Jimmy the Hand (40 page)

‘All
right,’ he said at last. ‘What does this necromancer want
with our blond-haired friend?’

‘In just
four days the three moons will be dark,’ Jarvis said, his
fingers toying idly with a crust of barley-bread. ‘And certain
stars will be in conjunction. At that time . . . well, let’s
say that the wayfarer they picked up and brought back to the manor
would be useful for certain dark arts. Useful in a terminal sense. As
would young Rip, your friend’s brother.’

Jimmy winced. He
was used to beatings, stabbings and affrays: he’d taken part in
them himself. But human sacrifice was another matter altogether.
‘This is getting beyond belief,’ he said. ‘Children,
then wayfarers—’

‘One
specific wayfarer,’ Jarvis said carefully as if reflecting on
that fact.

The old woman
made a noise and her husband tried to shush her, but she pushed him
aside. ‘Four days, you say, priestess’s servant?’

Jarvis bowed.
‘Goodwife.’

‘That
would be seventeen years to the day from the time Mistress Elaine
died in childbed,’ she said. ‘Seventeen years to the very
hour, at midnight.’

Jarvis’s
face changed. A shadow of fear—and maybe disgust—passed
over it.
Uh-oh,
Jimmy thought.
This is bad news.

‘Did you .
. . were you sure she died?’ Jarvis held up his hand. ‘Did
you see the body laid out?’

The midwife
shook her head. ‘He thrust us all out of the room, and later
word was sent that things had been done,’ she said softly.
‘Thrust us all out, but kept with him a chance-met guest he’d
been hosting that night, a scholar.’

‘Ah. I
doubt that it was entirely chance, not on that night—certain
happenings cast their own shadows, forward and backward in time.’
Jarvis looked down at the talisman. ‘Have you anything of the
lady’s?’ he said. ‘Anything that touched her body?’

The old woman
rose and went over to her pole-frame bed and dragged out a cedarwood
chest that looked incongruously fine in the wattle cottage. Prodding
around inside it, she brought out a small bundle wrapped in silk
stained with old, dried blood. ‘She were fond of me, and a kind
lady,’ the midwife said. ‘She knew she could trust old
Meg; many a secret a midwife hears. This she gave me, for
safekeeping. It would have been as much as her life were worth, did
the Baron find it.’

Jimmy came close
as Jarvis took the bundle from the old woman and swept the rough
wooden surface of the table clean of crusts and crockery before he
laid it down and began to unfold it.

‘Should
the talisman be doing that?’ Jimmy asked.

The needle
beneath the crystal lid was jerking; first it pointed southwest,
toward Baron Bernarr’s manor; then it swung towards the bundle.

‘No, it
should not,’ Jarvis said. Inside the silken handkerchief was a
true locket, a delicate shell of electrum. ‘Even if this is the
lady’s blood from the birthing—’

‘It is,’
the old woman said.

‘—or
hair, or nail clippings,’ he went on. ‘The spell is
linked to the similarity of essences. It should be pointing toward
the son.’ Jarvis opened the locket, his fingers probing
delicately for the catch. Within one half was a miniature portrait, a
tiny thing no bigger than Jimmy’s thumb. The other held a
love-knot, a twining of hair braided together, one strand blond, the
other brown. ‘Could you bring me some light, Jimmy?’ he
asked.

Jimmy went to
the hearth. A tube of birch-bark stood on the bare earth beside it,
containing long splints of lightwood from resinous pine, ready to
kindle. He took one and held it to the low flames of the fire. It
hissed and spat as it caught, giving off a resinous, medicinal scent.
Jimmy brought it back to the table, holding it higher and to one side
so that no driblets of hot sap would fall on the table, careful that
none struck him, either.

The light was
wavering and none too bright compared to a candle, but the old couple
had none of those, or even tallow dips, but it was still bright
enough for him to see the handsome blond young man in the portrait.

‘Ruthia!’
Jimmy blurted. ‘That’s the one they took!’

‘No,’
the old woman said. ‘That’s young lord Kethry, by the
name of Zakry, who were Lady Elaine’s friend from Krondor. From
before she met the Baron. Him who disappeared.’

‘Oh-ho,’
Jimmy said. ‘Well, from his looks—’

‘And from
the behaviour of this needle—

‘I’d
say that while the Lady Elaine may have had a son seventeen years
ago, the Baron surely didn’t,’ Jimmy said.

Jarvis gave a
lopsided grin. ‘You can see further than most, Jimmy,’ he
said.

The cottager
sighed. ‘You’ll have to tell them now,’ he said
wearily. ‘No helping it.’

Meg the midwife
nodded. ‘The Baron would have none of his son . . . well, of
the baby. For a moment he was overjoyed to have an heir, but when he
saw his wife at the edge of death, he became a man possessed. He
blamed the baby and told me to get rid of it, so that he would never
see it again. Set it out for the wolves, he meant, but I couldn’t.
So I took it to a farmer I knew—name of Ossrey—near
Relling, whose wife had lost her babe but still had milk. They were
glad to take it in and raise it as their own.’

‘Relling’s
not far south of here, and somewhat east. Still on the Baron’s
land, of course,’ her husband added. ‘He promised never
to speak of it, and to give him credit, I’ve never heard the
rumour come back. Like as not they’ve forgotten the babe wasn’t
theirs; all they knew was the mother died birthing it, and likely
they thought it some serving-girl’s by-blow.’

‘This
makes a good deal of unpleasant sense,’ Jarvis Coe said. ‘The
Baron obviously loved his wife very much.’

‘To
madness,’ Meg said, sitting down on her bed and sighing as she
looked at the cedarwood box. ‘And I never thought she wasn’t
fond of him—even when she took sick after Kethry disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘In a
hunt. Rode off to Krondor, the Baron said, leaving his servants and
traps to be sent on, but nobody saw hide nor hair of him again. Young
Lord Kethry never reached Rillanon.’

Jimmy snorted.
I
know that sort of sudden leave-taking,
he thought.
Bet if you
asked, nobody saw him arrive anywhere else, either. The sea hides a
good many sins.

‘Well . .
.’ Jarvis said, looking at the three of them and obviously
thinking how much to tell. Jimmy raised an ironic eyebrow: it was a
bit late to be cautious about things.

Unless he
plans to leave no witnesses, and I doubt he’s quite that
ruthless.

Jarvis confirmed
his guess by going on: ‘If a magician of the . . . right sort .
. . were at hand, as the lady lay dying, he could . . . not keep her
alive, exactly. Suspend her, between life and death, so that someone
could attempt to heal her entirely later.’ He reached for a
wooden mug of the old couple’s ale. ‘Let me wash out my
mouth! She’d be suspended between life and death . . . for . .
. by the Goddess! Seventeen years, dying every second!’

Jimmy felt the
coarse bread and eternal bean soup turn into a heavy lump under his
breastbone. ‘Lims-Kragma rest her!’ Another thought
struck him. ‘And why do they want her son?’

Remind me
never to get involved with wizards again,
he thought. Looking
back on it, he felt a touch of fear at how lightly he’d dealt
with old Alban Asher, even.

‘Well, the
force of life is released at death. They could try to revive her with
anyone’s, but the more like to like, the easier. Children,
because her life was lost birthing a child. The child himself, best
of all—it’s the natural order that the lives of parents
run on in their children, but it can be forced into reverse.’

The old man spat
into the fire, which hissed.

Jarvis looked
up. ‘We have four days,’ he said. ‘And so does
young—’ He looked down at the locket.

‘Bram,’
Meg said.

‘—Bram,’
Jarvis echoed.

Jimmy sighed. ‘I
suppose, if he loved her that much . . . it’s evil and mad, but
there’s a sort of grandeur to it.’

‘Less than
he thinks,’ Jarvis said. ‘You can get someone back, in a
way, but they’re often . . . changed. Unsealing the boundaries
of life and death lets . . . other things . . . in.’ He closed
his eyes. ‘Things that once in our world are most difficult to
cast out.’ Coe let out a long sigh, as he contemplated what
that meant.

Jimmy felt the
hair on the back of his neck and arms rise up, and wished more than
ever he had just lain low in Krondor and not tried to be so heroic.

Rip tried to
peer through the hole.

‘Chain him
well,’ the old man’s voice said. ‘And keep that bag
on his head, I told you!’

Rip slid back
down with a muffled gasp. The problem with the peepholes in the
secret passages was that they were made for grown-ups.

Another voice
sounded—the weasel voice.

‘As you
wish, my lord. Ah, my lord—’

‘You’ll
get the rest of your money, oaf. I don’t keep that much cash
here: my man of business in Land’s End will bring it up next
week. I have need of you anyway, until then. Be silent, and go—’

Chains clanked.
‘Your son is waking, my lord,’ said the oily man’s
voice. ‘Perhaps we should leave. I have examined him, and apart
from a few scrapes and bruises, he is healthy enough. More than
healthy enough to last three days.’

‘Do not
call him my son, ever again,’ the old man’s voice said,
softly menacing. ‘He murdered my lady Elaine.’

Steps faded
away, and the lantern-light through the peephole went out as the
outer door of the room thudded shut; they could hear the key turn in
the lock.

‘They
caught someone else?’ Mandy said. ‘And chained him up?’

Rip nodded, and
made an affirmative sound in his throat.

‘That’s
cruel,’ Neesa said. ‘I mean, even more cruel.’

‘But the
old man said he was his son,’ Rip said, frowning.

‘You mean
he chained up his own son?’ Kay asked, sounding horrified and
delighted at once. ‘Like the Wicked King and the Good Prince?’

‘Let’s
go and look,’ Rip said.

He felt for the
catches of the secret door, and they stepped into the room. It was
bare and empty, with a stone floor and stone walls, and was lit dimly
by one barred window high up on the far side. It was not large, as
rooms went in the big manor. Rip thought it might have been used to
store things once: it was on the ground level near the kitchens,
which made it chilly and damp.

‘That’s
a grown-up!’ Neesa said, her whisper carrying too clearly.

The figure
chained to the opposite wall raised his head. He was a tall young man
with a burlap sack over his head; for the rest he wore only breeches
and shirt. There were manacles on his wrists, running down to an iron
ring that also held the ones that joined his ankles: if he’d
been standing he’d have had to stoop, and take small steps.
Another chain ran from one ankle to an iron bolt driven deep into the
stone of one wall. There was a basin of water and a slop bucket
within reach, but otherwise he couldn’t go beyond a semicircle
six feet in circumference.

‘Who’s
there?’ he asked groggily.

Hope blazed up
in Rip, and he felt giddy with excitement. He dashed across the
stone, making shushing sounds, and fumbled at the drawstring that
held the bag over the young man’s head. Hands closed on him,
strong but not hurtful.

‘Bram!’
Rip squealed, remembering to be quiet at the last minute.

‘Rip! Rip,
lad!’ Bram said, and hugged him.

Rip hugged him
back; it felt so good to see a familiar face.

‘I came to
rescue you!’ Bram said, laughing, as he held the boy at arms’
length.

‘And now I
can rescue you!’ Rip said, delighted. ‘I’ve got
keys.’

Bram laughed
ruefully and held up his manacled wrists, turning them so that Rip
could see them in the dim, fading light. There were no keyholes, just
an overlapping joint with a thin rod of soft wrought iron pushed
through it and peened over with a hammer.

‘Did that
on an anvil, and the feet are the same,’ Bram said ruefully. ‘I
remember that much, and the two who caught me—folk’d pay
to see that fight, and laugh themselves silly, I’ve no doubt.’

‘A big
strong one and a skinny one who talks like a weasel?’ Rip said.

‘The
same,’ Bram replied. ‘And so unless you’ve a cold
chisel and a hammer, Rip lad, you’re not setting me free.’

He looked beyond
the boy at the children, who stood looking back big-eyed; Neesa
hugged her doll to her side, and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Bram’s
expression softened.

‘Well, but
you’re not kept close here, then?’ he said.

‘We were,’
Rip said. ‘We got out.’

‘It was
Rip’s idea,’ Mandy said. ‘We tripped the man who
came with our food.’

‘And tied
him up!’ Kay said, grinning.

‘And then
we pulled a sheet over him and tied that up,’ Mandy put in,
shyly touching her white-blonde hair.

‘And I hit
him with a candlestick,’ Neesa put in with a grin.

‘Well
done, the lot of you,’ Bram said. ‘Though I should have
known Rip was up to it, after he put that itchweed powder in my
breeches while I was swimming, last year.’

Rip blushed and
others looked at him with awed respect.

‘Did Ma
and Pa send you?’ he asked eagerly.

Bram’s
face changed. ‘Lad—’ he said. ‘I have grave
news, and no time being gentle in telling you.’ He explained
about Rip’s parents, glossing over the details of their death,
then rapidly assured him Lorrie was safe in Land’s End.

Rip collapsed
against him; the tears didn’t last long, though. He’d
done his fair share of crying since being taken, in the dark where
nobody could see. After a moment he felt the children crowding
around, and Bram’s other arm went around them too, as far as he
could reach.