Prospero's Children (10 page)

“Did you try the door to my room?” Alison was asking.

“Yes,” Will said. Behind the chair Fern stiffened; her knees seemed to be glued to the floor.

“Could you open it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was stuck,” Will said, “and it stung my hand.”

“He knows nothing,” said the idol. “You’re wasting your time.”

“I must be sure.” Outside the pentagram, Alison paced restlessly to and fro, her dress winnowing against her thighs. “Did your sister try it too?” Will assented. “And with the same result? Good. Perhaps you will know better than to pry in the future.”

“He’s asleep,” said the idol. “Don’t indulge yourself.”

“What about the key?” Alison continued. “Have you found it?”

Will seemed puzzled. “Which key?”

“Which key are you looking for?”

“The key to the chest in the attic,” he answered promptly, “and to Great-Cousin Ned’s writing desk.”

In her hiding-place, Fern blanched to recall how nearly she had told him, how close they trod to disaster. If Alison were to ask the wrong question . . .

“What do you expect to find there?”

“Treasure,” Will responded after a pause.

“What treasure?”

“Great-Cousin Ned’s treasure that he brought back from abroad.” Think of doubloons, besought Fern in the paralysis of her mind. Apes and peacocks. Pieces of eight.
Don’t think
of Atlantis. “Pirates’ treasure.”

“Let the fool go,” said the idol. “He’s a child playing storybook games. Send him to bed.”

“Very well. ” Alison made a gesture of dismissal. “Go back to your room; sleep; in the morning, you will remember nothing.” Will stepped out of the circle, walking toward the hall. Fern stayed where she was. The partial release of tension had left her shuddering, too unsteady to move; she could only trust the looming chair-back would be an adequate shield.

“Now for the girl,” Alison said.

“No.”

“Why not? She’s sly and much too clever for her own good. Do you think I can’t control her? A teenage brat? I will probe her brain like soft clay, I will pull out the strands of her thought until her consciousness is void, I will—”

“No.”
The interdiction was final. Fern, clenching her will to resist she knew not what, felt disaster brush by her yet again. “She’s at a dangerous age. If she has the Gift, now is the time when it might be woken. Summon her to the circle, and the touch of power could rouse a response we do not need. Do you want to have to destroy her?”

Alison gave an impatient jerk of her head. “The Gift is rare. Few have it now.”

“On the contrary. The seed of Atlantis was scattered wide. There are many mortals who live out their lives in ignorance, not knowing that it is there inside them, dormant, like an organ whose use is obsolete. Modern Man is limited by his own cynicism. The girl is sensitive against what she calls her better judgment. Don’t be the one to teach her wisdom.”

“She touched the picture,” Alison persisted, “and now the horse is gone. I must question her.”

“The horse was there after she touched it,” said the idol, “and she could not have entered your room. You were careless. Forget it. We are not here to chase the wind. The excrescence that you yearn for is a deformity—”

“It took me two hundred years to snare it,” Alison raged. “I
will not
let it go so easily!” She faced the circle, raising her hand, crying out words in a language like none Fern had ever heard, a language as clear and cold as ice, yet vibrant as the voice of fire. The glow from the perimeter was drawn upward toward her long fingers, spinning into a cone, released to form a cylindrical column of whirling dazzle. At its center the shape of a horse formed and faded, translucent as mist, twisting this way and that, fighting the urge to cohere. The horse in the picture. Fern could make out dim cloud-patterns on its flank, the tail that drifted like smoke about its hind legs, the grotesque protuberance on its forehead, distinctive now it was in motion. A budding growth, maybe three or four inches long, flaking velvet. A horn.

The rhythms of incantation were jumbled on Alison’s lips; the creature reared and plunged; its neighing scream shook the house. “Release it!” ordered the idol. “You will break the circle!
Release it!
”

Alison’s head snapped forward, her grip on light and phantom slackened: the wheeling scintilla subsided toward the floor. The outline of the horse shimmered into air.

“Restrain yourself,” the idol adjured, the scraping voice heavy with menace and the sheer effort of speech from that throat of stone. “You are frittering away power we cannot spare. Time is running out. Proceed with the questioning.”

Fern had almost forgotten her peril, so absorbed was she in the scene unfolding a few feet away. Will’s involvement had dwindled to a mere detail: she was concentrating wholly on a dialogue too obscure to elucidate, on phenomena beyond all comprehension. She felt that she had been drawn here for a purpose, perhaps for many purposes, and something more than mere chance had saved them, when Alison interrogated Will. She watched with crooked neck and deadened limbs as an unholy cavalcade of figures materialized within the circle: a cowled woman with vacant sockets, clasping a naked eyeball in her hand, an antlered man with a wicked, laughing face, something that looked like a child but wasn’t, and an ancient crone with nails curved like claws, dressed in uncured skins whose pungency wafted across the room. To all of them Alison put the same question: what did they know of the key? The cowled woman and the antlered man were noncommittal: both seemed uninterested, angry at being troubled over a problem which did not concern them. The child that was not a child vanished without speaking. The crone lingered, despite Alison’s dismissal, obviously relishing the opportunity to be malicious. She was repulsive beyond the range of normal ugliness: half her scalp was bald and blotched with scabs, the other half sprouted bristling hair; the whites of her eyes were sallow, the irises bloodshot; a single tooth jutted in her lipless mouth. “Your face is going, Alimond,” she mocked. “One day, all your powers will not be enough to remold it. In a thousand years or so, you’ll be a hag like me. You’ll wear your beauty like a dress at the full moon, and a passing cloud will wipe it away. An illusion is fragile: you can’t pin it down. The fish won’t come so readily to your net by then, ha ha!”

“I abandoned moon-magic long ago,” said Alison. “My Gift is stronger than such antiquated skills. I could change your face, Hexaté. For a price.”

“A price indeed!” The old crone was contemptuous. “You always were arrogant, Alimond. I can change it myself, when I want to: my strength is old but not yet rusted. Anyway, I like my face: it’s good for scaring drunkards and children. I’ll have no truck with the sorcery of the Gifted people. They were better named the Cursed people, cursed down into the deep: their Gifting damned them to a watery grave. Keep your Gift. I prefer my curses. A curse sticks, like damp excrement. Shall I curse you, Alimond? I taught you once, cared for you—”

“Curse away,” Alison retorted. “You taught me little and all you cared for was the Gift you deride. When I wouldn’t let you control it you cursed me then. I came to no harm. I learned my lessons from Morgus herself, and even she could not rule my mind. Tell me about the key, Hexaté. You must have heard something. The moles and the worms bring all the rumors of earth to your stinking hole.”

But the crone’s attention had strayed: she was mumbling to herself as if in senility. “Morgus,” Fern heard her mutter. “Don’t talk to me of
Morgus
. A fat slug swollen with a power she can no longer use. May she rot! Give me the old ways. Give me the sacrifice warm and twitching on the high altar, the throb of power from the planet’s heart. Let me taste the blood again, smell the spilt manhood on the wet soil. They do not make magic like that anymore. I have coupled with a billy goat, romped with goblins and satyrs, disfigured the moon, extinguished the stars. What is this key of which you speak? No one ever mentioned a key.”

“She’s wandering,” said Alison. “We’ll get nothing from her now.”

“She’s lying,” said the idol. “She wants you to think she has a knowledge you cannot reach. She craves companionship, even yours. Get rid of her.”

A flick of Alison’s hand, and the crone disappeared. “This is fruitless,” the idol said. “The perimeter will not hold much longer, and Hexaté wastes precious minutes in small talk. Summon Caracandal.”

For the first time Alison faltered. “He’s too strong,” she said. “I might not be able to bind him in the circle.”

“His power is wasted, burned out: he is nothing more than a man. Surely you are not afraid of a
man
? Summon him!”

Alison lifted her hand in the customary gesture, but the chant of command sounded less clear than before, slurred with uncertainty. The figure which appeared in the circle wore a bulky garment like a coat; his hood was thrown back, showing a shaggy head of hair brindled like Lougarry’s fur. At the sight of him, Fern went suddenly cold. “I have come, Alimond,” said Ragginbone. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” she responded. His tone was mild enough but her doubt remained, blunting the edge of her words. “Do you think I haven’t felt you watching? Not that it matters: watching is all you’re good for now. What have you seen, Brokenwand?”

“I have seen someone taking an axe to sever a spider’s web. Very clumsy. I should have guessed it was you. No one else would send a hound that scents blood on the trail of something that has neither blood nor scent. That seemed peculiarly pointless.”

“I wanted to deter the inquisitive,” she said frostily.

“I will try to remember that,” he responded in dulcet accents.

“
You
should be asking the questions,” the idol told Alison. “You’re bleating like a novice. The hound was a serious miscalculation. A conspicuous hunter draws attention to the trail.”

“What happened to it, Caracandal?” Alison demanded. “It does not answer my call.”

“Ask Lougarry,” said Ragginbone. “If you dare.”

“Enough of this!” The luminosity in the carved orbs of the idol appeared to intensify, a glow radiating from within the stone itself, kindling to a flame. “The key. We want the key.”

“Where is it? If you have a clue—a trace—tell me, Caracandal. I conjure you—I
order
you—
tell me!
” Once again Alison raised her hand with a peculiar twisting motion, and the veins of light from the rim of the circle streamed toward her fingers. Her fist clenched, grasping the air itself, warping the cone of space that enclosed the Watcher till the buildup of pressure within bandaged him in his own coat, strangling him in his hair, dragging his features sideways. Fern saw the dreadful concentration that fettered his brows, tug against pull, force against force, the struggle not of muscle but of will. Gradually, the pressure was thrust aside: his hair loosened, flesh and feature slid back into place. Alison snatched at the cone but the light frayed from her clutch and dissolved downward; the glinting lines grew dim; the fire sank; Ragginbone towered dark and ominous at the center of the circle, and the last motes of brilliance spiraled slowly around him until they too were gone.

“Not . . . good enough,” he said. His breath came short and fast but he stood like a rock, the rock Fern had seen before, solid as Earth. Immovable.

“You have not—the power!” Alison gasped. “You cannot—”

“I do not need power.” His voice steadied. “Only habit.” He pulled up his hood, and vanished.

The circle blazed back into light; the fire leaped. Fern felt a draft on her face like an icy burn; involuntarily she retreated behind the chair. She heard Alison swear, and the rasping derision of the idol. “Was that well done? You are afraid of him, and he knows it, he trades on it, he takes you by the fear and drags you down into weakness.
He uses your own power
against you.
He is an old man with nothing to cling to but his age, crippled in strength, tramping the hills on a quest that is never fulfilled, yet you are afraid of him. You would trap the wild unicorn for its horn, whistle up a hound from the packs of Arawn—yet you are afraid of him. He learned his tricks from a mountebank, he peddled arsenic to a streetwitch and aphrodisiacs to the mistress of a king, he sneaked his way through the centuries, toying with wizardry, squandering his Gift—
yet
you are afraid of him. You would do better to fear me. You have shown me nothing tonight but the depth of your own ignorance. Quench the fire. Clear the circle. It is enough.”

“Wait!” she said. “There is one I have not questioned. It may be useless, but . . .”

“Hurry,” said the idol. “The fire will die soon. I cannot dally.”

This time, the shape in the circle grew very slowly into being, as though coerced from some secure region of invisibility, dredged from an anonymous existence into a shy materialization. It was a squat, dumpy creature less than four feet high, its head sunken onto its chest, a lopsided hump distorting its shoulders, bat-like ears adorning its bald skull, each endowed with independent motion. It stood bundled up in its few rags as if in a motheaten sack, and it hugged itself with many-fingered hands in a pitiful attempt to conceal its poverty and ugliness. Its face was shriveled, its pouched eyes sorrowful and scared. Fern, venturing once more to squint around the chair-back, knew she had seen it before. This was the thing which had skulked in the passage outside her room, after the hound had gone. And with a surge of conviction she knew what it must be. The house-goblin.

“Malmorth,” said Alison. “Malmorth the misshapen: is that what they called you? One of a hundred malmorths, hiding in shadows, terrified of your own reflection. Or do you have another name?”

The tiny monster made a whimpering sound in which Fern could identify no words.

“Pegwillen, was it? Is that the name the children gave you—the children you used to play with, all those years ago? What became of the children, Pegwillen? Do you remember? Do you remember who or what you are? Shall I tell you where they went?” An imploring look came into the mournful eyes; a knobbly digit reached out toward her. “They died,” Alison said. “A stranger came down the valley with a buzz in his head and a pustule under his arm, and they all died. You were there, Pegwillen, but you could not help them. The cottage was burned with the bodies in it and you were alone. Always alone. And when they built this house you crept in and waited, but the children did not come again. Never again.”