The Dead Seekers

by Barb Hendee

  Neither spoke along the way to the candle shop, though Tris often watched his companion in side glances. When they reached that shop, Heil surprised him further.

  “You’ve a rare gift but no idea what you’re doing,” the herbalist said. “Not from what I’ve seen. I suppose you’d best come to Strîbrov with me, young baron.”

  “Do not call me that,” Tris warned without thinking.

  He wanted no connection to a father who treated him like a curse in the flesh. And it did not matter this was how he saw himself as well.

  Heil shrugged, a thin smile spreading across his stubbled face. “Very well . . . Tris.”

  And then Tris grew eager at this stranger’s offer—anything to find a way out of the life he had been given—any way to elude its loss as well. Yet he could not simply leave his mother. Her desperate love smothered him in the absence of his father, and the loss of her only child might damage her even more.

  “I cannot come, not now,” he mumbled out.

  Heil cocked his head, long and silver hair curtaining one eye.

  “The offer stands,” he said. “Whenever.”

  Heil turned away without another word, gone too quickly in that night that now seemed so long ago.

  Crouching before that one hut in the sprawling village amid the woods, Tris knew what had to be done now. Delaying longer gained him little, though he could not strike too soon and betray his presence. Creeping forward, he peeked through the seam between the front window shutters. All inside was as black as the other him who would never stop coming.

  —

  Mari slipped in and out of the darkest night shadows along the way, but it wasn’t long before it didn’t matter. She paused, peered ahead wide-eyed, and even let her other half rise a bit more. The night brightened in her sight, but the scent was gone.

  Tris was gone.

  Panicked, she crouched, dropped to all fours, and sniffed the ground, over and over. She had to find him, see what he was up to, to figure out once and for all if he really was the one she’d been hunting for so long.

  Mari smelled nothing that helped.

  How could she have lost him?

  She’d forced herself to join him, eat with him, and sleep idly nearby until certain she’d found the right prey. And now, just when she might’ve gained another scrap of truth about him, he was gone.

  It wasn’t possible. She could track anything—anyone.

  Mari rose, sniffing the air in quick pants, and still nothing came of it. Clearing her thoughts, she quickly scanned the village shadows for any sign of where he’d gone.

  After all three questionings during the day, he’d seemed to lose interest in everyone they’d sought out. But something slightly different had happened when they’d gone to Cecilia, and that stuck in Mari’s head.

  Touching items and putting his hand on a wall, he’d lost interest in questions—or answers—even quicker than before. And he hadn’t had Mari herself ask Cecilia about the severed locks of a dead girl’s hair. Right after leaving that hut, he’d stated his offer and price to the zupan, Alexandre.

  Mari darted across the village path, slipping from shadow to shadow, trying to trace her way back to Cecilia’s hut.

  —

  Tris remained as silent as the dead, as he had done so many times. He peered through the split in the shutters and waited until his sight adjusted to the deeper darkness within the hut. Slowly, he made out the barest orange-red glimmer.

  That was from the dying, charred logs in the hearth.

  Shifting his head slightly and steadily, he slowly studied the rest of the outer room. There Cecilia stood with her back toward him, halfway toward the hut’s rear and the cupboards beyond the kitchen’s table.

  She backstepped once more toward the main room. When she turned, it was too dark in there to see her face. Her head was tilted down, as if she looked upon something gripped tightly in her upheld right hand.

  That hand flattened to her chest, over her heart, against a floor-length garment like a heavy nightgown.

  She moaned, “Brianne, stop . . .”

  Though she went on, Tris did not understand the rest and did not care as he waited while watching.

  —

  Mari slipped in next to the hut’s side and away from sight along the village’s main path. All her senses widened again, and with one hand tracing along the wall, she crept toward the hut’s front corner. She stiffened and halted halfway at a moaning voice heard through that wall.

  “Brianne, stop, please . . . Come only to me, no one else, not ever again.”

  At those words in Belaskian somewhere inside the hut, Mari’s fingers curled like claws against the damp planks, and she flattened one ear against the old boards to listen.

  “A hunter was called to kill you, my child, this time forever!”

  Mari’s breath caught as a strange panic set in upon that last word—forever. Was that how these peasants saw him—Tris? Someone who wouldn’t just banish but “kill” the dead a second time?

  Something in this horrified her. Did it mean nothing would be left, not even the spirit? Was that what he did—what he’d done to her mama, her papa, and all others that she’d loved? A fear-fed anger brought one more question.

  Where was Tris now?

  She pulled her head back from the wall, and her senses sharpened to a peak. If he’d thought as she had, he was somewhere close by. She looked again to the hut’s forward corner, and as she drew one of her hands from the wall, she heard Cecilia’s voice again.

  “Oh my, my dear child.”

  Mari waited to hear more. A sudden chill ate through her palm and into her forearm.

  She snatched her other hand from the wall in a backstep of shock.

  —

  Tris waited and watched, understanding no more than a fourth of what Cecilia whimpered. None of this mattered. The only thing that mattered was that the dead did not belong among the living.

  For too long nothing happened, even for all of a mother’s pleading. He kept still outside, barely breathing as he watched. Then the night’s cold wormed into him like iced needles, and still Tris did not move.

  That was the first sign for which he had been waiting.

  Darkness within the hut’s front room appeared to swirl like char black smoke. The cold through the split in the shutters intensified on his left eye and cheek. The air before the hut’s hearth shuddered.

  A twisted glimmer of white formed.

  Brianne appeared suddenly before her mother, still as white, pale, and translucent as on the night she had gone at Mari. Her visage matched that of her unearthed corpse: starved with her illusory skin stretched tightly over her bones. Only the darker circles around her eyes unsettled Tris, for he had seen such before.

  Something at the barracks in Soladran had touched the girl, and her wasting death had been the result.

  Cecilia moaned something out while taking a quick step toward her daughter’s spirit.

  About to act, Tris hesitated again. The mother was now too close to the daughter. Soon, his own presence and intention would open that swirling hole into death. But his intention was only half the cause for the portal’s appearance. The “other” him was also somehow connected.

  It was as if Tris’s need to banish the dead was matched by the black one’s desire to take him, to take his life and replace him in the world of the living. That tension of desires was what breached the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead. Or at least this was Heil’s theory.

  And each time the portal opened, Tris heard the black one taunting him, and he felt its dark longings.

  It was as if it waited for the next time it could manifest. As of yet, it had not attacked Tris, but at each appearance, it longed to come at him. Its manifestations had a schedule, which Heil had calculated based on past attempts.
The next time was nearing, and worse, each time Tris banished a spirit, it felt as if that other him grew stronger.

  He feared it would soon be stronger than him, and then it would act on its desire.

  There was nothing to be done about this for now, and Tris shook off indecision. The dead did not belong among the living. Worse so, as tools to be used in finding him when that other him broke from the realm of dead yet again.

  Inside the dwelling, Brianne stretched out both arms toward her mother, but her fists were clenched. Not the pleading gesture Mari had described from her own encounter. Brianne’s gaunt face twisted in anger as her mouth gaped. Only more darkness showed between those shriveled lips, and she mouthed one silent word.

  Cameron.

  “No!” Cecilia shrieked.

  Tris could not follow the rest of her hysterical rant. When Cecilia held up her hands, one clenched in a fist, he already knew what she held.

  Dangling out of the bottom of her hand was the tail of a ribbon illuminated by Brianne’s phosphorescence. That ribbon had to be what bound a lock of hair cut from the girl’s corpse.

  The girl had not come back for love of a man. Her mother had done this somehow. But now that Brianne’s spirit was here, all she wanted was to return to the man she loved.

  Tris pulled back, a chill in one eye and on his face from peeking through the shutters. He needed to catch daughter and mother unaware—and quickly—to banish one and save the other. This time, however, there might not be a need to risk that opening to the realm of the dead.

  Rising, he sidestepped to the door and shoved sharply with both hands. The instant the door slammed open, he lunged one step into the front room. Both mother and daughter turned his way as he locked focus on the second.

  In Brianne’s presence, the room began to brighten slightly in Tris’s sight. By now, the color had likely drained from his irises, though it was an effect he had never seen for himself. Cecilia whipped the fist clenching the ribbon behind her back, but Tris remained fixed upon Brianne.

  The daughter’s spirit wavered as she attempted to vanish. Fear filled her gaunt features at failure, and she tried a second time. She remained there, locked in his sight . . . by his sight.

  Tris glanced at Cecilia only once. “Release her or I will banish her my way.”

  The mother charged him with an anguished cry. “No!”

  Tris did not flinch. Attempts on his life had been made before, though most people feared attacking him openly. Not so when they felt cornered or that he was trying to take away something—or someone—dear to them.

  He thought nothing of slapping her groping hands aside. When she swung back again, he simply blocked her lead arm with one hand and grabbed the trailing ribbon with the other. He ripped it free of her grip, and there it was:

  The lock of Brianne’s hair bound in the ribbon’s knot.

  Fingernails raked Tris’s right cheek.

  He shoved Cecilia aside in a lunge for the hearth. A quick toss, and both ribbon and hair landed on a charred log still glowing faintly with embers. A scream behind him drowned out the sizzle of burning hair.

  Tris felt the mother slam into his back.

  She grabbed for the collar of his shirt and pullover. He twisted, throwing her off again, and looked for the daughter. Destroying a fetish should release a bound spirit, which was better for all than forcefully banishing it back into death. He barely righted himself when he saw the result.

  Brianne still floated there, just within reach.

  Her shriveled lips parted as if in a sigh of relief. He tried to grab for her. She turned and fled straight through the hut’s front, through the shutters where he had first peeked in.

  Cecilia slammed into him again. He shoved her off and bolted for the door.

  —

  Mari had just rounded the hut’s front corner when a scream made her halt.

  “No!”

  There was no one outside the hut’s front, so what was happening if Tris wasn’t here?

  Mari heard a struggle inside and then the peal of shrieks. As she made a lunge for the front door, something white came out of the front wall at her. She barely spun away into the open path—but not quickly enough.

  Agony and numbness shot through her right shoulder.

  It sped up into her neck and down into her hand and the whole night began to tilt in her sight. Panic followed the chill that ate into her, freezing damp night air in her lungs. She hit the ground but didn’t feel it, and lay there gasping for air.

  Panic became terror.

  She tried to breathe or move and couldn’t do either. Numbness spread through her, until she felt neither cold nor heat. Out in the path, she saw him—sideways—where he stood before something that glowed in the dark.

  It was the ghost, the girl, the same one that Mari had faced last night in the common house’s loft, before Tris had torn it apart in the air. And there he was, gripping the girl’s spirit by her wrist.

  Mari lost awareness of anything else.

  A man holding a spirit? That was impossible.

  No, not for him!

  Night swirled inward behind Brianne, blotting out the shapes of huts across the way, which began to turn even darker in Mari’s failing sight. The spirit thrashed but didn’t break free, and then she began to shred in wispy tatters, sucked into that whirling black hole in the night.

  Once the spirit vanished, along with that black hole, the last thing Mari saw was him—Tris—turning around and freezing at the sight of her. His eyes were glowing again, as they had last night. Then they were like pinpricks of white light just before everything went black in her sight.

  That light sparked all of Mari’s fury within the cold numbness spreading in her flesh.

  —

  Tris had held the spirit in place before the portal and shut out those whispers of the other him.

  No! Brianne had mouthed, thrashing to get free, and then, Cameron!

  He had not reacted to her pleading expression. He’d held her there before that black vortex until she began to come apart. Only then did he release her and watch her form tear from this world. It happened far easier this time than many times before. Perhaps upon death she had lacked as much strength in spirit as in body—thankfully. He was exhausted, as always, after a banishment, but the years had conditioned him against giving in to fatigue.

  Tris turned away as the portal finally collapsed—and he stopped one step later.

  Mari lay sprawled in the village path with her eyes slowly drooping shut.

  “Mari?” he whispered in another step; she neither answered nor opened her eyes. “Mari!”

  Where had she come from? What was she doing out here? How had she found him? She should be asleep up in the common house loft and not here for any of this.

  He ran to her, dropped hard on his knees, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her slightly. Nothing changed. Even in the dark, he saw her face and hands were pale—too pale for anyone, especially the dusky complexion of a Móndyalítko.

  An agitated spirit had touched her.

  How? When?

  Something screamed just before it rammed him, sending him sprawling. As he lay prone on his back, it was on him again, raising something high.

  Tris saw the carving knife come down in Cecilia’s grip where she crouched atop him. Back inside the hut, he had already tossed the mother aside into the table and chairs to go after the daughter. He barely caught her wrist, and the blade’s tip stopped a hand’s length from his throat.

  Cecilia’s mania pushed the blade downward.

  “Murderer . . . my child!” she screamed.

  Tris grew more exhausted with each pant. He was too spent by another banishment to face another enraged villager, even one smothered in grief. And not at the cost of his own life.

  He jerked back his other hand h
olding her off and struck her with the heel of that hand.

  Cecilia’s head whipped back.

  He hit her again, and she tumbled off to one side.

  Tris rolled the other way. Struggling to his feet, he turned and saw her rush him again, knife still in hand. One foot seemed to catch on something.

  Cecilia suddenly slammed to the ground, face-first, and Tris flinched in shock. Just beyond the woman’s feet, Mari barely held her face up.

  One of her hands was latched tightly about the anguished mother’s left ankle.

  Tris flinched again. Even in the dark, he thought he saw her eyes shift, change as they fixed on only him.

  “My . . . my . . . ,” she struggled to say, as if barely able to breathe. That vicious, broken hiss sounded like the lynx that had torn apart a man one night before the journey here.

  Still pallid, Mari closed her eyes, and her head dropped facedown on the ground. Her grip remained latched tightly around the sobbing Cecilia’s ankle.

  “My . . . prey . . .”

  Mari went limp upon the ground after that last hiss.

  Tris stood panting in the dark and looked between Mari and Cecilia.

  Mari had saved him again, but why would she call a grieving mother prey?

  He took the knife out of Cecilia’s hand, threw it off into the woods, and stood there, looking down at both women. Dealing with one of them was all he could manage, and all this noise would surely have roused others in the village to come.

  Taking hold of Mari, he struggled to pick her up, and somehow managed to carry her back toward the common house. Perhaps he heard voices left well behind him whenever he paused to check if Mari still breathed.

  —

  Mari awoke, sat up, and shivered with an inner chill, though she was covered with a wool blanket. She was still dressed from last night, but her clothes were stained with mud and dirt. Blankets hung around her as curtains. So she was back in the common house loft, but how had she gotten here?

  The last thing she remembered was seeing him on the village’s main path. After the girl’s spirit ripped into shreds, she’d seen his eyes with their irises glowing.

  Where was he now? Had he brought her back here?