Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (25 page)

Silas, lost wholly in the rite, pitched his voice into a thunder. “
Cedo nulli!
” he pronounced. At once the black stone under Joseph Downing swallowed him, and the room grew still. Silas’s heart was racing. His words flowed with the force of command and his body shook with the power he held over the dead. Something in his world had shifted in that moment and whatever was to become of him, he knew he would not be able to turn back.

Jonas looked at Maud, as if to say,
You may have been right.
He moved to Silas’s side.

“I hardly know what to say. I have stood before the Door Doom many times, but I have never seen it conducted so well, so efficiently. That was excellently done, Silas! Did you see, Maud? Silas, I am without words!” Something had altered in Jonas Umber’s demeanor. Where once there was reticence and reluctance, now there was hope. Silas could see that Jonas was proud of him, but his limbs were still shaking and what he’d done to the ghost didn’t feel right, now that he was returning to himself again.

Jonas couldn’t stop. “Silas! Really! I must say—”

“Okay! Thank you!” Silas said louder than he’d meant. He needed to think and wanted to hold the silence a moment longer. “I’m sorry. I heard you. . . .” He felt nauseated and confused. For the last several moments, he had felt like he was locked away somewhere small inside himself, watching what transpired as though someone else had spoken the words, as though someone else had banished Joseph Downing. He knew, in every particle of his body, that his father would have wept to see him in that moment, and the tears would not be of pride.

“Shall we call another to the Door Doom?” asked Jonas calmly.

“Jonas, enough!” said Maud. “Leave him be. Can’t you see he’s spent?”

“Yes, all right. Just one for now. But Silas, tomorrow we shall proceed, yes?”

“All right. Tomorrow,” Silas said wearily, not wanting to discuss it any further. He was bone tired, his legs shaking.

“I know it’s hard at first. The sad condition of the spirits of the dead can blur one’s sense of responsibility, particularly when they are unable to take the waters. We will try again tomorrow with something where the lines between obligation and the so-called desires of the dead are more clearly delineated. It’s better, more humane, when they can understand you as you speak to them. Most will take the waters. It is easier that way, I promise you. I’ll take care of the preparations myself and will call for you tomorrow.”

Jonas left the hall. Maud smiled encouragingly at Silas, and then followed Jonas out.

A few moments later, the mighty horn sounded far atop the house.

Lars came running into the great hall. He took one look at Silas, his face pale and hands shaking, and ran to his side. “Let’s get you upstairs, eh? A little rest will put all to right.”

Silas only nodded. He felt pulled in two, sick at the thought of doing it again, but also eager to hold the power in his hands once more. He knew that if he looked in a mirror, in that moment, he would not have recognized himself.

When they got back to Silas’s rooms, Lars asked him to come up the stairs to the top of the tower. Exhausted, Silas protested, but Lars looked so pleased about whatever it was he wanted to show him, Silas relented.

Reaching the open air of the tower roof, his legs aching, Silas said, “So, cousin Lars, what is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?”

Lars walked over to the wall and pointed down. Silas looked below and saw torches burning in the small field beyond the garden. There were tents and banners that glistened in the torchlight and he could hear horses and the ringing of silver bridle bells. And there was music. The scene was enrapturing. And though he was becoming drowsy, Silas could not look away.

“What is it?” he asked Lars, putting his arm around his cousin’s shoulder for affection as much as support.

“Both within the house and outside its walls, spirits such as these come and go as they will, but the spectacle below is rare and very fine, you must agree,” said Lars without looking away from the night tournament.

“Yes. Very fine indeed,” replied Silas. He was relieved by Lars’s comment. And he was glad at the chance to eventually be able to share a little more with someone who asked nothing of him. Wanting to know more of what Lars believed, Silas pushed a bit further. “We find ourselves in strange circumstances, do we not? We are not like the folk here, are we?”

Lars made no answer.

“Lars?” said Silas as he turned toward him. “You know that though we are living men, we are residing in a house of the dead?”

Lars smiled wanly. “Cousin, I am a simple man, but I am no fool. I know how far we are from Lichport. That is partially why I remain here. Some nights, I think I can see Lichport from the battlements of this house, yet . . . I know the troubles I left behind are a great ways off. As strange as this place is, that odd distance is a kind of comfort to me, though my heart, every day, aches for home and what I left behind. Do you feel that way, Silas?”

“Yes. I miss Lichport. I’ll be glad to get back. It feels as though I’ve been away for ages now.”

Together they looked back over the battlement. Below, two knights with banded lances rode their horses slowly toward each other in a sort of mock joust. Lords and ladies watched from their tents, their clothes trimmed in ermine, laughing and singing below the moon, and the torchlight played on the armor of the knights and made them glow and waver in the air like living flames.

Silas glanced gratefully at Lars in thanks for the gift of the distraction, but when he looked back at the night tournament, it was gone. Shadows of every length and hue had fallen across the land, and the moon hid behind a wandering cloud. The tents and horses had vanished, and the music faded from the air like the song of some swift-departing night-bird.

Before they turned to go downstairs, Lars sighed and spoke again. “It is true that we have found ourselves in a very unusual place, Silas, an estate beyond my ken to understand, although I do know we are both very far from home. Still, cousin, you must admit, this house can afford some wondrous views.”

That night, Silas dreamed of Bea again. She was calling out, her voice falling upon his ears like a bell ringing up from below the waves. Silas wasn’t sure what she was saying and didn’t hear her say his name, but he knew, needed to know, that she was looking for him. In the dream, he tried to yell back, but his jaw was locked and he couldn’t speak or even move his arms to signal that he was there, wherever “there” was. He could sense her behind him. At last, the mist parted and he found himself standing before the mill pond. Thick ice and an old piece of Mrs. Bowe’s lace tablecloth lay across the water. He leaned down over the frozen pond and saw her below. Beatrice was struggling. She beat furiously at the ice with blue hands. Silas struck the surface with his foot, but it was like iron and would not crack no matter how he stomped at it. Suddenly, Beatrice’s face was very close to the clear crystal surface of the water, and he could see her mouthing his name over and over, forming sounds around the bubbles that poured from her throat and spread out against the underside of the ice.

When Silas awoke, the small fire Lars had set for him on the hearth had burned down to glowing embers, and in the dim light, little carved faces on his bedposts stared down at him with flat, dead eyes of wood, daring him to go back to sleep.

L
EDGER

For those who die unshriven, or furious, or vengeful, or are too fond of their estates and wordlie fortunes, shalle surely walk again after death. Beware then, for these Restless folk will wander forth from their graves and other habitations, their breath bringinge plague and contagion upon where e’er they walk. And lo! How many goodlie folk have come to death by even idle conversation with a wand’ring corpse.

—
F
ROM THE NOTES OF
W
ILLIAM OF
N
EWBURGH (C.1190), TRA
NSCRIBED BY
J
ONAS
U
M
BER FOR AN UNPUBLISH
ED TRACT ENTITLED “
T
HE
U
NDERTAKERS
N
EEDFUL
N
IGHT-
W
ATCH
A
GAINST THE
E
VILS OF
THE
R
ESTLESS”

A
S
S
ILAS LAY BETWEEN
SLEEP
and waking, a sound drifted down from the roof over his bed. There was a scratching, then the noise of something being dragged, or pulling itself across the floor above. There was a pause, then the latch of the trapdoor leading from his room to the tower roof rattled sharply. But as Silas rose from bed, the horns of Arvale sounded again, the shrill staccatos blasting out, blaring even through the thick stone of the walls: calling him
Attend! Attend! Attend! Return to the hall! Doom! Doom! Doom!
and banishing whatever had been trying to enter his chamber. It’s nothing, he told himself. The house is full of noises. It’s nothing. He knew the family was waiting. Yet his dream of Beatrice still clung at him, drawing his mind toward home, Lichport, his real home. Bea was trapped and he longed to go to her. But the straining chain of family obligation pulled the other way. It was the Doom more than anything that had taken hold of him. What had happened yesterday upset him, but hadn’t Maud said that each new Janus may make changes in the rite? In time, he could make the Doom his own. When he stood at the door, he now knew, he wielded an extraordinary power he was only beginning to understand. If he could summon the dead by their names . . .