by Ari Berk
Maud Umber began to shake as the mother of the child entered Arvale. Her lips moved furiously, as though the frantic workings of her mind were spilling senselessly into her mouth. She muttered beneath her breath, but then began to speak, rapidly, madly. “The cursed one is coming inside. See how she clings to the child! Mother of Heaven, see! The cursed one! No child needs two mothers. Where is my child? Bring home the child! Give me my child!”
Maud’s form erupted in flames that swirled about her, obscuring her face. From within the spectral fire, a terrible cry was heard. Maud flew toward the doorway where Alysoun and her child were standing oblivious to all.
“Let the baby come to me! It’s mine! It must come to me!” Maud cried.
Alysoun stood immovable, holding her child, as Maud circled before the door in a burning arc.
“Maud Umber! Stop!” Silas commanded. For a moment, Maud was still again. Her eyes were wild, and tears streamed down her face. Silas did not want to call her to the stone, but as she began to move again toward Alysoun, Silas acted without thinking. He reached into his front coat pocket, pulled out a handful of the grave earth Mother Peale had put there, and threw it at Maud. The crumbling clod of earth struck her in the back and the effect was immediate. Dust engulfed her, extinguishing her cloak of flames. Her face softened instantly as she descended to the floor of the hall. She stood quietly, her jaw hanging slack, tears spilling from her eyes.
Silas knew the effects of the grave earth were brief. He could see now there would be no rest for her. “Maud Umber, be still. Will you take the waters that may bring peace and rest?” Maud’s eyes were closed as she barely moved her head from side to side.
“No?”
Maud did not speak, but slowly, she raised her arms toward the baby, her hands reaching and clutching desperately at the empty air.
“Very well.” Silas drew in a breath and when he spoke again, his voice rose in the cadence of command. “Maud Umber, I bid you to return now to that sphere within this house where you abide in solitude, until such a time as you can return to your kin in peace.” As Silas finished speaking, his words echoed through the hall. Maud Umber dissolved upon the air and was gone.
Lars stood by the door with his mouth open.
Silas turned to Alysoun. She would look only at her child. In her child’s face was all the home she wanted. In that moment, he knew that Arvale could offer her no solace at all. Silas imagined mother and child, sitting in the empty hall and he knew there would be no real peace for her in merely enduring on in another, larger prison of stone.
“Little sister?” said Silas, taking the vial of the waters of Lethe from his satchel. “Here is Heaven for thee. Here is peace, if you will take it.”
Alysoun looked up at Silas. “Heaven’s peace for my child and me?”
“I pray so, yes.” He held up the crystal vial. Did she understand him? Did she believe it was holy water? Did it matter?
Alysoun held out her child to Silas. He gently tipped the bottle toward the baby’s tiny mouth, letting fall three drops of the water. He held the vial up to Alysoun who looked at him questioningly. Silas whispered, “And Heaven for thee,” and Alysoun drank from the vial. Light rose up about Alysoun and her child and they closed their eyes in bliss. For an instant, brightness filled the hall and pushed all the shadows up beyond the rafters. When the light faded, mother and child were gone.
Silas walked to the small table by the door and took the scepter, sliding it into the deep inside pocket of the coat his great-grandfather had given him. He looked past the threshold and saw that the path back to Lichport had been revealed once more. Exhausted but determined, Silas looked at Lars and said, “We’re leaving. Now.”
LEDGER
When the infernal huntsman rests, the earth weeps to bear so great an evil deep within her bosom. When the infernal huntsman rides forth, the earth trembles to bear the weight of so great an evil. When the infernal huntsman chooses his quarry, the earth hides its eyes so that it may not see the evil one soul may wreak upon another.
—FROM A MIRROR OF PENITENCE, BY JACOPO PASSAVANTI, 1354, TRANSLATED BY AMOS UMBER
HIS DAUGHTER HAD BEEN SENT OUT OF THE WORLD and taken the Mistle Child with her, and Cabel Umber knew it. He looked at the massive bronze statue of Moloch, its swollen belly-oven and empty sacrificial receptacles glowing red from the eager flames and hungry embers he’d set burning inside it. Now there would be no sacrifice. Long ago, the offering had likewise escaped him when his daughter had hid her filthy infant—the firstborn of his firstborn—in the forest. Now Silas, firstborn of his own family, had put the sacrifice beyond his reach. Cabel threw another log into Moloch’s belly.
Amends would have to be made.
The bronze idol groaned as the fire inside it flew upward into the bull-shaped head. Its wide hollow eyes blazed and flashed.
Cabel stood in his deep chamber, his vengeful thoughts boiling in anticipation. It was true. Silas had not brought him the Mistle Child and would have to pay the price. All to the good, he now saw. With his daughter gone, her curse upon him had dissolved. And to seal it, Silas had broken his promise. The Undertaker, the Janus of Arvale, had deliberately cast aside his vow.
Cabel Umber was free to leave his prison house.
How long had it been since he’d moved in society? He was eager to hunt again, hungry to begin taking back his losses. And wasn’t there a pretty little doe he might chase down for sport? Hadn’t he seen such a creature in the front of Silas’s mind? Oh, indeed he had. Pale and lithe. Cabel Umber thought a visit to the village might be in order to settle accounts and seek out a little diversion.
He looked about him and began moving quickly and deliberately through the debris of the room, selecting a horse skull, certain bones, and crooked pieces of wood, weaving them into a mockery of a horse’s frame. He went to the belly of the idol, and, drawing out two burning embers, set them in the eye sockets of the skull. He drew a sigil in soot upon the bony brow and spoke words as dark as the ashes on his hands. At once, the semblance of a horse threw back its skull and screamed, rearing up as Cabel leapt upon its back.
SILAS AND LARS CAME OUT OF THE FOREST and quickened their pace as they entered the long valley of ancient tombs. Behind them, in the distance, they could hear the sound of horses’ hooves and the long cry of horns. They pressed on. Night noises rose and fell all about them. Disembodied voices whispered, drifting aimlessly from the mausoleums.
Side by side they made their way. Bright moonlight fell across the sarcophagi and monuments lining the path, making them glow.
The two walked in silence until the quiet between them became too much and Lars said, “Won’t you say something, Silas? You’re making me nervous.”
Silas could barely hear Lars’s voice. He was deep in thought, trying to anticipate the awfulness waiting for him beyond the gate. He was walking from one world of problems to another.
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong. I didn’t mean to make you angry. Please, Silas, you’re the only friend I have just at the moment. You’d said you’d help me.”
Silas stopped and turned to Lars.
“I will help you, Lars. I’ll keep my promise. It won’t be easy, though, and I need you to understand that. Finding Beatrice might be particularly hard for me.”
“Why?”
“Beatrice and I have a past.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her.”
“Well, I do know her. I mean, I did know her. Look, Lars, I said I’d help and I will, just—” Silas thought of how tenderly he felt about Lars. He did want to help him, it was just that to give Lars back his heart, Silas would have to break his own. That wasn’t Lars’s fault, though. No one had to be at fault. No one had to be blamed. It was a terrible situation, but taking it out on Lars wasn’t going to help either of them.
“It’s okay, Lars,” Silas said. “We will work it all out later. Let’s just get home.”
Lars looked up, trying to smile. �
�Good. Home, then.” But then he asked, “How long have I been away?”
“I don’t know.”
“Silas—”
“A long time. Leave it now.”
The closed gates were just ahead and beyond them, Lichport waited.
“Come on, Lars,” said Silas. “Almost home.”
But their brief accord was shattered by the deafening sound of hooves, and, flying down the path toward them, a nightmarish horse and rider. His body was awash in black flames and his horse was formed from large bones and slabs of rotten wood. Splinters flew from the horse’s body as its hooves struck the earth.
“Silas!” Lars cried desperately. “Open the gates!”
Last time he’d stood there, his great-grandfather had bellowed and the gates had opened. Now, Silas could do it for himself. He reached out his hand. The metal bars shuddered.
Silas took out his pendant, a reminder of what he was now, as if showing the Janus pendant to the gates would compel them to open more quickly.
It sounded like a train was roaring down the path in their direction. Lars was terrified. “It’s coming, Silas! That thing is coming!”
Silas was about to run up and put his hands on the gates to try again when a thunderous voice hurtled down among them. “Hold fast, ye gates!” screamed Cabel Umber. “Hold fast!”
“Maybe it’s because I’m here . . . ,” Lars said, shaking.
“No. It’s me. I owe him something and now he’s never going to get it. He wants to challenge me.” Silas began to intone, “I am the Janus. I am the Lord of Gates and none other. I am the living heir of Arvale! Open!”
There was only the moonlight glinting off the heavy iron scrollwork.
Silas conjured an image of his great-grandfather into his mind and began to yell, his voice becoming the roar of a storm.
“I am the Janus!” Silas screamed, his eyes closed. The pendant burned against his skin, as, for an instant, his heart seized in his chest.
Deep from the earth came a groaning, as though some ancient mechanism had been engaged, and titanic wheels of stone started slowly turning. Before them, the gates began to open, the iron vibrating as though charged with current.
Behind them, Cabel Umber and his skeletal steed plunged down into the earth, and a second after, burst up again between them and the path home, blocking their way out. Before Silas could run or think of anything to do to protect himself, the spirit spoke.
“There is no need to fear me. I come only to settle accounts, then I shall be on my way.”
Not pausing for even an instant, Silas roared, “Cabel Umber, I call you back to the Limbus Stone! Go back, Cabel Umber! Sink down into the Abyss!”
Silas’s voice was electric with command, but Cabel sat upon his mount, unaffected.
“You are standing on the wrong side of the stone to be giving orders. But more to the point, you cannot compel me to any action. I am still here, Silas Umber, because you may have no power over one to whom you are in debt. And you are in debt to me, are you not? Now I shall have my due. All debts must be paid, little man. One way or another. That is Old Law.” The cruel features of Cabel Umber’s skeletal face had sharpened in the air and contorted into a mask of unmitigated hatred and fury.
Lars tried to jump between Silas and Cabel Umber, but the spirit moved too quickly, and Lars was thrown out of the way.
Looming over Silas, Cabel said, “I will not haggle with you, Silas Umber, like a tinker at the gate. Here is my price!” And he leapt from his steed. From the churning shadow of his form, a gray hand with nails tipped like daggers flew down at Silas, passing through his clothes at the shoulder, and into his flesh. Swift and determined, they moved over his skin, tearing where they touched. Silas writhed in agony, but could not move from the spot. As Cabel cut the curse glyph into Silas’s skin, his cruel voice rose in a crescendo on the cold air.
“Gods of the Inferno, take his breath! Bind his limbs. Nemesis, Queen of Vengeance, shorten his days, turn his blood cold. Dark Ones, by this sign I make in flesh and blood, know that Silas Umber is your victim!”
Silas’s head fell back in pain and his ears throbbed and hummed as though Cabel’s words were poison poured into them. He heard Lars shouting, but it sounded miles away. There was darkness before and behind him, and his limbs grew cold. He heard the horns again. They were closer, rising into an excited cacophony. As Silas opened his eyes, riders burst forth from the tree line and onto the path ahead of him. Cabel drew back his curse-tipped fingers, fearfully recoiling and remounting his horse in a swirl of coal-black shadow.
“Little cousin Silas!” cried Ottoline at the head of the company of riders. “It is kind of you to give us our sport this night!” She was a welcome sight, resplendent in her red coat and black boots.
Silas nearly passed out with joy at seeing his cousins from the summer house, here, upon the road home. He recognized many of them, but their aspects were darker, crueler. This was their natural element. Their features were sharp and they wore expressions of delight and exuberant bloodlust.
“I am so happy to see you, cousin Ottoline!” Silas said, clenching his teeth at the pain in his shoulder.
“But of course you are, Silas. Why wouldn’t you be? Now, I see this shifty fox has fled his den; I’d hate to deprive you of your fun, but perhaps we might give chase for a bit?”
“Yes . . . please,” said Silas.
“How kind of you! We’ll see him back into his hole!” The bright coats of the riders and the silver bells on their horse’s manes shone in the moonlight as the horses stamped impatiently on the earth. The riders drew their thin, sharp swords and bared their teeth. Their eyes burned with predatory zeal. One of the riders took up a golden horn and let loose its cry. Cabel Umber turned and fled, but the riders wheeled their steeds and rode hard upon him through the icy night and back up the road to Arvale.
The sound of hooves and horns faded in the distance. The gates leading home stood open.
Silas took a step and saw that Lars wasn’t following him.
Silas turned and took Lars’s hand in his.
“We’re going home,” Silas said, the words at first sticking in his throat.
“Silas, do you still promise to help me? I can’t go back alone.”
“You won’t be alone. I swear.”
Lars nodded, and they stepped together through the gates and back into Lichport. They had walked a few feet in, onto Fort Street, when Silas felt Lars slow his pace slightly, no doubt nervous about his homecoming. In Silas’s front pocket, the death watch began ticking again, and Silas could feel the small rhythm of its mechanism leap into a whir. He took it out, comforted to know that time had returned to its forward motion. He was about to ask how it felt to be home when Lars’s hand slipped from his. Silas turned around.
Lars stood a few paces away, frozen where his feet touched the ground of the town where he had been born nearly three hundred years before. His face was gray, as were his hair and clothes, and his skin looked dry and rough. Lars’s eyes were closed and his mouth hung open in an unvoiced gasp. The air seemed to waver about him. Silas took another step toward Lars and went to take his hand again. But as Silas reached out and touched him, Lars broke apart, as though made of ash, and fell away to dust.
Silas stood there stunned, gazing at the empty air where, only an instant before, his friend had stood.
Then, without thinking, Silas bent over and took up a handful of the dust and put it in the outside pocket of his greatcoat. Sorrow clutched at him. But already another thought siezed his mind, though it filled him with shame. His heart began dividing. There was grief and guilt at his friend’s death, and they were almost too much to bear. But somewhere deep inside him, from a place beyond his misery, another voice spoke, and said without a hint of sorrow: She is yours again.
If Silas could free her, he could have Bea back. It was easier to think only of this. What could he do about Lars now? Maybe it wasn’t really his fault. Weren’t there ancient
stories about those who wandered into the otherworld only to come back and find their postponed deaths waiting for them? Yes, Silas told himself, there are such stories, and so you should have known better.
With his pockets filled with dust, Silas turned away from the gate and started walking back into Lichport. As he made his way down Fort Street, he looked up at the window of his great-grandfather’s house. Nothing greeted his gaze. He looked down at the ring his great-grandfather had given him. In the deep blue of the stone, he could see the towers of Arvale looming. Below them, figures stirred in familiar scenes, as though the events there had all been stored within the bright gem. But now even the ring made him feel as though he were being watched. He didn’t want to think about Arvale now. He slipped the ring from his finger and put it in his pocket, and instantly his memories of the house began to pale and blur. So this was the ring’s gift, perhaps its gift to a living wearer: The stone granted memory of the otherworld. Silas took out the ring again and looked at it. His mind flooded with the names of necromantic texts and spells that Cabel Umber had told him. And in that moment as he put the ring back on, Silas was adamant about what he would do next.
He didn’t trust anything about Cabel Umber, but some of the books he’d mentioned Silas knew were real because he’d seen them. While his father’s library held a few general books on things like necromancy, Silas knew they were merely academic works. The subject would have been abhorrent to his dad. But there were other libraries in Lichport that held older, more practical texts.
So Silas would not go home. Not yet.
His shoulder blistered and burned. The place where Cabel had struck him and dragged his sharp nails through his skin was sore to the touch and burned like a hundred wasp stings. The pain went deeper into his bones. Silas rubbed his shoulder and sucked in air quickly through his teeth. Maybe Mrs. Bowe could help. No. He wouldn’t go to her begging. When the night’s work was done he’d go ask Mother Peale for help. He tried to push as much of the pain from his mind as he could, and, as if in response, the wound began to numb. He knew he should go home and rest, but his heart, rousing itself at the thought of Beatrice and the hope of seeing her, spoke and lied to him: If you could only see her again, all might be well. When you look into her eyes, everything shall be restored. Call her back to you. Summon her. Bring her back and your joys shall banish everything else in the world. There shall be no more pain. No more pain. Only love.
