The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  It was not midnight, yet Ederius chose midnight blue. The sea was over a hundred leagues to the north, yet he thinned his pigments with salt water. He hadn’t stepped on the Anointed Isle for thirty-five years, yet he remembered its features as if it were yesterday, and its colors, textures, and smells he re-created in his inks.

  No scribe trained on the isle ever forgot the shifting gray of the rising tide or the shrieking of the gulls.

  Pigments all but mixed, brushes clean, parchment raised and pounced with chalk, Ederius moved from his makeshift desk, taking the four steps required to cross his tent. An hourglass rested on a camp table, its contents long settled, its time long passed. After pulling a fine linen square from his personal chest, Ederius picked up the hourglass and wrapped it in the cloth. Twisting together the four corners of linen, he made himself a makeshift handle, and after tracing the four steps back to the desk, he raised the bundle high above his head and sent it smashing into the wood. Glass shattered. Pigments pots chimed. Parchment fluttered and then was still.

  Ederius released his hold on the twisted ends of linen, allowing the cloth to fall open. Shards of glass jutted like transparent teeth from a mound of glittering sand.

  Slowly Ederius began to pick the glass away piece by piece. The large slivers were easy to remove, but some of the glass had shattered into splinters not much bigger than the sand itself, and after a while of sorting he finally gave up. Precious minutes were passing, and the illumination had to be started. The guiding points for the design lay etched inside the densest weft of the Barbed Coil. Ederius knew he would need time to grow accustomed to the unfamiliar forms.

  He could not afford to make any more mistakes.

  Once he’d gathered the cloth into a tight bundle, Ederius transferred it to the scribing side of his desk. Holding the package above the various pigment pots crowding around the parchment, Ederius took his knife and stabbed a hole in the fabric. A fine stream of sand flowed through the hole to the pigments below. Cupping a hand beneath the flow, he filtered it through his fingers, catching the last splinters of glass.

  Sand was what he needed.

  Yellow sand to mark the beaches that stretched around the isle.

  T W E N T Y - F I V E

  T he buzzing noise grew steadily louder. She was running through a maze of patterns and could find no way out. Gold-eyed snakes hissed at her heels, and razor-edged barbs caught in her dress and hair. Something was coming after her; she could hear its footsteps padding against the earth, feel its breath curling past her cheeks. Gaining speed, it stepped on her shadow and then slapped its claws on her back.

  Tessa snapped awake.

  The cell door burst open.

  Light from the candle flickered then died. Utter blackness was left.

  Something entered the room. Tessa could feel it pouring into the cell, robbing the available space, sucking at the air she meant to breathe. A smell, like the harras, only different, older, deeper, bloodier, pushed against her face like heat from a furnace. The hair at the base of her scalp bristled. She tried to swallow, but something hard blocked her throat.

  The thing moved closer, its weight setting the walls vibrating and its mass killing all drafts stone dead. Even though it was still feet away from her, Tessa could feel its presence pulling at her skin. Grabbing the blanket as if that could somehow protect her, she scrambled upright on the mat. There was nowhere for her to go except back. One step and her ankle hit the corner of the cell.

  Pottery crunched like dry sand as the creature took another step. Its smell sharpened. Tessa didn’t want to take it in, but she had to. Forcing her lips apart, she took a breath through her mouth instead of her nose. Blood. The taste of blood smothered her tongue. A tiny quivering noise sounded in her throat. She couldn’t move.

  The thing that matched the darkness sprang at Tessa. Air pushed past her face. Something flashed—tooth, eye; she didn’t know what—and then the creature fell on her. It slammed her rib cage into her lungs, sending air exploding from her mouth. A wet claw raked across her cheek. Wet fangs sank into the meat of her shoulder.

  Tears rushed to Tessa’s eyes. The darkness blurred. Pain tore along her arm and down to her chest. She had no breath to scream. Yanking the blanket up toward her face, she beat against the creature with bunched fists. It was like beating against solid ground. Driving up her right hand, she sent her knuckles blasting into its snout. The creature’s jaw sprang apart, and it lost its grip on her shoulder.

  Head shooting back, the creature exhaled. Its breath was hot and sweet. Tessa felt the vapor condense as it hit her face. She smelled blood and something else—the stench of old, hateful things rotting away in wet soil.

  Tessa was glad then of the darkness. She didn’t want to see what was in the cell with her. She didn’t want to know what it was.

  Hearing the soft click of bone as the creature pulled back its arm for a blow, Tessa threw the blanket in the direction of the noise. It was nothing—a handkerchief before a charging bull—but it gave her a quarter second as the creature tore it aside. Tessa sprang off the mat toward the window.

  As her hand fell down by her waist, her wrist brushed against something hard. Ravis’ knife. Before her fingers had chance to close around the shaft, something blasted into the back of her head. Tessa’s teeth smashed together. Her upper torso fell forward into the deep alcove of the cell window. Her forehead cracked against the shutter. Everything dimmed. Thoughts and intent slipped away. Tessa’s legs buckled and her body slid off the ledge toward the floor. Claws ripped down her back.

  The cell began to spin. Tessa couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Specks of light shot across her vision, leaving white motion trails where they passed.

  In the spinning, thrashing, sharp-clawed darkness, Tessa became aware of the ringing in her ears. The high-pitched noise that had begun burrowing through her mind at the start of the storm, accompanying her ride across the causeway and then infiltrating her dreams, grew louder with every beat of her heart.

  It stopped her from forgetting who she was.

  Forcing her thoughts into focus, willing her muscles to work, Tessa tried to curl herself into a ball against the ledge. Movement was difficult, as her limbs felt heavy, and there was a wet, sticky substance coating her skin. Surprisingly she felt no pain.

  The creature tore at her back and shoulders, its claws shredding her dress, its fangs searching for muscle to grip. Tessa felt its mass pressing against her spine, crushing her ribs and lungs. The smell of blood was overwhelming.

  Noise ground through Tessa’s temples, forcing her to breathe, move, think. One small shift of her right arm brought her hand back in contact with Ravis’ knife. The handle felt large in her palm. Drawing it from her belt seemed to take forever. It was heavier than she remembered; awkward to hold. As she turned the blade to face outward, the heel of the creature’s hand smashed into her temple. Tessa’s entire body was thrown sideways. The darkness flashed white for an instant, and then her hips and rib cage hit the floor.

  That, thought Tessa as slowly and carefully as a drunkard reciting lines, was a very great mistake. The blow only made the ringing louder. She would never black out now with all this noise thundering through her head.

  Belly flat against the stone floor, knife in hand, blade parallel to her chest, Tessa waited for the creature to come to her. Wet stuff poured down her cheek. Her left thighbone throbbed, her lungs burned, but her mind was perfectly clear. One two three four five six seven eight nine, she breathed. One two three four—

  The creature shot toward her. Air pushed against her face, claws sank into her scalp. A frothing, saliva-thick breath sounded directly above her head. The noise was all she needed to aim her knife. Twisting around, she lashed out with the blade, hacking at the creature’s jaw and snout.

  A choked howl sounded. The creature stepped back. Something hot sprayed against Tessa’s face. Struggling to her feet, she wiped away the wetness with what was left of her sleeve. Her legs
weren’t working properly, and as she took her first step forward, her knees buckled beneath her. She had to lean against the alcove for support.

  Glancing into the darkness at the far side of the room, she tried to recall the exact location of the door. The creature was blocking her way out. Hearing a soft hiss of rage and feeling the air switch as if cracked by a whip, Tessa sucked in her breath. A wave of nausea rolled up from her gut. The creature was tensing for another attack. She was never going to make it to the door.

  As she altered her grip on Ravis’ knife, preparing to use it like a sword to defend herself, the blade tip scored against something metal. The clasp on the shutter. The noise in Tessa’s ear shifted to a higher pitch. The window. The creature was too large to fit through the window.

  But she wasn’t.

  Even as the thought formed in her head, the creature lunged at her. Tessa stabbed the darkness surrounding the clasp. Hands shaking, she drove the blade into the metal. The edge caught, a spark flashed, and then the creature yanked at her hair. The bones in Tessa’s neck cracked all at once, but she managed to keep her grip on the blade. Desperate now, she drew back the knife and sent it plunging into wood.

  The catch gave. The shutters flew open. A high, furious wind filled the room. Tessa smelled salt and seaweed and sand. A sheet of rain blasted against her face. The light level remained unchanged. It was as dark outside as it was within.

  The thing, the creature that smelled like fresh blood and old earth, sank its fangs into Tessa’s upper arm. Tessa wheeled round and stabbed the blackness above the area where she felt the pain. The creature’s bite loosened for an instant, and Tessa wrenched her arm free. Pulling herself up into the alcove with her left hand, she swept the air behind her with her knife. The window opening was a fraction narrower than her shoulders, and she had to squeeze her way through. The blood helped; warm and slick, it lubricated her skin, allowing her shoulders to slip through the frame.

  As she forced her way through to the exterior ledge, Tessa felt something sharp puncture the flesh on her right shin—the creature had bit right through the boot leather. Close to hysterical, she wrenched her leg back. Skin split, pain sizzled down her leg, and then her foot came free of the boot.

  Thrown off balance, Tessa careened off the ledge. She tried to grab the exterior wall, but it was too late, and she fell into the darkness below.

  She landed in a shallow pool of salt water. Her body stung in a hundred different places. Pebbles and smooth rocks lay beneath her. Ringing sounds clanged through her ears like the toll of a mighty bell. They cleared her mind in an instant.

  A cracking, splintering noise sounded directly above her. As she looked up to see what it was, the claw marks on her back pulled open. Tears filled her eyes. Wind and salt water blew in her face. She could barely see the outline of the abbey wall.

  Something landed in her hair. Raking her fingers along her scalp, she pulled out the object. It was a thick splinter of wood. Tessa’s stomach contracted to a solid mass. The creature was tearing away at the window frame. It meant to come after her. Scrambling to her knees, she plunged her hands into the water, searching for Ravis’ knife. Her fingers felt nothing except the smooth surface of sea-worn rocks. She must have lost the knife when she fell.

  The creature made a soft, throaty hiss. A wood-splitting noise followed, and then something heavy splashed into the water by Tessa’s hand. The window frame was coming apart.

  Abandoning her search for the knife, Tessa thrashed in the rock pool, trying to get her legs to take the weight of her body. Her thigh muscles were shaking. What was left of her dress hung like a wet curtain on her back. It was hard to orient herself in the darkness; the water from the pool dragged at her body, and the wind blasted her face from all sides. Slapping her hand against the abbey wall, she dragged herself to her feet. Water sloshed around the one boot she was still wearing. Briefly Tessa considered pulling it off, but she doubted she had the strength.

  Smiling grimly, too tired to retain any thoughts more complicated than the need to get away, Tessa pushed herself off from the abbey wall like a rowboat leaving a jetty. Her body felt strange, heavy and slow to react. If it wasn’t for the noises grinding in her ears, she had a feeling her mind would feel the same way too.

  Walking was difficult. The ground beneath the window was little more than a mound of loosely piled pebbles. Stones dug into the arch of her bare foot, making her wince with every step. Blood dripped down her shin from the bite wound, and each time she transferred her weight forward, she had to fight the buckling action in her knees.

  Ahead, she spied a gray line stretching across the coupled darkness of the storm and the night. It was either the sea or the mainland shore—she couldn’t tell which. Squinting into the rain and sea spray, she tried to pick out more details: the rise of the mainland, the lights of Bellhaven, the angular forms of buildings in the town. Nothing.

  Pebbles crunched directly behind her. The backwind carried a whiff of blood.

  Tessa closed her eyes. The ball in her stomach twisted, pulling the muscles in her abdomen into a tight, quivering band. She was so tired, she felt physically sick. She just wanted to lie down on the pebble beach and drift away—to sleep or unconsciousness, whichever came first: she didn’t care. Yet the high, piercing, cold-metal ringing wouldn’t let her. It told her the creature that had just torn off a window frame to get to her would slice her body to shreds the moment she stopped for breath.

  Tessa sucked in two lungs’ worth of air and broke into a run. She’d lived with her tinnitus for too long not to listen when it spoke.

  She ran and ran and ran. Heart pumping, lungs scorching, she headed into the oncoming wind. The ground underfoot gradually changed. The pebbles became smaller, smoother, more scattered, and then they gave way to sand. Tessa’s feet splashed through tide pools clicking with crabs, stamped over lumpy patches of seaweed that made popping sounds as she passed.

  The rain came in short, savage bursts. There would be nothing for seconds at a time, and then Tessa would be blasted with rain and sea spray. Specks of wind-driven sand flew into her mouth, lodging between her teeth and forming a salty, gritty layer beneath her tongue. Her eyes stung so much, she kept them closed as she ran. In the utter darkness of the storm there was nothing to see.

  Hard, crunching footsteps gained on her. Tessa felt the creature’s momentum as a palpable force against her back. It pushed her forward, made her take step after wavering step, forced her to flee into the black tunnel of the night. She didn’t think. It took everything she had to breathe and run.

  The noise in her temples grew louder. Before long it blocked out the sound of the wind and the storm. She heard blood pumping through her temples, sand shifting beneath her feet: little else. After a while the creature’s footsteps seemed to recede into the distance. Tessa didn’t trust her senses, though, and kept running on and on. Ringing meant danger, and the louder it became, the worse the danger was.

  Beneath her feet the sand grew wetter. Channels in the beach began to fill with water and large patches of ground deteriorated into soft mud. Thinking she was veering off course, Tessa changed her direction, running away from the waterlogged channels.

  Within seconds she ran into more.

  Thin plumes of icy water spilled over the sand. Tessa felt the water foaming beneath her bare foot. A thick gust of wind sent a wave breaking against her ankle. The noise in her ears became so loud, she could no longer hear herself breathe. A second wave followed the first, and this time it didn’t need the wind to roll over her foot; it flowed smoothly across the sand in air that was nearly still. Half a minute later another wave hit from the opposite side. The water level crested Tessa’s shin.

  Tessa stopped dead. Her heart and lungs seemed to collapse inward, leaving a hollow ache inside her throat.

  The tide was coming in.

  Rubbing her closed eyes, working the grit and sea salt into the outer corners, Tessa tried to take a deep breath. She didn
’t manage it. Two waves hit her shins from either side. Before the water had chance to recede, a third slapped against her knees. The ground underfoot was no longer solid; it was a rapidly liquefying mire of sand. Tessa felt her feet sinking in. Panicking, she dragged her booted foot from the bottom. The sand sucked at the leather, not wanting to give it up. Pivoting her weight onto her other leg, Tessa pulled her foot free of the boot.

  A series of waves hit as she planted her newly freed foot in the sand. The water hardly retreated at all this time, just kept rising steadily against her leg. The hem of her dress floated like an open flower around her shins.

  Working the last grains of salt free from her eyes, Tessa peered into the darkness. Ragged gray lines rolled out of the shadows toward her. Breaking waves, somehow managing to catch and reflect minuscule traces of cloud-filtered moonlight, rose and fell in the distance as far as she could see. Spinning around, she looked back toward the abbey. Only when she looked she wasn’t sure if it was the right direction after all, as the view looked the same as dead ahead: a black curtain, featureless except for the tide-driven waves skimming across the sand.

  Tessa pressed her lips together very tight, stifling a cry. There were no lights allowed in the abbey after Eighth Toll. She’d have nothing to guide her back.

  A hard gust of wind sent water splashing up to midthigh. Below the surface, uncoiling like a rope pulled from both ends, a current was beginning to form. Tessa could feel it tugging against her ankles, shifting her weight from side to side.

  Stay calm, she told herself. Stay calm.

  A trickle of salt water ran into her mouth, depositing more grit beneath her tongue. Now that she had stopped running, the ringing in her ears seemed less intense. She had to think. Think.