Read Online Gravelight by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online Page B

suspicion made him ask: “Look, exactly how old are you anyway, Luned?”
    â€œI’ll be seventeen next birthday,” the girl replied. “And I guess I could take care of you right well, Mister Wych.”
    Oh, Lord. Not a backward twelve as he’d vaguely imagined,
but sixteen. Old enough to think of herself as an adult, with what could be disastrous results.
    â€œNo,” Wycherly said carefully, “I don’t really think you could. I’ll be happy to have you come here and clean for me, and bring me things from the store, Luned. I’ll pay you for that. You see, I’m going to be … sick for a while. I won’t really need someone to, ah, ‘do’ for me.”
    â€œWas it the church bells?” the girl asked eagerly. “Ev an’ me, we figured it’d be something like that, with them ringing the bells down to Maskelyne for that Prentiss boy that drowned—”
    Drowned. It was silly, but Wycherly felt real fear. As if the possibility of drowning were a tangible and concrete thing, that could rise from a riverbed and seek him out as surely as a silver bullet. As if the waters could give up all the dead they had swallowed, and Camilla Redford could come back for him.
    â€œDrowned? Where is there around here that anyone could drown?” he asked sharply.
    â€œIn the river,” Luned said, as if this were something everybody ought to know. “The crick out back’s the Little Heller; she runs right into the Astolat, and the Astolat runs pretty fast just below the dam. The funeral was this morning, and Reverend Betterton was going to ring a long peal at sunup, so we figured the church bells must be what made you crash … .”
    Wycherly stared at her, wondering if Luned were a violent maniac or just delusional. What in God’s name could church bells have to do with his accident this morning, or whether he was going to dry out?
    â€œDid I say something wrong?” Luned asked anxiously.
    â€œJust who is it—precisely—that you think I am?” Wycherly said slowly. “And don’t lie,” he added, “because I’ll know.” He took a menacing step toward the doorway.
    Luned Starking turned pale enough for her faint freckles to show plainly, proof enough that she took the threat seriously.
    â€œYou’re a conjureman, Mister Wych. Wouldn’t nobody
else be coming to Morton’s Fork to live in old Miss Rahab’s cabin. And you’ve got red hair—that’s the mark of Judas—and you drank down Gamaliel Tanner’s best shine like it was well water. Couldn’t any mortal man do that.” Her confidence seemed to return as she enumerated the reasons for Wycherly to be a “conjureman.”
    â€œAnd you said you’d know if I lied,” Luned added seriously, “so that proves it.”
    Hearsay, innuendo, and half-truths. If this was some elaborate rural practical joke, Wycherly intended to see that its perpetrator got no joy from it.
    â€œThis is medieval,” he said bluntly. “Do you know what year this is? It’s practically the twenty-first century, and you’re going on with this—nonsense. Who do I look like to you, the Flying Nun? There’s no such thing as a ‘conjureman’—and if there were, I wouldn’t be one.”
    His angry speech did not have the effect he intended. Luned’s eyes filled with tears, and she fixed her eyes on her feet. “Then you cain’t help me?” she said in a low voice. “I thought maybe you could.”
    Ghoulish apprehension kept Wycherly from speaking for a moment, while his fancy made him imagine every sort of terminal illness beyond the help of medical science. The vigor with which Luned had polished and cooked now took on the luster of a desperate act—a bid for aid from a fantastic creature summoned up from her own imagination.
    â€œTell me,” Wycherly said