by Alys Clare
Then, in terrible haste, he gathered up the stones, hurriedly performed his ritual thanks and made his reverence, then stowed them away in their bag. He stood for a moment undecided. Where should he go? He could help – he knew that, for the runes had told him so – but where was he most needed?
The answer sounded in his head, clear as a bell on a still day.
He ran.
I was running as fast as I could, but the effort was enormous; as if I was straining against a rope holding me back. I was heading not for the tavern and Jack, where I longed to be, but in the opposite direction.
Everything in me wanted to go back to him. He was my patient, he was very badly hurt, I ought to be beside him. I didn’t admit that I also loved him; I didn’t know quite what I felt, only that running away from him was hurting like a stab in the heart.
He has Father Gregory with him, I told myself. I have not left him untended. But—
I didn’t let the protest form.
I ran on. I was over the Great Bridge now, diving into the network of alleys behind the market square. I had come this way often with Jack over the past few days and didn’t have to think about my route, which was hard because it freed my mind to think about him instead.
Stop.
I reached the narrow passage I knew so well. I stopped to listen, but there was no sound of footfalls. If anybody had been pursuing me, I had lost them. I walked on.
And, too soon, I was at the front door of Gurdyman’s twisty-turny house.
The door opened as I pushed it. I went inside.
So terrified had I been that I would be met with the real-life version of what I saw in the shining stone that it was quite hard to accept that he wasn’t lying there before me with no throat.
I stepped carefully along the passage. ‘Gurdyman?’ I called softly.
He was standing in the little inner court. The sun shone on his dome of a head, and his bright blue eyes softened as he saw me.
‘Lassair,’ he breathed. Then, anxiously, ‘You are unhurt?’
‘Yes! And you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He was staring at me, puzzled. ‘There was something …’ He broke off. ‘I have been staying with a very old friend,’ he said, and I was quite sure it was a last-minute substitute for what he had been about to say. ‘He lives in a little house on a patch of higher ground out in the marsh, almost an island. It is reached by a stretch of narrow causeway that is so well concealed that it is all but impossible to find. This secret dwelling is on the fen edge, to the south of the great bulge that you walk around to get from your village to the town. It is a small and perfect house, right out in the wilds, and you cannot find it unless someone tells you where it is. My friend built it himself, many years ago when the need for solitude overtook him and he began to walk away from the world, increasingly deeper into his studies. It has a magical sort of name, but that must remain hidden.’
I tried to take in what he was telling me; why was he telling me? ‘Is that where you’ve been?’
‘Yes. Hrype said I should go, for this town was not safe for one such as I.’
‘Because the Night Wanderer was killing other magicians’ – in my mind’s eye I saw Osmund, and then Morgan and poor, pathetic Cat – ‘and Hrype thought you’d be next.’
‘Precisely that,’ Gurdyman agreed.
But something was wrong with that. ‘You disappeared the night Jack and I saw Osmund being slain,’ I said slowly. ‘He was the only wi—’ I had been about to say wizard, but I stopped; I’ve always thought Gurdyman disliked the word. ‘He was the only one like you who had died, then, for Robert Powl, Gerda and Mistress Judith did not spend their private hours in magic workrooms.’ Gurdyman didn’t answer; he just went on looking at me. ‘You knew more would die,’ I whispered. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘I believed it, yes.’
‘How could you have left them to their fate? Morgan, and Cat! He tried to protect his master, you know. His body was found flung across the old man’s, but it didn’t help either of them.’
Gurdyman saw my distress and held out a hand to me, but I ignored it. ‘Child, do you not think I tried?’ he said, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘I railed at Morgan with all my strength, trying to impress the horror of what I had seen just ahead, but to no avail.’
‘You could have—’
Gurdyman drew himself up. His anger increased, and just for an instant it felt as if a flame was brushing my skin. It hurt. ‘Ow!’
‘I’m sorry, child, but you are losing yourself in your own emotion, and, while your urge to demand retributive justice for Morgan and Cat is admirable, you need to know the truth. Morgan refused to leave his home and his work, and Cat refused to abandon her.’
‘Him,’ I corrected automatically.
There was utter silence. Something crackled momentarily in the air.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Gurdyman’s.
‘The name, in fact, is Morgana.’
I felt my jaw drop. ‘He – she – Morgan was a woman?’
‘Of course,’ Gurdyman said shortly. ‘Since Cat was quite clearly male, his magician had to be female. Always there must be the opposites, the poles, the two sexes. Animus and anima,’ he added.
I sank down on to the bench that stands by the wall of the inner court. ‘Why did she pretend to be a man?’
‘She was brilliant, and her powers were great,’ Gurdyman said. ‘The world – even the world of like-minded souls – was perhaps not quite ready to accept that such a leading light could be female.’
Animus and anima. I took out Gerda’s pendant and silently gave it to Gurdyman. He went pale. ‘Where did you get this?’
So I told him. Trying to be brief, I told him everything that had happened since he left.
When I finished, he joined me on the bench. ‘It begins to add up,’ he murmured.
But I barely heard. I had been thinking about the night he disappeared; the night I thought I saw him and Hrype, down in the crypt, only when Jack arrived with a light – oh, Jack! – there was no sign of either of them.
‘Were you really there that night?’ I whispered.
He knew exactly what I meant. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hrype had come to fetch me and we were on the point of leaving when you turned up. Hrype was convinced the forces of the law would soon break in – that’s who we thought you were – and that was why I’d—’
‘That’s why you tidied up the crypt,’ I interrupted, ‘to make sure there was nothing incriminating to be found.’ Nothing, I added silently, that would give away who and what you are, for that knowledge is very dangerous.
‘Yes,’ he murmured.
‘How did you do it?’ I had to know. ‘One moment you were there – I saw you – and then you weren’t, yet you couldn’t have got out because I was standing at the foot of the steps, and Jack was coming down right behind me.’ It was conceivable that Gurdyman and Hrype might have squeezed past me without my feeling their presence, but they couldn’t have got past Jack. He was too broad.
Gurdyman was looking at me, his head on one side. ‘Do you remember what I told you about this house?’ I shook my head. He had told me many things, and I wasn’t in any state to run through the store of my memories and extract the right one. ‘I said,’ he went on softly, ‘that this house of mine holds many secrets, and that you would come to know about some of them, although some would remain hidden.’
‘Is this a secret I won’t know?’ I whispered.
He smiled gently. ‘Not yet, child, for there is no need.’
‘But—’
‘Enough.’
My mind was roaming wildly, throwing up possibilities. Did he mean there was another exit from the crypt, one so well hidden that I had no idea it was there? One that, perhaps, only revealed itself when there was desperate need? Oh, but that was impossible, surely, even for Gurdyman, unless—
Quite gently and firmly, he stopped the thought. I found I just couldn’t pursue it; it had ceased. Just like th
at.
I stared at him. He looked so normal, sitting there in the sunshine, his wonderful, gaudy shawl wrapped round him, his blue eyes twinkling benignly. For a moment I doubted everything. He was just a rotund, absent-minded old man, and the rest was all in my imagination.
Presently I said, ‘You came back. Does that mean it’s safe now?’
But he frowned, his face darkening into anxiety. ‘Oh, no, child, it is very far from safe. I came back precisely because of that; for the peril reaches its climax now, and we shall have to fight it.’
Something suddenly struck me. I sat up straight, looking around. ‘Where’s your friend?’ I demanded. ‘The one you were staying with, in the house with the magical name?’
Gurdyman looked down at his small, plump hands, folded in his lap. ‘I do not know.’ He met my eyes. ‘Something happened this morning; an enchantment, I believe, affecting both my friend – his name is Mercure – and me.’ He frowned. ‘I believe I perceived something I was not meant to see, and then some power overcame me and obscured the sight.’ Now he looked pale. ‘I believe that power might have emanated from the Night Wanderer.’
‘Oh!’ My hands flew up to cover my mouth, muffling the sound.
‘I do not know where Mercure is,’ Gurdyman repeated, ‘for he was not there when I was released from the spell and came back to myself.’
I had an image of him, out at his friend’s house. Waking from trance, or sleep, or enchantment – whatever it had been – and finding himself alone. Desperate with worry for his friend, yet leaving the lonely, isolated house to return here.
Gurdyman nodded, as if he followed the line of my thoughts. ‘I am indeed very anxious for Mercure, but he is powerful, and wise, and better able to look after himself than almost any other.’ He reached for my hand, briefly holding it. ‘My greater fear was for you.’
I stared at him. While it made me feel warm with pleasure that he should care about me in this way, at the same time I was filled with dread because Gurdyman, whom I’d come to think of as inviolable and omnipotent, had just admitted to anxiety and fear. If a magician of his quality was afraid, what hope was there for the rest of us?
‘What should we do?’ I whispered.
‘We shall go down into the crypt,’ he said firmly, ‘where I have in mind certain defences which I shall begin straight away to—’
He was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming slowly, draggingly, along the passage. Both of us spun round.
An old man in long robes was creeping towards us. He was very white in the face, as if he had suffered a severe wound or a dreadful shock. His dark eyes stared imploringly at us. His garments – musty black, or perhaps a deep shade of brown or grey – were dirty, and the flowing skirt of his robe was torn into tatters down one side. He clutched the remnants to him, perhaps in a pathetic attempt to preserve his modesty and hide his pale and bony legs.
With a soft exclamation, Gurdyman removed his shawl and held it out to the shuffling figure, helping him to wrap it around his narrow hips. He guided the old man to the bench by the wall, encouraging him to sit down. Over his shoulder he said, ‘A restorative for our visitor, I think, Lassair, if you would be so kind.’
I couldn’t take my eyes off the old man.
He was—
‘Lassair?’ Gurdyman prompted. ‘Mercure needs your help.’
I hurried inside to the kitchen, lowering the pot of water closer to the fire in the hearth and then quickly mixing honey with pinches of the soothing, calming herbs for a comforting drink. So that was Mercure. Gurdyman had said he was powerful, capable of looking after himself, but he didn’t appear so now. He looked as if he’d just suffered some frightful attack.
It didn’t take much imagination to work out who had attacked him. He was Gurdyman’s friend, and I was in no doubt that he performed the same sort of work. So had Osmund, Morgan and Cat, and all three were dead. And that horrible line of rips in Mercure’s robe could easily have been done by a set of sharp claws.
The water was boiling and I quickly made the drink. Hurrying back out to the court, I handed it to the old man, who thanked me with a nod.
Silence fell. Mercure sipped at his drink, but made no sound. I was just thinking idly that it was unusual for somebody to consume almost boiling liquid without slurping at it when I became aware of a low, soft humming. I was going to make some comment – to ask Gurdyman what it was, to question, perhaps, if it was some strange bird – but then the impulse, and the curiosity, left me. It was a nice sound. I smiled, and the humming intensified. My legs felt weak – what a lot I’d done recently! No wonder I was so weary – and I moved backwards so that I could lean against the wall.
I was looking at one of the late-flowering blooms in the little flower bed, thinking how pretty it was, how intense the colour, when Gurdyman said, his voice oddly strangled, ‘Lassair!’
‘It’s no good, you know, my dear friend.’ Mercure’s voice was like liquid silver, and I thought it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
‘Lassair!’ Gurdyman’s, by contrast, sounded like the coarse croaking of a hideous bird. ‘You must— aaaah!’ Abruptly his words choked off, and he put both hands to his throat.
Oh, dear. He seemed to be in some sort of distress.
That flower was so pretty!
Somebody else was humming now, in a higher octave. It was quite sweet, and blended well with the deep, powerful vibration now flooding the inner court and bouncing off the walls. With faint surprise I realized the new sound was coming from me.
Mercure and I were humming together, and the music was quite enchanting.
I turned to face him. It wasn’t a conscious move; I had no choice. I looked right into his deep, dark eyes. They were like wells in the pale face. I straightened up into a long, thin reed and poised to dive right down into them.
But at the very last moment, something held me back. I could see Gurdyman, still trying and failing to call my name and capture my attention, but the enchantment held him mute.
It must, then, have been another’s voice that yelled, over and over again, Lassair! Lassair!
It was the voice of a man in his prime, loud, vibrant with strength, desperate with fear for me and full of terrible warning.
It was enough – just – to make me pause.
Mercure laughed softly, a sound so sweet that I yearned towards him. ‘Ah, but you resist!’ he said gently. ‘I am pleased to see it, Lassair, for it demonstrates, if demonstration were needed, that I am right in my choice.’
His choice?
He stood up and moved closer to me. He was no longer stooped and cowed. He was straight and tall, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t an old man after all …
He reached out a long, graceful hand and touched my cheek. I leaned towards him, yearning, longing. His raised arm had parted the neck of his robe a little, and I saw he wore beneath it a medallion on a gold chain. My eyes were drawn to it and I saw the image etched into the gold.
A human figure composed of man and woman, half and half, wearing a single crown.
I managed to pull my gaze away from it and met his stare. For an instant, before he changed, I saw right into his eyes, and they were black holes that opened into a pit. But then he smiled, his eyes were human again and compelling me, drawing me, towards him.
‘I see you recognize the symbol,’ he said, his breath like a soft, fragrant breeze against my cheek. ‘The male and female must both be there, and I have striven to achieve union within myself, without the aid of pupil or Soror Mystica. Morgana had her Cat, Gurdyman has you’ – for a moment his gaze seemed to reach right inside me, as if fine cords emanated out of his eyes to enter into mine – ‘but I believed I could manage fusion alone.’
He winced and slumped briefly, as if in memory of some awful pain. Then, recovering, once more he focused himself on me. ‘I have been working these many long months – years – to bring full life to both sides of myself, the female and the male, but I h
ave not succeeded, and I must conclude that what I have striven for cannot be achieved.’ He made a strange gesture then: he wrapped both arms around himself, at the level of his ribs, and squeezed very hard.
It looked as if he was trying to hold himself together.
‘It is not meant to be, I think,’ he said ruefully. ‘My experiments have made a great rift, and although I try to put my two selves together again, I am no longer myself.’
I ought to have been curious. I ought to have been bursting with frightened questions, for he spoke – in that calm smooth voice – of things that were far beyond anything I’d ever learned; far beyond, surely, what men should even think of attempting.
But I stood, silent and docile, like a lamb awaiting the blade.
‘We who do the great work allow the fools who share this precious earth with us to believe what they see as our goal,’ Mercure went on. ‘For them to view us as covetous men and women seeking to make gold out of lesser metals suits us well, for it disguises our true aim. Not that we expect outsiders to see the huge importance of this aim, for who but we value the refinement of the soul?’
He kept his eyes on me, holding me as if I were in chains.
Then suddenly he clutched at himself, and my healer’s experience told me he was in dreadful pain. At the same instant, I had a slight disturbance in my sight; it seemed, in the space of a blink, that he altered. That the guise of a benign old man tore, and something else looked out.
Before the terror could burst out in a long scream, he had me – and perhaps whatever lurked inside him – back under his control.
‘I have erred, Lassair,’ he whispered, and the agony made his voice shake. ‘I tried to suppress my dark side; to bring it under my own control and then release it back into myself. But dark sides are not amenable to our control. Mine, at least, is not.’ He sighed, and now I could detect that his breath reeked; that it was foul and corrupt with some dread matter.
‘I have altered my soul’s true nature by what I have done to myself,’ he murmured – I noticed that he was trembling, his whole body shaking as if he was in the grip of some sort of fit – ‘and I am forced to admit, at the last, that I cannot achieve my uttermost desire alone.’