by Peter Oxley
Every time one of us attempted to glean more information from him, or to hurry things along, we were shushed into silence. I could tell that Pearce in particular was becoming more and more agitated, the man of action not suited to such a frustrating waiting game.
At first, Gaap had thrashed and moaned at us as best he could through his gag and bindings, but after a while he had subsided into sullen silence. Indeed, he looked as bored as the rest of us.
Joshua put a hand on my arm and pointed out into the distance. “Listen,” he hissed.
I strained my senses, just about making out a faint whispering and shuffling, like a pair of light curtains being stirred by a gentle breeze in another room. Then a flurry of activity below me caught my attention: Gaap was scrabbling back towards the wall of the mausoleum as though he were trying to force himself into the cracks in the mortar.
“Good,” muttered Andras.
I blinked and suddenly the mausoleum was surrounded by countless bodies, all stood motionless as they stared intently at Gaap, who was now in the throes of panic, making pained grunts and shrieks through his gag.
“Are we going to let them kill him?” Byron asked.
“Unfortunately not,” said Andras, rising to his feet. “I have need of him yet. But he has got their attention.” He clapped his hands three times, the noise making me jump with its harshness compared to the muted atmosphere that I had become accustomed to in that place. Cupping his hands to his mouth, Andras bellowed three strangulated words, the form and meaning of which escaped me as soon as they touched my ears.
At first the noise had no effect on the shuffling masses around us. I looked up at Andras and noted that he was supremely unconcerned by this fact, humming to himself as he surveyed the scene around us. He nodded and grinned at something and I turned to see the bodies in front of the mausoleum parting to reveal a dark, hunched figure that hobbled towards us. From our elevated position the creature appeared to be comprised solely of black frayed rags that had the appearance of feathers, such that I almost fancied it was the spirit of a large crow.
Andras stepped off the side of the roof and landed soundlessly in front of the figure.
“Who dares to call us?” asked the crow creature in a croaking whisper like a rusty gate being forced open.
“I bring one who has been tainted by a Wraith, inflicted on her by the Almadite Warlocks,” said Andras, his tone of voice unusual in that it almost seemed to be showing respect.
“By your own people,” noted the figure. When Andras refused to answer, it beckoned. “Show me.”
Andras turned and signalled that we should bring Kate down to him. I glanced at Pearce, sharing his disquiet at exposing her to risk in her vulnerable state; but if Andras was correct about the looming—and decidedly lethal—deadline we faced, then we had little choice. I jumped down to the ground, warily glancing at the soundless creatures gathered around us. I held my hands out to collect Kate as she was lowered down to me, nodding to Pearce to confirm that he could release her. I held her close, surprised by how light and limp she was, as though the Wraith was eating her very essence from within. I looked down at a face which seemed to have been carved from porcelain. Only the faintest flicker of breath puckering her nostrils gave any sign that there was still life within her body. As I looked at her I realised that this was the closest I had been to her since the rescue, for Pearce had jealously guarded her up to that point.
I turned and stepped towards Andras and the dark figure, cradling Kate gently in my arms as I kept a wary eye on the motionless forms all around me. Pearce and the others hastened to accompany me and I was grateful for their presence, although the sheer numbers of the creatures present meant that we stood little chance if they did choose to attack us.
As we neared the dark figure I realised that it was in fact a hunched and bent old woman, smothered in long black feather-like coat. Her face was partly hidden by its cowl but what I could see reminded me of the withered old crone from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, with a long, hook-like nose poking out from between two dark eyes.
She shuffled forwards and Andras nodded at me, his eyes urging me to stand firm. She peered at Kate, poking her cheek and using stick-like fingers to prise open her left eye. After a few moments of this examination the crone grunted. “I can release the Wraith from this body, but there will be a price.”
“Do it,” said Pearce.
“Wait,” I said, mindful of the one-sided deals that otherworldly creatures tended to strike with unsuspecting mortals. “What is the price?”
“She will have been changed by the Wraith,” croaked the old woman. “I cannot guarantee that she will be the same person you once knew. Separating a Wraith from its host is no simple task, and there is no telling what the creature will do when it is free. That is the risk you choose to take, and a burden that you will have to carry.”
“That is a challenge we will face when and if we need to,” said Byron. “But you mentioned a price for what you will do. What do you want?”
The crone nodded, a thin and hungry smile on her lips. “What we want is something you will never give us: release from this place and passage back to your realms. No, I will not waste time in demanding the impossible. All we ask is one thing. Our price is that you give us a vessel through which we can experience your realm.”
“A vessel?” asked Joshua. “You have in mind some form of device or charm?”
“No,” said Andras. “That is not what you are thinking at all, is it? You want a life. You seek a permanent possession of one of us.”
The crone shrugged. “A life for a life: is that not a fair trade? I do this incredibly difficult and perilous task for you, and in return one of you will allow us to experience that which we cannot. You would still be resident in your own body, but you would share it with us.” She swept her hand around at the silent multitude. “You could indeed think of it as akin to a possession. You would give us a new lease of life, literally.”
“I will do it,” said Pearce.
“Wait,” said Byron. “You do not know what you are agreeing to.”
“A chance to get Kate back, but in return I sacrifice my own life? That is a bargain I would strike in a heartbeat.”
“It is not as simple as that,” Byron persisted. “It could be a living Hell for you. We have no idea of their intentions when they get access to your realm through you.”
Pearce turned to the crone. “You described it as a possession, correct?”
She nodded with a slowness that did not disguise her eagerness. “That would be the general form of it, yes.”
“Would the process impede my faculties?”
“We will ensure that you are perfectly sane; it would be of no use to us if you wind up helpless or held in an asylum as a result.”
“So you would be simple passengers and observers?”
“Not quite. We need to… influence events. Not all of the time, but we will not be an entirely passive participant.”
I turned my head to mutter to Pearce as privately as was possible. “I do not like this,” I said.
“I do not see that we have any alternative if we are to save Kate. In any case, possessions are not necessarily fatal in our world, are they?” He raised an eyebrow at me and our eyes met. In a flash I understood his thinking: there were priests who were known for expelling unwanted demonic possessions, and no doubt Joshua, Byron, Maxwell and Andras would also have methods of containing such a curse. But even so…
“You should not be the one to make this sacrifice,” I said, uncertain of the words as they tumbled out of my mouth. “She is my friend as well, and I was there when she was taken. It is partly my fault that the Warlocks took her.”
Pearce put a hand on my shoulder. “I admit that I felt that way too, that I was trying to blame you for what had happened. Truth be told, I do still feel some anger towards you.”
“I can tell,” I could not resist noting with a wry smile.
He nodd
ed, the ghost of a smile playing across his own lips. “I apologise, but you need to understand that I care a great deal about her.”
“As do we all.”
He shook his head. “Not like me. Which is why I should be the one to do this.”
My head spun at this acknowledgment. “Are you two…?”
He shook his head again. “She does not know how I feel, and will never know.”
I straightened my stance to stare at him over Kate’s inert form. “Well, I also have strong feelings that she does not know about. What makes you think that you should be the one to make the noble sacrifice?”
“You are more important to the wider struggle than I am, what with your sword and your powers,” he said.
“He’s right,” chipped in Andras, pointedly tapping his foot on the ground.
“In any case,” continued Pearce. “I have lost enough in my life already. You still have your brother to worry about you. I have nothing. And above all else, I am a soldier: noble sacrifice is in our nature.”
“The risk though…” I muttered, shaking my head.
“It is not your decision to make,” Pearce said. He turned to the crone. “The deal is done; I accept your terms. Now do what you need to do to help her.”
“But what if the Wraith has already taken Kate from us?” I asked him by way of one final, desperate gamble. “What if they are not able to save her?”
He turned his steely eyes on me. “Then I would not wish to live.”
The crone led us onwards, the hordes parting in a shuffling silence to form a path for us. After a while I worked up the courage to look straight at them, trying to discern individual features and understand whether they were the souls of dead people that I might recognise. I wondered whether they were departed souls from my own past or figures whose physical appearance may provide some clues as to the era—or even the world—in which they had lived and died.
The harder I tried, though, the more indistinct they became, such that it was not unlike trying to divine the blurred features in a photographic image; indeed, it was almost as though there were nothing to see, save for a general impression.
“Do not waste your energies,” said Andras, catching up with me and dragging Gaap in his wake. “The amulet will let you see what you can safely see without turning you into a gibbering wreck. For all of your many faults, you are more use to us sane.”
I glanced at him, tearing my attention from the shapes around us. “You knew that this would happen, that she would force a bargain on us,” I accused.
He conceded the point with a half-nod. “I knew that there would be a price; there always is. But I had no way of knowing what form that price would take.”
I frowned at him and he held his hands out in mock surrender. “I have never before ventured to this place; very few of my people have. The ways of the dead are unknowable.”
“But it would be not beyond your wit to guess that they would demand some form of access to our world?”
Andras shrugged and I realised—not for the first time—that there was precious little hope of getting an answer or apology from him. Biting back my frustration, I tried a different tack.
“Why did you not tell us that we had to come here?” I asked.
“I did not know myself until Mama told me.”
“But when she did, you still decided to keep that information from us.”
He sighed. “We needed to move fast; I could not afford to have an endless debate about the rights and wrongs of everything. We were in the Citadel and under attack from the Warlocks, remember? You wanted to get Kate back, in one piece.” He gestured down at the figure I still carried in my arms.
“Even so,” I persisted. “The afterlife…”
“Let’s just say that I had told all of you that we needed to come here. There would have been endless discussions, not least because young Joshua would have been overexcited at finally getting his chance to try to resurrect his deceased little sister, and you all would have very sensibly wanted to stop him.”
I looked round at Joshua, who was still carrying himself with the air of an excited child, staring around with wide eyes. “Surely he would not consider…” I started, my head starting to reel with the possibilities.
Andras laughed. “Poor little Gus. You really do not think things through properly, do you? Of course he is going to want to try to find Lexie. If I had given him the knowledge beforehand, and you all did your endless moralising and pontificating, then there is every chance that he would have taken matters into his own hands and run over here unaccompanied, leaving us trapped in Almadel and at the mercy of the Warlocks and the Four Kings.”
“He would never leave us,” I protested. “We are his friends.”
“Never underestimate the human capacity to undertake acts of gross stupidity when emotions are involved. Especially emotions as strong as guilt, grief and hope. I am a veritable connoisseur of such things. But to return to your original question, there is a very important reason why I keep you all in the dark: if you don’t know things, then you cannot betray them. I am a closed book to these creatures, while you are not.”
I frowned at him. “You mean there is more that you are not telling us?”
“Always,” he replied in a patronising tone. “Ah, it looks like we have arrived.”
I looked in front of us to see another mausoleum filling my view. In design it was not unlike the one we had just left, although it was considerably larger. The crone rapped on the doors and the sound of her knocking echoed around us before the doors opened without a sound.
Inside was a deep blackness that my imagination populated with all manner of hideous creatures. The crone turned and pointed to Pearce. “You will bring her. The rest of you can wait outside.”
Pearce took Kate from me and made to follow the crone into the black interior of the mausoleum. “Wait,” I said. “Someone should go with them.”
“No,” said the crone as she walked away from us, her voice already echoing round the inside of the building. “It is forbidden.”
Andras shrugged while Pearce glanced back at us as he followed the old woman into the building.
“I suppose Captain Pearce can look after himself,” Byron said, an uncertain tone to his voice.
We nodded, trying to convince ourselves as the figures disappeared into the blackness. The mausoleum doors remained open, but our ever-present honour guard of the dead were a looming reminder of the crone’s orders for us not to consider venturing into that place.
“They will be a while,” said Andras, pulling out his pocket watch. “In the meantime, how about we make ourselves useful?”
He started to walk away from the mausoleum. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“There’s one other thing we need to do,” he said. “Joshua, I need you to come with us.”
“To do what?” he asked.
“We need to find something if we are going to be able to get home. Specifically, the rune that will give you the power to transport us away from here.”
“I was powerful enough to get us here,” said Joshua. “I can surely get us back. I feel so energised…”
Andras shook his head and rounded on him. “Please do not get delusions of grandeur. Byron, did you teach this child nothing?”
Joshua looked stung while Byron frowned at him. “I taught him plenty, including not to listen to scheming demons. It would appear that some of my lessons went unheeded.”
Andras spat on the ground. “Spare me the cheap shots.” He turned to Joshua. “Where do you think your powers come from? When you cast a spell or open a portal, does that power come from within you?”
“Well, no…”
“Of course not; the human body can only store so much. You can do what you do because you have some spark of power that is different to other humans, but also because you have a particular sensitivity to the energies needed to fuel your spells.”
“Of course I knew that,” muttered Joshua
, his arms folded across his chest.
“So when you achieved the impossible by bringing us here, where do you think that energy came from?”
Joshua looked from Andras to Gaap and back again. “The Almadite Citadel,” he said slowly. “The runes held there. The source of the Warlocks’ powers.”
Andras nodded. “Specific objects—runes—exist that provide the power for Warlocks to successfully conduct their spells. At the beginning of time they were all held by one entity, giving him power over all creation. When he was defeated, the runes were scattered across other realms so that no one race or creature could ever again have such all-encompassing and potentially ruinous powers.”
“I remember the stories,” said Byron. “My people had one of those runes.”
Andras glanced at Gaap. “As do the Almadites and the humans. The remainder—”
“It was the purpose of your invasion of my home realm, I believe,” Byron continued, glaring at Andras, “to get the rune for yourself. That was your overriding aim, as I recall?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Please, do give us your excuses for the genocide of my people.”
“Some of you survived,” noted Andras. “Many others we enslaved. Technically that’s not genocide.”
I held up a hand between them. “Is this really the time to discuss semantics?” I asked.
“It is not,” said Byron. “But his motivations are very relevant.”
Andras shrugged. “Joshua punched a portal through to here thanks in part to the powers from the runes held at the Citadel.”
“I feel it still,” Joshua noted. “Presumably the runic power lingers for a time?”
“Yes, I suppose,” blinked Andras. “But the point is that the doorway to the afterlife has never been intended as a two-way one. Entering is easy: anyone can do it just by dying, after all. Leaving, on the other hand, requires a much larger and more powerful source of energy.”
“Which must be somewhere around here,” I said. “You, of all creatures, would not have brought us here without a way out.”
“Give that dog a bone,” said Andras, clicking a finger at me. “As I was saying, there were a number of runes—”