Dragon's Met
Part Eight
by peregrin anna
c. 2001


(Disclaimers and notes may be found on the introductory page .)






Chapter 51

 What is to give light must endure burning.
          ~ Victor Frankl

Chuck woke to find himself sitting up in bed, his head screaming protest at the shock of violent movement.  It wasn't long before his stomach started in as well, and the effort to keep the bile down where it belonged was all-consuming.  He forgot the reason he'd been shocked awake until he heard it again: a hoarse, inarticulate cry that stabbed the air with panic and fear.

"M'rissa?"  His lips felt like Silly Putty, his tongue like lead, but Marissa wasn't going to hear him anyway, because she was the one making the noise.  Something was wrong, some overly rational bit of his brain that wasn't suffering from alcohol poisoning realized, and he had to do something about it.  But it would be better for all concerned, he was almost entirely sure, if he played the hero very, very...slowly.

It was still early morning, and the light outside his window was no more than a faint smudge across the sky.  It washed the room in a grey haze, and it was enough to show him that he'd slept in his clothes again.  At this rate he'd cut his dry cleaning bill in half.  He swung his legs off the side of the bed, put one hand on the mattress and one on the night stand, and eased himself to a standing position, gingerly testing his balance before taking one step, then another.  For a few minutes, the world narrowed to what was directly in front of him.  Each step sent his stomach careening from one side of his rib cage to the other, his vision swimming, and his head pounding.  Chuck had never been a wimp when it came to drinking, but last night he really must have gone over the limit.  Last night...and Crumb--hands out to  the side, Chuck stopped just before the open door of the guest room to take a deep breath and push all that away.  He had a job to do here.  Marissa hadn't kicked him out or scolded him, she'd understood, and now she needed him--

Her next outburst, words that he couldn't make out, scraped down his spine like rusty nails over cement, and he had to clamp his hands to his ears to keep his head from splitting open.  The world twisted in on itself, and when he opened his eyes, he was sitting half in, half out of the doorway, legs splayed in front of him on the hardwood floor.  Some hero.  Someone, probably Crumb, had left the hall light on, and it was shining too brightly in his eyes.  Also, he couldn't help but notice, a large tongue attached to a very large head was licking one of his hands.  Rather than growling at Chuck, as he usually did, Spike was watching him with pleading eyes, a soft whine deep in his throat.

"I know, boy," Chuck managed.  "'M comin'."  This time he used the wall and Spike's broad, steady back to push himself up, thinking he might save time and a great deal of dizziness, if not his dignity and pride, if he just crawled the rest of the way to Marissa's room.  Four lurching steps down the hall, and he caught himself on the door frame as he lunged into her room, the light finally, blessedly, behind him.  It was enough to illuminate the room, and Chuck had no desire to turn on any more lamps.  

Blinking through the sharp, pounding pain, he had to take another few seconds to be sure he was in the right place.  He'd often teased Marissa about being a neat freak, even though he knew, as she always explained with affected patience, that she couldn't afford to be messy--it took her too much time to retrieve things when she lost them.  By anyone else's standards, the books and papers scattered over the floor would have been a bit of clutter, and not the royal mess that they seemed to be in this room, in this house.  Spike waded through Braille printouts that looked to have fanned out as a stack was dropped, or kicked, off the bed.  Books lay open on the floor, upside down, right side up--it was hard for Chuck to tell.  Marissa shifted among more piles on the bed itself, kicking and struggling against something in her dream.  Even as Chuck watched, she lashed out with her foot and sent another book crashing to the floor.  Both her hands were out of sight, hidden by a bunched-up twist of blanket.  Spike placed his head on the mattress and nuzzled Marissa's shoulder, but it didn't have any effect.  He turned a puppyish gaze back to Chuck, as if to say, "Do something."

Chuck gulped.  This was not his territory.  Rescuing damsels had always been Gary's zip code, and Marissa would clobber him for thinking of her like that.  Sucking in a deep breath that grated on every nerve in his body, he picked his way, oh-so-carefully, across the hardwood floor, over the books and papers, until he was standing next to the bed, looking down at his friend in the half-light.  All the distress she'd tried to hide over the past couple of days was written in the tight lines around her mouth and eyes, and Chuck knew that the squirming in his gut was due as much to guilt and empathy as it was to alcohol.  As unsure of the etiquette involved here as he was of the best way to help, he knelt on the floor, gritting his teeth when the spiral binding of a Braille book cut into his knee.  He reached out a hand to touch Marissa's...hmmm...shoulder, he decided, that was the safest thing.  

"Marissa?"  He whispered her name, as much because he couldn't take the way his voice banged around in his own skull as because he didn't want to startle her.  "Wake up, it's just a dream," Chuck added as he shook her shoulder.

"Nuhh...sal--"  Biting her lip, Marissa shifted under the blanket.  She was still holding something that Chuck couldn't see, and he wondered briefly if it was a teddy bear.

He clamped down tighter on her shoulder.  "Come on, Maris--"

"No!"  She twisted away, jerking her shoulder out from under Chuck's hand so abruptly that he fell back on his butt and sent the book beneath his knee skittering under the bed.  Marissa rolled to the other side of the bed, pulling the blanket with her.  The crystal ball rolled out from under the covers and bounced on Chuck's arm before landing on the floor next to him.  He stared at it for a moment, then heaved his protesting body off the floor.  Curled on her side with her back to him, Marissa was still muttering, lost in her nightmare.  Spike trotted over to that side of the bed and started licking her hand, but she yanked it away with a faint cry of alarm.  Chuck sat on the edge of the bed and reached over to her shoulder again.  At least she was wearing long-sleeved pajamas, and not something with shoulder straps.  He never could have managed that.

"Marissa."  He forced himself to make his voice louder this time, even though it rattled his teeth and set off kettle drums in his ears.  "Marissa, it's just a dream.  You have to wake up--so I can get some sleep," he added.  Under his hand, Marissa's shoulder hitched as she caught her breath.  Tucking one leg under the other, Chuck was able to peek over her shoulder and get a look at her face.  Eyes scrunched up, lower lip quivering, she almost seemed to be...well, crying, and he wondered if he was in over his pounding head on this one.  "Please don't do this," he muttered, then, louder, "Marissa!  Come on, it's time to wake up; it'll be over if you just open your eyes, or...uh..."  He trailed off, not sure what blind people did to wake up.  "Marissa?"

Her breath caught in a louder gasp this time, and her eyes flew open.  She sat up faster than Chuck would have thought possible, dislodging his hand with a sharp shrug of her shoulders.  He lost his balance again, but managed not to fall off the bed.

"Who's there?"  As Chuck steadied himself, Marissa pulled into the far corner of the bed, sitting up against the headboard and drawing her knees to her chest.  "Who--what--"

"It's me, Chuck; it's okay, it was just a dream, Marissa--"

She turned her head from one side to the other with sharp, feral movements.  "What's burning?"

He'd been scooting closer, reaching for her shoulder and hoping to reassure her, but now Chuck froze.  "Nothing--nothing's burning.  What are you talking about?"

"I can smell it, something's burning, it smells like wood and--and--oh, my God--"  One hand flew up to her mouth, and for a moment Chuck suspected he wasn't the only one in danger of losing the contents of his stomach.  Maybe she was still asleep; it was hard to tell.

"Marissa, are you awake?  Look at--I mean, talk--talk to me, okay?  It's me, it's Chuck, and nothing's burning."  She turned her head in his direction, and he continued,  "Remember when you moved in here, and your mom made me and Gary put up smoke detectors in every single room, even the pantry, remember?"  Glancing at the detector that he'd put up over the door to this room, Chuck searched for the right words, for any words, that would bring his friend back from her nightmare.  Normal, everyday blabbering was all he could come up with.  "Took us hours, it seemed like, and then she showed up with more--with heat and carbon monoxide detectors, and she wanted to sponge paint them or something, so they wouldn't look so ugly hanging all over the place.  Believe me, if something here was on fire, we would have heard about it a long time ago."  He paused, waiting for the room to stop spinning--used up too much oxygen on that little speech.  But maybe it had been worth it.  Marissa lifted her hand from her mouth, swiped at her eyes, and he thought he caught the tiny curve of a smile.  After a deep breath, she sniffed at the air, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders, though she did wrinkle her nose once in Chuck's direction.  

"You okay?" he asked.

"It was the dream--I thought--Chuck, I had the most horrible, confusing dream--"

"Yeah, I know.  You were broadcasting it in stereo surround."

"Oh--"  She buried her face in her arms.  "I woke you up, didn't I?  I didn't mean to--"

"No, no, it's okay.  Five AM isn't so bad."  Chuck finally let his hand complete the distance to her shoulder, rubbing it awkwardly.  The wry note dropped out of his voice, though, when he asked, "It was about Gary, wasn't it?"

"Yes."  Lifting her head, Marissa rubbed the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, for all the world as if she were reading Braille dots on her own hand.  Chuck noticed, in the pale light, that there was an imprint on her palm, lines and criss-crosses that looked familiar somehow.  Marissa swallowed twice before continuing.  "I was trying to find Gary, and then I was so lost I was trying to find anyone, anyone at all that I knew.  It was a cold, hard place--it sounded like a cave or a basement--and then there were hands, hands everywhere, grabbing at me, and angry voices, and I could hear the fire, Chuck, I could smell it; it was so real--and I tried and I tried, but I couldn't find Gary in all the fire."  The rapid blinking to hold back tears, the way her chin dimpled with the effort, were so unlike Marissa that Chuck froze up again.  He didn't know what to say, and he didn't like what he'd heard.

"It meant something," Marissa whispered, half-choking.  

"It was just a dream," Chuck insisted.  "Gary's not--he's not in--he's not burning up somewhere."

"No."  Marissa shifted and crossed her legs Indian style while Spike nosed at her elbow.  She rubbed his head with one hand, running the other over her eyes again.  "That's not what I meant."

Chuck watched her closely, willing her not to cry.  That he was sure he couldn't deal with.  The ice around these parts was getting dangerously thin.  "What did you mean, then?"

"Something's wrong, something's--Gary's--"

"Marissa," he began, and felt like a heel when her name came out in a sigh, which she probably, from the way her expression hardened and closed over, took as a sign of exasperation.  

"Where's the scrying glass?"  Her free hand patted the blankets around her.  

Chuck blinked.  "The what?"

The hand on Spike's head squeezed a handful of loose skin and fur, and her voice rose, took on a note of panic.  "The crystal ball, Chuck, where did it go?"

"Don't get your knickers in a knot, it's right here."  Chuck had to bend over the side of the bed to retrieve it from the floor, and when he sat back up again he couldn't suppress the grunt at the fireworks of pain that burst against his suddenly-blackened vision.  "Oh, man," he muttered as he handed it to Marissa.  She cradled it in her hands, and Chuck realized that was where the imprint in her palm had come from, from the bands of metal that formed the base.  

"It doesn't look any different, does it?" she asked in a faint voice, rubbing a thumb over the smooth glass ball.

"Uh, no," Chuck told her, but when her shoulders slumped he added, "But you know, I'm not the best judge right now.  It's kinda hard for me to see straight."  Rubbing his temples, he shut his eyes and thought just how simple it would be to keel over and fall asleep right here, amidst the papers and blankets and Spike and Marissa.

"Tough night, huh?" she asked, and the smile she flashed at him was kind, understanding--like Marissa at last, rather than some badly-shaken ghost of his friend.  

Chuck started to nod in agreement, but ground his teeth at the stabs the simple movement produced.  "You ain't kidding sister."  

Clutching the glass ball to her with one hand, Marissa reached out with the other.  "And I had to go wake you up--Chuck, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, we've got to stop meeting at oh-god-thirty in the morning."  Chuck stared at her hand for a moment, suddenly aware of how strange this, all this was, and how little anyone who knew the two of them--Gary, for example--would believe of what had gone on in the past few days.  "But really, it's not a problem."

Marissa dropped her hand to the coverlet, but still left it stretched in Chuck's direction.  "It's embarrassing, though."

"Well, I'm sure I more than outdid you in that department last night," Chuck told her with a snort.   He traced the raised waffle pattern of the blanket under his hand.  "Did I--uh--how bad was it?"

"Not bad at all."  Marissa was still smiling that half-smile, and Chuck started to breathe a sigh of relief, until she added, "Though you did call Crumb by his first name."

"I'm a dead man," he groaned.  

That earned him a chuckle.  Marissa opened her mouth, shut it again with a sigh, and then said, "Why don't you get some more sleep?"

It sounded like a good--no, a tremendous--idea, but Chuck hesitated.  "You--you gonna be okay?"

"Yes."  Her voice was definite, but the way she clutched that crystal ball to herself made him wonder.  Chuck spared a glance at Spike, who wagged his tail happily.  At least one of them was content.  "Thank you, Chuck," Marissa added in a whisper.  

He shrugged, even though she couldn't see it.  Before he thought about what he was doing, he brushed his fingers over her outstretched hand.  "What are friends for?"

"Exactly this."  Marissa squeezed his hand for a moment, then released it with a little wave.  "I can hear how tired you are.  Go sleep a while longer.  We can talk later."

"Yeah," Chuck agreed through the sharp-edged blows hammering in his head.  He gritted his teeth against movement and stood, walked carefully to the door.  He looked back once, and Marissa was still holding the ball thing--what had she called it?--a strange, lost expression on her face.  Chuck shook off the small part of him that was urging him to stay, and went into the spare room, downing four aspirin and the entire glass of water that he found on the night stand before collapsing onto the bed and easing his aching head onto the pillow.  Something wasn't finished, he thought as his breathing calmed.  What, really, had been left to say?  

Well, he'd wanted to ask Marissa more about Gary, about what she thought had really happened.  He'd wanted to tell her about Cat.  But that could wait for the morning, and a clearer head, and a stronger stomach.  






Chapter 52

I have hands like my grandma, rough and wide
Smile like my father, kinda crooked at one side
And the thread of our union
Pulls through the years
Through the burdens and rejoicing
Through the courage and the fear
          ~ Carrie Newcomer


Marissa waited until she heard the bed springs creak across the hall, then let the smile drop from her face.  Stretching her legs out, she reached for a pillow and hugged it tight against her chest, trying to still the shaking in her hands.  She had a pretty good idea what Chuck thought, but in his condition it hadn't been worth the effort to make him understand what all this meant.  She never dreamt like this--never woke up shouting from nightmares.  But in this dream--somehow connected to the ball resting in her lap--she had come close to Gary, to finding him, she was sure of it.  She was also sure that something was wrong, horribly wrong; that Gary needed help now more than ever.  Maybe she'd put on a halfway decent show for Chuck, but she was still upset and, if she was honest with herself, frightened out of her wits.  

And her mouth still held the taste of ashes.

A few steadying breaths gave her the strength she needed to unclench her hold on the pillow, pick up the scrying glass, and swing her unsteady feet to the floor.  The boards were cold, but they felt good under her feet-- solid, the stuff of reality, like Spike's paws clicking beside her and the soft flannel folds of the robe she drew around herself.  The metal and glass that she clutched was something else, something other, but she wasn't about to let go of that, either.  

Down in the living room, she made her way to the front bay and lifted the padded window seat to get to the storage area underneath.  A wave of cedar filled the air, chasing some of the phantom, acrid smoke from Marissa's nostrils.  The quilt she wanted was on top, and she pulled it out with her free hand, using her shoulder to prop the seat open until the blanket was free.  Moving more surely now, she made her way to the sofa and curled up in one corner, spreading the quilt over her lap and fingering the patchwork top her grandmother had pieced years ago.  

How old had Marissa been?  Not even seven, not even in first grade, but she had dutifully learned to match the textures with their funny names--seersucker, dotted swiss, muslin, velveteen.  And the shapes--kites that made dodecagons, squares and triangles that made stars.  She'd traced them with her fingers over and over again, until she could not only name them, but cut reasonable facsimiles out of scrap fabric and lay them in patterns like these while she sat on the floor and listened to the soft whir of the sewing machine, the snip of scissors, and the hiss of the steam iron.  Grandmother's fingers had often been shaky with arthritis, but when she was sewing, they'd been sure and strong as the voice that told Marissa family stories and taught her songs.  

The quilt was worn these days, the fabric fraying as some of the seams pulled apart, but she wasn't willing to let someone else replace the stitches now that her grandmother was gone.  So she stored it carefully, taking it out only when she needed it most--times like now, when she wished with all her heart that she could climb the stairs to Grandmother's room and find the faith that had radiated from the old woman like a beacon.  If anyone in the world could have understood Marissa's present troubles, could have given her advice, it would have been Grandmother--she shivered as the images from her nightmare flooded her mind again, and pulled the quilt up to her chin, trusting its tattered grace, inhaling its fragrance--not just cedar, but the faint traces, maybe imagined, maybe not, of lilac cologne and oatmeal cookies and candle wax.  They were comfort and hope, a contrast to the  cold glass that pressed against her breastbone just above the v-neck of her pajama top and the scent of smoke that hovered at the edge of her consciousness.  

Firetorn, her dream had whispered.  Salve nos.

Save us.

Chuck was right--nothing here was burning.  But something, somewhere, was--or maybe, she finally admitted to herself with another shiver into the quilt, maybe it was someone.  Like the tessellating shapes that were joined in her quilt, there was a pattern to this somehow, and what she'd dreamed was part of it.  Now, more than ever, she was sure that the scrying glass was the key to finding Gary, but its secrets were unraveling far too slowly for her, and certainly for the people around her--they'd all given up already.  

Maybe her own patience with this mystery was foolish.  But that dream had been too real to be anything but a message, a warning.  Gary was still alive.  He was in trouble, serious trouble, somewhere beyond their reach, and there had to be something they could do to help.  

She traced a dotted swiss star, fingering the edges that had escaped Grandmother's tight seams, fraying like her own nerves under the friction of too much time.  "There's a pattern; there's a reason," she said softly to Spike, and she heard a deep doggie sigh from the floor.  Snuggling down on the couch, using the overstuffed armrest for a pillow, Marissa prayed that she could untangle the mystery of Gary's disappearance before she unraveled at the seams.







Chapter 53

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
         ~ King Lear, I. i.

Gary awoke with a mouthful of foul saliva and a head full of the Hickory High School Marching Band's Percussion Section.

Ba-DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da-da-da-DUM-BA-DUM-da-da...

They obviously hadn't practiced since Gary's graduation.  They were horrible, out of rhythm, and ghastly loud.

And they were inside his head.  Had to have been, because it was so heavy he couldn't lift it from the--what was that pressing into his cheek, anyway?  Wood.  He was lying on a bench somewhere, with the ghost of high school past weighing down his head.  The percussion section had never been particularly svelte.  Joey Sims was as big around as the bass drum he played, which he was currently jumping on in Gary's skull.  

He had no idea where he was, or how the band had got there, and his eyelids were too heavy to lift.  Groaning softly, Gary moved one hand--hand, he had a hand, though it weighed as much as a Sousaphone--up to the bench, and managed to brace himself and push his head a couple of inches off the thick-grained wood before gravity won the battle.

Clank!  The cymbals clattered to the bottom of his skull.  

"Oh, shi..."  Air escaped his lungs in a soft moan.  

Damn it, where was he, what was going on?  He'd never felt so awful in the morning, not even the day after Chuck's graduation party...

Chuck.  There was a familiar snoring coming from somewhere nearby, Gary realized as other sounds began to filter through the band's warm-up.  But it couldn't be Chuck; Chuck was in California, and Gary was--

Gary was--

Oh, God.  

With a Herculean effort, he blinked open the eye that wasn't squashed up against the bench.  He shut it again as soon as the images registered, but couldn't wipe them from his mind.

Stone floor, strewn with revelers who appeared to have dropped wherever they felt the need; empty wine goblets lying sideways everywhere, the dogs curled up with the leftover bones of roast beast...

Gary's stomach heaved and he swallowed, licking his dry, cracking lips.  Don't think about food.

People, the people were all wrong.  They were dressed in clothes from a Shakespeare play or--

--or the Middle Ages.  It all came back to him in an unwelcome rush.

He could see it now, the look on Marissa's face when she asked him why he'd been gone, and he told her he'd been busy tying one on with the cast of _The Princess Bride_.  That would go over well, wouldn't it?

Especially since she was already pissed at him for ducking out last night--

No, that wasn't Marissa.  Morgelyn.  Gary rolled onto his back and covered his eyes with that one heavy hand, shielding his face against the first rays of light streaming into the great hall.  Oh, Morgelyn was gonna kill him.  

It would be a mercy, at this point.

Anything to stop his head from pounding; anything to stop his eyes from aching; anything to make the darkness stop spinning, anything to stop--

Plop.

"Meow!"

Gary stopped breathing.  It hadn't been a real plop, not a Sun-Times plop.  More like a "plip".  But the second sound was unmistakable, as was the fur rubbing itself against his other, still-dangling arm.  Gary grabbed a handful of it and hauled the cat up level with his drum-filled head.

"Now?  You gotta be kidding me."  His voice was cracked, rusty.

"Meow..."

"All this time it goes AWOL--now?"

Now.  It had to be important, it had been days since he'd seen--Gary sat up in one panicked jerk, and had to drop the cat and put his head between his knees.  Bad move, Hobson, he thought, cradling his head and its collection of tumbling drummers.  Bad, bad move...

"Meow!"

Head still hanging, Gary pulled his eyes open by sheer force of will.  Cat sat at his feet, pawing at--some kind of book, loosely stitched with twine...

Morgelyn‘s book.  Her grandmother's...how did it get here?

Carefully turning his head from one side to the other, Gary scanned what he could see of the main hall, but he didn’t see Morgelyn.  Not a creature was stirring, except for the cat.

"MEOW!"

He picked up the book and opened it, turning through pictures of leaves and flowers and a handwritten scrawl that was completely indecipherable to him.  Then, at the end of the book, something changed--more lettering, tightly packed, and no more plants, but in the dim light the letters he could make out were in combinations that meant as much to him as Chinese would.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked Cat through a clenched jaw.  "I can't even read it!"

A man sleeping on the next bench over muttered in his sleep.  Gary needed to get the hell out of there.  Clutching the small book, he scooped up the cat, wobbled to his feet, waited for the room to stop spinning, and finally located Fergus's snoring form near the closest fireplace.  Curled around his harp, the would-be bard was as oblivious as anyone else in the hall.  Gary picked his way over silk dresses, brocade breeches, and jewel-studded goblets.  He couldn't bend down and shake the guy awake--that was asking far too much in his unbalanced, heavy-headed state--so he toed at Fergus's ribs, trying to ignore Cat's plaintive mews and the way it kept pawing at the book in his hand.  

"Ummpphhh!"  Fergus rolled over, curling into a tighter ball.  

Gritting his teeth, Gary bent at the knees, carefully lowering himself until he was close enough to hiss, "Fergus, wake up, damn it!  We gotta get out of here!"

"Worry not, love; your husband won't be back for another fortni--"

"Fergus!"  

The bard blinked awake, staring at Gary.  "I know I did not drink that much last night--"

"Damn it, get your stuff and get up.  We gotta get out of here, now."

"Gary?"  Fergus struggled to sit upright, his harp twanging as it hit the stone floor.  "What--what are you doing with that cat?"

"Meet me outside," Gary growled. There were too many people in here, unconscious or not, and he wanted to leave unseen.  Luckily, he didn't see Nessa anywhere.

Out in the courtyard, he sat down heavily on one of the stone benches.  Morning fog clung to the corners of the walled garden, and though the sunlight was filtered through clouds, it created a glare that deepened the ache between his eyes.  Though the marching band had subsided, they were still on the field practicing.  At least their rhythm was getting better.

Gary fumbled through the pages, trying to find something to which he could attach his rising sense of panic.  "Couldn't deliver plain old English, could ya?" he muttered to Cat, who sat perched on the bench next to him, regarding him solemnly.  

The writing at the end was formal, elaborate, hard as hell to read.  Not the grandmother's, and because it was so very different, Gary didn't think it was Morgelyn's either.  That made him more uneasy than ever.  If it had come with the cat, it must be news, and if someone else was writing news in this book, then what had happened to Morgelyn?  Or rather, what was going to happen--it couldn't have happened already, it had to have shown up here so he could stop it, whatever it was.  

Finally, at the bottom of the last page, he found something that looked vaguely familiar--Latin, Gary realized as he squinted, like the mottos on some of the monuments and buildings he knew.  

"In Memorium--Dormiunt in lux perpetua veritas."  

He only could figure out the first two words, but they were enough to send the marching band from his head down into his heart, where they threatened to push the overworked muscle right out of his rib cage.  When Fergus spoke from just behind him, Gary nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Why in the name of Our Lady did you do that to me?"

Gary spun around as Fergus continued, "Waking me out of a sound sleep after a night like the last one is criminal.  I do not understand--"

"It came."  Gary thrust the book at his perplexed friend.

"Morgelyn's book?  How did you get hold of that?"

"Cat brought it."

Fergus's frown went so deep his eyebrows met.  "How could the cat have brought that book all the way from the cottage?"

"It didn't."

"But you said--"

"It just appeared here, like my paper does.  With the cat.  And there's something weird with the book, it's changed, it's like it's the paper--tomorrow's--or some day's--news, the news, Fergus, I think this is what's gonna happen--"  But it couldn't, it couldn't happen, not if it was what he thought.  It would help if he could just think straight, if he knew what it was that was supposed to happen.  "I can't read it, Fergus, you have to help me out."

Eyes round as cymbals, Fergus set down his pack and took the book from Gary.  While he read, Gary paced, two steps to the bench, turn, two steps back, turn...he got dizzy and had to stop.  "Tell me it doesn't say what I think it says."

Fergus's face went pale.  His hair whipped from side to side as he shook his head.  "No.  No, I told her this would happen.  Why did she not listen to me?"

The ringing in Gary's ears wasn't from the triangle section.  "Damn it, what's going to happen?"

"It says they came for her the morning after the Midsummer's festival--today--how?"

Frustrated beyond belief, Gary grabbed Fergus by the shoulders.  "Who, Fergus?  Who came?  What did they do to her?"

"Mark Styles is dead--last night--"  Fergus winced at his own words.  "They believe Morgelyn--they will--"

"What?"

The two men locked eyes for a moment, and Gary felt a fresh wave of nausea.  

"It says she is dead," Fergus whispered.  "They went to her house and they killed her this morning because they believe she is a witch."   

"No."  Gary released Fergus's shoulders and headed for the gate.  "Not yet, it hasn't happened yet."

"Why would someone write this if it is not true?  And who wrote it, Gary?"

"That doesn't matter.  It's going to be true if we don't stop it, Fergus, let's go."  Gary watched Cat run for the main gate.  "We gotta go now."

"But that would be magic, if your cat managed to write the story, and--"  Fergus gulped down the rest of that protest when Gary turned an angry glare on him, and held out a placating hand.  "Even if it has not yet happened, you are talking about us against dozens of people, with clubs and rocks and--"  He shook his head again.  "We cannot possibly stop them alone.  We need help."

Clubs?  They were going to--oh, no.  Nonono.  "Fine then, go get help," Gary called over his shoulder as he strode through the gate, angry but out of time to argue.  "Me, I'm gonna keep them from--"  He couldn't even say it.  

To his surprise, Fergus caught up with him, nodding.  "I know, I--very well," he said suddenly.  "If this has not yet happened, then we must do everything we can to stop it.  What if Mark Styles is not yet dead?"

Gary frowned.  He hadn't thought about that.  But every instinct he had was screaming at him to get to Morgelyn.  "What if he is?"

"I will go to the village and see.  You find Morgelyn, and if you can get her away before it--before they--do what you must, head up the coast and I will find you later.  I will find someone to help, someone who will--"  He broke off, his expression one of blank panic.  "Who?"

"Father Ezekiel."  

Fergus shook his head, which made Gary dizzy.  "No, no--he may believe that she is--"

"Then you make him believe that she isn't!  Try, Fergus, you try.  Who else are we gonna get to help?  He might have doubts, but I don't think he'd let them kill her, not without some kind of trial or something."

"No, not a trial, she would be--"

"It'll buy us time--look, I gotta go.  This doesn't say when anything's going to happen, just says morning, and I don't even have my watch any more."

"You know the way from here?"

Gary glanced down at Cat, pawing the ground impatiently.  "I don't think that'll be a problem."

The two men looked at each other.  "Hurry," they said at the same time, and took off in different directions.

Neither saw the figure that emerged from the shadow of the yew hedges, a slow, cruel smile curving onto an otherwise beautiful face.






Chapter 54

There was a wave over the house
There was fear choked in my mouth...
There comes a time we all know
There's a place that we must go
Into the soul into the heart
Into the dark
          ~ Melissa Etheridge


The marching band helped.  It pushed adrenaline through Gary's veins, urged him forward across the damp moor and into the forest--not fast enough, but faster than he would normally have been able to go with a two-ton anvil of a hangover.  He didn't pay attention to paths or landmarks, just followed Cat, who streaked ahead of him like a cheetah.  

Little bits of what Fergus had told him filtered through the drumbeats, joined the meter of his pounding feet and exploding head.  "They came for her this morning..."

No.

"Mark Styles is dead...they believe she is a witch..."

No.

"They killed her..."

No.

They came upon the cottage, Gary and Cat, from the woods behind.  When he reached the clearing where Fergus had chopped wood, he could smell smoke and see the first flames licking at the thatched roof of the cottage.  Over the faint, malicious crackle he could hear voices, angry voices, shouting accusations in a cacophony that chilled him all the way through the sweat he'd worked up running.  Too late, he thought.  The villagers were already there.  Every pounding footstep brought him closer, turned up the volume, but he couldn't make out the one voice he needed to hear. He threaded his way through the last of the trees and could see, in the front garden, a rough circle of men, intent on whatever was in the middle of their group.

"Make her watch it!" one of them shouted.  "Let her see it burn."

Hatred had its own manic sound, its own smell.  Gary couldn't define it, but he knew it, sharp and terrifying, and he'd never been overpowered by it before now.  Fergus was right, they would kill her, if they hadn't already.  Completely out of breath, ankle-deep in flowers, he nearly went down on his knees.  There were too many of them..."We need help," he said to Cat, but it didn't leave, just sat there in the garden staring at Gary.  The world blurred around him until one frightened, angry voice rose above the others.

"You cannot do this--you have no right!  Take your hands off me!"

That propelled Gary across the garden and into the crowd.  Morgelyn was still alive, and he had to get to her.  He yanked villagers out of his way, calling her name, but he could barely hear himself.  He could smell drink and see the clubs and knives the men held when he bumped into them, grabbing their shoulders to haul them out of his path.  But what scared him the most was what he saw in their eyes: fire and righteousness, grim determination and a fierce glee.  Pushing his way between two men holding torches, he finally made it to the center of the vicious group, and the pounding in his head reached a deafening crescendo.

Two men held Morgelyn, one clenching each arm.  Her feet were suspended just above the ground, kicking ineffectually.  She was still wearing the red dress from last night, but the skirt was torn; her braids had come loose, swinging wildly from side to side as she struggled.  One of the men shook the arm he held and Morgelyn opened her mouth, but then she saw Gary, recognizing him before any of the others even seemed to know he was there.  Their eyes met for one frozen, terrible second that cleared his head better than any hangover remedy could have.  

Morgelyn recovered first.  "Gary--the house, the books!  The trunk, Gary!"

Understanding was instantaneous.  The trunk, his clothes, the Sun-Times , the Dragon's Eye, his only way home.  Gary spun on his heel and started back through the crowd, but then he heard one sound above, or maybe through, the voices and the crackling fire.  It was a thuck of something hard against something soft, something human--and then a cat's yowl of indignation.  When Gary whirled back, the villagers dancing through his spinning vision, he couldn't see Morgelyn.

Oh, God, what had they done, why had he left her--

He pushed his way back, fighting harder now, matching his own panicked desperation against the wild anger of the men who turned to stare at him.  They seemed to realize, finally, that someone wasn't going along with the program, and they tried to shove him back--out of their circle, away from Morgelyn, who was no longer screaming or yelling and he couldn't see her, couldn't hear her, what had they done--

"Stop it, damn it!  Leave her alone!"  Gary swung his elbows and fists wildly, hit someone in the face, shoved right back at those who would have kept him away, and used his shoulder as a wedge to get through.  It was like swimming up a waterfall, but he finally broke through the circle again.  Morgelyn lay curled on her front path, arms clenched around her abdomen, eyes squeezed tight as one of the men lifted a heavy wooden club for another blow.  

This one was aimed at her head.

Gary launched himself forward; he landed on top of Morgelyn and took the brunt of the blow in his shoulder.  The sharp pain that exploded across his shoulders, down his back, and into his already-abused head didn't even matter.  He was on his feet before he understood what had happened, his thoughts a step behind his body, except for one: he couldn't let this happen.

The man with the club was Simon Elders; Gary recognized the red hair and slack face in the split second glimpse he had before he plowed into him, pushing him back into the arms of the other villagers.  A hoarse voice shouted, "Go home, stranger!", but Gary ignored it.  He spun back to check on Morgelyn, who was sitting up, eyes squeezed shut, still clutching her stomach.  She reached out blindly, unaware of the rock being aimed at her by someone else across the circle.  Gary grabbed her hand, hauling her up and out of the way.  The rock sailed past them and hit Simon in the knee.  

"Stop it, I said stop it!  Just STOP!" Gary shouted over Simon's howl.  He pulled Morgelyn in close, one arm wrapped around her shoulders.  Shaking, she clutched at his tunic.  "Do you even realize what you're doing?" Gary yelled, and his voice echoed like thunder in his head.  The men around him fell silent, though none of the hostility eased.  It only grew, like the flames that were now leaping from the roof of the cottage.

"We are ridding our village of a filthy whore of a witch," snarled a voice.  

"No."  Gary had to fight dizziness, and he wasn't sure, between himself and Morgelyn, who was leaning against whom.  They were encircled, surrounded, he thought wildly--nowhere to go.  If Fergus was coming with help, he'd better be there soon.  "No, she's not a witch."  He looked down at his friend, who was staring at the flames leaping off her rooftop with horror in her eyes.  How could anyone think--

"Mark Styles is dead, d'ye know that?"  Simon Elders brandished his club in their direction, and Gary pulled Morgelyn behind him.  "His child lived because he broke that witch's curse, but then she cursed the man himself for cutting her, and now he grows cold in his bed!"

"It's not her fault--she wouldn't--"

"It is!  She is a murderer and a witch!"  Nods and grunts backed up Simon's accusation.

"I did not kill Mark."  Her words were shaky and she kept a death grip on Gary's arm, but Morgelyn stepped out from behind him to face Simon.  "He was sick and he didn't come to me for help, and all he drank last night no doubt killed him sooner--"

"This had nothing to do with ale, witch."  Simon literally spat the words in their direction; Gary flinched and started to pull Morgelyn with him as he backed up, but there was only room for half a step before he could feel the breath of the men behind him on the back of his neck.

"If he had asked me for help I could have--"

"You would have killed him that much sooner!"  

Morgelyn's "No!" was half-shout, half-sob.

"She didn't kill anybody!  How many of your lives has she already saved, when you were sick or hurt?"

"Stranger," Simon said, staring down Gary with insane malice, "we have no quarrel with you--yet.  Get out of the way and let us be about our business, or I promise you, you will get the same as her."  Shouts and jeers rose from all around them.  Gary shook his head in an emphatic "no" and wrapped his arm around Morgelyn's shoulders again.  He caught a flash of orange fur out of the corner of his eye, headed for the garden gate, but he didn't know if Cat was deserting him or going for help.  They needed help to stop this unbelievable nightmare--a whole mob intent on murdering one woman--it just didn't make any sense.

"You can't do this!"  Gary knew he should try to reason with them, but he was too angry to calm his voice.  Holding out one hand, palm forward, he tried to find the words to stop the men who were closing in, making the circle tighter, making it harder for them to breathe.  Time, he had to buy time, it was the only thing that would save them.  "Look, if you--if you think Morgelyn did something, then don't you have to have a--a trial?  Shouldn't there be a judge or something?  You can't just accuse someone and kill them without proof!"

Several of the men paused at that, looking uncomfortably at each other, at the burning house.  But the glare on Simon Elders's face didn't ease one bit.

"That is true."  Morgelyn's voice was quiet, but it had an air of command about it.  "If you believe I could have done this, if you truly believe me capable of--of murder--"  She lifted her chin.  "Then you have to call upon the king's sheriff."

"Why delay justice?" shouted a man behind them.  "The sheriff will say the same as the Good Book.  All witches must die!"  

"No--"  But this time Gary's protest wasn't loud enough to rise above the nightmare chorus of shouts that engulfed them.  He turned Morgelyn toward him, grabbed her hand, and mouthed, "Run."  She nodded.  

"Now!" Gary shouted, and pulled her toward the weakest part of the circle, only two men deep.  But he wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough.  Men came at them from every direction, screaming curses--they were pulled apart, and when Gary turned back for Morgelyn there were men in between them, shovels and coarse cloth and scraggly beards, hatred and ignorance, and fear as great as his own.

"No, leave me alone!  Let me go!"  All the command and poise was gone from Morgelyn's shouts; there was only desperation.  Gary reached out to her, tried to save her from all the hands pulling her away, pushing her down onto the ground.  Someone brought the handle of a tool down on his forearm, and as he bent over, breathless with pain, the marching band started up again, only this time in the rhythm of horses' hooves, pounding under Morgelyn's cries.  "Gary!  Gary, please--"  

He heard it again, the soft thuck of wood, or maybe stone, against skin, and, pushing blindly through the men around him, redoubled his efforts to get to Morgelyn.  The horses were closer now.  Please, he prayed to whoever might be listening, please let them be real.  Please let it be help.

Gary pushed one man away, then another, only to be grabbed from behind, pulled away, losing ground...

He had to reach her.  He had to, but there was no way he could, they kept pushing him back.  He could hear them swearing; could see flashes of a red dress; could hear Simon shouting, "Finish her off before she curses us all!"

And then the hoof beats clattered to a halt behind him.

"Stop in the name of God and the Church!" bellowed an unfamiliar voice.   Gary spun around, hoping to see Fergus and Father Ezekiel--but the three men on black horses were wearing armor and an insignia he'd seen before--at the manor house.  These were Nessa's guards, he thought with desperate, sinking disappointment.  They weren't the help Fergus had promised.  

The villagers fell silent, gaping at the new arrivals; his gut told Gary the farmers and craftsmen weren't the worst danger, not any more.  In that moment, when everyone else was frozen by surprise, he turned back, knocked over a pitchfork-wielding farmer, and jumped for Morgelyn.  His fingers brushed hers, but before he could grasp her outstretched hand, something cracked across his skull.  The bass drum exploded, and just before the world blinked out he saw Simon Elder's darkly satisfied face, and heard Morgelyn screaming his name.  





Chapter 55

You can wear life like well worn gloves
Embrace it like your truest love
You can hold onto something strong like that
Fending off every trouble standing back to back to back
           ~ Carrie Newcomer


The next time Chuck woke up, there was rain tapping at the windows--not a serious downpour, but enough to be a nuisance.  Another lovely day in Chicago.  Maybe it was the cloudy sky that had kept him in bed so long, he thought, squinting at his watch.  It was past ten-thirty, nearly eleven o'clock.  Or maybe, he realized when his head started throbbing the minute he sat-up--maybe it was more than that.  

He swallowed more aspirin from the bottle on the night stand, then went to the bathroom for water, assiduously avoiding looking at his own face in the mirror.  At least this time he was able to walk without getting impossibly dizzy.  Chuck risked a glance at Marissa's room as he passed and found the bed made, the piles of books and papers neatly stacked on a dresser.  Rubbing at the stubble on his face, he thought about going back and taking a shower before heading downstairs, but decided against it.  Simply negotiating the steps was going to be hard enough.  He needed coffee, and it wasn't as if Marissa was going to care about what she couldn't see.  

As it turned out, however, it wasn't Marissa he needed to worry about.

He picked his way through the quiet living room and into the kitchen, lured by the scent of coffee, but nearly turned around when he heard Crumb's amused chortle.

"Whoa-ho!  I've seen some sad cases in my day, Fishman, but you look positively pathetic."

Settling for a stiff shrug and a glare, Chuck headed for the cupboard where he thought Marissa kept her mugs.  Crumb's hand came over his shoulder and held the door closed.

"You don't want to deal with me until I've had at least half that pot."  Chuck pointed at the coffeemaker on the other end of the counter, but didn't turn around.

"Don't be an idiot, Fishman.  I got something better that'll perk you right up."

Chuck swallowed hard and rested his forehead on the cupboard.  "Aw, no..."  He hadn't been gone long enough to forget Crumb's stories about his legendary hangover cure, made from a list of ingredients that painted all but the most hardened of McGinty's patrons green at the gills.

"Perfected in the Navy!"  

Jumping at Crumb's voice right behind him, Chuck muttered, "Show a little respect for the dead."  He still hadn't turned around, and Crumb plopped a large glass on the counter, right under his nose.  "This stuff always got my boys up and going, even after the wildest shore leaves."

Chuck risked a glance down, then quickly shut his eyes.  "Is that a--a raw egg?"

Crumb clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, filling his own mug with coffee.  "Nothin' like it to cure what ails ya.  Don't think, just drink.  You gotta lie down for about fifteen minutes after, and then we've got work to do."

"Wha-what work?"  Turning his back to the counter, Chuck stared around the cheerful kitchen and thought maybe he'd just sit in here all day.  His head was still throbbing, even though it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been earlier this morning when he'd--wait a minute--"Where's Marissa?"  She was a compassionate person.  Marissa would save him from this fate, he was sure of it.

Crumb pursed his lips, then poured coffee into his own mug.  "Drink the damn stuff and then we'll talk."

Chuck watched, envious, as Crumb swallowed huge gulps of coffee.  Nice, normal caffeine.  Then he made a face at the glass next to his hand.  "It smells like poison!"

"You didn't have any trouble with the poison you were downing last night.  C'mon, I am not sitting around in the danger zone until you get your stomach settled and your head screwed on straight."  Crumb's mug rattled when he set in the sink, and Chuck winced against the noise.  Clamping one hand on Chuck's shoulder, Crumb thrust the glass under his nose.  "Drink."

"You think this is going to settle my stomach?"

"Either that or clean it out."  There was a hint of manic glee under Crumb's matter-of-fact declaration.

Chuck thought about staring the older man down, but he *really* needed to sit, and Crumb was between him and the table.  He took a deep breath, then another, held it against the sharp pungency of the concoction, and brought the glass to his lips.  "I don't know about this--"

But Crumb's hand was on the glass.  "Bottom's up, Fishman."  He tilted the glass, and Chuck opened his mouth to keep the stuff out of his nose and off his face.  Milk, whiskey, Tabasco sauce, flat beer, and, yes, an egg slid down his throat in succession.  Chuck swallowed just to get it all out of his mouth, and in a few seconds it was down.

"Gah...ack...oh...I...Crumb, I really need to just--"  Chuck would have slid down to lie on the cool linoleum floor right where he was, but Crumb was bigger.  He forced Chuck and his wobbly legs through the doorway and into the living room.  Chuck barely noticed when Crumb pushed him down on the sofa--he had his eyes closed, his entire being focused on *not* thinking about the horrifying mess sloshing around in his stomach.  

"That's it, lie down, and fergawdsake, keep it down."  

Chuck squinted through his lashes and saw Crumb perch on the edge of the armchair, his sweatshirted bulk incongruous against the pale green chintz.  "Dunno if I can," he whispered.

"You gonna mess up Marissa's place?  Explain to her that you weren't man enough to handle your liquor?"  The armchair's springs creaked as Crumb settled in.  Chuck shut his eyes and forced the contents of his rebellious stomach back down with a determined swallow.  One breath, then two...think of something else...like how hard his head was still pounding, when would the aspirin kick in--could they kick in, through all that mess?

Think of something else..."Where's Marissa?"

"She had to walk her dog, said she'd meet us at the bar later," Crumb muttered.  From behind the hand he'd flung over his face, Chuck heard the television click on.

"Cloudy with a few showers today, chilly for this time of year...our special fall clearance sale...Next on Montel: mothers who marry their daughters' boyfriends...Elmo's world, Elmo's world..."

"Could you at least turn it down?"

"Oh, Brett, Derek can never know of our love!...because I only want to serve my family the best imitation potatoes...Elmo loves dancing--lalalalalala..."

"Crumb!" Chuck pleaded.  The Muppet's voice was scraping around inside his skull.

Mercifully, the sound was reduced.  "Where the hell is ESPN on this thing?"

"She doesn't have cable."

"I thought everybody had cable."

"Think again."  Chuck swallowed, and the aftertaste wasn't as bad this time.  

"Huh."  The television clicked off, and for a few minutes there was only the faint sound of random raindrops.

"She look okay to you?" he asked Crumb.

"What?"

"Marissa."  Chuck rubbed at his cheeks, shivering at the memory of the fear on his friend's face the last time he'd seen her.  "This morning, did she--she seem okay?"

"I guess."  Crumb's sigh was heavy.  "Tired, but she looked a hell of a lot better than you do.  Why?"

Chuck wasn't sure if it was his place to say anything, but there didn't seem to be any need for secrets among the three of them now.  "She had a dream last night, a--a nightmare."  Blinking his eyes open, he found that the dim light wasn't nearly as annoying as it had been.  Cautiously he pulled himself up so that his head was propped on the armrest of the couch.  His stomach sloshed a little, but he didn't feel like emptying it.  No way could Crumb's remedy actually work--or at least there was no way Chuck was ready to admit that it could.  Head cocked, the ex-cop was frowning at him through narrowed eyes, waiting for more explanation.  

"She just--I dunno, I think she just got freaked out by everything."  Chuck fingered a fraying piece of pink fabric on the quilt draped over the back of the couch.  Most of Marissa's stuff was fairly stylish, or at least sedate--but this looked like something she must have had as a kid.  "You know how she thinks--Gary--"  Covering his eyes again, Chuck barely shook his head.  "She thought there was something burning; thought she smelled fire."

"A fire?  Did you check it out?"

"There was nothing to check out."  

"Nothin'--"  Crumb's voice rose and he leaned forward in the chair, as if he was ready to go fight imaginary flames.  "Fishman, you idiot, this place could have burned down around your ears!"

Chuck struggled to sit up.  "No, no way.  She was just dreaming.  She's just...over the edge."

"Not like you, huh?" Crumb grunted, sitting back again, and Chuck sighed.  

"You think she's right?  Not about the fire, I mean--about Gary?"

"Well--"  Crumb hesitated, shrugged.  "The way I see it, either she's crazy or we are, and at this point, I'm not putting any money on us--well, not on you, anyway."

Chuck sat forward, hands clasped and dangling between his knees.  "God, Crumb, I just wish this thing was over, one way or another."  But do you, really?  whispered the little voice in his head.  Are you really ready to let Gary go?  What if she's right?  

"Yeah, me too, Fishman."  But Crumb sounded as unsure about that as Chuck felt.  "You feelin' any better?"

"Uh..."  Surprised, Chuck found he was able to move his head, to look up at Crumb, without feeling the least bit queasy.  "Actually, yeah."  

Clearly having expected no other answer, Crumb nodded and waved toward the entryway and the steps.  "Clean yourself up, why don't ya, and we'll go get your car--if there's anything left of it."

"Then what?"

Crumb got up, headed back to the kitchen; Chuck hoped he was going to make more coffee.  "Whatever comes next," the bartender told him.

It had to have been the aspirin that was curing him, Chuck told himself as he mounted the stairs--the aspirin, and all the sleep he'd had, interrupted though it may have been.  It could not possibly have been that toxic waste Crumb had forced into him.  Well, whatever it was, he was grateful, and he was equally thankful for the rush of steam that greeted him when he turned on the shower and stepped in.  He wished, now, that he could do something for Marissa, something that would make her feel better, too--because she'd been so understanding last night, and because he knew Gary would have expected it of him.  

Not that it didn't hurt like hell to think about Gary; it stung like the water between his shoulder blades.  Marissa, he told himself firmly.  Focus on Marissa--what did she need?  Maybe some kind of comfort; maybe that's what that kiddy quilt downstairs had been all about.  Well, Chuck knew his own strengths, and broad shoulders really weren't among them.  Who, then...?

The idea hit him when he was rinsing out the shampoo, and he grinned, relieved in spite of everything.  Maybe it wouldn't be such at bad day after all.





Chapter  56

When such people say they only wish to cure the sick,
one should cry out, "To the flames! To the flames!"
          ~ Friar Bernadino of Sienna


The screaming was gone when Gary opened his eyes.  There was no sound but his own breathing, and he was instantly aware of two things:  he was indoors, and instead of the soft dirt of Morgelyn's garden, he was lying--alone--on stone and a layer of dank straw.  Sitting up with a  grunt, he tried to reach up and brush the straw off his face--

--and couldn't move his hands.  They were tied behind his back and his head felt like someone had used it for a wrecking ball and the smells of smoke and horses rose from his clothes and where was--

Oh, no--oh shit.  Where was Morgelyn; what had they done to her?  Was she already--the book had said--but he'd changed it by being there, bought time and the guards had come and--and tossed him in here.

Fighting back rising panic, Gary twisted his wrists against the rough ropes until they stretched enough that, greased by his own sweat, his hands could slide though. He flung the ropes away with a disgusted flap of his wrist, flexing his stiff, protesting limbs while his eyes adjusted to the gloom.  

He was in a high-ceilinged room about the size of McGinty's kitchen.  A small, narrow window was set high in the wall, just under the ceiling.  Thick bars, closely spaced, blocked the opening, but at least some light got in, cloudy and grey--evidently it was still daytime.  Except for that tiny window, his world was enclosed by stone walls, with dirt crumbling out from between the rocks.  To his right a set of six or seven wide steps led up to a wooden door with a window about the size of Gary's hand, also barred, as if anyone could fit through it.  The stone floor upon which he sat was covered in straw that smelled of mildew and a bunch of other stuff that Gary didn't want to think about. On the other side of the staircase, hidden in a corner of shadow and darkness, was a bundle of cloth or rags.  Gary wasn't feeling brave enough to find out what it hid.

Reaching up gingerly to explore the knot at the back of his skull, he winced against the stabbing pain that even that small movement sent from one temple to the other.  Between the aftereffects of the mead--let's be honest, Hobson, and call it a hangover, he thought grimly--and the crack to his head, he was lucky he still knew his own name.  

Obviously, this was some kind of prison or--they called them dungeons, didn't they?  But at least he was in one piece.  What about Morgelyn?  Closing his eyes, he still could see the angry faces that had encircled them both, and the absolute terror in his friend's eyes.  He had to get out of here--had to find her.  Fighting skin-crawling fear and a wave of nausea, Gary wrapped his arms around his stomach and inched his way up the wall until he was standing.  Maybe the bars in that window were loose.  

The room only spun a little bit when he left the security of the wall and took a few tentative steps toward the rectangle of faint, gloomy light that slanted in from the window.  He was just gritting his teeth and reaching up for a bar when he heard a soft rustle.  Gary turned in time to see the bundle of rags in the far corner move.

Stumbling back against the wall, he told himself that it was rats, only rats--but rats carried plague-infected fleas and where the hell was Cat and how had a nice guy like Gary ended up here in the first place and what if it wasn't rats at all?  What if it was something worse?

The bundle shifted again, stretched, elongated.  In a sky Gary couldn't see the sun broke from behind the clouds, casting a clearer light into the tiny cell, enough for him to catch a color--dark red--and, improbably, a bare foot, also dark, and not just from dirt.

Oh, God--"Morgelyn?"  It took six steps to reach her, and Gary knelt by her crumpled form.  She was lying face down; he found her shoulder under a tangled fall of hair and shook it gently.  "Hey, Morgelyn."  He wasn't sure why he was whispering.  He really didn't care whether the people who had put them here, wherever here was, heard him or not.  "You okay?  Huh?  Wake up."

His first aid training kicked in; he found her pulse, put a hand on her back until he was sure she was breathing.  Relieved to know that much, he went to work on the rough twine that bound her hands.  It was looped five or six times around her wrists, pulled so tightly that the rope was cutting into her skin.  Increasingly alarmed when she failed to respond to his calls, Gary fumbled with the tight knots, working at them for what seemed like hours.  He thought he heard a small, mumbled something as he finally freed her hands and rubbed them a little, hoping to help with the circulation.  

"Morgelyn?"  Nothing, no response at all.  

"Okay, I'm just gonna turn you over."  He did it as carefully as he could, hoping he wasn't making things worse.  Dirt, straw, and soot clung to her face, and a filthy rag hung loose around her throat.  A dark, ugly bruise stained her left cheekbone, and her sleeve had been torn--or cut, he realized when he saw dried blood underneath.  

Propping up her head, holding her right hand in his own, Gary tried to be gentle, to keep the escalating panic and fear out of his voice as he called her name over and over, determined to get a response.  

"Morgelyn, c'mon, you gotta wake up.  Listen to me, it's okay, it's just me, it's Gary.  Morgelyn?  Hey, Morgelyn, c'mon..."  

Her eyes flew open and she sat up so quickly that Gary lost his balance and fell back.  Morgelyn bolted to her feet, stumbling backward, arms spread wide.  Her breath came in rapid, audible gasps.  

"It's okay," Gary tried to reassure her through the fear that radiated from her, keeping him at a distance.  He got up slowly, one hand out, palm up in what he hoped was a calming gesture.  "It's all right, it's just me."

Framed in the square of light, she closed her eyes, breathing heavily as she slumped back against the wall.  "Those men--and then the guards--"  She brought one hand up to brush at the gunk on her face, found the rag around her throat, and fumbled with it.  "I cannot--why do my hands not work?"

Gary moved closer.  "Here, I got it."  He undid the knot while Morgelyn tried to flex her fingers, her frown deepening as she touched the cuts and indentations on her wrists.  "They had you tied up pretty tight there," he said softly.  The rag undone, he tossed it into the corner, and would have stepped back, but Morgelyn grabbed his hand, her fingers stiff against his.  

"I thought they had--"  Swallowing hard, she finally met Gary's eyes in the dim light of the prison.  "Are you all right?"

He nodded, and points of light did a firefly dance in his vision.  "Yeah.  Just feel like I've been run over by a monster truck."  Gary backed up and sat down on the second step.  "What happened?  Do you know where we are?"

"I am not sure.  I am not sure of anything."  Her voice was as wavery as Gary's vision.  "Last night--I waited for you, but finally I was so tired--I just dropped into bed."  She brushed at her face, pushed her hair back over her shoulders, while Gary let his guilt over the previous evening settle somewhere in the vicinity of his gut.  If he'd come back; if he hadn't gotten stinking drunk at Nessa's and...

Nessa.  There was something he was supposed to remember, something he didn't want to, but...but Morgelyn was speaking again.

"This morning they came before I woke--they were in my house, all of them."  Wrapping both arms around her stomach, she squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment before continuing.  "They dragged me out and threw torches on the roof and I tried to stop them but there were so many of them--so many--so many hands.  But you came--you came and--"

Gary couldn't look her in the eye.  This was his fault.  He should have been there sooner, should have stopped them.  Elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands.

"Are you very badly hurt?"  Morgelyn's soft touch on his shoulder startled him.  When Gary shook his head, she clucked her tongue, then sat next to him on the wide stair.  "When Simon hit you with his club, you just dropped like a stone."  She touched the bruise on her cheek, and Gary winced.  "Then it all was quiet, so quiet.  You were lying there, and the soldiers got down off their horses, and one of them said--I do not remember what he said, I--I cannot--"

"It's okay," he offered, feeble reassurance.  

Morgelyn drew in a deep breath.  "Something about the church, and trying heretics.  Gary, they think we are--they think I have done--everything Fergus feared is coming true..."

A draft came through the window, tendrils of cold air.  One or the other of them must have leaned in, because suddenly their shoulders were touching.  Together they stared into the faint grey at the bottom of the stairs.  Gary didn't know about Morgelyn, but all he saw were those distorted faces, blinded from the truth by their rage and fear.  If he wasn't careful, he knew he'd look the same way if he ever saw any of them again.

"I tried to get to you, but--it was Simon again."  She touched tentative fingers t o the welts on her wrists, and her voice grew hard.  "He pushed me down, face down in the violets.  I was choking on them.  I do not know if I can ever--I have never felt so--so--"

"Helpless?" Gary supplied.  It sure as hell described the way he was feeling right now.

Morgelyn nodded.  "He had his boot on my back, he pulled so hard on my arms--I understand that Mark was his friend, but Simon was never as cruel as this before--before--"  She drew in a deep breath.  "I helped Grandmother bring his two oldest into the world.  And the baby, little Stephen, he was the last child my grandmother delivered, before she--they are beautiful children."  Her voice cracked, and Gary reached for her hand and squeezed it.  He didn't know what else to do.  "He has Lara, and three beautiful children, and I have never seen such hatred on a man's face, such ugliness.  I do not remember much after that.  I do not know where we are.  I just remember his face, all their faces, and they were so hateful."

Gary wanted to kick the door down.  He wanted to find these men, this Simon guy in particular, and let them have it, hurt them the way they'd hurt her.  "I'm sorry.  I should have been there--"

"You were there--"

"--sooner."
 
Morgelyn shook her head.  "You came just in time.  The villagers--Simon, all of them--they would have killed me then and there."  Her hand shook, both their hands were shaking, and Gary didn't know how to tell her how right she was, and how much he wished he'd done a better job of changing things.  "How did you know?"  Her voice steadier now, Morgelyn shifted on the stair so they were face to face.  "I know about Nessa's parties.  Fergus usually staggers home at noon the next day.  How did you know?"

Gary opened his mouth, the lie nearly automatic, but then he realized that here, he had nothing to hide.  "Your Grandmother's book showed up with Cat at--at Nessa's this morning.  I dropped last night, too, only I did it on a bench in her manor.  And then this morning Cat was there, with the book.  In the back of it there was some other writing, and Fergus was able to read it.  That's how we knew."

Wide-eyed, Morgelyn opened her mouth, but nothing came out at first.  "Grandmother?" she finally whispered.

"I--I don't think so.  The writing was really different.  I think it was in Latin.  I think--whoever wrote it, after--after you would have been--"  He swallowed hard and had to look away, then he got up and paced over to the window, working out a crazy scenario in his head--maybe this had really happened, once, and then someone had written about it, and that's why he'd been sent back, to fix it, like he'd fixed things for Jesse and Eleanor, and so whatever was in charge of his early edition had drop-kicked the little book out of the time continuum, just like it had drop-kicked him six hundred fifty years into the past.  

That was absolutely nuts.  But it made about as much sense as anything else.

When he turned away from the window, Morgelyn was standing next to him, still looking a little dumbfounded by the whole thing.  "But I do not understand how--"

"Don't feel bad.  I never understand it either."  Crossing his arms over his chest, Gary leaned back against the wall.  He didn't mention his theory to Morgelyn.  The last thing he wanted to do was confuse her even more.

After a moment, she nodded.  "Where is the book now?"

"Fergus has it.  He went off to get help--but I guess he didn't find any."

Morgelyn glanced out the window, then turned back to Gary with all the stubborn insistence he'd gotten used to seeing in her face over the past few days--and years.  "What did it say when you came to my house this morning?"  

"That doesn't matter--"

"It does to me."

Pushing away from the wall with a sigh, Gary, too, took a look out the tiny window.  All the pictures--those he'd imagined on his mad tear over the moor and through the forest, and the real ones, what had actually happened--churned through his head.  "It--you--please don't make me say it."

"You came back this morning because I was going to die."  Morgelyn's tone was numb, her expression unreadable.  

"I--"  Swallowing hard, he managed a nod.  "Yeah."

"But now you do not know what will happen, not to me, not to you, no to any of us, and if you had not come you would not be hurt, or trapped here, and what worse is to come to you will be because--because of me."

Trying to reassure Morgelyn somehow gave Gary more strength than he'd felt since he'd woken up here.  He put a steady hand on her shoulder.  "There's always a way to change things--even now.  Marissa says everything happens for a reason, and in this case, I know she's right.  We're both here, and we're going to figure a way out."

"You are right.  We are both alive, and where there is life--"  Morgelyn turned around in a circle, surveying the cold walls.  "There is supposed to be hope."

"There is.  We just have to figure out how to get out of here."  Gary tried to sound reassuring, though he wasn't sure he did a very good job of it.  One more scan of the room, and he had a thought--just in case, he went to the top step and peered through the tiny window.  He could barely make out a stairway on the other side of the door; when he craned his neck, he saw that two flat iron bars, each the size of a man's arm, barred the door.  Trapped, they were--damn!  He pounded against the door with his shoulder, releasing all his frustration in two crashing collisions.  The door didn't budge, but the room did.  It tilted and slid, first to the right, then the left, as Gary sank down on the landing, cradling his head in his hands.  He was worse than helpless--he was useless.

"That was not wise."  Morgelyn stood over him, shaking her head, her tone rueful.  

"I had to try," Gary muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

"You hurt yourself, Gary--again.  If only we were home, I could..."  Morgelyn's voice trailed off and she stared off at some point beyond his shoulder.  She looked so lost, so bereft, that Gary wanted to shake her and call the real Morgelyn back to herself.  Where was the hope, where was faith she'd always--that Marissa had--but this wasn't Marissa, he reminded himself.  "I have no home," she said in a hoarse whisper.

Still clutching his shoulder, Gary got to his feet and went down the stairs.  He circled the small room, feeling the walls for--something, he didn't know what.  A trapdoor, maybe.  "There has to be some way out of here."  

"It does not appear to be this window."  

They both started at the voice.  

"Fergus!"  Morgelyn broke into a smile at the sight of her friend, peering down at them between the window bars.  Despite everything, Gary felt the corners of his mouth quirk into a grin; he'd never been so relieved to see that particular face.

"How do you fare?  A ridiculous question, I know," he amended at the look Gary gave him.  "But when I heard--God's breath, Morgelyn, what happened to you?"  Fergus's eyes had grown wide, and he stared at her in alarm.  

"Half the village happened to her," Gary growled.  "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

"I am well, truly..."  Morgelyn glanced from Gary to Fergus, then ducked her head and tucked a couple loose strands of hair behind her ear.  "Nothing is wrong with me that will not heal."

"You were right," Fergus told Gary, but he didn't take his eyes off his friend.  "I should have come with you."

"'Tis well you did not, or you would be in this--this place, too."  Morgelyn shivered as she threw a look around the room.  

"We need to get out of here," Gary said, stepping closer to the window and to Fergus, whose face was nearly squashed between the bars.  "We need to get out of here now.  Did you get help, like you said you were going to?"

Shaking his head, Fergus glanced back over his shoulder and shifted on his knees in the grass.  "I tried, truly I did, but I cannot find Father Ezekiel in the village."

Morgelyn gasped.  "Of course, Father Ezekiel will help us.  He will not let this happen."  She looked to Gary for reassurance, but he wasn't sure he could give it to her.  Fergus was chewing on his lip, suddenly uneasy.  There was something, Gary knew, that the bard wasn't saying.  He could read it in his eyes, there was something the guy knew that--

"The book, Fergus."  Though he had to stand on tiptoe to do it, Gary grabbed one of the window bars, thrust his other hand at Fergus, who pulled back.  "What does it say?"

Clamping his lips shut, Fergus shook his head.  

Gary's words came out in a frustrated growl.  "I can't fix this if I don't know what's going to happen!"

"It has not changed," Fergus whispered, watching Morgelyn.  "Except for the--the method.  And you--"  He turned back to Gary, and didn't need to finish.  

"I'm there, too."  

Fergus nodded grimly.  

Gary sighed.  "Out of the frying pan, into the fire."  When he saw the way Fergus winced, Gary's stomach gave a lurch.  That meant--oh, great.  

"No, no--it cannot be."  Morgelyn pushed her way in front of Gary, and she, too, reached out an open hand.  It shook as she demanded, "Give it to me, Fergus.  You must have read it wrong."

"You really are a pair of fools," Fergus said wearily, and his head drooped.  "The book is hidden away.  If I were found to have such a thing, we would all be doomed.  'Tis bad enough that they took--"  He stopped, and from the guilty look on his face, Gary knew he regretted whatever he'd been about to say.

"Took what?" Morgelyn demanded, her voice tight with more than exasperation.  

Fergus sighed.  "When I couldn't find Father Ezekiel, I went to your house.  Morgelyn..."

She turned just a little, hiding her face from both of them.  "I know.  I no longer have a house."

Shaking his head, Fergus scooted closer, reaching through the bars.  "It rained earlier--did you not know?  The fire was out by the time I got there.  You require a new roof, but the rest of the cottage still stands.  I was relieved beyond all telling that I did not find you in it.  I hoped you both had escaped--"  He flashed a sympathetic grimace at Gary, and completely missed the look of hope that flashed across Morgelyn's face.

Gary saw it, though, as she spun back around and placed one hand on his arm.  They were both thinking the same thing.  "Did you--did you find--"  She swallowed.  "Gary's things were in the trunk; was it--"

"Empty."  Fergus's eyes went round again.  "Everyone else was gone by the time I got there; I do not know what happened to any of it."

That news shouldn't have made things seem any worse than they were, but it sent ice water down Gary's back.  "Who has it?" Morgelyn whispered, but neither man answered.  Her hand dropped away from Gary's arm while he tried not to imagine what the person--or people--who did have the stuff were going to make of his clothes, his watch, and especially his newspaper.  

"How'd you find us?" he asked thickly.

"I made my way back to the village--I, I did not know where you were, either of you, and I wanted to find out--"  Fergus's expression turned dark.  "There was a group of them celebrating in the tavern, as if they had not had enough to drink already--they were stumbling home by the time I got there--and by the way, my friend, Simon Elders has the blackest eye I've ever seen."  Fergus raised an eyebrow at Gary, who shook his head.  They both turned to Morgelyn.  "You?"  Fergus's question was surprised and impressed.

"It was an accident.  My elbow..."  She waved the issue away with a quick gesture, but Gary thought it was more discomfort than impatience.  Not that there was any need; he nearly high-fived her, but figured he didn't want explain that now

Fergus flashed her a grin, but it barely lasted a second.  "I knew they would not speak to me, but Declan followed them, and heard them say that Nessa's soldiers had brought you both here."

"Nessa?  What does she have to do with this?"  Morgelyn turned to Gary.  

"A lot, but I can tell you about that in a minute," he said.  "We have more important things to worry about.  We gotta get out of here--where is here?" he asked Fergus, who was checking over his shoulder again.

"The old manor house," he told them when he looked back through the bars.

"The lights--we saw lights up here the other night," Gary told Morgelyn.  "Somebody must have been getting this place ready."

"There is no prison in the village."  Morgelyn looked around the dark room again and shivered.  "No doubt it was either this, or shut us up in the rectory.  But how could anyone have known that Mark would die?"

"I think they were just waiting for an excuse," Gary said, and wished he had seen that a lot more clearly a day ago.

"Considering what is to come, I believe they wanted to be away from the village."  Once more, Fergus looked dark, glowering, with the shadows from the light outside falling across his face.  

"What do you mean, what is to come?  Why will you not tell us?"  Morgelyn's face held the same look it had two days ago when Fergus had first frightened her with his stories about France.  Gary knew he didn't want to hear, he didn't need to hear, what was to come.  

"Lady Nessa had her guards stop the men who were trying to--"  Fergus cleared his throat.  "'Twas her guards who stopped them, and the villagers let it be stopped, because she has offered her help.  She has hired--a witchfinder, a man from the continent, who specializes in--in--"  

Fergus broke off, leaving the thought unfinished.  Morgelyn stepped back and slipped her hand into Gary's.  

The guest, Gary thought, squeezing her hand tight.  Nessa's guest, the one he'd heard during his blundered spying mission the night before.  "But how did she know when it was going to happen?"  He believed Nessa was capable of a lot of--of logistics--but it was hard to believe she'd orchestrated Mark Styles's death, or the timing of the villagers' reaction.

"I do not know.  Perhaps she had spies in the village, or perhaps someone overheard us in the garden this morning."  Fergus turned to Morgelyn.  "I am sorry, my friend."

"Don't be sorry, just get us out of here!" Gary demanded.  

"I cannot get in--there are guards here, and I am in danger of being found as it is."

"There has to be some other way."  Gary waved his hand, impatient, tracing possibilities.  "Father Ezekiel--or--or--"

"Robert," Morgelyn whispered.

"What?" both men asked.

She swallowed, and Gary felt her fingers tighten against his.  He knew she was trying to banish the same thoughts he was--warnings about fire, and how it could burn.  "Robert told me that when he was young, he used to play in these ruins with his friends.  He may know some other way, some secret passage."

Fergus shook his head.  "But Robert is blind now."

"Being blind isn't the same as being stupid," Gary snapped at Fergus.  "Or helpless."  

"I merely meant--"

Morgelyn's eyes widened.  "Shhh!" she hissed, and then Gary heard them, too; heavy footsteps clomping outside the door to their room, growing louder.  The grass behind them rustled, and when Gary glanced back, Fergus was gone.  The footsteps halted, metal rasped against wood as one iron bar, then the other, was lifted.  Morgelyn's hand shifted in Gary's, but her grip didn't loosen.  They both jumped when the door flew open.

There were two shapes, human but huge, framed in the doorway.  Gary could see flickering torchlight behind the looming figures of the guards; the light that made it through the window behind him wasn't enough to illuminate their faces.  The gruff, imperious voice, however, was perfectly clear.  "Come."

Gary and Morgelyn exchanged sidelong, wide-eyed looks.  Neither one moved.

"The prisoners will come forward!"  The barking command echoed off the walls.  One of the guards thudded down the steps and across the floor; he snapped his long-handled spear so that its sharp tip hovered less than an inch from Morgelyn's forehead.  "You will obey, witch, or we will use force."

Gary batted the spear away.  "She's not--"

"Silence!"  The spear came up again, but this time the point rested on Gary's neck, touching the skin.  Hard, dark eyes and a satisfied smile glinted at him, and he clamped his jaw shut, knowing that this guy was just waiting for an excuse to hurt someone.

"No," Morgelyn whispered.  She dropped Gary's hand and stepped forward.  "I will go with you."  Gary didn't dare open his mouth, but he wanted to tell her just how huge a mistake this was.

"You will both come," the guard snarled.  His partner seized Morgelyn roughly by the arm, pulling her toward the stairs, and though she kept twisting back to watch Gary, her feet kept up with the guard.  The spear was pulled back and snapped upright, and gloved hands clenched Gary's arm, forcing him toward the door as well.  He swallowed hard against the urge to tell the guy not to worry.  There was no way Gary would have stayed down there now.  





Chapter 57

There are storm winds who bow down to nothing....
The keepers of wisdom testify a heap of ashes
means whatever was there went out burning.
          ~ Carl Sandburg


Beyond the door of their cell, a narrow stairway led up to a bigger room.  The room's back wall was gone, as if a giant had taken a huge bite out of it, roof, walls, and all.  Fresh air slammed into Gary's lungs and the brighter light make him dizzy, the inrush too much for his overtaxed nerves.  He couldn't think straight.  Fragments of escape plans--run, twist away, head for the green grass, grab Morgelyn--jangled around in his head, crashing against insignificant details.  The guard who gripped his arm was missing his pinky finger and smelled like smoke: the room they were walking through was empty but for two huge fireplaces and some shelves hanging crooked by single brackets from the walls--Gary guessed it had been a kitchen.  Up ahead, when Morgelyn tried to turn her head back to look at him, the other guard wrapped a hand around her neck, gloved fingers digging in so deeply that she flinched.

"None of yer spelling, witch.  It cannot save you now."  

"Don't--"  For a split second, Gary forgot the fact that he, too, was a prisoner, and tried to jump to the pair ahead.  His own guard held firm; Gary stubbed a toe against the uneven paving stones of the floor and stumbled.  One knee hit the floor.  The guard dropped his spear with an exasperated grunt and grabbed the back of Gary's tunic; in the same moment, the other man turned to see what was going on, pulling Morgelyn around with him.  She was clutching a handful of skirt that she'd lifted out of the way to get up the stairs; still kneeling, Gary could see her bare feet peeking out underneath.  The guard followed Gary's gaze, grinned a feral grin, and slammed his thick-soled boot on her foot.  Morgelyn gasped, then pressed her lips together until they disappeared into a pale line.  

"Leave her alone, you--"  

"I wouldn't, mate," said the gruff voice in his ear.  "That's hardly the worst that will happen."

Morgelyn blinked hard at the open sky as her guard yanked her around and dragged her forward.  Jaw clenched, Gary let the man haul him to his feet.  

They were led through the kitchen, through an arched doorway to another short hall.  Here they turned and started down a longer hall.  The fresh air and bright sunlight disappeared abruptly.  This part of the old house was still intact, and a row of metal sconces hung from the walls.  Two of them held lit torches.  The place was as gloomy as the old black-and-white Dracula movie that Gary and Chuck had watched as kids, just to prove how brave they were.  It had given Gary nightmares for weeks afterward, but he'd never thought he'd actually live one.  

Eerier than the shadowy gloom was the silence that oozed from every stone, like guilt, like ghosts, like accusations.  Here, the guards made no threats, barked no commands, just forced Gary and Morgelyn along the hallway.  Silence pressed down upon them all, muffling the snap of boots, the shuffling of Gary's soft-soled shoes, the faint slap of Morgelyn's bare feet and the swishing hem of her dress.  

Gary counted eight closed doors, four on each side of the hallway, before the hands on his arm and at his back jerked him to a halt.  The ninth door stood at the end of the hall, a little wider than the others, and the guard who'd brought Morgelyn rapped once before swinging it open and pushing her through.  The door's unoiled hinges fractured the silent air of the hall.  When the back of his tunic was released, Gary wrenched his arm free and hurried in on his own two feet, so intent on making sure Morgelyn was unhurt that at first he didn't see who else was in the room.  

She pulled away from the guard when he tried to grab her again, and jumped when Gary touched her elbow.  He opened his mouth to ask her if she was okay, but stopped when he saw that her jaw had gone slack.  Morgelyn stared in shock at the man who sat in one of two sumptuously upholstered chairs on the opposite side of a huge, ornately carved table.  Long fingers laced on the table top, a gaunt-faced priest regarded them solemnly with his hooded, unreadable eyes.

"Father Malcolm?"  Morgelyn's whisper twisted through the air.  "Why are you here?"

He cleared his throat, a tight, nervous sound.  "I am here as the Church's representative," he said in his reedy voice.  "In cases of heresy--"

"Heresy?"  Morgelyn sagged backward, and Gary gripped her elbow tightly, partly to hold her up, partly to remind her that he was there.  Knowing about impending doom because of an early edition and being there when it actually happened were two entirely different matters.

Still searching for a way out, Gary took in the rest of the room--another chair, its arms and back straight, its seat unpadded, stood on their side of the table.  On either side of the table, two thick white candles with triple wicks did a better job of lighting the room than the pair of narrow windows off on the left wall.  There was also a fireplace, where new flames were just beginning to lick pine logs.  An assortment of books and a small chest took up one end of the table.  With the guards between them and the only door, there was no chance of escape.

"You are to be offered a chance to confess your sins before you are--"  Malcolm's gaze slid away from the dumbfounded woman before him, to a pile of books and a small wooden chest that sat at the end of the table.  "--questioned," he finished.  

Gary gulped in the air, scented heavily with wood smoke and candle wax.  He knew what was supposed to happen at the end of this.  He hoped that, with Fergus's help, they could escape fate.  But what would happen in between?  The paper hadn't said, and now, remembering how Fergus told Morgelyn she'd deny her own grandmother just to avoid this kind of questioning, he could feel fear rising in a tide around their feet, their ankles...what else was going to happen before this was over?

"Why do you have my books?" Morgelyn asked, the faintest crack in her quiet question, and Gary felt the shudder that ran through her.  

"They are evidence now."

This time it was Gary's mouth that fell open.  "Evidence of what?"

"Witchcraft," Malcolm said with a long, slow blink.  "Consorting with the evil one.  Heresy."

"Because she read a book?"

"Because she read these books."

Morgelyn shook her head.  "No, Father Malcolm, you know better.  You know I have always had these books--my grandmother--"  She choked off the end of the sentence.  

Gary looked the pile over, but didn't see his own paper or the Dragon's Eye.  But his relief was only momentary.  There were too many other things going wrong, and if Father Malcolm thought these innocuous books were evidence of evil deeds, it wasn't going to matter if they never found the real magical stuff.

Once more Malcolm cleared his throat, then unlaced his fingers and pushed himself to his feet.  "It is true," he said, "I have known you since you were small--I baptized you from your mother's arms.  A mother I could not bury on consecrated ground," he added pointedly.  It was bait, but Morgelyn didn't take it.  Probably too shocked, Gary thought.  

"Of course," Father Malcolm continued after a moment, "that was not your fault.  But since then I have watched your growth with some apprehension.  You are a strong young woman.  Perhaps too strong--perhaps your will has overcome your better nature.  I can tell you, however, that you are not strong enough for what is to come."  He moved around the table, stopped in front of it, and looked down at Morgelyn, ignoring Gary.  But Gary wasn't about to give ground--he scooted closer to his friend, slipping his hand from her elbow to the small of her back.  

"End this," Malcolm said, and his voice was pleading and stern...and a little bit eager, Gary thought, though that might have been his own imagination.  "You need but admit your guilt and give your soul over to God."

Gary could feel the shaky breath that Morgelyn drew in, but her voice didn't waver.  "I have nothing to confess."  Some of her hair fell from its tangles and brushed his hand as she shook her head for emphasis.   

"Perhaps you could persuade her."  Malcolm fixed Gary with his hooded stare, and Gary saw thinly-veiled fear.

"No," Gary said through gritted teeth, and felt Morgelyn's back relax, just a fraction, under his hand.  "She hasn't done anything wrong.  You ought to be talking to the men who tried to burn her house down, the ones who nearly killed her."

His gaze passing over Gary once again before flicking back to Morgelyn, the priest pursed his lips tightly. "Give up this chance, and there is nothing I can do to help you."

Bullshit, Gary wanted to say.  Malcolm could do whatever he wanted; he could let them go, he could talk to the villagers, or to Nessa...the man had some kind of power here, didn't he?  

But in the next instant, he found out he was wrong.  The door creaked open behind them, and Gary turned as another man, someone he'd never seen before, stepped in.  As tall as Gary, he wore the same robes as the priests except that they were tan instead of black or dark brown.  Gary couldn't tell if the man was prematurely grey, or older than his smooth, sallow skin and round blue eyes would suggest.  Despite the medieval getup, he walked into the room like a CEO taking over his boardroom, all business, no greetings, brushing past the guards as if they were furniture, not deigning to notice the way Malcolm scurried back behind the table.  From the blank, wondering look on Morgelyn's face, Gary assumed she'd never seen the guy before either.

Carefully placing a sheaf of papers, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink on the table, the newcomer moved to stand next to Father Malcolm.  Finally, he spared a look at the guard who stood behind Gary.  "You did not bind her hands?"  It sounded like a casual question, but the displeasure on his face was clear.  Gary thought of the knots he'd had to untie, saw the way Morgelyn's fingers brushed gingerly over the welts on her wrists, and fixed the man with a glare of his own.

"They--they were bound, sir."  The voice that had barked commands in the basement was only a shadow of itself here.

"Obviously they are not any longer, and there is nothing to stop her mouth."  The man raised a mild eyebrow.  "Do you not fear her curses?"

"No, that's just the point," Gary cut in.  "She wouldn't--she couldn't--we shouldn't be here.  I don't know who you are, but this is all a huge mistake."

The man stared at Gary, radiating flint-edged strength, and Gary flashed back to something Marissa had said once about herself: "Stone--it breaks, but it doesn't bend."  Dismissing the interruption without a word, the man turned to Morgelyn, and Gary flinched at the thought of flint on stone.  

"Sit down."  He pointed a smooth, manicured finger at the chair on their side of the table.  

Morgelyn shook her head, but her voice, too quiet, betrayed her fear.  "I would rather--"

"Sit."

After a moment's hesitation, Morgelyn stepped away from Gary's hand and sank to a tentative perch on the edge of the seat.  Gary would have followed to stand as close as possible, but the man's hand flicked once in the direction of the closest guard, who grabbed Gary with a firm, warning grip around his bicep.  
"You know why you are here."  The newcomer's statement was addressed to Morgelyn.  A faint breeze stirred the papers on the table, and he rested his hand on them while he waited for a response.  Gary squinted, trying to remember where he'd heard that voice before, that pudding-smooth confidence.  There weren't a lot of possibilities...of course.  Nessa's party--her special guest, the one he'd heard from the hallway.  This guy was...

Her guest.  His stomach clenching, Gary flicked a look at the guard who stood behind Morgelyn's chair, just to confirm that he did, indeed, wear the insignia of the golden hawk.  Nessa's guards.  Nessa's guest.  

"I know that any accusations against me are false."  A quick toss of her head, and Morgelyn fixed Father Malcolm with an accusing glare.  "What I do not know is why anyone would believe them."  

"And yet, the men in your garden this morning believed them enough to want to kill you.  You have been charged with crimes of heresy--witchcraft and consorting with the devil--both formally," he said, nodding at the papers under his hand, "and, from what I have heard about this morning's events, informally.  You were fortunate that Lady Nessa heard of your predicament and sent her soldiers."  

"Fortunate?  Are you nuts?" Gary asked incredulously.  His arm muscles bunched, tensing against the hand that held him.  

"Who are you?"  Morgelyn's eyes were round with fear.  "What right do you have to hold us here?"

"My name," the man said, smoothing the grey hair back from his temple, "is Brother John Banning.  I am here to determine your guilt in this matter.  Considering the evidence, I think you would be wise to take your priest's advice and confess immediately."

Gary still couldn't figure out what it was they wanted her to admit to.  These weren't ignorant villagers.  Surely they didn't believe that Morgelyn could have killed Mark Styles, not with poison, and certainly not with mere words.  He spoke louder, determined to stop this before it went any further.  "She doesn't have to confess; she hasn't done anything.  And you still haven't answered the rest of her question--why are we here?  What's going on?"

Banning fixed Gary with an arched eyebrow.  "What is happening, sir, is that I have been brought here because of my considerable skills, so that I may discern whether or not the people of Gwenyllan have been brought under the influence of Satan's evil by this woman and her use of witchcraft."

"And your way of finding out is to burn her out of her home and beat her up?"  Gary's voice had risen far beyond the reasonable tone everyone else had adopted.  This went way beyond reason, about as far beyond reason as Chicago was from Cornwall.  "That's real helpful; that'll get you the facts."

Banning's lips curled upward, transforming his smooth features into a horrible mockery of a smile.  "Those were villagers who committed those...unfortunate acts."

"Unfortunate?"  Gary's disbelieving voice echoed off the stone walls, and it didn't help the pounding of his head at all.  "They were gonna kill her!"

"They nearly did kill Gary," Morgelyn added.

"Then it was lucky my guards came along when they did."  Banning nodded at the men behind Gary.

His guards?  Gary's earlier assumption must have been right.  He must be Nessa's guest, and her plan--the fragments he could still remember from the night before--Gary's vision went swimmy again as he realized how carefully this had all been orchestrated.  He saw Morgelyn staring at him from just a few feet away, but it might as well have been an ocean between them for all he'd done to help so far.  They were in over their heads, way over their heads, fathoms deep, but he had to keep trying.  "Look, those people this morning, what they did was--"

"Understandable, though unwise.  They believe that they have been cursed, their families and friends sickened--"  Banning turned to Morgelyn.  "--through your deeds."

Morgelyn gripped the arms of her chair so tightly that Gary saw her knuckles redden, then pale.  "That is ridiculous--they are wrong--"

"Are they?"  Banning regarded her for a few tense, silent seconds, daring her to answer.

"Yes, of course they are, I--"  

His eyes narrowed, and Morgelyn faltered.  Gary swallowed, trying to think of something, anything, that would stop this charade.  "Not everyone believes that," he said, thinking of Anna, of Nia and her brother, of Declan, and--"What about Father Ezekiel?  You need to talk to him--he'll tell you this is all a mistake."

"Perhaps he will."  The thin, ghastly smile appeared again, then was gone.  "He will be here shortly to give his testimony."

"Testimony?" Morgelyn breathed.  "Against me?"

No, that was wrong, it had to be.  Gary refused to believe it.

"He overheard you telling Mark Styles that he would die unless he did as you wished," Father Malcolm said coldly.  "In light of the funeral Mass I will be saying tomorrow, I consider such an outburst strong evidence indeed."

"That isn't evidence!"  Impossibly, the guard who'd been holding Gary tightened his grip as Gary's free arm waved through the air.  "She was trying to get him to take some medicine that would help him.  It wasn't a threat, or a curse, or anything but--but trying to save his life."
 
Banning pressed his long lips together in a wry, too-red line.  "That might be true, if the death of Mark Styles was the only matter we were given to judge.  There are others, though that is perhaps the most...illustrative."

"Judge?" Gary asked.  "If you're the judge, who's the jury?"  The curious looks they all gave him reminded Gary that he wasn't in an American courtroom, that America didn't even exist.  

"I am merely here to collect the evidence and advise the village leaders.  They will conduct your trial and punishment based on my recommendations."

Punishment?  Gary's heart pounded in his ears.  If he'd had the Dragon's Eye, he would have found a way to use it then and there to take Morgelyn with him to the Twentieth Century, consequences be damned.  

"My experience in tracking down witches is considerable," Banning went on, "but I have no power to convict anyone.  That will be up to the leaders of Gwenyllan, including Father Malcolm, once I have finished questioning you both.  Now, if we may resume..."  He lifted his hand, indicating the pile of leather-bound books at the end of the table.  "These books, they are yours?"

"Yes, they are mine," Morgelyn said, her voice taking on an exasperated edge.  "I use them to help people, to make poultices and draughts that will heal injuries and cure illnesses."

"You can read these?"

"Of course I can!"

Banning lifted an eyebrow at that.  "And you admit they contain spells and charms for--as you would have it--healing?  Could they not also be used for causing illness?"

"There are no spells in there."  Morgelyn's voice was stronger than it had been, rising to the challenge.  "Have you read them?  They are written--many of them by monks--to teach people to use God's gifts, God's own creation, to heal His people.  The devil did not create rosemary and lavender and tansy; God did.  And I am using what He created to do what Our Lord asks us to do in the scriptures, to heal and to comfort the sick."

"But some of these plants could be used to bring harm, could they not?"

"Of course they could, but I would never do that!"

"Both Mark Styles and his daughter are dead, and his son has been ill as well.  How did you cause these events?"

"She didn't.  That boy is alive because of her," Gary insisted.  

"The Styles family is not the only one affected.  Others lie ill in the village today," Father Malcolm said.  "At least three adults and one child have been taken with this illness, though no more cases have been brought to our attention since your arrest."

Distress seemed to widen Morgelyn's features; she looked wildly from the inquisitor to Gary and back.  "If people are sick, you have to set me free.  They need help--let me go to them, I know what to do."

Banning struck with the alacrity of a rattlesnake.  "No doubt because you caused the trouble in the first place."

"No, I--"  Morgelyn was all the way forward, on the edge of her chair.  "Who is it, who is ill?"

Banning tilted his head, and a shaft of light from the window hit the side of his face, illuminating the sharp cheekbones and jawline.  "That is a matter which no longer concerns you.  If you did not wish them to fall ill, you should not have cursed them in the first place."

"I spoke no curse!"

"In addition to these events, you were seen last night with a cat, which I assume is your familiar."

No, Gary thought, no, Cat was there to help them, to protect her--"It's not her cat, it's mine.  You can't think just because--it's my cat," he insisted.  Banning's shrug was barely visible, and Gary's heart sank even farther at his next words.

"We will locate that animal soon enough, and determine the extent of its evil.  Furthermore," he said, turning back to Morgelyn, "you have spoken ill of a man whose garden died the next week; you have infected the minds of children with ridiculous, unholy stories..."

"The same stories you no doubt heard from your own mother."  Morgelyn's voice rose, higher than it had climbed when she was sparring with Fergus.  "How does telling stories to children make me evil?"

Though he understood Morgelyn's desperate determination to make them see the truth, Gary wanted to tell her that it was hopeless trying to talk to this guy.  He had the same intractable expression that Gary had seen on bigots, on fanatics--on those suburban kids who'd wanted to beat each other up because of the same kinds of differences that the villagers, and now these far more powerful men, had used to blame Morgelyn.  

"If you are found to have practiced witchcraft," Banning said in a voice that said he had no doubt she had, "we must do what Our Lord requires.  Father Malcolm?"

"The Book of Exodus commands, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" Malcolm finished promptly, coldly.  But he didn't look at Morgelyn when he said it.    

Morgelyn briefly closed her eyes, and Gary couldn't tell if she was trying to pray, or to escape in the only way she could.  They needed help from outside, and they needed it now--now that Banning was reaching for the small chest on the table and opening it.  Gary held his breath while the examiner pulled out what looked like a pair of tongs, or pinchers--something made of iron, and made to grip.  Other tools, unidentifiable but menacing, glinted from the interior of the chest.  Banning walked methodically over to the fireplace and placed the tool's handle on the stone hearth, the business end just in the growing flames.  When he turned back to them, it seemed that some of the light from the fire had been caught and held in his eyes.  He looked alive, really alive, for the first time.  The guard by the door grinned, Malcolm blanched, and Banning asked Morgelyn, in a soft, vivid tone, "When did you fall?  When did you first give your heart over to the evil one?"

Her whispered answer, stiff with shock, took Gary's breath with it.  

"Never."

Banning took a step closer.  "Was it when you survived the pestilence that killed your neighbors?"

Morgelyn slid back in the seat, her shoulders coming up in self-defense.  "I am not the only one who survived."  Her voice was still hushed.  Gary knew the inquisitor had hit on a weak spot, her uncertainty as to why she'd lived through the plague, and he realized that the light in Banning's eyes was one of triumph--he was sure he'd won.  

"Father Malcolm says you are the only one in this village who had the illness and lived."

Malcolm spoke up quickly, watching Morgelyn, but also checking Banning's reaction from the corner of his eye.  "Your grandmother loved you very much, unnaturally so.  She would have done anything to save you.  I have long wondered if perhaps she promised her own life, and your own soul, when your natural course was run, to the dark powers in exchange for your survival."

"No," Morgelyn said with desperate conviction.  "She would never, never do that!"  

For some reason, Gary's gaze landed on Morgelyn's hands.  They were trembling, and as he watched, she pulled them into her lap and clasped them together, staring straight ahead through teary eyes.  It was, in his mind, Marissa's gesture, it fell in that catalog, and it nearly split him in two.  Gary took a step toward his friend--but he didn't make it.  A yank on his shoulder spun him around; a fist to his solar plexus doubled him over.

"Gary!"  When he looked up, clutching his stomach and trying to catch his breath, Morgelyn was on her feet, eyes wide with alarm.  He opened his mouth to tell her not to worry, but nothing would come out.  Instead, he concentrated on breathing for a few seconds, in and out, past the hurt.

"He did nothing!  How can you accuse me of hurting people while your--your henchmen do this?"  Morgelyn's voice rang off the walls, and she stepped closer, reaching out toward Gary.  Still bent over, hands on his knees, his head pounding once again, he saw, but couldn't stop, the second guard, who left his post and pushed her roughly back toward the chair.  She caught herself on the armrest as she staggered back.

"Now, now, child, sit down," Father Malcolm said, hurrying from his place behind the table.  "There is no need for anyone to be hurt."

Gary's eyes met Morgelyn's when he straightened up; he could tell that she, too, was fighting the manic urge to laugh at that comment.  The guard closest to her wrapped an arm around a rip in her sleeve and pushed her to the front of the chair.

"Sit."  Banning stood less than two feet from Morgelyn, once more glaring down at her from his height advantage.  Her jaw tightened, and for a minute Gary thought she'd defy him then and there.  Gary braced himself, checking the guards' positions, knowing a fight was hopeless, but knowing, too, that a time was quickly approaching when choosing his battles would be a moot point.  They were already being chosen for him, narrowed down to a precious few opportunities to change destiny.  

Father Malcolm cleared his throat.  Breaking eye contact with Banning, Morgelyn looked over at her priest, whose lips twitched as he looked from Morgelyn to the fire and back.  After another breathless moment, the guard released her arm and she sat down slowly, like a balloon with a slow leak.  The hopeless resignation in her shoulders left Gary feeling as though he was sinking in quicksand.  Damn it.  Where was Fergus; where was Ezekiel?  Why hadn't the paper suggested some way out?  

"As for you,"  Banning said to Gary, his cold glance barely taking him in before sliding away again, "you will be silent, or you will be removed."  He reached behind him and produced a piece of parchment from the bottom of his pile, and held it out to Morgelyn.  "Understand that I am here to save your soul, as much as the lives of the villagers."

Morgelyn took the paper.  Gary craned his neck, but he couldn't make out the words, just the way his friend's face greyed over.  "What is this?"

"You can save us all a great deal of trouble if you admit your wrongdoing--your heresy.  Sign the confession, lass, and at least your soul will be purified.  You can make your peace with God and be shriven."

Make peace with God...that sounded too damn final.  "No, wait--" Gary began, but Morgelyn cut him off, shaking her head.  

Her voice quavered, but she met Banning's gaze with an eerie calm.  "I will not betray my soul to eternal damnation with a lie to save myself earthly torment."  She let the papers fall to the floor.

Brave--but totally naive.  Gary knew it as soon as he saw the light that flashed in Banning's eyes, the slow, small, utterly satisfied curve of his lips, more sneer than smile, at Morgelyn's defiance.  Whatever was coming next, this guy was going to enjoy it.  Gary tried to get closer, but the guard wrenched his arm behind his back.

It was Malcolm who spoke.  "My dear, it would be best if you confess now.  Look into your heart.  You know there is evil there, for it lies in the heart of every woman."

Morgelyn sounded as hurt and betrayed as if he'd slapped her.  "