Deosil, page 8
“Should we try again?” Iskander asked.
I shook my head wearily. “No. Whatever this is, it’s more resistant than the rust. Possibly it can’t be burned out at all, and we’ll succeed only in killing her.”
“Then what should we do?” Christine sounded uncharacteristically tentative. “If we just leave her, she’ll transform and be one more enemy to fight.”
I stood up and dusted off my trousers. I’d brushed them as best I could last night at Mrs. Rodgers’ house, but they were still a disaster, and the gesture did no good. “We certainly can’t murder her in cold blood. And we can’t leave her tied up to starve to death. There’s nothing to do but untie her, put her back in her house, and leave before she wakes up.”
We carried her back inside, settling her as carefully as possible on her couch, before cutting her bindings. As we departed, I paused in front of the mantel, staring at the photograph and tasting acid in my throat.
“Does it ever end?” I asked.
Griffin paused beside me. “What?”
“Do you remember Philip Rice?”
He cocked his head in confusion. “The murder case that brought me to you? Of course.”
“What about the Kincaid brothers in Threshold? Allan Tambling’s uncle? Guinevere and Miss Emily. The cinereous of Fallow, and the murdered heads of the old families, and the transformed Endicotts.” My throat tightened around the words, but I forced them out. “Families torn apart by greed, or hate, or the need for power. And now here we stand yet again, in a house where a woman’s husband and children were ripped from her in the night, while magic we can’t fight slowly subjugates her, body and mind.”
I turned away from the mantle and found my friends watching me. “Does it ever end?” I asked again.
Iskander’s dark eyes lowered. “No. I don’t think it does. Ghūls killed my mother. But it was disease that carried off Griffin’s parents and the orphan train that separated him from his brothers.”
“Daphne married a terrible man, but an ordinary one,” Christine added with an unhappy twist of her mouth. “Our parents were pleased because he had a title, and the rest didn’t matter.”
Griffin stepped closer to me. “The important thing is, we try to do something about it. In whatever fashion we can.”
“Did you ever get discouraged, when you were in the Pinkertons?”
“Yes, of course.” Griffin’s eyes shadowed with memories. “There were days when it seemed the tide of human misery never ended. But I always reminded myself that the tide of human joy likewise is unending. Think of those we’ve saved, as often as those we’ve lost.”
I couldn’t share his optimism. I was weary to the bone of grief, of struggle. “If we don’t stop the masters, nothing we’ve done will have been to any purpose.”
Griffin’s fingers tightened. “That isn’t true. If the world ends tomorrow, it will still have mattered.”
Christine put her hand to her belly. “Sometimes I wonder what I’m thinking, bringing a child into all this.”
I gaped at her, astonished. Christine was seldom one to be vulnerable; it wasn’t part of her nature.
“What if it becomes one of those broken orphans?” she went on. “Or I one of those grieving mothers? And Iskander is right, in one way or another, it doesn’t ever end. But what can we do, except live as best we can? Wallowing in despair certainly won’t solve anything.” Her chin firmed. “If our choices are to throw up our hands and walk away, or to fight and keep fighting, even if there is no end to the struggle, then I know which I’ll choose.”
I nodded mutely, uncertain what to say. We left the house and returned to our steeds. After I mounted, though, I sat staring at the empty windows, the cold chimney, the walls in which laughter might never ring again.
“I’m sorry I failed you,” I said to the woman, too quietly for my companions to hear. Then my horse fell in behind the others, and the farmhouse grew ever more distant, until it was lost behind the trees.
Chapter 17
Griffin
“I think the maelstrom is trying to communicate with me,” Whyborne said.
I slowed my horse to drop back closer to his. Thanatos hadn’t wanted to leave the comfort of the farmyard, and expressed its displeasure by dallying even farther behind than before. “How so?”
“The dream I told you about aboard the Melusine. I had another last night.” He shaded his eyes against the setting sun. “And when I touched the arcane line in the marsh, I heard a-a voice, I suppose. Mostly just howling, but it also said come to me, which is the same phrase I heard in the dreams. And earlier, when we were trying to cure the woman in the farmhouse, I perceived the cries again.”
Unease touched me. The maelstrom might weight the dice of fate, might nudge certain outcomes into being more likely than they otherwise would have, but it didn’t directly interact. That was presumably what Whyborne and Persephone were for. “It’s never spoken to you prior to this, has it?”
“I’m not sure it’s speaking to me now.” Whyborne ran his fingers through the strands of his horse’s mane. “The sounds might just be how a human-ish brain interprets it. The maelstrom is…I don’t know if angry is a word one can use for such an entity. But I do think it understands what’s happening in Widdershins. That the town is under assault and the masters are returning soon.”
“But it’s telling you to come home,” I said. “Unless I’m misunderstanding something?”
“Presumably.” He sighed. “You’re right, it’s strange. Either something has changed, or else it always had this ability and just…didn’t use it. You’d think it would have spoken to me as a child, or at least let me know as an adult that I ought to be studying magic. Not that I believed in magic at the time, but still, I might have majored in any number of useful subjects while at Miskatonic.”
“Perhaps it didn’t wish to influence you until it had to.” I tried to imagine how Niles would have reacted if his youngest son told him he was an eldritch being of vast power. I generally got along with Niles better than Whyborne did, but I couldn’t forget the things he’d done as part of the Brotherhood. He might not have killed anyone directly since the end of the war, but there was blood on his hands nonetheless.
If he’d guessed Whyborne’s true potential, Ival rather than Stanford would have become the apple of his eye: encouraged and groomed, inducted into the Brotherhood at first opportunity. At a young enough age, Whyborne might not even have realized what they were doing was wrong, not until it was too late.
The world was likely a much better place, thanks to that decision—assuming it had been a decision—on the maelstrom’s part. Not to suggest that Whyborne’s childhood misery had in any way been for the greater good. Niles might have been kinder to his youngest son, while still not realizing Whyborne’s true potential. But the thought of some other version of Whyborne, taught to believe as Stanford had been that he was always right, to take whatever he wanted by any means necessary, was enough to make my blood run cold.
“Or perhaps it simply wanted to make my life difficult,” Whyborne muttered.
“That I doubt.” I leaned over in my saddle to put a hand to his leg.
“What the devil is that?” Christine exclaimed.
My attention snapped back to the road before us. Streamers of fog rolled across the road ahead, which bent sharply to the north to avoid the Draakenwood. An abandoned field lay on the other side of the road; the fog thickened until I couldn’t see the forest which must lurk beyond it. To my shadowsight, the fog glowed with sorcery.
My horse snorted and tossed its head, disturbed. Thanatos came to a dead stop and simply refused to take another step, no matter how much Whyborne alternately cursed and cajoled it. Christine’s mount danced skittishly to one side, before she brought it firmly back under control.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to ride any farther,” Iskander said, patting his steed on the neck. Its nostrils were flared, ears swiveling back and forth to catch the slightest sound.
“The umbrae would likely have viewed the horses as food, anyway.” I swung down and gathered my things from the panniers.
We left the horses to their own devices. With luck, they would return on their own to their stable. If not, someone would come across them soon enough. The livery stable would probably go to the police when we failed to return the horses, but right now a warrant for my arrest seemed a minor worry at best.
I led the way into the fog, sword cane unsheathed and at the ready. Whyborne came after me, then Christine, while Iskander acted as rear guard, his knives in his hands. The farm field looked to have been deserted longer than a season, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of whoever had once worked the land, whose hands had built the low stone walls bounding it. Even before the umbrae came, the Draakenwood had an evil reputation as a haunt of sorcerers and nightmares, and few who stepped within ever returned to tell the tale.
The fog thickened as we entered the wood’s edge. “Is this some spell of the Fideles?” Whyborne wondered aloud. “Or Nephren-ka’s work?”
“He was from the desert,” I pointed out.
“There are fogs on the Nile from time to time,” Iskander said. Our voices fell flat on the heavy air, as though it sought to stifle them. “He wouldn’t have been unaware of the phenomenon.”
“Then I stand corrected.” A shiver ran through me. “It would surely take a great deal of sorcerous power to do this, whoever is at the root.”
“They have the maelstrom to draw from,” Whyborne said softly. “So long as they have a good wand and the spell doesn’t need constant upkeep, power isn’t a limiting factor.”
The trees closed around us, the forest growing darker and wilder with every step we took. Moisture dripped from the leaves, and the branches seemed to form almost human figures, writhing in agony. The sense of being watched pressed down on me, and a chill ran up my back.
“Do we know we aren’t just going in circles?” Whyborne whispered. There was no reason to whisper, but I shared the impulse, as if something might overhear us and be displeased.
“We’re not,” I replied. “I’m not the most accomplished woodsman, but even in the fog, I can keep us going in a more-or-less straight line. Hopefully the umbrae will find us soon.”
We came upon evidence they’d been there recently, in the form of a skeleton denuded of flesh. The bones had an almost melted appearance, and lay in a heap with a tattered robe and a mask such as the Fideles often wore.
“A soldier umbra has been here.” The work of a soldier’s acid feelers was unmistakable. I bore the scar from one of them on my left thigh, made by the broken captive of a sorcerer. It had eaten my partner Glenn, digesting him alive before my eyes, until a bullet put an end to his suffering.
“And where are they now?” Christine wondered, looking about the trees. Not that it was possible to see far in the dense fog.
“Close by, I hope.” I started forward again.
We hadn’t gone far, when there came a sudden rustling in the canopy. Water cascaded down, dislodged by…something…moving above and in front of us.
Something touched my mind, feather-light and reaching. I’d never before tested how far away I could be and still communicate with the Queen of Shadows without the Lapidem’s help. An oversight on our part, but it seemed she could at least find me so long as I was within the confines of the Draakenwood.
The rustling must have come from a soldier umbra in the canopy. Unlike the workers, they could fly. It would be able to communicate with the Queen of Shadows far more easily than I, so I turned in anticipation of using it to speak with her.
“I’m glad to see you,” I began to say.
The thing that dropped down from the tree was no umbra. Its bat-like wings were tattered and slimy, its skin furred with mold. Its jaws gaped to bite, and a blast of fetid breath nearly had me retching.
Whyborne’s hand closed on my collar, and he yanked me back. The teeth snapped closed where my head had been only moments before. All around us, Hounds of Tindalos bloomed in my shadowsight, darting back and forth through the Veil as they traveled.
“Run!” Whyborne shouted, and hauled me after him.
Chapter 18
Whyborne
My heart thudded and a stitch formed in my side almost immediately. I ignored it in favor of not being eaten.
The thick trees would foil any attempts by the byakhee to follow us directly; it would have to get above the canopy to fly. Unfortunately, they also made running difficult.
My foot caught on a root, and I measured my length on the ground. My chin clipped the earth hard, and lights flashed behind my eyes. An instant later, a heavy weight landed on my back as a Hound emerged directly on top of me.
I didn’t have enough time to even react. Griffin skewered it with his sword cane as it came into our world. It howled, and sickly ichor splashed from its wounds, to add to the utter ruin of my clothing.
Christine’s rifle barked as she dispatched another Hound. Had the cultist whose bones we’d found summoned them before his death, and now they wandered the woods on their own volition? Or were there more Fideles somewhere nearby?
Griffin hauled me to my feet. “Follow me!” he exclaimed. “Quickly!”
None of us questioned him, only pelted after as fast as we could. Eerie howls echoed through the trees all around us now. “How many of the bloody things are there?” Iskander panted.
“Not far,” Griffin said. “We’re almost—”
The byakhee crashed down through the canopy, so close to Christine its claws tore a hank of hair from her scalp. She let out a startled cry and ducked instinctively. Iskander shoved her out of the way, only to be thrown off his feet from a blow from one of its rotting wings.
I wanted to call down the lightning, but I hesitated. My target was too close to my friends; what if it hit them as well as the byakhee?
Christine rose to her full height, aimed her rifle, and shot the byakhee square in the eye. It let out a horrible screech and flinched back—but now the Hounds were closing in all around us.
I took a deep breath, centering myself. I wasn’t on an arcane line, but I’d burn through what magic I had inside me if that’s what it took.
Griffin put out a hand to stop me. Startled, I turned to look at him.
The smile on Griffin’s face wasn’t his own. His pupils had shrunk to mere pinpoints, the irises around them illuminated from within, so they appeared more like green ice than emeralds.
“The Draakenwood is ours,” he said in a voice like a thousand whispers, echoing through cavernous depths. “And you will regret coming here, creatures of the Outside.”
Then the soft earth gave way beneath us, and we plummeted into darkness.
* * *
My fall was a short one, broken by something soft and coated in slime. A chemical stink flooded my lungs, strong enough to choke me. Dark, billowy forms rushed past, folding themselves through the hole in the tunnel ceiling above us. A moment later, the death shrieks of Hounds and byakhee echoed down.
The squirming mass beneath me heaved, then slid away in a manner that brought bile to my throat. I swallowed it down, and found myself deposited on the bare rock of the tunnel floor. Umbrae workers scuttled around us like gelatinous pill bugs, feelers protruding and shrinking from their mass according to their needs.
Iskander and Christine sat up, their clothing slick with slime and reeking of the umbrae’s acidic stench. Griffin, however, lay on his side, his eyes closed and a line of blood seeping from his nostril. One of the workers slithered over him, cleaning the blood away.
I hastened to his side. “Griffin?”
He blinked slowly at the touch of my hand on his cheek. His eyes had resumed their normal color once again. “You were possessed by the Queen of Shadows,” I said.
“Yes.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, as I helped him to sit. “She reached out to me just before we were attacked, and told me where to run to find help.”
The sound of running footsteps—unexpected in the tunnels of the umbrae—echoed from nearby. A moment later, a light appeared around a bend, revealing the face of Griffin’s brother, Jack. In one hand he held a lantern; the other arm cradled a familiar orange body.
“Griffin!” Jack exclaimed, at the same moment I said, “Saul!”
Iskander helped Griffin to his feet. Jack set the lantern down, shoved Saul at me, and then flung his arms around Griffin in a tight embrace. “God! I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again. There was no way to know if you were still in Cornwall, or if the Fideles had killed or captured you.”
“I had much the same fears for you,” Griffin assured him.
As for me, I looked Saul over carefully. There was no sign of any harm to him—indeed, his fur didn’t bear so much as a smear of dirt. He purred happily, butting his hard little head into my chin in greeting. Since I’d recently hit said chin on the ground when I tripped, the gesture hurt rather more than usual.
Christine came over and scratched Saul behind the ears. “One of the librarians told us some of what happened in Widdershins,” she said to Jack, “but he only saw the thing at the museum.” I couldn’t help but notice she couldn’t bring herself to speak Nephren-ka’s name. “I assume you had a different vantage during the attack?”
“Yes.” Jack hesitated. “Before I speak, was your journey successful? You received the key to the Codex?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “And the Endicotts returned with us, though they’re currently at sea. It’s a long story,” I added at his surprised look.
“I imagine so.” Jack shook himself. “A client had just contacted me about missing relatives past the outskirts of Widdershins. Her suspicions were aroused by a lack of letters, so she went to the house. The blinds were drawn, the door locked, and no one could be found. She said there was something unsettling in the air, and explained to me as a lifelong resident of Widdershins, she knew better than to ask the police to investigate something they probably weren’t prepared to face.”
