Chapter Eighteen: Unison

Morning arrived as Tacenda led Davriel away from the room. And with the coming sun, her sight—already fuzzy from the flash that Willia had released—slipped away. The second darkness descended, and she found herself moving down the hallway by touch, pulling Davriel after her.

Willia’s footsteps followed. “I should have been strong enough to kill you myself,” the girl said, her voice echoing against the catacomb walls. “I didn’t have trouble stabbing the priest, so my spirits could enter the church. Afterward, I stood behind you in the village, knife in hand...and I heard you begin singing. I have always loved that song, Tacenda.”

Tacenda pulled herself along, feeling with one hand at the wall’s crypts, leading Davriel with the other. Smooth, polished stone, cold beneath her fingers. Tomb after tomb.

“Willia,” she said, “this is insane. You’re not like this!”

“What am I like, Tacenda? Am I the confident girl that everyone saw? Or am I the terrified one you saw? The one who knew that every night, the darkness would come for her again...”

“No, Willia,” Tacenda said, reaching an intersection in the catacombs. The stairs were to the left...but whispers came from that direction. She turned in the darkness toward Willia’s voice. “Please.”

“This is what we were always meant to be, Tacenda,” Willia said. “We two are one soul. And our power...it was always only a part of what it could have been. I needed the souls of the others to put back together the pieces of the Entity. I needn’t feel bad for doing that. It was inevitable. The Entity’s destiny was to become whole again.”

“And the priests?” Tacenda demanded. “What is your excuse for killing them?”

Silence, other than Davriel pulling up beside her, then cursing under his breath. He seemed to be getting his sight back—at least, he started toward the stairs but then stopped, as if he’s seen the geists in that direction.

“I won’t be weak again, Tacenda,” Willia said. “Each bit I claim gives me more light. Right now, I’m blind for only a few hours around midnight. If I put the Entity back together, I’ll be whole. I’ll never have to be trapped in that terrible, unbearable darkness again.”

That harshness seemed so strange to hear in her sister’s voice.

“Come,” Davriel said, pulling her by her hand away from the approaching Whisperers.

Tacenda resisted. Surely she could make Willia see. Surely...

“I know that tone of voice,” Davriel said. “She’s listened to the Entity’s promises for long enough to start believing them. Come.”

Tacenda relented, letting him pull her down a side corridor of the catacombs. It was hopeless. The Whisperers would flood the area. Soon she and Davriel would join that terrible, whispering throng.

Still, she followed in darkness. And as she did, she thought she...heard something over the whispers. A song that seemed at once distant and close. Something she knew, somehow, that she could only hear while within the second darkness.

Distant, because of its ephemeral, out-of-reach softness. Close, because it pierced through all other sounds and made something stir within her.

What was that song?

§

Davriel hastened down the corridor, pulling Tacenda with him. His eyesight had recovered, but Tacenda’s curse had obviously taken her.

Fool man, he thought at himself. You should have seen this outcome. He’d recognized that Tacenda’s power should have let her influence the geists—but he hadn’t put together that the supposedly dead twin would be in an even better position to do so. Perhaps it had begun as innocently as she insisted, killing her parents by accident. Then she’d needed a scapegoat for her murders. And who better than the Man of the Manor?

She could have stopped at that, and likely no one would ever have known. But the Entity whispered that she needed more. And so, the attack on the merchants—witnessed by a priest. Had she arranged for him to be there, to corroborate her story that Davriel was the culprit? In any case, he should have seen. Someone had stitched a costume to imitate him, and he hadn’t wondered if it might be the daughter of the village tailors?

“Davriel,” Tacenda hissed as he pulled her down another corridor. “Look for murals on the walls. Rom said that some of them lead to hidden exits out of the catacombs. There was one in the room with the Seelenstone.”

He pulled up short as green light lit the other end of the corridor. Hellfire. They were this direction too? He turned, pulling Tacenda down a side hallway.

Use me, the Entity said. It is beyond time.

He ignored the Entity, instead searching through his resources. He didn’t have much left. The pyromancy was gone, as was the dismissal spell. The weapon-summoning spell lingered, but would be useless, as would the silly spell for making ink appear on a page.

Otherwise, the remnant of the prioress’s power was the only thing he had left. Well, that and his last resort—his ability to leave a plane and walk the Blind Eternities to another realm. He could take nothing with him, however, and in so doing would abandon everything he’d built here.

You would run, as a coward? the Entity asked. Before using me? Why?

He risked a glance over his shoulder. Sickly green geists flowed in and out of the walls, moving toward him. The young woman—Tacenda’s sister—stood at the far back of their ranks, just a shadow.

Right. His only chance was to find a way out of this maze and flee to the manor and gather reinforcements. To that end, he thrust his hand forward—braced himself for the awful pain—and used the prioress’s talent to force the geists to remain corporeal.

A flash of light left him, traveling through the entire catacombs. The Whisperers quivered as the power forced them out of walls and into the corridor, where—suddenly physical—they collided with one another and clogged the way forward. Their mouths twisted in terrible ways, though they didn’t scream or moan. Just uttered those whispers.

A few of the geists at the front escaped the clog, so Davriel grabbed Tacenda’s hand again, leading her down another corridor, lined with grave markers on the walls. The way was lit by candles, which were burning low now that the priory’s tenders had fallen.

He pulled Tacenda into a nook and hissed at her to be quiet—then he used the inkspell, painting a wall with darkness to look like shadows, extending farther down the corridor just to the right. He held his breath, waiting as the geists drew near. Thankfully, they took the bait and flowed away, chasing toward the shadows.

He pulled Tacenda by her hand out of the nook and headed to the right, hoping this path would wrap around toward the room with the Seelenstone. Awful whispers echoed through the tunnels, seeming to come from all directions.

“Willia will know about the secret exits,” Tacenda whispered. “That must be how she got in and out, after they brought her body here. Be careful.”

“She’s posted geists to stop us from going this way,” Davriel whispered, peeking around a corner. “Any thoughts on how to get around them?”

“No,” Tacenda whispered. She stared blankly ahead. “Could she really have done these terrible things? She...she faked her death, didn’t she? She pretended to have been taken by the Whisperers, maybe so suspicion wouldn’t fall upon her. She knew they’d bring her to the priory, instead of returning her to the Bog. But how did she fool us?”

“Intentional dustwillow overdose, I’d suspect,” Davriel said. “The leaves are a sedative; eat them in their strength, and it will induce a catatonic state.” It happened sometimes to the farmers, he was told.

Davriel turned and pulled her toward another tunnel, but she tugged back. “Do you hear that song?” she asked.

“No,” Davriel said. “I only hear the geists.”

He pulled her forcibly after him, around another corner—then pulled to a halt. Green light illuminated geists flowing toward him from that direction.

Right. He dashed back the way they’d come, turning another corner. Then pulled to a stop there as well. A tall figure stood at the end of that tunnel, blocking the way to the stairs, lit from the sides by green whispering spirits.

He was tempted to try rushing her. She was just a girl of fifteen. But he recognized that glinting light reflected in her eyes. Power. Unimaginable power. Even if he could reach her through the geists, the Entity inside her would protect her from simple physical wounds.

“What would you do?” the girl asked. “To know that you’d never again be afraid? To know that you’d never again be hunted? To forever banish the things that scratched at your door at night? To—for once—rule instead of be ruled?”

“I know how you feel,” Davriel said back, smelling blood and smoke. “But there is always a price. Sometimes it’s too high to pay. That’s simple economics.”

It is time! the Entity said. Why do you hesitate?

Willia gestured, and geists flowed down the corridor, careful—this time—not to trip one another. Davriel, moved to run to the left, but Tacenda pulled on his hand toward a different corridor. “No,” she said. “This way. Toward the song.”

“That’s a dead end,” he said. “We visited that chamber earlier tonight.”

“It had a mural,” she said. “Maybe a way out?”

She pulled out of his grip and ran that way. As geists flooded down the corridor, Davriel cursed and reluctantly followed.

§

Rough stone under her fingers. Cool, dusty air. The second darkness, swallowing her.

And a song. A sweet, beautiful, mournful song.

Tacenda felt the tunnel end at an open room, circular. She remembered this place—it was where they kept the bodies awaiting burial. Trembling, she felt around the room until she reached the empty slab where her sister had once lain.

At that moment, Tacenda finally accepted what had happened. Her sister was a murderer.

Poor Willia. Terrified of the second darkness. She’d hid from it until, at long last, it had claimed her as its own. Just not in the way either of them had feared.

“Can you open the secret tunnel?” Davriel said, his boots scraping stone as he stepped into the chamber.

That melody...so haunting...

The song was closer now. Tacenda felt around the room until she touched a carved portion of the back wall. A relief depicting the Nameless Angel.

“The Man of the Manor.” Willia’s voice echoed against stone. Tacenda thought that she was approaching down the tunnel that led to this room. Whisperers walked with her, their voices overlapping. “Your reputation proved helpful. Everyone was so eager to believe you were a murderer.”

“Let’s make a deal, child,” Davriel said. “I won’t insult you with an offer of riches, but I am worth more than simple lucre. Let me live. I can tell you many things about that voice inside your head.”

“It said you’d try to deal,” Willia whispered. “But it also told me that you hold something I need. Something that will make me so strong, nobody will ever again be able to challenge me.”

Tacenda felt at the carving, following the contours of the stone. She felt to the Angel’s hand, which held a carved version of the Seelenstone. There, that was the button.

“You’d kill your own sister?” Davriel asked. “Truly? Are you that heartless?”

Willia was silent for a moment. Tacenda could hear her breath, which had a ragged edge. She was close. Perhaps standing in the tunnel outside the chamber.

“Tacenda,” Willia said, her voice icy cold, “has always had the voice of an angel. And do you know what the angels did to us, Man of the Manor? The same thing every lord, devil, and demon in this land has done. They bled us. So we bled them back.”

Tacenda pressed the carving in just the right way, as she’d seen Rom do. The wall clicked, then her weight caused it to inch open, stone grinding on stone. She pushed into the hidden chamber, the source of the song.

Behind her, Davriel gasped.

“What?” she asked. “What do you see?”

“It’s...her.”