‘Let us hope our friend has been restrained tightly enough,’ said one of the men, and Kate was sure she heard a smile in his voice.
Once she was inside it, Kate saw the corridor as it had been in its prime. A few brass lanterns hung from hooks along the wall, but between them was gathered a collection of far more gruesome artefacts: a human hand, severed at the wrist, that looked as if it had been preserved in yellow wax; a skull with no teeth whose eye sockets had been carefully filled with mud; and a collection of perfect bones – human, Kate guessed – all of them long, stripped and polished, with initials carved neatly into the very centre of their length.
Kate tried not to notice the other dead things, but they were part of the memory and she had no choice but to see the strings of bird skeletons spread wing to wing, and the long sticks of wood pierced with rows of teeth and smeared the dull colour of old blood.
The man’s shouts sounded louder now, and there was a light up ahead, leading off into a room that Kate and Edgar had not seen on their way to the spirit wheel – one that had probably been sealed up long ago in her own time. She tried to pull away from the memory, but she did not know how to break herself out of it. Without someone to help her, she was trapped.
The woman continued to walk steadily towards the room, no matter how much Kate willed her feet to stop. She could hear the voices of the men talking behind her, but she did not know what they were talking about. The woman was as transfixed as Kate was upon the light of that doorway, and her memory did not recall what they were saying. Kate felt her footsteps slowing as they neared the threshold of the room and she dared to hope she would be spared the sight of what lay inside. Then the moment of hesitation passed and the woman stepped into the light.
What Kate saw in that room would stay with her for the rest of her life. She had seen something like it long ago, in a printed picture – she couldn’t remember where – and her mind instantly registered two things: that this was a moment that meant something – one that was set to be a turning point in Albion’s history; and that she knew who these people were. The bonemen. Keepers of the dead. Men and women who had once been trusted to bury and care for Albion’s dead in the vast tombs beneath Fume, people who were generally seen as having done good work – not the kind of people who hung bones on their walls, carried blades and restrained people so they shouted out like that.
The picture Kate remembered was an artist’s view of the bonemen’s last collective deed before they disappeared from history. Their last funeral. The interment of the man thought to be their leader. No one knew his name. In the picture at least sixty bonemen were standing round a coffin in an otherwise empty room, their heads bowed to represent the ending of an age that would die with that man. It was a beautiful picture, drawn in black ink, but Kate now knew that it was a lie.
The bonemen were gathered there, surely enough, but the room was not the plain one the artist had depicted. The floor was alive with energy. Thirteen freshly carved spirit wheels were laid flat on their backs creating a stone mosaic upon the ground and soft light spread from their symbols like a blue mist floating just above the floor. It looked as if thirteen individual listening circles had been opened at once, creating thirteen separate tears between the living world and the veil.
More mud-eyed skulls watched from the walls, and in the centre of it all was not a body in a coffin, but a man who was still very much alive. He had been stripped to the waist and laid on top of one of the spirit wheels with his wrists and feet bound tightly to a plank or wood laid underneath him to keep him still. Two of the bonemen were kneeling on either side of him, painting inky symbols on his chest. His eyes were tar black, but when they moved Kate saw that they had the same sheen of silver as her own. He was a Walker, and a powerful one, just like her.
But none of that could help him there. Kate could feel the combined will of the gathered bonemen dominating the thirteen wheels. Not even a Walker could fight against a force of energy like that, but it did not stop the man from trying. Kate could feel him reaching out to the wheels one by one, his spirit searching for a way to close them but finding none. Then he shouted again, his voice black with anger.
‘Dalliah!’
The bonemen with the ink finished their work, and everyone in the room turned to see a woman entering the room. She was younger than most of the people there. She wore the same grey robes as the others, but her long hair was knotted into ragged plaits and her face was drawn and thin. She did not walk forward, but looked down at the closest spirit wheel as if it were a snake ready to snap at her ankles should she take another step.
The man in the centre considered his words carefully, knowing that he had only one chance to stop what was happening. ‘Dalliah,’ he said, battling to keep his voice calm, ‘Wintercraft caused this mistake. Wintercraft will put it right. This is not the way forward. This is not what we do.’
Dalliah drew her own silver blade and handed it to the boneman beside her. ‘It is now,’ she said.
The boneman crossed the spirit wheels, gripping the blade at his side.
‘The veil is not meant to be used this way,’ said the bound man, watching him approach. ‘There is no guarantee this will even work. We do not know enough. We need more time!’
The boneman with the knife knelt down, placing his hand across the bound man’s mouth, and Kate felt the energy in the room shudder as the silver blade was lifted and the point stabbed down. The man’s death was swift and silent. Kate caught a glimpse of red blood pooling near the boneman’s feet and watched it bleed down into the carvings of the central spirit wheel. The memory flooded with the woman’s emotions: guilt, grief, fear and doubt, all wrestling for Kate’s attention while she looked on in horror. Then the memory turned and focused upon Dalliah, who was watching the man’s death with quiet reverence. There was no guilt or grief on her face. Her grey eyes were empty of any emotion as she began to whisper a short verse – one that Kate had read before.
‘A circle made of blood and stone, to bind the words of soul and bone. A meeting place for those who seek the spirit sleeping underneath.’
Kate felt two conflicting bands of energy spilling out across the floor; one seeping from the dead man’s blood, the other being spread by Dalliah herself. The two forces joined together above the dead man, and as the gentle mist of his spirit rose up to be carried into the current of death, her energy acted as a wall, forcing his spirit down. Down into the spirit wheel. Down into the stone. The blood bled deeper into the wheel, and once the spirit was trapped, the energy within it died instantly. The wheel became dull and dead, with only the faintest vibration of energy at its core suggesting that there was anything unusual about it at all.
The room fell silent then. All eyes were on the bloodstained carvings, until the man’s killer stood up, his blade slick with blood, and spoke for them all.
‘Did it work?’
‘It worked,’ said Dalliah, sweeping her eyes around the people, a dangerous smile lighting up her face. ‘Now for the rest.’
‘The rest?’ The voice came from Kate’s throat as the woman stepped forward. ‘We were told one would be enough,’ she said. ‘We have taken one life. We are finished here.’
Dalliah met the woman’s eyes, and cold fear washed through Kate’s soul. Fear of what that woman was, and fear of what she could do.
‘We are only finished when I say,’ said Dalliah. ‘Do it.’
With those words twelve more blades flashed into action. Kate saw a handful of bonemen turn suddenly upon the others, stealing lives and binding souls into the spirit wheels with more spilled blood. The walls echoed with their victims’ screams and the wheels flickered out one by one as the bodies of the dead fell across them. It all happened too quickly for anyone to react, but the horror of what the woman was seeing choked through the memory as she stumbled back, turned, and stood face to face with one of the men she had brought to that room.
Kate saw the dagger and the silent apology in his eyes
. Cold silver plunged deep into her chest. Kate felt the blade grate against bone, the explosion of heat and fire as the dagger found her heart, and the shuddering pull of eternity as the final wheel claimed its soul.
Kate opened her eyes to blackness. She thought she was screaming, but the frost of the veil still had her throat and no sound came out. Her hands flew to her chest, but there was no dagger, no blood. Her heart was racing, and she did not know where she was. She was lying on her back on a cold floor with something soft underneath her head.
She sat up and felt deep grooves sliced into the floor beneath her fingers. For one terrifying moment her confused mind thought she was still inside the bonemen’s room, sitting on top of a spirit wheel. Then logic took over. She was no longer inside the memory, but she was not in the skull room either. The walls of this place felt closer together and someone was crouching nearby, breathing nervously in the dark. ‘Edgar?’ she whispered, as soon as her voice returned.
Something shuffled beside her and she heard the scratch of a match. Light flared across Edgar’s face and he held a finger to his lips to warn her to be quiet. They sat in silence while the match burned down and Edgar lit another, shielding the flame with a cupped hand.
‘I think they’re gone,’ he whispered at last.
‘Where are we?’ asked Kate.
‘You fell,’ said Edgar. ‘Something happened.’
Kate sat with her arms clutched protectively over her chest where the dagger blow had landed, her forehead throbbing with a dull ache that was gradually getting worse. Something tickled against her left eyebrow and when she rubbed her hand across it her fingers came away dark and wet.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Edgar. ‘You hit the table pretty hard before I caught you. Here, put this against it.’ He pressed something soft into her hand and her head stung as she tried to stop the trickle of blood.
‘Did Baltin see us?’ she asked.
‘He would have,’ said Edgar, ‘but the spirit wheel started moving again when you fell. Baltin just stood there staring at it, as if he was obsessed by the thing. I got us out through the narrow door before Artemis came in to see what was happening. You’re heavier than you look, you know.’ Edgar smiled before the match flame scorched his fingers and fell to the floor, flickering out. ‘Better save the rest of these,’ he said, not lighting another.
‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ said Kate. ‘I didn’t even know the skull was there until I touched it. I think there was a shade in there. It showed me memories. Horrible things . . .’
‘So long as you’re all right, that’s all that matters,’ said Edgar. ‘How does your head feel?’
‘Sore.’
‘I don’t suppose it showed you anything useful, did it?’ said Edgar. ‘I thought the wheel was pretty useless, but if it hadn’t distracted Baltin when it did he’d be marching us back to the cavern right now. At this point, I’m willing to take any help we can get.’
Kate considered telling Edgar what she had seen, but it did not feel right to talk about murders that had happened so close to the place where they were sitting, no matter how many hundreds of years ago they might have been committed. ‘Nothing important,’ she said, though with the possibility that shades might still be lingering close by she felt uncomfortable saying those words out loud.
‘Maybe we should stay here for a while,’ said Edgar. ‘Get our bearings before we head out again.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ asked Kate. ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’
Edgar let the question hang in the darkness between them, which said more than any answer ever could.
After what Kate had seen she was glad to be able to stay still for a while, but the longer they sat there, the more the silence and gloom of being underground spread around them like thick fog, threatening to steal her senses one by one.
Baltin had found one of the missing spirit wheels and had been collecting skulls in that room for a long time. Bonemen skulls, including those whose spirits had long been sealed away inside Fume’s spirit wheels. The thought of what the bonemen had done chilled Kate, but the idea of the Skilled digging up old bones unsettled her too. Baltin had seemed almost hysterically fearful of Kate’s connection to the veil and had been willing to kill her to prevent her from using it again. Now it appeared that he was involved in something even more sinister himself.
The veil plucked at the edges of Kate’s consciousness as the wheel’s warning weighed heavily on her mind. And even there, sitting in the stony shadows of their tiny hiding place, she did not feel safe.
9
The Messenger
Silas woke not long after midnight to the earsplitting sound of lightning striking close by. His chest burned. His heart, usually steady and unnaturally slow, raced up to a speeding irregular beat and his skin blazed with heat. Pain spread like veins across the left side of his chest, stabbing into his heart like a core of flame. The intensity of it took him by surprise and he clutched a hand to his body, waiting for the feeling to pass. He had felt the stab of metal many times before. When he opened his shirt to inspect the skin he half expected it to be stained with blood, but his palm came away clean.
Rain streamed down in rivulets through the ruined roof and he stood up, shaking his wet hair and feeling the strength returning to his body again. He tested his arms by clenching his fists and feeling the healing muscles stretch beneath his skin. He had to move. Pure luck was all that had prevented the Blackwatch from finding him in there, and a thunderstorm was not going to stop them from continuing their search.
He climbed the stairs to the crypt door and opened it to a bitter blast of icy wind. Outside, the sun had not yet begun to rise, the rain was already freezing where it had collected on the ground, the paths were slick with fresh ice and scatterings of hailstones had blown up against the crypt walls. The ground crunched beneath his boots as he stepped out into the cemetery and heavy clouds crossed the sky like purple bruises streaked with sulphurous yellow and crackles of blue. He smelled the air. It was too late in the year for storms. The land was too cold, and yet the clouds still hung steadily within the arms of the mountains, hurling rain down on to the cold houses below.
He turned up his coat collar and his crow flew out of the crypt, huddling on to a bare tree branch and fluffing itself up for warmth. A bolt of lightning shook the ground, striking somewhere in the forest to the south. Silas walked back through the cemetery towards the iron gates, ignoring the spearing rain that needled down around him. The Blackwatch had taken his sword during his capture. They had emptied his pockets and left him with nothing. The last of his silver was gone, his hidden blades, everything that could have been of some use to him, but the short time he had spent in their custody had given him something more useful than any of those things. It had given him an idea.
With the early hour and the rain pelting down hard, Silas had the streets to himself. There was no sign of the Blackwatch anywhere on the southern side of the river and many of the lantern strings over the streets had snapped or been blown out by the wind. A few early risers were standing at their windows watching the unseasonal weather, but those who saw him backed away from the glass as he walked by.
Silas’s mood matched the ferocity of the sky. He made his way towards a small row of shops, found one that specialised in trade goods and broke his way in while barely breaking stride. There was a rumble from the upper floor and a short man ran down the stairs still in his nightshirt, wielding a dagger, determined to defend his shop. He stood still the moment he saw Silas standing in the doorway. His face fell and he lowered the dagger slowly.
‘There are some items I require here,’ said Silas. ‘You are going to get them for me, and then I will leave you in peace.’
‘A-all right,’ said the shop owner, backing up a few steps. ‘Anything you want. Take it. It’s yours.’
‘I require paper, a pen, ink and string, and a container, no longer or wider than a woman’s finger, with a stoppered top.’<
br />
The shop was small and well stocked. The man collected most of the things he needed from behind the counter, placed them in front of Silas and headed off in search of the container. Silas leaned on the counter to write a short letter and bit off a long length of string with his teeth while the man rummaged in a small drawer at the back of the shop.
‘Will this do?’ He hurried back, holding out a small glass vial between his finger and thumb. It had a small crack running down the side of it, but it would serve.
‘Good enough,’ said Silas. ‘And I’ll take that as well.’ He pointed to the dagger in the shop owner’s hand, and was handed it at once.
‘Of course. Anything you need.’
Silas slid the dagger into his belt, picked up letter, string and vial, and walked back out into the street.
The wind tried to snatch the paper from his fingers as he pushed it into the vial, stoppered it and tied the string tightly around it in four strong loops. ‘Crow,’ he said. The bird flew down from the shelter of a high window on the opposite side of the street and landed on his wrist. Silas looped the string over the bird’s head and tied an extra knot around its middle and across the centre of the vial to keep it tucked into place against its chest. The crow snapped its beak in complaint and shook its wings the moment he was finished, ruffling the glass amongst its chest feathers. Silas had never used his crow as a messenger before, but if the Blackwatch’s tattered pigeons could make it across the sea he was certain his bird would.
Wintercraft: Blackwatch Page 10
