House of Blood and Bone

by Kimberley J. Ward

  Stepping further into the shop, Nessa’s curiosity got the better of her. The question she was meant to ask faded from her mind. She approached the wall of shelves to her right, her eyes sweeping over the array of gemstones and crystals arranged in little baskets and boxes. There was every size and colour imaginable, from clear quartz to the metallic iridescence of bismuth, from tiny beads to large geodes that were over a foot in height.

  The next row of display cases called for her attention; delicate rings and bracelets were artfully arranged on miniature pillows, with rough gemstones clutched in the grip of tiny prongs and cabochons cushioned in decorative bezels. Earrings and necklaces, too, were hung on and draped over wooden busts and metal stands, the silver, copper and gold twinkling in a seductive manner.

  The shop lured Nessa in, the sight of garnet-studded bangles, opal pendants and tanzanite charms, and many more things besides enthralling her. The shelves and cases were a riot of colour, filled with a wealth of jewellery featuring every kind of semi-precious and precious jewel known to man. Light flooded in through the window, catching and reflecting off polished metal and faceted stones, mixing with the soft illumination from the glowing mushrooms which were dotted throughout the shop, little clusters that were nestled within rounded bell jars, growing from pale moss. They ensured that there were no shadows, no dark corners that might subdue the lustre of the jewellery collections.

  There was a whisper of fabric, and Nessa turned towards the source.

  Sissy came through the archway, the velvet drape sweeping across the floor with a soft sigh. A burst of surprisingly cool air rushed out before it swept shut, and Nessa caught a glimpse of the space beyond it. While she saw it for no more than a split second, unable to see little else but vague shapes in the dimness, she knew that it was no storeroom. The air held a faint charge, an energy that rolled and churned within the room like an invisible thunderstorm.

  Nessa didn’t have time to wonder about it, to grow unnerved or alarmed before a whirlwind of twirled skirts and flying hair descended upon her.

  “Holy spirits!” Sissy all but shrieked in Nessa’s ear as she wrapped her arms around her, pulling her into a hug that Nessa hadn’t seen coming. Taken by surprise, Nessa froze, her arms hanging rigid by her sides. Everything she’d planned on saying fled, fleeing much like Nessa wanted to.

  “I can’t believe it’s you! Here! In person! Right now!” Sissy leaned back, her hands moving to Nessa’s shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. “She said you’d come, and here you are. She’s soooo gifted. We’re so lucky she’s willing to take us under her wing.”

  “Sissy,” Nessa croaked awkwardly, taken aback by Sissy’s ferocious cheer. “You look, ah, well.”

  Sissy nodded, smiling wide, teeth shockingly white against caramel skin. “I am well. I’m very well. And look at you. You’re in far better condition than you were the other night, now dressed like the girl you are and not falling unconscious. How nice. How very nice.”

  “Yes, I’m dressed like a girl.” It took a fair amount of effort for Nessa not to roll her eyes, or to cringe at the reminder of her fainting. How many people had noticed? Nessa inwardly groaned. And when would people stop bringing it up?

  “That’s good.” Sissy patted her shoulder, and to Nessa’s relief, took a step back. “I’m glad. My mistress, or should I say our mistress,” she winked, “doesn’t like people being anything other than their true selves.”

  “Our mistress?” Nessa blinked, feeling like she had somehow entered into a strange dream. “I’m not here looking for a job or whatever. A friend sent me to ask some questions. This is, like,” she did some mental calculations, “the twentieth place I’ve been to today.”

  Sissy’s eyes twinkled like the gems that surrounded her, shinning with amusement and secrets. She giggled. “Come, meet Mistress Pharawynn. She’ll explain what she can for you. After all, she has been preparing for this moment for so long. For months and months.”

  Nessa could offer no resistance as Sissy took one of her hands and began leading her away, overwhelmed and a little stunned by Sissy’s enthusiasm. She had forgotten how insistent Sissy could be. “Months?” Nessa latched onto that, unable to let it go.

  Months?

  “Oh, yes. She had a vision about you six or so months ago. She’s been anticipating your arrival ever since. Our mistress is most gifted, although she is most modest about it all, if you ask me.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Nessa mumbled as Sissy tugged her through the curtained archway with a surprising amount of strength.

  The room beyond was dark. The shutters were closed. Thin slivers of light from around the edges were the only source of illumination. There were no candles or lamps, and yet the air was alive, warm and filled with the strange charge that Nessa had felt only a minute ago. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom, and she couldn’t identify what might be causing it. Sissy didn’t seem to notice the air’s charge, or if she did, she gave away no indication. Maybe it didn’t affect her like it did Nessa.

  Having been swiftly led around the dark shape of a table in the middle of the room, Nessa was taken over to the looming hole that was another arched doorway. With a click of a lock, Sissy pulled open the wooden door, and the gentle glow of candlelight came spilling through, faint and beckoning.

  Nessa pulled Sissy to a stop in the threshold.

  She had found where the charge was coming from.

  The landing was small, no bigger than the average closet, but the stairs leading down from it were long and steep, burrowing deep beneath the shop before turning a corner and disappearing from sight. Soft candlelight emanated from the very bottom, bouncing off the stairs’ smooth tops and catching on the walls’ pitted sides.

  Energy filled the air, climbing the staircase in rolling waves, brushing against Nessa’s face with spectral fingers, threading through her long hair. Nessa shivered, both in fear and excitement. Orm’s and Heimaey’s words about Sissy’s mistress, about how she was little more than a fraud, a weak spellcaster at best, echoed in her mind.

  How wrong they were.

  The charge in the air was magic. Residual magic. And it was strong.

  If the person downstairs was Mistress Pharawynn, if she was the one to whom the magics belonged, then Nessa had no doubt about her being a powerful spellcaster. Perhaps one of the most powerful.

  Chapter 30

  With the candlelight calling to her, and the magic beckoning with promises and truths, Nessa trailed behind Sissy as she led them down the stairs. They were forced into a single file. The staircase’s walls crowded in on both sides, the corners of the stone bricks sharp and catching where the mortar had crumbled away over time, leaving deep grooves and pointed ridges.

  The static crackle of the energy, of the magic, grew as Nessa rounded the corner, turning into a low hum that reverberated through the marrow of her bones. Warmth bloomed in Nessa’s chest, an awakening of some kind, and she placed a hand over the spot, rubbing it. The tips of her fingers encountered something unexpected, brushing against something cold and hard. Nessa looked down, mildly surprised to find her brooch pinned over her heart, the silver and blue gems twinkling delicately in the soft candlelight. She had taken the time earlier that morning to remove it from her other dress, but had pretty much forgotten about it until now. The brooch was swiftly forgotten again as Sissy hopped off the last step with a merry, little skip, and Nessa found herself standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  Nessa hesitated, her eyes sweeping around the underground room with a sense of amazement, and perhaps a little bit of trepidation. She felt as if she were balancing on the edge of a blade. One wrong step and there would be no turning back.

  The room was big, larger than Nessa had expected, even though a part of her had known that it was going to be of considerable size. After all, she had gone down quite a few stairs. Still, Nessa marvelled at the vaulted ceiling, soaring high overhead, supported by a series of narrow pillars edged
with swirls of fine masonry, twining around them and fanning out across the ceiling. It was like they were playing the roles of trees, the pillars acting as the trunks, tall and unbending, and the patterns on the ceiling mimicking branches outstretched.

  The walls were covered in a thin shell of plaster, the tops stained a pale yellow in places and riddled with holes and cracks. The lower halves might have been in a better condition, but Nessa couldn’t tell because most of them were hidden from sight, concealed behind a wide collection of artefacts, apparatuses and many things besides.

  There were bookshelves and chests, boxes and bottles, benches and tables. There were books and scrolls everywhere, filling the shelves until they threatened to collapse under the weight. They were scattered over tabletops and stacked in corners. There were surely libraries less well stocked.

  A long table over to the side of the room held an arrangement of peculiar vials and bottles of all shapes and sizes, some sitting in little stands, others propped on tripods, small oil lamps placed beneath them, making the colourful potions within bubble and froth. Steam drifted up into a complex spider web of tubing that hung above the table.

  Nessa could have happily spent all day staring at everything in the cellar, investigating the curious sights of bones and jars filled with feathers, at the near-endless array of tiny, glass pots filled to the brim with loose crystals and gemstones.

  Movement in the middle of the room drew Nessa’s attention away from the sights.

  A woman stood, rising from a crouch beside a worktop, the heels of her palms pressed into the small of her back, making it click quietly as she arched her spine. She turned around, facing them. Instantly her gaze locked onto Nessa. Her eyes, deep-set and troubled, flat but also oddly bright, were a strange flinty grey.

  Nessa felt their stare like a punch. It knocked the air right out of her. She looked away, unable to meet the woman’s gaze for longer than a second, looking at everything but those bewitching eyes. Nessa took in the silver threads peppering thick, dark hair that was styled in an elaborate mess of fine braids and curled tresses that merged together into a wild bun atop her head. A few fine tendrils escaped here and there, framing wide cheekbones and a square jaw. Nessa studied the large earrings hanging from the woman’s earlobes, almost brushing her shoulders, and the creepy necklace that was draped around her neck. Composed of a chain and a bar of curled wire from which a peculiar mixture of things dangled, it rested low on the woman’s chest. There were thin, quartz wands and collections of gemstone beads threaded into the necklace’s trailing strands. In the centre of the arrangement were a long, white bone and a dainty skull of a songbird.

  Something about the necklace was eerie, unnerving. A shiver crawled up Nessa’s spine.

  “Finally. You have come,” the woman said, her voice low and gravelly. “At last, I may welcome you.” She dipped down into a shallow curtsy, her dark skirts pooling on the floor, her beguiling gaze lowering. “Greetings, Nessa, Rider of Aoife. I am Pharawynn, and I am at your service.”

  ∞∞∞

  Nessa gasped, her eyes widening. Instinctively, her hand wrapped around her wrist, making sure that her Rider’s Mark was hidden beneath her arm warmer, just as it always was. Such was her alarm, Nessa barely remembered to slam up her mental barriers before Aoife sensed her fear.

  “How…how do you know that?” Nessa stumbled back, her heel bumping against the rise of the last step, threatening to trip her over. “You can’t know that.”

  “I see and know a great many things, my young Rider,” Pharawynn purred, rising from her curtsy. “It is a part of my gift.”

  “Your gift?”

  “I have the gift of foresight. Alongside a few other things. Other talents.” Pharawynn smiled gently, motherly, trying to put Nessa’s fears at ease. It didn’t work. Nessa felt that the smile held a sinister edge and that her words held nothing but thinly veiled threats. “Long have I sensed that our paths were destined to cross. I swear to you, Nessa, Rider of Aoife, so long as you are under my tutelage, your secret shall remain just that, a secret. You have nothing to fear. I promise you that.”

  Nessa’s foot blindly searched for the top of the step, ready to make a mad dash for escape. This doesn’t bode well… She kept her gaze locked onto Pharawynn, weighing up the truth in her words.

  “How long?” Nessa croaked. “How long have you known about me and…and Aoife?”

  “For many, many years,” Pharawynn said, her voice dropping low in remembrance, seeing a time and place far beyond the vaulted cellar. “Ever since I was a little girl, I could tell that something awaited me, something great and important. Change is destined to come to this world. It’s been foretold by those with far stronger powers than mine, for a lot longer than I have been alive. But I knew. I knew that I had a role to play in bringing it about. My visions regarding this were vague, cloudy, little more than tantalising glimpses of what I needed to do. But I know what needs to be done. Oh, yes. I know.”

  “But what does any of that have to do with me?” Nessa interrupted, fighting against the enthralling sound of Pharawynn’s honeyed voice. It was warm and soothing, alluring. It made Nessa want to step further into the room, to listen to whatever else she had to say.

  Pharawynn frowned, the faint creases on her brow deepening. “All my life, I’ve tried to ready myself as best I could for what was to come.” Her hand rose to her necklace, her fingers toying with the dainty bird skull, stroking it as if it were a live pet. “But with the visions so vague, it wasn’t easy. Still, I did the best I could with what I had. I studied a great many subjects and learnt all I could. Then, one day, everything suddenly clicked, it all suddenly made sense. The fog that had concealed the details of my visions finally lifted.” She sighed happily. “It was all because of you.”

  “Me?” Nessa squeaked, pausing her efforts of trying to creep up the stairs. She was well and truly ensnared by Pharawynn’s narrative. “Have we met before?” There was something about her, something that echoed a likeness of recognition, of a memory.

  A corner of Pharawynn’s lips quirked up in the smallest of smiles. “Met would be stretching it a little.”

  “Then…”

  “I saw you once, and you me,” Pharawynn said, a hungry kind of energy in her voice. “Our eyes locked, and I knew what I had been waiting for. I understood. It was you.”

  “Me,” Nessa repeated, unnerved. “Why would you be waiting for me all these years?” Her suspicions grew. “That is, if what you say is true.”

  “Why not you?” Pharawynn laughed. “Out of everyone in the known world, why not you? Of course, it would be you. There is no one else it could be.”

  Sissy startled to giggle nervously, but hastily stopped when Nessa fixed her with a frosty scowl. She looked down at her shoes, the tips of which were just peeking out from beneath her skirts, like a pair of mice peering out from their little hidey-holes.

  “Start speaking sense,” Nessa muttered, ill at ease, confusion and fear crowding her mind. “Or I won’t listen any longer. Whatever preparations you’ve done will surely go to waste.”

  The brightness left Pharawynn’s eyes, and her countenance became a touch more serious. Her shoulders tensed beneath her dark dress, and her hand clenched around the bird skull. “I see you have a bit of a backbone hidden somewhere under that fine gown and all that pretty hair.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “But I am. Pleasantly so. Clearly appearances are deceiving. That will work in our favour.”

  “Our favour?” Nessa scoffed. “You make it sound like we’ll be having further dealings after today.”

  Pharawynn appeared unconcerned. “Oh, but we will.”

  “Because you’ve seen it?”

  A shrug of a shoulder. Neither confirmation nor denial.

  “Be that as it may,” Nessa said, nonplussed and feeling like she was being led around in circles. Useless, infuriating circles. “I’ve heard on good authority that you’re little
more than a fraud,” one whose lair thrummed with power and whose gaze felt as if it could see straight through someone’s soul, “who does simple spells and tricks people into thinking she’s more than what she really is.”

  There was an indrawn breath. Nessa turned and saw that Sissy was staring at Pharawynn with worry etched into her features, like she expected her mistress to say something, to do something, in anger. For a second, Nessa panicked. Had she gone too far? Said too much? Would she now suffer for it? Sissy certainly appeared to think so.

  Maybe it had been a mistake coming here?

  Nessa resumed backing up, needing to escape, managing to make it onto the bottom step as the energy in the room crackled and swelled. Paper rustled, and the candles flickered and dimmed as if an unseen force was smothering them, sucking the oxygen out of the air.

  “I see Heimaey has given you a somewhat tainted view about me,” Pharawynn said, her eyes darting to Sissy, the tension slowly leeching from her shoulders. The energy in the room stilled, calming. The crackling energy fading. Gone. In the blink of an eye, the candles’ flames once again danced brightly.

  “I’m capable of forming my own opinions,” Nessa retorted. “And I’ve heard things from other people too. Not just from Heimaey.”

  Pharawynn’s brows rose, fine creases on her forehead deepening. “Oh really? How curious. I hadn’t realised I was becoming a source of gossip.”

  “You’re not,” Nessa muttered. “Not really.”

  “Tell me,” Pharawynn said, looking Nessa over with a considering eye. Nessa paused in her retreat, the toes of one foot poised on the next step. “What is your opinion of me?”

  Nessa shrugged, hoping to appear nonchalant, like she wasn’t completely disturbed by what she had just seen, by what she had just felt in the air around her.

  “Fate has drawn her here,” Sissy cried, jolting Nessa out of her line of thought, out of her memory of Arncraft. “Fate and the brooch you gifted her. You truly are the finest sorceress of our age. That too, must be why she is here, because she senses that…”