An Artist's Eye (Dica Series Book 5)

by Clive S. Johnson

  “You know full well what I’m saying.”

  “Fah! It be impossible. No High Dican - artefact or no - would ever consider transgressing such a taboo. It dost not bear thinking about.”

  “Even if it’s true?”

  Turmoil clearly raged behind Nephril’s now blank expression. She could see it in the stillness of his eyes. “I cannot ... I cannot countenance any High Dican consorting with other than their own kind. It be ... well, it be too foul a thought.”

  “But, Nephril, you live with Penolith, a Galgaverran.”

  “We be companions only I wilt have thee know, Mistress Prescinda. We do not lie together.” He realised how loud he’d become and glanced towards Falmeard and Geran but they were both too wrapped up in themselves.

  “And anyway,” he whispered, “no Galgaverran has the necessary paraphernalia for such a conjunction. It would be a fruitless exercise.”

  “Well, Nephril, I’m pretty sure in my own mind what blood’s been carried down Lady Lipswell’s line. And if we’re to put Dica’s future to rights then we’d better use that knowledge to some good.”

  “But ... but a Dican born of a High Dican,” and he looked as though he’d tasted soured milk.

  “The thing is,” Prescinda pressed, “we need to know what it is about my own human stock that could have made the steward the danger we believe him to be.”

  Interest now seemed to glow in Nephril’s eyes and Prescinda caught a glimpse of a course ahead. She stared at him, her eyes urging him to speak.

  “If,” he haltingly began, “if ... if it truly could be the case, and ... and Melkin be of ... of human stock, then yes, mine dear, I do believe an answer to thy questions would lead us well. So, I suppose we ought now to question Falmeard more closely.”

  They returned to the table only to interrupt a kiss between artefact and human, neither seeming embarrassed. Prescinda caught a glimpse of an idea but couldn’t quite grasp its slippery form.

  “Falmeard?” Nephril broached. “What more did thy reading reveal of this human stock?”

  Falmeard drew his gaze from Geran and turned to Nephril, “You already know Dica’s purpose, my friend, why it was built in the first place.”

  “Indeed I do. To hold back Nature’s ineluctable drive towards chaos.”

  “Exactly. To preserve life’s own observation of the universe. So Nature’s chaos - its natural entropy - can be warded off. Order perpetuated.”

  “So the stars will continue to shine down upon all life, and all it holds dear. Yes, Falmeard, I know all about that, but...”

  “Life’s observation, Nephril, not artefact’s.”

  Stunned silence followed, only chased on by a question from Prescinda.

  “If only human life can fulfil Dica’s purpose then, well, why did Eyesgarth put these High Dican, Bazarran and Galgaverran artefacts here? What are they all for?”

  Falmeard smiled, somewhat mischievously. “We now slip from fact to that tricky area of conjecture I’m afraid. An area I’m certainly least qualified to fathom,” and he shrugged, apologetically.

  “It strikes me, though,” he added, “that maybe the best place to seek an answer would be from one of those very humans themselves.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Geran said. “I’m the stop-at-home sort,” and so they turned to stare at Prescinda.

  “Well?” Falmeard asked. “What’s your view of Dica’s artefacts? What do you reckon they’re for, eh?”

  “Oh dear,” she sighed, “what a question,” and it stumped her for a while.

  “Well,” Falmeard said, “how about starting with the Bazarran?”

  “The Bazarran?” and she turned her nose up. “Well, they’re a bit rough, aren’t they? And Bazarral’s such a seedy place.”

  “You wouldn’t like to live there then?”

  “Oh, no. Leiyatel forbid. What a thought. I wouldn’t feel safe. I mean, I’m sure there are nice ones there but it is where all the dregs end up.”

  “And the High Dicans?”

  She looked at Nephril. “Present company largely excepted, they’re just a bunch of toffs. Supercilious, empty headed and vain. What more can I say?”

  “So again, you wouldn’t like to be one of them either?”

  The thought clearly unsettled her. “For all their wealth and privileges, no. They’re just too stuck up their own arses. They’ve no idea what’s really of value in the world. I can’t imagine any of them enjoying life. Too busy being superior.” She paused. “Where’s this going, Falmeard?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  It was Geran who answered, who gave a short laugh and told him, “Us Dicans are quite happy where we are, Falmeard. We have enough of what we need and not too much to spoil it all, and so we value everything. Simple stuff like family and friends, wholesome food, romantic sunsets, the beauty of a butterfly and the thrill of a storm. We feel safe where we are, as you well know, happily in the middle ground.”

  Prescinda stared at her. “I’ve never before heard so much come out of your mouth in one go, Sis. You’ve not been at the wine have...” Her mouth dropped open and she turned to Falmeard.

  “Geran’s right you know. We’re happy and comfortable just being middle-of-the-road decent. Is that it, Falmeard? Is that what all the artefacts are for? To show us humans how fortunate we are with our lot?”

  Falmeard shrugged. “As I’ve said before, I’m not best suited to reasoning these things through, but it would make sense of a lot of what was in the folder. Especially the small-print.”

  “Small-print?” Nephril said.

  “Mind you,” Falmeard continued, “it would then beg the question of why. It can’t be just to keep you humans happy with your lot, although clearly that wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “It’s as though,” Prescinda said, “we’re being shielded from something, something from outside the realm, something that preys on the extremities where it could take advantage of a wicked or vainglorious human.”

  “But, Prescinda,” Nephril said, “that be precisely from where Steward Melkin has come?” His face had begun to lose colour it could ill afford. “If I accept what thou believe of Melkin, that he be a human of High Dican issue, then he has indeed grown up at the extreme, where a human man would be most vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable to what, though?” Prescinda wondered, but Nephril’s eyes had by now grown so very wide.

  “There be only one real threat to Dica’s purpose, Prescinda. Only one threat to its continuance.” He stared at them each in turn, his face drawn, but the word he could not at first utter finally slipped out.

  “Nature, mine dear. Nature, black in silhouette.”

  60 A Single Hope

  “’Twas upon the fall of mine own nephew, Auldus, at the Farewell Gap that I did first behold an agent of Nature. More than two thousand years ago, a naked black figure did appear there, as though it had simply walked in from the void.”

  Nephril clearly saw it still, as clear within his mind as it had once been before his eyes. He looked haunted, frail, every year of his long, long life now seemingly etched upon his face. The fingers he ran through his hair trembled at the touch, as though chilled.

  “Leiyatel was weakened then,” he told them, “although we knew not how badly so. Before mine beloved Auldus took the noble path and fell into the Garden of the Forgotten, I saw him place a ring upon the parapet beside the Gap. As clearly as I saw the dark shadow then pluck it up between its sooty finger and thumb.”

  For the first time since beginning his tale Nephril looked into Falmeard’s eyes. “For two thousand years,” Nephril told him, “I thought Dica eternally safe from Nature’s meddling. In the ring’s removal she had taken Leiyatel’s only chance of a daughter, and so I had assumed Nature content then in the prospect of the Certain Power’s inevitable death.”

  “You were wrong, though, weren’t you?” Falmeard said.

  “As all men often are, perhaps more so my being but a mere artefact.�
�

  “As we both are,” Falmeard reminded him, “and Phaylan too. Less than ten years ago, when we each witnessed Nature stand upon the very brink of success, we too were wrong. There, again at the Farewell Gap as she rocked Mount Esnadac beneath our feet and urged you on to destroy the remains of Leiyatel.”

  Nephril laughed but without mirth. “There was a time before that, Falmeard, before thou came amongst us, some ten years afore, upon our return from Nouwelm. The strange thing, though, was that Melkin Mudark himself stood with our party then, at the Farewell Gap. He too watched a youthful Phaylan meekly hand over Dialwatcher’s ring into the sooty grasp of another of Nature’s shadowy servants.

  “I never knew that.”

  “No. Few ever hear for the memories of meetings with Nature always seem ethereal, as though easily shattered by her hunger for chaos.”

  He paused, staring into space, into his own long history. “Each time, I fell foul of believing Nature content with her gain, that she would forevermore leave Dica alone. Perhaps ... perhaps it be beyond the wit of artefact to know the truth. Too hard a riddle.”

  Prescinda put her hand on his arm. “Are you saying that Nature’s agent is here again, here within Dica? Here now?”

  “Aye. At last I do firmly believe it so, despite Leiyatel having grown full and rude of health once more. Nature hast, I now see, roamed here since Melkin was a boy, from when Leiyatel was so very weak. No doubt her agent entered through the young lad’s discontent and there secreted itself away.”

  “I don’t understand. How could Nature still be here now Leiyatel is strong again? Why hasn’t she just banished Nature from the realm?”

  “I may have discovered that I be only an artefact, Prescinda, but I can still apply reason. I can still pull strands together and make of them a thread.”

  “Which involves me doesn’t it, Nephril? I can feel it somehow.”

  “It involves humans,” he corrected. “In particular, thy human magic.”

  “You mean what I did with Breadgrinder and the steermaster’s crew? That kind of magic?”

  “It doth strike me that those protective of humankind must themselves be incapable of doing it harm. More than that, indeed, that in extremis all artefacts must be subservient to that human will.”

  “Ah,” Falmeard said, raising his finger and wagging it. “The small-print. I wonder if that’s what was meant by the Second Law.”

  Prescinda grabbed Falmeard’s finger to still it. “Leiyatel must herself be subservient to that same law then,” she said. “It stands to reason. And if so then the only place Nature could safely hide would be within a human. Within Melkin Mudark.”

  Nephril looked pleased with her but also somehow saddened. However, when he turned Prescinda his leaden eyes, she smelled a rat. As Nephril’s mouth opened to speak, she said, “What did I say to you in Grayden, Nephril?”

  His mouth slammed shut, his brows furrowing.

  “I asked you then what you were after, why you’d come all that way to see me? I asked you if you had someone else you needed scaring near to death. Do you remember?” He didn’t answer. “But you said I’d to let bygones be bygones.”

  She sighed through her gritted teeth. “I wish I’d listened to my inner voice, the one that screamed at me then. But no, I had to go and get lured in again. The trouble is, I’ve a horrible feeling that this time you’re going to ask a lot more of me.”

  “There be no other way, mine dearest Prescinda. I assure thee. Thou art the only one who can do this thing. In mine two thousand years, I have only ever witnessed an act of intentional death on one occasion, at King Namweed’s funeral.

  “I heard Countess Ragskin and her party being savagely cut down at the King’s Mausoleum, at the hands of Grayden’s finest. I was threatened mine self by those very same humans as I fled across the estuary.”

  “There must be another way,” Geran pleaded. “You can’t expect my little sister to cut the steward down in cold blood, surely?”

  “I am certain that only one human can kill another, Mistress Geran. I wish it were otherwise, for your sister’s sake.”

  Prescinda went white.

  “Nature,” Nephril warned, “be amongst us again, making good her headway in destroying Dica, destroying all life - human and artefact. She has managed to hide herself where no artefact can strike her down, where even Leiyatel cannot transgress - within the human form of Melkin Mudark.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Prescinda said, her voice small and weak. “I just couldn’t.”

  “Then Nature will ride Melkin to victory and all will be lost. The end of existence, mine dear,” and he placed his hand on her arm. “I am afeared that time be running out. Melkin must soon reason that no hope of life can be found in Eyesgarth, that Ceosana be long gone. Life’s last bastion - Dica - now be firmly held in Nature’s fatal grasp.”

  “But to kill someone.”

  “I know. I know. If I could, I would do this deed for thee, but thou alone do stand in Melkin’s way. Only thee, mine cherished one, only thee. Thou it is who art now creation’s only hope.”

  61 The Garden Path

  The morning found Nephril and Falmeard in one of the farm’s outhouses, Falmeard gingerly passing down a large earthenware jar into Nephril’s hands. It was made more difficult by the sheep-gut gloves they wore, but Nephril successfully managed to slide the jar onto a nearby bench where he carefully inspected the vessel’s lid.

  “I cannot see any crystals,” he said as he bent to peer along its edge.

  Falmeard climbed down from the stepladder he’d used to reach the container’s high shelf. “The seal should still be all right,” he said before having a look himself. He felt the lid and it grated against the rim. Leaning away and at arm’s length, he slowly lifted it as he sniffed the air about them.

  “Seems fine,” he said, briefly turning to Nephril, and before placing the lid on the bench. He now peered into the vessel, a smile touching his lips.

  Soon, a smaller jar had been removed. It too had an earthenware lid but hidden beneath a string-secured and yellow-stained cloth, soon untied and delicately laid aside.

  When this one was opened, however, a sickly-sweet smell pervaded the air. They both held their breath as Falmeard threw back the shutters on a small window. A breeze blew through, carrying the aroma out through the room’s open door.

  Falmeard took a long-handled but small-bowled ladle from within the larger jar and slowly lowered it into the smaller one. Nephril already had a glass phial at the ready, secure in its stand upon the bench, its fluted neck thirsty for a tiny draught.

  Only when its crystal clarity had been stained black, a cork swiftly driven into its neck and the small jar resealed, did the two men breathe in a deep sigh of relief.

  “I cannot imagine thou hast many rats left in the whole neighbourhood, never mind just this farm,” Nephril said as he placed the phial in a bucket of water by his feet and carefully removed his gloves.

  “Rarely use it I’m glad to say. One dose, mind, usually keeps them down for a season. All the better for Blisteraising’s purse too, given how much it costs getting the stuff here from Wetwold.”

  Nephril stared into the bucket. “Monacild.”

  “Dwale as they know it hereabouts. What I call banewort,” and Falmeard took off his own gloves but then looked at Nephril. “Monacild?”

  “Moon child, mine dear old friend, for the look it gives the eyes. Normally from a tincture applied of course, not a potion imbibed.”

  The two men now both looked into the bucket, the phial glinting back at them with no tell-tale bubbles about its long-necked cork. They watched it until the matter in both their minds itself bubbled free.

  “Do you think she’ll really do it?” Falmeard said.

  “I do not rightly know, but Prescinda did seem resolute enough this morning. She has a strong character, and certainly a determination to be reckoned with, given a mind.”

  “She’s clearly not slept a
t all well, though. I do feel sorry for her. I wish I could have helped more last night but I’ve no doubt Geran’s done a better job than I ever could.”

  “I do not think it would hath been seemly either, your spending the night in her bedchamber.”

  “Ah. No, there is that. But still...”

  “We must be sure to bolster her determination over the next few days, Falmeard. More so when we get to the Royal College, and in particular if we have to wait for Melkin Mudark to appear.”

  Falmeard peered into the bucket again. “It looks safe enough, Nephril,” and so the phial was withdrawn, dried and secreted within Nephril’s robes.

  “Best be on our way,” he urged, “it be a long walk to the college from here. We ought not delay,” and he made his way back across the yard to the farmhouse, leaving Falmeard to lock up.

  In the kitchen, both sisters half-heartedly picked at slices of honeyed bread. The mugs of tea before them, however, seemed a bit more to their liking. Prescinda looked drawn, even beside Geran. But neither took their eyes from their brews when Nephril entered.

  “Prescinda, mine dear? Wilt thou be up to the walk dost thou think?” he asked, trying to lift her eyes to his own. “Thou hath clearly not slept at all well.”

  “We’ve neither of us had much kip if any,” Geran fired at him. “What do you expect?”

  Just then, Falmeard came in. “How’re you feeling, Prescinda?”

  “Will you all stop fussing,” she shrieked as she sprang to her feet. “Yes, I do look like shit. Yes, I’ve not slept a wink. And yes, I’m already pig-sick of the whole damned affair.”

  She froze and stared at the two men’s wide-eyed expressions, but then more levelly told them, “I’ve made up my mind. Do you understand? I’ll do it. There’s no more to be said. I don’t need treating like a child. Right?” and each nodded but rather weakly.

  The kitchen stagnated, a scum of silence soon staining the air. Nephril, though, eventually coughed, if only slightly, and quietly confided, “I was only going to suggest that we could use the wealcan to get there, but that it would take two journeys.”