Daughter of Lies and Ruin

by Jo Spurrier

  She wasted no time asking questions. She just stepped into my hands and leapt off them, all but knocking me over in the process. But it was enough for her to scramble up to the level above, where she lay on her belly to reach down for me. ‘Grab my hand!’

  With her help I clambered up, both of us covered with dust and grit, Kara scratched and bleeding from the sharp stone. From below I heard Toro scream with rage, and spin on his haunches with a clatter of hooves.

  ‘Again!’ Kara shouted, and we started up the next wall.

  ‘Does this mean we’re on the same side now?’ I said as she made the stirrup this time.

  ‘Shut up,’ Kara said. ‘Just promise me you’ll save him.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, scrambling up and reaching back for her. ‘I have an idea.’

  There were two souls to save — Toro and the bear. Best to do the bear first, I thought, Minerva had him pinned as her hostage. Toro was at risk too, since she’d figured out I cared for him, but Brute was the one she could kill with a flick of her fingers.

  I stood on the edge, looking down to take stock. Aleida was in the depths of the cavern now. The opalescent light that surrounded her was spreading, intruding upon the deep, smoky red of the lines and symbols laid out on the floor. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but it seemed to be having some effect, beating back Minerva’s work and supplanting it. But the spreading lights weren’t the only thing that was different from earlier. I frowned down at the scene, the obelisks of stone gleaming darkly, the bones shining bright white. Then I figured out what had changed — earlier, there had been four sigils marked in blue near the centre of the spiralling shape. Aleida had told me earlier that each of those sigils marked a life sacrificed to fuel the ritual, and back then Minerva had needed more to bring it to fruition. Now there was only one left.

  One must have come from the lion. The others . . . I bit my lip, turning back to the two pale shapes that flanked Minerva, and finally realised just what they were. Her white horses, crumpled and still. The realisation of it shook me. I’d spent most of my life on a farm, the idea of slaughtering beasts was nothing shocking to me. Horses, though . . . they were different to the regular beasts of field and fold. For most folk a good horse was like a good dog, they would hold a special place in the heart of even the toughest old farmer. Were they just beasts, or something more, like the transformed bandits? Impossible to know, now.

  I shook myself to dispel the chill of it, and pulled myself to focus. It didn’t matter how or why, what mattered was that now she only needed one more life to spill out on the stones.

  We had to get Brute out of there.

  Kara was waiting for me, fidgeting but quiet, letting me think. I backed away from the drop and thumped her on the arm. ‘Come on.’

  I ran to the wall and pressed my hand against the crumbling stone, calling on the pathway.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake. Come on!’

  Nothing. I could feel the power tugging on the stones, I could feel them shifting and twitching at my touch, but the doorway never came. ‘Facet!’ I cried. ‘Are you there? Why isn’t it working?’

  He was, of course, and he rose out of the ground, rippling with shifting light. But there were no answers in his crystalline planes.

  ‘Dee?’ Kara said. ‘What’s going on?’ There was a dangerous note to her voice. If I couldn’t do it, I knew she’d turn on me again. Her loyalty wasn’t with me, not really.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think. Why wasn’t it working? Well, every other time I’d opened a pathway it had been through solid rock. This rock was anything but solid. It was crumbling like a dried-out cake. Minerva had probably done it on purpose, I realised, so we couldn’t surprise her again by appearing at the heart of her lair. Perhaps we could run outside to the outcrop I’d used to bring us here, but I wasn’t sure Kara would follow me that far, and it still left the problem of how to snatch Brute out from under Minerva’s nose.

  Unless . . . unless I could make the rock solid again. I didn’t know a lot of magic, but fire was an easy one, and what was fire but heat? I had an affinity for earth magic, that’s what Aleida said, and I had a ring that was supposed to give me a boost to the fire I could summon.

  It was our best chance.

  I pushed back my sleeves and pulled out my wand. ‘Stand back,’ I said. ‘Keep watch for Toro, let me know if he’s coming.’

  Kara looked me over with a searching gaze, and nodded, drawing her sword. ‘You won’t have long.’

  ‘I don’t want him hurt!’

  ‘Then you’d better be quick!’

  She was right. I bit back a curse and then turned my attention inward, drawing a breath to steady myself and calling up a page from the book of sigils Aleida had given me to study. There was something there I could use, if only I could remember it correctly.

  I anchored the picture in my mind and summoned power to my wand. Once again, I felt heat searing through me in a scorching wave, but this time, instead of loosing it in a ball of flame, I held it in, and used it like ink to inscribe a sigil in the air, and with a flick I released it upon the stone.

  There was a flash and a blast of heat, a scorching wave of it. For an instant the rock glowed and rippled, turning glassy, and then it was done. Over the roar from below, I could just hear a faint tinkling noise, a tiny plink, plink, plink as the rock began to cool.

  I could also hear hoof beats. ‘Dee,’ Kara said in a low voice.

  Swallowing hard, I reached for the rock. It felt like reaching into an oven. ‘Oh gods,’ I whispered. ‘Open, please open.’

  The rock folded away in front of me. I didn’t even have to touch it.

  ‘Kara, come on!’ I shouted, and ran inside.

  The sudden silence was deafening, and I was sweating uncomfortably in the cool, damp air underground.

  ‘Now what?’ Kara said, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  ‘Let me see that seal,’ I said, holding out my hand.

  As soon as I touched the seal, I sighed in relief. It was enchanted, I could feel the power inside it, and I’d handled enough enchanted devices now to understand how to use it, if not how it worked.

  ‘All right, all right,’ I muttered. ‘I think I know how to do it. Once we’ve got him loose you’re going to have to draw his attention so I can get him free. I—’

  I broke off as a tremor rippled through the dark cave, sending a rain of dust down over us.

  ‘What—’ Kara started, but I was already cursing, remembering what Aleida had said earlier. The pathways might be destabilised by Minerva’s ritual.

  ‘We’d better be fast,’ I said, turning towards the nearest wall.

  I tucked the seal into the front of my dress, and pressed both hands against the wall, closing my eyes. I was getting the hang of this — I ought to be, it felt like I’d been doing it all day. Brute, I thought, thinking of the great shaggy beast trussed in chains. I had no doubt he was standing on more of that loose, crumbling rubble, but Minerva had spent a lot of power reshaping this place. Just how far beneath us did that gravel go? I was about to find out. ‘You’d better back up,’ I said.

  The doorway opened, and suddenly our quiet, calm cavern was full of dust and smoke and falling stones and the roar of power. I heard Minerva’s voice, and Aleida’s. Minerva’s rose to a scream of rage as the very ground beneath her feet heaved and crumbled away.

  I had opened a doorway directly beneath the huge bear. He fell, still wrapped and bound by chains, and his massive weight pulled down the flimsy structure holding back the mound of rocks and boulders. His fall brought them all tumbling down upon us.

  But it didn’t matter. As soon as he was through, I slammed the doorway shut, sealing out the avalanche.

  Choking, blinding dust and grit filled the chamber as the force of the fall sent bear and rocks all sliding in a heap across the floor. It must have been disorienting to say the least, and I took full advantage. I
threw myself at him, leaping half onto his great shaggy back as I fumbled for the seal in my bodice.

  Kara wasn’t ready for it at all. She stumbled back, face drained of blood. ‘Hey,’ she said weakly. ‘Hey, you sorry excuse for a bearskin rug. Hey, Da.’

  With a low rumble in his chest, the bear struggled to his feet. The chains that had wrapped around him were broken — no, not broken, cut. The ends of them were perfectly smooth, like glass, where the closing door had severed them. They slithered off him like clanking snakes. He didn’t seem to even notice my weight upon his back as he kept advancing upon his daughter, the rumble in his chest growing to a snarl.

  The seal was in my hand now. Winding fingers into his shaggy coat, I reached down. It didn’t fit at first, but I kept trying, turning it in my hand and praying that I wouldn’t drop it.

  ‘Da,’ Kara said, still backing away. Her hand went for her sword-hilt. ‘DA!’

  I felt the seal click into place, fitting perfectly over its gleaming golden impression on the bear’s shoulder. The gold disk came free and fell to the ground with a musical chime, and the great shaggy body beneath me collapsed in a puff of grit and dust.

  I gave them no time to rest, or catch their breath. As soon as Brute was able to stand, I was opening the doorway again. All I could think about was that Aleida was there, facing Minerva with no one to watch her back, and the best remaining sacrifice for Minerva to call upon was still charging around the spiralling path, searching for us — Toro. There was also the fact that the rock around us was still trembling and shaking every few moments. We had to move.

  I opened the doorway as I had before, into the solid rock beneath the loose gravel floor of the cavern, and clambered over the rattling stones to climb out. Stepping through, the shift from entering a hole in the wall on one side to exiting through a hole in the ground was every bit as unsettling as I’d imagined. The world swung crazily around me, sending my belly into knots and giving me a sudden wave of dizziness.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by far.

  The power bound in Minerva’s ritual roared in my ears like a waterfall, the kind of sound you felt rather than heard. The air was full of portent, like a summer storm right before the first lightning bolt comes crackling out of the sky. I had an inkling, then, why Aleida had been so hesitant to take this path — in trying to stop Minerva’s ritual she’d only been feeding more power into the spell. The air itself felt charged and ready to ignite.

  Kara and Brute came through behind me, whimpering at the strangeness of our passage back into the world. I’d brought us out behind Aleida, and she cast me a brief glance over her shoulder, her brow knotted and her dark eyes troubled, a look of urgency etched on her face.

  At my shoulder, Kara hissed in unease. ‘She doesn’t look happy. And that’s a damn big knife she’s got there.’

  It took me a moment to realise that she was talking about Minerva. The witch’s face was twisted in fury. She was gleaming with sweat, her tangled hair slick with it, her bare arms raised high. The knife in her left hand was as long as my forearm, the curved blade already stained with blood. She was still chanting, a shrill note to her voice now, a note of summons.

  A flash of movement along the wall caught my eye. Toro, charging down the spiral path to answer her call.

  ‘She needs one more to finish the ritual,’ I shouted. ‘We have to stop him!’

  ‘Right. You’ve got a thing for rocks, don’t you, Dee?’ Kara said. ‘Can you bring the path down? Cut him off?’

  ‘She’ll make him jump!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Just bring him near us, and then Da can pin him while we get the seal off. You can do it, can’t you, Da?’

  The bear rumbled in reply.

  It was a good plan, assuming Toro didn’t break a leg in the process. Hells, even if he did, better that than dead and fuel for the ritual. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ I jammed my wand back into my belt and ran for the wall. I didn’t have long.

  I dug my fingers into the wall. Any other time it would have torn my skin to ribbons, but between the sigil and the potion Aleida had given me it felt like sinking my hands into a bucket of smooth, round pebbles. I thought back to how it had felt to try to climb this crumbling, shifting mass, how easily it had slipped and slid away beneath me. Rocks knew how to fall, it was part of their very nature. Come down, I thought to the tiny, clinking pebbles. You know you want to, you know it’s where you’ll be before too long. Just come on down!

  At first there was just a trickle, a brief shower cascading over my feet. Then, they all came at once. With a yell, I beat a hasty retreat. Kara and Brute, too, as the spiralling pathway simply melted away, like a child’s mud pies under rain from a watering can. Aleida cast another quick glance around, her brows knotted even deeper, and with a gesture split the avalanche to flow around her. For a moment she was lost amid a swirling cloud of dust, the haze turning the hellish red glow dim and murky.

  Then, with a crash, Toro was there, falling in a tangle of legs and stones. From behind me came a rumbling growl, a sound that sent a flicker of terror through my heart, despite everything else going on around me, and Brute charged past me like a boulder hurled from a catapult. Toro was struggling to find his feet, but Brute was there first. Easily twice Toro’s weight, Brute slammed against his flanks, heedless of the flailing hooves, and knocked him sprawling onto the stones.

  Before I could truly take stock, Kara was already running past me. ‘Now, Dee, now!’

  ‘Oh, you don’t say,’ I muttered under my breath, and fumbled in my dress for the seal. In the moments it took me to get there, Kara was already kneeling on Toro’s neck, pinning his head to the ground. I had to squeeze in beside her to reach the seal, but in an instant it was done, and I felt Toro go limp beneath us. He was free.

  Minerva’s chanting abruptly stopped, the echoes of her voice dying away. Aleida, too, though she finished the phrase of her incantation first. My mistress didn’t look well — she was leaning heavily on her staff, her face sallow and drawn, her shoulders slumped. I hadn’t noticed before now how badly she was tiring, and it sent a sudden spike of fear through me. The webs of crystal and power we’d laid out — weren’t they working? Or was it simply not enough? Maybe Gyssha’s death-curse had weakened her too much. I scrambled up and ran to stand behind her, afraid of what Minerva would do next. Was she beaten? I wanted to believe it, but I didn’t quite dare.

  Minerva’s weathered face was full of fury as she slowly lowered her arms, eyes boring into Aleida as though they could burn a hole right through her.

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re a meddler, girl,’ Minerva said. ‘Bein’ your mother’s daughter and all. Following in Gyssha’s footsteps, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Aleida said.

  ‘Are you sure this is the path you want to take? You may have got lucky against Gyssha but if you keep on this road, sooner or later you’ll find yourself facing the Mist-hag herself.’

  ‘That’s naught to concern you,’ Aleida said.

  ‘P’raps not. What does concern me, lass, is that I still need one more life to finish this ritual, and you’ve stolen away the one I had marked for it. Though come to think of it, that little matter concerns you, too.’ Minerva started forward, padding across the stones in long, languid strides, moving like a great cat. She didn’t look weary at all, even after all the effort it must have taken to shape this cavern out of the earth, to sacrifice her horses and bring the ritual to its climax. Despite the sweat on her face and in her hair, she looked as fresh as a daisy.

  Aleida shifted her weight and staggered, grabbing for her staff with her free hand, her head hanging low. From the line of her skirts I could see that she’d lost her human feet; she was balancing on those dog’s paws once again.

  ‘Hit you hard, didn’t she?’ Minerva said. ‘If you were anyone else, I’d say you deserved it, turning on your own mother like that; but I do see why you’d want Gyssha Blackbone dea
d, mother or not. So I’ll throw you a dash of mercy, girl. I need a life, but it needn’t be yours. Give me one of them, and I’ll let you go. Your apprentice too, maybe, if she doesn’t try to fight me.’

  ‘Dee, get them out of here,’ Aleida said.

  I hesitated, hand on my wand. I’m not leaving you. I didn’t say it aloud, but I reckoned I thought it hard enough for her to hear.

  Minerva laughed, a low cackle. ‘Well, never let it be said I didn’t try.’

  Aleida laid her temple against her staff, head bowed, her tall figure stooped like an old woman. ‘If you want me, Minerva, come and get me.’

  Minerva took a step forward . . . then stopped, her eyes narrowed. I had a flash of memory, of Aleida standing in the road just a few hours before, waiting for the lords and their prisoners to approach, posing with her hat pulled down over her eyes. From this angle, I could just make out that her eyes were half-open, and she was watching Minerva from beneath her lashes. Waiting for her to draw near.

  Slowly, Minerva backed away. ‘Oh, I see. I see what you are. Trying to lure me in, like a plover feigning a broken wing. Gyssha did teach you well.’ She raised a hand, scraping damp hair back from her face, then pulling the whole knotted mass of it forward across her shoulder. Her eyes flicked to me. ‘Here’s a lesson for you, girl, the second I’ve taught you today. Never let yourself be backed into a corner with no escape. Always have a little something tucked up your sleeve.’ She pulled her hand from her hair, bringing a thick lock with it.

  No, I realised, not a lock of hair. Not with those bright colours. It was her snake, that gorgeous viper that had nearly caught me when I came a-spying in her den, its scales rippling with red, yellow and orange, like flames made flesh. I saw its tongue dart out, tasting the air, as it wrapped its body in coils around her wrist.

  Then, she brought up the knife in her other hand.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard myself scream. A cry of warning or a cry of protest, I couldn’t say. All I could think about was that beautiful creature, and how it had silently dropped on Aleida when she came to confront Minerva in her den. I couldn’t say how much her familiar knew of witches, if it knew that it had risked its life when it attacked my mistress — but whether it knew or not, its loyalty to its mistress was unfailing, even here at the last.