Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  The guards at the decadent palace stood ready to bar his way before he reached the elaborate gates. They were wrought with feather-throated schkaan, tiny flittering muid, scaled veli and the thorny bazwaeel: creatures of legend, imperilled by the iron depicting them. Behind them, the wet, golden domes and green-tiled minarets of Kaijoor Palace gleamed bright against the grey sky, draining the very commoners their occupants had pledged to protect.

  “I’ve come as a conscript,” he told the guard. In a bold move which was sure to please the lady he added, “Lady Jordayne will vouch for my bravery.”

  “Sergeant!” the guard called.

  The burly sergeant denied knowledge of new recruits but took Rondel’s name, gave his word he would check with the lady herself, and asked Rondel to return on the morrow. It was more than a marked man could wish for.

  His last stop was in the triangle around the Temple of the Vae. It took some time pressing his fingers into the masonry, but he found a hole to stash his magic carpet, behind a loose stone in the wall of Vae’oldin’s abbey. It took longer waiting for the moment when he would not be observed.

  As a fresh shower began to spatter, Rondel put his hand in his pocket and fingered his five lek. He had enough coin to purchase an evening meal. The ignorant, unchosen masses could wag their warning tongues off. Far from drawing down a curse, a visit from a djinn had unburdened his life.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The whoosh of oars lulled Kordahla into a trance that fogged the djinn-tainted stench. When the sun had dipped to the horizon, enriching the brown of the sluggish water, Arun came for her. He escorted her past the men, who had learned under threat of the whip not to stare, to Ahkdul’s cabin, pungent with the scent of sandalwood splashed over the thin, tight-fitting planks.

  They crowded her around a small table bolted to the floor, opposite her despicable betrothed and next to Mariano. Ahkdul had draped it with a cloth and ordered it set with burnished silverware. Her indifference might have embittered him, but his shallow effort kindled no affection.

  Arun removed his hood as the voluble, overweight cook lowered his tray between them and served dull metal bowls of a watery broth swimming with chunks of fish, white beans and onions. Not for her the audacity of removing her veil in the company of men, though she must uncover her mouth to eat. She should have pleaded false shyness. One whiff of the rot-tainted fish stew and she held her hand over her mouth to fight down bile.

  “As unpalatable as it is, it will nourish. You will eat.”

  She raised defiant eyes to Ahkdul and shook her head.

  “You will eat.”

  She turned her head away.

  “You insult our host. Neither he nor I can be expected to tolerate your behaviour.” In the set of Mariano’s shoulders, she saw the threat of another beating. Ahkdul had washed and combed his hair to neatness, and scraped the dirt from beneath his nails. Never could his prominent, shadowing brow, large nose and bushy eyebrows permit him attractiveness, but his effort would have endeared a more compassionate man.

  She dropped her eyes to her brother’s full bowl, where his spoon rested with a sip of the stew on it, picked up her own and forced the noxious brew into her mouth. The liberal sprinkling of herbs could neither disguise the vile taste nor settle her stomach’s revolt. She had time to turn before she vomited upon the floor. Her indiscretion pinched Mariano’s face. She did not need Ahkdul’s large hand to tighten on his mug of sour wine to understand how she disappointed. She used a corner of the tablecloth to wipe traces of her vomit from her mouth while Arun called a disgusted sailor to clean the mess.

  “Your Highness, my lord, perhaps a celebration is in order?” Arun said.

  She might have betrayed herself, tense with the effort it took to keep her eyes from the warmth of his open face, his golden-brown hair, his impeccable goatee. The men were so still, so grim.

  Palms flat on the table, Ahkdul stood and leaned over so that his face hung over hers. “Will you celebrate our engagement?”

  She swallowed as she nodded. To refuse was to insult him beyond tolerance.

  “It is fitting. There has not been the time,” Mariano said, as though the last weeks had been a mere hiccup in Father’s political ambitions.

  The flash of blue light obscured their features, a blessing which enabled her to regain her composure. She almost wept when she saw the feast Arun provided: roast quail, vegetables sprinkled with her favourite soft cheese and drizzled with honey, the spicy dried fruit and pistachio rice she adored. Her stomach growled as he poured a delicate wine that made it easy to listen to Ahkdul’s account of life in Verdaan. Her despised betrothed relaxed as she ate and, truly, she would have felt fine but for her worry over Vinsant. It took a cloud of the noxious, marshy stench to settle aboard the boat for her to find the chance she was looking for. Kordahla stood.

  “Please. I have need of a sound sleep. Minoria Arun, will you ease my rest?” she asked.

  Ahkdul was up before the mahktashaan could respond.

  “You have shown your magic to be swift,” Mariano said, crowding her.

  Arun’s submissive bow unnerved her. Her palms had become sweaty, as though this speaking to her own beloved little brother were some illicit act. Her heart quickened as Arun, calm as ever, eased back her veil.

  I must speak to my brother.

  There is not the time, Princess. Let me at least ensure you remain settled.

  Please, I must speak to Vinsant.

  Her queasiness subsided but he gave no reply, releasing her within moments. Crystal aglow, he held out his hand and offered a small jar. “Should you find yourself indisposed, rub a little of this ointment under your nose. It will help mask foul odours.” As she took it, he twisted his other hand to reveal another jar. It bore a label inscribed with Physic Nocrates’s elongated letters. “This gingerroot will settle your stomach.”

  “Thank you,” she said, though in her disappointment she refused to look him in the eye, to feel the flutter in her stomach whenever she beheld his startling cerulean gaze. She left the close confines of the cabin for the breezy deck. A single, faint star glowed through a gap in the blanket of cloud, white with a tinge of blue. Shadowed by Mariano, she had no choice but to retire and fret the night away.

  Chapter 32

  THE PATHS THEY walked were little worn, no more than a flattening of fallen leaves beneath woven branches which barred the clouded sun and dripped plump raindrops. Erok found the leaf markers carved onto towering trunks to guide them westward over roots that rose to his hip.

  The wind tugged the smell of rotten eggs down the wooded slope and across their path. The affection Erok showed just to her returned to his face. He had hidden it deep since they returned from Myklaan. He was a strong hunter and she was an afflicted girl, and if the Tribe saw it they would think less of him.

  Old Orin placed both hands on his staff and sagged. “Lead us to sunset,” he said. His face was haggard and the thin skin beneath his white eyes drooped low on his cheeks. The soothsayer could not take a step without tripping over root or rock or his own feet today. It made the going awkward slow.

  “This way,” Erok said, turning between two boulders.

  Sian shuffled. The marker was a Pa’akerin wolf. If they passed it, they would leave Ho’akerin land. They would travel towards the source of the smell.

  Orin took her arm. “Lead on, child.”

  She walked the damp, uneven, leaf-littered ground between the boulders too quick. Orin faltered, and her arm pulled free of his hand.

  “I need a rest,” she called to Erok, when what she meant was Orin needed one.

  Her hunter walked four paces more before tilting his head far back. “A short one,” he said, rubbing his puckered brow. He helped the gnarled soothsayer sit on a knobbly root, all outward respect even if his stiffness spilled all the frustration he was trying to stuff inside. He nodded at some brambles. “Why don’t you see if you can find some berries?”

  Sian nodded, and he
aded for the thicket. She spied a tuft of onion grass and ducked behind a bush where she could gather it to flavour their stew. She could see his handsome face if she peeped through the leaves. It wore a new gravity. Not the simmering anger he had harboured since that terrible night in Myklaan. That had always softened when he looked at her. This expression didn’t do that. She needed to be very good, and never complain so he wouldn’t resent her. She chewed on a blade of the onion grass to settle her nerves. Its bitter vapours brought tears to her eyes.

  “The girl misses your company,” Orin said. “She will have great need of a friend.”

  “Hmm,” Erok grunted as Brax returned with a speared rabbit. He met his friend so that he wouldn’t have to face those probing white eyes.

  Brax walked right past them both and sat apart. He flung his prey down, drew a stone axe out of a pouch and chipped away at a spear tip. Stone flakes flew in all directions. Erok picked up the rabbit, sat next to Brax, and began to skin it. They worked in silence for so long, Sian started to creep away.

  “I’m going back,” Brax said without looking up.

  Sian edged closer so the wind would blow her every word.

  Erok scraped his bone knife under the fur on the rabbit’s flank. “Draykan will not be pleased.”

  “I came because he ordered me to, but there is no need for both of us to be here. Our village is being destroyed while we play nursemaid to a soothsayer and a girl. I am a hunter. I itch to fight for my home, for my people’s lives.”

  “The Ho’akerin need a soothsayer.”

  “The Akerin soothsayers can beseech the spirits to heal Ishoa.”

  Erok dug his knife into the rabbit’s hip joint, and severed its leg. “It is after I will need you,” he said. “I cannot lead the two of them.”

  Brax spat. “You assume much of a girl who has mindless fits.” The wind gusted, and he shivered.

  Sian hugged her arms around her. It didn’t matter what mood the forest was in, he was right, he was right, he was so right. The soothsayer didn’t move from the root but he had to be hearing this. Orin would realise how wrong he was about her.

  Erok took a deep breath. “It is not her fault. The spirits are testing her.”

  Brax’s sharp strikes on the spear head became long, slow shaves. “They will brand us coward when we return. They will say Draykan sent his son and son’s friend on a path to safety.”

  For a time, Erok didn’t reply. His hands worked to gut the rabbit. Leaves red, orange and yellow drifted down from the canopy around him. “A great many things happened in Myklaan,” he said at last. “I do not understand all that passed, but it was Ishoa who set us on this path. It is the will of all five soothsayers.”

  “You fret and frown over it as much as I.” Brax had stopped working the stone altogether. He still wasn’t looking at anyone.

  Erok made a sharp scoop of his head, as though working out a crick. “Are you Ho’akerin or do you, too, seek to challenge the leadership?”

  “There will be no Ho’akerin to return to.” Brax flung axe and spear tip down as he stood.

  “I cannot stop you if you wish to go.”

  The kick was fierce; it lifted leaves off the dirt. Brax stormed off before they had settled.

  When Erok found the courage to look around, old Orin showed no expression. “Brax is a good hunter and a good friend.”

  “He must learn to be a good Akerin.”

  “As must I. Say it, soothsayer. You know I resent this journey. My heart cannot rejoice in this task while our village is in danger.”

  Orin made a sign of blessing. “The spirits guide you.”

  Erok sighed in resignation and replied in the way of the tribe. “The spirits reach you.”

  Leaning on his staff, Orin hauled himself up. “Sian has been too long alone. She will not finish this journey without you.”

  “Is that the voice of the spirits?”

  “It is the say of an old man, who has lived through youth and seen countless young ones grow up.”

  Orin turned his head. His sightless eyes bored right into her. Sian ducked deeper into the thicket so he wouldn’t see her with the vision of the spirits. She crawled until she could get to the blackberry brambles unseen. A few handfuls of the juicy fruit stuffed into her mouth helped fill the gnawing void. If she picked enough fat berries to fill a reed basket, Brax might forgive her for having to tag along. He might not think her a useless, mindless girl. She stretched up to pluck the plumpest fruit. The breeze sprinkled her with crumbled leaves as it twirled a black speck around her head. She would never have noticed it if her stomach hadn’t clenched with an aversion so strong she twisted right into the thorns. They snagged her clothing, pinning her as the speck sailed onto her cheek.

  Its touch triggered an explosion of horror. A figure sprang into her mind, cloaked, robed and hooded in black. He turned his head over his shoulder as though sensing she stood behind him. His curiosity gave way to a burning need. One hand rose to his black crystal, and dark rays sprang out, tracking her across the miles, pinning her to the bush and boring into her mind. The black light laid her life bare, peeling layers of memory apart: the taunting, the fits, the vision, the rape, Faradil’s succouring and, in one shadowed recess, the night she had rolled into the fire in the darkness of a fit. That memory he seized, and dissected, and lived, and relived in triumphant glee as she screamed and screamed from the pain of the fire. The sickening intrusion clawed on and on, until her sight turned as black as the light.

  No. Fitting now would leave her vulnerable to this evil. Her mind was narrowing, but the spirits were here, as they had been when she had glimpsed Timak in the burning dream. Help me. She pushed against the black light, and the beams retreated.

  Her resistance drove him to grip tighter. He poked, battered and tore, a violation more devastating than any she had known. Deeper and deeper he dove into her mind until he found a nook she had not known existed. His brutal touch triggered an ancient power. Around her, the sky darkened, the trees bent and the earth engulfed her. With their force behind her she surged towards the invader as he had flown towards her.

  She flew too far, right into his memory, to a time he was kneeling outside a cave, pulling a tag of burned skin off his arm, and releasing it to the wind, to sail across the snowy peak.

  He gasped and jerked. His hood dislodged revealing unnatural, black eyes. His sleeve slid from a hand burned to charred tendon, and bone, and rotting remnants of flesh. He let out a frustrated shout, and she was free of him, staring at the sky, screaming, screaming, with Erok and Orin standing over her. Her hunter reached out to her, wary of touch.

  “There is a scrap of burnt flesh on her face,” Orin said. “Take it. Bury it so deep it will never see the light of day while the soul it came from lives.”

  Her relief when Erok plucked the speck from her face was immediate.

  “Brax,” Erok called.

  His friend stood nearby, his forehead resting on the trunk of a silk tree. He shook his head and strode off.

  “Do it now,” Orin said.

  She was no longer screaming but anxious, so anxious. Erok did not want to guide her, and Brax knew she had half a brain. They didn’t want to be here, they resented her. They resented her. She kept hold of that, repeating it, because if she was stressed enough she would fit and Orin would see it was all a mistake.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The pull back into his own body was violent. Levi fell to his knees on the rocky path down the snow-capped peak.

  “I will be whole again.”

  “Majoria,” one of the concerned mahktashaan who accompanied him murmured.

  Levi growled. He had not meant to speak aloud. “Leave me,” he commanded, his voice gravel. He brushed away the proffered hand. So rapt in his ecstasy was he, he failed to notice who it was. An unimportant detail. His soldiers were insignificant next to him, majoria, favoured of Mahktos.

  Light-headed and overjoyed, Levi looked straight into the clear sky.
The offering he had made before entering the Crystalite Mines had borne fruit. A day past the Temple of the Rift, it was fitting Mahktos should have gifted him this vision here, so close to where he had sustained the injury in His name. He waited until his mahktashaan dipped out of sight below a ridge. Then he pulled the gilt statue of Mahktos out of his pack. He had taken it from pride of place in his private rooms in the mahktashaan lair. There, on a solid gold pedestal he had demanded of the shah, it served as a constant reminder of his due. Here, carried all the way from Terlaan, it was his direct link to the god. He set it on a patch of crisp snow and made fervent obeisance before it.

  Before this statue, in a ruined, overgrown temple that once served a hamlet in the barren central province of Quorn, he had first seen a mahktashaan. He had been hiding from his father’s dominating rage at the Vae for neglecting to send rain. The mysterious traveller’s meticulous tending of the neglected statue had intrigued him. It could have been no coincidence as the hooded and cloaked figure left, the heavens poured. Without a qualm, eleven-year-old Levi returned home, avoided his mother, his siblings, and the colourful bruises his father was dishing out, and packed provisions. He left without a word to anyone, collecting the statue from the temple on his way.

  For almost two weeks he tramped northeast, drinking from muddy puddles and chewing grass like the beasts, living on prayer until he reached Tarana and sat outside the marvellous carved walls of the palace, asking for apprenticeship to the mahktashaan whenever the guards came out to turn him away. They had laughed at him. He hadn’t cared. Day after day, he stood before them and repeated his demand, until one mahktashaan deigned to notice him from atop his midnight mount. Quick as a squirrel despite the gnawing hunger, Levi made obeisance and demanded his right. Hooded, cloaked, a purple crystal around his neck all that distinguished him from the mysterious traveller to Quorn, the mahktashaan reigned in his black horse.