Page 52 of The Simurgh
‘Everyone back in the carriage.’ Silas bellowed the command and movement surrounded him. ‘We head for Pendle Hill, there is nowhere else for us to go. Follow me as quickly as you can, but I’ll not wait.’
He didn’t recall mounting Lalassu, certainly didn’t dig in his heels or slap the reins to urge her on. The Palehorse knew his mind. Knew his desperate urgency, and responded. Her strides lengthened, whisking them away from York, to where he pinned all hope.
‘Fast as you can,’ Silas whispered to the mare, ‘and then faster still.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
UNDER GABRIEL’Swatchful eye, Badh withdrew a grimoire from the voluminous folds of his clothing. The book he held was small, no bigger than prayer books Pitch had seen on occasion in the homes of the more pious purebreds he had bedded. What an idiot he’d been to imagine himself free in those heady, debauched days. This was the fate he’d merely postponed; being taken apart by those who thought as he had, that he was nothing more than what his creators had made of him, a tool, a weapon to be used as seen fit.
It would hurt all the more to die with the taste of something more upon his tongue. To be eliminated without having thanked the ankou for making neither tool nor weapon of him.
Badh opened the book, held on flattened palms, and began his recital. Pitch could just make out a swathe of symbols scrawled over the pages, but he was in no position to make sense of them. He was too busy bracing. Every muscle tight with readiness. Even his arse cheeks were clenched, anticipating the sorcerers might send their casting right up his puckered hole.
Perhaps they would make him shit out the wildness. Or maybe he’d puke flame, or cry ember tears, babbling like a baby right at the bitter end.
He felt delirious with panic, and uselessness, and indecision. A great part of him wanted to tear his own guts open and let them have whatever was inside.
Go ahead, he wanted to say. Take it and piss off. Rule whatever world you like, just take the parasite and go.
But he could not shut up the annoying voice that said, no.
No.
Seraphiel had chosen him for the task, and he’d carried it so far– so far until it was almost too much to bear, and just when Pitch was buckling, cracking with the strain, the ankou had arrived. And shared the weight.
Spilled blood with the Berserker Prince. Hurt alongside him.
Given a lost daemon someone to hold on to when he stumbled.
Pitch jerked against his restraints, worked once more at building the flame within the gloves. The ache in his shoulders grew, rose up more sharply than it had before. That sense of dullness not quite so distinct. Was it the maleficium already? Or was Sybilla’s protection waning?
Badh stumbled over the spellwork, struggling with the incantation that could lever Seraphiel’s creation free. The words were lengthy, a tongue-twist of sound, and not at all pleasant to listen to. The sorcerer’s voice trembled as he made mince-meat of the grimoire’s directions. Badh’s hand shook beneath the book, and after another minute he was near to tears.
‘Gods, forgive me, my lord.’ Badh’s knees seemed ready to give beneath him. ‘I think I am not worthy enough for this.’
‘You must be. You are. Banish your fear.’ Gabriel moved to Badh’s side, placing a hand upon his wrist. At once there came a stillness upon the sorcerer. ‘You speak in the tongue of great angels, be not afraid of the divinity in these pages. It is your fear that hinders the magick. You have a right to hold this grimoire, to read these words.’ The Archangel used a gentleness Pitch knew to be utterly false, which told him much. Gabriel and Azazel needed the Morrigan for this act. So much so that a violent-tempered angel was pretending he was a subtle, reasonable teacher. ‘Find a tempo, hold to it, and you’ll know a peace that will gird you. It is your place to be here. Do not forget. Continue.’
Badh gathered himself, cleared his throat, and began again. The clarity of his words was far more discernible now, but not their meaning. Divine magick was not meant for the ear of a lesser daemon.
Pitch tried to work momentum against his ties as he considered the possibility of swinging hard enough to smash his knees into Iblis’s face and wipe that godsforsaken smirk of satisfaction from his lips.
‘Try as hard as you like, little daemon.’ Azazel’s deeper timbre lay beneath Iblis’s words. ‘There is no coming down from there.’
Badh found an odd rhythm, something of a melody in his chanting, a half-sung, half-spoken string of words that Pitch soon realized were the same ones being said over and over.
‘Yes, yes,’ Iblis whispered. ‘That is it. Good. Well done. Well done.’
Whatever the fucking blazesthatwas. Pitch rested, panting from the meagre efforts of trying to dislodge himself. If the incantation was supposed to bother him, it was only doing so by being irritating. Nothing was worse than a simple song repeated, lodging itself in the skull.
All at once Gabriel was gone from Badh’s side.
Reappearing alongside Macha. The sorceress jolted, moving to step back but was caught by the angel, fingers tight at her arm.
‘Macha…join him,’ the Archangel said. ‘Add your voice, your power.’
She mumbled something which was lost to Pitch. He could hear little else but Badh’s ceaseless nursery rhyme. The Archangel guided her to her brother’s side and Macha began. Another pitifully simple ranting, but very different to Badh’s. Hers was a steady drumbeat, a bass to his treble. The sorceress had a far deeper voice than he would have thought her capable, a menace to it that made his skin prickle. And something more.
There was an odd, but very faint, stirring in his belly. Like the heat of a fine whisky when it was first drunk. Gods, he almost cried out with the relief of feeling some semblance of life in that dark place where the wildness dwelt.