Page 62 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
But it was too late. The sigil glowed red. There was a tremendous pulse of magic, like nothing he had ever felt before. It was accompanied by a roaring sound, as if a steam train was coming. Something hit John on the head and shoulders, knocking him down. And then there was silence.
The pistol was gone from his neck. And the world had turned sparkling white. He got to his feet; he was the only man standing. He turned, slowly, stunned. Lord Dalton lay behind him, barely visible beneath a thick glittering layer of salt. Other prone bodies lay about, outlines rounded, as if they lay beneath snow.
Then one of the bodies staggered to its feet. Soren, covered in salt dust, so he looked like a moving statue. He took slow steps, as if wading through glue, but he knew exactly where to go. John had thought Dalton had the pelt, but Soren went straight to Abbott, fell to his knees beside the prone body and started flinging great glittering handfuls of salt aside. Then he picked up the pelt. He knelt, unmoving, staring at it.
“Soren!” John called.
Soren’s head jerked up. His face was a mask of blood, covered in white salt dust. His eyes were totally black, not a sliver of white or colour anywhere, and his lips were drawn back from his teeth. He looked like a demon about to attack. Then he blinked, and his eyes were their usual light grey, and his mouth took on a more natural shape. He glanced at the pelt, and said, almost conversationally, “I must go.”
He might have been at his tailor, and remembered an appointment with his bootmaker. The lack of emotion in his voice sent a shiver up John’s spine.
“Soren, wait—”
But Soren had already thrust the pelt inside his shirt and vaulted the fence. He was running back towards Raskelf. For a man with a cut chest, a raw ankle and a scarred foot who’d just been in a truly filthy fist-fight, he put on a fine turn of speed.
John followed him as far as the fence, and stopped.
Something was calling him, begging not to be left behind. The salt! Not the glittering blanket that had come from nowhere, but his salt. He’d lost most of it, but a good quarter was still in the Petit Clé. He glanced at Soren’s disappearing figure. But he couldn’t desert the salt. It had helped so much. And it was beseeching him to take it with him.
He could catch up with Soren. Though why the devil he was running back to Raskelf, and notaway, John could not guess for the life of him.
He ran back around the mausoleum. The Petit Clé had escaped the avalanche from Amalthea’s Mark, which was surely no coincidence, and lay startling white on the grey stone block, in exactly the shape he’d left it. It adhered to itself like magnetised iron filings, so that it came into his hand easily, all of a piece. He shoved it in his pocket and took the chimera key out of the lock. Then he heard a cry from one of his pins and went to retrieve that, then another, and another. He had to dig for them. One he had to pull bloody from Farrell’s thigh. The salt creaked like snow as he walked on it. All about was a tremendous smell of ozone, like the beach after a storm, warring with the rank smell of salt. He could hear one of Dalton’s men groaning, a feeble sound, but clearly they were not dead. Or not all of them.
He paused beside the motionless figure of the Marquess, buried under the salt. Should he check if the man was alive? Find the other pelt? Take it? See if that would break the curse? He knelt and shoved armfuls of salt aside, thrust back Dalton’s coat and felt for the pelt. Nothing. He glanced up. He could just see Soren in the distance, about to vanish behind a huge rhododendron.
Damn Dalton. Damn the man. If Soren was free, John was going with him. If Soren would have him. He climbed the fence and began to run. He was faster, but Soren had a good lead now. Soren stumbled occasionally, once falling, but getting up and running again. He didn’t look back.
When he got to the house, Soren ignored the knot of people standing at the western end, gaping and exclaiming at the hole. Lady Dalton was one of them, but she didn’t call out, as the others did, as first Soren and then John tore past. She stood, slightly apart from the others and watched them go. John hoped she was all right; that Dalton had given her the child she wanted.
Soren ran past the house and into the stables, and John realised, finally, what he was doing. When John got to the stableyard himself, panting and dripping with sweat, Soren was up on Lord Dalton’s big chestnut thoroughbred. The creature must have fled home at some point. Now Soren was taking it. An old stablehand was pleading with him, a hand on the reins. Soren shook his head, and said, in a voice of command John had never heard from him, “No, damn you. Out of my way.” He sounded remarkably like his father.
He gave a wordless shout and dug his heels into the chestnut’s sides. The horse leapt forward, hooves striking sparks on the flags. As he clattered past, Soren glanced down at John. John thought for a moment he would ride straight past, but once out of the stableyard and onto the grass, the big chestnut suddenly wheeled. Soren made it turn two small circles, all the while looking at John. The drying blood and salt dust on his face made it difficult to read his expression. Was he waiting? Deciding whether to wait? Saying good-bye?
Part of John wanted to run and get another horse, but he couldn’t look away. He found himself shaking his head, as if to say,No, no, no, but what he was saying no to, he wasn’t sure.
Soren said again, “I must go.”
There was a trace of regret in his voice, John was sure of it. Soren was trying to explain.
“I know. I’ll come,” he said, but Soren was already gone, sending the horse at a gallop across the parkland, leaning low, heading north-east.
