The Inner Circle: Holy Spirit (36 page)

Seteal handed over three coins to
purchase some bread and cheese at a corner stall. She continued
down the street and stumbled across a fruit stand where she bought
three apples and two pears. She turned the corner and slammed
face-first into a man’s chest.

‘
No,’ she choked out,
her heart racing. ‘Leave me alone!’ she cried, pushing against the
man’s chest before seating herself on the ground where she leant
against a building and kept her face hidden.

‘
Are you all right,
miss?’ Master Fasil offered his hand.

‘
Get away.’ Seteal
kicked out at him. ‘You’re a wicked man. You’re an evil, wicked
man. Get away from me. I hate you. I hate you!’

‘
Right.’ The stranger
backed away with wide eyes. ‘You can sort yourself out,
then.’

Sobbing and gagging for a lungful of
air, Seteal remained in place for some time. Her heart began to
slow and she was able to breathe. She gathered up her bags, got to
her feet, and picked up the apples that’d rolled across the path.
She dusted off her dress and leaned against the building. Seteal’s
hands were shaking and she found it quite impossible to prevent
them from doing so. She reached out to the Ways but felt only the
heavy burden of Far-a-mael’s anchor, as strong as ever and fixed in
place. Her only place of respite had been stolen by that
treacherous old man.

Seteal took a step back toward
the city and watched a small cloud of dust that was kicked up by
her boot. ‘You can’t keep behaving this way, Seteal,’ she
reprimanded herself. ‘They’ll have you locked up.’

Refusing to give in and seek refuge at
Mistress Daorey’s house, Seteal spent several hours in a local park
watching the ducks swimming. She fed them some of her bread and
giggled at their willingness to approach. She must’ve seemed like a
monster to them and yet they were willing to risk their lives for a
commodity so modest as bread. Seteal watched the ducks scatter
fearfully as she stood and couldn’t help but realise that they were
somewhat like her. They pushed the boundaries and then ran in
terror at the slightest sign of movement. It was time to go
home.

On her way back, Seteal found herself
thinking about Parrowun and his adorable face. She wanted him to
become a strong man--fearless. He would be a leader. He would
command respect and find the love of his life. He’d have countless
children and never feel a stick of pain. Seteal would make sure of
that. He’d be the admiration of everyone in Elmsville.

Happy thoughts faded as she turned
toward the south and saw black clouds boiling in the middle
distance. The whisps of Old World were getting closer and Seteal
knew why. She’d denied it out of fear, but felt it when a part of
the great cloud had latched onto her soul months earlier. A portion
so enormous had entered into her that the remainder of the great
cloud had been made aware of her presence. It was coming for
her.

‘
You’re being
paranoid.’ Seteal shook herself and made her way back along
Mistress Daorey’s street.

Several doors away, Seteal heard
Parrowun screaming. She ran. Briel was absent from the yard and the
door was wide open. ‘Parrowun!’ Seteal shouted, dropping her bags
and racing across the lawn. She stepped inside, but immediately
recoiled at the scent of blood. Seteal carried on a few strides
before she was alarmed by a piercing scream. She came around the
corner into the living room. Ieane was staring in horror. Seteal
followed her gaze and felt her heart sink.

Fes was lying in a pool of blood. Her
face was covered in it and she was panting fitfully on her back.
Briel gripped her hand, tears in his eyes, begging that she tell
him what’d happened. Mistress Daorey had lost all colour from her
face. El-i-miir watched on with a shaking hand over her mouth. The
look in her eyes told Seteal that she already knew of Fes’s fate.
Parrowun continued crying from his place atop a blanket a stride
away from her. His face was red and he screamed fitfully.

‘
Oh, Fes!’ Seteal
cried, hurrying to the woman’s side.

‘
Seteal.’ Briel
turned to her with red eyes. ‘It be the sickness ye had when ye
were pregnant. It must be catchin’.’

‘
It must have been,’
Seteal choked out, her eyes wandering to Parrowun. She scooped him
up and held him tight. ‘It’s okay.’ She rocked him while struggling
to open her dress to nurse him. The child stopped screaming and Fes
coughed one last time, a fountain of blood sprayed out of her
mouth.

‘
I love ye,’ Fes said
very clearly, her eyes locked on Briel.

‘
I love ye, too.’
Briel’s whole body shook as tears flooded down his cheeks and he
watched the life disappear from his wife’s eyes. ‘Nah, Fes,’ he
bawled. ‘Ye nah can leave me.’ But it was too late. The immense
pool of blood surrounding the Merry Islander was testament to
that.

‘
Fes,’ Seteal
whispered after realising that she too had been crying for some
time. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed.

‘
It nah be ye fault,’
Briel gripped Seteal’s hand. ‘It be the sickness.’

‘
I’m so, so sorry,’
Seteal cried over Fes’s body, because she knew better than Briel.
She knew it was her fault. She’d birthed a monster. And he was a
monster that she would protect with her life.

*

The room El-i-miir shared with Ieane
was not large and it’d clearly been used as a library before their
arrival. One entire wall was covered with bookshelves that were
filled beyond their intended usage. El-i-miir looked over the
books, her eyes foggy with tears as she tried to comprehend what’d
happened just hours earlier.

Briel’s deep voice rumbled on
through the wall as he spoke unceasingly to his deceased wife. It
was a Merry Islander tradition to speak to the dead about
everything they’d have done had they continued to live. It was
supposed to mean that in some small way, they wouldn’t miss out. In
El-i-miir’s opinion, it only served to further upset the family of
the deceased, but who was she to judge the traditions of another?
After all, the Elglair had some rather unusual customs of their
own.

After staring at the books for some
time, El-i-miir realised with a jolt that her eyes had been locked
on the spine of one particular book. It’s simplistic title read,
The Real Silt. El-i-miir made her way over on shaky legs and
removed the item before returning to sit on the bed. She rested the
tattered leather-bound book in her lap and read the subtitle out
loud. ‘A Study of the Silt in its Natural Habitat.’ The book had
been written and published by an anonymous author living in Kintor
over a hundred years ago.

Flicking through the pages,
El-i-miir was shocked to see incredibly accurate sketches of real
silts. Such a book would never have been found farther north, where
silts were depicted as drooling monsters with horns, hooves and
pointed tails. One of the pictures showed a male silt standing
proudly with a scythe in one hand, his wings folded elegantly
behind him. His eyes pierced through the paper, dark and brooding.
It could have almost been Ilgrin.

El-i-miir rested her hand on the
page and touched the silt’s face. She’d so grown to love those
strange, angular features. Those oddly shaped purple eyes and his
inhuman physique--elongated and slender--had become a comfort to
El-i-miir. Even the wings that’d once struck fear into her heart
had become a thing of beauty. She wiped a tear from her eye as she
continued to try and ignore Briel’s constant droning.

Fes was dead, but at least she and
Briel had lived a long and happy life together. Ilgrin wouldn’t
allow that for El-i-miir and him. He was the Devil now and didn’t
care about some silly human woman he’d once known. El-i-miir threw
the book across the room so that it hit the wall with a thud. When
it bounced across the floor it landed open at an illustration
depicting silts in battle, swooping over human soldiers on the
ground. The title read, A Formidable Foe.

El-i-miir went to stand up so that she
could put the book away, but as she did the room became heavy and
her eyes locked on the page. She lifted the book slowly, gazing
into the battle depicted on the paper. The floorboard creaked
beneath her feet and she felt them coming. El-i-miir threw the book
aside, raced through the house and out the front door. Silence.

The nights had become colder
lately and were often accompanied by chilly westerly winds.
El-i-miir’s hair blew about her face. They were coming. Crickets
chirped noisily in the long grass. The Ways churned excitedly,
twisting and pulling toward a mass of souls that approached at
speeds that far outpaced a horse. El-i-miir turned her face to the
south. The wind tossed her hair about fitfully. The crickets grew
louder. El-i-miir pulled her coat about herself for warmth. Someone
was cooking chicken in one of the houses nearby. The streets were
peaceful.

‘
What are you doing
out there, dear?’ Mistress Daorey asked from the front door.
‘You’ll let out all the warmth.’

El-i-miir looked at the woman for
a moment. She seemed so far away, her face a tiny spot of wrinkles
in the distant recess of her home. El-i-miir took a step out onto
the dewy grass, her slipper wetting through. The crickets grew
louder. A bell started ringing in the south. The crickets grew
louder. No they didn’t. The crickets were drowned out by a new
buzzing din. The Ways flicked out one tendril of light, which
El-i-miir snatched onto. She felt the approach of a soul she’d so
missed.

‘
Ilgrin,’ she
whispered before hurrying back inside. ‘Get dressed,’ she ordered
Mistress Daorey.

‘
I am dressed,’ the
old woman replied, following El-i-miir into her room. ‘Whatever is
the matter, child?’

‘
Silts,’ El-i-miir
wriggled into a more suitable dress and threw a cloak around her
shoulders. ‘They’re coming.’

‘
What in the world
are you on about?’ Mistress Daorey laughed
disbelievingly.

‘
Seteal!’ El-i-miir
rushed into her friend’s room, a lantern gripped in hand. ‘Get up.
They’re coming.’

‘
What time is it?’
Seteal grumbled, wiping at her eyes.

‘
They’re about to
attack,’ El-i-miir barked. ‘Get dressed.’

‘
All right, all
right.’ Seteal rolled onto her feet and wrapped Parrowun in a
blanket.

‘
It’s Ilgrin.’
El-i-miir choked on his name. Without wasting another moment she
sought out Ieane and repeated her instructions. Finally, she
hurried over to Briel’s door and tapped on it out of respect.
‘Briel,’ she whispered apologetically.

‘
I’m busy,’ Briel
said, his voice cold.

‘
I’m really sorry.’
El-i-miir pushed open the door to find Briel sitting on the bed in
which Fes was lying. Aside from looking a little paler than usual,
the woman could’ve almost been sleeping. But she wasn’t. She was
dead, just like Briel would be if he didn’t pull himself
together.

‘
Get out, El-i-miir,’
Briel sobbed.

‘
Briel,’ El-i-miir
began. ‘You need to listen to me very carefully. We’re about to be
attacked by a legion of . . .’ She trailed off at the sound of a
distant explosion. ‘We’re presently under attack by a legion of
silts. We have to escape the city before it’s too late.’

‘
Just go,’ Briel
sobbed. ‘Leave me here ta die.’

‘
I’m not leaving you
here,’ El-i-miir insisted. ‘Fes is gone. I’m very sorry for that,
but that doesn’t give you an excuse to give up. She wouldn’t have
wanted that.’

‘
Please.’ Briel
turned with tears in his eyes. ‘Please just be on ye way. I can nah
leave her like this.’

‘
If you don’t get
up,’ El-i-miir said threateningly, ‘I’m going to make you get
up.’

‘
What?’ Briel asked
in confusion.

Already fearing that she’d wasted
too much time El-i-miir threw a translucent cord from within her
aura and tightened it around Briel’s. The man stood up and
El-i-miir wriggled him into his winter coat. ‘Right, let’s go,’
El-i-miir said through his mouth.

‘
Seteal,’ Briel
shouted as he thudded along the corridor. ‘Are you ready yet?
Because I’m afraid that we’re running out of time.’

‘
Briel,’ Seteal
gaped. ‘Your accent . . . it’s gone.’

‘
Sorry,’ El-i-miir
shook her head. ‘I forgot who’s mouth I was speaking out
of.’

‘
You affiliated him?’
Seteal said in disbelief. ‘I wonder about you sometimes, El-i-miir.
I really do,’ she grumbled before tightening the sling she’d made
hastily out of Parrowun’s blanket and put it over her
shoulder.

El-i-miir made Briel run down the
hallway. When she found Ieane through his eyes she ordered her to
meet them at the front door as soon as possible. Then she made him
hurry over to the meeting point and remain fixed in place.

‘
Mistress Daorey,’
El-i-miir turned to the old woman. ‘You’re still not
dressed.’

‘
Of course not,’
Mistress Daorey murmured. ‘I’m not going anywhere at this time of
night.’

‘
That’s
ridiculous.’

‘
And don’t you dare
use any of those Elglair tricks on me either, young lady,’ the
woman snapped. ‘This is my home. I’ve lived here for fifty years. I
raised my children here and nursed my husband on his death bed.
Racing across the world is a young woman’s game.’ Mistress Daorey
made her way over to the kitchen sink, from beneath which she
procured a large double-barrelled gun. ‘If those monsters are
coming,’ she hefted the weapon, ‘I’ll give them one torrid of a
fight!’