The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  Perhaps.

  Pyke tried to clear his mind of the questions the epic scene at the book’s end had raised. If he considered only the present, what struck him as odd was that when the Relic had activated, he hadn’t felt the sensation of his Res being drawn upon, nor had he spoken any command phrase. Humans couldn’t operate Relics except by commanding them in Old Ancient. Not only was the Voice right about the tome possessing its own reserves of Res, but it also seemed capable of activating itself using certain predetermined triggers instead of a master’s commands. A concerning concept, but Pyke wasn’t about to object. After all, it had benefited him already.

  “Antiquarian!” exclaimed Aquamarine.

  Pyke looked up and saw what had caught the Seer’s attention. Standing in the doorway some ten metres to the left of the group, emerging from the library room which had been empty moments before, was a woman.

  Her eyes were the clouded orbs of a person born without sight, and her steps were hesitant and uncertain. She wore white gloves and a cream-coloured silk dress which bore traces of ruined lace across its front. The garment must once have been a masterpiece of the tailor’s art, but its long train and wide sleeves were tattered to shreds at their extremities. The woman’s hair was the white of a frozen lake’s surface, tangled down her back and plastered to her head as though by a heavy rain. Her delicate features were rimed with droplets of moisture which could have been melted frost or perspiration or both, and underneath the film of blindness her irises were the colour of morning sunlight reflecting from snow.

  “O maeris val rei, suv tal reves val rash vil rei sesrisit?”

 

  Chapter 15

  Pyke backed up a step, taking in the apparition. Trepidation hummed like stretched twine in his chest. What have I awakened?

 

  The Fae Queen. The knot of worry in Pyke’s torso tightened into fear. I read about her, and I gave her reality.

 

  “Pyke, what do we do?” asked Vino, clutching his pack to his chest.

  The blind Fae took another unsteady step and spoke again.

  “Run ralas situlesaite revei val sesrashasrei, vakheshisvai rei lesat. Hal eshisvai rei livet: vakhsikhei hul rashaoi sis eshet. Suv huvu tor vas eshet? Lesis reshai val sish rei suiset.”

  <‘By the most terrible final entry in my book, I feared you lost. Yet I feel your presence: it is faint but unmistakable. Who is with you? I taste their mortal terror.’>

  A pleased expression spread across the Fae’s features in the time it took for the Voice to translate for Pyke. Though her smile shed no light, the darkness of the room lessened, as though her pleasure itself illuminated the world with a bright and terrible glory. Every metal object in the heap of collected artworks and Relics glimmered with reflected brilliance.

  “Ratas rantei esheat lul nur gaseot lesii rei esheat. Reiseres fer steris, maerisrei.”

  <‘It is long since I was feared so deeply. I thank you for this gift, my love.’>

  The Fae’s steps steadied, and she seemed to grow taller and more present as she continued toward where Raine’s unconscious form lay directly in her path.

  “Not another step, apparition!” Aquamarine stepped forward, placing themself between the Fae Queen and Raine. The flutes in the Seer’s voice were faltering with open fear, and the violins screeched with discordant counterpoints at each vowel.

  “Fil hastas rei hastist, O Hesheos,” the Fae commanded, stretching out one white-gloved hand.

  <‘Out of my way, Seer.’>

  In response, Aquamarine made the same gesture as before, when they had washed away the grasping arms of the darkness-automaton. As the Seer raised their web-fingered hands, Pyke could once again hear the rushing of water.

  An invisible torrent struck the advancing Fae head-on, stopping her in her tracks. The apparition’s hair flew out in a ghostly white cloud behind her, and her gloves evaporated. The long white dress and the skin of the Fae’s cheeks and outstretched fingertips began to tear, slightly at first and then all at once. As the ruthless current intensified, the flesh peeled away from the Fae’s body and vanished into nothingness, leaving only a skeleton.

  Aquamarine stood trembling head to toe for a moment longer, then swooned. Merana, to the mercenary’s credit, was the only one nearby and swift enough to leap forward and catch the unconscious Seer before their insensate body could strike the ground.

  “What?” she grumbled quietly as Eiten and Pyke turned to stare at her in surprise. “I ain’t no fiend-lover, but I know a skin-savin’ when I see it. Figured I owed ‘em one.”

  “Uh… guys?” squeaked Vino.

  Pyke looked up. The skeleton had not fallen as Aquamarine had. In fact, it was still moving.

  Tendons of white-glowing Res grew between the bones, connecting them to one another. The skeletal Fae inclined her head and looked down at herself with empty eye sockets. The blank grin of her skull managed to project annoyance as she looked back up at Pyke and the rest of the group. The Fae stepped forward, and wisps of cold white mist formed around her skeleton, fashioning a lacy decoration at the front of the ribcage and fountaining downward over the hipbones to suggest a sheer white dress with a long train.

  Merana, still supporting Aquamarine’s slender frame on one shoulder, raised her weapon. Eiten shook his head and put a hand on her sword arm. “Don’t fight it. You’ll just make it angrier,” he murmured.

  “It moves slowly. Can we get away?” Merana asked, glancing back at Pyke.

  “We could, but only if we abandoned Raine,” Pyke whispered to her, finally finding his voice. “You three take Aquamarine and get to the door. I’ll try to distract her. If I fail… don’t stop running.”

  Translate my words into Old Ancient before I speak them, he told his Voice.

 

  “Reshash navaosh rei eshet, O maerios. Sish vas ekhest, rei vas akhet,” Pyke pled, trying to both convey that the others were under his protection and beg for their safety.

  The skeletal apparition paused. A response breathed itself directly into Pyke’s mind, its arrival carrying a sensation like a cool cloth placed against his consciousness.

  Rosh maeris val rei vas eshet, rokh tor rei vakhtamelist.

  <‘If you are my love, then stay with me,’> translated the Voice.

  Pyke hesitated. He couldn’t see a way to refuse without provoking the Ancient monarch.

  “Tor vas vakhtamelit rei helet, hal reutalaukheras fahalit rei helit,” he said, desperately trying to come up with a reasonable excuse and settling on ‘I need to fix the centre of the manse.’ He just hoped the Fae was weakened enough that she couldn’t tell he was lying. “Ratas vekh eshet.”

  The Queen cocked the skull which served her as a head, as though she were listening to a far-off noise.

  Vakhranis vekh eshet. Reutalaukheras muru sis volast eshet. Rei sis livet… Suv vas vakhluvash rei selit?

  She raised one skeletal hand and curled the fingers slightly in midair. A searing pain wracked Pyke’s shoulders, knees, and hips as an invisible force began to tear his joints apart from the inside.

  <‘There is no malfunction; the Manse-Heart is as it should be. I can feel it… Do you tell me lies?’> the Voice interpreted.

  Agony wiped all thought from Pyke’s mind. He struggled to buy himself a moment of clarity to think of something to
say… but nothing came to him, and all he could choke out mentally was, Voice! Say something!

 

  Say whatever you think will save us!

  There was a pause, during which time blackness filled Pyke’s swimming vision and his hearing lapsed. Losing consciousness, all Pyke felt was his mouth beginning to open of its own accord…

  Pyke stood at a crossroads under a bright noonday sun, surrounded by corpses and splashes of blood. Somewhere nearby, a woman whimpered in pain.

  His body ached abominably. Blood dripped from his wounds, but he couldn’t identify where they were. His head spun, and his heart was filled with a deep ache of discontent. Where was he? Who was he?

  The next thing Pyke knew, he was himself again, on his hands and knees on the floor of the collection room. The pain in his joints was fading. He raised his head and saw the skeletal Queen frozen in a taken-aback stance of bent knees and tensed shoulders. Her hands were raised to hide the ghoulish grin of her skull in the same way one might cover one’s mouth in astonishment.

  She spoke in his mind. Suv maeris val rei vas eshet—?

  For the second time that day, Pyke all but jumped out of his skin as Raine’s massive club slammed down, filling his field of vision without warning. The thunderclap of her Res-laden strike replaced his shout of startlement with a high-pitched ringing in his ears, obliterating his hearing as the metal-studded wood of the weapon crushed the Fae Queen’s skeletal form.

  The concussion was swiftly followed by a shockwave which rattled Pyke’s already injured joints, sending another jolt of searing pain through him. Then a spray of bone dust, superheated by the sheer force of the blow, blasted Pyke’s face. His eyes burned from their sockets and he flew head-over-heels, unconscious even before he struck the far wall.

  Jenna’s time listening to Lifa had been most edifying. She’d learned a lot more than ancient stories: the hours-long conversation had eventually shifted to information about Pyke and the Place Aside, for Jenna had commanded the Fae to stop her storytelling as soon as she and her sisters were no longer in danger of dissolution within Jenna’s lifetime.

  Lifa had paused abruptly in the process of finishing the tale of a time when Beloved-of-Nations had posed as a travelling magician and ensorcelled a village’s rats to follow her away from town, then returned them tenfold when the village had refused her modest request to erect a statue of her. Resisting the urge to ask Lifa to finish just this one story, Jenna had demanded the Fae tell her of Pyke, from the moment he’d vanished into the Place Aside until now. Apparently the last Lifa knew of the Antiquarian was from several hours ago, when Jenna had freed him from the sisters’ control.

  Now, Jenna knew Pyke was wandering a secret mirror image of this manse, in the company of three Relic-seekers and two beings from somewhere distant in the sunless Void. She also understood with brutal clarity the danger the people of the Last Spellbound House faced. The knowledge was both concerning and exhilarating... though she was starting to feel exhausted alongside her sense of empowerment. After seeing Lifa age rapidly before her eyes, Jenna had been expecting a cost to the storytelling session, but she hadn’t counted on the waves of tiredness which kept washing over her.

  Of course, that sensation might also be the life-sapping Working from the Lens under the library. Neither Lifa nor her sisters fully understood the Inventions of the Dead, but Lifa had shared with Jenna the progress the Three had made in the past century of investigation.

  There were other things she’d learned, too: secrets which she needed to share with Anabel, who might be able to fill in the blanks. Jenna rounded a corner where the stairs to the attic hid the secret passage, and stopped dead.

  Fifty people had gathered in the broad hallway, some of whom were carrying torches and unsheathed swords. They massed around the top of the straight staircase which had replaced the attic steps, and Anabel stood in their way, preventing them from descending. She was face to face with Flarrow, speaking quietly and intensely to him.

  “They were gonna figure it out ‘emselves anyhow,” Flarrow interjected, his voice loud enough for Jenna to hear. “I had ta bring ‘em here! Maybe somebody has the know-how ta stop whatever this is!”

  “And I told you,” Anabel shouted back, “The room is only for viewing! It has no control over the functions of the House. And you just told this rabble about it?”

  “Who says some money-hungry ex-adventurer knows the function of an ancient Lens?” shouted someone in the crowd. “We’ll judge that for ourselves, you old bat!”

  “What if your playing around with this ‘Viewing Chamber’ is what’s making us all sick?” yelled another.

  “It wasn’ our doin’!” protested Flarrow, turning to stare aghast at the crowd. “We done nothin’ different than we been doin’ for the last fifty cycles!”

  “How do we know?” bellowed a belligerent voice. A burly man grabbed Flarrow by the front of his fine robe. “You Founders ain’t never showed up ‘less it’s ta take our money! What says you ain’t decided we’re more use to ya dead?”

  “Calm yourself, Jerich,” Anabel told the large man, stepping forward to stand beside Flarrow. Her self-assured presence seemed to intimidate Jerich just enough that he relaxed his hold.

  “I will not be calm!” shouted someone else in the crowd. “My readings indicate the rate of Essence drain is increasing! We won’t live through the night if you don’t turn off your machine!”

  “And I told you, it isn’t our machine doing this,” Anabel shouted back as the scholars and Relic-seekers in the crowd began to babble loudly to one another. “It’s something else, and you’re getting in the way of my finding out how to stop it!”

  “Step aside and I’ll determine that myself!”

  “Of course it’s your machine’s doing! Where else could there still be secret Relics hidden away in this House?”

  “Nowhere! I’ve explored every inch of it, only this secret passage could hide a Lens powerful enough to do this!”

  “It’s a conspiracy! They’re harvesting us, like the Ancients did to our grandparents!”

  “Fiends!”

  “Murderers!”

  Many hands reached out to seize Anabel and Flarrow. Jenna, frozen in place until now, forced herself to step into the hallway.

  “Stop!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out by the continuing cacophony from the crowd.

  One person did notice her. Anabel, struggling against the grip of at least three Relic-seekers, made eye contact with Jenna.

  “Jenna!” Anabel’s sharp voice projected over the yells of the crowd and the screams as Flarrow was thrown to the ground. “Find my cane! It’s with the Lens!”

  Anabel vanished into the grasping heave of the mob. Jenna trembled with shock, as her mind tried and failed to wrap itself around how quickly the situation had grown deadly and how swiftly the two Founders had disappeared.

  Some of the violent crowd turned to see who Anabel had been talking to. “Look, it’s one o’ the staff!”

  “The murderin’ old witch was talkin’ to her!”

  “She’s in league with them!”

  “Get her!”

  Tears of terror rose in Jenna’s eyes. She turned and fled as the mob broke in two. Half remained clustered over Anabel and Flarrow, blocking Jenna from seeing what had become of the Founders. The other half of the crowd tripped over each other as they rushed to give chase.

  Jenna’s sense of empowerment had disappeared completely. She felt weak and helpless and frightened. She couldn’t focus on her predicament, for her mind wouldn’t cease returning to think about what she could have done differently. Could she have stopped this if she’d said something sooner? Could she have saved Anabel and Flarrow if she hadn’t frozen uselessly in place?

  The mob’s shouts fell away behind Jenna as she turned sharp corners and zigzagged through the unfamiliar cor
ridors of the uppermost two storeys of the House. Tears ran down her face in earnest, now.

  If I hadn’t believed Lifa that the House was no longer enchanted for safety, I’d be certain of it now. This place had turned from a second home into a nightmare in the space of a day, and Jenna wanted it all to just stop. She came to a halt and leaned against a wall, taking shuddering breaths as waves of exhaustion rolled over her. She was so weary…

  Jenna didn’t know how long she stood there, but voices approaching from the corridor behind her spurred her into motion. She was still tired, but a sort of clarity had replaced her misery: a clarity she recognized from after her encounter with the brigands on the road. Shock, Pyke had called it.

  Jenna intended to make full use of it. If she had understood the Founder’s last words to her, the door at the base of the spiral stairs was locked, and the Viewing Chamber was safe from the panicked mob. Jenna would have to go to the library and find Anabel’s cane… but first, there was one more thing she needed to do. Anabel’s secret was no longer a secret: now, with time running out, there was someone who needed to know everything.

  Pyke broke free of a feverish nightmare which reminded him of nothing more than the dark afterlife the Church of the Phoenix promised for sinners. It had been full of chaotic motion and screaming voices begging for mercy. From this hell, he swam gratefully up into the pain of consciousness.

  Wait. Why is consciousness so painful? Pyke’s eyes ached abominably, and when he opened them they didn’t seem to function as they should: he could see only the colourless silhouettes of people moving closer to stare at him with indistinct expressions. He reached up to wipe at his eyes, and his hand came away covered in a sticky and gelatinous mixture from his cheeks.

  His sight began to recover. First, colours returned, and he could tell Aquamarine’s silhouette from the others by the Seer’s blue skin. They leaned down and paused, but didn’t say anything.

  Pyke looked around at the other silhouettes, struggling to make out details. A black mass on one of the indistinct faces identified Merana by her eyepatch. Pyke could see changes in colour as her mouth opened and closed, but she wasn’t saying anything either…