The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  Jenna whirled, yanking the dowsing Relic out of the counter through Rosie’s hand to hold it up between herself and Lifa… but then she lowered the device as it became clear the woman wasn’t likely to be any kind of threat.

  Lifa’s eyes were sunken and her face ashen. Her green dress had grown shabby and full of holes. The skin which showed through the gaps was mottled, peeling, and covered in red rashes, as though it were rotting away on her decrepit body. Barefoot on the tattered rug, Lifa’s toenails were dirty and broken as though she’d walked some great distance.

  “Oh, put that thing down,” Lifa snapped halfheartedly. “At this point, you could destroy me with a dull iron letter-opener, much less a legendary masterwork made by the Golem Grandmaster of True Sight.”

  “All the same, I think I’ll keep my guard up,” Jenna replied, taking one of the rods in each hand and pointing them in Lifa’s direction. “Stay where you are.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Lifa tried to quirk the corner of her mouth, but her parched lips cracked and bled wisps of rainbow colour which shimmered like nebulae and then dissipated. “Do what you have to, but know that if I possessed any of my true power I’d have already swept your personality aside and seized your will, with or without your trinket to bolster your resistance.”

  “Like Rosie tried to do.”

  Lifa shook her head, not bothering to look at Jenna as she rounded the bar with unsteady steps. There, she stared woodenly at her unconscious sisters. “Rosie was always the gentlest of us. I would never have been so merciful.”

  “Trying to take control of my mind is your idea of mercy?”

  “She wasn’t trying to dominate you, girl. She was trying to make you love her too much to hurt her.” The green-clad Fae caressed Rosie’s cheek with one welt-covered hand, then snorted. “How far we’ve fallen. There was a time when the vulnerable girl you see before you evoked the worshipful adoration of thousands. Now she struggles to engender the simplest covetous infatuation in the heart of a lonesome mortal. And Thorne, well… once, five legions of Relic-enhanced Mosoleiosh would have been little difficulty for her, but today she nearly destroyed herself proving a point to a mortal.”

  “Sorry if my heart fails to bleed. I came here because I want something from you.”

  “We’ve nothing to give.” Lifa’s voice was heavy with tiredness. “None yet live who tell our stories, and we spent what miracles we had left on a fool’s errand.”

  The lines on Lifa’s face deepened with the exhausted sagging of her features as she spoke. If Lifa had been a human being, Jenna would have said she’d aged ten cycles in the past minute.

  “Even now, my sisters would have ceased to be, were I not repeating their legends in my mind as we speak,” Lifa continued. “My time grows shorter with every repetition— I’ve less strength left than the frailest of humans, and when I expire, so will they.”

  “So Pyke will be set free even if I do nothing.”

  Lifa sighed bitterly. “Yes. So if you have nothing further to demand of me, I’d ask that you let me have my final moments with my sisters in peace.” A clump of Lifa’s straight black hair fell out onto the counter, and she levered herself stiffly onto one of the stools behind the bar, moving as though her joints ached too much to bend her legs.

  Jenna almost turned to leave, but a thought occurred to her before she completed the movement. She still didn’t know much about the Ancients, but she remembered something Pyke had said about the Dead: that they consumed mortal lives to stay bound to the real world. He hadn’t said anything about the Fae, but it stood to reason they were similar: they needed fuel to exist.

  Why would Lifa be repeating her sisters’ legends to herself, unless the stories had something to do with…?

  “What if I asked you to tell me your story?” Jenna suggested in a rush, an idea growing in her mind as she spoke.

  Lifa raised sunken eyes to stare into Jenna’s. “It’s a kind offer, but I’m bound against it.”

  “Kindness has nothing to do with it.” Jenna’s voice was sharp. Her idea was coalescing, now, and Anabel’s words about the power of tales and belief were central to it. “How about this, then: what if you were to tell me... a story. A tale about someone. Not you, of course. Not Thorne or Rosie. But a story about three... someones.”

  An impressed smile spread across Lifa’s parched features, and the corners of her eyes and mouth cracked and bled a thin, star-strewn mist. “I see. The protagonists of this story would explicitly not be anyone you know. But it would be beyond my control if you made some associations entirely on your own.”

  “You take my meanin’,” Jenna said, her Void’s Rim accent returning as she spoke quickly, the heady sensation of being in control rushing through her like a warm current. “Then let me make somethin’ else clear. I’ll agree to listen to this story yer plannin’ on tellin’… but only if ya do somethin’ for me first. Yer gonna swear now, on behalf o’ yourself and your sisters, to serve me for the rest o’ my natural life, an’ obey any command I give fer as long’s either one of us lives. You’ll swear it, or I’ll walk out that door.”

  Lifa’s mouth dropped open, but the corners of her lips were still turned upwards in a shocked smile. “Your audacity is unparalleled. What makes you think I consider servitude better than nonexistence?”

  “The fact that ya haven’ let yerselves disappear already,” Jenna replied, confidence rising in the core of her body. A slew of impressions were coming together into a clear conclusion in her mind. “Yer already under the thumb o’ somebody else, I can tell that much from yer talk o’ bindin’s. Why not make yer promise to a nobody like me, who only knows a few myths ‘bout the Ancients? It has to be better’n disappearin’ still workin’ for... whoever or whatever it is yer bound by right now. An’ besides, I’m only gonna live fifty or sixty more cycles if I’m lucky.”

  Lifa nodded as Jenna finished, one corner of her lips curling downward sourly and cracking apart in parched fissures. “You’re no fool. One of the characters in this hypothetical story, who has been called Cruel Necessity as a title of fear and respect, knows better than anyone else the position I’m in.

  “I demand only one change to this oath: that your commands end when your life does. Else, what stops you from instructing us never to speak a story again? We would gain nothing but some fifty to sixty cycles of servitude before meeting the same fate facing us now. I would rather go willingly into oblivion.”

  Jenna considered. She supposed she’d been a bit greedy: it made sense Lifa wouldn’t swear an oath which amounted to letting Jenna order her to kill herself.

  “Okay. Then you’ll swear not to harm or manipulate me, and obey me for as long as I live.”

  Lifa nodded. “I accept your terms.”

  “Which terms?” Jenna asked suspiciously.

  “The ones you mentioned earlier,” Lifa replied, her tone serious but her eyes sharp.

  “Swear it properly. I grew up on Faerie tales.”

  Lifa sighed. “I had to try. But now I am well and truly out of time, so you’ll have your sincere oath. I, Lifa, swear by my name and my story that I will serve Jenna Rileysdaughter and obey her commands for as long as she does live. I so swear on behalf of my sisters, Rosie and Thorne. I bind myself to forget them utterly and become their eternal enemy should they break with this oath sworn in my name.”

  Jenna considered the wording for a long moment, choosing not to think too hard about how Lifa had known her father’s name.

  “I... accept your oath, Lifa. Now I have one order to give you before you tell me these stories o’ yours.”

  “Only one? How generous.” There was a hint of tense sarcasm to Lifa’s voice. “Know that there are no wonders within my power anymore.”

  “Release Pyke,” Jenna commanded. “Release him from every magic, every bit o’ control you got over him, no matter how small. Once that’s done, then you have permission to start tellin’ the story.
”

  Lifa took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “The things I do for my sisters.” She knelt to place her right hand on Thorne’s ankle and her left on Rosie’s back. She closed her eyes, and the bodies of all three Fae faded partway into translucence, as though some integral part of them had begun to lose cohesion.

  “It is done.” Lifa wobbled on her feet as she stood, and braced herself against the bar. In a rush, she began to speak the first of three tales which had not been told in more than a century.

  The four thousand, three hundred and tenth cycle of the Fae Queen’s Rule

  I tell now a story of the time of the Ancients: then known as the Age of Glories, when the Fae Queen Melianne ruled over all. It was the era of the War Eternal’s most wondrous tales.

  This story follows the rise and fall of three sisters, bound by oath and Twining to a task which would one day destroy them. Their names aren’t important, but let us call them Silvertongue, Legionslayer, and Beloved-of-Nations.

  Each of the three was a famous Fae hero, known and feared across the Spellbound World. Many sought a Twining with their stories, but whether as friend or foe, few were successful in measuring up to more than a footnote in their legends.

  It was crafty Silvertongue who called the three together for a meeting, deep in a place called the Hall of Secrets where lies died unspoken, truth did not echo, and treachery was born. It was she who suggested that there was only one feat in all the Spellbound World which had never been attempted successfully, one which was beyond any one of them alone.

  That feat was this: to defeat the Queen of the Fae, and wrest control of the Courts from mighty Melianne’s faltering grasp.

  The glory of that tale, should it come to fruition, was sweeter and more intoxicating than the finest wine of the sky-orchards tended by the Fae noble Speaker-of-Vines. It captivated Legionslayer and Beloved-of-Nations, as Silvertongue had known it would. The Three bound themselves that very night to a mighty Twining which could never be undone until the Fae Queen fell from power.

  With their tales and expertise bound up in a Twining of such fell import, the Glamourcraft of the Three was magnified. They drew forth their dreams of rulership from their minds into reality, and forged from those dreams three weapons sharper than wit and deadlier than forgetfulness. They drained away their fear and their love of their shining Queen, and fashioned from them three suits of armour to withstand the keenest of blades and the sharpest of killing words. They melted down their ambition and cast it into tools of magic whose deep subtlety could unmake the indestructible and capture the infinite.

  But when they came, so armed with dreams and emotions and ambition, to the Royal Bower in the deepest heart of the Dreamwoods, they found it empty.

  The Three were at a loss. Was it not here that Melianne was rumoured to reside for the hundred cycles between one Gala of Excellence and the next? Was it not here that she was believed to spend each day standing motionless under the soul-flaying Waterfalls of Gossamer, drinking in inspiration from all across the realms of the Fae Courts? Was it not here that the Fae whispered how their Queen fashioned each night a work of wonder and imagination to rival the crowning achievements on which lesser Fae prided themselves?

  Was this not the place for their planned usurpation, the clash of tales and Glamourcraft which would usher in a new Age of the Hallowed Three?

  No, it appeared all was not as it should be: for the Queen had disappeared, and none had seen her since the most recent Gala had ended a decade ago. A mystery faced the would-be usurpers, and it seemed to revolve around the enigma of the Queen’s first and only Royal Consort, the daring Fae who had appeared so brazenly before Melianne at the Gala. Had someone beaten the Three to the glorious achievement of laying low the Queen of the Fae?

  Their quest to find Melianne was an epic story in itself, one which required the Legionslayer to journey for a full decade, defeating the Queen’s most trusted servants one by one and wresting from them the truth of her whereabouts.

  Yet none of their truths held more than a fragment of the whole: even the Fae Queen’s most trusted advisor, Regent All-See-All-Hear, did not know her whereabouts. To assemble those fragments of truth proved to be the work of another decade, even for an expert as skilled in puzzles and mysteries as Silvertongue.

  At the end of the trail of clues, Silvertongue found a seeming dead-end: a great weaving of obfuscation and silence prevented the mind of any being from forming the answer to the riddle. Webs within webs of ever-subtler social machinations were revealed: a network of words and hearts and landmarks which tied all the people and places of every Fae-ruled realm in the Spellbound World into that woven Working. The Three were briefly humbled, for they could not have conceived of such a vast spell… and they knew the only secret deep enough to merit this Working’s complexity was the truth of the Queen’s whereabouts.

  None could have unwoven a Working so grand and so subtle... save for sweet Beloved-of-Nations, who, with the power of her Twining amid the Three, now possessed the subtle art needed to divine the most secret and irresistible desire of every heart. With the power of the Three behind her, she could coax tears from the very stones. Her gentle, inexorable touch on the strands of the Fae Queen’s web teased apart the tiniest flaws in the grand weaving.

  Gently, Beloved-of-Nations weakened the chain of the enchantment. She travelled the Spellbound World, drawing to her worship the villages and keeps whose people’s belief in the Queen made up that chain’s most essential links. She debated the forests and the oceans, disproving one by one the ironclad facts of Melianne’s right to rule over them. Lovingly she seduced the very mountains anchoring the Queen’s weaving, so that they fell to chasms for the desperate want of her.

  By the time Beloved-of-Nations unravelled the spell, a total of thirty-nine cycles had passed since the time of the last Gala. The grand Working’s sigh of gentle surrender uncovered in her heart the location of a manse near an unremarkable village in a little-travelled corner of the Spellbound World.

  There, Silvertongue, Legionslayer, and Beloved-of-Nations met their doom: for the Queen of the Fae alone would have been a challenge for them… and she was not alone. She and her lover, who was none other than the Dead Lord Tamelios, defeated the Three and bound them with chains subtler than dream and stronger than will. Forged with a terrible and blasphemous combination of Dead Invention and Fae Glamour never before seen in the Spellbound World, these chains of silence and forgetting ensured the Three could never again speak their names or tell the legends of their deeds.

  To seal the fates of the would-be usurpers, Queen Melianne cursed each of them with a new name, and the Dead Lord bound them in a way no Fae had ever been bound before. The conspirators tied the Three to the service of the manse until the day should come that none yet existed who remembered them: the only true sentence of death a Fae can receive.

  And it is said that the Three endure to this day, bound together in diminishment and servitude by the same oath which united them as sisters in strength. They abide, waiting, hoping desperately that their binding may cease before their stories are told for the last time.

  Chapter 13

  “This juncture also has no special secret to it,” Aquamarine said, after a long, searching look up and down an empty wall.

  Raine let out a long, low growling noise, like rocks being ground together.

  The group was on the second storey of the manse, and it seemed to Pyke that everyone was on edge. They were seeking the second of the two confluences of the magical field, which overlapped the very centre of the manse, but as yet they had been unable to find a way in.

  The eerie emptiness of the corridors grated on Pyke, too. As the group had followed Vino’s recollections of the manse’s layout and moved from the first storey of the building to the second, the absence of patrolling light-automata had begun to seem less like a blessing and more like the calm before the storm.

  Raine’s certainty tha
t something terrible had replaced the light-automata wasn’t helping matters. Her grip on her metal-studded club was constant, and every so often she would mutter, “A darkness and a silent death stalk these halls,” or, “We must not linger, for I sense danger. Hurry, Seer.”

  “I suggest that we go to the north approach on this level,” said Aquamarine, their musical voice making the request sound like a song. “With haste, please, friend Vino. The depths of this place stir.”

  Merana, standing behind Aquamarine, seized the blue-skinned androgyne by the shoulder and pulled them around to face her. “Talk proper, or hold yer tongue: what depth-stirrin’, dark-livin’ thing are you fiends on about?”

  Aquamarine’s oversized eyes bulged. “Unhand me, please,” they whispered, trembling from head to toe.

  After a long pause, Merana removed her hand.

  “Forgive my reaction.” Aquamarine’s body had not yet ceased its trembling. “Among my people, physical touch is reserved for practical co-operation or for close family. It is never imposed unexpectedly. I am… as yet unused to your ways.”

  “Touch the Seer without permission again, and I shall twist thy head from thy shoulders,” said Raine from behind Merana. Everyone gave a start at the Gigant’s abrupt appearance, for she should have been hard to miss… but none was more startled than Merana herself, who blanched parchment-white.

  “That will not be necessary, friend Raine.” Aquamarine straightened, and their body ceased to tremble. “I am no strand of seaweed, to wilt so easily. To answer your question, young Merana, we are aware of danger through two different means, both of which you would call magic. My people’s arts tell me there is something in these corridors: something dark, and cold, and hungry. The light-soldiers may have fled it, or it may have consumed them. If so, its hunger will only be greater, not less. Raine can sense danger, thanks to her people’s birthright as guardians.”

  “Hence the name Hoard-Watchers,” Pyke murmured.