Sword and Sorceress XXVII (8 page)

 Her seal body, old though it was, felt
better than her woman’s body had in decades. She could swim without stopping,
for miles and miles…

She surfaced, and blinked. She’d
forgotten just how long a selkie could stay underwater. Kim’s father was
already there, on the beach. So was Kim. And so was Elused, stark naked and
grinning his most suggestive grin.

Kim’s father swept his daughter up in
his arms and swung her into the boat. The motorboat roared away. Grandma Seeley
shook off her skin and ran to Elused.

“Did you see the mortal man, Fiedlimid
my love?” the selkie said, bent over with laughter. “Such a look he gave me! He’ll
be nothing but gentle with Kim now, for all the fault will be mine. All’s well.
Now, come with me. Teach me the feel of these waters.”

“Do you never think?” Grandma Seeley
shouted. “Now this place will be swarming with policemen, and how will we be
explaining ourselves? You’ve turned my home into a crime scene, Elused!”

He reeled back, shocked. “But I did
nothing to Kim. T’was only a trick.”

“That won’t matter.” Grandma Seeley
glared at him. “And it was a trick. A childish trick.”

Elused hung his head. Every line of his
sleek body expressed remorse. He probably felt it, too. For now. Something
would come along to distract him. Something always did.

“You’re a rogue, Elused. The same as
always.”

Sensing forgiveness, he raised his head
and grinned.

“But I’m not the same, Elused. I’m not
the selkie maid you knew. I’m Grandma Seeley too. And Felicienne.”

“And Fiedlimid? Or is she truly dead?”

“She’s grown up, Elused. As you never
can.”

“Fiedlimid, my love! Did I not swim the
seas over to find you?”

“You did. But I’d be a fool to think you
swam alone the whole time.”

“Well, it would have done you no good to
have me pining away of loneliness before I reached you, now would it?” He
turned the smile she remembered on her: brilliant with a selkie male’s
enthralling charm. “Come back with me.”

She shook her head. “This is my home
now.”

“Then we’ll claim the waters of this
place for ourselves. You and I, swimming where we please.” He grinned, pulled
his sealskin around himself, and slipped into the water.

Grandma Seeley looked back at her house,
so carefully hidden, holding so much of her mortal life. Armel had built it to
last for more decades than any human could live to see. For her. For them.
Forever. How strange, that a mortal’s promise could make “forever” mean more
than any immortal selkie ever had.

Elused was already swimming away, a
distant dot in the water. Grandma Seeley smiled, shook her head, and went to
pick up her sealskin.

“Make yourself at home in my lake, old
friend. But I won’t be crying seven tears into it.”

She stroked the soft hide. The lake
called to her. But policemen would be wanting to talk to Grandma Seeley very
shortly. Her seal-self would have to wait.

At least for now.

They That Watch

by
Michael Spence and Elisabeth Waters

In the
introduction to last year’s story we said that Michael and his wife lived with
a “canine Guardian” and continued “Hmm, now what can we do with a Guardian who
is a canine?” Once I had posed that question, both our minds started working on
it, and thus Mika came into existence. Nobody ever said that all female mages
or warriors must be human.

Elisabeth
continues to juggle working on her novel, anthology editing, and writing short
stories. She is currently working on a story for Mercedes Lackey’s anthology ELEMENTAL
MAGIC: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters (the anthology is scheduled for
December, but the story is due in three weeks) as well as her next Valdemar
animal story “A Wake of Vultures.” In her mundane life she spent the past tax
season volunteering with the AARP Tax Aide Program, which was an educational
experience and provided her with several blog entries.

Michael
Spence made his audiobook debut this year with his narration of the novel HOUSE
OF ZEOR by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, who called his reading “the best I’ve ever
found in an audiobook.” It’s available at Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. He is now
working on the audiobook versions of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books THE BRASS
DRAGON and THE SWORD OF ALDONES. Michael and Ramona have relocated to Minnesota
together with Orson, a bichon-cocker mix with a tendency to rush to the front
window and bark furiously—at nothing. Or so it would seem.....

****

The makt came to life—if one could call
it that—backstage in the University of Albion’s theater department’s main
auditorium, behind one of the eight props cabinets, and promptly began
searching. It had little time in this state; it had to find something quickly
to give it structure, or dissipate.

Since a makt was a variety of spell,
rather than a lifeform in its own right, one would not expect it to possess all
of the three classical elements of personality; it did the will of the mage who
cast it, as an extension of that same will, without the distraction of
accompanying passion or intellect. The mage who placed this one, however, had
not had the luxury of full reconnaissance, and so had to provide for some
improvisation. It therefore possessed a rudimentary intellect—again, an
extension of the mage’s: to scan; to observe; to choose.

And then the will would have free
rein... to seek; to find.

To
possess
.

#

Melisande was in the bedroom, unpacking
from her trip to the Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Anne, when her husband
came home.

“Melisande?” He seemed surprised to see
her. “I thought you weren’t due back until the fifteenth.”

“Stephen,” she said going into his arms
for a hug, “today
is
the fifteenth.”

“Oh.”

“I’m glad to see you, too,” she said
pointedly.

He started. “Of course I’m glad to see
you, it’s just that—” he broke off abruptly, staring at the one thing that hadn’t
fit in her luggage. “What’s that?”

“It’s a dog, dear. Her name is Mika.
What are you working on that’s made you so absent-minded?”

The dog—a beautiful black-and-white
border collie—was instantly consigned to the ‘Melisande is dealing with it’
category, as Stephen waxed enthusiastic about his work. “Edward and I are doing
a seminar for an exchange group from the Colonies. It’s incredible; their magic
system is so different from ours—subtly different, but the subtleties are
fascinating. There’s even one girl who comes from beyond the Colonies, and we’re
still trying to puzzle out just what she does.”

Albion’s and Iberia’s colonies,
Melisande knew, stretched almost halfway across North America. “You mean,
beyond the Mississippi? I didn’t know they had settlements there, let alone
universities.”

Stephen shook his head in bewilderment. “Now
that you mention it, I haven’t heard of any.” Then he seemed to forget the
question entirely. “Why do we have a dog? I thought you were at the convent to
learn how to handle our daughter.” He placed a possessive hand on Melisande’s
growing belly. “I still can’t believe she’s going to be a Guardian from
birth
.”

“She will be, but the Paten will be kept
safely at the Motherhouse until she’s older and has had some training. Lady
Wizard Sarras will be in charge of her training.”

Melisande felt Mika rubbing against her
leg. She knelt and scratched the border collie’s ears. “As for Mika, we became
very close at the Motherhouse. I hated leaving her. But Sister Madeleine said
she just showed up one day and had lived there ever since—she was free to come
home with me if she wanted to. And she
really
wanted to. Didn’t you, girl?”
Mika lay on her side for a tummy rub, and Melisande obliged.

“If you say so.” Ordinarily Stephen
loved dogs, but approaching fatherhood had so radically shifted his thoughts
that the usual “academics” now coupled with “daughter” banished this dog from
his mind. “I can’t think of a better teacher than Sarras for our little girl,”
he mused.

Neither could Melisande. Lady Wizard
Sarras was not only the Guardian of the Grail, to which the Paten was a
companion Treasure, she was a senior member of the faculty of the University’s
College of Wizardry, and she had been Stephen’s faculty advisor during the
many, many years he had studied before finally passing his Senior Ordeal. By
then, the University was home, and Stephen had slipped easily from student
researcher to faculty. And now that they lived in a house, complete with a
small garden, instead of the quasi-dorm used for married-student housing,
Melisande was content with her life. It wasn’t without its shocks, of course;
discovering that she was pregnant with a Guardian was only the latest one.

Unless it wasn’t... “Stephen, what did
you mean by “‘it’s just that—’?”

“I thought you weren’t due back until
tomorrow, and the seminar is scheduled to meet here tonight. We’ve been
rotating it through faculty homes to give the students a view of how we live
here.” He look at her anxiously. “You don’t have to do anything. Edward is
bringing refreshments, and we’ll clean up after ourselves. You don’t even have
to put in an appearance—you can stay in the bedroom and rest, or you can sit in
on the seminar, whichever you prefer.”

It might be interesting, at that.
“I’ll
see how I feel tonight. What time are they due?”

“Seven, and they should be gone by nine.
Nine-thirty at the latest.”

“Seven?!” she said in horror. “And what
time is it now?”

“Uh...” He consulted his Senior
Thaumaturge’s sigil and gulped. “Six-forty?”

She thumped an annoyed fist on his
chest. “Men! Get the chairs moved. I’ll put glasses out for drinks.”

#

Melisande decided to sit in on the
seminar after all, but when the group arrived, she felt as if her hair stood on
end. As a Sensitive, she knew this feeling well, but why now?
It could be
just that Edward’s here.
Edward was the Guardian of an anti-Treasure, the
Sceptre of the Ungodly, and anti-Treasures could be uncomfortable things to be
around.
Maybe I’m feeling things more than usual because of my pregnancy.
That
was certainly possible as well.

She sat down in a comfortable chair—on
the far side of the room from Edward and Stephen, and close to the fire cheerfully
crackling in the fireplace, a counterpoint to the lively discussion bouncing
about the living room. Mika stood vigilant at her side, scanning the students.
Her head was next to Melisande’s knee, so when she froze, pressing against
Melisande and staring fixedly across the room, Melisande followed her stare.
The girl sitting next to Edward seemed ever so slightly out of place. While all
of the students’ clothing was of a different style than that worn by students
in Albion, this girl seemed even more out of style. Also, to Melisande’s eyes,
there was a sort of gray film about her, as if she were wrapped in a
semi-visible shroud.

As the talk continued—tonight’s session
concerned Treasures and their Guardians (apparently they didn’t have either in
the Colonies)—Melisande realized that the girl was flirting with Edward. She
looked up into his face and actually batted her eyelashes as she said, “There
is a saying where I come from: “
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodies
?’—and I
think it would apply here. You have all of these powerful Treasures,” she
smiled at Edward, “and they have Guardians to watch them, but who watches the
Guardians? How do you know they won’t misuse the Treasures in their care?”

A reasonable question,
thought Melisande,
and one I know Edward himself has considered. But look at
her! The others don’t appear to know that Edward is a Guardian, and they live
here at the College; but
she
obviously knows. Is she a Sensitive? No, or
she’d be on the other side of the room from him, like me...except that she
looks as though she not only senses the Sceptre but covets it for herself.
Then the girl’s eyes flicked across the room to look at Melisande, and her eyes
became even more covetous. Melisande’s skin crawled.
Just who—or what—is
this girl?
The end of the seminar couldn’t come quickly enough.

But finally everyone had gone and
Melisande lay curled up in bed next to Stephen, feeling safe and cherished. She
saw Mika lie down at the foot of the bed and, smiling, drifted off to sleep,
happy at the thought of two individuals there who loved her. With a third on
the way.

#

She was dreaming. Of course she was
dreaming; she was a dog.

This wasn’t the first time this had
happened to her—it had started at the convent, shortly after Mika attached
herself to Melisande. There the dreams had been innocent and playful: running
around the convent grounds; herding the sheep and goats, whether they needed
herding or not (
a dog has to keep in practice, after all
); splashing in
the stream that flowed into the lake...

Now, however, play and innocence were
past. Her eyes darted from door to window and back. No sign of motion. The air
smelled normal, apart from the new ashes in the fireplace. It did not do to let
one’s guard down. To be sure, she knew (how did she know?) that she needed to
sleep for more than two-thirds of the day, something she wished weren’t so but
could do nothing about. At some point faith had to enter the picture; she knew
that, and surely those who called her did too. Still, she must do what she
could.

But just what was she watching for, and
who felt this need for vigilance? Was she Melisande, her unease from the
evening seeping into this dream, or was she another mind that shared Melisande’s
disquiet? And how could she tell?

Either way, life had suddenly lost its
carefree joy, and the urge to guard was strong. But neither mind was sure
exactly
what
they were guarding against.

#

After many false starts with various
backstage items—ropes, sandbags, makeup brushes, potted artificial palms, a
piano, and other items best left unmentioned—the final choice was perfect. Some
three years previously, a student actor from the College of Wizardry, in a
public performance of
Hamlet
that was attended by much of Londinium and
even by the King himself on opening night, had used a carefully tuned
invisibility spell to present his unrobed skeleton in the role of the late King
Hamlet’s ghost. The show slammed to a halt in the very first scene,
unfortunately, when the Ghost appeared onstage and it became obvious that
pranksters had nullified the spell, displaying the hapless thespian in all his
Emperor’s-new-clothes glory. The show must go on, however, and everyone tried
their best to persevere...but then the actor portraying Bernardo spoke his
line,
“Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio,”
bringing a wave of
laughter from the opening-night crowd, with not a few glances toward the Royal
box. For his part, Horatio valiantly tried to keep a straight face; but as he
replied,
“Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder,”
both his
composure and the audience’s—along with the Bard’s grand tragedy—went to
pieces.

After a morning’s tense conversation
with the Crown, the College administration issued a tastefully-worded directive
banning invisibility spells for the next three terms, along with a permanent
ban on the theatrical use of any technique that risked “this or any other such
wardrobe malfunction.” The University’s theater department regretfully
constructed an oversized skeleton of wood that could be manipulated using levitation
and other telekinetic spells, and the show did indeed go on.

The bone-marionette was still in its
cabinet and magic-ready to boot. The makt flowed through the spaces between the
door and the jamb, and a moment later those spaces shown with a ghastly violet
light. With a splintering crunch the door latch burst apart. The door swung
open to reveal the palely glowing skeleton, looking more than ever like the
death it symbolized, rising to its feet and clumping onstage toward the
footlamps and then down the steps to the orchestra. A cloaking subroutine
engaged, and the skeleton vanished from the range of human sight.