Silver in the Bone, page 43
The athame’s blade glinted. The chalice was silver, simple in its form but rimmed with glittering sapphires and emeralds. It was the wand that caught my eye, though. Longer than my arm, longer than even Neve’s own tool, it looked like a straight branch capped with a silver point.
While Olwen donned ceremonial robes, Caitriona did not. She bent down to retrieve the massive tome that she had placed near her feet.
I drew in an unsteady breath as she thumbed through the pages, revealing glimpses of color and glorious illuminations. Neve shifted, clearing her throat in the silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her decide—she set her wand down near our bags, freeing her hands to let the magic come naturally.
“Hail Mother of All, the heart of the world—” Caitriona’s voice choked, but steadied again as she began to chant. The words were grave and edged with no small amount of anger. “Earth of your body.”
“Earth of your body,” Olwen repeated, licking her cracked lips as Caitriona added a handful of dirt to the chalice.
“Water of your blood.”
Olwen echoed her again, pouring water into the chalice.
“Breath of your daughter.”
Olwen leaned forward and breathed into the chalice.
Sickly mist rolled up and over the steps, as if called forth by the chanting. It spread through the great hall like roots in dark soil, feeling its way toward us.
Caitriona used the statue’s candle to light another. “Fire of your soul.”
“Fire of your soul,” Olwen said. And then, together, they said, “We call upon your power.”
Caitriona shut the book and picked up the athame, chanting as she sliced her palm and squeezed blood into the chalice.
“Let that which dies know your light and be born again.”
Olwen took the ritual dagger next, cutting her palm quick and neat, before adding her blood to the gaping mouth of the cup. At our feet, mist gathered.
“Let that which dies know your light and be born again.”
Neve was next, repeating the words.
“Let that which dies know your light and be born again.”
And then it was my turn. I felt their eyes on me as I brought the fine tip of the blade to my hand. My arm ached in memory, and an image of the High Priestess flashed behind my eyelids until I forced them open. With one last deep breath, I sliced down. The blade was sharp enough that my skin only stung for a moment.
“Let that which dies know your light and be born again.”
I added my blood to the chalice. The damp touch of the mist crawled up my legs, my hips. There was a tingling at the center of my chest that spread, sparking like the firecrackers Nash used to buy Cabell and me at the start of the new year.
“Deliver your heart from darkness, as you have delivered us. We call upon you, Mother, to be reborn.” Finished, Caitriona took up the wand, closing her eyes. As she drew the instrument up, the mist followed like a spiderweb caught on its silver tip, glittering with the light of the statue’s candle. She held it there, silent and still.
Until her arm started to shake.
Until Olwen closed her eyes, crushed.
I didn’t know what was supposed to have happened, but it was painfully obvious that nothing had. The ritual hadn’t worked.
Caitriona set the wand down on the altar, looking as if she’d love nothing more than to break it into splinters against the stone.
“I told you,” she said derisively. “The Goddess will not lend us her power. Her heart has turned away from Avalon, if she ever possessed one at all.”
She walked away from us, moving toward the bags we had gathered for the journey, and stood there, an expectant look on her face that only partly masked how close she was to tears. I started toward her, the blood dripping from my palm onto the altar and floor.
“Wait.”
Neve’s voice hooked me, drawing me back. She was staring at the chalice, transfixed by what she saw inside.
The dark liquid whirled within the belly of the cup. Threads of mist rose from its center, growing as they wound through the air, twining between us. Caitriona slowly drifted over to the altar, clearly uncertain, even as the liquid rose from the chalice, billowing out with a sudden fury to stain the mist.
“What’s happening?” I shouted.
The mist became a hurricane of pressure and wind, spiraling faster until it tugged at our hair and clothes. Instinctively, I reached for Neve’s hand. She gripped Olwen’s, and Olwen Caitriona’s, until, finally, Caitriona reached for my free hand, and we formed a linked circle around the altar.
The ground trembled, rattling the chandeliers and tables. I held on to the others, fighting the pull of the violent air around us. The column of dark mist rose to tower over us, spreading through the great hall, tearing banners from the walls, upending chairs.
There was a voice in the wind outside the tower, desperate to get in. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on it, to make out what it was saying.
A song. The voice was soft, fair and low, like a mother’s lullaby. It grew in strength and loveliness, at odds with the maelstrom around us. It was the voice of warm sunlight, the refreshing water of a clear pool, of dew on petals, and the breath of trees. It was outside me, and in me, urging me to sing.
Sing.
The others gave voice to the phantom song—struggling at first with the unfamiliar words, to capture the blood-thrumming perfection of its melody. It was intoxicating, irresistible even if I’d had the strength to fight it. The foreign words, words with no translation, only a feeling that tasted like honey on my tongue.
The wind and mist swelled with our song, and the world trembled with it. My whole life, I had never felt power like this—magic, true and pure magic. It blazed through my body like lightning, electrifying every sense until I became it.
This was what it felt like to be caught in the palm of a god. To call their magic down and unleash it into the world, to be reborn along with it.
The ritual was working. I shouted the song now, desperate for it to rise above the harsh winds and stormy pressure gathering around us. Tears streamed down my face, and I was overcome by the magnitude of everything I felt. The joy, the pain, the release.
I forced my eyes open, trying to capture it all, let it live in my memory until breath left my body. The glimmering ribbons of white shot through the wild haze of expanding darkness. The power lifted us at the heels, until I was balanced on my toes, then off the ground altogether.
Through the squalling air, faces emerged, glowing and iridescent. Their features sharpened the longer I watched, fighting the need to shield my eyes from the whipping of the mist. Lowri. Arianwen. Rhona. Seren. Mari. Betrys.
Flea.
My heart felt like it would explode at the specters. I squeezed Neve’s and Caitriona’s hands, trying to get them to look, my throat aching. But the ghostly eyes were fixed on me; their lips were moving but no sound emerged above the song in my ears, and the wind that threatened to carry us away. Singing with us. Joining their power to ours.
No. As quickly as it had come, the elation evaporated. Their faces weren’t ones of love—they were ones of terror. All of them were screaming. Shouting the same word.
I forced myself to stop singing, pulling hard on Caitriona and Neve again, but it was too late.
With a roll of ear-piercing thunder, the isle erupted beneath us.
The air filled with strange light.
Silvery and elusive, its shafts broke through the cover of dust and mist, falling over me like cool fingers. I stared down at the dirt and blood caked onto my jacket, not understanding. The ringing in my ears was painfully sharp as I tried to sit up, only to find that I couldn’t.
My arm was caught beneath a pile of crushed stone. With a grunt of pain, I managed to slip it out, dislodging a large piece. The chunk of white marble rolled down, coming to a stop beside me.
I turned my head to find a pale white face staring back at me. Its serene expression was at odds with the splatters of blood dripping from it. A small candle burned on the ground nearby, its flame struggling until, at last, a gentle breeze blew it out.
As the mist and dust were gathered and pushed away by the wind, I realized where the light was coming from.
The moon.
It was full and lovely overhead, crowned by stars that sparkled like cut jewels in the black velvet of the night sky. I stared at it, my mind as bruised as my body, until I remembered.
The ritual.
I was in the great hall, but no ceiling or tree branches hung above me. Only sky. The Mother tree and the upper levels of the tower were gone, as if they had been ripped clear off by some great and terrible hand.
Horror flooded me, tasting of bile and blood. I ignored the flare of pain in my back and neck as I tried to twist around, searching for Neve, Olwen, and Caitriona.
“Hello?” I rasped out. The chalky air coated my mouth and throat, making it almost impossible to speak. “Is anyone there?”
The world spun as I got onto my hands and knees beside the broken statue of the Goddess.
The walls of the great hall were like a mouth of broken teeth, clattering as chunks of stone crumbled onto the mountains of debris. A section of one of the long tables was still standing, its other half buckled under the massive stone arch that had splintered from the ceiling. I crawled over the stones and debris, gasping for breath, trying to call out for the others.
They’d fallen like petals where they had stood. A slab of the ceiling had crashed down onto the altar, but the stone had caught it and shielded my friends from being crushed by the rubble.
Still disoriented, I crouched down and stumbled forward, reaching Olwen first. I turned her onto her back, pressing an ear to her chest to check for a heartbeat. She groaned, shifting stiffly. Her skin and ink-blue hair were caked in a thick layer of dust and soot.
“Tam…sin?” she whispered.
“You’re all right,” I told her around the lump in my throat. “Don’t move. I’m going to check on Neve and Cait, okay?”
Neve was out cold, but Caitriona was already starting to rouse herself. A cloud of dust exploded from her hair when she shook her head. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she tried to focus on me. She brought a shaking hand to her split lip and started to say something, but a different voice reached us first.
“…said she wouldn’t be hurt!”
I swung toward the place it had echoed from, near what had been the entrance of the hall. My heart slammed into my already aching ribs.
It couldn’t be.
Another, lower voice answered. “I said she would not die, and she has not.”
Their outlines appeared in the mist, faces shadowed. I rose again on shaking legs and struggled through the maze of crushed stone. Splotches of black floated in my vision at the suddenness of the movement, but I drove myself forward, desperate to prove it wasn’t a dream. That I wasn’t dead.
The haze pulled back, and I cried out. Confusion warred with pure, burning joy at the sight of Cabell standing in front of me.
Alive.
He was wearing unfamiliar clothing, and other than a bandage on his forearm, he looked clean and whole. His dark hair had been tied back neatly at his nape. His eyes widened a fraction at the sight of me.
“How is this possible?” I staggered toward him.
But Cabell stepped back, his expression hardening. I stopped in front of him, and the euphoria I’d felt spoiled into unease.
The second figure came alongside him, surveying me with a dispassionate look. He had shaved his beard and—my lips parted in disbelief—his two flesh-and-bone hands were visible as he crossed his arms over his chest.
But somehow, it was Bedivere.
They were both still alive.
I turned to my brother, feeling like I might be sick. “What’s going on?”
He only looked to Bedivere, waiting.
“You…” My mind couldn’t grasp what was happening. “You were dead. Was it the ritual? Did it bring you back?”
A muscle feathered in Cabell’s jaw, his gaze still turned away.
“Look at me!” I rasped out. “I thought you were dead. Why would you pretend—why would you fake it? Unless…”
My stomach turned so violently I almost doubled over.
“Did you have something to do with the attack?” The words came out scarcely above a whisper, pleading. I knew he had heard me by the way he flinched. “How are you alive? How?”
Bedivere looked utterly bored by my horror. The wind tugged at his overcoat, hissing as it blew between us.
“Sir Bedivere—” I began.
“I am not Bedivere,” the man interrupted, his voice like the most brutal of winter winds. “He had the honor of the first death at my hand. I took the body of the king, as is only right.”
“You’re…,” I choked out. “You’re…Arthur?”
His smile was all teeth. “Not quite. I was in need of form, and came to wear his skin well.”
The answer echoed in me. Tasted like smoke on the tongue.
I took a step back.
He took a step forward, and I hated myself for falling back again. Ice seemed to radiate from him, turning the air around me to freezing needles. The horned crown, the very same one I’d seen on the statue below the tower, materialized from the mist and shadows to rest on his head—as if it had always been there, secret and unseen.
“Say my name,” he said, his voice as smooth and cold as a blade.
Merlin’s voice echoed in me. I am one of three…One who dies but might yet live…one who lives but yearns to die…and one left behind, waiting…
King Arthur. Merlin. And…
One left behind, waiting.
Cabell was the one to answer. “Lord Death.”
He smiled, all teeth. “And how have I come to be here, when the paths between worlds were sealed?”
The answer wove together in my mind. “The druids.”
“No,” he said. “Shall we play a game, child? I’ll tell you another piece of the tale for every question you answer correctly, and deny you the rest should you make another mistake. Do you wish to try again?”
My heart pounded painfully against my ribs.
“The priestesses,” I heard myself say. “Morgan and the others brought you to Avalon.”
“That’s right,” he said, the words reeking with condescension. “In the mortal world, I had given the druids the knowledge of how to call on the magic of Annwn, the greater power of death. I thought the women were finally prepared to renounce their pathetic Goddess to seek the same knowledge. That they wished to serve me.”
“They would never,” I said fiercely.
Lord Death tilted his head in dark amusement. “No indeed. They offered me a bargain: if I removed the druids’ access to Annwn’s magic, they would give me the one thing I truly desired. Something no one else could.”
So that was how Morgan and the others had been able to kill the druids—not by wielding death magic themselves, but by having Lord Death cut off the druids.
“You turned against your own loyal disciples?” This went beyond the fickle whims of gods. “What could you want that badly?”
“I’m asking the questions, am I not?” Lord Death’s eyes bored into me, and there was no spark of life in them. “When it came time to collect on their promise, the treacherous snakes instead tried to destroy me. Tell me, child, what happens when you burn away a god’s temporary flesh and splinter their very essence? Do they die?”
“No.” Dread roiled in me as I understood. “You’ve been here all along. You never left the isle.”
A deadly seed, waiting to bloom.
“It took centuries to reassemble my scattered soul. Centuries of appalling weakness, unable to exist as anything more than a specter watching from the shadows of the forest.” Lord Death’s words were edged with barely suppressed rage as he touched his crown. “In time, I regained my strength and magic returned to me. I remade the isle to my liking and created my Children to hunt those who had betrayed me. You can imagine my displeasure in discovering the traitors were either dead or had fled into another world.”
My pulse rioted in my veins. I looked at Cabell, trying to draw a breath that wouldn’t come. His impassioned look was unbearable.
“We were brought here for a reason, Tamsin,” Cabell said fervently, as if begging me to believe him. “The ritual would only work if it was performed with a sorceress. Sisters joined again in purpose. High Priestess Viviane knew that, but she didn’t think the ritual could ever be performed.”
Something in me hesitated before asking, “Why not?”
“The Nine were wrong,” Cabell said. “They were all wrong. There was never a protective spell barring the sorceresses from Avalon.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to reach for him again. “You’re not making any sense…”
“The sorceresses barred the entrance to Avalon from our world, not the other way around,” Cabell said. “They didn’t want Lord Death to come for them. He had to do this to the isle. He couldn’t call the Wild Hunt to Avalon and pass through the worlds that way—there are protections here against it. He’d foreseen that a sorceress would come one day, and he knew the ritual was his only way around the sorceresses’ spells. And now he can truly punish them.”
“Poor child,” Lord Death said to me, clicking his tongue in false sympathy. “For all your cleverness, you do not yet understand. You cannot see how you came to my aid.”
“I didn’t,” I rasped out. “I—”
But I knew. I knew.
“Yes,” Lord Death said, the very portrait of arrogant disdain. “The athame. The High Priestess suspected me, and what I had planned. She hid the athame in a place I could not enter so no ritual would ever be performed.”
