Once Upon A Curse: 17 Dark Faerie Tales Page 19

  She blew air between her teeth. She untied and unrolled her scribroll. It contained an assortment of scribs and brushes. She chose one of the thin charcoal scribs. She peeled back a layer of the wax paper to reveal more nub. She began to draw the brink again, this time his whole body. He wore a kora, a forward-curved sword that broadened at the tip. His cape-coat had once been elaborate but the clasps and bells had been torn off the indigo velvet. Beneath it, the blouse of white silk may once have been pristine. Most brinks were painted richly adorned. However, why had he let the garments wear down to near rags?

  "Glamourer!" a cheery shout interrupted Sajiana’s concentration. Annoyance soured the smile she flashed to the man who had interrupted her with his salutation. She reminded herself that Mangcansten was surprisingly intolerant of punching locals in the face.

  "Glamourer!" He was a portly man, balding, richly belled in silk, with a moon shaped hat that protruded like a horn from the center of his head. Gold clappers cupped his ears, and bangles jingled on his thick wrists. He was seated in an open veyance drawn by massive Tugger hounds. "What an honor to meet one of your mastery! What brings you here to our remote hamlet?"

  "Our business need not worry you," she replied coolly. So that no one could see her drawing a forbidden human form – though if he knew she was a glamourer, he would know she had the right – Sajiana filed the paper and scrib back into her portfolio.

  "But you must let us assist you. I am the town Honorary, Lord Master Yorch. Have you a place to stay? Oh, I know you glamourers have your own ways of providing shelter, but surely you will permit me the vanity of offering you the hospitality of my house."

  Sajiana sighed and gave in to the inevitable. Perhaps it would be better to work on the portrait of the brink inside, on a flat surface, with good light. She climbed up beside Lord Master Yorch and allowed him to babble at her the rest of the trip to his large mansion. She would have to resume her hunt for the brink later.

  Most of the houses in Paddiglum were lumped from stone, but Lord Master Yorch’s mansion was a warm amber jewel of carven woods. Soldiers in serviceable brown cape-coats and iron helmets stood watch inside the house. A lovely, yet listless maid showed Sajiana to a guest chamber.

  Sajiana pleaded fatigue and hid in the guest chamber until supper. The sun set; she lit lamps. She drew and burned several drafts of the brink’s portrait. None were true enough to hold him, and there was no point in knotting him just to let him escape again. After a frustrating afternoon, she decided to allow herself to doodle to clear her mental palette before she tried again. She set aside the fine linen canvas she had been working and took out her sketchbook. She always liked to practice upon real rooms, and she especially liked to look at the insides of things because without those views, a picture would lead to a poor glamour. Much heavy oaken furniture adorned the guest chamber. Sajiana sketched the bed, then the casement window and the bronze grill across it, then a clever chest at the foot of the bed, and then a large dresser against the far wall. She opened one drawer…

  …Inside it was quite blank. White.

  Shocked, Sajiana stared at it a minute. Then she checked under the bed. White. Behind the curtains on either side of the window. White. Inside the chest in the corner. White….

  Was it possible? How? The mansion had not vanished at sunset…

  "Ah, yes, sorry, this room still has some rough spots," a mocking voice lamented.

  Sajiana whirled to face the man in the doorway. Lord Master Yorch.

  "I suppose it was only a matter of time before Mangcansten sent someone to investigate," he said. "But the scribblers of Mangcansten are not the only ones who know how to knot a portrait."

  He lifted his hands, revealing a painting of a woman. Water colors, hasty and slapdash, they would be possible to escape, except that he had a true talent for capturing detail. He had caught the curve of her neck, the shape of her brow, the way strands of her hair fell across her face.

  Sajiana cried out and ran toward him, but she knew even before she felt the searing jab of pain that she would not stop him before he finished the knot around the painting of her. She stumbled to her knees just in front of him. He laughed softly. He reached out and tipped her chin up, forcing her face to tilt to his scrutiny.

  "You’re pretty enough, and a man tires of paper women. Perhaps I will keep you on my string a while before I end you, glamourer. Take off those rags."

  She could feel the binding on her mind, chaining her to his will. Powerless in her rage, she obeyed him.

  "Draw a gown for yourself," he said. "And join me for supper."

  Though he left, the compulsion to obey him remained. She reminded herself that watercolors were not oils. She should be able to squirm free. However, it would take many weeks filled with long hours of concentration. And he would be most alert for any attempts tonight. So she did as she had been bid. Black silk. Gold bells. Scarlet hat.

  The drawing and knotting took her only moments. However, she did not stop. She pulled out of her portfolio another sheet of paper, one of the best quality weave.

  Once more, she began to etch the brink.

  Perhaps danger honed her concentration. Perhaps the helpless hate that boiled in her helped her to catch the glint of that same emotion in the eye of the brink. The shape that formed under her charcoal nib was truer than any she had ever been able to draw. She tied on the knot, looping each strand with utmost care. When she had finished, she hid the package back in her portfolio.

  She could feel Lord Master Yorch tugging at her will, demanding her presence downstairs.

  "Come to me," she whispered to the empty room.

  All through the farce of dinner, Sajiana sat stiffly by Lord Master Yorch’s side while he played the role of genial host. He had several guests, town magistrates and their wives, a few merchants, a guild master. None of them appeared aware that the glamourer who was the guest of honor had actually been imprisoned in the vilest way by her host. The oblivious laughter and meaningless chatter of the other guests made Yorch’s knowing smirks all the harder to bear.

  She puzzled over the mystery of Yorch’s power. He had knotted a glamour, but tied it to what? Why did the mansion not disappear when it crossed the twixting times of dusk and dawn?

  Sajiana saw no sign of the brink. He must have come to the room where she had commanded his presence, and, in her absence, willed his way free of the drawing. As she gave the matter deeper consideration, she felt relief. She didn’t know why she had drawn the brink. If Yorch had left her with her scribs and sketchbooks, it was because he knew that as long as he controlled her, he controlled her magic. The last thing she wanted to do was deliver a brink to him.

  "Come with me," Lord Master Yorch said to Sajiana after the listless servants took away the dinner. She followed him up the main stairs, across the hall, and up a back stair that she had not noticed before, to the third floor.

  "Take off your clothes," he said. He put a key to the heavy door at the top of the stair. "You won’t need them for what I have in mind."

  Sajiana dropped off the gown. As it fell away, it turned back into a sheet of paper, with the drawing jumbled into uselessness.

  Behind the door lay a painting studio.

  One huge oil painting, canvas mounted on a wood frame, dominated the room. Sajiana recognized Yorch’s mansion. Years of detail had gone into every minute stroke of the painting. Each room could be seen through the large windows. People, servants and soldiers, could be seen in the rooms. Lord Master Yorch exchanged his cape-coat and the sword belted at his waist for a painter’s smock.

  He pointed to a couch. "Recline."

  Step by step, Sajiana’s feet forced her to the divan. She was reminded of the scritching walk of the brink when she had called him in the ally. She did not enjoy the irony of being on the other side of the knot.

  "You painted people into the picture with the mansion," she said aloud. Her body contorted into a pose on the divan. "Your servants and soldiers do not w
ork for you -- they are your slaves."

  Yorch replied, untroubled, "As you will be."

  He came to arrange her hair around her shoulders and the edge of the divan. He removed her arm from across her breast and tilted her chin so that she must look at him as he painted her.

  He went to his large canvas, dipped his brush into a collection of jars on a platter, and began to paint Sajiana into the glamour of his mansion. Yorch painted with oils, and Sajiana could not deny his skill. She might have escaped the watercolor, in time. She knew she would never break free of this painting. The brink would have left Paddiglum by now, and when Mangcansten sent another glamourer after it, the glamourer would bypass Paddiglum altogether. Yorch, with his guilty conscience, had assumed that Mangcansten had detected his illegitimate use of magic. Sajiana knew better. As evil as it was, Yorch’s magic had a limited reach. She had not sensed it from her meanderings around Paddiglum.

  "Now, now," chuckled Yorch. "Your tears won’t show in the painting, so it’s no use crying."

  Under the compulsion, she had to take him literally. She could not longer even cry as the minutes crawled her closer to her enslavement.

  Absorbed in his painting, Yorch did not hear the door to the studio open. Sajiana heard, but under an order to hold her pose, could not turn. She did not see who it was until the brink walked on soft feet into view.

  His dark chestnut hair was still disheveled, his velvet cape-coat torn to expose a tattered white blouse and one muscled shoulder. He gripped his kora sword in his hand. The brink rested the wickedly heavy tip of his kora against Yorch’s neck.

  "Stand and fight," the brink ordered in the steely voice of one accustomed to command.

  Then, as if he were indeed the son of a noble house rather than a foul creature of magic, the young man stepped back and allowed Yorch to stagger to his feet and exchange his paintbrush for the sword he had earlier set aside.

  Seconds into the duel, it was obvious that the brink mastered his sword as the greatest painters of Mangcansten mastered their art. Yorch sweated and puffed, trying to move his fat body out of the way more than to fight back. Yet a knowing smirk twisted Yorch’s lips. From the divan where she lay, silent and immobilized by Yorch’s orders, Sajiana saw the cause for his confidence. Yorch’s soldiers, enslaved by his will, stormed up the stair and burst into the room. Six men now pressed the brink. They hacked at him with fierce downward motions of their kora swords, but he dodged in and out, slashing and tearing with his own blade as he swept by them. They began to lose limbs. Here a hand. There a leg. It became clear that they might as easily have lost heads, except that the young warrior did not seem to want to take their lives. Terror crept into their faces, and Sajiana suspected they would have fled, but Yorch’s compulsion forced them to keep coming, even when blood gushed out from their wrists or knees.

  Meanwhile, another soldier had crept into the attic from outside, through the casement window. Sajiana strove to cry out, to warn the brink, in vain. The newcomer slashed his kora directly into the back of the brink’s neck. The blow nearly severed his head from his body.

  The brink turned around and knocked the soldier out the window. The brink’s head lolled at a silly angle. This development did not distress or slow the brink, but it shocked Yorch long enough for him to forget to maintain his hold over his soldiers. They fled at once.

  "You’re a brink!" Yorch stammered. "Wait, please! Don’t kill me. We can reach an accommodation, I’m sure of it! Besides, all the wealth of this house is a glamour. If you kill me, who will maintain it for you? I will paint you anything you want -- anything!"

  "I am not a brink," said the brink. "And I don’t want your bribes, you vile dog!"

  For emphasis, the brink beheaded Yorch.

  The brink finally noticed the odd state of his own head. He yanked out the blade still lodged in it and adjusted his head back on his neck. His skin smoothed over the wound, restoring him to perfect health.

  The brink stared at the bloody kora, then turned to Sajiana in panic. "How did I do that?"

  "You’re a brink."

  "How did I survive that wound? It would have killed any man!"

  "You’re not a man, you’re a brink."

  "Stop saying that!" He waved his sword.

  The death of Yorch had, unfortunately, not altered the magic that bound Sajiana and the other servants of the mansion to the painting. Yorch’s last commands no longer held true, so she was able to sit up and try to hide her nakedness with her hair and her arms. Yet, her spirit remained knotted to the house through the painting. She would not be able to leave as long as the painting survived. Since she was in the painting, she could not destroy it herself. She itched to grab Yorch’s kora where it had clattered to the floor, but although she expected her swordsmanship a little surpassed Yorch’s, she knew it would not be up to par to defeat the brink. Even if a stab would have killed him, which it obviously wouldn’t.

  "Will you kill me too, brink?" she asked without much hope.

  He sheathed his kora. "I can’t," he said. "Even if I wanted to. You hold me hostage, even as Yorch held you. I came here because you summoned me."

  "You were able to slip out of my other drawing easily enough."

  "This one would not let me go. I tried."

  Sajiana felt a brief, irrational surge of pride in her work. It passed quickly, as she recalled that she too, remained bound. And there was a simple way for the brink to destroy her and free himself without attacking her directly.

  "If I burn this painting, it will destroy this mansion, including the picture you drew," he said, walking to the canvas. "And it will destroy everyone painted into it, including you. That will free me, won’t it?"

  She didn’t answer, but that was answer enough.

  "Couldn’t you just promise not to hunt me any more? An exchange. I cut the knots on this painting. You cut the knots on the drawing you made of me."

  She pushed away the temptation to lie. "I have a duty to Mangcansten."

  His huge, moist eyes pleaded with her. "Am I really a brink? How can I be a creature painted into existence when I remember my whole life? Brinks do not grow from childhood to adulthood. They are always as they were first painted."

  "You remember being a child?"

  "Yes." A thought brought despair to his face. "Could all my memories be false?"

  "No. If you were a brink, you would not remember anything before you were brought to life that had not been in your painting."

  "Then… I am human."

  "No. If you were a man, you would be dead. You said it yourself."

  "Am I immortal?"

  Sajiana thought she must be a fool to tell him his strength if he did not know it. Yet she found herself answering gently, "No. But you cannot be killed by a man or by a woman, by a manmade object or an unmade object, inside or outside, on the land or on the sea, during the day or during the night. Only a glamourer can destroy you."

  He absorbed that.

  "Tell me what you remember," she prompted. "Was there anything… uhm, unusual about your family?"

  "You might say so." He measured his trust of her, and must have found it small. Perhaps he deemed her no better than Yorch. "For many years, my parents could not have children. My mother said that she was…fortunate…that she finally had me."

  "Did you mother paint?"

  His pained silence answered her.

  Sajiana whistled through her teeth. "No wonder you remember your childhood. Did you…" – it was a ridiculous question to ask a brink, "do you have a name?"

  "Drajorian."

  She raised her brows. "Your parents were bold to name a brink after the heir to the throne of Cammar."

  "Apparently my parents were bold in ways I never imagined," he said dryly. "I knew my mother could be a stubborn woman. But this….You must understand, I was not raised in an isolated hamlet. I grew up surrounded by luminaries. None of them could have suspected, or there would have been consequences years ago."
<
br />   She wondered how a powerful brink could have gone undetected so long. And what had changed so that suddenly Mangcansten had noticed him? "She must have first painted you as a baby."

  "But then wouldn’t I have remained a baby?"

  "Not if she kept changing the portrait." She glanced over at the large painting that Yorch must have begun more than twenty years ago, that he had been touching up even now. "Year by year… maybe even day by day…"

  He bowed his head. "So it is true. I am a monster."

  There wasn’t much Sajiana could say to that.

  All at once, a yowl of despair issued from his throat. He raced to the painting, his hatchet-like kora sword raised over his head. Sajiana braced herself. She wondered if it would feel as though her flesh were being cut if he slashed the painting to shreds.

  Instead, she felt a burden lift from her.

  He had cut the knots.

  The twenty-year old knots drifted away from the painting. From all over the mansion, the glad cries of servants and soldiers burst out. Then the mansion dissolved. Sajiana and the brink and two dozen or so others stood in the middle of a weed-strewn field. Here and there, real objects and pieces of furniture that had not been part of the glamour poked out of the grass. Sajiana recognized her rucksack and ran to it. She pulled on her traveling clothes with a deep sense of relief.

  The brink followed her. He recovered her portfolio. The brink pulled out the drawing she had done of him and handed it to her, knot and all.