The Stricken Field - A Handful of Men Book 3 Read online

  “Her Faculty is extraordinary,” murmured another voice, as if musing aloud in the middle of an inaudible conversation.

  “It might explain her suspicions,” another said. “Just possibly. But not her recovery of the man’s name.”

  “Someone has been meddling!” That sounded like Raim, but perhaps only because he had used those words earlier.

  “She cannot possibly understand,” another said sharply. “She must be compelled to enter the Defile tonight.”

  “No,” said a spidery voice. “No one has been meddling.” The archons turned at once to face the speaker and sank to their knees. Mearn copied them an instant later, then Jain moved so fast he almost overbalanced. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, knowing that the Keeper herself had joined the meeting. Fear tightened icy fingers around his heart. He could not remember ever knowing worse terror, not even the horrors of the Defile itself. He recalled awful stories of Keepers who had wiped out whole armies of intruding Outsiders, and of the deadly, unpredictable discipline with which they ruled the College. Keepers were laws unto themselves, utterly unpredictable, heedless of precedent, devoid of mercy.

  The voice came again, a dry inhuman rustle beyond fear and passion and hope. ”I warned you that the drums of the millennium were beating, that Evil walked the world. I warned you that we are threatened as never before. You know that this girl must be the Promised One, and yet we almost lost her. The first night she was here, I found her at the mouth of the Defile.”

  Several of the archons gasped, but none spoke. The cold of the floor bit into Jain’s knees like sharp teeth, but deadlier yet was the thought of the Defile in less than full-moon light.

  Trembling, but unable to resist the need, he risked a hasty glance. The Keeper was a tall, spare shape, muffled in a dark cloak and hood. She seemed to be leaning on a staff, but he could make out nothing more. He looked down again quickly, at the dusty, uneven pavement, so comfortingly solid and prosaic. Tonight he would tell Jool that he had met the Keeper!

  She spoke again. “Raim, you are junior. Can you advise your older brothers and sisters how they blundered?”

  “No, Holy Lady.” Raim’s voice was much less arrogant than it had been earlier. “Enlighten us.”

  “You trespassed beyond the limits the Gods set for Keef, my children,” said the Keeper’s sad whisper. “You broke her word. You offended grievously against the Good.”

  “There are many precedents!” Raim protested, his voice quavering.

  The Keeper sighed. “Not thus. Analyst Jain, when you instructed the candidate to come to the College, did you specifically warn her that she must not fall in love?”

  Jain did try to answer. The answer roared in his head: Not specifically. His tongue was paralyzed, no sound emerged—but that would not matter.

  “Archivist Mearn,” the Keeper persisted, “you slew the man.”

  Mearn screamed. “There are precedents!”

  “But the babe? There are no precedents for that! Why did you not find a haven for the babe?”

  “I was obeying orders!”

  “The fault was mine, Holy One,” said a new voice, a woman’s. One of the cowls sank forward to touch the floor. “I feared the Chosen One’s future power, thinking she would be able to seek out the child wherever it might be hid. I was overzealous. Destroy me.”

  “It will not suffice, Sheef. If you seek to accept the guilt of ten, you must offer more.”

  Somebody whimpered, but it did not seem to be the Sheef woman.

  After a moment, Sheef spoke again. “Pronounce anathema upon me, as Deel did upon Theur. Expel me to the Outside, to wander there a hundred years among the demons, without power and without speech, in the guise of a gnome.”

  “That may still not be enough.”

  The woman moaned. “It is too much!”

  “Does my suffering mean nothing to you?” the Keeper asked. ”Will you bring destruction upon us all?”

  Sheef screamed. “Then two hundred years, and let me also be cursed with all manner of ill fortune and fated to a foul and painful death!”

  After a moment the Keeper said softly, “It may serve. So be it.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jain registered that there were now but seven archons. The gap where the eighth had knelt was marked by an empty cloak. He clenched his teeth and tensed his limbs, yet still he shivered. He, too, had only obeyed orders! He had not known of the killings!

  The Keeper paused as if to give the others time to reflect on the fate of their missing sister. At last the insectile voice began again, dripping words into the silence as water might drip into an ocean of dust.

  “You sinned against an innocent girl, against her lover and newborn child. You will be fortunate indeed if Sheef’s penalty assuages the anger of the Gods. In Their pity They gave the girl a hint of what she has lost. Do you understand what she did with that hint?”

  After a moment Raim’s voice spoke uncertainly. “She did nothing except go to the young man Mist and copulate with him.”

  “She made sacrifice!” the Keeper snapped, shattering the stillness. Suddenly the Chapel seemed to come alive, as if starting awake from its sleep of centuries. The dread voice rolled around the great building. ”She sacrificed herself to the God of Love! She gave her body to a man for the love of another! Fools! Now do you understand?” Her words echoed and echoed in the shadows, finally whispering back faintly from the roof as they died away.

  All the cowls tipped forward to touch the floor. Mearn doubled herself over, also, but Jain remained as he was, sitting back on his heels, paralyzed. He stared in rank despair at the edge of the age-old ice over the tomb of Keef. The magnitude of the danger appalled him. Thume’s whole existence depended on the Gods’ sufferance, the concessions that Keef had won when she sacrificed her lover. He had seen the Thaile girl as foolish and ignorant and of no importance, and she had won a God to her side. She had given her body to a man for the love of another, and the gods had accepted that offering!

  He was ruined! They all were!

  The Keeper’s voice returned to its resigned whisper, sounding as ancient as the Chapel itself, crushed with an unbearable burden of care. “It was the God of Love who restored her memory. Be grateful They have yet done no more! Hope They will not! It is the millennium prophesied. The Promised One has come and you have blundered.”

  In the long silence that followed, Jain heard some of the archons weeping. He knew nothing of millennia or Promised Ones, which must be lore restricted to the archons, but he could see that he had perhaps been guilty of some errors of judgment, due to his inexperience. He would certainly try harder in future. He would promise faithfully.

  At last one of the archons said, “Holy One, what must we do?”

  Again the heartbreaking sigh, the hopeless whisper. “Do nothing. If the child suffers more she may yet be taken from us, and she is your only hope. She must give up the man voluntarily, or you are all as doomed as I. Let her be, return to your posts. I shall go and plead with her myself.”

  The audience seemed to be over. Jain relaxed with a gasp of relief.

  The archons had gone. He and Mearn were alone with the Keeper.

  “As for you two!” The Keeper’s voice burned with contempt and was terrifyingly closer. “You are a disgrace to your training. Look what you have wrought!”

  Again Mearn screamed. “Did not Archon Sheef accept our guilt?”

  “In the killings, yes. But you have abused your powers and betrayed my trust. You seek to compel what can only be earned, you apply contempt in lieu of affection. Mankin, did you truly expect to win the child’s loyalty by torturing her father, or bribing her with things she did not want or even understand? Woman, do you expect your sneers to inspire endeavor? I strip you both of all occult power and banish you from the College forever. Live henceforth as the animals you are! Begone!”

  5

  Late in the afternoon, Thaile awoke from a doze feeling restored and strengthened. Her
hunger pangs had gone. She was familiar enough with sorcery now to recognize its effects and could guess at the meaning. She did not believe she had won. More likely her rebellion was just not going to be tolerated any longer.

  She peered out a window. The forest glade was bright with thin sunshine and apparently deserted, but common sense suggested she would have visitors shortly. She treated herself to a hasty dip in the magical hot water of the bathtub, then dressed in a soft green gown and brushed her hair. She took a chair out to the porch and sat down to wait.

  Shadows lay long upon the grass and the western clouds were flushing. In a few minutes she observed a tall figure coming through the trees, walking slowly along the Way. It was the apparition she had met on the mountain path. It bore a long staff, although its gait seemed steady enough. Measuring its approach by her own rising fear, she watched until it came to a halt before the steps. Even then, nothing of the person within the dark cloak was visible—the cowl cast an unnaturally dark shadow over the face, and the hand holding the staff was concealed by the edge of the sleeveyet somehow she knew it to be a very old woman.

  Thaile could remember strangers calling at the Gaib Place. The visitor would speak first, giving his name and home, then her father would bid him welcome and offer hospitality. But this was no ordinary visitor, and the cottage was the Thaile Place only because it had been given to her by the College—and thus by this very visitor, if it was who she thought it was. And she had no food to offer.

  She slid off the chair to her knees and bowed her head. The stranger made a little sighing noise, as if approving. A board creaked as she stepped up on the porch. She dragged the chair back a couple of paces and sat down.

  For about a dozen heartbeats there was silence, and then the visitor spoke in that same ancient whisper Thaile had heard in the night. “What lies Outside?”

  It was the start of the catechism, and it flooded Thaile’s mind with innumerable memories of childhood, of herself standing before her father with Feen and Sheel, learning and repeating the sacred words. She responded automatically. “Death and torture and slavery.”

  “Who waits Outside?”

  “The red-haired demons, the white-haired demons, the gold-haired demons, the blue-haired demons, and the darkhaired demons.”

  “How do the demons come?”

  “Over the mountains and over the sea.” “Who defends us from them?”

  Thaile clasped her hands to stop them trembling. They were very cold. ”The Keeper and the College.” Now she was whispering also.

  “Whom do we serve?”

  “The Keeper and the College.”

  “Who never sleeps?”

  “The Keeper.”

  A longer silence, then the visitor said, “I am the Keeper.” Thaile shivered.

  “Well, child? Have you nothing to say to me?”

  “Where is Leeb?”

  The Keeper banged her staff on the floor in anger. Then she said sharply, ”Why did you refuse to go to the Defile as you were told?”

  They had destroyed her memory, Thaile thought. They had stolen her away from her lover and brought her here by sorcery, and the Keeper had transported her back here from the mountains by sorcery . . . They were all-powerful! Why then did they not just force her to go to the dreadful Defile place if it was so important? And what did she have to lose now?

  “Because I want Leeb.”

  “I never sleep,” the Keeper said with a sort of dry contempt. ”Do you believe that? Truly believe that?”

  “Er, yes, ma’am.”

  “Look at me, child.”

  Thaile looked up as a fragile hand lifted back the cowl. She gasped. The woman’s face was wizened and shrunken, like dead leaves plastered roughly over the bones of her skull, but the scalp was smooth under silver wisps of hair. Her eyes were shrouded in wrinkles and so full of suffering that they were impossible to meet. They stared accusingly, questioning like the eyes of a tortured animal. Hastily Thaile looked away, shivering. The Keeper must be hundreds of years old, far older even than Great-grandmother Phain had been.

  “Now do you believe that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do, ma’am.”

  The Keeper sighed, and Thaile thought she replaced her hood, but she dared not glance up to make sure.

  “You are the first to look on me for a long time. My name, when I had one, was Lain. I have been Keeper for seven years. How old do you suppose I am?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “I am younger than your mother, Thaile!”

  Astonished, she did look up then, but the Keeper’s face was concealed again by the cowl.

  “Child, I am the Keeper. I watch over Thume and I watch the world. I tell you now that there is a danger out there worse than all those demons you listed in your parrottalk. He is prophesied in our most holy lore—a dwarf. A gray-haired demon, if you like. He is the greatest threat that Thume has known since the time of Keef herself, a thousand years ago. His army has overthrown the wardens and usurped the Protocol, and even Ulien’quith could not achieve that. If he discovers us we are doomed, for he will assuredly seek to destroy us and even I have not the power to turn hirn away.”

  What had this to do with her? Thaile wondered. And why would the Keeper not speak of Leeb?

  “You owe me your help, Thaile. All Thume requires your help. I ask you to go to the Defile tonight. Will you do that for me?”

  That awful, leering gateway . . . “It is an evil place!”

  “It is a necessary evil.”

  “I want Leeb!”

  There was a nerve-wracking pause, and then the Keeper uttered a sudden wry chuckle. “You are misguided, but you are most certainly not lacking in courage. Very well, I will make a deal with you, although I am the first of Keef’s successors in a thousand years to stoop to bargaining. Yes, you loved a man named Leeb, and yes, he loved you, also.”

  Thaile felt a pang of doubt. “Loved?”

  “He believes that you are dead, and he weeps sorely for you. But I will make you this promise. Walk the Defile tonight, as I ask, and tomorrow I shall restore you to him. I shall return your memories and remove his memory of seeing you dead. He will be lacking only a few days and will not notice.”

  Incredulous, Thaile stared at that mysterious hood, seeing only a hint of the crazily tormented eyes glinting in its shadow. “You will?”

  “I will—if you wish me to.”

  So there was a catch? Of course there would be! “What happens in the Defile?” She remembered Mist’s warning.

  “You are given understanding.”

  “Mist.”

  “Mist is a weakling. You are not. All of us in the College have walked the Defile at the full of the moon. Tomorrow you will comprehend why we do what we do, but if you still wish to leave the College and return to Leeb, then I will grant your request. I swear this by all the Gods. I swear it on Keef’s tomb.”

  For a moment Thaile’s mouth was too dry for speech. She nodded and finally whispered, “Thank you.” She had won!

  Won!

  “Go inside now,” the Keeper said softly. “There is a meal there, waiting. When the sky darkens, dress warmly and go to the Defile. The Way will take you. Do you want anyone to guide you?”

  Thaile shook her head.

  “I trust your courage, then. One warning you are given: Do not look behind you! I will meet you at the far end.” Thaile watched the Keeper trudge off along the Way and disappear into the darkening woods. Then she rose unsteadily to her feet and went indoors.

  She had won! Tomorrow she would meet Leeb, the man she loved, the man who loved her. She had won.

  6

  The way climbed steeply through the forest, unpleasantly familiar. Soon Thaile was again traversing the upland valley she had discovered on her first night in the College, the stony ground falling off steeply on her right and rising on her left, obscured by shrubbery and trees. The moon was bright through a hazy veil of cloud, and just knowing that she was supposed
to be there made her far more confident than she had been the first time. The white path unwound before her feet, the sounds of a torrent below her grew louder. This time she did not try to turn back, so there were no bridges and no delays. Soon the gorge narrowed, the slopes becoming bare and precipitous; she rounded a bend and saw the gateway ahead already.

  She paused, then, panting and yet chilled as the mountain air nipped through her heavy cloak. The light was different this time, the ruin less sinister, less distinct, more like part of the cliffs from which it sprung. She could not distinguish the illusion of a face in it. The arch spanning the ravine no longer seemed like a mouth. The empty windows above were not eyes, nor the stunted trees on top hair. She saw only a ruin of white stone—old and sad, but not threatening.

  Reassured, she hastened forward. Even when she reached the arch itself, she did not falter or break stride. The exit showed ahead beyond a brief darkness that echoed with the roar of a waterfall in the depths. In a moment she emerged on the far side.

  The gorge had widened dramatically. The moon shone clearly from a sky of black crystal, casting harder shadows. Off to the right, a small river cascaded down into unseen darkness but ahead the valley floor was level, and bare, flanked by cliffs. The Way continued, winding between pinnacles and slabs of rock; high on either hand great mountains shone as icy ghosts under the silver orb of the moon. There was no color, only paleness and dark and rare patches of snow.

  She hurried on, soon losing the noise of the cataract, walking into silence. Even the wind had stilled, as if the night held its breath. She could hear nothing but the faint crunch of her feet on the gravel and the steady beat of her heart.

  It would not all be this easy, of course. Mistress Mearn had admitted that the Defile was an ordeal. Mist had been frightened out of his wits. Yet the Way continued empty and level. The river had vanished completely. Nothing seemed to grow in this desolation except straggly tufts of pale grass, hardly darker than the snowbanks.

  The corners were where danger might lurk. Flat though the path was, it zigzagged between the jagged monoliths, and she could rarely see very far ahead.