“You don’t have to try and go near her to catch her scent; she has come to me once, and many times to the Christ-man,” he said patiently. “Besides, to look for those who know her, you do not need the scent. You only need the name. Names are like scent to men.”
“Both is better,” said the first, “But we can do this, if we can find her scent. Did she do magic there, too?”
Fauns needed a great deal of simple explanation, sometimes. “Yes, she did—Water magic, for she is a Water Mage. Her scent will be there, where the Christ-man dwells, with their magic mingled with mine. And her name is Marina Roeswood.” He stepped away from his offerings, just in case any of the Cold Iron he was wearing in tiny bits all over his person troubled them. Fauns were fairly robust about that, but it didn’t hurt to be certain. “To the fruit of the vine, the harvest of the field, be welcome,” he added, the litany that allowed them to take what he had placed there.
A half-dozen of them swarmed his offerings like locusts, and a moment later, they were all gone but the one that had first addressed him. That one stood hipshot, still looking up at him.
“Marina Roeswood, blood of Earth, born of Water,” the faun said. Andrew nodded, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant. “Good. We will send askings, for as long as we remember.”
“Then remember this, too. I will continue to bring Vine and Harvest here every two days for the next six, so if you have anything to tell me, there will be more to share.” He smiled to see the faun’s eyes widen. “And since you have gotten accustomed to butter and cheese, there will be some of that, as well.”
“Butter is good,” the faun said meditatively. “And cheese. I think remembrance will run long, if you come every two days.”
Fortunately, there was a bit left in the original cask of vin ordinaire, and no one at the sanitarium drank wine.
Isn’t that a line out of Bram Stoker’s novel? “I never drink… wine.…”
Odd thought, that. But it was the truth at Briareley. The staff was Devon born and bred, except for Eleanor, and your true Devonian wouldn’t look at wine when there was cider about. Old fashioned fermented cider, that is, the stuff that had a kick like a mule, and was stronger than anyone outside the county usually suspected.
He didn’t drink wine, either, as a rule. A glass of whisky by preference, if he felt the taste for spirits coming on—that was where Scotland had rubbed off on him. Otherwise, tea was his drink. And he’d never seen Eleanor touch a drop of spirit even when offered it; tea for her as well. So the fauns could have the wine and welcome to it.
“Vine and harvest, bee-sup and butter and cheese, all to come if wearing word. We will remember, Earth Master,” the faun said, with a stamp of his hoof to seal the bargain.
Then Andrew was once again alone in the clearing, with only the knowing eyes of Pan upon him, the faint purple stain and the bit of bread still on the plinth. The fauns would not take that bit of an offering to their god; a bird or a mouse might steal it, but that was Pan’s will.
He saluted the god with no sense of irony, and turned to push his way back out of the grove and into the workaday world again.
Marina sat at a desk in one of the inner offices and trembled. She had never been so glad of anything in her life as she was glad of the fact that Reggie had left the tour of the pottery to one of his underlings—and that business conferences with his managers had kept him pent up in his office all afternoon. Because it took her all afternoon to recover from what she found in the painting-room.
It had been bad enough to discover that the pottery was a blight, a cancer, a malignant spring spewing poison into the land, the water, the very air. Everyone and everything around here was poisoned, more or less—the clay-lees choked the Exe where the runoff entered it, and no living thing could survive the murky water, not fish nor plant. Clay clogged the gills and smothered the fish, coated the leaves of water-plants and choked them. The clay choked the soil as well—and the lead from the glazes killed what the clay didn’t choke. Even the air, loaded with lead vapor and smoke from the kilns, was a hazard to everything that came in contact with it. But those were the least of the poisons here.
The rather dull young clerk who took her around didn’t even notice when the blood drained out of her face and she grew faint on the first probing touch of the paintresses and their special environs. The girls themselves were too busy to pay attention to her—she was only a female, after all. There weren’t any of their gentleman friends there at the time, but Marina had the idea that they’d been chivvied out long enough for her to take her look around, and would pop out of hiding as soon as she was gone. So there was no one to notice that she clutched at the doorpost and chattered ridiculous questions for a good fifteen minutes before she felt ready to move on.
Thank heavens that was the end of the tour, she thought, shuddering. The clerk had tucked her up in one of the managers’ offices with apologies that he couldn’t put her in Madam Chamberten’s office, because it was Madam Chamberten’s orders that it was locked up unless she was expected. She waved him away and asked for a pot of tea, then changed her mind and left it untouched when she realized how much lead must be in the water. She didn’t want to go into Madam Chamberten’s office. Not when—that sinkhole of evil lay so close to it.
So instead, she propped her forehead on her hand and pretended to read her poetry book, strengthening her shields from her inner reserves, and trying to make them as invisible as all her skill could. One touch, one single touch had told her all she needed to know.
Ellen was by no means the first, nor the only girl with untapped magic-potential that had been drained. Every girl in that painting-room was being drained, and more than being drained, was being corrupted. Oh, it was insidious enough; and really, Marina could not imagine how Ellen had escaped permanent harm. It began with being brought into the painting-room, with flattery as the poison worked its fatal changes and made the girls beautiful, with pretty dresses made available to them, and cosmetics in the form of the glaze-powders. Then the temptations began in the form of the men who visited, and their presents, invitations, the stories of good times and pleasure from girls who had been here a while. There were two of those girls whose sexuality was so robust and honest that they actually got no spiritual harm from yielding to that temptation. They enjoyed themselves to the hilt, taking what was offered and laughingly thrust away anything that was perverse, that was the wonder of it. But the rest were tempted to do things they felt in their hearts were wrong, saw themselves as fallen—because they saw themselves as fallen, they became fallen, grew hard, and then—
And then realized with horror that they were dancing with death, as the first signs of trouble came on them. Understood that they were doomed, and saw themselves as damned by their own actions, and despaired.
And that cesspit, that sinkhole hidden beneath the floor of the painting room, drank it all in and stored it up, aged and refined it, then distilled it in a dark flame of pure evil.
And then what?
She didn’t know. Something came and tapped off the unwholesome vintage, more poisonous than the lead dust that floated in the air of that place. It was power, that wine of iniquity; power stolen from the girls, from their magic, from their guilt, from their despair. Three separate vintages blended into a deadly draught that something or someone drank to the dregs.