Strange Attractors - Kim Falconer [62]
The portal opened wider and Selene stepped into the light, the edges shimmering. She pulled Tamin with her.
‘Tensar,’ Shane said. ‘The courtyard in spring. Think of nothing else, Selene.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting my flutes.’
‘You can’t!’
‘They were gifts, and demons if I will leave them behind. Go. I won’t be long.’
Shane backed from the portal as the wall blurred. Selene and Tamin were whisked away, the sound of Selene’s retort vanishing with them. Thank the goddess for that. Her last look was fit to boil.
‘I’m not leaving what is mine,’ he said, though he knew she was already worlds away. His flutes and pipes were gifts from Annadusa and the Temple Los Loma bards. He had no intention of letting them rot. ‘There are some things I’ll not abandon.’ He picked his way over a torso and found his pack half buried among limbs and weapons.
A particularly large pile of gold coins caught his eye. ‘Why not?’ He figured he’d earned it. The crazy witch downstairs had, in a moment of clarity, asked him to take the boy and he would. He would also take some resources to help with the project. Minding a youngster wasn’t cheap. He knew that from his sister’s brood. He wouldn’t leave his instruments, or the opportunity for wealth. It could take some time to situate the lad, even with his talent. Best have backup.
He pinched the bony arm of the nearest corpse like lifting a rat by the tail. The odour made him gag. Swallowing his bile, he moved the limb aside, dropping it as it came away from the torso. The drawer beneath it glistened with gold. There was enough treasure there to finance an army. ‘What the river brings,’ he whispered again. He took two fistfuls and dropped them in his pack, the weight surprising him. ‘That’ll do.’
Shane didn’t want an army. He just wanted to get home, buy a new low whistle and resign from the border scouts. If it meant raising the fiddle-playing lad, he’d gladly do that too. He shouldered the pack. ‘Gladly.’ But when he turned to the portal the purple glow was gone. Where a moment ago was a whirling vortex, thick boards now barred the way; it was a wall without any sign of entry or exit—no glow, no swirl, no light.
‘Demon’s blood!’ He pounded the wall, his fists hammering out the panic in his head. When the cackle of May’s voice reached him, he stopped. ‘Enjoying this, are you?’
She laughed harder.
Shane looked at the floorboards. ‘If you want the boy looked after, you best pull back your glamour. Selene’s hopeless with children and wouldn’t have a clue how to support his musicianship.’
The laughter stopped.
‘I can bring him up right and it’s no consequence to you that I take some coin.’
The laughter resumed and the wall remained solid.
‘Let me out!’ he shouted, again pounding on the wall. His fists stung and still there was no hint of the portal. He stopped and wiped the sweat from his face. Steady, he said to himself. There must be a way.
‘There is.’
A smile lifted his face as he imagined Rosette’s voice answering him. He remembered a conversation he’d had with her on this very topic. Conversation? It was more an argument, on his side anyway, but he could hear her clearly and it started to make sense. She’d stayed calm, sweet and easy, as if it mattered nothing to her if he believed what she was saying or not. At the time he hadn’t, but now it was sounding different.
‘It’s like this, Shane,’ she had said. ‘I respond to what I want to see, not what’s there.’
‘But that’s just crazy talk.’
‘No, it’s witchcraft. It’s what I’ve been taught and—more than that—it’s the law of nature.’
‘How can it be the law of nature?’
‘Because it is.’
‘More like demons’ trickery.’
‘Hardly. Shane, relax for a moment and think about it. What you see is what you expect to see. Nothing more and nothing less. How do you think a glamour works, for the goddesses’ sake?’
‘I’m trying not to think about it at all. It’s too confusing.’
He’d been baffled that day and still was, but he closed his eyes and pictured Rosette, her raven hair blowing across her face, her dark eyes, her hawk nose, slender limbs