Vault of Shadows

by Jonathan Maberry

  “He is called the Huntsman,” said Evangelyne. “We already know of him. And we think that Queen Mab is either deceiving him or working out a deal of some kind.”

  Fenwillow said, “Oh, a deal, to be certain, and a black one. They have been speaking to each other through faerie rings. They have been trying to devise a spell powerful enough to tear open the way from the realm of the Aes Sídhe to our world.”

  “You’re sure they’re working together?” asked Milo.

  “I’m positive,” she said, then added, “though I don’t know if it started out that way. An owl who is a friend of mine said that at first they fought with one another, each struggling to dominate, but then this Huntsman offered the queen a deal. He promised to free her and give this world to her in exchange for her using her faerie charms to lure a perfect sacrifice into the toadstool ring.”

  “They tried and failed,” said Evangelyne, nodding to Milo. “This Daylighter boy was saved before the spell could be completed. And there was another attempt that failed too. A girl, another Daylighter, was nearly lost to the queen and this Huntsman, but somehow survived.”

  “I’m glad to hear that your friends survived,” said Fenwillow. “Not everyone has been so lucky. This necromancer has already spilled blood in failed attempts to gain power and break open the door to Queen Mab’s realm. And I fear he will spill more unless he destroys himself in the process.”

  “That’d be great,” said Shark. “What are the odds on that?”

  It was Evangelyne who answered. “A magic circle can be used as a channel to allow ancient and very dark energies to flow into one’s own body. To fail even once is to die and be utterly destroyed. But to try and survive? Every time the Huntsman survives a conjuration, he becomes more powerful because he allows more dark energy into his soul.”

  “I really, really, really, really don’t like the sound of that,” complained Shark, and Milo agreed.

  “This Huntsman must be mad, for only a madman would ever attempt that process,” said Fenwillow.

  Evangelyne nodded. “We are not talking about the life energies of this world, or the natural forces that run like breath and blood through the planet. No, such a spell can tap into the force of pure, destructive chaos.”

  “Wouldn’t that destroy the Huntsman?” asked Milo hopefully.

  Evangelyne chewed her lip. “Only if he makes a mistake. He is no magician, no sorcerer. His weapons are science. He wants to use magic, but without the Heart of Darkness he cannot possess that power. Performing spells of this kind should tear him apart. They are not meant for mortals, and the Huntsman is no Nightsider.”

  Fenwillow interrupted her. “He could survive the rituals if he makes the right kind of sacrifice.”

  “Whoa,” said Shark, “what does that mean?”

  “It means that if the Huntsman makes an acceptable offering, the darkest of ancient powers will protect and reward him.”

  “Yeah, but what kind of sacrifice are we talking about?”

  “An innocent soul,” said Fenwillow. “A pure soul. They are rare and precious, and the act of destroying one releases vast and terrible powers.”

  “What would they have done to Milo if he hadn’t gotten out of there?” asked Shark.

  Fenwillow glanced at Evangelyne. “For a human sacrifice? Would he have used a firedirk?”

  Evangelyne shivered. “Almost certainly. Making one is not easy, but Queen Mab could have taught the Huntsman how to do it.”

  “Firedirk?” asked Shark. “Ugh . . . that sounds nasty. What is it?”

  “A firedirk is the weapon of a necromancer. It allows him to drink the life energy from his victims. When used as a sacrificial blade, it kindles the fire of true magic inside a human heart. Especially in a dark, dark heart. With such a weapon, a necromancer can speak to the dead and force them to betray any secret they possess, and it can give the user a measure of control over the slain.”

  “Geeeeez,” breathed Milo, his pulse quickening. “Do you think that’s how he controls the holo-men?”

  “I don’t know much about science,” she admitted, “but if he is using the dead as his minions, then yes. Nothing else makes sense. The firedirk would give him the power to force the dead to obey him, to share their secrets, and to betray their friends.”

  “The one I met wasn’t anyone I knew,” said Milo. “But he looked like my dad.”

  “I know, so this is something new. Something the Huntsman and Queen Mab must be creating together. A new form of magic that blends sorcery with science. The firedirk must be more than a sacrificial knife; perhaps it allows them to share their energies. It is a terrible weapon of evil.”

  “What’s it look like?” asked Shark.

  “A firedirk is a long-bladed thrusting dagger,” explained the wolf girl. “In certain kinds of magic spells, the steel of the blade is transformed into a special kind of fire that burns as cold as ice. Although the blade looks like it is composed only of fire, it cuts like ordinary steel. However, the magical fire is there to sever the connection between the victim’s body and their soul. The firedirk transfers that energy into the person who wields it, increasing their magical powers. It is one of the easiest ways for someone to gain such power, but it is the very darkest of magic. Among my people, anyone committing such a sinful act would be destroyed.”

  They all stared at each other, shocked and horrified by all of this. Milo tried to wrap his mind around the idea of such a blade stabbing into him and draining his life away.

  Suddenly Evangelyne cried out. “By the Goddess! Now I understand. Now it all makes sense.”

  “What does?” asked Shark.

  “What blind fools we’ve been. The faerie rings should have told me, but I was too upset about the Heart to listen. Goddess of the Shadows, I’m an idiot.”

  “Stop ranting and tell me what’s going on,” ordered Milo.

  “The faerie rings,” repeated Evangelyne. “When you told me about what happened to you, Milo, I thought it was an attempt by Queen Mab to enslave the Huntsman in the way a wizard might enslave a demon, but that’s not it at all. We’re looking at this the wrong way around. I think this is all about the Huntsman. I think he was the one who reached out and offered a deal, to Queen Mab. But he’s so sly, so cunning, and he’s so careful. We know this about him. If he has become a necromancer, then he would never risk releasing the Aes Sídhe unless he could control them, and he couldn’t control them unless he already possessed magical powers.”

  “Right,” said Milo, “but he tried that twice and failed twice.”

  She looked at him with deep sadness in her eyes. “Did he, Milo?”

  “Of course. Killer saved me, and Lizzie never went all the way into the circle.”

  “Milo, don’t you see it? Queen Mab tried to lure you inside the circle, probably as an offering to the necromancer who promised to help free her. I don’t think they ever planned to kill you. Did you see a flaming knife in the Huntsman’s hand as he materialized?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m right, and a dark night is falling for all of us.”

  “What are you taking about? He didn’t stab me. The spell was broken. They failed.”

  She shook her pale hair, and beside her Fenwillow looked terrified.

  Evangelyne touched Milo’s arm. “When you saw Lizabeth in the woods, you said there was a cut on her blouse. Show me where.”

  Fear was beginning to claw at the inside of Milo’s chest. He touched his chest, just off center of his sternum. “Right here.”

  “And she was covered in blood?”

  “Well, I thought so, but there was no mark. Not even a scratch. She showed me.”

  “There wouldn’t be, would there?” whispered Evangelyne. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and two tears broke and fell down her cheeks. Beside her, Fenwillow also hung her head and wept tears of sap.

  “Oh, Milo,” said the wolf girl, “I am sorry. I am so sorry for not having seen it. For not hav
ing known. For being so wrapped up in my own problems that I did not see.”

  “See what?” yelled Milo, though he realized that he already knew.

  Shark got it too, and he put his face in his hands. “No, no, no, no . . .” His big body began to shudder with heavy, silent, wretched tears.

  “That is where a necromancer would stab with a firedirk. Right there at an angle so as to pierce the heart.”

  “No!” growled Milo. “No way. I saw her. I talked to her.”

  “So did Shark at the bolt-hole, and no one can be in two places at the same time, Milo,” whispered Evangelyne. “Only spirits can do that.” She paused as a sob broke in her chest. “Only ghosts have that power.”

  Milo suddenly felt as if the ground were falling away beneath his feet. He staggered sideways and reached out for the edge of the train car doorway. Missed it. Grabbed nothing.

  Fell.

  Fell hard.

  Fell into a heap.

  He tried to yell the word “no.” To shout it loud enough to make the world change back, to fix the hole that was now burned in Milo’s life. A hole shaped like a little girl with wild hair. A girl only two years younger than himself. A girl who was a bit mad and a little strange and entirely innocent.

  He tried to say “No!”

  Instead he said her name. Or rather, he screamed it.

  “Lizabeth!”

  Chapter 41

  They sat on broken crates inside the boxcar. They all knew that time was flying past them, but for now they could not move. Fenwillow, who could not bend enough to sit, stood against the wall near the door. For a long while no one said anything; then Shark begged them to explain it all. He kept crying and Killer leaned against him, whining piteously.

  “I saw her,” Milo kept saying over and over as he shook his head.

  “You saw her ghost,” said Evangelyne. “And it’s very likely you saw the ghost of the Daughter of Splinters and Salt. If Lizabeth died on her shrine, then their spirits would have become mixed. Entangled. I’ve read about such things. The Daughter has been dead so long, she has no body left and probably no memory of it. That . . . or maybe she took Lizabeth’s form so that she could fool you.”

  “Why?” asked Shark. “Why would she do that?”

  “I can only guess. Queen Mab and the Huntsman have done something very wicked, something truly evil. Sacrificing an innocent on a sacred spot. That is a terrible sin and it would offend the ghost of the witch. She would want revenge, but she would also need to know what was happening. Appearing as Lizabeth was probably her way of trying to understand us.”

  “So . . . you’re saying that wasn’t Lizzie at all?” asked Shark. He pawed at the tears in his eyes.

  Evangelyne chewed her lip. “I really don’t know. The power of that shrine might have brought Lizabeth’s spirit back too. We may have seen both of them at different times. And it’s even possible they are sharing the same spirit body. They may have become fused together.” She shuddered. “This is ghost magic and it is beyond my understanding. All I know is that this foul murder has given power to the queen and the Huntsman. There is so much old power there. It must have been like . . . like . . . What do you Daylighters call it when you use one car to energize another one?”

  “A jump start,” said Milo in an empty voice. “Is that all Lizzie was? A bit of juice for that . . . that . . .”

  He stopped because he didn’t know any word bad enough to describe the Huntsman. He wanted to throw up, but he kept it down, and kept his fury inside. It burned him, though. He could feel it leaving scars on the walls of his soul.

  “Milo,” said Evangelyne, “I know it hurts to hear this, but . . . yes. I think that’s exactly why they picked her. Her innocence was a great source of power, but the ritual must have awakened the Daughter of Splinters and Salt.”

  Milo dragged his arm across his eyes. “If they got power from . . . from . . .” He couldn’t say the word. He shook his head angrily. “If they got so much power, then does that mean the queen is free?”

  Evangelyne shook her head. “We’d know it if she was. No, I think something must have happened during the sacrifice. My guess—and it is only a guess—is that the Daughter somehow interfered with the transfer of magical power. It is, after all, her shrine. I think the queen and the Huntsman will need to try it again, as they tried when they almost lured you, Milo, into the ring. They’ll keep trying until they murder another innocent, but next time they won’t risk doing it on a sacred shrine. That was a risk that might have made them invincible, but it backfired.”

  “Backfired?” cried Milo. “Lizabeth is dead!”

  “I know, Milo . . . and I’m so sorry.”

  “Where is she?” asked Shark. “Her body, I mean?”

  Fenwillow spread her leafy hands. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either,” said Evangelyne. “Buried, maybe. Or taken by the Huntsman. All any of us ever saw yesterday was her ghost.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. She wasn’t all the way inside the faerie ring. I saw her, I should know.”

  Evangelyne shook her head. “You said that her legs were inside and the rest of her was outside. If she was inside the ring when she died, she would have fallen down across the arc of the ring. Her legs would be closest to where she stood.”

  Shark put his head between his hands, and his sobs filled the train car. Grief was like a whip that kept hitting them and hitting them. Mook laid a heavy hand on Shark’s shoulder.

  “Mook,” he said softly.

  “Maybe Lizzie’s not dead,” said Shark, his voice thick and his face streaked with tears. “I touched her. She was real. She wasn’t a ghost.”

  “Have you ever touched a ghost before?” asked Evangelyne.

  “Well . . . no . . .”

  “Then how would you know what one feels like?”

  “But you’re talking ghosts. You can’t touch them. It’d be like trying to grab smoke.”

  The wolf girl shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that, Shark. There are as many kinds of ghosts and spirits as there are sprites. Thousands of them. Even we Nightsiders don’t know all of them.”

  “You don’t?” asked Milo, surprised. “But I figured they were part of your world.”

  “Why would they be?” asked Fenwillow. “We are alive. Ours is the world of living things, even if we are strange to you Daylighters. Ghosts are not part of our world any more than they are part of yours.”

  To Evangelyne Milo said, “But you said the Heir of Gadfellyn Hall was a ghost.”

  “And so he is,” she replied, “but I never said he was a Nightsider. He is what he is, and no one I know can claim to understand what that means. He’s a dream, but one that lingers in the world. And he has dreamed so long and with such power that even his home, Gadfellyn Hall, lingers on as a kind of ghost. When we go there, we will all be stepping into the unknown. Mook and I will be as much strangers there as you and Shark.”

  Fenwillow stared at her. “Gadfellyn Hall? You’re going there? By the Goddess, why?”

  Milo saw that Evangelyne was uncertain whether to decide whether to trust this young tree spirit, but in the end she nodded. The wolf girl carefully removed the Heart of Darkness from its pouch and extended her palm to show it to Fenwillow. The willow girl’s eyes flew wide and she covered her mouth with two leafy hands.

  “Goddess of Shadows! The rumors are true. You do have it.” She began to reach out to touch it, then instantly thought better and snatched her hand back. “I have heard the bats whisper about it. They tell of a great battle with this Huntsman and how many of them died to help you recover it. But you know bats gossip and brag. . . . I hardly believed it until now.”

  “It’s real,” said Evangelyne, “but it is also damaged. See? There is a crack through its heart, and we are all now in grave danger.”

  Milo thought Fenwillow would faint, and once more there were sappy tears glistening on her cheeks. “Roots of Heaven!” sh
e cried. “Tell me we are not all lost.”

  “Shhh,” soothed Evangelyne, closing her hand around the stone. “Shhhh, now. We have yet a chance of repairing it.”

  Fenwillow straightened, and snapped her twiggy fingers. “That’s why you’re going to see the Heir. You believe the old stories are true.”

  “I hope they’re true.”

  “What stories?” asked Milo. His heart was so heavy that he wanted to leave and get lost in the woods, to give it all up. To walk and walk until he could forget, but he knew that there was no place on any map where memories and the truth could not find you. It was hateful. The world was so cruel, so cold. Lizabeth was the gentlest and most innocent person he’d ever known, and the idea that it was those qualities that had urged the Huntsman to sacrifice her was beyond imagining. It was beyond sick. So despite his despair, he made himself remain a part of this conversation, this hunt. “What are you talking about?”

  Fenwillow turned to him. “The Heir lives in a house with—”

  “—a great big library,” finished Milo irritably. “The Impossible Library. Yeah, yeah, I know. What about it?”

  When the willow girl looked surprised, Evangelyne quickly said, “Milo has prophetic dreams sometimes.”

  “Oh. That makes sense, then.”

  Does it? wondered Milo. Feel free to explain that to me. But he didn’t say this aloud, and instead gestured for Fenwillow to continue.

  “They say that the Impossible Library is where all books go when they die. Books that have been burned by people afraid of new thoughts or old wisdom. Books from cultures that have passed away into history, even into legend. Books that have been forgotten. The scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, which was burned by the Romans. The books from the Abbasid Library of Baghdad, which was destroyed by the Mongols. The lost writings of Archimedes, Plato, Agatharchides, Ctesias, Lucan, Protagoras, Hua Tuo, Tertullian; the Necronomicon; the Badianus manuscript, an ancient Aztec medical codex; Cardenio, a lost play by William Shakespeare; Homer’s Margites; the missing volumes of Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss; and thousands of others. And stories . . . so many stories written in journals and diaries and never shared.”