“Two,” said Audrey.
Mary glanced at her and flushed. “Two lives. If there’s something I must do to make myself clean, or to avoid profaning sacred secrets by hearing them—”
“Your profanity is beyond question,” said Grandfather, “but irrelevant. If there were ever any core of truth to the blood libels that destroyed our children, they came from misrepresentations of such desperate methods.”
“If there’s a chance she could come up with something—” I said.
“As she did with the summoning? First you risk yourself to preserve the illusion that you can save someone already lost; now you would risk all of us.”
“The summoning may have been foolish, but she’s created new arts that do work.” I neglected to mention the specifics. “I’ve seen them.”
“No,” said Grandfather.
“Yringl’phtagn,” said Ngalthr warningly. “It is a small chance, but would you prefer rumors of killing children, or children dead in truth because of your fear?” He looked to the clouds, then to Mary. “You have entered a place of sacred ritual. Honesty and plain speech are sacraments of the Tide. I will answer your question, and you will listen.”
For the first time, Mary looked nervous. “All right.”
“Outsiders, such as the thing you summoned, cling to this world by taking the place of your own self. Their presence drains vital power from mind and body, destroying both. If they know what life is, or that they have displaced it, we have never been able to tell.
“Detached from their host, they are unable to survive the laws of this universe. We have blades, enchanted to cut both body and mind. These we must use at the points where the outsider clings. The longer they have infected their host, the more such points there are.” Mary watched Ngalthr intently as he spoke. Grandfather looked away, though his glance stole sometimes in my direction. The archpriest laced sharp-clawed fingers together and went on:
“To survive such a cleansing requires physical endurance and the ability to heal quickly. But it also requires mental training and focused will. The mind, when attacked, instinctively flees from the flesh—and in doing so carries a part of the outsider to safety. Only someone trained in the arts of mental travel can deliberately hold fast to their body, experiencing all that it suffers—and ensuring that the outsider remains present and vulnerable to be cut away. Fail, and the body dies while the mind drifts anchorless, still bound to the outsider, until both dissipate into the void.”
I shivered, imagining it: staying with the pain, allowing it, knowing that I could stop it and must not. I might well have to, if I put off my separation from Sally much longer. Or if I had miscalculated our existing connection.
I could understand why my grandfather was less willing than I to risk such a sacrifice.
Mary waited a moment, still watching intently. “Is there more?” she asked.
“That is all of the method,” said Ngalthr. “There is much ritual built around the essentials. It gives the person something to hold on to other than their own pain. There is a room in the catacombs of our temple designed for such purposes—not a necessity, though it saves time and the risk of error. But the core of it is the cutting, and the endurance.”
She stood and paced. “Mind and body,” she said, half to herself. “That part’s easy enough, and you could reduce—what if you used anesthetics? And had a modern surgical theater to minimize bleeding, sterilize everything, and sew up the wounds afterward?”
Chulzh’th looked thoughtful. “The medical techniques … would help, in part. But the harm to the body is what forces the outsider loose. And”—she flexed her fingers, careful not to let her claws pierce Sally’s side—“it would be hard to keep gloves whole.”
“I can wield a blade,” said Mary. “If I have guidance.”
“Drugs to dull pain have been tried,” said Ngalthr. “But most by their nature loosen the mind from the body. If the mind is not there to feel the pain, the outsider remains untouched as well.”
“Damn.” Mary continued pacing. “I don’t know that I could talk Kingsport Congregational into giving the lot of us a private surgery at 1 a.m., in any case. Damn.”
“I’ll try it,” said Audrey abruptly.
Ngalthr frowned at her. “Child, I said no.”
“I don’t have Aphra’s strength, but I have more endurance than most people. I’m doing a lot better than Sally is, and that’s down to whatever this … thing … is, in my blood. It might help me survive. And I may not be trained in mental travel, but I learn fast. I’m already stubborn enough to hold on when people are trying to push me out.” Her eyes slid sideways to Trumbull, but with Mary present she didn’t specify. “And I’m dying, anyway. I’m not afraid of it hurting a bit more.”
“I have done this before,” said Ngalthr. “And I will not do it to you.”
“Audrey,” I said. “The thing in your blood—” Turning to Mary. “Audrey has something in her blood—we don’t know what it is, but it looks like—pieces of void that try to eat up the invader. It hurts her too, but it’s why she’s doing so much better than Sally. We were trying to find a way to share it, and get it under control, but we couldn’t figure it out.”
“Really?” Mary turned on her. “How did you come by it? What do you know about how it works?”
Audrey shrugged, beyond shame. “I had ancestors who were supernaturally crazy and liked running crazy supernatural experiments. But I don’t know anything about how it works, because their experiments were a few generations back and they didn’t leave any notes.”
Mary raised her eyebrows. “You’re talking about the Mad Ones? Or some seventeenth-century enthusiast in Providence or Salem?”
“The Mad Ones Under the Earth.” Audrey pronounced it with melodramatic relish. “You know about them?”
“I may take the classics with a grain of salt, but I’ve read them.” She looked at the elders. “Possibly a larger grain than I should have. Tell me everything you can about this protection of yours.”
Audrey, and those of us who’d seen her blood, did what we could to explain it—what it looked like to the inner eye, its effects, everything we’d tried to bridle it.
Mary held her hands out, flexed them as if trying to grasp something. “I could … there are equations that describe the body and mind. The ones I used for the inventory spell were too general, obviously, but they could be made more specific—perhaps specific enough to summon and control a part of the body.”
“Or the cold itself?” I asked.
“If we knew more of its nature. A gift from the Mad Ones would be far easier, if only because they’re human. But I can’t work out the equations. I can’t do them in my head, and I can’t write them out.”
Trumbull stepped forward. “Can you walk me through them?”