Briardark, page 20
‘Keep it with you all the time,’ Samuel told his daughter. His tone grew hard when he detected hesitance. ‘Promise me. Promise me you’ll keep it with you.’
Cicely lowered her head and stared at the floor again. ‘I promise,’ she whispered.
Samuel hugged her to him. ‘I need to know that you’re safe. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.’
As soon as she was able to excuse herself, Cicely hurried to the seclusion of her room. The moment she was alone, she dropped the talisman to the floor and kicked it under her bed. The thing was foul to the touch, viler than anything she’d ever encountered. The dire wolf’s rotten tongue would have been less revolting. It had taken all her self-control to keep from hurling Aaric’s bundle of garbage into the fire.
No, it wasn’t just self-control. It was also the intense faith her father put in the talisman. She could see the worry drain out of him when he gave the thing to her. She couldn’t reject something he had so much trust in.
Cicely shuddered and dropped down in the chair. Her fingers plucked at the edge of the tapestry resting across its arm. ‘He’s right to trust the protection of Aaric’s talismans,’ she whispered. That strange refusal of the onyx needle to obey and complete Aaric’s image. That could only have been the talisman’s power at work, striving against her. She’d had no problem at all with Enoch’s picture.
‘And maybe that’s why the thing disgusts me.’ Her eyes strayed to the narrow gap between her bed and the floor. The talisman’s purpose was to guard against the magic she herself was using. Why should it be so strange that the conjuror herself should be repelled by its power?
Her stomach turned when Cicely wondered about a very different possibility. She sprang to her feet and grabbed the rushlight from its holder. By the flickering flame she studied her hand, the one into which Samuel had pressed the talisman. Around the palm and the insides of her fingers it was almost transparent. Any vitalising essence drawn into her by the needle’s magic had been pulled back out again.
For some time, Cicely just sat and gazed at her hand. She scrutinised it with the most intense study, trying to spot the least advance of her affliction. By the rushlight, she couldn’t quite decide if there was a slowly creeping pallor or not. At last, she took the step of raking her skin with her nail and creating a mark by which to measure her fear. Long minutes passed before she let out a relieved sigh. The regression was confined to just the one hand.
‘Still, I cannot go about with one hand looking as if I’ve drawn it out of the grave,’ Cicely said. There was also the concern of what would happen if the regression was allowed to go too far. If her hand faded away completely, what would that do to the rest of her? She could remember when animals in the village were injured and the wounds became necrotic, how the cut on a leg would poison the entire sheep and cause it to die. Could that happen to her?
‘No, because worse than death waits for me,’ Cicely reminded herself. It wasn’t simply the grave that loomed ahead of her, but a transition into a state of discorporate existence. An unheard echo cut off from even the shadows of the spirit realm.
‘My life is yours,’ the spectral voice whispered at her mind, but she couldn’t decide if it was threat or warning. All Cicely knew was that it demanded she act.
She tightened the fingers of her afflicted hand, wincing when she could only vaguely detect them pressing against her palm. She couldn’t risk waiting. Enoch should have been enough for a long time, but Aaric’s meddling had spoiled that. She needed another victim now. And Cicely knew just who it would be.
Cautiously, Cicely cracked open the door and pressed her ear to the gap. She could dimly hear her father and her uncle talking in the other room. Would they never retire for the night?
As she caught more of their conversation, mere snatches of words here and there, Cicely realised she’d have to be patient. Samuel and Aaric were going out again. Some errand that revolted her father but one on which Aaric was most insistent. The scholar finally prevailed and gained the beasthunter’s acquiescence.
Fear pulsed through Cicely as she listened to the men leave. Whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to wait now. Then an icy calm settled upon her. Perhaps this was even better. The men had been hunting in Briardark most of the day. Now they were going out again. When they did come back and finally settle down, they’d be exhausted.
All the better. Because for what she had to do, she needed them both to be sound asleep. Incapable of reacting until she’d done what needed to be done.
The moonlight sent strange shadows swirling about the graveyard. An owl hooted off in the distance, its eerie vocalisations drifting through the fog. Samuel kept turning as some furtive motion caught the edge of his vision. A trick of the eyes, he told himself when he could find nothing but the grey tombstones. He didn’t want to believe it could be anything more. Not with the loathsome task ahead of them.
‘If Pater Kosminski finds us here, the consequences will be dire,’ Samuel reminded Aaric.
‘We’re not grave robbers,’ Aaric replied, shifting the shovel he carried over his shoulder. ‘We’ll take nothing, and we’ll leave everything just as it was before.’
Samuel shook his head. ‘It’s still desecration. That’ll be enough to enrage the priest. If Thayer were of a mind to, he could use that to have us both exiled from Felstein.’
‘You told me your townmaster was becoming a recluse.’ Aaric paused to inspect the inscription on one of the gravestones.
‘Thayer has been keeping to himself,’ Samuel conceded. ‘But I don’t think guilt about what happened to Anya is the cause. He’s probably waiting for the witch hunters he sent for. That way, whatever happens, he can deny responsibility for it.’
Aaric frowned. ‘It might be he’s mourning his son. When anger has no focus, sorrow can quickly unseat it.’ He cast his gaze across the cemetery. ‘Where is Alastair buried?’
The seeming innocence of the question didn’t deceive Samuel. ‘I appreciate the thought, but if we’re going to do this, then it must be my way.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if we visited Alastair’s grave?’ Aaric pressed. ‘There certainly wasn’t any affection lost between you when he was alive.’
‘That’s why we leave him alone,’ Samuel said. ‘I’ve no right to disturb him, nor to add another measure to his father’s grief. You’re right, I’ve nothing but contempt for the Greimhalts, but that doesn’t justify abusing them.’ He gestured with his bronze arm to the right, to a patch of the graveyard he knew only too well. ‘This way.’
The two men crept between the stones, seeking out the plots where Samuel had buried his family. If someone had told Samuel he’d ever concede disturbing these graves, much less participate, he’d have called them crazy. Now, he knew, the one thing more important than who he’d lost was who he might still lose. To protect Cicely, he’d countenance even the profane deed ahead of them.
‘Here.’ Samuel’s voice was low when he stood over Emelda’s grave, staring down at her stone. He looked over at Aaric and saw the hesitation in his face. It was ironic that after the scholar’s urging, it was he who should hesitate. ‘We have to do it this way if we’re going to do it at all.’
Aaric nodded. ‘There have been so many victims. We could still choose someone–’
‘The dead sleep lightly.’ Samuel quoted the old admonition his own father had impressed on him after he’d been caught trespassing in the cemetery as a child. ‘But if we’re to disturb the spirits, it would be better to disturb that of someone who would sympathise with our reasons. Someone who might forgive this desecration.’
‘She will,’ Aaric assured him. He thrust the spade of his shovel into the soil. Again he paused. ‘I can do this alone,’ he suggested.
Samuel shook his head. ‘I appreciate your consideration, but I have to see this through.’ He looked across the cemetery. ‘Besides, someone has to keep lookout and warn if Pater Kosminski comes around.’
‘I know what it means to lose a wife,’ Aaric said. He gestured at the grave. ‘To watch this… That is something else. Now that we’re here, I don’t think I could let it happen if our roles were reversed.’
‘Yes, you would,’ Samuel told him. ‘You’d do it to protect your daughter the same way I am to protect mine.’
The point struck home and Aaric bent himself to the task at hand. The shovel ripped into the plot, breaking the hard-packed soil and dispersing it in a heap beside Emelda’s grave.
Samuel circled the excavation, keeping his attention on the graveyard around them. A thin mist crawled among the tombstones and tiny wisps of light danced through the weeds, spectral energies that were sometimes called corpse candles when they appeared in Briardark and beckoned the unwary into the marshes. He was vigilant for any hint of a lantern. The only person likely to stumble on them was Pater Kosminski, and he knew the priest would be carrying a light if he were making a late-night inspection of the cemetery.
The sound of shifting earth became like the pad of a predator’s step to Samuel’s ears. Each dig of the shovel felt menacing and sent a tingle of alarm down his spine. ‘Forgive us,’ he whispered, his hand closing about the empty air at his neck where the icon of Nagash had once hung. Even he wasn’t sure if his words were meant for the grim god or for Emelda’s spirit.
‘I’ve reached the coffin,’ Aaric called to Samuel in a subdued tone. The hunter turned around to see the scholar using the edge of the spade to pry open the lid. He winced at the groan of each nail as it was wrenched loose. It seemed an eternity before Aaric had worked it free and lifted it away.
‘Sigmar’s mercy!’ the scholar gasped as he leaned over the casket and peered at what was inside. When Aaric instinctively recoiled from the repugnant sight that greeted him, Samuel was able to see what had provoked such horror. He fell to his knees as a feeling of sickness threatened to overwhelm him.
Among the inhabitants of Shyish there was a custom that any corpse which showed signs of unnatural preservation was proof that it had become a vampire. Such bodies were treated in different ways according to cultural traditions. Samuel had heard there were places that celebrated these occurrences and would seek to propitiate the supposed vampire with blood sacrifices, installing the corpse in its own house as though it were a living thing. Others would tie the preserved body to the back of a horse and chase it away into the wilderness, hoping by such means to send the vampire elsewhere. In Felstein, the more widespread custom of burning such bodies was maintained, to destroy the undead before it could come into the fullness of its terrible power.
Emelda’s body, however, exhibited an opposite condition. It wasn’t unnaturally preserved. It was unnaturally decayed. Only a bit more than a month in her grave, yet she looked as though she’d been there for many years. The corpse was shrivelled, little more than skin stretched taut across bones.
‘This can’t be Emelda,’ Samuel hissed, unable to accept the ghastliness of the scene. Yet the skeletal husk was wearing the same grave clothes; around its finger was the same wedding band. The skull was missing the same tooth. Desperate as he was to deny it, he knew this indeed was the remains of his wife.
‘Withered,’ Aaric stated, regaining some of his composure. The scholar used a small copper rod he withdrew from his belt to inspect the corpse. He prodded and poked at it for some time, lifting its rigid arms, peeling back its mouldering rags. ‘More than just the life has been extinguished. Something else has been drawn out of her.’
Samuel struggled to turn his mind away from the grisly sight. ‘What has happened to Emelda?’ he managed to ask.
Aaric shook his head and replaced the lid on the coffin. ‘I can’t tell that until I’ve seen another body. I have a suspicion, but I need another specimen to confirm the idea.’ He held up his hand, and Samuel lifted him out of the grave. Together, they reburied Emelda.
‘Anya is over here,’ Samuel said when they’d finished their task. He led the scholar to his cousin’s grave. With his augmented arm holding the shovel, the work proceeded much quicker. When the lid was pried away, the body had the same withered look to it, far beyond the work of the flames that had killed her.
Aaric leaned over his shovel when they’d filled in Anya’s grave. ‘I can say now that what has been done is more terrible than we’d supposed. The means of death, as I said, is inconsequential. Whether by fire or noose, the true cause of the killing is the sorcery that produces it.’ He paused and wiped his brow, a shudder passing through him. ‘Murder, however, isn’t the motive. Or, at least, the only motive. The killer is draining the victims of their very life essence, drawing it away like water from a well. That is why the corpses become husks. Even after death, the essence continues to be extirpated.’
Samuel blanched in disgust. ‘To what end? Isn’t killing them crime enough for this fiend?’
‘Fiend indeed,’ Aaric nodded. ‘For only the most debased practitioner of magic would resort to these methods. I have read of necromancers who, to preserve their own lives, will leech the life from others, fattening upon it in the same way a vampire fattens upon blood.’ He shook his head, and his expression grew even more disturbed. ‘We may have to rethink what we believed. The culprit behind this horror may not be concerned with revenge. This could all be simply a ruthless effort to preserve their own life. Though I shudder at the sort of spells they use to accomplish their ends.’
‘Killing so many people,’ Samuel growled, coming to grips with the hideous theory. ‘So much misery just to keep one sorcerer alive.’
‘That’s just it,’ Aaric said. ‘If the villain’s means is simply survival, then there shouldn’t be so much killing. The spell being used must be far different from anything recorded before. Primitive and inefficient, demanding continual sacrifices.’ His face paled as he cast his eyes back to Anya’s grave.
‘There’s something else,’ the scholar continued. ‘Even in death, the spell doesn’t end. I tell you that even now the bodies are still being drained. More slowly, to be certain, but they’re diminishing nonetheless.’ Aaric’s voice dropped to a horrified whisper. ‘Eventually, they may be completely consumed. Utterly vanish from this world.’
‘Vanish?’ Samuel seized on the word. ‘Vanish to where?’
There was raw terror in Aaric’s eyes when he replied. ‘I wish I knew, Samuel. I wish I knew.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cicely held the carved wolf in her hands, caressing its unfinished body in a ceaseless, monotonous motion. As she did so, over and over, she could hear the spectral voice. Or rather voices, for it was always as though a chorus were speaking in unison. Sometimes she could pick out Marden, sometimes it was Emelda or Anya or some other victim of her spells. Always, however, there was that other. Prominent and hauntingly familiar, yet also strange and alien.
Cicely wasn’t sure how long she’d been lost to the repetitive action and the voices. A noise in the yard outside finally broke her from her trance. As her mind stirred, she realised she couldn’t feel the wolf in her hand. There was a complete lack of sensation. She could see her fingers gripping it, but she couldn’t feel them.
Cicely dropped the carving to the floor. Her hand was a stark reminder of what would happen. What was at stake. The image of her body fading entirely filled her mind.
‘No, that won’t happen,’ she vowed. If she simply surrendered, then all those who the magic had killed would have died for nothing. She had to sustain herself so that their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. ‘My life is yours,’ the spectral chorus said. Cicely couldn’t throw that life away.
‘If I can just stave off Uncle Aaric’s threat,’ Cicely told herself. ‘I’ll find Verderghast and demand answers from him. There has to be a way to stay alive without killing anyone.’ It was a desperate hope she’d repeated to herself until it had become almost a mania. Once Aaric was gone it would be safe enough to venture into Briardark and find the fugitive physician. She’d have her answers then. But first she had to deal with the immediate danger.
The night advanced, falling into the ghostly hours before the dawn. Cicely was too tense to feel fatigue. Where had they gone, and would they ever return? She had seen for herself how exhausted the men were. They couldn’t have gone far. Whatever their errand had been, it couldn’t have taken them away from town.
Finally, to her sharp ears, there came the sound of the front door being opened and boots scraping on the floor. Cicely listened intently as the men lingered in the front room for a moment. She heard someone, likely Samuel, put something away in the closet. Only a few muffled words passed between the two before she heard footsteps in the hall. The door to her parents’ room opened and was quickly shut. Across the hall, the door to Marden’s room, where Aaric was staying, did the same. She wasn’t sure if her hearing had really become so sensitive or if it was mere imagination, but she faintly caught the rustle of bedclothes being shifted as the men retired.
Cicely forced herself to wait. Desperate to act, she retained enough wariness to know that the thing most apt to spoil her plans was to move before the men were asleep. Weary as they must be, it shouldn’t be long. She determined to be prudent and allow even more time to pass. She began counting off her own heartbeats, using her pulse to gauge the falling minutes. The process eased her mind, almost letting her slip into a trance. The immediacy that nagged at her was quieted by the calming redundancy.
When the numbers grew so large as to become unwieldy, demanding concentration that shattered the numbing tedium, Cicely decided to move. She had to allow Aaric time to sink deep into slumber, but she also had to be mindful of the nearness of dawn. Felstein would stir with the sun, and there was danger some sound from the awakening town might disturb her uncle.
