The Spell-Bound Scholar (33 page)

You have risen to be Chief Agent by your own strength and intelligence, the kind lady reminded her. SPITE is nothing without you now, but you have no real need of them — only the illusion of such need. Step out of the shadow they have cast over you, put behind you the fears and self-contempt they inculcated in you. Discover your own virtue, your own worthiness, for if you are the most potent of the anarchists tools, you can also be the most outstanding woman of your generation — aye, in virtue and wisdom as well as in strength and intelligence.

But I am nothing! I am corrupted!

Suddenly she was thrashing her arms and legs, though they struck nothing. She lay against something soft but secure and, looking up, saw a blur of a face framed by touseled hair matted with the sweat of labor, a face that sweetened as a smile of delight and amazement lit its features. "She is beautiful! I shall call her Allouette."

Then it was gone, and Finister stood alone, crying, What was that? Who? What name?

Your earliest memory, the kind lady said, dredged by magic from the depths of your mind. She was your mother, and the name she gave you is your true one.

It cannot be! It is a trick, a deception!

Memories can deceive, the kind lady agreed, but this one does not. Allouette is the skylark, whose music charms, and you are a woman of power and great magic who can move a world — this world.

I cannot be! They would have told me! But Finister knew that was not so.

That is why they needed to shackle you, the kind lady corrected. Burst your fetters, stand free, and grow into your true self If you were a valued tool, you can be often times greater value as a woman.

Finister tottered in the void, wanting to believe but afraid. Then she felt a wind at her back, a wind that rose, strengthening to a gale, and it was all she could do to hold her place against its push.

It is the wind of Destiny, the kind lady said. Have the courage to rise without broom or wing and ride it. Trust your destiny, trust your own talent and intelligence, your own immense worth, and see where they all may take you.

A vision of a castle sprang up in Finister's mind, but with shock and amazement she heard herself saying, What use is a castle?

None, unless it shelters people from attack, the kind lady said, or serves as a storehouse for food to feed them when famine comes, and medicines to heal them when they are ill. You who were reared to serve the people — can you make a castle that will truly do so?

Yes! Finister's soul shouted, but she withheld the words from her lips, shocked and frightened by her own essence.

Go and do it, then, the kind lady's voice said, and the darkness seemed to deepen around Finister; she stood naked in the void, the tatters of the illusion in which her foster parents had wrapped her drifting away, drifting thin, fading, extinguishing themselves. At last she stood bare and shivering in the cold wind, still not quite daring to trust it to bear her away, to trust herself to ride it, to fly, but the kind lady's voice echoed around her, saying, Rise and go. Explore your soul, sound your own depths, then rise and grow and become all you can.

That last word rang and echoed and built into a whirlwind of sound that surrounded Finister and dazed her to distraction, vibrating all about her, within her, making her one with it. With glad relief, she realized her consciousness had joined with it and was dissipating, and surrendered herself to harmony and to the Void.

Gwen went limp, shudders racking her every limb. Geoffrey and Cordelia instantly caught her between them.

"You have exhausted yourself, Mama!" Cordelia cried in alarm.

"I shall. . . revive. ..." Gwen gasped. "What of. . . yourselves?"

Cordelia paused a moment to take stock; in her concern for her mother, she hadn't noticed her own depletion. "I am wearied, but far less so than yourself."

"I, too," Geoffrey said. He glared daggers at Gregory. "This lass of yours had better be worth such a wasting of our mother's strength."

"I need only .. . rest," Gwen said, beginning to catch her breath. "Then I shall be ... stronger than ever." With an effort, she straightened. "As to Allouette ..."

"Who?" Cordelia and Geoffrey asked together, but Gregory protested, "Is she not truly Finister?"

"She is not," Gwen said. "I unearthed a buried memory, her very first after birth. She has used it as a nom de guerre several times but never used any other more than once. It is her true name, that which her mother gave her at birth."

"Allouette," Gregory said, wondering, then again and again, tasting the word, making it a part of himself. "Allouette ... Allouette ..."

"Je te plumerai," Geoffrey said bitterly, "and her plumes were most definitely plucked."

"So that she could not fly freely," Cordelia agreed, then said, remembering, "Allouette—skylark."

"You must never call her that without her permission," Gwen said sternly. "You must not let her know that you have heard of it until she tells you."

"Then why did you tell us, Mother?" Cordelia asked.

"Because Gregory must know it is her true name," Gwen said, "not merely another she has invented."

"I shall take that to heart, even as I forget the name," Gregory promised.

"That is well," Gwen said. "Be sure that she shall be well worth your love and my labor—if my attempt at healing has indeed succeeded."

"But what of Gregory's labor?" asked Cordelia. "For surely there shall be a great deal of constant work needed to woo and win this lass, then more to bond her to him
"

"That is true of all romances," Gwen told her. "The effort never ceases. You must win one another's love again and again, all your life long, and work at the bonding as surely as any mason building a castle."

"But it will shelter you all your days."

Gregory nodded. "I expected nothing less."

Nor did any of them. They had all watched Gwen's lifelong struggle to keep Rod believing he was good enough for her. Only Cordelia, though, had noticed his constant effort to convince Gwen that he was good enough for her, too, and looking back to her toddling days, she suspected there had been several times when her mother had doubted that rather strongly.

" 'Tis well," Gwen said, satisfied. "Be mindful, though, that this Al . . . this Finister will have all the self-doubts and uncertainties of a lass of fourteen, though she has the memories and experience and skills of her twenty-four years."

"A difficult combination." Gregory frowned. "Will she, then, struggle with the guilt of those years, too?"

Cordelia looked up, startled by his insight.

"She will," Gwen confirmed, "and will have a greater need to prove that you love her for herself, not for her body. Why do you love her, my son?"

"I cannot pretend to be immune to her beauty," Gregory admitted, "though I have seen it in so many forms that I begin to doubt it enough to cancel its force. I also cannot claim indifference to the allure she projects, though I know it to be only a skill of the mind, like to my ability to reason. But I am most attracted by the fire of her spirit, by her intelligence, her ingenuity in solving a problem, and her tenacity, her refusal to give up when solution after solution proves inadequate."

"The problem being yourself," Cordelia said darkly, "or at least, the enslaving of you by her erotic charms
."

Gregory made an impatient gesture, waving the comment away. "The problem matters little: the intelligence and the tenacity do."

Geoffrey smiled, amused. "How like you to be attracted by such turns of the mind!"

"How like me indeed," Gregory agreed, "and I feel no need to apologize for what I am."

Geoffrey's smile disappeared. "Nor do I." He seemed to bristle.

Gwen interposed smoothly. "The question, then, is not her worthiness of my effort, but whether the healing will succeed."

Gregory shrugged. "Only experience will tell."

"Yes, but if this healing has failed, the proof will be your death or enslavement," Geoffrey said grimly. "Guard yourself well, my brother."

"That is one lesson the youngest learns well." At last Gregory smiled, "Fear not for me, my sib." Then he frowned again. "But how if there is no improvement in her?"

"Then you must summon me," Gwen said, "and we must confer as to the meting out of justice again."

"Justice." Cordelia looked down at the unconscious woman. "How if she is cured, Mother? How many has she slain?"

"Thirteen," Gwen said, "though only one was of her own choice—her former commander."

"Then is it justice to let her go free when she has slain so many?" Geoffrey asked.

"Justice must be tempered by mercy," Gregory said quickly.

"Do not underestimate the agony of the ordeal through which I have guided her," Gwen said, "and the pains of the humiliations that have gone before. Still, if she devotes the rest of her life to aiding people in need, can we not say there is at least some measure of justice served?"

"If she so dedicates her life," Geoffrey said, his skepticism clear upon his face.

"Perhaps that will be the measure of her healing," Cordelia suggested.

"A life for a life," Gregory said, musing. "If she saves thirteen, will that not be justice?"

"Ask the families of those she has slain, brother."

"It will be hard enough for us to say that she has earned mercy," Gwen said. "What will be hardest of all is for her to forgive herself. You must be very patient, my son, while she struggles to believe she is worthy of love—indeed, that she is worthy of life."

"I shall rival Job!" Gregory said fervently.

"She has been your companion in your search for this Site of Power you have found," Gwen mused. "Is it not right, then, that you accompany her on her quest to discover how she may make reparations and forgive herself?"

"She had little choice about his company," Geoffrey reminded her, "and her motives were scarcely helpful."

"Her motives may have been sinister," Gwen said, "but you may be sure she had every choice. She might not have been able to escape our Gregory, but she did not know that."

"The woman has no difficulty believing in her own abilities, that is true," Cordelia said.

"No, only in her own worth." Gwen laid a hand on her youngest's shoulder. "Go wisely and warily, my son—but remember that in this instance, it is wise to follow your heart. Only use your knowledge and caution to ward it."

"I shall, Mother," Gregory promised.

Gwen turned, leaning on Cordelia's arm. "I believe I shall ride with you, daughter."

"Cling tightly to your own broomstick nevertheless," Cordelia said nervously, and the two brooms rose together to make a seat and a handgrip for Gwen.

The young men watched the women rise into the predawn sky. Then Geoffrey turned to his little brother, made an abortive gesture with his hands, and said, "Fare you well, my sib. Good fortune attend you."

"And you, bigger brother," Gregory said with a smile.

They clasped hands. Geoffrey frowning earnestly into Gregory's eyes, perhaps remembering the two-year-old who had toddled after him once. Earnestly he said, "Patience is all, brother—patience and enticement. The reward is well worth the effort."

Gregory understood that he was speaking of more than

making love. "I thank you, brother," he said. "I assure you your teachings shall not go in vain."

"Fare well, then! Remember to block with your left and test each coin!" Geoffrey took two steps back, squared his shoulders, and disappeared with a bang.

Gregory stood staring at the space where he had been for some minutes, musing and pondering. Then he looked down at the woman who slept at his feet, looked down and knelt down. Taking her hand, he settled himself to wait for the dawn and her awakening.

From the depths of sleep, she heard the lark heralding the dawn. The song drew her upward, away from the refuge of unconsciousness. She resisted bitterly, fighting the compulsion—until she remembered that she was the lark now, Al-louette, and it was her namesake calling.

Up from the womb of sleep she rose. Even then, fully conscious, she lay with her eyes closed, willing sleep to return, but it held aloof. Finally and with massive regret, she opened her eyes.

Slight though the light was, it hurt, and she squinted against it, looking upward, seeking the lark—but she found the boy instead, the callow youth whom she had been set, and set herself, to enslave or slay.

Massive remorse overwhelmed her, and the sight of his face blurred. She blinked away the tears angrily—how foolish they were, when she needed to see the world clearly! She knew with a certainty that reached to the roots of her soul that she would never again kill any human creature unless it were trying to kill her. Even then . . .

She became aware that she was sitting up, that an arm supported her, encircling her shoulders. She flinched, moving a little forward, away from the touch, and looked up into the face beside hers, the deep and aching concern in his eyes. Poor fool, he is still under my spell she thought, and withdrew any vestige of projection to free him.