Chapter 32
XXXII
Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream
I found Mademoiselle Cecile in the fields behind Saint-Julien.
It was the day after Antoine’s disturbing transformation, of which he remembered nothing.
We returned to Saint-Julien in the morning and I sent him to get more wine, salt and thread—enough to keep him busy for an hour or so.
I took the opportunity to seek out the young sage-femme in the commons behind the village.
It was not difficult; in my Arcane sight, her hagstone pendant winked across the field like a star.
The young herbalist was also swearing like a soldier. She knelt in a patch of cotoneaster, harvesting the berries with a curved knife. A cloud of tiny biting marsh flies surrounded her, and her bare arms were covered in red welts.
“Get off me, you little pricks!” she hissed, slapping at her shoulder. They covered her back and her dirty blond hair like pepper.
“Next time, use lavender and some geranium, if you can find them,” I said, approaching on my horse. “Either press them for oils or rub them straight on the skin—you’ll have no more trouble with bugs.”
“You again!” she said, scrambling to her feet. Her pinafore and apron were stiff with dried blood; Cecile had doubtless been very busy since the massacre in the marketplace. “I told you to leave me be!”
And I told you I was coming back for you, witch, said Sarmodel. Where is your boon companion? I am going to juice him like an orange and I would like you to watch.
She raised the pruning knife with one hand and clasped the hagstone with the other. It throbbed formidably in her fist. “Leave me be—now—or I will burst your heart.”
“Young lady, please calm yourself—and watch your tone. Père Arnaud is not here to rescue you this time. And I would remind you once again that I am not your enemy.” I leaned forward on my saddle horn. “Rather, I have come seeking your help.”
“My help?” She slowly tucked the knife into her sash, but did not release the hagstone. “Every house in the village needs my help right now. I have nothing left for you—either of you.”
Oh please, we are not here for pile cream, said Sarmodel. We don’t need you—we need whoever gave you that stone.
“My lady?” Cecile’s suspicion was plain. “You have no business with her.”
“Mademoiselle, I need help from a powerful Spirit, and yours is the only one here. The baron’s son has fallen victim to some strange affliction and it is the Beast’s doing. This ‘lady’—can she help him?”
“I have no doubt she can. Whether she will . . . I would not presume to say.”
“Please, it is important.”
“Important? Is the baron’s son more important than the dozens of others who are waiting for me?” she asked. “Is he more important than the man whose legs were crushed when the bridge collapsed, or the girl whose face was nigh bitten off by a crazed hound?”
“He is. To me,” I said, despising myself for the blush I could feel rising in my face.
Just tell us where to find her, said Sarmodel, and then go back to your bugs.
Cecile’s stubborn jaw trembled and her eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “By God, I hate you. All of you. Why have you come here? Why can’t we just live our lives as we were, without Spirits and demons and the fucking Beast?”
I was about to give her a fitting response, but she looked so utterly miserable.
Sarmodel, let us try a different approach, I said privately.
I was just thinking the same thing. We can dump the body on the road somewhere—they’ll think the Beast got her.
Not exactly what I meant. Let me handle this for a moment, please.
“Cecile. I—I apologize. I understand how you feel, better than you know. I was exactly like you once—”
You were never anything like this puling slattern.
“—and I know how unfair it is. You asked for none of this and it asks everything of you. I can help you; we can help you. Do this one thing for me and I promise I will do everything in my power to rid you of the Beast for good.”
Cecile shook her head but did not speak. She knelt and returned to her work, her face turned away from me.
“Mademoiselle?”
“You don’t know what he is. You think you do, but you don’t.
” I realized she was crying as she worked, pulling the stems and nicking away the berries with a practiced hand.
“My lady has forbidden me to speak of him—she does not wish me to attract his eye—but he sees me already. I see him in my dreams; he hunts me through the village, a wolf the size of a barn with the hands of a man. He speaks in Latin, and he opens his mouth as wide as the sky, and when I look inside, I see hundreds of people, each devouring the one in front like sausage links—the farmers and the villagers all the way up to the bishop and the king, who eats all the rest, and of course the wolf, who holds them all in his mouth. And then he eats me.” She stopped and looked up at me.
“I will tell you the way and petition my lady on your behalf, as you have requested, and she may treat with you as she sees fit. But make no mistake, Professor—he is going to eat you and your arse-talking imp as well.”
“You have my thanks, Cecile. You may well have saved the young lord’s life.”
We followed Cecile’s directions to the foot of the mountains, where an alpine stream cascaded into the river. On her instructions, we were to follow the stream to its source.
Arse-talking imp? Sarmodel was still fuming. There are some occultists, Sebastian, who would not countenance such an insult to their Arcane associates.
Just let it go. Cecile has given us what we want, and there is certainly something powerful in these mountains.
Perhaps, he replied, but if you are wrong, I want you to promise me something.
Oh?
You will kill the young lord. Today.
I did not make any promises, but his point was clear.
Antoine and I left our horses tied by the stream. There was fresh water and plenty for them to eat, should we fail to return before dark.
I told my young lover only what was essential.
He was weak and unwell, and I thought it best not to trouble him any more than necessary.
As far as he knew, the Beast’s bite had succumbed to an infection and I was taking him to someone who could help.
He seemed more dejected than concerned—he still remembered nothing of his bloody deeds the night before.
It was difficult going for Antoine, but I could spare little attention to helping him.
There were signs along the way, things I would have missed without Cecile’s guidance.
A rowan, split by a lightning strike. Red verbena flowering there at the threshold of winter.
A standing stone with the shadow of a face on its pitted surface.
A circle of gray toadstools, undisturbed in a glade.
Each was a marker on a very specific trail.
I took a deep breath and began to sing.
It was a low, wordless song,1 taught to me centuries ago by creatures without human mouths. I hummed and whistled through the melody where I could not make the sounds with my voice alone.
And the world around us answered. Like the chimes in a great instrument, each stone and tree resonated with its own vibration. The mountain stream was a thrumming bass tone, lifting and leading the rest. We were in the right place. We followed the stream up and around the mountain.
Antoine began to wander as the song took effect. He crouched to examine a clump of snowbells, his eyes wide.
“Sebastian, these are beautiful,” he croaked.
“Yes, they are. Come, we still have a way to go.”
He gently plucked one of the flowers before I helped him to his feet.
“Antoine, can you hear that song?”
“What song?” he answered absently, humming the refrain. He twirled the little white flower between his fingers. I smiled and took his hand.
We walked hand in hand like children, ever deeper into the forest.
The woods changed as the Fey melody filled the world around us, like water soaking slowly into sand.
Wild Spirits became apparent. Antoine marveled at a nenekt rolling in the rapids.
I drew him quietly away before it noticed him.
A red-winged orneger bored for anima-rich sap in the trunk of a fir tree, uncaring as we stepped close enough to touch it.
Eyes watched us from the shadows and the treetops.
There were tears on my face as we followed the stream still farther, past the shallow run where Antoine had been so humiliated by the trout. A swarm of tiny flying Spirits danced on the surface, leaving V-shaped trails on the water.
I remembered the world like this, when there was worship in wild places and people did not shackle their gods to mortal concerns and mortal civilization.
A traveler through the wilds might slip into the Fey realm and find himself speaking to a sentient tree, or treading on the scaled back of an ancient serpent.
Do not get lost, Sebastian, said Sarmodel.
His voice was so close that I glanced at Antoine to see if he had heard.
I felt strong hands on my shoulders, guiding me step after step beside the stream.
I have no doubt that, without him, Antoine and I would both have lost ourselves up there in the Fey dreaming.
We came at last to a place where the treetops seemed to swallow the sun, and a green gloaming lit the way to an eldritch place. We had arrived.
The pool was wide, perhaps ten steps across, shadowed beneath a stone rib of the mountain.
It was, of course, a circle. The edges were overhung with bracken and flowering grasses, nodding at their own reflections.
Beneath the surface, a forest of mare’s tail glowed gemstone green in the sunlight, waving in some deeper current.
On the far side, a mossy black overhang delivered a constant trickle of meltwater.
It fell in a single, clear stream onto a flat tongue of granite that rose just above the water’s edge.
I recognized it immediately as the place where Mademoiselle Cecile’s hagstone had formed over centuries.
Beyond the ripples of the cascade, the water of the pool was very still, disturbed not even by the wind.
None of it should be here. This flower-strewn clearing with its emerald pool, here in the mountains with winter beginning to bite—it was impossible.
A sacred pool. There could be no doubt.
Antoine collapsed to his knees by the water, his face shining with awe. “I never knew such a place existed,” he said. “And here in the mountains, so close. Can we rest here, Sebastian? I . . . I do not think I can go farther.”
I didn’t answer him. I could feel the pool’s custodian Spirit hovering just beyond my senses. The presence was primal, yes, but not threatening. It was unmistakably feminine.
I knelt by the water, my head bowed. From my pack I took out a wooden bowl, which I floated on the surface. I had bought it from a local man who assured me it was made from the pines of the forest around us. The Spirit stirred; we had her attention.
Oh, she is very, very old, said Sarmodel. I could feel his awakened appetite. Under other circumstances . . .
Do not dare challenge her, Sarmodel. That is not how we work, remember?
Calm yourself, my love. It was just an observation, he said. But have a care. I cannot help you once the deal is made.
I know. Now, please, do not scare her away.
I began to sing again; a different song this time.
The words were a poem in Ancient Greek, an ode to a wild mountain stream.
I sang of her leaping cascades and life-giving waters, her grassy banks and her unknown depths.
Into the floating bowl I placed a handful of barley and four silver pellets from my shot pouch, followed by a measure of wine and a twisted sprig of mistletoe.
I sang the last stanza of the devotion and placed my final offering in the bowl: a handkerchief in which I had collected a quantity of Antoine’s semen. 2
Seemingly of its own accord, the bowl floated away from me, out into the center of the mirrorlike pool. There it burst suddenly into white flames and disappeared beneath the surface.
And there she rose.
1. Yes, it has a name, and no, I’m not going to say what it is. Forgive me if I am overcautious in this age of the internet.
2. Oh, come now. It’s a little late for squeamishness.