Mercedes Lackey - Lamma's Night (anthology)

I could hear movement, sighs and groans and sloshings and crackles, but I was searching for my staff and the witch-light by which I could see what was happening. When the blue light flared into being, I stared, stunned—appalled by the thing on the other side of the table.

The shape was comely. My gaze met that of the wizard for an instant, and in his I saw gratitude—and despair. "Save yourself!" came his cry, as some other spirit quelled his and looked out at me from those eyes.

A darkness, a hatred, a coldness like no other ever met in all my wanderings stared out at me, and I knew that Keighvin had been compelled to quench his own life in order to subdue the evil that had overtaken him among his labors. Yet the wizard was still there, drowned but still struggling in that overwhelming spirit which had conquered him at last.

I straightened, holding that commanding gaze with my own. I had proven my own soul to be strong enough, clean enough to meddle with the stuff of life. Surely the gods were guiding me, shaping me all through the years of my travels and my studies.

I would not submit to the heart of darkness or allow the warm and loving person Keighvin had been to be imprisoned and used by this monster. The body that my spell had formed would dissolve if the spirit was removed from it, and that lay within my power.

The lips, red-brown as the soil that colored them, widened into a smile, as if this not-Keighvin thought me enspelled by its beauty. The eyes sparked with life that grew with each passing moment. There was no time to tarry; I must act instantly.

I smiled in turn, moving around the table with my arms open to embrace him. The other stood, waiting confidently as I approached, the witch-light still burning from the staff in my hand.

Was I strong enough? Brave enough? Dedicated enough to accomplish this lonely and all but impossible task?

Remembering those nights when Keighvin had visited my dreams, I felt a vast emptiness. I thought of the villagers, apt to suffer if I failed now. Without hesitation, I put my arm about the newly-risen wizard and raised my lips to his.

It was an old art, known from the earliest of times: I sucked the spirit from that false body as the first Dark witches had drawn the souls from their unwitting victims. Yet because I intended only good to come of this, I received that essence into myself and felt the anguished amazement of that cold Other as he found himself trapped once again, inside my iron spirit.

The light in the crystal dimmed as the dissolving body flung the whole of its strength against me, trying to fight free. The cold spirit drained into me, and I set my wards and the guardian spells to confine him. But I expected that, and provision had been made.

Clinging to the table, leaning on the staff, I bent to the fury unleashed inside me, as it surged and burned and struggled. At last it quieted, leaving me drained and exhausted.

A cup of wine restored something of my energy, and I turned to the stair and sought my bed. This was the most terrible task I had undertaken in all my life as an Adept, and it had almost been the end of me.

As I pulled the embroidered cover, a gift from the headman's wife, about my ears, I had a moment of intense sadness. The tender dream that had warmed my nights... what a loss to one as lonely as I!

And then I felt a thrill of recognition within my inner self. Keighvin was there: he would not company me in flesh as I had hoped, but in essence.

A voice whispered inside me, "Well done, milady. Do not grieve, for now I am with you totally, and together we will hold that dark well of hatred in thrall, locked behind the gate of your will and my guarding."

Warmth flooded through me, and I crossed my arms over my breast, hugging myself tightly. Never again would I be alone as I went about my duties to the village; I would carry with me the potencies of two wizards, allied and yet differing in capacity. The nights would not be cold and solitary, for his spirit lived with mine, housed in my own flesh as together we held captive the hating thing we had trapped.

Tomorrow I would go back into that haunted wood and feel through it for the leering presences I had known before. The heart of darkness must now be drained of energy, and surely we could ring it with power, confining any remaining potency within that grove.

My task is done. And my work is just beginning.

Ru Emerson

Miranda drew a deep breath—her first in hours, it seemed. Her feet ached; her legs wanted to tremble. No, she thought dully, and forced her knees to lock. Silence in the small hut, save for the distant, whispery crackle of fire; she couldn't feel the warmth of it, was barely aware of ruddy light on the far wall—beyond the silvery shifting barrier between her—and That.

That: Good or evil? She sighed, very faintly. How many times had she asked herself that, this night? And what answer save the first—no way to tell, unless she spoke the final word. If she chose to speak the word of release. "Wait longer, if you will, Miranda," she whispered. The colored mist that stopped just short of small bare feet shimmered, the pattern once again changing. She didn't dare eye it directly; it would trap her, if it could—lull her into a half-daze otherwise. Traps within traps. The very lure of that inner barrier should convince her to speak the word of banishment. What man—what Thing—would set such movement upon the air before her—unless it sought to control her utterly?

Soon, you will be too exhausted to decide—or to pronounce either word. And then it will have you as well. Proud fool .

She had been a fool: To remain in this village when the headman begged the favor of her—a woman of sense would never have taken such heavy responsibility, even if it came with the promise of shelter. But for a woman sought as she was to assume any burden so near Naples! Well, perhaps that much hadn't been entirely a fool's dare. Thus far the dusty little collection of goats, grapes and impoverished huts had proven safer than the open road, where any noble or high-ranking Naples churchman might espy her. King's widow, duke's daughter—she'd surely seek sanctuary in a nunnery, from a relative, from another royal in another land, never in a poor high country village, mere days' straight travel from her former life. A full year and more by her own wanderings.

No woman of that court—no man, either—would have done what I did, to find a niche here among the grapes and goats. Amid peasants scrabbling for a living amid stones and poor dirt. But I am also the Miranda of that island; I know how to live rough, if I must. Pray god Naples continues to forget that.

Still, to take the headman's offer of a hut and the living which had belonged to a curiously—mysteriously—missing wizard had been foolish enough. Not that she hadn't tried to discover where the man had gone. But the village headman wouldn't speak of the previous tenant and he looked so angry when she pressed the matter, it seemed better to leave it be; the villagers seemed afraid.

But why of her? She had done nothing these past months that was not to their benefit; she'd been polite, kindly—still most had been wary of her at best. Why?

No answer, either, what things remained in the small hut—it was as though the one who'd last slept on that rough cot had never been. Still. Her dreams from the very first night had been of someone else in this place...

Those dreams were proof that her heritage and her own childhood dabblings in Prospero's magics—the influence of her childhood companions—had left her vulnerable to dreams, if to no other influence.

Then, to attempt magician's books once more! The books weren't necessary for the kinds of protection these peasants needed: she should have been more surprised, and wary, to find such volumes among the possessions of a simple village mage. She hadn't been; she hadn't given the matter thought at all, until now. Any more than she'd considered tossing them into the village pond. The safe course—but there never had been a safe course for the daughter of Prospero of Milan.