Winter Tide Read online

  It was no surprise, then, when Charlie pulled himself up. “I’ll do it.” Dawson didn’t argue, nor ought she have.

  Caleb and Neko walked beside me as we made our way the few blocks to the temple, his arm around my shoulder and hers squeezing my hand. I squeezed back and leaned against him, though I wanted to urge them elsewhere. It was some sort of paradox, to yearn for their presence but also wish them not to see. Grandfather concerned me less, though I knew it would hurt him as well to see me in pain. Perhaps I did think it some sort of expiation.

  “You don’t have to watch,” I told Neko, reluctant even as I said it.

  “Is this something you’re going to have nightmares about?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “If you’re going to wake me up in the middle of the night about it, then I should be here now.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Chulzh’th carried Sally again; Jesse walked beside her. As we left the beach, the line of starlight slid shut. The wind picked up, and I lifted my face to the snow. The storm might have lost its momentum, but it hadn’t forgotten itself.

  The temple was only two blocks from the dunes. I hated to see it silent and empty, hated more to cross the threshold, where the wooden door hung off its hinges, and smell dust and mildew in place of incense. Audrey’s flashlight found cobwebs, layers of dirt, detritus blown in and pews and lamps scattered and broken. Figures of gods had been toppled, or looted from now-empty pedestals.

  Ngalthr found and lit an old-fashioned torch, and led us down narrow stairs into the catacombs, trailing pungent smoke. As a child I’d entered rarely, but the subterranean warren had been a place of adventure. You could get in trouble for exploring the catacombs, but turning a corner might unveil anything from an ill-made statue of Nyarlathotep to a collection of century-old brooms. As the archpriest led us through the winding maze, I realized that even on those sojourns I’d seen little of their extent.

  “These chambers were intended to hide all Innsmouth and much of Y’ha-nthlei, if needed,” said Grandfather. “But they did little good when danger actually came.”

  “The soldiers attacked the temple first,” said Caleb. “No one could have fled there.”

  We stopped at a line of stone platforms, carved with stylized figures of elders and long, sinuous fish. Chulzh’th placed Sally’s body on one. To the side, an archway opened onto a larger room. Ngalthr entered, lit candles still in their sconces, and set the torch in a holder.

  The room was made all of black stone, traced with veins of gold. Diagrams and symbols and passages of Enochian etched the walls and floor. In the center stood an altar of the same material. I approached, cautiously, and saw the shallow indentations in the top, carved to hold a human body. Tatters of a cushion rotted at the head, and scraps of leather bonds clung to the iron rings that must have anchored them.

  No bonds remained whole to buttress my will. I would simply have to keep still.

  Ngalthr felt at the base of the altar and pulled loose a block of stone. When he stood, he held a knife. He offered it to me, and I examined it. The handle was gold, worked in stylized figures of gods and waves. The blade was plain and functional steel, folded so that tiny rivulets glinted across the surface. It was an old technique, one that I had seen only in the work of elders and in a sword belonging to an old man who lived near the Kotos. He’d brought it with him from Japan, and secreted it somewhere prior to the war.

  Interesting how such distant cultures had discovered the same way of strengthening metal. And easier to consider the coincidence than to think about what that metal was for.

  Trumbull examined the room’s carvings with clinical eyes, discussed necessary additions and alterations with Mary, and decided that the room itself need not be modified. They called me over, along with Charlie and Audrey. Mary pulled pen and ink and a small brush from her bag; after further discussion Trumbull used the brush to paint our faces and arms. I took a deep breath and undressed first. Ngalthr would need me to do that anyway, soon enough, and I didn’t wish to increase our risk by smudging Trumbull’s work. Spector at least would find this uninteresting, I hoped, though he looked away delicately. I looked at Jesse and did not blush or smirk. He met my gaze briefly, then ducked his head.

  “Do we, ah, need to…?” asked Charlie. He’d removed his jacket and pushed up his sleeves to make a larger canvas, and was already shivering. I was pleased to find that while I could still feel the crypt’s chill, it was not so deep or distressing as it had been. Then I felt the shame of my comfort.

  “Shouldn’t be necessary,” said Trumbull, tracing a long equation down his arm. Focused on her work, her face held a little of the detached quality I’d grown accustomed to. “Though Miss Harris thinks some of the physical effects may carry through the link, so if you’re wearing anything you especially don’t want to bleed on, you might remove it.”

  We began.

  There is courage, different from that which armors warriors, in lying down before a knife. There is, I think, yet another sort in wielding the knife. Archpriest Ngalthr met my eyes as I lay back on the altar. I was afraid he might apologize, but he didn’t. The stone curved subtly against my bare skin: I found where I was meant to lie easily. The cool solidity sank into me, until I felt no more able to move than the altar itself. My heart beat fast; my breaths came deep and long. Outlined by air and stone, I felt keenly aware of all my body’s surfaces.

  Firelight echoed in sparks from the carven walls, from the skin and scales and clothing of those who stood around me. Ngalthr and Mary began chanting: Ngalthr the familiar words of the Inner Sea, Mary something stranger, half in English and half in the jargon she shared with Trumbull. My awareness of the room and my own skin grew sharper—but overlaid on them came Charlie’s skin and Audrey’s, the blood that coursed within each of us, and the energies that bound that blood together. Fainter impressions followed of Caleb and Dawson, and I knew with regret that we would not be able to fully spare them.

  But Mary’s equations did what we couldn’t alone. The darkness flowed over Audrey’s banks and spilled into the rest of us. It made me feel angry and strong and confident—and beneath that frightened at an anger and confidence nothing like my own. In turn, some of the strength of my own blood spilled over into her and Charlie. It sent their rivers foaming to rapids, and made a place of clear water within Audrey’s tumble of light and void.

  And in that tumult of mixing blood, I could see clearly that some of the pulsating, airless cold still remained in me—my own contagion, not only an echo of Sally’s. If I had cut her loose on my own, earlier, would I have spared myself this? But I couldn’t regret staying with her.

  And it didn’t make the work harder, that I must bear this for myself as well as for Audrey. It only meant that if I failed to save her, I would have my penance swiftly.

  The chant ceased; our strengthened connection settled into place. Then the elders began singing. They’d moved to the edges of the room so that music wove around me from all directions. The words were familiar, though it had been long since I’d heard them: a chant offered to the sick, the dying, the grieving. The Litany of the Peoples of Earth was a part of it, but so too were prayers to all the gods, and something that was nearly a prayer to the listener—to be strong, to be patient, to endure, to wait and change.

  The ancient words were comfort, a reminder that pain too was ephemeral. But I felt Charlie’s heart lurch, and knew how they sounded to his ears: harsh and alien and ominous in the progression of archaic tones. The elders sung in swooping altos that bubbled on the low notes, and in basses so deep they vibrated bone. I braced myself, clinging to the sound, hoping it would be enough.

  At the first cut, I screamed. It was not only physical pain, where the knife bit into me below my collarbone. I saw my father lying still with blood seeping over half-formed gills. Twelve again, weak and terrified, listening to my mother’s prayers in the back of a van full of prisoners.

  Before the knife pulled aw
ay I forgot that it would end. Then I heard the chant again, felt Charlie’s determination and fear and Audrey’s strange dark defenders, remembered that I must not run. But too, I felt Charlie gasp, heart painful in his chest. I pushed a little of my own blood over its boundaries, trying to share endurance I wasn’t convinced I had.

  Ngalthr’s face, when I dared look, was grim. I had the luxury of screaming; he did not. I watched the knife descend and did not close my eyes, for his sake. Pain blossomed across my forehead, and blood. This time there was no memory, only a wash of heat that limned the cold within me but did nothing to lessen it. Desert and drought, and the sun burning away the last of the oceans. I would be reduced to ash; I had to flee. And there was a dark place I could go, far away, where I could hide.

  But amid the burning I felt Audrey’s protective void, free of heat or cold or doubt. I had promised to stay here. I reached for it, knowing her defenses were dangerous but unable to care about anything beyond the pain and the fear and the holding on.

  The blade lifted. I gasped, and bit down hard on my tongue so I couldn’t beg Ngalthr to stop. That pain was barely perceptible. I closed my eyes, focused my will on not begging, not running. Yet when I felt the knife brush my belly, I thrashed and could not force my body still. I heard crying, recognized it for Neko’s.

  Cool, sharp-tipped hands grasped my arms and held them fast. I opened my eyes and saw Grandfather, his own eyes shut, but there and doing what was needful. I could not shame him. I relaxed my muscles, bit by bit, beneath his grip, and forced the rest of my body to follow. I closed my eyes again, and this time when the cool metal touched my navel, I controlled my reaction well enough that Ngalthr found his target. And screamed again as he did so.

  Where the knife touched my mind, I saw Audrey fallen, still and cold as Sally. Charlie, withered and wrinkled and forgetting my name, screaming to see me as an elder. Neko, Caleb, Grandfather, piles of beloved, empty bodies. I clung to those I knew hopelessly lost, and stayed beside them as I had promised.

  Cut after cut, fears and memories and exquisitely specific doubts and pains stripped utterly of context. But when I opened my eyes, when I could, I saw Grandfather still there, and Charlie and Audrey on either side. Audrey leaned hard against the altar, gasping, and Charlie stood bent and rigid. They held my hands so tightly that it would have hurt, if I were still capable of noticing such a pedestrian discomfort. I clung to them, and to myself: because I had promised, and because their shared strength gave me an anchor, and because the one fear that remained constant was of how much worse it would hurt if I turned away.

  The knife bit hard into the join of neck and shoulder, and I felt myself falling into endless void, knowing at once that I had lost control and would drift forever fading, and that I must continue to hold where I was certain I’d already let go. And in the midst of that paradoxical terror, I felt the cold loosen its grip. Hooks that had dug fast into me, into Audrey, slipped.

  Another cut, and I became convinced that Ngalthr had erred, that it would be me cut loose from my body and the cold left to take up residence. It would convince everyone that it was me, lead my friends to death and ruin. I tried to pull away, to stop it, but firm hands held me down. As Ngalthr lifted the knife, the cold went with it, pulling away from me and from Audrey like a withered scab.

  Ngalthr gasped—we all did, I think—and he held the coruscating light on the tip of the knife, well away from the living humans around him. The chant changed, became more rhythmic and aggressive. The mass dimmed, pulsed, dimmed again, and flickered out at last.

  I lay in the suddenly darkened room, pulse pounding, realizing slowly that I did not need to brace for the next cut. A broader awareness returned, beyond the lessened pain and the hands that had held me throughout: the stone now warm beneath me and sticky with my own blood, the smell of sweat, the remaining sting of myriad cuts, cold air that now seemed a balm, murmurs from the edges of vision.

  Charlie leaned on the altar, drawing shaky breaths. Audrey eased herself down against the cool stone; through our link I felt it solid against her back. I tried to sit up, found that it was a bad idea and lay back again. Chulzh’th appeared with a damp cloth and began cleaning my wounds. I felt absurd for flinching where it stung. I managed to turn my head, and saw Caleb and Dawson and Neko.

  “You okay?” Neko asked, voice squeaking a little on the question.

  I laughed shakily, found that I could manage that though it hurt my throat. “I will—” I coughed, and pain shot through my chest. I swallowed hard, and Chulzh’th handed me the salt water she’d been using to wash me. I drank it greedily, and managed to say: “I will be. Give me a minute.”

  “Aphra?” Audrey’s voice echoed too loudly. “I think we still have a problem.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Through the link I felt it: the gift of Audrey’s ancestor, triumphant over the outsider, rising to take the space it had been granted. The dark strength was greatest in the woman who bore it, but it swirled too in me and Charlie. I felt an anger and a strange joy that belonged to none of us as individuals. My pain, I realized as I looked more closely, had fed the Mad Ones’ creation even as it worked against the cold. The k’n-yan, all the stories said, drew pleasure and power from exotic tortures. Though this pain had been to a purpose and endured willingly, it had been terrible enough, and strange enough, to feed any such need.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mary.

  “My little pets helped,” said Audrey. “But now we can’t put them back in their box.”

  Mary looked frightened. “The equations—the ritual was supposed to take care of that. If it didn’t work—”

  “It didn’t,” said Audrey. I could sense her anger spilling in a growing desire to share the pain we’d just been through, pain it now started to remember as a malicious attack.

  This would not keep while Trumbull and Mary tried to recalculate.

  “I know what to do,” I said. In truth, “know” was a very strong word, but it grabbed Audrey and Charlie’s increasingly distractible attention and helped me suppress the anger in favor of unearned confidence. I tried again to rise, and this time found sitting possible if vertiginous. Grandfather let go my wrists and did not argue. I looked down at myself, found raw red lines beginning to scab over but still tender to the least touch or movement.

  “Good,” said Charlie. “What?”

  “Help me stand.”

  Audrey and Charlie helped me to my feet, and Caleb and Dawson and Neko hurried forward to offer additional hands. Spector hovered just out of range, seeming torn between feeling he should help and realizing that this was beyond his powers. Ngalthr, too, kept his distance, head bowed. I looked around for Jesse, found him standing still by the door, watching Audrey with frightened eyes.

  “This was too much like the Mad Ones’ arenas,” I tried to explain. “The differences would only matter to us. We need to remind them that we’re not under the earth.”

  Archpriest Ngalthr looked up. I tried not to let the knife draw my eyes. “Ah. Yes, I see,” he said. “That could work, perhaps.” I focused on the “yes” rather than the doubt. I pushed myself to my feet, leaned heavily on Audrey.

  “You want your clothes?” she asked.

  “Not now. We need to go outside.”

  “And therefore you should have clothes.”

  Anger overwhelmed me, ridiculous in the face of such a tiny argument. “Not. Now.”

  We filed out: Audrey helped support me on one side and Caleb on the other. Chulzh’th knelt briefly beside Sally’s body, whispered a prayer. “We’ll come back afterward,” she said to Jesse. “Do you want to stay here and keep vigil?”

  He looked around at the crowd, and at the catacombs. “No. I’ll come.”

  I felt stronger even as we walked. Scabs still pulled where I moved too quickly, but Ngalthr had not exaggerated our endurance. By the time we got outside, I no longer needed support to stand. I spread my arms to the snow and the cold, and found that they n
o longer hurt me. That was good, given what I planned.

  Looking at the symbols still inked on my outstretched arms, I saw another problem. “Miss Harris—the ink you used, will it come off in water?”

  “With a little scrubbing, yes.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “In D.C., they don’t like it when you come into the office painted up like some savage.”

  So I’d have a minute. I just needed to figure out precisely what I’d use it for.

  Back over the dune and down to the water. The wind had picked up, and though the tide had receded waves still crashed high on the beach. I placed Charlie and Audrey just out of their reach. “Focus on the connection between us,” I told them. “And with me, especially; I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it going.”

  The underlying, permanent connection of the confluence would help. This would have been harder, with Sally in Charlie’s place—no, I’d just have had to bring her into the confluence. And I’d have come to love her as well as I now did Audrey and Dawson. I recalled the strangers in the sandwich shop, all the possible intimacies passed by.

  I walked into the water. I raised my arms high to protect the symbols painted on them, though it probably looked like I was being dramatic. I forced that self-consciousness aside, and focused. A few hours ago the water’s cold would have set me shivering. Now, along with the scent of salt and stormwrack, it told me that I was home. I curled my toes in the sandbar, felt it ooze between them. A wave rolled past, lifting me and setting me down a foot away, tossing salt-spray against my eyes. I dug in my toes, licked my lips, and reached out. To Audrey and Charlie, watching nervously from shore—but also to the water itself.

  You cannot control the ocean. The ocean transforms constantly, moved by a thousand currents; the ocean endures. But you can send your mind into it. It is a vast body, and will swallow you whole if you don’t stay anchored. I remembered what I’d seen as Ngalthr reached into the storm. Not control, and not surrender. An invitation.