House of Stone

by R. L. King

  “Mmm?”

  “Eddie. It’s me.”

  “Me who?” Eddie’s gravelly voice sounded like he wasn’t fully awake yet.

  “Stone.”

  “Nope,” he said immediately. “Not Stone. Stone would know better than to be up at the bleedin’ crack o’ dawn. And ’e’d definitely know better than to wake me up then.”

  “All right, then. Sorry. I thought you might like to have a look at what we found up at Brathwaite’s place, but if you can’t be arsed to drag your sorry carcass out of bed…”

  “Wait—you found something?”

  Stone had to grin at how much more awake his friend suddenly sounded. “We did. Something nasty, I think.”

  “And you ’aven’t looked at it yet?”

  “I thought we’d save it for you and Ward.”

  “Come on, mate.” Now suspicion laced Eddie’s voice. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Not it—us. Ian went up there with me, and we both felt fairly ghastly when we got back. Whatever Brathwaite was up to, it wasn’t anything that should have been waiting out the centuries in a priest hole.”

  “Uh—wow. Yeah, give me an hour to call Ward and get over there.” He paused. “You…didn’t ’ave any trouble with Brathwaite, did you?”

  “Don’t think so. Why? Did you expect us to?”

  “Who can say? If ’e really did leave an echo, it might not want you messin’ with its stuff.”

  “Well, either you’re wrong or he’s taking a break, because all we encountered was the space itself—which was bad enough—and one wandering watchman we had to avoid. Enough talk, Eddie—get over here. I’m not waiting much longer to see what we’ve got.”

  Eddie and Ward arrived less than an hour later. Unlike Stone and Ian, both of whom looked rather disheveled even following showers, shaves, and fresh clothes, they appeared to have taken the time for a good night’s sleep.

  “Right, then—let’s see it, mate,” Eddie said without greeting.

  Stone didn’t take issue with his lack of manners—he’d been pacing the place for the last half-hour waiting for them to show, and didn’t think he could have waited much longer.

  He took them to the warded workroom on the second floor, then retrieved the box and placed it in the center of the table.

  “Blimey, that thing feels nasty,” Eddie said immediately, looking uncomfortable.

  Ward nodded, examining it with the fuzzed look of magical sight. “Indeed it does. Did you get any indications of what Brathwaite might have been up to?”

  Stone dropped his bag on the table and began removing the bottles, books, and rolled papers he’d taken from the room. “I couldn’t take everything, but I grabbed all the books and papers, and a representative sample of the other stuff. There wasn’t much there—it was a small space.” He added his notebook to the stack, open to the first page of his notes. “No photos, but here are sketches of some of the things I found on the walls. I’ve never seen anything like them. Have either of you?”

  “Let’s ’ave a look before we open the box.” Eddie pulled the notebook over, and a moment later the two researchers had scooted their chairs close together, heads bent to examine Stone’s hasty scrawl, muttering to each other in voices too low for anyone else to hear.

  Stone watched them fondly, glad to have them on his side. He was no slouch as a researcher, but even he didn’t have the temperament for the kind of focused study his two friends lived for. During their University days he’d seen them disappear on more than one occasion into some secluded corner of the library, coming up only long enough to grab quick meals or a grudging couple hours of sleep until they’d gotten to the bottom of whatever problem they were examining. Both of them had made careers of it—Eddie taking over the curation of the London library, and Ward as a historical researcher.

  It was nearly twenty minutes before either of them said anything, and when they finally looked up, both of them wore grim expressions.

  Stone leaped from his chair. “Have you got something?”

  “We do,” Ward said, “but I’m not sure we believe it.”

  “Believe what?” Ian, who’d been lounging at the other end of the table, sat up straighter. “What did you find?”

  “I think we should ’ave a look in the box first,” Eddie said. When Stone started to protest, he raised his hand. “I’m not tryin’ to stall, mate. I just want to be sure before we say anything.”

  “Have you checked it for traps or curses?” Ward asked.

  Stone nodded. “Last night, before I tried to sleep. It looks like it might have had a couple at one point, but they’ve faded.”

  He circled around the table until he stood in front of the metal box, pausing to study it once again with magical sight. Nothing had changed: the uneasy miasma hovering around it still remained, but he couldn’t see any indication of active magic. The lock holding it closed was complex for its time, but nothing compared to modern-day mechanical ones. Stone concentrated for a moment, took hold of the mechanism, and popped it free. Then, still using magic, he swung the lid open.

  All four of the observers stared into the revealed space.

  The first thing Stone noticed was more writing. Symbols and sigils resembling the ones he’d seen on the walls lined every one of the box’s interior surfaces. Unlike the neatly ordered lines of the sealed room beneath the Surrey house, these were scrawled almost haphazardly, with a hand not altogether steady.

  “Was that…some kind of skeleton?” Ian asked softly, leaning in for a closer look.

  “Looks like it,” Eddie said, no trace remaining of his usual humor. “Or a model of one—but it looks like the real thing.”

  It looked like the real thing to Stone, too. It lay on one side of the box on a bed of rotting fabric, a jumble of bones in the vague shape of a creature the size of a cat or small dog. A divider separated its section from the other side, which contained more books, along with sheaves of notes and diagrams.

  “What kind of animal is it?” Ian asked. “A cat, maybe?”

  “Hard to say,” Ward said. “I wonder if you two might have disturbed it when you moved the box, or if it hadn’t been intact before.”

  “That doesn’t look like any cat I’ve ever seen,” Eddie said, peering closer with a light spell around his hand.

  “That doesn’t look like any animal I’ve ever seen,” Ward said.

  Stone, meanwhile, was examining the other compartment. Using magic, he carefully lifted the small stack of dusty books and papers free and spread them on the table. “Those aren’t magic tomes,” he said. “They look more like notebooks or journals.” He narrowed his eyes. “All right, you two—what are you keeping under your hats here?”

  Without replying, Eddie picked up one of the notebooks and carefully flipped through it. “Preserved,” he said idly, as Ward looked over his shoulder. At one point, he stopped flipping and merely stared down at one of the pages.

  “Eddie—”

  It wasn’t Eddie who spoke next, but Ward. He indicated the items on the table, including the bizarre broken skeleton. “I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. And of course we’ve no way to know whether any of this is genuine, except that it appears you’ve seen a first-hand demonstration of it.”

  He picked up the book Eddie had been staring at and turned it around so it was facing Stone. “There’s really no denying it, though. It seems James Brathwaite was a practitioner of the allegedly lost and universally reviled art of necromancy.”

  30

  Stone’s feet ached, which wasn’t surprising. He’d been trudging around London for the better part of the day, to the point where he wasn’t even sure he knew where he was any longer.

  He’d had to get out. He didn’t explain or offer excuses for it, but merely told Eddie, Ward, and Ian that he needed some time to himself. Without a further word to any of them, he’d left the London house, switched off his phone, and boarded the first train that pulled into the Hi
gh Street Kensington Tube station. From there, he’d changed trains twice, ignoring the crowds of chattering tourists and commuters and paying no attention to where he was going. Eventually, after more than an hour had passed, he’d left the Tube behind and set off walking, changing directions when he felt like it and watching his route only enough to avoid wandering into traffic.

  He found, though, that as much as he’d wanted to, he couldn’t keep his brain shut off forever. As he paused for a brief rest on a bench in a sketchy neighborhood somewhere on the east side, his thoughts returned, not for the first time that day, to the time before he’d fled the house.

  Necromancy.

  He still didn’t entirely believe it could be possible. It was one of the fundamental laws of magic: you couldn’t raise the dead, just like there was no such thing as true teleportation, or time travel. The idea that James Brathwaite, a known associate of his own ancestors, had been dabbling in such a vile practice seemed absurd.

  But yet…a lot of Stone’s assumptions about magic had been challenged lately. Trevor Harrison and the other denizens of Calanar had proven to him that teleportation without a gateway was feasible. He’d thought it impossible—or at least highly unlikely—for a mage to leave an echo behind when he died, yet it seemed Brathwaite had done just that. The animated skeletal remains of the foundation sacrifices had been strong, supernaturally tough, and immune to direct magic, all rumored properties of necromantically-raised creatures. And if Brathwaite had somehow managed to do it as an echo, without any ritual materials, that suggested a level of power and control that placed even his echo among the top ranks of mages currently alive.

  Eddie and Ward had all but confirmed it after they and Stone had flipped through the remainder of the notebooks, journals, and papers in the strongbox. The material in the jars hadn’t been much help; aside from being dried out after nearly two hundred years, it was impossible to identify what it was without a lot more apparatus than they had on hand.

  “This is nasty stuff, mate,” Eddie had said, looking even more serious than he had before. “I’d need a lot more time to study these notes—which I’ll be honest I’m not sure I even want to do—but from what I’m seein’, there’s enough ’ere for somebody with brains and motivation to replicate at least some o’ the techniques. I’m not sure it’s all ’ere, but I think there’s enough that a trained mage could extrapolate the rest.”

  Stone had looked at Ward for confirmation, and his friend had nodded soberly.

  “They should be destroyed,” Ward said.

  “They should,” Eddie agreed. “And you know I don’t say that lightly.”

  Stone knew that all too well. Books and research material were even more valuable to Eddie and Ward than they were to him, and the idea of destroying them would normally be anathema to any of them. He thought about what might happen if these books, these techniques, got into the wrong hands—someone like Elias Richter, perhaps…or even Stefan Kolinsky. He wasn’t sure Kolinsky would have any interest in raising the dead, but after their recent conversations, he realized there was a lot he didn’t know about his black mage associate.

  He’d dropped back into a chair with a loud sigh. “That’s got to be what his other journal meant—the bit about wanting to try something he knew would work. It appears we’ve finally found the limits of my ancestors’ consciences, which I suppose should be comforting but isn’t. They’ll brick dozens of mundanes away alive to use their death energy for their own purposes, but they draw the line at raising them back up again.” He snorted, his voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. “Brilliant, that is. Just brilliant. Give them all a bloody gold star.”

  “Dad—” Ian had begun. He’d remained mostly silent during Eddie and Ward’s study of the material, even after they’d revealed what Brathwaite had been up to.

  Stone waved him off. “No, Ian. No. I’m…I think I’ve hit my limit for the day. I need a break. I’ve got to get away from this, or I’ll go mad.” He leaped back out of the chair and used magic to gather the books, papers, and vials into a pile, which he picked up and dropped in the box. “I’ll put this back in Desmond’s vault for now.”

  “You’re not planning to destroy it?” Eddie asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t want to make any sudden decisions, and until this whole bloody mess is sorted, we might need some of it.”

  Ward narrowed his eyes and frowned. “Stone, you’re not thinking of—”

  “No. No, of course not. You know me better than that, Ward, or at least I hope you do.” Suddenly, Stone felt exhausted—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. He simply had no more resources for dealing with the mounting collection of problems that kept piling up around him. “Listen—I’m done for a while. I’ve got to clear my head. You two—thanks for coming by. I appreciate all your help. I hope you won’t think me rude, but…I need to be alone for a while.”

  “I get it, mate,” Eddie said with sympathy. He too got up and patted Stone’s arm. “I honestly don’t know how you’ve dealt with all this so far without goin’ off your bleedin’ nut. Take some time, get the ’ell away from it for a while, and come back with a fresh perspective. We’ll be around. And if you just want to go get a few pints—I’m up for that as well.”

  “As am I,” Ward said. “You don’t have to handle this alone, Stone.”

  No, I don’t. Except it isn’t your ancestors that murdered dozens of people, or the ghosts of those people keeping you out of your house, or some mad necromancer raising them against you because your ancestors betrayed him.

  He smiled bitterly, his hands jammed in his pockets as he watched the traffic filtering by in the late-afternoon sunlight. Jason had once commented that he didn’t get involved with normal problems. This one might be the prize-winner.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and switched it on long enough to check the list of voicemails. There were two from Ian, spread several hours apart, one from Eddie, and one from Verity. He switched the phone back off without listening to any of them, and didn’t even feel guilty about it. He’d told them he wanted to be alone, and he still wanted to be alone.

  No, he decided. What he wanted was a drink. Or more than one. Preferably in a place where nobody knew him.

  He dragged himself off the bench and looked around, taking a true interest in his surroundings for the first time. He still wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but it wasn’t one of London’s better areas. That was all right, though—good, in fact. People in seedy pubs knew how to leave each other the hell alone so they could get on with their drinking. If he caught a cab and went to the Dancing Dragon, it wouldn’t be half an hour before somebody tried to join him. Eddie and Ward had probably already called there looking for him—in fact, they might be there now, waiting for him to show up.

  As he walked, scanning the streets for a likely place, another thought flitted through his mind: I could just go. Give it all up. Catch a flight somewhere else and start a new life, far away from his family’s entanglements. All his life he’d been proud to be a Stone, proud to be the sixth in an unbroken line of powerful mages. But back then, he hadn’t known everything that meant—everything that had come before him and contributed to making him what he was.

  Hell, he wasn’t even limited to this dimension. He could go back to Calanar. Harrison would no doubt let him stay in New Argana, and he’d finally have the time to learn all the things he wanted to learn there: teleportation, dimensional travel, how to build mechano-magical constructs. And best of all, nobody from Earth could find him there. He could stay for months, get his head together, and only a few days would have passed back home. It was the best of both worlds.

  Damn, it sounded tempting.

  “No,” he murmured, stuffing his hands back in his pockets. “You don’t get to do that. This whole mess is your responsibility. It’s your family, and you’re stuck with them. Nobody else is going to clean up after them for you.”

  A man glanced at him
oddly as they passed each other, and he fell silent as he realized he’d been speaking aloud. No doubt he sounded like a madman.

  Was he becoming a madman?

  He wondered if that was a question he could even answer for himself.

  Up ahead, he spotted a small pub with a scarred black façade, no windows, and The Night’s Rest spelled out in faded, peeling gold letters across the front. Below it, several neon beer signs flickered.

  Good enough.

  He pushed open the door and stepped inside, releasing a wave of warm beer aroma and dueling TV football matches into the street.

  The place was already crowded, mostly with what looked like workmen stopping for a pint or two before heading home. Stone hadn’t bothered with an illusion and knew he looked out of place in his long black coat, but he didn’t care. If anybody chose to mess with him, they’d soon learn what a bad decision that was.

  Nobody did. A few of them cast him looks—some curious, some suspicious—but no one approached him. He pressed his way up to the bar and ordered a Guinness.

  The bartender, a beefy, balding man who looked like he should be fronting a punk band, looked him up and down. “’Aven’t seen you ’round ’ere before, mate.”

  “No, and you probably won’t again after tonight. Is that a problem?”

  “No, no problem. You got moola, you’re good.”

  Stone produced a fifty-pound note—no credit cards to identify him today—and slapped it on the graffiti-carved wooden bar. “Start a tab, and keep them coming. I plan to be here a while.”

  “You got it, mate.”

  He found a tiny table in the back corner, as far away from the several televisions blaring football games as he could manage. All around him, men laughed and shouted, cheering and clapping each other on the back when their team scored. He spotted a couple other lone men seated at the long bar, but most of the customers were in groups.

  He could be in a group now, if he wanted to, at the Dragon. Eddie and Ward were always up for a pint, and you could almost always find some small collection of mages hanging around there to have a drink with. He realized he’d never even shared a drink at a pub with Ian. He’d have to fix that someday—but not now. First, he owed it to his son to sort this mess out. Ian hadn’t asked for any of this.