We Will All Go Down Together Read online

  As though I was there. As though, as though I—

  —am there.

  (Right now.)

  Unable to stop, or help. Unable to look away, to shut her eyes. To do anything but sit there rigid, lids screwed open and a whimper throat-stuck, as the past unspooled its filthy phantom message on the air.

  On the cold hill’s side we wake surrounded, Jonet bent over with pain, eye-socket dribbling. Alizoun jumps up into the air, dragging her along, as the witchfinders throw their nets. They tangle, hover and jerk sharply, caught—try to fight free, but fail. The finders haul harder, dragging them in.

  I am on my feet already, red down my side. My cut breast flaps. Some fool to my right in uniform draws a pistol from his belt, but I put my hand on him, grasp his parts. He gives a mighty cry as they wither in my hand. I laugh, spit in his face.

  Snarling, Alizoun lifts her skirts and pisses vitriol, drenching those below: they fall, roll, flee. More soldiers lift weapons, let fly with salt shot, banishing her spell’s might. She and Jonet fall together in a heap, Jonet below. I hear her scream as one leg folds underneath, breaking at the hip.

  I stand my ground, screeching. Cry out that my angel will come for me as I toss my head, hair catching flame and fire a-drip from my mouth like vomit, to make them turn and cringe—

  But then there is another one, slashing his blade behind my knee so I tumble. Putting his boot to my chest, wound flaring bright, as he reaches down to blood my forehead, carve this cross between my eyes. And I go out all at once, a water-plunged torch.

  :Not yet, my Euwphaim,: my Black Man tells me. :I am needed elsewhen, as other miseries call me—I am not like you, caught inside time’s folds, a straight line from birth to death. So put down your seed while you can, and I will use it to anchor us both. This will be the cord I draw us back together with.:

  The soldier grins down at me, hoping to see me weep. I laugh instead, and open myself to him—pull him down on top of me, biting at his tongue, letting him slap my face ’til my jaw turns blue, hard enough that at last his prick rises. And then

  —Dolores shook awake, pen skittering, fingers pain-cramped, every part of her aching. The box, jolted by her movement, tipped up and back, cracking along its spine; she lunged to catch it, exclaiming in horror. Saw a thin slot slide open in its base, some secret drawer sprung at long last, full of dust, and darkness.

  Something else as well, though. Smallish and black, dried hard, odd-smelling even at this distance, like spiced jerky . . .

  What is that? she thought. And put out one hand, all unthinking, to touch it.

  | six: the witch-house

  (iii)—as above

  Upstairs, in the room they shared as children, Ygerna Sidderstane sits waiting for her twin, dozing slightly—her eyes flicker back and forth under semi-transparent lids, skin tinted hazel by the cilia beneath. Though the lights are off and the curtains drawn, she can still be glimpsed distinctly, outlined by the glow of her own bones seeping up muffled through slimy meat, the low-grade, clustering light of her muscles and tendons.

  Malt-brown when she was born, the underwater tangles of her hair now drift weed-like, green as her gaze. She is a work in progress, or perhaps a study in decay: first nix bred in almost seventy years of Sidderstanes Druir-united, clockwise pride of her particular (de)generation.

  Though fraternal, she and Gaheris once looked almost identical, each other’s perfect, sexually apposite complement. But that, as both of them well know, has not been true for quite some time. Beneath her late mother’s morning robe, still satin-bright as the day it was bought and patterned in yellow chintz roses, Ygerna is slick and translucent all over though only slightly misshapen, a swampwater pearl formed ’round poisoned grit, her very blood turned stagnant. If she was to look in the heart-shaped mirror on her former dressing-table—mercifully shrouded, now—she could watch her organs pulse like fresh bruises, the semi-visible tracery of her skull pushing up through her face. In sleep, her legs and arms hang loose, cartilaginous-tentacled, while that shadow running the length of her throat down into her chest’s luminous cage is the only outward show of her long, barbed, narcotically poisonous tongue.

  She may be dreaming of her former fiancé, solid young Mortimer Gant, who disappeared at the cottage last summer. They went up to the Lake of the North to swim, he and she, crunching their way through the shadow of a hundred cross-grown pinetrees, the dim brown air heavy with stinging gnats. There was a picnic lunch, packed by Keck, in a wicker basket dating back to the 1920s—Mortimer carried it, no doubt swinging it jauntily back and forth with Ygerna’s arm grasped tight, their hands around each other’s waists. . . .

  But he never came back, and when Gaheris finally followed the setting sun down along the beach, he found Ygerna weeping over a pile of items that no longer seemed even vaguely human, her sweet mouth bile-stained and ripped at both corners.

  (That tongue of hers creeping down into Mortimer’s throat, coating it with some paralyzing agent, a swallow of liquor-sweet spit. Then nudging past his uvula to slither ever further, gag reflex neutered, ’til at last the lamprey-like barbs took hold, flexing and hooking, tearing, coring. ’Til the burden of her kiss turned him liquid from the inside, rendering him, and she began to drink.)

  This blithe college athlete, tan and straight and foolish, with all his insides suddenly out or gone. Sucked dry as any marrowbone, husked and still in his sister’s wet, too-flexible grip.

  I killed him, I, I must have—we were kissing, just kissing, and then—this. Explain it to me. Why would I do that when I loved him, so much? Can you tell me? Can you?

  No. Of course not. But those others, under the Hill . . . their great-grandmother, Torrance’s widow, and the rest . . . they could.

  Poor girl, Lady Glauce said when summoned, bent down to study Ygerna’s ruin with distant eyes, hair like a weeping willow; Gaheris’s “uncle” Ganconer stood at her one hand, Torrance’s ageless changeling by-blow, while Ganconer’s somewhat-stepmother Enzemblance grinned sly at the other, licking her own sharp teeth. So seldom do ye show my blood’s curse, you Sidderstanes, for which I reckon the most of ye well-thankful. Yet we shall prepare her a place at the table naetheless and open the low road tae her, that she may take it up whene’er pleases.

  No other option offered, of course; perish the bloody thought. And not one shred of doubt over whether Ygerna might—just possibly—find the chance to squat forever in the dark, eating raw fish by the light of glowworm-infested moss, not exactly attractive, given she’d previously held such high hopes for a non-Faerie hill-dwelling future.

  He’d caught Ganconer by the sleeve as they turned to go, only to have that same gentleman shake his grave head sadly, as if to say: Better not, Gaheris my lad. For they’re no’ to be questioned, these ones, especially wi’ their minds already made up. Then looked back to see Enzemblance Druir’s white hand emerging wrist-deep out of the cliff-wall the rest of her had already sunk inside, crooking itself for Ganconer to follow after—and hell if that wasn’t enough by itself to make Gaheris let go, dousing the hot rage he felt blister his lungs back down to a sullen smoulder.

  God forbid he ever wake to find her standing at his bed’s foot one of these nights, watching him sleep, with that same hungry smile . . . or Ygerna’s, either. Which would be far worse.

  How well he remembers those interminable Dourvale summers, wandering blind through the forest with invisible company or trapped for long hours inside protective rings, counting fungi on nearby trees while waiting for their parents to return from doing my Lady her due clan patron’s homage. That time Enzemblance eddied up through the forest floor without warning, biting a live toad in half as though it were some particularly warty potato, and crooned, still chewing: How I would love tae have one or t’other of ye visit me, pretty wee ones, and befriend my son awhile—for although he be the elder, poor Saracen is a lonely boy, I fear, wi’ so few meet playmates ’round
abouts tae choose from, and so few ways tae pass his time. . . .

  A year’s worth of nightmares, at least, wrapped in that icily sweet-voiced package; peacock-eyed Saracen was small threat by comparison, even when caught playing with toys made from human bones. Gaheris had sworn to himself then and there he would save his “little” sister—only a minute’s difference between them, true, yet one he’s been trained to respect since mutual babyhood—from ever having to grace the brugh with her presence for long, no matter how exigent the circumstances.

  We are not them, he has told himself, at least a thousand times, since that moonlit ill-meeting. Not now and not ever. Let them do as they please, out of sight and mind, so long as they leave us alone; any help they’d offer would always come at a price, one neither of us want to pay. Better by far to figure a way out of this for ourselves, and if it can bring hurt to them as a side effect, well—so much the better.

  Not that he’d actually thought it likely he’d ever achieve this goal. But then he turned the key in his father’s desk drawer to let loose a disgorgement of recent correspondence, amongst which lurked Dolores Trench’s fateful letter.

  Synchronicity, that’s what the books in Torrance’s library call it. But can there really be such a thing as coincidence in a world where magic works?

  A blind hope, stabbed straight to the heart; opportunity, knocking. Almost as though it was meant to be.

  In her chair, Ygerna groans, shifting so that one arm uncoils slightly, allowing Gaheris a glimpse of what she’s been clutching to her; he watches it spill forward into her lap, pause in mid-wobble, threatening to fall. All she has left of her lover, these days, concentrated to a dry, hard point: that dusty seed-pod which was once his heart, so jelly rich with congested blood, long since pried from between cracked ribs and sucked for its last, lingering shred of sweetness.

  Gently, unsqueamishly, Gaheris nudges it back into place, then taps her lightly on the shoulder. Murmuring in her ear as he does so: “Don’t fret, sis—it’s only me.”

  “Gaheris? Oh, I . . . must have been sleeping. Is she here yet?”

  “Miss Trench? Yes, just downstairs. I put her in Papa’s office with the box.”

  “Mmm.” Ygerna shrugs herself back up, Mortimer’s heart clutched tight to her ruffled breast, and Gaheris tries not to notice how her cuttlefish pupils slot against the too-bright light. “And—will she do, d’you think? The right choice?”

  “Oh yes, without a doubt. Quite perfect, for our purposes.”

  A sniff, wet and rattling. “That’s something, then.”

  Gaheris sighs. “You were scrying, when I left you; any reply? Do they know just how . . . difficult things have become for you, lately?”

  “Do they care, you mean?” Ygerna slides from the chair, oozes her slick way to the vanity, where she tucks the heart away again, after one last kiss. “Auntie E. looked in on me when I was halfway through the evocation; says she’s made up a bed for me, down in the cellar where the mushrooms grow. Oh, and my Lady says you’re always welcome to visit.”

  “As an appetizer, no doubt. Or a thrall.”

  “Auntie didn’t specify.”

  “Poisonous bloody bitch.”

  “Not as such that I’ve observed. That . . . would still be me.”

  He wants to hold her, fiercely. Yet he also fears to, cold clutch of it kept forever deep-swallowed down in his gut, though she can probably still see it, as a shadow clouding his eyes.

  “Since Miss Trench is busy with the dittay,” Gaheris reminds her, hastening to change the subject, “we should probably begin, while we still have time.”

  “You have what we need?”

  “’Course.”

  “Then let’s.”

  Setting up for the ritual is easier than he might have expected, considering. Once upon a time, magicians engaged in this sort of Summoning would have taken care to shield themselves from both Heaven and Hell by enticing a stranger who looked as much like them as possible to a remote place, somewhere so isolated that they could kill them, flay them, and wear the skin for nine days and nights without threat of interruption, letting it rot around them while continuously meditating on the Ouroboros’s (un)holy spiral shape . . . that “old serpent” all spellbooks warn of, immortality shed and renewed at will, the Snake Self-Eaten.

  Such a duly prepared sacrificial man- or woman-cloak, it’s thought, would act as an interdimensional imago, deflecting the attention of any monitoring angels who might notice mere humans dabbling in Chaos; a logical plan, for certain values of logic. Though one far less likely to warn other angels away, in fact, than to draw the attention of those you wish to summon.

  Shoulders squared against the blasphemy to come, Gaheris Sidderstane steps forward as his no-longer-identical twin steps back over the charred rim of a circle burnt into the floorboards, its circumference just large enough to include the both of them, along with that bag he dropped next to her chair last night. Inside, they find staples, familiar to the touch: a bronze bowl, salt boiled from seawater and fresh moly, a black-handled knife, a box of matches. Reaching into his pants pocket, he unfolds the scrap of manuscript their father kept in his office safe and reads:

  Two angels, foot and head,

  Stand watch o’er my narrow bed.

  Two angels, right and left,

  All we know from void once reft.

  Two angels in my mind,

  One before and one behind,

  One more angel, making seven—

  None that dare return to Heaven.

  Terrible as corpse’s eyes

  Bright and dark, arise, arise!

  Seven angels, less no more,

  Knocking now on every door.

  Ygerna shakes out the salt, seasoning the circle’s inner ring, then crushes some moly in the bowl and lights it. Throws another handful of salt in on top, making the flames turn blue while releasing a wild slaughterhouse reek, perfumed face-cough, drugged puff of spice—all three distinct smells of magic: before, during, after. None of them anything you’d want to bottle and sell, since before’s tang is most reminiscent of stomach-acids, all salt and meat and sweet-stink reek, every body’s home-made vitriol; during sends vomitus-chaser skittering up the nose-scale towards something almost like perfume, old cologne boiled away to its dregs. And after, oh . . . that burning marigold haze, acrid and numbing. Torched opium-field bouquet, with a brisk novocaine chaser.

  All of which makes it hard to think, let alone breathe, or chant, or—concentrate, even. Yet Gaheris manages, somehow, failure being so very much not an option.

  “Ye who are neither male nor female,” he begins, gazing deep into the bowl, as Ygerna takes his hand in hers. “Ye who stretch yourselves out like chains. Ye who first laid the foundations of the Earth—the Seven who are one, the one who is Seven. Hear now; come quickly, faithfully, in a form unfearsome, and without delay. Come to the call of any who make of your names a prayer: Maskim, Maskim, Maskim.

  “The powerful Zemyel, who destroys all hope of salvation.

  “The powerful Eshphoriel, who deceives in many voices.

  “The powerful Coiab, who impregnates without regard to safety.

  “The powerful Immoel, who cuts away from everything.

  “The powerful Ushephekad, who devours love and does not replace it.

  “The powerful Yphemaal, who judges without mercy.

  “The powerful Ashreel, who delights in chaos.”

  He looks over at Ygerna, who nods again. From his other pocket, he withdraws a sketch of the “mark” copied off Euwphaim Glouwer’s well-punished body by her examiners: a sigil, obviously, evoking one of the Terrible Seven. But which?

  If this is you, come. If not, stay away. Do not bring friends.

  Shivering, he casts the paper into the fire, watches it burn. On the other side, Ygerna passes her knife’s blade through the flames, cleansing it, then offers i
t to him. He closes his hand on it, grunting, and lets the result drip into the fire, before passing it back.

  (And God, even her blood is different, now. Smells like sap and seafood, runs blue as under-Hill royalty. . . .)

  “We stand waiting,” he tells the air, uncertain just how long they will have to. And flinches when the answer comes back only a second later, the bowl—balanced right where Ygerna sat, that sad little wet patch left behind when she rose still damp—almost seeming to blink as another, infinitely more immense eye looks back in at them from outside time and space. That circuit of loss and hunger where the Seven permanently orbit, from which they occasionally allow the barest fingertip of themselves to intrude.

  :You do,: a voice agrees, mainly from inside his skull, though the echo of it vibrates through every cell of his body, making what Gaheris can only assume might be his immortal soul ring fearfully. While Ygerna cringes from the words, covering her face with one wounded palm, unable to stop her nostrils from flaring at the scent.

  Gaheris gulps. “I see, and I thank you, truly. But—who are you, exactly?”

  :Can you not guess, little sorcerer? You have seven choices. One or another is sure to be right, eventually, if only by accident.:

  “You are bound to tell me, by rite of invocation—”

  :Am I?: The flaming bowl stirs itself again, strains a bit at its edges. :You did not even offer me a body on this plane,: the voice tells him, sadly. :So how do you propose to keep me here, let alone to bind me to your will? For I stand everywhere at once, the same as every other angel.:

  Under the brutal force of its words, Ygerna crouches even lower, almost on her knees and weeping openly, yet maintaining enough presence of mind to stay safely inside the circle, for now. And though he feels a vomit-inducingly strong urge to join her, Gaheris realizes all at once that this supercilious creature has finally made a variety of mistake: only one of the Seven would ever demand flesh to be used as a vehicle, rather than as currency.