by KJ Charles
“You did faint,” Simon observed.
“That was three years ago!” I shouted. “There was a rotting corpse walking towards me! Anyone might have fainted under the circumstances, and why you must bring that up—”
Simon silenced me by the crude but expedient means of a hand over my mouth. I made a noise of outrage.
“You may well be angry,” he said. “But you’re wrong.”
I jerked my head away from his hand. “About what?”
“I don’t think you’re weak, Robert. I think you are…light. Light and warmth. And this—” He gestured at his torso, the gently moving runes. “This is very cold and very dark, and it has been swallowing me slowly for a long time. I don’t want it to touch you. I need you as you are. Not to protect you, or not only that, but to protect me. Without you, I think I would be lost already.”
“Oh.” The anger sluiced away, leaving me stranded.
“What I expect is this,” he said levelly. “I think the communications have become too strong, taken too much toll on my body. I think they will become worse, until the damage is not reparable. And I do not think there is anything to be done. That is the truth, Robert, and I wish it were not so.”
The runes, moving, gouging into his skin. What was once written in ink now carved in flesh. I had a vivid picture, quite suddenly, of Simon wrapped in bandages, and the blood seeping through.
“No,” I said. “There must be something we can do. We could go somewhere without spirits—”
“There is no such place. They clamour to tell their stories. And they must be told.”
“For Christ’s sake, Simon, have you not done enough? Have you not done your duty to the dead by now?”
“No.” Voice flat. “That’s the price of the runes. I didn’t choose to pay it, but nevertheless I must. Do you imagine I have never tried to flee this before? Do you think, as a boy, I wanted to see the dead shrieking on my skin? Believe me, no matter how bad it is to have them, to ignore them is worse. If I do not go to them, they come to me.”
“It’s not right,” I said, feebly. “It’s not fair. Why are you not angry? Why aren’t you fighting?”
“Because I have always known this would happen,” Simon said. “Karswell explained it when he etched them.”
I stared at him, beyond speech.
“I have expected it,” Simon went on. “What I did not expect was you. The last years. A reason to want to grow old, instead of—this.” He grimaced. “I had resigned myself a long time ago, had thought I should not repine when it came to me, but you have shaken my purpose. I’m sorry, Robert.”
I scrambled up to take his face in my hands. “We will find something. We will talk to someone. Miss Kay. Dr. Nikola, if I must. Someone will have an idea. And—and if we cannot then I shall be here. You know that.”
“Yes,” Simon said. “I know. I should not mind this so much, if you were not here.”
“One day—” I began, and my throat closed.
I had intended to say, One day I shall teach you how to phrase a compliment so it does not become an insult. I had said that to him on several occasions. Now it hit me with stunning force that one day might never come. Would never come. That I would lose my stubborn, irascible, ill-tempered, catastrophically blunt Simon to the curse written on his skin.
He read the realisation in my eyes, I suppose, because he pulled me down to him then, lips meeting mine with unusual care, and we kissed as though it were a sacred act. A sacrifice to the shadow that loomed over us.
I was unspeakably afraid.
“There’s damn all I can do about it, so stop asking.”
“There must be something!” I snapped.
I had not expected Miss Kay to solve the problem for us, naturally. She was reserved, unemotional and formidable, and entirely lacking in the nurturing qualities that are supposed to be part of woman’s nature, but she would have set fire to the whole world for Simon’s benefit, without a qualm. (Although this says as much for her attitude to the human race as it does her affection for Simon.) If she had had any answers, she would have put them into practice long ago. Still, I had hoped.
She paced about the drawing-room, skirts rustling with every angry step. “I thought this might take longer. He’s so strong. But it was inevitable. It is inevitable.”
“Can you not—” I gestured at her left hand, curled into itself as usual. Her palm was scarred with a lifetime of pressure from those long, hard, polished nails.
“See what is coming? Yes, I see.” She made a face. “You don’t wish to know what I see. The plain fact is this: what Karswell did to Simon, to us, cannot be undone. We have tried. It cannot be removed, or outrun, or mended.”
“Explain to me,” I said. It was just the two of us in the drawing-room, she and I. Earlier that day Simon had been accosted on the street by a beggar who was so vividly haunted by his past sins that even I could taste it. Simon had spoken to him, long and intent, and lifted some intangible thing from his shoulders as he did it. The exchange had left the beggar with relief and hope in his eyes, and Simon with a series of deep gouges across his chest. Cornelia was bandaging him upstairs as we spoke. “Why did this man, Karswell, have to write on Simon? On a person, I mean?”
“Life,” Miss Kay said succinctly. “Divination can be practised by many means but always at the cost of life, one way or another. An animal is sacrificed and the entrails read. A crystal is drenched in blood or a mirror polished with human skin to make it an effective scrying-glass. Even in the practice of casting sortes, the best results are gained by using human bone. Karswell is far from the first to realise that the divining power is strongest and lasts best if it feeds off human life rather than human death. His great achievement, arrived at through much experimentation, was to keep the strain on the subject’s body to a tolerable level.”
Subject. I watched her face, marked as it was by years of pain, and the hand she unconsciously cradled. “But eventually the strain becomes intolerable,” I said, more statement than question.
“Of course. Everything wears out.”
“Are you—”
She didn’t wait for me to finish that sentence; she barely let me begin it. “Karswell gave me the lesser burden. I am very well, thank you.”
“Because you are his daughter?”
She gave a little exhalation, not quite a laugh. “Good God, no. Because Simon was stronger than I, and the experiment had more chance of success.”
I took a deep breath. “Are you in contact with him at all?”
“Karswell? Why on earth would—” She broke off, eyes narrowing. “What have you in mind?”
“You and Simon have both said that you do not know how to end this. It seems to me that there is one man who might.”
She shook her head. “He will not help you. He is vengeful to the last degree. No slight is so small that it can be overlooked. The least insult must be repaid a thousandfold. I expect he has been waiting for this moment for years. I imagine his dearest hope is that Simon or I will ask for his help, so that he can add insult to injury in refusing, or wreak greater vengeance in a pretence of help. Don’t ask Simon to appeal to him, Mr. Caldwell. You must not ask him that.”
“I won’t,” I assured her. “I would not ask it, and I am quite sure he would refuse.”
“I think there is very little you could ask that Simon would not grant,” Miss Kay said, a dispassionate statement. “Which is why you must not ask it of him. I want your word.”
“You have it. I will say nothing of this to him.”
She gave me a penetrating look. “And you must stay away from Karswell. He’s dangerous.”
“Of course,” I said. “I quite understand.”
It was easy enough to track Mr. Karswell down. I had made it my business to befriend the Remnant’s more talkative members from the beginning—one should always have the information-gatherers on one’s side—and Mrs. Phan proved able to tell me a certain amount of his career. He had moved to Oxford some two
decades ago, and found some parasitic position on the great oak of the University there, from which he had been evicted on the publication of a History of Witchcraft in 1889.
“Disgraceful,” Mrs. Phan said. “I do not know what he thought he was doing.”
She was a lady of Indochinese birth, short of stature and of patience. As the only woman on the club committee, as well as the only individual of colour, she was on occasion treated dismissively by new members, although not twice.
“He published this as a general work?” I asked. “For public consumption?”
“As a scholarly work. It was most foolish.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Fame I expect,” Mrs. Phan said dismissively. “A person of great self-regard, Mr. Karswell. Verry great.” She rolled her Rs beautifully in the French manner. “He wished to achieve an academic position with it, and failed. It was poorly written. And it contained a great deal of information that he should not have shared. We were obliged to…remove copies from circulation.” She ducked her head in a little gesture of mournful respect that I doubted she would have shown to men who had been similarly removed from circulation. “It was not a good book, not at all. But I do not like to destroy a book.”
“Naturally you do not,” I agreed. “And Mr. Karswell?”
She gave her characteristic little hiss, blowing air through her nostrils. It had just a slight quality of dragon to it. “What do you want with him, Mr. Caldwell?”
“A word. Advice. His help.”
“He is not a helpful man. He looks for offence, and takes it. And he does not like your friends.” She frowned. “Now, why are you asking me for information, instead of them?”
“Because you are the best-informed woman in London, of course. Can you assist me in finding out what I need?”
It was not easy to leave Simon. Once the affliction took hold, it worsened quickly. At first only the most powerful cries of the dead had damaged his skin, and thus he had been able to conceal his pain from me. As it progressed, the cries left more and deeper wounds; now, even the slow, steady background scribble was beginning to leave white grazes behind. Soon those would slice into his skin, I knew. Blood would bubble up. He would tear apart.
I cannot write of my feelings on this. I knew, had always known, that his life was full of danger. I had faced death with him frequently enough; I had more than once braced myself to lose him. But I had expected it to be suddenly, in the report of a gun or the flash of claws. Not like this. Not this slow, terrible, inexorable worsening.
Miss Kay confined him to bed, to keep his skin still, and filled the room with wards and talismans to fend off any roaming spirits. It would not work for long. “They come to him,” she muttered to me. “They need to speak.”
Simon did not speak. He loathed physical weakness in himself, and his body’s slow betrayal was an intolerable thing, bringing shame as well as pain. Or so I inferred, at least, because naturally he did not choose to discuss it.
“I will be away for a little while,” I told him. “Something I have to do.”
He didn’t ask what. I think he was probably relieved not to have me there, may have thought I was being tactful. Left to himself, he would have died alone, crawling into a hole like a wounded animal, rather than be seen in his weakness by any man, and particularly me.
But it was not left to him.
I did not telegraph. No need to let Karswell prepare. I took a train from Paddington to Swindon, and from there a closed carriage brought me to Lufford Abbey. The pale Cotswold stone of the ancient building glowed in the afternoon sunlight, but though the ancient building was pleasing to the eye, it grated on the nerves. The air had a rustling dryness around it, like the touch of ancient skin.
I rang the doorbell. A maid answered eventually. I handed her my card and was left waiting on the doorstep for some ten minutes, staring at the heavy oak door, until at last it opened once more.
“You can come in. Sir,” the maid added, reluctantly.
I was escorted to a drawing-room, furnished with pieces of great age—heavy wooden chests and settles—and a single comfortable modern armchair, in which a stout, elderly man sat, waiting. He did not stand.
“Mr. Robert Caldwell.” he said. A calm, entirely ordinary voice. This was the man who had mutilated Simon.
“Mr. Karswell. Thank you for seeing me.”
“I could hardly resist.” He wore a very slight smile, suggesting intense if suppressed satisfaction. “I am of course familiar with your worthless and contemptible scribbling.”
That set the tone for the conversation. I sat, without invitation. “I’m pleased to hear it.”
“Sensationalist yellowback rubbish.” Karswell dwelled lovingly on the words. “I suppose Feximal is content to have his character exposed by your nonsense, if it brings profit. The man was ever vulgar.”
“He’s dying,” I said. “You’ve killed him.”
The smile on Karswell’s lips broadened. “Ah.” A hiss of satisfaction. “The runes are wearing through at last? I had wondered. I must say, I thought it might have been sooner. But now it has begun, I expect the decline will be swift.”
“It is. He is, I can assure you, suffering as much as you could wish.”
“No,” said Mr. Karswell. “No, I doubt that very much.”
I made myself swallow, because my throat was cramping. “He has suffered from what you did to him for twenty years now. Have you not had your vengeance already?”
“He and my daughter revolted against me. Destroyed my experiment. Years of work taken from me by their disobedience. My success snatched from my grasp.”
“And you couldn’t start again and replicate it on other subjects. Why was that?”
He shot me a look of extraordinary malevolence. “I turned my attention to other studies.”
I let that go. “Mr. Karswell, let me be frank. I need your assistance.”
The smile of satisfaction on his face broadened unspeakably. He sat back, lacing his hands in front of his straining waistcoat. “I thought you might be here to beg.”
“You put the runes on Simon. You have knowledge shared by no man alive. You must know of something, some way, to stop it.”
He simply smiled. Waited.
“Whatever your price,” I said. “Name it. I will pay, whatever it may be. I don’t ask you to remove the runes. Just to stop the damage they are doing. It must be possible. Please.”
He blinked once, slowly. “Did he send you to grovel on his behalf?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t know I’m here. He would be furious if he knew.”
“And why, then, are you here, Mr. Whatever-your name-is? Why do you care?”
“Because he is my friend, and I love him dearly. I cannot let this happen, no matter how angry he will be.”
“A friend who disregards his expressed wishes,” Karswell mused. “Not much of a friend, it seems to me.”
“His only friend. I am all he has, and I must fight for him, because no other man will. You say not much of a friend. Perhaps I am not. He will never forgive me if he knows I have come here; he would rather die than owe his life to you.” I was sitting forward in my chair, speaking urgently; now I threw myself back. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is my duty as his friend to respect his wishes. I should go.”
Karswell held up a hand. “You are too hasty, sir. You have travelled some distance to see me; you must have considered this.”
“Considered, yes,” I said bitterly. “But I did not realise. You condemn my scribblings, sir, but you contaminated Simon with your own. You came close to destroying him as a youth; now you have achieved it as a man. Your acts disgust me almost as much as your cruelty. I find I do not wish to owe you anything, not on my behalf and still less on Simon’s. You shall not contaminate the last days of our friendship, and I withdraw my request to you.” I stood, jerkily. “He accepts his fate with courage and fortitude. I can do no less. Good day. I shall show myself out.”
He let me get to the door before he said, softly, “What if I could find a way?”
I stopped, didn’t turn. My stance presented a picture of irresolution, hand hesitant on the doorknob, head bowed. I have no doubt my face would have betrayed my true feelings.
He will never do a kindness, Mrs. Phan had told me. But if you can make him believe he is doing a cruelty…
“I cannot remove the runes from his skin,” Karswell said. “I cannot silence the voices. But… Have you ever seen a tree struck by lightning?”
“Of course.”
“Have you seen a church steeple struck?”
“If you have a point, kindly make it.”
“The church steeple has a lightning conductor.” There was a purr in his voice. “The power of the skies runs through that, alongside it, and dissipates itself in the earth. Without it, every steeple in the land would be a blasted ruin.”
I turned. “You are suggesting that Simon needs…a lightning conductor?”
“You may put it so.” He was smiling still, a glint of malice behind the round spectacle lenses. “But there are conditions. The conductor will have to be a living being. One who will take upon himself all the pain of it. Every lightning strike will go through him instead of through Feximal.”
“With…the same effects?”
“I have no idea,” said Mr. Karswell, with satisfaction. “One would have to wait and find out.”
“This being,” I said. “Who…?”
He shook his head, very slowly. “Ah, yes, Mr. Caldwell. Who will pay the piper? It shall be my faithless daughter, or it shall be you.”
My heartbeat seemed uncommonly loud, thumping in my ears, pulsing against my collar. “Miss Kay or I.”
“If Feximal wishes to live, he will see the price of it, paid by those closest to him, every day.” He hissed the last words, transported by malicious pleasure. “He will know that he owes his life to me, and that your suffering pays it. Unless, of course, you are not a good enough friend to take that burden on.”
I should like to write that I answered at once, that I seized the opportunity to help my lover, that my only hesitation was a dramatic device to conceal my urgency from this terrible man. It would not be true. I had seen the pain on Simon’s face. I knew his strength. I knew I did not possess anything like his fortitude. I have never borne pain with grace.