Chapter 17 #3
But he was right—recently I had forgotten who he truly was. He had become safe to me, my protector, my teacher.
I lifted my hands and grasped the jar tightly, fighting my revulsion.
“You have drawn the shapes. Here are the items you will use for the spell.” He swept his hand across a collection of jars and pots. “Quicksilver, galena, stone salt, aqua vitae, and that pig—whose body you will use as the vessel.”
I nodded jerkily, and he continued. “Next you will draw your sigils. I will leave it up to you to determine the ones you think will best call an old god such as this. I would encourage you to think of the language and words that might speak to him. Include inscriptions for each of your ingredients. Once you have completed that, you will place the items on their inscriptions and the pig in the center. Then you must use your power to activate them together and call his name. Then …” He trailed off and sat in my chair, as if to watch.
“Then?”
“He may answer,” Death said lightly. “Or he may not. You are trying to command his obedience, so remember your power.”
I could not imagine commanding any being, let alone an old god. But with Death I had already seen and done so many things I had never once imagined; I had reached a point of faith in him that was so strong, it swallowed my doubts and drowned my instincts.
I set the vessel with the pig down and looked at the shapes I’d drawn on the desk.
My earlier mistakes with the wine spell had taught me that the language would determine the outcome.
It wasn’t the individual words and how they were strung together, but the rhythm and cadence of translation, of meaning.
Picking up the chalk, I wrote the Latin words for each of the ingredients, four cardinal points, and then in the center the word for pig.
I’d learned that I felt most comfortable in Latin for spells, partially because I associated it with holy terror already.
But Latin would not be enough here. Not French or German either, because what would an old god know of French?
But I did not know the language he would recognize as his own.
I felt instinctively that to call forth a creature such as this, I would need both—a language of spell I could cast and a language of spell the god might hear.
Death did not rush me. He sat watching, as if he read my tumbling thoughts and observed the way I twisted apart the puzzle.
I stood before the desk with the chalk motionless in my hand for some time.
Nothing felt right. At a certain point, I walked over to my desk and looked for the transcriptions I had done with the occult alphabet.
Death did not move out of my way, only let me bend over him and riffle through my work.
Though he did not touch me, I felt the pull of his presence and the way he closed the atmosphere in tight.
Pulling out the sheets I needed, I took them back to his desk, his gaze heavy on me.
I began copying the sigils, but even these—the look and feel of them—were wrong. I ended up rubbing the chalk off with a frustrated dash of my hand.
“Do you need assistance?” Death asked mildly.
I was determined to feel my way through it, but I thought of his books and papers and narrowed my eyes. “You said an inscription on a votive had his name. What language was the inscription?”
His mouth curled into a hint of a smile, and he stood.
“It is a Celtiberian script. I will get you what you need.” He left the room and returned moments later with a heavy book.
Where had he even gotten it from in this rambling chateau?
But I laid it on his podium opposite the desk and began carefully leafing through the thin vellum pages.
This script immediately felt right, and I quickly filled in the words of the spell.
That time had now come. I set down the chalk and pushed back the sleeves of my dark tunic and coat.
Drawing my breath tight into the bottom of my stomach, I reached into the jar of thick liquid and drew out the curled pig.
I did not let myself think or feel. My attention was focused solely on the shape of the spell and the objects that would build on it.
Placing the pig in the center of the shapes, I stepped back and began in earnest.
It is hard to describe how a spell feels.
There’s no clear indication it’s working or not working until one has got to the end.
I could just begin to sense the rise of power in my throat and the sink of it in my stomach.
The soaring middle was the abyss opening in me as answer.
But it was so subtle and still so foreign; I stood there driving up a sweat as I used the words of the ingredients, repeating them in Latin but also in my own French, calling the old god by name, trying to flood it all out of me while also hearing Perchta’s caution deep in the back of my mind to hold my own borders.
I don’t know how long I stood over that spell, waiting to be told it had worked by some sign or indication—or Death putting me out of my misery and telling me I had failed.
I felt as if it must be working—my arms grew tired, my back was on fire, and sweat dripped down my temple and gathered at the back of my neck. But everything sat, inert and empty.
Finally, Death stood. I took this as a sign I had failed.
“I don’t know where I went wrong,” I said, hoping he would guide me.
“Sometimes you do nothing wrong,” he said, gathering up the objects I’d placed. His sleeve swept along the chalk, erasing it. “Perhaps you need more powerful vessels to call upon powerful gods. A pig was not enough. A child or young woman would work better.”
He said it so casually, that I was unsure how to take it.
My entire soul recoiled from such an idea, one so repulsive that I could not even imagine it and could not believe I had heard correctly.
“Is that how …” But I did not want to accuse him of something so horrifying.
And yet he was Death. Maybe there was some justification for it?
Thankfully, he did not make me guess. “No, Salomé,” he said with a chuckle, replacing the items of the spell in his cupboard. “I do not have any children or virgins to spare. But I’m curious, what would you have done if I did?”
I did not know how to answer such a question. I handed him the jar of quicksilver, shaking my head. “I don’t … I think I would want to understand.”
“What if I used you? You who are brimming with power. I don’t need you to do the spell, I could simply use you as a fuel, like that pig. What would you have thought of that?”
“I would think that I sound like bait.”
He laughed—a genuine, human-sounding laugh—and closed the cupboard door and carefully locked it with the small, twisted key.
“Do not fear. I have no intention of using you for such purposes. I have no need of such workings. But do not be fooled, many sorcerers find they must. Great power calls for great sacrifice.”
“I have sacrificed too much already,” I said, thinking of Rochelle and Valerie and Dacia.
Death was silent for a moment. Then reached for me.
I froze, not knowing what was happening or what to do.
But he just smoothed my wild hair down the back of my head and onto my back.
An innocent gesture all on its own, but when I met his eyes, searching the dark gaze that seemed so far away and so fixed all at the same time, he seemed unable to hide his longing.
For me? I had never loved a man, but this atmosphere around us felt like something bigger, something more powerful, something I could fall into and never recover from.
“Go,” he said, his voice dry and cold. He handed me the veil he’d pulled off. “Take care of yourself.” And with that he turned his back as if I had already gone.
I crept back to my room in the falling twilight, my mind racing but no thoughts emerging from the maelstrom. After bathing and eating, I crawled into bed, already feeling the drain on my body. I fell asleep easily and dreamed of nothing.
I woke with a gasp, my heart beating in my chest as if I’d been running.
My fire had gone out completely—not even a glowing coal—and the room was plunged into the deepest part of night.
I did not know what had pulled me out of my sleep, but as I laid there, his voice came, as clearly as if he stood by my bed.
“Salomé!” Death called, as if through tears or through pain or through some uncrossable mountain that echoed his cries. Right out of the air beside me, but my fumbling fingers proved there was no one there.
He sounded as if he needed help. He was calling for help.
I scrambled for the door, almost forgetting the house was full of treachery in these hours.
But then the memory of being burned alive, no matter if it was an illusion, assaulted me, and brought with it all my life’s griefs, like creatures clawing out of my own mind—Valerie, Rochelle, and a sudden vision of Dacia being taken away, screaming as she disappeared among the trees.
I stumbled away from the door toward the cold fire, trying to find the poker to stir it into life, my whole body tensed in anticipation.
His cry came again, desperate and pleading. As if he stood at my shoulder, though again, nothing and nobody was there. I could not ignore it. He needed my help! I flung the poker down and rushed for the door, before I could lose my courage.
In the hall, all the torches were out.
The passage yawned as a dark throat in either direction, empty. And down it, the cry came again. “Salomé, mon coeur!”
I rushed into the dark, my thin shift no protection against the frigid air. I could not imagine what he was facing, but I would be there for him. I ran blindly, expecting the house to arrange itself as it always did. I could see my breath but barely anything else.
“I’m coming!” I cried. “Where are you?”
But when I turned the next corner, I realized I had made a mistake.
“Salomé!” it called in the voice of Death.
But it was not Death.
The shape filled the entire hallway, the body of something massive and looming.
Great tusks gleamed in the moonlight. I felt certain I was not dreaming, but everything slowed, as if I had been caught in a dream, like the time in the hot springs when that strange unseen presence had swept through the forest. The roof was gone and the stone hallway had crumbled, and we stood among charred and blackened ruins, half sunk into the earth.
“You called,” the presence said, but I am not sure it spoke any words.
And then I understood.
My spell. My spell.
But Death had told me it had not worked! This must be a trick of the house. What I was seeing could not be real. My mind could not make sense of it. My voice was in my throat, and I could not get it out, so I simply shook my head.
Whatever it was, it gave a snort. “Beware little witch,” and in an instant the moon, the being, and the charred ruins winked out.