Bernarr thought about that. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I wasn’t interested at the time. And you’ve never mentioned it before.’ He frowned. ‘I will ask the midwife. She still lives in a nearby village. She will know what was done with the creature.’
‘Excellent, my lord,’ Lyman said, smiling. ‘And do keep the plan and think about my other suggestion. I fear that without your son it may be the only way to bring your lady back.’
Baroness Elaine woke with the feeling that someone had been calling her name. But now there was no sound and the call, if there had been one, was not repeated. Her thoughts were slow: even the breaths that she took seemed unnaturally spaced and Elaine wondered if she were dreaming.
She felt weak: that was the first physical sensation she was aware of, then the pain. It tore into her like a furious cat, digging into her vitals with sharp claws and teeth that ripped and chewed. Elaine wanted to writhe, wanted to scream in agony, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even open her eyes, or so much as twitch. Trapped in the darkness behind her eyes, she screamed in her mind, begging for something to ease the pain, for someone to come and help.
This wasn’t like the terrible birth-pangs, which came in waves of agony cresting higher and higher; they were over. Elaine was sure of that: she had heard the crying of her child. I saw his face, she thought. The memory brought comfort, or at least took her mind from the pain. But not for long—the pain wouldn’t be denied and she wanted to weep, but she couldn’t.
She could feel her life flowing away slowly but irresistibly. It terrified her. She struggled to hold on: she wanted to live! She wanted to see her son grow to manhood. She wanted Zakry!
Elaine imagined him holding her hand and telling her to be strong. His touch seemed so real that in spite of everything she was briefly happy. Then the pain bit deeper and in her mind she screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Soon she was begging for death.
But death never came. After a while Elaine lapsed into darkness until at last both she and the pain were gone.
THIRTEEN - Hiding
The magician looked up.
‘It’s not a complicated spell,’ Lyman Malachy said, when the preparations were complete. ‘But it’s tricky. The degrees of similarity must be delicately balanced.’
He looked aside at his . . . employer? Host? Friend? Benefactor? Someone who’d given him shelter for seventeen years, and let him carry on researches which would be . . . frowned upon . . . in most places, at least. No, he amended, it would get him hanged or burned alive in most places.
They were alone together in the room, with only the candle’s flame for company; certainly, the remaining castle staff were used to that. They were probably the best-paid domestics outside the great cities and the households of the greatest lords; and they weren’t much as far as quality went. But, like the household guards, they were paid as much to ignore what they heard and saw as they were to render service.
The magician’s mouth quirked slightly as he drew his robe more tightly about him—the spring rains were heavy tonight, a thrush-thrush-thrush sound on the shutters and the streaked diamond-pane glass of the windows; he would have liked a cheery fire himself, but Bernarr cared nothing for the damp chill of this stone pile.
Gold can do many things, he thought. Even overcome superstitious fear among servants and soldiers. But it cannot make a fortress a comfortable place to live.
Bernarr waved a hand that trembled ever so slightly. ‘Yes, yes. The brat must bear a similarity to both me and my lady Elaine, and your spell will find it,’ he said. ‘Damn the midwife! I gave orders that the brat be disposed of!’
Lyman nodded downward at the three shallow gold disks with their thin crystal covers, each about the size of the circle made by a man’s thumb and forefinger. Silver and turquoise, platinum and jet made complex inlays on the inner surface of the gold. Above that was a thin film of water, and on that floated a needle. Each of the three needles was wound about with a hair—for the needle of the central disk two hairs were twined around it, crossing each other; the crystal covers kept the whole undisturbed.
‘However, it maybe fortunate that she disobeyed,’ Lyman said. ‘A pity that we could not get more details from her, but this will do as well—better, for the knowledge it brings will not be seventeen years stale.’
Lyman rose and shook back his sleeves. His eyes closed, his lips moved, and his hands traced intricate, precise patterns over the central casing.