The Native Star (8 page)

“Fine,” Stanton sighed. “I
am
a bit peckish. But please remember, Miss Edwards—you’re supposed to be impersonating my sister. So far we must seem about as fraternally matched as the cuckoo and the nightingale.”

“I’ve always thought the cuckoo a rather clever bird,” Emily said thoughtfully, as she led the way downstairs. “I mean, they know how to get things done, don’t they?”

Stanton did not answer, but busied himself with straightening his tie.

Downstairs, they were given a place at the common dining table. Men were drinking by the fire, talking low among themselves. A woman brought them plates of food, and Emily was surprised to find that Stanton was “a bit peckish” kind of like the Pacific Ocean was a neat little puddle. She watched him eat a whole roasted chicken, a serving bowl of buttered potatoes, a jar of pickles, and a dozen biscuits with butter and jam.

“Travel takes it out of you, I see,” she commented, as she watched him pour a pint of heavy cream over half an apple pie.

“A Warlock has to maintain his reserves of energy.”

“Where do you put it all? You’re skinny as a rail!”

He gave her a look that indicated he deemed such discussion presumptuous. He’d already given Emily that look exactly eleven times that day. She’d kept count.

“I have an unusual metabolism,” he said, but Emily had already lost interest in Stanton’s metabolism. She was watching the men by the fire. Their discussion had become intense, with the words “roads” and “military” rising above the din.

“Go find out what they’re talking about!” she whispered fiercely, elbowing Stanton in the ribs. He frowned down at her.

“I’m digesting,” he said, shifting a little farther away from her.

“Digest faster,” Emily said. “Unless you want your sister wading into the middle of a bunch of ruffians!”

He was clearly appalled, though he tried unsuccessfully to hide it. She seized the advantage.

“Or how’d you like it if ‘Euphemia’ called out for a shot of whiskey, neat?”

Stanton rubbed his eyes. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m trying to eradicate the image of my eldest sister bolting a shot of whiskey. I’m sure the headache will clear presently.”

“Then for the sake of your aching head, I won’t ask you to imagine Euphemia climbing up on the table to sing the one about ‘Madcap Molly, Maid of the Million-Dollar Mine.’”

Stanton shuddered. He dropped his napkin on the table. “All right. I’ll go and glean whatever limited information they might possess. Just finish your dinner and
please
stay quiet.”

Over her coffee, Emily watched as Stanton went to the bar. He purchased a cigar, then installed himself by the fire, busying himself with the little movements of smoking: clipping the cigar end, piercing it, lighting it (with a lucifer from the box on the mantel, Emily noticed; no finger-snap flames here among strangers). He smoked contemplatively, adding nothing to the conversation but listening with extravagant casualness, as if the men were trading choice stock tips.

When Stanton had finished smoking, he strolled back to where Emily was sitting.

“Well?” she said.

“Wasn’t a bad cigar for a nickel.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Come along, then.” He offered her his arm. She stood and took it, then startled. He was astonishingly hot, as if burning up with fever. She looked at him, scrutinized his face.

“Are you sick?” She yanked the glove from her hand, touched his cheek. He pulled back as if alarmed.

“You’re hot as the bottom of a kettle!” It was as if he’d been sitting in the fireplace, instead of standing next to it.

“I’m fine,” he said, curtly. “I told you, I have an unusual metabolism. Now, if you don’t mind?”

Pulling her glove back on, she took his arm again and they went upstairs toward the rooms.

“All right, here’s the big news.
Aberrancies.”
Stanton spoke as if the word itself was tedious. “Apparently there’s a spate coming from a pit mine close by the main road to Sacramento. Causing trouble for some of the travelers here. There’s talk of government troops being dispatched to clear the trouble.”

Emily stopped short.
“Aberrancies?”

“Hardly unusual. Incidents involving Aberrancies have been increasing steadily over the past twenty years. Especially out here in the West.”

“Why would we have more Aberrancies?”

“Their appearance is correlated with certain geological irregularities. Mining—pit mining especially—often exposes these irregularities.”

“Aberrancies are caused by mining?”

“No, Aberrancies are not
caused
by mining.” He sighed as they came to the door of her room. “Rather, they are an unfortunate by-product. It’s all rather complicated—”

“Explain it to me.” Emily leaned against the wall next to her door.

“Not in the hallway of a public hotel.” As if pretending to be her brother gave him the right to talk to her like one! “It’s just too common.”

“Not as common as having your mad sister pound on your door until you tell her what she wants to know.” Emily narrowed her eyes. “I think you can guess, Mr. Stanton, just how common I am willing to be.”

Stanton glared at her. Emily smiled sweetly.

“Your comfort with extortion is an extremely ugly personality trait,” he said. Then he sighed. “I’ll make it as simple as possible. Deep within the earth lies the Mantic Anastomosis. In layman’s terms, it is a vast interconnected web, like a filigree over the whole globe. This web is made of a special type of mineral—a mineral almost never seen aboveground.”

“Native Star,” Emily said, her thumb stroking her palm. Stanton nodded.

“According to accepted theory, this mineral web is part of the cycle by which magic is absorbed, purified, and released. The Mantic Anastomosis exudes magic slowly, and the magic is knitted into all living things. When those things die, the magic returns to the earth and the cycle begins anew.”

“Yes, I know all about the cycle of magic. Pap taught me,” Emily said. “But everyone knows magic can’t be held within things that never lived. So how can it be stored in a rock?”

“It is theorized that magic binds to the mineral structure of the web, is attracted to it by some kind of magnetism. Therefore the power is not actually within the mineral itself, but held close to it.” He paused, suddenly looking exasperated. “But see here, you wanted to know about Aberrancies. If you’re after a broad-based tutorial on magical theory, we’ll be here all night.”

“All right,” Emily said somewhat reluctantly, for she did like to learn despite her general resistance to being taught. “Aberrancies.”

“Humans have been developing techniques to concentrate and extract magic since the dawn of history. But it is only in the past two hundred years—since most civilized people stopped burning Witches and Warlocks wholesale—that any large-scale, modern application of magic has been developed. Over the past century, research has begun to suggest a correlation between the use of magic in ever-more concentrated forms and an increase in the harmful toxic residuals in the Mantic Anastomosis.”

“So humans working magic dirties up the rock web somehow?”

“Close enough,” Stanton said. “Aberrancies are understood to be the result of the Mantic Anastomosis cleansing itself of these toxic residuals. By some process not entirely understood, the web segregates this highly unstable material. It is called geochole—Bile of the Earth.”

“Black Exunge.” That was the skin-shivering term always used in Mrs. Lyman’s pulp novels.

“Yes, I believe that’s what it’s called
popularly,”
Stanton said. “When large boluses form, it works its way out through thin places in the earth.”

“Like mines,” Emily said.

Stanton nodded approvingly. “The foul substance binds to any living thing that comes into contact with it. The result is horrible mutations, both physical and spiritual.”

“What about people?” Emily looked at Stanton. “They work in mines. Has a human ever been …”

“There was a famous case in Ohio before the war. A young man encountered quite a large black bolus and did not have the sense to know that it was something that should not be touched.” He paused, and Emily wondered if he was going to give her another lecture about grabbing things willy-nilly. “He terrorized an entire county before a detachment of military Warlocks was able to put him down.”

“He couldn’t be cured?”

Stanton shook his head gravely. “Death is the only cure—preferably a quick and merciful one. There is a period of vulnerability during the mutation. They’re easier to kill if you catch them early.”

“This man in Ohio … They didn’t catch him early?”

“He grew to fifty feet tall and smashed an entire township with his bare hands,” Stanton said. “Fortunately, such cases are extremely rare. Most Aberrancies are nothing more than a small animal, or insect, that has the misfortune to be present when a black bolus is expelled. In such instances, large-caliber silver bullets are typically sufficient.” Stanton cocked his head and looked at her. “You certainly are interested in Aberrancies.”

“Aren’t you?” Emily countered. “Oh, well, of course I suppose you’ve seen a hundred Aberrancies and dismissed them with a snap of your fingers.”

“It takes more than a finger snap,” Stanton said. “But forewarned is forearmed. We’ll ride well south of Sacramento, and avoid the area in which the Aberrancies have been reported.”

“I still think we should take the train,” Emily grumbled. “You won’t win any points with your professors if I get eaten by an Aberrancy.”

“You will not be eaten by an Aberrancy,” Stanton said. “Besides, the train does not stop everywhere we need to go.”

Emily registered the cryptic comment about going places the train didn’t, but decided she’d harassed Dreadnought Stanton enough for one evening. She smiled brightly at him and extended a hand. “All right then, you may retire. Downstairs by seven!”

He took her hand and gave it a wan shake.

“Good night, Miss … Euphemia,” he said.

“Good night, Dreadnought
dear!”
she chirped.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Aberrancy

The next morning after breakfast, Stanton made a trip to the general store, and when he returned the horses were loaded with supplies—mostly foodstuffs, Emily guessed—for the ride to San Francisco. The next leg of their journey would take them down the North Fork of the American River, high and wild with fresh snowmelt, down to where the rich Sacramento Valley spread like a green tablecloth. The morning was cool, and though a haze filmed the horizon, the pink-streaked sky held the promise of another warm, clear day.

“We should make good time today.” Stanton’s pleased tone suggested that making good time was a virtue right up there with Justice, Courage, Wisdom, and Moderation.

But the joke was on him, Emily thought, because there was no way anyone—especially not a clock-watching Warlock—was going to persuade her to remount that equine rack of torture. And in her constellation of aches and pains was one bright glowing sun of discomfort that she preferred, for obvious reasons, not to discuss. She simply insisted on walking the first few miles to stretch her legs.

As she limped before Stanton and his plodding horses, she imagined a smirk against her back. A couple of times she spun, trying to catch the Warlock out, but his face was always set with a placidity that suggested the deep contemplation of the noble virtues previously mentioned. She made a note of it; this Dreadnought Stanton was far sneakier than she’d given him credit for.

Finally, she could stand it no longer. Sore or not, she wasn’t going to be licked. Jerking the reins from where they were hitched to Stanton’s saddle, she muddled her way up onto Romulus’ back. This was not accomplished without considerable awkwardness and indignity. Finally, though, she sat stiffly, her back staff-straight, teeth clenched.

“I take it your legs are sufficiently stretched?” Stanton asked.

In reply, Emily used those legs to give Romulus a petulant nudge in the ribs and held onto the pommel for dear life as the animal leapt forward in a lively canter.

It was not until they stopped to eat lunch that Emily decided to speak to Stanton again. She doubted that her silence represented any kind of a punishment, but it certainly suited her better. Just outside Colfax, off the main road to Auburn, they came across a pleasant meadow where the horses could graze on juicy new spring grass. Leaving Romulus with Stanton, Emily wandered off to answer the call of necessity. Following the sound of rushing water, she discovered a lively little creek at the foot of a timbered hill. She knelt for a drink.

Tucking her gloves into the pocket of her buffalo coat, she felt the rasp of the comfrey Pap had given her, and something else, something cool and smooth. It was a coin, one of the gold eagles Stanton had paid over. Emily clutched it in her hand, a wave of affection for the old man warming her whole body. Swiftly, she transferred the coin into the silk pouch around her neck for safekeeping.

“I’m going to make it right, Pap,” she murmured. “I promise.”

When she came back, she saw that Stanton was no longer alone. He was speaking with three men by the side of the road. They were all dressed in solemn, dusty black and were mounted on skinny rib-sided nags that swished their tails with boredom and annoyance. The only words Emily caught were Stanton’s:

“I’m afraid not. But I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Good day to you, brother.” The man who had been speaking looked down at Emily, and tipped his hat. He had a thin face, with prominent, knifelike cheekbones. “Sister.”

When they had ridden off, Emily finally broke her self-imposed silence.

“Who were they, and what did they want?”

“No one, and nothing.” Stanton watched after the men until they were well down the road.

Then, Stanton unpacked food from the saddlebags, and Emily spread her skirt over the grass, stretching out her stiff legs. The farther they traveled down the flanks of the great Sierras, the warmer and more fragrant the air grew. It felt very much like spring now; everything around them smelled of juice and sap and growth. In Lost Pine, on days like this, she would be out gathering fresh herbs for charm work. They were under a Taurus moon now, good for collecting items to be used in spells that required fortitude—potions against drunkenness, nostrums to ease the pains of childbirth, elixirs for those who had difficult journeys to undertake … She sighed, feeling homesick already.

She watched as Stanton poured cold coffee from a flask into a tin cup. He waved his fingers over the cup and the liquid warmed to steaming.

“Is it really worth dirtying the Mantic Anastomosis to have hot coffee?”

“Don’t nag,” he said.

“But you said yourself that the increased use of magic is harmful, and causes Aberrancies. So shouldn’t people stop doing so much magic?”

“I said that was one
theory,”
Stanton clarified. He poured sugar into his coffee from a waxed-paper bag. “But magic is building this country, Miss Edwards. Will you ask the government to surrender its military Warlocks? The police to do without their Warlock investigators? And what would industrialists do without fashionable Warlock secretaries to light their cigars?”

Stanton swirled the coffee in his cup, took a sip. Grimacing, he added more sugar until the liquid took on the consistency of molasses.

“Useful things will be used,” Stanton said. “Advancements come with costs. No one ever said manifesting a nation’s destiny wouldn’t hurt a bit.”

“Well, the kind of magic Pap and I do doesn’t hurt anyone,” Emily said.

“Except poor stupid lumbermen.”

Emily glared, and contemplated saying something cutting. But how could she? Stanton was right. She stared at her hand, at the stone glittering in the sunlight.

“Poor Dag,” she whispered. “Before we left Lost Pine I touched him. I touched his face. Why didn’t it help? Why wasn’t the magic extracted, like it was with the zombies?”

“The zombies were animated entirely by magic.” Stanton chewed on a thick piece of bread, which he’d buttered and topped with even more sugar. “The stone absorbed the magical energy that drove them. But it seems not to affect magic that has already worked its way into a living creature’s life force.”

“That’s a shame,” Emily said.

“Not really. If the stone worked like that, you’d most likely be dead.”

“Instead of on a road to San Francisco, trying to rescue a man who loves me so much he hates me?”

Stanton looked at her as he tore another hunk from the now-ravaged loaf. “Still feeling guilty, are we? I’d have thought you’d be over that by now.”

“I have a nettlesome little thing called a conscience,” Emily hissed. “Ever hear of it?”

“They’re out of fashion in New York,” Stanton said, and though she guessed he was joking, he didn’t sound humorous. “Listen, you’ll be back in a fortnight, and you can smooth everything over. That love spell was strong enough for ten men. A few tears, some nice little endearments, a lighter hand with the lavender … he’ll marry you in a heartbeat.”

The thought made Emily shudder.

“No, it was a stupid idea to begin with,” she said. “I just want to take the spell off and—” She fell suddenly silent. And then what? Return to her life in Lost Pine? She’d be right back where she started. An aging spinster—now complete with an unsavory history—trying to compete against shiny mail-order spells in gilt-paper boxes. She and Pap would be two hundred dollars richer, but when that money ran out, then what?

“What happened to that pioneer spirit?” Stanton chided. “You can’t just give up, can you?”

Emily said nothing.

“Well, I must say I don’t get you, Miss Edwards.” Stanton brushed crumbs from his trousers and began replacing things in the saddlebags. “You must love the man, otherwise what’s all this nonsense about love spells? And the minute you get him to love you back, all you want is for him to stop loving you? I don’t—”

“You wouldn’t understand, Mr. Stanton.” Emily interrupted him. “Don’t bother trying. There are limits even to your superior intelligence.”

“I hardly think it’s a question of limited intelligence. At least not on
my
part,” Stanton said, tossing the dregs of his coffee onto the ground.

By nightfall they had reached Auburn, where they stopped at a small hotel. But if there was any talk of Aberrancies, Emily didn’t hear it, for the exertions of the past two days caught up with her all at once. She went directly to bed and slept for twelve hours straight.

Stanton knocked at her door before dawn the next morning, saying he wanted to make up the time they’d lost the day before. And so they found themselves atop the last foothill of the Sierra just after sunrise, overlooking the broad fertile dish of the Sacramento Valley. The sun looming over the towering black mountains behind them cast long shadows of lustrous peach and velvet blue over a seemingly endless checkerboard of green and buff. In the clean fresh light of dawn, everything seemed to glow with supernatural clarity.

“That’s one pretty valley.” Emily stared in awe at the beauty before her. “I’ve never been this far down the hills before.”

“It is quite pretty this morning,” Stanton agreed. Then he pointed to the western horizon, where heavy black clouds massed over the hazy coast range in the far distance. “I believe we’ll have rain later, though.”

“April showers bring May flowers,” Emily said cheerfully, clucking to Romulus.

April showers indeed!

Emily huddled under her buffalo coat, but it did little good. Rivers of rain were dripping from the edge of her sodden straw hat and pouring down the back of her neck. No matter how she tried to pull the coat tight around her, there was some place that the cold rain lashed at her.

Beneath her, Romulus was just as grumpy, plodding heavily in the sticky mud, head down and ears back. Every now and again he gave a fussy shake, throwing off additional sheets of spray to further soak Emily.

It was midday—though one could hardly tell because the sun had not managed to emerge from behind the clotted black clouds since morning—and they were riding well south of Sacramento, making for Suisun City. From there, Stanton said, it was one day’s hard ride to Oakland and the ferry that would take them into San Francisco.

Emily squinted through the driving rain to look at Stanton. From somewhere in his pack he’d produced a bright red oilskin poncho that was wide enough at the hem to cover his horse’s shoulders and withers. It made him look like a geometric proof wearing a black felt bowler. Despite the fact that Emily had always hated math, she decided that the minute they got to Suisun City, the Institute was going to buy her one of those red ponchos. And a new hat, too. He’d told her the Institute would pay expenses, and by God, she was going to hold him to it!

They were riding through a glade of ghostly white birches, along a muddy freshet that twisted down toward the Sacramento River. The trail was overgrown and hard to follow, and Emily was about ask Stanton if he was sure they were going the right way (which she didn’t relish doing, for she’d asked that particular question a dozen times already and Stanton’s replies kept getting curter) when a horrible sound rent the air. It was loud and eldritch—a cluttering shriek that echoed against the trees. Emily had never heard anything like it before.

She jerked the reins, pulling Romulus up short, pushing her hat back to look around. The surrounding forest was gloomy and dripping. She wiped water from her forehead, then slowly urged her horse forward to stand next to Stanton’s. Stanton had also drawn his horse to a halt and was listening, stock-still.

“What was that?” she whispered.

But Stanton said nothing; he was staring into the darkest part of the trees, where the undergrowth was thick and tangled. Remus danced nervously beneath him.

It was hard to tell, but Emily thought she saw something move. Something large and dark. She furrowed her brow, squinting, trying to peer through the murk.

Then, suddenly, with a rushing sound of tearing foliage and snapping branches, a huge black and gray thing leaped into their path, landing with a chittering snarl and a flick of its bushy striped tail. The thing was huge—huge as a house, huge as two houses, it seemed to Emily. Its glowing red eyes, embedded deeply in a coal-black mask, were on a level with hers on horse top—that would make the thing ten feet high at least. Its fur was matted and lank, dripping with black oily slime, and it exuded the most horrific smell, like the decaying corpses of a hundred skunks. In an instant she realized what it was … or what it had been.

“Raccoon!” Emily screeched, and Romulus plunged and wheeled. Emily dug her heels into the horse’s side, urging the beast to run, but then, from behind her, a single barked command—“Romulus,
placidus
!”—made her horse stop dead in its tracks.