by S. E. Grove
“Who was it?”
“It was not a person. It was the phantom of a thing—an animal. A horse that ran away when we were children. I recognized it by the toss of its head, and so did Oswin. I heard Oswin call to it by name. I followed, thinking as my brother did that some strange spirit of the horse, or the horse itself, had returned to us.” He shook his head. “But it was not the horse or its spirit. It was a fell thing that drew him across one field and then another. I pursued him, caring nothing for the horse but gravely distressed by how my brother seemed not to heed or even hear me. The night deepened, and we passed into the forest.” Errol turned to the fire. Sophia waited. “I lost him there,” he said, in a hard voice. “In the darkness. Though I could still pursue his trail. In the town beyond the forest they had seen him, and in the town farther south they had, also.” He passed a hand quickly over his eyes. “I will not tire you by telling you of every sign I sought and found, but suffice to say that I pursued Oswin for a year, farther and farther south, until we were at the very edge of the Papal States, and I began to doubt my own sanity.
“But here,” he said slowly, “I found that others had seen phantoms. It was not so uncommon as it had seemed to me in York. I saw them for myself—other specters. As dusk fell, they emerged, each with its intended destination. The people in the cities and towns north of here live in mortal fear of the phantoms, believing if they are bewitched by them, they will be drawn into the Dark Age.
“Then I had a chance discovery. I ran out of arrows.” Errol paused and smiled briefly to himself. “The mistake of a novice. So I cut new ones from an orange tree—crude things with too much bend and hardly a point. And when I launched them at the apparitions, they vanished. Now I cut fresh arrows each day. The green wood is, as yet, the only method I have found for banishing the shadows—at least for a single night. They always reappear.”
Sophia felt a rapid pulse of relief. She’ll be back again tomorrow, she thought. She’s not gone.
Errol picked up his spoon, then put it down again. “By then, I had reached the road from Seville to the border of the Dark Age. And there I lost the trail. No one had seen Oswin, though plenty had seen him farther north. He was easy to mark—a pale, blond youth from the Closed Empire, identical in appearance to me. Many before had seen him. But then all sign of him vanished. That was two years ago.”
He was silent for so long Sophia thought his story had ended. Seneca walked across the table once, examined Errol’s plate, then retreated to his corner and turned his back on them. Sophia felt her caution of the phantom hunter fading. He was just like her, this Errol Forsyth: seeking lost family, across great distances and with impossible prospects. Here, she thought, reaching into the pocket for the spool of thread, is someone who will understand what I am doing. The Fates have been kind to place him in my way.
Suddenly Errol spoke again. “Then I began to see Oswin’s likeness. It always arrives at dusk—that was what you saw. A sad, pathetic thing. With a strange face that seemed made of some page from a monk’s book. I do not know what it means.” He frowned, and his eyes, reflecting the fire, seemed filled with flames. “I refuse to believe that he is dead. I have seen the phantoms of the dead, and this is not one of them. True phantoms are heavy, toxic with grief. These are light, as if illuminated by a searching flame. He is alive,” he said fiercely. “I am sure of it.”
“Does he speak to you, too?”
“Yes. Always some nonsense.”
“He says the same thing each time?”
“No. Different things. I have long since stopped listening. The words have no meaning. It is not Oswin, that specter.” He took a breath and his face relaxed, growing pensive. “For the last two years, I have traveled all throughout the towns and cities here, but I have had no further sign of him. I have circled the perimeter of the Dark Age twice, but I will not venture into it.”
Sophia considered him. “Because it is not allowed by the Orders, or because it is too dangerous?”
“I care nothing for what the Orders allow or do not allow. But the Dark Age is not to be trifled with. It may belong to some distant past, but it is still here. It is the dark heart of the Papal States. We all have one,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “a dark point at our center, where it is wise not to enter or look too closely. My Dark Age is as dark as any other.” He flexed his hands. “I refuse to believe he is there. Not Oswin.” He took his eyes from the fire to look at her. “And you must have lost your mother, or she would not have appeared to you as a phantom.”
Sophia nodded. The piercing blue gaze seemed kinder now, though the expression on Errol’s face was unchanged. “She and my father disappeared when I was small. They were explorers. I’m here because I think there may be word of them in Granada. My mother left a diary there. I was to travel with another woman from Boston. Remorse. But she never boarded the ship. She . . . I don’t know. She made arrangements for me to meet someone in Seville at the port. They weren’t there. I am not sure if they ever will be. So who knows if I will ever get to Granada.” Errol gazed at her a moment longer after she had stopped speaking, then nodded.
“I will go with you,” he said without looking at her, standing up to throw another log on the fire.
She hesitated, surprised by the offer. “Thank you. But I can’t keep you from your search.”
“You are not keeping me from it. And it is a long road to Granada. It circles north all the way around the border of the Dark Age. Besides, this is what I do: wander futilely, hunting my brother’s ghost while my brother himself continues to elude me.” He spoke without bitterness, but with a heavy sadness that sounded to Sophia very like defeat.
“I should wait here, in Seville,” she said with a sigh. Then she looked up and was surprised to see the phantom hunter smiling.
It was the first time she had seen him smile, and it made him look suddenly younger. He let out a brief laugh. “You do not trust me!” he exclaimed.
“That’s not true,” Sophia replied earnestly. “I am grateful for your offer to help—very grateful. But I did sent word to friends in the United Indies before leaving Boston. I think perhaps I should wait for them here. They can be trusted—they are not Nihilismian like the others.”
“Ah. Nihilismians.” He paused. “And this woman who left you alone on the ship and made arrangements for you that did not come through—she was Nihilismian?”
“Yes.”
Errol raised his eyebrows. His face was serious once more as he turned to look at the fire. “In truth you would be wise,” he said, “to be cautious of strangers. I am surprised you found a Nihilismian trustworthy. And you do not know me—cannot know what I am or am not.” He shook his head. “You have nothing to fear from me, but you should bolt the door of my room, to make sure. A cautious young lady would not easily stay the night in an empty house with a hooded stranger. We will bolt the outside door as well.”
Sophia felt embarrassed by the reprimand. No doubt he was right. She trusted too readily. “All right. Thank you.”
—19-Hour 42—
THE BED IN the little room overlooking the courtyard was softer and more comfortable than Sophia had imagined. But she could not sleep. Restless thoughts and persistent uncertainties kept her mind turning. The pretty room, which had clearly belonged to a girl her own age or younger, filled her with morbid thoughts about the deaths that had likely occurred in her place of refuge. Perhaps, she comforted herself, the family moved away to avoid lapena. But then, why would they leave all their belongings?
Sophia sighed and turned over restlessly. She could not decide what to do. Was it wiser to stay in Seville and wait for Remorse’s ally? Or would it be better to travel east to the Granada Archive at once? Sitting up, she leaned forward and opened the shutters to the window overlooking the courtyard. Moonlight poured into the room. She looked out at the roofs of Seville and imagined the plague creeping through the city
on shadowy feet. Despite her exhaustion, she realized, she would not be sleeping.
Sophia took her notebook from her satchel. She filled the pages, drawing and writing by the light of the moon. The plague cleric, Whence and Partial, the boy and his mother who had given her bread, the lamplighter, Errol Forsyth, and the specter of Minna Tims. She could hardly believe it had all happened in one day. As she drew, the tolling of bells marked the night hours: the second vigil, the third vigil, the fourth vigil, and matins.
It was close to dawn, though the sky was still dark, when Sophia suddenly heard a strange sound: a stretching and creaking, like the wall of a house resisting the wind. Then a sharp cracking and splintering cut through the air: the sound of wood being smashed to pieces. For a moment, she thought of the front door, but no—the sound came from the courtyard. A clattering explosion, followed by the report of wood on stone, drove her to the window.
She looked down and saw the planter in pieces. The plants that had been growing inside the wooden container were now bursting from it; the soil lay scattered, the fully blossomed flowers partly trampled, as if someone had walked through them.
Sophia pulled away from the window with a gasp. “Errol!” she shouted. She unbolted her door and rushed out into the corridor. She could hear him in the room across the narrow hall, stumbling across the floorboards.
He pounded on the door of his room. “Open the door. Sophia. Sophia! Unbar the door!”
But Sophia stood motionless in the corridor. She stared up at the figure that stood not five paces away, blocking her path. Tall and strangely illuminated, emitting a golden light like the flame of a candle, the woman held her hand out toward Sophia, commanding her stillness. “Do not move,” she said, her voice sinuous as a velvet ribbon, winding its way around Sophia so that she felt rooted to the floor. Then the woman turned her palm upward, and a cluster of golden blossoms sprang from her hand. “Be gone,” the woman whispered. With a slight movement, she tossed the blossoms toward Sophia. They burst into a dense fog of petals and pollen, heavy and thick as a storm cloud. Sophia could see nothing but a yellow mist, and her breath seemed to lodge in her throat. She could hardly breathe.
25
The Lost Signs Are Lost
March 15, 1881
It was no surprise to us that Bruno had not only been kind to Rosemary but had become her teacher and friend. She told us how, during the year he stayed at the farm, Bruno had related stories of all his adventures, sung often, and laughed more. He tried to coax her out of silence with his poor Castilian, and when this did not work, he switched to his native English. Neither drew Rosemary into speech, but she slowly learned the unfamiliar language, even as she communicated with him mostly by signs. Bruno read out loud to her from his many books in English, sharing the world of New Occident through their pages. Bruno was never impatient or vexed at her muteness, which he treated with a delicacy that, at times, almost allowed her to forget its existence.
These qualities were the same ones that had endeared Bruno Casavetti to us when we first met him in Boston years earlier, and they were the qualities that had made him such a beloved companion on more than one expedition. They were the reasons why we had gone into such a remote Age to find him, leaving little Sophia behind. We listened with great emotion to Rosemary’s stories of Bruno’s kindness—and, finally, with dread to her account of his final months in Murtea.
“Bruno became captivated by Ausentinia,” she told us, “as I knew he would. He had originally traveled to the Papal States with the intention of mapping the perimeter of the Dark Age, but Ausentinia had distracted him. Rumor of the House of Saint Antony drew him to Murtea, and once he discovered the rumors were true, its marvels kept him close by. Bruno wanted to understand how such a wondrous Age had come to be. He crossed the stone bridge to Ausentinia every day, returning only at dusk. He visited each map store asking every manner of question and receiving friendly but uninformative replies. None of them had a map for Bruno. He became convinced that the entire origin and existence of Ausentinia was something the inhabitants concealed: the one lost answer for which no map would be drawn.
“And then, one day in November, he returned to the farm with a stricken look that filled me with fear. He would hardly meet my gaze. I pressed his arm and signed to ask him what had happened. He looked up at me then, his expression filled with grief. ‘It is gone,’ he said quietly. ‘Ausentinia is gone. The Dark Age has taken it.’
“I was shocked, naturally, and my face said as much. Bruno explained as best he could. ‘As I took the path to the stone bridge, I came across Pantaleón, the priest’s nephew. He was heading into Ausentinia as well. We walked together, talking, toward the stone bridge. But then when we crested the hill we saw’—he swallowed—‘we saw that the paths to Ausentinia were gone. Not even the hills were there. Black moss met the stone bridge on the other side. I saw the spines—they were young ones, with their thorny trunks and long limbs. I have seen the Dark Age before, as I stood at a safe distance, and there is no doubt in my mind. Somehow, inconceivably, it has arrived, taking the hills of Ausentinia with it.
“‘It was Pantaleón who saw the yellow hills in the distance. He pointed, and I could see that he was right. Pieces of Ausentinia had yet survived, like amber islands in a sea of black. As we looked, something even more unbelievable occurred. The shape of the Age before us changed. An Ausentinian hill in the near distance expanded, replacing a portion of the dark forest. Then, more shocking still, the earth on the far side of the stone bridge transformed as well—the familiar tall, yellowed grass appeared. Pantaleón and I stared, dumbfounded. I did not understand what I was seeing. But Pantaleón, with his typical impulsiveness, ran to look more closely. I called him back, but he ignored me.’
“Bruno wiped his brow. ‘If only I had stopped him!
“‘Pantaleón crossed the bridge and rushed across the grass to the very edge of the black moss, and as he did I heard a rush of wind like the sound of an approaching storm. Pantaleón reached to touch the moss, an expression of wonder on his face. I saw behind him what appeared to be a gust of wind, moving through the spines. Pantaleón rose, but he was too late. When I uncovered my eyes, everything beyond the bridge was black once more, as if darkness had extinguished a frail yellow flame. I could not see Pantaleón.’ Bruno looked up at me then, his face filled with horror. ‘But I could hear him screaming, running through the spines. And then . . . nothing.’
“Bruno and I sat in silence; both of us struck dumb now. After a time, he sighed. ‘I do not understand what I saw.’ He got to his feet. ‘But I must tell the priest what has happened to his nephew. Perhaps some brave soul will go in search of him and see if he is still alive.’ I nodded, understanding that the errand was necessary, but I felt a curious sense of unease and then dread, which grew in my stomach after he had gone. The story had unsettled me, of course, but I felt a fear of something much nearer: some impending danger that I could not fathom. Finally, unsure what else to do, I hurried to the village to find Bruno at the priest’s house.
“As I neared Murtea’s walls, I saw the peddler who travels between Granada and Murtea. He is an old man, hunched and dried as the hills, but he still walks the route every other week. He was arguing with a man from the village, and I heard their voices grow shrill. Suddenly, the enraged customer raised his sword, and with vicious strokes he began to hack the old man’s cart to pieces. For a moment, I felt a strange relief that he was attacking the cart and not the old man. And then my mind understood what my eyes were seeing. A broken cart. A broken cart. The words from the map came back to me. When the cart breaks, go to the goat’s head. I lost no time; I did as the map instructed me.”
“But what is the goat’s head?” I asked Rosemary.
“Our sheriff,” she said. “Alvar Cabeza de Cabra. His name means ‘head of goat,’” she explained for Bronson’s benefit. “I ran to the village plaza, where I knew the sheriff
would be, and there I found my dear Bruno already bound, looking at the sheriff and the priest with an expression of complete bewilderment. I ran up to him and clawed at his bonds. ‘Seize her,’ the priest said. ‘No doubt this little witch assisted him.’ I was no match for the sheriff, who held my hands behind my back before I could even turn to face him. ‘Did you teach the brujo a trick or two?’ the priest asked me cruelly. ‘Did you tell him to bring the Dark Age upon us? To send my nephew into its depths?’
“Then, as if it had never been gone, my voice returned. ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘He is no witch. He wanted to help Pantaleón. You must believe him!’
“The priest regarded me with disgust. ‘No doubt it was his witchcraft,’ he hissed, ‘that gave you back your voice as well. Was it a pact of some kind? An exchange of his soul for your wretched voice? I will see that you both pay for this.’”
Rosemary broke off. “I cannot bear to tell you the rest of it,” she said quietly.
“Please,” I said, though my eyes were already damp with tears. “I am sorry for the pain it causes you, but I beg you to tell us what became of him.”
“They placed us both in this same jail,” Rosemary went on, with effort, “and in time the villagers discovered that what Bruno had said was indeed true. The Dark Age had overtaken Ausentinia. It had reached the very edge of the stone bridge. None dared enter in search of Pantaleón. Bruno began to lose hope that they would ever listen to reason. Certainly the priest did not.
“Without telling me, he decided to confess to the charges. He could not explain how the Dark Age had arrived, but he pretended that he had made a pact with the Devil, sending Pantaleón into the Dark Age in exchange for my voice. He told them that I was innocent.
