by A. C. Cobble
An ice-cold arm wrapped around his neck and squeezed.
He swung his broadsword back, hoping to catch his attacker’s head, but the weapon sailed through empty air.
“Sorcery, Oliver, is about creating bridges through the shroud to the underworld and then fashioning patterns to channel and control what can be found there,” remarked William, studying him. “There is an order to both our world and the other one. By understanding that order, recreating those natural designs and then manipulating them for our own purposes, sorcerers are able to achieve incredible things. But no matter the skill of the sorcerer, no matter how complex and involved the patterns they invoke, the results are only as good as the strength of the bridge. A strong bridge requires familiarity, proximity, connection. The strongest bridges require a passage, a change. Life transitioning to death. Life becoming from nothing. These changes naturally breach the shroud, you understand?”
Oliver wheezed, unable to respond, unable to free himself from the relentless arm wrapped around his neck. He thrashed with his sword again, but a transparent hand caught his arm, gripping tight until his fingers spasmed and his broadsword clattered to the stone floor. He was held rigid, one arm around his neck, others clamped onto his limbs.
“My own blood would help fashion the strongest bridge, but I don’t want to die for my cause,” explained William. “You, however, are going to die anyway. I let you come here, Oliver, so I could use your blood to fashion my bridge. You will die so I never have to.”
Tugging, kicking, and struggling with his invisible attackers, Oliver fought the entire way up to the rooftop of the ancient druid fortress. The arm wrapped around his throat never relented. When he was dragged through passages narrow enough, he pushed himself off the floor and against the wall, kicking hard, trying to dislodge the unceasing pressure on his neck. He was rewarded by a series of vicious blows to his ribcage and more hands squeezing him tight, dragging him onward.
Finally, they emerged into the clear, night air. In the distance, Southundon sparkled. Nearby, it was dark. Only light from the moon above illuminated the battlement-ringed rooftop of the ancient fortress.
William turned and grinned at Oliver, spreading his arms wide, his pale skin white in the light, crawling with black tattoos. He declared, “The chill reminds me of the underworld. I prefer it like this, when it’s bitter cold outside. I wish I could stand here and revel in it, but you and your priestess delved too deep. You interfered with our plans, and I have to act now or the other will take advantage of my weakness.”
“Interfered with you,” growled Oliver, finding barely enough air to spit out a retort. “We killed your partners. Your ritual cannot be completed without them. Without three of you, you have no hope of binding the trinity!”
William smirked and then nodded behind Oliver.
His head was forced around by the invisible shade that gripped him, and Oliver found himself looking at two fist-sized hunks of amber sitting on waist-high block of stone. An altar, Oliver thought. The amber glowed softly, lit from within. He could see the rocks were streaked with black stains. He uncomfortably decided those must be dried blood. Both hunks of amber sat in shallow copper bowls that were filled with the same dark liquid. Around the bowls, he could see iridescent white chalk lines marked in dizzying patterns that turned his stomach to look at. The low light of the moon seemed to be drawn to the chalk and held there, shining within the design.
“Raffles and Yates.” William laughed. “I believe you’ve met? That is what is left of their souls.”
The shade jerked Oliver back around to face his uncle. He drew a ragged breath as the arm loosened around his neck, and he kicked back with a foot, catching nothing. He struggled, helplessly.
“I had a snare waiting on the shroud,” explained William. “When you killed them, I snagged their souls before they passed into the underworld. It is not ideal, I admit, but I believe it will work. With the help of your life blood, it is worth the risk. Eternal life, or eternal damnation? If it works, at least I will not have to suffer those fools any longer. I will rule alone, forever. A risk, yes, but such a prize…”
William turned, seemingly losing interest in Oliver for a moment and staring across the night-black river to Southundon.
“It’s all about my father, then?” questioned Oliver, glaring at his uncle’s back. “Jealousy? You’re willing to kill tens of thousands to settle some feud with my father?”
William looked back. “Jealousy? No, I wouldn’t term it like that. I thought you might understand, actually. It is why I’m even bothering to speak with you, Oliver. I don’t want the throne, not the way Edward sits upon it. It seems a rather large bother, doesn’t it? No, it is not that I want to be my older brother or to be the king. It is that I want to be more than I am. I am destined for more than this, Oliver. Once, I thought you might be, too.”
Oliver blinked at the older man. “You’re trying to turn me?”
“No.” William chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m not trying to turn you. I was just… I admit it would be nice to be understood, to speak to someone who realizes what it is like to be the younger brother of the first in line. You are not jealous of Philip, are you? I cannot imagine you would want to live his life, but don’t you want to live your own life? Don’t you feel bound by the expectations of your family? Being a Wellesley is a great honor, or so we are told by those who use us. You never would have lived your own life, Oliver. You would have always been in the shadow of your brothers, dancing to their whims. For the Crown, they tell you.” William shook his head. “Not for me. Not anymore.”
“Enhover is more than a crown and a throne, William,” argued Oliver, struggling against his formless captor. “It’s about—”
“Save the speech,” remarked William. “You think after this we’ll shake hands and agree to leave each other alone? Besides, even if you do not realize it, you were sent by another to distract and delay me. I’m not going to let that happen.”
From beside the hunks of amber on the altar, William collected a third copper bowl, the outside gleaming, the inside dull and stained black. His uncle removed a dull hunk of amber from the bowl and placed it on the altar, in the center of a matrix of white chalk symbols.
By invisible hands, Oliver was shoved back against an iron cross. His arms were forced up by his head along the lifeless metal spars. Across from him, he saw two similar devices. The three of them were arranged in a triangle. Three crosses where his uncle would bind his victims, where he could take his time sacrificing them. The floor of the rooftop was covered in old blood, and Oliver shivered, thinking about how many souls had been taken in the place. He shivered from the biting cold in the air and the iron behind him, and he shivered from the implacable hands of the spirits that pressed him back. Ice-cold nothing, pinning him down while he watched his uncle approach with the bowl and the dagger.
A look, somewhere between regret and anticipation, marred his uncle’s face. In the cold light of the moon, he wasn’t the boisterous, jolly soldier Oliver had always known, but a strange shining apparition, not far different from the shades that he summoned.
William stepped toward Oliver, raising the tainted dagger.
The Priestess XXV
Duke was dragged away, a shadowy wisp half a yard taller than him clinging to his back, dozens more surrounding him. William, haughty and laughing, led the way.
Between her fingers, she could feel her warm blood seeping out. The dagger had pierced her deeply, and when William had drawn it from her, a torrent of blood had followed. Even if she was lying on a surgeon’s table, the prognosis would not be good. Alone, in the middle of a forest, leagues from Southundon and the physicians there, she had no chance. She was going to die.
Cursing under her breath, she untucked her shirt and wadded it beneath her vest, pressing the fabric against the furiously bleeding wound. It was too wide, too deep to completely stop the flow, but she could slow it and maybe follow William to where he’d taken
Duke.
There wasn’t much fight left in her, but thanks to Kalbeth’s ink, her death would not be in vain. When her soul breached the barrier, it would unleash a torrent of power. That deluge would sweep away any nearby shades, banishing them to the underworld.
It was just as her mentor had done for her when he had died beneath Derbycross. He’d sacrificed himself to save her and Duke, to give them the opportunity to defeat the evil that they faced. She had hated Thotham for it, that he’d taken the easy way out and convinced Duke to strike the killing blow. She had hated that he didn’t fight, didn’t find some other way, but now, she understood.
Weak, blood gushing from her abdomen like water from a pump, she couldn’t fight. She didn’t even think she could stand. Gritting her teeth, one hand pressed against her stomach to stanch the flow of blood, she reached out with her elbow. Kicking her feet, she dragged herself ahead. Inch by inch, she crawled across the stone floor.
Sweat popped out on her forehead. Her jaw ached from how tightly she gritted her teeth. Her stomach… She couldn’t think about that, couldn’t consider the pull and tug, the fresh warmth of new blood with each yard she traveled.
She was going to die. If only she could get close enough that her spirit’s passing would help. Perhaps Duke would still be in good enough shape he could fight back against his uncle. Perhaps without his minions, William would fall to the younger Wellesley.
Perhaps.
She closed her eyes, her mouth forming wordless curses.
Three more yards to the doorway. Then, if she guessed correctly, maybe she could find where they went. Maybe…
She slumped on the floor. The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire in the braziers and her own pained breath. Wherever William was taking Oliver, they were already out of earshot. They were already hundreds of yards away and well out of her reach.
She smacked a hand on the raw stone of the floor. Thotham did not raise her to quit when she was needed. He’d raised her for this moment — for now. His prophecy was about right now. She had to keep going.
She looked up at the doorway, trying to decide which way to go, wondering how far she could make it.
In front of her, barring the doorway, was a wall of insubstantial shadows.
Refusing to give in, she reached out her elbow and dragged herself forward again. A foot crashed down on her head, slamming it against the stone floor. Another kicked her shoulder and then her arm. More blows fell on her legs. Invisible strikes rained down on her, but still, she crawled forward until finally a toe swept underneath her side and pounded into her gut, right where William had stabbed her. Wheezing, she flopped over from the force of the kick, landing on her back, staring at the rock of the ceiling, gasping and choking.
Shadows surrounded her. One settled down on top of her, wrapping ice-cold fingers around her throat. It squeezed, and her head pounded. Specks of white flooded her vision, spinning dizzily. She could feel the hands around her throat, but when she swept her arms, trying to dislodge them, she felt nothing, nothing but the pressure on her neck. She kicked wildly, trying to find her daggers, knowing they could banish the shades, but she’d dropped them and didn’t know where they were. The weight of the thing settled on her chest, the unrelenting hands strangled her.
The shades. William had not made a foolish error by leaving her alive. He’d left his minions to finish the job.
Her vision wavered and then went black. Only the agonizing pressure on her neck and the throb of blood in her head were real anymore. She couldn’t feel the cold opening in her stomach where William had stabbed her, where her blood leaked out freely. Somewhere deep inside, she knew that when blood loss or the shades finally killed her, it meant their own banishment, but in the sea of agony, the thought had no power. There was no spiteful joy that they’d pay for her demise, just the dull pressure, the sharp pain as she wrenched her body on the stone floor, struggling impotently.
In the black, the utter darkness and despair, she felt cold. Ice cold. Was it the underworld? Was she approaching the shroud? She was slipping. She could feel motion. She grew colder, and while she couldn’t see, she could sense something. A wall extending to the sides beyond imagination, rising higher than she could fathom. A wall between everything. The barrier between her old world and her new one. She was drawing closer, distanceless, timeless.
She was dying… dead?
All she could feel was cold.
The motion stopped, and she floated, suspended in front of the barrier. How far, she couldn’t say. How long, she didn’t know. There was no time or space. She stayed there, insubstantial, formless, like one of the shades, floating before the barrier. Darkness flowed all around her, swallowing her whole.
There was incredible pain. The wound from the tainted dagger in her stomach burned fire hot. Compared to the cold of death, it was the hot of forge fire. It scalded her, scoured her. Her veins filled with terrible heat. Piercing agony enveloped her skull. Needles jabbing, heat burning. Her flesh felt like, inch by inch, it was peeled away and then seared back down by orange-hot iron. Tingles, like pinpricks, tens of thousands of them, cascaded from the tip of her head to her toes, stabbing her with new agony. Pain was all that she knew, all that she was.
With an agonizing, uneven lurch, her heart started to beat. Squeezing cooling blood through her body, it thumped and then thumped again. Her eyes flicked open and she gasped, drawing a long breath of air, filling still lungs. Her body, in fits and starts, was waking back up.
She was alive.
If the shades around her had faces, she knew she would see confusion there, and knew they could see it in her face as well. They were not attacking. They were hesitant. These shades, they knew death, and they knew her soul had passed from her body. They must have seen it transitioning to the same plane they’d been summoned from. Death was what they were. The shades knew another.
Now, her soul was back.
She sat up, her eyes drawn to the floor beside her. Her hand, painted crimson with her own blood, had drawn a pattern on the stone floor.
A triangle, inverted, three slashes passing through it.
Her heart hammered, and her breath came fast and panicked as her mind struggled to adjust, to rationalize that she’d been dead, but now, she was not.
Somehow, her hand, operating without her direction, had drawn a pattern representing the great spirit Ca-Mi-He. She touched her stomach, feeling a knotted scar where William had stabbed her. The fabric of her vest, her shirt, her trousers, were soaked in her still-wet blood. The vest and her shirt were torn where the steel had slid into her. They were torn, but her flesh was not.
Ca-Mi-He, the spirit that had tainted the dagger, its name drawn in her blood. The same blood that had leaked out, killing her from the wound the dagger had given her, sending her soul to the barrier where it would have passed through the open shroud.
She’d been killed by Ca-Mi-He’s dagger. She’d drawn the spirit’s name in her blood.
Frozen hell.
Her soul had made it to the shroud. It had opened to take her, and then she had returned. Ca-Mi-He had used her, but used her for what?
She scrambled to her feet, unnatural energy suffusing a body that moments before had been dead. Around her, the shades were gone. They’d simply vanished. Either the surge of her death had finally caught them, or they’d fled before a spirit more terrifying than themselves. She glanced around the room, gaping in confusing, then back down at the bloody symbol on the floor.
Ca-Mi-He.
Frozen hell.
Ca-Mi-He had stopped her passage, had prevented her from going to the other side. He’d… She didn’t know. She didn’t know what was happening, but she knew she was alive. She wasn’t dead. She was in the fight, and Thotham hadn’t raised her to quit.
She strode across the stone floor, wet with her own blood, and bent to retrieve her kris daggers.
She wasn’t dead. Not yet.
The Cartographer XXVIII
The blade of the tainted dagger, slick with Sam’s blood, raised into the air, poised to swing down and plunge into his chest. William held the copper bowl in his other hand, ready to catch the fountain of life he would spill from his nephew. Oliver’s eyes were locked on the tip of the dagger, watching as crimson drops dripped from the edge. Sam’s blood, smeared along the entire length of the sharp steel.
The blood curled, writhing on the blade, like a silken sheet twisted into a pattern.
Oliver, trembling with terror, straining against the invisible hands that held him, wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Along the edge of the dagger, the blood seemed to move on its own, forming into crimson lines, complex designs, revealing the steel beneath. Steel that gleamed brighter than the reflected light of the moon warranted.
William noticed it as well and his hand froze. He stared at the animated liquid.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, like he was wondering at their mechanical carriage coming to a stop in unexpected traffic.
The pressure on Oliver’s arms and legs vanished. Arms still raised above his head, he blinked at his uncle.
William shrugged and then swung the dagger down, aiming for the center of Oliver’s chest.
Flinging himself to the side, Oliver stumbled out of the way, the steel dagger striking iron, a shower of sparks garishly lighting the cold rooftop.
“Spirits forsake it!” cried William.
Oliver scrambled back, glancing around wildly, unable to spot any of his uncle’s shades in the dark of the night. He couldn’t find any weapons, either, or anything at all he could use to defend himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his uncle place the tainted dagger between his teeth and clap his hands on the golden, rune etched bands he wore on his forearms.
Nothing happened.
William’s eyes were wide, and Oliver stared at him for half a breath. Then, he charged.