by E. E. Holmes
I felt every eye in the place flick toward Marguerite, watching the glowing current of energy that now tied her and the Geatgrima together.
“Your sister shares your Gateway now, not just with you, but with the Geatgrima itself. This means that every Caomhnóir in this courtyard is now sworn to protect the Geatgrima as a vessel of the Gateway every bit as much as they are sworn to protect you as the same.”
Simone’s eyes flashed at me and I knew that she, too, had finally understood what I was trying to say.
I went on, “The Gateway needs protection now more than ever. It needs to be protected from the Necromancers, who would seek to control it. It needs to be protected from the Casting which has trapped it for too long within living bodies. And, I am sorry to say, it now needs protection from you.”
Simone threw back her head and laughed. “Protection? From me? That’s where you’re wrong, you foolish girl. I am the Gateway.”
“And the moment we began to believe that is the moment we lost our way,” I said. Then, before anyone could stop me, I ran to the Geatgrima and stood upon the dais, so that everyone could see me. Several Caomhnóir started forward, but no one dared approach close enough to touch me, knowing what had happened to their comrades who had touched Marguerite.
“Listen, all of you, because everything I’m about to say is true, and I can prove it,” I said, battling to keep the fear from my voice, trying to channel my sister, the way she commanded the Grand Council Room when she made her case to be on the Council. No one could doubt the sincerity and authority in her voice that day, and I couldn’t afford for anyone to doubt mine now.
“Many centuries ago, the Durupinen had to protect the Gateways from the Necromancers. And so, we created a Casting that would strip them from their rightful place in the Geatgrimas, and put them in the safest place we could conceive of: our own bloodlines.”
I waited patiently through the outbreak of murmuring that followed. “It is true. Your High Priestess will not deny it. The Necromancers here will not deny it. After all, it is one of the reasons they have fought against us for so long; because they have known all along that our gift is not our own.”
All around the courtyard, eyes were turning upon the place where Simone and Charlie stood, their faces stony. The yearning was palpable in the air for Simone to say something—anything—that would dispute what I had spoken. She remained silent.
“The Casting was meant to be temporary. When we deemed it safe, the Gateways were to be returned to the Geatgrimas. Therefore, a counter-Casting was also created, and the moment it was to be performed was known as the Reckoning.”
There was no murmuring now. The courtyard had gone suddenly, intently silent.
“But the Reckoning never came. We never returned the Gateways to their rightful place, even when we believed the Necromancers to be finished. Instead, we allowed the origins of our gift to remain buried, hoping, I suppose, that the moment would never come when we would have to face the truth and give it all up.
“But the Geatgrimas could not survive indefinitely, torn as they were from their true purpose. Now they are in imminent danger of collapse. Only the Sentinels keep them from destruction now, and unless we can perform the counter-Casting and restore the Gateways, the spirit world remains in grave danger of being cut off from the living world forever.”
The scarred Caomhnóir stepped forward. “How is it you know this?” he asked. “Why should we believe you?”
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” I said, shrugging. “Ask yourself why your High Priestess doesn’t shout me down. Ask yourself what her silence means.”
Simone began to laugh, low and quietly at first, but soon it rose to a wild shriek. “The source of our gift and how it came to us does not matter. The Gateways are where they are meant to be, and we will continue to protect them as ever we have.”
“But you haven’t been protecting them. You’ve been abusing them,” I said.
“Such lies,” Simone said, waving my words away with a disgusted gesture.
“Lies, are they?” I asked, before turning to Hannah. “Hannah, Call the spirits of Havre de Gardiennes. All of them.”
Her eyes widened. She looked absolutely horrified. “All of them? Are… are you sure?”
I gave her a reassuring nod. “Trust me.”
Hannah stepped forward into the space between the Caomhnóir and the Geatgrima. She closed her eyes and, within seconds, a tidal wave of cold swept the courtyard. Spirits were flooding into the space from every direction: through windows, through walls, up from the very ground itself, stripped of their will and unable to resist the slightest beckoning of her Call.
A strangled cry made me turn. Simone was staggering, stumbling. Charlie Parker caught her as she clutched at her chest. A faint shimmering substance seemed to be drifting out of her, like smoke off a fire.
Hannah faltered at the sound, and the spirits all halted where they were. She turned to look at Simone, who was fighting to recover herself.
“What’s happened? What are you doing to her?” Charlie shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Hannah, who looked bewildered. But Celeste had understood something, and she stepped forward, standing beside Hannah in solidarity.
“She is giving you all the proof you need that the High Priestess has committed the most grievous of crimes. The spirits that Hannah has called to this place are mere shells—Leeched over and over again of their very essence by the High Priestess. Rather than letting them Cross, she has forced them to remain behind to be Leeched repeatedly and used as slaves to do her bidding.”
It was clear from the expressions on the Caomhnóir faces around the clearing that they had been completely ignorant of why the spirits of Havre de Gardiennes were so obedient. If they had suspected it, they had kept such suspicions to themselves. They gazed up at the horde of expressionless ghosts with a kind of universal horror.
“When Hannah Calls the spirits, every part of them wants to obey, even the parts that Simone has stolen. You can see the very essence of them, being pulled from your High Priestess, who has sustained herself on them.”
Simone’s face was a mask of shock. Her hands went to her face, to her hair, to her chest. “You… you cannot Call them from me. Their essence is mine now! It… it is not possible.”
“Oh, but it is,” Celeste said, a triumphant ring in her voice. “You have so perverted the natural order, so decimated the rules, that they no longer apply.”
“And if you order your men to attack us,” Hannah added, her voice somehow distant in the midst of her Calling, “I will not hesitate to Call these spirits to our aid, and I promise you that every part of them within you will answer my Call.”
Simone seemed unable to answer. The thought that one word from Hannah could leave her shriveled and deteriorated to her true form had left her too horrified to speak.
“You dare threaten the High Priestess of the International High Council?” Charlie called out, still helping Simone to stand. “Her Guardians will never allow it.”
“Don’t you dare to presume what a Caomhnóir would or would not do, Necromancer,” Finn growled. “You tried to enlist us once, to turn us to your will. The strong amongst us ensured that you failed. And the Caomhnóir of Havre de Gardiennes are the strongest you will find anywhere. You question their integrity at your own peril.”
“And you question their loyalty at your own,” Charlie shouted back. He looked quite mad, now. He was watching his great coup, his final grasp for power crumbling before his eyes. He released his grip on Simone, who staggered and fell to one knee, but he ignored her. “And even if you think you are right, to gamble your life on Simone’s men, I assure you, it would be foolish indeed to gamble your life on mine. Seize the traitors! Defend the High Priestess!”
His cry rent the air and the masked men behind him sprang into action with lightning speed. All was chaos. The Caomhnóir, thrown off by the suddenness of the attack, scrambled to respond. They couldn’t po
ssibly know what side they were meant to be on, what or who they were fighting for—were they protecting us? Protecting the Geatgrima? Protecting Simone?
Hannah, however, knew exactly who she was fighting for. With a great summoning of her strength, she brought both hands high into the air and then thrust them apart, so that the spirits that hovered like a storm cloud over the courtyard broke off in every direction, Habitating, overpowering, disarming everyone they could reach. Under cover of the insanity, I looked all around the Geatgrima for some sign of what I was meant to do with the keys, and within seconds, I found it. Three rounded keyholes had been inlaid at the foot of the Geatgrima, right into the front of the top step of the dais. I gave a cry of relief and thrust my hand down the front of my sweater to retrieve the keys. I dropped to my knees just behind where Marguerite stood, still locked in connection with the Geatgrima. I separated the first key, the one I had gotten from Ileana, and inserted into the first of the keyholes, and turned it with a loud, decisive click. The outermost of the concentric circles of stones that made up the dais began to rotate with the deafening sound of grating stone.
“NO!” The shout distracted me, causing me to raise my head. From his place beside Simone, who was now writhing on the ground, Charlie Parker had spotted me in the chaos, recognized what I was doing, and was sprinting toward me, a flash of a blade raised in his right hand.
Time itself seemed to grind into slow-motion. I watched as a spirit flew past him, slamming into another masked Necromancer and blasting him off his feet. I saw from the corner of my eye that Hannah had spotted him, her eyes widening like windows into her greatest fear, and she reached out into the air for another spirit to fling in Charlie’s path, to slow him down. From directly across the courtyard, Finn looked up from his own battle at almost exactly the same moment. I felt rather than heard him cry out my name, saw him break into a run, hurling bodies out of the way in his fight to reach me. I stared wildly around for a way to defend myself, finding only the Casting bag and the other two keys within my reach. Faintly, I thought I could hear both Milo and Hannah, calling out to me through the connection, desperate to warn me of the danger I had already seen coming and could not avoid.
Finn was too far. Charlie was too close. The spirit Hannah was fighting to pull from the fray would never reach me in time. And as he bore down upon me, I saw that triumphant gleam once again in Charlie Parker’s eye, that surety that he was about to get exactly what he wanted, the revenge he had sought from the moment Neil Caddigan had gone sailing back through the Gateway.
His eyes went wide as mine closed, each of us expecting the same thing.
Neither of us expected Catriona.
With a cry like a wounded animal, she threw herself at him from over my left shoulder, sailing right over my head and colliding with him just as he raised his dagger toward me. A terrible flash of Lucida shot across my mind like a bolt of electricity and all I could think was “Oh God, no, not Cat, too.” But with military precision, Catriona caught hold of the arm that held the dagger, forced it around and thrust it, with a guttural cry, right up between Charlie Parker’s ribs and twisted it brutally. For one long moment, Charlie Parker stared right into Catriona’s eyes with a look of mild surprise on his face. Then she let go of him and he dropped to his knees and keeled over onto his side, his eyes finding me as his face hit the grass. He opened his mouth as though to say something to me, and then the spark in his eyes went dull.
“That was for Lucida, you irredeemable bastard,” Catriona muttered down at him. She looked up and caught my eye. “What are you waiting for, Jess!” she cried. “The keys!”
Her words jolted me back into the reality of everything else that was going on around me. Fumbling and cursing though my tears (though I didn’t remember starting to cry) I pulled the second key free, thrust it into the second keyhole, and twisted it. A second ring of stone ground into motion, moving in opposition with the first. A spirit shot past me, tossing my hair in an icy blast of energy. A Caomhnóir dropped to the grass near my foot, groaning. My hand shaking madly, I forced the last key into the final keyhole and turned it hard.
A third concentric circle of stone began to turn, and within the center of the dais, the solid central circle of stone, the one upon which Marguerite and the Geatgrima itself stood, began to rise slowly from the ground. The sight of the Geatgrima lifting into the air brought the battle around us to a screeching halt. Distracted by the sudden movement of what they all believed to be an ancient and immovable relic, the Caomhnóir and Necromancers all around the courtyard froze. A moment’s distraction was all it took for the spirits under Hannah’s control to overtake the remaining fighters, pinning them to the ground or else disappearing within their bodies and forcing them to drop their weapons.
Finn arrived at my side, gasping for breath, but unhurt. “This is it, isn’t it?” he asked. “The counter-Casting.” He pointed at the face of the stone that had risen up from deep within the earth. There, carved into the rock, were the instructions and incantation to restore the Gateway to the Geatgrima.
Catriona was scanning the Gaelic. “This can’t be right. It says it needs the blood of the creator of the original Casting in order to reverse it. The creators have been dead for centuries. How are we meant to—”
But I smiled, for I already understood. All the time I’d spent convinced that I was the absolute wrong person to be Agnes’ messenger melted away as this last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “She is dead, yes. But her bloodline isn’t.” I looked up and met Catriona’s eye. “Agnes was the Scribe who figured out how to perform the Casting. This is why she left the message for me, and not for anyone else. It had to be Clan Sassanaigh. The same blood that ran in her veins runs in mine.”
By now, the fight around us had been subdued. All around the courtyard, Necromancers lay injured or dead, or else bound up and captured. A number of Caomhnóir casualties could also be seen, though how many of them had fought for Simone and how many for the Geatgrima itself, there was no way to know. The spirits whom Hannah had called into service were gathering again above our heads, their task complete. I watched Hannah deep in concentration, limbs twitching, lips moving silently, exercising every ounce of control she had. On either side of her, Milo and Kiernan, who had somehow slipped his bonds, were poised, ready to defend her from any hint of an oncoming attack. Celeste, Ileana, and Annabelle had gathered behind her for protection, and Seamus had also fought his way out of captivity to join them, armed with weapons he had wrested from other Caomhnóir. I could have cried with relief at seeing all of them alive.
“Finn, give me your knife,” I said, holding an impatient hand out for it.
Finn hesitated, “Jess, you can’t possibly—”
“Finn, I’m not going to sacrifice myself on the altar, for God’s sake! I’m just going to cut myself!” I snapped. “It’s the only way, now hand it over!”
“All right, all right,” Finn said grudgingly, pulling the knife from its hilt and passing it to me with the handle out. “But mind you don’t touch Marguerite!”
He was right to warn me. Every eye in the courtyard was on me as I climbed up onto the central stone platform. There was dangerously little room for my feet to find purchase between Marguerite and the Geatgrima, and nowhere to grab hold and the sheer power of the Gateway flowing between them whipped around us like a strong wind, blowing my hair around my face and buffering me back and forth, keeping me constantly off balance. I repeated the Casting over and over under my breath; I would only have one chance to say it right.
I looked up at Marguerite, and in her rapt face, I saw Savvy, hundreds of miles away at Fairhaven. And it was of her and of Agnes that I thought as I raised the knife to my hand and dragged it across my palm, watching the blood and its stolen gift rise to the surface. And it was of my mother and Carrick that I thought of as I reached forward and pressed my hand to the Geatgrima, and watched the blood drip down the stones. And it was of the many spirits I’d guided thro
ugh the Gateway over the years—Evan, Pierce, the Silent Child, and hundreds and hundreds of others—that I asked forgiveness from for what the Durupinen had done as I looked up at the Geatgrima and prepared to speak the words that would bring about the Reckoning. And just as I opened my mouth to begin, two voices, clear and strong broke into my head, encouraging me: my sister and my Spirit Guide.
“We’re with you, Jess. Say them. Say the words.”
And so I did.
“Ó fuil, mo chuid fola, scaoil saor,
Ó feoil, mo chuid feola, athnuaigh,
Ó laistigh na cosantóirí. díghlasáil na geataí
Agus oscail go leathan greim an Aether,
Chun pasáiste sábhailte abhaile a athbhunaigh.” [1]
The very blood in my veins seemed to bubble. I gasped, falling to my knees. I looked down at my hands to see the same shimmering tendrils of energy that connected Marguerite to the Gateway rising up from my skin. My lungs felt frozen, my body tingling, my blood crying out in pain as the gift that had resided there for all of my life drained away, being pulled like a soul toward the Aether, toward the Geatgrima. And it was like exquisitely painful music singing in my ears, a lullaby of loss and of longing, of sorrow and of hope. And I knew that, at this moment, all over the world, the Aether was singing its Gateways home at last.
And then the Geatgrima itself lit up like a beacon, newly flooded with power, and the concentrated beam of its true purpose shot into the sky over our heads. I threw my hands up over my face as the beam exploded in a blinding shower of sparks, sending comets of spirit energy shooting in every direction and illuminating the sky as bright as day before being swallowed once again by the inky blackness of the night.
A sudden rushing of icy wind filled my ears and I looked up in time to see the empty spirit hordes of Havre de Gardiennes swirling like a hurricane around the Geatgrima below, marking the eye of the storm. And then, with a great howling of a thousand trapped souls, the spirit cloud spun faster and faster, forming a vortex as the spirits were pulled inexorably toward the newly restored Gateway, which had flung its doors wide open at long last to welcome them. A great funnel formed, and the spirits whirled faster and faster until the very last of them vanished through the archway and out of the living world.