Five Odd Honors (36 page)

And no wonder,
Pearl thought.
So much of my life has been a story, a drama of my own construction.

“You took what was mine,” came the whisper again.

Pearl sprang to her feet, looking about. No one was there. No one behind her chair. No one—she felt foolish as she got down on stiff knees to check—under her bed.

Leaning against the mattress, Pearl got slowly to her feet, her muscles aching, her knees stiff and swollen. Her right elbow—on which she had leaned (the hand was stronger, but still healing)—d idn’t like her very much either.

I must have overdone it at sword practice this morning,
Pearl thought.
Well, what can I expect, exchanging off-hand blows with Thorn, who could be my grandson, great-grandson if I started young enough.

Pearl moved toward the closet, pushing aside the tidy racks of dresses, the slacks on their hangers, blouses, skirts. Nothing behind them. No indication that the shoes, ordered by style and color on their racks, had been moved.

“Mine. All mine,” came the whisper, so soft and hoarse that it was genderless. It quivered with barely contained wrath. “I had a place. A home. A duty. You stole it from me. You took what was mine, and what did you do with it? Nothing! Nothing!”

Pearl moved more quickly now, the stiffness in her limbs forgotten in building fear. Where could that voice be coming from? Her gaze fell upon the door that led into the bathroom.

Someone must be hiding in there!

Her heart pounding hard, Pearl threw open the bathroom door. A small nightlight burned with a soft green glow, sufficient to illuminate the small room. Clearly visible were the toilet, sink with a cabinet beneath it, and shower/tub enclosure.

The room appeared to be empty, but just to make certain, Pearl pushed back the shower curtain. This was printed with bamboo, and for a moment Pearl felt as if she were pushing through a tangled forest.

Nothing. The tub was empty. The pristine white enamel showed no marks.

Pearl opened the door on the other side of the bathroom. This led into a room only slightly smaller than her bedroom. She had used it as a private living room when she had had interns staying with her.

When the current troubles had begun, back in May, she and Des had converted it into a studio where the three apprentices could make amulets. It also served as a classroom, where Des or Pearl or Albert could lecture on arcane matters without fearing that the gardener or the twice-a-week maid might overhear.

There was no light on in this room. The partial light that filtered in through the windows showed only lumpish figures in shades of grey. Aware that her hand was trembling, hating herself for her growing apprehension, Pearl flipped on the light switch.

Harsh white overhead light transformed those grey forms into a utilitarian table large enough to seat six, comfortable folding chairs, bookcases, and a small table holding a toaster oven. Nothing else. The door into the hallway was shut, and the very basic lines of the furniture offered no concealment.

“Why did you have to be born? What use have you been?”

The whisper came from behind her now. Pearl swung around, looked through the pale green light of the bathroom into her bedroom. She saw nothing.

Purposefully, Pearl switched off the light in the studio and closed the door firmly behind her. Like most bathroom doors, it had a simple lock. She fastened this, assuring that her tormentor couldn’t slip through that way without her hearing.

Pearl paced back through the green-lit bamboo-lined jungle of her bathroom, her slippers soundless on the tiny white hexagonal tiles of the floor. Once again, she closed the door behind her.

Her reading light cast an ample glow through her bedroom, but now Pearl moved to turn on the overhead light. Under this brilliant illumination, Pearl scanned the areas nearest to the windows, the joins of floor and ceiling. T histime she was not looking for a person, but for wires, for a speaker, anything that might be transmitting those horrible whispered imprecations.

“A waste, a waste,” said the whisperer, “and you took it all from me for nothing but this sterile existence, the perpetual playing at pretend.”

There were no wires. No tape player. Could there be some sort of mini-spy system? A wireless device? But no. The voice shifted around the room, acid words coming forth harsh and cold. Judgment passed, doom pronounced.

Pearl sketched the glowing characters for All Green. Her wards, both within and outside of the house, were so good that she had not thought magic could be used against her. Perhaps she had been overconfident.

When the spell had transformed her vision, Pearl examined her bedroom once more. Other than her own green characters inscribed on floor and ceiling, doorframe and window frame, there was nothing. She looked again, knowing that if someone . . .

. . . (Another Tiger, another Tiger) . . .

. . . had worked the spell the color would be the same; even the handwriting might be similar if the one who had written them possessed a style similar to her own.

. . .
(Old Tiger, Thundering Heaven, teacher, enemy, adored object)
. . .

But there was nothing.

The whispering had continued during her inspection, rising in timbre. Accusations of failure, of theft, of misuse of valued commodities.

Pearl spun in place, twisting and turning, looking over her shoulder, moving fast as she could, trying to see where the whisperer was. Even when she angled herself so that the full-length mirror on the stand in one corner made it possible to see both in front and in back of her, she saw nothing, not the slightest flicker of movement.

Frustrated, Pearl threw her head back and screamed, a raw sound of anger and frustration, the precise opposite of that nasty, niggling, doubting whisper.

“I did not! I did not! I only took what was given! I am not a thief!”

Sobs mingled with the screams, but the only reply was silence.

Pearl collapsed onto her knees, feeling all the stiffness of the years. She felt the ache of the arthritis within her swollen knuckles as she beat her left hand against the carpet.

“I did nothing wrong!”

Pearl? Pearl?
Are you all right? Wake up now, honey. Come on, wake up.”

Nissa’s voice, soft and pleading, so very far away.

Pearl struggled to open her eyes, struggled to make sense of the confllicting signals her body was sending her. She’d been kneeling on the floor, but now she was on her back, the firm softness of a mattress beneath her.

“Pearl? Come on, now. Let me hear you talking to me.”

There was a sheet over her, and over that the lightweight cotton blanket Pearl usually pulled up, even in summer. Her head was on her pillow. She was wearing a nightgown.

Memory warred with memory. She’d been sitting up in her chair reading. Pearl knew that, but she also knew with rising certainty that she’d gone to bed around nine.

Pearl remembered choosing a fresh nightgown from her drawer, deciding on the sleeveless one with tiny orchids printed on the soft fabric. The gown was old; the touch of satin embroidery at the neckline made it elegant.

She remembered leaning back against her pillow, thinking about the next day, how she and Nissa were going to watch a “play” at Joanne’s little day school. Lani was singing a song, and from her impromptu rehearsals Pearl already knew every word and accompanying gesture perfectly, but she knew how important it was for a child to see familiar, loving faces in the audience.

She’d felt herself drifting off, tired, so unbelievably tired but content.

“Pearl?” Nissa’s voice sounded strained.

“I’m”—Pearl managed to open her eyes and saw her bedroom, lit only by the light drifting in through the open doorway from the hall—“I’m awake. Why did you come in here?”

Nissa sat on the edge of the bed and took Pearl’s hand between two of hers. Normally, Pearl would have been offended by the familiarity, but she could sense that Nissa needed comfort as much as she was offering it.

“I heard you screaming,” Nissa answered simply.

Pearl considered this, her brain moving out of sleep into its usual sharpness.

“How did you hear? I had this suite soundproofed back in the day when my interns could be a little noisier than they thought they were.”

Pearl pressed her free hand experimentally to her throat, as always feeling a touch startled by the changed texture of her skin, by the slight looseness and delicacy that had come sometime after her seventieth year.

“My throat doesn’t hurt, so I couldn’t have screamed that loud.”

Nissa looked resigned and a little guilty.

“Pearl, I’ve something to confess.”

Pearl pushed herself up on the pillows, but didn’t say anything.

“After I came back, Albert took me aside. He told me he was concerned that you weren’t recovering as quickly as you should.”

“I did,” Pearl said, with quiet dignity, “nearly have a heart attack, even if that heart attack was magically induced.”

“That’s right,” Nissa agreed. “But you didn’t have a heart attack. None of the tests Dr. Andersen ran showed any damage to the heart muscle. Albert said he told him that you had a heart like that of someone twenty years younger.”

Pearl remembered. She’d felt foolishly proud when she’d heard this, like she was getting a prize for all those mornings she’d eaten right and gone out to exercise instead of making excuses.

“Dr. Andersen also said you should be pretty much back to normal within a week. Pearl, honey, it’s been a lot longer than that, something like three weeks, and you’re still far too tired, far too run down.”

Pearl noticed that second “honey,” and tried to decide how she felt about it. Nissa had never used endearments before, but their situation had changed. And Nissa wasn’t condescending; she was just treating Pearl like she would have one of her sisters.

Despite her confusion and growing sense of apprehension, Pearl felt pretty good about this.

“So Albert asked you to watch me,” Pearl guessed.

“That’s right.”

Nissa was about to say more, but Pearl, shreds of what must have been a nightmare coming back to her, suddenly interrupted.

“Wait! Don’t tell me you’ve cast a spell in here! Surely, I’d have known. Even if the Rabbit and the Tiger are paired signs, I would have known!”

Panic rose.

If I’m getting so slow that I can’t tell if a spell has been set in my own house, maybe that voice was right and I’m useless.
. . .

In answer, Nissa got up from her seat on the edge of the bed. She reached down behind the nightstand, coming out with a standard baby monitor.

“No spell. I just put this monitor in here. The base unit is in my room. It has a couple of channels, so I could still keep a monitor in Lani’s new room. Albert asked me to learn if you were sleepwalking or something else that might account for your extreme exhaustion.”

“And you found that ‘something else,’ ” Pearl said. “Screaming nightmares.”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Nissa admitted. “Want to talk about it?”

Pearl didn’t, but she forced herself to do so. Dreams were not something to be taken lightly, not for those who lived with their feet set in more than one world.

Nissa listened attentively.

“You took what was mine,” she repeated after Pearl finished her account,

“and then wasted it. And variations of the same. Interesting. Unsettling. Tell me, Pearl. Is that honestly how you feel about yourself, deep down inside?”

Pearl hesitated for so long that Nissa gently prompted her.

“Go on, Pearl. I’m not going to tell everyone your deepest, darkest secrets, but if we’re going to try to decide if these are dreams or some sort of sending, then we need to, let’s say, check into your psyche.”

Pearl sat all the way up in her bed and plumped the pillows behind her. She knew her hair must look a mess, and she wondered what Nissa thought of her without her makeup. Even when her house had been full of people, Pearl had never left her rooms without at least some primping.

Then she dismissed such thoughts as unworthy and tried to give Nissa an honest answer.

“You know, Nissa. I really don’t think I do feel I’ve failed.”

Nissa’s doubt showed on her face, but Pearl held up her hand to forestall any comments.

“Let me explain. I know my father, Thundering Heaven, felt that I failed him, not by anything I did, but first by being born female, then by following my own course, refusing to marry and bear the ‘proper’ heir to the Tiger’s line.

“But that’s him. I really didn’t feel I failed—well, except in the matter of an heir, and I’ll come back to that. I know I’ve mastered the Tiger’s lore. I made certain that several people—Albert and Gaheris in particular—who might have otherwise lapsed received the best teaching Shen and I could provide. I’ve mentored Des. Stayed in touch with your family. Been friends with Deborah—though that’s easy. She’s very nice.”

“She is,” Nissa agreed. “What about the heir thing? Is that alone enough to give you nightmares like this?”