9. Disprite and Disruption
Chapter 9
Disprite and Disruption
All along the student side of the table was movement, some of it swift, some more cautious: I caught sight of Forsythe quickly wrapping a dark scarf around his neck and most of his face, the metallic threads woven through the fabric catching a glint of red in the firelight; Reinhardt slipped a wand from his belt—the kind used to perform sleight-of-hand tricks on a street corner—and ran a hand along its black length as he looked over his shoulder.
Most of all I watched Victor as he watched the doors, his black brows lowered over his burning eyes, the tension in his strong body curling his scarred left hand into a slow fist.
Then his brief moment of silent stillness broke.
“As we practiced,” he commanded as he stalked around and past the great table, his black cloak spreading behind him like vast wings; the air was alive with the feeling of him, the unsettling depth of his shadow now shivering at the tips of my nerves like the touch of distant lightning. “Ashcroft for the North, Forsythe East, Lloyd South, Greycliff West; Walker and Reinhardt for my left hand and my right.
“Buckingham,” the steel of his mask flashed as he turned back to me; he was too far away now for me to be certain of his eyes, but his voice was strong and clear, and I felt the arresting gravity of his regard. “Despite the depth of the irony, you will remain here; no place in all the city is fortified more securely against penetration. I do not expect to be long.”
“Doctor D’Arco—” I began to protest, to run forward to join the other six who followed him, each with a candle, their silhouettes glowing behind him in the firelight like lesser ghosts. Before Victor even reached the archway, I watched the heavy doors burst open by the sheer strength of his will; I staggered from the force, the deep disquieting shock of his power, and rather than fading with time the sensation sank down through my body into something worse: as I tried again to follow, I realized with a pang of distress that I could no longer move my feet—as if they were frozen in place by some implacable magnetic force of the earth—and the effort it would take to lift one before the other now was more than my strength.
“You will wait for me, Buckingham.”
I could only watch, standing as still as the suits of armor he strode past, listening to the hard, swift falls of his black Hessian boots, as before my eyes the dark vision of his form vanished into the dim candlelight of the hallway.
The great doors slammed shut behind the seven of them with a rolling boom.
Straining against the deep force that held me I suddenly lurched forward, my feet free again, and I caught myself with a silent curse. He had restrained me with his art to prevent me following—to keep me here, protected (so he said) but alone.
Locked in, most likely.
I stood still for a long moment, listening to the crackle of the fire echo in the cavernous emptiness of the vacant hall, feeling the heat of my frustration rise through my chest.
Futile though I knew it would be, I went to try the door, taking the skirts of my black dress in hand as I walked down between the rows of silent sentinels—how bracing is the air of freedom, when one has struggled against bonds for even a moment in time—and I imagined myself being watched by hidden eyes behind the visors of their helms.
Let them watch, if they could.
The black iron rings of the doors were cool to the touch as I laid a hand on each. My half-hearted attempt to push the doors open was as vain as I had imagined—I may as well have tried to push apart the sheer face of a stone mountainside—yet to judge by the shrill scrape of iron on iron I had succeeded, for what little it was worth, in moving one of the massive rings some faint distance across its plate.
I let my hands fall to my sides with a sigh, and stepped back.
And then, though I touched nothing more, the same shrill sound came again.
No sooner had I drawn a half of a cautious breath than I felt my breath stop altogether: a strange, shrill cry rose somewhere beyond the muffling walls, unearthly and hollow.
Then silence.
Then a crash like something heavy hitting a wall.
From the sound I could not tell the distance underground; I did not know whether something hunted Victor and his students, or whether it had escaped or dispatched them and now had come for me, throwing itself against these very doors, and if the latter case were true I could not abide the notion that my adventure in sorcery might well end so, here and now, hopeless and alone and without recourse.
Another crash. Another uncanny howl, so eerie a shriek that it seemed to pierce stone.
Instinctively I stepped back further from the door. I hated that I felt my hands begin to tremble; my chemise began to cling to my skin for my cold sweat, and as my mind raced, wracking my memory for something, anything, that Victor had said and I could put to use—or a hint from the vain books I had perused in Hargrave’s library, from the nights reading Coleridge in my room, from some half-remembered novel or legend—anything at all—at the corner of my eye I caught the glint of the axe-blade from one of Victor’s standing suits of armor.
A pole-axe was better than nothing.
Immediately I turned and seized the weapon by its long shaft, wresting it from the grip of the hollow steel gauntlet that held it. It was an unwieldy thing, heavy at the bladed head that extended so uncomfortably far before me, my knuckles white around the haft of a weapon made for hands twice the size of my own: but its blade was sharp, flickering a bloody red beneath the light of the great chandeliers. And now it was mine.
So armed with this strange medieval weapon in Victor’s strange medieval hall, I held my ground in the aisle between the rows of empty knights, feeling the quickening of my breath, the thundering of my heart against my ribs, as I listened for another crash, another cry.
The lack of either unsettled me. Moments passed—long moments, by the feel of them—and the axe-head grew heavier. I adjusted my grip, my palms faintly slick, as a sense of emptiness crept into my chest.
What of Victor?
It had not been even a day since I bound myself to him, in word and in deed; his darkness hung on me—seeped into me, perhaps, in those drops of shared blood—so thick that two at least of his students could feel it; and now… now that some thing had come for him…
No. I could not allow myself to think such things, now that above all I had to listen, listen—but there was nothing. Still nothing. I stood on guard alone.
I do not know for how long.
Slowly I lowered the long pole, letting the blade waver and dip to the floor, and my fatiguing arms rest.
And as the axe-head touched stone, the immovable doors swung slowly open towards me, groaning on their heavy iron hinges to reveal a broad shadow framed in their arch.
“Victor…”
It was him—it had to be him—I let my weapon clatter to the ground as a sense of relief flooded me, warming the cold film of sweat on my skin, despite even the ghoulish aspect of his appearance as he strode toward me through the doorway arch: he carried his long dagger in his right hand, the bare blade steaming with the kind of ghostly vapor that curls from wet streets in the sun, and the same twisting trails of white smoke rose from all the metal of his mask, nearly obscuring the fiery intensity of his eyes.
He stopped before me, swept his hooded head left and right to scan the room, and slipped his dagger back into its sheath. “You are unhurt?”
“Yes, sir. Are you?—”
“You will not need the halberd for now,” his strong shoulders relaxed slightly, as if with the release of a long-held breath; I sensed a faint humor in his voice, though it was gone as swiftly as it had come. “The danger has passed. Come with me.”
Thin white wisps of smoke still rose from his mask and the sheathed dagger under his cloak as we left the great hall together, and what I could see of his black robes looked mildly disheveled somehow. I felt the familiar, visceral shudder of his magic through me before even I heard the doors thunder closed behind us.
He walked more slowly than was his wont, and I matched his pace at his side. “What happened, sir?”
“My theory class became a practicum,” he replied.
“Physical banishment?” I imagined it could be none other, given the terrible sounds that so easily might have been flesh and bone against solid earth.
“Yes. That is how it ended. A matter of course, when I am alone, yet to involve students brings new complications.”
“Why did the disprite come?”
“For me.” There was no fear in his voice, but a defiant strength, something like pride, and for that pride I mistook his meaning.
“You summoned it? To teach them banishment?”
“No,” he grunted. “No, not this one. As I told you: I have transgressed against that other world. I am a wanted man, Elizabeth, and being hopelessly outmatched against my art does not always relieve my detractors of the temptation of trying their luck. Nonetheless,” he continued with a deep, grim chuckle, “at least one of the students seems to have learned something. You may find the aftermath to be mildly disturbing, being unaccustomed to such sights.”
“It could not be worse than waiting alone, sir,” I ventured, knowing that I had not even begun to imagine the depth of danger in opposing him, and yet unwilling even so to let the matter go unspoken, “with the distant howls and crashes for one’s only companions.”
“Indeed,” his low voice rumbled in reply. I could not tell in which way he meant the word, but he stopped before a doorway, beneath the figure of a gargoyle leering over the lintel: a heavy wooden door again, but nothing so grand as the double doors to the great hall. He opened it slowly, holding it ajar for me with a vague tilt of his head in silent question.
A thin, eerie fog drifted out from the open door, or else my vision had begun to blur for the sense of unease that sifted from the room. The flamelight of the candles in the wall sconce next to Victor spread before my eyes into cold halos.
I wondered if he sensed my trepidation, and whether this place felt to him as it did to me: like the underground tunnel, somehow, between Hargrave’s library and the shop at Witch’s Corner. I did not know why.
But I knew, then as now, that to move forward meant to trust him again. I felt myself rub the tip of my index finger against the memory of the small cut he had made to my thumb.
Looking up to him, I nodded gravely, and stepped inside.
It was the nature of the light that struck me first.
No candles were lighted save those eight that formed the wide circle in the center of the floor: one held by each of the four figures standing still and silent around its circumference, spaced equally apart; the other four in simple candleholders on the ground, halfway between one man’s left and the other’s right.
But all their light was dim and diffuse for the misty fog. The candle flames survived it somehow, though the deep chill of it clung to the skin like the cold dew of the grey hour before dawn. I wondered whether a heaviness dragged at my steps again, or whether it was merely the damp weight of the dew sinking into my petticoats.
The silence of the room drew in closer for the uncanny mist, and I stepped forward, nearer to the circle, attempting to will my eyes to discern what seemed to be some formless shadow at its center. I glanced back to Victor. He stood as still as the others and gave no sign, but I noted that he had left the door open, perhaps to encourage the dissipation of that impossible fog that beyond all rational conception had gathered underground.
I watched the candlelight sharpen, the mist slowly ebb, and the breath I drew of the clearing air caught in my throat: the shroud of the fog drew back, revealing in the center of the circle the body of a man lying motionless on the cold stone floor, nearly face-down, his dark cloak pooled about him and his arms positioned as if he had meant to break his fall.
My eyes fixed on his form—surely he must be dead, to appear so stricken yet be left so calmly unattended—but I thought I saw the slow rise and fall of his back beneath his mantle. He seemed to be breathing, at least, but the loose roll of fabric someone must have stuffed under his head was the sole concession to his comfort.
Was this fallen figure the thing that had pierced the walls with that terrible, howling cry—some underworld ghost in the likeness of a man, entrapped and enchanted within their magic circle?
But I thought that I had seen that cloak before.
I looked to the solemn shapes standing in the circle and recognized Walker by his face, his dark, severe features cast by his candle into sharp relief—Forsythe with the scarf and the black gloves—Ashcroft, perhaps, was the younger, smaller man with the well-trimmed chinstrap beard; the one with the darker, longer beard and hair might have been Lloyd. I heard the creak of an old chair somewhere to the side in their shadows, and noticed for the first time the man seated near the circle: surely Reinhardt, by the half-rakish slouch of his posture.
Victor drew toward me from behind—I could feel him close in, even were it not for the sure, heavy falls of his boots—and I turned to him, searching for his eyes in the dim light.
“Is that,” I whispered, stuttering slightly, “is that Greycliff…?”
“Greycliff is comfortable, relatively, and will come around on his own in time,” Victor replied, quietly though with no particular concern. “He endured a minor magical injury during the attack, and as it had begun to rankle, I put him under a spell to make him rest and recover: a little heilschlaf , to borrow from the great poet of Reinhardt’s country, if not to precisely the same effect.”
Reinhardt nodded and looked pleased for the reference, idly tapping the wand that lay across his lap.
“He is to be left as he fell,” I asked, “professor?”
“Correct.” Victor stepped to my side, watching Greycliff and the circle with me, and from the corner of my eye I thought I caught sight of a small rip in the professor’s great black cloak. “The easier for him to reconstruct the series of events in his mind when he awakens. Memory of cause and effect is vital, particularly in dangerous cases; whether recorded in the mind or by the hand, the sorcerer must track his magical operations— experiments , as they once were called, before the fashion of the language changed. We are scientists, Reinhardt, are we not?”
“Most of the time, professor.”
“Precisely.” Victor nodded to Reinhardt, but when he spoke again his voice was lowered, and behind the last curls of spectral smoke that rose from his metal mask, I knew his words were for me alone. “They stand at the cardinal directions: Ashcroft North, Forsythe East, Lloyd South; Walker replaces Greycliff for the West. They draw the seams of the world, if you will, and make Greycliff at their intersection the core of the earth, or the axle of the universe, or the eye of all storms. Do you understand?”
“No…” I let the word drift, watching the candlelight flicker over Greycliff’s limp form. “No, professor. Not very well.”
“What vexes you?”
“The compass points, professor. The directions. Any point in the world could be imagined as the place where the four cardinal directions meet?—”
“Correct,” he whispered slowly, nearly under his breath.
I said no more—the affirmative reply was unexpected, and in my confusion I lost the course of my thought.
“Reinhardt’s command over the physical world is weaker, yet his intuition is strong, and so he sits aside as a guard for now, to alert the four at Greycliff’s compass points if he senses disruption. Those four envision Greycliff with his injuries healed, his strength returned, and focusing on this vision and its reality they enforce their will upon the world. Imagination and will , Elizab—” he caught himself and corrected without comment, “Buckingham. Do not mistake their stillness for passivity. The sorcerer who empties his mind is the knight who drops his sword.”
He left me and stepped toward the circle, to the side of the melting candle on the floor between Walker and Lloyd, and I felt my eyes grow wide as I anticipated some shock, some nauseous sense of vertigo as he broke through?—
But there was nothing. Only the sound of his boots, loud for the silence, and the brush of his black cloak spreading across the floor as he crouched down beside Greycliff’s unmoving form. The light flickered for the movement of the air. With no pretense of gentleness he shoved two fingers against the side of Greycliff’s throat, and for a moment the terrible thrill of a vision crept into my mind: he became before my eyes some immense ghoul-creature, risen from the tomb to bend gloating over the lifeless body of his prey, his mask concealing his long, sharp teeth.
“A different kind of circle,” Victor murmured as he raised his hooded head to look to me, answering the question I did not think I had ever voiced, and the vision drifted away. “Come, Buckingham.”
Once more I was aware of the tap of my little shoes on stone, so entirely unlike the firm, heavy footsteps in which they followed. I passed into the circle where he passed—west-southwest, between Walker and the low candle next to Lloyd—and felt inside its boundary a strange tension, a quickening in the air.
“Beside me.”
Perhaps there was something to the angle of the candlelight, but for the first time I noticed burn marks on the floor: black streaks of soot, dull and dusty where the stone should have shined. I did not demur to traverse them, but stepped where Victor did, treading in the broad prints of his boots.
I lifted my black skirts and crouched down by his side. Greycliff lay before us, and though I could not see his face, I thought his hands had an unnatural pallor.
“Ashcroft. Forsythe. Lloyd. Walker.” Victor drew his hand back from Greycliff, who but for his breathing remained as still as the cold stone of the floor. “You have done well. He will not be much longer. Reinhardt, a refreshingly uneventful turn at watch. Buckingham will remain with me; Greycliff does not presently have much say in the matter; for the rest, we are adjourned until next time.”
Reinhardt rose unhurriedly from the creaking chair and put away his wand, and each man in his own fashion made a parting nod to Victor, nearly a slow bow, on his way to drift out of the room. The four from the circle left their candles set on the floor where they once had stood, and surrounded by eight points of shivering light I watched them disappear one by one into the brighter glow of the hallway.
The circle seemed to focus the feeling: with each one of them that left, I felt myself sink deeper into the strange, stifling disquiet of Victor’s shadowy presence by my side.
I did not protest as he took my hand—that strong, warm grip, the absence of which so haunted me last night—and pressed it against the cool, dewy skin of Greycliff’s neck, my fingers meeting the new stubble of a day’s growth of beard and the slow, muffled pulse of an artery under the side of his jaw.
“What do you feel, Buckingham?”
I closed my eyes, letting Victor press my hand in closer.
“His skin is a bit cold. Damp somehow. I know little of medicine, but it strikes me that his pulse, while even, seems slow and rather distant.”
“Yes. Good. What else? Pulse is generally necessary to the mortal body, yet presence in this world or the other is more than the mechanical throb of blood.”
“You, I think—your shadow—albeit faintly.”
“Correct. My spell remains in him. What else?”
“Something like…” I squeezed my eyes shut harder, concentrating until I thought my head about to burst. The cold dampness of the uncanny mist had settled on Greycliff’s skin, yet I thought for the moment that it was inside him somehow. My eyes opened again in instinct, and I shook my head, and looked to Victor. “It’s strange, sir, and—I don’t know how to describe it. Like you, and yet so very unlike. Something like the fog. Like the tunnel,” I whispered, as if Greycliff might suddenly awaken and listen, “on that first night.”
He nodded as he relaxed his grip, and not until he had fully released me did I draw back my hand.
“For many years, what Greycliff is experiencing has been called in your language elf-shot or faerie-stroke . A magical injury. Not visible nor curable by strictly physical means.”
“What will happen to him, then?”
“Left untreated, he is increasingly likely to be taken to the other world—with his body, or without it. Yet that prospect for him is mostly past,” Victor shifted, rising slowly to his feet, “and a few more preparations will ensure it. Not the lesson I had planned for you, but useful nonetheless. You will remain with him until I return.”
I nodded, watching Victor leave; his tall, broad form eclipsed the light from the hallway as he passed through the open door.
Beside Greycliff, I settled myself into a seated posture on the terribly hard stone floor, just to change the position of my legs—and when I drew back my hand from where I had set it momentarily on the stone, I found my fingers darkened with soot. It was a fine ash, I discovered as I rolled it between my fingers and thumb, though sharp with grit, and it smelt strangely: something like sulfur, something like damp earth.
I brushed it against the skirt hem of my black dress, until the wavering candlelight revealed my hand nearly clean.
I had not told Victor all that I wondered.
The feel of the mist as I entered this place. The smell of the soot. The ash and the fog.
The strange fog in my husband’s parlor the day that he died, leaving no body and little blood. Likely to be taken to the other world , Victor’s words about Greycliff echoed in my mind, with his body, or without it. The uncanny silence. The threshold burnt black.
And all of my husband’s household and all of his artifacts gone but the Talisman of Thoth, as I had overheard Victor name it, and that only because my husband had by chance given it to me earlier in the same day and sent me away. From that day forward—for a year—I had worn it hidden beneath my crepe mourning veil and black bombazine, until that amulet became the price I paid to Hargrave and the Order for the purchase of my new life of sorcery. A small price, a favorable bargain a thousand times over—yet the Talisman had never entirely left my thoughts.
And now I turned the matter of the Talisman aside once more, and returned to that which was most pressing at hand. The evidence was before me, all around me, perhaps even inside me now: I had breathed that fog into my breast, felt it settle as cold dew on my skin and Greycliff’s throat, touched the burnt-black ash with my fingers and the soles of my shoes:
Whatever manner of disprite attacked Greycliff, it must have been some creature of its kind that killed my husband.
Victor would know this soon enough, some way or another, if by some strange chance he did not already. And he would know that I knew: I would tell him my thoughts, if I decided to trust him so, though I wondered if he could not discern them even in my silence, and therefore I resolved not to so much as think of such things in his presence until I was ready to speak.
I wanted first some time to let my ranging mind settle in this theory, perhaps to?—
I stopped, freezing in place: pale movement at the edge of my vision broke my reverie, and my gaze darted from the circle of candles around me to the dark form lying before me on the floor.
Greycliff’s arm began to move across the stone, groping slowly for some unknown end in the shadow-broken candlelight. His sharp groan of horror split the silence, his hand distorted into a pale claw—and then he went limp again, but for his back and shoulders which heaved now with every panting breath.