"Are you afraid of ghosts?"
"Yes, Mistress lya! Aren"t you?"
"Not especially. And you mustn"t be, either, because there is a ghost at the keep."
"Bilairy"s b.a.l.l.s!"
Suddenly Ki was no longer behind her. Turning, lya found him standing in the road with his bundle in his arms, staring miserably back toward home.
"Get back up here, boy!"
Ki wavered, evidently uncertain which he was more afraid of, ghosts or his formidable father.
"Don"t be ridiculous," she chided. "Prince Tobin has lived his whole life with it and it hasn"t done him any harm. Now come along or I will send you back. The prince needs no cowards around him."
Ki swallowed hard and squared his shoulders, just as she"d guessed he would. "My father sired no cowards."
"I"m pleased to hear it."
When he was safely mounted again, she asked, "How did you know of the ghost?"
"Ahra told me this morning after she heard who Father bound me off to."
"And how did she know of it?"
She felt a shrug. "Said she heard it among the ranks."
"And what else did your sister hear?"
Another shrug. "That"s all she told me, Mistress."
K i was polite in a glum sort of way the rest of the day, and that night he wept very quietly after he thought lya was asleep. She half expected to find him gone in the morning. When she opened her eyes just after dawn, however, he was still there, watching her from across a freshly laid fire. There were dark circles under his eyes, but he"d fixed a cold breakfast for both of them and looked much more the bright fellow she"d taken him for that first night.
"Good morning, Mistress lya."
"Good morning, Ki." lya sat up and stretched the stiffness from her shoulders.
"How long"til we get there?" he asked as they ate.
"Oh, three or four days, I think."
He bit off another mouthful of sausage and chewed noisily. "Could you learn me to talk proper on the way, like you said?"
"For a start, don"t speak with your mouth full. And don"t chew with your mouth open." She chuckled as he hastily swallowed. "There"s no need to choke on my account. Let"s see, what else? Don"t curse or swear by Bilairy"s body. It"s coa.r.s.e. Now, say "could you please teach me to speak properly?"" "Could you please teach me to speak properly?" he repeated, as carefully as if it were some foreign tongue he was mastering. "And could you please learn-teach me about ghosts?"
"I"ll do both, as best I can," lya replied, smiling at him. She"d judged rightly after all. This boy was no turnip.
Chapter zz Sitting on the roof with Arkoniel one afternoon in late Rhythin, Tobin looked out over the blazing colors of the forest and realized it was only a few weeks until his name day. He hoped no one remembered.
He hadn"t wanted to come up here for their morning lesson, and made certain they sat as far as possible from the base of the tower.
Arkoniel was trying to teach him mathematics, using dried beans and lentils to work through the problems. Tobin wanted to pay attention, but his thoughts kept straying to the tower. He could feel it looming behind him, cold like a shadow even though the sun was warm on his shoulders. The tower shutters were closed tight, but Tobin was sure he could hear noises behind them; footsteps, and the soft brush of long skirts across stone floors. The sounds scared him the way his visions of his mother"s ghost behind the tower door did.
He didn"t tell Arkoniel about the sounds, or about the dream he"d had the night before; he"d made that mistake several times already and everyone, even Nari, had started to look at him strangely when the ones he told came true.
In this one, he and Brother went outside again, but this time the demon led him to the bottom of the meadow, where they stood waiting for someone. In the dream, Brother started crying. He cried so hard that dark blood ran from his nose and mouth. Then he pressed one hand over his heart and the other over Tobin"s, and leaned so close their faces were almost touching.
"She"s coming," Brother whispered. Then he flew through the air like a bird back to the tower, leaving Tobin to wait alone, watching the road.
He"d woken up with a start, still feeling Brother"s hand pressing on his chest. Who"s coming, he thought, and why?
Cl j^7itting here in the sunshine now, Tobin didn"t tell Arkoniel any of that. He hadn"t been scared in the dream, but when he thought of it now, listening to the noises in the tower, he was overcome with a strange sense of dread.
An especially loud b.u.mp sounded overhead and Tobin stole a quick glance at the wizard, thinking he must have heard that, that perhaps Arkoniel was just choosing not to say anything.
In their first days together Arkoniel had asked him many questions about his mother. He never mentioned the tower or what had happened there, but Tobin could see in his eyes that he wanted to.
Tobin let out a sigh of relief when Tharin appeared in the courtyard below. Father and the others were still away, but Tharin had come home to be his weapons master.
"It"s time for my practice," he said, jumping up.
Arkoniel raised an eyebrow at him. "So I see. You know, Tobin, there"s more to being a n.o.ble than arms. You have to understand the world and how it works..."
"Yes, Master Arkoniel. May I go now?"
A familiar sigh. "You may."
.,"l-rkoniel watched the child scamper eagerly away over the slates. He doubted Tobin had heard half the lesson. Something about the tower had distracted him; he"d twisted around to stare at it every time he thought Arkoniel wasn"t looking.
The wizard stood and looked up at it. Something about those closed shutters always sent a chill down his spine. When the duke returned, Arkoniel meant to get his permission to see that room. Perhaps if he could stand there, breathe the air, touch the things she"d left behind, then he could gain some sense of what exactly had happened that day. He certainly wasn"t going to learn it from Tobin. The few times Arkoniel had broached the subject the child had gone blank and silent in the most disquieting way.
Arkoniel gave no credence to Nari"s wild talk of possession, or her fear that Tobin had somehow caused his mother"s fall. But the longer Arkoniel remained here, the more keenly aware he was of the dead child"s permeating presence. He could feel its chill. And he"d heard Tobin whispering to it, just asNari had said, and found himself wondering what sort of replies Tobin heard.
What if Tobin had fallen that day? For an instant he imagined the two children watching him from behind those peeling shutters, united in death, as they should have been in life.
"I"ll go mad here," he muttered, scattering the lentils for the birds.
Hoping to shake off his dark mood, he made his way down to the practice yard and watched Tharin working with Tobin. Here was a man who knew how to teach a boy.
Both of them were grinning as they moved back and forth with their wooden blades. No matter how hard Tharin worked Tobin, the boy strove to please him, worshiping the big warrior with an openness that Arkoniel envied. Tobin had put on a battered leather tunic and tied back his hair with a thong; a dark miniature of fair-skinned Tharin.
Arkoniel had come to accept that these lessons captured the boy"s interest in a way that his own lame attempts could not. He"d never meant to be a tutor and suspected he was making a poor job of it.
Part of the problem was Tobin"s distrust. Arkoniel had felt it since the day he arrived, and things had not changed much for the better. He was certain that the demon had something to do with this. It remembered the events of its birth; had it told Tobin? Nari didn"t think so, but Arkoniel remained certain the demon had somehow set Tobin against him from the start.
In spite of all these obstacles, however, he found himself growing increasingly attached to the child.
Tobin was intelligent and perceptive when he chose to be, and around anyone else except Arkoniel he was pleasant and well mannered.
Recently, however, something new had given the wizard pause and filled him with a mix of wonder and unease. The boy had shown a few flashes of what appeared to be foreknowledge. A week earlier Tobin had claimed that a letter was coming from his father, and waited all afternoon by the gate until a rider appeared with the message that Duke Rhius was not coming home in time for Tobin"s name day after all.
Stranger still, a few nights ago he had frantically woken Nari and Tharin, begging them to go into the woods to find a fox with a broken back. They"d tried to rea.s.sure him that it had only been a dream but he grew so upset that Tharin had finally taken a lantern and gone out. He"d returned within the hour with a dead vixen. Tharin swore the fox had been too far from the house for Tobin to hear its cries and, when asked how he"d known, Tobin had mumbled that the demon had told him, but wouldn"t say any more.
This morning he"d had a furtive air and Arkoniel guessed he"d had another vision, and that it might have something to do with the way Tobin had squirmed so inattentively through the aborted lesson in mathematics.
While foreknowing in a future ruler was an undoubted advantage, what if it presaged the first blossoming of a wizard"s gifts? Would the people accept a wizard queen, unable for all her power to bear a successor?
Leaving Tobin and Tharin to their practice, Arkoniel crossed the bridge and wandered down the road into the forest.
As the keep disappeared from sight behind him, Arkoniel felt his spirits lift. The crisp autumn air cleansed him of the tainted atmosphere he"d been breathing for the past month, and he was suddenly grateful to be away from that strange house and its haunted people. No amount of repair and fresh paint could mask its underlying rot.
"That baby still sit heavy on you heart," an unmistakable voice said behind him.
Arkoniel whirled around to find the road as empty as before. "Lhel? I know it"s you! What are you doing here?"
"Be scared, Wizard?" Now the mocking voice came from a thick stand of yellow-leafed poplar on his right. He couldn"t make out anyone hidden there, but just then a small brown hand appeared-not from behind the trees but out of thin air just in front of them. The forefinger crooked, beckoning, then disappeared as if it had been pulled back through an invisible window frame. "You come here, I take your fear away," the voice wheedled, almost at his ear.
"By the Light, show yourself!" Arkoniel demanded, intrigued in spite of his surprise. "Lhel? Where are you?"
He stared into the trees, looking for telltale shadows, listening for stealthy footsteps. Nothing came tohim but the patter of leaves in the wind. It was as if she had opened a portal in the air and spoken to him through it. And put her hand through it.
It"s a trick. You"re seeing what you want to see.
But what if it wasn"t?
The more important question right now was what she was doing here at all after all these years?
"Come to me, Arkoniel," Lhel called to him from behind the screen of poplars. "Come into the woods."
He hesitated just long enough to summon a protective core of power deep in his mind, strong enough-he hoped-to keep away any creatures of darkness she might summon. Gathering his courage, he pushed through the screen of branches, following the voice into the forest beyond.
The light was muted here, and the ground rose gently before him. Laughter came from up the hillside and he looked up to see the *witch floating beside a large oak tree a dozen yards from where he stood.
Lhel smiled at him, framed by a long oval of soft green light. He could see rushes and cattails swaying around her, bathed in the rippling shimmer of light reflected from unseen water. The vision was so clear he could even make out the exact demarcation between the illusion and the surrounding forest, like a painting hung on the air.
She beckoned coyly, then the entire apparition collapsed like a washday soap bubble.
He ran to where she had appeared and felt the tingle of magic in the air there. He breathed it in, and felt a long-forgotten memory stir.
Years earlier, while still a child apprentice, Arkoniel had thought he"d seen a similar miracle. Half asleep in some n.o.ble"s hall, he"d awakened in the early light to see men appearing silently out of thin air at the far end of the room. The sight had both frightened and excited him.
When he told lya of it later that morning, however, he was heartbroken to learn that it had simply been a clever trick of the eye, using a painted wall and the placement of a tapestry in front of a servant"s entry.
"No such spell has ever existed in Oreska magic," lya had told him. "Even the Aurenfaie have to walk from place to place, just as we do."
The disappointment had faded, but not the inspiration. There were spells aplenty that could move objects like locks or doors or stones; surely there must be some way of translating these. He"d toyed with the notion for years, but had come no closer to making it a reality. He could push a pea across a carpet with ease, but he could not make it pa.s.s through a solid door or wall, no matter how he meditated and envisioned the act.
Arkoniel shook off the reverie with suspicion. This was some witch trick, coupled with the memory his mind had fastened onto in the shock of the moment.
Lhel"s faint call drifted down to him again, leading him to a trail that wound off to his right through a thick stand of fir. The ground fell away sharply from here and he came out at last at the edge of a marsh.
Lhel stood waiting for him at the water"s edge, surrounded by cattails and faded marshworts, just as he"d seen her earlier. He stared hard at her, trying to pierce whatever new illusion she was practicing on him, but her shadow fell across the wet ground just as it should, and her bare feet sank into the soft mud as she took a step toward him.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I be here, waiting for you," she replied.
This time it was Arkoniel who stepped closer. His heart was racing, but he felt no fear of her now.
She looked smaller and more ragged than he recalled, as if she"d been hungry for a long time. There were thicker streaks of white in her hair, too, but her body was still rounded and ripe, and she moved with the same challenge in her hips that had so unnerved him. She took another step toward him, then tilted her head and set her hands on her hips like a fishwife, regarding him with a combination of heat and wry disdain in her black eyes.
He was close enough to smell herbs and sweat and moist earth, with something else mixed in that made him think of mares in heat.
"When-when did you arrive?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I be here always. Where you be, all these times? How you take care what we make, be gone so long?" "You mean you"ve been here, near the keep, all these years?"
"I help the lady. I follow and keep watch. Help that spirit not be so angry."
"You haven"t done much of a job of that," Arkoniel retorted, holding out his splinted wrist for her to see. "To-bin"s life has been a misery because of it."
"It be worse, I don"t do as the Mother show," she retorted, shaking a finger at him. "You and lya, you don"t know! A witch make a spirit, she..." She held her wrists up, crossed, as if she were bound. "lya say, "You go home, witch. Don"t come back." She don"t know." Lhel tapped her temple. "That spirit call out for me. I tell her, but she don"t listen."
"Does Rhius know you"re here?"
Lhel shook her head and an earwig squirmed loose from a tendril of hair and skittered away down her bare arm. "I close always, but not to be see." She smiled slyly, then faded from sight before his eyes.
"You do that, Wizard?" she whispered, behind him now and close enough to his ear for him to feel her breath. She"d made no sound as she moved, nor left any mark on the ground.
Arkoniel flinched away. "No."
"I show you," she whispered. An invisible hand stroked his arm. "Show you what you dream."
The memory of the men emerging from the air intruded on his thoughts again.
She was doing this.
Arkoniel jerked back, caught between the water and the invisible hands that tried to stroke his chest.
"Stop that! This is no time for your petty teasing."
Something struck him hard in the chest, knocking him backward into the mud at the water"s edge. A weight settled on his chest, holding him down, and Lhel"s musky unwashed scent overwhelmed him. Then she was visible again, squatting naked on top of him.
His eyes widened in wonder. The three-phase moon-a circle flanked by two outfacing crescents-was tattooed on her belly, and concentric serpent patterns covered each full breast. More symbols covered her face and arms. He had seen such marks before, carved into the walls of caves on the sacred island of Kouros, and on rocks along the Skalan coastline. According to lya, such marks had been old long before the Hierophant came to the Three Lands. Had Lhel somehow hidden these markings before, he wondered, unable to move, or were they another illusion? There was certainly considerable magic of some sort involved. Strength greater than her small body could account for held him flat as she took his face between her hands.
You and your kind dismiss my people, and my G.o.ds. Her true voice intruded into his mind, devoid of accent or stumbling grammar. You think we are dirty, that we practice necromancy. You are strong, you Oreska, but you are often fools, too, blinded by pride. Your teacher asked me for a great magic, then treated me with disrespect. Because of her I offended the Mother and the dead.
For ten years I have guarded that spirit, and the child it is bound to. The dead child could have killed the living one and those around her if I had not bound it. Until its flesh is cut free from the one you call Tobin, it must be so bound and I must remain, for only I can do both unbind-ings when the time comes.