Worldsoul

by Liz Williams

  Deed was relieved to see her depart. He went quickly across the courtyard without looking back, but it seemed to him that he could still feel Mareritt’s gaze on his back and the sensation was an unfamiliar one, therefore unsettling. His pride was affronted and that made him angry, made him feel the disir bones start to thrust at his cheeks and rib cage. If anyone had been watching, which perhaps they were, they would have seen his eyes darken and his teeth grow sharper. Deed took hold of himself with an effort and forced the human semblance back.

  The steps up to the palace were icy and needed care to negotiate. Reaching the massive doors, Deed knocked once, hammering the iron ring back against cold oak. The sound resonated throughout the courtyard like a rifle shot, though the snow muffled all else. Deed waited for a moment and then the door swung open.

  He had been here many times before, but the hallway always looked different. Deed could not say why this was, although he suspected that it had to do with the magical overlay that Bleikrgard would have continuously deployed: the warding/guarding/binding spellcasting that kept the fortress secure. The exterior of the fortress was ancient, castellated, but the hallway was modern: a marble floor with the patina of ice, mirrored walls, a gleaming blue ceiling the colour of an arctic sky, and a soft illuminating glow which was diffused throughout the hall. No one was in sight. Deed walked along the hallway, catching glimpses of himself in endless mirrored permutations. He did not care to look directly at his reflection, in fear of what it might reveal. He had forced the disir-self back, but it might not last: Bleikrgard had a way of revealing weakness, not the disir-nature itself, but the loss of control.

  He reached the end of the hallway. Here stood a wall that seemed made of ice. Deed placed a hand upon it and, as always, felt its cold beating into his bones. He did not fight it off, but tried to welcome it, let it enter into himself. The cold was so intense that he felt as if it was transforming him, taking him somewhere that was very far from Worldsoul, perhaps all the way down the storyway of the Dead Road to the wild old lands of Earth’s far past.

  Then, it was gone. A dim blackness took its place. Deed smiled for the first time since Mareritt’s intervention. He took strength from the cold and the dark, drawing a breath of pine-scented, smoky air. He stepped forwards into the dimness and spoke.

  “I am here.”

  “Abbot General. Again, welcome.”

  Light flared and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The Lords of Bleikrgard, the lords of the north, were seated around the chamber. Nine of them wore business suits, of conservative and old-fashioned cut, with greater or lesser ruffs. The tenth wore rust-red armour, and carried a sword. The helm was down and Deed had never seen it raised, but he knew what it was supposed to contain. A skull, some claimed, but Deed thought this clichéd, and therefore tedious. The tenth lord was not human, Deed knew-at least, not any more. What he was, however, was open to some question.

  The third lord spoke. “Abbot General.” The voice was weary, long since burned of any fire. “What did you have to tell us?”

  “I have a proposition for you. Of all the Quarters of this city, the Court has greatest allegiance to the Northern. To yourselves. How would you like that power to spread?”

  “Of course we would.”

  “The past is stirring and the Ladies are coming to town,” the fourth lord, who was prone to oracular announcements, said. He smiled a sudden and terrible smile. The others ignored him, which was just as well, Deed thought.

  Deed pursed his lips. “How would you like to possess the Library? And all the magic that it contains?”

  The Lords drew forwards. “The Library, you say?” the second lord said.

  “Yes. I can give it to you.”

  Loki’s plan was bubbling beneath the surface of his brain. He could not reveal it yet, but they would trust him enough to believe that he could make good on his promise. He was Abbot General, after all.

  “… we need to take power, and that time is now.”

  “Yours is a savage ancestry, Abbot General,” the third lord said. He meant it as a compliment, without reference to the disir: Deed had taken pains to keep that quiet, but he winced anyway.

  “It’s a matter of family pride,” Deed said, modestly.

  “We depend upon you, Abbot General.” That was the armoured lord, in a voice that sounded as though there were no larynx behind it.

  “Whilst regional feeling may account for something,” Deed began.

  “You will be paid, naturally. What currency do you wish?”

  Deed showed teeth. “Blood.”

  “From whom?”

  “None of you. There are debts that I would like settled. I shall give you a list of names. If you have objections to any of them, then we can negotiate.” But he knew they would comply. He was their link to the oldest lord of all, he who lived in the wood, he who spoke chaos to the world. Deed was their link to Loki, whether they realised it or not, and thus they would do exactly what he told them.

  Mareritt was a bad dream, nothing more. Deed walked out on a cloud of power; he had got what he wanted.

  Sixteen

  She must have slept, Mercy told herself later; must have done so, because she dreamed. She was standing in the entrance hall of the Library, one hand resting on cool marble. The other hand held a small book; it seemed she had been reading. Those who had interrupted her were walking down the middle of the hall and Mercy’s heart leaped to see them: they had come back, at long, long last. Their year’s absence was ended and they had come home. Smiling, Mercy swept down into a bow.

  The Skein acknowledged her with their customary remote smiles. There were two of them, one male, one female. They were twice Mercy’s human height and their long robes fell to the floor as smoothly as water, a pale, fluid grey. The male Skein’s skin was night-black, underlain with gold, and black hair reached his waist, tied with a gilded thong. The woman was white: snow haired, paper pale. Her eyes were jade; his were azure. They were talking and laughing in their own unknowable tongue, a language in which every word held weight, and their long hands glided in graceful, sweeping motions, adding emphasis to their words.

  “You’ve come back,” Mercy breathed, and bowed lower. But when she straightened up again, the hall was empty. The Skein had gone and the marble paving was blowing with dust and cracked with age. It frightened her so much that she woke into the unfamiliar confines of the guest house, and she did not sleep again.

  Interlude

  The Duke knocked, once. She had never been to this place before, but it seemed to her that there was something familiar about it, as though someone lived here whom she had once known. But she was used to palaces, mage-houses, fortresses, not ordinary apartment blocks.

  The door opened. She looked through twisted coils of magic.

  “You are a demon,” the old lady said.

  “That is correct.” The Duke bowed.

  “I’m afraid I have no intention of letting you in.”

  The Duke had expected this.

  “Not a problem. I have no intention of hurting you, however.”

  “Then why have you come?”

  “I am told that you know a great deal about this quarter, about its magic. I’m looking for someone. A djinn.”

  The old lady laughed. “There are many djinns and ifrits in the desert. Have you tried there?”

  “I’m reliably informed that this one is in the city itself.”

  “I think your informant must be mistaken,” Mariam Shenudah said. “An ifrit in the city would cause a small sensation. They’re quite large, you know.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “I can’t help you. I’m very sorry.” Then, guileless, she added, “Have you tried asking Suleiman the Shah? He’s very well connected.”

  The demon grinned. “Perhaps a small social call is in the cards.”

  Later, she crouched on the roof of the Has, tapping a brass fingernail against the tiles. It would not be wise even for a duke to try to
break into the Shah’s palace, but there was more than one way to go about things. From a pocket of her armour, the Duke took a small golden fishing hook and a long line of thread, also gold. Then she cast about for the nearest storyway.

  These were evidently rigidly controlled around the domain of the Has. She finally found one, the slightest whisper of an unfinished tale, so gossamer thin that it had crept unnoticed through a crack in the wards. The Duke raised the fishing hook, attached to its line, and dropped it down the storyway. She felt it slide into the Has, and be gripped by a strong rushing tide. The psyche of the Shah, a lodestone within the palace walls. Gremory let the hook be drawn along until it snagged.

  The Shah was sleeping. She supposed he had to do that sometimes. His dreams were bloody, and the Duke smiled. A man after her own heart… maybe she’d come back later, pay a genuine social call. Some men were wary of demons, but her grandmother had been a succubus and she could still turn on the charm when she needed to. She sent her own mind down the line, slipping gently into the Shah’s dreaming psyche. She included a few erotic thoughts, just to distract him. But the Shah’s mind was well-guarded. It was like peering at a sealed leaden egg. The Duke cast about for cracks and at last found one in a dream: the Shah, possibly stimulated by her erotic thoughts, was dreaming about a woman. In the dream, she was behaving in a most wanton manner: Gremory wondered idly if this was actually true to life. She could tell that this was a real person, not a dream artefact. She watched with interest as the Shah demonstrated a variety of perversions, culminating as he cried the woman’s name and it snared on the demon’s golden hook.

  Her name was Shadow.

  Seventeen

  Mercy had returned to her own quarter, with a promise to return. Shadow, left alone, spent the morning in a quiet, boiling rage that she tried to channel into restoring the damaged laboratory. It was mid-afternoon when some semblance of order had been attained, and her fury had abated a little. She was not surprised when the soft knock on the door came. She had been expecting it.

  Before she opened the door, she reset the wards with a gesture of her hand and they burned a dull red around the frame. Someone was standing on the step: a woman in green.

  “Yes?” Shadow said.

  The woman bowed her head. She handed over a parchment scroll, tied with a black ribbon.

  “Who has this come from? Is it the Shah?” Shadow demanded. The woman looked up and Shadow recognised the blind eyes: it was the mute serving maid from the Has el Zindeh. She bowed her head again and melted into the dimness of the stairwell, leaving Shadow clutching the scroll.

  Some time later, she perched on the windowsill of the laboratory, looking out across the desert. The scroll sat beside her and she was tempted to fling it into the sands, let it be swallowed by nothingness and shift. But Shadow knew this was childish. It would accomplish nothing; the obligation set by the Shah would still remain. Had she not taken the vows that she had, Shadow would have simply ignored it, but by the initiatory terms of her training, she could not. She even wondered whether the Shah had summoned the disir himself. The timing did not add up, but the Shah had diviners, and more than that, understood people, damn him. Coercion and threats would have made Shadow dig her heels in: this, however, was a far greater compulsion.

  She picked up the scroll again and studied the contents. She was required, most politely, to present herself at the Has on the following morning, with a range of tools. The Shah would, he said, leave those to her discretion. There was no attempt to bluster, or to suggest that Shadow herself might call his bluff by not appearing. That still left the issue of the disir. Shadow and Mercy had talked long into the night, but had been unable to come up with an explanation as to why Shadow, in particular, had been attacked. Was it connected with the Shah, or not? Had it been purely random? Whatever the case, two things seemed clear: the Shah had been keeping an eye on her, and the disir was now engaged. Shadow had wounded it, and it was somewhere in the Eastern Quarter. Shadow had no doubts that it would be back.

  On the following morning, after a troubled night, Shadow walked to the Has. She kept the veil as thick as possible, feeling secure behind its magic, but she knew that this was illusory only, no real solution. The ones who wanted her would find her, and Shadow disliked feeling exposed.

  The door was opened by the same old woman as before. She gave Shadow a knowing glance. “Nice to see you back.”

  “Thank you,” Shadow said sourly. “Where am I to go, please?”

  She was led up a narrow staircase. The Shah stood in a room high in the Has, a turret with fretworked windows that were shuttered against the sun, looking out over the courtyard garden and letting in diamonds and squares of dappled, pleated light. The Shah stood in mingled bright and shade, reminding her uneasily of her own sun-and-moon knife. The floor was tiled in white and blue.

  “Good morning,” the Shah said, placidly. “I’m pleased that you could come.”

  “I do not see the need to fence,” Shadow said. “We both know what I feel.”

  “Yes. And although you will not believe this, you have my apologies. I dislike extreme measures. I take them only when they are necessary.”

  “You are right. I do not believe.”

  “Nonetheless.” The Shah’s voice remained mild. “I imagine that, under the circumstances, you are eager to start work.”

  Shadow did not trust herself to speak. She walked past him to a window, hearing the heavy cream robes that he wore rustle against the tiles as he turned.

  “I will have the ifrit brought up,” the Shah said. “Here in the heights, overlooking all, it is closer to the air and fire which is its element, and it will prove more compliant.”

  “I would have thought that miring it in water and earth would have been a more sensible solution.”

  “No. A curious paradox. Using its own elements against it has proved more helpful. Please don’t think that we have not tried.”

  “I do not want to reinvent the wheel.”

  “Of course not.”

  She looked out over the quarter as the Shah clapped his hands and spoke into the air. The turret was higher than it had appeared: she could see the curving dome of the Medina and then the jumbled buildings of the Quarter beyond. There was the wall, her own windows mercifully not visible from this angle. There was the apartment in which Mariam Shenudah lived. Shadow blinked into the morning sun as the sounds of something heavy being carried up the stairs drew louder.

  Interlude

  The young man was walking quickly, his footsteps unsteady on first the steps and then the cobbled street as he made his way up from the cellar bar. She had not hunted here before, and she was enjoying the change of scene. Had this been the Northern Quarter, she would never have taken this sort of risk, but it was not. She was enjoying that, too.

  In her mother’s house, she would be expected to bring back any kills. The cub was told to do that; any transgressions would earn a beating. But then, it was exactly the same in the Court. It did not occur to her to miss her mother’s house, that blackstone fort near Bleikrgard, but she did want to make her family proud. And jealous. She planned to accomplish that on her next visit home with a casual remark.

  I’ve become very-close-to the Abbot General.

  If they didn’t believe her, she’d show them the bite marks.

  She watched, now, as the young man wove his way along the street. It had recently rained, one of those sea-stained downpours for which the Western Quarter was famous, not good cold northern snow. It occurred to her that had the Skein still been in dominion, she might not have taken such a risk then either, but they were gone and she stretched, luxuriating in unaccustomed freedom.

  She wasn’t supposed to be out but, well, windows could be opened. It was a relief to be naked and free of all those formal gowns. She knew Deed liked them: that was the human half. His little disir doll. But he liked the row of multiple teats and the spiky spine, too. She watched the young man with eyes grown lumino
us until he reached the end of the street, and then she stepped, clicking, from the shadows.

  She didn’t drink his blood. She wasn’t wampyr. But she did take a little memento.

  Eighteen

  Nerren was due in later that morning after a doctor’s appointment. The Library inspection had apparently gone as well as possible and Benjaya informed her that it had been thankfully brief.

  “They said they’d do a more extensive one later.”

  “Oh, good,” Mercy said. “Something to look forward to.”

  Predictably, she found herself with a mountain of paperwork, and some explaining to do. She spent most of the morning of her return with the Elders of the Library, trying to work out where the disir had come from. Nerren had told them about the events in Section C, eventually. Mercy called on Librarian McLaren for moral support: he could be relied upon to talk sense, and he looked more like a warrior than a Librarian. She felt she needed that.

  “It must be a priority,” Elder Tope said, her elderly face creased in concern. “We simply cannot have leakage.”

  “This never happened when the Skein were here,” Elder Jonah lamented.

  “But now the Skein are gone,” McLaren remarked. “We have to shift for ourselves.”

  She looked at the Elders and suddenly felt very sad. Despite their age, they were like children whose parents had suddenly disappeared, leaving them alone and defenceless. She had thought this before and, of course, it was no more than the truth: the Skein had always taken care of everything. They might not have been gods, but they were god-like-powerful, benevolent, remote. Not for the first time, however, Mercy started to wonder whether this was really an accurate perception. How much had they really known about their masters and mistresses, after all?-although the Skein had changed gender seemingly at will, adopting new bodies as one might put on another set of clothes. They had always seemed kind, but when Mercy thought about it, she had the impression that the Skein treated humans as a sort of amusing pet, that their agenda lay entirely elsewhere. These thoughts did not make her comfortable, but this was not a comfortable world. And looking at the faces of the Elders, creased with worry and bewilderment, Mercy was conscious of a growing anger. Did you go away on purpose, she mentally asked the Skein, so that we would grow up? But in that case, why didn’t you prepare us better?