Страница 69 из 76
Chapter 19
Farrell never knew why he brought the lute with him; he was not even aware of it until the three of them were creeping up the stairs. Except for the door, nothing was obviously missing or damaged, but every room seemed shrunken, smelling palely of damp dust, as a house smells that has stood closed for years. Farrell heard no sounds beyond the scrape of their shoes and the soft thump of the lute on his shoulder, and even those were strangely smothered, as if there were no air to bear them up. Everything is in that room with her, everything—not just her son and his witch, but all the light and soul and energy there ever was in this house. We can’t really see the rest of it, because it doesn’t quite exist without her attention. And all her attention is far away now, in a little low-rent place that I probably can’t find again. East of the sun, west of the moon, with an unlisted phone number.
He had counted on Briseis leading them to Sia, as she had done before, but the dog was as gone as the front door. So, for that matter, was the linen closet, leaving no least suggestion that it had ever been there. This time it was Farrell’s turn to rage helplessly; but Ben said, “There are so many ways,” and took them downstairs again, around the back of the house, in through one of the uncountable windows, and up an evasive stair which dissolved into a dim flurry of passages fading off in every direction. Farrell and Julie filed after him along corridors they could not see, around certain doubtful corners that had to be caught up with before they could be turned, and through high, transparent outlines, the color of abandoned spiderwebs, cold to make the blood ache. I know what these are—the ghosts of rooms she forgot about, just let go when she didn’t need to imagine them anymore. Within those almost-walls, his sense of balance abandoned him utterly, leaving him nauseous and heartsick, holding onto Julie. How terrible to be forgotten by the god that made you, even if you’re just a room. How could you love something that can do that anytime?
In the end, he sometimes thought, they never did find that last room at the top of the house. It found them. The open doorway seemed to come roaring up to them, visibly slowing down and stopping where they stood. No country hotel parlor waited beyond, but fat, lumbering vines, crowding the frame, beckoning and warning with the same green greed. They had to put their heads down and plow blindly onward, tearing the vines aside and trampling flowers like unpleasant human faces underfoot, until they broke out into a clearing that had nothing in it but sandy earth and stones and Aiffe dancing. Farrell never found another word for what she was doing, but he always knew there was one.
Her movements were nothing like the way she had danced with him or like any galliard or almaine he had ever seen her perform at the League’s affairs. On that ground, she was all swirling, filigreed insult; here, dancing alone, she was almost two-dimensional, rigid and thin as a razor blade. Back and forth she went, keeping to a small space, always traveling in a straight line, each razor-quick turn and glide at right angles to the one before, her body gradually writing a precise shape into the air, as if on a darkly gleaming floor inlaid with fiery stars and pentagrams. If she sensed her watchers’ presence—and Farrell thought she did—she paid no heed at all, but only danced.
No one, including Aiffe, saw Sia appear. Suddenly there was never a moment when she had not been there, trudging forever across the clearing toward the girl who was calling her out of hiding. She was wearing the disquietingly fluid garment that Farrell remembered, but it murmured over a body that he did not know, one grown impossibly stooped and withered since just that morning. Her shoulders all but hid her emaciated chest. Under the gown, her belly and thighs seemed to have run like candle wax into pitiful drizzles of skin. The gray eyes had gone suet-colored in her shrunken face, and when she mumbled to herself as she slumped along, Farrell saw that her teeth were rotting like cheese. Turning, he saw the silent tears sliding down Julie’s face and realized that he was crying, too.
Aiffe’s dance never faltered, nor did she speak a word to the wretched old woman standing before her. It was Nicholas Bo
Aiffe had begun to move slowly around Sia, not in circles, but in hexagons, octagons, dodecahedrons, weaving straightline patterns that glazed the air, dimming Sia to Farrell’s sight. Nicholas Bo
“Oh, mother, goodbye,” Nicholas Bo
But from the far side of the clearing, in two gigantic bounds and a desperate, yelping leap, Briseis came skidding through the air like a tailless kite in a downdraft. All four legs extended, she crashed full tilt into Nicholas Bo
He would have known that sound anywhere, in whatever throat. Young and rough, and as much of the earth as Nicholas Bo
When he opened his eyes and turned, he saw that she and Sia were standing so close together that they almost touched, and that the air around them was clear again. Aiffe was plainly trying to back away, and just as obviously could not, for the old woman was chuckling gently, “No, no, child, it was your magic that bound me to you. A very pretty spell, beautiful even, but you let yourself be distracted. Magic is easily offended.” As Farrell, Julie, and a bloody-nosed Ben stared, her body began to grow round and solid once more, her eyes to focus, her skin to restore itself. She explained placidly to Aiffe, “You see, you would never have let me so near to you if I looked even a little bit threatening. And I am only really good at very close range these days. I think I must need contact lenses.”