Dead Man's Reach

by D. B. Jackson

  “At last,” came a rasping, uneven voice from the far side of the warehouse. “Now our battle can commence in earnest.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ethan jumped up, expecting to be beset by spells and armed sailors. But no attack came, and he was left to stare across the great room, his mouth agape as he struggled to comprehend the scene before him.

  Earlier this very day—before sunrise, although it seemed as though weeks had passed—Ethan remarked to Mariz on the appearance of Ramsey’s illusion, and the possibility that, because of the fire at Drake’s Wharf, the captain had made the figure look as he once had, rather than as he did now. But never had he thought to see Ramsey in such a state.

  He sat propped up by pillows in a large bed, blankets covering him to above his waist. Even from this end of the warehouse, Ethan could see that his unruly dark hair and unkempt beard were gone. The lone window in the building had been covered, and the only light came from a few candles that had been set on barrels and crates, and from a vast shining aqua dome of power—faint, transparent, but, Ethan was sure, as impermeable as steel—that surrounded the bed and its occupant. Still, Ethan could see that his skin was waxen and pale.

  Ten sailors stood around the bed, some armed with knives and lengths of rope, others with pistols. They watched Ethan, like wolves guarding their pack leader.

  “Come closer, Kaille,” Ramsey said, his voice barely discernible above the shouts from outside of Sephira and the others. “Come see what you’ve done to me.”

  Ethan glanced back at the door, which stood ajar, pieces of the splintered jamb on the floor. He hadn’t noticed before, but Uncle Reg still stood with him, his bright eyes fixed on that aqua shield.

  “They can’t help you. I’m not entirely sure that they can help themselves.”

  Ethan started toward the bed with deliberate steps, his gaze sweeping over Ramsey’s men. Reg followed him. Ethan held his knife ready, though he had little doubt that the captain had warded the sailors.

  “You needn’t fear them. They have strict orders not to touch you. They are here to guard against interference from others. I’ve made it clear to them that you are mine.”

  The closer Ethan drew to the bed, the more horrified he grew at what he could see of the man lying in it. Ramsey, who once had been as dashing and vital as he was mad, now was disfigured almost beyond recognition. The flesh on his face and head appeared to have melted like ice in the spring and then solidified again, misshapen and hideous. His lips had been burned away, so that his mouth was a slanting gash across his face. His nose was little more than a flap of skin. He had no eyebrows or eyelashes, and the skin around one of his eyes drooped, so that it was barely open.

  It was as if a careless child had begun to mold a face from clay, only to tire of his art and leave the visage unfinished.

  The only aspect of the captain’s face that struck him as at all familiar were the eyes themselves. Pale, almost ghostly, they were intelligent and hard and they peered out from the ravaged mien with such hatred Ethan had to resist the urge to flinch away.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Kaille. I feared that you might allow some other conjurer to fight this battle for you. I thought you’d bring Miss Windcatcher with you, or Pryce’s pet conjurer. It came as some relief to see you fly through that door.”

  Ethan couldn’t bring himself to speak. He stared at the man; the face, the emaciated form, the thin, bony hands, which were as scarred and grotesque as his mien.

  Ramsey’s mouth quirked in what might have been intended as a grin. “Hideous, aren’t I? You did this to me.”

  “No,” Ethan said, finding his voice. “You started the fire. You started the war. You did this to yourself. I’m no more responsible for your burns than I am for the deaths of Christopher Seider and the men who were shot last night.”

  “You left me to burn!” Ramsey said, his voice rising to a rough screech. “You were content to let me die! But I saved myself, and I healed the burns.”

  Ethan winced.

  “Aye, that’s right! I healed myself. As terrible as this face might seem now, it is better by far than it was in the days and weeks after we sailed from Boston.”

  Ethan tore his gaze from Ramsey and considered the shield of power that covered the bed. It was the same hue as the detection spells, and it glimmered similarly, its lustrous surface reflecting the candlelight as might a glass bowl.

  “You can’t defeat it,” Ramsey said. “Not without killing me. And yet, you cannot kill me without defeating it. A conundrum, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I thought you wanted to fight me, Ramsey. And instead you hide in this conjured cocoon. That hardly seems fair.”

  “Fair?” the captain said. “Fair? I can’t walk, Kaille. I can’t hold a weapon. I have nothing left but magicking. And you dare speak to me of fairness?”

  “Ethan!” Sephira’s voice.

  He looked back toward the door once more.

  “They cannot enter. The building is surrounded by flames and molten stone, as from the great volcanoes of the Mediterranean. Have you seen them?” Ramsey asked, abruptly sounding wistful. “Etna, Vesuvius?”

  Ethan shook his head.

  “I have. My father took me once, and I have been back since. But no more. Never again shall I captain my vessel past Gibraltar or along the shores of Italy. The life I have known is lost to me, and so I seek to deprive you of your life, as small recompense.”

  “How have you used my power for your conjurings, Ramsey? What manner of spell allowed you to do that?”

  The captain offered no answer save to lift the corners of his scarred mouth in a ghoulish smile.

  “Come now,” Ethan said. “One of us will be dead before this morning ends. Surely no harm can come of revealing your secret now.”

  “The harm comes from telling you nothing, from allowing you to die in ignorance, without the satisfaction of knowing how you have been bested again and again and again. How is your woman, by the way? Did that man in her tavern kill her, or did you rescue her in time?”

  Ethan’s arm was bleeding and the spell was on his lips before he knew what he had done. “Discuti ex cruore evocatum!” Shatter, conjured from blood!

  Ethan’s conjuring thrummed, and at the same time, the aqua dome shielding Ramsey seemed to shudder. He had time to realize his mistake, but could do nothing more before the spell rebounded and struck him. His warding held; the shatter spell did not break any of his bones. But once more he was knocked off his feet so that he landed hard on the dirt floor.

  Ramsey’s laugh was dry as brittle wood. But that was of little interest to Ethan, who had noticed something else. At the moment his conjuring touched the aqua shield, Ramsey’s spectral guide appeared beside the captain’s bed. The old, bent figure of a sea captain remained in view for but an instant before vanishing again. But that was enough to tell Ethan that the captain was using a different sort of power to maintain his domed warding. Reg appeared when Ethan cast his own wardings, but not each time another conjurer’s assault tested his defenses.

  Ramsey held no knife in his hands; Ethan wasn’t sure he could. And yet he had no doubt that the captain expected this encounter to end with a battle of conjurings. What was Ramsey using as the source of his power? Were some members of his crew conjurers? Was he using them as he had used Ethan this past fortnight?

  Ethan brushed himself off and got to his feet. Ramsey cackled.

  “Did you believe a simple conjuring would defeat my warding? Or did my mention of your woman banish all reason from your mind? Perhaps she is dead then, and that particular barb found its mark.”

  Saying nothing, Ethan edged closer to the bed. Despite Ramsey’s assurances, the sailors guarding him stepped forward, blocking his way.

  “I thought we were to fight without interference, Ramsey,” Ethan said.

  “You’re close enough, I believe. You could stand with your nose but an inch from my warding and it would do you no
good.”

  “Then why not allow me to do that?”

  He gave the captain no time to reply. Slashing at his arm again, he said, “Falx ex cruore evocata.” Blade, conjured from blood.

  It was not a spell he would have used under ordinary circumstances. Blade spells were vicious conjurings that could literally carve a man’s body in half. But he assumed that Ramsey’s crew were warded, and would survive the assault. And few spells struck at their victims with such force, which was exactly what Ethan wanted.

  The spell pulsed, and the men went down like ninepins. Ethan strode past them, cutting his arm again as he went, only to halt and sway at what he saw on the far side of Ramsey’s bed.

  A second spell pulsed—it might have been a blade spell as well. Ethan was tossed backward as if he were no more than a rag doll. He landed in a heap near where he had been standing before he advanced on the bed.

  But now he knew.

  “Damn you, Kaille!”

  He had managed a glimpse, no more. But the image would not soon fade from his mind.

  Beyond the large bed that held the captain, but still within the protection of the dome, stood a smaller, lower pallet. And on it lay a man—one of Ramsey’s sailors perhaps, or more likely some hapless innocent brought here for the captain to use and discard.

  This poor creature was naked to the waist, his body covered with bloodless gashes. He appeared to be unconscious; Ethan wondered if Ramsey had him under some sort of conjured thrall. And beside him, on a low stool, also hidden from view and also warded, sat another man—definitely a sailor—who held a knife over the one bloody wound on the torso of his victim. Ethan guessed that the sailor cut the man after each of Ramsey’s conjurings, so that the captain would always have blood for his next spell. He wondered how many men Ramsey had bled to death since his arrival in Boston.

  Most of Ramsey’s men were back on their feet, tending to the few who had yet to recover from Ethan’s spell. The captain, though, paid them no heed. He stared daggers at Ethan, his disfigured face twisted with rage.

  “You’re barbaric,” Ethan said. “You know no shame.”

  “What choice do I have? I can’t grip a blade or pluck leaves of mullein from a pouch as you are wont to do. I have only this.”

  “How many of them have you killed?”

  “Fewer than you think,” Ramsey said, in a tone he might have used to discuss the recent snowstorm. “There is a good deal of blood in the human form, and our spells require surprisingly little.”

  “And what of the unfortunate soul who must wield his blade on your behalf? What damage have you done to him?”

  “Don’t pretend to care about my men, Kaille. You fool no one. He understands my need, and he was one of several who offered themselves for this particular service.”

  Ethan wasn’t sure if he was bothered more by what the captain’s man had to do, or by the fact that he believed Ramsey when he said the sailor had volunteered for such gruesome duty. But he knew this to be Ramsey’s greatest weakness, and he believed that if he could convince the sailor to stop cutting his victim, or if he could incapacitate the sailor even for a short while, he might break through the shield that guarded Ramsey.

  Once more he thought of how Ramsey’s spectral guide had appeared when his spell struck the aqua dome. Was it possible that Ramsey had to cast a spell—and thus needed fresh blood—each time the warding was tested?

  He had no chance to satisfy his curiosity. Ramsey muttered something that might have been “Enough.” A conjuring hummed in the floor and walls, and Ethan was struck once more by the force of a spell. It seemed to be directed at his bad leg, which was swept out from under him. He dropped to the ground. But if it was a shatter spell intended to break the bone, it failed.

  From where he lay on the ground, with blood still on his arm from the last cut he had made, Ethan countered with a conjuring of his own.

  “Aperi hiatum ex cruore evocatum.” Open chasm, conjured from blood.

  He aimed the spell at the ground beneath the dome, hoping the opening would swallow the bed and Ramsey with it. But once more the dome shuddered and the spell turned back on Ethan. The floor opened, seemingly rent by giant unseen hands. The widening split raced toward him. Ethan rolled to the side, tottered on the edge of the crack, and with one last racking effort, threw himself onto solid ground.

  Again, though, he had noticed that when his conjuring hit the shield, Ramsey’s ghost appeared, albeit for the blink of an eye. He felt certain that in maintaining the protection of the dome, the captain had taken still more blood from the unconscious man beside him.

  “Our wardings serve us well,” Ramsey said, watching Ethan as he climbed to his feet yet again. “You escaped my fire spells out on the street. I might have been too gentle with them.”

  This time the pulse of power brought another ring of fire. Like the last, this one began to press in on Ethan, the heat of it making him shield his face with an upraised arm.

  “The circle of fire created by the detection spell was meant to cause you pain,” Ramsey said, pitching his voice so that Ethan could hear it above the roar of the blaze. “This one will only contract so far. How long can your endure such agony, Kaille? For how long will your warding against flames work?”

  Too long, Ethan knew. His spell would protect him from the flames as long as he remained alive, and so if he could not escape this fiery ring, the agony would go on and on. He assumed that another extinguishing spell would not work, and he could not leap through the fire to safety. But what if he convinced Ramsey to extinguish the flames for him. Ethan ran toward Ramsey’s bed, and as he expected, the circle of fire moved with him, as it had on the street. He veered off just as he reached the domed shield and pressed himself to the warehouse wall.

  The flames licked at the wood and then caught. Ethan heard the crack and snap of burning lumber.

  “No!” Ramsey said, barking the word. “Exstingue ignem ex cruore evocatum.”

  The fire sputtered and went out, leaving a small section of the wall charred and smoking.

  “You fool!” Ramsey was trembling and breathing hard, a sheen of sweat on his face.

  “Fool you say.” Ethan wiped sweat from his own brow. “I thought it was rather clever of me. In fact … Ignis ex cruore evocatus.” Fire, conjured from blood.

  Flame flew from his hand into the still smoldering wall. The building shook, and in seconds, the section of wall nearest to Ramsey’s bed was engulfed.

  Ramsey shouted another extinguishing spell, his voice spiraling upward in panic. As he put out that fire, Ethan used another spell to light a second blaze on the wall behind Ramsey’s men.

  The captain used a conjuring to douse these flames as well, but he was wide-eyed with terror now.

  “Kill him!” the captain said. “I don’t care how! But I want him dead!”

  The men advanced on Ethan. A half dozen of them drew pistols and cocked the hammers. Ethan hacked at his arm and cast another blade spell, knocking them back, although not before one of men got off a shot. The ball whistled past Ethan’s head, too close for comfort.

  While the men were still sprawled on the floor, he cast again—“Impedimentum ex verbasco et marrubio et betonica evocata”—drawing upon the herbs he carried to conjure a barrier, a gleaming wall not unlike Ramsey’s shield. This one glowed russet, the color of Uncle Reg, and it surrounded Ramsey’s men, hemming them in against the wall.

  Ethan didn’t believe it would prove as effective as the captain’s, but it didn’t need to. None of the men were conjurers; he only wanted his barrier to hold them back and block the bullets from their flintlocks. As if responding to the thought, one of the men sat up, aimed his pistol at Ethan, and fired. The ball rebounded off the barrier and an instant later struck the wall behind the man. He ducked belatedly and gaped at his weapon, seeming to realize how close he had come to killing himself.

  “It’s just the two of us now, Ramsey,” Ethan said, turning back to the captain.
“Shall I light another fire?”

  “I should have resorted to this already,” Ramsey said, sounding as though he hadn’t heard. “I’ve been wasting time.”

  This conjuring felt all too familiar. Ethan shuddered at the touch of it and looked to Reg, only to find that the ghost was watching him.

  But nothing else happened.

  “Impossible!” the captain said in a rasp. “Impossible!”

  He glanced to his side, toward the man on the cot and the sailor who was cutting him. Another conjuring shook the warehouse, but again whatever Ramsey had intended did not result.

  “I don’t understand!”

  Ethan could not quite believe that having Mariz ward him from the conjurings had worked so well, but he concealed his amazement as he said, “I found a way to stop you. You can’t use my power anymore.”

  “But I can!”

  A third spell rumbled and failed. Ramsey let out a skirling, inarticulate scream.

  “What will you do now, Ramsey?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the captain said. He licked his lips and said again, “It doesn’t matter at all.”

  Another conjuring slammed Ethan to the floor. He didn’t know what kind of spell it was, and didn’t have time to ponder the matter. A second spell hit him, and a third. Each failed to penetrate his warding, but each battered him with the force of an ocean breaker. A fourth made his vision blur, a fifth left him addled. And still the assault went on. He feared he might pass out, and that if he did, his conjured barrier would fail, allowing Ramsey’s men to kill him.

  Desperate, not knowing what else to do, he dragged his knife across his arm and cast another fire spell. He didn’t aim it, but simply let it fly from his hand. He heard it hit wood, heard the crackle of spreading flames.

  Ramsey broke off his attack to extinguish the fire. Ethan cast three more fire spells in quick succession, directing them at the ceiling, the wall near the captain’s bed, and the wall nearest the door through which he had entered the warehouse.

  The captain cast his spells as quickly, snuffing out the flames before they could spread. But this gave Ethan the respite he needed. He knew that he was forcing Ramsey’s man to draw more and more blood from the unfortunate lying on the pallet, but he could think of no way to prevent this without surrendering to the captain.