Chantress (18 page)

Once we entered the tunnel, however, Norrie balked. “I . . . I can’t.”

Caught behind her, I could barely see the flicker of Nat’s lantern up ahead. Trying not to think of the darkness and what it might harbor, I touched her trembling back. “What’s wrong?”

“This.” Shielding her eyes, she pointed upward. “All that earth, pressing down on us. Ready to swallow us up . . .”

“It won’t, Norrie. It won’t. Try not to think about it.” I was trying hard not to think about it myself. A difficult job in the still, damp air.

“I can’t help it.” It was almost a sob. “I’m sorry.”

I tried to comfort her, but the tunnel was narrow, and I couldn’t do much except pat her shaking shoulders.

A flash of light: Nat was coming back with the lantern. “What’s the delay?”

Norrie didn’t speak.

“She doesn’t like being underground,” I said quickly. “It scares her.”

I was afraid he might scold her, but instead, he spoke to her gently as a bird. “You’re not the first to feel that way, believe me,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll put you to rights.”

The nightmare I’d seen in Nat’s head came back to me.
Walls dark and glistening as jet. Walls so tight they scraped hands and knees . . .

No, Norrie wasn’t the first.

“Take my hand, will you? And now look at the lantern,” Nat said to her. “That’s it. Concentrate on the light, and think about the sun, warm and bright on a summer’s day. The sun on an open meadow, with the sky wide and blue above you. Now take a deep breath . . .”

His voice went on and on, soothing and kind, without any sharp edges to it. I hardly recognized it as Nat’s, yet as I listened, I felt my own shoulders relax.

It had the same effect on Norrie. He coaxed her into taking first one step, and then another, until she was walking steadily down the tunnel.

“And now we’re almost through. Can you hold the lantern for me while I turn the lock? Keep looking into the light, that’s it. Watch that soft, bright flame. And here we go, straight through . . .”

The moment we entered the cellars, matters improved. It was still dark, but the hallways were taller and broader than the tunnel, and fresh currents of air stirred as we walked.

By the light of the lantern, I saw Norrie’s expression ease, though she still kept her eyes on the lantern.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Nat.

“No thanks needed. She did it herself.” He nodded at Norrie encouragingly. “I’d say the worst is behind us now.”

I believed him until we reached the rooms Sir Barnaby had in mind. Even as we crossed the threshold, my spirits sank. The first room—the largest, Nat informed me—was small and low-ceilinged and covered with dust, and the dingy walls had no windows. Indeed, once we were inside, it was almost impossible to see where the door was, so carefully was it concealed.

A refuge, Sir Barnaby had called it. It looked more like a prison to me. And from the look on Norrie’s face, that’s how she saw it too.

Only Nat seemed pleased. He carefully settled Norrie into the sturdiest chair available, resting the lantern on the table beside her. “It’s good to see the old place again.”

“You’ve been here before?” I said.

“More times than I can count. It used to be Sir Barnaby’s alchemy laboratory.”

I regarded the smoke-begrimed walls of the room with dismay. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. But that was a while ago. The IC is more interested in practical experiments nowadays—though there’s hardly any time for those, either. It’s been over a year since we last met here.” He nodded toward the hampers in the corner. “It looks like you’re well set for provisions.”

“For now.”

“I gather you’ll be getting regular baskets delivered. The cook here is one of our confederates, and no one bakes a finer pork pie.” He glanced back at the half-open door behind us. “Let me check the back room—the pallets should be there, and some blankets to go with them.”

I was about to follow him when I saw Norrie shiver.

“Chilly?” I asked.

“A b-bit.”

As I wrapped my cloak around her, she covered her face. Not just chilly, then. I knelt beside her. “Norrie, what can I do?”

She kept her hand over her eyes. “I—I need a moment to get used to the place.” She shuddered again.

“Everything’s shipshape there,” Nat said, coming back into the
room. He cast one quick look at us and crossed to the fireplace. “Let me see what I can do to warm things up.”

He pulled open the doors of a black box that squatted in the middle of the hearth.

“What’s that?” I asked, not because I cared very much, but because I thought conversation would comfort Norrie more than cold silence.

“A firebox.” Nat stacked coals inside, then kindled a flame. “It gives out more heat than an ordinary fire.”

“More heat?” I said, my curiosity piqued despite myself. “That small box?”

“Yes.” He stepped back from the fire, now merrily crackling, and shut the door on it.

I looked down at Norrie, wondering what she thought of the device, but her eyes were closed. She seemed to have forgotten us entirely.

“That should do it.” Nat twiddled a few levers and looked with satisfaction at the black box. “You won’t need to add more coal for another six hours at least.”

I started to worry about how I would manage the box once he was gone. “You’ll have to teach me what to do. I’ve never seen one before.”

“It’s a new design.”

“Yours?” I guessed.

He looked a little abashed. “Mostly, yes. Though I had some help from the IC. We needed something safer than an open hearth, and something that made better use of coal. Luckily,
there’s a good circulation of air here, even though we’re underground. We’ll have these rooms warm in no time.”

I looked at the metal contraption again, thinking that I was in favor of anything that would heat the room quickly. “How long did it take you to build it?”

“Off and on, about a year,” Nat said. “Christopher Linnet and some others helped me with the plans, but after that it was a matter of trial and error. Quite a lot of error, sometimes: The second firebox nearly blew us all up.”

I gave the walls a startled glance. The grime I’d seen there . . .

“Scorch marks,” Nat confirmed. “But you needn’t worry. I won’t be doing any experiments while you’re here, and neither will anyone else in the IC—”

Next to me, Norrie let out a strangled sob.

“Norrie, what is it?” I leaned in close, trying to take her hands in mine, but she was hunched over so tightly that I couldn’t reach them. “Is it the room?”

“All that weight on top of us,” she gasped. “Like being buried alive . . .”

I tried to reassure her and so did Nat, but this time nothing worked. She only curled tighter and tighter, shaking so hard I was afraid she would do herself an injury.

“Dear Norrie, don’t.” I tried to stretch my arms around her. “Please don’t hurt yourself.” But she hardly seemed to know I was there. As her breathing grew shallower and shallower, I looked up at Nat. “What do we do?”

“We’d best get her out of here,” he said.

Send Norrie away? “No.” The answer flew out of me before I’d had time to think.

Nat looked like he was about to argue with me, but a soft fusillade of knocks interrupted him. He went to the door. “Dr. Penebrygg’s signal. He must be having trouble with the locks again.”

When Nat pulled back the latch, Lady Helaine swept past us. Penebrygg tumbled in afterward. As Lady Helaine looked the room up and down, Penebrygg came straight to my side. “Is Miss Norrie ill, then?”

I explained what the matter was, rubbing Norrie’s back as I spoke. She never stopped shaking. I wasn’t even sure she understood what I was saying anymore. “Is there anything we can give her?”

Penebrygg looked down doubtfully. “We might perhaps be able to find some poppy syrup to make her sleep. But that won’t solve anything in the long term. If it’s being underground that does this to her, she’ll have trouble staying here even for a day, let alone months on end.”

Shaking out her beads, Lady Helaine came over to view Norrie. “She can’t stay here, not like that.”

Nat nodded in agreement. “We can’t leave her like this. Her heart could give out.”

Under my hand, Norrie shuddered again. I had wanted her here beside me—here to mother me, if the truth be told. But not if it meant she had to suffer like this. And certainly not if it meant risking her death.

I turned to Nat. “How fast can we get her out?”

Very fast, was the answer. While Nat improvised a litter out of his cloak and some odds and ends in the room, Penebrygg explained what he had in mind: They would carry Norrie to a secret entrance that led up into the upper cellars of Gadding House. There was a set of hidden rooms there, with half windows that let in air and light. “She can stay there till she’s herself again. Then we’ll leave through the servants’ entrance and take her home with us.”

Nat gave me quick instructions on how to work the firebox and turn the locks and everything else he thought I needed to know. By the time he was done, Norrie’s breathing was so shallow that she fainted away. We bundled her in blankets and shifted her over to the litter, making as quick a job of it as we could.

Before I knew it, I was giving Norrie’s slack hand one last squeeze. Then Nat and Penebrygg braced the litter between them.

I’ll come with you,
I almost said. But I knew I needed to stay here in the darkness, here in the depths, here with my teacher, Lady Helaine. No matter how much I wanted to be with Norrie instead. I held the door, and they left, Norrie unconscious between them.

By rights, the room ought to have felt more spacious after they were gone, with only two of us left to share it. Yet somehow it felt more confining than ever.

Trying not to think about how many floors of Gadding House were piled above me, I turned to Lady Helaine. “Will they be all right, do you think?”

“I expect so,” Lady Helaine said briskly. “In any case, it does no good to worry about it. We have more important matters to attend to.”

More important than Norrie’s health? I frowned.

Lady Helaine guessed what I was thinking. “The greatest threat to us all—even Norrie—is Scargrave. And only you can save us. That being so, we cannot afford to become distracted from our true purpose, which is to train you as a Chantress. Every other worry and concern must be set aside.”

Heartless though it sounded, there was a certain logic to what she was saying. I silenced my objections and tried to listen.

“Where to begin?” Lady Helaine said. “This is what I have
asked myself. You are foolish, you are impatient, you are shockingly ignorant—and your instincts are deplorable.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.

“Fortunately, all is not lost,” Lady Helaine continued. “You come from good stock, and blood and breeding count for a great deal. Your gift, though so far misused, appears uncommonly strong. The stone you bear is a sign of that. Although every Chantress has one, few are as extraordinary as yours. If you will put yourself in my hands, doing everything I tell you to do, then I have every hope we will succeed.”

My cheeks stopped stinging, though they remembered the slap. “I will do whatever you ask of me,” I promised her.
I will do whatever it takes to defeat Scargrave and make us all safe.

For a long moment, Lady Helaine regarded me in unblinking silence, as if probing the strength of my resolve. Then she nodded sharply and said in a voice that was even rougher than usual, “We shall begin, then. But where?” She ran an impatient hand over her bone beads. “If you had started your apprenticeship with me at age ten, as is customary, we would have had a full five years to cover the rudiments of Chantress magic. But there is nothing normal about our situation, and time is short. We must concentrate only on essentials. Still, you must understand something of our background, our history. So let us start with a question, an easy one: How is Chantress magic worked?”

It was so easy that I feared there must be a trick. “Through songs?”

Lady Helaine dusted her palms in irritation. “Don’t answer like a scared little rabbit.”

I did my best to sound confident. “The magic is worked through songs.”

“That is correct. Using song-spells, we charm the objects, animals, and plants into doing our bidding.”

“Only objects, animals, and plants?” I put the question boldly, since that was the tone my godmother admired. “Not people?”

“Not often, not anymore. Long ago, there were some very remarkable Chantresses who could do it easily. Niniane, for instance, who trapped the wizard Merlin in a rock.” Lady Helaine’s battered voice subsided in a sigh. “But much that was possible for Chantresses in ancient times is utterly beyond us now.”

“Dr. Penebrygg said that in the old days, Chantresses—”

Lady Helaine stopped me with a look. “What others have told you is not to be relied upon. When I think of the damage they did to you, encouraging you to remove your stone . . .” Her lips tightened. “You must forget everything they told you and listen only to me. Is that understood?”

I knew the answer my godmother was expecting. “Yes, Lady Helaine.”

“Now, as I told you last night, there are two kinds of magic that a Chantress can work. One involves Wild Magic, and that is forbidden. The other is Proven Magic, and that is what I will teach you.” She paused. “But before we begin, let me be sure that I have made the fundamental rule abundantly clear: You must never, ever remove your stone.”

“I understand.” The stone seemed almost to glow as I spoke. “Is it true that every Chantress has one?”

“Indeed.”

“Where is yours?”

For a moment, I thought that Lady Helaine would not answer.

But then she reached past her long string of bone beads, under the thick wool of her gown, and drew out a milky-white stone, clouded and cracked.

“Once it was as clear as your own,” Lady Helaine said. “But see what the Shadowgrims did. When my stone had power, it shone like a diamond, and it was as heavy as gold; now it is dull, and no more weighty than a shell on the shore. The magic in it has gone.”