Kara stood in a new perfumed room with her parcel of stolen goods clutched in one hand.  The purple hooded woman was making her wait this time.  Kara frowned and shifted from foot to foot.  Her palms were sweaty.  The room was bright and open, but something about the air felt vaguely ominous.  She was in a different part of town now, where the houses weren’t stacked one against the other and there was no speck of rubbish left in the streets.  Kara felt like someone might toss her out into a bin or the lockup just on account of her tattered coat.  It wasn’t just the unnerving cleanness, though.  The house didn’t feel clean.  It felt as though things were writhing within the pristine walls and windows.

Kara calmed herself by reviewing her exits: three tall windows with cross-hatched panes of frosted glass, and two doors, one to a hall and then out the servants’ entrance, and one leading further into the house.

            A robed figure finally entered the room, but it wasn’t the lady this time.  The new person was both hooded and masked—a white mask, almost featureless, with dark eyeslits, a hint of nose and closed and expressionless lips.  “You have brought the artifacts?” the new figure asked.  This voice was not a woman’s but a man’s, cold, and a little high.

Kara nodded, set her packet on a table, and took a step backward, away from the man.  “Where’s my reward?  I don’t want gold.  I hope lilac-breath said that.”

            “Open that parcel first, please.  I want to see what you have brought me.”  The man’s voice came soft from under the mask.  Kara, having unpleasant memories of a cloaked figure last summer, put the table between herself and the man before unwrapping the treasures.

            “Isn’t there something missing, child?” the man asked, blinking through slits at the little mound of gleaming items.

            Kara felt chills, but refused to shiver.  Warnings shot through her senses.  “That’s all of it.  It was in a locked secret drawer.  This was everything there.”

            With sudden speed the man stepped around the table and grabbed Kara by the wrist.  The man’s hand was small and clammy, with neatly manicured nails.  Kara had half expected it to be rotting.

            “You’ve touched it,” the man said, his voice catching.  “You have held the seal.”

            “Get off.” Kara pulled, but the man’s grip tightened painfully.  “I’m warning you, I can kick very hard.”

“You have touched the seal.  The aura of its might marks you.  And something else as well.  You are very interesting.”  The man’s voice was strange.  “You were marked by darkness before the master’s seal.  I thought the time of the abominations had passed.  But here you are, so young and so like unto a child, yet not quite human.  Whose sins crafted you, I wonder?  I will sift you later, grain by grain, to learn of your maker.  You may prove a worthy host for a lord of the growing legion.”

            Kara was trembling now.  She pulled away as hard as she could, but her arm didn’t have the strength she could normally call from it.

            From the next room there came the mundane sounds of laughter, a door closing, and voices.  Kara opened her mouth, but no sound came out.  She felt strange and stifled.  It was hard to move, hard to breathe.  She couldn’t keep her feet any longer and fell over, held up only by the man’s iron grip on her wrist.

            “I shall have to leave you here for now,” the man said, sweeping the treasure into a voluminous pocket, and hauling Kara effortlessly over to the wall beneath the window.  “But we will talk later. You will tell me all you know about where the seal is, and I will learn of your blood.”  The man pulled down one of the curtain ties and bound Kara’s strangely weak hands and feet together.  “Stay here. Do not move.  My will binds you,” he commanded.  Kara blinked back tears as he shut both doors and left the room.  She couldn’t move.  She couldn’t even swear.

           

 

            “Of course he’s late,” Varden complained to Anna, looking coldly around the parlor.  “I’m sure he plans to make an entrance.” 

            Anna glanced around the heavily ornamented room, hiding a giggle at an urn covered in vacant-eyed, naked muses and babies.  It was a good thing poor Tam was stuck outside minding the carriage.  The parlor was very purple and black, sparkling with crystals, and positively dripping with huge, aromatic, lavender-colored flowers.  The group gathered for the séance stood idly around a table at the center of the room.  On the table lay candles and incense, ready to be lit, and some chalks and a board that Anna was barely resisting playing with.

Varden inspected the urn nearest him with disgust.  “I see no evidence whatsoever of antiquity or taste,” he said under his breath.  He ran one hand surreptitiously through the contents of the urn.  “No hidden wires or noisemakers, though.  We ought to examine the underside of the main table.”

            “What are we looking for?” Anna whispered.

            “Anything that could make it appear to levitate, or change temperature, or just thump about.  Usually there is also something meant to create mysterious sounds: steam whistles, or playing on a wine glass, or sharp little cracks made with a clapper or a tin box.”

            “That’s quite devious,” Anna said.  “Perhaps I should pretend to have one of those fainting fits so common in literature, to give us an excuse to sit and have a closer look.”

            Varden muffled a laugh. “Just give me a bit of warning first, so that I can catch you properly and transport you there in a gentlemanly fashion before a servant can instead bring a chair to you.”

            “Good thinking.  Perhaps I should attempt a brief dizzy spell rather than anything too like a swoon.”

            “As the lady wishes.”  Varden bowed.

            “Well, then.  Let us move toward the table, and I shall be struck with a touch of faintness when we pass that woman with the fuschia hat with the dead bird on it.  If that’s her perfume I smell from here I really might.”

            They executed the plan perfectly.  Anna, feeling a bit like one of the actresses in the play she’d attended with Lady Hellin, put a limp hand to her brow and wilted lightly just as they passed the fuschia hat.  Varden made a concerned sound and supported her upon one strong arm, saying something about space and air as he guided her to a chair on the far side of the table, near which, he explained in a whisper, the medium would sit.  Anna obligingly swooned down into it, dipping briefly to see under the table, while Varden lifted the table cloth subtly to assist her view.

            Anna recovered quickly, thanking Varden for finding her the seat and professing that it had just been a little light-headedness, nothing to worry about.

            “There’s nothing there,” she whispered.  “At least, nothing like you described.  But Varden, there are chalk symbols and writing all across the bottom of the table.  I think perhaps some of them are hieroglyphs.”

            Varden frowned, confused.  “How do you mean?”

            “I think you should look.  You might faint next.”

            “Don’t be silly, gentlemen don’t faint.  Look, you might drop your handkerchief, or handbag or something.”

Anna sighed.  “Why is it that the lady always has to look like a goose?”

“Never a goose,” Varden said.  “A swan perhaps.”

Anna dropped her handbag.  “Oh dear, I feel I’m being such a trouble today.”

“Let me retrieve that,” Varden said, correctly, and this time Anna lifted the tablecloth while Varden got a chance to examine the table.  Anna glanced briefly at the others in the room, but none of them were looking in their direction.

Varden was frowning as he rose.  “This is puzzling,” he said.  “There are two languages, and one is a script used in Narmos.  It seems to be a replica of one of the tablets of the hall of rites, but with some distinct differences.”

            Anna felt a chill.  “No one put those there for show.”

            “Or that’s just what they did, to put off any skeptics like ourselves.”

            “But why text from Narmos?  There’s nothing romantic or benevolently mysterious about Narmos, is there?  Didn’t they invoke spirits for war and smiting and possession and things, not for enlightenment?”

            Varden pursed his lips and gave her a sharp look.  “I say, have you studied my subject?”

            “Not really, but Varden, I have a nasty feeling about this.  I don’t think we should be here when the séance starts.”

            “Whatever are you talking about?  Don’t you want to unmask Pumphrey as a fake?”

            Anna looked at the people, all taking seats around the table now.  Some of them she recognized as part of Pumphrey’s usual glittering crowd.  Others were strangers, giggling women and earnest looking gentlemen, a threadbare scholar, some dreamy-eyed girls, a man in mourning clothes.  “They shouldn’t be here either,” she said.

            “The more fools them, for being led about by this.”  Varden shrugged.  “If we reveal Pumphrey publicly, they’ll scatter off and be the wiser for it.”

            Anna frowned and shook her head.  Varden might not believe in real supernatural occurences, but she still had her good Shandorian sense and besides, she’d seen a walking dead man last summer.  She stood and put a hand on Varden’s arm.  “I’m not staying here in this room.  I hope you’ll come with me.”

 

© Ruth Lampi 2010