Shadow Magic (26 page)

It wasn’t just Thorn who had unique skills.

I have unique skills, too, Mary. Skills you wouldn’t believe. It’s time I used them.

It’s time I spoke to the dead.

“W
e used to be able to summon ghosts with a click of our fingers,” said Lily as she, Thorn, and K’leef made their way to the chapel. “But over the centuries, the magic’s faded, not just for us, but for all the Great Houses.”

“Contacting the dead is a huge, dangerous step, Lily,” said K’leef.

“I’ve got to do it.”

“The princess is right. We need to know who killed Rose and make him pay.” Thorn replied grimly.

She would find out the truth. Was it this sixth brigand, as Tyburn suspected, trying to finish the job? She might speak to Rose, tell her how sorry she was and see if there was anything more she could do, like help Rose’s family. They were all good reasons.

And also to prove that she could.

Why stop at Custard? Surely it was her job, her
duty
, to use her magic to help her people? Father had won great battles with his magic. And Lily was—wanted to be—her father’s daughter.

“Have you forgotten the penalty?” said K’leef. “They’ll burn you at the stake for this.”

“Only if I get caught.” She looked back at them. “If you’ve changed your minds about this, you can go back. It’s all right.”

Thorn touched her arm. “Rose was our friend, too.”

K’leef nodded. “It is the duty of a noble to uphold the law. The killer cannot be allowed to get away with this.”

“Thank you.” She meant it. Lily knew she wouldn’t be able to carry on if Thorn and K’leef weren’t here with her.

They turned the corner toward the chapel. Tall candles lit the corridor leading to it, and there were fresh flowers laid at the door. “Just imagine if I could summon undead armies, like Astaroth Shadow. That would be
amazing
.”

“You said Astaroth was pure evil,” reminded Thorn. “You really want to be like him?”

“I’d be a
good
necromancer.”

“Do you know how wrong you sound?”

K’leef waved small flames over his fingertips. “Not that it matters. That level of power no longer exists.”

“The age of sorcery is coming to an end,” said Lily. “Soon we’ll all be just like you, Thorn.”

“There ain’t no one else like me.”

“It’s the age of steel now,” said K’leef. “The future will be decided by men like Tyburn.”

Lily touched the bronze door handle, forged in the shape of a skeletal hand. This was it. She opened the chapel door.

Three maids all jumped up. They’d been praying. Iris brushed the tears from her eyes. “M’lady, we weren’t expecting you.”

Clare and Dot were with her. Rose’s friends.

Rose lay upon a stone slab, surrounded by fresh flowers, hundreds and hundreds, their scents filling the room with thick perfume. Roses, lilies, tulips, daffodils, and snowdrops. All black.

Rose wore her best dress. As dark as midnight and not coarse wool or rough linen, but fine crushed velvet with sleeves made of silk, the skirts layered satin and the collar fur. Her boots shone in the candlelight, and the buttons on her dress were silver, sparkling and newly polished. There was a necklace of small black pearls around her neck and onyx rings on her white fingers. She clutched a bouquet of black roses, tied in place with ribbon.

Death’s bride. That was how it was done in Gehenna. You crossed from the lands of the living to the dead in all your finery.

Lily looked at the three girls. They must have prepared all this. Washed the body and perfumed it and dressed her and arranged all the flowers. “She looks beautiful. Rose would be pleased.”

Dot sniffed. “Thank you, m’lady.”

It didn’t seem right, telling them what Rose might think. They all knew Rose better than she did. Lily took off her wrought silver bracelet and put it on Rose’s wrist. It was customary to give the dead gifts for their journey.

The maids left, and Thorn closed the door behind them.

Should she do it? She didn’t feel so sure now, standing beside Rose.

She looks so peaceful. Should I just leave her be?

But what about her killer? Were they just going to let him get away with it?

No. Rose belonged to Castle Gloom. We look after our own.

Lily closed her eyes and concentrated. This wasn’t like being in the Shadow Library; it felt different.

Things came here to be laid to rest. They did not want to be disturbed.

Lily held Rose’s hand. It was cold but soft.

A new, unpleasant smell brushed Lily’s nostrils. It was damp and thick with soil—strange, odorous, rotting. Moldy. There was nothing in this chamber that smelled like that.

She winced as she felt, imagined, a blow to the back of her head. She swayed, and Thorn held her until she steadied herself.

Lily’s chest tightened. Her breath fought against her. She felt long weeds clinging to her legs and wet leaves sticking to her face and arms.

Tighter and tighter the plants within the moat entwined her, holding her down.

Water rushed about her. Bubbles of air spilled from her mouth.

She wants to reach the surface; she can see the moon shimmering just beyond her fingertips. But her dress weighs her down and the more she kicks, the more the weeds tangle her legs. She grabs for the side of the bank, but her fingers slip.

Her head aches from when she was struck from behind, moments before she was pushed into the moat.

There is a person standing on the edge. His face is broken by the rippling surface of the water. No, it’s not the ripples that break his face, but deep scars. He watches from eyes that are two black holes.

The man reaches and holds out a strip of white cloth. Rose grabs it and hope fills her heart. He will help pull her up.

Instead he slowly begins to let the cloth slip.

No! Rose clutches the material even tighter.

The man lets go.

Lily’s throat seized up. An invisible weight crushed her lungs.

The moonlight fades away….It is growing murky dark all around her.

Only her fingertips catch the moonlight as she tries, in vain, to reach for the surface. It spreads a rippling pattern over her, a shroud of pale light.

Then Rose sinks into darkness. Her last thought is that now Fynn won’t see her in this beautiful dress.

Lily opened her eyes, gasping for air. She was blind with tears. “Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry.”

Thorn put his arms around her. “What happened?”

Lily heaved, trying to breathe deeper. She wasn’t getting enough air. “I was there, Thorn. I felt what she felt.”

K’leef knelt down in front of her. “Did you see who did it?”

Lily still clenched Rose’s hand. She shouldn’t have done it, delved into Rose’s last moments. Was that all her spirit could remember, the awful death? That was too horrible. Rose should go to the lands of the dead with only sweet memories.

“Lily, did you see?” asked K’leef, his eyes dark with worry.

“Yes,” Lily gasped. “It was the scarred man.”

W
ho was the scarred man?

The question ticked over and over in Thorn’s head throughout the next few days. Was he working for this sixth brigand, or was he an entirely different enemy? Thorn tried to see Lily, between his errands and training, but Mary guarded the door into the Needle and shoved him off. For a small woman, she could be very forceful.

Lady Shadow needed her rest, that’s what Mary had told him.

Who was the scarred man?

Thorn rubbed his aching head.

Face it, you ain’t got a clue.

He wasn’t smart like Lily or K’leef. He had no book learning and no magic, and the answer to this question needed plenty of both.

Thorn yawned. With Halloween only around the corner, more and more guests were arriving, and he hadn’t stopped since sunup. The stables were overflowing, and every lord and his squire wanted hot food and cold drinks, baths and clean bedding, and all of it immediately. His arms ached from lugging sacks of oats, and his feet were sore from running up and down countless steps and along miles of corridor. He was the lowest of the low, which meant that
everyone
ordered him around. Body and brain were exhausted. He just wanted his bed.

And maybe if he hadn’t been so tired he would have been ready for the ambush.

An icy breeze touched his neck. A torch flame flickered and, briefly, a shadow loomed over him. And then it was too late.

Something grabbed his shoulders, its strength incredible, and then the ground fell away.

“Hades!” Thorn yelled. “Put me down right now!”

The giant bat snarled as he soared upward with Thorn dangling under him, trapped in his claws.

“Put me down! I’m not in the mood!”

Hades ignored him. Higher and higher they rose, the giant bat gathering speed amid his entourage of lesser bats. More and more flocked about him, their king.

Hades threw back his head and shrieked. He flipped over and wove between a pair of tottering chimney stacks, the brickwork skimming past Thorn’s nose.

“No! I’m not enjoying it!”

But, clearly, Hades was. A lot.

Swinging from his claws was not the same as riding on his back. Thorn’s stomach tossed and rolled in wholly bad ways. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

Hades hissed.

“Really, I am!”

Hades spun upward, twisting in tight corkscrews, and Thorn clamped his eyes shut as the world became a belly-flip-flopping blur.

Thorn gulped. “It’s coming up….”

Hades dropped him.

Thorn didn’t have time to scream before he hit cold, damp stone.

Shouldn’t that fall have taken longer? And hurt a lot more?

He opened his eyes. “Oh, very funny.”

He was on the roof of a tower. The highest tower in Castle Gloom. The Needle.

Hades settled himself down beside Thorn, who looked over the edge and instantly regretted it. People milled in the courtyard far below, ant-sized.

“You really shouldn’t be up here, Thorn.”

Lily sat on a gargoyle, her skirts fluttering in the night wind, her head resting on the stone creature’s brow.

“And I doubt you should be up here, either, Princess.”

“I come here to think. Up here with Flint.” She patted the gargoyle’s cheek. “It’s quiet, and we don’t get disturbed. Usually.”

“You want me to leave? It wasn’t my idea to—”

She shook her head. “I’m not getting anywhere. My brain aches with it all. I’m due to marry a boy I loathe. I’m to leave my home to live with my enemies. Someone tried to poison me, and a few nights ago, my oldest friend was murdered. And I’ve got no one to help me.”

“I’ll help you. With anything. You know that, right?”

“Thanks, Thorn. I know I can count on you and K’leef, but…” She sighed. “I went down to the Shadow Gallery. The walls are filled with portraits of my family going back a long, long way. Could one of them be this scarred man? Come back from the grave, somehow?”

“If he is one of your relatives, why does he want you dead?”

“I’m not much, Thorn. I can’t protect my people, and I’m about to hand over my kingdom to our enemies. I can imagine lots of reasons why another Shadow might want me dead.” She turned and gazed out over the castle, toward Spindlewood and beyond. “I came up here the night they died.”

No need to ask who “they” were. Lily was talking about her family.

“I waited and waited until the sun came up. I would have waited another whole day if Mary hadn’t found me.”

“I…I don’t know what to say, Lily. I’m sorry.”

“Even when they were dead and Tyburn brought their bodies home, I didn’t really believe they could be gone. I kept on thinking it was a mistake and they’d come riding through the gates and it would be someone else all burned and unrecognizable. Isn’t that evil of me? Wishing it was someone else’s parents, someone else’s brother, who was dead?”

“No, I’d call that normal. Who would choose grief?”

She looked at him intensely. Then she nodded slowly. “I remember the very moment I realized they were
never
coming back. It was Rose. She came in with breakfast and called me ‘M’lady Shadow.’ Until that morning she’d always called me Lily.”