At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  Something heavy battered at it, rolling in waves through the air. Then the ripple reverberated in turn, striking the walls and ricocheting out. Screaming, on and on. There was no voice, but the thing shrieked through them all, and there was not a soul there that did not buckle beneath the pressure.

  For Leopold, it was like someone had beaten a drum through his ear. Rapid beats drilled the questions from his head, bloodied the body without ever touching the flesh. He stumbled, and his wife shrank beside him, as she shouted in surprise.

  Such power! He found himself shrinking, pulling away. Is this what stalks me?

  “Let go,” Bertold shouted. Never had his voice risen to such crescendo. The man surged against their bond and feverishly tore at their arms. “Break the circle. Break it now!” the magi cried.

  It was not that he did not want to oblige. Leopold yanked back, startled to waking by the sound of his guardian’s voice. He yanked back and tried to pull free, but his wife began to shout, and the witch would not release him. “I can’t,” he shouted. “She won’t let go. She won’t!” It was like he had been caught in a vice of iron. Even his wife’s nails, digging into his skin, felt as if they were searing into his arm. As if some invisible force had bound them.

  “The fire!” Duša began to weep. “Dítě, dítě, turn back, I pray you still, ustat!”

  As the woman fell into her foreign tongue, Bertold cast back as well, howling, snarling words Leopold could not identify. It was a language, surely, and though pieces seemed to borrow from Rovennan, their intonation was far darker, and the core was lost to time and space. From his touch on the floor, the salt and ash smeared across the walls began to bubble and shimmer. A dark cloud swirled over the walls, swallowing them, and that voice grew further away. More and more of the air warped, contorted, rippled in the dark, such that Leopold began to panic. It was as if the air itself began to bubble around the figure taking shape within their chamber.

  He tried to shake his wife free, calling to her, but she would not listen. Someone pounded at the door. “It’s here,” Ersili whispered, almost crying. Pain creased her beautiful face, wracking them both. He kicked at the witch, but something—something more than those old bones—would not let go.

  Air flickered to life, and he could see the barrier. It strained and became transient, like paper held before the setting sun. In that moment, he beheld the labors of Bertold’s sweat. Something swirled beyond it. Waiting. Bertold’s words seemed to flare the light to life, but the inky apparition hammered it, thunderous and terrible, like a battering ram. The magi stumbled, crying out. Muscles strained, though he grabbed at nothing. His face set to a purpose, and Leopold might have sworn something crimson surged through his robes—down, down into the earth. He muttered. He strained. And the world strained against him.

  Please, Maker, Leopold cried, closing his eyes against the madness. Let this be a dream. Let it all just be a dream.

  When the wall finally broke, and Duša screamed aloud, Leopold’s eyes opened to the shape of her, lines of black and grey hair weaving into the very moulds of the stones, even as her eyes crackled lightning into the sky.

  The room became her, and everyone and everything beneath her was consumed in her essence.

  “Pomsti nás z plamenů,” the witch cried out abruptly, jerking against the force of the presence. “I can see, I can see…”

  The earth began to shake.

  * *

  Half a dozen men pulled them apart and dragged the still babbling witch toward the sheets. Charlotte twisted away as Dartrek seized her.

  “Stay. Enough you have done,” he demanded, splitting his attention between them.

  The witch began to buck and shake, crying out as she clawed them. The guards took her by the hands and bore her down, but still she fought, unconsciously striking at any close enough to touch. “Bind her!” someone shouted. Every part of her edged out, as if the very world bore down upon her. “I see you!” she screamed. “I am the Inquisition! I see you!” So loud, that one of the guards called for a rag with which to gag her.

  Blood dribbled from Usuri’s nose, lapping at the flesh like a babbling brook. Skin paled as she contorted, writhing—something seized her.

  Flesh bloodied against the iron and leather of her captors, but the woman struggled as if against the world itself. They clapped her tight, and still she raged. Charlotte could feel the reverberations, even from the other end of the room. They left her breathless—the air, heavy. Usuri was not with them. She could feel that much. Somewhere far away, and they were all the better for it.

  For that presence, heavy as it was, left no light in its wake. What it touched, it consumed, and the air, numb, drifted in its wake—a forgotten presence, devoid of all that gave life breath. Charlotte placed a hand against her chest, trying to settle her thoughts, but they raced with the power of it all. It surged, through air and stone alike. It pierced walls no flesh could touch.

  They needed to wake her. Blood flashed, bright and copper through Charlotte’s mind, and she knew that this was the only recourse. Only destruction lay in dreams.

  * *

  Somewhere far from either ghost a boy came awake screaming in the night. The girl sang through the coin and through him, and even then he knew.

  Something had broken.

  * *

  He held her. Bertold held her, but for how long Leopold could not say. The sorceror drew the full weight of himself against the ram of her presence, crying out his dark tongue as he crumpled under the pressure. Sweat beaded and descended his increasingly frail shape.

  There, in that instant, Leopold could see that he was greater than they had ever known. There was more substance there, more presence, than even eyes could hold. He was a force in a world of motion, and he pressed it all into a single moment, hoping to batter one force with another. For a moment, it seemed as if it might work. Air rippled and strained against their effort, flaring and fading in time to some strange song Leopold had never known.

  So long ago, they had taught him, the Lord moved in mysterious ways. Though his work remained unseen, the efforts were there for all to bask in.

  Now Leopold saw the motions, as well as the ends. Everything quivered under the weight of their magic. Not just them. No—he could see that. Another man—a holier man—might have cried out to his god in that instant. When the lines of the world itself began to strain, they would have praised the Lord for showing them the very threads of earthly being. Yet Leopold was not that holy man, for he did not see the world at work. Rather, he saw the lines of the world struggling not to break. He felt flesh and spirit strain, bend, and fold beneath the tugging of its core.

  Then, he felt it tear.

  “What is it?” his wife called. “I don’t understand.”

  One didn’t have to understand to see. It was like the air itself was ripped asunder; to the shrieking tune of metal, rending. Ersili screamed. That seemed at last to rouse his wife, her hand and his peeling apart. Too late. The circle was broken, but the circle was only a catalyst. Bertold screamed and the light—the beautiful light that encompassed them all—rolled along the lines of the air and shattered as it clattered against the stones. Breaths licked darkness and everything rolled. Leopold’s stomach shuddered under the impact. He felt ill.

  And through it all, Bertold continued to scream.

  Somewhere beyond the pale, the door also shuddered. With shouts and steel. Men had heard them. They clamored at the entrance, trying to force their way in. Yet he could not have wished that on anyone.

  As flames wisped and subdued, something solidified in the air. His wife pulled him back, retreated across the cobbles. The witch’s hand scored him as she called out across time, but his hand seemed to slip easily from her, at last. Bertold curled inwards, crumbling against the stones. In the salt, he writhed as a man possessed. Something broke in him. Leopold glanced from his guardian to the witch, and the eyes consumed him.

  They lurked behind the witch’s, watchi
ng his every step. Her breaths were in the air as he ran, shoving his wife onward toward the door. An axe splintered the boards and men hurled against the hinges. Yet this devil’s anger was in his heart long before she ever gripped him. It screamed and everything seemed to rumble away. He gasped, for the power of it. It was like an avalanche.

  “What are you?” he shouted, trying to retain some semblance of sanity. Trying to gasp. Ersili begged him not to look back, clawed at him, pulling him toward the opening door. But he could not look away.

  She spread into being. Translucent, uncertain, her hands burned in some unseen tumult. Duša whispered her name and rocked against the stones as her hands reached out and her eyes nailed him to the floor. He was exposed. Fragile. He could see that now. He felt naked before the judgment, and cried out to Assal in a way he hadn’t since he was a child. She wrapped her arms around him and he staggered. They were cold. So cold. He rasped as nails dug into his mind.

  “You,” the spirit called across the din of space. Then he could see her, as if she stood before him. Flames bubbled around her, and he knew of father, friend, life. It all boiled away. His own wife called to him, tearing at the men pouring through the gap, but he could not move.

  “You would consume me. You all would,” she said, and he knew it was true. He saw a child, only a child, and at last he wondered why.

  Then she reached into his heart, and all the wondering ceased. Assal, he wept, as the world began to tear him away. Have pity on us. We have sinned. We have—a prayer to the tune of his wife’s own cries.

  * *

  The flesh sank in surrender, though the mind remained. The guardsmen hesitated as the witch went limp, many of them boasting scratches from the throes of her tantrum. They did not know what to do and they looked to Charlotte for a resolution.

  Though they had bound hand and foot to the bed, Usuri fought against them with as much fear as she fought against the flesh. When the moment of quiet came, it was as sudden as the fit had begun. She simply opened her eyes and sagged against the feathers of her bed. Ceased struggling. Ceased screaming.

  Then vomit spilt from the witch’s mouth and several soldiers vaulted back to evade it.

  A terrible cough rattled her as she uttered, “I am used.” Focus seemed to elude her eyes and they sank instead into the cracks of the floorboards. There was a phantom there that would not abate, carving lines beneath her eyes far deeper than the other deaths had wrought.

  “Father. I am not fit. What good in this? What good?”

  Usuri had been mad before. But taling to a dead man? Charlotte lacked the words to lend it shape.

  She knew that drawn look. The ghost of flesh. Magic—there was no doubt of its part in this. Yet the woman held no trinkets, and so far as she seemed, had not stood compelled against another. Not in that moment, anyway. And the violence of it—she was normally so detached.

  A horrible thought bloomed. Had someone else attacked her? If so, how could they have known of her? An old grudge—personal—or someone from the Court? Surely Sara hadn’t said a word of the girl’s presence. Where anyone could have found another creature like her to do it, though…it wasn’t as though her father hadn’t looked. Hadn’t hunted.

  Walthere had to be warned.

  One of the soldiers had already gone to fetch Charlotte’s father. Dartrek kept Charlotte sequestered off to the side while his fellows did the work. She stared over his shoulder, but said nothing, knowing the futility of that fight. The rest stalked the bed like vultures awaiting the final moment of surrender.

  The witch began to rant. “He falls. She falls. It slips through the fingers and the world, it watches, knowing nothing of the grains upon the wind—just sand. Just sand. We wash away. That’s it. We wash away and we are gone.

  “The grain turns to another, says: I’ll cast you out for that grain you tossed up last octave. And he throws him. And the wind howls dirges to the dissolution of the grain but—he’s gone. The others don’t notice. The wind howls again, and another goes the next day. Meaning is…is…”

  Fear remained in the soldiers’ eyes. They had seen too much of this girl to trust her insanity to merely that—insanity. So had Charlotte. She saw their fingers linger on their cudgels and wondered if, finally, this wasn’t the moment. If death would not be sweeter for the girl than this. Something had happened, but then, something always happened.

  Usuri’s voice cracked, wavered, and trailed into silence. She cast this way and that, tossing her head as if to shake some foreign beast from off her back. There was nothing to say. A pang of guilt struck a chord in Charlotte’s gut, but this was just case and point. The woman’s madness had gone too far.

  Long moments passed in the candlelight. It framed wrinkles about the witch’s drowning face that made her appear far older than she was.

  Gently, fingers once lost to frenzy brushed against the straps that held them. Without a word, in those places where rope met flesh, the threads unwound and snapped, brittle as ice. Thus freed, as the crowd gawked, she reached down and made the same work of those threads about her legs. Kicking them off, she stood abruptly, to the startled cries of her guardsmen, and headed for the door. Charlotte called after her, but the witch ignored it.

  “It hurt. It always hurts. They round you and they rake you and…” Nonsense peppered the witch’s steps, but Charlotte slowly rose to follow it to its course. Like a piper’s note. Dartrek held her back, barking orders, as one of the other soldiers lunged for Usuri’s shoulder.

  And Charlotte knew fear.

  Seeming in that instant to finally remember where she was, the witch stopped. She blinked as she turned to face the soldier’s grip. While denouncing her for hellspawn, without hesitation the guard struck her down with a cudgel. A little rush of air was all she gave. Blood dripping from the side of her head, the dazed woman rolled onto her belly as the man stooped over her, cudgel rising, and began to dig at the floor. Usuri rubbed dust across her face, across her hands and gown. She piled it between her fingers and cupped it to hold out to the soldier. The man ordered her up as the others hedged in, but she did not obey.

  “Hit her!” one of the others called. “You saw what she did to the rope.”

  Gone was the pain. Her face drew formless, empty. “Dust to dust,” she whispered so low Charlotte had to strain to hear it. The guard’s shoulders loosed with a sigh, his lips mouthing a soundless “What?” to Charlotte, with all the interest of a man jailed.

  Usuri opened her hands as he did and flung the dust into the stale air.

  It exploded.

  When Charlotte pulled back from the noxious roar, the world ripped asunder with her scream. For her, there was only air. One moment, she stood in it, feared in it, and the next—the overwhelming sound.

  It burned through her like a cancer. Limbs froze. Eyes watered—filled to bursting and broke. Her body twisted and croaked on its own breath. There was no sound to loose and only blood to taste. Everything went rigid, and launched her burning down a long, dark corridor.

  She woke in it. One long, deep rasp. Then the coughs racked her. She sat up, wheezing, feeling—chill. She called to Dartrek, but the words seemed to ring hollow in her mouth, and all that greeted her was ash and more damnable dust. Something burned. Needles lanced through every motion, and she found she was not the only one so pinioned. There was a pile before her, all broken bodies and mangled limbs, and no one moved but in wincing.

  Men armed and armored had been scattered as if by cannonfire. At their center, Usuri lay as though asleep—peaceful, almost, but for the broken murmurs and the pale, lidless stare.

  She did not see—not them, anyway. The blood matting her hair was the only color left to her.

  I am not here. A guard crawled through the doorway. Shouts in the hall—a maid calling for help. For the blood. There is no blood. She could feel it on her skin. Like water rolling cool fingers down her cheek. I am in my room. I am running my fingers through my hair and— It was muddled, distant�
�the sound. It had carved through her like a scythe, yet the chaff remained. Hunched, groggy. I do not know this woman before my eyes.

  Blood had crusted where her fingers touched her ear. It ran the side of her face and stained.

  “My lady?”

  A spider scuttled at her shoulder, immaculate among the carnage. There were boots in the hall. All rang with the sound, such that she winced. Weakness. There is no abiding weakness.

  She felt sick.

  Boyce looked it.

  “You’re bleeding. Assal above—get the medicus.”

  Figures shuffled. They spun. She swooned, thought better of words, and leaned against the ground. It felt solid, anyway. Yet the witch laid on it as if adrift. Mumbling to the sea.

  “It burns. It all burns. You and I and everything between. Only the lioness, cradling the gryphon in her arms, should ever kiss another snow. We are…”

  There was a dagger in his hand as he moved on the witch. Charlotte blinked. Boyce’s face gave nothing, but the hands were poised, even—eager. He moved between the bodily lanes until the shadow of his being put him over the source. Boyce did not blink. He lifted the dagger under her chin and made to push.

  There was a weight on Charlotte’s legs. She couldn’t move. Into sight, the body flickered, and she knew it for Dartrek, still as a felled tree, covering her.

  Tears stained the cloth. “No, no,” Charlotte rasped, struggling through the croak of her voice.

  The sound of hesitancy. The spider bent against its prey, attention rolling back along its web. Hard eyes held no remorse. But hers did.

  He slid the dagger back up its sleeve and cast the witch to the floor. She never moved. Then: “As you wish, my lady.”

  It would end in blood. As she breathed against the stone, the silence whispered that to her. Insanity was useful. But only when leashed.