Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

The voice went on unhurried and tender still, but profoundly forceful.

"A female Taltos is as willful and childlike as a male," said Ash. "A female would have gone at once to this creature, Lasher. A female, living only among females, could not have been prevented from doing it. Why send mortal men to capture such a prize and such a foe? Oh, I know to you I don't seem formidable, but you might be very surprised by my tales. Take comfort: your brothers and your sisters are not dupes of the Order itself. But I believe that you have hit upon the truth in your considerations. It is not the Elders who subverted the avowed purpose of the Talamasca, so that they might capture this creature, Lasher. It was some other small coterie of members who have discovered the secrets of the old breed."

Ash stopped. It was as if the air had been emptied of music suddenly. Ash was still regarding Yuri with patient, simple eyes.

"You have to be right," said Yuri softly. "I can't bear it if you are not."

"We have it in our power to discover the truth," said Ash. "The three of us together. And frankly, though I cared for you immediately upon meeting you, and would help because you are a fellow creature, and because my heart is tender to you in general, I must help you for another reason. I can remember when there was no Talamasca. I can remember when it was one man. I can remember when its catacombs enclosed a library no bigger than this room. I can remember when it became two members, and then three, and later five, and then it was ten. I can remember all these things, and those who came together to found it, I knew them and I loved them. And of course my own secret, my own story, is hidden somewhere in their records, these records being translated into modern tongues, and stored electronically."

"What he's saying," said Samuel, harshly but slowly for all his annoyance, "is that we don't want the Talamasca to be subverted. We don't want its nature to change. The Talamasca knows too much about us for such a thing to be tolerated. It knows too much about too many things. With me, it's no matter of loyalty, really. It's a matter of wanting to be left alone."

"I do speak of loyalty," said Ash. "I speak of love and of gratitude. I speak of many things."

"Yes, I see it now," said Yuri. He could feel himself growing tired--the inevitable finish to emotional tumult, the inevitable rescue, the leaden, defeated need for sleep.

"If they knew about me," said Ash in a low voice, "this little group would come for me as surely as they came for this creature, Lasher." He made a little accepting gesture. "Human beings have done this before. Any great library of secrets is dangerous. Any cache of secrets can be stolen."

Yuri had started to cry. He didn't make a sound. The tears never spilled. His eyes filled with water. He stared at the cup of tea. He'd never drunk it, and now it was cold. He took the linen napkin, unfolded it, and wiped his eyes. It was too rough, but he didn't care. He was hungry for the sweets on the plate, but didn't want to eat them. After a death, it seemed not proper to eat them.

Ash went on: "I don't want to be the guardian angel of the Talamasca," he said. "I never wanted this. But there have been times in the past when the Order has been threatened. I will not, if I can prevent it, see the Order hurt or destroyed."

"There are many reasons, Yuri," said Samuel, "why a little band of Talamasca renegades might try to trap this Lasher. Think what a trophy he would be. They are human beings perhaps who would capture a Taltos for no earthly reason. They are not men of science or magic or religion. They are not even scholars. But they would have this rare and indescribable creature; they would have it to look upon, to talk to, to examine and to know, and to breed under their watchful eyes, of course, inevitably."

"They would have it to chop it to pieces, perhaps," said Ash. "Lamentably, they would have it to stick it with needles and see if it screamed."

"Yes, it makes such good sense," said Yuri. "A plot from outside. Renegades or outsiders. I'm tired. I need to sleep in a bed. I don't know why I said such terrible things to you both."

"I do," said the dwarf. "Your friend's dead. I wasn't there to save him."

"The man who tried to kill you," Ash said, "did you kill him?"

Samuel gave the answer. "No, I killed him. Not on purpose, really. It was either knock him off the cliff or let him fire another shot at the gypsy. I must confess I did it rather for the hell of it, as Yuri and I hadn't yet exchanged a single word. Here was this man aiming a gun at another man. The dead man's body is in the glen. You want to find it? It's a good chance the Little People left it right where it fell."

"Ah, it was like that," said Ash.

Yuri said nothing. Vaguely he knew that he should have found this body. He should have examined it, taken its identifying papers. But that really had not been feasible, given his wound and the awesome terrain. There seemed something just about the body being lost forever in the wilderness of Donnelaith, and about the Little People letting the body rot.

The Little People.

Even as he had fallen, his eyes had been on the spectacle of the tiny men, down in the little pocket of grass far below him, dancing like many twisted modern Rumplestiltskins. The light of the torches had been the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness.

When he'd opened his eyes to see Samuel, his savior, with the gunbelt and pistol, and a face so haggard and old that it seemed a tangle of tree roots, he had thought, They've come to kill me. But I've seen them. I wish I could tell Aaron. The Little People. I've seen them....

"It's a group from outside the Talamasca," said Ash, waking him abruptly from the unwelcome spell, pulling him back into this little circle. "Not from within."

Taltos, thought Yuri, and now I have seen the Taltos. I am in a room with this creature who is the Taltos.

Had the honor of the Order been unblemished, had the pain in his shoulder not been reminding him every moment of the shabby violence and treachery which had engulfed his life, how momentous it would have been to see the Taltos. But then this was the price of such visions, was it not? They always carried a price, Aaron had told him once. And now he could never, never discuss this with Aaron.

Samuel spoke next, a little caustic. "How do you know it's not a group from within the Talamasca?"

He looked nothing now like he had that night, in his ragged jerkin and breeches. Sitting by the fire, he had looked like a ghastly toad as he counted his bullets and filled the empty spaces in his belt and drank his whiskey and offered it over and over to Yuri. That was the drunkest Yuri had ever been. But it was medicinal, wasn't it?

"Rumplestiltskin," Yuri had said. And the little man had said, "You can call me that if you like. I've been called worse. But my name is Samuel."

"What language are they singing in?" When will they stop with the singing, with the drums!

"Our language. Be quiet now. It's hard for me to count."

Now the little man was cradled comfortably by the civilized chair, and swaddled in civilized garments, staring eagerly at the miraculous willowy giant, Ash, who took his time to answer.

"Yes," said Yuri, more to snap himself out of it than anything else. "What makes you think it's a group from outside?" Forget the chill and the darkness and the drums--the infuriating pain of the bullet.

"It's too clumsy," said Ash. "The bullet from a gun. The car jumping the curb and striking Aaron Lightner. There are many easy ways to kill people so that others hardly notice at all. Scholars always know this; they have learnt from studying witches and wizards and other princes of maleficia. No. They would not go into the glen stalking a man as if he were game. It is not possible."

"Ash, the gun is now the weapon of the glen," said Samuel derisively. "Why shouldn't wizards use guns if Little People use them?"

"It's the toy of the glen, Samuel," said Ash calmly. "And you know it. The men of the Talamasca are not monsters who are hunted and spied upon and must retreat from the world into a wilderness and, when sighted, strike fear in men's hearts." He went on with his reasoning. "It is not from within the Elders of the Talamasca that this menace

has arisen. It is the worst nuisance imaginable--some small group of people from outside, who happened upon certain information and chose to believe it. Books, computer disks. Who knows? Perhaps these secrets were even sold to them by servants...."

"Then we must seem like children to them," said Yuri. "Like monks and nuns, computerizing all our records, our files, gathering old secrets into computer banks."

"Who was the witch who fathered the Taltos? Who killed him?" demanded Ash suddenly. "You told me you'd tell me if I were to tell things to you. What more can I give you? I've been more than forthcoming. Who is this witch that can father a Taltos?"

"Michael Curry is his name," said Yuri. "And they'll probably try to kill him too."

"No, that wouldn't do for them, would it?" Ash said. "On the contrary, they will strive to strike the match again. The witch Rowan ..."

"She can no longer bear," said Yuri. "But there are others, a family of others, and there is one so powerful that even--"

Yuri's head felt heavy. He raised his right hand and pressed it to his forehead, disappointed that his hand was so warm. Leaning forward made him feel sick. Slowly he eased back, trying not to pull or flick his shoulder, and then he closed his eyes. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his little wallet and opened it.

He slipped out of hiding the little school picture of Mona, very vividly colored; his darling with her smile, her even white teeth, her heap of coarse and beautiful red hair. Childwitch, beloved witch, but witch without question.

Yuri wiped his eyes again, and his lips. His hand was trembling so badly that Mona's lovely face was out of focus.

He saw the long, thin fingers of Ash touch the edges of the photograph. The Taltos was standing over him, one long arm behind him, braced against the back of the sofa, while with the other hand he steadied the picture and studied it in silence.