Pilgrim (48 page)

Lines of light hung in the air before the lizard. It had drawn a symbol variously composed of circles and three-dimensional pyramids, the lines of both circles and pyramids interconnecting in two score places.

The symbol of light was large, perhaps the height of a man and the same dimension in width and depth.

“It is an enchantment!” Faraday said.

“Yes,” Drago replied, not taking his eyes from the symbol. “An enchantment made visible.

“And,” he placed his staff on the floor, “an enchantment with walls.”

Without apparent fear, or even overdue caution, Drago reached out with both hands and seized the enchantment. It quivered lightly as it felt his grasp, but floated gently towards him as he pulled his arms back.

“Faraday?” Drago said. “Will you take hold of its other side?”

Faraday walked slowly about Drago, and the lizard—which had dropped to the floor and had its head resting incuriously on its forelegs—and took hold of the enchantment directly across from Drago.

It felt warm to her touch, and quivered softly with vibrant life.

She laughed, and Drago grinned at her wonder. “Lift it a little higher,” he said, and together they raised it until their hands held it above their heads.

“Now, take a step back,” Drago said, and as Faraday did this, so did he, and to Faraday’s amazement, the enchantment stretched.

“And another,” Drago said, and so they stepped yet further back until, under Drago’s direction, they had stretched the enchantment to twice its former size.

Through all this the enchantment held shape and
dimension, and the lines of light did not seem to lose any of their thickness or vibrancy. The lizard blinked, pleased with itself. Katie had sunk to the floor, eyes wide with marvel.

The creature had not stopped shrieking the entire time.

Under Drago’s murmured instructions, Faraday helped him shift the enchantment until they held it high above the creature’s head.

It was quiet with horror now, and cowered as close to the floor as it could get.

“Let it go,” Drago murmured, and Faraday did so.

The enchantment trembled, then slowly sank.

The creature went completely wild, more than it had yet done. It howled and squealed, and threw itself about so violently that Faraday was sure it would manage to break every bone in its body.

“Drago!” she cried.

“Wait,” he said. “It will be all right soon.”

And so it was, for within the space of two breaths the enchantment settled to the floor, pinning the creature inside its cage of light. The enchantment had now taken a circular three-dimensional form, and it rose in a series of spheres and pyramids above the creature.

The creature was now still and completely silent.

Faraday looked over the rising, pulsing lines of light towards Drago, her eyes wide with questions.

He chose not to answer them.

Instead, Drago slowly walked about the enchantment, as if considering it. As he walked, he reached inside his sack, and drew out the mixing bowl he’d taken from Sigholt’s kitchens.

Faraday’s eyes, if possible, grew even wider. How had he got that bowl inside that tiny sack?

Balancing the bowl in the crook of his left arm, Drago—still walking slowly about the enchantment—reached inside the sack again, and drew out what appeared to be tiny pinches of dust, which he sprinkled into the bowl.

Faraday stepped back as he approached her, giving him room to move freely, and just watched.

Again and again Drago’s hand dipped into the sack, always drawing forth what appeared to be nothing but pinches of dust. He continued to walk about the circle of the enchantment, his eyes never leaving it, until he had completed his circuit. Then he stopped, and stared into the bowl. His face was puzzled, as if he’d forgotten the recipe.

“You need this,” Katie said, standing up and walking over to the lizard. She squatted down beside him, and gently lifted one of his claws.

Then, with a swift, stunning movement, she plunged the tip of the claw into the pad of her forefinger.

Faraday cried out softly and started forward, but Drago waved her away. Faraday halted, undecided, looking between first Katie, and then Drago.

A fat, bright scarlet drop of blood glistened on the end of Katie’s forefinger. Slowly, and with the utmost caution and concentration, Katie rose and stepped over to Drago.

Once there, she slowly raised her hand, careful not to spill the drop of blood prematurely, and then, once it hung over the bowl, let it roll down into the mixture with an audible sigh of relief.

Drago stared at her with a mixture of awe and sadness, finally understanding what—or who—she was.

“I thank you,” he whispered, and bowed slightly.

“Nay,” Katie said, “it is I who will one day thank you.”

She put her finger into her mouth and sucked it, and the wisdom in her eyes faded back to that of childish curiosity.

Drago put the bowl on the floor, and retrieved his staff. Standing very straight, he dipped the end of the staff into the bowl and began to blend the mixture.

His face was intense, every movement deliberate and almost part of a carefully rehearsed dance.

Faraday blinked. Her senses were overwhelmed by the scent and sight of a vast plain of wildflowers, dancing in the
wind even as they reached for the sun. Birds and butterflies dipped and swayed above the waving sea of blossom, and Faraday thought that in the distance she could hear the crashing waves of the ocean.

All she wanted to do was to run through the flowers, run until she was exhausted, and then collapse wondrous within their midst, letting the beauty envelop her…

She blinked again. The flowers had vanished, and the room was before her.

Both Katie and the lizard were staring at her, but Faraday did not see them.

All she saw was Drago…Drago now dipping the staff into the bowl, now withdrawing it glistening with a liquid Faraday could not identify, and tracing the end of the staff over the lines of the enchantment.

Everywhere the glistening tip of the staff traced, flowed colour—every colour of the rainbow, until the entire enchantment glimmered and shifted with a thousand shades and permutations of colour. Overcome with its beauty, and the sheer beauty of Drago’s enchantment—had StarDrifter or Axis
ever
created anything so wondrous?—Faraday’s eyes glistened with tears.

Drago had finished with the enchantment. He raised the staff one more time, dipped it into the bowl, and then sharply struck the floor with its tip three times, and then twice more.

The enchantment collapsed inwards. It fell over the creature, covering every pore of its skin, and then…then it slowly sank in.

Faraday could understand it in no other terms. For an instant she’d thought the enchantment was evaporating, but then she’d realised it was actually sinking through the pores of the skin of—

Leagh twisted over, and gave a hoarse cry of horror. She wrapped her arms about herself, and curled up to hide her nakedness.

“Faraday!” Drago said, and Faraday swiftly knelt beside Leagh, gathering the woman into her arms, and hiding her face against her shoulder so that she should never see the pitiful state in which she’d been living.

Drago strode over to the door that connected to the adjoining chamber, ordered out Zared and the two waiting women who stood there, and grabbed a blanket from the bed.

He returned, and helped Faraday to wrap Leagh in the blanket.

“Leave us,” Faraday said quietly, her arms tight about Leagh, and Drago nodded.

He retrieved the bowl, slipping it back into the sack where it apparently disappeared without trace, picked up the staff, took Katie by the hand, and prodded the lizard with the toe of his boot.

The outer door swung closed behind them, and Faraday lowered her face into Leagh’s filthy hair and wept.

F
araday sat there a very long time, holding the shivering woman in her arms, and weeping. Then she sniffed, wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, and resolved to cry no more this day—this was a day for joy, not grief.

It took some effort for Faraday to persuade Leagh to her feet, and even then she was weak and hardly able to walk. Finally, as they stumbled towards the adjoining chamber, Leagh found her voice.

“Askam,” she croaked.

“He betrayed you,” Faraday said, “and brought you to this.”

“Why?” Leagh whispered. “Why, why, why?”

Faraday did not know if she was asking why Askam had done this to her, or why she’d sunk to such a dreadful physical state. Having considered, and not known what to answer to either question, Faraday chose instead to remain silent, guiding Leagh towards a great tub of water that stood steaming before a leaping fire.

“Oh, ye gods!” Leagh wept as Faraday let the blanket fall to the floor, and she saw the full extent of her depravation in the light of the fire. “How…did I get to such a state…what…Faraday? Why are you here? Where is Zared? Why am I—”

“Hush,” Faraday murmured. “One of the first things my mother taught me was that no-one can fully understand any answers when the first thing they need is a bath, a meal, and then some rest.”

“But—”

“Lift this foot. Good. Now the other one.”

Leagh gasped as she sank down into the hot water, partly in shock, partly in pain, as the heat bit into her scratches and sores, and part in sheer wonderment at the comforting embrace of the water.

Faraday rinsed out a cloth, lathered it with soap, and washed Leagh down, wondering wryly if she was to be condemned—through
all
her lives—to repeating the actions of her first. Here she knelt by the tub washing a pregnant Leagh as she had once sat on Azhure’s bed and washed her, feeling the malevolence that even then had emanated from the belly swollen with the infant Drago.

Now? Faraday’s hand slid gently over Leagh’s belly, feeling the life within. What had happened to it? Had
it
been reborn, redeemed, as Leagh had?

Or…?

Leagh’s hand closed over hers, pressing it against her belly.

“Tell me,” she said, staring at Faraday.

Faraday hesitated, then felt for the baby with all the power she possessed, bending her head down so that the ends of her chestnut hair trailed through the bath water.

Suddenly Faraday snatched her hand away and rocked back on her heels, covering her face with her hands. And then, despite her resolve of only a few minutes before, she burst into tears.

“Faraday?” Leagh cried in panic.

But Faraday slowly lowered her hands, and Leagh saw that she was crying in joy.

“Did you know,” Faraday said, “that you have a field of flowers growing within you?”

Deep in the hours after midnight Theod and Herme sat at the small table, a jug of rich ale between them. Several empty jugs lay on the floor.

“What’s happening?” Theod asked a fortieth time. His voice was hoarse, halfway between anger and desperation.

What was happening?

What?

A footstep, and both men jerked their heads up.

Zared.

He looked between the two of them, then his gaze settled on Theod.

“My friend,” he said in a voice very gentle. “I think this is something you should see.”

Theod stood up, stumbled, knocked the chair over, then gained enough control of himself to walk in a reasonably steady fashion over to Zared. Zared took his arm, and turned him for the door.

“May I?” Herme stood also, and Zared looked over his shoulder.

“Yes. If I thought it possible, I would ask the entire city to see this wonder…but I think it is a feat that perchance they will see soon enough anyway.”

Theod stood before Leagh’s bed, staring, not believing, not
daring
to believe. His shoulders shook, as if he was about to sob, but he gained control of himself with visible effort and stared towards Drago, standing in semi-shadow by the fireplace.

“Is she…can she…”

It was Leagh, rather than Drago, who answered. “I is,” she said, and smiled, holding out her hand for Theod. “And I am. Theod, will you not come sit beside me?”

She was wan, and patently exhausted, but it was Leagh who sat there propped against the cliff of snowy pillows, not some demented fiend, and although Theod allowed Zared to guide him to Leagh’s side, and sit him down, and even though Leagh took his hand, still Theod could not allow himself to believe…to believe…

Drago stepped forward into the light, although the leaping fire still sent shadows chasing across his face.

“Leagh has returned from death, Theod. And what I did for her, I can in some measure do for all those who screech and wail and crawl through the dirt.”

Theod opened his mouth, then his face crumpled, and he sobbed. Faraday sank down on the bed behind him, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, leaning his head against hers.

“There will be further miracles,” she whispered. “Never doubt that.”

There was a silence then, save for the crackling of the fire.

Leagh looked about the room. At her husband, whose haggard face revealed the extent of his worry for her. At Faraday and Theod sitting so close beside her on the bed, Theod weeping out his grief with silent tears that wracked his body. At Earl Herme who stood pale-faced just inside the door, but with a gleam in his eyes that Leagh had never seen there previously.

The girl who had come in with Drago earlier, the strange waif called Katie, sat by the fire, her face downcast, alternately scratching and then smoothing the feathers of the lizard.

Then Leagh turned her face and looked at Drago.

He was staring directly at her, his face showing the marks of exhaustion, as if he had recently been through some trial. Nevertheless, his eyes were soft, and he smiled a little at her regard. His legs were slightly apart, and his hands were folded before him, and as she watched he moved one of them slightly, as he were…

…as if he were tossing a flower into a field of flowers!

As Faraday had been overwhelmed by a vision of a field of flowers, so also had Leagh been visited by a vision which, though similar to Faraday’s, was also different.

She had been in a dark, dark forest, the trees completely stripped of leaves so that only dead limbs reached out. There
was no sun, only a thick grey fog. The ground was thigh-deep mud, and this mud simmered about her legs; hot, horrid, sucking her down.

She was in a land called hopelessness.

Then a voice had called out. It had called a name, although she did not know she had a name. She looked up, and there, leaning comfortably in the fork of a nearby tree, was a man. A wonderful, glorious man, with a strong face and copper hair, and such dark violet eyes that they seemed to absorb all the grey fog into them. He was dressed only in a white linen hip wrap, as if he were about to leap into a bathhouse pool, but at his hip swung a golden sword, with an oddly shaped hilt that she could not immediately discern.

A fairy sword, and yet she sensed that it was sharp and deadly, and somehow hungry.

A movement caught her eye, and she looked away from the sword.

In his hand he had held a large, pure white lily.

“This,” he said, holding out the lily to her, “represents your life.”

And she had cried, for the lily was so beautiful, its scent was so extraordinary, that she knew it could not possibly represent her life.

“Please take me home,” she had whispered.

With a sweeping, graceful gesture, he’d thrown the lily out into the mud.

And suddenly there was no mud, and no fog, and no bare dead trees.

She was standing in a field of wildflowers, an infinite field under an infinite blue sky.

And she had felt his hand in hers. “Welcome home,” he said.

So now Leagh looked at Drago, and her eyes filled with tears, and his smile deepened very, very slightly, and she knew that he, too, was remembering the field of flowers.

“You are a magician,” she said quietly, and at her words, Faraday lifted her head and looked at Drago herself.

“And you?” Drago asked Leagh.

“I am different,” she answered and realised that, indeed, she
was
different.

She had now taken her place within the infinite field of flowers.

In that moment, Leagh had her first, true understanding of what Drago would do to Tencendor, and she gasped, and looked away, shaken beyond belief.

“The night beyond the next we will go to the Western Ranges,” Drago said into the very quiet room. “All of us in this room, save Herme who will stay to watch Carlon.”

Leagh looked at Faraday, and then both women looked at Katie.

“We will go to sow flowers,” the girl said, and laughed.