by Grace Draven
“What of the dead raiders?” Ildiko tried not to look too often at the corpses piled near the road.
His lambent eyes narrowed to slits. “We’ll burn them before we leave and return their ashes to Belawat. Message received.” His voice was cold, flat.
Ildiko shivered, not because of Brishen’s sudden icy demeanor but because they’d both been targets for revenge. Marriage obviously had many more pitfalls to beware of besides sharing a bed and a household with a stranger. She didn’t fool herself into thinking the man who tried to drag her from beneath the wagon had only meant to scare her. He would have butchered her on the spot and smiled while he did it. Ildiko was glad he was dead and equally glad it had been Brishen who killed him.
Some might wonder at her lack of fear regarding her new husband. Dreadful in appearance, lethal in combat, Brishen was all that was cordiality and dignified royalty in every interaction with her.
When their camp had settled in, he took the time to introduce her to the Kai cavalry who’d come to their rescue, and his Master of the Horse, Mertok. As she expected, the Kai soldiers were formal, polite and refused to meet her gaze. They had no problem gawking at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, and Ildiko had been tempted more than a few times to cross her eyes and watch their reaction.
As perceptive as he was affable, Brishen squeezed her waist in warning and bent to whisper in her ear. “Don’t even think about it, wife. You’ll notice half of them are sharpening or cleaning their weapons. All I need is for someone to inadvertently slice themselves open because you startled them.”
Ildiko stifled a laugh behind her hand. Brishen’s answering predator grin made the hairs on her arms stand up in warning, but she patted the hand at her waist and remained unafraid.
The moon glimmered directly above them—a Kai noon—when all their party, except those on guard, gathered in the clearing and formed a circle around the three fallen Kai. They looked no different from when they were alive except for a change in their skin tone. Instead of the slate gray with its undertones of teal and lavender, the flesh had paled to the color of cold ash. Their bodies were laid out side by side, dressed in their armor. They held their arms crossed over their chests, favorite weapons beside them. Ildiko stood outside the circle on a tree stump tall enough that she could see over the mourners’ shoulders and into the circle.
Anhuset entered the circle with a small amphora. From it she poured a glistening stream of oil over her fingers and crouched to draw a mysterious symbol on the forehead of each of the dead soldiers. Like the other female Kai, she shone cold and elegant beneath the moon’s pale rays, her silver hair shimmering. She opened the consecrative with a chant in the Kai tongue, a sing-song cant answered in chorus by the surrounding Kai. Ildiko only knew a smattering of bast-Kai words, but she easily recognized a lamentation when she heard one.
The dirge continued, rising and falling in volume. The Kai swayed with its undulating rhythm, their glowing eyes bright in the woodland darkness. From her vantage point, Ildiko clearly saw Brishen. He stood on the opposite side of the circle from her, his lips moving as he sang with his comrades.
Ildiko’s eyes widened, and she gasped when a soft light suddenly suffused the dead Kai, creating a nimbus that washed like spiller waves over their bodies. The light broke, stretching into sinuous threads until they coalesced into three spectral forms, vaguely human—or Kai—in shape.
The living Kai continued the lamentation, the higher female voices melding with the lower male registers. A single bright light, no bigger than a butterfly, ignited within each of the three specters hovering over the bodies. The memory spark. The mortem light.
Brishen and two others broke from the circle and approached the dead. The phantoms swirled around them, seeming to dance in time with the dirge. Tears filled Ildiko’s eyes as Brishen and his companions opened their arms and were embraced by the dead whose spirits twirled and swayed before enveloping the living completely, sending tendrils of radiance into their mouths and nostrils.
Ildiko’s wonder battled with horror as the spirits of the fallen Kai possessed their willing hosts. Brishen had told her his were a people of night. They avoided the sun when possible and rejected the day for their hours of activity. Yet seeing her princely husband and his two subjects lit from within by the resplendent dead, she couldn’t imagine any who embraced light more than the tenebrous Kai.
Brishen burned like a torch within the circle, his glowing eyes sulfurous instead of their usual nacreous shade. The two soldiers standing with him bore the same look. One staggered with the force of the possession, and the mortem lights pulsed under their clothing—candles lit inside living lanterns.
The possession lasted only a moment before the spectral entities abandoned their worldly anchors on a mournful exhalation and faded into the vast night, leaving their mortem lights behind with their hosts. Their physical bodies collapsed inside their armor, desiccating into a fine dust until they melded with the earth beneath them.
The dirge faded as well until the Kai stood silent together, serenaded only by a cool wind. Ildiko leapt off her tree stump and hurried to Brishen. He leaned weakly on Anhuset, his features as colorless as the dead Talumey who’d gifted his life memories to him for safekeeping. His fellow vessels looked just as weary and stood with the help of others, as if holding a mortem light sucked out all their strength. Brishen’s eyes were twin suns in his face, and he reached for Ildiko with a hand that trembled.
She clasped it and drew him to her, leaving Anhuset to hover close by. “Anhuset, help me get him to our tent.”
The Kai woman nodded and signaled with one hand. Two more soldiers appeared. Brishen sagged between them as they carried him to the tent and laid him carefully on his pallet. Ildiko knelt by her husband’s side and curled her hand around his. His eyes were closed, but the mortem light inside him still glowed through his eyelids.
Anhuset settled on the floor on Brishen’s other side. “He and the others be like this for a few hours and then suffer mortem fever.”
Ildiko’s stomach flipped. “Mortem fever? He’d said nothing of a fever.”
The other woman pulled a blanket over Brishen’s still body. “A light vessel drowns in the memories of the dead until they become accustomed to them. It’s temporary but painful while it lasts.”
“Bursin’s wings! Do all the Kai go through this?” Ildiko was rapidly reconsidering her envy of such a gift. She stroked the back of Brishen’s hand with her thumb.
Anhuset shrugged. “Only those who volunteer. Brishen volunteered to act as light vessel for Talumey until we reach Haradis. He’ll turn Talumey’s mortem light over to his mother once we’ve arrived. I’ll stay here with you until he adjusts and overcomes the fever.” She leaned back against one of the tent supports in a pose that lacked any tension.
Ildiko wasn’t fooled. She’d observed the interaction between Brishen and his cousin. Anhuset was worried. “I’m harmless, Anhuset. You don’t have to protect him from me,” she joked gently.
Anhuset stared at her, mouth unsmiling. “Mortem fever can make a Kai go mad. I’m not protecting him from you, Your Highness, but you from him.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was madness in memory, especially when the memory wasn’t yours. Brishen lay on his pallet, eyes closed, and watched the life of young Talumey twist and entwine with recollections of his own life. Beloved faces flickered in his mind’s eye, some his, some Talumey’s, along with emotions that accompanied them. Father, mother, two sisters.
Brishen raised a hand to touch the older woman’s proud, lined features. “My mother,” he whispered.
“What of your mother, Brishen?”
The voice was familiar. Anhuset, his commander. Brishen frowned. No, not his commander. He was her commander. His cousin and lieutenant. “My mother,” he said. “Love her. Her name is Tarawin.”
His commander spoke again. “No, Brishen. Your mother is Secmis, Queen of the Flatlands. Shadow Queen of
Bast-Haradis.”
Brishen frowned. Another image replaced that of Tarawin, this one of a woman possessing the haughty beauty that had captured a king’s interest and hinted at the brittle soul beneath it.
“What is he saying?”
A different voice, this time speaking in the Common tongue with a Gauri’s lyrical accent. The prince’s ugly wife with the frightening eyes.
Brishen shook his head. “Lovely inside,” he argued with himself. “Laughs easily.”
Anhuset answered the Gauri woman in Common. “He’s confusing his mother Secmis with Talumey’s mother, Tarawin. I don’t know Tarawin, but I do know Secmis. She rarely laughs.”
He wanted to counter her comment, clarify that he’d spoken of Ildiko, not Tarawin, but his tongue felt glued to the top of his mouth. He was hot, broiling—as if someone had staked him out beneath the sun and let it roast him alive. “Water,” he rasped.
A cup pressed against his dry lips, and Brishen drained the water in gulps. A hand caressed his brow, cool on his hot skin. He opened his eyes and found Ildiko staring at him with those strange human eyes. He instinctively jerked away and tried to sit up. “Your Highness,” he murmured. He was a lowly soldier and broke all protocol, lying down before a member of the royal house.
Ildiko. She was Ildiko to him in private. Two pairs of hands pressed him back to the pallet. Brishen blinked at Anhuset who offered more water. He turned his head away and sought Ildiko once more.
She stroked his arm, and her voice was soft, worried. “Do you know me, Brishen?”
The constantly shifting patterns of combined memories clouded his vision, even with his eyes open, and his stomach roiled in protest. Brishen closed his eyes. “My wife,” he said. “My Ildiko.”
“Yes, Brishen. Your Ildiko.” Like her touch, her voice soothed him. “Anhuset and I will stay with you until the fever is over.”
He wanted to thank them for their vigilance—Ildiko, who’d never witnessed a mortem light’s possession of a light vessel and Anhuset who was still put out by having to eat the revolting potato thing at the wedding banquet. An image of the steaming maggot on his plate overrode all the jumbled memories trying to cloud his mind. Bile surged into his throat, and saliva flooded his mouth.
“I’m going to be sick,” he muttered.
The words had barely passed his lips before he was shoved to his side. Hands held his head and lifted his hair as he emptied his stomach. More memories surged through his mind—a week of illness when he was a child and clutched a carved wooden bowl to his chest as Tarawin crooned to him what a brave boy he was. Another similar memory, only he huddled in a grand bed holding a silver basin while one of the royal nurses stood safely out of range and eyed him with disgust as he retched.
A cool cloth bathed his hot face, and he captured the wrist of the person wielding it. Fragile bones in his grip. Human bones. Easily snapped if he exerted the smallest amount of pressure. Brishen traced the spider network of tiny veins just beneath her skin with his thumb. Though they were thinner than silk thread, he could feel the blood pulse through them in a steady rhythm.
He cracked his eyelids open just enough to find Ildiko holding the cloth. Her other hand carded through his hair. “Battle and vomit, wife. Not what you should witness during your inaugural trip to Haradis.” Nothing had gone quite as he planned since the moment they rode out of the Gauri capital city. “Shall I take you home?” He wouldn’t blame Ildiko if she said yes.
She flashed him a brief smile of her square teeth. “You are taking me home, Brishen. There’s nothing for me in Pricid.”
“What of your family?”
Her smile faded. “Blood ties do not always make a family. My family rests in a crypt overlooking the sea. I need to make a new family now.” She traced one of his eyebrows with her fingers. “Can you take a little more water? Rinse your mouth?”
Brishen nodded and this time accepted the cup Anhuset offered him. He lay back, inhaling and exhaling slowly, willing his rebellious stomach to calm down, despite his and Talumey’s memories pitching his vision so hard, he felt like he’d spent a night emptying a wine barrel, only to have someone shove him into it, seal the lid and toss the thing into a stormy sea. He refused to think of potatoes.
The sounds of cleaning and straightening filled his ears. He wanted to apologize for the mess but didn’t dare open his mouth in case he ruined all their hard work.
Somehow he managed to drift into a restless sleep plagued with dreams and cluttered with two sets of memories. He thrashed on the pallet and ripped the blanket off his body. A surprised yelp filtered through his dreams, followed by two voices speaking in Common.
“Did he slash you?”
“Just my sleeve. Bursin’s wings, you are fast!”
“Not fast enough.”
“It’s just my sleeve, Anhuset.”
“Lucky it wasn’t your face or your throat, Your Highness. You shouldn’t be here.”
“This is exactly where I should be.”
“Then until he’s lucid, stay out of his way. I might not be as quick as you need me to be a second time.”
Brishen struggled against the somnolent shackles that held him prisoner. He’d kill whoever had tried to hurt his wife, split his skull the way he he’d done with the Beladine raider who attacked her. She was ugly; she was beautiful, and she was his. “My Ildiko,” he whispered.
She didn’t offer her soothing touch, but her voice calmed him. “I’m here, Brishen. I’m not going anywhere.”
He hoped not.
CHAPTER NINE
They were into the fourth day of their journey, and Ildiko was beginning to miss the sun. She fiddled with her horse’s mane as she and their entourage rode ever closer to Haradis, capital of Bast-Haradis. The moon had waned to a slivered crescent in the sky, and the night was so dark, she was virtually blind. The black-armored Kai were no more than vague shapes with disembodied eyes that flitted like pairs of fireflies.
She relied on her mount’s sense of direction for home as well as its instinct to stay with a herd for protection. Wagon wheels creaked behind her, accompanied by the distant howls of wolf packs and the voices of the Kai who spoke and bantered with each other.
For a moment Ildiko had the oddest sense of being set adrift alone on a vast sea in a small boat. Her horse’s rolling gait was the tide that rocked her. Beyond her senses lay a horizon she couldn’t see and land she couldn’t reach; the shadows of leviathans that swam the deep abyss and swallowed ships whole lurked beneath her.
The resolve she held to embrace this new life and call these people hers fractured a little. She was an outlander with a strange face and strange habits. Ildiko pushed back the sudden swell of terror and homesickness. It would be difficult enough adjusting to a different household among foreign humans with their own peculiar customs. But this was far more than culture shock. The Kai weren’t even human. An ancient, insular people who shunned the sun and swallowed the spirits of their dead, they were nothing like the Gauri or any other peoples Ildiko had ever encountered at court. She would be as a babe just learning to walk as she navigated her way amongst the Kai and their royal court. No doubt she’d make mistakes and embarrass herself—and Brishen—on more than one occasion. That thought sent her stomach plummeting to her feet.
Her husband rode ahead of her, deep in conversation with the cavalry commander. Mertok’s arrival during their battle with the Beladine raiders had swelled the Kai troop to formidable numbers. Brishen had assured Ildiko that it would take far more than a band of cutthroats to defeat them now. They remained on alert; however, and kept the day watch doubled when they stopped to camp and sleep.
As if he sensed her gaze on him, Brishen glanced over his shoulder and halted his mount. Kai riders eddied around him as he waited for her to catch up to him. He offered her a tired smile, and even in the suffocating darkness, Ildiko saw the weary lines etched into his features. Recovered from the mortem light’s possession, he still bore remnants of
exhaustion from the fever.
“That is a somber set to your mouth, wife. What grim thoughts plague you?”
She hesitated in telling him. Brishen had been even more solicitous after he’d awakened from the mortem fever and discovered her sitting nearby with Anhuset. Ildiko had exercised her newly acquired rank and extracted a reluctant promise from the Kai woman not to say anything about her slashed sleeve unless Brishen asked directly.
“You’re asking me to lie to my cousin and my commander, Your Highness.” Anhuset’s eyes had narrowed to glowing slits.
Ildiko had stripped out of her torn gown, aware of the Kai’s equal measure of disapproval and curiosity. She shrugged into a new gown, haphazardly tying laces. As long as her clothes didn’t outright fall off her, she didn’t think the Kai soldiers would much care that she looked more bedraggled than a laundress on wash day.
“I’m asking no such thing.” She ran her hands over the skirt in a futile attempt to smooth out the wrinkles. “If he asks what happened, tell him, but there’s no reason to run tattling to him over something as trivial as a torn sleeve.”
Anhuset crossed her arms, mutinous. “It could have been worse.”
Ildiko didn’t argue that one. It could have been infinitely worse. Her heart had almost leapt from her chest when Brishen suddenly lashed out in delirium, his nails slicing through her sleeve like knives. She didn’t have time to cry out before a hard shove from Anhuset sent her flying halfway across the tent.
“Anhuset, what good will it do to tell him other than to make him worry or fill him with guilt? What’s done is done, and I’ve come to no harm.”
“You shouldn’t keep secrets from him.” Anhuset refused to yield.
Ildiko blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and resumed her seat near a feverish Brishen but out of striking range. “It’s not a secret; it’s just a fact that offers no benefit in being retold.” She mimicked Anhuset’s posture and crossed her arms. “Do I have your promise? Say nothing unless he asks?”