by David Waid
“Incredible,” said one. “Not in a thousand years has this been done. I can feel the girl’s power in my fingertips.”
“Yet two remain,” said another, “with which to double and treble our strength.”
“Celebration is premature,” said the Maestro. “The power is not ours until the ritual is sealed.”
“You are right, of course, Maestro. We should…”
The Maestro snapped his fingers. “Be still. Something approaches.”
The others quieted and turned to stare at the inn’s front door. A moment later, an unnatural silence descended, dampening even the sound of Teresa’s ragged breath. Eamon shook his head. It was as though he had earth packed in his ears.
“A Harenin,” Tummia said. “Yet here we sit, the only ones who could beget such a thing.”
Even with her muffled voice, Eamon heard the fear. Then he knew why.
The room’s air thickened with an odor like rotten meat. Eamon gagged. The smell grew thicker and he closed his mouth, but it seemed to congeal in his nose, growing stronger, sharper.
“Treachery,” said the man by Eamon’s head. “It is one of you.” His eyes darted from face to face.
“Silence! I recognize this.” The Maestro’s head moved side to side, eyes closed. “It is…” His eyes opened. “Sairshee. My ill-serving menial.”
The man by Eamon’s head spoke again. “Bah! I trust no one.” He began to stand.
“Sit, you fool!”
The door exploded inward and the standing man was knocked from his feet as sound returned with a thunderclap. Shards of wood slashed through the air, a heavy piece banging end over end through the circle. Eamon twisted and it bounced, passing over his legs by a hand, landing again on the other side with such force it gashed the dirt, erasing lines and symbols on the floor as cold night air blasted in behind with a roar and a rush.
The mage by Eamon slumped into the dirt. He tried to talk, but blood erupted from his lips. Eamon shouted, twisting as far away as he could, saw the jagged splinter in the man’s neck, thick as a wrist, long as a forearm. The designs of the pentacle throbbed with illumination. The light itself seemed to writhe across the floor toward Teresa and sparks popped in the pattern’s broken places.
Wind howled and, against it, Eamon heard the chant of the Maleficarum. He saw nothing in the doorway, but it was clear that Caitlin did. She screamed, shrill as a whistle. It cut through the noise as gusts launched debris in the air.
When the first of the sorcerers died next to Eamon, Teresa felt the slightest brush of what had been stolen. She gasped as though she’d been holding her breath, a great gulp, as if she could draw the lost power in through her lungs. The sigils drawn on the ground pulsed, sparked, ignited with weak, flickering light. Shadows of the circled magi were thrown against the wall like silhouettes of stones. Thoughts slipped away, danced away, but some slender thread of herself returned.
Eamon heard his name called. Nairne from beneath the table.
“The circle,” she shouted. “Somethin’s happened.”
The pattern was broken, but did that mean . . . ? Eamon reached for his gift and found the wall restraining it gone. His hands remained tied, yet now maybe he could do something.
Each braid of the rope was made of thin strands, their frayed ends scratching his skin. He focused on that sensation and on breathing, following the lines with his mind, through each sliding twist, each length of cordage. Not just his ropes, but those on the others, as well.
Whatever this thing was the Maleficarum fought, a note of triumph had entered their chanting and the tempest grew less. He had to act now. Eamon pulled a single strand and it gave. Another, and another, great bunches together. He pulled with all his fear, all his focus, and the lengths came apart in a thousand filaments.
The Maestro and two others sat closest to the inn’s shattered door, attention locked on their struggle. They formed a bulwark, stretching from one side of the room to the other. Yet Tummia, sitting by Caitlin’s head, saw what happened with the ropes and reacted instantly. She cursed, swung her attention away from the Harenin, and the wind rose.
The man on the Maestro’s left glanced over his shoulder — only for a moment — but that was enough. The wind shrieked, yanking him into the air, and before he could react, the sorcerer was torn in half at the waist. All eyes were drawn to the sight. Drawn and held because his blood never fell.
It hung in the air, thick in places, in others thin as mist. But as Eamon watched, the blood moved, droplets combining, then running through the air to form a mesh of dark veins, tangled as tree roots. They converged on a single point, and there, in the rippling center, a blood-dark knot took shape. A face. Branagh’s face, the girl who had run from the inn.
In the corner of the common room the alewife stood, rope fibers slithering to her feet. “Mother of Mercy,” she cried, staggering as Nairne caught the edge of her dress. Unreasoning hatred pulsed from Branagh’s spirit, the stench of it overwhelming, but her blood red face was set and slack like the dead. Her eyelids remained closed, the curve of her glistening lashes like two veiled smiles. Her mother tugged fistfuls of her own hair, and pulled wildly against Nairne’s grip.
With the death of the second wizard, the touch came again, another piece of Teresa returning. Just a small amount, yet stronger than before. The roil of thoughts slowed and once again the pentacle flickered and sparked.
A whimper escaped Teresa’s lips, hunger for the return surging up so strong it made her head light. Darkness and haze threatened to roll over her, but when the swell receded, her mind had calmed. A hand touched her leg and she jerked in surprise, opening her eyes. The blond girl who had been tied in the circle leaned toward her. In rough Genoese, the girl whispered Teresa’s name.
“Ignacio says to get up,” she said.
The innkeeper’s wife didn’t run toward the spirit with her daughter’s face. Eyes wide, lips pale, she tore from Nairne’s grip, snatched a knife from among shards of kitchen crockery and leapt for Tummia. The Florentine saw her at the same time Eamon did. She made a fist, squeezed, and Branagh’s mother crashed at her feet. Great swaths of purple bruising flushed beneath the alewife’s skin in a single heartbeat. Blood broke from her like sweat, kirtle and gown staining from the inside out. The woman writhed on the floor as blood poured from her ears, nose, mouth and eyes. By the third hammering beat she was dead.
Eamon had broken the river ice to drown a man, but here was no ice, no time. Yet in the alewife’s outstretched hand he saw the knife. Tummia saw, too. She flicked her wrist and every muscle in Eamon’s body spasmed and pulled, the pain so sudden and overwhelming it stole his breath. He landed on his side, muscles bulging and slithering as if alive. Lady Tummia crossed the circle to stand above him as he curled into a ball, groaning in pain.
“You cannot die yet,” she said. “We must extract your spark. Yet we no longer need a ritual to do it. Nor five magi to perform it.” Her eyes flicked over Eamon’s head to the raging battle, then narrowed. “Not even two.”
She stretched one hand over Eamon and something tugged deep within him. He’d seen what happened to Teresa, witnessed the air within the circle shimmer exactly as it did now. Yet this time, the shimmer came with heat. Lady Tummia felt it, too. She backed a step, confusion plain on her face.
Teresa, leaning on Caitlin’s shoulder, rose to her feet. Her brows pulled down in concentration, her lips moving.
“No,” the Florentine woman said. “It is impossible.”
There wasn’t time for anything else, no time to act. The sorceress screamed — wailed — and burst into a roaring sheet of wind-ripped flame so tall it bent against the ceiling. She ran screaming into the wall, and from there into a jumble of tables and chairs, crashing blindly, collapsing in a burst. The cramp of Eamon’s muscles came undone. Tongues of fire rose up from the fallen sorceress, black smoke rolling greasy clouds into the air.
The Harenin’s tempest raged higher, shaking the walls so E
amon thought the inn would come down. He turned in time to see the Maestro’s last ally fall from the air and blood running once more to the engorged bulb of Branagh’s face. Unable to turn away, he watched the spirit swing its mask — its obscene serenity — to the Maestro. Invisible power contested in the space between them, Eamon could feel it. Even as he watched, the lord of the Maleficarum fell to one knee and the thing drew nearer.
He didn’t notice his sister walking forward until she passed him.
“Caitlin!”
He tried to grab her, but the sudden movement sent a jolt of pain through his muscles. Caitlin glanced his way, but turned back, shouting into the wind. “Stop it,” she said. “That’s not your hate.” She took another step. “You don’t have to be a monster.”
“Get away, Caitlin.” Eamon managed to raise onto hands and knees. The thing advanced and the Maestro flinched, one arm warding the spirit, the other propping him against the floor.
Branagh’s hatred thrummed on and Caitlin stepped nearer still. “This is your home,” she yelled. The raw wash of hate fluttered, a barely noticeable change, and the mask pivoted slowly in its thicket of veins, the inscrutable features turning on Caitlin.
“You don’t have to hurt people,” she said. Something moved in the face, almost imperceptible. “Your ma and da are waiting for you.” The wind diminished, yet still, blood fronds from the tangle reached for Caitlin. She stood her ground, looking up. “Your brother’s here, too.”
A tremor ran through the mask.
The veins stretched for Caitlin, making quick, probing attempts, but wherever they came close, the slender fingers jerked back and lost color. At first just the tips became pale and clear, yet that leeching of color spread toward the heart of the tangle. The mask spasmed and pulled as translucence worked its way along the lines.
Eamon had forgotten about the Maestro, but the man strode toward Branagh now, strength and confidence renewed. The old man made a chopping motion with the side of his hand and great ropes of vein were cut from the tangle. The ones remaining whipped wildly through the air flinging streaks of blood. The mask convulsed. Though the mouth never opened, an inhuman, high-pitched shriek burst through the air. The Maestro made another chop and a second batch of crimson tendrils spattered to the ground. Caitlin fell to the floor with her arms around her stomach, eyes shut hard, screaming “Stop it!” over and over.
To Eamon’s left, Teresa began her chant again, face screwed up in concentration, but the Maestro heard. He pivoted, sweeping a hand through the air. A blue-white flash blistered the common room and Eamon felt an enormous hand lift and toss him through the air.
When he could think again, the wind was gone, the room still. Rolling over, he managed to get to his knees. Nairne, Caitlin and Teresa stirred on the ground, bits of plaster and wood in their clothes and hair. The only person standing was Maestro Lodovicetti. Eamon’s vision was so blurred he couldn’t see the Maestro clearly, but he recognized the man’s thin silhouette in the slurry of light and dark. He shook his head and saw Branagh’s bloody mask in front of the Maestro. The veins were gone, and the mask itself reduced by half its size. The blood of slaughter that had swollen the spirit now stained the floors and walls, and the stink of its anger was gone.
A string of blood and spit ran in a long unbroken line from Eamon’s mouth to the ground and he remembered Nairne’s word’s from what seemed so long ago. He who is not strong must be clever. His mind went into the bones of the inn, the way he’d entered the walls of Nairne’s farmhouse. He saw the building’s strengths and weaknesses, the lines and buttressed angles that held it up, like glittering strands, running in every direction. And within it all, the furniture and things that filled the building’s space.
The Maestro continued pressing Branagh’s spirit, yet Eamon barely registered it. Staggering to his feet, he extended his arms to either side and ran his fingers along the lines, plucking here, pushing there. The building’s timbers groaned, a loud crack resounded and dust sifted from the beams overhead. Gathering the lines to himself, Eamon pulled them all, and the entire building; ceiling, stone — every peg — pulled apart with a wrenching, grinding noise. Great blocks of masonry, wooden beams, blankets, chairs and tables lifted into the air.
Night hung beyond the foundation where the walls once stood. The things of the inn pulled out and away and, slowly, ponderously, began to rotate around the common room floor. Great fragments of chimney and stone from the walls tumbled through the air in slow cartwheels, trailing dust. Nails and fabrics, splinters of wood flashed in and out.
In a bowl of moving fragments they stood, the walls shifting, the only sound a “shhhh” as though an island of sand coiled and uncoiled. Far overhead, Eamon saw the long unbroken stormclouds had parted. A circular gap had opened, and on the other side lay the milky sweep of stars.
The Maestro continued to wither the apparition with one hand outstretched, yet he stared at the floating things like one amazed, eyes wide, lips parted.
“Who are you to do that?” he said.
“I am the one you tried to kill,” Eamon replied.
The Maestro turned more fully, nodded at Eamon. “I will kill you if I must. All of you. But I would rather you live. Would you not rather that as well?”
“And if you kill me,” Eamon asked, “who will hold that up? You?” Shadow slipped between Maestro Lodovicetti and the pale starlight. The mage glanced up to see — suspended fifteen feet above his head — a crushing weight of stone and mortar that had once been a wall. Eamon pointed to Teresa. “Give back what you stole from her.”
“I have tasted a geistmage’s power now. That will never happen.” Back straight, imperious, the Maestro stared at Eamon. “Let loose your control and I will die along with all hope for your sister.”
The man smiled. “You know she is Hekat, yes? Then you know what that means. Without my assistance, she will perish, tortured and terrified, like all of them. But I can help. There are worse things than me. I can tell you about them.”
For a moment, Eamon was struck silent. Those last words reverberated in his skull and his hands went numb. There are worse things than me. I can tell you about them. The same words had been spoken from his sister’s lips in the windowless room of this inn, with its miasma of illness and fish oil from the dented lamp.
The liar who stood before him was the author of every evil they’d endured.
Taking the boy’s silence as capitulation, the Maestro smiled. “It seems we are at an impasse. We must learn to trust one another.”
Eamon heard his own reply as if spoken by someone else.
“No,” he said. “I have tasted a geistmage’s power and that will never happen.”
His hands came together in a clap, its sound reverberating up the bowl’s sides. And all of the inn’s stonework, debris and timbers collapsed inward, rumbling over his head onto Maestro Lodovicetti with a roar, drowning any sound the man might have made. The ground shook and Eamon was knocked from his feet as a billowing cloud of dust churned across the knoll.
35. The Rubble Cairn
Leinster
Where the Inn of the Three Shrikes had once greeted travelers on the Dublin Road, north of Bray, there now stood a cairn, a massive pile of broken wood and stone. The tumble of its black shape became gray as morning light brushed tattered clouds over the Irish Sea. The smell of the sea rode a brisk easterly wind across the knoll where the pile rested, passing on toward the Wicklow Mountains.
The survivors gathered on what was left of the inn’s flat, dry floor, a momentary island in an ocean of snow. Nairne hugged Caitlin to her side and Teresa stood several feet away, shivering and disheveled. They looked like they’d been rolled in flour and Eamon nearly laughed in woozy relief at being alive.
The laugh died, however, when he looked again at the bodies of the innkeeper and his wife. The two lay side-by-side, hands folded across their chests. The others, the broken forms of the Maleficarum, were pinned deep in the rubble. At the
thought of it, a joy so fierce it was like anger surged through Eamon.
At the edge of the gathering, Teresa looked from one to another of the survivors, eyes finally resting on Eamon.
“I think I know you,” she said in accented English.
“I feel it, too,” he said.
“I should think so,” said Nairne. “’T is the power ye recognize. But, Arra! We need warmth.” Her voice sounded harsh in the morning stillness. “The town of Bray is close. There we can find help, though the walk’ll be cold enough.”
“Wait,” Eamon said. At one corner of the pile leaned a jumble of boards. Casting them aside revealed a tiny space he’d created with the weave of glittering strands. And in that space rested a bundle of their travel bags and the blankets from their room. “Here are things to get warm.” He passed the clothing and blankets to the others.
“Bless ye,” said Nairne. She gave her thick travel cloak to Teresa, taking a blanket for herself.
“And here are your herbs,” said Eamon. “And the things from Father Rhys.”
Nairne opened her bag, ignoring the priest’s treasures, and rummaged instead for her bundled medicines. One after another, she held them up to her nose and breathed deep with eyes closed.
“Yer best magic yet,” she said.
With cloaks and blankets divided, Nairne drew Teresa, Eamon and Caitlin into a circle. “I’d thought we were blessed with two of ye, but tut! It’s three we have. I wish to take ye to me own people. North, past Dublin. They can teach ye how t’ use such gifts as ye’ve been given.”
“What about Duff?”
“My people will see to his care. They’ll bring him to ye when he’s well enough to travel. Will ye come?”