“It’s the curse,” the woman said, lifting a tear-stained face. “It’s the curse, right enough. Damn her! Damn her!” and she began to cry. Her brother gathered her to his shoulder, trying to comfort her, and by the look of it, having no success.
“Curse?” Andrew asked, bewildered by the intruders, their sudden spate of words that made no sense—the only sense he had was that these people were the ones he had sought for, Marina’s guardians. “What curse?” There was only one thing he needed, needed as breath, to know. “What’s happened to Marina? I’ve tried everything—”
“Stronger Masters than you have tried everything, and the best they could do was to warp that black magic so that it sent her to sleep instead of killing her,” Sebastian Tarrant said gruffly, and patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. He glanced at the bed, and groaned. “And there’s nothing we can do in the next hour that’s going to make any difference, either.”
Andrew shook his head, and blinked eyes that burned as he squinted at the stranger’s face, trying to winkle out the sense of what he was hearing. A curse… a curse on Marina. But—who—how—why? The man’s eyes shone brightly, as if with tears that he refused to shed. “You look done in, man,” Tarrant continued. “Come show me the kitchen and let’s get some strong tea and food into you. I’ll explain while you eat; you aren’t going to do her any good by falling over.”
Sebastian Tarrant’s will was too strong to be denied; Andrew found himself being carried off to Briareley’s kitchen, where he was fussed over by cook and seated at the trestle table where a half dozen loaves of bread were rising, a mug of hot black tea and a breakfast big enough for three set in front of him. He ate it, untasted, as Sebastian Tarrant narrated a story that—if he had not seen Marina—would have sounded like the veriest fairy tale. A tale of a curse on a baby, an exile to keep her safe, and all the plans undone. A tale of blackest magic, sent from a bitter woman who should have had none—
“And now I’m sorry we didn’t follow her here, and damned to Madam,” Tarrant said, the guilt in his face so overwhelming that Andrew didn’t have the heart to take him to task over it. “But we were afraid that if we showed our faces in the village, Arachne would take her somewhere we couldn’t follow, or worse. At least while she was here, we figured that Arachne hadn’t worked out a way to make her curse active again, and we knew she wouldn’t dare try anything—well—obvious and physical in front of people who’d known and served Hugh and Alanna. And the child didn’t write, so we had to assume that Arachne was keeping too close a watch on her for us to try and contact her that way.” Tarrant rubbed at his own eyes, savagely. “Dear God, how could we have been such cowards, such fools?”
“But—what is this curse?” he asked finally. “How on earth can something like that do what it did?”
“You tell me how someone without the least little bit of magic of her own could create such a thing,” Tarrant countered, wearily, running his hands through his hair and flaking off a few bits of white and yellow paint. “Not a sign, not one sign of the Mastery of any of the Elements on Arachne or her son—so where is the magic coming from? And how are they able to channel it, if they aren’t Masters and aren’t sensitive to it? But it’s there, all right, if you know what to look for, or at least I saw it—the curse-magic is on Marina, like a shield, only lying right under her skin, a poisonous inner skin—a blackish-green fire, and pure evil—”
Pure evil The words hit him between the eyes and he gaped at the stranger. “Pure evil? Pure evil?” he repeated, as all of the pieces fell together.
Ellen—Madam and her son—the curse—the pottery in Exeter—curses, and black magic, in the traditional and legended sense of the words.
And the stories, the accounts in those old traditions of the Scottish Masters—the tales of Satanists.
And yesterday, Marina had gone to the pottery in Exeter, looking for whatever had attached itself, lampreylike, to Ellen with the purpose of draining her. What if she’d discovered black magic there, the Left-Hand Path, which needed no inborn abilities to walk? What if Madam realized that Marina was about to unmask that evil?
And if Madam and her son were Satanists, if they had set up the pottery as a place where they could batten on the energies of the marginally gifted as they were poisoned, physically and spiritually—that could be the source of the power behind the curse. That would be why no one had seen any signs of Power on or around them. They didn’t have any power until they stole it, and once stolen, they had to discharge it immediately, store it elsewhere, or lose it.
And that would be why Andrew could not unravel the dreadful net that ensnared Marina. It was like no magic he or any Master he knew had ever seen before. Certainly nothing that any Master still alive had seen before. Ah—still alive—
As it happened sometimes when he was exhausted, the answer came in a flash of clarity. Still alive; that was the key to this lock, the sword to sever this Gordian Knot. Because there were Masters of the past who had certainly seen, yes, and even worked to combat such evil.
And to a Master of Earth, the past was an open book.
“My God,” he breathed—a prayer, if ever there was one. “Tarrant, I think I have an idea—”
“Well, I’ve got one, at least,” Sebastian interrupted him. “Thomas and Margherita are Earth Masters themselves—not strong ones by any means, but one thing they can do is, keep Marina going. We’re fresh; you’re not. Do you want to get to work on this idea of yours now, or get a spot of rest first?”
He wanted to work on it now, but what he was going to try would need every bit of concentration he had. “I need to go look through my magic books,” he decided aloud. “There’s one in particular I need to find, what used to be called a grammar in Scotland and Northumberland and—” he shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll find it, make sure it’s the one I need, then I’ll drug myself. I’ll need my wits, and you’re right, if I don’t get a couple of hours of rest, I won’t have them about me.”
“Good man.” Tarrant nodded approval. “We’ll make sure Marina’s all right, you can leave that to us. What about the rest of your patients?”
“Eleanor can see to them—did you say your wife is an Earth Master? Would she be willing to help?” he asked, desperate for anything that might take the burden off his shoulders during this crisis.
“When Lady Elizabeth gets here, I’ll tell my wife to have your nurse Eleanor show her what to do, and I’ll send someone down to the village to telegraph for some more help,” Tarrant promised. “There’s not a lot of us out here in the country, nor powerful, but we’re Devonians, even those of us who weren’t born here. When need calls, we answer.”
“But—the telegraph—?” he replied, puzzled.
Tarrant fixed him with a minatory glance. “Why use power we should save for helping her to do what a telegraph can do, and just as quickly?”
Andrew winced; it was one of his own Master’s constant admonitions. Why use magic to do what anyone can do? Save it for those things that hands cannot accomplish, ye gurtfool.
He closed his eyes as a moment of dizzy exhaustion overcame him, then opened them. “Me for my old books, then—” he shoved away from the table.
“If you’ve got any clues, Doctor, you’re miles ahead of the rest of us,” Tarrant said, his jaw set. “And if you’ve the will and the strength and the knowledge—then you let the rest of us take your burdens off you so you can do what needs to be done. We’ll be the squires to your knight if that suits you.”