“So we understand from Athru and Tana. We are hoping that it has not yet tired of carrion meat.”
“Why does that happen, othala? Do you know?”
I shook my head. “We wish that we did. But none of our teachers could offer a reason, only warnings that it becomes twice as difficult to quiet a ghoul after it has killed.” Anticipating his next question, I added, “We have never had to deal with a ghoul that has killed, although we have quieted half a dozen.”
“Gracious,” said Osmer Thilmerezh.
“The northern plains seem to breed them,” I said. “We know of Ulineise prelates who tried to turn their parishioners to different funerary practices, simply because of the incidence of ghouls, but we have not heard that any of them had been successful. Everyone believes that their cemetery will never fall into disrepair.”
“That’s why Tanvero has a cemetery caretaker,” Osmer Thilmerezh said, somewhat wryly. “And really it’s been a remarkably effective precaution. This is the first ghoul in the forty years we have been here.”
Definitely Varenechibel, then. I did not ask him what he had done to be exiled to Tanvero; it could be a very sensitive subject, even decades later, and I was a new acquaintance, not a friend of intimate enough standing for such a confidence.
Instead, I asked him to tell me what lay along the South Road.
He was still engaged in that disquisition when Tana returned with two massive goblin men, each with a shovel and a lantern. One of them had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder, which was the only way to tell them apart.
“This is Vera and this is Valta,” said Osmer Thilmerezh. Valta was the one carrying the rope. “Gentlemen, this is Othala Celehar, who requires your help.”
They both nodded, and Vera said, using the plural, “Tell us what you need, othala.”
I explained the situation again. They listened carefully, and Valta asked, sounding not at all alarmed, “Will the ghoul attack us?”
It was a fair question. “I will ask you to wait on the road until I have quieted it,” I promised. “But should it somehow get past me, it will be very slow. And a shovel is an excellent weapon.”
The twins considered this, then nodded. Valta said, “If we leave now, othala, we will have at least some daylight left along the South Road.”
“All right,” I said, and Osmer Thilmerezh said a very old luck charm.
The twins set a less punishing pace than I had expected, being kind to the lowlander. But it still wasn’t long before we reached the south gate and were out in the farmlands.
“We should check the Old Town Cemetery,” I said. “Tana said it was seen there, and maybe it won’t have gone farther yet.”
That was most likely a forlorn hope, but the twins agreed that it was a sensible place to start. We reached the Old Town Cemetery just before the twins had to stop to kindle their lanterns. I could understand, looking at it, with the road on one side and a steep hill rising up on the other (and on the other side of the road a deep rainwater gully), how the town had run out of room. I still found myself uneasy at the thought of any cemetery being abandoned, even with a caretaker, but that was my own experience of Aveio and how quickly a ghoul could rise in untended ground.
Here, all seemed peaceful. We didn’t even find signs of the ghoul’s passage until we came to the graves farthest from the road, where there had clearly been some digging, and there were old bones scattered, as if the ghoul had not found what it was looking for.
That was a foolish fancy, I told myself sternly. It was a ghoul. It hadn’t the brain to look for anything. But it was hard to rid myself of the idea that it might have ceased to be satisfied with dead victims, might be planning—not planning, Celehar, stop being absurd—might be drawn toward the living.
“Tell Athru,” I said to the twins, and they nodded, grotesque bobbing shadows in the lantern light. Ghoul-disturbed earth became rapidly likely to spawn ghouls itself.
We continued south, watching for the warm lights of the farmhouses as we went. The next cemetery along the South Road was a family one, but before we reached it, one of the twins stopped and said, “Where’s Sherzar’s house?”
“We’re not to it yet,” said the other.
“But we should be. We passed the Reclavada and the Parsinada on the left, and the Obrevada on the right—Sherzar should be right here.”
There was a pause while Valta—the rope visible across his chest in the lantern light—recalculated his twin’s reckoning. Then he said, “Maybe he’s saving money by going to bed with the sun.”
“Sherzar? The man all but bankrupts himself buying candles in the winter.” They both sounded uneasy.
It wasn’t yet dark enough that the landscape was completely invisible, and after a moment, Valta said, “There’s the beech copse. If he had a candle lit, we would see it.”
We were all nervous now. I said, “I think we had best investigate. We can apologize if he was asleep.”
“Yes,” said Valta, not happily, and led the way past the beech copse, and down a narrow, rutted path. After about twenty yards, a house became visible, very small but squarely built, and entirely dark. Another three yards and we could see the door was open.
Valta muttered a prayer under his breath and called, “Sherzar! Sherzar, are you there?”
There was no answer; I did not think Valta expected one.
I said, “You can stay here if you’ll give me one of the lanterns.”
“No, I thank you, othala,” said Vera. “I think we would be much wiser to stay with you.”
“Yes,” said Valta.
“All right,” I said, though truthfully I myself had no desire to divide our forces.
When I reached the doorway, I knew it was too late for Sherzar. The thick reek of stale blood was like being struck in the face.
Vera went inside first, then me, then Valta. Vera said, “Goddesses of mercy,” in a choked voice. Valta stepped back outside and was quietly sick.
The ghoul had torn Sherzar to pieces. Some of the pieces had been gnawed on, and blood was everywhere: pooled on the floor, streaked across the walls, spattered on the ceiling. There were bloody handprints here and there, clearly Sherzar’s.
At least we did not have to search to be sure the ghoul was not there. Sherzar’s house had only two rooms; neither was cluttered enough with furniture to offer any hiding places—if a ghoul were bright enough to hide, which it wasn’t. I reminded myself again that the ghoul was no longer elf or goblin. It was only dead, hungry meat.
I said the prayer of compassion for the dead and offered a silent apology to Sherzar that we could not stop long enough for more. “All right,” I said. “We have to follow it from here. There should be enough of a blood trail at least to start us in the right direction.”
“Yes,” said Vera, still choked, but he recovered when we were back in the open air, and Valta was already casting around for traces. It took only a very little searching to find the ghoul’s path, paralleling the road but apparently careful to stay off it, which was not a good sign.
“Be alert,” I said to the twins. “This one has been risen long enough to develop some very rudimentary cunning.”
“Keveris should have reported it sooner,” said Valta.
“Much sooner,” said Vera.
“Be glad it’s only one ghoul,” I said. “From what Athru and Osmer Thilmerezh told me, it could easily have been more.”
Two of us walked on the road while the third followed the ghoul’s trail. We traded off regularly, and we hadn’t gone more than a mile, the moon now starting to rise, before Valta, beside me on the road, said, “There’s the Clestenada cemetery. I can see the fancy fence.”
“All right,” I said. “Assuming it can’t figure out the gate—”
“The gate’s open.”
Vera came out of the ditch, and we ran for the gate of the Clestenada cemetery.
We were too late again.
It was immediately obvious that the ghoul had
not opened the gate—also that Othala Perchenzar’s book had not been protection enough against a real ghoul.
“He must have tried to lay a trap for it and ended up trapped himself,” I said, my own voice shaking. “And now the ghoul has killed twice.”
The twins said nothing, and I said, trying to get my thoughts to move forward, not to remain stuck on the grisly mess of the Clestenada cemetery, “Tell Athru to watch these graves particularly. The dirt has been saturated with blood, and I’ve been told that wakes ghouls more certainly than anything else.”
“We will have to bury Othala Perchenzar,” said Valta.
“And Sherzar,” said Vera.
“Get someone to pay for proper gravestones,” I said. “Maybe the town of Tanvero. And maybe they should think about hiring a second caretaker.” I stopped, scrubbed my face with both hands. My thoughts were moving, certainly, but in no useful direction.
I centered myself, told the twins to start searching around the perimeter of the graveyard for the ghoul’s trail, then moved forward to the corpse. I said the prayer of compassion for the dead and a second prayer, specific to prelates of Ulis. It was as I was turning away from the terrible remains of Othala Perchenzar that I realized two things. First, that the Clestenada cemetery, with its elaborate fence, did in fact make a perfect trap. Second, that this ghoul was smart enough to figure that out.
It was blocking the gate.
It did not have a face, only a mouth, and its teeth seemed to be made of bones. I never saw its body clearly, only impressions of blood and bone, fat and raw meat. I wasn’t sure that there was any proper body at all; the ghoul clothed itself in meat, but it clothed itself badly. One thing I had always been told about ghouls—one thing I had seen for myself a number of times—was not true about this one. It was not slow.
It was not lightning-fast, but it was far faster than any other ghoul I had seen, fast enough that I almost didn’t dodge in time when it rushed at me.
I scrambled out of the way and ran immediately for the gate, for it took only seconds to understand that I had to get out of the killing pen the ghoul had found and already used successfully once.
But the ghoul had reasoned that out, too. Even as I bumped hard into the gatepost, its clawing rib-fingered hands clamped on my shoulders. I had only enough time to grab the gatepost with both hands before the ghoul started dragging me backwards toward the jagged bone teeth of its maw.
Wherever they were in the darkness, the twins had the wits to extinguish their lanterns.
I ripped myself free of the ghoul’s hold and fell hard on the blood-soaked ground. Before I could pick myself up, I felt the ghoul’s hand close around my ankle, and it started to drag me back. I cast desperately for the ghoul’s name. The process was the same as with any dead body, and the ghoul might be cunning and fast, but it did not have a living mind. It had only hunger and rage and there at the center, almost unsalvageable, was its name.
“Hiriän!” I gasped, grabbing frantically at the gatepost again. “Hiriän Balamaran, I know your name!” The ghoul had been a woman. I didn’t know why I was surprised.
It made a noise, a sort of roaring, sawing sound that I could not imagine how it had produced.
“Vera!” I shouted. “Valta! Say the name! Hiriän Balamaran!”
“Hiriän Balamaran!” a twin shouted from the left, and for the first time I felt the ghoul’s grip loosen.
“Hiriän Balamaran!” I shouted again. “I know your name! I know your death!” Hiriän Balamaran—who in truth had nothing to do with the ghoul except that it had started with her body—had died in childbirth. She had started bleeding, and there had been no midwife to help her, only her trapper husband. They barely had time to realize something was wrong before Hiriän was dead.
“Hiriän Balamaran!” shouted the other twin from the other side of the cemetery. That actually distracted the ghoul; I felt its grip loosen a little, as if it couldn’t decide whether to drag me in or to go after this other target.
“Hiriän,” I said, trying to soften my voice. “Hiriän, you have been wrongly woken from your sleep. You must rest again. Hiriän, let the darkness take you.”
The ghoul roared again, but I could feel its grip weakening. This was an old ritual, although it was usually recited over the grave after the ghoul had been quieted. I said again, “Hiriän, you have been wrongly woken from your sleep. You must rest again.” The twins were still shouting “Hiriän Balamaran!” in turn, and as I said, “Hiriän, let the darkness take you,” I felt one of its rib-fingers fall off. “Hiriän, you have been wrongly woken from your sleep.” The ghoul let go of me entirely, and I scrambled madly out of the cemetery. “You must rest again,” I said with all the conviction I had, and, craning over my shoulder, I saw the ghoul’s indistinct shape, half out the gate, slump to the ground.
The twins let out a ragged cheer.
“Hiriän Balamaran,” I said, “let the darkness take you,” and the ghoul collapsed into a pile of rotting meat.
There was perfect silence for a moment—not even insects singing—and then both twins cried, “Othala! Othala, are you hurt?”
I wasn’t sure of the answer. I felt filthy, as if I, too, were made of rotting meat, and both shoulders burned and throbbed with pain from the ghoul’s grip. “I don’t think anything’s broken,” I managed as I got to my feet; by then the twins had found me by the light of their relit lanterns.
“You’re bleeding, othala,” said Vera.
I looked down and saw blood oozing through my torn shirt and waistcoat and coat—long parallel rents that marked the touch of the ghoul’s hands. My trousers were stained with a vile mixture of mud and blood, and the ghoul had pulled off one shoe.
“Well, that’s the ruination of this coat,” I said wearily. “But come. We must bury this carcass.”
“We will dig,” Vera said firmly.
I should have argued, but I was too grateful to them to try. Also, I realized as I watched, I would only have gotten in their way. They dug neatly and swiftly, their shovels never colliding, and when the grave was deep enough, they carefully transferred the foul pile of bones and body parts into the earth, returning my shoe to me when they found it. It was in no worse condition than my trousers, and I put it back on.
The twins filled in the grave as quickly as they had dug it, and by then I had found a stick and wrote HIRIÄN BALAMARAN in careful letters across the freshly turned soil. I said the prayer of compassion for the dead and added a prayer for rest traditionally said over the graves of ghouls, and then we started the long walk back to town.
* * *
Tanvero had two clerics of Csaivo; I did not ask why the twins took me to one instead of the other. He was a tall elven man, rather stooped, with an abrupt manner and quick-moving hands. He seemed unfazed by the information that my injuries were from a ghoul, merely muttering, “I’d best clean those out thoroughly then.” He washed the gashes on my shoulders and left ankle out with something that smelled like marigolds and stung like hornets. I gripped the edge of his examining table and tried to maintain a decent composure.
Coralezh raised an eyebrow and said, “No one will think less of you if you scream.”
“That’s good to know,” I said.
When he had cleaned the gashes, he smeared them gently with an ointment that smelled of camellias and said, “They’ve stopped bleeding already, so I don’t think I need bandage them, but you will need a shirt.”
“Yes,” I said ruefully. Mine was essentially torn to ribbons, and if I’d wanted the bloodstains to come out, I shouldn’t have delayed to bury the ghoul.
“Not to worry,” Coralezh said. “I have a kind of secondhand exchange in the back here. Sometimes patients come, like you, and need clothes. Sometimes they come, and they will never need their clothes again.”
I had no objection to wearing the clothes of the dead. Coralezh disappeared for a moment, and came back with a plain calico shirt that proved to be only a little bit too b
ig.
“It will do,” I said, and put it on.
He offered me a pair of trousers, which were fine once I’d rolled up the cuffs.
“Unfortunately,” said Coralezh, “I have no waistcoats that will fit you, and the only coat back there that I think you could wear is mustard yellow. Do you want it?”
I hesitated. On the one hand, I had no wish to look like a barbarian wandering the streets of Tanvero in my shirtsleeves. On the other hand, I was expected, as a prelate of Ulis, to maintain a suitable palette in my clothes, and mustard yellow was not by any stretch of the imagination suitable. My own coat, the black one with gray embroidery of which I had been particularly fond, was ruined.
“Let me try it,” I said finally.
It was both bright yellow and quite fashionable, with the off-center line of frogs down the front and the braid in looping patterns at the cuffs. It fit perfectly. And I really couldn’t go out in my shirtsleeves.
“That’s a terrible color on you,” Coralezh observed.
“I will remember not to wear it again. Thank you for your help.”
“My calling,” Coralezh said with a shrug. “Make a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary for the people of Tanvero and any debt you may owe me will be cleared.”
“I will do so.”
“Thank you, othala.” We bowed to each other over folded hands, and I departed.
* * *
It was dawn before I was able to sleep, on a bed that Valta’s wife Sanaro had made up for me in their winter storeroom, and my dreams were strange and restless. I was fairly sure I did not dream Valta saying sternly to someone, “No, you do not need Othala Celehar to bury Othala Perchenzar. Is Othala Monmara ill?”
Someone else said, “But Othala Perchenzar hated Othala Monmara.”
“Then he shouldn’t have gone out and gotten himself killed by a ghoul,” said Valta. “Leave poor Othala Celehar in peace.”
I wanted to protest that I was perfectly capable of performing a funeral service on two hours’ sleep—I had done so before—but by the time I remembered how to form the words, I was asleep again.
The Witness for the Dead Page 12