Page 60 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
He ran around the building. There were no windows, but he found a door on the western side; black iron, bound with iron. He’d renewed the chimera key last night, thinking he might need to get into Lord Dalton’s room in an emergency. The charm would be faded, but it might work. He was getting the key out of his pocket when he put a hand to the door, and felt a faint cold thread, running like veins of ice through both door and threshold. A ward. Demon-wrought. About twenty years old, laid by some other magician when the place was built. He’d have to unpick it before he could use the key. Lucky he’d realised, or the ward would have broken the key.
He pulled out the salt and made a sketchy Petit Clé sigil on the threshold. He was about to start tidying it with his fingertips, when the power surged through it, blazing bright. They would have said it was impossible at the Institute, yet the more he worked in accord with the materials, the less the details seemed to matter. The salt understood his intentions. It was helping. The ward threads in the door began to frizzle and wither. He tore them away as easily as spider-webs. The chimera key spun in the lock almost of its own accord. That shouldn’t have been possible either, but it was helping, too. He pushed open the door. Inside was a round room, but it was no pumphouse.
It was a mausoleum. There was a raised dais in the middle, on top of which lay an ornate coffin in ebony and gilt. Decorative pillars ringed the walls, festooned with stone garlands of flowers and fruit. Muddy footprints, quite recent, went from the door to the coffin. And beneath the sourness of cold stone and dust, he could smell blood. He glanced over his shoulder. He could see across the graveyard to the village church, but no one was in sight. He approached the coffin. There was nothing on top of it, nor behind the dais. There were no other obvious hiding places. He hesitated only for a moment.
The coffin lid was not nailed down. He lifted it and stood staring in horror and pity, holding the lid in front of him like a shield. The body looked as if it had been entombed yesterday, not twenty years ago. The first Lady Dalton was white as alabaster, her unearthly beauty a little bloated. She wore a dried-up rose in her dusty hair, and a yellowed dress of fine lace that could have been her wedding gown. A bunch of fresh violets, still wet with dew, lay on her breast.
And across her dainty ankles lay the small, crumpled pelt of an animal. It was the same golden-brown as the hair they’d found in the trunk, and it smelled of blood, though there was no blood on it.
He set the coffin lid down and picked up the pelt.
The moment he did so, the door slammed shut and he was surrounded by utter darkness.
He backed away from the coffin, feeling for the door handle. The after-image of that pale, unearthly face was seared into his eyes.
But there was no handle. The door would not open. He took several deep breaths trying to calm his racing heart. It didn’t matter. Perhaps he hadn’t fully disabled the ward. He’d use the salt again. The Petit Clé outside would help too. He thrust the pelt under his arm. But he couldn’t work blind. He grabbed the rowan twig, which sputtered into weak blue light before he could dip it in the sulphur.
The corpse was standing at his elbow.
He leapt away from it, away from the door, dropping the pelt as he did so, a cry of horror escaping him. Yet even as he moved, the corpse flickered like a candle flame and appeared on his other side. Her eyes opened; black all over. A malevolent snarl marred her beautiful lips.
“No! I’m here for Soren!Soren!Your son!”
But with another strange flicker she was upon him, reaching with hands like claws. He ducked again, knocking the coffin with a flailing arm. It made a hollow sound, but, said the rational part of his mind, notthathollow. He scrabbled backwards, and as his bare hand hit the floor he sensed something familiar: a musky animal stink overlain with the cloying sweetness of privet.
Demon reek. But not from Lady Dalton. From the floor.
He scrambled to his feet and lifted the rowan twig high. The real corpse still lay in the coffin. The flickering thing that was approaching him again was merely an illusion. All the same, he threw salt at it, and watched as holes burned in it, and it vanished. He grabbed the pelt from the floor and tucked it inside his shirt. It was immediately warm against his skin. What was it from? Some kind of dog? He had no time to wonder.
He crouched, made another Petit Clé by the door, but a wind came up from nowhere and blew the salt away. The demon must be in the building; they sometimes bound one in the foundations as a watchman. For all his scornful dismissal of theurgists, Lord Dalton had employed one when he’d built his first wife’s mausoleum.
John straightened and realised his feet had sunk into the stone flags as if the floor were a mire. He pulled free with difficulty, sinking again, even as he struggled out. Most of his scattered salt had caught like a small snowdrift against one of the decorative stone pillars. He managed to get one foot onto it and found the ground firmer. He scraped as much as he could spare from under his feet and held it tight, trying to decide what to do. He had a demon trap in his pocket. The trap was a good one—Rokeby had made it—but it wouldn’t work through several feet of stone and earth.
And what was happening to Soren? Dalton would see the enormous hole in his house, put two and two together, and be back any minute. Johnmustget out. What to do? The salt seemed to be pulling at his hand, trying to rise. Perhaps it was a hint. He put the rowan twig between his teeth, checked the pelt was safe, pocketed as much of the salt as he could gather, and began to climb.
The stonework twitched under his hands, and when he fell, the floor sucked at him, but eventually he got to the cross beams that held up the roof, and began to smash his way out, brittle slates sliding down the roof. The demon seemed to have less power up here, but it was making the beams feel greased.
Soon he had a hole large enough to see through. His heart lurched in his chest. Five horsemen were approaching fast from the direction of the Hall. One was surely Lord Dalton, and two wore the blue livery of Raskelf; Prout and Abbott. John held tighter and kicked slates. He could hear Soren shouting, but couldn’t make out the words.
But he could guess. As soon as the hole was bigger, he pulled out the pelt. In the light of day, it was a pathetic thing, barely as long as a new-born babe, stiffened and shrivelled by its long banishment in the dark. Nevertheless, this was it; the source of so much trouble to Soren, and so much power to his father.
He’d thought to throw it to Soren, but it was too light—it would fall short. To be sure of Soren getting it, John would have to climb down and give it to him. He stuffed it back in his shirt. He’d kicked out as many slates as he could reach. Could he crawl through? Not quite. He bashed away more with forearm and elbow. Now the hole was large enough, but when he tried to climb through, his left foot would not budge. He tugged at it, disbelieving, before realising the demon had bound it to the beam. The delay could cost them everything. His heart sank, but he fumbled in his pocket for a handful of salt.
In a thunder of hooves, the horsemen reached the fence, reining their horses in so fiercely, the creatures slipped. Lord Dalton’s face was red with rage. Soren climbed over the railing, putting it between him and his father. John began to grind salt into the spell on his foot, his hand shaking so much he dropped half of it. The spell came plain, but did not dissolve.Shit!
“Well, well, Mr Blake.” Dalton’s voice was tight with fury, but pitched to carry up to where John perched on the roof. Dalton’s horse danced under him, snorting. Soren was backing away from him, clinging to the fenceline.
“I see my son is with you,” Dalton continued. “His cat’s-paw now, are you? I hope you don’t believe whatever he’s told you. He’s got nothing. Whatever he’s offered, I’ll double it. Now give me that—thing.”
Soren started forward across the field, but only managed a couple of steps before staggering back to the railing. “John!” His voice was frantic, pleading.
“John?” Dalton repeated. “You are on familiar terms for men who met a week ago. How familiar, I wonder? Well, Mr Blake, you’re a clever man. You understand business. Give me the skin for now, and once I’m done with it, you can have it. Keep it in a safe place; you’ll have him forever. Do whatever you like with him. What do you say?”
Dalton was guessing. It was best not to respond. John tried to concentrate on unpicking the binding spell. He had the trick of it; it was simply a matter of time. But the skin would be no good to Soren if he was trapped, and Prout and Abbott had dismounted and were advancing on him.
“Come, Mr Blake,” Dalton was saying. “We’re above the law, aren’t we, men like us? I’m a man of the world. If you want him, we’ll say no more about it. Just give me that skin!”
John pulled an iron pin from his pocket and threw it, hard. It hit Abbott in the arm and stuck like an arrow in a target. Abbott screamed and grabbed at it, but it burnt his hand with an audible sizzle. He yelled again and began twisting out of his coat, trying to remove it that way. Prout backed away from his flailing figure, but the other two men—Warren, the valet, and Farrell the butler—were also dismounting.
