Lamma's Night (anthology)

In the morning, staring at the age-worn planks of the cottage's ceiling, Marise listened to the sounds that accompanied sunrise and thought about Efeon. He still remembered few details of his previous life, growing irritable when she pressed him on it. Whatever had killed him left him a restless spirit; those secrets he was holding dear to him, hoarding the not-knowing as one might an unknown inheritance. There might be jewels—there might be dust. But once opened, the precious moment of uncertainty would be gone forever, leaving him to deal with the results.

Marise could understand his reluctance, empathize with it. If it were only that she would encourage him to let go those secrets, wipe the past and start a new life in fact as Efeon. But another, darker shadow lay under his eyes when they spoke of who he might have been, and what might have happened to him-who-was. And that shadow frightened Marise. It frightened her both as a wizard and as a woman.

The day passed, Efeon never once out of her sight, never once anything other than the affable, caring man she knew, and yet the fear grew.

That night, after Efeon had finally dropped off into a restless sleep, Marise sat at the worktable, nursing a mug of tea, and poring over her journal, a slender book of remedies and spells she had brought with her rather than the massive tomes of lore she had inherited along with the cottage. One page in particular had her attention in the middle of that chill night. The Riding Folk had a charm to discern intent. It was a mild sort of magic, along the lines of love potions and see-clears. Most wizards scorned such cantrips as toys for the unskilled. But in this instance, such a charm had a powerful allure: it could neither be detected nor defended against.

She didn't want to cast it, had in fact talked herself out of it several times already. To doubt him seemed as great a betrayal as anything she might suspect of him. But his fits of violence were increasing, frightening her both for herself and for the villagers she had vowed to protect, and she had to do something.

Drawing the journal closer, she rehearsed the words in her head. As with most of the Riding Folk's magics, the spell required no physical components, simply the words and the wish. Twisting about to stare at Efeon in the dim firelight, Marise mouthed the words, barely vocalizing them for fear of waking him. He thrashed once as the spell took effect, and she held her breath, but he lay still thereafter. The cottage looked as before, the shadows no more threatening, the sounds from outside no less familiar. Taking a deep breath for courage, Marise closed her eyes, and looked at Efeon.

And there, in the flickering of her sight, lay the explanation for her love's tormented behavior. Marise opened her eyes, tears filling and overflowing. She had brought back not one man, but two.

In the morning light, Marise sat on the floor watching Efeon sleep as one would a wild cat, in awe and in fear. She wanted to wake him, to hold him against the truth, and at the same time she half-wished him gone, back to the ether from which she had called him.

Him. Them. Marise shook her head. She could not think of him as other than Efeon, anything but one man, despite the battle warring within him. But no body could hold two souls within it. They would never meld, not without magic far beyond her abilities. And his as well, if she was correct and half of him was Aginard, the wizard from whom she had inherited the cottage. It made sense, his being here, being familiar with the location and the people, having some memory of working magic here. But that left one very important question:

Who was the other half?

A squirrel chittered loudly outside and Efeon awoke with a smile, stretching his arms over his head in a graceful motion that made her heart break. Surely no evil could come of this man. And yet the warning of her sight stayed with her, putting a chill into the early spring air.

Efeon saw her staring at him, and his sleepy smile turned into a frown. 'What?'

She started to make some excuse, then stopped herself. If she was right, if her sight showed true, then he had every right to know. In truth, he needed to know. But the words came to her with difficulty, the explanations sticking in her throat.

Throughout, he sat there on the woven frame he had built himself, one hand clenched in the square- patterned quilt Alyone had sewn for him in exchange for a letter to her son in Aldersvale.

'You're certain?' he asked finally, his voice weary and beaten. She nodded silently.

'I remember... I remember an argument. I—the two—they must have killed each other. The wizard, and another.'

'He had a visitor the week before he died,' Marise said slowly. 'But the villagers said he left on easy terms with Aginard.'

'Was that other a wizard as well?'

Marise shook her head. 'I don't know. No one did. I suppose he must have been, to take Aginard by surprise.'

Efeon leaned forward, elbows on knees, forehead sunk into palms. 'Two wizards battling, one destroying the other so that no trace is left.'

'And the other taking revenge as he died,' Marise finished. 'Murdering the survivor. Both souls left to wander the place of their death.'

'Until you came along.' Efeon raised his head to look at her, his lips twisted in a smile that had no humor in it. 'Both souls speaking to you, cajoling you—and you heeded them both. Oh, my lady, why didn't you just let us wander?'

Marise closed her eyes against the prickling of tears. He had not called her that since Lammas Night. It was an old-fashioned endearment, one a man of Aginard's age might use—for a woman his own age.

The gentleness, the courtesy of which Efeon was so capable. That had to be his legacy from Aginard. But the old wizard had been dour as well, folks told her, and no more capable of a joke than the planks of the floor. Efeon's ready wit, the pleasure he took out of a well-played prank or a bawdy tale—could those have come from the stranger who murdered her predecessor? Or was it Efeon's own self, called up out of magic and dust, that found such pleasure in a sunrise, and the smell of her herbal garden? So many conflicting signs, so much she had refused to see!

Marise groaned. What were they to do? It hurt her to look at him, to see that familiar face, and know that he was a stranger—two strangers—capable of cold-blooded murder.

'I don't suppose we could...' He paused, uncertain. 'No. Releasing one half would destroy the whole. I know