“But”—Emma’s voice was beginning to shake—“why did he have to wait till he was here? Why couldn’t he just eat the spirits of people when they were alive?”
“Think, child: each time he consumed another spirit, it brought with it all the memories of that person’s being. And on the scale he intended, he would have had thousands of memories swarming and shouting inside himself.”
Emma remembered touching the Reckoning and the voices clamoring inside her. She said, “He would’ve gone crazy.”
“Exactly. And in the world of the dead, the spirits have no memories. They are empty vessels.”
Emma turned and looked at the listless figures in the cage. Did they know that they were basically food for the Dire Magnus? She hadn’t been able to imagine a worse fate than having the memories of the people you’d loved taken from you, to be so awfully, terribly alone, and yet, here was such a fate.
“The fire serves as a portal,” the witch said, “for him to call up the souls of the dead.”
“Uh-huh.” Emma was thinking of how, when Rourke had taken her to the Dire Magnus’s tent, she’d seen the boy Rafe kneeling in the fire. She remembered thinking she saw shapes in the flames. Had those been the spirits of the dead?
“I think he made one of those portals for me too. When he tried to bond me with the Reckoning, he pulled my spirit out of my body and sent it through a fire. He sent it here.”
“He collected the dead for years,” the Countess went on, as if Emma had not spoken. “Housed them in this prison. And since he’s returned to the world above, he’s been using them to feed his power. Of course, soon he will have the Books. Power that dwarfs even this.”
Emma was still trying to process all this when the shouts and curses from outside rose sharply. The Countess gave a ghastly smile.
“But see for yourself.”
Emma rushed to the front of her cage and peered down. Six or seven guards—Emma looked, but did not see Harold Barnes—were using whips and sticks to herd fifty or so men, women, and children up to, and then over, the edge of the pit.
Then Emma saw three of the red-robed sorcerers, the necromati, emerge from a passage under the cells. One of them leaned on a gnarled wooden staff, and Emma felt a shiver of recognition as, in the dying light, she made out an all-white eye in the shadows of the man’s face. The figures in the pit were just visible amid the clouds of black smoke, and Emma could hear them choking, see them struggling for air. And although Emma had expected more ceremony, the old white-eyed sorcerer simply gestured with his staff, and flames shot across the bottom of the pit and exploded upward. Emma raised an arm to protect her eyes, and when she looked again, the flames had already died, and there was only a great black cloud billowing into the air. The pit was empty.
“They’re gone.”
“Not gone,” the witch said. “With him. As you will be soon.”
“You’re gonna tell them, aren’t you? You’re gonna tell them who I am.”
The Countess smiled the same wolfish grin. “And why would I do that? If I told the necromati who you were, they would take you across the plain to the portal to the world above and send you through to their master, carrying the book and yourself like an offering. I did not lie, the last thing I want is for the Dire Magnus to achieve his goal. In this, you and I are together. No, child, I will not tell.”
Then she crawled back to the shadows on the far side of her cage and was quiet.
Emma stood there, very still, saying nothing. Something was happening in her mind. It took her a few moments to realize what it was, the experience was so novel, but finally she had to admit that it was a plan taking shape, the pieces slowly fitting together. It was a dangerous plan, incredibly so, and she clenched her fists and willed another, less risky plan to emerge. But there was no other; this was the only way, and if it succeeded, the Dire Magnus would not survive.
But probably, she thought, neither would she.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Judgment
The cage shook from the impact of footsteps on the ladder, and then the guard’s head came into view. It was the tall one, the one who had hit Emma in the mouth and taken Michael’s knife, which was there, still tucked in his belt.
Night had fallen, but Emma could see, thanks to the torches burning in the arena, the constant reddish glow from the pit and the dozens of small fires speckled across the dark expanse of the shantytown.
Since early that evening, the grim-faced men who served the Dire Magnus, directed by the necromati, had been removing cage after cage of prisoners, and forcing them, men, women, and children, into the pit. Emma had watched it all, horrified. For though she knew they were already dead, and though she had observed many times that existence in the world of the dead would be akin to hell, it sickened her to know they were being consumed by the Dire Magnus.
Not to mention that each spirit that went into the pit made their enemy stronger, and she couldn’t think of that without thinking of Kate and Michael and Gabriel in the world above, and what they might be facing.
“What is it?” the tall guard demanded of the Countess. She had been hurling down abuse and curses for several minutes. “Or do I have to shut you up?”
“You’re a fool,” the Countess hissed. She was on the floor of her cell, as her legs were unable to support her. “Don’t you know who this child is?”
This was her cue, and Emma gripped the bars of her cage and shouted, “Shut up! Shut up!”
“She’s the one your master is looking for, the living girl. The Keeper of the Reckoning. You locked her up with the others! You were going to feed her to the fire! What would your master have done then?”
“She’s lying! She’s a liar! Don’t listen to her!”
The Countess ignored her. “She brought you the Reckoning itself and you didn’t even realize! She said some fool of a clerk took it! She laughed about what idiots you all are! Ha!”
“Shut up!” Emma wailed. “Please! I—I’ll—Just shut up! You promised!”
The tall man stepped across the scaffolding, reached between the bars, and seized Emma’s arm. He pressed two fingers against the underside of her wrist. Emma struggled and made protesting noises, but there was no breaking his grip. It seemed she could feel her own pulse pounding against the man’s fingertips. Then, still holding her, he took a key off his belt.
“The Dire Magnus must learn what I did!” the Countess shouted. “He must reward me! He must forgive me!”
Emma didn’t look at the witch as the man pulled her from the cage and carried her down the ladder. She fought, punching, kicking, scratching, but soon they were on the floor of the arena, engulfed in a scene of chaos: shouts and cries of anger, smoke, heat, people being struck and driven about. Emma guessed there were maybe thirty guards, along with five of the red-robed necromati. She’d already spotted the rat-faced, black-haired man she’d seen earlier.
Emma looked but did not see Harold Barnes.
With his hand on her arm, the tall guard dragged her over to the pit, stopping a few feet from the edge. A single red-robed figure stood looking down into the smoke and flames. The tall guard said nothing, and after a moment, the figure turned, still leaning on his gnarled black stick. The old man’s one gray eye studied her. But it was his blind white eye that unnerved Emma. She imagined it saw more clearly than the good one, as if it could see into her mind and heart, see her entire plan. Despite the heat from the fire, she shivered.
It will work, she told herself, it has to work.
If it didn’t, she had just doomed herself, her brother and sister, everyone.
—
It had taken some time to coax the Countess out of her dark corner, but Emma had persisted, as there were things only the witch could tell her.
“I mean it—I have a plan!”
“Oh, you have a plan! Oh, we are saved!”
“Shut up! Do you want your stupid revenge or not?”
Finally, the witch had dragged herself
back across her cage.
“Well?”
“First, you gotta tell me, when I get the book, how do I kill someone? I know you know, you used it to kill all those giants.”
The Countess had chuckled. “Yes, I slaughtered those fools. You should have felt the earth buckle when they fell! Timmmberrr! He-he-he.”
“Yeah, yeah, so how’d you do it?”
“Do you know what a reckoning is, child? The meaning of the word?”
Emma had opened her mouth to reply—she knew this because Michael had told her—but the Countess was too quick.
“A reckoning is a debt. And there is one debt that every living being must eventually pay: death. When you engage the magic of the book and fix your mind upon a person, the Reckoning calls that debt due, and the person’s spirit is severed from their body and brought to this world. Even the Dire Magnus is not exempt from this.”
“What about the voices?”
“What voices?”
“You know, the ones that start screaming when you touch the book.”
“I heard no voices.”
Emma had studied the other’s face. The woman had seemed to be telling the truth. Could it be that despite allowing the Countess to kill the giants, there were things the book revealed only to its Keeper?
Lucky her.
“What is it you intend, girl?”
Emma had hesitated for an instant, then reasoned that if the woman was going to betray her, she could’ve at any time. There was no point in holding back now.
“According to you, all I have to do to kill the Dire Magnus is call up the magic and think about him. Only first, I’ve got to get one of those necromati guys to give me the book. Well, I know how to do that!”
And she would just put up with the screaming voices. She had to; there was no other option.
The Countess had sneered. “You arrogant little fool. You cannot trick the necromati into simply giving you the book!”
“I’m not going to trick them. One of them’s going to help me.”
And then she’d told the witch about the old white-eyed sorcerer, and how he’d once been a friend and ally of Dr. Pym, and about Harold Barnes and what she’d done to him. Finally, the witch had started nodding, murmuring, “Yes, perhaps it could work….” and had even suggested that she call for the jailers, saying it would be less suspicious than Emma calling them herself.
—
After hearing the guard’s report, the old man spoke to the black-haired, rat-faced necromatus, who then scurried away across the arena. The white-eyed sorcerer stepped closer, the point of his staff stamping dully in the heat-cracked mud. Emma guessed he was taller than she was, but he was so stooped over, like someone who had spent his life hunched at a desk, that their eyes were level.
As she stood facing him, Emma was aware of another cage’s worth of people being herded toward the pit, and she glanced toward them without thinking. It was like being struck in the chest. One of the figures, his face blank and confused, was Wallace. Emma had met the dwarf just once, during the Christmas party at the mansion in Cambridge Falls—he’d been more Kate’s and Michael’s friend than hers—but he had given his life trying to rescue her, and now he was being pushed over the edge of the pit, and she could only watch, powerless.
She looked back at the old man and ordered herself not to be weak. The tall guard stood several feet to the side; Emma kept her voice low.
“I know who you are. You used to be Dr. Pym’s friend. You helped him fight the Dire Magnus. You’ve got to remember!”
The old man stared at her, then said, “Your words mean nothing to me.”
He waved his staff, and flames exploded from the pit. When Emma was able to look again, Wallace was gone. She felt sick to her stomach, and her plan suddenly seemed childish and flimsy.
It came down to this: Emma knew that when she and Harold Barnes had touched the Reckoning together, she’d restored at least some, and perhaps all, of his memories. That had started her thinking: All those voices shouting in the book, what if they were the memories that had been taken from the dead? And if she’d given Harold Barnes his memory back, couldn’t she do it again? She just had to manage it so that she and the old sorcerer were both holding the Reckoning at the same time. Then she’d restore his memories, he’d realize who he was, and he’d help her kill the Dire Magnus.
The rat-faced necromatus was hurrying forward, clutching the book to his chest, the bald clerk trailing behind. There was no more time for doubt. Emma took a step closer to the sorcerer, to be next to him when he received the Reckoning.
Then the old man said, “Hold her.”
A pair of large, strong hands seized her wrists, pinning them behind her back. Panic swept over her, and she screamed and struggled.
The old sorcerer ignored her and spoke to the necromati and guards gathered about. “After all these years, our master will finally possess the Books. But only beings of pure spirit can pass through the fire, and the Master wishes the book and Keeper complete. We will go to the last portal, the one in the mountains across the plain.”
He began to give orders. They would leave immediately. The rat-faced necromatus would stay and finish herding the dead into the pit.
A voice whispered in Emma’s ear, “You saw Nanny Marge?”
She jerked her head around. It was Harold Barnes who held her wrists. He was leaning close, and there was a desperate, searching look in his eyes.
“You really saw her? You saw my Nanny Marge?”
Recovering from her surprise, Emma nodded, and the man, without making a sound, bit his lip as tears welled in his eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, “you have to let me go. Please.”
And for a moment, it seemed that it was just her and Harold Barnes, alone in the arena. Then he nodded, and his hands opened.
The old man was still giving orders when Emma leapt forward and grasped his hand, her fingers stretching to touch the hard leather of the book—
Instantly, the magic rose up, filling her, and she was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude—
Then the arena, the fire, the guards, the necromati—all fell away.
Emma saw a brilliant blue sea, felt salt air against her skin, and saw a man with a tanned face, thick hands, and a quick smile. She saw him in a boat, teaching a boy, teaching her, how to care for his nets. He was the sorcerer’s father, a fisherman, and he was the boy’s entire world. And the day he disappeared at sea, Emma felt the hole it left in the boy’s life…and then she saw a young woman, with dark hair and dark eyes, and felt the old man’s—the young man’s—love for her…and then she saw another boy, the sorcerer’s son, with hair like his mother’s and his father’s gray eyes, and Emma felt how the wound made by the death of his father had finally begun to heal—
Emma was knocked back by the rat-faced necromatus. She landed on her side, close to the edge of the pit. A stillness had descended on the arena. The old man’s head had dropped forward. He sagged against his staff. Emma was scarcely breathing. She willed the old man to look up. One glance would tell her if he remembered who he was.
Seconds passed. Still, no one moved.
The thought came to her that touching the book, being in the old man’s memories, hadn’t been anything like how Michael described using the Chronicle, how he experienced a person’s whole life in an instant. She’d only seen the people the old sorcerer had loved. The same thing that had happened with Harold Barnes. What if the sorcerer only remembered those three people and not the rest of his life? Her plan was doomed to fail! How could she have been so stupid! Who was she to try and plan anything!
Then the old man raised his head, and everything inside Emma turned to ash. His face was just as blank as before.
He said, “Bring a table. We will perform the Bonding here.”
Emma froze. What did that mean? Why would he say that? She lay there, tense, hoping, telling herself it was stupid to hope—
“But,” the rat-faced man
said, “the Master—”
“Has spoken to me,” the old man said. “He needs her power. Once she is bonded to the Reckoning, we will throw her into the pit, and her spirit and the magic within it will be consumed by his. Her body will perish in the flames. Now, bring a table.”
So she had failed after all. Emma knew she should jump up, snatch away the book, and try to use it before they stopped her. But she couldn’t even summon the strength to rise from the ground, so crushing was the weight of her failure. And it would’ve been pointless anyway. Her enemies would’ve been on her in an instant.
The rat-faced man rushed off. Then hands, Harold Barnes’s again, lifted her to her feet, and the old man, still holding the book, stepped closer. He made a gesture, and Harold Barnes moved away, eager, it seemed, to distance himself.
The sorcerer’s face was in front of hers. When he spoke, it was in a whisper only she could hear:
“Child…”
And in that instant, Emma saw that he’d remembered who he was.
She was on the verge of letting out a cry of joy when the old man held up his hand, still whispering:
“Quiet. Others are watching. If they suspect what you have done, you are doomed.”
Emma glanced past him at the three red-robed sorcerers standing nearby; they were indeed watching closely. With effort, she forced her face into an expression of defiance and struggled to speak through the emotion choking her throat and chest. “You—you really remember? That you’re a friend of Dr. Pym and hate the Dire Magnus? He kept you like a slave, you know!”
The old man moved his body to shield her as much as possible and allowed himself a sad smile.
“I remember everything. Pym, our friendship, our fight against the Dark One, even my years being bent to the enemy’s will. Though what I remember most is my father, my wife, my son.”
The Black Reckoning Page 26
