The Keep by Bella Forrest
“Very good—promising control,” said Vincent with a smile, though Alex wasn’t aware he was doing anything profound. “Now, necromancy can also be performed on yourself, but we are beginning with somebody else, in case things go awry.”
Alex nodded, eager to begin. The memories of S. Epstein were growing more insistent, banging on the barrier he had put up in his mind to keep them out.
“First, you must focus on the path of someone’s spirit line. Then, you can follow it back as far as you are able. Though, I should warn you, it gets harder the farther back you go. The spiritual memory is filtered through generation after generation, growing weaker with each stage, if you will, like taping too many times over a cassette,” he explained.
Alex looked at him blankly.
“A cassette?” Still nothing. Vincent shook his head in mock despair.
“Never mind—you understand my meaning?”
“I think so,” he replied.
“Superb. So, a spirit line is precisely as described: it is the line of somebody’s spirit.” He grinned, long teeth pushing against the thin flesh of his lips.
Alex frowned. “How do I find it?”
“I will instruct you as best I can, though your instincts may have to do some of the work, tailoring it to your particular style of magic,” Vincent began, smiling as reassuringly as his strange face permitted. “And, please, don’t worry if you don’t succeed on your first attempt. Necromancy takes practice, but is invaluable once mastered. First, close your eyes and focus on the image in your mind, surging forth from the vial in your hand.”
Alex obeyed, allowing S. Epstein back into his mind. He found himself floating above a familiar piazza, the sun baking the sandstone as the heady scent of roses filled the air. Against the far wall, the stern-faced young man stood beside a young woman, talking secretively beneath the tensed bow of a cupid-like cherub carved into the stone above their heads. It was easy to get lost in these visions, and Alex felt lighter in the false world of another’s former life, his troubles fading away as he soared above the square, observing the couple, unseen. It was only the sound of Vincent’s voice, piercing the scene, that brought his focus back to where it ought to be.
“You must seek out a pulse within the vision. Delve deeper into the essence, transcending the layers, and you should find it within,” he instructed.
It sounded like a vague sort of command, but Alex found it far easier to follow than expected, once his mind had made sense of it. It was like staring into a moving stream to try to see the shapes of fish and pebbles beneath. Focusing beyond the bright lights and vivid colors of Stillwater House, he moved through the layers of S. Epstein’s surface memories, reaching deeper and deeper toward something else, pulsing acutely in the center of it all. A glowing heart of silvery white light. This had to be it, Alex thought, as he awaited further instruction from the godlike voice of Vincent, bellowing to him from all around.
“Now, follow the light as if it is a pathway, going back as far as you wish to go. It should stretch out ahead of you once you focus your mind upon it,” he explained, moments later.
Alex concentrated on the glowing light, realizing he no longer possessed a body as he glanced down with invisible eyes. He could see and he could hear, but he was not an entity as such, merely a concealed observer in the life of another. It did not perturb him as much as he thought it might have, and he diverted his attention back to the task at hand. No sooner had he poured all of his attention toward it than the light began to spill out, running in a shimmering line into the darkness of a distant gray horizon.
Following Epstein’s spirit was a slightly harder skill to master, however, and Alex struggled to walk the silvery line. It was not a case of simply putting one foot in front of the other, as he had no feet to move. Reaching within himself, he drew upon the strength of his anti-magic, gathering it into one core point of focus and sending it out toward the silvery line of Epstein’s spirit. As if magnetized, the ripple of his anti-magic stretched ahead, pulling him along behind. The place where his mouth normally was curved into a smile as the first fresh visions began to come to him; he had mastered the skill with a degree of success he had not anticipated.
“It is up to you where you wish to go,” Vincent boomed in his head. “Direct your energy and dive into the spirit line at any interval you please.”
He did so, though the exertion was titanic as he dragged himself along the gleaming spirit line of S. Epstein. It became easier, the more used to the sensation he got, but he could feel his energy straining to achieve his desires. In these visions, Alex felt different from the omnipresent figure he’d been in the surface memories. As he delved deeper into this young man’s past, he realized he was the person whose spirit he was piggybacking upon. The view was limited, his eyes seeing only what Epstein had seen. It was the same as he moved gradually backward, inhabiting the souls of Epstein’s parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, going as far back as he was able.
He saw days filled with laughter and days filled with tears, first kisses and last kisses, triumphs and failures, all in one sweeping observation of Epstein’s spirit. In one vision, seeing the black clothes and rainy skies of a funeral, he almost felt as if he were trespassing, stealing a precious moment from within the pulsing red soul of S. Epstein. He wasn’t sure how comfortable that made him feel, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from experiencing it through the stranger’s eyes, watching it and living it as if it were him. It was deeply sad and deeply moving, and he found he could not leave.
There was something oddly addictive about escaping into the body of another, seeing their life instead of his own, especially considering the pressures that awaited him in his own existence. Here, there was no Alypia, no portal, no stress, no time constraints, no imposing barrier magic overpowering his emotions. Here, there was only what he wanted to see, and he felt this was exactly what his mind needed.
Pulling away from the funeral, he stretched farther and farther back along the line. It was like flicking through the pages of a painstakingly made family tree, with some images less clear, getting fuzzier and fuzzier the farther back he went. Eventually, the visions became nothing but grainy tableaux; he could still hear things that were being said, but he could no longer see any of the actors playing out the scene.
“When you’re ready, return as carefully as you can, recoiling slowly,” instructed Vincent.
As Alex returned to the cell, which seemed so ordinary now, a ripple of concern flowed through him. He worried that performing such a feat might have used up some of his essence, as other powerful spells did, but he realized, as he clutched his chest, that the spirit line he was following had acted like a buffer, keeping his own essence safe. It was almost as if the spirit line was a power source all its own.
“Why are you really teaching me this?” Alex asked suddenly, gripping the bottle in his hand. He wasn’t sure if Vincent’s motives were as altruistic as he’d made out.
Vincent picked at a thread on his armchair. “I felt… compelled to instruct you in the ways of spirit lines. There was an inkling within me that it may be of some use to you—a compulsion… as I said,” he explained, a tightness in his usually crisp voice.
Alex frowned, eyeing the necromancer with curiosity. If there was more to the story, Vincent didn’t seem particularly forthcoming, his stern expression preventing Alex from inquiring further. Still, Alex couldn’t quite suppress the sense that there was more to it than met the eye.
As Alex placed the bottle back on the table, he realized how relaxed his mind still felt, how much joy the fleeting escapism had given him, within the lines and lives of others. Though, the attraction he felt to it also scared him slightly, making him think he might have to keep his spiritual endeavors to a minimum for fear of the dark places they might lead. After all, there was a reason necromancy was frowned upon, no matter how pleasant it might feel.
Deciding to take a brief pause, Vincent offered Alex something to eat
“How did I do?” Alex asked, swallowing the last of the cheese.
Vincent grinned. “Better than expected, for a beginner.”
The five-minute interval had given Alex a chance to think about the potential of these newfound skills, and how he might use them for his own means. It was encouraging, and Alex realized it was probably worth every moment of time he spent away from the task of breaking down the barrier magic. An idea had come to him while he was biting into a plump fig, though the thought of actually trying it out made him nervous. His own spirit beckoned, whispering to him the possible secrets of his hidden lineage.
“Do you think I could try my own spirit line?” he wondered aloud.
“Do you feel up to the challenge? You look a touch pale.” A strange expression crossed Vincent’s pale face, but Alex would not be deterred, not when such a huge opportunity was orbiting within his grasp.
“I’ll be okay—the food helped, and we’ll end the lesson straight afterward,” he said.
Vincent raised a silver eyebrow. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” he replied, though he had to wonder if this was the whole point of Vincent teaching him how to trace spirit lines, to encourage him to try it on himself and learn more of his secret past, as a secondary observer. Who was to say that, while Alex was in someone else’s memories, Vincent wasn’t rooting around in his? Trusting a necromancer only went so far. Still, he was desperate to try his own spirit line.
“Very well, then. Let’s begin.” Vincent spoke softly, gesturing for Alex to close his eyes, as he had done before. “Seek out the pulse of your own spirit, deep within the heart of your inner core, beyond the realms of solid flesh.”
Alex searched through the darkness, reaching through the blockades of his conscious mind, pushing deeper into the very epicenter of himself, feeling his physical self fall away as he sought out the glow of his own spirit line. It burned brightly, though it surprised him to see that his was the same color as the mages’.
See, we are not so different after all.
“Now, follow it,” whispered Vincent, somewhere in the air around him.
Gathering his anti-magic, he poured it toward the burning heart of his spirit, watching in delight as a silver stream flowed away into the distance, mapping out the history of his existence. Alex wasn’t interested in the near past; he had lived those days and moments, and he did not need to see them again. However, he paused awhile on a memory of his mother. It wasn’t something he could pass up, seeing her again, even if it was just in memory.
In the vision, she was sitting, curled up on the sofa with a tartan blanket draped across her legs, laughing at a terrible gameshow answer on the television. There was a mug of steaming hot chocolate on the coffee table, a mountain of marshmallows bobbing on the surface—too many to melt, just the way she liked it. The memory stung him with a bittersweet barb. He must have been sitting in the armchair opposite, because his view of her was perfect. It was a simple, domestic scene between the two of them, no doubt identical to a million others he could find in his library of remembrances, but it was everything Alex had wanted and needed to see. He didn’t even remember it, or how old he must have been, but it didn’t matter; it was enough just to see her, to refresh the picture he held of her within his mind.
It was tricky to pull away from her. He knew he could have spent a week there, watching only her, but the draw of his past soon overcame his desire to linger in the realm of his old life.
Moving farther back, things began to speed up, like a fast-forwarded version of This is Your Life, until there was no more of him to see. Reaching the edges of the next person in his spiritual timeline, he came to a standstill, pressing the metaphorical pause button. However, the images that rushed into his mind were foggy, swirling around his vision like a black mist. He wondered if it was just this small section of memory that was distorted, but, as he pushed farther and farther back, the visions grew even worse; they were barely discernible, as if someone had tied a blindfold around his eyes, blocking the images from sight.
Frustrated, he flitted back to the gleaming spool of recent times and childhood memories, just to check that it wasn’t him losing strength, causing the images to blur. To his utter vexation, the images of his own life were crystal clear, but as soon as he moved back along the line, to delve into the ancestry of his father and beyond, everything went dark. It was like a curtain being dragged across the scenes that were playing out, keeping him from seeing. The shapes and images weren’t discernible at all, but he could feel things and hear muffled words and conversations—he just couldn’t see them or touch anything, in the way that he had been able to in his own, personal memories.
Trying to push away his annoyance, he honed in on the emotions he was vicariously feeling, through the person whose life he was viewing, and the sounds that rushed all around him, drowning his senses in a cacophony of noise. Without warning, grief and fear shot through him like a lightning bolt, driven by the experiences of someone else and a scene he couldn’t see. It coursed through every cell with an intensity he had never felt before. His body was in shock, his anti-magic faltering in defense against the pain, until the sensation was so overwhelming it drove Alex to pull away from the hidden memory.
He tore back into reality, his chest heaving, tears pouring from his eyes. Inside his ribcage, his heart thundered against the bone so hard he felt it might explode. Once again, the adventure had taken a vast amount of energy from him, but he was relieved to feel that it had not touched the edge of his essence, even though he felt utterly broken. It had taken nothing important, but this excursion had drained him as physically as it had emotionally.
“You must be careful!” said Vincent, worry furrowing his veined brow. “Rushing from a spirit line as fast as you did is never advisable. It takes time to unpick your consciousness from the spirit world—do you feel well? Do you feel strange? Are you in one piece, do you think? Is there any chance you may have left a piece of yourself behind?”
Alex couldn’t deal with the bombardment of questions while his mind was still reeling, and it was everything he could do not to yell at Vincent. The memory he had dwelled upon had made him feel exhausted and bitter, opening him up to a world of accumulated pain and torment within his own past, so intense he didn’t even need to see the faces of those who had suffered through it to feel the agony and persecution they had felt. It lingered inside him, haunting him. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he could never have anticipated the wave of pure terror and searing pain that had coursed through him, leaking through from some unseen point in his ancestry.
I shouldn’t have delved into my own past. I should have just followed Epstein and left this room while I still felt rested and calm.
A panic attack began to claw through Alex’s body, but Vincent was quick to step in, trying to calm Alex by helping him up and moving him over to the window at the far side of the room. The stale air washed over Alex’s face, soothing the livid red of his flushed cheeks. Moments later, as Alex leaned heavily against the sill, Vincent began to speak of other matters, probably in an attempt to distract Alex from the panic that threatened to tip him over the edge.
“Caius often disappears into a forest that lies just beyond this fog,” the necromancer said, pointing toward the blurry shape of trees. “It seems
To Alex’s surprise, Vincent’s tactic worked. The light outside was growing dim, making Alex wonder just how long he had been in Vincent’s cell, dabbling in the spirit world. The idea that he had wasted a great chunk of time made him feel suddenly guilty, but this new information about the forest was somehow managing to shift his focus from his inner turmoil.
“Why does he go there?” Alex asked quietly, his voice thick with emotion.
“Who can say? He never brings anything out and he never takes anything in, though there have been rumors from time to time of him stealing away the odd prisoner to torture, to punish and play with at his leisure. No doubt a test subject for his latest batch of horrors,” Vincent mused. “He’s not the worst of them, mind you—the royals. His brother holds that title, more monster than man.” He shuddered, the movement causing the darkest veins in his head to pulsate in a somewhat nauseating fashion. Alex could barely look at them, though it was harder still to look away.
“His brother?”
Vincent nodded. “The king, Julius. If I had not experienced his cruelty for myself, I would think his vile reputation was nothing but exaggerated hearsay. He makes Caius’s box of tricks look like a parcel of kittens.”
The more Alex learned about the royals, the more he grew to detest them. Although, it seemed that those in charge of the havens had split off into their own factions. Alypia and the Head were one team, albeit a dysfunctional one, while Kingstone and, presumably, the haven he had not yet had the pleasure of visiting, Falleaf House, were laws unto themselves, quite separate from the closer sibling bond, however tense, of Alypia and her brother.
Glancing uncertainly at Vincent, Alex couldn’t help but again wonder why Vincent wanted to show him these skills or help him by imparting all this knowledge. What did Vincent get out of it? It was all of very real interest to Alex, but he wasn’t sure how Vincent could know so much, unless he was guilty of snooping in royal spirit lines. It seemed like a crime that could definitely get a person locked up.