Patricia White, page 24
Some time in the early morning hours, he had fallen on the bed fully clothed, even to his boots. It might not be done in the best circles, he thought wryly, but it certainly makes dressing a whole lot easier. Crawling, almost literally, out of the bed, he managed, with the help of the bedpost, to get to his feet before he staggered to the washstand, washed his face and ran wet fingers through his wild hair.
The hasty toilet didn't help much, but he was feeling only a little less than human when he entered the lamplit dining room and faced the men seated there. Most of the posse that had brought them to the ranch were in the bunk house, but the marshal was at the table with Farrel and they were both watching him with expectant eyes.
"Let him get some grub in his belly first," Coodie, the cook, said as Will slumped in one of the vacant chairs. His next order was directed at Will. Sliding a plate of bacon and eggs in front of the wizard, he pointed at it, and said, "Eat."
Will ate, and as he ate, he listened. What he heard was both good news and bad; and all the bad could be laid at Cordelia's door.
"It be snowing some," the marshal said. "Ground be white, but likely it won't stay."
"Not this time," Will said, the food he was trying to chew suddenly too big for his mouth. "There's another storm right behind..."
"Eat," Coodie said again, taking up a position at Will's side and folding his arms.
"The waddies Cordelia magicked away have been coming in one by one," Farrel said. "As far as we know, there's only one dead and three hurt bad. The rest are scared and mad and..." He shook his head. "The unicorns are scattered over half of The Great Northwest, but we've managed to round up enough to get us where we're going."
Neither man asked the most important question until Will, eating with a coming appetite, had emptied his plate, filled it again, and was making deep inroads into that. Then the marshal said, "Be they coming?"
Will didn't have to ask who they were. He knew. He had spent the night chanting spells, using magic, telling the Master Wizards at Wizardholm of their plight.
"Yes," he said. "Three will be here by midnight. It will take their combined strength to undo what Cordelia has done to the weather, but they can only do that after Cordelia has been subdued, judged, and..."
"Can we..." The question was almost out of Farrel's mouth before he caught it back and said, "I didn't want this to happen. I just didn't love her and..." He got up abruptly, his chair toppling to the floor behind him, and hurried out of the room.
"Love do be making a man's life hell, don't it?" the marshal asked.
Thinking of Farrel and Sojourner and his own hopeless love for Maggie, Will could only nod in agreement.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Evil and dark, magic tainted the air, but it was old beyond knowing and crumbling into decay. Bits and pieces of it fell free, eddied and roiled in the restlessly moving air. They were but darker motes in the uncertain light that came from everywhere and nowhere, pale light that leached all color, all life from the large, high-ceilinged room.
A throne room, Jane guessed. It wasn't much of a guess, not when the room was, more or less, identified by the two dusty, time-stained ebon thrones setting, slightly separated, on a raised dais at the far end of the room. Once the walls had had hangings of snowy silk, tapestries in bright hues, and bright banners, but now there was only mold and tatters to reflect that former glory.
Fully aware of herself, the dungeon slime drying on her ankles, the voluminous white nightgown, with its trim of lace and pink satin ribbons that tied at the throat, Jane was equally aware that she was dreaming. But for some reason, the dream time had shifted from what-was to what-is, from the then to the now, as it were. And in the now she had to meet, face to face, with the person who sat on one of the thrones. A person whose cackle of laughter would have done full justice to any Ozian wicked witch, especially the one who was bent on stealing some ruby slippers and disposing of their present owner by any means at her command.
Jane didn't have any ruby slippers; she was unshod, walking across the grimy stone floor in her bare feet, or maybe stalking describes what she was doing in clearer, far more precise terms. She didn't like what was happening to her one little bit and was very close to making her dislike known to all involved.
Her fear was all behind her. She was tired, and she was mad. Damned mad. And when Jane was mad, those who knew her, even slightly, knew enough to speak softly and stay out of her way.
Evidently the person on the throne did not know Jane at all.
That changed rather rapidly. It was Jane who brought about the change. "Why are you doing this? What in the hell do you want from me?" she snapped, wanting to draw back her upper lip and snarl like a great cat, like Sojourner, before she attacked with fangs and claws.
The seated figure reached up, pushed back some of the folds of black, funereal black, that had swathed her from head to toe, revealing her face and a few wisps of her yellowish, dead-looking hair. It was an old face, withered, skin stretched on bone until not much more than mummified skull remained, that and silvery eyes, dulled now and dark with bitterness, old bitterness that still rankled and burned.
"You know me, don't you?" the papery old voice asked.
"Lizan." Jane's answer was terse, flat, almost expressionless, and it betrayed nothing of her true feelings, which were almost all devoted to fury; with only a small bit left over to know pity.
"I knew you would come. I saw you long ago in the flames. You are his One True Love, his destiny, and destiny cannot be turned aside lightly, if at all. But it can be circumvented, so I waited for you."
"Why?"
The old woman smiled, her teeth white and long against the wrinkled, leathery skin of her face. It was a predator's smile, one that told Jane she was, in all likelihood, the prey of choice, the special of the day.
The smile did not make for pleasant viewing; in fact, Jane was hard put to repress her shudder of distaste. But she did. Even if her pity shrank a little, took on an overtone of revulsion, not to exclude a growing animosity holding within it a strong seasoning of fear.
It's a dream, she told herself, she can't actually hurt you. Just listen and learn. Her dream-self wasn't convinced of the truth in that, but she took a step forward, stopping at the single step that led up to the two thrones and the old woman.
"Why?" she asked again, taking in only shallow breaths of the fetid air as she waited for the old queen to answer.
"He killed my son. He must be punished."
Jane didn't flinch away from the hatred in Lizan's voice, she just stood there and waited. It was important, it had to be, or else why was she here? Why was she dreaming this dream? But she said nothing, did nothing to fill the silence that followed the woman's words.
It wasn't a long silence, but it was the queen who broke it. The queen who pointed a gnarled finger at Jane and said, "Someone must suffer for his crime, but he has forgotten almost everything. I will not have it so. If the changing took his memory, then you will suffer in his stead. And that will hurt him even more."
"What was his crime?" Jane asked, sounding reasonable and calm past all understanding.
"He murdered my only son." It was a wail of sorrow, laden with age-old pain, pain the years had not lessened.
The words made no actual sense-- even if it was a dream. Jane frowned as she asked, "Who are you talking about? Not Sojourner? He's your son, too, isn't he?"
"His crimes are unforgivable. He has no name. No mother. No land. No people. He is an anathema, and we have cursed him. Cast him out." She leaned forward, stared into Jane's eyes, looked deep, and then she said, her voice hard, cold, "But the changing took away more than a man. It took his memory of his punishment. That cannot be. Someone must know and hurt, hurt until the grave claims them. Only then can my poor murdered son find his rest."
Jane lifted her chin, looked down her nose at the old woman, and said, quite calmly, "You're crazy, lady, and I have no intention of hanging around in this stinking dump and listen to you spout crap."
Smiling sweetly, sweetly for Jane anyway, even if it did hurt her face, she added, allowing nothing of her anger to show, acting as if the whole dream were just a chance meeting in the ladies room, "It's been interesting," as she turned and started to walk away.
"So!" It was hiss of contempt. "You, who carries the twin to his soul, think you can escape the consequences of what he has wrought? Watch and learn, fool."
Between one step and the next, Jane crossed over into another time, a different dream. This time the throne room was relatively clean if somewhat faded, but, as before, only one of the thrones was occupied. Only now, Jane wasn't alone with the queen; a queen whose grief-twisted face was only just beginning to bear the mark of years.
Stripped naked, a man with bronze skin and silver eyes, a chained man with the mark of whips on his back, was being forced to his knees before Queen Lizan's throne by three other men. He had been beaten bloody, but he was far from defeated.
Fierce love rushing up, pounding in her ears, making her blind and deaf to all except the man, Jane ached to run forward, hold him in her arms, tend his wounds, destroy the woman who had brought him to such a pass. But even if they were invisible, the bonds that held her were as strong as his chains. Strain as she might, she could do nothing but watch and listen as Sojourner's mother repeated the terrible spell, the forbidden spell that turned a man into an animal. The spell that fairly burned itself into Jane's brain, her memory, and perhaps even into her soul.
Tears ran down her face, clogged her throat, but Jane couldn't turn away; she wouldn't have if she could. He was Sojourner and she would stay with him until the end.
A woman wrapped and veiled in deepest mourning, Lizan stood, looked down at the chained man. "Why?" she asked, her voice venomous with hate. "Did you hate him so much because he was my favorite? Is that why you killed Damian, the child of my heart, my only son?"
Sojourner's head was unbowed, but his voice was low, husky with weariness when he said, "Damian was mad, Mother. I told you that, so did his wife. But you wouldn't listen to what we..."
"Silence!"
Several more black-clad men, Jane supposed they had some sort of function at the court, stepped forward as if they intended to make sure the queen's slightest command would be obeyed. Lizan waved them away and moved a step closer to her son.
"You are the child of my body, conceived by force, nurtured in hate. You are your father's child, but I am not your mother. I have never been your mother. You are nothing to me. Less than nothing."
"I am sorry to have caused you sorrow, Mother, but Damian killed his wife, his child, and then he burned and savaged the land of her birth. He was a mad dog; someone had to stop him. I did it the only way I knew."
"Why? Why did you kill your brother?"
"Because I loved him," Sojourner said, anguish giving truth to his words. "I did not want to see him suffer any more."
"Fool!"
"Perhaps, but Damian believed the all lies someone spread throughout the court, believed his wife loved me, that the child she carried was mine, but it wasn't so, was it, Mother?"
"Annette and her dear little baby." She laughed and took another step in his direction before she threw back her mourning veil and lifted her hands, began moving them in precise patterns as she recited words that forced their way into Jane's heart, crawled in her mind and took up permanent lodging. All while it added a world of new tears to her life, tears that could never be shed. Tears for knowledge that could never be shared.
The words of the changing weren't harsh, they were almost gentle, and would have been if they had been given with love, but the curse that followed had no gentleness in it.
"I curse you," Lizan said, lines of force going out from her hands, curling around Sojourner in a web of power. "From this time forward, you have no land, no people, no family, and only one hope. You are doomed to wander alone, endlessly and eternally, never resting in one place until you find That Which Was Lost, until you find the Black Opal Crown of Seeting."
She gave a final twist with her hands and smiled coldly as the chained man shimmered, took on the aura and semblance of a great black cat, a silver-eyed cat who still wore the chains of the man.
And then Lizan looked at Jane and said, her voice inaudible to all the others, "Watch and remember. Know in your heart and your mind that this is what he has forgotten, know it and suffer as he has made me suffer."
Lizan reached behind her, and took the Opal Crown in her own two hands, and began breaking off the nine opals it contained. One by one, muttering inaudible spells over each one before she threw it in the air, she watched them vanish.
Her breath caught in her chest, aching there, Jane watched, too, until Lizan lifted the last of the sullen, barely flaming opals. It was the ninth and largest. She showed it to both Jane and the cat before she dropped it on the stone of the dais, stepped on it, and ground it to powder under the sole of her shoe.
"No!" Jane's scream echoed in the high reaches of the room, but no one even turned in her direction. No one but the queen, a very old queen who, once again, sat on a throne in a tattered, moldy room, a room filled with old rotting magic and bitter hate. And with madness taking all humanity from her silver eyes, she smiled at Sojourner's One True Love and said, "Now you know. Will you tell him what you have seen? Will you tell him all his searching is in vain? Will you tell him That Which Was Lost can never be found? Jane Murdock, will you tell him that he will never walk like a man again?"
The old woman's laughter was wild, ugly, and so was her voice when she said, "Cry as I have cried, ache as I have ached, and know that nothing can change it. Nothing!"
Abruptly, with no transition, the dream, if that's what it was, vanished, ceased to exist, but it did not take with it the memory of what had been done. And it did not take the tears, the terrible wracking sobs that shook Jane's whole body, that made her shake and cling to Sojourner when he woke from his doze, took her in his arms, and tried to soothe her.
"What is it, love? What has frightened you so?" he asked before he said, "Tell me, love, talk about it and it will go away. It was just a dream, it cannot follow you here."
But it had. It had.
"Tell me, love. The telling will ease the fear, the pain, take away its sting."
The old woman's words still echoing inside her brain, Jane clung to him, but only for a moment. And, not now or ever could she tell him what caused her terrible pain. Jane Murdock would never give that evil old woman that particular satisfaction.
Instead she wiped her eyes and said, "It was nothing, just a dream about dires or something like that. It's all but forgotten. I'm sorry I worried you, but we're going to leave tomorrow, we'd better get some rest." She freed herself from his arms, turned her back, and murmured some sort of answer to his protests.
The quilts warm around her, Jane closed her eyes, forced her body to relax, but sleep stayed just beyond her reach. She liked it that way. Sleep held dreams, and she hadn't the strength to dream any more that night.
The rank smell of evil magic lingered around her, like a miasma of decay. Sojourner didn't know where Jane's dream walking had taken her, but he was sure it hadn't been into Cordelia's sphere of influence. This magic was old and real, and there was something about it that tugged at his memories, reminded him of some unnameable something.
He sighed, but he couldn't remember, couldn't do whatever was needful to protect his One True Love. He thought with a touch of wry, she didn't like it much when he tried.
Knowing full well she wasn't sleeping, but not quite sure how to tell her so, he wanted to...to... He wasn't sure what-- whatever he did, it would only make parting harder.
Sighing again, he turned his back to her still form, reached out, picked up another stick of wood, and threw it on the watch fire. Then, he mouthed a spell of protection, let it settle around her, and hold back all things arcane; if only for the moment.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Her back tight against his, Jane woke first. Still drowsy but savoring the moment, she smiled before memory smote her a heavy blow, memory of Lizan and the terrible future she had given Sojourner. Jane tried to squirrel the memory of the curse away in some hidden recess of her mind, but that wasn't possible.
Wanting to weep until her eyes bled, she knew she couldn't, knew, too, she had to conceal the terrible knowledge from him forever. She could not and would not cause Sojourner any further hurt. But it wasn't going to be an easy thing, and that was exactly what his mother knew, the reason Lizan had told her the truth. That Which Was Lost could never be found; Sojourner could never regain his man shape. He would search forever and would always be a cat; except to her seeing, to her every touch.
Jane stared into the darkness, forcing her much vaunted reason to take hold. And when her smile was firmly in place, she wiggled around in their rumpled bed until she could sit up without waking him.
What she saw didn't give her all that much pleasure. The fire was dead out. The cave was lit by a pale light, early morning light magnified by the night's snowfall and seeping in through the tunnel like a wan ghost of summer. And it was cold, so cold that she dreaded jumping out of the warm bed and going in search of the garments she had laid out for the day; the day she knew they had to leave the cave.
Her teeth were chattering, but she was fully dressed-in a pair of Will's pants, one of his heavy shirts, thick socks and kidskin slippers-- when she had her first setback of the day. The wood was piled and ready for the touch of flame, but the cigarette lighter wasn't being cooperative. Swearing under her frosty breath, Jane spun the wheel against the flint again and again. It was as dead as autumn leaves, without even a spark to show it had ever lived.
