THE SOLAR AT ERRALSWAN was a small room, situated in the stumpy tower at the southwest corner of the rambling sandstone manor house, the windows that on three sides overlooked the walled-in orchards and gardens making it, on these cold autumn afternoons, the warmest and sunniest place in the house. Even so, fires had been kindled in the braziers of beaten copper; the sun that strewed an intricate lacework of bare tree shadows through the latticed windowpanes had lost its power to warm.
Tallisett of Erralswan stood for a long time in that bright, chilly drench of light, looking down at the locked doors of the cupboard-desk that stood between the windows, her arms folded, almost literally shivering, not with cold, but with a gust of irrational rage.
The cupboard-desk was of the old-fashioned, simple kind frequently found in the seats of country lords like this one, made of pickled pearwood, simply and cleanly carved. The pale wood showed up admirably the half-dozen small, oval splotches of indigo that dotted the edges of the tall, narrow, enclosing doors - when Tally took the desk's small key from her belt and opened those doors, she had to do so carefully, so exactly did those telltale smudges coincide with where it was easiest to place her hands.
She already knew what she'd see when she opened the desk, but at the sight of her letters, in their neat pigeonholes, all daubed and thumbed with more spots of indigo, renewed anger swept her, so that for a moment she felt she could scarcely breathe. The top sheet of the little pile of half-written stationery on the minuscule writing surface was smeared, not only with those grubby blue thumbprints, but with a very fine white powder that in places had begun, itself, to turn a faint blue. This sheet she lifted carefully, holding it by the very tips of her fingernails, and carried it to the brazier in the corner; the two silky red bird dogs sleeping in front of it in the scattered glory of the autumn sunlight raised sleepy, hopeful heads as her skirt hem brushed their fur, but for once she had no greeting for them. She placed the sheet on the blaze and waited until it caught.
After it had completely burned she turned away, to descend the stone stairway to the gardens, and seek her husband.
"It's Neela, it has to be," she said.
Marc frowned irritably, though whether it was because she'd interrupted him while he was working one of his new horses, or because he resented an accusation against the pretty black-haired housemaid whom Tally knew he was planning to bed - if he hadn't done so already - she wasn't sure. From this, the largest of the paddock yards, one could look down the length of the narrow, upland vale nestled between the shouldering walls of the Lady Range and the granite cliff of the main mass of the Mountains of the Sun: sheep country, green and empty of trees, crisscrossed with low stone fences and crystal-cold despite the deceitful brilliance of the sun. Tally pulled the long featherwork shawl more closely about her shoulders and shivered.
She went on, "I've thought before this that my desk was being searched, my letters read. Last week when I went into Yekkan I bought a powder from a Hand-Pricker, which will cling to a human hand and leave purple stains on whatever it touches, stains that appear only hours later. I found such stains not only on the papers of my desk, but on the sheets of my bed, and around the fireplace, and on brooms and rags in the servants' hall..."
"You went to a Hand-Pricker?" Marc caught her by the arm in a crushing grip, and she saw, not anger, but fear in his dark eyes. Then he cast a swift look behind him, at his stablemaster who was training another of his dark, thick-necked two-year-old colts in the first of the elaborate carousel figures that would be required in the mounted fetes of the capital that winter, and drew Tally closer to the yellow sandstone wall that flanked the paddock on that side, so that his horse stood between them and any possibility of being seen from the yard. "My lady..." he said warningly.
She shook her head, baffled by how much he was making of it. "Everyone goes to Hand-Prickers."
"Not everyone," he whispered hoarsely. "In fact it's far fewer than most people believe."
"That's nonsense," she said, still puzzled at the look in his eyes. "If nobody goes how do they make the kind of living they do - and what does it matter anyway? What matters is that one of my servants is searching my rooms..."
"Hand-Prickers make their living as poisoners, as abortionists, as everyone knows - by transmuting base metals into gold..."
"Marc." Tally pulled a little away from him, shocked at hearing this kind of thing from him. From Damson, last June, it was to have been expected - she was close to the inner circles of Agon's cult and would promulgate their oversimplifications whether she believed them or not. But with all the years Marc had been at her father's court he had to have known better. "You know as well as I do that they can't make base metals into gold without expending more energy than it's possibly worth."
Marc shook his head. "They only say that." He placed his big hands on her shoulders and looked gravely down into her eyes. Out of court costume, in the plain green tunic and close-fitting sleeves of a country squire and with his hair braided back, he seemed both older and more approachable than he did in Bragenmere, where the ceremonial of her father's household gave them the ability to distance themselves from one another. Here at Erralswan, though the summer had not been an easy one, she had remembered why she had always liked the big, easygoing young man whom she had part bullied, part bribed, part begged to marry her seven years ago.
"It's only a story they put around," Marc said, in a still lower whisper, as if he feared that some wizard would overhear, "to keep the secret of their wealth to themselves - so they can buy the influence of powerful nobles. My lady, these days it doesn't pay to be seen having anything to do with people like that, particularly for you."
Behind them the horse, bored, tossed its head. Past the low sandstone wall of the paddock Kir's voice could be heard, raised in a joyous shout as he led a pack of the half-dozen pages of the household in a charge down one of the long arbored walks that connected the main house with its several attendant pavilions. Tally caught a glimpse of them through the latticework of the vines, now nearly bare of their summer leaves, and felt a cold little dart of fear.
Carefully she said, "Why 'particularly' for me?"
"My lady," her husband said quietly, using the honorific in which he had always addressed her, "the days are past when you, or anyone, could be seen associating with... well, with just anyone. They're finding out things about wizards, and how they work..."
"Who is finding out 'things'?" Tally insisted warily. "What kind of 'things'?"
"About what they do to people who come within their power." Marc glanced around him again, though there was no one in the yard but the stablemaster and he was fussing lovingly over the colt's feet. "Now, I know you - and in fact anyone who knows you can attest that you haven't had your soul stolen, or your will taken over, by wizards..."
"That's ridiculous"
He put a finger to her lips. "They do it, my lady," he said softly. "They do it. We're only just finding out how frequently. And they turn such people into their servants, to get them still other slaves."
For a moment she could only stand openmouthed with shock at the enormity of this lie. The sheer scope of it took her breath away almost as much as the fact that it was coming to her from Marc, Marc who had always been cheerfully friendly to the wizards at her father's court, who had bought Mhorvianne only knew how many love philters from Jaldis and Rhion over the years... "That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard!"
He bit his lip, hesitating for a long moment - Tally felt almost that he was waiting for the groom to get out of earshot before he spoke again. "I see I'm going to have to tell you," he said softly. "I didn't want to, because I know you liked old Jaldis and Rhion, and I swear to you I've never heard a thing against either one of them, even if they did... Well, everyone says their disappearance was opportune."
He lifted his hand to silence her as she opened her mouth again, but the gesture was needless - Tally was outraged beyond speech.
He went on, "They arrested a conspiracy of wizards the night you left Bragenmere, in your father's very palace, in Jaldis' rooms. I'd like to assume that with his disappearance they were trying to take your father's library for whatever knowledge it contained, and not that Jaldis himself had summoned them."
Tally closed her mouth, stood for a time looking up into the handsome, healthy tanned face bent so gravely above her own. All these endless summer months she had suspected something had happened after her departure, though out here in the deeps of Marc's countrified fief there had been no way of knowing for certain, and she had feared to write to anyone she knew at court. Damson's words to her before she had left had frightened her; she knew how easily letters could be intercepted and read. So she had waited, knowing that if Rhion had indeed been brought back with the turning of the summer-tide she would eventually hear of it... someone would get word to her...
And so she had waited, through the nerve-racking weeks.
Marc went on in almost a whisper, "So you see, they have this information from the wizards themselves. From their confessions."
"Under torture." Her heart was beating heavily, hurtingly in her chest. Shavus... she thought. The old man was vain, arrogant, maddening, but never did he deserve that. The Serpentlady, Harospix... Dear Goddess, did the Gray Lady get away safety? Did Gyzan?
Marc nodded. "Of course. The things they've confessed to aren't anything you would learn of without torture. But that doesn't mean they aren't true."
Of course, she thought bitterly. I chose Marc for my husband partly because he was easily led - because he'd believe what I told him and not ask questions. Why be surprised that I'm not the only one he'll believe?
"And Father let them?" Her mouth felt dry. She remembered her father and the gruff old Archmage dueling with the salt spoons.
"Your father's been very ill," Marc said. "You know that, Damson's been writing all his letters for him, with only his signature... but yes, his signature was on the orders. He must protect his realm - and not only his own realm, but humankind."
Tally was silent. A part of her felt very still and cool, detachedly contemplating pieces of a puzzle fitting together. She didn't even feel anger - at Damson, or at Marc - only a sort of clarity, as if she were seeing them for the first time in decent lighting. For no reason, she remembered the tiny, crystalline clinking of her sister's lace spindles and the breath of incense that moved about the shrine of the Veiled God. A cold mountain wind breathed down across the stable yard, stirring her heavy skirts and making the feathers of her shawl ripple in the light like a meadow of iridescent, red-bronze grass.
But part of her remembered Gyzan, Shavus, and the other mages who'd been in Jaldis' tower that night, remembered Jaldis' sunken, empty eyepits and limping step, and she felt her breath thicken and heard the dizzying roar of blood sounding in her ears. It seemed to take her forever to collect her thoughts. "Do you know... who was among those arrested?"
"The Archmage," Marc said quietly. "The Harospix Harsprodin, who had been one of the Queen's advisors. The Queen was deeply shocked at his betrayal, and by his confession that it was he who'd been causing her little boy's seizures, and even more shocked when it became obvious that your father's illness was almost certainly the result of the Archmage's spells."
"Shavus wouldn't - "
Marc shook his head. "According to his own confession, he cast the illness upon your father when your father began to suspect him of trying to steal his soul, of trying to rule the country through him. Tally," he insisted, as she shook her head, refusing to believe, "it was written in his confession! It was what he told Mijac - the doctors sent to your father's bedside by the priests of Agon can't make head nor tail of his illness! He betrayed your father. The wizards he has sheltered for so long, befriended for so long, were only using him! Don't you understand?"
With a feverish shiver Tally remembered the letters she'd had all summer from her father, written in Damson's neat, secretarial hand - the wording had been frequently reminiscent of Damson, as well. She wondered if the signature on the orders for arrest had been the same as on her letters: unsteady, mechanical, like a man gravely ill - or a man deeply drugged.
"Do you know," she faltered, "what time that night the wizards were arrested? Whether it was before or after midnight?"
And Marc shook his head.
They will have destroyed the Dark Well, Tally thought, crossing the paddock quietly and turning toward the villa, almost shocked at her own ability to appear calm. Her heart pounded sickeningly in her breast, and her belly turned cold every time she thought about how confession was extracted - about what Rhion had told her of his own brush with the priests of Agon.
Was he one of the ones they took? She thought about it for a moment and found it unlikely. Even if he had... Her mind shied from the thought of what Esrex would have done to force a confession from Rhion as to the paternity of her sons. Even if he had withstood it and died, Esrex wouldn't have passed up the chance to let me know.
But if he didn't make the crossing before the arrest - if he didn't come stumbling out of the Dark Well right into the arms of Esrex and the masked servants of the Hidden God - that means he's still stranded wherever he is, with Jaldis dead, without magic, in trouble, he said.
And there was no one of sufficient power to bring him home.
She paused at the rear door of the house, hating the thought of returning to her rooms. The purple handprints would be fading by this time, as they did after a few hours, though the Hand-Pricker in the village had assured her that at a word from him they would return. For all the good that would do, she thought bitterly. Marc would never consent to bringing him here - and as things are, if he has any sense of self-preservation he won't come.
And in any case, disposing of one spy would only mean there'd soon be another one that she didn't know about. His devotees are everywhere, Damson had said.
With sudden resolution, Tally turned her steps left, crossing behind the rustic sandstone of the stable's east wall and thence around to the long, sloppy succession of sheds and huts that housed the kennels and the mews. At this time of the day the dog boy was in the rough brick kitchen, preparing the mulch of chopped mutton and grain the dogs were fed on those days when they weren't hunting; the pack bounded happily to the low fence to greet her, swarming around her skirts, tails lashing furiously as she climbed over the stile and hopped down among them. Despite her fears, despite her dread, she had to laugh at the earnest joy in those furry unhuman faces, and clucked to them, calling them the love names that always made Marc roll up his eyes: "My rosy peaches, my angelmuffins, my little wuzzlepoufkins..." The big staghounds and mastiffs, the rangy wolf killers whose shoulders came up to her waist rolled ecstatically on the ground, long legs waving in the air, for her to scratch their bellies.
In time she made her way into the first of the half-dozen huts where the dogs slept, raised a little off the ground for ventilation, low-roofed and smelling of the old blankets on which they slept and the herbs hung from the rafters to freshen the air. Tucking up her skirts, Tally knelt in the sun-splintered shade at the back, surrounded by a sniffing congregation of interested wolfhounds, pulled aside the mass of blankets, and lifted the floorboard beneath.
Barely visible in the gloom below the floor, she could make out the shape of a large square bundle, wrapped in waxed leather; under the leather, she knew, for she was the one who had wrapped it and the four others like it hidden in other holes and corners of the kennel, was oiled silk, and then the spell-woven cloth they'd been swathed in when she'd first smuggled them out of her father's strong room. All summer she had been waiting for a question from someone - her father, Shavus, someone - about where they were.
Now she knew the question wouldn't come.
No one but her father knew where Jaldis' books had been bestowed - her father, the wizards, and she.
I feared that the knowledge would be lost, the Gray Lady had said. And, speaking of the wizards, Without them it would become a contest of strongmen.
And very calmly, she wondered where it would be best to hide her children, when she fled from Erralswan and made her way to the Ladies of the Moon.
