Book One: Thankless Task (part 1)
In the Heart of the Wood
Oh there have I understood
- Current 93, "The Cloud of Unknowing"
West and north of Norton, not far outside the sprawl of the campus grounds of Tower College, the lights and life of the city give way to rolling hills and quiet suburban villages. The air of quaintness that pervades the city is, if anything, more apparent here without Norton’s veneer of modernity, as the tangled roadways (which the wise traveler will not venture too far on without the assistance of a map, and perhaps not then) yield little inns and churches and farmhouses that seem to have stumbled out of the Colonial age into this one, and, having realized themselves out of their era, sit calm and bemused in valleys and on hilltops and wait for the frippery of centuries to pass by. The countryside here is wild and wooded, the earth no more than half-tamed in any handful of acreage. Signs by the roadside are few and far between, but any that have been bothered to mark out some piece of geography as distinct from any other invariably claim it as part of the township of Otherwood.
And there is a quality to the people, too, the ones standing outside farmsteads and on porches, that seems to suggest that they themselves might have stood here, save for some slight changes in wardrobe, since the days of Penn himself. (There is always the possibility, of course, that for some of them this might be true.) They might say, on reflection, that life here is much as it ever was, that little changes in Otherwood as it does in the world outside. And this is true, but only to a certain extent.
But it is true that Otherwood is old, older even than the most elder of the foundations in any building within its demesne, older than the lineage of any of the folk of European descent who live on its lands; it was old when the Lena’pe came, and ancient indeed when the first stones were laid on the nearby ground that would become the first and most prominent college of the art of Magic in a young America. It is old, and its memory is long – before the first hunters, before the ice, before humanity.
But it has always had a Lord.
*
Seated atop a low hill ringed with hedge and oak and briar, the great house Hartshorn has been the seat, for the last few centuries, of the most recent line of the Lords of Otherwood, who have styled themselves Marchesses since taking on that stewardship. And indeed the house does stand on borderland, in many ways; among others, it marks the last frontier of Otherwood the township before Otherwood the wild forest swallows the landscape entirely.
It rises just above the trees around it, a mad motley of architecture, as if the Age of Reason that gave it birth stopped just at its threshhold and loosed all its repressed chaotic urges at once. Its foundations and ground floors suggest the monastic, heavy hewn blocks and pointed arches and doorways flanked by tall, solid columns. Above this, brick begins to dominate, and sharp-edged gables spring from its upper stories. The massive central chimney is mortared stone, and begins to spiral just slightly as it clears the rooftop. Above all, from one back corner, a huge round turret topped with a Gothic spire towers over the rest of the house’s improbable topography, ringed with tall, rounded windows with spiderweb panes.
Hartshorn, for all its size and capacity, has only rarely during its history been home to many people at once. The Marchesses have on the whole declined lives of ostentatiousness, perhaps from finding themselves in a land that decided early and with some vehemence to do away with Lords and their trappings altogether, and perhaps out of pragmatism as well; the power and duty of the Lord of Otherwood touch only rarely on mundane or terrestrial concerns, and a small retinue helps maintain a certain focus.
So it was that mage-adept Jenny Haniver – who was not Marchess of Otherwood, but who had nonetheless called Hartshorn home for the better part of a decade – came into the house on a crisp and gorgeous autumn evening after some time away to find it nearly empty.
She was not especially surprised by this, as she’d cut short her trip by a couple of days and hadn’t phoned in. The minimal household staff were undoubtedly in their own quarters by now, with the possible exception of Penrod, who might be occupied with any number of things in some unseen corner. The one real disappointment was the absence of the current Marchess, but that was the risk she took coming home unannounced.
We should probably pause a moment to consider Jenny as she comes in here, and pauses herself on the doorstep of Hartshorn, her travel bag slung over one shoulder. She is deceptively small, short and compact, though just how she’s put together under her layers of clothes can be hard to judge. Her hair is a perpetual hopeless mess, just long enough to hang in her eyes, which are behind square glasses; her myopia is an annoyance she has been unable to otherwise correct. She wears shapeless trousers and heavy boots and an overcoat so worn and stained it’s begun to look almost leathery, and a long scarf for the autumn chill. She holds the stub of a cigar in her teeth, which she takes in her hand as soon as she sets her bag down on the floor, and blows a small, perfect smoke ring apparently by reflex. She does not, for various reasons, look her age, but a casual observer might put her anywhere between nineteen and thirty-five or so.
There is also a large raven perched on her shoulder, opposite where she’s just unslung her satchel. His name is Gregor, and he is a master of that particularly corvid air of seeming to regard anywhere he finds himself as slightly beneath his dignity.
Just how much of Jenny’s innocuously rumpled appearance is the result of her natural personality, and how much is calculated to camouflage that she is one of the most skilled adepts of the Art in living memory, is something she has never given a satisfactory answer to. As with many magicians, it is probable that she has been in practice so long that the line between the two has become so blurred as to be meaningless.
“Okay, off, you, before I cramp.” Jenny shrugged, and Gregor let out a halfhearted croak of protest and flapped over to settle on the back of an especially threadbare chaise. Jenny knelt at her dropped bag and fished out a compact box wrapped in gold paper. “Right. First things first, then.”
She wove through the maze of halls and rooms to the far end of the house and went up the several sets of staircases leading to the easternmost gable. The door to its small attic room was closed, but there was a light behind it, and soft music playing. She knocked.
“Come in,” said the voice behind the door.
It wasn’t locked; it never was. Jenny pulled out the door and stepped around it into the room. It was small but comfortable, despite not quite having recovered from being a storage space a generation or so ago; trunks and boxes were still piled in the corners. But a small couch had been conscripted into service, and what had once been an ottoman refitted into a coffee table. There was also a stand with a phonograph off to one side, from which the sound of lute and voice was crackling. And there was a writing desk in front of the window, at which the room’s sole occupant was bent.
Professor Nandana let his quill scratch to the edge of the page before replacing it delicately in its inkwell and turning in his chair to face the door. He was big-bellied and broad-featured, and dressed in his habitual loose brown kurta, with a pair of small round spectacles perched on his prominent nose. He was smiling, as he usually was, his teeth white in the dark tangle of his beard, save for the gap where one was missing on the right. Jenny had never gotten a straight answer from him how he’d lost it, but given the Professor’s fondness for candy and sweet tea, she had some theories.
“Hello, Jenny. Welcome home. How was your trip?”
“Exhausting.” She sat down on the little couch. Gregor, at the end of his limit of being attention-deprived, flapped through the doorway and lit on the arm at the other end. “How’s the sabbatical?”
“I do my best to remain productive.” Nandana gestured toward the neat stack of parchment accumulating on one side of his desk. “And hello to you too, Mister Gregor.”
“Oh, don’t encourage him.” Jenny pulled out the little box she’d brought up. “Here. I brought you something.”
His eyes glittered. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Probably. That’s from Teuscher. It’s the assortment. Try not to eat them all at once, okay?”
“I shall do my best to exercise restraint,” he said, inclining his head, “but I’m afraid I can make no promises in the presence of such truly excellent truffles. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And do not share them with Midnight Dreary over here. He knows they’re not eyes, and don’t let him tell you otherwise.” Gregor ruffled up his feathers and did his best to look affronted. “So where is everyone tonight?”
“If by ‘everyone’ you mean Mistress Branleigh, I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Nandana. “I went for a long walk this afternoon and she was gone when I returned. I believe Master Penrod is still about the premises, however, and will almost certainly have a better answer.” He slid the box of chocolates out of its wrapping paper, and the lid from the box. “Would you like one?”
“No, thanks. I haven’t eaten all day, and I think I need something more substantial. I’m about to go down to the kitchen and see what I can scare up.”
“Ah. Well, in that case, I believe the last of some passable gobi aloo is still in the icebox.”
“Yours?”
“Indeed.”
“I’m on it.” She stood and stretched. “Gods, I’m tired. It’s good to be home.”
Nandana selected a truffle and bit into it. “Mmm. Wonderful. And how is Master Murdoch these days?”
Jenny sighed. “Spooky and weird and harried. As usual. But I think we got his current problem as under control as we’re going to. He sends his regards.”
“Which I must return someday soon, before my classroom duties call again. Well. You should go eat, Jenny Haniver, and get some rest. The rest of the household will be happy to see you in the morning.”
“Oh, I’m sure. We’ll see how I feel after food. Enjoy the chocolates, Professor.”
She was about to turn for the door when a crisp double knock came from outside the doorway. Penrod, butler to the Marchess of Otherwood for at least two generations now, was standing in the hall with a tray of tea. Like Jenny, his actual age was impossible to tell; he had sleek dark hair and a round, handsome face. She understood that there was fey blood in his family tree, but the only visible tell was a very slight point to his ears. He was also the only member of the household shorter than her (by half a head, even), a fact that she had just enough conscience to feel guilty about taking pleasure in.
“Welcome home, Magus. I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a cup of herbal for you. Sir, your Earl Grey.”
Jenny sighed. “No such thing as an unobtrusive entrance around here, is there?”
“No, Magus. Not with your luggage in the hallway and half a cigar in the tray by the coatpegs.” Penrod poured tea into the Professor’s cup, stirred in milk and plentiful sugar. Nandana took it with a nod. “I trust Boston remains as it was?”
“More or less. I think I’m going to take this down to the fire, if you don’t mind. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Magus. Will you be requiring anything else?”
“Nothing that’s in your job description.” Gregor gave a little croaking chuckle from the couch. It was one of the more distressing human habits he’d picked up over the years. Jenny frowned and shot him a glare. “Any idea where my better half has vanished to?”
Penrod brushed invisible lint from his cuffs. “Her Lordship has gone into town tonight, and has given every indication of returning rather late.”
“Of course. And she’s with Rayne, isn’t she?”
“I trust there will be no shock in my answering in the affirmative, Magus.”
Jenny took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Well, that’s what I get for coming home early and not calling ahead. I go to bed early while my wife’s out with her girlfriend.”
*
That it was greatly amusing to Rayne to be called that was a cause of some aggravation to Jenny, but he’d learned, for his part, not to be too bothered by her aggravation. Though he’d have been the first to admit that the moods of one’s lover’s spouse are a thing not to be taken lightly, it hadn’t taken much exposure to Jenny to conclude that there was frequently more drama than substance in hers.
Jenny’s short fuse was a useful corrective, however, to the guilt he still occasionally felt about the arrangement. He’d given up ages ago trying to figure out whether that was intentional on her part, and whether she’d admit to it if he asked. He wasn’t the first lover the Marchess had taken since her marriage (and he had his doubts, if it came down to it, about Jenny, though they were both resolutely silent on that subject around him), but from what he understood, being noticed enough to be the target of Jenny Haniver’s wit and abuse was a kind of compliment. It didn’t take long knowing her before he began to believe it.
What Rayne found harder to believe was that Marcie Branleigh – that is, Branwen Fiona Belladonna Bishop-Ashleigh, seventeenth Marchess of Otherwood – kept him around after all this time. She had some of the same agelessness as her wife, though Marcie wore hers with style, and if a few silver threads had begun at last to creep in amid the crow-dark hair, she made that look dashing and elegant too. He often wondered how she’d managed to pull off going incognito during her years of exile, when she’d adopted the name that she came to prefer to her True one; it seemed to him that nobility and sheer class shone on her like a beacon. The handful of times he’d mentioned something on that order to her, she told him he was biased, and he had to admit that was true too.
He also had to admit that the affair had given him lots of opportunities to attend to (or indulge in, perhaps) his own sartorial obsessions, out of sheer determination to not be entirely outshone by his lover. If he spent more time these days than he had before in search of that just-so item – the perfect black dress or pair of boots, the pefect match of jewelry and makeup – he reminded himself that the role of Noble Consort took some effort to live up to.
He kept his head and body sleek and shaved to the skin, save for carefully plucked eyebrows and a close, wedge-shaped patch on his chin. For the evening’s outing he’d selected a basic satiny strapless with a slit up the side, and offset it with thigh-highs and knee boots and a translucent drape with a shimmering leaf-pattern woven in. This last he was careful to wear to show the pendant – a silver pentacle-and-crescent set with an uncut garnet – that dangled from a choker at his throat. He knew there were those who disagreed, but he never saw the point in being a witch if you weren’t going to broadcast it to the whole room.
The room in question was the Six of Cups, a Guild club in Norton’s downtown where the adepts of various schools and lodges could mingle over cocktails and pretent they didn’t despise each other for a little while. Technically, Rayne wasn’t on the guest list; covens were not officially affiliated with the Guild of the Great Art, for various reasons that mostly boiled down to people being stupid at each other for hundreds of years. But Marcie had learned at the Scholomance, and so had an in, and had found besides that even the most sneering and uptight mages were reluctant to say no to the Lord of Otherwood. Rayne was spending a good deal of the night standing at the bar, scandalizing the crowd and trying not to let it show on his immaculately-glossed lips.
He’d discovered early in the evening that his taste for hanging out with Marcie’s old friends was currently in wane. Even Garron, who Rayne usually liked, was being especially catty tonight, and it had gotten worse all around as the drink flowed. He decided that sobriety was probably wiser than the various alternatives, so he’d spent the last two hours nursing the hell out of his amaretto sour and watching as the various little deals, battles of will, connections and debates were acted out all over the club, and listening to the half-electric chamber ensemble in the corner drone out the kind of music magicians thought they were supposed to like.
This meant that he spotted the messenger as soon as he walked in. He was obviously there working, and not part of the clientele: too energetic, not nearly desolate enough. He was also dressed practically, a thing nearly unheard-of at the Cups: a hooded sweater and cargo pants with bulging pockets. There was also a battered satchel slung over his shoulder marked with the rune Ansuz in bright red, which was the biggest tell that he was a courier on the job. He spotted Rayne looking his way and caught his eye, and wove through the crowd to him.
“Pardon. You wouldn’t happen to be the Lord of Otherwood, by any chance?”
“Not quite, sweetie. I’m her mistress. What do you need?”
The messenger pulled out a silver scrollcase from his shoulder bag. “I’m to deliver this to the Lord Marchess of Otherwood who’s supposed to be here tonight. Only it’s an eyes-only kind of thing, see. Very private and important.”
“Right.” Rayne sighed. “Of course. Come with me.”
Marcie had a corner table, and was sprawled in a high-backed chair in the gunfighter’s seat, a wineglass in one hand and a long, slender tavern pipe in the other. She had on one of her distinctive brocade frock coats, over pinstripe trousers and a silk poet’s shirt with long cuffs. She was wearing her hair even shorter than Jenny these days, night-dark against her pale skin. She looked up and smiled as Rayne approached, but didn’t get up. The little circle of hangers-on around the table hardly gave them a glance.
Rayne gestured with one long-gloved hand. “Her Lordship the Marchess of Otherwood. Deliver away.”
Marcie cocked an eyebrow. “Wow, Rayne. As a herald, you make a great ornament.”
“Darling, if that was what you thought you were keeping me around for, I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
Garron, who was little more than a goatee and Buddy Holly glasses in the smoke haze, giggled. “Oh, honey, I’m sure she’d figure out something to do with that tongue of yours, one way or another.”
Rayne rolled his eyes. “Yes, let’s completely terrorize the courier service. I’m sure his night’s not complete without at least one sledgehammer innuendo. Well done, Mary.”
Marcie shook her head and stood up. “Hi. I’m Marcie. Don’t mind the entourage. My father had a full house, and somehow all I got was a pair of queens.” A chorus of chortles sounded around the table. “What can I do for you?”
The messenger held up the scroll-case. “It needs your signet to open, m’lady. It’s a letter for you.”
“Okay.” Marcie fished a long chain out of her shirt; a heavy silver seal ring dangled from it. She slipped it onto her right forefinger. “Do I get any hints?”
“It’s not for me to say, m’lady.” He held up the case, and Marcie pressed her ring to the embossed sigil on one end. It snapped open, and a roll of parchment tied with ribbon slid out. “There you go. If you’ll just give me your seal here.” He popped a little wax disk out of the end of the case, and Marcie touched the ring to that too. He gave a little salute. “Thanks so much, m’lady. Good evening to you folks.” And with that, he turned on his heel and was gone.
“What is it, Mar?” Nadia, a red-haired woman who Rayne was reasonably sure had been Noble Consort a time or two herself, looked over her brandy glass at the parchment, heavy with seals and dangling ribbon, that Marcie was unrolling. “Who’s it from?”
Marcie’s eyes danced back and forth over it for a moment, and widened, just a fraction. She bit her lip, and looked up, rolling the scroll tight again and stuffing it into her coat. She smiled. “Nothing. Big buildup, no payoff. Silly protocol stuff.” She picked up her wineglass again, and raised it. “Let’s get back to the business of getting out of our heads.”
That got a round of cheers, but Rayne caught her eye and raised a questioning brow at her. The look she shot him back begged him not to push. He sighed and lifted his own glass.
“Hey, Rayne,” said Garron. “Since you’re up, can I talk you into heralding me a refill?” Snickers erupted from the crowd.
“A double Fuck Off and Die, Bitch, was it?” said Rayne, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d seen the moment of fear that had passed over Marcie’s face, quick and sharp as a lightning flash. Whatever it was someone had taken such trouble to put in her hands wasn’t any kind of good news, and anything she was that eager to gloss over was sure to only be waiting to go off in a big way. He’d never been that good at reading signs and portents, but he knew reading people backwards and forwards, and what was written on Marcie was a volume of trouble.
*
Alyson Shae, on the other hand, was very good at reading signs and portents; she might have said that this was because her approach to the Craft was somewhat more old-school than Rayne’s, though it might have had more to do with being an nth-generation practitioner who’d gotten Calling the Corners around the same time as her picture books. But she didn’t like what she was seeing any damn more than Rayne did.
She’d been holed up in what she insisted on calling The Cottage for three days, with two loaves of bread, a wedge of cheese, and enough orange-and-clove tea to open her own shop, if there had been anyone other than rabbits and bats and the occasional raccoon to drop in for a cup. She hadn’t touched most of it, though. When she got into her work, eating was something she had to remind herself to keep doing, sometimes with an alarm clock.
The type of magic practiced by people who call themselves witches is not terribly different from that practiced by folk who prefer the term adept or mage. It does come from the same sort of energy, ultimately, and tends to collect many of the same sorts of trappings around it; and adepts and witches do find that they speak dialects of a common language, when they can get around to not glaring at each other for long enough to actually have a conversation. The difference, more than anything, is one of philosophy, or perhaps attitude. A mage is a shaper of energies, who knows a thousand little tricks to bend the world in accordance with his Will. A witch, on the other hand, is likely to be more of an observer, who tunes himself in just so to the energies all around him that a little push, precisely placed, will shift the world just far enough in the direction he desires to produce the results he wants. Both are legitimate and useful approaches. It’s just that witches tend to be more subtle, and careful, and delicate, while an adept tends to know things like a Word that will turn stone to powder and make a man’s ears implode.
So Alyson, following the hair-prickling instinct that had drawn her out to The Cottage in the first place, had made copies of every topographical and survey map of the surrounding area that she could get her hands on (including a few she was most definitely not supposed to know about), and laid them in certain patterns all around the floor, and sprinkled them with carefully selected and finely-ground oak leaves and topsoil, and made careful note of the patterns; and spent hours watching and mapping the flight patterns of hawks, crows, geese, swallows, as they flew over the trees; and brewed tea from precisely selected herbs and mushrooms from all over a half-mile radius, and paid close attention to the dreams that came that night; and even sat up into the small hours listening to the the chorus of insect buzz against the sonar squeaks of the bats that nested in the bat box outside, until she swore she could hallucinate in sound-shapes and taste chitin (and she did break for a particularly strong dose of orange tea right after that, though the flavor of moth lingered unpleasantly even then). And she spent long hours compiling and cataloguing it all in a database on the laptop she’d hooked up to The Cottage’s generator, because while Alyson was old-school, she was also not an idiot.
And the infuriating thing was that it was all off, in some head-scratching, barely perceptible way, that once you noticed it was impossible to ignore. The data just did not add up in the ways it should have; there were gaps in the readings that should not have been there, and were moreover not even consistent from one set of observations to another. Suspecting human error, she retested as much as she could, but the conclusions themselves remained the same. It all hurt to think about, like a puzzle whose pieces looked like they lined up just right to fit, but when you put them together showed a picture that had somehow slid in three different directions from true.
Clearly, something in Otherwood was very, very wrong.
Now, at the end of the third day, she was bent over the keyboard again, trying to arrange all the ill-fitting pieces so at least the gaps between them might form a shape she could recognize, some notable absence of quality that could present a solution to it all. She was deeply enough involved in the work of it that she almost didn't hear the door open.
Wolf, a striped scarf wrapped around his neck to just under his red beard, edged through the doorway with a paper bag in his arms, and stepped carefully around the chaos of papers and paraphernalia on the floor. He looked in vain for a clear surface in the room, and finally sighed and set the bag down in a corner.
"Hi, love," he said. "How's it going?"
Alyson sat back and groaned. "Frustrating. It's all wrong. I've been at this for hours and I can't make any damn sense of it. I'm about ready to give it all up and go work as a waitress somewhere. Like, California, maybe."
"Well, before you do that, Kara sent you some pumpkin bread and apples and cold chicken sandwiches. And there's a bottle of cider in there, too. She's been worried about you, you know."
"I figured. It's not me she should be worried about. It's… Christ and the Lady, Wolf, I've never seen anything like this. It's like everything is… fragmenting."
His brow furrowed. "Yeah? How?"
"Here, give me that cider. Maybe getting the buzz on will be the answer I need. Gods know I've tried everything else." He bent and fished it out of the bag with a rustle, twisted off the cap, and handed it over. "Thanks. Wow, that's really good. I don't know. It's like… it's like there are about five different Otherwoods out here, all telling me different things, all contradicting each other."
"But isn't that kind of status quo, considering?"
Alyson shook her head. "Not like this. This isn't just all the doors being close by. This is… Fuck me. This is the walls being there and not there at the same time, and the doors all being open and closed simultaneously."
Wolf’s eyebrows lifted, his version of open-mouthed shock. “That’s… not good, then.”
“No. And I can’t imagine it’s going to get better, either. In fact, if I had to hazard a professional guess, I’d say it was probably only going to deteriorate more as it goes on.” She took a long drink of cider and looked over the complicated grid of tables on the screen. “Okay. I’m going to give this another hard look and see if I can get a bead on anything that will help. Maybe figure out what I need to do next. Tell Kara not to worry and that I’ll be home soon. Give her a big kiss for me and tell her thanks.”
“Got it.”
Alyson sighed. “I don’t know about all this, pup. I have a really bad feeling, though. I may have to end up going to see some folks.”
“Oh. Time to drop in on the ex, then?”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that quite yet. No, I think first I’m going to go and see the Man.”
*
Somewhat deeper in the forest that is Otherwood proper, the autumn season had already given way. It is possible that it was a part of the forest (as the unwary traveler may stumble upon, who strays unwisely into the tangled and shadowed depths, and far from the paths he knows) where the seasons had wandered from their cycle altogether, and remembered only bare trees and bleak Winter. This is indeed one of the hazards of Otherwood’s nature, standing where it does and being what it is. Such anomalies may be mapped, but not charted, and careful walkers of Otherwood’s trails will verse themselves well in the Lore before setting off on the more uncommon of its trails.
Argus Kermassy, being of the Folk Under, had the Lore in his blood and bones, and in any case could scent his way home in a thunderstorm if he had to. (The various tribes and clans of the Wildish are not subject to Otherwood’s hazards as other folk are; they are all too happy, indeed, to be counted among the hazards themselves.) It was another kind of scent that had led him here, however, one that he’d given up ever catching again in the forest since years ago. It had only peen pure luck that he’d been out with his patrol when it came on the wind, and it was only because he knew could trust his senses with his life that he believed it at all. They’d all changed course with him to follow it, knowing as he did that it meant a small fortune and the quarry of their lives if they brought it down.
There were three others with him, the most trusted lieutenants of his war-band. Anemone, of course, his strong left hand, tall and silent and oblivious to the cold, despite being barefoot under her loose overcoat. Vasyl the Bok, as tough and as subtle as a sack of meat, but damn good with an axe, all blue-black skin and antelope horns. And Kindekin Weiss, with skin and hair the color of milk and a mouth full of ragged fangs, and a giggle that made even the other Folk Under afraid. They’d been on a routine patrol of the borders of their territory – you never knew when some idiot Brightlander hadn’t paid attention to Otherwood’s reputation, and was out wandering where they shouldn’t be – when that musk had drifted across their path, pungent and heady and unmistakable. None of them had questioned Argus when he took them off-course; these three would follow him to the gates of Heaven if he commanded it, which was why he kept them so close. They’d followed the trail, which had become visibly apparent very quickly, deep into the wood, quite a bit farther than their usual perambulations took them. But, hell, it had been a while since anyof them had been off on a good lark, and what a prize at the end!
Now they stood just behind a line of bare black trees and wiry bramble, looking out on a small glade and weighing their best strategy of attack. The great megatherium stood in six inches of snow, curling its claws around a pine branch and pulling it down to eat, slow and deliberate as a thunderhead. They were four against one, true, but the giant sloth was many times their mass and twice as tall as the biggest of them, and had claws and crushing tail and armor-thick pelt on its side. There was also the matter of how they were going to bring it back to the grottoes once they brought it down, but that was a problem they could afford to think about later – that skin, those bones, even the meat and the musk would keep them in trade and favors with the mages for a long time to come. Time was you could count on one of the big beasts wandering out of Otherwood every so often, straying from Elsewhere, or Elsewhen; but it had been a generation since the last one, and scarcity would surely have brought up the value.
Well, Argus had his long knife, and Vasyl had a poleaxe with a heavy meat-cleaver blade; Kindekin Weiss usually carried some kind of hook on a chain, bless him, and a couple of little knives of his own; and Anemone had mostly herself, though that was more than sufficient for most purposes. They were outfitted for border patrol and intimidating Brightland folk, not as a hunting party, and while they probably had enough muscle and skill between them to pull it off, Argus would’ve given a couple of eyes for a good spear, and maybe a crossbow. The Wildish didn’t like firearms much in general, and certainly not for things like this, which required at least a degree of sportsmanship. At least the big sloth hadn’t scented them, or hadn’t cared much if it had, considering that it was a creature that could hold its own against saber-toothed cats if it needed to.
Argus, wishing he’d worn something quieter than his leather coat, crouched down in the brush and whispered. “Right. We circle around it, and Anemone, you keep it distracted. I’ll go in for a hamstring; Kindekin Weiss, you stay on my side, so you can help bring it down with the hook if you need to.” Kindekin grinned and giggled. Argus glared at him, a thing he was uniquely suited to do. “When it’s down, Vasyl – killing blow. Back of the skull if you can; we keep as much of that beastie intact as we can help. Everyone ready?” There was a round of nods. Argus held up a hand to give the signal.
They all looked up to see the megatherium prick its ears, and lift its head. And the rest of them caught the scent then too – another one, stronger even than the sloth musk. This was what a thousand snakes in a pit smelled like, over a sweet reek of decay, with an edge of smoke and sulphur and acid. There was just time to let it register before chaos let loose.
It came in a dark shape, thirty feet long or so, slender and twisting and slick as oil, bursting out of the brush on the other side of the glade. It moved like an eel in water, serpentine body and four clawed legs all in tandem, with the gaping head held up, all horns and crest and teeth. There were wings, too, flexing there behind the forelegs, and they stretched up like fans as it rose and reared back to strike.
The sloth was already on the move, but not fast enough. The dragon was on it all at once, coiling and clawing and biting, and by the time the sloth raised its paw to strike, the fangs were in its throat and it was down. The crash of its toppling shook the ground, shook snow from the trees, and the wyrm unlooped itself from around its bulk and climbed atop it to begin to feed.
“Oh, bloody hell,” growled Argus, and then the dragon noticed them too.
Quick as thought, its coils slid down from the dead megathere and it charged the trees, hissing and gurgling. Its breath was hot and smelled like an open grave. Argus and his band were on their feet and running almost as fast, spreading out in different directions; this was a tactic they knew by rote.
Vasyl was half a second too late, and paid for it. The dragon slithered into his path and cut him off, and its barbed tail lashed out and swept his legs from under him. He rolled instantly to his knees and lifted his axe, lowering his head with its crown of horns and bellowing like an ox. But he left his belly unguarded, and one taloned hindleg struck out and cut him across. His viscera spilled out onto the snow, steaming, and he groaned and fell.
Anemone turned back and pulled open her coat, loosing the nest of purple, mouth-tipped tentacles that grew out of her abdomen. They rose up around her, pulsing and waving. The dragon took Vasyl’s body in its teeth and began to drag it back to the glade. It stopped when it saw her striding towards it, and lifted up its head. It made a horrible hacking sound in its throat, and vomited up a spray of liquid that ignited in the air, splashing in a red-hot stream over Anemone’s chest and face and knocking her backwards to the ground. It turned back to its prize, mouth smoking, and with its fangs locked in Vasyl’s thigh, slithered backwards to the glade, trailing his guts over the ground.
Argus ran over to where Anemone had fallen. She was fighting to pull herself up, steam trailing from the wounds on her chest and cheek where the flesh had bubbled. Argus put an arm behind her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. She started to move towards the glade, her eyes hard.
“Leave it,” said Argus. “He’s gone. We have to go, before it decides it’s going to need another repast later. We’ll keen when we’re back Under. That’s an order, Lieutenant.”
She scowled, but nodded, and drew her smoldering coat back around herself. The tentacles all twitched and rustled as they were covered again, letting out a low hum for a moment before they calmed themselves. She leaned against him and let out a long breath.
“Can you walk?” She nodded. “Good. Kindekin Weiss has already beat a path back, I see. Sharp of him.” They began to walk, steady but not too fast, and Argus kept a couple of eyes on the trees behind them as they went. “Well, I think we have a problem, don’t you? Or, on consideration, someone does, and I suppose I’m going to have to go up to that Moon-forsaken house and get her to do something about it.”
*
Twenty minutes after coming back downstairs, out of her coat and curled up amid pillows in front of the fireplace, the last of a bowl of perfect curry in her lap, Jenny Haniver was more than ready to take the Professor’s advice of an early night. It had been a long couple of weeks, and a long drive, and she felt the ache of it deeply.
Normally, she might have been inclined to stay longer in Murdoch’s house, since it seemed they saw less and less of each other these days that wasn’t business. But she found herself missing home any more when she was away from it. Hartshorn had been home to her for nearly nine years now, and she’d first come to it because the Lord of Otherwood lived there, and that was where her heart followed. But the place itself had been drawing her back more and more with each passing of the seasons. Especially now, in the autumn – longer and richer and more glorious in Otherwood, it seemed, than anywhere else – she felt it tug at her, stones and hearth and trees. Her blood might not be of the line, but more and more she felt that Otherwood was in her blood anyway, and was slightly surprised to feel as well the rightness of that.
She’d begun without realizing it to doze, and then to sleep. She was just getting into a good solid slumber when she heard soft footsteps enter the room. She stirred and looked up.
She had to admit that she’d always been impressed with how quietly Rayne could walk in heels on hardwood floors. He had his cloak over his arm and was giving the coals in the fireplace a little coaxing with the poker, and looked up over his shoulder as she sat up.
He smiled. “Welcome home, stranger. If I’d known you were in, I wouldn’t have let your wife get nearly so drunk tonight.”
“Oh, good.” Jenny took off her glasses, all askew from the cushions, and rubbed her eyes before replacing them. “I am so sending ahead next time. Speaking of which, where is my malodorous shadow?”
“In the front hall, I think, saying hello.”
“Suckup. Oh, shit, do I hurt all over. Maybe I should’ve tied one on myself.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think I know which of you will be happier in the morning.” Rayne stood and stretched, a cat in a satin dress.
“That bad? Aren’t you supposed to be keeping her out of trouble in between cuckolding me?”
“Not really, no,” said Rayne. More footsteps, much less careful and quiet than his, approached from the hall. “And, well, see for yourself.”
“Sweetie!” Marcie beelined for the couch, shedding her coat on the floor as she did; Rayne made a disapproving noise and plucked it up. Gregor flapped in after her and settled himself on the mantle, chortling. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back, baby. I missed you.”
“I can tell. I missed you too. Air.”
“Sorry.” Marcie giggled and sat up. Her eyes were bright with inebriation. “We should all go up to bed. We could open up some of last year’s Eiswein. Or, I know, do we have any hash?”
“Um, actually—”
“Actually,” said Rayne, “I think I’m going to call it a night, and crash on the couch. And you should get some rest with your wife. It has been helpfully pointed out that I’ve done more than my share of enabling tonight, so off to bed with you, young lady.”
“Sure, now you’re on my side,” said Jenny, but she sighed in relief and put an arm around Marcie. “Come on, babe. Up we go, or it’ll never happen.”
The Lord of Otherwood let out a whine of protest, but let herself be moved, unsteadily, into a standing position. She leaned against Jenny and purred. “Oh, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. Do you need your coat? Aren’t you cold?”
“Mmm, maybe, yeah.”
“Here.” Rayne draped the brocade frock coat around Marcie’s shoulders, and Jenny saw the flash of parchment and ribbon as he drew something out of the inside pocket.
“What’s that?”
Rayne sighed. “Something that can probably wait for morning. You’ll want a good sleep in you, believe me.”
Jenny scowled and looked at him over her glasses. “So this is something important you’ve taken it on yourself to not worry me with, then?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Not on your life, Guinevere. Give.”
“All right,” he said, closing his eyes and handing over the scroll, “but you’re not going to like it.”
“The fuck, Mar,” said Jenny. “Who the hell are the Kyr? What’s the Domanda?”
“It is, I take it, a kind of test,” said Rayne. “Or that’s what I gleaned out of the explanation I got on the ride home. I get the impression it was something the late previous Marchess didn’t quite have the opportunity to explain in full before he, well.”
“Died,” said Marcie. “You can say died. I know he’s dead.”
“Yes. Anyway, after nine years, the Lord of Otherwood has to go before this Parliament in Nisroch and, what, pass an interview of some kind? Is that right?”
“Uh-huh,” said Marcie, nodding solemnly.
Jenny scowled. “For what? To see if she gets a raise?”
“No, Jenny,” said Rayne. “To see if she gets to keep her job.”
“Well, what the hell? Who in the name of all the gods and little fishes are the Kyr, and what do they have to do with Otherwood?”
“Jenny,” said Rayne. “Nine years you’ve been here, now? And it never occurred to you to wonder just where her authority comes from?”
“Well, fuck, Rayne, I though it came from, you know.” She gestured vaguely at the wall. “Out there. The land. The Mystery. Whatever.”
“Yes, that too.” Rayne sighed and rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. “But there’s still got to be protocol, I gather. A governing body, to make sure it’s running properly, and to keep it all from getting too intangible and arbitrary. Or at least there has been for a few thousand years now. That’s what the Kyr are.”
“The beaurocracy.”
“I suppose.”
“They’re fuckers,” said Marcie. “Bastards.”
“That, too.” Rayne pulled off his shawl and started to peel his gloves. “So, are you happy now? Think you’ll sleep better on all that?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Jenny.
“Good, then. I’m going to sleep.” His brow creased. “Jenny.”
“What.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “You know I’m here. If, you know… if there’s anything. You know that.”
She started to call up a retort and bit it back. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He paused, then walked over, and bent and kissed Jenny on the forehead. “Go, depart. The Queen dismisses you. Take care of her. I’m sure this is all going to look better in the morning.”
Oh there have I understood
- Current 93, "The Cloud of Unknowing"
West and north of Norton, not far outside the sprawl of the campus grounds of Tower College, the lights and life of the city give way to rolling hills and quiet suburban villages. The air of quaintness that pervades the city is, if anything, more apparent here without Norton’s veneer of modernity, as the tangled roadways (which the wise traveler will not venture too far on without the assistance of a map, and perhaps not then) yield little inns and churches and farmhouses that seem to have stumbled out of the Colonial age into this one, and, having realized themselves out of their era, sit calm and bemused in valleys and on hilltops and wait for the frippery of centuries to pass by. The countryside here is wild and wooded, the earth no more than half-tamed in any handful of acreage. Signs by the roadside are few and far between, but any that have been bothered to mark out some piece of geography as distinct from any other invariably claim it as part of the township of Otherwood.
And there is a quality to the people, too, the ones standing outside farmsteads and on porches, that seems to suggest that they themselves might have stood here, save for some slight changes in wardrobe, since the days of Penn himself. (There is always the possibility, of course, that for some of them this might be true.) They might say, on reflection, that life here is much as it ever was, that little changes in Otherwood as it does in the world outside. And this is true, but only to a certain extent.
But it is true that Otherwood is old, older even than the most elder of the foundations in any building within its demesne, older than the lineage of any of the folk of European descent who live on its lands; it was old when the Lena’pe came, and ancient indeed when the first stones were laid on the nearby ground that would become the first and most prominent college of the art of Magic in a young America. It is old, and its memory is long – before the first hunters, before the ice, before humanity.
But it has always had a Lord.
*
Seated atop a low hill ringed with hedge and oak and briar, the great house Hartshorn has been the seat, for the last few centuries, of the most recent line of the Lords of Otherwood, who have styled themselves Marchesses since taking on that stewardship. And indeed the house does stand on borderland, in many ways; among others, it marks the last frontier of Otherwood the township before Otherwood the wild forest swallows the landscape entirely.
It rises just above the trees around it, a mad motley of architecture, as if the Age of Reason that gave it birth stopped just at its threshhold and loosed all its repressed chaotic urges at once. Its foundations and ground floors suggest the monastic, heavy hewn blocks and pointed arches and doorways flanked by tall, solid columns. Above this, brick begins to dominate, and sharp-edged gables spring from its upper stories. The massive central chimney is mortared stone, and begins to spiral just slightly as it clears the rooftop. Above all, from one back corner, a huge round turret topped with a Gothic spire towers over the rest of the house’s improbable topography, ringed with tall, rounded windows with spiderweb panes.
Hartshorn, for all its size and capacity, has only rarely during its history been home to many people at once. The Marchesses have on the whole declined lives of ostentatiousness, perhaps from finding themselves in a land that decided early and with some vehemence to do away with Lords and their trappings altogether, and perhaps out of pragmatism as well; the power and duty of the Lord of Otherwood touch only rarely on mundane or terrestrial concerns, and a small retinue helps maintain a certain focus.
So it was that mage-adept Jenny Haniver – who was not Marchess of Otherwood, but who had nonetheless called Hartshorn home for the better part of a decade – came into the house on a crisp and gorgeous autumn evening after some time away to find it nearly empty.
She was not especially surprised by this, as she’d cut short her trip by a couple of days and hadn’t phoned in. The minimal household staff were undoubtedly in their own quarters by now, with the possible exception of Penrod, who might be occupied with any number of things in some unseen corner. The one real disappointment was the absence of the current Marchess, but that was the risk she took coming home unannounced.
We should probably pause a moment to consider Jenny as she comes in here, and pauses herself on the doorstep of Hartshorn, her travel bag slung over one shoulder. She is deceptively small, short and compact, though just how she’s put together under her layers of clothes can be hard to judge. Her hair is a perpetual hopeless mess, just long enough to hang in her eyes, which are behind square glasses; her myopia is an annoyance she has been unable to otherwise correct. She wears shapeless trousers and heavy boots and an overcoat so worn and stained it’s begun to look almost leathery, and a long scarf for the autumn chill. She holds the stub of a cigar in her teeth, which she takes in her hand as soon as she sets her bag down on the floor, and blows a small, perfect smoke ring apparently by reflex. She does not, for various reasons, look her age, but a casual observer might put her anywhere between nineteen and thirty-five or so.
There is also a large raven perched on her shoulder, opposite where she’s just unslung her satchel. His name is Gregor, and he is a master of that particularly corvid air of seeming to regard anywhere he finds himself as slightly beneath his dignity.
Just how much of Jenny’s innocuously rumpled appearance is the result of her natural personality, and how much is calculated to camouflage that she is one of the most skilled adepts of the Art in living memory, is something she has never given a satisfactory answer to. As with many magicians, it is probable that she has been in practice so long that the line between the two has become so blurred as to be meaningless.
“Okay, off, you, before I cramp.” Jenny shrugged, and Gregor let out a halfhearted croak of protest and flapped over to settle on the back of an especially threadbare chaise. Jenny knelt at her dropped bag and fished out a compact box wrapped in gold paper. “Right. First things first, then.”
She wove through the maze of halls and rooms to the far end of the house and went up the several sets of staircases leading to the easternmost gable. The door to its small attic room was closed, but there was a light behind it, and soft music playing. She knocked.
“Come in,” said the voice behind the door.
It wasn’t locked; it never was. Jenny pulled out the door and stepped around it into the room. It was small but comfortable, despite not quite having recovered from being a storage space a generation or so ago; trunks and boxes were still piled in the corners. But a small couch had been conscripted into service, and what had once been an ottoman refitted into a coffee table. There was also a stand with a phonograph off to one side, from which the sound of lute and voice was crackling. And there was a writing desk in front of the window, at which the room’s sole occupant was bent.
Professor Nandana let his quill scratch to the edge of the page before replacing it delicately in its inkwell and turning in his chair to face the door. He was big-bellied and broad-featured, and dressed in his habitual loose brown kurta, with a pair of small round spectacles perched on his prominent nose. He was smiling, as he usually was, his teeth white in the dark tangle of his beard, save for the gap where one was missing on the right. Jenny had never gotten a straight answer from him how he’d lost it, but given the Professor’s fondness for candy and sweet tea, she had some theories.
“Hello, Jenny. Welcome home. How was your trip?”
“Exhausting.” She sat down on the little couch. Gregor, at the end of his limit of being attention-deprived, flapped through the doorway and lit on the arm at the other end. “How’s the sabbatical?”
“I do my best to remain productive.” Nandana gestured toward the neat stack of parchment accumulating on one side of his desk. “And hello to you too, Mister Gregor.”
“Oh, don’t encourage him.” Jenny pulled out the little box she’d brought up. “Here. I brought you something.”
His eyes glittered. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Probably. That’s from Teuscher. It’s the assortment. Try not to eat them all at once, okay?”
“I shall do my best to exercise restraint,” he said, inclining his head, “but I’m afraid I can make no promises in the presence of such truly excellent truffles. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And do not share them with Midnight Dreary over here. He knows they’re not eyes, and don’t let him tell you otherwise.” Gregor ruffled up his feathers and did his best to look affronted. “So where is everyone tonight?”
“If by ‘everyone’ you mean Mistress Branleigh, I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Nandana. “I went for a long walk this afternoon and she was gone when I returned. I believe Master Penrod is still about the premises, however, and will almost certainly have a better answer.” He slid the box of chocolates out of its wrapping paper, and the lid from the box. “Would you like one?”
“No, thanks. I haven’t eaten all day, and I think I need something more substantial. I’m about to go down to the kitchen and see what I can scare up.”
“Ah. Well, in that case, I believe the last of some passable gobi aloo is still in the icebox.”
“Yours?”
“Indeed.”
“I’m on it.” She stood and stretched. “Gods, I’m tired. It’s good to be home.”
Nandana selected a truffle and bit into it. “Mmm. Wonderful. And how is Master Murdoch these days?”
Jenny sighed. “Spooky and weird and harried. As usual. But I think we got his current problem as under control as we’re going to. He sends his regards.”
“Which I must return someday soon, before my classroom duties call again. Well. You should go eat, Jenny Haniver, and get some rest. The rest of the household will be happy to see you in the morning.”
“Oh, I’m sure. We’ll see how I feel after food. Enjoy the chocolates, Professor.”
She was about to turn for the door when a crisp double knock came from outside the doorway. Penrod, butler to the Marchess of Otherwood for at least two generations now, was standing in the hall with a tray of tea. Like Jenny, his actual age was impossible to tell; he had sleek dark hair and a round, handsome face. She understood that there was fey blood in his family tree, but the only visible tell was a very slight point to his ears. He was also the only member of the household shorter than her (by half a head, even), a fact that she had just enough conscience to feel guilty about taking pleasure in.
“Welcome home, Magus. I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a cup of herbal for you. Sir, your Earl Grey.”
Jenny sighed. “No such thing as an unobtrusive entrance around here, is there?”
“No, Magus. Not with your luggage in the hallway and half a cigar in the tray by the coatpegs.” Penrod poured tea into the Professor’s cup, stirred in milk and plentiful sugar. Nandana took it with a nod. “I trust Boston remains as it was?”
“More or less. I think I’m going to take this down to the fire, if you don’t mind. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Magus. Will you be requiring anything else?”
“Nothing that’s in your job description.” Gregor gave a little croaking chuckle from the couch. It was one of the more distressing human habits he’d picked up over the years. Jenny frowned and shot him a glare. “Any idea where my better half has vanished to?”
Penrod brushed invisible lint from his cuffs. “Her Lordship has gone into town tonight, and has given every indication of returning rather late.”
“Of course. And she’s with Rayne, isn’t she?”
“I trust there will be no shock in my answering in the affirmative, Magus.”
Jenny took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Well, that’s what I get for coming home early and not calling ahead. I go to bed early while my wife’s out with her girlfriend.”
*
That it was greatly amusing to Rayne to be called that was a cause of some aggravation to Jenny, but he’d learned, for his part, not to be too bothered by her aggravation. Though he’d have been the first to admit that the moods of one’s lover’s spouse are a thing not to be taken lightly, it hadn’t taken much exposure to Jenny to conclude that there was frequently more drama than substance in hers.
Jenny’s short fuse was a useful corrective, however, to the guilt he still occasionally felt about the arrangement. He’d given up ages ago trying to figure out whether that was intentional on her part, and whether she’d admit to it if he asked. He wasn’t the first lover the Marchess had taken since her marriage (and he had his doubts, if it came down to it, about Jenny, though they were both resolutely silent on that subject around him), but from what he understood, being noticed enough to be the target of Jenny Haniver’s wit and abuse was a kind of compliment. It didn’t take long knowing her before he began to believe it.
What Rayne found harder to believe was that Marcie Branleigh – that is, Branwen Fiona Belladonna Bishop-Ashleigh, seventeenth Marchess of Otherwood – kept him around after all this time. She had some of the same agelessness as her wife, though Marcie wore hers with style, and if a few silver threads had begun at last to creep in amid the crow-dark hair, she made that look dashing and elegant too. He often wondered how she’d managed to pull off going incognito during her years of exile, when she’d adopted the name that she came to prefer to her True one; it seemed to him that nobility and sheer class shone on her like a beacon. The handful of times he’d mentioned something on that order to her, she told him he was biased, and he had to admit that was true too.
He also had to admit that the affair had given him lots of opportunities to attend to (or indulge in, perhaps) his own sartorial obsessions, out of sheer determination to not be entirely outshone by his lover. If he spent more time these days than he had before in search of that just-so item – the perfect black dress or pair of boots, the pefect match of jewelry and makeup – he reminded himself that the role of Noble Consort took some effort to live up to.
He kept his head and body sleek and shaved to the skin, save for carefully plucked eyebrows and a close, wedge-shaped patch on his chin. For the evening’s outing he’d selected a basic satiny strapless with a slit up the side, and offset it with thigh-highs and knee boots and a translucent drape with a shimmering leaf-pattern woven in. This last he was careful to wear to show the pendant – a silver pentacle-and-crescent set with an uncut garnet – that dangled from a choker at his throat. He knew there were those who disagreed, but he never saw the point in being a witch if you weren’t going to broadcast it to the whole room.
The room in question was the Six of Cups, a Guild club in Norton’s downtown where the adepts of various schools and lodges could mingle over cocktails and pretent they didn’t despise each other for a little while. Technically, Rayne wasn’t on the guest list; covens were not officially affiliated with the Guild of the Great Art, for various reasons that mostly boiled down to people being stupid at each other for hundreds of years. But Marcie had learned at the Scholomance, and so had an in, and had found besides that even the most sneering and uptight mages were reluctant to say no to the Lord of Otherwood. Rayne was spending a good deal of the night standing at the bar, scandalizing the crowd and trying not to let it show on his immaculately-glossed lips.
He’d discovered early in the evening that his taste for hanging out with Marcie’s old friends was currently in wane. Even Garron, who Rayne usually liked, was being especially catty tonight, and it had gotten worse all around as the drink flowed. He decided that sobriety was probably wiser than the various alternatives, so he’d spent the last two hours nursing the hell out of his amaretto sour and watching as the various little deals, battles of will, connections and debates were acted out all over the club, and listening to the half-electric chamber ensemble in the corner drone out the kind of music magicians thought they were supposed to like.
This meant that he spotted the messenger as soon as he walked in. He was obviously there working, and not part of the clientele: too energetic, not nearly desolate enough. He was also dressed practically, a thing nearly unheard-of at the Cups: a hooded sweater and cargo pants with bulging pockets. There was also a battered satchel slung over his shoulder marked with the rune Ansuz in bright red, which was the biggest tell that he was a courier on the job. He spotted Rayne looking his way and caught his eye, and wove through the crowd to him.
“Pardon. You wouldn’t happen to be the Lord of Otherwood, by any chance?”
“Not quite, sweetie. I’m her mistress. What do you need?”
The messenger pulled out a silver scrollcase from his shoulder bag. “I’m to deliver this to the Lord Marchess of Otherwood who’s supposed to be here tonight. Only it’s an eyes-only kind of thing, see. Very private and important.”
“Right.” Rayne sighed. “Of course. Come with me.”
Marcie had a corner table, and was sprawled in a high-backed chair in the gunfighter’s seat, a wineglass in one hand and a long, slender tavern pipe in the other. She had on one of her distinctive brocade frock coats, over pinstripe trousers and a silk poet’s shirt with long cuffs. She was wearing her hair even shorter than Jenny these days, night-dark against her pale skin. She looked up and smiled as Rayne approached, but didn’t get up. The little circle of hangers-on around the table hardly gave them a glance.
Rayne gestured with one long-gloved hand. “Her Lordship the Marchess of Otherwood. Deliver away.”
Marcie cocked an eyebrow. “Wow, Rayne. As a herald, you make a great ornament.”
“Darling, if that was what you thought you were keeping me around for, I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
Garron, who was little more than a goatee and Buddy Holly glasses in the smoke haze, giggled. “Oh, honey, I’m sure she’d figure out something to do with that tongue of yours, one way or another.”
Rayne rolled his eyes. “Yes, let’s completely terrorize the courier service. I’m sure his night’s not complete without at least one sledgehammer innuendo. Well done, Mary.”
Marcie shook her head and stood up. “Hi. I’m Marcie. Don’t mind the entourage. My father had a full house, and somehow all I got was a pair of queens.” A chorus of chortles sounded around the table. “What can I do for you?”
The messenger held up the scroll-case. “It needs your signet to open, m’lady. It’s a letter for you.”
“Okay.” Marcie fished a long chain out of her shirt; a heavy silver seal ring dangled from it. She slipped it onto her right forefinger. “Do I get any hints?”
“It’s not for me to say, m’lady.” He held up the case, and Marcie pressed her ring to the embossed sigil on one end. It snapped open, and a roll of parchment tied with ribbon slid out. “There you go. If you’ll just give me your seal here.” He popped a little wax disk out of the end of the case, and Marcie touched the ring to that too. He gave a little salute. “Thanks so much, m’lady. Good evening to you folks.” And with that, he turned on his heel and was gone.
“What is it, Mar?” Nadia, a red-haired woman who Rayne was reasonably sure had been Noble Consort a time or two herself, looked over her brandy glass at the parchment, heavy with seals and dangling ribbon, that Marcie was unrolling. “Who’s it from?”
Marcie’s eyes danced back and forth over it for a moment, and widened, just a fraction. She bit her lip, and looked up, rolling the scroll tight again and stuffing it into her coat. She smiled. “Nothing. Big buildup, no payoff. Silly protocol stuff.” She picked up her wineglass again, and raised it. “Let’s get back to the business of getting out of our heads.”
That got a round of cheers, but Rayne caught her eye and raised a questioning brow at her. The look she shot him back begged him not to push. He sighed and lifted his own glass.
“Hey, Rayne,” said Garron. “Since you’re up, can I talk you into heralding me a refill?” Snickers erupted from the crowd.
“A double Fuck Off and Die, Bitch, was it?” said Rayne, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d seen the moment of fear that had passed over Marcie’s face, quick and sharp as a lightning flash. Whatever it was someone had taken such trouble to put in her hands wasn’t any kind of good news, and anything she was that eager to gloss over was sure to only be waiting to go off in a big way. He’d never been that good at reading signs and portents, but he knew reading people backwards and forwards, and what was written on Marcie was a volume of trouble.
*
Alyson Shae, on the other hand, was very good at reading signs and portents; she might have said that this was because her approach to the Craft was somewhat more old-school than Rayne’s, though it might have had more to do with being an nth-generation practitioner who’d gotten Calling the Corners around the same time as her picture books. But she didn’t like what she was seeing any damn more than Rayne did.
She’d been holed up in what she insisted on calling The Cottage for three days, with two loaves of bread, a wedge of cheese, and enough orange-and-clove tea to open her own shop, if there had been anyone other than rabbits and bats and the occasional raccoon to drop in for a cup. She hadn’t touched most of it, though. When she got into her work, eating was something she had to remind herself to keep doing, sometimes with an alarm clock.
The type of magic practiced by people who call themselves witches is not terribly different from that practiced by folk who prefer the term adept or mage. It does come from the same sort of energy, ultimately, and tends to collect many of the same sorts of trappings around it; and adepts and witches do find that they speak dialects of a common language, when they can get around to not glaring at each other for long enough to actually have a conversation. The difference, more than anything, is one of philosophy, or perhaps attitude. A mage is a shaper of energies, who knows a thousand little tricks to bend the world in accordance with his Will. A witch, on the other hand, is likely to be more of an observer, who tunes himself in just so to the energies all around him that a little push, precisely placed, will shift the world just far enough in the direction he desires to produce the results he wants. Both are legitimate and useful approaches. It’s just that witches tend to be more subtle, and careful, and delicate, while an adept tends to know things like a Word that will turn stone to powder and make a man’s ears implode.
So Alyson, following the hair-prickling instinct that had drawn her out to The Cottage in the first place, had made copies of every topographical and survey map of the surrounding area that she could get her hands on (including a few she was most definitely not supposed to know about), and laid them in certain patterns all around the floor, and sprinkled them with carefully selected and finely-ground oak leaves and topsoil, and made careful note of the patterns; and spent hours watching and mapping the flight patterns of hawks, crows, geese, swallows, as they flew over the trees; and brewed tea from precisely selected herbs and mushrooms from all over a half-mile radius, and paid close attention to the dreams that came that night; and even sat up into the small hours listening to the the chorus of insect buzz against the sonar squeaks of the bats that nested in the bat box outside, until she swore she could hallucinate in sound-shapes and taste chitin (and she did break for a particularly strong dose of orange tea right after that, though the flavor of moth lingered unpleasantly even then). And she spent long hours compiling and cataloguing it all in a database on the laptop she’d hooked up to The Cottage’s generator, because while Alyson was old-school, she was also not an idiot.
And the infuriating thing was that it was all off, in some head-scratching, barely perceptible way, that once you noticed it was impossible to ignore. The data just did not add up in the ways it should have; there were gaps in the readings that should not have been there, and were moreover not even consistent from one set of observations to another. Suspecting human error, she retested as much as she could, but the conclusions themselves remained the same. It all hurt to think about, like a puzzle whose pieces looked like they lined up just right to fit, but when you put them together showed a picture that had somehow slid in three different directions from true.
Clearly, something in Otherwood was very, very wrong.
Now, at the end of the third day, she was bent over the keyboard again, trying to arrange all the ill-fitting pieces so at least the gaps between them might form a shape she could recognize, some notable absence of quality that could present a solution to it all. She was deeply enough involved in the work of it that she almost didn't hear the door open.
Wolf, a striped scarf wrapped around his neck to just under his red beard, edged through the doorway with a paper bag in his arms, and stepped carefully around the chaos of papers and paraphernalia on the floor. He looked in vain for a clear surface in the room, and finally sighed and set the bag down in a corner.
"Hi, love," he said. "How's it going?"
Alyson sat back and groaned. "Frustrating. It's all wrong. I've been at this for hours and I can't make any damn sense of it. I'm about ready to give it all up and go work as a waitress somewhere. Like, California, maybe."
"Well, before you do that, Kara sent you some pumpkin bread and apples and cold chicken sandwiches. And there's a bottle of cider in there, too. She's been worried about you, you know."
"I figured. It's not me she should be worried about. It's… Christ and the Lady, Wolf, I've never seen anything like this. It's like everything is… fragmenting."
His brow furrowed. "Yeah? How?"
"Here, give me that cider. Maybe getting the buzz on will be the answer I need. Gods know I've tried everything else." He bent and fished it out of the bag with a rustle, twisted off the cap, and handed it over. "Thanks. Wow, that's really good. I don't know. It's like… it's like there are about five different Otherwoods out here, all telling me different things, all contradicting each other."
"But isn't that kind of status quo, considering?"
Alyson shook her head. "Not like this. This isn't just all the doors being close by. This is… Fuck me. This is the walls being there and not there at the same time, and the doors all being open and closed simultaneously."
Wolf’s eyebrows lifted, his version of open-mouthed shock. “That’s… not good, then.”
“No. And I can’t imagine it’s going to get better, either. In fact, if I had to hazard a professional guess, I’d say it was probably only going to deteriorate more as it goes on.” She took a long drink of cider and looked over the complicated grid of tables on the screen. “Okay. I’m going to give this another hard look and see if I can get a bead on anything that will help. Maybe figure out what I need to do next. Tell Kara not to worry and that I’ll be home soon. Give her a big kiss for me and tell her thanks.”
“Got it.”
Alyson sighed. “I don’t know about all this, pup. I have a really bad feeling, though. I may have to end up going to see some folks.”
“Oh. Time to drop in on the ex, then?”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that quite yet. No, I think first I’m going to go and see the Man.”
*
Somewhat deeper in the forest that is Otherwood proper, the autumn season had already given way. It is possible that it was a part of the forest (as the unwary traveler may stumble upon, who strays unwisely into the tangled and shadowed depths, and far from the paths he knows) where the seasons had wandered from their cycle altogether, and remembered only bare trees and bleak Winter. This is indeed one of the hazards of Otherwood’s nature, standing where it does and being what it is. Such anomalies may be mapped, but not charted, and careful walkers of Otherwood’s trails will verse themselves well in the Lore before setting off on the more uncommon of its trails.
Argus Kermassy, being of the Folk Under, had the Lore in his blood and bones, and in any case could scent his way home in a thunderstorm if he had to. (The various tribes and clans of the Wildish are not subject to Otherwood’s hazards as other folk are; they are all too happy, indeed, to be counted among the hazards themselves.) It was another kind of scent that had led him here, however, one that he’d given up ever catching again in the forest since years ago. It had only peen pure luck that he’d been out with his patrol when it came on the wind, and it was only because he knew could trust his senses with his life that he believed it at all. They’d all changed course with him to follow it, knowing as he did that it meant a small fortune and the quarry of their lives if they brought it down.
There were three others with him, the most trusted lieutenants of his war-band. Anemone, of course, his strong left hand, tall and silent and oblivious to the cold, despite being barefoot under her loose overcoat. Vasyl the Bok, as tough and as subtle as a sack of meat, but damn good with an axe, all blue-black skin and antelope horns. And Kindekin Weiss, with skin and hair the color of milk and a mouth full of ragged fangs, and a giggle that made even the other Folk Under afraid. They’d been on a routine patrol of the borders of their territory – you never knew when some idiot Brightlander hadn’t paid attention to Otherwood’s reputation, and was out wandering where they shouldn’t be – when that musk had drifted across their path, pungent and heady and unmistakable. None of them had questioned Argus when he took them off-course; these three would follow him to the gates of Heaven if he commanded it, which was why he kept them so close. They’d followed the trail, which had become visibly apparent very quickly, deep into the wood, quite a bit farther than their usual perambulations took them. But, hell, it had been a while since anyof them had been off on a good lark, and what a prize at the end!
Now they stood just behind a line of bare black trees and wiry bramble, looking out on a small glade and weighing their best strategy of attack. The great megatherium stood in six inches of snow, curling its claws around a pine branch and pulling it down to eat, slow and deliberate as a thunderhead. They were four against one, true, but the giant sloth was many times their mass and twice as tall as the biggest of them, and had claws and crushing tail and armor-thick pelt on its side. There was also the matter of how they were going to bring it back to the grottoes once they brought it down, but that was a problem they could afford to think about later – that skin, those bones, even the meat and the musk would keep them in trade and favors with the mages for a long time to come. Time was you could count on one of the big beasts wandering out of Otherwood every so often, straying from Elsewhere, or Elsewhen; but it had been a generation since the last one, and scarcity would surely have brought up the value.
Well, Argus had his long knife, and Vasyl had a poleaxe with a heavy meat-cleaver blade; Kindekin Weiss usually carried some kind of hook on a chain, bless him, and a couple of little knives of his own; and Anemone had mostly herself, though that was more than sufficient for most purposes. They were outfitted for border patrol and intimidating Brightland folk, not as a hunting party, and while they probably had enough muscle and skill between them to pull it off, Argus would’ve given a couple of eyes for a good spear, and maybe a crossbow. The Wildish didn’t like firearms much in general, and certainly not for things like this, which required at least a degree of sportsmanship. At least the big sloth hadn’t scented them, or hadn’t cared much if it had, considering that it was a creature that could hold its own against saber-toothed cats if it needed to.
Argus, wishing he’d worn something quieter than his leather coat, crouched down in the brush and whispered. “Right. We circle around it, and Anemone, you keep it distracted. I’ll go in for a hamstring; Kindekin Weiss, you stay on my side, so you can help bring it down with the hook if you need to.” Kindekin grinned and giggled. Argus glared at him, a thing he was uniquely suited to do. “When it’s down, Vasyl – killing blow. Back of the skull if you can; we keep as much of that beastie intact as we can help. Everyone ready?” There was a round of nods. Argus held up a hand to give the signal.
They all looked up to see the megatherium prick its ears, and lift its head. And the rest of them caught the scent then too – another one, stronger even than the sloth musk. This was what a thousand snakes in a pit smelled like, over a sweet reek of decay, with an edge of smoke and sulphur and acid. There was just time to let it register before chaos let loose.
It came in a dark shape, thirty feet long or so, slender and twisting and slick as oil, bursting out of the brush on the other side of the glade. It moved like an eel in water, serpentine body and four clawed legs all in tandem, with the gaping head held up, all horns and crest and teeth. There were wings, too, flexing there behind the forelegs, and they stretched up like fans as it rose and reared back to strike.
The sloth was already on the move, but not fast enough. The dragon was on it all at once, coiling and clawing and biting, and by the time the sloth raised its paw to strike, the fangs were in its throat and it was down. The crash of its toppling shook the ground, shook snow from the trees, and the wyrm unlooped itself from around its bulk and climbed atop it to begin to feed.
“Oh, bloody hell,” growled Argus, and then the dragon noticed them too.
Quick as thought, its coils slid down from the dead megathere and it charged the trees, hissing and gurgling. Its breath was hot and smelled like an open grave. Argus and his band were on their feet and running almost as fast, spreading out in different directions; this was a tactic they knew by rote.
Vasyl was half a second too late, and paid for it. The dragon slithered into his path and cut him off, and its barbed tail lashed out and swept his legs from under him. He rolled instantly to his knees and lifted his axe, lowering his head with its crown of horns and bellowing like an ox. But he left his belly unguarded, and one taloned hindleg struck out and cut him across. His viscera spilled out onto the snow, steaming, and he groaned and fell.
Anemone turned back and pulled open her coat, loosing the nest of purple, mouth-tipped tentacles that grew out of her abdomen. They rose up around her, pulsing and waving. The dragon took Vasyl’s body in its teeth and began to drag it back to the glade. It stopped when it saw her striding towards it, and lifted up its head. It made a horrible hacking sound in its throat, and vomited up a spray of liquid that ignited in the air, splashing in a red-hot stream over Anemone’s chest and face and knocking her backwards to the ground. It turned back to its prize, mouth smoking, and with its fangs locked in Vasyl’s thigh, slithered backwards to the glade, trailing his guts over the ground.
Argus ran over to where Anemone had fallen. She was fighting to pull herself up, steam trailing from the wounds on her chest and cheek where the flesh had bubbled. Argus put an arm behind her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. She started to move towards the glade, her eyes hard.
“Leave it,” said Argus. “He’s gone. We have to go, before it decides it’s going to need another repast later. We’ll keen when we’re back Under. That’s an order, Lieutenant.”
She scowled, but nodded, and drew her smoldering coat back around herself. The tentacles all twitched and rustled as they were covered again, letting out a low hum for a moment before they calmed themselves. She leaned against him and let out a long breath.
“Can you walk?” She nodded. “Good. Kindekin Weiss has already beat a path back, I see. Sharp of him.” They began to walk, steady but not too fast, and Argus kept a couple of eyes on the trees behind them as they went. “Well, I think we have a problem, don’t you? Or, on consideration, someone does, and I suppose I’m going to have to go up to that Moon-forsaken house and get her to do something about it.”
*
Twenty minutes after coming back downstairs, out of her coat and curled up amid pillows in front of the fireplace, the last of a bowl of perfect curry in her lap, Jenny Haniver was more than ready to take the Professor’s advice of an early night. It had been a long couple of weeks, and a long drive, and she felt the ache of it deeply.
Normally, she might have been inclined to stay longer in Murdoch’s house, since it seemed they saw less and less of each other these days that wasn’t business. But she found herself missing home any more when she was away from it. Hartshorn had been home to her for nearly nine years now, and she’d first come to it because the Lord of Otherwood lived there, and that was where her heart followed. But the place itself had been drawing her back more and more with each passing of the seasons. Especially now, in the autumn – longer and richer and more glorious in Otherwood, it seemed, than anywhere else – she felt it tug at her, stones and hearth and trees. Her blood might not be of the line, but more and more she felt that Otherwood was in her blood anyway, and was slightly surprised to feel as well the rightness of that.
She’d begun without realizing it to doze, and then to sleep. She was just getting into a good solid slumber when she heard soft footsteps enter the room. She stirred and looked up.
She had to admit that she’d always been impressed with how quietly Rayne could walk in heels on hardwood floors. He had his cloak over his arm and was giving the coals in the fireplace a little coaxing with the poker, and looked up over his shoulder as she sat up.
He smiled. “Welcome home, stranger. If I’d known you were in, I wouldn’t have let your wife get nearly so drunk tonight.”
“Oh, good.” Jenny took off her glasses, all askew from the cushions, and rubbed her eyes before replacing them. “I am so sending ahead next time. Speaking of which, where is my malodorous shadow?”
“In the front hall, I think, saying hello.”
“Suckup. Oh, shit, do I hurt all over. Maybe I should’ve tied one on myself.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think I know which of you will be happier in the morning.” Rayne stood and stretched, a cat in a satin dress.
“That bad? Aren’t you supposed to be keeping her out of trouble in between cuckolding me?”
“Not really, no,” said Rayne. More footsteps, much less careful and quiet than his, approached from the hall. “And, well, see for yourself.”
“Sweetie!” Marcie beelined for the couch, shedding her coat on the floor as she did; Rayne made a disapproving noise and plucked it up. Gregor flapped in after her and settled himself on the mantle, chortling. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back, baby. I missed you.”
“I can tell. I missed you too. Air.”
“Sorry.” Marcie giggled and sat up. Her eyes were bright with inebriation. “We should all go up to bed. We could open up some of last year’s Eiswein. Or, I know, do we have any hash?”
“Um, actually—”
“Actually,” said Rayne, “I think I’m going to call it a night, and crash on the couch. And you should get some rest with your wife. It has been helpfully pointed out that I’ve done more than my share of enabling tonight, so off to bed with you, young lady.”
“Sure, now you’re on my side,” said Jenny, but she sighed in relief and put an arm around Marcie. “Come on, babe. Up we go, or it’ll never happen.”
The Lord of Otherwood let out a whine of protest, but let herself be moved, unsteadily, into a standing position. She leaned against Jenny and purred. “Oh, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. Do you need your coat? Aren’t you cold?”
“Mmm, maybe, yeah.”
“Here.” Rayne draped the brocade frock coat around Marcie’s shoulders, and Jenny saw the flash of parchment and ribbon as he drew something out of the inside pocket.
“What’s that?”
Rayne sighed. “Something that can probably wait for morning. You’ll want a good sleep in you, believe me.”
Jenny scowled and looked at him over her glasses. “So this is something important you’ve taken it on yourself to not worry me with, then?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Not on your life, Guinevere. Give.”
“All right,” he said, closing his eyes and handing over the scroll, “but you’re not going to like it.”
Her Lordship Branwen Bishop-Ashleigh, by the grace of the Mystery 17th Marchess of the domain and Realm of OTHERWOOD, its lands, holdings, pathways, gates, and appurtenances, and of the house Hartshorn and all Retinue thereof –
In this the 9th year of her Stewardship of the aforesaid, is hereby called to stand the Domanda before this just and Honorable Parliament of the Kyr, here in the glorious citadel NISROCH, on the day of Midwinter in this current Cycle of days;
Thereby to determine all future and ongoing Sovereignty of those realms and demesnes as listed heretofore, and the sway, tenure and succession Thereof, as by the laws given in the great Charter of dominion, established by the Wisdom of the assembly of this Body in its first convocation.
We greatly anticipate the pleasure of your Attendance.
Sincerely,
His Grace Lord Athanasius Aurelian Ozmand, First Alder
[his seal]
“The fuck, Mar,” said Jenny. “Who the hell are the Kyr? What’s the Domanda?”
“It is, I take it, a kind of test,” said Rayne. “Or that’s what I gleaned out of the explanation I got on the ride home. I get the impression it was something the late previous Marchess didn’t quite have the opportunity to explain in full before he, well.”
“Died,” said Marcie. “You can say died. I know he’s dead.”
“Yes. Anyway, after nine years, the Lord of Otherwood has to go before this Parliament in Nisroch and, what, pass an interview of some kind? Is that right?”
“Uh-huh,” said Marcie, nodding solemnly.
Jenny scowled. “For what? To see if she gets a raise?”
“No, Jenny,” said Rayne. “To see if she gets to keep her job.”
“Well, what the hell? Who in the name of all the gods and little fishes are the Kyr, and what do they have to do with Otherwood?”
“Jenny,” said Rayne. “Nine years you’ve been here, now? And it never occurred to you to wonder just where her authority comes from?”
“Well, fuck, Rayne, I though it came from, you know.” She gestured vaguely at the wall. “Out there. The land. The Mystery. Whatever.”
“Yes, that too.” Rayne sighed and rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. “But there’s still got to be protocol, I gather. A governing body, to make sure it’s running properly, and to keep it all from getting too intangible and arbitrary. Or at least there has been for a few thousand years now. That’s what the Kyr are.”
“The beaurocracy.”
“I suppose.”
“They’re fuckers,” said Marcie. “Bastards.”
“That, too.” Rayne pulled off his shawl and started to peel his gloves. “So, are you happy now? Think you’ll sleep better on all that?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Jenny.
“Good, then. I’m going to sleep.” His brow creased. “Jenny.”
“What.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “You know I’m here. If, you know… if there’s anything. You know that.”
She started to call up a retort and bit it back. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He paused, then walked over, and bent and kissed Jenny on the forehead. “Go, depart. The Queen dismisses you. Take care of her. I’m sure this is all going to look better in the morning.”
posted by Dan L-K | 7:41 PM
2 Comments:
Notes on the Preceding:
I reverse-engineered the title “Marchess” as an equivalent of marquis, margrave, markgraf or marchese, all of which originally meant an Earl or Count who oversaw a borderland. It is, as should be apparent, a gender-neutral term in this universe, as is (often) “Lord.” Incidentally, I was first impressed by the possibility of the egalitarian use of “Lord” in Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books.
Okay, I might as well admit that there’s a little bit of Little, Big’s Edgewood in Hartshorn. The big, motley house home to an eccentric family and their boarders is a theme that fascinates me, and one I’ll probably use again.
The story of how Jenny got the raven is one I’ll probably save for later. It’s been an interesting ten years since A Thousand Thrones, and that’s all I’ll say about that.
Yes, I realize that what’s going on in the Nandana scene is about as subtle as a hammer once you figure it out. I should point out that Jenny doesn’t know, though. Anyway, hush, if you’ve caught on; and if you haven’t, never mind.
Murdoch is one of those characters who’s so arcane and mysterious that I find it’s hard to give him a lot of screen time without diminishing some of that. I tend to have a lot more of people mentioning him than actually bringing him onstage, though I think of him as one of the major players in the setting. (Maybe later.) It occurs to me that if Jenny is, more or less, the John Constantine of my universe, Murdoch is its Dr. Strange.
There’s more staff than just Penrod in the house; hopefully we’ll have a chance to get to them before too long.
Well, of course Marcie likes boys too. After a fashion. (Nor is Jenny as exclusive in her own tastes as she sometimes likes to pretend she is, while we’re at it.) Rayne was almost a last-minute volunteer for this story; I knew I wanted to complicate Jenny and Marcie’s love life in some interesting way, but it took Rayne showing up in all his fabulousness for that to gel. You can totally blame Eddie Izzard for his genesis, if you like.
Garron had a bit part in A Thousand Thrones a couple of years ago, though he wasn’t nearly as juiced and queeny as he is here. Nadia had a similar bit part in Night, last year’s problematic NaNovel that I have not, as of this writing, unveiled to the general public. Members of the recurring supporting cast who it’s nice to see drop by again.
Rayne does actually have just enough queer cred to say “Mary” with impunity; aside from his fashion sense, it’s not as if he’s exclusively heterosexual either. (Like I’d ever do that.)
Yes, this is indeed the same Alyson who was Jenny’s girlfriend in The Vasty Deep and “Heartwood, Heartblood.” Hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler that she’s lived through the saga this long. Wolf and Kara are the nice witchy couple she’s been living with for the last few years, in a poly arrangement that’s not nearly as neurotic as the one at Hartshorn. They’re all members of Horn Coven, the community of Craft in Otherwood (as is, ostensibly, Rayne, though he’s not as active there these days).
The idea that time slips out of true when you go deeper into Otherwood – and, indeed, much of the nature of the forest of Otherwood and the places it touches on – had its seed for me in Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood and its sequels, though it’s probably got a pedigree in enchanted-forest fantasy that’s somewhat older than that.
Argus Kermassy and Anemone appeared, of course, in The Vasty Deep, and have done good service as my stock Folk Under for a while. The others are original to the present work, and gave me a good excuse to bring some more weird monsters onstage. I'll go ahead and confess that the Folk Under owe a great deal to the Nightbreed in Clive Barker’s novella Cabal and the Nightbreed film; I love the idea of this society of all different kinds of creatures hidden away underground too much not to appropriate it. I got Argus’ surname, by the way, from the Flemish festival kermesse, noted for its masks and grotesqueries. I think his tribe were bred in the Verge Domains as wizards’ guardians, ages ago.
Go to the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian sometime and stand in front of the giant sloth skeleton, and let it sink in that it was at one time walking around full of muscle and flesh and hair. Impressive. Also, it’s worth noting that Megatherion – “Great Beast” – was the title Aleister Crowley adopted in his notorious heyday. Not especially germain to the tale, except that if you’re going to throw prehistoric megafauna into an occult novel, that’s the one it makes sense to pick.
Also, Hooray! I get to write a dragon. This is not your nice fluffy-unicorn-fantasy dragon, needless to say. This is the kind that’s just slithered off a medieval tapestry and has set about despoiling the countryside and eating people. I’ve always liked that kind a little better.
The satisfying thing about doing Jenny’s banter with Rayne is that part of her really means it, and part of her knows she shouldn’t and wishes she didn’t, and she can’t help herself so she tries to make it half-affectionate and the edge comes through anyway. Or at least I hope that’s how it comes off. It’s nice to know he can hold his own, though.
The thing is that Marcie really does care about both of them, and really is capable of balancing out her affection between them most of the time. It’s just that Jenny is much more of a romantic than she’s usually willing to admit.
“Not on your life, Guinevere” is one of those lines the writing of which makes the whole exercise worthwhile. Note that Jenny’s bending that metaphor entirely to her own purposes here, which probably reveals more about how she sees the world and herself than she’d like to admit; and I also point out, without comment, that the modern form of “Guinevere” is “Jennifer.”
I’ve name-dropped Nisroch a couple of time now since Spyder sent me the files on it a while back. I’m looking forward to dealing with it more directly here. “Domanda” is, by the way, just Italian for “question,” which goes to show you how dangerous it is to have things like Babelfish up on the web where writers can get to them.
More story soon.
*squeeeee*
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