The Hidden Coronet by Catherine Fisher
“What does it mean?”
The keeper gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t know. Yet.” Outside, Galen turned left, but as Raffi closed the door his eyes caught a scuttle of movement on the stair.
“There! Look!”
The lamp shook, sending shadows flying. Galen grabbed his shoulder fiercely. “For God’s sake, keep quiet!”
Around them the house rang with the cry, agitated, like a still pool broken by a stone. All the ends of Raffi’s nerves quivered; he felt cold, instantly cold.
After a moment Galen said, “What was it?”
“A . . . small thing.” Raffi gripped the warm handle of the lamp with both hands to steady it. “It . . . crept.”
“A rat?”
“Bigger.” His heart was thudding like a pain. Galen didn’t move, as if part of him was reaching out, sensing. Then he said, “It’s coming. We’d better get back up there.”
Quietly they ran up the broad wooden staircase, and all the way Raffi felt the stirring in the house, the slow gathering of something far below, its energies twisting up the smooth balustrades, the invisible carved cornices high above his head.
In the top room Galen propped the door open, snatched the lamp, and put it in the center of the beads, its light opening a complex net of seven spirals, jet and green, small emerald sparks glinting in the dark. He pulled Raffi close, inside the pattern, and the raw tension of the Crow scorched, so that Raffi jerked away, breathless.
“Keep still!” Galen hissed.
Far below, something was coming. They couldn’t hear it but they could feel it; a pulsing energy, unformed yet, gathering itself out of cellars and deep courses of brickwork. It rose up along passageways, through halls, all the time knitting together, clotting into a swirling flux that crowded Raffi’s sense-lines so that he could barely breathe, and had to crouch down over the sharp stitch in his side.
Closer. Now the whole house creaked with it, as if it drew itself in filaments of darkness out of all the wooden stairs and warped doors, ran in trickles down the damp walls. And it breathed; he could hear its breathing, and its footsteps as it climbed. Staring in dread at the black rectangle of the open door he clutched his coat in tight fistfuls, feeling Galen draw himself up beside him.
The keeper was intent. A soft, rich scent filled the room, the muskiness of decay.
Then, in the doorway, a shape moved. Raffi saw it through the glow of the awen-spiral, a presence lurking out there in the dark.
“Closer,” Galen said. “Come closer.”
Slow, reluctant, it slid into the room, huge and dark, all the desolation of the house held in a loose human outline, featureless and blurred, as if it might break down at any time, might flood out.
Galen held his hand up. “Enough.”
It stopped.
Shivering, Raffi pulled back, shook off sense-lines. He didn’t want to feel it; the stink of it in his nostrils sickened him.
“Why are you still here?” Galen asked softly.
The outline blurred. A gap like a mouth opened in the smooth face. “This is unfair,” it hissed. Its voice was hoarse and crude; a patchwork of echoes and creaks and overheard whispers. “I wanted to go. He awakened me.”
“Who awakened you?”
“He did.”
“Do you want to be at peace?”
“Let me. Let me go. Into the dark.”
It squirmed, its outline breaking down, the body running and dissolving suddenly into a black pool, trickling and spreading over the floor to the very edge of the spiral. Small black fingers touched the beads and jerked back.
“In the name of Flain,” Galen said quietly, “I dissolve you and absolve you. In the names of Soren and Tamar I release the pain from you . . .”
The pool bubbled. Out of it rose a great mass of tentacles that soared and groped high over their heads. Raffi ducked with a yelp of fear but Galen’s voice went on, relentless. “In the name of Theriss I draw out your dark dreams. In the name of Halen I unfasten you, atom by atom. And in the name of Kest—”
The creature screamed. It slithered itself up into manshape and howled, arms overhead, bending and swaying as if in agony. The beads crackled and spat. Galen glanced at them anxiously.
“Not that name!” The voice broke into hisses of static, barely understandable. “Not him! He started it! The terror, the decay!” It squirmed into separate flames of blackness, wordless moans, then hurled itself forward at them, hands out.
Raffi leaped back; Galen lashed out and grabbed him.
“Still!” he snarled.
The awen-beads sparked. Smoke filled the room, blurring the light. The creature impacted on the invisible barrier and spread like a blot. It swarmed around them, hung over their heads, a black mass of despair. Raffi could feel its agony like a weight. He was dizzy, his chest ached.
“Let me finish!” Galen said.
“No! Not that name!”
“The Litany . . .”
“You must do it,” the voice howled. “I know who you are. I know the Crow. Let me go to them through you!”
Astounded, Raffi turned. The voice was everywhere—in his head, filling his veins. Back to back with Galen they were both swallowed in blackness, the lamplight gone as if some great beast had devoured it.
“It’s too dangerous,” Galen muttered.
“Please! Trust me!” It squirmed piteously. “I have been evil, done evil. Let me have peace, keeper.”
Galen cursed bitterly. Then he dropped Raffi’s arm. In the darkness his face was gaunt, eyes black. “Stay in the spiral,” he hissed.
“Galen!”
It was useless. The keeper pushed him aside and stepped over the beads, into blackness.
4
Evil is a shadow.
Without light it could not exist.
Litany of the Makers
THE ROOM LAUGHED.
A deep, devilish chuckle. Raffi felt dismay well up in him; he shuddered, saying blind, meaningless phrases from the Litany over and over.
For a second he couldn’t see Galen at all; the keeper was eaten by the murk. And then, gradually, it rolled up, dragged back, shriveled into the vast shadow of a man, face-to-face with Galen, fingertip to fingertip.
The keeper stood tall; he had the crackling stillness about him that was the Crow; his hair dark and glossy, the very air about him riven with sudden threads of energy. He spread his hands; the shadow-hands spread too, as if the creature were somehow the reverse of the keeper.
“Come to the Makers. Let yourself come.” It was a harsh voice, barely Galen’s, making Raffi think of vast distances, the emptiness between stars. But to his surprise the creature’s reply was calm and amused.
“No,” it said. “You come to me, keeper. Come to the dark.”
Galen stared.
The featureless face stared back.
In the bare lamplit room they confronted each other, both charged with power. Catching the awen-beads at his neck Raffi saw the invisible struggle between them, knew the shadow-creature was growing, swelling into strength.
“Come to me, keeper,” it said again, and now its fingers were locked in Galen’s, trapping them tight, pulling him close. “You’ve always wanted to. Deep into the dark.”
Galen didn’t answer. Silence raged between them, as if their souls ebbed and flowed in a bitter tussle channeled through fingertips and sense-lines. When Raffi tried to reach out to help, the ferocity of it flung him back.
“Galen!” he cried.
The keeper was fading, flooded by darkness.
“Galen!”
“Darkness is stronger,” the creature hissed. “It was first, and will be last. Enter it with me.”
“Who . . . awakened you?” Galen had to force the words out.
“He did. The one you fear. The Great One.”
“The Great One? Who is that?”
Suddenly the creature tried to jerk away. Galen gripped it tight. “Is it the one called the Margrave? Does he control
“Let me stay!” It was a howl, a scream, and with sudden panic the shadow fought, but Galen pulled it closer.
“I can’t go to the Makers,” it sobbed. “I’ve been evil.”
“No one is turned away. No one.” Galen’s fingers merged into the black hands, warm as fire. He hugged it into himself. “Come to us,” he said.
And to Raffi’s astonishment the creature’s blackness had stars in it, distant suns and tiny nebulae, and then it was fading, passing into the keeper’s fingers, into his body and beyond him, far out to somewhere else, streaming into the sense-lines and the stars, still crying out, still sobbing.
Until it was gone.
THE LAMP FLICKERED. Galen was alone.
For a second he stood there; then he muttered, “Raffi,” and staggered back. Raffi grabbed him; together they crumpled breathless onto the bare boards.
Galen dragged in breath. His hair was soaked with sweat, his face white as if in pain. Raffi looked around for water but there was none.
“The beads,” the keeper croaked. “Give me the beads.”
The spiral was broken, all its green and black crystals scattered, as if something had blasted them wide. Raffi gathered up a handful and pressed them into Galen’s fingers; the keeper held them tight, bending over, forcing himself to breathe, to be calm, and as his eyes opened, just for an instant, Raffi was sure he saw the echoes of tiny stars fade out of their blackness.
Unless it was the lamp.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” Galen leaned back against the wall, his breathing ragged. He looked exhausted.
“You asked it about the Margrave.”
“Yes.” The keeper looked up. Rubbing his cheek with the edge of his palm he said, “Something’s not right here. That was no ghost, no trapped relic-power. That was real, malevolent, a creature woken, maybe even made intentionally.”
“To do what?”
Galen shrugged. “To get us here.”
Raffi went cold. “Us?”
“A keeper. Any keeper. Bait.”
Raffi chewed his nails. “If that’s true, we ought to get away.”
“Not before we stop those executions.”
There was silence a moment, a hostile, worried silence. Then the keeper said, “I need some water. Go and get it. And anything she left to eat. Bring the pack up too.”
Reluctant, Raffi scrambled to his feet.
“You won’t need the lamp,” Galen said wearily, watching him reach for it. “The house is empty. Feel it.”
And all down the stairs he could feel it, a silence raw and astonished.
When he came back they ate the rest of the cheese. Galen drank heavily and then spread the blanket over his legs and leaned back, closing his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Raffi muttered. “Why did it put the flowers there?”
“It didn’t.”
Puzzled, he chewed the hard rind. “We saw them.”
“We saw them. But that creature didn’t put them there.”
“So who did?”
But Galen did not answer.
BANGING WOKE HIM. A hard, insistent banging that seemed to go on and on, until Raffi rolled over with a groan and heard Galen unbolting the doors below. Echoes of a woman’s voice murmured in the house.
He sat up.
Bleak gray light was seeping through the boarded windows. He yawned and scratched and rubbed his face with dry hands. Then he pulled his boots on and went downstairs.
In the kitchen they were talking.
The woman had a bundle in her arms; she laid it on the table. “Are you sure?” she said, dubious, looking around.
Galen was tired and bad-tempered. “It’s gone. It won’t be back.”
Raffi was amazed she couldn’t feel that. The whole house was calm around him, as if it had slept for the first time in weeks. He knew that was why he felt so bleary.
She nodded. “I’ll have to take your word. I’ve brought these, but if anyone asks me, mind, they were stolen. I never saw you or want to know anything about what you do with them.”
Galen opened the bundle. It contained dark clothes, a few small silver discs on a chain, and some papers.
“They may not fit you,” she warned.
He looked up. “I’ll take a chance. We’ll leave now. We need to get there in time.”
“But what about food? I have to thank you, and the boy looks famished.”
“The boy always looks famished,” he snapped, going out. They heard him limping up the stairs.
Majella turned to Raffi. The morning light showed the wrinkles in her skin, the graying hair. “What happened?” she asked, fascinated. “He looks worn out. What was in here?”
He knew better than to say too much. “A sort of . . . energy. Probably left over from some relic. Galen said the incarnations and we prayed. It just faded out.”
He was poor at lying. She looked at him closely. “I see. And now, what does he want these clothes for? If it’s for what I think, then he’s crazy! He’ll never get away with it!”
“The Makers will help us,” Raffi muttered.
“If he’s killed,” she said, “and you’re on your own, come back. I’ll hide you.”
Astonished, he looked at her.
She glanced away. “My lad used to look a bit like you. When he was young.”
Galen shouldered his way in, the pack in his arms. He dumped the peddler’s empty tray on the table. “Burn that.”
“Don’t worry.” She pushed a small sacking roll at Raffi. “That’s food. Eat it in the cart. And thank you for coming here, keeper. Now we can make something of the place.”
He looked at her. “Did your son know about this haunting?”
“Not from me. The men may have said something. Now, are you certain you want to go back to the fair?”
Galen did up the straps of the pack. “Certain.”
“Keeper—”
He looked up. She was watching him anxiously.
“I don’t ask. But if there’s . . .” She shook her head. “I mean, you have weapons, powers. I don’t understand them. But I have only one son, and all I ask is that he’s not hurt.”
Galen looked at her in surprise. Then he said, “Mistress, you have great faith. Far more than you think.”
5
Be public. Be brusque. Let the criminal choke slowly.
If the people feel a thrill they are ashamed of, so much the better.
WP6/489: Notes for the
Guidance of Executioners
EVERYONE WAS WAITING.
Shoving his way through the crowd, Raffi could feel the tension. Today the fair was full, crammed to bursting, and the noise was intolerable—loud talk, forced laughter, intense bargaining—as if people tried to drown out the fear inside themselves or argue it away. Music seemed sharper in the cold air. He was lightheaded with it all, his own terror a chill down his spine. Even the animals, sheep and marsets and boshorns, bleated and fidgeted and racked their stalls with restless energy, hooves chipping the frozen floor into tiny drifts of snow that the wind gusted into corners.
Out in the center of the solid lake the gallows waited too, black and gaunt. Around them stood a ring of armed Watchmen, faces muffled against the icy wind. One of them, he prayed, must be Galen.
They had separated outside the checkpoints, and Raffi had come in first with the pack—easy enough, as the crush had been fierce. Were they all so keen to watch people die? he thought in disgust. Or was it that the Watch would notice anyone who stayed away?
Already the front row of the crowd was pressing against the ropes, finding good places. Sellers of sausages and ale and hot cakes were doing a fast trade. Raffi chewed his thumbnail, anxious. Had Galen gotten in? Or had he been arrested already? He narrowed his eyes against the sleety wind and tried to see, but each Watchman was tall and dark and he could feel nothing from them. They all had crossbows too. Where would Galen have gotten one?
If the keeper was captured, then it was up to him. He squashed that thought away. There was nothing he could do on his own.
Then, like a cold touch, he felt something. A brush of knowledge, the edge of it like a feather against his mind.
Someone was watching him.
He turned. Around him the stalls were busy. He saw coopers, blacksmiths, singers, all sorts of peddlers and hucksters and hawkers, a man with a dancing bear, a gang of girl beggars. None of them seemed to have noticed him. He walked away quickly, weaving in and out of the crowd, anxious to lose himself, his heart thumping. It might have been Galen. That thought washed over him with relief, but still he sent a few sense-lines out, feeling instantly only the confusion of the crowd, its dizzying desires and anxieties and laughter.
Then the drumming began.
At once people surged forward, Raffi pushed along with them. Bargaining was abandoned; men and women elbowed for position, a better view. He tried to worm his way out, edging down the rope toward the nearest point to the gallows, as Galen had told him to.
The prisoners were coming out. They were filthy and bruised. Ten of them. Five men, two women, and three bedraggled-looking Sekoi, all with their hands tied loosely in front.
The crowd went quiet. Only the drums thudded like a heartbeat. Raffi looked carefully along the stumbling line, seeing an old woman, a young, white-faced boy. When he came to the third man, his gaze fixed, all the hairs on the backs of his hands stirring. He knew this was the keeper.
He was an elderly man, straight-backed, silver hair swept back to the nape of his neck, his face calm, despite its dirt and bruises. A smooth, noble face. He wore a long, ragged gray coat. Power was all around him; even Raffi could sense it. The others were terrified, yet this man felt nothing but compassion; Raffi saw how he turned to a bald, thickset prisoner behind him, obviously injured, and put an arm around his shoulders. Ignoring the angry yell of the Watch commander, he supported the man across the slippery ice, speaking to him quietly.