10. The Four Winds
Chapter 10
The Four Winds
In the center of the circle of melting candles, Greycliff groaned again, long and low.
I have never had a nurse’s instinct, and as it seemed clear regardless that Victor had meant for him to awaken with no further aid, I only watched as Greycliff raised himself in time to his knuckles and his knees, his head hanging so low that his light hair nearly blackened in the ash of the floor. Then, with a pained grunt, his strength failed him again, and he rolled onto his back in the tangle of his cloak. Panting still, he lay staring up toward the unseen ceiling somewhere in the darkness overhead, until I must have moved—leaned in for a better view, perhaps—and he turned his face toward me, eyes straining for focus.
“That new apprentice… aren’t you. Buckland…?”
I nodded. “Buckingham.”
“Listen… Buckingham. Whatever Doctor D’Arco did to me, don’t let him do it to you.”
I watched his face, but said nothing. He was a well-formed man in about his thirties, and would have been conventionally handsome—albeit in a rather bland, indistinct way—but for the scar that cut from his left temple to his lip, and the wary restlessness in his blue eyes that did not inspire trust.
He wiped his blond hair back from the dew and sweat of his brow, then held his head and winced. “The nightmares are awful. Feel like I drank a pint of that tar-black shadow of his and passed out under the table, all full of pitch and midnight and worse, then dreamt of being thrown down by some kind of”—he groaned suddenly, manfully biting back some shudder of terror as his eyes clenched, his body tensed—“I can still see that damned thing as if it were here?—”
“Do you remember what it looked like?”
“Wish I could forget. Height of a man, or nearly so… walks upright like a man, most of the time… a howl to freeze the blood… long bones and claws, black mane, head like a—damn my soul,” he finished as if he could bear to say no more, muttering through gritted teeth.
“The professor left me alone in his hall. But I heard the howls through the walls.”
He raised himself up into a sitting position, steadying himself, his wary blue eyes taking measure of my dress, my posture, the lineaments of my face before the light of understanding sparked in them—and then they shot to mine, clear and piercing. “Then it was no dream.”
“No. You were attacked somehow by a disprite; Doctor D’Arco left you as you fell to help you reconstruct the memory. He put a spell on you, and the others played some part in your recovery before he dismissed them. The disprite was banished—physically banished—but more than that, I cannot say.”
“We’re still in his parlor, then,” he murmured as he seemed to strain to gaze into the darkness beyond the circle, “aren’t we.”
“His parlor?” It was not until then that I took the time to study the room about me, and discern in what manner of place I had found myself. There was little to interpret: it was a stark, dark room, with nothing to break the stony expanse of the floor and walls but, to one side, Reinhardt’s chair—upholstered in a style which hadn’t been fashionable for perhaps a century—and its mate, and between them a low table of plain wood, not unlike an altar, yet bearing only an unlighted oil lamp. I thought I saw the roll of a rug slumped in the corner. That was all.
“The room with the gargoyle over the door. Private joke of his, I suppose. Where he invites and entertains his…” Greycliff looked at me meaningfully, the candlelight casting strange shadows across the scarred side of his face. “ Guests .”
“I don’t know, Lord Greycliff, other than to say that I saw a gargoyle on the lintel.”
“John,” he sighed, relaxing a little even as he winced, “just call me John. That’s what I tell everyone around here, not that it ever sticks for long. I know it’s not proper up there,” he gave a faint toss of his head toward the ceiling, and I supposed he meant the surface world of the London streets somewhere above, “but I never liked the rest of it much. John Brighton, Lord Greycliff. ” An ironic twist of his lips pulled weakly at his scar. “The Brighton name’s cursed, and Greycliff Manor’s about as festive as it sounds.”
“He’s coming back.”
I heard the hiss of Greycliff’s inhaled breath (it was too late, I think, for me to imagine him as John) as his head whipped to the door.
“No, not that—Doctor D’Arco. I hear his footsteps.”
From the tension in his posture, he did not seem to think this a great improvement over the disprite.
“Listen, Buckingham,” he murmured with a new urgency, as if he had now to say all at once everything he had been waiting to tell, “and listen well. You see how this ends. Don’t be me. Don’t be Rothfield and his ghost eye. You don’t have to go through with this.”
“Nor you,” I replied. “Nor the others.”
He paused, taken aback, and inwardly I smiled. “I don’t have much choice,” he regathered himself and continued, his speech still hurried. “I have a curse I need to break, and D’Arco’s the best there is, some say the best there’s ever been—but you?” He shook his head and wiped his brow again. “You’re playing a game that can’t be won. Ever gambled?”
“I suppose I’ve only just begun.” I knew my tone was mildly dismissive: I had no interest in the vague condescension I heard in his voice, well-meaning though it might have been.
“Nobody ever beats the house. And you can’t beat that house either.” He pointed down with a dark nod. “Maybe for a while. Not forever. I don’t know how you came to this—I don’t know what compels you?—”
I watched the light in the hallway dim. “My will.”
He stopped. Victor’s looming form darkened the doorway, black and backlit, and there was no more for Greycliff to say.
As Victor approached, I saw that he carried a small black cauldron in his hands; something slung over a shoulder interfered with the movement of his cloak.
“Good morning,” his voice rumbled, “Greycliff.”
I felt the touch of Victor’s shadow as it spread before him, more familiar now but no less deeply disquieting. Greycliff seemed to grow unsteady.
“Good morning, professor,” he managed, the scar distorting his sheepish grin into something like an involuntary sneer.
“You are clear on the sequence of events? Your use of your art and its effects?”
“Nearly, professor.”
“Work on it.”
He set the cauldron down before Greycliff and me with the weighty clank of iron on stone and lowered himself to the floor behind it, unslinging a well-worn bag from his shoulder as he sat down. Something clattered inside like glass against glass.
Thin fingers of smoke rose from the cauldron, and I wondered whether it was ordinary steam, or whatever the ghostly vapor was that once had streamed from Victor’s mask and the dark blade of his dagger.
Greycliff leaned forward to the edge of the steam, though his eyes remained on me, as if to ascertain that he was indeed the first to investigate. He inhaled cautiously; whether he meant to prove himself wise or brave, he was unconvincing. “What do you call this concoction, professor?”
I watched Victor look up from gathering a trio of oddly-shaped glass bottles out of the bag and setting them on the floor. “Hot water.”
Greycliff said nothing, and did not look to me again.
“You have a knife with you, Greycliff? A dagger?”
“A knife, professor. Blood?”
“Blood would suffice,” he looked to me, as if to ensure my attention, “yet blood flows like water. We need your element of earth, to bind you to your body and the world. Your hair.”
With a nod, Greycliff produced a knife from the inside of his waistcoat, cut off the end of a lock of his hair, and dropped it into the cauldron. The pale strands spread on the surface of the dark water.
“Olive oil.” Victor picked up one of the bottles and removed the old glass stopper.
“Just olive oil?”
“Doubtless there are professors who could demonstrate for you the more fashionable methods to test spirit influence,” Victor replied to Greycliff, the disdain plain in his voice, “yet there are some things the practitioners of the Old Ways got right the first time. Greycliff, a candle from the circle. Any now will do. Watch, Buckingham.”
As Greycliff returned with a dripping candle, the glow reflecting off the water, Victor tipped the bottle and let a single drop of oil fall to float on the surface near the cauldron’s rim.
“ Tramontana .” He spoke slowly, the very air shuddering with the deep resonance of his voice. “ Levante .” Another drop of oil into the water, ninety degrees clockwise from the first. “ Mezzogiorno .” A third drop, across now from the original. “ Ponente ,” he finished, with a fourth and final drop.
Stoppering the bottle, he set it down again, rubbing a thin sheen of oil into the skin of his hands as he watched the cauldron.
We did not have long the wait. The drops of oil, drifting aimlessly on the surface of the water, began to draw toward the center of the cauldron as if by some unseen force. Even the floating strands of Greycliff’s hair did not fence them back.
“ Malocchio …” I felt Victor’s voice as unmistakably as I heard it: a low, guttural growl of gathering force. He rose to one knee, drew his long dagger, and as the four drops of oil amassed into a single circle he stabbed down through its center, slashed at it twice, and raised his dagger again.
“ Malocchio ,” he commanded, driving down his dagger once more, “avaunt!”
Either it was a trick of the light—the sudden wavering of Greycliff’s candle—or the cauldron roiled briefly, then calmed. Victor let his dagger drip into the cauldron, then wiped the rest on a cloth from his bag and sheathed the blade somewhere under his cloak. Broken into a dozen droplets, the oil floated naturally on the water.
I heard Greycliff draw a strange, sudden breath and then release it with a sigh; I looked to him, and wondered if his complexion was a shade less pale.
Victor took from his bag a flared glass bottle like a chemist’s flask, dipped it into the cauldron to half-fill it—oil, hair and all —and added some of the contents of the other two bottles at his side.
“Fennel,” he said simply, holding the flask up to Greycliff’s candlelight and swirling the liquid inside, “and extract of mistletoe.” Seemingly satisfied, he held the mixture out to Greycliff’s free hand. “Drink. Then Buckingham will try the cauldron.”
“Thank you, professor.” Greycliff put down his candle and raised the glass rim to his lips, closed his eyes, and tipped the flask; as he swallowed he clapped his free hand over his mouth, trying not to gag.
Victor showed no sign of alarm. “Try to swallow at least some of the hair.”
Forcing it down with effort, Greycliff set the flask on the floor, the candle flickering for the speed of the motion. I could see that it was mostly empty now, but for some wet strands that slid slowly down the oiled sides.
“Good. More hair for the cauldron, Greycliff. Buckingham, sit before me, facing the water.”
He moved back a little to allow room for me on the floor; I must have stood up, I think, and sat down again, but the memory of the process was soon eclipsed by a strange, acute sense of his presence close behind me. As I wondered whether I should be afraid, I felt the fine hairs that escaped my braided bun prick up from the skin on the nape of my neck; my muscles began to tense as my bosom filled with a slowly drawn breath. The close air smelt deep green and grey—unfamiliar herbs and warm candle wax—and I wondered whether I would feel him lean forward, hear him murmur some unknown, arcane words into my ear through his hollow mask, and how it would feel to lose myself to his will, lying like Greycliff in insensible nightmares on his ashy stone floor while he looms over me, his great dark form overwhelming the candlelight, the heat of his strong hand against the soft skin of my throat, his hidden cannibal teeth bare and slick with hunger behind the cruel steel mask.
Even as I blinked to clear the thought, I felt my breath quicken. A foolish imagining: he had done no ill against me, unless the workings of his spells were too subtle to sense; even locking me in his hall during the banishment, terrible though it was, was (in his estimation) for my preservation after all. Yet no amount of reasoning stilled the instinctual shiver that slipped down my spine at the feeling of the depth of his darkness at my back, the animal sense of peril in the eldritch touch of his shadow from behind. I thought of the long, dark dagger—and I thought of how surely and effortlessly it had drawn my blood?—
No. I forced the visions from my head. All of them. If Victor could indeed read my thoughts….
I blinked again and the room seemed to dim, as if for a passing moment it had been lighter. The candles returned to the state in which I realized I remembered them, and only then did it strike me that seconds ago they had burnt brighter, the flames more vivid than a dream.
Now, new cuttings of Greycliff’s hair floated on the water. Victor pressed the open oil bottle into my hand.
“One drop,” I heard his deep voice behind me, “for each of the four winds.”
I wondered if he could feel me consciously compose myself. “What happens if I cannot pronounce the names properly, professor?”
“Any language will suffice, particularly for now. All words are magic. Your conviction in naming the winds will do more for the spell than the vagaries of tongues.”
I nodded as I closed my hand around the glass bottle, its exterior slick and cloudy with old spilt oil and fine soot. Some measure of heat still rose from the iron cauldron before me, and it occurred to me to wonder how hot it must have been when he carried it in bare-handed.
“Focus,” he intoned behind me, little more than a whisper. “Feel the four airs against your skin. Yes, even here.”
As I let the first drop of oil fall, I closed my eyes. “North Wind.”
“Water, heat for fire, fruit of the olive tree for earth. Air completes it. Continue.”
“East Wind.” I opened my eyes enough to place the second drop, not knowing whether the faint touch of air against the side of my cheek was real or imagined.
“In the presence of the influence of the Malocchio , the Evil Eye, the oil forms the Eye in the center of the water. Elf-shot, as it is called, is relatively similar enough to produce the same effect. Continue.”
“South Wind.”
“Should it form, the piercing and ruin of the Eye aids in recovery. The consumption of the blinded Eye imparts a certain power over it. Continue.”
“West Wind.” I let the last drop fall.
“Good. Watch.”
I drew a breath, straightening my back as I looked to the water, the light of Greycliff’s candle flickering on its surface. The four drops began to wander: north and west drew slowly together, finally merging near the cauldron’s rim; east moved closer to the center; south stayed more or less in place. I looked back over my shoulder and into the blackness of the form that haunted me from behind, the reflected light off of Victor’s mask at the corner of my eye.
“Your result, Buckingham?”
“I cannot tell, professor, whether it indicates a negative result or my own novice technique.”
Greycliff began to peer more openly into the cauldron, understandably anxious as to its divination of his state.
“The paradox of the novice,” Victor replied. “To presume an uncertain result true is perhaps to operate on false information. And yet to question the result too deeply is to presume one’s own power uncertain. To erode one’s own will. How did you proceed, Greycliff, when you first found yourself in her place?”
“I had been taught, by other professors of the Order, that when in doubt one must choose the path of least presumption. Humility. The humble sorcerer does not presume.”
“And how did I reply?”
“ The humble sorcerer does not exist , professor.”
“Correct. Why not?”
Greycliff smiled a little, crooked for his scar. “Because all magic is presumption.”
“Good, Greycliff.” I thought I heard in Victor’s voice a certain pride. “Buckingham, interpret your result. Choose your presumption.”
This was not particularly a subtle test, but it was one I could not afford to fail. He had made his point, employing his catechism of Greycliff to remind me of his command that I must compete: that I had ascended suddenly to my position as his apprentice, with a motley pack of sorcerers jumping to snap at my heels. In my moment of honest uncertainty in Greycliff’s presence I had slipped my guard. If I could not trust in my art, young though it was, I would undermine both my sorcery and Victor’s judgment in choosing me—my will, and his own. “The merger of north and west,” I spoke my answer slowly, but with confidence, “suggests some attempt to recreate the Eye, albeit weakly. The cure has begun to take effect.”
Behind me, I thought I felt Victor exhale with a quiet growl of satisfaction.
“Mix him a drink, Buckingham. He may need it tonight, if the midnight hour affects him.”
With a nod, I did as Victor had done: dip the flask into the cauldron, then add and swirl the fennel and mistletoe.
“Good. Greycliff, you are free to go. Though I leave the matter to your choice, I will expect your return to class within the next several weeks. Recover and proceed, or you teach your enemies how to destroy you.”
“Thank you, professor. Buckingham.” He took the mixture from me, rose to his feet, and with a gentleman’s bow turned from us. Framed for the moment in the light of the door, his silhouette disappeared into the hallway, but behind me Victor kept a long silence.
I looked to the old chairs and the table to distract myself from the feeling of his shadow, but those empty chairs became nearly as ominous. If Greycliff were correct—if this was the room in which Victor communed with the ghosts and demons of that other world—then one chair, perhaps the creaking one in which Reinhardt had waited, must be the one where Victor sits when the spell is complete.
The other must be for, as Greycliff had called it, the guest .
Despite the sudden chill in my blood, I held myself still: I did not wish to shiver before him again. Nor did I wish to look away. I watched the far chair, as if expecting at any moment some vision to form from what traces of fog still lingered at the corner of the room. With my cold trepidation came a creeping desire to see what should not be seen, to know what should not be known.
A sudden awareness seized me: if that other world were truly beneath the ground, in the infernal bowels of the depths of the earth, then Victor’s lair was halfway between the two: a subterranean twilight between that underworld of eternal night and the sun-realm of mortal man, dug down deeper than a tomb.
Yet if the other world were as the whispered tales said—the great, haunted hollows scarcely hidden below the hills and the green earth, breached at the turns of the day and the year—then its folk might be neighbors, listening with inhuman ears from the other sides of Victor’s cavern walls.
“You have questions,” he ended his silence at last as he stood up, as if no more words were needed to convey so self-evident a fact. My reverie was broken, and I began to wonder instead how Victor chose his timing, and whether his hearing could be so impossibly sharp that he waited listening for Greycliff to ascend to the top of his stair. “But they are not for this room. Come.”