Sister of the Dead

by Barb Hendee

  "All right, " he said. "But we have to go. I need to find Magiere. "

  He tried helping her up to her feet, but Wynn began to shake again at the thought of Magiere waiting for them in the village below.

  "No more, " she cried. "I do not want to know any more. "

  Leesil gripped her arms and forced her up. She was surprised by the strength in his hands.

  "I understand, " he said, "but you have to pull yourself together—now! Magiere is already on the edge, and I need you to stay with me. "

  "What is she?" Wynn asked.

  "Don't start that with me, " Leesil returned. "She had no more choice than you or I in how she came into this world. She was born a dhampir and—"

  "Is that all you think she is?" Wynn said. "I just told you what we found in that room. The vat was so large, it would have taken a long time to make, to engrave. It was left and discarded, as if it could be used only once... because of what it was used for. Have you ever wondered why a Noble Dead—a vampire—for an unknown reason, would labor to create its own kind's hunter?"

  Leesil's temper flared. "That's not what she—"

  "Yes, she is, " Wynn nearly shouted. "It is her nature... but only its thin outer surface. Those victims in that chamber... Leesil, someone searched the world to find them, and three are but a myth so old, it had been forgotten. They were brought here to be slaughtered for Magiere's birth and then sealed in rather than risk disposing of the evidence in another manner. "

  She shoved him away, and her voice softened. Not in sympathy but in disbelief at his blindness.

  "What was done here is close to impossible. And you still think it was just to create an enemy of the Noble Dead?"

  Leesil stared back at her, looking lost amid her words. "I have no choice in this, I love her... and I can't turn away. If you don't help me, then I'm alone. Not even Chap seems willing to tell what he knows or why he brought Magiere and me together. "

  He stepped closer, looking tired and desperate.

  "I need you, " he said. "You have more knowledge than any of us. All I have is cunning and my past, and that may not be enough. I need you now. "

  Leesil's plea made Wynn's knees tremble. This was not the world she wanted to live in. She feared these first steps into Magiere's past would inevitably lead them to worse places. In Chap she had found a Fay taken to flesh, who had befriended a half-elf with a black past she still knew too little of. The dog had steered Leesil to Magiere, and they had stumbled on to more of Magiere's nature than Chap wanted anyone to know.

  Beneath the city of Bela, Wynn had kept Magiere from killing Chane, though he was revealed as a monster. And she adamantly defended her choice, believing that even Chane might have some good in him... what she felt, how different he had been in the quiet study of the sages' barracks.

  Leesil pleaded with little more than his blind faith in someone he loved.

  "We had better go, " she said.

  He blinked in relief. He took her hand, gripping it gently, and pulled her along as he headed down the road.

  "Say nothing to Magiere, " he told her. "If what you suspect has any truth in it... for now, we'll keep this between us. "

  * * *

  Magiere faltered as she passed Aunt Bieja's little home. Even with the shutters closed on its one front window, soft light leaked through the cracks.

  Few villagers were about, and those few quickly became none, now that she stood amid the cluster of squalid buildings. When the sound of the closing doors and sliding wooden bolts ended, she was alone in the dark. For the moment, it was too much. She wanted one warm touch of life before her next task. Magiere opened the hut's door and stepped inside.

  Aunt Bieja stood before the burning fireplace, the cook pot's lid in her hand as she stirred its contents. She looked up as Magiere closed the door.

  "I wondered when all of you would return, " Bieja said with annoyance. "Already added water twice to keep the stew going. Where are the others?"

  Magiere decided to say as little as possible. She'd wanted only to see a friendly face not marred by the hidden past that surged toward her.

  "They're still at the keep, " she answered. 'They'll be along shortly. I just stopped to let you know... I'm on my way to see Mother. "

  Bieja closed the pot, and her expression softened. "I wondered if you were going or not. I haven't been there myself in a long while. "

  Her aunt's words surprised Magiere. Tending those who'd passed on was at least a yearly ritual for the people here. Still, it was best that Bieja had moved on, as had Magiere... until this return.

  Bieja paused a moment. "So, did you find anything at the keep?"

  "A little, " Magiere lied. "We'll leave that for later. I don't want to keep everyone waiting too long, so I'd better go. "

  "Take your time, dear, " Bieja answered, wiping her hands with the old rag she'd used for a hot pad.

  Magiere stepped out into the night once again.

  The graveyard was a ways off into the trees but not so far it couldn't be seen. This was the usual way, as if the dead should still have a home among the living. The lantern that had glimmered within the plot on the first night they arrived was gone. Magiere was forced to call upon her night sight, letting her dhampir nature trickle through her flesh enough for her vision to open wide. It seemed a whole lifetime since she'd last been here, and she stepped slowly through the trees, uncertain of the way.

  Village graveyards in Droevinka were little more than a series of spaces in the woods kept reasonably free of low growth. Tree branches were thinner here, letting in the night sky, but the moon wasn't high enough for much light. She made out a few markers sprouting from the earth here and there, with evening mist a vaporous carpet between them.

  Some were made of planks and posts. A few newer ones were stone. Recent lapsed taxes and missing overlords may have afforded the coin for such. It was ironic that the changing fortunes of the living were marked by remembrances for the departed.

  But it wasn't her own memories she hunted among the dead. She came for those of her mother... or at least as seen through her killer's eyes.

  Magiere stopped short.

  She could neither continue nor flee but only remember the skull she'd so recently held in her hands. In Bela, she'd envisioned a girl's last moment by walking in a Noble Dead's footsteps with a scrap of the girl's dress in her hand. She'd lived inside Welstiel's moment as he tore open the girl's throat without even feeding.

  Magiere would have to walk every passage and room of the keep, over each of its stones if need be, to find where her mother had died. But a scrap of clothing wouldn't remain for her carry now. Not after all these years in the ground. She would need bones.

  "Forgive me, " she whispered, and drew her falchion. "I have to know... to see if it was him, Mother. "

  There wasn't time to find a spade without drawing attention, so the blade would have to do. She stepped forward, searching for anything that sparked memory of this place— of her mother's marker. Sweat built beneath her grip around the sword's hilt.

  The spring before she'd left home, Magiere had gone with Aunt Bieja to a woodwright's shop in a neighboring village of the zupanesta. Her aunt paid for a new marker, the old one having weathered to where it no longer stood up in the earth. The two of them lost half a day's fieldwork in the journey.

  Magiere stopped again, looking about.

  She remembered that the marker was on the south side of a large fir. She crouched near the base of the nearest tree. There was no marker she recognized by make or the name upon it.

  Her dread for her task withered beneath a rising fear. Where was the marker... her mother's grave? She stood up to look back, wondering if she'd come too far. The markers in this present clearing were older, so Magelia's grave should be near.

  Magiere heard softly shifting branches nearby, perhaps from a breeze high above that had penetrated down into the woods. She gazed ahead along her original path, but saw nothing besides the thickened
forest. This was the last graveyard clearing. She backtracked, anxiety quickening her step.

  In the previous clearing were a few smaller stone markers. Nothing appeared familiar to her. She heard the breeze again, nearer this time, and it whistled sharply in her ears.

  Magiere's instincts surged, and she ducked around a tree. Along shape whizzed past her and cracked against the trunk, and she heard bark tear away under the impact.

  A shadowed figure appeared around the tree's far side. Magiere stepped out and away. Starlight was enough for her to make out the disfigured side of his face.

  Adryan held a long staff, overly thick at its upper end. He shifted its weight with both hands, slowly swinging the end back and forth through the air like an inverted pendulum.

  "Looking for your mother again, " he said softly.

  It was not a question. Anger stirred dhampir hunger in Magiere's stomach, and her vision sharpened further. Rather than open rage, Adryan's expression was a mix of anguish and anxious hope. He mirrored her movements as she sidestepped farther into the open, tilting the staff from side to side.

  "What have you done?" she asked, glancing about. "Where's my mother's grave... where's the marker?"

  The barest wrinkle appeared on his brow, but it was enough to see he didn't understand what she'd asked.

  "You're the last of it, " he said. "Magelia was mine, and he took her. When he left, that should have been the last reminder. And then you came, little thing, crawling out of a thieving noble's bed. "

  The staff's end leveled as Adryan turned his whole body to power his swing. Magiere dipped her blade to catch it.

  A dull clang sounded on impact as her sword was slammed away and the staff struck her side. Magiere went down hard, stumbling over a stone marker in her fall. Pain spread through her side.

  It was only a staff, and Adryan was only a villager without skill at arms.

  When she looked up at him, she was just a child beneath the high branches of the graveyard. All she saw was his scarred face leering at her from the trees on the last day she'd ever found her mother's house.

  "I'll send you to her, " Adryan said, nodding his head as his cheeks glistened with tears. "And I'll never have to look on you again. "

  He swung the staff at her, and Magiere shrank away as she'd done so long ago beside her mother's grave. It glanced off the stone marker with a crack.

  Magiere rolled back and chopped down with her falchion upon the staff, hoping to break it. A louder metal clang sounded, and the sudden stop of the blade jarred her wrist. She took her eyes from Adryan just long enough to glance at the staff.

  Bound to it with nails and straps were thick iron strips longer than her forearm. They formed a sheath around the staff's upper end, creating a crude great mace. Magiere kicked out at his shin.

  His foot slid on the wet sod, and he dropped to one knee. Before she could scramble away, he pushed up from the ground and lifted the iron-shod staff. Twisting his body, he brought it round at her again, like a scythe in a wheat field. Magiere leaped back out of its reach toward the next tree.

  "Pin her down!" Adryan screamed in frustration.

  His words confused Magiere for only an instant, but even that was too long.

  Another twinge shot through Magiere's injured side as someone grabbed her wrist from behind and jerked her sword arm back around the tree trunk. Her wrist was held tightly out of sight as a hand clawed at her fingers, trying to take her weapon.

  The staff arched toward Magiere's head, and she ducked as low as she could. The bark above her crackled as the staff hit.

  Before she could spin to her right and free her sword, a pitchfork came from nowhere. It skimmed her left ankle, pinning her foot to the ground between its prongs. Its wielder was barely visible around the side of the tree, pressing the pitchfork down with his weight.

  Fear gathered in Magiere's stomach and began to burn. Adryan spun around, gathering force into his next swing. His eyes glowed with the hope of an injured man who saw relief within reach.

  A scream rang out from behind the tree. Adryan faltered at the sound, and his swing came low as Magiere felt her sword arm come suddenly free.

  She threw herself against the pitchfork, not caring that she fell or what had become of the second attacker who'd held her arm. The third man clung to it as he tumbled with her to the ground. Adryan's staff struck the tree's side and recoiled, and he stumbled under the jarring force.

  Magiere's fear turned to hunger and ran out of control from her stomach into her head. An ache built in her jaws. It sharpened as her teeth pressed apart and her mouth filled with saliva. Her vision opened even wider, and the night brightened enough to hurt her eyes.

  Magelia had been taken away by a Noble Dead. But it had been Adryan in the graveyard clearing who'd taken the last of a mother from a forlorn and frightened child.

  Magiere bit into the arm of the man grappling for the pitchfork. Her teeth sank halfway through thick wool cloth and into flesh. He cried out, and wet heat spread across Magiere's lips. The taste of salt seeped through the wool and into her mouth. She smashed her fist down on the man's head, and he went limp.

  Magiere arose, tears in her eyes. She snarled, the blood still in her teeth, and rushed at Adryan.

  * * *

  Leesil followed Wynn into the hut, expecting to see Magiere waiting, but he found only Aunt Bieja fussing over her cook pot.

  "Finally, " she huffed. "Now, if that niece of mine would bring herself back again, we can eat whatever hasn't caked itself to the bottom of this pot. "

  Leesil settled Wynn at the table, and the sage hunched there with her head down. That Magiere had come and left again fed Leesil's worry. Bieja told him where she'd gone, and this calmed him somewhat.

  He'd wondered when she might visit her mother's grave, realizing she might prefer to do so alone. So he would wait, but not for long. When Bieja added the tale of Chap's escape, Leesil slumped at the table with a groan.

  He'd spent years drinking himself to sleep at night to hide from the nightmares conjured by his past. Those torments, resurfaced in newfound sobriety, lessened when he lay in Magiere's arms at night. The long-hidden secrets of the keep hinted at things as dark from Magiere's own past. And to top it all, he would have to find Chap before the dog frightened unsuspecting villagers.

  All he truly wanted was everyone here under his watchful eye, safe, so he could forget what he'd seen at the keep, if only for a short while. He didn't even want to hear more of Wynn's insights. She sat staring blankly at the tabletop, lost in her thoughts.

  "You want to tell me what's going on?" Aunt Bieja asked. "From the look of you two, that niece of mine is being as closed-lipped as ever. "

  Leesil shied away from the elder woman's gaze. "I think it's best to wait for her. It's not my place to—"

  "You'd better start filling my ears with something I want to hear, " Bieja warned. "Unless you'd like those ears trimmed down to a respectable size. "

  Leesil was in no mood for parental threats.

  "That skull in her hands..., " Wynn whispered.

  "What's she saying?" Bieja insisted.

  Wynn lifted her head like a child on the verge of sleep but troubled by a sudden thought. The sage's words made about that much sense to Leesil. She wasn't even looking at him.

  "What about it?" he asked, raising a hand for Bieja to wait.

  "What was she doing with the skull?" Wynn asked, seeming afraid of any answer that might come.

  "Seeking a vision, I think, " Leesil answered. "In Bela, she had to hold something from a victim at the place of death. It let her see through the killer's eyes, if it was a Noble Dead. I can only imagine what it's like for her. I couldn't let her do that... not with what we saw in that room. "

  "Are you going to tell me anything?" Bieja interrupted.

  Before Leesil could stall her further, Wynn continued. "But where is Magiere?"

  "She went to visit her mother's grave, " he answered.

 
; "Now... in the dark, after holding that skull... after all of what we found?"

  Wynn looked away in puzzlement, lips moving as she mouthed something to herself. She turned back to Leesil. "No, she would not.... Do not let her—"

  "Valhachkasej'a!" Leesil cursed, and he was off the bench and heading for the door.

  Aunt Bieja shouted from behind him, but he was already out into the night and running for the graveyard.

  In the keep's sacrificial chamber, Magiere's actions had terrified him more than what they'd found. She was obsessed with finding her undead sire and had tried to reach back to relive the slaughter.

  The moment she'd stared into the skull's empty sockets was shadow and dust compared with what he feared she did now in the graveyard.

  A male voice screamed from somewhere ahead in the dark.

  Leesil leaped and dodged through the grave markers of the first clearing as another voice cried out. Two more clearings, and he still couldn't find Magiere. He heard a snarl from nearby, and he stumbled, trying to pick out its direction.

  He followed it into the next clearing, and what he saw brought him no relief.

  Magiere grappled with a tall man at the clearing's far side. Her falchion was missing. Even in the dark, Leesil saw her mouth forced wide by teeth like a wolf's. The two struggled for control of a thick-ended staff, until Magiere wrenched it sideways, pulling herself closer to her opponent.

  Her head twisted, and she bit into the man's shoulder.

  Leesil sucked in cold air. He drew one of his blades as he closed on the two and slammed full speed into both of them.

  The impact sent all of them sprawling, and Leesil tumbled up against a tree. His scarf had fallen off, and he stripped his cloak, as well. When he rolled to his feet, Magiere was facedown to his left across two broken markers, and then he spotted the body.

  Pitchfork across his limp hand, a man lay still where he'd fallen, eyes closed, mouth slack. Leesil looked at Magiere.

  She rolled to a crouch. The saliva running from the corners of her mouth was darkened from stains on her lips and teeth. Her eyes were wide with irises full black, and her face was wrinkled in a snarl. She didn't even look at him and glared back at her opponent. When he arose, Leesil recognized him.