Sister of the Dead

by J. C.

  "What is it?" he asked, stepping back into the room.

  Wynn shook her head. "I am not certain. This room holds barracks equipment from many years past. Perhaps there was a military contingent here once. There is a parchment in this first crate. A list of some kind. "

  The worn parchment was frayed at the edges and torn along one ancient crease, where it had been folded in quarters. Leesil couldn't see the writing itself directly as Jan silently mouthed the words on the yellowed and dingy sheet.

  "Just an account of the room's contents, " Jan said. "From many years past. My father wouldn't have an interest in packing lists or inventories too old to be helpful. "

  Wynn studied the sheet and looked around the small room. She shoved the parchment in her pocket and opened another crate. With Jan's help, she searched the remaining crates but found nothing else noteworthy.

  Jan looked at Leesil and shook his head.

  "That's enough, Wynn, " Leesil said, and gripped the young sage's shoulder. "We're done here. "

  Wynn pulled away, not ready to give up. She removed the parchment from her pocket to stare at it again, even though she couldn't read the language.

  "Let's go, " Leesil said.

  He led the way out and down the passage, pulling each door closed as he passed. He could hear Wynn counting under her breath as she followed behind him—"One, two, three... five, six, seven"—until they reached the landing chamber.

  Magiere looked up at him. There were no words of comfort he could find that wouldn't sound like hollow excuses. He held out his hand to her, and after a lingering silence, she took it and stood. Leesil headed up the stairs.

  "Seven?" Wynn murmured from behind. "Leesil... there are seven. "

  When he looked back, she stood below in the small chamber facing the passage. Leesil couldn't see her face, but her head bobbed as she looked to the parchment and back down the hallway again.

  "If this parchment accounts what these rooms once contained..., " she muttered. "Seven lists... for seven rooms. "

  Magiere's grip tightened on Leesil's hand. She let go to scramble down the stairs and grab the parchment from the sage. She stared at it but a moment, and then looked up at Leesil. If there was hope in her eyes, it was smothered by fear of another misdirection.

  "The seventh room could just be the chamber here at the stairs, " suggested Jan.

  Wynn's shoulders slumped, but Magiere kept her eyes on Leesil, waiting.

  Leesil stepped back down to join her and tried to keep his expression impassive as he held his hand out to Wynn. "Give me the crystal. "

  Wynn's crystal in hand, Leesil dropped to one knee and inspected the chamber's floor. Strangely, along its center he found shallow traces of lines where something heavy had been dragged along the chamber floor and into the passage. The scarred lines were packed with dust and dirt, so were quite old. Closer to the walls were circular stains that suggested large barrels full of liquid had been stored here at one time, and he pointed them out.

  Jan was looking at the list over Magiere's shoulder and shook his head. "There's no mention of barrels here, just crated goods, " he said.

  Leesil took a deep breath, careful to let it go silently before looking up at Magiere.

  "Be certain, " she said to him.

  He stood up and let his gaze wander from the stairs to the ceiling, along the passage of doors, and down to the hallway's end with its blank wall. There was just this one cellar storage area and one dungeon under the keep.

  Leesil looked up once again to the stone ceiling. Above these cellar chambers was the main floor of the keep, surrounded by its thick stone walls. Any hollowing below the keep to produce this passage of chambers would've been done with thought for the support of the upper building.

  "Wait here, " he told the others.

  Leesil counted his steps as he climbed the curving stairs up to the main floor. With the exceptions of the entryway, the kitchen out back, and the stairs leading up and down, the main room's wall was the keep's outer wall. He paced the same number of steps back along wall until certain he stood directly above the cellar's landing chamber below. From there, he stepped out the distance to the other side of the keep—fifty-eight paces. He returned to cellar's landing chamber and looked down the passage of chambers.

  "What is he doing?" Wynn asked.

  "Be quiet, and let him think, " Magiere answered.

  Leesil's stomach rolled at the rekindled spark of hope in Magiere's eyes. This was all a hunch at best, but she nodded for him to continue. Leesil paced out the distance down the passage between the six rooms. At forty-two paces, he reached the end wall.

  The passage was short of the distance across the whole keep along the same line.

  This meant little, other than perhaps the cellar's end had been kept short of undermining the keep wall. The stones of the passage's end wall were newer than elsewhere but still well aged. It confirmed his earlier appraisal that the cellars had been slowly expanded over time from when the keep was first built many decades ago. He studied the end wall— and suspicion grew.

  The stones were aged more uniformly than he'd noticed in his early inspection. There were no signs of patchwork here. He held the crystal close as he moved back and forth across its surface. The stones were fitted solidly up to the edge of the passage's side walls in both corners.

  Leesil held his breath. He heard Magiere and the others moving in closer behind him.

  "What?" she demanded. "You found something.... I can see it in you. "

  He held the crystal close to the corner.

  This end wall's stones had been cut off to fit inside the passage's side walls.

  Something at the passage's end had been blocked off long ago, as the passage had originally been longer. Leesil took off his cloak and began unstrapping his blades.

  "We need tools, " he said. "This wall was added, and the passage runs beyond it. "

  "Hold there, " Jan said. "Even if my father agrees, you can't start knocking down walls. Remove the wrong support, and the place could collapse on us. "

  Magiere grabbed Jan by the shirt. "Just do as he says!"

  Leesil reached out and grasped Magiere's wrist, pulling her away from Jan.

  "This wall was a later addition, " he explained, keeping an eye on Magiere. "It isn't supporting anything. Get your father, and find us some tools! Wynn, go with him. "

  Jan turned away, muttering under his breath, and Wynn followed. Magiere's gaze was fixed upon the end wall.

  "There must be something..., " she whispered. "I can't... I can't leave here with nothing. "

  Her voice was so full of desperation that Leesil wrapped her in his arms. Magiere slumped forward, her face buried in his shoulder. He felt her tremble, and he rocked her slowly. What if there was nothing behind the wall? And what if there was something leading into Magiere's past? There was little hope either would bring her any relief.

  Jan and Wynn returned with Cadell. It took some convincing, but once Leesil showed the zupan the wall's structure, Cadell was reasonably convinced it was safe to break it open. He seemed as disturbed by the discovery as Leesil. Jan had brought a pair of prybars and handed one to Leesil. The two of them set to breaking out the wall's top-center stones first.

  The stench that wafted through the opening made all of them step away, gagging and coughing. Cadell caught Wynn as she stumbled, retching, and his face twisted in disgust at the scent of decay assaulting them.

  Leesil's fear mounted. All he wanted was to drag Magiere from this place and never return. He thought he saw this same thought on her own pale face, but Cadell broke the silence.

  "Finish it. Tear it down. "

  Leesil and Jan rammed through stone and mortar with their prybars to widen the opening. When enough of the wall fell away to allow him to step through, Leesil found the dark cavity where the passage continued, but it reached only a short distance. Another wall obscured by darkness stood before him, and he held Wynn's crystal out.

&nbs
p; "The seventh room, " Wynn said from somewhere behind him.

  The door in the revealed wall was severely decayed, and the air smelled of rotted wood over the top of something more rank. Magiere tried to step past Leesil, but he held her back with a shake of his head, and began carefully inspecting the seventh door.

  There was no sign of anything unusual, but the years had eaten at the wood. He hooked the door's latch with his pry-bar, stepped as far back as he could, and pulled. The door collapsed outward as it broke from its hinges, and the fetid stench mounted until he could taste it in his mouth.

  Leesil heard Wynn moan as his own stomach lurched.

  Magiere stood close behind him as he held the crystal up in the doorway. The crystal's light, undiffused by a lantern glass, was so sharp that it deepened the room's shadows as much as it revealed pieces of what lay within.

  The back wall appeared to be old mortared stone. It barely caught the light, so the room was quite large. Near it, Leesil spotted what he thought were the shattered remains of a large wooden crate or box. One strut remained vertical, its height above his own waist. There was another slightly smaller crate to its right.

  Leesil stepped in and spotted a large crusted vat to the left. Next to it was a crumpled mass, and other such piles appeared here and there on the floor along the wall. As he approached the vat, shadows turned around the walls as the crystal's light moved with him, making the dark heaps upon the floor shift like animals disturbed from slumber in their unearthed burrow.

  One appeared to roll its head, and as Leesil stopped, the shadows froze all around him.

  A mass on the floor in the left front corner took shape in the light as Magiere gripped his shoulder.

  It was a body in a sitting position. Rotted clothing par-tially obscured the bones but not the skull. It narrowed toward the dangling lower jaw, hinting at a triangular face it once wore. Its dark eye sockets were larger than those of human skulls Leesil had been forced by his parents to study in his youth. And upon it still clung wisps of white-blond hair. Slender fingers too long for a human rested on a narrow rib cage.

  Leesil didn't need a closer look to recognize the tall lithe stature. This elf had died and been entombed without ceremony in the dark forests of Droevinka, far from its homeland.

  Magiere's other hand flattened against Leesil's side. Her grip on his shoulder tightened as she pulled him around to face the chamber's back wall again.

  Around the base of the walls were the remains of more bodies.

  Chapter 5

  Thinly veiled by a night mist, the keep appeared to have aged a century in the brief decades since Welstiel had last seen it. From beneath the branches of a spruce at the clearing's edge, he watched two men with spears walk slowly across the courtyard.

  "She is inside?" Chane asked. He crouched nearby, and moonlight peeked through a break in the clouds to wash over his pale features.

  Welstiel nodded. He peered about the forest with his senses open wide, letting not only sight but also sound and scent flood into him. Being this close to the keep, this close to the beginning, made him wary. Magiere was inside—of that much he felt certain—but what concerned him more was who else might still have a keen interest in this place, and in any visitors from the past.

  "We wait, " he said. "Stay close to me if she appears, or I will not be able to hide you from her awareness. "

  Chane looked at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation of how this could be accomplished. Welstiel silently kept his attention upon the keep.

  The two would-be guards walked the grounds' circumference together rather than separately. Simple villagers, their presence was one more hint that this place might well have been forgotten by all who knew what had happened here. Somewhere inside those stone walls, Magiere wandered, unaware of the ghosts of her own past. Welstiel willed that she remain ignorant.

  As the guards passed from sight around the stables, the crumbled keep appeared still as a headstone in a forgotten, hallowed place. This illusion of peace and serenity masked a long-ago madness, and Welstiel's mind slipped back....

  * * * *

  It was nearly twenty-six years earlier, and Welstiel's father dragged Magelia from her village home. She rode behind Welstiel, clinging silently to his waist all the way to the keep. Her sister ran after them as far as she could, screaming Magelia's name in a frenzy of fear and anger.

  Someone loves her, Welstiel thought without feeling. Someone was frightened for her.

  It hadn't mattered. It hadn't changed anything.

  Lord Bryen Massing was tall, but Welstiel had not inherited his father's imposing height. They shared dark brown hair, square faces, and the shallow bump at the bridge of their noses, but heritage and a few features were all they had in common. Most notable to all who saw them together, the father did not have the white patches of hair at his temples that the son wore.

  The fief his father had been assigned was primitive compared with others they had tended over the years, with a squat tower keep of mortared rock with crude barracks and stable attached, built near the central village of Chemestuk. Welstiel rode into the keep's muddy courtyard that night following his father. Their family retainer, the robed and masked Master Ubad, stood waiting for them.

  The torch-lit courtyard was alive with activity. Men-at-arms and a few conscripted villagers attempted to unload the contents of five sturdy wagons. Along with family baggage, each wagon carried a square crate at least two-thirds the height of man and covered by a thick canvas tarp. Seeing the lord and his son arrive, the men grew openly nervous and too hurried in their tasks. They pulled a tarp aside to reveal one of the crates.

  It was constructed of oak held together with steel straps and bound to the wagon bed with chains instead of rope. As two guardsmen unhooked the chains, a deep muffled voice howled out from within the container: "Shairsnisag mi, na mi taitagag craiui ag shiui ag cher!"

  The words Welstiel heard sounded Elvish but were more guttural, and he could make no sense of them. A thunderous boom issued from the crate's walls, and it slammed sideways into one guard. The impact crushed the man's legs against the wagon's side with an audible crack of bone. His companion leaped out the other side and scrambled clear. The guard screamed and toppled over to dangle against the rear wheel with his legs pinned against the vehicle's sidewall.

  Master Ubad glided toward the wagon. His dark robe showed no sway from footsteps.

  "Fools!" he hissed, ignoring the trapped man's squeals of pain. "The contents are worth more than all your lives. Take care—and have all five crates brought to the lower chambers. "

  Ubad's face was covered by an aged leather mask with no eye slits. Only his withered mouth and chin were visible. When he moved, strange markings shimmered briefly across his char-colored robe in the torchlight.

  Welstiel heard less articulate growls coming from the crate, as the men returned to pulling it free from the wagon. All were careful not to pass too near Master Ubad, who watched them closely. The maimed guard was quickly dragged from sight.

  Welstiel and his father dismounted, and Lord Massing lifted Magelia to the ground and grasped her wrist to drag her inside. Her black hair hung in waves to the middle of her slender back, and her blue dress made her skin appear ivory. She struggled and tried to jerk away, but her captor kept walking, unhindered by her efforts.

  Master Ubad's bony hand motioned Welstiel to follow, as he moved smoothly toward the keep's main doors. Welstiel abhorred being so close to the creature, but he had little choice and followed.

  "I can walk on my own!" Magelia shouted. "Leave me be. "

  Some part of Welstiel was capable of pity, but this woman was just a peasant. He found these unfolding events more and more distasteful. They entered the main hall, furnished only by an aged table, a few chairs, and dusty rushes covering the floor. Welstiel shivered in the cold. He was always cold in this foreign land and rarely removed his cloak even when indoors.

  His father suffered no such discomfo
rt, not since Wel-stiel's youth and the first appearance of Ubad in their lives. Lord Massing released the woman and removed his own cloak with one hand, tossing it onto the table.

  Magelia backed into the nearest wall, and Ubad's head turned as if he could see her clearly through the leather covering his eyes.

  "Do not allow your guard to drop, Bryen, " he said. "She must not escape. "

  It grated on Welstiel that this creature spoke to his father in such a manner. Welstiel called him "Father, " of course, but all others conducted themselves with suitable decorum, even Prince Rodek of the Antes. At the counsel gatherings of the house's nobles, his father was announced as "Lord Bryen Massing. "

  Ubad did not show his father the proper respect.

  Withered, faceless, conjurer of spirits of the dead—such rare specialization earning the title of necromancer—Ubad's forecasting ability was questionable at best. He amounted to little more than a servant in Welstiel's eyes and yet addressed Welstiel's father in a familiar way.

  Lord Massing raised a hand to his temple. His left eyelid twitched as he whispered inaudibly to himself.

  Welstiel no longer asked what troubled him. His father's unnerving habit of speaking to himself was becoming common. Ubad did not hesitate, sliding closer.

  "Your son can lock up the woman until all is arranged. You should rest... slumber... and commune. "

  Bryen Massing stared blankly into Ubad's mask, then nodded.

  "Yes, see to matters here, " he said, and turned toward the stairs curving up the inner wall, his vacant gaze passing briefly over Welstiel. "Lock her in the cellar and assist Master Ubad as needed. "

  Lord Massing walked heavily up the stone steps, leaving Welstiel to handle Magelia. He did not want to touch her for any reason, even on the orders of his father. This arranged joining was not of his making or desire. He pointed toward the stairs leading down the opposite way to the lower chambers.

  "Go, " he said.

  Beneath the fright in Magelia's dark eyes was anger, and she was watchful, studying everything around her. Welstiel noted for the first time that her face was attractive, with a long straight nose and delicate jaw framed by her mass of black hair. Her wrists and fingers were slender to the point of fragility. He pitied her as he might pity a sack of kittens just before they were thrown into a river.