Portraits of the Forsaken

by E. E. Holmes

  “It’s not a box,” I said as the realization surfaced at last. “It’s a camera.”

  “A what? Excuse me?” Catriona asked. I craned my neck to see her staring at me as though she feared I’d lost my mind.

  “It’s a camera obscura,” I told her. “Shriya told us about them, remember? They were used to create daguerreotypes like the ones we found of Neil and the other Necromancers.”

  “Yes, very good, Jessica,” Charlie said. “I’m pleased to see you’re keeping up. When I first met Neil Caddigan, he had just risen to the highest ranks of the Necromancer hierarchy, due, in large part, to a monumental discovery. He had worked for many, many years on perfecting a process, a process that would change the Necromancers’ relationship with the spirit world forever.”

  He paused, as though hoping one of us would encourage him to go on. When we didn’t, he stroked the wooden box gently with a single finger, and sighed.

  “Since the Necromancers were formed, they have been plagued by a single handicap that has impeded their advances more than any other. I am speaking of course, of the Sight, or lack thereof.”

  My heart sped up. Was he talking about being a Seer? How could he possibly know about my gift? No one knew, not even our own Council. I swallowed hard and tried to sound clueless. “What are you talking about? What Sight?”

  Charlie laughed, but it was cold, humorless. “My, my, those drugs have made you rather dull, haven’t they? Your Spirit Sight, of course—the ability you each possess that allows you to see and interact with the spirits around you!”

  I was so relieved that he wasn’t referring to my role as a Seer that I did not at first notice or share in Catriona’s sudden tenseness. After a few silent moments, though, during which Charlie seemed to be enjoying the effect of his words, I saw that Catriona was now staring at the camera obscura as though it were a dangerous weapon rather than a simple wooden box.

  “Over the centuries we struggled to find a solution, to discover the secret of the Sight, so that we could imbue ourselves with it and strengthen our connection to the spirit world. With the Sight, what couldn’t we learn and study about the Aether and beyond? What secrets mightn’t we unlock?”

  “The Sight cannot be put on or cast off like a piece of old clothing,” Catriona spat at him. Her expression was twisted with disgust.

  “Perhaps not,” Charlie said. “But neither does it indelibly belong to the Durupinen. With the right understanding, the right science, and the right Castings, it can be replicated, and it can be bestowed upon others.”

  Catriona blinked. She seemed to be in shock. “That’s not possible,” she whispered.

  “Wrong again,” Charlie said, grinning. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself now. Meanwhile, my arms were cramping horribly from being tied so tightly and I’d nearly lost all feeling in my feet. “Are you finally beginning to understand what Neil Caddigan and the rest of the Necromancers have been trying to tell you all along? Your view of the spirit world is blinded by your own arrogance. You have limited others by design, but by doing so, you have limited yourselves. But Neil dared to experiment—to push against those boundaries that you have so carefully built around yourselves. And at last, he succeeded.” Charlie patted his hand on top of the box again, a fanatical gleam flashing behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Neil built that?” I asked.

  “No,” Charlie said. “I built it, based upon his designs. It is called the Camera Exspiravit. Take a good look at it. Remember it well, and fear it. It will be the end of Durupinen dominion as we’ve known it.”

  21

  Camera Exspiravit

  I LOOKED AT THE BOX AGAIN, and was visited by a wild desire to destroy it, though I was utterly helpless to do so in my current state.

  “You see, when the Prophecy came to pass, Neil had already built a Camera Exspiravit, after decades of work and research. It wasn’t a new idea. Necromancers had been working on it for centuries, experimenting with the idea since the advent of photography itself. You’ve found some of the attempts, I am sure, amongst the collection. Neil took up the work when he joined the Brotherhood. Many of his experiments went terribly wrong, but each taught him just a bit more, illuminating his path one step at a time until at last he reached his desired outcome. Perhaps you noticed, Jessica, during your tangles with the Necromancers, a certain odd quality to their eyes?”

  “Yes,” I said at once. “Their eyes looked almost silver.” It had been one of the very first things I had noticed about Neil Caddigan when I had met him, years ago on that fateful night in Culver Library. And later, when the other Necromancers had attacked us and abducted Hannah, I had noticed it again in the eyes of our assailants.

  “Yes, indeed,” Charlie said, waggling his finger at me like I was a precocious child who had just amused him with my adroitness. “Every fully indoctrinated member of the Brotherhood was endowed with the Sight before carrying out the plan to kidnap your sister. It was the final step to full initiation into the Necromancers, a gift that had to be earned through dedication, perseverance, and commitment to our cause. The silver color is a side effect of the process.”

  “So that’s the reason for the silvery eyes in daguerreotypes as well?” I asked breathlessly.

  “That’s right,” Charlie said. “It was the gleam of Spirit Sight in their eyes, a gleam put there by this very invention.”

  “This isn’t possible,” Catriona murmured. “This just… isn’t possible.”

  “Not only possible, Tracker. Actual. Surely you must have noticed during your interactions with the Necromancers that they could both see and interact with the spirits around them? Surely that did not escape your notice?”

  “Yes, but I… I assumed it was a Casting. A bastardization of Melding, perhaps, or…” Catriona’s voice trailed off as her mind groped about for any shred of logical explanation for the Necromancers’ abilities. It was clear that she could find none.

  “But your eyes are normal,” I said to Charlie.

  “I never made it to the final stage of my initiation,” Charlie said, his expression darkening. “Neil had hand-picked me, with my proclivity toward research and science, to be his apprentice in this, his most important work. It was his intention to teach me all there was to know about the process of using the Camera Exspiravit, so that I could assist him in the complicated and arduous task of bestowing the Sight upon all new Brothers. But I had only just begun to embark on my studies when the Prophecy came to pass and the Brotherhood fell. We were decimated. The Candidates like me, who had not been at Fairhaven, went to ground. And with the identities of our senior members discovered, the Trackers located and confiscated or destroyed nearly all of our assets, properties, and artifacts.”

  “And we’re bloody good at it,” Catriona said. “I personally destroyed many of Neil Caddigan’s belongings, and what we didn’t destroy is kept under lock and key.”

  “You were thorough, yes,” Charlie said. “But you didn’t know about me, did you?”

  Catriona didn’t answer, but if looks could kill, Charlie would have dropped lifeless to the ground right there. He met the venomous glare with a smirk.

  “The Necromancers were very careful to keep no records of Candidates, mostly to protect themselves, but in this case, I was the one who needed protection. For weeks I held my breath, sure that each new hour that passed would be the hour that brought the full might of the Durupinen thundering down on top of me. But weeks and then months passed, and at last I accepted that the Durupinen were not searching for me. I had fallen under their radar, a stroke of luck that I had not anticipated. At last, I felt safe to pursue my work again.”

  “But none of this makes sense,” Catriona said, squeezing her eyes shut. “A wooden box cannot bestow Spirit Sight.”

  “Oh, not by itself,” Charlie said. “You’ve got that right, if nothing else. The box itself cannot pluck Spirit Sight from the air, just as it cannot pluck a likeness or an image from the air. One with the Spir
it Sight must be present, and then, her sight must be reflected onto the subject. Only then can the Spirit Sight be passed along, and bestowed upon another.”

  “One with the Spirit Sight,” I repeated. “You mean a Durupinen.”

  “Yes.”

  I winced. “This still makes no sense.”

  “Yes, it is most complicated,” Charlie said, a note of pity in his voice. “I cannot fault you for your lack of understanding, when I have just begun to understand it myself. First, the subject’s image is taken with the camera obscura. They sit for the portrait, the lens cap is removed, and the plate is exposed to the light. Then, the lens cap is replaced. Then the Durupinen’s image is taken on the same plate, the image captured directly on top of the first. Then the image is developed using chemicals, to produce the final daguerreotype, which is a melding of the two images.”

  “But,” I sputtered. “That’s just a photograph. A double exposure. Sunlight and a few chemicals can’t magically make someone see spirits.”

  “No, indeed,” Charlie said. “The key to the process are the many Castings involved. See for yourself.”

  He picked up the camera and slid the top of it off, revealing a hollow inside with a metal device for holding the plates. Then he walked a few steps closer to us, tilting the camera toward us, so that we could peer inside.

  “Bloody hell,” Catriona whispered.

  The inside surfaces of the camera were carved with runes and markings—dozens of them. Round metal medallions had been hammered into the surfaces, gleaming like coins. There was also a strange scent of mingled herbs—I thought I could make out sage, lavender, and something that smelled like sulfur. There also appeared to be a set of prongs rising up in the center of the box, holding a large, multifaceted gemstone that might have been a diamond.

  “What is this?” I whispered, more to myself than to Charlie. “What is all of this? This isn’t how a camera obscura is supposed to work.”

  “Oh, no indeed,” Charlie agreed. “We’ve quite reinvented it, it’s true. And yet, when you see it… when you take a moment to appreciate this new incarnation… doesn’t it become clear that this is what it was always meant to be? Its true form. Look at the way it all fits together, so beautifully, like it had simply fallen from the Aether in this very way.”

  Charlie looked down at the Camera Exspiravit with an affection usually reserved for offspring or small puppies in normal people. But I was quickly seeing that Charlie was not normal, and that this situation in which I now found myself was perhaps the most dangerous of my life.

  “Your very own Castings, your very own system of magic, used to steal your gift and give it to the world,” Charlie said, his voice full of wonder and something else less identifiable but far less stable. “I thought I knew what poetry was until I saw this.”

  Catriona seemed unable to respond. She was still staring at the inside of the box, trying desperately to fit together the pieces of what she could see, her overwrought, drug-dulled brain working furiously.

  “The Castings capture the Spirit Sight, and the diamond refracts it—splits it—within the confines of the camera,” Charlie said, an indecent enthusiasm in his voice. You would have thought Catriona and I were precocious students, eagerly engaged in his experiment, peppering him with questions and begging to be shown more, rather than two bound prisoners forced to listen to his ravings. Charlie, oblivious to the irony, went on, “Then the refracted components are focused onto the plate, and onto the image of the recipient.”

  He looked up from the camera eagerly, as though he expected to find us looking awed and impressed rather than horrified. He grinned, a bit manically, and continued. “Then the plate is removed and developed, and even during that stage, more Castings are required as part of the process. Once it has been completed, though, the resulting image, carefully encased, preserves the Sight for the subject.”

  “What do mean, the image preserves the Sight?” I asked, trying to think logically through my horror. If only we could just keep him talking long enough to come up with some kind of plan…

  “The creation of the portrait is part of the Casting,” Charlie said. “There are many examples in the history of mystical and religious culture that require the creation or use of an outside object to produce a result in the subject of the charm or spell. A needle in a voodoo doll, for example, will cause pain in the subject in whose likeness the doll has been created. The same is true of these portraits.”

  “And if the portraits were destroyed?” Catriona asked. “What then?”

  “The Necromancer would lose the Sight,” Charlie said solemnly. “That is why the portraits have been so carefully preserved.”

  “And what about the Durupinen used to create all of these?” I asked through gritted teeth. “No worries there about detriment to the subject, were there?”

  “There was no detriment at all,” Charlie said. “Not when Neil produced them, at any rate.”

  Catriona and I looked at each other. I could see a sudden dread in her eyes, as though she had just understood something that I did not.

  “Neil had a willing participant,” Charlie went on, looking directly at Catriona now and smiling blandly. “I am speaking of your cousin Lucida, of course, who was more than happy to assist. Through her generosity, Neil was able to bestow the Spirit Sight upon all of the upper ranks of the Necromancers. The gift they used to interact with the spirit world was connected to your very Gateway.”

  The muscles in Catriona’s neck were working furiously, like she was fighting back the urge to vomit. “I don’t believe you,” she managed to hiss at last. “The woman we saw in those daguerreotypes wasn’t Lucida. It was another Durupinen, one who was clearly being tortured.”

  “Well, Neil had to go through a few—ah—volunteers before he met Lucida. But if you’d kept looking through the collection you would have found a familiar face.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Catriona repeated weakly.

  “But you don’t need to believe me,” Charlie said, pulling a daguerreotype from his pocket and holding it out for us to see. “The proof is right here, should you choose to acknowledge it.”

  Catriona was incapable of rebuffing the invitation. Unwillingly, she tilted her head, peering across the top of the portrait until the light shone off the image at just the right angle, morphing Neil’s smug expression into Lucida’s triumphant one.

  I gasped as I glimpsed it, then tilted my head to try to catch it again. Beside me, Catriona was shaking with rage.

  “I started with what little I had in my possession: a small notebook of Neil’s, detailing the basic concept of the Sight and the theory that it could be imbued on a non-Durupinen by means of an instrument of photography and the correct combination of Castings. At the very back of the notebook was a rough drawing of a camera obscura, along with a few notes, and a crude list of musings. I knew that Neil’s Camera Exspiravit, the one he had managed at last to build, had been destroyed along with all of the rest of his work files and the entire contents of our Grand Temple. If I was ever to help our Brotherhood to rebuild, I would be starting nearly from scratch.

  “Bit by bit, I gathered the pieces. I interviewed the few high-ranking Brothers who had survived the purge. Only one remained who had been gifted with the Sight. He had been too old and in too frail of health at the time of the Prophecy to have been of any use in the storming of Fairhaven. It was his information that became the most valuable to me. He was able to walk me through certain parts of the process, to provide details that I could not find in any of Neil’s written notes. And while there was much of the process he did not understand, the tidbits he provided me with were invaluable. He agreed to help me in my mission. Have you guessed yet to whom I am referring?”

  I shook my head stiffly. I wasn’t interested in playing a guessing game, not now that I was finally comprehending how much danger we were really in. I used Charlie’s fixation on the camera to take in the room again, desperately searching for any p
ossibility of escape.

  “The gentleman in question had helped track down and provide many of the components Neil needed for his work. He was an expert, you see, in all forms of photography, both old and new. He had connections to antiques dealers and collectors, as well as a working knowledge of processes long out of date. It was his expertise that Neil relied on to begin his work, and so I knew that I would have to do the same. And so, I came to a quaint little museum tucked away in Old London Town.”

  I gasped as the pieces finally fell into place in my foggy brain. “Oh, my God. Mr. Pickwick. Shriya’s grandfather.”

  “Correct again,” Charlie said. “He was more than willing to help me, but his health was failing and his mind was not what it had been. He took me on as a shop assistant so that I could be close to him and his artifacts, many of which I would need to study to progress in my work. Under his tutelage, I was able to produce a working replica of a camera obscura and learn the traditional daguerreotype process, while helping him keep up the museum.”

  “But he died,” I interrupted. “He died and left the museum to Shriya.”

  “A complication I had not anticipated,” Charlie growled. “It was most inconvenient. How could I continue my work if I was separated from it? But luck smiled on me in this, at least. Shriya knew little about the day-to-day business of running the museum, and was therefore delighted to find her grandfather’s young assistant to be so amiable and willing to help her keep things running.”

  This would have been a perfect moment in the conversation to hurl a snarky insult at him, but another nugget of information had floated to the surface of my memory. Shriya, arms full of boxes, cocking her head in the direction of a sealed basement door and saying, “I’m not allowed to open it. It’s been sealed off. See? Black mold. It was all in the paperwork when I finally got the deed to the place. City health inspector would have to shut us down if we broke the seal. That stuff can kill you.”