by Nix, Garth
“Just the lightest touch,” said Terciel. “You do the same to me.”
Elinor raised her own hand, her finger half curled, and gingerly reached up. An inch from the glowing mark on his forehead, she stopped.
“Yes,” said Terciel. “Now.”
Elinor hesitantly touched his mark, expecting to feel soft skin, and to be awkward about that, to be touching a young man in any way and any place, no matter how lightly, and to be touched so herself.
But it wasn’t anything like she expected, or could have expected. She didn’t feel the touch at all, or Terciel’s fingertip against her forehead. Instead, all her senses were overwhelmed. The world disappeared, all sight and sound cut off. She saw only Charter marks, millions and millions of brilliant glowing marks all around her, stretching into infinity, and she heard sounds that did not exist, and she felt an astonishing mixture of excitement, fear, and a sense of contentment all at once, and she knew, she knew to the very marrow of her bones, that she was part of this vast, limitless Charter, and so was everything and everyone else, Terciel and Ham and the woman who must be the Abhorsen, and the little fish in the ghyll, and the ghyll itself, the rocks and the water, and the field beyond and the weeds in the garden and the sky above and the stars and . . . everything . . . everything . . . everything . . .
Chapter Five
Terciel snatched his hand away and jumped forward to catch Elinor as she fainted. He laid her carefully on the ground, using her scarf to make a pillow.
“Unsurprising,” said Tizanael coolly. “It would be a great shock to have borne the mark so long but never felt the Charter proper. She will sleep for some time, I judge. Come, Terciel. We must immolate the bodies and get after that Fifth Gate Rester.”
“I should carry her to . . . um . . . shelter,” said Terciel. He looked over to the burning house and did not need to add that there probably would not be any shelter if the fire continued.
“Can you do anything to stop the fire?” asked Ham anxiously. “The house is done for, but the stables should still be safe for a little while. My room is there. I’ve heard you can shift the wind and make rain . . .”
Terciel cocked an eyebrow at Tizanael.
“The wind is already changing,” she said. “Whoever summoned it has lost or relinquished their hold.”
“Even I could probably encourage this drizzle to do more,” said Terciel. “But you could do it best, Great-Aunt.”
“Always ‘Great-Aunt’ when you want something,” said Tizanael, with a swift glance down at Elinor. “These people are not in our charge. We are south of the Wall.”
“But we let them be bait for the trap against us,” argued Terciel. “I think we owe them something. More rain is not so much, surely?”
“Do not become sentimental,” said Tizanael. “An Abhorsen cannot afford it.”
“It would be practical, too,” said Terciel quickly. “If you can bring a heavy rain and extend it northward, it will hamper that Fifth Gate Rester. Urhrux. Or any other Dead that may have been raised.”
“Your horse is in the closest box in the stable to the house,” Ham pointed out. “If it hasn’t kicked the door down and fled. Though mebbe you don’t really need horses.”
“We could ride double, Aunt—”
“Hmmph,” said Tizanael. “Begin upon the bodies. I will see what I can do with the rain.”
She lifted her arms above her head and whistled, strange notes that Ham had never heard come from a human mouth, and he was no mean whistler himself. With the sound came glowing Charter marks that spilled from her lips and sped into the air, shooting up into the sky like festive rockets, disappearing into the smoky cloud.
A few feet from her, Terciel drew several marks upon the body of Mrs. Watkins. The last one he cupped in his hand and held, turning to Ham.
“She was a relative of yours? I thought I saw a likeness.”
“My niece,” said Ham heavily. “Roberta. Though she liked to be called by her husband’s name. Watkins, he was, Theodric Watkins. I suppose the name was the only thing he left her. She remembered him more fondly than he deserved.”
“Farewell, Roberta Watkins,” said Terciel. “Do not look back.”
He let the last mark fall from his hand. It landed as a glowing ember in the bloodied hollow of her neck, there was a whoosh, sparks flew, and then she was entirely consumed in fire, all of her—clothes, flesh, and bone—reduced to fine ash in a single second, and in another second, the fire winked out as if it had never been.
A moment later, the rain suddenly intensified, from a faint drizzle to a heavy, beating fall, coming down fast and cold. Tizanael grunted in satisfaction and strode over to the nearest Dead Hand, and began to sketch the marks that would immolate the body so it could not be used again.
This did not stop her from looking at Terciel with a glare that could only mean “hurry up!”
Terciel had been about to bend down and pick up the girl. He sighed and stepped back from her, acknowledging to himself an odd feeling of protectiveness, not something he had ever felt before. He wanted to take Elinor to safety, to wake her up and tell her everything would be all right, to talk to her and try to make her smile. But Tizanael was quite right. There was no time to waste.
“Can you take the girl?” Terciel asked Ham. He eyed the old man doubtfully. Ham was still gazing at the thin layer of ash that was all that was left of his niece. It had already mixed with rain and earth to form a grayish rivulet that was flowing down into the ghyll.
“Aye,” said Ham. He bent down slowly, but lifted Elinor easily enough, cradling her in his arms. “There’s not so much of Miss Elinor. All wire and gumption, but no weight. You sure she’ll take no harm from this Charter business?”
Terciel didn’t answer for a moment. He stepped closer, wiping the rain from his face. It had already begun to quench the fire, but even more smoke billowed up from the house.
“Not physically,” he said at last. “But now that she knows what she was meant to be part of . . . she may yearn to know the Charter again.”
“More to worry her,” said Ham regretfully. He resettled Elinor to be sure he held her securely, and stepped onto the log bridge. There was a flash of sudden light off to one side, refracted by the rain, as Tizanael immolated another bog corpse.
Terciel glanced at his great-aunt, who had moved on to another corpse and doubtless was on the verge of a caustic comment to get him to attend to the task, then stepped closer again.
“If she needs assistance in that particular,” he said quickly and almost too quietly for Ham to hear over the drumming rain, “tell her to go to Magistrix Tallowe at Wyverley College and say her grandmother was Myrien of the Clayr. Tallowe is also of that descent. They would be distant cousins, of some sort.”
“Aye,” said Ham. “I’ll tell her.”
He strode across the bridge. Terciel watched for a second, then went to the closest Dead Hand and began to call out marks for fire, sleep, cleansing, and peace, sketching them in the air above the ancient bog-preserved corpse.
When Elinor woke up, she was momentarily bewildered. She was lying on a narrow bed, not her own; there was a strong smell of smoke, and she was fully clothed, missing only her shoes. It took her a few seconds to realize the bed was Ham’s, in his loft above the stables. She was lying under a patchwork quilt, one Mrs. Watkins had lovingly sewn over many months from various odds and ends of unsalvageable clothing.
Mrs. Watkins. Elinor felt a sob rising up from deep inside. She buried her face in the quilt and let it capture a short, barking cry of grief. She didn’t want to wake Ham up. He was asleep in his big armchair near the sole window of the loft, which looked out over the courtyard. Rain drummed on the tiled roof and peppered the glass. The curtains were drawn but not fully closed, and a single slippery ray of sunshine slid through the gap, though it was hard to tell the time of day.
Elinor slid off the bed. Her legs felt weak, and she tottered a few steps before she steadied herself. H
er first thought had been to look out the window, but on the way there, her eye had caught her own reflection in Ham’s small shaving mirror, which hung on a nail from one of the exposed posts, above the stand that held his washbasin. He got his hot water from the kitchen in the metal can that was stashed below the washstand. Or he had, Elinor thought. The kitchen must have burned along with the rest of the house.
She stepped closer to the mirror and pushed her hair back from her forehead. The scar . . . no, the Charter mark . . . was different now. It shone with a soft golden light, and Elinor wondered how she had ever been convinced it was a scar or burn, something ugly to be hidden. She sniffed back more tears. Angry ones this time, at what her mother had done to her.
Ham stirred in his armchair, and looked over. Elinor had never seen him look like he did now. Beaten down, and showing his true age. But he smiled fondly at Elinor and started to lever himself out of the chair. It was cold in the room, the small iron stove in the corner lit but the fire within almost burned out, only a few glowing coals visible through the grille. Ham always moved slower in the cold.
“Don’t get up!” said Elinor swiftly. “You shouldn’t have given me your bed, Ham.”
“Nowhere else to put you, Miss Elinor,” said Ham, ignoring her protest. He got himself upright and stretched, reaching for the ceiling, flexing his clever juggler’s hands. “The house is completely gone.”
Elinor crossed to the window and twitched the curtains open a little wider so she could see out. It was near sunset, she saw now, though the sun was mostly obscured by drifts of rain and cloud. Individual tendrils of smoke still rose from the house from small buried pockets of fire, but no great billowing column, and she saw no visible flames. Eventually the rain would get in everywhere and put out whatever embers remained.
“Yesterday all I was thinking about was Love Laments Loss,” said Elinor. “And now . . . Wattie is dead. And Mother. And Maria. And Cook. And my home is destroyed. Not that it was much of a home in some ways, I suppose. Wattie did her best to make it one for me, but . . . and all the time, my mother telling me the mark on my forehead was a horrible scar!”
Ham shifted uneasily behind her.
“We should have told you about that,” he said. “Only Roberta never would go against Mrs. Hallett, your mum. And I wouldn’t go against Roberta.”
“I know, Ham,” said Elinor sadly. “I don’t hold it against you, or Wattie.”
She looked at the house again.
“I suppose I should be doing something. I should tell someone what happened. Or at least tell them about the fire. I suppose . . . I suppose I’ll have to say that’s what killed everyone—”
She bit back a sob.
“Constable Goodwin will be up from the village soon enough,” said Ham awkwardly. “He’ll have been waiting for the wind to change. Even down here they know not to go out when the north wind blows.”
“The north wind, bringing magic with it,” said Elinor, almost to herself. She touched the mark on her forehead, and felt an echo of that incredible connection, the joining she had experienced when she had touched Terciel’s mark and been drawn into the Charter. “So much to know . . .”
Ham cleared his throat.
“The young one. That Terciel. When you keeled over, he said summat about if you needed help with the magic, the Charter and all that, then you should go to Magistrix Tallowe at Wyverley College and tell her you’re the granddaughter of Myrien of the Clayr. She’s a Clayr, too, Tallowe. You’re some sort of cousins.”
“Cousins?” asked Elinor, surprised. She knew her father had a pair of ancient, estranged aunts in Corvere, but had never heard of any other relations on either side of the family. “And what does ‘of the Clayr’ mean? I thought it was Grandmother’s surname.”
“I don’t know, Miss Elinor,” said Ham. “I’m only telling you what he said. Terciel.”
“Terciel,” repeated Elinor. He lingered in her mind, a sudden, vital presence who had changed everything. Or maybe he had simply coincided with it. “He’s . . . they’ve gone, I suppose?”
Ham nodded. “North, after they burned up all the bodies. Going after that . . . that thing. He said it would try to get back to the Old Kingdom, because it couldn’t exist here once the wind changes.”
“Has the wind changed?”
“It’s winnering about,” said Ham. “Slowly turning southeast, I reckon.”
“But unlike the wind, everything else can’t go back to how it was,” said Elinor dully. “I wonder—”
She stopped, mid-sentence. Several drops of rain had pooled together on the lower-right pane of glass in the quartered window, and the setting sun hit this limpid circle in such a way that it filled with color and for a few seconds it seemed to be a picture, or a photograph, though Elinor knew there were no color photographs and this was certainly glorious color. She realized with a shock that it was herself she was looking at, but not as she was now. It wasn’t some kind of reflection. She looked older somehow, and was wearing strange clothes, some sort of leather armor, and her hair was shorter and . . .
Another raindrop ran down the glass and exploded the temporary pool, the picture fragmenting, water and sunshine once more separate things. Elinor blinked. She’d occasionally had visions like this when she was small, seen pictures in water, on the frosted lawn, in an icicle that hung from a punctured gutter, but not for years. Mrs. Watkins had called them “fancies” and chuckled at Elinor’s imagination. When Mrs. Hallett had heard it mentioned, she had made Ham go and break off all the icicles, and the gutter had been mended. Elinor had forgotten. It had been a long time ago.
Something else caught her eye, something outside, not on the glass. A flash of movement, breaking through the haze of rain.
“There’s someone by the corner of the house,” she said to Ham, lowering her voice even though there was no chance anyone outside could hear her over the rain.
“Probably that Constable Goodwin or someone from the village,” replied Ham. He came over next to her and pulled the curtain back so he could see as well.
“I don’t think so,” said Elinor. Her forehead twitched, and she touched the mark there again. “Why would they skulk by the corner like that?”
Ham didn’t answer for a moment, staring out the window, his old but bright eyes intent. Then he opened his coat and took out one of his sharp throwing knives and handed it to Elinor, before taking out another himself. He had four altogether, two on each side in special lined pockets.
The skulking figure must have seen the movement, or sensed their presence. A man, a thin, balding man, his scalp all shiny from the rain. He stepped out into the courtyard and looked straight at them. He was an unprepossessing figure physically, in a sodden military overcoat over a farm laborer’s serge jacket and trousers, with heavy boots. But somehow he made Elinor shiver, a shiver that intensified as she saw a heavy raindrop slide down his forehead and, as it did so, reveal a mark that had been hidden until that moment.
Not a warm and glowing Charter mark, this was a scar—a scar like a segmented worm half-buried in the flesh. As Elinor stared in horror down at the man, the scar moved and writhed.
The man smiled, an unfriendly smile, and reached inside his coat. His hand snapped out with a revolver.
Ham pushed Elinor roughly aside. Falling, Elinor heard the bang, the window shattering, and the thud of a heavy bullet striking flesh. Instinctively she did as Ham had taught her long ago, tucking in her head, relaxing into the fall and turning it into a roll that not only dissipated the force of the fall but also took her away from the window. She held on to her knife, turning it outward so she would not stick herself.
Ignoring various pains, she rolled over, looking anxiously for Ham. He was lying on his back by the window, not moving. There was a bullet wound above his nose, a sharply delineated hole where no hole should be. His head lay back at a gross angle, because much of the back of it was missing, and there was already a pool of blood beneath him, spread
ing fast. He still held his knife, but there was no more life in his hands, those dexterous juggler’s hands that could catch and throw anything back.
Anything except a bullet.
Swallowing down a sob, Elinor crawled over on her elbows and took another knife from inside Ham’s coat, then slithered toward the rough staircase that led down to the stable proper. At the top she stopped to listen. If she saw the man, she would throw one knife and charge with the other, she thought. He might have some magic that protected him from thrown knives, and the wind might not have changed enough.
At first all she could hear was the steady drumbeat of the rain on the roof. Then she heard soft footsteps on the cobbled floor of the stable below. The man—or whatever he was—must be sneaking in through the barn doors at the south end, which had been ajar for years.
Elinor took a breath to steady herself, readied her knife, and kept listening. He would step into the stair cautiously, no doubt, at the corner there . . . and she would put a knife in his eye. If she could do it before he shot. He had been very fast.
The faint scuffing sounds continued below, but the man did not appear. Suddenly, the Charter mark on her forehead stung her, and the scuffling noises vanished, to be replaced by another noise, right behind her. She spun around, but the thin man was already upon her, gripping her wrists with hands that burned like fire. She kicked him, as Mrs. Watkins had taught her, aiming straight for the groin, but he turned sideways and took it on his hip and he twisted her wrists until she had to drop the knives and effortlessly he threw her down the steps.
She rolled again as she hit the steps a third of the way down and kept rolling, and when she landed at the bottom she instantly sprang up and ran, not taking a moment to catalogue her hurts or scream protests or lie sobbing or any of the other things a young woman who had not had the benefit of Ham’s circus training would presumably do.