“Good. I’m ready.”
She picked up a piece of dark gray slate, about three feet high by two feet wide, like the slate flagstones lining the terrace behind Maenllyd, only bigger. She lifted the heavy tile like it weighed nothing, carried it across the lawn, and leaned it against the trunk of a tree five yards away. Then she returned to where I stood.
“Have you ever heard the expression
stone the crows
?” she asked.
“Um, no.”
“It expresses disbelief or annoyance. As in ‘Stone the crows, my bloody car broke down again.’ ”
I shrugged, suppressing a smile. Swearing—even a mild oath like “bloody”—was so out of character for my aunt.
“No matter,” she went on. “It’s more than an expression. It’s an ancient practice.”
“Like farmers throwing stones at crows to shoo them away from their crops?”
“There is that. But I’m speaking of an ancient magical practice. Remember that Morfran means ‘great crow.’ The Morfran can be imprisoned in stone. In slate, to be specific.”
She produced a dagger, easily the most beautiful I’d ever seen. Its bone hilt seethed with carvings of twining vines, symbols, and letters. The blade, six inches long, was made of glassy black stone that glowed with silver light. My fingers itched to heft it and feel its balance. I doubted Mab would let me touch it today. I’d had to practice with wooden swords for two years before she let me try the real thing—and then it was another whole summer with a blunted blade.
“It’s an obsidian athame,” Mab said.
“An athame? I don’t know anything about witchcraft.”
“You don’t need to. Witches call their ceremonial dagger an athame because it’s not a weapon but a tool for directing energy. That’s how we use this knife, as well.” She spun it a few times, like a gunfighter in a classic Western. “What are the magical properties of obsidian?”
Oh, crap. Minerals and gemstones were my weakest area. I hadn’t thought about that stuff in years. “You could’ve told me there’d be a quiz. I would’ve studied.”
“Don’t be flippant. Obsidian—as you should know—disperses and redirects negative energy. The bone hilt lends strength and acts as an intensifier; its carvings are spells written in the language of
The Book of Utter Darkness
. The athame’s name is Hellforged.”
“Wait … Hellforged?” Suddenly, the dagger looked more ominous than beautiful.
Mab nodded. “It was created in Hell, by Hellions, as a tool for directing the Morfran. Your ancestor Nimuë stole it and used it to imprison the Morfran.” Nimuë, a formidable Cerddorion demon fighter, shows up in norm culture as the Lady of the Lake in legends about King Arthur. She gave Arthur his sword Excalibur and caused Merlin some trouble.
“It’s a powerful tool,” Mab said. She held out the athame, hilt first. “Take it.”
I couldn’t have heard her right. “Now?”
Mab gestured impatiently. “I’d prefer to proceed more slowly, but there’s no time.”
The dagger was a beautiful object, well wrought and glowing with a mystical silver light. But I didn’t want to touch it, not if it was Hellion-made. Any time I messed with Hellions, I came out on the losing side.
Mab gestured again, and I reluctantly took the athame. When my fingers closed around the grip, a jolt of electricity shot up my arm. The dagger leapt skyward, yanking my arm with it.
“Hey!” I let go before the damn knife pulled my shoulder from the socket. When I did, the athame fell to the grass and lay there, looking innocent. If the thing had a face, it would’ve been wearing a “Who, me?” expression.
I rubbed my shoulder. “What the hell happened?”
Mab, bending over to pick up the dagger, glanced at me. “Purity, child.”
At first I thought she was telling me to watch my language, then I remembered what she’d said yesterday.
“You mean I’m not pure enough to use it.”
She balanced the athame on her open palm. “You are marked by Hellion essence. It’s not surprising there’s a reaction.”
“So why are you wasting my time showing it to me? I mean, it’s pretty and all, but give me something I can use.”
“You can use this.” She twirled it again. It was annoying to see her handle the knife so easily, like she was provoking me.
“No, I
can’t
.” I rarely raised my voice with my aunt, but I didn’t try to tone it down. “Not if it requires some impossible purity. I can’t help it that the Destroyer marked me. I’d cut the mark from my flesh if I could. But it’s part of me, and there’s no way to change that.”
“You can’t cut out the Hellion mark, true. But you can overcome it. That’s why I told you to focus on being purely yourself.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I muttered, still angry. Yesterday’s attempt to be pure had been a disaster. Instead of achieving some mystical purity, I’d gotten beat up and turned into a sheep. If anything, I’d taken three giant steps back from purity.
“Enough, child. I can’t explain to you what purity means, but I can show you how to use Hellforged. Hold out your hand, like this.” She stretched out her empty hand, palm up.
I shot her a look, but did as she said.
“Now, close your eyes and take a moment to center yourself. Listen to your heartbeat. Control your breathing.”
I did. My heart was still galloping from anger and the shock of the athame’s reaction, but as I moved inside myself, focusing, it slowed to a strong, steady beat. My breaths lengthened as I pulled in calming energy on the inhale and sent out pent-up emotion on the exhale. I repeated those breaths, over and over. Gradually, my emotions smoothed out.
“Open your eyes, child.”
I did. The athame balanced on my palm, just as Mab had held it a minute ago. It seemed weightless, although it vibrated slightly.
“Stay centered,” Mab said. “Don’t think about what I’m doing.”
“That’s like saying, ‘Don’t think about an elephant.’ ”
“What?”
“Never mind. Give me a second.” Eyes shut, I found my center again. I stayed there for five heartbeats, then opened my eyes and nodded.
Mab put her right hand beneath mine. Adjusting the dagger with her left, she gently closed my fingers around the grip. Sparks flicked against my hand, and a buzzing sensation ran from my demon mark up my arm. Hellforged twitched, but it didn’t launch into orbit. I focused on my breathing, and the athame settled down. Mab gave my fingers a slight squeeze, then took her hand away.
As soon as she did, Hellforged bucked like a rodeo bronco. But instead of clamping down, trying to control it, I worked at keeping a double focus—staying centered while inspecting the tool in my hand. It was a gorgeous dagger, lightweight and well made. Silver light shimmered along the glassy obsidian blade, flickering with the athame’s vibration. Gradually, the vibration changed to a pulse, one that matched my own heartbeat. When I felt that, I went from holding the athame to moving it, getting a sense of its balance—perfect—and feel. I wasn’t about to start spinning it, but Hellforged and I were getting to know each other.
“Good.” Mab’s voice startled me, and the athame rocketed from my hand. It landed point first in the lawn ten feet away, where it stood upright, quivering. “What have you learned so far?” she asked, pulling Hellforged from the grass and wiping its blade with a handkerchief.
“That it likes you better than me.”
Mab’s “We are not amused” face frowned.
“Okay, okay. If I stay centered, the athame aligns with me and I can move it.”
“Yes. Using this tool requires more focus than you’re accustomed to using. If you let go of that focus—even for a moment, as you just did—you lose control.”
Fighting takes plenty of concentration. Going after Drudes or Harpies wasn’t exactly shooting monkeys in a barrel, or however that expression goes. But Mab was right. Keeping the double focus, plus doing whatever I’d have to do to fight the Morfran, would be tough.
For the next hour, I practiced staying centered while holding and maneuvering Hellforged, getting the feel of it. I moved in superslow motion, as if I were practicing slowed-down tai chi. The athame was jumpy at first, ready to fly out of my hand as soon as my concentration flagged. But with practice, my focus improved. At the end of the hour, the dagger almost felt like a normal one.
Mab checked her watch. “That’s enough for now. You’ll need to do an hour’s practice like that every day.” She put out her hand.
“All right,” I said, returning the athame. Hellforged and I definitely needed more bonding time, but I was glad to quit for now. Maintaining that level of concentration was tiring. Even though I’d moved slowly, I’d been tense the whole time, and I ached worse than before. Ready for a nap, I started across the lawn to the house.
“Where are you going, young lady?” Mab’s voice halted me in my tracks. “We’ve more work to do.”
“But I thought … You said …”
“I said you were done practicing with Hellforged for today. I didn’t say we were finished.” I walked back to where Mab stood on the lawn. “I’m going to show you how to contain the Morfran,” she said.
“Time to stone the crows?”
“Precisely.” She gestured at the piece of slate she’d leaned against the tree trunk. “That tile is made of good Welsh slate, mined not far from here. As I mentioned before, slate is binding to the Morfran. The tricky part, of course, is to get the Morfran into the slate. Once it’s there, it can’t escape unless it’s released.”
“And Pryce knows how to release it.”
“I believe he does, yes. Years ago, an ancient manuscript, the Cerddorion counterpart to
The Book of Utter Darkness
, disappeared from my library. It contains the history of our race, along with spells and prophecies—including spells for imprisoning and releasing the Morfran. I always suspected Pryce stole it, but I wasn’t overly worried. I know the book by heart, and its spells are written in code and protected by wards to prevent their magic from being misused.” She frowned. “But it seems he’s found a way around the protections. North Wales has major Morfran deposits. When Pryce moves to free that Morfran, we must be ready to counter him. We must prevent the Morfran from reaching its critical mass.”
“Okay. Show me.”
She squared her shoulders and stood with her feet hip-width apart. “First you must coalesce the Morfran energy, like this.” She held the athame in her left hand and swung her arm in big, clockwise circles over her head, like she was swinging a lasso. “You do it with me.”
Feeling way too Annie Oakley, I used my left arm to copy the circles she was making.
“Left pulls the energy in,” Mab said as her arm circled. “By making this motion with the athame, you’re drawing the Morfran toward you.”
Given what the Morfran had done to those three zombies, bringing the Morfran closer sounded like a bad idea, but I nodded and kept spinning my imaginary lasso.
“You’ll feel coldness pass into the blade. When you do, make the circles smaller. Like this.” She demonstrated, and I followed her. “Draw the Morfran in very close. Let the coldness move up your arm. Watch for a shift in the Morfran energy. It feels—how to describe it?—it feels the way it sounds when one instrument in an orchestra plays a terribly wrong note. That’s the signal to do this.”
In a lightning-fast movement, chanting unfamiliar words, she shifted the athame to her right hand and pointed it at the slate tile.
She moved too fast for me to follow her. I realized I was still making circles with my left arm, so I stopped.
“Use your right hand to project outward, sending the energy where you want it to go. Basically, you throw the Morfran into the slate. Once it lands there, it can’t get out.”
“What’s the incantation?”
“A word of command, a word of direction, and a word of binding:
Parhau! Ireos! Mantrigo!
”
“What language is that?”
“An ancient language of power. It’s never been spoken in the ordinary world.”
There are other ways,
Mab had said,
to gain understanding of the language of Hell
. Was that the language that commanded the Morfran? A chill shot down my spine. I mouthed the words several times, trying to remember them. My demon mark itched with each syllable.
“Mab, what about my demon mark? You used your right arm to point Hellforged at the slate. What if the mark won’t let me do that?”
She pursed her lips, considering. “I don’t believe that will be a problem. The mark prevents you from raising that arm against the Destroyer, true. But it should be no impediment to directing the Morfran. I’d imagine, rather, that the mark should aid you in sending the Morfran where you wish.”
The Destroyer’s mark might
help
me? That’d be a first.
We kept practicing, Mab holding the athame and me empty-handed, until I had the basic sequence down: Circle, draw the Morfran in—closer, closer—then switch hands and hurl the energy at the target, locking it there with the incantation. Each time I said the command words in that strange language, a pulse of energy buzzed down my arm, through the demon mark, and out the tips of my fingers. I was almost eager to try the ritual with Hellforged in my hand.