Tomb of Ancients Read online

  “Shall I stop?” It was taunting me, all but giggling.

  “No,” I shouted. “No, I am willing.”

  “But are you truly willing? You are willing in the mind, but are you willing in the spirit? Let us see.”

  I hated its voice, eerie and cold, and I hated that it frightened me. Its fingers pulled and pulled, lifting now, though my hand, gripped strongly by some unseen force, stayed against the table. I watched with open-mouthed horror as the flesh of my palm grew taut, then I felt it begin to tear. The wound was small at first, but at once the blood came, filling in at the seams where my skin gave. Hot blood pooled, almost burning in contrast to the chill in the air and the Binder’s fingers, which were oddly without temperature, as if the thing was neither warm enough to be living nor cold enough to be dead.

  I gritted my teeth, but the pain of it was no illusion, no trick, my mind revolting at what my eyes beheld, a tremor starting in my core that moved quickly to my stomach. I know I must have vomited somewhere into the darkness around us. I know I shouted, but not for mercy, for I refused to be trapped in that void forever. I cursed the thing. I found ugly words I had never uttered aloud before. I screamed at it incoherently in a language that wasn’t even my own, one I could not decipher if pressed, one that felt true and evil enough to punish it for skinning my palm right before my eyes. A raw, bloody flap came free, peeling away to reveal the slick, pink meat of my hand.

  It was surprise, perhaps, that made the pain vanish for an instant. Blood poured from my hand, spilling in thick rivers onto the table. The Binder’s fingers lingered, keeping the skin of my palm aloft so that we could both see what was beneath.

  A word. A single word was somehow there, written on slick and shining sinew.

  Willing

  I was dizzy and faint, hoarse from screaming, but the sight of that word somehow gave me comfort. A test had been passed, one I did not know I had prepared for. The Binder sneered but released its cruel grip on my skin. I teetered back, eyes rolling from the blood I had lost, which spread all around us. My hand burned steadily, pinpricks of red light dancing in front of my eyes. The fiend in front of me spun and tilted. My mouth went bone dry; I was going to collapse.

  Then I was falling, tumbling helplessly into the dark pit, the concentrated burning in my hand the only thing I could really feel or hold on to. Above me, high above me, I heard the Binder whispering:

  Spell and sage, blood and ink, water and wine. These bindings are undone.

  Chapter Eleven

  As if stirring from a deep sleep, I distantly felt someone lifting me up. Cold, clean water trickled into my mouth, and I was forced to swallow it. Then came the taste of something bitter, and I went away again, not to the Binder’s realm but to unbroken and welcome rest.

  When I woke more fully, it was to the sensation of a cloth pressed to my forehead. Mary was there, staring down at me with wide, worried eyes.

  “Oh, thank every star in the firmament!” she cried. “She’s awake! Everyone! Louisa is awake!”

  My head felt as if it had been stuffed on a pike, my neck stiff and sore. I tried to rouse myself, but, weakened, I flopped back down to the pillow. Blinking around, I did not recognize my surroundings, but the light, dusty smell on the air was familiar. They had placed me in a small bedroom, its chintzy, cozy manner reminding me of Giles St. Giles’s home in Derridon. There were overstuffed chairs and fluffy carpets, with a fire in the hearth and two orange cats dozing in front of it.

  “Where are they?” Mary fussed, standing and trotting to the open door.

  In answer, raised voices rumbled through the floorboards, then a series of sharp cracks like fevered pounding on a door. I forced myself to sit up, ignoring the dizziness lingering in my head. My right palm hurt as soon as I touched the blankets, and I hissed, pulling it away to find I had not escaped the dark pit unscathed. Scarlet with irritation, black script had been carved into my hand. It was unreadable, a language neither I, nor apparently Father, spoke. But I knew, of course, what it must mean.

  “How did I get this?” I asked as Mary ran back to the bed.

  “Louisa, I will explain it all to you later. Something is amiss downstairs. Hurry!”

  She was right. There were shouts now and more banging, and I let Mary throw the covers off me and pull me carefully out of the bed.

  “Wait,” I said, teetering. “The diary . . .”

  “Dalton has it,” she assured me. “Come on!”

  My body felt as if I had been tumbled down a mountain, but I followed, leaning heavily against her shoulder as we left behind the cats, which appeared unbothered. We emerged onto a walkway above the shop, on the fourth floor, with all the many shelves and lanterns spread out below us. From that vantage, I could see Fathom and Khent braced against the front door, their backs pressed to it, their legs straining.

  Dalton shouted across the floor to Niles, who had managed to find a number of pistols stashed underneath the counter. But as Mary dragged me along toward the stairs, all I could focus on was the woman lying in the middle of the store, curled on her side in a dark feathery dress, unmoving. Mother. There was no sign of the witch.

  “Did it work? Or is she . . . Please tell me it worked,” I murmured.

  “We were afraid to move her, Louisa. She hasn’t taken a single breath since the ritual. You were moaning and groaning, so we thought it safe to bring you to bed. Oh, but it’s been hours and hours. I was afraid you would never recover.”

  My heart sank. The Binder had said the bonds were broken. Why was Mother unmoving? Had the ritual somehow killed her? Had I done something wrong?

  With each step, I felt slightly stronger, and at last I could walk on my own, hurrying across the walkway. We skidded to a stop then, as Fathom shouted something incoherent and the door behind them contorted, sagging inward, then exploded in flames. It was madness to move toward the fire, but our friends were in danger, and I could not just stand there and watch.

  “Come on, Mary.” I tugged at her.

  “You’re still too weak,” she insisted.

  But I was already on the move. “We will find a way to be useful somehow.”

  “Torches!” I heard Khent thunder. “There are too many of them!”

  Too many of them, and the moon would not be full again, if it were indeed evening. I glanced frantically to Mary as torch-bearing followers of the shepherd streamed into the shop, swinging their lit truncheons in front of them as they went. Khent and Fathom fell back, and Niles and Dalton stood not far from Mother, in front of her on the carpets, taking aim and firing as best they could.

  “Mary!” I cried. “Can you not do something?”

  “I’m weak from the ball, but I will do what I can,” she said, pursing her lips tightly and throwing her hands outward. Her shielding powers shimmered out from her chest as usual, though the glimmer seemed somehow dimmed. I dodged around her, taking the steps two and then three at a time, pelting across the shop floor in time to see the shelves nearest the door catch fire. It was all too soon—the taste of smoke filled my mouth again, and I fought a wave of nausea—this time it was real. This time my friends could be killed if the fire raged out of control.

  Courage.

  Mary’s shield enveloped us, lessening the sting of the smoke and the heat of the flames, but already the fire was shooting along the walls, the old, brittle pages of the books the perfect but heartbreaking kindling. We may as well have been trying to stand against our attackers on a pile of dry twigs. Khent backed into the bubble, accepting a pistol from Niles, but knowing not what to do with it, he simply bludgeoned the nearest person in white, knocking the torch from their hand and stamping it out with his boot. Fathom quickly loaded the pistol she had taken from Niles, and proved an excellent shot, but there were simply too many targets.

  And worse, more threatening than their swinging clubs, was the fire now creeping across the wood floor toward us.

  “They must have followed me back from the tavern,” Fat
hom muttered. I could hardly hear her over the melee and the crackle of flames.

  “I never thought I would say this,” Dalton said, firing blindly into the crush of bodies surging against us. “But now would be a good time for your father to come out and play.”

  I went rigid, staring at him. Hurt. But he was right. We were being overwhelmed, and I was not at all the marksman we needed. Mary’s powers were faltering, the gossamer surface of her bubble fading out, more and more smoke curling in toward us. And the fire? There was no stopping it now—it ate and ate, hungry, gobbling up whole shelves, hemming us in on three sides with walls of climbing flames. Mary screamed as a beam not far above us cracked and swung free, then crashed down to the floor, glass cases showering us with shards. Her shield depleted completely, and I heard her footsteps as she abandoned the loft and joined us.

  Khent took a bad blow to his forearm, stumbling back into me. I caught him by the shoulder and watched the blood seep through his shirt. I closed my eyes, letting the chaos and smoke fill me, letting the blood be all that I saw. First blood. More blood.

  Father woke almost too eagerly. He had been waiting for this moment. My eyes glazed with red, and I felt the strange and wild stirring of his power as it overtook my own thoughts. I shook, not wanting to lose control, not wanting to unleash him again. There was no telling who would be caught in the ensuing carnage.

  I could see nothing, but I heard the roar of the fire and the screams of righteous anger from the followers as they beat us back farther into the shop. We were losing ground, and I was out of time. But a light hand fell on my shoulder, soft and consoling, so consoling that I felt Father’s influence over me loosen until it fell away completely. I looked up and to the left and found Mother gazing down at me, her mouth half lifted in a forlorn smile.

  “No,” she told me. “You must never let him out.”

  “But—”

  She silenced me with a shake of her head. All eight of her delicate purple eyes closed, and the hem of her feathered dress fluttered from the gust of the fire. Pressing on my shoulder, she moved ahead, and then seemed to glide across the singed carpets toward the fray. She was defenseless and carried no weapon, and I scrambled after her. I could not let her die at the hands of these people, not after the ordeal I had undergone to save her. She was met with alarmed shouts from Khent, Dalton, and Fathom, who tried to coax her back toward safety, but she would not be deterred.

  “Peace,” I heard her say just above the din. Then louder, “Peace.”

  All at once, as if put under a blanketing spell, the followers lowered their clubs and torches, mouths hanging open a little in wonder. She had captured their whole attention with two words, spoken as if in friendly conversation. Flinging her arms wide to them, she gazed around, seemingly unconcerned by the smoke or the fire eating its way toward her.

  “I know your hearts,” she said. “I know that when you wake tomorrow, tired and afraid, you will look back on this moment and feel only one thing. Regret. Turn away. Turn away from this violence and this hatred. Turn away from this place. Someone awaits you. Will you greet them with relief or with regret?”

  A hush fell upon us all. The mob shifted, and then I could make out their individual faces. Men and women, old and young, their eyes open wide as if seeing us and one another for the first time. One club fell to the ground, and then another, and I watched a mismatched pair grab hands and turn toward the broken door. They were leaving. Retreating.

  “This is our chance,” Dalton said, gesturing for us to follow. “There’s a back way out. Quickly. I had hoped to save the books, but we have no choice.”

  I let Mary and Khent go ahead of me, pushing them along, then watched Mother stay there on the burning carpets until the last follower of the shepherd dispersed. Then she turned and drifted along beside me, her hands clasped at her waist, feathery train trailing behind her, dragging through the charred remains of books and shelves.

  “That . . .” I was astonished, almost at a loss for words. “How did you do that?”

  She glanced down at me, a dimple running down one cheek. “It was only possible because they had no true hate in their hearts for us. I wanted to give them a chance. Peace is always preferable.”

  “Now I know why Father wanted you gone so much,” I murmured, following the others behind the sales counter to a backroom and then a short door blocked by a bookcase. Niles nudged it aside and opened the door, letting in the blessed, rain-soaked air.

  “He was not always as he is now,” she told me with a mournful sigh. “But he watched too many of us die. When you lose your children, something changes inside you forever.”

  “They were your children, too,” I pointed out.

  “Their loss broke my heart,” she said. “It scorched his to ash.”

  Chapter Twelve

  1248, Constantinople

  “You do not know where to eat, my friends. You do not know! Baki will show you. Baki knows every stall and butcher from Galata to the port. That tea shop by the temple serves piss. What were you thinking, Dark One?”

  My Greek, far better than Henry’s, was proving useful when dealing with Baki. I knew him only tangentially through Finch, who spoke highly of the man. Baki took up nearly the entire alley ahead of us, his immense belly popping out from under an embroidered vest and short tunic. His head and shoulders were covered with a fantastically striped shawl, though it did little to hide his horns and pointed ears.

  “We’re not here for the food,” I told him with a snort.

  “But we’ll be sure to try the oxtail,” Henry teased.

  Baki rumbled with laughter, patting his stomach and turning to give us a wink. His eyes were mismatched, one blue and one a catlike yellow.

  “Very good, my friends. I myself do not partake in cow flesh, but Baki will look the other way if you are so inclined. Maybe we can discuss your friend’s quest for the writer over honeyed pudding tomorrow. There are rumors of some great battle at the Henge, and Baki is always ready to talk of battle!”

  Leave it to Henry to make friends with another Upworlder faster than I could. The narrow passage we traveled down was lit only by the lanterns of homes above us. The neighborhood was one I couldn’t name, somewhere to the southwest of the coliseum and garden-heavy estates of the wealthy. The walls here had once been painted but had been long since neglected. Rat eyes sparkled from every crevice, flies gathered over piles of refuse and rotting bones, their swarms thick enough to choke you.

  Inside Henry’s pack, the little hellhound pup whined. I sympathized. We let Baki go ahead while Ara took up the rear. Her indistinct grumbles joined the dog’s whimpers.

  “I don’t like this,” I heard her say. It was a phrase she must have uttered twenty times already that day.

  “You try and stop him,” I replied. “You know how he gets once he has a notion.”

  “Me?” Ara laughed, though her laughter never sounded innocent or merry. “You try. You know he worships you.”

  I rolled my eyes, watching Baki lift a drooping clothesline out of the way. The darkness here was dense and soupy, the walls pressing in more and more as we followed some path only Baki knew. I told myself we could trust him. Finch was a good judge of character, and Baki was one of ours. Under his shawl, down near his waist, I could see a small tail swishing against the fabric, barely concealed. He was a Re’em, strong as a team of oxen, with horns and teeth that could make quick work of flesh. Perhaps only Goliath and Nephilim were stronger, or whatever Ara was, but she was not one of ours.

  “We are close, my friends. Only whispers now, and only if you must.”

  The silence allowed me to hear the skittering of unseen rat claws and the occasional deep voice muted by plaster and brick. Deeper we went, as if navigating a jungle and not city streets. What I would’ve given to be back at that mediocre tea shop, sipping herbal brew and complaining about the heat. I had no stomach for these dark adventures, but Henry, whether because of his own dark nature or his curi
osity, could not get enough of them.

  One day I would learn to turn him down. One day . . .

  “And you’re sure this Faraday chap can help us? I’m spending a lot of coin on you, friend, it had better not be a waste,” Henry hissed.

  “I would take you to him for only the gift of that little doggy,” Baki said, his pointed ears perking under his shawl. Under his tunic, his tail swished faster.

  “Ha. Unlikely. That runt is worth more than any information you or this stranger might have,” Henry replied. “And anyway, I’ve grown attached.”

  “Of course, of course. Now, friends, be silent, we are here.”

  I murmured a prayer of thanks to the shepherd, huddling close to Henry and Baki as the tall and round Re’em drew up short to a door hidden by a tattered burlap cover. He pushed the cover aside and knocked in a strange pattern, then waited. Something brushed by my ankle, and I gasped, nearly leaping into Henry’s arms with fright.

  “Steady on,” he whispered. “Just a mouse.”

  “Mice are not cold and wet.”

  The door swung open, revealing a hovel with a low ceiling. A hunchbacked woman met us there, her hair white, her eyes white, her garb completely black. Nobody would call her appealing to look at, her mouth no more than a short slash above her chin.

  “Ah, White Keeper, you are looking radiant this evening,” Baki cooed.

  White Keeper. That certainly fit. The rest of it? Henry and I exchanged a glance. She reached a crooked arm out from her black cloak, the wrinkly white skin covered in faded ink markings. Patting Baki’s cheek, she puffed out a dry laugh.

  “What do you need, my boy?” she asked in Greek. “I take it this is not a social call. How disappointing. You never come to see me unless you need something.”