Beyond the Pale

by Mark Anthony

  Grace crouched and brought her eyes on a level with the little man’s. “What do you mean, ‘the words of Gloaming Wood’?”

  “One may not be what one seems,” the little man said. “Then again, one may not seem what one doth be.”

  “I don’t understand,” Grace said. “What are you talking about?”

  Trifkin smiled again.

  Grace’s green-gold eyes bored into the little man. “Who are you?”

  “The darkness is here,” Trifkin whispered.

  Bells shimmered on the air, and the little man was gone.

  Grace stood and looked at Travis, her mouth open. He shook his head. What had just happened? He didn’t know. Or did he? Did both of them?

  “—who’s hiding in the castle,” Aryn said.

  Travis and Grace turned and stared at the others.

  Beltan frowned at them. “Is something wrong?”

  Aryn’s and Durge’s expressions mirrored the blond knight’s concern. Travis realized the truth. None of them had seen the little man in green and yellow. At least a minute had passed for Grace and Travis, but to the others it had been a heartbeat or less.

  Travis glanced at Grace. She reached out and took his hand in hers. He nodded and looked back at the others.

  “There’s something we have to tell you,” he said.

  88.

  The next morning, Travis rose in the colorless light before dawn, shrugged on his tunic, wrapped his cloak around his shaking body, and trudged to the tower of the Runespeakers.

  Jemis was in a fouler mood than usual, and the list of runes he gave Travis was endless. By late afternoon Travis was just half-finished, and only because of Rin’s influence was he allowed to leave without doing the rest.

  He headed back to the keep and, along with the other castle folk, found something to eat in the great hall—bread, yellow cheese in a hard rind, raisins with seeds in them, and a slice of tough but edible venison. It wasn’t baked brie and toast rounds, but he was getting used to the food of this world. And getting leaner as well. His green tunic was baggier than ever, and these days he didn’t have much more fat on him than did the stag he had just eaten part of.

  By the time he finished chewing the venison it was dusk. However, night came prematurely this deep in winter. The Circle of the Black Knife wouldn’t meet for hours yet. Not that he had much to report. No one in the great hall was sporting an obvious bandage, and there wasn’t enough time to begin a serious search of the castle. Travis decided to return to the chamber he shared with Melia and Falken and spend the interim trying to get warm by the fire.

  He was nearly there when a drab flutter of movement caught his eye. He turned in time to see a lumpy shape wrapped in gray tatters scuttle through a distant archway.

  “Hey!” he called out.

  Travis hesitated, then groaned. He launched himself down the corridor and pounded through the open archway. On the other side was a room with three doors. All were shut. He started toward the closest door, then changed his course and moved to another. There. He plucked a bit of rag from the hinge. She had gone this way. He threw open the door and ran down the corridor beyond.

  A flash of gray down a side passage.

  “Wait!” he shouted.

  Why was he doing this? He didn’t even have the filthy little bundle she had dropped—he had left it in his room, under his bed. But if he could catch her, he could tell her to wait, then could go fetch it for her. He didn’t know why he cared so much. Only that she had made him feel so small for the way he had run her down that last time.

  “Please, wait a second!”

  Either she did not hear him or did not care to. She disappeared around a corner. He careened down the side passage, turned the same corner, and ran full speed—

  —into a gray-haired man clad in black and maroon.

  “Ouch,” Travis said and stumbled back.

  The man reached a hand toward him. “Do you need help, Master Travis?”

  As always, Lord Alerain was trim and neat in his understated attire. His graying hair and beard were both closely cropped.

  Travis drew in a breath. “I’m looking for—” For what? He couldn’t very well say he was looking for a mad old hag who had dropped a piece of what was most likely trash. “—I’m looking for Lord Beltan. Have you seen him?”

  “Indeed I have, just a few minutes ago. He was in the west hall. If you follow this corridor to the end and take the stairs down, you’ll find it.” The seneschal started to move away, then paused. “You are his friend, aren’t you, Master Travis?”

  This question took Travis by surprise. “You mean Beltan? Yes. At least, I hope we are.”

  Alerain nodded. “I am glad. He needs friends like you, to remind him he is a good man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alerain moved to a window. The world outside was silver in the gloaming.

  “I love this view. It’s my favorite in all of Calavere. It looks straight into the heart of Calavan. Everything you see lies within the Dominion. It makes me feel …” He sighed and turned to look at Travis. “Beltan is kind, and given to laughter rather than anger. In that he is unlike his father, old King Beldreas. And so he thinks he is not as strong as Beldreas was.” He shook his head. “Beltan might have made a bid for the throne, you know. Many of the barons would have supported him.”

  Travis thought about these words. “Beltan is strong,” he said.

  Alerain nodded. “I know that, and so does King Boreas. Perhaps you can help Beltan believe the same. I’ve tried, but I’m afraid …”

  He gazed back out the window. Travis frowned. The king’s seneschal seemed different from usual, more melancholy. At that moment Alerain reminded Travis of his friend Jack Graystone, but he couldn’t say exactly why.

  Travis took a step toward the seneschal. “Are you well, Lord Alerain?”

  A smile touched Alerain’s lips. It seemed a bitter expression. “Am I well? Yes, Master Travis, I am well. I will always be well.” He gazed back out the window. “No harm can come to me now.”

  Travis bit his lip, unsure what to say. What was the seneschal talking about?

  Alerain stepped from the window, squared his shoulders, and was his crisp self once again. “You had best go, Master Travis. I imagine Lord Beltan is awaiting you.”

  Travis bade Alerain farewell, then turned and headed to his chamber. And although he spent the next hour sitting by the fire, for some reason he could not seem to get warm.

  89.

  Grace stood before the window in her chamber and gazed out at the failing day. She turned a small vial over and over in her hands. The green fluid within glinted like a liquid emerald. She didn’t need to taste it to know she had gotten the simple right this time. She could feel it. One sip would bring down a fever. Three would induce vomiting and hallucinations.

  You’re getting good at this, Grace. Too good …

  She was to meet with Ivalaine again that evening. So far, in the course of her studies, she had still not brought herself to ask the queen directly about the Council of Kings. There had not been time with the intense pace of her learning—at least, that was what she had told herself. But the council was to meet again the next day, to begin a new reckoning, and Ivalaine held the key. Her decision could tip the council in either direction. Grace had to find out what she wanted. What the Witches wanted …

  A hard rap sounded on her door.

  Grace nearly dropped the vial, then fumbled and slipped it into the pouch at her waist. She turned to face the door.

  “Come in,” she managed to say.

  It was not, as she had feared, Queen Ivalaine striding into her chamber in a cool fury, magically aware of Grace’s intention to question her. Instead she came with timid steps, her head down low, her brown hair hiding her face—a young woman in the ashen dress of a serving maid.

  Grace didn’t recall requesting a servant. “Can I help you?”

  “Aye, I hope so, my lady.”

/>   The young woman lifted her head, and Grace recognized her. It was Adira, the serving maid she had saved from Lord Olstin’s wrath. Adira, from whose lips Grace had first heard the word witch. That day she had been proud and bold. Now her face was smudged with grime and tears. Outrage replaced Grace’s surprise.

  “Adira, has Lord Olstin …”

  The serving maid shook her head. “Nay, my lady. It isn’t that.” Despite her tears, her full lips curved upward in a smile. “I think you taught Lord Olstin a lesson he won’t soon forget. A woman need never submit herself to a man’s will. You showed me that, my lady.”

  Grace lifted a hand to the bodice of her gown. Could she really have made such a difference in another’s life—not with a scalpel but with mere words?

  “It’s my brother I have come to see you about.” Now the smile vanished from Adira’s lips. “He’s ill, my lady, terribly ill, and Vayla says he is beyond her help. I heard … I heard you are a healer. And you have been studying with the Witch queen of Toloria. I know—I’ve seen you two together.”

  Grace’s shock was renewed.

  “Please, my lady.” Adira was sobbing now. She knelt and clutched the hem of Grace’s gown. “Please, won’t you come help us?”

  Grace gazed down at Adira. The sultry young woman who had professed her desire to be a witch was nowhere to be seen. At Grace’s feet was a frightened child.

  She can’t be more than seventeen, Grace. And she’s terrified. Help her. Grace’s shock dissolved. She knew what she had to do—she always did when someone was dying. Her woolen cloak lay across a chair where she had thrown it earlier, warming by the fire as if she had known she would need it. She tossed it around her shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Ten minutes later they halted in the cold mud of the lower bailey. Before them opened the shadowed mouth of the gatehouse, and beyond were the gates of Calavere. Grace glanced at Adira in confusion.

  “My brother lies in our house, in the town below.”

  Inwardly Grace kicked herself. In the urgency of the situation it had never occurred to her to ask where Adira’s brother was. She had assumed he was somewhere in the castle.

  The young woman tugged at her cloak. “Come, my lady. We must hurry if you are to return ere they close the gates.”

  Adira’s tears had dried, and her cheeks were rosy from their swift pace. Her terror seemed to have vanished. Perhaps the serving maid had learned some tricks of her own.

  Grace gave a jerky nod. What was she doing? But there was no time to think of an answer as Adira pulled her down the dim tunnel. They passed a pair of men-at-arms, who bowed as Grace passed, then the castle walls fell away behind them, and they were half walking, half running down the rutted dirt track that wound its way around Calavere’s high hill. Grace nearly fell as they stumbled down a steep stretch of the path, then they rounded a sharp turn, and the town came into view.

  It was hard from the haze of blue smoke to be sure just how large the town was. Grace guessed there to be five hundred structures, some of stone and slate, most of wood and thatch, which meant perhaps two thousand people. It did not seem much of a city to be associated with the seat of the most powerful of the Dominions. Then again, Grace knew this was a land of castles and fiefdoms, not cities and highways. Most of the people would live in small villages scattered across the land, and most of them would die without traveling ten miles from the place of their birth. Only a few would live in the towns that grew up around the keeps of lords and knights and barons, or that sprung up like mushrooms at busy crossroads. They were trading markets and religious centers, that was all.

  “Please, my lady. We have to hurry. Please.”

  Urgency had returned to Adira’s round face. Perhaps her fear had not been feigned entirely. Grace followed after the serving maid.

  They crossed a footbridge over a brook that tumbled down from the hill, then set foot in the town. Grace gagged and clamped a hand to her mouth. She had thought herself accustomed to the smells of this world, but she was wrong. The odors of neither ED nor castle compared to this.

  “Come, my lady. Come.”

  Grace almost couldn’t do it. Then she remembered there was a sick man in the midst of this. She clutched the edge of her cloak to her mouth and stumbled on.

  Twilight filtered down from the sky like soot, and the town was a dim blur. There was no reason to the streets. They zigged left and right, ended abruptly, turned to alleys where the two women could barely walk single file between wooden walls, then widened into broad cesspools.

  At first there were few people, then they came upon a town square. There was a stone well. Sheep milled about, along with people in rough, filthy tunics. Their faces were pockmarked, their backs stooped, their hands gnarled and missing fingers. Even that time in Appalachia she had not seen squalor like this.

  And this is the most prosperous of the Dominions, Grace.

  Adira dragged her across the square. Brown rivulets trickled through the mud. The reek that rose from them was a living thing, thick and suffocating, and stabbed at the primal core of Grace’s brain, triggering alarms more ancient than any castle: the scent of human feces. It was too much. Her stomach clenched, sour fire burned her throat. She turned, leaned against a wall, and vomited into an open gutter.

  “It’s all right, my lady,” Adira said, soft and slightly mocking. “It’s only the stench of the sewer. Come, it will be better indoors.”

  Grace managed to stand up, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded.

  “Take me to your brother,” she said.

  She felt better by the time they came to a small hovel near the far edge of the town. It was barely a shack, with walls of thin planks and a lean-to of daub and wattle slumped against one side. Chickens pecked in the bare dirt around the house. They were scrawny and bedraggled things. Grace wondered what use they could possibly be.

  Adira opened a door, and Grace followed. The air inside was thick with smoke. The only light came from a feeble fire.

  “I’ve brought her, Vayla.”

  The serving maid moved to the other side of the room. Only then did Grace see the narrow cot. A young man, no more than a year or two older than Adira, lay on the cot, his eyes closed. Another figure hunched over him. This one looked up at Adira’s words.

  “So the duchess descended from the castle, did she?” The voice was like the smoke from the fire—harsh and acrid. “Will she command his fever to be gone, then?”

  “She’s more than that, Vayla. She’s a healer, and she studies with the Tolorian queen.”

  A snort was the only reply.

  Adira motioned for Grace to come closer, but Grace stood paralyzed. She should not be here, she should run back to the castle as fast as she could, before they shut the gates and she was trapped out here. Then she remembered the sick man. Terror melted away, and she approached the bed. She was aware of eyes peering at her through the slit of a curtain. The rest of Adira’s family. They were afraid of her. Good. It would keep them out of her way. She reached the edge of the cot.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Grace said.

  “What? Can you not tell merely by looking at him, Duchess?”

  Grace winced at the harshness of the voice. In the castle, a servant who spoke to a noble like that would have been beaten, or worse.

  But you’re not in the castle, Grace. You’re not even a duchess.

  She pulled back the blanket and examined the man. He was naked beneath the rough covers, his skin waxy with sweat. He was small, no more than sixty-two inches, but obviously fully grown. The greater size of men compared to women was an artifact of good nutrition. In a stressed population, males were seldom much larger than females. Grace made a catalog in her mind.

  White male, approximately nineteen, unconscious and malnourished. Skeletal evidence of rickets as a child. Badly set but healed breaks to the proximal right ulna, distal left radius, medial left clavicle. Mass of scar tissue from a burn
on the left lateral abdomen.

  Had this man come into the ED, Grace would have thought him a product of an abusive childhood, or a kid from the streets. If he was under eighteen, she would have called Social Services. Here he was a normal man with people who cared about him. Everyone in this world lived this way, or at least the commoners. Anger flooded Grace’s stomach. What kind of hell was this?

  A gnarled hand placed a warm cloth on the young man’s forehead. A sharp scent rose from it. Grace knew it from her studies. The cloth had been steeped in mourner’s wreath. She could almost smell the salicylic acid. It was some sort of analgesic, good for pain.

  Grace followed the gnarled hand back, to the face of the one Adira had called Vayla, then drew in a sharp breath. So not all witches in this world were like Kyrene or Ivalaine. The woman was ancient, her back a hump beneath tattered clothes. Wisps of gray hair had escaped her ratty hood like smoke through a roof. Her face was a map of lines, her cheeks sunken, one eye bulbous, the other a wrinkled mass of flesh.

  The crone grinned at Grace, displaying a few yellow teeth. “What? Do you not find me beautiful, Duchess?”

  Grace stared at the crone, then she clenched her jaw and turned back to her patient. “His temp is elevated. He’s not cyanotic, so there’s no evidence of pneumothorax. It’s not a viral infection. Abdomen is not rigid or sensitive. No signs of appendicitis.”

  “What are you saying, my lady?” Adira’s face was fearful. “Are you speaking a spell? What are you doing to him?”

  Grace ignored her. “There must be some other cause for his fever. But what?”

  “He is dying,” the crone said.

  Grace glared at Vayla. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

  The crone gazed at her, then nodded. “What do you wish me to do, Duchess?”

  “Help me turn him on his side.”

  Grace hardly needed the crone’s aid. He felt as light and hollow as a bird. He moaned in his delirium—he was waking up. Grace ran eyes and hands over him, searching, sensing. There had to be something, some clue.…

  There. She had not seen it until Vayla snatched the tangled blanket away from his feet. Just above his left ankle was a wound. It was small but deep. Grace bent close, then gagged at the sweet scent of decay.