Lamplighter

by Law, Lincoln

  She wiped it on her trousers, though, and began her way through the Architect’s garden, guided by the hearthflies. As it was raining so heavily, there would be no guards out tonight, but there would be fiends. She was safe, though, so long as the hearthflies stayed by her side. The sky began to rumble with thunder, the dark, heavy clouds announcing their warning: a storm was coming.

  Now to find Nataniel.

  Escape

  But from the very beginning there has been blood on my hands. I have ruined lives and families. It has all been my fault, because of the promises I made and the contracts I keep.

  Like a phoenix from the ashes, though, this city shall be reborn.

  Nataniel sat quietly in his cell, waiting for Hana who sat in a cell a few down deciding her actions. There was still a good fifteen minutes before their cells would be closed, and so he lay patiently, hoping for a positive answer from Hana. He had told her the plan already, and he was sure it would work. But he needed her help. Without her, the plan could turn dangerous.

  As he waited, hoping, praying, he couldn’t help but let his mind wander to Elenor. He sat his legs up on the bed and laid himself down, crossing his hands over his stomach. From this angle he could see the fire in the doorway, burning angrily. Scarlet and orange and gold swirled together in the fire, like liquid rising upward in a stream of bright light. It took only a moment for pain to come over him. It hurt his eyes, as if he had stared too long at a book or into the sun. He shifted himself around so that he was facing the other way.

  He closed his eyes and tried to remember Elenor’s face. He could see it so clearly, her eyes light and her face literally glowing. Around her was a ballroom he had never seen her in. There were tables surrounding the dance floor, and people sitting there, talking. But she was in the middle of the floor, quiet and impassive.

  “Elenor?” he said, taking a hesitant step forward. He looked down and found himself in black trousers, a white shirt and a blue vest. When he looked back up, she was in a baby-blue dress that puffed out at the bottom, a collection of ribbons tied at the back. It was a mass of blue fabric and white lace, and it looked stunning. Yet her face remained unemotional.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, but she said nothing.

  He ran towards her and held out his arms, hoping to grab her hands. He took the last few steps with massive strides, ready to throw himself into her arms.

  He stumbled though as his hands grabbed at smoke, his body passed through her body and he slammed onto the floor with a loud thump.

  He turned around expecting to see her there once more.

  But she was gone.

  Everyone was gone.

  He was alone.

  He awoke with a start, a gentle hand shaking him into wakefulness.

  “Are you all right?” asked Hana. “You looked like you were crying in your sleep.”

  “Fine,” he replied, catching his breath. “I must’ve dozed off.”

  He got up from the bed, standing before Hana. “So?” he asked.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “But I want to help the others get out, too. I can’t imagine Castoro keeping his promise to us. We either escape or we die here.”

  Nataniel’s heart rose at the prospect of escape.

  “Wonderful. We’ll start as soon as all the cells are closed.”

  Hana nodded and made her way back to her cell as the guards began their rounds of locking the cell doors once more.

  *

  Fiends.

  Everywhere.

  The Architect’s courtyard was full of them. The hairy, scaly, leathery masses lumbered about the place like they owned it, and a handful had joined the hundreds already climbing the Architect’s tower towards its peak. They took an interest in her as she walked through the courtyard, but they all kept their distance. The hearthflies were working well.

  “I have the hearthflies with me,” Ophelia told herself as she took each step slowly and carefully. “They can’t harm me so long as there is fire.”

  Ophelia saw the glass opening in the ground mere moments before the hearthflies pointed it out to her. From a distance, where it was covered in rain, it looked like a massive eyeball staring up at the Architect’s tower from the ground, glazed over in awe. Or perhaps it was crying. But it was a skylight; an opening in the ground to allow light to fall through and illuminate whatever room lay below.

  She approached it slowly, for fear of finding a guard watching from within. She fell down onto all fours, on hand wrapped around the ignited gas stick, and crawled across the sopping grass. Before her, the sea of fiends parted, retreated into deeper, darker shadows, safe from the firelight. As if they understood, the hearthflies broke free of their swarm and spread out, pushing the monstrosities further and further away. Two hearthflies remained on either side of Ophelia, for solidarity.

  She shuffled to the edge, peaking through the water-drenched glass into the room below.

  It was empty, and dark, except for a single candle left burning in the centre of the room. Probably to keep the fiends out, she mused.

  “So how do we get in there?” she asked the hearthflies. The creatures quickly swarmed together once more, the fiends following closely behind, too. But they still kept their distance, even when Ophelia was alone, the hearthflies gathered before her, twenty cauldrons of flame throwing its light about them.

  For a moment, the world was quiet. The rain fell, Ophelia was silent, and the hearthflies simply hovered, two metres above the glass. Their pulsing was methodical. Calming, even.

  Then in one synchronised movement, the hearthflies’ wing beats stopped and they dropped, their caudrons striking the window of glass, sending up twenty splashes of cold rainwater. Their flames remained unaffected though. The sounds of cracking echoed through the air, and as the heathflies rose, they revealed a mighty fissure in the glass, slowly growing in legth, white lines snaking their jagged way over glass. The largest of the hearthflies then dropped once more, the cauldron breaking through the glass completely. A loud smashing noise boomed as the glass broke free of the ceiling, and another as it crashed over the tables below, extinguishing the lone candle. The light of the hearthflies fell through the window, illuminating the floor. Ophelia looked down into the hole, expecting to hear guards coming to investigate. But there was silence once more. No yelling, no shouts as orders were given out. Just the sound of the wind and the echoing pitter-patter of rain as it fell onto the shards of broken glass.

  “Wonderful,” she said, taking two of the hearthflies’ cauldrons once more so that she could be lowered into the room. They did so, descending her into the peace of the hidden prison.

  The flames in the cauldrons seemed to flare as they entered the room, light spilling over the walls and across the tables. It was still devoid of movement and people.

  Strange, she thought. You’d expect at least one guard.

  She shrugged the thought away, though, and let herself drop the last few inches to a section of clean floor.

  “Come on,” she said to the hearthflies, as she saw the entry to a hallway nearby. She ran along it, the light of the hearthflies penetrating the darkness only metres ahead. It was only a short hallway, with a single corner for her to turn, which gave her enough worry to approach it slowly. Once she was sure it was clear, she turned it.

  “What’s happening?” yelled someone in the room that opened out a few metres ahead of Ophelia.

  “Calm down, everyone!” cried the gentleman who walked the hallway, dressed in a blue uniform.

  “A city guard?” she murmured. She quickly retreated back around the corner once more, though, for fear of being spotted. Behind her, the fiends had begun to enter the room with the shattered skylight, dropping down one by one, skulking about the place.

  “Well how do I get out of there without being seen?” she mused.

  Voices echoed down the hallway.

  “Let me have a look at him,” said one voice. “I think I might be able to stop the
Curse.”

  Ophelia’s heart dropped. Oh no! Was she too late?

  *

  Faulkner and Elenor stood before the small opening in the rock wall, the dark passage descending into the ground below. Up above, fringes of storm clouds hung over the area near the Tyndibar Well, Castoro’s magic to control the weather gaining potency.

  “We’ll have to hurry,” said Elenor, the nearby lamp the only light with which to see the hole with. “You go first.”

  Faulkner nodded, dropping onto all fours before clambering into the tight, wet space. The ground was rough, and as he shuffled through the crawlspace, hearthfly just slightly ahead of him, he felt his knees being cut by the floor and the fabric of his trousers torn.

  “How are we going there?” asked Elenor, her voice slightly muffled by Faulkner’s own body.

  “Fine,” he replied. “It’s just a bit dark, even with this hearthfly.”

  “Spiritfly,” she corrected.

  “Fine, spiritfly.”

  He set his hand in front of the other and heard a splash. His next hand followed, and there was another splash, the water deeper here.

  “No,” he muttered. He stopped where he was, attempting to force his eyes to adjust by opening them so widely it hurt.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The crawlspace,” he replied, “it’s flooded from all the rain over the other side. There’s no way we’re getting through.”

  “What!”

  “Start crawling back,” he said. “We’re not going today, it seems. We’ll try again in the morning.”

  “No,” Elenor said. “It can’t be blocked. We have to get through. Who knows how long it’ll take before the Curse takes hold. I have to see him before he becomes a monster. He has to know I love him.”

  “That’s all well and good, but we’re not getting through. Unless you intend to grow a pair of gills, then start shuffling back. Look on the bright side. We’ve only been in here a few minutes. We won’t have to go backwards for too long.”

  “No, no, no!” she cried, pushing Faulkner hard enough for him to stumble forward slightly on his arms. His face was suddenly immersed in the dark, frigid waters, a few filigrees of light shining from above, bouncing off the bubbles and a set of sharp-looking grey-coloured stones lining the bottom of the cavern.

  His eyes adjusted.

  They weren’t rocks.

  They were teeth.

  The crawlspace apparently sloped a little further down and then came to a sudden drop, in which was a night fiend, hiding in the shadows of the protective rock ceiling.

  Faulkner screamed, lifting his face from the water. He hit the back of his head hard on the cavern’s ceiling, calling out again as a sharp claw burst from the black, shiny surface of the water. His head began to swim with pain, but adrenaline minimised it.

  He waited for the gash across his face, the blood, the hot terrible pain, but it never came. He opened his eyes and saw the claw, melting before him in the light of the hearthfly, which had flung itself between Faulkner and the claw. Black coloured ichor sprayed against the walls as the claw disintegrated, bubbling against the rock, as if boiled.

  “What was that?” Elenor asked.

  “A fiend,” Faulkner replied, breathless. He tried to breathe, but the stink from the melting flesh was acrid, and the air already stale. He coughed out his words. “Now start going back before any more come.” He puffed out a sigh of relief.

  He heard movements from behind him as she began her way back towards Pollock.

  Perhaps there’s another way we can get there, he thought, as he began his own shuffling.

  *

  Nataniel continued to writhe about on the floor of his cell, confusing and scaring the guards, who were yet to unlock his cell to check on him, for fear that his curse had taken hold. He was, of course, acting, but they didn’t know any better.

  He could hear Hana over his wails. “Let me in and I can check him. At least that way I can be sure whether the Curse is taking hold or not.”

  There were mutterings amongst the guards, none of which Nataniel heard, as he forced out another bout of moaning and swearing. To others, it would look like he was being possessed by a strange, dark demon. To him, he felt like an absolute fool, rolling about the ground, yelling and groaning as he pretended to be consumed by the Tyndibar Curse.

  Not bad acting if I do say so myself,he thought, as he heard the rattling of keys and the pulling back of prison bars. It worked!

  *

  Ophelia quickly took a chance. She ran out into the room, the hearthflies zooming ahead of her. Soundlessly, and without instruction, each hearthfly hit a guard over the head with their stone cauldrons. Each guard let out a yelp, before dropping to the ground, unconscious.

  She came to the open cell, to find Nataniel on the ground and a dark-skinned woman standing over him. They were both perfectly still, staring in Ophelia’s direction, somewhat dumbstruck.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked.

  “Ophelia!” cried Nataniel, who shot up from the ground. He leapt over the woman, into Ophelia’s arms. They gave each other a tight, warm hug, as the hearthflies began to swarm together once more.

  “What are they doing here?” Nataniel asked, shielding his eyes with a raised arm.

  “They showed me where to go,” she replied. “Now come along. We have to escape.”

  Nataniel nodded. “Hana, do you think you can unlock all the other doors and help them escape.”

  The woman nodded, crawling across the floor to the unconscious guard, who still had the keys in his hands. She snatched them from him.

  “I’ll leave some hearthflies with you, so that you can escape the fiends,” Ophelia said.

  “Thank you, Ophelia,” Hana replied. “I will tell a story of you.”

  Though she didn’t understand what the woman meant, she nodded anyway and ran along to the first locked cell. Half of the hearthflies broke free of the swarm and joined her.

  “It burns,” Nataniel said. “The hearthflies’ fire; it hurts.”

  “We need them, so don’t worry. Just cover your eyes.”

  He nodded, taking her hand as she began her way towards the hall she had come from. She guided him down the passageway and into the mess room, which was now crawling with fiends. They all looked up at the hearthflies’ light, slitting their eyes or covering them with scaly, slimy or hairy arms. There were hisses and growls from the fiends at the back of the room, still safe within the shadows, while those at the fore roared and yelped as the light blinded and burned them. The hearthflies, recognising the danger, shot forth, filling the room with their powerful firelight. One by one, the fiends caught alight, bursting into flames from the sheer force of the light. Ophelia had seen fiends melt at the sight of fire, or send out puffs of smoke as they disintegrated, but never had she seen them burst into flames. It was like they had been drenched in lamp oil, and then had a match struck to them. Within moments, the whole room was ablaze, the hearthflies playing among the flames and the sparks that rose. Heat and fire was their home, and in it they were most powerful.

  “Ophelia,” croaked Nataniel.

  She looked down at the boy, her triumphant expression dying quickly.

  “No,” she murmured. The boy’s face looked dry and cracked; rough like stone. His eyes were still milky white, but the blood vessels were thick at the edges, the redness creeping in on the centre of his eyes. He wasn’t blind—that she knew—but she was worried that if she exposed him to the firelight any longer, he would be.

  “We’ll have to go another way,” she said, running down the hall, tugging Nataniel behind her.

  They came back into the room filled with prison cells. The ceiling was already covered in a thin layer of smoke, the stench of burning hair and skin blowing into the room. The doorway opposite—and the only other exit available to them—was currently alight with flame.

  “It’s the protection,” Nataniel said. “It means fiends can’t ge
t in, and we can’t get out.”

  “Damn!” Ophelia yelled. “Can we turn it off?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “I do!” cried a man in one of the nearby cells. “I’ve seen them. On that wall next to it there’s a few knobs. Try a couple. One of them has to be it.”

  She nodded, leaving Nataniel where he was. She frantically grabbed at the dials, twisted each one. Some of them dimmed the lights, others made the other exit burn, but one of them did shut off the flames. She yelled triumphantly as the flames died away, revealing a tall, dark staircase.

  She ran to Nataniel.

  “Come along,” she said. “Hearthflies!” she called down the hallway. Their pulsing wingbeats sounded, and their light illuminated the hall as they turned the corner, rushing to her call.

  She took Nataniel by the hand once more and pulled him along, leaping over the space from which the flames had burned.

  Up the stairs the pair ran at a breakneck pace, refusing to tire, refusing to stop. Ophelia took a quick glance at Nataniel’s arm, which had begun sprouting fur. Coarse, black fur.

  “So what you were doing in the cell,” she said, “with all the moaning. That was real?”

  “No,” he replied. “That was me acting. I think the transformation is a slow process. I only noticed it earlier today when I’d looked through the glass ceiling at the Architect’s tower and seen the flame atop. It hurt a bit, like looking directly into the sun.”

  “Well stay human for just a bit longer,” she said. “Fight it. I know you have a strong heart.”

  The hearthflies flew a few feet ahead of them, ascending the stairs at a similar speed. They were close enough to light the way, but distant enough that Nataniel remained unaffected by the light. He seemed hesitant to travel, though, perhaps out of fear of what he would do should the Curse take full control within the next few minutes. The hair on his arms had grown no coarser or longer, but it did look like it was spreading.