Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  He finally fled, calling for guards when Grace led us down three flights of stairs and straight into Hell.

  Hell was a deep, wide room with bare stone walls and the smell of unwashed hair. Fifteen people sat chained into a circle inlaid on the floor in copper. Sigils and curves spread across the floor in one unbroken line, as complex as the inlay on the floor in the Hall of the Invisibles.

  Grace sucked in her breath. “It’s a Calling Circle.”

  Tristan shut the door behind us. “Like the Invisibles use?”

  Her nod was tight. “The way they’re … chained up, they’re arranged in Stations, with one Caller and two Links. They’re moving the power into the center.”

  None of the witches looked up as we entered. They sat opened to the power coursing through their bodies, funneling it into the heart of the Circle.

  “Can you feel it?” Tristan asked.

  He didn’t mean the souls, exactly. He meant the sense of their movement. They pooled in the center of the Circle, then were forced out along straight lines stretching out past my perception.

  How could they stand it? It was worse than the copper-lined rooms used for examinations. I wanted to run away from here until my legs gave out. How long had these people been coerced into this?

  “It’s the copper,” I said. “Miles of it, probably. Like railway, shuttling the souls along to—where?”

  “Power stations,” Grace said. “It’s aether.”

  I stared at Grace in horror. Aether? Our lights, our wireless, our telephones and machines, our cinema projectors and passenger trains ran on …

  Oh, Solace. Oh Guardians, forgive us.

  “We have to break it.” Tristan looked sick. And furious. He covered his mouth, tense with the need to shatter something. “Stop it.”

  “How?” Grace asked. “How could we break it?”

  “Start with the witches. They have to be part of it.”

  “They’re channels, like bound Secondaries,” I said. “That’s all they’re doing. The souls pass through them and into the copper. This is what aether is. This.”

  “Yes,” Tristan said. “The Amaranthines will … I swear I’ll protect you, Miles. Both of you are safe from them. When they learn what your people have done…”

  Grace raked her fingers through her hair, grabbing a handful. Her throat went tight, the cords on her neck standing out. “It’s always been from souls. All along.”

  “Yes.” I paused next to a woman who stared at me with uncomprehending eyes, who watched me test her bonds.

  “Try this.” Tristan handed me a handcuff key.

  I looked at the key, and then him. “Really?”

  He shrugged. “I expected chains. No one’s here willingly.”

  Clever Tristan. I tried it in the shackles. It fit. I popped the locks holding her.

  “Can you stand?” I asked her, and helped her up.

  When I moved to the next prisoner, she followed me. She watched me unlock the man’s cuffs and help him stand up. He moved into a corner, as far from us as he could get.

  “The power’s fluctuating,” Tristan called. “It depends on the witches.”

  I moved on to the next prisoner. The woman followed me, a new light in her eyes.

  “You’re going to be all right,” I said. “I’m Miles. What’s your name?”

  “Ann.”

  “Are you Ann Elliot?”

  Her eyes were wide. “Did Nick send you?”

  Her hopeful look stung me in the heart. “He did.”

  It was true.

  “Everyone’s going to be all right, Ann.” I said. “No one is ever going to lock you in this Circle again.”

  Ann followed me all the way around, reluctant to leave me even when I rejoined Tristan and Grace. Tristan watched me with shining eyes, but Grace covered her mouth in horror.

  “It doesn’t feel like this in the Circle. This feels like—” She shuddered. “Miles, I was wrong. I was so wrong—”

  Her knees landed on the copper-inlaid floor with a thump. She buried her head in her hands. “What have we done?”

  “You didn’t know,” Tristan said. “I’ll tell the others that only a few understood what they had done.”

  “I should have known.” Grace turned her face up to the ceiling. “I should have questioned. Miles. Miles, I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you didn’t know. Now we can—”

  “No,” Grace said. “You don’t understand.”

  The door clicked open. Ann clutched at my arm.

  “Miles, I am so sorry,” Grace said, and Father walked into the room.

  * * *

  He stood tall, my father. He walked with a cane across the sigil-laden floor. Guards spilled into the room to flank him. The guards moved to seize us, but paused at Father’s quelling hand.

  “You may go, gentlemen. Thank you for the escort.”

  Reluctantly, the guards left. One man stayed by his side, an ordinary-looking man with a well-groomed, curling mustache. He remained until Father gestured at him to go.

  I knew him. The man from the hospital. The one we had chased through West Kingston, the man who had stolen my bag, who had followed me, who had bribed his way into delivering Nick Elliot’s poisoned groceries.

  Tristan moved to shield Ann, who cowered behind me. My heart was lead as I looked at Grace. “You told him.”

  “Grace has always been faithful,” Christopher Hensley said. “She didn’t know you had stumbled onto the truth. She didn’t want to believe it was true. So she asked me.”

  “And you didn’t tell her.” My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I wanted to grab Father, put him in those shackles, make him feel what Ann had felt. “How could you do this?”

  “Look at the wider picture, Miles. It’s terrible to have to carry in your heart. But you can bear it.” He planted the tip of his cane and leaned on it as he took a step closer. “Think of Kingston. Think of all the people blessed with fine weather and the wonders of aether. Count the millions who thrive because of our great works.”

  I shuddered. “Look at the fifteen who suffer in here. What do you say to them, Father?”

  “That the needs of the many are paramount.”

  “Then take their place.”

  He gave me a patient smile. “Miles. Does a general fight with the infantry?”

  “Then put the Invisibles in their place.” I flung my arm toward that awful ritual circle. Souls clogged the air, and I fought to breathe through it. “If the needs of the many are so important. Since it’s for the good of the country. Like the war against Laneer.”

  “Laneer won’t need all of the aether they could produce.”

  “You started a war! You sent thousands to kill—for what? For gadgets?”

  Father thumped the floor with his cane, his lips pressed in a tight line. “For the advancement of our people.”

  “That’s the real reason for the Laneeri War. To set this up and take their souls too. That’s why they’re out there, isn’t it? Possessing our men, ready to slaughter at the surrender. Anything to stop this … abomination.”

  Father leaned on his cane. “I didn’t expect their resistance, but it doesn’t matter. The Invisibles are guarded. The royal family is under protection. The reserve has been ordered to muster.”

  If I could vomit again, I would. “You truly don’t care. They’ll kill anyone they find. Innocents. While you’re behind royal guard and your high walls.”

  “I can count the costs, Son.” He stepped forward, leading with his cane again. “Thousands will be killed by the possessed. Millions will suffer if you break the summoning complex.”

  If I break it? I could break it. How? “Did Grace tell you about Tristan, while she was betraying me?”

  Grace looked agonized. “Miles—”

  “She didn’t want to tell me about your witch lover.” Father shook his head. “You should have known better than to share our secrets. He’ll have to die, of course.”


  Tristan bared his teeth. “You want my death, mage? Come and take it.”

  I held up a hand and Tristan didn’t lunge, but he quivered with wanting to. “He’s here because the Amaranthines noticed, Father.”

  Father blinked and looked at Tristan more carefully. “The Amaranthines?”

  My sister hadn’t told him everything, then. “They’d assumed that Aelanders had all died until they noticed the decreased flow of souls from Laneer. If you’d left it alone, they would have gone on assuming we had been wiped out.”

  Tristan loomed, taller than the rest of us. “What you have done is unspeakable. Run back to your Queen, and prepare her to beg us for mercy.”

  “Father, he’s not bluffing. The Amaranthines will go to war with you over this.”

  “Let them come,” Father said. “You don’t see the full scope. Ten deaths increases our power a hundredfold. Our greatness will continue.”

  The blood in my veins turned to ice. I locked my knees to keep standing. “Our greatness? Or yours? You’ll do anything to keep this power. Believe anything. But it’s wrong, Father. It’s monstrous.”

  Rage propelled me—not forward, but back.

  I stepped inside the Circle, felt the souls around me. With no witches to channel the power along the copper lines to the aether stations, the souls pooled inside the boundaries, filled it up.

  They had nowhere to go.

  It clicked into place. I understood.

  They needed somewhere to go.

  “It ends now, Father. It’s finished.”

  The souls of Aeland’s dead clamored around me. The well filled as I searched for the way to free them. The raw power in the air scalded me, dug under my skin, squeezed my breath. It was worse than the car, worse than the testing room.

  Tristan grabbed a handful of air and Father flew back, hitting the wall hard before slumping to the floor. He groped his way up, his hands in front of him and his eyes wide but unseeing.

  “We have to hurry.” Tristan stepped over the line and took my hand. “They’ll pass through you.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We joined our power together, his meeting mine. “I’ll open the way.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Wait.”

  Grace stood at the edge of the circle. I shook my head, and tried to give her one last smile. Goodbye, Sister. “I have to do this, Grace.”

  “I know,” she said. She raised her hand. I stiffened as the tension of the tether between us went taut for an instant; then I staggered as the tension vanished all at once.

  She’d freed me.

  “Mind if I join you?” She stepped over the line. “You’ll need a Caller.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Liberator

  I stretched out my left hand, and she took it.

  Grace sang out to the magic, Called the souls. Tristan unraveled the space in the center of the room, opening it to bright light and a sound like a thousand hooves pounding the earth. I saw the threads of energy Tristan bent, and I filled in the flimsy spaces between with the starry light of my energy, knitting them together like healing bone. The souls came to Grace’s Call, cramping the air around us.

  I staggered. Linked like this, I knew Tristan’s power and Grace’s. Above us in the unseen sky, cold air bulged, heavy with pressure. Clouds.

  I could feel what Grace could. I stretched my senses along the copper on the ground. It screeched along my nerves and radiated from the complex sigils into straight lines joined at hubs a half mile distant, following parallel to the iron railway to the border towns with asylums.

  It was vast. It was years of work to build. We had to stop the souls’ helpless attraction to the network and set them free. Moisture coursed down my lips, and when I licked them I tasted blood.

  Father stretched out one hand to the edge of the Calling Circle, and drew it back as if he’d been burned.

  Grace held me upright. I heard her sob as I coughed, a fire-blossom of red bursting from my lips. But she Called the souls who passed through me. She never stopped.

  A woman screamed. I couldn’t look for the source. The lives of Aeland poured into me, their memories smearing into mine. I was born, learned to walk, went to school, worked, loved, had children. Hunted, gardened. Memories passed through me, tossing me about.

  I wept to hear a symphony perform Abianta when I was sixteen, knowing I would never sit on a stage and play. I felt the warm leap of joy when the prettiest girl I’d ever seen said she’d be my wife.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could stand.

  Ann hovered on the border, wringing her hands as I swayed. I couldn’t spare her a nod, a smile, a promise she would be safe. But she ventured into the Ring, flinching at the power, and clutched at my shoulder. She opened herself up and channeled her power through me. I could stand up straight. My nose stopped bleeding. The burning in my chest subsided.

  The pale green light of her soul left her body and bound itself to me. Freed, her soul fed more power through me, enough to join to Tristan’s gateway from here to his realm.

  Ann’s body lay at my feet. One of the witches I’d freed came closer and carried Ann’s corpse away, then laid his hands on my head and gave me his power.

  When he died, a third witch stepped forward. A fourth.

  Father shouted at me, but I couldn’t hear his words. The thundering sound was louder now, the faint shouting nothing compared to its rumble. He struggled to come closer to us, battling against blindness and a high wind Grace had woven to keep him back. I cried as the barber cut my russet hair short, because I was ten and no longer a little boy. Grace’s voice was hoarse, but she kept Calling. Tristan held the passage open, but his power flagged.

  I gave them some of the strength gifted to me by the witches who had moved their predecessors aside to give their lives before mine, each one another starred soul floating around my head. Some of those seventeen souls flickered feebly, giving everything to the last.

  A thousand voices roared. Horns blared, calling again and again. My grandmother put her hands over mine and taught me to knit. And still I worked to strengthen the gateway Tristan opened, tracing the threads and hardening them.

  My vision swam, darkness growing on the edges of my perception. I didn’t have long. The lacelike sigils on the floor were joined by simple straight lines cutting across the land, branching off smaller and smaller to cover the land … like a circulatory system.

  “Miles,” Tristan said. “Do you see them?”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but he had his eyes closed. I shut mine and let a picture of the aether network blossom in my mind, too big to really hold all of it in my head, but through his senses I saw what he did.

  Souls like stars. A galaxy of them in Kingston, and smaller blobs marking other cities, other towns. Tristan showed me a soul that was twinned, the second one dried-blood brown and spreading to take over.

  I reached, and peeled the parasite soul free. It sucked into the aether network and sped toward us. With all the power I commanded, peeling the soul loose was easy as a thought.

  I found another. And another.

  “You can’t do it one by one!” Grace shouted. “There’s no time!”

  She was right. But how? I could see those angry souls now, red stars in the sky, only uncountable. Like grains of sand on a beach—

  Like a virus.

  And I knew what made the invading souls different from living ones.

  One of my star-souls extinguished. Ann, kissing the fine colorless hair of her infant son. Another winked out, dancing in a square with his newly wedded wife. Nick, ripening an orange in a glasshouse. Another faded, and this one stopped my breath.

  “No. Mother, no.”

  I fought to unravel her link to me, but she poured the last of her power into me, the last touch a kiss to the crown of my head. A hole tore through my chest, the ache unbearable. I wanted to keen for her loss, to drop the whole web of magic, to fall to the floor and weep.r />
  Thousands of tethers reached for the invading souls, moved by my healing magic. I sent out the lines, and they found their targets and pulled them into the network, making it stronger.

  I learned to play the spirit-flute. I helped my brother get ready for temple, drawing a wooden comb through his shining blond hair. I sat with my hugely pregnant cousin and held her as she wept over a message saying her husband had been killed in battle. I bowed my head as a sky-priest lay a spell on me and all the men of my village. We picked up knives and left for war, covered in their blessing for our sacrifice.

  They passed through me too, the Laneeri souls. I saw what had happened to them, how they had fought and died, how their sky-priests had known what the Aelander army had built in the territories they conquered, how they’d kidnapped priests and novices and imprisoned them in the death engines. I understood why they fought so relentlessly to stop us.

  But their revenge would have made the soul machines stronger.

  Father was right. Every death made the aether network brighter. We were draining it, but we couldn’t stand here forever. Souls had found their way to the Solace before this gate was built. We’d have to break the aether network.

  But how?

  The asylums linked to power stations through the copper lines. The witches Called the souls; the copper coils in the asylums sucked them down. We had to shut down the main lines, and then the souls would either come to the gate we had fashioned or find their own way.

  “Grace.”

  She saw it too. “Help me.”

  I gave up my power and Grace seized it, working at all five junctions simultaneously, even though they were miles away from where we stood. Grace took all the threads of power and made them into what she wanted. Clouds mounted, huge and dark with moisture. Cold air rolled in underneath.

  She made a finger of her will and pointed, and thunder cracked overhead, rolling like kettle drums. The next strike made the lights go out, flashing twice before half the bulbs relit.

  The power thinned around us as Grace called lightning down. One by one, each spoke of copper line broke, not just in half but into pieces.