60. Interrogated by Shadows
60
INTERROGATED BY SHADOWS
For a demon dwelt where his heart should be,
That lived on blood and sin
— JOHN T. CAMPION, “EMMET’S DEATH”
T rue silence doesn’t really exist. Everything in the universe is made of energy, of movement, which means that it all produces some kind of noise, audible to our clumsy human ears or not. The only real silence is death.
The tiniest of sounds rescued me when I thought I was lost forever.
My ears found consciousness before any other part did. Darkness had swallowed me whole and still held me in a firm grip as I came to, groggy like I’d been under heavy sedation. It could have been a few minutes, hours, or days. At first, I didn’t even care, only vaguely registering that I was alive, that I existed at all, with a sort of detached observation.
Alive, am I? Huh.
Then, there it was again. The drip, drip, drip. The trickle of water.
I would know it anywhere.
I sat up.
I opened my eyes but only darkness greeted me, the same unforgiving black that had wrapped around my senses before I’d been—what? Taken? Moved? Kidnapped?
I inhaled and was rewarded with the dank scent of damp, mold, earth, and air with too little oxygen. But at least that sense was available too. A cautious, salty lick of my hand told me I’d been sweating and also that I could taste.
Cautiously, I reached out, and my fingertips grazed a slick, rocky surface that was a little bit slimy in some parts. Terror had imprinted there too. A cave, then, where other people had been kept before me.
Four out of five senses firing. Not too bad.
I pulled my hands back into my lap as I sat up. Perhaps the Council had decided to pull me into the recesses of the mountain, into one of its ancient spaces where other prisoners were held. I wasn’t quite ready to explore that fear or the cave’s previous experiences. Something told me a place like this would have nothing nice to share. But I was here. I was alive. And I could feel. It was a start.
I blinked several times and tried to find even a pinprick of light to guide my sight, but there was nothing. So, I tilted my head and listened to the drops. They seemed to be far away, and there was an echo, like every drop was falling from a great distance into a pool.
Then something louder, closer. A trickle. The song of a creek coming to life.
Touch the water .
Oh, that I could.
My head ached as I leaned back against the stone wall. What to do next? I could try to feel my way somewhere and at least determine the cave’s dimensions. But the echo suggested a height or maybe a very dangerous drop. Besides, other things occupied caves like these—the living were the least of my worries.
“Cassandra?”
I jerked at the sound of my name, spoken in that deep, warm baritone.
“Cass? Are you there?”
“Jonathan?” Relief flooded me.
He was close, though not immediately so. A cough echoed off the walls of the cave, and a scatter of pebbles chased it.“Yes, it’s me. Keep—keep talking.”
“I—I’m here,” I called into the darkness. “Where are you?”
As they escaped my mouth, the words themselves seemed to light up just a bit—enough to cast a gentle glow across the cave, through which I could now see a pair of glowing green eyes blinking through the dark—lynx eyes.
“Jonathan!” I started to scramble up from my reclined position, but his cry was immediate.
“For the love of the gods, stop !”
I froze. “What is it?”
Those eyes were two tiny beacons in this frightening abyss—and it was an abyss, I realized. Yawning between us was a chasm of pure darkness. All I could see in Jonathan’s eyes was fear and caution, along with the flickering indication of his sorcerer’s Sight.
“You’re on a cliff. We’re separated. One step, and you’ll fall.”
I pressed myself against the wall, edging as far away from that invisible ledge as I dared. “Jonathan,” I whispered.“Where are we? Is this—is this still the Brigantian?”
“No.” His answer was final. “Definitely not. I’ve explored every inch of that school, and there’s nothing like this there. This feels similar to the place where it was founded, though. The original school was built on an ancient gravesite similar to the passage tomb Rachel was excavating, and some of them were developed from natural cave systems. Ones that would have housed the first of us, in the very beginning.”
I’d seen caves like that in books. Places where the first humans had taken time out of their lives based on hunting and gathering to put their marks on cave walls. Pictures of animals. Handprints. Playful spots of color and pattern that spoke of the pure joy of being alive.
If there was anything that made us all human, fae or otherwise, it was art.
“Can you get us out?”
I was hopeful. He had some power here, at least. I imagined a spell where he could ask the rock to create a tunnel for us. Rearrange itself as an opening that would allow us to escape.
“No.” Hopelessness—and shame—laced through the word. “There’s a spell on this place that suppresses my power. Yours?”
I pressed my fingers into the rocks below. A memory of another sitting in just this spot, equally afraid, practically throttled me before I jerked my hand back. If memories were meaning, the terror of this cave was substantial.
Just how old was the terror leaching from these walls?
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I can feel the people who’ve been here before. Their memories are strong. Not much good it will do us, though.” I shrunk into myself, not wanting to risk a full attack. Especially without the one person who had ever seemed to calm it on the other side of a crevasse.
“Who—do you know how we got here?”
“My father. He must have been waiting. The moment Celine opened the safeguards, we were taken. I should have been prepared.”
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
He was quiet. Then: “I should have been prepared.”
“Yes, you should have.”
A shaft of light shot through the cave like a spear as a door opened behind me. It was so bright compared to the abject darkness that when I turned, I couldn’t see anything else but the illuminated stream and the silhouette of a tall, thin figure in its center.
Gradually, my eyes adjusted, and I was able to get a brief look at the cave.
Not an abyss, then. Just a five-foot drop or so to a river that seemed to have carved the space out from the beginning. Walls that curved around us like a hug, covered in the same kinds of spirals and other markings I’d seen in the other passage tomb. Pockets had been carved out of each side of the river, where the remains of previous denizens lay in a jumble of aged bones.
I turned back to the door.
It was him.
Caleb Lynch.
The shadowed man, loose-limbed and tall, floated more than he could actually stand in the long black coat that seemed to drag his face even farther down.
The last five months hadn’t treated him well. He looked more like the skulls bordering the river than a living man.
Jonathan sprang up on the other side. He opened his mouth with a spell, but nothing came out. His eyes bulged as he tried again.
The man behind me barked a laugh, hoarse and cruel.
“Cat got your tongue?” he jeered in the Queen’s English. “I still can’t believe you are my son. Such a disappointment.” He snapped his fingers, and Jonathan gagged like he was choking.
That was all it took to move me to action.
I jumped up and started for the door, hand outstretched. “Let him go!”
Just as I was about to grab his wrist, Lynch raised his other hand, and I was slammed backward against the wall. “I don’t think so. I remember that little trick from the last time we met. You’ll keep those hands to yourself.”
I tried again, but it was as if I was bound to the stone. Panic coursed through me—not just mine, but from others who had been in my exact position. Too many to count.
How many people had he tortured here?
How many people had died?
“Please.” I wasn’t above begging. “I don’t know what you want, but he doesn’t have what you’re looking for. I do.”
Lynch dropped his hand, leaving Jonathan to collapse onto the ground, gasping for breath. “Don’t know what I want? I thought you were supposed to be a vector for truth, little oracle. You know very well what I want, and you’re going to give it to me. Or else your mate here will suffer.”
“Don’t do it,” Jonathan called, his voice rasping with effort. “I’m not worth it, Cass. I’m not .”
I glanced at him, then back at Lynch, who leered over us both in an excellent imitation of Lurch from The Addams Family .
“Come with me,” he ordered, and before I could do anything, he snapped his fingers again. My entire body was elevated off the ground just enough that the air itself could carry me after him.
“Cassandra!” Jonathan called in a voice cracked with the same desperation that seemed to cut through my chest, my heart, my soul.
“Don’t fret,” his father told him. “She’ll be back. Whether that’s in one piece is up to her.”
We floated—and I say “we” because I saw no evidence that Lynch was walking any more than I was—out of the depths of the chamber and up a flight of crooked stone stairs to an area of the complex that seemed to be much more recent—and by recent, I mean medieval instead of neolithic. It was a prison, all the chambers barred by great iron gates, no doubt enchanted to keep their prisoners, plain and fae alike, firmly in place. Misery and pain filtered up through my feet the moment they touched the ground.
I was plopped in the center of one of the chambers. Lynch entered behind me, his long black robes brushing the bottom of the gravelly dirt floor, adding to his overall apparition-like appearance.
Gods, why did he look so strange?
Though he wasn’t quite as shrouded in shadows as I remembered, there was still something very odd about the way Caleb Lynch was put together. His body moved as if the bones were separated from one another, jiggling like a marionette on strings. Everything seemed loose, and the dark circles below his eyes and in the hollows of his neck and cheeks enhanced that skeletal appearance. His very skin sank into his bones. It was like the old man was on the verge of scattering—like the unity of his body and spirit was a large shell suffering from millions of fractures, waiting for the right moment to crumble into dust. A single gust of wind might blow him away for good.
I wished it would.
“You have something of mine, Ms. Whelan.” His voice was low like his son’s but creaked like an old rocking chair.“Something that was taken from me by your grandmother. She was very stubborn, and it did not serve her well. If you give it to me now, you can avoid her fate.”
“You mean the one where you stole her memories and left her brain dead?” I swiped at him, but couldn’t find a way to take hold in his phantasmagoric form. He wasn’t quite a ghost but bordered on it.
His power, however, did not.
He held up a hand, and once again, I was slammed backward, this time into the iron bars that marked the cell. My bones seemed to rattle like his, and blood trickled down my cheek where the iron had cut me.
“I don’t have it,” I said as I swiped at the blood. I couldn’t make another grab at him. Something about the air inside this cell felt so horribly heavy. Or maybe it was just my bones. “Did you think I just walked into the Brigantian with a thousands-year-old secret gift-wrapped for the Magi?”
“Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look.” With two long fingers, Lynch pinched a bit of skin on his cheek and pulled meditatively.
“They don’t know about you, do they?” I asked. “Senni does, of course. He tried to comb through my mind to find it for you. But the rest of them think it was Penny’s to guard. They think you’re looking for her , not trying to find the secret to immortality for yourself so you don’t blow into the wind. I told them, though. I told them everything you did to her, to me, so don’t expect you’re just going to walk back in there and get whatever you?—”
My mouth snapped shut with a wave of his bony hand.
He examined me for a long time, beady eyes glinting dangerously. He didn’t really look like his son, though as ancient as he appeared, I doubted I would see much of a resemblance other than the long nose and the high cheekbones. Everything else was decayed, though I wondered if he might have been a handsome man in his youth.
“You speak entirely too much for a woman,” he informed me. “I suspect it’s learned behavior. Penelope was exactly the same. She didn’t shut up until forced either.”
His power swirled, shadows reaching through the cell and wrapping around me.
But unlike the last time, they had no hold, and I Saw his weakness through their flimsy strikes.
His power was waning—it was why he relied on shadows to do his work for him. Their flimsy non-reality was the only thing that would respond to magic that wanted to return to the earth and be freed from this mortal cage.
It made my choice clear.
Mind bend. At all costs.
I lunged for him, and though I missed his body again, I was able to grab his cloak. That alone carried enough of his thoughts—fear, mostly. Greed, yes, but fear.
Of me.
Let. Me. Go , I ordered.
Lynch paused, but it wasn’t quite enough. He mumbled a spell that made the cloak burn under my fingertips. I released it with a yelp, and he swept the loose fabric up and over his shoulder.
“You will tell me what you know,” he hissed. “And while I may not have the strength anymore to force you, there are others who have.”
As if on cue, steps echoed through the chambers, and another fae appeared: Senni Perumal, the other seer on the Council.
“Senni. Time is of the essence,” Lynch said. “I am weakening, and Bertram hasn’t delivered the potion.”
“I was delayed,” Senni replied. “You caused quite the uproar. What happened to coming through the caves?”
“I saw an alternative, and I took it. The Speaker was stupid enough to open the wards for them.”
“And you were stupid enough to warp with depleted power.” Senni approached me, rubbing his hands together. “So, we meet again, little seer. You will find I am better prepared. There will be no more mind bending this time.”
“She tried it with me too.” Lynch sounded almost bitter as he leaned against the wall for support. “Just as sly and dishonest as her supposed ‘mate.’”
“And just as disorganized,” Senni said. “I’ve already Seen what she has. It’s a mess. The foolish memories of a little girl and millions of others she got from who knows where. She has no control over what she Sees, and can’t keep anyone out either. It will take months to find everything and clean her brain properly.”
“We don’t have months. Weeks, at best.” Lynch glanced in the direction we had come. “Perhaps she’ll need some different persuasion. The boy may be of some use after all.” He gave a great cough that literally made his bones shake, then checked an ancient pocket watch. “Bertram should be arriving. I’ll take the draught and return.”
Senni nodded. “Go. I’ll find what I can.” Lynch left me with the seer, who was rubbing his hands eagerly. “We were in the middle of something. I think we will return to it.”
He didn’t have to touch me to seize my head. And this time, it was far more painful than in the Council chamber. Now, he squeezed me like a tourniquet, and it was obviously where Caleb Lynch had learned part of the technique he had used to wring memories from Gran and me in Manzanita—though how, exactly he had managed it with a sorcerer’s power was a puzzle. Maybe Senni had been there the whole time.
It was impossible.
It should be impossible.
But right now, it was the least of my worries.
I thrashed on the ground, throwing myself against the stone as I grabbed at my hair, my scalp, desperate to escape this horrible hold. Get out of my head!
“Then tell me what I need to know, witch!” Senni shouted right back. “Tell me what your grandmother was guarding. I See it now—there was a package, sent over the winter. She died and bade you to guard it. But you don’t have to do that anymore. You don’t have to be as selfish as she was. The Council didn’t understand the Secret, so they wanted it hidden away, but it is the key to the lives we are all promised by the magic itself. You are keeping it from us!”
The shroud of his power had returned, blinding me again while he skipped through my memories like a rock across a river. I tried to grab it with my mind’s own grip again and pulled.
I’m not keeping anything! I twisted out of his power’s sway, and to my shock, it was as if I had pushed Senni across the room.
“No!” he seethed and whipped his mind around mine once more with an unbreakable hold.
I threw my hands out, looking for purchase, anything to root me in the here and now instead of the oblivion he was chasing with every memory that dripped out of my brain and into his.
My mind was about to crack. Still, there was a shape there, one I hadn’t Seen before. Tall and round, like one of the hubcap-sized rocks that made up the walls of this stone prison. But unlike the stones, it wasn’t strong. Like an egg, it would shatter with just the right tap.
Please , I begged someone. Anyone. A vision, a bit of energy, the goddesses or fair folk the ancients believed lived in places like these. Brigid, help me.
A spirit drifted from the rock and appeared between Senni and me. Tall and statuesque, she had bright blue eyes and dark skin, with silver hair that hung to her hips over a ragged tunic. Gold rings pierced all the way around one ear along with beads hanging off braids and around her wrists.
Senni seemed to look right through her, but she spoke to me directly.
Sister , she said without really saying it. It was a language similar to Irish, but not quite the same. Enough that I could understand her meaning. If I listened with my heart.
She closed her eyes, and I Saw the truth.
She was no goddess, but a woman like me.
An oracle, a vector for the world. Someone who had been laid to rest under this dungeon and tortured above it. Who had lived just long enough for her life and knowledge to connect with the stone.
Imbolc to Solstice, dying with the light of the sun before her remains were charred under the sun’s rays. Her body was gone.
But her life remained in the stone.
Help, I asked her. Help me escape.
There is no help for you. She almost seemed amused. This is your fate. It’s why you are here.
I didn’t come here to die , I said.
No, she agreed. You did not come here to die.
Then what? I asked as Senni continued to plow through my brain, taking the memories I could not shield.
Find the Lost One. Free her Secret. Be at peace.
How? I asked. How do I find her? How do I get out of here to do that?
She cocked her head, as if the question was absurd, then looked at the vial around my neck.
How else? she replied. Touch the water .
I took my hands from the ground, and the spirit disappeared. Under my dress, a vial of water hung between my breasts on the chain my cousins had brought me.
Blindly, I pulled it out and unscrewed the stopper, then tipped the remaining liquid into my palm.
Water flowed over my fingers, but instead of falling to the floor, the shape of it appeared before me, dispersing the fragile stone with a mere splash and taking up its position within me. Lending me its shape.
Magic flowed through my memories and took my power, then surged through the shroud Senni had woven to capture it. Soaking it. Drowning it. Then rushing through those threads with the force of a storm and washing me free as it drowned him completely.
Light returned. My sight returned.
The seer lay cold on the floor while footsteps shuffled above.
A stream of sunlight pierced the air, illuminating dust particles floating so peacefully through nothingness. But I couldn’t stop to admire the simple beauty of the elements.
I was already running back to the cave.