by Mia Archer
Tiafa stepped out of shadows cast by the stable and into the starlight. Sarai’s breath caught. She’d always felt an attraction to Tiafa, but there was something about the way she looked tonight bathed in the starlight that took her breath away.
Perhaps it was the outfit she wore. Tiafa had never been one for the skirts and dresses that were expected of women in the village. Even when she was old enough that it was expected of her. She’d always preferred the more practical shirt and pants farm women wore when they were out working the fields.
She wore something like that this night, but it was far more fashionable than anything a farm woman would wear. Farm clothes were all practical. They were designed for work.
What Tiafa wore today was nothing short of stunning, and it was made all the more stunning by the fact that she was the one wearing it. It was made out of a finer material than work clothes, and it fit to her body like a dress that had been designed for fine occasions even though it was the opposite.
Her parents could afford that, of course, but they didn’t flaunt their wealth all that often. Perhaps they’d decided to splurge on their daughter who was about to face the Choice.
Sarai found herself staring openly. Whenever she’d stared at Sarai in the past she always made an effort to hide it, but she was having a difficult time hiding it now.
Tiafa cocked her head to the side. She almost seemed to shiver.
“Is something wrong Sarai?” she asked, her voice quiet and almost filled with anticipation.
“Nothing,” Sarai said, licking her lips and unable to pull her eyes away from her friend.
Tiafa blushed and looked down. “It’s something I bought for myself. I figured if we’re all going to be shipped out in two days what’s the point in saving the money I got from working in the bakery any longer?”
She shrugged and looked up. She seemed almost embarrassed that she’d bought something like that for herself. Though Sarai found herself hoping that maybe Tiafa hadn’t bought this fancy outfit just for her.
Sarai shook her head. For a moment there it had felt like she’d been overcome just the same as when she thought of…
Again she forced her mind to slide around that thought. Though this time as her mind slid around the thought there was something new that happened. Something mildly terrifying.
The dizziness was coming at her and she wasn’t even thinking the thing that she usually thought of when she was having this problem. No, that woman wasn’t in her thoughts, but Tiafa consumed her mind and it was the same as when she thought of that woman.
She stumbled back and there was nothing to catch her this time.
Nothing but Tiafa. One moment Sarai was falling, and the next Tiafa was there with her strong arms wrapped around Sarai. Staring down at her with obvious concern.
“Sarai,” she whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”
For that moment there was nothing wrong with her. Wrapped in her friend’s arms made her feel like there was nothing that could possibly go wrong in the world.
Though of course there was plenty that could go wrong with the world. The world had gone to hell since she was an infant, to hear her parents tell it.
“Nothing,” she finally managed to choke out. “I guess I’m just having some difficulty and…”
“If you don’t want to go to the wall tonight you don’t have to,” Tiafa said. “I didn’t realize it was bothering you this much. If I’d had any idea then…”
She trailed off and shrugged. Though honestly Sarai was having difficulty thinking much of anything with her friend staring down at her with those eyes. She shivered and tried not to think about how easy it would be for Tiafa to lean down and press their lips together.
It would be so easy, and the thought sent another shiver running through her. She shook her head to clear it.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not going back. I promised I would take you to the wall, and I’m going to take you to the wall damn it.”
Tiafa grinned. “That’s more like it! I was starting to wonder where the Sarai I knew had gone. I figured all that bowing and scraping with Asana earlier had done something to you.”
Sarai sniffed and pointedly ignored the jab. Tiafa could ignore the nobility at her own peril, but that was one basket of trouble Sarai wasn’t going to pick up.
“Come on,” Sarai said. “We’re going to go to that tower and you’re going to see a view the likes of which you’ve never seen before!”
“Good,” Tiafa said, reaching out to take Sarai’s hand.
She tried to ignore just how wonderful it felt having Tiafa’s hand grasping her own, but it was difficult. They’d held hands so many times before, and always there was the torture of knowing it was merely a friendly gesture for her friend while it was so much more for her.
And that more than anything was why she was doing this fool thing this night. Going out into the darkness when she should have been staying in the safety of her own home.
Because she would do anything to have a last few moments with Tiafa on their last two days before the Choosing. Before they were potentially separated forever.
So she gave Tiafa’s hand a squeeze and moved off into the night with her friend. Trying the entire time not to think about how she would like that friendship to be so much more.
5
Ghost Fields
They moved quietly through the darkness. Sarai had done this countless times before, but she’d always been alone. She was nervous how Tiafa would react considering she hadn’t been to the Ghost Fields before.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Tiafa whispered, her voice hissing into the darkness like the roar of a dragon for all to hear.
Not that Sarai had ever heard the roar of a dragon. She’d merely imagined it based on tales from far off lands. Stories from grizzled veterans who returned after taking a lucky arrow to the knee that let them return home mostly whole and not in a box.
The looks in their eyes as they described the sound was enough that she knew she never wanted to see a dragon up close if she could avoid it.
“You need to stay quiet,” she hissed. “If you make noise you’ll catch their attention.”
“Come on,” Tiafa said. “I know the oldsters say the glow is from spirits, but that can’t be…”
She trailed off as some of the glow that surrounded the city at night hissed out of the ground right in front of them. It seemed to almost take the form of a skeleton lurching through the darkness with a shield in front of it that hadn’t done it much good in life and a sword at its side that might’ve been used to create some of the other dead spirits around here.
Not likely though. Most of the spirits in the Ghost Fields had been killed in the fire.
“Is that a soldier?” Tiafa asked, her voice finally quiet enough that she wouldn’t wake the dead with all the noise she was making.
Quite literally, in the Ghost Fields.
“No,” Sarai said as they waited for the thing to disappear.
Tiafa made a strangled noise as Sarai walked through the spot the spirit had just occupied, but Sarai didn’t care. She’d been out here often enough that she wasn’t overly worried.
“The spirits don’t come back after they’ve made an appearance,” she said. “Not usually, at least.”
“But if that wasn’t a soldier from the battle then what was it?” Tiafa asked, her eyes wide as she glanced over their shoulder to where the glowing “soldier” had disappeared.
“That was probably a constable who was caught in the fire,” Sarai said. “There was a whole different city outside the walls. It ran almost all the way to your village. That’s why the Ghost Fields extend so far and why the farmers go out from the village rather than towards the city.”
“But…”
“Also, everything you ever heard about a battle taking place here is hog slop,” she said. “This wasn’t a battle. People were caught in a magic fueled firestorm and killed, but there was no fighting th
e flames. Unless you’re talking about the mages. They were the only ones who could do anything. Not that it helped the common citizens of Choikal.”
A woman appeared in front of them. She appeared to be holding children and she was wailing in agony. Tiafa let out a choked cry as she realized what she was seeing, the echo of a tragedy that had played out nearly two decades prior with an unfortunate ending, but Sarai barely noticed it.
She’d spent a lot of time traveling the Ghost Fields at night. She was drawn to them for some reason. Which meant she was thoroughly inoculated to a tragedy that had happened when she was an infant.
“Come on,” she said.
“But how do you know all this?” Tiafa asked.
“I know all of it because people talk about it when they don’t live in the shadow of Choikal,” Sarai said. “This was a place where people lived and eventually died because they could make a living being near the city even if they couldn’t be within the safety of the walls, and people still talk about that outside your village. My parents talked about it.”
She looked up at those walls. Even now, two decades later, they were intimidating. They were conspicuous in the way they blotted out the starlight in that direction. The spires of long abandoned guard towers thrust into the skies like skeletal fingers.
“So they all burned?” Tiafa asked.
“Yup,” Sarai said. “Walls aren’t much use if the fire takes everything inside and out. Certain people were thorough in their work.”
“The Dark Lady,” Tiafa said, her voice quiet.
Sarai hissed, but it was too late. The dizziness struck her as it always did. Of course most of the time people made wards across their person or otherwise reacted negatively to a mention of that woman, which usually made it easy for Sarai to cover up her own unpleasant reaction.
Not so now, however. The feeling was so intense here this close to the city the woman had burned that she fell over. She’d spent most of the day trying to avoid thinking of the woman and now Tiafa had said her name.
Though it was far worse than that. She looked up and her breathing came in quick gasps as the mist gathered around them. A glowing mist that seemed to have a life of its own. Great banks of it swirling around them with outlines of the spirits of the dead appearing within glowing a faint green.
“What in the nine hells is that?” Tiafa asked.
“Her,” Sarai growled.
“Jaska is here?” Tiafa cried out, loud enough that the ground glowed fitfully for hundreds of paces around them.
“Don’t say that name!” Sarai hissed. “They don’t like it when you mention her!”
Sarai looked up at the spirits coalescing around them. Sure the villagers were afraid of the things, but in her experience the spirits left her alone by and large.
Her personal experience with docile spirits had been enough to make her think that maybe some of the stories the villagers told about how dangerous the Ghost Fields could be after dark, not to mention how much more dangerous it got when you got into the city where the magical fires had really twisted things, were so many fireside tales told to terrify young children and keep them away from the very real dangers of the crumbling burnt out buildings within the city.
As she looked at the spirits now she found herself thinking maybe there was something more to those stories.
Or it could simply be that Tiafa had been stupid enough to bring up the Dark Lady’s name. Sarai noticed long ago that just thinking of that damnable woman was enough to make the green spirit energy pulse, and she’d never said the name.
She’d never wanted to find out what would happen. Though it looked like she was going to find out now. She’d assumed the spirits wouldn’t care for someone bringing up the woman who’d destroyed them in magical fires, after all, but she couldn’t be sure.
She didn’t know enough about the Ghost Fields to make a guess. All she had was her experience to go on, and right now her experience was telling her they needed to get the nine hells out of this place.
She grabbed Tiafa’s hand. She didn’t think about what she was doing grabbing her friend’s hand. There wasn’t the usual delicious torture at Tiafa’s touch. No, she was more concerned with getting them out of whatever danger they’d just found themselves in.
She pulled Tiafa forward. Towards the mist coalescing around them. The mist that seemed to be filled with the souls of the restless dead.
“What are you doing?” Tiafa shrieked. “You’re bringing us closer to the ghosts?”
“Trust me,” Sarai said. “Either we get through that mist or you can stay here with them.”
“But you’re going away from the village!” Tiafa said, her voice entirely too loud and making the glow pulse brighter. “Why would you go away from the village?”
In a way it was satisfying for Sarai to hear her friend freaking out. On the other hand she didn’t exactly enjoy hearing her normally brave friend losing it in the face of something Sarai had faced down countless times.
On the other hand it was amusing. Yeah, that was the word for it. She yanked Tiafa along, right into the one thing that seemed to terrify her more than anything, more even than the Kwarks, and she felt a rush as they pressed through the dead with her friend shrieking behind her about how everything she was doing was going to get them killed.
Maybe, but at least they were having fun. It would be a better death than being reduced to nothing out on the front lines in the Twisted Lands.
6
Unquiet Dead
“You’re crazy!” Tiafa shrieked.
“Would you shut up already?” Sarai asked. “If you keep screaming like that you’re going to draw the wrong kind of attention.”
Tiafa’s eyes went wide. Her mouth shut. Blessedly it didn’t feel like there was much more irritation coming from the glowing dead mist. It was mostly behind them now, along with the dark shadows inside that glowing mist.
As though the glow wasn't enough trouble to begin with.
Getting away from the unquiet dead was enough to make Sarai start to think about the situation they found themselves in. More specifically she found herself thinking about Tiafa’s hand in her own. How her blood was pulsing behind her ears as they ran.
She was so distracted by the feel of Tiafa that she almost didn’t notice when a larger shadow than she’d ever seen before loomed before them. It was huge, hulking, and didn’t look like any of the ghosts she’d encountered.
She’d spent enough time out here in the Ghost Fields that she thought she knew everything that lived out here, even though nothing could really be said to “live” in the Ghost Fields. This thing was new, though.
Something massive shambled out of the darkness and slammed into them. She stumbled back, but Tiafa was thrown back and went sliding in the grass. She let out another scream, then curled up in the fetal position.
Sarai stared in wonder. Tiafa had always made such a production about being the bravest. She’d always been the first one to make it to the top of a tree. She’d always been fearless when it came to climbing the bluffs outside the village.
She’d always been fearless when it came to challenging someone. She said she was merely doing what needed to be done, and it was odd to see her reduced to gibbering terror.
Something looming out of the darkness in the Ghost Fields probably was a good reason to feel a bit of gibbering terror. Though oddly enough Sarai didn’t feel any of that.
She knew she should’ve been afraid at being confronted by something straight out of the stories told to keep children out of the Ghost Fields, but more than anything she was curious.
This was something new, and she felt like it was intruding on her domain. Not the other way around. She’d grown used to the soft glow out here. To the spirits of the restless dead that lurked about lamenting their untimely demise at the hands of that woman.
This was new though, and rather than terrifying her it made her more excited.
“What are you?” she whispered.
The hulking darkness took a step forward. Close enough to the glow from the fog behind them that she could get a good look at it. The thing was terrifying, but she also couldn’t help but think it was beautiful in its own strange way.
It was a monstrosity made out of bones. Presumably the bones of those who had died here. There were plenty of bones to work from. That glowing mist held it together at the joints and it regarded her with curiosity. Not malice.
Though there'd certainly been some malice in that hit they took.
There were also shadows coming off of the thing. A roiling darkness that seemed to mix with the glow, but when she stared at the thing she could see through those shadows to what was underneath.
She reached out to touch the thing. She knew it was an idiot fool idea, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know what made this new curiosity tick.
The darkness seemed to pull away from her. Well then. That was even more interesting. The shadow stared down at her, and if anything she thought it seemed surprised.
Not what she was expecting from a hulking shadow monstrosity looming over them in the middle of the night, but she’d take it. At least the thing wasn’t attacking.
“What are you?” she asked.
The thing shuffled from side to side, then a scream split the night. Sarai was so startled by the scream that she stumbled forward. Right into the thing. Which promptly fell to pieces.
She stared at the bones. Oddly enough her first impulse was to apologize to the creature for what she’d done, but there was no creature left for her to apologize to. Sure the thing had been mildly horrifying, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just done something terrible by destroying the creature.
She turned to Tiafa who'd pulled herself up and was staring where the creature had been. She seemed truly terrified. Not that Sarai could blame her. That was the reaction she was supposed to have to a big scary monster confronting them, after all.