Chapter 6 #2
In his shadow, thrown across my doorjamb, I noticed a pattern glowing in the shape of a small circle with a cross through it, like the music symbol for coda—which meant new part or new music.
It was another odd thing in a growing list of odd things that I couldn’t explain.
After he left, I tried calling Henry again.
Nothing. Whatever was going down, I hoped he was just lying low for a while.
For the moment, the anxiety inside me had subsided, and I turned my focus to the books
Church had sent me home with last night.
They sat in a neat pile next to other piles of books I had on loan from the library: history and philosophy—for personal interest and songwriting material—and some volumes on composing from Andrew Lloyd Webber, James MacMillan, and Richard Wagner, as well as a few film scores.
Plus a dozen or so novels. Songwriting was storytelling, so reading decent books helped with narrative technique.
I went through four or five a month. New stuff, and classics, too—Tolkien, Lehane, Dickens, Shakespeare.
I’d found words had a kind of music of their own.
The sunlight had disappeared into the evening, so I switched on my one lamp—a shaded, bronzed boot that had once belonged to Lemmy of Motorhead.
Then I grabbed the book on top of the stack Church had given me and turned to the title page: The Precedent: Known and Ratified Laws for the Governance of Thanaturgic Actions and Disputes.
Dense reading, no doubt.
I set the book aside and scanned the next few: Calling, Binding, and Dismissing Semblances; Catalysts: The Tools of the Thanatist; and The Effects of Common Lantern-Bow Strokes.
There were a few others, as well as a pocket-sized book entitled The New Thanatist’s Quick Reference Field Manual.
Its cover and pages were coated in some kind of resin.
At the bottom of the pile was Henry’s journal.
For a few moments I just sat there with it in my hands.
Holding it helped me feel closer to him somehow.
But I wasn’t sure I should read it. That felt like something you do after a death.
Henry was still out there. That’s what I chose to believe, anyway.
Church had probably included it because it might help us find our friend.
But I didn’t feel ready to hear Henry’s private thoughts.
Seemed like a violation of trust. And once I’d read those things .
. . well, that was a gateway, too, of sorts.
So, I set the journal aside and dove into the others, scanning parts, skipping others, and sometimes reading whole chapters.
As a kid, I’d begun humming when I read.
Not loud. More like the sotto voce in Mozart’s Requiem.
It was an undertone only I could hear. But when I did it, I could finish a book in half the time it took Chuey—and Chuey read tech manuals the way some folks read comic books—plus it gave me an echoic memory.
Like eidetic, but with auditory cues. My recall on the stuff I read while humming was pretty damn good.
I think I started doing it in second grade after abandoning piano lessons—my teacher got fed up with me because I’d scan a piece of sheet music once or twice while painfully humming out the notes and then wouldn’t need or use the sheet music anymore.
Not that I could play a piece perfectly afterward, but I sort of had it in my fingers at that point.
So things in these books Church had sent over began to stick—like the spots I could see in a person’s shadow.
They were scars on the soul known as “occlusions.” Some resulted from what Lady had called “wounds of the heart,” but others were known as “crimes against the soul.” This was all in a ledger entitled Shadowmancy: Known Fragments.
Apparently Shadowmancy was a lost art, with only a few extant writings.
I finished that one—fascinating stuff about people’s shadows and how to see and manipulate them—then set it next to Henry’s journal, which I picked up again.
I wanted to read it. Hear the man’s voice in my head.
But sometimes a person’s secrets are better left alone—they can change how you think about them.
So, I put the journal back down and decided to tackle the book on Precedent Law—the rules that governed this new world I’d been reborn to.
After a few hours, I’d finished that book, too. I’d have to reread it—dense reading, indeed. I placed it in the finished pile and again picked up Henry’s journal, gently caressing the cover. Then once again set it aside.
The third book was short, but I read it cover to cover—The History and Architecture of Thanaturgy.
There were three primary branches, known as drycraefts.
They boiled down to: the redistribution of life forces (elanothalia), communing with the dead (xenoglossia), and the manipulation of once-living matter (classical necromancia).
Some of the guys in the Hounds played RPGs, which made the third branch all sound like evil undead stuff.
But it turned out—in thanatist circles—the term necromancer had evolved into a bit of a slur by the time the Renaissance hit, due to a lot of bad behavior in cemeteries.
It came back into fashion in the Victorian age—such was the drift of language—but still only described thanatists who focused on the one drycraeft.
In the Strata, thanatists were even sometimes called cunning folk.
But it was all more than just reanimating a corpse.
This was my life now. And after reading three full—if short—books and healthy bits of the others, I was less grounded than when I began. Henry had always helped me find balance, and anything I was going to learn that might help me find Henry was probably in his diary.
Knowing I couldn’t unread whatever I found inside, I leafed the journal open to where a violet had been pressed between the pages:
I told Jack about you tonight, Martha. Told him how you suffered my music habit with dignity and moved on sooner than was your lot because of it.
Bless the lad’s heart, he sang the Who back to me to ease my guilt.
He knows my weakness for the Who. He has some pain of his own, having to do with his mother—I hear it when he sings—but I think he’ ll find his way out of it.
You’ d like him, Martha. I wish you could meet him. I do so like having him around.
The lines blurred. I wiped my eyes and fought a rising headache and nausea by humming a few notes from Jimmy’s song a few hours ago. A calm replaced the turmoil I was feeling and helped me focus.
If Henry’s out there, I’m going to find him.
Then, I kept at it, flipping back several pages to a hand-drawn map of London. It showed a shaded area that read IRON HORSE ENVIRONS.
The ward didn’t extend in a perfect circle, more of a triangle that ran up Charing Cross Road. A note said it adhered to ley lines and sacred geometry for its “extensible influence.” But the shaded area had grown successively smaller, looking like growth rings on a tree stump, but in reverse.
Then I turned to the last entry, and my fingers began to tremble, as if I was about to hear my friend’s final words:
The Iron Horse ward is dying.
If only it were runic or mechanistic, refreshing it would be a simple matter.
But the ward is spiritual. Its nature belongs to what the ancient Children of Ashes called “an old soul”—“old” in this case being a measure of plurality, many souls belonging to the same being.
So, if I’m to renew the ward, I must find such a being.
Unfortunately, while finding an old soul would be hard enough, finding one that is also willing requires special knowledge.
I’ve no access to relevant arcanum, nor have I found the courage to seek assistance from those who make spiritual matters their study .
. . not after my involvement in that bloody mess at St. Paul’s these many years ago.
I did approach Muster about it. He wasn’t optimistic, but he promised to check Shiguan schism archives for arcana on the topic.
Despite our disagreements, he’s a good friend, and has a gift with arcanum.
He might be my last hope. Because I fear time is running out.
I’ve never felt such tension from the Strata.
I’ve done my best to bridge the gap. The world above must be allowed to change, just as no harm should be brought to those who exist below. But despite my efforts, the ward is weakening under the strain. I wonder if the tension is what started the ward’s decay in the first place.
Regardless, should the ward fail, and those who would abuse the Steps gain access, there is no calculus for how the worlds above and below might change. What is calculable is that I am growing old . . .
I read the entry again. And again. I kept wishing Henry had gotten help before the ward had contracted so far that someone could just waltz up and shoot him.
Damn, Henry.
I felt the world crashing down. But instead of thinking, as I had been, that this couldn’t be real, I thought it now seemed more real than the life I’d been living in London for the past five years. The pieces, like Henry’s journal, were slowly starting to fit together.
My cell rang. “Yes, Church, I’ve been reading nonstop—”
“Jack, there’s someone here at the Horse. I think you better come.” “Who is it?”
There was a short pause. “An old friend of Henry’s, Muster Brach.”
I looked down at Henry’s journal and found the name “Muster” in the last entry. “I’ll be right there.”
I set the journal on the orange crate, snatched up The New Thanatist’s Quick Reference Field Manual—seemed a good one to keep handy—grabbed my earbuds, and set out for the Iron Horse.
When I got out to the street, Cassius wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
He was probably still walking patrol, but I couldn’t go looking for him.
I needed to meet this friend of Henry’s and see if he had any answers.