by Ari Berk
He knew now, without question, that this was the fiery specter he’d seen at Temple Street. Silas shouted, “Cabel Umber, stop!”
Before Silas could say more, Cabel Umber continued, his words wrapped in smoke and disdain as he spoke them.
“You see, Silas Umber? We are met again, just as I foretold.”
Silas stared but took a few steps back, trying to get closer to Bea. Despite the heat pouring off Cabel’s ghost, Silas could not look away from him. His thoughts turned several ways at once, each a dead end. He could work no spell against the ghost of Cabel Umber, because behind Silas, Beatrice stood newly risen from the waters. He could not run, because he was standing on the ice and the fiery ghost blocked the homeward path. How could he protect Bea, when the last time he’d met Cabel Umber, he’d not even been able to protect himself?
“What is this? No greeting for your kin? This is cold comfort indeed, sir. But, as I have traveled only to see you, let me be brief. You are in debt to me, Silas Umber. You cannot deny this. We had a bargain and you have broken it. In truth, I think this was for the best. For now I am here and may make of this new world what I will. Also this: All of what is yours is mine. You were warned when last we spoke, were you not?”
Silas ignored the speech. Instead, he held his ground, and trying to be as specific as possible, spat words meant to work upon the fiery spirit and no other.
“Cabel Umber of Arvale, you are not welcome here. Go now! Go back to that place where once you were imprisoned. Do not return here. I, the Undertaker of Lichport and Janus of Arvale, command and compel you! Crawl back to where you were before! Go now!”
The wind rose and whipped the snow up from the pond’s surface and into the air about them.
Cabel Umber sat upon his horse, unmoved, a corona of scarlet fire about his head.
“Stirring words, little cousin. You might have been a troubadour with your fine voice. But I pray you, play us another tune.”
Reaching down into his mind for more and elder words of power, spells older than Cabel Umber, Silas shouted lines from the Book of the Dead, “You are the snake that hides in the marshes. Return now to your black cavern. Go below the waters. Do not breathe the air. Do not return. Do not see the sky again. It is the Lord of the West who speaks these words.”
The ghost’s horse shuddered and reared. Cabel Umber turned and looked at Silas with surprise. “Now, Silas Umber, that is old magic indeed. I reckon, if it were not as it is between us, I should even now be finding some dark hole to lie up in. But, if we are done with playacting, let me speak to you a few needful words. There is nothing you can do to bind or harm me. Nothing. This is Old Law. Your unpaid debt renders you ineffectual where I am concerned. Shout what you will. Curse me, if you like. It will come to naught. While I do not know how you slipped the noose of the curse I set upon you, rest assured your being yet alive only compounds the debt owed to me. Had you only died, why, then, I might never have come unto this place. I thank you.”
Silas turned his head and whispered frantically to Bea, “Go back, Beatrice. Or go to my house. Hide, please. Hide!” Her eyes were blank and her whole body shook into a blur.
Cabel Umber smiled with the half of his face still capable of a grin.
“Now it is my turn to show how it shall be between us. What is yours is mine.”
Cabel Umber raised his arm in threat and spurred his horse forward into the air between them, casting sparks and embers across the surface of the millpond as it landed. Silas jumped to the side to avoid being struck and fell hard on the ice. Cabel did not stop but drove his horse directly into Bea. Smoke enveloped them, and an instant later, when the air blew clear, Beatrice had been pulled up and across the front of the horse. She lay over the creature’s fiery mane, Cabel’s hand pressed down on her back. Her eyes were closed, and flames spread hungrily over her body.
“Stop! Stop!” Silas screamed. “I’ll give you anything you want! Anything!”
“I know you will,” said Cabel with a sneer. “There is only one more thing I desire from you, and now I shall have that, too! No need for you to make a gift of what I am owed already and can take easily enough.” From the horse’s side, Cabel Umber drew up a bar of iron, hot and burning red as an ingot fresh from the forge.
“Please, just let her go when it’s done, okay? She is nothing to you.”
“Don’t be absurd. She is something to you, and that makes her demise, even as she is, marvelous to my eyes.” He stroked her hair, which steamed below his hands. “Besides, she reminds me of someone I lost long ago . . . a child who ran from me, a daughter who, with your help, fled that most just punishment she might have received from her father’s hands.”
The horse walked toward Silas, and Cabel raised his arm above his head, preparing to strike.
Silas closed his eyes, but the blow did not come.
The spectral horse moaned and moved backward, farther out onto the ice. Cabel Umber shouted, “Hold! Hold, damn you!”
A strange and graceful harmony began to cut through the cold air. Music was drifting across the reeds. The specter’s horse stopped, suddenly incapable of motion. The flames circling Cabel’s head lessened. Everything about the ghost seemed to fray as the music rose louder. Above, the stars brightened, and in their light, the edges of Cabel Umber’s ghost began to thin. Through Cabel’s body, and his horse’s, Silas could now just make out the steeples of Lichport in the distance. In what remained of Cabel’s eyes, Silas could see fear. The music and its effect had caught him off guard. Silas moved across the ice toward them, hoping he might be able to draw Bea away.
The music was unlike anything Silas had ever heard. It was both soft and sharp at once, and composed of celestial grace. It held a harmony beyond earthly things.
Cabel Umber had heard enough. He swung the horse about and, holding Bea tightly with one hand, pulled back sharply on the reins with the other. The horse kicked its back legs, sending burning shards of bone into the air, then leapt up, coming down on the ice close by the shoreline. Cabel shouted something in a language Silas did not know, and the earth tore open. The horse, the huntsmen, and his quarry crashed down into the darkness. Clouds of steam flew up hissing, but the spectral fires were gone, and Silas was alone once more among the cold, brown reeds. The massive hole filled up with mossy water and immediately began to freeze.
“Beatrice!” Silas cried, jumping toward the edge of the millpond, but she was nowhere to be seen. Except for the fragments of bone and ash strewn across the ground and still floating in the air, it was as though the ghost of Cabel Umber had never been there. Mist turned and drifted on the icy surface of the pond. He could see nothing below the surface.
Silas sat on the ice. He was freezing and exhausted, and the only things he knew with any certainty were there was nothing more he could do tonight, and that now matters were worse. Before he’d summoned Bea, at least he knew where she was. Now she might be anywhere. Silas unbound the hand of the death watch and pushed it into his pocket.
With the death watch ticking once more, Silas was surprised to hear the unearthly music continue. It grew louder and filled his mind with its harmonies. Silas looked up, trying to see where it might be coming from. The stars were brilliant in the winter sky, and he thought for a moment, perhaps affected by the cold, that the music was somehow descending from the spheres above and drifting down to the earth.
He stood up.
He tried to think of what he was going to do next, how he might find Bea, but the music was all about him. His thoughts were thin and would not hold together. He relented and allowed the music to wash over him. He could not do otherwise. So the song of the stars was in his ears and in his eyes, and it drew him away from the millpond.
LEDGER
Pluto is represented as the grim, stern ruler over hell. He is also called Hades and Orcus. He has a throne of sulfur. He is described as being well qualified for his position, being inexorable and deaf to supplications, and an object of aversion to
both gods and men. From his realm, there is no return, and all mankind, sooner or later, are sure to be gathered into his kingdom. As none of the goddesses would marry the stern, gloomy god, he seized Persephone . . . and opened the earth and carried her through into his dominion.
—FROM THE MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITY, BY L. W. YAGGY AND T. L. HAINES, 1883
The swift necessity of the Undertaker’s task be chiefly this: Dissolution. The longer a ghost remains in this circle of the world, the longer a spirit may be left to harass the living, the more mightie it may then become and the harder it shalle be to finally put it down. Those ghosts, left to haunt their ancient piles, retain and darken the habitual thoughts and ways they worked in life. And so the ghost of a prince, or a master of slaves, or a huntsman shalle, in death, hold scepter, whip, and chase over any lesser spirits about them, and shall much annoy the unfortunate living with whom they share a habitation.
—JONAS UMBER, FROM HIS TRACT “PUT THEM DOWNE WITH SPEEDE”
CABEL UMBER HAD NEVER HEARD music like that before.
The terrible sounds had thrown the light of the stars into his face like broken shards of glass and had driven him back down into the earth, where mud and rock and soil muffled the awful music of the spheres.
But his quarry was still over the saddle. So enough. Time for more mischief later. Why not pause and take a moment and examine his prize?
The girl was lovely. So young. And there was a knowingness in her face. She was willful, he could tell. How her father must have hated her.
She sobbed. But that was nothing. She did not yet know what wonders lay in store.
“Be collected, child,” Cabel said to her. “Listen only to my voice.”
Fear drew over her face like a ragged veil.
“Beatrice . . . Beatrice . . . Beatrice.” Saying her name was part of the spell. Now she could not depart. With her name, with his voice, he bound her to this place.
“Just us now, Beatrice. No more worries. I shall keep you here with me.”
Softly, as though for the first time, Bea spoke. “I am longing to be elsewhere, where my love is hid.”
“But you are on the doorstep of your new home. Be collected. Be all within. Dry your eyes. You are where you must be.”
She looked around, at the statues of the monstrous gods of the earth and sunken places. She wept louder and cried, “Where are we?”
“Hush, child, hush,” he said, grinding his teeth between the words.
“Please . . . what is this place?” Her words were soft, weak, and barely held the air.
Cabel Umber lifted up her face by the chin and showed his teeth. “The new hell,” he said, laughing, “but you may call it ‘home.’ ”
BEATRICE STOOD, UNABLE TO MOVE. Fire was before and behind her.
Her mind was smoke.
There was nothing to hold on to.
She closed her eyes but could still feel the flames. Not only their heat, but their hunger. She spoke to herself. She made words in her mind to keep herself from falling to pieces, to keep the flames away.
Where are the things that are mine?
The white things
in the water
are far from me
I cannot be.
I cannot be
here
Where is solace?
Where is my thyme?
The time he gave to me?
I cannot be
Here
It laughs at me
through the darkness
Let love come for me
Let love carry me
Let my love come back for me
How will he find me
My love?
I am not there
with the white things that are mine
I am in the burning place
Let my love come for me
through the fire
through the flames
Let me be
Let me be
Let me be
LEDGER
But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul’s servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.
—I SAMUEL, 16:14–16. MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
Come, cheerful day, part of my life, to me; For while thou view’st me with thy fading light, Part of my life doth still depart with thee, And I still onward haste to my last night. Time’s fatal wings do ever forward fly, So every day we live a day we die. But, O ye nights, ordained for barren rest, How are my days deprived of life in you; When heavy sleep my soul hath dispossessed By feigned death life sweetly to renew. Part of my life in that you life deny; So every day we live a day we die.
—THOMAS CAMPION (1567–1620). MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
DESPITE THE COLD, MRS. BOWE’S window was open, and music poured from her parlor and into the street. Silas could hear no other sound, and nothing he saw on the street distracted him from following the music to its source: not the locking of doors, not the drawing of curtains as he passed. The crack of the breaking of ice, the chaotic clamor of the ghostly rider, all previous frights had been suppressed in his mind, or rather dissolved. Even his fear for Bea was softened by what he heard. He followed the music like a spell—those beautiful and unearthly sounds—right up to Mrs. Bowe’s front door.
Before he could knock, he heard her familiar voice.
“Come through,” Mrs. Bowe called out to him.
As he opened the door, the music was all about him. He walked slowly toward the parlor and saw Mrs. Bowe standing before a strange device; like a lathe, but on the long iron spindle that ran its length, bowls of glass had been threaded, largest to smallest. On the end was a wooden wheel attached by a cord to a pedal that Mrs. Bowe pumped with her foot, making the bowls spin. She dipped her fingers in a small dish of water and then pressed them to the various bowls. The glass sang.
Not looking up, Mrs. Bowe said, “A glass armonica. This one belonged to my mother. I believe it was the wizard Ben Franklin who made the first on these shores—one of his many and excellent petty sorceries.” Mrs. Bowe closed her eyes and kept playing.
“The music of the spheres,” said Silas, barely speaking out loud.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bowe.
“Celestial harmonies.”
“Indeed.”
“All from friction.”
“Always. On earth as it is in heaven, music restores order. No chaos, nor evil . . . nor cruelty may endure in the presence of such music as this,” Mrs. Bowe said.
On the table close to the mantel, a crystal ball sat with a candle burning by it, its flame wavering in the cold draft from the open window. But there was a great fire on the hearth, and the room was comfortable and warm enough. Seeing the crystal, Silas knew she’d been watching him from a distance. But instead of feeling intruded upon, he was glad. Her careful watch had most likely saved his life at the millpond.
“I am so sorry, Mrs. Bowe. I should never have raised my voice to you before.”
“Bless you for saying it, Silas.”
“You were playing to help me just now, weren’t you?”
“Partly, yes.”
“You saw him, then?”
Mrs. Bowe stopped playing. “I did,” she said, crossing herself.
“I can’t fight him, as things are,” said Silas. “I left Arvale in such a way, well . . . nothing I do has any effect on this spirit. Maybe you know some way to bind him, or banish him?”
“Oh, Silas. Whoever or whatever he was in life, that ghost is an old thing. Terrible and mighty he is. Your father would have found him challenging. Against such a malediction, I can be of little help, beyond what I have done. But I fear for you, too. Why did the spirit go to the millpond?”
“To
hurt me . . . to kill me.”
“But the spirit took her and here you are. So it seems the ghost’s intention is to bring you harm by harming others.”
“He tried to kill me before, as I left Arvale. There was nothing I could do against him, because . . . I broke a vow to him.”
Mrs. Bowe nodded slowly. “So it is as I’ve said. You are at a stalemate, but he has the advantage: He is here, in your home, among those people and places you love. There is much evil he can work. We have driven him off, but for only a moment. In any event, no one expects the glass armonica. . . . Well, what I could do, I have done. Music is a great power against evil, I believe. Anger is a fire in the heart. Music can wash it away. Fury is cacophony. Music puts all to harmony again. At least for those in whose heart love still resides. That ghost bears no portion of love—that is easy to see—and so the music was anathema to him—painful, I suspect. But it will not surprise him again. This time, by the Heavenly Mother, we were fortunate.”
It was too much to think about. Silas had no idea how to get Cabel Umber out of Lichport, or how to destroy him. He might return to Arvale, but who there could help him now? And Silas had no idea if the house was even accessible to him anymore. More importantly, he didn’t want to go back there. At least in Lichport, Silas felt he had some advantage because this was a place Cabel did not know. He began to wonder if there might be something more in his uncle’s collection of books that might be consulted. Fight fire with fire?
Mrs. Bowe began playing again, and all dark thoughts fled his mind. Silas closed his eyes and asked, “What are you playing now?”
“Just an old parting song, the sort of thing we might play at the end of a gathering if we were feeling wonderfully maudlin. Sometimes, where my family comes from, it would be played at wakes. Would you like to hear some of the words?”
“Please.”
In a soft voice, Mrs. Bowe sang.