He whispered, “I will lick your memories from my fingers.”
“Not on the first date, dearie,” Ciaran said. He stood about twenty feet away, his face a hash mark of scores and scrapes.
Then he threw, of all things, a rock. The aim was perfect. Rurik’s head snapped backward and forward like he was nodding. He didn’t go down, but he staggered, and my paralysis vanished in a cramp of pins and needles.
I grabbed my sabre and slammed the hilt into Rurik’s ribs, then drew heavily on my willpower and generated a bolt of fire as thick as my wrist. The bolt tore through him and burst out the other side. I scrambled away as chunks of flesh fell from the chest wound, a nauseating mix of char and wriggling larval matter.
“And so,” Rurik hissed. “Enemies.”
He flicked a hand. Something flew out of a nearby bush and scratched at my face. I smelled death before I saw it: the corpses of hornets, squirming with necromantic energy. A stinger dragged a gash under my eye, another across my forehead.
I ran a thumb over the etched surface of Quinn’s platinum disc and released its stored magic.
Light moved through me like spring water, clear and pure. It spilled out my fingers and eyes and nostrils, radiated from me like a child’s drawing of a spiky sun. The hornets gave a high-pitched hiss and burst into flame. Rurik raised his arm in front of his face and staggered back.
It was called Bless-fire, a powerful and difficult magic, a holy magic. It was a spell to cower the undead. I’d sacrificed any hope of sleeping last night in order to store it.
Rurik held out his arms. Weeds browned underneath him; black lightning sang upward into his fists. He began to gesture at me.
Filaments of lightning arced from Ciaran’s hands and turned Rurik’s linen into black flakes. Ciaran drew on more power, scoring Rurik’s dead flesh with glowing, molten marks. I let the Bless-fire loose in an almighty flood. It burst outward, turning everything into a silhouette. Flickers of orange light threaded through it—my Aspect rising, answering the call of Bless-fire with the purifying force of the Sun.
With a lingering screech, Rurik vanished.
I sagged to both knees.
I thought, Down is good. Lying down would be better. Lying down several city blocks away would be ideal.
But we’d bought ourselves a window, that’s it. A window of opportunity. Plus, I was my father’s son, and I did not kneel between battles.
I grunted to my feet and capped the Bless-fire that still burned through my skin. Bless-fire was a precious spell; I couldn’t afford to expend any more of it than was necessary. I had no confidence that we’d seriously injured this Rurik. He’d been freakishly powerful. He had moved a null thread, which was the magical equivalent of picking up a river and slinging it over your shoulder.
Rurik. He had a name. I’d even started thinking about it as he. I’d never heard of a recarnate that had developed a personality, or at least anything more than the echo of its mortal life. I’d never heard of a recarnate that could channel magic like a living spell-caster. I’d never known a recarnate to heal its own decomposition.
None of that mattered now, though. Addam Saint Nicholas was still inside the castle.
Farstryke’s aviary would have been beautiful in its prime: a two-story glass atrium designed to capture the east and west light. I used a cantrip to dislodge the few remaining teeth of glass that clung to one of the window panes.
“We can go through here,” I said.
“The inside of the building will likely disrupt cell service,” Ciaran said hesitantly.
“You’ve got someone you need to call?” I asked.
“You do. You must call Lord Tower and tell him about that creature. You must tell Lord Tower what it did.”
“You know something,” I said.
“Suspicions.”
“Of?” I said when he didn’t elaborate.
“Just call Lord Tower, Rune. He’ll want to know.” Ciaran turned and climbed through the window frame.
“Well, that’s not like foreshadowing at all,” I said after him. I’d never seen Ciaran so serious, which, in itself, was unnerving.
I pulled out my cell phone. I didn’t have a signal out here, so I put the phone away and climbed after Ciaran.
Morning had enough trouble breaking through the cloud cover outside. It had no effect whatsoever on the rooms inside. I whispered a light cantrip, which pushed at the gloom, revealing broken statuary and long-dead trees. I sent the bauble dancing around the walls, illuminating the room’s exits.
“Hey, Ciaran,” I said. “Remember back when we were talking about your suspicions?”
Ciaran tutted me. He ran a finger along the grime of a worn angel.
“Any reason you’re being so closed-mouth about this?” I asked.
“I don’t want to be an alarmist. It’s unnecessarily flamboyant.”
“You turn things you touch into shades of pastel and fluorescence.”
He gave me a pointed look. “Do we have time for this? When we spoke last night, you seemed to think finding Quinn’s brother was urgent.”
I blew a sigh out of my pressed lips, and dropped the matter.
Brand had quizzed me on blueprints he’d drawn up, based on a hurried internet search. The aviary abutted a music room and a conservatory, which opened to a great hall. We headed toward the conservatory.
As I stepped further into the building, the castle’s otherness went from an itch to a vibration. I could feel the tense presence of spirits. From experience, I knew they’d be excited by my strong, fresh heartbeat. I let a little Bless-fire trickle from my hands. Its illumination was wildly disproportionate; shadows tripped over each other as they receded into corners and cracks.
The castle’s restless energy retreated.
The conservatory was filled with big, clunky furniture covered in rotting sheets. One entire wall was a mural—stone inlaid with inscriptions, speckled with what looked like ash. When I wiped a finger across it, the flakes came away fine and greasy.
“How do you plan to find Addam?” Ciaran asked.
“Magic,” I said. I focused on my thigh sigil. The spell released after a second’s hitch. A ball of energy formed above my head, not unlike a light cantrip.
At my command, the ball broke apart and became a shining wind. It flooded away from me, through walls and floors, through doors and ceilings. It ignored ghosts and boggarts and paused only a moment above the scratching of rodents and insects. The spell finally swarmed over a large living creature—the only living creature inside the building. If it was Addam, then he was below me.
“This way.” I headed toward the closed doorway on the other side of the conservatory.
My Bless-fire stuttered, then resumed its glow. It didn’t have much duration left. It’d be worrisome to be stuck in the basement without it. The cellars of Atlantean castles were rarely used to store Christmas ornaments and lawn-care tools.
Ciaran hit me in the shoulder and shouted, “You are only my face and voice, not my Will, and I will have you remember that!”
“What the hell? Get off!” I shouted back at him, shoving him away.
He went still. He stared hard at the ground. His jaw muscle began to twitch.
“What’s with the crazy?” I demanded.
“Something just happened. I was . . . I can’t explain. I’m fine now.”
We were in a haunted castle. I had no idea what to expect. Best advice? Walk softly and carry a flaming stick. I crackled my sabre into a burning, straight-edged scimitar.
“If anything comes at us, hit it hard,” I said. “Shield your mind as much as you can.”
I slashed an X on the closed conservatory door. The worm-eaten wood pattered to the ground. We stepped through the opening and into the great hall.
“Brand showed me all the routes from the first floor. This is the main hall—and basement access is somewhere over there.” I pointed across a ruined landscape of wooded banquet tables and broken chairs. The
doorway wasn’t apparent at first until I spied the banner. It trembled as a faint breeze sucked at it.
Ciaran said, raw and loud, “She fooled us all, like Russian dolls inside Russian dolls inside Russian dolls. The canny bitch!”
“Ciaran, shield your mind !” I shouted.
He shook his head. One delusion slipped off, and another slipped in, turning his anger into grief. “Their bodies have been lost to the waves,” he said. “There is no more cause for hope.”
And because the universe is all about multitasking, the tapestry, at that moment, was ripped aside and four recarnates rushed out, carrying weapons. More guns in a magic fight.
“Ciaran, get behind me—you’re compromised,” I ordered.
“But . . . the Westlands is advancing on us, we must prepare.”
“Get behind me!” I shouted. I let out the Bless-fire in a perfect ring. Table fragments skittered and smoldered under its energy.
I thought at first the recarnate soldiers were wary of the magic, but as they spread out around me in a semicircle, their most wary looks were sent upward.
It made sense when a rush of darkness ruffled my hair, leaving behind traces of frost.
I looked up and saw wraiths.
The hungriest of all ghosts, the wraiths came at us from a stairway at the other end of the hall. I sent another pulse of Bless-fire outward, strengthening the circle. The wraiths howled toward me, but they were old and corrupted beings, and the Bless-fire tore through them like a sword point. Three of them came apart entirely. Muted, colored memories flew from their bodies like ash. Pieces of the memories brushed past me, and I experienced starburst images from other people’s lives. Maria’s crooked smile, the cherry tree in my Atlantean orchard, Adeem’s first pony being fed plums the size of coconuts.
The recarnates were not so well protected as I was. They were borderline energy—not precisely alive or dead—so the wraiths could still feed on them. I remember something Quinn had said, something about letting the ghosts eat first.
So I stayed put.
Two of the recarnates shot at the wraiths. Another aimed a pneumatic dart gun at me, and went down as a wraith bit his arm. A recarnate tried to jump across my ring of Bless-fire. His arm caught fire. He dropped to the ground and rolled. The wraiths dove on him and ate.
It took three minutes for the last of the recarnates to succumb. The wraiths howled and keened around my circle for another long minute, then whooshed back up the stairway.
My Bless-fire was now seriously ebbing. Even if Addam was downstairs with his coat on, I worried about having enough juice to get back to the castle gates.
“Ciaran,” I said. “You need to turn back. The Bless-fire is the only thing keeping the castle from mind-fucking me, and I can’t spare it on you without burning through it. If we both go nuts, Addam is screwed.”
He gave me a sane nod. “My powers . . . are very similar to dreams and prophecies. I think that is why I am so susceptible.”
“Addam’s close—give me fifteen minutes, and if I don’t report in, find cell service and call the Tower. And thank you. I mean that, Ciaran—thank you.”
He inclined his head, then left.
I went across the great hall. As soon as I pushed through the old tapestry, I had a better understanding of why the recarnate guards had lasted this long.
The great hall, for them, was a killing ground. The stairwell and basement were not. Someone had warded it against spectral intrusion. I took a deep breath and felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.
Unlike the upper floor, the basement level was well tended. The ground was swept, hard-packed dirt. No cobwebs. The wraith wards had a strange effect on my light cantrip. It now cast a perfect circle of cartoon yellow around me, and did absolutely nothing to pierce the darkness farther away from me.
I walked down the hall. What felt like half a city block later, I came on a door.
It was in much better shape than its splintered cousins upstairs. My garnet blade bounced off the metal cross-braces when I tapped them. It was warded. Or maybe trapped. I put the palm of my hand just above one of the metal bands and concentrated.
Identifying spells was a dodgy business. Interpretation and a good gut meant everything. To me, the door felt faintly of static cling and sunburns. Some sort of shock or fire spell?
I had options. They lay in two familiar camps: smash or subvert. I went with the subtler option and released a sigil spell. It was called Opening. Once released, it sat ready in my brain, a little like a head rush from standing up too quickly.
I positioned myself on the side of the door and sent Opening into both the door and its trap. Gears turned and clicked inside the locking mechanism. The trap’s magic parted, whole but untriggered.
I wasted no time in turning the handle to see what was on the other side.
Addam Saint Nicholas faced away from me. He had an MP3 player in one hand and was dancing.
There was a tray of food, a bottle of wine, a small stack of new-release paperbacks, and a camping cot. He wore only black suit pants. No shoes, socks, shirt, or sigils.
My first thought was that he danced like Brand.
Then, in an astonishingly fluid motion, Addam snagged the leg of a roughly-sharpened footstool he’d hidden in his waistline, and spun around to stake me. His eyes jerked from my extended sabre blade to my face. His fingers spread open and the stake clattered to the ground.
He said, “Ah. You’re not dead. I am being rescued, yes?”
He had white teeth and a freckled tan. Tattoos covered one arm and one shoulder in an intricate Celtic sleeve. He was well over six feet tall. His hair, the color of sand, was tied into a short ponytail with a dirty rubber band.
He held out a hand and said, “Your blade.”
I blinked back at him. “Um. No, thank you?”
He frowned. “Apologies, it has been a . . . long few days. Does anyone have a blade to spare? It would be better if I were armed.”
It clicked. “Oh, I get it. You think this is one of them big, fancy rescues. Boy are you about to be embarrassed.”
His burgundy eyes—a beautiful color—flicked behind me, then flicked back, filled with something not unlike approval. “You came into Farstryke alone.”
“I had help outside.” I retracted my sabre blade and stuck it in my waistband, and hopped around on one foot while taking off my sneakers. He watched me with an expression that swayed between amused and interested until I slapped my dirty socks against his stomach.
I pulled my shoes back on. While Addam put on my socks, I examined his tattoos. Most scions avoided them. Tattoos were uncomfortably close to runes, and sometimes they took on a life of their own.
I said, “Just to make sure I’ve got things right, this is a prison cell, isn’t it? You’re not just ducking your mom because you got drunk and woke up with a sailor?”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “It’s a prison cell.”
“Any chance you know who put you here?”
“I do not,” he said, and his voice got a little hard. I heard the curl of an accent; heavy and Slavic, like his mother.
He said, “But I will.”
ADDAM SAINT NICHOLAS
The Opening spell was waning. We needed to be on the other side of the door before the trapped wards reengaged.
“Let’s go,” I said to Addam.
He picked up his stake and joined me in the hall.
“Listen.” I closed the door and released the Opening. The hairs on my arm stood up as the trap fell back into place. “The upstairs is lousy with ghosts. Worse, whatever that thing is that’s raised those soldier recarnates—he calls himself Rurik—could come back. We need to move fast. If we can find a quick way out, great. If not, I have a . . . less comfortable option.”
“There’s a back exit,” he said, pointing in the other direction. We began walking. “That’s how they took me in. If we—”
I raised a finger. Noises—coming from the stairway. I tri
ed to place the sound. A scratching or scraping, like mouse nails on plywood.
Down the hall, from the direction I’d come in, dull white sticks rocked back and forth in midair. As they neared our sphere of light, the sticks resolved into the ribs and ulnas of skeletons. They wore scraps of funeral shrouds, and stared at me through orbital sockets stuffed with gold coins and knuckle-sized gemstones.
Skeletons were down-and-dirty recarnate magic. It was far easier to raise the fleshless than it was the able-bodied recarnates I’d encountered upstairs. But while they were weaker, they could be summoned in greater quantity.
The corridor permitted four abreast, and I counted five bobbing rows of muddy craniums. “Get back,” I said.
“Ten apiece,” Addam whispered in a tight voice.
“Shh.” I called on the magic in my silver ankh sigil and held it ready. Its power rumbled through my fingers like a car engine.
The skeletons moved slowly into our sphere of waxy, yellow light. Several of them held rusted daggers. When they were even with the door of Addam’s prison cell, one of them flipped its dagger back for a toss. Addam panicked and threw his stake. Neck vertebrae cracked as skulls followed its trajectory. The stake hit the closed cell door with enough force to trigger the trap. Streams of electricity arced from the ground beneath the first rank of skeletons. Charred bone and smoking rags scattered in a blast radius. It wasn’t a bad tactic altogether—even if more than a dozen of skeletons were still coming at us.
I’d planned on piggybacking my own spell on the door trap. There was no use waiting now. I released Shatter.
The powerful magic hit them with a peal of thunder. The skeletons rained upward in pieces no larger than a child’s tooth. When the pattering stopped, Addam came up next to me, so close that the warm hairs of his forearm touched mine. He smelled of sweat and faded cologne.
“Want me to go fetch your stake?” I asked.
He gave me a smile. “I am unaccustomed to being upstaged by a proper hero. That was very good spellwork.” He winked, turned, and retreated. “This way, Hero.”
The Last Sun Page 14
