City of Ghosts (35 page)

Chapter Thirty-seven

I was certainly scared when I got on the elevator, and even more scared when it stopped and my Liaiser led me into the antechamber where I met the spirit of my dead great-grandfather. But there was no need to be afraid, and I managed to trace back four more generations of my family with his help!

—”My Visit with the Dead,” by Etherida Pilcher, from
It’s You!
magazine, March 2000

Thick, powerful energy swirled into the elevator car, over Chess, through her, leaving her chest tight. They’d started the ceremony, they must have, and she practically leapt from the car. They had to get moving, get on the train and go. Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait for it; it returned automatically after each journey. It was too dangerous to keep it near the City; bolts could be unscrewed, parts used as weapons. No foreign objects were permitted in the City.

She hit the switch that opened the train’s doors and gestured the men inside, her heart pounding triple-time. Speed, and her fear of the City, dislike bordering on hatred. And above it all the absolute terror of what they might find when they arrived.

The men sat down. She didn’t. Instead she forced herself to walk into the little booth in the front and press the button that brought the train to life. Dull blue lights glowed overhead, reflected off the Plexiglas windows, gleamed dully off the iron walls and fittings. Like sitting in an iceberg, it was; the heaters whirring overhead would kick out warm air in a few seconds, but for the moment it was cold and sterile inside the car, silent save for the dull grind of the first set of doors opening to admit them to the tunnel.

Chess leaned against the iron pole in the center. She couldn’t sit down. Couldn’t look at any of them as the floor lurched under her feet and the train carried them into the darkness. How many of them were about to die? How many of the men sitting there, close enough to touch, were living the last moments of their lives?

Her entire body buzzed so hard that she thought it might explode if she didn’t focus on keeping it together. Her pouch full of supplies made an ungainly weight in front of her. She still stank. And she was probably about to die painfully, along with the rest of them.

This was her fault. If she’d caught on earlier, this might not have happened. If she’d paid more attention to Lauren and her suspicion that everything wasn’t right there. If she’d sat down and thought about the clues, about Baldarel’s tie to the smuggled ghost at the execution and the fact that the death of a Church employee in good standing automatically meant the entire staff would be in the City at the same time.

She should have been quicker. Should have been better. And if she died—if any of them died—she had only herself to blame.

Best of all, there was a very good chance that she was going to be killed by someone who was actually pretending to be her. Which reminded her …

Something clogged her throat when she turned around. She pushed her words out around it. “There’s going to be a—
ow
—a girl in there who looks just like me. So … please be careful, okay?” She forced a smile; her face felt like a rubber mask. “Don’t kill anyone with my face.”

They nodded. A few of them smiled. Fear touched their eyes. Terrible’s brows drew together, but he didn’t speak. And she was glad. She didn’t want him to talk to her, didn’t want anyone to talk to her.

Outside the windows everything was black. The train with its motley load of passengers hurtled through the emptiness. With every second the power outside them grew, pressing against her skin, throbbing in her head. Her grip on the pole tightened. She could do this, she’d gotten through worse than this, dealt with power more intense than this, and she could do it this time, too. She held the thought in her mind, pictured it as bright red words against the black earth outside. Focused on it:
She could do this
. She had to.

Finally the train ground to a halt. The doors slid open, spilling them out onto the smaller platform. Their breath fogged in the icy air, glowed iridescent blue in the light from the lone bulb above the thick double doors.

The locked double doors. No big deal there. It actually felt good to handle it, to know that here at least was something she knew how to do. Something easy. Whatever else was happening, whatever other fears she had, whatever insecurities and blame and self-hatred and other freaky problems plagued her—at that moment it was about work, about doing something she’d been trained to do.

From behind her came the sound of the train’s doors slamming back into place, the rush of wind as it began its return journey, but she ignored it. The train didn’t matter. The work mattered.

First she inserted her key into the ornate lock, turned it counterclockwise three times until it clicked. Energy puffed out of the lock and licked her fingers, testing her. She waited, totally focused. Any second it would recognize her power, that elusive whatever-it-was that identified her as
witch
, and the power of the oaths and spells that made her Church. This was why the Lamaru needed a ceremony, or at least part of the reason; they could get onto the platform, but unless someone opened the door from the inside, they couldn’t get in. The lock required a Church member to open it.

It happened. A flare of heat against her skin, there and gone in less time than it took for her speed-addled heart to beat once. As quickly as she could she pushed back at it.
“Harraskata berkarantus.”

The click would come next. She braced herself, set her feet more widely. Such a simple ward this one was, but so effective; a test of power, of reflexes, of knowledge.

She felt the click rather than heard it; her entire body clicked with it. A rush of heat slammed into her and rocked her backward, but she held her ground, pushed against it harder. Fighting it like she had the Binding, only a few days that felt like months before.

For a moment everything hung in the balance while she struggled with the load of magic threatening to blow the top of her head off. She gritted her teeth and fought harder, waiting, pushing.

And just like that, it disappeared. Her balance was off; her forehead hit the door, but she was too busy feeling totally triumphant to be embarrassed by that. And what the hell, none of the men knew how it was supposed to go anyway.

She turned to them, gave them one last inspection. “Remember what I said, okay?”

They nodded. Their fear drifted through the air to her. Another thing to fight. She had enough problems of her own without worrying about their feelings.

One deep breath for luck, one more to center herself. “Let’s go.”

She pushed the door open and stepped through the thick magical barrier and the wall of iron chains into the City of Eternity.

The men gasped. So did she, but for a different reason. The ceremony was in full swing; she could see the huddled mass of blue-robed figures a hundred yards or so away, could feel their power sweep through her like a nuclear blast and shake her just as hard.

She didn’t want to be noticed, not yet. So she crouched down, motioned with her hand for the men to do the same, and started moving carefully across the uneven dirt floor, not taking her gaze off the Church group ahead.

They moved in a slow circle, chanting. Words of power bounced off the smooth dirt walls, rose hundreds of feet into the air and crashed against the distant ceiling. Some of the light came from the candles inside the salt circle the Church employees had laid; she knew how thick the line would be, knew that at least two Elders stood outside it, not participating in the ceremony itself, their only job to continue feeding power into that circle to keep it strong.

More dim light came from the wards crisscrossing every inch of the walls and ceiling, strengthening the power of the earth itself, glowing blue with that same power.

The strongest illumination came from the ghosts. Below the surface of the earth they glowed more brightly than they did above it, each of them a phosphorescent bulb in human form, flowing through the air. Ghosts milled around the enormous space, drifted through the vast emptiness, floated just above the ground. They clung to the blank uneven walls in unwelcoming clumps; they glared at the ceremony. Their anger was overwhelming, subdued though it was by the City’s powerful wards and by the earth itself. Outside the City, ghosts below the ground were more powerful, more dangerous—the reason basements and underground structures were illegal. But inside the City they were neutralized—at least until someone made a mistake and provided them with a weapon, or the means to escape through either set of doors guarding the train tracks.

There was nothing to hide behind as Chess led the men toward the ceremony. No boulders, no ditches, no piles of dirt. The City contained no topography, possessed no visual interest. It was an ice-blue neon hell, so cold her nose felt numb, so enormous she had never seen where it ended.

They slid against the wall of the Liaising Station, its solidity behind her back a false comfort. In a minute they’d be past it, out in the open; they’d be seen. She had no idea how their presence would be welcomed.

Already some of the ghosts had noticed them. Furious as they were at the presence of Church employees, at the very idea that their home was being invaded by living people they could not touch, it had taken them longer than usual. Chess had hoped it might take even longer, but the life force she and the men carried with them stood out like a beacon, she knew, created waves that rippled through the empty air and brushed against the forms of the dead.

She halted at the end of the Liaising Station wall and turned around. Terrible and Lex hunched right behind her. Neither man appeared to notice the ghosts or the cold misery of the space; they watched her, waited for her, with an unshakable faith in their eyes that would have been comforting if she wasn’t pretty damn sure they were all about to die. What would Lauren do when they arrived? What would the Lamaru do? Were they here already, hidden beneath pale-blue robes in the circle?

“In a second we’ll be in the open,” she whispered. “We’ll need to run for it. But stop before we hit the circle, okay? Don’t break—”

Too late.

Power flared like a thousand-watt bulb being switched on. Her words ended in a strangled gasp as she spun around and almost fell. Terrible caught her shoulders; she felt him squeeze, glanced back just long enough to meet his eyes. One second of eye contact—all it took to rupture her heart.

Another throb of power. She snapped away from him, righted herself.

Above the circle hung the spectral forms of Elder Murray and the executioner. It was the high point of the Dedication, the moment when the last vestiges of their humanity were magically returned to them so they could bid their farewells before being relegated forever to the City.

But it didn’t take a Churchwitch to know something was wrong. As Elder Murray’s head touched the top of the circle—she could see the thin white-light shell of power above it—another voice rose even higher. A voice that sent chills of rage up her spine and made her start running before she was even aware she was doing it.

Her voice.

Her own fucking voice, screaming words of power so tinged with black energy they were like vomit spewing into the air. That energy sailed through the circle and shattered it. Confused shouts and screams erupted.

Something else erupted, too: three psychopomp ravens. Lauren’s psychopomps—or new ones, probably. They flew over the small crowd, through the thickening air, their eyes glowing red as they grabbed ghosts and lifted them. Carried them to the door, pushed the iron chains apart.

Chess felt the magical seal over the doors break, like a cable snapping.

Felt the doors open, and glanced back to see a black mass pour through the space and flow across the ground. The Lamaru. Saw ghosts begin to escape.

Not her problem—or rather, not her immediate problem. All she had time to worry about was herself, Lauren pretending to be her, smiling in triumph and raising a sword as the Elders and Church employees turned on her.

Some of her men passed her, heading for the black cloud of Lamaru almost at the broken circle. Her makeshift pouch bounced against her thighs, heavier than she’d thought it would be. She grabbed it and clutched it to her, her lungs ready to burst in her chest.

Her voice echoed again, impossibly loud. This time it was answered. Not just by the Lamaru joining in the chant—some of them, anyway, the ones who weren’t already raising weapons to attack the defenseless Church employees—but by the dogs.

Hundreds of them, their howls filling the air, crashing off the walls and ceiling and into her ears.

Each Lamaru must have carried dozens of skulls, all those she’d seen at Lauren’s and then some. What the fuck was the point of bringing in psychopomps when you were opening the City doors and letting the dead escape? What the fuck was—No, no time to think, it was too late for thinking.

The ghosts were moving, stirred and excited, blurring as they forgot their shapes and simply became masses of energy. Shit. Unshaped ghosts were incredibly dangerous; they grew extra arms or legs, merged with one another to form new beings, powerful ones. Was that the Lamaru’s plan? To set them all—No, why have psychopomps, which destroyed ghosts, if you wanted to set the ghosts free?

The Lamaru had reached the Church employees now. Some of Lex’s and Terrible’s men had, too—she saw weapons flash, heard screams of a different tenor.

But she barely paid attention, because worse than that, worse than all of it, was watching the dogs attack the ghosts, tearing them apart, savaging them. They weren’t setting the ghosts free, they weren’t worried about leaving the doors open, because they were destroying the ghosts, ripping them limb from spectral limb.

She hit the fray. Took a second she couldn’t afford to figure out what to do first. Some of the ghosts had found the iron candlesticks and were trying to pick them up and use them as weapons. One gripped a burning candle and waved it slowly in an arc.