Charlie glowered. “Important for who?”
But if Berghast minded Charlie’s tone, he gave no indication. His face was as cold and flat and emotionless as ever. “In the other world, in the land of the dead … nothing is as it is here. There, matter is dust and spirit is substance. It is a world as different from ours as the inside of your body is, from what lies outside it. Its dangers are various and changing. It is easy to become lost. There was a time when I sent talents through. The old ones, you call them.” Dr. Berghast worked his hands in front of him, massaging the scarred knuckles as if they pained him. He looked up. “But then something terrible came out of the orsine and put a stop to it all. A creature. It is this that gives Jacob Marber his strength, and his purpose. It is this which we are trying to stop. The drughr.”
Charlie shivered.
“Miss Davenshaw will have told you about the orsine. But not its essence. Where do we come from? What are we, really? We are connected to the orsine in ways you cannot imagine. The orsine was built at the behest of a man named Alastair Cairndale. He was the first of our kind, the First Talent. You will have seen his portrait in the great hall. After his talent manifested, others emerged, other talents who found their way to him. All of this was many centuries ago. But wherever there is order, chaos will press in. In time there was disagreement, a struggle between talents for how to be in the world. Whether we ought to reveal ourselves fully. Whether we ought to play a greater role in the fates of nations. The drughr emerged out of that chaos, seeking to destroy us.”
Charlie watched Marlowe. The little boy was listening intently.
“Lord Cairndale and his … associates, constructed the orsine and banished the drughr through it. He was powerful, far more powerful than we are today. His talent could not merely manipulate, as ours do, but even create. In the struggle he was dragged into the orsine, alongside the monster. How he perished, under what circumstances, was never known. But somehow he managed to contain the drughr; it was trapped inside the orsine.
“Yet now it is back,” he continued calmly. “And it falls to me to stand against it.”
Charlie could sense the older man’s seductive sadness, the intensity of it, and he didn’t like it. “You mean it falls to us,” he said, reproach in his voice.
“I am no Alastair Cairndale,” Berghast replied, just as if Charlie hadn’t said anything. “And yet I must become him. All of us must carry what we are, Charles. Whether we wish to or not.”
Charlie glanced over at Marlowe, whose face was expressionless. “I’m getting tired of being told that in fifty different ways. It’s always someone else saying what’s got to be carried and who it’s got to be carried for.”
A subtle flare of the nostrils betrayed Berghast’s impatience. “Mr. Thorpe is dying,” he said. “Cairndale’s glyphic is dying, Mr. Ovid. Your outrage will change nothing. The orsine will rip itself open; Cairndale will be defenseless. The dead will pour through the breach into this world, and there is no telling what will become of us then.”
Charlie swallowed, abashed.
“When that happens, the orsine will have to be sealed,” Berghast continued, in a soft angry whisper. He might have been alone. “Sealed forever. And then our only way of destroying the drughr will be lost. If I am to enter the orsine, if I am to confront the drughr, I must do it soon. Its powers are different there; I can stop it there.”
“I don’t understand, Dr. Berghast,” murmured Marlowe.
The man smiled his cold smile. “I have been preparing for this for longer than you can imagine, child. I do not need your understanding. Only your trust.”
“You mean our obedience,” muttered Charlie.
Berghast unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a long metal box. He rested his hand on the lid. “There was a time when I would send the talents through, so they could map the world beyond the orsine. So we would be prepared, you see, if the drughr returned. I’d found an object, an artifact of immense power. I’d been searching for it for years, across oceans of sand, mountains of ice. At last I tracked it down in a community of talents east of the Black Sea.” As he spoke, he opened the box and lifted out a strange glove, made of wood and iron and cloth. It looked heavy and clicked as he picked it up. “Once there were three artifacts; now there is only one. This is a replica.”
He passed it across and Charlie took it and turned it in his fingers. Plates of iron and wood like an armored gauntlet. Sewn inside the wrist of the glove was a band of sharp studs, like little teeth. “The real artifact allows the talent who wears it to pass through the orsine, intact, and to survive in the beyond. It allows them to return alive. But not only talents. The artifact’s power is such that it protects anything that wishes to cross between the worlds. From either side.”
Charlie blinked. “You mean, the—”
“The drughr, yes. It would be protected here. In this world.”
Charlie was running his finger over the soft wood plates. He saw there were delicate carvings, line work, like the trails left by beetles in bark. Each plate was different. Stamped into the iron palm was the same crest as his mother’s ring, the same design as what hung over the gates of Cairndale. Twinned hammers against a rising sun. The wood was soft, warm. The iron was supple. Even this replica felt immensely old. Charlie offered it to Marlowe, who handed it back to Dr. Berghast.
The older man’s face darkened as he studied the copy. “A beautiful thing, isn’t it? But the real glove was lost, years ago. It was lost inside the orsine.”
“You want us to find it for you,” said Marlowe.
He nodded cautiously. “We must find it before the glyphic dies. While the orsine can still be controlled.”
Charlie scowled. “Why us?”
“Because you are both … unusual. You, Charles, are a haelan. Your body, your very talent, sustains itself, regenerates itself. You can stay in that world much, much longer than any other talent. And you, child,” he said, fixing his eerie gaze on Marlowe again, “you are another thing entirely.”
Marlowe looked back at him, his eyes big.
“You are quite remarkable, child. You contain a spark from the orsine. You are a piece of it. You were born in that other world, your mother gave birth to you there, before she was murdered by Jacob Marber. You can survive there as long as you wish. The orsine cannot harm you.”
All at once it was like all the air was sucked out of the room.
Dr. Berghast had said it so casually, with such easy disregard. It was shocking. Charlie gripped Marlowe’s shoulder firmly.
The little boy was staring at Dr. Berghast. His mouth was open.
“My mother was—?”
“Murdered. Yes. You did not know?” Dr. Berghast grimaced coolly, and then he said, with a look of satisfaction playing at the corners of his eyes: “She was a kind woman, a remarkable woman. She would have loved you more than her own life, child. Marber took her from you, from all of us. And then he tried to take you. If you wish to avenge her, if you wish to make Marber suffer … then this is the way. Bring me that glove, and I will destroy his master.”
* * *
After the boys had left, Henry Berghast carefully put the replica glove away and opened a second drawer in his desk and took out a ring of heavy iron keys. He went to one of the doors in his study and unlocked it and lit a lantern from a sconce on the wall and began to descend. His footsteps scraped on the stone stairs. The steps wound down into the earth and stopped at a thick oak door.