The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 22

Why. . . why, of course, Finister said, taken aback. Two a year? Surely that is not so many!

And that is what they told you, the kind lady said with a sigh. There was little truth in it, I assure you. Those babes were brought from all over Gramarye and smuggled to that farmhouse, and most of them were neither orphans nor castaways.

Finister went rigid. What is this you tell me? she demanded with terrible intensity.

That you are probably neither an orphan nor a foundling, the kind lady said with relentless pity. Oh, some few were, I am sure — but I have looked into the minds of the anarchists who brought the babes, into the minds of the man and woman who reared you, and found that most of the babes were kidnapped from loving homes when they showed the first signs of psi powers.

A scream of anger and anguish tore the world apart. It went crazy for a few minutes, becoming a swirl of colors that blinked in and out of darkness. Finally it steadied and Finister, exhausted and panting, realized that the scream had been her own. Gasping for breath, she demanded, Proof! I must have proof!

There it was, the world from Mama's eyes, taking a baby from the arms of a man whose breath steamed—winter, then—and who was saying, "Her parents will never miss her. They have a dozen brats already. The youngest is still nursing and this one was trying to push the other away from the breast with her mind."

The surroundings swam, and Finny saw a little cottage, modest but well kept. In a sunlit garden, a mother was picking beans while her baby slumbered in a cradle. The mother looked up at a sudden sound, then went quickly back into the house, leaving the baby alone.

The cradle came closer as the man ran up to it. Two hardened hands lifted the baby out and tucked it in the nook of his elbow. Then the cradle swam away and the road came closer again. The man who was carrying the baby swerved onto the road and ran along it until trees shadowed him on all sides. Then he slowed to a walk as a scream sounded behind him in the distance.

Another night, another baby, another admission of kidnapping—and another and another.

The anger boiled up again, but Finister was too furious to scream. She stared, breast heaving, and in the silence, the vision changed to the street of the village near Mama and Papa's farm, with the boys out to taunt.

"Nyah-nyah! Little foundlings!"

Finny turned to stare at the four richly dressed boys who were thumbing their noses at the girls. Orma stood her straightest and turned Finny's head frontward. "Don't look, Finny. Don't pay them any attention at all!"

"Didn't have a father," two of the boys chanted in derisive singsong. "Never knew your mother!"

Then it was not true? Finister cried. We need never have suffered that humiliation, none of us?

One or two, in the time you were growing up, the kind lady told her. No more.

Finister's heart twisted with the need to know if she were one of those two—but she knew ways to find out now.

Why did they do it? she cried. Why couldn't they have at least told us we were orphans?

Because they wanted you to be loyal only to them, the kind lady explained. They did not want you thinking that you had family somewhere to whom you could go, or to whom you might owe love or allegiance — and they did not want you becoming fond of the village, beginning to think of it as home or learning to love its people.

You cannot mean it! They reared us to work for the good of the people!

All the people, yes, the kind lady said, but not those closest to home. They want you to work for the people only through SPITE. They want you for themselves.

Finister groaned, sinking in on herself. She searched for an argument but found none—other than to question the kind lady's motives, and with them, her whole argument. When she woke from this dream, she would seek evidence—but she suspected it would only prove the kind lady's tale. There were too many little questions she had ignored as she grew up, too many answers not given.

Then a glaring, horrid memory—the slaughter of a sheep, and herself wielding the knife. The others congratulated her on her courage, though quietly, and when they were alone, Mama gathered Finny's head onto her breast to let the teenager weep. "I know it's hard, Finny, but the world is grim. It's a cruel place, and the only way to live in it is to become capable of cruelty yourself, and to harden your heart to others' pain."

Then she was outside the event again, watching herself weep, and the kind lady was saying, / disagree. The world can be cruel yes, but it can also be kind and loving. You must protect yourself against others ' pain that you cannot avoid, but if you shut out all feeling, if you truly harden your heart, you shall close yourself off from all that is tender and affectionate.

Finister frowned, uncertain. If that were true, why would Mama have said such things?

The better to make you able to kill human beings, the kind lady said. That is why they insisted that each of you help in the slaughtering. You were trained to kill; you began with chickens, progressed through sheep and pigs, and ended with men.

Finister said nothing, only watched her younger self sob in Mama's arms and brooded. It would explain why Mama had given her so much attention on her first slaughtering—to make her wish to please Mama by killing again. It certainly was training for assassination, especially if you learned to block out all the victim's pain and anguish and to ignore your own qualms, the suspicion that killing might be wrong.

Then, suddenly, she saw a succession of all the men and women she had murdered, thirteen deaths by the power of her own mind, by the silent explosion in the brain or the stopping of the heart—deaths that were quick and merciful, but murders nonetheless.

It was not my fault! Finister cried. You have seen even now how they made me do it!

That explains your deeds but does not excuse them, the kind lady said. You might as easily try to excuse your foster parents' actions by saying that they did it for the Cause.

They did!

Did they hurt you any the less thereby? Is your soul any the less corrupted thereby?

She waited for Finister to answer, but she only stood mute, her mind churning, trying to find some concept that was secure, to rebuild a new understanding of her world.

The damage they did you is still done, no matter what the reasons were, the kind lady said. Only by acknowledging their responsibility, by telling you that what they did was wrong, could they begin to heal the wounds they made.

They do not see that they have done anything wrong, Finister said in sullen tones, nor do I!

I think that you do, the kind lady contradicted. If you wish to regain control of your own life, to win back your soul, you must accept the blame you have earned and the damage it has done. They may have reared you to it, but it was nonetheless your mind that struck the fatal blow.

The world whirled again, making Finister dizzy, but before she could cry out in protest it steadied again and the words froze on her tongue, for she was looking at the hayloft of her parents' barn with a sixteen-year-old Finny coming up the ladder to make sure the barn cat had not yet started to labor. She went over to Puss's corner and parted the hay to look down at the swollen-tummied feline, who lifted her head and parted her eyelids to purr at Finny—but behind her, Orly's head appeared on the ladder, then all of him, and he swung off, grinning.

"Why, Finny! Have the kittens come, then?"

"Oh! You startled me!" Finny leaped up, then saw it was Orly and couldn't help letting out some of that special feeling as she gave him a sleepy-eyed smile. "No, they haven't come yet, Orly. But it's late enough that we need to watch her closely. Why are you here?"

"Papa sent me to knock down the old hornets' nests so the bee-sties wouldn't come back," Orly said, then looked at Puss. "Watch her closely now? We should have been watching her closely two months ago!" Orly grinned as he came nearer. "It's a little late."

He was standing a little too close, and Finny felt a strange new presence about him, something like her own special feeling, and wondered if Orly were a projective, too. They talked, some inane chatter about Puss, when all the while they only wanted to talk about one another. Then Orly stepped a little closer, reached out to touch her waist, to almost touch her waist, and his face hovered near, so very near, and the adult Finister watching remembered how his breath had smelled sweet and musky, remembered how she had felt her special feeling growing as she looked deeply into his eyes, the delightful shivering sensation all through her body as their thoughts mingled and she swayed just a little forward and their lips brushed, brushed again, and stayed. She watched her younger self melt against Orly, pressing and grinding against him. She remembered that she hadn't known she was doing that while it happened, had only been aware of her whole body melting against his as that fatal first real kiss had deepened into sensations that set her whole body on fire.

For a moment, adult Finister longed to be back in Orly's arms, longed for that sweetness, that yearning again. Then the kind lady's face appeared beside the young lovers, smiling fondly at them and saying, How fortunate that you both came to this loft at the same moment, or this adventure would never have begun.

Even now, Finister's face grew hot with embarrassment, and she protested, It must have been an accident. Surely Mama would never have sent me to the hayloft if she had known Papa had just sent Orly up.

Would she not? the kind lady asked. You learned later that all the other graduates of the farm had encounters that began as secret assignations like this — that led to sexual initiation and this same early bliss. Could they really have all been accidental?

She had put Finister's own covert suspicions into words. Afraid to confront them, Finister lashed out. You re saying they arranged that private meeting, that they wanted me to have that first tryst with Orly. Impossible! They told us it was wrong! Why would they have maneuvered us into doing something that disgusted them?

Because they did not really think it wrong, the kind lady said, only useful. Remember!

A haze seemed to spread over the hayloft. When it cleared, the hay was lit only by moonbeams that managed to find a way through the chinks in the wall, to illuminate cast-aside clothing, and two young lovers separating to stare into one another's eyes, panting and both alarmed yet exalted by the emotional and sensational explosion they had just experienced. Then they rolled back together, kissing fervently, deeply, trying to raise that ecstasy again. The haze rose over them, and Finister was aware of her own pulse hammering. She started to protest, but the haze cleared, showing her younger self just climbing down to the barn floor, with Orly a step behind her. Laughing, they ran lightly out the door . . . . . . and froze to see Mama and Papa striding toward them, their faces red with wrath.

Even now, Finister shrank from this most horrible of all memories, from the intensity of her foster parents' rage, from the humiliation, guilt, and shame they had heaped upon her and Orly—but their lips moved without sound, and the kind lady's face appeared between her and them. It was wrongly done, and they knew it, and at a moment when you were both most vulnerable. They linked your first sexual experience with shame and guilt, and by doing so, they deliberately destroyed your ability to ever enjoy it again, or even to remember this first experience without pain. They publicized something intimate instead of teaching you how to keep it private even in your most ecstatic moments. They contaminated something pure; they desecrated the part of the experience that was spiritual, convinced you it did not exist, that there was only physical sensation and nothing of true joy — and did all this purposely.

Purposely? Deliberately? You talk nonsense! Finister cried, all the more angrily because it resonated with her own unspoken fears. Why would they have done such a thing?

To debase your self-esteem and convince you that you were fit only for prostitution, the kind lady said, the better to make you a tool for their use. They destroyed the core of your sexuality and left you only the husk and the techniques of seduction, the better to make you a more effective agent and assassin in ways that only women can be.

The shriek started deep inside and burgeoned upward and outward into a wild scream of rage that went on and on as Finister took hold of the picture of Mama and Papa ranting and whirled it about and about with her mind, circling it over her head as though on a rope, swinging it again and again as the scream echoed on and on, deep and ugly and shrill and raw until she finally let the picture go to fly away, sailing farther and farther over the farmyard and house, over the trees, over the horizon, and out, far away from Finny's world.

With them, the farm disappeared, leaving a void of darkness, and Finister collapsed in on herself, panting and heaving with exertion, stunned and dizzy and frightened by the magnitude of her own anger. Panic clawed up in her at the thought of losing Mama and Papa, of the farm and her foster siblings.

Then she regained self-awareness with a shock of alarm. I cannot hate them! Without them I have nothing, am nothing!

Only without them can you truly be yourself the kind lady's voice said sternly. You must cast off the chains with which they bound you and discover yourself as you truly are, as you might have been without the devastation they wreaked upon your mind and heart and soul.

Finny longed to believe the words but still felt the numbing fear of being alone. It is all right, she assured herself frantically, I still have SPITE.

Then she froze, suddenly realizing why she had clung so frantically to SPITE, no matter how foul the tasks her superiors ordered her to execute.

Yes, said the kind lady. Your foster parents made sure that, deep within, you saw SPITE as an extension of the farm, as a home away from home, as a place where you might feel secure when you had to go out into the world.

It is that for which they trained me, Finister protested. It is my purpose in living.

It was they who made it so, not you, the kind lady reminded. They never even suggested you might have a choice.

Choice? The concept burst upon Finister like an explosion of light, leaving her numb. But — what else could I do?

You have risen to be Chief Agent by your own strength and intelligence, the kind lady reminded her. SPITE is nothing without you now, but you have no real need of them — only the illusion of such need. Step out of the shadow they have cast over you, put behind you the fears and self-contempt they inculcated in you. Discover your own virtue, your own worthiness, for if you are the most potent of the anarchists tools, you can also be the most outstanding woman of your generation — aye, in virtue and wisdom as well as in strength and intelligence.

But I am nothing! I am corrupted!

Suddenly she was thrashing her arms and legs, though they struck nothing. She lay against something soft but secure and, looking up, saw a blur of a face framed by touseled hair matted with the sweat of labor, a face that sweetened as a smile of delight and amazement lit its features. "She is beautiful! I shall call her Allouette."

Then it was gone, and Finister stood alone, crying, What was that? Who? What name?

Your earliest memory, the kind lady said, dredged by magic from the depths of your mind. She was your mother, and the name she gave you is your true one.

It cannot be! It is a trick, a deception!

Memories can deceive, the kind lady agreed, but this one does not. Allouette is the skylark, whose music charms, and you are a woman of power and great magic who can move a world — this world.

I cannot be! They would have told me! But Finister knew that was not so.

That is why they needed to shackle you, the kind lady corrected. Burst your fetters, stand free, and grow into your true self If you were a valued tool, you can be often times greater value as a woman.

Finister tottered in the void, wanting to believe but afraid. Then she felt a wind at her back, a wind that rose, strengthening to a gale, and it was all she could do to hold her place against its push.

It is the wind of Destiny, the kind lady said. Have the courage to rise without broom or wing and ride it. Trust your destiny, trust your own talent and intelligence, your own immense worth, and see where they all may take you.

A vision of a castle sprang up in Finister's mind, but with shock and amazement she heard herself saying, What use is a castle?

None, unless it shelters people from attack, the kind lady said, or serves as a storehouse for food to feed them when famine comes, and medicines to heal them when they are ill. You who were reared to serve the people — can you make a castle that will truly do so?

Yes! Finister's soul shouted, but she withheld the words from her lips, shocked and frightened by her own essence.

Go and do it, then, the kind lady's voice said, and the darkness seemed to deepen around Finister; she stood naked in the void, the tatters of the illusion in which her foster parents had wrapped her drifting away, drifting thin, fading, extinguishing themselves. At last she stood bare and shivering in the cold wind, still not quite daring to trust it to bear her away, to trust herself to ride it, to fly, but the kind lady's voice echoed around her, saying, Rise and go. Explore your soul, sound your own depths, then rise and grow and become all you can.

That last word rang and echoed and built into a whirlwind of sound that surrounded Finister and dazed her to distraction, vibrating all about her, within her, making her one with it. With glad relief, she realized her consciousness had joined with it and was dissipating, and surrendered herself to harmony and to the Void.

Gwen went limp, shudders racking her every limb. Geoffrey and Cordelia instantly caught her between them.

"You have exhausted yourself, Mama!" Cordelia cried in alarm.

"I shall. . . revive. ..." Gwen gasped. "What of. . . yourselves?"

Cordelia paused a moment to take stock; in her concern for her mother, she hadn't noticed her own depletion. "I am wearied, but far less so than yourself."

"I, too," Geoffrey said. He glared daggers at Gregory. "This lass of yours had better be worth such a wasting of our mother's strength."

"I need only .. . rest," Gwen said, beginning to catch her breath. "Then I shall be ... stronger than ever." With an effort, she straightened. "As to Allouette ..."

"Who?" Cordelia and Geoffrey asked together, but Gregory protested, "Is she not truly Finister?"

"She is not," Gwen said. "I unearthed a buried memory, her very first after birth. She has used it as a nom de guerre several times but never used any other more than once. It is her true name, that which her mother gave her at birth."

"Allouette," Gregory said, wondering, then again and again, tasting the word, making it a part of himself. "Allouette ... Allouette ..."

"Je te plumerai," Geoffrey said bitterly, "and her plumes were most definitely plucked."

"So that she could not fly freely," Cordelia agreed, then said, remembering, "Allouette—skylark."

"You must never call her that without her permission," Gwen said sternly. "You must not let her know that you have heard of it until she tells you."

"Then why did you tell us, Mother?" Cordelia asked.

"Because Gregory must know it is her true name," Gwen said, "not merely another she has invented."

"I shall take that to heart, even as I forget the name," Gregory promised.

"That is well," Gwen said. "Be sure that she shall be well worth your love and my labor—if my attempt at healing has indeed succeeded."

"But what of Gregory's labor?" asked Cordelia. "For surely there shall be a great deal of constant work needed to woo and win this lass, then more to bond her to him/'

"That is true of all romances," Gwen told her. "The effort never ceases. You must win one another's love again and again, all your life long, and work at the bonding as surely as any mason building a castle."

"But it will shelter you all your days."

Gregory nodded. "I expected nothing less."

Nor did any of them. They had all watched Gwen's lifelong struggle to keep Rod believing he was good enough for her. Only Cordelia, though, had noticed his constant effort to convince Gwen that he was good enough for her, too, and looking back to her toddling days, she suspected there had been several times when her mother had doubted that rather strongly.

" 'Tis well," Gwen said, satisfied. "Be mindful, though, that this Al . . . this Finister will have all the self-doubts and uncertainties of a lass of fourteen, though she has the memories and experience and skills of her twenty-four years."

"A difficult combination." Gregory frowned. "Will she, then, struggle with the guilt of those years, too?"

Cordelia looked up, startled by his insight.

"She will," Gwen confirmed, "and will have a greater need to prove that you love her for herself, not for her body. Why do you love her, my son?"

"I cannot pretend to be immune to her beauty," Gregory admitted, "though I have seen it in so many forms that I begin to doubt it enough to cancel its force. I also cannot claim indifference to the allure she projects, though I know it to be only a skill of the mind, like to my ability to reason. But I am most attracted by the fire of her spirit, by her intelligence, her ingenuity in solving a problem, and her tenacity, her refusal to give up when solution after solution proves inadequate."

"The problem being yourself," Cordelia said darkly, "or at least, the enslaving of you by her erotic charms."

Gregory made an impatient gesture, waving the comment away. "The problem matters little: the intelligence and the tenacity do."

Geoffrey smiled, amused. "How like you to be attracted by such turns of the mind!"

"How like me indeed," Gregory agreed, "and I feel no need to apologize for what I am."

Geoffrey's smile disappeared. "Nor do I." He seemed to bristle.

Gwen interposed smoothly. "The question, then, is not her worthiness of my effort, but whether the healing will succeed."

Gregory shrugged. "Only experience will tell."

"Yes, but if this healing has failed, the proof will be your death or enslavement," Geoffrey said grimly. "Guard yourself well, my brother."

"That is one lesson the youngest learns well." At last Gregory smiled, "Fear not for me, my sib." Then he frowned again. "But how if there is no improvement in her?"

"Then you must summon me," Gwen said, "and we must confer as to the meting out of justice again."

"Justice." Cordelia looked down at the unconscious woman. "How if she is cured, Mother? How many has she slain?"

"Thirteen," Gwen said, "though only one was of her own choice—her former commander."

"Then is it justice to let her go free when she has slain so many?" Geoffrey asked.

"Justice must be tempered by mercy," Gregory said quickly.

"Do not underestimate the agony of the ordeal through which I have guided her," Gwen said, "and the pains of the humiliations that have gone before. Still, if she devotes the rest of her life to aiding people in need, can we not say there is at least some measure of justice served?"

"If she so dedicates her life," Geoffrey said, his skepticism clear upon his face.

"Perhaps that will be the measure of her healing," Cordelia suggested.

"A life for a life," Gregory said, musing. "If she saves thirteen, will that not be justice?"

"Ask the families of those she has slain, brother."

"It will be hard enough for us to say that she has earned mercy," Gwen said. "What will be hardest of all is for her to forgive herself. You must be very patient, my son, while she struggles to believe she is worthy of love—indeed, that she is worthy of life."

"I shall rival Job!" Gregory said fervently.

"She has been your companion in your search for this Site of Power you have found," Gwen mused. "Is it not right, then, that you accompany her on her quest to discover how she may make reparations and forgive herself?"

"She had little choice about his company," Geoffrey reminded her, "and her motives were scarcely helpful."

"Her motives may have been sinister," Gwen said, "but you may be sure she had every choice. She might not have been able to escape our Gregory, but she did not know that."

"The woman has no difficulty believing in her own abilities, that is true," Cordelia said.

"No, only in her own worth." Gwen laid a hand on her youngest's shoulder. "Go wisely and warily, my son—but remember that in this instance, it is wise to follow your heart. Only use your knowledge and caution to ward it."

"I shall, Mother," Gregory promised.

Gwen turned, leaning on Cordelia's arm. "I believe I shall ride with you, daughter."

"Cling tightly to your own broomstick nevertheless," Cordelia said nervously, and the two brooms rose together to make a seat and a handgrip for Gwen.

The young men watched the women rise into the predawn sky. Then Geoffrey turned to his little brother, made an abortive gesture with his hands, and said, "Fare you well, my sib. Good fortune attend you."

"And you, bigger brother," Gregory said with a smile.

They clasped hands. Geoffrey frowning earnestly into Gregory's eyes, perhaps remembering the two-year-old who had toddled after him once. Earnestly he said, "Patience is all, brother—patience and enticement. The reward is well worth the effort."

Gregory understood that he was speaking of more than making love. "I thank you, brother," he said. "I assure you your teachings shall not go in vain."

"Fare well, then! Remember to block with your left and test each coin!" Geoffrey took two steps back, squared his shoulders, and disappeared with a bang.

Gregory stood staring at the space where he had been for some minutes, musing and pondering. Then he looked down at the woman who slept at his feet, looked down and knelt down. Taking her hand, he settled himself to wait for the dawn and her awakening.