Wintercraft (29 page)
‘So … we’re OK?’ Edgar asked hopefully.
‘Being in this city gives you a strange view of things. All the hiding and the secrecy … and I’ve only been here a few days,’ said Kate. ‘I suppose I can understand why you did what you did. I’m just sorry you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it sooner.’
‘Then we’re still friends?’
Kate held out her hand. ‘Friends,’ she said.
They shook hands awkwardly and Edgar grinned. ‘Silas was right though,’ he said. ‘I do have more of a knack of getting people into trouble than getting them out of it. Just look at where we’re standing!’
Kate realised they were still holding hands and gently pulled hers away. ‘Silas hasn’t done anything to either of us yet,’ she said. ‘Right now, we just have to do what he says.’
‘Wait!’ Edgar stopped her on her way to the door. ‘You’re not really going after him, are you?’
‘I have to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s nowhere else to go. Do you really think he would just let us leave?’
‘I think if we run fast enough he might not have any choice.’
‘And we’d be on the wrong end of that sword of his before we took ten steps. Look, I don’t like this either, but I have to go and find him. You can stay here if you like.’
‘I’m not leaving you alone with him again,’ said Edgar. ‘From now on, where you go, I go. Even if you are insane.’
The two of them headed out into the corridor together, took the stairs up to the ground floor and found Silas in the main hall, kicking away piles of bones, wood and fallen wire. He had already cleared a wide space and was beginning to tear up floorboards in the very centre of the hall.
‘You’re no use to me standing there,’ he said without looking up. ‘Get working.’
Kate and Edgar tugged at the floorboards, using broken boards to lever others up and push them aside. It was easier than it looked. The museum hall was ancient, but the floor was false and had been recently laid. Beneath those boards was the real museum floor and on it - being uncovered piece by piece - was a circle of symbols carved deeply into the stone. Kate stopped work, not daring to go any further, and Edgar did the same soon after her.
‘Whoa! Is this what I think it is?’ he said.
Kate touched one of the symbols. There were dozens of them, each one intricately carved and as wide as her palm. It reminded her a little of the spirit wheel, only these symbols were very different. They looked more like letters than pictures, and if that was true she was looking at a language she had never seen before.
Even though she had only ever read about places like this, there was no mistaking what it was. ‘It’s a listening circle,’ she said.
For generations people had told stories about the listening circles, about the Skilled who had first created them and of the madness said to claim people who dared to use them more than once. Most people did not know if they really existed or not, but as with any good story, the more gruesome the details, the more quickly it spread, and when it came to the listening circles there were plenty of gruesome stories to go around.
Some said the circles allowed the restless souls of the dead to enter a body and take physical form. Others said that by standing within one, a person opened their mind to the voices of the dead, which would follow that person until the day that they died. And a few even speculated that the circles had somehow been responsible for the bonemen’s disappearance, through a death ritual that had gone horribly wrong.
The only aspect of the circles that most people agreed upon was that they were carved in places where the veil between life and death was at its thinnest, and that they were made to pierce through the veil and let the Skilled see deeper into the world of death itself. Standing next to a real one for the very first time, Kate sincerely hoped that every story she had ever heard about them was untrue.
If she had known what they were uncovering she would never have begun, but most of the work was already done. Many of the floorboards were heaped up against the walls, revealing the full span of the circle, which looked completely intact. It was at least thirty feet wide with four narrow lines radiating out from it at the points of the compass, and where the lines reached the walls a further row of smaller symbols circled around the edges of the room. Kate did not know what those outer symbols were for, but she stepped into the central circle and read a curve of words carved neatly along its northern edge.
A Circle Made of Blood and Stone,
To Bind the Worlds of Soul and Bone.
A Meeting Place for Those Who Seek
The Spirit Sleeping Underneath.
Wintercraft
suddenly felt heavy in her pocket, as if the circle was trying to pull it down towards the floor. Kate pressed her hand against it and a gentle vibration thrummed along her palm.
suddenly felt heavy in her pocket, as if the circle was trying to pull it down towards the floor. Kate pressed her hand against it and a gentle vibration thrummed along her palm.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Edgar. ‘I don’t like this at all.’
‘This is Da’ru’s work,’ said Silas, standing on the other side of the circle. ‘She found this circle, restored it, and put it to use in some of her earliest experiments. You are going to finish what she started in this room.’
‘What is he talking about?’ Edgar whispered, as Kate pulled the book out into the light. ‘Is that … ? That’s the book Da’ru’s after, isn’t it? It’s
Wintercraft
!’
Wintercraft
!’
Kate did not answer him.
‘This is bad, Kate. Silas being part of some experiment definitely explains a few things, but that book is serious trouble. Da’ru talked about it all of the time. It should be kept hidden. If the wardens, or even the Skilled, find us with it, and Silas here too—’
‘They won’t,’ said Kate, opening the book.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because that’s why I’m here. Silas wants me to kill him.’
‘You!’ Edgar tried to keep his voice down. ‘Silas could stand in front of the Night Train going at full speed and it would come off worst!’
Kate did not know what she was looking for, but she was drawn to
Wintercraft
’s final section, the only part she had not yet read, and she looked at Edgar with the same cold expression he knew from Silas’s face. Her eyes were no longer the bright blue he knew so well. A thin shadow of black lay across them as the effects of the veil started to close in around her, magnified by the presence of the circle.
Wintercraft
’s final section, the only part she had not yet read, and she looked at Edgar with the same cold expression he knew from Silas’s face. Her eyes were no longer the bright blue he knew so well. A thin shadow of black lay across them as the effects of the veil started to close in around her, magnified by the presence of the circle.
‘Maybe I can’t do it,’ she said, feeling the energies tingling in the air around her. ‘But
Wintercraft
will.’
Wintercraft
will.’
‘Oh n-no. That can’t be good,’ said Edgar, backing away and pointing to her eyes. ‘What just happened there? What’s going on?’
‘The spirit has to be sent back. Just stay out of my way.’
‘The spirit
what
? Listen to me, Kate. This is a very bad plan. Maybe you should think about this. You’re not yourself. I don’t think you know what you’re doing!’
what
? Listen to me, Kate. This is a very bad plan. Maybe you should think about this. You’re not yourself. I don’t think you know what you’re doing!’
Silas squeezed Edgar’s shoulder, silencing him at once. ‘If anyone comes through that door, shout a warning
before
they kill you,’ he said. ‘You do remember how to take orders, don’t you, servant?’
before
they kill you,’ he said. ‘You do remember how to take orders, don’t you, servant?’
‘Kate, please don’t do this.’ Edgar had heard enough about the veil to be glad that he had never shown even the slightest hint of being able to see into any world other than his own. He had enough to contend with in his own life without worrying about what came after it. But as much as he wanted to avoid the listening circle, he needed Kate to stay well clear of it as well. Somehow he doubted that was going to happen.
Kate was already standing in the centre of the room, reading the book while Silas prowled around her like a stalking cat. She was biting her bottom lip, the way she always did when she was concentrating. Edgar didn’t know if she had even noticed Silas, but Silas was not taking his eyes off her. Edgar retreated so he was nowhere near the carved symbols and Kate looked up.
‘I think I know what to do,’ she said.
Silas took off his sword and coat and joined her in the circle. ‘Then do it.’
Kate nodded and a brief flash of anxiety crossed her face. The look lasted only a second, but Edgar saw it and it gave him hope. He knew Kate well enough to know something was not right. She was hiding something.
Kate read one of the green-inked pages again. The experiments written in those pages were more rushed and random, as if the Walkers had tried to squeeze in as much as possible in a short space of time. If the main sections were daunting, the last section looked almost impossible and the warnings accompanying each technique were very clear.
One warning was written in small letters tracing around the edges of the current page, where someone had slipped a thin black feather next to an experiment called the ‘Most Dangerous and Permanent Binding of a Soul’.
The warning read in tiny green letters:
Beware This Binding Most Of All. For Once This Deed Is Done There Can Be No Reversal.The Soul Shall Remain Evermore Tainted And Broken, Unable To Walk Fully The Path Into Death. Trapped In Perpetuity, Half Within The Veil, Half Without. Bound And Subject To Thee And Thy Blood.No Endeavour Yet Attempted Has Released A Soul Bound In This Way.There Exists No Method To Apply.
Kate did not know what to do. She had never considered that the book would not tell her what she needed to help Silas. She tried to look confident and if Silas knew she was lying to him, he showed no sign of it.
If what the book said was true, there was no way anyone could end Silas’s life. He was a creation outside the usual laws of the veil. Even if she managed to open a pathway through the veil, it would never accept him. And if she could not send him into death, what was to stop him ending her and Edgar’s lives instead?
She couldn’t give up. She had to do something.
She turned back to the section called ‘Life & Death’, taking care not to let Silas see. If she could at least try to help him, maybe he would accept that she had done her best. Maybe then he wouldn’t—
‘Wardens!’ cried Edgar, pointing to the broken door where six black-robed men had just reached the top of the museum steps.
Silas turned to face them, leaving his sword on the ground.
The patrol leader spotted him from the doorway and immediately gave his men the order to attack. Silas tightened his scarred hand into a fist. ‘Now, Miss Winters.’
The wardens spilled into the hall all at once, daggers out, but Silas stood his ground, ready to take them one by one. Two of the wardens headed right for Edgar, who ran into the circle to protect Kate.
She was out of time.
Kate concentrated hard, summoning up every ounce of will left in her. Frost glittered on her skin as the chill of
Wintercraft
spread around her and, with a feeling that was a mixture between hope and dread, she reached out into the veil.
Wintercraft
spread around her and, with a feeling that was a mixture between hope and dread, she reached out into the veil.
18
The Half-Life
Kate felt the floor shudder beneath her as the symbols around the circle began to glow. The floor was shrouded in a soft blue light that seemed to rise up out of nowhere, and any of the Skilled nearby would have felt the pulse of energy swell outwards as the lines spreading across it throbbed into life.
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