I had never known it so urgent. There was no waiting for murky darkness to clear; no patient following of the brilliant green and gold lines that seemed to lead the eye into its mysterious heart. The vision was right there and it felt as if the stone was hammering it into my head.
It showed me Gerda and Osmund. It showed me Morgan and Cat. Then, in clear detail, it showed me myself and Gurdyman.
Its message was devastatingly clear, but still it forged on. I saw the four victims throatless, bleeding, lifeless. Then, in an image of total horror, Gurdyman and I lay on the stone floor of the crypt, and we, too, had no throats.
Nausea rose up and overwhelmed me and I vomited and retched until I could bring up no more. Then, more frightened than I’d ever been in my life, I fled.
TWENTY
Hrype sat cross-legged before the small fire he had lit. He had been walking for the greater part of the last two days and nights, if the furious, driven striding on his long legs through wood and field and around marsh and fen could be called walking. He knew, if he was honest with himself, that he was fleeing from the truth, for it was extremely unwelcome and uncomfortably painful.
Earlier, he had woken from a brief and restless sleep. He had sought shelter in a hay barn, tunnelling into the fragrant hay like the rats and mice who kept him company to lie in the grip of dreams of violence and horrible images. Waking, he had believed he detected the ring of truth in the nightmarish dreams, and, steeling himself, he had found an isolated place and lit his small fire. He had taken his rune stones out of the bag and spread out the cloth on which he always cast them. He was finding it difficult to put himself into the right state for reading their message. Closing his eyes, he forced his mind to detach. To elevate into that strange realm where the spirits waited, and from which, if you were lucky, they might deign to communicate.
He cast the runes and looked down.
The first thing he saw made him smile grimly. The powers that ruled his life, it seemed, were intent on showing him aspects of himself he preferred normally to ignore. First there had been Gurdyman, earnest, deeply concerned, brave in his determination to stand firm in the face of Hrype’s increasing anger and make him hear the truth. Now the runes were following where the old man had led, for what Hrype read was the combination of symbols that he suspected meant Jack Chevestrier, and beside them the ones that implied a tearing away of smoke screens; a confrontation with the true nature of something, or someone.
Slowly Hrype nodded, as if indicating that he accepted the message.
I have always found it hard to trust Jack Chevestrier, he admitted to himself, because, certain as I have been from the start that Gaspard Picot is involved, in the thefts and perhaps the killings too, I convinced myself that Chevestrier too is crooked and corrupt. Both men work for the sheriff – Gaspard Picot is the wretched man’s own kin – and I allowed that to persuade me.
But now he accepted that he had been wrong. The stones told him so. Moreover, seeing the truth displayed so clearly before him, he realized that he had allowed his antipathy towards Jack Chevestrier to cloud his vision.
Hrype dropped his head in his hands. He was ashamed. He was a seeker after the truth. He prided himself on his clarity of vision; his ability to rise above the petty sentiments and emotions of ordinary human beings and courageously stare the truth in the face. In the space of two days, he had been shown to himself for what he was, and the pain was intense.
He removed his hands and looked down at the runes again, for he had got no further than the first message before being overcome.
He stared. Rubbed his tired eyes, stared again.
What he thought he read couldn’t be true; surely not!
He did something he very rarely did, for the powers that drove the rune messages didn’t like having their word doubted. He gathered them up, held them tightly in his hands, prayed to his gods for help and guidance, shook the stones hard and once more cast them on to the sacred cloth.
The message was there; and this time it was expressed even more forcibly.
For a few moments, Hrype couldn’t move. He muttered, ‘I have been blind. Blind!’
Then, in terrible haste, he gathered up the stones, hurriedly performed his ritual thanks and made his reverence, then stowed them away in their bag. He stood for a moment undecided. Where should he go? He could help – he knew that, for the runes had told him so – but where was he most needed?
The answer sounded in his head, clear as a bell on a still day.
He ran.
I was running as fast as I could, but the effort was enormous; as if I was straining against a rope holding me back. I was heading not for the tavern and Jack, where I longed to be, but in the opposite direction.
Everything in me wanted to go back to him. He was my patient, he was very badly hurt, I ought to be beside him. I didn’t admit that I also loved him; I didn’t know quite what I felt, only that running away from him was hurting like a stab in the heart.
He has Father Gregory with him, I told myself. I have not left him untended. But-
I didn’t let the protest form.
I ran on. I was over the Great Bridge now, diving into the network of alleys behind the market square. I had come this way often with Jack over the past few days and didn’t have to think about my route, which was hard because it freed my mind to think about him instead.
Stop.
I reached the narrow passage I knew so well. I stopped to listen, but there was no sound of footfalls. If anybody had been pursuing me, I had lost them. I walked on.
And, too soon, I was at the front door of Gurdyman’s twisty-turny house.
The door opened as I pushed it. I went inside.
So terrified had I been that I would be met with the real-life version of what I saw in the shining stone that it was quite hard to accept that he wasn’t lying there before me with no throat.
I stepped carefully along the passage. ‘Gurdyman?’ I called softly.
He was standing in the little inner court. The sun shone on his dome of a head, and his bright blue eyes softened as he saw me.
‘Lassair,’ he breathed. Then, anxiously, ‘You are unhurt?’
‘Yes! And you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He was staring at me, puzzled. ‘There was something…’ He broke off. ‘I have been staying with a very old friend,’ he said, and I was quite sure it was a last-minute substitute for what he had been about to say. ‘He lives in a little house on a patch of higher ground out in the marsh, almost an island. It is reached by a stretch of narrow causeway that is so well concealed that it is all but impossible to find. This secret dwelling is on the fen edge, to the south of the great bulge that you walk around to get from your village to the town. It is a small and perfect house, right out in the wilds, and you cannot find it unless someone tells you where it is. My friend built it himself, many years ago when the need for solitude overtook him and he began to walk away from the world, increasingly deeper into his studies. It has a magical sort of name, but that must remain hidden.’
I tried to take in what he was telling me; why was he telling me? ‘Is that where you’ve been?’
‘Yes. Hrype said I should go, for this town was not safe for one such as I.’
‘Because the Night Wanderer was killing other magicians’ – in my mind’s eye I saw Osmund, and then Morgan and poor, pathetic Cat – ‘and Hrype thought you’d be next.’
‘Precisely that,’ Gurdyman agreed.
But something was wrong with that. ‘You disappeared the night Jack and I saw Osmund being slain,’ I said slowly. ‘He was the only wi-’ I had been about to say wizard, but I stopped; I’ve always thought Gurdyman disliked the word. ‘He was the only one like you who had died, then, for Robert Powl, Gerda and Mistress Judith did not spend their private hours in magic workrooms.’ Gurdyman didn’t answer; he just went on looking at me. ‘You knew more would die,’ I whispered. ‘Didn’t you?’