A Whisper of Death

by Paul Barrett

  “Are you okay?” Blink asked, alarmed by Erick’s sudden change. “Do you need something?”

  “I need Mom back,” Erick said as he opened his mind to let Blink share the memory.

  As a child, Erick helped—or tried to help—with the laundry, pulling the heavy linens from the basket until they draped over his head. He would stumble blindly toward the lines until his mother grabbed him, laughing her soft laugh. By the time everything had been hung, Erick stood soaking wet, and several clothes needed rewashing to remove the stains of grass and pollen. His mother would threaten to pin him up next to his shirts, chasing him across the yard as he squealed in delight and ran into his father’s arms.

  As he grew older, the fun disappeared and he quit assisting, but his mother never lost her enthusiasm for the chore, despite the monotony and difficulty.

  “It clears my mind,” she said once in answer to Erick’s questioning her pleasure at the tedious task. “When I’m cleaning, I don’t have to think about anything but the task at hand, and that’s nice sometimes.”

  Erick hadn’t understood the answer then but had appreciated the sentiment in the past month. He sometimes wished he could douse his dark thoughts like water on a fire.

  He wiped at his eyes, wondering yet again why his parents took their lives. The months before their fatal leap ran through his mind; as always, nothing alarming presented itself. Both Darric and Olena behaved as they ever had. His mother tended the gardens and instructed Erick in his studies, both of them spending four hours a day in the manor’s extensive library. His father passed his time working with the quana on the many physical chores around the estate: feeding livestock, splitting wood, and keeping the manse itself patched and presentable.

  His mother insisted their home remain at the height of respectability, both inside and out. It was a request neither Erick nor Darric understood, but Darric accepted it with good humor and Erick with unreserved grace, as he did the many etiquette lessons his mother gave him.

  When he was not engaged with the manor, Darric spent time teaching Erick the art of Necromancy, filling Erick’s mind with herbs, formulae, and rituals. Once the lessons were done, Erick would be sent away, while Darric remained late into the night.

  Erick’s eyes dried as the process of searching his memory for clues overrode his emotions. It was a fruitless exercise, but he hoped it might someday provide an answer. “Where are my clothes?” he asked Blink.

  “Elissia and Karin washed them and put them away.”

  “What? She worked with the quana?”

  “She did,” Blink said. “They bothered her at first, but she got used to them.”

  Erick considered this, amazed again at Elissia. He understood her appreciation at him keeping Corby alive, but she seemed to be doing more than necessary. Erick only knew about people from his parents and his mother’s books, and more recently from Corby, but Elissia seemed unique. And beautiful. He wanted her to be a friend, like Corby. And he had already stumbled. “Maybe I should have just stayed quiet.”

  “No,” Blink said. “You did the right thing, tough as it was.”

  “We’ll see.” Erick stood slowly and walked to the dresser. His legs wobbled, and the soles of his feet prickled as if they had pins stuck in them. He pulled a gray linen tunic, brown pants, and undergarments from the dresser and began to dress. As he pulled the tunic over his head, further dimming the room’s already soft light, something flickered in the back of his mind, a sense of unease at a dream he couldn’t remember but knew he should.

  He came back into the light, but the discomfort remained. “Bad things are going to happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, I just feel it.” If he could remember the dream, he knew it would tell him everything, but it remained elusive.

  He tried to shake his dismal thoughts and decided standing in a gloomy bedroom that smelled of medicinal herbs and the almost oppressive cleanliness of fresh-washed sheets didn’t help. He turned up the lantern to brighten the room. “I think you’re right. I need some strength. Would you make breakfast? I’m starving.”

  “Right away.” Blink leapt into the air, flapped his wings, and disappeared through the doorway.

  Erick smiled, thinking about the connection he shared with Blink, a bond that had saved his sanity in the days following his parents’ death. A homunculus, created from Erick’s blood, semen, and soul, Blink was closer to his heart than any friend--or even a brother--could ever be.

  Darric, aided by his familiar Sniffer, had performed the familiar binding ritual shortly before Erick’s thirteenth birthday, speaking the words and slicing the boy’s wrist over the cauldron, while Erick loosed his seed into the metal pot.

  After the bleeding, they bound Erick’s wrist, and he went abed for three days while his mother fed him herbal concoctions to rebuild his strength. On the fourth day, he went to see the half-formed lump of gray flesh. For the next three days, he watched for hours as his progeny took shape, each day its body more complete than the previous.

  On the tenth day, the four-foot tall, oyster-colored body was formed: leathery wings, a squat torso with stubby arms, thin tapering fingers, short, powerful legs; and a long, thick tail that bulged near the end, terminating in a wickedly pointed tip. The oblong head had a wide, sharp-toothed mouth, sizeable rounded nose, bat-like ears, and almond-shaped eyes. Some might have considered his familiar ugly, but to Erick it was beautiful. Every lesson in his life was death and Elonsha, but this, a gift of the Covenant, was the one thing of life and creation Necromancers could do. He cherished it.

  That night, they performed the final ritual. As Erick lay beside his creature, Darric spoke words that seared into his mind, not with pain, but with love. The love of friends, couples, and family. His father spoke of bonds beyond love, bonds of devotion lasting through and past death.

  When his father finished, Erick felt a tug in his guts, as though something escaped. His body tingled from scalp to toes, and his mind’s eye felt a stirring beside him as his creation came to life. He heard its first thought in his mind, a thought of adoration and everlasting devotion to the one who gave it life.

  Its eyes opened, and Erick saw the ceiling from two angles, each slightly displaced from the other. The double vision startled him, and Erick closed his eyes to clear his sight. But even with his eyes shut, he still saw the ceiling. Then the angle shifted, and Erick saw himself lying on the table. He turned his head and opened his eyes, staring at the creature that stared at him. It was like a view into two angled mirrors—he and his creation reflected across eternity. Then the creature blinked, and the connection disappeared, but returned whenever Erick wished it.

  Erick immediately named the homunculus Blink.

  But as close as they were, Blink was only one being, and at times he and Erick were too close. Erick wanted to meet people that didn’t know everything about him. He wanted to share stories and divulge secrets and make discoveries. That’s why he had struck up the friendship with Corby when he found the scholar lurking outside the manor fence. Why he wanted to befriend Elissia. And why he hoped he hadn’t lost her permanently.

  5

  The Necromancers brought horrors into the world which had never been seen. Caros willing, we will never see them again. Although I do not warm to the idea of letting one of their kind reside in our kingdom, we will do what the will of the Gods and the Temple of Caros demand. But if they must live here, thank Caros they wish to live on the [Keystone] island. At least there, any harm they cause in future may be contained.

  -Letter from Queen Alana of Zakerin to the Caros Prelate of Kalador

  Elissia paced through the manor’s large garden. She wanted to rip out the late summer hyacinths that grew over the trellises of the gazebo. She longed to take a hammer and smash the decorative stone bench that sat in the middle of the enclosure. The desire to shred the herbs and crops raged in her.

  She wanted to do all that so she would not do the same thing
s to Erick. He deserved to be beaten for the horror he had brought into the world.

  But had he brought it into the world? That question had stopped her from attacking him in his room. He was a Necromancer. He brought people back from the dead. A power useful for nothing but evil, to hear the priest tell it. Still, Erick had not hesitated to destroy the vampire. Had risked his life to save Corby and the whole town. Why would he destroy something he had created? Was it some ploy, forming a monster to attack and then coming in as the savior, thereby getting in the town’s graces?

  Elissia stopped pacing and plopped onto the stone bench. That was the kind of plot her father would come up with, destroying what he loved for some nebulous gain that most would consider unimportant. But after spending time talking to Blink, Elissia couldn’t fathom Erick being that manipulative.

  And Erick had said it was his father. She hadn’t coaxed it out of him or learned it secondhand. He had come right out and stated it, and apologized for it. What could the ulterior motive be in that? Try as she might, she couldn’t figure it out. Her father said everyone had motives, reasons that had self-preservation as top priority. Either Erick wasn’t adept at preserving himself, or he was far smarter than her and had already thought several moves ahead.

  She stewed about it for several minutes, teetering between anger and indecision, when movement caught her eye. Blink waddled into the other end of the herb garden, almost a hundred feet away. He flinched when he spotted her. Instead of coming over, he dashed back into the manor.

  She waited, wondering if Erick would come out to talk to her or send Blink to chase her away. Or he might send Corby to take her home since her cousin no doubt stood inside apologizing for her abrupt departure.

  She eventually heard a shuffle of feet across the ground behind the lattice that enclosed the bench on three sides.

  The large blooms of the hyacinth blocked her view, but the shadow playing across the flowers was too large and upright to be Blink and didn’t have the shy hesitance of Corby. It had to be Erick.

  He came around the trellis, and she hurled a question at him. “Did you make your father a vampire?”

  He stopped moving and took a step back, shock in his round face. “What?”

  She didn’t give him time to think. “No what, just yes or no.”

  He frowned. “No. Not only no, but by the Festering Hells, no.”

  “Okay,” she said. Daughter of a master liar, Elissia had learned early to perceive deception. Erick either spoke the truth or was the best actor she had ever seen.

  “Why would you ever think I’d do something like that?”

  He had been truthful with her, so he deserved the same respect. “As a way to put the town in your debt and force them to accept you.”

  Disbelief showed in the cock of his head and the lowered eyebrows, and she didn’t blame him. It sounded even weaker spoken than it had in the silence of her thoughts.

  “That’s asinine. Why would I give up someone I loved for a town I cared nothing about? And damn near die in the process.”

  Because my father would. She almost said it out loud, but that would lead to questions she wouldn’t answer. “You wouldn’t, and it was a stupid idea. But I have those occasionally.”

  Erick nodded and smiled. “I wanted to try and explain more, but you ran out too fast.. I probably could have found a better way to tell you, but I’m inexperienced at this.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Elissia told him. From the way his face and eyes lit up, she might have told him he had been made a king. “You want to explain now?”

  The brightness left his expression. “Is it enough right now to know that I didn’t do it? That I’m so sorry about your friend? It’s too nice an evening to talk about such things.”

  Elissia nodded, only now noticing how wan he appeared in the day’s dying light. She needed to remember he had been out for almost four days, and no doubt his shock and grief at his father’s return equaled hers.

  But he was right. The evening was too pleasant to wallow in grief. She had said her goodbyes to Frazen. The young girl’s cares were as gone as she was. Elissia could do nothing for her, so she had to care for herself now, just as she always had.

  She sat on the bench and waved her hand toward the carefully tended herb garden, a collage of plants and vines laid in orderly rows that stretched over two acres, near as she could tell. “I’ve been in Draymed three years, and I still haven’t gotten used to so much green.”

  Beyond the garden lay some wooden buildings, one obviously a barn and another a windmill. Near those lay fields of hay and vegetables, which the undead servants tended like any other farmers. If she approached them, that illusion would disappear. The sight of their withered flesh unnerved her, but she could grow accustomed to it. She could never see them as normal, but she didn’t consider them abominations, no matter what Fathen said.

  She turned back to Erick and caught him blushing as he drew his eyes up from her shirt. She smiled to herself. Boys had regarded her that way for several years now, but none with the charming innocence revealed in Erick’s red cheeks or swiftly averted eyes. “It’s very prosperous land. How much of it do you own?”

  “It goes that way to the cliff.” Erick pointed past the trellis toward the fields, ripe with wheat and corn. “About three hundred acres, I guess.”

  Elissia barely kept herself from whistling. Though small for holdings on the mainland, Erick’s parcel made him the largest landowner in Draymed, and possibly the whole island. He probably didn’t realize his wealth. To obtain such a tract, one had to be nobility or, at the least, have connections to the aristocracy. Was Erick a baron? It gave Elissia great pleasure to think he might be lord over the village and not even know it.

  But his ties to the land complicated things. After what she witnessed four nights ago, and what she learned from Corby and Blink about Erick’s powers, a plan had formed in her mind. In Erick lay the means for her to return home, and right an injustice done to her. She had suffered for three years, and that was more than enough.

  To accomplish her retribution, she would have to convince Erick of many things, the first being to leave Draymed. If he knew the importance of what he owned, and she had no reason to think he didn’t, he might not have any desire to go.

  Another factor she had to consider. It wouldn’t take the other girls long to learn of his wealth and be clamoring for his attention. She had little fear they would win, with their dull looks and simple country charm, but they presented a distraction. One of them might snag Erick through sheer persistence, or trap him with fatherhood.

  She needed to hook him before they did, an easy task. He was obviously infatuated with her. She could take him back into his house and-

  Stop it, she scolded herself. Not everything has to be about personal gain, no matter what the old bastard says. She could win Erick without resorting to spreading herself open. She would sooner convince that insufferable acolyte Keven to spirit her away than lasso Erick with her legs.

  And if she couldn’t persuade Erick, so what? In ten months, she would reach her majority and could leave Draymed without fear of being hunted down and brought back, like the two previous times. She had refused to become a whore back home, why consider it an option now? Erick was a sweet, naïve boy, but still a boy, despite his seventeen years. It would be easy to take him by removing her clothes and bedding him. But that would lead him to believe something that wasn’t true. To accept as a given an emotion she hadn’t even considered.

  Men equated sex with possession. If they bedded you, they owned you. If you were lucky, they might grow to love you. But boys like Erick thought sex was love. Elissia could use that to her advantage, but she shared her mother’s belief; love had to come first, sex later. Such an attitude caused her no lack of grief at home. But she never wavered, though it had cost her dearly. To trap Erick with her body would betray her beliefs. She wasn’t willing to do that, not even for a chance at early freedom.

 
; She would let Erick decide between her and the other girls who came hunting for him. She would win him, but she would do it fair, a straight-up clash, her personality and attractiveness against all the Zakerin girls and whatever wiles they thought they possessed. A fair fight without resorting to sex. Wouldn’t that make the old prick grind his teeth? Elissia thought with savage glee.

  Erick took a step back at the strange grimace that came over Elissia’s face. Certainly he couldn’t have messed up with something as simple as telling her how much land he owned.

  Maybe she had remembered why she sat out here looking at the land, instead of sitting inside talking about the manor. He didn’t want to discuss his father, but it might be best to plunge ahead before her anger returned.

  With dread akin to his encounter with the monster, he said, “I didn’t make my father into a vampire, but he...he may have done it to himself. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing now. It wasn’t my fault, but I still feel responsible, so I want to apologize. I wish I could have stopped him before he killed anybody.”

  “I do too,” she said, and Erick caught the slightest hitch in her voice. “But you didn’t know, and once you did, you stopped him. You could have told us all to go to the Hells that night. I know people who would have, for far less reason.”

  He sat on the edge of the bench, as far away as possible, though he wanted nothing more than to move closer. A breeze rattled the vines and blew Elissia’s black hair into her face. She shook her head and brushed the stray locks aside. A tingle ran through Erick at her lithe movements. Why did she affect him this way? He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t.