by E. E. Holmes
Even as I struggled, I tried to blink the tears out of my eyes, and focus on how to control my sense of sight, so that I could see what was happening. But what I saw when I finally remembered how to use my eyes only made my panic peak.
Finn. Finn was holding my body down, and determinedly drawing runes onto my skin while muttering the words of a Casting.
“Finn!” I gasped at the sight of him. “Finn, what are you doing! What the hell are you doing!?”
He did not flinch, nor even seem to acknowledge the use of his name. He would not look at me, but kept his lips in a tight, thin line as he continued his work. Over his shoulder, I could see a second Caomhnóir, and his was also a face that I knew.
“Ambrose!” I cried out.
Ambrose did not ignore me, but looked up at the sound of his name, and his face split into a smug grin.
“It worked!” he said to Finn, who was still determinedly not looking at me. “The Castings worked, she’s back in there.”
Finn murmured a few last words, and then pushed himself up off the bed, removing his crushing weight from my body, so that I could finally take a proper breath. I looked down at myself. My arms were covered in an assortment of runes, as was my chest. My skin felt incredibly hot and tight, as though my insides were threatening to burst my seams. My head was throbbing, as were my feet, and I looked down to see that my ankles had been manacled to the end of the bed.
I looked up at Finn, who was placing his Casting materials back inside the Casting bag that was hanging from his belt. His face was utterly calm, unconcerned.
“Finn, what have they done to you?” I whispered. “This isn’t you. What have they done?”
But when Finn raised his head, he did not answer me. He just stared straight ahead, oblivious to my struggles. Something was wrong with his eyes.
“There you are, then,” Ambrose said, still grinning at me. “No more Walking for you. Took a thing or two out of the Traveler playbook and found some ways to keep you nice and safe in there. I wouldn’t try Walking again if I were you, unless of course you prefer madness to sanity.”
“You treacherous son of a bitch,” I spat at him. “What have you done to Finn?”
“He’s just another trusted foot soldier now,” Ambrose said. “And now that you’re safely contained, we’ve got more work to do.” He pulled open my cell door, and Finn marched out of it without a single word, a single glance in my direction.
Ambrose made to follow him, but paused in the doorway, and turned back to face me. “The number of times I almost told you that your days of ordering me around were numbered,” he said, so quietly it was almost as though he were speaking to himself. “We’ll find a use for you soon, I expect. Until then, just sit tight. Like you have a choice.”
He pulled the cell door closed with a resounding crash, and I heard him fasten all of the many locks and bolts before marching off down the hallway.
I had never felt so hopeless and so desperately trapped. Not only was I chained to a bed and locked in a cell, but they had managed to force my spirit back within the confines of my body and blocked all possibility of Walking out of it again. If ever there had been a moment that I understood exactly what it was like to be Irina, this was it. I had never thought of my body as a prison the way that she did, but now that I had been stuffed inside it, like a foot into a too-small shoe, I could feel every fiber, every cell of its restriction. It was as though my soul had expanded so much in my travels through the príosún that I now needed to find a new home, like a crab wandering the ocean floor for a larger shell. My pulse throbbed. My limbs shook and twitched. Every thought and feeling I had was screaming and pounding against its incarceration in my skin. Finally, a single thought fought its way clear of my tangled mess of emotions. As that single thought clarified itself inside my head, it became clear that it had bubbled up from my voice of reason, that single sane place within me that still had not given up, had refused to submit to the pain, and was still determined to see me safely out of this mess.
Open the connection. Tell the Council. Get help.
I repeated this thought slowly and methodically, like a mantra, until my soul and my body began to respond to it in unison. The two warring parts of myself realized that neither could win if we remained trapped here in the bonds of Necromancer magic. I just needed to pull myself together long enough to open the connection and get help—help that I knew was waiting for me to call upon it.
I tried to find that mental door that would connect me directly to Hannah and Milo, but with my body and my spirit desperate to disconnect from each other, it was not so easily found. Everything still felt very broken up, like a puzzle whose pieces had been left half-scattered across the table; the pieces all had a place that they fit, but everything was still too disorganized and confused to come together. Instead, I thought back to my attempts to find the connection while I was Walking. Then, it had felt more like plucking strings, rather than simply opening the door. Now, the inside of my head felt like something in between the two, no longer an exquisite harp of emotional strings, but a tangled jungle of them through which I would need to maneuver in order to find the connection.
It was such hard work, and I was tired, so very tired. The Walking, while exhilarating, had exhausted my mental resources. My spirit was still struggling against the binding feeling of being restrained against its will. It wasn’t that I no longer wanted to be in my body, it was simply that I had not been allowed to enter it in a natural manner, but had been stuffed inside it haphazardly. I began, bit by bit, to untangle myself. I started with the very tips of my toes and worked my way up all the way to my head, unfurling my spirit into each corner and crevice. Slowly, very slowly, the desperate and constrained feelings began to subside. Finally, the tangled mass of feelings and thoughts in my head unraveled itself, and at last, I felt the mental light of Hannah and Milo peeking out through the crack of that familiar door. I had barely enough mental strength left to pull it open and…
“She’s back!” I heard them cry. “Catriona, she’s back!”
“Jess, how did you…” Milo began. Then he paused, as the tenor of my emotions washed over him. “What is it? What’s wrong? Something’s wrong!”
“Jess, what happened to you?” Hannah cried, as she, too, sensed that something was terribly wrong. “This connection feels strange.”
“It’s happening,” I told them, and though I wanted to scream it at the top of my mental lungs, I felt as though I could barely produce a whisper.
“What’s happening?” Hannah asked. “What are you talking about?”
“The Necromancers. The Caomhnóir. It’s happening, whatever they’re planning, it’s already underway, and it’s all my fault.”
“Jess, I can barely hear you!” Hannah said.
“Just tell us what’s happening,” Milo said in a determinedly calm voice, as though to try to counteract Hannah’s terrified energy, which was infecting all of us.
But I was so tired, I just didn’t think that I could hold the door open by myself. Hannah and Milo seemed to realize this, and I could feel both of them straining to hold the connection open against my mind’s desire to let it fall closed.
“I went Walking… found Fiona…”
“Fiona?” Hannah gasped. “She’s there? But they said she went home!”
“They lied… they’ve got her… locked up…”
“Then what happened?” Milo prompted. “Come on Jess, stay with us.”
“Tried to find Finn… but they got to him…”
“Got to him?” Milo asked. “What do you—”
“Saw Lucida… and she told me… the Necromancers… all freed…”
“Oh my God!” Hannah cried.
“And then they trapped me… performed some Castings, to pull me back inside my body, and trap me here… just like Irina…”
“You can’t Walk anymore?” Milo asked.
“Trapped,” I repeated. The door was just so heavy. I didn’t know ho
w much longer I could keep it open. “Finn did it… he is one of them… but he’s not himself…”
“Finn?” Hannah cried. “Finn did that to you?”
“But it’s not him,” I tried to explain, but the words and thoughts were becoming so tangled and confused again. “They’ve done something to him… Finn would never…”
“But what’s happening now?” Milo prompted. “Come on, Jess, stay with us, now.”
“Don’t know… Ambrose is here… he’s part of it…”
“Ambrose?” Hannah and Milo shouted together.
“But he’s here, isn’t he?” Milo asked. “He’s here at Fairhaven, isn’t he?”
“Not anymore,” I told them. “He was the leak from Fairhaven. It wasn’t Seamus… but now they know. Somehow, they know that I’m not really a prisoner. They know that we’re onto them, and they’re moving to action…”
“What action?” Milo asked.
“They’re going to try to take the príosún.” The door slipped closed just a bit more. “All the Caomhnóir… subdued… they’re going to fortify the place… take it for their own…”
I could feel Hannah pulling back from the connection to relay everything to Catriona, and when she did so, the door slipped even further closed. It was barely open now, just a tiny crack through which we could barely hear each other.
“You’ve got to send help,” I cried out, with the last bit of mental energy that I had. “Tell everyone if you have to… tell them… the prophecy… the drawings. I don’t care. Just get them here before it’s too late…”
Hannah and Milo were shouting for me, but their voices seemed a million miles away as the door slipped closed at last. I felt them pounding against it, but I could not respond. All I could do was slide down into the quiet and the darkness of unconsciousness.
18
Allies
I HAD NO IDEA how much time had passed when I began to stir again. I only knew that there were strange sounds echoing around me, and I just wanted them to stop so that I could find the blissful nothingness of unconsciousness again.
The problem was, now that I’d heard the sounds, I couldn’t ignore them. I also couldn’t ignore the fact that my entire body was aching, and my head felt like somebody had removed my brains and replaced them with the stormy waves crashing outside on the cliffs.
The sound echoed again, a clanking and scraping and… someone cursing?
I peeled my eyes open. The room around me was blurry, but I remembered where I was. The walls and door of the cell came into focus just in time for me to realize that somebody was attempting to open it.
My whole body tensed into a fight or flight panic. Despite the pain and dizziness, I sat myself straight up in the bed, pulling myself as far back into the corner as I could with the manacles still attached to my ankles. I looked around me for something, anything, that I could use to defend myself, but there was nothing.
Whoever was trying to open the door was taking a very long time to do so, almost as though they didn’t know which keys fit into which locks. I leaned forward to try to catch some of what the person was saying.
“No, you’ve already tried that one. Here, give it to me, you’re useless.”
A second voice answered, “This is the right key, it’s just that the lock is rusted. Keep your hair on, woman, I’ve nearly got it.”
I thought I recognized both of those voices, but it was impossible. There was no way…
There was a squeak, a grating screech, and then a metal clunk, and both voices cried out in victory. The door swung open on its hinges, and two figures stood in my doorway, two of the last people in the world that I would ever expect to see working together.
“See? I told you it was the right key,” Fiona said, tossing a huge ring of keys back at Lucida as she walked across the room to where I still sat on the bed.
“What are you both doing out? What’s going on?”
“We’re springing you out of here,” Fiona said.
“Unless of course you’d rather stay,” Lucida added.
“Where did you get those keys?” I asked. “Where are all the guards?”
“Nearly every Caomhnóir and Necromancer in the place is gathering in the courtyard to prepare their defenses. Seems that they think a confrontation is imminent,” Lucida explained. She examined the manacles around my ankles, and then began flipping through the giant ring of keys for the right tool to unlock them. “They left just one guard to patrol the cellblocks downstairs. He seemed to think it was the perfect opportunity to force himself upon the sole remaining prisoner. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to break his neck.”
“You… you killed him?” I murmured.
“Thoroughly,” Lucida replied without a trace of remorse. “He’s lucky I didn’t castrate him first for good measure. But there really wasn’t time for those sorts of theatrics. Here we are.” She separated a long brass key from the others on the ring and inserted it into the locks on the manacles. Within moments, my ankles were free.
“But… why are you up here? Why are you helping us?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I asked her when she showed up at my cell and let me out,” Fiona said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes in Lucida’s direction. “But she agreed that she would free my mother as well, so I could hardly say no to her. Still, I wouldn’t mind knowing where this sudden outpouring of empathy is coming from.”
“And I’ll give her the same answer I gave you,” said Lucida. “I don’t know. I just am, all right?”
Fiona and I exchanged a long look, each of us silently asking the other the same question: How could we trust her? Neither of us had the answer.
“How do we know that you aren’t just going to hand-deliver us straight to the Necromancers?” I asked Lucida.
“You don’t,” Lucida said, looking me dead in the eye. “I betrayed you before, and you would be a fool not to think that I would do it again. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’ve had some kind of great bloody change of heart, all right? I still bear an awful lot of ill will toward the Durupinen, and that hasn’t gone away. But the Necromancers have proved themselves to be fair weather friends. They care no more for me than the Durupinen ever did. If I stay here, they will use me any way they see fit, and then they’ll discard me. I have no interest in being discarded again, and so I’m going to try to make a break for it. I don’t know why I’m giving you both the opportunity to do the same, but I am. We don’t have to like each other, or even be on the same team to get safely out of here. The choice is entirely yours.”
I looked at Fiona again, who gave a helpless shrug. “She unlocked the doors and let us out,” Fiona said, “which is a damn sight further than we would’ve gotten without her. If she turns on us, so be it, but I say we follow her. What choice have we got?”
“We might have another choice,” I told her, as a memory struck me. “What time is it?”
“Just before midday,” Fiona said. “Why?”
“Just before I passed out, I was able to get a message to Hannah and Milo at Fairhaven. They know what’s happening, and I told them to send help. It’s been hours now. It’s possible that help could be here at any time.”
Lucida snorted. “Maybe they’ve sent help, and maybe they haven’t, but I have no illusions that that help is meant for me. I’ve got to find my way out of here regardless of who’s on their way.”
“That’s your choice,” I told her. I looked back at Fiona. “What do you think?”
“It seems foolhardy to wait for help that may or may not be on the way,” Fiona said. “Can you open the connection and find out what’s going on?”
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on finding and establishing the connection, but for some reason, whether it was the Castings that had forced me back inside my body, or just the spiritual exhaustion from Walking, I could not find it. With a cry of frustration I opened my eyes. “I can’t,” I told her. “These Castings have really messed w
ith me. I’m still too weak.”
“Look, even if the Durupinen are on their way,” Lucida said, “even if they brought every bloody reinforcement that they have, they are still on the outside of these walls, and we are still on the inside. And that makes us hostages. And I’ve no interest in being a pawn in this game any longer. I’ve been sacrificed on both sides. There’s no winning here for me.”
I looked into Lucida’s face, so vulnerable behind the mask of self-reliance. “I would tell them what you did for me,” I told her quietly. “I would tell them how you helped us get out of here.”
Lucida gave a bitter half smile. “Too little, too late, love, I reckon.”
In that moment, I made the decision. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and slid them into my shoes. “Lucida is right. We’re sitting ducks if we stay. And we’re wasting time.”
I looked to Fiona, and she gave a helpless sort of shrug. I turned back to Lucida. “All right, then. We are trusting that you want out of here badly enough to not betray us. We’re with you. Let’s get out of here.”
“Brilliant,” Lucida said, jumping to her feet. “Once more unto the breach, and all that.”
I stood up. “Wait,” I told her. “You should know that I’m not leaving here without Finn.”
Lucida stared at me. “The Caomhnóir? He’s a lost cause, Jess.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m not leaving without him,” I repeated.
Something shifted behind Lucida’s eyes as understanding hit her. “Bloody hell,” she groaned. “I’m not sacrificing myself for your goddamn love-life, Jessica!”
“I’m not asking you to,” I said calmly. “If a moment comes when you need to choose between saving him, and saving yourself, I fully expect you to choose to save yourself. I won’t fault you for that. But the Necromancers have done something to him—subdued him somehow. I think he’s being controlled; that’s the only explanation I can find for why he did this.” And I held out my arms to show them the runes.