Jocelyn ran her hand across her dry lips and shoved the last of her things inside her satchel. The drunkenly joyous heavy foot stomping to the music playing in the bar below made her thoughts scatter with each bang. The piano was ruckus and loud, with a sloppy fingered pipe being played slightly off tune.
"And to the King in his tower high
poor slobs in the west land wet when all is dry
and dry and hungry when east Old Kingdom's gay
Abhorsen, the Queen, in a deep grave may she lay
when our stones are broken,
twenty years and the stones stay broken,
and the dead walk the earth to the bells."
Tonight as the rain pelted the side of the Tin Pony Inn and Tavern with thunder clapping loud as a drunken man's bellow, the locals sang this popular tune with more gusto than usual. It was true, thought Jocelyn, the west did seem to be forgotten. In the twenty years since the start of the restoration and the reign of Touchstone, little had been done to heal this part of the Old Kingdom. Many of the Charter Stones in the villages remained broken, people worried their loved ones would not have the true peace of death but be brought back by the will of some rouge necromancer. Though Jocelyn knew that both the Abhorsen and King Touchstone had worked wonders, this particular part of the kingdom seemed to still be under some strange spell of madness, a remnant perhaps of times she wished not to think of. When all lay in ruin.
Those times will come again, a voice whispered in the back of Jocelyn's head, they will come again and with your blessing. She dug her fingers deep into her hair and pulled at the roots.
"Stop it." She whispered to the unknown assailant inside her mind. Though she had Seen it, or something of it. But it might only be one possibility, she thought, one of many. The future is fickle. As all Clayr knew.
"But not mine." She choked. No, no. She could still change it, set it right. She had bought a horse before evening fell, she could leave tonight. Would. Must leave tonight. Before it was too late. Before he found her. The threat of the dead and the strange lightning storms would keep many off the road, she could make it to the Ratterlin by noon tomorrow, perhaps a bit longer if she went around the hills and through the wood, strait east, to avoid the slumbering town of Edge where wickedness waited. Where she knew it waited, where the lightning lay off the water. Where the hole was in the ground. Jocelyn shuttered, she must not think of these things, but images of the blue swathed dead, digging in the night filled her night sendings and waking thoughts. That was why she did not fear them nor any other rough-and-tumble she might meet on the road that night. They lived in her head.
"I am a daughter of the Clayr," She said aloud, not quite believing the words as they fell broken from her mouth. "Daughter of the Clayr, Jocelyn, daughter of Monric, daughter of Shannea." She shut her eyes tight. The Clayr. Her ice home in the north. She longed for the sight of the glacier, of the fog and snow whipping against the bright blue of the morning. For her sisters. She bit her lip until it almost bled. How would she explain her disappearance? How would she explain that she had been able to See Red Lake? That she had Seen the west more clearly than any other vision in her life and yet hid it from the others? Would they banish her? Would they forgive her for coming home and doing right when all her body, all her vision had forced her towards this gloomy Inn, taken her down river, smuggled by traders, to the town of Uppside and the muddy red of the dreaded lake? Taken her here to wait. To wait for him.
Tears began to spill down her cheeks and she wiped them away quickly.
"I will go." She said finally. Her spirit felt weak and her body drained, though she had done naught but sit in this pitiful tavern for a near moon cycle. She wrapped her drab grey cloak around her and summoned her strength as she threw her satchel over her shoulder.
She moved for the door but stopped dead when the handle began to turn. She drew in breath. It was too late. There was not a possibility of many futures anymore. Only one. This one.
His hot metal stink met her nose and she covered her face with one hand, moving instinctively back from the door, one hand grabbing the four-poster bed.
"Darling," he purred and with that he blew out on his breath some sort of spell that left her feeling hazy, the free magic stink replaced by some glamour of perfume that was overly floral and bit at her tongue. "On your way out?"
She shook her head, not necessarily as a gesture of confirmation or denial but more of defeat. He came to her and took her hand from her face, his bandolier of bells pressing cold and hard, like the current of the river, against her chest.
"Lovely." He said. Jocelyn turned her head. He grabbed her chin and forced her face upwards until she had no choice but to gaze into the depthlessness of his eyes, recalling from Sight this moment when he smiled at her like fire and her will melted away.
"You seem surprised. Did you not See this my sister? My Clayr bride?"
"I am not your bride." She spat with some force despite the weakness of her will and body. Her energy seemed to ebb outward and flow towards him, wrap around his hands and go up through his arms, to those endless dark eyes. His power was immense and she physically shook from its presence. Its dark overtone.
He chuckled and removed her cloak.
"You are tonight." He touched the berry brown of her skin. He could not remember the last time he partook in pleasures of the flesh, it seemed so pale compared to the exaltations of manipulating death, of serving destruction. She was small, wiry. Not much of a match even for a normal man. Aesthetically she reminded him of the world which his master would one day suck life from, the earthy skin, the bee stung lips, wheat colored hair, classic Clayr eyes the clear blue of their glacier fortress. It made her all the more desirable, all the more conquerable. It would only be this one night, for he had more pressing business to attend to and must be back at once. But this night was all he needed.
"You're trembling," He said with mock concern, his grip around her shoulders tightening, nails sinking into her flesh. She turned her face away once more, eyes shut.
"Do you intend to kill me, sir?"
"Kill you?" He laughed, "Oh, my dear Jocelyn," She twitched in shock at the sound of her name, not yet spoken aloud by her, rolling off the tongue of this man. This Necromancer. "I have Seen you too. I have seen our future."
She looked at him with ice in those blue eyes.
"You cannot See. You are not of my people."
He cocked an eyebrow and stroked her jaw line absently with his thumb.
"Cannot See? Oh, the folly of the young!" His grin widened until it seemed it would stretch off his face, "My sweet girl, I have been given powers beyond your reckoning. You were promised to me long before you were ever born. My former master told me of you, where to find you, where you would wait and when."
"Who?" She said mockingly. The Sight did not come to those outside the Clayr...but the powerful among the dead...someone a necromancer might meet, who could say where their knowledge might extend?
"Kerrigor." The word was liquid acid. It filled the room.
"Kerrigor?" Jocelyn choked, "Krigorr was your master?" She knew from her studies at the glacier, that Kerrigor alone, one of the greater dead and of royal blood, almost destroyed all the Charter Stones, which would have melted their world into decay had it not been stopped by Abhorsen Sabriel. This had all taken place when she was but a child. However the name still held it's awful power and the dizzying idea of what it might have been like to have known such times.
"Yes," He nodded deeply as if talking to a child.
"A-and who do you serve now?"
He shushed her with a finger and ticked his tongue. He whispered into her hair,
"I would speak his name but I fear burning your sweet ears."
Goosepimples rose all along her body. She felt limp, sick, almost as if lying on her deathbed. Promised by Kerrigor? A daughter of the Clayr? How could such things be?
"You are to be my fail safe," He continued, "Incase my plans go a-wry. The plans your lovely cousins are working so hard to discover. However," He looked out Jocelyn's window to the lake and the crackling of the storm, "things are looking well. In which case you will be of no need and my master will deal with you in his time."
"No," Jocelyn managed to croak. Her eyes held unimaginable terror. Was she a monster same as he? Or had this been a vision of her death? He could easily be lying. She was Clayr blood. She could be a sacrifice of some sort.
"Did you not come here of your own volition?" The man asked with a mocking mouth, "Did you not sail down the Ratterlin for many days and find this Inn? Have you not been waiting? Why did you not return when you could? Why did you not escape this fate and choose another?"
"No," Jocelyn spoke again as his hands slipped around her and he laid her on the bed. The room was browning out, she was slipping away, becoming more defenseless than before.
"Yes," He hissed, "Yes, yes."
Once again she looked at him,
"Do you intend to kill me, sir?"
"You hush now, my little treasure." He waved his hand over her face and let out a breath, the charter mark on her forehead seemed to freeze. She gazed at him in panic, her nearly lifeless body wilted as a spring flower come too soon. "And should we meet again, call me Hedge." He burned her mouth with a kiss.
A faint bit of mid-morning sunlight brushed Jocelyn's arm and woke her. All her body ached in a feverish way she had never known before. She blinked to clear her vision. There was no way to tell how long she'd been like this, how many days. She could see she was still at The Tin Pony, and as her eyes adjusted to the light she could see the latest bill for payment slipped under her door. She moaned and began to slowly stretch from her fetal position on the floor. What had happened?
She tried to draw up all her memory from the haze of her brain. Why had she left the glacier and come here to Uppside? A mission, yes, she'd been sent. No...no, not sent. She had snuck away. Why would she sneak away? Why would she lie to her cousins and sisters? To what purpose?
She gasped and felt her body clench and cramp again. The Vision. The man by Red Lake, the man who would meet her at the room above the bar, the man with the broken piano key smile and the dark eyes, forever dark. She was to tell no one, no one. But why? They had been working so hard to see Red Lake and what fiendish things were at play here. Things that shadowed themselves from the sight of the Clayr. Must be great evil. So why had she gone? Why had she told no one?
Fate. Fate. "Why did you not escape this fate and choose another?" A voice danced around her brain, "You were promised to me before you were born." Despite the pain of her limbs, Jocelyn shot bolt upright. She had come here, she had met the man. His name? What was his name? It slipped past her, just out of reach. She clutched at her shivering body. Her dress was disheveled, a glance at the bed revealed that it too was in a state of disarray. Jocelyn's mouth went dry.
"What have I done?"
She began to look down at her body, saw the bruises on her wrists, lifted up her skirts to find swelled red marks, like that of a burn, on her inner thighs. She drew her knees to her chin, rocking, sobbing.
"Oh Charter, oh Charter, what have I done?"
It was then that the knowledge came, not unlike a vision. He had spilled his seed inside her and there it had split in two and grew. Nested deep within her womb. Split in two and there it grew.
She gasped through her sobs and brought a shaky hand to her mouth. She remembered a moment, looking up, the man's face had gone shapeless, dripping, it was human but somehow not, it drizzled free magic, it dripped fire liquid.
"You will go south," The voice seemed to scream, "You will go south Ancelstierre. You will cross the wall by the western light. An escort will meet you. From there go deep to the heart, to the capitol city, tell no one where from you came. You will be found if need be."
"No!" Jocelyn shrieked aloud, stumbling to her feet. "No!" She looked franticly around the room. The man was gone, for sure he was gone, he had to have been gone several days for his sent no longer lingered, except for on the sheets which Jocelyn would have the maid servant burn right away. Did he have ways of knowing? Knowing what she might do? Jocelyn was unsure but felt that his attention was mostly directed elsewhere.
"You are my fail safe," His voice rang in her head again and she clamped her hands over her ears to drown it out, stamping her feet. When it was gone she groped the floor for her cloak and slipped it on, feeling for her change purse in her pocket. She ignored the exhaustion of her limbs and moved foreword towards the door, determined to somehow make things right. Perhaps, after she did, she could go back home. Home to the cold north and the ice. Perhaps she could confess her sins and be forgiven. Become a true daughter of the Clayr once more.
It had been two weeks since she had awoken on the floor. Jocelyn, a tiny, huddled lump in the corner of a large bed, wept for what must have been the hundredth time that day. She did not know when or if this weeping would ever end.
She had searched out the village healer, and for many coins, bought as much Pennyroyal tea as the old woman had. For days she subsisted on nothing but. Though her stomach tossed like a stormy ocean and she reached up nothing but bile many times, her blood did not come. When the tea was gone, she stopped eating, she beat on her belly, drank only warm brandy from the bar. She'd lost much weight, her cheekbones carved out of her face like bone etchings, her ribs and hipbones curling and rising out of her skin.
She had raised her dagger, a beautiful carved puter and limestone the length of a forearm, and tried to bring it into her chest. She could not, she collapsed into tears. The same happened when she tried to slice the delicate skin of her still bruised wrist. An early death, a miscarriage, was, apparently, not in her cards.
On this evening, Jocelyn wept because the truth had come to her. She would never be able to return home, not with the seed she carried, not with the lies and betrayal that weighed her soul. Even if they did not condemn her to some terrible fortune, she could never face them again. She no longer felt one of them as the charter mark that had always brandished her forehead felt stained and dry. Tainted.
The man had spoken of her choice to come here, of her fate. She could not believe that this was all destiny had made for her-to be the bearer of wicked life from the loins of an evil man. She could not go home, she had fallen too far from the flock. But there were still choices to be made. The future was still made up of many futures.
She fumbled in her bedside table drawer and pulled out a map of the Old Kingdom. His voice still screamed, ever present inside her head—"Ancelstierre!" Jocelyn could not imagine a life in Ancelstierre, even if it were where she was being drawn. She knew nothing of their kind. And she was summoning something, something from deep within herself, a well of strength she did not know was there.
"These babies," She spoke aloud to the room as if addressing the imaginary audience of all those she had forsaken by coming here, "will not leave my womb. Charter help us, they are determined to be born. By what magic I do not know, by what hand I do not know. But I know this, and that is that if these children are part his they are also part mine," She growled the word as tears slipped down her cheeks and pooled in the corners of her mouth, "And in my heart I will always be of the Clayr."
She stared again at the map, the route forming in her mind, the determination building. The isle of Karen, a two-day journey from Aunden, south of Belisaere. That was the place she would go. Surrounded by the swift waters of the sea she would raise her babies. Far from Ancelstierre, far from Red Lake. On the warm shores they would swim in magic free waters. They would know nothing of this. It was the only way to make right.
Tomorrow she must begin eating to gather physical strength, and make arrangements for her journey, but she must also take haste. For she knew not if the man would return or sense her leaving northeast and not southwest. The idea alone was enough to strike terror.
Jocelyn stretched out upon the bed, wiping tears from her cheeks. Little did she know it would be the last time she would ever let herself cry, that those tears were the child in her slipping finally and definitively into its grave. She moved her hands over her emaciated belly and exhaled, her mouth softening slightly for the first time in days from a grimace into a line.
"Twins," She said softly and then drifted into sleep.