Frieda's Tale

Chapter 7

He’s going back to the artefact, Frieda thought, as she ran out of the collapsing tunnels into the open air. He has to go back there.

Her mind raced, putting the pieces together. She’d sensed something under the artefact, something sleeping… something on the verge of waking up. She had no idea what it was, not really, but she was certain that it had to be stopped. Granny’s warnings rang in her ears. The village had been built on top of the artefact, and its destruction had kept everyone away, until the ground shifted and revealed something fascinating below the ground. And it had drawn the diggers like moths to the flame. And Ivanovo…

He’s been killing people for months, she thought. Behind her, she felt the ground shake as the last of the caves collapsed into rubble. And he’s been doing something with their life and magic.

She frowned. What had Ivanovo been doing? He was no magician. It was rare for a male magician to remain in the Cairngorms, even if they didn’t have the potential to become full-fledged sorcerers. Granny and her ilk were about the only magicians who stayed in the mountains for their entire lives, and they were permanently on the fringes of society, respected and feared in equal measure. Frieda couldn’t believe Ivanovo had magic. He’d never have shut up about it, if he’d had enough power to light a spark. She’d heard horror stories of magicians who’d turned entire towns and villages into their private kingdoms, with their populations enslaved or enchanted. Ivanovo would have done just that, she was sure, if he’d had the power. And yet, without magic, what could he do with a stone knife? Even necromancers needed a spark of power before they could fan it into a blaze.

He was feeding something, she told herself. The thing she’d sense threatened to fade from her mind, her memories already blurry… she bit her lip as she worked out what was happening. Ivanovo was gathering magic and life energy and channelling it to the artefact… she had no idea why, but it didn’t matter. He has to be stopped.

She forced herself to keep running. The artefact’s brooding presence was growing stronger, poison spilling over the land. She had no idea how Hoban and the others had missed it. She knew they’d decided to make a show of going to bed, in hopes of obscuring the fact Frieda hadn’t gone to her private tent, but surely they could sense something. She couldn’t imagine Ivanovo somehow killing or capturing the diggers. They were experienced sorcerers, and sorcerers weren’t easy to kill, not for a mundane.

Her hand dropped to the pistol at her belt. If Ivanovo had a firearm…

You saw no trace of firearms in the village, she reminded herself. They were rare so far from civilised lands, with the local lords and their followers doing everything in their power to prevent firearms from entering their world. And even if he did have a pistol, it wouldn’t be easy to kill the entire team without being caught and stopped.

She kept running, relying on skills she hadn’t used for years to pick her way down the rocky slope and into the forest. The trees loomed around her, the branches seeming to snap at her face as if they were animated by a remorseless will. She told herself she was imagining it — the artefact seemed to be driving away the wild magic pervading the forest — and kept moving, jumping over streams and hopping over fallen trunks as she picked her way onwards. The artefact was almost drawing her towards it… she hoped, as she darted through the remains of a long-gone village, that it wasn’t literally pulling her to the site. She might run up to the artefact and…

… And what?

Frieda tried to force herself to think. Emily would have come up with a plan by now, a plan certain to work because it was her. She was brilliant as well as knowledgeable, skilled at spotting weak points, insightful enough to see how an enemy might become a friend… Frieda knew, all too well, she couldn’t hope to live up to her saviour’s example. Her mind raced, trying to work out how Ivanovo could be stopped. But she didn’t even know what he was doing. She wasn’t even sure why her instincts insisted he was going back to the artefact.

Don’t be silly, she told herself. Where else can he go?

She clambered up and over a mound, then paused as she sensed a column of darkness — she couldn’t help thinking of it as dark light—streaming from the artefact and reaching up to infinity. It had to be visible for miles around, a darkness so dark it made the night seem like day. She shuddered helplessly, her stomach churning at the sheer wrongness of the sight, then stumbled back into motion. The dig was closer, much closer. She briefly considered trying to find the others — she needed help — but the camp was right on the far side of the burned-out town. If they couldn’t sense the gathering darkness, they had to be enchanted — or dead. She told herself they couldn’t be dead.

The darkness touched her the moment she crossed the boundary line, an oppressive sensation that left her feeling as though she was being violated at a very primal level. Her legs shook as she felt breath on her neck, even though she knew she was imagining it. There was no one behind her and yet… all of a sudden, the old tales of succubi and incubi sneaking into huts, when the doors were left unbarred, and assaulting the helpless inhabitants suddenly seemed very real. She shuddered again, then forced herself to keep going. The artefact looked unchanged and yet… it was huge, as if it was growing into a tower far larger than Whitehall or Alassa’s castle. Her eyes hurt. Her brain found it impossible to process what she was seeing. Again.

She reached out gingerly with her senses as she rounded the artefact, trying to find Ivanovo despite the pain. It was impossible. The artefact was both silent and incredibly loud, its mere presence shaking the world. She thought she sensed mighty engines thrumming, preparing themselves for… for something… but it was hard to be sure. The world was shaking as she stumbled around the artefact. Ivanovo was kneeling beside it, his back pressed against the alien object. He no longer looked human. It was so hard to see it took her a moment to see that he’d removed his shirt, revealing dark things driven into his skin. She remembered all the stories about people who’d been stolen away by the Awful Folk and how they’d been different when they’d finally returned to their village. Ivanovo looked… she couldn’t see him clearly. It was as if he was standing in front of a light so bright he was lost in the shadows.

“Too late,” Ivanovo managed. His voice no longer sounded human either. It sounded as if a hundred voices were blurring together into a single harmonic that tore at her ears. Blood trickled down his jaw and onto the ground as he spoke. “He will rise.”

Frieda reached for her magic, but her power splinted and drained even as she tried to cast a spell. She felt a flash of pure terror — she was helpless in front of a monster, a young man she knew to have far more than just wandering hands — before she remembered herself. She was no longer the scrawny runt of the litter, but a young woman with strength and skills that didn’t depend on magic. Ivanovo was strong, yet far from unbeatable. His confidence in his muscles would blind him. If he came at her, confident she’d yield before him, she’d kick him in the groin and stomp on his throat before he knew what had hit him.

She gritted her teeth. She could sense power — her power, but not just her power — flowing into the artefact. Ivanovo had given it everything it needed to start draining power and life from the surrounding world and channel it… where? She tried to follow the power as it twisted into realms beyond her ken, but it was impossible. There was just an overwhelming sense of wrongness… she cleared her throat, bracing herself. What would Emily do? She’d keep him talking until she could come up with a plan.

“This is madness,” she managed. If nothing else, openly challenging Ivanovo might provoke him into stepping away from the artefact and coming at her. The village menfolk had never stood for women questioning them, certainly not in public. She hoped irritation would override the fear of being transfigured again. “What are you doing?”

“He will rise,” Ivanovo said. “It is his time.”

“Whose time?” Frieda leaned forward, trying to sense the threads of raw magic pervading the air. It almost felt like spellwork, except it was so complex she couldn’t even begin to figure out how to pick it apart. She’d seen the wards of Whitehall and the evolving spellwork beneath Heart’s Eye, and yet they were child’s play, compared to the unfolding nightmare in front of her. “What is happening?”

“They come to our lands and take what little we have,” Ivanovo said. He sounded drunk, his words slurring together as he clutched the child in his arms. “We hate it. We hate it! And we can do nothing. I found…”

His mouth twisted into an expression that chilled her to the bone. “Radovan found it. I took it. It promised us everything, if only we brought it what it wanted. We did. We killed and killed and killed again, keeping our side of the bargain. He will rise, and he will make us kings of the land…”

The ground shook. Frieda was nearly knocked off her feet. She steadied herself as she tried to think. Who would rise? There were old tales of gods and kings slumbering below the land, ready to wake when the kingdom was in mortal danger, but she’d never believed in any of them. She doubted Ivanovo wanted to wake a king or even a god. The mountain folk lived far too close to a wild inhuman world to have faith in its benevolence. What was he trying to wake? And who was Radovan? The name was unfamiliar.

She frowned as the pieces fell into place. “This… thing you’re trying to wake, do you trust it?”

She’d hoped to appeal to his paranoia, and to the justified suspicion every commoner felt for their local aristocracy, but it went nowhere. Ivanovo was too far gone. His body was twisting and bulging in odd places, as if things were crawling under his skin. He had to be in terrible pain and yet, he didn’t cry out. Frieda would have been more impressed if he hadn’t been up to something disastrous. She wracked her brains, trying to think of a solution. Emily would have worked one out by now. Frieda was completely lost. Her legs felt as if they’d been turned to stone.

Her mind churned. He killed at least a dozen men for power, but he didn’t kill the child even though her cries might have drawn attention to his lair, she thought, numbly. It made no sense. Why not?

She forced herself to inch forward. Stepping closer to the artefact felt like forcing her way into a furnace, an act so close to suicide as to be completely indistinguishable, and yet… if she killed him, or dragged him away from the artefact, or even took the child… she couldn’t think of anything better. Nothing about the artefact made sense… surely, if Ivanovo was up to something, he could have waited until the diggers completed their work and left again… unless he’d thought they’d take the artefact with them. Or if he feared they’d try to destroy it before he could complete his work. It was clearly dangerous, and while Hoban might be reluctant to smash it, his superiors might have different ideas. Frieda wished, suddenly, she’d thought to write to Emily. Hoban would never have forgiven her if she’d called in reinforcements from the one person everyone took seriously, but it might have saved a few lives. It was too late now.

The artefact pulsed with darkness, a deadly heartbeat hammering on the air. Her legs seemed unsure if they wanted to stop or hurl her into the artefact. She thought she could hear distant screams as she inched closer, her hands twisting as if the world itself was slowing down. Perhaps it was…

“Bitch.” Ivanovo raised his eyes to meet hers. His eyes were nothing more than pools of dark shadow, his face unrecognisable in the twisted light. He held a knife in one hand and the girl in the other. “It’s too late.”

She wanted to reach for him, but her body refused to cooperate. Ivanovo stabbed… Frieda blinked in shock as the stone knife was plunged into his heart. For a moment, her mind refused to comprehend what had happened. He’d stabbed himself? He’d killed himself? It was absurd and yet… her head spin as the artefact twisted, an invisible force picking her up and throwing her away from the alien object. The girl screamed once, then fell silent. Frieda landed badly but forced herself to roll over and stagger to her feet. She’d had worse, thanks to her father and the village louts. She really had.

The artefact had changed. No… the girl had changed. Frieda’s eyes hurt — she thought she was crying tears of blood — as she looked at the child. She could see tendrils of power burning through the girl, threads leading back to something so different she couldn’t even begin to understand what she was seeing. It was vast and alien and hungry and… she swallowed hard as she worked out what Ivanovo had done. He’d given his own life to forge an unbreakable link between the alien entity and the child, turning the poor girl into a host… no, something worse than a host. A bridgehead. Frieda could feel the entity pressing forward, forcing its way into the human world. She could hear it promising everything she’d ever wanted, if only she opened her mind. The promises were everything…

It’s not real, she told herself. The entity was either reading her memories — possible, if terrifying — or her own mind was filling in the blanks. There were spells that made people see what they wanted to see or needed to see to ensure they didn’t get suspicious. She doubted the promises were real, or that the entity would bother to keep its side of the bargain. It was offering her what she wanted to hear, and she knew enough to be suspicious of anyone — or anything — who did that. It offered Ivanovo everything and then pushed him into self-sacrifice.

Her knees buckled. The entity was growing stronger. She could feel its power sweeping over the land. They’d be feeling it in the campsite now, she was sure; the villagers further down the valley would be feeling the first questing touches of a very alien mind. A yawning hunger swept through her, her mind trying to make sense of what the entity wanted. It wanted everyone. And Ivanovo had unleashed it. He hadn’t known what he was really doing, she was sure, although she didn’t want to give him any credit. His mind had been so twisted he’d never stood a chance.

Frieda forced her eyes to open. The girl was standing in front of the artefact, her form twisting as the entity forced its way into the human realm. Reality itself was threatening to break down. Frieda saw images of herself flickering around the child. She was a beaten wife and mother, she was a hedge witch, she was a powerful sorceress, she was a necromancer, she was a slave, she was a… corpse. She shook her head and focused, trying to understand what was happening. Her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her. The girl was a bridgehead. The entity was using her to reach the human world. And…

Shit, Frieda thought.

The conclusion seemed inescapable and so did the consequences. Her fingers dropped to the pistol at her belt. She drew it slowly, her arms feeling as if they were made of lead. It was hard, so hard, to lift the weapon and point it at the girl. The pistol felt heavier than an entire school… she gritted her teeth, telling herself she was imagining it. Her hand shook as she took aim, her heart twisting. If it had been Ivanovo, she would have fired without hesitation and passed water over his grave. An innocent girl…

Her heart twisted painfully. Emily would have found a way to save the girl. She would have banished the entity without leaving chaos and death in its wake. Emily would have… but Frieda was not Emily. She didn’t have Emily’s gift for finding perfect solutions. And she was running out of time.

She pulled the trigger. The gun jerked in her hand. For a horrible moment, she thought she’d missed. She’d spent days practicing, when Emily had gifted her the pistol, but she’d never felt so drained… the girl seemed unharmed, just for a second, before collapsing into a pile of rags and bones. The entity screamed — Frieda heard it, a howl that crossed worlds and realms — before snapping out of existence. She couldn’t tell if it was dead or merely banished. It didn’t matter. It was gone, and it had taken an innocent girl with it…

Her legs buckled and collapsed. Frieda was unconscious before she hit the ground.