Quill

by A. C. Cobble

“Fish?”

  “Pet fish,” he clarified. “I’ve seen people put them in bowls like that. They watch them, I guess, swimming around.”

  “I don’t know anyone with a pet fish,” she replied, trying to ignore the nobleman.

  “What will you do with that?” he asked. After a moment, he also asked, “Do you need me to be quiet while you work?”

  “Fortunately not,” she replied.

  Then, she sat the bowl down in the center of the circle and knelt next to it. She poured half of the gold dust into the bowl and waited while it sank to the bottom. She picked up the glass knife and tested the edge. Sharp, but she wished it was sharper. Razor-sharp would suit well. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to sharpen glass.

  She glanced at Duke. “Our goal is to find Thotham. This ritual is designed to call upon a spirit and use it to locate him for us. Through the spirit’s senses, we should be able to see him. With luck, we’ll be able to identify where he is.”

  “A spirit,” said Duke. “A life spirit?”

  She held his look, and then her gaze fell back to the bowl, the knife, and the gold dust. She turned to examine her runes again, making sure they were accurate. Then, that the line was straight and that the candles were placed equidistant from her and the bowl.

  “Do those look the same distance from me?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Fetch me the salt. Then let us begin. Can you light the candles while I prepare the bowl? Once you are done, do not cross the boundary of the circle until I exit it.”

  “What will happen if I do?” he asked, stooping to collect a small brand from her fire and pulling it out to light the candles.

  “I don’t know, but surely nothing good.”

  He grunted then lit the candles. His nose wrinkled and he stepped back. “That smells awful.”

  “One contains the ashes of a dead man’s bones and the other the placenta from a pregnant woman,” she reminded. “I wouldn’t expect them to smell like lilac and cinnamon.”

  “What’s a placenta?” asked Duke.

  “There is so much you need to learn about women,” she chided. “How you manage to… to do as well as you do truly astounds me.”

  He shrugged. “I get by on what I do know.”

  “So it seems,” she agreed.

  Then, she drew the edge of the glass knife across her palm. She winced in pain, a short gasp escaping her lips. When the initial stab of pain faded, she began sawing hard at her flesh, cutting it deeply and letting the blood drip from her closed fist directly into the water in the scrying bowl.

  The pungent smoke, rising from the two candles, jerked. It began streaming toward the circle, where it began to rotate, two flows of ash and heat. Far more smoke than should have come from the two candles, but it did not penetrate the chalk barrier.

  Murmuring under her breath, Sam knelt, whispering over the bowl of water.

  “Is that some ancient… Oh, is that… That’s not a strange language at all, is it?” asked Duke, edging back to the wall of her room, slowly waving his hand in front of his face to clear the smoke.

  She ignored him, eyes fixed on her blood dripping into the water, billowing there as if it was smoke blown on the wind, mirroring the rotation of ash flowing up from the candles. She sprinkled three pinches of salt into the mixture, taking her time, letting the grains trickle from her fingers.

  With careful looks to the side, she confirmed the smoke from the candles was forming a wall around her circle instead of making it into the circle, and she whispered again into the bowl, speaking quickly, urgently.

  Then, the blood in the water stilled. Only the drip from her hand stirred the surface, and when she moved her hand to her side, the water was dead still.

  She smiled and watched as slowly the blood suspended in the water began to move again. She took the glass knife and wiped it along her bloody hand, taking care to coat the entire blade with the sanguine fluid. Then, she looked through the glass and blood down at the water. She could see through the liquid of her heart. She could see the same liquid suspended in the water, shifting and swirling for no apparent reason.

  Slowly, it formed into a cityscape. Rolling hills framing tall towers and an unwalled town. A small river, slender, perhaps early in its life? And rail. Leagues of rail all coming into the city into one massive station.

  “Middlebury,” she called. “I am seeing Middlebury.”

  She leaned close to the scene, making sure to keep her bleeding hand far away from it, and whispered again. She heard back through the breath of breeze in the room that didn’t stir the smoke outside of the circle, and she knew the spirit would assist them still. Assist them until they found Thotham. They’d gotten lucky, maybe.

  “Snuff out the candles,” she said before looking up.

  Duke, a frightened look in his eyes, did as she asked.

  “Pass them to me,” she instructed.

  “What about not breaking the barrier?” he questioned.

  “Hopefully it will not be a problem.”

  He grunted but did as she asked.

  She took each candle and pressed the melted tip onto opposite sides of the bowl, letting the cooling wax harden there. Then, she snapped the candles off, a finger-thick length unnaturally affixed to the glass bowl. She took the rest of the gold dust from the pouch and dumped it into the bowl. She watched as it passed through her blood, miraculously not disturbing it and never reaching the bottom of the bowl. It simply vanished.

  She stood and walked to the chalk circle. Carefully, she broke it at one of the inscribed runes with the toe of her boot.

  “That was strange,” declared Duke. “I think I need a drink.”

  “First,” she replied, “pass me that burial shroud so I can cover the bowl with it. Then, we need to hurry to the rail station. Tonight, we’re catching a ride to Middlebury.”

  The Cartographer XVI

  He walked behind her, keeping his pace quick but steady. Several times, he had to tell her to slow. The large bowl of water was heavier than it looked, and the open top did nothing to prevent the liquid from sloshing over the sides. He paused, wondering what would happen if the sorcerous mix of salt, water, blood, gold, and power were to spill onto his arms. He then wondered what a wet, recently used burial shroud might smell like.

  Then, he began moving again, not thinking about what would happen, not remembering the swirling wall of smoke that had built around Sam’s circle, and definitely not considering what kind of spirit she’d contacted through her blood that had formed an image of Middlebury floating in the water. No, he wouldn’t think about any of that, he told himself.

  “Two tickets to Middlebury,” said Sam to a bored-looking man at the ticket counter, “on the evening rail.”

  “The rail is leaving, girl. You’re too late to catch tonight’s run. You want tickets for tomorrow? The dawn run might be booked, but let me check my log—”

  “It is right there!” exclaimed Sam. “It’s not too late.”

  “We stopped selling tickets… five minutes ago. It’s too late.”

  “There are two pounds sterling in it for you if you get us on that rail,” said Oliver. The man’s eyes flashed, and he saw the greed there, so he sweetened the deal. “Two pounds for each of us. How long does it take you to make four pounds sterling?”

  The man stood from his chair and bolted out the door, shouting at the men standing outside of the waiting railcars.

  “We’d better follow,” said Oliver, and he started off after the clerk.

  The ticket-taker was locked in a noisy argument with a uniformed conductor. Stepping by both of them, Sam and Oliver approached a second attendant standing on the step of a railcar, watching the argument on the platform.

  “You have room on this car?” asked Sam.

  The man turned and grinned, evaluating their attire at a glance. “For a price I do.”

  “Hold the fish bowl,” Oliver instructed Sam as he unfastened his purse.

>   An hour later, the train passed the outskirts of Westundon, venturing into the dark hills around the city. The sky was black, the moon and stars obscured by thick, autumn clouds. The car rumbled and rocked. It was the same route they’d taken toward Harwick that first time they’d met.

  Across from him, Sam nervously held the glass bowl secure. She didn’t appear any happier about the prospect of it spilling than he had been earlier.

  “What will happen if it spills?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “For this to work properly, it should be dead still. The kind of spirit that could hold an image while it’s in motion is not the kind we want to deal with. If it were to spill, my blood… Well, let’s just make sure it holds steady.”

  They took another turn, the railcar rocked, and she blanched.

  “So, you don’t know for a fact that it would be bad,” offered Oliver. “Maybe nothing at all will happen.”

  “Will happen?” she responded. “I’d rather not find out.”

  He saw a bead of sweat forming on her forehead.

  One arm was resting atop the scrying bowl, holding it steady. The other was clutched in her lap, a strip of rag wrapped around it, and already, he could see a crimson stain peeking out where her blood continued to seep.

  “We need someone to see to that,” he said. “It could get infected and certainly will form a nasty scar.”

  “My bag,” said Sam. “Can you open it?”

  He reached under her seat and collected the canvas rucksack. Watching for her approval, he flipped open the top flap.

  “A pocket on the side, there should be two stone vials. Get one out for me and pour it into my mouth.”

  He fished around inside until he found the hard lumps of the vials. He removed one, peering at it curiously. On top of the cork stopper, red wax was embossed with a strange rune. It was a single eye, two lines undulating below it.

  “Are those supposed to be tears?” he wondered.

  “I don’t know,” replied Sam. “Just pour it in my mouth.”

  He shrugged and worried the stopper to loosen it before pulling it free. He glanced inside, but in the dim light of the railcar, he couldn’t see a thing. He thought about smelling it but given the ingredients she’d claimed were in the candles they had burned earlier in the evening, he decided not to. Standing, he gripped a bar above his head to hold him steady and tilted the vial up to pour it into Sam’s open mouth.

  A sound drew his attention and he turned to see a well-dressed man walking down the aisle pausing, a look of lascivious curiosity in his eyes.

  “Keep moving,” growled Oliver, turning a little so his back wasn’t to the aisle any longer. Muttering to himself, he shook the vial, hoping the last drops had fallen into Sam’s mouth. Then, he sat back on his side of the railcar booth. “It’s a shame we couldn’t get a sleeper compartment.”

  “There are only so many of them,” remarked Sam, “and we were rather last minute. Later than last minute, actually.”

  “What will that liquid in the vial do? Prevent infection?” he wondered.

  “It will speed the healing process,” she replied. “My mentor bought the potion in Rhensar and claims it can be a life saver. It causes the flesh to knit back together quicker and is particularly effective for lacerations like I have. I’ve never used it myself, though.”

  “Lacerations like the one I received in Swinpool?” groused Oliver.

  “I didn’t pack a bag for that trip,” reminded Sam.

  “What about when we got back?” he complained.

  She waved her injured hand at him. “You’d seen a physician by then. You were fine.”

  Grunting, he glanced toward the aisle that ran down the edge of the railcar. “When do you think the attendant will be by with tea and dinner? It’s getting late, and I’m famished.”

  Sam stared at him, shaking her head.

  “What?”

  “You’ve never been outside of first class, have you?” guessed Sam. “I’ve got bad news. There is no tea and dinner coming.”

  “You’d still think they’d feed us,” he mumbled under his breath, declining to answer her question about first class. He let his gaze fall on the shroud-covered scrying bowl. “What happens if Thotham moves?”

  “That’s why we brought the bowl,” she said. “If he moves, our spirit can stay with him and show us his new location. I’m keeping the link alive, I suppose you could say, though it’s actually the opposite. It is much quicker than establishing a new one.”

  Oliver sat forward, peering at the shroud.

  “What?” asked Sam.

  “Is it… glowing?”

  “Huh?”

  She glanced around to make sure that no one was approaching in the aisle then pulled the burial shroud back. The liquid inside was moving, and it was indeed glowing.

  “Maybe he’s relocating now,” speculated Oliver.

  “I don’t think… That doesn’t make sense. There should be no light in the water. See, it’s-it’s like… I don’t know. The bowl feels warm.”

  “Is that… normal?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “I’ve seen my mentor do this, but I’ve never done it myself. The bowl didn’t start glowing and get warm when he did it, so no, it is not normal. I’m not sure what it means.”

  He glanced at her then gasped. “Sam, your hand!”

  She looked down at the bound wound and shrieked. The cloth they’d tied around her cut hand was soaked in blood, and it was starting to drip out, dribbling down the leg of her leather trousers. As they watched, a shadow of a hand, a claw, slipped out from under the sheet and grasped Sam’s wrist.

  “By the circle!” she shrieked, bolting upright, rocking the scrying bowl, and spilling the contents on the bench. Then, she picked it up and hurled it at the wall across from them. The glass shattered with the heavy impact of a water-filled bowl smashing into a wooden wall.

  Half a dozen shadows rose like smoke, insubstantial, unformed. Oliver scrambled onto a bench, grasping his broadsword which he’d stowed on a rack above, but as he watched, the shapes wavered as if they couldn’t hold their presence in the world of the living. Water leaked down the wall and puddled amongst the broken glass on the floor, and in moments, the shadows faded.

  Oliver blinked, wondering if he’d really seen them at all.

  Sam tore off her bandage, panic in her eyes as she looked at her wound.

  Oliver stepped down from the bench and peeked into the hall where he heard running footsteps. It was the attendant, the same man who had let them on the car to begin with.

  “What in the frozen hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  Several other passengers were looking down the open corridor, curious but unalarmed. They were seeking entertainment on a long, dark ride, not feeling the same fright Oliver could feel roiling off Sam behind him. He turned, and she was scrambling at her pack, tearing it open and yanking out the second stone vial. She met his eyes then popped it open, dropping the cork on the floor, swallowing the contents in one gulp. Breathing heavily as if she’d just run a footrace, she slumped back on the bench.

  The attendant was looking between her, the broken glass, and the water soaking into the carpet of the railcar where she’d shattered the bowl. In the dim light, Oliver was glad the man couldn’t see how dark the liquid was. Water mixed with Sam’s blood.

  “I’ll be all right,” gasped Sam.

  “Well, this isn’t all right,” cried the attendant. “Why, I—”

  “Two pounds?” asked Oliver, reaching again for his purse.

  The man glanced at the broken glass and then back to the duke. “Two pounds, but if there’s one more thing…”

  “There won’t be,” assured Oliver.

  He sat back down, ignoring the attendant as he left and returned with a brush and a bucket, cleaning up the broken glass. Duke had eyes only for Sam. She met his gaze, the fear slowly receding as he imagined the pain in her wounded hand faded. The blood st
opped flowing from the cut, and miraculously, it seemed the wound began to heal. He removed a shirt from his pack and tossed it on her lap.

  She nodded thanks, wrapped her hand in the shirt, and then laid her head back. In moments, she was snoring, but Oliver stayed awake, the slow rock of the railcar and the dim light doing nothing to lull him to sleep after what he’d witnessed that day. Sam was a priestess and, evidently, a sorceress.

  Oliver woke to the squeal of metal brakes on metal axles.

  Sam was across from him, back against the wall of the train, legs pulled up onto the bench, arms wrapped around her knees. Her head was bowed, but he saw she was awake.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, grim-faced, her eyes rimmed in red. “I’ve been better.”

  “How’s the hand?”

  “It will heal,” she replied. “Rather quickly, actually. The potion in those vials last night…”

  “I figured,” remarked Oliver. He stood, bracing one hand against the ceiling of the railcar as it slowed to a stop. “Should we find somewhere to try scrying again?”

  Sam unfolded herself from the bench and shook her head. “Last night, I think there’s only one thing that could explain the change we saw. I think Thotham is dead.”

  She said it matter-of-factly, cold, but he could see in her eyes, in her posture, that the thought hurt her worse than the cut on her hand. Worse than she could admit.

  Oliver wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest. The hilt of one of her kris daggers dug into his side, and she pushed against him, but he just squeezed harder. She wiggled, trying to get away, but he held her for another long moment. Finally, he released her.

  “You’re a strange man, Duke.”

  “My name is Oliver, you know.”

  She shrugged, stood, and stepped into the aisle.

  Checking that his hair was still bound in a tail behind his head by the thin leather thong and that his broadsword was still strapped to his side, he followed after her.

  They emerged onto the bustling platform in the heart of Middlebury’s rail station. All around them, people rushed to and fro, whether beginning an adventure, returning from a journey, or, in most cases, merely changing railcars. The platform was packed with people. Over the dull roar of conversation and rushing commuters was the crash and bang from the freight side of the station. Next to the passenger platforms, freight trains were brought in where they were broken up, the cars sorted, reassembled and forwarded on. Middlebury was the beating heart of Enhover’s rail network, and the town had risen a wave of prosperity forty years prior when Oliver’s grandfather had begun spanning the continent with the gleaming steel lines.