The Complete Trilogy: The Books of Conjury #5 Page 4

  “In the glamour, sir?”

  “In the glamour.” With that, he strode out into the night, leaving me alone with eight corpses whose visages grew no less alarming as the minutes ticked by and the wavering lantern flames kept the shadows moving as though alive. I tried shutting my eye, but that only made me more aware of the trembling of my knees. Was it getting colder? Did something shift in the far corner? My mouth went dry. The bucket of water may have well been in London for all my willingness to step outside of the glamour and help myself to a sip. After what felt like half an hour, Swaine’s footsteps crunched in the darkness beyond the door and he returned, a book tucked in the crook of his elbow.

  “You look like you’ve been holding your breath,” he said. “Nor do your ears require your shoulders to shield them. You’re quite safe, as I said.”

  I tried to hide my exhalation.

  “Now.” Swaine put the book down on his bench, his finger already opening the pages where he’d marked it. He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue as he scanned the page. “Here’s what I dislike about curse magic: repetition. Each strand of the curse seems to require a separate greeting. Hello, and who might you be? And who is this next to you? And this?” He traced a finger along several lines of text, reading. “Rather like weaving, if you enjoy that sort of thing. Which I don’t.” One page, then another. More clicking his tongue. A shake of his head. “I suspect two-thirds to be unnecessary. Redundant. If you’re going to accentuate each separate order of invisibili instinctu—meaning, unseen impulse, roughly—you’re forgetting that all the upper harmonics are contained within the base order.” He glanced at me. “Like the ghost notes on a violin string.”

  I knew nothing of violins, other than that they sounded pretty when playing a waltz. Still, Swaine didn’t appear to require any input from me.

  “Fine,” he said after a few more minutes, closing the book with a satisfying thump. “This should suffice. Unless you have syphilis.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well done.” He selected three glass bottles from the back of his workbench and set about mixing two dark powders with a pinch of an herb I couldn’t identify. “At least Easterbrook stayed with the basics when it comes to instantiating the incantation. Of course, I would too if I felt compelled to examine every new piece of wardrobe, every new bottle of ink, every mirror I encountered for signs of being cursed. Maybe that was the curse, after all.”

  His last observation seemed to amuse him, but I couldn’t muster a smile with the corpse of Silas Wilkes staring up at the shadows not ten paces away. Not to mention the talk of demons, curses, and magic. Once Swaine had the proper proportions mixed together, he took the small bowl in one hand, lifted a candle with the other, and turned to me. “You may step out of the glamour.”

  “Will it hurt, sir?”

  “It’s a spell, not a strapping. You shan’t feel a thing.” He motioned me to a spot away from the bench. “Now hold still. And be patient—the incantatory phrases are bountiful. And must be woven one strand at a time, God help us.”

  He approached me with the candle. Holding it a foot from my face, he whispered a long string of words I didn’t understand. The flame stretched high from the wick. He tipped the mixture from the bowl into this tongue of fire, continuing to whisper. Snapping flares in the various shades of the prism danced in the air before me, combusting into thin embers, glowing filaments that drifted around my head, untouched by either wind or gravity. When all the mixture had burned so, a shining veil floated around my head, multi-hued and bright.

  Swaine paced around me in a circle, speaking one line after another: “Felafricgende feorran rehte. Hwilum hildedeor hearpan wynne. Gomenwudu grette. Hwilum gyd awræc” and so on, the sonorous phrases seeming to turn in on themselves, snakes devouring their own tails; syllable after syllable, word after word, the flow transforming ever so slightly with each iteration, a different touch on the ear. The flecks of illumination spun around me, a thousand floating parasols of sun-touched dandelion seed. In places, my skin tingled as though brushed by a strip of silk. The thought occurred that I’d just allowed a self-professed practitioner of magic—illegal, infernal, and immoral, by all accounts—deliberately cast a spell on me as I stood obediently still. Would he curse me? Make me his eternal servant? Ravish me with no hope of defense? Enchant me to become a murderer, taking the role of the late Doyle and Flynn? Make me into a sprinting corpse?

  A little too late to entertain such thoughts, I realized with a sinking resignation.

  I closed my eye, hoping the entire year would vanish right along with the view in front of me.

  The spell took another quarter of an hour. The next time I looked, the swarm of tiny lights had dwindled to faint lines of red, spreading farther and farther from me, some reaching the dark corners of the barn. As a last shiver ran along the backs of my legs, Swaine came to a stop, the last phrase rolling off his lips. Silence filled the barn, save for the wind knocking the doors on their rails and sighing over the roof. He snuffed the candle wick between his thumb and forefinger. A gray scribble of smoke rose.

  “No curse on you, Miss Finch of London.” He stared at me: a puzzle still. After a moment, he turned to put the candle back.

  “The spell—it was beautiful, sir.”

  He took another step and stopped, his head turning in my direction. “Beautiful?”

  “The magic. The light, sir.”

  “I beg your pardon? What light?”

  “Around me. The light that shone. Hundreds of little—I don’t know—flares. Spinning.”

  He turned fully. “There was no light.”

  “There—wasn’t? But. Well. I saw it. All over.”

  “Are you talking about the candle?”

  “No, sir. The other light. I thought it was the—the spell.”

  His gaze fixed on mine, his eyebrows lowering. A glow emanated from his hands, running up along his sleeves, brightening at his temples.

  “There,” I said. “More, around you. It’s not the same. It’s like mist, mist at sunrise. Catching a golden color. Don’t you see it, sir?”

  In an instant, the glow faded. Swaine tossed the candle over to his bench. He raised both hands, palms facing me. “Which one?”

  The center of his right palm shone with a curious ripple of red, low huffing flames.

  “Right,” I said.

  “And now?”

  Neither of his hands glowed, but the candle on the bench shimmered. I pointed. “That, sir. Not your hands.”

  Swaine put a knuckle to his lips. “Stand back within the glamour, if you would.” His voice lost the bemused rhythm of his earlier comments. I did as he bade. “Now, I want you to remove the pendant I gave you earlier, but remain within the glamour.”

  “Is that, well—safe, sir? After what you said?”

  “You’re quite safe. Within the glamour. And I’m here.”

  With some resistance from my unruly hair, I soon had the pendant in my hand.

  Swaine nodded. “Now place it on the ground outside of the metal filings.”

  I did so. The flesh between my shoulder blades crawled.

  “When I tell you—and only when I tell you—please step outside the glamour. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  He covered his mouth with his hand. I couldn’t catch the words he whispered, though the sound of them echoed queerly in the barn. The feeling between my shoulders grew uncomfortable, spreading around to my sternum. Within the chains of the strange pen in the corner, the enormous man with the crushed head sat upright, a horrid groan seeping from his throat. He stared at the far wall, motionless. Of all I’d seen that evening, nothing frightened me more than the sight of the hulking man going from prone corpse to animated in an instant.

  “Exit the glamour now,” Swaine said, keeping his eyes on the man. “And get ready to step back in the moment I say so.”

  It was suddenly the last thing on earth I wanted to do—but I realize
d that if Swaine had wanted me dead, he’d had ample opportunity already. With clenched fists, I stepped out, one foot, the other. The moment my back foot passed over the metal filings, the man snarled, turning his ruined head until his lone eye found me, glimmering with malice. With terrifying speed, he leapt to his feet, hurling himself at the chains. Bursts of blue-white lightning crawled across his bare chest and arms. His mouth filled with crackling blue flames. Overhead, two planks tore from the roof with a screech of pegs and a tearing of wood. Splinters showered the spot where I stood. A shadow flitted past the stars overhead, now visible in the opening.

  “Back in!” Swaine motioned at me.

  I didn’t need any prodding. As soon as I landed within the glamour, the enormous man swung his head this way and that, searching, still crashing up against the magic. The shadow over the roof vanished, leaving only a small patch of stars in place of darkness. Swaine said “Dæge hæfde ambyrne isen, Navallahdraegur” and the man collapsed backward, hitting the ground with a bone-jarring thud. Not a limb moved. Not a finger. Nothing. Swaine watched the man for a few moments, then turned to me. He stepped to the glamour. He bent and retrieved the pendant, staring at me as he held it out for me to take.

  I did so, not needing to be told to put it back over my head. “Can I—”

  “Yes.”

  Gathering up my nerve, I stepped outside of the glamour again. The man didn’t move. None of the corpses stirred. Swaine continued staring at me.

  “Sir, I don’t understand,” I finally said.

  “You don’t?” Swaine said, as quietly as I’d heard him speak. “Not at all?”

  I shook my head. My stomach twisted into a knot. What was he going to say? “No. No, sir.”

  He brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead.

  “I find that almost impossible to believe, Miss Finch,” he said. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “I’ve—I’ve told you everything, sir. I’ve no reason to lie to you.”

  “Then you’ve no idea what you are?”

  “What I am? What does that mean?”

  “A witch. It means you’re a witch.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Of which there have been none for nearly one hundred years. Not here. Not in Britain. Not anywhere across any ocean, north, south, east, or west. Nowhere.”

  Witch.

  I reached out to steady myself, suddenly light in the head.

  Witch?

  5

  Haunted and Forbidden To Trespass

  I sat on a stool beside Swaine’s bench, staring ahead, not registering the barn, the bodies, the looks Swaine gave me as he performed one test after another. Do you feel this spell? Yes, like pinpricks on my scalp. Can you move this copper ingot across the surface of the workbench with just your mind? No, not at all. Without the pendant on, standing within the glamour? No, still no. Do the glamours glow or shine to you? Neither—but I notice them immediately. They stand out, somehow.

  Pendant on, I could walk about outside the glamour with no hint of notice by any infernal presence. Pendant off, and it would be only moments before the ghost that had damaged the roof made itself known. Not a ghost, I corrected myself: a demon.

  Swaine found it endlessly fascinating. I was terrified. The tests continued.

  What did it mean? How had I never been told? Why? Who was I? Had all the death around me been my fault? Such questions filled my mind, splashing and clawing like rats heaving themselves from a sinking ship—the ship in this case being everything I thought I’d understood about myself before hearing the word witch applied to me.

  Swaine lifted his gaze from yet another book he’d carried in from the manse, opening his mouth to instruct me on yet another test.

  Before he could speak, I raised a hand. “Sir?”

  He straightened. “Yes?”

  “Might I take a break please? I feel rather weak.”

  “This shouldn’t take long. And it’s utterly the key to it all. You see, if the visual artifacts—beyond the realm of normal senses—of the spells we’ve tried are clear to you, the forces involved in wards must also register in some fashion. Very different from glamours. I’ve always sensed they organize energies in a fashion unique from anything else, and this might well prove just that. There’s no record of it anywhere, but my guess is that you’ll perceive—”

  I must have looked a pitiful thing indeed, for he paused.

  “No, of course,” he said. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when did you last eat?”

  “Yesterday, sir. On the ship.”

  “Yesterday? Why didn’t you say anything? This won’t do.” He stood. “Come. And don’t suffer in silence, Finch. I’ve left my social graces well behind and would hardly demand more of you. Such conditions are suitable enough for my own needs, and I can work through the night with nary a pause—but I’m a poor host indeed, guilty as charged. Come.”

  He swept up the lantern. When I followed, he shouldered open the barn door and headed toward the manse again. The air had grown sharp and iron cold. As I shadowed him through the entryway, he said “Glamour,” reminding me not to step on the lines of the circle. We passed the study and he led me to the kitchen. A large hearth glowed with the graying embers of an earlier fire. He clunked the lantern down on a sturdy table—yet another repository for books—and pulled a tin from a shelf. As with the other room, the section of the kitchen he used was clean and orderly, while the rest of it looked to bear a decade’s, or several decades’, worth of dust and disuse.

  “You can stoke a fire and make tea, yes?” Swaine said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He handed me the tin. “Marvelous. I like it strong. Now, you’ll find cornmeal about here, somewhere. Near it, molasses. What little milk I have has spoiled, I fear—but give it a sniff. You can make mush, I take it?”

  My stomach growled so fiercely that I almost let that suffice in answer. I nodded.

  “A large bowl for me. I like it thick, and don’t be stingy with the molasses. You may help yourself, as well—now that you mention it, you do look on the brink of joining the others in the barn, and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Splendid. You’ll find me back in the barn. You know by now what not to step on.” He regarded a stack of books. “Now, where is my Fletcher?”

  “Sir?”

  “Fletcher. Archibald Fletcher. A book, Finch. And not a kind one, mind you. Yet one I think might shed some light on our . . . situation. Unfortunately, reading Fletcher is rather like being a farmer, turning a field loaded with stones that dull the plow and try the patience. Yet he has his moments of insight, nestled in among the more stubborn boulders. So a’plowing I shall go, should the book have the decency to stop hiding from me.”

  Not finding it among those on the table, he shook his head and left, calling back that the water for the tea should be boiling, not just hot. I stared after him for a moment and shook the tin. Tea. I set about to prepare it, throwing kindling on the fire, adding a pair of split logs from the rack. A sooty kettle needed refreshing. I filled it with water from a bucket in the corner and hung it in the hearth.

  “A few rules to mark, Finch.”

  I startled, knocking my head on the mantlepiece. Swaine stood in the kitchen doorway, a thick book in hand. “Don’t touch my books, or my papers. No venturing off alone—manse or surrounding property. There are dangers waiting for the wrong moment of curiosity, even beyond your particular situation—a staircase on the verge of crumbling, cistern holes left uncovered, transoms ready to collapse, doors that may well bind or lock behind you. More crucially, if you see—or think you see—anyone else, be exceedingly wary. Don’t approach them. And, good Lord, whatever you do, don’t speak with them. Really, do your best to ignore them. Clear?”

  I worked through what he’d said, my worry deepening. “Yes, sir.”

  He looked around the kitchen as though taking a
quick inventory. He nodded and left, his steps receding down the hallway and out the door. I wondered what he meant by not speaking with anyone else. The darkness that pressed in on the kitchen from the doorways and the two windows grew even more menacing as I thought about his warnings. Still, hunger has a way of forcing other concerns into the background—be they corpses, witches, or magic—so I busied myself in making the first decent meal I’d had in over six weeks, and one I still count among the finest of my life.

  As I later crossed from the manse to the barn, balancing a steaming teapot and a tin bowl brimming with hot cornmeal mush drenched in molasses in one hand, a lantern in the other, the wind sent fingers prying beneath my collar, grasping at my ankles, tugging my hair into my eye. I lifted the lantern, the lone point of light in a sea of black.

  Witch, the thought rang in my head. A witch.

  Hail fell in the darkness, tapping the ground on the other side of the manse. The hemlock trees sighed beneath the stars. The night had all the trappings of a nightmare—yet I felt the wind in my hair, saw the blood stains by the wagon. If I crouched and touched them, I’d find them still wet, I knew. No, I was awake. Wilkes was dead. And I was alone. Again. And a witch. A witch. That thought alone propelled me out of the darkness and into the barn, where a spill of warm light pushed back against the night.

  Swaine didn’t appear to notice me as I entered the barn, busy as he was scratching notes into a bound journal, his quill moving with precision. Before him, several books sat open.

  “Sir? Your tea,” I whispered.

  Swaine continued to write. “The edge of the bench.”

  I juggled the bowl, teapot, and a cup I’d found, setting them down with care. I dug a spoon from my pocket and put it beside the bowl. Swaine licked a finger and turned the page of one book at his elbow. “Why use two words when a score will suffice?” he sighed.

  “Fletcher, sir?” I said.

  “Fletcher, indeed. To say that the man was verbose is rather like saying that the Atlantic is wet. Why, listen to this patch of bramble that I just trudged through.” He flipped the page back and read aloud, his voice taking on a nasal tone: “’Tis when autumn eventide sets this feral forest a’smoulder as with the glow of Hell’s infernal chambers that one begins to apprehend the discorporal touch of the darkness in this land, the soul and the nerves preyed upon by the blackest currents of Witchcraft and Sorceries of most insidious origin, whose reach extends from beyond the borders of midnight to reveal a Great Realm winding unseen, beyond sill and threshold, beneath Rivers.” He turned. “I might have simply written Salem is unquiet, from a planar perspective. Much more succinct, wouldn’t you agree?”