And then, she began to expand. To transform. Her entire body, her entire existence inflated like an exploding sun, blossoming with pustulant black eruptions. She churned into a foul froth. She was engulfing herself, transformed by the waste she could not excrete fast enough, green and blue gone now, transmogrified into an unending blackness—roiling, stinking foulness …
An Abberancy. The tiny, insignificant part of her mind that was still Emily Edwards screamed out in panic. She was turning into an Aberrancy.
It can be stopped, Komé’s voice susurrated urgently. It can be stopped, Basket of Secrets.
Black and roiling, bubbling and hissing. An Aberrancy that engulfed the entire world, a planet of pestilence, a whole world of blackness and filth and rot and death …
The poison, the Maien said. The poison hidden by the god of oaths. It did not die with him.
Komé’s words were lost in the torrential garble that was her, that was everything. She could hear nothing, only blackness. She could see nothing, only blackness. She was frothing and tumbling and dying. She was dying.
Ososolyeh desires it.
Then, in the Grand Trine Room, someone screamed. The piercing, tortured shriek tore Emily’s mind from the grasp of Ososolyeh’s consciousness, one reality cracking to reveal glimpses of another …
And she fell, and she bubbled, and she died.
In the Grand Trine Room, someone screamed—a high lingering warbling scream rent from the core of the creature that gave it voice.
Emily opened her eyes, gasping, fumbling around herself like a drowning victim. She felt Stanton falling to his knees beside her, reaching for her arms; she looked at the place where her hand should be. She looked for the bubbling blackness, for the foulness that would engulf her …
… but her hand was still just a ghost-image floating above a cuff of silver, and her arm was smooth and white.
“It’s all right,” Stanton murmured, holding her to still her violent trembling. He smelled of blood, but maybe that was just another part of the horror. “It’s all right, Emily. It was just a vision. A Cassandra.”
The screaming continued, like a man being torn to pieces. Emily looked to see where the soul-wrenching sound was coming from.
It was coming from Tarnham.
The scene was ghastly. Tarnham was soaked in blood, bound by lashing tendrils of power. He struggled in wild terror. In his teeth, clenched like a bit, was the Otherwhere Marble. He screamed against it like a man gagged. Emily looked down into her palm. Only the acorn remained there.
“He’s got it!” Emily screamed. “He’s got my hand!”
“Stop him!” Mirabilis roared. But it was too late. In a flash, Tarnham was gone, leaving behind only a smell of brimstone and burning hair.
“His ferret!” Miss Pendennis pointed. “Look there!”
Tarnham’s ferret had been slaughtered, torn to pieces by someone’s hand, and the bloody remains of the creature used to inscribe a magical sigil on the floor of the Grand Trine Room.
“Blood magic,” Stanton barked, jumping to his feet and storming forward. He looked at each of the sangrimancers in turn. “Which of you did it? And how … in Mirabilis’ own Grand Trine Room?”
Heusler and Rocheblave looked at each other suspiciously, each scrutinizing the hands of the other for traces of blood. It wasn’t until that moment that Emily noticed that Caul wasn’t with them. Rising quickly, Emily felt a hand wrap around her arm. She looked up, into Caul’s twitching face. He smiled.
“Carissima mia,” he whispered. “It is t-t-time.”
She winced, sudden pain bending her almost double. It was as if acid had been poured into the twisting channels of her cerebellum. No, she thought. No … she would not …
It is time, the voices in her head commanded her.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, Emily leaned forward. Her hands moved on their own. She squeezed her breasts together from the sides to slacken her corset front. Reaching down between the corset and her chemise, she felt for the black-handled knife that she had hidden there, the sharp athame that she had stolen from Miss Pendennis’ traveling case. The muscles of her arms spasmed as she struggled against the compulsion, but the magic was too strong. She withdrew the knife, holding it loosely in a shaking hand.
Caul snatched it. And then everything that had been moving so quickly moved even faster.
The huge man crossed the Grand Trine Room in two strides, toward Mirabilis. Before anyone even saw his movement, Caul had a hand buried in the Sophos’ white hair. He jerked the old man’s head