‘Isaiah’s research with the Society pointed to more,’ Ethlet says quietly, walking in to flop on the sofa beside her. ‘He was seeking other forms, other strands, that might bring a new kind of balance to help banish the fog. And so that he could form a portal and return to Eli. His mother, your aunt, did she ever speak of Isaiah?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Lowri says. ‘I never met her. She died in childbirth, before Eli could even form a memory of her.’
Ethlet’s hand flies to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. So he truly knows nothing of his father. Not even her memories of him.’
‘It’s why he’s so cut up. He’s forever chasing past ghosts.’
Ethlet nods, her features troubled as Gracious watches them quietly. ‘We have to go back to the Society. Isaiah’s research and notes might be here in his office, but they’re uncatalogued, scattered. He had his own way of organising things, and now I need to bring some order to his work. But at the Society someone might have answers. They might even be able to help.’
A message is sent to the Society, and Lowri waits anxiously as they assemble their members. Ethlet tempts Eli out with the invitation to speak to the members and he leaves his father’s study seeming haunted. This time, in that great round hall, Eli addresses the gathering and the tinkle of those bells falls eerily silent. He speaks of the portal between worlds that his father had taken half a lifetime to try recreating. And he talks of how he is now having the same troubles, and that he and Lowri cannot return home. Lowri’s heart cracks as he tells the Society what he saw through the portal, of Mira, his love, in danger. His anchor to our world. The person to whom he could not cross over and reach.
‘She was being held by the ruling council’s guards. The Rexilium brothers have her. I implore all of you to dig into your memories, your knowledge, and perhaps I can piece together a solution. Anything you can tell me might help us. Please …’ Eli says, swallowing. ‘She’s in danger and this is only the beginning for us.’
After some conferring, a woman with a lined face and grey eyes stands, silence falling once more like a spell. ‘Your light magic is being sucked into the fog, as you are aware. It’s like a sponge, wringing our world dry. Isaiah found this too. The longer he stayed, divided from your world, the more difficult it was for him to be able to return.’
‘But you must have a solution,’ Eli says desperately. ‘Some way to restore the light magic.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Eli grips the chair back, schooling his features as he speaks smoothly, carefully. ‘Isaiah was working on another theory, though. Of light and shadow not being the only strands of magic, that there could be more. Other ways to bring balance to Fallow and the rest of this world. Did he share this research with anyone? Anyone here today?’
Many pairs of eyes blink in puzzlement, whispered conversations breaking out over the room.
‘Anyone?’ Eli asks a second time. But he’s once again met with silence. Not a single handheld bell rings out.
‘The Society cannot help you,’ the woman eventually says pityingly. ‘This shadow, this curse of fog, is beyond all of us.’
‘A complete waste of time,’ Eli mutters darkly as they descend the wide staircase, back into the entrance hall. ‘All we’ve done here is wasted time.’
Lowri hesitates, catching something in the corner of her eye. A message sparrow, swooping into the entrance hall below. It pecks at something on the ground then flies up, landing on the banister beside Eli. Lowri extends a finger, murmuring a witch word to call it to her. It looks up, beady eye regarding her, before it flutters over, landing on her finger.
‘What have you got there, Lor?’ Eli asks softly, meeting her eyes with a smile.
Lowri whispers another word, the message turning to ash in her fingers. The message sparrow squawksand leaves her finger, flapping for the open door and narrowly missing Ethlet’s left ear. ‘An appointment we cannot miss.’
It takes Ethlet half an hour to lead them across Fallow, all of them clutching umbrellas. ‘You’re still too conspicuous,’ Ethlet hisses at Eli. ‘If you’d only worn those yellow shoes …’
‘Nothing says “I’m not up to anything; don’t bother following me” than a pair of bright yellow shoes – you’re right,’ Eli says as they step round a gaggle of schoolchildren wearing red shoes. ‘Which street did it say again, Lowri?’
‘Gallow’s End.’
‘Cheery,’ Eli remarks.
Ethlet sighs. ‘I liked you both more when you were despairing.’
Lowri snorts, covering it with a cough as they turn on to the street. Aptly named, it seems even more gloomy than the rest of Fallow, as though the shadows are deeper here, darker. They reach a door and Lowri raises her knuckles to knock, but it opens before she can. And framed in the doorway is the historian they met at the Society – Hellius.
‘We need to talk,’ he says. ‘Come in.’
huge and fanged, the witherbeast locks on to me immediately and growls. The sound reverberates through every inch of me, a cold sweat breaking out on my skin. It’s twice my height, taking up every inch of space, eyes narrowed and vicious. Without a weapon, with only the clothes on my back, I have nothing with which to defend myself. I don’t wait for it to come at me. As a door opens in the wall on my left, I run.
Skidding round corners, heart slamming into my ribs, I race in total panic, calling for Kell or anyone who might hear me. Distantly, I’m aware of the crowd, but my terror overtakes everything, to the point where all I am is a fast-moving feast. A door begins to close before me and I push back and slip through, my skin scraping against the narrow opening, and force it closed behind me. But the wither beast thumps into it on the other side, cracking it open. I cry out, bones barking as I push against it, digging my feet into the ground and shoving with everything I have.
‘Kell!’ I cry on a desperate exhale. ‘Anyone!’
I can’t die like this. Not before a baying crowd, a wither beast mauling me, the glimmer of freedom a distant dream.
I gasp as another body shoves all their weight against the door as well, and the door closes, leaving the wither beast shut away on the other side. I double over, bracing my hands on my thighs and look up to find Soturi, one of the contenders from the Spines. He’s got a bow and arrow slung across his back, steel in his eyes, and when he looks at me, a small smile lifts his lips.
