by J. A. White
“Hey!” Taff exclaimed.
The unghosts, unable to resist such a smorgasbord of toys, came almost immediately. A wooden wagon rose into the air and a translucent boy with brown skin and soft eyes appeared. He rolled the wagon along his forearm and giggled, the sound softer and more distant than it should have been, as though the boy were playing at the end of a tunnel. Another girl held Isabelle in her lap and brushed her fingers through the doll’s hair.
Bethany drew her hands to her mouth in horror.
“What happened to them?”
“You stole something from these children and took it for yourself,” Kara said. “Maybe the thing that makes them special—that makes all children special. You took an essential part of who they are, and what’s left is angry, and sad, and confused. They wander the streets, not understanding why everyone is ignoring them, why they no longer have a place in the world.”
Kara picked up the grimoire. She saw Lucas exhale deeply and lower his bow.
Bethany’s attention remained on the unghosts.
“Can you change them back?” she asked.
“No,” Kara said. “Only you can do that.”
She opened the grimoire, noting that she cast no reflection in its mirrored pages, and handed it to Bethany.
“What are you doing?” Lucas asked, raising his bow again. “Why did you give it back to her?”
“Because she’s going to fix what she’s done. Aren’t you, Bethany?”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how. And the grimoire won’t let me.”
“Look at them. Look at their faces.”
The unghosts stared at Bethany expectantly.
Please, a little girl mouthed, her silence more plaintive than words could ever be, and the other children echoed her: Please, please, please.
“I’m so sorry,” Bethany said. “I never meant to hurt any of you.”
Bethany ran her finger along a mirrored page of the grimoire. For a moment her face darkened and she glared at Kara with a horrific snarl of hatred, but the real Bethany quickly resurfaced, her face tight with strain as she battled the grimoire’s influence. “No,” she said. “No! I don’t care if I’ll be all alone again. I won’t hurt her . . . or anyone else . . . not anymore! I want things back the way they were!” The grimoire shook fiercely as though trying to escape. Bethany tightened her grip. “Reverse the spell. Return those children to their mothers and fathers. I command you!”
A series of muffled cracks shook the interior of the book. Bethany turned the grimoire over, holding it by its spine, and shards of broken glass clinked to the cobblestones.
“Where’s my mom?” a boy asked.
It was Liam, Mrs. Galt’s son. Kara remembered his curly hair, though of course he had been little more than a hint of a boy when she first saw him. Not anymore. Along with all the other children, he was perfectly, vibrantly alive. The former unghosts stood in a semicircle, confused but otherwise unharmed.
Bethany’s face was drenched in sweat and she looked as though she could barely stand. Kara, who knew the toll that magic could take on the body, ran to her side.
“You should sit down,” Kara said, taking her hands.
“Who are you?”
“A friend. A real one, this time.”
Bethany smiled.
“I like that.”
The town bell tolled three times.
“That’s odd,” Lucas said. He had been in the process of sliding his bow back into its sheath but now drew it forth again. “Why are they gathering everybody on the beach?”
Kara heard a thump behind her, like something falling from a great distance. She spun around to find Bethany pinned to the ground by a black net while two figures on a nearby roof assessed their handiwork with satisfaction. The net had been weighted down with metal balls, the force of it knocking Bethany’s head against the stones. She wasn’t moving.
The narrow lane filled with men.
Graycloaks.
They marched past the children at a uniform clip, every fourth man bearing a torch, and encircled Bethany.
“What are they doing here?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know,” said Kara.
On De’Noran, the graycloaks had been responsible for enforcing the strict rules of the Path, a duty they embraced with merciless fervor. Seeing them again set loose old fears, like a hot blade dragged along a poorly stitched wound. Keep your head down! Don’t let them recognize you! Kara stole glances but saw no one familiar, which was strange—she thought she knew everyone in her village.
Who are these people?
“We have her! Bring the cart!” one of the men shouted. He rode a horse and held a red ball-staff that seemed to denote authority of some kind. He reached down to pat Taff on the head, and then allowed his gaze to play along the growing crowd of townspeople who had awoken in the night to investigate the commotion.
“Don’t worry, good folk. You’re safe now. The Children of the Fold have arrived. You’ve nothing to fear—unless you’re a witch, of course!”
The men stood aside as a horse dragging an iron cage on wheels clopped through the crowd, stopping in front of Bethany. Two graycloaks dragged the unconscious witch roughly across the cobblestones and threw her in the cage.
Several people in the crowd applauded.
A graycloak wearing long black gloves took Bethany’s grimoire and placed it inside a metal box, which was immediately closed and latched.
The cart pulled away.
I’m sorry, Bethany. I couldn’t save you after all.
The graycloaks, focused on more pressing concerns, hadn’t paid any attention to Kara and Taff. Now that the witch was secured, however, that would change. She had to move quickly.
“I don’t recognize any of them,” Kara whispered to Lucas, “but they’re still graycloaks. If they report to Father, and he finds out I’m here—he’ll burn Nye’s Landing to the ground to find me.”
“And Safi!” Taff exclaimed. “We have to get her out of that cell before they find her!”
“Go,” said Lucas. “I’ll distract them if I can.”
In the end, however, Lucas didn’t have to do a single thing; the distraction came to them. The people of Nye’s Landing, en route to the beach, had made note of the restored children, and an avalanche of bodies crashed into the narrow lane: parents pushing against the crowd to gain entrance, young ones screaming for their mothers, the graycloaks trying to maintain order but ill-prepared for this unexpected chaos.
Taff’s toys were kicked and scattered by heedless feet.
“Wait here!” Taff exclaimed, and before Kara could stop him he vanished into the crowd. While scanning the packed lane for her brother, Kara saw Mrs. Galt hugging Liam as though she would never let him go again. The sight of their smiling faces filled Kara’s body with welcome warmth. Things hadn’t gone as planned, but she had done this one thing right, at least. Still, she couldn’t help but be annoyed by the number of people thanking the graycloaks, as if they had been the ones responsible for their children’s return.
Taff scrambled out of the crowd with only one toy, the wooden hideaway he had shown Kara on the ship.
“I had to leave the rest of them,” he said, near tears but fighting it. “Right now, this is the one we need.”
There was no time to ask him why; they had to reach the Stonehouse before the graycloaks did. The building was located on the western border of Nye’s Landing, and Kara knew only one way to get there: a path that cut through the weedy hill overlooking the beach.
From this vantage point, they had a clear view of the activity below them.
Tall stakes had been driven into the sand, their tops covered with oiled liniment and lit aflame. Beneath these torches the townspeople huddled like livestock, fenced in by a rectangle of graycloaks. Anyone who moved too close to the perimeter was shoved backward with a quick jab of a ball-staff.
A man sat on a massive black horse, looking down at the
crowd. People were still talking, milling about, and he wasn’t going to speak until he had their full and undivided attention. He waited patiently. One by one, the people of Nye’s Landing stared up at him, some already with reverence in their eyes. He was a special man, after all, one who invited devotion.
“Good evening, lost ones,” said the impostor wearing their father’s face. “My name is Timoth Clen, and I have come to save you all.”
BOOK TWO
SENTIUM
“A wexari makes magic, but it is not magic that makes a wexari.”
—Minoth Dravania
40th Sablethorn Lecture
Kara’s mother had been orderly with her affections, offering a hug or kiss only after she had finished planting the bulb in her hands or hanging herbs to dry, but Father had always given a more immediate response. As soon as he saw Kara tottering across the fields he would stop whatever he was doing—planting his ax into a stump, laying the plow on the ground—and throw her high into the air, calling her “Moonbeam, my little moonbeam!” as little Kara tilted her head back and threw her arms toward the sky. That was why, even though Kara knew that the man below her was only the shell of the loving father she had once known, her first reaction was to run into his arms. He was safety, home; all the things she longed for so terribly.
But then he spoke and the spell was broken. Her true father could never sound so cold.
“We have imprisoned your witch,” Timoth Clen said, his voice carrying along the beach. He wore a pristine white cloak, and his face, revealed by torchlight, was clean-shaven and freshly scrubbed. “You are safe once again, as are all those who follow the Path.”
Behind him an endless parade of soldiers continued to march into Nye’s Landing, some on horseback but most on foot.
Look at all those graycloaks, Kara thought. No wonder I didn’t recognize any of them. Surely there were still people from De’Noran somewhere among their number, but the ranks of Timoth Clen had multiplied.
He has an army now.
“Maybe we should go down there,” Taff said. “Maybe if Father sees us he’ll remember that he loves us and that will break the spell.”
“That’s not our father. It’s just the thing that stole his body.”
“Can’t we just try? He’s so close!”
“He’s never been further away.”
East pushed his way to the front of the suddenly mesmerized crowd. He looked up uneasily at the man on the horse.
“I am the one who sent for your help,” he said, rubbing his bald pate with his knuckles. “I heard tell of how you saved Fraenklin from a vile young thing who changed dreams to nightmares, and the village of Denholm from a flying witch whose scream could shatter both glass and bones. Truth be told, I found such tales dubious at the time, but now—”
“You are a believer,” Timoth Clen said. “This is good. Denholm and Fraenklin are hardly the only villages we’ve saved, though, and we hear reports of new witches awakening every day. Magic spreads through the World like a plague.”
The grimoires, Kara thought. This is Rygoth’s doing.
She heard squeaky wheels and directed her attention to the opposite end of the beach. Between two perfect lines of marching graycloaks came a procession of horse-drawn rolling cages identical to the one used to imprison Bethany. From this distance Kara couldn’t make out the faces of the prisoners. She saw only shadowy figures, some lying down, motionless, others with their faces pressed against the bars.
Witches.
Chained to the outside of each cage, about a dozen in all, were a number of mangy animals, whimpering and whining as though the slightest movement caused them unbearable pain. They looked like old dogs that had been beaten down by the world.
Kara knew better.
Oh no.
“We appreciate your help,” East continued, “and will pay you whatever your fee might be for your services.”
“Our mission is a duty, not a vocation,” Timoth Clen snapped. “We ask for no coin. However, if any of the men or women of your town would like to join our crusade, we always welcome those eager to follow the One True Way.”
She saw a few people step forward. More than a few.
“I see,” East continued. He straightened his back, trying to look as authoritative as possible, but stuttering words betrayed his fear. “Now tell me, where have you taken Bethany Jenkins? She will be tried for her crimes here, of course, being a resident of Nye’s Landing.”
Kara would have liked to believe that East truly cared about Bethany’s fate, but she had left such naïveté back in De’Noran. The Mistral’s ego had been hurt, nothing more, and he wanted to regain some measure of the power stolen from him.
“My Children and I are making a pilgrimage to the bones of my first life, a sacred place far to the north,” Timoth Clen said, “though we shall stop to do good works where needed. There are so many witches out there, so many cages to fill. When we reach our destination, they shall all be purified in a blaze of righteous fire, and the World will rejoice, for they will know that the Children of the Fold have returned to them at long last.”
Timoth Clen leaned forward and pinned East with his gaze.
“The witch of Nye’s Landing, the one you call Bethany, shall be coming with us. I don’t like to waste good kindling. Do you have any objections to this?”
“Of course not!” East exclaimed, nodding his head hard enough to shake the loose flaps of his jowls. “She’s yours to do with what you will.”
“I’m glad to hear that, friend.” Timoth Clen straightened himself on his steed and addressed his next comments to the crowd at large. “And I’m gratified that the Children of the Fold could be of service. But witches are a crafty lot, like any other type of vermin; you might catch one, but there are always others lurking in the darkness. You needn’t worry, though. I wouldn’t dream of leaving your little town without cleansing it completely.”
He waved two fingers forward and the chained creatures were set free. They looked like mangy dogs at first, a laughable army of malnourished strays, but as they limped along the sand their bones began to pop and stretch, their forms growing larger in the darkness. Soon the creatures loped on powerful hind legs, their jaws elongated and overpacked with fangs.
Nightseekers, Kara thought.
She had seen her first one the night her mother died. Fen’de Stone had wanted to know if Kara—then just five years old—was a witch, and so he had set a single nightseeker on her to perform its test.
But why so many now? Kara thought. Who does Timoth Clen think is a witch?
The graycloaks parted, allowing the nightseekers entrance into the crowd of entrapped townspeople, and then they closed their ranks again so no one could escape.
Kara let out a small gasp.
He’s going to test everyone, she thought.
The first nightseeker pounced upon an older woman with long, flowing hair. A translucent needle emerged from the creature’s paw, and the woman whimpered softly as it pierced her forearm. The nightseeker slid the needle up its nostril and snorted the blood at its tip, pausing only a moment before leaping off the woman in pursuit of worthier prey.
She’s not a witch, Kara thought.
“That’s why Father gathered these people together,” Taff said. “So he could test them all at once. It’s a witch hunt.”
“Timoth Clen,” said Kara. “Not Father.”
The nightseekers worked quickly and efficiently, never testing the same person twice. Pounce, pierce, snort. Pounce, pierce, snort. Once cleared, women and girls were permitted to leave the perimeter, as were all the men. Some did. Others stayed to fight. Kara saw a bearded man wrap his arms around a yellow-tailed nightseeker and attempt to drag it off the girl pinned beneath its massive frame. The creature snapped its jaws lightning fast and the man staggered backward, his hands pressed against his neck. In a different area of the crowd a young girl screamed, a nightseeker having identified her as a witch. Two graycloaks dragged her
toward the rolling cells as Timoth Clen watched with a smug look of satisfaction.
“But that can’t be right,” Taff said. “You asked that girl if she was a witch, I remember! She said no. And Isabelle didn’t shake her head.”
“That’s because she wasn’t lying. She honestly didn’t know she had the talent. She’s nothing but an innocent girl—and that monster’s going to burn her to death anyway.”
“We have to get Safi,” Taff said, tugging at Kara’s hand.
They sprinted to the Stonehouse. Its guard was gone, and a terrifying thought suddenly occurred to Kara: What if they’ve already put her in a cage? What will we do then? They burst inside, the air damp and cold like that of a cavern, and crossed the dirt-packed floor, shouting Safi’s name. Kara felt relief flood her as they came to the third cell and she saw the small, familiar shape pressed against the back wall. It looked like Safi hadn’t moved since they last saw her.
“We’re getting you out of here,” Kara said. “Come on. We have to hurry.”
She tried to open the cell door and realized an important difficulty she had overlooked.
It was locked.
“Oh no,” Kara said. “I’m so stupid! No, no, no!”
“Excuse me,” Taff said, retrieving the penknife from Kara’s cloak.
“What are you doing?” Kara asked as he unfolded the blade. “Can you pick the lock with that? Do you even know how?”
“Hold this,” said Taff, digging the tiny hideaway out of his pocket and handing it to Kara. He scraped the blade of the penknife against the cell, producing a thin sliver of metal that he pinched between two fingers.
“Open it,” he said, nodding toward the hideaway.
Unhooking the latch, Kara opened the tiny red door. Taff carefully dropped the metal filing inside the plain wooden compartment.
“I think I have to do the rest,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “Mary’s toys only work for me.”
Taff lifted the hideaway from Kara’s hand. He latched the door shut and placed it to his forehead.