Umbral Ten, page 24
part #1 of Khaldaia Chronicles Series
“If you’re happy with that, we can start adding the emblems. You’ll need to charge them with elemental energy,” Jakob said. “In the central circle, we have the sun, charged with fire, at twelve o’clock; the moon, charged with ice, at six o’clock; the snake entwining an hourglass, charged with thunder, at three o’clock; and the emblem of oceans, charged with wind, at nine. Then moving onto the second circle, we have the planets, rotating clockwise from twelve …”
Snuffles returned just as Theo was finishing up the last set of emblems, holding something wrapped in cloth in one hand.
“Well, got it. It was gross, but I got it. Where’s the archbishop?”
Rook jabbed a thumb a little way down the garden. “Where we left him.”
“Cool,” Snuffles said, handing the cloth-wrapped item to Lance. He looked like Snuffles had punched him in the gut. “Be right back.”
Theo heard the sound of a knife being pulled out, and then a wet noise. She very intently avoided looking. Or thinking too hard about it.
“What’s next?” She asked Jakob, who was looking very much like he wanted to throw up.
“I -- ..” He raised a hand to cover his mouth, turning a little green. “... We should start arranging the spell components. They’ll be burnt up when the spell is activated.”
“Right. Talk me through -- …” Something squelched from Snuffles’ direction. “Talk me through it.”
Jakob nodded, shutting his eyes. “We need to set eight spell components. We’ll lay the mundane components first, since we’re … still acquiring the magical ones …” He had to pause for a moment. “Place the butterfly chrysalis at one-thirty, and then the chalice of opium, mercury, and prismatic sand at four-thirty. After that, place the parish records wrapped in red thread at seven-thirty, and the dragonfly trapped in amber at ten-thirty.”
“Wasp,” Tamara said.
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“We had to raid my box of treasures on the Mermaid’s Kiss to get it, and I don’t have no dragonfly trapped in amber, so we’re substituting it with a wasp trapped in amber,” Tamara said. “What, that a problem?”
Jakob turned pale. “The dragonfly represents the swift passage of time and is of immense symbolic -- it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! A wasp will do.”
Theo rubbed a hand over her face. “I’ll get those arranged now.”
She carefully set each in four of the glowing rings around the outermost circle. It was rare to see a spell, even a complicated one, with eight separate components, and some of the magical ones were inordinately rare and powerful. Acting as guiding instructions for the spell, beacons to magical power, and batteries all in one, the components were by far the most important part of any complex spellwork.
Theo set the butterfly chrysalis down first, then the chalice, filling it with a vial of opium and then a vial of mercury, both taken from the village doctor, before mixing in a handful of rainbow glittering prismatic sand. The alchemist had been quite kind in giving them that sand for free, but on the free market it would have doubtless cost an arm and a leg. After that, she delicately set down the parish records from the village chapel, bound in some red thread she’d untangled from her own robe, and finally the chunk of amber with a wasp preserved in it.
“Got it,” Snuffles called. “The old man’s skin is still pretty tough. Lingering umbral magic, I guess.”
“... Wait, I never asked before, but when you die, are your ears going to disappear? ‘Cause he turned back into a human …” Tamara asked.
Snuffles flicked an ear thoughtfully. “Huh. Never really thought about it. I guess they probably would, but where would they go? Would they turn to -- …”
“Focus, please,” Theo said. “Jakob, the magical components, please.”
“R-right,” Jakob said, adjusting his glasses. “At twelve, we have the heart of a crystal dragon, of at least a thousand years of age. I gather we had to substitute that?”
Theo nodded, reaching for her satchel. “The alchemist had an extraordinarily rare white dragon heart, some four-hundred years of age. It’s not the same or as powerful, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.”
Jakob breathed out through his teeth, but said nothing as Theo pulled the heart from her satchel. Preserved as it was, it looked and felt almost like porcelain, sparking faintly in the sunlight. She stepped forward and placed it down in the ring.
“Next, at three o’clock, we have …” He turned faintly green. “The eye of an Incarnate and the eye of a Church Oracle, paired together.”
“We lucked out there,” Snuffles said, holding up a bloody eyeball. He went and set it down in the ring, and Lance set his item down next to it, pulling the cloth away.
“May Fraydeus guide you into rest,” he said softly.
Jakob looked away, covering his mouth again for a second. “At six o’clock, a memory stone from the forests of Ilyasvale, doused in fine alcohol.”
“We were certainly lucky there,” Theo said mildly, pulling her memory stone from around her neck. She traced her thumb over the smooth surface, breathing out slowly. Then she placed it down in the ring, her fingers lingering over it before she pulled back.
“Does grog count as fine alcohol?” Tamara asked, pulling a bottle from her satchel.
“No,” Jakob said irritably. “But I suppose it’ll have to do.”
“Let’s hope it counts,” Tamara replied, tipping the bottle over the ring. The alcohol splashed out, pooling around the shimmering surface of the memory stone.
Jakob shoved his glasses up his nose again. “And finally … damn it all, did we even think of a substitute for this one?”
“Royal blood, right?” Snuffles asked. He pulled a vial from his coat, tapping it with his finger. “I’ve got you covered.”
“How.”
“Temujin,” Rook said, before Snuffles could reply. “You said he was a prince, didn’t you, Tamara? Because if he wasn’t, then this is useless.”
Snuffles raised an eyebrow at Rook, before shaking his head with an amused snort. “Well, he was bleeding all over the place, I guess. Easy enough to skim some blood off the top.”
Jakob took the vial, turning it about in his hands thoughtfully, before setting it down in the last ring. “That should be all of the components. Theo, Alisha, did you memorise the chant?”
Theo gave him a thumbs up. “Fully memorised.”
“Yep, got it all up here,” Alisha said. “But I, er … I’ve never cast a spell like this before. Or really anything anywhere near this complicated. Is it really okay?”
The spell technically called for three mages to perform it, but it seemed like Alisha was the only other mage -- witch, Theo reminded herself again -- anywhere nearby, so two would have to do. Theo smiled gently at her.
“Don’t worry. Just say the chant and trace your brush in a circle, and I’ll do the rest,” she said. “You’ll do just fine.”
Now or never. Either this spell would work or it wouldn’t. Theo took a deep breath, tightening her core and straightening her back, tipping up her chin so that she would at least look like a confident, undaunted mage.
Alisha took up her spot on one side of the tree, and Theo settled on the other side, raising her brush.
“Asmodai et Gusion, Tempus Edax Reram, Relicum Fata Morgana,” she chanted, tracing her brush about in a circle. Focus. Imagine the island in her mind, imagine a great wind sweeping up the people on it and bearing them ten days hence. Pull the image out of her head. “Jeruz Ansuz Uruz.”
Runes flowed from her brush, forming a ring in front of her, and as it closed, the Tree of Mystery began to burn with light. Brighter, brighter, until it was a tree-shaped mass of white and pink fire, casting sparks into the air around them.
One by one, the spell components burst into coloured flame, their physical forms turning to ash as the magical fire swirled inwards, empowering the magical circle and converging on the tree.
“Asmodai et Gusion, Tempus Edax Reram, Relicum Fata Morgana, Jeruz Ansuz Uruz,” Theo repeated, pitching her voice louder. “Asmodai et Gusion, Tempus Edax Reram, Relicum Fata Morgana, Jeruz Ansuz Uruz.”
The air was shaking. Flickers of cold light weaved around Theo, then back towards the tree, then out again, an endless cycle gathering momentum and power with every loop. Theo furrowed her brow, concentrating on the image in her mind. Vanishing from here, and reappearing in ten days.
“I think it’s working!” Jakob yelled.
“Asmodai et Gusion, Tempus Edax Reram, Relicum Fata Morgana, Jeruz Ansuz Uruz,” Theo chanted, mustering up all her power. She could feel the spell drawing on it, tugging on it like a thread, draining her dry. “Asmodai et Gusion, Tempus Edax Reram, Relicum Fata Morgana, Jeruz Ansuz Uruz!”
Those flickers of light blossomed into ribbons, a whirling vortex not of light, but of day and night and dusk, like panes of glass filtering the world through them, and at the centre of it all the Tree. Theo grit her teeth as the spell tugged on the last of her power, the light of the Tree flaring so bright it drowned out the blood moon above.
The last dregs of her mana drained out of her, but the Tree was still pulling, sucking the breath from her lungs, drawing from her life force.
“It’s working!” Jakob called. “It’s wor — …”
Then the light swallowed everything.
---
Clang.
The red moon was in the sky, but this wasn’t the monastery. This was a fishing village’s dockyards, steeped in the smell of sea salt and blood, with the ocean stretching away on one side and the squat, mossy stone buildings on the other.
An Incarnate, his face half-covered by some outgrowth of bone, his body a rake-thin tangle of bone and mismatched flesh meshed and melting together, possessed of six spindly arms tipped with blades, rushed forward. Snuffles and Lance were in his way in a moment, their blades crashing against his. He turned and jabbed at them with a yell, carving patterns in the air.
“To have fallen so far and so quickly. Is this what you wanted, Roger?” Lance asked.
“He can’t hear you,” Snuffles replied. He kicked the Incarnate in its chest, forcing it back a step as he raised his sword. “O Lords of Umbra …”
Lance frowned, raising his own sword. “O divine Fraydeus …”
Light. Searing light. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think. It was like she was falling through molten steel.
“To kill an Apostle Knight … that was a mistake, Theodosia.”
Elizabet. She was standing with Temujin and Ser Morian, and Theo couldn’t decide if she looked sad or baffled or furious, but it didn’t matter, because Ser Morian swung his scythe upwards, and the sky exploded into light.
Theo caught a glimpse of a woman in red samite reaching out for them, before six pillars of light crashed into the ground. Ser Leodegrance emerged from one, then an old man, a woman with fox ears, and more, and more, until they were surrounded by Incarnates.
“I’m sorry,” Elizabet said, and she sounded … sincere. Bizarrely sincere. “This is where your rebellion ends.”
Theo couldn’t tell if moments were passing or hours. It was like she was unmoored from time, space, any solid footing in reality, just spinning free through a kaleidoscope of burning light, not knowing where she’d end up.
A woman with the dawn-pink eyes and the markings of a Church Oracle sat in a chair by a dingy inn room’s window, staring out at the horizon.
“Your Holiness,” Lance said from next to Theo. “It’s time for us to go.”
The Church Oracle didn’t reply. She just smoothed a hand over her stomach — Theo realised now, looking at her properly, that the woman was heavily pregnant. Why did that fill her with so much dread? It was in breach of her vows, certainly, but that was no reason to be afraid.
She began to hum a tune, some simple lullaby. Lance took a step forward, holding out his hand.
“Chaldana,” he said quietly. “We need to go.”
“Where are you taking me? To see the witch?”
“Yes. We’re going to see the witch.”
Was she lost? Had the spell gone so badly wrong that she would simply be drifting through the whirling colours forever, always falling deeper, through ever more chaotic layers of time and magic? It was like being on the border between dreaming and wakefulness, that one agonising suspended moment where you were trapped between worlds.
Theo didn’t know how long they had been walking, but her legs, her entire body, was bone tired, as they descended the great, spiralling staircase. After a while, the stone of the holy crypts had turned to corrugated metal, and the eerie silence had been replaced by the whirring of distant machines.
Then they emerged into the lowest chamber. Huge, impossibly huge, filled with platforms and walkways, with ‘FRAY US PE AL R R’ painted on the walls, almost completely worn away.
The bottom filled with water, and rising out of it was a jagged sphere, glowing a brilliant gold.
“Would you look at that,” Snuffles murmured.
Jakob shook his head. “I can’t believe it actually exists.”
Lance’s face contorted into something like joy and something like dread, strung unsteadily between the two emotions.
“The Cradle of God,” he murmured.
Deeper, deeper, always deeper, falling further into the vortex. Theo shut her eyes, but the colours burnt straight through them, rattled her bones and stole the breath from her lungs.
The blood moon hung larger and brighter than she’d ever seen it before, as if it had been dragged close to the horizon.
With a thunderous noise, it cracked down the middle.
“Theo?”
Theo’s eyes snapped open.
It was dark. They’d performed the ritual in the daytime, but now the only light came from the moons and the faint glimmer of the Tree. Did that mean it had worked? Or had she simply passed out?
She was sprawled on her back, arms stretched out on either side, with Rook leaning over her.
“How long was I out for?” She asked, blinking up at him.
Rook’s expression was wholly unreadable. “No idea. Most of us only just came to ourselves.”
Theo stared at him for a moment, trying to find any trace of elation or disappointment, something that would clue her in to whether he thought the spell had worked or not. “Did you see … ?”
Already, the things she’d seen were starting to become hazy, as though they were simply dreams.
“See what?” Rook asked. “You were casting the spell, there was a flashy light show, and then I came to and it was night.”
Theo sat up, rubbing her hand over her face. For someone who had just woken up, she felt surprisingly alert, the last traces of haziness fading fast from her mind. She took a moment to remind herself of the details of what she saw, to commit them to memory long enough that she could write them down later.
Lance was standing nearby, watching her carefully, and Tamara was helping Alisha to her feet. The girl seemed shaken — Theo supposed that was hardly surprising, all things considered, but she had to wonder if Alisha had seen the same things she had. Snuffles was crouched at the archbishop’s body, with Jakob standing behind him, pinching his nose.
“Body is fully bloated, discoloured to shades of black, losing fluid,” Snuffles rattled off. “Fingernails and teeth are starting to fall out. Smells fucking foul. Just about covered in flies.”
“Yes,” Jakob said, muffled. “That’s, um, that’s some advanced decomposition.”
Snuffles tilted his head back, regarding the rest of them with a sidelong look. “This sure as fuck isn’t a body that’s been decaying for nine days. It’s been rotting for at least fourteen days, probably more like twenty.”
Alisha flicked her brush in a quick circle. “Camio Eortologio Dagaz.”
The light spilling from her brush resolved into a string of numbers. Longitude and latitude Theo recognised, and the line of numbers beneath it must have been a date. It wasn’t a spell she was familiar with, but she could see its use while roaming the high seas.
“Ten days from when we left, give or take a few hours,” Alisha said. “We … we actually did it. I can’t believe it, but we really, actually did it.”
Tamara whooped with happiness, flinging her arms around Alisha. Lance allowed himself a triumphant grin, approaching Theo and clapping her on the shoulder. Even Snuffles seemed delighted, sprinting forward and throwing his arms around a surprised Rook from behind, while Jakob beamed a dazed smile behind him.
Theo felt a startled warmth swell up in her chest. She could laugh — happily, madly, she didn’t know or care right now. The enormity of what they did, how stupid and impossible it was, was crashing down on her.
She indulged it for a moment. Then she forced it down. She could spiral into whatever joy or horror or incredulity at what they just did later.
“Let’s get back to town. We need to know that everyone is all right, and then we need to repair the ship and leave,” Theo said. “The Church won’t leave this island alone for — …”
Her head burned with pain. She could feel her heartbeat pumping fast, faster, deafeningly loud. A swirl of colours burst in front of her eyelids.
“Are we ready for the test run tomorrow?”
A man with a short, greying beard and gentle eyes turned towards the speaker. She was maybe some five or ten years younger than him, her dark hair tied back in a bun, her glasses reflecting the light from the strange plaque she carried.
Theo’s mind whirled. Where was she? Some room carved from a shiny white substance she didn’t recognise, all smooth curves and sleek lines.
“That might be a better question for our staff. They have their fair share of nerves,” the man with the greying beard said mildly. He took a sip from his mug, giving a hiss of pain. “And who can blame them? They could still decide to back out of this, if they wanted to.”
