Warden (Book 2: Lure of the Lamia) (11 page)

Chapter 20

The door to the Messen household rattled fiercely in its frame as Errol pounded on it like he was trying to turn it into toothpicks. He had gotten here as fast as he could, hoping to find at least some of the answers that he needed. Finally, the matriarch of the household, Kate Messen, opened the door.

“Errol Magnus!” she exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?! It’s the middle of the night!”

Much to Kate’s chagrin, Errol pushed past her without a word and into the house. Behind Kate stood a horde of girls in their nightgowns – the group that was spending the night with the Messens after visiting the troupe – including the one Errol had come to see.

“Gale,” he said, dispensing with any pleasantries, “where’s that bracelet?” He eyed her so intently that everyone cleared the way between the two of them.

“I-I-I told you,” she said, voice quivering nervously. “I left it–”

Errol closed the distance between them so quickly that Gale almost jumped. He gripped her by the shoulders, solidly but not painfully, and gave her a cold stare.

“Where. Is. The. Bracelet?” he repeated, emphasizing each word in a voice that hinted at barely-controlled fury.

Gale’s lip trembled. She looked into his eyes and didn’t see anything that she recognized. This was an Errol she was unfamiliar with – one who would only be pacified by the truth. Gale blinked her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I-I-I don’t know,” she said, sobbing. “I lost it.” Errol, tension suddenly flowing out of him, let her go and took a step back.

“I’m sorry,” she went on. “I took it off when we spent the night here two days ago, and put it in my bag. The next morning I left, and was halfway home before I thought about it. But when I looked in my bag, it wasn’t there. I came back here, thinking I’d misplaced it, but Margo and her mother said they hadn’t seen it. It’s just gone. I’m so sorry.”

She looked at Errol pleadingly, but he said nothing. In fact, it didn’t even appear that he was even listening to her anymore, so lost was he in his own thoughts.

All the way to the Messens’ home, he’d been under the impression that Gale was controlling the golem, and that he’d somehow have to deal with her. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a seemingly trustworthy person had turned out to have sinister motives, but it had infuriated him that he’d become personally involved with her.

Now, however, he was convinced that she wasn’t the golem’s creator. It was someone else.

“Did you show the bracelet to anyone?” he asked.

She lowered her eyes, somewhat ashamed. “I showed it to everyone,” she said.

“Everyone?” Errol repeated, frowning.

“All the girls,” she said, gesturing. Errol looked around; he had practically forgotten that they were in the midst of what was essentially a slumber party, and that everyone was looking at them. “I was just so happy that you had given it to me…”

Errol barely heard what she was saying. He was looking at the faces around them, counting heads – trying to remember who had been with Gale two nights ago when she’d initially come to see the performers. There was only one face present then that he didn’t see now.

“Where’s Talia?” he asked.

For a moment, no one said anything, and then Mrs. Messen spoke up. “She’s resting in Margo’s room. She’s been sick.”

“Sick? In what way?” Errol asked.

“She had a slight fever when she came in tonight, but before long she was burning up. I put her in my boys’ room, since they’re out patrolling with their father tonight.”

“How has she been?”

“Not good. She alternates between burning up and being cold and clammy. She’s been asleep almost since she arrived, but she cries out every now and then. Nightmares, I suppose.”

“Take me to her.”

*****

Talia lay on a bed under a thin blanket. The sheet on top of her, as well as the one underneath, was soaked. Her brow was dotted with sweat, and she shook with a slight spasm as Errol walked into the room.

He would have preferred to close the door to keep the conversation private, but wasn’t sure it would have been proper. Thus, he had Kate Messen stand at the threshold while he stepped over to Talia’s bedside.

Next to the bed was a nightstand on which sat a low-burning candle, a pitcher of cool water, and a towel. Kate had been using the towel and water to occasionally to try to help with Talia’s fever, but it hadn’t seemed to do much good.

By the light of the candle, the girl’s skin looked ashen and gray. Her lips were dry and blistered, and there appeared to be bruising around her neck. Errol assumed that she probably had other injuries as well, but if so they were hidden by her nightgown, which stretched down to her feet, and covered her arms all the way to her wrists.

Errol wet the towel with water from the pitcher, and then sat on the edge of the bed – in an area that had remarkably remained dry – and soothingly wiped the sweat from Talia’s forehead. She moaned softly, then turned her head towards him. Her eyelids fluttered for a second, and then opened as she stared at him with obscenely bloodshot eyes.

“Hello, handsome,” she said, smilingly through painfully cracked lips.

“Hello yourself,” he said, returning her smile.

“I had a dream about you, you know. We were out in Moonbloom Meadow, and I was holding you.” She closed her eyes for a second, reminiscing, then looked at him boldly. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

“No.”

She turned away from him, staring at the ceiling. He waited patiently, knowing she had to tell it her way.

“It’s his fault,” she said. “That little man. It all started with him.”

“Berry? The homunculus?”

“Yes! I just wanted an answer to my question – my one true love!” She paused to take a breath. “I was assuming that it was either you or Chad Sterillo.”

“So what happened?” Errol asked, ignoring the implication in her statement.

“I asked my great-granny about it the next day, like I said I would. She’s half-senile, but occasionally she knows what she’s talking about. She told me to forget about the one with the troupe and make my own.”

“She taught you how to do it?”

Talia nodded. “Um-hmm. She told me what to do. She told me the type of earth to use, the runes to draw, the words to say.”

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know. Something didn’t go right. Honestly, I didn’t really expect anything to happen, but I didn’t think it would hurt to try. But when I was finished, that bracelet started to glow and–”

“Wait. You mean Gale’s bracelet?”

Talia glanced at him, then quickly looked away again, clearly ashamed. Theft of any sort was rare in a community like theirs, where everyone pulled together – had to – in order to survive.

“I didn’t mean to take it,” she finally said. “I was a little jealous when she showed it to everyone, saying you’d given it to her. We were all staying in Margo’s room, and after everyone went to sleep, I went into Gale’s bag and took it out. I only wanted a closer look at it, but then it sounded like someone was waking up and before I knew it, I had tucked it into the sleeve of my nightgown.

“When we got up the next morning, I had planned to put it back before everyone left. For some reason, though, I never got around to it. Whenever I touched that bracelet, it just felt like it belonged to me.
With
me.”

“So you kept it,” Errol added.

“Yes, and I had it on when I tried to make my own homunculus. But it didn’t make one. It made something else instead.”

“A golem.”

“Is that what it’s called? Interesting… Anyway, when I was finished making it, the bracelet started to glow, and so did the thing I’d tried to make. I got scared and ran away. That night, though, after I went to sleep, I had a dream that I was walking through the forest. The world looked peculiar to me – things were different colors and shapes than what they should have been. Also I felt different, like I was living in someone else’s body almost.

“I spent a good part of that first night – last night – just exploring. Looking around, going through the forest, watching people, animals, the forest.”

“Sounds like a lot of walking.”

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “It never actually felt like I was walking. It felt like I would just glide along the ground, through it, like I was a part of the earth.” Then she frowned. “That’s what I was doing when I saw it kill Tern.”

Errol raised an eyebrow, but kept silent.

“It looked like a woman,” Talia said, continuing, “but also some kind of snake. It chased him into the water, wrapped itself around him, and crushed him.”

“You didn’t…you didn’t try to stop it?”

“I didn’t know any of it was real!” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I thought I was dreaming!”

Errol took the towel and wiped her tears, and then sat silently as Talia took a few moments to compose herself.

“I hadn’t seen anything like it before,” she said, “so after it finished with Tern, I just followed it.”

“And it eventually climbed a tree, where some clothes were hanging, changed into a person, and got dressed.”

Talia looked at him in astonishment. “How did you know?”

“I’m the Warden,” he said with a smile. “It’s my job to know.”

She smiled back at him, and then went on. “I woke up the next morning – yesterday, although it seems a lot longer – dead tired, and feeling sick and feverish, although I got better as the day went on. I didn’t find out until later that Tern was actually dead. Even then, I still thought it was all a dream. Until we came back to see the performers again tonight and I saw her – saw her talking to Chad – and I knew. I knew it was all real. And I started feeling sick all over again.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Tell anyone what? That while I was sick and feverish the night before, I had a dream that a snake-woman had killed somebody and then turned into a girl? They’d just think I was delusional. So I left the rest of the girls and came back here; I probably should have gone home – let my mother take care of me instead of making Mrs. Messen do it – but it was already dark, I was by myself, and this was closer. I think I heard the girls come in later, but I was pretty much out of it by then.”

The rest of the story Errol essentially knew. In the grips of her fever, Talia had brought the golem back a second night. This time, however, she had tried to prevent the lamia from killing again – once when the golem showed up at the campsite, and again in Moonbloom Meadow. Unfortunately, Talia’s unity with her construct meant that the injuries that the golem had suffered had, to some extent, been transferred to her.

“Am I going to die?” Talia asked softly, after finishing her story. Her voice was slowly fading.

“I don’t know,” Errol answered honestly, “but I’ll do whatever I can to prevent it.”

With great effort, she reached over and patted his hand. “Thanks,” she whispered, so gently that he barely heard it.

“One more thing,” he said. “The snake-woman. Do you know who she was?”

Talia nodded, and Errol leaned in closely as she whispered in his ear.

*****

When he left the bedroom, Talia was sleeping. In his hand he held the bracelet, which he now viewed as a thing of malice.

After Talia had whispered in his ear, he had gently lifted the sleeve of her nightgown, where the ornament was on her wrist. It had glowed with an intense red light when he started to pull it off, and though it merely felt warm to him, it had scorched Talia’s flesh, making her scream. The thing obviously hadn’t wanted to come off. Still, the minute it had been removed, Talia had fallen into a deep sleep, breathing calmly and evenly. Errol didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but her pallor even seemed to have improved.

Mrs. Messen – and the rest of the girls – followed him as he carried the bracelet into the great room of the home, where an intense fire crackled and burned in the fireplace.

Errol dropped to his knees and laid the bracelet on the stone hearth of the fireplace. Around it he traced an intricate ward with his wand, one meant to dispel harmful magic. When he had finished, he spoke a word of power and the ward flared up in a brilliant hue of purple. From the bedroom where she was sleeping, he heard Talia moaning loudly in pain. Around him, Mrs. Messen and the girls watched in fear and fascination – a few of them making gestures to ward off evil.