The Magician of Hoad (3 page)

This waking dream, almost a vision, came and went in a moment, but it frightened him so fiercely that he spun away from the gate and saw, in the long grass on his right, a flattened patch as if some animal, no larger than a dog, had been lying there. The grass blades were still moving, in the act of springing up again. Heriot understood that,
only a moment earlier, something must have been curled up there, hiding itself from him. Only a moment earlier something must have been watching his approach and had chosen to disappear. He clapped a hand over his puzzled eye and stared at the space with the eye that saw straight. So he fled—fled from the gate without a wall and from the flattened patch of grass; fled away from the fringe of Cassio’s Wood, out under the arch, and onto the causeway.

Once again it seemed to stretch endlessly before him, dimmer and cooler than it had been, for a drift of cloud had sidled over the face of the sun. Its beauty was still there, but it no longer moved him. As he had walked toward the island, its great length had not mattered. Now the causeway seemed endless. He needed to get himself home again—he needed to be contained once more, surrounded by cheerful arrivals, happy endings.

But even the causeway wasn’t endless. Panting and struggling and sprinkled with the first rain, he reached the place where he could climb away from it. He was just about to leap onto the slopes of his own farm when something happened that was beyond description. He stopped midstride, falling to his knees as if he had been clubbed down. Deep inside his head that black barrier was finally dissolving. Something from the other side rushed out and ran through him like a contradiction of everything homely. Something looked directly out into the world for the first time, using Heriot’s eyes. And for some reason the most
frightening thing was that this intruding force was not a stranger but a wild part of himself… a part of himself he had never suspected but immediately recognized. At some time in the past something had happened to him, had violated him over and over again; something had fed on him. Somehow, back then, during the time of his fits and headaches, perhaps, he had been torn in two, and now, suddenly he was confronted with that other—that torn-away self. But now, though it was part of him, this rag of self was a stranger, settling back into him without fusing into him, becoming an occupant.

The landscape in front of him, the whole hillside, broke into a shifting mosaic of colored crystals, skewed madly, and contracted, before swelling back into a recognizable form, while Heriot, filled with a terror so extreme it was like pain, toppled sideways onto the edge of the path and lay there, whining through clenched teeth, clutching the grass stems. He was worked on by such vertigo that, even with the whole earth bearing up under him, he still believed he was falling. Inside his head something demanded recognition. He gasped. Inside his head that new, separate self breathed in too… a gigantic first breath.

In the outside world Heriot gasped again. “It’s all right!” he muttered. “It will be all right. Take another breath. Last a bit longer. It will end.” This was what he had learned to say to himself during the violent cramps, fits, and headaches of his early childhood… those times when he felt that something was stealing whole pieces of him… devouring him. “It will end,” he repeated, though he couldn’t hear his own voice. “It will end. It will be over.”

Now, as if he were looking out of blackness through a far-off window, unnaturally clear, he saw the boy of his dreams, not in bed this time but standing on a great confused plain, dressed in rich strange clothes, staring back at him.

“Help me,” Heriot said, but the boy looked frightened and puzzled, then vanished as completely as if he had been blown out like a candle. In the silence that followed, he heard, coming in at him from somewhere, a deep, slow breathing, and made himself breathe in time with it. It was several minutes before he understood it was only the sound of the sea.

He opened his eyes and looked into a tuft of grass half an inch from his nose. Fear continued to subside. He began to move his hands and feet, to sit up, to stand, to run. For then, indeed, he did run. He scrambled wildly until he was back onto Tarbas land.

He had changed. Something new was stirring in him… a new nerve… a new appetite, anxious to be fed. However, he was too alarmed to try and make any real contact with this… this thing… this wild presence he had carried within himself unknowingly until it had swept in from the other side of the black barrier. He began climbing again and kept on climbing until he reached the spot where, only a little time ago, he had stood beside his brother and looked out over the sea to Cassio’s Island.

Something moved on the road below. Heriot stared down, screwing up his face a little as wind blew in on him.

Someone was walking away from Cassio’s Island. He stared, narrowing his eyes. A woman carrying something
heavy—a woman carrying a child, who lay limply in her arms, while another child trailed behind her, getting left behind and running, every now and then, to catch up. But the woman seemed to take no notice of her follower. She stumped along, looking neither right nor left, up nor down, looking straight ahead as if the road might vanish if she took her eyes from it. The child behind her, on the other hand, was staring around all the time and suddenly came to a standstill. Looking up, it had seen Heriot standing on his hilltop, looking down. Knowing he was seen, Heriot waved rather incoherently, feeling himself become more wonderfully ordinary by making this ordinary human sign. The child stared up at him for a moment longer, then waved back, before turning and racing after the woman, who had walked on without once glancing over her shoulder at the child she was leaving behind.

There was a flash of lightning and a sound as if a tin sky were being beaten apart. Unable to distinguish any longer between inside events and outside ones, Heriot half believed he was responsible for the harsh sound, but it was only the storm sweeping in from the northeast. The bruised sky had taken on a luminous sheen, but directly overhead the sun still shone through a haze of finer cloud. Heriot turned and ran. He was going home with the storm growling at his heels.

But the day had not finished with him. Though Heriot believed that after what he had just gone through he couldn’t be frightened any more, he was wrong. His strange ordeal on the causeway had prepared the way for yet more terror, and this time there would be witnesses.

Heriot had left the courtyard full of women but came home to find men drinking and gossiping as they watched the storm roll over the hills. Radley, Wish, and Nesbit, tall and bushy as trees, were planted in the center of the yard with a younger cousin, Carron, beside them, just as tall but narrower, more agile, and more wordy, too. There were about ten Travelers, both short and tall, and a neighbor or two. The courtyard was bathed in a wild light, the sun shining rebelliously through the first clouds, painting the western hills, which in turn reflected distant light from their jagged crests down into the courtyard. The men stood in an unnatural coppery glow that was flicked occasionally with whips of lightning.

As he slid through the gate, Heriot heard Carron holding forth in his quick, eager way to one of the Travelers. Heriot closed the gate behind him, then leaned against it, breathless with exhaustion and relief.

“They’d call that treason,” he heard the Traveler saying to Carron in a startled voice. “Their present King may be a
Secondcomer, but we have to count them as men of Hoad by now, even if we were here first. And lucky for us if they do have a King to keep them in order.”

Heriot could see Nesbit rolling his eyes at Wish, full of despair at Carron’s dangerous arguments.

“If there’s a King, the King should be one of the first people… one of us,” argued Carron. “Not that we really need a King or a Hero. A long time ago even the Secondcomers—the Hoadara—used to choose their leaders. All the people got together and worked things out among themselves. Every man counted. It wasn’t just one family with all the power.”

Heriot stared. He blinked and shook his head, then stared again. Someone was standing behind Carron, someone he hadn’t noticed when he first came through the gate; though now that he had seen this stranger, it seemed impossible to notice anyone else. He screwed up his face trying to focus on the man, who seemed painted with a darkness that had sunk into him, right to his bones. Cut, this man would bleed black. Even his face and hands were shadowed, which made his light eyes, fixed intently on Carron, particularly startling. And his hair was red—a crimson both dark and bright, braided and wound into a tight cap around his head.

Heriot, still unnoticed, moved a step or two closer, frowning and doubtfully biting his lower lip. There was something about the stranger’s stillness that made his heart jolt unpleasantly. Even the most impassive faces have some sort of movement, but this face was entirely frozen. Light reflected oddly from the upward turn of an unpleasing
smile… a smile begun but unconcluded, as unnatural as a diving gull arrested midair.

“Heriot!” shouted Radley, suddenly noticing him standing in the gateway. “Where did you get to? We could have done with an extra pair of hands.”

As if the sound of Heriot’s name had somehow released him, the frozen stranger’s half-finished smile suddenly widened. He gracefully embraced Carron from behind by flinging one arm around his neck and at the same time drove a narrow blade into him. Heriot thought he felt the thin destruction of his own heart.

“And another thing… ,” Carron said, turning to the Traveler on his left, apparently unconcerned by what had happened. At that moment Heriot began tasting blood. His own mouth was suddenly full of it. He gave a cry. The sound that ripped out of him was inhuman even to his own ears. Everyone in the courtyard started and spun round. Radley ran toward him, followed by Wish and Nesbit, while Carron, looking more curious than concerned, came behind them. As he advanced on Heriot, Carron’s eyes darkened. Crimson curtains were being drawn across them. They filmed, then overflowed with tears of blood, which left trails on his cheeks and blotched the stones of the courtyard behind him. Heriot screamed again, backing away, but as Radley reached him, he turned, seized his brother, and buried his face against him so that he needn’t see any more.

A great babble of voices blended into the single sound that was most familiar to him… the sound of family interest and argument. The kitchen door flew open, the footsteps
and voices of women asking questions rang above the exclamations of the men.

Radley was shouting. “What’s happened? Let’s take a look.”

But Heriot didn’t want to look up and find himself staring into Carron’s bleeding eyes. Something splashed on his hands, and he started and cried out as if the drops had burned him.

“It’s rain, Heriot, nothing but rain!” Radley cried, shaking him slightly. “Stop it! There’s nothing wrong.”

“It’s blood!” Heriot screamed.

“There’s no blood here but yours,” said Radley, so bewildered he sounded angry. “You’ve bitten your lip, I think. That’s all.”

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Joan was asking… Ashet was asking… Baba was asking… their voices coming in on top of one another.

“What’s wrong?” asked Great-Great-Aunt Jen, and everyone heard
her
question.

“That’s the sort of thing I was telling you about.” Carron’s voice sounded somewhere in the background. “They make out there’s nothing to it, but he’s always likely to flip.”

“Let’s get him inside!” shouted Nesbit. “Here comes the rain.” And at that, the clouds seemed to split open and rain poured down, soaking them in seconds.

As Radley carried him toward the house, Heriot lifted his eyes at last and looked frantically over his brother’s shoulder, through the veil of tumbling raindrops, at Carron, whose face, alight with interest, was quite unmarked by
a single smear of blood. Big splashes of rain shone for a moment like silver coins pulled out of shape, and were blotted out almost immediately by the downpour. A door opened and closed. Then the kitchen embraced them all, its air thick with smells of cooking and another ancient smell—the smell of time, which no scrubbing or rubbing could totally clean away.

“Take him through into the big room,” Great-Great-Aunt Jen was ordering, and he heard the familiar creak of a heavy door, a sound that had always made him think the house was asking a question over and over again.

Light dimmed. As Radley laid him on the long table that ran down the center of the room, Heriot found himself staring up into a series of interlocking arches carrying a ceiling that had once been painted to look like an evening sky.

“He was terrified,” Radley was saying in a puzzled voice. “But there was nothing to be frightened of, was there?” There was a ragged chorus of agreement. Heads bending over Heriot turned and nodded.

“Here’s his mother,” said Great-Great-Aunt Jen, and Heriot’s trembling grew less at the sound of her calm voice. “Maybe he started out trying to trick us, and tricked himself into this state. He must have known I’d be cross with him, vanishing for ages just when we’re busy.” But Heriot knew that if it was a trick, he was the tricked one, not the trickster.

“He’s bitten his lip almost through,” said Radley. “That’s not acting.”

“He’s had one of his fits,” Carron said. “He’ll get over it. He always does.”

Radley now became angry, something that almost never
happened. “He hasn’t had one for three years, and when he did it was different from this, so just forget it, Carron!”

There was a burst of confused conversation as every other Tarbas in the room expressed an opinion, most agreeing with Carron but sympathizing with Radley. Heriot felt relieved at the thought that it might be his old trouble in a new form. But there had been no pain, only one inexplicable shock following sharply on another. His mother took his hand, but as she did so, another face showed up beside hers, vivid, amused, a little sympathetic, a little scornful. It was Azelma, pushing in through the family.