“My spell work is all based on raw power and instinct, not real sorcery or ritual,” Umber said. “We need a mancer to help figure this out—and we don’t have one.”
“What about Lydie?” Umber quirked a brow at him, skeptical about how Hansa expected a necromancer to help them with Abyssal power. “The Abyss is also the realm of the dead. And Lydie was able to tie her power briefly to the Abyss. Do you think . . .” He trailed off, self-conscious about his attempt to suggest a solution involving powers he generally knew less about than anyone else.
But Umber looked contemplative. “We could ask,” he said. “Good idea.”
Chapter 22
Lydie
Lydie had returned from Amaranth Farms with a pounding headache, and unlike Hansa and Umber and Cadmia and Alizarin, she didn’t have an easy solution. She wasn’t tied to the Abyss; sex wasn’t the answer to all her problems. Or any of her problems.
Sleep and a meal helped. Having good food available in ample amounts helped a lot. While the others had some private time in their rooms, Lydie ate a large meal, then walked along the cliffs behind Umber’s house, brushed the snow from a bench, and imagined the ocean waves were washing over her. The spirits were quietist here, which meant she could almost hear herself think.
She was still there, half dozing despite the chill wind, when Hansa and Umber approached. Neither seemed as refreshed as she had expected.
Umber nodded to Hansa, as if cuing him to begin.
Hansa spoke haltingly, uncertainly, but clearly enough for her to grasp the problem. He explained about their power—oversharing a little about the bond, in her opinion, but that was fine—and how they had thought Cupric was responsible, but now believed he couldn’t be.
Lydie paused him there to check one thing. “Cupric is an experienced Abyssumancer. He isn’t ignorant of the dangers of the bond or power exhaustion, so he wouldn’t have done something like this accidentally. So you’re saying that, despite Terre Verte’s injunction, you still thought he was the most likely cause of such a severe drain on your power that it might have killed both of you?”
“Yes,” Hansa said, as if that was all that needed to be said.
Lydie started to ask more, then realized Hansa was right. That was enough to warn her that, despite all his attempts at jovial charm and startled but affable response to Umber’s supposedly-unprovoked attack, he was a dangerous man.
“Umber says we need a mancer to look at what’s going on, and maybe fix it,” Hansa continued. He glanced at the spawn as he said it, and Umber nodded, his expression grave and drawn. “We can’t go to an Abyssumancer, but the Abyss is also the realm of the dead, so I thought maybe . . .” He trailed off, averting his gaze, as if now feeling embarrassed either by his limited knowledge of sorcery or his attempt to dabble in it.
“When a necromancer refers to the realm of the dead,” Lydie said, thinking aloud as much as attempting to educate, “she generally means the one that overlaps the realm of the living.” Hansa looked at her blankly, so she tried a metaphor. “Imagine you’re in an open field. The wind is blowing, so the field is full of air. The sun is shining, so the same space is also full of light. Then a rancher passes by, so it’s also full of the smell of horseflesh. Those things all take up the same space, yet take up no space at all. A herd of deer can fill up that field. The realm of death is like the air and light and smell, and the realm of life is the field itself and the deer. They overlap.”
She was rather proud of herself for the description, and the way that Hansa nodded, his eyes widening a little with surprise at his own understanding.
Umber pressed, “Surely in that way the realm of death overlaps the Abyss and the Numen, too.”
The mention of the Numen seemed to stir a cold breeze around Lydie, raising gooseflesh on her arms, though she couldn’t say why. She rubbed at them and admitted, “In theory.”
“Could you examine Hansa for any trace of this . . . death realm?” Umber asked.
“Every living creature is touched by death,” Lydie explained. “When we get sick or injured, the trace grows. When someone near to us, emotionally or physically, dies, we pick up a taint from that death as well.”
“Would you be able to see if there’s anything that doesn’t belong?”
Umber wasn’t going to drop it, and an unsettling thought had just occurred to Lydie: she had almost pointed out, And I recently linked Hansa to the realm of the dead to help him talk to his friend. Could she be responsible for this?
“I can try.”
Once more, she cast a circle of salt and earth and invited Hansa inside it so she could ensure anything she sensed came from him and not the rampant powers outside that circle. Umber, thankfully, didn’t question how much of the salt he had originally purchased she had gone through; she didn’t explain that she had needed to cast a true circle lately just to sleep. Umber’s house wasn’t haunted specifically, she didn’t think, but the spirits in Kavet were restless and noisy lately, disturbed by all that was going on.
She focused on Hansa, and tried to sift through the power-signatures of the dead, which adhered to all the living like burrs and tree sap.
There was Hansa’s own tie to the realm of the dead. All mortals owed a death, or so the saying went. Lydie’s power gave her the ability to stave it off for a while in the case of illness or injury, but even she couldn’t make a man immortal.
Jenkins’ death clung to Hansa as a bright spot, heightened by their recent connection. As Lydie examined that bond, she noted Jenkins himself lingering outside the circle, watching anxiously. She didn’t see any way the tie she had created could be enabling some Abyssi or mancer to drain away Hansa’s power, thankfully.
There were other deaths on this man—so many, including too many that shone with other power. Mancers he had arrested and therefore helped kill in his previous life. She felt his fiancée’s death, in the grip of the Numini and the icy water of the Kavet harbor. And there was another death—Oh.
“There it is,” she said. It was so obvious, now that she had pushed the other distractions aside.
“Why is it?” Hansa asked.
“Hush. I think I can break it. Let me just . . .” She followed the twisting rope of power that connected Hansa to one of the dead, one who was far away, in a cavern Lydie could only barely make out . . .
The world was heat and ash, shadow and fang. He still mourned his discovery that he wasn’t an Abyssi, but Modigliani had given him bones—old, powerful bones, which had belonged to the previous king of the Abyss—and working with them helped the human remember what he really was. Not Abyssi. So much more.
Black as the deepest cave on the mortal realm, those bones, which absorbed any light cast near them and deepened the darkness of his chamber.
Now they are mine.
With a discarded Abyssi claw, he cut his palm. As he worked blood and magic into the bone, it began to soften like clay under his fingertips. He could use it. Shape it. He did so once before. The blue one taught him how . . . he should know the blue one’s name.
“Don’t exhaust yourself,” Modigliani warned, but the Abyssi seemed far away and he brushed it aside.
He couldn’t hunt like an Abyssi and feeding like a human wasn’t satisfying, either, which meant his center was a constant, gnawing void, filled only by scraps drawn from a tentative tie to the mortal realm. Working with the bones was the first time he felt truly good, even more than when he felt when the Abyssi’s body slid along his.
“There,” Lydie said again. She felt sorry for the poor, hungry soul at the base of the Abyss, but that didn’t give him a right to kill Hansa and Umber by feeding on them—as he inevitably would, if the link weren’t severed. She focused on the strands and began to pick at them.
The last one held, stubbornly, but—
“Hello, Arylide,” Modigliani said, in a singsong, predatory tone. “Necromancer, you are gazing quite far past your own territory.”
As the king of the Abys
s turned his attention her way, Lydie beheld him in full. Through her link to the souls of the dead and his dominion over them, she gazed on the deepest beast in his true form—
Lydie sputtered, opening her eyes, then closing them swiftly against the immediate stinging sensation. She was cold and wet and what happened?
She smeared a hand over her eyes, wiping away the wetness that wasn’t tears before cautiously opening them again, then gasped and scrambled back from the darkness that loomed over her. Living shadow, formless, but somehow possessing teeth and claws and eyes in the darkness—
“Alizarin, give her space,” Cadmia’s voice said, before Cadmia herself stepped between Lydie and the form that must be the Abyssi. How could Cadmia stand to be near it, have it behind her, much less touch it and make love to it?
Lydie sat up and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m all wet,” she said. Her throat was raw, and the words came out with a rasp.
“We couldn’t wake you,” Umber said, pushing forward. “At first I thought we should wait for you to come out of it on your own, but then you started screaming. We managed to reach Cadmia, and she remembered your saying something about ocean water disrupting your power.”
She might have complained that they didn’t need to pour the entire bucket over her head, but it had worked, freeing her from that infernal vision. That was what mattered.
“Thank you,” she croaked. “I was—”
Her voice choked off before she could finish. She scrubbed her hands over her eyes, uselessly.
“You’ve said food helps, too, right?” Cadmia asked practically. “And I’ll make some tea, for your throat.”
They moved from her soggy circle to the table in the kitchen, where Cadmia offered bread, apples and honey as the quickest thing she could provide.
“Just bread,” Lydie said. “No fruit, no honey.” She had to gag the words out around a wave of revulsion, though normally she liked both.
“Abyssumancers too deep in their work often develop a revulsion for tree-fruit and honey,” Hansa supplied, as Lydie stared at the bowl of apples as if it had betrayed her. She tried to imagine the crisp, white fruit she normally loved, and her gorge rose. “They’re among the offerings Numenmancers often have on their altars.”
Did that mean she should follow her instincts and avoid those foods until the aversion resolved on its own, or that forcing herself to eat them would help distance her from the Abyssal taint? She didn’t know, but the bile in her throat as she imagined choking down an apple made the decision for her. She couldn’t do it.
“Just bread,” she said again, turning away from the fruit bowl.
“What happened?” Umber asked, once Lydie had taken her first bites of food.
“I—” Her breath caught. “Bones,” she said aloud, struggling to remember the vision, which was fading like a nightmare. “I saw bones, black bones. Someone was . . .” She trailed off and shook her head. She had seen through someone else’s eyes, but hadn’t known who that someone was, or what he was doing with the bones. “He was hungry. For some reason he couldn’t hunt properly, so he had to feed on a mortal. He was linked to you, Hansa, siphoning power from you. Then he turned, and I saw the Abyssi—” She caught herself before she imagined the creature too clearly, and forcibly wiped the image from her mind. “I think I severed the bond, though. How do you two feel?”
“Better,” Hansa answered immediately. “I wouldn’t have been able to say there was anything extra stealing power from me before, but I can feel the difference now.”
“Whatever it was probably latched onto you while we were still in the Abyss,” Umber speculated. “It couldn’t still be Antioch, could it? Or—”
Lydie heard the distinctive crunch of teeth biting into an apple and turned her head to the Abyssi behind her. The apple was clear in her vision, now missing a large chunk; she saw it tumble to the ground as the dark haze seized and contorted, taking on a gray-green tinge.
“Rin? Are you all right?” Cadmia asked, eyes wide, stepping forward to wrap arms around that strange, fluid blackness.
If the Abyssi responded, Lydie couldn’t hear it, but she saw the rising alarm on Cadmia’s face. Umber also ran forward and put a hand on the creature.
Hansa stayed back with Lydie and said, “I know Abyssi don’t eat fruit, but he wouldn’t have bitten it if it were poison to him . . . would he?”
Watching sickly colors writhe through the shadowy power, Lydie wasn’t so sure. Umber seemed to be pounding on the hazy smoke now, the way one might pound a man’s back to dislodge something from his throat.
Exactly like that. And after a few moments, the bite of apple came back out and tumbled to the floor.
Lydie rubbed her eyes as Umber held up his arm and said, “Here.”
This time the sound wasn’t crisp and dry, but wet and meaty, and what disappeared was a chunk of flesh from Umber’s forearm. Lydie saw the glint of bone in the wound before the blood flowed in and she turned away, gagging—and attempting to catch the stumbling Hansa, who had gone sheet pale as the pain reached him through his bond to the Abyssi-spawn.
When Umber pulled back, grabbed a dish towel, and pressed it to the fist-sized hole in his arm, Hansa fainted entirely. Lydie tried to support him as well as she could on his way down so he didn’t slam his head against the wooden floor.
“Rin?” Cadmia asked again.
His one-word response, Hunting, reached Lydie like a whisper on the wind before the dark haze disappeared. He was gone.
What was that about?
Hansa groaned and shuddered as he pushed himself to a sitting position at the same time that Umber swayed and collapsed into a chair, still gripping the towel tightly. It was entirely crimson now, and more dripped to the ground.
“Shouldn’t that heal?” Lydie asked.
Umber nodded. “It will. It’s just too deep to do so immediately. Hansa?”
Hansa managed to form the words, “That. Hurt.” He drew another breath, and on a moment of abashment added, “You probably noticed.”
“I noticed.” Umber held up his bleeding arm with a grimace. “But my pain tolerance is higher than yours.”
“What was that about?” Lydie asked again.
“An Abyssi being an Abyssi?” Umber speculated, though he sounded doubtful. “We were talking about apples and he got curious?”
“With the way he usually regards our food,” Hansa said, voice still breathy from pain, “that seems like me getting curious and taking a big bite out of writhing maggots.”
Lydie’s stomach, already unsteady from her mental trip to the Abyss and brief glimpse of Umber’s flesh-bared bone, took a turn.
“I’ll ask him once he’s back from hunting,” Cadmia said, clearly unconvinced that this bloody escapade had been the result of an idle whim. She looked at the window, outside which dawn had brightened to true morning. “In the meantime, Hansa, are you well enough to return to work? Rose helped me brush your illness off as a minor flu from your hard travels, but the longer you’re away, the more gossip will start to amplify your symptoms and come up with alternative explanations. The last thing you want is for your coworkers to insist you have some sighted monk examine you for lingering magical malevolence when you walk through the door.”
Hansa nodded grimly. “I can go back.” He rubbed absently at the unmarked skin of his own arm, as if to assure himself it was attached. “Actually, even with this, I feel better than I have in days.”
Lydie looked away quickly as Umber pulled the towel off his arm to examine his wound. There was no gush and spatter of blood, so she cautiously glanced back, and found herself immediately fascinated by what she saw. The injury was still dolefully deep, but clean now, like the wound of a corpse that had been washed of gore. Lydie could see new muscle fibers growing and reaching across the gap like the tendrils of a grasping plant.
“I’ll go back to the Cobalt Hall,” Cadmia said. “By now, Rose will have spread the word of what she saw among th
ose she trusts among the Order of A’hknet. I suspect someone will seek out either you or me, Hansa.”
“To either share important information, or accuse us of sorcery,” Hansa grumbled, but the words didn’t sound like an argument.
Given they were both risking themselves, Lydie sighed and said, “I think someone or something powerful has been trying to reach me. Too powerful—I can’t understand it when it speaks, and it knocks down all my shields so I end up drowning in the voices of the dead. I would like to work on a ritual so I can try to communicate with it, whatever it is. Given how this ritual went, I would feel better if someone were on hand in case I need help to snap out of it.”
“I’ll be here,” Umber offered.
“I would like to get a second read on what happened with you and Hansa, too,” Cadmia said, looking at Umber. “Could Cupric—”
“No,” Hansa and Lydie said simultaneously. They exchanged a glance. Lydie was sure Hansa knew more than she did in terms of specifics, but he didn’t elaborate. She added, “Cupric is good at pretending to be friendly, but he isn’t on our side, and shouldn’t be trusted.” She held Hansa’s gaze while she said it, and saw gratitude and relief there. He nodded slightly, in agreement and thanks.
A captain of the 126 was not the kind of ally she had ever expected, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about it.
Chapter 23
Hansa
As Hansa returned to the Quin Compound late that morning, he discovered that masking his magical aura was much less work without an Abyssal parasite pulling power from him. Comparatively speaking, it was easy. Keeping to the story he and Cadmia had crafted about a flu and a faint was even easier.
The last time he had been in the building, Hansa hadn’t been thinking about much of anything beyond the immediate task of getting the manuscript for Cupric, not thinking about Umber being with Cupric, and not passing out or losing the veils over his power. This time, he supposed his first task should be reporting to a superior officer.