by Rosalyn Eves
By the time the first grey light of morning seeped through my window, I knew what I must do.
I went to wake the others. Noémi looked shocked. “Are you certain?” We were gathered in Grandmama’s room, huddled close in the chill air.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s the right thing to do. The Circle has used the Binding for too long as a way of keeping people under their control—they can’t be trusted not to abuse that power. The creatures who are bound deserve a chance at freedom, just as we do.”
“Simply breaking the Binding won’t free Mátyás and the others,” she pointed out.
“I know.” This uncertainty was a cold weight in my breast. “But it will weaken the Circle, and I think I can bargain with the creatures to fight with us in exchange for freedom. This is our best chance.”
Grandmama listened quietly, then nodded. “I trust you, Anna. And—this is my heart’s country. I will fight for her.”
My heart warmed at her faith. I described the spell Lady Berri had used to root us to Attila’s Hill. “Do you think you could re-create such a spell?” I asked Pál.
He nodded. “The Portal spell is straightforward enough. But I don’t understand why Lady Berri chose that site.”
“She said that it was sacred, that ley lines ran near there and would strengthen our spells.”
“Then why use it for an Unbinding spell? With all due respect to your Lady Berri, sometimes her faith in her own knowledge prevented her from perceiving certain realities. Symbols can add powerful resonance to spells. We need a site of breaking and desolation.”
“A cemetery?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. It was not that I found the graves particularly distasteful, only that spell-casting there seemed blasphemous. “I know that death is powerful magic, but surely there are better sites.”
Pál shook his head. “No. Cemeteries are sacred places. They breathe death, yes, but death is more a remaking than an unmaking. We need a profane site.”
“A defiled church?” Was there such a place in the city?
“A railroad?” Grandmama asked, her mouth pursed in distaste. Noémi and I exchanged a look. Only Grandmama would find trains profane.
“A symbol is more powerful if it has personal meaning.”
“I know,” Noémi said. “Eszterháza.”
I did not want to make the return trip to Eszterháza and waste the little time remaining to us. It would take two days to reach the country palace at a good pace, and I was not sure Grandmama could survive the journey. By then, the executions would have already started. But Pál agreed. The decaying estate was an ideal mix of personal and symbolic dissolution.
“You needn’t ride all that distance,” Pál said. “I can open a portal.”
“But then you’ll lack the strength to open a gateway to the Binding.” I recalled Lady Berri’s exhaustion after she’d folded the earth.
Pál’s light eyes glinted. “I have strength enough.”
I returned to my room to stuff my few belongings in the small valise Ginny had prepared for me. In the bottom of the valise was a small, oddly shaped package. I unwrapped the brown paper and stared, chilled, at the bone knife Lady Berri had given me to break the Binding. Beneath it lay the Romani bracelet I had snatched from the square.
Noémi brushed by me. Seeing my stare, she said, “Oh. Ginny found those among your things. She believed they might be important.”
How had Ginny known? Perhaps this was fated to be. I slipped on the bracelet, and the agate glimmered in the shadows.
It did not take Pál long to cast the Portal spell, a thin slit appearing in the doorway. Through it, I could see the hazy outline of one of the Chinese-style salons at Eszterháza, the blue inked figures dancing across the wall.
Pál held his arm out toward Noémi. “After you.”
Noémi took one step through the archway. For a moment, her outline seemed to blur and smudge out, then she reappeared in the salon. Grandmama followed her. Then it was my turn. I looked back at Ginny, who sat on the bed, weeping. Pál refused to bring her through the portal, as she would contribute nothing to our fight. She was to depart alone for Grandmama’s house in Pest and wait for our return.
She waved her soggy handkerchief at me. “Godspeed, Miss Anna.”
I darted away from the portal to hug her, then stepped through.
A rush of heat enveloped me, pinching at my eyes and mouth and nose. I willed myself to stay calm. Then I was through, gasping in the warm air of the Eszterháza parlor.
A moment later, Pál emerged from the portal, and a few moments after that, Noémi’s vizsla erupted into the room, barking to raise the dead. Or at least, to raise János, who came stumping into the room shortly after, swearing under his breath.
It took only a little time to acquaint János with the circumstances. When he heard of Mátyás’s imprisonment, he turned a ghastly shade, and Noémi ran to the kitchens to find some tea. After he revived, János set wards on the house to warn us if the Circle was coming, and we got to work.
As the sun broke fully across the horizon, we gathered in the Sala Terrena, the great ballroom turned sheepfold. The sheep paid us no mind as Pál grounded the spell, treading a circle across the floor and murmuring incantations. Noémi tried, unsuccessfully, to shoo them from the room.
I watched and waited, a yawning coldness swallowing me. What was I doing?
I thought of Gábor and Mátyás and William, and the dozens of others imprisoned with them, awaiting execution. And the creatures, imprisoned for centuries in a different kind of jail. Something like peace swept over me, nestling under my heart. The fear didn’t vanish entirely—I could still feel it stirring in my middle—but it was gentler now, less hungry.
A crow cawed from the shaggy garden beyond the empty-eyed windows. Distantly, bells rang.
János started. “The wards!” He stumped toward the pillared opening at the far end of the room.
“Another portal?” I asked, fear leaching through my body. How had the Circle found us so quickly?
Noémi, Grandmama, and I swiveled toward Pál. He stood with his eyes closed, arms extended, fingers splayed. Light winked off a heavy signet ring on one finger.
“You are my son,” Grandmama said. “Why should you help us and then lead our enemies here?”
Pál opened his eyes, the unearthly blue blazing. “I have not been your son since I was nine years old. And I want to see Herr Steinberg’s face when he knows I have betrayed him. I want him to see that in me he has wrought a tool that will destroy everything he values.”
If we survived this, I would kill Pál myself.
Grandmama stood shrunken, her shoulders bowed under the weight of a new disappointment. I wanted to throw my arms around her and tell her if Pál was not the son she yearned for, I would be a granddaughter to make her proud. But she was too far away. I hadn’t time.
Footsteps pounded across the marble floor beyond the room. János stumbled and cried out.
“Anna, go now!” Noémi hissed at me.
I hesitated. “But the spell—it could be anything.”
Pál’s eyes flashed. “The spell is sound.”
I would have to trust that his desire for revenge on the Circle was greater than his desire to betray us. I stepped toward the Grounding spell and closed my eyes, preparing for the imminent falling sensation. Instead, an electric shock ran through my entire body. My knees collapsed underneath me, and I found myself staring at the vaulted ceiling covered in writhing rose vines, wondering why my arms would not stop shaking.
Grandmama cried out.
I gritted my teeth and struggled upright.
Four men stood in the doorway of the Sala Terrena. Three were masked. Herr Steinberg was the fourth, his hands extended before him in a spell-caster’s stance.
Deep lines scored his face, though his mouth was set. I knew he did not want to be here, did not want this confrontation.
I also knew he would kill me if he could.
The fear I had
pushed aside gushed outward, flooding through me. I scrambled to my feet and pulled Grandmama backward, away from the portal. Behind me, I heard the crackle and hiss of electricity. Something exploded, sending a pulse of light through the darkening room. The sheep moved, finally, surging around our feet and heading for the broken glass doors. I pushed Grandmama toward a crumbling sculpture.
Grandmama trembled on her feet, but would not move. “I will not hide.”
“But you might be killed.”
“So might we all. I am an old lady. And you have a spell to break.”
I stared at her, my heart racing. Grandmama took my hand, rubbing her papery fingers against mine. “Anna. All your life, your mama and I have tried to fit you into a shape too small to hold you. But you are two souls, not one, and you have always been meant for greater things. Let yourself free. Be who God intended you to be. Now go. We will hold them.”
She withdrew her hand, and her outline blurred and became transparent.
I darted back to the portal. A ball of fire shot toward me. At the last moment, I leapt aside and tumbled to the ground. The fireball exploded scant inches from my head. I struggled to rise from the tangle of my skirts.
The light abruptly winked out as something vast and shadowy passed between our small group and the arched ceiling. Then it swooped down, a rush of wind and something cool like mist. I had a confused impression of long, dagger-sharp teeth before one of the men began screaming.
“An illusion!” Herr Steinberg shouted. “It is only an illusion! Hold fast!”
A flash of light illuminated the dark room. For that half second, the world seemed shrunk to a small, bright sphere: Noémi’s pale face, János’s determined one, Herr Steinberg’s grim one. The light faded, and I blinked against the afterimages, trying to regain my bearings. Grandmama and Pál had both vanished.
Another flare of light, this one racing toward me. Just before it hit me, I was struck from the side by something warm and solid. I fell, and Noémi’s weight landed across my legs. Her eyes, when they met mine, were bright, and her face twisted with pain. She took a deep, ragged breath.
“Anna, you must go! No one can help us if you are killed.” She rolled away from me as I stood once more and ran.
The explosion of a second fireball lit the room behind me. I heard János’s cry and my heart twisted, but I did not stop. I dove into the middle of Pál’s anchored spell and closed my eyes.
I braced myself for impact with the ground, but the impact did not come at once. When I opened my eyes, I was falling through a field of stars.
When I landed, at last, the Binding was both strange and familiar.
There was no grass-carpeted hill, no flowers, no distant turrets rising above a silver-leafed wood. Instead, I found myself standing in a narrow valley, great rock mountains rising all around me, their tops shrouded in mist. Fir trees sprouted from the mountains at improbable intervals. The ground around me was strewn with rocks, boulders heaved from the mountains by storms or heavy snows. Or giants. Winds howled, tugging at my hair, keening in my ears.
I’d never seen this aspect of the Binding. Was this the heart of the spell—or had Pál’s spell merely taken me to the part of the Binding nearest Eszterháza?
I needed to find out. The only vantage point in all that windswept valley was a great stone slab. I made my way toward it.
I struggled to remember all I knew of breaking the Binding. Before, it had seemed enough that I was chimera, that if I drew the spell into me, my very nature would shatter the spell as it had at Sárvár. But walking through a lonely valley, dwarfed by solitary mountain pines and rocks, I felt acutely how foolish we had been to think this might work. How could I pull something so vast into my souls?
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
The slab had not appeared far away when I began, but it began to feel as though I had walked for hours. My legs wobbled, sweat stuck my bodice to my skin, and I struggled to hold on to what little courage and composure I possessed. I could not think of Grandmama and Noémi and János, outmatched in Eszterháza behind me. I could not think of what might face me when I returned. I could only move forward, one heavy foot after the other.
I stooped, cringing as a shadow passed over me. It was only a crow, landing several paces ahead of me.
A curl of hope lifted my heart. Ravens were good omen birds—at least in Hungary; surely some of that luck would attend its cousin. And I was no longer alone.
As I moved forward, memories began sliding through my mind. I did not consciously call them; something about this wilderness dragged them into light.
I remembered Hunger, the first time I had seen him in the bathhouse at Sárvár. I might have need of your heart, he’d said.
Then later, the first time I’d gone with Lady Berri to Attila’s Hill: You will have to sacrifice at the heart of the spell. You must pull the power of the spell into your own heart and let your heart break with it.
All magic had a price. I knew that. It cost time, energy, will—the imprisonment of ancient creatures. It had taken a blood sacrifice to craft the Binding; it would take a blood sacrifice to break it. My fingers curled around the bone knife I carried. I doubted my courage.
Hunger had promised I would not die. I clung to that promise as I walked.
I halted and raised my face to the sky. I let all of my frustration and fear and longing swell inside me: for my family, for Gábor, for a world I might not live to see. And for a world that might be changed beyond recognition by what I was about to do. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Hunger. I need you.”
When I opened my eyes, he stood before me, his golden eyes glinting in the sunlight. My heart fluttered, moved by something that might have been fear. Or desire.
“I have come to break the spell,” I said. The wind picked up my words and tossed them in the air, mocking me. In this land of stone and shadow, my will was a fragile thing.
Hunger cocked one eyebrow at me in amusement. “So you have said, my fairy-tale maid.” He began walking toward the stone slab, and I fell in pace beside him.
The crow led the way, winging silently before us.
“If I break this spell, will you promise me something?”
“Anything. Break me out of this world, and I will remake your world in your image. I will bid the stars sing out your name and the shadows guard your slumber. Break me out of this world, and I will even make you my queen.”
“No.” I shuddered. I knew I should thank him, but his offerings left me cold. “I need an army. If I set you free, you must help me free my friends.”
Hunger stopped walking and regarded me for a long moment. “You shall have one. You have my word.”
His golden eyes, full of dark shadows, caught mine. Fear skittered down my spine. What sort of bargain have I wrought?
The stone slab, when we reached it at last, was larger than I expected, and smoother. Veins of white and pink ran through the dark grey rock. Something translucent caught the sunlight overhead and cast a net of stars back into the air above the stone.
The scent of roses hung thick in the air, rising from low bushes surrounding the stone.
I turned to Hunger. “What must I do?”
“Can you feel the spell?”
I concentrated. I felt the tips of my fingers, which were cold, and the wind that whispered along my neck. I heard the shushing of the trees swaying at the foot of the mountain and the dry rattle of winter grass. I heard the caw of the crow and the rustle of its wings as it settled on the rock before me. I felt the sunlight on my cheeks. But I felt nothing of the spell.
I shook myself free of the memory of summer afternoons with Gábor, failing at spell after spell. I could not fail here.
Just as despair reached clinging fingers into my heart, I sensed it: a faint pulsing that came from the stone itself. I opened my eyes to find Hunger watching me.
“Look,” he said, nodding at my hand.
The Romani bracelet I wore glowed faintly, vibrating against my skin and skimming the excesses of a powerful spell as it was designed to do. If I could reach the spell through the stone, somehow, and pull it into me…
I reached outward, or tried to. Nothing happened.
I could sense, dimly, the tremendous thrum of power all around me. But it was as if I were separated from it by an impenetrable glass. I wanted to weep.
“What sacrifice have you brought?” Hunger’s voice was rasping, jarring, but it pulled me out of my despairing reverie.
I held out my hands. “I brought myself.”
Hunger frowned. “If you die with the spell, the Binding will not break.”
My heart squeezed into a tight, painful ball. “Lady Berri said my blood would be enough.”
“Then your lady doesn’t know this spell. The spell needs heart’s blood—and you cannot give that and break the spell.”
“You’ve lied to me before. Why should I believe you?”
“I would not lie about this. The spell was bound in heart’s blood, with the power only death magic can bring. It must be broken with the same.”
I pressed my hands together. Somehow I knew that, had known it since I stepped into the spell, but I had been hiding from the knowledge. “Is there no creature—” I began, but Hunger cut across me.
“No creature here can provide what you need. We are part of the Binding.”
The crow fluttered down from its perch to land at my feet. With a tremor that passed through its entire frame, the crow lifted its wings and expanded, blossoming into a man-sized shadow. As the blackness bled away from the shrinking wings, I saw it was no bird at all, but a shapeshifter.
“I will be the sacrifice,” Mátyás said.
Hunger’s eyes lit with interest. “A táltos. I did not think your kind existed anymore.”
A shapeshifter. Once, on a sunny summer afternoon, Mátyás had told me the story of a Hungarian shapeshifter, how a táltos could travel between worlds. I remembered now the crow that had attacked two guards at Sárvár. The crow had been Mátyás himself, not just a bird moved by an Animanti spell.
