Winterspell, page 8
He laughed, pushing back a lock of dark hair, and Clara saw him then as she did when he told her stories by candlelight, as more than some eccentric old toymaker. He was ancient, magnificent, and other.
“Who is her?”
“Anise.”
He hissed the word, and the statue—God help me, Clara thought. I’m hearing things—cried out again. The sound seemed somehow enraged.
“Who is Anise? Who’s coming, Godfather?”
In answer something clattered across the roof. A large weight fell onto the second-floor terrace.
Godfather took from the statue’s side a long, slender sword with a hilt of black stones. “Here, Clara. You’ll need this. I made it myself in one of my first experiments with their magic.”
This elegant weapon was no wooden play sword of the sort she and Godfather had practiced with. As her hand curled around its hilt, the part of her that came alive in the safety of Godfather’s shop thrilled at the weight of the sword; it felt as though she was meant to hold such power in her hand. Etchings along the blade echoed the markings carved into the statue, repulsing and fascinating her simultaneously. How were these elements connected, and what did it mean?
An inhuman scream sounded from the direction of the stables, followed by another, and then eerie silence. Godfather cursed.
“The horses,” Clara whispered, the sword forgotten, replaced by dread. “Was that the horses?”
Godfather moved her toward the statue. “They’re here.”
“Who?”
Scratching sounded against the doors; a blunt force impacted the boarded-up windows.
“Loks,” Godfather spat.
“Loks? What is that?”
“You’ll see soon enough. I’m sorry, Clara, to request such a thing of you.” He pressed a fierce kiss to her hand. “But you will be glorious, ferocious. This is what we’ve been working for, you and I. To fight whatever comes our way, and then . . .”
He paused, put his forehead against hers, chuckling under his breath.
She held his cheeks, forcing his gaze to hers. “And then what?”
“Stay still. Don’t move.” He withdrew three clockwork dragons from his coat and sliced open his palm with a serving knife.
Clara grabbed for his hand. “Godfather, you’re—”
“Bleeding” was the word, but it would not come, for the liquid now coating his hand was not red.
It was silver.
“What is that?” She pointed at it stupidly. Things were clawing at the windows, smashing the glass, shredding the wood, but she could look only at his hand. “Godfather, your blood, it’s—”
He ignored her, smearing his bloodied hand across the dragons and then throwing them across the ballroom floor. One went straight, the other two to the sides; they skittered along the floor with flapping clockwork wings and whirring jaws, chomping up the wooden slats beneath them. Each of them spit out behind them another, identical dragon, and another and another, until a black sea of them roiled across the entire room.
They scattered like crazed spiders, wings and talons snapping with a familiar whir of gears. It sounds like the back room, Clara realized. She had never been allowed there, and now she understood why.
In the wake of this dragon sea, the ballroom metamorphosed into a forest of black metal, iron, and glass. Staircases became jagged mountains, shining in the dim, wintry moonlight; strategically placed chairs became mazes of spindly towers. Godfather’s toys, scattered across the room, grew into enormous versions of themselves—skeletal, winged horses; a squadron of clockwork soldiers, gears turning inside their gaping chests. Garishly painted bats and monstrous raptors darted up from the floor to perch on the chandeliers that now filled the entire room with drooping tangles of wire. Godfather’s electric lights sizzled white. The grandfather clock in the corner tolled midnight, each chime lower and deeper than the last as the entire mechanism swelled to five times its normal size.
Likewise the Christmas tree grew until it reached the ceiling, where it erupted into a forest of iron needles. Oversize ornaments spun, throwing moonlight across the ceiling. The barricade surrounding the statue transformed into a maze of black mirrors until Clara was surrounded by a hundred versions of herself, peering out from behind a hundred laughing Godfathers, their bloody hands outstretched.
“It’s working!” he cried. “I’ve done it—Clara, at last I’ve done it!”
The dragons, their work complete, settled silently at the edges of the room. Thousands of red eyes watched from the shadows and the ceiling; thousands of whirring metal wings glistened with silver blood. The air stung of salt and nearly choked her with its acridity.
“What have you done?” Clara turned to Godfather, torn between terror and awe. He was sweating, his cheeks pinched and gray; she hurried to him and held him up as he caught his breath.
“Godfather, can you hear me?” She slapped him lightly. The relentless clawing noises at the windows magnified tenfold. Fear swelled within her as she watched the boards over the windows bow under the pressure. They were everywhere, these phantom creatures, these loks, whatever that meant. “Are you hurt?”
He laughed, weak. “A bit. That magic’s not meant for me, but I had no choice. I have no choice, not until things are as they should be once more. It wounds me every time.” He straightened, glaring at the statue and swinging his fist through the air. “And yet still I triumph!”
Clara drew him back to her. “Godfather, pay attention. Something is breaking in. What are they? What shall we do?”
“We shall do as I’ve taught you,” he said, turning her away and withdrawing his own sword, slender and unadorned, from where it leaned against the statue. “We shall fight.”
The energy vibrating off Godfather was cold, as taut as silver wire. It frightened and energized her. She wondered if this was what being struck by lightning felt like, and she wondered why this was happening, and if it had something to do with the statue, which trembled furiously on its base.
At that moment several . . . things, hulking and black, burst through the windows on the mezzanine and crashed into the forest Godfather had made. Hellish screams filled the air, and against the backdrop of a broken window, Clara saw the silhouette of a long, fanged snout, a knotted back, a hulking, bearlike body covered in armor, and three naked tails.
Rats, Clara thought. The similarity was unmistakable.
But, no, not rats. What had Godfather called them? Loks.
Behind the loks, against the shattered window, a tall, lean figure stood, pale and clothed in ragged garments. The figure was decidedly male, and a light at his temple blinked mechanically, attached to some sort of wired apparatus. He called out a guttural command in an unfamiliar language, and the loks screamed in answer. They were approaching fast, crashing toward Clara through Godfather’s wild maze.
“Keep them away from me,” Godfather said, turning to the statue. “I’ll help you as I can, but I must concentrate. Do you understand?”
He withdrew more dragons from his pocket, tinier ones, and sliced his unmarred palm above them. Silver dripped onto the dragon’s serpentine necks. They came alive at the contact and scattered across the statue’s surface, ripping at the metal, peeling it back bit by bit. They swarmed over the statue, biting and tearing, their spiderweb wings writhing. They seemed to follow Godfather’s directions across the statue’s body; he was coaxing them to life as a puppet master would, murmuring things under his breath and occasionally slicing open his forearm for fresh drops of blood. As the dragons moved, the statue began jerking violently, screaming something too inhuman to interpret. Blue light flashed along the seams of its metal plates, illuminating the etched symbols from within.
“Keep them away from you?” Clara backed away from the sight, sword in hand. Sounds of battle came from throughout the ballroom—shrieks and slashing claws, the clash of swords, and far too much of it to know where to train her attention. Memories of her sparring with Godfather, their evenings laughing over punches and swordplay, overwhelmed her with new significance. “You’ve been training me to fight not for me but for you.”
“Clara, we haven’t time for this. Please just—”
On the other side of the protective barricade, a gigantic weight crashed to the floor. Inside the statue something pounded furiously.
A massive clawed arm burst through the wall of mirrors behind Clara and yanked her through.
Choking on her own scream, Clara landed hard against a bristly body hot with blood. Black claws slashed across her arm and thigh. She saw yellow eyes, two sets of long black teeth in a mouth crusted with pus, and a distinctively ratlike snout. The beast smelled of sewage and grime. Around its head it wore an assemblage of gears and lenses that unfolded over its right eye. Clara struggled to break free, kicking and biting, but the lok’s grip was iron. Angered, it reared back onto its hind legs.
Spots swam before her eyes as the lok’s grip tightened. The creature roared unintelligible words, its stink washing over Clara’s face. She had the impression that it had won a game and she was the prize. But she still had a sword somewhere. She had lost much of the feeling in her arms, but it was still in her hand—she had not dropped it. Desperation spurred her on past the frantic, impossible fear of being trapped in the arms of a monster. Any thoughts but those of survival fell away, leaving her mind sharp. She needed room to maneuver the blade into the lok’s belly, but she could hardly breathe for the pain. The lens over the creature’s eye flashed, catching her attention, and this seemed significant. The man at the window sported a similar light. Could he be controlling them? Were they somehow linked?
“Anise,” she whispered. She didn’t know who or what Anise was, but maybe that man upstairs knew, and maybe it would distract the lok long enough for Clara to make her move. She forced herself to stare at the blinking lens and infuse her voice with conviction she did not feel. Something sparked in her hair—from the swinging chandelier overhead, perhaps?
“Anise! I know you’re there. And it’s too late. Godfather’s already done it.”
Clara didn’t even know what precisely Godfather was trying to do, but the words clearly meant something, for the lok’s grip loosened. It cocked its head slightly in puzzlement, or, perhaps, to listen to something far away.
Clara did not wait to find out. Gathering her strength, crying out in pain as her bruised back twisted, she thrust her sword toward the lok’s midsection and prayed that her blade would find a gap in the strange, corded harness wrapped around its middle. The lok jerked, putrid breath rushing over her face. Its steaming black blood spilled onto her leg.
The lok fell. Clara fell with it and rolled away from its flailing body. As she watched it die, shock settled in her mind. Her limbs were unsteady, and blood spotted her skin. She had killed the thing that had attacked her. The novelty of such a concept, the revelation of her own might, sent surety surging through her in a rush of heat.
She was invincible, ecstatic. For an instant the chaos around her fell away. She allowed herself to imagine slicing open Dr. Victor’s own white belly, again and again, until he was nothing but a bloodied piece of meat, like the lok before her.
The main ballroom doors burst open with a great cracking sound, two loks bounding through, their tails like whips. Overhead, iron creaked and shadows swayed. Clara looked up to see a lok wrapped around one of the chandeliers, peering into the maze for a safe path down which to climb.
Something slammed into her unwounded side, and she fell hard against one of the long serving tables, now flung up on its side, a sheer, mountainous black wall. In the distorted reflection of the table’s surface, Clara saw a lok rearing up to strike, but then one of Godfather’s monstrous creations, a life-size clockwork soldier of metal and brass and meticulously crafted military finery, stalked forward and jerked its sword high. The blade whirred, separating into five smaller ones. When the soldier slashed, five dark ribbons appeared on the lok’s belly.
A delirious thought occurred to her: Had each of Godfather’s creations over the years been specifically crafted to someday come to gigantic life and defend against potential attackers?
The lok fell, but Clara did not wait to confirm its death. Three more were behind it, rushing toward her. She fled through the ballroom, dodging beasts of flesh and beasts of clockwork battling to the death. A pack of metal wolves pounced on a lok, their mechanized howls piercing the air. Another lok, its eyes clawed out, blindly snatched a dragon from the air and smashed it against the wall. It was as though this night had ripped everything from Godfather’s shop and thrust it into a monstrous fever dream.
Another dragon dipped low, almost hitting Clara; one of the loks pursuing her knocked her across the floor, and shattered glass raked her skin. When she came to a stop, she looked up to see hundreds of shining daggers and the warped face of an angel.
The Christmas tree.
Clara staggered to her feet, slashing free of a tangle of light strings with her sword. The wires popped, catching one of the loks in the face. The creature fell with an abbreviated shriek, and the air smelled of charred flesh. Two remained, and as Clara ran, she held her sword up behind her, dragging it through the metal shards that had once been pine needles. Thin black daggers rained down in a luminous cascade as Clara covered her head and threw herself out into the open space beyond the Christmas tree. Behind her the loks had fallen, now no more than pincushions bleeding black.
From the center of the room came a terrible scream. It was unfamiliar and deep—not Godfather but someone else.
The image of the statue’s handsome metal face sprang to Clara’s mind. She searched for it desperately through the gaps in Godfather’s barricade, but something higher up caught her eye.
Down the sheer slope of what had once been the staircase to the mezzanine crept the figure from the window—a man in torn clothes and covered with muck, as though he had been crawling on his belly through the bowels of the city. The man caught her eye and grinned horribly. He was pale and looked somehow . . . not right, the lines of his body not quite what they should be, though Clara couldn’t pinpoint the wrongness more precisely than that. He shouted something to a nearby lok, and it turned toward Godfather’s barricade, where the air thrummed blue.
Clara ran after it without thinking, too crazed for fear or strategy. A few loks broke away from their skirmishes to follow her. She reached the barricade and squeezed through a narrow gap in the glass, catching distorted glimpses of her reflection—bloodied, bruised, her gown shredded. Loks clawed through the glass after her, shrieking.
Godfather crouched at the statue’s side, guiding the dragons in their work. They chewed between each of the statue’s fingers and along each palm. Metal peeled away in curling strips and fell to the ground like rain. Blue sparks danced along the unfurling metal seams. The statue’s handsome mouth twisted, emitting sizzling blue light, and cried out in pain. Its voice was both human and not—rattling as a machine would, but as rich as a man’s. Disbelief rooted Clara to the spot. She felt as though she had tumbled into a dream, fed by too much punch, too little food, and the weight of Concordia’s threats.
“Clara!” Godfather shouted. This was followed by a vicious scream as a lok flew into her, knocking her back into a mirror. Her sword flew away, and she gasped for air, fighting to stay conscious. Stars danced in her vision—or perhaps they were the cascade of sparks now tumbling off the statue.
Godfather threw himself between the statue and the lok, blue fire singeing his hair.
“It’s too late, Anise.” He gestured at the statue, chuckling wearily. “You see? Not the king’s fool anymore, am I?”
Clara searched through the sea of glass around her, desperate for her sword. Her hand landed on the heel of her left boot. “A handy place to keep a dagger, inside a boot,” Godfather had said the day he’d presented them to her, beaming. “Everyone knows that. But I much prefer to use the boot itself.”
Frantically she fumbled at the hidden mechanism on her heel until the blade fell free from inside it—a slender dagger, but it would suffice.
The lok raised his paw to strike, his eyepiece flashing. Godfather closed his eyes and murmured something that sounded like a prayer. Behind him the statue’s blue sparks coalesced into a great tower of light. There was no more time; Clara ran at the lok with blood in her eyes and leapt, screaming with the effort as she thrust the dagger high.
The impact threw her back, blood splattering her. She flung herself to the side as the lok crashed to the ground. It did not move.
Godfather stared at her, astonished. “Clara . . .”
From the lok’s left eye socket protruded her dagger’s hilt. The creature’s mouth dripped black.
Trembling, Clara put her boot on the lok’s head and tugged, trying not to vomit at the sensation of her dagger’s blade scraping bone. She rose to her feet, gripping the hilt like a tether. Her battered knees nearly buckled with the enormity of what she had done and how close Godfather had been to dying.
The other loks hissed in the shadows, slinking away. Ominously the man with the light at his temple had disappeared, which so frightened Clara that, weary as she was, she found her sword and held it up, at the ready.
“Well?” she shouted, shoving hair slick with sweat away from her eyes. “Are you finished with us, then?”
The only answer was reluctant lok chatter from the shadows as they dragged themselves out the shattered windows. Snow had been blowing in during the fight, leaving the ballroom a madhouse of black angles and white drifts.
The loks were leaving. Why were they leaving? And where had the man gone? Perhaps they were simply regrouping, or more were on their way.
Clara turned, wild-eyed, to ask these questions of Godfather—but he was on his knees.
Her heart turned cold and sank. She had not been fast enough. The lok had killed him, her precious, strange godfather, her dearest friend.
She dropped her weapons and ran for him, his name on her lips, but he was laughing; he was crying.
