I had an idea. Not a good idea, perhaps, but the only one I was likely to come up with in the next few seconds. If Nyarlathotep didn’t want me talking to the intelligence in the Needle, then it seemed that should be my highest priority.
The second Hound abandoned its guard of Justinian and charged at Stanford. And for an instant, all eyes were fixed on their struggle, rather than on me.
I ran for the Needle.
“Stop,” Nyarlathotep commanded in the voices of the damned. Magic swirled around me, the earth gripping my feet, the air buffeting me, frost burning on my skin. I fell full-length to the ground. The rock beneath me softened and began to close over my legs, my hips.
“You are nothing but a tool.” The rain turned to ice, freezing to my exposed skin. “And when a tool cannot be mended, it must be thrown away.”
I bared my teeth. “We use hammers because our own fists can’t drive nails. We use knives because our own teeth can’t cut through hide.” I stretched out my arm to the Needle. “So what does that say about you and the maelstrom?”
My fingertips brushed the Needle, and I felt the intelligence within it once again. When it had touched me earlier, I had seen its thoughts as it had seen mine. Its recognition of the maelstrom.
God, I hoped I knew what I was doing.
Rather than try to drag power from the Needle, I sharpened my will to a point and pushed into it instead.
Light exploded into being around me, the arcane vortex unfolding much as it must appear to Griffin’s shadowsight. The howl of magic through my bones was nothing as compared to standing at the eye of the maelstrom. No hurricane of energy battered my all-too mortal body. Rather, the power seemed to stretch away, from horizon to horizon, taking my senses with it.
For a moment, I could see it all. Rivers of light flowed across the world, like blood through veins, silently nourishing the body of the earth around them. Slender rills fed into streams and thence into rivers. Here and there the rivers came together, currents swirling, channeling into vortexes.
I could feel them all. And, distant but unmistakable, the maelstrom beneath Widdershins turned, its vast bulk rotating eternally counter-clockwise.
It was all connected, from the tiniest arcane rivulet to the great rivers of the lines, to the maelstrom. The blood of the world, ancient as the rock, shaped and reshaped through incredible eons as continents rose and fell.
Somewhere out there, not far from where my body even now lay in the rain at the base of the Needle, was Griffin. My mother, and Christine, and Iskander, and even Rupert and Hattie. I had to find them, had to help them, before Ophelia or Nyarlathotep or anyone else could hurt them. But before I could do that, I had to save myself.
I reached out for the limitless arcane power spread before me. Nyarlathotep might be able to dissipate small spells, but I hoped he’d fare less well if I aimed a torrent of pure magical energy at him.
A shadowy form rose up before me, within the confines of the Needle. The intelligence I’d sensed before. It ruled here, blocking my reach for the power I could sense all around us.
We hung facing one another in an abyss of light. “What are you?” I asked. “You seemed to recognize me. How?”
Its shapeless form shimmered and contracted, and began to take on definition. At first it was hard to make out, like ripples distorting a reflection. Then it solidified into the form of a ketoi woman. Her blue-black markings drew spirals across her pearlescent skin, and spread to cover the tendrils of her hair. Unlike every other ketoi I’d ever met, she wore no jewelry, carried no weapon or tool.
“I recognized you,” she said, though in this place she spoke directly into my mind, “because I am the one who created the maelstrom.”
Chapter 44
Griffin
“Through there,” Hattie said, pointing to the iron doors at the end of the passageway. “They’re normally locked by a spell, so no one can go to the Needle without the Keeper or Seeker’s permission.”
Only fading traces of arcane energy clung to the surface of the doors. “I think Justinian left them unlocked,” I said.
We’d run all the way from the armory, terrified of arriving too late. The ketoi Sword was heavy in my hand, and I hoped it would be of use even if we couldn’t activate whatever magic it was primed to contain. The Shield hung on Iskander’s arm, and Christine carried the Spear. Heliabel had the Source and the magic-enhancing bracers. Rupert’s hand hovered near his alchemy pouch, waiting to fling a powder or potion.
Hattie aimed a kick at the great doors. They both swung open with surprising ease, revealing a sort of courtyard encompassing the very pinnacle of Carn Moreth. The wind howled, and rain pounded the tumble of boulders and rocks forming the carn. The very last finger of sunlight shot beneath the low clouds far to the west, touching for a moment the black standing stone piercing the very heart of the island. Then it vanished, and night descended on us all.
Rupert pulled a handful of shining powder from his pouch. Shouting a string of unfamiliar words, he hurled it with all his strength into the air. Rather than disperse as powder should, the particles clung together, arcing higher and higher above the courtyard, before exploding into a brilliant white light illuminating everything below.
My shadowsight hadn’t required the extra light; the courtyard blazed, arcane streams pouring in to wrap around the length of the Needle, just as they had in the cavern below. Two Hounds swung their dragonish heads in our direction as we charged inside.
Whyborne lay sprawled at the base of the Needle, one hand resting against its glassy surface. The rock around him had deformed, closing over his legs, and frost sparkled on his clothing, washing away in the rain. His stillness sent a spike of terror through me, before I realized he yet glowed steadily in my shadowsight.
Then the terror returned as I beheld the creature bearing down on him. My brain scrambled to understand what my eyes showed me, and a wave of nausea threatened to bring up bile from my empty stomach.
The creature was a blot on the world, a living darkness spreading corruption to everything it touched. Where Ival burned with pure, cleansing fire, it smeared a layer of sooty foulness across the very fabric of reality. It was every shape and none, a heaving, churning distortion that gave my shadowsight nothing to rest upon. Sharp appendages emerged from it, stabbing and gathering at the strands of arcane light, plucking smaller threads from the thick streams and weaving them into some kind of pattern. Mortal sorcerers used their spells to manipulate the warp and weft of reality. But this being seemed to weave—and no doubt unravel—it directly.
Other hands drew some of the threads into itself, where they vanished amidst the corrupt darkness of its form. Was it…feeding, somehow?
“Bloody hell,” Hattie said. “That’s what we have to kill?”
“Yes,” Justinian grated.
He stood not far from the doors, back against the wall, one sleeve soaked in blood. “You!” Christine exclaimed.
“It used me.” Justinian’s eyes were wild, and I wasn’t certain he was entirely sane at the moment, if he had been before. “Used me, to destroy the Endicotts.”
“Obviously!” I exclaimed. “We don’t have time for this—we have to keep that thing away from Ival.”
“Magic doesn’t work against it,” Justinian said, but I’d already broken into a run.
I tried not to look at the monstrous thing I was charging, instead focusing on the Hounds which moved to block our path. They blinked in and out of existence, twenty feet away one second, then five the next. My shadowsight revealed their ghostly forms, and I called, “Iskander, bring up the Shield!”
He did so without question, plowing directly into one of the Hounds as it materialized and sending it flying. The other I stabbed with the Sword; it let out a yelp of pain and blinked away to reappear in front of Rupert. Rupert flung a handful of powder on it, preventing it from blinking, and a moment later Hattie descended with her knives.
My foot caught on something half-
hidden in a clump of grass, and I went sprawling. I swore, scrambling to my feet—then cursed again when I saw what I’d tripped over.
At first glance, it was nothing more than a mass of limp tentacles, torn and mauled by the Hounds. But then I realized a human eye stared out between two of them, dead and filling with rain like tears.
Heliabel stopped, lips parted, eyes wide. The Source fell from her hands, and she crouched down to pick up the nauseating thing. The tentacles slipped aside, revealing Stanford’s face.
She stared at the last remnants of her eldest child, and I knew she wasn’t thinking of Stanford as he’d become. Not the monster who had tried to murder us all in the Draakenwood, or the assassin who had struck down Guinevere.
She was seeing the little boy she’d described to Whyborne aboard the Melusine. The toddler with chubby cheeks and a bright smile. The baby she’d once cradled tenderly, her face against his soft skin, her dreams filled with a bright future for him.
This was what that future had come to. Horror and death, betrayal and jealousy, all leading here. To this scrap of inanimate flesh.
Even as she tried to hold him, his body began to dissolve. Things of the Outside never remained long after their death, and the torn flesh went to greenish slime, then to nothing at all.
For a long moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. Rain slicked her face, hiding whatever tears she might have shed. Then her expression transformed from one of stunned horror to utter rage.
“No,” she said. Then she looked up at Nyarlathotep and screamed, so loud the words tore from her throat. “No! You will not have any more of my children!”
She dropped to her knees and slammed one hand on the blue sphere atop the Source. With one hand on the blue stone, she flung out the other, and channeled the arcane fire directly from the vortex.
Chapter 45
Whyborne
“I thought Nyarlathotep created the maelstrom,” I said.
The ketoi woman—the entity I’d sensed within the Needle—tipped her head to the side. Her tendrils lay quiet over her shoulders, and a palpable sense of weary sorrow radiated from her.
Morgen’s Needle, they’d called the stone. Morgen. Sea born.
Had the name referred to her all along?
“It used me—commanded me—to twist the lines and form the maelstrom.” She held up her hands. “But it was I who did the work. I who directed the arcane fire. I who made you.” She let her hands fall and met my gaze. “I saw you when you came onto the island. But I did not warn the one whose dreams I touched.”
No wonder there had been no Endicotts waiting to ambush us the moment we entered the family crypt. “You filled Justinian’s head with visions of horror, but you want to help me? Whose side are you on?”
“I didn’t wish to show him Nyarlathotep’s visions. It forced me to. As for why I’m helping you, it’s because I created you. You are my legacy. Not theirs.” Her nostrils flared, and her voice grew bitter. “Not Nyarlathotep’s. Mine.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, or even how to feel about it. “Who are you? You look like a ketoi, but you can’t be.”
“I don’t remember.” She tipped her head back, as though she could peer into the past. “It has been eons since I spoke to anyone. I was…not like this. I had a body, once. Like you, I was created to serve. This was how the masters decided I could best contribute. So Nyarlathotep changed me. Put me in here.” She paused. “It’s been so long. I can’t…I can’t remember. There was another, and I can’t remember their face.” Pain and despair distorted her features. “I promised I’d never forget them and I did!”
Her entire body went slack, head bowed, arms dangling, legs limp. “I forgot you.”
Despite the urgency of my own situation, pity tightened my throat. “Forgot who?”
“Someone I loved. I can’t remember them. How could I have forgotten?” Hopelessness coated every word. “I loved them more than anything in this world, and they’re gone, and I can’t even recall their name.”
Dear God. Oblivion I could accept, but to still exist and not be able to remember Griffin’s name? His face?
It felt an unspeakable cruelty, forced on her not by the uncaring hand of illness or age or accident, but to further the goals of the masters. “I’m so sorry.”
“The masters left, so Nyarlathotep had to leave as well. I was finally allowed to sleep.”
Wait. “What do you mean, Nyarlathotep had to leave when the masters did?”
“It is their messenger. Their servant. Their first creation. It is bound to them even more intimately than an umbra to its queen, or the rust to the avatar. Nyarlathotep cannot remain long in this world while they are still Outside. Only when they return will it once again be free to walk this earth as it will. And I fear that time is soon.” She raised her head, just slightly. “I dreamed, sometimes, over the long years. I didn’t want to wake, not ever again. But I didn’t have a choice. Nyarlathotep prepares for the return of the masters. If that happens, I’ll never be able to escape. Never be able to sleep and forget for a while all that I have lost.”
The weariness of ages filled her voice. I couldn’t imagine what she had suffered here. Locked away, her very essence changed, made into nothing but a tool for Nyarlathotep to use.
This was, indeed, Carn Moreth. The hill of grief.
“How can I help you?” I asked. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
She stirred, her eyes lifting to meet mine. “You defy them. Nyarlathotep. The masters.”
I nodded, though it hadn’t really been a question. “Yes.”
“The you who is in front of me, but the maelstrom as well?”
I remembered what Nyarlathotep had said. That if I faced down the masters as the maelstrom wished, I was doomed.
It might have been lying. It probably was. But either way, there were far, far worse things than death.
“Yes,” I said. “The maelstrom fragmented itself so my sister and I could help it stand against them. We will never submit.”
To my surprise, she smiled. “Then I managed to do one good thing in this cursed existence. I will help you fight Nyarlathotep here. Now. But I ask one thing in return.”
I nodded. “Anything.”
“When this is done, help me sever the bonds between the Needle and the arcane streams. Redirect them, drain this vortex, and let me die.”
A part of me wanted to question her further. To ask her to stay long enough for us to learn anything that might help us stand against the masters. But I could feel the weight of her grief and despair against my own heart, so I only nodded. “You have my word.”
She reached out her hand. I reached back, and the arcane fire engulfed us both.
Chapter 46
Griffin
Heliabel screamed.
Her back arched as arcane fire blazed through her, and she bared her teeth to the heavens. Like her children, she had both the Endicott and ketoi blood, and could withstand the raw power in a way no one else could.
Had this been the maelstrom, her lack of a connection with the old families might have made a difference. But this was no titanic whirlpool such as lay beneath Widdershins, fed by enormous rivers of light. So she shrieked her defiance to the sky and held on.
The light poured through her, then into the Source, which began to shine ever brighter in my shadowsight.
In response, the stone on the pommel of the Sword began to glow as well. Magic poured through the channels on its surface, and the edge blazed as though white-hot. A glance at the Shield and Spear revealed similar effects.
“The weapons aren’t inert anymore!” I called.
“So what the devil do we do with them?” Christine shouted back.
We didn’t have time to determine. Nyarlathotep’s attention swung to us like the beam of a lighthouse, something with almost palpable weight. The monster tugged on the strands of arcane fire, and rifts began to open in the world. Ghostly Hounds appeared in my shadowsight, about to
blink into existence.
“Hounds!” I yelled in warning.
The Endicotts were ready. Hattie threw down her caltrops, and one of the Hounds screamed as it manifested directly on them. Rupert flung a handful of powder on another, pinning it in place as well. Hattie slashed first one, then the other, with her knives, killing both.
A Hound burst into being near Christine. She stabbed the Spear at it—
And a second spear, made entirely of magic, flew out of its tip. With unerring accuracy, it lanced directly through the Hound, killing it instantly.
“Oh, that’s what it does,” Christine said. A savage grin spread across her face, and she began casting ethereal spears with abandon.
A rat thing and a Hound both appeared next to me. I swung the Sword, and its magical edge cut first through the rat thing, then the Hound, as though both were made from warm butter.
“Iskander, try the Shield!” I called.
He’d moved to protect Christine while she hurled magic in every direction. As she disintegrated a rat thing, another Hound charged at her. Iskander thrust the Shield in between—and the Hound was blasted back, striking the ground ten feet away.
Then the chaos of battle demanded all my attention. A Hound began to shimmer into being, but the sword in my hand was waiting and it formed around the blade, dying even as it emerged into our reality. A rat thing leapt squealing onto my leg; I kicked it off, then sliced it neatly in half.
But for every rat thing or Hound we destroyed, Nyarlathotep summoned two more. Its nightmare presence dominated the fray, calling forth horror after horror. We couldn’t keep this up forever; even with magical weapons, we were only human flesh. Christine’s maniacal laughter as she laid waste to our enemies notwithstanding, we would eventually tire.
“Enough,” Nyarlathotep said. I cringed instinctively at the loathsome sound. Every word felt like insects crawling through my ears and burrowing into my brain. “I tire of this amusement.”
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