Lamma's Night (anthology)

had almost two months before her year was up, and if she were delayed, which she hoped she wouldn't be—well, Sammel shared her love for books and would understand. So she settled in, determined to find out what was going on before her journeyman year was up.

The dreams had started the first night, but she had thought they came merely because she missed Sammel and was thinking of him. There was nothing particularly frightening in the early dreams, just a sense of someone watching her and finding her beautiful, and the touch of a hand on her hair. As the nights went on, the dream lover grew bolder; Amber was fairly certain that he had been kissing her throat before she woke up this morning. This was outrageous and not something she was prepared to tolerate.

This was no simple dream; this was an earthbound spirit, trying to get her attention. Well, he has it now, she thought grimly, and I will deal with him. The first step was to determine who was haunting her—and why. She had her suspicions, and they would be easy enough to check.

She looked out the window. In the herb garden outside the cottage, Ysetta knelt in the dirt, carefully pulling weeds from around the herbs.

Ysetta was the headman's youngest daughter, sixteen years old, and very much indulged. She was interested in herb lore, so her father had allowed her to work in the wizard's garden and learn what he was willing to teach her. He had been happy that Amber agreed to keep the girl on—and even happier that Amber was a woman. Probably he suspected that Marius, the former wizard, had taken advantage of Ysetta's youth and innocence. Amber, whose specialty was healing magic and who had the sight that went with it, could tell that someone had. Ysetta was almost three months pregnant. She wasn't showing yet, but in another two months, it would be obvious, even to those without the mage Gift.

Amber sighed, picked up the forget-me-not, and went outside.

'Good morning, Ysetta. How are you feeling today?'

'Well, thank you, lady,' Ysetta replied cautiously, casting a sidelong glance at Amber as if she suspected the reason behind the question. Then she saw the flower in Amber's hand and burst into tears. Amber hauled her to her feet and hurried her inside the house. No sense in letting the neighbors see this.

She passed Ysetta a handkerchief and let the girl cry herself out. When she had reached the sniffling stage, Amber tried again.

'Did this flower come from the garden here?'

Ysetta nodded. 'Marius used to give them to me. Where did you find it?'

'On the table, when I woke up this morning.' Amber shrugged. 'But I fell asleep while reading last night and didn't even shutter the windows. Anyone could have put it here.'

'Oh, no, lady.' Ysetta shook her head decisively. 'No one from the village would dare to disturb you or your things. It had to be Marius. He said he would come back.'

'Is it his child you carry?' Amber asked. Ysetta looked at her in horror; obviously she had thought this still a secret. 'Conceived at Beltane?'

Ysetta nodded and started crying again. 'We were betrothed,' she said between sobs, 'but he wanted to wait to tell my father until he had completed a great spell he was working on. He was almost done when he died—but he isn't really dead, is he?'

The girl was quick, Amber realized, at least about some things. Too bad she doesn't have the mage Gift; she might be a good one.

'Do you know what the spell was?' Amber asked. As she had expected, Ysetta shook her head. Marius wouldn't have told her directly, but Amber was sure that Ysetta knew more than she thought she did. She tried another tack. 'Did he know you were with child?'

'Yes,' Ysetta said. 'I told him as soon as I was certain. He was happy about it!' she added defiantly. 'He said he was going to make me a potion to take care of the baby as soon as he finished his spell.'

Amber had enough experience with potions intended to 'take care of' unborn babies to know that the phrase did not mean what Ysetta obviously thought it did. So he needed her pregnant with his child for the spell and then planned to have her miscarry.... That narrows it down a bit. He was doing something that required an anchor, something to tie him to the physical world.

'Who found his body?'

'I did,' Ysetta said, her lip quivering. 'It was Midsummer morning. He was lying on the rug in front of the hearth, and I thought he was asleep, but the fire had burned out, and I couldn't wake him, and—'

Amber cut off what was threatening to become an attack of hysteria. 'So there were no marks on his body or signs of disturbance in the house.'

'No.'

'Were there any books lying open anywhere?'

Ysetta frowned in thought. 'Yes, there was a book on the table and a flask with a potion next to it.' She bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying. 'I thought the potion might be the one he promised me, but it wasn't. It had pennyroyal in it, and that's bad for babies, isn't it?'

Amber nodded. 'Very bad. If you had drunk it, you would have lost the baby.'

'So it must have been something Marius was using for the spell. Perhaps a restorative for afterwards;'

Amber shrugged, careful to keep the distaste she felt from showing in her face. Marius ought not to be earthbound, she thought angrily. He should be in the deepest hell, with demons tormenting him! Aloud she said only, 'Can you find me the book that was out that morning?'

Ysetta rose and went to the bookshelf, dragging the stool she had been sitting on. Standing carefully on it, she removed a book from the far side of the top row. 'I put it up here,' she explained, returning to the table with it, 'in case it was something dangerous.'

'That was well thought of,' Amber said approvingly. 'You would have made a good mage.'