When the form finally swept into the room, bringing darkness with it, Henrik saw at last that it was a man.
The man paused before Jit, not far from Henrik. The candles’ flames in the hall behind him and those nearby in the room slowly came back to life, showing at last the man before them.
When he finally got a good look at the man, Henrik froze stiff, unable to draw a breath.
CHAPTER 53
The man glanced down at the warm, wet place growing on the front of Henrik’s pants and smiled to himself.
“This is the boy?” he asked in a deep, iron-hard voice that made Henrik have to remind himself to blink and caused the seven familiars to drift back up ever so slightly more behind Jit, as if they weren’t aware that his voice alone had bulled them back.
The Hedge Maid let out a short, grating, clicking sound.
“Yes, this is him, Bishop Arc,” the handless familiar said for her mistress after watching her speak in the strange voice.
Bishop Arc glared at Jit for a moment. His gaze lowered deliberately to take in her mouth sewn closed; then he again turned his terrible eyes on Henrik.
The whites of the man’s eyes were not white. Not at all.
They had been tattooed a bright blood red.
The dark iris and pupil in the field of blood red made his eyes seem as if they were looking out from some other world, a world of fire and flame— or perhaps from the underworld itself.
But even as frightening as the bishop’s eyes were, that was not the most disturbing aspect of the man. The most ghastly thing about him, the thing that made Henrik unable to look away, unable to stop his heart from hammering, unable to draw more than short, shallow breaths, was the man’s flesh.
Every bit of Bishop Arc was covered with tattooed symbols. Not simply covered, but layered over countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. There was no place that Henrik could see that was not tattooed with some part or element of strange circular designs, each one randomly laid over another over another and over yet another, all layer upon layer so that there was no untouched skin visible anywhere. Not one speck.
The top layers were the darkest, with those under them lighter, the ones under those lighter yet, and so on, as if they continually absorbed down into his flesh and new ones were constantly being added over the top of those already there. They had an endless, bottomless depth to them, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from somewhere dark.
Looking down through the ever-deeper levels of designs gave the man’s skin a three-dimensional appearance. Because the layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, it gave Bishop Arc a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly appearance. Henrik felt sure that if the man wished it, he could vanish at will into the fog of floating symbols.
Because of the way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them, each symbol, regardless of how many layers down it was, was distinct and recognizable. The symbols were all different sizes, and from what Henrik could tell, endlessly different designs. Almost all of them seemed to be a collection of smaller symbols assembled into larger, circular elements.
The bishop’s hands and what Henrik could see of his wrists sticking out from his black coat were completely covered with the designs. Even his fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself.
His neck above his tight collar was covered all around, as was his entire throat. His face— every part of his face— was covered with emblems by the hundreds, if not thousands. Even his eyelids were tattooed. Even the man’s ears, every fold and as far down inside as Henrik could see, were completely covered in the same kind of strange tattoos of circular symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols.
While the bishop’s entire bald head was tattooed over with the designs, one dominated them all. It was larger than all the others. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the center of his nose and swept to each side beneath his eyes, going around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes.
A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man’s brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol, as if he were looking out from the underworld.
In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man’s skull, was a backward figure nine.
That large tattoo covering the top of his bald head was darker than all the others, not just because it looked to be the most recently added, but because the lines composing it were heavier. Even so, lying as it was over layers of hundreds of other random emblems, it was evident that it was merely a part of a much larger purpose.
All the tattoos, in all their many different designs, still seemed to be variations of the same basic themes. There were symbols laid out in circles of every size, even circles within circles within circles, with some of the symbols contained within those circles made up of other, smaller designs. Taken in totality, it was a profoundly unsettling sight to see a man so given over to such an occult purpose.
It all made him a very dark, living, moving, fluid illustration, with every design down through the countless layers clearly discernible. Henrik imagined that if the bishop were naked, he would still be totally hidden behind the veil of symbols.
The only place Henrik could see that was not tattooed with the symbols was the man’s eyes, and they were tattooed red.
Bishop Arc saw several of the familiars glance nervously behind him, back down the hall.
He smiled. “I didn’t bring her with me,” he said in answer to the unspoken question haunting their eyes. “I sent her on an errand.”
The familiars bowed their heads in acknowledgment and as if to apologize for being so nosy.
The wide eyes of one of the people woven into the wall behind Jit stared fixedly at Bishop Arc. Terror shaped the man’s expression and left him unable to look away when the bishop glanced up at him. The man swallowed over and over, as if trying to swallow a scream fighting to make its way out. All the people in the walls seemed incapable of making a sound, though this man clearly seemed like he was about to scream.
Bishop Arc lifted a hand toward the man trapped in the wall. It was not an overt motion to point at the man, but a casual gesture, a slack hand held out on a partially raised arm, fingers barely extended. Nonetheless, it was clearly directed at the man encased in the wall and unable to stop staring at the bishop.
“Be still,” Bishop Arc said in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper, but as deadly as anything Henrik had ever heard.
The man gasped, sucking in short, sharp breaths. He pulled in one last, long breath as his eyes rolled back in his head. He shook violently but briefly, then slumped, at least as much as he could slump, woven as he was into the tangle of sticks, twigs, and vines. After a final shiver, his whole body went completely slack. The last breath of air left his lungs in a long, low wheeze.
The bishop looked around at other eyes watching him from the walls. “Anyone else?”
In the silence, every eye behind layers of twigs and branches turned away.
Bishop Arc smirked at the Hedge Maid. “There you go. Freshly dead fluids for your little helpers here to suck out and feed you.”
The Hedge Maid’s big, black eyes revealed nothing. She let out a low, rasping squeal broken by several clicks.
One of the familiars, watching Jit speak in the strange language, waited until she was finished and then leaned toward the bishop, showing contempt on behalf of her mistress. “Jit wishes to know why you have come here.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He lifted his a
rm out to the side, toward Henrik, as he addressed Jit. “I have come to make sure that you complete the task I gave you.”
After a long pause, Jit gave him a single nod.
The bishop’s brow drew down, deforming the symbol on his forehead, pulling the center of it lower with his eyebrows. “Now, you have wasted enough of my time. I expect you not to waste any more of it. The boy is finally here. Get on with it.”
Jit watched him for a moment, then turned her attention to Henrik and motioned for him to come closer.
CHAPTER 54
Henrik feared to take a step toward the Hedge Maid. As she made a soft cooing sound while gesturing for him to come closer, he could only stare at the leather cord stitched through her lips keeping her mouth from opening more than a mere slit. Some of the holes where the leather thong penetrated her flesh oozed a pinkish fluid, as if the effort of calling him forward reinjured the wounds.
He wondered why her lips were stitched closed.
He realized that his feet were shuffling forward, even though he’d had no intention of moving. He found himself helpless to stop himself from inching ever closer to her, closer to her outstretched hands.
His own arms lifted of their own accord. No amount of strength on his part could have prevented it. His fists led the way as he moved toward her.
Her hands, stained dark— with what he feared to imagine— at last closed tight around his wrists. Closer in to her, he noticed that there was an odd smell about her, a kind of soft but sickening odor that he couldn’t identify, but it made his nose wrinkle and his throat try to close off so he couldn’t breathe it in.
Though she was a small woman, she had powerfully strong fingers. He tried to back away, but he couldn’t. He felt trapped in her grip. He had no control, no say in any of it.
Jit made another vibrating, clicking, squealing sound. As close as he was to her, Henrik could only stare into her intense black eyes with speechless fright, unable to think of what she wanted from him, what she was going to do to him.
She leaned toward him and made the same sound again. He didn’t know what she was saying. He only knew that she wanted something.
One of the familiars bent toward him over the Hedge Maid’s shoulder. “Open your fists,” she hissed impatiently.
His breaths coming in short, rapid pulls, he tried with all his might to do as he had been told. Despite his best efforts, his hands would not open. He’d held them tightly closed for so long they’d become frozen into tight knots. Despite how much he tried, how much he wanted to obey, he could not will his fingers to uncurl. He stared at them, trying frantically to make them open, fearing what she would do to him if he didn’t do as he’d been told.
Jit seemed unconcerned. Her strong fingers began peeling his fingers open one at a time. It hurt something fierce to have them move after all the time they been held fisted. Each one tingled with stabbing pains as it was pulled straight. Showing no sympathy for his cries of pain, she did not pause at her work.
Before long, she had all his fingers pried open. She flattened his hands out, pressing them between hers, one hand at a time, stroking them for a while as if to soothe away the stiffness and make certain they would remain open before she turned them over, palms down.
The Hedge Maid snapped a small twig from the woven mass beside her. He could see that there was a long, wickedly sharp thorn at the end. Not knowing what she intended, he again tried to pull away, but, with his left wrist caught in her iron grip, she easily pulled his hand closer. He felt like an animal in a trap about to be skinned.
Holding his hand steady, the Hedge Maid dragged the point of the thorn along the underside of the fingernail of his first finger. She turned the thorn in the light, carefully inspecting it. He couldn’t imagine what she was doing or what she was looking for.
Henrik saw one of the familiars, back at the wall, working at pulling a jar out of its snug place in the weave of branches. With effort, the jar finally came free. She brought it with her to Jit’s side and waited patiently as she watched her mistress at work.
The Hedge Maid dragged the point of the thorn under the nail of the second finger. She held it up. This time there was a small bit of something stuck on the point.
A sound came from deep in her throat that told him she was pleased. She held it up to show her companions. They cooed their satisfaction. Bishop Arc only glared when she showed him.
The familiar with the jar, after pulling off the lid, held it out for her mistress. Cockroaches poured out over the sides of the jar and down over the familiar’s hands. They made a rattling sound as they fell by the hundreds onto the floor, scattering in every direction before vanishing down into the weave of sticks and branches. In a moment they had all disappeared.
Jit, unconcerned, dunked the thorn in the filthy water and swished it around. She pulled it up and saw that what ever had been stuck on it had come off. Satisfied, she returned her attention to Henrik.
She repeated the careful cleaning under the nails of the last two fingers and thumb on his left hand. She found more of the tiny treasure she was searching for under the nails of his fingers, but not his thumb. Out of the corner of his eye, Henrik saw a smile come to Bishop Arc’s tattooed lips both times the Hedge Maid came up with a little scrap of something on the point of the thorn. Each time, she swished the thorn in the stinking liquid in the jar, leaving what ever it was to disappear down into the murky water.
Jit dropped his left hand and moved on to his right. After dragging the thorn under his first finger she brought it up close to her face for a look. There was nothing there. She cast a brief, furtive look up at the bishop and then dragged the thorn under the nail again, but it didn’t produce anything the second time, either.
She moved to the next finger and did a more careful cleaning under Henrik’s nail. The thorn found nothing. She repeated the search, then when it was fruitless, moved on to his third finger. It, too, didn’t have what she wanted. She focused on the little finger, as if it were her last hope.
When the thorn came up without anything but dirt, her hands dropped into her lap.
The symbols all over him seemed to churn as the man leaned down a little. “What’s wrong?”
The Hedge Maid made a few short sounds from deep in her throat.
“Jit says that we have the flesh of the woman,” the familiar at her side said. She hesitated before finishing the translation. “But we do not have the flesh of the man.”
The bishop straightened in a way that caused all seven of the familiars to back up.
One of them was not quick enough.
He snatched her by the throat and yanked her close. It looked to be a reflex driven purely by emotion. She cried out, thrashing like a snake in a snare, but she could not escape his grip. It was clear that the bishop was in a blind rage. She clawed at his tattooed hands around her throat, but it did her no good.
“Tell your mistress that I am not pleased,” he said to the others.
Several of them urgently leaned in, speaking to the Hedge Maid in her strange language.
When the bishop pulled the familiar in his fist close to his face and glared into her eyes, she cried out with a shriek of terrible agony.
“Back to the grave with you,” he said through gritted teeth.
As Henrik watched in frozen shock, the familiar lost the bluish glow they all had. Wisps of smoke curled up from under the cowl over her head. The whole creature writhed and withered as if everything was being sucked out of her. The skin on her hands and arms darkened as it drew in around the bones and knuckles until they looked skeletal. The flesh of her face boiled and bubbled and burned to a dark, leathery mask. Blackened skin smoldered as it shrank tighter and tighter around the skull. The eyes sunk back into their sockets. The jaw slackened and lips shriveled back, exposing the familiar’s fangs.
Bishop Arc tossed the withered remains aside.
Seething with anger, he paced back toward the tunnel where he had entered. The candles went
out around him as he moved, as if he were dragging a veil of darkness with him. He growled in frustration and rage.
Abruptly, he stopped and turned back. He stared at the Hedge Maid a moment, then marched back toward her. The candles behind him came back to life as he moved away from them.
“You at least have the flesh of the woman, right?” he asked Jit.
With her dark eyes fixed on him, she nodded and then took the jar from the trembling familiar beside her. She held it up a little as if to show him.
He stroked the knuckle of his first finger along his gaunt cheek.
“Change of plans,” he said in a voice like ice.
CHAPTER 55
As the Hedge Maid started out toward a shadowy opening at the back of the chamber, her familiars raced around the room, urgently pulling smaller jars from where they were stuck into the weave of the walls or picked up larger ones out of the diverse collections at the edges of the floor. The eyes of those people nearby encased in the walls, the ones who were still alive, watched in desolate agony.
Henrik wished he could help them, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even help himself.
Jit cradled the jar with the filthy brown water containing what had been under Henrik’s fingernails in the crook of her arm as she made her way back into the dark opening. The brown water sloshed around as she walked. The lid kept most but not all of the water from spilling over. Henrik saw big brown bugs emerge up out of the weave of the twigs and branches to feed at the drops that did escape, run down the jar, and drip onto the floor.
Bishop Arc glared with bloodred eyes as the familiars went about their work of finding the correct containers out of the hundreds hoarded throughout the room. The dark symbols covering his flesh made his obvious rage seem all the more dangerous. The six remaining familiars avoided meeting his gaze as they worked at finding what they needed and pulled them out of the wall or plucked them up from the floor.