Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  Finvarra was shaking her head. “Carrick? He’s around somewhere. He’s trying to find a way out, though I’m held here by many castings, with none of the means to undo them. He’s convinced that he’ll find a chink in their armor if he keeps searching. I’ll summon him back.” And she closed her eyes, her lips moving silently for a moment. “He’s on his way.” She stared at me again. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  “I’m here to stop all of this, if I can,” I said. “Do you have any idea where the Necromancers might be keeping my sister?”

  Finvarra’s eyes widened. “Has it happened? The Gateway, has it…?”

  “Not yet. That’s what I’m trying to prevent, if I can just—”

  But Finvarra spoke over me in low, anguished tones. “Jessica, I must say to you, while I have the chance, how very, very sorry I am that I doubted you. You tried to warn us all about the Necromancers. We should have listened. We were fools to ignore the signs, but we were so convinced you were the danger that we couldn’t see the true dangers looming up before us.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a bit late for that now,” I said, in no mood to be all charitable. “Is everyone okay? Have they locked all of you down here?”

  “The teachers and Council members, yes,” Finvarra said. “Of course, I was already imprisoned here when they arrived, but I witnessed them all being brought down. They’ve got the students up on the main floors of the castle, locked in their rooms. I think they’re hoping they can use them, somehow, or perhaps even attempt to convert them through propaganda. And the Caomhnóir are being kept in their own barracks under lock and key.”

  “And what about the ghosts? Did they just capture every spirit on the grounds?”

  “As to that, I do not know. We’ve been betrayed. Lucida was working with them all along, and she must have instructed them on the best ways to take down our defenses.”

  “Yeah, we learned about Lucida the hard way,” I said. “Have you heard anything about Hannah? Have you seen her?”

  “She was with them when they arrived. She was carrying a sort of torch, and the spirits were under her control.” Finvarra shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I know they’ve enslaved some other spirits since arriving here, but not all of them. Carrick, for one, is still free, and doing his best to avoid detection. But these… ghosts they’ve brought… what are they?”

  “They call them Blind Summoners. Their essences are trapped in that torch, so for all intents and purposes, they are Wraiths until someone restores them,” I said.

  “Blind… but… is this Necromancer magic?” Finvarra asked.

  “Yes. We think they must have discovered it because of their obsession with the Wraiths. If the Gateway reverses, they’ll have legions of them, thanks to all the leeching the Durupinen have been doing. But in the meantime, the Blind Summoners have been a good way to practice their control.”

  “My God,” she sighed, drawing a weary hand across her forehead. “We reap what we sow. As ever, we reap what we sow. But you still haven’t told me why you’re appearing in this form. What have you—” Then she broke off and looked up expectantly. “Here comes Carrick.”

  “Jessica’s here? But how did she get in?”

  Carrick’s voice preceded him as he materialized in the far corner. He took one look at me and his face crumpled into a look of such devastation that, had I been connected to my own heart, I surely would have felt it stop. He shot forward toward the door, but he seemed to hit some sort of barrier after a few feet, and halted in midair.

  “Jessica! Oh my God! What have they done? What have they done to you?”

  I could barely find my voice. “Carrick, it’s okay! I’m not—”

  But he wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He had dropped his face into his shaking hands, his entire body wracked with a sudden onslaught of sobbing.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Oh God, I’m so sorry. I’ve failed them. I failed you. I’m so sorry!” he gasped into his hands.

  Finvarra was staring at him in alarm. “Carrick, what’s wrong with you? Calm yourself at once!”

  But Carrick seemed unable to hear her. He just kept wailing into his hands, “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry. Jessica, I’m so sorry.”

  Somewhere deep inside, something woke up. It must have been primal, biological, triggered by the sight of this man and the depth of his emotion. Maybe it was the way in which he said my mother’s name. But I knew it. I knew it as though I had always known it, like it was intrinsic to my make-up, to the blood flowing in my veins.

  Which, I suppose, it was.

  “Carrick. Look at me.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t see you like that. Please don’t make me.”

  “Look at me. I’m not dead. Do you hear me? I’m not dead!”

  And his head shot up, his tear-stained face blank with shock. “What?”

  “I’m not dead. I’m a Walker.”

  He still looked completely uncomprehending. It was Finvarra who gasped now.

  “A Walker? But we haven’t had a true Walker in centuries! How can you possibly have learned to do it?”

  Carrick was looking back and forth between us, still comprehending nothing.

  “I’ll explain that later,” I said, still looking at Carrick. “The point is, I’m not dead. I’ve just left my body. But my body is fine, and I can return to it safely whenever I want to.”

  Carrick sunk to his knees with a strange half-laugh. “You’re alive?”

  “I’m alive,” I repeated.

  He gave the laugh again, and then seemed to come back to himself. He looked at Finvarra and dropped his head again into a respectful bow.

  “I am sorry, High Priestess. I am sorry for deceiving you.”

  “What are you on about, Carrick?” Finvarra asked.

  “It is time to come clean. Long past time, actually, but there’s nothing I can do to remedy that now.” He took a long, deep breath. “There’s something that I ought to have told you the first moment I ever saw you.”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I knew what he was going to say, and yet I had no idea if I wanted to hear it.

  “Jessica, I’m your father.”

  The words fell upon me and rolled off without sinking in. I’d imagined it. I was in a strange waking dream, and this would all be a half-remembered figment of my sleeping brain.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, I’m your father,” Carrick said again, more softly, but slowly, more deliberately, landing the words intentionally on me now, so I would be sure to understand.

  “I… you didn’t… what?”

  In my bewilderment, I turned to Finvarra, who always seemed to have an answer, an explanation to everything. If she confirmed it, it was true. But she was staring at Carrick in as much shock and confusion as I could feel on my own face. She had no more inkling of this than I did, and for some reason this made me even more convinced I had misunderstood him.

  “We never meant for it to happen,” Carrick said softly. “There was no intention, no flirtation between us, harmless or otherwise. I would never have allowed it, and she was much too focused on the importance of her training to give thought to such a thing. Even if she had, she would never have chosen me as an object of affection; I was nearly twice her age and treated all Durupinen in much the same fashion you’ve probably come to expect from the Caomhnóir. In a logical world, there was no chance for any sort of relationship to bloom between us. But the strongest love is insidious, like a creeping vine, and before we could recognize it for what it was, it had entangled us completely.”

  He paused here, perhaps for some reaction or interjection from me, but I was still too shocked to respond, so after a cautious look at Finvarra, he continued.

  “I was working as an instructor here. My duty was to train the Caomhnóir in defensive castings, to ensure that they could protect the Durupinen from spirit attack as effectively as their fight
training would help them to fend off physical attack. I was, if I may be permitted to say so, particularly good at my job. I had always had an intuitive ability to sense a spirit’s intentions, and therefore to preempt an altercation. Finvarra can attest to this, as it was her and her sister that I was charged to protect when I was not teaching.”

  Finvarra surfaced at last, and though it seemed she did not have the words to respond yet, she permitted herself to nod in confirmation.

  “From the moment your mother and aunt came to Fairhaven, there were murmurings about the strength of their abilities. As you now know, we have always kept a close eye on anyone who could be described, even in part, as the Gateway foretold of in the prophecy. They were twins, and as such, were flagged for close observation. As one of the teachers, it was part of my job to watch carefully for any sign that either of them possessed the unique abilities of a Caller. I also had to conduct an investigation into the family, to make sure that there was no chance that their father was actually a Caomhnóir. The irony of all of this is not lost on me,” he added, with the faintest suggestion of a smile.

  “You thought my mother and Karen might be the ones in the prophecy?” I asked, distracted enough from the shock of his bombshell revelation to lose focus for a moment.

  “Not really, no,” he said. “It quickly became apparent that we could rule them out. We could find no evidence to support any of the other criteria laid out in the prophecy. But it was through this process of investigation that I had to work closely with Liam, your mother’s Caomhnóir and, as a result, with your mother and aunt. I saw much more of them than I did any other Durupinen apprentices in all my years of teaching.

  “You remind me so much of her. Though she grew up knowing of the Durupinen, and though she had much clearer expectations of what Fairhaven would be like, she took no better to the nature of the relationship between the Caomhnóir and the Durupinen. While I was attempting to rule her out of the prophecy, she was attempting to do all she could to sabotage the clan’s relationship with their new Novitiate, Liam.”

  “What do you mean, sabotage?” I asked.

  “She resented him, as I’m sure you can understand. He treated her with the customary disdain and mistrust, but though she had been told to expect it, she did not respond well to it. She was much too proud to allow someone who treated her in such a manner to hold any sort of control over her. The other teachers found her to be willful and disobedient. I found her to be spirited, a breath of fresh air, and someone who opened my eyes to the inherent faults in the system we have built over the centuries.

  “What, she demanded of me, was the point of a protector who resented and mistrusted the person he was bound to protect? Wasn’t it possible to have a mutually respectful relationship, one that allowed both parties to appreciate one another’s gifts, while maintaining the boundaries that had been set forth? I could make no reasoned argument against her.”

  Neither could I, I thought. Little had rankled me more than the draconian views that the Caomhnóir held toward the Durupinen, and even through my shock at what Carrick was telling me, a tiny part of my brain was applauding my mother for standing up to it all. She’d always taught me to be fiercely independent, and it was comforting to know that she had actually practiced what she preached. I said none of this aloud, though; I was much too focused on Carrick’s story.

  “Jess? Did you find him? What’s taking so long?” Milo’s voice came humming through our connection.

  “Not right now Milo,” I thought, pushing him away with my mind.

  “But I—”

  “Not. Right. Now.” And with an enormous effort, actually lifted him out of my thoughts. This was about me. Me and Carrick. I had the right to this, uninterrupted and whole.

  Carrick was going on, and I refocused on him. “It happened one day when we were running a training exercise. The Caomhnóir were being tested on their abilities to expel spirits, and the Durupinen had been called in to assist. Liam’s casting went rather badly wrong, and instead of taking blame for it, he began shouting at your mother and aunt, blaming them for the spirits that penetrated his defenses. He even went as far as to accuse them of sabotaging his test. Your mother left the courtyard and refused to return, and so I was forced to go looking for her.

  “I found her just beyond the boundaries of the forest. She had drawn a protective circle around herself and, though she endeavored to hide it at once, I could tell she had been crying.

  “You must return to the courtyard,” I told her.

  “I will not,” she said. “I will not be spoken to in such a manner.”

  “He is just upset with himself,” I said. “He was embarrassed that he did not do better.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she said, and fixed me with a gaze that pierced me to my very core. “Everyone in the courtyard knew that, but that isn’t the point, is it? You did nothing to stop him. No one ever does. This culture is toxic. Don’t you understand that you are undermining the relationships you’re trying to build? If we don’t learn to respect each other as human beings, rather than just the ceremonial roles we play, everything will fall apart. We won’t be able to trust each other.”

  “Your family was one of the most influential, one of the most powerful old Council clans. It was, quite frankly, unheard of to encounter anything amongst its members but utter submission and acceptance of all aspects of Durupinen life. Your mother’s resistance was so jarring that it made me stop and take notice, for the first time, of this inherent flaw in the system; if we were to continue to protect our Gateways and ensure our continued existence, shouldn’t we be encouraging our young members to question, to test, to improve? Traditions turn to shackles when they prevent the evolution necessary for survival. Just look at the situation in which we find ourselves now, at the mercy of the Necromancers once again.

  “And who was this girl, so young but so intuitive, making me question everything I’d taken for granted about the world I defended? I could not stop thinking about her, though I told myself it was her defiance, her ideas, that had captured my attention. I did not realize what was happening, the attachment I was forming, or I would have put a stop to it at once, but it had taken root before I could defend myself.

  “Still oblivious to what had sprung up between us, I watched her drive away at the end of her training, a strange emptiness inside me and, I must admit, a sense of relief that I would most likely never see her again, never again wrestle with the strange, powerful feelings she had ignited in me. I threw myself into my work, training the Novitiates and protecting Narissa and Finvarra, who was being groomed to become the next High Priestess as Calista’s health continued to fade. She would need my protection more than ever when her time came to take the helm of the Council. But then, less than a year later, I got a panicked phone call from Liam.

  “The girls’ father had stumbled upon them in the middle of a Crossing, and the aftereffects were devastating. Liam, as a new Caomhnóir, did not know what to do, or how to handle the fall out. He blamed himself, having been absent during the time of the Crossing, though there were no extraordinary circumstances that made either him or the girls feel his presence would be necessary. It was just one of those terrible things that could not be predicted. I was hand-picked by the new High Priestess as one of those who would fly to Boston to assess and control the situation.”

  “You didn’t want to go,” Finvarra said. I jumped, having all but forgotten she was there. She was staring at Carrick with a sad new understanding in her eyes. “You fought me on it, and I couldn’t understand why.”

  “I’m not sure I knew myself,” Carrick said. “All I knew was that something inside me was fighting against the possibility of seeing Elizabeth again. I must have known, subconsciously, what seeing her again would mean. I tried every argument I could think of to stay behind.”

  “And I, convinced this was the first test of my authority, would not listen to you,” Finvarra said, shaking her head, an ironic smile
on her lips. “I ordered you to go, determined to quash dissention in my ranks, lest chaos break out under my nose.”

  Carrick nodded. “So of course, I went, and what I found was so much worse than I could have prepared for. John Ballard had suffered irreparable damage from the incident, but I only had eyes for Elizabeth’s devastation. I found her, alone and sobbing, and I found I could not let her cry. I could not let her suffer, even for a moment, if it was within my power to comfort her. And in her grief, we came together.”

  I couldn’t find a single emotion to expend on anything he was saying. All I could feel was a blank, buzzing astonishment and a vague frustration that my mind could not seem to absorb what he was saying as quickly as I needed it to. I was scrambling to keep my head above a rising tide of information that threatened to drown me at any moment.

  “At first, I was only blissfully happy, but by the next day, I was consumed by horror at what I had done. You must realize,” he said, and here he met my eye for the first time, a note of true desperation in his voice, “that all my life I had been taught that nothing could have been more abhorrent than what I had just done. I had been weak, conquered at last by the temptation that had threatened to swallow up the Caomhnóir since the dawn of our brotherhood. Without even saying goodbye to her, without offering even the weakest of explanations for my cowardice, I fled back to Fairhaven, determined never to see her again.”

  “You just abandoned her?” I asked flatly. “That was probably the most horrible moment of her life, when that happened to my grandfather. And you’re telling me that you slept with her and then just left her there, in that hellhole of a situation?”

  “Yes.” He said it baldly, no note of pleading in his voice, no tone of apology now. It was as though he knew I wouldn’t accept it, that he did not deserve to be forgiven.

  “Did you ever see her again after that?” I asked.

  “No, but not for lack of trying,” Carrick said. “Not even two months later your mother Bound her Gateway and ran off. News of her disappearance reached me at Fairhaven, and of course I was sure that I was the cause of her departure. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer, staying away from her. Each day, my resistance had been waning, and it was all I could do, hour by hour, not to cross the ocean to be with her, expectations be damned. But it wasn’t until I arrived in the States to help Liam search for her that I learned the whole truth of why she had run off— I learned of your impending arrival, Jessica, and I was even more determined to find her.