Bedlam's Edge Read online

  Seth began, cautiously, to hope. After all, they were back of beyond of nowhere; they might have been on the moon for all that the world ever dropped by to say howdy. Even when the menfolks had been here, it had been the holler that went out to the world, not the world that came to the holler.

  But he didn’t relax his vigilance, and neither did Cassie. They were never more than fifty yards apart at all times, even if he had to take her with him when hunting. Turned out that wasn’t so bad; she was a help when he got game, and company when he didn’t.

  And besides—when she was with him, at least he knew for sure she wasn’t singing.

  Any other times—well, all bets were off. Because as the winter wore on, and things got harder for everyone, it seemed there were more and more temptations for her to use what she had.

  * * *

  Seth had thought that at least, if the Dark Man actually came, he’d have some warning. Thought? No, he’d been sure, as sure as he’d ever been about anything.

  But when it happened, there was no sign whatsoever, so it was a blamed good thing that he’d insisted that Cassie never be far away from him from the moment that Spirit Woman had told them about the Dark Man.

  Of course, “not far” was relative.

  He was in a blind, overlooking a deer trail, waiting with Pappy’s rifle; Cassie was well out of scenting-range behind him though still within earshot, patiently waiting until he got too frozen with cold to sit there anymore, or until he got a deer. Whichever came first. She had some confounded womanly stuff to do with her, in a basket. Mending or knitting or some such, whatever she would have done if she’d been with Mam. It was a nuisance, but what was he to do? He daren’t leave her at home, and there was too much to do for her not to tote it. And anyway, the basket was useful… .

  So he watched the trail for the little signs of a deer moving in the distance, and listened for what the crows and jaybirds were telling each other, and waited. The trouble was, if he recollected right, she had this habit of singing to herself over her work. And if she forgot—

  The jays began to scream bloody blue murder. And he got—a feeling. A real bad feeling. An urgent bad feeling!

  Before he knew what he was about, he found himself scrambling on hands and knees through the brush, heading back to where he’d left Cassie.

  Too late—

  The Dark Man was already there ahead of him.

  He saw the figure just in time, and burrowed back under cover of the brushwood before—he hoped—the Dark Man saw him. And as shivers played up and down his spine, Seth knew why that durn fool woman had been so spooked at the sight of him.

  The black horse, if horse it truly was, stood too quiet-like to be natural. Didn’t even seem to breathe, truth to tell, and yes, it had red eyes that glowed like a couple of coals. But it was the rider that sent chills all through Seth.

  The rider was dressed all in black, too, boots to hat, the little kepi-hat that both sides wore—but this one didn’t have any insignia on it, and there was no mistaking the color for Damnyankee blue, no, this was black, blacker than black. Like the rest of the stranger’s clothing, it swallowed up light, it was so black. Black boots, not shiny, no—black trousers—black swallowtail coat, like the Preacher’s—black shirt. Black hair, too, thick, straight hair that was too long for any man Seth knew, more like an Indian’s, it was so long, but his face, his hands, they were pale, pale, so pale they were almost a watery blue-white, like skimmed milk. His eyes—well, they might’ve been green, but a green so dark it was near-black.

  Oh, those eyes! Cassie was purely, plainly caught up in those eyes, and couldn’t look away. She was frozen where she sat, there on a fallen tree, the mending fallen into her lap, her mouth a little open.

  Seth felt his hands clenched on Pappy’s rifle so hard they ached. But he knew better than to take a shot at the Dark Man. Spirit Woman had warned him that he’d just turn a lead bullet back on the shooter, and now that he’d seen the fellow, Seth was disinclined to test that point. For there was a kind of halo of shadow around the man, like the black rainbow that sometimes formed around the moon in winter.

  “Girl,” said the Dark Man, amusement in his cold, cold voice. “You fight me.”

  Cassie just raised her chin and stared at him. So she wasn’t completely helpless!

  “Do not,” the Dark Man continued. “You have no hope. Yield to me, and you will discover that I am not a bad master.”

  A stab of alarm went through Seth; and somewhere inside him a part of himself yelled “Liar!” For the Dark Man was lying; Seth knew that, and not just because Spirit Woman had warned them.

  Then again, he always had known when someone was telling him the truth.

  Cassie shook her head, ever so slightly. Her mouth formed the word “no,” even though nothing came out.

  “You task me, girl,” the Dark Man said, irritation starting to creep into his tone. He wasn’t amused anymore. “Come here.”

  Cassie’s chin jutted, and though she was shaking like a reed in a high wind, she didn’t move.

  “Must I come down to take you?”

  Cassie just stared. Seth held his breath. If she—

  The Dark Man dismounted, and stretched out his hand, palm up, toward her, then crooked it into a claw, and pulled. Cassie paled, swayed a little—but stayed where she was.

  The Dark Man snarled, and with impatience radiating off him like heat, he strode to Cassie and bent down to grab her wrist and drag her to her feet.

  But the instant before his fingers touched her wrist, she had snatched Mam’s second-best cast-iron fry-pan out from under her skirt and whanged him upside the head with it.

  And Seth dropped the rifle like it was red-hot and exploded out of the bushes.

  Now, Spirit Woman had said that the Dark Man was “vulnerable to Cold Iron,” but Seth hadn’t rightly understood just what that meant until the moment when fry-pan met skull. There was a kind of explosion, except there was no sound—but something went off like a cannon that’s been fired one too many times, and the Dark Man went staggering backward, hands clasped to his head, howling in pain. Now Cassie jumped to her feet and held up the fry-pan between them to fend the Dark Man off.

  But by that point, Seth had jumped the stranger, and had the loop of baling wire he’d kept in his pocket around the Dark Man’s neck.

  If the fellow had reacted poorly to the fry-pan, he plain went crazy over the soft iron wire. And to Seth’s amazement, beneath the loop of wire, the skin of the Dark Man’s neck began to redden, then blister, as the fellow screamed at the top of his lungs and clawed at the wire, or tried to.

  Didn’t try for long, though, because every time he got a finger on it, he screamed again, and within a couple of minutes, his hands were blistering and burning too.

  Cassie flailed at him with the fry-pan, and the haughty Dark Man stumbled back, still trying to get the wire off his neck, until he tripped over a log and tumbled to the ground.

  And as the two youngsters stood over him, the Dark Man, the fiend who had burned whole villages to the ground, was reduced to a whimpering, kneeling, groveling thing, rolling around in the dead leaves, pawing at his neck, and whispering “Take it off! Take it off!”

  “You done good, Cassie,” Seth said, approaching the creature cautiously.

  “He almost got me, Seth,” she replied somberly. “He almost got me with them eyes. I felt like a rabbit looking at a fox—‘member what Spirit Woman told us!”

  “Ayuh, well—you!” he said, poking at the creature with his toe. “You hear me, Dark Man?”

  ”I—hear—” came the hoarse whisper from behind the curtain of hair.

  “I’ll take that off, but you swear like I tell you!” He wanted to kill the thing, but Spirit Woman had warned them that killing the Dark Man might make things worse. A lot worse. ‘Cause then there’d be the start of a feud, and there were kinfolk of the Dark Man as would set fire to half the state over it. So she told him to tie the fellow up in swearing and oaths he daren’t break. “You swear by the High King and the Morrigan, you hear me? You swear you are never gwine to touch, nor harm, nor cause to be harmed, nor hurt, nor mislay, nor mislead, nor set astray, nor cause to be set astray, nor curse, nor cause to be cursed, any of me and my kin to the tenth degree of relatedness?”

  “I—swear—by the High King—and the Morrigan—” came the tortured reply.

  “And do you swear that your kin to the sixth degree, and your vassals, and your allies, will be bound by that selfsame oath?” The words that Spirit Woman had taught the both of them had a kind of grandness to them, like they came out of the Bible; they made him feel stronger and more sure just by the speaking of them.

  “I—swear—”

  “And do you swear by the Names Not To Be Spoken and the Bonds Not To Be Broken that within the same mortal breath and heartbeat that the Cold Iron is taken from you, you will depart this Middle Earth, never to return?” Spirit Woman had said that ‘Middle Earth’ was the name for here-and-now; in the middle between Hell and Heaven, which seemed right to Seth.

  ”I—swear—” The voice was the thinnest of whispers now, and Seth hastily said the thing that was supposed to make it all legal—“I do accept your word and bond!”—and pulled the wire loose from the Dark Man’s neck—

  For a moment, it didn’t seem as if he’d gotten it off in time. But then, the Dark Man started to breathe again, and slowly got to his feet.

  He looked down at Seth with a face full of impotent wrath. “If I knew who’d taught you that, boy, they’d be dead before the sun rose again,” he said, and snapped his fingers. The horse came to life, and trotted over to him.

  He mounted, still glowering. “And as for you—”

  “You jest hold by your
bond,” Seth said, tersely. The burns—around the Dark Man’s neck, and the side of his face where Cassie had hit him with the pan—were healing and fading before his eyes. “Now, you get! And don’t you come back here no more!”

  For answer, the Dark Man uttered an inarticulate growl—then put spur to the horse’s sides.

  The horse reared, and was gone. Just that quickly.

  “Dang.” Seth dropped the bit of wire, and looked at Cassie. “Mam finds out you got that—”

  Cassie shrugged. “She hain’t used it for years,” she pointed out. “It’s too little to cook for more’n two. An’ it’s s’pposed to come to me in my hope chest anyway.”

  Seth took a deep breath, and felt himself start to grin. “So, s’ppose I tell your beaus what you really do with it, huh?”

  Now Cassie threatened him with it. “You dare, Seth Carpenter,” she yelled, as she chased him with it, “You dare—”

  Seth laughed, and ran. Come rain, come shine, come Damnyankees, he didn’t care. He and Cassie’d beat the Devil. So just at this moment, the way he had it figgered, there weren’t much they couldn’t do!

  UNLEAVING

  India Edghill

  During the day, India is a mild-mannered librarian (and if you believe that librarians are mild-mannered, I have a nice bridge to Brooklyn for sale, cheap); by night, she dons the garb of a writer (a J. Peterman caftan) and produces fantasy short stories and historical novels. Her historical novel, Queenmaker, tells the story of King David through the eyes of his queen; her second, Wisdom’s Daughter, retells the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. A resident of the beautiful Mid-Hudson Valley, India also owns far too many books about far too many subjects.

  It’s a parking lot now, but in its heyday it was one of the most famous places to grab a donut and a cup of joe in the world. Nine million cups of coffee—that’s the figure I read, somewhere. That’s how many cups of coffee the Hollywood Canteen served to almost four million servicemen. Men on their way to war, sent off with a coffee, and a donut, and a smile from a movie star.

  Men? Boys, many of them. Boys from all over America, from the rocky coast of Maine to the shores of California; from chicken farms and banks, ranches and gas stations. From every high school in the nation they came, lying about their age, eager to join the fight against evil.

  My brother was one of them. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. My family has dwelt here since before the Pilgrims set foot on that slippery rock at new Plymouth. My brother and I grew up running through vast fields of poppies golden as the sun, walking hills that reached behind us eastward to the snow-bright mountains, sloped down before us to the endless blue of the western sea. We grew up in California before it became popular. Before, in fact, it was even California.

  Our race is long-lived, and my brother and I watched the conquistadors come, and enjoyed the hospitality of the great ranchos that their successors built. Once we rode our moon-silver horses down El Camino Real from San Diego de Alcalá to San Francisco Solano, stopping at each mission upon the way to marvel at the monks and their strange devotion to a stranger god.

  We stood upon a balcony overlooking the grand square of the City of Our Lady of the Angels as the brash new men called Americans rode in and claimed California Territory as their own. And when the magic word “gold” was shouted across the world, and men—and women, too—sold all they had to travel to San Francisco in hope of attaining for themselves some of that fantastic wealth, we only laughed.

  “Perhaps Sutter has found the lost hoard of Dracainiel,” my brother said, and I answered, “Perhaps he has. Wasn’t that treasure cursed?”

  “Aren’t they all?” he asked.

  And we watched as the gold drew more men, and still more, to the land we had long considered our own. Cities rose upon that precious foundation, cities built upon golden sand and unsound rock. But mortals are prolific as rabbits and tenacious as badgers, and even the fall of the Golden City when the earth slid and the city burned did not stop them. They only rebuilt, and the city rose higher and spread broader than before. We rode our own paths from the City of Angels to the City of Gold to see it with our own eyes, and were shocked at what had happened there. The city that once had curled small upon the shore of the bay now pushed itself outward, and buildings soared where once I had seen the masts of ships… .

  “Wasn’t the bay twice that size, when last we came this way?” I asked, and my brother stared, and said at last, “Yes. Men have built upon water. And used no magic to do so.”

  We rode away from there silent and thoughtful. And by tacit consent, neither of us spoke of what we had seen. What happened in the north was the concern of those who dwelt in the northern groves—nor were Dinendal and I supposed to travel there in the first place. We took shameless advantage of our position as the only children in Elfhame Goldengrove.

  And it was still quiet, in the south.

  But that too changed—slowly at first, and then, as if some sorcerer had set the years spinning faster, the land changed more and more swiftly. The sprawling ranchos transmuted into orange groves. The haciendas were reborn as health farms, sanitariums, and hotels.

  And then the movies came to California.

  * * *

  My brother and I were sitting upon the branch of an ancient oak tree when we saw our first movie being filmed. “Flickers” they called movies then. The men who made the flickers were neither artists nor dreamers. They were hard-headed businessmen desperate to succeed in the New World to which most of them had but lately come. At first movies had been filmed in the East, in places with names like Brooklyn, and Astoria, and New Jersey. But the movie men had learned that in California the sun always shone and the weather moved to a rhythm as set and certain as a pavane. And so they followed the sun, and moved West.

  We had seen flickers, of course. My brother and I would slip away from our elders and their courtly protocols and ride the trolley into Los Angeles, where our nickels—one coin was easily kenned into as many as we needed—spent as well as any human’s did. We would sit in the dark and watch the black-and-silver ghosts upon the screen, while the organ music boomed and crashed and wept until our senses spun. And afterward we would buy a bag of peanuts, or a box of Cracker Jacks—just the one, to share. My brother always let me hold the crisp striped bag or the bright box as we rode the trolley back to the end of the line. From the last stop, we walked, slowly, and each of us would take a bite and then hand the forbidden treat to the other. Once—once only, we were not utterly foolish—we had dared buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, had drunk it, sip by sip, as we walked toward home.

  We did not get home until the next dawn; became giddy and drunk upon the bubbly sweet-dark drink and lay in the nearest field and stared up at the stars, trying to force the Great Bear to turn and bite his own tail. We lay there as the stars wheeled overhead and the darkness fled before the rising sun. The bliss conferred by the honey-poison of the cola slipped away as the stars faded. By daylight, we were ill beyond belief; we walked home very slowly, hoping our pounding headaches would fade before we had to pass before our elders’ eyes. The pain of the price for sipping the forbidden substance warned us against seeking again the fantastical intoxication of the senses the liquid bestowed. We continued to go to the movies, but we drank no more Coca-Cola.

  * * *

  The first of the great wars was easy enough to ignore, at least in California. Our kind sat safe in our New World, and awaited the end of the mad affair. As half the world churned itself into a sea of blood and mud, the Elfhames remained aloof—or at least, that is what we were told. In the Holds of the West, in America, it was easy to believe. The country my kin had chosen to dwell in came late to that first battle-fair of the bright new century; if any elf chose to take part, he went to the mortals’ war from another hold than Goldengrove. But then, the Elfhame in which I dwelt never willingly chose action over delay. Nor did Nicanaordil, Lord of Elfhame Goldengrove, wish to draw the attention of the great Elfhames to our small one. Goldengrove existed upon sufferance, and a courteous blindness—and on the fact that Elfhame Misthold lay far to the north, in San Francisco, and had no knowledge of our small Holding in the southern hills.