Silver Eve (32 page)

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Powerful magic takes much focus, much concentration,” he murmured. “Salva.” He called to the white-haired woman without looking at her. “Bring her the jug.”

I heard her behind me, creaking out of her chair, shuffling to a corner. Little noises so loud. The tabby yowled suddenly, and I jumped. Salva's darning needle clattered to the floor. She murmured, “Not to matter.” And then the White Healer turned, saying, “We are nearly done, my dear. You must fetch water from the well.” Salva handed me the jug and I went out of the cottage, past Laurent, who smiled at me and said, “I am here.”

The two little redheaded children were playing by the well; they ran off as I approached. I wondered that I'd never acknowledged if they were boys or girls, and that they were gone before I could decide. I dunked the bucket, drew it up, and filled the container. A shadow fell over the stones; 'twas a puff of cloud skittering across the sky, the first cloud in what seemed forever. I stayed for a moment watching, wondering at its speed when there was no breeze, but then the woman in the buttercup apron came out of the far cottage door to sweep her step and wave her hand at me.

The same,
I thought. A variation of the same task each time….A chill flickered through me.
Raif.
I frowned and hurried back to the warmth of the cottage.

“Here,” I said, entering, and then stopped dead.

Around me the pretty whitewashed walls were dulling, as if color was being pulled from the space. But the table, in shape, color, and size had intensified; the wood, brushed with the poison, was pulsing and vibrant. The powder was no longer a charcoal dust but swirls of color. The black things in their jars were pulsing too with glorious color.

And the shell was glowing—a radiant, beaming white. A burst of brilliance.

The old man was smiling. “Do you see? You have done exceptionally.”

See.
That word again—haunting, worrying. I could not feel exceptional, for it came back, what Raif had said to me:
You have to see.
I glanced around the room. All was still cozy and familiar: the size, the furnishings, the old woman, the old man, and the cat. Laurent outside. Things were in their place, things clean and whole and unharmed. Healer needs—nay,
my
needs. A sweet respite, a safe respite from the brutality that leached into our world. The only thing reminiscent of those horrors was my battered satchel. It rested empty and deflated on my hip. I felt a sudden ache at that. The shell shouldn't be glowing so brightly, but nestled close to me.

Where is your curiosity now, Evie Carew?

“And now the final part of this spell making, my dear.” The White Healer pointed to what I'd forgotten I held. “Fresh water, my dear. 'Twill erase any impurities. You will pour it into the shell.”

The cat was meowing—guttural sounds. I looked at the jug, then at the old man, confused. “You cannot purify with this. Water only cleans when running along its own free path.”

The old man was taken aback. “What is gathered from that well is exceptional,” he insisted. And when I shook my head, he said a little more forcefully, “Who is the greater Healer in this room? Do you defy my knowledge?”

“But well water is
still
water, and still water cannot purify. Every Healer knows—”

He didn't let me finish. “That you doubt weakens the spell. Pour the water into the shell, quickly before it is too late.” He took a sharp breath.
“Attention to task!”
Now there was no question that he was sweating; it trickled over his temple, beaded his brow.

“You are worried,” I whispered, curious. “My doubt makes you anxious.”

“ 'Tis not anxiety, 'tis
effort
!” he barked. “I bind this spell for you! You have not the strength enough in your resolve to ignite this cure. 'Tis I who hold it by my own power. 'Twill break apart if you do not hurry!”

“Nay.” The word came out of me of its own accord. There was a shift; the room gave a little jolt.
You have to see.
Raif's voice repeating, insistent in my ears.

The White Healer peered at me. “You will not refuse, Guardian.”

'Twas the first time he'd called me Guardian. It sent a shiver down my spine, that tone, that name from his lips.

That name. I gripped the jug a little closer, Raif's words flowing back:
Ask the White Healer's name….

I lifted my head, looked the old man straight in the eye. “What is your name?”

My voice was hardly strong, yet seemed to crack like thunder, spawning a fury I'd never before witnessed.
“You dare…”
The White Healer's face turned red, his eyes bulged from their sockets, and his mouth contorted—as if trying to hold back what he was compelled to admit by that simple request.

I was fascinated. I said louder, bolder, “Tell me your name!”

At that the old man's mouth yawned wide, wider than humanly possible, and a sound erupted, huge and deep, tearing fascination into horror. A name! Unintelligible, unpronounceable. Like nothing I'd ever heard; it took my breath with fear, as winter sucks away breath with cold. It rocked the walls surrounding us, the floor we stood on, and crashed over us like a wave….

A moment frozen in time forever—the moment before impact. The moment when I understood the old man was never whom I'd thought.

He was a Breeder.

I didn't think—Healer instinct to protect. My hands flew up, bracing. The jug flung from my hands and smashed against the table, splashing its contents over the table, the nest, the shell.

And immediately I knew what a terrible mistake I'd made. About everything.

THE CAT SCREECHED
and leaped upon the table; Salva lurched to grab it back. His claws scrabbled, scoring the wooden top as the old woman dragged him off, leaving bursts of light. Everything else on the table was turning a lurid black—not a pitch black, but a swirl of darkest color, massing, spreading, trying to bridge and smother those glowing striations. And there was laughter in the wake of that hideous release of name. Deep, bellowing laughter—laughter that was for me, at what I'd done. It wasn't pure water that I'd spilled. It wasn't water at all.

I lunged for the shell, trying to wipe or shake the liquid off, but it was already thickening, like some brackish tar—not on the shell but over it, wrapping the nest in a little dome. I cried out—

The laughter quit abruptly. “Stop!” the White Healer commanded. He grabbed my arm. It was the first time he'd touched me and we both gasped at how violently the effort was repelled. His arm flew back from mine and my own arm smacked against the table in powerful reflex. He tried to grab my skirts but the cat got in the way, hissing and swiping, so he shrieked, “Do not touch it! Do not stop the spell!”

“What have you done?” I cried, wrenching away from him. “What is this?” I dug my fingers into the stickiness, struggling to pry the whole mess from the table, and crying out at the pain of it. The tar was resin, sap from some vile thing, yew by the smell of it, and the nest…the nest…

You have to see,
Raif had urged. And I was seeing, my eyes truly opening. Everything around me was dissolving, like rain washing mud from stone. Only here 'twas the stone dripping away, leaving behind muddy filth. The sweet room and everything beyond were melting before me.

Raif was right. I'd seen what I'd wanted to see, what I longed for: the world to be as sweet as a sunny day in Merith and a White Healer to put everything right again. A little world invented from my own history, as if my mind had been gleaned, picked over for images—the dear cottages, the waving woman, the red-haired children, Salva…all creations stitched together from memories. And all wavered and blurred as I stood clawing at the table. I saw my hands, saw them as they truly were, covered in blisters and blood, and knew why minion grew beneath that willow tree. A warning I'd refused to heed. 'Twas
black
willow I'd collected the branches from—
hukon.
The most evil, deadly thing, and I'd cut and plaited and made a nest from it. I'd placed my amulet within and spilled yew resin to trap, putrefy, and seal the shell to the hukon so that it would shatter if I tried to separate them. Laurent had warned me that I could destroy the shell without knowing, and now I could not have done worse had I been the White Healer—

No:
Breeder.

Still I tried, working at the nest while the old man tried to get past the cat. There should have been at least some grim satisfaction that he could not stop my efforts—but I was frantic, screaming, “Laurent! Laurent!”

On some perverse cue there was knocking at the cottage door, even as the door was melting away. Between the smears of wood, exactly as I might wish him, stood Laurent with his beautiful smile and clear blue eyes, except he was slurring in horrid monotone, “I am here,” before he too puddled into nothingness.

My breath caught, ripping out its first sob. Raif was right. Laurent didn't belong. That was not Laurent, but some pretty doll I'd stuck into this dream repeating all the things I wanted to hear him say: of happiness and sweet endings—
nothing
that the Rider had ever promised. I should have seen. I didn't want to see.

“What have you done to me?” I shrieked at the old man.

But he was shrieking as loud as I—half in fury that I was trying to abort the spell, and half in struggle with the scratching, hissing tabby. “What have
I
done?” He screamed back, “Look at yourself, Guardian! This was your will, your doing!”

“Will?”
It stunned me, spurred me. Any victory I'd assumed had led me exactly to where the Breeders wanted me. From the moment I made the Insight spell to quell my curiosity to this grotesque fabrication.
Curiosity and need—they'll strike you where you are weak.
And so they had.

But I could still fight for what little was left. I still had a Healer's need to save.

I said viciously, “That was not will.
This
is will!”

And I ripped the poisoned clump free, dragged the nest up to my chest, the resin sticking my fingers to the shardlike hukon. I turned as the last of the cottage dissolved, revealing those barren salt flats that I'd trudged across days—or hours—or maybe only minutes ago. Imploding, all of it—this sick fantasy created to erase all the dark things was now erasing itself. The walls of the cottage were gone; the square was gone, the other dwellings gone. Whatever gentle sunshine I'd imagined turned to some harsh, gray bulk of clouds, leaving me with the Breeder, the cat, and Salva. Salva stood up as her chair melted away. She came to me, head down, saying, “Not to mind, mistress….” And then the yellow sock she darned was shriveling into something snakelike, a twisted, limbless muscle of putrid yellow, writhing in her grip. I stumbled back. Behind me the Breeder bellowed, “Nahlgruth!” Salva's head whipped up so that I caught her eye for the first time: liquid and black. And then the eye was the only thing that remained of the old woman, for she was expanding into something huge and inhuman.
Nahlgruth
—the Breeder had named it, summoned a beast. It was growing, already towering above me in a shape I could not fathom: a gargantuan trunk, reptilian skin, a frenzy of worms sprouting from an expanding skull. That writhing thing was merging as part of a third appendage, a tentacle.

And the Breeder laughed at me, hideous and cruel. “You cannot stop what you've begun! You will destroy the amulet!”

“No!” I screamed back, desperate.
“No!”
The tabby sprang, yowling, and landed by my feet. It wound between my skirts then leaped away with a look behind.

I ran after it. It had to be an ally, showing me the way. The Breeder shouted and the Nahlgruth thundered forward in response—so huge now, the heat of its breath carried straight to my back. I kept running. My hands stung, the resin bonding them to the hukon. I rolled and rolled the awful thing between my palms, trying not to let it fasten to my skin, for 'twould shatter if my hands were sucked in. “Wait!” I yelled at the cat.
“Wait!”
I was losing sight of him—a streak of rust between the dull of the flats and the sky. I stumbled once, falling hard on my knees, seeing that even my clothes I'd believed so clean were frayed and filthy, and stinking of the fire that the villagers of Haver had set. I picked myself up, unstuck my hands from the nest, and ran on.

And I thought again: Raif was right. My yearning had kept me in this dream; it was what brought this ruined end.
Be careful what you need,
the seer had said. I'd been warned from the start.

I laughed at myself, a horrible and ugly sound. If Harker had warned me, he had also contrived this—finding me at the drinking pool, offering me the possibility of a White Healer to beckon me forward, to open me to mistake, and to leave my one champion behind in drugged sleep. I was a fool. A fool!

Ahead was the sea. I could hear it, storm-tossed and angry. Above, the clouds were massing dark and thunderous, the wind howling, whipping my salt-dried hair across my face. It stung harsh as nettles, but at least it deflected the worse pain of my burning hands. I gritted my teeth, groaned against all of it, and ran on into what stretched as gray upon gray. Behind me the Nahlgruth roared, shivering the very sand.

There!
Out of gray rose the rock outcropping that I'd climbed before. The tabby cat was waiting—a tiny splotch of color against first heave of stone. “You!” I called to it. “Where do I go?”

In response the thing leaped onto the rock and skimmed right up the tall face. I clambered after it, hampered by the nest, by the vile resin, stopping almost every step to switch hands. I was lagging, too slow. The Nahlgruth roared again, loud, breath hot—I couldn't tell if the beast was behind me or already above, waiting to swallow.
Don't think, Evie. Don't think of anything. Just climb.

Barnacles gave way to a smoother face of boulders. I sank on one for a moment, dragging in breaths, juggling the nest and trying to peer through the thickening resin to see the shell. I remembered the satchel, yanked it into my lap, and placed the nest on top, thinking some cloth between skin and hukon would help, protect. But the resin burned right through the satchel with a hiss and stink of yew. I flung the charred bits off my frock before it caught fire, then paused. In the smeared ash on my lap was the lark feather. I plucked it up, gasping, laughing, rammed it through the middle of the nest—

Any hope the feather was going to stop the spell was brief. There was a flash of flame—the same way the cat's claws had drawn fire across the table—and the feather was gone. My laugh cut short in defeat. And out of that same defeat came the Breeder's cry exploding in my head, “You cannot escape!”

I jerked back, jamming myself in a gap, flailed there while the whole sky resounded the Breeder's glee: “The amulet is finished!”

And I, who'd hardly ever been afraid, was terrified—terrified by what I'd done, terrified that this bellowing declaration was true.

No. No. No.
I pushed fear from my head, refusing this ending, and wriggled free.
No.
I turned and crawled up the huge boulders, tearing skin on stone, staying low, for the gale threatened to pluck me up, dash me down. The Nahlgruth roared again; the wind howled. And behind that, somewhere far, far behind, I could swear my name was being called, carried along by the rush of wind.
No.
Dry sobs squeezed my lungs, or maybe I was just gasping for breath, for the air seemed to be taken from me. The clouds boiled black and huge…yet despite the ferocity of the looming storm, there was no rain.

And then I was up, on the top of the outcropping, tugging my hands from the nest. For a moment—just for a moment—I thought the wind paused, maybe in surprise that I'd reached the summit. I could see the wild sea, the salt flats on one side, and the ruined village of Haver on the other. There in the rubble the villagers clung together, shouting, bracing for the oncoming storm. I shuddered to look at them: to look and remember their misguided prejudice, to look and remember that I'd constructed a perfect little town to replace this rubble, and that my own construct was far worse than what they'd done to me. I turned to the sky, with the lightning streaks making silver what was black, with the crash of thunder that nearly silenced the howl of the Nahlgruth. And I was suddenly so sad for the villagers. They had no concept of what was erupting all around them, that Chaos was claiming our world. All they understood was that they were being punished, that the clouds above could boil and threaten and push wave upon shore to decimate their lives and it still would not rain. Whatever slaughter they offered to beg safety only drew them further into chaos. It took my breath, the realization that I'd helped sink them ever deeper.

It would never rain.

The voice boomed again and I ducked; the wind whipped up stronger, buckling my knees. “You cannot have the amulet!” I shouted.

'Twas meager defiance in the face of something so huge. I shifted the ruined nest from hand to hand, as if I could not have the amulet either. And in answer a harrowing sound shivered the outcropping, shivered the earth. The villagers from Haver were wailing.

I staggered toward the end of the point, where it jutted high and far out into the sea. The waves were in a rage, smashing at the rocks in fury, sending the spray arcing over the top.

“Evie!”

The cry was faint against the roar of wind and wave. I'd imagined it. But it was there again: “Evie! Stop!”