by Kit Hallows
I felt nauseous as I met her hard eyes and her cold, mocking smile. She waved her hand in the air, causing the glistening white floor beneath her feet to darken like an ink stain. The transformation seeped across the ground and up the walls to the ceiling, turning everything black.
My eyes were drawn to the window as the lands beyond it changed. The distant forest grew taller, its trees morphing into twisted wretched things. Tendrils of fog snaked through the treetops and merged to form a sallow hovering mist. The sun shed its golden-yellow luster, and became a weak, insipid orb surrounded by wispy grey clouds.
“Welcome to my world, Morgan Rook.” Wyght strode toward me, sending Ben sniveling between my feet. She pressed her face so close to mine I could barely stand it.
A slow, ice-cold rage began to spread through me. I reached up to seize her pale throat but my hands began to burn as if they’d been held too close to a naked flame.
“As I said,” Wyght tapped her long finger into the center of my forehead, “we’re in my world now, which means I make the rules.” She leaned down, grabbed Ben by the ear and dragged him screaming to the window.
I started after her but couldn’t move. I looked down to find my feet buried up to the ankles in the inky black floor.
Wyght spun Ben around until his back was against the glass and shoved him so hard it began to splinter. “I’ll throw him if you like, Morgan. The terror will probably stop his tiny heart before he hits the ground.”
“What do you want? You promised to let him go if I came.” Impotent rage strangled my voice. There she was, my nemesis, my constant tormentor, only a few feet away from me, and I couldn’t lay a finger on her. Help me! I called. If my other heard the plea, he said nothing in return.
“You know what I want, Morgan. A door to Penrythe, and I know you can make one. I caught a glimpse of your talent when we were trapped in those glass cells. You possess both the mind of a blinkered as well as one with magical power, a very rare combination. One, as it turns out, I have a use for.”
“Right, because using blinkereds worked out really well in Temple Park.”
“It was working. I saw the door. As well as what you and your friends did to my coven. And you'll pay for that. But what you don’t understand is that we sacrifice for our causes, Morgan, we always have. Every witch that attended that ball understood the risks and the real possibility that this All Hallow’s Eve could be her last.”
“That's heartwarming.” I regretted my barbed taunt as a frown crept across her brow and she pushed Ben harder against the glass. He whimpered as the cracks in the window grew.
“All of this could have been prevented if you’d just cooperated with my agent when I sent him to collect you. Imagine all those blinkereds that might still be drawing breath today. Their blood is on your hands.”
Agent? I thought back to the hooded attacker in the magical quarter. Perhaps it hadn’t been the Council…. But then there was Rhymes? Was he working for Wyght? I kept silent. There was no point exposing my ignorance. I tried another tack.
“Why do you want to a door to Penrythe? Surely you realize it will mean certain death. If the restless ones don’t strike you down, the blinkereds will. Their violence is on a hair trigger at the best of times. If they catch sight of us, they’ll go on a rampage. And while they may not have much in the way of magic, they’ve got plenty of weapons. It will be a bloodbath, one you're not likely to survive.”
“It won’t get to that. We have a powerful alliance.”
“With Stroud?”
Wyght nodded. “He’s promised to grant me supremacy over the blinkered world while he ties up a few loose ends, and-”
“A caretaker? You’re going to be a caretaker?” I laughed. “I guess you already have the broom-”
“Shut up!” Wyght pushed Ben’s head again. The ragged web of cracks splintered further through the pane. She drank in the boy’s terror for a moment before turning back to me. “Enough talking. Summon the door. Now.”
“How?” I asked. “I’m not a wizard, I’m just a pawn.” Like you.
“You have the power, Morgan, I’ve seen it. Now close your eyes and create the door. That’s the first part. Then it will open to any place we command it to.”
Help me. Please. My words rang futilely through my mind. Where was he? Why had he-
Give me full control.
I can’t do that, you’ll-
If you want to save yourself and that sniveling runt, relinquish control. Now!
Wyght shoved the boy again. Long shards of glass fell and shattered on the blackened floor at their feet.
“No!” Ben cried. “I want to go home!”
“All right, you win!” I said as I closed my eyes and stepped back from my consciousness. My other leapt to the forefront and violently shoved me aside. Within moments I was lost, stranded. A ghost haunting himself as I peered out into the world as a mute, disembodied witness.
My other placed his hands upon the blackened ground, the gesture slow and nonchalant. Like he was dipping his fingers into the sands of a sparkling summer sea.
“What are you doing?” Wyght demanded.
He ignored her as he gave a long sigh and shuddered with delight.
“I asked you-” Wyght let go of Ben and threw her hands over her temples as a deep rumble rose through the tower.
“I’m drawing power,” my other replied. “Your power.”
Wyght fought to compose herself. Agony filled her eyes as she seized Ben and hurled him into what was left of the window. It looked like the entire thing was about to give way. “Stop it. I’m warning you, I’ll-”
“Kill the brat,” my other growled. “Do it now, I couldn’t give a fuck.” He bristled with the effects of the refined, malevolent energy he’d taken. I could feel it too, the rush shot through our veins like it had been channeled from a supernova, its dark potential far beyond black crystals. But I had no means to wield it.
It was a distillation of Wyght’s power. Pure unadulterated evil. An evil my other was no stranger to. An evil he could not only use, but could revel in while doing so.
“Stop!” Wyght screamed.
He wrenched his feet from the stone and the floor buckled like freshly laid tar. He winked at Wyght, raised a hand, and snapped his fingers.
The light from the window vanished and the room filled with blackness as deep as the darkest of nights where not a single star gleamed in the sky.
I heard a whimper. It might have been Ben, it might have been Wyght.
It might have been me.
And then the pain came. Like a thousand fires had ignited in my brain. A bright heat of torment swept from my skull to my feet, searing through my gut as it went. A terrible tearing sound filled my ears, as if the tower and world around it was slowly being rendered in two. It felt as if my blood was slowly freezing and crystalline flakes of frost drifted through my veins, each one as sharp as a dagger.
A deep primal scream filled the darkness. It was mine, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Somehow I’d drifted back into my consciousness but now it was a cold, empty place.
He’d gone.
Slowly the agony began to subside, but the emptiness in its place was even worse. I was hollow, desolate. I’d been torn in two and one half had been discarded.
I glanced ahead as the light slowly returned and spread in a glow from the broken window. Wyght glanced around, her usual aloofness shot with confusion. She still held Ben, but it seemed some of her malice had been shaken from her. “What did you do?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t-”
“Conjure the door.” Wyght said. The flicker of doubt in her eyes was stifled and replaced with steely composure. “Do it now or the boy dies.”
I could barely register her words. A terrible frailty was falling over me. I’d never felt so weak, so broken. So hollow. All the fight had been kicked out of me, and along with it, my fury. “Leave him alone, I’ll do it. But I’ll need magic.”
“You have magic.” Wyght scowled. “You just stole it from me. So use it now, or so help me-”
“Okay.”
Ben was shaking now but he was perfectly silent. Almost catatonic. The choice was simple; his life versus the potential slaughter of millions. An easy enough sum on the face of it, yet I couldn’t bear to see his torment for another moment. I glanced down to the blackened ground. My other had drawn power from her. Perhaps I could do the same, use her magic against her…
“Stop plotting, and start conjuring,” Wyght said.
“Let him go. I’ll do it. I promise.”
She pulled Ben away from the window, and held him by the back of his neck. It seemed it was the best I was going to get from her.
I silenced my thoughts, closed my eyes, and began to picture a tall black door in the middle of the chamber. A door like the others I’d seen. A door that opened to the place I’d been born. One I meant to escape through along with the child, the first chance I got.
I saw it forming, from imagined to real as it slowly extracted itself from my mind’s eye.
Then Wyght giggled, and I shivered as she whispered, “Yes!”
56
I fought to fix the image of the door amid Wyght’s soft sighs of excitement. I pictured it beside her throne, tall and wide, its dark wood stained with age, the glow of light at its keyhole. And then I felt a breeze. A cool, temperate wind. It carried the scents of pine, mulch, and plants whose names I’d forgotten.
Fragrances from Penrythe.
The door was unlocked, the only thing required to open it was will. It was here. Now. In the chamber of Wyght’s inner world, the blinkered world, and Penrythe. And I was the lynch pin between the three.
I heard sounds; a distant mournful howl, birdsong, and the call of a hunter’s horn. Each one existed beyond my perception in a world of their own.
“Keep going,” Wyght whispered, “keep going!”
I shivered and a low, ominous feeling passed through me, as if my very soul had shuddered. It was magic. The magic that had long lived inside me, wild and untamed. A fire that, once stoked, threatened to rage out of control. A force that might devour me. I’d never been shown this magic, how to harness or master it. My other had. But he was gone now. How could I wield it, mold it and make it mine, without it consuming me?
“Keep going!” Wyght’s voice was urgent, excited, almost sensual. “Yes!”
I felt the door solidifying in my mind and saw its battered and warped sides. Its age. It was so close to being real. A thing, existing beyond my concept. And with its conjuring came a worrying thought I couldn’t shake. That once it was full formed, the magic I’d used in its creation would unravel me. Wyght knew this… I was certain of it. And as the knowledge passed through me, I faltered and the door lost a little of its luster.
“What are you doing?” Wyght demanded. “It’s fading!”
“It’s going to kill me.”
“Two birds, one stone. Finish it now.”
I opened my eyes. The door was where I’d pictured it, right beside her wretched throne. It was still ghostly and I could see the cracked window behind its panels.
“You’re not finished,” Wyght said. “Continue.”
I glanced at Ben. He trembled, his legs shaking, his eyes wide with terror. “I will. Just as soon as you’ve let him go. Let him wake in the blinkered world. He doesn’t need to be here for this.”
“And lose my leverage?” Wyght shook her head.
“When he wakes, he’ll be surrounded by your sisters. You’ll still have your leverage. But at least he won’t be here. And I’ll be able to concentrate, knowing my death won’t be in vain.”
“Oh, it won’t be. That door is your last testament.” Wyght sighed and kneeled before Ben and smiled, the gesture even more unsettling than her snarl. “You want to go home, little one?”
He nodded, and the tears that had pooled in his eyes streamed down his cheeks.
“Then wake up.” Wyght snapped her fingers. “Now!”
“I… I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Shut your eyes and when you open them you’ll be awake in your beautifully ordinary, blinkered world.”
Ben gave me a fearful glance, but I nodded. “Close your eyes and imagine yourself waking. That’s all you need to do.”
He closed his eyes and a crease spread across his forehead. Slowly, his form began to fade, and within moments he was gone all together.
Wyght strode to the door and rapped her knuckles on it, producing a dim, hollow sound. “It’s almost here, Morgan. Finish it.”
I closed my eyes. If the door was complete I could use it. It was my only hope. But as soon as I began to visualize it, the deep, unraveling sensation within me returned. My undoing… I wasn’t going to survive this, and I wasn’t going to defeat her. I’d die in this imaginary chamber, buried forever in Wyght’s fevered mind.
“No.”
It was a man’s voice.
It was my voice…
I opened my eyes. Wyght stared behind me, her lips drawn over her teeth. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. Slowly, I followed her gaze.
It was like looking into a mirror.
My other stood in the doorway, his stare as cold and nonchalant as Wyght’s was furious. “You’re not going to die,” he said, glancing my way. “Not like this.” He held out his arms and closed his eyes. The air above his hands fizzled and shifted, and when it finally settled, he held a sword in each of them.
The sword in his right hand was silver and it crackled with fire. The sword in his left was jet black. Both were the sword of intention, one light, one dark. He tossed the silver blade to me. I caught it, relieved to feel its weight in my hand once more. Weight and… power. He’d infused his magic into the steel. Just enough to revive me.
“What have you done?” Wyght demanded, her voice bewildered, furious as she glanced from him to me.
“We’ve been at odds,” he answered. “But there’s at least one consensus, we have unfinished business. You.”
Slowly, together, we began our advance on Elsbeth Wyght.
57
Wyght’s bewilderment turned to fury and excitement. “So be it,” she said, as she stroked the spiral on her wrist with her finger and the glow began to cut through the gloom of the chamber. Then the radiance slowly spread up her arm, to her body and face. Her light blazed for a moment and when it faded, she was covered in hard, dark serpent-like scales. She shivered and began to grow, until she towered over us like a giant. Wyght nodded to my other. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For giving me the opportunity to slay you.” she said, before glancing my way, “I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of you simply withering away once you’d finished the portal. But now I get to have my door and kill you too.” She reached up toward the ceiling and pulled down a sword from the shadows. The dark light from the blade glistened on her scales as she crossed it over her chest. “Come,” she said to my other. “Let me show you how weak and inconsequential you are.”
“He’s weak,” my other said, nodding to me. “You’ll find me less so.” He strode toward her, swinging his sword and bringing it up in an arc to meet her throat. She blocked his attack and their blades crashed together. The rumble that echoed through the chamber was like a calving glacier.
Wyght reared over him but he pushed his blade hard against hers, driving her back. She swore and spat, the venom raining down on him. He recoiled, wiping his eyes with the crook of his sleeve as she conjured a ball of silver fire over his head. I leaped forward, and pushed him aside. The fire struck the dark stone where he'd stood and scattered like beads of mercury.
“Don’t worry, you’re next,” Wyght promised as she shot me a withering glance. The words that followed were garbled and hissed. A spell crackled in the air as she ran at me, her movements feverishly fast. She swung her sword. I had no time to parry.
“Block!” I shouted. Fire swirled aroun
d the sword of intention as it swept through the air, jolting to stop each of the blows she rained down upon me, her attack so frenzied I struggled to keep up.
I prepared for her next swing and sidestepped, punching her hard in the stomach. Pain exploded across my knuckles as if I’d struck a brick wall, then my skull seared with agony as she head butted me in the face.
“Fuck!” My head throbbed and the room spun. I backed away and brought up my blade to obstruct her next blow as the tip of her sword sailed past my eyes.
I groaned as the back of my head struck the wall. Wyght ran at me, her sword held high. She swept it down, using the flat of the blade. I rolled across the floor as her sword glanced off the wall and my other rose up behind her, his eyes running red from the toxins.
Wyght spun round to face him. Their swords whirled and clashed once more.
She was strong and in her element. This was her domain. Her killing ground. And we were her toys.
All I had beyond my will to survive was a drive for vengeance that had solidified into cold hard hatred. I ran at her. She blocked my assault and the force of her counter attack deadened my arm.
As I lost ground, Wyght raised a hand and an orb of silver flames crackled in her palm. She flung it in a long rolling arc along the floor and a wall of flame roared up between us. I shielded my face against the blazing heat and peered under my arm as she turned back to my other, grim determination on her face.
His eyes followed the rhythmic motions of her sword as she swung over and over again, their blades crashing and singing out. Learn her movements, I almost cried to him. It seemed he already was, as he parried each of her attacks.
The barrier still blazed. I clenched my jaw and leaped, bracing myself against the searing flames, and charged at Wyght as she forced my other toward the shattered window.
She turned her back on him before I could reach her and bore down on me. The speed of her incessant blows almost overwhelmed me, but the sword of intention bucked each strike and fended off her attacks. I kept my eyes locked on hers, willing her focus to remain entirely on me as my other prowled behind her.
