The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  Reality sank in for Pyke. The others were speaking, but he couldn’t hear them. He began to shake with the shock of pain and realization combined: Raine’s strike had obliterated the Fae, but it had also deafened him.

  Aquamarine turned away to face someone else, and Pyke struggled to sit up from the cold wooden floor of the collection room. Someone had placed a pillow under his head, likely taken from one of the toppled displays.

  He opened his mouth and tried to say, What happened to my eyes? but faltered as it didn’t seem as though the words were leaving his mouth. As his disorientation faded, he realized that of course he wouldn’t be able to hear himself, either.

  A scrap of parchment was shoved in front of his eyes. He could faintly make out some writing on it, but he couldn’t read it. He looked up and saw Vino staring back down at him: the Risker’s face was indistinct but now fairly recognizable.

  Vino turned his head and said something over his shoulder, and Pyke seized the Risker’s wrist. He made a writing motion, saying Graphite in a voice he himself still couldn’t hear. After slightly more than a minute, a brittle quill pen was thrust into his hand: the implement from the room with the book.

  Turning the parchment over to the blank side, Pyke wrote as best he could without being able to see, ‘Does my voice work?’

  He held it out to Vino, who took it. Reading it, the Risker nodded, mouth moving.

  I can’t understand you, Pyke said, trusting that the words were making it through. My ears…

  There were gesticulations and other reactions above and around him, but he couldn’t tell who was speaking. For the first time, Pyke considered how lonely, how frustrating it must be for those who were born deaf to try to communicate with others. He felt like an outsider, even with so many people talking to him and about him.

  Aquamarine knelt in front of Pyke and used both hands to press something firm and wet against the sides of his head. He resisted the urge to pull away, hoping against hope that the Seer had some magic for this situation, too.

  Based on the vague outlines his swimming vision allowed, Pyke guessed Aquamarine’s eyes had changed back to their blue colour and human-like shape. To Pyke’s immense relief, his vision cleared further and he heard sounds distantly in his right ear. They began as a tinny muttering, and grew until he could clearly, if distantly, hear Merana and Vino arguing over whether ‘the Un-Guildsman’ deserved such pampering. Vino threw up his hands and crossed the room to one of the piles of Relics to sulk.

  Aquamarine’s illusory humanoid face swam into focus, and Pyke smiled weakly. “Healing is another of your magics?”

  The Seer shook their head no, and held up the cylindrical Relic the Voice had identified earlier. “Thanks to you, I possess the next best thing. Until today, I was only an herbalist. I could no more have regrown two eyes and two eardrums than taken flight into the skies.”

  Pyke broke out in a cold sweat. “Regrown…?” He looked down at his hand, and found there a mess of blood mixed with a whitish-yellow gel. Suspended in the gel was an unmistakable brown iris flecked with pale grey.

  Pyke rolled to one side and vomited on the floor, wiping frantically at his face with one sleeve to remove the ruins of his eyes from where they had melted and run down his cheeks. Trembling from head to toe now, he stayed there on all fours, trying to control the rate of his racing breath.

  “Antiquarian.”

  Pyke looked up to see Raine crouching a short distance away, her face lowered to be level with his. Her expression was somber. “Please accept mine apologies, and also mine oath of friendship. I owe thee a blood-debt twice over, for thou hast saved my life from the grasping darkness and been repaid only in thy blood shed by my hand.”

  Pyke took one more shuddering breath, leaning back to stare at the Gigant. “In future, I hope you’ll remember that we humans are a little more fragile than you are.” His voice shook.

  “I swear it.” Raine stood in a rush. “How may I aid thee?”

  “He needs rest,” Aquamarine responded from behind Pyke. “And some more of this mixture on his ears. If you would help him, friend Raine, fetch two more pillows and watch the doorways.”

  Raine looked to Pyke. He stared back for a second, trying and failing to get his shock-addled mind to encompass the shift in the Gigant’s demeanour, then nodded speechlessly at her. Without a moment’s further hesitation, she set about collecting pillows from next to several fallen plinths.

  “Sit down, please.” Aquamarine had arranged his pillow against a bookshelf. Pyke gratefully scooted himself backward into the spot the Seer had prepared, and shifted slightly as Raine pushed two more pillows between his back and the shelf with surprising gentleness.

  “What happened after I…?” he asked as Aquamarine began to apply more of the medicine to his still-deafened left ear.

  “The Fae dissipated,” Aquamarine responded. “Without a body, her voice spoke, telling us that we would not be suffered to invade her home unpunished.”

  “I thought we established this place belonged to one of the Dead,” Vino said, joining the conversation from amid the pile of Relics he had been picking through.

  Pyke sighed. “It is. The Fae is his wife.”

  All eyes turned to him.

  “I shouldn’t say more about her. But now that we seem to have made an enemy of her, I will give you some information considered strictly ‘need-to-know’ by the Antiquities Guild. There’s a reason the true nature of the Fae is a closely guarded secret: in the time of the Ancients, every morsel of information a person knew about a Fae gave it a little bit more power, drawn straight from that person’s lifespan. We hoped they were gone forever, but feared that knowing too much about them would risk reviving them. They’re living stories… and this book contained one of those.”

  Aquamarine gasped. “Then the one with snow and sunlight in her eyes, before whom I stood, and against whom I used the deep arts…”

  “Yes, it was she,” Raine rumbled, and there was fear in her voice. “I know her description, as do all my people, for we lived in the time before.”

  “Who is she?” Merana narrowed her eyes. “You damn fiends, speakin’ in riddles! Who d’you mean?”

  The Seer clasped their web-fingered hands over their mouth. “I must say no more.”

  “Listen properly this time: to know her story gives her power.” Pyke met Merana’s eyes. “We won’t be telling you what we know. Unlike you, we want to live through today.”

  Pyke didn’t miss the careful, subtle shake of the head Eiten gave Merana. Glancing at him, Merana backed down with only a halfhearted grumble.

  The hearing in Pyke’s left ear was starting to return, now, too. He checked his pack, and found that the book had been placed back in the appropriate compartment.

  “So… is anyone going to ask why the Antiquarian was speaking fluent Old Ancient just before Raine bashed the Fae into a million pieces?” Vino’s stare into Pyke’s eyes was more direct and challenging than Pyke had yet seen from the Risker.

  Everyone except Raine and Vino was now avoiding eye contact with Pyke. He was reminded, not for the first time, that he had never been any good at understanding people.

  Raine bristled and loomed protectively over Pyke. “Thou hast given him discomfort! Silence thyself, shrinking Vino human.”

  Vino quailed, but Merana straightened and crossed the room to glare coldly down at Pyke, her belligerent stance daring Raine to do something rash. “No. I wanna know what’n the Ashen hells that was. You been nothin’ but trouble an’ mysteries since you showed up, and all we got to show for it is that Wolder ain’t around no more.”

  “And a room full of valuable Relics,” murmured Eiten, but Merana shot him a glare and he fell silent.

  Pyke’s thoughts were sluggish, and he blinked several times in an attempt to clear them as he stared up at Merana. “You’ll have to excuse me if I… don’t remember very well. What are you referring to?”
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  Raine knelt to look Pyke in the eyes, shouldering Merana out of the way. “In the instants before the… accident, thine eyes became the dark grey of the tundras, and thy voice shook the walls and ceiling. It was as though a terrible and mighty being were standing in thy place, speaking through thee.”

  Pyke closed his eyes to hide the colour changes which accompanied his conversations with his Voice. What did you do?

 

  Explain.

 

  “I used the magic of the book.” The half-truth rolled off Pyke’s tongue with an ease which surprised him. “There’s a memory of sorts inside it, encoding a few key entities from its story. I was able to use the book to speak in the voice of the Dead Lord Tamelios. No doubt the Fae thought I was her love, returned to her.”

  “That explains the other part of her threat,” Eiten said. “She didn’t just say she would punish us for trespassing in her home. She also said she would reclaim her love, her Tamelios, and free him of our jealous control.”

  Pyke groaned and sank back against the pillows. “Just what we needed. The undivided attention of another Ancient.”

  “Quiet, please,” Aquamarine said, their posture straightening. The Seer’s ear-fins opened wide as though they were listening to a distant sound… but Pyke couldn’t hear a thing. Perhaps his ears hadn’t yet fully recovered.

  After an expectant pause of half a minute, during which time everyone stared at Aquamarine, the Seer nodded. “I am receiving a message from across the veil. It appears that Pyke’s friend Jenna has freed him from the control of the Fae sisters. His name is safe to use now.”

  Pyke breathed a long sigh of relief. “That explains my sudden freedom.”

  Aquamarine held up a hand to indicate the need for further silence. After another pause, they continued, “Jenna has learned of our plight, and knows a path to a place which may be of use to us. She cannot access it in the real world, but intends to return when it is safe.”

  Worry clenched like a fist in Pyke’s belly. “Safe? Is something dangerous happening over there?”

  Aquamarine glanced at him. “I am unable to ask. I can hear Jenna, but she cannot hear me unless I go to the world-window where she speaks… and she seems in a hurry. Be silent.”

  The Seer listened for a minute longer, then nodded. “She will describe the way, but we should hasten. The people of the Last Spellbound House are panicking: they can feel their life’s force being drawn away. Soon, I will tell more of what Jenna has said. For now, time grows short. Come.”

  The Seer led the way out of the collection room, and everyone followed, Eiten pausing to snatch up three of the smaller Relics lying on the floor. Aquamarine spoke again as they crossed the wreckage of the trapdoor, now no longer a threat. “Vino, I believe you know this place best. With all haste, find us the steps leading into the… addic? Forgive me, the word is unfamiliar.”

  “The a-attic?” Vino asked, stuttering with surprise at being called on. “S-sure, I just don’t see what we’d find there. A Lens would be too unstable that high off the ground.”

  “If Jenna is correct, and if the Place Aside mirrors the real world, we shall find there a secret stairwell. It leads to a basement hewn into the stone underneath the manse. Take us there, swiftly but quietly— I am listening further to her words.”

  Vino took the lead, peering out into the darkness with his vision Relic adorning his forehead. Pyke listened as best he could, but the halls were silent as the grave, devoid even of the faint slithering noise the darkness-automaton had made. He wondered idly when the light-automata would return.

 

  Thank goodness for small mercies.

  Before too long, using Vino’s shortcuts, the group arrived in a hallway much like any other. There was a break in the wall partway down the corridor, which held a set of stairs.

  “Seek a hidden lever behind the decorative wooden panel above and to the right of the lowest step,” instructed Aquamarine. “Jenna is repeating the instructions for me, but she sounds rushed.”

  Eiten wasted no time, running a gloved hand swiftly along the decorations until he found the panel which slid. Pushing it open, he flipped the switch.

  The wooden steps descended one at a time to form a new flight leading down, connecting to a curving spiral staircase which descended out of view.

  “Jenna has fled. I hear running footsteps and shouts, but they are indistinct due to their distance from the world-window,” Aquamarine said. “It seems that she is in danger. Let us move swiftly: in the depths of this place may beat the Manse-Heart we seek.”

  “I shall go first. I am not so fragile as you humans.” Raine took the lead, stepping over Eiten. The spiral staircase was just wide enough for the Gigant, and she descended swiftly, her immense strides taking the steps four at a time without effort.

  Pyke and the others hurried to follow, urgency in their steps. Their objective lay ahead, but time was running out.

  Chapter 16

  Jenna crept down the central corridor in total darkness, fearing a lantern might give her away. She had passed four more searchers in the time since she had fled the thin place. She hoped Aquamarine had heard her: the glyph hadn’t reappeared, though Jenna wasn’t certain it was supposed to. She had to trust her message had made it through. Otherwise, she couldn’t imagine them finding the secret staircase in time to stop this.

  She was becoming certain that the paranoia of the people prowling the hallways wasn’t natural. They seemed intent on finding her, as though she were the missing key to what was happening to them… but she couldn’t see any reasonable way the adventurers and scholars of the Last Spellbound House could have come to that conclusion.

  And then there was the fact that the air felt hazy and thick, though there was no smoke or mist in the corridors as far as she could see. Just to be certain, she took care to keep one hand on the dowsing rod Relic, which Lifa had called the Grandmaster’s Manipulators, in case they held off the haze in the same way they’d helped her to resist Rosie’s Glamours.

  Coming around the corner into the library, Jenna could hear two men babbling. Their speech struck her as being just as unnatural as everything else lately.

  “Get the girl, gotta get her, take her to the top, take her… take her there, find a way in,” one was muttering frenetically.

  “What if it needs a sacrifice? What if it needs blood? What if they want my blood for the sacrifice? Ohh, no, no, no,” whimpered the other. “Catch the girl, maybe they can use her blood instead of mine, oh please, don’t bleed me…”

  It was as though the two were unaware of each other, unaware of anything but their need to find and stop whatever they considered the greatest threat to them. One was on the upper level, pacing frantically and scanning the library with a lantern-light. The other was sitting huddled in a corner of the large open space in the centre of the room, watching by the light of a candle and occasionally moaning with fear.

  Jenna waited until the watcher above her shone his light in the other direction, then stepped into the darkness at her end of the library. After a minute of creeping through shadows cast by the rows of bookshelves, she arrived at the open space where the second one huddled.

  I need a distraction. Think, Jenna, think…

  Her left hand, the one which wasn’t still holding the Manipulators, closed around something in Pyke�
�s pocket. It appeared to be an unusually heavy stick of wax, and when she pulled one end apart she found the half-chewed nub of a dense ration bar of some kind, still moist from the last time it had been bitten. Eww…

  Jenna gingerly pinched the wax closed again, then drew her arm back and threw the snack as hard as she could. It made a satisfying thump as it landed among the bookcases on the other end of the open space.

  The downstairs watcher gave a start, snatched up a cudgel lying in the darkness next to him, and jumped to his feet, shouting incoherently about witches and Ancients. He rushed into the shadows where Jenna had thrown the ration bar, and the one on the walkways above turned the light to point in that direction.

  It was now or never. Jenna raced across the open space and between the bookshelves on the other side, heading straight for the secret passageway. She reached in between the shelves, and after a frightening moment of fearing she’d mistaken which one it was, she found a handle. Pulling it, she stifled a sigh of relief as the bookshelf rotated.

  She slipped through and pulled the handle on the other side, closing the opening. She prayed to the Phoenix that the paranoid searchers hadn’t seen the bookcase swing shut… but thankfully they’d seemed plenty distracted searching for the source of the noise.

  Jenna turned the spark-maker to light her lantern and proceeded down the curving half-turn of steps. At the bottom of them, leaning against the wall, was Anabel’s cane.

  A lump came to Jenna’s throat as she picked the object up. It felt heavier than it should in her hands, weighty with import. I’m sorry, Anabel… I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t do anything to save you.

  Jenna leaned wearily on the cane, which now felt like the only thing stopping her from collapsing. She’d had to stay on the move since the moment Anabel had vanished under the grasping hands of the mob, and hadn’t had a chance to rest since then. Now, her sadness, her regret, and her exhaustion were all catching up with her at once.