“So,” he said. “This is a pretty little mess, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Thaniel tonelessly.
“How are things, Detective Carver?”
“Bleak,” he replied. He looked a mess; for a man of Carvers fastidious neatness, it said more than words could. “Were being overrun. And people can’t get out. The bastards are penning us in for slaughter. The Army’s on its way, but I’d like to know what they could achieve that we haven’t.”
“Have you achieved anything?” Crott asked out of spite, rubbing the sword-scar that curled his lip into a sneer and ran up his cheek. He was still feeling venomous, though not towards Carver specifically.
“We are keeping the panic to a minimum,” the Detective said. A rattling noise came from another room in Crott’s chambers; he looked towards it for a moment, then disregarded it and continued. “Guarding the hospitals. It is all we can do.”
“What did you want us for?” Cathaline asked bluntly. She was too tired to be polite. Her last few hours had been spent dealing with all forms of minor wych-kin; thankfully, she had not come across anything major yet.
“I want a battle plan,” Crott said. “What we’re doing is useless. They’re swarming all over us. You two are the only real weapon we have against the wych-kin, and I suspect that you are running out of supplies and charms. We can’t win by fighting them here.”
“I have a proposition,” said Carver.
“Ah. A proposition.” Crott sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “I knew there was some reason why you had come.” Carver let Crott’s unpleasant tone slide off his back. “Were up against an army, one that’s much bigger than we are. There’s no sense dealing with the foot soldiers. We’ll lose. We have to strike at the generals.”
“The Fraternity,” said Cathaline. “You think we haven’t considered that?” She waved a hand above her head, indicating the outside world.
“You know where Thatch is now?” Carver asked.
“I know where she is,” said Devil-boy Jack, walking through the doorway from another chamber, as silent as a ghost. It was he who Carver had heard rattling; though what he was doing, the Detective had no idea. Crott was apparently used to the Devil-boy coming and going as he pleased. “I’m sure you all have guessed. The Old Quarter. The centre of the maelstrom.”
“We know,” Cathaline said irritably. “It’s obvious. You don’t even need a wych-sense to feel where it’s all coming from. Besides, I imagine you’ve already performed a Divination to be sure?”
“I have.”
“Wonderful,” said Crott. “And have any of you thought how we’re going to get into the heart of the Old Quarter when to travel a mile above ground and remain alive is nigh impossible?”
“My point exactly,” Cathaline said, settling back into her chair.
“By Heaven, are you all already beaten?” Carver cried, getting up. “I have never seen men and women fold so easily! I came here with a way to get into the Old Quarter. Would any of you care to hear it? Or would you prefer to declare your cause hopeless and give in?”
There was a moment of slightly shamed silence. Even Crott felt childish in his negativity.
“How do we do it?” Thaniel said at last, his eyes dark. His jaw was set in determination. He had become dour and menacing in aspect since Alaizabel had been taken from them, his every thought upon how to find her. But then the wych-kin had attacked, and he had been forced to stay and defend the Lanes. Cathaline could not do without him here. But if Alaizabel were... no, he dared not think that thought.
“West of here is the old Caledonian Road station,” Carver said. “The Lanes stretch up close to that. If we can get there, we can go through the Underground tunnels and get to Finsbury Park.”
“You want us to take an airship?” Crott asked in disbelief. “You want us to go through the Underground?”
“I can’t pretend it isn’t dangerous,” Carver said. “But it can be done. In the Underground, there are not so many sides wych-kin can come from. I have telegrammed and commandeered a pilot; he is waiting for us there. The Finsbury Park airstrip is still held by the soldiers there, at least for a time. After that, we fly over the Old Quarter. Not many wych-kin can fly, I would guess.”
“I don’t believe I am hearing you right, Carver,” said Crott. “What you are proposing seems to be suicide.”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Crott,” Cathaline snapped. “It’s the best idea I’ve heard so far. I’m in.”
“I will go, too,” said Thaniel.
“We shall all go,” husked the Devil-boy. “Come into this room.”
Puzzled, they got up and followed him to the room from which he had come. There, beneath the light of a stuttering gas lamp, a chalk circle had been drawn on the floor. A doeskin bag lay nearby, and scrying stones were scattered in the circle. They were flat, white and elliptical, and each bore a mark on it, carved and painted in black ink.
“Do you know of the stones?” he rasped.
“A little,” Cathaline said, then privately added: enough to know whether you know anything about them. Scrying stones were a blend of old runic disciplines and tarot, a complex system of symbols that created pictures of great complexity when combined. Unlike runes or tarot, however, they were extremely specific and not open to wide interpretation. To a charlatan or an amateur, they would spell simple nonsense. It took long study to master them, and each had to be treated with its own Rite. Cathaline was sceptical of the Devil-boy; he was far too young.
Jack crouched down by the side of the chalk circle, his hair straggling over his blind eyes. He never seemed to have the slightest problem finding his way about, even without his vision.
“See,” he said. “This rune, fallen in that way, conjunct with this one. The King and his Boy. That is you and me, Lord Crott. Here, the sign for the Hunters, and its orientation towards the others means two. That is you, Thaniel, and Cathaline. Three more: the Yeoman, the Idiot, the Sacrifice. Detective Carver, Armand and Alaizabel.”
He brushed a frond of hair back from his dirtied face and pointed elsewhere in the circle. “There. Journey, the Earth, and that one means Above and Below. We travel under and over the ground.” He straightened and faced them. “I cast the runes before I came in here. It is fated, already decided. We go. It is the way.”
“What do those other stones mean?” Crott said, motioning to several stones within the circle that Jack had not mentioned.
“They are irrelevant. Their location helps divine the meaning of the other stones,” came the reply.
Thaniel looked at Cathaline, who shrugged. The Devil-boy seemed to know what he was talking about. Whatever and whoever Jack was, he was certainly possessed of great power and a knowledge far in advance of his years.
“So we bring Armand,” said Crott. “What of Thaniel and Alaizabel?”
“Have you not realized yet? It is all being decided for us. We are the pawns of the higher powers, who want us to stop the Fraternity.”
“You mean Alaizabel will find us?” Thaniel asked, a note of sudden hope in his voice.
There was a knock at the door. “Girl ’ere to see you, Lord!” hollered the guard.
“It appears,” said the Devil-boy, “that she already has.”
Thaniel sprung to his feet faster than any of them, as Crott motioned at the guard to let her in. He was at the doorway when she stepped through, bedraggled and exhausted, and her eyes rose to meet his. The two of them faced each other for a heartbeat, no words coming to either of them; and then they held each other, and words were not needed any more.
THE WYCH IN ALAIZABEL CRAY
THE HALLOW GHOUL
THE PUPPETS SEE THE STRINGS 22
Time was desperately short, and perhaps the hardest aspect of that day was the waiting. Once the decision had been made to go, nobody wanted to put it off; the fearful anticipation was almost unbearable. But Cathaline, Carver and the Devil-boy all insisted that they move at nightfall. Cathaline
’s reason was practical: they needed time to prepare new charm-strings, for the mornings battles had left them nearly out of weaponry. Jack declared in his annoyingly vague way that the alignment of the scrying-stones favoured a night departure. Carver said it “made more sense”, but did not clarify why.
The fact was, they needed sleep. All were exhausted. The hunters and beggar-folk were nocturnal by nature, but most had missed at least one day’s rest, and there had been precious little chance to lay down over the previous few days. They would need to be as alert and prepared as possible to stand a chance out there.
They slept in Crott’s chambers, which were guarded and had several rooms large enough to accommodate them all. Crott himself refused to sleep; despite his acceptance of his companions’ recommendation, he could not rest while his territory was under siege. He threw himself back out into the fray, and when he returned towards nightfall, he was plainly exhausted. Cathaline suggested he stay behind, but he would hear nothing of it, and nor would Jack.
“I live in a battlefield, Miss Bennett,” Crott said, his smile turned leerish by the scar that ran up his pox-pitted cheek. “I’ve endured more than these creatures can throw at me.”
Thaniel and Cathaline had spent most of the day with the Devil-boy in his sanctum, performing Rite after Rite, only sleeping when they were too tired to continue. It was gruelling work, but they were heading into the heart of the wych-kins domain, and they needed every weapon they could. Knives were Warded, charm-strings were sewn, amulets treated and reagents prepared. Powder, sulphur, bullets and blades; their arsenal was an assembly of superstitions, myths and legends. The Devil-boy supplied them with what they needed, and offered them items from his own hoard; Jamaican feathered darts for use against jumbies, gris-gris from New Orleans to ward off dead-walkers, miniature Canadian forest-idols for wendigos. There was no way they could prepare enough, and yet they simply could not carry too much. In the end, they could only do the best they could, and hope it would suffice.
Alaizabel spent her time reading. Jack had provided her with a tome of simple Wards, and instructed her to study it. If Thatch’s memories still resided in her, it would take little more than a reminder to awaken them again. Alaizabel read, her eyes blurring from staring at the arcane and disturbing shapes etched in red ink on the page. And each shape, once seen, stayed. She learned thirty of the most basic Wards that day, but they were thirty Wards that she knew would work
What has she done to me? Alaizabel thought. What am I supposed to do with this?
Alaizabel had been left with a power, literally overnight, that could change her entirely. She was used to imaginary and impossible things happening in fairy tales; but here, the ability had been delivered into her hands. She was terrified of it. She had already come across Wards for the infliction of pain, for disorientation, for death. All of these had sprung from her mind like jack-in-the-boxes as soon as her gaze made contact. She dreaded to think what else she might remember if she spent a month, a year in the study of wychcraft.
I am a wych now, she told herself, and the thought brought her to sudden tears.
All of them snatched a few hours’ sleep, sheer exhaustion overcoming them. Armand, who did not need the rest, was away with Lord Crott. Only Carver slept the whole day through, untroubled, like a baby.
Outside, the Crooked Lanes gave itself up slowly but surely to the wych-kin.
Night fell.
The storm burst from the clouds with typhoon fury, a raging dragon of lashing rain and thunderous roars, striking out with forked barbs of lightning, setting fires and extinguishing them just as quickly. The blazes that had raged across London quailed and choked under the onslaught, leaving wet and blackened patches of char kilometres wide, hulking skeletons of buildings that ran with water and wept for the human corpses within.
On the edge of the Crooked Lanes an old church sat, a creature of weathered stone and high Gothic arches. Soot from a nearby fire had blackened its face, but the rain was washing its stained-glass windows down, pummelling the dirt away with cleansing savagery. Its great doors were locked, for it had lain unoccupied for a dozen years now, ever since the Crooked Lanes crept up behind and claimed it. It was the westernmost point of the slums, the limit of Lord Crott’s territory.
Inside, the Hallow Ghoul walked as it had always walked, shuffling between the mighty sandstone pillars, through the cloisters, past the altar to the apse. The baptismal bowl had long been dry; the altar was an abandoned slab. High above, a mighty wooden crucifix hung from chains, one worn and snapped so it tilted at an angle, Christ’s carven eyes watching the unholy thing as it dragged itself past the pews.
It was a creature that thought itself alive, though it was little more than a shade, a ghost of a ghoul. To human eyes, it was visible only where light struck it directly; all else was invisible, unsolid... not there at all. But somewhere in whatever could be called its mind it believed itself the keeper of the church, the defender of the stones, and so each night it walked. It had claimed trespassers before, but those that had escaped its grip had warned others, and there had been no visitors for nigh on six years now. Until tonight.
The shifting of the stone trapdoor in the crypt of the church was no easy task. Once, perhaps, it might have been the escape route for priests still nervous about the religious persecution that drove the British to America. Since then it had joined the network of tunnels and alleys left over in the wake of the Vernichtung, half-discovered and half-constructed by the enterprising beggars that called the Crooked Lanes home. There had not been cause to ever use it until now.
It took all of Thaniel’s might to heave the trapdoor up, revealing a square of light in the floor of the silent, dusty black void of the crypt. He raised his lantern, spilling unwelcome brightness into the empty dark, filling it with rows of stone shelves and ledges, cracked coffins, scattering spiders.
He looked about warily before clambering through the narrow tunnel. Cathaline followed, then Alaizabel, Crott and the others, finally squeezing Armand’s massive frame through. By the time they had all got their feet under them, the lantern light had been multiplied by the addition of several others and the entire crypt was visible.
The musty, still decay surrounded them, seeping through the time-worn stone. Several stone oblongs dominated the floor, their legends brushed away by the passage of time, containing bones that had long since gone to powder. All around was the eerie sensation of movement, the rats and spiders and beetles as they hugged the corners of the crypt, fleeing the light. A low roof loomed in close, sandwiching them between the ledges of coffins on either side.
Armand’s face was a childish picture of fear, plainly terrified. He made a strange moaning noise. Thaniel spared him a glance before raising his lantern towards where a set of narrow, crumbling steps led upward.
“Keep alert,” he said.
“The bastard’s around here somewhere, I’ll wager,” Crott muttered.
They knew about the Hallow Ghoul. Most of the Lanes did; some were almost fond of it. There was never any reason to do anything about the creature. It was just an old church, after all. Let the ghoul keep it.
But now they had to deal with the warden of the church. Simply, it was a trade. The long northward tunnel clipped off a kilometre of dense and dangerous streets, but the downside was the thing waiting at the other end.
“Better the devil you know,” Cathaline had said.
“Light it,” said Thaniel, and Cathaline brought forth a small incense burner from her pack, a delicate globe of gold hanging from three thin chains. Carver did the same, holding a match to it and lighting the flammable mixture that lay beneath the powdered incense. Armand continued to bleat as the smoke wisped out from the globes. They both swung the globes gently side to side like pendulums, allowing the scent to rise up and surround them. It was earthy and dry and somehow flat, with an acrid underside to it.
“And this is what will keep the Hallow Ghoul from us?” Crott asked sceptical
ly, keeping his voice to a whisper in the silence of the crypt.
“Ghouls hate it,” Thaniel said confidently. “Powdered lilies, grass, dried earth, mixed with incense. The smells of a funeral.” He looked at Cathaline, who nodded to indicate the burners were working well enough now. “You just have to remind them that they are dead.”
“I’d hardly have imagined something so small could defeat wych-kin,” Crott said. “It makes them hardly fearful.”
Thaniel gazed at him levelly. “I would not like to guess how many wych-hunters died at the hands of ghouls before someone discovered this,” he said.
They ascended a set of narrow stone stairs and opened the door that led to the sacristy. It was a small room, where the priests prepared themselves for Mass. There was nothing there now, having been emptied when the church was abandoned; only a bench and a washbasin. It was as black as the crypt was, with no windows to let in the light.
They made their wary way across, and Cathaline pushed open the door that led to the church proper.
Silent cloisters greeted them as they emerged, pillared walkways covered by a balcony above. The church was not so dark as the previous rooms, and it echoed and roared whispers that told of the assault from the sky on its outer skin. The tall stained-glass arches let in a faint glow, slanting its hue with the robes of the saints and the wings of angels. The pews were thick with shadow, the great wooden Christ staring out across them, tilted.
“Where is it?” Alaizabel whispered.
“Its near,” said Thaniel and Cathaline in unison, responding to their wych-senses.
“Keep moving,” Crott advised.
Armand, considerably happier now that he was out of the crypt and away from the corpses, laughed his foolish laugh. They walked slowly along the cloisters, the pews on their right, heading for the arched double doors at the north end of the church. Thaniel felt the skin creep along his nape, his eyes searching the slices and patches of shadow that lurked in the hollow body of the building.
The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray Page 20
