Briardark, page 21
Softly, Cicely eased her door open and slipped into the hall. A mouse would have made more noise as she crept towards Marden’s room. Her hand paused on the handle. She drew in a breath, holding it tight in her lungs. What if the wood had swollen, or some debris had caught under the door? What if it refused to open or in opening made a sound that woke Aaric?
The fears of the moment held her firm. Uncertainty weighed down on her, adding its burden to the guilt she’d tried to rationalise away. Cicely was on the verge of retreat. It was the cold, dead feel of her afflicted hand that kept her where she was. A vivid reminder of what awaited her if she didn’t stay the course.
The door slowly eased open under her touch. At first only a crack, to which she pressed her eye. The darkness of the room offered small obstacle to her vision. She could make out the bed against the far wall, the shape of her uncle beneath the blanket. Keeping her gaze fixed on Aaric, Cicely shifted the door inward, pausing every time the gap widened by another inch. The least movement from her uncle would have sent her scrambling away, but the insensate man didn’t stir.
When the opening was wide enough, Cicely slipped inside. She drew the door close behind her, mindful that she also had to worry about being discovered by Samuel. She knew his hunter’s senses were keen and apt to rouse him at the least disturbance.
Cicely waited a few minutes, nerving herself for what she had to do. Despite the regression done to her hand, she was thankful her father had given her a talisman. It let her know exactly what she had to find now.
She didn’t waste time looking about the room. Aaric would keep the talisman on him so it could protect him. Even asleep, she knew her uncle must have it with him. Careful to make no noise, she moved towards the bed. Her hand trembled when she reached out to grip the blanket. Conscience reared its objection for an instant when she looked down on Aaric’s face. This was the man she was going to kill.
Survival throttled her hesitation. Aaric was a scholar, and his knowledge was a dire threat. If she were to live, he had to die. Cicely slowly tugged the blanket away from Aaric’s shoulders, drawing it down the bed as she studied the sleeping man. The scholar was a bit older than her father and his frame wasn’t nearly so robust. His nightshirt hung loose about him, and where it was open around his neck, she could see a leather cord.
Cicely let the blanket fall slack around Aaric’s waist. She could see something underneath his shirt over his chest on the left side. Instinct, or something near enough to it, informed her that it was the talisman. He’d fastened it to the cord and was wearing it over his heart.
Now Cicely did make a brief search of the room. She caught up one of Marden’s hunting knives and quickly returned to the bedside. The blade felt heavy in her hand as she leaned over Aaric. She could plunge it into his breast and eliminate the danger he posed right now. The idea flashed through her brain, abhorrent and malignant. Necessity had made her a killer, but she wasn’t a murderess. She couldn’t stab him in the dark like an assassin.
Deftly, Cicely pulled open Aaric’s shirt and slipped her other hand underneath. She knew the horrible feel of the talisman, the same as the one Samuel had given her. The impulse to recoil from the foul thing was strong, but the urgency of her task was stronger. With great care, watching Aaric’s face for the least trace of awakening, she pulled the talisman away from his heart. She let the shirt fall back against the man’s chest. She was wary enough to keep the talisman close so that the cord wouldn’t grow taut and rouse her uncle. Instead, she let it lie on his breast while she curled the cord against the knife blade and raked it against the edge.
Aaric’s eyes opened. Cicely froze in horror. Her uncle was looking right at her.
‘Hephzibah,’ the scholar whispered. Though his eyes were open, they were glazed and unfocused. After a hideous moment, he closed them again. Cicely waited until his breathing fell back into the regulated pattern of slumber before she dared to stir. Slowly, she began to drag the knife across the thong again.
Minutes elapsed, but finally Cicely sawed through the leather. Biting down on her revulsion, she caught up the talisman and made her way back across the room. She continued to watch Aaric’s face and felt her blood freeze when his features began to twitch. The tics became ever more pronounced. A nightmare of some sort, bedevilling her uncle. If they grew any more intense, she was certain Aaric would wake.
Haste displaced caution and Cicely fled from the room. She hurried across the hall to her own and hurled the talisman under her bed to join the other one. She leaned back against her door as she shut it. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she allowed herself to draw a full breath. It left her in a ragged sigh.
‘The task is only half done,’ Cicely whispered as her gaze turned to the chair and the tapestry.
And the onyx needle.
‘Uncle Aaric’s picture is almost done,’ she reflected, leaving the door and walking to the chair. She picked up the needle and threaded its eye. ‘Only a moment or two, and I can finish.’ She frowned when she noted that both of her hands now had a chalky transparency about them.
‘Everything will be better when I finish,’ Cicely said as she dug the needle into the cloth.
Samuel woke with a start, no drowsiness nagging at his mind. Every speck of his being was alert, keyed to a razor’s edge. He didn’t know what had snapped him from sleep, but he trusted the instincts he’d honed through so many years hunting the wilds around Felstein.
Doubt was dispelled a moment later when he heard a scream of fright and the sound of glass shattering. Samuel didn’t wait to question, he simply lunged out of bed and grabbed up his axe. He left his room and was across the hall in a matter of heartbeats. A kick of his foot opened the door to Marden’s room – the source of the disturbing sounds.
Moonlight streamed through the splintered ruins of the window. A tree, one Samuel had thought sturdy, had fallen and slammed into the side of the house. One of its branches had stabbed itself into the room like a blood knight’s lance, impaling the bed with its jagged tip. He gasped and hurried forwards, horrified to think what he’d find lying in that bed. He was as relieved as he was puzzled when he saw that the bed was empty.
‘I’ve had a very narrow escape.’ Aaric’s voice spun Samuel around. So intent had he been on the destruction at the window and bed that he hadn’t seen the scholar in the opposite corner. He was bleeding from several cuts where shards of glass from the window had sliced him, but he was very much alive.
Samuel gestured with the axe at the branch piercing the bed. ‘Nagash! If you’d been asleep…’
‘I was asleep,’ Aaric corrected him. He trembled as he spoke. ‘I should have been another victim of an accident. Like so many in Felstein.’ A glint of steel came into his eyes. ‘Only we know these aren’t accidents. We know someone is employing the blackest magic to commit these murders.’
The beasthunter reached to his neck, to the talisman Aaric had made. ‘But we’re supposed to be protected,’ he said, a hint of accusation in his tone. If Aaric’s talisman had failed, then why should any of them work? His hope that Cicely was safe…
‘It did protect me,’ Aaric replied. He held out his hand and showed Samuel the talisman he held. Then the scholar’s visage darkened. ‘Or, I should say, this talisman protected me. It’s the extra one. The one I made for myself is missing.’
Samuel shook his head. ‘That’s impossi–’ He didn’t finish what he was saying. His eyes had dropped to the floor and noticed something. Stooping, he picked it up. Holding it in the moonlight, he saw that it was a leather cord like the one he wore around his own neck. The cord, he was certain, from Aaric’s talisman.
‘It’s been cut,’ the hunter reported, curling his fist around it.
‘The removal of the talisman was no accident,’ Aaric emphasised. ‘Our enemy knew about it and took action.’ He tapped his finger against the replacement. ‘This has rather spoiled things for them.’ A haunted look came over him. ‘This… and a nightmare.’
‘Nightmare?’ the hunter asked.
A sad smile pursed the scholar’s lips. ‘In lieu of what’s happened, maybe more than a dream. I thought I heard Hephzibah calling to me. She was crying my name from a place so bleak neither light nor darkness would lay claim to it. She was compelling me to stir, to rise before it was too late.’ He scowled at the branch. ‘I woke with a scream and found my talisman gone. I leapt to see if the extra was also stolen. I’d just put my hand on it when the tree fell into the room.’
Samuel glanced back at the tree. ‘You’d have been killed like all the others. Without the talisman to protect you.’
Aaric laid his hand on the hunter’s shoulder. ‘Our enemy knew about my protection and tried to take it away.’
Terror crackled down Samuel’s spine. ‘They were here! Inside the house!’
‘Yes,’ the scholar said. ‘They were inside the house.’
‘Cicely!’ Samuel pushed past Aaric and hurried into the hall. A matter of a moment and he had his daughter’s door open and was standing in her room.
For an instant Samuel’s heart froze. Where was his daughter? Then, as his eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness of the room, he saw her shape lying on the bed under the blankets. A tide of relief left him in a low sob, and he had to hold on to the chair to support himself.
Aaric appeared in the doorway, a rushlight smouldering in his hand. He took a look around and his eyes narrowed on his niece’s bed. ‘Asleep? Through all of this noise?’
The suspicious note in the scholar’s tone provoked Samuel. He turned and fixed Aaric with a warning glower. ‘Cicely’s been sickly since her brother’s death and that of her mother. She often secludes herself in a deep sleep.’
‘Until she’s recovered?’ Aaric remarked. There was an insinuation wound within his speech.
‘Be careful,’ Samuel growled.
Aaric offered him a sneer in reply. ‘I will.’ He looked over at his sleeping niece. ‘Here isn’t the place to say such things.’
Samuel’s temper flared. ‘Say what you have to say.’ Though the scholar’s meaning was clear enough, he wanted to hear it for himself in Aaric’s own words. When the man hesitated, Samuel’s temper grew worse. ‘She’s asleep, I tell you. Not even the trumpets of Azyr could rouse her.’
The scholar looked far from convinced, but he was too proud to be quelled by Samuel’s harangue. ‘We know that the culprit is using sorcery to drain away the life essence of their victims. Subsisting on it like some obscene vampire.’ He pointed at the bed. ‘What if they need that energy to stave off sickness? When they claim a victim, they seem to recover. When they let too much time pass, the illness saps them until there’s no choice but to act.’
‘You dare make such accusations under my own roof?’ Samuel hissed.
‘Look at the facts,’ Aaric persisted. ‘Someone got inside to steal the talisman from me. What could be easier than for someone already inside the house to sneak into my room…’
‘This fiend has already been proven a student of dark magic,’ Samuel countered. ‘Why not use a spell to spirit it away?’
‘Would a spell need to cut the cord?’ Aaric asked. He tapped the replacement talisman he now carried. ‘Magic that could take one talisman could surely take all of them. No, it had to be someone inside who physically removed it… and didn’t know where to look for the other ones.’
‘The other ones.’ Samuel latched on to the words, a quiver in his voice. He turned from Aaric and hurried to the bed. He drew back the blanket, pausing for a moment to see if Cicely would wake. She remained asleep, such was the depth of her slumber. He hastily examined her, horrified to find the talisman was gone.
‘It isn’t here!’ Samuel moaned. The animosity of only a moment before was forgotten as he turned back towards Aaric. ‘Cicely’s talisman has been taken!’
Aaric was standing beside the chair, peering intently at the tapestry folded across its arm. ‘She’s been quite busy here,’ he said.
Samuel stormed over to him. ‘Damn your accusations, didn’t you hear me? Cicely’s talisman is gone. She’s without protection.’
‘She hardly needs protecting from herself,’ Aaric stated. He held the rushlight down towards the tapestry. ‘Isn’t this your cousin Anya?’
‘And there’s Emelda.’ Samuel pointed his bronze finger at the image of his wife. ‘Are you going to tell me she cast a spell on her own mother?’
Aaric hesitated for a moment. ‘I can’t change the evidence I see–’
‘A suspicious mind sees what it wants to see,’ Samuel snapped back, barely glancing at the picture. He turned and went back to the bed. He lifted the talisman from around his neck and leaned over his daughter.
‘Don’t!’ Aaric cried. He forgot his examination of the tapestry and hurried over to the hunter. He grabbed his arm to keep him from setting the talisman around Cicely’s neck. ‘You’ll be without any protection. You saw for yourself what almost happened to me.’
Samuel pulled free of Aaric’s grip. ‘You’ve convinced yourself she’s a witch, but think if you’re wrong. That means Cicely’s the one without any defence against this sorcery.’
Aaric tried to make one last appeal. ‘Let’s say that I am wrong.’ He tried to make his tone conciliatory. ‘That still means you need to protect yourself. If not Cicely, then someone else stole into this house. There will be another attempt unless the fiend is stopped. I need you to help me bring an end to this.’
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Samuel said. He slipped the cord around Cicely’s neck and drew the blankets back over her. ‘Not after what you dared to say to me. To accuse my daughter of these outrages. No, Aaric, you don’t need my help, and you won’t have it.’ The beasthunter pointed at the door. ‘I’ll suffer your company this night, but tomorrow you should return to Gothghul Hollow. It was a mistake to bring you here.’
Aaric started to speak but must have recognised the futility of mere words. ‘I’ll leave your house in the morning,’ he said. ‘But I’ll not leave Felstein until the danger is over. I’ll find this fiend, and I won’t let sentiment stand in my way.’
Samuel watched the scholar retreat into the hall. Aaric was wrong. He had to be wrong. Cicely had no such powers.
But at the back of his mind was a note of uncertainty, a whisper that Samuel couldn’t silence.
What if Aaric’s right?
It took all of Cicely’s willpower to maintain a pose of sleep while her father and uncle were in the room. She bit down on her lip to keep from screaming when Samuel set the talisman around her neck. If anything, it felt more disgusting than the others, like a slimy newt crawling across her breast. More than anything, she wanted to rid herself of the revolting thing, but she knew the least motion on her part might instigate a situation she wanted to avoid.
Uncle Aaric’s speech was enough to horrify her to the core. She’d been right to target him, but much too late in doing it. A dark providence protected the man, and she knew she’d never get the other talisman away from him. There was a bitter irony in that. He’d made four of the things, and all of them were in her control except the one she most desperately needed.
Her father lingered in the room after Aaric left. Cicely knew Samuel was keeping watch, trying to protect her. She agonised over the worry he must be under. He believed in her, and it pained her to appreciate how misplaced his trust was. How could he know the small steps that had escalated events the way they had? The horrible accident that led to matricide. The ghastly affliction that forced Cicely to murder.
Cicely focused her thoughts on the course she would have to take. She knew Aaric would stay in Felstein, with or without her father’s support. He’d be watching her, searching for the least evidence to try to convince Samuel. When she started to fade again – as she knew must happen – Aaric would be looking for the signs. If someone died and she became vigorous again, that would banish any lingering doubt her uncle had. He’d act, even if he had to do so without Samuel.
Keeping still under the blankets, Cicely fixated on a way to bypass her uncle’s vigilance. There would be a way. There had to be a way. Finding the answer to that puzzle occupied her through the night until she finally heard Samuel leave. When the door shut behind her father, she lost no time ripping the talisman away and throwing it to the floor.
‘Disgusting.’ She rose and walked over, ready to kick it under the bed with the others. She hesitated when she lifted her foot. Maybe that was the wrong approach to take? Her uncle knew so much – perhaps he also had a suspicion regarding how the talismans would affect the witch they were meant to guard against? If she wore the hateful thing, it might make him doubt himself.
Cicely took a needle and thread from her box of supplies. Briefly, her hand brushed against the onyx needle. She’d hastily stuffed it at the bottom of the box after she heard the commotion in Marden’s room. Seeing it now made her wonder about the tapestry. She turned and flipped it over. The image of her uncle was there, but it wasn’t so complete as it had been. The threads were frayed and loose, as though they’d pulled themselves free from the cloth. As it had before, the talisman had unmade her work and broken the spell.
Turning the tapestry over again, Cicely approached Samuel’s talisman lying on the floor. Controlling her revulsion, she brought the little copper needle against the leathery skin and undid the stitches that bound it together. The oddments Aaric had stuffed it with came spilling out onto the floor. She barely glanced at them before she was sweeping them under the bed with an old dress.
Once the insides were hidden, Cicely set to refilling the leather bag. Rags and strips torn from the old dress went inside, as did a few smooth stones Marden had given her years ago. The stones would provide some rigidity and simulate the little bones that had originally been part of the talisman. When she was satisfied the bag resembled what it had been before, Cicely sewed it shut again. She carefully inspected her handiwork. It was a good resemblance, one that she was certain would pass even Aaric’s scrutiny.
