Winterveil Read online

  “The Skilled should be here,” said Kate. “Shouldn’t they be doing something?”

  “We are doing something.”

  The central stone was carved with a four-pointed star. Dalliah pressed her palm firmly against it, and the tiles around it trembled. “Few bear grudges longer than the dead,” she said. “This soul resisted the procedure that ultimately saved Albion in the bonemen’s time. It did not trust me in life. It will not do so in death.”

  Kate thought the spirit had good reason to be wary of the woman who had sealed it into stone. The atmosphere of the room had changed markedly, and now Kate recognized the cause. Hate was leaching silently from the wheel: hate toward Dalliah for what she had done.

  “Five hundred years is a long time to be wrong.” Dalliah was talking to the stone, keeping one hand upon the star and the other on the ruined tile that had once held her symbol. “The bloodline lives,” she said. “The girl is here. Despite everything you have done and all the barriers you have put in my way, she will not save you.”

  The tiles around the stone circle rattled and clicked, but none of them moved.

  “Bring me one of those spikes.”

  The only spikes that Kate could see were the collection of rusted spearlike tools. She pulled one out of the box and held it out.

  “No. You will do this,” said Dalliah. “Do you see the damage done to the edges of the central stone?”

  The stone was worn away at four equal points around its circumference. Kate had assumed the erosion was caused by age, but the shape of the damaged areas matched exactly the point of the tool she was holding.

  “You sent Ravik here to dismantle the wheel,” said Kate.

  “And he succeeded,” said Dalliah. “Now you will do the same. Pry out the stone.”

  Kate could not afford to drop her pretense, so she lifted the spike and drove it hard into the wheel.

  Metal rasped against stone, and the star carving moved slightly as she worked the spike deeper into the wall. Whatever mechanism was meant to work the wheel was not attached to it any longer. Ravik may have dismantled it, but he had failed to piece it back together. The stone loosened easily. It was thin and disk shaped, with sides that tapered to a narrow edge, allowing it to spin easily within the wall.

  Kate let the spike fall and held the disk safely in her hands. There were carved holes where a mechanism had once been connected, but now there was nothing left. Even if the spirit had wanted to communicate using the tiles, there would have been no way for it to move them. “Ravik was studying the wheel,” said Dalliah. “The creation of these devices is a lost skill. I needed someone who could understand the mechanics behind them, as well as the veil work that infuses the finished stones.”

  “So you could make more of them,” said Kate.

  “In the beginning, yes. Unfortunately, I could not do it alone. Ravik was talented enough, but he allowed his empathy with the soul inside to cloud his judgment. His dealings with it twisted his mind. It drove him mad.” She glanced back at the shade of the young man, who was now waiting near the stairs. “I see very little has changed.”

  Kate saw her chance. While Dalliah was distracted, she quickly reached out, slid the fold of paper from its hiding place in the mirror, and tucked it into her sleeve.

  “The past is no longer important,” said Dalliah. “A new future begins today.”

  She reached her hand into the space left by the stone, and the atmosphere in the room darkened at once. It felt as if the rest of the world were falling away, leaving the walls swamped by the endless touch of a realm without substance, the lost place between the living world and the embrace of true death. The air became thin, and the only light was concentrated in the very center of the room, pressed in upon itself by the darkness. Ravik tried to move away from the walls, and Kate found herself stepping in toward the light, trusting it to keep her safe.

  “The veil has many levels,” said Dalliah. “Most Skilled eyes can see into the first level quite easily. They can share the memories of the dead and draw upon the energies of the veil to heal the physical body. A rare few can see into the second level, where wandering souls wait to die. Even fewer can see beyond that, and barely one or two of us can peer into places that human imagination would find difficult to describe. I have seen every level there is. I have stepped beyond the shallows of the half-life and witnessed what lies beneath it. Death is beautiful, Kate, but there is another place, a more distant and powerful place. Death cannot save souls who are pulled into its heart.”

  Kate and Ravik were forced closer by the encroaching dark. Whatever Dalliah planned to do, Kate feared that what was left of Ravik was not meant to survive it.

  “The veil confuses the soul, but the darkness at its depths tears it apart,” said Dalliah. “Walkers referred to that place only as ‘the black.’ It severs every link to the physical world, steals every memory, and leaves a soul with everything that the living mind thought it had forgotten. The unspoken lies, the regrets, the fear, and the pain. The black makes a soul doubt that the living world exists. It removes every memory of the life it once had until only fragments are left behind. Death embraces the soul. The black destroys it. That is where the soul from this wheel must go.”

  Ravik was so close Kate could feel echoes of fear trembling through him. Dalliah’s link with the wheel drew the darkness closer. There was nowhere to go. The emptiness touched Ravik, and his soul gave out a whispered cry. Kate had never heard a sound like that before. It was a gasp of anguish and panic, the cry of someone who was used to being alone, knowing that no one would come to help. Kate did not know what to do, and then it was too late. The depths pulled Ravik in, and his spirit fell silent, dissipating into white haze.

  Wherever that darkness came from, it was filled with threat. The airless force nipped like acid on her skin, exploring her flesh and stinging her eyes. It felt as if she were standing in the jaws of a creature that was deciding whether or not to swallow her. Instinct made her hold her breath, not wanting to invite any of it into her lungs. The tower contained it. The stones formed its cage. Her soul, still bound to a living body, could barely resist it, and its touch had already taken Ravik away.

  Dalliah reached through the blackness and took hold of Kate’s hand. Her touch felt like hot needles, pulling her toward the wheel.

  “You will see what this girl can do,” said Dalliah, addressing the spirit in the stones. Her voice sounded dull and strange, as though Kate were listening to it underwater. “Your time is over.” Dalliah pressed her fingers firmly against Kate’s throat, forcing her to breathe in the black mist; then she thrust Kate’s hand deep into the hole in the wall.

  Kate expected the blackness to overwhelm her, but instead everything around her slowed and hung within one silent moment: Dalliah watching her; the spirit wheel illuminated in a blaze of orange, every symbol shining with a fiery light.

  “Dalliah has returned.” A voice spoke within Kate’s mind, sad yet proud, drawing her consciousness into the veil. “She is ending us.”

  “The veil is falling,” Kate answered. “I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “We know this.”

  “What can I do?”

  The wheel’s glow faded from every tile except one. The snowflake symbol of Kate’s family. Then, on either side of the circle, two more illuminated: the bird and the bear.

  “I don’t know where Silas is,” said Kate, recognizing the bird’s meaning at once. “And Edgar . . . Edgar is gone.”

  “No,” said the soul. “You are three.”

  “Edgar died. The Blackwatch . . . I couldn’t help him. I left him there.”

  “He lives, as you do. His body lives on. He has returned to Albion.”

  “Edgar is here?” Kate could not contain the relief she felt as the burden of grief and guilt fell from her. Her energy sent a shiver through the stones.

  “Dalliah knows her enemy is close by. She is ready.”

  “I don’t know how to stop
this,” said Kate. “Tell me how to help you.”

  “We are lost. You shall live on. You will be the first and the last.”

  The blackness scratched at Kate’s back, like ants biting her skin. “The first what?” she asked. “What can I do?”

  “You will do what is necessary. Others will show you the way. You cannot help me. Let me go.”

  The wheel faded back to dull dead stone, and Kate felt a tugging sensation in her chest as the spirit was drawn away, into the depths. Into the black.

  Kate’s soul was standing on the edge of an abyss. It would take only a slight touch to send her into it. She felt the creeping hands of the dark, the horrors of emptiness, the certainty of destruction.

  She pulled her consciousness back from the edge, dragging herself back into the living world. The darkness fell away. Her body ached, and her hand felt heavy as she pulled it from the wall.

  “You are as ruthless as your ancestors,” said Dalliah, who had not shared the conversation between Kate and the trapped spirit. “How do you feel?”

  Kate wanted to say that she felt dirty, sickened, and hollow. She wished she had never stepped into that room, that tower, that city. The back of her hand had been sliced open, and blood ran freely along her arm. Kate did not need to ask what Dalliah had done. Her blood had been used in veil work before. Dalliah was not the first to recognize its power.

  “I was right about you, Kate,” said Dalliah, her cold eyes bright with excitement. She took Kate’s hand again, and at her touch the cut healed perfectly. “Your blood is more powerful than I had hoped. You and I are going to achieve great things here.”

  6

  TRAITOR

  “Call the guards!”

  “Do not waste your breath.” Silas marched toward a fresh-faced warden who was guarding the chambers’ main door. He disarmed the young man in two smooth moves and held the officer’s own dagger to his neck. “The High Council,” he demanded. “Where are they?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Where?”

  Edgar winced as Silas dragged the warden’s head back, exposing the beating thread of the artery in his neck.

  “The meeting hall!” said the warden. “They’ve been there since yesterday. No one goes in without authorization.”

  “I do not need authorization,” said Silas. He pushed the warden against the wall and walked away.

  The warden watched Silas and Edgar leave, then stepped outside and raised the alarm. “Enemy in the chambers!” he shouted. “Ring the bells!”

  The sharp clang of metal echoed around the chamber buildings as warning bells were rung one by one, melding together into an urgent cacophony of noise.

  “It’s about time,” said Silas.

  He and Edgar walked swiftly through the corridors and up opulent staircases as if they had never been away. The chambers filled with servants, and wardens burst out of side corridors, hurrying to their posts. One or two looked directly at Silas, registering him just for a moment, before they lowered their eyes and ran on. They valued their lives too much to challenge him.

  Silas and Edgar reached a long corridor leading down to the meeting hall. The wardens on either side of the doors drew their weapons when they spotted someone approaching and immediately lowered them again when they identified Silas, their faces filling with dread.

  “Move aside,” he said smoothly, before pushing the doors open with both hands and entering a room filled with raised voices.

  “I don’t care what you think,” came a shout from inside. “You are wrong, and that is the end of it!”

  The meeting hall was a vast paneled room, painted black, with huge tapestries hung upon all the walls except one. That wall was filled with a square window of clear glass that let moonlight stream in across a long wooden table etched with curls of silver. The table was surrounded by the thirteen members of Albion’s High Council and their closest advisers. Some were seated, others standing, watched over by eight wardens, who stood silently against the walls.

  An argument was raging, and there was no sense of order. Silas doubted they had even heard the warning bells over the sound of their own voices, but when he entered the room, every voice fell quiet, except for one.

  “It is a waste of our time, a waste of our men, and the most laughable excuse for disobedience that I have ever heard,” it was shouting. “I don’t want to see another single person leaving this city. I don’t care what they have heard or what they think they have seen. All this talk of ‘restless souls.’ It is the talk of children and has no place within this room!”

  The councilman realized that people had stopped arguing back and spotted Silas standing just a few steps away from him. “Oh,” he said, much more quietly. “You. Those bells are for you, I presume? Traitors are not welcome in this hall, Officer Dane. I trust you are here to turn yourself in to the judgment of Albion law?”

  Silas watched the man with interest. He was the most recent member among the thirteen—Da’ru Marr’s replacement—and still naive enough to think he had a voice and an opinion separate from those of the council as a whole.

  “Since you already know me,” said Silas, “I will not waste time on introductions.”

  The councilman turned to his fellow members. “Why is he here?” he demanded. “Who let him get this far into the chambers? A murderer is standing a few feet away from me, and no one is moving!”

  Most of the advisers whispered excuses and exited the room, leaving the council and its wardens alone with the two visitors.

  “I have served this country far longer than you have worn that robe,” said Silas. “You will listen to me, or this city will soon be unrecognizable. You have become blind to what is happening here. You have been so busy doubting the truth about the ground beneath your feet that you have allowed a poisonous enemy into your lands.”

  “And that enemy would be . . . you?” The councilman laughed quietly, looking around for others to share in his joke. Edgar watched nervously. He had never seen anyone attempt to mock Silas before.

  “Dalliah Grey is here.” A whisper of surprise spread around the table as Silas addressed the council as a whole. “She is here, and she intends to damage our city and our country. Those of you who were present on the Night of Souls know that the veil is not merely a superstition. Dalliah intends to bring it down upon all of us, allowing restless souls to wander through our streets, our homes, and our lives. She plans to bring chaos to Albion, and she must be stopped.”

  As Silas spoke, he studied every face in front of him. He was looking for clues, any sign that Dalliah’s appearance came as no surprise to someone in that room. If what he had heard from his sources was true, someone had wheedled his way into power even more deviously than most. An enemy agent had infiltrated the council’s chambers. One person sitting at that ruling table had been working for the Blackwatch all along.

  “I am here to offer my services in defense of the city.” He continued. “People are afraid, and they have good reason to be. Until you accept what is happening, you will be of no use to them. The veil will fall, and you will lose control.”

  “Why do you care if we lose control?” asked one of the seated men.

  “Because the leaders of the Continent are preparing to move against us. Rumors have spread that Fume is weak. There is talk of sickness within its walls, and people are beginning to distrust your rule. The Continental leaders see this as the perfect time to attack. If you do not act, you will lose this city. The war will be over. They will have won.”

  “That will never happen. Fume is ours. We will defend it!”

  “Then you must prepare. Now.”

  A third councilman, his confidence bolstered by the presence of the wardens in the room, stood up. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” he said.

  “It is the truth.”

  “I see no armies on the horizon. There has been no word of attacks upon our southernmost towns for days.”

  “No
competent leader would waste time on smaller towns when our capital is weak,” said Silas.

  The third councilman raised a thin smile. “Then we are perfectly safe,” he said. “Our enemies have already proven that they are far from competent.”

  More nervous smiles spread around the room, fueled by the arrogance of fools.

  “Every battle against the Continent has been hard won,” said Silas. “Their leaders will not waste this chance to strike at the heart of our lands. The wardens on the walls are disorganized and unobservant. They are not used to being challenged. When the armies come, we will need to provide greater resistance than we have raised so far. I will hunt down Dalliah Grey, but I cannot protect this city on two fronts. I need men and women who are willing to fight, and I need them to be ready. I am here because my duty is always to Albion. As is yours.”

  The outspoken councilman folded his arms and shook his head, raising his eyebrows in mock concern. “This is all very interesting,” he said. “Unfortunately, your ‘duty’ extends to one action alone. You are a traitor, a murderer, and a criminal. You have no right to stand in this room and address this council as an equal. You are an insect, worthy of nothing more than being crushed under my heel.”

  The room waited silently for Silas to react. He unbuckled his scabbard from his belt and passed it, sword and all, to Edgar, who held it carefully and backed away.

  “Then you surrender yourself ?” The councilman’s mouth twitched with victory, and he signaled for the wardens to close in. No one moved. “Take him!”

  One warden stepped forward, sliding a silver dagger slowly from its sheath. No matter who had given the order, Edgar could not believe anyone would be foolish enough to act upon it. But instead of approaching Silas, the warden walked up to Edgar and passed him his weapon before standing to attention at his side.