Absence_Mist and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  He felt his way back to the old guard room and the welcome glow of its mistorb. Moving quicker now he climbed the stairs and stepped back into the fresh air of the Caliste. With no business left in the fortress he went straight to the gatehouse and descended the Cragg. He leant heavily on the iron handrail as he went, stopping several times beneath torch lit horrors to catch his breath and conduct further scours.

  Night marinated the city below him; soaking into narrow streets and sheltered doorways. Here and there lamp light bled from windows - the only sign of the city’s nervous inhabitants. But it was to The Reader and its magnificent jewel that his gaze was drawn. With the Butcher’s story fresh in his mind, he looked at them with new eyes; wondering how much of it was true. It was a story he needed to pick apart - a story he would need to document and share with the upper echelons of his order. But he knew he might never get the chance. If his plan failed and he died tonight, no one would ever hear it.

  He made it down the steps and walked into a brace of city guards at the first corner. ‘Lord Riole!’ said the larger of the two. He had a flat nose and a face full of freckles.

  ‘Sergeant Falc.’

  ‘Are you alright Lord Riole,’ he said looking him up and down with concern.

  Kass was weary and his hip felt like a ball of broken glass. His hair was thick with ash and his face smeared with soot. The robes that hung off him were soiled and creased. So little was there about his appearance to set him apart from the cities beggars that he would have forgiven the sergeant if he’d walked right by and tossed him a copper moon.

  ‘Just a little tired is all. It’s been a long day… Is the curfew in place?’

  Sergeant Falc nodded. ‘They went straight home after Lord Beredrim’s speech and there hasn’t been a single breach. It’s as if it was self-imposed. Which I suppose it is. Nobody wants to come out after what happened earlier.’

  He was about to give some reassurance when the soldiers flinched back from him. ‘Lord Riole. Are you sure you’re alright?’

  Kass frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Your eyes… They clouded over for a second.’

  Kass turned his mind inwards and conducted a deep scour. The guards flinching back from something in his eyes suggested the Butcher had come loose. But once again he found him resting easy in his restraints. Something he had said came back to him now: ‘Do you think we’ve been idle in this stinking prison? We’ve learnt much by fermenting what already exists in our minds.’

  He refocused on the guards, understanding how his scour must have looked to them. One moment he was talking to them, the next he was in a trance. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said with a smile. ‘I felt a little light headed, but it’s passed now.’ The guards seemed to accept this explanation. Like most people they viewed the exorcists as a strange bunch, prone to odd behaviours that were beyond their comprehension. ‘Tell me, what’s happening with the people displaced by the fire?’

  ‘Many have been taken in by relatives, or those with a good heart and room to spare. Some had nowhere to go, so they’ve bedded down in the old barracks - neigh on a hundred of them.’

  ‘Do they have food and blankets?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘And what are they saying this evening?’

  ‘They’re scared.’ He hesitated and glanced at the other guard.

  ‘Go on sergeant, you can speak freely. What do they say?’

  ‘Begging your pardon Lord Riole, but they say the Caliste has no power over this spirit… That it’s beyond you.’

  Kass smiled. ‘After what they witnessed today who could blame them? But you can tell them we still have hope.’ The guards smiled back and nodded their heads, trying to communicate faith, but failing miserably. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got urgent business with Hayhas.’

  ‘Of course. Good evening Lord Riole.’ The soldiers stiffened respectfully, then disappeared around the corner.

  Kass intended to take a direct line to the market quarter, but his feet took him on a winding course that brought him out on Reader Way. He started to cross, but for some reason he stopped. Then, with a feeling like the ground was moving instead of his feet, he did a ninety degree turn to face The Reader. It stood in its enclosure, visible from the waist up; its westward gaze cutting through the darkness a hundred feet above him. He stared at its face. Its vigilant expression was the same as always, but the warm iridescence of its jewel seemed to caress its visage with new appeal.

  ‘The Creator Stone!’

  He started towards the enclosure, his appointment with Hayhas forgotten. As he drew closer the cobbles beneath his feet softened and broke up, becoming a narrow mountain trail. He blinked and all of a sudden he was approaching a rocky depression filled with the twitching bodies of hundreds of men. He walked on spellbound as The Reader was constructed before his very eyes. An invisible force tore the bones from the bodies and sent them spiralling into the air; fusing them into an enormous skeleton. The sagging flesh followed, packing out its frame as it drew a huge pool of blood up through its feet…

  The enclosure walls reappeared, materialising out of thin air fifty yards in front of him. Two sentries stood in the shadows by the gate – still as stones.

  Why had he come here?

  ‘To see it!’

  He veered away from the enclosure and climbed the steps of the adjacent tower. Two more sentries flanked the door and as he passed between them he gave neither the friendly acknowledgment they had come to expect from him. Once inside, he cut straight through the base of the tower to a door that opened directly into the enclosure. He stepped out onto the cobbles and looked at The Reader with new understanding.

  ‘The flesh and bone of over three hundred men.’

  In the light of the Creator Stone, he could just make out the rocks between its feet – the throne upon which only fifty-one men had been allowed to sit.

  ‘The mantle is hidden amongst those rocks. I should see if it’s there.’

  He streaked across the courtyard with a feeling of urgency, oblivious to the guards on the walls. One of them saw him and whistled down.

  ‘The mantle will give you control of The Reader and access to the stone. What hope is there for the city without it?’

  He was about to cross the Threshold of Consciousness when a guard sprang in front of him, levelling a sword at his neck. ‘That’s far enough.’ Another guard ran up behind him and tapped his shoulder with the tip of his sword.

  ‘Lord Riole!’ said the first guard in sudden recognition. ‘To go before The Reader is treason.’

  All at once Kass snapped back into reality. He stared at the Threshold of Consciousness then looked up; realising with dawning horror where he was and what he had been about to do.

  ‘Are you alright Lord Riole?’ he asked without lowering his weapon.

  Kass gawped. The Butcher had wriggled free of his bindings and walked him here and if he had taken a few more steps The Reader would have killed him. He remembered the city guards flinching and realised they had seen him coming loose. He should’ve listened to Hayhas. This really was madness.

  ‘Lord Riole?’

  As the Butcher’s mocking laughter filled his head, he bore down and tied him up again.

  ‘So close don’t you think?’

  ‘You can’t hold us Kriiiiole.’

  ‘Like we told you before. This is our game!’

  And then one last voice, spoken in a conspiratorial whisper:

  ‘Sixteen Kass Riiiiole… Not Fifteen.’

  That number again.

  Then the voices were gone and the Butcher was still once more. But this time he was taking no chances. From now on he would keep his draw active, maintain a constant pressure on his mental knots. The Butcher had come loose with an act of spirit escapology that was way beyond his understanding, but he would do everything in his power to prevent it happening again.

  ‘Lord Riole? … Lord Riole!?’

  He looked at the guard, arranging
his face in an expression of weary confusion. ‘Keren isn’t it? I can’t understand how I got here… I must’ve walked in my sleep.’

  ‘Tis treason,’ Keren repeated, though now there was a tremor in his voice.

  ‘There’s no treason without a king,’ Kass lied.

  Keren looked at him – his training no doubt thin on how to deal with those in higher authority who transgressed the rules. He looked at the other guard for guidance, but found no help there.

  A shout turned their heads. ‘Lord Riole come quick,’ called one of the tower guards as he came running across the courtyard. When he saw the swords levelled at him, he stopped and drew his own. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just a misunderstanding,’ he replied, raising a hand to show he was alright. The Enclosure Guard were sworn protectors of The Reader and its protocols, but the Tower Guard had sworn oaths to protect the King and the Lords. ‘Why do you seek me?’

  ‘Hayhas sent a messenger. The spirit’s turned up at the old barracks and it’s smashing the place up.’

  Kass looked at Keren and could tell he wasn’t going to write this off as a misunderstanding. He knew the protocols of the enclosure guards well enough to know he was supposed to arrest him and send word to Marshall Beredrim. It was only his rank that was giving him pause. ‘Let me go to face this spirit. I give you my word I’ll present myself to Lord Beredrim the moment I’m done…You know who I am and where I reside… People are in danger and I’m the only one who can help them.’

  The guards shared an uncomfortable look over his shoulder and in the end some tacit agreement passed between them and they lowered their weapons.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kass. He whirled away and followed the tower guard out of the enclosure, leaving them staring after him.

  Meld

  Kass hobbled after the guard, calling upon him several times to slow down. For the most part the citizens of Irongate were locked tight in their homes and only the weak light that shone out from the edges of their doors and the corners of their windows gave them away. The shops and taverns were completely dark and their black windows seemed to gobble their reflections as they streaked by. Near the market quarter the smell of smoke strengthened and they were soon passing rows of burnt out houses. Distant shouting amplified with every step and before long they could hear smashing glass and splintering wood.

  He arrived at the old barracks to find it awash with lamplight and teeming with the dispossessed. The drill square out front had been appropriated by the Trader’s Guild many years ago and furnished with dozens of makeshift markets stalls. Many of these were now part of a ramshackle structure that had been erected next to the barracks to accommodate those who couldn’t fit inside. There were perhaps sixty people in the square now and to a man they were frozen in place with their heads tipped back; all looking at an enormous spirit. It had been revealed by dozens of fieraks and they were buzzing around it excitedly, feeding on its energy.

  The spirit’s face was gaunt and feverish and its skull deformed; covered with knuckles of bone that had ripped through its hairless scalp. Supporting its head and in sharp contrast to its emaciated face was a thick neck and a set of broad shoulders that tapered away to a snaking body of spectral smoke and flame. If the spirit really belonged to one of the fifteen exorcists Izle took into the Wilderness, he had changed so much he was unrecognisable.

  In one clawed hand it held a man by the ankles. The man’s features were bludgeoned to a pulp and his body kinked by a myriad of fractures that made him hang like dough. Kass stared at this vaguely human form with horror, realising only when he spotted a pulsing mist stone that it was Djin. The spirit had used him to smash the market up and in all likelihood, a loud crack he had heard before turning onto the square had been his skull, impacting one of the broken stalls.

  Lord Beredrim and a dozen city guards were braced shoulder to shoulder; their weapons raised instinctively, but uselessly against it. Hayhas stood in front of them and as he approached he could feel his draw. It was a respectable draw for a veteran, but it was having little effect. The spirit was rippling under its influence, but it remained fixed in place.

  ‘Shut down your degenerative draw old man,’ it roared in a voice like distant thunder, ‘and send for Kass Riole.’

  Kass pushed his way through the crowd. ‘No need. I am here!’

  The spirit’s eyes widened with glee. It threw Djin’s broken body over its shoulder and swatted Hayhas away with a contemptuous backhand, sending him crashing into a stack of boxes. Then it snaked through the air until it hung over him.

  ‘At last your champion steps out of the shadows in which he has been hiding,’ it said, addressing a sea of terrified faces with a sweep of its fiery arm.

  Kass had used his time climbing back up through the dark dungeons of the Caliste to think about what he would do when this moment arrived. A meld exorcism had been performed only once before, when two exorcists released their contained spirits in close proximity. The spirits’ natural affinity brought them instantly together and into a contest that was concluded when one consumed the other. The victor, temporarily subdued by an acute glut of power had been drawn and purged without putting up any resistance.

  But Kass knew the same process could never work here. There were two key differences between that spirit meld and the one he was about to attempt. For one, he couldn’t simply let his spirit go. The Butcher was an anomaly resistant to exorcism and who knew what else. There was no guarantee he was prone to the same spiritual magnetism that attracted all other spirits to each other and he could not, would not, risk him fleeing the scene.

  The second difference was that the spirit he had come to exorcise was free. The exorcists that performed the first meld simply let their spirits go, allowing them to rise and mix like vapour. Such a gentle release would do little to serve him here. The spirit had promised him a spectacular and public end and it was gathering itself to crush him.

  For his meld to succeed he had to ensure the spirits made contact whilst at the same time protecting himself from a physical assault. The only way he could do both was to purge the Butcher with all the force he could muster. To use him as a weapon.

  He began to tighten his knots, squeezing him to the brink of purge and then holding him there. The strain was enormous, the mental equivalent of holding one’s breath to near unconsciousness. In a matter of seconds, he would be forced to loosen off or burn him up with one last constriction.

  ‘People of Irongate, your High Exorcist swore an oath to protect you. But he can no longer fulfil it. He has grown old and idle and is no longer worthy of his position. I claim this city as my haunt and there’s nothing he or anyone else in his black fortress can do to stop me. People of Irongate look upon your High Exorcist for the last time.’

  The spirit gathered its flaming smoke to strike, but as it raged down Kass purged his prisoner. The spirits collided in a flash of light and the spectators shrank away with their hands shielding their eyes. A shock wave shook the Membrane and those normally numb to it, felt it for the first time in their lives.

  The impacted spirits blazed into each other, spreading out in a disc of light that curved towards Kass like a mushroom cap. Transparent arms of spirit light reached around the edge, giving the impression he was being attacked by a giant spectral squid. But when the glare faded and the people saw him standing his ground within it, they raised a cheer.

  But it was a short celebration.

  The tentacles withdrew into the curved disc and the light sprang away, reforming into its component spirits. The Butcher coalesced into a raging figure with multiple heads and the fire spirit swatted at him like a cat on its back. It grabbed at the heads with fiery claws, biting their faces with grotesque distortions of its mouth. But as it bit down, the heads sunk into the Butcher’s spectre, only to be replaced instantly by another. Among them: a toothless old lady with baggy ears; a little boy with an eye patch and a young woman whose long hair swirled around as
if blown by a violent wind. Hobe Riole rose from the place where the toothless old lady disappeared; his eyes bright with delight as he attempted to throttle the spirit. A giant eagle appeared briefly to peck at the spirit’s eyes and when it was grabbed by the neck the wolf replaced it, biting and clawing as if on a hot plate.

  As the struggle continued the Butcher resolved into a single figure: The Witch of Winter Wood - her shining crow eyes bulging in her masculine skull. Beneath her hooked nose, her square jaw worked itself to a blur trying to find purchase on the spirit’s neck. But it held her off – gripping her throat with a smoke-flame hand. Then all of a sudden, it spiralled around behind her; clamping its mouth on the back of her neck. The witch shuddered and the congregation inside her screamed in pain. She tried to rip it away, but it held fast and started sucking her in. Her spectre began to distort and flicker and in one juddering wrench she became the Butcher himself; his eyes wide with the knowledge of his imminent demise. His face imploded and he disappeared into the spirit like an inhalation of vapour.

  The spirit twisted towards Kass as though meaning to rage down on him again, but all aggression suddenly drained from it and it sagged in the air, closing its eyes. Kass had expected the Butcher to win, but it didn’t matter either way. His plan had worked. The spirits were melded and the victor hung vulnerable above him; temporarily incapacitated by an influx of raw energy. And all he had to do now was step forward and draw it. Once it was contained he could take it to the alushia cell in Irongate Gaol and attempt its exorcism at leisure.

  But he hadn’t come through the process unscathed. When the Butcher’s purge light had connected with the spirit a terrible back stream force had raged through his soul. And now instead of rushing forward to draw it he dropped to one knee, clutching his chest. There was a rush of boots across the cobbles then an arm around him.