Jimmy the Hand: Legends of the Riftwar, Book 3

  I’m really not happy, he thought. I’d almost rather he was one of Jocko’s spies. On the other hand, he’s likely to be much more useful than one of the secret police, and if I’m to undertake hero-of-legend deeds against an evil enchanter, no less, I could do with some help.

  He didn’t want to go back to Lorrie and tell her he couldn’t find Rip: after all, he’d promised. On the other hand, he didn’t want to be chained to a red-hot metal plate in a dungeon for the next thousand years, either; or have his death-essence used to power a spell. Risk was one thing, doom another.

  Besides, I suspect that ducking out on friend Coe would be unlucky. I do not want the hatred of a goddess dogging my steps. Her favour, on the other hand, and the favour of her priestesses…

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘What does this necromancer want with our blond-haired friend?’

  ‘In just four days the three moons will be dark,’ Jarvis said, his fingers toying idly with a crust of barley-bread. ‘And certain stars will be in conjunction. At that time…well, let’s say that the wayfarer they picked up and brought back to the manor would be useful for certain dark arts. Useful in a terminal sense. As would young Rip, your friend’s brother.’

  Jimmy winced. He was used to beatings, stabbings and affrays: he’d taken part in them himself. But human sacrifice was another matter altogether. ‘This is getting beyond belief,’ he said. ‘Children, then wayfarers–’

  ‘One specific wayfarer,’ Jarvis said carefully as if reflecting on that fact.

  The old woman made a noise and her husband tried to shush her, but she pushed him aside. ‘Four days, you say, priestess’s servant?’

  Jarvis bowed. ‘Goodwife.’

  ‘That would be seventeen years to the day from the time Mistress Elaine died in childbed,’ she said. ‘Seventeen years to the very hour, at midnight.’

  Jarvis’s face changed. A shadow of fear–and maybe disgust–passed over it. Uh-oh, Jimmy thought. This is bad news.

  ‘Did you…were you sure she died?’ Jarvis held up his hand. ‘Did you see the body laid out?’

  The midwife shook her head. ‘He thrust us all out of the room, and later word was sent that things had been done,’ she said softly. ‘Thrust us all out, but kept with him a chance-met guest he’d been hosting that night, a scholar.’

  ‘Ah. I doubt that it was entirely chance, not on that night–certain happenings cast their own shadows, forward and backward in time.’ Jarvis looked down at the talisman. ‘Have you anything of the lady’s?’ he said. ‘Anything that touched her body?’

  The old woman rose and went over to her pole-frame bed and dragged out a cedarwood chest that looked incongruously fine in the wattle cottage. Prodding around inside it, she brought out a small bundle wrapped in silk stained with old, dried blood. ‘She were fond of me, and a kind lady,’ the midwife said. ‘She knew she could trust old Meg; many a secret a midwife hears. This she gave me, for safekeeping. It would have been as much as her life were worth, did the Baron find it.’

  Jimmy came close as Jarvis took the bundle from the old woman and swept the rough wooden surface of the table clean of crusts and crockery before he laid it down and began to unfold it.

  ‘Should the talisman be doing that?’ Jimmy asked.

  The needle beneath the crystal lid was jerking; first it pointed southwest, toward Baron Bernarr’s manor; then it swung towards the bundle.

  ‘No, it should not,’ Jarvis said. Inside the silken handkerchief was a true locket, a delicate shell of electrum. ‘Even if this is the lady’s blood from the birthing–’

  ‘It is,’ the old woman said.

  ‘–or hair, or nail clippings,’ he went on. ‘The spell is linked to the similarity of essences. It should be pointing toward the son.’ Jarvis opened the locket, his fingers probing delicately for the catch. Within one half was a miniature portrait, a tiny thing no bigger than Jimmy’s thumb. The other held a love-knot, a twining of hair braided together, one strand blond, the other brown. ‘Could you bring me some light, Jimmy?’ he asked.

  Jimmy went to the hearth. A tube of birch-bark stood on the bare earth beside it, containing long splints of lightwood from resinous pine, ready to kindle. He took one and held it to the low flames of the fire. It hissed and spat as it caught, giving off a resinous, medicinal scent. Jimmy brought it back to the table, holding it higher and to one side so that no driblets of hot sap would fall on the table, careful that none struck him, either.

  The light was wavering and none too bright compared to a candle, but the old couple had none of those, or even tallow dips, but it was still bright enough for him to see the handsome blond young man in the portrait.

  ‘Ruthia!’ Jimmy blurted. ‘That’s the one they took!’

  ‘No,’ the old woman said. ‘That’s young lord Kethry, by the name of Zakry, who were Lady Elaine’s friend from Krondor. From before she met the Baron. Him who disappeared.’

  ‘Oh-ho,’ Jimmy said. ‘Well, from his looks–’

  ‘And from the behaviour of this needle–’

  ‘I’d say that while the Lady Elaine may have had a son seventeen years ago, the Baron surely didn’t,’ Jimmy said.

  Jarvis gave a lopsided grin. ‘You can see further than most, Jimmy,’ he said.

  The cottager sighed. ‘You’ll have to tell them now,’ he said wearily. ‘No helping it.’

  Meg the midwife nodded. ‘The Baron would have none of his son…well, of the baby. For a moment he was overjoyed to have an heir, but when he saw his wife at the edge of death, he became a man possessed. He blamed the baby and told me to get rid of it, so that he would never see it again. Set it out for the wolves, he meant, but I couldn’t. So I took it to a farmer I knew–name of Ossrey–near Relling, whose wife had lost her babe but still had milk. They were glad to take it in and raise it as their own.’

  ‘Relling’s not far south of here, and somewhat east. Still on the Baron’s land, of course,’ her husband added. ‘He promised never to speak of it, and to give him credit, I’ve never heard the rumour come back. Like as not they’ve forgotten the babe wasn’t theirs; all they knew was the mother died birthing it, and likely they thought it some serving-girl’s by-blow.’

  ‘This makes a good deal of unpleasant sense,’ Jarvis Coe said. ‘The Baron obviously loved his wife very much.’

  ‘To madness,’ Meg said, sitting down on her bed and sighing as she looked at the cedarwood box. ‘And I never thought she wasn’t fond of him–even when she took sick after Kethry disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘In a hunt. Rode off to Krondor, the Baron said, leaving his servants and traps to be sent on, but nobody saw hide nor hair of him again. Young Lord Kethry never reached Rillanon.’

  Jimmy snorted. I know that sort of sudden leave-taking, he thought. Bet if you asked, nobody saw him arrive anywhere else, either. The sea hides a good many sins.

  ‘Well…’ Jarvis said, looking at the three of them and obviously thinking how much to tell. Jimmy raised an ironic eyebrow: it was a bit late to be cautious about things.

  Unless he plans to leave no witnesses, and I doubt he’s quite that ruthless.

  Jarvis confirmed his guess by going on: ‘If a magician of the…right sort…were at hand, as the lady lay dying, he could…not keep her alive, exactly. Suspend her, between life and death, so that someone could attempt to heal her entirely later.’ He reached for a wooden mug of the old couple’s ale. ‘Let me wash out my mouth! She’d be suspended between life and death…for…by the Goddess! Seventeen years, dying every second!’

  Jimmy felt the coarse bread and eternal bean soup turn into a heavy lump under his breastbone. ‘Lims-Kragma rest her!’ Another thought struck him. ‘And why do they want her son?’

  Remind me never to get involved with wizards again, he thought. Looking back on it, he felt a touch of fear at how lightly he’d dealt with old Alban Asher, even.

  ‘Well, the force of life is released at death. T
hey could try to revive her with anyone’s, but the more like to like, the easier. Children, because her life was lost birthing a child. The child himself, best of all–it’s the natural order that the lives of parents run on in their children, but it can be forced into reverse.’

  The old man spat into the fire, which hissed.

  Jarvis looked up. ‘We have four days,’ he said. ‘And so does young–’ He looked down at the locket.

  ‘Bram,’ Meg said.

  ‘–Bram,’ Jarvis echoed.

  Jimmy sighed. ‘I suppose, if he loved her that much…it’s evil and mad, but there’s a sort of grandeur to it.’

  ‘Less than he thinks,’ Jarvis said. ‘You can get someone back, in a way, but they’re often…changed. Unsealing the boundaries of life and death lets…other things…in.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Things that once in our world are most difficult to cast out.’ Coe let out a long sigh, as he contemplated what that meant.

  Jimmy felt the hair on the back of his neck and arms rise up, and wished more than ever he had just lain low in Krondor and not tried to be so heroic.

  SIXTEEN

  Developments

  Rip tried to peer through the hole.

  ‘Chain him well,’ the old man’s voice said. ‘And keep that bag on his head, I told you!’

  Rip slid back down with a muffled gasp. The problem with the peepholes in the secret passages was that they were made for grown-ups.

  Another voice sounded–the weasel voice.

  ‘As you wish, my lord. Ah, my lord–’

  ‘You’ll get the rest of your money, oaf. I don’t keep that much cash here: my man of business in Land’s End will bring it up next week. I have need of you anyway, until then. Be silent, and go.’

  Chains clanked. ‘Your son is waking, my lord,’ said the oily man’s voice. ‘Perhaps we should leave. I have examined him, and apart from a few scrapes and bruises, he is healthy enough. More than healthy enough to last three days.’

  ‘Do not call him my son, ever again,’ the old man’s voice said, softly menacing. ‘He murdered my lady Elaine.’

  Steps faded away, and the lantern-light through the peephole went out as the outer door of the room thudded shut; they could hear the key turn in the lock.

  ‘They caught someone else?’ Mandy said. ‘And chained him up?’

  Rip nodded, and made an affirmative sound in his throat.

  ‘That’s cruel,’ Neesa said. ‘I mean, even more cruel.’

  ‘But the old man said he was his son,’ Rip said, frowning.

  ‘You mean he chained up his own son?’ Kay asked, sounding horrified and delighted at once. ‘Like the Wicked King and the Good Prince?’

  ‘Let’s go and look,’ Rip said.

  He felt for the catches of the secret door, and they stepped into the room. It was bare and empty, with a stone floor and stone walls, and was lit dimly by one barred window high up on the far side. It was not large, as rooms went in the big manor. Rip thought it might have been used to store things once: it was on the ground level near the kitchens, which made it chilly and damp.

  ‘That’s a grown-up!’ Neesa said, her whisper carrying too clearly.

  The figure chained to the opposite wall raised his head. He was a tall young man with a burlap sack over his head; for the rest he wore only breeches and shirt. There were manacles on his wrists, running down to an iron ring that also held the ones that joined his ankles: if he’d been standing he’d have had to stoop, and take small steps. Another chain ran from one ankle to an iron bolt driven deep into the stone of one wall. There was a basin of water and a slop bucket within reach, but otherwise he couldn’t go beyond a semicircle six feet in circumference.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked groggily.

  Hope blazed up in Rip, and he felt giddy with excitement. He dashed across the stone, making shushing sounds, and fumbled at the drawstring that held the bag over the young man’s head. Hands closed on him, strong but not hurtful.

  ‘Bram!’ Rip squealed, remembering to be quiet at the last minute.

  ‘Rip! Rip, lad!’ Bram said, and hugged him.

  Rip hugged him back; it felt so good to see a familiar face.

  ‘I came to rescue you!’ Bram said, laughing, as he held the boy at arms’ length.

  ‘And now I can rescue you!’ Rip said, delighted. ‘I’ve got keys.’

  Bram laughed ruefully and held up his manacled wrists, turning them so that Rip could see them in the dim, fading light. There were no keyholes, just an overlapping joint with a thin rod of soft wrought iron pushed through it and peened over with a hammer.

  ‘Did that on an anvil, and the feet are the same,’ Bram said ruefully. ‘I remember that much, and the two who caught me–folk’d pay to see that fight, and laugh themselves silly, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘A big strong one and a skinny one who talks like a weasel?’ Rip said.

  ‘The same,’ Bram replied. ‘And so unless you’ve a cold chisel and a hammer, Rip lad, you’re not setting me free.’

  He looked beyond the boy at the children, who stood looking back big-eyed; Neesa hugged her doll to her side, and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Bram’s expression softened.

  ‘Well, but you’re not kept close here, then?’ he said.

  ‘We were,’ Rip said. ‘We got out.’

  ‘It was Rip’s idea,’ Mandy said. ‘We tripped the man who came with our food.’

  ‘And tied him up!’ Kay said, grinning.

  ‘And then we pulled a sheet over him and tied that up,’ Mandy put in, shyly touching her white-blonde hair.

  ‘And I hit him with a candlestick,’ Neesa put in with a grin.

  ‘Well done, the lot of you,’ Bram said. ‘Though I should have known Rip was up to it, after he put that itchweed powder in my breeches while I was swimming, last year.’

  Rip blushed and others looked at him with awed respect.

  ‘Did Ma and Pa send you?’ he asked eagerly.

  Bram’s face changed. ‘Lad–’ he said. ‘I have grave news, and no time being gentle in telling you.’ He explained about Rip’s parents, glossing over the details of their death, then rapidly assured him Lorrie was safe in Land’s End.

  Rip collapsed against him; the tears didn’t last long, though. He’d done his fair share of crying since being taken, in the dark where nobody could see. After a moment he felt the children crowding around, and Bram’s other arm went around them too, as far as he could reach.

  ‘I want you to kill them!’ Rip said after a moment, wiping at his face with his palms. ‘They’re…they’re evil!’

  ‘That they are,’ Bram said. He clanked his chains a little, ruefully. ‘But I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’ His smile turned to a frown. ‘I still don’t know why they’ve taken you, or me,’ he went on. ‘Even a baron can’t do this sort of thing for long. Stealing children–there’ll be rebellion if it gets out. Parents won’t wait for the Prince’s Magistrate to come down from Krondor. Those who’ve already lost children will be the first to riot.’

  ‘They had kids before us,’ Mandy said in a small voice. ‘After a while they’d come and take them away and they didn’t come back.’

  Rip swallowed. ‘I think…I think one of them is a magician,’ he said.

  Bram frowned. ‘And the old man–’

  ‘The Baron? I don’t know. Everyone does what he says, though.’

  ‘The Baron,’ Bram confirmed. ‘Baron Bernarr of Land’s End.’

  ‘And…Bram, there are…things here.’ Rip looked around at the shadows; he could feel them. ‘Wrong things.’

  Bram nodded, and his voice went hard and grim. ‘So now we know what he’s been doing with the silver we sweated to give him all these years, bought with the good bread we didn’t eat and the cloth we didn’t wear come winter; not paying men-at-arms to keep us safe, or to hold court and give justice, or patch the roads. Yes, I felt it too. Even the cut-throats who brought me here did. There’s something bad here, something
rotten.’

  He looked up, almost bristling, bruised lips curling back from his teeth. A breeze they could all feel cuffed at their heads, stirred the dark air.

  ‘What was that? Who calls?’

  Impressions blurred and memories returned.

  The children!

  They were not where she had seen them last. She didn’t understand the cycles she endured, pain, blackness, being in her body, being out. Forces tugged at her and sometimes she ached just to remain in oblivion. There were times she raged in frustration at her inability to interact with those around her, and she often felt confused by the sudden jumps from night to day and back, and the rapidly changing light outside the windows, sometimes the cold and foggy skies of winter common to this coast, other times the brilliant golden sun of summer. It confounded her senses as much as anything else, not knowing how long she had lingered in this state since the baby was born. She floated away from her body, looking for the children.

  The girl, the one the others called Neesa, she was almost able to talk to Elaine, and Elaine hungered for some human contact. No matter how long it had been since the birth of her son, it felt as if she had not known the touch of a hand or the sound of a voice in a very long time. She sensed the children had moved to another room, and she hastened there. As she entered, she saw the black cloud, the spirit presence of some unnamed evil that had avoided her for so long. It hovered over the children.

  Elaine swept toward the black cloud furiously, snatching at one of its tendrils. It pulled back, retreating slightly, then it fled. Rather than waste her energy chasing it, Elaine hovered protectively over the children, pleased by their presence, delighted with the littlest one, the boy, and feeling a connection with the girl.

  Then she realized something had changed. There was a new presence! It was…

  Zakry! Elaine called.

  They had brought Zakry–chained him, beaten him. Her rage swirled about the man she loved, and they retreated before it, afraid, drawing back their looming presence like the fading of the stench of rotten meat.

  Her anger was palpable, enough to ruffle their hair and stir the burlap sack on the floor beside him. Beaten! Chained!