At the Edge of Waking (33 page)

The release from guilt, from resentment, was like a benediction. Like (not that he would never think this in words) love.

“Come,” said the Cellarer/Claude. “Take what you need. You may only use it this once, but if you strike hard and true, that once will do for all.”

So they moved forward to gather up the talismans, the weapons, the rocks glinting like the Cellarer’s eyes with pyrite and quartz.

The keep was all around them then, a shadow so vivid in Claude’s mind it turned the trees to ghosts of themselves, cobwebs and tapestries on the ancient walls. Sunlight was striking the ramparts on the far side of the outer bailey and the lesser denizens of the keep were beginning to stir. Yes, they cast shadows like birds and deer, but the keep was half wild and all magic, and what would you expect? Claude had lost track of how many innocent forest creatures had been turned into voiceless slaves, how many treacherous servants had been transformed into mule deer, coyotes, grouse. If trees and bushes clung to the cracks in the old walls, what did that say but that the Tyrant had stolen even the gentle power of the woods to build his stronghold, or that the woods were slowly wearing away at the Tyrant’s cruel power, or both. So it was right, it was fitting, that the outer bailey
had the appearance of
a hay meadow ringed by trees and hills, and it was right that the great gate leading into the inner bailey
seemed like
a rocky ridge cutting the valley farm almost in two. And it was obvious, if you know how to look, that the magpies chuckling in the shorn grass had human shadows, and that the shadows hid whispered comments behind their hands. The Tyrant’s spies. They would steal even your thoughts if you had not learned how to hide them behind a screen of words.

“If anyone asks,” Paul said as they jogged across the field, “we’re just taking the banqueting cloths to the laundry.”

So they became pageboys with license to go anywhere, easy even for the magpie-spies to overlook. The Laundress was one of the Lady of Fountain’s guises, her humblest, as the pageboys were
their
humblest, and Claude was a little disappointed—a little irritated, in fact, that Paul’s contribution to the story had them taking the path of least grandeur. Didn’t he understand this was the great climax of all their stories? Didn’t he get that this was the end?

But maybe—Claude’s heart gave another of those out-of-rhythm bumps—maybe Paul
didn’t
get it. Maybe he thought he was coming back to the game.
Maybe it didn’t have to end.

Instantly Claude’s mind was racing through the possibilities, trying to find the path that would let the story continue past this day’s assault. But for the story to go on the Tyrant would have to survive. He was the reason for all the quests, the secret tasks, the battles. He was the force that drove the entire game. And in his potency he
could
survive, Claude knew. This was a desperate chance, the Cellarer’s magic weapons cobbled together in a hurry to take advantage of this one instant’s vulnerability. So it
could
fail. Looked at logically, it probably
would
fail, and the Tyrant would keep his power and his throne.

But if he did, what would the consequences be?

The Lady, the Cooks, all the lesser denizens who came and went according to the story’s demands. Even the Cellarer. None of them was powerful enough to best the Tyrant or even defend against his full wrath—if they had been, there never would have been a story or a game. So to attack the Tyrant openly, and fail . . . Even if they survived, what kind of story would remain to be acted out? The Tyrant’s evil had always been mostly potential, the threat they dodged or foiled in a thousand subtle ways. To unleash it in all its power, to expose themselves to the full force of the Tyrant’s hatred and rage, the hatred and rage they had been provoking and evading all these years . . .

Claude felt queasy threads of panic squirming beneath his skin. Because he had made the elementary mistake of all young wizards: he had thought he was in control of the magic, but he was himself entrained in the spell he had set in motion. They both were, the story and all its characters were. The Tyrant was already waiting for them in his place of power, and as terrible as the consequences would be if they attacked him and failed, Claude literally could not imagine the consequences of not attacking him at all. Because he, Claude, had made the Tyrant real. The Tyrant was real, and awake, and waiting.

So the story had to end. It
had
to end. And yet . . .

The panic did not diminish, but it began to wind itself through other strands, a briar patch of anger.

Because if the story
didn’t
end, and the Tyrant survived in all his fury, then maybe that would serve Paul right. Even if Claude had to share in the consequences. Maybe that was no more than Paul the traitor deserved.

At least, that was one way the story might go.

The Lady of Fountains had her place in the valley, as the Cellarer had his. The spring that provided drinking water to the farmhouse was one of the imaginary keep’s anchor-points, one of the places where the game had something tangible to latch on to. Like the mine shaft, it was a forbidden place, but unlike the mine it was not forbidden because it was dangerous. No, it was forbidden because the water must not be sullied; the spring must be kept pure. And so, as the Cellarer was a dangerous man full of dark secrets, the Lady was vulnerable and aloof. She was one of the wild powers that needed protecting from the Tyrant’s wicked greed as much as she was one of the powers that did the protecting. And so even her Laundress guise was delicate and wary.

In fact, the Laundress was one of the elements of the story Paul was most fond of, not least because he had made her up himself. She was a girl, half human, half wild, who let her magic mingle with the wash-water so that it could protect the dreams of those who slept between her sheets. When Paul was visited by nightmares or couldn’t sleep for thoughts of his fights with Claude, he took clean sheets from the linen closet and pretended they came from the Laundress’s cauldrons, and such was the magic of the game that it always worked. The Laundress was imaginary, yet somehow her spells were real.

Would it still work, Paul wondered, when the game was done?

The Lady’s pool coiled like a sleeping cat in the elbow of the western hill. The water was shallow and very clear, shaded by rocks and trees and the gently thumping pump house that squatted on the bank. On that cold autumn morning the pool was fringed with ice, crystals more delicate than communion wafers. Paul knelt on the flat Summoning Stone and broke off a piece of ice to slip onto his tongue. It gave a taste much wilder than the water that came from the tap at home, the essence of ice formed in a hollow of stone and flavored by the weeping of trees, and he realized it was too late in the year to summon the Laundress from her clouds of steam. This cold, clear silence was the Lady’s signature and her rightful realm.

“Lady,” he whispered, his breath a cloud, and although he did not really listen for her answer, he felt a strangely adult pang of longing for the days, the very recent days, when he would listen with all his soul. What would become of the Lady without the game? Would she . . . die? A crazy thought, but it went with that moment of sadness.
Goodbye,
Paul thought.
Goodbye.

“Lady,” said Claude, kneeling beside him, “we beseech your blessing. Please. Give us a sign. Is this the right thing to do?”

Paul gave him a sidelong look. Was
what
the right thing to do? Ending the game? The run through the cold morning had stung color into Claude’s cheeks, but it looked like rouge painted over his pallor. His face was tight with strain; sweat dewed his temples and his downy lip. For the first time it occurred to Paul that his brother was actually sick, fighting a fever of the body as well as the mind. God knew, he probably hadn’t slept all night, gearing himself up for the final play. Compassion twinged in Paul’s chest.
Let’s get this done,
he thought, for both their sakes.

“The Cellarer has given us our task,” he said in the best game voice he could summon. “We do not seek to be released from our duty, only to be confirmed in it. Lady, give us your blessing.”

“Lady,” Claude whispered, the words barely more than breath smoking on the air, “give us a sign.”

“Lady, give me a sign.”

Claude knelt in the chill purity of the Wellhouse, watching the reflection of the sky upheld by pillars that were immense even in their ruination. They had fulfilled their task in the laundry, hiding in the steam from the Tyrant’s spies, and the Laundress had beckoned them inwards, through all the concealing bustle to the hidden door to the ancient holy place, the door she in her Laundress guise was there to protect. Now they were within (and he blessed Paul for finding the way through) and his heart ached for the Lady’s recognition of his dilemma, for a touch of the Lady’s gentle grace.
A sign.
He held the fate of the Tyrant, the fate of the keep, in his hands. What should he do?

“The price,” he whispered, though there was no echo to pick up the words and speak them anew. “The price of freedom.”

He could hear Paul breathing beside him, and in the far distance, no louder than his heartbeat, the rhythmic thumping of the laundry’s mangles. Even here they were within the keep. Here, they were within the keep as it should have been if the Tyrant had never come—as it might be again once the Tyrant was gone. Was that Claude’s sign? Was that the only answer he was going to get?

No. The sun was still rising above the eastern ramparts, and now a long shaft of autumnal sunlight slipped through the pillars to brush the Lady’s pool with gold. Her benison. And then, with a whisper of wings, a black bird followed the sunlight down to the water’s edge. It was a crow, one of the birds of war, drinking from the Lady’s own water. There was Claude’s answer, as clear as if she had spoken in words, and he was glad—oh, most bitterly glad!—or perhaps he was only bitter. But there was no arguing, the Lady was an oracle in this place. There would be war. They would take the Cellarer’s martial spells to the Tyrant’s stronghold, they would strike, and they would bear the consequences together, win or lose.

They bowed to the Lady’s invisible presence and rose. The crow started up and flew ahead of them through the trees.

Paul was itching to run again. It was obvious Claude was leading him to the Tyrant’s tower, what they had called the castle rock in the days before the game had expanded to fill the whole valley with the keep. Back then, when the farm had encompassed their world, the farmhouse had been the witch’s forest cottage and the castle rock the place where they had been sent on their fairytale quests. Sometimes their mother had played the role of the witch, sending them off to gather ingredients for her magical spells—getting the boys out of the house and out of her hair, Paul had come to realize. But it was those games that had given rise to
the
game, and it was the castle rock, a steep-sided lump of granite like an island in the upper field, that had formed the nucleus of the keep.

I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal!

He remembered that from when they were so small the castle rock was a mountain they could not explore in a day. He could remember shouting until the noise shook the birds from the trees, and he felt some of the same rambunctious energy bubbling up from inside. He would have laughed if Claude had not been so intent; would have run if Claude had not been holding them to a cautious jog. The valley’s magpies had gathered at the sunlit margin of the field, flashing peacock-green from their tails even through the mist rising off the frosty grass. And Paul had to admit to himself, the mist drifting about the foot of the rock was a beautiful touch. Like the Cellarer’s echo, like the Lady’s still pool. Like a goodbye. It drew a bittersweet thread through his ebullience, a lick of nostalgia for something that was almost, but not quite, gone.

So he tried hard, and he could almost see the Tyrant’s tower rearing up in its ruinous magnificence; he could almost see the Tyrant’s guards gathering up their weapons, preparing to question what business they had with the Master of the Keep. And when Claude yelled at him to run, he ran with all his heart.

The tower was as overgrown as the outer walls and they had to fight their way through more than the baffled guard. Hawthorn and ash were still bright with berries, as was the prickly oregon grape clinging in the cracks of the stone. Claude hauled himself up by the thin, tough trunks of the stunted trees, his hands growing sticky with sap, his heart pounding madly with exertion and fierceness and fear. He could hear the cries of the Tyrant’s spies alerting their master to the assault, but there was no help for it, it was impossible to take the Tyrant unawares. Claude could only put his faith in the Cellarer’s magic and the Lady’s blessing, in the weight of stones in his pockets and the whisper of crow wings in his ears.
You are not alone,
he told himself,
you are the champion of the keep, you have allies and protections the Tyrant knows nothing of.
So he told himself, though fear crowded the air from his straining lungs. And then he remembered that this was his spell, that even the Tyrant himself was bound up in his, Claude’s, spell, and he grew confused.

The castle rock did not have a proper peak, rather, a saucer-like declivity ringed in a low, rough battlement very like a lookout tower’s roof. The hollow had accumulated a mulch of drifted leaves and a clump of shallow-rooted birches had grown and died there, leaving black-and-white trunks to stand like so many gravestones. It had always felt like a
place
to Paul, not just a part of the sprawling landscape like the woods or the wider hills, but a
place,
singular and alive. It had its own silence, its own moods, its own relationship with the sun and rain and moon. It was a place to claim and be claimed by, and it was a shock, a real fist-in-the-guts shock to see that it had been claimed by someone other than the twins. It was a trespass that trembled on the verge of sacrilege.