Briardark, page 8
‘Help me,’ Cicely gasped. It was all she could manage to keep standing as her body convulsed with horror at the sight of her own arm.
Verderghast drew back for a moment, a grim look in his eyes. He withdrew a crooked stick from his belt, and when he came near to Cicely, he employed the instrument to examine her in lieu of touching her with his own fingers. ‘My poor child,’ he tutted as he prodded her arm with the stick, moving it up and down and from side to side. She could feel the contact only as a dim tingle against numbed flesh. She could see that there was still substance there for the stick to touch, however transparent it might have become.
‘What is happening to me?’ Cicely sobbed.
The physician shook his head apologetically. ‘I had hoped this wouldn’t happen,’ he said. ‘I’d hoped I was able to cleanse your wounds so thoroughly that this wouldn’t occur.’ His arms dropped to his sides in a helpless gesture. ‘The creatures of Nagash carry with them the blight of the grave and can transmit that corruption to those upon whom they do injury. The dire wolf’s fangs…’ His voice trailed away into a solemn whisper.
Cicely felt choked by fear. Everyone in Felstein had heard the tales of those who escaped from the undead only to become undead themselves. A scratch from a ghoul’s claw or the bite of a vampire’s tooth and the survivor found there was no survival after all.
Her head felt as if it were spinning. She reeled to one side and slipped down to rest against an old tree stump. Mirthless laughter welled up from deep inside her. ‘I thought you saved my life,’ she cackled cynically.
Verderghast tapped the examination stick against the palm of his hand. ‘So did I. I thought I had conquered any side effects, that I’d defeated the necromantic poison.’
Cicely wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She just looked up at the physician. ‘What is happening to me? What will happen to me?’
‘I brought you back from the very cusp of death,’ Verderghast said. ‘Now death is trying to reclaim you.’ He turned his face up towards the black sky. ‘Your energies are being drained off. Bit by bit, speck by speck, every hour there is less of you. You’ll continue to lose substance until everything is gone.’
‘Nagash have mercy,’ Cicely groaned. Her heart went cold at the picture Verderghast proposed. To gradually have her body fade away, evaporating around her. The transition from living woman to ethereal wraith. She pleaded with Verderghast to save her from such a doom. ‘Please, there must be something you can do. Some way to cure me of this!’
Verderghast grimaced. ‘I refuse to admit there is no hope,’ he declared, snapping the examination stick in two and hurling it to the ground. He stared intently at Cicely. ‘You mustn’t resign yourself to death. There’s a way to save you.’ His eyes beamed with excitement. ‘Your energies are being drained away, but if you were to replenish them, then you could restore yourself!’
His excitement infected Cicely with a cautious hope. ‘Replenish my energies,’ she said. ‘Is there a way to do that?’
‘If you are brave,’ Verderghast said. ‘If your will is strong enough to do what must be done.’ He stepped closer, and this time didn’t balk from touching her but instead took her hand in his. His hand felt like ice under her fingers, and Cicely tried to pull free, but he held her fast. ‘Your will to live must be strong enough to do what you must do. You must want to live more than anything else. Do you want to live, Cicely?’
She gave an emphatic nod. The intensity in his tone had emboldened the faltering hope of a moment before. She believed now that there really was a chance she could be saved. ‘I’ll do anything,’ Cicely said.
Verderghast released her hand. He reached beneath his coat and removed a small fold of cloth. It had a strange, uncanny air about it. Cicely knew without being told that it was incredibly old. So ancient it had no right being in the world.
‘What is that?’ she asked, drawing away.
‘Salvation,’ Verderghast told her. He turned the folds outward and exposed a curious object.
‘A needle?’ Cicely was dumbfounded. Yet that was what seemed to be resting inside the ancient cloth. A needle fashioned from some dark, shiny material that gleamed like glass and seemed to suck into itself what little light there was in the forest. Faintly she thought she could discern some sort of markings, weird glyphs both beautiful and hideous in their graceful ranks.
‘You were delirious after the wolf attack,’ Verderghast said. ‘You muttered many things in your delirium. That was how I learned you are a seamstress.’
Cicely almost laughed. It was absurd. Here she was, her body evaporating into a wraith, and Verderghast was talking about sewing!
Instead of laughing, however, she just nodded again.
‘There is a chance, then.’ Verderghast pressed the cloth and the needle into her hand. They felt so cold that they burned her skin. It was an effort not to fling them away into the dark, but she could sense there was an awful power within the needle. A force too great to simply throw away.
‘Take this,’ the physician said. ‘Use the needle to sew the images of others. The magic bound into it will transfer the energy of whoever the image belongs to into yourself.’
Cicely stared down at the onyx needle with incredulity. ‘This is too incredible to be real,’ she protested. The obscene aura that exuded from the object frightened her. As much as part of her wanted to believe in its power, another part of her prayed it was nothing but a charlatan’s trick.
‘Incredible or not, it is a chance for you to live.’ Verderghast closed her hand over the cloth. ‘Take it. Use it. Anyone whose image you create will have their life force drained off in substitution of your own.’
As though in a daze, Cicely rose to her feet. She pondered the import of what Verderghast was telling her to do. ‘It could be any image, not just a person’s.’ She gave the physician a frantic look. Suddenly she was even more afraid of this thing he’d given her. Not because it wouldn’t work, but because it would.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely emphasised. Verderghast said nothing. His silence sent her fleeing from him as though he were a venomous serpent.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely swore as she left Briardark. She kept telling herself all the way through Felstein. By the time she’d reached her home, she’d almost convinced herself it was true.
Cicely sat on the corner of her bed for some time, just staring at the strange packet Verderghast had given her. The cloth still had that horrible sense of antiquity about it. She wondered if it was something woven by the aelves, for certainly no other sort of material could be as ancient as she felt this to be. Her revulsion for the thing had softened into a morbid attraction she couldn’t account for. Yet another symptom of the affliction that assailed her?
The onyx needle, by contrast, felt fresh and new. She couldn’t explain the impression. Perhaps it was simply that anything would seem new when set against that hoary old cloth.
She picked up the needle and wondered what kind of magic it held. Cicely had little experience of physicians, but she understood them to avoid the arcane. Their practice involved herbs and poultices, remedies that were much more mundane than the spells of witches and wizards. What sort of doctor was Verderghast that he’d studied magic enough to employ it in his cures? She wondered if perhaps his exile from civilisation wasn’t as innocent as he’d made it out to be.
Looking at the needle, she couldn’t help but see the fading skin around the fingers that held it. As her condition deteriorated, how long would she even be able to hide what was happening to her? How long before she was discovered?
Elsewhere in the house, she could hear someone stirring. Probably Emelda, rising to get breakfast ready. It wouldn’t be too long before her mother came to Cicely’s door and called her to eat. Cicely might be excused, but she knew that was only a delaying tactic that wouldn’t work long. Whether today or tomorrow, the reckoning would come.
Her attention shifted to the unfinished tapestry. Not for the first time since she’d returned home. Cicely wasn’t sure why she hadn’t already experimented with Verderghast’s needle. Was it because she feared it wouldn’t work, that the physician had lied to her simply to ease his own conscience? Or was it because she was afraid it would work? What would it mean, to siphon energy from something and draw it into herself? Would the subject grow tired or sick? Worse than that? And how much energy would it take to replenish her own and be cured of her affliction?
‘Only now do you think of these questions,’ Cicely berated herself. If she’d been half as smart as she thought she was, she’d have asked Verderghast when he gave her the needle.
The sounds of activity in the house finally decided her. Cicely walked over to the big oak rocking chair and picked up the tapestry. She plucked the old copper needle from the fabric. Bending down to the box of materials on the floor, she fastened a string to the onyx one and set the tapestry across her lap. The images of her family smiled back at her. Samuel and Emelda and Marden, each in varying stages of completeness. She shifted the heavy fabric around, finding for herself an empty space. Her fingers hesitated, the new needle just touching the surface.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ she whispered before thrusting the needle into the tapestry. Her gaze drifted to the window and fastened on a big yellow flower growing in her mother’s garden. She determined to use the flower as her subject. Once that choice was made, her fingers flew about their work. Never had she laboured at such a feverish pace. The needle darted in and out like a firebrand. She fixed different-coloured threads to its eye with a speed that surpassed conscious thought.
Almost before she realised, the work was done. At the far corner of her tapestry there was now a flower. Only it wasn’t the flower in her mother’s garden. The image that met her gaze wasn’t full and vibrant. It was wilted and sagged on its stem, its petals falling away. This wasn’t the picture she’d woven. At least, it wasn’t the image she’d started to create.
Cicely shifted the tapestry around so that she could get a better look at it. When she did, she noticed her hands. They were normal again! The skin was solid with no hint of that terrible translucence. She couldn’t see the blood and bone beneath her flesh. Amazed, she spun around and looked about the room. Everything was as it should be. The shadows were dark, the light was bright. She saw her cousins’ cat stroll past her bedstead and there was no strangeness about its appearance, no stinging glow or horrible sense of the blood flowing through its body.
‘Praise Sigmar,’ Cicely said, weeping. This time she could feel tears against her cheeks. It had worked. Everything would be all right now. The relief she felt was so profound that it shook her to the core. She rushed to the mirror and just stared at herself. She smiled and laughed, clapping her hands to her face.
The sound brought a stern rap against her door. ‘Breakfast,’ her father’s gruff voice sounded from the other side. Cicely could hear him stomp off down the hall. Her cheer vanished as quickly as it had come. She hoped Samuel hadn’t heard her laughing, not when they were all grieving Marden. She hoped, but she knew it was a vain wish. He’d heard, and if possible, it had made him even more disgusted with his daughter.
Cicely stared back at the mirror, chiding herself for being so insensitive. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Certainly not her family. That she didn’t mean to wasn’t an excuse.
Gazing at her visage, Cicely gradually noticed the change. At first she tried to tell herself it was a delusion spurred by her guilty feelings, then tried to deny it as a caprice of the morning light. Finally, she had to accept it. Yes, her complexion, robust and healthy a moment before, was growing waxy and pale.
She turned to the window. Out in the garden she could see the flower, wilted and dead. Not as she’d intended to weave it into the tapestry but as she’d in truth added it into the picture. By whatever arcane process, she knew the needle had drained away its life essence and transferred it into herself. She’d been revitalised by the flower, but it wasn’t enough.
‘Breakfast, Cousin Cicely,’ Amelia called timidly from the hallway. She could hear the child shifting her feet against the floor.
‘I’m not feeling well,’ Cicely replied. ‘Tell my mother I’ll be out later.’
Amelia lingered in the hallway. ‘Cousin Cicely, have you seen Octavia? I can’t find her.’
Cicely’s eyes turned to the cat, which was still pacing around her room. A cold knot formed in her throat. She could barely force herself to speak. ‘No, I haven’t seen Octavia,’ she said as she stared at the animal. ‘Maybe she’s outside. If I feel better, I’ll help you look for her later.’
With her cousin’s promise, Amelia hurried off down the hall. Cicely felt unclean when she took up the tapestry and stabbed the needle into the cloth. Her eyes were riveted on Octavia, drinking in every detail of the cat’s sleek shape. She didn’t look at what her fingers were doing as they worked the thread, just remained focused on the animal whose image she was copying. The victim whose essence she was going to steal.
It wasn’t of her own volition that her hands finally fell still. Cicely watched Octavia, terrified to see the cat wither like the flower. After a few minutes, however, nothing had happened. The cat continued to prowl about the room, sniffing and purring as she investigated her unfamiliar surroundings.
Then Octavia brushed against the leg of Cicely’s chair. She rose quickly, drawing up the tapestry with an instinctive defensiveness lest the cat rip it with her claws. The sudden motion somehow upset the chair. Octavia yowled once as she tried to dart away to safety, but the animal misjudged the direction in which she’d find it. She put herself directly in the path of the falling rocker. The heavy back slammed down on the creature, crushing her beneath it.
Cicely threw aside the tapestry and hurried to raise the chair. Even before she looked, she knew the cat was dead. Her hands weren’t pale any more but had instead reverted to a healthy complexion. When she pulled back the chair, she saw that Octavia’s skull had been shattered. Blood flowed from the cat’s head and formed a pool around the body.
Dreading what she would see, Cicely took up the tapestry again. What she’d sewn wasn’t Octavia the way she’d seen the cat, but the animal as she was now. Lying dead with blood gushing from the crushed head. Horrified, she threw the tapestry onto her bed. She stared at her hands again, at their robust colour. The flower had sustained her for only minutes. How long would the cat’s essence stave off her affliction? Would it be enough to cure her completely?
As much as she wanted it to be that way, she knew it was too much to wish for. The effect might last days or only hours, but at some point she’d have to use the needle again and add another image to the tapestry.
She turned back to Octavia’s smashed little body. Gently, Cicely lifted it from the floor. She couldn’t bear the thought of Amelia continuing to search for the animal when it was dead. She’d tell her family there’d been an accident, that she hadn’t known the cat had got into her room. Only a part of the truth, but enough to mitigate the shame she felt.
Cicely drew back the bolt on her door. It was best to hurry while her appearance was revitalised. After the example of the flower, she didn’t know how long Octavia’s essence was going to last.
Before heading down the hall, she cast a lingering look at the tapestry. Whatever it had been before, it was now a gruesome thing. It was also the only thing that might save her.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely whispered as she closed the door and went to tell her family about the cat.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Barnabus and Amelia whimpered while they sat on the floor next to their mother. They were still upset over the death of their cat early that morning. Anya had tried to keep them quiet, but it was difficult to make children so young understand things like decorum. Here they were grieving for a pet while their hosts were grieving for a son. Samuel tried not to display any sign of annoyance. He knew being forced from their home and having their father go away was already tough enough on them. The cat’s accident was another hardship heaped on top of the pile.
Samuel lit the candle and set it beside the skull-faced icon that rested in the little niche opposite the hearth. The flicker from the fireplace sent weird shadows spinning across the effigy, lending the crude representation of Nagash a grisly semblance of motion. The hunter curled his fingers together, careful not to exert too much pressure with the metal ones. He managed to fold them into the sign of Nagash and bowed to the representation of the Lord of Death.
‘From gheists and ghouls, and all the horrors of the unquiet grave, Lord Nagash please spare this house,’ Samuel prayed to the icon. ‘Look kindly upon our guests and extend to them the protection that graces this household.’
‘Give thanks that he has withdrawn his hand from our daughter,’ Emelda whispered to Samuel. He glanced aside to where Cicely sat and studied her for a moment. What Emelda said was true. Cicely was looking much better today. Until just now, he hadn’t considered the pale, wasted condition his daughter had been in. He’d been too wrapped up in his own grief, too bent on blaming Cicely for Marden’s death, to notice her. To really notice her.
He was ashamed of that. The contrast between how she looked now and the day after Marden’s death was undeniable and spoke to the depth of her grief. It went far deeper than he’d been willing to believe. In his anger at the abrupt and senseless death of his son, he’d taken a cruel satisfaction in thinking she was tortured by guilt. Only now, seeing the change back to something resembling her old self, did he understand how terribly she’d been affected. He was revolted that he’d drawn any measure of comfort, however small, from Cicely’s distress.
Samuel quickly finished the family prayers and walked over to his daughter. Emelda gave him a worried look, but he made a placating wave of his good hand that he could see reassured her. He wasn’t going to add to Cicely’s trouble. If possible, he wanted to make things right. That was, if his cold attitude hadn’t already soured the love between them.
Verderghast drew back for a moment, a grim look in his eyes. He withdrew a crooked stick from his belt, and when he came near to Cicely, he employed the instrument to examine her in lieu of touching her with his own fingers. ‘My poor child,’ he tutted as he prodded her arm with the stick, moving it up and down and from side to side. She could feel the contact only as a dim tingle against numbed flesh. She could see that there was still substance there for the stick to touch, however transparent it might have become.
‘What is happening to me?’ Cicely sobbed.
The physician shook his head apologetically. ‘I had hoped this wouldn’t happen,’ he said. ‘I’d hoped I was able to cleanse your wounds so thoroughly that this wouldn’t occur.’ His arms dropped to his sides in a helpless gesture. ‘The creatures of Nagash carry with them the blight of the grave and can transmit that corruption to those upon whom they do injury. The dire wolf’s fangs…’ His voice trailed away into a solemn whisper.
Cicely felt choked by fear. Everyone in Felstein had heard the tales of those who escaped from the undead only to become undead themselves. A scratch from a ghoul’s claw or the bite of a vampire’s tooth and the survivor found there was no survival after all.
Her head felt as if it were spinning. She reeled to one side and slipped down to rest against an old tree stump. Mirthless laughter welled up from deep inside her. ‘I thought you saved my life,’ she cackled cynically.
Verderghast tapped the examination stick against the palm of his hand. ‘So did I. I thought I had conquered any side effects, that I’d defeated the necromantic poison.’
Cicely wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She just looked up at the physician. ‘What is happening to me? What will happen to me?’
‘I brought you back from the very cusp of death,’ Verderghast said. ‘Now death is trying to reclaim you.’ He turned his face up towards the black sky. ‘Your energies are being drained off. Bit by bit, speck by speck, every hour there is less of you. You’ll continue to lose substance until everything is gone.’
‘Nagash have mercy,’ Cicely groaned. Her heart went cold at the picture Verderghast proposed. To gradually have her body fade away, evaporating around her. The transition from living woman to ethereal wraith. She pleaded with Verderghast to save her from such a doom. ‘Please, there must be something you can do. Some way to cure me of this!’
Verderghast grimaced. ‘I refuse to admit there is no hope,’ he declared, snapping the examination stick in two and hurling it to the ground. He stared intently at Cicely. ‘You mustn’t resign yourself to death. There’s a way to save you.’ His eyes beamed with excitement. ‘Your energies are being drained away, but if you were to replenish them, then you could restore yourself!’
His excitement infected Cicely with a cautious hope. ‘Replenish my energies,’ she said. ‘Is there a way to do that?’
‘If you are brave,’ Verderghast said. ‘If your will is strong enough to do what must be done.’ He stepped closer, and this time didn’t balk from touching her but instead took her hand in his. His hand felt like ice under her fingers, and Cicely tried to pull free, but he held her fast. ‘Your will to live must be strong enough to do what you must do. You must want to live more than anything else. Do you want to live, Cicely?’
She gave an emphatic nod. The intensity in his tone had emboldened the faltering hope of a moment before. She believed now that there really was a chance she could be saved. ‘I’ll do anything,’ Cicely said.
Verderghast released her hand. He reached beneath his coat and removed a small fold of cloth. It had a strange, uncanny air about it. Cicely knew without being told that it was incredibly old. So ancient it had no right being in the world.
‘What is that?’ she asked, drawing away.
‘Salvation,’ Verderghast told her. He turned the folds outward and exposed a curious object.
‘A needle?’ Cicely was dumbfounded. Yet that was what seemed to be resting inside the ancient cloth. A needle fashioned from some dark, shiny material that gleamed like glass and seemed to suck into itself what little light there was in the forest. Faintly she thought she could discern some sort of markings, weird glyphs both beautiful and hideous in their graceful ranks.
‘You were delirious after the wolf attack,’ Verderghast said. ‘You muttered many things in your delirium. That was how I learned you are a seamstress.’
Cicely almost laughed. It was absurd. Here she was, her body evaporating into a wraith, and Verderghast was talking about sewing!
Instead of laughing, however, she just nodded again.
‘There is a chance, then.’ Verderghast pressed the cloth and the needle into her hand. They felt so cold that they burned her skin. It was an effort not to fling them away into the dark, but she could sense there was an awful power within the needle. A force too great to simply throw away.
‘Take this,’ the physician said. ‘Use the needle to sew the images of others. The magic bound into it will transfer the energy of whoever the image belongs to into yourself.’
Cicely stared down at the onyx needle with incredulity. ‘This is too incredible to be real,’ she protested. The obscene aura that exuded from the object frightened her. As much as part of her wanted to believe in its power, another part of her prayed it was nothing but a charlatan’s trick.
‘Incredible or not, it is a chance for you to live.’ Verderghast closed her hand over the cloth. ‘Take it. Use it. Anyone whose image you create will have their life force drained off in substitution of your own.’
As though in a daze, Cicely rose to her feet. She pondered the import of what Verderghast was telling her to do. ‘It could be any image, not just a person’s.’ She gave the physician a frantic look. Suddenly she was even more afraid of this thing he’d given her. Not because it wouldn’t work, but because it would.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely emphasised. Verderghast said nothing. His silence sent her fleeing from him as though he were a venomous serpent.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely swore as she left Briardark. She kept telling herself all the way through Felstein. By the time she’d reached her home, she’d almost convinced herself it was true.
Cicely sat on the corner of her bed for some time, just staring at the strange packet Verderghast had given her. The cloth still had that horrible sense of antiquity about it. She wondered if it was something woven by the aelves, for certainly no other sort of material could be as ancient as she felt this to be. Her revulsion for the thing had softened into a morbid attraction she couldn’t account for. Yet another symptom of the affliction that assailed her?
The onyx needle, by contrast, felt fresh and new. She couldn’t explain the impression. Perhaps it was simply that anything would seem new when set against that hoary old cloth.
She picked up the needle and wondered what kind of magic it held. Cicely had little experience of physicians, but she understood them to avoid the arcane. Their practice involved herbs and poultices, remedies that were much more mundane than the spells of witches and wizards. What sort of doctor was Verderghast that he’d studied magic enough to employ it in his cures? She wondered if perhaps his exile from civilisation wasn’t as innocent as he’d made it out to be.
Looking at the needle, she couldn’t help but see the fading skin around the fingers that held it. As her condition deteriorated, how long would she even be able to hide what was happening to her? How long before she was discovered?
Elsewhere in the house, she could hear someone stirring. Probably Emelda, rising to get breakfast ready. It wouldn’t be too long before her mother came to Cicely’s door and called her to eat. Cicely might be excused, but she knew that was only a delaying tactic that wouldn’t work long. Whether today or tomorrow, the reckoning would come.
Her attention shifted to the unfinished tapestry. Not for the first time since she’d returned home. Cicely wasn’t sure why she hadn’t already experimented with Verderghast’s needle. Was it because she feared it wouldn’t work, that the physician had lied to her simply to ease his own conscience? Or was it because she was afraid it would work? What would it mean, to siphon energy from something and draw it into herself? Would the subject grow tired or sick? Worse than that? And how much energy would it take to replenish her own and be cured of her affliction?
‘Only now do you think of these questions,’ Cicely berated herself. If she’d been half as smart as she thought she was, she’d have asked Verderghast when he gave her the needle.
The sounds of activity in the house finally decided her. Cicely walked over to the big oak rocking chair and picked up the tapestry. She plucked the old copper needle from the fabric. Bending down to the box of materials on the floor, she fastened a string to the onyx one and set the tapestry across her lap. The images of her family smiled back at her. Samuel and Emelda and Marden, each in varying stages of completeness. She shifted the heavy fabric around, finding for herself an empty space. Her fingers hesitated, the new needle just touching the surface.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ she whispered before thrusting the needle into the tapestry. Her gaze drifted to the window and fastened on a big yellow flower growing in her mother’s garden. She determined to use the flower as her subject. Once that choice was made, her fingers flew about their work. Never had she laboured at such a feverish pace. The needle darted in and out like a firebrand. She fixed different-coloured threads to its eye with a speed that surpassed conscious thought.
Almost before she realised, the work was done. At the far corner of her tapestry there was now a flower. Only it wasn’t the flower in her mother’s garden. The image that met her gaze wasn’t full and vibrant. It was wilted and sagged on its stem, its petals falling away. This wasn’t the picture she’d woven. At least, it wasn’t the image she’d started to create.
Cicely shifted the tapestry around so that she could get a better look at it. When she did, she noticed her hands. They were normal again! The skin was solid with no hint of that terrible translucence. She couldn’t see the blood and bone beneath her flesh. Amazed, she spun around and looked about the room. Everything was as it should be. The shadows were dark, the light was bright. She saw her cousins’ cat stroll past her bedstead and there was no strangeness about its appearance, no stinging glow or horrible sense of the blood flowing through its body.
‘Praise Sigmar,’ Cicely said, weeping. This time she could feel tears against her cheeks. It had worked. Everything would be all right now. The relief she felt was so profound that it shook her to the core. She rushed to the mirror and just stared at herself. She smiled and laughed, clapping her hands to her face.
The sound brought a stern rap against her door. ‘Breakfast,’ her father’s gruff voice sounded from the other side. Cicely could hear him stomp off down the hall. Her cheer vanished as quickly as it had come. She hoped Samuel hadn’t heard her laughing, not when they were all grieving Marden. She hoped, but she knew it was a vain wish. He’d heard, and if possible, it had made him even more disgusted with his daughter.
Cicely stared back at the mirror, chiding herself for being so insensitive. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Certainly not her family. That she didn’t mean to wasn’t an excuse.
Gazing at her visage, Cicely gradually noticed the change. At first she tried to tell herself it was a delusion spurred by her guilty feelings, then tried to deny it as a caprice of the morning light. Finally, she had to accept it. Yes, her complexion, robust and healthy a moment before, was growing waxy and pale.
She turned to the window. Out in the garden she could see the flower, wilted and dead. Not as she’d intended to weave it into the tapestry but as she’d in truth added it into the picture. By whatever arcane process, she knew the needle had drained away its life essence and transferred it into herself. She’d been revitalised by the flower, but it wasn’t enough.
‘Breakfast, Cousin Cicely,’ Amelia called timidly from the hallway. She could hear the child shifting her feet against the floor.
‘I’m not feeling well,’ Cicely replied. ‘Tell my mother I’ll be out later.’
Amelia lingered in the hallway. ‘Cousin Cicely, have you seen Octavia? I can’t find her.’
Cicely’s eyes turned to the cat, which was still pacing around her room. A cold knot formed in her throat. She could barely force herself to speak. ‘No, I haven’t seen Octavia,’ she said as she stared at the animal. ‘Maybe she’s outside. If I feel better, I’ll help you look for her later.’
With her cousin’s promise, Amelia hurried off down the hall. Cicely felt unclean when she took up the tapestry and stabbed the needle into the cloth. Her eyes were riveted on Octavia, drinking in every detail of the cat’s sleek shape. She didn’t look at what her fingers were doing as they worked the thread, just remained focused on the animal whose image she was copying. The victim whose essence she was going to steal.
It wasn’t of her own volition that her hands finally fell still. Cicely watched Octavia, terrified to see the cat wither like the flower. After a few minutes, however, nothing had happened. The cat continued to prowl about the room, sniffing and purring as she investigated her unfamiliar surroundings.
Then Octavia brushed against the leg of Cicely’s chair. She rose quickly, drawing up the tapestry with an instinctive defensiveness lest the cat rip it with her claws. The sudden motion somehow upset the chair. Octavia yowled once as she tried to dart away to safety, but the animal misjudged the direction in which she’d find it. She put herself directly in the path of the falling rocker. The heavy back slammed down on the creature, crushing her beneath it.
Cicely threw aside the tapestry and hurried to raise the chair. Even before she looked, she knew the cat was dead. Her hands weren’t pale any more but had instead reverted to a healthy complexion. When she pulled back the chair, she saw that Octavia’s skull had been shattered. Blood flowed from the cat’s head and formed a pool around the body.
Dreading what she would see, Cicely took up the tapestry again. What she’d sewn wasn’t Octavia the way she’d seen the cat, but the animal as she was now. Lying dead with blood gushing from the crushed head. Horrified, she threw the tapestry onto her bed. She stared at her hands again, at their robust colour. The flower had sustained her for only minutes. How long would the cat’s essence stave off her affliction? Would it be enough to cure her completely?
As much as she wanted it to be that way, she knew it was too much to wish for. The effect might last days or only hours, but at some point she’d have to use the needle again and add another image to the tapestry.
She turned back to Octavia’s smashed little body. Gently, Cicely lifted it from the floor. She couldn’t bear the thought of Amelia continuing to search for the animal when it was dead. She’d tell her family there’d been an accident, that she hadn’t known the cat had got into her room. Only a part of the truth, but enough to mitigate the shame she felt.
Cicely drew back the bolt on her door. It was best to hurry while her appearance was revitalised. After the example of the flower, she didn’t know how long Octavia’s essence was going to last.
Before heading down the hall, she cast a lingering look at the tapestry. Whatever it had been before, it was now a gruesome thing. It was also the only thing that might save her.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person,’ Cicely whispered as she closed the door and went to tell her family about the cat.
‘It doesn’t have to be a person.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Barnabus and Amelia whimpered while they sat on the floor next to their mother. They were still upset over the death of their cat early that morning. Anya had tried to keep them quiet, but it was difficult to make children so young understand things like decorum. Here they were grieving for a pet while their hosts were grieving for a son. Samuel tried not to display any sign of annoyance. He knew being forced from their home and having their father go away was already tough enough on them. The cat’s accident was another hardship heaped on top of the pile.
Samuel lit the candle and set it beside the skull-faced icon that rested in the little niche opposite the hearth. The flicker from the fireplace sent weird shadows spinning across the effigy, lending the crude representation of Nagash a grisly semblance of motion. The hunter curled his fingers together, careful not to exert too much pressure with the metal ones. He managed to fold them into the sign of Nagash and bowed to the representation of the Lord of Death.
‘From gheists and ghouls, and all the horrors of the unquiet grave, Lord Nagash please spare this house,’ Samuel prayed to the icon. ‘Look kindly upon our guests and extend to them the protection that graces this household.’
‘Give thanks that he has withdrawn his hand from our daughter,’ Emelda whispered to Samuel. He glanced aside to where Cicely sat and studied her for a moment. What Emelda said was true. Cicely was looking much better today. Until just now, he hadn’t considered the pale, wasted condition his daughter had been in. He’d been too wrapped up in his own grief, too bent on blaming Cicely for Marden’s death, to notice her. To really notice her.
He was ashamed of that. The contrast between how she looked now and the day after Marden’s death was undeniable and spoke to the depth of her grief. It went far deeper than he’d been willing to believe. In his anger at the abrupt and senseless death of his son, he’d taken a cruel satisfaction in thinking she was tortured by guilt. Only now, seeing the change back to something resembling her old self, did he understand how terribly she’d been affected. He was revolted that he’d drawn any measure of comfort, however small, from Cicely’s distress.
Samuel quickly finished the family prayers and walked over to his daughter. Emelda gave him a worried look, but he made a placating wave of his good hand that he could see reassured her. He wasn’t going to add to Cicely’s trouble. If possible, he wanted to make things right. That was, if his cold attitude hadn’t already soured the love between them.
