Chapter 8 and Interlude

(In which we learn the tale of Margaret and Priest, and a bit about Eliza and Silas's earlier days in Edge)

Priest shook her forcefully back and forth, his jaw clenched and the curlicues of his hair wavering with the momentum. She balled her right hand into a fist and flung it against the side of his head. He winced, then grabbed at her wrist with his free hand, immobilizing it. "What did you do to her?", he repeated, hissing, covering her face with a thin spray of spit.

An unexpected calmness washed over her. She slowly, carefully reached up her left hand and placed it on the forearm that held the front of her hoodie. She rested it there, not pressing, not slicing, not stabbing. She looked at Priest flatly.

He got the message. His grips loosened and she stepped back, not taking her eyes off of him. He still trembled with rage.

"Who--" She whispered, unsure why. "Who is in that tower? What is in that tower?"

He waited a moment before answering. "That is Margaret."

"Margaret?" Surprise granted her unintended volume. "You named that thing Margaret?"

Priest's eyes narrowed within their deep-sunk cavities. "I didn't name that thing Margaret. Her name is Margaret."

"Why is she locked away in there? How long has she been in the tower? Who put her in there?"

Priest sighed. "Elizabeth, I am no longer in the mood to tell you stories or to answer your questions." He examined the wrist that had been in contact with her knife-hand. It was the one that had the burn scars she had seen earlier, wide patches of shiny pink skin without the hair growth that forested the rest of his forearm. "Margaret is held within the tower because it is not safe for her to be outside of it. Not safe for herself, nor for me, nor for anyone else in Edge. That is all you need to know. I'm going back to my work. I think you can rest here by yourself. I will find you when it is time for breakfast.

"I am sorry I reacted the way I did. But try not to get into any more trouble." He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back. "And thank you for not disturbing any of the maps on your walk through my home. They may look haphazard, but they are my life's work. The damage I was just...forced to do may take days to restore." He bent and picked up one of the maps he had knocked down, smoothing it with something like reverence.

"You're welcome."

"It took many weeks for Grim to get that little bit of courtesy through his skull. For someone who's supposed to be unobtrusive, he can cause a great bit of disorder."

She allowed herself to smile. "Well, he told me he's not a very good Shade."

     "That is a matter of opinion. I think he's one of the finer Shades I have known. Though what your average shadow-walker thinks of him I cannot fathom. Speaking of which, one of us should be checking on him. Do you feel up to that?"

"I think so. I'll be able to in a minute."

"Good. Please be careful." He disappeared into the sea of tapestry maps. Elizabeth crouched, and from that vantage was able to view his bare feet tracing their helter-skelter path through the passageways, dipping and turning and stepping over low-hanging threads. She watched until she was sure he had walked far enough away, and only then did she relax.

She looked up at the tower. The eddies of the oily blackness continued, but there was no sign of Margaret. Elizabeth wondered if the entirety of the tower was filled with that ink, and if Margaret was alone in there, or if other creatures swam with her. If she was the same girl whose picture adorned Priest's necklace, how had she been turned into that thing in the tower?

Elizabeth again approached the tower’s base. She noticed something she hadn't on her first pass: a cane-backed chair tucked off to the side, tilted against the wall in a position of repose. There were four depressions in the ground in front of the window of the tower, corresponding to where its legs would settle if someone sat down in view of it.

A small pile of cloth-bound books rested next to the chair; she opened one of them to see it was mostly blank, with the same spiraling dotted lines she had seen earlier in Priest's hands. The first few pages were populated with a few scattered scratchings, the symbols she had seen him writing earlier. Tucked between the pages was a dull pencil-root, left as a place-holder. She put the notebook back where she found it and dragged the chair to what was likely its customary position, then sat down to watch the porthole into the tower.

It hadn't escaped her that Priest had failed to answer her questions about how long Margaret had been in there or who had locked her away. He had a talent for avoiding even the most direct of questions. Kind of like Grim. What had she gotten herself into?

The circular motion of the liquid black was soothing, hypnotic; it reminded her of a lava lamp. A few times she thought she saw flashes of small things darting by, but none came close enough for her to determine their identities...it could have been one of Margaret's limbs, or something else entirely.

Finally, one of their paths came close enough for Elizabeth to see that it was the creature called Margaret. She stood and approached the window. Margaret swam back, lingering in full view, hovering. Elizabeth hadn't noticed her clothing earlier; her body was partially covered by tightly-wound gauze, the pale skin visible in the gaps between heavily scarred. Several ends of the gauzy material floated free, undulating like extra limbs with the motion of the oily liquid.

Something fleshy was held in her jaws, obscuring the view of her teeth. It was white and squirming, and looked to be halfway between a fish and a worm, about the size of a forearm. Her jaws were stretched wide to accommodate the prey, her jawbone disengaged like a snake's. Greenish-blue ichor erupted from where teeth had punctured her meal's flesh, rising like smoke to float in front of her face. Her jaw worked side-to-side as she hovered, her empty eye sockets trained on where Elizabeth stood, hypnotized.

"Margaret?" Elizabeth whispered. Margaret placed her palms against her side of the porthole. Like the rest of her, they were chalk-white, and pulsating blue veins shone beneath her translucent skin.

A residue coated the inside of the window, an underwater dust of undeterminable source, and in this Margaret began to trace symbols: seven characters, written in an unshaking hand. Elizabeth could not decipher them; she wasn't even sure if they were meant to be read from Margaret's or her own perspective.

Margaret pointed downward, to Elizabeth's left hand. She lifted up the half-metal appendage in response, rotating it so Margaret could view it entire. Margaret pointed at it again, emphatically, then pointed her finger at her own neck, drawing the claw in a slow horizontal line across her throat. Then, for emphasis, she gripped the fish-worm with both of her hands, and tore a violent bite out of its belly, greenish blood exuding like steam as the teeth gnashed.

The message was unmistakable. I will cut your throat with your own hand.

Margaret twisted, using her legs to push off the porthole like an Olympic swimmer executing a kick-turn, and she was gone, swallowed by the blackness. The disemboweled corpse of her meal remained, bobbing lifelessly in front of the window.

The traced symbols were still on the surface, but fading as the grime succumbed to the waves of liquid. Elizabeth carried the chair back to its place and picked up the cloth notebook, copying down the symbols before the dark tides claimed them. She tried to tear the page out of its binding, but the fabric paper proved more durable than it appeared, and she finally gave up, instead putting the small book in the front pocket of her hoodie. It was time she checked on Grim.

Whether by luck or skill, she tracked him down without a single misstep. Grim lay as they had left him, within the pile of blankets that approximated a bed. His breathing still rasped but its rhythm had become more regular, and his color had regained some of its normal greyish cast. As she laid the back of her hand across his forehead to gauge if he was feverish, his eyes opened to greet her.

"You made it." His voice was weak, not the firm, confident one she had grown used to. Speaking was clearly an effort for him. His lips were cracked, and he looked a few years older than when she had met him.

"A bit late. I apparently don't remember the road to Edge as well as I used to."

He squinted at her. "You look different." His gaze wandered down to her hand, and his eyes grew wider. "It worked."

"Yeah. About that." She wasn't sure how to continue without accusation. "You knew this would happen. You called me 'Eliza the knife-fingered.' When we first met."

"The merging is not easily predictable. It happened before. I was not sure if it would happen again. It is part of the prophecy--"

"The what? You didn't say anything about a prophecy." What had she gotten herself into? "You also didn't ask me if I wanted my hand turned into a Swiss-army knife."

He sat up, reaching over to lift a small ceramic bowl filled with water to his lips, and ignored this last statement. He set the bowl next to one filled with fruits from the orchard. "Truthfully, it is a vague prophecy. Did Priest read any of it to you?" She shook her head. "I am not surprised. He follows his own prophecy, that of the man Jesus. Priest is...unusual. I suspect you have discovered this already. But he is a good man. He serves a good master."

"But you suspected this would happen? That my hand would turn into this?"

"Yes." Grim coughed. A fake-sounding cough to Elizabeth’s ears, designed to buy some time or to hide embarrassment. "You are right. I should have told you more. But I did not have the luxury of choosing when we would leave. I did not have the time to explain everything. And I did not want to tell you what you did not need to know. Giving you too much information, with the blind spot..." He trailed off. "I did not know what would happen."

"Well, what happened the last time I was here?"

"That is...unclear." He extricated his hand from the blankets, reached up to rub at his temple. "It was long ago, in some respects."

"How long ago could it have been? I'm only fourteen."

"That is part of what I do not understand. And it may be why Priest distrusts you...he has been wary of this plan from the start. And he may not be convinced you are who we say you are. Of course, he has reasons to distrust you, even if he does believe it."

Elizabeth sat down. She was getting tired of being told only parts of stories. "Grim, you brought me here because you needed my help. I don't think you're lying to me, but you are hiding things. I suspect you're hiding a lot. And the time may come when you're not here to help me. To hear Priest tell it, you almost died after your migration." She may have been misrepresenting Priest's report, but she felt she had earned a little payback in the stretching-of-the-truth department. "And if you had died, how would I carry on your task here? I don't know anyone else. I don't know where I am. I don't remember anything that might have happened when I was here before, if I really was here before." She absentmindedly clicked her metal fingers together. "If you want me to help you, you've got to tell me everything you know. No more half-truths. No more omissions."

He took another gulp of water. "It is not as easy as that. In my time, in my land, it has been hundreds of years since Eliza the knife-fingered and Silas the Pretender walked together through Edge. The truth and the myths have mingled and blurred into each other. Some of that may be intentional, fueled by lies spread by Silas, to enhance his own stature and weaken the resolve of his enemies. But some of it is just the way of history.

"You...excuse me, Eliza and Silas appeared in Edge and wandered for years, righting wrongs and having adventures, stories of their deeds spreading throughout the land. They made enemies, slayed monsters, led armies. They explored previously unheard-of lands. They feared nothing. Children in all parts of Edge are raised on stories of their exploits. I was raised on these stories.

"And then The Watchmaker became ruler of Edge. He captured Silas and twisted him to his side, and he somehow exiled or killed Eliza. And, when he died, Silas the Pretender became king and continued The Watchmaker's reign. Silas has ruled for as long as I have been alive, for as long as any of my relatives or their grandparents have been alive."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Grim, this isn't right. My brother can't have ruled for generations. He was five. I was ten...you saw the pictures. Something isn't true in this story."

"Time is--"

"--Different here. Yes, I know. That's all you ever say. But listen to what you're saying. Eliza and Silas wandered for years? I wasn't gone for years. I wasn't gone at all. There's no break in my history. I dug through my parents' house. I looked." She was starting to despair. "Every month, every season is accounted for, with pictures, with homework, with evidence. You've got the wrong person."

Grim set his jaw. "The mark of Silas was on your home. The same mark that flows from the castle of the Chzezch, his high keep in Pendulum. I am sure of this." He ran his hand through his hair, sighing. "I do not understand everything. I did not go to Central expecting to find a girl. I thought Eliza would be long dead but perhaps had left a weapon behind we could use against Silas, or at the very least I would be able to learn something that we could use against him. Something from the place he came from that would be his undoing.

"You agreed to come here because, no matter what you may truly be, Silas thinks you are a danger. He does not send spies or weapons on trivial missions, especially on such an arduous journey as the one from Edge to Central. If he has made you his enemy, if he has made you his target, then whoever you are, Elizabeth, you can fight back. I can help you."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Elizabeth's stomach rumbled; she hadn't eaten anything since she got here, but this was the first time she felt hungry. Grim reached on the other side of his bed, his hand emerging with a second bowl full of the fruits from the orchard. He showed her how to put pressure on the fruit's skin, popping the edible inner flesh out.

She swallowed, then remembered the notebook in her pocket. "Grim," she began, taking it out and opening to the page she had written on, "can you tell me what this means?"

He took the book from her, turning it upside-down and then right side up, squinting at it. "Is this mirrored?"

"I'm not sure. I copied it."

"The symbols are crudely drawn. And they appear to be backwards. Where did you copy this from?"

Elizabeth held Priest's reprimand fresh in her mind, but she didn't feel like she had truly done anything wrong. "The woman in the tower. She wrote it."

"The woman in the tower."

"Yes. Margaret. Did Priest tell you anything about Margaret?"

"No." Grim paused. "But he did not have to. It is a fairly well-known legend."

"Legend? How long has she been imprisoned?"

"Hundreds of years, at least."

"Did Priest lock her in there?"

"No."

"Then who did?"

Grim looked uncomfortable, as if he had started to swallow a piece of meat and just now realized he was on the verge of choking.

"You did." He tapped at the paper. "This is your name."

Interlude

My wee ones, my dears, come close to yer grandmother. Ye've eaten yer fill, and ’tis close to time fer yer sleepin'.

A story, ye ask? Yes. Grandmother has stories. How 'bout the Wolf and the Swan Queen? The Silversmith's boy? No, Gramma knows what ye'll be wantin'. Ye'll be achin' to hear a tale of Eliza the Knife-Fingered and Silas the Pretender in the days of their wanderin' round Edge.

I've one ye may not have heard. 'Tis a sad yarn, m'loveys, and yer old Gramma heard it first when she was not much more than yer size. Nuzzle in close, m'dears, there's room round Gramma for all of yah.

'Twas in the days when Eliza and Silas were trespassin' in the Lion's lands. They were travelin' in secret, for they knew that the Lion had not yet forgiven them fer takin' the side of The Stringmen when they battled fer the Soul of Leda fair. And they knew if the Lion discovered they were walkin' his mazes, his temper would flare up sump'tin turrible, and they would have to fight to escape with their lives.

No, no, Willan, they weren't scared, just careful-like. They'd faced the Lion before, and they'd do it again, both as allies and foes. He might've roared or scratched at'em, or set his guards t'fightin'em, but t'weren't no one could stop those two.

Eliza and Silas, as ye all know, came from a far-off land, a magical land that'd spit 'em into Edge when they were just children. And, though they loved all the lands of Edge and had adventures beyond compare, they still missed the land that had borned 'em, and their family and their home. Some say 'twas ten and some say twenny years they'd been in Edge when this here story happened.

Eliza and Silas had heard talk of gatekeepers, creatures who held the power to let ye be walkin' betwixt worlds. What's that, Norrah? Well, m'love, there is Edge and there is the world they came from, and the Pack says there's the world of the dead and the world of the light, and there's the world where wolves run in sunny fields and catch fat rabbits all the day long. Some say there's worlds beyond worlds, and some say there's just the two we know for sure, but yer old Gramma has only seen the one that we're nuzzled in right now.

Well, Eliza and Silas heard that the gatekeepers, a man and a woman, were livin' in a garden on the top of a mountain in the middlin' of the Lion's land. The man and the woman had a home full of treasures they had stolen from the world Eliza and Silas come from: gold, precious jewels, and magicks of metal the like of which this world had not yet seen, and it had made them rich beyond dreams and powerful beyond reckonin'.

Now, the Lion heard that Eliza and Silas were searchin' fer a gatekeeper, and even though he didn't know where they were at the moment, he had a fair idea where they'd be headin'. So he appeared at the home of the gatekeepers up on that tall mountain in the middlin' land, and he spoke with that man and woman, named Garren and Marjorey, they was, and he promised them that if they resisted Silas and Eliza he'd bestow on them his greatest gift: to eat from his Graal, a dish which itself came from the world they'd been plunderin' and which would give someone eternal life if they were to et food which sat on its face.

The man and the woman agreed, both 'cause they were afraidy of the lord of this land and 'cause...What's that, Ivan? No, m'deary, 'twas a plate, not a cup. Ye're thinkin' of the cup in the story of Silvan and The Swine. Mebbe we'll tell that 'un tommorra.

The Lion told the man and the woman his plan. First, they would hide all the treasures they had stolen from Send'ra, which is the name of the world Eliza and Silas came from. The Lion roared to the rocks in the ground, and they shot out of the soil to form a tower that rose out of the earth like the blackened bone of a crow. He bade the man and the woman to hide their treasures within, to hide anything they had spirited out of Send'ra away within its dark walls.

Then he called to the plants of his land, and the maze-plants that served him formed a tricksy labby-rinth ’round the tower so that Eliza and Silas would have to be just as tricksy to find it. Even if they could see it, the tower would always look to be just as far away no matter how much you trotted t'ward it.

Last, he placed his paws on their heads and unlocked sumthin' in their minds. He made their gatekeepin' powers turrible strong and told 'em that if Eliza and Silas made it past the maze and into their home, and if they figured out that they could walk betwixt worlds and if the two Strangers forced them to open a gate, then, as a last twig of the tree, that's what they should do.

But not a gate to Send'ra. They should open a gate to the part of Edge that lay beyond the farrest oceans, into the wildest barely charted untamed lands, beyond the reaches of the Three, where they would have to fight the Little Gods and all of their monst’ries and beasties and mebbe never make it back to Edge proper.

The Lion left Garren and Marjorey in their home, with their tricksy garden and their tower. The man and the woman talked over their part in the Lion's plan and decided that the borderlands of Edge might not be far enough to send the Strangers. If Eliza and Silas ever made it back, 'twouldn't be the Lion's blood drippin' off their blades, 'twould be Garren and Marjorey’s.

They felt the crinkle of their new powers, and they knew that their doors could be made to lead not just to Send'ra but to worlds beyond. To the darkest of worlds, the underworld, the world filled of the blood of the damned, the world called The Blackest by those with knowin' 'bout such things. The Blackest would suck in Eliza and Silas, and then Garren and Marjorey could close the gate behind them, and the two Strangers would be stuck there. Mebbe forever.

Don't be scared, Willan. It's just a story, no lions or blackest around here, just yer Gramma and brother and sister. An' ye know Eliza and Silas get through it, righto? Because this is before they fought at the Battle of Paper Lakes, when they was still wanderers.

Eliza and Silas came to the tricksy garden, and they soon realized that though they could see the tower, they couldn't get any closer to it. They'd walk for a ways, then turn 'round and see they'd not gone any ways 'tall. The trick was you had to hold the tower in yer eyes while ye walked, if ye took yer eyes off't for even a splitsy, it would retreat. And the garden kept throwin' things at 'em to make 'em look away; birds and snakes and grabbsy branches that they would have to fight.

But wise Silas, he figured out the trick. He tied a long string between hisself and Eliza, and he made hisself to stare at the tower while Eliza ran 'bout him with her deadliest hand, striking the birds and snakes and branches and slicing them into strips, keepin' them free of Silas so he could keep the connection 'tween the tower and hisself intact, and the string kept the two of them together. The path behind them became littered with bits of the foes she had been strikin' down. By the time the birds and snakes and branches figured it out and started tryin' to attack the string, 'twas too late, the Strangers had reached the stones of the tower.

Garren and Marjorey weren't no warriors, nor soldiers. They knew they couldn't fight two such as these. So they opened their doors when the strangers came in, and they welcomed the two into their home. But they lied when Eliza asked 'em if they was gatekeepers, they said they was simple farmers who tended their orchard in the Lion's land, and wanted fer nothin' more than a glass of wine and each other's love on a cold winter's night.

The ear of Silas was trained to sniff out such lies, and somethin' in the way of Garren's words told Silas that the man had been to Send'ra, or had talked with many who had, for the man could not fully hide his accent in the sayin' of the words. Likewise, the keen eye of Eliza would not be fooled. Marjorey wore a simple peasant's shirt, but she had forgot that it had come from Send'ra and had not hidden it away in the tower. And though 'twas subtle, the tiniest of stitches in the shirt were lined in a way not known in this world, so Eliza knew that this woman was lyin' to her as well.

So the two Strangers said to Garren and Marjorey that they did not know this land well, and the Lion would not welcome them if he knew they were there trespassin' in his lands, and asked if they could go to the top of their tower to spy out the best path through the surroundin' mazes. And the gatekeepers did not know what to say to this, for if they allowed the strangers into the tower, their treasures would be found, their lies would be uncovered, and the wrath of the Strangers would come down upon them. But if they didn't, then Eliza and Silas would know there was sumthin' they was hidin'.

"'Tis not our tower," Marjorey said, thinkin' fastly, "'Tis the lion's, an' he said we're not t'go in there. He gave us this orchard an' allowed us to live here if we'd guarded it, but we don't know what's inside."

This was not good enough for Silas and Eliza, and Eliza took her deadliest hand and traced a door in the rock with her sharpest finger. Then Silas used his great strength to push the door inwards, and the two of 'em stepped inside.

There they saw the treasure, and some 'twas familiar to them from their childhood in Send'ra, and they knew for sure the gatekeepers was lyin' to them. So they turned around, Eliza's hand and Silas's fiery sword ready to strike down Garren and Marjorey in anger.

But Garren and Marjorey begged for forgiveness, for mercy, and promised they would open the door to Send'ra for the Strangers, allowin' them to go homeways at last. So, wantin' so badly to go home, Eliza and Silas stayed their blades.

Garren and Marjorey linked their hands and started their gate-magicks, and they ripped a hole in the air not to Send'ra, nor to the edge of Edge as the Lion had bade, but to The Blackest. And as the door opened, the blood of the souls started spilln' inta Edge like a dam burstin', only The Blackest didn't just fall like water, it reached and grabbed like 'twas ivy. The hungriest of ivy.

The Strangers knowed what had happened, and fast as flashes, they stabbed and chopped at the Blackest, cuttin' the reachin' hands into puddles that fell to the ground. And they knowed of the hunger of the Blackest, that 'twould not be stopped or slowed unless 'twas fed, that the leak these two gatekeepers had poked into the walls of Edge could threaten the whole of the Lion's land if 'twere not closed up. So Eliza grabbed at Marjorey the liar, and she threw her to the Blackest, and the Blackest filled her up, nose to tail.

Silas and Eliza, they run out of the tower and Silas, he lifted the stone back inta place, quick as a wink, and used his weavin’ magick to seal it up again, only it left the stone clear as water instead'a the dark it had been. An' the two of them, they faced Garren. No warrior, he, and the man started babblin' and cryin', for through that clear stone he could see the woman he loved gettin' et by The Black.

Eliza and Silas knowed the man would've had the same fate befall them, and they demanded that he open the gate to Send'ra now, or they'd kill him where he stood. But Garren answered that he couldn't, that without Marjorey he couldn't open even the smallest of gates. And Silas's ear and Eliza's eye knowed he was tellin' the truth. And he cried to the Strangers that the Lion had made them do it, that the beast had threatened his and Marjorey's lives unless they tricked the strangers into The Blackest. Which was another trick, of course, as the Lion had not said any such thing.

And the Strangers looked at the man who had tried to trick them, the man who had lost his treasure and his love and his powers that day, and they took pity on him. "This Blackest," they said, "The Blackest which you and your love let loose on this world, this is a pox on Edge. Mebbe The Blackest would have stopped if'n it had fed on two such as the likes of us, but mebbe not. Mebbe it would've flowed forth an' swallered Edge an' everyone who lives in it. For your foolishness, Garren, we curse you to stand guard on this tower for the long of your life. You are now keeper of this one gate, the gate of The Blackest."

And Silas and Eliza walked away from the tower and the man they had cursed. Walked inta other stories, for other nights.

But then...oh, then, m'dear babbies, then the Lion came, and the Lion was angry. And he knew that not only had Garren and Marjorey failed, not only had the man and the woman put his land in danger with their trick, but that Garren had tried to set Eliza and Silas 'gainst him with his lies. And Garren was made afraid. But the Lion said, "Do not be scardsey, gatekeeper. You resisted the Strangers and did not allow them back into Send'ra, and I will give ye what I promised. Eat from this dish, eat from the graal, and ye shall never die."

But Garren did not want to eat from the graal. Death was the finest gift he could've received. But the Lion held him down and forced the food into his mouth, made him chew and made him swaller. Then the Lion opened the doorway into the tower he had created, and thrust some food in, so that Marjorey would eat of it as well.

And there they remain to this day: Marjorey trapped in the blackness of the tower, Garren bound to her fer eternity. Because they dared to cross the Lion, and Silas the Pretender and Eliza the Knife-Fingered.

Time fer sleep now, m'loveys. Tuck in yer tails and nuzzle yer muzzles close to Gramma. Tomorra will be another day of chasin' rabbits in the fields.