The Poisoned Crown (16 page)

The following evening Annie walked over to Thornyhill. There was a wind seething in the treetops, sending the last of the leaves scurrying down the road. Even without the gnomons, the wood seemed to be full of spirits—not the sinister phantoms of the Grail but strange, wild spirits with strange, wild purposes of their own. A restlessness crept over her, as if she was infected with some of that wildness, a feeling unlike any she had ever known. All her life she had run with fate, fighting the small battles that came her way, bracing herself for the bigger ones. Accepting, coping, but never challenging, never defying. Loving Nathan completely, she had rarely thought about her emotions for his true father, the being who had taken her without her permission, in some dimension beyond her will—taken not just her body but a piece of her soul, giving her a child not in love but for some goal too obscure to comprehend. Yet the seed of emotion was there, long dormant, perhaps not a seed but an ember, a smolder; she could feel the
flicker of it kindling inside her, waking another Annie, an Annie who was everything she wasn’t. An Annie who would burn down the barriers between worlds, who would find him if it took a thousand lives, a thousand deaths, who would find him and face him and make him pay.
He had no right!
The words scorched across her heart. She fought down the flame and the fury, but the other Annie remained, just under the skin, changing her—changing her for all time. I
love Nathan
, she thought,
I would give my life for him. But it isn’t for him I want to know. It’s for me.

It’s for me …

Opening the door to her at Thornyhill, Bartlemy felt that a little of the night came in with her—a breath of the wind’s wildness, a sense of lost seasons blowing away like leaves. She had always seemed such a gentle creature, slight and soft, with her heart-shaped face, her wispy mouse-brown curls, the secret strength barely visible in the set of her mouth, the openness of her gaze. But now she appeared suddenly lit up, both pale and glowing, a hint of glitter in her eyes.
She looks almost beautiful
, Bartlemy thought,
almost dangerous …
And he was troubled, because he loved her as if she were indeed his niece, and although he had lived fifteen hundred years he still had everything to learn about women.

He said, “Do you want some tea?” but she declined, accepting a drink instead, the dark strong drink that she guessed he brewed himself. She swallowed it quickly, out of not bravado but impatience, scarcely feeling the heat of it in her throat.

In the living room Bartlemy had already drawn the curtains, rolled back the rug. The blackening of former circles showed like a brand on the boards. He had sprinkled the powder around the perimeter, traced the Runes of Protection outside. Annie sat in a chair safely out of range, with Hoover beside her. Bartlemy lit the spellfire on the hearth and extinguished the electrical lamps, so the light was blue and flickering. Then he spoke the word and the powder ignited, etching both circle and runes in thin lines of flame. Annie had seen the routine before, finding it both fearful and curiously banal, since Bartlemy’s attitude remained efficient and matter-of-fact, devoid of melodrama. But now the
urgency of her need consumed all other feelings. She sat tautly, leaning forward, unconscious of Hoover’s body pressed against her legs, offering protection—or restraint.

Bartlemy spoke briefly in the language of the Stone—the same language the Grandir used for spell and sorcery—the language of power throughout the multiverse. A faint mist appeared at the hub of the circle, shaping itself into a seated figure, ghost-pale but veiled in red. It lifted a transparent hand where the tracery of bone showed through phantom flesh and drew back the veil. The face beneath was equally dim, skull and skin melding one into the other, the eyes empty. But the apparition held in its other hand a small orb that it placed in one eye socket; the orb glowed into definition and color, focusing on some remote point far beyond the borders of both spell and circle.

Bartlemy said: “Greeting, Ragnlech.”

“Who disturbs our meditation?” As ever, the voice of the seeress echoed strangely, as if many voices blended into one. “We are the sisterhood; we are not to be summoned lightly. We are watching for the hour of Doom.”

“Will it be soon?” Bartlemy asked with the hint of a frown.

“The portents are unclear. But the old spells are disintegrating; new spells must take their place. There is a break in the Pattern, the Balance begins to fail. We have no time for lesser matters.”

“Yet the lesser matters, too, have their part,” Bartlemy said. “You know me, Ragnlech. I have been involved in these things for some while.” The seeress bowed her head as if in affirmation. “There is a child who may be in peril, Romany Macaire. She lives at Riverside House, where Nenufar the water spirit once dwelled in the form of a mortal woman. I believe Nenufar still hopes to obtain one of the Grail relics for her own purposes. She could be using this child. What can you see of all this?”

“The Three are shielded,” the sibyl said. “I have told you before. We cannot see them—it hurts our Eye. It hurts … it hurts …” Red tears ran down her cheek from the socket that was occupied, dripping into nothingness. “We will not look farther. We are watching the Pattern … There is a child, but she is not significant. The werespirit uses
what she can. They are too close to the breakpoint—the point of power. We will not look!”

“So as the hour of Doom approaches you will watch the Pattern, not the flaw,” Bartlemy mused. “A useful task for a seeress.”

“We have given warning—”

“But few details.”

“It is enough.” The form of Ragnlech started to fade. “I
will
go—”

“One more question.” Something in Bartlemy’s tone, a note of spell-power or Command, called her back. “Nothing to do with the Three. There is a boy living here, now fifteen. Nathan Ward. Tell me the name of his father.”

There was a silence. The Eye glowed brighter: red veins stood out on its surface, like cracks in marble. Annie thought she could see it beginning to pulsate.

“Forgive me,” Bartlemy said. “It is such a simple question. One for a streetwitch or a reader of tea leaves, not for the sisterhood.”

“We cannot—see!” The wraith-hands flexed and clenched. “The doom is in him—in
him.
Nathan Ward … the child of two worlds! His father’s name is beyond the Gate—beyond the Veil of Being. It is written in the stars of another world. We cannot see—we cannot look—”

Bartlemy murmured a word, made a gesture of dismissal. The sibyl faded, taking her Eye with her.

Annie whispered: “The doom … is in
Nathan?”

“Riddles,” said Bartlemy. “Empty riddles. She told us nothing we don’t already know. But she is a seeress; she has a reputation to protect. The sisterhood know how to elaborate on blindness. Do you want to go on?”

“Yes,” Annie said. She was shaking, but her resolution was unchanged.

Bartlemy turned back to the circle, resumed the summons. The old crone whom Annie had seen once before appeared, half bald and mumbling on her single tooth.

“Hexaté,” said Bartlemy. “You were not called.”

“There was talk of a child,” the crone said with unexpected clarity. “And Nephthys—my sister Nephthys. We shared the ceremonies, binding
earth and water. We drank the blood together—wine and blood— blood and wine. We danced in the moondark. They brought us children for the sacrifice, always girls, no more than six or eight years old, plump and sweet. Plump and sweet! We roasted them in the spellfire and ate their flesh. Are the ceremonies to begin again? Have they brought a fresh young child for us to share? I cannot smell the roasting flesh … Where is Nephthys?”

“Go back to sleep,” Bartlemy said. “The fires you speak of are long cold. This is another spellfire, one not used for roasting children. Go back to sleep!”

“Nephthys … my sister in kind, my sister in kin … She will need me, or the rites will not be complete …”

“She has other fish to fry. Literally, I suspect. Begone!” The archaic order seemed to penetrate the fog of the werewoman’s mind: she glanced around with extraordinary speed, as if someone had tapped on her shoulder, then vanished in a trail of yellowish smoke and a smell of decay.

“She still hangs around,” Bartlemy remarked, “clinging to her memories. Senility in a mortal is a disease of the mind and the body, but not the soul. Senility in a spirit is something else. A turning inward, a clutching at the past—almost self-indulgence. She may malinger for centuries. There is, I’m afraid, nothing to be done.”

Annie said only: “Go on.”

She wondered briefly what had happened to the good guys, the fairy godmothers who would bless the princess in her cradle, send the kitchen maid to the ball, find the loophole in every wicked enchantment. Gone back to the children’s books from which they came, she thought. And even in children’s books, all the oldest stories were about blood. The Ugly Sisters cutting off their toes to fit their feet into the crystal slipper—the old witch in her gingerbread house who tried to push Hansel and Gretel into the oven … In the end, there was always blood.

Children like stories about blood. Grown-ups know better.

Bartlemy had switched back to Atlantean, repeating the incantation. The air thickened within the circle; another figure materialized. A
tall figure with the antlers of a stag and a savage, swarthy, slant-eyed face, not quite human, not quite animal. He wore only a few ragged skins, and the hair on his chest and arms was as dense as a pelt.

“Cerne,” said Bartlemy.

“Wizard,” said the Hunter.

“You are the Lord of the Wood,” Bartlemy continued. “The lord of all woods, or so they say. What do you know of the water spirit who trespasses on your territory?”

“I do not fear her,” Cerne replied, in something close to a growl.

“I never asked if you did,” Bartlemy murmured. “So she is to be feared, even by such as you? Well, well. I asked what you knew of her.”

“She comes rarely to my domain; she dare not. The sea is her kingdom and her retreat. But there is a word on the wind and in the chatter of the streams, a word in the whispers of the night. They say a portal will open, or be opened—a key has been found to a Gate without any keyhole. A time is drawing near that will change all things. Werespirits may no longer be bound to this world; there may yet be a way through. I heard of a region where the trees go on forever. I would give much to see it.”

“I believe I know the place you mean,” Bartlemy said. “You might be disappointed. The Deepwoods of Wilderslee stretch far, but not forever. There are realms of men there, too.”

“There would be,” Cerne snarled. “Mankind is a plague that rages through all the worlds. Nonetheless, she whom we spoke of thinks to find a place without Men, a dimension of the Sea. Maybe she would draw a storm from it to wreak havoc in the shorelands here. She wants worship and power again—she is not content with her exile in the dark.”

“Is she using a child as her instrument?”

“Perhaps. I do not know. The fate of mortals does not concern me.”

“It should,” said Bartlemy. “In the world Nenufar wants to reach, men and trees drowned together. No matter. What do you know of the boy whom the sisterhood say is born of two worlds? Can you tell me his father’s name?”

The Hunter’s whiteless eyes became twin pits of flame. “What is this? Am I a servant to be summoned thus for questioning? Or do you mock me?”

“I would not—”

“You call him
boy
—you flatter him! The bastard brat born of two kinds—the witch’s brat with his father’s seed, a seed that could never germinate, never endow him with life! You know the story—who does not? Why taunt me with it?”

“Ah,” said Bartlemy with sudden comprehension.
“Him.”

“I took her body and she took mine—my impress, my heritage, flesh of my flesh. She made him—an infant botched together from witch woman and wood god, animated by a spirit plucked from who-knew-what infernal region—a monster of neither her world nor mine. What would you want with
him?
As for his father’s name—who is there who does not know my shame?”

“You misunderstood me,” Bartlemy said. “I did not allude to the witch’s child, nor wish to offend you. If I have done so, I ask your pardon.”

“If—!” Cerne laughed bitterly. “Be careful how you talk to me, wizard. It is not well to offend one of the Oldest—especially for a fat soup stirrer who prefers to remain out of trouble.”

Bartlemy ignored both insult and menace, as he invariably did. Maybe he had heard it too often before.

“The boy I spoke of is all human,” he said, coming back to the point, “but his father is from another universe. It is
his
name I seek.”

“That would be impossible,” Cerne said contemptuously. “No child could be so fathered, human or otherwise. The Gate does not open for a moment of lust. When mortals pass through, they do not return.”

“Yet you said the portal
will
open, for mortal and immortal alike. If it
will
, then maybe it already has.”

“Mere speculation.” Cerne shrugged. “If small talk is all you want of me—”

“The seeress said the hour of Doom was approaching,” Bartlemy said. “Whose doom?”

“I do not know.” A sudden dark smile curved the Hunter’s mouth, changing his face into a diabolical mask. “But we may yet hope it is the Doom of Man!”

Bartlemy let him go without further questions.

“What was all that about his son?” Annie asked.

“I touched a nerve I did not intend,” Bartlemy said. “Old Spirits cannot procreate; it is the usual price of immortality. They have no need to pass on their genes. But once, a very long time ago, Cerne had a liaison with a young witch who used her power to make his seed grow inside her. The thing in her womb had no life, no glimmer of a soul to animate it, so she took a spirit from some unearthly plane and bound it in the fetus for all time. She hoped, I think, to create something superhuman—mortal and werespirit combined—but instead she made a monster. Cerne hated her for her betrayal of him, and hated the son as the symbol of that betrayal. The witch, too, hated her failure—the aberration of her power. And the monster child hated them both.”