Spirit Ascendancy (11 page)

“Home is a relative term, isn’t it? I must say, this is one hell of a welcome committee,” Annabelle said, tossing her hair with more than a touch of her usual fire. “Does everyone get this kind of red carpet treatment, or do you reserve it just for family?”

Anca did not acknowledge the joke with even the faintest of smiles. “These are dangerous times, and you bring the greatest of threats here with you. We must take precautions.”

“I hardly think all this is necessary,” Annabelle said. “I told you we were coming. Surely there could have been a better way to receive us?”

 Anca shrugged. “I am just adhering to my orders. Were you followed?”

“I don’t believe so,” Annabelle said, turning to Finn for confirmation.

“No,” he said. “Not by any means I could detect, spiritual or otherwise.”

Anca turned to the nearest man and spoke in a harsh tongue I did not understand. The man immediately turned and vanished into the looming shadows.

“And the spirit in the car?” she asked, gesturing to where Milo still hung, unresponsive, inside the Volvo.

“What about him?” Annabelle asked.

“Who is he? What has happened to him?”

“His name is Milo. He is Bound to Jessica’s sister, and is pledged as the Spirit Guide to their Gateway. He was attacked by the Necromancers and left in this state.” Annabelle said, “We don’t really know what has happened to him. That’s part of why we sought you out.”

Two of the older women looked at each other, their expressions skeptical.

“I don’t think this bodes well for the rest of the visit,” Savvy hissed in my ear. “If this is how they greet us, what do you think they’ll do when they hear the whole story of what brought us here?”

“Which of you is the Ballard girl?” Anca asked, though she was staring directly at me when she said it.

“I am.”

All of the dark eyes in the circle were now fixed on me. I could feel each pair of them, burning into me from all sides, turning my face flushed and my heartbeat to a nervous flutter.

“We’ve met you here to give you a choice,” Anca said. “This is your opportunity to walk away.”

“Walk away from what?” I asked.

“We have been instructed to bring you to our own High Priestess. We cannot guarantee what she will decide to do once she meets you and hears your story,” Anca said.

I chanced a glance at Finn. His eyes were narrowed as he scanned the circle.

“We have decided as a Council,” Anca went on, gesturing to the other women around her, “to give you the option to leave before you see her. If she determines you are too great of a risk to our Clan, she may decide to turn you in, or otherwise detain you. We thought it only fair to warn you of this possibility before we took you to see her.”

I swallowed and endeavored to keep my voice from shaking, which I failed at miserably. “What would happen if we decided to leave?”

Anca shrugged, almost coldly. “We have cast a circle here that you will not be able to break until we are miles away. If you choose not to enter our camp, your fate is your own. You will not be able to find us, and we will not trouble ourselves with what happens beyond our own borders.”

“And if we go with you, and your High Priestess doesn’t decide to turn us in? What then?” I asked.

“You would be offered the protection of the Travelers, which, if I may be so bold, is rather formidable. But, as I said, I cannot guarantee that she will choose to extend this protection. Our High Priestess will always put the safety of the Clan ahead of all else, and that may well mean that you are not welcomed here. If you come with us into the camp, you agree to leave your fate in her hands.”

I glared at Annabelle. “Blood doesn’t count for quite as much as you’d hoped, I guess.”

She smiled grimly. “Not mine, at any rate. Dormants aren’t exactly prized in our culture. Still, I must admit I’d hoped for better.”

I hesitated, playing for time. If we walked away, where could we go? The Necromancers hadn’t just found us; they’d ambushed us. They’d had time to carefully plan and stage an attack. They were probably already on our trail, ten steps ahead of us, waiting for us to play into their hands again. What choice did we have? If this new High Priestess was going to turn us in to the Northern Clans, would we really be any worse off than we were on our own? But if, by some miracle, she did decide to protect us, we might have time to regroup and come up with another plan in safety.

I turned to the others, prepared to discuss all of this, but they  were all staring expectantly at me. I sought out Finn’s gaze and he nodded at me as though to say, “The choice is yours. It’s up to you.” I took a deep breath.

“We’ll go with you,” I said. “No chance we take with your High Priestess can compare with the chance we’ll take by staying here.”

“Very well,” Anca said. “Dragos, unlock the circle and untie them. For the continued safety of the Clan and the camp, we are going to blindfold you.”

“Is that really necessary?” Finn asked.

The man called Dragos, who had stepped forward at Anca’s words, looked him over with definite disdain. “You are in no position to question our decisions,” he said, in a quiet but somehow cutting voice. “You have come here seeking our help. We have decided to extend it. You will accept it under our terms, or not at all.”

“We accept it,” I said, before Finn could leap into protection mode.

Anca inclined her head to me. “Very well.”

As one unit, the eight Caomhnóir broke into the boundary of the circle, and as they did so, the darkness encasing us actually seemed to lighten, the light from the torches penetrating further toward us. The four women gathered together, conversing in low voices as the Caomhnóir approached us, obliterating the curves of the circle by sweeping their bare feet across it. It struck me that none of the other women had spoken to us, given that Anca was the youngest. I would have thought that age meant status. I realized, though, from the little snatches of conversation that drifted over to us, that none of the other women were speaking English. It was possible, I realized, that Anca was not the leader as much as the interpreter in this group.  One of the older women opened the door to the car and examined Milo, calling one of the others over to look at him by the light of one of the candle torches. I hated to see Milo so helpless and vulnerable; it was the complete antithesis of the feisty ghost I’d grown to know. Now all he could do was drift along senselessly after the women, armed with an unknown casting, tethered him to them with invisible strings, like some grisly balloon, and pulled him from the car.

Savvy made a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh of resignation, and I turned to see her closing her eyes in preparation for the blindfold now being lowered over her face. Her hands were balled into fists, and I knew, hard-boiled Londoner that she was, that she was fighting against every instinct of self-preservation she possessed not to punch the nearest Caomhnóir as hard as she could.

The last thing I saw before the fabric descended over my own eyes was Finn’s face, shadowed by more than the flickering of the torches, mouth opened in a protest that he swallowed along with his pride as he was hoisted to his feet.

We stumbled and lurched through the forest, over an ever-deepening carpet of leaf mulch and a network of roots so tangled that they threatened to snap an ankle with nearly every step. I didn’t get the feeling that the Caomhnóir were troubling to be gentle with any of us, compounding the fear that we were much more prisoner than guest. The women continued to talk amongst themselves ahead of us, and it felt like the strange cadences of their voices were pulling us reluctantly forward through the woods like the pied piper’s song.

After what felt like an hour, the ground beneath our feet began to harden and the roots became fewer and far between. At last the Caomhnóir dragging me came to a sudden stop. I slammed into his back and had to grasp him awkwardly around his waist to stop myself from falling.

“Thanks for the warning,” I muttered, righting myself.

By way of reply, he yanked the blindfold off of my face, and I clenched my eyes against what, after a solid hour of pitch blackness, seemed to be a very bright light.

We stood on the outskirts of a large, round clearing lit by a blazing, leaping bonfire at the center and a number of smaller camp fires scattered around it. Bathed in the orange glow stood about two dozen ramshackle dwellings, an odd collection of elaborate tents, retro campers, and even several wooden wagons, the type of things you’d imagine wandering minstrels or circus performers might have traveled in a hundred years ago.

“We are taking you directly to our High Priestess. Her name is Ileana, and it will be her decision what will happen to you next,” Anca told us. “Her tent is just over there.”

We followed her, a much simpler process now that we could see, to the mouth of a billowing velvet structure as large as a circus tent. Two more Caomhnóir waited in the entryway, and drew the door flaps back for us as we approached the opening.

“We’re off to see the wizard…” I sang under my breath.

“What?” Finn whispered.

“Nothing.”

THE INTERIOR OF THE TENT was lit with guttering candle torches, so the woman basically lived in a mobile fire hazard. It was set up like an elaborate office, with carved mahogany furniture, steamer trunks full of books, and shelf upon shelf of very old, very mysterious looking objects; small statues, bottles and mason jars full of herbs, tattered books, candles, quartz crystals, and, horrifyingly, an expansive collection of small taxidermied animals. I couldn’t imagine having to move it all every time they changed locations, but then again, she had an army of burly, barrel-chested Caomhnóir at her disposal, so I suppose that didn’t trouble her. Enthroned amidst this shrine of oddities, in a high-backed wooden chair, lounged Ileana, High Priestess of the Traveler Clans.

Savvy caught my eye, and I knew her thought was the same as mine; we were trapped in some bizarre carnival nightmare, and we’d both be laughing if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious.

Ileana looked to be about seventy years old and, unlike the leaders of the Northern Clans, she wore every wrinkle and age spot like a badge of honor on her face. For some reason, this realization heartened me; this woman obviously did not believe in leeching, at least for beautification purposes. Her long hair, threaded with white, was still thick and shining. Her long neck, wrists, and ankles were hung with dozens of chains, jewels, and strings of beads, and her bare feet rested on a pile of embroidered cushions. A wooden pipe dangled from the corner of her mouth, which was stretched into a smile. There was nothing friendly or welcoming about it; she was laughing at us. Behind her right shoulder, a golden cage on a pedestal housed a glossy black raven, which glared malevolently from one dark eye; its head, when cocked insolently to the side, revealed that the other eye had been pecked out.

Anca approached the High Priestess and pressed first her forehead and then her lips to a triskele medallion strung onto her hand from a number of chains connected to her several bulky, jewel-encrusted gold rings.

“The fugitives have arrived, High Priestess,” Anca said.

“I can see that,” Ileana said, with a slight cackle. I counted four gold teeth. “Leave us, now. Gather the Council and wait for me in the meeting circle,” she added, and Anca repeated the instructions to the three other women who had accompanied us through the woods. All four bowed and exited the tent without another word.

Ileana turned back to us and eyed us beadily before giving a derisive snort. “So here be the trouble makers. Two Apprentices, a Novitiate, and a Dormant. It’s a miracle you’ve survived for as long as you have with the full force of the Necromancers on your trail. How did you manage it?”

She seemed to be addressing me, so I answered. “We had a Tracker from Fairhaven who was helping to hide us,” I said, endeavoring to keep a tremor of emotion out of my voice, “but she was killed in our escape.”

Ileana gave a hacking cough and turned to Annabelle. “Annabelle, is it? Granddaughter of my second cousin Madalina, I believe?”

“Yes, High Priestess,” Annabelle said, rather breathlessly. She inclined her head as a sign of respect.

“How did you get wrapped up in this?” Ileana barked at her.

Annabelle cleared her throat. “One of my colleagues and I were trying to help Jessica, before we knew the nature of her gift. The Necromancers tracked us both down. They tortured us both. They killed my friend David.”

“The Necromancers show no mercy. They are quite famous for it,” Ileana said, puffing on her pipe until she resembled a crag-faced steam engine. There was no trace of sympathy in her voice.

“So you actually believe us then, that the Necromancers have returned?” I asked. “The Council at Fairhaven wouldn’t even entertain the notion.”

“The first thing you should know about the Traveler Clans is that we are not like the Ensconced Clans,” Ileana said. “We embrace change—our very existence depends on it. We do not get comfortable, and we do not get complacent. We are always on the move, and, more importantly, on the watch. We see and hear things that do not penetrate the hallowed halls of our sisters. The rise of the Necromancers has not been sudden; they have crept, a noisome little weed, spreading and growing over many years. Now, they are an infestation that threatens us all.”

“So why haven’t you done anything about them?” I asked, my nerves making me sound a bit more combative than I had intended. Annabelle shifted uncomfortably.

“We do not have the resources or the inclination to engage in battle with the Necromancers,” Ileana said, poking a gnarled finger through the bars of the cage to stroke the feathers on the raven’s chest. “We are too small of a clan to invite confrontation without aid. We have reported our findings to the Ensconced Clans, including the Northern Clans. We have been ignored.”

“You’re not the only ones,” I said.

“Before we go on, I wish for you to tell me the story of how you came to be here. Anca has relayed what she could to me, but I would like to hear it with these very old ears of mine. And do speak up,” Ileana said, as she pulled her ankles up and tucked them under her like a small child. She stared at me expectantly, as did everyone else in the room.

I took a deep breath and told her everything, from the discovery of my abilities, to my reunion with Hannah, and all the events at Fairhaven that led up to our escape. Then with Annabelle’s help, I explained everything that had happened to us while we were on the run, right up until our less than hospitable welcome on the outskirts of the woods. Ileana listened intently, taking her eyes from me only to stuff more sweet-smelling tobacco into her pipe and light it again.

As I sat in the silence that followed the end of my story, I felt much as I did mere days before, standing in front of the Council at Fairhaven, waiting to find out my fate. I had to admit I was growing weary of constantly teetering on the edge of something terrible. If I was going to fall, I just wanted to fall already, and get it over with; at this point, the impact would be a sweet relief from the anticipation.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take another second of silence, Anca and two of the older Council members bowed their way back into the tent, followed by—

“Milo!”

He smiled faintly. “I’m going to remind you of this golden moment, when you were actually happy to see me.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I am now, thanks to the witches of Eastwick over there,” he said, thumbing back over his shoulder at the Council members who had entered with him. “They worked their magic on me. I don’t know what those Necro-assholes did to me, but it was like being paralyzed. I could see you and hear you, but I couldn’t move or speak or communicate at all.”

“They put you into corporeal shock,” Anca said. “It is a way of immobilizing a spirit, so that he cannot harm you. It usually only lasts for a few seconds, so I am not sure how the Necromancers altered the casting to make it so powerful, but it was simple enough to reverse. You should feel no lasting effects, other than a bit of weakness for a few hours.”

“Yeah, well never mind about me,” Milo said. “What about Hannah? I’ve been reaching out through our connection for the last few minutes, since I’ve been free from that casting, but she’s not there. Something is blocking it. I’m really freaked out; we’ve never been disconnected before, not since I died.”

I looked at Anca. “Is that an effect of the corporeal shock, too?”

Anca was frowning. “No. At least, it shouldn’t be. They must be employing something else to interfere with your connection. I don’t know what it might be, though. I’ve never heard of a casting being able to separate a spirit and a Durupinen who were Bound.”

“Okay, well, what else can we do? What have you found out? Do we know where she is? What are we doing to get her back?” Milo asked.

“We don’t know anything else,” I said. “I just finished filling them in on everything that’s happened.”

Milo turned a defiant glare on Ileana. “Well? You’ve got the story. What are you going to do to find her?”

Ileana looked him over with a combination of amusement and condescension. It was a surprisingly threatening expression, and I felt Milo shrink a little beside me.

“Mate, she is like the Queen Mother of the Clans around here,” Savvy whispered. “I’m pretty sure she could roll you in that pipe and smoke you, if she wanted to.”

“Right, okay,” said Milo, making an obvious effort to master his rage before he was the victim of another unpleasant casting. “What I meant was, could you, uh, please be so kind as to let us know if you’re going to help us?”

Ileana shifted back in her chair, so that her expression was shrouded in shadows as she answered. “I have not yet decided.”

“Stellar,” Milo said through gritted teeth. “Well, I guess we’ll just be going then, since we have a kidnapping to foil and we’re basically wasting our time here. Nice meeting you all.”

He turned back toward the entrance, but found his way blocked by two of the Caomhnóir. He halted in midair, nostrils flaring, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

“I’m afraid you must stay and hear my thoughts on this matter, Spirit Guide,” Ileana said. “You are here by my permission and you will leave, or stay, by the same. That was the arrangement.”

Milo turned back and hovered back to rest beside Finn.

“We’re wasting time,” he hissed, to no one in particular. His energy was bordering on manic; I could feel it rolling off him in waves, making my skin explode in goosebumps. “Every minute we stay here is another minute they could be doing something awful to her. We need a plan.”

“I know,” I whispered back. “Let’s just behave long enough to find out if they’re going to help us. Then we can go from there.”

Ileana didn’t seem to notice our quiet exchange, or if she did, she didn’t acknowledge it. Instead she said, “When Anca first told me of your phone call, I must admit I had no intention of allowing you to come here. You must realize how very real the danger is that follows in your wake.”

I actually snorted with bitter laughter. Danger, really? I had absolutely no idea, given the multiple attempts on our lives and the violent death of our only ally. So much for staying calm.

Perhaps my anger had flashed across my face, because Annabelle swooped in and answered before I could open my mouth and put my foot in it. “We do,” she said quickly. “And we are sorry. But we had nowhere else to turn.”

“Too right. It is now true of us all; there is nowhere left for the Durupinen to turn, except into the face of the waiting enemy. The time of the prophecy is at hand.”

Two or three of the Caomhnóir shifted nervously. Anca closed her eyes and seemed to be praying.

“The strange thing about prophecies,” Ileana continued, blowing a thoughtful smoke ring into the air and watching it dissipate around her head, “is that they do not come to pass on their own. They are always brought about by the actions of those about whom they are made. The Northern Clans have feared the prophecy, for it has long been suspected that, since the prophecy was made by one of their own, those of whom it spoke would also be of Northern descent. The Isherwood Prophecy is—”

“I’m sorry, did you say Isherwood?” The word sparked a memory of wandering down a portrait-lined corridor, of staring into an ancient, beautiful, and somehow familiar face. “Does that have anything to do with Agnes Isherwood?”

“Of course,” Ileana said, eying me sideways, like she was trying to decide if I was being impertinent. “Agnes Isherwood of the Clan Sassanaigh was the Seer who made the prophecy so many hundreds of years ago. Surely Finvarra told you that?”

I reeled. My own ancestor, the only one of my family ever to be the High Priestess, had made the prophecy about me, and not a single Council member thought this information worth sharing.  “Finvarra hasn’t been very interested in keeping me informed,” I said when I found my voice at last. “That’s pretty much how we got into this mess.”

“Finvarra and those before her have shunned the prophecy and all it could mean for our order, because they did not want to face the idea that they could be the cause of our downfall. They have contented themselves with watching for and quashing all possible circumstances that could lead to its fulfillment. It was they, for instance, so many centuries ago, who declared the ban on relationships between Durupinen and Caomhnóir, and saw that it was enforced across all clans everywhere on the globe. They have destroyed many of their own number over the intervening years, whenever they suspected such a relationship or, worse still, a child from such a relationship. They focused all of their energies on stopping the prophecy rather than understanding it, but we are not so foolish. We want to know everything we can, for knowledge may be the only way to change the outcome.”

My anger vanished as a tiny bubble of hope rose in my chest, and I looked Ileana directly in the eye for the first time since entering the tent.

“You think there’s still a chance that we could change the outcome?”

“There is always a chance,” Ileana said, nodding gravely. “But only if you meet the prophecy head on. If the Northern Clans had any sense, they would learn about the prophecy, rather than trying to destroy any sign of it at every turn. History teaches us that this is futile, like cutting the head from a creature that can simply grow a new one. This has always been the weakness of the Northern Clans. They have been known throughout the ages for a streak of stubborn arrogance that has, time and again, nearly destroyed them. And now it may destroy us all.”

I opened my mouth automatically to defend my own clan, but immediately closed it again. I thought of Marion and the others leeching from the spirits they were trusted to shepherd, just to appease their own vanity. I thought about Finvarra, and her stubborn insistence that the Necromancers had been wiped out, and Marion’s manic obsession with locking us up. I couldn’t defend them, and what was more, I didn’t want to. They deserved every word that Ileana was speaking against them now.

She nodded again at me, as though she knew exactly the conclusion I had just come to, and that she approved of my ability to do so. Perhaps this separated me from the rest of the Northern Clans in her mind, for when she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its hostility. She repeated the words that had been echoing in my head, haunting my thoughts since I’d first heard them.