Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The span of a ward is derived from the number of souls in its bond, but can be extended by the light of souls that reside within the environs of its care.
—William Murdoch, chief Cython luxographer,
The Effects of Cumulative Light
At ten o’clock sharp, Church met me at the left side of the Horse stage, where he opened the lock to the Abyssal Steps and lifted the hatch.
He’d said these steps went all the way down to the bottom of London history—its oldest secrets and silences.
Things far down in the dark that might want to be left alone.
Yet I felt pulled toward them. “The renewal of the ward comes in two parts,” he said, breaking me from my trance.
“I can help you with the first part and hope it buys us the time we need to deduce the second part.”
He then led me down the earthen steps to a stone door with no handle. In the dimness, he traced a series of figures against it with his finger. The door groaned back, and the scent of earth and dry roots whooshed over us.
“Tell no one,” he whispered, “but the door opens by simply tracing the words ‘Please talk to me again I need you.’ ”
It was the chorus from the Who song “I Need You.” Of course it would be the Who. Reminders of my friend were going to be everywhere.
We entered an undercroft formed entirely of cold, chiseled dirt, save for an arched tunnel of stones.
Church pulled out a pen flashlight and led me through it.
At the far end, we passed into a circular grotto that must have run a hundred feet across and thirty feet high.
It smelled of fresh loam and old rock. He led me around the perimeter to the far side, where another set of stairs went down.
“The Abyssal Steps,” he said. “There’s a door like the one we just passed on every level of the Strata.
Same trace-lock.” He then walked to the middle of the grotto and turned his light on me. “Over here.”
I followed, the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to rise.
“This is a unique chamber, Jack, because the soil here is hallowed.” He crouched and stared down at the dirt floor.
“It harbors the memories of those who’ve defended the Iron Horse and all its permutations across the millennia.
Those permutations are all musical in some way, too, and all fortify its original intent. ”
“Which is what?”
“To be a safe haven, a bulwark against tyranny, consecrated by the suffering of innocents on this very spot.”
That about matched the feeling I was getting. “What am I supposed to do?”
“For the first part, simply put your hands into the soil. Feel it. Let it feel you. The Iron Horse needs to accept you before you’ll be permitted to renew the ward.”
“What if it rejects me?” I asked.
“Honestly, we have no contingency. So, best foot forward, as they say.” None of this was in the books. “Is there something I should know first?” “Concentrate so that you may perceive its voice.”
“In dirt?”
“I suspect you’ve seen any number of things in entirely new ways of late.” Church started backing away. “Let your thoughts run out. They’ll find a home.”
I knelt down and slowly pushed my fingers into the loam. Almost immediately, my vision exploded. In a rush of sights and sounds I stood in more than a hundred different moments on this very ground.
The scent of oak bark and wet straw, the brush of wind and hiss of rain, the crimson sunset and hard yellow midday.
I saw refugees marching down from forest hills, crying, with rough sacks on their backs; old men praying at stone monuments; soldiers resting by a stream, swords in their hands; children in nightgowns reading books with curled yellow pages; families huddled by cook fires against the icy wind.
I wanted to help them. I felt that Henry wanted me to help them.
When I pulled my hands from the dirt, it began to roil and shift.
A moment later it surged up into human form, churning, remaking itself into one figure after another—woman, child, man.
Some smiled, some cried, others looked frightened, still others defiant.
Deep tones of shifting earth rose up from their throats.
Some tried to reach out, their arms spiraling into dirt and sand, grainy and ephemeral.
A moment later, all the faces and forms resolved into a woman fashioned of swirling soil and dust. She stood hunched over and emaciated. Even through the shifting soil of her face, she looked tired and weak. The woman turned her focus on me, though she had no eyes.
“Who are you?” I asked.
I am the ward of these grounds, she said inside my mind. “How can you—”
The walls and ceiling of the grotto seemed to disappear, and I was suddenly kneeling on a mud path under a rainy grey sky.
Around me, several hovels were burning despite the rain.
Dozens of people lay wounded and bleeding.
Some moaning. Some silent. Thundering hooves faded in echoes.
Then, the woman, her hair muddy, her face covered in blood, began to sing.
The world around me transformed with the ebb and flow of her melody and became the Asphodel Meadows. Souls stood up to be taken by the
winds to the mountain of fire . . . until her song invited them back.
But they didn’t return to their effigies the way I had. Instead, one by one, their souls joined hers, each one brightening her shine. When all
had come, her song modulated, the Meadows faded, and she stood again in the mud and rain. There, a plain-looking man in a long coat gently wrapped a vibrant crimson twine around her. When he’d finished, its ends plummeted into the ground like anchor chains and she ceased to sing.
The images and sounds faded, and I was kneeling back in the grotto, looking into the shifting-earth visage of the woman.
Their sacrifice hallowed this parcel of ancient London’s bloodied soil against any future claim that might be made upon it or its people. That is who we are. And that is how we protect our home.
My mind raced, drawing connections between what I’d been shown and what little I’d learned about spiritual wards from Father Kincaid.
I have shown you our past. Now I will show you yours.
Suddenly, I felt like I was looking into a mirror at my ten-year-old self.
It was actually my reflection in the front window of my childhood home on 107th Street.
I saw little me, leaning on the back of the couch.
Mama was backing down the driveway. She was crying at the wheel of the old Dodge.
She reached into the back seat for a tissue, and I caught sight of the wine-splash birthmark on the back of her neck.
I grabbed my neck where I have the same mark and screamed against the window for her to come back. I started to cry as she drove away.
Then the memory shifted to another place.
I clutched my wrist and screamed at the dirt woman. “No!”
There is more.
“I can’t . . .” I leaned forward and pressed my forehead into the cool soil to ease the pounding behind my eyes.
You are too much a prisoner of your own history to be steward over ours.
I looked back up at her. “There’s a war coming, and I have to strengthen you against it. People are counting on me.” People had died because of me. “Please, tell me how I can help.”
That is part of your prison, Jack, believing that meeting the needs of others will somehow restore the unmet need of the boy in the window.
That was too much to process. “Then what do I do?”
You have to make your spirit right.
I crept forward, still clutching my wrist. “How do I do that?”
You must begin to forgive those who’ve abandoned you. As soon as she’d said it, I knew she was right. “What if I can’t?”
Then we are lost.
“I’ll try—”
The Ward jolted as if struck. Dirt rained down from her.
“What’s happening?” I peered around the grotto. “Are you okay?”
We are under attack. Modern Stratum. Tin Pan Alley. Help us.
She crumbled to the ground, silt and dust rising in eddies around me. “What is it?” Church hollered from the far wall.
“The ward’s being attacked. Modern Stratum. We have to go.”
Church rushed up the grotto steps. A few moments later he returned with Cassius, Lady, and Chuey, who was carrying his bat. Church crossed to the corner and pressed a rounded rock near the Abyssal Steps. A section of the wall receded and slid left, revealing a large, well-lit weapons closet.
“Jack,” said Church, “your new khopesh is thanaturgic steel, far better than anything we have here. But Chuey, you won’t be very effective in the Strata with just a bat. Quick, choose a weapon.”
“This might have come in handy sooner,” I said.
“Perhaps,” Church agreed, “but it wasn’t something I could share until the Horse belonged to you.”
“No catalysts?” I asked.
“There’s a catalyst closet, too,” said Church, “but only Henry had keys. You’ll need to get to a catalyst market as soon as you can. For now, Henry’s penchant as a collector is our good fortune.”
The case held Japanese kakute, spiked rings; an Italian boarding sword, its one edge deeply serrated; a Zulfiqar scimitar; and a dozen more.
Chuey pulled down an Aztec macuahuitl, a large paddle whose edges had been fitted with sharpened obsidian.
A skull with inlaid turquoise eyes had been carved into the flat side.
“I once told Henry about the stories mi abuela used to tell me about the macuahuitl.” Chuey held it up and gazed at it. “You think Henry knew someday I’d need one?”
It certainly seemed Henry had been planning ahead.
I shrugged at Chuey’s question. “Listen, man, you’ve got no reflection thread, so up here in our world you see things the way thanatists want you to see them. But this Enigma Covenant thing only applies to our world.”
Chuey hefted his macuahuitl. “So, down in this Strata place, I’m gonna finally get to see this stuff for what it really is.”
“It can feel strange.”
He grinned. “I’ll watch for celebrities.”
I grabbed a sheath for my khopesh from the weapons closet and tucked it into my jeans at the small of my back. “Let’s go.”
My friends all drew their weapons. I lit my Zippo, and traced the Who word-lock on the door to the Abyssal Steps. Then, together, we all started down toward Tin Pan Alley.