voice had turned pitying and welcoming all at the same time, and so kindly that even Nan felt herself melting a little inside just to hear it. He held out his hand to the ghost girl. “Come away, human child, or what’s left of you. Come! Take a step to me, just one, to show you trust your dreams and want to find them—”

  Shaking so much her vague outlines blurred, the ghost girl drifted the equivalent of a step toward Robin.

  He laughed. Nan had never heard a sound quite like it before. Most people she’d ever heard, when they laughed, had something else in their laughter. Pity, scorn, irony, self-deprecation, ruefulness—most adults anyway, always had something besides amusement in their voices when they laughed.

  This was just a laugh with nothing in it but pure joy. Even the ghost girl brightened at the sound of it, and drifted forward again—and Robin made a little circle gesture with his free hand.

  Something glowing opened up between him and the ghost girl. Nan couldn’t see what it was, other than a kind of glowing doorway, but the ghost girl’s face was transformed, all in an instant. She lost that pinched, despairing look. Her eyes shone with joyful surprise, and her mouth turned up in a silent smile of bliss.

  “There you be, my little lady,” Robin said softly. “What you’ve dreamed all your life and death about, what you saw only dimly before. Summerland, my wee little dear. Summerland, waiting for you. Go on through, honey sweetling, go on through.”

  The ghost girl darted forward like a kingfisher diving for a minnow. A flash, and she was into the glow—and gone. And the glow went with her.

  Now Robin turned his attention to the shadow woman, lying motionless under his spiderweb net. “Heaven won’t have you neither, and you’re not fit for Summerland,” he said sternly. “Nor am I the one to call hell to come and take you. But you’re too much mischief in the world, my lady, and I can’t leave you free.”

  Neville suddenly made a sound Nan had never heard him make before. Something like a quork, and something like a caw, it made Puck glance at him and nod.

  “Right you are, Morrigan’s bird,” he replied. “That’s all she’s fit for. It’s the Hunt for her, and well rid of her this middle earth will be.”

  He turned to Nan and Sarah. “Close your eyes, young mortals,” he said, with such an inflection that Nan could not have disobeyed him if she’d wanted to. “These things are not for the gaze of so young as you.”

  She kept her eyes open just long enough to see him take a cow horn bound in silver with a silver mouthpiece from his belt, the sort of thing she saw in books about Robin Hood, and put it to his lips. Her eyes closed and glued themselves shut as three mellow notes sounded in the sultry air.

  Suddenly, that sultry air grew cold and dank; she shivered, and Neville pressed himself into her neck, reassuringly, his warm body radiating the confidence that the air was sapping away from her. All the birds stopped singing, and even the sound of the river nearby faded away, as if she had been taken a mile away from it.

  She heard hoofbeats in the distance, and hounds baying.

  She’d never heard nor seen a foxhunt, though she’d read about them since coming to the school, and it was one of those things even a street urchin knew about vaguely.

  This, however, did not sound like a foxhunt. The hounds had deep, deep voices that made her shiver, and made her feel even less inclined to open her eyes, if that was possible. There were a lot of hounds—and a lot of horses, too—and they were coming nearer by the moment.

  She reached out blindly and caught Sarah’s hand, and they clung to each other as the hounds and horses thundered down practically on top of them—as the riders neared, she heard them laughing, and if Puck’s laugh was all joy, this laughter was more sorrowful than weeping. It made her want to huddle on the ground and hope that no one noticed her.

  The shadow woman shrieked.

  Then dogs and riders were all around them except that, other than the sounds, there was nothing physically there.

  Feelings, though—Nan was so struck through with fear that she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. Only Sarah’s hand in hers, and Neville’s warm presence on her shoulder, kept her from screaming in terror. And it was cold, it was colder than the coldest night on the streets of London, so cold that Nan couldn’t even shiver.

  Hoofbeats milling around them, the dogs baying hollowly, the riders laughing—then the shadow woman stopped shrieking, and somehow her silence was worst of all.

  One of the riders shouted something in a language that Nan didn’t recognize. Robin answered him, and the rider laughed, this time not a laugh full of pain, but full of eager gloating. She felt Neville spread his wings over her, and there was a terrible cry of despair—

  And then, it all was gone. The birds sang again, warmth returned to the day, the scent of new-mown grass and flowers and the river filled her nostrils, and Neville shook himself and quorked.

  “You can open your eyes now, children,” said Robin.

  Nan did; Neville hopped down off her shoulder and stood on the ground, looking up at Robin. There was nothing out of the ordinary now in the scene before them, no matter how hard Nan looked. No shadow woman, no ghost girl, no dark emotions haunting the bridge. Just a normal stone bridge over a pretty little English river in the countryside. Even Robin was ordinary again; his fantastical garb was gone, and he could have been any other country boy except for the single strand of tiny vine leaves wound through his curly brown hair.

  “What—” Sarah began, looking at Puck with a peculiarly stern expression.

  “That was the Wild Hunt, and you’d do well to stay clear of it and what it Hunts, l
ittle Seeker,” Robin said, without a smile. “It answers to me because I am Oldest, but there isn’t much it will answer to, not much it will stop for, not too many ways to escape it when it has your scent, and there’s no pity in the Huntsman. He decides what they’ll Hunt, and no other.”

  “What does it hunt?” Nan asked, at the same time that Sarah asked, “What is it?”

  Robin shrugged. “Run and find out for yourself what it is, young Sarah. And go and look to see what it hunts on your own, young Nan. There’s mortal libraries full of books that can tell you—in part. The rest you can only feel, and if your head doesn’t know, your heart can tell you.”

  “Well,” Nan replied, stubbornly determined to get some sort of answer out of him, “What was that thing at the bridge, then?”

  “And I need to tell you what you already know?” Robin shook his head. “You work it out between you. She’s not been here long, I will tell you, and I should have dealt with her when she first appeared, but—” he scratched his head, and grinned one of those day-brightening grins, “—but there was birds to gossip with, and calves to tease, and goats to ride, and I just forgot.”

  Nan snorted at the evasive answer, but Sarah smiled. “You never will answer anyone straight up, will you?” she asked with a sidelong glance.

  “It’s not my way, Missy Sahib,” Puck replied, and tickled her under the chin with a buttercup that suddenly appeared in his hand. “Now go you back and not a word of this to your schooling dame. Just your bad luck that two things came together and you as the third made some things happen that might not have, otherwise. That was bad for you, but good for the little mite. Then came your good luck, that it all made a mighty big stir-up of the world, and that got my attention. And me knowing you, that called me. An hour one way or the other and this would never have happened. The shadow would have claimed the mite, and no doubt of it.”