Shadowheart (9 page)

He set the deck before Elayne and reached into the box again. This time he opened between them a parchment adorned by the figure of a naked man, the arms and legs spread wide, the body enclosed in a wheel of astrological signs. She was determined to show as little as possible of her emotion, but her cheeks flamed at the immodesty of the drawing.

The Raven glanced up, as if he had sensed her abashment. His dark, beautiful eyes rested upon her. He smiled with one corner of his mouth and reached across for the cards, placing them in the center of the figure as if they were a loincloth. “Haps that pleases you better, my lady,” he murmured. “Take off some cards, and keep them with you.”

“Why?” she asked. “Is this a spell?”

“We are philosophers. It is purely contemplation and study.”

“Study of what?”

“Of you.”

She stared at him warily across the table, realizing belatedly that he had lured her into his pentangle of truth. “I do not think you will find that there is a great deal of me to contemplate.”

“So it may be. Gentle young ladies often lead dull lives, and have characters to match.”

“As you say,” she murmured, dipping her head briefly.

He grinned, a dark flash of humor. “Take up the cards, madam,” he said.

She grew weary of breaking the stack and handing him one card after the other from the top, over and over, while he placed them in a pattern over the points of the human figure. It seemed to go on for hours, although she had no way to keep the time. Her neck and shoulders ached.

Night and lack of sleep were overcoming her resolution to remain vigilant.

If the Raven were fatigued, he gave no sign of it, but seemed to be deep in thoughtful meditation as he examined each card, placed it, and then studied the evolving spread. At some cards he seemed to smile a little, and when she handed him The Pope, he even laughed and shook his head as he laid it across the unclad figure’s private members. At another he lifted his black-winged eyebrows, whether in surprise or incredulity, she could not say. Finally she came to the last two cards in the stack before her.

“Take the one from the bottom,” he said.

Elayne offered it to him. He turned it up and laid it down facing her, in the center of the figure.

“The Knight,” he said. “From the first decade, the stations of humanity. I do not think you are a humble maidservant, my lady Elena. Your birth is much higher than you tell me. But you need not look so alarmed.” He leaned upon his elbow lazily. “The degree of your nobility is not what I wished to discern.”

She had grown wide awake in an instant. The elegantly dressed Knight posed before her mockingly.

“Here—” He spread apart two cards that lay at the lowest part of the wheel. “Your establishment interests me more. The Duke and the muse Clio, the giver of fame. But you see … here at her feet, this herb. Do you know it?”

Elayne peered at the card in spite of herself. “It seems to be a rose?”

He looked surprised. “No. Perchance it might appear so, though for myself I cannot see it, but the plant is not so noble. It is only the poor gith flower.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Haps you know it by another name. I have heard it called melanthy, too.” He smiled at her, and suddenly Elayne saw her danger.

“Is it?” she asked stupidly.

“Yes. Does it not grow near Bowland Castle?”

She blinked. “I know not. I have never been there.”

“But you are in the household of my Lady Melanthe, the Countess of Bowland.”

He spoke with simple assurance. Elayne answered nothing. She thought that someone must have told Amposta, but she kept a careful silence. There were any number of minor handmaids in the household of Lady Melanthe.

“You see, a little study of the details reveals much,” he said. “Here in the ninth house, we can see more—in your childhood you made a great journey out of danger… recovery from a morbid illness?” He tilted his head, turning over another card and considering. “Nay, I think not. The Emperor in the sixth position. Your health has always been superb.”

He glanced up at her, as if to confirm this. She could not deny it; she had never been seriously ill. Even the measles had treated her lightly.

“A journey in truth it was,” he said. “Over land and water. A vital cusp. Everything in your life changed at that turning. I don’t think you would have lived long if you had not traveled so young.” He frowned at the cards before him. “From the south to the north. Was it winter? Was there snow? And a fortification—a castle—a woman with child.”

Elayne stared at him. He could not know of her childhood journey from Monteverde to England; Lady Beatrice could have told him nothing of that. Elayne recalled it only dimly herself. But in her mind, even as he spoke the words, a memory stood clear, of arriving at Savernake in a snowfall, of Cara’s bulky form, nearly to term with little Maria, of being swept up into a joyous welcome.

“You called out,” he said. He rested his forefinger on a female figure named Melpomene, a singer holding a double flute. He smiled a little, as if remembering it himself. “A horse foundered in the drifts. You made a ball of snow and threw it.”

She sat frozen, stilled by the strange precision with which he described her own memory. She could see the horse struggling, the empty, snowy road that led away from Savernake Castle. “How know you these things?” she whispered.

“Some I read on the cards,” he said. “Some seem to be— given to me. But look now, the last card. That represents your future. Turn it up.”

Hesitantly she lifted the card, holding it so that she alone could see its face. It was exquisitely painted like all the rest, but here the artist had traded the bright colors and landscapes for a darker hue. On a background of midnight blue, the winged figure glowed: an angel arrayed in robes of sable black and silver, resplendent against a sky of infinite stars. Elayne felt her breath fail her.

It was her own dark angel. Beautiful and powerful, radiant with mystery, a perfect rendering upon the artist’s card. And as she lifted her eyes, she saw the same face alive before her, watching her, in the person of a nameless pirate.

She sprang up, sweeping the card away and knocking over her chair as she escaped from his circle of Truth. “It is a trick! It is some artifice with the cards!” She stood breathing quickly, angrily. “He can’t be you.”

The Raven never took his eyes from her face. He tilted his head a little, as if he too were doubtful. “Do you remember me, Lady Elena?”

“Nay—remember you? Have we met?” She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t understand this! It’s not—I don’t mean—not in life! Remember you from where?”

He smiled. “It is merely a card, as you say. I only wonder why it disturbs you so.”

“It is not merely a card, as you well know!” she cried. “It is you! And he can’t be you. I don’t know how you have discovered this, or made it come about, but he is not you.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “You confuse me greatly, Lady Elena, I do concede. The card is me, and I am not him? Who is ‘he’?”

She set her jaw and reached to pick up the card, slapping it face-up on the table. “I am quite sure this is some prank you play with your victims, as it must be known to you that this card is a perfect rendering of your person.”

His mouth worked, as if he were subduing a smile. “I confess, you are correct in that point.”

She hesitated, taken aback by this easy admission.

“It is a little game. I delight in games. It is a pursuit of mine to observe the human character. Your response has been the most interesting of all so far. Tell me, who is this ‘he’ that I cannot be?”

“No one,” she said, truthfully enough. “ Tis naught but a resemblance to a… a statue I used to gaze on during mass.”

“Of a saint?”

“Um, an angel,” she said.

“Ah, that would account for it,” he said placidly. “I’ve oft been told I resemble an angel.”

Elayne blinked at him. He did not appear like any angel she had ever seen, except her own.

“I expect it is my cherubic expression,” he said, and gave her a smile so wicked that her throat shrank.

“You are very frightening,” Elayne breathed.

“I mean to be,” he said. He riffled through the cards and spread them in a fan upon the table. “And yet… you do know me.”

“No.” She shook her head, twice. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m in no mood to harm your lovely face, Elena,” he said. “None at all.” His lip curled slightly. “ ‘Tis your good fortune that you remind me more of Melanthe than of your sister.”

Elayne felt herself frozen. She answered nothing.

“Ah, the house of Monteverde. Do they either of them suppose that I would forget those night-flower eyes? Your half sister’s are only brown, but you have that infernal Monteverde tint of blue and purple in yours. Foolish of Melanthe, to be so careless. But better for you in the end, as I don’t hold the timid Madame Cara’s visage very dear.”

If he had only spoken names, or even of faces, she might not have believed he could be speaking true. But when he called her sister timid, Elayne knew that he must have some close and vivid knowledge of her. “You have met my sister?” she asked faintly.

He made a short nod. “Aye,” he said, “and hated her as she despised me.”

Elayne stared at him. She could not even imagine her fainthearted sister in the same room with this man, far less that they knew one another enough to have hatred between them.

He turned his full gaze on her again. “Either you dissemble well, or your education in your family heritage has been sadly neglected, Princess Elena Rosafina di Monteverde. I am of Navona, and you have no greater enemies on earth.”

She stiffened in her chair. “Nay,” she whispered. “That is all gone now. Lady Melanthe told me!”

“Oh, did she!” He laughed. “And how did she convince you of this fantasy?”

“She only said—there were once three families, Monteverde, Riata, and Navona—but I need not study deeply on Navona, for they are finished.”

“Finished! And that is all? I am stung.”

“I’m sorry,” Elayne said, ducking her head. “But in truth she made no mention of a pirate.”

“Pirate!” he exclaimed languidly. “What a low opinion you have formed of me, my lady, on such small acquaintance!”

“A very princely pirate,” Elayne said, giving a shaky wave of her hand about the chamber.

“Grant mercy!” He bowed his head in mockery. He picked up the angel card and glanced at it. “Finished,” he said, tossing it down. His beautiful face became a devil’s mask as he narrowed his eyes. “Indeed.”

“Haps she only meant—that we are not enemies anymore. I have no hate for you myself.”

His dark eyebrows lifted. He looked at her as if she must be lying, and he would kill her for it. Elayne tried to hold his gaze.

“How should I?” she asked earnestly. “I don’t know who you are.”

After a moment he lifted the angel card again between two fingers, turning it to examine the shadowy figure. A faint curve appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Alas, you make me smile too easily. I fear things will go hard for you here.”

He did not appear amused. Elayne knew not what to make of him. “You object to smiling?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Only I find that I do not do it often—so it may be I will decide to keep you with me longer than you find convenient. Should you object?”

Elayne looked away uneasily. “I do not comprehend you.”

“Oh, you will, my lady Elena,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, standing over her. He did not touch her, and yet as he looked down, his eyes seemed to move over her face with the depth of a caress. “I promise that you will.”

Somewhere very far away, at the outermost edge of hearing, a trumpet called three notes. It called again, and was gone, dreamlike in the silence.

He laughed suddenly. “Franco Pietro, eh? What a tragedy that would be!” With a gesture, he beckoned her. “Come, Elena. Your future awaits.”

“Sit!” he said, waving her to the place beside him on the dais. They stood upon a gallery overlooking the sea, with laden tables lining the row of open arches. Elena was vividly aware of her hair falling loose down her back. Her insides quivered from lack of sleep, making her brain dance with flashes of illusion in the corners of her eyes. Torches burned, but the growing light of dawn made them dim. As he bid her sit down at the head table, child-servants passed back and forth, carrying platters and trenchers, casting long sharp shadows across the tiled floor. The prospect from the gallery was magnificent, the sky ablaze with pink and orange, the sea a soft blue. The Raven himself was a figure cast in silver and black, lit by the golden beams. He made no move to eat or speak to her—he sat still, his hand upon his wine cup, watching the sun rise over the sea.

Elayne sat quietly also. There seemed to be no other diners but themselves. The white linen tablecloth swayed gently in the open air, brushing her hands in her lap. In spite of his stillness, she felt a sharpened vitality in him; a sense that he kept himself motionless by resolve, alert, like a hunter listening for the distant sound of the hounds.

As the sun rose slowly above the sea, Elayne saw his glance flicker aside from his fixed focus on the horizon. At the same instant, she became aware of another drift of linen at the corner of her eye; a cloth moving lightly—a table that had not been there—but as she turned toward it she saw that it was a man. He seemed to appear from the dawn breeze itself, tall and insubstantial, dark-skinned like the Moors, his long wrists as thin as a skeleton’s in the full white sleeves of his gown.

He made an elaborate bow, dipping his bronzed, bald head almost to his knees, like a court jester. He wore a white linen robe, cut simple and full, with a peasant’s rough cord knotted about his waist. The flourishes of his hands in his sleeves were overwrought, dramatic, his tapered fingers mercurial. They almost seemed to gossip, speaking a silent language of their own.

“Il Corvo!” he exclaimed, lifting his gaunt head on a slender neck and stretching out his arm, addressing the pirate with a bold ease that Elayne had seen no one else use.

The Raven nodded. He smiled dryly, tapping his wine cup with his forefinger. Elayne could not tell if he was annoyed or entertained.

“I bring tidings,” the strange man said in thickly accented Latin. “I bring great news.”

The quiet figure beside her made no move. But Elayne knew that this was what he had been listening for.

“Tell us,” the Raven said.

“I have found it!”

Still the pirate did not move, and yet it was as if a silent quiver ran through him; or through the air itself. He took a sip of his wine and waited.

The stranger was in no hurry to explain what he had found. Instead, he began a discourse on his travels, beginning in Byzantium and progressing—with extravagant gestures to show the length and hardship of his journeys—to Jerusalem, to Damascus, to Athens, and thence to Alexandria in Egypt. He endured storm and wrack, he rode upon camels, he sailed the River Nile in leaking vessels, he walked the hot sands of the desert wilderness. “At length I came to Thebes of the Temples,” he declared, “Thebes the Colossal, the Everlasting, the Divine.”

He paused, staring into the distance, the tendons in his neck springing clear and taut against thin skin. His dark eyes widened, as if he saw it before him.

“There I went into the temples,” he whispered. “The empty sand-filled temples of ruin. I looked upon the columns, the statues—stone icons of men as tall as this fortress.” He looked sharply at Elayne, as if he had seen her doubt. “You may believe me, my lady. I am a native of that country. They were the ancient kings, like unto gods themselves, and their statues are immense beyond your cunning to imagine. Their temples are defended by curses that must be disarmed—it is a lifetime study I have made, so that I may enter them safely in my search. I am a magician. Any other man would not emerge alive—or if he be unlucky enough to live, his maddened wits will slay him soon enough.”

Elayne glanced aside at the Raven, to see how he accepted this. He looked back at her blandly, giving nothing away.

“It has cost me greatly,” the Egyptian magician said, gesturing wide. “In coin, a king’s fortune. In strain, it has cost me near my life—as you see by my withered frame.”

His frame was indeed spare, although Elayne would not have called him withered. He seemed more as one of those men who might eat all they could consume and still burn it away with the flame of his eager temperament.

“I found nothing in the temples,” he announced. “Nothing that would interest the least boy sorcerer in the land. Their bones were picked dry long ago by others.”

“I thought no others could dare to go in,” the Raven said dryly.

“Oh, I am not the only magician who can turn away a Pharaoh’s cursed writ. You yourself could do it with some ease—I dare to say that even your gentle lady here, flying under the Raven’s wing, would be as safe as I,” he replied, glossing any contradiction with a rolling presentation of his hands, at the same time that he managed to give an air of great compliment to his host. “But—” He paused. “There are other places of power in Thebes.” He lowered his voice. “The tombs.”

The Raven said nothing, but he listened.

“Even such a master as I was forced to become apprentice again in order to reach them,” the magician said. “When I found the man who could make me an adept in the secret art of entry, I had to pay him dearly, with a hundred pounds of marcasite and cinnabar—and then for a further compensation, to make him fulminating gold from aqua regis.”

The Raven lifted his eyebrows. “Fulminating gold.”

“A jeopardous undertaking, I know,” the magician said, nodding deeply. “If it had erupted, I should not be standing before you now.”

“Continue,” their host commanded. Of all the food that lay before them, he had not taken a bite, nor invited Elayne to eat. She was hungry, but had more sense than to risk tasting anything on the pirate’s table.

“In the end, I was successful,” the Egyptian said. “When he judged me skilled enough, he took me to the city of Hermoupolis, to the mouth of the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus.”

The Raven made a soft sound, like a sleeper’s sigh. But he was not asleep.

“You will judge for yourself my tumult. Hermes Trismegistus, Lord of Wisdom, he who instructed Asclepius himself in the divine way. I will spare your lady the tale of my entry into that place. It is not lovely, nor fit for gentle ears. But I returned with treasure beyond compare. Not gold or jewels!” He flourished his sleeve. “Nothing so common. You of all men know what manner of treasure I describe.”

“Tell me,” the Raven said softly.

“Scrolls.” The magician lowered his voice. “Still sealed with the device of his caduceus.” He swept his hand wide, and suddenly he held a rolled paper. He strode forward and placed it on the table before them. Dust fell from it onto the linen; Elayne could smell the musty odor. On the clay seal, deeply incised, she saw the badge of an upright wand entwined with two snakes.

The Raven nodded slowly. “How many?”

“Twenty,” the magician said. “And …” He began to nod also with his zeal. “A single tablet.”

“Describe it,” the Raven said sharply.

“It would seem to be made of onyx, though nothing I can use makes a scratch upon it. The inscription—” He became suddenly reticent. “But you must judge for yourself. I tell you verily, I cannot read it. It is in no characters that I know.”

“The Black Tablet?” the Raven demanded.

“I know not. I would not take it upon myself to say. Those who do not wish you well have made me a bountiful offer, but I tender it for your examination. I brought it to you first.”

For a long moment the pirate stared at him, as if he could see into the man’s brain. Elayne did not think she could have stood still under such a scrutiny. But the magician looked back, directly into the Raven’s eyes.

“How much do you ask?” the pirate said.

“I have brought the treasure first to you. We have dealt well before with one another,” the magician repeated. “Ten thousand ducats of Venetian gold.”

The Raven glanced toward his young steward, who instantly went about tasting and serving the meal that had been waiting. “Sit down to my table,” he said to the magician. “I will examine them in my library later.”

“You wish to accompany me?” The Raven slanted a look toward Elayne, offering her dried fruits and honeyed wafers from his own plate.

The breaking of fast was done, the torches and candles gleaming fitfully along the length of the gallery in the full light of morning. Elayne was giddy from lack of sleep.

“To your library?” she asked, hardly knowing what she said. The question ended on a yawn she could not stifle.

“I thought the Egyptian’s wares might interest you.” He shrugged. “But it is true that they will be in my library, where I conjure Beelzebub for sport. You need not come, if you do not like it.”

Elayne felt as if she were swimming through some fantastic dream. “I will come,” she said, hearing her own acceptance as if someone else had said it.

“Good.” His demeanor lightened. He rose quickly, offering his hand. His fingers closed about hers a little more eagerly than was courteous. But as soon as she was on her feet, he let go and strode away down the gallery, his cloak sweeping out like the wings of the raven he was named for. Elayne glanced about her at the silent child-servants. The magician had departed some time before, to prepare his goods for viewing. She was left to follow in the Raven’s train, hurrying after with what dignity she could muster.

He did pause and look back for her at the head of the stairs. But as soon as he saw that she was coming, he passed ahead, moving as silently as shadow, as ardently as a boy on his way to some glad game.

She nearly lost him several times as they wended among passages and stairs, through empty rooms, where the only sign of the way he had gone was a slight crack in one of the heavy doors. But he waited for her at the burnished brass door to his observatory, standing and looking back, his dark cloak hanging back over one shoulder.

“You are slow,” he said, smiling. “Has no one taught you how to follow properly?”

“I am not usually so pressed,” she said, still panting a little from hurrying up the last set of stairs.

“Pressed!” He shook his head. “I’ll teach you, sweeting.”

“Teach me?” she replied carefully, taken aback by the endearment.

He brushed his hand over her cheek and hair, lightly, without touching it. “I shall teach you all manner of things,” he said, his black eyes alight. He seemed to emanate his own dark flame, burning brighter as they drew closer to the Egyptian’s cache.

Elayne gazed after him as he pushed open the door and strode out across the etched wheels and curves on the gleaming white floor. A thought of Raymond flitted through her mind—he seemed a simple knight indeed in comparison to this pirate. Elayne did not doubt for a moment that the Raven could teach her all manner of things—the kind of things she had never been allowed to learn under Cara’s strictures. Her spirit rose fiercely at the thought, bounding like a hawk from the glove. Lifting her skirt, she hastened after him down the curved stairs into darkness.

The scrolls lay upon the same table where he had read her the cards of the Taroc, within the protective circle. But Elayne was not so unsettled now—she gave the mysterious blue lights merely a glance, and then turned to the center of the room.

The Egyptian magician stood silently by, his white garment dyed blue by the lights. The Raven was already occupied with the dusty treasure, but he looked up as she left the stairs, beckoning her nearer.

“I shall not need you for the moment,” he said to the magician.

The Egyptian drew himself up, sweeping his arms behind his back. “I do not think it safe—” He paused. The Raven merely looked at him, one eyebrow lifted. With a negligent flick of his sleeve, the magician said, “For any other, I would not deem it safe. I do not recommend it to you, but if you insist upon my absence, it is upon your own head.”

The Raven made a polite bow. “I do.”

With a stately tread, the magician passed out of the library. When the sound of his sandals on the stairs had faded, the Raven gave Elayne one of his sudden, devilish grins. “An easy victory. I did not think to be rid of him for hours.”

“He fears you would toss him from a cliff if he disobeyed,” she said boldly.

“Not he! He supposes he could fly if I did.” He tilted his head, observing her. “Do you think I have ever in truth had someone flung down?”

She looked down, her momentary boldness crumbling. “I don’t know,” she said. In the blue half-light the sculptured planes of his face seemed like a marble statue. Elayne lost her nerve for saying more.

“Do you think I am a murderer?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you are,” she said impulsively. “I don’t know!”

“But you are sure that I am dangerous.”

She glanced up at him, and then bent over the scrolls, pretending to examine them, keeping her hands locked behind her back. Her brain felt as unsteady as a ship’s deck, tilting and spinning with exhaustion. It seemed madness, that he said such things. Yet it awakened something in her, a will for the wild sky that was nothing like her blissful love for Raymond.

“What do you think of them?” he asked.

Elayne straightened. She rubbed her nose, subduing a sneeze. “They are quite dusty!”

“Dust from the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus!”

“Who?” she asked.

“Perchance a god, perchance a man—let us call him the patron saint of magicians and sages. He lived in ancient times.”

“A pagan.”

“Without doubt, a pagan.”

“Did he write these papers?”

“That, my beloved, is the question before us.” He stared at the table without touching anything, then turned and took down one of the blue lights from a shelf. He set the glowing flask upon the table. As he leaned over the Egyptian’s musty treasure, the shadows and light drew a glitter from his silver tunic.

Elayne watched him as he unrolled the scrolls one by one. She was learning to see emotion where he seemed to show none—he betrayed nothing in his face, but in the swift lift of his hand, the stillness of each pause as he examined the antique papers, he revealed a fascination as intense as the fiery lamplight. She could not tell what he saw there—only that it held him rapt.