by D. J. Butler
Fire fell on Nathaniel and Jake.
“Or are you someone else? Maybe you’re with the pirate queen, and you want to steal back your hostage with this Talligewi sorcery.” The orange-clad mage chuckled. “Today is not your lucky day, friend. Today’s the day you go in the bottle.”
The mage let the aspergillum fall to his side. It hung there, connected to his belt by a leather strap.
Nathaniel tried to bang his drum, but his fingers wouldn’t respond. He tried to sing, but his parched throat emitted a cracked warble with no words and no power. The sleeping Margaret, he noticed, also wore the lumpy amulet. The same amulet worn by Margaret in the chair.
The mage reached into a coat pocket and produced a dark brown glass bottle.
The Margaret who could move, but not speak, wore no amulet.
Jake threw the Tarocks.
The cards burst into flame as they sailed through the air. Doing so, something in them was freed. Men and beasts and horses sprang from the cards as they disintegrated, and a stampede of Major Arcana rushed over the orange wizard. The images themselves took fire as they moved and a river of flame struck the mage, who dropped the bottle and raised his hands defensively—
Nathaniel could move.
He sprang toward Margaret. He saw three of her, so it took mental effort to shut out the sleeping Margaret on the bed and the frantic mute Margaret, and focus on Margaret sitting and staring at the wall.
He dodged beneath a flaming horse and was buffeted by a drunkard on fire, but he lunged across all three rooms and wrapped both hands around the amulet hanging around sitting Margaret’s neck.
He yanked it off.
An intense surge of pain shot up both arms to his brain, and he fell to the ground, frozen.
Sitting Margaret stood and looked at frantic Margaret. Each took a step toward the other, and then a second, and then they melted into each other and became one. As the last of the burning Tarock images faded and the orange-wearing wizard turned and glared at Nathaniel, Margaret stepped in front of Nathaniel. Her hair flared and waved and she raised one warning finger.
“Now you’re really going to get it,” she growled at the wizard.
The mage’s answering smile was unsteady. “Oh? I think you’ll find I can deal with you on this plane just as easily as I can in Haarlem.”
But as the wizard spoke, behind him in the farmhouse cellar, the flesh and blood Margaret stood. As she climbed to her feet, her hair rose and spread until it waved about her head like the white spores of a summer dandelion.
The wizard raised his aspergillum—
and flesh and blood Margaret tore it from his hand.
She pulled so hard, the strap broke and he fell to the ground. He yelped and when he hit the stone, his lungs emitted a high-pitched squeak.
Nathaniel tried to move, but was still frozen in place.
~Don’t let him do any more magic!~ Jake yelled.
Margaret bent over the wizard as he struggled to catch his breath. “Corporem—” He grunted, and she shoved the handle of the aspergillum into his mouth, muting him instantly. She picked him off the ground entirely and slammed him to the stone again, forcing grunts of pain from the wizard.
Then she slid his body across the floor. Like a wet sponge run over a school slate, she smeared a large gap into the chalk circle.
Nathaniel tried to rise and couldn’t. He tried to throw the amulet away and couldn’t. He felt a cold stupor and an electric paralysis flowing from the lump in his hands through his entire body.
A hard, rapid knock came at a door. What door was that? Nathaniel thought it was in the inn. “Wie schreeuwt daar?” yelled a voice on the other side of that door. “Is alles goed?”
Another door opened. Did the room in the Benedito de Espinosa have two doors? No, this was a door in the cellar of the white farmhouse. It opened, and through it charged the three card-playing men. One Ear rushed in first and tried to grab Margaret.
She rose swinging a fist. Her punch connected, her fist sinking deep into One Ear’s gut. He made a sound like a bellows squeezing out all its air in a single forced push and sank to the ground, blood pouring from his lips.
The other two men shouted incoherently. Margaret calmly picked up One Ear by the belt and tossed him. He whirled end over end, striking both the ceiling and the floor as he went, and plowed through both other men, knocking them down.
~The amulet!~ Jake shouted.
A fog began to creep over Nathaniel’s vision, obscuring all three spaces at the same time.
When the two conscious smugglers stood, they were armed. Burn Hands had a truncheon and Droop Nose a knife, and they came at Margaret swinging.
But she had armed herself, too. She held the wizard by both ankles and she swung him around overhead like a lariat. The mage’s skull and Droop Nose’s connected with a loud crack and she dropped the wizard.
Nathaniel’s vision was almost totally fogged over.
He heard the thudding sounds of someone trying to break into the bedroom at the inn.
Burn Hands swung his truncheon downward at Margaret’s head—
she caught it with one hand.
“Kanker!” Burn Hand shouted.
With her other hand. Margaret casually punched him in the nose, knocking him unconscious.
~The amulet!~ Jake shouted again.
~The amulet!~ spirit Margaret also shouted.
Flesh and blood Margaret gripped the amulet around her neck with one hand and ripped it from her body. Smashing the lump on the floor, she stamped it under her heel and ground it flat.
The amulet in Nathaniel’s grip disappeared, the fog lifted in an instant, and he could move.
The cellar and the inn room were beginning to fade.
~Where do I find you?~ spirit Margaret asked, stepping backward toward her flesh and blood self.
~Get out of the house!~ Jake shouted. ~There’s a barn by the west fields. Hide there, we’ll come within the hour!~
Spirit Margaret and flesh and blood Margaret fused, and flesh and blood Margaret raced out through the cellar door just as the cellar and the inn both faded from view.
~We’re about to have visitors,~ Jake said.
Nathaniel pulled the Dutchman up onto his horse and turned to race back the way they’d come. In quick bounds, his drum-horse covered the long grass of the curling valley and descended the seven steps into the Benedito de Espinosa. Jake fell into his cross-legged body, Nathaniel melded into the shadowy form of his bear-self Makwa, and the horse became the drum across Nathaniel’s lap.
The door caved in. A heavy Dutchman in a greasy apron charged through, caught his balance, and then began yelling at Jake.
Jake yelled back, all in Dutch.
Nathaniel considered jumping out the window. Instead he stood, slung his drum carefully over his shoulder, and walked out the door.
So much for secrecy and spycraft.
He heard the metallic jingle of coins behind him, and then Jake caught up.
They exited the common room into the streets of Haarlem. “Well, people are going to talk about this. You’re going to be so famous in Haarlem, you’ll become a folktale.”
“The innkeeper thought we were trying to steal from him?”
“Yes, he charges by the person, not by the room. Also, he thought we were lovers.”
“What?”
“Apparently, we were screaming. And he said he doesn’t mind that kind of thing, but we ought to keep it quiet. And if there are two of us, we both have to pay.”
“That sounds like he really does mind.”
“Or he was happy to have found opportunity to make a little more money.”
“I heard coins,” Nathaniel said. “Did you pay him? Even though we’re leaving?”
Jake shrugged. “I thought it was better to pay him than risk having a jager sent after us.”
“What’s a jager?”
“A hunter. You know, someone who tracks down fugitives for money?”
/> “A bounty hunter.” Nathaniel stopped in the middle of the frozen street and pointed at an orange light north of the village. “What’s that?”
Jake looked, and then laughed. “We’d better hurry up and get there before anyone else does. Your sister lit the farmhouse on fire.”
“I shall not visit thee in hell, Ophidian.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ezekiel Angleton, that was his name.
He had to remind himself from time to time, when the winter’s chill drove the name from his head.
Winter didn’t trouble his body at all. His new body, he reminded himself. His resurrected body. Like Elijah of old, Ezekiel had been taken into heaven and transformed without the necessity of death first.
His nails had grown black. His pale complexion, easily burned by the sun, had turned an impervious gray. His breath had grown sweet with the flesh of men.
This is my body which is given for you, the Lord had said.
Not Ezekiel’s Lord, but his predecessor.
He had eaten men first, because men had attacked him. But he had learned that women and children were sweeter.
I am the resurrection, and the life.
Winter didn’t trouble his reborn flesh, but it dulled his mind. It caused him to forget his name sometimes and, much worse, to forget Lucy.
Lucy. He must share this gift with her.
This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
After being repulsed by the Earl of Johnsland, with his ferocious fire and his mounted men, Ezekiel had taken refuge in the hills. He had grieved his failure for several days in a crack in the earth, until hunger had finally driven him to move.
He had eaten, taking a child from outside a chapel. The boy was peeping in through a frost-glazed window during service, obviously disobeying his parents. Naughty child. Ezekiel had enjoyed the sense of being the instrument of justice that came when he broke the boy’s neck, dragged him behind the hill, and devoured his flesh.
Men with torches had pursued him deeper into the hills, but Ezekiel didn’t sleep and didn’t tire. In the face of a north wind-riding blizzard, the posse comitatus had given up.
Ezekiel had turned into the teeth of the storm. Sometimes, he thought he was going home to Lucy. He knew where she was buried. He knew he could raise her from her grave; he believed his Lord would give her a perfected body like his own.
He had followed his coat to Johnsland, but there the coat had been destroyed.
Robert Hooke had once worn the coat, but Ezekiel realized that it must have had an earlier owner. The coat pulled him in the direction of the children of Kyres Elytharias, which must mean that it had once belonged to the Lion of Missouri. Had he lost it to enemies in the Spanish War? Had it been taken from the scene of his murder by Daniel Berkeley or Bayard Prideux, his murderers?
Somehow, in any case, it had come into the possession of the Lord Protector, who had given it to his servant Robert Hooke.
And then to his servant Ezekiel Angleton.
But now it was gone.
Ezekiel turned to old magic. The skills he had learned at Harvard seemed dry and dusty to him, but they worked. He stole a small glass bottle from a farmhouse window and filled it with spring water. He had once carried quicksilver on his person, but that had disappeared somewhere along the way. Carefully, he had scraped the packed grime from beneath three long nails of one of his hands.
That grime contained the flesh and blood of Nathaniel Elytharias, and he had formed it into a ball, compacting it with his gray fingers and his tongue and forcing it with his mind into a tight, solid object the size and shape of a pea, but black, and with the sweet odor of decay.
He dropped the ball into the bottle, then spoke a short incantation over it: ani mechapes yeled. He stoppered the bottle and held it up to examine: the ball inside swam steadily to one end of the container, pointing north.
He was his Lord’s servant. He would be his Lord’s best servant, the one who killed the Elytharias children and ended the menace they represented.
There had been another. He had served another.
Thomas, that was the name. Thomas Penn.
He still served Thomas Penn, but Penn also served the Lord Protector. And he would be the Lord Protector’s greatest servant.
Ezekiel. Ezekiel Angleton, that was his name.
His tongue fell out. He found he didn’t miss it.
He’d wrapped his face in a long scarf and pulled the brim of his tall hat down to cross the Hudson River on a ferry loaded with Pennsland coal. He’d stalked across the island of Manhattan with his eyes fixed north and east, imagining the country churchyard in the Covenant Tract where his dead love lay.
What was her name?
Lucy. And he was Ezekiel.
He would raise her to eternal life. But first, he must kill the Unsouled.
How would their flesh taste?
Approaching a village on the east side of the island after dark, Ezekiel saw a house a few miles ahead of him burst into flame.
He hesitated, thinking of a burning tobacco barn in Johnsland where he’d failed to do his Lord’s bidding, where he’d been rebuffed by mounted Johnslanders, Sarah Elytharias’s Dutch servant, and an Indian wrestler.
He wouldn’t be rebuffed again.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.
He broke into a run.
* * *
Sarah gazed from the height of the Treewall at the ring of black fire. Had it advanced closer?
No, she could still see the crosses that gave it its shape. But neither had the fire retreated or faded, and her people would run out of food in two weeks’ time if she did nothing.
The riders were prepared, messengers to race north, south, and east, through the city’s Talligewi, Zomas, Mississippi, and Onandagos gates. Many of them were Alzbieta’s former servants, who had learned a little horsemanship under William Lee—they would ride to call on friendly powers to come to her aid. At the risk of humiliation to herself and her people, Sarah had insisted on not limiting herself to known and traditional allies. Messengers were ready for Chicago, for Calhoun Mountain, for Memphis, for the Igbo Cities, for Chicago, and for Johnsland—multiple messengers with multiple copies of the same message, in case some were struck down as they tried to escape.
Some would inevitably be struck down.
Sarah looked one last time at a copy of the message she had laboriously written, mostly rejecting but in a few cases accommodating suggestions from Maltres and Zadok.
~ A CALL TO ALL LOVERS OF FREEDOM ~
The usurper Thomas Penn has for years oppressed the honest folk of the Ohio, robbing their wealth, tearing down their walls, choking their highways, and restricting their public meetings, on the pretext of quashing a rebellion that did not exist. He has done this to innocent Cahokia and her six Sister Kingdoms—which Elector’s lands will be next?
On the pretext of madness that never existed, Thomas sequestered and then murdered his sister, Hannah Penn. Earlier, he treacherously slew her husband, Kyres Elytharias, King of Cahokia. Now, he has laid siege to Elytharias’s city Cahokia in an effort to kill the only daughter and heir of Hannah Penn and the Lion of Missouri, Sarah Elytharias Penn.
Defend your rights as Electors! Protect the integrity of the Philadelphia Compact and the legacy of John Penn! Steady the ark of Christendom! Resist the usurper Thomas! Cahokia calls you—send aid!
The message had its faults. It contained at least one lie—that she was her parents’ only daughter. It also left rather ambiguous Sarah’s own status, which was at least honest, since Sarah’s claims were only partially realized and her status was unclear. Alzbieta urged Sarah to include the indication that she was the Beloved of Wisdom, arguing that that was at least as important and as valid as claiming a bishopric, but Maltres reinforced Sarah’s better instincts, and she pulled back from making that revelation.
If this didn’t work, Sarah knew she could try to send flying messengers over the heads of her besiegers. She
also knew what a toll that would take on her physically and how much it would dry up her resources, so she was loath to do it unless necessary, and she feared Hooke would have a means to trap any such highly visible heralds.
Could I make contact with someone outside the black fire by gramarye?
But with whom? And how?
And what would the fire do to me when I tried to cross it?
Somehow, messages must go out, and Maltres’s earlier attempts had failed. Without aid, Cahokia would fall.
The riders massed within the gates on the last of the city’s horses. More than one resident watched the animals with a hungry look. Sarah herself, though she could not longer stomach the thought of eating meat, was uncomfortable to see the last of the good edible flesh exit the city.
She folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into her satchel. From the shoulderbag she removed the Heronplow and the Orb of Etyles and held one in each hand. They were heavy, and the time she’d be able to hold both of them without tiring would be measured in minutes, not hours.
She should only need minutes.
In her Eye of Eve, the wall of fire looked much like it did with her natural eye: a negative light, a brilliance that was also black. She found the filthy aura of Robert Hooke, stalking the perimeter of reversed crosses. His shuffling dead stayed low in the trenches during the daytime. Sarah had deliberately chosen the hour of noon for that reason.
She also saw the aura of something or someone like Robert Hooke. From this distance, it seemed to be a short, naked person, but his or her aura had the same black and filthy appearance that Hooke’s did. To Sarah’s annoyance, this person—likely another sorcerer—stayed close to Hooke’s largest cross.