The Curse of the Silver Pharaoh

by Pip Ballantine

  “Whatta?” Emma asked, her own complexion looking slightly green.

  “Mana. Life force. The energy we as living, corporeal things generate every day we are above ground. Without mana, we cannot break through to the planes. Mana is needed to feed the breach and maintain its integrity.”

  “Feed?” Henry asked. “You make it sound as if the æther is alive.”

  “It is alive, Henry, but it is not a kind of lifeform or intelligence as conventional science classifies.” This would be where Verity would usually rebut, but the Sound was taking on a new quality, one she had never heard before. Something was happening, she just didn’t know what. “Mana is a positive, powerful energy, and the more of it that is generated and consumed, the better the connection. This is the ‘super’ part of the supernatural.”

  “So how will we know if we’re generating enough mana for the æther to feed on it?” Henry muttered.

  Verity felt an insatiable urge to move—to run as fast as she could to get away from both the smell of death and strange, alien cacophony in her head. Her curiosity kept her rooted, though, as the temperature plummeted. The nausea began to pass, but in its place formed a hard, biting cold she felt on and underneath her skin.

  “That,” Julia said, her breath forming in wisps of fog just beyond her lips, “is how we will know.”

  The machine still thrummed and clattered in the centre of their circle, but suspended several feet above them, a strange green-tinged form began to take shape. Verity blinked a couple of times, just to be sure she wasn’t succumbing to vapours or some such, but there was no mistaking it. Mist and light was coalescing above Julia’s communicator. The thing was undulating and translucent, but not yet recognisable as a humanoid, male or female.

  Verity was quite at sea. She had been raised by scientists and engineers, and everything she had ever done had been with things she could see, grasp, hold, and evaluate. So her mind raced through the possibilities. Could Julia be playing an elaborate joke with this combobulation on the table before her? She had only known her roommate for a short time, and thought she was prone to the occasional elaborate fancy, Julia was not a liar.

  Yet she was a McTighe, and even Julia seemed to walk a fine line between inspiration and insanity.

  Could it be a projection? Verity craned her neck, peering into the corners of the library which were all cloaked in darkness. No magic lantern would be able to remain concealed and produce such a phantasmagoria. Verity shot a look at Henry, trying to judge if he spotted something off about what they were seeing. His mouth hung open, his whole body leaning towards the spectre taking form above them. She turned back to Julia who looked as shocked as the rest of them. Obviously whatever her uncle Hamish told her about the device had not prepared her for such amazing results.

  “Mrs Pyke?” Julia spoke, pitching her voice in a strange tone Verity immediately identified as the signature of spiritualists. While séances and talking boards were all the rage of the upper classes in parlours decorated with red and black draperies and finely polished rosewood, the lower classes had their own version of spiritualism. These supernatural ventures were less about piercing the veil and more about a good old fashioned ballyhoo. Travelers telling the future in abandoned cellars, or a blind man claiming to see into the Great Beyond. These parasites used the very same tone when speaking to their marks.

  But this was Julia, and what she saw floating above them was not some elaborate illusion. She said they were going to the intersection of science and magic and here it was.

  “Mrs Pyke?” Julia repeated, the sing-song tone of her voice now becoming a little more demanding.

  The phantasm struggled to find some sort of true form, undulating and shifting as it did so.

  “How’s she going to talk without a face?” Emma asked, chewing on her lip.

  Julia’s eyes remained fixed on the spirit, but she did reply. “The spirit world does not comply to physical restraints... jus’ give her a moment...”

  The mist rolled and blossomed, and its figure gradually materialised. However, the form did not seem to resemble Mrs Pyke, or anyone remotely feminine for that matter.

  Verity’s spine tingled and her stomach flip flopped. Any thought of this being some incredible prank from Julia immediately was dismissed. A projection of Mrs Pyke would have been expected, but there was no possible way she would know to create this.

  “Who the bloody hell is that?” Julia, who had somehow up until this point remained very proper, blurted out.

  The mist became the glowing visage of an Egyptian man, a king since he was wearing a pharaonic crown. She could make out a fierce and proud face, lined with old age but still strong. He was hunched over in his linen kilt, and his brilliant, white-emerald eyes were staring directly at her. As he held her gaze, the low hum of the ætheroscillator was now changing pitch in the bell of the protruding horn. No, the pitch wasn’t changing. It was, much like the spirit, taking form. The deep drone was resolving itself into words, low and breathy though they might be.

  “The Silver Pharaoh,” Verity whispered. “You’re here.”

  “We should stop this,” Julia said, her voice rising.

  “Leave it,” Henry replied softly.

  Verity was just dimly aware of any living presence around her. Her entire attention was devoted to this new, ancient phantasm.

  The Silver Pharaoh held out his hand to her, flat palm out, and a voice spoke to her in her mind. Only to her. He spoke words, words her parents would have been in raptures to hear. A distant memory of listening to her father talking with diggers, the best in Cairo she recalled her mother telling her, and their tongue had been similar to what echoed in her mind. His voice was from a civilisation long dead, and its sounds were beautiful but unknown to her, though his tone was kind. His hand beckoned, and she could see make out frustration in his face. Was he telling her to hurry up?

  The Sound changed suddenly, the oscillator’s low drone wavering ever so slightly. Something was close to failure within the device. She needed to warn the others, and she should have spoken up, but the vision was far more important. This echo from a time before comprehension was trying to communicate something to her, and it looked urgent. Her parents had been working all of their lives for this kind of discovery. Hours bent over sandy holes, weeks sweating and burning under foreign skies, and here she was within inches of more understanding than they had dreamed possible.

  The undulating pitch was growing more and more pronounced, and faster in its instability. There wasn’t much time. The face was insistent, and his hand gestured to her again.

  When she addressed the pharaoh, Verity couldn’t tell if she was actually speaking aloud or if it were merely her thoughts. “But I would have to break the circle.”

  The Silver Pharaoh’s face creased as his lips formed a smile. A distant, rational part of her screamed, insisted she tighten her hold on her friends, her family. Though that terror was so very far away from her, even as the eyes flared with malicious intent.

  Something spoke to her. Take my hand, child.

  Julia was next to her, Henry on the other side, and they were saying something to her, but their words sounded just as foreign as the ghost’s words. It sounded as if she were underwater. The Sound consumed her, and the world around her was muddy and formless. The pharaoh was not. He was real, and her fingers were only an inch from meeting his. He spoke again and the words wormed their way into her head. He was asking for her help with something. He needed something she could give him.

  Take my hand, child.

  The scream from behind her came closer. Closer.

  Then a sharp pain erupted up along her side, and as water bursting through a dam, the high-pitched cry of the æthercommunicator, the angry roar of the portal from underneath the Pharaoh, and her friends calling out her name, all rushed into her.

  Verity found herself on the floor, surrounded by darkness. The cobbled-together communicator and the lamps around them had all gone out
, leaving the library in near-darkness, a narrow sliver of moon providing the only light. After a few moments of feeling around, Verity discovered the edge of the table and got to her feet.

  “Everyone all right?” Julia called out. “Henry?”

  “I’m in one piece, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he replied as he lit a match. Moments later, amber gaslight gradually filled the room.

  Julia’s eyes were huge, and her hair looked as if she’d been riding in a motor car with no scarf. The Sound was gone, but Verity’s ears were still ringing. The oscillator was nothing more than a scorched husk. From the soot decorating Henry’s face, its ætherexplosion must have delivered quite the punch. Verity looked around at the chaos they caused. A few shelves now held singed volumes. Pieces of Julia’s contraption were strewn about the study. One chunk of the table was on fire, but the flame was slowly dying. Julia was by the bookcase at the door. Henry was on her left just now putting the shade back on the gaslight.

  Where was Emma?

  Spinning around, she found the younger girl sprawled across the floor. She was completely still.

  The three of them rushed to her at once. “The Silver Pharaoh was about to touch me when Emma tackled me,” Verity said, her words tumbling out of her mouth. “He must have touched her instead of me.”

  She felt a stab of unreasonable jealousy about that.

  “Does she have a pulse?” Julia asked, nervously pushing back Emma’s chestnut hair. Well, not completely. A streak of white, the kind of hair a grandmother might have, now ran along its entire length. “Look at tha’. The White Forelock. A sign of æthereal contact!”

  “Julia, not now!” Verity felt at Emma’s neck. “Yes, she has a pulse.”

  “Emma?” Henry leaned over her and peered at her face as if it were one of his clockwork contraptions that had failed. “Emma?” His yell got no response.

  “Look at her eyes,” Julia said in a whisper.

  They were wide open, unblinking, and flickering with a green, æthereal glow.

  The supernatural was not Verity’s forte in any manner, and she stared up at Henry for answers. When he shook his head, Verity’s gaze travelled to Julia. The McTighe girl’s expression tightened, going from confused to determined in a moment. Verity was glad of that, since she had no need of people who fell apart in moments like this.

  “Pick her up, Henry,” Julia said, motioning to Emma. “There is one teacher here who specialises in æthersciences, but you are not going to like it.”

  Verity’s heart sank. “Miss Delancy? Really?”

  Julia nodded solemnly.

  Despite herself, Verity had to ask. “Couldn’t we just read a book of hers? There’s got to be one around here, somewhere.”

  Putting her hands on her hips, Julia glared at her. “Don’t you know better than to diagnose complex medical issues from reading books? It takes knowledge, not information, to properly do that.”

  “She hates being wrong,” Henry warned as he scooped up Emma, “and I am pretty sure she’s going to hate confessing to the headmistress too.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Queen of the Æther

  Knocking on the headmistress’ door in the dead of night was a different sort of terrifying for Verity. It was a combination of pure fear tinged with disappointment and overwhelming embarrassment. Henry cradled Emma, and insisted with a jerk of his head she be the one to put knuckles to oak.

  “You strike me as a strong girl, and I should nurture such strength,” Miss Delancy said of her. “A talented girl such as yourself? Why would I turn you away?”

  Perhaps putting a student’s life in jeopardy coupled with dabbling in æthersciences without proper supervision would be enough reason, Verity thought bitterly.

  Her knocking did not bring Miss Delancy to the door, and Verity would have given up if not for Emma’s pale face lolling against Henry’s chest. Pressing her lips together, Verity tightened her fist and pounded more violently on the wood. That assault earned her the sound of movement behind it. Yet still the door did not open.

  Now she didn’t care who heard her. “Miss Delancy! Miss Delancy, please answer the door!”

  More movement, cabinets being opened and closed, and then finally she opened the door. The headmistress was not entirely how Verity figured she would appear in the dead of night, roused unexpectedly from her sleep. In her mind’s eye she imagined a tousled head and a dowdy cotton nightgown. Instead, Miss Lobelia Delancy wore a thin white, short satin robe over a black lace bodysuit that defined what a woman of her class certainly did not want defined. Verity knew, despite her age, the headmistress had a very fine figure.

  Henry’s eyes widened, and a faint smile crept over his lips.

  With the gaslight behind her, the headmistress’ eyes were pools of shadow. “What on earth is going on?” she asked, and there was a definite snap in her voice. Her outrage melted once her eyes fell on the comatose Emma in Henry’s grasp. “Come in. Quickly.”

  “There has been an accident,” Verity ventured, hoping the headmistress heard her running to the hearth where the fire was alight just as it had been when she had met with her. “Something to do with an ætheroscillator. Since Mrs Pyke is dead, we don’t know where to take...”

  “Just tell us what happened.” That voice made Verity stand a little straighter. Professor Vidmar stepped out of the shadows and took Emma out of Henry’s grasp. “From the beginning. Miss McTighe, and turn up the lights.”

  Julia stumbled to the wall sconces, cradling the scorched oscillator in one arm while she turned the dial on the gaslight with the other.

  “We were performing an experiment,” Verity said as Vidmar and Henry gently laid Emma in the space Miss Delancy cleared in front of the hearth. She focused her words to her headmistress, doing all she could to ignore her automaton professor. “We were attempting to reach…” It sounded so ridiculous, but she could not deny her own experience or the tragic physical evidence. “…to reach the other side. We were holding a séance using an æthercommunicator…”

  “Wouldn’t you need an ætheroscillator for that?” Vidmar asked.

  “Yes, ya’ would,” Julia said, then handed him the useless component. “My sympathies, Professah.”

  “I was intending this,” he said, turning the device in his hands, “to assist Miss Simmons here with the stealth capabilities of her class project.”

  “Aye, well, if’n it weren’t fah Verity here, we would have nevah gotten our hands on it.”

  Verity could have slapped the back of her head. Julia was terribly bright, but not very smart sometimes. “Our intention was to contact Mrs Pyke and ask who killed her. Julia constructed the communicator and our séance was a success. We made contact.”

  Miss Delancy’s eyes shot up from the prone form of Emma to Verity. “You made contact with the other side?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Mrs Pyke?”

  “No.” Verity bit her bottom lip, and said, “It was something else. Something…evil.”

  “Aye, an’old!” Julia added. “We heard Verity call it the Silver Pharaoh.”

  Vidmar and Delancy shared a momentary look. Verity stepped between them. “You know about the Silver Pharaoh?”

  “Just legend,” Vidmar said dismissively, joining Delancy by Emma’s side. “Isn’t that right, Lobelia?”

  “My interest in the æthersciences stem from my family’s connection with archaeology.” She took in a deep breath and went to the bookcase. “It was the Delancys who funded the original expedition to find the Silver Pharaoh.” Julia let out a gasp as Delancy’s fingers glided along the spines. “Since its discovery, my family has been plagued with tragedy and disgrace. The only reason my reputation remains immune is that I was the one who orchestrated the deception at the British Museum.”

  “At the British Museum?” Henry asked. “What do you mean?”

  Verity looked to Henry. He shot her a wink. Well played, Henry.

  “Without delvin
g into details, the Silver Pharaoh has been a thorn in my family’s side,” Delancy said, pulling a single volume free of the bookcase. “I have used much of my family’s resources to not only keep my family name intact, but to keep this school running.” She frantically flipped through pages. “I know I have seen this before.”

  “Lobelia?” Vidmar asked, his face tense. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  “You can help her, can’t you?” Verity asked, feeling once more the strangeness of the little tableaux. Naturally there would have to be plenty of reasons for Professor Vidmar to be in their headmistress’ rooms in the middle of the night, and whatever the teachers did among themselves was of no concern to her. However, Miss Delancy’s curiously odd attire and Vidmar’s presence set Verity’s teeth on edge.

  “Professor Vidmar, return the students to their rooms,” Miss Delancy said, waving her arms in their general direction as if they were chickens. “Assure their safety, if you please.”

  Henry shot Verity a look that the Seven often shared. He didn’t want to leave Emma behind. Do we dare to reveal our hand?

  Verity gave a tiny shake of her head, while her fingers flat against her dress signed, I’m in charge.

  Hopefully he wouldn’t fight her tonight.

  Vidmar gestured to the door, his face blank. Henry and Julia obeyed but Verity remained next to Delancy. She was not going to concede to the headmistress just yet.

  Taking hold of Emma’s hand, she tilted her chin up. “I’m staying, Miss. I’m the closest thing she has to family with her parents dead and all. I should be with her.”

  Something about the way Miss Delancy adjusted her posture gave Verity chills; it reminded her of one particularly nasty guard dog chained up down by the docks. That beast didn’t bark. It just bit.

  As quickly as the threatening glimmer appeared, it was gone. “Very well,” she replied warmly.

  The door closing behind the other three sounded like a tomb being sealed, but the headmistress paid it little mind as she began reading the passage from her book. With a curt nod, she went to a cupboard suspended over a tea setting and began laying out items from within it.