Nor Iron Bars A Cage (9 page)

Tobin made a gutted sound.

“Oh, I wasn’t one of those pleasures.”
Not yet.
“But it decided that it needed to move into my body. Meldov was twenty years older than me and although he should have been still young and hale, he was falling apart. It didn’t know how to do the transfer though. It came to believe the only way was to be welcomed in, as it had somehow tricked or persuaded Meldov to do.”

“It wanted to possess you? Your mind?”

“Yes— well, my flesh, more like. It wanted me, but by the time it made a move, I’d found out what it was.”
Too late. And missed a chance to run. I was a fool, so infatuated that no change, no cruelty on Meldov’s part had been enough to shake me, until it was too late and the mark was on my wrist. Such a fool.

“I realized too late to get away. And it needed me to give it house-room voluntarily. So it chained me to a wall in the work-room and… tried things.” I couldn’t believe I could say all this, in a dispassionate voice. I’d barely been able to even think about it awake, until now.

“It tortured you?” Tobin’s tone was admirably steady.

“Not really. It wanted my body whole and healthy, after all. It tried persuasion first, offering me bribes, knowledge, power, pleasure.”
Meldov’s familiar voice, offering things I hadn’t thought to imagine.
“It kept me fed and clean, but it whispered at me, hours on end, night after night, and raged, and threatened.” It had learned fast not to stand where I could get a kick in. A pity I hadn’t gelded it the one chance I got, but the body had still been Meldov’s and I hadn’t been desperate enough yet to put the full force behind it. After that it drugged me most days, so I woke groggy and disoriented. “It would touch my arm, in that vulnerable place where the brand was, and I would
feel
it searching for the cracks in my thoughts, the way to make me let it in.”

“A brand? It was inside your mind? It could do that?”

“The brand on my wrist came first.” I touched the spot, rubbing it. “Some kind of rune that let it get a spell into me. A pain spell at first, no more.” But it had been enough to get that first control. Ironic, that the wraith had some kind of magecraft. Meldov had finally found his source for the old magics, and not lived to know it. “Then the first night I was… restrained, it painted a spell on my back, tied into a branded key on my wrist. I never saw the details. It drugged me unconscious for the spellwork— couldn’t risk me moving and messing up the lines, I’m sure. I imagine it hoped to do the whole job of possession while I was out, but I guess you can’t consent while unconscious. But the spell hooked into my mentor’s mark, and let the wraith speak to me, inside.” I started trembling, long rippling shudders that shook me against the blankets. Tobin reached for me and I barked, “Don’t!” I couldn’t bear a touch right now. He drew back and waited.

“It tried other things. For a while. Eventually I, um, went away for a bit, and that made space in my mind, I guess.” I was never going to tell Tobin how that was done, my ankles restrained by the steel bar, my body taken and filled as it slipped through my defenses.
Say yes. Just say yes.
Not violence but slow, repeated, unwanted pleasure, over and over, stopping on the brink. And then trying again. Another night. And another. The first pain disappearing until I couldn’t remember why I didn’t want this, but only that with all my heart I
did not.
I couldn’t say no, was not willing to ever say yes. I went away for a while. “The wraith thought it had won, but it was mistaken.”

I grinned in the darkness, glad that Tobin couldn’t see me clearly. It didn’t feel like a nice grin at all, more like a thing of sharp teeth and bitter glee. That had been the most intense moment of my life, as the wraith struggled to puppet-control my newly-acquired body, and to decide what to do with the old man. I’d cowered in the back of my mind, still aware. I don’t think it knew I was there. It had hovered between me and Meldov for a moment, trying to animate us both. And succeeding.

It used Meldov to take off my cuffs, and then walked my body over to the table. It let him drop unheeded to the floor, still as death. I could feel the
thing
inside me. The weight of all those years, the narrow but deep knowledge, the hunger. It was deciding if it was safest to kill Meldov, or keep him in reserve. Wondering whether it had really slipped free of him, or was still inhabiting us both. And if both, whether Meldov would have to die, in order to free it to fully inhabit me. It cared less than nothing for the man whose life it had shared for six months. It was greedy to become me.

“There was a lantern on the table. I’d been hiding, somehow, down inside my own head. I made us stumble, just enough. It didn’t realize— it thought it was just its own clumsiness with the new flesh. The lamp tipped over and the glass broke. And I set my wrist in the flame.”

“Sweet goddess!”

“It was the best pain I’ve ever felt.” Just shock at first, and soaring, screaming exultation. Then agony, of course.

The wraith had fought me. But I’d caught it by surprise, and as the brand sizzled and warped I could feel it leaving me, sucked back into Meldov.

“When it was back inside Meldov, before it could get up off the floor, I killed them.” There’d been a knife on that table. We’d never used it for anything but cutting writing supplies, and I was working left-handed. But it went through a man’s arteries just fine. “I cut its throat. His. I cut his throat.” I caught back a sob. “Oh, gods, Tobin. I killed Meldov.”

“You had to.”

“I thought so then. But I managed to get free of its hold. Maybe he could have too. Was he still in there? If I could have dragged the body outside and chained it up, waiting for daylight, might that have weakened the wraith enough for him to force it out, as I did?”

“It was in you, controlled you for how long? Minutes?”

“Yes. And not completely.”

“And it walked around in his body doing things he’d never have consented to for how long?”

That was nothing I hadn’t told myself, over and over for years, but hearing it in Tobin’s voice helped.

He said, “You were tortured, captive and possessed, and you got free. You have nothing to be sorry for. Meldov had already had a long time to get loose, if he could have. So you cut its throat. The thing was dead. What did you do next?”

It was a relief to move on from that moment. “I wasn’t sure it was really destroyed. A wraith isn’t alive to begin with, after all. But I knew we had to be close to morning, and it hated the daylight. I put a containment circle around the body, because I couldn’t manage to move it.” Not because it was heavy, although I was weakened and one-handed. But because I hadn’t dared touch it skin to skin. Even when I found a glove, reaching for the body was impossible. “I thought I’d use heat and fire, and maybe I’d burn the roof off overhead and let in the sun. I put everything we had that would burn well in that room. Including our stock of admagnium.” The precious metal we used for augmenting spellcraft burned with a white-hot flame. “All our oils, distilled spirits, candle wax, paper. Even most of the books.” I’d perhaps been a little crazy. “I packed a bag with a few things. I stole his money, and the best three books.”

“Good,” Tobin repeated with the same conviction.

“Then I threw in a lighted candle and ran.” I’d almost caught myself in the inferno. The workroom was in the basement. I’d dashed up the stairs as fast as I could, my arm cradled to my chest and the bag bumping my shoulder. The roar of the flames behind me was like a living beast, and the heat rolled up the staircase, turning it into an oven.

“I was two miles away when the sun came up, and I still wasn’t sure I was safe. I kept running. Eventually I was certain it was gone.” I’d been sick, over and over until I fell into the ditch beside the road. I’d thought I pushed it out completely before, when the mark on my wrist was gone, but I’d felt the moment an hour later when the wraith was banished. There’d been a greasy, lingering touch on my skin, on my back, in the curves and words of the spell, and I felt when it left me. Only then did I realize its hand had still been on me, and I hadn’t even known it was there.

“Where did you go? Why didn’t you come to me?” Tobin’s voice rose thinly. “I would have helped you. Whatever you needed.”

“At first, I was too scared and sick, barely able to hide myself away before I fell apart. When I finally emerged from hiding days later, a traveler came across me stumbling and raving and got me to the hostel at Lowbridge.” And hadn’t robbed me. I never knew his name but, despite my unbelief, I gave a tithe to the goddess Bian every year, on his behalf.

“And the sisters tended you?”

“Yes. I was out of my head for a while. And after that, I needed to find a sanctuary somewhere alone. Completely alone.” Even from my oldest friend. In appeasement, I added, “Anyway, I assumed you were outcountry somewhere.” During those last six months before the wraith tipped its hand, it hadn’t let me go to town at all. I’d thought it was just Meldov being angry and disciplining me. I’d tried to do better, and followed every rule, accepted the restrictions, and lost track of Tobin in my own personal hell. Not that I’d looked for him, after.

He nodded. “Maybe I was away by the time you recovered. You know, I probably was. I’d just got home on leave to Riverrun when we heard about the fire. By the time I reached the manor, it was a pile of ash with the flames still dancing in it. It was too hot to approach, and clearly far too late. I sought word of you, or Meldov, for days afterward, but when none came I was sure you were dead. I volunteered to cut my leave short and went back to the front. Depending on how long you were ill?”

“A month,” I said. I’d almost lost the arm, as the wound suppurated. The Mistress Healer had wanted to amputate, but I’d refused to let her get near it with a knife. I think I’d hoped I would die. But the sisters of Bian were skilled physickers and eventually it got better, although the damaged tendons pulled it into the claw I now lived with.

“A month? Yeah, by then I was back to chasing tribesmen in their own hills. Bloody work, but it kept me busy.”

“I just wanted a place to rest. A safe place, and far from the city. Far from people. I paid an agent to find me that little house. I’d stolen enough money from Meldov to buy the place outright. It was perfect.”
The trip there had been hell, but once I’d arrived I’d gone to ground inside its walls and not come out for a long, long time.

“And you’ve lived there alone, all this time.”

“From the moment I could get myself there. Gods, yes.” Alone. It had been such a relief. I’d spent most of my month with the sisters first out of my head, then drugged, and eventually pretending all was well and trying not to kill the nice ladies every time they laid a hand on me. Pretending to be sane enough to be let go.
Alone
had been my goal, my only hope for salvation.

“Weren’t you lonely?”

“I wasn’t fit for human company.” It was an answer, and yet not. I’d been desperately alone. I hadn’t wanted anyone near, but still the emptiness had echoed.

Tobin’s eyes narrowed. “You seemed to be doing okay now. The boy and his mother like you. You’re known in the village.”

“Now. Yes, I can hold a conversation without running away. But at first?” I laughed. “When I got there, I had them brick up the window. And put a dozen iron bars over the bricks as further comfort. I hid behind my stone walls and thought myself safe as humanly possible. And yet the thing I was afraid of could creep beneath a door. I wrote the wards over and over.” Sometimes hourly, in fear that some passing breath of air might have altered them. “I slept inside a circle. I had my household goods brought to me, and ventured out no further than to dump the night-soil in the blazing sun of midday.”

“But you’re much better now?”

“The day I took out the bricks and replaced them with glass was a victory. I was so tired of the dark. The day I took out the bars from behind that glass, so I could look at my garden unobscured— that was when I finally felt at home.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, years and years now,” I said airily, to hide how ashamed I was of how long it had taken me. “I donated those bars to the king’s iron drive, to be made into swords. I felt quite pleased with myself.” I’d imagined Tobin perhaps armed with a new weapon, forged out of my escape from insanity. I’d forgotten that, but now it came back to me. I’d missed him fiercely that day.

 “So you were happy there? Really? Before I came?”

Should I say “yes”, so he would blame himself for dragging me away, or “no”, and appear to give consent to this madness?
“I was content.”

“I’m so sorry I had to force you to leave.”

I shrugged. “It’s done now.” Although there was still the city to come, and all its crowds and the king himself, waiting.
Done
was likely to be an optimistic statement.

“I’m glad you didn’t still have those window bars in place,” he added. “I’d have beaten through the door to get to you.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I repeated peevishly. “You misunderstood.”

“I’m still not giving you the knife back.”

I was glad he was making me irritable. I’d come too close to feeling soft about him. “Suit yourself. You can keep watch then.” I rolled myself in my blanket, turned away from him, and watched the flames dance, as the night wore on.

****

CHAPTER FOUR

In the morning I was as sore as if I’d been beaten with a stick, and a little sick at heart over the things I’d told Tobin. At least I hadn’t told him the worst of it. But I’d said enough about weakness and pain that I thought I’d never share with anyone. I watched closely to see if it would change the way he treated me.

Tobin raised an eyebrow. “Do I have soot on my face? You’re staring.”

“You’re imagining things.” I forced myself to my feet. We ate a hurried and cold breakfast, to get on the road faster. Then I made the mistake of insisting I could bridle and saddle my own damned horse. Forgetting that I’d never tried it one handed. Cricket let me slide the bit into his mouth, but then spit it out when I tried to move up the cheekpieces to loop the crown over his ears. We did that little dance several times. Then he stopped opening his mouth for me. I called him names. In several languages.