Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Braiden sensed the hum of magic in the air as they drew even closer to the portal. It was something that he’d never experienced before, a different flavor of the arcane than anything Granny Bethilda had previously warned him about.
The air had the quiet sizzle of static, like the air before a thunderstorm, yet the quality of it brought a strangely comforting warmth, as of the heat radiating from a candle on the bedside table or a handheld lantern on a cold evening.
And despite the infernal origins of the portal’s magic, Braiden was careful to remember that it did not necessarily mean it was sinister in nature. High time that he left those prejudices behind, especially now that he’d met people who were native to those realms. Now it was time to send them back.
“Decades ago, we opened this from our end with a sort of ritual,” Newt explained. “It involves tuning the air to a very specific frequency.”
Ophidia smiled as she gazed distantly, as if straight through the portal to the world awaiting beyond. “We had great horns of brass, huge drums, flutes carved out of obsidian trees. It was a joyful ceremony. We had such high hopes for building a bridge from our world to yours. If only we knew.”
“Many of those same instruments were destroyed in the transfer,” Valefour said. “You might think of them as sacrificial offerings for the ceremony. We’ve tried time and again by building instruments with what materials we could find on this side, but it’s never quite worked the same.”
That might have explained the design and construction of the Heirloom in part. Apparently, the demons also had a predilection for music, much like the bards that Granny Bethilda favored.
“That’s where you come in,” said Newt, looking up at Braiden. “That’s why we gave Bethilda Beadle the Heirloom’s schematic. Opening the portal from our end needed demon magic. The theory is that opening it from this side needs magic native to Aidun.”
The little demon shrugged, turning to Bones. “And what the hell — you should add your music to the ritual as well. Who knows? It just might help.”
Bones pushed his hands into his hips, adopting his familiar heroic pose. “You can count on me. Bones, the greatest living Hyberidian bard, will help you break open that portal.”
Braiden smiled at Bones’s pride, careful not to point out that this greatest living Hyberidian bard was also the only one left. His smile hid the anxiety he felt deep within his chest — the familiar fear of failure. He couldn’t let that stand in the way of this last ritual.
If they stumbled, all they could do was try again. Wasn’t that all Braiden had ever done throughout his entire life? With the shop, with their many adventures — to persist, resist, and insist against whatever obstacles life threw at them.
Newt and the others went around distributing sheets of parchment.
Braiden was the only one not to receive a copy — demonic sheet music, he could see from looking over Bones’s shoulder.
So everyone was expected to add their voice or music to this resonance that Newt had mentioned, and Braiden’s job was to use the Heirloom.
“But wait,” Braiden said. “How am I supposed to use the Heirloom when Bones is also using it to play music?”
Valefour smiled. “Believe it or not, you can share, and it’ll work exactly the same.”
Puzzled, Braiden laid it on the ground, shifting until he was sitting and occupying exactly one half of the instrument. Bones rattled and creaked as he took his place next to Braiden. They laid their hands on the Heirloom.
To Braiden’s surprise, his half sprouted the loom’s frame while Bones’s half grew a neck.
“Unbelievable,” Braiden breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He licked his lips, swallowed hard, and stared at the portal. “I think I’m ready, if everyone else is.”
A heavy, reassuring hand clapped Braiden on the shoulder. Augustin knelt by him, draping his arm across his back. “You can do this, weaver. Believe in believing in yourself — and even if you can’t, know that I believe in you, too.”
Elyssandra clasped her hands and gave Braiden an encouraging nod. “We all believe in you,” she said.
Augustin pressed a quick, chaste kiss against Braiden’s cheek, then squeezed his shoulder again. “A kiss for luck, and the best of luck to all of us.”
Braiden chuckled. “Then you’d better get a move on kissing everyone else, too.”
Augustin laughed and chucked him on the cheek. “There’s the weaver I know. That’s the spirit.”
He stepped away, making space for Bones and Braiden to begin their work. The demons brought out the rudimentary instruments they’d crafted from materials in the bloody jungle and the burning meadow. They approached the portal’s columns.
The chatterboxes arranged themselves around the portal, the seventh — their progenitor and leader — hovering above the archway’s topmost point.
Braiden watched as the demons pressed their fingers to the great brass columns, inscribing glittering glyphs with their hands, leaving flaming runes wherever they touched.
“This much we’ve been able to manage,” Newt said, stretching high along the great columns to inscribe and trace the demon script. “But the rest of it, we need your assistance with. Think of the portal as its own instrument, one in dire need of tuning.”
“Only then can the barrier between your world and ours be lifted,” Valefour said. “Those of you who can offer voices or music, please pitch in. And Braiden — weaver — the great cloth that you manifest will be as the bridge between Aidun and our hell. May this be our final attempt.”
Ophidia nodded, finishing her own series of glyphs and speaking with a pinched voice. “May this be our final attempt.”
One by one, the demons of the encampment lifted their voices, singing directly into the gap between the columns, strumming and beating their makeshift instruments, blowing on obsidian flutes.
The chatterboxes offered their voices, too, their monotones shifting to something uncharacteristically sweet, a high-pitched piping whistle.
Bones did the same on his half of the Heirloom, plucking the strings just so to match the wordless song. Elyssandra and Warren did their best with their own voices, while silently — and as expected — Elder Bahul looked on with his arms crossed.
Augustin waited with his eyes closed, a finger by his ear, like a conductor listening to his orchestra. A moment later, he executed complex gestures with his hands, conjuring a breeze to blow through the arches, miraculously matching the same tone throughout.
It was exactly as the wizard had told him that morning. Together, they could accomplish anything.
Valefour locked eyes with Braiden even as the song left his lips. He gave one firm, final nod.
Braiden strummed his fingers along his half of the Heirloom, casting the greatest swath of fabric he’d ever conjured in his life, as wide as a barn, as long as a river.
He watched with eyes as big as dinner plates as the golden ream of cloth extended through the portal and seemingly into forever, a golden road, a silken bridge between worlds.
Elyssandra never stopped singing, but fixed him with emerald eyes that sparkled with admiration. Braiden already knew that this was going straight into her journal of heroes.
Braiden plucked at still more of the Heirloom’s strings, weaving over and under, warp against weft, when suddenly great threads and ribbons erupted from its frame, reaching lovingly toward the portal, a rush of waves in all the colors of the rainbow.
Am I actually doing this? he thought, mouth agape in amazement. It hardly felt as though he was expending any of his own magical essence. That was what arcane tools were for, after all, a way to focus, amplify, and magnify a caster’s own talents.
But gods, what a magnification this was.
The last of the threads finally broke free of the Heirloom, the entire mass moving as if bestowed with its own intelligence, a great murmuration of starlings.
They stretched themselves taut across the portal’s hollow archway in a familiar configuration: a spiral of thread and ribbon that covered the entirety of the portal’s opening.
Every note sung, every trill, toot, and beat of a demon instrument made the strings quiver and dance, like the ripple of sails on the mast, like a bride’s veil lifting with her every excited breath on her wedding day.
“It’s working!” Newt cried above the music. “Different from before, but it’s actually working!”
The spiral of threads began to spin inward, sucked into the portal like fibers twisting into thread at the end of a spinning wheel, pulled harder, faster, and ever onward into the other side of the portal.
The huge golden swath formed by the silk rippled, then faded, seemingly fusing into the ground itself. Somehow, Braiden understood that the weaving magic had quite literally paved a road between worlds.
He licked his lips, waiting for the invisible spinning wheel to finish unleashing its great thread, to see what lay beyond the portal.
But the first thing he noticed — louder than even their voices and the music — was the baying of hounds.
Braiden distinctly heard Elyssandra and Warren stop singing, but the demons and the others carried on. Again came the howling of great beasts, this time louder, as if they had drawn even closer to the portal.
Braiden frowned at Newt. “What was that? Are we supposed to stop?”
“No, no, keep going,” Newt said, throwing uncertain glances at Valefour and Ophidia. “Um, I think.”
Braiden frowned harder. “What do you mean, you think?”
Valefour scratched the top of his head and gave Braiden an apologetic shrug. “So — we haven’t been completely honest with you.”
Another howl, this time even closer to the portal, and worse, accompanied by snarling. That, and the snapping of teeth that only came from creatures with powerful jaws meant for cracking bone and tearing flesh.
Braiden stared angrily from the Heirloom to Valefour, unsure of what to do with his hands, terrified that letting go would sever the connection to this specific hell.
What if they couldn’t open the way for the demons again later? Then again, what if he let those things through? What were those things to begin with?
Augustin leaned into the conversation. “You have one minute to explain yourselves. Perhaps less. What is coming through?”
The three demons glanced uncertainly at each other.
“Tell us now,” Braiden said, “or I snap the strings on the Heirloom. Have you been lying to us this whole time?”
“Well,” Newt said, “yes, and no,” twiddling his fingers. “You see, when we left for this expedition, we truly believed that we would only be gone for a few days, a week at most. And while we cared for our pets, we knew well enough that they were self-sufficient and could go hunting on their own.”
“Pets?” Bones cried out. “Hunting? What are you even talking about?”
“Hellhounds,” Ophidia said. “But when we left, we only had two of them. The sounds coming from the portal — that’s far more than what we started with.”
“Are you saying that they’ve bred?” Warren asked.
“Uncontrollably, it seems,” Ophidia answered.
The first slavering beast barreled through the portal. It took every ounce of bravery in Braiden’s body for him not to turn tail and flee.
This creature resembled a dog in only the most rudimentary ways. It might have been descended from a wolf, if it were a wolf that lived in the heart of a volcano and was constantly on fire.
Its eyes glowed like embers, its breath misting hot even in this climate. Wait. That wasn’t mist. Steam, perhaps? Or maybe smoke. And where there was smoke — or steam, for that matter —
“Wow, look at those,” Lucie said, holding her arms out, waiting expectantly.
The hellhound noticed her, growled, then picked up speed.
“Lucie, no!” Ophidia shouted.
She gathered her daughter into her arms, then cried out in pain as a pair of leathery wings burst from her back. Braiden gasped. Had the opening of the portal restored her abilities? Hadn’t she just said something about once being able to fly?
Ophidia bore her daughter up into the air. Lucie whooped in delight and burst into laughter, as if uncaring or unaware of the danger that waited below. Perhaps it was better for a child not to know of the real threat that the hellhounds brought.
Three, four, a half dozen of them now raced out of the portal on paws that left scorching, flaming prints behind them.
“Here they come,” Elyssandra said, watching the portal warily, drawing her weapon and extending it into a spear. “Defend yourselves.”
“Don’t hurt them,” Newt said. “They’re just puppies! They don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve just never known the touch and affection of a demon.”
Or the taste and texture of one, for that matter. For all that Braiden knew, these things saw all of them as food.
“What do we do?” Bones yelled. “Oh, what do we do?”
Braiden couldn’t give him a straight answer. It was too late to abandon the Heirloom now. Best for them to hold the portal open, in case the demons could push the hellhounds back.
But there was one other option, now that he had all this weaving power at his fingertips. He knew of at least one reliable way to control a dog.