Zenobie (Windrose Chronicles) Page 4

  And Joanna said, “The tower.”

  “Don’t everybody come up at once!” ordered Ben, as the entire population of the Institute streamed back into the house, to the backstairs that ascended from the kitchen.

  Dr. Conyer – to his total credit as far as Joanna was concerned – said, “Antryg, you’d better go. Joanna – Lindy…”

  Which proved, to Joanna, that The Teacher – reincarnated Indian savant or not – had at least been paying attention to which of the women in his little coterie would be best able to deal with a possibly traumatized thirteen-year-old. “Honestly,” protested Starshine, “I don’t see why she should go and not me. Children naturally love me—”

  Galadriel lay in the center of the tower chamber, deeply asleep. She didn’t wake when Ben lifted her, and carried her down the stairs: “Her pulse is normal,” Joanna heard him say to Lindy, “and she seems to be breathing okay—”

  “I get just like that,” squeaked Mrs. Durham down below, “when I’m having an attack of negative vibrations…”

  Joanna turned from the trap-door, the weak yellow illumination of her flashlight outlining Antryg’s skinny shape against the darkness. No moonlight came through the chamber’s four tall windows. The sky was like tar with the storm; as in her dream, lightning flared and died, flared and died in the window. Rain rattled against the glass and the old house creaked, very softly, on its tall piers. Beyond Antryg, writing glistened a little on the wall. The blood – and she could smell the blood, the way the scent of a single rose can perfume a closed space – was still wet.

  It said, ALYS.

  *

  There was talk over breakfast of Galadriel leaving Zénobie. “Oh, come on,” said the girl, exasperated. “So I sleepwalked? Big deal.” Despite her obsessive neatness – better turned-out, with her washed hair and neat polo-shirt, than the three actress-models of the party – she looked sleepy and a little haggard as she stirred her coffee, and her voice was filled with pubescent contempt for the concerns of grown-ups. “It’s not like the windows up there are ever open, or I could fall out, or anything.”

  “You could fall down the stairs,” pointed out Mrs. Durham, and Galadriel rolled her eyes.

  “Besides, where would I go?” She glanced at her father. “I know Dad’s gonna want to stay here to make sure the guest-houses get done before your conference—”

  “I can do that,” offered Chad.

  The look Galadriel gave him – Yeah, right – seemed to be echoed in the long pause among the others, into which nobody, not even Dr. Conyer, leaped with assurances that by golly, Chad would certainly do a great job bossing laborers from town! At length Ben Hallard said, “Well, if you’re sure, honey…”

  “Do you have a friend you can go to?” asked Lindy.

  “Marcie and her folks are in Hawaii,” retorted the girl. “And Tory’s family isn’t going to be back from Maine ‘til school starts.” Marcie and Tory, Joanna had learned yesterday during the guided tour, were Galadriel’s BFFs.

  She noticed with interest that nobody suggested Galadriel spend the time with her mother.

  By mid-afternoon the topic was moot anyway, when news came over the radio (there was, of course, not a TV in the Institute) that Highway 90 back to town was flooded with the worsening of Tropical Storm Beryl, so Galadriel wouldn’t have been able to go anyplace even if she’d had someplace to go. Joanna, whose mother had started leaving her home for two and three days at a time at the age of twelve, could sympathize. Staying in an empty house with a stack of frozen dinners, a twenty dollar bill, and the neighbor’s phone number had been unnerving sometimes – she’d had very few friends – but it had been a whole lot better than the prospect of going and staying with her dad and whoever his current girlfriend was.

  By three, the water was knee-deep around the house and rising.

  This didn’t surprise anyone. Antryg went out and walked the circuit around the house again just after breakfast, when the wind was strong enough almost to blow Joanna off her feet and the air was filled with flying debris from the woods: branches, leaves, ragged clumps of kudzu and Spanish moss. “What are you looking for?” asked Joanna again, as the wizard stopped and studied each of the three doors that led into the store-space under the house, passing his hands across the stout wood and the heavy new padlocks the contractor had left, and Antryg only shook his head.

  “The house was Zénobie’s,” he said, turning his shoulders to the hammering wind, “before Trasher – her master – brought in a new wife. At least that’s the story, which may not be true. The contractor in charge of the repairs is a descendant of the original family. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Not unless this is the first time there’s been a Trasher on the property since the tragedy.”

  He raised his eyebrows, turned the padlock over in his crooked fingers and ran his fingertips lightly on the wood all around. “I wonder.”

  The bayou was beginning to flood even then. By the time Antryg lowered himself down through the floor of one of the deserted bedrooms on the north wing, and into the space beneath the house itself, the water was ankle-deep. Antryg sloshed the length of both wings, and around among the stout brick piers that supported the main block of the house, reaching up now and then to touch the foot-square cypress beams, put into place by unfree labor almost two centuries before and bearing both the new aluminum sheathing of new electrical wiring, and the carved work-signs of the slave-gangs who’d raised the house.

  “Can you feel them?” asked Joanna softly, as Antryg ran his fingers over a larger sign, a grid-work of crossed lines and stylized snakes. “The people who made the house?”

  His spectacles flashed as he nodded. “Their wizard put a spell on the house,” he said softly. “A number of spells, actually – the slaves used to come down here and mark the underside of the floor, look—” He turned her flashlight up to the thick boards over their heads. “I presume so the master would walk across these signs. Signs of hatred, of sickness and grief to all who dwelt there. Look here—”

  He dug his fingers into a dark cranny between the beams, brought out a cracking fragment of what looked like coarse sacking, and from it unwrapped with withered remains of a chicken’s foot, and a dirty crumble of earth and salt. “These things don’t go away.”

  After that they climbed to the tower, and Antryg studied the now-dried blood-writing by daylight, straggling letters crudely drawn, first with his glasses on, then with his long nose almost touching the whitewashed plaster.

  “Where does the blood come from?” Joanna asked softly. “I’ve read about poltergeist activity involving blood dripping from the walls or the ceiling – and I assume that the blood from that thing we dealt with back at that village in the Sykerst was from its victims… I’ve read that when they’ve tested the blood at poltergeist sites it’s human. But how would it show up on a DNA test? Whose human blood?”

  “Whose indeed?” He wet his finger, dabbed it along the dried letters. “In my own world we don’t have DNA testing, but a trained mage can see – can feel – the victim of the original murder in the blood, so I presume this would test as the blood of whoever is the guiding spirit here. Probably Zénobie, possibly the woman Rowena, or the child Alys.

  “I do need blood,” he added, and turned from the wall to look out the window beside it. The woods heaved and thrashed like a dark-green ocean, and Joanna could see, up to the wall of the house, the sullen pewter waters of the flooded bayou shuddering with the movement of the storm. “I presume one could just get a couple of rats from the pet store in town—”

  Antryg knew all about feeder-rats from Mr. Parker, who lived next door to them in Granada Hills and had three boa constrictors and an anaconda.

  “—but I doubt we could get into town at the moment.”

  “Why do you need blood?”

  He looked a bit surprised that she’d have to ask. “I plan to spend tonight here in the tower, of course.”

  *

&
nbsp; In the end Antryg cut open his own arm, and mixed the blood he drew with a great deal of water in one of Lindy’s spare mixing-bowls (“It’s the wrong size for my current mixer, so it can just be thrown out afterwards…”). “Won’t the ghost know the blood is watered?” asked Starshine, observing Antryg in fascination as her daughter wrapped a field-dressing tightly around his arm. “My goodness, where did you learn to do that, dearest? You used to faint at the sight of blood.”

  “You can have some of mine,” added Crystal, holding out her henna-squiggled arm. By this time, knowing the sorts of things Crystal customarily had in her blood-stream, Joanna wondered what sort of effect that would have on subsequent manifestations. Psychedelic paisley ghosts, presumably…

  “Until I know what I’m dealing with—” Antryg put his thumb on the bandage so Joanna could finish tying it, “—I’d rather my blood be the only type our friend has contact with.”

  “Is it true what the Teacher says?” Ben’s sweetheart Cherí leaned her elbows on the kitchen table: group summons of the power of the Universe aside, Joanna had quickly found that the kitchen was the place that most people gathered in the afternoons. “That this – this spirit, this thing – can use the energies raised here to spread out over the world? And do what? Spread hatred? Are we looking at some kind of catastrophe?”

  The last light was fading from the wide kitchen windows, the long, narrow garden beyond. The wings of the house protected it somewhat from the wind, but with the rising of the storm-surge from the Gulf the whole countryside was drowned crotch-deep in flood-water, and the house’s bones shuddered under the flail of the wind. At the counter, Lumen was lighting the emergency oil-lamps, as the electrical power had failed again, this time presumably from natural causes, and the soft glow seemed to intensify the familiar smells of Lindy’s cookies, cooling on their racks, and of the vegetarian lasagne in the oven.

  “To be honest I haven’t the faintest idea what we’re looking at.” Antryg covered the bowl with Saran wrap – it was astonishing how little blood it took to encrimson half a gallon of water – and stowed it in the refrigerator. “I’ll need salt, and iron—”

  Everyone looked at each other blankly at that, until Lumen said, “Do you mind if it’s rusty? When they were clearing away the old slave-cabins for the guest-houses, somebody found what used to be the plantation forge, and there was about a quart of old nails there. I think they’re in the unfinished bathroom.”

  “And I have a half-gallon of kosher salt up in my room,” added Mrs. Durham helpfully. “It keeps the negative vibrations away, but the maid keeps vacuuming it up.”

  Enough light remained for Joanna to see the guest-houses through the window when she went into the library, perched up on their piers several feet above the water; something small and black paddled determinedly out of the woods, scrambled up on the steps of one of them, and shook itself. Nutria? Squirrel?

  Rat, probably. Joanna grimaced. God knew what the flood was going to chase out of the space under the house, and Chad had warned her to watch her feet if she walked along the galleries of the rear wings that night. It wasn’t uncommon for snakes to be flushed from their holes by floods and there were several notably poisonous varieties in the near-by swamps. When she’d gone to her mother’s room earlier in the afternoon, she’d heard the scuffle and scurry of movement in the attic above the wings. Just what we need.

  And she thought again of Galadriel, in her solitary chamber in the north wing, lying there listening to the darkness when everyone had gone to bed.

  Reason enough, she thought, to set off poltergeist activities in that self-contained and withdrawn girl… If that’s what’s doing it. Whatever the girl said, Joanna was certain it wasn’t some petty rivalry between the Teacher’s Ex and his Pending. Both had been in the room during the tapping episode last night and both had looked shaken and scared.

  And anyway, I DREAMED ABOUT HER.

  Dreamed about her in the tower. Dreamed about her pacing the floor, with the bodies of Rowena and Alys lying in their blood in the moonlight…

  *

  She dreamed about her again.

  Zénobie. Tall and beautiful – older than Joanna had pictured her – with fine black hair like wavy silk bound close to her head, and dark eyes wide and full of fury in the thin moonlight that came and went through the ragged clouds.

  The wind had ceased. The rain had fallen for a time, then eased, though the floods still stood in the lands. Zénobie paced the tower, but instead of the bodies of the woman she’d slain, the daughter she had chosen to see dead rather than given to another, in the center of the tower sprawled a complex protective circle wrought of iron, salt, silver – coins, chains, earrings – and blood.

  Wait, I was going to go up and be with him…

  But Antryg wasn’t there.

  Only a huge puddle of blood lay in the center of the circle, fresh and glistening, the stink of it filling the room.

  I have to wake up. He’ll need me…

  She heard a man come into the house from the gallery behind, through the kitchen, up the backstair. Walking heavily, under some burden limp in his arms…

  I HAVE TO WAKE UP…

  Zénobie turned to listen, and her face twisted with hate.

  Joanna jolted from sleep. Her heart raced, but her mind felt groggy and stupid. She lay fully dressed on the futon – I was just going to lie here and read for awhile, have a few cookies until Antryg was done reading his cards in the dining-room and went up to the tower…

  How the HELL could I fall asleep?It was only nine o’clock

  By the glowing hands of her wristwatch it was midnight now, the house sunk in silence like death.

  Except for the weighted tread of someone climbing the stair.

  Joanna crawled to her feet and staggered, sleep still gumming her thoughts. Am I dreaming this?

  She knew she wasn’t.

  She took a poker from the clean-swept library fireplace, checked that her flashlight was still in her pocket, but some obscure instinct whispered to her not to turn it on. She slipped barefoot from the library (with uneasy reflections about copperheads and cottonmouths slithering up the gallery steps and into the house) into the thin moongleam of the kitchen, stood at the bottom of the backstair listening.

  Brightsky sneaking up for a surreptitious boink with The Teacher?

  She knew it wasn’t.

  Stonne Caris, grandson of the Archmage Salteris Solaris and a healer now himself, had told her once that when climbing stairs in silence one should keep to the wall, and to the edge of the step, that the riser should take one’s weight. Joanna climbed in silence, poker heavy in her hand (Like a poker’s going to impress a ghost?). When she reached the upstairs hall she saw something – a ball of glowing phosphorous, like a silent fireball – on the opposite side of the gallery that ran around the well of the main stair from the hall below. It seemed to appear near the door of Mrs. Durham’s room and roll toward her, then vanished, and as Joanna stood, frozen in the dark entryway of the backstair, she heard someone coming down the stair of the tower.

  A man, by his weight.

  Moving quietly, on stockinged feet.

  Thin moonlight showed her his face as he emerged. She’d never seen him before: not as tall as Antryg but heavier built, buzzed hair and a broken nose, and a face of the cruellest and most uncaring calm Joanna had ever seen. He wore something dark – she couldn’t see what – but she did see that he had a military pistol on his belt and a sheathed knife with a twelve-inch blade.

  Soundlessly – it was eerie how quietly he moved – he opened the door of what Joanna knew was Ben and Cherí’s room and went inside.

  What the HELL…?

  Joanna almost made a dart across from the backstair to the tower stair – it was less than twenty feet – but her nerve failed her at the recollection of that craggy dead-eyed face. He’ll kill me if he sees me.

  She knew it, as she knew her own name.

  Antryg’s in th
e tower.

  Asleep, as I was asleep… Dead-asleep? Drugged-asleep? How could somebody drug people in the house…

  Cookies. She remembered how Galadriel had sagged limp in her father’s arms last night when he’d found her in the tower. How groggy she’d been that morning. How easy it was to come and go through one or another of the house’s many doors and windows and how many hours each day all the bedrooms sat unlocked and unwatched. You could swap Lindy’s chocolate chip cookies for cookies loaded with strychnine, let alone methaqualone or whatever the hell it is…

  The door opened again and the stranger emerged, carrying Ben slung over his shoulders.

  Ben the rock-star— But she knew this wasn’t a thrill-kill stalker. He isn’t dripping water on the floor. That means he’s been hiding in the house all afternoon. Attic, probably… It’s got to be a professional hit. That means money.

  She padded softly – still holding to the wall – to the bottom of the tower stair, heard the assassin’s feet ascending in the darkness ahead of her. I’ve gone up against a Dead God and a trans-dimensional Devourer… against abominations from across the Void and soul-stealing wizards, and the smartest thing for me to do would be to wait down here at the bottom with a weapon and kill him when he comes down…

  Except that by that time he’ll have already killed Ben and whoever else it was he took up there – Galadriel, it’s got to be Galadriel – and anyway there isn’t a gun in this house and I will NOT go up against a professional hit-man with a poker—

  A man’s harsh voice yelled “Fuck!” and she heard Antryg cry out in pain.

  And flung herself like a tiger up the stairs.

  Antryg had, of all things, a six-foot piece of clothes-pole (He has to have got it from one of the guest-houses…), with which Joanna knew he was murderously adept; the hit-man had got inside his guard and opened a gash on his right fore-arm. Only secondarily did Joanna spot Ben lying like a sack of laundry just beside the open trap-door of the tower stairs that led down, and Galadriel unconscious in the room’s far corner. Antryg twisted out of his assailant’s way and tried to trip him, but the other man was trained, and cat-fast. Antryg ducked back, trying to get enough distance to use the pole and to put as much space between himself and the knife as he could. He caught sight of Joanna, yelled “Joanna, RUN!” in the same moment the hit-man turned, broke off his attack and lunged for her—