Tomb of Ancients Page 6

  Fathom greeted us warmly, a wool blanket draped over her shoulders, and she offered us more tea and food, but Khent refused her. He blinked heavily, anxious for bed.

  “The bunks are this way,” I explained, leading him through the labyrinth of halls.

  “It is warm and dry here, eyachou. Why can you not sleep?”

  I answered with a shrug, reluctant. When we reached the room where Mary slept, he carefully unburdened himself of the bags and trunks, but our companion did not so much as stir at the noise. I sat down heavily on the bunk across from where Mary rested, putting Mab’s cage on a crate that had been repurposed into a table. A single candle lit the room, and I watched the pink and purple creature pace back and forth in its cage, agitated. Khent sat beside me, then fell backward, his legs hanging off the edge of the bunk while he used his open palms as a pillow.

  “If you fear the shepherd’s folk will find us, I will watch over this place,” he said. “Or do you not trust our strange new friends? I smelled no magic upon the girl, only ink and kindness.”

  I wouldn’t have called them friends. Yet. “They would have harmed us before you arrived if that was their intent. No, I do not fear them, but I do fear my nightmares.”

  Khent sat up, ducking to pull off the tattered remains of his shirt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, a hot flush filling my cheeks.

  “I have nightmares, too,” he explained, unaware of my embarrassment. He pointed to his right arm, and the crisscross of scars and markings there. They looked painful. Some had not healed well. “This was from the creature that bit me. And these?” He ran his finger along a line across his shoulder. “My father thought he could beat the curse out of me. He gave it everything he had. I was a nobleman’s son, not a monster, and he would not accept that I had been bitten. No number of lashes took that back.”

  “And those markings?” I asked.

  “These I asked for. These? They were my choice. At midnight on a full moon, I asked a priest of Anubis and a scribe to carve the ink into my flesh. I was not ashamed of my nature, and so I decided to tell it plainly to the world. My family was furious, but I knew I had lost them the moment that creature chose me. They did not need to embrace me, they needed only accept me, but even that was asking too much. Thankfully, I had a new family, the one you and I share.”

  The rows of images on his arm were mottled with scars, but similar to the shorthand writing Bennu had used in his journals. They were somewhat difficult to read, but I could decipher a few characters.

  Elder son, the one belonging to the Moon

  “I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Of course you can,” he chuckled, his purple eyes half-lidded and sleepy. “To live is to be cursed, many times with things we cannot change. Scars and nightmares are what we share, eyachou. Do you think Mary dwells in ideal dreams? Her love is far away, maybe in danger. She was imprisoned by your father for months. No, Louisa, the nightmares come for us all.”

  I felt sheepish then, for having thought that I was the only one suffering when my eyes closed. There was no sympathy from my parents, or my grandparents, and certainly none at the horrid Pitney School.

  “So few of my memories are comforting. Even as a child I knew nothing but neglect and scolding. My parents didn’t want me, and my grandparents gave me away. Now I know my true father is even worse than the drunk I grew up trying to love,” I told him with a sigh. “So what do I do?”

  Khent leaned back again on the bunk, taking a blanket and balling it up to use as a pillow. “You face the nightmare, eyteht. You kick it in the teeth.”

  I smiled at that and shook my head. For a brief while, I had thought perhaps my heart belonged to shy yet thoughtful Lee. Our fracturing had left me feeling raw, confused, but now I found comfort in Khent’s forthrightness, even if it felt scary. And risky. Too risky, too vulnerable a thing for someone in my position.

  “These pet names are becoming irksome.”

  He yawned. “I am never irksome.”

  “Indeed, if you would face your nightmares so boldly, you are not irksome, but brave. If only I had that courage. Instead I’m filled with trepidation.”

  His thumb poked into my back, just between my shoulders.

  “Eyem.” There. “Now you may sleep. I’ve given you all my courage.”

  Somehow it worked, or else I could no longer stave off the impact of the day. Of the battle. I curled up on the cot and placed the diary under my pillow, blinking my last for the evening while Mab the spider danced in the candlelight.

  It was not long before I woke into my dreams. ’Twas no mystery why I rarely felt fully awake—I lived one life during the day and another at night, leaving one world for another. There was no rest for me, not even at night. And now I found myself wandering the hall of stars again, this time surrounded by them completely, as if I walked through a tunnel made of sky.

  The usual dread did not rise to meet me, though a dark mass like a tangle of shadow waited for me at the end of the hall. Above and around me, the stars shifted into their shapes, constellations forming and spinning slowly, a dazzling dance of twinkling lights. The shadow mass grew and grew, its core radiating with evil. There was the dread I had anticipated and feared; there was the nightmare reaching out toward me.

  First blood, it whispered. First blood.

  It was Father’s voice, of course, the familiar dark thrum of it coiling around me like a rope. Suddenly it felt airless in the tunnel, and I gasped, reaching for my throat. My chest felt as if it might collapse from the pressure.

  We have tasted blood now, their blood. How does it feel?

  He had no form but the shadows, yet I felt him all around me, that cold, squeezing rope freezing me into place. My vision went red, and all I could see was Sparrow’s limp body, her blood seeping out onto the shattered parquet floor. I had tried my best not to look at her in death, but Father had seen. Father had looked. Now I was forced to confront what I had done. No, no, what she had done. What we had all done.

  “I didn’t want to hurt her,” I croaked.

  Yes, you did. The first blood has been spilled, but now it will run free as a river.

  I could see her vacant, icy eyes, a single bead of blood racing between them. They were staring into mine. Her mouth was open, a shard of chandelier crystal sticking through it, as glittering and sharp as her golden spear. The body beneath the glass and metal that had pierced it was twisted and odd, one open hand reaching toward me, the fingers at wrong angles. Help me, her permanent scream seemed to say, help me.

  Regret is useless in war. Father’s voice strangled me now, and no matter how hard I tried I could not tear my gaze away from Sparrow’s dead eyes. No more regret. Tear it out by the root. First blood, more blood. For what they did to our people: More blood.

  “I think not.”

  The shadows gripping me eased, and I heard a low, ancient gasp. Father had been taken by surprise. My vision was my own again, my breath, too, and I struggled to see who had come. It was a woman’s voice that floated toward me, breaking up the shadows like a softly suffusing dawn.

  I tumbled to the ground, released, then watched the mass of writhing black shadows coalesce into a form. Father. He towered over me in his shredded robes and with his skull-like face, his eyes glowing red and his antlers rising almost to the ceiling of stars.

  “You have tormented this child long enough. She is not lost. Her feet have been on the path all along, only you seek to lead her astray.” Twisting, I watched a tall, graceful figure glide toward us. She was dressed in magnificent magenta feathers, her skin dark, dark purple. Eight pink eyes blinked at me in unison, their lashes long and as fine as her bright gown with its countless feathers.

  I knew her, yet my head burned when I looked at her.

  Father’s roar filled the space around us, the constellations vanishing for an instant as if frightened, but gradually they returned, and I felt the woman come close to me, the soft
fringe of her dress brushing my hands. At once, I felt safer. Braver.

  “I will protect her from you however I can, and so will my children. She is yours only by blood, but her heart is good. You bound me with spell and sage, blood and ink, wine and water, but cruelty can be undone by a willing one, and a willing one I have found.”

  “She will never be your servant.” Father’s words were almost lost among his snarls.

  “No servant of mine, but a friend.”

  She stood in front of me, guarding me from Father, and while he thundered his protests and shook the stars, I could sense that his power was threatened by her presence. I scuttled toward her on my knees, taking hold of her skirt with both hands. She grinned down at me, beautiful and serene.

  “I wish you would let me protect you in earnest, child,” she murmured.

  Father and his cloak of shadows were disappearing down the tunnel, though the glow of his red eyes could be seen for a long, long time. I shuddered.

  “How?” I begged her. “How?”

  “You will know me,” she said. “You will know me by my name when you wake. Mab.”

  That one word was like a hammer that broke the nightmare into pieces. I was enveloped in darkness, dreamless and still, that one name echoing on and on, carrying me to morning.

  Chapter Eight

  When I awoke, it was to eight tiny, curious eyes and a little hooked paw, raised as if to shake me out of sleep. A spider. My spider. My spider touching my face. Her leg brushed my nose, and I screamed, backing away on the bed frantically until I smashed into Khent. He shouted as he woke, throwing his hands in every direction at an imagined threat.

  The curses that flew out of his mouth were creative even for him.

  “I’m sorry! Oh! I’m sorry!” Mary shot forward, seemingly from nowhere. It was chaos. As my pulse evened, I realized that she had been out in the hall, and, from the pot of tea cradled carefully in her hands, that she had been finding us breakfast.

  The spider watched me, unmoving, its furry leg still raised.

  “I thought she must be so cooped up in there,” Mary tumbled on, covering her mouth with both hands. “Perhaps it was foolish to open the cage . . .”

  The unhealed bite on my hand began to itch, and I placed my other hand over it. “No, you were right to give her that freedom. She isn’t a spider at all.”

  Mary stared at me, minding the teapot, then I saw her eyes travel slowly over my shoulder to Khent.

  Pushing myself off the bed, I knelt in front of the cot, bringing my face level with the spider. It made no more attempt to touch me, but I could sense the intelligence hiding there.

  “It was like having a word stuck on my tongue for months and months, but I know it now,” I told them, ignoring their strained glances. “Her name is not Mab, but Mother. The soul of an ancient god cannot be killed, yes? But it can be concealed. Father trapped her in this form once he had the Dark Fae book. I saw her when I died, and I saw her just now in my dreams.”

  Mary came to kneel next to me, studying the creature as closely as I did, and Khent did the same from the bunk. How strange it must have been for Mother to have the three of us pressing our noses right up to her. She seemed to take it in stride, darting forward to touch her strangely soft, paw-like foot to my hand where it had been bitten.

  “Aye, you bit me,” I said, remembering how the spider had leapt from my father’s shoulder to take a nibble when he was still trying to masquerade as a human at Coldthistle House. “You were trying to warn me, weren’t you?”

  The spider danced back and forth, still touching my hand.

  “How extraordinary,” Mary breathed. “And how wretched to be trapped like that for so long.”

  Khent chimed in, too, but his thoughts on Father and his methods were sharp enough to pierce steel; I was grateful that Mary could not understand him.

  “But how to undo this?” I mused aloud.

  “It must be buried in your mind somewhere, mm? If Father put her into this creature’s body, then the memory of it simply needs to be found,” Mary said. She leaned back on her heels and pursed her lips. “Ach, I’m sure that’s easier said than done.”

  I stood and rummaged through the trunk Khent had recovered from our house, desperate to find ink and parchment. Vague remembrances of the dream lingered in my brain, and I needed to scratch them down before they disappeared. I came across a folded bit of paper and an old drawing charcoal. They would have to suffice.

  “She said something about the curse in that nightmare,” I told them as I scribbled. “He bound her with spell and sage, blood and ink, wine and water. I can only hope the same kind of ritual would undo all of this.”

  “Brilliant,” Mary murmured. “What does it mean?”

  “Perhaps Dalton or Fathom might know,” I ventured, feeling hopeless. It seemed unlikely that Father would willingly part with the means to reverse his spell. Whenever I learned something he disliked, his anger emerged, and trying to help Mother would no doubt put him into a rage. My hands trembled at that. He was thirsty for more violence, and I feared the instrument of his will would again be my hands.

  “I might know what?”

  Dalton watched us from the open doorway, or perhaps watched was the wrong word, in light of the strip of fabric covering his damaged eyes. But his attention was fixed in our direction, and he sipped casually from a chipped teacup, dressed in a patchy white morning suit.

  “It will probably sound a bit mad . . .”

  “Then I am definitely interested,” he said with a grin.

  “This creature of ours was recovered from Father. She has the soul of an ancient Fae goddess trapped inside. The Mother, actually. Father’s counterpart. It all came to me in a dream, but I only have a few clues.”

  “Which are?”

  I recited the bit of Mother’s speech that I remembered and stumbled upon my own memories as I did so. “It all sounds rather like what Mrs. Haylam does with her shadow binding, making a man of shadow, or preserving a person that way. Chijioke could bind an entire human soul in a small bird! Could it be similar magic?”

  “This only makes me surer that I should write to Chijioke at once,” Mary said, standing. “Could you assist me with that, Dalton?”

  “Fathom can give you Wings, our owl. He’s much faster than the post.”

  With that, Mary gave us all a quick, shy smile and dodged out of the room. I had no doubt she was very eager to write to Chijioke and have him receive the letter with magical haste.

  “And I think you may be on to something, Louisa,” Dalton added, joining us near the spider. His tea smelled rich with bergamot and lavender, and the scent made my stomach growl. “It will be difficult to find anyone with even a fraction of Mrs. Haylam’s power in the city, but I may know someone across town. We need to gather horses at St. Albans anyway, and it will be along the way. Hello, what’s this, then?”

  He had taken the little square of parchment from me with the scribbled notes. Flipping it over, he found the letter I had taken ages ago from Henry, meant for the bookshop that had procured Bennu’s journals. I had promised to deliver it when I reached London and never bothered to out of spite.

  “This will be a spot of help,” he said, running his thumb over the address. “It’s been quite some time since I chatted with a shadow binder, but the chaps at Cadwallader’s are the perfect place to start.”

  We made an odd sight, I’m sure, Mary and I in borrowed, old frocks that would not have looked out of place on a Covent Garden stage. Khent had also borrowed something suitable from Dalton, though luckily he could disguise the ill-fitting clothes with a heavy black shawled jacket, perfect for the persistent rain. Dalton hid under a hood, and Fathom weathered the wet in a sturdy leather coat that seemed fit for crossing the North Atlantic.

  And, of course, Mab. Mother.

  Now that my memories of her had returned, it felt uncivil to leave her behind in the safe house cellar, and so she accompanied us in her cage to Cadwall
ader’s, which was not far, a short carriage ride to Greenwich, a stone’s throw from the great, glass-domed Royal Observatory. The streets were all but empty as the rain poured down, but even with more threatening clouds hanging overhead, pockets of the shepherd’s followers haunted corners, huddling under overhangs with their white clothes sodden and dripping. I could feel each of us in the carriage flinch whenever we passed another cluster of white chanters.

  “Is it just me or are there many more of them today?” I whispered.

  “We must be careful,” Dalton told us as the carriage rocked from side to side. We had hired out a cab instead of taking the more conspicuous carriage with magicked white horses. “Cadwallader’s is safe for us, but when we move along the streets, there will be eyes everywhere.”

  I pressed one knuckle to my lips, ducking down from the window. “Perhaps we should simply press on to Coldthistle.”

  “Wings will return soon with word,” Dalton assured me, his face shadowed by his hood. “I should like to know the state of things there before charging in. Regardless, if we can truly free Mother and return her to power, having another ancient one on our side would be prudent. Sparrow will not be the last of our troubles.”

  “Our troubles,” Mary corrected him, gesturing to herself, Khent, and me. “You’re one of the Upworlders. Why should you worry?”

  It needn’t be said, I knew perfectly well that she wanted to return to Coldthistle and see with her own eyes that Chijioke and Poppy were safe.

  “Why? Because we harbored you. Because I turned my back on the shepherd long ago. Because I did nothing to help Sparrow. Because I assist you still. The road to Coldthistle will be dangerous, and Mother could make our chances substantially better.”