The Master of Heathcrest Hall (77 page)

The witch’s lifeless body fell backward from the top of the wall and vanished behind it. A shudder passed through the trees. Then they fell still as the morning sun touched their leaves.

Beside Rafferdy, Lieutenant Beckwith lowered his pistol.

“That was well done, Captain, gaining her attention like that,” the young man said with a fierce grin. “She never even saw me draw my pistol. Once I was assured you had distracted her, I took
my shot, and she never had a chance to induce the trees to strike us.”

Rafferdy was beyond speech. He knew Beckwith was impatient, but he had never believed he was capable of so rash an act as this.

“Why?” he said, his throat ragged. “She was going to let us get Hendry. Why did you shoot her?”

Beckwith frowned. “Surely you didn’t believe her! The witch had been too long in the grove, and she was beyond help or hope. You saw it for yourself, Captain. She was lost to the Wyrdwood. But she can’t agitate the trees any longer, and now dawn has come. We can fetch Corporal Hendry and the arms without any fear, then be on our way.”

Rafferdy was dumbstruck, and a sickness churned in his stomach. Before he could think of how to respond, the warm dawn light went to cold gray. To the east, a morning fog had risen up from fields, swallowing the sun. A chill wind rushed up the hill. The trees waved to and fro again, but this time it was only due to the force of the gale.

Suddenly came a new sound: a distant crackle that Rafferdy recognized at once as gunfire. A new fear gripped him, and he ran along the base of the wall, Beckwith behind him. He rounded a curve in the wall just as another volley of rifle fire was borne upon the wind. Below, at the foot of the ridge, a white veil hung upon the air: not fog, but smoke. Then it was torn aside by a gust, and Rafferdy had a clear view of the scene below.

Despair filled him. At the foot of the ridge, his men had tried to arrange themselves in a hasty line, but it was ragged and half formed. Marching toward them was a tight formation of men in blue coats. The fog and gloom must have obscured their approach, but now they were in plain view, and Rafferdy made a quick count. There were close to a hundred of them, the rifles held before them fitted with bayonets.

So the pursued had indeed become the pursuer. The enemy soldiers they had been following had turned about and had come after the rebels. And they had gathered more of Valhaine’s men
along the way. Now they advanced, and Rafferdy knew his own men were in dire peril, for they hadn’t had time to form a proper defense or ascend to higher ground.

Even as Rafferdy watched, a line of bright flashes appeared as the redcrests fired their rifles. A half-dozen figures in brown coats crumpled to the ground.

“We have to get down there!” Rafferdy cried.

But his words were lost in the roar of the gale. He could just discern a shout behind him—a sound quickly cut short. Rafferdy turned around, and a sigh escaped him. He had been wrong; it hadn’t been the wind stirring them. Even as he watched, the branches that had coiled around Beckwith bore his limp body upward and over the wall. Then he was gone.

So the trees did not need their witch to direct them after all. With the dawning sun obscured, they could act with a will—and a vengeance—all their own. Rafferdy reached for his saber at his hip, but there was no time to draw it, or to speak runes of power. Behind him, he heard another crackling volley of rifle fire.

Then black branches whipped down and wrapped around him.

T
HE CURTAINS SPED SHUT before the stage. The performance was over at last. Still, beyond those red folds, the soldiers continued to clap and whoop and whistle. The whole theater vibrated as they stamped their boots, and every few moments came a noise of shattering glass as an empty whiskey bottle was dashed against the floor.

In the wing, just offstage, Riethe gripped the curtain rope and tensed his thick arms.

“Wait!” Eldyn hissed. “Not yet!”

Riethe clenched his jaw but did not pull on the rope. All around Eldyn, the other illusionists slumped upon pieces of scenery or had collapsed to the stage. They were all of them spent. They had done five performances in the last thirty hours, and Eldyn knew they were too exhausted to answer a call for additional entertainments. Were they to conjure any more illusions, they would be in danger of expending their own light; indeed, they had likely already done so. They had to rest.

Though whether the soldiers in attendance would allow it was in question. Sometimes the men departed the theater as soon as the play was over, off to seek out more drink, or to find women who were not constructed of air and light, but rather warm flesh. But sometimes the soldiers had brought ample drink and relished the sights they had been shown, and so craved more. In such cases they would continue to roar and shake the theater until the illusionists were forced to open the curtains and improvise more scenes, lest the soldiers bring the place down with their raucous exertions.

Still Eldyn waited, listening. He heard the tinkling noises of more broken bottles, and by that he guessed that they had not brought sufficient reserves of whiskey with them that night. Another minute passed, and the clapping and whistling dwindled. The roar beyond the curtain faded into a grumble. Again came the thumping of boots, but now it was the blessed sound of the soldiers getting up from their seats and departing the theater.

“By God,” Mouse said from where he lay upon his back on the stage, limbs all splayed out, “if they will just leave us alone, I swear I will never drink again.”

Riethe let go of the curtain rope and peered out past the edge of the curtain. “Then you’d better get used to being sober,” he said, “for they are already departing.”

“Already?” The diminutive illusionist sat up. “But if they were in the act of leaving the theater when I spoke, then my bargain is null, of course. Someone fetch me a cup of rum!”

No one did. Indeed, nobody even had the wherewithal to give
Mouse a thump on the head such as he deserved. Riethe leaned against the proscenium arch, shutting his eyes. Not far away, Hugoth sat upon the edge of a wooden platform that was painted to look like the parapet of a fortress, his face carved with lines.

Eldyn surveyed the rest of the players, noticing their haggard faces and hazed eyes, then he sighed. “We can’t keep doing this.”

He spoke the words quietly, not meaning for them to be heard, only Merrick had been standing just behind him.

“We can’t, but we have to,” the tall illusionist said. His cheeks and nose seemed sharper than ever in the glare of the oil lamps that lit the stage. Even so, Merrick seemed to be holding up better than most of them throughout all of this. Even Riethe, big ox that he was, appeared more worn out these days than Merrick.

“I know that you can keep going,” Eldyn whispered. “And for all their complaining, Mouse and Riethe can, too. But what about the others? Hugoth’s beard gets grayer every day. And even the new fellows are already beginning to look worn out.”

Recently, they had hired a few men from some of the theaters that had closed. It had been Madame Richelour’s hope to hire enough players so that each illusionist would be able to sit out every third performance. Only it had been harder to find illusionists willing to work onstage than they had thought, and it wasn’t just because the wages they could offer were pitifully low. Rather, a large number of Siltheri had fled the city as Huntley Morden advanced. Many of those who had remained in Invarel had done so because they were older or could not travel—which in both cases meant they likely suffered symptoms of mordoth—and so were unwilling or unable to endure the risks and rigors of performing for Valhaine’s soldiers.

“I don’t know how we can ask them all to keep going on like this,” Eldyn went on, shaking his head.

“We have to help them,” Merrick said, his dark eyes grim. “You’ve seen what happens to Siltheri who aren’t in the employ of Lord Valhaine, and who make the mistake of being seen.”

Yes, Eldyn had. A few lumenals ago, there had been an impression
on the front page of
The Comet
illustrating exactly this.
The Comet
was the only broadsheet still being published, and like the plays they were forced to perform at the Theater of the Moon, the newspaper contained only those images and stories which the Lord Guardian deemed to be suitably patriotic and emblematic of Altanian values and ideals.

Given this fact, it was now clear what place there would be in the nation for the Siltheri once the war was over. For the impression on the front page had depicted not just three convicted witches dangling from a gibbet before Barrowgate, but two illusionists as well. Only they had not been called such in the article accompanying the impression. Rather, they had been referred to as
stunted male witches, possessed of the most repulsive feminine characteristics, and which ought to have been born female themselves but for a perversion of nature
.

Eldyn didn’t know how it mattered what sex they had been born. Either way, woman or man, if one of Valhaine’s witch-hunters saw you, and glimpsed a light around you, and pointed a finger in your direction, then it was off to Barrowgate you went.

How many witch-hunters Valhaine employed to do this work, no one knew for certain. Nor were they easily spotted out in the city. They were not madmen with their eyes torn out, like the witch-hunters Archdeacon Lemarck had been trying to create. Rather, they were like Rose Lockwell—people who, for some reason, were naturally sensitive to the light that emanated from witches and illusionists. And from magicians. For it was the case that more than a few men who had been accused of practicing magick without proper approval by the government had gone to the gallows—along with any number of others who had done something that was not deemed
emblematic of Altanian values and ideals
.

Eldyn had no idea how many people there were in the world like Lady Quent’s sister. He could not believe they were very common. All the same, Lord Valhaine had found at least a few. And whether they served him out of fear of reprisal if they did not, or
in exchange for money, it made no difference. They could be anywhere, in any place in the city. Which meant it was not safe for an illusionist to show his face in public, unless it was on a stage in one of the few theaters authorized by the government to provide entertainment to the soldiers.

As for the women taken to the gallows—Eldyn doubted that any of them had been aware of their own nature, or had ever seen a stand of Wyrdwood except in a painting. But it did not matter.
A sibyl need not have induced a Rising or aided the illegal rebellion to have committed a crime against Altania
, the article in the broadsheet had stated.
Rather, it is the gravest sort of offense merely to be capable of witchcraft. For once brought in proximity to a grove of Old Trees, how could a witch do anything but serve its will, which is clearly bent upon the destruction of men?

Despite all his misgivings, Eldyn did his best to effect a smile for Merrick’s sake. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure those who are the most weary have the smallest roles. And we’ll construct more props to use in place of phantasms, just as we’ve been doing.”

The other illusionist started to protest, but Eldyn laid a hand on his bony shoulder. “We will all of us be well, Merrick, I promise. All we have to do is keep performing. It doesn’t matter how awful our plays are. There are only two other houses on Durrow Street now with enough illusionists to mount productions for the soldiers. Which means Lord Valhaine needs us.”

Indeed, more soldiers than ever had been marching into the theater of late. It seemed that Lord Valhaine wanted to keep providing his troops with ample patriotic inspiration. Or was it rather that he was trying to distract them from what was happening on the battlefield? No news about rebel victories had been reported in the broadsheets since the West Country fell, but there were rumors in the city that things were not going well for Valhaine, and that Huntley Morden continued to advance on Invarel. For this reason, Valhaine was recalling more and more of his troops to defend the city.

From things Jaimsley had said, and things Eldyn had seen for
himself, he believed there was truth to these rumors. And that gave him hope. It meant they wouldn’t have to keep doing this interminably. All they had to do was hold on until Morden’s men reached the city.

Though how long that would be, Eldyn didn’t know. Soon, he hoped, looking at the weary illusionists. As for Merrick, even in the best of times his was a gloomy perspective, and he looked less than convinced by Eldyn’s words. Before he could speak, though, a welcome visitor appeared upon the stage to congratulate them on their performance, as was the tradition. Only it was not Madame Richelour who came to praise them.

Rather, it was Lily Lockwell.

She wore a ruby-colored gown that surely had been taken from one of Madame Richelour’s closets, and which had been liberally augmented with feathers and beads and bangles. Her cheeks were tinged pink, and her dark hair was worn in a mass of ringlets, all of which had the effect of making her look far more mature than her sixteen years.