by Nix, Garth
“I spoke truly,” said Terciel. He hesitated, then added, “But if that Greater Dead creature directs them, it is likely they’ll try to dam the ghyll upstream.”
“A Greater Dead creature?” asked Mrs. Watkins. Elinor could see from the set of her jaw and the tone how much effort it took to keep her voice from trembling.
“Something powerful from the far reaches of Death, a Fifth Gate Rester or the like,” said Terciel grimly. “Come into Life again, which it should not. It is the thing inside your mother’s corpse. And there it is.”
The creature that stepped out through the garden gate and stood behind the line of Lesser Dead in the field no longer looked much like Amelia Hallett. The Dead spirit within had begun to corrode and warp the flesh, had stretched the body like a wax doll to make it taller and thinner. Its neck was twice as long as any human’s, and its fiery mouth now extended all the way across its face, from ear to ear. The heliotrope nightgown was too short and had split into separate, trailing strands, doing little to cover the pallid, bluish flesh beneath. Its arms had also grown, and the nails on its hands were several inches long and viciously curved.
It raised one taloned hand and pointed at the small group around the bonfire, just as the roof of Coldhallow House fell into the fire and a massive eruption of flame and sparks blew up into the sky.
“The water will not save you, Abhorsen!” shrieked the creature. There was still a faint, horrible echo of Amelia Hallett’s speech in its otherwise otherworldly voice. It gestured to its servants, commanding them. In answer, the Dead Hands moved like a tide, swarming up against the garden wall, ripping the stones away wherever they were loose. With a thundering crash, a good third of the wall came down all at once, head-sized stones tumbling and smashing down among the creatures. Long-dead flesh was crushed and bones splintered, but they did not care. Gathering up the loose stones, the Hands turned to stream across the field toward the ravine. Some, the most badly crushed, crawled or hopped behind, each still lugging a stone in obedience to their master.
Elinor felt sick to her stomach, but she also couldn’t look away. She noted that the Greater Dead thing did not advance with its minions, but stayed back close to the wall, and she felt grateful for that. The lesser creatures were bad enough.
Terciel drew his panpipes and stepped forward to the edge of the ghyll. The water below moved swiftly, but it was not deep. There were several dozen Dead Hands coming, and though they were dropping as much earth as they carried, were generally stupid, and several would probably fall in, he figured they would be able to dam the watercourse quite quickly.
“Come on, Auntie,” he muttered desperately as he considered which pipe to blow, and wished he had his bells.
Chapter Four
As the line of Dead Hands reached the other side of the ghyll and began to throw the stones into the stream below, Terciel blew upon the shortest and least of the pipes, the one corresponding to the bell Ranna. The Sleeper, the bell who brought quiet rest. He tried to direct its power forward, so as not to catch Elinor and the two old folk, but he daren’t look back or break his concentration as he blew. Like the bell, the pipe imbued with Ranna’s power could send him to sleep if he got distracted.
The pipe’s sweet lullaby sounded across the field, surprisingly drowning out the crackle and bang of the fire. There was an enormous blaze now, the house fully alight and the fir coloring all the clouds above with angry red. The drizzle continued to fall, but it was not heavy enough to extinguish or even to slow the flames.
Several Dead Hands crumpled at Ranna’s sound, the guiding spirits within the ancient bog flesh sinking into unconsciousness. Three of them tumbled down the side of the ghyll into the water, but though the running water sent the spirits within into Death, this actually made things worse, as the remnant bodies washed up against the stones to speed the building of a makeshift dam.
This unexpected result distracted Terciel for a moment. A wave of weariness came over him, his knees buckled and he almost fell, but he managed to still the pipe, snatching it away from his mouth and catching his fall by leaning on his sword, sticking it point first in the dirt like some ordinary walking stick. No way to treat a blade, particularly one so old and redolent with Charter Magic. It was a named weapon, too, Rorqualin. He hoped it would not take the mistreatment amiss, as he hastily stood upright and pulled the tip free.
Elinor rushed to his side.
“What can we do?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we run away?”
“No,” said Terciel. “The Dead are swift in pursuit. And we have a part to play here.”
“A part?” asked Elinor. She heard the near panic in her own voice and took a deep breath. She was always playing heroes in her greenhouse theater, or coolheaded competents at the least. Sir Merivan would not falter here, nor Queen Rosalind from The Siege of Thrame. She had to be like them. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” said Terciel hurriedly. He thrust the panpipes into his pocket. “Take up the torches. Most Dead fear fire, for their flesh is dry and will kindle easily. These bog creatures may be more difficult . . . but in any case, stand by me and try to force them back. If we’re lucky, the dam will not hold, and we should . . . may have help soon.”
“Miss Elinor and I can throw knives,” said Ham. “I’ve brought the sharp ones, miss.”
Terciel shook his head.
“The Dead feel no pain. They do not bleed,” he said. “Knives are useless. Take up the torches.”
Ham had prepared several torches, wrapping sackcloth around dead branches gleaned from the fringe of the copse. Elinor took one and thrust it in the fire, turning it so it caught well alight. She was pleased to see her hand was not shaking.
“Spread out. Push them back,” instructed Terciel.
The Dead had worked quickly to build their dam, and the stream had begun to back up and pool behind it, leaving little more than a trickle downstream, though even this appeared to deter the Dead from crossing. Some were going back across the field to collect more stones, but at least a dozen crouched on the opposite side of the ghyll, like dogs waiting to be unleashed.
“You’re not going to use those pipes again?” asked Elinor.
“They aren’t strong enough,” said Terciel. “There are too many Dead. Stand ready!”
The Dead rushed down into the now dry stream below the dam and started clambering up, many on all fours, scrabbling at the ground and pushing one another aside in their eagerness to take the lives of those opposite. Lives that would help them stay in Life longer, sustain them for a few more deeply desired hours in the living world.
Terciel hacked at their hands and legs, the Charter marks on his sword blazing, silver sparks streaming wherever he struck. Ham had a flaming brand in each hand, and he spun them around to deliver ferocious blows against two Dead creatures at the same time. Mrs. Watkins thrust with her torch as if it were a stout umbrella, pushing the flaming end into a Dead Hand’s face. It recoiled and fell back on the wrong side of the dam, where the water swirled as it rose higher and higher against the blockage. The Hand squealed like a stuck pig and thrashed, but the spirit was banished and the corpse left behind curled into immobility. But the stream picked it up and pushed it against the rocks, to make the dam more secure.
Elinor swung her torch two-handed, like the chieftain Ruhan Ard-Ruhan in Treedmuir’s Last King of the West, complete with the bloodcurdling yell she’d used when playing the part. She smacked one Dead Hand down into the ghyll, ducked under another one’s attempt to grab her, and kicked it in the kneecap as she scuttled back. As it lurched forward, she executed a perfect thrust to its chest that sent it into the ghyll, arms windmilling and teeth gnashing the air.
A second later, the first five Dead Hands that had crossed the ghyll were down, their motivating spirits either banished into Death or their physical forms so badly dismembered they could not get back up. But there were many more already charging across, and they had spread out along the ghyll so they wou
ld outflank the few defenders almost immediately.
“Get behind the bonfire!” shouted Terciel, stepping back even as the Dead raced up the side of the ghyll. Elinor and Ham obeyed instantly, but Mrs. Watkins stumbled and fell to one knee.
“Eli—”
Her cry was smothered as a Dead Hand leapt upon her, slamming her flat. A moment later all the closest Hands were worrying at the fallen governess, teeth snapping and taloned hands rending. Killing the living gave them the strength to stay in Life, and they were all greedy for it.
Ham yanked Elinor back as Terciel drew more symbols with his sword in the air and his left hand, a long chain that he threw upon the bonfire, even as Elinor struggled to get free of Ham and charge forward to do something, anything, for Mrs. Watkins, even knowing it was already too late.
The chain of marks fell on the bonfire and exploded back out again as dozens of brilliant, shining red-gold spears, thrusting up to make a palisade between Terciel, Ham, and Elinor and the Dead. The creatures shied back from this fence as if they feared the spears even more than fire, though Elinor could feel no heat from them, only from the bonfire, which still burned beneath the magical fence.
But the palisade extended no more than a dozen feet in a straight line, and the Dead were already swarming around each end.
“Back to back!” commanded Terciel. The three survivors stumbled together, shoulders touching. Elinor held her torch high, ready to strike. Terciel lifted his sword, and Ham spun his two flaming brands.
They all knew they could not last long, not against so many Dead.
I’m going to die, thought Elinor. Thoughts were racing through her mind like panicked mice discovered in the pantry, fleeing in all directions. In the next half a minute, perhaps even less, and I haven’t managed to really do anything and there is so much I don’t know, including all the things I’ve just discovered I didn’t know, to do with the North, and the Old Kingdom, and the magic, and that girls’ school, and who was Grandmother anyway—
The Dead charged forward, and every thought vanished, every part of Elinor’s being focused on swinging her torch, on keeping the terrible creatures that rushed at her away.
“Auntie!” shouted Terciel, which Elinor thought was a very odd thing to be someone’s choice of a final word.
But his shout was answered. Not with a human voice, but the sudden, immensely powerful toll of a deep bell. Elinor felt it through her entire body as much as she heard the strange, multilayered voice that was akin to the pipe Terciel had blown in the house, as a great wave upon the sea is to a ripple on a lake.
The Dead creatures who had been about to attack stiffened and stopped in place. Elinor looked wildly around her and saw that all the Dead Hands—those close by, those crossing the ghyll, the ones in the field—all of them were motionless, bizarre statues backlit by the flickering red light from the burning house. Held in place by the implacable force of the bell known as Saraneth, the Binder.
Another bell sounded, even as the first bell’s tolling still echoed. This one was lighter, and livelier, and Elinor felt her feet do an involuntary little dance. A sudden urge to walk came upon her, to stride out, somewhere, anywhere. She resisted, but the Dead did not, or could not, and they were being given very specific directions as to where they were to go.
The second bell was Kibeth, the Walker, and the one who wielded it used Kibeth’s power to make the spirits inside the ancient bodies walk into Death, there to be gathered up by the swift waters of the river and tumbled through the gates to the Ninth Gate and beyond, to final death.
Only the Fifth Gate Rester, the Greater Dead, was strong enough—and far enough away—to resist the compulsion. But it fled, leaping across the fallen garden wall to run back through the courtyard, skirting the great fire. It ran northward from there, its legs growing longer and more muscular, and its feet broader, the talons shrinking to become mere claws.
The palisade of golden spears vanished, leaving only a few shining marks that slowly drifted to the ground like feathers from an overplumped pillow, and vanished. The bonfire flared up once, twice, and then fell into itself and went out, sending up a stream of smoke to join the great pall that was spreading overhead from the burning house.
Elinor ran to where Mrs. Watkins lay and knelt by her side. The governess was clearly dead, her neck chewed almost through, her dress sodden with blood. She had a surprised expression on her face. Ham knelt slowly by Elinor, his knees clicking. He reached over and gently closed his niece’s eyes.
“It was quick,” he said quietly, almost to himself. He looked back past Elinor at Terciel. “She won’t . . . she won’t become one of . . .”
He gestured at the fallen Dead about the place.
“Her spirit, too, was caught by Kibeth’s call,” said Terciel. He was quite matter-of-fact, like Ham explaining to Elinor how a particular knife trick worked. Purely mechanical, with no emotion. “She will safely die the final death. And we will burn all the bodies, so they cannot be used as they have been.”
“She should be buried properly, with a gravestone and . . . and all that,” said Elinor dully. She wanted to look away from the governess’s face, now so slack and strange without the animating force of life, but she could not. Mrs. Watkins was . . . had been . . . her dearest, closest friend and companion. Closer to her than her own mother. Who was also dead.
The realization struck Elinor with renewed force.
Her mother was dead.
Mrs. Watkins was dead.
She took a long, shuddering breath and forced herself not to burst into tears.
“No,” said Terciel. “You have seen what can inhabit buried corpses. Even here, if the wind comes strongly from the North. There is a Charter spell to ensure complete immolation, a simple one. You would have learned it yourself if you’d been taught properly.”
“Have you tested her mark?”
Elinor flinched and snapped around to see who had spoken. A woman stood by Terciel. She was taller than him by several inches, older by many decades at the least, her face cold and hard, her skin even more strangely pale than the young man’s, her hair as black, but cut very short. Like Terciel, this woman had the same mark upon her forehead. It was glowing, golden, and somehow comforting. Elinor wondered if her brand was glowing like that, too. It never had before. Or not so she’d noticed.
The old woman also wore a military-style waterproof cape, but the clothing under it was out of the history books—a coat of armored plates, and over it a leather sash or shoulder belt arrayed with flapped pouches or holsters that clearly contained handbells, the mahogany handles hanging down and exposed, a curious arrangement that meant the bells had to be drawn up and out by opening the flap and gripping the clapper inside the bell. Charter marks, shadowy, faint ones, moved across the handles of the bells.
She had a sword in a scabbard at her side, a battered old weapon with an emerald in the pommel. The scabbard and the weapon also crawled with faint Charter marks, marks that changed shape and melded together and spun out as new marks, and as Elinor watched, one or two briefly shone brighter before dimming back to a faint glow. She wanted to touch them, to know about them. But at that same time she felt this attraction, Elinor instinctively knew they could be dangerous.
Much like the old woman, and to a lesser extent, Terciel. Everything about them spoke of power and violence. Contained and controlled, but there, ready to be used.
Elinor shivered, and found it hard to stop that turning into the full-blown shakes. But she managed it, though she had to look away from Mrs. Watkins, up to the smoky sky. No drizzle fell upon her face, but her cheeks were wet.
“No, I haven’t checked her mark yet, Tizanael,” said Terciel evenly, in the voice of a student who resents being told what to do all the time, to a teacher.
This had to be the Abhorsen herself, Elinor realized. Whatever that meant. And she was Terciel’s aunt. Or great-aunt.
“Do so, at once,” ordered Tizanael. “We have no time to w
aste. You are too trusting. Some mortal accomplice has been at work here. It could be her.”
“What?” asked Elinor indignantly. “Me?”
“It’s not painful or anything,” soothed Terciel. “I simply need to touch your baptismal mark, and at the same time, you touch mine. If they are unsullied, not false marks set to deceive, then we feel the presence of the Charter. Weaker here, of course, so far from the Wall, even with this wind. But there will be no doubt.”
“There will be plenty of doubt!” snapped Elinor. “I have no idea what you are talking about! What is the Charter, to begin with? And how can touching the scar on my forehead do anything?”
“It isn’t a scar,” said Terciel. “And the Charter . . . the Charter describes the world, and everything in it. It underlies all things. The mark on my forehead, the marks you saw me use to change some part of the world, to bring fire or deny the Dead, all these are part of the Charter. If you know the marks to call, to draw or describe, then you can order or change almost everything, within the constraints of what the Charter wills. That is Charter Magic.”
“My scar is magic?”
“Terciel has already told you it is not a scar,” said Tizanael impatiently. “Hurry up. We must dispose of the bodies here and get after Urhrux.”
“You already know its name?” asked Terciel, surprised.
“I went into Death to examine who had passed through here. That was why I was a little late,” replied Tizanael grudgingly. She paused, then added, “Urhrux was not acting of its own volition. So hurry up.”
Terciel nodded, looked around carefully as if he might see some hidden enemy, then looked at Elinor. She stood up slowly and glanced at Ham, who nodded gently, as if to say this was all right. Tizanael looked around, sniffing the air, her hand resting on the pommel of her sword.
Terciel strode close to Elinor and lifted his hand, forefinger extended, stopping an inch from her forehead. She grimaced, seeing him looking there. It was hard to fight the years of her mother telling her to keep her forehead covered, that the brand there was a scar, a particularly unsightly one that would disgust people.