“Not that way!”
He stopped. The voice had come from his left, as much a dry croak of pain as a warning.
“She will have you before you reach the end.”
“Hide!”
“Watch for her!”
The voices came from the ivy-covered trellises. Against all his instincts he slowed to a walk, his legs cramping with fear and indecision.
Then he discerned them. They were caught in the vines, limbs entwined: corpses. Emaciated, skin slumping like dry leather, jaws gaping, arms and legs skeletal, eyes hollow. But their heads turned to follow him and they strained against their bonds, lips pulled back over yellow teeth.
“Don’t let her have you! Die first!”
“Watch for her!”
“Not that way. She’ll get you!”
In fact, the gate seemed farther away now than when he had begun. The closer he came, the more it receded and the longer the trellises were. And the more writhing mummified bodies he saw in the grasping dead ivy.
“If she has you, you never the…”
“If she loves you, you sleep…”
“And awaken here.”
“Live forever…”
“But decay!”
Maniacal laughter all around. The corpses struggled horribly, pieces of skin flaking off to the ground. Some reached out to him, imploring; others strained their hollow chests against the vines, heaving and thrashing and shaking the trellises until they seemed in danger of falling over.
The guardian was on the same path now. He hadn’t seen her pass through the gate; perhaps she didn’t need to. As she walked, the wide hat swung slowly from left to right. She surveyed her past victims, lurching down the path to certain conquest over another.
She collected them. Had them, used them, placed them here. She savored her collection, her work well done. This was her paradise of vegetables and succulent fruits, the garden of her labors.
Stay.
He half-ran, half-stumbled crab-wise, trying to find the center of impulse again. But he had no clear way to throw another shadow. The guardian, dress flapping and pressing back against her distorted frame, had risen a foot or so above the path and was accelerating toward him like a piece of fabric on a spinning clothesline. She pitched head-forward in her flight until the hat pointed directly at him and the dress fanned out, a deadly trailing blossom.
He turned and fled from his doom, screaming.
Ahead of him, Eleuth stood on the path, so close he couldn’t avoid colliding with her.
And passing through. He stumbled and fell on the ground. Glancing back, face contorted, he saw the translucent Breed woman spread her arms before the hurtling guardian.
They merged. There was a drawn-out cry as the fabric and distorted body tangled in mid-air and fell to the ground like a downed bird. Michael ran. The gate at the end of the lot was much closer. He reached it in a few strides, opened it, looked back at the guardian still crumpled on the pathway and saw Eleuth’s final shadow gently spinning with the force of their collision. It floated off the path, fading, fading, until it was gone completely.
Michael stood on the field behind the homage’s house. With a hollow clang, the gate latched itself and the wall vanished.
Once again he looked out across the Pact Lands, down the slope to the broad river. His breath was ragged, his elbows and knees were scraped and bleeding, his head hurt abominably.
The trance was far from over.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was late afternoon in the Realm. From miles away, Michael could smell smoke. A thick column of black rose over Euterpe. Hardly able to walk, he crossed the field and went to the front door of the Isomage’s house. In the distance he heard thunder and indistinct shouts and screams. Then the wind shifted and all was quiet.
The parlor, ballroom and dining room of the house were empty and silent except for a noise like sand or dust falling. He wasn’t sure what to do next so he climbed the stairs. He wondered if he should confer with Lamia, ask what had gone wrong with his journey and what was happening in Euterpe.
He didn’t particularly wish to know.
The room of candles was deserted and dark. He crossed the wooden floor, footsteps echoing sharply even though he still wore his cloth shoes. The room’s echoes were like returning knives—breath, heartbeat, rustle of his fingers against his chin.
He noted, with a start, that he was beginning to grow a rough beard.
He walked farther down the hall, away from the open landing. Shadows ruled the house; all the candles sat unlit in their sconces or lay shattered on the floor, as if someone had despised their light. “Lamia?” he called, quietly at first, then louder. His throat still hurt from his screaming in the Between. He brushed one hand against the wall, venturing into the darkest recesses of the hall. The wall vibrated like a bell at his touch; the entire house seemed alive, yet fearful, shrinking back.
He touched a doorjamb and turned into the doorway. From a half-drawn curtain, twilight snuck into a small sitting room. Lamia sat in a chair facing the window.
“Please,” Michael said. “I need help.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t move. He approached the chair cautiously, fearful of her bulk, her quiet, her fierce concentrated expression as she faced the waning light.
For a moment, the dim lighting and the folds of her skin had concealed the fact that she was unclothed. She sat naked and still in the large chair. Michael was convinced she waited for him to come close enough to reach out and grab. But nothing moved. She didn’t even appear to breath. Was she dead?
He reached out to touch her shoulder. His finger curled back involuntarily into his palm and he forced it to straighten.
The skin gave way beneath his finger, first an inch, then two. Repelled, unable to stop, he continued pressing. She hissed faintly and her head folded in like a collapsing soufflé. Her arm and chest began to collapse and she fell into a pile of white translucent folds, sliding from the chair to the floor.
Not Lamia, but her skin—shed completely. He bent down and rubbed it between his fingers. Such a familiar texture. He had felt something like it before—in the closet downstairs, when she had hidden him from Alyons.
She kept a closet full of her own shed skins.
But then, where was she? Hiding someplace, vulnerable, like a soft-shell crab or snake still damp and tender?
“Boy.”
He swiveled on his heels and saw her in the room’s opposite corner. She was dressed in dark gray and blended into the shadows. She was even more huge now, perhaps half again as tall and fat as she had been. Her voice was deeper, more appropriate to the mountain she was becoming. Everything about her was vibration as she stepped forward, from her cheeks to the flesh of her hands.
“You tried to go back, didn’t you?”
His mouth was dry. He nodded. She came within two yards of him and stopped, momentum swinging all her flesh toward him like a cresting wave… and resilience drawing it all back until the motions damped themselves out. He couldn’t see her eyes in the fleshy folds of her face. The nose—tiny and surrounded by flesh—was her last identifiable feature but for her hair, which was glossier and more luxurious than before.
“The Breed girl. I heard about her. Lirg’s daughter.”
“How did you hear?”
“Hear many things,” Lamia said. “Even when I’m…not quite up to my usual. Why didn’t you cross?”
“She didn’t get me all the way. I mean, she did, but only for a moment. Then I was drawn back.”
“The Guardian? Meet her?”
He nodded.
“And you escaped.”
Nodded again, only once, to signify just barely.
“Your little Breed girl sacrificed herself for you.”
“What?” Though he knew.
“She wasn’t even half Sidhe, boy. She couldn’t do all that and survive the consequences. Even so, her life wasn’t enough. You’re still with us.” This seemed to amuse
her, and a little tremor passed through her, accompanied by a deep muffled chuckle. “Do you know what happened while you were gone?”
“How long was I gone?”
“Days, I suspect. Do you know?”
He shook his head. Her smell was dust and roses and acrid, sweating flesh.
“Your little rebel friends decided to defy Alyons. The Wickmaster has never been even-tempered.” Again the deep-buried humor. “There’s nothing I can do. Not now. They could have picked a better time. Now Alyons has what he’s always wanted—a chance at the humans. To level them, make them pay for intruding.”
“What’s he doing?” Michael asked, his throat almost closing off the question.
Lamia peered down at her shed skin. “The guardian. She’s my sister, boy. We were Clarkham’s wives. Lovers, actually. He brought us here. There were fine times then. Dances, all the people rallying around the new mage. The Isomage, he called himself then—equal to the Serpent Mage. Come to bring everybody out of the shadow of the Realm, into the light of his rule. Oh, he didn’t hate the Sidhe. He didn’t hurt them, not really. He could work magic with music, with what the Sidhe taught us long ago. He was very proud. Soon, he claimed he was the mage reincarnate—born again to avenge what the Sidhe had done to the original human race. His arrogance became too great for the Sidhe to bear. The Black Order sent their armies against us. That was the war… the war that made the Blasted Plain.” For a long moment she was silent, the folds of her face working. “He was not the mage. He could do magic, but he couldn’t win with it. He could only lose a little and call it a draw. He fled. He gave us up, my sister and me. The Sidhe made their Pact with him but he gave us up. He claimed he had buried powerful magic here, fatal to any Sidhe who transgressed the Pact. He’d fought well enough that the Sidhe had to believe him. So he bargained. He set aside the Pact Lands and put all his people—he thought of them as his own—right here. The Sidhe shrunk the boundaries by half, to let the Blasted Plain act as a barrier. Keep their females from human temptation. Keep themselves pure.”
“Are they fighting in Euterpe?” Michael asked.
“What would you do if you knew? Go and save them all? They’re fools. They only get what they deserve. Though I’d fight the Sidhe myself if I could. In a week, I’d be able to. If your rebels had waited a week for their foolishness—But now I’m in my curse. I eat nothing and grow huge. I shed my skin like a snake and my flesh is fragile as unbaked clay. You, you could grab my arm and tear it off, if you wanted. Here’s your chance.” She held out her arm. Michael backed away. “But I’ll toughen, as I always have before, and the power he left me, that’ll come back. Then Alyons will pay, if he hasn’t already.”
“Please. What are they doing?”
“They made my sister into the guardian, to keep humans from using the Isomage’s pathway. She still has a touch of humanity, maybe? She doesn’t catch all who would cross. Not you… maybe she held back a bit, seeing what you are.”
“Tell me!” he demanded, neck muscles cording, lower lip contorted.
“Scourging,” she said. “Scarbita. Alyons is the Scarbita Antros, and there’s nothing you can do.”
Michael ran from the room, down the hall and stairs. The sky was on the thread’s edge of night as he ran down the road, trying not to focus on the smudge of orange light against the night.
He was hardly breathing hard when he came within sight of Euterpe. Invoking hyloka had restored energy to his tissues and given his senses hallucinatory precision. The brick houses lay in heaps around a central bonfire. He saw mounted Sidhe driving people in lines and clusters ahead of them. Wicks flashed in the firelight. Overhead, the stars seemed to have turned away in fear. The ground glittered with excited pinprick lights.
He left the road and crossed a hill. Most of Euterpe was in ruins, some glowing as if electrified. For a long minute he stared at what seemed the ghost of the hotel, limned in glowing outline against the fountains of fire, everything else translucent.
As he watched, the outline evaporated and the hotel was gone.
Piano music drifted from across town. The courser’s mounts reared back and they broke away from their captives to ride back through the flames. Not all of the resistance was broken.
Michael ran around the outskirts, stopping to listen for the music. It came from the last remaining stand of buildings—from the school. Sidhe on horseback darted up and over the flames as if maddened by the music.
The Wickmaster stood on a mound about a hundred yards outside the town, lost in thought. His golden horse waited patiently behind him. Michael tried to keep well back from the firelight, but the Sidhe turned and saw him. For a long moment their eyes held; then Alyons smiled, baring ghost-white teeth, and glided onto his horse.
Michael reversed his run and fled from Euterpe. He wasn’t afraid; if fear was a chemical, it had long since been used up in his body. He acted purely as he had been trained. Now it was obvious that his education had been accompanied by a good many subliminal instructions. The Crane Women had tinkered with his aura of memory. He could visualize tactics, methods of escape he never would have thought of on his own.
There was one instruction which he couldn’t quite bring to the fore; nevertheless, he acted on it. The Wickmaster’s golden horse glided up behind at a leisurely pace, its master exulting. Here was his chance at the troublesome antros, with no one to hold him back.
Ahead, Michael saw the outline of giant teeth—a ring of stones, slightly darker than the night. He ran in that direction—into the jaws and to one side, backing up against a smooth round stone carved with spiral grooves. Alyons slowed just outside the ring. “Hoy ac!” he cried.
“Hello yourself, you cruel son of a bitch,” Michael whispered.
“Antros! You need the Wickmaster’s mercy. Come out and join your own kind. They aren’t mistreated, only punished.”
“Come in,” Michael invited loudly enough for Alyons to hear if he strained; no louder. Alyons lifted his wick to the sky. The tip glowed dull red. His horse paced between the stones, weaving in and out. The Wickmaster chanted softly in Cascar.
He’s worried, Michael thought.
“He enters the circle, he must come closer,” said a voice behind Michael. He recognized Spart but he couldn’t see her.
“Wickmaster!” he cried out. “What was your disgrace? Did you make your masters angry? Were you the lowest thing in the Maln, a traitor, or just something they could do without?”
“The Maln,” Alyons replied coldly, just loudly enough for him to hear, “Still accepts me. I do my duty in the Pact Lands. I keep the human filth bottled up.”
“They won’t take you back,” Michael taunted. “How did you insult Tarax?”
“Shy of the mark,” Alyons said. Michael could feel his aura of memory being feather-touched. He blocked the probe.
“Antros!” Alyons’ horse passed into the inner circle, but the Wickmaster was not astride. Michael backed up hard against the cold stone.
The point of the wick thrust up before his face and glowed bright. Alyons flowed into visibility in front of him and lowered the point to Michael’s chest. The Sidhe’s armor flashed and rippled like living skin. The maple-leaf insignia on his chest seemed to stand apart from the armor, floating with a vitality of its own and changing from moment to moment to oak, then laurel, then back to maple. Alyons pulled the wick back, preparatory to thrusting, singing in that weird way Michael had heard the Crane Women sing, as if searching for a tune and not finding it, only the tune was present all along…
The dried grass behind the Sidhe flew straight up, swirling into the night. Around the inner circle of the stones, a spiral of dirt fountained upward, the wind of its passage lifting Alyon’s hair. For an instant, the Sidhe poised with his wick and Michael again felt the nearness of death.
Then the Wickmaster vanished. Out of the ground, with the roar of a dozen freight-trains, rose a monstrous steel snake. It had been coiled beneath the grass, and like a s
pring it lashed out and gripped the Wickmaster in gleaming steel teeth. Clods of dirt struck Michael all over.
The snake lifted the Sidhe high into the air. Then, with the sound of strained metal snapping, it broke into sections. The sinuosities straightened and plunged into the dirt like stakes, forming a tripod. The snake’s head shuddered at the top of the tripod, in the exact center of the circle of stones.
Alyons, held like a mouse, reached down to Michael with a trembling arm. Michael walked slowly around the tripod until he could see the Wickmaster clearly, then let up his memory block.
“The wood, the wood!” Alyons whispered. “Quickly! Call the arborals…” His body twisted violently, jamming the teeth even deeper through his flesh. His bones ground against the metal loudly enough for Michael to hear and the tripod swayed.
Alyons died.
Michael had never seen anything like it. Muscles twitching, he looked up at the corpse, fascinated and sick at the pit of his stomach. Alyons had been trapped and executed and he had been part of it. He turned away from the tripod and the limp, bloody Wickmaster.
Spart faced him. Her hair blew back in the night breeze. “The coursers haven’t finished,” she said. “We must go.”
“Who made this?” Michael asked, pointing at the trap.
“Clarkham, who calls himself Isomage.”
“Why?”
“I do not know,” Spart said. Her voice was harsh and scratchy and the wind made her shiver. “Perhaps it was his revenge for the imposition of the Pact.”
“Did Alyons know it was here?”
“Obviously not,” Spart said. She closed her eyes halfway. “No more questions.” He followed her as she plodded through the grass. Euterpe’s flames were dying. Snow fell again, and he noticed with curiosity that when it alighted on Spart, it did not melt, as if she no longer maintained her hyloka.
“I saw Lamia.”
“So?” She continued walking without looking back.
“She can’t do anything. She shed her skin.”
Spart shivered. “Quiet,” she said. Overhead was a rushing, wind-whining sound—one Michael had heard before. He looked up but saw nothing in the smoke-palled sky. Snow fell through the smoke as if conjured out of nothing.