Never After

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Some say they used to be human.”

  “Souls stolen by the forest of a powerful queen. Roots that grew from bones and blood, and imprisoned the spirits of an entire people.” Mickel smiled. “I’ve heard it said that red hair was a common trait amongst them, and that descendents of those few who escaped the curse, who battled the queen herself, still bear that mark.”

  Sally brushed a strand of red hair self-consciously from her eyes. “You and your stories. How could something like that be true?”

  “Maybe it’s not. But either way, something about you is affected by that place, even by looking at it.”

  She began to deny it. He touched a finger to her lips. The contact startled her, and perhaps him. His hand flew away as though burned, and something unsettled, even pained, passed through his gaze. Sally suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  “You think too much in your eyes,” he said quietly.

  “I can practically read your thoughts.”

  “How terrifying,” she replied, trying to be flippant; though hearing herself was quite different: she sounded serious as the grave.

  A rueful smile touched his mouth, and he stroked the neck of his horse. He hardly used a saddle, just a soft pad and a molded piece of pebbled leather. He held the reins so lightly that Sally thought he must be guiding the horse with his legs. “Yes, it is frightening.”

  Sally fought the urge to touch her warm cheeks. “Why do you do this?”

  “Perform? Create masks for a living? Haven’t you ever wanted to be someone else?” Mickel’s smile deepened. “No, don’t answer that. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Sally thought she should start wearing a blindfold. But before she could ask him more, he said, “So what are you useful for? Are you good for anything?”

  “I can read,” she said, stung. “Garden, cook, ride a horse—”

  “All of which are admirable,” he replied, far more gently. “But I was referring to skills that would be useful in a… performance setting.”

  “Performance,” she echoed, eyes narrowing; recalling overheard discussions between her father’s men about “performances” involving women. “What kinds of skills do you think I might have?”

  Rumble, who had been silent, began to laugh. Mickel shook his head. “Reading, I suppose, would be enough. Precious few can do that. If you know your letters, you might earn your keep writing messages that we can carry along the way.”

  “Earn my keep? You expect that I’ll be traveling with you for much longer?”

  Rumble glanced over his shoulder and gave the man a long, steady look. As did Patric, who was suddenly much closer to the wagon than Sally had realized. Both men had messages in their eyes, but Sally was no good at reading them. Mickel, however, looked uncomfortable. And, for a brief moment, defiant.

  It’s all right, she wanted to say. I’ll be gone by tonight.

  Ahead, a small boy stood in the road with several sheep and a dog. He stared at them as they passed, and Mickel’s hands were suddenly full of small colorful balls that flew through the air with dazzling speed. He did not juggle long, though, before catching the balls in one large hand—and with the other, tossing the boy something that glittered in the sun. A silver mark, though the cut of it was unfamiliar. The child stared at it with huge eyes. Sally was also impressed, and puzzled. The coin, though foreign, would buy the boy’s family at least a dozen fine sheep, or whatever else they needed.

  “You run ahead,” Mickel said, in a voice far deeper, and more arrogant, than the one he had just been speaking with. “Let your village know that the Traveling Troupe of Twister Riddle has arrived for their pleasure, and that tonight they will be dazzled, astonished, and mystified.”

  The boy gulped. “Magic?”

  “Loads of it,” Mickel replied. “Cats chasing kittens will be coming out of your ears by the end of the night.”

  “Or more silver!” he called, when the boy began running down the road, halting only long enough to come back for his sheep, which had scattered up the hill behind him, herded by the much more diligent dog.

  Patric chuckled quietly to himself, while Mickel gave Sally an arch look. “Warming up the crowd is never a bad thing.”

  “That was an expensive message you just purchased.”

  “Ah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ve performed for many important people.”

  “I’m surprised, then, that the rest of your troupe left you behind, even for the promise of yet more riches.” Sally frowned. “I also thought actors were supposed to be poor.”

  “We’re immensely talented.”

  “Is that how you afford such lovely horses?”

  Rumble coughed. “These were a gift.”

  “A gift,” she echoed. “You’ve been south of the mountains, then.”

  Mickel gave her a sidelong look, followed by a grim smile. “You have a keen eye, lady.”

  “I have a good memory,” she corrected him. “And I’ve seen the breed.”

  “Have you?” he replied, with a sudden sharpness in his gaze that made her uncomfortable. “So go ahead. Ask what’s really on your mind.”

  She frowned at him. “The Warlord. Did you see him?”

  Rumble started to chuckle. Mickel gave him a hard look. “We performed for him.”

  Heat filled her, fear and anger and curiosity. Sally leaned forward. “I hear he sleeps with wolves in his bed and eats his meals off the stomachs of virgins.”

  Patric laughed out loud. Rumble choked. Even Mickel chuckled, though he sounded incredulous, and his nose wrinkled. “Where did you hear such nonsense?”

  “I made it up,” she said tartly. “But given how other men speak of him, he might as well do all those things. Such colorful descriptions I’ve heard. ‘Master of Murder. ’ ‘Fiend of Fire’—”

  “Sex addict?” Rumble said, his eyes twinkling. “Ravisher of women? Entire villages of them, lined up for his… whatever?”

  Mickel shot him a venomous look. Patric could hardly speak, he was laughing so hard. Her face warm, Sally said, “You disagree?”

  “Not at all,” he said, glancing at Mickel with amusement.

  Sally drummed her fingers along her thigh. “So? Was he truly as awful as they say?”

  “He was ordinary,” Mickel said, with a great deal less humor than his companions seemed to be displaying. “Terribly, disgustingly ordinary.”

  “Or as ordinary as one can be while eating off the stomachs of virgins,” Rumble added.

  “This is true,” Mickel replied, his eyes finally glinting with mischief. “I can’t imagine where he gets all of them. He must have them grown from special virgin soil, and watered with virgin rain, and fed only with lovely virgin berries.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” Sally said, but she was laughing.

  Mickel grinned. Ahead, there was a shout. Children appeared from around a bend in the road and raced toward them. The boy who had been given the silver mark was in the lead. Sally thought they resembled little sheep, stampeding.

  “Damn,” Rumble said, slowing the mules as Patric whirled his horse around and galloped back to the wagon. “You and your bright ideas.”

  “Brace yourself,” Mickel said.

  But Sally hardly heard him. She had looked up into the sky, and found ravens flying overhead; a handful, soaring close. She swayed, overcome with unease, and touched her throat and the golden chain that disappeared beneath the neck of her dress.

  Two of the birds dove, but Sally only saw where one of them went—which was straight toward her head. She raised her hands to protect herself, but it was too little, too late. Sharp claws knocked aside her hood and pierced her scalp, ripping away a tiny chunk of hair. Sally cried out in pain and fear.

  Her vision flickered. Inside her head, she glimpsed images from her dream, which swallowed the wagon, and Mickel, and the sun with all the steadiness of something real: a silver frozen lake, and a woman sleeping within a cocoon of stone, her head dressed i
n a crown of horns. An unearthly beauty, pale as snow.

  But the woman did not stay asleep. Sally saw her again, standing awake within a dark, tangled, heaving wood, gazing from between the writhing trees to a castle shining in the sun; an impossibly delicate structure that seemed made of spires and shell, built upon the green lush ground. But in the grass, warm and still, were the fresh bodies of fallen soldiers, so recently dead that not even the flies had begun buzzing. Amongst them stood women, strong and red-haired and bloody. Staring back with defiance and fury at the pale queen of the wood.

  Sally felt a pain in her arm, a sharp tug, and the vision dissolved. She fell back into herself with a stomach-wrenching lurch, though she could not at first say where she was. The sun seemed too bright, the sky too blue. Her heart was pounding too fast.

  Mickel’s fingers were wrapped around her arm. She peered at him, rubbing her watery eyes, and was dimly aware of the other men watching her, very still and stunned; and the children below, also staring.

  “I wasn’t screaming, was I?” Her voice sounded thick and clumsy; and it was hard to pronounce the words.

  Mickel shook his head, but he was looking at her as no one ever had; with surprise and compassion, and an odd wonder that was faintly baffled. Blood trickled down the side of his face. He looked as though he had been pecked above the eye.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  “I got in the way,” he replied, and reached out to graze her brow with his fingers—which came away bloody. Sally touched the spot on her head and felt warm liquid heat where part of her scalp had been torn off. Pain throbbed, and she swallowed hard, nauseous.

  “You are a curious woman,” Mickel said quietly. “Such a story in your eyes.”

  “Magic,” Rumble muttered. “When a raven sets its sights…”

  But Patric shook his head, and the older man did not finish what he was going to say. Mickel murmured, “The raven who attacked you spit out your hair. I could almost swear he simply wanted to taste it… or your blood.”

  The children scattered, melting away from the wagon. Perhaps afraid. Sally did not want to look too closely to know for certain. She shut her eyes, feeling by touch for the hem of her skirt. She tore off a strip of cloth, and bundled it against the wound in her head.

  “I should go,” she mumbled.

  “Rest,” Mickel replied. “Dream.”

  No, she thought. You don’t understand my dreams.

  But she lay down in the wagon bed, thinking of ravens and her father, and her mother, and little girls with wild hair and wilder eyes; and slept.

  4

  Sally danced that night. It was not the first time she had ever danced, but it was the first beyond the watchful eye of home, in a place where she was not known as the eccentric tatterdemalion princess—but as Sally, who was still a mystery, and unknown, without the aura of expectation and distance that so many placed on her. If anyone recognized her face—and there were several older women who gave her and her clothing sharp looks—no one said a word.

  And no one seemed to be aware of the encounter with the ravens; nor commented on the wound in her head. She thought the children must have talked, but the people of Gatis were either too polite, or too used to strange occurrences, to make much of it.

  Instead, she was treated as another Twisting Riddle, a woman of letters, who held children in her lap while she transcribed messages on the backs of flat rocks, smooth bark, and pale tanned hide; listening with solemn patience to heartbreak, tearful confessions, stories that would be amusing only to family and friends; news about births, livestock, weather; and the growing mer cenary presence with pleas attached to be safe, be at ease, stay out of the hills. I love you, people said. Write that down, they would tell her. I love you.

  And all the while, Mickel juggled and sang, and juggled and danced, and juggled some more: no object was too large or small, not even fire. The other two men were also gifted, in surprising ways. Rumble dragged a stool into the heart of the gathered crowd, where he slouched with his elbows on his knees and began reciting, halfheartedly, a well known fable that also happened to be utterly boring. But at the end of the first verse his hand suddenly twitched, and the ground before him exploded with sparks and fire and smoke.

  The crowd gasped, jumping back, but Rumble never faltered in his story, his voice only growing stronger, richer, more vibrant. More explosions, and he began striding forcefully across the ground, punctuating words and moments with clever sleights of hand; cloth roses pulled from thin air, along with scarves, and coins; small hard candies, and once a rabbit that looked wild and startled, as though it couldn’t quite believe how it had gotten there.

  Patric was a marksman. Daggers, arrows, any kind of target. Sally was convinced to stand very still against a tree with a small soft ball on her head—holding her breath as the blond giant took one look at her, and threw his blade. She felt the thunk, listened to the gasps and cheers, but it was only when she walked away that she was finally convinced that she’d survived.

  The men had other acts that impressed—shows of horsemanship, riddles, recitations of famous ballads (during which Sally beat a drum)—indeed, several hours of solid entertainment that no one in Gatis would likely forget for a long time to come. Nor would Sally. And, when the show was over, it seemed only natural that the village treat the little troupe to dinner (at which Patric’s catch of venison was sold), and to a performance of their own—as all the local musicians took up a corner of the square, and began playing to their heart’s content.

  It was night, and the air was lit with fire. Sally danced with strange smiling men, and then Rumble and Patric; but she danced with Mickel the longest, and he was light on his feet, his hands large and warm on her arms and waist. She felt an odd weight in her heart when she was close to him, a growing obsession with his thoughts and the shape of his face; and it frightened her, even though she could not stop what she felt. She thought he might feel the same, which was an even graver complication. His eyes were too warm when he looked at her—cut with moments of flickering hesitation.

  But neither of them stopped, and when the music slowed, Mickel twirled her gently to a halt, as Sally spun with all the careful grace she possessed and had been taught.

  “Well,” he said hoarsely, standing close.

  “Yes,” Sally agreed, hardly able to speak past the lump in her throat.

  The people of Gatis offered them beds in their homes that night. The men politely refused. Sally helped them pack the wagon, including fine gifts of cloth and wine, and then the troupe followed the night road out of the village, toward the north. Sally kept meaning to jump out and head in the opposite direction, but her heart seemed to be heavier than her body, and refused to move from the wagon bed.

  “Why did you leave?” she asked Mickel.

  “It’s never good to overstay,” he replied, sounding quiet and tired. “What feels like magic one night becomes something cheap the next, if you don’t take care to preserve the memory. Familiarity always steals the mystery.”

  “Always?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling. “I believe you could be the exception.”

  Sally smiled, too, glad the night hid her warm face. “Who taught you all these things?”

  “We learned on our own, in different places,” Rumble said, the bench creaking under him as he turned to look at her. “All of us a little strange, filled with a little too much wild in our blood. Got the wander-lust? Nothing to do but wander. Now, Mickel there, he comes from a long line of those types. Knows how to recognize them. He put us all together.”

  “And how long have you been at this?”

  Patric flashed white teeth in the dark. “How long have you? You were quite good tonight.”

  “I read. I held children and beat a drum, and stood while you threw a knife at my face.”

  “But you did it easily,” Mickel said. “You made people feel at ease. Which is not as simple as it sounds. I know what Patric means. You have
it in you.”

  “No,” she replied. “I was just being… me.”

  “As were we.”

  “Mostly,” Rumble added. “I don’t usually keep chickadees in my pants, I’ll have you know.”

  “That,” Sally said, “was a remarkably disgusting trick.”

  “It only gets better,” Patric replied dryly.

  They set up camp near the road, beside a thick grove of trees that was not the Tangleroot, but nonetheless made her think of the ancient forest. It was somewhere close, but if she kept going north with these men, she would lose her chance, lose what precious time she had left.

  Perhaps it was for nothing, anyway. Despite her strange dreams and the behavior of the raven (her head still ached, and she could not imagine her appearance), the longer she was away from the gardener and her words, the less faith she had in her chance of finding something, anything, that could help her in the Tangleroot. It might be a magical forest, filled with strange and uncanny things, but none of that was an answer. Perhaps just another death sentence.

  You think too much, she told herself. Sometimes you just have to feel.

  But her feelings were not making anything easier, either.

  Rumble and Patric rolled themselves into their blankets as soon as they stopped, and were snoring within minutes. Mickel stayed up to keep watch, and Sally sat beside him. No fire, just moonlight. He wrapped himself in one of the new cloaks the villagers had given them, and fingered the fine heavy cloth with a great deal of thoughtfulness.

  “This is a good land,” he said. “Despite the mercenaries.”

  Sally raised her brow. “You say that as though you’ve never been here.”

  He shrugged. “It’s been a long time. I hardly remember.”

  “So why did you come back?”

  “Unfinished business.” He met her gaze. “Why are you running? More specifically, why are you running to the Tangleroot?”

  “My own unfinished business,” she replied. “I have questions.”

  “Most people, when they have questions, ask other people. They do not go running headfirst into a place of night terrors and magic.”