The Tattooed Heart

  Without comment, two letters appeared on the board. It now read:

  H E _ T _ _ _ H _

  I solved the puzzle. But the audience must never shout out answers. So I kept my peace.

  “R!”

  And yes, there was an R in the sixth place. But a wrongly guessed S added his torso, leaving just his legs still standing in place.

  The weight doubled as his body, from pelvis upward, joined the rest of him and dragged him down. He strained with both hands, biceps quivering, neck a twist of arteries and distended tendons, face shining from sweat, eyes bulging.

  Oliver was very frightened now. Nicolet no longer looked as if she regretted not playing.

  And Haarm was becoming agitated. He kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting someone to arrive and put a stop to this vicious game.

  I glanced at Messenger, wondering whether he had noticed Haarm’s distraction, but Messenger refused to meet my eyes and instead looked fixedly at Oliver. At what was now most of Oliver.

  “I . . . ca . . . I . . .” Oliver was choking as his arms weakened.

  “Are you choosing the letter I?” “Graciella” asked innocently.

  “Chhh . . . chhggr . . . no . . . letter . . . P!”

  And yes, as I had guessed, there was a P in the third slot.

  H E P T _ R _ H _

  It seemed obvious to me now, but then I had heard the word frequently since adopting my new duties as apprentice. It was not otherwise a common word, not a word Oliver was likely to have on the tip of his tongue.

  That tongue now bulged between his lips. It had turned a dark red color. The muscles in his body strained to hold the choking weight.

  With a supreme effort Oliver pulled himself up just enough to gasp, “B!”

  His left leg now hung from the rest of him and kicked at the air, seeking something to rest upon. It hung just eight or ten inches above the platform. Too far for Oliver, and too heavy. The additional weight caused him to lose his grip on the noose and he swung, voiceless, airless, while the sand fell through the hourglass.

  One more wrong letter and he would lose.

  But he could not speak. His hands had been dropped to his side so that circulation could be restored, but I doubted he would have strength enough to rise for the last letters, the letters that might save him.

  Yet I had underestimated the drug-dealing pimp, for he found a last reservoir of strength and managed to gasp, “C!”

  H E P T _ R C H _

  He had it now. I could see that he had it. There was desperate awareness in eyes now bulging out of his face above tongue turned black.

  He saw the answer, but he saw it too late. He clawed madly at the noose, but the strength was gone from his fingers. He clawed, clawed, weaker, less focused. His eyes glazed over.

  The sand ran out.

  With one leg attached, the last of Oliver was no longer able to lift himself to speak.

  “Heptarchy,” the Game Master said. And with that, the snake noose released its hold and Oliver fell to the platform in a heap.

  But he was not dead. The game is never fatal, not really.

  Oliver remained bent over on his hands and knees, gasping for air.

  “The game has been lost,” the Master of the Game said.

  “Yes,” Messenger agreed.

  “Have I performed my duty, Messenger of Isthil?”

  “You have,” Messenger said. “You may withdraw.”

  Oliver was sent tumbling down the thirteen steps to land, still sucking desperately for air in a throat that was half-crushed.

  The Master of the Game withdrew and took with him the gibbet and the snake and his vile simulacrum of Graciella, and faded into the mist.

  “Oliver Benbury, you have lost the game,” Messenger said. “And now you will endure the Piercing to determine your punishment.”

  “Let me do it.”

  Haarm.

  I spun toward him. “What?”

  “I may not be your apprentice,” Haarm said to Messenger, “but I am still an apprentice and you have been charged with my training for now.”

  Did Messenger suspect something was very wrong with this bold request?

  “I can do it,” I said, peering closely at Haarm.

  “You’ve already done the girl,” Haarm said. “It’s my turn.”

  I had not thought of the ritual of the Piercing as something to be fought over, and I admit I was baffled, though suspicious.

  “Haarm will perform this duty,” Messenger said.

  Haarm roughly dragged Oliver to his feet. There was no fight left in Oliver. Oliver was a whipped dog, cringing and subservient.

  As I had done with Nicolet, Haarm now moved behind Oliver and placed his palms against heart and head. For perhaps two minutes I watched and waited, splitting my attention between Haarm and Nicolet and Messenger.

  Something was not right here, and if Messenger didn’t sense it then he was not the person I believed him to be. But he said nothing and did nothing.

  At last Haarm blinked, and wiped his hand over his eyes as if waking from a nap.

  “He has many fears,” Haarm said, steadfastly refusing to make eye contact. “But his great fear is of . . .” Haarm swallowed and his eyes flitted left and right. “He has a strange fear of plush animals. Teddy bears.”

  I was looking right at Oliver as Haarm said it. I saw the surprise. I saw the mystification. And the relief.

  Fear? Not even a little.

  Haarm, on the other hand, looked nervous and belligerent.

  I was still trying to make sense of what had happened when the answer appeared, looking, as always, like the girl who was actually too hot for the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  “What are you doing here?” Haarm cried.

  “Where else should I be?” Oriax asked innocently.

  “But—”

  Oriax waved him off dismissively. “Oh, don’t be dull, Haarm. Did you really think they wouldn’t figure it out? Little mini-Messenger here isn’t stupid—sexually repressed and frustrated but not stupid.” She slinked her way toward Messenger, grinning with her too-sharp teeth. “And Messenger? He’s not just a pretty face.” She sighed theatrically, enjoying her moment of victory. “Although it is a very, very pretty face.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I mentioned Oriax to Haarm. He came to see me and he made me angry and I blurted out her name. He must have—”

  “Oh, please, mini, don’t disappoint me,” Oriax said. “The big dumb Dutch boy here has been mine for a long time.”

  Messenger nodded slightly, almost a token of wary respect. “The timing was less than perfect,” he said.

  Oriax shrugged. “Yes, true enough. I was hoping to get Haarm into your little circle earlier.”

  “It was Trent you wanted to rescue,” Messenger said.

  “Trent,” Oriax said wistfully. “He was on a very useful path. There’s never really a bad time to add another hater, but Trent, well, there was a particular role he could have played. He would have been just the right thug at just the right time. My lord is not happy with me for failing to save Trent.”

  Haarm had begun to edge away from me and from Messenger.

  Oliver just looked scared and wary and still badly shaken from his encounter with the Master of the Game. But he responded to Oriax the way people do, eyes taking in every detail, and then taking in those same details again.

  “Yes, Trent would have been useful,” Oriax said, and pretended to wipe away a tear before laughing gaily and saying, “But a sixteen-year-old who is already pimping and pushing heroin? We’ll find something useful to do with him.”

  “Let me redo the Piercing,” I said. “I can find out what he’s afraid of.”

  Messenger shook his head slightly. “That ritual may be performed only once. Oriax knows this.”

  “Yes, she does,” Oriax said, mocking his seriousness.

  “You set up Chandra,” I said to her.

  “Not quite,” Oriax said.
“I just seduced her apprentice. See, I’ll tell you a little secret.” She came to me, close enough, too close, and though at that moment I raged inwardly at her, I could not resist entirely the gravitational pull she exerted over me.

  “All are sinners,” Oriax said. “All fail to do their duty at some point. Everyone falls, even Messengers of Fear. Chandra had a soft heart. I had seen her intervene in the time line before and I knew she would do it again. But I needed someone to inform Daniel, and, well, Daniel doesn’t listen to me. So I had a charming . . . discussion . . . with this great blond lump here, and he was not hard to convince. He ratted out Chandra. The law of averages made it reasonably likely that he would be temporarily assigned to Messenger—he’s very well thought of, you know. Oh yes, he is the Golden Boy. Once assigned to Messenger, Haarm would be in a position to help me with Trent. That didn’t work, but I did manage to salvage a few things: Chandra is out, and I saved this potentially useful creature.” She waved an elegant hand at Oliver. “Unless of course you intend to attack him with plush animals, Messenger. And even now, there’s still hope for Trent. Who knows what he may do when he returns to his life? You may not have broken him entirely. He may yet be salvaged.”

  Messenger did not answer her. Instead he said to Oliver, “You have escaped your due punishment. You are free to go.”

  “He’ll go with me,” Oriax said.

  “He cannot be forced to do so,” Messenger said. “He is free to make his own decision.”

  Oliver perked up at this. He climbed to his feet, shaky, traumatized, but recovering his wits. “What’s the deal?” he rasped.

  “Go back to your life,” Messenger said. “Consider what has happened. Take stock of what you have done, of the damage you have caused. Change your life. Be a better person.”

  Oriax laughed delightedly. “Oh, that’s so very Messenger.”

  She stepped to Oliver. Without looking at him, but keeping her eyes on Messenger, she stroked her hand down Oliver’s cheek. “Did the bad, bad Master of the Game scare you, little Oliver? Did the bad Messenger hurt you?”

  Oliver’s knees buckled and he knelt, gazing up at her, his face no longer ravaged by fear. His mouth was open and his eyes ecstatic.

  “Yes, I think he’ll come with me,” Oriax said, her voice dripping contempt. “I’ll find uses for him. Isn’t that right, Oliver? You want to come with me. You want to serve me. You want to swear eternal allegiance to Malech. Don’t you?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  She bent slightly at the waist and just brushed his forehead with her lips. I thought he might faint.

  “Now there is one last question to be decided. You. You mini . . . I mean, Mara.”

  I managed to shake my head but words did not come. They didn’t come because at that moment I wasn’t sure what I would say.

  “Haarm is mine now, but you could borrow him if you came with me now, Mara. He’s a handsome boy, isn’t he? And he will be more attractive still when he has met my lord and sworn allegiance. You don’t have to live a life of loneliness, Mara. You don’t have to pass your days in your sterile abode awaiting the appearance of the boy you can never have. You don’t have to serve out the rest of your sentence. You can escape your doom. You can come with us.”

  “With you?” I said.

  “In every way, Mara,” she said, and now she was so very near. I heard her voice as a whisper in my ear. I felt, or imagined I felt, her breath on my neck.

  Haarm was escaping his fate. Haarm’s body would not be slowly, inexorably covered with the tattoos that would forever remind him of a hundred terrible encounters with evil. Haarm wouldn’t live years of pain and loneliness and the sadness they brought.

  I imagined the months and maybe years ahead of me. I imagined the distance that must inevitably grow between me and Messenger as he pursued his own obsession for Ariadne.

  And, too, I took stock of my doubts. Was this worthwhile, what we did? Did it matter to me if some balance were maintained? It wasn’t up to me, it couldn’t be. There would be others to take my place.

  And what of the day when Messenger deemed me ready to become the Messenger of Fear? What would be left for me when he departed for good and I was fully, absolutely, alone?

  I knew I was being tempted. I knew Oriax was manipulating me. I even saw clearly that part of her motivation was mere spite toward Messenger. He had withstood her temptation and she hated him for it.

  Haarm was crude and unfeeling, but he was being offered to me and it wasn’t like I had better offers lining up. My future was bleak.

  But not as bleak as the future I had created for Samantha Early, or as lost as poor, brave Aimal’s future. And not as sad as what likely awaited Graciella.

  Oriax was evil. She had sung and celebrated as Derek Grady burned. She had reveled in his destruction. She had wanted Trent for purposes that I could not guess, but I knew that it was his hatred that attracted her attention.

  “Come, Mara,” Oriax purred. “Let us seal the deal with a kiss.”

  Did I want to know what her lips felt like? Did I crave the pleasure that I knew would suffuse me?

  Desperately.

  Desperately.

  And her mouth, her now-red and full lips were millimeters from mine.

  I closed my eyes and parted my lips.

  Yes, I was lonely, and yes in my isolation and sadness I longed for love.

  But not hers. The one I longed for was not to be touched.

  It was with more than a trace of bitterness that I said those despised words to Oriax: “I am not to be touched.”

  18

  ORIAX AND HAARM AND OLIVER WERE ALL gone. Messenger and I remained, with Nicolet. We stood there in silence, the boy in black, and the girl who loved him.

  Instantly I tried to push that thought back into some dark corner of my mind lest Messenger sense it. My cheeks burned and I could not look at him. It wasn’t true, I told myself, it was absurd. I barely knew him. I didn’t even know his real name. I was just stressed, traumatized, lonely, and afraid, so of course I would be attracted to him.

  And yet I knew that in his heart he was compassionate. I knew that he was loyal. I knew that he was strong; no one could long survive as a Messenger of Fear without some source of inner strength. Did it matter that I didn’t know his favorite color, or what music he liked, or any of the superficial things I’d known about other boys?

  Didn’t I know what really mattered?

  Yes, but I knew as well that he loved another. Ariadne, whose name was becoming almost a curse to me. Her memory cast its shadow over me, and it would never go away so long as he held on to hope.

  The Shoals, I thought. The Shoals. The truth might lie there.

  I could go there. I could know.

  I covered for my blushing and agitated looking away by saying, “Messenger, shall I?”

  Had he in fact read my mind and known my deepest thoughts he might well have misinterpreted that. But he was blind, or perhaps deliberately blind, to my internal turmoil.

  “Do,” he said.

  So, I did. I wanted the words to sound suitably solemn, but I cannot deny that there was a quaver in my voice as I intoned, “I summon the Hooded Wraiths to carry out the sentence.”

  And that’s when the last of Nicolet’s arrogance abruptly disappeared. She was allowed to speak again, maybe only so that she could scream.

  “What the hell?” Nicolet asked, and asked again and again, each repetition louder and higher and faster until the sound of her fear was an almost continuous scream.

  Almost a scream. The actual scream came when the Hooded Wraiths stepped from the mist.

  They are tall, the wraiths, perhaps a foot taller than the tallest men. They were clothed in black hoods that fell from a point to cover them entirely and sweep the floor. They were a parody of ancient monks, a mockery of druidic fantasies. I saw no face, not even an opening where a face might be, in the darkness of their hoods.

  But understand that it is not th
e size or the robe or the suggestion of physical horrors beneath that robe that is the greatest cause of the fear that flows from them. No, there is something deeper, something visceral, a feeling, a tingling of nerves, a tightening of sphincters, a heaviness in heart and soul that comes not from what is seen or even imagined, but some vastly deeper well of primitive dread.

  They carry fear with them like some swift contagion, and it twists your thoughts and crushes your defenses.

  They were not here for me, though once they had been. I had nothing to fear from them now, but fear them I did.

  The Shoals were their abode. If I meant to visit that dreadful place I would have to conquer that fear.

  The wraiths closed on a cursing, screaming Nicolet.

  The plane had no identifying logos. There were no flight attendants. I saw no other passenger than Nicolet, belted into seat 12A, a window seat.

  I saw bright blue sky through the oval window, and clouds beneath us. The hum of engines was familiar. The fasten seat belts sign was on. And no smoking was allowed.

  “Okay, okay, no,” Nicolet babbled. “No no nononono!”

  The engines began to whine more insistently, as if they were straining. A sudden sharp bump, and Nicolet was thrown upward against her seat belt, though Messenger and I were not affected.

  “You gotta . . . Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’ll give her credit! I swear to God!”

  Sweat poured into her eyes. Every muscle and fiber in her body strained. Blood oozed from her palms as her long nails cut into the flesh.

  “Let me out! Let me out!”

  The next bump of turbulence was stronger. A voice, professionally controlled but clearly worried, came over the public address system and warned that we were encountering severe turbulence.

  “Severe” barely covered the reality I witnessed. The plane was lurching around the sky as if it was a ball being kicked around a playground by a giant child.

  Everything shook. Nicolet’s body was a blur dominated by a wide, shrieking mouth. The turbulence was so violent that sewage came seeping out beneath the bathroom doors. Some terrible god was raining hammer blows on the fuselage.