I gasped a few times before my vision turned to black, Franklin's parlor receding away from me down a long featureless tunnel.
As the prophecy foretold, I was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
An obsidian throne towered above the courtyard, beneath a star-strewn sky. Galaxies crowded the dome of the world, flashes of stars exploding, ripping apart their unfortunate neighbors. The pulses came like fireflies at dusk.
Perched in an alien tree was the raven from the woods, oily black plumage glistening in the dim light. Its black pebble-like eyes reflected the death of a billion galaxies. It opened its long serrated beak.
"Katerina."
I was held by invisible chains in the center of the courtyard. My struggles against my bonds brought nothing but fear, acidic fear, seeping into my bones.
Movement graced the obsidian throne; something upon it awakened. I felt its awful presence growing more alert by the moment.
"Katerina."
The raven in the tree was speaking, ruffling its feathers. I heard the warning in its tone.
A thundering heartbeat echoed through the courtyard. It'd emanated from the throne. Something was hungry. My skin was prickly, neck tight with frustration as I tried to move.
"Katerina."
I mouthed a word, though no sound came, "What?"
A burst of wings filled my ears.
"Flee!"
I shuddered awake, cold as a corpse and weak as a babe.
I lay in Rowan's hospital. The room that I'd labored at her side in during the autumn had returned. A simple blink brought agony, like knives being driven into the back of my head.
Though it cost me in pain, I explored my chest, finding the cloth ripped, dark with old blood. Probing fingertips revealed a mess of scars on my ribs. Ben Franklin had shot me there.
Sitting up brought darkness to my vision, and the world rotated around me until I slumped back onto the slab. It took many heartbeats before I dared to open my eyes.
Rowan stood over me, her eyes wide with worry. Her crimson lips bunched together.
"Katerina, my love, are you well?" she asked.
My words came out as a whisper. "Thanks to you. You came, saved me."
"How could I not," she said wistfully.
She placed her hand against my face and it burned with an inner fire. I almost expected her flesh to be smoking.
"Your skin is burning hot," I said.
"You're cold. Coming back from death takes time, even with help." She smiled. "And such bargains take a sacrifice. I hope you understand."
I didn't understand, but I returned a weak smile and nodded. The tiny movement brought spikes of pain.
"Don't worry, my love," she said. "Stay and rest. I must go do something and when I return, I will spirit you away from here. The Lady thought you were meant to stay, but it's clear you are surrounded by nothing but enemies. I'll take you back with me where it'll be safe."
She stroked my hair as if she were my mother.
"Take me back?"
"Yes, darling Katerina, you know of where I speak. You will be much happier there. It is your home." She squeezed my arm. "I will avenge what Ben Franklin did to you before we leave. I've already sent Harvest to track him down. Rest here until I return and bring good news of the death of your murderer."
My feeble cries were lost as Rowan Blade swept out of the hospital, black furred cloak ruffling like dark wings.
"No. No. No."
Carefully, I turned onto my side, preparing to climb off. A body lay on the next slab.
The man, or I assumed it was a man by the tailcoat and cravat, was a dried husk. He looked like an ancient cadaver brought up from a deep mausoleum, preserved by embalming and the dry air and stuffed into clothes befitting a banker.
Such bargains take a sacrifice.
Rowan's words before she left. To bring me back, another person had to die. I didn’t know if I could have done it had I known the price.
I recognized the man's attire. It was one of the men who'd been with William Bingham. Rowan had stolen him away from his fellows and drained him to a husk to save me.
The nature of his death echoed through my sensibilities. The revolting result of Rowan's magic was suddenly familiar, I'd seen it before at the farmhouse and in Albert Hold's apartment.
My previous understanding of the third prophecy was dashed against the stones, broken into a thousand tiny pieces. I was not the Accidental Killer. It was Rowan Blade.
Though I didn't know how she had accomplished it, magic probably, she'd killed Mr. O'Dell and Mrs. Sully as well.
Rowan's reluctance to speak about battlefields became clear. She did not frequent them only to heal the sick, but to take some essence from the dying to fuel her power. She was a skilled healer in mundane methods, but also practiced some powerful magics that could heal the dead.
It was why she had exuded guilt when I asked about the battlefields.
And now she was going to kill Ben Franklin. As William Bingham had called him, he was the Architect. Without Ben, America would be vulnerable to these forces from Otherland.
An ancient god will enslave this reality unless you slay the Accidental Killer on the day of the Winter Solstice.
The danger was clear. I had to kill Rowan Blade. From the very first time we met, we wanted to clash blades. I shouldn't have been swayed by her friendship and cleaved to my initial reactions. She was to be my enemy.
But was her prophecy a lie designed to lure me to her side? No, I think she believed it. Still believed it.
Climbing off proved quite difficult. The thick table might as well have been a hundred-foot cliff by the way I struggled to make it to my feet.
With heaving breath, I leaned against the stone, trying to conjure energy to my limbs. Once I was able to move, I slowly circled, looking for a weapon.
My rapier leaned against the corner. Harvest must have carried my body from the estate’s parlor.
Using the blade as a cane, I stepped outside. The unexpected scenery left me reeling with confusion.
Not only had the storm ceased, reduced to an unnatural calm, but I did not stand on the corner of Brown and Second where Rowan's Bone House had occupied a space for the last few months. Rather, I stood a block up from Franklin's estate, in a lot I thought had been unoccupied.
This magic was familiar, the ability to move a building from one place to another, but I did not dwell on it.
To my right, half a block from my location, was a stranded steam carriage, its iron wheels buried in a drift. The snow around the open door had been thrashed, the signs of a struggle. The vehicle confirmed the identity of the poor sot who gave his life for mine.
The few gas lamps that had survived the storm cast a golden light on the packed snow. The winds had turned the upper layer into a hard crust that gave my boots easy purchase.
I hobbled to the Franklin Estate, following multiple sets of tracks. It didn't take an experienced tracker to see the two sets of prints going to the Bone House and then away, back towards the estate. Harvest's large footprints were unmistakable, while Rowan's barely made a dent in the hard snow.
The air was burning cold, freezing tears to my cheeks. I thanked the gods for the absent wind. My lips were cracked and I ran my tongue across them, only sparingly, for each time I opened my mouth, my teeth ached.
Upon arrival, I leaned heavily against the door. My recent death had left me weak, and frequent flashes of pain sparked through my head.
Who was I kidding that I could stop Rowan Blade? Or her massive manservant, Harvest?
I pressed on into the house. The parlor was as I'd left it, minus the participants. Blood stained the carpet; the room was becoming a regular place of dying.
The door between the parlor and the living room had been broken off the hinges. I imagined Harvest putting his bulk into the barrier.
Moving carefully through the house, I wanted to shout Ben's name, but he wouldn't come to my call anyway. He had to assume I was the ene
my. I hoped he didn't kill me a second time, though if he did, it would be my fault.
The main level was absent of people. If there was a battle going on, I would expect to hear it, despite the haphazard nature of the estate. Franklin had built onto the house one section at a time after snapping up empty nearby lots.
The absolute silence unnerved me. Especially since I'd scoured the main floor, finding scant evidence of the pursuit.
Finally, I came upon a door that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar. As I touched the memory with my mind, the layer of paint exploded away, revealing the full recollection.
Other memories rushed in behind it. It was as if death had made brittle the palimpsest that hid my previous life. Suddenly, I could recall things that had happened, including the reason Ben had left Philadelphia.
The parlor. I remembered him in the parlor falling through the portal after the Uthlaylaa, the memory thief. And poor Trisella with her throat cut, falling through as well.
I remembered the investigations, the battle at the Binghams’, and the discovery of the worms on our necks. Everything began to make sense. That's how the Binghams had possession of the gauntlet that I recovered on the Brave Eagle. We'd left it in their estate in the aftermath of the battle with the memory thieves.
I remembered the letters, and Ben Franklin reading the wrong one. That's how he knew I was a spy. No wonder he doubted me so severely. I'd admitted my brief allegiance to the Russian Empire in that letter.
With trepidation, I opened the door. No matter what the cost, I had to make this right. The stairwell led deep beneath the estate, going deeper than I remembered.
Halfway down the steps, a faint pressure built up against my skin, like lying in a bed of pine needles. It continued building until I reached the second to the last step and the pressure popped, leaving me to stumble into the hallway.
The archway ahead was unfamiliar. It was made of a dull metal, with eldritch symbols cast into its surface. It was tall enough to fit Harvest without ducking.
It was cold to the touch and oily. When I passed beneath the arch, faint electricity leapt from the stones and crackled along my exposed skin. Spent ozone filled the air. The feeling had been unpleasant but not painful. It felt like it'd been probing me. I wondered what would have happened if I'd not met its requirements.
As carefully as I could, I tested the light buried in my head. Though I had no wish to use the fledgling magic, for it would bring an Empty Man, I might have to use it to survive. That space seemed raw, like exposed flesh not yet healed. I dared not summon it to my need unless the reason was dire.
A long hallway stretched out beneath the archway, cyclopean stones forming the walls. The hallway was long enough to stretch outside of the bounds of the Franklin Estate, but part of me thought that I'd left my realm when I passed through the archway, which meant I had no idea where I was. When I reached the end of the hallway, I was confronted with a sight that gave me vertigo.
I leaned against the warm stone, words tumbling from my lips.
"This cannot be."
Chapter Twenty-Three
The cavern was the inside of a great undulating wyrm, its rib bones broad structures as smooth as ice. Or at least that was the impression I got when I leaned out of the opening at the end of the tunnel.
It stretched out in a vast plain as wide as a dozen city blocks and as long as the section of Philadelphia between the two rivers. The walls of the cavern seemed less the natural growth of stone and more that a great beast died eons ago in the soil and left a hole in place of its body.
The tunnel from the archway exited at a height two-thirds the way up from the floor. A series of wooden ramps led down to the bottom of the cavern.
Strange, alien trees littered the floor, scattered about as if a drunken arborist had planted them. At the center of the cavern, in the middle of a stone village, a flash of sorcery exploded between the buildings. The echoing boom reached me moments later.
"Ben," I whispered.
The ramp made torturous, haphazard turns on its way down. The steps led at a brutal angle, leaving me to clutch the rickety railing. By the time I reached the bottom I was covered in a damp sweat.
A stone path formed between the undergrowth. The leaves on the bushes, though symmetrical, were unfamiliar in their five-pointed star patterns, nothing I'd ever seen in my travels. Beneath each leaf was a thorn about the length of my finger.
Dirt tracks of wagon wheels stretched the length of the cyclopean stone, indicating the path had been used frequently. Clumps of weeds broke through the hardpack at the side of the path but did not venture onto the stone.
Reaching the village took longer than expected. My initial impression of the size of the cavern was probably correct. Viewing the ceiling from underneath revealed the shapes of a primal honeycomb or scales in the stone between the smooth ribs.
The village was monstrous in size, made for beings larger than humans, and would make Harvest into a child. The gatehouse was made of the same gray oily stone that had formed the arch in the hallway.
Murals covered the walls of the buildings with designs in such alien shapes that I couldn't look at them long or suffer a headache. Studying the stone murals wasn't my mission, though it was hard to pass them by without giving them a distracted glance.
Before I set off into the chaotic streets in search of Franklin, or Rowan and her manservant, Harvest, I paused, realizing that the cavern should have been awash in darkness. Sight was clear and easy, as if it were a cloud-covered noonday in spring. Only a faint vapor in the upper reaches of the cavern hinted at the possibility of weather, though it did nothing to suggest the source of the light.
Another sorcerous enfilade cascaded across the streets, billowing above the stone buildings. A sulfurous stench radiated outward.
As I crept forward, holding my rapier at low guard, it occurred to me that the former residents of these buildings might not be former, and that the archway above had drawn me into another realm. I might not be pursuing Franklin and Rowan Blade, but walking into the midst of an antediluvian battle among arcane-wielding giants.
With my back against the gatehouse wall, I peered around the corner at a grand stone building with thick ridges along the roof, shaped into beings suggesting gargoyles. Stone doors covered in murals blocked the entrance.
Standing at the center of a cross-street, which had other passages radiating outward like uneven spokes at a misshapen wheel, Rowan Blade faced the stone door. At her side was a grizzly bear the size of horse-drawn carriage.
Rowan flung her fur-lined cloak onto the ground. Her crimson dress was almost obscene in this place, the vibrancy of color clashing with the ancientness of the village.
"Franklin!" shouted Rowan. "Reveal yourself so you may pay for your crimes!"
The anger on my behalf was touching, though misplaced.
The grizzly pawed at the stone, growling menacingly.
"Again, Harvest," said Rowan, sweeping her arm towards the stone door.
The beast charged, moving faster than a creature of that size should have been able to move, and hit the barrier with a bone-shattering explosion. My teeth hurt from the impact and I was standing a street away. The massive bear shook off the collision, snorting and pacing.
Harvest.
I wondered if her manservant was a beast given man-shape or the other way around. Either way, I had no desire to face him.
Rowan motioned again, a rolling purplish energy releasing from her hands and hitting the stone door. The contact turned the sorcery black, as if the pressure had condensed it into night. Sulfurous vapors climbed the building and disappeared above the village.
Something down a separate street caught the pair's attention. The bear took off in a rumbling gait.
Rowan went a different direction, crimson dress flowing behind her.
Not wanting to encounter either of them until I understood the situation better, I went back around the street, hoping to come upon the buildi
ng they had laid siege to from a different angle.
Before I reached my intended destination, I found an open door. It was much smaller than the others and wouldn't fit Harvest in his bear form. Curious, I pushed inside.
After a series of hallways, I found an alchemical laboratory filled with vials and jars. Finding the materials and substances familiar, meaning they'd come from my world, I took a moment to utilize the equipment.
With a practiced hand, I mixed myself a restorative, a recipe I'd learned in the Bone House. Rowan gave this mixture to those most grievously injured. It had the smell of rotten butter and required a pinched nose to swallow it.
But once I did, I immediately felt a cessation of the exhaustion plaguing my recently dead limbs.
Plunging back into the streets with renewed vigor, I sought to either shepherd Franklin from this place back to our realm, or confront Rowan Blade. Though maybe it was safer for Franklin to stay in his building. He seemed to be weathering the siege quite well.
Under no circumstances did I want to encounter Harvest. Though we had been friendly during our time in the Bone House, his bestial form concerned me. Would he have his human restraint as a hulking grizzly bear?
I stayed to the narrower passages between the buildings, using the streets least likely to contain Rowan's manservant.
At times, I heard the sounds of battle, but when I came upon the location, I saw nothing to indicate what I heard had been real.
Once, I massive explosion shook the stone village. Gunpowder smoke rolled upward, revealing the source though not the cause.
As I neared, I spied the great bear stumbling from the location, looking slightly burnt around the muzzle, patches of fur blackened and bloody flesh exposed.
The bear had tangled with something that had detonated. The black scarring on the stones indicated a large explosion. Nothing remained of the object. That Harvest had survived it suggested a magical durability.
I assumed that Franklin was playing a cat and mouse game with Rowan and her manservant. A dangerous game, but what choice did he have?
When I came upon Rowan in a thin alleyway that zigzagged between buildings, I stepped into her path.
Birds of Prophecy (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 3) Page 15
