Quinn did a jerky twist and saw that others—Max, Brand, Addam, Ciaran, and Mayan—were crowded in the corridor outside.
“I stored four Clarity spells,” Quinn said. “We’ll need them.”
Another detail I’d overlooked. Without some sort of spell to resist the fugue on the battleship, we’d be lost to the ghost visions. I should have warned Lord Tower—though likely he’d figured it out already, if he’d been there himself.
“And I may be able to help find the kids and Corinne quickly,” Quinn added, speaking now to Addam.
“I’m getting good at helping Quinn understand his visions,” Max jumped in. “This all started because of me. I want to be there. I want to help.”
“You are my useful brother,” Addam said to Quinn, and put a hand on the teenager’s head for just a moment, smoothing the cowlick. “But you are still so young. There is so much you need to learn about situations such as this.”
“This is part of that learning, Addam,” Quinn said softly.
For a second I saw that lost expression on Addam’s face, as he watched his brother get older before his eyes and move a little further away from where Addam was still standing.
Addam nodded.
“Then you all move out,” Mayan said briskly. I hadn’t even realized the Tower had left him behind—but then, he wasn’t the same sort of Companion to the Tower that Brand was to me. Mayan would need a stable location to order Lord Tower’s entire security unit into deployment.
Mayan looked over at Brand. “Reconsider?”
Brand paused, but shook his head. Mayan looked disappointed at that, but accepted it. “I’ll make sure Jirvan is put in custody. Go. Hurry. I’ll keep trying to raise Lord Tower. They won’t wait long.”
“Roof,” Lady Death said, and pushed through the bottleneck in the doorway.
We moved in mass after her.
Brand was with me in the rear, so I whispered, “What was that with Mayan?”
“He wanted me to stay behind and organize backup with him.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised, and maybe a little uncomfortable.
Brand looked over at me. “You’re not going to be like every other Arcana? I’m not going to be like every other Companion. I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
I let it rest. I wasn’t entirely sure why Mayan wanted Brand to remain behind, but, then again, this wasn’t the first time in the last few days I’d misunderstood the undercurrents around Atlantis Companions.
Lady Death led us up a private stairwell to the hospital roof, where a small garden had been planted. The nature sprites tending the trees and shrubbery chittered excitedly as we burst out the door, flitting to the top branches and shedding excited sparkles of light.
Lady Death marched up to a large frothing fountain. She looked at us over her shoulder and counted. “We’ll need to pair up. Odd man out gets his own steed.”
“Quite unnecessary,” Ciaran said. “I can move fast on my own. I’ll do my best to hold Lord Judgment from a hasty decision. Vaya con dios, dears.” He tapped a sigil on his neck—a pendant made of actual finger bones— and his suit ruffled with wind. He knelt down in a curtsy, and shot into the sky with a sonic pop. He did a wholly unnecessary figure eight above our heads, and cannonballed toward the north.
“Three steeds, then,” Lady Death murmured. She shifted her gaze to me. “You better be worth these gray hairs.”
She held out an arm. Her frost magic rose, forming shining rivulets of ice above the veins of her hand. The fountain’s moving waters stilled. From a spot in its center, the liquid froze solid with a tremendous crack, radiating outwards, creating jagged fracture lines in the stone wall of the basin. Chips of ice flew into the air in a glittering haze.
“Come to me,” she whispered. “Come to me. Come to me!”
This time, she used no sigil. What happened wasn’t frost magic, nor a manifestation of her Aspect. I could identify no actual source of power—it was just suddenly there, blindingly bright to my inner eye, focused entirely on the solid ice before us.
The surface of the fountain splintered into spikes. Through the broken surface, creatures climbed upward. Horses of solid ice, one after the other, until three translucent beasts had clattered onto the tiled rooftop.
The horses reared, throwing their head toward the skies. The ice split like a shell, revealing white stallions shining with a pearl-colored light.
It took me a moment to realize I was looking at the ghost steeds of the Bone Hollows—creatures passed down through Lady Death’s ancient bloodline. I still didn’t know how she’d summoned them, though there were ideas forming in the back of my head, tied to those words I’d heard. What was the Arcana Majeure?
“Where is this battleship? In the Green Docks, I know, but where?” Lady Death asked.
“Northern point,” Brand said. “Furthest ship out. Maybe a bit toward the northwest. You won’t see it, though, unless you’re as good as Rune at seeing weird shit. Just look for where the docks end.”
“We double up,” she said. “Riders with non-riders, if necessary. Mount.”
The seating resolved itself with minimal muttering and bad feelings. Quinn and Addam were experienced riders, as was Lady Death. Max paired up with Quinn, and I felt it was only polite to take the spot behind Lady Death. That left Brand having to let Addam take the lead. I felt it grate along our bond, but Brand had sunk into his bodyguard mode, so you’d never tell by looking at his face.
I clambered up behind Lady Death after returning my sabre to wrist-guard form—with a lot of graceless flailing, but I ended up facing the right way. It had been ten years or more since I’d ridden a horse.
But this was not a horse. There was no saddle on the ghost steed, and its back gave way in a manner completely unlike real flesh.
“Trust your steed,” Lady Death said. “It will find level ground. You only need to point it in the right direction, and it’ll move in a straight line. Whatever you do, don’t aim it at the center of the bloody earth, not unless you want to wind up as a very curious fossil a thousand years from now.”
“Are you listening?” I heard Brand asked Addam.
Lady Death dug her heels into our steed, which reared. She shouted, “Ta!” and we leapt off the roof.
I’d thought the horse would fly. It didn’t. It rocketed to the ground many, many stories beneath us. I felt the plunge in my stomach, but it was a curiously psychological sensation, the way your belly plunged when watching a roller coaster’s descent on a television. We may have landed on a million mattresses, for all the impact I felt in my spine.
The other two horses went straight down, vanishing beneath the parking lot pavement. Quinn popped up almost immediately; and Addam about ten anxious seconds later.
Lady Death aimed her horse toward the north and shouted, “Ta!”
And we were off, leaving a glowing, phantomlike trail behind us. No living mammal could move as fast as we did. No real mammal, for that matter, had such blasé disdain for things like walls or people. We moved in a straight line, phasing through any solid object. Through buildings, speeding cars, food vendors and pedestrians; through a bank vault with gold bars stacked in pyramids; through a men’s locker room, and then over the surface of an indoor lap pool. We moved so fast that I only caught the scenery in brief, fractional hesitations. In what couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, skyscrapers become an industrial neighborhood. We rode through a warehouse filled with half-assembled yachts, and over a series of muddy canals. The Green Docks appeared on the horizon, a motley collection of canvas sails and rigging rising toward a bright mid-morning.
Rather than urge our party toward the boardwalk, Lady Death took us along the surface of the ocean in a wide circle. Even that was another curiously blank sensation—I saw waves break along our steed’s hooves, but smelled no brine, felt no sea spray.
“There,” Lady Death said, and pointed off to the left. I spotted Ciaran first, in his bright suit. He was all but st
icking his finger up Lord Judgment’s nose. They were gathered just outside the influence of the magical barrier that Lord Hanged Man had erected around the ship.
Lady Death took us toward that section of the boardwalk, covering the last few yards in a fantastic leap. When all four hooves were on the scuffed green planks, she reached back and took my hand in a firm grip. The ghost steed melted beneath us, bottom-up, lowering us to our own feet as it did.
Behind me, Addam’s and Quinn’s horses did the same. Brand caught my eye as he regained his footing and, for just a second, I saw a little bit of my own wonder reflected in his eyes.
There was no time for more, though. I was not a sightseer to this moment; I was its catalyst. It was time to take ownership of what I’d set in motion.
“Lord Sun, we can’t be sure your subjects are on the ship,” Lord Judgment said as I approached.
“They are not subjects—they are children. I need time to find them.”
“Let me be clear. We’ve tried to create a barrier around the ship,” he said, and the faint whiff of patronization nearly made me show my teeth. “Whatever magic Lord Hanged Man has raised to shield the vessel from our eyes is uncooperative. In the absence of raising a shield, I have no other option. We must destroy it.”
“The shore is protected,” Ciaran said loudly, as if he’d been arguing the same point over and over again. “Lord Magician himself worked on its wards. Gunfire from a World War II—era weapon will not succeed.”
“That is the most obvious assumption, Ciaran,” Lord Tower said, “which is why it’s false. Lord Hanged Man knows something we do not. We must expect that the wards are compromised.”
“I have made my decision,” Lord Judgment said.
Now my lips did peel back. It was an animal instinct because, in the end, and in the beginning, and in every important middle point, we all acted from animal impulses. Dominance. Subservience. Show of strength.
This was my raid, and I would remain in control of it.
What I did next came less from a sense of confidence in myself than it did in every shattered half-truth and secret I’d learned over the last few months. Arcana, I now knew, had a power that no one had told me about. I’d just watched Lady Death summon extraordinarily potent creatures without any visible source of magic. In my own greatest need, not long ago, I’d torn the sky open.
So, with all my intent, and with all my control, I invited my Aspect to the surface.
I walked to the edge of the barrier Lord Hanged Man had raised around his ship. Days ago, I’d pierced it. Now I let fire race along my body, gathering as spheres around my hands that were so bright even I needed to close my eyelids against them. And I said to myself, this barrier must fall, and pushed out with all the potential to make it so. I imagined how it would have felt to have had a sigil filled with the right spell to make it happen, and that imagination, married to my willpower, became reality.
A nova’s worth of light seared my eyelids, dying in seconds. When I opened them, the barrier was simply gone.
I asked my Aspect to retreat, as if it were a thinking being. And its fires died in a wind-like whoosh.
“This is my raid,” I said to the people behind me, without turning. “I will find the children and their guardian, and I will hunt the Hanged Man to ground. Your help would be much appreciated.”
I heard someone sigh, and Lord Judgment said, “Very well. I’m moving to the shore, to shield what I can. Lord Chariot is en route to assist me. The Tower will lead the party onto the ship.”
“We should sink it,” Lord Hierophant said to him. “That’s what your gut is telling you.”
“My gut is telling me I’ve been missing far too many gut impulses. Lord Sun, Lord Tower, you have little time. Go.”
“We will find them,” I said. “Quinn, please release your Clarity spells. Anchor one to me, and another on Lord Tower. If the situation requires us to divide our forces, the rest must keep to one of us. The ghost imagery on the ship is powerfully strong. They won’t pose a threat, but the impact of them is disabling. The Clarity spell will protect you from that. Let’s move.”
Quinn released his spells, blanketing the crowd with each release, and yielding the control of the spells to Lord Tower and I. Brand and Addam took point, while the rest of us filed behind them. Lord Tower put a hand on my shoulder, though, and with an expression drew me to the rear of the group.
When we were apart, he said, quietly, “You will have figured out by now that you are using an ability we call the Arcana Majeure. It is a guarded secret, and there is no time to explain it. Do not rely on it, Rune. Do not trust it. Wait until we have time to talk.”
“No magic is safe. If it helps me find the kids or take the Hanged Man down, I’ll take the risk.”
“The risk of what?” Lord Tower said, but patiently. “Damage to yourself? There is no risk of damage. You are damaging yourself every time you use it. There is a lifetime cost.”
“Those kids are there because of me. I can handle the cost.”
“Can Brand? Because you are injuring him too.”
I stopped in my tracks. Stared at Lord Tower. My reaction was such a tangled ball of emotion that I couldn’t separate the uncertainty from the anger.
“This is not something I could have told you sooner. You learn as it happens, and it’s most unfortunate that it’s happening now, in a living moment. Please, Rune. Do not rely on the Arcana Majeure until you understand it.”
I continued walking up the gangplank. I didn’t argue. It was just one more bit of weirdness to load into the bullet chamber and fire into my aching head later.
We rejoined the rear of the group. I could tell that some of the Arcana were messing about with the Clarity spell on them. Lord Hierophant, in particular, probably looked a lot like I must have, the first time one of the unnaturally cohesive ghosts ran through me.
They would also be noticing the other preserved damage—they would smell the powder of recently fired guns; see the destruction of the Hanged Man’s decades-old assault fixed in the moment of delivery. Armed with my hindsight, they would already be figuring out that the stasis magic had been entwined with time magic to stage this damage.
I went through the crowd and shook the shoulder of anyone lost to the images, barking at them to re-engage the Clarity spell. I didn’t like the look in Lord Hierophant’s eye, in particular. If I had to, I’d lock the spell on him like a damn childproof gate.
“How did we not know this?” he whispered. “The audacity. He knows what’s at risk. He knows what forces he’s taunting.”
“Quinn,” I murmured. “Anything?”
“It’s all going on at once,” Quinn said, grimacing. “Then and now and next is happening at once. It’s like someone screaming in my face.”
“He’ll know we’re here,” Lord Hierophant said. “He would have felt his barrier fall.”
“Then we move quickly,” I said.
I had an idea in mind, but before I could put it into motion, Lady World pushed to the edge of the group, facing the far end of the ship. I saw what she saw a moment later—a winter banshee coming toward us with haggard, floating steps.
The difference was that, now, we were armed. We had our sigils and our instruments of office.
She touched a bracelet around her wrist, then held out her arms. Twisting funnels of water rose from the sea. The water streamed around her hands and formed greenish, giant spheres that shuddered with miniature ocean waves. She bent her arms behind her, and flung the water at the banshee. They hit the creature in a splash that, instead of falling to the ground, writhed and twisted into an envelope.
The moment the envelope was sealed, Lady World jerked her hands in a sharp twist. Plumes of oxygen bubbled. The water grew dense with deep-sea pressure. Within the span of a second—before the banshee had any hopes of a death keel—the monster imploded in a froth of reddish water. Lady World jerked her hands again, and water and viscera splattered the ship decks.
I looked away from the sight in time to see Lord Hierophant monkeying with his Clarity again. I let my own slip for just a heartbeat. The world dimmed into a darker pallet of colors. Down the length of the main deck, I saw a fireball hit the catapulted plane like a rocket.
Drawing on my willpower, I took the tendrils of Clarity that linked me to Lord Hierophant, and wove it around him like a straightjacket. He didn’t even seem aware of what I did; he just shook his head and stared in horror at the rest of us.
“These are actual tears in time,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lord Sun. I know the lives of people you care about are at stake, but we must take action. We must sink this vessel.”
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. He looked like he was moving to the stairwell ahead of him—not far from where I’d once seen two ghosts share a cigarette—but he lost his footing, tripped forward, and slammed into the bulkhead. He hit his head hard and collapsed into a blinking heap.
I took the win.
“There’s no time,” I said. “Lady World, would you stay with Lord Hierophant? He seems to require a Healing spell.”
“We should find the firing controls,” Quinn said suddenly, and nudged between Lord Tower and me. “There are two places they can fire missiles from. Up there in the bridge place. And down below.”
Then he turned and gave me a half wink.
I made a deliberate choice not to look at Addam, who may or may not be realizing how well Quinn was getting at lying for our sake. “Quinn, will you release another Clarity spell, and anchor it to Lady World? Lady World, the bridge is in that main tower. Just there.” I pointed. “I’ve been below deck before. I’ll go there.”
“We’ll need to stay in touch,” Lord Tower said, though, oddly, while staring hard at Brand.
“Easily done,” Lady World said. She’d knelt by Lord Hierophant, who had a nasty cut along his forehead, but was conscious. She reached into her pocket and pulled a handful of green stones from them. There were enough to go around, and afterward she released a sigil spell that created a momentary web of green light around us before fading from sight. “It will open an audio channel, when you close your hand around it. An hour’s worth of energy. But Lord Sun? We don’t have an hour. You understand that?”
The Hanged Man Page 33