Winterveil

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  Kate searched for Artemis’s spirit among the others, but there was no way to know where it had gone. She could feel his blood winding beneath the stones, burning through the connection between the soul in the wheel and the binding that kept it in place. Tendrils of shadow reached upward, darkening and choking the wheel beneath her and forcing Kate to step back.

  The Winters spirits watched in silence.

  The black was drawing in.

  16

  HEART & STONE

  “And the last wheel shall be broken,” said Dalliah, quietly reciting memorized words out loud. “Winters blood shall stain the stones and the veil will crack. Thunder will call across the wild lands. The dead shall walk free, and the lost shall find their way. The eyes of the living will open. The worlds of soul and bone shall become one.”

  Kate felt numb. She looked down at Artemis’s body. “Please,” she whispered to him, “please don’t go.”

  The destructive energy of the black spread around the spirit wheel, rising up to claim the soul that was sealed inside. Kate’s senses deadened as it emerged. Everything sounded hollow; her sight became blurred. The black smoke swirled around the outer tiles of the wheel, absorbing sound and light, reflecting nothing but emptiness back into the living world. But instead of sinking away when it was done, the cloud lingered. The soul was resisting.

  Dalliah swept her coattails behind her and knelt down over the wheel. “This is no time for your family to be stubborn,” she said. “The last soul must die!” She pulled Kate down and pressed her hand into the center of the wheel, but nothing changed.

  “You killed Artemis for nothing,” said Kate, backing away.

  “His blood is strong, but his soul was weak,” said Dalliah. “He gave his own life willingly.”

  Kate’s grief twisted into rage. “He is dead because of you. You can help me bring him back!”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “And I can’t let you do this,” said Kate.

  “You are here to serve me,” said Dalliah, standing up, unconcerned by Kate’s defiance. “Your family and I have an understanding. Your spirit will free us all. I will get what I want.”

  “These souls are not my family,” said Kate. “Families do not abandon one another when they are needed most. They fight for one another. They protect one another. They do not do this.” She pointed down at Artemis’s body. “They may have once shared my blood, but they are not my family.”

  “Be careful, Kate. The dead are listening.”

  The force of Kate’s anger seeped into the walls. Her spirit reached out and connected suddenly with the soul that was still inside the wheel. An image flickered behind her eyes, and she saw through the spirit’s eyes at the moment of its physical death. He was lying on his back with a brown-robed boneman standing over him, and a blade stabbed down into his chest as a younger Dalliah looked on. Kate felt the man’s spirit sink into the wheel, but part of it was torn away. He resisted the full binding and tore his own soul in two, sending half of himself into the stones and half into the purple-covered book that would be carried through his family for generations. The book pulsed with energy as his body died, but no one present had known what he had done.

  Kate let the memory fade and glanced at Wintercraft, lying in Artemis’s fallen hand. His wrist lay in a pool of blood, and the edges of the book’s pages rested in the patch of perfect red, letting it leach slowly into its fibers. Winters blood was the only thing that could affect that book, and its curse was inescapable. Even Artemis, who had shunned the ways of the Skilled all his life, had been claimed by it in the end.

  Noticing Kate’s interest in Wintercraft, Dalliah picked it up and turned it in her hands. “Books can be powerful things,” she said. “The dead can speak to us through their pages. We can learn from the successes and failures of the past by reading what has gone before us. Mistakes were made, Kate. I do not deny that. When the Walkers created this book, we could not have known the bloody path our future would take. We gave everything for knowledge. We looked into the darkest places, and some of us did not return; but sacrifice is an essential part of everything we do. The soul is infinitely more precious than physical life. We understood that. Silas Dane understands it, and I believe you are beginning to see the truth as well.”

  Dalliah’s hand glistened with frost as she tapped her fingernails against the cover of the book. Kate now knew that it was far more than just a collection of paper and ink. A soul was alive within its pages. If the energy of the veil could restore a broken body when it was injured, the pages of a spirit-bound book could be protected just as easily.

  “Everything here has its part to play,” said Dalliah, holding Wintercraft out to Kate. “If you had not abandoned this, your uncle would not have been called to bring it here. His death is on your hands, not mine.”

  Kate took the book and felt the cool touch of the spirit lurking inside. It had protected the book, even after death. It had resisted Dalliah, torn itself in two, and left part of itself to guard the knowledge it had worked for in life. When Kate touched Wintercraft, she could feel the soul’s presence secretly surrounding her. It had been alone for too long to still hate Dalliah for what she had done. It was a strong and decent soul, very different from the darker shades that lingered within that tower. It had lived long before any of them, and it did not like being in their presence any more than Kate did.

  The pages ruffled in her hands, and Kate felt the trapped soul’s need to reconnect with the half of itself that was still bound within the spirit wheel.

  “The spirit in these stones must be destroyed,” said Dalliah. “If you want your uncle to enter death and find peace, you will help me now. Death cannot gather souls when the veil is unstable. Destroy this spirit. Call down the veil and embrace the legacy your family left behind.”

  Kate could not leave Artemis trapped forever within the veil. His final act had been to bring the book to her. There had to have been a reason. She could not turn away from him when he had given so much to try to save her, but she did not know what to do. The souls in the tower fell silent, except for one. The soul that had been divided between the book and the wheel passed a clear thought, like a whisper in her mind.

  “What is broken can be rebuilt. The old must fall for the new to rise.”

  At those words, all of Kate’s doubts fell away. She made her decision, walked over to the spirit wheel, and placed the book carefully on the central stone. The silver studs on its cover nestled perfectly within secret hollows in the snowflake carving, the blood in the pages linked with the blood in the wheel, and the silver-leafed title blazed out as light burned up through the darkness.

  The tower rumbled against the force of the soul stirring within it. The book fluttered open as the spirit from the wheel pulled back from the darkness like a silvery thread, weaving into the paper and becoming whole again. The ink glistened with new life as the soul’s presence restored the book, replenishing its luster and absorbing Artemis’s blood. The pages ruffled softly together, and the book fell closed, its silver studs glinting with the spark of hidden life.

  Dalliah watched the pages settle. The last spirit wheel was empty. The final barrier holding the veil back had fallen.

  “We are ready,” she said, listening to something deep within the veil that Kate could not hear. “He is coming.”

  “Who?” asked Kate.

  “A man who has a country to save.”

  Dalliah’s eyes hardened, and her smile was tinged with malice. She grabbed Kate by the throat, returned her to the wheel, and kicked Wintercraft to one side. “Silas Dane is here, in the city,” she said. “He has seen enemies close in upon the gates and shades emerging within the streets. He knows I cannot bring down the veil alone, yet he has witnessed pieces of it chipping away as you walk free. Each time a soul was torn from these wheels, he has felt the veil’s heart pull a little more strongly at his soul. Who do you believe he blames for that?”

  Kate could not answer.
Dalliah was holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  “Silas has seen the horrors that hide within the dark,” said Dalliah. “He will not let his country share the nightmares that he has known. He believes he can stop everything, right here, with one simple act. Silas is a formidable soldier, Kate, and he has identified a new enemy. You.”

  Outside in the city, Silas approached the group of smaller towers surrounding the Winters tower and entered the first one he reached. He forced the door inward and climbed the inner staircase with the crossbow slung behind him. The windows offered plenty of vantage points, and he climbed until he was in a position with a clear sight down onto Dalliah and Kate.

  He pulled the window open and slid the crossbow from his shoulder, focusing upon what he had to do. He held the bolt between his teeth, pointed the weapon to the floor, and drew the bowstring back into position. He slid the bolt smoothly into place, then raised the weapon and steadied it, directing it straight through the open window and down through a narrow archway of stained glass set into the side of the Winters tower.

  As one of the High Council’s men he had performed the duty of execution many times. He cleared his mind of every distraction. Nothing mattered except for the task ahead. His hands were as steady as stone, his heart silent, his lungs still. His finger touched the trigger. Waiting.

  At last, Dalliah released Kate and took a step back, leaving the girl exposed. Silas saw his opportunity. His sight was practiced and perfect. His finger squeezed. The crossbow sprang. The bolt soared.

  Silas watched it fly. Its silver point glinted as it flew, and in that second Kate looked up. Her eyes met Silas’s, and the blood connection between them burned strongly in his veins. He felt the raw grief within her: the memory of witnessing Artemis’s death and anger toward the woman who had claimed his life. He saw the bright light of Kate’s soul, wounded but strong.

  The bolt punched powerfully through the arched window, shattered the glass, and plunged into Kate’s chest. She stood her ground for a few slow moments, closing her eyes against the pain, and Silas stumbled back in surprise. He had felt the bolt strike her body as if it were piercing his own. His hand went to his chest and came away wet. His slow heart beat twice, spilling blood from an impossible wound.

  The connection between him and Kate was enough to tear Silas’s skin in sympathy with the girl whose soul was even closer to him than his own, and his consciousness saw the world through Kate’s eyes as her body crumpled down onto the spirit wheel. Dalliah was standing over her, waiting for the last of her life to slip away. She looked up to the window from which Silas had taken his shot, and when she looked back at Kate’s face, Dalliah saw something very different living behind the eyes.

  “Silas,” she said. “You arrived later than I expected. I almost had to kill the girl myself.” She placed her hand upon Kate’s chest, and Silas felt her manipulating the veil as he pulled away.

  He severed his link with Kate and opened his own eyes to find himself hunched upon the tower’s upper floor, struggling to control the bleeding from his chest. It did not make sense. His link to the veil should have stronger than ever in the city, yet now the link that had sustained his body for twelve years was tearing it apart.

  He made his way to the stairs and half walked, half stumbled down them and drew his sword before stepping out into the night air. If his body was refusing to heal itself, there was a good chance that Dalliah’s body would be weakened, too. Whatever fate awaited him, he could not let that opportunity pass.

  He slumped against the lower door as Kate’s pain stabbed deep into his heart. The veil was in turmoil. The barrier between the half-life and the living world was the thinnest it had ever been, but it was still there. He pushed himself out into the open air and staggered across to the Winters tower. Dalliah would not win this battle. As long as the veil held, he still had time to finish it.

  Kate could feel the bolt embedded inside her, but it felt cold and distant. Her thoughts passed between the different levels of the veil as she lay there, bleeding and still.

  Dalliah had moved away, but Kate’s body would not move. Kate focused instead upon the spirit lights in the tower, upon her ancestors and the spirit wheel, illuminated by the energy of her own soul threading down through it like a needle piercing into the black.

  “It is not easy to cheat fate,” said Dalliah. She kicked Kate’s arm, sending pain exploding from the wound in her chest and making her cry out. “It is better not to try.” She looked up through the broken tower and watched the sky with eager eyes, waiting for the first tear to open and the first soul to fall. “Your spirit has pierced the world,” she said. “Albion will soon see the truth it has denied for too long.”

  The darkness of the veil’s depths throbbed within the spirit wheel. Kate could feel it dragging at her consciousness, stripping away pieces of her soul. She had already glimpsed the terrors that waited there. She had seen the horrors that drove the Skilled into madness and tormented Silas every day of his life. She knew what was waiting for her.

  “Artemis!” Kate called out in desperation. She thought she was shouting, but while her throat barely made a sound, her cry carried powerfully across the veil.

  Every living person within Fume’s walls felt Kate’s cry as a wave of sadness. Edgar’s brother shivered in his hiding place out in the street, still waiting for Artemis, who would never return, as Silas pressed a bloodied hand against the tower door.

  Fume echoed with torment. The shades screamed with Kate, filling the air with the anguish of the dead and the dying. Soldiers fought and died by the eastern gate. Wardens fell in defense of the city, and every soul lost became caught in the space between worlds. The current of death was nowhere to be seen. Those who were not fighting stopped what they were doing and looked toward the tower. Even people without Skill could see a change in the atmosphere surrounding it. Drifting souls were pressing against the air of the city, like smoke upon glass.

  Kate’s spirit bled down into the stones, down into the warm earth beneath, spreading through the city until she could feel every soul, every heartbeat, and every shade within the walls. Streets away, laid out, dying in the cold, Edgar stopped fighting against the shades. He let them sink into his body, freeing his soul, as he concentrated only upon Kate, helping her to hold on.

  Kate felt as if she were standing upon a huge, tightly bound drum. Every movement in the city created vibrations that translated into a map within her mind. She could see the Continental army along the eastern wall and frightened residents fleeing the city any way they could find. She could feel stirrings toward the very center of the city, where the veil was shifting unexpectedly above the city square.

  A small group of the Skilled was there, attempting to manipulate the enormous listening circle that Kate had used on the Night of Souls, but they were taking too long. They knew they were standing at the center of the largest listening circle to have been activated in living memory, and Kate could feel their fear, both of the circle itself and of being on the surface, exposed to the open sky. Most of them were kneeling on the ground, translating the symbols on the stones, trying to decipher their meaning, and searching for the way to unlock the circle’s power. They had not been working for very long when the circle thrummed with energy beneath them, and the symbols began to glow.

  “Stop,” said Greta immediately. “Stop now. We are too late.”

  The magistrate glanced across the city square, watching the symbols burst into life. So long as they remained in the center of the circle, they should have been safe, but there was no guarantee that it would behave in the same way as any of the circles she had used in her time. This one was being worked by spirit, not by the living. If she and the rest of the Skilled crossed it, the risk of being captured in its influence was too great.

  “Sit down!” she ordered, as veins of white energy scribbled across the empty square. “Stay away from the edges. Stay as low as you can.”

  The Skilled held
on to one another and with a sound like screeching metal, energy thrust suddenly out of the stones, whipping their hair and toppling the rows of wooden seats around the square like falling dominoes. The Skilled screamed, and the great doors opening into the amphitheater slammed back with a thunderous clap. Shades were pressing in all around them, waiting for the first tear to form within the graveyard city. Greta was the only one who dared stand and watch, and she whispered to herself, “What have we done?”

  17

  REMEMBRANCE

  Kate lay upon the floor of the tower, silent and still. She had lost too much of herself. Her mind had been drawn too deeply into the black, and she could hear nothing except her own thoughts becoming stranger and more foreign to her by the moment. Memories of her past tangled together. Dreams, fears, and nightmares all fought for dominance within her mind, until it was hard to make sense of what was real and what was imaginary.

  Wintercraft was still beside her. The book that had seemed so cold and dangerous to her such a short time ago now felt like the only thing she could be sure of in the world. It felt solid and safe. She rested her fingers against it and felt the gentle touch of an unseen hand upon hers. Artemis was still there. She could smell the familiar scent of ink and paper that always clung to his skin and feel the touch of rough fingertips that had been worn by years of working with old books. She could sense his spirit as strongly as if he were sitting right beside her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Artemis did not answer her, but the longer his hand remained on hers, the clearer his spirit became. He carried Kate’s thoughts into a memory held within the city, taking her consciousness toward a patch of bare land some distance away from the main streets. Old headstones were left broken upon forgotten graves that were choked with ivy, and trails of bramble thorns scratched across the ground. Any paths in that place had long been claimed by the creeping hand of nature, and she found Artemis standing close to two dark figures that were leaning over a grave and digging down into the earth beneath.