by Ken Altabef
Amalric blew a handful of yellow powder into Eric’s face. He thrashed and sputtered but it was already in his nose, his eyes.
Theodora smelled a pungent odor, like topanga root or mudwort.
Amalric raised a powdered finger to his mouth and rubbed a bit of the stuff across his upper gum.
“We need to invoke some repetitive motion,” he said to Theodora as if explaining his procedure to a student at some esoteric London university. “It can be a painful memory or a happy one.”
“How about the carousel his father made for him?”
“The carousel. Hmmm? Delightful!” Amalric kept his gaze fixed on Eric’s darting eyes. “You remember that, don’t you Eric? Riding it as a boy, round and round. What fun. Round and round.”
To illustrate the idea the alchemist circled a finger slowly in the air in front of Eric’s face. “Round and round.”
Theodora watched as the struggle slowly drained from Eric’s face. The effect of the herbs was too strong for him to resist. He thrashed less and less now, like a fish that had been out of water too long. Like a dying fish. Theodora steeled herself. I must not waver now. The end is near. I have a job to do and there’s too much at stake.
Theodora closed her eyes and sought out her husband’s spirit. The same way she could link with the animals of the wood, sharing the busy lives of the squirrels and the foxes, the thundering exhilaration of a charging horse, or soar the skies with an errant eagle, she linked with Eric now, to feel what he was feeling as Amalric put him through his paces. She felt his anger directly through the link. It was stark and uncomfortable but soon melted away, fading into the distance as the drugs took effect.
“Round, round, round.” The alchemist’s finger twirled faster and faster. His eyes locked with Eric’s and would not waver. He was forging his own sort of connection Theodora realized, through science and pharmacology rather than faery magic. So the three of them would walk this road together. Good. She wanted to witness these revelations first hand. She found it difficult to trust the alchemist of late. She couldn’t shake the feeling he was hiding something from her. If this tactic brought the location of the lens to light, she would have the information directly. That was best.
Eric’s eyelids grew heavy. His mind sank down into a memory from his childhood. Theodora and Amalric, each in their own way, came along for the ride.
Like a pair of bloated ticks clinging to his soul, Theodora thought. But it was necessary. She would not look away.
And it was such a happy memory. The carousel. She was glad she’d chosen this one. Whatever lay ahead for Eric this night, she’d granted him at least this one moment of unbridled joy. Eric was a child of five again. So young and carefree, the world spinning around him as his wooden horse rose and fell, rose and fell. The carousel spun and spun, it’s only music the singing of the young boy’s heart.
Eric laughed until he was gasping for breath.
“Round and round,” said Amalric. “But your grandfather has the lens. The lens.”
The carousel came to a sudden halt. Time seemed to slow and then stop. Young Eric saw his grandfather standing by the side of the carousel. Griffin was an imposing figure with his broad shoulders and barrel chest, standing ramrod straight in perfect military posture. His bullet-shaped head, thick mustache and steely gray hair cut unfashionably short. He was smiling as he watched his grandson at play, but his face was not softened by the good humor. Such a thing seemed impossible for him. The lines of his face were ever rigid, rock hard even in a smile. Hs eyes were looking at the boy but they saw only hardship and war.
This memory took place at the height of the Purge. Eric recalled that there had been blood on the cuff of Griffin’s shirtsleeve. A thin line of spatter drops. It was purple blood. Faery blood.
This was the last time he would ever see his grandfather alive. Tomorrow Griffin Grayson would be struck down, ripped apart by his own hunting dogs, murdered by faeries.
“Your father had it,” Amalric reminded him. “Your father had the lens. He had it.”
Eric felt pressure building at his temples, a dull headache.
“Your father. Find him. Find the lens.”
Henry? Where was he? Eric was indeed searching for his father. He must find Henry. Where was he?
Eric tore across the grounds of Grayson Hall. It was a moonless night and dark. But his father was not in the house. Henry was sick, terribly sick with the Creeping Rot, and he hadn’t been thinking straight. He could have wandered off anywhere. How was Eric ever going to find him out here?
Henry had ranted of so many strange and incoherent things over the past few days. The scaly lesions covered half his face and both forearms up to the elbows. His hands worst of all. His hands were stiff, swollen lumps of gray rot grown to twice their normal size. His father’s hands. Ruined.
Eric broke out into a run, racing past the dairy farm and the granary. What had Henry been ranting about today? The itch, of course. The relentless, maddening itch. And he’d been speaking of his own father. About Griffin.
Eric turned on his heel and headed for the cemetery. The Graysons kept a small graveyard on the south side of the estate, just behind the chapel. Six generations of his forebears where enshrined in that gloomy place, though he rarely visited them. In fact, no one tread the graveyard path very often. There was always a sour smell about the place. He cut through the rows of little graven stones marking the plots where beloved members of the house staff and lesser family were laid to rest. He headed straight for the crypt.
The well-oiled, wrought iron gate of the crypt swung open easily. Eric thrust his lantern in front of him as he descended the stone steps to the lower level. He ran down the long hall of the crypt.
“Father!” he called out.
“That’s right. Find him. Find the lens.”
Find him. Find him. Eric didn’t care about any lens.
He heard muffled sounds up ahead. A shuffling of dull, padded feet. Low moans of pain and confusion. A muffled sobbing, so dry, so brittle.
Eric rushed from crypt to crypt, sidestepping the caskets and monuments that told the history of the Grayson family, written in death from generation to generation. His lantern illuminated swirls of gray dust as he passed through each chamber, then left the dead in darkness behind.
The moans and senseless babbling grew louder and Eric recognized the frantic voice as that of his father. He swung the lantern into the next crypt. A pathetic figure stood at a weird angle, bent over the opened casket. Henry Grayson was a sickening sight, his clothes shredded to dirty rags, his shoulder length hair falling haphazardly in front of his distorted face. Blobs and patches of the Gray Rot crowded his cheeks and hung so thick on his brow they obscured one eye entirely.
The other, uncovered eye told the story. The Creep had driven him mad; it had turned this thoughtful and considerate man into a raving lunatic. The tragedy fell as heavily upon Eric as if one of the great gravestones had toppled down upon him. His father had done nothing to deserve this. He hadn’t ever harmed even a single faery and yet this terrible blight had been brought down upon him just the same.
“It’s not here. Not here.”
“Father?” Eric advanced slowly.
Henry dug his hands into the opened casket of Griffin Grayson, rooting through the pulped remains the dogs had left so many years ago. “I thought I knew,” he said, then broke down into a childlike sobbing. “Where? Where is it?”
Eric didn’t understand. “What are you looking for?”
Henry looked upon his son for a moment just the way he used to, the benevolent teacher, the wise father. “His heart.”
“He was your father. Come away.”
“Did he have one? Did he?”
Henry raised his hands from the polished granite casket. They were covered in blood. Purple blood.
But it was only a trick of the lantern light. The blood was red, seeping through cracks in his thick gray skin. It was Henry’s own.
&n
bsp; And it was Eric’s too.
“You’ve hurt yourself.”
Henry looked down at the blood smeared on his lumpy, gray, stumped fingers. His eyes bulged with horror. His mouth opened wide but only a silent scream came from the tortured hole.
Eric took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped it around one of his father’s hands, dabbing away some of the blood.
And then, the distant memory exchanged places with a slightly more recent one, and he realized he was washing his own hands. Red blood dripped from his fingers into a small ceramic basin. Eric rubbed his palms together, leaving streaks of shit and blood in the cold water. His father lay on the bed, the sheets smeared with his own filth. The stench of sour milk, the hallmark of the dreaded Rot, assaulted his nostrils. Henry’s personal staff would not come into the room. Even the doctor had fled. Eric had been left to take care of his father by himself.
Henry lay shivering on the bed, his breaths thick with pink spume. It wouldn’t be much longer now. At least asleep, Eric was spared his lunatic ravings. Shit and blood. Such a pathetic sight. Having to witness his once-proud father laid so low was the worst thing Eric had ever experienced.
And then there was his mother. She sat in a chair at the bedside, wrapped in a linen shawl, crusted and dirty with the weeping from her own skin lesions. She said nothing, having withdrawn into a private world of fear and sadness. Every few moments she looked at her husband with a horrific, probing stare. She knew. The same thing was going to happen to her too. Her mouth opened but nothing came forth except the tip of a quivering, silent tongue. If she could speak, would she say anything to him besides that one fateful word? Her worst fears had been realized. Faery vengeance. She’d been warned. She’d been told to stay away but had married into this cursed family just the same. She had done it for love of Henry Grayson, that wretched lump of gray tumors swaddled on the bed.
What would she say? Regrets? Recriminations? Another warning? She offered none of those things. Instead her eyes shot to the doorway, the window. Her body jerked, jumping at shadows.
“Fey!” she said. “Fey!”
She pointed a trembling finger at the window. Eric didn’t bother to look. She saw them everywhere. The faeries. All around, leering, laughing, sticking out their tongues, licking their lips.
“Fey!” she screamed.
Chapter 32
“The lens,” Amalric asked, “Where is it? Find it.”
Eric grunted with the pain. The crushing pressure on his temples increased. It felt now like a white-hot needle had been driven through each side of his head to meet somewhere in the center.
“Find it!”
Eric plodded drunkenly forward. The darkened street swayed before him. He was looking for something. Something. The intense pain in his head made it hard to think clearly. It was all he could do to place one foot in front of the other, forcing his way along the dirt path between empty houses. Graystown was completely deserted. There was no one around, no one to see their lord, only half-dressed, wandering alone in the night.
No. He wasn’t alone. There were people all around. He saw them now. Men and women, lying in huddled lumps on the ground. And children. All dead. All victims of the Rot. Who’s fault was it? Who’s fault?
“It’s not here,” he gasped. “It’s not here.”
A cackling laugh rang down from one of the trees beside the path. Eric looked up. It was a dark night and so hard to see, but a shadowy figure hunched among the branches of the tree. Her dark blue face melded into the black sky, a void only, a fearsome silhouette blotting out a small patch of stars. He was glad he couldn’t see her clearly. But Black Annis was surely there. He heard her teeth gnashing, chewing the bones of Graystown’s children.
He glanced helplessly down the street, at the bodies lying everywhere around.
“It’s not here,” he said, desperate to wake up, desperate for this nightmare to end.
Ka-thoom! Ka-thoom!
The tolling of the great iron bell was like a piston pulping his skull with every stroke. He clapped his hands to his ears to fend it off but the sound remained as loud as ever. Ka-thoom! Ka-thoom!
Whose death did the bell toll now? His parents? The townsfolk? Or all the faeries murdered in the Purge?
“They are all dead,” said Amalric. “Because of the Graysons!”
Ka-thoom! Eric couldn’t take much more of this. He felt as if his head was going to explode.
“They are all dead,” repeated Amalric. “Because of the lens! Where is it?”
The lens. The lens belongs to Hake.
“Hake? Yes. What about him? Does he have it? Does he have the lens?”
Yes, thought Eric. He did have it. Henry passed it down to him when it became evident the Rot had taken its hold, that the lord of Grayson Hall would inevitably succumb to the ravages of the dread disease.
But then the curse fell on Hake too. Poor, dear Hake. Eric remembered the fateful day when he’d found his brother, stark naked, standing on the roof of the chapel. Eric had climbed up to rescue him and the two stood on top of the fitted terra cotta plates that made the roof, three stories high. Hake was half covered in blood. Red blood. But he didn’t seem to be harmed.
“Whose blood is that? What did you do?”
“Traitors. There are traitors everywhere.”
Eric didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “Who?”
Hake drew in a quick breath, a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know.”
He looked down at his chest, splashed with red as if he were seeing the blood for the first time. He didn’t seem to realize he wore no clothes. The Rot had gotten to him. He had no lesions on his naked body, still muscular and perfectly formed. Hake had always been so fit and handsome. The Rot had not touched his body. But it had ruined his mind all the same.
“We’ll sort it out,” Eric said, “whatever it is. But first we have to get down from here.”
“I can’t,” said Hake, his face contorted with pain. “I can’t… I won’t… die like him.”
“You needn’t die at all. You’ve got to carry on. For father.”
“Father’s dead.”
“I know.”
“They’ve killed him. They’ve killed me!”
“You’re not dead, Hake. You are alive. We’re talking.”
“They’re in my mind!” Hake gripped a shock of hair on either side of his head and gave it a sharp pull. “He told me. He warned me. He told me to use Griffin’s lens. Use it to kill them all. A new Purge.” Hake’s whole body cringed as if struggling with opposing forces within his own mind. “Burn them all!”
“We’ll talk about it. Come away from the edge.”
“He gave it to me, but it’s too late. Too late for me to use it. It’s up to you, Eric. Up to you.”
“I understand. Let’s come down. We’ll sort it all out.”
“But I can’t tell you. Don’t you understand? I can’t tell you where it is. Because they’ll hear. You understand?”
“Where it is? The same place as always. In the chapel, beneath the altar.”
“No. No. I moved it. You understand? I can’t say where. I can’t even think about it. They’re in my head. They’ll hear! We have to kill them. You have to kill them.”
“Please… don’t…”
Eric charged forward. Too late. Hake had thrown himself from the roof. Eric reached out for him, even after he had gone. Too late. He stared down at the broken body of his brother on the ground below. The faeries had taken his parents from him and now his dear brother. He had half a mind to follow him down as well. If not for Fitzroy March, he just might have.
“The lens,” said Amalric, “he was talking about the lens.”
Each word hit Eric as an unbearable, searing pain in his head. He screamed. He sank to his knees, the chapel roof gone, the sky gone, lost in a world of pain. A series of disconnected visions played themselves out on the inside of his skull. The carousel. The bloody water. Black Annis. The be
ll.
“He can’t take any more of this,” said Amalric. The alchemist spoke dispassionately as if discussing the weather. He waved a hand in front of his own face as if breaking up a mirrored reflection in a smooth lake.
He stepped away, leaving Eric still strapped to the chair, his head sagging onto his bare chest.
“That’s it,” said Amalric. “He truly doesn’t know. His brother stashed it away somewhere, took the secret to his grave. If I push him any farther he will be completely insane. And so might I. We’re finished.”
The alchemist paced the little cell, rubbing at his temples. “Oh, and I’ve gotten a ghastly headache in the bargain.”
Theodora dismissed nothing. She spent a long moment reviewing the entire journey through Eric’s memories. The general turn of these events had already been known to her, but Eric had always spared her the gory details of his parents’ deaths. And he’d never spoken about his rooftop talk with Hake. A history of madness in the family was not something an English lord dared discuss, not even with his devoted wife. She’d never imagined the full extent of his tragedies before. Not like this. His thoughts of Griffin as a murdering monster, his father as an ineffectual leader, his mother a weak and frightened superstitious woman. The guilt he felt at being the only one to survive the plague. He had endured so much.
“I’m not finished yet,” said Theodora. She carefully maintained her empathic connection to her husband.
“Hmmm?”
“There’s something else I want to know.”
Amalric shook his head. “Well, I’m done with this. And so is he. You might as well just slit his throat and be done with it.”
“Yes. We might as well,” said Redthorne. She stood leaning against the back wall near the door, balanced on one leg, the other casually drawn up behind her buttocks.