The Sorceress of Ambermere

THE SORCERESS OF AMBERMERE

Second in the AMBERMERE series

J. Calvin Pierce

Smashword Edition

Copyright © 1993, 2001, 2003, 2012 by James Pierce. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author's work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

Cover Art Copyright © 1993, 2012 by Peter Clarke. All rights reserved.

First published in 1993 by Ace

Published March 2001 by

Embiid Publishing

PO Box 2855

Waianae HI 96792

Published 2003

Eksmo

Moscow

Published April 2012 by

Valhalla Press

1115 12th Street NW

Suite 205

Washington, DC 20005

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fiction or are used fictitiously. That means the author made it all up.

FOR DIANE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

True_Midnight

The_Dogs_of_Time

Behind_the_Curtain

Feast

Dull_Swords

Working_Girls

Brother_Fincus

Bowl_of_Cherries

Rhastopheris

Drunken_Poet

Iffy_Spell

Pipers_Dirge

Whispers

Virgin_Warrior

Gorgles

Houseguest

About_The_Author

Other_Works

TRUE MIDNIGHT

It was the hat that caught the eye. Not that it was flamboyant, or that it was worn in a manner calculated to attract attention. On the contrary, it was modestly compact, and colorful only where an enamel-red berry or a tiny yellow petal stood out against the background of woven ferns and herbs. The hat was not worn at a rakish tilt, nor yet pulled down military fashion to tickle the bridge of the nose. In fact, it gave every appearance of having been squared with mathematical precision on the head of the gray-haired lady who wore it. Still, a hat thatched with stems, leaves, berries, and blossoms will get its share of attention.

The lady herself was rather short. It was only when measured with the hat that her height exceeded five feet, but she carried herself with such uncompromising erectness and moved with such evident firmness of purpose that her stature was always the last thing to be noticed by anyone who saw her.

The hat and the posture had been sufficient to keep Marcia from noticing the lady’s aura, unusual though it was, until Hannah had sat down next to her and introduced herself. But this time Hannah did not stop and sit down. That was the way it was supposed to happen, but instead she walked past without a glance. Other things were wrong as well. Marcia was seated, not on a bench in the park as she should have been, but at her desk at work, except that there were trees and gravel paths and benches all around her. That in itself was curious, but not so curious as the fact that as Hannah passed from her field of vision on the left, she entered it again on the right.

While she watched Hannah repeatedly passing by her, Marcia tried to reconcile the puzzling relocation of her desk into the park. Her office, she was certain, was in a building, her desk and appurtenances in a drab little cubicle. Then she remembered: she had put a spell on Mr. Figge—employed a magical powder to make him give her a promotion. That was when her desk and her computer had been moved to the spot under the trees, near the bench where she ate her lunch on days when the weather was nice.

Marcia could picture the crowded freight elevator—all her things jumbled together, falling off her desk. She was worried about her papers, the spreadsheet printouts that had taken her so much time. She could see that they were getting wrinkled and dirty. She would have to do the whole job over again. It was going to be such a bother, and the printer wouldn’t plug into the tree properly….

Marcia turned her head on her pillow and opened her eyes. Every night of her life, Marcia awoke at midnight. Not the midnight of the clock, but true midnight, the high noon of the night, the moment when the night was at its depth. As a child she had found it disturbing to waken so, but for most of her life she had just noted the passing of the moment and then gone back to sleep. She considered it nothing more than a private peculiarity, like her ability to see auras. She had never given it much thought until the strange woman she had met last summer mentioned it.

She tried to cling to the fading shreds of the dream, but knew only that once again it had been about Hannah and about the strange events of six months ago. She had the sense that the dream had concerned either place or time. Hannah had been very particular about time, in an odd sort of way.

She had, for instance, thought it outrageous that someone she considered her protégée wore a wristwatch—consulted a device, as she called it in a scandalized tone, to regulate her comings and goings.

Time is perfectly capable of operating without the help of springs and gears, Hannah had said, pointing to Marcia’s watch. Wearing that thing only promotes an unwholesome preoccupation with your own mortality. When she noticed the second hand racing in its eternal circle, she shook her head in disapproving wonder.

Madness, she said. You are trying to batter time into a powder. No wonder it’s so frantic and noisy in this world. She looked up at the sky. Dawn…noon…sunset. These things can be seen plainly, and divide the day sufficiently for any sensible purpose.

Marcia tried to think of something relevant or at least polite to say, and ended up saying nothing. After a moment, Hannah continued.

The fourth division—midnight—is hidden. It is recognized only by a few; by those who need to know the center of the night.

Marcia wondered who on earth would have such an ominous-sounding need. To know the center of the night, she thought skeptically, then realized with a start that she knew, and always had known, when the deepest hour of the night fell. It was this that woke her every night. She had never thought about it, but she knew at once that it was true.

It was bits of revelation like this one, as much as Hannah’s highly unusual aura, not to mention Marcia’s overdeveloped sense of tact and courtesy, that had prompted her to continue meeting with the lady who called herself a witch. And it was continuing to meet with her that, finally, had made last summer such an eventful one.

Eventful would not have been a word to describe Marcia’s life up to that point. She lived alone, and had worked in the same office for fifteen years, putting up with the petty tyrannies of her boss until they had come to seem almost reasonable. She took carefully planned vacations and was often relieved when they were over. She played bridge without great enthusiasm. She read a lot of library books.

Then one lunchtime the short lady with the exemplary posture, unusual hat, and peculiar aura had sat down next to her on a park bench and started talking about witchcraft. Despite, or perhaps because of, her ability to see auras, Marcia was a confirmed skeptic on matters that had any connection with the occult. The existence of auras she was obliged to concede, but she had never harbored any belief in astrology, palm reading, tarot, or astral projection, let alone anything so eccentric as witchcraft.

In what Marcia soon came to recognize as her characteristic manner, Hannah did not waste time soliciting Marcia’s opinion on witchcraft, nor did she ask whether she had any interest in learning to practice it. She had simply informed her that she, Marcia, was now her, Hannah’s, adept, and that it would be necessary for her to pay careful attention to everything her teacher said.

As it turned out, being the apprentice of a witch was the tame part of her unusual experiences. Even when she employed, reluctantly and fearfully, the little box of powder and its accompanying spell on Mr. Figge in the sanctity of his own office—this when Hannah had become impatient with Marcia’s rigid work schedule and insisted she arrange to set her own hours—even when she acquired harrowing firsthand knowledge that a mugger armed with a knife was no more than a minor annoyance to the witch; these things, considered in light of the events that followed, were insignificant, about on a par with an afternoon at the zoo.

Marcia tossed the covers back. She reached up and touched her cheekbone. Next to her eye she wore a scar, put there by a demon. On her hand she wore a thin gold ring, put there by a woman, Elyssa, whose aura was the polar opposite of the horrific emanation that surrounded the demon, and so dazzling that Marcia had found it hard to believe it could be invisible to anyone. And this woman, little more than a girl in her outward appearance, had dealt with the demon as handily as Hannah had dealt with the mugger.

Marcia got out of bed and walked to the window. She pulled back the drapes and gazed down to the avenue below. She remembered waking up at midnight on the day she had first seen the demon. She had been convinced that he was outside, waiting for her. But then, as now, the sidewalk was deserted. It was another, different sort of memory that was connected with the apartment building.

Marcia was able to pick out the precise spot where Elyssa had left her on that last night. She remembered standing alone outside the building in the muggy night, confused and disoriented. Her cheek had still been oozing blood, and burned with a hot sting that had not completely gone away for weeks. But at that moment she didn’t even notice the pain; she was too busy trying to figure out what had happened. She had taken Elyssa’s hand in an alley miles from her apartment and then, with no intervening sensation of motion or elapsing time, had found herself alone on the spot she peered down at now.

She let the drapes fall back across the window. All those things had happened last summer, six months ago. The last time she had met with Hannah, the older woman had told her that wearing Elyssa’s ring, facing the demon—these experiences had carried her beyond the possibility of apprenticing with a witch, but that she was certain they would meet again.

They had not. There had been no more demons, witches, or enchantresses in Marcia’s life. She sighed and looked at the ring. Elyssa had asked her to continue to wear it—had said she seemed suited to it. She had said nothing more, but Marcia had assumed…something, she wasn’t sure what.

A draft from the window washed across her bare ankles like ice water. Marcia crossed the room and got back into bed.

When she dreamed again, it was of waking up in the morning without Elyssa’s ring, or even a mark on her finger to show that she had ever worn it. She dressed quickly in the clothes she had been wearing on the night she defied the power of the demon, and went to see Hannah, who lived, not in some parallel world in a cottage outside a city by the name of Ambermere, but in an efficiency apartment on the fifth floor of Marcia’s building.

No, no, those things never happened, my dear, said Hannah, then pointed out to Marcia that the clothes she had on proved that she was imagining all of it. Marcia felt stupid. How could she have missed something so obvious? Of course she would never wear high heels with slacks. She wondered if she could be losing her mind.

But what about my job? she said, gesturing to her office cubicle, which was next to Hannah’s kitchen. I set my own hours, she added in an insistent whine that echoed in her ears and embarrassed her. She looked around at Hannah’s collection of clocks, watches, and antique electric shavers. Marcia stared, letting her eyes wander over the jumble of brass and glass and polished steel. She realized suddenly that she was trapped by time—that there was no such thing as setting your own hours. Your hours set you.

She raised her fingers to her cheek. This was all too silly. She would show this old woman that she was not crazy. On that night last summer she had conquered her terror and stood alone in the shadow of a demon. She had the evidence of her scar.

Except that she couldn’t find it. Her skin felt like porcelain. Marcia got a startled glimpse of herself through Hannah’s eyes. She looked like a nineteen-year-old cosmetics model. Her tight, poreless skin gleamed under the muted colors of her makeup. Her hair, which had become jet black, was pulled back into a severe bun.

Somewhere, someone was laughing at her.

She awoke with only a vague memory of the first dream, and none at all of the second. The weather was warm for the third week in January. Marcia waited until the worst part of rush hour was over, then walked to work, as she did whenever she had the chance. She rarely walked home; an hour of bad air and noise after a day filled with deadening trivia was more than she cared to face. For years she had taken the bus in the evenings. Since her promotion last summer, she nearly always rode home in a taxi.

Late in the afternoon, the weather, which had been predicted to remain springlike until the weekend, turned suddenly nasty. The sky darkened, and the temperature dropped more than twenty degrees in two hours. When the sleet began, everyone else in the office gathered at the windows to watch, and to discuss the reliability of meteorologists. Marcia checked to make sure she had an umbrella, then went doggedly on with the project she was determined to finish.

She stayed on after everyone else had gone home. She knew there was nothing pressing about getting the spreadsheet printouts finished, but the thought of them had been pursuing her with a nagging worry since before her first cup of coffee that morning. She worked until the power went out, then made her way down the stairs in the glare of the emergency lights.

The sleet that stung her was invisible in the darkness. Marcia walked carefully on the slippery pavement, staying close to the buildings. She flipped her wet collar up against the biting wind. Her collapsible umbrella had collapsed inside out and forever when the first stiff gust had ripped at it many blocks back.

She had lost track of just how far she had walked. She was trying to remember the location of the nearest hotel or restaurant—or drugstore, for that matter. Traffic was stopped. There was no hope of getting a cab or a bus, nor any reason to. Trying to walk home had been a sound idea, but was beginning to seem impossible. The wind began to blow harder. Marcia took shelter in the doorway of a bank that had been closed for hours.

The traffic seemed tired and dispirited. Hardly a horn sounded. Those that did were muffled by the furious weather. Marcia decided that if she ever did get home tonight, she would stay in bed all day tomorrow.

A woman stepped into the doorway. Marcia nodded. The woman smiled as though they were old friends and looked her in the eye. Marcia blinked and glanced away uncomfortably.

Marcia. The voice was barely audible in the wind.

Marcia looked back at her. The woman held out her hand. She was wearing a thin golden ring. You are exactly as you were described to me, she continued, as though the two had just met at an office party. I’m sure the clothes I got for you will fit perfectly.

Clothes?

Yes, it’s summertime where we’re going, and I knew we wouldn’t have time later to collect a wardrobe.

Marcia felt that her brain must have quit working. She wished she could get in out of the cold. I’m, I mean, what…? she stammered.

The woman laughed. We can talk later, she said. She gestured at the street. This is just awful. You’ll feel better when we get home. I have your things all ready.

Marcia stared, shivering in the wind. Get home? she said. She looked again at the ring the woman wore. The meaning of what she had said sank in. Marcia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Months ago, in the alley outside the strip joint, she had taken Elyssa’s hand. A moment later she had stood miles uptown, dazed and shaken, on the deserted sidewalk outside her apartment building. She opened her eyes and reached out.

They walked with their heads bent into the wind. Marcia’s shoes had been saturated already, and yet were somehow getting wetter. Her red fingers were caught in the numbing grip of her companion’s icy hand.

The woman had said they would be warm and dry when they got home. Instead, Marcia was colder and wetter than she could ever remember being. At least in the doorway she had been out of the wet, and the worst of the wind. At the corner the woman did not hesitate at the curb, but stepped into the snarl of traffic. The rumble of the engines, the swipe and slap of hundreds of windshield wipers, all were muted beneath the furious wind and the rain and sleet it drove. It was a ghostly scene, and behind the fogged glass were the ghostly forms of men and women trapped in a metropolitan purgatory.

Marcia was matching the purposeful stride of her companion, walking abreast of her, and yet felt as though she were being dragged along. When her right foot plunged into a puddle nearly to her ankle, the shock of the engulfing raw icy water made her stumble. The woman glanced at her, but seemed intent on the motionless cars around them. She pulled Marcia’s hand close to her side and piloted them to the far sidewalk.

Once safely off the street the woman stopped. The wind was spitting ice water at them; conversation was nearly impossible. The woman clasped Marcia’s shoulders and leaned close.

I’m sorry, she said, almost shouting to be heard before her words were blown away, it’s really not far. Please don’t be angry.

Marcia realized that anger had been building in her. She had been near to getting in a temper, as her mother had always called her tiny explosions of wrath. But allowing herself a temper was something Marcia had outgrown early. By the time she entered grade school, she was shy and quiet. She kept her anger for her private moments. At least until the unusual events of last summer, and a few times since.

The woman grinned. Although she was probably only slightly younger than Marcia, at that moment she looked girlish with her hair soaked flat and streams of rain running down her face.

Honest, she yelled. This is not the way we usually operate. Fortunately. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. The effect was temporary. By the way, my name is Annie.

Marcia held out her hand. I’m… she began.

Annie laughed into the wind. I know, Marcia, she said. I’ve known about you for months. She hunched up her shoulders and shivered. Now, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get home. We’re not going to have much time to rest.

Marcia lost count, but in four or five or maybe six blocks they came to a street of large, tired-looking brownstone townhouses. As they turned the corner, the wind abated. For a second, Marcia felt almost warm. She was about to say something to Annie when a sustained gust began to fling splinters of rain and sleet into their faces. Annie picked up her pace, hurrying to an entrance a few doors down the street. As she rushed to keep up, Marcia noticed a man approaching. He wore no coat—only a hooded sweatshirt that hung on him in wet folds. He quickened his pace. He seemed to be staring at them intently. Marcia could see nothing of his aura, only his pale face inside the hood, and night shadows and rain. Annie had her head bent away from the wind. She seemed not to see the man.

He reached the house just after they did. As Marcia and Annie began to make their cautious way up the ice-glazed concrete steps, he fell in behind. Marcia glanced over her shoulder. The man was right behind them. With one hand he steadied himself on the railing, with the other he was reaching toward her.

Marcia pulled from Annie’s grasp and turned as fast as she could without slipping. She clenched her ring hand into a tight, frozen fist. She raised her other hand to point at the man, as though with that gesture she could command him to keep away. She felt her alarm, her fear, change to a sudden unexpected surge of anger.

The man leapt back. He lost his footing on the icy steps and saved himself from a fall by an awkward lunge to the railing, where he hung on with both hands as he scrambled to get his feet under him. In the same instant, Marcia heard a shout from behind her and felt a firm hand seize her forearm.

No! Don’t! Annie’s voice had more of an edge than the bitter wind.

Marcia was confused. She blinked. The rain was pouring down her face, and now down the back of her neck as well. Don’t what? she thought. Annie released her arm and went to the man. She helped him stand up. His hood had fallen back. His hair was plastered to his head with rain. He looked as much like a drowned cat as Annie did. As though to answer Marcia’s silent question, he smiled at her uncertainly and said, Yeah, please don’t fry the help, which, in the noise of the wind and the confusion of the situation sounded to Marcia like please don’t try the kelp. Annie was watching her carefully. Marcia nodded uncertainly. She couldn’t, at that moment, remember whether kelp was a kind of seaweed or a variety of fish.

The man, introduced simply as Dennis, produced a key from the pocket of his jeans and opened the front door onto an unlighted vestibule. He stood back so that the two women could enter, then followed, leaving the street door open behind them. Water poured from their garments onto the floor of dirty cracked tiles. Shivering and smelling of wet cloth, they rearranged themselves in the cramped space to allow Dennis to get to the inner door. It had a window of stained glass that looked as though it had once been less opaque than it now was. Behind it could be seen the faintest of lights. After some difficulty, during which Marcia had leisure to wonder if she would ever be able to stop shivering, Dennis found the right key. He inserted it, but before turning the bolt, pulled the outer door closed behind them.

As a girl, Marcia had lived in an apartment building in which the odors of boiling cabbage and cheap cigars competed for predominance. It had been one of the modest pleasures of her adulthood to be able to live away from such smells. Now, for the first time in years, they were in her nose again. She winced, not so much at the odors as at the vivid memories they recalled. This could be a nasty winter day of thirty years ago, and she a fifth-grader fleeing the cold for the comforts of a hissing radiator and supper in the kitchen.

Inside, the hallway presented a scene of moldering elegance. An ancient rag that had probably been an opulent product of the looms of Antwerp battled to cover the narrow floorboards. Halfway back the long corridor a staircase rose in dusty magnificence to a broad landing cluttered with trash bags and an object that looked as though it had once had wheels.

Dennis locked the door behind him. Sorry about the keys, he said, addressing both of them. He smiled at Marcia. I generally come in the back way, he explained, and the girls almost never use the street door.

Marcia nodded and smiled politely at Dennis while trying to think of some way to make up for nearly causing him to break his neck on the steps. Nothing sprang to mind, partly because she was at the same time trying to figure out what possible connection this tenement could have with Elyssa, the ring, and the events of last summer. She had thought, through the fall and winter, that she was meant never to hear more of whatever she had been in touch with for those weeks. Hannah had said they would meet again, but then Hannah had disappeared, apparently forever. And the young man, Daniel—she had harbored hopes of seeing him in the city. For those first weeks she had haunted the little park, hoping he might show up there. True, he had been full of questions, but even he had seemed to know more than she did.

Dennis turned back to Annie. Listen, you’re in charge of the house, right?

No, I am not. You are in charge. Completely. I happen to be the one who hands out the money. She paused for a moment, as though she had just thought of something. A sudden burst of laughter escaped her lips. The girls, she said. Really!

Dennis grinned and started to say something. Annie interrupted him.

Never mind, she laughed. Anyway, I’m going to be away for a while, so don’t forget to come and get some cash and checks later.

Okay, he said. "But just