The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (56 page)

I turned and ran back down the corridor. However, I had gone only halfway when I heard a scrabbling on the main staircase. Behind me echoed more howls, closer now. They were coming up from the kitchen as well. I turned around again, and again, but there was nowhere left to go.

Something hard caught my arm from behind, digging into my flesh, pulling me back. I opened my mouth to scream.

“Quiet, you foolish girl!” whispered a harsh voice.

I shut my mouth and the hand released me. Trembling, I staggered around. Mrs. Darendal stood in an opening in the side of the corridor, in a door I was certain I had never seen before.

“Mrs. Darendal,” I said stupidly.

The door was low, and I saw that its edges were cleverly aligned with the paneling. Once shut, it would look like any other part of the wall. So that was how she had always avoided me.

“You stand there and stare like a dolt! To think he believes you clever. Come!”

The housekeeper made a motion with her hand, and I stepped through the opening. She pressed it shut behind me; it closed with a
click
. We were in a narrow passage, lit by the candle she held.

We did not move. I hardly dared to breathe. As we listened, something moved outside the door. There was a snuffling just on the other side of the panel. I bit my lip for fear I would scream. Then the sound ceased, and the padding footsteps moved away.

“Follow me,” the housekeeper whispered, and she started down the passage. I hurried after, afraid of being left outside the circle of candlelight.

The passage twisted left and right and went up and down little half flights of steps. In some places it was so narrow we had to turn sideways to pass through. I tried to keep track of the twists and turns, but the dark deprived me of all sense of direction. Were Mrs. Darendal to abandon me, I should be lost, trapped in the walls of Heathcrest Hall like a spirit.

At last we came to a halt. The passage dead-ended, and a lump formed in my throat; I feared we were indeed lost. Then Mrs. Darendal did something to the blank panel before us, and a pinpoint of light appeared. The housekeeper put her eye to it, then hissed between her teeth. She retreated down the passage and around a bend, taking me with her.

“We must wait.”

I did not need more explanation. Whatever room it was she had looked out on,
they
were there.

At last I could stand the silence no longer. “What are they?” I dared to murmur. “Are they…are they men?”

“Lower your voice! You have already caused enough trouble.”

I could not have been more stunned if she had struck me. “
I
have caused trouble?”

“It is your fault it has come to this.”

A fraction of my dread was replaced by astonishment.

Her face was a hard mask in the candlelight, all edges and shadows. “Do not pretend such innocence,
Miss
Lockwell. It is wasted on me. I know what you are. I have known it since the moment you set foot in this house, and every fear I had, every concern I tried to relate to him, has come to pass. I told him not to bring you here, and when you came I encouraged him to dismiss you at once. Would that he had listened to me.”

Now I
did
feel as if I had been slapped. “I thought you merely disliked me. Yet you say you tried, with conscious effort, to drive me away!”

Her expression showed no shame. “It is not only my duty to care for this house but for its master as well. I did everything in my power to prevent him from bringing the children here. Their presence could not be tolerated. All the more because I knew that once they came,
your
presence would become all the more likely. Almost from the first moment his cousins prevailed upon him to take the children, he spoke of you as their governess.”

“But why me? Surely there were other choices, ones you would have not considered so poor.”

Her face seemed to soften a fraction. “Do not think I speak ill of him. His only fault is kindness. He wanted to see again a person whose fate had once been his concern. There can be no impugning
his
motives.” Now her expression hardened again. “The same cannot be said for others, Miss Lockwell. Forgive me, I mean
Mrs. Quent.
” She spoke these last words as if she had swallowed a mouthful of vinegar.

“You cannot think I came here with that intention!”

“I would not presume to know with what intention you came here. All the same, it is
your
coming that has brought us to this.”

It was too much. Tears stung my eyes. “How can that be?”

“You cannot see? Then you do not merely look a dolt.
They
know the work he does, and long have they wanted to put a stop to it.”

“The rebels,” I said. “Those who plot treason against the Crown. Mr. Quent said they have been using the Wyrdwood to meet and gather, to conceal their plottings. And his work is to seek—”

“I have served him for nearly twenty years,” she snapped. “I know what he does.”

The housekeeper looked away. Her gray dress melded with the gloom, and her face seemed to float: a pale cameo, shaped by years of worry that had long ago become regret. “I wanted only to protect him. That is why we endured a silent life here, in this forlorn place. If we were alone, then we were safe; never would they attack him openly, not in his demesne. Yet if they could find a way to draw him into theirs…”

“But the children are gone,” I said. “They have failed to lure him to the Wyrdwood.”

She raised a sharp eyebrow. “Have they, Mrs. Quent?”

A weakness passed over me. I wished to sit, but there was no room in the passage. The children were gone. The witch had been stopped from drawing them into the wood;
I
had stopped her. Yet in their stead, I had given the plotters even better hope for compelling Mr. Quent to enter the Wyrdwood. For what man would not come to the aid of his new wife?

Yet something had happened they had not expected, just as it had that night at the Wyrdwood. Westen had thought to capture me, but it was he who had been captured instead. A curious feeling rose in me: a sensation of triumph. I even smiled, I think.

A howl echoed from somewhere above in the darkness, and any feeling I had was replaced by dread. I looked upward, into the dark. “What is happening to them?”

“The wood is changing them.”

“But how can that be?”

She gave me a look of disgust. “What do I know of the affairs of witches?”

The housekeeper turned away, and her gray hair and gray dress faded into the gloom, so that I could see her only as a woman-shaped void where the candlelight did not reach.

“I told him,” she whispered to the dark. “I told him not to go in there.”

“Westen,” I said. “Your son. Is he—”

“He is a fool. If only his father had…” The candlelight wavered. “
He
knew the peril of the wood, but they toy with it. They laugh and believe they can put it to their own uses. All they can think of are their schemes and plans. ‘You shall see, Mother,’ he tells me. ‘We will be free of this tyranny. We will have a king who protects the folk in the country.’ As if it matters who sits in the Citadel! What king has ever cared for folk like us? It is not worth giving up your…It is not worth dealing with such as
her
.”

Now she did turn to look at me. “I hate it. I hate the wood. I hate those women who go to it and work their craft there. I hate its trees. I hate that it took my husband. And I hate that it is taking my son!”

I was struck dumb. No breath would enter my lungs. Her face hung in the darkness before me, and for the first time since my coming to Heathcrest Hall, there were feelings upon it I recognized: anger, and love, and despair. Something glinted on her cheek.

She seemed to see me staring. Her lip curled up. “Now,” she said, pushing past me. “I hear them no longer. We must go.”

She moved back to the end of the passage. By the time I reached her she had already pushed it open. I saw a wedge of silver light, and though it could only be dim I squinted as if it were a brilliant glare.

“Come, you fool!” she said, seizing my arm and dragging me forward as the opening grew wider.

“Why?” I said as I stumbled after her. After all she had said, I could not understand. “Why are you helping me?”

“I keep this house, and all that is in it, for him, that is why.” She pulled me through the door.

I blinked and saw we were in the front hall. We had emerged from behind another panel, this one beneath the stairs. Not ten steps away was the arch that led to the front entry to the house. We both looked around, but the hall was empty save for ourselves and its usual mounted denizens.

“To the door,” the housekeeper said.

I hurried toward the arch, but when I reached it I realized the housekeeper was not behind me. Turning, I saw her start up the stairs.

Dread seized me. “Mrs. Darendal, what are you doing?”

“It is none of
your
concern,” she said with a glare over her shoulder. She ascended several more steps.

“You cannot go upstairs. They are up there!”

“So is my son. I will not leave him to them.” She continued climbing.

“But he is like them!”

The look she sent me across the hall was filled with such loathing, such contempt, that I could only stagger back against it. The housekeeper vanished up the stairs.

For a mad moment I thought of dashing after her. No—she did not want me. Whatever she had done to help me, it had not been for
my
sake. I turned and ran to the front door. It was still open.

I ran through. Mist coiled around my ankles, pooled on the stones, slithered down the steps. I hesitated, thinking of Lanna and Jance. Were they still in the house? I could not know, but if I had any hope of aiding them, it was to escape this place, to ride to the village, to seek help. I started down the steps.

A dark form moved in the mist before me, and I halted. There was a sound like a blade being drawn over a whetting stone. The shape stalked up the steps.

“No,” I said, or tried to. The mist filled my mouth; I could not speak.

The shadow prowled closer.

I fled back up the front steps, but as I reached the top a growling sounded on the air, so low it was a thing felt as much as heard. A dark form loped through the open door. I turned; the other shadow was halfway up the steps.

There is a point where dread becomes so great the mind can no longer endure it and so gives it up completely. In my fear, a kind of madness came upon me. My heart did not slow, but I no longer felt any desire to run. Terror had made a crystal of my mind: sharp-faceted and clear. They were not here to murder me but for another purpose.

Let them, I thought with a sudden elation. Let them try to make use of me for their own ends! I spread my arms wide and held my chin high.

“Come, then, take me,” I spoke into the fog. “Take me to the Wyrdwood—if you dare it.”

There was a snarl, and the shadow leaped up.

Lightning flashed, a clap of thunder rent the air. There was a pitiful whine. The thing crumpled in a heap on the steps below me and did not move again. There was a clattering sound. More shapes moved up the steps. Only these were tall and upright.

“By God, hold your fire! There is a woman there!”

At the same moment another snarl sounded behind me, and again light and sound tore the mist asunder.

“Damn you, I said hold your fire!”

The mist swirled and parted. A man stood before me, a rifle in his hands. He wore the blue regimental coat of a captain.

“Madam, are you well?” His eyes were wide. “Tell me, are you hurt?”

I tried to answer him, but my ears rang from the rifle shots, and the sound had struck me dumb.

Other soldiers appeared from the gloom behind the captain. “Where is the inquirer? Get him now!”

“I am here,” spoke a deep, familiar voice.

So filled with relief was I at the sound that my legs could no longer support me. I would have dashed my head against the steps if the captain had not caught me. Then another pair of hands took me, holding me aloft with easy strength, though they had but eight fingers between them.

“You are well, aren’t you?” His brown eyes were intent upon me. “Tell me you are well.”

I reached up and laid a hand against his bearded cheek. “Mr. Quent.”

“It looks as if we got two more of the dogs, sir,” one of the men said.

Dogs. Yes, that was what they had seemed like: great, shaggy dogs. I turned my head. The mist had lifted a bit, and in the failing light I saw two figures sprawled on the front steps of the house, dark pools forming beneath them. Their jackets and breeches were shabby, their hair long and tangled, their faces pale.

Men. They were men.

“Search the house!” the captain called out. “Find any more of the rebels that might be left inside.”

Gently, Mr. Quent turned me away.

“Do not look at them,” he said. “You are safe now. It is over.”

I rested my cheek against his chest. Yet I had seen enough to know that neither of the dead men was Westen. Nor did I believe they would find him inside the house. I remembered the last words he spoke to me.

No matter what you do, the land will rise….

A shiver passed through me. Though I admired Mr. Quent more than any man in the world, all the same I knew he was wrong. It was not over.

Night descended. As it did, a gale sprang up, tearing apart the fog, and I thought I could almost hear it: the sound of wind through bent branches and the whispering of leaves.

No, it had only just begun.