Spirit Ascendancy (31 page)

“The Wraith is at the other end of the dungeon, I just checked,” Milo said. “It’s the Silent Child. Did you see her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I was hoping they hadn’t caught her,” he said sadly. “She works on a pattern; that must be part of her instructions. She won’t be back down this way for another three minutes.”

“Well, we better hurry up then,” I said.

Milo looked outraged. “Why do you think I came to—”

I turned back to Carrick and Finvarra, both staring at me now. “We don’t have much time,” I said. “I… we can talk about this again later, if we get the chance. Right now, I need the castings to summon and banish the Elemental. They aren’t in the Book of Téigh Anonn, but Finn knew you had them, because you helped him banish the Elemental last time.”

Both of their faces went blank in surprise. “The Elemental? What does it have to do with this?” Finvarra asked.

As quickly as I could, I explained the rough plan. When I had finished, Carrick nodded. “It’s risky, of course, but you’re right. I think it’s the only thing that might work against them. How will you remember the castings? Have you got some way to write it down?”

“I don’t need to, not in this form. It’s hard to explain, but I’m hyperaware right now. There’s nothing to get in the way of my mental energy. If you just tell me, I’ll remember it.”

He rattled off the instructions, including a fairly complicated set of summoning words in Gaelic. Normal Jess would have heard nothing but gibberish, but not Walker Jess. Even in my panic, I could appreciate the ease with which I retrieved it from my mind the instant I tried, like plucking an item from a shelf.

“Can you tell us anything about what’s going on in the rest of the castle? Do you know where Hannah is being kept?”

Carrick shook his head. “They’ve warded the entire central courtyard area, including all the surrounding rooms, so I can’t get anywhere near it. Only the ghosts they’re controlling seem to be able to gain access. I think they must be in there.”

“If they truly are going to reverse the Gateway, the most powerful place they could do it from is the Fairhaven Geatgrima,” Finvarra said. “That is surely why they’ve returned here.”

“But I thought the Gateways were part of us,” I said. “They aren’t physical places, are they?”

“Not in the usual sense, but there are places, like Fairhaven Hall, where the Gateways have been opened so many times over the centuries that the barrier between the worlds has become worn down. Think of it as the tiniest of cracks in the wall that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Our presence is what makes it. The energy channeled there is stronger than a hundred individual Gateways. If your sister manages to reverse it…”

The horror of the thought swallowed us all. I remembered the first moment I’d seen the Geatgrima, towering over the masses of white-clad Durupinen, candles alight, its power tugging at each and every one of us, devastating in its suggestion of allure.

I pushed the thought away. There was no time.

“What about the torch that Hannah carried with her when they attacked? Have you seen it?”

Again, Carrick shook his head. “Not since they entered the castle. I couldn’t risk discovery.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said. “If this works, we’ll be able to free you all from down here. If it doesn’t…well, we’ll come up with something else, I guess. We’ll see you soon.”

Carrick’s face was twisted with a dozen different, painful emotions.

“Wait! Jessica, let me go with you. I can help you.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head before he’d even started speaking because I knew what he was going to say. “You need to stay here. If the Elemental gets out of control, you need to be here, to protect the people in this castle from it. The Necromancers won’t know what’s coming, they won’t be able to protect themselves. But you can make sure that thing doesn’t harm anyone down here.”

“Jessica, I…”

“Not now,” I said. “I can’t… I’ll see you later. I promise.”

And without another word to the man who I’d known for only minutes to be my father, I turned and left, my heart and mind too full of inexpressible things.

I PUT AS MUCH DISTANCE between myself and the castle as I could, as fast as I could.

“What was that all about?” Milo asked.

“Nothing.”

“Jess, I can tell you’re upset. Can’t you just—”

“No. I can’t.”

Something in my voice made him give up. We flew in silence until we reached the cover of the trees. We saw not a soul—living, dead, or in-between—anywhere on the grounds. Their absence struck me as ominous.

We reached the clearing where the príosún was located, and saw Finn, Savvy and Annabelle crouched around my body, waiting. Finn’s eyes were closed, and he was muttering something to himself. It seemed he couldn’t look at my body, even when he knew that I wasn’t forever gone from it. This realization landed with a hollow, painful thump on top of the pile of other things I could not possibly cope with. The pile teetered, threatening to bury me. I righted it and shut it away and I reentered my body.

“Jess!” three voices chorused.

“Are you okay? That took longer than I thought. Did you get it?” Finn asked.

“Yes,” I gasped. “Give me a pen and some paper.”

Annabelle thrust them into my hands, and I wrote down all of Carrick’s instructions regarding the Elemental, before the barriers of my physical form had a chance to dull and cloak them. I handed it to Finn, who took it, but stopped, staring into my face with concern.

“Are you okay? What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I said, knowing the answer was utterly transparent.

“No, you’re not. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Of course I’m not! It’s just… everything! I mean, are
you
seriously okay right now? I’ll be okay when this is all over,” I said, climbing awkwardly to my feet. He put out a hand to help steady me, but I brushed it away.

“They didn’t know anything about where Hannah’s being kept, or where that torch is, except that the Necromancers have blocked off the entire central courtyard and surrounding rooms,” I said, looking at Savvy and Annabelle instead. “So Milo and I will need to habitate to see what we can find out.”

“What’s in the central courtyard?” Savvy asked.

“The Geatgrima. Finvarra thinks they will use it as the location for Hannah to reverse the Gateway.”

Finn eyes widened. “That would be…”

“Cataclysmic? Devastating? Apocalyptic? Yeah, I think that’s the idea,” I said impatiently. I turned to Milo. “Are you ready? This means you might not be strong enough to go with us when we enter the castle.”

Milo nodded stoically. “I know. But this is important. We need to know everything we can before we go in. If this is the best way for me to help, then let’s do it already.”

I closed my eyes. “I’m ready.”

Milo surged forward and I felt the now familiar expansion of another consciousness inside my own. Almost at once my head was filled with the sound of stormy crying.

“That’s her!” Milo thought, his fear infecting me before my own could even form. “What’s wrong with her?”

“We won’t find out by panicking, Milo! Focus in!” I thought.

“Right. Right. Okay, get a grip Milo,” he said, and I felt the steadying hum of his concentration as it aligned with my own.

A room resolved into being behind eyes.  I knew it must be the Grand Council room, but it was barely recognizable. The walls were charred and soot-blackend. A huge section of the north wall, directly behind the Council benches, had crumbled away, framing a jagged snatch of dark, starry sky. The candelabras and chandeliers, once lit with electricity, were alight with waxy stumps of candles. All of this could be seen through Hannah’s trembling fingers as she held them over her face and sobbed unrestrainedly.

“I cannot express to you how very sorry I am,” said Neil Caddigan, who knelt beside her, one of his long pale hands cupped on her shoulder. “We were too late.” Just over his shoulder, a large torch burned in a bracket placed upon the High Priestess’ chair, surrounded by casting circles, candles, and runes.

“I don’t believe you. I won’t believe you,” Hannah said, her voice cracked and broken.

“They were staying with a ragtag band of travelers, an obscure clan. No doubt their companion Annabelle contacted them, for I understand that she has relatives there.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Hannah cried. “Why would they go to the Durupinen when they knew our clan was looking for them?”

“As to that, I cannot say. Perhaps it was their only option. It was a gamble, to trust another clan, and it was a gamble they lost. Someone amongst the Traveler Clan must have tipped off the Fairhaven Caomhnóir that were out on the hunt for them. They attacked the camp. They left no survivors but for a few Traveler children who told us what happened.”

“What about Milo?”

“No sign of him. No sign of any spirits at all.”

“No. No I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it,” Hannah shouted, slapping Neil’s hand away from her shoulder. Another took its place, a slender dark one. Hannah turned to Lucida, sitting on her other side, her face the picture of sadness and remorse. I wanted to reach through the mental space and throttle her.

“I thought you might need evidence, though I hesitate to show it to you,” Neil said in a delicate tone that made my skin crawl. “It is not my wish to cause you further distress.”

Hannah did not answer right away. “What is it?”

Lucida shook her magnificent head. “No, Neil. Come on, now, you can’t show her that.”

“I do not wish to,” Neil said. “But if she will not accept the truth…” Was I the only one who could hear the note of amusement, however faint, in the velvety folds of his voice?

“What is it?” Hannah asked again.

“A photograph,” Neil said, “sent to me by one of my men who found them. He sent it as proof of what they found when they arrived.” He held the phone in his hand, looking down at the screen. I knew what the picture would show.

Hannah leaned back but stared at the glow of the screen as though it were a weapon being pointed at her. “Lucida, have you seen it?”

“Yeah, love, I have.”

“And?”

“And I don’t think you should look at it, pet. I really don’t. What good could it do?”

Hannah continued to stare at the phone. Then she held out her hand for it.

Neil kept his eyes on her face as he reached out and dropped it into her outstretched hand.

She looked down. And because she looked down, we both saw it too, the image of my own lifeless body, smeared in blood. I fought back the bile.

Hannah let out a sound I could hardly describe; a strange, primal thing that made all the hairs on my arms stand up. She let the phone clatter to the floor. No one made a movement to pick it up. No one made any movement at all.

“There’s nothing left,” Hannah whispered at last. “They’ve taken absolutely everything I have. Everything.”

Lucida reached out and grasped her arm. “Tonight we take it back, love. We take it all back.”

Milo pulled away, and I staggered, the vision going black before being replaced by the surrounding faces of Finn, Savvy, and Annabelle, all tense and anxious.

“Those bastards. Those bastards!” Milo was shouting.

“What happened? Could you tell where she was?” Finn asked.

“Yes. She’s in the Grand Council Room, and the torch is there, too, I think. She… they showed her a picture of my body from the Traveler camp. She thinks we were all killed by the Durupinen.”

Annabelle covered her mouth with her hands. Savvy groaned.

“Oh sweetness, what are they doing to you?” Milo mumbled, blinking in and out in agitation. “We’ve got to get in there. We’ve got to show her we’re all okay, before she does something stupid. She’s not going to be able to hold it together.”

“Calm down, Milo,” I said.

“Do not, do
not
tell me to calm down!” Milo practically shrieked. “That’s my girl in there, do you understand?”

“I do!” I said, stepping forward and wishing, for the first time ever, that I could hug him. “You need to calm down to save your strength. Because there’s no way we’re going in there without you. She needs you, Milo, and you won’t be able to help her if you can’t even materialize. So, do it for her, okay? Calm down, blink out, and rest.”

I watched the wild light fade from his eyes. Then he nodded once, with a strangled little half-sob, and flickered out of sight.

“Okay,” I said, turning to the others. “Time to make a deal with the devil.”

If someone had told me a day would come that I would step into the príosún again voluntarily, I would have told them I would rather die first.

Well, I would have been half right, anyway.

I floated a few feet above my body, hesitant to put too much distance between the two very crucial parts of myself. I knew that Finn was standing by, ready to protect my physical form from whatever may happen, but the variables at play with something like the Elemental were too unpredictable and potentially devastating to take any chances.

It was just a few months ago that Hannah and I had been trapped with the Elemental in this place as a cruel hazing joke gone horribly wrong. The Elemental was an ancient being created and fueled entirely by feeding on negative human emotion. It sucked these emotions from the nearest people and reduced them to helpless, cowering shells of their former selves. Though no one knew its origins, it was trapped and used by the Durupinen centuries ago as a form of torture for prisoners kept in the príosún. I knew all too well from personal experience how effective a torture device it could be. A few minutes with it left me barely knowing who I was, wanting only for the pain and terror to end. I’d have welcomed death gladly.

Okay, poor choice Jess, poor choice to relive the details of one of the most terrifying events of your life right before facing it again. 

Somewhere to my left, in the darkness, I could hear Finn muttering the words of the summoning casting that Carrick had given us. Any moment now…

A panicked sort of moan escaped me, despite my best efforts to suppress it.

“Jess, you okay in there?” Savvy called.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright. Just freaking out, that’s all.”

To calm myself, I talked through the theory in my head one more time, to remind myself why it was necessary that I do this.

The Wraiths couldn’t be stopped by any casting the Durupinen knew, because they weren’t really ghosts anymore; they were empty of any sense of themselves; their essences were gone, replaced by the orders given to them by the Necromancers. Those orders, however, were steeped in the worst humanity had to offer: hatred, fear, and unabated greed. They were vessels for the Necromancers’ depravity. And I was willing to bet that the Elemental would find them absolutely delicious, unencumbered as they were without even a single cheerful thought. And so, if I could convince the Elemental to join forces with us…

But before I could complete it, the thought was overridden in my brain with another, one that I did not put there, and which felt strange and foreign to me, an intrusion.

What is this morsel?

We recall it, do we not? We taste it on our tongue, and we know it. We have tasted it before.

But the form, the form… what is it now?

“I’m here to speak to the Elemental of Fairhaven Wood,” I said, hoping my voice betrayed something less than the crippling fear I was struggling against. “Will you show yourself and speak with me?”

It seeks us. That is bold.

Shall we speak to it? But what is it?

More than spirit, less than human. We cannot fathom it. We must know.

And suddenly, from nowhere, there it was. It looked very much the same as when I had last seen it, a human form constructed entirely of rippling, swirling negative energy. Last time the form was that of a woman. This time the figure it chose was that of an androgynous child, lithe and slim, with short but flowing locks. Its face shifted and flickered as the images of countless other countenances flashed across it, each twisted in agony or fear. For the most fleeting of moments, I even thought I saw my own terrified face staring back at me from under the undulating hair.

What are you, my beauty, my love? Not spirit, no not a ghost.

“No. I’m not a ghost. I’m a Durupinen and a Walker,” I said, and my voice seemed to ring out unnaturally loud in the clearing.

What brings you here, Walker?

“I need your help.”

Help? What can any being ask of us? We do not help. We feed.

Yes, feed. And you, my love, are mouthwatering.

And the Elemental reached out, finding my fear, and my anger, and every other negative emotion I had harbored inside of me. But unlike the last time, it could not take hold of them. It could not use them to weaken me. My state as a Walker prevented it. I could feel myself nearly expand with the triumph of it.

The Elemental froze, one foot poised to walk forward, its head cocked to one side.

What means this?

How does it thwart us?

What trickery is this, to summon us forward but deny us sustenance?

To taste but not to feed? Ah, agony!  

“I did not bring you here to feed you,” I said. “At least, not with my own feelings. But a feast awaits you, if you will hear me out.”

A feast? What does it mean?

It will explain itself or it will leave this place!

And the Elemental seemed to expand in its anger, the colors of its many images intensified, pulsating with waves of poisonous negativity. I could feel it like heat billowing off of a fire, though it did not seem able to infect me. Again, I was momentarily enthralled with my own immunity to its powers. It was satisfying to see it so impotent, but I didn’t want to push it. I didn’t want to provoke it further; I needed it to cooperate.

“The Durupinen are under attack. The Necromancers have invaded the castle and are going to destroy everything if we don’t stop them,” I said.

What care we for the struggles of humans?

They win, they lose, it matters not. We feast upon them all and relish in their pain.