The sun was heading for the western horizon, but Waylaid didn’t feel the need to talk. Galen grew increasingly uncomfortable.
“I’m going to go check on Tal,” Galen said and scampered from the room.
Waylaid waited in the growing darkness, aware distantly that he hadn’t eaten today. The lore of the headless ghost was strong in his memories. He tried to measure it in his mind.
A weaker ghost might haunt. A stronger ghost might kill, but it took real power to do a spirit taking. It took a sorcerer. This wasn’t the only evidence he had. The body of stars was a spell, a method of keeping your spirit separate from the spirits you stole. The spell was called the Cloak of Shadows. Waylaid had learned it and, to his eternal shame, he had practiced it many years ago. He had learned it across the shallow sea in the Fomor homeland. But in Pywer, no one else but the high priest of Cern should know that technique.
Soul taking is torture. You take everything from your victim and add their spirit to your own, but their minds come with their spirits. They scream in your head, begging you to let them go. If you didn’t build the cloak of shadows, you also had their memories as a part of your own.
He shook his head; it was a horrible thought. It was a horrible experience.
A headless ghost was a more limited creature altogether, a man with little ability to decide his course of action. He was more powerful than a living man in some aspects; he could hardly be killed. But he would follow the lead of the man who owned his skull. The ghost could act on its own, of course; it was a creature of spirit, not simple mortal flesh which needed a functioning brain to think.
“But it could be tricked,” Waylaid said. He grinned evily. Oh, the best answer is to dig up his grave when both the sun and moon are in the sky. Bless the corpse to the Mother, and let her send the spirit to Heaven’s Gate or the Dragon’s Lair or back to the cycle of life as she sees fit.
Could I convince him to reveal his maker? That was a real mystery. How would a Bolg or Ruad learn sorcery? The words of the field spirit haunted him. Have I taken an apprentice sorcerer? This led to the obvious answer. Some Fomor took an apprentice and taught him the Cloak of Shadows. The rest was equally improbable. The sorcerer must have killed his apprentice, took his head, and set him to killing the Ruad.
The ghost could not be condemned to death, but it could be sent to the Blessed Mother for judgement. The sorcerer was going to end up in the Ruad or Daen court or on the end of someone’s sword. There was little difference in the outcome if it were a Daen court. There was no question in Waylaid’s mind of why Brea was a judge; she was the mirror of the Mother in judgment. A child killer would have a short trial and a final answer if ever he was brought before her.
On the heels of that thought, Brea entered the room. She spoke the language of the Blessed Folk in its most proper form.
“Master Waylaid, Ella’s mother gave me this and said that the boys told her that you would want it.”
She lifted a small, blue-eyed girl in her hands, her dress a pale yellow and her hair a dark blonde on the edges of brown.
“Who is that?” asked Waylaid.
Brea frowned at him, and laid a small straw doll in his hands. Waylaid tilted his head back, squinting with his left eye to get the image to settle between young girl and straw doll. An evil thought trickled up through his brain and, for the first time in years, he laughed. The people below the house cringed at the evil sounds coming from the building like rolling thunder, but Waylaid was grinning from ear to ear. Waylaid’s face did not have a lot of pleasant expressions. This was not one of them.
“I am going to make a trap, a beautiful trap, and I will catch a ghost.” Waylaid calmed himself to his usual surly serenity and taking the doll, walked into the other room. While working, he found that his right knee and left shoulder didn’t bother him much at all.
Waylaid stepped inside the circle, bringing the stool in with him. The bed was quiet, the mattress muffling the sound in the room the way the circle quieted his left eye. He focused, letting himself see far more than he normally would. No longer damping down his vision, but letting it out to its fullest extent. He looked at the child.
The child was dead, and there was no helping that. Nothing remained of her delicate spirit. A sorcerer could bind a spirit into the body, let it pretend to live again, but there was nothing of the child that was. Still, there was … not an echo so much, but an impression of her left on her clothes. The essence remaining was little more than the scent of the child, the shape her spirit left a mark on the world while it lived within her body.
He sifted the dead knife from its bag. The dead knife was an obsidian razor stored in a bag of salt, so that no spirit energy attached to it, or even noticed that it existed. The obsidian was sharper than bronze, but bronze had properties that would push spirit energy away. Spirits were comfortable with stone; bronze wasn’t bad, but stone was better. The worst offenders were the holy metals: gold, iron, and silver.
“The first step of magic is to note the qualities of your materials,” he said, talking to himself while he prepared to work. “Bronze came with the gods of the Fomor, some say a gift of the Dragon himself, who was a god of the Fomor long before the Blessed Folk recognized him as first of the angels. The Dragon also brought gold, a cursed metal, good for nothing.” The Fomor had never used silver and iron; those were the gifts of the Daen gods.
“Iron belongs to the Blessed Mother,” he said. “Silver is the gift of the Good Father.” The Blessed Folk did not approve of magic, and their gods rarely let their metals be used as tools for magic and never for sorcery.
He sliced a wide strip from Ella’s dress and laid the knife aside. With simple motions, he knotted the fabric into the start of a doll, a bit bigger than his hand. It had two arms and a head but the rest was a wide flap that had yet to be folded. He carefully tucked up the legs and arms of Ella’s straw doll and put it on the belly of the doll, folding the cloth around it. With a short piece of trim from her dress, he fashioned a belt for the doll and tied her belly shut. Now the doll had a pretty dress with a belt and a wide trim. He played with his creation, making sure it was perfect. He evened out the arms, flattened the loop of head, and straightened out the dress.
Waylaid took up the knife again and sliced a bit of hair from little Ella’s head. He laid the long strands of hair across her body while the knife went back in its bag. His thick fingers moved with careful delicacy, turning the head inside out, tying the hair to the fabric, and turning it back straight. Waylaid pushed the hair about, arranging as a girl might, and laid the rag doll on her chest.
He leaned over the doll and spoke to it.
“Remember that you are little Ella. Remember all that you are.”
He frowned at the results and tried to remember if there was anything he had forgotten. He had once served Cern, God of the Sorcery and the Hunt. Cern would have given him a ritual for this, he had only to ask. There was temptation there, the certainty of ritual, however tainted, but the Good Father had brought him away from that life. Now he was no longer a Fomor – niFomori, a simple pilgrim among the Blessed Folk in this strange city. The rituals of Cern had no place here; it was time to learn a new way.
“Good Father,” he prayed. “If it is in your purpose, let this magic succeed.”
He thought about the gods whose servants had broken him and whose priests had cursed him. Their curses meant less than their blessings. The Good Father was a god whose blessings meant something.
“There’s not much to do now,” he said, straightening up from the stool. He saw Brea, standing in the doorway, watching him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Praying.”
“Who are you, Waylaid?”
“I don’t understand the question,” he replied, but he did understand. It was a question he had avoided for some time.
“You and I have argued about the roles of the Good Father, the Dragon, my Blessed Mother and her unborn son for many
moons now. I cannot count how many times we have discussed Nuada’s heresies, or the scroll of Lilith.”
“I am interested in these things, so I study them.” Waylaid shrugged, but it was a poor excuse, and he delivered it without passion. It had become his customary dodge and apparently she no longer was willing to hear it.
“Who are you, Waylaid, that you are here among the Blessed Folk?”
He looked serious for a moment, and, for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. He gestured for her to go out into the other room, and he followed her out, bringing the stool with him. He found a cup and the rain barrel, half-filling the cup and adding a dollop of vinegar, before drinking a long swallow.
He sat straight in the stool, crossing his legs before him and leaning back against a tapestry-covered wall. Twice he gestured her to silence. She waited. She lacked the patience of a hunter, but the Mother was quiet in her, cold even. She recognized the presence of the Good Father, so she stilled herself and let the words come to him.
Waylaid wasn’t a man who composed speeches, especially about his private life, but this time was different. He closed his eyes and hummed for a moment.
“Once upon a time, my people ruled the world. We sailed all the oceans of the world with our ships, coming to this shore in triumph wearing our robes of purple and gold. We were the kings of the age, and the gods smiled upon us. We swept the beasts from this shore, built our kingdoms, and drank sweet hydromel in the shade of our patios atop our marble palaces.”
He drank again from his sour cup, looking into the glass and seeing a world much different from the one he lived in today.
“We fell from grace, simply enough.”
“When the gods found us, they were new to thinking men. They strengthened our blood, so that we could communicate with them and to feed their desires. They taught us magic and sorcery. They made us great.” He pointed to Mistress Brea. “The Scroll of Lilith teaches that the gods of the ancient world, of my youth, were the first created of the Good Father.”
“Do you believe that the Fomor gods are the Earth-bound of the angels?” Brea asked.
“I do not know, but I have begun to believe that. Much as you were,” Waylaid said, “I was raised to be a priest. I am studying to understand what the Daen Angels were in the time of the Fomor Empire and what they are today. I am still studying them, but they seem different. Perhaps they were not evil when the Good Father created them. They only became evil when they were forced into a millennium of slavery under my ancestors.
“But I was not raised with this knowledge, I did not know of the Good Father or your angels when I was young. I only knew that the gods hated us and sought to wipe us from the face of their creation.” Waylaid lifted his hands in the symbol for ignorance.
“I looked for a fault among my people. We weren’t perfect in some way, that we failed in our sacrifices…I didn’t know what we were or weren’t, but I tried to learn. I studied the scriptures, I performed every sacrifice, I…” He paused and continued slowly.
“I assumed sorcery contained the answers, not the problems. I practiced sorcery.” He took another drink, clearing his throat which had grown tight. He looked into his cup, despairingly. “I sincerely wish this was mead.
“In the end, I travelled to the Secret Mountains, across the Shallow Sea to the east in the lands of the Fomor. I lived upon a mountaintop and preyed upon the villagers below, Fomor, but small compared to me. I spoke, pleaded, sacrificed, I did everything I had ever been taught. The gods would not give me an answer, a way to save my people, no matter what I promised, not one would hear my cries. Not one would be satisfied in his hatred of the Fomor.
“I was slowly starving. It was a hard winter, but I was huddled in a cave no wider than my shoulders, with a fire before the entrance to keep the worst of the cold wind out...and I heard a voice. It said it was my father.”
“Understand that my father was still―is still―alive. I knew he was then. I didn’t understand the voice, but I listened. He said he loved me, and he forgave me for every last thing I had done, and everything I would do. He did not hate me, and he would not turn his face from me. I was forgiven. I had a God.
“In time, days later, when I came down from the mountain, I finally understood the voice. I had spoken with the Good Father of the Blessed Folk, who forgives those who break his laws and fight his will but leads them into the proper way of life.”
He raised his hand to forestall her argument.
“I do not speak against the Mother, but I have not heard her. I know you hear them both. But she is not as kind to her wayward sons. She does not speak to them nor comfort them. If I must stand before Her for sentencing, I expect that I will receive the worst punishment she can devise, and I deserve it. But the Good Father gives something that the Fomor have searched for over a thousand years.”
“Forgiveness,” she said.
He took a deep breath, for the hardest part of the tale.
“So, I returned to my people, preached to them. They laughed at me, they scorned me. Finally, finally, they took me seriously. I had Counts, priests, and leaders coming to my side. I saw the possibilities before my people as they hadn’t been in generations.
“Upon that night, my brother struck my face with an axe, for it is written that the gods care not to look upon an ugly face. He cut off my foot, for it is written that an incomplete man cannot lead. I am lucky that he left my punishment to removing me from my place in the priesthood and,” he waved his hand, “my hereditary leadership position.”
Waylaid pointed at his knee and his shoulder.
“These were my fault. I fought when I should have taken my punishment.”
Brea spoke. “Piju said that you cast a man from the top of the cliff.”
Waylaid snorted.
“I did. I shouldn’t have. Poor Ubor was only doing his job. But they were casting me from the priesthood, something I had worked for my entire life. I cannot stop seeking the truth about the Father, but I have no way to teach my people. I was a priest to save the Fomor, and now they will not hear my voice.”
Brea sat there, wishing she could comfort him. He never showed emotion, but now the hurt showed itself on every line of his face.
“I understand you, Fomor. I feel the same way. Some days the pain just won’t stop coming, will it?”
“You have accumulated your tragedy as well?” he asked.
“Yes, I have felt the same way every day for the last four years. I can save my people, but I can’t save my sons.”
Waylaid looked confused.
“Seth told me that your son is a warlord of the Blessed Folk, a rank as near to king as the Blessed Folk permit in Pywer, and as respected and loved as any man in the land.”
“Brian married my baby girl. I love him like a son, but in truth he is only a cousin. I have two sons of my body. They are beautiful boys, but they have gone across the sea to fight in the civil war between the Blessed Cities.
“Now they follow Nemed, and they do not hear the voice of the Blessed Mother. They would punish me as a heretic. I follow the most ancient of laws, but Nemed says that the Mother is heresy.
“He will come to Pywer, and I will go to war against my own blood, kill my own sons…”
“You shall fight your sons, and I shall fight my brother.” Waylaid took a deep breath and recovered his serenity. “Let us meditate and listen for her voice, perhaps we can learn, somehow, how to save those that matter to us.”
“While we save the Ruad?” Brea added.
“Bah, they are saved. All we must do now is wait.”
“For what?” she asked.
“We let the doll soak up the remaining impressions of the young girl and wait for Piju.”
“Piju said that he’d find your killer.”
“He will. I have confidence in my hunter.” He snorted. “I’m no young man, I’m not tracking around the woods all night. Let the journeyman do it.”
“He’s a journeyman now? I
thought he was only an apprentice.”
Waylaid smiled at Brea, sharing a professional secret.
“A trick of a Master: a man is a journeyman when he knows he is no longer an apprentice. Perhaps I have trained him enough or perhaps too much. Let us pray and hope the gods know what we need.”
Piju was only an apprentice and didn’t feel sufficiently trained to solve this mystery. He was not an accomplished thinker, so he covered what he could a second time.
The girl could have been killed by a Bolg. There was no evidence of poison, but I was told that the killer of Warlord Morn was a sorcerer. Piju didn’t believe in a Bolg sorcerer, but that wasn’t as important as following the clues. Clues were like tracks on the ground, you followed them to answers the way you followed a deer. Ignoring them just meant walking in circles in your mind.
The poison could have come from an uncommon beast or plant, one I did not recognize. Since the girl did not go far, it couldn’t be a plant I didn’t recognize, so a beast. Clearly what killed this girl was not a common creature. No, in fact it was no creature I have ever seen before, so I must simply search the forest for a creature I have never seen before, or possibly a ghost, or possibly a sorcerer.
This was a long list, but it boiled down fairly simply to another one of Waylaid’s rules. “Find something there that doesn’t belong.”
Piju walked on in the gathering darkness. He needed to work on the story of the Burning Ghost, while he was at it. Perhaps they had something in common. The forest wasn’t providing him anything unusual.
Last Spring, when he had walked across the rooftops of Ard, he had discovered the dead birds. They were burned up, from the inside, like nothing he had seen before. Of course, now they looked identical to the sacrifice he performed every moon. That was not a description he could use in a story. Who has seen a sacrifice to a ghost?
The Broken Man Page 27