The Hemlock Queen, page 18
Lore pressed her mouth flat, directed her gaze to the cobblestones. This should be a good thing, but Malcolm looked almost pained.
Behind them, Gabe stared at the well with a similar lost expression, his one eye wide. He shook off whatever emotion had him pinned, glared at Bastian. “There’s no way to be certain unless we send someone down there.”
Bastian raised a brow. “I don’t think that’s necessary, but if you do, I won’t stop you.”
Surprise made Lore raise her head from her contemplation of the ground, her eyes meeting Gabe’s for a shared beat of shock. That was the easiest she’d ever heard Bastian concede to the other man.
The King noticed their quick glance, and his mouth lifted in the tight smile of someone who’d gotten what he wanted but wasn’t yet sure of the cost. There was something nearly pained in the line of his jaw, like he was fighting off one of those headaches again. His eyes slid upward, to a sky slowly sinking toward twilight. The attack had been this morning; Lore had only lost a few hours to recovery.
An improvement on a week. Especially since she’d channeled so much more Mortem this time around.
All of it, even.
“This should free up some of your time,” Bastian said. “Now that you won’t have to go to the Priest Exalted for help with your forest.”
Lore’s brows knit. “I beg to differ.”
The pleased look on Bastian’s face faltered, a shadow passing over it. “Do you.”
Not a question. He said it flat.
“If it’s all… escaped,” she said, her voice skipping over saying exactly what had happened, “I’ll need my barrier more than ever.”
Her forest, he’d said. Had she ever told him it looked like that?
“It would be a waste of time.” Bastian’s voice brooked no argument. “You and Remaut both have better things to do than hide away in a dusty confessional booth.”
“I highly disagree.”
“As do I,” Gabe said quietly.
Bastian’s eyes swung between the two of them, more gold than brown. “I see.”
“Bastian,” Lore said, starting toward him, passing close by a bank of stone roses. “We should keep things as they are until—”
Her arm brushed a stone stem, and it gave, as if the rock had suddenly become ice and melted at her heat. Lore lifted it quickly, backing away from the flower bed.
The rose only cracked, at first. Then it shattered. All of them did, down the line, the rock becoming so brittle it flaked like ash before nearly disintegrating, a cloud of gray grit in the humid air.
She’d seen rock do this before, but only when huge amounts of Mortem were channeled into it.
That’s when she noticed her hand. The gray star on her palm had extended outward, nearly covering her fingers, every vein etched in ink. The cold set in slow, the pins and needles as her blood went sluggish.
Mortem. She’d channeled Mortem into the roses, with barely a touch. But that was impossible, if it was gone—
Not gone.
The voice was faint, like a whisper through a door that was only cracked.
Just in you now.
“Fuck,” Lore whispered, staring at her hand, staring at where the stone roses had been. Staring at Bastian, who looked at her with something both thrilled and almost worried in his eyes.
“I’m going to keep working with Gabe.” Lore didn’t know how to hold her hands, afraid that she might channel death into anything she touched. “In fact, I think we should go practice right now.”
Bastian didn’t say anything, even as Gabe nodded and turned to walk back into the Church, even as Lore followed him. He just watched them go.
“I don’t understand.”
She’d said some version of those three words at least five times in the few minutes she’d been following Gabe through the labyrinthine back hallways of the Church, taking the long way like they had the day they went to see Anton. Gabe didn’t try to hide, this time, apparently unafraid of being followed.
Lore kept her arms crossed tight, her stained hands hidden. “I didn’t even feel it, Gabe. There was no warning. It just happened.”
“We’ll have to guard your mind more,” Gabe said, stating the obvious. He walked with no thought for her shorter stride; Lore scrambled to keep up. “Stronger barriers. If all the Mortem is in you now—”
“Wait.” She stopped in the middle of the stone hallway. “How do you know that for sure?” The voice had told her, quiet in her head. Did he have a voice, too? Something whispering to him when the sky grew dark?
He turned, confusion written across his features. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But am I wrong?”
Lore shook her head.
He nodded once, decisively, then started down the hall again. Knowing things they shouldn’t about each other wasn’t a shock at this point.
What is happening to us? Lore could feel it approaching, like the charge in the air before a storm, a dread and anticipation she couldn’t put words to.
They reached the confessional room, but Gabe didn’t stop, leading her through the lattice and then the velvet curtain, down the deserted aisles to the door. He opened it, waved her through, turned right, and went down the hall. She recognized the path, after weeks of taking it daily a little over a month ago. He was going to the library.
“Think on your barrier,” he said as he walked, a lesson given on the move. “You know how to do it by now. Think on it hard, Lore, guard your mind like your life depends on it.”
It had this whole time, but never had she felt it quite so acutely.
She could imagine her forest without closing her eyes now. It sprang up around her thoughts, thick and green, a mirror image of the forest she saw in her dreams. Lore could nearly smell it—the thick sap, the sharp bite of greenery, salt on the breeze—
When Gabe reached the library door, she was calmer, the panic in her stomach soothed enough to pull in full breaths. Experimentally, she reached out, touched the stone wall. No melting, no sudden brittleness.
It’s more settled, the voice in her head said. Stronger now, as the sky outside dimmed to dusk. You can contain it.
Lore lifted her hand away.
When Gabe threw open the door, Malcolm was waiting, already gloved, shoving books beneath the glass dome running down the center of the reading tables. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes determined, but there was a barely-there shake in his hands. “I’ve pulled everything that mentions channeling mechanics,” he said, not looking up from his work. “Between the three of us, we should be able to check all of these in an hour or so, just keep it quick, and I can send to Farramark and maybe even Kettleburgh for more—”
“I don’t think we need all that, Malcolm.” Gabe’s voice was gentle.
Still, Malcolm scowled, his gloved hands sliding the last book under glass. He moved toward the shelf for more—the pothos vine growing along it twitched at his approach. “Then what do you think we need, Your Holiness? Because the Mortem is gone, and while that seems great in theory, in practice I am extremely troubled.”
“What we need,” Gabe said, “are the myths.”
“Why?” Lore asked, even as Malcolm, with a shrewd look at Gabe, diverted his course from the shelf. He went toward the small alcove in the corner, the one where he’d once told her the prophecies and other things deemed too important for common eyes were kept. “What could you possibly think the damn myths are going to tell us? It seems like Malcolm has the right idea about how to figure out what happened to the Mortem, how to reverse it.”
“Reverse it?” Gabe arched a reddish brow.
Lore hadn’t known that’s what she was hoping for until the words were already out of her mouth.
Too late for that, the voice said.
Shut up. Gods, there was a very real possibility she was completely mad now, no slow descent for her. She was talking to the fucking voice in her head like it was an irritating sibling.
Not quite, the voice rejoined. This would be much easier if you stopped pretending you don’t know who I am.
Lore concentrated on her forest very, very hard. “I don’t want this,” she murmured. “Gabe, there’s no way anyone could want this.”
Someone could. Lore wasn’t sure whether the thought came from the voice or from her.
He sighed. His hand twitched up, tentative, before he smoothed back her hair, tucked it behind her ear. It’d been at least a day since it was brushed, a frizzed and tangled halo around her head—Juliette would have heart palpitations if she knew Lore was traipsing around the Church in such a state, and in a nightgown, too.
But he didn’t turn to stone. That was something. The cold fear that had trapped her eased, somewhat.
“This doesn’t feel like something that can be reversed,” he said quietly.
The fear came back, albeit in a different shape.
“Here.” Malcolm came out from the small alcove room with only one book in his gloved hands. He slid it beneath the glass, then pulled two other pairs of gloves from his pocket, tossed them at Lore and Gabe. “This is the only one I could find.” He barked a rueful laugh. “There’s apparently volumes of technically non-canonical stories in Laerdas, if we wanted to ask our Kirythean friends in the gods-damned holding cells. Maybe Alie can bring it up.”
“Hopefully not,” Gabe rumbled. Alie hadn’t accompanied them to the well, instead going to her own apartments, ostensibly to prepare for the sudden diplomatic crisis. “I think we should keep this as quiet as possible.”
“You might need to adjust your expectations of possible.” Lore slid onto the bench in front of the book as she pulled on her gloves, now confident that she could touch things without sending death into them immediately. “I don’t think me saving everyone from an explosion will be news that goes away quickly.”
“Probably not.” Malcolm reached through the door to turn the book’s delicate pages. “But the part about you somehow absorbing all the excess Mortem leaking from Nyxara—and keeping it—can hopefully be left out.”
That could be true. The average courtier didn’t keep up with the eclipse cycles; there’d be no reason for them to know that Lore had taken in all the Mortem left in Nyxara’s dead body.
“There’s just too much we don’t know,” Malcolm said, still leafing through the book. “Can we still channel the Mortem in dead matter, when there’s no extra coming from the Buried Goddess? What about people who dose poison? Will it even do anything anymore? Will you still get the high, will it still make you live longer—”
“It should.” Finally, something Lore had concrete answers for. “Most poisons have mild mind-altering effects when taken correctly, even outside of Dellaire—that’s why poison runners are able to do business elsewhere, shipping out poisons grown here, since they’re more potent.” Or they had been. Maybe she’d ruined Val and Mari’s business, too. Lore was breaking records for ruining things lately. “The life-lengthening effect utilized the Mortem within a person more than the Mortem leaking from the Buried Goddess. Anyone who bought some years should still have them.”
“Wonderful,” Malcolm said, sarcasm thick in his voice. “At least our criminal enterprises won’t be harmed.” He scrutinized the page beneath the glass, straightened the book, then stepped back. “Here’s a myth for you. The Fount of the Golden Mount.”
“Who named it that?” Gabe scrunched his nose in distaste. “The rhyming is unnecessary.”
“Clearly, they didn’t let that person name anything else,” Lore said. “The Sapphire Sea would be ‘the sea you want to flee.’ The Ourish Pass would be ‘the pass that’s a pain in my ass.’”
“If you aren’t going to be helpful, don’t talk.” Gabe sat down across from Lore, peering through the glass to read. “Lo, I tell of the Fount of Power, the source of all magic—”
“The lo is also unnecessary.”
“Attempting to hide your fear through humor is never effective. Also, that wasn’t funny.”
Lore shut up.
Malcolm gave her a sympathetic glance from the other side of the table. “The bit about the Ourish Pass was funny, though.”
“Got one,” Lore muttered.
Gabe ignored them. “The Fount of Power, the source of all magic, was found on the Golden Mount by He who would become Apollius. And feeling the weight of all power, He invited those He loved most to the Mount, to partake of the Fount and receive power in turn.”
“The weight of all power…” Lore repeated slowly. “Does that mean what it sounds like it means?”
“Yes.” Gabe sat back, a thoughtful look on his face, though there was no hint of surprise. “In the beginning, Apollius was the god of everything. Just like He is now.”
No, said the voice in the back of her head. That’s just what He wanted them to think.
“That doesn’t tell us anything about what happened with Lore and the Mortem.” Malcolm stepped forward, flipped through the book again, looking for another myth. “Here. This one is about the Dissolution.”
The capitalization was clear in his tone. “What’s that?”
“When the gods first left the Mount, before the Godsfall,” Gabe answered. “All of Them but Nyxara and Apollius, anyway. He couldn’t leave. Had too much power to be far from the Fount.”
Not true, again, the voice said. Not like that, anyway.
Malcolm read aloud, this time. “When eons of time had passed upon the Golden Mount, with the power of the Fount shared among the pantheon, the gods grew restless and wanted to leave Their paradise. Even Nyxara, who had wed Apollius, desired to leave with Hestraon and the others. Apollius, stricken with woe, begged Them to stay. Nyxara did, but the rest departed and left Him alone. This was when Nyxara began to plot Her husband’s demise, and when Apollius began to realize He was better as the only god.”
She expected another negation from the voice, but it remained silent. Lore twisted her fingers in her gloves. “Rather harsh.”
“That’s gods for you.” Malcolm was already turning pages again, his agitation clear. “And that’s why I can never understand why we’re supposed to try to be like Them. It’s not like They were paragons of morality.” He gave another one of those rueful snorts of laughter. “I guess August took that in the opposite direction, didn’t he? Apollius’s flaw was that He was too loyal to His wife, and no one could accuse August of that.”
A muscle in Gabe’s jaw twitched at the word flaw, clear discomfort with the idea of a god having such a thing. But he just sighed and rubbed at his eye patch. “No, they certainly couldn’t.” He shook his head. “I heard more than one tale about August ordering people to his bed. Nobles’ wives, servants, whoever caught his eye.”
“You don’t have to use force to be a rapist,” Malcolm said, still flipping pages. “I hope his hell is particularly gruesome.”
Lore thought of the brief stories she’d heard of Gabe’s boyhood, of his mother and Bastian’s mother, Ivanna, their friendship. Ivanna was an unhappy woman in an unkind marriage. Extremely unkind, apparently. August was even more repugnant than Lore had known.
Malcolm reached the back of the book, flipped it to the front again, his ire rising. “The only other myth in here is about the sacred grove on the Mount burning the night the elemental gods left.” Mindless of its age, he slammed the book shut. It made Lore start, made her lean back from the table. Malcolm must be beyond furious, to manhandle a book like that.
With rough movements, Malcolm took the book from beneath the glass. “This is useless. The most religiously significant events to happen since the Godsfall are happening right under our noses, to us, and we have no reference points because—”
His voice died in his throat as he spun on his heel to take the book back to the alcove.
When Lore looked at the bookshelf behind him, she saw why.
The pothos vine had grown. Grown was too tame a term, really—it’d rioted, spreading more leaves, more green tendrils, climbing up the shelf and down to the floor. It’d happened soundlessly, and so quickly none of them had noticed it until now.
A moment’s shocked silence. Then Malcolm whirled, his dark eyes wide and fixed on Lore. “Did you do that?”
“No!” She clenched her hands tight, as if stray magic might leak from them. Maybe it would. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“Like you didn’t feel the Mortem at the well?” But Malcolm sounded distracted, not accusatory. He opened his own hands, staring into his palms, an inverse reflection of Lore’s stance. Dark eyes went from his hands to the vine, tracking along its length.
“I can’t channel Mortem anymore,” he murmured, almost to himself. “There’s none to pull out of the catacombs, and I can’t even feel it in dead matter. But I feel…” He closed his hand and didn’t continue.
A weight on Lore’s shoulder. Gabe’s hand. He gently nudged her up from the table. “We should go, Lore.”
She stood on shaky legs. Briefly, she considered reminding Gabe that they hadn’t actually worked on her barrier yet, but her forest grew riotous in her mind, thick and green.
It’ll hold, the voice reassured her.
Lore grimaced. Aren’t You what I’m supposed to be keeping out?
No reply.
Gabe looked to Malcolm, still standing by the bookshelf, still studying his hands. “I’ll be back after I return Lore to her rooms.” Bastian’s rooms, but none of them voiced the correction. “We can look through more books.”
“Not unless I write to Farramark,” Malcolm said distractedly. “I’ve looked at our other books, they don’t have anything useful.”
“Seems like allowing one god to tell all the stories before disappearing wasn’t the best plan.” A yawn punctuated the end of the sentence. Lore wasn’t sure how late it was, now, but her body seemed to think it was the middle of the night.
Malcolm just grunted.
Right before she stepped through the arched doorway, Lore looked back. Malcolm still stood by the bookshelf, though his attention had gone from his hands to the vine stretching across the books. Tentatively, he raised his finger, touched one of the leaves.
