The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

“No. Don’t. I know what you meant.” She wiped her eyes quietly with her handkerchief. “And I didn’t mean that you remind me of him as a lover. It’s just . . .” She put her head on one side. “I miss him. He was an irascible old man and a terrible rake, but I loved him dearly. He was a scholar, a teacher, a great Ofan. . . .”

“He was Ofan? The Guild thinks your lover was a Natural. Some rich old Englishman.”

“They are idiots.” She smiled. “And in their idiocy lies our greatest chance of success. Now, before you go, I must tell you the only thing I know about the Talisman. The only thing the Guild does not know.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I decided to trust you long ago, Nick. And I have not asked you for promises. But what I am about to tell you . . . you must not tell the Guild.”

Nick looked up over her head and into the square. Could she trust him? He put his hand on Solvig’s broad head, felt the confident, innocent warmth of the animal. Solvig had chosen him in spite of the fact that he didn’t need her. Didn’t particularly want her. And the Ofan seemed to have chosen him as well, for equally obscure reasons. He looked back into Alva’s eyes. “I promise,” he said.

She spoke easily, without whispering, without drama. “When the future changed, and we became aware of the Pale, Ignatz and those of us who were close to him dedicated ourselves to study. Thirteen of us. We set up the Ofan research station near Cachoeira, in Brazil, and we started trying to learn about the Pale. Then Eréndira disappeared over the Pale and we could not find her. Ignatz came back to England and the late eighteenth century a broken man. Eréndira reappeared, only to die. Ignatz called Arkady and he arrived in time to hold her as she slipped away. Ignatz was inconsolable. He left London and the Ofan community here. He spent the last twenty years of his life in near solitude, buried in the country. He came to London only rarely, and only to see me. The Ofan almost forgot about him, and the Guild lost track of him altogether; they thought he was dead. Then, just a month or so ago, I received a letter from him. The letter was cryptic in the extreme; he explained that he was dying, of a fast-moving disease, but he said that he knew for a fact that the Talisman was more than a rumor. It was too dangerous to spell out the details in a letter. But he said that I must race to find it before the Guild. That was all the letter said. He signed it without love, without a personal greeting. Another letter followed a day later, addressed in Ignatz’s hand but delivered by a special courier. I tore it open, thinking that this would be his farewell to me. But the page was empty except for a symbol. I have only ever seen that symbol in one other place.”

“Where?”

“In the design of Eréndira’s ring.”

“Then that ring is the Talisman! Surely that’s the obvious inference. What does the ring look like?”

“It is small, but intricate. Passed down through her family for many generations. The symbol is abstract; you wouldn’t recognize it unless it was pointed out to you. It is an eye in a circle.”

“Was it buried with her? Did she leave it to anyone?”

“When I last saw Eréndira—when she was dying—the ring, which she wore every day, was gone.”

“Then Arkady has it. He must.”

“Ah. But he doesn’t, for he asked for it after her death and was enraged when it couldn’t be found. The story goes that one of Eréndira’s great-grandfathers was a coppersmith, murdered in the Spanish conquest and plundering of the P’urhépechas. This one ring was saved by a daughter, who passed it to her daughter, who passed it to Eréndira’s mother. Eréndira’s mother was misguided enough to fall in love with Arkady Altukhov, have Eréndira, and pass the ring on to her. But the ring was gone by the time Arkady got to Eréndira’s bedside.”

“So we have to find a small copper ring. We have no idea where it is. I am somehow integral to this search, and yet I have never met any of the characters involved.” Nick laughed. “Where the hell am I even supposed to start? For that matter, why me at all? Why am I not still driving around in my pickup in Vermont?” Solvig whuffed at the anger she could hear in Nick’s voice, and he pulled on one of her ears as he glared at Alva.

Alva just smiled. “Poor Nick. None of it is really about you. It’s about your land and your position. Arkady brought you back for two reasons, reasons he does not know are connected. First, he wanted you to help him get close to Castle Dar, where he knows something strange has been going on. What better way than to tie himself to the neighboring Blackdown estate? Second, he had this wild idea that a virile young marquess could winkle my secrets out of me. It was a wild idea that I encouraged, because I, too, need your help. You see, Nick, I want to get to Castle Dar myself, to search for the Talisman. The reason Castle Dar thrums with time play is that my lover, the great Ofan teacher and scholar, was your neighbor. To the Ofan and the Guild, he was Ignatz Vogelstein. But you knew him as Ignatius Percy, the late Earl of Darchester.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

He’s brought home a dog!” Bella came into the drawing room and startled Clare and Julia, who were on the settee, bent over the cushion cover Clare was embroidering, trying to count stitches.

“I cannot understand how I went wrong,” Clare said, glancing up at her sister and then back at her work. “Look, though.”