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.