Transcript

[HEAVY RAIN. DISTANT THUNDER. THE BABY IS NURSING, NOISILY]

Poignant weather for the moment at which we find ourselves, little one. Weather is just about the only thing that can get through the protections Abagnale’s put around this place. Weather and beings he’s allowed through personally.
Did you know there are old stories about magic stirring up the clouds themselves? In the great wars before the Alliance was formed, mages set the sky rumbling, cracking their bones to cast great bolts of lightning down upon their enemies. Nobody is quite sure any of that is true, of course, but there are stories, and even some fairly reliable accounts of it I’ve seen myself, hidden the belly of the Raeg, deep in its vaults.
You mustn’t tell I’ve seen them, little one. Gods know I’m probably in enough trouble as it is. I say this as though you’re not. And you’re so small. Goodness, look at you. I’d bleed the life out of anyone who dared try to harm you or tell you who or what you should be, except that you should be loved.
It’s good the storm isn’t bothering you. I must be doing something right, at least.

[INTRO MUSIC; This is the Twelvelms Conspiracy, Episode 13, Spicer]

[BABY IS QUIETER NOW, SLEEPING SOFTLY, LETTING OUT THE OCCASIONAL SNORE]

Let’s see, now. Where was I in my story? Ah, yes. Edward March, in the cells. It won’t make for much of a lullaby, but it doesn’t seem that the content of what I tell you matters very much to you right now. You’re too small to understand what I’m saying. When you’re old enough to make sense of it, I…
Anyway…
The colour had drained from Felix’ cheeks, his mouth was pressed into a thin, hard line. He asked for my help pulling him out of the water. It felt wrong to move him. To touch him. His skin was cold and dimpled where we pressed it, swelled with water as he was. Felix took off his shirt, still damp with the bathwater, laid it over Edward’s most vulnerable parts, then laid one hand on Edward’s forehead, the other on his chest, over his heart.
There was a shimmer, the smell of o-zone, and the light of Felix’ signet stone cast the cells purple-red. The force of the spell made my stomach clench, and when he was done, Felix shuddered and for an awful moment I thought he might collapse forward onto Edwards’ corpse.
‘He died of shock from blood loss,’ said Felix, breathless.
‘But the gashes on his arms—’
‘They’re half-healed, I know. He’s also malnourished and he—‘ Felix cut himself off, grimacing. ‘His neck is broken. The bones are part repaired but the nerves were severed.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
Felix glared at me.
‘No, no I just mean he wouldn’t have felt this, that’s good isn’t it’
Felix shook his head. ‘The break came after the cutting. Or, after some of it. The wounds were reopened and sealed many times. The first ones, he’d have felt, I’m sure of it. I’m sure I’d have been able to tell if he’d been given anything for the pain or— or— unless it— but who would cover their tracks for that and none of the rest of it? Gods, Cyan, I… He was kind to me. I should have been kind back. But I wasn’t, I…’
I didn’t know what to do or say. For a long while we sat in silence, looking at what was left of Edward March.
‘I’ll take the blame, for us being down here,’ Felix clarified. ‘I’ll say I… I’ll say I brought you down here because I wanted to impress you. Then we got lost and ended up here.’
‘No, Felix, I—’
‘Look, everyone knows the tunnels are here. I am 90% sure the staff who work at House Derwen know I’ve been stealing the wine.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t like the idea of you getting yourself in trouble to protect me.’
‘So what, you want to come clean? Tell the Raeg you’re a selkie, get yourself locked up, and ruin Abagnale for good? And gods know what they’d do to Quinn.’
‘I. I don’t know.’
‘This is the best way. The only way, really. Besides, my reputation can hardly get more sullied. This is the exact kind of shit people expect of me. And it’s only half a lie. I really did bring you down here to impress you, the first time.’
I blinked at him. ‘You shoved me into a wall.’
Felix almost smiled. ‘I know.’
I put my hand on Felix’s arm. He stared at my fingers for a long moment before he covered them with his own. Then, a lap of water stirred Edward’s body on the ground, knocking his hip against my ankle. I flinched back, splashing. The little stream that ran through the centre of the room had burst its cut stone borders. The straw in the cells turned in idle circles on its surface.
‘What’s happening?’ I said.
Felix shook his head. The grate at the end of the room was half obscured by the rising water, and as we stared, the flow grew faster, visible bubbles and striations across the water’s surface, swirling, spinning, bringing rotten leaves and tiny twigs and murky streaks of dirt.
‘It’s salt water,’ I said. ‘It was fresh water before but it’s salt water now, it’s—‘
‘It’s the sea!’ said Felix, clutching Edward to stop him from floating away. ‘He’s coming for you, Cyan!’
‘What?! Who?!’
‘The Spicer!’
Before I could say anything else, a great swell of water rushed up through the grate. Felix grabbed my arm and we both bolted for the stairs. Water crashed into the backs of our legs, and it just kept coming as we scrambled up the stairs, almost on all fours. It just kept rising.
‘We’ll never make it back to House Derwen,’ I said.
‘The baths!’ said Felix. ‘We’ll get out that way!’
We ran as fast as we could, the rush of the water so hard it threatened to knock us over. It was completely, utterly dark; the glass candles had been washed away. Now and then one drifted past us, grey light muffled by the water that carried it. We were half way to the baths when there was a great, wrenching groan, like someone shifting an entire stone house over a slab of granite, like the tectonic plates were churning into one another under our feet. Loose dust and stones fell from the ceiling of the tunnels, and then, with a rushing sound like a great inhale, the water changed direction. Felix slipped, almost washed away in the relentless current, but I caught him by his arms and he clung onto my coat with such fierceness it made me scream as I heaved us into one of the alcoves where a glass candle had once stood.
Finally, it stopped. The water was gone. We sat on the floor, soaked, heaving for breath, clinging to each other.
‘Edward,’ Felix said. ‘The body!’
‘Wait!’ I cried, but before I could stop him, Felix was on his feet, running, illuminated by he glow of his signet stone. I followed him back the way we’d come, trickles of water running down the tunnel walls turning purple-red as Felix passed them. Back in the cells. They were empty.
‘No,’ said Felix. ‘No, no, no!’
‘It’s alright! He was already dead!’
‘But we found him! Cyan, we found him, Quinn, her grandmother, Mrs March— he was right here and we left him and now he’s gone!’
‘We’ll tell Abagnale, we’ll explain what happened, someone will—‘
‘No!’ Felix shouted. ‘Don’t you understand?! They will not believe me! How is it you still don’t understand what I am, Cyan?! I am a fucking pariah, a mad man! And you, you’re a— you’re supposedly a fucking Happener! We may as well have— we may as well.’ Felix doubled over. He was sick on the ground between his feet. ‘He was here! He was here.’
‘I know, I saw.’
Felix sobbed, sinking down onto the wet stone, covered with pieces of straw, half-masticated by the churning water. I looped my arms around him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Shut up,’ he said into my chest.
I did.
After a long while, we got to our feet and made our way miserably back to House Derwen. The place was in chaos. There were Dogs outside in the thin light of the early morning and it seemed like every scholar in the coven house was out of bed, milling around in their pyjamas. Someone grabbed my arm and I almost shoved them away before I realised it was Quinn.
‘What’s happening?!’ I whispered.
‘Surely you heard it from the baths?’ she replied. ‘Something triggered the security systems at the Raeg and flooded all the tunnels that access the vaults. The Watchers are going mad.’
Felix and I exchanged a glance. We hurried upstairs to Quinn’s bedroom where Reilly was waiting for us on her bed, then explained what we’d seen.
‘And you’re sure he— he was definitely dead?’ asked Reilly.
I thought of the loose flaps of skin hanging from Edward’s legs.
‘He’d been dead for days,’ said Felix.
‘And you’re sure it was him?’ asked Quinn.
‘I’m certain.’
‘There are no cells under the Raeg,’ said Reilly.
Quinn groaned. ‘For Merlin’s sake, Reilly, this isn’t the time to—‘
‘No, no I’m not being pedantic! There are no cells! The only thing close are the quarantine rooms which were put in when the university was first built, but they got sealed off when the Alliance moved the centre of operations into the Raeg.’
Felix, Quinn and I stared at her blankly.
‘Oh come on,’ said Reilly. ‘I know you don’t care much for the architecture or the history but this is pretty common knowledge!’
‘Why would a university need quarantine rooms?’ asked Felix.
’They used them when scholars came back from expeditions beyond the purlieus, they were worried about an outbreak of the plague. They could have treated it with potions, of course, but best to avoid entirely, wouldn’t you agree?!’
‘So they built a prison to hold them in?!’
‘No, Felix! It’s not a prison, it’s quarantine! They’d stay down there a few weeks until they were certain they weren’t infected, then they’d rejoin the rest of the congregation! Back then it wasn’t just a university as we understand it today, this part we’re in now served the same purpose, of course, for educating mages into excellence, but the Raeg back then was like a sort of live-in library, I suppose, it’s a bastardisation of the Welsh ‘Cymraeg’. Honestly, Quinn, you have so many lessons with your grandmother.’
‘Yes! About important things like policy and the political history of the covens, not what the name of the building is!’
‘It’s not just the name of the building, it was the people inside it!’ Reilly sighed, frustrated. It basically once meant ‘compatriots’ or ‘countrymen’. Anyway, the point is, the connection was sealed up when Avalon fell. The Alliance thought it was the best way to maintain the university’s ambition for neutrality, you know?! It’s the beginning of that whole idea of ‘covens sharing knowledge on common ground!’’
‘Right,’ said Felix. ‘What’s that got to do with Edward March being down there?’
Reilly wilted a little. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We have to tell Abagnale,’ said Quinn. ‘And my grandmother.’
‘Tell them what? That the loony who was sent to your coven after trying to kill himself thinks he found the corpse of a missing boy in a tunnel that’s supposedly been sealed for centuries?’ said Felix.
‘Well maybe I could say I’m the one who found it.’
‘And what was the Future Consul of Coven Derwen doing in the out-of-bounds tunnels under the university?’ asked Felix.
‘I— I don’t know,’ said Quinn. She slumped on her bed. ‘I just. We can’t— how do we…’
Though she’d failed to complete a sentence, Quinn had aptly summarised the feeling in the room.
‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and I’ll tell Abagnale what I saw. He knows I’ve been going to the baths. Maybe he’ll be angry at me, but what is he going to do?’
‘Excuse me,’ said Quinn. ‘I am your warden! I am supposed to look after you, how is this going to—’
‘I imagine it’ll reflect on you quite well, actually,’ said Reilly. ‘It would be smart to tell Cyan to use the tunnels to get around. You have exams, there’s been all sorts going on, what with the Hollow Sleepers and the Watchers crawling over every inch of the grounds. Abagnale can’t fault you for that.’
‘And what about me?’ said Felix.
Reilly clucked her tongue. ‘Well there’s no need to fill Abagnale in on whatever salacious business the two of you get into down there. Why mention you at all?’
Felix frowned. ‘Salacious?’
Reilly rolled her eyes. ‘Oh come on. It doesn’t take an expert in scrying to understand the long, pained glances the two of you cast whenever you think the other one isn’t looking.’
Felix’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘What, you think we’ve been sneaking down for a quick shag?! Yeah, I figured that’s what the rabble would assume, but—‘
‘Stop it!’ Quinn snapped. ‘Edward March is dead!’
Felix hung his head and Reilly bit her lip.
‘I’ll go find Abagnale,’ I said.
Quinn nodded. ‘I’ll come with you. Even if we aren’t saying I was down there, I want to be able to back up your story for why you were, if it comes to it.’
I sighed. ‘Thanks.’
As soon as her bedroom door closed behind us, we heard Felix and Reilly burst into a half-whispered argument. Quinn put her hand over her mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Quinn shook her head. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s them. Oh, what does it matter? Edward. Gods. Poor Edward.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, crumbs,’ said Quinn, coming to an abrupt stop. ‘How would you know who he was?’
‘What?’
‘Edward March! You never met him. He disappeared right before the Summer Solstice, you weren’t even…’ Quinn trailed off, staring ahead of us in the direction of the dome of trees that covered Twevelms’ altar. ‘You didn’t know what he looked like.’
‘I could have seen his photo the paper.’
‘And have recognised him well enough to be sure it was him despite the state Felix said he was in?’
I opened my mouth, closed it again.
‘We’ll say I came with you,’ Quinn resolved, striding forwards again. ‘That’s what we’ll do. We’ll say I came with you to keep an eye on you like I was supposed to and we got lost and.’
My stomach twisted anxiously. With each word that left Quinn’s mouth, the story grew less convincing, and I think we both knew it because Quinn’s words trailed into nothing again and we made our way to Abagnale’s office door in silence.
There were Dogs everywhere, mages in pale uniforms with badges that marked their covens on their chests, their familiars skulking at the edges of the grand atrium, wet noses quivering at the the floor and in every corner. A few flicked their ears towards us as we walked in, but there was so much going on, so many professors and students being interviewed here and there across the vast room that the echoic din of their dozen murmured conversations disguised us.
There was no answer when we knocked on the door to Abagnale’s office. I reached for the handle, and with only the lightest press, it sprung open, as though it had been waiting for me. The room was almost unrecognisable from the last time I’d seen it, just a week earlier. It was like the whole thing had been picked up and shaken, but as we peered closer, it was clear the chaos was not chaos at all. Open books and loose paper strewn across the tables, chairs, and almost entirely obscuring the floorboards, but they were deliberately placed weighed open with rocks and paperweights to keep everything from stirring in the breeze that drifted through the open window. The books’ pages were heavily annotated and the loose sheets were covered in dense script, but others had drawings on them. Sketches of animals in various states of dissection; cross sections of bones and organs; diagrams of machines.
‘What is that?’ I asked Quinn.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ she said.
A gasp in the doorway. ‘Miss ap Howell, Master Goodman! What are you doing in here?’ Lady Ottilie was clinging to the doorframe as though weak at the knees.
‘We were looking for Lord Abagnale,’ said Quinn, smooth, without a beat.
‘I’m afraid he’s gone to the Raeg to discuss what— it’s— goodness, what a wreck this place is in, I…’ Lady Ottilie trialed off as her gaze fell on the paper in my hand. As she took in the diagram drawn on it, the colour drained from her flushed cheeks. ‘Why do you have that?’
‘We just came to look for—’
Lady Ottilie shoved Quinn aside to snatch the paperwork from my hand. ‘This work is highly confidential! This room should be locked, Tegid only knows what Abagnale was thinking, how could he—’
Lady Ottilie began madly reaching for the books, slamming them shut, before giving up and deciding to shove us out of the room instead. When she pulled the door closed behind herself, she said ‘nemo hoc modo praetereat nisi me donec aliter dicam.’ Her signet stone glowed in its orate pendant around her neck. ‘You don’t know what you saw,’ she said.
‘Really, Lady Ottilie, it meant nothing to us,’ said Quinn, a picture of composure.
Lady Ottilie’s shoulders sagged with relief. ‘Good. Now be gone! Get back to House Derwen at once. I’m sure the Watchers will want to have words with both of you.’
When we were out of the main building again, Quinn whispered under her breath, ‘what are we going to do?’
‘I have no idea,’ I replied. ‘Wait for Abagnale to get back, I suppose.’
Only Abagnale didn’t come back. When we knocked on his office door that afternoon, and again in the evening, we were answered only by a shimmer across the polished oak, the residue of Lady Ottilie’s spell making itself known. Reilly explained she’d sealed the door in a way that meant nobody would be able to go inside until she lifted the spell herself, not unless they completely understood what elements of the wood and stone she’d called upon to bind it shut.
It didn’t matter either way. If Abagnale was not in the office, it was no use to us. Reilly was the only one who might’ve known what the paperwork he’d left behind might’ve meant, and she was dead against going in there. If Lady Ottilie had reacted as strongly as Quinn and I said she had, it was probably restricted knowledge none of us had any business getting ourselves into, Reilly said. ‘And besides, she’s probably been back to tidy it all away. Her spell accounts for that, if you’re right about the wording.’
Quinn sighed and slumped down onto the pile of cushions which had been Felix’ nest for the day. She frowned. ‘Where’s Felix?’
‘Oh, he left not long after you did,’ Reilly sighed.
‘To go where?’
‘I assume to his room? He and Cyan never slept last night, did they? He’s probably tired.’
‘And you didn’t think to check?!’
‘Gods, Quinn, I’m not his keeper!’
Quinn scowled and got to her feet. I followed her back out into the hallway. She rapped her knuckles on Felix’ door. ‘Felix,’ she said, softly at first, but getting louder after every knock. She shot me a panicked glance. ‘Felix, please, please just open the door.’
I stepped forward, and without even really thinking the thought, my hand closed around my signet stone and cast the hallway in a warm shade of blue, and Felix’ bedroom door burst open. Quinn rushed over to the flung wide window. She peered down into the cobbled courtyard where she’d threatened me the night we met. ‘He’s not here,’ she said, relieved.
I stepped gingerly into the room, like he might be hiding under a pile of clothes or hidden by a swathe of torn sheets. The bathroom was in a state, too. The shower was streaked with dark stains of what I sincerely hoped was not dried vomit, but strongly suspected was. The mirror above the sink was shattered, shards glittering on the ceramic. Only a few clung valiantly to the edges of their frame. In them, my face was gaunt, my eyes tight. And there was something on the wall behind me. Something red.
I turned around slow, as though if I could just delay looking at them the words written on Felix’ bathroom wall would simply not be there. But they were. Smeared in thick, ugly letters, as though someone had drawn them on with two fingers, it said ‘TRAITOR, BE REDEEMED’.
‘Is that blood?’ Quinn whispered beside me.
‘I think so.’
‘Estne hic Felix Scarlett sanguis,’ Quinn whispered, her signet stone glowing against her chest, warm purple. ‘No. It’s not his,’ she said, putting her hands on her head. ‘It’s not his blood.’
‘Well whose is it then?’
‘I don’t know! I’d have to— Reilly, I’ll get Reilly.’
I stood there staring at the words as she ran from the room. Someone had trailed their hand through the word ‘redeemed’, like they’d tried to rub it away but by then the blood was already too dry. I reached out, followed the ghostly smear with the tip of my fingers. A thin light oozed from the wall, falling to the floor like liquid. The puddle was beautiful. I had to touch it. Just gently, I nudged the edge of the puddle with the tip of my finger. The light coagulated, lifted from the ground, hovering a few inches above it, and began to move, spluttering as it went, leaving little droplets of light on the ground that shimmered for a moment before disappearing into nothing. An odd feeling settled in my chest. I had to follow the light. I was dimly aware of Reilly and Quinn discussing what it was, words like ‘guide light’ and fretting about why it was not the same colour as Felix’ signet stone if he was the one who’d left it for us. I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about anything. I just had to follow the light.
Quinn and Reilly were calling after me, trying to get me to stop, but I couldn’t. I knew Quinn and Reilly were shouting at me, grabbing at me, but we were in the dark of the tunnels now and I had to follow the light, I had to go, I had to follow it, it would give me what I wanted if I just followed it, I knew it, I knew—
A blast of powerful magic knocked me off my feet and I sailed face first onto the cut stone floor, all the wind knocked out of my lungs. I scrabbled on the ground. The light had stopped a few feet ahead of me, beautiful, spluttering, calling to me, telling me to follow.
‘You can’t, it’s a trap!’ Said Quinn, but it felt like the words were coming from an awfully long way away. I fought my way out from under hers and Reilly’s knees, barely feeling the stone biting into my skin. The light, I just had to follow the light. I had never been more certain of anything in my life. I just had to follow the light and it would all be okay.
I was running, running. Here, the stairs down to the cells, here, an open space where there should have been wall but was now an entry way, for me to follow this shimmering, gorgeous thing that knew me, it knew what I was, it saw through to the very centre of my soul and it called out and told me that if I just followed it would take me back and I would follow my mother into the sea and she would hold me like a breath and carry me safe and far away.
Follow the light, follow the light, it was all I was, all I knew, all I had ever known.
And then it stopped.
I stood feet from it, breathing hard, reaching out. The light poured over my hand, cool and beautiful, thin strands like spider’s silk between my fingers. And then it was gone. It was like something had been torn out of me. Pain, pain through every part of my body. Pain like I’d never felt before. Deep, anguished grief. Everything I’ve ever done wrong laid bare. My father’s pressed closed mouth as he held me under the water as I begged and begged with my eyes for him to let me stay there this time, please, please just let me stay, but he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t ever grant me that peace, he was shaking me, shaking me.
A hard strike across my cheek. Quinn’s face came into focus in front of me. There was a soft, pale light all around us. ‘It’s okay!’ she told me, catching her breath. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
I keened forward, a blubbering, sobbing mess. Quinn put her arms around me, hands smoothing my back. ‘It’s all going to be okay,’ she whispered, rocking me side to side.
‘It’s gone,’ I sobbed.
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’
‘What’s wrong with him? This isn’t what they’re supposed to— nothing I’ve read about guide lights says implies this should happen!’
‘Reilly! Please! Can’t you see he’s in pieces?!’ said Quinn.
‘I don’t understand why!’
‘Does that matter?!’
‘Yes, it’s— oh. Oh gods.’
The rest of the room we were in was coming into focus, piece by piece. It was not, in fact, a room at all. It was another tunnel, though it was not like the ones under the university. The walls were made of densely packed earth. I’d been in here before. The Liminus. We were just inside the door that led to the little stone stairway I’d climbed the night Abagnale had brought me to Twelvelms, though with a hole blasted through the careful stonework. Through it, I could see a narrow tunnel, barely wide enough for a person to fit through. As I looked, I felt the grazes on my arms, the snags in my coat, as though they manifested only at the moment I realised they were there.
I’ve made guide lights of my own, now. It’s hard to imbue them with feeling like that. Usually, all they do is show you the way. You summon them, bind them to an object for someone to find. It’s possible to make sure they only work for certain people, but the mage that left the light for Felix didn’t know him well enough for that, and he certainly didn’t have enough of his blood to circumvent it easily. Later, Abagnale would conclude it had been made in a way that attempted to limit the amount of times it could be triggered.
The only reason it had worked again when I’d touched it was because it was so powerful; it had to be to make Felix follow it. Unlike me, he’d have known what was happening to him the moment it started. I can’t imagine resisting that pull but it’s possible, I know, and Felix could’ve found a way to use his magic to resist it if it had been even an ounce weaker than it had been. That’s what the grief was. A punishment for Felix if he’d managed to escape its clutch. If I’d been caught in the full force of the spell, and not just its residue, I imagine I’d have been writhing on the ground instead of just weeping.
‘Do you think you can stand?’ asked Quinn.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘What’s happening, Cyan?’
Reilly was at the far end of the Liminus, at the door directly opposite the one that led back to the road just outside the Raeg. When I’d been there before, that door had been bolted shut. Now, those bolts lay on the dirt floor.
‘It’s not possible,’ Reilly breathed. ‘These bolts have been in place for centuries. Scholars have been running experiments for close to a century and every single one has concluded there is no way to remove them!’
‘Yes,’ said Quinn, quietly. ‘But did anyone actually try it?’
‘That would be sacrilege.’
‘A powerful magic all of its own, my grandmother told me. She says half the things we mages assume are impossible are only that way because we refuse to do them,’ said Quinn. She glanced back at me. ‘Nobody is meant to escape the prison at the Raeg. The bolts in the door to Avalon are not meant to come free. Selkies aren’t meant to do mage magic. But they can. Perhaps that’s always been the case and we’ve been too coward to see it.’
She reached for the handle on Avalon’s door.
‘What are you doing?! Reilly hissed. ‘We have no idea what’s on the other side of that door! It could have been a plague or a cursed fire or—‘
‘I know Felix went through there. He has to have done. What are the odds the guide light would bring us here and we’d find the door to Avalon unbolted and those things would be a coincidence?’
Reilly cowered against the wall. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Yes you do,’ said Quinn, and then she pushed the door open.
We all held our breath, maybe simply from anticipation, maybe because we feared some terrible miasma would leak out from this place we’d all heard stories of but had been told we’d never see. The door creaked on its old, impossible hinges, iron moving through dirt. When I dared to breathe in, I could smell the sea, and something like flowers only sweeter than any flower I’d ever smelled before, so bright and fresh they almost obscured the thick smell of death beneath. And blood. Some of that blood came from Felix.
My response was almost as strong as the compulsion the guide light had drawn from me. I sprang upwards, bowled right through the door, not pausing, not looking to see where I was going. I just went.
Up a few steps, flat rocks embedded in earth. The hillside was cast in the golden glow of the setting sun. Long grasses waving from the wind coming in off the sea. It was vast and silver blue. The small hill on which I stood rose directly from it, connected to another, far larger island by a small, stone bridge. Thick vines climbed its walls, leaves trembling in the wind around huge, white flowers almost like lilies but not quite. Every tiny movement of air sent waves of perfume rolling from them, beautiful and fresh and gloriously paired with the salt of the sea.
‘Wait,’ said Quinn. Over my shoulder, I saw her and Reilly emerging from the cairn, ducking under the stone lintel that held up the dirt. Reilly rushed down to the bridge, cupping one of the flowers in her hands. ‘Vita Morgana,’ she said. ‘They’re just like they’re described in all the stories, Quinn, can you see, can you smell them?!’
‘Yes,’ said Quinn. ‘Yes, I can.’
Reilly let the flower go and got to her feet, peering around. ‘I thought it would all be charcoal and dust.’
‘It’s been a long time since the fire,’ said Quinn. ‘If there ever was one.’
We crossed the bridge in a daze. More of the flowers grew in great winding tangles of vines, their gorgeous smell wafting over us as we climbed, climbed, climbed to the top of the hill. Its peak was oddly flat, as though deliberately levelled. The way into Avalon had been so delicately and carefully designed; the cairn surrounded by the sea; the bridge adorned in flowers; this plateau clearly made to welcome you to this place.
You could still get a sense of what it had been once. The way the white stone path connected to a thick central trunk with other paths branching off it, like tributaries to a great stone river, or the branches of a tree pressed into the earth. The remains of buildings in the same pale stone stood along it the paths. You could make out the outlines of rooms, see the bottoms of fireplaces, insides blackened with soot.
There were other marks, too. On the path, they seemed innocuous, strange circles where the stone shimmered, like discs of quartz had been pressed into it. But as we pressed further into the remains of what had once been a fairly large town, the shapes began to take on a more gruesome sense. Here, on the wall, a long line that branched into five. There, against a doorway, a mark like an egg, with handles at its narrow end like the arms of a vase. On the cobbled floor, as though whatever had done this to them had warned them it was coming, an adult, still reaching for a child’s outstretched arm.
There were hundreds of them, these shimmering ghosts imprinted on the walls of what must have been their homes.
‘We should go back. He wouldn’t want us to die saving him!’ Reilly hissed.
‘He’d die to save you,’ I said, flatly.
Reilly faltered.
‘It’s this way,’ I said, nodding towards another hill the roots of the tree path vanished over.
‘How do you know?’ asked Quinn.
‘Smells like death that way.’
‘Surely that’s a reason not to go somewhere,’ said Reilly.
‘You don’t have to come,’ I said, and I kept walking. Quinn and Reilly followed.
By the time we reached the next summit, the sun had fully set. The moon hung round and full, massive in the sky, like the whole island was somehow closer to it than anywhere else in the world. At the end of the path was a dome of trees, their branches curling inwards in careful braids, just visible through their lush green plumage.
From inside them, a terrible scream. Felix.
I broke out into a run. I was so fixed on the scream and the stink of blood and the dome of trees that must have hidden Avalon’s altar that I barely noticed the things that littered the grass around me. At speed, they looked like rocks, but they weren’t. They were corpses. Deer, cows, sheep, foxes, cats, badgers, and humans, all strewn across the ground. Their placement was not random, they followed careful curves, marking some sigil with their stinking remains. It did not make sense until I got level with the first of them. It was like walking into a wall of sponge. It moved back a little, but could not be breeched. As I was flung backwards, every corpse shifted on the dirt, some of them releasing whines as the trapped gases inside of them were freed, a great, awful sigh that made my bones feel like ice under my flesh. Old magic.
Quinn was just reaching me, asking what was happening, but her words were drowned out by Reilly’s awful scream. She fell to the ground in a crumpled heap as a flash of bright white light turned the hillside into a horrible joke of daytime, just for an instant.
There, at the arched entry of the altar trees, was a man dressed all in white. I knew him at once; I had seen him before. He was the man who had broken in at Samhain, whose familiar we had been feeding for months, which was now soaring out from the top of the tree dome on glossy wings with only a few feathers missing. It arced through the air, headed right towards us just as its mage turned his attention too. His signet stones gleamed from thick bangles on his wrists, and the magic was the colour of the moon. It seemed to take an age to reach us, cutting a deep line in the earth as it went. I could feel myself aging, dying as it sped towards us. I flung my hands forwards, with what felt like eons to spare, and the magic burst into a million stars that hissed as they dissipated in my flash of blue light.
Quinn rolled aside, muttering spells that shimmered and crisscrossed above us, a shining purple net that held until the next glowing bolt of magic burst from the mage’s braced palms. Quinn yelped; the raven had reached us and was pecking at her neck, her ears, her cheeks as she shouted in latin and magic splattered around her as useless as melted snow.
Then, there was a low, strange rumble, like tons of dirt dumped onto soft ground. The wall we’d run into before was visible, first as a matrix of interlocking threads, but as I watched they burst into mist, which then began to drift on the ground. The mage let out a bark of anger, breaking into a run, but not at Quinn and I, at Reilly. She was not passed out on the path as we’d thought. She’d drawn something on the stones in her own blood, which was still dripping thick and fast from her nose and mouth. She looked like a feral cat, braced on all floors, smeared in red as the soft lilac glow of her signet stone lit the grasses around her.
The bird had abandoned Quinn and was making for Reilly too. Quinn was shouting spells, the mage shouting back to deflect them. I reached out, and the bird froze as though I’d caught him though I was still feet away. I twisted its blood free of its veins and the mage screamed and crumpled to his knees just as his familiar hit the ground. I could taste the sea in the back of my throat, heart hammering, acid in my veins.
‘Find Felix!’ Quinn shouted, as though there was still any question of where he was.
I ran towards the dome. It was bigger than the altar at Twelvelms, much bigger. A huge, sculpted mound of dirt reinforced with bones and roots and pretty twists of metal. On top of it, a huge silver plate below a massive frame with four great spikes of hammered silver. From the tips of each, thin chains reached out then bound together, holding up what at first seemed like a blur of light.
The drawings on Abagnale’s floor. They had looked not dissimilar to this.
Something was dripping from the light. Blood. Felix’s blood. My stomach wrenched as the whole thing made sense; it was not a light, it was Felix, spinning so fast that I could not make out anything of him but a moonlit blur, dribbling red.
I scrambled up onto the altar, ignoring the way it made my ears throb and ache, the way I felt blood split from my nose across my lips and down my chin. I reached up, but he was spinning too fast for me to stop him, and instead all that happened was every bone in my fingers shattered the moment they found his skin. I screamed, falling forwards into Felix’s blood. It shimmered around my fingers like oil.
It should be inside of him. It was Felix’s blood and it belonged in his veins, warm and safe and happy, but here it was, shimmering curiously, cooling fast on my crooked, mis-bent fingers. I could hear the sea in my ears, the distant crash of her waves against the nearby shore amplified and matching the violent hammer of my heart. I reached up again, though there was no way I could grab him, and as I did, I felt the spray of the sea, heard it roar, crashing through the dome of trees and into the altar space. The rig suspended Felix groaned and began to topple, taking me with it.
The thrumming sound in my ears stopped and I fell like a dropped marionette.
When I could see again, I was looking at the sky, at the bright, silvery moon visible in a gap in the dome right above the altar. I could hear slow, soft breathing. Felix. I scrambled up. He was still hanging by his arms from the silver frame. There was no blood left on the silver plate, nor streaking down his body, nor covering my hands. I’d willed it back inside him. The only red that was left was oozing from his wounds. The ends of two of its chains bit savagely through thin slices of crystal, crudely cut into hooks like crescent moons, forced through his forearms, between the bones, leaving jagged tears. The other chains connected to a third crystal shard, this one jabbed sidewards through his neck.
None of these seemed to trouble Felix. He was breathing slow and even, despite the blood bubbling between his lips, eyes open just enough to catch the moonlight above us.
‘Felix,’ I whispered. ‘Felix, wake up.’ He did not stir.
The chains broke easily against my palms and he slumped into my arms. Though the blood was gone, he was still covered in something else. Thin and slippery like oil, it twinkled when the moonlight caught it.
My first bionomy lecture came searing into my mind. The exhaurine, the vial of elixir Abagnale had held aloft, shining so bright. The blood of the soul. That’s what it was, all over my hands, smearing into my fur as I freed him from the bindings on his arms Felix’s soul, soaking into the fur of my coat. His soul, all over me.
‘What have you done?! And for what?! The mage in white was standing, bloody, missing an ear. The silver plate clattered as I backed into it, sloshing seawater to the ground, a thin film of elixir like oil slick on its surface.
‘You can’t put it back inside him now. He’s as hollow as the corpses in my garden. He was as good as dead the moment the sun set!’
The mage was holding his familiar like a knife, raised above his head. It came down like an arc and I pulled Felix close and we twisted into my coat and the bird’s beak tore into the flesh above my flipped and I barked in my seal’s voice, and the mage gasped and staggered back.
‘You’re a selkie,’ he said. ‘But— you have a signet stone, you— where’s the other one?! Where’s the Traitor Prince! Where’s he gone, what did you do?!’
For a moment, I didn’t understand, because Felix was clearly right there, I was clutching him to my chest, but of course I couldn’t be, because I had shifted forms and had no arms to hold him with. Yet I could feel him there, against me, the steady unbroken rhythm of his breathing, the sluggish throb of his heart, though it felt so close, so close to mine.
‘He was right,’ said the mage, ‘they can carry passengers.’ His face was alive with almost childlike wonder for a moment, then a deep purple blast of magic. Quinn hurtled, bloody faced and screaming, towards the altar. The mage in white looked at me for a moment longer, then he turned, and with a twist of his stained cloak, he was gone, leaving nothing but the crumpled remains of his familiar in a heap on the floor.
‘Cyan!’ Quinn cried. ‘Where’s Felix?!’
I twisted in my coat, revealing him, tucked against my chest. He was bleeding again from a fresh gash on his shoulder. I could feel one on mine too, the place the bird had pierced me in the flipper had somehow struck him as well.
‘Oh no,’ Quinn whined, taking Felix’ face in her hands. ‘He’s not— no. No.’
‘Is that an exhaurine?’ asked Reilly. Her voice was thick; I think she’d broken her nose. ‘What’s— he wasn’t— it wasn’t him who was— that’s not his. His elixir.’
Quinn was making small, soft sounds as she brushed the hair from Felix’ flaccid cheeks. ‘No, no, you’re okay,’ she told him. ‘You’ll be alright. I promised. I promised I’d look after you.’
Reilly sunk down to the ground. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘All that and he can’t just— It’s not fair.’
I slipped out of my coat, careful to keep Felix bundled in it. He seemed suddenly very small. Such a little thing, wrapped up in my coat, breathing so softly, so steadily, like he was sleeping. Almost peaceful, if I could forget the truth. Almost okay, if I could make myself pretend.
I got to my feet, carrying him with me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I carried Felix out of the dome around the altar, out across the grass, where I could hear the sea lapping against the edge of the island. I looked down at Felix. I meant to speak, but there were no words for the feeling in my chest. What came out instead was a song, spoken in the language of things that swim and turn and twist in the dark embrace of the sea, calling up a great, trembling power from its depths. I could not sing it to you now, the song the sea pulled out of me that night. I am not sure it had words or a tune that would make sense if you were not a thing that could live in the waves. But it was a selkie song, a thing made out of feeling, and it dripped our of me in tears in tears as much as sound as I pulled my coat tighter, tighter around Felix’ shoulders.
He inhaled sharply, turning rigid in my arms. He choked, a hand flying to his throat. His eyes flew open, and a thin, desperate croak burst from his lips. It didn’t sound right, I knew it didn’t but it was still the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my life. He looked up at me, and in this new, thin voice, he said my name. And then his eyes rolled back into his head, and I was hit by a wave of exhaustion so massive I fell against his chest, dark velvet sleep engulfing me at once.
What happened next has been relayed back to me by others. Reilly, injured badly int he fight and too drained to heal herself, waited with Felix and I in the swaying grass beside Avalon’s altar as Quinn rushed back to the Liminus. Abagnale and several Watchers from the Raeg where already there, murmuring in horror at the unbolted door to Avalon when it burst open to reveal Quinn ap Howell drenched in blood and telling a story about an exhaurine built to extract elixir not just from animals, but from mages.
They carried Felix and I unconscious back to Twelvelms, put us up in beds in the small hospital next to the Raeg. They’d wanted to keep us in separate rooms, but apparently I screamed and bit people whenever he was more than three feet away from me, though I have absolutely no memory of that and cannot attest to it. The experts at the Raeg concluded that the exhaurine the mage in white had built at Avalon could not possibly have worked as Felix appeared to have a fully responsive brain when they tested him, and his extended sleep was the result of exhaustion and blood-loss, they concluded, further concluding the idea that the exhaurine on Avalon had never worked.
Over the next few days, the pieces of what happened were put together, or at least some of them were. The Hollow Sleepers were what was left of animals whose elixir had been drained from them. The mage was Thomas Vane, as Felix had suspected. Abagnale claimed he had known it all along. I believed him. He’d kept it secret because he wanted to avoid a panic. Abagnale thought he knew what Vane wanted; access to the Raeg’s vault. When he abandoned his familiar on Samhain, Abagnale was certain he did so because he thought it would be placed in the Raeg’s prison. Abagnale was not sure how, but he suspected that Vane hoped to use the bird to somehow circumvent the new protections placed on the vaults since his last escape, so he had it placed in the old quarantine rooms under the university instead. He only opened up the nearest portion of them; it was easy enough to do. Whilst the old tunnels had been filled with grown rock, the quarantine rooms had only been hidden behind a wall; the mages who’d closed the way through to the Raeg wanted to be prepared in case there was ever an epidemic like the plague again so they had not wanted to block them off entirely.
Abagnale had assumed Vane would come back for his familiar. All he had to do was wait. But he had made a crucial miscalculation; Vane had never wanted the bird to be at the Raeg. He’d wanted it at Twelvelms, and he’d wanted it there because of Felix. Traitor Prince of Coven Sambucus. One of the strongest practical casters of his generation, who’d turned his back on his birth right and abandoned his coven. A soul who defied tradition, who existed within the confines of the Alliance but in contradiction with so much of its values.
At the time, Abagnale had only been guessing, of course, but it would turn out that most of his guesses on this were correct.
We would not know that for a while yet, though.
I woke before Felix did, but I didn’t want to leave him. The healers at the Raeg did not try to make me; I had no idea what I’d done to them when I was unconscious but they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of finding out what I’d do now I was awake. Abagnale had stashed my coat inside a pillowcase and had been coming to see me every night to douse me in seawater, so my skin was alright, if a little stiff. My fingers were healed and there was not a trace of any of the grazes on my body. Felix had jagged scars down his arms, along the front and the back. That’s why Vane had taken Edward March, Abagnale thought, so he could see how best to use his exhaurine on a human.
There were scars on Felix’ neck, too. Thick lines either side of his throat. They’d healed what they could, but the crystals that had pierced him were bound with magic, and there were scars inside him, too. They were not sure what use he’d have in his hands, nor how it would impact his voice.
The only still-healing wound on either of us were the gashes on our shoulders. These had not responded to any spell or tincture the healers knew, even though they were not particularly deep. Perhaps it was because they were made with a familiar’s beak, they said. But I don’t know. I think it’s because of how we were when we got them, both of us wrapped in my coat, me in my seal form and Felix tucked away impossibly inside of me, my passenger, held close.
It was so strange, those days I spent lying next to him. I didn’t speak a word. I listened to the thudding of his heart, marvelled how it beat in time with my own. every time his breath stuttered, I shuddered with relief. I could tell he was inside himself in a way he hadn’t been when I’d held him in my arms at the altar at Avalon, that he was the whole of himself, the way he hadn’t been before. I was relieved, yes, but I was also afraid. Because he had been a shell. I had been covered in his soul, shimmering and beautiful but completely disconnected. I was scared what he would be when he woke up, that whatever it was that I’d done, it wouldn’t be enough.
What I did to us, as far as anyone can tell, had never been done before. No selkie I have spoken to knows of anything like it, and there are no records of it in the vaults of the Raeg or any of the great libraries of magedom that either of us have visited in the years since it happened. The closest thing we could find were in broken stories from before the Alliance. Mages, rumoured to have made familiars of each other.
It’s a very particular set of circumstances, not one anyone could planned for have anticipated, not me, not Felix, not even Abagnale who could think five steps ahead of any mage I’ve ever know. I want you to understand that. Neither myself nor Felix meant for it to happen, none of it. We did not design this. I just wanted him to live, and by some fluke, it happened, and he did. I would rather that than to lose him, even if… Not only would not have Felix, I wouldn’t have you! If things had happened differently, if any of our paths had been altered even slightly, there’s a good chance I would never have met you. That you’d never have existed. That I’d never hear your little giggles or see your little smile, or those soft little snores you make when you sleep. You, and the thousand other little happinesses we’ve found in the chaos, they make it worth it. For me, at least.

[GLASS SHATTERS, A SOFT THUNK. THE BABY FUSSES.]

I know, I know, I’m sorry, I know! It’s okay. That— a stone. That shouldn’t be able to get through the barriers, ah ha! I. Wait. It’s an amanuensis stone. Let me—

[A CRUMBLING CRACK]

[FELIX’S VOICE IS THIN AND RASPY]

FELIX: You tell the story so well. But you have to stop it, you have to stop. They are closing on Abagnale. Trust nobody. Go to the place where we found it. Wait for me there.

CYAN: Felix.

It’s just Felix. Okay, baby. It’s okay. We always knew we couldn’t stay here long. It’ll be alright. Felix will meet us. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s still afraid but he’s okay. We’re going to be okay. I love you, little one, I love you.

Okay.

[CANDLE BLOWS OUT]
[END]

Cyan and Felix know they need to tell someone about Edward March, but keeping Cyan’s identity a secret complicates matters, and Abagnale is less helpful than they hope…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

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