The Bearer's Burden (Phantom Pact Book 1)

by Chad Queen

  Rast shrugged.

  “You always fought dirtier than most,” Cade said.

  “And you never fought dirty enough.” A wide smile spread across Rast’s face, revealing worn teeth. “It’s been over a year since I last saw you on the battlefield.”

  Cade shook his head. “We don’t have time for small talk. I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, but you can still help me. It’s not too late. All the people taken from the villages…you and I both know it’s not the work of raiders. What are the Wraiths up to?”

  Rast looked down, a chuckle escaping his travel-chapped lips. He rocked back and forth, ever so slightly, his jaw tight, as if biting down upon an imaginary bridle. He relaxed and spoke.

  “Dammit, Cade. You don’t know what you’re mixed up in.” He looked up and shook his head. “We can’t stop them. You don’t understand the Wraiths…what they are capable of. The things they have taught me make the encoding techniques we learned look like cheap party tricks. As an Acolyte, I have a chance. You still have a chance.”

  “No. You were on the battlefield, same as me. We’re nothing to them.”

  Rast snorted. “Maybe so. But I like my odds better on this side. The Wraiths left me behind for you. You’re lucky it’s me and not one of those other putty-brained Acolytes. They don’t even remember their own names.” Rast gestured to the door. “Take your leave and stop looking. It’s the least I can do for a fellow soldier.”

  Two approaching from the back of the room. The voice again.

  Cade would never stop, and it seemed Rast knew it. He looked down at the tripwire and closed his eyes. He readied the phantom within him.

  Almost in range—now.

  Cade kicked the tripwire and encoded with tungsten, the dark silver color eclipsing his arm as it hardened. The tripwire triggered an axe secured to a long pole from the ceiling. It swung out like a pendulum to greet him. Cade used his hardened hand to deflect it and sent it into the man on his right.

  The other man took aim with his sidearm and fired off three rounds. The man-made firearm wasn’t powerful enough to hurt him while he encoded, but it might leave a mark.

  This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.

  Cade ignored the comment and encoded with aluminum, becoming lighter. He swung hard to his left and lunged toward his opponent, also adorned in the red robes of the Acolytes. He switched his encoding to lead and slammed his elbow into the man’s chest. The man groaned and collapsed.

  Cade looked to Rast—or at least where Rast had been. The old soldier had always detested a fair fight. “Fair fights make for fair corpses,” he’d once said during his time in the Bearer Corps. Cade had half-expected the man to defect to the Wraiths.

  Cade left the hall and scanned the camp in the dim light. No movement.

  I can sense him.

  Cade made his way to the looming obelisks in the training gauntlet. With them, Bearers learned to shift their body composition from flesh to a different material using encoding.

  Each obelisk possessed a core element. Tungsten, aluminum, and even wood was utilized. It was much easier to encode when more of the material was available. The slabs towered over Cade and were large enough for even a neophyte Bearer to encode with the material.

  There.

  With so many places to hide, Rast had to be there. He made his way to the encoding area, staying low, careful not to give Rast any more of an advantage. Cade rounded the corner of the first obelisk—steel—when the obelisk slid forward and slammed him hard against another obelisk of solid stone. He encoded with steel to keep from being crushed between the two obelisks, but the pressure built until both obelisks came free and fell to the ground with Cade caught in the middle. He strained against the weight, but the steel obelisk on top of him wouldn’t budge.

  The old soldier shook his head as he looked down on Cade. “You should have just died back on Gigan’s Hill.”

  Cade grimaced under the tremendous weight as he tried to catch his breath. “I was never any good at dying.”

  The man laughed. “I like you, Cade.” Rast, kneeling beside him, pressed his weathered hand down on the steel obelisk with phantom-assisted strength. “It’s a damn shame they want you dead so bad.” The man winced, his jaw tightening once more. He took a deep breath and refocused on Cade.

  “Either your phantom will tire out and you’ll be crushed, or you’ll encode too far and become a permanent statue.” Rast shook his head. “But that’s just cruel, and I wouldn’t do that to an old friend.” He unbuttoned the holster strap on his right hip, pulled out his sidearm, and pointed it at Cade’s head. “You deserve a soldier’s death.”

  Rast was right. Cade could die either of those ways. But as he had hoped, the man had underestimated him. Cade encoded to diamond and felt a rush of strength course through him.

  He heaved the giant chunk of steel forward, flipping it onto Rast and pinning him to the ground.

  Cade stood up and looked down at him. The man’s eyes were wide with surprise, and blood started to pool underneath him.

  The soldier’s face paled, his breathing labored. He looked up. “You have more than one phantom kicking around in that thick skull of yours? Hells, I should have guessed.”

  Cade kneeled next to him. “You don’t have much time. Tell me what the Wraiths are doing with them. And why are you and the other Acolytes helping them?”

  The light in the man’s eyes grew dim as he coughed and shook his head. “Not much time…what a relief that is. I’m doing you a favor by not telling you a damn thing.”

  Cade took a breath, trying to quell the anger rising within him. “We fought together once. Help me one last time.”

  The man chuckled.

  Cade’s eyes narrowed as he grabbed Rast by the collar, eliciting a bloodied cough from the wounded man. “You will give me answers.” He took his free hand and pressed the palm hard against the fallen obelisk, but a dull grunt was all Rast could afford.

  “War’s over, Cade. We lost. But you’re still on the battlefield.” Rast snorted as a cruel smile stretched across pained features. “Don’t worry…I’ll say hello to your wife for you.” Rast’s breathing slowed, and he was no more.

  As the old man’s body grew cold, so did the trail Cade had followed for the last year. He stood up over where Rast’s body lay, his head bowed low under the starless night.

  2

  Resolve

  A song plays within each of us; it vibrates through everything we do, telling our story and entwining with those around us. This is the essence of the phantom.

  —Excerpt from The Book of the Traveler

  Ashlyn Winshire hurried down the grand hallway of the castle as fast as her court attire, a light blue dress with far too many skirts for her liking, would allow. Her uncle, Rolan, had sent for her.

  She was already grinning, though it was not becoming of royalty, or at least that’s what her etiquette teacher would have her believe. Ashlyn did not care. Her uncle just had that effect on her. She remembered how he would, without fail, bring her back some trinket or oddity from his travels when she was a child. One time he brought her back a chocolate filled with delicious crème made from the petals of a yalis flower. They soon learned the flower possessed a mild amatory effect when young Ashlyn ran around the castle, trying to kiss all the boys. That had been a fun day. She smiled to herself. Of course, the incident had not endeared Rolan much to her father.

  Ashlyn kept up her pace through the winding hallways of the castle. She hoped Rolan’s new contact from Rynth had secured the information they needed regarding the disappearances around Chalice. Her father had refused to let her pursue the matter, insisting it was the work of raiders and the Chalician Navy would handle the incursions. But Ashlyn and Rolan suspected more. Ashlyn would prove to her father she was every bit as capable as her younger brother, Elon.

  As she neared her receiving room, she slowed, raised her head, and smoothed out her dress. She was already beaming in a
nticipation of seeing Rolan. Her uncle always had a way of making her happy. With her mother no longer around and her father busy with the rule of Chalice, she was closer to Rolan than to anyone else in her life. She turned the corner to greet him and froze.

  Lying on the white marble floor of the small room was Rolan. She rushed over to him and fell to her knees. “Rolan? Rolan?” she said, trying to rouse the man. She placed her hand over his chest and could only make out the faintest of heartbeats.

  “Help! Someone please help!” Ashlyn yelled.

  A guard rushed in the room. “Princess? What is the…” The man fell silent when he saw the body on the floor.

  She looked up at the guard. “Fetch a doctor and my father straight away.” The guard nodded and sprinted down the hallway.

  “Rolan, don’t you leave me. You can’t leave me.” His eyes opened partway upon hearing her voice. He lifted his hand and rested it on his chest. She took his hand and held it. “That’s it. You stay with me.” He smiled at her one last time, and his face went slack.

  Ashlyn bowed her head as the tears came, one by one, soaking Rolan’s navy blue vest.

  A man wearing a crisp white button-up shirt with rolled sleeves entered the room. He carried a brown leather medicine bag, which he set down beside him. He knelt next to Rolan and checked his wrist for a pulse. Ashlyn made no acknowledgment of the man’s presence. She just sat beside her uncle as her heart went numb. She blocked out the sounds and the swirl of activity as she stared at the face of the man who had loved her like he would his own daughter.

  “Ashlyn? What is the meaning of this? You must clear the grand hallway at once.” Her father, King Liam Winshire, followed by his long train of advisers and sycophants, swept into the room.

  Ashlyn only looked up at her father, expression blank and unable to speak.

  The man cast a brief glance toward Rolan. “A shame,” he said as he turned to one of his advisers. “It is not surprising, with him running off like a man half his age would do. It was just a matter of time. See to it he has a proper burial.”

  Her father had never liked Rolan. The king blamed Rolan for allowing the assassination of his wife, Queen Sashion, after the end of the Wraith War. Ashlyn had been in court the day Rolan pledged himself to the king’s service after her mother’s death. Her father’s reply: “I’ll ask for your help when I’m ready to meet my wife again.”

  Rolan blamed himself for Sashion’s death, and he felt honor-bound to do what he could to atone for his failure. That was when he swore an oath of fealty to Ashlyn.

  Despite everything that had happened, Ashlyn didn’t understand how her father could treat him so coldly, even in death. “Father,” she called out, her cheeks growing hot.

  He turned to her, his expression stern. He opened his mouth to reply when a breathless messenger ran up to the king. “Your Highness. The, ah, Wraith. It’s here. It seeks an audience.” The king muttered something under his breath and strode from the room.

  Ashlyn sighed and looked once more upon Rolan.

  “Ashlyn…” Ashlyn looked up to see her brother, Elon, had entered the room. He sat upon an ornate wheelchair, crafted by the king’s chief artisan. Complications in childbirth had rendered Elon lame, but the king was nonetheless overjoyed to have a son and heir to the kingdom.

  Ashlyn didn’t bother to look up. She hardly knew her brother outside of the handful of awkward exchanges they shared at official events. To Ashlyn, Elon was just a younger version of her father. “Don’t. Just…don’t,” was all she could say.

  She heard Elon heave a sigh as he wheeled himself out of the room, following her father’s entourage.

  A symphony of odd, clacking sounds echoed down the hallway, as if a hundred walking canes were making their way down the hall. Ashlyn looked up to see a procession of Skex marching past the room, their striated tan exoskeleton appendages scraping across the marble. Though she had seen them run on four legs—which was a terrifying sight—these were upright on their two hind legs. Their hands, if you could call them that, possessed long, finger-like appendages that gripped the energy rifles they were known to carry into battle. Their heads appeared to be encased within metal helmets, which had no opening through which they could see. She still did not know how they could navigate without eyes.

  Ashlyn knew little about the creatures other than they were the hands of the mysterious Wraiths. They were both soldiers and beasts of burden, guarding key Wraith outposts or carrying supplies back to the Thread.

  Marching in front, astride the beasts, were a pair of Acolytes in their flowing red robes. Though they wore no expression, their faces appeared strained, as under some unseen duress. Ashlyn knew little about them, other than they were connected to the Wraiths, though she could not fathom why.

  Within the center of the procession walked a solitary Wraith. Ashlyn caught herself holding her breath. It was rare to see a Wraith in person since they rarely visited the cities of men. They were rumored to dwell within a vast ship among the stars, looming above Chalice. The Wraith had the same basic features as a human, but everything about it felt wrong. The way it walked, the way its eyes moved within its head, and above all, the haunting voice with which it spoke. It wore simple black robes, and its skin was a shiny dark gray, almost like polished coal.

  It turned its head toward her as it passed and fixed its unnatural eyes on her. It smiled, and the sight of it sent a cold shiver reverberating through her.

  She regained her composure and pushed aside her anguish. She looked up at the adviser who was now talking to the doctor. “Leave me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?” the adviser asked.

  “I wish for a moment alone.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course,” the man said, and he and the doctor exited the room. Ashlyn stood, closed the doors, and locked them.

  Ashlyn surveyed the room. Her uncle was not young, sure, but he was hale and hearty for his age. She refused to believe he died of something as mundane as a heart attack.

  She spied a broken teacup on the floor. That wasn’t surprising. Her uncle loved tea. “The blacker the better,” he would always say. He was not a morning person and would generally drink five cups of the earthy stuff before starting his day.

  Ashlyn furrowed her brow. What was upsetting her now was less what she saw than what she didn’t see. Where was the teapot? They always served his tea with a full pot. Unless someone had already taken it from the room? She knelt and sniffed at the rug where the teacup had fallen. She could smell an almost floral note in the spilled tea. “My uncle would never have taken more than a sip of tea like that,” she said aloud.

  Continuing to explore the room, she found that his folio, the one in which he kept all his notes and correspondences, was nowhere to be found. Her uncle was never without it.

  She knelt next to him again. “Somebody did this to you, Uncle. What did you discover?” She looked at his vest, where his hand rested, and could see a faint black spot that had seeped through his vest. Her eyes grew wide. She reached inside the lapel of the vest, her hands still shaking, and broke the stitches of the secret pocket Rolan had sewn into its lining.

  When she was a little girl, she would steal away with his coat and run around the palace pretending to be a world-famous spy, just like her uncle. Rolan started hiding candy in secret pockets he had sewn into his jackets to see if she would catch on. She had nearly forgotten.

  Whatever is in this pocket cost him his life, she thought as she pulled a sealed letter from the vest. She stood up, her eyes filled with determination. “I’m going to finish this, Uncle. And I’m going to find whoever did this to you.”

  Ashlyn thought she could hear strange music playing somewhere in the distance, perhaps down the hall. It was unlike any music she had heard before, yet it bore a sense of familiarity. She shook her head.

  Ashlyn opened the letter and scanned its contents. “But where do I start?” she found herself saying out loud. “Who can I trust? If only I could j
ust ask you—” She snapped her fingers.

  “I know who can help us.”

  3

  Nocturne’s Call

  Beware the Bearer of many phantoms. Their minds twist and fracture, losing all sense of self.

  —Excerpt from The Book of the Traveler

  At times like this, Cade wondered how he ended up in the only town that had a drug dealer with a conscience.

  “You’ve been cleaning me out of Nocturne lately,” Tic said. “It’s not the easiest thing to get, you know? Plus, the rate you are gulping these down, it can’t be good for you. I’m pretty sure your dose is too high. Have you heard of veiling? That’s a thing, you know? One minute everything is normal, the next everything goes—”

  Cade held up his hand. Tic was a good kid, which some might think strange to say, considering his line of work. He wasn’t cut out to be a dealer. Tic just cared too much about his clients. But life hadn’t given him the opportunities he needed. He easily could have been a healer in Toltaire, had he the means.

  Cade, hand still raised, cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. Tic was in his usual spot, standing in the alleyway adjacent to a small pharmacy where he worked during the day. A few overflowing cans of trash lined the wall but did not provide suitable cover for Cade’s tastes. He would have preferred to be somewhere more private. But he had no choice. The voices were getting louder.

  “You told me I could count on you when I needed it. Has that changed?”

  Tic looked down and sighed. “I know, I can’t help it—I’ve read—”

  Cade didn’t hear the rest. He grabbed his head, wincing. It was getting harder to think clearly. He shouldn’t have been away for so long.

  “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  Cade looked at the mouth of the alley and saw a small group of children running by. He shoved his hands into his pockets even though he had already taken off his rings.