The Magician of Hoad (32 page)

Linnet stared at him directly. “You think Betony might kill Dysart?” she asked, sounding nothing more than
mildly curious, though the tempest building inside her was becoming increasingly furious.

“At the very least I think Dysart might spend many years in Hoad’s Pleasure,” her father said. “I think Betony Hoad may like to be completely certain of his position.”

It occurred to Linnet that her father was not speculating. He had been encouraged to guess at something… and was guessing with a strong element of confidence. The courier who had brought her letters from Dysart had also brought letters for her father, and letters for those officials of Diamond who lived in Hagen representing the King. After all, Linnet thought, being in Hagen was something of exile for these men. If Betony Hoad established a cause, Diamond men, half-exiled on the edges of Hoad, might be drawn back in to support him. As she thought about all this, her sudden, secret plan was continuing to work itself out in the back of her mind.

I mustn’t do things too quickly. I must plan,
she was thinking.
And I’ll need a strong horse.… My father’s horse might be the best. My father will try guessing which way I’ve taken, so I’ll travel by a mixed road… spin off through the villages of the Vincey estate, then into the forest.…

She smiled smoothly at her father, as wild thoughts chased themselves through her head, and after a moment, he smiled back with relief, as if they had come to an understanding and all their troubles were over.

“Good girl,” he said. “You know you are my treasure, and I want happiness for you… happiness for you and power for Hagen. We are privileged people, but we have to serve our counties as well as ourselves.”

Or I might make for Lancewood,
Linnet was thinking.
It would mean a longer journey, but it might be safer. Would I need another horse?

In three days the couriers would return, perhaps with more letters from Prince Betony Hoad to her father. Linnet went to her room.

“I’m not feeling sleepy,” she said to her maid, a young woman she suspected of reporting to her stepmother. “You can leave me for a while. I won’t need to change my clothes just yet. I’m planning to read.

Solitude was wonderful. She sat down then, lifted her skirts, slipped Dysart’s letter from the waistband of her petticoats, and read, noticing the small sputter of ink, as if Dysart had pressed too hard on the paper.

Linnet, I just don’t believe in Betony. And I long to be properly united with the land. There’s only one thing I want as much, and you know what that is. And now I’ve lost my Magician. I hope he’s simply run away for a while, because I think he’d be very wise to keep clear of Betony Hoad. I wish I knew for sure just where he has gone. Sometimes Heriot’s very existence seemed to mock Betony Hoad, saying, “Here I am! And I am a Magician. You are only a Prince. You can tell men what to do and punish them if they don’t do it, but I can make the seasons dance and the sun rise.” It’s the sort of thing that would infuriate my brother.

Linnet found her own pen and paper and began to write rather desperately.

Dysart, my dear, my dearest dear! Be careful. Something in the way my father has been talking makes me think he knows you are in danger from Betony Hoad. I can’t be sure. And you say Heriot has already disappeared. So be careful! Be careful! I don’t want you disappearing too. And there are things I am planning that I cannot write down, because there’s no certainty this letter will reach you unread by someone else. Dysart, life is wicked, but the wickedness of it makes it adventurous, too, and I am planning adventure.

Cayley woke, lying naked under her coat—the coat of the Wellwisher—the braid of her dyed hair twining out, a scarlet serpent among the wild grass. As she opened her eyes Heriot, sitting beside her, turned and looked at her. They stared at each other for a moment… a moment in which it seemed their two glances twisted into each other and which became an invisible tether tying them together.

“Good morning!” said Heriot.

“You look like a different man,” Cayley said, smiling and drowsy, but also a little puzzled. “You really do.”

“That’s because I am,” Heriot replied. “Do you want breakfast?”

Cayley continued to stare at him. “What’s happened to you?” she asked at last. “I mean, it’s not just morning, is it?”

“I might find it difficult to tell you,” said Heriot. “I know what’s happened, but words are not enough. What about you?”

“Almost free,” she said. “Except there’s that one thing set down in me. I’ve told you. That one thing…”

“I know,” Heriot said. “I felt it fall away for a moment back there, and then I felt it building itself back into you again. But it’s been true transformation for me. Remember I told you about what happened to me when I was a child… Izachel swooping in on me, feeding on that sleeping power in me and tearing me in two. I grew up to be myself and my own occupant as well… two of us in the one head.”

Cayley nodded.

“Well, during the night,” Heriot went on, “during the fire and explosion of us making true love—I felt that occupant move toward me. It took a strange energy to move across the gap, but you and me—we created that energy, and my occupant couldn’t resist. And as you and I melted into each other, there was this other melting inside me. Old injuries healed. I’ve become what I should have been from the beginning.”

He was telling her, but he couldn’t really describe the overwhelming moment when he not only felt himself becoming part of her, but also felt his own completion. The division within him had not been able to withstand the simultaneous assertion and surrender of self. He had been transformed.

“You restored me,” he said.

They kissed, but gently now.

“That’s my story,” he said. “Tell me yours.”

Cayley gave him an unusual look, somehow unsure and humble. “I can’t tell it yet,” she said. “I want this mood to
last for a bit, before that old stuff takes over. Which it’s bound to do, it’s my first direction.”

“Well then, let’s have breakfast,” Heriot said. “Let’s have a day or two of rest. Then, maybe, we can start all over again.”

Riding out, alone and lonely through a wild land, Linnet suddenly felt she had made a great mistake. It had been disconcertingly easy, and once on the road, in the beginning at least, there had been a huge exhilaration in cantering off through the early morning with an old moon in the east, fading from bright silver to blue, half-bracketing the new day. She was off and away… off to warn Dysart about his strange brother. She was becoming a heroine of the heart.

I’m free,
she had found herself thinking.
I’m out in the world. I’m not just a lady of Hagen, I’m a true adventurer.

She came to a familiar crossroads and turned left.

They’ll look for me down the central road,
she told herself, and then farther down the road she had chosen, she reached yet another crossroads, where she turned north, making for Diamond. But after that things became rather more complicated. She stopped, dismounted, sat down by the roadside, and unrolled her map.

That way,
she thought, tapping the paper with her
forefinger, and then felt doubtful. Was the road she had taken actually marked on that map, flapping in front of her as if it were desperate to escape her and fly off on its own? Traveling the central road she would have had some idea of how time and distance should correspond—she had traveled along it several times and its geography was familiar, but this wasn’t true of the road on which she now found herself. She had expected to ride through villages, those minute names on the map, but the roads she traced with urgent fingers seemed to unravel under her touch, breaking down into a maze of lines—tangled threads—dwindling to dotted tracks going nowhere. Linnet knew she was lost.

“But I’ll find myself again,” she said aloud, reassuring herself. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy once I left the main roads.”

The day wore on. Though she was used to riding, she found she was beginning to ache and decided to camp in a small glade.

From the beginning, Linnet had known it would take days to arrive in Diamond. She had known she would need to sleep on the ground and had brought a folded blanket. What she was not prepared for was just how uncomfortable it was. At first, since she was very tired, she slept easily enough. Later she woke in the dark, her right hip and shoulder hurting, the earth below her seeming determined to reject her. It was some relief to turn onto her back for a while, but all too soon her back began to ache. Hours went by, as she commanded herself to sleep, only to find herself incapable of carrying out her own commands. Twisting right and left, desperate to find a comfortable position,
she comforted herself.
It’s part of the adventure. Be brave! Be strong!
And then, at last, morning began to stain the sky with its first light, and she was off and away, glad to be on her horse again, glad to recognize the pattern of the map stretching out on the land in front of her.

However, she hadn’t gone very far before the stiffness of the night she had just struggled through began to reassert itself. Linnet set her teeth. “We’re not going back,” she told the horse. “Look ahead! There’s a road.” It was a road and more than a road. She was trotting down the hill into a village.

At first Linnet felt relief, but almost at once this pleasure faded. For the first time she found herself wondering what she must look like, disheveled and tired, a woman riding, unattended, out of nowhere. People in the village came out to stare at her, mostly with curiosity but sometimes with something approaching fear, as if she were a tangled witch dashing in on them. And some of the men in particular studied her with curious, blank expressions she found hard to define.

She spoke to the people, asking if she could buy food, holding out a few silver coins, and found to her astonishment that, though they certainly spoke the same language, she could barely understand them, and that, judging from their frowning faces, they could barely understand her. Then one man sidled forward, staring at her intently.

“Food,” he said. “She needs food. Bring her some bread and cheese. Could you do with beer as well?”

His question was asked rather insolently, and several of the villagers laughed.

“Where are you off to, little miss?” asked a second man, smiling up at her in a sickly fashion she couldn’t help mistrusting.

“I’m riding to Diamond,” Linnet said.

“Riding to Diamond? Just fancy, all that way. And you’re right off the track,” the second man said. “You should have turned back
there.
” He sketched unintelligible lines in the air as he spoke.

Someone brought bread and cheese along with a bag of apples, and Linnet packed the food into her saddlebag, before passing over a silver piece. She could immediately feel people’s attention focus on her money, felt their eyes flick from the hand that had received the payment, then back to her face, and then to her saddlebag.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m grateful.”

“It’s good you’re rich,” said one of the men. “That’ll help you on your journey. Now if I were you, little miss, I’d make off along that path there and ride on… up and over until you come to the wood. You can go around the wood or—”

“She should go through it,” said the second man. “It’s quicker.”

“Would you like us to ride with you, little miss?” asked the first man. “We know the paths round here well.”

Linnet would have loved a guide, but the two men frightened her. She couldn’t explain why, for their questions and comments had been reasonable enough. Perhaps it was because they were both looking her up and down with a curious calculation, not quite a threat but certainly not friendship. She scrambled onto her horse, irritated to
find herself suddenly clumsy at doing something she knew very well how to do, and though she had longed for the certainty the villagers might give her as far as her road was concerned, she left the village behind her with enormous relief.

At first she rode through open farmland, but as she moved on, up and over the slopes of a small hill, the hedges gave way and she found herself on a rolling heath… bushes, straggling trees, and coarse grasses seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of her. A teasing wind blew as she took the bread and cheese from her saddlebag, for by now she was starving. While she ate greedily, her horse walked on up and over a rise. The heath stretched ahead of her for what seemed to be leagues, but in the distance she could make out a smudge against the horizon… trees. The men in the village had mentioned a wood. And the road ahead was striped with the tracks of cart wheels, bracketed with the prints of horses, coming and going. This was sustaining in a way. It meant other people must use this road regularly. But for all that… “Where am I?” Linnet asked herself over and over again, wondering just how tired her horse might be. Sure that this well-used road must finally link up with the central road from Hagen to Diamond, she persisted, trying to recapture that first feeling of adventure. What had the men back there said? She could go around the wood or through it.…
I’ll worry about that when I come to it
, Linnet thought. Slowly the forest advanced out of the distance, vanishing as the road sank down between the hillocks, reappearing as she was lifted by a wave in the land only to sink again as she rode patiently on.

***

It was coming to the end of the day, and a faint, warm breeze was blowing, toying with the grasses and the bushes on either side of the road. Because of the quietness, she suddenly became aware that she was being followed. At first the beat of those pursuing horses came to her more as a vibration. Coming to a standstill, to drink a little water and to rest her horse, she began to feel a rhythm coming up out of the ground and into her very bones—the rhythm of a chase. Linnet was immediately sure the two village men who had watched so keenly as she took the silver coin from her saddlebag were after her. No doubt they’d gone out into some field beyond the village to get their own horses, and now they were tracking her down.