Dark Magic (53 page)

“Quite right. I take it the explorers did not fare well?”

“There are traps down there, sir. Vicious ones. And ghosts, and—well, the reports from those that made it back out to the surface were confused. Talk of mountains of bones. Stairways that led to nothingness. White maids with gossamer bodies beseeching them—bah, it doesn’t bear talking about.”

Brand stared at him, plucking at his new beard. He found that it itched more when he was irritated. “Are you telling me they encountered the Shining Lady?”

Grasty made a dismissive wave of his hand. “Possibly, or just as likely they met their own reflections in a stinking slime-pool. I’ve no doubt there were hazards, but I also know they may be exaggerating to increase their pay.”

Brand’s frown became intense. “You said you had a solution as well as a problem to present?”

“Yes, well—right. I want to block these portals down into the underworld. We Kindred have dealt with this kind of thing before. We can build up a pile of crushed granite, iron and the like and then—”

“You’ll light a great fire on the mass and melt it down into a hard, impenetrable plug, right?”

Grasty looked surprised. “Exactly, sir…ah, right, you have been to the Earthlight and down into the Everdark below, haven’t you? I’ve heard the tales. Let me assure you, your lordship, whatever dark things dwell below us now will not escape! They will never get past one of
my
plugs!”

Brand nodded slowly. He paused. He wondered how many Kindred leaders had been faced with such a decision. To his mind he had two choices: he could plug up these holes and let the mess fester below, or he could take the surgeon’s option—he could excise the cancer before it grew worse.

“Grasty, I want you to mix up your plugs. Cook them until they are thick and reliable. But before you pour them into place, I think I will take an expedition of my own down to see what is what.”

“Is that wise, sir?” asked Grasty in surprise.

“Probably not,” Brand admitted. “But shouldn’t a lord at least know what it going on beneath his very own castle?”

Chapter Eight

A Ray of Hope

When Trev returned home, he was exhausted and disheveled. His mother met him on the doorstep, as if she’d been watching for his return—which she had.

“You’re late!” she scolded. “What’s happened to you? Your head bleeds! Where is your cap, child?”

Trev told her of the dead-thing he’d met in the woods. He told her everything, except the reason he’d been there, playing alone among the ferns and grave-markers.

“An old man grabbed you? He held you to the ground?”

“Not exactly. He had a staff, with a black rock at the tip. He was all bones, mum. There was no meat on him at all.”

Mother made a gasping sound. Her eyes were alarmingly wide, and Trev thought he might be in trouble.

“But I’m fine, mother. I talked to him, and I wagered with him, and he lost, so he had to let me go.”

“I must sit down.”

Trev followed his mother inside their cottage. She seemed sick with worry, which surprised Trev. After all, he had survived and due to his wager he was safe from this new danger for a whole year.

Mari sat upon an old rocking chair made of lashed willow sticks. She began to rock, and she didn’t look at him.

“Where’s auntie Kaavi?” Trev asked.

“She’s gone, boy. She’s left us.”

Trev felt tears in his eyes. Kaavi was his only playmate. She understood him and was always cheerful.

“I must call your father,” Mari said. “I must contact Brand as well.”

Trev barely listened. He looked out the room’s lone window into the world. The forest was out there, darkening as the sun fell. He wondered if the dead-thing was still under those trees somewhere and if it had caught any other little boys and consumed them.

“Did Kaavi follow the path?” he asked.

“I’ll go in the morning,” his mother continued. She was not listening to him. Her face was dark and full of fear. “We can’t go out now. We’ll go for help in the morning. Oh, what did you find, Trev? What did you awaken in the Haven Wood?”

“If Kaavi’s out there, she might run into the dead man,” Trev said, staring toward the trees.

His mother’s hand fell upon him. He had not heard her get up and come close. Her hand closed on him, and squeezed his shoulder tightly. She began to tend to his cut scalp.

“You’ll not go out there, Trev,” she said in his ear. “I’ll not have it. Kaavi can take care of herself.”

“But—what if she can’t?”

“Then there will be one less elf in the woods. But you are too young yet to save her, regardless. Don’t worry. I have a way to call your father. He will know what to do.”

Trev did not respond. He was thinking hard. He knew there was only one person in the Haven who was safe from the dead-thing in the woods, and that person was him. He’d bargained and won a year’s safety. Kaavi didn’t have any such assurances, and in any case he doubted his auntie had ever met someone like King Arawn of the Dead.

He waited until the moon rode high over their cottage. His mother went to light a lantern on the roof’s peak among the wild flowers and began to play a set of wax pipes. Puck had left them with her to call him, and she did so now. Softly, she repeated his name three times, then blew upon the pipes and burned the lantern and then called out seven times more. Trev knew it didn’t matter if she called loudly or softly, just that she used his name and yearned for him to come to her.

Trev was well aware of this arrangement between his parents, although they’d never told him. He
heard
things, oftentimes things he was not meant to hear. Some called him inquisitive, while others used words like
impudent
and
snoopish
. In any regard, he knew more things than anyone suspected he did. Kaavi had taught him that staying quiet and listening closely tended to gather wisdom, if not high regard.

While his mother went out onto the roof to cast her tiny spell of calling, he slipped out of bed and donned his best traveling clothes. They smelled of green grasses, and made him homesick for the forest. If the truth were told, he felt more at home and safer among the tree trunks than he ever did in the cottage.

Being only six years of age, he did not think to carry a weapon or even take his jacket. He did take some food, however. He’d stashed away a rucksack with three apples and various other odds and ends for exploring in the woods. He’d hoarded the apples over the week, left over from his lunches. He didn’t like apples, but he didn’t like wasting things either, so they’d stacked up in there. The sack went over his shoulder and it was time to make his escape.

There was only one door in the cottage, and only one window in the front room. But there was a crawlspace under the house. He slipped down there and passed a dozen spiders and sacks of turnips. Crawling on his hands and knees, he went out through a loose board into the yard and ran quickly for the forest. He was a fast runner, the fastest in his school. The others didn’t like to run against him, they said it wasn’t natural. Trev didn’t know how unnatural he was, but he knew he was very fast and he liked to run. Within a minute or two, he had reached the trees and the darkness beneath them.

Trev looked back to see his mother on the roof, still calling to father. He told himself not to worry. He’d be back before the morning sun rose. She would never even know he’d gone.

He did not head to the pet cemetery. He didn’t go toward the nearest village either, nor the schoolhouse on the hill covered with rowan trees. Instead, he journeyed to another private spot he knew of. It was a small mound, a secret one that was rarely visited by anyone. Not even the Fae danced here much, it being such a lonely place. Whoever had been buried here could not have been that important, Trev figured, as the grave wasn’t big enough to house a king or even a lord. Less than a dozen feet high and no more than twice that around, the mound was covered in velvet grasses and circled by evergreen poplar trees. Trev didn’t know if anyone ever came here—he’d certainly never seen anyone on the mound or near it.

Tonight was different, however. When he arrived, there was someone there. A
dead
someone. He knelt beside the corpse and drew a candle stub out of his rucksack. He had a few matches as well, and he lit the candle and examined the small body. It was the tiny figure of a woman with a perfect shape, a lovely face and lavender wings. A wisp—it had to be. His aunt Kaavi had taught him all about wisps.

Trev prodded the tiny figure’s feet for a moment, hoping maybe she would hop up and come alive. She didn’t. Using his hands, he dug a small hole in the side of the mound and rolled her inside then covered her up. He didn’t want a fox or a crow to carry her off in the morning.

After he’d buried the wisp and stood, he sensed something near him. He whirled and saw a figure standing at the foot of the mound.

“Father?” Trev asked.

“You’ve grown so!” Puck answered, coming forward and kneeling beside the boy.

Father’s face was alight with good cheer and it made Trev’s heart glad. He knew that his father used mounds like this one to travel between the Twilight Lands and the Haven. He didn’t know how he did it, but it was no surprise he had shown up here, as this mound was the closest one to their cottage.

“I’m glad you’ve come. Mother was worried.”

“So I gather. Is it you she’s worried about? Have you run off and hidden in the woods?”

Trev shook his head.

“What are you doing here then?” asked Puck.

“I was burying a wisp,” Trev said, pointing to the tidy heap of fresh earth at his feet.

The joy drained from Puck’s face. “A wisp? Who would murder such a lovely thing?”

“King Arawn of the Dead, I think,” Trev said. “It is he I came here to speak with.”

Puck stared at him. “Whatever for?”

“To tell him to leave aunt Kaavi alone. She’s out in these woods somewhere as well, since mother and she had a falling out. I don’t want King Arawn to harm her. I thought I might bargain with him again and save her life as well.”

Puck made an odd sound. It was as if he choked upon a bean at dinner. Trev had heard River Folk make such sounds in the past, but never an elf.

“I think your mother was quite right to call upon me,” Puck said at last. “Let’s go to her now, shall we?”

The two of them set off at a run toward the cottage. Trev was surprised at his father’s speed. He could not keep up.

Puck’s homecoming was not a happy one. Usually, when father returned after a long stay abroad, Trev would be sent to bed early and would pretend to sleep while his parents made love quietly downstairs. Tonight wasn’t like that, however. Tonight, father stayed up all night with his blade across his knees. He stoked the fire high with the tip of his sword and added wood frequently.

Trev found the blazing fire annoying, as it was summer and the house was quite hot enough already. He did not complain, however, and in the morning the family headed for Riverton. Trev was excited about this unexpected development. He’d only been to Riverton a time or two and he found all the motion and noise of the place entrancing. Others talked about visiting far-away worlds, but Trev thought all he had to do was go to Riverton to experience the same sensation.

Along the journey, his parents had some loud discussions.

“He needs to talk to Brand and the rest,” said Puck. “I think he really did meet this monster from the past. If he did, or met something like it, Oberon and Brand both need to know.”

“Well, where he goes, I go,” Mari said stubbornly.

Puck sighed. “I’m not taking you two to Castle Rabing if the Dead are on the rise. I’ll leave you both in Riverton. I’ll try to bring Brand to him. You should be safe there.”

“We were probably safer in our cottage.”

“No, the ancient one knows of you now. The boy is safe from him, but not you. He can get to the boy through you, if he wishes.”

“How so?”

“What if he caught you, then told Trev he could save you by rescinding his arrangement?”

“I wouldn’t do it!” piped up Trev from the back. “If I did, he’d have us both.”

“How would you save me then, Trev?” mother asked, smiling at him.

“I’d light his old bones on fire and burn him to ash. I made no deal not to harm
him
.”

Both the adults laughed, but Trev was quite serious. He crossed his arms defiantly.

“Well played, son,” Puck said. He turned back to Mari. “You’ll stay in Riverton for now, and I’ll go see Brand. And one more thing.”

“What is it, love?”

“Stay away from the cemetery.”

* * *

When Myrrdin regained possession of his mind, he was sorrowful. He sensed a number of years had passed, but he had no way of knowing the truth of this. His waist was thinner now, and innumerable ridged scars marked his hide where he had clawed himself with his remarkably long fingernails. He yearned for the return of madness. Being aware of his predicament did nothing to improve it.

I am old
, he thought,
in my dotage
. How else had he been so taken in by his own sire? How had he not known the depths to which his father would sink in the name of power? With his half-breed blood, was he not more aware of the Fae and their dark, mercurial ways than any other?

Myrrdin had done everything he could in the hopes of peace. He had not wanted a new war only two centuries after the last had ended. He, who alone among the people of the Haven could recall the horrors of warring with the Fae, had been determined to bring peace at any cost. In the end he had failed, and war had marched onward over his broken form.

Bouts of madness, despair and fury took turns holding his mind in their grips as further months passed. He decided in the end that everyone had been right—everyone except for him, that poor old fool Myrrdin. How his elf half-brothers must laugh far above as they made water into his feeding tubes! How they must dance and giggle at his misfortune!

In the end, he had a change of heart. His philosophies shifted forever. Peace was not to be bought at any price…not because it was too expensive, but because it could
not
be purchased. War was inevitable. Brand had been right to fight for what was his. And Oberon had been right to take whatever he could and make with it what he willed. The Kindred had built horrors of metal and flame that had slain with mindless, mechanical efficiency. They’d all been on the right side of the matter. Together, all those who’d wielded their Jewels with abandon had been right to do so. They’d fought a great war and each had killed a generation of their own Folk—but that was
right
for them.

Myrrdin felt he’d come to better understand the hard ways of the worlds. What the various folk had achieved after the bloodshed was finished, after the last vein had been opened and bled white, was the only kind of peace that was achievable: the peace of exhaustion. The peace of two drunken louts who’ve beaten one another unconscious in an alleyway. Afterward, these louts would sleep together, arm-in-arm like babes. That was the only sort of peace that a man could hope to bring to his people.