A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(63)

William hangs there.

No. Never.

“Close it!” I shout.

Charles takes the blade on his stave and cuts his hand, flinging blood onto the runes. Blood oils the hinge of reality. The tunnel above us retreats a little…then continues ripping apart the sky like a sheet of fabric.

“It’s too big!” Charles bellows, the veins of his neck popping.

I keep a tight grip on my rope, and even then my feet start lifting off the ground. Muttering a few spells to weigh down the soles of my shoes, I inch my way to my friend. His hand slips from mine once, twice, and I’ve almost got him….

Charles lunges forward, slashing with his stave. He’s too far away. He’s…he’s trying to cut William’s rope.

“We can’t!” I scream.

Charles ignores me and grabs the ax next to him.

William sees what this is. He pulls desperately, yanking himself down the rope. I can’t. This is impossible. My head is exploding with pain. Grunting, Charles lifts the ax with both hands.

“Help me!” William cries, whipping and battering about in the wind like a child’s kite. The thought occurs to me to kill him, to put a blade into his heart before…

I can’t. He looks into my eyes, and his face blurs because I can’t help crying anymore, and I tell him that I’m sorry, I couldn’t do it, I can’t do anything.

“Howard!” William wails, a sound of pure suffering. “Please!”

Charles throws the ax with deadly precision and slices the rope. For a brief moment, William is suspended in the air, a perfect illustration of shock. Then he is sucked up into the vortex. His hand reaching for me is the last I see of him before the void swallows him whole with an obscene sucking sound.

The fissures retreat back into the circle’s frame. The vortex, satisfied with its morsel, withdraws enough for Charles to spatter his blood over the runes. He yells for it to close, and in a flash the cloud disappears.

The sky is bright and blue, and William is gone.

No. I crawl to the bloody runes. The gateway has vanished.

“Call it back!” I touch the wet deck.

“It won’t work,” Charles says. He appraises the empty sky. “It was the wrong summoning spell.”

“No.” I reach for the ax to cut my hand, but Charles tackles me.

“Control yourself, man,” Charles says as he grabs his stave.

Warding that yellow blade of his, he slashes at the runes, making them unusable. Snatching the rune sheet, he tears it apart and flings the pieces into the water. Even if we wanted to open that gate again, we can’t. I didn’t memorize the runes needed for the circle, and now they’re lost forever.

“What’s done is done.” He stretches his arms over his head, as if he’d had a strenuous workout. “Interesting, isn’t it? Such a shame, the world of Ralph Strangewayes some barren hellscape.” He sighs. “Perhaps there are other circles to try. If one fails, another—”

I can’t listen to his hateful, hideous voice. I run at him, blinded by my tears—I’m going to rip him apart where he stands. He sent William into that darkness. Charles draws up his ward about himself with ease, and I smash into it, biting my lip and tasting warm blood. Charles then takes me by my cravat. The easy expression on his face has vanished. His nostrils flare.

“Now we’re off to the widow.” Charles’s voice is deadly. “You’ll follow what I do and say. If not, magician, you don’t even want to know what I’ll do.”

“I don’t care what happens to me,” I spit. “Just so long as everyone knows the truth.”

“Do you think anyone would believe a magician over me?” He lets me go roughly. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life in Lockskill Castle, your hands chopped from your wrists? No? Best to speak when I tell you, then, like a good fellow.”

He says it as if I were a dog. He walks away and leaves me crying for William as the afternoon sun moves farther into the sky.

—

MY HAND DROPPED AWAY FROM THE mirror. I didn’t realize I was falling until Mickelmas caught me about the waist and helped me into a chair. He pressed a cup of water into my hand and helped me drink.

I’d been inside Mickelmas’s head. I’d seen the world through his eyes, heard his thoughts as if they were my own. And I’d seen my father. Not his painting; not some wistful dream. I’d heard his voice, seen his face as he smiled and laughed. As he screamed. I’d watched through Mickelmas’s eyes as the rope had been cut, as my father had been swallowed into that churning…I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe.

I shoved the water away, spilling it onto the rug, and slid to my knees. I heaved several times, though nothing came up. My throat was raw. Once I could speak, I said, “You let him die.”

“For six years, I spent all my money.” Mickelmas sounded deflated and, somehow, horribly relieved. “I traveled the bloody world in search of the correct summoning runes.” He pulled me up by my shoulders, his gaze locking with mine.

“And I found them, the ones that would allow me to call for a specific person or creature. There was something wrong with our original trio: me, William, Blackwood. We should have had a witch. Such a spell requires all three magical races.”

“So you got Mary Willoughby.” My voice was weak and flat.