by Jo Spurrier
I dodged aside, and tried to pull Aleida with me, but she refused. Like the warlock last night, she planted her feet instead, raising her wand to fight back — and the spectral figure slammed into her. The impact drove her back, into me, and sent us both sprawling on the ground, Aleida on top of me.
In panic, I looked around for the spectre, trying to wriggle out from under my mistress’s body, waiting for the next attack and expecting at any moment for my corpse tangled in the water weeds to rise up and join the fight — but the other me was gone. And Gyssha was gone.
Still half-sprawled over me, Aleida squirmed and writhed like a cut snake. She coughed, and from her lips came a puff of ash and dust, smelling of ancient, mouldering rot.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh no!’
She coughed again and heaved herself off me, rolling over and levering herself up. Her head lifted, eyes fixed once again on me, but Aleida’s dark brown eyes were gone. Instead, her irises were a pale, watery blue. Her lips parted, but I couldn’t call the expression a smile. It bared far too many teeth.
I scrabbled for a weapon. I still had the stick jammed through the ties of my apron but I couldn’t get it out, I was half-lying on the thing. Aleida was crawling towards me now, hands twisted like claws, and I frantically felt around for a weapon.
My fingers found her wand, dropped when the spectre struck.
Without thinking, I closed my fist around the handle and swung it as hard as I could. I didn’t want to hurt my mistress, but this wasn’t her anymore — it was Gyssha, and I knew the old witch wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if she could.
Gyssha caught the movement and jerked back. The point of the wand merely grazed her cheekbone, instead of striking it square-on. But that movement was enough for me to roll away from her and get to my feet.
Panting, she tried to stand, a trickle of blood on her cheek where the point of the wand had grazed her skin. ‘You’re dead, child,’ she rasped. ‘After all the trouble you’ve caused me I ought to flay you alive! I’d have had the ungrateful wretch days ago if it weren’t for you.’ She managed to get her feet underneath her, but then staggered again, and beneath the hem of her skirt I saw the black dog’s paws, tottering and unsteady. Of course, she’d had no practice walking on them, I realised. Not like Aleida had.
I glanced down at the wand in my hand, thinking back to the night before, when that rasping voice had come from my own throat, and the symbol Aleida had drawn to drive her away. I have a very good memory. I remembered every line of it, and every word.
I leaped, and slammed into Aleida, knocking her onto the ground once more. Then, I scrambled on top of her, pinning her down while she thrashed and struggled, too weak to throw me off. I felt one of her hands go for her belt, pulling something free, and hastily I dropped the wand, using both hands to catch her wrist as she slashed at me with her dagger. It took hardly any effort to force her arm down, and pin it there with my knee. She really was just skin and bone.
‘Idiot child!’ Gyssha hissed up at me. ‘I’ll have your guts for garters. I’ll bleed you dry!’
I paid her words no attention as I picked the wand back up.
It shouldn’t have worked; I wasn’t a witch, I didn’t have any power. The wand didn’t like me either, I could feel its hatred seeping through the wooden handle, turning my hand numb, but it couldn’t stop me either. I drew the symbol and spoke the words, and each line left a glowing blue tracery inscribed in the air. When it was done, the glowing shape shattered into myriad fragments. They poured over Aleida’s face, flowing in her mouth and nose, settling over her eyes. Her feeble struggles stopped, and then, with a howling gust of icy wind, Gyssha’s spirit left her body, shrieking with rage.
Beneath me, Aleida coughed and choked, and then gasped a heaving breath.
And then a sack full of sticks slammed into me. It reeked like a charnel-house. I tumbled over the mouldering leaves, entangled with the thing, my braid wrapped around my neck, tight enough to cut off my breath.
Then it grew tighter still, and a hideous, grinning face loomed over mine. No, it wasn’t my braid at all — hands, bony hands strung together with wire and sharp, glittering beads. ‘Hello, lover-girl,’ the construct clacked at me with stained teeth. ‘Miss me?’
I clutched and scrabbled at the fingers but I couldn’t peel them back — the construct was far stronger than any mortal man.
Over its shoulder I saw Aleida heave herself up, wand in her hand. She started towards me, but ducked away when Gyssha’s spectre appeared again, diving towards her. Aleida turned her back on me, head tilted back to search the canopy above for the old witch’s ghost.
My throat was on fire, my vision growing narrow and black around the edges. My eyes stayed on Aleida, pleading where my voice couldn’t. Help me, Lord and Lady, please help me!
Then, my hand dropped away, abandoning the useless task of plucking at those bony fingers. I tried to pull it back — I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t give up, not while there was any will to fight left in me. But my hand wouldn’t obey, it was as though it had a mind of its own, or someone else’s. While my neck burned and my heart thumped in my throat, my hand slipped downwards into the pocket of my apron, closing around the first crystal I’d found that morning, the little amethyst point I’d dug out of the earth, what felt like hours ago.
‘Gyssha!’ Aleida shouted, howling up into the trees. She had her back to me, like she was ignoring me, as I struggled for breath among the rotting leaves. ‘Show yourself! Come on, old woman! Or are you finally ready to admit this ungrateful upstart is better than you?’
My vision was fading to black, but somehow I felt my hand clutch the crystal tight and draw another symbol on the construct’s rotting flank. My lips shaped words I didn’t know and had no breath to speak.
Dimly, I heard a shriek of rage from Gyssha’s spirit, and the howl of spectral wind as she swooped again. And then something slammed into the construct and tore its grip away.
For a moment everything was black, and all I could do was gulp down air in great heaving breaths.
Then I felt a hand wrap around my upper arm, and I panicked, thrashing.
‘Dee,’ Aleida hissed. ‘It’s me, it’s just me. Get up, quickly!’
I tried to get my feet under me, and was mostly successful, though I would have fallen if Aleida hadn’t had a good grip on my arm. It seemed to me that we were holding each other up.
A few more breaths, and my vision cleared enough to see the construct on the ground, struggling to stand, just as we were. It hadn’t escaped the waterfall unscathed, it seemed. One of the long thigh-bones had broken, and had been crudely splinted with a stick and some vines.
Aleida’s grip on my arm tightened. ‘Tell me,’ she murmured. ‘Is there a walking skeleton over there?’
I glanced at her quickly. Her eyes were still huge. ‘Um, yes. Definitely yes.’
‘Right. So it’s not just the belladonna, then.’
‘No. Where’s Gyssha? Where—’
‘Trapped. That sigil you drew on the construct is a binding.’
‘Oh! I thought that was you,’ I broke in.
‘Well, obviously, Dee, who else? When she came at me again I cast a shield and threw her off onto bonehead, there. Now she’s stuck. Until she breaks the binding, that is.’ She frowned at me briefly before turning back to the construct. ‘But you’re not too bothered, are you, Dee? Seen ol’ Boney before, have you?’
‘I, um, remember that boy I told you about? The one who told me all those stories about you? It was her, all along.’
The skeleton stood and rippled, and a moment later Kian stood there, hatred in his soft brown eyes and a sneer on his lips. ‘Oh, and you loved it, didn’t you?’ he spat. ‘I bet you’ve never had a lad cast a second look your way in your whole life! One more day, and I’d have had my hand up those pretty skirts of yours.’
Aleida elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Dee,’ she hissed. ‘Crystal?’
It took me a moment
to figure out she was looking at the broken stone I’d stabbed him with. The point was still buried between his ribs, the end jutting out beneath his breast. But, in the same moment, I realised that the broken end of the crystal had come out of my apron pocket at some point in the fight, and lay on the ground between us.
‘Dee?’ Aleida said again, her voice low.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It broke. That’s the other half.’
‘Right,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll put him on the ground. You keep him there, I’ll get the stone. Got it?’
‘What?’ I squeaked, but she was already moving away, readying her wand. Sometime during the scuffle, the stick had come free of my apron, and it lay just a few feet away. Keeping my eyes on Kian, I darted over, stooping to pick it up — only to fumble, and drop it again.
At least, that’s what I wanted Gyssha to think.
As soon as I’d moved to the stick, Kian had dropped into a crouch, and as I fumbled the stick he roared and charged — and Aleida struck him with a blast from her wand, a great gout of flame like a dragon’s breath.
It rather threw me off, I must admit. By that point I’d snatched up the stick and was charging to meet him, and was moving too fast to avoid the flame. It stripped away the illusion, revealing the stinking skeleton again, flames licking over his ragged clothes, just as I collided with the scorched, smoking, disgusting thing. I clubbed it with my stick, once, again, and then threw myself on top of it, stick across its neck and arms, me sitting on its shoulders.
The thing’s legs came up to kick at me, but before it could land a blow Aleida threw herself down beside me, pinning them down too.
‘Do you mind?’ I snapped at her without thinking. ‘I’ve had enough burns for one day, thank you!’
‘Sorry,’ she grunted. ‘I tend to default to fire when I’m under strain.’ Then, before I could reply, she plunged her dagger into the construct’s chest and levered the ribs apart. Beneath them was a complicated weaving of wire and stones and scraps of silk and glowing charms — and piercing it all, the broken crystal.
Aleida threw her knife aside and picked up the broken tip of the crystal. She started to draw another sigil, and as soon as the first line appeared, the body beneath us began to struggle harder, roaring with fury and rage. But Aleida never faltered — she drew the symbol with quiet surety, and spoke each word with a puff of blue. Then, with the last word, the last line, I felt the spell release. With one last fading howl, I felt Gyssha’s spirit leave the construct, felt it be forcefully pulled away — into the stone that had pierced the thing’s chest.
Aleida slammed the broken end of the crystal down, like a cork in a bottle, and there was another flare of power as the break was mended.
Inside the stone, darkness swirled. Like smoke, like a storm cloud, boiling out of the air, roiling and seething. Then, the movement slowed, like air turning to water, turning to tar. It ceased and then it froze; the witch’s soul was trapped inside the stone.
The crystal fell from Aleida’s hands, stained black as soot now, and rolled away over the leaf litter. She threw her hands forward, trying to catch herself, and raised her head to look at me. Her lips parted, trying to speak, but then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed against me, breathless and spent.
CHAPTER 14
I caught Aleida under the arms and pulled her away from the tangle of green, mouldering bones, just far enough that we weren’t touching the revolting object, and let my shaking legs give way. Aleida sagged against my shoulder, eyes closed, breath panting.
We stayed like that for a time, just resting, while I felt my heart gradually slow and the nervous energy from the fight drain away.
Finally, Aleida shook back her tangled hair and rubbed her forehead with the back of her wounded hand. The gash across her palm was a nasty one, now a mass of clotted blood and dirt. Without a word, I pulled out my handkerchief and folded it into a long strip. This time, when I gestured to the wound, she let me wrap the linen around it. ‘I suppose there’s some spell or potion that can get the stain out,’ I said.
Aleida shrugged. ‘Honestly, it’s easier just to dye it black. That’s what I—’ She broke off then, lips parted and eyes suddenly narrowed.
She was frowning at the skeleton. I went as tense as a hunting cat, suddenly afraid the construct was about to jump up again. But instead, she crawled towards it on her hands and knees. ‘Oh, Lord and Lady. For pity’s sake, Gyssha, you couldn’t even let the poor soul rest in his grave!’ She huddled over the desecrated corpse, her hand hovering over the green, mossy skull with its eyes of staring river-stones. She was weeping, tears falling like rain on the poor lad’s rotten burial suit. ‘Ben. Oh, Ben . . .’
Ben? Bennett? The name hit me like a physical blow, driving the breath from my lungs. It was one thing to know Gyssha had robbed a grave to build her construct, but it was another knowing she’d used the body of a man she herself had driven to suicide. I picked myself up and came around to the other side of the construct. ‘Lord and Lady, she didn’t—’
‘Of course she did,’ Aleida growled though tears. ‘Oh, Ben,’ she whispered. ‘You poor soul. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you and your kin. I’m sorry . . .’
I crouched down to slip an arm around her shoulders. ‘But she’s gone now. She won’t harm anyone else. And we can take him back to his grave, back with his . . .’ my voice broke on the last word. I had to swallow hard and try again. ‘Back with his family.’
‘I don’t even know where they’re buried!’ Aleida wailed.
‘But we can find them. I can ask the Sanfords, or Attwater. They’ll know. They’ll help us.’
She nodded, gulping down sobs. Then she threw her head back, dashing tears from her cheeks as she drew a shaking breath. ‘Oh, good grief, Blackbone, pull yourself together.’
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t know about you, but a nice little bout of hysterics has a certain appeal right now.’
She gave a brittle laugh and shook her head. ‘No, no, no, that’d never do. Blackbones don’t have hysterics, Dee, we make other people have them.’ She sat back awkwardly, her dog-like legs splayed to one side, and shivered. ‘We can’t just leave him here, though. The scavengers will get to him, chew his bones. He doesn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of this . . .’
‘Maybe we can bury him here, then,’ I said. ‘Just for now. It’ll keep him safe.’
‘Bury him? Dee . . . I can’t. I don’t have the strength.’ I could see it was true. She was propping herself up with one arm, and even that was taking all the strength she had.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Can I do it? Can I help?’
She raised her face to mine, searching my eyes. ‘Is that what you want?’
I swallowed, hard. ‘Yeah. It is.’
‘Dee, I mean—’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I think I made it up a while ago, actually. I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words.’
‘Words are cheap,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s what you do that counts. But you have to know, there’s no going back.’
‘Oh, I’m never going back. What do I need to do?’
‘Just look at me, Dee.’
I met her gaze across the mouldering bones, and then I felt her slip inside my head.
Without thought or intention, I placed my hands on the dead man’s chest, clothed in ragged shreds of cloth, and then I felt her call to the ground beneath us, the moist, rich earth, born of death and decay but full of life.
In the space of a single breath, the skeleton sank into the dark earth, embraced by the world itself.
Aleida released me, and let her head fall, black hair hanging across her face as she wiped her eyes with the edge of her cloak. For a moment all we did was sit there and breathe in the cool, damp air. ‘What happened to you, anyway?’ she said. ‘Where did you go? I tried to find you, but that damn belladonna got me all turned around.’
‘Kia
n dragged me away. Gyssha, I mean. Only I didn’t understand what was happening until we got to the waterfall and she dropped the illusion.’
‘The waterfall?’ She lifted her head to give me a puzzled frown. ‘That’s nearly a mile from here! How did you get back so fast?’
‘I, I’m honestly not sure. I found that crystal, and broke it when I was fighting the construct. Then I thought of the earth spirit you showed me and . . .’
‘Spit it, Dee.’
‘I asked it to help me. It showed me this place, like a crack in the rock, but it turned out to be a cave.’
Aleida’s eyes widened. ‘A Pathway? You used a Pathway to get back here?’
‘A Pathway? Is that what it’s called? What was it?’
‘A short-cut through the spirit realm. Can be dangerous, even if you’ve got a tame earth elemental to show you the way. So, you just went in? In the dark?’
‘What else was I going to do?’
She laughed again, a brief chortle. ‘Well, quite.’
I leaned back on one hand, glancing up at the glowing leaves overhead. ‘Does this mean I’ll be Elodie Blackbone?’
‘It does. If you stay with me.’
‘Well of course I’m going to stay with you. I was brought here for a reason, wasn’t I?’
‘A reason . . .’ she said, and tipped her head back to gaze up at the branches above. ‘Yeah, about that. I think I’ve figured out what it was.’
I waited, but she didn’t speak. Not until I snapped. ‘Well? Tell me!’
‘To keep Gyssha from coming back. She’d have had me there if it weren’t for you, Dee.’
It was true, I had to admit. ‘But that just leaves more questions! Who sent the letter? How?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Well, think, Dee. Remember the spirit who warned me off pushing the reading any further?’
The shiver that ran over me was answer enough. ‘What about it?’
‘Whoever — or whatever — it was that brought you here, they have enough clout to send a greater spirit running around as an errand-boy. That means we’re being watched, Dee.’
