“Why do you trouble the living?” Tris added another surge of power, assuring that Rosta and the others could see the assemblage as he saw them.
“This is our home,” an old man whose neck bore the mark of a noose spoke. The noose had been badly made, and it was clear that he had died by strangulation and not from the snap of his neck.
“Then stay in peace, and leave the living alone.”
The strangled man’s ghost made a deep bow. “You mistake me, m’lord. We seek to warn them.”
“About what?”
The ghosts pressed closer around him. Tris felt their agitation. No, it was more than that. Fear. Few things retained the power to make the dead fearful. Most feared the coming of one of the Dark Aspects of the Sacred Lady. That was the most common reason Tris had found for spirits refusing to go to their rest. Others wanted to remain near loved ones, or just lingered out of a fascination with the everyday drama of life. A few were confused about whether or not they were truly dead. And more than a few were bound by the trauma of their deaths to a place or time. Those were the ghosts who appeared on the anniversary of their death or seemed doomed to reenact their final moments for eternity. And while Tris’s powers as a summoner were strong, he had learned the hard way that it took an enormous expenditure of power to banish a ghost who did not want to go, and it was not within his power to release a ghost from its self-imposed reenactment until it had made its peace.
No matter the reason that these ghosts remained at Vistimar, tonight they shared something in common. They were terrified.
“What do the dead fear?”
The strangled man’s bulging eyes fixed Tris with a steady gaze. “We fear the North Winds, m’lord. On them comes the Hollowing.”
“Hollowing?”
The strangled man nodded, bobbing his blood-bruised face. “Darkness rides the North Winds, Hollowing soul from spirit like marrow from bone. We have heard the cries of the spirits who were extinguished, like the flame blown from a wick. We fear the judgment of the Lady, m’lord, but we fear the Hollowing more.”
“If I add my protection to Vistimar’s wardings, will you agree to leave the living in peace?”
The strangled man looked to the other spirits. Their faces held a terror Tris had rarely seen among the dead. “Your power is great, but it may not hold against the North Winds. Can you save us from the Hollowing?”
“Who brings the Hollowing? By whose power does it come?”
The strangled man considered the question. “We don’t know. But we’ve felt it like a stain at the edge of the Plains of Spirit. Can’t you sense it, Summoner?”
Tris stretched out his power beyond the gathering of spirits. Space and time on the Plains of Spirit did not correspond exactly to the mortal world. In the Nether, it was difficult for Tris to judge distance or place. But in the distance, Tris saw a darkness he had glimpsed before. More solid than a shadow, “stain” was the right word for it, and it sent a cold shiver through Tris. His power moved cautiously forward, but the darkness receded, rolling back like the tide and disappearing into the Nether. It left behind a residue, an unknown signature of magic, powerful and evil.
“I sense it,” Tris replied. He began to weave a warding of his own, both in the Plains of Spirit and around Vistimar itself. If Rosta thought to interfere, she said nothing. Tris felt for the wardings the Sisters had placed around the madhouse and added his own signature of power, his own protections. In his mage sight, the new wardings shone like a coruscating barrier, gossamer thin, yet powerful.
The spirits felt Tris’s magic and began to calm. What remained was their usual level of agitation, but not the fever pitch of frenzy.
“Thank you, m’lord,” said the strangled man. “Our duty is complete. We have delivered our warning.”
“I’m grateful for your warning,” Tris replied, gathering his power to fully return to the realm of the living. “Will you be sentinels for me? For the living?”
The strangled man looked to the others and nodded. “Yes, m’lord. We will watch.”
The spirits drifted away and Tris released his power, returning completely to himself. Rosta was watching him carefully, and in her eyes, Tris saw a mixture of admiration and caution. The two soldiers who had accompanied them looked pale but stood their ground. Soterius and Mikhail, who had seen Tris work powerful magic many times before, looked disquieted but not surprised. “Well?” Tris asked. “I made sure you could hear what the spirits had to say.”
“It’s certainly disturbing,” Mikhail replied thoughtfully. “But consistent with some of the comments I’ve heard among the vyrkin and vayash moru. There’s an edginess, a feeling that a storm is coming.”
Rosta nodded. “It’s been discussed among the Sisters, unofficially. Sister Landis will not speak of it. But the magic feels… wrong. And there is a feeling like when the wind changes before a squall that something unseen is coming.”
Tris met Rosta’s eyes. “Take me to Alyzza.”
Rosta led Tris down a long, shadowed corridor. Mikhail and Soterius followed a few paces back, and behind them, the soldiers. Tris wasn’t sure whether Soterius had insisted that they follow out of any real belief that they could be of help, or whether after the confrontation with the spirits, no one really wanted to remain behind.
Tris could sense that the level of agitation had dropped among the residents, but there was an odd discordance in the magic that he sensed around him, as if each of the residents was playing a different instrument at once, and all of them off-key.
“We have over seventy-five mages here, all hopelessly mad,” Rosta said as they walked. “And if they are at Vistimar, they have some type of magic that makes them a threat without control of their powers.”
“How many of your residents have come within the last year?” Tris asked. He had to increase his shielding to keep the magical noise from distracting him.
Rosta paused to think. “Interesting you should ask. Fifteen of our residents were committed to our care over the last year or so. That’s more in a short span than we had seen in a while—since Jared the Usurper carried out his attacks against mages. Without a war, we often get only a handful of damaged mages each year, and most of them have just gradually declined from eccentric to unstable.”
“Is there anything different about the new residents?” Tris pressed.
Rosta nodded. “They’re more agitated than usual, and more self-destructive. We’ve had more suicides than usual.” She looked abashed. “I know Your Majesty must be judging us harshly. Our resources are few, but we do try to do our best for the poor souls given to our care. No Sister is forced to come here to serve. We come of our own will, and we would protect our charges with our lives.”
Tris nodded. “I didn’t come to judge you. I can tell that what you say is true, and I commend you for your work. Is there anything else about the newcomers? Anything at all?”
Rosta frowned as she thought. “They were all once mages of power. I know Alyzza has passed herself off as a hedge witch for close to fifty years, but in her prime, during the Mage Wars, she was a fearsome sorceress.”
“What broke her mind?”
Rosta drew a deep breath. “Have you ever heard musicians tune their instruments to a bell or chime?” When Tris nodded, she continued. “Those of us who work among the afflicted have a theory, although please don’t speak of it to Landis. She doesn’t like what she can’t prove.”
“You have my word.”
Rosta dropped her voice. “You know how bells of different sizes produce different sounds? Well, we think—but we can’t prove—that magic is like those bells. For some, the power is like a gong, while for others it might be like a delicate chime. I’ve heard it whispered that Alyzza’s magic was ‘attuned’ to the power of the Obsidian King, and that the backlash from his destruction damaged her.” She paused as if she were debating whether to say more. Finally, she gathered her courage. “We think that those who have gone mad in this recent group all h
eard the same pitch, for want of a better word. We think that’s why they’re still so addled. Their magic is resonating with something that literally frightened them out of their wits.”
They stopped in front of a door. All of the rooms down the corridor had heavy wooden doors braced with iron. This door was solid iron. “We’ve had to put Alyzza in this room because it’s the most secure in the whole fortress. The windows are warded so that nothing can enter or leave except light. Her furnishings are minimal, to keep her from hurting herself.” Rosta motioned for Tris to come to one side of the door. She raised her hand and spoke a word of power. The stone wall became transparent. Inside, Tris could see a figure swaying and dancing, arms upraised.
“She’s quiet at the moment,” Rosta said. “But she dances or paces all day long. She barely sleeps. It’s mania. I wanted you to prepare yourself.”
Tris nodded. “I’m ready.”
Rosta gestured for the others to stand back from the door. “I’d suggest that you raise your wardings. When you’re ready, I’ll drop the magic that binds the door long enough for you to enter. I have to raise the magic again when you’re inside. I’ll keep watch on you while you’re with her. When you’re ready to leave, come to the door, but make sure Alyzza keeps her distance.” She paused. “M’lord, I realize that you think of Alyzza as a friend. But I beg of you, be wary. She’s not as you last saw her.”
Tris raised his wardings and waited. The magic that bound the door shifted, and the door opened for him of its own accord.
“Come in, come in. It’s time, you know.” Alyzza’s gravelly voice was a sing-song chant. She had a threadbare shawl wrapped around her body and head, and her feet danced to music only she could hear. She did not turn.
From the back, Alyzza looked gaunt and frail. She had been stooped before, but now the hunch was more apparent. Where she had been well fed, now her skin hung like crepe on her bones. “It’s time, it’s time,” she sang, almost to herself. Swaying to the rhythm, Alyzza turned to face Tris. Her face looked as wizened as an old corpse, and her eyes were bright with madness. But in those eyes, Tris saw a glimmer of recognition, and something else. Fear.
“Ah, yes, you’ve come.”
Tris slowly took a few steps into the room. “Do you recognize me, Alyzza? It’s me, Tris Drayke.”
It had been only two years since Tris had fled for his life from Jared’s coup. Tris, Soterius, Carroway, and another friend, Harrtuck, had tried to elude Jared’s guards by hiring on as tent riggers with Maynard Linton’s caravan on their way to safety outside Margolan’s borders. Alyzza, then a hedge witch traveling with the caravan, had been the first to recognize Tris’s newly woken magic, powers Tris did not understand and could not control. Alyzza and Carina had been his first teachers as he struggled to keep his power from destroying him. And it had been Alyzza who one night had put a blade against his throat, determined that he should prove himself to her rather than let a new dark summoner rise again.
Alyzza hummed a tune and swayed toward him, looking like an animated corpse. “The king, the king, all hail the king,” she sang. “Let warriors tall and maidens all attend, all hail the king.” The words were to a popular song, long a tavern favorite, but the melody had been replaced by a discordant sing-song that sent a chill down Tris’s spine.
Tris met Alyzza’s eyes. Fire and fear burned in equal measure, and with them, a canny intelligence. “What do you see, Alyzza? What frightens you?”
“Fie!” Alyzza’s outburst startled Tris. “I will not speak ill of the damned, lest we meet, and soon.” Words to a play this time, a drama that local bards often performed at festivals. A play popular among taverngoers for its lurid enactment of corpses drawn from their graves by a dark mage.
“Where would the damned meet, if not by moonlight?” Tris ventured, remembering a line from the play. Alyzza’s eyes lit up with recognition, and a gap-toothed smile spread across her face.
“Walk not by moonlight, m’lord, or risk your soul. There be corpses in the copses, and dimonns by the wayside. On such a night, keep salt and iron at hand.” Alyzza’s voice had become conspiratorial, though her words were still those of the play. Tris glanced around Alyzza’s sparse room. All along the walls lay a fine white powder of salt. Runes were scratched into the stone walls, darkened with what Tris guessed was blood, from the ruined fingernails and scabbed fingers of Alyzza’s hands. A circle had been drawn on the stone floor in what appeared to be charcoal, and a braid of rags had been added to it as a charmed mat. At the quarters and cross-quarters lay bits of slag iron. Salt and iron—two of the most basic charms to ward off evil.
Tris racked his brain for memories of the tavern play. It had been a long time since he’d seen it. Carroway could probably recite the entire play from memory, but he was far away, healing his damaged hand in Dark Haven. Tris gambled on his memory and remembered another line. “The Wild Host comes on the north wind. But ’tis souls, not stags, that come to the hunting horn. Hide yourself away.”
Alyzza’s face shone with recognition. Tris felt as if they were sharing an elaborate code. “Where will you hide, when Nameless sounds Her horn? Where will your soul take its refuge? Would there were a summoner to hide my soul away.”
Tris drew a sharp breath. He had forgotten that line. The stories of Nameless, the eighth Aspect of the Sacred Lady, told of the Goddess in her guise as the Formless One riding the cold autumn winds through the countryside, harvesting souls. Tris had heard it said that many villagers would not be abroad by night in the weeks around the Feast of the Departed for fear of hearing Nameless’s horn and being called to her hunting party of the damned.
“I’m that summoner, Alyzza,” Tris said, meeting Alyzza’s eyes. “I have the power to protect you. Tell me what you see.”
“I see, I see, a far, far sea. The sea we all must cross. Gray and cold, dark and deep. Across that sea there comes a ship, a ship. A ship that comes for me.”
Cam’s note said that Alvior sailed away in a strange ship across the Northern Sea. Cam thinks Alvior’s coming back across the sea with his dark mage. Alyzza may be mad, but she’s mad as a dancing spider.
“You hear a bell I can’t hear, Alyzza,” Tris said evenly. “Let me listen with you. I won’t hurt you. Let me listen through you.”
Alyzza exhaled in a hiss. “I would not take that road, m’lad, though all the gold be mine. Not king, nor queen, nor beggar fool return from that dark lane.” A song again, about a desperate man’s date with Death.
“The bells, Alyzza. Let me hear the bells.”
Reluctantly, Alyzza stretched out a gnarled hand. Despite her madness, she stopped just shy of Tris’s wardings without touching them, giving him to know that she saw the magical protection and knew it for what it was.
Without dropping his wardings, Tris projected his magic across the shield to touch Alyzza’s outstretched palm. Tris drew them both onto the Plains of Spirit, anchoring Alyzza with his power. Tris could sense the power that Alyzza’s magic still commanded, although that power had become as gnarled as her bony hands. Tris extended his spirit, and as Alyzza dropped her own battered and ragged shielding, Tris let his power brush against her mind.
Immediately, he heard it. The sound was low and distant, like a rumble of thunder or the crash of a rock slide. But this sound was as much unlike those sounds as it was similar. Deep and vibrating, the sound waxed and waned. At its loudest, it crowded out thought, but at its softest, it hovered menacingly at the threshold of hearing, threatening to return. Carroway had once told Tris that there were certain chords that could produce madness if sounded incessantly. Tris had heard of torturers who used particular sounds to increase the pain of their victims. Until now, Tris had believed that the sounds of battle were the most damnable, along with the dying screams of men. But something in that distant rumble resonated with primal terror deep in Tris’s mind. It supplanted reason and training, and all vestiges of modern civilization, a warning to the animal core at its most basic
. Channeled through Alyzza, Tris heard the reverberating sound, felt it amplified through her terror and her tangled power. It was all he could do not to tear free and scream.
Alyzza suddenly launched herself at him. His shields held, but Alyzza reached as if to grip and hold his head close to hers, hanging on though the magic of his wardings burned.
“It comes,” she shrieked, as if she were trying to shout over the low, damnable sound. “A key. A bridge. A voyager. It comes for these.”
“Who? What key? Which bridge?”
But as abruptly as Alyzza had thrown herself toward him, she drew back. For an instant, her eyes were unclouded. “Protect the bridge, Tris. Protect the bridge.”
Like a curtain, the madness descended once more. Alyzza’s hands fell to her ragged skirt and she curtsied as she began to dance. “Oh, will you walk a space with me, a pace with me, or two or three. Oh, will you walk a pace with me for now, the sun is setting.” It was a child’s rhyme this time, and Alyzza’s voice was reedy and high, like a deranged young girl. “Oh hush, my love and don’t you fear, or shed a tear, or two or three. Oh hush, my love, and don’t you fear, for I the fire am setting.” Alyzza’s voice grew by turns louder and softer, and she turned away from Tris as if she had forgotten he was there. He watched her for a moment, and then walked to the door, making sure that he did not turn his back on Alyzza. Until Rosta opened the door, Tris did not realize he had been holding his breath.
“You see, she is quite mad,” Rosta said as she closed the door behind Tris, setting the wardings back in place.
“I felt it, Rosta. The resonance. You were right. There’s something out there, something she’s attuned to—and probably the others, too. Goddess help me, if I had that in my head all the time, I’d be as mad as she is.”
The guards took up their places outside the door as Rosta gestured for Tris, Soterius, and Mikhail to follow her into a small parlor. Its furnishings were threadbare and hard used, but at the moment, Tris welcomed the chance to sit down. His encounter had left him shaken, and he wondered if it showed. As if Rosta guessed his thoughts, she went to a cabinet and withdrew a bottle of Cartelasian brandy, pouring Tris a generous portion and offering some to the others as well. Soterius accepted the drink. Even Mikhail looked uneasy.
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