Deosil Read online

  Deosil

  (Whyborne & Griffin No. 11)

  Jordan L. Hawk

  Deosil © 2019 Jordan L. Hawk

  ISBN: 978-1-941230-37-4

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art © 2019 Lou Harper

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Annetta Ribken Graney

  Dedication

  To everyone whom Widdershins has collected on this journey:

  You are seen.

  You are important.

  You are loved.

  Welcome home.

  Chapter 1

  Whyborne

  I was precisely on time for my meeting.

  I needed no alarm. At the proper time, I simply awoke. I dressed, combed my hair, and straightened my freshly starched collar. Every motion was practiced, without either haste or slowness.

  Perfect.

  I departed Whyborne House just as the trolley came to a halt outside. No one spoke when I climbed aboard. I took my place among the other riders, all of us silent, save for the whisper of clothing and tap of shoes when taking or leaving our seats.

  The trolley passed smoothly through Widdershins, drawn by some force I couldn’t see. It wasn’t my place to wonder about such things, however, so I didn’t.

  “Come to me,” a voice whispered in my ear.

  I tensed, and on instinct I glanced to the left, where the voice had come from. No one sat there, and my view out the window was unobstructed. People—or things very much like people, or that had once been people—walked up and down the street, avoiding one another as skillfully and silently as ants in a nest. Their clothing consisted of drab browns and grays, with plain suits for the men and unadorned dresses for the women. A cannery worker might wear a heavy apron, or a fisherman an oilskin coat, but otherwise they were variations on a theme.

  I returned my attention to the fore and let the momentary tension slip from me. There was no need for concern.

  The trolley halted in front of what had been the Nathaniel R. Ladysmith Museum, and now was…something else. Exactly what eluded my mind, like a fish slipping from my grasp in a murky pond.

  No matter. I disembarked the trolley and walked up the steps, merging with the flow of people or things. Some of them looked familiar: the woman with her dark hair, who walked a few feet away from the bronze-skinned man, neither glancing the other’s way. I did not speak to them, nor they to me, and soon I lost sight of them amidst the throng.

  “Come to me,” the voice whispered again.

  This time, I stopped and looked around for the source of the anomaly. A man with chestnut hair and green eyes barely avoided bumping into me. I felt a strange twinge in my chest at the sight of the spray of freckles across his tanned skin. He passed by, continuing on whatever business he had, without so much as a glance in my direction.

  Unease awoke deep in my belly. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Yes—and that something was me. Standing here, blocking the way so everyone else had to divert around me. I was in danger of becoming the grain of sand in the oyster shell—an irritant to be walled away for the good of the host.

  I forced myself to move. To go where I was appointed. Through the museum that was no longer a museum. Through shadowy corridors that grew impossibly larger as I walked, until the architecture towered over me. Carved murals covered the walls, the writing on them in strange clusters of dots I could not understand. Something that was like an umbra, but not, slipped past me without acknowledgement.

  At last I came to a hexagonal room. A column of blinding light pierced the center. Before it stood a ketoi man. Arcane fire spilled through his skin, and the dark markings along his back and arms writhed. I froze, unreasonably afraid he’d turn toward me, and I’d have to see his face.

  “Come to me,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”

  * * *

  I woke with a gasp.

  For a wild moment, I didn’t know where I was, the room around me taking on unfamiliar dimensions. The floor heaved beneath me, and I clawed instinctively at the bedsheets.

  Bedsheets. The roll of the sea.

  I was in my stateroom aboard the Melusine, making my way home to Widdershins with the remaining Endicotts in tow. Cool, salty air flowed in through the open skylight, a welcome break from the summer heat, which had plagued us since leaving the Isles of Scilly in our wake. I breathed deep, willing my thundering heart to settle.

  Griffin stirred in the bed beside me. “Is everything all right, my dear?” he asked sleepily.

  “Just a dream. A nightmare.”

  At one time, those words would have been a comfort. Now, they only roused Griffin further. “Are you certain that’s all it was?”

  We’d both had nightmares that were anything but. I when the dweller in the deeps reached out to my mind, and Griffin after his encounter with an umbra in Egypt. “It wasn’t a sending of the dweller,” I said. “That much I’m certain of, at least.” I related what I could recall of the dream to him; even as I spoke, parts of it began to fragment.

  “You didn’t know me,” I finished. “Christine, Iskander, we were all there, but we walked past one another as if we were strangers.”

  He rubbed my bare arm comfortingly. “It sounds disturbing.”

  “It was.”

  Griffin wound his arms and legs around me, hugging me tight. “I could never forget you, Ival. Or Christine, or Iskander. You’ve had a great deal on your mind. It’s no wonder you’d dream such troubling things.”

  He was right, of course. It had just been a fancy of my anxious mind, nothing more.

  “We’re almost home,” he went on. “Hopefully, being on dry land once again will ease your mind.”

  We’d put in to Widdershins by sunset tomorrow. Or rather, today, given the hour. Once there, Griffin would take on the task of settling the Endicotts on the old Somerby estate. I’d already begun decoding the Wisborg Codex, using the fragment saved from Balefire’s vault. Back in Widdershins, I’d have the museum’s complete copy of the Codex to work on. Hopefully, it would tell us what we’d need to either keep the masters from returning, or to defeat them if that was our only option.

  And hopefully, Persephone and I wouldn’t die in the process.

  I sat up and reached for the clothing I’d hung over a chair when we put out the lights. “I’m going up to the deck for a bit.”

  “Do you want company?”

  I did. I had the sense of our time together slipping away, the grains of the hourglass running out. I wanted to spend every possible second with him, just in case Nyarlathotep hadn’t lied. In case my sister and I really were doomed.

  But I couldn’t say that to him. So I just leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Try and get some more sleep. I’ll rejoin you soon.”

  * * *

  I stood for a time near the prow of the ship, watching lightning dance on the horizon. The storm hadn’t reached us yet, and hopefully wouldn’t, but there was something about seeing those distant sparks of light amidst the utter blackness of the sea. Thick clouds covered the stars, and the moon was waning fast.

  Lanterns glowed from the other ships in the flotilla. After the destruction of Balefire, the Endicotts needed somewhere new to settle, and for better or worse I’d invited them to relocate in Widdershins. Whether they would stay after we faced the masters’ return remained unclear. At least I now felt relatively certain they wouldn’t try to murder me, whatever else they decided.

  I hoped they wouldn’t, anyway.

  I preferred this sort of night at sea,
if only because the darkness hid the vastness of the water all around me. A youthful accident had instilled in me the fear of drowning, and even though it had been eroded somewhat by various sea voyages—not to mention several dunkings in the ocean at Balefire—it would never truly leave me.

  The salty air filled my lungs, and I clasped my hands behind my back. I hadn’t told anyone about the prophecy Nyarlathotep had made to me upon the heights of Carn Moreth, with Morgen’s Needle looming over us both. It claimed the maelstrom created Persephone and me to die, presumably as some sort of necessary sacrifices. That the only way to survive was to turn against the maelstrom and side with the masters.

  Which of course was out of the question. Neither of us would even consider such a thing, no matter the personal cost. Besides, Nyarlathotep likely had been lying, just as it had lied to Justinian Endicott and so many others. It had been a thing of chaos, the first servant created by the masters, bound utterly to their will and their existence. Why wouldn’t it have lied?

  I only wished I knew for certain whether there was any hope for survival. Or if my time on this earth—my time with Griffin—was truly winding down. If I might hope to see Christine’s child born.

  Persephone’s failure to propose to Miss Parkhurst had annoyed me. But perhaps she’d made the right decision after all. Would Miss Parkhurst’s grief be less, than if she lost a wife?

  I let out a long breath. There was no profit in such thoughts. If I could not sleep, I could at least work on decoding the fragment of the Wisborg Codex in my possession, rather than wallow in self-pity.

  Though I would have preferred to stay in the fresh air, the lighting below was better at this hour, so I retired to the room that served us as parlor, library, and dining area. My notes and the tattered fragment of the Codex were secured behind a brass bar on one of the shelves, and I settled myself with them at the table.

  The Wisborg Codex had been written—or perhaps copied from some older text, for all I knew—in the fifteenth century, and every replica I’d seen dated from that time. To preserve its secrets, the unknown scribe had used a complicated system of symbols, impossible to decode unless possessed of the correct key. Once decoded, the tome proved to be written in Aklo, the language used by sorcerers from medieval times on.

  I lost myself in decoding and translating. Time passed without meaning, my focus entirely on the aged pages in front of me.

  “What do you think, Whyborne?” Christine demanded.

  I started, pencil scrawling a mark across the paper. The gray light of dawn struggled through the portholes, and my neck ached from hours spent in the same strained position. Christine and Iskander had emerged from their stateroom at some point, but I’d not even noticed their presence until she spoke.

  “Think about what?” I sat back and rubbed at my neck. My eyes felt gritty, and I longed for a cup of coffee rather than tea.

  Christine dropped into a chair across from me. “Narmer if the baby is a boy, and Sobekneferu if it’s a girl.”

  “Er…”

  “I’m not entirely certain about naming our child after one of the pharaohs,” Iskander said as he seated himself beside her. “I thought perhaps, if it’s a boy, we might honor my paternal grandfather, Murgatroyd. What do you think, Whyborne?”

  Dear God. The poor child was doomed before it was even out of the womb.

  Rupert Endicott chose that moment to put in his appearance, saving me from answering. “Ah, good,” he said, spotting the partial Codex and my scribblings on the table. “You’re making progress, I take it?”

  “I am.”

  “Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together. “Then you can enlighten us all over breakfast.”

  Chapter 2

  Griffin

  We sat crowded around the small table, breakfast laid out in front of us. Whyborne had chosen only toast, a sure sign he was troubled. Beside him, Christine cheerfully shoveled eggs off her overflowing plate and into her mouth. The rest of us contented ourselves with porridge, rashers, and eggs, except for Heliabel, who nibbled delicately on a raw fish.

  Though we all bore bruises and scrapes from our sojourn through Carn Moreth, my mother-in-law had taken the worst injury. Many of the stinging tendrils on the right side of her head had been reduced to blackened stumps by an Endicott sorceress. Those on the other side curled idly as she ate, her eyes fixed on her son.

  “What have you discovered, Dr. Whyborne?” Rupert asked.

  Whyborne sipped his tea, made a face, and set it aside. “I’ll know more when I have an entire copy of the Codex in hand.”

  “We’re quite aware of that,” Christine said impatiently. “Surely there’s something of use in this fragment, though.”

  Whyborne shot her a testy look. He’d never returned to bed after his nightmare in the early hours, but then, he hadn’t been sleeping well ever since the events at Balefire. I’d hoped the sea voyage home might give him some chance to relax, before plunging back into his responsibilities in Widdershins, but instead he looked more worn than ever. Dark circles showed beneath his eyes, and the weight he’d put on after moving in with me had melted away as he reverted to his old habits of poor eating.

  I worried about him. So much rested on his shoulders, but he’d never been one to graciously allow anyone else to help him carry it. Maybe because he’d been so alone as a child; I didn’t know. I only wanted him to know the rest of us were here for him. That he didn’t have to bear his burdens alone.

  I slid my ankle over until it rested against his. He glanced at me; then his sour expression relaxed into a faint smile. “Hear and judge for yourself,” he said.

  Pushing away his toast, he gathered his notes, tapping them on the table to straighten the edges. “As we guessed from the illustrations in the full Codex, some of it is dedicated to discussing the creations of the masters. The ketoi, the umbrae, the rat-things, the Hounds of Tindalos. In addition to serving as a sort of bestiary, there’s a great deal of alchemical ranting about purification.”

  I frowned. “I thought alchemy was concerned with turning lead into gold, or discovering the elixir of immortality.” I glanced at Rupert. “Or sorcery.”

  Rupert looked faintly pained. “That is a common misunderstanding, I’m sorry to say. Alchemy is the art not only of transmuting the world, but transmuting the self through study. Solve et coagula—the dissolving of the imperfections of the soul, reducing it to its base materials, then crystallizing it anew in a more perfect form.”

  “And in theory, that would result in immortality?” I hazarded.

  “In terms of purifying the immortal soul and reuniting with God, yes.” Rupert set aside his plate and poured another cup of tea. “Much medieval alchemy is metaphor and symbol, filled with meanings only those in the know can correctly interpret. The lead is the sinning soul, transformed into the purest gold through knowledge and experimentation.” He paused as he lifted his cup to his lips. “Needless to say, the alchemy I perform is far more practical, and much less influenced by the Christian concept of sin.”

  “Which is one of the reasons I’m confused to find so many references to purification here,” Whyborne put in. He scowled at his notes, as if they might offer up answers spontaneously. “The Fideles are interested in power. They seem to believe they’ll have favored status once the masters return, that they can use to rule over the rest of us. Or, in the case of Mrs. Creigh, to save at least a part of humanity through appeasement. So why is their guidebook obsessed with perfecting humanity?”

  “Rupert said alchemy is veiled in metaphors known only to the initiated.” I glanced from Whyborne to Rupert and back again. “Perhaps ‘purification’ in this context means something we can’t guess.”

  “Who cares what the Fideles think they’re going to get?” Christine asked. “The masters are the true threat here. Don’t tell me we went to all the trouble to get the cipher for nothing.”

  “Hardly nothing,” Rupert said stiffly. “Even if saving the Endicotts holds
no worth to you, Nyarlathotep is no longer a threat. Not having to face it alongside the masters will surely be to our advantage.”

  Christine colored. “That isn’t at all what I meant, and you blasted well know it.”

  “There is more,” Whyborne said hastily, before tempers could flare any further. “As to when the masters will return, I don’t know. But according to the fragment, certain events will precede their emergence into our world.”

  I sat forward. “That could be useful.” More than useful—it would give us time to prepare, to plan, to get our forces in order before the final confrontation. “What are they?”

  “I’m afraid the first part is rather cryptic once again.”

  “You didn’t write the accursed thing, so there’s no reason to apologize.” Christine helped herself to Whyborne’s untouched toast and began to slather it with more butter. “Out with it, then.”

  Whyborne didn’t object to the theft; he rather seemed to have become accustomed to sharing his meals with Christine now. “There is a great deal of ranting about the return of some king. The ‘Lord of All Lands, who shall awaken from his long slumber remade by the masters, and herald the coming of the new world, when all will be purified.’ He will walk at the head of an army of the risen dead.”

  “That sounds like necromancy.” Heliabel’s remaining tentacles began to lash in agitation.

  Whyborne nodded grimly. “Agreed, but who are the Fideles going to resurrect? Who is this Lord of All Lands?”

  “We can probably assume it won’t be King Arthur,” she said with a faint smile.

  “Rex quondam, rexque futurus,” Rupert murmured.

  I arched a brow in Whyborne’s direction, who clarified, “King once, king to be. And yes, I doubt whatever figure they intend to call up will be half so benign.”