“I asked you where my father is,” she said, taking another step toward Mr. Bennick, the pistol before her.
He turned to regard her. “His physical self is safe. No harm came to him in our flight from Madstone’s and out of the city.”
“The same cannot be said for the warden you murdered when you abducted my father.”
“Murdered?” He shook his head. “No, I did not murder anyone at Madstone’s.”
“Then who did murder the warden, if not you?”
“The magicians that Gambrel sent, I presume,” Mr. Bennick said. “I knew that he would try to seize your father, to gain his piece of the keystone, just as he did with Larken and Fintaur. Thus I moved first and took your father from Madstone’s.”
Ivy’s head was throbbing now. “But how could you take him out of there unless you were working with the magicians yourself?”
“One doesn’t always require magick to open a door, Lady Quent,” Mr. Bennick said, the hint of a smile playing upon his thin lips. “For some time, I have worked to cultivate several contacts within Madstone’s. Let us just say that a warden’s remuneration is not so great that some increase in this regard goes unappreciated.”
Ivy gaped at him. “You mean you bribed them?”
Mr. Bennick shrugged. “When magick is not available, one must resort to whatever methods work, no matter how mundane. But yes, over the last year I purchased the favor of two of the wardens. It was they who unlocked the doors for me, and who allowed me to remove your father—just in time, it seems. At present, Mr. Lockwell is safely hidden. I believe that you know Dr. Lawrent? He and Mrs. Lawrent are currently in the south, where they are staying with her family. I took your father there, and he is now
in their care. So you see, you need have no fear for Mr. Lockwell’s condition—though there was one small matter that required the help of a surgeon.”
“A surgeon!” Ivy exclaimed. “But for what?”
“For this,” Mr. Bennick said, and drew something from the pocket of his coat. He opened his hand, and on his palm lay what appeared to be a jagged-edged stone.
Fascinated, Ivy took another step closer. Yes, it was indeed a stone—or rather, a fragment of a stone. It was a deep red in color, and regular white lines scored one side of it. At once, Ivy knew what it was.
“It’s a piece of the keystone,” she murmured. “The piece that belonged to my father.”
“Yes.”
“So you did want to take it from him!”
Mr. Bennick nodded. “I did, but only to prevent Gambrel from seizing it.”
Ivy could only stare, disbelieving. “But you are in league with Mr. Gambrel. Surely you intend to deliver my father’s piece of the keystone to him, and your own as well!”
Mr. Bennick’s sallow face was grim. “No, I am not in league with Gambrel. Indeed, he and I have ever been at odds—a fact he well knows. It is your father, Lockwell, with whom I was allied in all things. Again, look to Ashaydea if you think I do not speak the truth.”
Ivy did so, looking toward that white, smooth face. Lady Shayde gazed at Mr. Bennick for a moment, then slowly she nodded.
The heat of anger died down within Ivy, even as the fire had died on the hearth leaving her cold. She stared at the pistol in her hands—then slowly set it on a table and backed away from it. For so long she had believed the very worst about Mr. Bennick; everywhere she had seen evidence of his duplicity, of his wicked intentions.
It seemed she was not so clever at solving ciphers and deducing the answers to puzzles as she had thought. While the evidence
against Mr. Bennick had appeared plentiful, in retrospect it was all circumstantial as well. Yes, he had manipulated Ivy and Mr. Rafferdy, using them as a means to unlock the house on Durrow Street—just as he had manipulated the wardens at Madstone’s to unlock the door to her father’s cell.
But none of it had been for the motives she had presumed. She had been all too eager to find a villain in the affair of her father’s illness. And so, guided by prejudice rather than reason, she had leaped to a faulty conclusion, and then had proceeded to dismiss any evidence that countered it—evidence which, now that she considered it, was plentiful, and came from the most trusted of sources.
She sank down into a chair. “My father wrote in his journal time and again how much he depended upon you, and what a true friend you were to him. I thought my father had been deceived.” She shook her head. “But it was I who was deceived, and by myself. I knew my father to be among the wisest of men. I should have known that I should prefer his judgments over my own when it came to the matter of you. Only I was … I so wanted …”
“You wanted someone to be blamed for what befell your father,” he said, and while his deep-set eyes were as dark as ever, they no longer seemed so hard. “As a child, you could not believe that he would abandon you of his own choosing, and so it had to have been forced by another. Then, as you grew older, the belief grew stronger.”
Ivy could only nod, for it was so.
“Well, you should not fault yourself for suspecting me of such treachery,” Mr. Bennick went on. “After all, I gave you little reason to think otherwise with my actions. But I knew that I did not dare become too close to you, or reveal too much, for the peril it would have placed you in. The other magicians of our order would have eagerly approached you had they thought you could help them gain what they desired. What’s more, I did at times deliberately mislead you, and worked to influence events, in order to achieve
an end. But it was, I hope you can see, an end of great importance.”
Lady Shayde made a harsh sound that was not laughter. “That sounds very similar to what you told me, more than twenty years ago.”
The tall magician turned to face her. “And you may yet play a role in achieving that end, Ashaydea. I confess, I had given up hope of that. But now I see that my hope was not in vain after all. For here you are.”
Lady Shayde folded her arms, as if she felt a chill, even though such was not possible for a being like her. She turned away from him.
From the chair, Ivy looked up at Mr. Bennick. “But what is this end you seek to bring about? What is your purpose in coming here?”
“This is my purpose,” he said and held up the fragment of the keystone.
Ivy clutched the journal in her hands. “My father described it in these pages, how you discovered the keystone and broke it into six, and how each of you took a piece. Only I am sure my father did not have it among his things at Madstone’s, for I brought him everything he had there. I would have seen it.”
“But he did have it with him. He always had it, as did the rest of us. We had to be sure no one could ever lose his piece of the keystone—something Mundy surely would have done in that rat’s nest of a shop he kept. It was Lockwell, being a doctor, who came up with a way in which we could always keep the pieces of the keystone hidden, and yet never misplace them.” As he spoke, he pressed a hand to his chest.
Ivy thought of the blood upon the doorstep of Mr. Larken’s shop and sat up straight in the chair. “It was in him! It was inside each of you!”
Mr. Bennick nodded. “It was Lockwell who worked the magick, for we knew he had the finest touch, as well as the greatest knowledge of anatomy. By means of a spell, he could open a miniature
door into a space inside the body, and so deposit the stone within. There was no blood at all.” His fingers clutched at his chest. “Though I will not say there was no pain.”
“So that’s why you needed the surgeon—to remove the fragment from within my father.”
Mr. Bennick reached into his coat, and drew out two more fragments of stone. “And from me, as well as from Mundy. Of course, magick might have been used to remove the fragments from our bodies rather than a scalpel, but neither Lockwell nor I was in any position to do so, and Mundy never had a very fine touch. Gambrel possesses such ability, but as you saw, he chose a more violent method to remove the stones from Larken and Fintaur.”
Ivy gazed at the pieces of stone in his hand. “I thought Mr. Mundy had fled the city.”
“So he had. But Mundy’s habits and intentions were ever obvious to me, and so I was able to find him easily.”
“And he gave up his piece of the keystone willingly?”
“Willingly enough. I told him that if he did not submit himself to the surgeon’s knife, that Gambrel would take the stone from him by less precise means, just as he had done with Fintaur and Larken.”
Yes, Ivy imagined that had indeed convinced him. “Where is Mr. Mundy now? Is he with my father?”
“No, the toad has hopped away to lose himself in the mire, as to be expected. But it does not matter, as we have what we need of him.”
Throughout this exchange, Ivy’s dread had gradually receded. A curious mind such as hers—one that ever sought out knowledge—could not help being engrossed by all she had heard.
“But what is it?” she wondered aloud. “What is the keystone for? I think my father intended to tell me through the pages of his journal. Only something went amiss with the calculations he had made, so that his entries were no longer appearing when he intended them to. And I fear his final words will not appear at all.”
“No, they will show themselves,” Mr. Bennick said. “But it is as
you describe—his initial equations were off by some degree. I have reformulated them, and so have determined when his final words will appear. That is why I have appeared myself at this very moment. The last entry should manifest in the journal just as the fifth occlusion in the Grand Conjunction commences, which will be a number of hours from now.”
“The fifth occlusion?” Ivy said, frowning. “But that’s not what my sister Rose said. She said Father told her that I should open the book when the third occlusion begins.”
Mr. Bennick seemed taken aback by this. “Your father told her this? How can that be?”
“She can speak to his spirit, in the house on Durrow Street. Or rather, I do not know if he can hear her. But at the least, she can hear him.”
Lady Shayde turned around and took a step toward them. “You should believe what she says. Her sister possesses a sensitivity to the presence of both witchcraft and arcane power. I’ve witnessed it myself.”
“And your sister told you that Lockwell spoke of the third occlusion?” Mr. Bennick said, advancing on Ivy. “Are you certain of it?”
“Yes, that’s what she said.”
Mr. Bennick swore an oath in a harsh language Ivy did not recognize. “Then I am not so good at astrographical calculations as I thought. I came here well before the fifth occlusion to make sure I did not arrive too late. But I fear I may have after all. For I believe the third occlusion is about to commence. Indeed, it may have done so already. Quickly—open the journal!”
Ivy was already doing so, her heart beating wildly as a panic gripped her. She turned through the pages, going swiftly, but trying not to skip any. After a few minutes she made it to the end of the book, but all of the pages had been blank.
“Again,” Mr. Bennick breathed, his dark eyes intent.
Going from the back of the book this time, Ivy turned through the pages again, her hands trembling as she did. One page. And another. And—
There was a dim flutter just as she was turning a page. Hastily, Ivy turned back. No, she hadn’t mistaken it. A word had appeared, and already more were following after it. They were even fainter than the last entry that had appeared, but Mr. Bennick brought a candle close, and she could make out the lines of spidery text. Rose had heard their father’s instructions, and she had remembered them correctly. If it hadn’t been for her, they would never have been able to read these words.
And they still wouldn’t, if Ivy didn’t read quickly. For hardly more than a minute after the first words had manifested, they were already beginning to fade away, even as other lines were appearing below.
“Hurry!” Mr. Bennick hissed. He came around behind her chair, and she knew he was reading frantically even as she was.
Grand Conjunction, First Occlusion
,
Eides inferior to Regulus
My Dearest Ivoleyn—
There is so much I would like to tell you, but I know that time is now exceedingly precious. For if you are reading this, it means that all of Larken’s calculations are indeed correct, and a Grand Conjunction of the planets has commenced even as the Red Wanderer draws close to our world
.
That our little world, so minute in the great void of the heavens, is now in the gravest of perils, I suppose you can by now imagine. Just as I suppose you have learned of the Ashen, and of their insatiable hunger. Over ten thousand years ago, long before the first recorded histories of the scribes of Tharos, they nearly conquered our world. Had they done so, they would have devoured all life upon it—just as they did to their own world long ago
.
For eons, the Ashen have had only one another’s bodies to consume. They ever eat, and spawn, and are eaten themselves. So you can imagine the ravenous furor with which they would have descended upon our world. No light, no life would have remained
.
Only it did not happen that way. The Ashen had not anticipated that our tiny world could have its own unique and inherent defenses to protect it—that is, the Wyrdwood. A union came about between women who could call to the trees and men who could wield magick. By this alliance of the first witches and magicians, the Ashen were repulsed, and their planet spun back into the depths of the Void
.
Only now it has returned. And while ten thousand years ago much of Altania was covered with great tracts of primeval forest, now but a few straggled stands of Old Trees remain scattered here and there. Yet many of the old gates remain as well, relics created by the Ashen during that first war. When the red planet draws close enough, those ancient doorways will be awakened. They will open, and the Ashen will pour through in a dark flood—and there will be neither trees nor witches to stop them
.
I fear this is all by design. Ever since that first alliance of witches and magicians long ago, the two have not dwelled in such harmony. For magick, you must understand, has its very origins on the world of the Ashen; it was from that world that knowledge of the arcane was brought to our own world. And while the first magicians used this power against the Ashen, it has not always been that way since. And so, throughout history, the forces of magick have sought to subjugate the Wyrdwood even as they have sought to subjugate those who might call to it and direct its power
.
I fear it is for this reason that, over the centuries, women have ever been diminished to an inferior status in our civilization, constrained by the corset of society’s rules, even as the Wyrdwood itself has been diminished, cut back and trapped behind stone walls. The power of magick—which resides in the Old Houses, those families descended from those first seven magicians—has ever schemed and plotted for this day, shaping and directing the wishes and actions of men, most often without their knowledge. Thus it has worked over the ages to prepare the world for the return of the Ashen, to make certain there would be no resistance this time
.
And now that day has come
.
But do not despair as you read this! There is yet some hope, however scant. Though it was from the world of the Ashen that magick came, that does not mean all magicians are their servants. Some have labored over the long years to bolster the defenses of this world. My own ancestor, the great magician Gauldren, was one of these. He worked the Quelling not to weaken the trees as many believe, but rather to make them slumber unless provoked, so that men would be less inclined to destroy them and more willing to simply let them be. It is because of Gauldren’s work that we have any Old Trees left at all, though these are precious few all the same
.
Still, it is my hope they will be enough to do what must be done. The Old Trees need not hold the Ashen at bay for long. If all goes as I have long planned, the ravenous ones will have little time to pass through the gates as they open
.
It is my hope that Mr. Bennick is with you at this moment. He knows much of this even as I do, for he has from time to time spoken with the Elder One—the man in the black mask—even as I have done. It is also my hope you have found a suitable magician—the very same, perhaps, that helped you gain entry to my house on Durrow Street and bolster its defenses. It is because of what you accomplished then, Ivoleyn, in solving my riddles to you, that there is any hope at all now. It is because of this new alliance of witchcraft and magick that the Ashen may yet be defeated. For if you can call to the Wyrdwood and bid it to open the way, then your magician may master the magick of Heathcrest Hall
.
Here is how it is to be done.…