Belladonna (15 page)

Heart's hope lies within belladonna.

A warmth, a tug that suddenly turned into a longing so fierce it was almost painful. He could feel her, smell her, hear the music in her heart. The dark-haired woman who had been filling his dreams lately.

Dreams, Aunt Brighid had said. Portents.

Could his dream lover be the key to the riddle? Could she lead him to the Warrior of Light?

"Michael?"

He opened his eyes and noticed the glass of whiskey. He drank it down, wanting the heat of it to warm a cold that suddenly filled his bones.

"Trouble at home?" Kenneday asked.

"I'm not sure," Michael replied. "But I'll take your offer."

Kenneday started to push back his chair. "Then let's get you settled. We sail with the morning tide."

Michael shook his head, then leaned over and rummaged in his pack. When he straightened up, he held his whistle. "Give me an hour here."

Heart's hope lies within belladonna.

He let the rhythm of the words fill his heart, his body, and then let the words shape the music that flowed from him as he played no particular tune. He could sense something quivering in response to the music, had the strange sensation of the ground turning under the building to align itself with ... What?

He had no answer, so he concentrated on the music — and hoped he would dream of his dark-haired lover. He wanted that last memory of her as a talisman when he sailed through water where Evil dwelled.

Chapter Eleven

I
t flowed from the sea to the land, a shadow under stone, a feeling of menace that made horses bolt and run wild through the village streets, made penned animals fling themselves at their enclosures until they broke free — or ruined themselves in the attempt —

made women, for no reason they could explain, snatch up their children and bring them inside, ignoring the wails and protests that toys had been left behind.

As It flowed beneath the earth, It sent the force of Its own rage through the Dark currents that ran through the land around the village of Raven's Hill. It could sense the presence of the Landscaper who had helped the True Enemy hide the Place of Light, but It couldn't find her. Somewhere on that hillside. There and yet gone. Somewhere.

Frustrated and furious, It paused on the edge of a well-tended lawn, a darker shadow among the shadows cast by stones and trees. Paused and stretched Its mental tentacles to touch the minds of the villagers.

And, oh, wasn't this delicious? These foolish humans looked on the Landscaper with distrust, not realizing she was their protector, that her presence spared them from the stains within their own hearts.

Sorceress? Yes,
It whispered.
Yes, she is a servant of evil. She covets what you have, wants to destroy what you hold dear.

Nothing good has come from that family. Nothing ever will.

Hearts wavered. Were seduced. Fed the Dark currents. One heart blazed with the Light and one heart was too anchored in the currents of Light to be completely swayed, but even in those hearts It found shadows of doubt.

It flowed along the base of the hillside until It reached the path that led upward. Like other animals, humans had game trails they followed. The Landscaper traveled this one often. It could feel her resonance in the earth.

It could feel something else too — a tangle of currents so bloated with the Dark and resonating so strongly with It that Ephemera gave up that piece of itself with no resistance.

And part of the meadow behind the cottage near the hill changed to rust-colored sand.

Satisfied, the Eater of the World rested — and waited.

*

Michael tucked the tin whistle inside his pack, secured the pack's flap, then set it aside where it would be out of the men's way but within easy reach when they finally dropped anchor at Raven's Hill.

He was glad his presence and his music had eased the hearts of Captain Kenneday's crew, but he hoped by all that was holy that he wouldn't be ready to leave when Kenneday sailed back this way, hoped he could find a reason — or an excuse — for taking the roads to head back to the villages that made up his circuit. Because he didn't want to sail through that stretch of water again, even knowing that it would be hard for Kenneday and his men to make that part of the journey without him.

What was out there was no story told by the surviving fishermen in order to explain a tragedy. Kenneday's ship had had a clear sky, a good wind, and no hint of anything unnatural. Then they sailed into fog.

He'd heard the voices of the dead men. A chill had gone through him, as if he'd stepped out of the sun into deep shadow. So he'd picked up his whistle, and he'd played. At first the tunes were laced with sorrow and were a salute to the dead and the families who mourned the lost men. Then he eased into tunes that threaded hope into the melody. The fog thinned, the voices of the dead faded, a hazy sun shone overhead, and he imagined he could see a faint glow around each man as, one by one, they shed their despair and believed they would reach clean water again.

When they finally sailed clear of that terrible stretch of water, Kenneday looked at his pocket watch — and discovered they had been lost in the fog for three hours.

No, he didn't want to sail through that stretch of water again, but as he had played, a thought had danced with his tunes.

Maybe his brain had gotten addled in the fog, but if not, the feeling people had of a journey being shorter or longer than usual might not be just a feeling after all.

Leaving his pack, Michael made his way to the stern, where Kenneday was manning the wheel.

Kenneday smiled as Michael came up to stand beside him. "We'll have you home in time for tea, Michael. That we will."

Then he looked away. "I'm grateful for your help. If you hadn't been on board. . . Well, we might still be sailing in that fog, becoming more of the lost men, if it hadn't been for you."

Michael gave the captain a sharp, assessing look and decided Kenneday believed what he said.

And it is true,
Michael thought.
If this isn't more than fevered imaginings, a ship might never leave that stretch of water if the
men on board start believing they'll never get free of that haunted place.

"I think there's a way to avoid the fog," Michael said.

"What? Sailing clear around Elandar every time I have a supply run between ports in the north and south? That would put days on every trip."

"You don't have to avoid this part of Elandar, just that stretch of water." When Kenneday made a dismissive sound, Michael clamped one hand on the captain's forearm. "Listen to me. The bad water is where those five fishing boats were destroyed. Talk to the men who were in the other boats. You can be sure they know how far out they were when that monster rose from the sea.

Damn the darkness, man, you and the other captains can figure out the position of a safe channel that will keep ships from sailing into that water. You mark other dangers; why not this one?"

"Because this one is different."

Kenneday might be arguing, but Michael heard the underlying hope in the man's voice.

"This one has boundaries, same as any other piece of dangerous water," Michael said. "I don't know how I know that, but I
know
it. And I'm thinking the area inside those boundaries is never any smaller than the area where those fishing boats were destroyed, but it can expand to be as big as a person believes it to be."

"That's crazy talk."

"Is it? Then how do you explain us being in that fog for three hours?"

Kenneday hesitated, then shook his head. "I can't."

You said yourself there's something strange about this world. I'm thinking it's gotten stranger. So maybe there's someone out there who knows what is happening and what to do about it."

His dream lover's face filled his mind. Would she understand Ephemera's strangeness? Did she know the answer to the riddle his aunt had sent him?

Maybe you've been alone too long.

Where had
that
thought come from?

"Michael?"

The sharpness in Kenneday's voice brought him hack — and he realized he was now holding the man's arm in a painful grip.

"Sorry. My mind wandered." He took a step back and tucked both hands in his pockets.

"I'll talk to the other captains about marking a channel." Kenneday tried to smile, but worry filled his eyes. "After all, we can't always have a luck-bringer on board with us."

The truth of it, and the unasked question under it, caused an awkward silence between them.

"I'd best pull my gear together," Michael said. Since Kenneday would have seen him checking his pack, it was a poor lie, but it served its purpose.

Michael paused near his pack, then didn't even pretend to check his gear. He went to the rail and looked toward the shore. He wanted to go home,
needed
to go home.

But as he looked at the shore, he suddenly had the feeling "home" was a place he hadn't seen yet.

*

"What are you playing at now?" Caitlin muttered. "If I don't get back in time to help Aunt Brighid put tea on the table, there will be nothing but cold silence this evening."

When there was no response to her words, she rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead as if that might scrub away the day's frustrations. How many times over the years had she used the old hoe to work the soil in that part of the garden? There shouldn't have been any stones there, let alone a big stone buried under the soil just deep enough and just at the wrong angle.

Giving the broken hoe handle a sour look, she used the jagged end to poke at what should have been the path leading down the hill to the cottage.

It should have been a simple day of weeding and tending the garden, but everything had been harder to do. The ground held on to weeds with a perverse tenacity. For the first time since it appeared in her garden, the knee-deep pool of water at the base of the little waterfall held no more than a finger length of silty water at the bottom, so she'd had to let the bucket fill by leaving it under the falls — and yet the surrounding beds weren't saturated.

"Maybe I've found where the water drained," Caitlin said, lifting the now-muddy end of the hoe. The path, which had been dry when she walked up it that morning, was now ankle-deep mud for several man-lengths. And now that part of the path was bordered by thorny, impenetrable bushes that had sprung up in the few hours she'd spent in her garden.

"I need to go home," Caitlin said. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I need to go home."

She waited and watched. The path didn't change. The bushes didn't sink into the ground to give her an easy way to skirt around the mud and pick up the path farther down the hill.

Giving the thorny bushes a hard whack with her hoe handle, she retreated up the path. Then she set off through the trees. If the hillside behaved, she should come down close to where the path crossed the meadow behind the cottage.

But as she picked her way through the trees, watching for ankle-twisting roots and dips in the ground, she couldn't shake the feeling that Ephemera really was trying to stop her from going back to the cottage.

The Eater of the World flowed through Raven's Hill, nurturing the bogs of doubt and fear that lived in human hearts.

Yes,
it whispered to three boys whose hearts already embraced the Dark.
The woman in the cottage. Nothing but a hag
,
a
whore, an old liar rejected by the Ladies of Light. She sullies the village with her presence.

As the boys headed for the cottage that held the heart full of Light, the Eater of the World drifted back toward the harbor.

Something on the water was producing a faint resonance with this place. Something strong enough to
leave
a resonance, despite the murky bedrock of the Landscaper's heart.

Whatever was coming would never leave again. The Eater — and the sea — would make sure of that.

*

Uneasiness became an itch under Michael's skin. He knew Kenneday and the crew were becoming infected by his uneasiness, but he couldn't stop prowling from one end of the ship to the other, watching the sea, the shore, the sky. Something out there. But what was it? And
where
was it?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kenneday hand over the wheel to the first mate, so he stayed by the rail and waited for the captain to approach.

"Is there something you need to be telling me, Michael?" Kenneday asked.

Michael shook his head. "I need to get home." The moment he spoke the words, the certainty of it was like a fist pounding against his heart. "I just need to get home."

"We should have you ashore in another hour or so. Not in time for tea, I'm afraid, but maybe in time for supper if the wind doesn't die on us again." Kenneday hesitated, then added, "If you'd come north by land, it would have taken you longer, even with the delay we had in that fog."

Hearing a defensive apology in the words, Michael offered an understanding smile. "I know that. I've just been anxious since I read my aunt's letter. I'll feel easier when I find out the fuss turned out to be a trifling matter."
I'll feel easier when I know for
certain that an hour from now isn't an hour too late.

But that wasn't something he wanted to think about because he had the strangest feeling that if he thought about it, and truly believed it, he would make it true.