Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  A rush of thoughts cut through the numbness in his mind. What was he supposed to tell Benjen’s parents? Should he make the journey back to the village? He would have to leave right now, and he’d travel on Roebuck all the way across Fortuna and he’d tell them the news no parent would want to hear.

  The whole village would blame him; they’d say that this was all Joshua’s idea, that it was his dream to restore the heroes’ guild and he’d brought Benjen along, to his death.

  Were they right? If he really thought about it, did Benjen want all of this? Or was he here because he and Joshua were best friends, and because he’d do anything for him?

  He heard buzzing in the air. Something rushed over his head, and he felt his hair move with the force of it.

  A hand grabbed him. “Joshua. I’m sorry, but we have to get inside. I can’t control them like this.”

  The buzzing grew so loud that it was all he could hear, and in a way he liked it, because it drowned out his thoughts. It was something to focus on that meant he didn’t have to think about his friend and about the rapier in his belly.

  He stood up. He noticed them now; the thrips, only eight of them remaining after their battle with the feagles. Their eyes were set on him, and they had their stingers pointed outwards. One of them hovered over the head of the sepuna child.

  “Casker,” said Beula, with panic in her voice. “Get inside.”

  The sepuna child didn’t move.

  “Casker! Get inside right now.”

  Joshua could tell the orc was torn between wanting to get Joshua to safety and worry for herself and her foster child.

  “Go inside,” he told her.

  She grabbed him, but he shrugged her off.

  “Go inside.”

  A thrip flew at Casker with its stinger pointed out. It smashed into the sepuna child’s marble skin, and its sting broke away, and the thrip crashed into the ground and it writhed on the field.

  “Calm!” shouted Beula, and Joshua knew she’d put the full weight of her tamer class into the words.

  The thrips didn’t listen. One hovered in front of her now, its stinger aimed at her face.

  Beaula reached into a pocket of her trousers and she pulled out a glass vial. She quickly opened it and poured a yellow liquid onto her fingertips and she flicked it at the thrip, which zoomed away and into the air, out of reach.

  “Joshua-”

  “Go inside, Beula.”

  And she listened to him this time, since even though he’d helped her he was still a stranger, and she had her children to think about.

  But what about Joshua? Who did he have to think about now that Benjen was gone? His father, sure. He couldn’t deny that. But what was Joshua even worth to him now? What was he worth to anyone?

  He’d travelled here to restore the heroes’ guild, but there wasn’t a shred of heroism in him, so how could he do that? Did heroes let their friends die?

  A thrip buzzed in front of him. Its bulbous body was covered in patchy fur, and its stinger stuck out of its rump, pure black and glistening with venom at the tip.

  Joshua held his arm out for it.

  “Do it,” he told the insect.

  Was he crazy?

  No. He just needed something to take away the guilt. Pain would stop his thoughts.

  And the thrip obliged; it flew at him, and Joshua braced himself for the sting.

  But the thrip darted down at the last moment, and it sunk its stinger deep into Benjen’s neck.

  Somehow, that hurt Joshua more than if the thrip had stung him. It was sick; the idea that his friend’s corpse was being defiled by this insect. More thrips hovered now, and Joshua could tell their bulbous eyes were set on his dead friend. But why?

  It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let them do it. Benjen was gone, but didn’t he deserve respect, at least?

  So, Joshua grabbed his friend’s arm. He tried to heave him up, but Benjen was too heavy. There was nothing to do but drag him across the fields. So much for respect.

  One thrip hovered a foot closer. Joshua grabbed Benjen’s sword from beside him and he swatted at it, catching it on the leg with the blunt edge. The thrip flew lop-sided, landing ten meters away.

  This made the rest of them weary of him, and it gained him enough time to drag Benjen across the field and to the farmhouse.

  Beula opened the door, and she grabbed Benjen’s other arm and helped bring his body inside, where Joshua took his legs and the orc grabbed his head, and they lifted him onto the table.

  Casker shut the door behind them. The daylight was leaving now, and candles burned in Beula’s kitchen. The light of the flamers seemed to shimmer on the sepuna child’s marble skin.

  A thought hit Joshua as he looked at Casker.

  It was something that his father had once told him; something that he’d remembered again the first time he met the sepuna child.

  Sepunas practiced necromancy to bring their deceased elders back from the dead when population counts became too low, didn’t they?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Joshua faced the sepuna boy. He was such a strange creature; humanoid in form, but with skin cast from the darkest marble, and it was dimly reflective so that the glow from the candles flickered over his chest and arms. He had no face, just a slight dip on the lower half of his head which served as a mouth.

  Even without eyebrows, eyes, a nose, dimples, or any of the other things that gave a person’s face an expression, Joshua could tell the sepuna boy was looking back at him.

  It was less of something he saw, and more a feeling; he felt empathy drift to him, leaving the boy’s obsidian skin and travelling the room and wrapping around him.

  Little was known about the sepunas, since they isolated themselves from most civilized parts of Fortuna. In the same way, most town and city folks were glad to not have them around; there was something just too disconcerting about a faceless head pointed at you.

  What was known, though, was their population problem, and the fact that sepuna children were rare. Sepunas stuck to the natural order of things as long as they could, but when population counts became low, their elders used necromancy magic to raise old sepunas from the dead.

  Was it that simple? Did every sepuna have this magic inert inside them?

  Joshua paced. He ran his hand through his hair, which was getting longer after not having it cut since he left the village.

  “Joshua?” said Beula, who was in the kitchen attending to her flock of multi-race children. The human twins were asking for honeyed biscuits to snack on, while the goblin child wanted to go outside.

  Behind her were Roebuck and Firemane, who Beula had temporally given sanctuary to in the kitchen while the thrips were wild. Firemane was standing there with his long head hung low, and he whined whenever he looked up at Benjen’s lifeless body. Roebuck nuzzled his snout against him.

  “I want to go and play, mother,” said the goblin boy.

  “No,” Beula told him. “You can’t go outside. It’s dark, and the thrips are angry.”

  “Why?” asked the goblin.

  “Sometimes thrips just get angry. Everybody does.”

  “Oh, like Carlisle?”

  “Exactly.”

  It was interesting that the goblin boy didn’t call Carlisle father. Beula wasn’t his real mum, yet he called her mother. Perhaps he’d stopped doing it after Carlisle left the farm.

  It didn’t really matter. All that Joshua thought about while he paced around the farm house was Carlisle and his friend, the man who’d brought the rapier to battle.

  Joshua’s mind was so stained with hate that he could hardly picture the man’s face. All he saw instead was the man backing off, his face shocked and white, and then Benjen stumbling back with the blade hanging from his stomach.

  He knew he should go to the town guards. They wouldn’t help with trouble at the field, but murder was murder, and Joshua should report it.

  Then again…what if he didn’t tell them? What i
f he took a sword from the guildhouse armory and he practiced with it, and then he found where the rapier man lived and he crept into his house under the dark of night…

  He shrugged the thought off. Right now, only one thing mattered. Only one thing burned in his mind; that there was a chance. A slight one, but a chance.

  “Casker,” he said.

  The sepuna boy turned his featureless face in his direction.

  “Do you know necromancy?”

  Beula stopped what she was doing and walked out of the kitchen and to the table, where she stood by Benjen’s prostrate body.

  “No, Joshua. He doesn’t know it. He’s a child. I know you’ve lost your friend…”

  “I know that you sepunas can use necromancy. Tell me, what do I need to do?” said Joshua, ignoring her.

  “He doesn’t know how to do it.”

  There were seven hurried taps on the farmhouse door. Joshua opened it to find Kordude standing there, with Carlisle’s mule next to him and with Gobber the goblin baby in his basket in his right hand.

  Behind him, a thrip buzzed ominously in the darkness. Evening had come to Fortuna now, but the blackness of night hadn’t done anything to calm the insects.

  “I’m sorry, Kordrude,” said Joshua. “I didn’t think; I should have come to warn you about the thrips. I just…with everything…”

  “Everything?”

  “Come in,” called Beaula. “And bring in the mule. It’ll get stung to hell.”

  Kordrude urged the mule into the house, and the animal, seemingly knowing its way, trotted into the kitchen, where it joined Roebuck and Firemane.

  Joshua stepped aside, revealing Benjen’s body behind him. Kordrude’s bird eyes grew wide, and the darkness in them seemed even more pronounced than before. To his right, the Sepuna child turned his smooth head in the crowsie’s direction.

  The thrip buzzed in the doorway. Joshua shut the door.

  “Heavens,” said Kordrude. He strode forward until he was beside Benjen’s head, and he put a long finger against his neck and he waited. “Is he…?”

  “He was stabbed,” said Joshua, a little shocked at how matter-of-factly he’d said it. He felt like he was going numb, and maybe that was what he needed. It was either that, or break down in front of Beula, Kordude, and the children.

  “What happened?” asked Kordude.

  Joshua told him about the fight in the field, starting from Carlisle and his mob arriving with their weapons, and ending with what happened to Benjen.

  “I am so sorry, Joshua.” Then, the crowsie gestured to Benjen. “Would you mind if I…”

  “If you what?”

  Kordrude plucked a feather away from the left side of his chest, near his heart. “It is customary in crowsie culture that everyone in the village would leave a feather with the departed.”

  Joshua was touched at the gesture, but at the same time, it sickened him. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it meant that this was real. That Benjen was gone, and that it was time to do things, like prepare for his burial. All of the things you normally did when someone died. He wasn’t ready for that.

  He faced the Casker. “The necromancy ritual,” he said to the sepuna. “How do we do it?”

  Kordrude looked his way. “Necromancy? No, Joshua. You can’t get mixed up in something like that.”

  “It’s a way to bring Benjen back.”

  “A necromancer cannot conjure life from death. He can’t bring something back which was taken. It is not a gift, but an exchange. When a person is brought back from death, something is lost among the living. It is a fool’s path, Joshua, and it is one of the most dangerous ones of all. What is dead is dead and playing with the natural order invites evil.”

  “Natural order? What was natural about Benjen dying? Are you saying it was the order of things that we talked about the guild for years, and we left our village and travelled all the way out here, and he gets killed in the first week?”

  “I don’t think it was pre-ordained, if that is what you mean,” said Kordrude. “But life and death are a cycle. It is wrong to interfere.”

  Beula nodded. “And Casker can’t bring him back, anyway.”

  “Sepunas know necromancy,” said Joshua.

  “They’re born with it, but that’s part of the sepuna way. Their natural order is different to ours; for them, death isn’t the end, but part of a path. Just because they can bring back their own, it doesn’t mean they can do that for anyone else.”

  Joshua walked over to Casker. He reached out to put his hands gently on his shoulders.

  “Don’t touch him!” shouted Beula, with more urgency than Joshua had expected.

  It was too late. When he touched the sepuna’s marble skin, he heard someone scream in his ears. Not just one person, but two, then three, and then a dozen, and then hundreds of voices joined in, all of them screaming strange words into Joshua’s ears.

  He felt like his eardrums were going to explode. The pain was so bad he staggered back, and the screaming stopped when he broke contact but he still heard the sound ring in his head, hundreds of voices crying in a strange language.

  He put his hand to his ears to stop the noise. He staggered back and then hit the wall, and he slumped down.

  Beula rushed over and kneeled in front of him. She spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear her words.

  He couldn’t hear anything at all; he saw her lips move, but the sounds were muted. The children in the kitchen spoke to each other and pointed at Joshua, but the words didn’t reach him. When Roebuck wheezed, Joshua saw the action but heard no sound.

  And then, in the silence, he heard a lone voice; one he could understand.

  You wish that I help your friend?

  It was a child’s voice, even if the phrasing was an adult’s. Joshua knew that it was the sepuna child’s real voice.

  His voice was cold and without a trace of emotion, and there seemed to be an echo of song behind it. It was as though there was something inside him, some kind of ethereal music, and when words left his would-be mouth, the music left it too.

  It was haunting, but it was beautiful.

  “Can you do something?” said Joshua. “I know that sepunas use necromancy.”

  He saw Kordude in his peripheral vision, and the crowsie was saying something to him but Joshua couldn’t hear his words, just silence.

  Our race has used it for centuries.

  It didn’t seem like Kordude or Beula could hear Casker talking, since neither of them reacted to it. Maybe Beaula had never heard him speak before. But then, she’d warned Joshua about touching him just before he did it. For her to warn him, she must have known something.

  The knowledge it bred deep within us, said Casker.

  “You’re not a child, are you?”

  What is a child, really?

  “A son or a daughter of a parent.”

  Is not everyone a child, then?

  “How old are you really?”

  Old enough to know what you seek, and how to do it.

  Joshua’s heart thumped. “So, you can bring him back?”

  I can try.

  ~

  His hearing started to return to him as the evening wore on. Beula applied a sweet-smelling mixture to his ears, covering her fingers with a gloopy mess and then massaging it over his earlobes.

  “It’ll help with the pain,” she told him. “Thrip honey has healing qualities.”

  The pain didn’t matter to Joshua. All he could think about was Casker’s voice in his mind, and the things that he’d said.

  He could bring Benjen back. Or, he could try to. Wasn’t it worth it?

  After he’d explained what Casker had said to him, Kordrude shook his head.

  “No, Joshua. You can’t play with life and death. You’re inviting chaos.”

  “If someone you loved died, wouldn’t you do everything you could to bring them back?”

  “My wife died. As much as I would have given anything to h
ear her voice again, I wouldn’t do this. There is a natural order.”

  “Screw the natural order. Nothing about this is natural, nothing about it is right. If we could talk to Benjen somehow, if we could ask him, he’d tell me to do it. I know he would.”

  Kordrude shook his head. His facial feathers were on edge. “I won’t stay here and watch this. It isn’t right.”

  For the first time, Joshua felt a flicker of annoyance toward the crowsie. Didn’t he understand?

  Kordude seemed to sense this, and he walked over and settled his arm around Joshua’s shoulder and he pulled him close in what Joshua suspected was the nearest the crowsie would come to a hug.

  “You’re hurting, lad. And the grief isn’t letting you think properly. Perhaps you should go home. Go back to your village.”

  Even hearing the word made Joshua’s stomach lurch. If he left here and went home, he wouldn’t only be giving up on the guild; he’d have to look into the eyes of Benjen’s parents and tell them what had happened, and he’d have to face their grief and their anger and their blame.

  He couldn’t do it. Not when there was a chance to fix this.

  He looked at Casker. “What do we need to do?”

  The sepuna didn’t answer.

  “You can’t hear his voice now,” said Beula. “Not when your hearing has come back. You can only hear him in silence.”

  “I’m leaving,” said Kordrude. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be party to this, and the Gods won’t take kindly to it. Beula, are your thrips calmed now?”

  “They’re in their hive. They won’t bother you.”

  “Then I’ll take my leave. I am truly sorry, lad, and I hope when the pain lessens, you will see the sense in why I cannot stay.”

  With that, Kordrude walked over to Gobber’s basket, in the kitchen. He reached inside with his thin fingers and he tickled the goblin baby’s cheeks. He turned to Beaula. “The official in Ardglass town hall said you would look after him. He said they send all their strays to you, until they can find permanent homes.”

  “One more mouth won’t make a difference to me,” said Beula, with a maternal smile. “He can stay.”