The Master of Heathcrest Hall (92 page)

“Lord Baydon!” she exclaimed. “But how had the curse befallen him? He was never in Am-Anaru.”

“No, he wasn’t. But as I said before, even a good man can do an awful thing if he is desperate enough.”

With a composition of both fascination and horror, Ivy listened as Mr. Rafferdy explained how he had learned what Lord Marsdel had done—how he had taken fractions of the curse’s power from himself, Earl Rylend, and the elder Lord Rafferdy, and had placed them in the box. Then he had given the box to Lord Baydon, who had opened it, taking those portions of the curse’s power upon himself.

It was an awful deed, the more so because it had played upon Lord Baydon’s good nature, and upon his regret at being unable to join the other three men in war. Fortunately, Mr. Rafferdy had discovered the box among his father’s things, and he had arrived at Farland Park in time to find Lord Baydon yet alive. He had extracted the curse from Lord Baydon, returning it to the onyx box.

“Ever since then, I have felt the dreadful power of the curse straining to be free of the box,” Mr. Rafferdy said. He approached Gambrel’s remains. “And now it has.”

Ivy shuddered. “But why did it operate with such swiftness upon him?”

It was Mr. Bennick who answered. “I would imagine it is because the curse had worked for years within Lord Baydon, growing ever more noxious. It had done this gradually, so that his constitution could in some part acclimate to its effects. Even so, he had nearly expired from it. When Gambrel opened the box, the effects which the curse had wrought upon Lord Baydon over decades came upon Gambrel in mere moments. His physical form was not able to tolerate such a sudden and savage assault.”

“But how is Lord Baydon now?” Ivy said, looking at Mr. Rafferdy.

“I cannot say for certain, for I had to depart Farland Park immediately. Yet even within minutes of taking the curse from him, his breathing eased, and his color improved. I have hope he will yet have many years before him.” He looked at Mr. Bennick. “If any of us in this world do.”

“That is within your and Lady Quent’s power to decide now,” the former magician said.

Ivy turned away from the remnants of Mr. Gambrel. “But he has still won. Even if we do as my father wrote in the journal, the gates between our world and Cerephus will be open for a brief while at least. Surely that is long enough for many of the slaves of the Ashen to come through and wreak havoc upon Huntley Morden’s army. They will be decimated, and Lord Valhaine will still rule Altania.”

To her great puzzlement, Mr. Rafferdy laughed. “No, Lord Valhaine won’t win, and it’s all due to Eldyn Garritt. Our dear, diffident friend has become both a rebel and a spy, can you imagine that? And because of his most courageous efforts, we now have a map which shows precisely where each of the arcane gates is located.”

“That is marvelous!” Ivy exclaimed. “But how is that possible?”

“The rebels Mr. Garritt was working with had come by a map of Altania on which five locations were marked. It seemed a great stroke of luck, for these locations were clearly the places Valhaine was sending his troops to make a final assault. The rebels forwarded
the map to Morden’s generals so they could position their troops to meet Valhaine’s army. Only it’s clear it was not luck at all that the rebels obtained the map, but rather that they were meant to find it.”

“How can you know this?”

“I know because, when I met with Mr. Garritt’s compatriots, they showed me a copy of the map, and I saw at once that there were runes written next to each place marked on the map—including the rune which means
gate
in the language of magick. It can only mean that the purpose of the map was to lure Morden’s army to the various locations—”

“—so that they would be near the gates when the Ashen came through!” Ivy gasped.

“Just so,” Mr. Rafferdy said, nodding. “But the two armies aren’t the only ones making for the gates at present. I only hope there is time enough.”

“My calculations are not perfect,” Mr. Bennick said. “But we are only to the third occlusion. It will be six hours I would guess, perhaps eight, before the Grand Conjunction reaches the final occlusion.”

“That should be enough time,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “Barely.”

Quickly, he described the plans which had been set in motion back in the city. With the aid of his black magician’s book, he had exchanged a flurry of messages with those members of his order who had escaped the city. As it turned out, four of them happened to be in locations which were not so very far from four of the gates—the farthest being less than fifty miles, a distance a cantering horse could easily cover in a matter of hours. The main obstacle would be passing through the front of the war, but the four magicians had been provided the necessary passwords and codes to approach Morden’s commanders. Which meant, at that very moment, they were racing toward the locations of the arcane gates in the company of rebel soldiers.

“Are they going to destroy the gates?” Ivy said, breathless from the thrill of this news.

“Not quite,” Mr. Rafferdy replied. “Rather, they are going to alter them. With their House rings as guides, and with the rebel soldiers to protect them, my colleagues should have scant trouble locating the gates once they reach the areas marked on Garritt’s map, for these are bound to radiate much arcane energy now that Cerephus draws near. And the rebel soldiers are prepared to excavate them, for they have no doubt been buried over the eons. Then, once the gates are exhumed, Trefnell, Canderhow, and the others will carve a new set of runes upon them.”

“For what purpose?”

“Do you recall the gate in the center of the Evengrove? How the arch had runes on each side so that it acted as a sort of doublelock?”

Ivy nodded. “Yes, it led both to Tyberion and to the tomb of the Broken God. That was how Gambrel intended to get from Tyberion to the tomb.”

“Precisely. Similarly, my colleagues will alter the gates they dig up with new runes so that each of them bridges to other destinations.”

Mr. Bennick’s eyes were alight with curiosity. “And what destinations might those be?”

Ivy could only admit that Mr. Rafferdy appeared a bit pleased with himself.

“I examined a number of gates in the ancient way station on Arantus,” he said. “I found a number that opened into stands of Wyrdwood, and I copied the sequence of the runes upon each of them into my black book. My colleagues will inscribe these same sequences onto the gates they uncover.”

And all at once, Ivy understood. “So when the Ashen come through the gates, they will not fall upon Morden’s army at all.”

Mr. Rafferdy nodded. “Instead, the gates will whisk them to the corresponding doorways upon Arantus, and from there directly—”

“—into the Wyrdwood,” she said in unison with him.

It was marvelous and brilliant and daring. At that moment, Ivy’s only thought was to rush to him, throw her arms around
him, and embrace him with all her might. Only before she could do so, a voice spoke—one that she seemed to hear with both her mind and her ears.

“If any of those plans are to have meaning, you must first bind the keystone and descend to the gate beneath this house.”

As one, they all turned to look at Lord Farrolbrook. Only it wasn’t Lord Farrolbrook anymore, not really. He must have been keeping his black mask somewhere in his frilled black costume, for it was before his face once more. The mask was wrought into a grimace of agony.

“Who are you?” Ivy murmured, taking a step toward him. “Mr. Gambrel called you the Elder One. But who are you really?”

Now, despite the expression of pain, the mask’s mouth twisted into something of a smile. “But don’t you know, Lady Quent? I have been trying to tell you that very thing for months now. Perhaps this will aid you.”

With weak and trembling motions he removed his gloves. On his right hand was an ornate gold ring set with seven red gems. They caught some of the firelight, glinting brightly.

And Ivy’s body went rigid. A pain passed through her—a sharp and awful rending. For months, piece by piece, she had been recalling more of the strange dream that had started coming to her at the same time as life had first taken root inside her.

Now, gazing at that glittering red ring, she at last could recall the final moments of the dream: leaving the cave, and traveling across the land with the tall man who wore the wolf’s pelt across his shoulders. Moons passed, and her belly swelled. At last life had sprung forth from her, and she had cradled the infant in her arms, filled with joy.

Only then joy became horror. The tall man’s body crumpled to the ground, lifeless. Even as it did, the infant boy in her arms opened his blue eyes—eyes that were far too ancient to be those of a child.

Through you, I will truly live again
, the man had said as they lay together in the cave.

The man whose name was Myrrgon.

And he had done just that.

“You are the great magician Myrrgon!” Ivy cried. “Or rather, you are his father!”

He made a dismissive gesture, and the red ring flashed; though it did so feebly, like a sputtering flame on a dying candle. “Father and son—it makes no difference. The two are one and the same in my case.”

Mr. Rafferdy wore a look of astonishment that Ivy was certain appeared much like her own. In contrast, Mr. Bennick had affected a curious expression, while Lady Shayde, who now approached, wore no expression at all upon the white mask of her own face.

“But how can you be Myrrgon?” Mr. Rafferdy said, touching his own House ring. “Myrrgon lived thousands of years ago.”

“Yes, I did,” the man in the mask replied. “Indeed, it was the one time I truly lived upon the world, and it was the same for the others.”

Ivy pressed a hand to her stomach, forcing herself to breathe. “The others,” she gasped. “You mean the other magicians who founded the seven Old Houses of magick?”

“Yes, Gauldren, Baltharel, Xandrus, and the rest. We had all found a way to live again upon this world. In our arrogance, we thought we could do so forevermore. Only for all our knowledge, we had not considered the price that must be paid for the manner in which we had achieved our rebirth. And we had underestimated the power of this world we had arrived at.”

Now it was to her head that Ivy pressed a hand, for a pain seemed to stab there as well. “You are from Cerephus! You come from the world of the Ashen!”

For a moment, all were motionless. Then the man who was not Lord Farrolbrook nodded.

“Yes, that is the world of my origin. It is the world where I was born for the first time.” He took a lurching step toward a window, as if to gaze outside, then turned the black mask to face her again. “We do not have much time left. Nor does this mortal form, I fear.
All the same, I will tell you a story, Lady Quent, since I know you are fond of them.

“Once there was a race of beings who had mastered the working of arcane powers—magick, you would call it. They used this magick to build a great civilization, making their world into a place of such majesty and awe as even your clever mind could never imagine. On the surface, it was a place of order and beauty. But beneath the surface, an endless labyrinth of engines and mechanisms and furnaces belching vapors and vitriol was required to maintain all of the wonders above. As none of our kind would deign to dwell or labor in such a place, we needed others to do this work for us. And so we used our powers to open doorways, and draw beings through from other places, other worlds. We altered them, shaping them with magick to suit our uses, and then we sent them to the foul depths below our world to labor there. The Ashen, we called them—those who stoked the blazing furnaces of magick that fueled our world. And so they did for millennia while we dwelled in ease above. Until …”

“Until your slaves rose up against you,” Mr. Bennick said flatly.

Again the man in black nodded. “Yes, they did. And over the eons, our race had dwindled in number and strength. We could do nothing to stop them as they boiled out from below and swarmed over the world, consuming all. We had but one hope, and that was to open a great gate that was large enough to move our entire world a vast distance through the heavens in an instant, and so bring it close to another world—one which might provide a haven for us.”

“You mean to this world!” Ivy exclaimed.

“Yes, this very world. But to work an enchantment of such an enormous scale was a terrible act. Our own planet was cracked and nearly sundered into pieces, while at the same time the workings of the celestial spheres around this world were disrupted and forever altered. In the tumult, nearly all of our own race perished. Only seven of us survived—the seven strongest. But even we did so only in the abstract. The essence of our spirits endured, but our bodies had been burned away and utterly destroyed.

“After this violent arrival, our world began to circle wildly around yours, growing closer yet with each revolution. Bodiless, we were able to leap across the void to this new world we had reached, and there we sought out new forms to inhabit. We observed the primitive people who dwelled on one particular island—the island you now call Altania. And we discovered, through some experimentation, that we could each force our essence into these beings, so long as we chose those who had the most powerful physical forms. Even so—even when we chose to enter the tallest and strongest of them, the dominant males of their species—we could only do so for a little while, for the physical forms would quickly begin to deteriorate and decay. And this inflicted a significant agony upon us.

“Thus it was we sought a more permanent solution, and quite by accident we discovered one. Not long after we came to this world, the Ashen began to do so as well, gradually learning to construct ever more powerful gates to bridge the way here in pursuit of us. In turn, we employed the natural defenses of this world against them. The thick forests had an inherent power to defend themselves, an ability they had developed in the distant past to defend themselves against great beasts now long extinct.

“What was more, we discovered that there were some women among the primitive people who were born with an ability to communicate with the trees. So it was we came to these women, wearing the bodies of men, and taught them to call to the forests and to turn the trees against the Ashen. This they did, driving the Ashen back as the celestial spheres continued to turn, settling into a new harmonic. In time, the planet on which we were born, which you now call Cerephus, began to circle farther and farther away in the aether, until at last it was beyond the reach of this world.