Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1)

by Aaron Buchanan

  “How long do you think we should wait,” Joy asked far too soon.

  “I’d wager that driveway can’t be any longer than a half mile long. In his shape,” though now I knew that wasn’t quite the right word, “it would take him 20 minutes to move stealthily. 20 minutes to poke around. 20 minutes back.”

  “Oh,” was the only response I got back.

  I’d give Gavin an extra 30 minutes if it came to it. That put our wait-time at an hour and a half. In our current state, he would be unable to find us unless he was right up next to us. Joy texted to tell him that we’d be waiting under the oak tree 30 yards west of the gate.

  One hour went by with little worry. The first half hour we talked about it being our first time in France. The next half hour we passed the time theorizing who Dalton was and what rEvolve’s intentions were. Our thorough lack of information hindered anything substantive coming of our conversation. The next 30 minutes, we were coaxed into silence by a woman walking her dog along the sidewalk across from us. She must have heard us speaking some moments before, so could have at that very moment been questioning her sanity. Even after she was out of earshot, however, the silence remained. As the minutes ticked by, the more convinced I became that something untoward happened to Gavin. Had he been caught? Worse?

  Time was up.

  “We need to go.” It took me a moment to realize it was Joy speaking and not the thought already articulated in my brain.

  “I think we should split up and approach from different vectors. If he’s been caught it’s because he took the most direct route. And someone could still be watching. I’m going to augment us both, so we can come from the east and west. Walk down to the end of the fence line to the east, I’ll take the west.” Sitting under the oak tree had not proven to be dangerous, but the cloaking had probably helped as his cell phone may have already been compromised.

  I wrote the spell on Joy’s ankle with the felt-tip, hoping to make it less susceptible to sweat. I put my hand on Joy’s shoulder and leaned awkwardly and did the same thing.

  “See you in the middle. Call like a bird once you’re where we’re going.” I took off at a light jog through the grass to the west. There was still a surprising amount of moisture in the grass, dampening my clothes and chilling me in the otherwise pleasant afternoon air.

  I ran into a row of houses that abutted up against the fence and prevented me from going forward as planned. I decided to negotiate along the top of the stone fence until I could follow through with the formulated plan. A couple dogs barked at me, but once on the other side, I continued along the length of the wall with as much celerity as I could muster and turned the corner no less than a mile away from the starting point. The foliage was much more dense from this angle—on both sides of the wall. I wish I had access to an aerial view of the estate and cursed my phone and its technology for not allowing me access to its technological wonders. Still, the angle of approach was less important than timing at this point, so I crossed over the wall and began slogging through the forest, hoping to hit the center of whatever was walled in the middle. The sun helped me orient myself, but it was setting over the tree line behind me. Keeping it to my back let me know I was going in the right direction. It would soon recede behind the hill and I would have to light my hand and look for moss on the north sides of trees. And that risked calling attention to myself, as there is no way to cloak light.

  In the twilight, I found myself stumbling into thorny brambles, tearing my jeans and my new scuba jacket. By the second or third time, I could feel the stickiness of blood on my limbs. When I got through, I’d take a quick moment to heal. Joy and I did not have a meeting point on this side, since we had no idea where we were going, we decided on a bird call.

  When the sun was nearly set, I finally came to a clearing. I saw the outline of a castle. It was not particularly well kept. There were no lights. There was no white Citroen freight van. I looked to the drive, seeing nothing. I dropped to the ground and turned on my phone, letting the flap of the bag cover the light. One message from Joy; none from Gavin. Though I know it wasn’t the case, I hoped his battery was dead. Maybe he just couldn’t see us, nor we him? Joy’s message was from the past five minutes. She must have taken as long to get through her side as I did mine. The message read: Still see fuchsia. Not very bright. Coming from inside. No one home? Tire tracks might be from van. Where are you?

  I texted back: Meet me where tire tracks end. Seemed specific enough. My main concern was steering us clear of whatever might have gotten Gavin. Unless those who drove the van got Gavin? We would have no way of knowing if the van had left while we traversed through the trees and bushes and thorns. I hurried to end of the tracks and nearly ran headlong into Joy.

  “Good! There you are!” I whispered impatiently. “No sign of anyone?”

  “No one. Nothing. These tracks could be a week old or an hour old. I can’t tell,” Joy knelt, pointing to the indentations in the dirt.

  “We need to go inside,” I ignored the tracks and stood, hands on hips, to take in the castle with some help of the moonlight. It was not very large. In fact, it was much smaller than the manor back in Mousehole. Its condition was not dilapidated, but it did not appear occupied, or even maintained. It was probably experiencing some stages of mold and rot, but the intricacies of castle-care were not something with which I was familiar. Three Stories rounded a central area with an adjoining tower. It was covered in ivy, though it did not completely obscure the structure. There were no parapets, no keeps. Underneath the ivy, the brick was white or gray. It occurred to me that it probably wasn’t as old as it originally appeared and consequently maybe there wasn’t much rot. Perhaps it was only meant to look this way.

  “How are we going to play it? Those windows don’t slide open,” Joy observed.

  I looked up to the tower. No windows, but a metallic, conical roof covered an open area at the top.

  “We’re going to fly,” I told her.

  Chapter 20

  This was a stunt I had tried exactly once before. It was not liberating. I am not the type who shies away from high places, but I have never been on the friendliest of terms with them either. With spells written upon the bottom of our shoe soles, Joy and I levitated to the top of the tower. It was not easy going. It was awkward and we needed to hold fast to the wall of the tower to balance ourselves from falling over. Joy accidentally screamed once, but I was of the mind that no one could hear us. Unfortunately, we became stuck at the corbels that jutted out from the platform at the top of the tower. To climb up, we would have to arch our backs enough that it would cause us to lose our balance. We wouldn’t fall, but we would be flipped upside down. I had visions of floating ever upward, as if my boots were helium balloons. There were no alternatives.

  “Wait a second while I try this. If this doesn’t work,” I would probably burn up in the atmosphere, I finished the thought.

  Joy looked squeamish, flailing her arms back and forth. I did not know her to be afraid of heights, but have had little experience with her in that regard. Apparently, we felt the same way. “Why,” she began to ask, “can’t you just give your boot, or even your jacket wings or something? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “Despite what you may have heard, conjuring isn’t real magic. I can’t make something appear out of nothing,” I shouted, then continued, “and physics is still physics. We’ll levitate, but keep balance…well, I hope you’ve surfed or something.”

  “Hold on!” Joy ordered. She began taking off her jacket, “Hang on to the arm.”

  “And now, I am a balloon. Thank you,” I winced, thinking about our sushi earlier and how it might find its way out again.

  I let the back of my legs flip upward toward the tower, leaving my back to it. The length of Joy’s jacket was far too short to leave her under me so she let go. With my back to the tower, it was difficult to turn and grab the roof of the tower. As I did, Joy was vaulting under the tower’s roof. She hit the stone with s
uch impact, I lost purchase on her jacket.

  Panic momentarily gripped me.

  Joy was now up-right, I hung onto the top of the roof with both hands. If I kicked off my boots, I would slide down the roof and off the tower.

  “Hold on,” Joy flung the arm of her jacket back toward me. Admittedly, I was afraid to let go with even one hand. We did not connect on the first several tries. On the fifth or sixth, I grabbed the lifeline and let her pull me down and under the roof.

  I left my bag secured and hidden before leaving the ground. I had only a couple pens, a Sharpie, and a stack of Post-Its tucked into my jeans. I removed the Sharpie from my pocket and scribbled upon the design on my right foot—then my left foot—and fell in a heap on top of Joy.

  She screamed out a second time. I rolled off her and lay staring at the ceiling. My immediate thought, other than thinking I had just done something profoundly reckless—and stupid—was that the older I got, the worse I got along with heights. “You all right?” I asked, though I guessed the answer.

  “Yeah.” Joy was getting up. “I took off my shoes, but they tumbled out.” Her eyes looked to the ceiling, “And up.”

  I had not seen that happen, but that was likely due to me closing my eyes most of that time. “Barefoot? Wonderful.”

  “I’m wearing socks,” she replied. She was trying to find the trap door that led down the tower. I rolled over off of my back, conscious of the hinges digging into my back.

  “I think I was laying on it,” using the moonlight, I wrote a small triangular pattern on my hand in Spanish, French, and English to make the light gentle enough on the eyes, that it mimicked a small LED keychain light. I wrote the same pattern on Joy’s hand.

  “Got it.” Joy eased back the trap door. Its hinges were rusty and resisted being opened. When both Joy and I placed our combined weight against it, we pried it to a 90-degree angle, all the while making an ear-blistering creak. Joy made to move first.

  I put the light in my hand over the hole. “Hold on, Shoeless Joe—I’ll take the lead. If there’s glass at the bottom of these stairs, you’ll thank me.”

  “Fine, fine,” she relented. “Didn’t want to go first into the creepy castle anyway.” Joy held on to the top of the hatch while I descended.

  The stairs were so steep, that did their best to imitate a ladder. At least the spiral stairs leading downward had less narrow steps. Joy followed down once I told her there was nothing to beware on the floor. We reached a door on the second floor and entered the living area with no sign of trouble. And definitely no sign of Gavin.

  “Grey,” Joy’s speech was hushed and panicky. “It smells very weird in here.” We took turns shining our lights around the room. The room was silent and since Joy was wearing only socks on her feet, the only footsteps were mine. And with each footfall, I managed to startle myself anew.

  “Yes. It does. But I have no idea how castles are supposed to smell.” My sushi felt like it was thinking about a hasty exit again. Joy turned to me, inadvertently shining her light in my eyes before she lowered it to my feet. Light and black dots littered my vision. Before I could fret about losing sight, the flash-blindness passed and I could see Joy’s face in the stray light shining from of our hands.

  “I thought castles were supposed to smell damp. Musty.” Joy breathed in through her nose in short spurts, as if what we smelled was potentially toxic. “This is fetid, but more like skunky beer and rotting meat, if that makes sense.”

  “I’m with you.” I walked to spiral stairs on the far wall. Downstairs, the scent stuck in our noses, but it did not seem as strong. I checked the front door. What I found was six car batteries wired together and attached by jumper cables a metal coil to the front door knob. If either of us—or Gavin—had touched it, we would have been electrocuted. If it was rigged in such a way on the outside, the voltage was definitely enough to kill a person.

  I feared even more for Gavin. Toward the back of the living area was a colonnaded walkway that I could see leading to a greenhouse. The trees around the castle obscured that area and not for the first time since we came down the tower, I wish we had looked for the back door. But oh no, Grey Theroux can’t ever be obvious.

  Taking in the room, the smell, I concluded that somehow, Gavin got complacent or his pattern rubbed off. Though Sharpie wasn’t removed that easily, with the excess of briars around the castle I could see flesh tearing and spells breaking. Gavin might have not even noticed he was compromised. “Joy, try to suss out what that smell is. I’m going to try some magic; see if Gavin made it this far The front door is rigged.

  “Rigged? How so?” Joy was rifling through papers on a roll-top desk, but stopped and looked toward me.

  “To shock someone. Maybe fatally. I’m not sure. Look for the smell.”

  “Jesus.” I thought she nodded, but wasn’t sure. She spoke up once she realized I probably couldn’t see her, “Yeah, that’s what I am doing. It seems to be coming from above us.”

  I exhaled heavily, tired and not or the first time feeling like I was in far over my head. “Okay, we’ll go back up in a minute,” I said, penning new and intricate patterns on pages in a notebook. “You still have those glasses Gavin etched?”

  Joy dug through her jacket pocket, “Here you go,” she handed the pair to me. “Will using these work?” She did not wait for an answer before moving on, “I’m going to keep looking for the source of our smell.”

  “You wore them, and they belonged to Henri. But the magic is Gavin’s.” Joy was already heading back up the set of stairs. A little louder, “That’s what I’m going to latch onto.” I popped out one lens and placed it into the middle of the dodecahedron I drew onto a scrap of paper. The light from my hand was slight, but it was enough. The paper pointed out the front door. I spent the next few minutes gingerly dismantling the wires from the batteries. Once it was dismantled, I opened the front door and grabbed my bag from where I had stashed it.

  I removed the map I had bought in Paris and laid it out as flat as I could make it in spite of its creases. With the pattern laid down upon the map, it began to move ever-so-slightly. That meant he was not only alive, but moving; driving somewhere. I removed phone from my bag, powered it on for hopefully one successful message, and just barely managed to hit send before it shut down once more. Henri was to meet us at the gate on Chemin de Senlisse in 30 minutes. I put the phone back in my satchel. I refolded the map, folding against the creases so, while it might be more cumbersome, it would lay flatter the next time I got it out. Nearly finished, I noticed drops of rain dropping onto the paper, and I looked to the ceiling to check for a leak. When I lowered my gaze back to my map, I saw Joy standing next to me, wiping her eyes.

  “Gavin?” I asked, but knew that would not jibe with what I just witnessed on the map.

  Joy said nothing, but beckoned for my hand. She grabbed it and led me back up the spiral stairs. A lamp was on up there, so I clenched my fingers over the palm of my hand to diminish the light. It looked different in the electric light. Whereas before entry, I imagined the castle to be some sort of den of evil, now it looked moderately comfortable. My suspicions about it being much more modern than it initially appeared were confirmed. In the center of the circular room, there was a hole in the ceiling where a ceiling fan or chandelier would have hung. Instead, the area was black through the hole, but the ring that encircled the hole was brass, with flecks of gold, like someone had scratched the brass and decided to paint over the scratches with gold paint.

  I was so distracted by the hole in the ceiling, I did not notice that the rug underneath the hole was also flecked with gold. The room was eldritch, disconcerting. There seemed to have been a receptacle underneath the hole, as there were no flecks directly below it. I looked to Joy, not understanding; not fathoming what I was about to behold.

  “You have to go up, Grey,” she pointed to trap door in the ceiling right above the threshold to go into the tower, “I…I…..it’s horrific,” she gulped, st
ill wiping at her eyes. The ladder was bolted to the wall underneath it.

  The trap door swung to the left and I climbed through. My hand still was lit and the dullness of the light lent itself to the macabre tableau I was witnessing. The smell was otherworldly and managed to curl my insides more violently than the ascent up the other tower. Now in the attic, the smell was caustic, my eyes welled with tears from vomiting, from the smell, from the acute sadness cascading over me.

  Seven elderly women were suspended from the attic ceiling from meat hooks. In the center, an eighth older woman was suspended by chains around her wrists. Her face was mostly golden, but also puffy, beaten, and rotting. Some of her sisters were wide-eyed, a few of them still wore expressions of shock and horror frozen in time on their faces. I flipped a toggle switch to my right and saw the scene in its gruesome entirety. I could only assume either Clio or Calliope was suspended in the middle. They were all doused in that same gold-colored paint that was on the aperture in the ceiling and on the rug. Beneath each one of them, a metallic trough was covered in the same gold paint and emptied into the hole in the floor.

  This was not paint. This was blood: the gods were filled with this golden fluid the Greeks called ichor.