Soulkeeper Read online

“She’ll be fine,” Tommy said as they walked. “I mean, it’s Adria. She’s the best, and she has her prayers now. Remember how she exploded one of those owls? I bet we’ll stumble upon a giant mess of Janus goo and bones any second now.”

  “Tommy,” Devin said. “I appreciate you trying, but please… no jokes, all right?”

  He blushed a little and nodded.

  “Sure. Sorry.”

  Though they traveled in a relatively straight direction, Devin couldn’t decipher their destination. Where was that bastard taking his sister? A bloody chaos of horrifying ideas bounced inside his mind, and it took all his training to silence them so he might focus on the task at hand. If Janus wanted to kill his sister, he’d have done so immediately, not carry her unconscious body through the city.

  Unless he wants to make an example of her.

  The night passed slow and painful. Tesmarie had to stop often to recast her spell, and each time it took longer for her to, as she put it, “locate the proper time.” She fluttered at an even slower rate, until eventually Devin placed her on his shoulder and had her point in the direction to walk. They passed through two districts, and still they had no clue as to the final destination.

  Late into the second hour Tesmarie abruptly stopped them in front of a dilapidated building in the adjacent district to Tradeway. Not a thing about it appeared unusual, especially now that so many buildings in Londheim had boarded up their windows or covered them with thick curtains. Tesmarie, however, was certain of its importance. She floated to the door and halted as if confused by its presence.

  “In there,” she said, pointing. “He took her in there.”

  Devin cast a glance at Jacaranda. She drew her daggers and nodded in silent understanding. The two took up positions on either side of the door. He tested the door handle, unsurprised to find it locked.

  “Know any spells to open a door?” Devin whispered to Tommy. His brother-in-law scrunched his face as he concentrated.

  “Not without alerting half the neighborhood,” he whispered back.

  “I’ll get it,” Tesmarie said. She shivered as a pink aura flickered and then vanished from her skin. Her eyes returned to their normal diamond color. She zipped through a slender gap in the boards covering one of the windows, and a moment later, the lock clicked. Devin pulled the door open a crack, and Tesmarie quickly flew back out.

  “Is it empty inside?” Jacaranda asked.

  “I think so,” Tesmarie said. “But… but never mind. You’ll see.”

  Devin led the way inside, Jacaranda at his heels. At first the building appeared like any other home in Londheim. The entry opened directly into a living room containing a fireplace and chimney. A hallway beside led further into the house, which, given the home’s small size, he expected to be little more than a bedroom and a pantry.

  “Where did he take her?” Devin asked softly. The two doors at the end of the hallway were both boarded over, and it appeared there was no other place to go.

  “You mean you don’t see?” Tesmarie asked.

  “See what?”

  The faery didn’t answer. Instead she flew to the fireplace and gently landed.

  “It must be protected,” she said. The other three gathered around her to watch. It seemed Tesmarie was studying a bare patch of wall just beside the fireplace, her hands crossed behind her back and her lips pursed. “But protections like this don’t like it when you mess with them real bad, like… this!”

  She put her hand against the wall—which then sank into it half an inch as if it were made of liquid. Her wings fluttered, and she shot upward and then to the right, tracing a rectangular shape, once, twice, three times…

  The wall wasn’t a wall. It was a narrow entryway receding inward toward a gray stone door with no visible handle or lock. Devin rubbed at his eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache. Just looking at the door burdened him. He stepped closer and put his hand atop the stone. Light emerged from little cuts and divots, forming a shape resembling an hourglass. When he pushed, it offered no give.

  “How did Janus get inside?” he asked.

  Tesmarie cast her spell a second time, returning the pink aura to her eyes.

  “He put his hand upon the door,” she said, her voice so slow it bordered on comical. “The hourglass glowed, and then it opened for him. I can’t see more.” She snapped out of her spell and pouted her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “You’ve been more than helpful,” Devin assured her. He turned to his brother-in-law. “This feels like your area of expertise now. Can you make sense of that symbol?”

  “It doesn’t look like there’s much to decipher,” Tommy said. “It’s an hourglass. If Janus gained entry by saying a password of some sort we could maybe discover a connection between it and the symbol, but by merely touching it? We have nothing to go on.”

  Tommy brushed the door with his fingers. The hourglass symbol shone back to life, then faded when he withdrew. Still no give.

  “Perhaps there is a hidden trigger, and your fingers must apply pressure at certain locations?” Jacaranda offered.

  “A decent idea,” Devin said. “Tes, can you show me where Janus put his fingers?”

  Pink shimmered over Tesmarie’s eyes, and she stared at the door for several long moments before banishing the spell.

  “All right, I think I have it memorized. Um, Devin, use your right hand. Put your thumb there”—she pointed—“and your forefinger there, index there…”

  He did exactly as instructed, but even when all five fingers perfectly matched where Janus had touched the door, it remained locked. Devin swore and pulled his hand away. There must be something they were missing, but what?

  “Is there any spell of yours that might open the door?” he asked.

  “I could try,” Tommy said. He scratched at his chin and stared. “It looks like it’s pretty thick stone, though. I’m not sure fire will do anything. Maybe if I concentrated a lot of lightning at it, but there’s the possibility it’s been protected in some way.”

  “Protected how?”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Void if I know. I’m still a beginner at this sort of thing, remember?”

  “Let’s take a step back and think before we start trying to break down the door,” Jacaranda said. “What is the purpose of this lock in the first place?”

  “To keep people out,” Tommy said as if it were obvious.

  “No,” she said. “Not just people. Humans.”

  All three turned to Tesmarie, who hovered in the air with her arms crossed behind her.

  “Um, I guess I can see,” she said softly. The faery fluttered to the door and gently put her hand atop it. The hourglass symbol flared with light and then vanished completely, as did the door, revealing a long dark tunnel. Devin sighed with relief. They weren’t stuck. He still had a chance to save his sister.

  “Can you still see Janus’s path?” he asked.

  Tesmarie cast her spell but then quickly banished it.

  “He took her through that door, I’m sure,” she said. “But beyond that is, well, it’s lots of magic, and I mean lots.” She clutched her elbows and held her arms to her chest. “A-scary-amount lots.”

  Even Devin, with his normal human senses, could detect the power emanating from the tunnel in waves. What lurked inside? For what purpose did that monster bring his sister here? Whatever the reason, he’d lead the way to find out.

  “Can you give us light?” Devin asked.

  Tommy snapped his fingers and muttered, “Aethos creare lumna.”

  A perfect orb of daylight shimmered into existence above his hand. It appeared the tunnel didn’t travel far before reaching a second open doorway. Devin stepped inside, the stale air wrapping around him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something hummed in the deep nearby, its vibration rattling his teeth. There appeared no reason for it, but he found the air somehow harder to breathe. Dread increased with his every step. He half expect
ed an ambush at the doorway, but none came. Lest his fear overwhelm him, he stepped straight through the door and into the room beyond.

  The room was a perfectly spherical dome whose walls were lit with small, twinkling lights. No, not lights. Stars, as if the walls were windows to a distant night sky. Their soft glow illuminated a perfectly smooth floor made up of an enormous gray stone slate. In the center, shimmering with unearthly power, was a triangular well cut from stone. Alma’s rising sun circled the sides of the bottom third, Lyra’s full sun the middle, and Anwyn’s moon the top. Thin rivulets of light swam from the stars toward the center of the dome’s ceiling and collected into long, thin strands that fell like a drop of rain into the well. The drops looked composed of water, except it shone a pale white in the darkness and flickered like fire. Devin knew immediately what it reminded him of: a burning white soul rising up to the heavens.

  “What is this place?” Tommy wondered. His eyes sparkled like a young boy’s on his birthday. “It’s so… so… wonderful.”

  Devin approached the triangular well. A faint blue aura shimmered about the stone sides, the exact same color as the beams that guided souls to the heavens above. He looked inside the well, and though it resembled a rippling pool of water, he knew that was a lie. Whatever swirled within bore no physical shape whatsoever; his mind only gave it a liquid form as it struggled to ascertain something not of this world. In the very center of the well, hovering just above the surface of the “water,” was a smooth spherical orb made of clear diamond. White light rippled about it, bursting brighter every time a drop of whatever star-substance fell from the ceiling to touch its surface. A thin line, no thicker than a strand of spider silk, stretched from the bottom of the diamond orb to flow into the shimmering, raging white fire that filled the rest of the well. This wasn’t the light that made up a soul, not quite. The color wasn’t as vivid, the white not as pure.

  “What do you think it is?” Jacaranda asked. She looked greatly unnerved by whatever swirled in the center of those three triangles.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Devin said. He stepped away from the well. Though its blue-and-white color conveyed feelings of cold and calmness, in reality he was painfully hot standing in its presence. Beads of sweat had already formed across his forehead.

  “The room is empty, and I see no doors other than the one we entered,” he told Tesmarie. “Can you tell where they went?”

  The faery shook her head.

  “I told you, my magic won’t work in here. It’s like asking me to find a spark while staring at the sun.”

  Devin swore. There had to be something hidden in that giant room. He joined Tommy at a portion of the long, spherical wall to see if he had any ideas.

  “I thought I had a pretty good grasp of magic,” his friend said. “Malik and I had defined the schools, interpreted the words, and seen its supposed limits.” He shook his head and gestured around the room. “This is beyond anything I’ve ever conceived. That well in the center is collecting something, and while I can only guess, my gut says it somehow involves stars and the cycle of souls. Someone put a lot of work, and a lot of magic, into creating this room. The question is… why?”

  Devin put his back to the wall and took in the surroundings. Something about the place felt familiar; if only he could piece it together. The stars, the well, the bare stone…

  Suddenly it clicked.

  “When the Sisters arrived upon the Cradle there was only stone and water floating in the void. The Sisters created the stars to hold back the darkness, and upon seeing the Cradle’s emptiness, they despaired.”

  “You’re quoting scripture?” Tommy asked.

  “The First Canon,” Devin said. “It’s from the story of our creation, and how the Sisters delivered the light of the First Soul to the Sacred Mother.” He gestured about the room. “Does it not match?”

  “I guess, but why make a replica?”

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be stuck here.”

  “Hey, I recognize this!” Tesmarie shouted. They both turned. Tesmarie hovered above the well and pointed to the diamond orb in the center.

  “Get back, Tes,” Devin said, fearful of how close she hovered to the shimmering essence. “We still don’t know what that—”

  Her tiny hands brushed the orb. A sound like thunder clapped through the room. The floor shook. Stars rippled as if space itself were a disturbed lake of water. Devin readied his weapons, convinced they’d sprung a trap. Tesmarie zipped over to his shoulder, looking ashamed and worried.

  “There,” Jacaranda said, her own daggers at the ready. “The wall.”

  A line split the stars, then rotated, creating a circular hole of pure darkness in the center of the wall. Tendrils of shadow drifted like smoke through the opening, but they did not rise to the star-ceiling but instead sank to the stone as if burdened with a heavy weight. Devin aimed his pistol at its center, already doubting that his meager stone bullet would do anything to what emerged. That tear, that opening, it was a much larger version of the black scar that had marked the temple in the massacred alabaster faery village. Just like then, a monster emerged from the void to enter their world.

  Fingers pierced through the hole. The darkness clung to it like oil. Arms followed. A perfectly bald head emerged, tilted to the ground so they could not see its face. The breach among the stars shrank as the monster passed through, closing behind it. The blasphemous thing rose to its full height, an imposing eight feet tall with arms so long its six-fingered hands rested upon the floor.

  Tesmarie whimpered, and Devin swore out of revulsion. Where there should have been a face was instead a great swirling vortex of darkness, a sinking pit without a shred of light that rotated and churned for an eternal distance. Devin could stick his hand, his arm, his entire body into that devouring maw. It bore no eyes, no nose, no hair or fingernails, just a hungry mouth that could feast upon the entire world and not reach its fill. Devin looked upon a moving embodiment of the void: furious emptiness given form and substance.

  And then it spoke. Its voice was a whisper of the reaping hour.

  “Trespasser.”

  Devin fired at the center of its head. He watched in horror as the bullet froze in midair just before contact. A soft white light enveloped its surface. The bullet drifted into the vortex, starting along an outer edge before rotating inward, growing smaller and smaller with each revolution but never entirely vanishing on its path toward that infinitely distant center.

  “Anwyn be merciful,” Devin whispered.

  The monster took two lumbering steps and then flung its arms forward, its hands reaching greedily for them. Jacaranda deftly stepped aside, her daggers a blur as they scraped its skin. Devin was forced to drop into a roll as the six-fingered hand swooshed the air just above his head. He came up swinging, his sword hammering at the nearest joint twice in rapid succession. He’d have cut through any normal bone and flesh, but the oily darkness appeared as strong as steel. Tesmarie had far better luck. Her moonlight blade slashed through the darkness like a heated knife through butter. Inky liquid shadow erupted from the cuts, splashed the ground, and immediately evaporated into pale smoke.

  Tommy used the distraction to ready one of his spells. His hands slammed together. Words of power leapt off his tongue.

  “Glaeis astam!”

  Ice gathered above his head, assimilating into the form of a long, thin spear. Tommy pantomimed a throwing motion. The spear shot toward the monster as if thrown with the strength of a giant, its aim directly for the monster’s face. With such size and force, the spear should have ripped the monster’s head off its body. Instead the ice shimmered and broke into shards, each one swirling into the shadow vortex to be consumed.

  “Aim for the body, not the head,” Devin shouted. Goddesses damn it all, was Tommy not paying attention when he fired his bullet?

  “Um, yeah, I see,” Tommy said. He wiped sweat from his forehead and began another spell as Tesmarie swooped in for anoth
er pass. Her moonlight blade ripped a gash open across its chest, oily shadow spurting out like blood. Some landed across her wings, and she shrieked as if burned. Her wings ceased fluttering. Devin dove to catch her, and thankfully Tommy covered him with a sudden plume of fire erupting from his fingertips. The flames licked across its body, and deep patches of the darkness bubbled and hissed into black smoke.

  The monster of the void released what Devin guessed to be its version of a scream. Wind sucked into its face, shrill and howling. Devin whispered a prayer to the Sisters to combat his growing horror. This monster, this blasphemous existence, simply should not be. It did not belong in their world. It should not walk the land they walked.

  Tesmarie didn’t appear to be physically injured from the splash of darkness that had struck her, but she clearly was not well. Devin fled to one of the walls and gently set her down, all the while the monster sucked in air and flailed at the flames on its body with its six-fingered hands.

  “Are you all right, Tes?”

  “I’m c-c-cold,” she said. Her body shivered as she clutched her arms to her chest. “I d-d-d-don’t like it.”

  “Stay here,” he told her. “We’ll win without you, I promise.”

  With Tesmarie recovering, that left Devin and Jacaranda to occupy the monster’s attention. Devin readied his sword in both hands and rushed to attack. The monster had subdued the flames, and though it lacked any expression given the vortex that was its face, there was no doubt it was infuriated. Its hands punched and twisted with heightened urgency. Devin dodged the first two, but a third punch connected with his shoulder, and he gasped at the impact. It felt like being struck with a sledgehammer. He dropped to the ground and rolled. It was a wonder his collarbone wasn’t shattered.

  Jacaranda launched into an assault to buy Devin time. Her daggers punched tiny little holes into the skin, the deepest she could manage given its toughness. Any other foe would have died under the barrage. This monster, however, acted as if she were as threatening as a bumblebee. It swatted at her, its arms coming in at strange angles given its double set of elbows. Jacaranda danced through the jumble of limbs, but even with her skill it was only a matter of time before a blow connected.