by ‘I think that means we won,’ I said into the silence.
The silence stretched, and nobody answered me.
I raised my voice. ‘If anyone would like to dispute that, feel free.’
Nothing.
I felt more uneasy than triumphant. This wasn’t quite the glorious victory I’d been hoping for, and without an explanation as to where or why they had gone, we were left guessing.
Well. They’d already demonstrated a flair for creative torment. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I shrugged, and took a decisive breath. ‘Votes? What do we do?’
‘Proceed,’ Zareen said immediately. ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’
‘Wasted? Zar, come on. We had a great time.’
She gave me a speaking look. Since she retained most of her death’s head characteristics, the effect was sufficiently appalling.
‘Moving on,’ I said hastily. ‘Anybody else?’
‘I agree,’ said Emellana. ‘The terms of our agreement were clear, and we have fulfilled them.’
‘Also, I’m hungry,’ Zareen added.
‘Now that you mention it, me too,’ I agreed.
It came down to Jay’s opinion. While he often questioned my peculiar decisions, he rarely mounted any serious objection. If he did so today, I’d listen. In fact, as a general rule, I’d do pretty much anything that registered as important with him.
I’m not sure he knows he has that power.
‘I’d be happier to know for certain that they’re in agreement with our proceeding with the project,’ Jay said.
‘Agreed,’ I nodded.
‘But if neither you nor Zareen can track them down, then we’re out of options. They have been given more than fair opportunity to object, if they want to.’
Indira nodded along with Jay’s words and seemed disinclined to venture an alternative perspective, so that was us in agreement. ‘In that case, go time.’ I retrieved my coat and buttoned myself back into it.
Our door still opened onto the barren fields, and we trooped out.
I left the craggy old house with a little reluctance, and not only because of the uncertainty surrounding the glaistigs’ disappearance. They’d lingered there down the centuries, alone except for each other, and in a state of misery and torment. I’d wanted to offer them a way out. Zareen couldn’t exorcise all four of them if they were fighting her every step of the way, but what if they agreed to it? What if they wanted to go?
Too bad. I should have mentioned it sooner; now it was too late.
The mood was subdued as we trailed back to the village of Silvessen. We were tired, we were confused, we were uneasy. But we were also victorious, and within an hour or two of completing our test and getting out of there.
We stopped in a huddle in the middle of the main street, and Indira found herself the centre of everyone’s attention.
This pleased her as much as ever, for she flushed darker, and fidgeted with the buttons of her coat. ‘Um, this is probably as good a place as any,’ she agreed, glancing up and down the street.
‘Do you need help with setting up the regulator?’ I asked.
She shook her head. I watched in fascination as she tapped two fingers against the palm of her hand and produced — apparently from thin air — a tiny, shimmering device shaped like a spinning top. Argent. It glimmered with mesmerising radiance as she turned it in her fingers.
‘Neat trick,’ I murmured. ‘Teach me some time.’
‘It’s just a pocket,’ Indira answered.
‘A pocket of… air. Apparently.’
‘Something like that.’
‘That’s the regulator?’ asked Emellana. ‘All of it?’
I saw her point. The thing was tiny, even smaller than the child’s toy I’d mentally compared it with. I don’t know what I had expected; something bigger, certainly. More complex. Something with knobs and dials and whirling things; something impressive, at any rate.
‘This is it,’ Indira confirmed. ‘Argent’s really a useful substance. You don’t need much of it to produce a significant effect. Orlando spent weeks condensing the size; it’s more portable this way, and you don’t need very much argent, which is important when you consider how little argent there is and how many Dells and Enclaves are going to need help…’ She trailed off, as if realising how many words she’d strung together all in one go.
‘I meant no criticism,’ said Emellana in her mild way. ‘I spoke out of surprise, not disapproval. It’s a very clever design.’
Indira nodded. ‘The rotation’s useful. It creates a kind of centrifugal force which was found to have an amplifying effect. And it’s quite simple to deploy.’ So saying, she knelt down in the street and gently set the regulator, point first, against the mud of the long-decayed road.
After that, I felt a whisper, barely discernible, of stirring magick. The regulator began, slowly at first, to turn, silvery and rippling like water. With every rotation, the stirring of magick built and built, until it became a near palpable force.
A faint tremor ran through the earth.
Indira stood up, and took a few steps back, motioning for us to follow suit.
I scrambled backwards, needing little encouragement to clear the area. The tremors were gaining in intensity, and I began to wonder if we’d started an earthquake. These ramshackle houses wouldn’t bear the force. We’d knock the whole village down.
‘Indira?’ That was Jay, disquieted, casting uneasy glances at the half-ruined cottages. He’d positioned himself between his sister and me, his pose wary but prepared, as if he proposed to deflect any dislodged bricks or beams from both of us at once.
‘Give it a moment.’ Indira, in contrast, displayed no tension at all. She stood composed, watching the regulator with a deep focus that told me she was monitoring it with far more than just her eyes.
I followed her gaze, and refocused my own attention on the regulator. I could feel it, a central force sending waves of magick surging farther and farther, like a burgeoning tide. As I watched, it began to descend into the earth, sending up a spray of mud as it disappeared from view.
Zareen stood watching with her arms folded, hunched in on upon herself. It occurred to me that she was shivering, which wasn’t a good sign. Zar isn’t usually sensitive to the cold. ‘Is that supposed to happen?’ she was asking.
‘No,’ said Indira. She didn’t seem perturbed.
‘This is a test, after all,’ I observed. ‘It’s bound to do some unexpected things.’
The unexpected effects continued, and by that I mean they continued to get worse. The rumbling intensified, the earth shaking underfoot. Zareen fell, with an exclamation of surprise and disgust, and I toppled into Jay.
‘Sorry,’ I gasped.
He merely shook his head, steadying me with outstretched hands. ‘Indira, maybe we should stop this,’ he shouted over the noise of the tremors.
‘I… can’t,’ she replied. ‘We’re committed.’
My stomach dropped. This was bad news. The cottages were mostly tumbled down already, they wouldn’t bear much more of this; if we succeeded in creating a magickal resurgence at Silvessen only to reduce its structures to a pile of rubble in the process… hard to call that a success.
‘Give it another minute,’ shouted Indira, rather pointlessly, for we didn’t seem to have any other choice.
It was possibly the longest minute of my life. I hung onto Jay while the ground heaved under our feet; Emellana abandoned her attempts to remain upright, and opted to sit down; Zareen hauled herself up, only to sink back down in disgust. Clouds of dust and ancient straw flew from the tortured roofs of Silvessen’s houses, those that weren’t already a collection of bare eaves and beams.
The house nearest to us creaked alarmingly, its timbers emitting a deep, tormented groan.
‘We might need to run,’ Jay said, and I couldn’t disagree.
And then, suddenly, it was over. The ground steadied, the profound tremors fading into stillness. The ominous rumbling of brittle timbers stopped, leaving a deep, hushed silence in its wake.
I realised I was holding my breath, and let it out in a rush. ‘We’re okay.’
‘We are.’ Jay let go of me, and straightened, looking around. All the houses were still standing, as much as they’d ever been. We’d dislodged a lot of loose matter, which lay littered about the streets, but other than that, everything was—
Fine, I was about to say. But, no. Because that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?
The silence lasted only a minute or two, and then a new sound shattered the peace. A thundering thump, thump, thump, rhythmic and regular, like… like a drum. Several drums.
Music.
The singing began a moment later: high, ululating voices wailing words I vaguely recognised as an Yllanfalen dialect. And another sound, one I didn’t immediately place.
Footsteps. Pounding footsteps marching in time to the beat of the invisible drums.
‘Um,’ said Zareen, looking about. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell you, it isn’t going to be good.’
And when Zareen calls something ‘not good’, she tends to mean do you have your affairs in order?
‘Skeleton,’ Jay croaked.
‘What?’ I whirled around.
I thought that’s what he said; the racket was tremendous, however melodic, and surely he couldn’t have meant—
‘Skeleton,’ he said again, louder.
They came clambering out of the wrecked doorways of their ruined houses, stamping their fleshless feet in time to the beat of the Yllanfalen drums. So many skeletons, more than I’d imagined these houses could hold. Far more.
A phalanx of them approached from each end of the village street, marching in perfect time. Ridden with fresh, wet earth, some of them, shaking splinters of decayed wood from their shoulders, their gaping eye sockets blank as they advanced on us.
‘They’ve raised the entire population of Silvessen,’ Zareen choked. ‘All of them.’
Every single person who’d ever lived and died in Silvessen, she meant. Not just those who’d been slain by the hex. Every single one, reaching back hundreds of years.
We were in trouble.
‘They?’ Emellana yelled. ‘Did they do this, or did we?’
Giddy gods. She was right. Was it the glaistigs who’d done this, or had we somehow set this in motion ourselves with Orlando’s regulator? Was it the surge of magick that had spun these poor souls out of their graves and sent them into the streets?
We’d formed a circle, the five of us, standing back-to-back in a futile attempt to defend ourselves from the advancing horde of the dead. We couldn’t hope to prevail against so many, despite Zareen’s presence, despite Merlin’s magick. We were in trouble.
‘This is not how I pictured this day ending,’ I muttered, groping for an idea. Something. Anything. What was I Merlin for, if I couldn’t deal with a mere several hundred dead people? At this rate, I wouldn’t be Merlin for long.
‘This is not how I pictured this life ending,’ said Jay.
I was panicking and I knew it. My brain spun in useless circles, picking up and discarding ideas like a hyperactive kid in a sweet shop. Fire? No. I could set a bunch of them alight, but if it worked I’d take out the whole village and probably the five of us, too. If it didn’t, too bad.
Air? Wind? I’d used that to good effect already, and maybe I could… what, blow them away?
Too late. Too little time. I needed strategy for a threat like this, some kind of plan, and I didn’t have one. We were out of luck.
The skeleton horde was twenty feet away and closing…
I shut my eyes.
The marching footsteps stopped, all at once, as if on cue. Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened. No bony hands closed around me, tearing me to pieces. No impacts. No pain.
I opened my eyes.
They’d formed a circle around us and were standing, motionless, staring at us with those empty, black eye sockets. They’d spaced themselves out to about a metre apart, fanning out around us in even regiments.
Well, regiments wasn’t the word. There was nothing martial in their posture. They didn’t look like they were preparing to attack, or to defend. They looked like they were waiting. For what?
The rhythm of the pounding drums changed, and the voices fell briefly silent.
A new song was beginning.
I eyed the front ranks of skeletons.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ I said slowly, ‘I’d say that looks remarkably like… like… well, like a flash mob.’
A single, female voice began a new melody, a raw, raucous sound layered with fury. Silvessen. She was out there somewhere.
Something in the roar of drums and words must have contained a cue, because the skeletons, as one, struck a pose.
And then… they began to dance. All of them. In unison.
