“I gave you a choice,” said Kami. “Now I’m taking it away. If all you listen to is force and fear, you can be afraid of me. You’re going to help Jared.”
Amber made heat hit Kami’s face in one fast stroke, as if Kami had been slapped by a fire.
“I’m not.”
Kami’s fingers bit into Amber’s wrist so hard that Amber let out a soft cry of pain. And then Amber gave no more cries.
Her hair crackled as it began to slowly burn, the fire licking blue and scarlet in the winter sunshine. And from her lips issued a faint gurgling sound, the sound of water filling her lungs, bubbles forming on her mouth as flames surrounded her hair.
Kami, what are you doing? Kami, stop! said Ash, and Kami felt his horror course through her, saw it reflected on the faces of the friends she loved. Ash’s horror met her own, horror built on horror until it was a towering nightmare feeling, but she refused to be stopped.
Amber hit out wildly at Kami with her free hand, and Kami grabbed that hand too, stepping in close with both Amber’s wrists bound in her grasp.
“Which is it going to be, sorcerer?” Kami asked. “Drown or burn?”
Amber shook her head frantically, and Kami let the flames cool and the air filter into Amber’s lungs so she could speak.
“Fine,” Amber rasped. “Fine, I’ll help you.”
“Thank you very much,” said Kami.
Chapter Four
The Lady of the Lake’s Riddle
Passing through the flames and over the threshold of Aurimere at last did not feel like a victory. Kami was terrified for all of them as they stepped through the fire and she felt its heat on her skin, making the ends of her hair curl up, crisp and brittle.
She looked over at Angela, who seemed to be immune to sweating.
“How are you doing with the whole ‘enveloped in fire’ bit?”
“Basically how I feel every day when people ask me to do unreasonable things,” said Angela. “Things such as get up early or talk to them in a civil manner.”
“People are monsters,” said Kami, and by then they were standing in the cool stone hall of Aurimere.
“Everyone’s a monster,” Amber said bitterly. “Given the incentive.”
They had tied Amber’s wrists with a skipping rope, all they had to restrain her. They did not seem like captors to be dreaded, Kami thought, but then she remembered the look of fear she had put in Amber’s eyes and the cry of pain she had wrung from her lips. She could not blame Amber, after all, for bitterness.
Aurimere was still austere and intimidating, with an arched stone ceiling like a church and windows with diamond panes alternating ice-white and blood-red. Kami had thought the place would be more altered, now that it was occupied and invaded by evil. She almost expected to see Lillian Lynburn come down the broad walnut flight of stairs, serene mistress of the house. Aurimere stood untouched, indifferent to good or evil. Aurimere would be the same when they were all gone.
They heard a step in the corridor on the floor above, and Amber looked as if she was going to die of terror.
“Which way?” Kami asked, keeping her voice calm.
“Not far now,” whispered Holly, reassuring and sweet.
Kami’s confidence and Holly’s comfort together seemed to work: Amber squared her shoulders and marched across the floor. They all followed her, through the records room and along another corridor, going on until they were looking up at the flight of stairs leading up from the little hall beside the library.
The stairs were narrow, and gleaming with red from the room above. It felt as if they were ascending into hell.
There was a break in the stairs where they turned. The group paused there, and Kami felt Ash’s unease in her mind, his memories of having run thoughtlessly up these stairs a thousand times.
There was a stretch of polished wooden floor, a light above that looked like a star caught in a golden net, and a wall that bore a black and white mural in mosaics.
The mural showed Aurimere, in the distance but unmistakable, and in the foreground it showed a woman standing by a lake. Even in black and white, the woman was obviously a Lynburn: she held her head like a queen, despite the hair tumbling long, heavy, and laden with river flowers down her back, and her face in profile was both disdainful and pitiless.
“He’s there,” Amber said in a low voice. “Rob put him behind that wall.”
By magic, Kami assumed, but Kami had magic too. She could break him out. She envisioned the stones in the wall being moved around to suit her, as if they were Lego blocks.
Nothing happened. Her magic had absolutely no effect on the wall: it was as if she had tried punching the stone instead.
Ash, said Kami, like reaching out a hand, and with panic and fear that mirrored hers he reached back.
This wall’s protected against magic, he said.
Then how does Rob open it? Kami demanded. How are we going to?
There was no answer from Ash, only desolation going through him, through them both, like a cold wind over a dead land. He stepped forward and laid his hand over the black tiles that formed the lake, as if he could reach through it to Jared. Kami understood the impulse: to hammer on the wall until it broke and gave Jared back, not caring how much noise they made or who they brought crashing down on them.
She had brought Angela, Rusty, and Holly into this. She could not risk them for nothing.
Instead she stood with the others in a hush of horror, and she heard the sound of stone on stone, like the scrape of a pebble against a board.
“Wait,” said Kami, recalling a scrap of history from her schoolbooks. “Did you hear that? This doesn’t have to be a wall opened up by magic. This is an old house: there were a lot of reasons to build secret trapdoors and hideaways. This could be one of those. A lot of people had hiding places for Catholic priests in Elizabethan times. Somewhere convenient to pop your priest when the soldiers came by.”
“A priest hole,” said Ash. “I think Dad mentioned the house had one of those, once. Or … I think he said there was supposed to be one, but nobody knew where it was. He laughed about it.”
Kami stared grimly at the wall. None of them were laughing. If this was not magical, there had to be some trick or some catch, some button to push or secret way to enter. She’d heard the shift of stone when Ash put his hand on the lake, but it hadn’t opened.
“A priest hole covered with a picture,” said Ash aloud. The picture tells us nothing, he said to Kami alone, because he could not hide bad news or fear from her. A lake, a woman, a sword … there are symbols like this all over Aurimere.
Kami knew it was true. She had seen the decorations of Aurimere, the outstretched sorcerous hands, the drowning woman, and the Lynburn crest with the motto beneath it reading in Latin, We neither drown nor burn.
“This isn’t a picture.”
“I don’t want to contradict you,” Holly said. “Obviously Jared being buried alive is stressful for everybody. But I’m pretty sure it is a picture.”
Kami turned to her and beamed at her.
“No,” she said. “It’s a riddle.”
Everybody looked confused.
“Think,” said Kami. “The Lynburns as a family—egomaniacs to a man, am I right?”
“Personally, hey!” Ash Lynburn remarked. “But on the whole, your assessment’s pretty fair.”
“So if they had a system of which stones to press, and a picture on top of them,” Kami said, “what else would it be but the Lynburn crest?”
The house, the woman, the lake, and the woods beyond. They were all in bright heraldic color on the Lynburn crest, and in shards of memory in Kami’s mind’s eye, the tentative green of the woods coming back to life, the shimmering green of the lakes the first time she had shown them to Jared, the golden house and the woman with golden river-bound hair.
Now they were black and white tile, all monochrome and simple as a chessboard, and all she had to do was know how to play.
Hous
e, woman, lake, and woods.
The wall did not move.
Kami tried it, with increasing desperation, in a variety of different combinations: woman, lake, woods, house. Lake, house, woods, and woman.
She realized after she had touched the stones in every order she could think of that everyone was staring at her as she randomly and frantically patted at the wall. They looked rather alarmed.
“I thought it might be the … the Lynburn family crest,” Kami explained. It sounded like a wild idea when she said it. “The woods and the lake and the house and a woman, you know.”
Holly frowned. “But the Lynburn crest has a sword on it?”
The crest did, though Kami had assumed the sword and its hilt only served as a creepy frame for the four pictures.
In any case, there was no sword in the mural on the wall.
Kami squinted at it, as if she could make a sword appear, and then she whirled and seized Holly in her arms.
“You are a genius!” she declared, and kissed her on both of Holly’s suddenly blushing cheeks.
Kami let Holly go, stepped forward, and pressed the single large stone lying by the lakeside.
There was a grind of stone on heavy stone, the sound of a tomb opening. Slowly, the stones in the picture moved, so the pictured Aurimere was gone and the pictured woman was headless, until there was a gap into the dark about the size of a fireplace, halfway up the wall.
Jared, Kami thought, as if she could still speak to him like that. She did not let herself scream his name. He would be safe, soon, if she could only do this right.
“The Lynburns talked about King Arthur being a source and the Lady of the Lake a sorcerer,” Kami said instead, almost in a whisper. “I thought they might have come up with an extra trick, to be clever. The sword in the stone.”
“Arthur became king by pulling a sword out of a stone.” Ash’s voice was soft with wonder, soft as the feeling of his wonder wrapping around Kami like mist. Ash was the only one of the group who cared about stories as much as Kami did. He had been raised on stories told by sorcerers.
“The Lynburns, egomaniacs and tricky bastards,” said Angela. “A riddle wrapped up in an enigma, wrapped up in a giant pain in the ass. Well done, Kami.” She hesitated and added, “Well done, Holly.”
Kami turned to Amber and began to unloop the skipping rope from around her wrists. It was not that she trusted Amber now. She needed the rope for something else. She glanced at Angela for support.
“I’m going down to get him,” she told Angela. “I have to be the one. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Angela. “Rusty and I will hold the rope.”
“Holly, could you do something for me?” Kami asked, and Holly, blushing more than ever now that both Angela and Kami had praised her, nodded. “Creep down to the library and grab any books that look like they might be helpful—anything about the town, anything historical, especially anything about the 1480s. Be careful and come right back.”
That was the time when Elinor Lynburn and Matthew Cooper the source had lived—the only source besides Kami that they knew of. That was as sensible as Kami could manage to be right now, with the prospect of rescuing Jared so close. Ash had to help her scramble up to the aperture in the wall, but once she was up she had hold of the rope, and it was being held firm.
She ducked her head so she would not bang it on the stone, and with the rope gripped tight in her hands she began to scale her way down the wall.
The wall felt dry and cold, rasping against her knuckles as the rope burned her palms. She trusted the people holding on to the rope, but her feet still felt as if they were dangling into a thousand fathoms of darkness.
But it wasn’t so far down, nor so very dark. As Kami descended, her eyes became accustomed to the faint light provided by the opening in the wall above her head, where her friends waited for them.
The light painted the stones dark gray rather than black. She could see nothing but the stone wall before her.
She could smell old dust and fresh blood.
Kami told herself to just keep going, down and down, hand under hand and the soles of her shoes scraping against the wall. She went until her feet touched something else.
Kami let go of the rope when she realized she was standing on a corpse.
She did not scream, except in her head. She did not let herself panic. She ignored the feeling of bones crackling under her weight and simply stepped off the body onto a stained stone floor.
There was only a little light, but there was enough. She could see his pale hair, his face that barely looked human but still somehow looked young. She forced herself to stay in control. This was an old body, years old, and Jared had been alive yesterday.
Kami turned, carefully and gradually, in that terrible narrow space.
On the other side of that tomb was Jared. He was not lying down, because there was no room to lie down, but he was sitting in a lax, contorted way that did not look right.
Kami knelt down beside him, the black frills of her skirt falling over his legs. She looked up into his face: it was the same face she knew by heart, thinner but not irrevocably or terribly changed. She looked at him for one desperate hungry moment that had to count for all the moments she had not seen him; she took in the aristocratic Lynburn lines of his face, the starkness of his scar, the curling gold of his lashes—and the way something about his mouth softened when he slept and made him look as young as he was, as young as she was.
Kami reached out, touched his hand, and said his name.
“Jared.”
His hand was warm under hers, which eased a clawing wordless worry in her chest, but he did not stir. Kami slid her hand from his down to circle his wrist, as lightly as she could, hardly daring to move in case of what she would find. She let out a breath that came out stuttering like a sob when she felt the steady pulse of his heartbeat against her fingertips.
“Jared,” she implored, and tightened her hand around his wrist. She could not reach out to him in her mind and she could not scream, but she had found him once in dark winter waters and she would find him now, no matter how lost he might be. “Jared,” she said again, his name prayer and promise at once.
Jared’s lashes flickered: his hand moved beneath hers, and his pulse quickened. He gave a shuddering gasp, and his eyes opened.
“Oh, thank God,” said Kami.
Jared stared at her blankly for a moment, his eyes so dazed they seemed blind, and moved fast as a striking snake. She did not recoil, and the next moment he had her other arm in his grasp. They had each other, held fast.
She did not mind until she saw what his movement had betrayed. The material of his shirt, which had looked closed in the dim lights, parted and she saw that the buttons had been cut away.
The skin beneath had been cut away too. Even in the dim light she could see the smears of blood against his skin, and the pattern the blade had cut into his skin beneath the darkness of that dried blood.
“What’s the matter?” Jared asked, and his voice cracked as he spoke. “Don’t—don’t cry.”
Kami shook her head mutely, and held on to his wrist. She was gripping on too tight, she thought, her fingernails probably biting into his skin. She should be careful with him.
She unloosed her grip, drawing her hand back.
“No,” said Jared, voice suddenly urgent rather than lost. “No. Don’t go away.”
Kami shook her head again and reached out, fastening her fingers with care in the sleeve of his shirt. She could grip onto that and not hurt him.
He drew her closer to him, as if he didn’t care if he was hurt. It was cramped and awkward in that living tomb, horror all around them. Kami knocked her elbow against the stone.
She got as close as she possibly could: she could feel his hot breath on her neck, and she knew he could feel her hot tears, falling onto his shoulder.
“Kami?” Jared whispered, her name soft as a kiss on her hair.
She tried to make her voic
e sound strong. “Yes?”
She felt the shape of his mouth against her hair and was amazed by how crazy he was: he was smiling. “Hey, Kami.”
“Hey, Jared,” Kami whispered back.
She held on to him, fists tight on the material of his shirt as if he was trying to get away. There was darkness and blood and the dust of the dead all around them, but they were all right. Everything would be all right, as long as she never, never let him go.
A yell split the air above them, echoing from wall to wall of the priest hole. Kami felt Ash’s voice cut through the peace in her mind.
Ruth Sherman’s seen us, he said. We have to get out now.
Chapter Five
Fire Burning Bold
“Right,” said Kami aloud, in her normal voice. It sounded obscenely loud in that little space.
She scrambled away from Jared and to her feet, not letting go of his wrist. He looked up at her, eyes uncomprehending and hurt, wide as a child’s.
“Come on,” Kami said. “Get up. You’re being rescued. I came here for you and I am not leaving without you. Get up.”
“I’ll try,” Jared told her.
He did try. It broke her heart to see how difficult it was for him, leaning his weight heavily against her and against the wall. She could feel him shaking from head to foot, and she did her best to hold him up though he was so much taller than she was.
“You’d better try,” she said fiercely into his shoulder. “This isn’t a choice. I insist on rescuing you!”
“Well,” Jared said. “If you insist.”
Kami pushed him toward the rope, and tried to smile at him, though she was not sure that she succeeded or even if she did, if he could see it.
“Just hold on,” she said, and gave the rope two quick tugs. “Rusty and Angela will bring you up. Hold on. I’m with you.”
He climbed as best he could, trying to haul himself up with the rope. She stood and watched his faltering progress: at the moment when she saw his hands slip, she willed him not to. She sent him with magic up along the stones, light as air, light as the rope, up to the outside world.