by D. P. Prior
A sharp rattle came from behind Shadrak and Grimwart, and the creepers instantly withdrew. The rattle sounded again, this time rhythmically, and the vines whipped back into their branches.
A woman stepped from the trees, a gourd in one hand. Each time she shook it, a percussive rasp punctuated the air. She was lithe and tanned, her modesty protected by strips of animal hide. Her long black hair was braided and crusted with crystal beads. She had a broad face with high cheekbones, and eyes like a doe’s. Her skin was streaked with white lines—some sort of paint or paste. The effect was macabre, menacing, but at the same time, she was undeniably beautiful, for a human.
Shadrak whirled to face her, still clutching his glass sphere. Grimwart stood and moved to one side, covering his body with his shield. His mace hung limply from his hand, but Nameless could see he was tense, ready to fight.
The husk girl released Nameless from her embrace. He was suddenly struck by the scent of her: roses mingled with something else… Frankincense?
The woman with the gourd took faltering steps toward Shadrak. As he backed away, she lowered her rattle, and her brown eyes glistened with moisture.
“Fellah,” she said in a voice trembling with emotion. “My fellah, you came.”
“Kadee?” Shadrak said. “Mom?”
FOREST OF LOST SOULS
The woman standing before Shadrak, holding a gourd, wasn’t his foster mother. She couldn’t have been. Kadee was old and wrinkly. Had been ever since he could remember, and Shadrak’s memory was faultless. Even when he was a child, she’d been ancient. If anyone else had said it, he’d have poked their eyes out, but Kadee had been a crone. This woman, though, she was… She was anything but.
With the hand holding the gourd hanging at her side, she raised the other, fingers splayed, and took a tentative step toward him.
“Shadrak,” she said. It was the same native Sahulian accent as Kadee’s, but it lacked the rasp of old age. “My boy. My fellah.”
He drew a flintlock and leveled it at her.
Nameless breathed, “Laddie?” but Shadrak waved him back.
“You don’t know me, fellah?” the woman claiming to be Kadee said. “You don’t recognize me?”
Shadrak’s temple began to throb. He touched a hand to it, felt the ridge of a pulsing vein.
She couldn’t be Kadee, and she couldn’t be an illusion, either. He’d never seen her young like this, so why would his mind construct such an image? And not only that, but clearly Nameless and Grimwart could see her, too. He wasn’t so sure about the husk girl; she was back to being vacant as the Void.
Whatever the case, it made no sense seeing Kadee at all, old or young. He’d scattered her remains on the banks of the Soulsong River in Sarum. If she still existed after that, like the Archon had claimed, it stood to reason she might not look the same as before. Though, she was the same height, if you allowed for a stoop. The cheekbones were as he remembered; even the girth of her wrists and ankles. All so familiar.
But her body was gone. You couldn’t burn a thing to ashes only to have it appear younger and better than before. He hadn’t dared to imagine what he might find here on Thanatos. A ghost, perhaps. A phantom of his own making. But not this.
“You never saw me when I was young,” she said. She might have been echoing his thoughts. The look in her eyes said she was trying to assuage his doubts. “I was an old woman when the snake-god brought you to me.”
That much was true, and there weren’t too many who knew.
Shadrak wagged the flintlock at her. His arm trembled. “Mamba?” The snake-headed hybrid had carried him from the plane ship as a baby. “Kadee never spoke about it.”
Sadness entered her eyes. The hint of a smile curled one side of her mouth, but the other resisted. “I wanted you to belong. Wanted you to feel you were mine.”
“I did…” He stopped himself and backed away. “No, I’m not falling for this.” And yet a part of him already had. A large part. He wanted to avert his gaze, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her lithe figure. Not just lithe: toned and sharply muscled. Every limb, every contour, harmoniously balanced. Exquisite. And her breasts beneath the animal hide: full and firm; her waist slender and ridged with abdominals. She was too perfect.
Finally, he looked away. He didn’t like the way it made him feel. Not if there were any chance this really was his foster mother.
“I died, little fellah,” she said, advancing.
Shadrak willed himself to keep retreating, but his legs didn’t respond. The flintlock shook so much in his hand, he could no longer hold it level.
She took another step. “What you saw back then, what you suffered, it was true. And this is true now.”
One more step, and she clasped the barrel of the flintlock between thumb and forefinger, gently angled it away.
“We all appear in the Forest of Lost Souls in bodies like this: at our peak, only better.”
Forest of Lost Souls? That certainly had the feel of Kadee about it; the sort of superstitious nonsense that went with her fanciful beliefs. One thing Shadrak had never grown used to was all her Dreamer mumbo jumbo, but he’d indulged her because of what she’d done for him; who she was.
“I never had such strength, even when I was young and a huntress,” she said. “Some of my tribe were soft and flabby during their lifetimes; others suffered deformities, missing limbs, but not here. Not on Thanatos.”
“Tribe?” Nameless butted in. “More of your people are here?”
Her eyes flicked to him, but instantly returned to Shadrak. “Not Barraiya people,”—her tribe back home in Sahul—“at least, not all. Most of us are strangers when we arrive, but we have formed a community, the better to survive.”
Grimwart spoke from behind Shadrak. “Survive? You mean, the dead can still die?”
“Look around you,” she said, indicating the trees. “This fate awaits those who are harvested.”
Shadrak stared hard at a charcoal trunk. Anywhere was better than looking at her beauty. Even with the white streaks across her skin that gave her the appearance of undeath, he found her disturbingly arousing. “What, they turn into trees?” he said, his voice thick and throaty.
“Those that are taken,” she said. “Those that are fed to Thanatos. But by their second death, they further our protection, for the harvesters will not brave the forest. A new tree grows each time a soul is taken. It is the last service of the lost, their final gift to us.”
“Harvesters?” Nameless said.
She looked out toward the black mountains. “You will see. If you live long enough, you will see.”
The husk girl glided into Shadrak’s peripheral vision. He turned with a start. He’d forgotten she was there. The woman who said she was Kadee looked from Shadrak to the girl. Her eyes widened, and she tilted her head toward one shoulder, smiling with unforced warmth. It was the same way she’d looked at Shadrak as a child. The same way she’d looked at him as an adult, too, when she’d known what he was into and disapproved, but still couldn’t help loving him all the same. To Shadrak’s surprise, and Nameless’s, judging by the look on his face, the husk girl smiled back.
“Kadee,” someone called from further back in the forest.
Hearing the name spoken aloud by another person was a hammer blow to Shadrak’s chest. His heart beat a sloshing rhythm in his ears.
The woman who couldn’t possibly be Kadee touched her fingertips to his face, let the contact linger as a solitary tear tracked down her cheek. She slid her hand to his chin, tilted it, then leaned in and pressed her lips to his forehead, the way Kadee had done every day she’d still been with him.
Shadrak shuddered and gasped, choked back tears of his own. No amount of words could have swayed him; reason could never have convinced him this was true. But those two simple touches had, despite the fact they came from a woman he did not recognize. He saw the glimmer of relief in her eyes, the gratitude that her deepest wish had been realized. And then her head je
rked up, and she craned her neck behind.
A man stepped between two trees. He was barrel-chested, yet lean with it. His hair was blonde and cut short. He was tanned, but not the same shade as Kadee. His skin was more bronzed, and he wore leggings made from the hide of some gray-scaled beast.
He frowned as he took in the group. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at Kadee. “They are not dead?”
She smiled at Shadrak when she answered, “Just like the Warlord.”
The man pursed his lips and slowly nodded. Behind him, more people came into view through the trees. All were perfectly proportioned and well muscled. Most wore animal skins, but some were naked and showed no sign of self-consciousness. There must have been upward of twenty, and further back beyond them, there were more signs of movement.
“This is Tarik,” Kadee said. It was getting hard not to think of her that way. “And this is my tribe.” She swept out an arm to encompass the others. “We are from Sahul and all the other countries of the Urddynoor. There are some also from the Dreaming.”
“Aethir?” Shadrak said.
She nodded. “We are the homeless dead. The doors of the afterlife are closed to us. Or rather, as Tarik believes, our souls were intercepted before they could make it through the Void.”
“Skimmed from the surface of the Abyss.” Tarik drew nearer, and rested his hands on his hips as he studied the group.
The Abyss had once covered the mouth of the Void. According to the Archon, the souls of the unworthy dead had been caught in its tendrils and dragged to its deepest layers. The worthy, those who were destined to pass on through the Void to the Supernal Realm, remained on the fringes, like flies on honey.
“Thanatos is a scavenger of souls,” Tarik continued. “The planet itself is alive, and hungry. Always hungry. It is a planet of death to the living, and a world that thrives on the souls of those already dead. One has to wonder why anyone who still draws breath would choose to come here.” He looked to Nameless, then Grimwart, and finally Shadrak, but before any of them could answer, Kadee spoke.
“Because the heart leads where the head would dare not go.” She fixed her gaze on Shadrak, and a smile played upon her lips. Her chin trembled. New tears glistened in her eyes. “I knew you would come.”
“Well—” Nameless started, but Tarik cut him off.
“This is your boy, Kadee? The one you ceaselessly harp on about?”
She pressed her palm to Shadrak’s cheek, caressed his face with the tenderness he thought he’d never know again. He gently rested his hand on top of hers, held it there, not wanting to let it go.
Her eyes flicked to the husk girl, and she said, “See, Tarik. I told you he hadn’t sold her. He’s a good boy, really.” She smiled at Nameless. “And he has good friends.”
“But you can’t return with him,” Tarik said to Kadee. “The Warlord said as much. Even if the arch would work for us, back home, we are dead. You would be a ghost, or nothing.”
A tear fell freely from Kadee’s eyes, rolled languidly down her cheek.
“I just wanted to see you again, little fellah; say the things I could not before.”
She’d said them, right enough. All throughout Shadrak’s life. What she must have meant was, she’d been unable to at the end. The cancer had hit her throat and rendered her mute. She hadn’t been able to console him as he watched her rot away.
“Me, too,” was all Shadrak could manage in reply. Fumbling like an amateur, he holstered the flintlock. But then he had to ask, “Your voice… your face in my head: you still looked old, but now—”
“It’s an effect of this place,” Tarik said. “Something about this forest. When the newly deceased arrive here, it is always in the semblance of youth and vitality.”
But that still didn’t explain—
“Outside of the forest it is different,” Kadee said. “Outside, we begin to age, and age quickly.”
“But the instant we return to the forest,”—Tarik indicated his own perfect form—“it’s back to this.”
“In here, I could not reach you, fellah,” Kadee said. “Yet out there, creatures hunt us—specifically us, the dead of Urddynoor and Aethir. I can never linger long, and my contact with you is so painfully brief. I miss you, fellah.”
Shadrak’s head was buzzing with half-formed thoughts, intertwined emotions. It was too much to take in. Too much to believe. But Kadee was looking at him like she expected an answer. All he could manage was, “And I miss you.”
The simple admission brought the burn of tears to his eyes; tears he refused to let fall, in case it weakened him before the others. Weakened him before Nameless.
“I’m sorry,” Tarik said. He dropped his gaze to his feet, shook his head. “I don’t want to be the one to have to tell you, but what you want is impossible.”
“What I want?” Shadrak said. He unpeeled Kadee’s hand from his face, but still held onto her fingertips. “How would you know what I want?”
“Coming to Thanatos will not bring Kadee back to you. All it will do is cost you your life, and the lives of your companions.”
“Really?” Shadrak said.
Kadee gripped his hand tighter, and he felt the sharp inhalation of her breath.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Nameless said.
Grimwart shouldered his mace and worked his arm from his shield straps, splaying and flexing his fingers, shaking out his wrist. His eyes were on the ground as he said, “And we already lost someone.”
“Lost?” Tarik said. “Someone with you died? After you arrived?”
“Kal.” Grimwart raised bleary eyes. “Kaldwyn Gray, was his name. He was my friend.”
“Aye,” Nameless said. “Mine, too.” There was something hesitant in his tone, as if he wasn’t quite sure the friendship was reciprocated.
“Soon as we came through the portal and got the fug out of our heads, there he was, lying in the mud, dead,” Grimwart said.
Shadrak turned his head to the side and spat. Just doing so helped him to focus; helped him to clamp down on the boiling feelings threatening to undo him. “It was some sort of leech. It must’ve had one bitch of a poisonous bite.”
Kadee released his hand. She studied the change in his demeanor, appraised him with her eyes. “And the body is still there, outside the forest?”
Nameless nodded.
Tarik seemed to pick up on where this was going. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. When people started to emerge from the trees, he pointed at three of them in quick succession. “There’s a dead…”
“Dwarf,” Grimwart said. “He’s a dwarf.”
“Bring him here,” Tarik said. “Quickly, before the harvesters come for him.”
“But the other one,” Nameless said. “The skeleton by the tree. The baresark,” he said to Shadrak. “The one Abednago sent through.”
Kadee shook her head. “It is not the body they come for, only that which hovers above it in the hours or days after death. If we get there first, we bring the body into the safety of the forest for burial, and its soul follows. Soon after, it will inhabit a new body. We found him, this other, but it was already too late. A black tree marks his passing, if you would like to see it.”
“I never knew him,” Nameless said. “Duck? I mean, Grimwart?”
“Sorry to say, I don’t know any baresarks too well. Scare the shog out of me.”
“So,” Shadrak said, “these harvesters didn’t take his body; they took his soul?”
“Spirit, soul,” Kadee said. “His essence.”
“So who or what took his flesh?” Shadrak said. “Because he wasn’t exactly that far ahead of us,”—a couple of days, Abednago had said—“and yet he was flayed right down to the bone.”
“Insects,” Tarik said. “Plants. Maybe even birds. That’s the way of Thanatos. “What I don’t understand is, why he would have come here in the first place, and why the rest of you would follow.”
“I can’t answer f
or the baresark,” Nameless said, “but in our case, it’s about the survival of our people. Our home. A creature came against them, a dragon so huge, nothing on Aethir could stand against it. But if we can find the Dwarf Lords…”
Something like a shadow bloomed in Kadee’s eyes. Her jaw dropped slightly, and the hint of a frown creased the perfection of her face. She was getting it all wrong.
“No, you don’t understand,” Shadrak said. “I was coming for you, as soon as I found a way.”
“But the Archon—” Kadee started. She’d been present in some manner he didn’t understand when the Supernal Being had told Shadrak he’d show him how to reach her again, but only on condition their contract was fulfilled.
“Dead,” Shadrak said. “And without him, I couldn’t find this place.” Before Kadee could ask him more about the Archon, and why Shadrak had jeopardized finding her by killing the scut, he rushed on. “But the dwarves could. There’s a portal, like the arch we came through, beneath their citadel. The two are connected somehow.”
Nameless nodded. “It’s how the Dwarf Lords of old came to Thanatos a very long time ago. We’ve come to find them.”
Kadee and Tarik exchanged looks.
“This we know somewhat of,” Tarik said. “The Warlord said as much when first he appeared. Though the portal he started from was on Urddynoor, not Aethir.”
Behind Tarik, more people, all in their prime, spread out to watch what was happening. If anyone else had anything to say, they seemed content to keep it to themselves and let Tarik and Kadee speak for them. They each glowed with vitality, and their eyes sparkled in stark contrast to the bleakness all around.
Before Shadrak could ask about this Warlord, Tarik said, “I know of no dwarves, but I have hardly ever left the forest.” He inclined his head toward Kadee.
“After I first arrived here, I passed beyond the trees,” she said. “I did not want to accept my death, or my new life.” She touched a hand to her breast, as if to say she couldn’t stand what she’d become. “I wanted to find a way back, fellah. I wanted to see you again. I’ve since left the safety of this place many times. There are people between the Forest of Lost Souls and the black mountains: humans, but I’ve seen no people akin to these two.” She indicated Nameless and Grimwart.