Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (19 page)

That was the wrong thing to say. Silas’s face burned with anger and he turned to face Maud. “What do you know of my father? My dad turned his back on this place and its ‘ancient rites,’ didn’t he?” Below him, the stone seemed to vibrate at his words.

The room was silent. Jonas almost looked relieved at the possibility that Silas might step off the stone and leave the house; he was nodding slowly, as if he might be encouraging Silas to stop the rite. Yet, Silas wanted to know what it was to be Janus, what authority he might yet wield.

“Maud, won’t you answer me? No? I am here. I will see this through. Please
don’t
push me. And I ask you not to invoke my father’s name, particularly when we both know he abandoned many of your so-called ‘family obligations.’ ” Silas touched the pendant under his shirt and said, “I know my father meant for me to be here, but this is starting to feel desperate.”

Silas began to step off the stone.

Maud muttered something under her breath, and suddenly the Limbus Stone was covered in swirling smoke that rose up around Silas like binding vines. Maud said sternly, “Do not move! Silas Umber, you have crossed the threshold and entered this house of your own free will. The rites of Janus have begun, and there are only two roads open to you now. There can be no turning back. I understand you are scared. Life and death are both framed in fear. Look beyond your uncertainty! Be strong! You may only step off that stone if you are the Janus of this house. If you refuse or are deemed unworthy, you shall be
sent down
, exiled from the mansions of your family.”

Silas looked at the stone under his feet. The warm vapor was crawling up his body and his hands began to shake. He feared whatever might be down there, below the stone. Some kind of Tartarus? A prison? An endless chasm worse than any shadowland? He did not move. Maud’s warning worked on him like a spell and seemed somehow fateful and true. She had invoked something with those words, and he could only continue. Silas now knew that he must finish what he’d started. His heart was about to burst as apprehension sent the blood flooding through his veins. It was fear, not pride, that made him want to run, and he knew it now. Whatever Maud or Jonas wanted, whatever he wanted himself, he would not bend to fear. Not again. His father, with his own hand, had once put a pendant around his neck bearing the image of Janus. It must mean his dad had expected this moment to come. He was following a path set out for him from the beginning. This was what needed to happen next and what his father wanted. And, he wondered again, trying to look beyond the rite, if he became Janus, what kind of power might he wield then?

Silas raised his head, looking at Maud and Jonas without expression. From somewhere along the battlements, the ancient horns cried out. The three robed figures stepped forward to wait just inside the doorway. They raised their swords toward Silas’s throat, making it impossible for him to move. Looking at the swords, he held up his head, unwilling to bend to the fear. This was where he had to be.

“I will abide by the will of family,” Silas said. As he closed his eyes, he saw Maud was smiling.

“Then speak the words,” instructed Jonas in a voice tinged with regret.

I don’t know the damn words!
Silas thought.
I’m just here. I’ve shown up! Isn’t that ever enough?

Perhaps sensing the pause, Jonas said, “It is enough to state your desire to become Janus. Just say what you are about to do, and that shall suffice.”

Very slowly, Silas said, “I have answered the summons. I wish to be Janus. I wish to stand at the threshold. I will sit in the seat of judgment.” His mind was swirling like the mist on top on the stone below him and he added again, “I will abide by the will of my family.” He knew that in the next instant, those three swords would stab through his body, or sever his head from his neck. But instead of the sound of metal passing through warm flesh, he heard only Jonas’s voice briefly again.

“Very well,” said Jonas, turning away from the door. “Hearken now to the song of the abyss. . . .”

And those words rose and then dissolved in Silas’s ears as he knelt, then lay down upon the Limbus Stone, succumbing to the intoxication of that strange Plutonian ether that swirled to cover his face and flowed into his nostrils.

He could hear nothing but the deep sound of a bellows, as though the earth itself was breathing with titanic lungs.

Silas opened his eyes. He was standing again, perched just before a pit of air and fire. Each way he turned, the vision of the abyss remained before him. Even when he looked up, he was looking down. Maud and Jonas had vanished and he could no longer see the hall of Arvale. No way forward. No way back. Thick ropes of vapor rose from about the edges of that earth-door and wound about his face, piercing his mouth and nose. The fumes were acrid and burned his throat, making him choke and gasp and draw them deeper into his lungs. Silas breathed in, accepting whatever might come. The Limbus Stone had become transparent, an insubstantial veil hanging over the chasm beneath him.
There can be no looking back,
he told himself. Then, without another thought, he stepped forward and could feel himself falling. Down and ever down, Silas fell through the earth, plummeting, piercing flames and shadows.

He closed his eyes again and the scene changed; Silas saw himself walking through a barren country. . . .

The ground of the valley was covered in bones, brittle and blasted by the elements. Skulls and long bones, spines, and the tiny bones of the foot and hand, all lay indolent under a dark sky, covering the earth like dry branches on a forest floor.

“Here is life,” the youth called out to the bones, and the earth rattled eagerly. The youth raised up his hands. On his right palm was burned the image of a key. On his left, the image of a skull.

A voice spoke. “You are Janus. You watch the door. You help the dead pass to where they must go and no more.” The voice rose into a bellow. “Who are you to rouse the dead? Depart this place and leave the dead in peace.”

The youth closed his right hand, hiding the key.

“I am Mors,” said the youth. “I am Death.”

“You are Janus—” the voice began again in the same tone, like a recording.

“I am this and that also,” said the youth matter-of-factly. “I am Lord of the Bones. These are my subjects.”

“You do not need to do this,” said the voice, almost pleading. “The dead shall not complain.”

“I am Mors,” said the young man again, simply, absolutely. It was a confirmation. “That was the bargain. And I shall abide by my birthright.”

“You can turn back. You are Janus of the House of Arvale. You will sit in judgment over the dead. Be content.”

“It is not sufficient to judge the dead. I will do what else I can for them.”

“Life is not always a gift. Leave the dead in peace.”

“Peace is what I shall bring to them.”

“Thus spoke every King of the Dead since the making of the world,” said the voice with an almost familiar sorrow. “So be it. You shall be Life in Death. Restoration may flow from your hand and you shall judge who shall live and who shall die in the Valley of the Shadows. As you claim it, one day, this land shall be yours.”

The youth looked out over the field of bones, feeling the losses of the dead hanging in the air like thick smoke. Then he began to speak, low words and phrases framed in dust and decay, but quickly rising in pitch, growing lighter like the coming of dawn upon the land. The words burned his mouth, and as he spoke them the earth warmed and shuddered. The bones turned where they lay upon the ground and drew together. Tendons slid around them, joining bone to bone. Strands of flesh wove and skin grew like mold over all, and where once a field of scattered bones was seen, now a vista of fallen corpses lay. They did not move. They could not.

Without hesitation, the youth looked to the cardinal directions and said, “Four winds come and fill these forms with breath that they might live.” And the corpses gasped and filled with air, breathed, and stood up, a mighty company arrayed from one side of the valley to the other.

The youth looked out upon what he had done, and saw before him an army, risen up from their skeletons, and knew at once that it was Death who ruled the world and no other thing.

The youth turned from the once-dead multitude and looked behind him. Away, beyond the mouth of the valley, crying was heard: the sound of a father weeping for his son, though whether he wept because his child was lost or found, dead or alive, the youth could not discern.

Silas could feel something cold against his cheek. His face was pressed against the Limbus Stone.

A little distance away from him, a voice said, “Who stands here, at the threshold?”

But he knew he wasn’t standing. He was lying down. He must have fallen. Where was he? He couldn’t think. His mind had been poured full of mist. He wanted to wave it away, for a wind to blow through his brain and disperse the heavy fog.

The voice spoke again. “Who is here? What has come? Speak your name.”

He heard himself whisper the word “Mors” through clenched teeth.

“What? What did he say? What did Silas say?” The voice sounded frightened now.

Yes. I am Silas Umber,
Silas thought to himself.
I am the Janus of Arvale.
But in the very furthest corner of his mind, another part of him said quietly, gently, coldly,
You are that, and more besides. You have claimed your birthright. There is no turning back.

Silas opened his eyes fully and tried to sit up. Pale forms wavered on the air before him, condensing into familiarity. Jonas Umber wore a mask of absolute fright and said, “Say your name again!”

“I am Silas Umber. I am the Janus of this house.” Silas was not sure how he could be so certain of it, but in every fiber of his being, he knew those words to be true. He looked at the palms of his hands. Nothing stood out. Now, whatever he was, it was inside him, woven right through the very core of his being.

“That is well,” Jonas said, sounding unconvinced. “Be welcome, now and always, in this house,
Silas Umber
, Janus.”