The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  Slamming into the first creature’s chest, it sent its body flying out and down. The creatures behind tried to move out of the way; some succeeded, but most were hit by the block or the falling creature as they crashed from step to step. Bodies bounced down after them; the cracking of skulls and bones was almost indistinguishable from the cracking and splintering of wood.

  Camron turned to Ravis and held out his hand. “Eight down,” he said, “Less than three dozen to go.”

  Ravis grinned. He took the offered hand and gripped it hard. “Let’s go and find the others.” Spinning around, he moved away from the stairs.

  “Ravis.” Camron halted him. “Do you feel it too?”

  “Feel what?”

  Camron shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s as if what we are doing is important. It means something.”

  Feeling his old harrar wound throb against his ribs, Ravis nodded. Camron was right. By fighting here, together, they weren’t just buying Tessa time. They were feeding her strength as well. Unable to find the right words to explain how he felt, Ravis said, “You and I have to keep fighting—that’s all I know.” It was more than that, a lot more, but Camron seemed to accept what he said.

  “Let’s go and fight then.” Camron glanced down the stairs. Some of the creatures were already recovering, pulling themselves off the floor, their bodies jagged with broken bones. “Those aren’t the only creatures in the keep. Others have broken through around the rear.”

  Ravis nodded, and together the two men made their way across the main hall and through to the gallery beyond. The sound of fighting grew louder with every step. There was no clashing of metal, no ringing of blades, just the dull thud of flesh meeting flesh, high screams, ragged breaths, and cracking floorboards. As they approached a curved doorway, the noise became deafening. Blood spilled from under the door.

  Ravis drew his sword. He knew he should be afraid of what he and Camron would find on the other side, but a part of him was eager to face it. It was like fighting for his father’s estate all over again. They were being attacked on all sides, the odds were against them, they never knew what they’d be called upon to deal with next. Ravis glanced at Camron. And by his side was a man he was learning to trust.

  A wet-throated scream set the door timbers vibrating. Something smashed against a wall. Glass shattered. Camron drew back his foot, ready to kick down the door.

  Ravis placed his hand on Camron’s arm. “Before we go in there I want to tell you something.”

  “What?” Camron barked out the word. He was impatient to get to the other side.

  “You’re not the only one with a claim on Garizon.” Ravis increased his pressure on Camron’s arm, holding him while he looked into his eyes. “I was married to Izgard’s sister. She died without leaving a will.”

  Camron drew a breath. His eyes shifted color from gray to slate. Cords of muscle strained in his neck. “Why tell me this now?”

  Ravis ran a tooth across his scar. He wasn’t sure of the answer himself. It had something to do with Tessa, yet there was more to it than that. “I want you to know you can trust me.”

  Seconds passed. Something massive moved on the other side of the door, causing the stone flags beneath their feet to vibrate. Ignoring the noises filtering through the wood, Camron looked at Ravis without blinking. Finally he said, “Then we are together in this. As brothers.”

  Hearing Camron’s words, something deep in Ravis’ chest shifted into place. His eyes stung, so he closed them. When he was ready, he opened them again. Finding himself staring into Camron’s face, he nodded once. There was nothing further to be said.

  “Right,” Ravis cried, turning away. “Let’s kick this door down on the count of three. One, two, three—”

  Bursting into the archers’ gallery, they were met by the sight of blood-sprayed walls, broken swords, and mauled limbs. A creature charged straight at them, claws smeared with tissue from whatever man it had slaughtered last. Behind it came something darker, larger, colder. Walls shook as it moved.

  Ravis fought. He fought until blisters burst in his sword hand, until the muscles in his shoulders sizzled with white-hot pain and every part of him was covered in blood. Through it all, through the terror and the pain and the killing, he never lost sight of Camron of Thorn. The man was seldom far from his side.

  “Quickly, Ederius. Quickly.” Izgard leaned forward over the desk. “I need to know what is happening in Castle Bess.”

  Ederius managed to nod as he coughed. It took him longer than usual to control the attack, and after it was over the cloth he held to his mouth was speckled with blood. He folded it quickly away. Outside, the sounds of hammering, construction, and rolling carts could be heard as the camp was built around the one tent standing: his own.

  “I will work as swiftly as I can, sire,” Ederius said, binding the calluses on his painting hand with silk. “Though the gathelocs should have done their work by now.”

  Izgard exhaled, spraying Ederius’ cheek with a fine, milk-colored mist. “Take no chances, scribe. Paint.”

  Ederius did as he was told, dipping his brush into pigment and letting the first mercury-rich drops bruise the vellum. He had hoped his king would leave him to work on his own, but Izgard pulled up a stool and brought his elbow to rest on the scribing desk, settling down to watch the pattern emerge on the page.

  T H I R T Y - F I V E

  C ome here this minute, Snowy,” cried Angeline, too tired to chase after him any longer. The no-good dog had found grasshoppers in the grass and was jumping around like a mad thing, gnashing his teeth, pouncing, bristling, and barking as loudly as he could. Not all the grasshoppers he barked at were actual grasshoppers, though. Some of them were plain old leaves. Snowy didn’t seem to care either way. Anything that moved—and was a great deal smaller than him—was fair game.

  Snowy here. Snowy here.

  Snowy came tearing up to Angeline, tail wagging furiously, tongue out and lolling from side to side. Angeline wanted to be angry at him for running away from the cart before her tent was ready, and making her chase around the campground in the dreary light of dawn, but Snowy looked so funny and happy and just plain doggy that she couldn’t even bring herself to frown. What else could you expect from a no-good dog? Besides, it was rather exciting to be out and about so early, watching all the goings-on in the campground.

  Spying Ederius’ tent in the middle of all the mayhem of carpentry, staves, poles, and piles of folded canvas that would soon become the camp, Angeline found herself wondering about the honey and almond-milk tea she had left for the scribe the previous night. Had he found it? Had he drunk it? Had it made his cough go away? Keeping a tight hold on her hood, lest the wind blow it back and reveal her hair to the surrounding workmen, Angeline made her way toward the tent. She knew Izgard would be angry if he found out about the visit, but more and more these days she cared less and less about her husband and what he might think.

  Snowy chased a few more grasshoppers just to prove that he could, then followed along at her heels.

  Approaching the tent, Angeline listened out for any signs of activity inside. Sounds of coughing shook the canvas. Not liking the thought of Ederius being sick and all alone, Angeline pushed her way into the tent. Then froze.

  Izgard was there, back facing toward the slit, sitting close to Ederius, the Barbed Coil on a pedestal before him.

  “Control yourself,” Izgard said to Ederius, who was coughing into a cloth. “Finish what you have started.”

  Snowy growled.

  “Ssh,” Angeline hissed, letting the tent slit fall closed behind her. If Izgard noticed her entrance, he was too preoccupied to care. His fingers dug into the back of Ederius’ chair. The side of his face that was visible to Angeline was lit up by golden light from the crown. A line around his mouth hardened as Ederius continued to cough.

  Recognizing the first signs of anger in her husband, Angeline willed Ederius to stop. She didn’t want him coming to harm.


  The scribe rocked back and forth in his chair, his shoulders shaking and his throat pumping out hard, hacking coughs. Angeline hated to hear them and scrunched her face up very tight. At her heels, Snowy was so quiet and well behaved that Angeline wondered if he was actually asleep, eyes open. A few seconds later, Ederius finally brought his coughing under control. Folding away his handcloth, he picked up his brush and continued painting. Breathing a great sigh of relief, Angeline bent and petted Snowy.

  “Now,” Izgard said very softly to his scribe, “tell me what you saw in the pattern that made you afraid.”

  Ederius shook his head. When he spoke his voice was so low and weak, it made Angeline’s throat ache. “Sire, something is wrong. The girl is painting a pattern. I can feel her knitting pigments around the Coil. She is trying to undo its bindings.”

  Izgard punched his fist into the back of Ederius’ chair, splitting the cross timber in two. “Go after her. Destroy her. Burn the skin off her hands, her arms, her face.”

  Angeline shivered. Snowy fastened his teeth on to the hem of her skirt, then tugged on it sharply, pulling Angeline back toward the slit.

  Let’s go. Let’s go.

  Angeline snatched her skirt away, leaving Snowy snapping air. Snowy was right: they should go. But Ederius was very ill and Izgard was very angry, and she wasn’t a little girl any longer. And she wasn’t going to run away.

  Tessa felt her body changing. Close to completing work on the first knotwork panel, she drew shallow breaths and her heartbeat slowed. Sweat stopped trickling down her back and along her neck. Her eyes and mouth grew dry, and her senses retracted, leaving her aware of little but the paintbrush in her hand.

  Her body was filling like a waterskin, growing heavier and denser and slower. It became increasingly harder for her to push pigment across the page. Somewhere high above her, Camron and Ravis battled for their lives. Surrounded by a dozen thrashing creatures, they fought with a singleness of purpose that allowed nothing to come between them except their blades. To break them up would have been more difficult than to slaughter them both at once. Tessa felt the power of them; her body gathered it up and stored it, converting it to something else.

  As she joined the final two lines on the page, she was aware of a strange taste in her mouth. The ring, which was still on her finger, tightened around her bone. Tessa felt only pressure from the barbs, no pain. Before her, the finished panel hummed with all the tension of a coiled spring. A perfect copy of a copy, ink still wet.

  “Emith, I need your knife.” The words fell from her mouth like stones. She noticed blood running down her finger from where the ring had broken her skin. “And a clean brush.”

  Emith was quick to do her bidding, handing her the finest sable brush he possessed. All the time she had been painting, he had been matching pigments. Using only vegetable or animal dyes, he had re-created every color in Ilfaylen’s palette. Now, though, Tessa wanted none of them.

  She was going to break the first binding with her blood.

  Ilfaylen’s copy was as dead as stone. Its colors were mineral bright, its vellum had the yellow-and-blue cast of a cadaver. To break the Barbed Coil’s bindings, Tessa knew she had to give them life.

  Raising a hand that felt heavy as lead, she turned the knife handle until the blade was facing down. As she leaned over the pattern, the ring dug farther and farther into her flesh, itching away at her bone. Blood rolled down her hand and onto her wrist. Still, there was no pain. A slow, thick shudder passed down Tessa’s spine. Her body didn’t feel like her own anymore.

  Swallowing hard, she brought the blade over the panel. Eyes searching out the main thread that bound the knot, she fought the desire to let her arm drop to the floor. She wished she could be sure of what she was doing.

  The panel consisted of one large, many-coiled knot, and although several colors meandered through the design, one single black thread held all the tension.

  Tessa took the knife and began scoring along the line. When the line weaved through threads of red and gold, Tessa severed them with her blade; when it twisted itself into tight, snaking curves, she slashed along each minuscule fold, pinning them one by one. Like a surgeon preparing to operate, she opened up the panel, drawing back the skin and exposing the raw muscle beneath. The vellum was still in the process of absorbing the wet pigment, and as Tessa’s blade traced along the line, it drove the blackness farther and deeper into the vellum. Yet at dead center, where the tip of the blade scored deepest, a thin furrow of pigment was scraped away.

  The taste in Tessa’s mouth sharpened. Her entire body seemed to condense. Everything—blood, senses, moisture, ligament, and bone—shrank inward like a curling fist. When she breathed, she sucked up more than air. Pigment fumes, fibers, and chalk from the scored vellum raced down her throat and into her chest.

  Tessa felt the Barbed Coil. Straining against its bindings like a god on a leash, it glittered with complete and utter coldness.

  It knew nothing of good and evil. It knew only of war.

  Blind, powerful, older than both worlds Tessa had walked on, the Coil was a force unto itself. One purpose drove it. One thing fed it. One image alone was reflected in its gold.

  Tessa’s heart contracted, shifting downward in her chest. A dry, tight sickness shook her to the core.

  The Barbed Coil had to go.

  Nothing, nothing it had done so far, no wars, butchery, bloodshed, or invasions, came even close to all it could do. It could take a world and destroy it.

  With a hand too heavy to shake, Tessa picked up the sable brush and dipped its tip into the blood running around the ring. As fast as falling rock, she brought the tip down onto the page, letting her blood flow into the naked furrow within the black.

  Everything that had been stored inside her body came out: all the power, love, and brotherhood she had pulled from Camron and Ravis; all the grief she felt over losing Mother Emith and the guilt she bore for failing to save Avaccus’ life; all the anger she held toward Deveric and his patterns. And every bit of frustration, pain, and loneliness her tinnitus had ever forced her to bear.

  Blood blazing with emotion, Tessa gave the pattern life.

  Vellum crackled. Black pigment hissed. Tessa drove her blood into the page, working it into the heart of the pattern; going against every line, curve, and convention Ilfaylen had used to bind the knot. Hot, furious power flowed through her body. Spurting out with her blood, lashing downward with the brush, it tunneled through the parchment like a terrible, fast-moving worm.

  Something snapped.

  A noise, like an arrow shot, whipped through the air. The cavern shook, sending stones and rock dust spraying from the walls. The air buzzed, ringing in Tessa’s ears like a thousand tiny bells. Pressure blasted along her body, then everything stopped.

  The first binding was cut. The Barbed Coil was coming unloose.

  “Miss! Get back!”

  Disoriented, it took Tessa a moment to respond to the sound of Emith’s voice. Whipping her head around, she saw Emith standing at the entrance to the chamber. Something was trying to force its way in. Tessa saw an arm thick with muscle and then a claw. A dull thud sounded, and chips of rock fell to the floor by Emith’s feet. A hairline crack appeared in the wall directly above the entrance. Whatever was on the outside was too large to fit through the opening and was smashing its way in. Inhaling sharply, Tessa got a whiff of the smell. She recognized it immediately. The stench of the creature in the abbey.

  “Miss! Get to the back of the cave. NOW!”

  Tessa jumped at the command. It was the first time she had ever heard Emith raise his voice. With her last scrap of strength, she edged backward.

  The entrance wall shook. Chunks of rock fell away. A great laboring breath sounded as the creature forced its shoulder through the gap. Seeing its seared and bloody flesh, Tessa let out a small cry. The creature was massive, distorted, not human at all. Even as she looked on, it struck out at Emith, ripping its claws along his chest
.

  “Emith! Come away.”

  Emith shook his head. Red lines bloomed across his tunic. “No, miss. It has to be stopped.”

  As Emith spoke the creature blasted the wall with the full force of its body. The cavern shuddered. Tessa’s teeth banged together. A huge slab of stone crashed to the floor like a closing gate.

  Tessa tried to scramble to her feet. Emith needed help.

  “Stay where you are,” Emith cried, rifling through the contents of his pack. “It’s not going to hurt you. I won’t let it.”

  With that he wheeled around and threw something at the creature’s body. It was dark and fluid, and it took Tessa a moment to realize it was ink. The black liquid coated the creature’s arm and shoulder, acid falling onto flesh that was already burned. The creature let out a high, piercing cry. Emith snatched the lunular knife from the floor where Tessa had dropped it and began stabbing the creature’s arm and shoulder. Tessa looked on closemouthed as Emith flung himself at the creature, striking out time and time again with reckless frenzy, oblivious of the damage he was doing to his own body by driving himself toward the rocks. Tears gathered in his eyes. His lips moved back and forth, and he began murmuring words that Tessa couldn’t hear.

  Watching him, seeing how his knife hit rock as many times as it hit flesh and his entire body shook with a kind of furious fear, Tessa realized that Emith was no longer in the cavern. He was back in his mother’s kitchen, fighting to save someone who could never be saved.

  When the creature began to back away, Emith pushed forward, continuing the onslaught. Sobs shook his chest as he fought. Sticking its upper torso dozens of times with his knife, Emith forced the creature back through the entrance and into the tunnel beyond. Tessa thought that would be enough, but it wasn’t. Emith followed after.

  No longer able to see what was happening, Tessa listened to the sound of feet slapping against stone and the soft gasp of breath. Sobs and animal cries soon blended into one. The entrance wall shuddered from time to time, and drafts of air caused by the moving bodies wafted through the entrance, making the candles flicker. After what seemed like a very long time there was silence. Minutes passed. Tessa strained to hear something, anything. Then Emith appeared in the entrance. He held the knife out before him. The blade was bent and misshapen from being driven into stone. Dark blood coated Emith’s face, his hands, and his knife. Great strips of fabric had been torn from his tunic, and his hair was ashy with rock dust.