Beyond the Pool of Stars

by Howard Andrew Jones

  A brass candelabra skipped across the floor as I reached the doorframe. The room had been closed up early—or never opened at all—its furniture, paintings, and fireplace all covered in linens. Stale air suggested it hadn’t been used for some time—and even then it surely hadn’t received the rough treatment it was getting now.

  At the opposite end of the room, a figure in a coal riding coat pulled the covers from a pair of mismatched bookcases. With one swipe, he scattered a shelf’s contents to the floor. Delicate figurines and silhouettes in tiny frames cascaded down amid an avalanche of decorative tomes.

  I stepped into the room, trying to start things lightly. “I don’t think the owners would appreciate their—”

  “Where is it?” He spun with inhuman speed, his shout shooting cracks through colorless skin. Before I could reply he stormed over. His fingers shriveled into claws, already stained from feeding.

  Only half surprised, I brought my blade up. He swiped for my gut, but I slid aside. “Is this how you treat your elder’s agent?”

  That should have slowed him down, but it didn’t.

  “You’re not him.” His claws came up for my face. My blade slapped his forearms but the blow pushed me back, heels and spine slamming against the hearth. Who had he been expecting?

  I made a show of it, my sword slicing a broad warning between us. Having no clue what he was talking about, I bluffed. “Plans changed.”

  “Liar!” His rage surged between us, red thoughts roiling at the edge my sight. As was the case with most of his kind, his will wasn’t entirely fettered to his mind—something in death had jarred it free. Few humans know what it is to have their thoughts invaded, but once you’ve been a captive inside your own head, you recognize trespassers.

  I wrenched my eyes away and lunged. He was fast enough that his throat wasn’t pierced cleanly, but the wound looked like a woodcutter’s first chop—and was just as bloodless. He hissed, dashing into the wall and up, his claws not even marking the faded floral paper. I sliced the sheet covering some wall hanging. Suddenly the surface he clung to was sliding. He scrambled, then hit the ground solidly. I delivered the woodcutter’s next strike.

  The body burst into a cloud of pyre smoke. My sword screeched across the floor, momentum thrusting my face into that blast of dry death. I twisted away, grimacing as I regained my balance. I hated that smell. The young ones smelled wet, the old smelled dry, but both had that throat-clogging bitterness.

  Like a shadow given shape but not substance, the smoke fell but refused to disperse. It pooled across the floor, seeking cracks in the boards, trying to seep into the dark below. I hadn’t ended the stranger—his head hadn’t severed cleanly—just panicked him. Instincts were powerful things, even more so when immortality was at stake. He’d search out a dark place to recover, but he wouldn’t be bothering me again soon.

  I scanned the room for whatever he might have been looking for, but the woman caught my attention.

  The cloth I’d cut from the wall revealed a portrait of a noble family: two arch-looking young women in matching floral dresses, plus a mother and father. My slice had cut a mortal wound across the chest of one daughter, but it was her near-twin who caught my attention. Red strands strayed from beneath her broad sun hat. The traumatized canvas distorted her face, but it was clear she was a fragile thing, with her father’s calm expression …

  I raised my hand to the portrait. Something about that woman seemed …

  I pinched the limp canvass back into place.

  It was me.

  Somehow, impossibly, the other woman seated in the picture was unmistakably me. The dress was some pampered socialite’s, the hair impractically styled, and the scene’s other occupants utter strangers. But everything else was absolutely me.

  The creak on the steps brought me back to the moment. Down the hall, another man in a dark coat and hat peered from the stairs. He’d already seen me, and maybe the last wisps of his companion settling into the floorboards. Our gazes barely met before he launched back upstairs.

  “Damn it.” The portrait’s eerie occupant would have to wait. I vaulted the banister, swinging myself over the bloody mess staining the steps. Battered doors and artless decorations lined the upper hall. The houseguest was nowhere in sight, but most of the doors were open.

  Inside the nearest room spread remnants of a gory debauch, a slaughter framed in nurse’s white. The resident was in but wouldn’t be receiving guests, butchered in what she must have known would be the last bed she’d ever own. Nothing stirred. I moved on. Each room presented a similar tableau, though the framing was different in each—a hunter, a debutant, a collector of glass figurines sprawled amid his shattered collection. Despite myself, my tongue was starting to feel dusty.

  The last door was open only a crack, though the wood around the lock had been shattered. I checked behind me, then pushed into what was clearly the master bedroom. Dawn’s light drowned beneath thick, sea foam curtains, casting everything in shades of sunken green. A bulky vanity lay wrecked against one wall, its hinged mirror shattered. There was certainly truth to the vampiric aversion to mirrors, but few knew how personally some took their weaknesses.

  A lavish mahogany hat box sat open upon the bed, brass clasp gleaming. Inside, white satin cushioning and nothing more.

  I smelled him the instant before he struck. Rolling across the bed corner, I rounded on him, sword still in hand, my back to the window. He was already on me, fangs like a snake’s striking for my face. He was too close. I dropped my sword and grabbed the loose flesh of his forearms. My grip did little to slow his charge, a power stronger than death driving him on—but I didn’t have to be stronger.

  Adjusting my footing, I pulled him to me, adding my weight to the force of his rushing frame. We toppled back. His wide hat shadowed his face except for bloodless lips. They twisted into a smile the moment before the glass shattered.

  We crashed onto the sloped porch roof, glass and loose shingles slipping beneath us as our bodies slid on the tearing curtain. His victorious expression vanished and I rolled hard, forcing him beneath me. He shrieked and flailed his arms in an attempt to simultaneously throw me off and slow his slide into the dawn light. The smell came first, appropriately like sulfur and burning garbage as his fleshier features charred.

  We hit the edge of roof. I let my body go limp, crashing upon him as we hit the ground. His chest gave way, crackling as though I’d fallen upon a bundle of brittle twigs. Ash and the echoes of another shriek burst into the air. As flesh or as smoke, for him this was immortality’s end.

  He burned quickly.

  Standing, I brushed ashes off of my hands. The house and drive were still, looking far less ominous without their veils of morning fog. Whippoorwills warbled in the distant trees.

  A shadow settled near the stranger’s cinder-filled coat. His traveling hat landed gently, a wide-brimmed slouch common to the riders of Amaans. Supposedly the horsemen wore them to keep the sun out of their eyes when riding valley trails.

  “Huh. Not your worst idea, friend.” I tried it on.

  I checked the height of the sun from under the shady brim. The city constables were already late and might arrive at any moment, but I still had questions. Questions with answers I might learn from a torn canvas, or from a coward hiding in basement shadows. I started back toward the manor’s front door, pulling a sturdy stake from the holster on my thigh.

  6

  The Exorcism of Elistair Wintersun Jadain

  Pain pierced my fear, forcing me back into the moment. Still the essence of the asylum’s insanity bled into the room, babbling its shattered psyche as it reached for me. My amulet, slipping in my grip, forced the edges of the goddess’s spiral into my palm.

  I thrust the holy icon before me, nearly plunging it into the core of the shrieking thing.

  “Get back!” I poured my swallowed scream into my words, lending them something like force. “In Pharasma’s name, get back!”

  A me
asure of conviction, of my faith in the goddess, must have shone through my words. The carved image of the Lady’s spiral shivered to life, its cold radiance washing over the blot of murmurs and shadowy limbs.

  The stray soul refused to be lit, but its inky mass diminished, flagging in the goddess’s light.

  I sought sanctuary in remembered lessons. What was this? A spirit shackled to the world by its own broken mind? Literally a stray soul? As a servant of the goddess, wasn’t it my duty to banish the remnants of just such a thing? Was my fear nothing more than a novice’s unease? Could all hunters feel such dread upon first drawing their bows?

  The high exorcist must have been watching me through the door—testing me.

  I raised the icy blue spiral, letting its radiance fill the room. The apparition withered, and I addressed it as I knew a Kellid would prefer. “Elistair, son of Clan Wintersun—your gods and ancestors wait for you.”

  The thing shuddered upon hearing the name. The babbling slowed, features congealing in the blot’s depths.

  “Leave here, son of the North. The Lady of Graves waits for you. You’ll not travel the River of Souls alone.”

  Eyes, lips, hands strained from the oily dark—signs of reason. The features of an aging northman fought for form beneath unlife’s stain.

  “Join your lieges and the spirit of the land that once was. Your path—”

  Shrieking, its form tore back open. The tarry pollution of soul surged, consuming any semblance of sanity. A lash of intangible dark defied the goddess’s light. Before I could jerk away, a corrupt limb boiled over my holy symbol. In an instant-eternity, death was inside me. It consumed my hand, and the goddess’s symbol fell from numb, colorless fingers.

  “No.”

  As the icon slipped, so did the goddess’s light. Shadows crashed back into the room. The madness that was Elistair Wintersun filled the cell. I groped after my holy symbol, trying to keep my desperation separate from the insane jabbering forcing into my head. The cell was not large—the thing was over me. Frozen fingers—a dull weight hanging from my wrist—scraped over stone encrusted with the madman’s blood. In the blackness, I found nothing of the goddess.

  Lightning flashed. The spirit’s shriek clawed to unearthly pitches of pain. In the moment my body was still my own, I scrambled away, slamming into a wall. The flash came again, fast and limned in crimson. Behind it was the hint of the cell door, the screeching of its opening lost amid the howling. An ember-colored cloak and a glowing blue blade flared. The stained soul twisted, its shadows weakening before this new vicious light. Its song shot through every pitch of confused pain. Dark tendrils whipped toward the dancing blade only to be cut away. With every slash, the black madness lost form. Seeking to escape, it surged upward, soiling the ceiling.

  High Exorcist Mardhalas stepped beneath it and plunged her cold blue longsword up, skewering the shadow and impaling what remained. A thousand franticly babbling voices gasped, the form shuttering as the sword’s glow burned through.

  “Go,” the high exorcist commanded. “And be damned.”

  What remained of Elistair Wintersun burned like a page cast into a bonfire. The ashes of shadows scattered, rained down, and faded away.

  Next, the exorcist came for me. She reached down.

  “Thank you, Sister,” I practically panted. My head pounded, my fractured thoughts slowly recrystallizing. “I don’t—”

  A rough hand clamped around my throat. The sound I choked wasn’t a word. My hands sought to loosen her grip, but years of flipping hymnal pages made even my uninjured fingers poorly suited to breaking a soldier’s grip. My heartbeat pounded in my neck, frantically trying to break the high exorcist’s hold from inside.

  She released me. My effort to tear away threw me back, knocking my head soundly against the wall and shooting sparks across my vision.

  “Lady’s tears! Have you lost your mind?” I rubbed my throat against the sudden hoarseness.

  Mardhalas looked down at me unapologetically. “Your heart still beats. As poorly as you handled that, I couldn’t be sure it hadn’t drained you and left something else.”

  I was dimly aware of Doctor Linas entering the room behind her, holding the other lantern.

  “Had it been a living thing, I might have let the goddess take you.” She retrieved my holy symbol, inches from my foot. I snatched for it as she stood, missing thoroughly. “But stray souls are not of Her nature.”

  She held my simple amulet before her eyes, examining it suspiciously. “Bringing you here confirmed my suspicions, though. You’re too weak and sentimental to serve the goddess.”

  Another cold wave crashed over me. I mouthed a word, but the sound didn’t come out.

  “The cycle of life and death isn’t your rosy path of hope and wishes. It’s cold and brief. You can tell yourself otherwise, but such fairytales have no place tainting the Lady’s teachings. I had hoped to show you that here tonight, but the lesson almost cost you your life.”

  She twisted the twine holding the amulet, setting it spinning. “I know you don’t accept it yet, but deep within, you agree. You know you’re not fit. In the face of that abomination, your faith proved wanting. The goddess’s own mark abandoned you.”

  She tossed the holy symbol onto my lap. “A true priestess wouldn’t be separated from this, no matter the cost.”

  I swallowed deeply, mining whatever stone I had to buttress my voice. “I know I’m not a warrior like you, but I am a servant of the goddess.” Still my words cracked. “I’m every bit as devoted as you.”

  Somehow she took that as an insult. “You think I’ve ever shrieked and fled? Begged an abomination to leave by the whim of its blasphemous soul? Cowered?” She laughed—actually laughed. “No, Miss Losritter, you and I do not share the same devotion.”

  The high exorcist turned.

  Doctor Linas had been watching intently. “This is not a usual part of the exorcism.”

  “No. But we’re done here.” Mardhalas’s words seemed as much for me as the doctor. I struggled to my feet, a challenge with trembling legs and one hand still numb from the spirit’s attack. I gripped my holy symbol. It felt tepid.

  “Good,” Linas said. “Should we take any special precautions before assigning this room a new occupant?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent. I’ll have your payment sent in the morning—or donation, whatever your order prefers to call it.” Linas stepped back into the hall, ready to show us the way out.

  “That will be fine.” Mardhalas followed without looking back.

  We returned to the asylum’s entry in silence. Even the lunatics seemed more subdued.

  Only once the door was in sight did the high exorcist acknowledge me. “Miss Losritter. Upon returning to the cathedral, I’ll be leaving a message for the holy mother. In the morning, I will discuss with her the unsuitability of your performance and advise we dismiss you from the order. Whether this means relocation or excommunication will be her decision, though I will make my recommendation plain. Expect a summons to interrupt your afternoon routine.” Her words were casually formal, as though she were discussing the weather with a respectable stranger—not promising to shatter a life. “Now go fetch the coach.”

  “No.” The incredulous word escaped before I could think better of it. The idea of sharing the ride home with this vicious woman, of enduring her company a moment longer, twisted my stomach.

  She looked back as though I were an impetuous child. “This sort of behavior certainly won’t encourage the holy mother to look upon you more favorably. Go get the coach.”

  I ignored her, turning to Doctor Linas, pausing upon the front steps. “Doctor. Does the asylum have a shrine or other place of worship?”

  Her brows lifted. “Yes.”

  “Might I make use of it?”

  “For what?” She asked, clipped and clinically.

  “I find myself in need of the goddess’s counsel, and feel the need to pray for temperance.”

/>   Mardhalas scoffed.

  The doctor considered over the course of several slow blinks. “Through there.” She pointed to a pair of sliding wooden doors, just off the foyer.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” I said as politely as possible, restraining the slurry of emotions roiling in my stomach. Something boiled over, though. I turned on the high exorcist. “And thank you as well, Miss Mardhalas. I don’t—”

  The slam of asylum’s front door cut me off. The high exorcist had left, taking with her my life as a priestess.

  About the Author

  Howard Andrew Jones is the author of two previous Pathfinder Tales novels—Plague of Shadows and Stalking the Beast—as well as the short stories “The Walkers from the Crypt” and “Bells for the Dead” (both available for free at paizo.com). In addition, he’s written the creator-owned novels The Desert of Souls, The Bones of the Old Ones, and the forthcoming For the Killing of Kings, as well as a collection of short stories, The Waters of Eternity. His books have been honored on the Kirkus New and Notable Science Fiction list and the Locus Recommended Reading List, and The Desert of Souls was number four on Barnes & Noble’s Best Fantasy Releases of 2011, as well as a finalist for the prestigious Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel.

  When not helping run his small family farm or spending time with his wife and children, Howard has worked variously as a TV cameraman, a book editor, a recycling consultant, and a college writing instructor. He was instrumental in the rebirth of interest in Harold Lamb’s historical fiction, and has assembled and edited eight collections of Lamb’s work. He serves as the Managing Editor of Black Gate magazine and blogs regularly at blackgate.com as well as at howardandrewjones.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

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