Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2 Page 13

Lady Beners snorted. “Not for you, girl. A pretty face and money in the pocket, yes. But you are going to be ‘my lady when you leave the altar.”

  Sara felt sick. Luckily that very queasiness seemed to raise a veil between her and the outer world during the endless evening. Thanks be, Julian did not seek her out for any special attentions. His father was quite open with remarks concerning his purchase and restoration of Harewood, the only mansion in the countryside which could rival Highmount.

  At last Sara was able to creep away. Her agitation of the nerves was in no way lessened when, as she came into the hallway leading to her chamber, she heard loud voices.

  “’Tis so! Th’ Black Man—he peered through th’ window—all nasty—”

  Dottie, the chambermaid, was confronting Martha at the door to Sara’s room, which was open.

  “What is it?”

  “Ahhh—” Dottie’s voice shrilled up to a scream; she pulled her apron up over her head as if seeking some hiding place and blundered down the hall. Hibbitts himself came out of the chamber, followed by one of the footmen bearing a poker. The butler’s face was flushed red.

  “Such a to-do—th’ gel’s nub-cracked. Oh, Miss Sara—Dottie is as flighty as a feather. There be naught on th’ balcony, nobody a-looking in.” He gave a stiff pull to the edges of his waistcoat. “Be sure she’ll not put us to such a stir again!”

  Attended by his still poker-armed guard, he passed on after the fleeing Dottie with a ponderous tread. Sara looked inquiringly to Martha.

  “Naught to do, Miss Sara. Th’ stupid lass has taken a fidget—saying as how there was someone all in black walking the balcony—looking in at your window, where she didn’t need to pull back th’ curtains in th’ first place. A flighty piece she is—”

  “I know.” Sara went on into the room. “The Black Man—this is the time of year that he is generally seen. All those stories they tell—”

  “Stories,” Martha burst out. “Foolishness! We’ll have Black Men sproutin’ from every bush if Dottie spreads th’ word—which she is not likely to do once Mrs. Parley gets her tongue on her.”

  The housekeeper’s scolds were famous. Almost Sara could feel sorry for the girl. But the matter soon slipped from her mind; she had too many troubles of her own.

  Yes, she thought as she tossed and turned, unable to quiet her thoughts enough to sleep, it was truly a pity that the Black Man was story only. She could do well with the aid of the local boggle, if she could summon him up and put him to haunting the Rowlands, giving them such a disgust of the place that they would take off and out of her life.

  Lacking the boggle she had to resign herself during the next few days to playing the part Lady Beners set her. Julian Rowland was perfectly correct in his addresses, but luckily the men were out in the day seeking sport. He had not attempted any display of false affection, and for that Sara was thankful.

  Martha informed her that, accepted as the Rowlands were by their host and hostesses, the small staff which traveled with them was not faring as well. Those were natives of India—heathens one and all—and greatly distrusted belowstairs.

  “The sooner those be away th’ better,” Martha grumbled. “Hibbitts has said as how he is not used to such an’ if he has to take much more he’ll be lookin’ out for another place.”

  Sara only half heard the words; she was looking at the small casket sitting on the dressing table. It was a marvel of workmanship in precious metal, the patterns on sides and lid strange—and somehow disturbing.

  This had been delivered to her only an hour since, with a note from Julian Rowland saying this was brought especially for her and asking that she wear it the next night for the formal announcement of their betrothal.

  When she lifted the lid she stared wide-eyed. Martha had come up behind, drawn by curiosity.

  “Miss Sara, whatever are those? It gives me a spasm to look at them!”

  “They give me worse than a spasm—certainly they are not in the common way!”

  On the velvet cushion within lay what were undoubtedly a pair of bracelets, together with necklet. The weak autumn sunlight brought forth sparks of lights from the begemmed setting, but what that so bedazzled was also plain to see.

  “Claws!” Sara jerked back her hand. “Tiger claws!”

  “Miss Sara—those couldn’t be—surely—” Martha’s face was a mask of horror.

  “No! No one could conceive of such a grossness. But how could he, with his own brother killed by a tiger?”

  “They do have some nasty ways o’ reckonin’ in them foreign parts. Maybe he thinks as how you should be glad th’ beast’s dead an’ shows it so.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Don’t fret yourself, Miss Sara—” Martha had begun when Sara spoke aloud some thoughts that had been gathering strength during the past few days.

  “They never have spoken of Jasper—why? It’s as if he never was at all.”

  “You be thinkin’ of th’ other young man, Miss Sara? Now that you speak it so—why, they did not even have proper mournin’ clothes with them! They was probably fitted out in London, but it’s queer that they have never said naught about him.”

  “One cannot ask—” Sara returned. She put out a hand and pushed the lid down on the casket. “I’ll not wear these, Martha. It would be unfitting.”

  She endured another evening, but the men, tired with their day’s outing, were not inclined to much conversation and her mother claimed most of her attention—outward attention—discussing the rigors of preparing for the coming ball.

  When she dragged back to her room she wanted nothing more than sleep—a sleep that would carry her well over the next day and night, or even longer.

  Martha got her to bed and she wriggled back among the pillows, the homey scent of lavender from the bed linen somehow a comfort, if a very small one.

  There was a small bedside light on the side table and a sliver of moonlight lanced through between the curtains, which were not firmly closed. Sara sighed and closed her eyes.

  She must have slept a little; she did not know what it was that had brought her awake. There was light by the dressing table, not that of any nightlight. This was of a yellowish-green color, and it brightened even as she watched.

  Then a darker core appeared within that pillar of light. There was a figure that gained substance steadily as Sara watched, the chill of fear rising in her. It was a woman who stood there, and she was now wholly solid, giving the appearance of one truly alive.

  Her garments swirled about her with a glitter of metallic threads, and she was girdled with a belt of flashing gems, red, green, and orange-fire yellow. Both wrists were banded with numerous bracelets, which built towers over her brown flesh nearly to her elbows.

  A collar of necklaces descended over her breasts, and there were long dangles of jewels from her ears. Though a triangle of veil had been pulled partly over her head, that did not hide the black hair parted in the middle and smoothed back to a knot against the neck.

  Sara could see the stranger’s face plainly reflected in the mirror, rendered fully visible by that noxious light. Between her black brows there was a red mark, and across her cheeks spread patterns of filigree as if gold leaf had been pasted to the flesh. In one nostril there was set a diamond as imposing as any Lady Beners prided herself on owning.

  The light had deepened, sharper than candle glow, as the woman’s hands grasped at the casket. With a click, the lid of the coffer was flung back and the long fingers scrabbled in the interior. When those hands were withdrawn they appeared curiously misshapen, as if the fingers had been folded inward. Between them protruded the claws of the bracelets, as might the tiger from which those had been taken extend them from the pads of its paws.

  A dream? To wake—move—to wake! Sara struggled against a force she had never felt before.

  The woman whirled, a movement that set the wide draperies of her skirt in motion. Her lips were drawn back to display teeth, very white against her
dark skin. But her eyes were more of a threat. The drooping lids were fully raised, and it seemed there were no pupils, rather yellow-green spots of fire.

  Sara tried to scream, the only answer to her efforts a hoarse croak. She threw herself backward across the wide bed as the woman moved with an odd stalking tread toward her. If she could only reach the door—

  There was something in that advance, a kind of relish of Sara’s terror, as if that were some refinement of pleasure for this woman out of nowhere.

  Sara fell over the edge of the bed, grabbed wildly at the covers, and pulled herself up. She gave one look. The woman had changed course; she was heading also for the door, striving to cut off the escape of her prey. But Sara had to risk it.

  She threw herself toward the only promise of safety she could see—hands outstretched.

  There was a blow between her shoulders. She felt her nightgown being ripped from her, the scouring of painful scratches down her shoulders and back. That somehow restored Sara’s voice and she screamed at last, shriek upon shriek.

  Though that attack had nearly brought her to her knees, she hurled herself ahead with all the strength she could summon and felt the door at last beneath the scrape of her nails. Frantically she sought the latch.

  Once more she screamed. The panel yielded, but there was a jerk at the tattered remnants of her gown and she was dragged from her feet, unable even to throw herself through the opening into the hall beyond.

  She rolled and then somehow felt the wall behind her back, was able to look up at that terror hunting her. The woman was half crouched, raising one of those paw-seeming hands to her mouth, and was delicately tonguing the tips of the claws, her eyes holding steady on Sara.

  Blood. This—this thing had drawn blood—her own blood—and was tasting it!

  Again Sara screamed. There were other sounds that she could hardly hear through the fog of horror enwrapping her—voices, feet in the corridor. Louder still than those came a smash at the balcony window as the curtain shook, a shower of glass fragments falling from behind them into the room.

  Those same curtains were swept aside, allowing a dark figure to burst through. Sara saw a gleam of metal in a black-gloved hand—the barrel of a pistol. Now the light caught the newcomer full-on. She gave a small whimpering cry.

  Dark hair was swept back from his forehead. His features were lean, harsh lined, and from temple to chin on one side of his face ran the line of a deep scar. He did not look at her at all; his attention was all for the woman.

  She apparently had not heard his entrance, or else believed she had nothing to fear from him. Her body had drawn together in an odd way, and Sara sensed that she was about to leap straight for her selected victim.

  The door Sara had fought to reach was thrown wide open. There were people there. Who, how many, the girl could not have told. She felt that she dare not take her eyes from the woman.

  It was the man from the window who spoke first, but not in any tongue intelligible to Sara. She saw the woman snarl and her body shift with an unbelievable speed to one side so she could face the other.

  He spoke again emphatically, as one giving an order.

  There came a cry from the doorway—

  “You are dead—damn you—dead—dead!”

  As if those words were a lash laid about her shoulders, the woman whirled again, this time turning not toward Sara but to the doorway and those who had forced their way in. She sprang with all the ease and speed of a great hunting cat, the clawed paws out.

  Sara had not screamed. The cry now sounded deeper, but filled with no less horror than her earlier ones had been. The man raised his pistol and shot, the sound of the weapon seeming to finish that cry.

  Sara watched with unbelieving eyes. The woman-thing, which had been crouched above a still-quivering body, threw up her head and mouthed a yowl. She strove to rise but instead half fell to one side to fully reveal a bleeding body.

  Then the pawed thing twisted, turned, seeming to dissolve into the air. The light that had cloaked it was gone, as if snuffed out like a candle. The man from the window stepped forward. Catching up a scarf Sara had left on a chair, he used that to cover his fingers as he picked up from the floor the pair of bracelets that were evilly afire in the light from the corridor.

  On the floor the body of the victim twitched, then was still. Sara shuddered, so faint and sick she could not move. Where that once so handsome face had been was blood. Blood still spurted from the torn throat. And on his knees by that tortured thing was Amos Rowland, his face a mask of horror.

  “Devil—” he spat at the man from the window.

  “Evil sent returns to evil,” that other said. “That is the law. He should have known it well, since he imbibed it with his mother’s milk. Her race has strange knowledge. The fate that he would have fostered on me, or was that of your devising—father?” He uttered that last word as he would an oath. “You wished much for him—did you let those wishes outrun caution and humanity?”

  “What—what—?” Sara heard her father’s voice, shaken as if he could not believe what he had witnessed.

  The man bowed. “Lord Beners, it is an ill thing to bring a family quarrel under another’s roof. I am Jasper Rowland. As my father’s eldest son, I was not his favorite after he took another wife—an Indian lady of very ancient blood, though that line was, by legend, somewhat tarnished. I was—perhaps this seems beyond belief—made the target for a certain ritual curse.” He still held the pistol, but his hand went up to touch the barrel of that to the ribbon of scar.

  “My brother had another reason to dislike me.” He no longer regarded father and son on the floor. “He was also enamored of a native woman, one said to possess these unknown powers. It was to her that he must have applied for a remedy for my existence. But unfortunately he was not constant in his attachment to her, and seemingly she prepared an answer to being cast off.

  “These”—he held the bracelets farther into the light—”were to be a luck gift. Unfortunately, it was not said what kind of luck. They are better here—”

  With one quick jerk of wrist, Jasper Rowland sent the bracelets spinning into the coals of the fire still dimly aglow on the hearth. There was a flash of that same yellow-green—a billow of stench-laden smoke.

  Jasper Rowland laughed. “Well rid,” he commented. “But there was an innocent pulled into this embroilment, and for that there can be little excuse.” Another of his quick movements had brought him to Sara and he was kneeling beside her with no attention for those others, drawing her gently forward, his strength of arm somehow comforting.

  “Can there be forgiveness for this?” he asked seemingly of the company at large, but it was Sara who answered him.

  “You saved me—do you ask forgiveness for that?” She did not know the reason for this strange feeling. The many happenings of the past few moments had seemed to be so out of nature that she could not really believe they had occurred. But of this much she was sure: Jasper Rowland she wanted to know the better, and that would come in time.

  Nine Threads of Gold

  After the King (1992) TOR

  The way along the upper sea cliff had always been the secondary road into the Hold. Erosion had left only a narrow thread of a trail, laced with ice from the touch of storm-driven waves.

  It was midafternoon but there was no sun, the sullen grayness of the sky all of a piece with the cracked rock underfoot. The wayfarer leaned under the leash of a frost wind, digging the point of a staff into such crevices as would give her strength to hold when the full blasts struck.

  The traveler paused, to face inland and stare at a tall pillar of rock ending in a jagged fragment pointing skyward like a broken talon. Then the staff swung up and, for a second, there was a play of bluish glimmer about that spear of rock, which vanished in a breath as if the next gust of wind had blown out a taper.

  Now the path turned abruptly away from the sea. Here the footing was smoother, the way wider, as if the land had preserve
d more than the wave-beaten cliffs allowed. It followed for a space the edge of a valley, narrow as an arrow-point at the sea tip, widening inland. The stream that bisected the valley ran toward the sea, but where it narrowed abruptly stood a building, towered, narrow of window, twined with a second structure, a bridge connecting them, allowing the stream full passage between.

  In contrast to the gray stone of the cliffs the blocks that formed the walls of those two structures were a dull green, as if painted by moss growth undisturbed by a long flow of years.

  The traveler paused at the head of a steep-set stairway descending from the cliff trail, for a searching survey of what lay below. There were no signs of life. Those slits of windows were lightless, blind black eyes. The fields beyond lay fallow and now thick with tough grass.

  “Sooo—” The wayfarer considered the scene. In her mind one picture fitted over another. The land she surveyed was spread with an overcoating of another season, another time. And life in many forms was there.

  She gathered her cloak closer at her throat and started to pick a careful way down the stair. The clouds at last broke, as they had threatened to do all that day. Rain began as a sullen drizzle, coating those narrow steps dangerously.

  However, she did not halt again until she reached what had once been a wider and better-traveled way leading inward from the sea. In spite of the rain she stopped again, peering very intently at the building. Holding her staff a little free from the pavement, she swung it back and forth. No, she had not mistaken that tug. But a warning was as good as a coat of armor might be—sometimes.

  Such a long time—

  Seasons sped into each other in her thoughts, and she did not draw on any one memory.

  The road had been well set long ago, but now its pavement was akilter from the push of thick-stemmed shrubs, gray and leafless at this season. It still led straight to an arch giving on the nearer end of the bridge that united the two buildings. Down below, the stream gurgled sullenly, but the birds that had haunted the cliffs had been left behind, and there was no other sound—save now and then a roll of distant thunder. She stepped out on the bridge, her staff still held free of the pavement, and the lower end pointed a little forward. If only a small portion of what she suspected was the truth, there was that which must be warded against.