Chapter 3 Fate’s Continued Interference in Matters It Does Not Understand #2
“I’m going to shadow-walk the two of us right through,” said Mordaunt, in an extremely offhand way, given the ludicrousness of the suggestion.
Aurienne was a Haelan. Haelan did not walk the Dusken Path. She could not possibly have heard him correctly.
“I’m sorry,” she sputtered, “shadow-walking? Me?”
“No,” said Mordaunt. “Me. I’ll carry you along.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not,” said Mordaunt. “Stop clutching your pearls. We’ll be in and out before you can blink.”
Aurienne—who had actually been clutching invisible pearls at her throat—lowered her hands. “I follow the Bright Path. I don’t even know what will happen to me if I try to walk a Dusken one.”
“Nothing. You’ll be a passenger.”
“You’ve shadow-walked others along with you before?” asked Aurienne.
“Yes,” said Mordaunt.
“How did they fare?”
“All right, I think. They hadn’t an opportunity to share how it felt afterwards.”
“They ‘hadn’t an opportunity’?” repeated Aurienne.
“No.”
“Because you murdered them?”
“Because I murdered them.”
“Brilliant.”
“I promise you’ll be fine. Let’s do a few practice runs. Come with me.”
Mordaunt drew his cloak and cowl back on, and led the way to a high-columned ambulatory round the back of the house.
Like most of Rosefell Hall, it was overgrown and derelict; poor Mr. Parson, solely in charge of the estate’s thousands of acres, had managed to keep most of the flagstones clear, but moss crept inexorably between cracks and up columns.
It also made its way onto the statue of a kore at the far end of the ambulatory.
The kore’s chiton was adorned now with green lacework.
Her stone basket held scruffy dandelions and a single courageous daisy.
There was a surprisingly lush, well-kept kitchen garden bordering one side of the ambulatory, which Mordaunt indicated was Mrs. Parson’s.
Aurienne remained unenthused by Mordaunt’s idea but, having no better suggestion to make, found herself limited to sprinkling a bit of disaster-mongering into the conversation.
“I don’t think it’s wise of you to shadow-walk two people at once.
Your seith system is fragile. You mustn’t push it to extremes. ”
“Carrying you along isn’t extreme.”
“Is the carrying along literal?” asked Aurienne.
“Yes,” said Mordaunt. “Do you want to be my sack of potatoes or my bride?”
“Potatoes,” said Aurienne.
“Unromantic choice, but you are starchy.”
“Have I got to do anything?” asked Aurienne. “Use my seith?”
“No,” said Mordaunt. “I’m going to sweep you off your feet.”
Which he proceeded to do. He slung Aurienne over his shoulder, exactly as though he were handling a sack of potatoes, which offended her. She hung there with her arse in the air. The chicken and mushroom pie she had just eaten sloshed into a new position.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Aurienne, tapping at Mordaunt’s back. “Bridal-style, please, or I’m going to lose my dinner.”
Mordaunt slipped Aurienne into place accordingly. Now she found herself in the appalling position of being held like a lover by him. He smelled of blackthorn smoke and shaving soap. He radiated his usual warmth.
She had desired to be In Control, and would have preferred anything to this intimate positioning. It felt perilously natural to be held by him. Such was Fate’s sense of humour. Aurienne wished that Fate would mind its own business and not meddle in her affairs.
The moon above was almost full. Lovelily she cast her light on Mordaunt, who held Aurienne like a paramour in the dark.
“Ready?” Mordaunt squeezed her tight. “Don’t want to leave bits of you behind.”
“Leave bits behind?” repeated Aurienne.
Before she could ask for a more fulsome report of the risks involved in the shadow-walk, Mordaunt swept her into it. First they were here, at one end of the ambulatory, and then they were over there, at the other end.
About ten percent of Aurienne’s brain registered fascination with this feat.
The rest of it sloshed against her skull in a nauseated stew.
Mordaunt might’ve warned her that every moment in the shadow-walk would feel as though her molecules had spun out and joined the iniquitous dark—that she would lose all sense of sight; that her breathing would be oppressed by the thickness of his seith over her; that, after each discombobulating step, she would be left with a brain like a centrifuge; that she would want to spew out the entire contents of her GI tract, as well as the organs themselves, if they would kindly detach themselves for the purpose.
Aurienne came out of a near faint to find herself clinging to the front of Mordaunt’s cloak. Masticated chicken pie heaved ominously in her stomach.
She would never eat again.
“Bit vomity, eh?” said Mordaunt.
Aurienne disentangled herself from Mordaunt to stand on her own. Her triumph lasted but a moment; the world whisked itself out from under her feet and sent her scuttling sideways like an excited crab. She fell into a heap.
The world oozed. Presently it congealed. A swimmy eye cast in Mordaunt’s direction confirmed that he was trying not to laugh about as hard as she was trying not to vomit.
Also: he had lied. He had promised that she would be fine. She was not fine.
Mordaunt squatted next to Aurienne and said, “Down like a bag of spanners.”
“This isn’t funny,” said Aurienne, clinging to flagstone and dirt.
“It’s an unalloyed delight.”
Aurienne could normally stem nausea with her tācn pressed to her own forehead. She tried. It didn’t work. This was not regular nausea. This was sickness born of walking the unwholesome Path. Her every fibre shook in revulsion; her very seith tingled in alarm at the wrongness of it.
“You’ve walked the Dusken Path now,” said Mordaunt. “You must be the first Haelan to do that.”
Aurienne was not gratified by the honour. “I’m a d-disgrace to my Order.”
“Let’s try again,” said Mordaunt. “Permit me to help you up.”
She flung a hand in his direction and said, tragically, “If I die tonight, see to it that someone feeds my cat.”
Mordaunt’s gloved hand closed on her bare one.
He pulled her up, took her in his arms again, and stepped back into the shadow-walk.
Blackness came over Aurienne; the pressure of his seith pushed against her brain, against her guts.
She was conscious, in ways she had never wished to be, of the exact shape of her pancreas and her eye sockets.
Aurienne and Mordaunt materialised a few feet away. Aurienne squirmed out of Mordaunt’s arms. She went down again, exactly like a bag of spanners.
Mordaunt knelt next to her. “You’re doing better.”
His confidence seemed imprudent to Aurienne, presently indisposed. The world continued its spin. She considered anchoring herself to it using her teeth, but didn’t, because she needed her mouth to say, “I wish to die.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Bugger off.”
“You’re on solid earth.”
“It’s not solid. It’s curdling.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“What if I don’t get used to it?”
“I shall shadow-walk your queasy self through the Faerwundor as quick as I can, and ask that you spew away from my boots.”
In one graceful movement, Mordaunt regained his feet and pulled Aurienne up with him.
“Ready?” he asked.
Aurienne held in a nauseated sob, clung to his cloak, and said, “Yes.”
There again was the unholy flare of Mordaunt’s seith, the blinding press of darkness absolute, the insalubrious smoke of the Dusken Path stifling her breath, the exhilaration of being here and then, incredibly, there.
They traversed the few dozen feet between one end of the ambulatory and the other instantaneously.
Aurienne hated to be impressed by anything Mordaunt related, but mastery was mastery, and this was masterful. She trembled, below her nausea, with adrenaline. It was incredible. It was magical. What a pity one had to walk the Dusken Path for the privilege. And the vertigo, gods, the vertigo—
Aurienne resumed her position as a bag of spanners.
“Cheer up,” said Mordaunt. “You’re discovering something new. Isn’t that the apotheosis of every researcher’s life?”
Aurienne clutched at the floor and the remains of her dignity. “This isn’t discovery. It’s a torment.”
She contemplated the decisions that had led her here, shadow-walking with a Fyren. In retrospect, the decisions were unsound; the logic, feeble; the outcome, harrowing. Once again, she regretted everything.
Mordaunt considered her limp corpse with his fingers at his chin. “I do cause swooning. Should’ve factored that in.”
“Your touch,” said Aurienne, “is an emetic.”
“A what?”
Aurienne’s dignity gave an expiring burble; she vomited the last of it upon the flagstones.
“Mint?” offered Mordaunt.