Balefire

by Jordan L. Hawk

  As for what he had planned for us, I didn’t want to contemplate.

  “Rupert, Hattie, now you understand,” Justinian said. “Everything I did was for our family. For our future. To preserve our legacy.”

  Rupert’s head bowed, too broken in spirit perhaps to say anything. Hattie continued to stare at the floor, as if lost in thought.

  “You cowardly, sanctimonious prick.” Christine’s words rang across the Great Hall. She drew herself up, glaring at Justinian with an expression of utter loathing. “You claim to be doing this for the Endicott children, but you’re doing nothing but indulging your own fears.”

  “How dare you—” Justinian began.

  “Your duty is to make a better world for them.” Christine’s dark eyes flashed fire. “Instead, you mean to help ruin the one they will inherit.”

  “You know nothing,” Ophelia snapped.

  “I know a great deal,” she shot back. “I know that my mother wasn’t the best, for either myself or Daphne. I know I’ve been terrified I won’t be any better than her, that I’ll drive away or fail my child. But having seen you lot as an example, I’m feeling a great deal more confident in my abilities, because I at least won’t sell its future to monsters!”

  “Time is growing short, and I am done entertaining you.” Justinian glanced at Ophelia. “You know what to do. I trust your judgement in this matter.”

  She nodded curtly.

  Justinian turned back to Whyborne. “I hope you’re ready to meet your maker.”

  Ival returned his stare coolly. “I’m an atheist.”

  An odd grin twisted Justinian’s mouth. “That isn’t what I meant. You have no soul. Just a fragment of arcane power where it ought to be. But this is where the architect of the maelstrom did his work, using Morgen’s Needle to weave and twist the very veins of the world.”

  Fear threatened to freeze my limbs, my lungs, my heart. “You cannot mean to summon Nyarlathotep.”

  “I would do anything to save this family,” Justinian replied, his smile still fixed in place. “And to finally have revenge against the creature who slaughtered my children.” He gestured to two of the guards closest to Whyborne. “Take him, and follow me.”

  “No!” I tried to put myself in between the two Endicotts who came for him, but a third struck me a heavy blow across the back of the head. I crumpled to the ground, the room spinning around me.

  “Griffin!” Whyborne shouted. He tried to run to me, but the guards grabbed him around the elbows and hauled him back. A confusion of yells rang out as Heliabel, Christine, and Iskander attempted to intervene. “Griffin!” he called again. I blinked; they dragged him backward by the arms, his heels scraping the stones as he fought to stay with me. “Hold on! I’ll come back for you!”

  “Ival,” I whispered.

  Then a door slammed shut, and he was gone.

  Chapter 34

  Whyborne

  I fought like a mad thing, twisting and bucking against the grip of the Endicott guards. Again and again, I instinctively reached for the arcane fire beneath my feet, but the manacles around my wrists left my hands numb and my senses dead. I was cut off, nothing but a little spark in human flesh, bound and trammeled.

  And on the way to meet with my maker. Literally.

  Nyarlathotep had twisted the arcane lines to create the maelstrom. He had set Morgen’s Needle in place, or forced the umbrae or ketoi do so for him. Last February, he’d meant to emerge into the Draakenwood at Stanford’s call, pluck my essence from my body, and give it to my brother. And do the same with Persephone’s. It would have given Nyarlathotep a means of controlling and corrupting the maelstrom, through the fragments within Stanford.

  What he meant to do to me now, I couldn’t guess as to the details, but I doubted it included killing me outright. Perhaps after Stanford’s failure, he’d concocted some secondary plan, should either Persephone or I be foolish enough to fall into his hands.

  My captors dragged me bodily through the upper half of Balefire, but the rooms and doors barely registered. I struggled and kicked, but they ignored me.

  I had to get free. God, what did the Endicotts mean to do to my family? To Griffin and Mother, Iskander and Christine? I’d been so proud of Christine when she’d told Justinian precisely what she thought of him. She’d be a wonderful mother.

  I just had to ensure she lived long enough to get the chance.

  The Keeper strode well in front of us, so I turned my attention on the guards. “Don’t do this,” I said, even though I doubted they would listen to me, if they hadn’t listened to other Endicotts. “The Keeper has been led astray by despair. Even if we can’t win, there must be a third path, one that doesn’t end in either complete extinction or wholesale slavery.”

  They didn’t answer.

  “Was this even discussed?” I asked frantically. “Did the Keeper even ask your opinion? Or did Justinian just make this decision on his own?”

  “That’s his job,” one of them said.

  I was so shocked to have gotten a reply, I almost lost my train of thought. “But…but surely strategy, warfare, that’s usually considered by more than one person. He’s the Keeper of Secrets, not the Dictator.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the other said. “It’s too late. And we aren’t listening to the words of an abomination.”

  “Oh no, but you’ll deal with an entity that gives people tentacle-faces!” I exclaimed. “What is wrong with this family? Can’t I be related to a single ordinary person?”

  Neither had a good answer to that. We caught up with the Keeper at the end of the passage. The doorway blocking our path was a dozen feet tall and sealed by a pair of large iron doors. Though the design matched the rest of Balefire, it reminded me instantly of the doorways we’d passed through below. If any future civilization added to Balefire’s spiral, it would begin here.

  Assuming the masters allowed a new civilization to rise. They’d abandoned our world once before, after the umbrae and ketoi rebelled. If they regained a foothold, I doubted they would vacate so easily a second time.

  Justinian placed his hand on the doors and murmured a spell. They swung open in response, and he strode through, followed by the guards.

  The doors let out onto the very pinnacle of Carn Moreth. It was a landscape of tumbled gray stone, worn smooth by centuries of storms. From the very center of island, Morgen’s Needle thrust toward the sky. So close, I could see the purple-black stone it was hewn from seemed semi-opaque; if sheered off in a thin enough sliver it might border on transparent. The menhir jutted perhaps fifteen feet above the ground, the spiral of arcane symbols we’d seen below continuing up its surface.

  Iron gray clouds seemed to scrape the top of the Needle. Far off to the west, the setting sunlight escaped beneath a break in the mass just above the horizon, turning the cloud’s bellies blood red. Rain spattered down around us fitfully, thunder rumbling low and threatening somewhere to the east.

  Even with the manacles on my wrists, I dimly sensed the lesser vortex around me. It wasn’t the maelstrom, but I could still draw from its energy—if only I could reach it.

  The guards flung me roughly against the black stone, then stepped away. Surprised to have been released, I scrambled to my feet.

  “Remove the manacles,” Justinian ordered. He stood a few feet away, his white hair blowing in the wind, an eager glint in his eyes. He wanted me to suffer, I realized. And perhaps whatever lurked in the Needle had influenced his mind, used his grief for Theo and Fiona as a crack to be widened, but his desire to see me die screaming came solely from within himself.

  “Are you sure?” one of the guards asked uncertainly.

  Justinian’s words cracked like a whip. “Obey me!”

  I readied myself, the shape of the lightning spell in my mind. As soon as they released me, I’d call down the lightning directly on Justinian’s head. With any luck, I’d hit at least one of the guards as well. The moment the manacles left my skin, I reached for
the arcane power surging beneath me.

  And something reached back.

  Chapter 35

  Griffin

  I took one deep breath, followed by another. My head ached and my heart slammed against my ribs. Warm blood flowed down the side of my face, but I didn’t think I’d been concussed.

  Heliabel snarled. “Let me go to him!”

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” Ophelia said, her voice so cold I expected frost to spread out from her feet and over the stones. “Save to your deaths. As Nyarlathotep has no interest in you, I am allowed to decide your ultimate fate.”

  No. We had to escape, had to get to Ival. What Nyarlathotep planned for him, I couldn’t guess, but clearly it wasn’t a swift execution. I struggled to sit up, and then climbed swaying to my feet.

  “You’ll regret this,” Rupert told Ophelia. “Justinian is a fool if he thinks the masters will spare any of us. Earnest and Charlie—”

  “Were traitors,” Hattie cut in.

  Rupert gaped at her. “You don’t mean that.”

  “‘Course I do.” She finally looked up, turning to him. Her remaining eye was red-rimmed, as though she’d been weeping silently. “We felt bad for them, because we didn’t know the whole story. We thought the Fideles had done it to them. But they betrayed the family. Broke their oaths.”

  “Nothing could possibly justify—”

  “Shut it!” She took a step toward him; had her hands been free, she doubtless would have punctuated her words with a blow. “You think you know everything, but you’re just spoiled. You didn’t have to grow up outside the family like I did. The Seeker saved me from the gutter, and Aunt Ophelia finished raising me, and the only thing anyone asked in return was a bit of loyalty. I just wish I’d been here to help earlier.”

  Rupert looked stunned. But he should have seen it coming. Hattie had always acted solely for the good of the family. It was why she’d spared Whyborne. Why she’d initially saved Whyborne from Stanford instead of Iskander, even though the choice had pained her. Why she’d come with Rupert to America in the first place, swallowing her revulsion at working with what she considered abominations. Of course she would continue to choose the side she’d always chosen before. Why would any of us have ever expected otherwise?

  “I’m sorry, Rupert,” she said. “I’m sorry Earnest and Charlie and the others couldn’t make the hard choices. I’m sorry they decided to turn traitor instead. But I ain’t sorry for keeping my oaths.” She looked at Ophelia. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Ophelia smiled. “That’s my girl. But you know I’ll require a bit of proof before I untie you.”

  I held my breath. Hattie’s mouth tightened. “Katherine ain’t on our side. I don’t mean she’s actively plotting against us yet—she’s too worried about the kids. But you’re going to want to do something about her soon, before she gets the courage to try anything. I definitely wouldn’t let her roam around unguarded anymore.”

  Christine unleashed a blistering string of curses. Fury and raw despair mingled in my veins. Hattie had betrayed Katherine’s confidence, even knowing what the end result would be. The thought of the woman transformed into one of the faceless monsters turned my stomach.

  “Thank you,” Ophelia said. She cut Hattie’s bonds, then took her knives from the table. “Now, with your help, we’ll draw this to a close. Rupert is of our blood, so we will of course spare his life.”

  “The way you did Earnest and Charlie?” I demanded.

  She shrugged. “Eventually. Once Justinian is finished with the spark. Until then, Rupert comes with us. I fear there aren’t enough of us left to spare a separate guard on him.”

  Another pulse of fear for Ival went through me, but I struggled to ignore it. I couldn’t think about him right now. I had to concentrate on surviving the next few minutes, whatever it took.

  There had to be a way out of here. Somehow.

  “As for the rest,” Ophelia went on, “They are not our kin, and the one is a ketoi. I say we take them to the cliff’s edge, slit their throats, and cast their bodies into the sea below.”

  ~ * ~

  The guards marched us out of the Great Hall, not to the stair but through the same door Whyborne had been taken earlier. It let into the upper portion of Balefire’s spiral. We passed a library and what looked to be an infirmary. A tower opened to the right, and the guards shoved us in its direction.

  A tight stone stair rose to one side, and directly across from us stood a small door. My shadowsight revealed magic sealing it, but a word of command from Ophelia dismissed the spell. She unbarred the door and led the way outside.

  We found ourselves on a small outcropping of rock, covered in thin grass. The tower wall bounded it on one side, and a long drop into the ocean on the other. The sea wind blew stiffly, flattening our hair and rippling Christine’s and Ophelia’s skirts. We faced east, but the setting sun reflected strangely from the heavy bellies of the storm clouds, briefly making the overcast sky seem lighter than the land and sea below.

  I cast about frantically for some avenue of escape. There were six of them, counting Hattie, and five of us. Hattie and the other guards were all armed, and Ophelia was a sorceress. Our only exit was the door back into the tower.

  There had to be some way out. It couldn’t end like this.

  Ophelia stepped to the cliff’s edge and looked down. “Hattie?”

  Hattie had escorted Iskander from the Great Hall, one hand on his shoulder as she steered him along. Now she stepped out from behind him and went to Ophelia’s side. “Yes, Aunt Ophelia?”

  Iskander had ended up closest to me. He took a small step in my direction and bumped against my hip.

  “You have done well so far.” Ophelia swept her gaze over us. “Your task now is to strike the killing blow when the prisoners are brought to you.”

  Iskander bumped me again. The devil?

  Hattie nodded. “Whatever you say. I’ve got a request, though.”

  “What is it?”

  Hattie locked her single-eyed gaze on Heliabel. “I want the ketoi to go first.”

  Fingers brushed against mine, picking at the knot of my bindings. Iskander’s fingers.

  Heliabel fought, and it took two of the guards to drag her to the edge where Hattie stood. One got too close, and she stung his hands with her hair. He cursed and let go. Even from a distance, I could see the red spot on the back of his hand, the skin swelling rapidly around it.

  “That’s why you always wear gloves when dealing with ketoi,” Ophelia snapped. “You know better than that. Just because we’re currently sealed away from the outside world doesn’t mean we can let discipline relax.”

  The remaining guard seized Heliabel by her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her throat to Hattie’s knife.

  The ropes around my wrists began to loosen. Had Iskander somehow managed to free himself, even though Hattie had been right behind him? Or…

  “Go on, Hattie,” Ophelia urged. “Kill the abomination. If there’s one good thing about the coming days, it’s that the ketoi will finally be wiped from the earth. A fitting end for monsters like them.”

  Hattie raised her knife. “And what about monsters like us?” she asked.

  And buried her blade in the guard’s throat.

  Chapter 36

  Whyborne

  I recoiled in horror, but whatever lived within the Needle already had a grip on me. An invisible force curled around my body, holding me tight to the column of black stone. Simultaneously, a mental assault slipped past barriers I’d not had time to strengthen.

  “I know what you are.” Curiosity and wonder flowed from it, tempered by uncertainty. “How is this possible?”

  What was it? A consciousness similar to the one that had developed within the maelstrom? Or something else?

  “I’ve watched you. I didn’t tell them you were here. I wanted you to come to me in the chamber below, but I had no way to speak to you.”

  I st
ruggled to shut it out, but I couldn’t summon the concentration. It rifled through my thoughts, burrowing deeper into my memories, until it suddenly stopped on the moment during the battle on the Front Street Bridge, when my consciousness had briefly been joined with that of the maelstrom.

  Shock and hope flowed out from the being in the Needle, so strong it took my breath.

  “Come to me.”

  For an instant, I felt half outside of my body, as though the Needle wanted to drag me into it as well. I glimpsed the cavern below our feet, where mutated Endicotts fed on the remains of their kin we had slain or trapped. I saw the empty corridors built by the masters, and the library with the secret passage, and half a dozen other places within Balefire.

  And at the very edge of awareness, I perceived the arcane lines spiraling away from me, spreading over the face of the world.

  “I’ve brought the abomination,” Justinian said. My consciousness snapped back into place at his words, though I could still feel the thing in the Needle tugging at my thoughts.

  “Thank you, Justinian,” said a young woman. “You’ve been so helpful.”

  She stepped from somewhere behind me, though I couldn’t have said where. Her pale skin all but glowed in the sun’s last light, her blonde hair arranged in the fanciful crimps and waves popular forty years ago. Her dress appeared to date from the same era. For a moment, I thought she must be an Endicott, because of the strong resemblance she bore to Fiona.

  But she wasn’t. I didn’t have Griffin’s shadowsight, but my every sense screamed the thing before me was only a mask, worn over something utterly inhuman. Beneath her girlish tones there rang the howling of the void, and I shuddered.

  No one else might have perceived it—clearly Justinian didn’t—but the very arcane lines whispered her monstrousness to me. I couldn’t imagine how she would appear to Griffin, but I knew the sight would be horrible.