Sword and Sorceress XXVII (9 page)

With tottering steps the makt made its
way up the center aisle and out the exterior doors to begin the hunt.

#

This morning Stephen had gone to meet
again with the seminar, this time in its regular lecture hall. Melisande fed
Mika a portion of the previous evening’s dinner—pork chops with fried apples,
her favorite. Stephen had fixed it for her, and she was tempted to forgive him
for that evening’s student invasion. After breakfast, she built up the fire in
the living room and thought about doing some reading.

Mika had other plans, though. Melisande
had just settled herself in the chair and picked up her book when Mika trotted
up and put her front paws on the chair arm.

“Hello there. And
what
do you
have in your mouth? Give it here.” To her surprise, Mika dropped the tiny
packet into Melisande’s lap without an argument. It was a pair of Stephen’s
socks, still folded together. “What are you doing with this, eh?” Melisande
said, scratching behind Mika’s right ear and wondering whether to be angry.

Mika barked once and waited.

“I don’t—oh, wait a minute. Maybe I do.”
With an effort Melisande levered herself out of the chair, deciding she wasn’t
going to do that more often than she absolutely had to until the baby came. As
she picked up the sock bundle, Mika barked again and backed away toward the
hallway leading to the bedroom.

“A-ha! Here we go,” Melisande said,
tossing the socks down the hallway. Mika swiveled around and dashed down the
hallway, picked up the bundle, and brought it back. Instead of dropping it at
Melisande’s feet, however, she merely sat and held it up, allowing Melisande to
pluck it from between her jaws. It was quite dry.

“Why, thank you, Mika,” she said. “Have
you done this with pregnant ladies before?” Mika only barked and darted down
the hallway again.

They played fetch for a few more
minutes, stopping only when Melisande paused to lean on the back of her chair
and take a breath. breath. As if on cue, Mika trotted back around the chair and
lay down beside it.

“My goodness,” said Melisande. “If only
husbands were as accommodating!” She chuckled and resumed both her seat and her
book, an experimental novel about a love triangle involving a lycanthrope
and—wonder of wonders!—a sympathetic hæmophage. She didn’t think it had a
chance, but she was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

She hadn’t read more than five pages,
however, when Mika jumped to her feet, ran to the window, and began to bark up
a storm. “What in the world are you barking at?” she said, pushing herself
slowly, awkwardly, to her feet and joining the dog at the window. “There’s
nothing out there!”

Indeed, the window showed only the empty
courtyard, crisscrossed by walkways and winter-dormant grass that covered the
hundred-plus yards to one of the inner castle walls of the University complex.

The border collie would not be deterred.
She continued her frantic barking, her eyes focused not straight across from
the window but somewhat to the left. Abruptly she stopped, bounded away from
the window, and dashed leftward toward the hallway and down it toward the
bedroom, barking all the way, as if seeking a better vantage point. Melisande
slowly followed, calling, “Mika? What are you doing?”

Before she reached the hallway, the
barking stopped.

“Finally!” she said, making her way down
the hall to the bedroom. “Mika, what on God’s green earth has gotten into—”

She reached the bedroom doorway and
stopped. The bed was made, the rug orderly, the window closed.

The dog was gone.

She shook her head. Clearly she had gone
mad. That was it. She had an absent-minded husband, a Guardian-elect child, and
now a vanishing dog. She was mad, mad as the hare in March.

There was nothing for it but to make a
pot of tea and go back to her book.

#

She galloped across the campus, her legs
powering her past lawns, classroom buildings, offices, and the people who were
normally out in the mid-morning. The sight was breathtaking, the rush of energy
exhilarating. And the smells! She could smell the greenery, which surprised
her, since it was still wintertime and nothing had blossomed yet. The dirt
beneath her feet, the remnants of someone’s breakfast from a nearby lodging,
even the people walking along the walkways had their own scents.

Melisande noted that not a soul turned
to look at her, which seemed strange. Normally when she strolled along those
walkways people said hello, or at least smiled. But then she was also able to
look them in the eye, whereas now they were looking well over her head. Her
viewpoint was no higher than their knees; it was as though she were—

(“—on four legs, close to the ground...
Oh, I see. I’m a dog again. But it’s daytime, so I wouldn’t be dreaming now.
Therefore I’m delusional. Of course. It only fol—”)

No you’re not! You’re there! I’m here!

It was an actual voice, although she
didn’t seem to be hearing it with her ears. It was one she had never heard
speak before, and she wondered why it seemed so familiar somehow. Abruptly she
realized that while no one had spoken in this voice, she had heard quite a few
barks of similar tone. (“Mika?”)

Yes, Mellie! Me!
That
was the nickname a young novice had used for Melisande at the Motherhouse, and
it had caught on among the nuns. It made sense that she should hear it
now...unless, of course, she were imagining it too. Which could be, if in fact
she had gone mad. But what if—

(“I’m actually talking to you?”)

Yes! Why not? You talk to me a lot!

(“Well, yes...but I never really
expected you to answer.”)

How strange! I always answer. You must
not have been listening.

Was she dreaming again? That too would
make sense. She was back home—”there”—by the fire, asleep. (“The book must not
have much going for it, then.”)

Not much what? I don’t under—

(“Never mind. Where are we going?”)

Bad! It’s bad! Can’t you smell it?

She quieted and let the impressions wash
through her as Mika sailed past the Semeiotics department office, turned a
corner, and headed across a courtyard toward the distant Knox Arch. (“Faintly...yes,
yes, it’s there! Oh my word, it
is
bad. Worse than those eggs that sat
for a month before we found them...”)

Yes! That’s it. Bad.

(“And you could smell this from the
house?”)

No, not in my nose...
behind
my nose...all around me...that’s not right, I don’t know how to say—

(“No, it’s fine, I understand. But now
we really do smell it?”)

Yes! Terrible! And it’s coming.

They dashed through the archway and
along a stone-floored corridor. (“Coming from where?”)

Don’t know. Coming to us. It wants. It
wants.

(“Wants what?”)

It wants Dorothea. There’s nothing else.
It wants her.

That gave her pause. Who? The name was
new to her. She knew no student named Dorothea, no teacher, no staff...

The dog leapt through one of a row of
small arches bordering the corridor and out onto another swath of dormant
grass. It crackled under her feet, and the increased traction lengthened her
stride.

Perhaps someone in town, or one of the
new students. Last night there was...

Something inside her froze.
Coming to
us,
Mika had said.

The baby.

#

Mika turned a corner past More Hall and
saw it. The bizarre figure walked slowly but steadily beside the flagstone path
in the direction that would ultimately take it to the cottage where Mellie sat
dreaming, with the baby inside her. It couldn’t be allowed to go past this
point! Mika barked, but the thing ignored her.

Some people turned to look at her, but
not at the—it seemed to be a walking stack of bones, a—what did they call it—

(“Skeleton,”) Mellie supplied.

That’s right, a
skeleton
. No one
seemed to notice it. They didn’t
see
it. Even Mika could barely see it.
From moment to moment flickered out of sight; one moment it was there, a dim
purpley color, and then for an instant it wasn’t. Was it real?
Oh yes, it’s
real. Unreal things don’t
smell
like that!

And indeed it did smell, enough that
several of the people nearby wrinkled their noses and glanced about, puzzled.
Evidently they dismissed it as either a bit of nearby magic some first-year
student had botched, or something that the custodial staff would clear away
soon.

Still they appeared not to see the
skeleton
thing. Maybe they
couldn’t
see it! Mika knew humans could see almost all
the colors she could, although they needed brighter light to do it. Perhaps
this purpley color fell into the slim margin between their sight and hers. And
yes, it was dimly visible... but she was fine with dim light. Mika wondered if
there were a cat around. It might be interesting to find out which of them
could see this thing better.

Heh. It probably thinks it’s unseen. One
mistake.

(“Mika?”)

Yes, Mellie?

(“You know that I...love you very
much...don’t you? And...that I’m glad, so very glad you’ve come to stay with
us?”) Her voice in Mika’s head held a strange quaver.

Yes! Yes, I do.

(“And at the Motherhouse, I was a
perfect example of a calm, serene, exceptionally rational woman? Not prone to
wild emotional outbursts?”)

Calm, quiet, thoughtful, yes. Very much
so.
Mika had no idea where this was going.

(“Good.”) She sounded quiet and precise
even now. Dangerously so. (“Because I hope you won’t be hurt if I leave you and
try to sleep
without
dreaming for a while, because I’m sitting here
very, very pregnant and you’re telling me Hamlet’s father’s ghost is marching
toward us and wants to do something terrible to my baby and I am
this
close to collapsing into full-on raging gibbering hysterics.”) Mellie took a
mental breath. (“Which won’t help you either. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just
say Godspeed and you can tell me about it later. Okay?”)

Oh. Mika supposed she was right..
..Yes.
Sleep. Do speak to the King about this, will you? I will need it.

(“Uh...Lord Logas and Magistrix Judith
are going to the palace this afternoon. Perhaps...oh. Okay, I will,”) Mellie’s
voice said wearily, and fell silent. She would have been helpful, but Mika knew
Mellie needed to be somewhere other than here right now.

And
here
included an oncoming
bone-monster.

Did it see her? It didn’t pay attention
to her when she barked. Just a—a
skull
, that was right. No eyes.

She gathered her courage and charged it.
She had herded sheep by nipping at their feet...but then she knew where the
shepherd was and made them move towards him. Where was the shepherd for this
bone-thing? Or was there one? And if so, was Mika ready to meet that shepherd?

No time for that. She knew where the
skeleton-thing intended to go.
Herd it any way but there.

Running toward its feet, she noted the
placement of its left ankle. She circled around and darted toward it, her mouth
opening to take a bite.

A bony arm scythed downward and swept
her into the air. She landed hard on her side some thirty feet away, the wind
knocked well out of her.

So much for whether it could see her.
She struggled haltingly to her feet.
Ow
.
It thinks it’s unseen. I
know
I’m not.

The standard method was out, then, even
reversed. The thing might walk slowly, but it could twist and contort itself
quite nimbly. She, then, had to either move faster than it did, or do something
it didn’t expect.

The skeleton appeared to be articulated
like that of a human being. If it actually were, then a frontal assault was
worse than useless, but she might be able to hit it from the back. She’d have
to be quick, though; she didn’t know whether it could only see forward or it
somehow sensed what was happening on all sides. If that were the case, she was
in big trouble.

Nothing for it but to try. Mika
approached the thing from the rear, zigging and zagging, and just when she
figured it should expect her to zag, she
zigged
and launched herself
toward the spot between its shoulder blades.

There was a flash of light, and then she
saw nothing.

#

Darkness. Darkness and silence. Mika lay
on her stomach amid absolute blackness. Had she lost consciousness? For how
long? And how close was the bone-thing now to Mellie and Dorothea?

First order of business: to figure out
where she was. Not on the lawn, that was certain: underneath she felt not grass
and dirt but stone. The walkway? She slowly got to her feet, very carefully
lest she strike her head against something above. Remembering a previous time
an enemy had put her in a box, preparing to bury it and her, she shuddered.