Book Read Free

Worldsoul

Page 16

by Liz Williams


  It was a moment before Mercy, bridling, realised that the woman was not issuing a threat, but speaking literally.

  “You’re from the Northern Quarter?”

  “I get around. But originally, yes.”

  “Scandinavian?” Mercy’s professional curiosity was piqued. Mareritt smiled.

  “Once upon a time.” She raised her head and scented the air like a hunting dog. “I understand you’ve had a visit from the Ladies. Not here. Where you work.”

  “The disir? Yes.”

  “How unpleasant,” Mareritt said. She sounded as though some social undesirable had dropped in uninvited for tea. Then she turned to Mercy and the well of her eyes exerted a sudden pull, as though the gravity itself had altered. Mercy felt herself flinch away.

  “You’re carrying the touch of the god’s hand. Did you know?” Mareritt cocked her head on one side. “But how could you not, unless he’s wiped it from your mind.”

  “He hasn’t,” Mercy told her, dry-voiced. The ka looked from one to the other, as if watching a tennis match.

  “What did he tell you?”

  Mercy was reluctant to say. Is my enemy’s enemy my friend? Hard to tell, in this instance. But she felt the words being pushed out of her throat, as if Mareritt had taken up temporary residence inside her.

  “He-he wants me to find a story.”

  “Does he, now?” The black eyes were bright. “How interesting. What story is that?”

  “A story about demons and a garden.”

  “Loki is a lord of intrigue, you know that? You’re familiar with the tales of the north?”

  Mercy nodded. “My mother, Greya-she’s from a northern clan.”

  “But Greya isn’t here.” Did she know everything?

  “No. She’s gone on the Barquess.”

  “I’m going to do something for you,” Mareritt said. She stepped across the kitchen, taking care to avoid the frond of a fern which, Mercy saw, withered at her approach.

  Standing over the kitchen table, she reached into her mouth with a finger and thumb and took out a key. It was similar in size and shape to the key Loki had given Mercy. She placed it on the table.

  “That’s for you.”

  “Loki gave me something, too. What does it open?”

  “It opens the door to the Library that belongs to the Court.”

  “What? How did you get that?”

  “I picked a pocket.”

  “In the Court?”

  “I need a book,” Mareritt said, “The name of the book is The Winter Book.”

  “Have you checked our own lending section?”

  Mareritt clicked her tongue with a noise like chiming icicles. “I know for a fact that the book is in the Court’s library, not yours.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mercy said. “I don’t have visiting rights.”

  “Oh, but you will fetch it for me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mareritt turned. “This is the name,” she said.

  “I don’t-”

  The woman touched a chilly finger to Mercy’s brow.

  “This is the name of the clan: they are the People of the Birch Forest and the Stone. I ask you to do this in the name of the People, of your mother’s clan. I place you under geas to bring the book to me.”

  Mercy felt the geas go into her mind like a silver hook, snaring her will in a binding net.

  “Damn you,” she managed to say.

  “Oh, come. That’s no way to talk to your-” She reached out and touched the phial of golden oil to Mercy’s brow and that was the last thing that Mercy remembered that night.

  Thirty-One

  The Devil’s Ears had fallen far behind. Shadow had not seen the watching woman again, and she had kept the sighting from the demon. Periodically, the spirit stirred inside her head, found Gremory’s red-black gaze fixed upon it, and retreated hastily. Shadow was enjoying the relative peace and quiet, but she kept thinking of the woman, and of Ator. She could not help feeling they were connected, that Gremory had drawn her into a wider web. Yet there were advantages: the immense weight of heat that lay upon the desert diminished the disir in Shadow’s memory, diminished even the Shah. She did not think the creature of the north, of those great ice wastes, would pursue her here. The Shah’s influence did not stop at the city wall, however. She would be wise not to discount him entirely. That left the demon herself.

  Beneath her, Gremory’s camel-feet relentlessly pounded across the desert. It was evening. The sun had gone down in a burst of rosy flame and the sky was now green and water-cool. A single star hung like a lamp over the dunes. The demon had, before changing back into animal form, told Shadow that they would be there by nightfall, but Shadow did not know where “there” might be. Asking Gremory had merely resulted in the shapeshift from woman to dromedary. This was not a slow process; one moment Shadow was talking to a woman, and the next, to a large and insolent camel. She found this disconcerting.

  As she rode, she scanned the horizon for signs that they might be approaching a destination: there were hills ahead, a ridge that was higher than the Devil’s Ears and still catching the last red light of the sun. Gremory veered towards the hills and Shadow became increasingly sure that this was where they were heading. As they drew closer, a bright sword-tip appeared over the summit-the crescent moon. Shadow greeted it like an old friend.

  Gradually, the sand became interspersed with rocks jutting up out of the dunes like a cliff from the waves. Gremory slowed, halted, kneeled, and Shadow climbed down, to stand-wobbling a bit before regaining her balance on the sand. A blink, and the demon was back in female form. This time, Gremory wore black armour, heavily ornamented with silver. Shadow had a brief moment of demon-envy; a pity humans couldn’t carry their wardrobes with them.

  “So,” Gremory said. “Here we are.”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  “Where the person I want you to meet lives.”

  “Is he like Ator?”

  “No, not like Ator. I don’t-” the demon hesitated. “Ator is sometimes an ally, but one can’t rely on him. Besides, he doesn’t have the ability we need.”

  “So who are we going to meet?”

  “Come with me,” the demon instructed, and walked between the rocks.

  A pathway, very rough, was cut into the face of the stone. As she began to climb, Shadow saw that it was not badly made, but simply very old, worn away by erosion and time. The scouring winds that crossed the desert were not kind to stone, and few structures lasted long. But the sickle moon hung above the steps like a guiding lamp and Shadow climbed on.

  Halfway up, she turned and looked back. The desert stretched below, undulating miles of shadow. Far on the horizon she could see the uneven line of the Devil’s Ears, but the city, as she had risked to hope, was happily invisible, unbetrayed even by light. The stars were thick and brilliant now, so vivid that they cast their own faint glow, and in its pale light Shadow, for a moment, thought she saw someone standing on the opposite ridge. Then it was gone. She turned to where the demon waited with a terrible patience.

  “I thought I saw someone,” Shadow said.

  “This place is too crowded,” Gremory replied.

  At the top of the steps, the stone levelled out into a platform and there was a black arch in the rocks beyond, some kind of entrance. As Shadow stared, a flame flickered within and she glimpsed a chamber cut into the rock. The demon strode forward. Shadow heard a murmured incantation, a ritual greeting. She ducked to avoid the low lintel and stepped into the chamber.

  She knew at once that the person sitting on the other side of the chamber was not human. Yet there was nothing ostensibly to suggest this. He was tall, white-haired, and although his face was unlined, it seemed filled with a great weariness. His eyes were the no-colour of clear glass. He wore a grey robe. He should, Shadow thought, have faded against the stones of the wall and yet he was vivid, drawing the gaze and snaring it.

  “Not a demon,” she said,
and did not realise she had spoken aloud until it was too late.

  “An opposite number,” Gremory said, and smiled thinly.

  “Fallen?” Shadow asked and was appalled she had said such a thing.

  The person said, “You cannot help but speak the truth in front of me. It makes social conversation very trying, I know. No, I am not fallen. I choose to be here. Duke, it’s good to see you again.”

  “His name is Elemiel,” the demon said. Shadow noticed Gremory-Duke?-took care not to step too close to Elemiel: around the entity’s feet, a faint golden glow spread outwards. Protective measures. Shadow had no doubt that the entity needed them.

  “I got your letter,” the angel said.

  “We’ve come because this woman is possessed,” Gremory said. “She needs your help.”

  “I may not be able to give it.”

  “Yet, you may.” They stared at one another for a moment.

  “All right,” Elemiel said, at last. “Let’s see.”

  The world was filled with light. It was as though her veil had become transparent, and Shadow’s eyes had opened wide as a door. Illumination flooded into her; she breathed light. She was a doorway, she realised, and the angel stepped lightly in.

  “Now,” Elemiel said. “Where is this person?”

  It was not like being possessed by the spirit, or invaded by the demon. The angel’s step into her soul was thistledown soft, as imperceptible as a moth. But she could not more have resisted it any more than she could have flown: there was an inexorable push behind it, sunlight-strong. She stood quietly back and let the angel in.

  And then she watched, passive, but this time not minding, as Elemiel strolled down the walkways of her mind, quietly and methodically opening doors. He walked into rooms that Shadow had long since forced shut; chambers filled with cobwebs and matters of the dark, and the light wind of the angel’s passing stirred up the dust and opened windows, letting in the air of the spirit.

  Housecleaning, Shadow thought, and the angel laughed. Illuminated by the light that he brought in his wake, she was able to look on things that she had thought long buried-her mother’s death, her father’s disappearance-all without pain. She could sense the demon watching with detached interest. Gremory did not attempt to intrude. But always the spirit that had possessed her ran, fleeing swiftly down the corridors, and the angel went after it like a silent hunter.

  He caught up with it at last in a basement room, somewhere small and walled and tucked away. Shadow recalled it as an early memory: a tense night of arguments, the family shouting around her as she lay, fearful, in her small bed. There were slamming doors and hissed accusations. She had never known what it was about. Yet she remembered now that on the following day, her aunt had taken her to the zoo, and the happy memory had eclipsed the other one, forcing it from her mind until now. She again had that feeling of miserable oppression, filled with lack of understanding and wish-you’d-just-stop, until the angel’s touch banished the unhappiness and brought healing in its place.

  The spirit’s back was up against the wall; she sensed Elemiel closing in. The angel did not have wings, but colours swirled around it, shades that she was unable to name, colours of the soul and not of the manifest world. She could see the spirit over Elemiel’s shoulder, and it was as bright as a dancing flame.

  “Come now,” the angel said, commanding, and a blade that was a fire and a leaf and a word appeared in his hand. The flame shrank back and then it dispersed into a mass of fragments, much as the ifrit itself had done. Elemiel gave a wordless cry and the light around him folded, faded, diminished to a small glowing point, coal-hot against the cool dimness of the room.

  Thirty-Two

  The Irish sword was not the only weapon in her arsenal, Mercy reflected, and not all weapons are swords. The mind is the best weapon of all and thus she had taken herself early in the morning to the Library in order to do some emergency research.

  Mareritt and the Order of the Court itself were the objects of her enquiries. A superficial search revealed a great deal about the Court, all of it on public display and none of it startling. Mercy could probably have amplified much of it herself, through common knowledge. That mean a deeper investigation, and she decided to leave this until a later hour and track down Mareritt instead. The nature of the woman who had come to visit her seemed to entail a focus on the Northern Quarter; there was something tugging at the edges of her mind, some half-recalled memory that rendered the name familiar.

  The name meant “nightmare,” and it seemed this was what Mareritt was. But whether she was an avatar of that phenomenon, or an entity with the same name, remained to be seen. Mercy followed the trail down through the forest tracks of a dozen books, along a sequence of winding etymological trails, words which conjured snow and the scent of fir, fragments of legends which brought in the ice and the winter wind, just as the disir had done. She did not think Mareritt was the same, but she did not like the thought of the risk. She tracked her quarry down into story, running her to ground in fairy tale.

  And the little boy took the spinning top and spun it as he spoke the magic words, and Mareritt appeared like sugar taffy curdling in the air. At first Jan was very frightened, but she spoke kindly to him and told him not to be afraid. Then she asked him to show her the golden ball that his stepmother had given him. When he put it into her hand, she uttered a word and a knife came out from the middle of the ball, as sharp as an unkind word. “If you had done as she asked you and thrown this to the dove, it would have killed her.” Jan did not say anything, but a tear came to his eye because of his love for the dove. “Don’t cry,” Mareritt said. “Come with me.” She took his hand. Her glove was as soft as silk but he could feel the coldness of her flesh inside it and her breath made patterns on the air, like flowers. She led Jan to the window and he could see her sledge hanging on the air: it was made of snowflakes and silver and it shone like the moon. The white swans that drew it stamped their feet upon the air and Mareritt helped Jan into the sledge. “We’ll rescue your dove,” she said, settling a fur robe around his shoulders, “and leave your stepmother to me.” Then the sledge sailed up into the clouds and-

  That was all there was of the story. Mercy was sorry. She would have liked to know what happened next, a good sign in any tale. The legend suggested a number of things: Mareritt was honourable, perhaps fond of children, or at least willing to take their side. The wicked stepmother was, of course, a staple of fairy tales, often a witch herself. What had happened to the stepmother in this story, Mercy wondered? Had Mareritt breathed on her with a cold breath, brought winter nightmares to her bed? And what had happened to Jan? What did happen to boys in fairy tales who meet a fascinating woman? Did they become an army of acolytes, a loyal band of followers? Or were they damaged forever, like Kay with the Snow Queen’s splinter of ice in his heart? Thoughtfully, Mercy tucked the notes she had made into her pocket and placed the original fragment back in its place.

  As she walked back down the stairs to the central hall, where the Great Book stood on its plinth, the birds whisked and whirled around her head. Jan’s dove: what had that meant? Had Mareritt saved it from the evil stepmother? Mercy stopped mid-step, looking up, and as she did so, the bird-ghosts began to change. From shadows, they became solid: some white, some black as soot and night. They began an aerial ballet, turning and twisting until they formed a column of light and dark. They soared up in a pillar of flight towards the ceiling, until they reached the roof, when the pillar broke apart and fell into a flickering mass of birds, shadows once more.

  Mercy did not know what the behaviour of the birds meant. She had never heard of such a thing happening before. Was it a sign? Did it mean the Skein were coming back? Frustrated, because she had no time to spend thinking on the matter, Mercy headed out into the day, a plan forming in her head.

  Across the square, the Court towered around the Citadel. It was massive, built of black stone and wood: Mercy was reminded of the birds, but usually she
thought of the Court as a chess player, moving pieces around the city as if it were a huge chessboard. The official entrance was found between a set of stone columns, a pair of iron doors that were shut at twilight and opened again at dawn.

  Mercy gave the Court a long, hard look, and then she walked on down into the narrow cobbled streets which led through the Quarter. At the bottom of the hill, there was a rickshaw with a golem standing placidly in the shafts. Mercy hailed it.

  “Heart of the World, please.”

  The rickshaw rattled across the cobbles, taking her past streets of ancient inns, their heraldic signs blazing, past colleges and galleries and markets, under the monorail line and over one of the many bridges which crossed the canals. Mercy stared at the back of the golem’s round head and tried not to think too hard about what she was going to do.

  The dreams, of the north.

  The disir.

  Mareritt.

  There was one place where answers lay. She’d found the address in Greya’s effects, after both her mothers had disappeared. It had been scribbled on a scrap of paper and it had been the only address that Mercy had not recognised among her mother’s things.

  It had been the only address from the Northern Quarter.

  When Mercy got down from the rickshaw, the ka reappeared out of the air.

  “This ka is coming with you,” Perra said. Mercy felt a distinct relief. Perra was not a talisman, yet she could not help feeling that nothing too terrible could befall her if the ka was present. They walked across the square to where the monorail terminus for the North Road stations was situated; there was a train already in. Mercy paid the fare and they got on.

  It took them past the empty palace of the Skein where the light still burned, past the statue of the Barquess. The scenery shifted and blurred in a small fold of time, and they were going up through the northern part of the Western Quarter, where the river palaces were distantly visible through the gaps in the parkland woods, up over the Speaking Cliffs and towards the Northern Gate, which was now visible on the horizon, towering over the surrounding buildings. The Northern Wall extended outwards from its nexus, heading right and left into the city.

 

‹ Prev