Under A Velvet Cloak (16 page)

“I never saw the like,” Gordon said.

“Wasn’t it better than your way?”

“But suppose they had reneged, and tried to hurt you?”

“I would have castrated them.”

He was taken aback. “You could do that?”

“Yes. I have magic powers I did not know of before, and know the use of the knife. As it was, I got a nice dose of sex, and you did not have to fight.”

“Your way was better.”

“Yes, as long as I did not have to use the magic. Had that been necessary, it could have been ugly, as I prefer that my nature not be known.”

“So do I!”

The trek to central England took them a month and a half. When they reached the capital city, Kerena went to the spot she had first met Sir Gawain as he gazed up at the stars. He was there, as before, in the early evening.

“Sir Gawain,” she said.

He knew her voice instantly. “Renal”

“You may not like my present mission.”

“I still love you, though it damns me.”

“But you still can’t marry me.”

“That is the curse of my existence. Oh, to hold you again.”

“That you can do. But first you must know this: I have a son by you.”

He was stunned. “You never said!”

“I didn’t know. Not until after I left you. I can’t keep him; he must be with you. You can give him the life he deserves.”

He hesitated hardly a moment. “Of course. If I can’t have you, I can at least have him.”

“I named him Gawain, after you. Gaw for short. Here he is.” She set the baby into his hands.

“There is something about him.”

“He relates well to people. He charms the ladies. Can you get a wet nurse?”

That sat him back. “It is not the kind of thing I know about.” Then he got an idea. “Would you serve? Until he is weaned? I would pay you.”

Somehow Kerena hadn’t thought of that. The idea of being with her son longer appealed, as well as that of being with Sir Gawain again. “I would be anonymous,” she said.

“Yes, to all others. But to me-Rena, if you would also consent to-”

“I would,” she said. “I love you too.”

So it was that she dallied longer with Sir Gawain than she had anticipated. She became his hired wet nurse for the son he had discovered, and his secret mistress. If others suspected her dual role, it hardly mattered; pretty wet nurses were fair game for knights, and often they were amenable apart from the pay. This was certainly the case here.

Her status as a vampire didn’t matter. She used her magic to direct light around her body so that only part of it actually struck her, making her feel as she were walking in dusk. The diversion made a subtle sparkle around her that others remarked on, on occasion: it was as if she were a bright jewel, scintillating. Meanwhile she was able to tolerate broad daylight, while still able to see well at night.

Gordon departed with the gold. “But if you ever need me again-”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I will find you. You have been wonderful.”

He kissed her back “Now at least I know some of what I am missing.”

She stayed with the elder and younger Gawains a year, until the time for weaning approached. Every so often she went out in the evening, found a sheep, cut its skin, and sipped the bit of blood that flowed. The sheep hardly noticed, and healed soon enough. She appreciated the way her Seeing had guided her, so that she was free to do this. It allowed her more time with Sir Gawain and son, and she knew that Morely was well attended.

“Soon your job will no longer be necessary,” Sir Gawain said as they lay together after a typically torrid love session. “Then I will lack a pretext to keep you here.”

“And I will go” she said. “That was always our understanding.”

“Maybe I should renounce my position and marry you. That at least would make me happy. You have such remarkable passion I can barely keep up with you, yet it is a joy trying.”

“You owe it to the kingdom to keep your place,” she reminded him. “Not to throw it away for a harlot.”

“I will slay the man who calls you that.”

“Then I had better get me gone before anyone speaks the truth.”

“You are entirely too rational.”

It was time to change the subject. “I must nurse Gaw.”

“That reminds me. There is something about him.”

This was new. “I thought you liked him.”

“I do. He is bold and beautiful, like you. But there is something eerie, too, like a sour note in a symphony.”

“Maybe I should do a Seeing on him.”

“Maybe you should. Maybe it can be fixed.”

She went to Gaw, nursed him, then set him down and focused her Seeing.

Sir Gawain was right: there was something subtly out of line. It wasn’t physical; the boy was supremely robust. It was spiritual. A psychic taint that could cause him mischief.

“What is it?” Sir Gawain asked, seeing her expression.

“There seems to be a kind of curse on him,” she said. “Something that will make him unlucky, so that he will die before his time.”

“Luck is as a man makes it.”

“Perhaps I have the wrong word. There is a spiritual guidance to all our lives. Some of us are destined for great things, some for failure, regardless of our physical or mental potential. Gaw has great potential, but his destiny is compromised. I wish it were not so.”

“How can that be? Tell me what ill is fated to befall him, and I will set him on another course.”

“This seems to be beyond what human beings can influence. He will ultimately fail in life, and we can not prevent it.”

“I can’t abide this! My son must succeed.”

“Nor can I,” she said, her anguish growing. “Yet I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Your Seeing-can it be focused on a particular aspect? Such as the origin of the curse?”

“I can try.” She hadn’t thought of that, but it was a good suggestion.

She focused, orienting on the origin. Half to her surprise, she discovered a time when Gaw’s fate had changed. Four months before his birth. He had been cursed before ever leaving her body.

Four months. That would have been when-

“Oh, no!” she cried.

“You have found it,” Sir Gawain said.

“I have found it. It is my fault.” For it was when she became a vampire. She had not told Sir Gawain about that, and did not plan to; the news would not please him, and she thought did not relate to his interests.

“How can that be? You are devoted to him, and have never played him false.”

“Not knowingly. But this-it was something I did that affected him while he was still in my belly. I had no idea.”

“You ate something poisonous?”

“In a manner of speaking. I ate-something tainted. It affected him. Now the taint is on him. It is too late to take it off.”

“Then he is doomed?”

“He can’t be doomed!” she cried in tears. “Not because of me!”

“Yet if we can’t change it-”

Her desperation summoned a bold idea. “There are spirits we little know. They have powers that can affect us. I will go to them and plead for Gaw. I will save our son.”

“I know you will do your best,” Sir Gawain said comfortingly.

In due course she weaned Gaw and with deep regret left him and his father. It was time for her to go, lest others wonder why the wet nurse stayed beyond her time. But now she had a mission: to find and address the spirits that could help her.

She went north to the vampire enclave. Vorely remained chief despite the loss of a vote; it would take a majority to displace him, and he was doing a good job, so had actually gained support. He was glad to see her, and not merely for her ardent presence in his bed. “I feared something had happened to you.”

“I stayed to nurse Gaw to the weaning. Then I learned he was tainted by my conversion. He will fail in life and die early. I must abate that curse, as it is my fault.”

“You didn’t know,” he reminded her.

“Yet I did it. I should have birthed him before converting. I must change that.”

“You can’t change the past.”

“Can’t I? You know so many things; you must know of a way.”

He considered. “There is a story, but I have never fully credited it. Rational analysis suggests it is fantasy.”

“Tell me that story.”

“In the beginning the earth was void and chaos ruled. Then it separated into day and night. Day fragmented into seven major Incarnations of Immortality and many more minor ones, while Night remained inchoate. The Incarnations of Day assumed several major tasks, such as collecting conflicted souls after Death, organizing Time, and manipulating the threads of Fate. They have powers that mortals hardly dream of, but they remain mostly clear of mortal affairs and are difficult to approach. Yet sometimes they do intervene in mortal affairs.”

Kerena found this fascinating yet barely credible. “Fragments of Day supervise mortal affairs? That suggests they have minds and awareness. Whence come such consciousness?”

“A rational question,” he said, kissing her and proceeding to another round of love. “I bless the day I met you, though your potential extends well beyond mine.”

“You are avoiding the question,” she said, participating with full vigor.

“Merely remarking on my delight of you. We are near the limit of my knowledge of the Incarnations. I think at some point human beings merged with some or all of them, lending human intellect to their nebulous powers and giving them direction. Thus Death was personified as Thanatos, Time as Chronos, and so on. I know no more.”

“So there are people there to deal with. How do I find them?”

“I do not know. It is certainly beyond my power, assuming the story is true and that such folk exist. Perhaps it is not beyond your power.”

“There is my challenge. I shall go to meet it.”

“Now you are losing rationality.”

“How so?”

“How can you go anywhere, when you have no idea where or if they exist? Remain here while you contemplate this challenge; you can do as much in the security of the warren as elsewhere.”

“And you will have me in your bed longer.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s so nice to be desired.”

“Thank you.”

Yet his suggestion made sense. Her desire matched his, and she had nowhere else to go. She remained while she struggled with the question, and bit by bit between horrendous bouts of sex she worked out an approach.

She would use the velvet cloak. By itself it had no power, but it had
good
associations for her, and she was comfortable with it. It helped her to focus on it, imbuing it with the powers she chose, as she had done while traveling.

But what kind of focus should she apply? That was easy: whatever worked. She tried focusing on life, and found it all through the forest; no differentiation there. She tried focusing on spirits, and after a month or so was able to detect them, but they too were omnipresent: every person and every plant had a spirit of some sort. She adjusted the intensity, and that filtered out most, but still didn’t locate anything special.

She was frustrated. Time was frittering away, and while it was fun making out with Vorely, sometimes in tandem with Vanja, her mission to help her baby was getting nowhere. Yet what else could she
do?

She discussed it with Morely, but he had exhausted his inspiration on that. It was Vanja who came up with the most promising lead: “They are aspects of Day, you say? So they must draw their power from what we can’t face, the light of day. The burning energy of the sun. Can you fix on that?”

“Surely I can,” Kerena agreed. “But since that unfiltered energy would destroy me, what is the point?”

“You must denature it, as you do when going abroad by day. Then maybe you can address it.”

Kerena tried it. She deflected the light so sharply as to become almost invisible, and went out at noon. She oriented the cloak on the sun itself, aligning with its savage energy, sorting out its special qualities. Most was sheerly physical, the kind that heated ground. Some was nutritious energy that encouraged plants to grow. Some was deadly, destroying qualities of flesh. Step by step she filtered out the irrelevant or dangerous elements and concentrated on the rest. And discovered the underlying component of magic.

That was surely what she wanted. She set the cloak to nullify the rest, allowing only the magic to penetrate. It was everywhere, because sunlight was everywhere by day, but there were areas of special concentration. A high intensity of daylight magic. She tuned it and retuned it, getting the filter just right so that she would be able to orient on such a phenomenon and
go
to it. If she were correct, the several Incarnations of Day would be found amidst exactly such energy swirls. If.

Finally she was able to narrow it down to seven manifestations, the strongest. Those were the ones she wanted. She hoped.

She realized that she would have to travel far distances, and not want to do them afoot. What alternative was there? She had heard of magical devices like floating carpets or transformation into swift birds, but didn’t trust them; she preferred to keep her own form and footing. How could she walk, yet not take a month to pass from Scotland to England? The world was much larger than that, and she had to be prepared to chase the Incarnations throughout the world.

She struggled with this, and finally devised a compromise: she would remain afoot, but phase out most of her mass to enable her to move rapidly through mountains and towns with very little energy expended. Taken to its extreme, she might even magnetize the cloak so that it was attracted by the energy swirls and would carry her there with minimal effort on her part. This might be dangerous, but it would be under her control so she could slow or stop it at any time.

Another year had passed. “I am going after them,” she said. “They may be dangerous, so I can’t promise to return. But I hope the vampires will welcome me if I do.”

“As long as I remain, we will,” Vorely said. “You are a remarkable woman, and I will always love you.”

“I, too,” Vanja agreed.

Kerena kissed them both and departed. She went abroad by night, not because she had any further difficulty with day, but because the swirls of energy were clearer by night because of the contrast.