Chapter Thirteen

 

Clarice found herself outside her own front door. Though the fog had not lifted, it had moved farther off, so that Hamdry Manor stood in a circle of clear air. She could see all of the round drive before the house and a good piece of the lawn beyond it. She was entirely alone, wearing her own clothes, which had miraculously dried. Even her shawl was back about her shoulders.

Taking a few steps away from the house, she leaned backward to look up at the roof. There were fantastic creatures sitting on the chimney pots, just as always. Unicorns, basilisks, chimeras, and more, decorated the edge according to the fancy of an ancestor. Once, one had led her to a treasure that had restored her family wealth when her mother’s lover had stolen everything. That had been the beginning of this odyssey into realms of legend.

She’d always loved the creatures on the roof and it warmed her now to see them still, though they were no more than copies. Or were they? Suddenly, she became convinced that those beasts were not carved of stone anymore, but were entirely real. Real, and watching her.

Opening the door, Clarice went inside quickly. Now that she knew the truth, she marveled at the perfection of detail. The Fay overlooked nothing.

Catching sight of herself in a mirror, she noticed that she was frowning. Perhaps this was her real home. Perhaps they’d sent her back to her own place, hoping that she’d believe them and not try to leave to find help. That would be like them, cunning to the end.

She crossed the entry hall, looking for some flaw to tell her the truth. Hurrying down the corridor, she entered the library. The warm smell of the leather bindings took her back to the days when her father was still alive. How often had they pored over some intriguing volume with the aid of his magnifying glass, for his eyes had been nearly as poor as hers when it came to reading.

Clarice pulled open the center drawer of his desk, which stuck just as always, and sought for the brass-handled glass. The drawer was nearly empty. A few loose and dusty pastilles, a crumpled page or two was all that met her questing fingers. The drawer stuck so tightly that she did not use it, though this was now her desk.

Just as she was trying to force the drawer closed, a glint as of glass caught her eye. Reaching in again, she found the lens, but not the handle. Yet she was prepared to swear that the lens had not been there in any condition one moment before.

Still fighting against the truth, Clarice told herself that she might have overlooked it. As for the metal handle and rim having gone missing, any one of the servants might have dropped the magnifier and rather than own up to the deed, had taken away the battered brass.

Even as she came up with this notion, she dismissed it. Her servants knew they’d not be turned off for such a trivial mishap. No, if the brass handle and rim were missing it had to be because the Fay could not summon up metal.

To test her theory, she rapped one of the bronze jars that stood on the mantelpiece. It gave out a dull thud. Using the lens, Clarice saw that the “bronze” was carefully painted wood. She heaved a great sigh. Morgain had been right. She would tell him so at once.

As she turned to go, a book fell off the shelf on the far side of the room. Clarice considered ignoring it. If she had to remain here at this imitation manor, she could only retain her sanity by disregarding anything that could not have happened in her own realm. That was when the book began to thump itself repeatedly and insistently on the floor.

Clarice left the library but she could still hear the thumping. Perhaps it would continue interminably. Tightening her lips, she returned and went over to where the book lay. It stopped making noise as she came in, opening of itself and riffling through its own pages.

“What next, I wonder? Will quills tickle me until I write letters, will my needle prick me until I ply it, will the pianoforte frolic about me like a foolish dog until I play? I have been dictated to by more than my share of people lately; must I now truckle to inanimate objects as well?”

The book lay open, supinely offering itself for reading. “I suppose you are not so inanimate as all that,” Clarice said, still aloud as she picked up the book. “Very well; let us see what you have to say.”

Using the lens, Clarice saw that this was the first volume of a history of England. The book felt comfortable in her hand, as though it settled down with a sense of pleasurable anticipation of use. “I don’t know what you want me to read,” Clarice said.

One page rippled. “Oh, thank you.”

She rattled off the words aloud, “ ‘In the dark years following the arrival of the Black Death in England, the customs and orders of a society predicated upon the manorial system were irretrievably damaged. Entire households were lost, from babe in arms to venerable grandfather. The histories of a household’s proper service vanished with the souls who accepted them as the standard for civilization. Even more damaging was the desertion and eventual destruction of many villages, where the death-toll was so complete that there were none left alive to bury the dead. A famous example is that of Priory St. Windle."

Clarice’s voice faded. Her eyes moving more quickly, she read how the village had been abandoned to its dead, leaving such desolation that even the sheep reverted to a wild state. When the monks who owned the village at last crept out from the security of their stone walls, they found dead bodies lying in the snow all the way from their gate to the village.

Painstakingly, the monks, guilt-ridden at having failed their community, buried each of the dead in individual graves, unlike the hurried mass graves of so many other places. Each name was recorded, all were accounted for with the exception of a small boy who, it was assumed, had been carried away by feral dogs. The monks of St. Windle said prayers every day for the souls of the plague-dead until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1536.

Clarice returned to the top of the page and read it again, carefully searching for the name of the boy. The historian who had summarized this sad tale did not mention it. Closing the book, she restored it to its place on the shelf. She did not really require confirmation; she knew the boy’s name already.

She could not imagine what it must have been like for Dominic, seeing each of the people he knew sicken and die in such a hideous way. Children lost their parents even today; she herself supported a local orphanage. Yet how much worse to have everyone around him die, his parents, his neighbors, his friends, young and old. Her heart ached for him, though his suffering had been long, long ago.

He had said that the Fay had taken him when he was six years old. From a distant memory of a never-well-liked governess’s teaching, Clarice recalled that the plague had struck England in the year 1350.

All at once, Clarice needed to sit down. She put her head down on her knees. Though King Morgain had told her Dominic’s age, and he’d mentioned it himself, it was not until she herself did the math that it came home to her. Dominic Knight, looking no more than thirty, he who had guarded her, kissed her, and made her furious, was four hundred and fifty-five years old.

When the dizziness passed, she wondered who it was that had wanted her to see that particular book. Glancing surreptitiously about her, Clarice asked herself if she was, even now, alone in the library. Was someone standing over her, watching her as she struggled to accept what she had learned? Why had someone wanted her to know so much about Dominic? Even more than this, Clarice wondered why Dominic had kissed her there in the make-believe meadow.

This time, when she left the library, no book pursued her. She was curious to know whether Morgain was having the same trouble with his books. Did books grow jealous when one was preferred over another? Would they jostle frenetically for position, each seeking to be read first? Clarice felt sure Morgain was capable of keeping them in order.

He was not in his room, nor in any of the corners that he’d taken to reading in of late. After she’d searched fruitlessly for some little time, she was disturbed by a gentle, attention-awakening cough in the dust-sheeted nursery.

Camber—or whoever—stood beside her. “May I be of assistance, your ladyship?”

“There’s no need to keep up this pretense,” she said coolly. “I know you are not my butler.”

“But I am.” He smiled when she would have protested. “For the time being, I am most certainly your butler. I find it quite amusing. How may I help you?”

It would be childish to continue to argue. Clarice said, “I am looking for my nephew.”

“Ah.” The Fay who wore Camber’s countenance looked about him. He bent his head slightly to look under a table and even strode to the double-doored wardrobe to examine the inside. One eyebrow rose. “He does not seem to be here.”

“I realized that myself. And I should mention that Morgain knows all about you as well as I.”

“Does he indeed?”

“You don’t believe me? Then you should know that Camber cannot raise only one eyebrow. No matter how hard he tries, both always go up together.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “That would explain several things. I thought Morgain Half-Fay was strange in his distrust of me. I am grateful to your ladyship for pointing it out. How true that it is the little mannerisms that betray us.” Without another word, he closed his eyes and let his head loll on his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Hush. I am casting forth my consciousness.”

A silence as heavy and tactile as a velvet cloak closed around her. That, more than any single thing, taught her that this was not her home, no matter how like all the contrivances of the Fay could make it. Hamdry Manor, the real Hamdry Manor, had never seemed to her to be less than welcoming, more accepting than her mother had ever been. Yet in this silence, she felt no comforting aura gathering about her. She could not forget that she was the daughter of Forgall’s enemy and that these Fay playing the part of her servants were Forgall’s most trusted people.

When heavy footsteps approached, she could feel them shake the floor. “That’s not Morgain,” she said, fear rising in her throat. If the Rider could come so close to taking her, what else might try?

When Dominic opened the door, she was so glad to see him that she became angry at him for worrying her unnecessarily. “The least you could do is knock!”

He glanced between her and the butler. The definition in his jaw grew more noticeable. “I’m interrupting you?”

“We were looking for Morgain.”

“He’s in his room.”

“No, I looked.”

“Then he’s in the library.”

“No. Don’t you think I looked there as well?”

Clarice knew she wasn’t angry with Dominic either for his obtuseness or for scaring her. If she hadn’t been so abashed at seeing him again, she wouldn’t have spoken so. Seeing him, she felt she could almost read his thoughts. He must be thinking of those stolen moments when he’d kissed her and she had so wantonly kissed him back. At the remembrance of how she’d clung to him, answering his passion with her own, she didn’t know whether to run away, slap his face, or throw herself into his arms.

She did neither. Hating herself for being such a shrew, she challenged, “Instead of suggesting places I’ve already searched, why don’t you and your confrere here do something useful? Going away comes to mind.”

The butler opened both eyes. “Are all mortals so uncontrollable, Dominic? You are not thus. It must be the females of your species that behave so. Troubling. No wonder you never have peace.”

Clarice advanced upon him. “Considering how I have been put upon, sir, I suggest you take your patronizing tone elsewhere.”

“Or what, my dear child?” His austere smile did not long survive her next words and the threatening gesture that went with them.

“Or I’ll touch you!”

The Fay-Camber stepped back a pace. “Come, Dominic. Let us search for Morgain Half-Fay as she wishes. I do not want to be trapped by the Ancient Law into accepting the command of such a wild-hearted creature as this.”

Dominic said, “Careful, Chadwin. I am sworn to protect her, even against you.”

“But who, pray tell, will defend me against her?” The butler strode to the doorway. “I’ll find Morgain Half-Fay for you, my lady. Then we may all be comfortable again. This masquerade need not last much longer. Thy mother, Lady of the Pale Banner, will sue for peace soon enough.”

When he’d gone, Clarice demanded, “What is ‘soon’ to an immortal? Two hundred years?”

Dominic closed the door behind Chadwin. He stood with his back against it, gazing at her with a smile lurking in the depths of his dark topaz eyes. He seemed entirely at his ease. He’d left off his cravat and had unbuttoned the top two buttons of his waistcoat. This relaxing of the gentlemanly code gave him a rakish air that she should have found vulgar, but that appealed to her natural taste more than an over-particularity of dress.

His gazing on her so steadily unnerved her. She thought that he knew that it had that effect on her and believed that was why he did it. She snatched her hand away from where she’d quite unwittingly been coquettishly smoothing her hair. “Why do you stare at me so? It’s exceedingly rude.”

“You may stare back if you like.”

“I don’t. I don’t see anything of interest in your face.”

“No? Well, it’s the only face I have so I’m sorry if it doesn’t please you.” His shoulders came off the door and he began to advance on her slowly, giving her plenty of time to run from him. Clarice wanted to stand her ground, but she had a strange, hot, jumpy feeling in her stomach and it demanded that she back away if only to see how far he’d follow.

“It’s not the only face you have. You’ve shown me half a dozen since you first came to Hamdry.”

“Perhaps I have. But this is the true one you see now.”

“How can I tell? Tomorrow you may wear another.”

“I give you my word.” Dominic took her hand. She pried it loose from his lax grasp. Yet before she had an instant to feel gratified, he reached out for the other. He brought it to his lips and brushed the back of it. She had a little more difficulty getting free, but not a great deal.

“Clarice,” he said with teasing reproach.

He took her left hand again. This time, his warm mouth moved against the tender underside of her wrist.

A thrill of desire seemed to shoot up her arm, overwhelming her senses. She realized slowly that her increasing difficulty in freeing herself was not because Dominic held her too tightly. Rather, her will to resist weakened every time he touched her.

Clarice felt trapped in a dance of ritualized movements, the steps of which she had never been taught. Dominic, for all his years in the Living Lands, seemed to have mastered not only the desirable moves but also the countermoves.

She searched his eyes. They’d lost their smiling look. Like a magnifying glass, their intensity narrowed to focus on her mouth. She could feel her lips growing warmer under the concentration of his gaze and knew that however much he might want to kiss her, she wanted it just as sharply.

When he bowed his head to taste her lips, Clarice held him off, but in truth, it was her own nature she struggled to keep at bay. “No . ..”

“Why not?”

“I... because I want you too much.”

“Good.”

He pulled her off balance, so that she had only him to cling to as his mouth came down on hers. Desire came roaring to life as though they’d forged a new existence between them. This was no tentative touch of mouth to mouth nor did it end with a faltering sally of tongues. He seemed intent on conquering all her resistance with a well-planned undermining of her chastity.

With her body in full traitorous revolt and on the point of surrendering to him, Clarice could not retreat and could summon no defense but attack. She slid her hands into the open front of his shirt, surprised by the contrast between his hard-muscled body and the soft prickle of his chest hair teasing her palms. A shudder went through him at this intimate touch, and Clarice felt the tide of battle turning her way.

But then Dominic left her mouth to press his teeth against the side of her neck. She couldn’t hold back a gasp of pleasure, though she knew it gave away some of her position. His hands slid down over her full skirt to urge her lower body closer to his.

She hadn’t known how much she’d wanted that until it happened. It stole her breath and a good portion of what was left of her reason. She pressed against him shamelessly, and was so lost to propriety as to think his groan the most delightful sound she’d ever heard. She put her chin up in a demand for more kisses, dragging his head down to meet hers, making sounds of her own, eager and wild.

“Clarice ... ah, you’ll kill me.”

An admission of surrender? So she thought, until Dominic cupped her breasts in his hands. At some point, he’d slid her gown down, exposing the creamy flesh of her shoulder and the upper slope of her bosom.

She’d been so dazed and drugged with kisses that she’d hardly noticed, even when he’d pressed his lips to the base of her throat before kissing his way out to her shoulder. Then he slipped his hands up her waist and smoothed them over her bodice, lifting her breasts until they all but spilled over the lowered neckline.

“You’re so beautiful. I’m hopelessly in love with you,” he murmured and lowered his head to steal a taste. The sensation of his mouth on her tightly furled nipple was fugitive, maddeningly elusive, and yet sweetly wicked. She couldn’t keep back a cry far louder than those soft moans and sighs which had escaped her vigilance.

It was as if someone had sounded a clarion call of danger in her ear. Her friend and companion, Melissa, raised in an uncaring world, had told Clarice all about the activities of men and women in love when they were but green girls of seventeen. Clarice wondered now how many illegitimate children were brought into the world as a consequence of the hot, urgent feeling of a woman’s body when a man touched, held, and worshiped her as Dominic did now.

Taking advantage of his distraction as he touched and fondled, Clarice propelled herself out of his arms. She retreated a final step, clutching the fallen left side of her bodice with her right hand. He tried to hold on to her, letting his hands slip away at the last instant.

Dominic looked heavy-eyed and slightly dazed as though he’d wakened to a strong light in the middle of the night. She doubted that she appeared any more alert. Even now the heady narcotic of passion was urging her to return to the pleasure of Dominic’s touch, hinting that there were many more delights to be found farther along the road they’d begun to travel together.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out as hurt began to replace the desire in Dominic’s expression. “We must stop this here and now.”

He tried to smile, but perhaps the tide of desire beat too strongly in him still, for his smile died before it was half-realized. “Why must we stop? Didn’t you like it?”

“I—never mind. Where... how...? Before you did not kiss me...” She found herself having to gulp a few mouthfuls of air before she could finish by saying, “you didn’t kiss me before like... that.”

“There’s a saying among the People to the effect that the third time one tries is the mature child of the first two efforts.”

“We say, ‘third time’s the charm.’ “

“Much more succinct.” His dark eyes were still focused on her with a deeply serious intent. “Besides, I want you more now than I did before. I’ve tasted how sweet you are and I hunger for more of you, Clarice.”

If only he’d smiled when he’d said those things. She could have discounted them as the hyperbole of a man seeking mere physical gratification. But he’d been entirely, dauntingly serious. What answer could be made to such a declaration?

She knew honesty deserved nothing but honesty. “I’m sorry, Dominic. I should have stopped you at my ‘no,’ rather than continued to make love to you.”

“You did say no. I should have stopped there. I was wrong.”

“So was I. You are, after all, something of a jailer. I always thought those stories of women falling under the spell of such a one were imaginary.”

“Your jailer?” He was obviously offended. “Is that what you think of me?”

“I am your hostage, Dominic. There’s no sense in wrapping up such an ugly thing in plain linen. If it were not for that, we should never have met.”

He said eagerly, “Only say you don’t regret it, Clarice.”

“No,” she said without hesitation. “I do not regret it.” She held up her hand when he would have seized her joyfully in his arms. Mindful of what a touch could lead to, Dominic stopped. The desire in his eyes was nearly as arousing as a kiss.

“It’s too dangerous,” Clarice said. “If Forgall knew...”

“He may know already. You see, I have not even a solitary drop of Fay blood in my veins. I cannot shield my thoughts from the least among them. It has made growing up in Mag Mell something of a challenge as you may imagine.”

“Are you afraid of Forgall?”

He did not deny it hotly as a younger man would have done. Dominic deliberated for a moment before saying, “I have never given him cause to be angry with me.”

“Until now.”

“Until you, Clarice.”

In some agitation, she tried to adjust her gown, unable to meet his eyes.

“Let me,” he said. With a tender touch that held much of the lover but not uncontrollable desire, he tugged the gown back into its proper position. Then he stood away from her.

“What happens now?” Clarice asked.

He smiled at her so warmly that she lost some of her embarrassment. “I shall help you find Morgain Half-Fay. Then, unless your mother relents, there will be a war.”

“Which you and others like you will fight.”

“It is what we have been trained for all our lives. You need have no fear for me. In the end, my comrades and I will overcome those who fight on the other side.”

“You sound very confident. Is that for my sake? You waste your time.” She clutched his hand. “You might be killed.”

“No. Even if I am defeated, I will simply return to the time and the place from which I came.”

“Yes, Priory St. Windle in 1350!”

“What? How know you that?”

“I read it in a book.” She did not mention the circumstances under which she’d found the book. “If you go back there, we will never see each other again.”

Dominic covered her hand with his own. “Is it so important to you that we meet again?”

“Yes. No. Stop! I won’t be manhandled...”

“Am I being so brutal?” He gathered her close in his arms, pressing her head against his shoulder. His voice was low, thrilling her with its sincerity. “I pledge you, my lady, that I will find you across time, space, and eternity, though the ten thousand devils of hell bar the way.”

“A pie-crust promise—easily made and easily broken,” Clarice said, her voice obscured by tears that she had no intention of permitting to fall.

He pressed his lips to her temple and released her. “Chadwin has probably already found your nephew for you. I like Morgain, you know.”

“He’s a scrapegrace.”

“Yes, if it weren’t for that, he’d be intolerable.” He grinned at her and sketched a salute. “I shall go and see.”

At the doorway, he paused and glanced back. “I meant it, Clarice. Every word.”

A lesser woman would have flung herself into his arms again, giving him, between kisses, a pledge in return. Clarice felt a tremendous impetus to demonstrate how clinging and sweet she could be. She repressed it firmly, letting him go without a word, for if she’d spoken she would have given her heart away.

Too much had proved false of late. Her home was not her home, her trusted servants were strangers, her mother was not lost forever after all. With the foundations of her beliefs shaking, Clarice mistrusted the strength of the refuge Dominic offered. She longed to test it but she dared not try.

The sound of his footsteps had not entirely faded before Morgain appeared in the entrance to the nursery. His finger went to his lips before she had time to more than inhale for her cry of surprise.

“Hist!” he said, his green eyes alight with mischief. He glanced behind him into the hall, then tiptoed in. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“Morgain, where have you been?” she whispered.

“I hardly know myself. But I think I can find it again.”

“Find what?”

“The forest with the doors. I reached them the first time traveling in my bed. It didn’t work this time, but I found another method.”

Clarice could no longer think Morgain was out of his head when he talked this way. Ignorance had been more of a comfort than she’d realized. She only asked, “What doors are these?”

“You remember. I sketched them. I—I’m afraid I lied to you about that, Aunt Clarice. I told you I hadn’t seen any doors in the trees, that I just wanted to put them there. You see, I had a funny feeling that it wasn’t quite the done thing to mention them. Queer, that. But they are quite real and if we can reach them, then we can go home.”

“You’ll have to explain, Morgain. My head is spinning. How can doors help us leave Mag Mell?”

“I saw Hamdry through the doors. We find them, walk through them, and there we are, safe and sound. Once my father returns, he’ll know how to keep us out of their hands a second time.”

“You know why we’ve been placed in this replica?”

“I heard the Fay who are pretending to be Camber and the rest talking.”

“That was very careless of them. Didn’t they notice you?”

He shook his head with a joking look in his eyes. “Watch what I can do, Aunt.”

The hairs on the hack of her neck rose like hackles with awestruck disbelief. Morgain had disappeared, gone like a flame when a candle winks out. She looked around the dusty nursery, sure she heard his stifled laughter.

Then slowly, she began to see him. He looked like a drawing of himself in pale pastels, only the figure was not static. It moved with all the boy’s awkward grace. He rubbed his nose with the fore-knuckle of his finger and then wiggled all five at her in a funning gesture. The sketchy colors of his clothing began to deepen and Morgain increased in clarity. He passed from a watercolor to an oil in a matter of moments, until he stood before her solid and unchanged.

“How are you doing that?” Clarice demanded.

He shrugged with supple shoulders. “I don’t know. I just ask myself to do it, and it’s done. Oh, I’m afraid there’s a rather big stain on the carpet in my room, Aunt. The manticore I conjured up wasn’t entirely housetrained.”

Clarice felt glad that Morgain was not slightly older, or he might have conjured up a mermaid or a nymph. “I thought you were trying to control this power.”

“I have tried, Aunt, but I’m afraid that.. . I’m afraid. ...” Suddenly Morgain looked at her with the eyes of a small boy whose longed-for toy broke on Christmas morning. “I haven’t been trained for this. I don’t really know what I am doing or how to control it. It... it frightens me.”

Clarice put her arms about him and found him reassuringly solid. “What do you think it means, Morgain?”

“I think I’m becoming one of them, Aunt.” He seemed to be looking inward. “I’m losing my human half. I can feel it going even now. The more magic I do, the faster it leaves me.”

“Then don’t do any more of it, please. Unless... Morgain, do you want to change?”

“I thought I might, but I don’t. Not really. It sounds wonderful, but Mother wouldn’t like it.” He bit his lip, looking and sounding his age for once. “I wouldn’t like it either. Their hearts are colder than ours, you can tell by the way they talk. Oh, Aunt Clarice, I so want to go home.”

Clarice cuddled him for a moment, feeling that he needed her to make a wise, mature decision. Her growing attraction for Dominic belonged to a silly chit fresh out of the schoolroom, not a woman with responsibilities and duties. Heartbreak could have nothing to do with such a woman. “Very well, Morgain. How do we set about finding these doors?”

“I’ve made a map. Look.” He brought out from his breast pocket one of his much-folded pieces of paper. Carrying it over to a sheet-shrouded table, he lay it out for her inspection. It looked like any of his old maps of imaginary places but with a difference, for she recognized several names. The great meadow where the feather-roofed tents stood was in the center with MAG MELL lettered over the top. A round insignia with a crown in the center hovered over these words.

Around the map were arrows pointing off to the four points of the compass. A river here, a shining lake there, a few mountains rising above the sea, and a distant, jagged peak with the words LA’AL FORTRESS surmounted by a floating banner empty of all insignia.

“I don’t think that this is everything.” Morgain said regretfully. “I had to leave out a lot, but it shows the main points.

“Did you invent this? How can you know what is contained in the Living Lands?”

“All those books I’ve been reading, Aunt Clarice. There’s an awful lot of writers who have either been to the Deathless Realm or who have written about it. Maybe it’s all make-believe; I don’t know.”

“That can’t be right, Morgain. Why would the Fay leave those books here for us to find. That doesn’t make sense. You don’t help an enemy escape.”

The boy lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think someone else is helping us.”

“I hope you are right. I hope they go on doing it. Come. We’d better dress warmly and I’ll try to filch some food from the table at dinner. We’ll leave as soon as night falls.”