Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Not even Orcus thread can stitch a torn soul. Only Essiene thread, spun from the spirit of a loved one in a time of need, will do.
—Esther Bruce, On the Treatment of Irreparable Harm: A Field Manual for the Soul
The semblance woman’s cry echoed out across the stony Highgate ground. Cassius and I stepped between her and the veil-faced woman floating down out of the Dark.
Owen shot a look skyward. “Blazes, it’s a waelcyrge!” All I could do was stare.
“A psychopomp,” Owen explained. “They guide warrior spirits into their next life.”
Owen laid his lantern on the ground, positioning its beam on the ribbons of light.
“Don’t let her interfere!” He cut the streamers of the semblance woman’s soul, and she collapsed to the ground, whimpering.
The tailor’s lamp beam held the streamers like bugs in amber, while he reached in with both hands and began to weave the soul strands into a tight thread.
The waelcyrge raised her free hand and lightning erupted from her fingertips, brightening her dress and veil.
A boom of thunder exploded around us. And the sizzling light, radiating again through the Dark, lit a thousand latent forms in the thick, black sky that seemed ready to be called forth.
The light wound upon itself, until the darkness above the woman had coalesced into two massive ravens.
They cawed loudly and dove toward the tailor.
Cassius and I backpedaled, trying to give Owen cover, but the waelcyrge pointed her spear at the semblance woman, and a ribbon of blue light ripped into her body.
The semblance stood and turned toward us, her eyes twinkling with the same blue light.
She hunched her shoulders and let out a shriek so powerful it would have made Slipknot piss themselves. It knocked Cassius and me on our asses.
The ravens reached Owen, savagely clawing and pecking at him. He tried to shoo them with one hand, still grasping the woven ribbons with the other.
Cassius shot to his feet and shouted “Bratros,” silencing the semblance. From my knees, I pulled a hard bow-stroke on my lantern, to try to flash-blind her and the ravens, but only got one contact point. Damn. I clambered to my feet.
The waelcyrge’s lips parted, a deep, sonorous voice cascading down on us in echoes.
“These garlands do not belong to you.” With her words came a chilling cold that wrapped around us, slowing our movements.
The semblance shrieked again, and a blast of frigid air shot from her mouth, nearly knocking me back to the ground.
Cassius drove the semblance back with a swipe of his blade, and I stroked my lantern hard again with my bow, catching two contact points, and holding thoughts of light in my head.
My lamp flashed bright this time. The semblance covered her eyes, and the ravens circled up into the darkness.
Owen pulled a spindle from his pocket and gathered the streamers together again.
He wove the trails of light with his fingertips and wound the sparkling crimson and amber thread around the spindle as he went.
The semblance crept away into the Dark, her feet sliding across the stony ground.
I peered after her into the black. Cassius took a few steps but stopped. She was gone.
Owen had almost finished spooling the thread.
When the waelcyrge reached the earth, she pointed her spear heavenward and raised her free hand high above her head. Lightning crackled across the black sky again. Thunder rumbled the stone beneath our feet.
When the thunder had receded, violet streamers cascaded quickly to the dark ground at the far side of the clearing. We heard a shrill cry and stamping hooves.
Owen doused his lantern and shoved the spindle of shimmering amber and crimson Orcus thread into my hand. It thrummed as if alive. “Stow this away and put out your lantern.”
“The semblance’s streamers—”
“Remnants of her soul, and her last connection to the world above.
Now hide it.”
I tucked the thread into my pack and whispered my ghost stone to darkness.
At the far side of the clearing, hooves sparked against the stone, illuminating the semblance woman now riding a black beast. Its legs were scarcely more than bone and knotted sinew.
Its great horns swooped out and forward like jagged spikes.
It glared at us, its face long and bony, its tongue flicking over rows of broken teeth.
“Dear Father . . .” Owen crossed himself. “What is it?” I asked.
“A shagfoal,” the tailor whispered.
The semblance charged the shagfoal toward us, her sheer white overlay rippling in the wind, beast and semblance shrieking. The screams pierced my ears like an ice pick, and my legs went heavy like I’d run ten miles. I put a hand on Cassius’s shoulder for support.
“Go,” Owen said. “I’ll try to draw it away.” “No,” I said. “We all go.”
Owen grabbed my shirt and pulled me in. “You just make sure you use the Orcus proper. Stop Brach, ya hear me. And if you see ’em, tell my wife and daughter . . .”
My own parents hadn’t given a damn about me, and here was Owen, scratching out a life in the Dials down a stinking alley for his wife and daughter, willing to put it all on the line for them, too. I’d never seen something like this up close.
I stared a moment, then said, “Yeah, man. I’ll make sure.”
The tailor nodded, let go of my shirt, and hobbled away, striking up his lantern as he went. I fought the desire to go after him, as the shagfoal and semblance tore after his bobbing lamp, the ravens wheeling and beginning to dive-bomb.
“Cassius—”
The waelcyrge whipped her spear tip our way, and bright white streamers flared over us, lighting us up.
The shagfoal skidded to a stop and snapped its skeletal face in our direction.
The ravens circled back and flapped wildly toward us, abandoning their pursuit of Owen, who disappeared into the Dark.
The semblance shrieked again, so loud this time my ears rang.
Cassius said something but I couldn’t hear him, and my vision began to blur.
He cried out “Bratros,” pulled me forward, and we scrambled from the stony round, back toward the catacomb stairs.
High above us a rich, sonorous sound rose.
I looked up to see the waelcyrge trumpeting her deeply curved silver horn.
The sound resonated beneath our feet, and the stone effigies we were running across began to shift, arms pulling free, bodies slumping up and standing.
The horn sounded again, and the rising statues of black rock began shambling after us, bits of them cracking off and clacking beneath them as they came. A few went the other way, after Owen.
As we burst from the Dark into the graveyard, Cassius hit a headstone hard with his knee and toppled forward onto the dry grass.
I stopped to give him a hand, but he jumped up and limped ahead of me toward the Strata stairs.
Behind us we heard the shagfoal panting and hissing, its pounding hooves gaining on us.
And just behind that the heavy thump of hundreds of stone feet.
At the catacomb steps, the ravens latched onto us and began pecking at our eyes. We both fell, trying to bat them away. The semblance woman screamed again—the howl like it was inside my head.
Cassius knocked the ravens back with his massive hands and grunted, “Go, Jack.”
I stood and stumbled up the first few steps, the centurion at my back. We pushed our way up through the darkness until I finally relit my lantern. But the jouncing light barely illuminated the stair walls.
I heard the shagfoal’s hooves clack on the stone steps behind us. The semblance woman shrieked again, filling the stairwell with her piercing voice. A raven landed on my back and stabbed its beak into my neck before Cassius swatted it down and drove his sword through it.
We rounded a turn in the stairs, giving me a quick glimpse at the semblance woman and the drooling, jaw-snapping beast charging up after us. Her eyes were wide and wild. The shagfoal brayed and picked up speed.
“Keep moving,” Cassius shouted.
I felt like I was a kid again, running up from the cellar, certain that something in the dark would pull me back.
At last, I saw a vague light ahead. A few moments later, I burst out into the sunlight of the topside world and stumbled to my knees. The woman’s screeching stopped. I clambered to my feet just as Cassius stomped out from the stairs, splashing mud up on us both.
We were at the center of a sunken ring of mausoleums beneath a large cedar tree.
The ring was surrounded by oaks and the broader cemetery beyond.
It smelled beautifully like cut grass, rich soil, and wood.
We faced the doorway, weapons raised, expecting the semblance woman and her beast to barrel out at us.
But they didn’t. Still, we stood waiting, ready. A minute passed. Two.
We were safe. I screamed with relief, but the sound died in my throat when I remembered Owen. I hoped the dark effigies hadn’t caught up to him, killed him.
The tailor’s sacrifice for his family still struck me. “How could Owen have a daughter in the Strata?”
The centurion wiped mud from his face. “Good men look after the young. It will always be so. Finding the girl alone in the Strata, he probably took her in as his own.”
The spirit of a dead man caring for a dead child in the slums of the Strata.
Yeah, Owen was a good man, all right. One thing was for sure, people like Owen and his little family deserved the chance to progress and move on.
If the topside world was killing that chance, I’d be hard-pressed to defend it.
I didn’t really need another reason to try and make good use of the Orcus thread, but Owen had just given me one—for him, his wife and daughter, and all the others like them in the Strata.
I took a deep breath of fresh topside air. “Owen seemed surprised to see that waelcyrge. Why?”
“There are many waelcyrges,” Cassius replied, “but they are rarely seen, since they only conduct warrior souls.”
“So, was it just angry that we were interfering with the semblance, or was it working for the Shiguan? Bringing them fighters for their revolution?”
Cassius shook his head. “Hard to know. But waelcyrges are often likened to the horsemen of the apocalypse. It is said they are able to pass back and forth through the mountain of fire on the Asphodel Meadows.”
“To take souls home?”
“Or bring them back,” Cassius said. “What is sure is that with our interference of her sacred commission, we have made another enemy.”
“We seem to be good at that.”
“However, we have also made an ally,” Cassius added. “You now have a gifted seamster you can call on. One who will stand against men like Brach. That is no small thing.”
“If he made it.”
We walked out of Highgate Cemetery, rode the Northern Line south, and got off at Tottenham Court Road Station. A few minutes later we turned onto Manette Street.
I counted four Shiguan thanatists, each with vestiges at hand, prowling just outside the ward barrier. On the Iron Horse side, Sherzer and Delain were keeping an eye on them. We strode past Brach’s watchdogs into the protection of the Iron Horse ward, which had receded several more yards.