The Master of Heathcrest Hall (86 page)

“I say, that was rousing,” said the young man with the high column of hair, his cheeks rosy and blue eyes bright from exertion.
“By the way, my name is Coulten, and this stout old fellow is Wolsted.”

By their clothes and manner, Eldyn had a feeling they were in fact
Lord
Coulten and
Lord
Wolsted. Either way, he could only be grateful to know them, and he reached across to shake their hands. If Eldyn had not already seen them work magick, still he would have known they were magicians by the House rings on their right hands, the gems of which continued to throw off red and yellow sparks.

“Do you think they’ll come after us?” Coulten said, now pulling on a pair of gloves to conceal his ring.

Lord Wolsted did the same. “I shouldn’t think so. They won’t have gotten a good look at our faces, for the binding spell would have made them blind and deaf. And with no other witnesses about to say otherwise, I would imagine the soldiers and the hangman will collude to keep the entire affair a secret. After all, if they confessed to letting prisoners escape, it would surely mean prison for
them
. Instead, they’ll bribe the undertaker to dig four empty graves, and no one will be the wiser.”

“I’d wager you’re right,” Coulten said cheerfully.

Eldyn supposed the same. But there were other matters that weighed more on his mind. “Dercy, why are you here?” he said, turning in his seat to look at the other young man.

Dercy raised a gold eyebrow. “Why, aren’t you pleased to see me?”

If Eldyn had possessed the strength, he would have punched his arm. “Sun and Moon, of course I’m glad to see you! But how did you know where I was?”

“I knew because, unlike any of those dolts at the Theater of the Moon, I was smart enough to look in the newspaper to see if there was any mention about what had become of you. And there was your name, listed with the other convicted traitors to be hung today.” He winked at Eldyn. “It seems you’ve been up to mischief in my absence. So perhaps you’re no angel after all.”

No, he wasn’t. “But why were you at the theater?” Eldyn said,
trying to make sense of all this. “In fact, why were you in the city at all?”

Now Dercy’s tone and expression were no longer wry, but rather solemn. “Don’t you know, Eldyn?”

“You told me you needed to go away so you wouldn’t be tempted to conjure illusions—that leaving was the only way to break yourself of the habit.”

“It was. And I did. But there’s one craving I couldn’t cure myself of no matter how long I stayed in the country.” He bent his head toward Eldyn’s and whispered so the other two men could not hear. “I came back for you. Or are you too much of a dolt yourself to realize that?”

After all that had happened, this was too much; Eldyn was beyond words. Not caring for the two magicians on the opposite bench, he found Dercy’s hand and took it in his own, squeezing it with all his might. Dercy squeezed back.

At last Dercy released Eldyn’s hand, and in a louder voice he explained how he had come to be there that day. Over the course of the last month, he had grown increasingly worried by the news making its way out of the city—how both witches and illusionists were being hunted. When he saw in a copy of
The Comet
that several Siltheri had been put to death, he knew he had to get back to Invarel at once.

Fortunately, the parish where he had been living with his cousin was to the southeast, and not behind the lines of war. Yet approaching the city was no simple task given all the soldiers on the roads. The last thing Dercy wanted was to be caught and taken before a witch-hunter, so he had used illusions to keep himself concealed as he traveled. Of course, this meant he had to go on foot rather than by horseback, which meant the journey took several days.

“But you’re not supposed to be doing illusions anymore,” Eldyn interrupted him. “You said you had broken the habit. Yet now you say you used illusions to get into the city. I saw you conjure another back there, when you pulled down that curtain of darkness.”

“And a good thing he did, too,” Coulten said, probing his frizzy crown. “I think my hair was parted by one of those bullets. If the soldiers had gotten a clearer view, I don’t believe I’d be here now.”

“It’s all right,” Dercy said, meeting Eldyn’s eyes. “I won’t ever be conjuring phantasms for amusement anymore—for my own or anyone else’s—but I have enough light to spare for a few illusions when needed. I’ll tell you about that later. For the moment, suffice it to say that a well-timed phantasm or two helped me slip through a gate and into the city.”

Once inside the walls, Dercy proceeded to the Theater of the Moon, and there learned that Eldyn had gone missing. That was when he checked the broadsheets and saw Eldyn’s name.

“I didn’t tell the others about it,” Dercy said with a sigh. “Riethe in particular would have gone lumbering like a bull into Barrowgate to save you, and would have gotten himself captured in the process. But there’s one person at the theater who has some wits, and that’s Lily Lockwell. I was astonished to find her there, but very glad as well. She knew I was intending to look for you, and she told me I should seek out someone she knew—a magician—to see if he could help me.”

“Rafferdy,” Eldyn said, amazed at Lily’s good sense. “She told you to go find Lord Rafferdy.”

Dercy nodded. “So she did. But when I slipped into his house in Warwent Square, I didn’t find your friend there. Instead, I found these two.” He nodded toward the magicians across the bench.

“And quite a start you gave us when you appeared out of the shadows like that,” Coulten said with a somewhat nervous laugh.

“Sorry about that,” Dercy said with a smirk that indicated he wasn’t sorry in the least. He looked back at Eldyn. “I heard them formulating a plan to rescue you from the gibbet, so I revealed myself to them, and told them I was going to help whether they wanted me to or not. Though I suppose it’s they who helped me, really. I’m not certain how I would have freed you without that trick of theirs.”

“And I’m not certain we would have escaped without
your
trick,” Wolsted replied, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief.

“Well, I’m very glad for all of you,” Eldyn said. He lifted a hand to his neck, which was sore where the noose had chafed it. “But, while I do not wish to sound ungrateful in any way, I am puzzled why Coulten and Wolsted here should have given one whit about my fate when we have no connection.”

“Ah, but we do have a connection!” Coulten exclaimed happily. “You are a friend of Lord Rafferdy’s, correct? Well, we are also companions of his.”

As the carriage raced through the city, Coulten explained how he and Wolsted had been hiding themselves at Rafferdy’s house on Warwent Square ever since Invarel was closed, for they had been unable to pass beyond the wall of the Old City to reach their own abodes in the New Quarter. Just yesterday, someone had slipped a letter under the door of the house. Presuming it to be some urgent missive for Rafferdy, they decided to read it, thinking they could pass along its contents to him by means of their black books—devices, they explained, which allowed them to communicate over long distances.

Only upon reading the missive, they knew they would have to act on it themselves. The letter said it was imperative that one Mr. Eldyn Garritt, who was an acquaintance of Lord Rafferdy, be rescued before he could be hanged at Barrowgate the following day.

“But who was the letter from?” Eldyn asked, amazed by this.

Coulten shook his head. “I’m afraid we don’t know. It wasn’t signed, and there was no address. Yet we decided we had better act upon it.”

Eldyn found this all very remarkable. “I am flattered to know I have been the subject of concern by such a mysterious personage,” he said. “Yet I confess, I hardly know why I am so important as to warrant such attention.”

Wolsted cleared his throat. “Meaning no offense to you, Mr. Garritt, but I believe it isn’t necessarily you yourself which is of
such great import. Rather, the letter referred to something in your possession. Namely, a key.”

Eldyn could only frown. “A key?”

“Yes, a key that opens a particular door located within the house of Sir and Lady Quent on East Durrow Street.”

All at once Eldyn understood. They could only be referring to the wooden leaf that Rafferdy had given him for safekeeping—the object that unlocked the door through which Lady Quent had passed to a place that was not upon this world at all, but rather on the moon of another. Quickly, he explained these things to the others. Dercy’s eyes grew large as he did, while Coulten clapped his hands.

“That must be it!” he said. “But do you have the key with you?”

“No, it is in my room at the Theater of the Moon, on West Durrow Street.”

“Then let us go there at once to retrieve it, and then proceed with all haste to the house of the Quents.”

Eldyn pressed a hand to his brow, trying to make sense of all this. “But why is it so urgent that we do this? Why do we even need to open that door in the first place?”

“Because,” Coulten said, his expression growing solemn, “if we do not unlock the door this very morning, then Lord Rafferdy will not be able to come through it. For the letter told us to send him a message, telling him to find a way through the door.”

Rafferdy? But why would he be coming through the door? None of this made any sense; his head was filled with a fog of confusion.

Well, he would simply have to believe that whoever had written that letter knew what he was doing. After all, it was because of this mysterious person that Eldyn wasn’t presently hanging from a rope in Barrowgate. He turned to look at Dercy beside him.

“What do you think we should do?”

“These two helped us greatly today, so I think the least we can do is return the favor.” He grinned, his green eyes sparkling. “Come on, let’s go get this key for these fine magicians.”

Eldyn grinned in return, while at the same time Coulten leaned out the window of the carriage.

“To the Theater of the Moon!” he called to the driver. “And hurry!”

A
T LAST the morning fog lifted, and warm sunlight shone down upon the grove of Wyrdwood as the trees drooped and fell still.

Rafferdy slumped to his knees beside the mossy stone wall. His arms ached from raising them above his head for so long, and his tongue was as dry and cracked as the leather of his boots from speaking runes of magick over and over again. He could not stop shaking.

That he was alive was a cause for wonder. He had watched as the black branches bent down to grasp Lieutenant Beckwith and drew his lifeless body over the wall, into the grove. Rafferdy nearly suffered the same fate a moment later. More branches had cracked like whips, wrapping themselves around him, and lifting him up. He had felt his boots leave the ground.

Had the trees managed to take him over the wall and into the grove, he surely would have perished like Beckwith and Hendry. Fortunately, though the branches tangled around his limbs, they had not covered his mouth, and he was able to call out several runes of protection. His House ring had flared, and blue lines of power snaked and sizzled along the branches. As if paralyzed by this shock, the trees released him, and he had fallen hard to the ground at the foot of the stone wall.

Quickly, the branches had begun to reach out again, creaking
and groaning as they bent over the top of the wall, straining to reach him. But by then he had managed to use the heel of his boot to draw a rough circle in the moist turf, and he was uttering a torrent of arcane words in an endless incantation. Time and again the branches reached for him, and time and again they recoiled as blue sparks hissed around them.

How long he had maintained the circle of protection after that, fending off the fury of the trees, he was not certain. Hours, he supposed. Whatever the duration of the ordeal, he doubted he could have maintained his efforts much longer. And even if he had, it would have done him no good; for only now did he see that the wall was riddled with cracks, and here and there stones protruded outward. Clearly root and limb had been attempting to break through the wall to reach him.

Only they hadn’t. And now, in the daylight, the trees finally drowsed as the power of Gauldren’s ancient spell, the Quelling, did its work.

Leaning upon the wall, Rafferdy slowly gained his feet. For a minute he stood there, steadying himself. Then he turned around and, for the first time since the trees assailed him, looked down the slope to the foot of the hill, to the place where his men had been scrambling to make some sort of stand against the approaching company of Valhaine’s soldiers. He saw no lines of soldiers, no clouds of smoke from the barrels of rifles. Here and there he could make out a brown shape sprawled upon the trampled grass, but not nearly enough to account for all of the men who had been in his company. That was good. It meant that at least some of them had survived.

Unlike Lieutenant Beckwith or Corporal Hendry. Damn the lieutenant! Had Beckwith not been so impatient to retrieve the supplies—and had he not then rashly shot the witch—both he and Hendry might yet be alive. What was more, Rafferdy could have run down the hill to shout orders and arrange his men in a proper defense against Valhaine’s soldiers.