The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  He came around a corner to find the way blocked. A tree had fallen through the wall, taking half the wing in on top of it. Great vines that looked like they belonged in Catal instead of Etsey twined around the wreckage and up over the gilded portraits lining the walls, and snaked across the floor, where they burrowed into the plaster on the other side. He could still hear Jonathan from somewhere close by, but when he scanned the pile of rubble, he decided Jonathan had not climbed over that, and he turned to find another way around.

  When he did, he saw a ghost standing there, smiling at him.

  The Goddess.

  Her eyes were duller, more shapes beneath the veil than eyes at all. The other ghost had been beautiful and powerful, but this one looked subdued and diminished. And sad. Just looking at her made Timothy feel excruciatingly sad.

  “I am trying to find Jonathan,” he said, not knowing what to say. Trying not to be angry.

  The ghost smiled and gestured to a wall beside her. “We can lead you there.”

  Timothy hesitated.

  The ghost held out her hands. “You will come to no harm. We would not harm Raturjula D’lor.”

  Timothy took a step back, almost tripping on a vine. “Are you the same—are you the ghost from the tower?”

  “No,” she said without concern. “We are another shard.”

  Shard? Timothy didn’t know what that meant, but there were more important questions just now. “Why do you keep appearing to me? How do you know my name?”

  The ghost laughed, a beautiful and haunting sound. “How do we know the sun? Because we see it and we know it is the sun.” The ghost motioned to him. “Please. Come. We will take you the androghenie way.”

  She turned to the wall, touched it, and the wall melted away. A tall, wide, well-lit, and richly furnished corridor appeared, and the ghost stepped inside.

  Transfixed, Timothy followed.

  The ghost walked beside him as they moved down the hall. It was a replica of the one he had just been in, but this one had no debris and no decay. It smelled of fresh flowers and summer afternoons. He could hear the trickle of fountains in the distance, and he thought he could smell succulent duck and vegetables roasting from somewhere farther away. Children ran past them in clumps of three and four; they paused when they saw Timothy, whispering and clutching one another and pointing at him. They too were ghosts, their hollow eyes staring up at him, but when they saw Timothy, tiny stars lit in the back of the dark sockets, and they smiled. When Timothy waved tentatively at them, they waved back in delight, then hurried on their way.

  “I find it difficult to believe this is happening,” he admitted to his escort. “You seem real, but this—” He shook his head.

  “We are in the space between,” the ghost said. “When the androghenie were alive, these were secret passages, designed by the ellyuit to keep them safe, but their secrets were given away. We are all dead now, but the spaces live on, and in them, after a fashion, so do we.”

  She stopped at an open window and pointed into a courtyard rich and lush with fruit and nuts, things that could not possibly grow in Etsey. They grew here regardless, hale and hearty. Inside the groves, Timothy saw Jonathan. He walked through many of the trees, as if he could not see them. But he was lunging and turning in regular patterns; it appeared he was doing his old exercise routine. Timothy thought he saw the glimmer of a pair of fencing foils sticking out of a berry bush.

  There was a sort of glass in the open space of the window, except the more Timothy studied it, the more he suspected it was not glass at all but some sort of magical barrier. He reached out and touched it; it was as firm as glass, but when his fingers touched the surface, it shimmered beneath his hand.

  “We are on the Other Side,” the ghost said. “Your companion is back in the world you know. We will take you through by another path, but first—”The ghost turned to Timothy, the stars in her eyes winking devilishly. “We understand you may have some questions.”

  Timothy laughed, a little nervously. “I have a lot of questions.”

  Another twinkle. “We have a great many answers.”

  Timothy turned back to the window. He wanted to demand more information about this shard, to try to find out, again, how they knew him, but he suspected he would only get more gibberish about moon and stars. No, he would ask something else, something he needed to know. He watched Jonathan move through the trees, through the courtyard within the courtyard. It had started to rain on the side of the world Jonathan was on, and it was falling on him, making his shirt stick to his skin, making his hair plaster to his face. He was full of agony and fury, and every shout he made in exertion was also full of pain. Timothy could not tell if it was mental or physical pain, or if it was both.

  “Tell me about this place,” he said quietly. “Tell me about the abbey. About you.” He let out a shuddering breath and nodded to Jonathan. “Tell me the truth about him. Even if it is not what I want to hear.”

  The ghost watched Jonathan as it spoke. “The abbey was the home of the androghenie. It was their safe place, their retreat. The humans hated the androghenie and feared them for their differences and their power. And so the androghenie made a haven, but the harsher the world became, the more they retreated, until they did not leave at all.

  “They crafted the Houses as their eyes and ears and arms and mouth into the world, but even here they failed. They feared death above all things, and they tried to escape it. It caused much pain and suffering, and in the end, they died more completely than they ever would have had they allowed themselves to truly live.

  “But the Houses lived on. And they still live, because the androghenie put too much power in them, because they are not living things. They too must be brought to accept death. But they are wild things now, the Houses. They are not to be trusted.” It nodded through the glass. “He is of the House that betrayed the children first. They were the House of Air, the house of protection. They sold the androghenie for money and power. But this one, the one who walks on the other side, he is different.” The ghost pressed its hand to the magical barrier, her empty sockets watching Jonathan. Timothy could not read her expression.

  “His father made this home a house of terror. The daemon turned demon inside him made him mad, and it made him listen to the cries of the dead. He cried with them because he could not shut them out. In his agony, he began to mimic the crimes committed here. He did unto those he could lure inside what had been done to the androghenie. He raped. He tortured. He destroyed slowly, painfully, with heartless meticulousness. His moments of madness and darkness were his only moments of peace.

  “But this one killed him. This one took away the monster. This one is stronger than the monster.” Her hand pressed flat and firm against the barrier, making the whole window shimmer from the pressure. “This one will not be forgotten.”

  The ghost’s stories were swirling in his head, making Timothy feel sad and sick, but he had to know the rest. “But he killed the girl. And he betrayed his brother with her.”

  The ghost nodded. “He did. We do not know why he went to her bed, but we know why he killed the girl. She was dying slowly. So very, very slowly. We wept so deeply for her, but we could not stop her cries. We took away what pain we could, but we cannot act against the Houses. Like this one, the monster killer, we must live with the mistakes we have made. We cannot undo them. This one ended her pain when we could not. He of the House who caused the pain to the last of another House ended the pain as well. That was as it should be. And one day we will repay him.” She lowered her hand from the window and turned back to Timothy. “Have you more questions?”

  Timothy’s mind was ringing with the story, but one detail had nagged him all the way through. “You keep saying ‘we,’ as if you speak for a collective, but when you told the story of the Houses and the androghenie, you said ‘they.’ Are you androghenie, or are you not?”

  She seemed to like this question. “We are both androghenie and not androghenie. W
e are androghenie, but we are something more as well. We are of she whom you met in the tower and with the beloved, but we are not she. She is whole, but we are not whole.” It stepped closer to Timothy. “Would you like to ask us what we are? We would like to tell you.”

  Timothy was having a difficult time breathing. Was this a spell? The ghost came closer and closer, and Timothy’s eyes fixed on the vapor-thin veil over its face. He stared at those empty eyes and knew with terrible certainty that if he lifted that veil, he would see more than just a face. As he had known in the tower, he knew that if he looked, if he lifted that veil, he would see truths—great and terrible truths. He would know everything.

  “Would you like to ask us what we are?” the ghost asked again, its fingers moving to the edge of the veil.

  “No,” Timothy said quickly and turned away.

  The ghost sounded disappointed but accepting. “Perhaps a different question?”

  Timothy was already reeling, but before he could decline, he found himself asking one more. “Charles—he says he knows you. He calls you Goddess.”

  Timothy watched the ghost carefully. She held very still, as if waiting for something.

  “Is that what you are?” Timothy prompted.

  The ghost laughed, but it was a sad sound. “You said you did not wish to see what we are.”

  Timothy knew he should let it go, but he could not. “He thinks you are his creator. He thinks you sent me to him.” He waited, but the ghost still said nothing. He clenched his fists in frustration. “I called him quiera. Did you do this? Did you compel me to do this?”

  The ghost tilted her head to the side. “You know the answer to this, Raturjula.”

  Timothy was afraid that he did. “But how could I—I barely know him! And—woman, he is Etsian!”

  The ghost waited a moment, then asked very politely, “Do you wish to inquire further of Charles Perry?”

  “No,” Timothy said hoarsely. “I do not. Not of anything. Thank you.”

  The ghost reached out and touched his cheek. The touch was soft, and it made him ache. He closed his eyes.

  “We are so happy to serve you, Raturjula D’lor. We are glad it is you who has come. We believe you are strong, and we believe you will succeed in your quest. This time with you has been an honor and a pleasure we will not soon forget. We hope it has brought you peace and love and ease.”

  It had made him feel queasy and unsettled, in point of fact. His quest? He would succeed? He was tempted to ask for clarification. But he only nodded and tried to make his smile reach his eyes. “Thank you.”

  The ghost stepped back and gestured to the hall around them. “Our ways are yours. You have seen them now, and you may find them whenever you wish. You may bring any you wish into their safety, but we must warn you none from the Houses will be able to enter here until the beasts have been slain. You may reveal the way inside to any you deem worthy to know.” It made a low, elegant bow, then rose and gave him one last smile, whole galaxies twinkling in its dark sockets. “Go in peace, Raturjula D’lor. May the sun always be in your sky.”

  Timothy blinked and reached for the support of the wall as he watched it go; the phrase she’d uttered had been the traditional parting for any clients leaving the gardens at the Cariff’s palace. The ghost was gone, vanished into the air, but the lush hallway remained. The wall where he had rested his hand, however, had not. He looked at it, saw his hand sticking through into cool darkness, and pulled back. The wall came back into place.

  He looked up and down the hall before trying the wall again, with the same effect. He noticed this time, however, that there was a small plate of brass affixed to the floorboard. There were others up and down the hall, but this one seemed different somehow. He bent down and prodded it to the side with his finger. It spun around and revealed a stone plate on the other side; this one was carved with a small, crude figure: a cross, a U-shape, a circle inside the U, and a snakelike line coiling around a straight line at the figure’s feet. It looked, roughly, like a person standing, legs together, arms raised, with some sort of…wand? Serpent? Something magical at its feet. It meant nothing to him, but it looked somehow familiar too.

  Timothy pushed it again to return it to the brass plate position. Then he rose and walked through the wall.

  He appeared in the courtyard, but now he was in the courtyard in the real world, the one where Jonathan was dueling with fallen tree trunks in the rain, thrusting a foil against the great carcasses before rolling them aside with an angry roar. When he saw Timothy, he startled and drew his foil back, coming back to an at-ease stance. He looked at the solid wall of rubble and vine behind Timothy, glanced behind him at the only entrance to the courtyard, and frowned.

  “Did you come in through the wall?” he asked in jest. But his words were tight with his unspent emotions.

  For a moment Timothy only stood there. He looked at Jonathan, truly looked at him as he had not since that morning in his room. He took in his health, his strength, his power. He looked into his eyes and saw waves and waves of pain, as he always had, but now he remembered what the ghost had told him, and now he also imagined what his friend had seen, what he had done. He imagined how Jonathan must have wondered, time and time again, if he had done right.

  “I lost Charles,” Timothy said, his voice breaking, surprising him. He stopped, then found it hurt more to hold it in. “The alchemist is still here, and he has been torturing Charles. Badly. I was trying to save him, to take him away, but I lost him. I threw a jibtsi in the alchemist’s back, but it only wounded him. I didn’t have a charm. I didn’t dare to go for a fatal target. But I couldn’t find Charles.”

  Jonathan rested the tip of his foil on his boot and regarded Timothy for a long moment. “And you want to find Charles.”

  “Yes,” Timothy said, the word tearing from his heart.

  Jonathan nodded. He looked a little surprised, but he didn’t seem upset, and he asked no questions. He did wipe his hand over his face, and he stared at the ground before he spoke. “My grandfather came while you were out. It seems he put the demon in my father on purpose, and he knew it went into me. He’s disappointed it didn’t make more of a man out of me, and he’s incensed that Madeline has the daemon now. Or the demon, whatever it is now. She says it’s contained, but I don’t—” He cut himself off and ran a weary hand over his face. “She’s hiding from me and won’t let me warn her that Whitby will be coming for her. I knew she was hiding, so I stood there and told her she was being a prideful idiot—” He shut his eyes. “And,” he continued quietly, “in a fit of rage, I told her that was why I had slept with her cousin.”

  “Mathdu.” Timothy shook his head. “You fool.”

  Jonathan jerked his head in silent agreement. Then he wiped his face with his palm again, took a deep breath, and turned to reach behind him for something. When he turned around, he tossed a second foil in Timothy’s direction, the thin steel whistling and arcing sharply against the stone walls as it sailed through the air. Timothy caught it easily with his left hand.

  “You look as if you could use a good bout, and it’s been a long time for both of us,” he said. “Since the foil’s owner can’t bring herself to come down from her bower and take a proper piece out of me, would you care to stand as her second?”

  Timothy stared down at the blade as his mind tumbled around him. “It’s been a long time for both of us.” He thought of how it used to be, of how they had sparred daily in odd little courtyards just like this, until Jonathan’s injury had grown bad enough to prevent them. He thought of all the dirty tricks others had taught him, of all the people he had fenced with in the Etsian Army, of Nara and the rebel fighters in the South, but he thought too of how nothing had ever been quite like a bout with Jonathan. Nothing else had been so intense, so fraught with sweat and the knife-edge of danger and release. He looked again at Jonathan, hale and hearty and strong and full of piss and vinegar and pain. He thought of his own inner agonies and rage, and his
heart began to pound.

  Timothy set the foil down, and he smiled as he reached for the buttons of his coat.

  * * *

  It was strange, Madeline thought, sleepwalking through life, waiting for death to come.

  Madeline could cast, and she could function, but it was much like trying to live without sleep. The longer she did it, the more difficult it became to continue, and the more mistakes she made. She clung to the habits that had sustained her for ten years, trying to maintain her balance and her calm despite the fact that she was increasingly sure she had no hope of finding it, let alone sustaining it. She did not make her rounds, and she saw no one. She barely saw Emily, communing with her sister just enough to keep her at bay.

  Witches who fell from the Craft were destroyed; that, simply, was that. The Craft was a religion, a creed, a philosophy, a way of life, and it was a rigid one. Madeline had now broken several sacred tenets; she would be destroyed as soon as the Council found her. It was her duty as a witch to remain and face her punishment. But it appeared that whatever had been holding up the Council in its efforts to arrive and Seal her was still acting to delay them in their new mission to exterminate her. They knew; the guide would have reported immediately. Either that, or something was stopping the Council from knowing. Logic and reason told her this was not possible.

  But then she thought of the Void beyond the Void, of the White Charles, and of what had felt very much like the Elliott daemon—or even demon—which had entered her circle as she tried to heal Jonathan. She knew she could trust no logic or reason anymore.

  She had considered, briefly, running.

  She considered it again the afternoon when Jonathan broke into the house and shouted up the stairs, when she had lain under the bed, rigid and terrified and furious—and hurt. His words had hurt very much. She lay there a long time beneath the bed, not moving, not making a sound, letting the tears dry against her skin, letting the rage boil away even though she could feel it giving her the energy she needed to rise at last. She lay there until Emily came back with Stephen, until she heard their quiet murmurs, the ominous silence, and then his strangled gasps as Emily ran her needle through his cheek. She lay there when, later, Emily came upstairs to look for her, calling softly and asking if she was all right.