Page 62 of Siege of Shadows

“That you were blessed.” Pastor Charles grinned down at me. “Perhaps it was the spirits that gave you your gifts. Perhaps you’re more connected to them than any of us will ever be.”

My family was never that religious. While many had taken to the refuge of the steeple to explain the existence of the phantoms, others like us chose to just take things as they were, but for me at least, I’d always figured there was a god. God. Magic. Spirits. Effigies and monsters. What was true? Or was it all true in this world where the impossible was possible?

I shook my head. “So what’s in the cellar?” I asked as we turned a corner and started down a flight of stairs.

“I met Natalya, the fire Effigy before you, about a year before her unfortunate death,” Pastor Charles said, and I felt Belle go rigid beside me. “She was curious about my views, about why my teachings differed from the usual discourse of the Deoscali. And one day, during our discussions, I showed her this.”

The cellar looked more like a crypt. A small, square room, it was built entirely of gray slabs of stone, dark but for the sunlight streaming through one clover-shaped window.

But there was something else about this room, something I couldn’t name. A silence hung in the air, so heavy I could feel it whispering against my skin. And when I breathed in, something primal in me lifted its head and groaned, a slight tremor stirring me from the inside.

“What is this place?” I asked, staring down at my tingling hands as if I’d never seen them before. At the far corner of the room, one of the stone slabs had writing etched into it, but I couldn’t make out the words from here.

“It feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” This time, when he lifted his head and closed his eyes, I understood why. There was something here, something that cast shadows of stillness over us. “Many years ago, when I was still young and misguided,” Pastor Charles said, “I was fortunate enough to go on a spiritual pilgrimage with a traveling sect of the Deoscali. It’s where I learned to return to the old teachings of Farlow. And where I learned there are many secrets in this world. Secrets beyond the old dichotomy of phantoms and Effigies.”

“He calls this cellar the Listen,” Belle told me, gesturing toward the chamber. “It’s the same as I remember it. You can feel the cylithium here, can’t you?”

I did. Cylithium existed in nature, and in some areas it was more concentrated than others. Those were the areas human populations stayed away from, the areas where phantoms sprang forth. But it was different here. The atmosphere seeped inside me, a targeted assault on my nerves, but strangely soothing all at once. Even though I knew London’s antiphantom municipal defense was strong, I half expected phantoms would suddenly emerge in front of us, growing their limbs and bones and putrid flesh from thin air as they always did in cylithium-rich areas. But nothing happened. A strange sort of peace washed over me.

“Calm,” I whispered. “I feel calm.”

“For only in the calm can you hear them speak,” the pastor said as if reciting lines from a text. “The leader of that sect had a cellar like this built in an old chapel where she would rest every so often. She used it to meditate, to commune with the spirits.”

When I breathed in deeply, my bones felt like liquid. “How did you draw so much cylithium here?” Like most cities, this wasn’t a cylithium-rich area. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he answered. “The religious sect I told you about—theywere kind enough to build one in my church, though they refused to share its secrets and I haven’t been able to find them since. Natalya meditated in this place once or twice before, to do what you call scry, particularly when her mind was too perturbed to achieve meditation on her own. You Effigies have your own way of connecting with spirits of this world, it seems.”

Spirits. No, not spirits; it was the cylithium resonating with what I had inside me. Had to have been.

“Go ahead,” Belle said. “Find out as much as you can from Natalya. Try to reach Marian.”

My body felt heavy, my heels tingling with each step toward the center of the room. The dense air dried me out inside. It was as if the warmth of my palms and the flush of my face had been sucked out through the skin. And my thoughts seeped out with it.

The secrets of the world.

Sighing, I sat quietly on the ground and closed my eyes.

Something shivered past my cheek, and I opened my eyes with a shudder, but there wasn’t anything else here.Concentrate. Ignore the presence of Charles and Belle. Keep everything out.The breathing techniques Belle had taught me were useful enough to calm my nerves, but this was more intense: the rich energy in the air, the silence, the feeling of my sensations dying off inside me.

I listened and heard it: her humming. The same tune. Always the same tune. It was her song that carried me into the recesses of my own mind.

The water was still against my ankles. Ah, the white stream. I’d seen it many times before, ever since Saul had forced me into my own subconscious in New York. That’s when I started to see their memories, the Effigies who’d fought before me. For a long time, I’d bumbled carelessly, recklessly through Natalya’s thoughts, picking up only jagged pieces of a frame. But, as Belle had taught me, this was the proper route. Here in the white stream with the thick fog surrounding me. And the red door, large and magnificent, like the entrance to a palace. The door to her memories. Thefirstdoor of many, perhaps.

But this time, Natalya was not guarding it.

I felt the tip of her sword against the bare skin of my neck, just above my neck-band.

“This... thing,” Natalya said in her Russian accent, softly clinking her sword against the steel plate. “You let them cage you. You trust too easily.”

“What’s wrong?” I kept my voice as still as my breath. Losing my cool wasn’t an option. My nerves were a latch Natalya could use to open the window into my body. “Mad because you can’t go running around inmydreams anymore?”

“Your dreams. My memories.” Natalya laughed lightly through closed lips. “We were becoming closer, you and I. The barrier between us isn’t as solid as you would like to think. Who knows, we may become closer still.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I hissed. “It would just make it easier for you to steal my body.”

“It would make it easier for me toleadyou. I am always trying to lead you, Maia. To the right memory. To the right path.” Her blade tilted up and I could feel the added pressure against my skin. “You can trust me.”

Finally, Natalya withdrew her sword and walked off to the side, letting the blade’s tip trail the water.

---