White Heart of Justice (24 page)

“I can't even cremate them,” I said miserably. It would likely be hours before I was able to throw waning magic again. And I'd certainly have to be more judicious about creating large, animate creatures from my fire in the future.

“I can do it,” Rafe said. His voice was rough and, even though he'd shed no tears, I could tell the sight of the barghests' dead bodies had deeply moved him.

As we had with the two skeletons we'd found in Corterra's bailey gaol, we said the Final Blessing, but this time Rafe used Angel light to burn them. There was no flicker, only a steady illumination that changed hues from indigo to azure to aquamarine and then finally to a white so bright it might have been starlight. I raised my hand to shield my eyes and just as Rafe and I were saying
requiescat in pace
together, I saw them.

The
mortem animae
.

They just materialized before our eyes. I didn't think I'd ever get over seeing that. I knew that some demons could travel through the ether, but the
mortem animae
weren't demons. They were supposed to be Hyrkes. Or they had been.

But now they were simply shadows, tragic and pitiable—but worse than lethal.

At least two dozen of them surrounded us. They were a lot less horrid than most of the other creatures we'd faced. Physically, they weren't very intimidating. Sure, they looked like walking corpses, and all of them had pasty white paper-thin skin that covered organs and arteries that were so loaded with iron they looked like they'd turned to solid metal centuries ago. (Only magic could make a creature look simultaneously denser than a black hole yet lighter than a thought.) But the
mortem animae
didn't have fangs or claws or tails. They weren't immensely big or strong. They didn't growl or grunt or bray. They wouldn't bite or sting or scratch. No, they would simply
touch
us. And then we'd be in Hell. Until someone found a way to release us, which to my knowledge, no one yet had.

Instinctively I tried to shape a weapon, but none appeared. My fire was out, which caused a painful zinging in my stomach.
Never
had I wanted my magic back as badly as I did then.

Rafe started murmuring the words to a spell. It wasn't one I recognized, but I was betting it was some sort of shielding spell. But I was also betting his faith-based spells wouldn't work against perennial magic. What had my mother said at the spring? That perennial magic was the magic of time and inanimate elements. That it was the oldest kind of magic there was.

Rafe and I stood back-to-back as the
mortem animae
amassed around us, silent as gagged Angels and deadly as demons. They weren't demons, but the thought made me think I might be able to offer them a bribe instead of a sacrifice.

Tartarus had been emptied of its underground riches long ago. Now it had infinitely more miners than metal. Did the
mortem animae
really want more of their own kind? Maybe they would accept iron in exchange for leaving us alone. I scrambled to remember what was in my pack that might be made of iron. There was the box of Bialas' letters from Joy. But that was made of tin. And there were the odd gardening tools from my mother. But they were made of steel.

“Rafe,” I shouted, “what do you have that's made of iron?”

“Nothing.”

One of them stepped forward, his arm extended, his hand reaching for me. I stiffened immediately, but instead of touching me, he merely pointed at my chest. My own hand raised up to touch the spot. And I felt it. What the
mortem animae
longed for almost as much as their prior lives. It was in their blood and their bodies. It ruled their minds and filled their hearts, yet they hadn't seen it in centuries.

Iron.

Resting against my chest was the hollow, smelted arrow tip that I'd tied around my neck.

I wondered what the lump looked like to them. Did it shine like a diamond? Was it brighter than the sun? Or did they feel it like I felt other waning magic users' signatures? With a yank, I pulled it free and dangled it in front of the one who'd stepped forward. He reached for it, but I snatched it back. Just so there was no misunderstanding, I said:

“A lump of iron in exchange for your oath to leave us alone.”

He nodded once and held his hand out, palm up. I dropped the iron lump into it. He held it up, examining it as one might examine raskovnik or a four-leaf clover. Once he was satisfied with it, he opened his mouth and swallowed it. The bulge moved slowly down his throat, making him look like a giant, gray snake swallowing a rat. I grimaced. Soon, however, the iron that had once resided in me resided in him.

The
mortem animae
left soon after, going as they had come. They simply disappeared into the ether. It was disconcerting because it was disturbingly demon-like and because it underscored the fact that they could return at any time. But I'd learned to take Luck's blessing when I could get it.

*   *   *

D
espite the late hour, we followed the Old Trail all the way down the southern slope of Septembhel. Our first view of Halja's southernmost dungeon came shortly after nightfall. It was every bit as dramatic as my imagination had led me to believe it would be. Even in the distance, across the Fiddleback, it looked like a bigger, more sinister bailey gaol. In the moonlight, Tartarus' spires rose up out of Mount Iron like pikes upon which drakons or giants could be impaled. There were no lights shining from it, not even the flickering light of fire. Which made me wonder what had happened to Peter and Brunus.
Were they inside? Or had they been touched by the
mortem animae
? Or killed by
rogares
hiding in the Fiddleback? Or had they simply slipped off the side of the mountain and broken their necks?

One could hope . . .

Rafe and I stood, side by side, bent over, panting from our exertions, hats in our hands, the wind in our hair. For once, the frigid air felt delightfully chilly against my sweat-soaked skin. I glanced over at Rafe. He looked dark and brooding.

“Too bad Fara's not here,” he said.

I nodded. She'd certainly proven her skills last semester, not to mention her bravery and loyalty. But Rafe was a more powerful spellcaster. I wondered what had brought her to mind.

“Too bad
Virtus
isn't here,” I quipped. “I'll bet even the
mortem animae
wouldn't scare him.”

“Cats can see in the dark, you know,” he said. But the reply was automatic and his gaze was locked on Tartarus.

“Come on, you don't know a spell called Night Vision or Cat's Eye?” I teased.

He shrugged, then shook his head. He was acting fatalistic again. I recognized the signs. He was trying to pull back emotionally. He was trying not to care. Last semester, I called this look his carefully carefree look. But there was an edge to it now. Ever since the train ride down from New Babylon to Maize when Rafe had held me to this world with only the barest thread of magic, he hadn't been able to pull off that look as effortlessly as before.

“If I knew a spell like that, I would have told you before now.”

This time, I shrugged. I put my hat back on. Rafe's sharp tone was uncharacteristic. But I knew why he had it.

He was anxious about the fact that we were about to break into Hell.

Chapter 22

I
realized a few minutes later, when Rafe cast a glamour over me, why he'd been thinking of Fara. Despite his fear of
becoming
one of the
mortem animae
, he had no fear of
pretending
to be one. The problem was, unlike Fara's glamours, Rafe's glamours were horrible. Instead of looking like victims of the
mortem animae
curse, we now looked like the victims of an exploding X-ray machine. The two of us crouched down, our booted feet crunching in the snow, our bodies glowing like two ape-shaped lightning bugs. I held my hand out, peering at its luminescent outline surrounded by darkness and then squeezed my eyes shut.
Terrific.
I now had zero magic, was temporarily blind, and I was shining brighter than the New Babylon port beacon.
Yep, right on schedule,
I thought.
Luck loved to test me, yes he did.

“Rafe, how about a simple cloaking spell, huh? For you, me, and my signature, just in case my magic decides to reassert itself just as we breach the gates?”

Rafe gave me a lopsided grin and then cast me up. Our glowing outlines faded until I could barely see us against the stygian sky and the flat plain of permafrost in front of Tartarus. We now looked like shadows, the only evidence of our existence a slight blur and a stir in the air. We crept silently down the mountain and started crossing the plain, maintaining a steady pace toward the cheerless castle rising up in the distance.

Crossing the Fiddleback was eerie, and not just because I could hear us but not see us. About halfway across, I heard what sounded like music. It was just a few strains at first, which I dismissed as the wind possibly moving through an oddly shaped bit of rock. But as we moved closer, the sounds grew louder.
Halja did
not
have ghosts,
I told myself.
I was imagining the long, slow, low note that sounded as if a demon were drawing his bow across a violin string.
But I wasn't imagining it. The sounds became more fervent the closer we got. Piercing whines, staccato bursts, women wailing, children crying . . .

I slowed down to a walk as we approached Mount Iron. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I felt suddenly nauseous. There, at the base of the palisade, was a mound of debris taller than any building at St. Luck's. Nothing about it was natural, not how it had been made, nor what it had been made of.

The top of the mound, as well as several acres of area surrounding it, was littered with the broken parts of men and their machines. There were coils of uncut cable and hundreds, if not thousands, of counterweights, cylinders, pistons, valves, spools, cranks, skulls, and other bones scattered across the area. I gazed up at Tartarus with renewed revulsion. It was like gazing up at a metal hydra's head. And slithering out of its mouth was a forked iron tongue—the old railway line. It was broken and bent now, but at one time—when Tartarus was a fully operational mine—the railcars had come out of its northern facade on an elevated track, which then branched right toward East Blast and left toward West Blast. Jutting out from the castle's curtain wall were various planks—the “teeth of the beast” that rebellious miners (or their family members) were probably made to jump off.

Studying something in class, abstractly learning about a place of torture and what happened there, wasn't at all the same as seeing it in person. My throat closed up and my stomach clenched. There was absolutely nothing that could be done to right the wrongs that had occurred here. Thousands of innocent people had been killed here and nothing would ever bring them back or undo the pain of their deaths. I'd thought I'd developed an immunity to the horror of seeing skulls last semester, but this was so much worse.

The skulls that had adorned the watery bowels of the giant's keep in the Shallows last semester had a vague, unremembered history. Those skulls may have belonged to the giants' family members as much as their enemies. Their inclusion in the architecture of the Stone Pointe keep could have been as much for veneration as for intimidation. Either way, torture and a complete and utter lack of respect for the dead hadn't been a part of
that
ghastly display.
This
, however,
this
 . . . mound or lump or tell wasn't created for any purpose. It was merely a method of discarding the unwanted. This site was simply Orcus' trash dump.

It was more than disgusting and awful.

It was evil.

I wanted to burn that pile more than I'd ever wanted to burn anything in my entire life. But I knew if I did it would not only possibly alert Brunus and Peter to our presence but also other
mortem animae
—and I had no iron left to bargain with. It was bad enough we were trying to sneak into Tartarus. I wasn't about to bang on the door and demand a fight too. So I turned my attention from the mound to the various entry points that were available to us. Unfortunately, blocking out the visual assault of the atrocious place proved easier than blocking out its unnerving audio assault. Up close, the grating musical notes sounded like someone pulling a metal bow across a violin strung with barbed wire. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the screeching, off-key melody.

As I saw it, we could enter Tartarus in one of two ways. We could hike up the mile-long, narrow, twisted, ill-maintained road that led to the castle's barbican, hope the portculis was either open or that we'd be able to raise it, and
then
hope we'd be able to successfully cross the ravine in between the barbican and the castle regardless of what perilous winged or tentacled creatures might still be lurking there. That option, obviously, held little appeal. Rafe and I dismissed it almost immediately. I'd jokingly told Joy I was going to storm the gates of Hell, but I hadn't meant it. Only a fool would say something like that and mean it.

Our second option was to climb up one of the elevated rail supports and make our way in through the rail line. Certainly that approach was the most direct. Whether it would be the easiest or not depended on how sturdy the old rail line was.

Needless to say, I asked Rafe if he knew a simple levitation spell. I tried not to be too disappointed when he said he didn't (Fara had, albeit it may have been capable of only raising us two feet off the ground). But then Rafe told me he knew something better.

“I know a trio of climbing spells called Vice Grip, Verticle Leap, and Dynamic.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, but of course my face was blurred and obscured by the cloaking spell. He could tell I was in front of him, but he couldn't see my expression.

“What are you waiting for then?” I asked. “Cast us up!”

When I first started working with Rafe, his spells were so unusual, I was always wary. But now, not only had he proven his spellcasting skills, he obviously cared for me (he claimed to be in love with me), and he'd taken an oath to protect me. The glowing glamour miscalculation aside (glamours simply weren't Rafe's spellcasting strong suit), I knew he wouldn't botch a spell or cast something that could harm me.

The new spells felt strong and sticky and I wasted no time in trying them out. Just to be on the safe side though, I pulled some rope out of my pack. I tied it around both my waist and the support column I'd decided to climb. My plan was to climb up the way a lumberjack would. I'd only seen it done once, years ago, when my father had some of the woods on our estate cleared. Once I got started, I was absolutely certain that I
never
would have made it to the top but for Rafe's spells. Strong and sticky they were, but snow boots weren't made for scaling slippery smooth vertical surfaces (and neither were Maegesters-in-Training). The rope saved me from falling more than a few times. By the time I got to the top and dragged myself up over the edge of the rails, I didn't think I'd have the energy to stand up, let alone walk.

I lay on the tracks regaining my breath, my strength, and, hopefully, my magic. The wind was more than relentless. It was nearly skin flaying. Up here, on the old elevated rail line, we were level with Tartarus and the top of Septembhel, but we were now hundreds of feet above the Fiddleback. The light of the moon gave us just enough light to see the faint fiddleback shape of the mountain cove we'd just hiked across.

All around us were mountains. Not just Septembhel and Mount Iron, but others as well. Behind us, the rail line snaked its way east and west, through two different mountain passes. I knew the Old Justice Circuit lay beneath and beside the rail line. Regardless of which version of Metatron's history was true (whether he'd loved Justica or not; whether he'd died of angina or a broken heart), one thing was certain: he'd once traveled here in an oxcart. He'd traveled up and down and all through these mountains. It was an astonishing feat, even if he'd done it during a time in Halja's history when the trail might have been slightly more manageable.

As Rafe and I made our way across the rickety tracks toward Tartarus, my musings about Metatron were derailed by the renewed metallic screeching sounds. To maintain sanity, I decided to name them (as one might name a classical musical piece): “Serrated Bow Being Drawn Across Rusty Violin Strings.” Maybe the jarring notes were part of the castle's defenses. There was no doubt the sounds set us on edge and made it even more difficult to think than it might have been otherwise. Although, admittedly, our entire situation was pretty unsettling. Here I was, hundreds of feet up in the air, suspended on tracks that were centuries old, navigating the broken portions amid gusts of wind that topped eighty miles an hour or more, wondering if my magic would return in time to fight (or preferably elude) anything that might be waiting for us inside.

As soon as we entered the mouth of Tartarus via the elevated railway, we lost the moonlight. Rafe cast Angel light and, after a moment's hesitation, I tried to light a fireball. My sigh of relief when it flared to life was audible. I'd have to think long and hard before I
ever
shaped my magic into such a large semi-sentient being like “Nova” again. Both our cloaking spells and the radioactive glamours had worn off so I could now see Rafe in his natural, adorably disheveled state.

The passage we were in wasn't built to be welcoming. It wasn't even supposed to be an entrance. It had been built to be an exit for the iron ore that had been mined here and then shipped east or west to one of the furnace towns to be smelted. So the whole passage was very utilitarian, which suited me just fine. Except for the warm, orange glow of my fire and the cool, soothing glow of Rafe's light, there was no color in the space. Everything was either charcoal, slate, stone, or smoke colored.

In addition to the rails we walked along, there were also broken iron pipes, dangling wires, twisted grates and fencing, piles of stone and debris, as well as several overturned railcars. A half-inch layer of grainy powder covered everything. We tried to keep our steps as light as possible, not just to avoid detection, but also to avoid breathing in centuries of dust and ash, but it was impossible. Soon, we were as covered in the nasty stuff as the place itself.

We emerged from the railcar loading docks into the castle's bailey. To our left was the keep, which was a high, square, stone tower. That's where the jarring, discordant violin music was coming from. To the right was the mining pit. It was a huge, deep, dark hole in the ground with a giant windlass over the top, which was now standing idle. Immediately in front of us was the courtyard, which made Septembhel's illegal sacrifice site seem like a charming roadside inn by comparison.

If the mound outside Tartarus held the consequences of evil, then Tartarus' bailey was the cause of it. It was full of the same sort of standard torture equipment that, while barbaric, had been widely used all over the Verge during medieval times. There were the requisite stocks, pillories, and pikes, but there were also machines. It was all too easy to imagine what they'd been used for
because they were still being used
. By
mortem animae
on other
mortem animae
. It was almost too horrible to process.

I knew the
mortem animae
had been cursed, but until now, I'd just assumed the curse was only related to mining. Endless, everlasting mining. But apparently Orcus hadn't just mined iron ore here; the berserker demon lord had also mined psychological terror. In their minds, these victims were
still
suffering terrible atrocities. And they'd
been
suffering them for centuries upon centuries. And they would
continue
suffering them for time immemorial. Because there was no way to lift the curse. Except by possibly using the White Heart, which both my mother and Joy Carmine had warned me not to do. Still, seeing . . .
this
 . . .

Well, I didn't know how I'd be able to walk away from this if a possible cure was in my hand.

The
mortem animae
noticed us then. They had enough sentience to stop their grisly work but they made no move to come toward us. I don't know if it was because we now had full use of our magic or if it was because the oath the Septembhel group had given me had broader application than I'd dare hope.