Salt Magic, Skin Magic Read online

  He tried to knock them away, but there were too many. They were also grabbing at the golden streams of light from the ward stone, tearing the magic and pulling it like ropes to get a better purchase on him. Then an overwhelming pulse of music—or was it magic?—surged over him, and he was embedded in the strangeness like a fly in amber, the tatters of the ward stone in his hand getting dimmer and dimmer, until he knew no more.

  ***

  Thornby took another shaky mouthful of brandy, perched on a cushion in Aunt Amelia’s sitting room. In her youth, she’d travelled extensively in the Middle East, and she disapproved of chairs on principle.

  His heart was pounding, his hands trembling, mind racing. Blake had done it! By God, he had done it! Magic was real. And not a demon to be seen! And Blake had said he would stay and help. He was curious; he was interested. He was bloody marvellous! Whatever Father was doing, Thornby had a possible ally. The weight of months of anguish and self-doubt had fallen away. All of Father’s snide hints about lack of character, all of his own fears about secretly wishing to obey—all gone, all fallen to dust when Blake stood inside that peculiar measuring tape and Aunt Amelia looked right through him.

  So, he, Thornby, was still stuck here, so Blake’s magic did not work on him for some mysterious reason. These things seemed, not insignificant, but surmountable. Blake would help him. Maybe Blake could tell Father, “Let your son leave,” in some magic voice and Father would have to do it. Why, Thornby might be able to get away this very night!

  And when he went, perhaps Blake might go with him? That look in Blake’s eyes—as if he’d tear Thornby’s breeches off and fuck him right there on the old Savonnerie carpet in the blue room. Christ! He shifted uncomfortably on the cushion. These damned tight breeches hid nothing. Did magicians do it like ordinary men? What tricks might a man like Blake have up his sleeve? Surely Thornby hadn’t been imagining it? He could barely drink; his hand kept chinking the glass against his teeth. Aunt Amelia thought he was terribly upset and hiding it. She kept asking him to stay, to have another brandy.

  But he excused himself and made his way on quivering legs to Blake’s room. He knocked and waited. No answer. He knocked again, more impatiently. Damn it, where was the man? Thornby had made it clear he would come here. He knocked a third time, opened the door a crack and said, “Mr Blake?” round the side. Still no answer. He opened the door and stood transfixed on the threshold. If Blake’s invisibility trick had impressed him, this turned his already shaking knees to jelly.

  Blake’s room was lit with a green-white light that emanated from a woodland path. The path, lined by tall trees, started in the middle of the room and seemed to wend its way through several walls and neighbouring rooms. Thornby thought he could see Blake in the distance, apparently standing in a sunlit glade a hundred yards away. He couldn’t be sure; it was a figure, certainly, and who else could it be but Blake? Yet the figure’s stance was slumped, not an attitude he associated with the upright Mr Blake.

  Thornby closed the door behind him and took a step closer.

  It really was utterly marvellous the way moss and huge forest oaks seemed to be growing straight out of the dusty floorboards. Was it an illusion? He reached out—would it hurt to touch it? Would it ruin it?—and touched the bark of the nearest tree. It was cold as ice, but it was definitely there. The path was slightly concave, as if it was often travelled, and the moss looked cool and soft.

  He backed away, looking around the shabby spare room. Everything else seemed quite as normal, except for a large travelling trunk with the lid thrown open. Inside it was all manner of jars, bottles, pouches, boxes, vials, and objects so peculiar it was impossible to guess what they were for. There were some strange pale shapes that might be ceramic replicas of a human heart, human lungs, a human brain. There was a jar full of tentacles, and several painted wooden butterflies that could almost be children’s toys.

  He looked back down the woodland path. Was he supposed to walk down it, to find Blake? They had arranged to meet here, after all. Had Blake conjured this up to prove twice over what he could do? Or maybe this was it; the way out of Raskelf! Maybe if he took this path he’d find London at the end of it, Father notwithstanding.

  He approached the path again. The light coming through the leaves now looked warmer, less green-white, more gold. How good it would feel to remove shoes and stockings and bury his sore foot in the cool moss of the pathway. He could hear faint, silvery music. It was beautiful, and he should walk down there to meet whatever was coming next.

  Maybe this was Blake’s idea of flirting? Maybe this was how magicians impressed one, before the clothes came off? It was certainly more novel than the bottle of hock and bit of Byron that had started Thornby’s last affaire. He almost stepped onto the path again.

  At the very edge of his hearing he could hear someone shouting. Was it Blake? It was the very thing Blake had complained of; there was something he couldn’t put his finger on, like an itch somewhere deep inside. But surely whatever happened would be better than staying at Raskelf. He took a deep breath and stepped onto the path. He thought again that he heard shouting, but that silvery music swelled up from somewhere and he took another step, and another.

  What had seemed like a long path suddenly shrank to nothing and the dark figure of Blake was now only a few yards away.

  “Get out, Thornby, it’s a trap!”

  Blake’s voice was oddly husky. Thornby whirled, to look back along the path, but it had vanished, and he now stood in a clearing in a dense wood. The walls of Raskelf were nowhere to be seen. Next to him Blake appeared to be imprisoned in a thorn-bush, only the thorns were made of something hard and clear as glass and so bright they dazzled. Blake looked different too. It took Thornby a moment to realise Blake’s chin was covered in dark stubble, and yet when they’d parted in the blue room barely twenty minutes ago, Blake had been clean-shaven. And Blake looked exhausted, with lines of strain around his eyes and mouth. His lips were cracked and dry.

  “Run!” Blake said urgently, pointing. “That way. Go. Now!”

  ***

  John had watched in horror as Thornby opened the door to his room and gaped at the woodland pathway. It was clear to him then that Thornby hadn’t hoodwinked him in any way. No one could fake the look on Thornby’s face, he was certain of it. But he could see that Thornby was thinking of walking down the path, and although the creatures that had put John here appeared to have gone, he was sure they were hiding, waiting. He shouted warnings, but his voice died the moment it left his mouth. It was like shouting into a gale.

  Thornby made his decision and stepped onto the path. And the path vanished, and he was suddenly right next to Blake in the enchanted woodland clearing.

  “What’s happened? Did Father do this?” Thornby said.

  “No. Go! Find the path. It might appear if you get close.”

  For answer, Thornby put his hands on the glistening thorns and pulled at them.

  “Leave it. I’ve tried. Go and look for the path before they come back.”

  “Who?” Thornby looked around hastily. “What is this place?”

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  “What?” Thornby almost laughed, though his gaze kept darting to the woods, and John could see him trembling. “Yes, I come here all the time, you idiot. Nothing I like better than a stroll in the woods in a spare bedroom. Christ, what is this place? What should we do?”

  “Don’t mention Christ, for one thing. If I’m guessing right, the people here aren’t—well, they’re not human. And they’re easily offended, so be polite if you see anything living, whether it looks like a person or not. Now, will you go!”

  Thornby bit his lip but didn’t move. “This is bad, isn’t it? You weren’t expecting this.”

  “I wasn’t. But this is what I could sense; that strange feeling I told you about. This is the heart of it. My magic doesn’t work here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think my mag
ic only works in the human world. This is a different place. You’ll have to be brave, Thornby, but I think—” John broke off, wondering how many of his suspicions to tell him.

  John had woken hours ago to find himself trapped. The thorn-bush looked brittle as ice, but it was impossible to break, either by brute force or by magic. He’d tried every release sigil he could think of, every counter-spell, every kind of ward. Nothing had worked. It was like a nightmare. No magic. No power. The horror of it had nearly panicked him one point, the fear and the helplessness rising up, paralysing his mind. He’d crouched on the grass in his spiky prison, eyes tight shut, forcing himself to breathe. But after a while, when the creatures did not come back, he’d found himself able to think more clearly. Perhaps he had no magic, but he still had his wits. He could still reason. He could still bargain, if it came to it. And so he had begun to plan and to think. And after a while he had found himself thinking of Thornby.

  He couldn’t help staring at Thornby now. He could tell that only minutes had passed for Thornby since they’d talked in the blue saloon. He could smell the brandy on Thornby’s breath. Oh, what he’d give for a slug of brandy himself right now! Or better, a drink of water.

  So, how much to tell Thornby?

  How do you tell a man you think he may not be quite human?

  Thornby looked human enough, yet the facts were suggestive. That same fleeting oddness John had noticed about Thornby and the hedgehog—and now John had been caught in the epicentre of that oddness for the last twelve hours.

  As a child, John had listened to fairy stories on his mother’s knee in the stuffy little kitchen behind the shop. As a slightly older boy, he’d read Tam Lin, and begged stories from the Irish washer-woman on washing day, and she’d told him of Fionn MacCoull and the Fianna and their adventures in the many-coloured land. And then he’d gone away to the Institute, trained as a magician, grown up, and completely forgotten everything he ever knew about this other world. Because fairies weren’t real and neither was fairy-land.

  And yet, here he was. And here too was Thornby. A man who was impervious to John’s magic, as the beings here seemed impervious. A man who was bound in some mysterious way to the estate, not with human magic, but with some power John couldn’t detect beyond that faint, vague strangeness.

  So how do you tell a fellow you suspect he isn’t human? John didn’t know how to begin. They had bigger worries at the moment.

  “Thornby, I think you might get out, even if I can’t. Go and look for the path, and if you find it, don’t leave it. Will you tell Lady Dalton to get her cousin to tell Rokeby what happened. Got it? Tell Rokeby I used the Woden’s Eye sigil in salt, and to bring anyone he can.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Go on. I don’t want your bloody noblesse oblige.”

  “It’s not that. If you’re stuck here, I can’t get away from Raskelf. I’m not—”

  “Will you bloody well leave? Damn, look!”

  Thornby spun around to face the procession of creatures that was coming out of the woods. John saw him wobble and cut his hand on one of the thorns as he grabbed it for support. The procession formed into a rough semi-circle about them and a woman stepped forward from the crowd. She wore a golden diadem which seemed to grow directly from her skin, and long copper-red hair. Her breasts were bare, and great folds of green satin grew out of her slender waist and fell to the moss. Her face was narrow and marvellously beautiful, marked with a pattern of blue lines and dots on forehead and cheeks. Her eyes were black as sloes and had no whites to them.

  “My lady.” Thornby’s voice was a croak. His bow was jerky. Yet John felt a sudden leap of hope. Be polite, he’d said, and it seemed Thornby had listened.

  The lady clapped her hands and smiled at Thornby. Her teeth were sharp as a cat’s. “Oh, you’re a pretty one!” Her voice was melodious as a stream. She had a strange accent, so ‘pretty’ sounded like ‘praty’. She reached out a white hand. “What has it done to its face?” She stepped forward, and a goat’s hoof peeped from under her skirts. John could see Thornby steeling himself not to flinch as she touched him.

  “Poor little sweetling.” She stroked Thornby’s face. “It isn’t whole.”

  “It’s broken,” growled the huge red dog. “Let’s put it out of its misery. I’ll bite its throat out.”

  “No!” John said loudly, before he could stop himself.

  Thornby took a step backwards and bowed again, more gracefully this time. “I’m not miserable, I assure you, sir. I—er—how could I be unhappy when such beauty is before me?”

  The lady smiled again, a terrifying sight, her cat’s teeth gleaming white. “See, Pooka! Oh, he’s pretty! Let’s keep him!”

  The dog sniffed at Thornby’s silk stockings. Its feet were the size of dinner plates. “They’re never nice for long,” it growled. “Let’s have it now, while it’s fresh.”

  “Does it hurt, beautiful one?” the queen crooned to Thornby. She was again stroking his face. His back was rigid with tension. Sweat had sprung out on his brow, but he was schooling his face, wearing a social smile.

  She began to hum a lilting melody, as if she were alone, stroking a pet. “And such a long way from home! What are you doing here? Did you come to look for me?”

  “I, we, got here by mistake—er— Since you’re here, my lady, will you let my friend out?” said Thornby. “If it pleases you. I think he’s finding it tiresome in there.”

  “Friend?” The lady frowned. “Friend?”

  “Well, perhaps friend’s a bit strong. But he is our guest. And it’s bad form to let a guest get lost in the woods in his own bedroom, don’t you know?”

  The queen hissed. Possibly she was laughing. She gave John a sideways glare. “He prickles. And smells. He is full of gramarye, that one.” She smiled again at Thornby. “You don’t want him, do you? You could come dancing with me!”

  She raised her arms above her head and took a few steps across the moss, so graceful she seemed hardly to touch the ground. When her skirts moved, John heard silvery music. While her attention was diverted, he tried again to make his ward stone work, throwing every ounce of power he had into it. It sat in his hand, lifeless as the pebble it had once been.

  The queen held her hand out to Thornby, an inviting expression on her face. He bowed again. “My lady, compared to you, I dance like a donkey. I couldn’t do you justice. Really, shouldn’t we be going? We’ve taken up so much of your time already.”

  She lowered her hand, smile fading. “You won’t dance? You won’t stay?” She shrugged. “Well, then, what will you give me if I let you leave? A gift? A kiss?”

  “I—” Thornby shot a look at John, who shook his head, as obviously as he dared. He hated to think what ‘gift’ might be asked of Thornby, or what a kiss might mean.

  “What about a game?” said the red dog, licking its chops. “I like games better.”

  “All right, a game,” said the queen. She walked in a circle around Thornby, forcing him to turn to keep facing her. “Perhaps you’ll have a wager with me? How about this? Answer three questions truly, and you can have the guest.”

  “Don’t,” John said in a low voice. He suspected a trick, but didn’t dare to say so, with her standing right there.

  “Three questions?” Thornby put his head to one side and appeared to consider. “I don’t think he’s worth three. Perhaps one? An easy one?”

  “One, is it?” The queen snarled. “So brave, my little fighting cock!” She broke off into peals of hissing laughter and the others joined her. The dog laughed so hard it seemed to dislocate its jaw.

  Thornby shot John a look that said What the hell do I do? as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. John said quietly, “Be careful. She’ll cheat if she can.”

  The queen stopped laughing, abruptly. “All right. I’ll give you a chance because I like your pretty face. Answer one truly and I’ll let you leave. If you want him to leave with you, but somewhat changed, you must a
nswer two. If you want to recognise him when you get back, it stands at three.”

  “I can’t quite see it at the moment, but you know we’re standing in my house, don’t you?” said Thornby carefully. “I think I can leave when I like. So perhaps if I answer two?”

  The queen tilted her head as if listening, sloe eyes not leaving Thornby. She smiled, slyly. “But it isn’t your house. It’s your father’s. And you can’t leave. Can you?”

  She laughed again, and the court joined in, a cacophony of jeers and whinnies. Thornby glanced at John again, perhaps in order to see another human face. John tried to inject some reassurance into his expression, but he had none to give.

  Thornby drew himself up. “Very well, I accept. Three questions. What’s your first?”

  “My diamonds and pearls, in a box they are hid, with the sun for the satin and the sky for a lid.” Her voice was mocking. “Where are they, sweetling, where do I keep my jewels?”

  A look of disbelief crossed Thornby’s face, and John almost groaned aloud. The question was impossible. How could anyone answer that? And yet, suddenly, Thornby’s eyes glittered and he almost laughed.

  “On the nasturtium leaves of course,” he said. “In the sunken garden.”

  The uproar from the court was so violent that John thought the answer must be wrong and they planned to tear Thornby limb from limb without regard for the rules of the game. Thornby clearly thought so too, from the look of horror that crossed his face and the way he hunched defensively. Then the queen was snarling at them to shut up.

  “Clever, isn’t he?” she said, when at last the place was silent. Her voice was vicious. “But how about this? The place is old, the house is new, the goose is red, the hound is blue; yet neither one is truly meet, which sign should grace Dezombrey’s seat? Which sign, little one? What’s the real emblem of Raskelf?”

  There was a long pause. Thornby turned to John, face appalled. “I don’t know. It’s been a red goose and a blue hound for centuries. How could it be anything else?”