Bringer of Dust, page 45
“The fire is holy,” said the Abbess in her deep voice. “Only the pure will pass through it, untouched.”
Hearing that voice, Alice felt like she’d been punched. She stared, shocked. Everything, all of her childhood, all of her fury and sorrow and grief all came rushing up at her at once. For she knew that woman, she knew that face and those words, had suffered them in her dreams since she was a little girl.
Standing before her was the woman who’d seduced her mother into madness, the woman who’d founded the religious community at Bent Knee Hollow, all those years ago.
Adra Norn.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she swore. “No—Stop. Charlie? No, no no no no…”
She seized Charlie by the sleeve, pulled him back. Adra Norn had always been tall but she looked now almost monstrous, peering down with silver eyes, her lids rimmed with red, her face impassive as stone. But it was her; there was no mistaking it.
Adra Norn too had stopped. Her dead eyes at first had seized on Charlie with a grim satisfied hunger, but now they shifted, reptilelike, to Alice. A flicker of recognition flared in them.
“Ah,” she said simply. “I know you.”
Alice was breathing hard, staring. Before she could think, she’d pulled Coulton’s pistol out of her pocket and cocked the hammer and held the gun level at the old woman.
“Uh, Alice?” said Charlie, his voice reaching her as if from a long way off. “Alice, what’re you—?”
Adra Norn merely stood in her rough robe, peering down. If she was unnerved by the loaded gun, she gave no sign. At last, she nodded. “You are Rachel’s daughter. Yes.”
Alice’s head was spinning. She wanted to throw up. She felt so stupid. She remembered her conversation with Margaret Harrogate, nearly two years ago now, when she’d first interviewed for the employment. How the woman had asked about Bent Knee Hollow even then, how she’d conceded that it was her experience with Adra Norn that had drawn them to seek her out in the first place. This was no coincidence, she saw; it was all interconnected, always had been, from long before her time. Adra Norn, Dr. Berghast, Margaret Harrogate. Talents, and children, and the deceived believers at Bent Knee Hollow. This. This woman. She’d hated this woman, hated her even more than her own mother, had imagined all her life finding her again, and now she was standing in front of her and she realized it didn’t matter, there was nothing about it that could make anything right, no amount of vengeance or fury could fill in the hole that was inside her, the hole that was her grief. She could pull the trigger or not, it wouldn’t change a thing, and did that make her weak or strong?
But she thought of Charlie and of Marlowe and the reason they’d come to this place and she knew she’d sooner die than be the reason they failed. And she raised the gun sharply away and carved her tongue along her eyeteeth and then she slipped the weapon back into her pocket.
“It’s her,” she said angrily to Charlie. “She’s the woman who ran the commune, when I was little. Who made my mother think it would be a good idea to burn a house full of people in their beds.”
“Bent Knee Hollow has always filled me with regret,” murmured Adra Norn. “I am so sorry for what happened there, child. I’d sought women for my community here, women who were not talents, but capable all the same. It was a mistake. Only talentkind can do the good work we do here. And your mother suffered for my mistake, as did those she hurt.”
Charlie, bless his heart, stepped forward, his hands balled into fists. He glared up at the towering figure. “You can’t apologize for a thing like that,” he said angrily. “There’s no apologizing for it.”
Adra Norn, implacable, unmoved, merely watched Alice’s face, her great slabs of hands still flat and upturned. “Interesting. I thought I’d found none suitable, at Bent Knee,” she murmured. “And yet here you are. Perhaps I was not so mistaken after all.”
Alice felt sick, furious that she couldn’t just turn and walk away.
Adra Norn shifted her gaze back to Charlie. “You. You are the one who carries Jacob Marber’s dust,” she continued in her deep voice. “The famous Charles Owydd. You have come here to me.”
Famous.
Suddenly Alice felt afraid. Sharp memories of Adra Norn from all those years ago were coming back, memories of how the women at the commune had worshipped her, emulated her, adored her. She remembered watching Adra Norn move through her disciples like a farmer through her sheep, trailing her fingers over their heads in benediction. The cold assessing light in her eyes. Then she remembered what Abigail Davenshaw had told her about the Abbess, how dangerous the woman was, how she had been hunting the dust that was in Charlie for her own ends, and she knew he was in real danger.
“I didn’t come here to you,” Charlie told her, fierce. “I came for the orsine.”
“Oh? And what would you want with an orsine?”
“Nothing he can’t manage on his own,” interrupted Alice.
A flicker of a smile crossed Adra Norn’s lips. “Nothing to do with a child lost in the gray rooms, then?”
Charlie turned to Alice. “She knows about Mar,” he hissed.
“Paris is the center of the world, child,” said Adra Norn, raising her hands. “All news reaches here, eventually. But you may relax, young Charles Owydd. I will not impede your efforts. Though I fear there is little I can do to actually help. Our orsine has been sealed for centuries; there can be no passage through.”
The Abbess glided closer, towering. Alice took an involuntary step back, but she needn’t have feared; the woman dismissed her acolyte with a flick of her fingers, then stopped at the base of the steps. Her clothes smelled faintly of sulfur and sweat. Her teeth, when she smiled, were blackened at the edges, as if from sugar.
“You have brought the dust, I assume?” she asked. “Show it to me.”
“Don’t, Charlie,” said Alice. “Don’t do anything she asks.”
But Charlie, ignoring Alice, folded back his sleeve, exposing the writhing tattoos. “It’s inside me,” he said calmly. “I can feel it. It … it got into me, somehow. And now it’s spreading.”
“Yes,” Adra Norn murmured. “Because it has bonded to you, child. Good. So it is safe.” She nodded twice, and her eyes darkened. “I am relieved. I have been so afraid for its safety. The outcast drughr will be hunting it, even now. It will make her powerful again. But in you it is contained, child; in you, it is stable.” She frowned down from her immense height. “You are a haelan, are you not?”
Alice scowled. “And what if he is? He’ll be of no use to you. He’s not about to join your cult.”
“We are only women here, Alice, daughter-of-Rachel,” said Adra Norn. “There would be no place for Charles, among my acolytes. But these women—these talents—have devoted their lives to guarding the orsine, keeping it sealed. Keeping what lies on the far side of it at bay. They are deserving of your respect, not censure.”
Alice could have spat in her eye.
“Why would you help us?” asked Charlie.
“Because I loathe the drughr even more than you do,” she said calmly. “All my long life I have labored to keep talents safe from their hungers. My task has been to watch over this orsine, to keep the terrible things on the far side contained. The world beyond is not a fixed place; it is always growing, mutating. It cannot be withstood. It can only be refused. Henry, alas, thought differently. He wanted to enter Cairndale’s orsine, and destroy the evil that is inside it. He believed he’d found a way to absorb a drughr’s power, its … talent. That an exile’s emptiness was a kind of strength. He thought he could become a drughr, and carry that power into the land of the dead. I warned him it would destroy him instead. But he always was stubborn; he would not listen.”
Charlie was staring at her, his mouth half-open, astonished. “You knew Dr. Berghast?”
“Of course I knew him, child,” replied Adra Norn. “He was my brother.”
Alice laughed angrily. “The hell he was.”
“You don’t … look like him,” said Charlie doubtfully.
“Because it’s bullshit,” Alice said. “Don’t believe anything she says, Charlie. This is what she does. She gets in your head.”
“You are skeptical. Of course you are.” Adra Norn’s gaze flickered over Alice, untroubled. “I expect Henry shared a great many truths with you. But there are truths of spirit, and truths of fact, and he did not always distinguish between the two. Did he tell you I too am a haelan? How else could I walk through fire and live?”
“Damn you,” whispered Alice.
“If there is a God, I am certain that damnation awaits,” replied Adra Norn calmly. “Thank goodness there is no such thing. My brother and I were … chosen to guard the orsines. When we ourselves were still young. Chosen, on account of our talents. It was known we would live long enough to see the gateways safe. Such was our charge, many centuries ago. But in a long lifetime, there is space for many mistakes, hm? That is what you are thinking, is it not, young Alice?”
Alice glared, trying to get a sense of the woman. Her thin lips, her silver eyes betrayed nothing.
But then, unexpectedly, Adra Norn reached out one massive hand and gripped Alice’s shoulder, too quickly for her to pull away. The hand was hot, crushing. It felt like a burning weight was pressing down upon her and she could only stare up, startled, rooted to the spot.
“What happened to your mother was awful, child,” said Adra Norn, her voice lowering to a purr. “There is no excuse for such suffering. I am so deeply sorry.”
“What if your brother was still alive?” said Charlie. He turned his face to Adra Norn like a flower to the sun. “I mean, Mar is. We know he is. So maybe Dr. Berghast is inside the orsine, too? What if we could get him out, too?”
Adra Norn withdrew her heavy hand. Alice felt her knees go weak, as if something had been drained from her.
“My brother is dead,” said Adra Norn flatly.
She turned away, and rose impassively back up to the pavilion, to the dark entrance there. She raised a hand and several acolytes emerged at the edge of the gravel path. “Nor, I regret to say, is there salvation for your friend. I will show you the orsine, Charles Owydd. You will see, and understand. Yes?”
“Show us,” said Charlie firmly.
Adra Norn nodded. “Come. The both of you. Come.”
* * *
Charlie followed the Abbess down, into the dark.
Alice was right behind him. Behind her came three acolytes, heads bowed, hands clasped. The stairs led into the catacombs of Paris, a rough-cut maze of ancient quarries, the walls smoothed in places and slimy to the touch. At the first branching the Abbess took a torch from its bracket on the wall, held it high. A blue flame folded itself in transparent sheets, the heat strong. Alice, Charlie saw, kept a hand deep in her pocket, where Coulton’s old pistol lay. The ancient acolytes followed at a distance, in near darkness, as if they’d walked this way often and knew it blind.
The Abbess went slowly down, into the earth. The floor was smooth from long centuries of use and gradually they passed alcoves filled with human bones. There were ribs arranged on shelves, and stacks of skulls with solemn dark sockets, and the chambers they passed were shrouded with sadness. They approached a reservoir of black water, the Abbess’s torch glittering fiercely in its reflection, entered a gallery with red walls. A long corridor branched away, lined with the bones of children, at the end of which stood an altar with a silver chalice. The Abbess explained nothing. She led them down a winding stair that seemed to end in a wall, then turned left, and they slipped into a narrow passage Charlie hadn’t noticed. All the while he could feel Alice’s anger, like a hot wind on his skin, and the eyes of the acolytes far behind.
At last they came to a great limestone cavern, not unlike the cavern below the island ruins at Cairndale. Its ceiling glittered with strange calcified shapes, twisted by age. They might have been bodies, suspended frozen in a rictus of pain. All along the walls were bones, skulls and humeri and fibulae stacked like firewood. The skulls grinned in the flickering light.
And there, in the center of that cavern, was the second orsine.
Charlie knew it at once. He felt a sudden heat under his skin, as if all the capillaries there were burning. He knew the Abbess was watching him but he didn’t care. He took a step forward. The orsine was a limestone reservoir, with a railing made of wood that ran its perimeter. Stone steps, worn by age, led down into it at each end. It might have been carved with care once, lovingly even.
But there was no water within, no strange blue glow like at Cairndale. The orsine was crusted over with black vines, strange bud-like contusions grown up out of it, like little horns. It was not vegetal; whatever it was, it had grown up out of the orsine itself, entwining and roping over itself and looping all around the railing and the stonework and spreading even across the floor, like an infection.
Charlie shuddered.
“That happened around the time Cairndale burned,” said the Abbess softly. “It is … leaking.”
Charlie went over to it. And then he saw the corruption more clearly. They were not vines, but arms, hundreds of arms of all different strengths, twisted at the elbows and wrists; they were not buds but fingers, curled painfully. The firelight did not reflect off the black limbs, but seemed drawn into them and eaten by their own dark nature. He stepped cautiously between the arms on the floor, crouched low. He reached out, touched one of the charred hands.
“Charlie—” called Alice, uneasy.
The dust in his skin began to shine a soft blue. At his touch, the hand gave off a loud sigh, and crumbled away. He rubbed his fingers together. The hand was made of a thick, greasy soot, or something near to it, and where the corruption had been a black smoke now rose up off Charlie’s skin, and off the broken black wrist.
The shine in his hand grew brighter. He waved his fingers sharply and the black smoke dissipated. But the broken arm was still smoking; gradually, as Charlie watched, the tendril of smoke thickened, hardening into a new arm, congealing like wax and folding over itself under its own weight before freezing into place.
“What the…,” he whispered to himself, leaning nearer.
“If you touch it, it will spread,” called the Abbess. “I would advise you to step back. It has a … tendency to grow toward living things.”
Charlie turned his face. The tattoos in his hands were pulsing, casting their eerie blue shine. He rose and returned to the tall woman with the torch, to his friend with her loaded pistol.
“There’ll be a glyphic’s heart inside that, then,” said Charlie.
The Abbess nodded.
He was wondering how they’d ever get it out, if Mrs. Ficke and the girl Deirdre should manage to unseal it. If he could just wade through the arms and plunge into the heart of it. “What happens when the corruption gets onto a living person?” he asked.
“It has been many months since anyone has approached the orsine,” said the Abbess. “The last who did so are still there.” And she gestured toward the black rot in the middle of the floor, her eyes grave.
Alice’s eyes were dark. She stood some feet away, grim.
“But what is it? What is that stuff?” asked Charlie.
“It is what the orsine is made of,” replied the Abbess, “and the world beyond it. The same substance has infected you, young Charles Owydd. Though the dust in you has been altered by the drughr. Some believe a variation of this substance can be found in all talents, that it is the very substance of death-in-life. The source of talentkind. Who can say? The ancients called it stille, but we have lost that word. It is, how do I say…,” and she opened the cage of her fingers, as if releasing a small creature, “… a wrongness, on this side of the divide.”
Charlie wet his lips.
“You see now why it is not possible to use the orsine,” said the Abbess. “I am sorry. Perhaps we can find another way to your friend.”
But Charlie wasn’t so sure. The Abbess knew nothing of Mrs. Ficke and Oskar and Deirdre, what they were attempting. And if the glyphic’s heart could be stopped, what would happen to the corruption then? He was careful to keep his face neutral as he turned and studied the orsine. It had not hurt him, as it had hurt those others who had gone near it. He, Charlie Ovid, for whatever reason, seemed immune to it. Perhaps it was the drughr’s dust, already in him; perhaps it was his nature as a haelan. But it meant he could still maybe find his way to the glyphic’s heart when the time came. All this was in him while the Abbess peered down, her silver eyes assessing him, her mouth cold and downturned and seemingly filled with regret.
“Young Mr. Owydd,” she murmured then. “If you would follow me, there are matters I would discuss with you. I would be honored to show you to your sleeping chamber.” Her eyes flickered over Alice. Alice looked, Charlie thought, very small next to the Abbess and yet hard and tough as a bent nail. The Abbess continued: “For obvious reasons, it would be inappropriate for a young man to share arrangements with a woman. But you will see your companion again, soon.”
Alice spat, squaring her shoulders. “The hell with that. We’ll go together.”
The acolytes near the entrance rustled, like long grass where a predator lurked.
But Charlie shook his head. “It’ll be fine,” he said quietly, taking her aside. He gave her a quick unhappy grin. “Really, I’ll be fine. I mean, what can she do to me?”
The red scar at Alice’s eye was creased with worry.
“You’d be surprised,” she muttered.
37
PAYING THE GATEKEEPER
The land of the dead was still.
Marlowe followed the ragged figure of Dr. Berghast down the creaking stairs, through the house, out into the square. The cobblestones seeped at their edges. The white tree in the mist looked spectral and bare. There were some few spirit dead adrift near the far tenements but they took no notice of him.
Berghast hurried. Tall and thin and double-wrapped again in his rags like the Egyptian dead, his hand armored in its fractured glove of black metal plates, gleaming black wood. The teeth within it had raked his wrist raw. His rags were the yellow of the mists and when he moved he almost disappeared. Only his eyes were visible and those eyes were blue and fierce.
