Modern Magick

The Road to Farringale: 19

To my renewed horror, the ortherex on the baroness's palm was by no means content to lie passive. It twitched and writhed, bunching its body into a tight coil, its mouth fixed upon her skin in a manner that to my eyes looked highly unpromising. The baroness winced, and quickly dropped it back into the mass of its brethren.

The thing was gamely trying to eat her.

I stared at the baroness, and I dare say my eyes were as wide as saucers. In the midst of my horror, a thought occurred to me. 'How is it that you are still here?' I gestured at the ortherex. 'I mean, it is not merely the passage of time — for you have been here since the fall of Farringale, have you not? Hundreds of years?'

She looked gravely at me, and said only: 'I have.'

'Time aside, then, how have you survived proximity to these horrors? The rest of Farringale fell!'

She turned away from the wriggling parasites and began, slowly, to ascend the stairs. 'Some few of my kind are resistant to the ortherex. Our blood will not nourish them. From us they cannot feed, and so they die.' Her lips quirked in a faint smile. 'Still, they try.'

I thought of the way that tiny mouth had fastened upon the baroness's skin, the way she had hastily thrown it off. Apparently, the ortherex could still hurt, even if they could not kill her. 'How many of you are still here?' I asked her.

'Three, by my life. Once, there were more.'

They were dying out, then, these lingering guardians of Farringale. I pictured her centuries-long vigil, the loneliness of her state here, cut off from the wider world; condemned only to wait, and watch as her few fellows died around her. I shivered.

A theory as to the nature of her longevity was forming in my mind, and I hungered to ask questions of her. But I restrained the impulse. There was not time, now, to pursue that topic. The matter of the ortherex was far more pressing. We reached the top of the stairs, and those enclosed walls now made sense to me. Perhaps there was the outline of a lost door, somewhere inside that walled-off corridor; someone had bricked it up, perhaps in hope of containing the tide of ortherex which had taken possession of the cellars. A doomed effort, and futile.

The baroness took us back through the wall, and paused. How grateful was I, to return to that light, airy hallway after the dank misery of the passageways below! I stepped into the patch of sunlight which shone through the main doors, welcoming its soft warmth upon my skin. It was faded and wan in this strange place the baroness had brought me to — between the echoes — but comparatively, it was bliss. 'Baroness,' I said. 'Please, tell me you have a way to stop these creatures. Can they be purged? Destroyed? Repelled? Anything.'

A faint smile curved her lips: of satisfaction, perhaps. 'I do,' she said, and my hopes swelled. 'Alas, too late we were for Farringale. But down the long ages we've toiled, and our work is finished. The tome I put into your hands; you have it still?'

Of course I did. I took it out to show her, and she nodded approval. 'Therein lies the key. Know that nothing can purge the ortherex once they grow too strong; perhaps Glenfinnan is already lost beyond recall. But it is not too late for Darrowdale. If you love magick, Cordelia Vesper, then save our Enclaves. I entreat you.'

'I will. We will, now that you have given us the means.'

She nodded again, though her attention had wandered from me, her thoughts turned within. 'If but one is saved, all is justified,' she mused, and I saw a sadness and a weariness in her that all but broke my heart. 'It will be enough.'