Page 21 of Tomb of Ancients
“Oh, Louisa, perhaps it will be all over quickly,” Mary saidwith a shiver in her voice. “Like one of Poppy’s screams. Maybe I can even shield you—I’ll ask her—though to say it true, I do not like the look of her.”
Khent proved far less optimistic. “She smells of old beer and vomit. And craft—ancient, terrible craft. I don’t trust her.”
“What choice do I have? We cannot keep Mother trapped in there forever.”
Selfishly, my fears had little to do with what pain or fright could accompany this ritual, but with how Father would react. Already I sensed a boiling inside me, a sensation like a teakettle growing hot to the touch, iron thrust in fire warming until it burned. This was his doing, after all, and though his exchange with Mother in my dreams—or simply in my mind—had intimidated him into silence, I knew that reprieve could not last. The sands were slipping through the glass, and only a few grains remained, my hands clutching into fists preemptively as if I had the means to stop a crashing wave with a small and whispered, “please.”
Perhaps Father’s displeasure was falling from the sky, the rush of rain against the bricks so noisy it sounded like the whole of London was sinking under water. I tried to ignore the deluge and the thunder, each random rumble making me jump.
What had Mother called me? A willing one? Aye, I was willing, but also I was so very afraid.
We needed allies. We needed help. I feared our escape from London would not be an easy one, and harder still whateverawaited us at Coldthistle. I remembered the feeling of safety and warmth I had felt in my dream when Mother came near, and it steeled my heart to think that I could carry that same feeling with me to confront Henry and ask for his help ridding Father from my mind. Or better still, perhaps Mother herself would know how to banish him without leaving me a soulless husk.
The mood became somber, that of a funeral procession. On the rich carpets I had so admired before, Dalton had placed Mab out of her cage. The fuzzy pink spider did not move, though it had turned to watch us approach. Niles breezed by us a moment later, mumbling to himself as he clumsily laid out the stubby black candles in a circle. Then we were all assembled, Fathom and Dalton standing nearest the entrance, Khent and Mary toward the counter, Niles huddling behind them. The stranger carefully flattened a burlap cloth next to Mab and put her instruments down upon it.
Lifting my skirts, I stepped over one of the candles, feeling its heat lick at my ankle as I joined Mab and the stranger.
“What are you?” I asked her, giddy with nerves.
She stood and faced me in her rough-spun barkeep’s woolens and gave me a mild smile. “Most would call me a witch. I studied under the last trueDa’mbaeruof London, who disappeared some years ago. She taught me her craft, though in my heart I sense she withheld much.”
I lifted both brows at that and said nothing. In fact, I had astrong suspicion where that lastDa’mbaeruhad gone, and what her current occupation had become. Strange that they had both landed in positions of service. That this woman had known and been taught by Mrs. Haylam almost gave me solace. Almost.
“Nothing good comes of their arts,” I said at last, thinking of Lee and the curse I had thrust upon him in death.
“We are not performingtheir arts,” she replied tartly. “We are undoing them.”
“That does not sound like Father’s magicks,” I mused aloud, and the stranger nodded.
“The manner of binding Fathom described is not known to me, but binding as a concept is the foundation of our work. Had you not given me the list of steps in the spell, I would not have agreed to come,” she finished. Then she motioned to the spider and I knelt beside her.
“What can I expect?” My voice trembled now, and the heat of the candles circling us pressed in on me like eight too-warm hands.
“First, a chant,” the stranger murmured. “Second, a burning of sage. Then I will ask for your palm and prick it with a needle and ink, which is a common appeasement to dark spirits. Finally? A baptism and a sacrament. There will be no turning back once we begin, do you understand?”
I had anticipated that from what I had witnessed so far among Unworlders and Upworlders—a dangerous pact oncestarted must be seen through to completion.
The stranger cleared her throat once, crouched behind me, and placed her fingertips on my shoulders. I had enough time to glance at Khent and Mary, who were now all but hugging each other for comfort. Khent mouthed something to me, and it took me a moment to realize what he was saying.
“Courage.”
Then the stranger spoke directly into my ear. Her voice had changed, becoming more liquid, more dangerous. “Close your eyes,” she said. “And if you are willing, it will begin. Once the ritual starts, there will be no going back. Youmustendure.”
I did as she asked, though I had no earthly idea if I was willing or not. That one word—courage—repeated itself over and over as I drew in a weak breath. The stranger began to sing, a low hum that wound its way up and down until it sounded like the keening of a widow deep in her grief. The cry entered me and slithered into my blood, and my flesh felt suddenly as if it were on fire. I wanted to snap my eyes open, but instead I gasped, taking more of the wailing into me, drinking down the piercing sound.
At once I was plunged into darkness deeper than what lay behind my eyelids. It was a pit from which there was no escape and which no light penetrated. My breaths became short and harried, and then a single candle began to glow in front of me, and my whole being shuddered with primal dread.Idid notknow what sat before me, but my bones and blood did. Whatever ancient intuition had been gifted to humans and animals came to life, trilling with warnings.
Courage, I reminded myself desperately.
A voice emerged from the poisonous dark.
“Oh, but you will need far more than courage here, Daughter of Trees.”
Chapter Ten
The place I landed did not have the hazy quality of a dream, yet I did not recognize it at all. Dream or otherworldly realm, I could not say. My eyes would never adjust to this dark, for it was no natural darkness, but the true dark of hell. There was a table between myself and the voice, and even the candle that burned upon it glowed with ahollow purple flame, illuminating nothing. Had I reached out with my hands, there would be no way to see them.
The man—no,thing—seated before me almost appeared as if its head floated in the blackness around us. Yet when it shifted, I saw that it wore a mantle of serous ebony sap, as if a thick black sand were being endlessly poured over its shoulders. Nothing made sense; I could not see my own body, yet I could see this entity before me. Long, white fingers emerged from somewhere inside the cloak and tented, though they were fingers only in the loosest sense, as each hand possessed three “fingers,” each a writhing snakelike creature with an open sucking mouth. In the vast quiet, I could hear those horrid creatures teething softly on the air.
