A Decision is Made
Once again I have been thinking of the day of his return. I will not be here to see it, I know that well. I must pass through the borders of the world and join my exiled Master. When I do, light shall be my companion again, for the Blackness has no place outside this universe. When I have passed beyond the sky I will not spare much thought for this earth, where now I sit by the dying embers of last night’s fire and write.
Yet it troubles me to think that I will be forgotten to this world, for I have loved it, though it bears no love for me. I leave this journal, then, for those children of men who will one day be; and I hope that they will remember me.
My name is Aneryn. I am a Poet, and I am a Prophet. I fought beside the King in the Great War. The Brethren of the Earth—spirits of wind and tree and beast, of water and of fire—fought alongside me. There were men on our side as well. Few they were, and weak, as I am, but nobility and courage were in their hearts. This skeletal world without a heart and without flesh does not know what it means to feel courage, or to feel love. They, my sword brothers, knew. And I know. I alone know.
In the end the heart of the world was broken. The King took himself away. He took the faithful children of men with him, beyond the sky, to the kingdoms of light. The Earth Brethren were left alone. They continued to battle the Blackness, but they were overcome quickly by the strength of the enemy. They would have gone with the King if it had been permitted them, but they are bound to the Seventh World and cannot leave it. I know not where they are now. They live still, I believe, but as captives. They wait for the day of his return.
I alone remain of all the hosts of the King. I watched as my sword brothers and my Lord passed through the sky circle into the kingdoms of light, but their path was denied me. I was left here, for it is not good that the earth forget completely. Someone must remain who remembers. I am that one.
I write these things, so that the world can never really forget. Those who care to look will find the truth. When I am finished and my pen is at last run dry, then I will lie down and let my wounds drain me of life.
And I, too, will journey beyond the sky.
* * *
The Major’s Gypsies were on the move once more. Nicolas sat on the driver’s seat of the Major’s wagon. Peter the Pipe-Smoker rode a shaggy little mare at the back of the caravan, and the Major, having declared an itching for a good walk, kept up a powerful stride next to a wagon further back.
Maggie sat on her bunk and rode with the back door open so that she could see out. She watched as the Major stretched out his arms so that Tiny Paul, Maggie’s four-year-old friend, could climb up on his shoulders. Together they strode along: the Major, with a heavy sword swinging at his side, and Paul, waving his wooden one furiously.
The wagon bumped and jolted over the ruts in the road, and Maggie sighed with contentment as she leaned against the wall. A flock of birds burst suddenly from the trees and flew, cackling, over the heads of the Gypsy band. Maggie heard a long, high whistle rise from one of the wagons. It was the second time she had heard such a sound that morning. The first time, Nicolas had explained that Marja was hailing the birds.
Maggie stood unsteadily, taking a moment to get her balance in the rocking wagon, and then pushed aside the green blanket. She stumbled past the cupboards and climbed onto the driver’s seat beside Nicolas. They sat in happy silence, rumbling down the road at the head of the Gypsy band.
The voices of the Major and Tiny Paul mingled with the sounds of horses and wagons as they sang a raucous song at the top of their lungs. Maggie grinned at the sound, then turned to Nicolas.
“Why do they call him the Major?” she asked.
“He was in the High Police,” Nicolas said with an ironic grin. “Not a very respectable position for a Gypsy. Members of the Wandering Race are not usually drafted into the Emperor’s service.”
“Was he really a major then?” Maggie asked.
Nicolas shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t be sure—Gypsy stories get a little tangled with time—but I don’t believe he belonged to the police more than a week. Just long enough to make him the butt of many a fireside joke.”
“They seem to respect him,” Maggie said.
“Oh yes,” Nicolas said. “Yes, they respect him. He’s like a father to them. It’s been a while since anyone made fun of him. He laughs at the police just as hard as the rest.”
“Have you known him a long time?” Maggie asked.
Nicolas was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Yes.”
Maggie knew that she was prying, but another question came almost without her bidding it. “Are you a Gypsy?”
He sighed quietly and did not look at her. “Half,” he said at last. “Actually, if it weren’t for my gift of hearing, I’d have grown up in a respectable Midland home like you did.”
Maggie didn’t bother to correct him, as memories of the Orphan House with its high iron gates filled her mind. She didn’t prompt him again, but Nicolas had decided to talk.
“My father was a Gypsy,” he said, “but a Galcic family adopted him when he was a boy. My mother was Midlandish.” Something in his face softened. “She was a good lady,” he said, “but she died when I was six. Scarlet fever. My father… well, he left before I was two. I don’t remember him.”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said softly. Nicolas didn’t seem to hear her.
“My mother’s family was going to take me back to Bryllan, but some of them had an idea that I was crazy. See, when I was little I thought everyone could hear things like I could. Animals, and babies, you know. So I would tell people, and they all decided I was a little off in the head. One night I heard my mother’s sister—she was a mean old lady—talking about putting me in an Orphan House in Londren.”
He shivered, too preoccupied with his own thoughts to see the look on Maggie’s face. “You have no idea what that meant to me,” he said. “I had seen Orphan Houses in Galce, and there is no nightmare that could have been worse. You don’t know what it was like.”
Maggie said nothing.
“So I ran off, through the streets in the city where I was—I don’t even know where. I got lost in the city, and an old Gypsy woman found me. She took me on the road with her. I lived with the Gypsies until I was thirteen, and then I started wandering on my own. I found Bear, and I learned to like living by myself.”
“But you seem so happy here,” Maggie said.
Nicolas nodded and smiled wryly. “Thing is, even the Gypsies think I’m a bit crazy. I don’t really fit in here, Maggie. But you’re right—when I’m here, I’m happy. At least for the first while.”
They were silent for a long time, and then Maggie asked, “What happened to the old woman who took you with her?”
“She’s dead,” Nicolas said. “She was the Major’s mother.”
Before anything more could be said, Nicolas pulled up on the reins and signaled to the caravan to halt. The Major strode forward to see what the hold-up was, handing Tiny Paul to Maggie as he joined Nicolas.
A dead deer lay in the road, and a flock of ravens picked at the remains. The largest, an enormous black bird, opened its mouth and cawed. Its malevolent stare was fixed on the caravan, and Maggie shivered.
Nicolas jumped down from the driver’s seat, and he and the Major approached the carcass, throwing a few stones to get rid of the birds. The large raven flew onto a branch overhead and sat watching.
Peter rode up to the front of the caravan, his pipe hanging from his mouth, his brown head wreathed in smoke.
“Any meat worth saving?” he asked, taking his pipe in one hand.
“No,” the Major said. “Doesn’t look to be safe eating. We’ll have to get it out of the road.”
Peter called for rope, and Marja appeared at the front of the caravan with a long coil. As the men tied the deer to the saddle of Peter’s shaggy mare, Maggie saw Marja’s face go pale. She followed the Gypsy girl’s gaze to the raven on the overhanging branch.
Slowly, Marja let out a long, eerie whistle. The raven ruffled its feathers and did not move. Maggie thought she saw Marja’s face turn even whiter.
As Peter’s horse hauled the deer carcass out of the road, the Major came back to his wagon and reached for Tiny Paul. Maggie handed the child over. She heard Marja say in a low voice,
“The raven’s a bad omen. He ought to move on with the dead. Yet he stays and watches us.”
The Major looked over his shoulder uneasily at the huge black bird. It had not moved from its perch. With little conviction, he said, “It’s just a bird, Marja.”
“It’s a sign,” Marja insisted. “And not a good one. It’s an omen of death. The scavenger waits for carrion when he sees danger approaching.”
Maggie found her eyes drawn to the raven. Once again she shivered. Marja’s worries were nothing but superstition, yet the bird frightened her somehow. There was something familiar about it, as though she had seen it in a nightmare.
Peter and Nicolas returned from disposing of the deer. Peter re-lit his pipe and headed for the back of the caravan, Marja disappeared into a wagon, and the Major again walked with Tiny Paul on his shoulders. But something had changed; Maggie could feel it. The Major did not pick up his song, and Nicolas did not continue his stories.
An ominous cloud had fallen over the Gypsy band, and the raven left its branch and followed the wagons.
* * *
Eva Cook wanted very much to be happy. She had cause to be: Pat was coming home. She would be back in Londren within two days. It had been months since the young woman had left for Cryneth to work as a seamstress for an acting troupe—an unusual occupation, but one that suited Pat well.
But Mrs. Cook was worried. There had been no letter from Maggie yet. She had received the mail every day with a thrilling heart, but there was nothing. She had chided herself time and again for worrying. Pat habitually went for weeks without writing, and Mrs. Cook had not worried then.
Maggie had not been gone long. She was busy; she had probably forgotten all about writing.
So Mrs. Cook told herself, but she continued to worry, and brood, and frown. An idea was beginning to shape itself in her mind: that when Pat arrived, the two of them would go to Pravik and find Maggie. Everything would be fine, of course. But Maggie would be glad to see them anyhow.
The fact was, deep inside, Mrs. Cook was sure that everything was not fine.
Mrs. Cook stared through the steam rising from her teacup to the little pile of letters on the table in front of her. She mentally went through the pile again. A bill, from the coal seller. A letter addressed to her husband, Charles Cook, dead of a heart attack fifteen years earlier. The letter came from a Londren club that Charles had sometimes patronized; she had sent letters back to them before with the word “Deceased” written on them in big black letters, but evidently someone at the club didn’t consider death an obstacle when it came to soliciting money. And there was a stiff little packet addressed to the yellow house at the end of the street.
Mrs. Cook sipped her tea slowly and looked out the kitchen window at the cold drizzle. It would be a miserable walk to the yellow house to deliver the misdirected letter, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. She finished her tea, stood up, and took the packet from the bottom of the pile.
She pulled on her dull blue cloak and boots and opened the front door. The hinge squealed loudly as the door opened on a grey, puddled street. Mrs. Cook made a face at the weather as she stepped ponderously down the three front steps. She reached the bottom and looked up the street. Her heart caught for a moment and refused to beat.
A very tall man was walking through the rain toward her, carrying a girl in his arms. His step was purposeful and strong, and Mrs. Cook knew that she had seen him walking just that way before. She knew his stride, his form, his way of holding his head up.
But it was impossible.
He stopped three feet away from her. His blue eyes, set in a face older and more lined than she remembered, spoke a thousand words. He bowed his head slightly, every inch a gentleman. He had always been a gentleman. His sideburns were grey, though the hair that curled under his ears was still dark blond.
She tore her eyes away from his face and looked at the girl. She was pale, her eyes closed. Mrs. Cook might have thought her dead except that she could see her breathing. The girl’s dress was black with a tartan skirt of red, white, and black—she came from the Northern Highlands. Her arms were twisted behind her.
Lord Robert’s voice, low and urgent, broke through the rainy stillness. “We need your help, Eva. I’m not welcome here, I know. But look at this girl and tell me you can turn us away.”
She wanted to tell him to get away, to turn back down the street and disappear in the rain and never come back. But in spite of herself, her eyes went back to the girl’s face. There was something there that pleaded silently for help, and something else… something that shook Mrs. Cook with the force of old longing suddenly revived. She realized with a start that the girl’s hands were chained.
Mrs. Cook took a step back, and then turned from the pair in the street and climbed the steps to her house. She pushed the door open, and stood frozen for a moment in the doorway. Leaning on the door frame wearily, she turned her face back to the laird.
“Come in,” she said.
Lord Robert stooped as he awkwardly maneuvered through the door. He moved straight to the couch by the fire and laid the girl down gently. Mrs. Cook stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as the laird sank down onto his knees beside the couch and leaned wearily against it. He closed his eyes for a moment before looking up at his hostess.
“Thank you,” he said.
She nodded and then gestured toward the girl. “Who…?”
“Her name is Virginia Ramsey,” he said. “She is the granddaughter of a tenant farmer on my land.” He sighed deeply, and his eyes went back to the figure on the couch. “She fainted some miles back,” he said. “Of weariness, I suppose. We’ve been three days on the road, walking and riding and walking again.” His voice trailed off. “I won’t lie to you, Evie… it’s Mrs. Cook now, isn’t it? That’s what the postmaster told me.” He saw her slight nod of acknowledgment and asked, “Is Mr. Cook at home?”
“He’s passed on,” Mrs. Cook said. “Some fifteen years ago.”
Lord Robert nodded. “I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man?”
“Very,” Mrs. Cook said. There was a note of rebuke in her voice. He heard it and understood. It had been a long time since she had thought of Lord Robert Sinclair as a good man.
“You were beginning to tell me something,” she prompted.
“There are High Police after us,” he said. “Your hospitality to us is kind, but not advantageous to you. We’ll move on again if you wish. Only let us stay until Virginia has some strength back.”
“Those irons?” Mrs. Cook asked, gesturing at the chains.
Lord Robert’s face flushed with anger. “The gentility of the High Police,” he said. “How anyone could think it necessary to chain a blind girl… I tried to get them off, but they’re fine pieces of iron. I could do nothing without attracting attention. There were High Police all over the roads. I couldn’t risk taking her to a locksmith.”
“There’s a locksmith five blocks from here,” Mrs. Cook said. “He’s a good man. He won’t be into the shop till noon today, but you can fetch him then.”
Lord Robert said, “It may not be wise for me to show my face. I already fear what asking for you at the post might have done.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Cook said, flustered. “I’ll go after him myself, then.”
Her face paled slightly as Lord Robert’s words sank in. Was her past involvement with the laird to be her undoing now? It had already taken Maggie away from her.
“Why did you come here?” she asked, suddenly angry.
“I didn’t know where else to turn,” he said. “I found myself in Londren and realized I couldn’t run forever. My society ‘friends’ would have turned me in to the police.”
His weary blue eyes looked straight into hers, catching her off guard. “I was despairing, and your name came to me like an arrow. I went to the postmaster and asked after you, and the man knew you personally. Well enough to know that you were the Eva Brown I asked for. I know you do not think kindly of me, but in heaven’s name, Eva, I didn’t know where else to go.”
“That seems to happen a lot lately,” Mrs. Cook muttered bitterly. “Dan Seaton slept in this very house just over a week ago.”
Excitement suddenly animated the laird’s face. “He came here?” he asked. “Where is he now?”
“He’s dead,” Mrs. Cook said. “Died in that room behind you.”
The unexpected news checked Lord Robert’s enthusiasm, if only for a moment. “Did he bring anything with him?”
Mrs. Cook sat down in the high-backed chair near the fire. “He did. A scroll, all written up in some ancient tongue.”
The laird rose to his feet. “Do you have it?” he asked.
Mrs. Cook pulled herself up on her own feet, her height dwarfed by the laird. “No,” she said sharply. “I don’t deal in mysteries anymore, Lord Robert. I haven’t done so for forty years. The thing is far from here now, where its curse can’t touch me.”
Lord Robert sank back down to the floor, but he was quiet only for a moment. Then he said abruptly, “Can you truly have turned your back on everything we lived for? Did the scroll do nothing to you when you saw it? My housekeeper said it was very old. Think what it might have contained!”
“I don’t care to know,” Mrs. Cook said.
“Daniel came to me with the scroll,” Lord Robert said, “and the fool of a woman who keeps my house turned him away. Do you know what I did when I heard of it? I went back to our old council room. Do you remember the journal Huss began to translate in the last days? It’s still there! Don’t you remember, Eva, how the lore of old days just seemed to come to us, as though it wanted us to find it? And now it is coming to us again, calling us again!”
“Let it call,” Mrs. Cook said. “It shall have no answer from me.”
Lord Robert did not seem to hear her, but went on. “And it’s not only the scroll. Do you see this girl, Eva? Do you sense the way the air changes when she comes near? She is Gifted.”
“As Evelyn was Gifted?” Mrs. Cook said. Her eyes flashed with anger. “Evelyn, who destroyed us all?”
“Our own foolishness destroyed us,” Lord Robert said. “Not Evelyn.”
“No?” Mrs. Cook said. “Do you still defend her? After everything that happened, can you still be so blind? We tried to reach into another world, and that world would have taken our very souls if we’d let it. As Evelyn let it.”
With those words she turned and stalked into the kitchen, leaving the laird alone with Virginia.
An hour later, when Mrs. Cook could bring herself to leave the laird of Angslie unsupervised in her house, she went after the locksmith. He was a man of average height, with copper hair, a hooked nose, and a very discreet tongue. His name was Benjamin Warne.
He took in the scene without a word and set to work at Virginia’s shackles. They were off in the space of thirty minutes, and he held the iron chains up with disdain.
“If I were you,” he said to Lord Robert, “I should take these out and bury them somewhere away from here. If I’m not mistaken, there are High Police inquiring for you all over the city.”
A quick glance passed between Lord Robert and Mrs. Cook. It did not go unnoticed by Benjamin Warne. Lord Robert reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out sufficient funds to pay for the locksmith’s service, and extra to keep his tongue.
Warne waved the money away. “No,” he said. “I’ll not accept money for a job compassion would have bound me to do. Take care of the girl; her skin is badly torn. And don’t fear for my silence… that cannot be bought, but my words will not bring chains on her again, or on you.”
They thanked him profusely. When he was gone, they heard a sound in the sitting room. Virginia was awake.
Lord Robert rushed to her as Mrs. Cook fetched water to bathe Virginia’s wrists. When she returned, she knelt down and gently began to clean the wounds. As the locksmith had said, the skin had torn deeply and painfully, and the iron soot had worked its way into the raw flesh. Virginia winced with pain as Mrs. Cook worked, but said nothing.
When dry blood had turned the water to rust, Mrs. Cook sent Lord Robert upstairs in search of a balm. Before he returned, Virginia spoke.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but your hands are very gentle. Thank you.”
Something about the simplicity of the thanks and the way that Virginia’s eyes stared into nothing when she spoke brought Mrs. Cook to tears.
“No, dear,” she said. “No, no, there’s nothing to thank me for.”
Virginia’s hands reached hesitantly for Mrs. Cook, and the elderly woman allowed the young one’s fingers to trace the lines and wrinkles of her face. The fingers met with tears, and Virginia smiled tenderly.
“Is it for me you are crying?” she asked. “Or for something else?”
Mrs. Cook nodded and took the searching hands in her own. “For you, dear,” she said.
They heard the laird’s feet pounding down the stairs, and Lord Robert appeared with a small bottle. Mrs. Cook took it and started to apply the ointment to the wounds. Virginia bit her lip and worked to hold back tears of her own. In moments, the stinging cream began to work its healing magic and the pain ceased. Mrs. Cook wrapped Virginia’s wrists in bandages and then touched the young woman’s cheek kindly.
“Finished,” she announced.
Mrs. Cook had never had children of her own, but her motherly instincts had not suffered for lack of use. She ordered Lord Robert to escort Virginia to the kitchen, where she soon laid out a hearty meal of bread, cheese and sausage from the cold room, and plenty of hot tea. While they ate, she bustled around the house: the lower room, where Old Dan had stayed, was prepared for Virginia, and Maggie’s room upstairs was reluctantly made ready for Lord Robert.
When the rooms were ready, Mrs. Cook brought Virginia a clean dress of Maggie’s so that she could wash her travel-stained clothing. To Lord Robert’s chagrin, she insisted on washing his clothes as well. “I don’t care what you look like,” she said, handing him a nightshirt and a blanket to wear until his clothes were dry, “but I won’t have you smelling like last week’s rubbish while you’re in my house.”
Late that night, Lord Robert left the house in slightly damp trousers and shirt, with a shovel and the blood-rusted shackles. He carried them down the street and over the fence to the yard of the yellow house, where he dug a hole under the shadow of a young oak tree.
The rain had ceased earlier that evening. There was no sound in the night except for that of the shovel penetrating earth. Lord Robert gritted his teeth as he worked. Even this was too loud. What if someone in the house looked out? But the yellow house seemed very much asleep. The windows were dark, and no light or sound stirred in its bulk.
A sufficient hole dug, Lord Robert dropped the shackles in and grimaced at the clanking sound they made in the darkness. He thought he heard something stir in the alley beyond the fence, and stood stock while his heart beat out the minutes. There was nothing.
He shoveled the dirt back quickly and spread damp oak leaves over the spot to disguise the newly turned earth. With that he stood tall, wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead, and climbed back over the fence.
Shovel in hand, he had just started up the steps to Eva Cook’s home when he heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He started to turn, his body unable to move with the speed he wished for. A searing pain flashed through him as something heavy hit below the base of his skull. He fell to the steps with a cry. A foot landed squarely in his back and pushed him off the steps onto the street. His eyes, fighting black spots as he struggled against the pain, could just make out a slim form standing over him, hands raised in the air with something clutched between them.
The object rushed down toward him, and he heard Mrs. Cook’s door swing open. The elderly woman’s voice cried out, “Pat! Stop! He’s a friend!”
And then he could not see, or hear, anything. The laird’s body lay still on the cobblestones as he slipped into unconsciousness.
He awoke to the unpleasantness of smelling salts under his nose and a throbbing pain in the back of his head. Mrs. Cook was peering down at him with obvious concern while the hand of an unfamiliar young woman held the salts unmercifully. She was thin and dressed like a boy. As she stood, Lord Robert could see that she was as tall as Mrs. Cook. Her straight, dark hair was cropped short. In the shadows of the street, she could be easily have been mistaken for a young man.
Lord Robert struggled to sit up. The young woman had wandered over to the window and was peering out through the curtains at the street.
“You’re all right then,” Mrs. Cook said. “I was afraid she’d killed you.”
“Who is she?” Lord Robert asked, putting his hand behind his head to feel the growing lump there. “And does she have a good reason for attacking me?”
The young woman answered his questions on her own, walking back to the couch with her arms folded in front of her. Her face was serious and her glare met the laird’s eyes dead-on.
“My name is Patricia Black,” she said. “I live here. And I had a very good reason for popping you. I thought you were the High Police.”
The blood drained from Mrs. Cook’s face as Lord Robert quietly said, “Do you often have High Police sneaking around in the middle of the night?”
“They’re on their way,” Pat said. “On my way here I overheard a racket at the postmaster’s. They’re looking for someone. You, I suppose, though they said you had a girl with you. The postmaster let it slip that you’d come here, but he gave them a good run around on directions. Must have felt guilty for ratting you out.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Lord Robert said. He stood up, ignoring a wave of nausea that hit him at his sudden rise, and pulled his coat from the tall rack that stood by the door. Three long strides took him to Virginia’s door. He knocked loudly.
“It’s time to go,” he said. His voice broke in mid-sentence. When he turned to Mrs. Cook, his face was weary.
“You don’t know who we were,” he said. “We seemed to need help, was all. We left hours ago, saying something about going to the country. Cryneth. Understood?”
Mrs. Cook did not even nod as she pushed into Virginia’s room to help the young woman get ready to leave.
“Pat,” she called over her shoulder, “get them some food from the pantry. As much as they can carry.”
Pat disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Lord Robert to pace in the living room, now and then going to the window to look out nervously. Pat reappeared just as Virginia emerged from the bedroom, guided by Mrs. Cook’s hand on her elbow. Pat looked the newcomer over quickly. Her eyes betrayed nothing of what she thought.
The laird pulled himself up straight and looked at Pat. He’d been thinking.
“Do you make a habit of attacking police when you see them? Wouldn’t it have been more effective for you to make up a story about your innocence? You might have had the every soldier in Midland down on you.”
Pat looked away from him suddenly. Mrs. Cook sought to hold the young woman’s eyes and could not. Pat had turned her gaze to the curtains.
“I meant to tell you,” she said in muffled voice, “that I’ll be going away again. Now.”
“Now?” Mrs. Cook s