Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  “I bring net but now no good. Sword cut through.” In his exhaustion, the poor man was leaning against the chaotic pile of planks.

  “That I can take care of,” Rokan said.

  Her hand strayed to her dagger as her sergeant’s sword slid out of its scabbard. “Is that such a good idea?” she asked as he strayed towards the abomination. More than a few men had died, and she presumed they had not tackled this atrocity single-handed.

  “Its hand will be off before it even knows I’m here.”

  “No. You wait!”

  The barest of glances over his shoulder revealed how little Rokan thought of Wu.

  “Sergeant, I do believe you better listen to our guest.”

  He stopped but did not take his eyes of the soulous. She had to admire his courage for not retreating.

  “Well, Master Wu, were you casting a foul spell when those bumbling boys caught you?” she asked.

  The ancient magician waved his hand and the sleeve of his voluminous gown shimmered. Not hearing an answer, Rokan crouched. At a click of Wu’s fingers, the rope Rokan had freed him from uncoiled from the ground and zipped past the sergeant. Rokan jumped sideways, caught his heel on the edge of a crate, and toppled through its planks with a resounding crack. The rope wriggled in the air at the level of the dead man’s waist. It sprung like a cobra, smacking him on the ribs. The soulous turned and slashed, cutting the rope into two. Its belly was ripped open, leaving its putrid guts exposed, its eyes were glazed dull, and its red beard was slick with the blood of its victims.

  Interesting, how clear a swallow could sound. Her seasoned soldier picked himself up, tugged splinters out of his shalvar, and retreated as far as he could.

  “Explain this,” Jordayne demanded as Dario returned, walking his horse behind hers.

  “It no think, but it react,” Wu said.

  Each piece of rope was wrapping itself around a wrist. The ends strained towards each other, pulling the foetid grey hands together.

  “Well you seem to have things under control.”

  “Lady, you assume too much.”

  Beware the black arts. The soulous turned its lacklustre eyes upon the rope, noted the threat, and plucked the writhing binding from each wrist.

  “How do we deal with it, magician?” Rokan asked.

  The ensuing silence did not inspire confidence.

  “Do we require a stronger mind, a deeper magic or something more?” Jordayne asked.

  Weng Wu turned to her. The way the otherwise nondescript fabric of his gown captured the light when he moved was remarkable. “Death play by own rules.”

  “Fetch reinforcements,” she ordered Dario.

  “Too late,” Rokan said, stalling him, for the soulous was walking their way.

  She pulled on Aribelle’s reins. The neighing mare was tossing her head, an understandable reaction from a poor beast when she herself was prickling with fear. Rokan followed her to the mouth of the alley while Weng Wu darted through the doorway into the building in which he had been detained. The stubborn soulous plodded on.

  “My lady, I suggest you make a full retreat,” Rokan said.

  Her smile was halfway between irked and amused. Men had such gall to insist all fun and adventure was their domain. As she reached the wider lane, she glimpsed Weng Wu emerge, a net in hand. Rokan sidled to the opposite wall, ready to engage the atrocity her inadvertent hand had formed. A clank of his sword against the one the soulous carried ensured it advanced on him. As he circled towards the dead end, and the soulous turned to fight him, Dario lunged at it. How the foul being sensed the threat, she would never know, but it turned towards the wall, arm and sword held high to the side, forcing her guard to jump back, his stomach sucked in. Rokan slashed, severing the free hand that was held out towards his neck.

  “Remove sword,” Weng Wu ordered.

  The problem was the dead fiend boasted some skill with a weapon. With parries and slashes, it kept both men occupied. Together, her guards were just able to slow its advance, and that was without the distraction of the severed hand crawling over the dead man’s foot. The fingers clawed their way up leg and torso, and worked their way along the arm. Tendons, ligaments and muscles flicked out, coiled together and snapped taut until the ends met and knitted. The edges of the rotting skin pulled together, healing with a white scar. All the while the soulous kept advancing, slashing, reaching out with an open hand.

  It turned the sword from Dario, and struck Rokan, slicing his arm. Dario stabbed, sliding his sword between the ribs. The blow took him inside the creature’s reach. Dario ducked as the soulous twisted, whirling its sword over his head. The reattached hand jerked, grabbed Dario around the neck and lifted. The poor man gurgled as his feet left the ground. Two handed, Rokan brought his sword down and severed the hand.

  Dario fell to the ground, the hand squeezing. He squirmed, clutching at the gripping fingers. The blue tinge to the guard’s face alarmed her. Dodging the wild swing of the soulous’s sword, Rokan was unable to do more than inflict a couple of pricks.

  Any further delay and her man would be dead. Jordayne dismounted and ran to him.

  “No, my lady,” Rokan said. He executed a desperate swing at the fiend’s neck. Even though he missed, he kept slashing with abandon, holding it off Dario, and her.

  She tugged at the stiff fingers, unable to pry them free. Dario’s eyes were bulging; the whites were becoming bloodshot. Taking her dagger from where it hung at her waist, she hewed through the thumb and tossed it away. Weng Wu appeared beside her, net in hand. He prised one finger free. She cut it off, and he threw it down the alley. The thumb had already wormed its way to her heel. Vae help her, but she jumped away from it. The thumb crawled over Dario’s chest to the severed wrist, its muscles dark with death and devoid of blood. Bubbles of saliva oozed from Dario’s mouth. His gurgle was horrifying. As the thumb reattached itself to the hand, she slid her dagger under the palm, impaled the fleshy pad and flung the hand as far from the soulous as she could manage.

  “Your dagger,” she demanded as Dario took a gasp. To his credit, he plucked the weapon from his boot even as he struggled to one knee. She seized it, and strode after Rokan with none of the confidence she hoped she portrayed, and a swishing of her skirts that was bound to entangle her legs at the most inopportune time.

  “Turn him,” she ordered.

  “My lady.”

  “Don’t make me replace you with one of those callow Slope boys. It would end badly for everyone involved.”

  He did as she asked, saw the daggers in her hands, Dario’s and her own, and bobbed as she threw, one after the other. They landed one in each eye. The soulous halted, turned its head and took a tentative step. Rokan hacked off the sword hand with a horrendous yell. The soulous swung at the sergeant. Rokan ducked to avoid a pummelling from its stumps. He stomped upon the hand, and retreated as the sightless soulous swayed from one side of the cobbled lane to the other.

  With an agility that belied his age, Weng Wu cast the net. Fanning open, it floated over the soulous. Rokan threw himself at the corpse, toppling it to the ground. Jordayne walked up and plucked the daggers from its eyes. She handed the plain weapon to Dario. His breaths rasped close to a fatal crush of the throat. She sheathed her own dagger. For an object of exquisite workmanship, it had seen too much action of late.

  The persistent soulous was struggling within the net. Imbued with a foreign magic, the cords shimmered green. She blinked as the enchanted rope wrapped itself around the torn ends of the net. Dear Rokan didn’t hesitate to grab the rope and heft the soulous over his neighing horse. The beast, sensing the foul nature of its burden, shied.

  “Easy,” Rokan calmed the gelding. It tossed its head, affecting an uneasy truce as they hauled the undead man past retreating citizens to Weng Wu’s Eastern Emporium.

  Inside the shop, Ming took one look at their catch and rotated the sign on the door to closed. Rokan and Dario, stoic to the last, lugged the netted soulous pas
t the dusty curios in the front room into the clutter of the interior. They dropped it in the first patch of clear floor they found.

  “Get yourselves attended to,” she ordered.

  Dario looked to Rokan, whose stubborn examination of the slash to his arm kept him rooted to the spot. She fixed her sergeant with a withering look and a sigh of exasperation.

  “Wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t attend to you first,” he said, with a cheeky wink.

  Ming glanced at the sergeant with respect as he finished attaching a rope to the top of the net. He threw the end over a beam, tugged on it, and raised their catch.

  “I have no desire to explain to that wife of yours why a black magician decided to test his spell upon her husband,” Jordayne said.

  “My lady,” Rokan said, bowing his head. She caught his grin and noted how he quickened his pace to the door. Dario was right behind him.

  Arms folded, hands in his sleeves, Weng Wu regard her with the solemnity of a monk. “What you have me do lady?” he asked.

  “Disab –” The question caught her unaware. As the curiosity of it struck, she cut herself off. The magician was harbouring a dozen or so souls the last time she checked. He had hinted they were insurance against the nightmare to come. It followed he must maintain a degree of influence over them.

  “How is it this soulous evades your control?” she asked.

  “This corpse zombie. Soulous the soul light inside.”

  She stood corrected. Her index finger drifted over a porcelain urn painted with dragons twisting through mist laden hills. The vessel was centuries old, no doubt. A light touch rocked it, and brought it to rest.

  Weng Wu refused to take the bait. “Do not demean yourself, lady. I already agree to help. Your answer, yes, is ceremony to bind soulous to maker’s will.”

  “Ah.” The man was open to reason. She lifted her finger but stayed it just above the rim. “And you could, I presume, control it.” Ming, having finished securing the rope, was too attentive. “Of course you could. So what function, Master Wu, can a soulous perform?”

  “Great-grandfather,” Ming said, his face tight.

  Weng Wu’s face dropped in disappointment. “Your parents teach you manners, boy. Fetch lady chair.”

  Without another word, the dear boy went to do the old man’s bidding. Now that was respect of a kind Myklaan’s younger generation were lacking. Weng Wu waited until he disappeared behind a stack of crates to speak.

  “Soulous and zombie creature of black magic. When soulous bound to will, it follow most foul command of maker. Dead man cannot die.”

  “Can it be ordered?”

  “Can. But beware, Lady. It no distinguish right from wrong, innocent from guilty.”

  Jordayne walked around the net. Inside, the soulous moved arms and legs in a vain, uncomprehending attempt to walk free. It was her citizens’ souls Weng Wu bound and hoarded. She had tolerated that abuse and weathered a nasty fight with Drucilamere on the say so of an ancient, foreign magician. Only because she needed to verify the truth of what Wu said, only because of that and not in the least because of the hatred simmering in her, did she mark her resolve.

  “Bind this zombie to hunt a drug dealer by the name of Prahak deq Fraaq. Bind it to kill that man.”

  Weng Wu closed his eyes and pressed his hands together as though in prayer. A chime sounded, though she could not locate the source. The zombie fell still. “Lady, there is saying in eastern Xueyim,” Wu said, with the gravity of his years. “One who bestows sorrow courts it.”

  “We have a similar maxim, Master Wu. And the one who inflicted pain on me is about to reap his due. Do it.”

  “Not so easy. Need something of man.”

  “Will this do?” Rolling the waistband of her skirt, she unpinned a square of fabric and unwrapped the splinter of nail she had shredded off Prahak.

  Weng Wu bowed to her.

  Ming allowed the chair in his hands to drop to the floor. Its hollow thud echoed around the room.

  “You will assist, Weng Ming.”

  “Great-grandfather!”

  The magician addressed the lad in their own tongue.

  The boy bowed his head, a predictable response. “Yes, great-grandfather.” Ming collected a shallow earthenware bowl from on top of one of the crates and brought it to his grandfather with a bow. It was unremarkable except for the green-white glaze on the inside. Jordayne walked among the artefacts – stelae carved with cryptic symbols, wooden horses, and daggers with the most intricate of scrimshaw handles – while Ming collected the noxious ingredients for his great-grandfather’s black art. From the front shop, he returned with spider legs, cockroaches, and squishy eyes whose origins she had no desire to learn. From the office, he returned with a peculiar bean and a puffer fish, from which the old magician cut the spine. Weng Wu placed the hair, nail and bean with the other ingredients and squeezed drops of the puffer fish toxin into the mix. This was potent poison Ming was grinding into a thick paste.

  The magician pointed at the corpse. His great-grandson looked closer to retching than she as he hooked a piece of bowel on a pole and pulled it through the net. Using his nail, Wu sliced through the bowel and applied paste inside. When he was done, he broke off the tip of his nail and uttered a foreign word. It dissolved, removing any chance a fiend might have of turning that body part to black magic.

  Raising a hand, the magician spoke a single word. Chimes light and deep rang across the room. The lad mouthed a chant. She caught the drug dealer’s name. The chimes faded until a solitary bell tinged. At each ding, Wu spoke a word. The zombie jerked. A thrill of dread seized her heart. When she thought she would be unable to bear another second, the room fell silent.

  “Lady, deed is done.”

  “I thank you, Master Wu. Let him free.”

  The unhappy Ming lowered the net. As though waking from death, the zombie began to move. The effort it took to drag the dead man through the maze of crates and into the front shop brought beads of perspiration to his head. At the door, he let go.

  “You can’t mean to have us dump this creature in full view of every passer-by.”

  “Of course not. I do not wish to lose the only dark magicians in Myklaan in a revolt.” Jordayne opened the door and beckoned one of the guards Rokan had summoned in his place. “I need your sword.”

  “My lady?”

  “Are you slow or merely deaf?” His reluctance to relinquish his weapon was annoying. “Now clear the street and all the shops along it of every last person who might witness what we are about to do. You may tell them the zombie is headed this way.”

  He seemed about to protest, registered her haughty stare, and said, “My lady,” without the conviction she expected from her men. With a war coming, Matisse had to find a way to drill them to unquestioning obedience.

  The evacuation took longer than expected but, at a nod from her guards, Ming at last dragged the net into the street and kicked the zombie onto his stomach. Taking the sword, he slashed through the rope and used the tip to part the net. The zombie had no trouble sensing it was free. It crawled out and stood. Jordayne held out her hand for the sword. She tossed it at the zombie. It hit side on and clanged to the ground, but the zombie stopped, turned and picked it up. They filed into the shop before it could focus its foul attention on them.

  “Innocent men will die,” Ming said, closing the door. Perspiration was running down his cheeks and it was not, she guessed, from exertion.

  “They already have. And more will perish if we don’t find a way to defeat the forces your great-grandfather believes are hurling towards our land.”

  “The black arts are not the solution.”

  “Your great-grandfather disagrees.”

  His head shot up in surprise. Face pinched, he let out a tirade of eastern words. Well this was a welcome side to the lad. Weng Wu accepted the assault with impressive calm.

  “To question elder’s judgement is to judge without wisdom of elder,” Weng
Wu educated when the lad had finished. “Now come. I have question.” He led the way to the storage room. “Why such display?” Weng Wu asked, surveying the exhibition of a centuries old porcelain urn, a gold statue of a snarling tiger and a knife with a jade dragon hilt.

  “The lady requested a wedding gift.”

  “Hmm.” Wu tucked his hands into his wide sleeves while his gaze appraised each item in turn. “No union last, but Shah now marry again.”

  “My dear uncle deserves some happiness in life.”

  “You respect shah? You wish shah safe?”

  “I am not so diabolical I would visit ill upon my own blood.”

  “No. You support hospice. You save addicts. You think shah good for Myklaan, then shah good.”

  “Has the realm not prospered? Have you not thrived Master Weng Wu?”

  “Weng Ming,” Wu said, and switched to sonorous eastern tongue.

  Ming stared. Weng Wu held his gaze until the young man bowed his head and shoulders. “As you wish, great-grandfather.” He walked behind the crate she knew shielded the entrance to Wu’s hidden office. When he returned he held a mahogany case. With a fleeting sulk unbecoming his disposition, he placed it on a crate.

  “This gift is unsurpassed,” Ming said. He waited.

  Jordayne flipped open the catch. Inside, wrought of gold and gems was the most exquisite butterfly she had ever seen. The figure itself was primitive; two wings of crimson that stretched the length of her forearm. Yet somehow the craftsman had captured the essence of the Vae themselves. The sapphires and emeralds sitting atop the extremities, the two diamonds inlaid in the centre, a body of gold studded with tiny gems – all these combined into a beauty the beholder could weep to look at. And the workmanship! Her dagger paled by comparison.

  “This is indeed a most fitting gift. You are a devil, Weng Wu, for now I’ve seen this nothing else will suffice. Well then, let us talk business.”

  Weng Wu took a quill, dipped it in ink, wrote a figure and passed it to her. If her face betrayed her shock, no one commented on it. “I see you took my instructions to heart,” she said to Ming. But the young man’s worry had given him more wrinkles than Wu. “What exactly is this much gold paying for?”