Plague of the Shattered

by E. E. Holmes

  We watched the pendulum swing, its curve slow and mesmerizing. But as it rounded the area of the map where the UK was located, it seemed to defy the laws of physics, breaking its pattern to create a small, looping motion over the spot before continuing its wider arc around the perimeter of the map.

  “What was that?” Hannah asked, pointing excitedly. “Why did it do that?”

  “Och, it’s this lass what’s upstairs, refusing to get on with it and open her Gateway,” Moira said without looking up from her work. “What a numpty.”

  Hannah I looked at each other, and then at Mackie for a translation.

  She grinned. “She’s talking about Frankie. Her continued refusal to open her Gateway has caused a kink in the patterns, a concentration of spirit energy, sort of like a backup, and that’s what’s causing the pendulum to move like that.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said, and then a thought occurred to me. “So, when my mother Bound her Gateway, this pendulum could tell?”

  “Aye,” Moira said bluntly.

  “And over time, the longer it was Bound, the larger an effect it had,” Mackie said, then leaned in and added in a low voice, “Best not talk too much about that, mate. Moira likes her Léarscáil in perfect balance.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, and I felt myself blushing.

  “My ears are as good as ever they were, lass,” Moira called. “And I dinnae care so much about that, not since the day of the Isherwood Prophecy, when the whole thing came to a stop.”

  “Came to a stop?” I asked. “You mean, the pendulum stopped moving?”

  “Och, aye, lass.” Moira whispered, and took off suddenly across the Léarscáil, tiny tattooed feet scuttling like an insect, until she crouched just to the left of where Fairhaven was marked on the map. Even as she came to a stop, the pendulum swooped down upon her. Hannah and I both cried out, sure she would be killed, but Moira did not even flinch. The great sphere came within less than an inch of her nose, before arching off again across the map.

  “It stopped. Dead stopped. Quivering like an arrow. Right. Here,” she hissed, jabbing a long, yellowed fingernail at the map. “Gobsmacked, I was.”

  I turned a stunned face from Moira to Mackie, who nodded grimly. “Only time I’ve ever seen her leave the tower. She came flying into the Council Room to warn everyone. It was the only reason we knew you were coming,” Mackie said, glancing apologetically at Hannah.

  Hannah dropped her eyes, and even as I watched, two tears splashed onto the gilded stones at her feet.

  “Hey,” I said to her, grasping her hand and squeezing it. “Don’t forget who set that thing spinning again. Don’t forget that in the end, we made it right.”

  Hannah looked up and found my eyes. I squeezed her hand again, and she obliged me with a tiny smile. Mackie punched her playfully on the shoulder. “Sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to… we all know it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Not all of you, no,” Hannah said. “But thanks, Mack.”

  A strange whistling sound made us all look up. Moira was scuttling with unnerving speed across the map again toward the source of the sound, a small metal door set into the wall. As we watched, she pulled a skeleton key from the pocket of her robe and inserted it into the door, turned it, and yanked. The door creaked open and a pigeon fluttered in, coming to rest on her shoulder.

  “What the—” I muttered.

  Moira cooed at the bird, stroking its chest and offering it several kernels of corn that she pulled from another pocket. Then she untied a small leather pouch from the pigeon’s leg and sat down with it at her table.

  “Carrier pigeon?” Hannah whispered. “What does she use a carrier pigeon for?”

  “Every clan stronghold has a Léarscáil and a Mapkeeper. This is how they communicate, to compare findings and interpretations,” Mackie said. “It’s not an exact science, and so they confer with each other to reach conclusions on what the patterns might mean.”

  “Is there, like… a legitimate reason not to just pick up the phone?” I asked.

  Mackie grinned. “Moira doesn’t trust technology. You know from working with your ghost hunting mates that spirits can mess with batteries and electricity and all of that. She knows it too, and so she won’t have anything to do with it. She’s been bringing up those pigeons for years. I think she’s got about a hundred of them.”

  Moira was now unrolling a small scroll of parchment she had found tucked inside the pouch. She took a moment to read it, then snorted loudly and started muttering as she stood up. She pulled one of her own scrolls from its cubby, consulted it quickly, and then returned to the desk, where she scrawled a hasty response onto the scroll, rolled, it up, and tucked it back into the pouch. She then tied it back onto the bird, kissed its head, and promptly released it back up into the shoot before slamming the door shut behind it.

  “That Mapkeeper in the Nordic Clans is a real walloper,” Moira grumbled as she returned to her work. “T’ain’t a reading yet she’s gotten right and that’s the truth. Can’t no one explain this spike of energy in the North Country, including me.”

  “The North Country?” Mackie asked, in a tone of polite interest.

  “Aye, that’s right. In the Inner Hebrides, round about the Isle of Skye. Can’t make heads or tails of it,” Moira said. She sat back and began fiddling with the knobs on her goggles again, leaning low over a stack of smaller maps. She continued her muttering, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a few errant kernels of corn to munch on.

  “Skye,” I murmured, frowning. “Why have I heard of that place before? Didn’t someone just mention it to us?”

  “It was Celeste,” Hannah said, staring at the pendulum’s progress around the map. “There’s a príosún there. That’s where Lucida is serving out her sentence, remember?”

  I watched the pendulum as well as it made its funny little loop around the place where Lucida sat captive among many other Durupinen enemies. Then I imagined the pendulum crashing to the ground on top of the place and squashing it flat. It was a childish moment, but it was common knowledge that I was not above childishness.

  “Well, we don’t want to disrupt you too much, Moira,” Mackie said. “So, we’ll just be on our way.”

  “Get on with ye, then,” Moira said without looking at us. She was now measuring angles with a protractor.

  “Right, then. Good luck,” Mackie said, and gestured that we should follow her up the steps again. We did so, leaving the tiny old woman scuttling around in the semi-darkness behind us, like a rodent in a lonely attic.

  “I think the rule is one raving, tower-bound lunatic per castle, Mackie,” I said, when we had closed the door behind us. “Between her and Fiona we’ve exceeded our limit here.”

  Mackie chuckled. “Yeah, she’s an odd duck to be sure. But she’s also the best Mapkeeper in the world, so we ignore the majority of her idiosyncrasies.”

  “Does she seriously never leave that room?” Hannah asked, pulling agitatedly at her own fingers. “Where does she eat? Where does she sleep?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, she’s got her own sleeping quarters off of the map room,” Mackie said. “And someone is tasked with bringing her meals and seeing that she’s got everything she needs. Story is that she took over the Léarscáil when she was still an Apprentice, and she’s tended to it every day since.”

  “That can’t be healthy, though,” Hannah insisted. “People need fresh air and sunlight. And besides, she looks much too old to be working like that.”

  Mackie smirked. “You go in there and tell her she’s got to stop tending that map, and see what happens. They’ve been encouraging her toward retirement for years, but she just refuses. And it’s hard to argue with her, because she is still the very best in the world at what she does. In fact, she’s the one who discovered where you were, Hannah.”

  Hannah started. “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Trackers acted on a tip from her that a latent Durupinen might be active in the New York
area, and that’s how Lucida and Catriona first tracked you down. You started using your Calling abilities consciously and it caused a disturbance on the Léarscáil. So, in a way it’s all down to Moira that you’re here.”

  Hannah blinked. She looked over at me. “Did you know that?”

  I shook my head. “I knew that the Trackers had located you, but Lucida never told us how.”

  Hannah was so lost in thought that she did not speak again all the way back down to the entryway, though Mackie kept prattling on about the Léarscáil and all of the fascinating types of spirit activity it could detect. I could not blame Hannah for continuing to ponder her first glimpse at the contraption that had been responsible for breaking her free from eighteen years of misery.

  13

  Finding Frankie

  THE MOMENT WE SET FOOT in the entrance hall we knew something else had happened. There was a heavy pall over the room, a silence as though at a funeral, and the whole chamber was thick with the smell of smoke.

  “What is it? What’s going on?” Mackie asked a young woman standing at the base of the stairs.

  “Another Habitation,” the woman replied, and her voice was full of tears. “Just now.” She pointed a shaking finger toward the fireplace, from which puffs of deep grey smoke were billowing, though the fire itself seemed to have gone out. A glistening puddle of water was spreading across the floor in front of the hearth, and a small knot of people, including several Caomhnóir, were bent over, struggling with something just beyond it.

  Then two of the Caomhnóir straightened up and turned, so that we had a clear view of the commotion. Patricia O’Toole lay pinned to the floor, whimpering and struggling. Finn rushed forward to help, but there was nothing for him to do. She was already being hauled to her feet and carried in the direction of the hospital wing.

  I walked over to the fireplace and squatted down beside it. I hadn’t knelt on this spot since a spirit had used me to cover the walls in a grotesque mural depicting the Prophecy. I woke from that trance with third degree burns from my elbows to my fingertips and no memory of having drawn the mural, which stretched all the way up to the ceiling two stories above.

  I reached into the fireplace, careful to avoid the places where embers still glowed like rubies. I extracted several large fragments of porcelain—the remains of a large pitcher that Patricia had undoubtedly used to try to douse the flames.

  “What is this about?” I said out loud, more to myself than to anyone else, but Finn answered me, having followed me over to the fireplace.

  “The Shattered spirit must have died in a fire, or else had a terrible fear of it in life,” Finn said quietly. “It seems to be one of the only characteristics strong enough that every Shard still remembers it and acts upon it. Celeste said that the Shards would be confused and disoriented, but they certainly show no confusion around fire.”

  “Yeah, I bet you’re right, Finn. Spirits nearly always fixate on the major events of their lives, especially their deaths, and most especially if those deaths were traumatizing,” I said, thinking through the many spirits I’d felt Cross through me. Hardly one had slipped through without a visceral flash of his own death.

  Hannah and Milo had walked over to join us, their faces grim. “Since Catriona was the source of the Shattering, do you think Fairhaven was the source of the spirit itself?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s possible,” Finn said, nodding his head. “I’d even say probable.” Celeste and the Scribes are researching every clue that the Shards are giving them. They are trying to connect it to the spirits that they have records of here at Fairhaven.”

  “But the resident spirits here Crossed during the Prophecy,” Hannah said, staring down at her twisting fingers. From where I sat on the floor, I could see guilty tears welling in her eyes again. “So, searching the history of the castle isn’t going to do much good, is it? Any spirits from those recorded deaths will have gone.”

  “It’s possible a few are still…” I began, but Hannah shook her head.

  “I Called them myself, Jess. I didn’t leave any behind,” she said, a barely concealed sob in her voice.

  As Milo leaned in to comfort Hannah, Finn went on. “There are many spirits here that have arrived since the Prophecy. Because of the Geatgrima and the high concentration of active Gateways, this place is a spirit magnet. The Scribes do their best to keep track of all spirits who take up residence here for any length of time, but even those will take a good long time to research.”

  “Who knows how long this could go on if the Council doesn’t find the name themselves? If the spirit doesn’t want to tell us its name voluntarily, how will we ever expel the damn thing?” I said, chucking the pieces of porcelain back into the soggy ashes in my frustration. “Hannah, remind me to kill Karen when we get home. I can’t believe we are stuck here like this.”

  “There’s really no chance the spirit came from somewhere other than these grounds?” Milo asked.

  “Catriona had been on the grounds for a full day before the Shattering happened. I can’t imagine she had a spirit Habitating in her for longer than that without noticing.”

  “Unless…” Milo started, and then stopped himself, looking embarrassed.

  “Go on, Milo,” Finn prompted. “Unless what?”

  “Well, I was just thinking out loud,” Milo said sheepishly. “But, what if the spirit didn’t Habitate without permission? What if Catriona brought it here on purpose?”

  Finn frowned, but not in skepticism. He seemed to be seriously considering the idea. Milo realized this, and he went on disgorging his theory.

  “Look, obviously it sounds a little strange, but what if, while Catriona was off working for the Trackers, she came across this spirit? What if the spirit asked her to bring it here, or maybe she felt compelled to bring it here for some reason?”

  “Why would Catriona need to do that?” I asked.

  “There could be a million reasons,” Milo said. “Most spirits get disoriented too far from the place where they died. I’m an exception, because I’m Bound to you, so anywhere you go, I can go too, without feeling those disorienting effects. But maybe this spirit needed to get here, and Catriona volunteered to bring it? Maybe it had unfinished business here that it needed to take care of before it crossed.”

  Finn raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. “That’s a very interesting theory, Milo.”

  Milo shrugged, trying to look modest. “I am one of the great minds of the deadside, we all know that.”

  Finn stood up. “I’m going to have a word with Seamus, and see if he will pass this theory on to Celeste and the Trackers.” He walked a few steps and then turned sharply back to us. “Don’t leave the entrance hall without me,” he ordered.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re like, the meanest babysitter ever.”

  As Finn marched past the staircase, Savvy came pounding down it, muttering angrily to herself. She spotted us and stalked over, her expression so fierce that I had to resist the urge to back away from her.

  “That’s it. I’ve had it. I quit. Someone give me the sack already.”

  “What’s wrong, Sav?” Hannah asked, placing a consoling hand on her shoulder. Savvy did not shrug it off.

  “It’s Frankie. I’m done. She’s not going to give in, no matter how many times I try to convince her. I just talked my bloody head off for an hour, and nothing. We’ve just got to close her Gateway and start over.”

  “I don’t think you can do that,” Hannah said gently.

  “Well, the Council will have to figure it out without my help, because I’m bowing out,” Savvy said, and her anger seemed to melt into exhaustion before our eyes. “I was so excited to help someone,” she said, flopping into a chair by the fire. “I thought I could actually be of some real use to someone instead of always being the resident fuck up. I thought, if I could make this Durupinen mess easier for someone, then maybe it was worth it, everything I went through. Ha bloody ha. What a joke.”

  Hannah
walked over and sat down next to Savvy, placing her curly brown head on Savvy’s shoulder. Savvy lay her own ginger head on top with a defeated sigh. “What say you, wee one? Any pearls of wisdom for your ol’ Savvy? I could use some, and that’s the truth.”

  “You asked me before if I might be able to talk to Frankie for you,” Hannah said. “Do you want me to go do it now?”

  Savvy picked up her head and looked at Hannah with an expression of relief. “Would you? That would be brilliant!”

  “I can’t promise it will help,” Hannah said. “But I can try. I can’t stand you looking so gloomy. It’s disrupting the natural order of the universe if you’re not laughing.”

  And Savvy obliged, laughing heartily and pulling Hannah into something that was half-hug, half-headlock. “Ah, you are the best, Hannah, that absolute best. Shall we go up now, then?”

  Hannah’s voice was muffled, as she was still trapped in Savvy’s armpit. “Why not? It’s either that or sit around waiting for a Shard to infect us. I’d rather keep busy, wouldn’t you?”

  Savvy turned to Milo and me. “You two coming as well?” she asked.

  We agreed, and then we all stood up and headed for the stairs. I flagged down Finn with a wave of my hand and told him where we were heading.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” he told me, and turned back to Seamus to finish their conversation.

  Frankie’s room was on the third floor, surrounded by other Apprentice rooms. The hallway was empty, except for Caomhnóir standing guard in front of a few of the doors.

  “This is her, here,” Savvy said, hitching her thumb at the door. “Want me to come in with you? I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting when she’s about to throw something.”

  Hannah stared thoughtfully at the door for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “No, I think it’s better if I go in there alone. She doesn’t trust you, but she has no reason to mistrust me yet.”

  We turned at the sound of footsteps. Finn was rounding the corner into the corridor, followed by Bertie, who was panting and clutching at a stitch in his side.