GHOST_4_Kindle_V2

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  I was mindful of the possibilities related to Forneus’ message. The ancient Knightshade hadn’t been given his names—Felriven, Despoiler, Spirit Prince—by accident. Whatever the contents of the scroll, it would likely cause epic-level chaos. But what kind of message would lead others of my own order to end me if I delivered it to anyone but Anthriel? Had I done something, something I’d washed from my memory? No, the message wasn’t likely about me. Forneus didn’t know me from a Guardian.

  Was it some top-level secret that I wasn’t supposed to know? Something that would necessitate a superior ending me? And what would such a message mean to a warrior of Anthriel’s level? I would warn Anthriel, of course. And then, good-or-ill, I’d find out my fate.

  Unfortunately, Anthriel wasn’t a local. And the nearest Waypoint was several hours north in Jackson County, Florida. I glanced over at the mile markers. I was still about thirty miles away from Sweet Deliverance Cemetery and the Waypoint hidden within. That’s when I noticed the tail.

  In highway traffic, I don’t much like to cruise in the fast lane. I prefer to find a car in the right lane, one doing reasonable speed, and then I just fall in behind him. But, on this journey, I ended up stuck several times behind cars going just south of slothful. It was the darting in and out of the fast lane to get around such pedestrian drivers that helped me spot the tail.

  Gray sedan with silver trim; very sporty, aquiline features for a big luxury car. Headlights were slanted like snake’s eyes and stayed on, maybe due to the overcast skies. The windshield was as dark as the shadow beneath a storm’s mantle. And it didn’t seem to cruise on the highway, but advanced rather with a relentless prowl.

  So far, the sedan had mirrored my traffic moves. I saw a rest stop up ahead and decided to test my theory. If I was right, I wouldn’t pick a fight there. Too many innocents could get in the way. But, I couldn’t very well have them follow me to the Waypoint either. This might call for a touch of creativity.

  I slipped into the far right lane and drifted into the exit. The rest stop was packed. Tour busses lined up like fat caterpillars on the east side of the building, the roof of which, oddly enough, was shaped like a leaf. The rest of the parking lot burgeoned with a technicolor mix of tractor trailers, cars, campers, and utility vehicles. I slid the assassin-mobile behind a hulking U-Haul truck and slipped quickly out onto the sidewalk.

  As I walked to the restrooms, I kept half an eye on the gray sedan and watched it pull into a spot about ten cars away from my U-Haul. I wondered if they’d leave the car or just wait for me. I figured it depended on their purpose.

  If it was the FBI, as I suspected, they’d likely just want to keep tabs on me. But maybe they’d play it safe and send someone inside, just to make sure I didn’t disappear. No big deal. If it was someone else, well…anything was possible, including violence. I looked around. There were kids everywhere. I would not let a fight go down here…even if it meant I had to run. And I am not fond of running.

  I passed by the restrooms without going in. I thought I might slip around the flank of the building and see what I could figure out about my pursuers. I had to wade through a thicket of travelers—mostly kids—at the snack machines. The smell of every chip ending in -itos hit me like a salty bat. I watched a teenager rip the top off a snack-sized bag of Cheetos and dump the contents into his mouth. That’s where the creative spark hit me.

  I’d never been called the Prince of Nonviolence, but hey, there was always a first time. If I could pull this off, it would eliminate the threat of violence and keep whoever it was from following me.

  I slid around the backside of the building as planned, but instead of finding a hiding spot for spying purposes, I waited. A couple of truck drivers emerged from the restrooms. As they joined the crowd departing that side of the building, I blended in beside them. We walked past the rows of cars, including the gray sedan. When we came to a couple of vans parked next to each other, I slid between them.

  Five minutes later, I circled back around the building and emerged from the front side as if I’d just used the facilities like any other traveler. I stopped in a sunbeam that strayed through the cloud cover, and I made a big show of stretching and yawning. I wanted to be certain they saw me. I got in the car, backed up, and drove slowly away.

  I watched in the rearview mirror as the gray sedan backed out of its spot. Wait for it, I thought. Wait for…it. The driver of the gray sedan let a family cross the parking lot in front of the car. Then, he pulled forward.

  I watched intently. Ought to be right about…now.

  The back end of the gray sedan suddenly dropped about a foot. One of the back wheels, a stub of axle still attached, wobble-rolled away, and the car came to a grinding halt. I watched the driver and two passengers practically leap out. Not FBI, not in those designer threads. La Familia, more than likely.

  It didn’t matter. They were out of play, and I had a cemetery to visit.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  Sweet Deliverance Cemetery sat upon 25,000 acres of prime Florida real estate. I pulled through the high arched gates and noted the horn-blowing cherubs worked into the wrought iron fence decor.

  “Right,” I muttered, shaking my head and creeping along the winding cemetery road. I passed perfectly manicured gardens full of perky flowering shrubs and a manmade lake where seagulls, ducks, geese, and peacocks wandered. Yes, peacocks. Complete with spectacular sprawling plumes of tail feathers. The grass was lush, immaculately cut, and greener than any grass grown in Florida heat had a right to be. It was the perfect, peaceful place to live.

  Ironic, I thought that the dead had better property than most of Florida’s living.

  The sun had scarcely appeared all morning, and given the thickening mantle above, I figured I wouldn’t be seeing it again anytime soon. It threatened rain but seemed to me more like the all-day soaker kind of storm. No thunder and lightning. No divine violence.

  I soon found myself in an ocean of grave markers: tall, stately crosses, headstones of granite or marble, blocky crypts, saintly blank-eyed statues, and mausoleums the size of summer homes. Like I said: ironic.

  I’d been to Sweet Deliverance only once before, but it had been a very long time ago. I thought I still remembered the way to the Waypoint, but even if I got mixed up, it wouldn’t take me long to spiral in on it. It would be the mausoleum that the Shades stayed farthest away from.

  Anthriel did not suffer the presence of the enemy.

  And make no mistake, Shades by the scores liked to hang out in graveyards. Knowing it was an unnecessary risk, I flexed my inner eyes and went to Netherview.

  The somber gray sky turned to a roiling mixture of purple and black. Any measure of peacefulness that existed in Earthveil dissolved into spiritual chaos. Pale, luminous Shades stirred and careened around the ethereal, mist-shrouded atmosphere. Dozens of them perched on gravestones like carrion birds waiting for something to die.

  Yes, the gravestones and other monuments were still there. No massive, turreted castles or fortresses existed here in this place. Just the graves and the stone structures that marked them. But they were no longer whitewashed. Now their surfaces were sickly yellow or marrow-toned, strewn with all manner of creeping green lichen.

  “Enough,” I muttered, chiding myself back into Earthveil. Painting a bull’s eye on one’s self was not wise when one is surrounded by guided missiles.

  Shades loved to hang out in cemeteries. It was a place where they could do their most insidious kinds of damage. After all, broken, hurting people came with great frequency to cemeteries. It was a place where Shades could torment and terrify; one place where Shades would be so bold as to appear to the living.

  Heartless, cruel miscreants, I thought, grinding my teeth. Some Shades even went so far as to masquerade as the deceased. Pain, terror, and false hope were equally effective tools for the gouging of Soulmarks. Far too many agonized mourners arrived at a cemetery alone and departed with an invisible, malevolent hitchhi
ker. Or more than one.

  The road forked half a dozen times, and I followed the path in my memory. The cemetery grounds became less open and sprawling, and thickets of spruce and pine took more territory. Grave sites became more grandiose and more secluded.

  I slowed the car and waited for a bunch of pure white geese to waddle across the road in front of me. That gave me a moment to notice how the road curved wickedly ahead and disappeared as it climbed a wooded hill.

  This was the place.

  I followed the path, found the dead end I remembered, and parked. A slightly jarring symphony of frogs and crickets awaited me when I got out of the car. The tree cover overhead cast a night-like darkness over the hill. Here and there, a forlorn firefly blinked to life and extinguished.

  At the top of the hill, in the deepest shadow, stood a single cylindrical mausoleum. It was tall, maybe thirty feet, and domed, supported by austere ionic columns. The widest gap in the columns opened to a seldom trodden path that ended at the dead end where I’d parked.

  I took the path to the Waypoint of Anthriel.

  Shadows cloaked me as I came. The crickets and frogs muted their music. I approached the columns and stepped over the threshold. If I had been just a visitor to the cemetery…maybe, in my grief, wandering aimlessly until I found myself curious about this structure, I would have discovered a shadowy vault with a very high ceiling. I would see seven evenly spaced statues standing in their private recesses in the walls. I would find bronzed placards beneath each statue with long messages engraved in an ornate foreign language that I wouldn’t recognize. And I would feel as if all seven of the statues were staring down at me, their weighty, empty gaze urging me to leave this place. And I would have departed as quickly as my legs could carry me…only to forget the entire event just moments later.

  If I had been an enemy and crossed that threshold, I would have suddenly found licks of hungry, white fire climbing over every inch of me, burning and tearing at my flesh until my mind and body were incinerated.

  Thankfully, I was neither a stranger nor an enemy. I was on the right team. Nothing happened to me. I went forward, and found an impossibly long hallway rising on a slow but relentless incline. Antique lamps and strange, gilded oil paintings adorned both sides of the hall. I would never forget this hallway. The paintings were a test.

  A test I had failed miserably the first time.

  This time, I refused to so much as glance at the paintings. I actually do learn from my mistakes…sometimes.

  As I neared the end of the hall, I felt the weight of the scroll in my coat pocket. Maybe six ounces, but it felt like a metric ton.

  At the very end of the hall, a massive curtain fell from high ceiling to floor. I waited to be summoned.

  “Come, Horseman!” came a voice from beyond the curtain.

  Horseman. I hadn’t been called by that name for a very long time. I didn’t much care for the name. It was a derogatory misnomer based on the kind of missions to which I am called. And, in a way, it was a slight to those who rightfully bear that name. For they are as far above Anthriel’s pay grade as Anthriel was to me.

  There was no throne room or mighty chair for Anthriel. He wasn’t that type. Just maps. Great, vast, detailed maps—they were posted on the concave walls; they were strewn across half-a-dozen strategically placed tables; and many more were still rolled, at the ready, in designated barrels beside each table.

  Anthriel was not garbed in armor—though I knew that, with a thought, he could be. Today, he wore fatigues like a commando. But the many pockets on his shirt and in his pants and in the belts across his shoulders and waist did not hold clips of ammunition or grenades. His pockets were filled with a variety of writing implements—and figurines.

  The same sort of figurines that were spread in clumps across the map Anthriel labored over now. His hair was long and, because he was leaning over the map, it hung over his face so that I could not see his eyes. That hair was white as cream but, here and there, was striated by ribbons of amber wheat. It curled devilishly at the ends. Another interesting irony.

  “It is not often that one of your…cadre…graces me with a visit,” Anthriel said without looking up. “You are not under my command, directly, and I have no need of your particular skill set. I trust you have ample reason for intruding upon my plotting?”

  I scanned the map in front of Anthriel. It might have been a map of Florida, but the border was irregular and stretched over large bodies of water. There was also a peculiar translucent territory seemingly hovering just above the main. And scattered across its entirety, were hundreds of the figurines. Some were silver. Some were black. Many were shaped like arrowheads. Others like tripods. And still others looked more or less like small shields.

  It looked like an otherworldly game of Risk, but I knew the players and the stakes were much more serious.

  Anthriel looked up at last, and his silver eyes fixed me with pulsing intensity. “Well?”

  I bowed slightly and then said, “I apologize for the trouble, but I bear a message.”

  “We have couriers for such things,” Anthriel replied, his eyes glinting, orbs of silver fire, as they shifted restlessly across the map.

  “The source of the message,” I said, “is a little unconventional. On my current mission, I found myself at the mercy of Forneus the Felriven.”

  The Knightshade’s name, when I spoke the words, came out flat and brittle like thin, impure metal that, when struck with a hammer, would shatter into a thousand jagged shards. And the hammer fell.

  “FORNEUS FELRIVEN!” Anthriel’s pale skin flared white-hot, like a light bulb pushed beyond its wattage. He slammed a fist down onto the map and two things happened: dozens of the tiny figurines, both silver and black, went flying; and Anthriel’s garb flickered, the many-pocketed fatigues blinking intermittently with hard plate armor. He seemed to master himself because his skin returned to its less smoldering color, and any sign of his armor vanished. He asked, “What mission could possibly put you into contact with one of the Highfallen?”

  Great, I thought. Time to beat myself up all over again. “It wasn’t exactly part of my mission. I was trying to piece together a theory, and I staked out an abortion clinic. I witnessed some rather disturbing events there, lost control of my rage, and went ballistic.”

  Anthriel surprised me then. Rather than castigate me for foolishness or loss of control, he said, “I hope you dismembered every Shade in that vile place and sent them in agony to the Abyss.”

  I blinked. Anthriel and I would never hit the town and shoot pool together, but he’d just risen fifty spots on my respect meter. “I took out my fair share,” I said. “But, when I went inside the stronghold, thinking it would be just a random Knighshade, I found Forneus instead. He could have ended me—probably would have except he mistook me for a Guardian. He released me with the condition that I deliver a message to you and to you only. He took my tools as collateral.”

  “That seems a shame.”

  “I’m touched by your empathy,” I said.

  “What?” Anthriel thundered, his skin flaring. “Careful, Horseman, you forget yourself.”

  He was right, of course. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I get glib when I’m frightened.”

  That seemed to amuse Anthriel. He went back to his map and began putting the tiny figurines back into their places. “And what was the message?” he asked.

  “I don’t actually know,” I said, reaching into my pocket and removing the scroll. “He didn’t tell me the message. He wrote it on this.” I held it up.

  Anthriel froze. “You brought a handwritten message from Forneus Felriven into a Waypoint? You realize the threshold might have ended you for even having such on your person?”

  “I actually hadn’t thought of that,” I muttered. “Glad they let me pass. May I?”

  He gestured for me to approach, and I handed him the scroll. He started to pull at the parchment seam, cracking the seal of black wax. “Uh, wait a m
inute, please…sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look, sir,” I said. “You know this level of business far better than I do, but even I can tell Forneus is up to something. There’s a gravity to it that feels…well, epic. Like opening this scroll is going to set wheels in motion that will change things.”

  Anthriel’s silvery gaze flickered from me to the scroll and back. “I feel it also,” he said quietly. He glanced down at his map. “It is not merely that the pieces are in motion. The pieces are always in motion. But now, it feels as if the board itself is about to shift.”

  “There’s one other thing,” I went on. “Forneus told me not to deliver the message to anyone but you. That, if I did, that recipient would feel compelled to end me.”

  Anthriel seemed to weigh that information for a while. “It was wise of you to bring it directly to me,” he said. “But I think I will wait until you have departed to read the message. Just in case.”

  “No argument there,” I said. If the message put Anthriel in a rage, he could end me with a sneeze.

  “You’ll have to return to Sintryst, you know,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Or go without my tools.”

  Anthriel looked off to the side, seemingly deep in thought. “If you return, he will most likely end you.”

  “Most likely,” I said. “He bears a Soulcleaver.”

  “Does he?” Anthriel asked, his voice still distant with thought. “Then, he has risen within his order. I wonder at this.”

  I bowed slightly, turned, and began to walk away.

  “Be careful out there, Horseman,” Anthriel called after me. “As I said, there are many pieces in motion. Some of them are pursuing you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be as careful as I can.”