by Kaje Harper
“I’m going to open my shield down here, just a bit. If I did it right, the spell I laid up there will guide the newly dead along it to here.”
“To you? With your shields open?”
“Yes. But remember, a ghost can’t latch on to my energy. I’ll be fine. You keep your shields tight, and keep watch.” He traced the other end of his tether spell in the air, then eased his shields down. He felt naked and vulnerable, waiting that way. “If there’s a hungry thing down here, this might lure it too. Sing out if you notice anything.”
“Right.” Darien put his back to Silas’s, and they stared off into the dim landscape.
Minutes passed. It was always hard to tell time down here. Silas counted his breaths, deliberately slow, twenty-five a minute. Or so. More minutes passed.
“This is really boring,” Darien said.
“Lying in wait generally is.” Silas’s father had taken him deer hunting a few times. He’d preferred the long hours of silence in the blind to the moment a wild creature turned to dead meat. He’d been squeamish back then. Probably wouldn’t bother me now. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“My nose itches.”
“Well then scratch it. We’re not exactly hiding.”
“Oh. Right.” He felt Darien move against his shoulder. “How long—?”
Silas silenced him with a tap on his leg. Something was changing. Approaching. He tried to scent it on the still air. Not a demon, he’d swear.
A woman’s form coalesced ahead of him. A shade, not yet a ghost, she was pale and translucent, but looked fully human. She had her arms clasped tightly around her, and her eyes were dark, looking far away. She turned toward him, then away toward the river, then back.
He murmured, “Are you—” What had the nurse said? “—Mrs. Gauthier?”
She nodded, her focus turning to him, but she threw another glance over her shoulder even as she drifted closer. What now? He didn’t want to impede her passing, but to see if something else would do so.
He gestured the way she’d been looking. “The River’s there. That’s where you should go. I’ll go with you.” He moved out slowly.
Darien walked a few feet behind them, golden light still spilling from his hand, with a shimmer of tighter shields around him. Good man. Silas eased his shields back up a fraction, now the dead woman was with him.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” Silas said. “I don’t think the River’s a bad place, though.” His footsteps and Darien’s chuffed softly against the dry ground. The woman’s made no sound.
They were a dozen yards from the river when a dark shape with a charnel house reek popped into being off to the right. Silas slammed his shields up even before he could tell what it was. Then an image in an old textbook and a long-forgotten lecture came back to him. Is that a ghoul? Holy hells!
It glided toward them, fast as a freight train, multiple hands and mouths appearing and disappearing out of its amorphous darkness. The bits looked human, but the creature was anything but. Despite the hazy swirl of its form, it was dense enough to blot out the ground behind it.
Silas threw a power bolt at it but the power went through it without reaction. Damn it. He’d never dealt with one before and even rumors of their nature were hard to come by. He’d almost thought ghouls were a myth. Perhaps they were more vulnerable to sorcery than necromancy. “Darien, can you— throw a spark at it?” He hadn’t had time or knowledge to teach Darien offensive sorcery, but he’d done that much in the council chamber against Burns. A shield spark was a feeble thing, but worth a try.
“Throw?” Darien muttered something, then there was a crackle and snap. “No.” Darien sounded angry. “Turns out I can’t throw one down here. If it grabs me, I can spark its two hundred fingers off.”
Silas knew bravado when he heard it. “Just keep your shields up. It shouldn’t be able to get through.”
“What about yours?”
“They’re up.” He added a titch more power.
The dead woman became aware of the ghoul. She looked back and forth between Silas and the approaching darkness with its mouths gaping wider. Shivering, she moved closer and closer to Silas. He could probably grab her now, but he’d never dealt with a shade before the personality had left it. If he couldn’t pull her in and get his shield around them both, they’d be vulnerable to that thing.
Fast as he could, he backpedaled toward the River, not taking his eyes off the ghoul. “Darien, get clear. Mrs. Gauthier, follow me. You want the River. You need it. You’ll be safe there. Come on!”
The woman stood frozen, the translucent folds of her dress whipping around her legs as a thin wind picked up. The ghoul was closing fast.
“Ah, hells.” Silas opened his shields, leaped close to the shade, grabbed her around the chest, and slammed his shields around them. She felt odd against him, more solid than ghost-stuff, but cool and malleable.
“What are you doing?” Darien’s voice shook.
“Getting her out of this. Stopping the ghoul.” He dragged the shade with him. She shouldn’t have had weight and heft, but she did, digging in her heels and staring panicked over his shoulder.
They’d almost reached the bright water when the ghoul hit them. Silas was pushing as much power into his shields as he could, and it made no difference. The death-reek filled his lungs and the woman’s shade was ripped out of his arms. He reeled from the impact and a chill hit his bones as if something of himself was sucked away with her.
“No!” Darien was suddenly beside him, pushing those shining gold shields outward, trying to knock the ghoul off balance. The shields passed through the ghoul as if it wasn’t there, and then it was inside with Darien, still gripping the shade with a dozen hands. The dead woman screamed soundlessly.
Silas scrambled toward them, building runes in his head, trying to turn his shields into a circle, a true wall. His power and Darien’s met and meshed, right where the ghoul stood. The blazing edge of gold-green threw the ghoul backward several feet. It staggered, tendrils of dark splaying out to keep it upright, but it didn’t let go of Mrs. Gauthier’s shade.
“If we push together—” Darien’s shield bent in unnatural ways, wrapping around the edge of Silas’s green as he leaped toward Silas. “Yours and mine.”
Before they could work it out, the ghoul turned and fled with the shade. Or just ran off to eat its meal, if you weren’t an optimist. It was far faster than Silas at his best run. They sprinted after it, but quickly lost sight of it in the fog. Darien would’ve kept going, but Silas grabbed his arm. “It could be anywhere. It might circle back around.”
“What about the woman?”
“I don’t know!” He schooled his voice to more controlled tones. “I have no idea where that ghoul came from, or where it’s gone. And if we find it, I don’t know if we can get Mrs. Gauthier’s shade away from it, or carry her to the River before it strikes again.”
“We have to try!” Darien called a much brighter light, blazing on his palm, and turned in a slow circle. All they saw were the rocks and scrub and dirt of the land beside the River. Nothing moved. There was no sound, no odor, nothing to say which way the ghoul had gone with its victim.
“Damn it!” Silas wanted to hit something, throw whips of power through the murk until they reached the ghoul and forced it to let Mrs. Gauthier go. He actually gathered power humming in his palm, thinking about what kind of runes it would take to spin that lash out, thinner, farther, whipping through the darkness. Except my full impact didn’t do one bit of good when it was standing right there.
For a long time, they stood staring, gold power flaring bright in Darien’s hand, green cool light coiling in Silas’s palm. Nothing changed. Behind them the River ran on, bright, glittering, calling as ever. It chuckled to itself, as if the drama on its bank was amusing, or perhaps just unimportant. I wonder what that ghoul does with a shade. I need more information.
The voice of the River gained strength and insistence, tugg
ing at Silas’s attention. He realized Darien had turned and taken a step toward the water. “We should go.” Silas sucked his power back down and reached for Darien’s elbow.
Darien shook his touch off and moved a step closer to the water. “Will it possess her, do you think?”
Silas kept his tone matter of fact, pretending he couldn’t hear the horror under Darien’s words. “I doubt it. That’s a different situation. From the ghosts we found, I imagine it will suck down some part of that shade as—” At the last moment he managed not to say “food.” “—as energy, and let the remnant go.”
“You’ll be able to lay her ghost, later?”
“Should be.” If we find her. “We need to talk to someone who knows about ghouls.”
Darien let the light in his palm fade to a candle’s glow. “Who?”
“Locke, maybe. He’s fond of dusty old books and historical accounts.” Silas nudged Darien away from the water. “If he doesn’t know anything, he might be able to tell us who would. Rare power entities must be someone’s pet topic—”
They’d moved to the edge of the Veil’s dense fog when Silas sensed something, a wisp of energy, of scent. Not charnel-death. A cologne, maybe… The energy brushed the edge of his shields and he recognized it. “Mrs. Gauthier!” He opened his shield enough to grab the scrap floating there.
It had no real shape, no strength, but despite having come to him, it fought his grip frantically.
“Hush. Shhh. It’ll be all right.” He tried to gentle the ghost fragment. “Can you tell us—?” There was no point. The little thing pulsed with terror, wordless, mindless, less coherent than half the older ghosts he’d laid that week. “Never mind. Just a minute.” He turned back to the River.
“Is that her?” Darien hugged his arms around himself.
“Yes. Part. Maybe all that’s left.” He gripped the ghost firmly, despite her fear, and carried her to the bright water. Plunging his hand in felt like surrender. Letting his fingers open and release her felt like a loss. He didn’t try to take anything from her, just sent her downstream, and then stood, letting the energy and the oddly silky silver liquid drip from his fingers back into the River.
“She’s gone?”
“Yes.” For what it’s worth. But he had to believe that sending ghosts on their way was the right thing. At least as he let go, he’d felt her fear turning to something better. He stared downstream, wondering for the thousandth time where they went, after he pushed them into that current.
Darien came up beside him and bumped his elbow. “Then maybe we should get back, huh?”
Silas blinked and pulled his attention away from the ripples gliding by. “Yes. Definitely. This way.”
***
Darien stretched out on the bed when they got back to the boarding house to relax his tight muscles. Or maybe settle his stomach. He hadn’t even known Mrs. Gauthier’s first name, and she’d been dead anyway, but the image of the ghoul dashing off with her shade, many hands clutching, mouths open, nauseated him. He folded his arms behind his head on the pillows.
Silas had to be even more wrung out, but he paced the room, windows to door, muttering. Darien could make out words like “resistant” and “research” and “a myth” and “damn it.” Several repeats of that one. When Silas made his next pass, Darien stuck out a leg to block him. Silas glared down at it, and when he looked up his gaze wasn’t much warmer. “What?”
“You’ve done enough thinking. It’s time to talk.” Darien patted the bed next to him. “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet. Or would be, if there was a carpet.”
Grim said, “Indeed. For those of us who were left sitting in the car like pets, and then told to wait while you thought for the entire ride back, what in the hells happened, exactly?”
Silas turned to face him. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to shut you out. Or you, Darien.”
Pip bounced. “Me too? I was good. I didn’t ask any— many questions.”
Even with the deep frown creasing his forehead, Silas’s lips quirked. “You too. I was trying to get my ideas in order.”
Darien asked, “What was that thing? You said ‘ghoul’—”
At the word, Grim hissed and jumped from the floor to the top of the bookcase. “Is that what you saw?”
“What’s a ghoul?” Pip bounced up and down in front of the bookcase, not coming close to where Grim crouched. “I don’t remember it from bestiary class.”
“You wouldn’t.” Grim muttered.
“They’re very rare,” Silas said. “Almost thought to be a myth, like a manticore or a unicorn, except some of the accounts were from men considered levelheaded in their day. I’d assumed the same but… I don’t see what else it can be. Dark, shapeless, a hundred mouths, eats the dead.”
“Ghouls aren’t myths.” Grim twisted to lick his ruff in fast short strokes. “Rare. They weren’t in bestiary class, young Pip. They’d have been in your Powers and Entities, if you hadn’t ditched that one.”
“So how do we defeat it?” Darien glanced from Silas’s headshake to Grim’s busy tongue. “Destroy, banish, lock up…?”
Silas said, “Grim? Any familiar lore about how to deal with it? It ignored a power whip like I was using a wet noodle. My shields, Darien’s shields— nothing seemed to shake it. If it had wanted to eat the living, we’d be eaten.”
“Sorry.” Grim crouched down and curled his tail over his toes. “My teacher called them battlefield ghouls, a dark eater that stalks the site of death, feeding on the lost. He thought if they gained enough power, they might eat the living too, although he wasn’t sure in what form. But he said not much is known, and they’re extremely rare. We’d probably never come across one in our lifetimes.”
“Not much help when you do come across one.” Silas bounced to his feet and began pacing again.
“No.”
Darien said, “We need more information, sounds like. Maybe the library back home— at your place.” Not home. Not yet. No matter how much it’s coming to feel that way.
“Unless you’ve made a hell of a lot more headway on that indexing than I remember, we could have a book entitled Ghouls and How to Stop Them somewhere on those shelves and never have a clue.”
“If those old bookbinders had bothered to put titles on the spines…” Darien had to admit Silas had a point though. They’d decided Darien could catalog the books as part of room and board payment, but they were old, fragile, half of them with unmarked spines and bound in the same brown leather. “Who would know more? Another necromancer? Worthington?” The older necromancer owed them a favor.
“Locke’s still the best bet. He loves old lore and remembers pieces from it. I’ll call him.” Silas looked at his watch. “Well, in an hour. He’ll be at his work right now.”
“Does the Guild have a librarian? Didn’t you say the Guild hall library was a duty?”
“Yes. But the old head librarian passed a few years ago. Locke’s more likely to know what’s actually in the books.”
“Sounds like Locke’s our man, then.” Darien sat up higher, watching Silas rebound around the room like a demented border collie. All that energy and frustration, and nowhere to direct it.
Grim said, “So what happened? From the moment you crossed.”
Darien let Silas tell the story, hearing the rasp and ache in his voice as he described the shade being pulled from his grasp so easily.
“What difference do you think it makes?” Darien asked. “To the shade, being eaten, I mean. You took the ghost to the River afterward and set it free. Heck, some shades obviously splinter into a ghost naturally. You eat ghost energy yourself. Maybe it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to—”
“They are dead, after all.” It’d be a comfort to think that eating the dead shade was no worse than eating dead flesh. It was beyond life and pain.
“They come back terrified,” Silas said. “I don’t know what the ghoul does, but every ghost it leaves is afraid to the point
of panic. They may be dead, but there’s enough left to feel an incredible fear. And that doesn’t seem harmless. It didn’t…feel harmless as it passed us.”
Darien had to admit it hadn’t felt harmless to him either. He’d like to think it was just an occult vulture, a creature living off the unneeded remains of life. But all his instincts had rebelled at the sight of it.
Silas took up pacing again. “I’ll call Locke. He might even be willing to come out here. He’s interested in new and rare phenomena. If he can find a spell to banish it, well and good. If not… someone else will. He knows scholars around the world.”
“Good. A plan.” Darien wasn’t eager to bring Locke’s superior scorn into their comfortable boarding house, but he couldn’t argue with the logic.
Silas pivoted on his heel again, paused by the window, staring out blankly, then smacked the frame with his palm and turned. His lips were pressed in a thin line and his eyes were bleak.
He’s still thinking about his failure with that shade. Maybe I can distract him. “You said it’ll be an hour before you can telephone Locke, right?”
Silas glanced at his watch. “Fifty minutes now, yes.”
“Then why don’t we do something more productive than pacing a groove in the floor?” Darien licked his lips and lowered his gaze.
“Like what?”
Seriously? “Well, you could lie down and get a bit of rest, or—”
“I don’t need rest. It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“Or—” Darien continued louder. “We could do something about the tension that’s tying you up in knots.”
“I’m fine.” Silas went to look up at Grim. “You’re sure your teachers didn’t tell you anything more about ghouls?”
Grim got up and arched his back slowly, stretched one front paw, then the other. “You think I’m withholding information?”
“No.” Silas slumped. “Sorry, no, I’m just worried. What kind of creature can waltz through shields and ignore the best I can throw at it, and yet can hold a shade?”