by R. L. King
“Yeah.”
He tilted his head. “Ian, you might be able to fool me into believing that normally—your aura control is that good already. But you’re not even trying now. What is it?”
Ian’s gaze skated away, not meeting his. “I…I’m just not sure you should do this.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged.
“Ian…”
“Okay, look.” He took a deep breath. “We barely know each other. All these years I had no idea you existed. When Trin told me you did exist and you were a mage…that took a lot of getting used to. And when I finally met you…” He turned away and then back, his jaw tight. “Maybe it’s not worth it, getting rid of these echoes, if it means you might die. Does it really matter, whether or not you have this house? Let them have it. It’s not like you don’t have other places to go.”
“Ian—” Stone sighed, reaching out to grip his son’s shoulder. “I’m not going to die. But I’ve got to do this. I know you don’t understand. You know I’m your father, but you haven’t been around long enough to know what it means to be part of this family.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re responsible for what they did.”
“That’s true. But it does mean if I have a chance to make it right, I’ve got to take it.” He patted Ian’s arm and gave him what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Off you go, now. I’d like a few moments alone before we do this. I’m not going to die. Verity’s damned good—I know, because I trained her—and so are Eddie and Ward. They won’t let anything happen to me.”
Ian still didn’t look convinced, but after one last long look he headed off to join the others.
Stone watched the slump of his shoulders with a twinge of regret. If he had any other ideas, he’d try them, but he didn’t. “Okay,” he called after a moment. “Let’s do this.”
They gathered around him as he approached the circle. Verity pulled him into a tight hug, burying her face in his chest. “It’ll be fine,” she whispered.
“I know.” He stroked her back and kissed her. “You know I trust you. And don’t worry if I’m gone a while—I want to make sure they’ve all left before I come back.”
“Yeah.”
He stepped back and slipped off his coat and his black T-shirt, shivering a little as the room’s chill hit his bare skin. Verity took them, squeezing his hand.
“All right…here goes.” He scanned his companions’ faces, noting they all looked as grim as he was sure he did. Without giving himself more time to reconsider his decision, he levitated upward, crossed the circle, and settled on top of the altar. It still felt solid even after the others had opened it to reveal Brathwaite’s body. The body, of course, was no longer there—except perhaps as ashes. Stone hadn’t asked if they’d moved the ashes. He knelt there, waiting.
Eddie stepped forward, taking his position at the top of the circle, facing Stone. Verity, Ian, and Ward moved to the other three points.
Eddie began a chant in Latin. Stone had no trouble following the gist of it, and had to admit his friend had outdone himself making it sound authentic. The Latin words were a combination of a religious invocation and a magical ritual, asking God and the spirits to accept Stone’s sacrifice to pay for his ancestors’ crimes, so the innocent victims might have everlasting peace. He spoke in a strong, singsong cadence, his voice swelling to fill the room. Ward and Verity followed along in response, with Ian doing his best to do likewise.
Stone, shifting to magical sight, already noticed a growing sense of power beginning to rise in the room. It didn’t feel like magical power, but rather more of a force pressing on the room from all sides. Were the echoes here? Were they watching?
The chant lasted for several minutes. Stone remained kneeling, trying to project penitence and a desire for atonement. He didn’t make any effort not to shiver, figuring his discomfort might add to the verisimilitude of the whole thing.
“Alastair Stone, son of Orion Stone,” Eddie called, spreading his arms wide. “Please state that you ’ave come ’ere to this place of your own free will.”
“I have.” Stone’s confident words rang against the chamber’s walls.
“You ’ave chosen to sacrifice your life—to spill your blood to atone for the sins of your ancestors, so that those they have wronged may ’ave peace.”
“I have.”
“You ’ave not been coerced in any way to make this sacrifice.”
“I have not. It is my choice.” Stone tilted his head back, addressing the unseen presences in the room. “Although I have no hand in what was done to all of you, I deeply regret it. I beg that, by my sacrifice, I absolve my descendants of any responsibility for your fate. I ask your forgiveness, and seek both to send you at last to your rest and to wipe my family’s slate clean from this moment forward.”
Would they buy it? Should they buy it? Was he even doing the right thing, trying to deceive them like this?
No going back now.
“Then it shall be so,” Eddie intoned. “Lie down, please.”
Stone lowered himself down until he lay on his back atop the altar. It was ice cold against his skin, shooting a stronger, full-body shiver through him. Eddie and Ward had removed the manacles during their preparation, since it wouldn’t be necessary to restrain him. He stared up at the ceiling, noting the tiny, previously hidden vent. It was a clever design, probably leading to a concealed passage that vented into one of the house’s existing chimneys. Idly, he wondered how many other secrets this house hid within its walls, and whether he’d have the chance to try finding them.
“Are you prepared?” Eddie asked.
He studied the faces of his companions. Eddie and Ward looked solemn, Verity nervous but resolute, and Ian pale.
“I am.”
“Verity, if you would be so kind…”
Verity stepped into the circle. Stone couldn’t see her feet, but the way she moved made it obvious she was taking care not to obscure the lines. From her bag, she removed a small jar of black liquid and unscrewed the lid. She looked down at him, unsmiling and focused. “Are you sure?”
“Do it.”
As Eddie, Ward, and Ian continued a soft chant, Verity dipped her finger into the jar and began tracing patterns on Stone’s chest.
He felt his skin flutter beneath her finger, but fought to lie still as she went about her work. She met his gaze again as she traced the last of the pattern, finishing with a dot on the left side, just below his magical tattoo. Then she drew another pattern on his forehead, put the lid back on the jar, and set it aside. “He is prepared,” she announced.
“Good,” Eddie said. Once again he spread his arms wide, looking like a preacher giving a heartfelt sermon. “Prepare the sacrificial weapon with the ritual poison.”
Verity drew the knife from her bag along with the little vial of elixir. With care, she held the blade up and tipped the vial, dripping a single drop on its tip. Stone watched her, noting the thick, viscous stuff didn’t trickle down, but instead remained on the blade, coating it. She flipped the knife over and did the same thing on the other side. When she finished, the end of the black blade shone with the oily substance. She capped the vial and put it back in her bag.
“It is prepared.”
“Good.” Eddie lowered his hands, looking around the room. “Alastair Stone, this is your last chance to change your mind. For the final time: do you choose, of your own free will and without coercion or duress, to make this sacrifice, to spill your blood and give your life to clear the stain from your family’s name?”
Stone swallowed. This was it. If he’d made the wrong choice, this was when he’d find out.
“I do so choose,” he said firmly. He lay back on the table, tensing.
“Then let it be done,” Eddie said, and nodded to Verity.
She raised the knife. Tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes, and her hand gripping the knife shook. “Let it be done,” she repeated.
She brought her arm down,
stabbing the knife into Stone’s chest at the point where she’d made the dot.
Stone kept his eyes open, and it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done not to flinch away. The blade pierced his skin with a bright, stinging pain, but he barely noticed it along with the trickle of blood running down his side and pooling beneath him. What he did notice was another sensation—not pain, but rather a feeling of diminishing, as if a psychic whirlwind had gathered his soul and was pulling it free of his body. It was a profoundly disturbing feeling, its sense of wrongness far worse than the slight pain of the physical wound.
Suddenly, a deep sense of panic gripped him. This was wrong. I never should have agreed to it. I’ve got to—
Around him, the physical world began to fade. The faces of his companions swirled, their bodies becoming gray and indistinct. As his essence—his soul, if you believed that sort of thing—lifted free of his body, a dark, foggy haze engulfed him. He looked around for any sign of the echoes clustering near him, but saw nothing but the darkness.
Had something gone wrong?
Panic rising higher, he tried to reverse direction, to plunge his astral body back into his physical one. This had been a mistake. They’d have to try something else. He couldn’t—
And then, a sudden wrenching.
Something gripped his essence and pulled, a strong, inexorable force yanking him free of his body. He struggled, flinging himself back and forth like a wild animal caught in a trap, but the grip didn’t fade.
The last thing he consciously remembered before the dark fog enfolded him was deep laughter—the same laughter he’d heard at the end of the séance—and the feeling of something strong and determined brushing past him on its way toward his unmoving, unconscious body.
37
The fog didn’t clear, not entirely. It still floated all around Stone, obscuring the view above him, below him, and off in the distance.
Nearer, though, the world settled into hazy focus.
He looked around, confused. Where was he? Where was this place? Why couldn’t he return to his body?
Slowly, the haze drifted away, revealing a large room.
It wasn’t a room, though—not in the physical sense. It was more correctly the abstract concept of “roomness”—walls, floor, ceiling all made of the suggestion of wood. On either side and in front of him rose several levels of tiered seating, each row behind its own waist-high panel. When he spun to look behind him, he saw they were there too. Surrounding him. The room, or whatever it was, did not appear to have an exit.
“Where am I?” he called. His voice didn’t echo, but fell flat almost as it did when he tried to speak in the Overworld. Was he in the Overworld? The fog was similar, but he’d never seen anything like this when traversing the tunnels. “Is anyone here?”
Slowly, a series of figures swirled into view.
Like the wooden room, they weren’t substantial. They flickered and twisted, almost as if they weren’t fully there at all. They had no weight to them, no sense of physicality.
They did have faces, though.
Suddenly, with a certainty he didn’t question, Stone knew exactly how many of them there were.
Forty-one.
If he’d had breath, it would have caught in his throat.
He looked down at himself. Unlike the other figures, he did look substantial. He was naked, his body traced with the hint of a silvery glow. A trickle of blood ran down his chest, and his magical tattoo glowed faintly in the dead air, but he no longer felt the chill of the ritual room, nor the slight pain of the stab wound.
All around the room, the figures were watching him. All of them wore the same expression: stern, cold, unyielding. Each was dressed in the suggestion of old-fashioned clothes, and even though Stone couldn’t get a good look at any of them, he didn’t need to. Even the vague, shifting hints gave him what he needed to know: some of the clothes were threadbare and ragged, while others were fine and well-tailored.
“Deceiver,” boomed a voice.
“No…” he whispered. He put his hands to his ears, but it didn’t help. All around him, other voices repeated the word: Deceiver. It seemed to be coming not from the room, but inside his head.
This had not gone at all as he had expected.
Desperately, he tried to find the thin cord that would lead him back to his body. The elixir should have rendered it invisible to the echoes, but he should still be able to see it if he looked carefully. If he could follow it back to his body, he could—
“Deceiver,” the deep, unseen voice intoned again, and this time several more picked up the refrain as well.
Stone looked around, trying to pierce the strange, foggy room’s walls. The others—Verity, Eddie, Ward, and Ian—were out there somewhere. If he could reach them, he could find his body even without the cord. Surely they must have realized something had gone wrong, and were even now working from their end to bring him back.
The indistinct figures were all glaring at him, their burning hatred beating at his astral body with as much force as if they had been throwing physical knives at him. Pain buffeted him, driving him to his knees.
“Deceiver!”
“Murderer!”
“Betrayer!”
“He must pay!”
“No!” Stone shouted. “No…” His body jerked and shuddered as the power of their hate continued to slam into him. He braced himself against it, trying to fight it with the power of his mind—the only power that mattered here.
It didn’t work, and he knew why.
Because they were right.
He had sought to deceive them. Despite his precautions they’d caught on to his game, and now they wanted to punish him for it. He felt the ghostly trickles of more blood running down his body, but when he looked down at his chest he saw nothing save the original wound from Verity’s knife.
“No…” he said again, struggling to rise. “Please. Listen to me. You’re right—I did try to deceive you. But only because I had no other choice. I want to help you. I tried to help you. Please—just listen to me, I beg you. Let me help you.”
He did his best to project genuine sincerity, apology, shame for what his family had done. In the astral realm, intent, emotion, and mental power were the only things that mattered. It was no surprise that his body was naked, mirroring the state of his mind. There were no lies, no deception, no places to hide.
Their cold gazes continued slamming into him, opening fresh but unseen wounds. Here, the expression “glaring daggers” took on literal meaning. “Please…” he begged. “Let me help you. Listen to me. Or—”
A sudden thought struck him.
He jerked his head up. “No. Don’t listen to me. Let me listen to you.” He pulled himself up straighter, facing them without flinching. “Tell me your stories. Show me what you’ve endured. Help me remember you.”
For a moment, he thought his words wouldn’t do any good. Their hatred, steeping against his family for three hundred years in one of the most magically potent locations in the world, would be too strong for mere words to overcome—and if it turned out to be so, he didn’t blame them. He couldn’t. Unless his friends could figure out how to bring him home, he’d have to accept his fate. He’d known the risk existed when he tried this mad plan.
But…slowly, some of the slicing pain receded. Stone didn’t look at their faces, but he sensed dissention in the echoes’ formerly solid wall of hate. Now the voices murmured and whispered to each other rather than booming in his head. He couldn’t make out their words, but he sensed discussion.
“You wish to see?” the male voice asked. It still sounded hard and cold, but it also carried disbelief.
Stone lifted his head again, realizing that, for the moment, at least, the blades piercing him had ceased. “Yes,” he said. “I want to see. I’ve got to see. Please—show me. Let me share your pain.”
More murmuring. Stone still sensed their hatred, their judgment, but it didn’t seem quite as monolithic as b
efore.
Then, so quickly he had no chance to prepare himself, to brace against the onslaught, images and sensations began to flood him. Although on some rational level he knew they came fast, bombarding him from all sides as each of the echoes struggled to make its own voice heard, for him it was as if time had slowed, giving him a front-row seat to each and every one of their stories.
He was a child, a starving, sickly orphan living on the streets of St. Giles, picking through scraps and begging for his next meal, dazzled by the well-dressed stranger offering to show him another world where he’d never want for anything again…
He was a woman, a prostitute, desperate to feed her three hungry children in any way she could. Perhaps the handsome, wealthy man might fancy her, so she could make her children’s miserable lives a bit better…
He was a teenage boy, running from a tyrannical father, seeking only honest work so he could gather enough money to leave England. The promise of a job was a godsend, taking him far away from the man who sought to kill him…
He was a wealthy businessman, owner of a firm that imported exotic items from the Orient, facing ruin. The stranger who approached him about an alliance showed impressive credentials. Perhaps there might be a way free of his crushing debt after all…
He was a workman, who made his living by the strength of his muscles and the sweat of his brow. Work was sparse lately, but after he heard of a grand mansion being constructed, he could barely believe his good fortune when he was chosen…
He was a traveler, a young man far from home, seeking only to see what the world had to offer…
He was a runaway child…
He was a barmaid from a disreputable tavern…
He was a skilled carpenter who was caught speaking against his employer…
He was a stonemason…
He was a tramp, living in squalor in an abandoned building in Liverpool…
Stone barely realized he was on his knees again, bent over with his hands pressed against a floor that looked like fog and felt like scarred wood. The images kept coming, crowding their way into his head until he was sure he couldn’t endure any more of them.
