Finally her game brought her up to the attic rooms. Here Ranya and Evenore's few servants resided, though most of the small, haphazardly arranged chambers had been given over to storage, each filled with a maze of shabby furniture, ancient trunks, and portraits of long-forgotten Harrowing ancestors.
In the last of the storage rooms, Clarisse sat upon an ironbound chest and ciphered in the thick dust that covered a worm-eaten mahogany serving table. Fourteen windows in the grand hall, and nine in the library. Six for the parlor, and twenty for the ballroom, and five more for the kitchen. Then all the bedchambers, and the servants'quarters, and the storage rooms. Carefully she checked her numbers. At last she leaned back, brushing the dust from her hands, gazing at the numbers drawn upon the table.
Once again, she had counted ninety-nine.
Clarisse sighed, and for the first time found that her game had left her lonelier than before. She caught a pale glimmer out of the corner of her eye and turned to find herself gazing into an old mirror with a gilt frame. A pretty young woman stared back at her with wide green eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back from her high fore- head, and a tear-drop pearl glistened at her throat. The mirror's ornate frame made her face look like a painting — just one more object of delicate beauty purchased to decorate the rambling manor called Evenore.
Sudden rage flashed through Clarisse's breast. Was that all she was, then? A mere thing to be bought and sold? Without thinking, she snatched up the mirror and smashed it against the floor. The gilt frame cracked and splintered, and the glass shattered into a dozen jagged shards. Clarisse clapped a hand to her mouth, her anger turning into cold horror. From each of the shards, a fragment of a pale, wide-eyed face stared up at her in mute shock. What had she done?
Quickly she snatched up an old rug and threw it over the broken glass, concealing the disturbing images. Then she moved toward the door. She needed to wash her face. Gareff could return at any moment, and she didn't want him to wonder why there were cobwebs in her hair and dust on her gown. She reached to turn the porcelain doorknob.
A single spark of ruby light touched her hand.
She gasped, snatching her arm back. Then, tentatively, she reached out once more. A small circle of crimson light danced across the back of her hand. Small motes of dust swirled on the air, transformed briefly into tiny glowing suns before vanishing. It was a beam of sunlight.
Clarisse looked up at the storage room's sole window. It was utterly overgrown with ivy, letting in only a dusky green illumination. But that meant the light must come from. .
'The hundredth window,' Clarisse whispered, her pulse quickening.
Fascinated, she stood and began moving slowly through the room, keeping the ruby spark of light on her hand, tracing the beam to its source. It led her to the far side of the chamber. Here the wall was covered by a faded tapestry, its images so murky with time and neglect that Clarisse could not make them out. The edges of a small, moth-eaten hole in the tapestry glowed as if on fire. Holding her breath, hardly daring to let her- self hope, Clarisse reached out a trembling hand to lift the tapestry.
Suddenly a voice rang out from far below.
'Clarisse!'
She froze. Footsteps sounded on the stairway.
'Clarisse, where have you gone?'
Gareff! Swiftly, Clarisse let the tapestry fall back. She whirled and sped from the room, brushing the cobwebs from her hair. She dared not keep Lord Harrowing waiting. He might ask what she had been doing, and she would have no choice but to tell him. And she did not want to tell him. The game was hers, a private thing. Smoothing her gown, she dashed down the stairs to greet her husband.
She found him standing before a window in the parlor, handsome despite his gray hair and mustaches, elegant in his old-fashioned frock coat and breeches. He gazed outside through rain-spattered glass.
She knelt beside him and clasped his hand, as was expected of a wife. 'Welcome home, my lord,' she murmured softly.
'Ah, there you are, Clarisse. 'He stroked her dark hair with the same absent fondness he always displayed when petting his favorite hounds. She tried to suppress a shiver, and did her best not to recoil from his touch. Then he turned his gaze back out the window as the storm that had threatened all afternoon finally loosed its fury over Evenore.
It was only then that a queer thought occurred to Clarisse. If it was raining outside, from where had come the crimson ray of sunlight in the attic room?
Clarisse reined the gray stallion to a halt at the top of the heather-blanketed ridge. The beast tossed its head and snorted, its hot breath casting faint ghosts on the damp air. Countless droplets of mist, glistening like tiny pearls, beaded the woolen cloak she had thrown over her riding gown. The somber landscape marched below her in endless, dun-colored waves, broken only here and there by a hedge of dark thorn or a crumbling stone wall.
Crimson blossomed in her pale cheeks as she dared to laugh. She knew she was a fool to have spurred her mount so swiftly. Riding sidesaddle was precarious enough, and the irregular ground made it absolutely treacherous. Yet that was a great part of the excitement. Sometimes there was a part of her that secretly, almost darkly, hoped she would have a horrible accident. She knew that a throw from the back of a horse and a hard landing on cold ground could snap the bones of her neck like dry kindling. It would be a terrible price for freedom, but one she was not entirely certain she would be unwilling to pay.
Of late, the airs she took about the countryside were all that gave Clarisse a sense that she was alive. Even her game had given her no comfort these past weeks. After that day she had discovered the strange beam of sunlight in the attic storage room, it was nearly a fortnight before Gareff's mysterious business once more took him away, and she was able to resume her search. To her dismay, she had found the storage room door locked. Somehow, Gareff must have learned of her private amusement. No doubt the hateful Ranya had told him.
Whatever the cause, Clarisse knew it was best that she forget her window-counting game. True, she had learned where Gareff kept a skeleton key that worked all the locks in the manor — she had spied Ranya stealing it once to open the wine cellar and snitch a bottle — but Clarisse did not dare use it. In his wrath, a lord might rightly punish his wife for such a disobedience. Of course, Clarisse thought with disgust, a lady had no such recourse should her husband betray her.
The gray stallion gave a snort, pawing the damp ground with a hoof in agitation. Startled, Clarisse looked up to see a man approaching. By his ragged clothes and the bundle of firewood slung over his back, she took him to be a villager. He doffed his cap when he reached her and smiled, baring a handful of yellowed teeth.
'Milady is a brave one, yes?'
Clarisse frowned. The villager's thick country brogue was difficult to fathom.
'I wouldn't know what you mean,' she answered coolly.
'Aye, don't you, milady?' The man winked with one bulbous, palsied eye. 'Lord Harrowing is gone wandering. And so has milady, yes?'
Clarisse's slender eyebrows knit in a scowl. 'Lord Harrowing's affairs are his concern,' she said sternly. 'As my own affairs are mine.'
The villager hopped a step backward, his peculiar eyes bulging in alarm. 'Aye, milady, just as you say. Begging your pardon and not meaning to presume. It's just. . 'The man clutched nervously at his threadbare cap. 'It's just that it isn't safe for you to be out riding by your own, what with the shadows and all.'
'Shadows?' Curious, Clarisse leaned forward in her saddle.
'Aye, shadows. 'He lowered his voice to a coarse whisper. 'The kind as sneak up on a foolish man who sets out for home too late to make it afore sundown, and then he never makes it at all. I heard old Madam Senda say a goblyn lord conjured them, and her being Vistana and all, I suppose I'd tend to listen.'
Clarisse shivered and drew her cloak more tightly about her shoulders. 'It's just a story,' she said flatly. But she felt a strange tingling of excitement in her chest all the same.
The haggard man pulled his cap back over his head and hefted his load of firewood. 'As milady wishes,' he said. 'I'm certain she'll be troubled not by man or shadow this day. 'He nodded his head in farewell. But as the villager turned away, Clarisse saw a strange look in his eyes. It was a fearful look, and one of pity.
Finding the dwindling afternoon light suddenly menacing, Clarisse spurred her mount and rode in the direction of Evenore.
She returned to find Gareff pacing before the fireplace in the library. Three black mastiffs lay sprawled asleep
