by J M Robison
Darik’s bagged head lolls to the side, and he curls both knees into his chest, choking. I slice open the back of the bag, sawing at the ties around his throat while his body convulses and wheezes and chokes.
“Breathe, Darik!” I pull the bag off and throw it aside. His tumble of black hair has come out of its tie and sticks to his face, drizzling in the water, blood, and vomit now in the grass. His face has been marred by a broken nose. Bruising swells under one eye.
I cut the rope around his ankles, wrists, and fingers swollen purple. I kneel next to him. He tries to breathe, but it’s forced out again in a violent cough sprayed with more water. My heart hammers in my neck and head as I wait for him to fully recover. His body has stopped convulsing with every gag and choke, and he finally breathes easy, though he shivers.
I’ve put eight fingers in my mouth in heightened anticipation. He’ll be okay.
He looks at me. “Didn’t you—” His voice pinches, and he coughs. “Have a friend to save at eight?”
I take offense that his first words weren’t a thank you. “It’s not eight yet.”
“Yet. You’ve wasted time with me.” He pushes his body up and rolls onto his knees.
“Wasted?” I’m stricken with confusion and anger. “You were…drowning. I just saved you.”
“Whatever for?”
I’m so shocked by the fury in his eyes that I sit back without a word.
He grinds his lower jaw and looks away. Water and blood drip down his face. “If I didn’t die today by the Camorra, I’ll just die tomorrow.” He rises to his feet and lowers a hand to me. “It’s got to be almost eight. We’re not that far from the Pantheon, but we have to run.”
I’m stiff with hurt over his cold gaze. I grasp his fingers, and he pulls me up.
A bell booms above the rooftops.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Zadicayn
A bell booms through the window.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice…
Jaicom was eager to disbelieve my claims that Black Magician demons were holding the window and door secure. Ten hours ago, someone outside our room got tired of his pounding and came to investigate. Which led to the hotel owner trying his own key in the lock, then calling a locksmith who removed the entire mechanism, the hinges, and still the door would not budge, as if it had been nailed shut into the stone. They tried an axe, which yielded the same result as the bust I threw at the window. Burning it down was considered, but they settled for calling for a priest instead. He just arrived. I hear his exorcism prayers through the wood, along with the eighth toll of the bell.
The door, removed of its lock and hinges, falls forward into the hallway. Men shout and scramble out of the way as it crashes against the rug.
“Zadicayn!” Jaicom leaps for joy. “The priest worked!”
“Did ye not hear the bell toll eight just now?”
His grin drops.
I stand, heart thrumming with the same fervor as the night I was dragged in front of the priest who broke my amulet. I want to tell Jaicom to go back home tonight, without me, because I’m walking into a trap I can’t avoid or do anything about. Because they have my wife and son.
“Ye don’t have to come with me.”
“Have you become daft?” Jaicom places his hat on his head. “I didn’t allow you to drag me all the way here on the back of a dragon just so I could wave farewell to you right now.”
Farewell is right.
“You’ll do well, Zadicayn. You’ll blow those magicians away with your magic, sweep Brynn off her feet, and carry her into the…I was going to say sunset, but it’s raining.”
I force a grin for him. If I have one prayer, I hope Jaicom can return safe and unharmed to Clarissa and his growing family. While Jaicom was distracted by the door all day, I loaded his rucksack with the rest of my Fae money and a note to deliver to Brynn’s parents with a sad, sorry, and regretful explanation about what happened to their daughter, their grandson, and me.
Eudora is safe in the Fae Realm. As long as she comes out of it within two days or so of my death, the Faewraith won’t come. In the note, I ask Jaicom to take care of Eudora for me, since I trust Eudora to go to Jaicom if she is confused about what happened to me. She’s started calling him Uncle Whaerin.
I never should have left the undercroft.
I walk out the doorway with a confident Jaicom right behind.
The Pantheon is just down the street. We come upon the square in front of the Pantheon to what appears to be a riot. A close examination determines it is not, though the common-dressed people skirting the edge of the massive square appear to be upset they weren’t invited, proven by the line of singular dressed men with clubs prohibiting entry. The entrance has been funneled to one narrow point. A man stands at it, verifying people entering.
It’s our turn. I show the man the letter. His gaze slides down it, grinning when he finishes, then hands it back. He waves us through.
“Unsettling,” Jaicom comments.
I’m beyond the feeling of that word.
Tables border the edge of the square. A nearby restaurant must have provided the food, for some of it still steams upon their tops. Finely dressed men and women sway in the center, dancing and socializing. An orchestra plays near the fountain. Lanterns light up the entire area.
The common folk on the outskirts pace restlessly, eyes like wolves waiting for the shepherd to leave. I understand their plight–the age-old war where the middle-class feel oppressed.
The Pantheon itself is lit up like a theater, bright banners drooping from the roof top with enough lanterns that I can see ancient cracks in the marble. Numb feet propel me toward it. Brynn is in there. And that is why I keep moving forward.
A man stands against a pillar to the entrance of the ancient building. He steps forward upon our approach. “Nomi?”
Before I can hand the man the letter, Jaicom pipes up with, “Parli inglese?”
His eyes narrow and he reassesses Jaicom’s top hat, buttoned vest, and my hodge-podge of Middle Ages clothing.
I rip the letter out of my pantaloons like I’d rip a knife out of my body, and hand it to him. He takes it hesitantly, scans over it, and looks at me with a bigger grin than the first man. He waves me through with slimy cordiality.
“Solo lui.” He puts a hand to Jaicom’s chest. I look over my shoulder.
“I guess…” Jaicom steps back, “it’s just you.”
My knees turn to water, and I almost buckle. They’ve taken Joseara, and now they’re separating Jaicom from me. I’m facing this alone and defenseless. I’m likely to see my amulet in their possession when I walk inside. I hope the Faewraith they would have summoned for touching it ate as many of them as it could.
It’s better Jaicom doesn’t come inside. I’d rather his last vision of me to be of me walking in to rescue my wife instead of walking into Illuminati hands.
“You’ll do great,” Jaicom says as if I’m entering try-out for a recital. He smiles confidently.
My heart beats like a half-second clock hand. I walk inside.
I stop in the doorway, absorbing everything. The inside is one massive circular room with a domed roof. Niches in the wall hold statues, and an intentional hole in the ceiling bleeds in the last of the sunlight. The dancers and bystanders pay me no heed, though a few quick glances have me believing they are assessing my hairstyle as being at odds with their culture. The musicians play like I’ve seen at any other party I’ve been to, everyone dressed nicely to compete.
If this is a trap, it’s waiting on some trigger to spring it. Brynn and Levi may not be here, but I’ve no other choice. I’m a horse chasing a carrot, and can’t change my current circumstance unless I chase that carrot to the end and spring that trap.
I keep my back to the curving wall, walking along it, trying to memorize faces, trying to recognize exactly one–the Italian who met me at Blackfriars.
I see him. Turning in the center o
f the floor in dance with his woman partner. His eyes flip to me every time she spins back around. He’d been watching me since I first stepped in. Just waiting for me to notice.
He stops and walks out of the dancing circle, leaving his partner–my wife–on the floor. The other couples stop dancing as well, walking away. The circle spreads around me and Brynn. My heart rams into my ribs and then dies for a full heartbeat.
Her long brown hair is piled into a curled mass atop her head, other curls swept across her throat and the open chest of her corseted silk dress, which must have been spun from the sun itself for how it glitters gold. Brown eyes connect with mine, glistening with tears I cannot name until she shakes her head.
The circle has spread to leave a clear path in front of me to Brynn. The music stops. She shakes her head again, tears streaking down her painted cheeks.
It’s a warning not to come any closer. I see it as loudly as if she had screamed it. Brynn, I have to. I know it’s a trap, but if I don’t go to ye, then they shall keep ye forever. I’ve failed to conquer this circumstance, so I must trip it into something new and try again.
I walk forward, my boot heels too loud in an ancient Roman building full of people.
Her hands lift toward me as if to accept me into the embrace I’ve ached for every night. I’m still twenty feet from her when the ambience of the room shifts. I stop. The trap has been sprung. I’m going to be thrashed.
I cover my head and drop to the floor.
The room bursts as if with a sudden gale off the ocean, roaring with a howl. It should have whirled the skirts and coats of my audience, but it only affects me. Black Magician demons can’t touch that which has been blessed or baptized. Unless a massive sacrifice to the devil was made to bridge over that restriction. Like a human sacrifice.
Unseen hands grab my limbs and my feet flip over my head, tossed up into this gale. A blackness covers my eyes, and a hand grabs my throat so I can’t form words, can’t breathe, can’t shout. The Black Magicians have effectively taken away everything I need to cast a spell, even if I’d had my amulet.
I can’t say how far up I was taken, but my body is abruptly dropped, and I believe I’ve gone through the floor because Brynn’s scream now rises above me in a blood-thickening shrill.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Joseara
We sprint into the crowd in front of the Pantheon. A man standing as a gatekeeper for invited guests only, shouts at us in Italian. A bustle behind us warns I’ve got mere seconds before I’m grabbed and hauled away.
I push past people, heart beating as if I’d run all the way from the river instead of relocating us with magic to get here faster. I see the steps to the Pantheon. I don’t know if Zadicayn has gone in yet. Relief falls out of me when I spot Jaicom’s top hat above everyone’s heads. I shoulder my way to him and latch onto his arm.
He jerks in alarm and spins as if to strike me with his cane. His eyes widen. “Joseara? Where have you–”
“Where is Zadicayn?”
“He’s just gone inside. Missed him by less than a minute. I tried to go–”
I leap past Jaicom just as hands reach to grab me. Darik is not successful. His capture buys me a few more seconds, and I use magic to relocate onto the top step.
“Zadicayn!” I scream because I need him to hear me and come running. He’s going to die. Brynn said they wanted his blood.
I sprint across the porch beneath the pillars and fail to notice a man standing there. He snatches my arm, and my feet run out from under me. I would have fallen backward if it wasn’t for him hanging onto my arm.
“Non sei invitato!”
He bellows more Italian at me, and I kick him. He’s large, so it only makes him mad. I relocate closer to the doors with a spell, but because he’s attached to me, he comes with me. He shuts up and looks at me in shock. I don’t know any other spell to get him off me, so I fist Zadicayn’s amulet out of my shirt and press it to the man’s naked arm.
The amulet bucks and a Faewraith pops into reality with a sound of displaced air. The man lets go of me and draws his pistol. I sprint through the open doors as the pistol booms behind me. I don’t look to see if he was successful.
I push through the people who have formed a ring around the center of the massive domed chamber. I stop, seeing Zadicayn tossed to and fro in the air in a swirl of sound and wind that appears to only affect him.
Black Magicians.
Zadicayn plummets to the ground, and my heart stops beating as I believe he’s died. I shove my way to the front to see a yawning hole opened up in the floor. Zadicayn is gone, and the hole swirls closed to become solid polished marble again.
Through the haze of my failure and fear, I become aware of a keening and look up to see Brynn drop to her knees with fingers spread across the floor. I run at her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Brynnella
Zadicayn drops through the floor, and I scream until my soul shatters, until my blood shivers, until I’ve collapsed my lungs with how much sound and air I’ve pushed out. I’m about to pass out from the strain, but a hand claws onto my arm. In the next blink, I’m standing outside on a roof, overlooking Rome. I inhale and scream again.
“Brynn! Brynn! It’s me! Joseara!”
My scream liquefies into horrid sobs, and my knees buckle. I hit the roof and almost fall into the hole center of it. Joseara grabs my arm to prevent me, but my head still turns, and I’m looking down into the room below. The Pantheon below. We are balanced on the lip of the circular hole directly above the floor. My vision speckles.
“Brynn, breathe!”
I’m shaking. When I don’t inhale on command, she slaps me. The sharp sting makes me gasp. I push it all back out in a heartless, crushing moan.
“Where did they take Zadicayn?” she shouts.
I point into the room, at the spot where my husband fell to his death. “Under.” I can’t come up with any more words. I’m reliving six years ago when I watched Zadicayn’s head snap back as the priest drove his pike through the amulet hanging around Joseara’s neck.
Killing him.
“Breathe!”
I’m slapped again. I’m forced to inhale to shout at her. “Stop it!”
“Then you better bloody keep breathing.”
A sound of displaced air brings us to a flat roof across the street from the Pantheon.
“I’m going down to find Zadicayn. Stay here so I can find you again.”
She turns her head and vanishes.
“He’s underground,” I sob into the sky. “You won’t find him.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Zadicayn
I spin in black air for a brief moment, landing haphazardly upon soft materials. Hands seize my arms. I hold my resolve until a bag pulls tight over my head.
Breath locks in my throat, and I thrash like a madman, screaming like a wild animal–kicking, trying to claw. I’m eighteen again, and men are dragging me back into my castle’s undercroft to steal my amulet and lock me inside for three hundred more years.
My blue coat is pulled off me. More hands wrap around my legs. I thrash harder, snarling like I’m rabid. I’m slammed hard into a chair; heavy straps cinch around both legs. My left arm is held down to the arm of the chair and secured in the same manner. My right arm is stretched out; the sleeve jammed up to my elbow.
“What dost ye want with meself?”
No one answers. Likely don’t understand my Old English wrangled out of my anxiety. A sharp prick to my arm betrays a needle point. They’re poisoning me. I’m going to die.
Hands slap my chest and legs. Someone digs the letter out of my pocket.
“Where’s the amulet?” an Italian accent barks.
“I dost nary have it.” I’m hyperventilating. I’m going to pass out from panic–my body preparing to process the poison. I’ve seen Brynn for the last time. I loveth thee.
“No wonder we caught him so easily.”
The sack is y
anked off my head. I blink to clear away sweat and tears. I’m in an underground chamber, oil lanterns lighting up the space. I look at my outstretched arm. A red tube connects the needle embedded under my skin to a clunky metal device on the table next to me being hand-cranked by a man.
They’re not poisoning me. They’re taking my blood.
My head slams against the high-backed chair with the force of a heavy back-hand. “Where is your amulet?”
“Ye had no intention to offer me work.” A headache blooms behind my slapped eye. It flutters open. “Ye wanted me blood and amulet.”
“We all knew you would never work for us.”
“Let me wife and child go.”
“What child?”
Heavy dread flaps in the empty space my hope once occupied.
“Where. Is. Your. Amulet?”
So they didn’t take Joseara. What happened to her? Dead? Then where is my amulet? It’s not broken; otherwise I’d be dead.
“I dost nary wit!” Strength bleeds out of me and into that hand-cranked machine. They’ll take all my blood. I’ll never know the fate of Brynn and my son. Eudora is in the Fae Realm. The world will be absent the Fae Magic to keep the Faewraith away, and they will come.
“If ye kill me, ye shall die as surely.”
“Stop cranking!”
The tic-tac-tic-tac of the machine stops. The man stares hard at me. The harsh shadows cut a devilish costume mask out of his face. “Why will we die?”
“Me and the…amulet art connected.” I blink, unable to tell how much blood is left in my body. Unable to focus and barely able to keep my head up tells me not much. “The Fae made it that way…to protect their magic in case I’m killed.”
“That’s a lie. The book says the amulet will respond to the wizard’s blood.”
What book? Who wrote it? When? Why? Doesn’t matter. There is some truth to what he says. The amulet responds to Joseara as if it were me.
“It shall…but it needs my…my head to work.” I don’t know if that is true, given my experimentation with Joseara. “Ye have to speak Faery to command spells. Ye do not know the language.”