The Inner Circle: Holy Spirit (14 page)

Ilgrin had the wind knocked out of his
lungs when he slammed bodily into El-i-miir’s pursuer. The two hit
the earth and tumbled through the dirt until they hit a tree. There
was no time. Ilgrin pushed the stranger away and threw an arm
around El-i-miir’s waist, to drag her feverishly into the air. He
ignored his complaining muscles and doubled his efforts, spotted an
exit and shot through an opening in the canopy.

‘
Where’s
Seteal?’

‘
I don’t know,’
El-i-miir choked out. ‘They’re gaining on us, Ilgrin!’ she
cried.

‘
I know,’ Ilgrin
murmured, risking a glance over his shoulder. ‘Forgive me!’ he
shouted as he opened his toes and allowed El-i-miir to plummet
screaming into the stream below. ‘What!?’ Ilgrin shouted back at
his attackers. ‘It’s me you want!’

‘
Get the girl!’ one
the silts shouted and another immediately swooped toward the
earth.

‘
No,’ Ilgrin gasped,
but it was too late. A man much larger and stronger than Ilgrin
wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed just hard enough to
make it difficult to breathe. A pistol was put to Ilgrin’s head as
the silt swooped down, dragging him along by his throat. They
reached the earth to find El-i-miir had been pinned down, sopping
wet and terrified.

‘
Watch this,’
El-i-miir said breathily to Ilgrin’s captor. The silt who had been
holding her down stepped back, his eyes staring at
nothing.

‘
Caleb?’ another of
the silt’s enquired. ‘Are you okay?’ Caleb said nothing. He calmly
raised a pistol to the side of his head and pulled the trigger.
Ilgrin gasped in horror and leapt back as the body hit the
earth.

‘
It’s the woman!’ the
silt who’d spoken earlier said nervously. ‘She’s an
affiliate.’

‘
Kill her,’ the large
silt ordered. ‘Quickly!’

‘
No.’ Ilgrin leapt
forward, only to be dragged back by his throat. El-i-miir grunted
and her eyes closed as she was struck in the back of the head. A
silt kneelt over Caleb, hands placed flat against his chest. Bits
of scull and brains tumbled across the earth and leapt back into
place. His scull crunched and shimmied into a smooth surface. Skin
slid across muscle and fresh hair sprouted. Then that dirty black
mist with which Ilgrin was so familiar drifted away from Caleb’s
flesh as he came back to life.

‘
What do you want
from me?’ Ilgrin snapped, unable to tear his eyes from El-i-miir’s
dead or unconscious form. If the former were true, he would not
hesitate to resurrect her. To torrid with the
consequences.

‘
Under order of his
Highness the Devil you are hereby placed under arrest for informal
execution this night,’ Caleb removed his sword from its
scabbard.

‘
Ilgrin!’ Seteal’s
voice pierced the night as she hurried between the trees. ‘Get
down.’ The woman hit the ground, abandoning her lifeless body to
roll to a stop at Caleb’s feet.

‘
That was
anticlimactic.’ Caleb nudged Seteal with his toe.

Ilgrin swallowed nervously as an eerie
silence fell upon the woods. Night birds didn’t sing. Crickets
didn’t chirp. The trees didn’t rustle. Ilgrin didn’t need to be
told twice. He hit the ground and squeezed El-i-miir’s hand. A wave
of hot wind poured through the trees in the form of a deafening
explosion. Ilgrin clung to a root and grabbed Seteal’s leg in his
toes when her body rolled toward him. The silts clung to trees and
branches, but soon lost their grip.

The wind stopped and Ilgrin released
Seteal, allowing her to rock onto her back. His eyes ran over her
slender body and down to her slightly extended stomach. He realised
then that she was pregnant, but didn’t have time to contemplate the
situation. He turned back to El-i-miir to find Caleb had already
snatched her into the air. The silts must’ve thought she was
responsible for the wind.

Ilgrin leapt into the night sky.
El-i-miir’s scream told him that she’d regained consciousness. A
silt’s body hit the earth with a sickening thud. One by one the
others did the same. They were in flight and then they were dead,
falling through the air. Only Caleb remained. And he was
El-i-miir’s captor. Ilgrin lunged into the air only to discover a
newly repossessed Caleb heading back to earth. His landing was
clumsy, which was forgivable considering El-i-miir’s lack of
experience in flight. Ilgrin landed and took the woman into his
arms.

Caleb’s legs fell out from under him as
he died and fell on his face.

‘
What happened to
them?’ Ilgrin stepped over for a closer look. He gazed at the
bodies all around them and slowly spun in terror. He’d miscounted
earlier. Caleb wasn’t the last. ‘El-i-miir!’

A sword slashed forward, pierced
El-i-miir’s back and came out through her stomach. She looked down,
hands hovering above the blade. Behind her stood a young silt, his
expression one of relished vengeance. He sneered and tore the blade
free, preparing for a second strike. It was one that would never
come. His eyes rolled back and he fell in death.

El-i-miir landed on her knees. Ilgrin
rushed to her side. Her face became white and she shook
uncontrollably. She fell onto her side. Ilgrin got to his
knees.

‘
Oh, Maker, no,’ he
sobbed.

‘
Ilgrin,’ El-i-miir
wheezed. ‘Don’t do it. You have to promise not to do
it.’

‘
Why?’ Ilgrin
breathed, inches from her face.

‘
It’s too much,’
El-i-miir sobbed. ‘I could never forgive you.’

‘
But you’re dying,’
Ilgrin pleaded. ‘Let me.’

‘
It’s not worth the
cost.’ El-i-miir’s eyes began to close.

‘
Don’t do this,’
Ilgrin barked, stood up and slammed his fist into a tree. ‘What am
I supposed do?’ he shouted at nobody.

‘
Do it.’ A clammy
hand wrapped around Ilgrin’s wrist and squeezed
reassuringly.

‘
You?’ Ilgrin stared
at Seteal as he again hunched over El-i-miir protectively. ‘Of all
people, this is coming from you?’

‘
Do it,’ Seteal
repeated without expression. ‘The longer you wait, the worse it’ll
be. You know that.’

‘
She doesn’t . . .
didn’t want me to,’ Ilgrin said, realising El-i-miir’s chest had
ceased to rise and fall. ‘And you shouldn’t either.’

‘
She’s not very
dead,’ Seteal pushed. ‘If you act now, the whisp won’t necessarily
be too large.’

‘
Any amount of evil
is too much.’ Ilgrin shook his head.

‘
Listen to me, you
idiot,’ Seteal snapped. ‘She doesn’t want you to save her life
because you’re going to die instead.’

‘
What?’ Ilgrin
gasped.

‘
You’re going to die,
Ilgrin,’ Seteal said without compassion. ‘I had a knowing. You’re
going to save her life and then you’re going to die.’

‘
The whisp,’ Ilgrin
said softly. ‘It’s going to kill me.’

‘
That’s the choice
you have to make,’ Seteal replied. ‘It’s the one I already know you
have made.’

There was no further hesitation. Ilgrin
put his hands over El-i-miir’s body and immediately they began to
tingle. Then they burned. The wound in El-i-miir’s stomach shrank
and sealed up. El-i-miir’s colour returned, she took a breath and
her beautiful blue eyes popped open. They looked at Ilgrin
revealing a mixture of sorrow and betrayal. Her quivering lips
parted and she rolled onto hands and knees. She coughed twice and
again looked at Ilgrin.

‘
Run,’ she choked
out. Then the black mist poured from her nose and mouth. It wafted
from her pores and oozed from her tear ducts.

‘
I love you.’ Ilgrin
stepped back as the darkness began to fill the clearing. He turned
and leapt into the sky. He beat his wings as hard as he could, but
knew there would be no way to outrun a whisp. Had it chosen him as
a target, it would not rest until satisfied.

A patch of moving darkness blotted out
the stars behind him. The whisp was coming. Ilgrin panted and cried
as he beat his wings to the point of agony. He needed to go faster.
Faster! The only sign that the whisp was getting any closer was the
fact that increasingly greater numbers of stars were vanishing
behind him. The cold slithered up Ilgrin’s legs and along his body.
The whisp crawled over his flesh, toying with him, a cat playing
with its food. Then there was only darkness. Ilgrin could hear
himself breathing, otherwise all was silent and black. The mist had
enveloped him completely.

Quite unexpectedly his toes became
warm, then his legs and body. The mist overtook him and continued
on its journey. It hadn’t been pursuing him after all, merely
travelling in the same direction. Ilgrin headed back to where he’d
left the others, flooded with relief.

‘
Seems like you were
wrong.’ Ilgrin landed before Seteal and El-i-miir.

‘
Oh, thank Maker,’
El-i-miir rushed into his arms.

‘
Maybe it’ll come
back.’ Seteal frowned.

‘
I don’t think so,’
Ilgrin replied. ‘It passed right through me . . . or I did through
it. Whatever! My point is that it didn’t fuse. So you,’ he wiggled
a finger at Seteal, ‘were wrong!’

‘
I’m often wrong,’
Seteal said dismissively, ‘but the knowing is never wrong. My
interpretation of when may have been incorrect, but you will
someday die to save her.’

‘
Oh, for goodness
sake,’ Ilgrin grumbled, ‘can’t you let us enjoy this small victory
without being a constant downer?’

‘
Don’t enjoy yourself
too much,’ El-i-miir said quietly. ‘We’ve still done something
terrible here.’

‘
This is true.’
Seteal glared at Ilgrin and shook her head.

‘
You encouraged me to
do it!’ Ilgrin threw out his arms defensively.

‘
Only because I
thought it was going to kill you,’ Seteal replied with a
shrug.

‘
Really?’ Ilgrin
stared at her in disbelief. ‘I still mean that little to you? What
a bitch.’ He turned away.

‘
That’s not what I
meant,’ Seteal said defensively. ‘What I meant is that if it killed
you, at least you’d be choosing to give up your life for someone
you love. Now it might go off and kill a baby.’

‘
Well, that’s how
this works, Seteal!’ Ilgrin spun around and shouted at her. He felt
his face flushing blue with rage. ‘And who the torrid are you to
talk to me about killing innocents? What about them?’ He waved his
arms out at the bodies all around them. ‘What’d you do to
them?’

‘
I did what was
necessary to save us from certain death.’ Seteal lowered her eyes,
abruptly becoming very subdued.

‘
Seteal?’ El-i-miir
approached cautiously. ‘What did you do?’

‘
I severed them from
the canvas.’ Seteal cringed.

‘
The what?’ El-i-miir
shook her head.

‘
When I’m projecting,
I don’t see as I would see ordinarily because I don’t have eyes,’
Seteal said distractedly. ‘It’s as though everything is woven
together in some strange way. Far-a-mael once said my pupils were
too dark to see through. Well, I guess how I see the Ways is kind
of like how a blind man might interpret his surroundings by feeling
rather than seeing.’ Seteal kept her eyes on the ground and
continued to ramble. Ilgrin was beginning to think she was trying
to lead them off-topic. ‘When I project, there exists a canvas
composed of infinite strands. Everyone and everything is there. We
are all strands in the weaving. Each strand is composed of
thousands of smaller ones and so on.’

‘
Why are you telling
us this?’ Ilgrin demanded, having heard enough. ‘Perhaps you could
tell us how upwards of a half dozen silts have died without being
touched.’

‘
Far-a-mael taught me
how to severe the strands in the canvas.’ Seteal shifted her feet
uneasily. ‘He got me to practise on a wall once. It was only a tiny
strand and so a crack appeared, that portion of the wall having
ceased to exist.’

‘
You cut them out of
the Ways?’ El-i-miir gaped.

‘
I didn’t mean to,’
Seteal said. ‘I only cut a tiny strand on the first one, hoping to
disable him, but apparently all the bits of a living being are
important to their survival. Once I’d made the first slice, all of
the rest began to unravel.’

‘
But you killed
off
the others just the same,’ Ilgrin
stated.

‘
I was trying to save
our lives,’ Seteal said forcefully. ‘You’d both be dead had it not
been for me!’

‘
Oh, don’t get us
wrong,’ El-i-miir reassured her, ‘we know that what you did was
necessary. It’s just that . . .’ El-i-miir turned to look at
Ilgrin.

‘
What?’ Seteal
enquired irritably.

‘
Well . . .’ Ilgrin
took over from El-i-miir. ‘You are very dangerous.’

Seteal stepped up to Ilgrin and looked
into his eyes with a half-smile. ‘And don’t forget it,’ she
whispered.

‘
Please, Seteal.’
El-i-miir looked at the woman with a strange new fear. ‘Just . . .
be careful what you go about slicing up in the Ways. You might
accidentally end up cutting the whole world out of
existence.’

‘
I’ll meet you back
by the fire,’ Seteal said without breaking eye contact. Then she
turned and walked away.