Call of the Wraith

by Kevin Sands

  ?

  I’M SO COLD.

  I shiver, but this does nothing to fight the chill. The frost grips me like vines, creeps under my skin. My flesh, my bones, my veins turn to ice. Even my thoughts cannot escape. The wisps of vapor that rise from my head freeze, fall, and shatter on the plain.

  The cold surrounds me, envelops me, swallows me. I try to move, but I can’t. I look down from the slate-gray sky and see I am buried to my waist. My hands, my legs are stuck in ice, endless ice: deep, eternal white.

  I scream. “Help me!”

  My words echo back, twisted, mocking. “Help me,” not-me says, and laughs.

  There is no other sound. The giant is gone, his body lying bleeding in the valley, pierced by a thousand arrows. The princess is gone, locked in the tower, no one around to hear her cries. And warmth is gone, the hands that once held me ripped from my heart. Nothing remains.

  Except the bird.

  A branch rises from the ice, crooked and twisting. The bird perches at its end, watching me. Its feathers are . . . not black, for black would mean they were made of something. These feathers are nothing. The bird is a hole in the universe. And beyond that hole is nothing at all.

  It looks down at me. Its eyes, like its feathers, are black, but not the deep empty black of nothingness. These eyes are glittering onyx. There is intelligence behind them, and it sees my pain.

  “Let me go,” I plead.

  The bird answers. THIS PLACE IS YOURS. THIS PLACE IS ETERNAL. NO ONE LEAVES. EVER.

  I’m so cold. Yet it isn’t the chill that makes me shudder. “I don’t belong here!”

  BUT YOU DO.

  “I betrayed no one!”

  BUT YOU DID.

  “Please,” I say. “I don’t deserve this.”

  YES, the bird answers, but now another voice answers underneath. It’s the faintest of whispers, so soft, it’s not even sound, just the memory of it. It echoes inside me, and its words fight against the cold.

  Hold on, it says.

  Hold on to what? I ask. I am lost. I am alone.

  No, the voice says. I am with you. Always.

  And that’s when I begin to fall.

  CHAPTER

  1

  MY HEAD SLAMMED INTO THE floor.

  I lay there, dizzy, stunned, my legs wrapped and bound above me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.

  My head.

  My head ached with a deep, throbbing pulse, every thrum a promise to split my skull. My stomach roiled, rebelled, and when I could stand it no more, I turned over and retched.

  Nothing came out. My muscles strained, but there was nothing in my cramping stomach to throw up. When the spasms finally stopped, I rested my head on the floor, the packed dirt cool against my cheek.

  I coughed, then swallowed. My throat burned, scratched, dried with hollow spit. I groaned and opened my eyes.

  I saw tarred wooden beams above me. Confused, it took me a moment to understand: I was looking at the ceiling. I’d fallen out of bed. Now I lay upside down, half on the floor, half hanging from the mattress. The bonds that held my legs were the bedding: a sheet of cool white linen, a heavy wrap of deerskin on top.

  I wriggled free. My body slipped from the blankets and thumped against the floor. I lay there, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

  The light, as faint as it was, was still enough to make me squint. It came from a fire of wood and peat, burning low in the hearth opposite the bed, filling the air with the smell of smoked dirt. The room itself was unfamiliar, and nearly empty: just the bed I’d fallen from, a rickety wooden table and chair, and a palliasse in the corner near the fire, a second deerskin blanket crumpled behind it. The mantel over the fireplace, a plank of sagging cedar, was empty. The walls were made of cob: smoothly packed clay and straw, washed with lime. A single door offered an exit, one step up from the floor. Beneath the handle, a rusted iron plate covered its keyhole.

  Where was I?

  I tried to remember how I’d got here, but tasking my brain made my head spin again. I crawled back onto the bed and lay there, breathing, letting the whirling subside.

  At least it was warm. The fading dream of the icy plain made me shiver, and I pulled the deerskin up to cover me. As I did, I noticed what I was wearing: a plain gray shirt, breeches, and hose. All simple, undyed wool, all too large for me.

  These were not my clothes. Where had they come from?

  Where was I?

  Again I tried to remember, and again the world began to spin. I groaned and covered my eyes until the queasiness passed.

  I stayed like that for a while, resting against the mattress. It was soft—goose down. The comfort struck me as oddly out of place, considering my surroundings. Not that I was about to complain.

  Complain to whom?

  I sat up, startled. The motion made my head throb.

  The question I’d heard wasn’t a thought. It was a voice, a man’s voice. Deep, the strains of age beginning to weather it.

  “Hello?”

  My own voice came out ragged. I was so thirsty. I looked around and spied a ceramic jug at the foot of my bed. My fingers ached as I picked it up, grateful to hear sloshing inside. I pulled the cork from its neck. The jug’s mouth had already reached mine before I smelled the horror.

  I recoiled just before it touched my lips. The jug slipped from my fingers, bounced off the mattress, cracked on the dirt below. The liquid splashed from the broken bottom, and the sharp tang of urine filled the room.

  I stared, shaking, at the mess on the ground. Underneath the shards, soaked in the waste, were a handful of stones, a half dozen nails, and short strands of something tied in a knot. It looked like hair.

  I gagged, the stink choking my throat. Why would someone leave me that to drink?

  It’s not for you to drink.

  That voice again. “Who are you?” I said.

  No answer came. I made to call out once more, then stopped when I realized: The voice was right.

  The jug. Ceramic, filled with urine, stones, nails, and hair. It wasn’t meant to be drunk. It was . . .

  The room tumbled, and this time I couldn’t control my nausea. I leaned over the side of the bed, retching, my skull throbbing with every heave.

  The spell finally passed. I rolled over, gasping.

  You need to get up, the voice said.

  I heard it clearly. The voice . . . it wasn’t coming from inside the room. It was inside my head.

  I lay there, breath caught in my throat, and responded in kind. Who are you?

  Get up, the voice said.

  My mind swirled with questions, but the voice wouldn’t answer them. I crawled to the edge of the bed, then stood. My legs wobbled under my weight, the dizziness overwhelming.

  Give it a moment.

  I steadied myself against the wall. The roughness of the lime-washed cob made my fingers sting. I looked at them; they were red and raw. Blackened skin peeled away from the tips.

  “What’s happened to me?” I whispered.

  The voice in my head spoke, soothing. Calm, child.

  But I couldn’t stay calm. I tried to remember how I got here, and the room spun faster than ever.

  I fought it, searched for the memory. I tried to remember.

  The walls swam. The walls melted.

  I tried—

  • • •

  I opened my eyes.

  Timbers. I saw tarred timbers over thatch.

  The ceiling. I was looking at the ceiling again.

  You passed out, the voice said.

  I pushed myself up. I didn’t try to remember anything this time. I just stayed hunched over, head between my knees, until the dizziness subsided.

  That’s it, the voice said. Good.
/>   What do I do now? I said.

  Go to the door.

  Slowly, I stood, then staggered over. When I touched the handle, I jerked my blackened fingers away.

  The handle was freezing. I could feel the cold beyond the door, seeping through the wood. The nightmare of ice returned to my mind, and all I wanted to do was run. But there was nowhere to go.

  I took a breath, trying to calm myself. Then I knelt and pushed the iron plate covering the keyhole out of the way. It swung upward with a squeal of rusted metal.

  Light winked through the keyhole. I squinted and peered into it.

  Snow.

  The door led outside, to a world covered with snow. Some thirty feet away was a line of trees, branches swaying in the wind, weighed down by heaps of white. The sky above was a dull gray ceiling of clouds.

  I pressed closer, trying to see more. To the left, I could just make out the corner of another cob house. I could smell something, too: charred wood.

  I saw no fire through the keyhole. The smell wasn’t coming from outside; it was closer. I pulled back, blinking away the spots the brightness had left in my eyes. Then I saw: There were symbols, burned into the wood of the doorjamb.

  There were five of them. Four were circles, arcane markings within. The fifth was a W.

  No. Wait. It wasn’t a W. It was . . . conjoined Vs?

  Yes, the voice in my head said.

  I knew these symbols. I looked back at the broken jug, and once again my stomach began to tumble.

  Yes, the voice said. Those go together. Think.

  But thinking made me dizzy. The only thing I could remember

  no, not remember—feel

  was that those symbols meant nothing good. A sudden, desperate wish gripped me: Be anywhere but here.

  I grabbed the handle again, ignoring the pain in my fingers. I pulled. But the door only rattled. It was locked.

  I was a prisoner.

  CHAPTER

  2

  I COULDN’T FIGHT THE PANIC anymore. I shook the handle, shouting.

  “Hey! Let me out! Let me out!”

  The door wouldn’t budge. All my calls did was make me dizzy again, so I stopped, resting on my knees, waiting to recover.

  Calm, child.

  That was the second time the voice—I’d begun to think of it as the Voice—said those words. They were familiar, in a way I couldn’t place. Someone had said them to me a long time ago, and they’d made me feel safe.

  I listened to the Voice, and his words stilled my heart, my panic fading with my breaths. It returned when I heard a sound outside. The crunching of boots in snow.

  Someone was coming.

  I crawled from the door, but there was no place to hide. I looked about the room for a weapon, any weapon. All I could find were the broken shards of pottery—and the chair.

  I stood; I hefted it. It was a flimsy thing, creaking under its own weight. A single blow would likely turn it to splinters.

  Fortunately, one blow might be all I’d need. The door wasn’t tall, so whoever came in would need to bend over to enter. If I surprised them, hit them on the back of the neck, even this rickety chair would leave them dazed.

  The crunching footsteps reached the door. A key rattled in the lock. I pressed my back to the wall, the chair overhead.

  Daylight spilled in as the door creaked open, and the figure stepped inside. I spun around, heaving the chair back to slam it down. I stopped myself just in time.

  It was a girl. She looked to be about ten years old, wearing a long sheepskin overcoat and heavy boots, hands weighed down with a pair of bowls. She shrieked as I jumped out at her. Her heel caught on the step, and she fell backward into the snow, sending the bowls bouncing off the door frame. I ducked as carrots, leeks, and steaming chunks of meat splashed gravy everywhere.

  The girl scrambled to her feet and fled, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” The bowls dripped the last of their stew into the snow. The smell of it made my stomach growl, and my heart sank to see it wasted. I suddenly realized how desperately hungry I was.

  I could hear the girl running, calling for her father. She’d left the door open. Cold air blew inside, daylight promising escape. I rushed toward it.

  Then a man stepped into the doorway, blocking my path. He was tall and awkwardly lanky, and though he was bundled in the same sort of sheepskin coat as the girl, he couldn’t have been her father. He was too old, the lines of countless decades etched into his face.

  He froze when he saw me. Unlike the girl, he wasn’t carrying stew. He held a longbow.

  I stepped back, chair held high. “Get away from me!” I said.

  He held a hand out. Moving carefully, he rested his longbow against the wall, then backed away, hands open so I could see them. A quiver of arrows remained slung behind his neck.

  I studied his face, trying to place him. Besides the marks of age, there was a bruise on his cheek, a deep, angry purple, and the corner of his mouth was cut. Sometime recently, someone had split his lip.

  “Where am I?” I said. “What do you want from me?”

  He didn’t answer. He just held out his hands, as if asking me to keep calm.

  I tried again. “Who are you? Why am I being held prisoner?”

  The old man looked puzzled. He shook his head, then gestured. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me.

  “Why won’t you speak?” I said, fear raising my voice to a shout.

  He hesitated. Then he opened his mouth, and I understood.

  Someone had cut out his tongue.

  The chair drifted downward as I stared in horror. “Who did that to you?”

  He just shook his head. I was about to ask him more, but then I heard someone else running through the snow.

  I brought the chair up again as the new man arrived. He was heavy, a burly sort, and, unlike the others, he wasn’t wearing a coat. His sleeves were rolled up, stained at the cuffs with what looked like blood. He was shaggy—shaggy head, shaggy beard, shaggy forearms, covered in hair—and he reminded me, as much as anything, of a bear.

  He skidded to a stop when he saw me. He held out his hands, like the old man had, and spoke, low and soothing, his voice a rumble. “Please, my lord. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  I kept the chair right where it was. “Where am I?”

  “On my farm, my lord.” His accent was pure West Country: On moy fahrrm, muh’larrd. “My name’s Robert. Robert Dryden.” He motioned to the old man beside him. “This is Wise. We’ve been looking after you. No one means you any harm, I promise.”

  The strain was too much. My knees wobbled. “Why am I being held prisoner?”

  “Prisoner?” The farmer looked confused. “You’re no prisoner.”

  “Then why was I locked in here?”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “Oh, no, my lord. The lock wasn’t to keep you in. It was to keep the bad things out.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  I STARED AT HIM. “WHAT bad things?”

  He hesitated. “Will you let me explain? Put the chair down? Please?”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Despite his wild appearance, the calm in the farmer’s manner made me feel he wasn’t much of a threat. “I . . .”

  My body gave my answer. I collapsed.

  Wise sprang forward, catching me before my skull cracked on the floor. Gently he disarmed me, pulling my fingers from the chair. Then he lifted me with ease, the man much stronger than I’d have guessed.

  I didn’t try to resist. I couldn’t, in any case. Wise carried me to the bed and sat me at its edge. He and Robert waited, hands on my shoulders, until the world righted itself.

  “What’s happened to me?” I said when I could finally speak.

  “You’ve been very sick, my lord,” Robert said. “Right worried about you, we were. We kept you here, in the cob house, so you’d be safe. You and the girl.”

  Safe? I thought. What girl? “The one who brought me stew?”

  “No, that�
��s my daughter, Margery. I was meaning to speak of the little one.”

  He nodded toward the corner, where the empty palliasse rested. I looked at him quizzically.

  “She’s hiding under the blanket,” the farmer said. “She’s a shy one, that.”

  They steadied me as I stood, until they were sure I wouldn’t fall again. Then I stepped closer to the palliasse. As I did, the blanket behind it moved. Surprised, I took a corner and lifted it.

  A little girl, four, five years old at the most, lay curled beneath the deerskin. Her hair—blond, it looked like, though it was hard to tell, so matted as it was with dirt and grime—stuck with oily gumminess to her cheeks. She was wearing an odd mix of togs: a torn and filthy lemon dress with brand-new sheepskin boots and a coat far too large for her draped over her shoulders.

  She slid away from me, big blue eyes round with fear. She curled up in the corner, an animal trapped, watching me through strings of tangled hair.

  “Do you know her, my lord?” Robert asked.

  I shook my head. The motion made the girl twitch. I realized that I probably looked as monstrous to her as Wise had to me.

  “It’s all right,” I said to her. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you—”

  She bolted. She tore her blanket from my grasp and scrambled over the palliasse. The coat fell from her shoulders as she slid into the opposite corner, where she crouched, trembling, behind the deerskin.

  “Best not to press her, my lord,” Robert said. “She won’t let anyone touch her, not even my girls.”

  I was beginning to understand why. When her coat had fallen, I’d seen the marks of violence on her arms: red, scabbed scratches and huge purple bruises, already turning an ugly yellow. “What happened to her?”

  Robert hesitated. “Couldn’t say for sure, my lord. Wise found her by the river three days ago, dying in the snow, poor thing. Still tried to run when he picked her up. Screamed blue murder the whole way, too, until he brought her inside and let her go. Since then, she just hides behind that blanket we gave her. Hasn’t said a single word.”

  He sounded troubled. There’s something he’s not telling me, I thought, and the idea nearly made me miss what he’d said.