Griffin
I should never have drawn attention to the buried mountain pass. But all day, I hadn’t been able to shake the sense that the stele was familiar, in form if not detail. And with the aurora raging overhead, the voice no one else heard had returned, and I’d no longer been thinking clearly by the time we pieced the accursed artifact together.
Was I going mad?
The doctors at the asylum had been wrong to try to cure me of my desire for men. There was no aberration in my love for Ival, no disease of mind or soul. But the rest...
The daemon in Chicago had broken something in me. Had confronting another of its ilk in Egypt caused some deep fracture in my mind? Something that had lurked like a trap, making itself known only through the occasional strange dream, until the strain of Pa’s death and Jack’s danger forced it to the surface?
If Whyborne said the stele held no magic, I believed him. If he didn’t hear a voice on the aurora, there was no voice to be heard.
It was all in my head. And that terrified me.
I said nothing, only held him tight that night, when we at least had the luxury of sleeping together, if not doing anything more. The next morning, we set out for the mountain.
I tried to bury my fears beneath physical activity. I’d done little in the way of mountaineering, and certainly nothing like this. Reverend Scarrow proved to be the expert among us, although one or two of our guides had also climbed the high passes of the St. Elias Mountains during the Klondike stampede. From here on out, the glacier-fed creek was far too steep to use as a road. The dogs dragged the sleds up steep slopes, over rocky outcroppings, and between trees whose limbs brushed the ground beneath their burden of ice and snow. The thick forest of spruce gave way to barren rock, and the air grew increasingly thin as we made our ascent. Still, the dogs pulled with good heart, and we made rapid progress. We’d had astonishingly good luck with the weather so far, and I could only hope it held, as I had no desire to be caught on the glacier in the middle of a blizzard.
Despite Christine’s reassurances, I still wasn’t at all certain we were doing the right thing by looking for this lost city. Especially given what Whyborne said about a potential connection with the dweller in the deeps. I still didn’t see how it was possible, as one city lurked beneath the waves and the other stood on a mountain, but I trusted his expert eye to notice such similarities.
And, unfortunately, made it even more likely my feelings of familiarity were the product of my imagination. I had no ketoi blood, no connection with the dweller.
Jack picked up on my dismal mood. When we stopped for lunch, he came over to me as I repacked our supplies onto the sled. “Is everything all right?” he asked quietly.
“Of course.” I glanced about, hoping for something on which to blame my melancholy. “I miss the sun.” A statement that was painfully true. The aurora had its own beauty, but I longed for real daylight again, rather than the murky sun that barely broke up the long arctic night.
“Ah.” He nodded his understanding. “I hope you haven’t quarreled with your companions? Dr. Whyborne perhaps?”
Why would he think such a thing? “No.”
“It isn’t uncommon. Even the best of friends argue when forced together for months on end,” Jack said. “It’s amazing more miners don’t shoot each other in the dead of winter, trapped in their cabins by storms, in the endless dark.”
I dug my canteen from inside my coat and took a swallow. Did he really believe I’d fought with Whyborne, or did he think of his own argument with Turner? “Understandable.”
“Yes, well. I’m glad to hear you haven’t had a row.” He nodded, as if to himself. “Still, if you ever find yourself in need of a sympathetic ear, I hope you’ll come to me.”
I met his gaze. The shadows flung by the wavering light above made it hard to discern his expression within the depths of his hood. “Of course. And I hope you would do the same.”
If he felt a need to discuss his fight with Turner, he gave no indication. “Thank you. Now, we’d best finish up here so we can be on our way.”
The great glacier provided a road for us up the side of the mountain, so at least we didn’t have to climb the rugged peaks. From a distance, it seemed smooth and unbroken, but up close the glacier proved to be far more uneven. Its slow movement from peak to base left great splits and cracks in the ice, some of them large and deep enough to be a danger. Reverend Scarrow went first, probing the thick layer of fresh snow with a long pole, in case of hidden crevasses. Traversing these offered something of a challenge. For the most part we were able to go around them, but once we had to use the sleds as bridges across a narrow but lengthy gap. This meant unharnessing the dogs, maneuvering the sleds into position, herding the dogs across, crawling over ourselves, then putting everything back together again.
A sense of urgency, reinforced by the brief hour of sunlight, drove us. Time was short, if there really was some creature that might be unleashed by the thinning of ancient seals. The day after tomorrow would mark both the solstice and the new moon, an ominous combination. I expected Scarrow or Turner, or even the guides, to suggest we stop for the night when the sun slipped back below the horizon. They remained silent, however, as if the same urgency drove them. Perhaps Christine’s dreams of archaeological glory had infected them as well.
The sunlight banished my delusions of a distant voice speaking too quietly to be made out, for which I was profoundly grateful. I tried to believe it wouldn’t return with the coming of darkness. But once the thin light vanished, it came back, stronger than ever. As if it drew closer.
I had to tell Whyborne. If I was losing my faculties, it could prove fatal in this wilderness, not just to me but to my companions.
We stopped at last, high up on the mountain in the thin air. The tired dogs immediately flopped onto their bellies. Whyborne rather looked as if he wished to do the same. The guides set about unpacking the wood we’d hauled up from the tree line far below, and the rest of us saw to the tents.
“This seems like a good place to make our base camp,” Christine said, surveying the area as she spoke. “The ridge there provides some shelter from the wind, and we should be close to the location of the city as shown on the stele. We’ll rest up tonight, and tomorrow we’ll see if we can’t find any way to reach the bedrock below us. Perhaps one of the larger crevasses.” She trailed off, staring at the mountain as if it might offer up its secrets to her.
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” Whyborne asked. He sat back on his haunches, his gaze on the vast valley carved by the glacier. “A city once stood here. Long before anyone dreamed of the pyramids, people lived in this very place.”
“I wonder what happened to them?” Jack mused. “Did the Ice Age drive them away? And where did they go?”
“Perhaps we’ll learn soon,” Whyborne replied. A spark livened his tired eyes. “If only there was some way to interpret their writing. Might any known languages descend from it? I wonder...”
“May I speak to you privately a moment?” I asked, before my courage failed.
Whyborne and Jack both frowned in surprise. “Of course,” Whyborne said, rising to his feet.
“Don’t go far,” Jack warned. “There are crevasses everywhere.”
I waved to let him know I’d heard. In this cold, clear air our words would carry all too easily, so once I judged us a safe distance away, I spoke in a lowered voice. “Something’s wrong with me.”
“What?” Whyborne’s eyes widened with concern. “Are you ill?”
“No. Or, yes. Just not physically.” I didn’t look at him as I confessed to my delusion, not wanting to see his pity or his fear.
“This is bad, Griffin,” he said when I finished. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you started hearing things?”
“Because...I didn’t want it to be true.” Acid churned in my stomach, and my chest felt too tight. “After the asylum, I always feared that—that the doctors might have been right in some small part. And I know the Brotherhood was behind my confinement, but no one else seemed to question it. Even Elliot thought I’d lost my senses. Hearing voices no one else can...I can’t tell you how many inmates I saw who suffered from the same madness. And now I am as well.”
“Griffin, you’re being absurd.” Whyborne gripped my shoulder. “Clearly something is going on, but I’m certain it has something to do with this blasted city.”
“I’d thought of that, but it doesn’t make sense. I’m ordinary. There’s nothing magical or special about me.”
“Everything about you is special,” he said gently.
“To you, perhaps.” I gave him a rueful smile.
“Not just to me. Widdershins knows its own.”
A former client of mine had once insisted Widdershins collected people, but I had never believed it. Not until last year, when Whyborne had touched the maelstrom and found some kind of mind, or sentience, or...honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure, and even Whyborne had trouble explaining it.
“The town didn’t collect me,” I said. “I’ll grant there are arcane forces at work, and an unusually high number of strange people living there, but not everyone in Widdershins is odd. Look at Christine and Iskander.”
“Everything about Christine is odd,” Whyborne muttered. “And Iskander is from a line of ghūl killers, which is hardly ordinary. But I’m not talking about everyone in town. I’m talking about you. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m certain this has something to do with the stele and the city. You aren’t going mad.”
I wanted to believe him. “You can’t be certain.”
He squeezed my shoulder, and I knew he longed to embrace me. But that was impossible, with so many watching eyes. “Which one of us is a sorcerer? Trust my expert opinion.”
“Very well.” I met his gaze. “I will. And I hope you’re right.”
“I am.” His hand fell to his side. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Griffin, but we’ll find out and make it right. I promise.”