The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Read online

  Again Timothy watched for her reaction, but this time she gave none at all. She only stared down at Jonathan, unmoving, her face so wooden it could have been carved from a plank. Her hands, however, gave her away. They were clenched into fists at her sides, fingers tucked in so tightly her knuckles were white.

  “She has some sense left, then, if she still knows fear,” the ghost said, reappearing beside Timothy. “Perhaps there is hope after all.”

  “Can you help him?” Timothy asked the witch, ignoring the ghost. “Can you cure him? Can you save him?”

  Madeline Elliott nodded, but slowly. When she spoke, her voice was thin. “There will be a cost.”

  “I will do anything,” Timothy said with no hesitation. “I will give my life, witch, if this is necessary.”

  But she only shook her head. “There is nothing you can do. There—” She swayed on her feet, then reached out to steady herself on the bedpost. The veneer of her expression cracked, and Timothy could see she was terrified. Though she gathered herself again, she could no longer fully recover. “I must pay the cost.”

  “Noble fool.” The ghost began to pace back and forth beside the bed. “She will only feed it! She is of a House! She will only set it free!”

  Timothy frowned at the ghost. “House? She is noble like Lord Whitby? She is a lady?”

  He realized too late he had spoken aloud; Madeline Elliott tore herself from her trance of terror and looked at him through a sort of fog.

  “Not political houses. Magical Houses,” Madeline said. “Whitby is one of the political houses too, but the magical Houses are older. Caryltin, pari, ellyuit, and whitbi are the names of the four elements in the Old Tongue. Lord Carlton, Lord Perry, Lord Elliott, and Lord Whitby ruled them in the world. But the lords are dead, all but one, and he is two in one: the Houses of Perry and Whitby merged long ago. The rest are spent, with only traces of the House blood remaining. Once we were the guardians of the elements. Now—” She looked down at her hands, flipping them over and back again as she watched. “Now we are little more than the ghosts we serve.”

  Timothy cast a glance at the woman of blue mist and light beside him. “What does it matter that you are of a House? An Elliott, you said. The House of Water.” He paused, wondering how he had known that. Then he shook his head, swearing in Catalian under his breath. “This is madness. This is not happening. I am still enchanted or drugged by that mathdu ghora at the inn. Houses! Ghosts! Madness!”

  “Jonathan is under a curse,” Madeline said. “He spilled the blood of his own House, which means his family’s daemon has changed from pure spirit of the Element and has come as a demon to claim him. It will eventually consume him or be passed on to another of his House. And if it consumes him, it will use him like a puppet to destroy the remaining members of the other Houses.” She pursed her lips. “And that is me. I am of the House of Elliott, the only one left. Carlton is dead, and Whitby has been claimed long ago. I am all that remains. But I am a witch. I am my own power. I am more than my blood.”

  “She is vain! She is a fool! She will kill the beloved!” The ghost was wailing now.

  “Can you save him?” Timothy leaned forward over the bed toward Madeline, bracing his palms against the rotting mattress. “Can you make him whole again? Will you save him?”

  “I—” Madeline Elliott pressed her hands to her abdomen and stared at Jonathan’s face. Her own was full of agony and fear. “I would, and I will, but…” She raised a hand to her mouth and covered it, shaking her head. “If I still had guides…but without them? How?”

  “Guides?” Timothy asked.

  “Magical aids,” the ghost said. “Anchors for a witch. Hers have abandoned her because she dared to disobey them and come to this man’s side.”

  “Let me be your anchor, then,” Timothy said before Madeline could form an answer.

  The ghost shook her head. So did Madeline. “If you were an alchemist—” She cut herself off and shook her head. Then she covered her face. “I cannot see the way! I am not afraid to die, but I cannot see how to do this! He said only I had the power to save Jonathan, but I cannot see!”

  Timothy turned to the ghost and glared. “Help her!” Madeline Elliott looked up at this, but he ignored her and addressed the ghost again. “If this is so vital, help her!”

  “Who are you talking to?” the witch asked.

  “We cannot help those of the House.” The ghost crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head at Madeline. “This one in particular. She does not believe.”

  “I don’t believe,” Timothy shot back. He waved a hand at Madeline, then at the anachi. “She believes! Help her!”

  “You see the ghosts,” Madeline whispered. She was looking at Timothy with shocked awe. “You—you see the ghosts?”

  “Just one,” Timothy snapped. “And it’s one too many. Do you know who she is?”

  But Madeline Elliott was backing away. “Androghenie,” she whispered. “You see the androghenie.”

  “No,” the ghost said, calmer now. “I am not androghenie. But I have an aspect among them.”

  “What are androghenie?” Timothy’s head was spinning, the strange word rolling around inside the storm. Images collided with it, images of beautiful children, tall and slight and soft, their skin a strange mixture of dark and light, their eyes wide, their mouths upturned in laughter.

  They are mine. He didn’t know if it was his voice or the ghost’s. The androghenie are mine.

  “Who are you?” Madeline Elliott was backing away slowly, staring now at Timothy. “Who are you to stop my spells? Who are you to speak to the Old Ones? Who are you who speaks their tongue, who knows their words?”

  Timothy shook the images out of his head and faced her. “I’m no one! No one!”

  On the bed, Jonathan began to moan. His body started to twitch, and Timothy’s heart sank as he recognized the sign of a convulsion coming on. It would be a bad one, and the wound would open. How much blood could one man lose in a day?

  Timothy cried out and buried his hands in his hair. “Mathdu, you stupid people, you stupid country! What do you do to him? What is this hell you put into him? Why will you not take it out?” He turned back and forth between the two women. “Witch! Ghost! Demon! Houses of Elements! Where is your worthless Goddess in this cast of idiots? Where is your great whore, your ice queen, your High Hypocrite—”

  He stopped. Madeline Elliott looked frozen—she was frozen, he realized with a sick comprehension. So was Jonathan. He and the ghost alone were still animate.

  “I am no whore, court concubine.”

  Her words did not echo as they had before. Timothy looked down at his hands. He was made of light, as she was. He laughed, feeling more than a little mad.

  The ghost reached out and touched his hand. She was gold again but blue as well, the two colors swirling together within her. She squeezed his palm. “Call the beloved,” she whispered. “Call him, please.”

  “You are the Goddess,” he said, not believing the words even as they passed his lips. “You, a ghost only I—a gutter boy of Catal—can see, are the Goddess of Etsey. And you want me to call Jonathan’s bastard half brother because he is your beloved.”

  She shook her head. “I am only a shade, and I can do nothing. I cannot speak. I am nothing but a memory. I have waited so long, so cold in the darkness—and you, you claim your will, but you will not listen, and you will not see!”

  Timothy opened his mouth to argue with her, then stopped, arrested. He turned back to Madeline, still frozen in a way that made his insides squirm, but he stayed there, letting the ghost’s words echo in his head.

  “I cannot see.”

  “He told me I had the power to save Jonathan.”

  “He told me…”

  “He…”

  “I cannot see, I cannot see…”

  Timothy stepped forward, ignoring the fact that he stepped through the bed, through Jonathan’s legs. He shivered when he bumped against Jonath
an’s wounded thigh—he could pass through flesh and bone and wood and cloth, but he could not pass through that. He reached out to take Madeline’s hand.

  “Who told you?” Timothy felt as if he were in a dream, and his mind assured him this was one because nothing else was logical. “Who told you that you had the power to save Jonathan?” But she did not speak, did not move, did not even breathe.

  Timothy let go of her hand and turned to the anachi at the foot of the bed. He stared at it for several seconds, focusing on the eerie blackness of the skull’s empty sockets.

  “I cannot see.”

  He walked back through the bed again, across the room to his satchel. He dug through it until he found a small linen bag with glass beads sewn in intricate patterns across it a pattern that matched his first tattoo. He withdrew a knife from his pocket, ignored the way both it and his hand were not flesh and metal but clustered points of light, and he pried two blue stones the size of flat acorns from the center. Clutching them tightly in his hand, he crossed back to the bed.

  “Who are you? What is this you do? Who are you?” The witch’s questions echoed in his ears, but though they troubled him, he did not let them slow him down. The ghost did not speak, only watched as Timothy went back to the bed, crouched down to the skull, and placed the stones carefully into the two sockets.

  “See,” he said to the skull. “Show her the way to save him. Show me the way to understand.” He shut his eyes as the images returned to him again, the children running and laughing, dancing. But this time a tall white figure came along behind them, and Timothy felt his heart catch, tightening as he added, “Show me the beloved.”

  A wind blew through the room; it put out the candle on the bedside and the witch’s hearth fire. It brought back time: on the bed, Jonathan was convulsing and gasping, and beside it, the witch was bending toward him, looking lost and afraid. Timothy barely saw them; he saw only the ghost, soft and quiet as she stared with him at the skull at the foot of the bed as it gathered the twigs and garlands and buttons and jars of earth, and the sole burning candle, collecting the elements into a body as it began to rise.

  In Timothy’s mind, he heard the children laugh and saw them part before the man as he came forward, his face now only a breath away from the light. Timothy reached for him, his heart so full it pounded against the back of his throat.

  “Come to me,” Timothy said.

  The anachi stood. The ghost cried out and ran to it, disappearing in a burst of candle flame. In the distance he heard the witch cry, heard Jonathan shout, but not even his friend could move him now. Timothy climbed onto the bed, taking the witch’s dummy in his arms, no longer twigs and flowers but flesh, white flesh, white hands that glowed with light as they closed around him, drawing him against white clothes that smelled of the sun, pulling him toward a mouth—

  He saw the beloved’s face—

  The beloved smiled at him—

  Timothy cried out and reached up, trying to pull him down, trying to take him in a kiss. “Quiera,” he whispered, his heart breaking, the flood rushing down his body. The beloved embraced him back, pulled him close against the fire.

  But it was not a mouth he kissed. It was the gritty grind of bone that touched his lips, and when Timothy opened his eyes, he did not see the beloved of the Goddess but a skeleton with empty eyes grinning back at him. He cried and fell forward, the fire from the candle burning his skin. He fell from the bed with the anachi still in his arms, and he hit the floor, cracking his head on the stone.

  Bleary with pain, he lifted his head and looked back at the bed. He saw him again, the man in white, Charles Perry but not Charles Perry. More. He was more. The man smiled, his blue eyes brighter than eyes should be, his body stronger than Timothy remembered, his clothes bright and shining. He waved, his face turning sad as he lifted his hand and blew Timothy a kiss. His eyes were wet with tears, though he did not stop smiling.

  Timothy tried to speak, but his mouth was full of earth. He tried to reach for him, but his hand would not move, and he felt himself slip away into the cold, silent dark.

  Chapter Five

  shi

  female

  The female is the first gender created by the Goddess.

  The female is the cradle of the earth. She is the living womb, the carrier of all life.

  The female is the sign of strength and of the fortress.

  It had happened like this.

  Charles had been unconscious on the pallet bed before the hearth at Madeline’s cottage, and he had been dreaming. For the first time in a long time, however, he wasn’t dreaming of blood and gore and death. He dreamed he sat on the mantel above the hearth in Madeline’s cottage, his feet dangling over the edge as he watched himself lying there, sleeping. That was all. He was just watching himself sleep, and it was actually quite restful and soothing. But then as usual someone showed up and wrecked everything. It was just that Charles hadn’t expected that someone to be himself.

  Another one of himself.

  He frowned at the Charles sitting beside him, disconcerted but not much. There were already two of him. Why should a third matter? Except this new Charles was…odd. He looked good, for one. He looked healthy. He had no fashion sense at all, though. He wore nothing but white.

  The White Charles leaned forward on his elbows and studied the sleeping Charles below.

  “I didn’t realize I’d let myself go so far,” he said a little sadly. “I’ve forgotten what that felt like already.” He sighed and turned to Charles, smiling. “I’ve been looking forward to this one. If I recall, it had a lot of whoosh to it.”

  Charles scooted closer to the edge of his perch. “Who are you?”

  The White Charles looked offended. “I’m you, of course. Us, rather.” He climbed to his feet and stood on the mantel, extending a hand to Charles. His head started to go through the ceiling, and then the ceiling simply rose to accommodate him. “Up you go. We have an appointment to keep.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Charles turned back to the scene below. “I like this dream.”

  The White Charles ignored him, fixing his attention on Emily Elliott as she busied herself about the room. “Probably best to wait until she’s gone.”

  “Who are you?” Charles demanded again.

  “Told you already,” the White Charles said. “Ah—there, she’s gone. Ready?”

  “No,” Charles said. But the White Charles only raised his hands, murmured something under his breath, and just like that, they were gone.

  Charles tried to grab the mantel, but he only screamed, a muffled, garbled sound as the magic pulled him away. He gasped as he felt his sleeping body merge with whatever one he was in now. Charles looked around, saw that he was soaring through vast, empty space, and he yelped.

  “It’s all right,” the White Charles said gently. “This is the Void. You’ll come here again. Don’t be afraid of it. It will be all right.” But he looked haggard as he said this, and sorrow filled his countenance. “Come,” he said, much of his joy gone. “He is waiting. He is calling.”

  “Who is calling?” Charles demanded, but the scene was already shifting again.

  They were in the tower room at the abbey. He stood in the middle of the air, and Jonathan was in the bed, convulsing and groaning. Charles saw the demon slithering like a snake inside his brother, and Charles cried out as it reached for Madeline.

  He fell, and for a minute everything was jumbled and odd. When the world righted again, he looked down, and his breath caught in his throat. Him. The Catalian, Jonathan’s equerry—him! He was in Charles’s arms. Charles’s heart swelled for a moment—and then Timothy was falling out of his arms again, landing face-first on the floor. Charles cried out and leaped after him.

  There was a whoosh, like a spark igniting on oil. Charles turned back toward the noise, covering his eyes at the burst of light that rose up in a circle around the bed, rising like a curtain from the ceiling to the floor. He tried to sit up
and reach for it, but his head felt strange. Something smelled awful, and it was making him dizzy. He saw himself again, the white him, peering out through the shimmering curtain of magic. The White Charles winked and waved at Charles on the floor, but his expression softened as he looked at the unconscious Catalian beside him. He blew a kiss, whether to Charles or the Catalian, Charles couldn’t tell. Then the White Charles disappeared.

  Charles stared at the place where the other version of him had vanished. Then the dizziness overtook him, and he fell back in a heap, using Jonathan’s handsome equerry’s chest as a pillow as he slipped, once more, into the dream.

  The wraiths circled him, but this time they did not reach for him. They blinked at one another, and they whispered.

  After a while, Charles sat up inside the dream, looking past them into the heart of the forest. Something had changed. He couldn’t tell what it was, but something had changed. He rose and weaved through the wraiths, who made no move to stop him. She is here. The thought made him ache, and he moved faster. He saw a shadow moving in the trees, and he began to run, his heart pounding, his breath catching as he saw the hem of her skirt, the curl of her hair against her shoulder—

  He reached for her—

  Something slammed against the back of his head, and he stumbled. The dream shook, then started to shatter, but he fought for it, using the tricks Smith had forced him to learn to keep it in place. He would not lose her, not now, not when she was so close! He reached again.

  His head slammed harder, and the dream broke into shards, too many for him to catch. Charles cried out at the loss, but the shout turned quickly to a gurgle as something sharp and insistent pressed against his throat.

  “What have you done?”

  Charles blinked, watching the last of the forest die away. For a moment, he thought he saw her face looking longingly at him through the veil. Then the knife pressed tighter, cutting Charles as he gasped, and a very different face filled his vision. This one was not part of the dream.

  It was the Catalian. He was furious.