“Excuse me, please,” Tria said.
“Some things can’t be excused,” the maid said. “Have you forgotten the stairs?”
“I’m trying to climb them, but you’re in my way.”
“But you are not in mine. And I do not refer to these stairs.” With that enigmatic comment, Veronica stepped aside and Tria hurried past her.
Has Veronica lost her mind? Or does she know what Lina and I are about to do? Fear gripped her at the possibility that the maid might know what hid beneath her jacket, its small heart fluttering in terror.
Tria shivered. She and Lina wore sleeveless white smocks of light cotton, and the cold air flowing in through the open window raised chill bumps along her bare arms. As with the spell they’d done before, they sat on the wood floor, the carpet rolled up in the front of the room. This time they had spread no earth over the floor; they sat within the outline of a chalk-drawn pentagram. In the center of the pentagram, the skull rested on the round mirror taken from the back of their door. The candle set within it provided the room’s only illumination, doubled by the reflection in the mirror. The light glared balefully through the empty eye sockets.
Trussed in scarlet yarn, the dove lay in front of the skull. From time to time its body twitched in a feeble attempt to escape. Its reproachful gaze burned Tria’s soul. This was wrong. She should never have agreed to it, should never have gotten involved.
Lina chanted. The words were in no arcane language. Tria wished they were. She would have preferred not to understand the accursed phrases by which the Shadow Powers were invoked.
The chant grew louder. Lina’s voice rose to a crescendo, dropped to an enticing whisper, fell silent. Tria sat as if paralyzed.
“Now!” Lina urged in a strident whisper.
Tria plunged her hands into the bowl of water mixed with bitter herbs. Numbed by the cold, her shaking fingers grasped the hilt of the silver knife but could not hold it. It clattered to the floor.
With an impatient grunt, Lina dipped her hands in the bowl and picked up the knife. With a single slash, she cut through the dove’s neck. Holding the headless corpse by the feet, she unwound the scarlet thread. The body jerked about, spraying blood. The hot liquid splashed against Tria’s icy arms. It spattered the skull, hissed in the candle flame, darkened the mirror, rained into the herb water, and pooled on the floor.
Fighting nausea and faintness, Tria gazed at the severed head, its beak open, its sightless eyes glazed over. If only she could rejoin head to body and restore the stolen life. But that was beyond her power.
The candle flame flared. A woman with a skull face took form within the circle. Her gown was as red as the blood of the dove. “I come to your bidding,” she said.
“Where is he whom you stole away?” Lina demanded imperiously. “Bring him.”
The death’s-head bowed. Long-nailed fingers snapped.
A creature bounded out of the darkness and crouched like a dog at the woman’s feet. Its hair was long and shaggy, its skin scaled, its nails taloned. Its pale blue eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. Its nose dripped, its fanged mouth slavered.
“Gray,” Tria moaned and scooted back in revulsion.
“Don’t move,” Lina warned.
Too late. Tria’s reflexive retreat erased a portion of the chalked pentagram.
The Dire Woman rose into the air and flew across that gap toward the door. The thing that had been Gray loped after her. Tria screamed and tried to grab it. Its claws raked her shoulder as it shoved past. Blood welled from the scratches and mingled with the blood of the dove.
The Dire Woman hesitated only an instant before the locked and warded door. She lifted her hands, spoke a single word, and the door swung open. She swept out into the hall.
Tria scrambled to her feet. “We’ve got to stop them.”
Lina leaped past her, metamorphosing into a panther as she ran. Tria started after her, remembered the blood that spattered her thin smock, and turned back for her robe, which lay across her bed. She snatched it up, pulled it on, and yanked the sash tight, knotting it as she ran into the corridor.
Doors slammed. Girls screamed and darted in and out of rooms. The Dire Woman strode down the hall, skull head turning this way and that as though searching for something. Gray shuffled along behind her, walking on his knuckles like an ape. In panther form, belly low to the ground, emitting low snarls, Lina stalked them.
Rehanne opened her door and stepped into the hall as Gray passed. He paused and looked at her. She screamed and sagged against the wall. Lina pounced.
Yowling, hissing, scratching, biting, panther and Gray-thing rolled together on a floor soon slick with blood. Tria reached Rehanne and held her.
Stop them! Stopthemstopthemstopthem!” Rehanne shrieked.
The Dire Woman turned and loomed over the battling creatures. She thrust her hand between them, and Tria thought she would separate them. Instead, she pulled her hand free, covered with blood, and raised it to her mouth.
“Stopthemstopthemstopthem!”
“Help!” Nubba’s voice. “I need help for Irel.”
“Get Headmistress!”
“DO something! Somebody DO something!”
Taner hurled herself at the Dire Woman and drove her dagger into the woman’s shoulder.
The dagger shattered like glass. A flip of the creature’s wing flung Taner backwards. She crashed to the floor and lay stiff and pale as a corpse. Verin crept fearfully to her side.
All this Tria heard and saw as though in a dream, a nightmare from which she could not wake. Her limbs were heavy; her strength drained. She could not summon her power.
And Lina and Gray fought on, flesh torn, bleeding heavily from gouges that exposed the bone. Again the Dire Woman touched them, smeared their blood on her hands.
“Cease!” Oryon stood in the hallway.
At his sharp command the combatants froze. The Dire Woman’s hands stopped near her face. Sudden silence replaced the shrieks and pleas.
Oryon stepped forward, black wand in hand. “Take them!” The tip of his wand pointed in turn to the panther and to Gray.
The Dire Woman stooped, caught up the panther, tucked it under her arm, and caught hold of Gray with her other hand, lifted him easily, and pinned him under that arm.
The panther’s face shifted to Lina’s, but only for an instant. One paw became a hand, extended as if in a plea. The fingers curled, reverted to claws. Lina couldn’t change. She was trapped in her panther form!
“Return from whence you came, and henceforth answer no one’s call but mine,” Oryon ordered.
The death’s-head bowed assent. The creature turned and vanished, carrying Gray and Lina with her.
“And you, fool!” Oryon aimed his wand toward Tria. “You see how futile are your puny, ignorant attempts at thaumaturgy. Of what use was your furtive visit to my room? Your quest is doomed. Renounce it or be doomed yourself.”
Tria spat at his feet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CLEANSING
Oryon whirled and strode to the stairs. Too shaken to speak, Tria glared at his retreating back until his descent carried him out of her sight. When she turned to the clustered onlookers, she saw several gazing after Oryon with awe and admiration. Her search for a friendly face met only pitying looks or hostile stares. Even Nubba averted her gaze when Tria tried to catch her eye.
Clearly, they all blamed her for the appearance of the Dire Woman. And Oryon’s remark about her “furtive visit” to his room could only have aroused their suspicions even further. This was no time to explain her experiment with space-shifting. No one would listen.
Tria walked to where Verin knelt over Taner. “Is she? …” Tria couldn’t finish.
Verin shook her head. “She’s alive, no physical injury that I can find, but I can’t bring her around. Whatever that thing did to her is beyond my power to heal.”
“Maybe you can help Coral,” Kathyn said, stepping in front of Tria as though she wer
en’t there. “She’s moaning and holding her head, and I can’t get her to say anything.”
“And Irel!” Nubba shouted. “She’s having convulsions. Help her, please.”
“We need another healer,” Verin said as she brushed past Tria. “Somebody get Salor up here.”
“What have you done?” Rehanne’s horrified whisper pierced Tria’s heart.
She couldn’t answer. Shoulders slumped, she turned, walked to her room, and closed the door behind her. She nearly tripped over the rolled carpet. Leaning against her desk, she surveyed the bloody mess left from the spell. At the sight of the decapitated dove, she doubled over and vomited into the wastebasket.
She worked through the night cleaning the room. What else could she do? She had no way of rescuing Lina; she was powerless to confront Oryon; and she had no one to turn to for help. She expected a summons to Headmistress’s office, but no message came.
Headmistress must know what happened. If her power had not shown her the events as they unfolded, by now someone would have reported the whole sordid story. Tria dreaded being reminded of Headmistress’s warning that the battle could only be won by keeping to the moral high road. How many rules had she and Lina violated in performing the spell? Those infractions paled beside the enormity of having failed to save Gray and Wilce, having lost Lina, and having been indirectly responsible for Taner’s injury and the mental traumas suffered by Irel, Coral, and who knew how many other sensitives.
She rubbed harder at the floor, scouring the boards to remove the stains. It was not enough, could not be enough, to spread the carpet out and hide the telltale splotches. She had to scrape away every trace of blood.
Dawn found her still at work, still unsatisfied, though no speck of dirt or fleck of blood remained anywhere on the floor, walls, or furniture. Soon the other students would be stirring. Knowing that the room was as clean as she could get it, she carried the bucket, mop, and scouring powder to the shower room, put them away, and spent the next hour scrubbing herself.
Forced from the shower by the shouts and complaints of those waiting their turn, she put on her robe, wrapped a towel around her sopping hair, and hurried from the washroom. No one spoke as she walked through the hall; she avoided eye contact with those she passed. One or two stepped back into their rooms as she approached.
She dressed but did not go to breakfast. When everyone else had gone, she bundled Lina’s and her bed linens and her robe and carried them to the laundry room, washed them, and hung them to dry. They were not visibly soiled, but she needed everything cleansed.
She had already rinsed out her bloody smock and cut it into small strips. Rather than putting the scraps into the trash, Tria took them to the incinerator herself.
When she finished that chore, she slipped out the side door carrying a small package and hurried down the road to the field where she had caught the dove. Satisfied that no one was watching, she dug a hole with the trowel she’d brought and buried the body and head of the dove, wrapped in her best scarf.
“Forgive me,” she said, and tears streamed down her cheeks as she smoothed the earth over the tiny grave.
By the time she returned to her room, the floor had dried. She spread the carpet over it and made both beds with clean sheets. She took her old pink blanket from her trunk and spread it on her bed in place of the fancier blanket and coverlet of Lina’s she’d been using at her roommate’s insistence. For the fourth or fifth time, she polished the round mirror, returned to its place on the back of the door.
Tria did not go to lunch. Although she was restless, she did not leave her room. She felt neither hungry nor tired. A dull ache filled her body and brain. Her ears buzzed. Her eyes were dry and scratchy. She wanted to cry but the tears no longer came.
She tried to think, to plan, but her thoughts were sluggish, freighted with defeat. She could conceive of no action that could possibly succeed. Oryon’s power was growing; hers had waned. What talent did she possess that would help in this struggle? She took her list from the desk drawer and stared at it. Her ability to shape light and fire had served her well enough in her original power duel with Oryon, but what good was it in this duel of nerves and wits? She erased the question mark she’d placed after “calling animals.” She’d proved she had that talent by calling the dove, an act she bitterly regretted.
Her abilities to find buried metal, to hurl small objects through the air, to alter the size and shape of larger inanimate objects all had no more value than parlor tricks. What else could she do?
She could shift time.
She recalled her discovery of that unknown talent and its disagreeable results. After Headmistress’s stern lecture, Tria had vowed never to call on that power again, a vow that had been reinforced by Master San Marté’s warnings in several of his lectures.
She got out her course notes from the first semester and reread the words: Let those who have the ability to twist the dimension of time beware. The slightest manipulation can have far-reaching consequences. The greater the displacement, the greater the certainty of disaster. An irresponsible time-shift could create anomalies impossible to reverse or correct. Every small adjustment, every tiny tuck in the fabric of time, must eventually be compensated for in order to maintain the stable balance of the universe. This effect must always be taken into careful account by the manipulator. I hold the firm opinion that time-twisting is a talent that should never be used.
“But in that case,” Tria wondered aloud, “why is it given to us? As a test? Or a temptation?”
If she could turn time back to the fateful night of the Midwinter Ball, she might be able to stop Oryon from carrying out his vile plot. But she couldn’t be certain, and the probability of a catastrophe brought on by a time displacement of eleven weeks was too great to risk.
However, if she went back only twenty hours, to a time before the working of the spell, she could set the dove free, save Lina, reverse the injuries to Taner, Irel, and Coral, and prevent the further hurt done to Gray.
How dangerous was a time displacement of twenty hours? Would she be able to contain the damage? She needed to think, to consider carefully, but every moment’s delay increased the time and therefore the danger.
If only there were someone she could go to for advice. But everyone she had turned to thus far had failed her. It was useless to waste time trying to seek out someone else. The responsibility had been thrust on her; she must make her own decision and abide by the consequences.
She cleared everything from her desk but her clock, even removed the lamp and placed it on the floor. She sat down and stared at the clock, visualizing its hands set at the time she wanted to return to. They had begun the spell at eight o’clock; she’d try for an hour before that. She took careful note of the present time: one forty-eight. Eighteen hours and forty-eight minutes to displace.
Tria concentrated on the clock face, let her eyes shift out of focus as she imagined the hands moving slowly backward. The clock face grew larger, brighter. Like a sun, it swam before her. The hands swept around it like swift, dark clouds, dizzying her. Her chair reeled, the room plunged into darkness, the world spun. She could no longer see the clock, and her efforts to hold a mental image of the hands faltered.
With a thunderous crash the room righted itself.
Not her room. A dim, diffuse light allowed her to do little more than distinguish vague shapes. She seemed to be among massive columns, some upright, some toppled and broken. In front of her, poised between two standing columns, her arms outstretched to rest a hand on each pillar, was Veronica.
“Restore the time,” Veronica said. “You may not do this thing.”
Tria noted the straining of the woman’s arms, the perspiration studding her forehead, as though she was supporting the columns to prevent them from falling.
“Hurry!” Veronica cried.
Tria blinked. The scene vanished. Immersed in darkness, Tria tried to recapture the image of the clock. Again she experienced the sensatio
n of floating, spinning, falling.
It grew light. The clock face took shape before her eyes, its numbers too blurred to read. She felt the chair supporting her, felt the floor beneath her feet.
The room steadied, the clock came into focus. The time read one forty-nine. She was back.
She had accomplished nothing, might have done more harm. She had to find Veronica, talk to her, ask her how she had chanced to be in that place—wherever it was. But before she could move, someone knocked on her door.
She pushed back her chair, rose, and went on shaky legs to the door. She pulled it open. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of Headmistress.
“May I come in?”
Tria stepped aside to let the tall woman pass.
Headmistress walked into the center of the room between the beds and looked around. Her long nose wrinkled, as if despite all the scrubbing she could smell the blood.
“Will you … will you sit down?” Tria scarcely knew what she was saying.
Headmistress nodded and lowered her long form onto Lina’s desk chair. Tria dropped into her own chair, glad her weak knees were spared the effort of supporting her.
“You haven’t been going to meals. You missed breakfast and lunch today and supper last night,” Headmistress observed.
It was not the accusation Tria had expected. “I wasn’t hungry,” was all she could think of to say.
“And you’ve missed several classes recently.”
“It seems pointless to go.” Suddenly weary, Tria did not feel like sparring. She waited for Headmistress to speak of the true purpose of her visit.
“It is not pointless. You have already made at least one tragic mistake. You nearly made a worse one. The classes offer instruction that might prevent such mistakes.”
Tria slammed her palm against the desk. “I’ve made mistakes because no one has given me any practical instruction. I’ve had theory up to here.” Her hand drew a line across her nostrils. “Ethics, logic, symbolism, history, philosophy. What good have they done? No one teaches me how to counter Oryon’s power. No one teaches me how to deal with Dire Women. I thought Aletheia’s class would help, but it’s been nothing but theory. It’s all a waste of time.”
A School for Sorcery (Arucadi Series Book 6) Page 16