Scarlet in the Snow Page 24

  I remember now why the landscape seems so familiar. I had seen it in Gabriel’s miniature painting, hanging in the study at the Durant residence. I can’t help a little shiver at the thought of that place. ‘It’s over, Natasha, quite over,’ Gabriel says, putting an arm around me.

  Luel then chimes in hastily, ‘And as to explanations, my child, they will be lengthy, so I propose that they wait. You should first get up and have something to eat. I’ll order herbed chicken and cream cakes.’

  ‘Tush, my friend,’ says Old Bony. ‘What the girl needs is strong hot tea and creamy porridge, not your fancy table.’

  I smile at them both. ‘I should like hot tea and herbed chicken – that would be the finest thing, don’t you think, Gabriel?’

  ‘Or perhaps creamy porridge and cakes?’ says Gabriel, mischievously.

  ‘Whatever it is, let us have plenty of it,’ I say pertly, and he laughs and kisses the tip of my nose.

  ‘There’s a girl after my own heart!’

  As Luel had promised, the explanations came later, when we were all sitting comfortably by a roaring log fire, replete after a large meal that had filled a table end-to-end. The two old feyas had competed mightily in the production of this hilariously varied meal, and it must be said they also ate the lion’s share of it.

  We talked for hours, and so it was that I learned that when you use a strand of Old Bony’s hair, she feels it. And how at the same time the rose petal she had kept safe for me jumped in its box like a living thing. She had known then that something was wrong and had tuned her feya ears to listen out. But even then she might not have come to our aid if I hadn’t spoken of the white wolf, a child of the forest, twisted and tortured, and of the fate of the old northern shaman. Guided by the homing beacon of the rose petal, Old Bony had woven a spell of speed and invisibility, and had swept off at once in her sleigh. Like an avenging fury, she had swooped down from the night sky and into the Durants’s garden. I heard then how a strand of Old Bony’s hair instantly released Luel from her stony prison, and how together the two feyas cast a powerful spell that turned the white wolf against its master. The sorcerer had not stood a chance.

  ‘Torn to shreds and vaporised,’ said Luel, with grim satisfaction.

  ‘Not even a bone left to adorn my fence,’ said Old Bony, with a rather terrible smile.

  And the white wolf whose spirit had been enslaved and perverted? It had vanished at the same moment, reduced to a pile of ash, which Old Bony returned to its home so that its spirit could finally find rest.

  Though his ultimate fate made me shudder, I could not find any pity in my heart for Edmond Durant, for the long list of his victims cried out for justice, and justice was what he had got. And if his daughter was now fatherless, she had in truth, as Gabriel said, not had a real father for a long time.

  ‘You see,’ Gabriel said, ‘I was a real orphan but I had the memory of my parents’ love for me. But Celeste was an orphan in all but name, for her mother died long ago and the closest she ever got to her famous father was in the pages of newspapers and magazines. Though she never lacked for anything materially, her heart was hollow as a honeycomb. And though I never loved her in the way you thought, I grew up with her and I do care what happens to her. Luel made a spell that night that would convince the whole household that my godfather had left unexpectedly for one of his trips abroad. Later, news of his death abroad can be circulated. That way, Celeste is spared the shame and disgrace of the truth, and she can hold up her head in society. And Luel says that the spell on her died with the man who cast it, so she will be back to normal.’ He gave a little smile. ‘Celeste’s kind of normal, that is. I am glad, Natasha. I want her to have a chance to have a life as happy as it can be. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said softly, and kissed him. ‘And I love you all the more for it.’

  I heard then how Luel had bent over the crumpled body of Felix – the sorcerer’s death had broken the crow-spell – and had found a very faint pulse. Old Bony was minded to leave him to take his chances but Luel wouldn’t hear of it. ‘His last thoughts were not for himself and that was why his heart did not give out,’ she said, ‘and I was not about to just leave him.’ So they took him to Dr Golpech’s house, left him on the doorstep and rang the bell.

  ‘Golpech had nothing to do with Edmond’s crimes,’ Gabriel said. ‘He was just used. That story of my being found on his doorstep was just that – a story. Golpech was told by Edmond that I’d been found unconscious in a squalid dive in the city, that it was obvious I’d been living a shady life under an assumed name and that for this reason it was best if people thought I’d been kidnapped by foreign bandits. Golpech agreed because Edmond helped to fund his researches, so he was hardly going to ask too many questions. He was happy to have someone to experiment on with that antirentum of his. It’s supposed to clear bad memories. Perhaps it will help Felix.’

  They went on to tell me the story of how the white wolf had come to be. Potent as a shaman’s spirit-wolf, obedient as a witch’s familiar, it had been a unique combination of the two, and so more dangerous than either. Durant had come across the living creature in a forest in his northern sojourn. And I had been right – it was a fragment of the white wolf’s spirit, not his own, which Durant had captured with his photograph. He had grown it and artificially enlarged it, like an exotic culture in a hothouse, in the synthetic white night of the glass room, with its concentrated energy. And that concentration of energy was precisely why he’d had Gabriel put in the glass room – there the antirentum’s effects, magnified and perverted, would have worked over time to cut the young man’s spirit loose of all memory for ever, thus rendering Gabriel utterly malleable, even more so than Felix had been.

  Once the spell was complete, the spirit-wolf could be taken wherever its master went, an innocent photograph simply slipped into his pocketbook, till the time was right to unleash it. And unleash it he did, many times, in different places, against any person who stood in his way. Luel thought there were at least a dozen victims, starting from Byelfin the shaman. Without knowing it, I’d even seen a mention of one of those crimes: for the Kolorgrod Messenger report had got it wrong. The nameless man in that story hadn’t been killed by a shaman’s spirit-wolf at all, but by Durant’s creature of light.

  That was the terrible secret Gabriel had found out, three years before, when he had stumbled across a secret panel hidden behind the bookshelves in Durant’s study. He had found a notebook detailing his godfather’s experiments with magic. Till then, he had not had the faintest idea of his godfather’s double life. ‘I hardly knew him,’ Gabriel said. ‘He was hardly ever home, but he was the last person you’d suspect of sorcery. Not only did he claim to despise magic, he was also a man of action, whose exploits in remote places were the stuff of legend, and he had friends in high places, including the Presidential palace. The rare times he was home, he spent his time locked in the glass room, tinkering with the photographs he’d taken abroad. That was hardly a secret; his photographs were published in magazines and shown in exhibitions. I’d helped him with the work when I was younger. If he seemed even more distant when he came back from those long months in the north five years ago, I did not really pay attention. So I had no inkling – no inkling at all – of this thing that had become an evil obsession, a cancer that gradually ate away everything that had ever been good in him. I suspected that Felix had used some kind of magic to enhance his painting and secure his win, but I had absolutely no idea Edmond was involved.’

  ‘As for me, I’d felt for a while there was something different about that man,’ Luel chimed in, ‘but never anything I could be sure of, and I was distracted by the painting. Like Gabriel, I suspected something, and when I saw it at Lilac Gardens I was sure it had been magically enhanced. But I didn’t suspect Durant. I just wanted to punish Felix for his cheating, so I made the painting vanish from the gallery. I had no idea that would precipitate what it did . . .’

&nbs
p; ‘That was just before I discovered the notebook,’ Gabriel explained. ‘I had no idea Luel was behind the disappearance of the painting. The day it happened Felix turned up at the house, ranting that I’d done it, that I was eaten up with jealousy because he was a genius and I wasn’t. Edmond was there and sent him packing, and the way he did it made me think he too suspected that Felix had cheated, so I told him my hunch about the involvement of magic. He had looked grim and had said he’d investigate, that in the meantime I was to keep quiet.

  It was that very night I found the notebook. I could hardly believe it at first. I was in utter turmoil, repulsed by what I’d read. But I could not just betray Edmond to the authorities, not without giving him a chance to explain. He was my godfather, after all – the man who had taken me in when my parents had died, who had paid for my education. He might never have shown me affection, but also never enmity. From honour, from loyalty, I could not forget those things.’

  Luel shook her head. ‘Ah, but a sorcerer has no honour. No loyalty. Not even family. Nothing left in his heart but the will to power. If you’d come to me first, I’d have told you. But then you didn’t know that, and so I couldn’t stop him casting the abartyen spell. I wasn’t even there.’

  ‘And the only bit of good fortune,’ said Gabriel quietly, ‘was that before the spell had time to work completely, you were able to free me from the room where he had locked me, and spirit me away to a place you thought he could never get me.’

  ‘Why there?’ I asked.

  It was Old Bony who answered, not Luel. ‘Luel knew that in the places under my protection, no sorcerer can set foot. Though to be sure, she did not ask my permission. I knew a fellow feya when I saw one, and I sensed no threat from her or the poor creature she was protecting.’

  ‘I knew that man wouldn’t stop looking for us though,’ said Luel, ‘because my intervention had halted the workings of the spell so that its power was incomplete. Until he could be sure the spell had destroyed Gabriel, he could never feel safe. I knew Durant would be scouting the world for us. I knew I could keep the spell in suspension, albeit temporarily. I know how standard abartyen spells work and what might be done to break them, but this one wasn’t standard or even traditional – it was a hybrid thing, and wickedly subtle. As you know, good magic should fit you and bad magic makes you fit it. But that man’s magic was uniquely dangerous because it used small strands of good amongst the bad so as to burrow deeper inside its victim, turning your own impulses against you, destroying everything most precious. A feya alone could never break a spell like that. It took me a long time before I had any notion of what might be done. And even then it was only a small notion, as everything really depends on finding the right person to break the spell.’

  ‘And wasn’t she ever the right one,’ said Gabriel, looking at me in a way that sent tingles of pleasure up my spine.

  I leaned against him. ‘I’m sure I’m pleased you think that because I think the same of you.’

  ‘That’s just as well then,’ Gabriel said, smiling. Into my head came my mother’s words. One day, you’ll understand what I mean. A pang went through me.

  ‘What’s that sigh for?’ he said gently.

  ‘I was only wishing that my mother and sisters could be here to meet you. Then my happiness would be complete.’

  ‘Well, then your wish is granted,’ he said, ‘for they should arrive by this evening. Isn’t that so, Luel?’

  ‘I do believe that is so,’ said the feya, smiling in calm pleasure at my yelp of joy.

  Old Bony did not stay for my family’s arrival. ‘No need for them to see me,’ she said. ‘And I have more important things to do.’ There was to be a big gathering in the north, to which all Ruvenyan feyas had been called to discuss new laws in connection to dealings with human sorcerers, so that a sorcerer like Durant could never exist again.

  Luel did not go, believing firmly that her place was with us. And she still says that now, more than a year later. She and Gabriel took a summer house right next to our place in the country, but they also kept the old Fontenoy house in Champaine, where we join them to escape the Ruvenyan winter, so Gabriel and I are rarely parted. He speaks more than passable Ruvenyan now and I get by quite happily in Champainian, so when we are married, our children will have both languages as their birthright.

  Luel has become a member of my family now as much as Gabriel’s. My mother and sisters took to her at once, and even Sveta sniffily agrees she’s all right, for a foreigner and a feya. She won’t hear of Luel using magic to help the household, though. But she has a sneaking fondness for the pretty things Luel creates – the silk flowers and hat ribbons she is making now not only for Madame Ange in Palume, but the best milliners in Byeloka, too. It is Luel’s primary use for magic these days, and she thoroughly enjoys it, though she will occasionally do a couple of other small things.

  She also advises Andel on his prototype of the ‘armchair traveller’. Though the story of Dr ter Zhaber’s legacy wasn’t strictly speaking true, the patent most certainly did exist. Upon my suggestion, Gabriel purchased it and bequeathed it to Andel and Olga, who had been so kind to me. It has been an inspired decision for it also means Andel and Olga often come to visit.

  I have become fast friends with Olga. Occasionally, she and I speak of Old Bony, because apart from Gabriel, the young werewolf is the only one who really understands how I feel about the forest feya. I know my family would not have taken her to their hearts like they have Luel, even knowing of how she helped us. Even when she is helpful, there is something about Old Bony that does not encourage you to be too friendly. She’d hate it, anyway. She likes being respected, even feared. But that does not stop me from remembering her with gratitude and respect. I have not seen her since that time in the Fontenoy house, and I do not wish to go anywhere near the house of bones in the forest again. But I feel that one day our paths may cross once more. And that I’ll be pleased to see her.

  But if Luel is held in great affection by my family, Gabriel is loved. First it was for my sake, now it is for his own. Liza said to me the other day, ‘It’s like Anya and I have a brother now, and do you know what? I didn’t know that all along we’d missed having one.’ As for my mother, she says that the old proverb is right and that she hasn’t lost a daughter but gained a son. And they’re not just words; she and Gabriel get on so naturally it’s as if they have always known one another. Of course, they’re both artists, and that makes it even easier.

  Things are good in our family. Over winter in Champaine Gabriel introduced Liza and Anya to his circle of friends and one of them, Sebastien d’Roch, has taken quite a shine to Anya, and she to him. He is nice-looking and kind and also he’s heir to a large estate, so he fulfils just about every wish Anya had for a match. Funnily enough, it is sharp-tongued Liza who has turned out to be more flighty. She has a great circle of admirers in Byeloka and in Palume, and she goes to just about every ball and party. It was from just such a ball in Palume that she came back with the news that a newly engaged couple had been there: Celeste Durant and Felix Vivian. Felix is by now fully restored to health. He is working for Messir d’Louvat, managing a new art gallery, but has given up painting altogether. ‘He’s a rather wishy-washy specimen,’ Liza said cheerfully, ‘but harmless, you know, and he thinks Celeste is the queen of the world, which is just how she likes it.’

  Celeste has surprised everyone. After news of her father’s death was brought to her – the story was put about that he’d drowned in a deep remote lake, which explained why no body was ever found – she developed a decisiveness that previously had lain quite dormant. As Edmond Durant’s sole heir, she had sold the Durant residence, bought a luxurious apartment in the centre of the city and invested some of her money in a little jewellery shop, which she keeps stocked with unusual items. They aren’t created with Luel’s magical gifts, for the power of those ended when they were no longer needed, but are sourced from the far-flung places her father had once travelled t
o: Green River pearls from Pandong, delicate gold ornaments from the Prettanic Islands, crystal from the deep mines of Krainos, and even amber from the frozen north. Yes, Celeste has come a long way. Our paths rarely cross; and though I cannot ever really feel warmth towards her, I also cannot think altogether unkindly of her. And to her credit, she did offer Gabriel a small portion of the estate, though he refused it out of principle.

  I only have to look down at the ring Gabriel gave me for our engagement, shining with the glow of the ruby and pearl in its setting, and think that we two are the luckiest, most blessed people alive. We found each other in the most unlikely way and in the most unlikely place, and the love between us has bloomed and flourished as we have grown to know each other in the quiet happiness of ordinary days as much as in the thrilling joy of passion. As our love has grown and deepened and strengthened, so too have the gifts we were each born with.

  Though I had had a budding literary talent before, it has now opened up and become deeper, richer. And that has changed everything. Eight months ago, the story I wrote at the mansion, The White Rose, was published in The Golden Pen, has received very good notices and has been reprinted twice. Since then I’ve sold nearly a dozen more, new and old, including The Three Sisters. Most exciting of all, Gabriel and I are working on a book together. It is a book of tales of love and magic, written by me and illustrated by him. Luel and my family say it will take the world by storm.

  Six months ago, Gabriel had a joint exhibition with my mother. It was a beautiful collection of her most striking portraits and his miniature paintings of Ruvenyan landscapes, clustered around Scarlet in the Snow – the only painting not for sale. The exhibition was held in Kolorgrod’s modest art gallery and was launched quietly. But it did not stay quiet for long. The word spread about how good it was, and soon people were flocking to it from far and wide, including from Byeloka. Even a member of the royal family turned up one day! Everything was sold, and there were even notices about the ‘wildly successful and unusual’ show in foreign newspapers. Mama has more commissions now than she could ever have dreamed of, including one for a portrait of that same prince who saw the show. As for Gabriel, he has been inundated with offers of shows from just about everywhere. But he’s put them all off, for the time being. ‘There’ll be time for that,’ he says, ‘later.’