As the numbing cold and painful lashing of the water drained the strength from those who tried to fight it, a great stillness overtook Virginia. No hint of expression passed over her face, and even the sea around her calmed. Pat wiped her hair out of her eyes and stared at the strange young woman, whose very calmness seemed to take the fury out of the storm.
“Look!” Virginia commanded suddenly, and the three ceased working against the water and raised their eyes to the sky.
They were surrounded by an army of beautiful giants.
In the blackness of the clouds warriors and horses waited, wearing golden armour and cloaks of deep scarlet and forest green. They stood facing the wind, and their horses stamped impatiently. The air was filled with the sounds of swords swinging, harnesses jangling, and hooves stamping. The wind made the white manes of the horses and the long hair of the warriors stream out behind them. For a moment only, even the earthy smells of the creatures reached the sailors in the tiny boat.
And then it was gone.
Lord Robert looked away from the sky and at Virginia with wild eyes. He had seen it. It was real. She had opened the Otherworld to him at last.
The rain continued to fall, but it did not chill them as it had before. The wind died down and the waves that had beaten the boat now caressed it, and carried the little craft through the water to Galce.
The sun was setting fiery orange over the water when the fishing boat scraped against the sands of the continent. Lord Robert and Pat jumped into the surf and pulled the boat to shore, where they helped Mrs. Cook and Virginia out. The setting sun brought the changing colours of the forest to blazing, brilliant life. Somewhere deep in the trees, a bird was singing.
Virginia shivered with the cold, fully human again, as water dripped from her skirts onto the sand. Mrs. Cook moved close and put her arms around her. Virginia leaned her head on Mrs. Cook’s shoulder, and they stood in silence. Lord Robert let the fading warmth of the sun play on his neck and bare head, and he sighed low. He gazed a moment at Virginia, but she did not seem aware of his presence.
“Where do we go from here?” Mrs. Cook asked finally
The question brought Lord Robert back to himself. He looked around at the sandy shore. His eyes fell on a tall white stone that rose from the water out in the channel, the sun causing it to shine like a strange moon rising from the depths.
“I know this place,” the laird announced. He pointed out at the stone. “That’s the Giant’s Tooth. I came here often as a child. We’re not ten miles from Calai.”
“Which way?” Pat asked.
Lord Robert started off briskly. “This way, I’m nearly certain of it! We haven’t got time to waste, now come on.”
They started to walk, but Virginia suddenly stumbled and nearly fell to the sand. Mrs. Cook held her up, and cast a wrathful glance at the two who led the way.
“She can’t walk all that way now, and though I don’t like to complain, neither can I,” she said. “You two can march on if you like, but we’re resting here.”
Lord Robert bowed his head, and Pat threw herself down on the sand next to Mrs. Cook, stretching out with a long sigh.
“I’m sorry,” Lord Robert said. “Of course a rest is needed.”
Virginia lay down on the sand, and Lord Robert came and sat by her head. He reached out to touch her, but she flinched and moved away. He drew his hand back as though it had been bitten.
No one else had seen, but Lord Robert felt the rejection keenly. Not for the first time, he wondered darkly what it was that had sent the High Police after Virginia Ramsey.
* * *
Chapter 7
A World in Turmoil
Tonight the moon burns red. I have seen it thus before: in the days of the Great War, the anger of the heavens burned in her face. Such a world she looks down on must kindle great wrath! Evil walks among men, though the Blackness itself is kept away behind the Veil.
It is a great mystery, the Veil. I will tell the tale of it, for it is a thing of mourning and of wonder.
There once walked among us a race of beings called the Shearim, the Fairest of Creation. In them was great wisdom, great beauty, and great strength. They took what shapes they wished and moved about clothed with the forms of men and women and children. Men sometimes called them the Virtues, for they took names to themselves after those qualities which men most honoured and revered: Justice and Wisdom, Harmony, Innocence, Hope, and Beauty. The child-hearts among the Shearim were called Merriment, Laughter, and Melody.
Some kept to themselves, but many were dear to men, for they would often come among them, easing burdens with their touch and filling hearts with their laughter and strength. It was sometimes said that those who had been with the Shearim would afterwards glow as if they had touched the sun.
When the Blackness began to grow in the Seventh World, the Shearim first sought to hold it off by exerting their influence for the good, but it was to no avail. At last the Shearim, in their own way, became warriors, and they battled the creatures of shadow before even the Great War. Those were days of grief and hardship for the Fairest of Creation, for the Blackness was cruel and ruthless, and loved to torment its enemies.
In the end, men became allied with the Blackness and went to war against the King and his army. In those days the Great War began, as men and shadow fought against the Earth Brethren and the few remaining faithful of men. But this was a clash in which the Shearim did not take part, for they were bound by their own law, and could not take up weapons against men. They watched, and moved among the wounded and dying, and ministered to them as best they could. It is said that the Eldest Seven stayed by the King and served him. But in the end even their ministrations were to no avail, for the King’s heart was broken and he went into exile.
It was then that the love of the Shearim for all creation became fully manifested. With the King gone and the Blackness growing, the Fairest of Creation, weeping for all that had come to pass, saw that there was one last thing they could do to save the rebellious ones. They joined themselves together and called upon the power of their law to undo them. While the raging Blackness watched, the life-force of the Shearim was woven together into a new thing: an impenetrable Veil, a living division between the Blackness and men.
And so the Blackness was for a time thwarted, and the children of men were left free to build their own world, and someday, perhaps, to reach out for the King again. For this slender chance of redemption the Shearim gave themselves.
But now they are gone from creation forever and always, for the Veil must one day be destroyed, and the makers of it can never be re-made themselves. They sacrificed themselves to defeat the Blackness and to save men, and the world will ever weep for them.
O Children of Men, will you only be dry-eyed in the face of this thing? You for whom it was done, you for whom all was sacrificed—will you not weep?
* * *
Virginia lay on the beach sands, listening to the gentle thunder of waves on the shore blend with the soft sound of snoring. Her clothes had dried to an uncomfortable damp. The wet sand felt warm under her body. The air around her was cold, and she knew that the sun had gone down. In the forest, insects were chirping.
A breeze blew through her hair and died away. A sudden unease gripped her, and she raised herself up on her hands and sat with her head cocked, listening.
Once again the air stirred around her, and this time she felt as though fingers were reaching for her through the wind. She flinched at the touch of the breeze, and suddenly a blinding flash of colour—purple and red and living, pulsing blackness—shot through her eyes. For an instant she could see two eyes in a shadowed face, staring at her. She looked back, unable to tear her eyes away, and then it was gone. There was nothing but the gentle rhythm of the sea against the sands.
Something had found her. She could not hide much longer.
* * *
The walk into Calai should have been miserable, as the little company staggered
along on storm-battered muscles. But something about the day lightened both their steps and their moods. Sun diamonds sparkled and flashed on the water, and the seabirds shouted glad tidings to the white clouds. Mrs. Cook and Pat fell to talking, catching up on each other’s lives since they had parted a few months before.
Lord Robert walked with his hands in his pockets, his mind filled with the memory of the vision in the storm, and with wonderings and thoughts of the future that waited in Pravik. Only Virginia, walking by the laird’s side, seemed unaffected by the cheerfulness of the day. She was silent and shadowed, every step taken with grim determination.
There was no sign of the High Police in Calai. Lord Robert hailed a cab, and before the heat of mid-afternoon had begun to beat down, the foursome were resting comfortably on an iron train bound for Pravik. They rode in a private compartment, with red velvet seats and windows, faintly etched with dragons and serpents, that looked out on the country as it passed.
That night, Lord Robert sat with his chin in his hand, gazing at the curved moon that stood watch high above the black trees. Moonlight caused the swirling patterns etched in the glass windows to sparkle, snake scales shining in crystal. Pat slept beside him, her head resting against the wall. She had pulled her legs up on the seat, and lay curled up like a cat.
In the seat across from them, Mrs. Cook was snoring softly. Virginia was wide awake.
Lord Robert listened to the rhythmic clacking of the train wheels as the car rocked gently back and forth, rushing through the forest. He imagined himself in a study in Pravik, pouring over the contents of the mysterious scroll with Jarin Huss, just as in the days of the council. For so long he had sought the Otherworld, only to find every door closed to him. Now windows such as he would never have imagined were flinging themselves open at every turn, and the Otherworld was seeking him again. Seeking him through Virginia. Her nearness to him made his pulse quicken with the awareness of the other side of reality, and he felt a determination to make her open up to him. He knew that he did not have her confidence—her trust—but he meant to win it. She held the key to the worlds unseen, and she must open them to him someday.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Virginia’s voice. “Laird?” she asked.
He turned away from the moon to face her. “What is it?” he asked.
“You saw, didn’t you?” she asked. “All of you—you saw the riders.”
“Yes,” the laird said, sitting forward. “We saw them. I have waited all my life to see such a sight.”
“And I have seen such things for as long as I can remember,” Virginia said. “But I have never desired to. The visions come without my wish or command, and they fill me with joy or horror as they will.”
“As a young man I would have given anything to see as you do,” Lord Robert said. “The powers of the Otherworld did not grant me such a gift. Only, here and there, they would seek me out. They would give me a hint in one place and a whisper in another, always tantalizing, always calling me to come farther. But I had no stepping stones to reach them.”
“You speak as though the Otherworld had a human spirit,” Virginia said.
“Perhaps it does, or more than one,” Lord Robert said, carefully. He was baiting her; waiting for her to tell him the things she had always kept hidden.
“You should be careful,” was all Virginia said, “whose call you answer.”
“Are you worried about me?” he asked, and said, without waiting for an answer, “You don’t need to be. I can take care of myself.”
“So says every man, before he is lost,” said Virginia. “I do fear for you. I have seen you, sometimes, and there is a great black cloud around you that whispers and calls to you. And a woman.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lord Robert said, suddenly irritated. “I suppose everyone has a ‘cloud’ at times, of emotion of one sort or another. And what do you mean, a woman?”
“A woman who occupies your thoughts and your longings,” Virginia said. “I have seen her in your memories.”
Lord Robert laughed a short, humorless laugh and said, “It’s just this sort of thing that makes the villagers hate you.”
“I know,” Virginia answered, and said nothing more. Lord Robert silently chided himself. He had let something slip through his fingers, he was sure of it. After a while he turned to apologize, feeling sincerely guilty for his words—but Virginia was asleep.
The laird did not sleep well that night.
* * *
Dusk had fallen when Nicolas and Maggie rode into the city of Pravik and wound their way through the narrow streets. The black waters of the Vltava River cut through a ravine in the center of the city, dividing level streets from those that rose up the sides of a high plateau, crowned by the dark aspect of Pravik Castle. Fifteen bridges spanned the river, their lamps glinting off the water far below. The dark shapes of mountains and foothills stood sentinel beyond the city.
The streets were still and empty, and the step of the horses beat hollowly on the cobblestones. The air was uneasy; it whispered in Nicolas’s ears and twitched in the horses’ tails. Maggie leaned over and stroked Nancy’s neck just before they stepped onto the Guardian Bridge, a silent archway lined with white marble statues.
Nicolas pointed up the steep hill on the other side of the bridge, to the place high on the plateau where torchlight glistened and the milling silhouettes of a body of people could just be made out.
“That’s Pravik Castle,” he said. “Looks like something’s happening up there.”
Maggie squinted into the darkness at the shadowy bulk of the castle. Nancy stamped nervously, and Nicolas said, “Let’s go see. Come on!”
Maggie followed Nicolas onto the bridge, where the strange white figures held out their hands in silent pleas. The lamplight on the bridge flickered off the statues’ empty eyes and lit the sides of the ravine, carved deep and narrow by centuries of water. Halfway across the bridge, the sounds of unrest from the crowd around the castle began to mingle with the rushing spray of the river. Nicolas spurred his horse on faster.
They rode up the streets until they reached the edge of the crowd. There were hundreds of men gathered around the gates of the castle: merchants and university students, chimney sweeps and lamplighters. They carried weapons, such as they had. On the other side of the gates, half-hidden by the shadows, stood row after row of High Police, the ends of their spears shining in the torchlight. Their swords, long and sharp, rested in black scabbards. The soldiers were as silent and unmoving as the statues on the bridge, but their eyes glistened with threats.
A young man, tall and darkly handsome, had mounted a wagon, where he shouted in a strong voice. The crowd around him had quieted, and only their muttered agreements betrayed how strongly his words struck their hearts.
“The Overlord has no right to deny us a voice!” the young man said. “The Governing Council speaks for us, the people… how can they if they will not hear us? Let the Overlord know that we will not leave these gates until they are opened to us, and we are given the right to speak!”
An old man in the crowd shouted something back at the young man, who answered with an imploring look at those around him. “We cannot allow the Overlord to take more from us. Already he bleeds us dry! In our schools, our universities, he denies us the right to know what is true. I know! I am a student, and every day I must sit and listen only to those things which the Overlord—indeed, even the Emperor himself—deems necessary for me to know! And you, the workers and merchants who are the lifeblood of this city! The taxes taken from you snatch the very food from your children’s mouths. Now they will take those same children from you. The Man Tax is an evil that ought to have been strangled the day it was born. Instead it has taken your sons from your hearths and sent them to become wolves.”
He gestured to the silent rows of soldiers who watched and listened from the other side of the gate. “The High Police! What are they but slaves, taken from our nu
mbers before they knew enough to know what was worth fighting for? My brother was taken from my parents when he was thirteen years old—as you have all lost brothers, and sons, to their ranks. And now they will lower the age of the tax, and we will lose our children when they have scarcely learned to walk and talk! Seven years old! That is what the Emperor has decreed. That is what our Overlord bows to without protest. We shall not allow it! We are here to protest, and our cries will rise above Pravik until they reach the throne of Athrom itself! All we ask is a voice in the council tonight. Stand strong, and be heard!”
The young man jumped down from the wagon, and Maggie found that she could still see his head above the crowd. He strode up to the gates and shook them until the iron rattled deafeningly.
“Tell me!” he demanded of the soldiers. “What does the Overlord say? Will he listen now? When will the gates open to us?”
In answer there was only silence, only the glaring malice of the High Police.
Nicolas leaned over and whispered, “Some of those soldiers could be looking their own fathers in the face now, and it wouldn’t make a difference to them. The Empire has trained away every shred of family loyalty and love that ever existed under those uniforms. That’s why the Man Tax is so hated.”
Maggie looked back at the glinting spears behind the gates and shivered. “It is the same in Bryllan,” she said. “Only our boys are taken much older, when they are nearly men. Why so young here?”
“Because the Eastern Lands have always been breeding grounds for revolutionaries,” Nicolas told her. “Gypsies wander here, and they taunt all men with a vision of freedom—even if it is a tattered, starving, outcast freedom. And there are others who work to keep revolution alive. In the universities. The Eastern Lands are a threat to the Empire and they always have been.”
The young man leaped back onto his wagon and continued to speak, but Maggie was engrossed in the faces of the crowd, and his words were lost on her ears. The men in the crowd showed faces filled with fear and anger; some lined with age and some smooth with youth; fathers who longed for their sons and boys who wished for their brothers. Many in the crowd were young, clean-shaven men who bore the good clothes and uncalloused hands of university students, and they, who had perhaps suffered least, seemed most determined to bring change. Maggie noticed a few men who wore homespun clothing and carried pitchforks and homemade spears—farmers, these, with rough hands and weathered faces. They seemed out of place, awkward though not fearful, and they kept silence and watched the others.