Third came a single ember, sitting at the bottom of its chest with no fuel and glowing steadily red regardless. As the chest lid opened, the ember flared, and sparks flew out to land and fizzle against whatever metal the boxes were made of. Sophia almost felt sorry for it.
She moved onward to a single white rose that looked as if it grew out of the chest bottom, with no bush or bramble in sight: pretty, but nearly sad in the same way that the ember had been, and she could spare no time for pity or curiosity. The feeling of awful anticipation was getting stronger. Had she been in the waking world, she might have heard footsteps approaching.
Before she could raise the lid of the next chest more than a hand’s width, the thing inside sprang at her, snarling: a twisted ape face with the slit pupils of a goat and razor teeth, and the impression of a body at once powerful and sinuous, all of it far too large for the chest. Sophia screamed and slammed the lid back down with both hands. The jolt as the thing hit the lid would haunt her, she knew, but not nearly as badly as the glimpse of that face—and the malign intelligence she’d seen there.
Another element of the stories verified. Wonderful.
After that, she approached the sixth chest with even more fear. Her hand trembled as she touched the lid, and she opened it only a bit at a time, ready to shove it back down in an instant—but nothing jumped out at her. The chest opened quietly, and inside was a rust-colored object about the size of her fist, not quite spherical but in its shape suggestive of both an apple and a heart.
This, she thought, and it wasn’t entirely her mind, nor true thought at all. Not entirely willing to trust such instinct, Sophia reached in and touched the sphere.
When her fingertips met its surface, Fergus’s face rose up before her eyes. She knew him in an instant, better than his own mother could have—and only avoided more because she cringed back from the contact, wanting none of such forced intimacy with another mind. She knew too that his strength was fading; even the potions couldn’t keep his body going forever.
“Cling just a little while longer, hmm?” she told him, slipping the soul-sphere into the bodice of her gown. The proximity was embarrassing, but the location more secure than anything else she could manage.
She turned, and the space in front of her parted with a shriek: not the sound of the passage, but of what charged through it.
The figure was a man—more or less. In the world of flesh and bone, he might have looked entirely like one, but this world didn’t only reflect the physical. Like Cathal and his family, Albert de Percy hadn’t been entirely human for longer than Sophia had been alive. Unlike them, he’d made the changes himself, not seamlessly, and now, whether because of the place where they stood or because of Sophia’s intrusions, he was falling apart.
One arm was too long, started too low, and ended in a withered hand whose yellow fingernails were claws. His body was otherwise that of a man in his prime, but his face was ancient, with skin like parchment and sunken cheeks. One eye was clouded and blue, the other huge and red, with the goat pupil of the thing in the box.
He came through screaming—no words, only shocked anger. Sophia might have sympathized—this place was the core of his power, her presence an outrage—had he been less vile, and if she’d had time. But he was grabbing for her at once. His normal hand fell far short of her, but the claw swiped through the air only a hairbreadth from her shoulder.
Sophia hurled the feather at him.
She’d had no thought save that there was little within her reach except that and the heart. If she’d hoped for anything, it was that the feather would cut his face as it had scratched hers. She certainly hadn’t expected it to blast them both away from it, but it did, the wind stronger than those that had pulled at her when she’d ridden Cathal through the storm. It flung her backward, onto the floor. The stone still hurt to land on, but as she scrambled to her feet, she saw that Albert was lying against the far wall.
Her path to the stairs was clear.
She ran, holding her skirts in both hands, heeding the stairs only that she might not trip. However Albert’s strength might be failing him, however breaching his defenses and freeing the elements might have hurt him, she feared to fight him at the center of his power.
In truth, she feared to fight him regardless, but she was no longer certain she’d be able to escape that.
On the first landing, hearing the footsteps running after her, she nonetheless took Fergus’s soul into one hand and tried to wake herself up as she’d done before.
The world wavered around her, shimmered—but stayed.
Sophia wished she could even feel surprised.
Thirty-eight
Waiting was far from new for Cathal, yet so much of it in quick succession scraped at even his patience.
As Sophia fell asleep, he switched to the vision of the otherworld. The room looked much the same as it had before, but the woman at his side lay in a nimbus of sunset pink, with shades of gold closer to her face. Unlike the time in Fergus’s room, a small ribbon of silver wound its way out of the space just above her head, only to vanish—not broken, he didn’t think, but stretching off beyond his sight.
Did that mean she’d reached her destination? Cathal wished his vision extended that far, or that he’d taken more of an interest in magic. Nothing to do about it now, though, but watch where he could and thank God no demons were coming out of the walls yet.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed. The wind and rain outside gradually quieted. He heard an owl once after that. Those were the only things that changed for what felt like hours. Cathal stood on occasion, paced the room to keep himself awake, then sat back down and watched Sophia.
The fourth time he did so, the aura around her looked different: not dramatically, but the furthest end he could see of the silver ribbon looked darker than the rest, more like lead. Unless he imagined it, the room was colder too.
Yet he hesitated. The fire had died down—he knew not what the change in shade meant—and Sophia might not have another such opportunity. She’d not thank him for pulling her away before she had a chance to accomplish her task. Cathal’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, but he waited and watched.
Darkness and dullness advanced. Sophia’s chest rose and fell as calmly as ever, and she showed no signs of distress. Even when shallow cuts drew themselves across her face and hands, she made no sound, moved not at all.
Cathal, on the other hand, swore in three languages and stopped himself at the last instant, his outstretched hand above her face, poised in a long moment of indecision.
A wind from nowhere blew through the room, and the smell of open graves filled his nose. He snarled.
