His Lordship Possessed

soldiers taking firing positions behind the oaks’ immense trunks.

“Your grandfather assumed, not entirely incorrectly, that the lights were torches being waved by the Talian forces. As you see, he ordered his men to take up defensive positions in an old oak grove. He had no way of knowing that the lieutenant leading the enemy troops toward the grove from the other side thought the English were doing the exact same thing, and had put his men in identical positions. Which is all they wanted.”

The moving picture started again from the beginning, showing the soldiers following the lights and then taking cover from them. Dredmore said nothing until I prompted, “They?”

“The trees.” He switched off the machine and blew out the candles. “They took them.”

“The trees took them.” I was right; he was mad.

“They seized every soldier on both sides of that grove. They pulled their bodies into their trunks. They swallowed them whole.” Dredmore went to the mantel, bracing one arm against the carved, polished wood to look down into the merrily crackling flames. “The men had to become part of the trees so that the Aramanthan trapped inside could possess them and escape.”

And for this he had trussed me to an armchair? He couldn’t be drunk; he’d barely touched the gin at Rina’s. Harry’s sudden appearance certainly hadn’t frightened him out of his wits. No, whatever had addled his brain must be more serious than grumpy ghosts and the blue ruin. “Lucien, I’m sure your father saw some terrible things during the war, but really. Man-eating trees?”

“The oaks had been bespelled long ago. No,” he added when I looked away, and came to loom over me. “You will listen to me this time.”

“Very well.” I was annoyed, but he was an unbalanced deathmage, and if regaining my freedom and preserving my ability to breathe meant catering to his insanity, then I’d make a decent show of it. I glanced up. “I’m listening. Tell me the rest of this faeriestale.”

“Faeries didn’t build the Brecheliant,” he said. “It was the haven of the Druuds, the old high priests who protected humanity. A thousand years ago, they saved the world by putting an end to a civil war being fought by the Aramanthan. They combined their powers to lure all of the warring immortals and their minions into the forest, where they bound their spirits to enchanted stones and cast their bodies into the oaks. They then warded the forest itself to prevent anyone from entering it.”

“Using magic that, oh, didn’t work.” I controlled an impulse to begin tapping my slipper by nudging the edge of the Turkish rug with one toe. “How awful for them.”

“The spells didn’t fail.” He walked over to an antique standing globe displayed beside the heavy tapestry window curtains, and with a nudge of his thumb set the little sphere to spinning. “The world changed. Over the centuries, weather, floods, and earthquakes created new paths round the old wards into the Brecheliant. The soldiers on both sides simply stumbled onto them.”

I again marveled at how magic always seemed to evaporate at the most convenient moments. “Tragic.”

Dredmore stopped the globe. “Time had changed the immortal prisoners of the grove as well. Nothing remained of their bodies except dust. Their immortal spirits endured, however, trapped as they were in stones used by the Druuds to imprison them. By that time they had learned what they needed to escape.” He came to me, and absently tucked a stray piece of my hair behind my ear. “Can you guess what it was?”

“A woodman’s ax?” I guessed. “Lightning? Termites?”

“Hosts, Charmian.” He popped a matchit and lit the lamp nearest my chair. The frosted glass diffused the flame into a soft amber glow that gilded every edge in the room. “Living bodies that could house and transport their spirits.”

“So when the soldiers came, these imprisoned spirits dragged them into the trees so they might use them like carris.” Did he even realize how ridiculous he sounded? “Is this when the white rabbit makes an appearance and leads them and a little gel into a garden of talking flowers?”

Instead of growing angry again, he smiled a little. “I said almost the very same thing to Jack. He told me that at first none of the soldiers who came out of the forest truly believed what had happened to them. It seemed like nothing but a long, bad dream, until they discovered exactly how much time had passed, and how greatly they had been changed.”

Dredmore setting me on fire suddenly didn’t seem as bad as before, and once I convinced him to release me from the chair I’d have to make a run for it. The window latches were the heavy, solid sort that were inclined to stick; it would have to be the door. “I suppose their feet had been turned into roots, their arms into branches, and their hair into bird’s nests.”

“The men found they could move objects, start fires, even see into the future,” he said, and touched a center spot on his brow. “From here, simply by thinking it.”

“Mind power.” I sighed. “Of course it would be that. Couldn’t exactly walk about with roots for feet, could they? Imagine the dirt they’d track everywhere. And the cobbler’s bills.”

“You agreed to listen,” he reminded me. “Some of the spirits—indeed, most of them—wanted to atone for the great damage they had inflicted on the mortal world during the mage war. They guided the soldiers they had taken to take up their normal lives again, and to use their mind powers discreetly and wisely. They formed a secret association so they might help and govern each other. The less benign spirits were not so benevolent, and wanted to kill the spirits of the men they had possessed so the bodies would be theirs alone. To avoid another war, the two groups agreed to go their separate ways.”

“After which they all lived blissfully ever onward,” I guessed, eyeing the high shine of the waxed cherrywood flooring. When I ran for it, I’d have to be careful to keep to the rugs or my slippers would have me skidding straight into a collection of botany books.

“The group of men who hosted the benevolent spirits went back to England and called themselves the Tillers,” he told me. “The others withdrew to Talia, and became known as the Reapers. Little is known about the Reapers except some rumors. It’s said that they still desire to settle old scores.”

It was incredible how much detail he’d worked into his delusion . . . or perhaps there was nothing wrong with his mind, and he’d employed this complicated farce in hopes of bringing me under his sway. I began to suspect the latter. “So which was it? Harry became a Tiller, and your father a Reaper? Is that why you despise each other so much?”

“Jack was a Tiller,” he said softly. “Harry’s spirit never did choose a side.”

I decided I’d indulged him long enough. “I must say, that was an excellent story, Lucien. Quite imaginative, having the moving pictures to add such a dramatic feel. You could perform this show daily in the park. I think you’d really clean up.”

“What you are disregarding is that the Tillers and the Reapers did go back to live normal lives,” he said. “They became men of business, politics, and importance. They all succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. And they married and had families, because they never suspected hosting the Aramanthan spirits would change their physical bodies. Not until they realized that their offspring were not like other children.”

My nose itched and I couldn’t scratch it, and it was driving me insane. Just as he was. “Please, Lucien, stop. Just stop now. It was a good joke, a very good joke, but you’re taking it too far. It isn’t funny anymore.”

“The Tillers managed to hide what they were, but their children were born with abilities not so easily disguised.” His voice dropped low, as if he were confiding in me. “Some superstitious fools began calling their progeny names. Shade-born. Demonites.”

I went still. Hellchild.

“Some of the children had ordinary gifts, but others proved to be even more powerful than their sires.” He went to the panel to flip some switches and the cuffs round my wrists parted, and then the bars folded themselves away. “Your mother not only rejected her powers, Charmian, but I believe that she and your father used the nightstone to assure that you would never know yours.” He came over to take my cold hands in his. “Thanks to them, you’ve remained ignorant of the fact that you are spiritborn, and possess incredible—”

“Enough.” I pushed him away from me and got to my feet, wincing as my muscles went pins and needles. “My parents are dead. I don’t have any power—mind, magic, or otherwise. I am an ordinary person, just like you. I don’t even want to know what a nightstone is.”

“You are not like anyone.” He also stood. “You are a spell-breaker, Charmian. Perhaps the most powerful in existence. Magic cannot work in your presence because your own instantly unravels it.”

“Brilliant.” I clapped my hands. “You’ve managed to invest me with the one power that explains why magic