Mercedes Lackey - Lamma's Night (anthology)

"I'm not sure I want to know its nature," said Jemuel, in all seriousness. "Is it the kind of spell Stephen would want?"

"Yes."

"But..."

"But it doesn't add up. If these two were enemies in the end, why would Dervish's reward be tied to Stephen's?"

'Things are not always as they seem."

"Indeed," said Miranda,

"I think if I were you, I'd try to talk to the real Stephen," said Jemuel.

Miranda was staring into the coals of the fire. "I think I know just where to go. I must excuse myself, Jemuel, you've been very helpful."

"Always happy to aid and abet," said Jemuel, but by then Miranda was already on her way out.

Miranda heard the ducks at the pond and placed her hands on the well. Her mind burrowed down deep, down the slimy bricks into the dank water far below. She gasped as she made contact and finally spoke, "Stephen."

There was something like the drawing of breath, ethereal. "Miranda."

"I thought it was you in your house; I was going to set this wizard free."

"To do so... would accomplish my life's work."

She saw images then: Dervish and Stephen at the well; Dervish revealed, discovering Stephen's plan; Dervish banishing Stephen to the well; Stephen banishing Dervish to Stephen's spell; the cold water mocking Stephen, and both of them reaching out for just the right wizard, who would surely come along in time.

"But how did you know I would find you?"

"I did not," said the spirit in the well. "Things have worked out better than I had planned in that regard. The choice is still yours, Miranda. Say the words, as I have prepared them."

"I don't want to set Dervish free."

"But so much more will be set free if you do so. What is he, after all, compared to our revolution?"

"A hypocrite, a liar. He preached your philosophy to get himself flesh."

Silence. "I understand."

"I want you , Stephen, not this revolution, not if it means losing you."

"You do not know me."

"But I do. The words he spoke were culled from your books. He learned your arguments, but I read them in your hand."

"Then you know what you have to do."

"Why did you do this?"

"To punish him. To break him, to force him to speak that which he did not believe. To make him my servant, if you will. Cast the spell."

Miranda stepped back from the well. The ground was damp against her feet. "If I cast the spell of banishment, your spell of Opening, taking down all the safeguards, all of that is lost?"

"Yes."

Miranda turned back to the house. Lammas in a fortnight. She had to think.

It was Lammas Night. The circle smoked on the floor where Miranda had drawn it, and in its center she sat, her palms held up, and she felt the spirit near by:

Yes, now....

"With the word Kadbin, formed with care by Alexander, who died to make it, I call."

Kadbin, by Alexander....

"With the word Nednal, formed by Roderick, who died to deliver it, I call."

Nednal, by Roderick....

"With the word Cyphertan, formed in his last breath by Cedrick, I call."

Cyphertan, by Cedrick, yes , spoke the spirit, bring me and our new world!

"With the word Lanhadruf, formed by James, who carried it leagues before he succumbed, and delivered at last by his son Hal, I call."

Lanhadruf, by James!

"With the word Mannivandal, formed by Edmond, I call."

Mannivandal, yes....

Miranda stopped for a second and breathed.

Nartedti, by Lucas.

"All these things I speak in remembrance of the formers, but now cast I the word Gremfhel, by Stephen."

What?

"And all the work of Stephen's comrades remembered, I banish this resident spirit."

But they can only be spoken once! This is...

"Be gone, Dervish," Miranda whispered, and the spirit howled and Miranda saw images of a dream disappear with him, gone, and she was alone.

And when morning came, Miranda rose and went to the well. For she had another spell to cast, and years and years of work before her.

Diana L. Paxson

"Like I was tellin' ye, Mistress Erne, there's not much left of the old place now—" Sean McMurtry's voice grated on the words. His son Luke hauled back on the reins and the pony halted.

My fingers clenched in the folds of my traveling cape as I looked at the ruins of Carricknahorna Hall, trying to reconcile these rotting timbers with my father's stories of the warm and welcoming house in which he had been born. Blackened timbers rose from a rubble of masonry, stark against the gray stone of the escarpment from which the place took its name. On my left, to the west, the land fell away into a tangle of wood and farmland, and to the east I could see the blue glitter of Lough Arrow through the trees.

My poor father , I thought with a sorrow worn to a dull ache in the months since I had left India, perhaps it was a mercy you died without seeing what has become of your home. But Carricknahorna was all he had possessed to leave me. With neither the beauty nor the wealth to attract a suitable husband even had I desired one, what was I to do now? I could feel McMurtry's concern like the slow warmth of a peat fire, and the hotter flare of his son's sympathy.

"The agent wrote there had been a fire," I said carefully, using disciplines I had learned in the East to banish panic. "But I thought that the rest of the house—"

McMurtry shook his head. "It was seven years ago, and what the fire left the weather's done for. The coasts of Sligo can breed fierce storms, though you might not think it now with the sky so smiling. It's been over a dozen years since we've had such a wet summer, and if the harvest fails again—but such talk is foolish..." he broke off, shaking his head.

I looked at him and shivered. My father's fellow officers had joked about how cold they found Ireland when they came home on leave. I, who had been born and raised in India, felt chilly even in June. This land was green as India during the monsoons, but instead of the hot embrace of the sun, a veil of silver mist wrapped the land. I had come here eager to learn what mysteries that veil might conceal. But at this moment the cold was all I could feel.

"A blackguard the agent is not to have told ye, but he's not been here himself in many a year." McMurtry grimaced. "And you are the last of the Family. I suppose now you'll be selling off the land...."

I sighed. My friends in India had advised me to do so. I could have stayed there as part of the circle who were carrying on the work of Madame Blavatsky, but ever since I had read W.B. Yeats' first book of poems, I had been fascinated by the old lore of Ireland. He was a Sligo man himself, I had heard, and his writings filled me with a longing to learn about the magic of my own land.

He nodded to Luke, and the younger man began to rein the pony around. He was, I gathered, about my own age, with a shock of reddish-fair hair and bright blue eyes. But even if our stations in life had been the same, there was an innocence in his face that I had lost when my father died. In spirit, he was far younger than I.

"We'd best be getting back to the village," his father said. "Ye can sit snug by my fire until time for the Dublin train—"

I shook my head, for the money I had left would not keep me long in town, and besides, I was wearied of journeying. "Is there no place here where I can stay?"

"There's no inn, and no gentleman's house I can take ye to, for Lord Skein's place is all closed up while he is in London, but—" he looked at me narrowly. "Ye seem a brave lady, to have come all this way from India and have lived with those black savages they have out there."