Winterveil (10 page)

“You do now,” said Silas. “You will listen to me, or you will prove to me beyond all doubt the worthlessness of your kind.”

“We are far from worthless!” said Baltin. “Ask the boy. He knows what our ancestors have done for Albion.” He tried to grab hold of Edgar's arm, but Edgar saw him coming and moved away. “Tell him! Tell him about the sacrifices that we have made.”

“You live on the achievements of your predecessors, while ignoring your responsibilities to honor their memory,” said Silas. “You squirm here, down in the dark. Do you want to see where you are leading this land? Do you want to witness the darkness, the dread, and the pain that await every soul in this place?”

Baltin glanced at his followers, trying to remain composed. “I know what lies beyond the veil,” he said. “I have seen it for myself.”

“You have seen only what you wanted to see.”

Silas moved before Baltin had time to react. Edgar tried to step between the two men, but Silas was too quick. The energy in the room was already highly charged, and Silas had decided that there was no more time for talk. He pushed Baltin so hard that the older man fell back and scrabbled across the floor, landing just inside the blood circle, and Silas was right behind him.

“No,” said Baltin, desperately trying to find his feet. “Please!”

Silas felt the sickly tug of the physical world fall away as he crossed the blood line and stood over Baltin, who raised his arms uselessly to protect himself. Traces of Kate's blood surged through Silas's veins, reacting to the broken presence of the veil. The circle was not perfect. It was a crude guess at something the bonemen might once have created every day, but it was enough to tear through the already delicate barrier between two worlds. The blood of a Walker made Silas's own connection to the veil more powerful, and the moment he looked into it he saw a flicker of an image as if he were seeing directly through Kate's eyes. He could see where she was at that moment. Water pooling around her feet and Dalliah Grey shouting, her words lost within the veil.

“I never wanted any of this!” said Baltin, flailing his arms. “I wanted to help. I was only doing what I thought was best.”

“Be silent,” said Silas. “And listen.”

Baltin let his hands fall to the floor and felt it tremble gently. “Wh-what's happening?”

Every person in the meeting hall pressed against the nearest wall as the circle spluttered with new life. If that circle had been a flickering flame of energy before Silas's arrival, now it was white hot. None of them wanted to go near it, except for one.

Edgar walked right up to the edge, watching Baltin's expression as it changed from panic to sheer terror and then sank into the abject desperation of someone who was looking straight into the veil's terrifying heart.

“This is unacceptable,” said Greta. “Stop this.” She tried to cross into the circle, but Edgar stopped her.

“You can't go in there,” he said. “Silas knows what he's doing. Baltin has to understand. We are not your enemy.”

“Is
that
the face of a friend?”

Edgar looked behind him, where Silas had begun pacing around the inner edge of the circle. Baltin was curled on his side, trying to block whatever Silas was showing him from his senses, and Silas's eyes shimmered white, looking like the eyes of a predator captured in the glare of moonlight.

“I know it looks bad, but he knows what he's doing.”

“He is polluting the circle with his presence,” said Greta. “He will attract too many souls. He will ruin everything!”

Edgar looked at her. “I thought you were worried about Baltin,” he said, “not your precious circle.”

“Baltin is one man,” said Greta. “He is more than expendable.”

“It's a good job we don't all think like you.”

“Move aside!” she demanded, but Edgar held her back.

Silas took no pleasure in exposing an unwilling mind to the black, but Baltin had been quick to end other people's lives in the name of his cause. Risking his own sanity was a small price to pay in return.

Baltin writhed. His fingers clutched at empty air. “We killed them,” he whispered. “We had to do it.
I
had to do it. I—” His body tensed and fell limp. Silas continued to pace.

Time passed strangely within the circle. What felt like a minute held within its influence was almost an hour in the meeting hall. When Baltin fell still, Edgar was left to calm the Skilled and reassure them about something he knew little about. Greta was determined to break the circle and disturb the process, but some of the older members of the group, worried that she would cause more harm than good, helped Edgar to keep her away from the blood line.

Only Silas would ever know what Baltin had witnessed inside that circle. Only he would remember the sight of Skilled souls trapped beneath the meeting hall. He would see them, frightened and lost, reaching out to Baltin for help the man was unable to give. When Baltin's soul threatened to break away from his body, Silas helped him find his way back to the living world, where he lay horrified by the torment that his actions had caused.

Silas reached an arm out and helped him to stand. Greta looked flustered as he stumbled from the circle, breathless, dazed and determined.

“Greta,” he said, “it is worse than we thought. This effort of ours is not enough to stop what is coming. I saw the prison that lies in the dark. I walked within it. I think . . . I was dead. Was I dead?” He turned to Silas, who said nothing. “Those people we killed, Greta. They are suffering now. These hands . . .” He raised his palms in front of his face. “They are stained with more than blood. What we have done should never be forgiven. We have to put this right. I thought I knew the veil, but I knew nothing. Nothing at all.”

Greta looked at him with disdain. “You are allowing yourself to be misled,” she said. “Our first duty is always to protect those who are still alive. The children need us, and those who are missing may yet return. We cannot afford to risk our lives on the word of someone whose very existence in this world is an abomination against everything we know and trust about the veil. He is a bound soul, Baltin. He is less than a shade, and we cannot trust him. We cannot even be sure his mind is his own.”

“I trust what I have seen,” said Baltin. “Gather the ones who are strong enough to travel. We are not finished yet.”

He hurried over to those of the Skilled who were still clutching old skulls and took them from them to lay each skull carefully on the floor. While he tried to rally the others, Silas scrubbed his boot through the blood circle, severing its link to the veil.

“Stop that!” cried Greta. “These circles cannot be made in the same place twice.”

“Then perhaps you will listen,” said Silas. “The veil is under threat, and much as I would like to leave you and your people to rot here underground, you are its guardians.”

“That does not give you the right to invade this cavern and spread your soulless lies among my people.”

“Yes, it does!” said Edgar, stepping forward. “We are here to help you. We could have stayed away.”

“My role here is to enforce order and to protect the group,” said Greta. “I have done that to the best of my ability. As a former soldier, your master should respect that.”

“He's not my master,” said Edgar.

“I knew the Winters girl was too dangerous to be set free,” said Greta. “I did not approve of Baltin's treatment of her in the end, but we were right to contain her. If it were not for the boy”—she stabbed an accusing finger toward Edgar—“we would not be in this situation. He interfered where he did not belong.”

“Nothing could have prevented this,” said Silas. “Everything that has happened was seen within the veil long before Kate was even born. Dalliah deliberately created the chain of events that brought us here. She has manipulated all of us, and now she intends to finish her work.”

Greta looked grim. “Do you believe she has gained some degree of
control
over the girl?”

“They entered the city together, but it is impossible to say how much of Kate's will has been lost.”

“Then you are right,” said Greta. “This is bigger than any history we may have shared. Baltin is good at reacting to events. Whatever you showed him in there certainly provoked a reaction, but he is like an excitable dog. When he runs out of energy, he will lose focus. I, however, will not. I assume you and I are contemplating the same solution to this mess?”

“Yes,” Silas said, without hesitation. “This has already gone too far.”

“Then, at last, we agree,” said Greta. “For Albion to survive, the Winters girl cannot be allowed to live.”

10

RELEASE

L
ake water seeped slowly into the records house, spreading across the floor and into the corners, where stacks of old papers became swamped. Loose pages floated just beneath the surface as the freezing water swallowed entire books, devouring their ink and rendering them worthless.

Kate had not taken her eyes off Dalliah since she had challenged her, but instead of looking angry or concerned, Dalliah did not seem to care. Knowledge was Dalliah's greatest advantage. She was not surprised by the swelling of the lake. She knew exactly why everything was happening. She had planned for every eventuality, whereas Kate could only react to events as they happened around her.

“Your anger will only make it worse,” said Dalliah, turning back to her books. “The spirits are listening to us.”

“I don't care,” said Kate. “This city isn't yours. You can't come here and destroy it.”

“I have done nothing,” said Dalliah. “
You
sent the souls in the tower into the black. Events
you
have put into action are forcing the city to react. Destroying Fume has never been my intention. I doubt it could even be done. Its stones will stand here long after every living soul has fled its walls.”

The water crept up past Kate's ankles, beyond her knees, and settled around her hips, where it stopped rising and became still. The surface was mirrorlike with not a splash or a ripple to break its calm. Only a thin film covered the top of the stone wheel, trickling through the spaces between the outer tiles.

“This lake was here before any of the buildings around its edge,” said Dalliah. “At its height it once covered the entire district. The water is reclaiming what should never have been taken away.”

Kate waded toward the table closer to one of the windows. The cold water stabbed at her legs, and she lifted herself up, checking to make sure
Wintercraft
was still intact. It seemed untouched, so she placed it on the tabletop, out of reach of the water, while Dalliah remained next to the wheel, her dress and coat swirling in the flood. Kate's warm breath came as vapor as she spotted shapes moving beneath the surface of the water. There were shadows where shadows should not have been: fast-moving drifts of black and gray, seeping through the walls and gathering around the spirit wheel.

“Working the veil to this level takes years of concentration and study,” said Dalliah, continuing to keep the spirit in the wheel under her control. “But all of that is useless without the ability to use it: the spark to trigger the first switch. Once the first step is taken, everything that follows becomes easier.” She looked up at Kate. “I couldn't have done any of this without you.”

“You have spent your life destroying people,” said Kate. “I saw the graves around your house on the Continent. There were thousands of bodies there. All those souls, unable to enter death because of what you did to them. The Skilled are supposed to help people.”

“Walkers have more important things to do,” said Dalliah. “When I was away from Albion, it became difficult to connect strongly with the veil. It would not speak to me unless I called it with the souls of the dying. Now we are here in the city, I have everything I need.” Dalliah pulled a twist of cloth from her bag and unfolded it to reveal a thin glass vial filled with red liquid. “I did not expect you to obey me forever,” she said. “I do not need you for this. Your blood is more than enough.”

“No!” Kate jumped back into the water and waded toward Dalliah as the woman unstoppered the vial. The cold snatched her breath away, but she stripped off her heavy outer robe and moved quickly across the room. “Don't!”

The center stone, loosened by the water, lifted easily beneath Dalliah's searching fingers, sending water swirling into the space beneath. Dalliah pushed the disk over the edge, and it flipped as it fell, revealing one side carved with a spiral, the other carved with a goblet. The goblet side was faceup as it sank to the floor, and the symbol flared with light before sinking out of sight. Kate struggled to reach Dalliah in time, but it was too late. The vial dropped into the wheel's open void and smashed, spilling smears of blood over the mechanism inside.

“This is not the existence I chose for myself,” said Dalliah. “Once my blood would have been more than enough for this work. That strength was stolen from me, along with so much else, by your family. You should condemn them for leaving you the burden of what you must do, but I can condemn them for far more. You were born to be betrayed by your family's legacy. I was not.”

Kate stood over the wheel, watching the bloodstains darken as the black crept in. She reached down, trying to fish out the shards, but the glass bit her fingers, threatening to add more blood to the mix. Shadows formed against the walls, and the water moved as if it were filled with live fish. The surface bulged and churned, and shades burst from the building as though something had physically dragged them out. Kate pressed her hands upon the outer tiles in desperation, determined to do something to stop what her blood had put into motion.

“The Winters family and your mother's family have hated each other for generations,” said Dalliah. “The Winters family drove the Pinnetts' seers into madness more times than I can remember. You may hate me for what I have done, but your ancestors did far worse in search of knowledge. They would be surprised to see you trying to save the soul of a Pinnett now.”

“Shut up!” Kate glared at Dalliah. She wanted to look at
Wintercraft
, but she could not remember anything inside that could be of help, and she did not have much time. She turned instead to logic.

Everything connected to the veil had a method behind it. If her blood had done something to the spirit wheel, that meant she was at least partially in control of it. She had seen something similar before, when she had been forced to open a listening circle against her will. She had been able to bring that circle under control, but this was different.

Kate did the only thing she could think of. She placed one hand on the snowflake tile, the other on the small goblet tile that matched the central stone Dalliah had removed. At that moment she did not care about history, family, or anything else. She would not allow another spirit to be stripped away.

Dalliah did not try to stop her. In her mind, she had begun something that was unstoppable, but it interested her to watch Kate try.

The mechanism inside the wheel grated into action, sending disturbed air surging up in strings of tiny bubbles to the surface. The tiles flipped, sank back, and switched places, all except for the two that Kate was touching. The snowflake and the goblet drew energy from the other tiles until all movement stopped and the only brightness came from the light bleeding up through Kate's hands, making her fingertips glow red.

There was no pattern to the final positions and no order that Kate could see. She felt the room darken, just as the tower had before, but she refused to simply accept the blackness. She concentrated upon the aspect of the veil that she knew best, the half-life, the upper level where souls still had hope of being delivered into the peace of true death. She shivered as the water stilled around her and crackles of ice began webbing across the surface, creating frosty trails that radiated out from her body.

She could no longer feel the spirit wheel beneath her palms. All she could sense was gentle heat, as if she were standing close to a fire. The tiles no longer felt solid. Something moved beneath them, and she felt warm fingertips touching her own. The spirit in the wheel was reaching out.

Kate did not dare open her eyes for fear of losing the connection, but behind her eyelids the physical world peeled away, and she sensed the shade's soft gray form as clearly as a lucid dream. It was a haunting, gentle shift in the darkness that was easy to miss until she stopped focusing upon it and let it linger at the very edges of her consciousness. It did not want to be seen. It moved like a fly in a jar, knowing the boundaries of its prison by memory. Only its eyes appeared human: the dark, penetrating eyes of one of the Skilled. Ancient, but still very strong.

Kate moved her fingers slightly. The stone was still there, but it was like placing her hands against a mirror to touch her reflection. Her world and the spirit's world were separate, but they were connecting. Kate's blood was breaking the hold the wheel had upon the soul, letting it fall into darkness. It should have already happened, but the soul, drawn to Kate's presence, was lingering.

“Distant child. We are proud of you.”
The spirit's voice echoed up as though from deep inside a well, and Dalliah began to take serious notice of what was happening. She put one of her own hands on the wheel, but the tiles sank away instantly at her touch.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Stop this. Now!”

Kate did not move. The tiles rattled once again and flipped to reveal their undersides, where letters were carved instead of pictures. They settled into a ragged order, and the lights beneath Kate's hands wandered around the circle, pausing upon letters to spell out five words.

 

DO NOT TRUST THE WARDEN

 

The light faded the moment the final letter was revealed. Dalliah looked unimpressed.

“Not the final words I would have chosen,” she said.

The spirit's faded hands clutched tightly around Kate's, and the wheel burst with sudden energy. Instead of blackness, soft light reflected from the thin ice across the water. The stones singed Dalliah's hand, forcing her to back away, while Kate's fingers felt as if they had been plunged into the frozen sea. The spirit was rising out of the wheel like a delicate swimmer standing over a mist-covered pond. Kate was drawing it up. Out of its prison, out of the stone, and into the air of the city.

Kate wanted to let go. She
needed
to let go, but her conscience would not let her. The connection binding the spirit to the wheel was splintering further the longer she held on. She would not let it fall into the dark.

The skin on her palms blistered against the energy of the deep veil. Physical life did not belong in that place. She was connecting with it for far too long, but she would not sever the link. She was intent upon drawing the spirit away from the black, carrying it to a place of peace and hope, a place where—she hoped—death would eventually come.

The spirit separated from the wheel with the lightest of sounds. A whisper, partway between sadness and relief. Only then did Kate allow herself to let it go. The spirit's essence unwrapped from her fingers, and Dalliah watched powerlessly as the soul dissipated into the veil. It was not free—not yet—but it was in a far better place than that to which Dalliah had intended to deliver it.

The wheel fell still. Kate stumbled back from the stones, her head swamped with dizziness, her hands red and sore. Her body was exhausted by the effort, her muscles would not hold her, and she sank beneath the water, letting the flooded lake carry her under. She did not have the energy to fight it. She wanted to sleep, to escape the tiredness, the cold, and the pain. It would be easy to let go, let the veil take her and turn away from the madness her world had become. Dalliah stood beside her in the water, looking down, as if she were viewing an experiment that needed to run its course.

Kate heard the echoes of the dead reverberating from the walls of the records house. Their voices were thin and weak, like a conversation captured upon the wind. The water's touch seared her injured hands, and she felt a warm presence close by. The spirit from the wheel had not left her behind. It reached out to touch her hands and heal the damage its rescue had caused, but Dalliah got there first. Solid fingers grabbed Kate's arm and dragged her back to the surface. Kate coughed the moment her face reached the air, and the spirit retreated, leaving her hunched over the sunken wheel, clutching the stones.

“Do you
want
to lose your mind?” demanded Dalliah. “Taking risks has gained you nothing, except this.” She grabbed Kate's wrists to inspect her blistered hands. The flesh was raw, and every movement felt like knives slicing across the open wounds. “The touch of the black is beyond my skill to heal,” she said. “Even if I could do it, I would still leave you with the pain as a lesson against stupidity.” She let Kate's hands fall, and Kate pulled them protectively to her chest.

“I don't care where your soul is or what you need to do to get it back,” she said. “All of this . . . it's not worth it.”

“You are in no state to say what you will or will not do,” said Dalliah. “You should have stayed ignorant.”

She pressed her hand against Kate's shoulder, making Kate's hands blaze with pain. Any slight healing that had occurred in those few minutes was picked apart by Dalliah's influence. Blood seeped from the sores, and Kate cried out in pain. Anger flooded her thoughts, and the air trembled. The water felt as thick as oil, and when Dalliah raised her arm, tendrils of it hung from her sleeves like melting grease.

“Be careful, Kate.” Dalliah's voice was suddenly serious and wary. “This is not the place for you to lose control. Not here. Not yet.”

Kate was far from losing control. She could see more clearly than she had in her life. She was turning the connection Dalliah had forged between them back upon Dalliah herself. The water was as it had always been; only their perception of time had shifted, forcing the world around them to slow down. There, in that pocket of mutual existence, Kate could see into Dalliah's memories and share her most secret past. Dalliah tried to resist her, but it was too late.

“I'm not scared of you,” said Kate. “You left Albion because you were afraid. You hid yourself away because people were hunting you.”

“Stop this.”

“You hated what you had become, but you had no real power. The bonemen feared you, the Walkers lost respect for you, and you could not manipulate the veil as well with a broken soul. You hated the people who had stolen part of you away. A Winters made you what you are. He was supposed to bring your spirit back, but he never discovered how to do it.”