The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff

  “And the crag’s magic kept you alive for all that time,” she said, remembering what he’d said to Majem in her dream. Suddenly another memory came to her, of being small, inconsolable, a terrible loss ripping through her; then an old man was rocking her in his arms, his silver hair shining.… “You comforted me,” she whispered, “after what they did to Jamem.”

  A tear trickled down Drudge’s face and he stroked her hand, a smile flickering across his cracked lips. Then his expression steeled. “Time,” he said, turning toward the kitchen. “Ratssses, come.” Noodle and Pie hopped from Jemma’s hands and scuttled after him.

  “Hey! Rattusses, why are you going too?”

  “Trusssst!” Drudge said, and melted into the scullery. Seconds later, Nocturna swept into the kitchen dressed in her crimson Ceremony-Day velvet, Rook on her shoulder, weasels circling her feet. Shade, Nox, and Feo were close on her heels.

  Jemma thrust her hands into her pockets and stood as tall as she could as the group began their silent, funereal march toward her. None of them would meet her gaze. The words from her dream began circling her head: Si ti neto di od nise … The fingers of her right hand touched her Stone, then beneath it, Bethany’s gold coin. Blessed it in the fire, Bethany had said. An idea took root.

  Nocturna walked slowly past Jemma’s cell, proud and erect. Shade tossed her raven hair, brandishing the bunch of keys at her waist. Nox and Feo looked staunchly ahead as the eight Agromond feet stepped in time down the corridor. Keys chinked … the triplets moaned … Digby yelled … and all the while, Jemma turned Bethany’s coin over and over, letting her thoughts float and expand. In her mind’s eye, she could see Drudge in the scullery, his hand resting on the flagon of syrupwater. Gordo was there too, with Noodle and Pie on his shoulders. Hold Shade back, she heard in her head. We’ll do the rest.

  “Digby, help!” The triplets’ screams melded into one.

  “Leave ’em be—take me instead!”

  Jemma took a deep breath, her fingers working the coin. Her plan became a single point in her mind, a crystal thought that she directed toward Shade: Stay behind, Shade! Taste your triumph over me, just for a moment.…

  “It’s to no avail, snivelers.” Shade’s sneer whined through Digby’s cries and the triplets’ sobs. “So you may as well stop grizzling.”

  Jemma took another deep breath and focused her intention, slicing it like a blade down the corridor and into Shade’s head: Taste your triumph, Shade. Think of the satisfaction! After years of hating me … The group emerged from the shadows with Nocturna at the helm, her weasels forming a wave of fur along the floor. Just behind her were the ashen-faced triplets, flanked by Nox and Feo. Shade brought up the rear. Oh, how you hate me—you always have! So gloat a little. Gloat! You’ve earned it. They walked solemnly into the kitchen. Shade—your triumph. Gloat! They were almost at the door to the Pickle Corridor, and still Jemma kept spearing her thoughts into Shade’s mind. You’ve won. Finally, you’ve won—rub it in!

  Nocturna had just stepped into the corridor, when Shade stopped.

  “Indulge me if you will, Mama,” she said, “while I enjoy a moment with Jemma?”

  “Very well, my dear. But dally not. We have but a few minutes until the appointed hour.” Nocturna, Nox, and Feo herded their terrified victims away as Shade strutted to Jemma’s cell. She stood a safe distance from the bars, arms crossed.

  “Fool!” she said. “To think you could get the better of me! Soon, the Ceremony will begin, the girl will be sacrificed, and the boys will go to the dungeon of bones where we shall not be bothered by their whimperings. But rest assured, you and their brother will not live long to hear it.”

  “So, I’ve lost the battle for their lives.” Jemma sighed. “But you’ll never kill me. I have protection.”

  “Protection? Besides your Stone, which you so conveniently made disappear last night? What rubbish!”

  “Rubbish? I think not.” Jemma pulled the coin from her pocket and held it up between her thumb and forefinger. Even in the dank corridor, it shone. “This talisman,” she said, waving it close to the bars, “holds the Power of my entire lineage. Whoever possesses it is immortal.”

  “Is that so?” Shade’s eyes settled on the coin and widened with greed. “Then why aren’t any of your ancestors still alive?”

  “Because only one at a time may command the talisman, and it was always meant to come to me. As long as I guard it well, I can live forever.” Jemma began to close her fingers around the coin. Shade made a grab for it. Jemma dropped it to the floor, then clasped Shade’s wrist with both hands and pulled her toward the bars.

  “Let go!” Shade twisted and writhed, pounding Jemma’s arms with her free fist.

  Jemma held fast. At any moment Shade’s strength would overpower hers. Only one thing could weaken her.… From the corner of her eye, she could see Gordo and Drudge coming out of the scullery, Gordo staggering under the weight of the syrupwater flagon, which was balanced against his chest. Noodle and Pie clung to his jacket, grossly magnified by the liquid in the jar.

  “I said, let me go!” Shade yelled, pounding harder.

  Gordo, Drudge, and the rats were halfway across the kitchen.…

  “Ow!” Jemma feigned pain, and released Shade’s hand. Shade dived for the coin and her fingers closed around it.

  “Mine!” she crowed, holding up the gold disc. “Now we shall see who’s immortal—ha!”

  And now we shall see who’s weakened by her greatest fear, Jemma thought.

  “Shade!” she yelled. “Look out, behind you—in the kitchen!”

  Shade looked over her shoulder. Gordo was teetering toward her; Noodle and Pie, through the syrupwater, looked enormous and grotesque. She shrieked and froze.

  “I can’t hold it no more!” Gordo slid the flagon to the floor. The rats launched themselves from his shoulders and landed on Shade.

  “Get them off me!” Shade dropped the coin and backed against Jemma’s cell door.

  “Gladly!” Jemma grabbed the keys hanging from Shade’s waist, her fingers scrabbling at the knot tying them there as the rats bounded all over their trembling victim.

  “Aaaagh—stop, stop! Drudge, you old fool, help me, for Mord’s sake!”

  “Gnnnnaaa!” Drudge snarled, pulling a small knife from his pocket and handing it to Jemma. She cut the keys free, then pocketed the knife, unlocked the door, pushed it open against Shade’s weight, and stepped into the corridor.

  “Mama!” Shade yelled. “Hellmmmmfff!”

  Gordo slapped his hand across Shade’s mouth to stifle her screams. “Off you go, lass, and get Digby,” he said. “I’ll hold this she-devil.”

  Jemma sped down the corridor with the keys. Moments later, she and Digby were pelting back to the kitchen. Shade, still weakened by her terror of the rats, was safely in Gordo’s grasp.

  “Digby, lad,” said Gordo. “Your face! That bruise—them scratches—”

  “I’m fine, Pa. Let’s get this harpy locked up.” Digby grasped Shade’s arm, shoved her into the cell, and slammed the door. “There! Enjoy a taste of your own medicine!”

  “Please …” Shade was quaking under the rats’ scampering paws. “Take them with you.”

  “Fat chance!” Digby’s face reddened with rage. “After what you done to my little brothers an’ sister, you’re lucky I don’t come in there an’ skin you alive.”

  “Come on, Dig, we’ll deal with her later.” Jemma locked Shade’s cell. “Stay with her, Rattusses, just until we’re upstairs. Gordo, Drudge—” She spun around. “Where is Drudge?”

  Gordo shrugged. “Dunno. One minute he was behind me, next he was gone.”

  Jemma’s heart sank. Frail though he was, she wanted the old man by her side. “Let’s go,” she said, pocketing the keys.

  “You’ll r-regret this,” Shade growled. “Just you see!”

  Jemma and Digby took off across the kitchen, Gordo trailing behind. As they reached the door to the Pickle Corrido
r, Gordo yelled out. They turned. He was on the floor, clutching his calf, blood dribbling from the bottom of his trouser leg.

  “You go on,” he said, wincing in pain. “Somethin’ hit me … like a bolt of black lightnin’, it was. Came straight from her hand.…”

  “A Dromfell!” Jemma said. “If she hadn’t been weakened by the rats, it could have killed you!”

  Shade was leaning against the bars of the cell door, one arm stretched toward Gordo. Noodle and Pie lay belly-up on the floor by her feet, stunned. They shook themselves, clambered up her legs, and clawed at her other hand, which was clutching something at her neck.

  “Ow! You little beasts!” She released her fingers, revealing a black stone hanging there.

  “Her amulet!” Jemma ran over, reached through the bars, grabbed Shade’s pendant, and yanked. A wave of nausea hit her. The reason was obvious. She hurled the pendant toward the scullery and shot a beam of Light at it. It exploded in a rain of black dust.

  “I’ll get you for this, J-Jem-mah!” Shade squirmed, trying to beat off Noodle and Pie. “You’ll see!”

  Digby had rolled up Gordo’s trouser leg, revealing a deep black-edged gash on his calf that was bleeding badly. Jemma crouched down and lay her hands on it. Seconds later, the blood stopped, and she and Digby helped Gordo to his feet.

  “That should hold for now,” she said. “Gordo, do you think you can get to the cart?” Gordo nodded.

  “Good. Bring it around to the front and wait for us there.” Jemma glanced at Shade’s cell. Though Noodle and Pie were still keeping Shade in check, her dark aura was strengthening. Even without her amulet, she seemed to be growing rapidly immune to the rats, her phobia of them dwindling. “Leave her, Rattusses!” Jemma pulled her Stone from her pocket and fastened it around her neck. “Quickly, before she can harm you. Come on, Dig. They’ll be starting the Ceremony any moment.”

  Jemma, Digby, and the rats ran along the Pickle Corridor and up the stairs. Jemma repeated Majem’s instructions as they went, as much to drum them into herself as to tell Digby: Opening Call, Song, Releasing Rhyme. Call. Song. Rhyme.

  They tumbled into the cavernous hall. The Ceremony Chamber doors were closed. Pale smoke seeped underneath them and curled upward, like wispy talons ready for the kill.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The Darkest Hour

  “Where is Shade?” Nocturna’s voice was sharp as a sword edge. “Nox, fetch her!”

  “Dig, grab that,” Jemma whispered, pointing to one of the halberds. “Stop him!”

  “Right.” Digby wrenched the long handle from its suit of armor. Jemma quickly threw a protective sphere of Light around him and the rats, and then herself.

  “Shade!” Nox bellowed. The doors flew open. “Where—What the devil is this?”

  “Out of our way!” Digby jabbed the halberd’s curved blade at him.

  “Don’t try anything with me, boy,” Nox snarled, backing into the Ceremony Chamber.

  Jemma and Digby followed him in. Through the pale smoke, Jemma could see that the pews had been cleared to the far side of the room. A large circle of black candles glittered in their place, surrounding the two front pillars. Simon and Tiny were lashed to Mordrake’s statue, Flora to Mordana’s, looking petrified. In the middle of the mantel-altar, surrounded by smoldering willow branches, sat the black globe. Nocturna stood in front of it with Rook on her right shoulder, the weasels coiled around her hemline. Feo, stiff as a board, stood beside her. The flames behind them flashed off the sword Nocturna was clutching with both hands.

  “Jemmahhh!” she hissed. “Even now you seek to thwart us! Whatever you have done with Shade, we shall not be stopped!”

  “We’ll see about that!” Jemma ran toward Flora; the rats pelted over to Simon and Tiny. Nox shot a Dromfell at Digby, disintegrating his protective light shield, and he fell to the flagstones, the halberd clattering beside him. Jemma threw another protective shield around him: Nox wouldn’t be able to produce another Dromfell so soon, but Nocturna or Feo might try.

  Nox strode to Nocturna and Feo, turned, and raised his arms. “Mordsprites!” he boomed. “I summon you!”

  “Dig!” Jemma yelled as she reached Flora, “think positive thoughts!” Arming herself with memories of her parents, Marsh, and sunshine, she pulled out her knife and began hacking at Flora’s binds. Already, shadows were swarming in the vaulted ceiling. “Above you, Dig!”

  Digby struggled to his feet as the heaving mass swooped down on him. His eyes steeled with determination; his light shield intensified. Inches away from him, the Mordsprites stopped dead, then turned and fled.

  “Nox!” Nocturna shrieked. “Stop wasting time on secondary sorcery! We must hasten!” Her eyes, and Nox’s, rolled back in their heads until only the whites showed.

  Jemma went cold. They hadn’t even said the Opening Invocation, but were going straight into a trance …? That could only mean one thing: they were about to summon an Entity. Already. And not just any Entity … Her small knife no match for Flora’s ropes, she pocketed it and began tearing at the impossible-looking knot and willing it to untie.

  “Morda-Morda-Morda-lay …” Nocturna, Nox, and Feo started the slow, deliberate chant. The black candles flared.

  “Morda-nothin’!” Digby charged toward them, halberd in hand like a lance, but was thrown to the ground again by a force surrounding them, visible only as a gray aura that had expanded around the black globe, pulsing in time with their words.

  “You who keep’st the Light at bay …”

  The candles flared again, more strongly.

  “Dig, leave them!” Jemma yelled, realizing with a jolt of horrific memory what the black candles were: a sacrificial circle. “The candles, Dig—put them out!”

  “Right!” Digby stood and swiped several over with his halberd. They sprang back into place, still lit.

  Come on, knot, come on! Jemma pulsed Light through her fingers as they worked. The rope shifted slightly.

  “Hurry, Jemma.” Flora’s voice was barely a squeak.

  “Bring to us on this Your day …” Nox and Nocturna’s expressions were like stone, their white eyes unseeing. But Feo was staring at Jemma, a look of intense anguish on his face. Suddenly, he broke out of the Agromonds’ gray force-field.

  “I’ll get you, common dross!” He lurched toward Digby, his eyes blazing with hatred. Flames leapt into life around Digby’s light sphere. Jemma quickly reinforced it, and the flames went out.

  “Keep back, you!” Digby jabbed the halberd at Feo, while veering from side to side and kicking over a few candles. They snapped upright again, burning brightly.

  “Your darkest demon—Scagavay!”

  Darkest demon? Jemma gulped. Last time, it had been “favored phantom,” and that had been terrifying enough.

  Untie, knot—please! At last, the rope slithered undone.

  “Come on, Flora.” Jemma pulled the quivering girl over to Simon and Tiny. Noodle and Pie were just gnawing through the last strands of their ropes, and the boys shook themselves free.

  “Morda-Morda-Morda-lay …”

  Jemma grabbed their hands and dragged all three triplets toward the door, kicking at as many candles as she could on the way. But the candles remained standing, as if attached to the flagstones by springs, their flames still strong.

  “You who keep’st the Light at bay …” Nox and Nocturna droned on. Smoke belched into the room.

  “Flora, Simon, Tiny,” said Jemma, “hurry outside! Your pa will be there any minute.”

  The triplets bolted for the door, and Jemma ran toward Digby, who was swinging the halberd at Feo. Feo shot another Fire gaze at him, but the light sphere around Digby was strong, and the flames instantly died.

  “Hazebury muck!” Feo snatched at the halberd’s handle.

  “Agromond menace!” Digby dodged Feo’s grasp.

  “Bring to us on this Your day …”

  Jemma stood by Digby’s side. For a split second, Feo’s eyes
wavered to her and flashed with sadness. Then he fixed them on Digby again, his expression hardening. Behind him, smoke curled around Nox and Nocturna as if embracing them. Jemma gathered her focus and took a deep breath.

  “The Opening Call, Digby,” she said. “I’ll say it three times. Join in when you can—”

  Screams from the hall split the air. She wheeled around. Shade stood in the doorway, clutching Simon and Tiny by the collar in one hand, Flora in the other.

  “Did you really think a mere lock could hold me, Jem-mah?” she sneered. She kicked the door shut behind her and marched into the Chamber, adding her banshee-shrill voice to the Agromond chant.

  “Your darkest demon—Scagavay!”

  Jemma hurled herself at Shade. Noodle and Pie were ahead of her, running up Shade’s legs. For a second, Shade flinched. Simon and Tiny wriggled free and ran for the door, but it was shut fast. Gripping Flora’s hair with one hand, Shade hurled a Dromfell at Jemma with the other. Jemma ducked, and it exploded against one of the pillars.

  “You coward, Shade. Let her go!”

  “And why exactly would I do that, Jem-mah?” said Shade, sweeping Noodle from her shoulder as if he were a speck of dust, and sending him flying.

  The Agromond chant droned on.

  “Jem—help!” Digby yelled. “I can’t hold him!” His light sphere was flickering, choked by the smoke now surrounding him and Feo. Feo was choking too, and apparently unable to summon more flames. Red with rage, he finally managed to grab the halberd’s handle. He and Digby were now face-to-face, deadlocked, the handle horizontal between them.

  “Dig, hold on!” Jemma shot reinforcing Light at him.

  “Oh no you don’t, you she-devil!” Shade snarled. “We can’t have you helping him, now can we?” She caught Jemma’s wrist with her free hand and twisted, forcing her to the floor. “I’ll teach you to destroy my amulet!” Even without it, her strength was immense. She flung Flora to the flagstones, then straddled Jemma, pinning Jemma’s arms with her knees and closing her fingers around Jemma’s throat. Noodle and Pie scratched and bit, but Shade was oblivious to them now, and to Flora and the boys, who had thrown themselves on her and were pulling at her dress, her hair, anything their small hands could grasp, yelling Get off her! Leave her alone! at the top of their small voices.