Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  All honour to you, Majoria, he said, wavering in an odd place between sarcasm and humility because there was bound to be some way Levi could punish him even across all this snowy, mountainous distance.

  For what calamity do you dare to interrupt me, apprentice?

  The hostility turned Vinsant’s mind blank. Um, was all he managed to say.

  Minekeeper Fenz informs me you are again in disgrace.

  Vinsant swallowed. Yes, Majoria. Levi was being downright cruel to remind him of the disaster in the mines. He could feel tears threatening.

  Your lessons in humility have not met with success.

  No, Majoria. I look forward to more of your discipline, Majoria. He winced.

  There is such a thing, apprentice, as taking things too far.

  Yes, Majoria. Um. It’s just that I can’t contact the minoria.

  You thoughtlinked? It sounded like an accusation.

  I wanted to find out how my sister was doing. Vinsant kept his thought-voice level. Whatever everyone seemed to think, there was nothing wrong with speaking to Kordahla.

  A stab of some emotion shot down the link, subdued before Vinsant could identify it. It smelled suspiciously similar to the relish with which Levi had suggested he pursue Kordahla, all of a major moon and a half ago when she had first escaped. Vinsant bit his lip. Arun hadn’t ignited his crystal. He hadn’t wanted anyone on the boat to know he was alive. That left Vinsant with wavering doubts about whether Arun would want Levi to know.

  The minoria will be occupied with ensuring your sister is compliant with the shah’s wishes.

  He was talking about Kordahla like she was beneath them. It’s not just that Minoria Arun doesn’t answer. It’s like he. . . Vinsant took a deep breath. It’s like he’s not there. Not anywhere. Like he was dead. He had been so weak when he seized Vinsant’s crystal.

  Levi broke the link without so much as a “you have done well to tell me, apprentice.” Vinsant wiped a raindrop off his nose. When another hit his head, he shielded and listened to them sizzle as they struck. He bet himself a caramel walnut pastry that majoria or minoria made contact before the drizzle became a downpour.

  When did you last talk? Levi snarled as Vae’omar released a deluge of his tears.

  In Vinsant’s estimation, he had won that sweet. Um. Six nights ago. Five in truth, but he wasn’t quite ready to reveal Arun had seized control of his crystal. He pulled his hood over his head and shivered. Water was running off his hair and into his eyes, and the stones felt cold and lumpy under his behind. This inability to work magic while sustaining a link during what was bound to be a very long session with his esteemed leader was going to leave him saturated.

  Sure enough, Levi pressed for details.

  Mariano discovered we were talking. He was not impressed with me usurping the minoria’s attention. That was the truth; he hadn’t lied.

  You are withholding vital information, apprentice.

  Vinsant sneezed. I wanted to talk to Kordahla. That was nothing but truth. By the time Mariano returned home, the details would be immaterial.

  There it was again, tension at the mention of his sister, something as dark as the storm brewing in Levi. Why can’t I reach the minoria?

  It is not your concern.

  The link snapped. Vinsant put a shield up and squeezed the water out of his hair and robe. A horrible knot had settled in his stomach. Tight enough to steal his appetite for that pastry. Arun had to be up to his ears in scum. If he was even alive.

  Chapter 48

  THE PULL WOKE Sian before dawn. It coursed through her like a flooding stream, Spirit Lake calling to her.

  A breeze swept through the camp, dragging leaves and pods across the earth, over the sleeping men, into the fire. The pods cracked open, spilling seeds which popped and burned to a wisp of bitter-sweet smoke. It curled its way through the camp, over the soldiers lying in their bedrolls, their oblivious faces clear under a sweep of Dindarin’s green light. It lingered around the man on watch, twisting into his nose. His head drooped as he yawned and he eased himself down into the crook of two high roots.

  Amid the steady breaths of sleeping men, Sian rose. Daesoa’s yellow moonbeam brushed the dried leaves and mossy logs, lighting her way. She followed it through the circle of red-leaf oaks up to the ridge. Orin was waiting by the water’s edge, the enormous power of the steamy lake banked behind him. Gone was any trace of the frail, old man. Here he stood the most revered of the soothsayers of the Akerin, the guardian of Spirit Lake. Sian did not slip on scree once as she joined him. Together, silent, they contemplated the water, bubbles plopping as they broke the surface.

  She took a deep breath. Her choice was impossible. It would be so easy to ignore the call. The Forest would allow them passage. The gale would die to stillness and the rain dry to mist. But Erok was wrong. She surrendered to the spirits now or she rejected them forever.

  The sun peeped over the ridge. Its beams reflected off the scree, orange and yellow like dancing flames.

  “The choice is upon you,” Orin said.

  “Ishoa. . .” There were never two.

  “The spirits have chosen.”

  I am scared.

  You would be unworthy if you were not.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She never meant it to come out as a sob but the blue lake was so beautiful, bubbling up pure, white steam under a soaring, apricot sky. It would be so easy to turn her back on the call, to keep colour and shape, distance and depth in her heart.

  The answer is within me.

  The lake tugged at the deepest place in her soul.

  Faradil resides there and Faradil is not a mistake.

  A tear welled in her eye.

  And the other, my sight, it is a selfish thing.

  The tear overflowed, blurring the water.

  Hanging onto it makes me as mean as my mam claims.

  The tear dribbled down her cheek.

  There are never two.

  She loved Ishoa, loved her more than anyone else in the entire forest.

  “Ishoa’s fate is the spirits’ and theirs alone.” Orin was leaning on his staff, intent on the simmering lake. “It is a choice, Sian. In dire times, each tribe has suffered for the lack of a soothsayer. But we have survived.”

  Deep in her, the Forest lurched. Sian gasped at the glimpse of its wisdom. This time was different. Without its soothsayers, the Akerin would wither and die. She stepped into the lake. The water lapped warm around her ankles. High above, the moons flared into fullness. She turned her face to their light. Their beams fell full upon her, yellow and green. The tug of Spirit Lake strengthened. She waded in, succumbing to the call. The soft water closed over her head, claiming her, caressing her. It felt like coming home. Around her, spirits danced, tugging at her fingers and toes, fanning through her hair and flitting through her eyelashes. Water Spirits, Earth Spirits, Air Spirits, Forest Spirits, all spinning through her, in her, in the dizzying blue lake. Between them, the ululating song of the soothsayer rippled faint through the water. Voices she knew threaded through it, Joser and Mun, Mila and Ishoa, setting the beat, guiding and preparing her.

  The spirits were all before her, two rows of billowing light. Their tremors demanded a crescendo in the soothsayers’ song and on that high, piercing note, they streamed into her eyes with a stab of pain so intense the waters turned black. Down her throat they coursed, into her heart, through her veins and up again to pour out of her mouth and cover her body. They carried her to the sky, to Daesoa who showered her with seeds and petals, to Dindarin whose gem-tipped arrows arced down to pierce her eyes with blinding agony, to the Sun which bathed her in its searing heat. They bore her across the hills where the beat of the soothsayers’ song matched the beat of every insect’s wing, the beat of every animal’s heart. Its melody traced the smallest dip in every mound, hummock and hill. Its cadence surfed the current in every river, stream and pond. From the snowy peaks in the north to the mounds in the east, the entire Olon
o Range laid itself bare.

  The spirits and the song carried her back to Spirit Lake. She was no longer a girl; she was the Earth, the Air, the Forest, the Water. The spirits flitted around her, pressing gifts she did not deserve into her hands: Daesoa’s beam bloomed into a chrysanthemum; Dindarin’s light condensed into a green gem. The spirits spun their power into the gifts at the peak of the song: a wolf tooth from the Animals; a spiral shell from Water; an eagle feather from Sky. The treasures rose out of the water on a long staff worn smooth by currents and salt: an acorn from Forest; a pebble from Earth.

  Sian surfaced into darkness and the heat of the sun. She was blind, but how she could see! Raised above the lake was her staff. She reached up and claimed it and, as she did, Daesoa and Dindarin waxed to full, their beams alighting on her before they faded in the hidden brilliance of day.

  On the slope, the men were figures of light, Orin with the radiance of the spirits clinging to him, Erok verdant for the Forest, and Brax a homely blue beneath a harsh outer shell. The Terlaani were there too, indistinct, colourless. She waded out of the water, stood at the muddied edge and listened to the fading chant of the soothsayers.

  One voice dropped from the choir.

  Ishoa.

  Sian. Her name carried across the distance of the Olono Range. The spirits reach and guide you. You have made me proud.

  She clutched too tight at her staff. The waters will heal you.

  Have courage. You are the hope of the tribe.

  Ishoa!

  Nothing. Ishoa! Sian fell over her staff. The song flattened and roiled, the soothsayers mourning one of their own. Sian added her voice but it cracked as she sobbed.

  Strong arms caught her. Erok. She collapsed against him. He lifted her up and carried her over the crunching scree to the ridge, to the rustling oaks with their drifting leaves.

  “My brave Sian. You gave up your eyes.”

  She caught a leaf, cuddled into the comfort of his embrace and sent up her quivering voice. When the last note of her song had faded, she listened to the gentle plop of the lake.

  “Ishoa is dead,” she said when she had found words again. She opened her hand. The leaf drifted off her palm and over the scree. Her spirit-sight saw it land in the lake, and swirl until it disintegrated.

  Erok drew a deep breath.

  Tentative steps approached. Respectful hunter steps, not the careless lowlander crunch. “The spirits reach you,” Brax said.

  “The spirits guide you,” she replied in the way of a soothsayer, because it was expected of her.

  “The spirits reach you,” Erok echoed. He pressed an object into her hand. Her fingers slid over smooth derral. Her box of bones. He had carried it all this way.

  She placed her hand on his face, traced his brow, his cheek, his nose, his mouth, just as she had done last night. “Will you be brave for me?”

  He took her hand, brought it to his lips. “What is it you would have me do, Sian?”

  He spoke to her as a friend. She almost cried because of it. She shifted, and he drew her up. She knew without seeing she had met Orin’s eyes. He understood and his understanding ran deep, maybe deeper than any other soothsayer before him. But Faradil did not reside in him, not the way it resided in her.

  The sudden clatter of tumbling scree made her turn her head. Her lips parted. The mahktashaan had an aura the colour of his crystal. It ebbed and surged as he took in her steaming clothes, her white, sightless eyes, her dependence on the staff.

  “You are honoured among your people,” he said at last.

  She felt a trill as the spirits coursed through her blood. “Evil is descending on the world.” She felt foolish for delivering the foreboding message. “You already know this,” she blurted. This had been a mistake. She sounded stilted, like an uncertain girl standing in the sun not a soothsayer at one with it.

  “And so you wish us to turn you free?”

  “Let Erok and Orin go free. Brax will guide the soldiers to Myklaan. I will go with you to Terlaan.”

  “What is this?” Leader Terhel said, joining the mahktashaan. “The hill rat speaks Laanan.”

  The oaks rattled their branches, showering them with autumn leaves.

  “This child is a soothsayer. Among the Akerin they are as revered as a mahktashaan. We will do as she says.”

  “The old man is also a soothsayer. We left him to rot.”

  A thin branch cracked and fell on Terhel. She was a silly child to smile, at least until he snapped it over his knee. He was more blind than she.

  The mahktashaan picked up the pieces and laid them at the base of an oak. “The girl speaks a truth the old man chose not to reveal. The heavens are in turmoil and their disorder will bear upon the world. Your shah and majoria are aware of the peril.”

  “They sent us to Myklaan.”

  “The majoria asked this soothsayer girl come to Terlaan. She has agreed. That will suffice.”

  Terhel frowned. “The safety of a hill rat among my men is your –”

  The broken branches whipped Terhel in the leg. He shied and skidded down the scree. She giggled. Erok put his arm around her and gave a brief, squeezy hug.

  “I will take her,” the mahktashaan said. “Send Vermed with us. The rest will continue to Myklaan.”

  “This unnatural forest will not permit you to retrace your steps.”

  “It will not stop us now.”

  Sian reached out until she felt Erok’s arm. In Akerin, she said, “They will let you go. Brax, you must travel to Myklaan. Seek Magus Drucilamere and –” She broke off and bowed her head. What right did she have to command these men’s lives? To tell them what to do? Her, a sightless, outcast girl.

  “Soothsayer Sian,” Brax said, as though he read her thoughts. The title sounded all wrong. He glanced from her to Orin and back again. “Tell me what I must do.”

  She took a deep breath. She spoke the spirit’s will, but it was just her speaking, a girl with an immature voice. “You must seek permission for our people to enter Faradil Forest. Tell the mage I sent you. Tell him the time came. I did not run.”

  She shifted her weight, steadying herself with her staff so she could find Erok. Scree scraped under her feet. A hint of doubt wavered through her hunter’s aura.

  “Can you take Orin to Verdaan?”

  She heard the quick release of air through his nose, felt his warm breath at her ear as he leaned in and whispered, “Soothsayers don’t ask, Sian.” He had righted himself before she had time to blink.

  “Orin must tell the Verdaanis of the threat that approaches. He will need a guide and a protector. He will go, but you I must ask.” She bowed her head. Better than her, Erok knew how the Ri and Su Akerin condemned the Verdaani. None but the half-brained entered the north-western land. Those lowlanders hunted Hill Tribe like vermin. Few ever returned. She had heard the whispers of one who had escaped at the gathering. His friends had been butchered piece by piece, fed to jabberweis finger by toe as they bled to death, their murderers watching and laughing as they screamed.

  “What about you?” Erok demanded. She heard his frown.

  “I have a different journey to make.”

  “Sian?”

  “I am going to Terlaan.”

  She could have caught her hunters’ dismay in her hand. “I will take you,” he said. “Verdaan can wait.”

  Orin shambled beside her. “These journeys cannot wait. Evil already wreaks havoc among us.”

  She held her breath. Orin would go but he would not survive alone.

  Her hunter took harsh breaths. “Find your way to our village, Sian. I will come for you. If you are not there, I will turn over every stone in Terlaan to reach you.”

  Brax kept turning his head from her to Orin, and from Orin to her.

  “Ask your question, hunter,” Orin said, with a hint of a smile. “You will need to deliver my answer to the Tribe.”

  She heard Brax swallow. Hesitancy dried his mouth. “How is it a new soothsayer,
a young soothsayer. . . How is it she speaks for the Guardian of Spirit Lake?”

  Orin was standing soothsayer tall. “Look at her staff.”

  Wind ruffled her hair, blew the steam into a blanket around them. The mahktashaan and the soldiers coughed and spluttered but they would not make their way through. No outsider to the Akerin would witness this mystery, the gust catching the gifts dangling from her staff: the pod, the tooth, the feather, the shell, the pebble, and on top the green gem nestled in the yellow flower. They twirled as she lifted the staff in her hand.

  “Why?” Brax breathed. “She was born Ho’akerin. She is Soothsayer of the Ho’akerin. How is it she bears the symbols of all five Tribes upon her staff?”

  “So the spirits have decreed. Honour it,” Orin said.

  The steam lifted and the wind died.

  Chapter 49

  ARUN DROVE THE final nail into the warped plank on the roof of the hut. He had woken with sufficient strength to brave the hordes of buzzing flies and mend the leaks, repayment to the old couple for saving his life. It was more than he owed. His crystal was not within the cabin. He had fallen on it in the swamps, he was sure. If the stilted smiles and shoulder shrugs when he mentioned the crude belt he had fashioned from his robe were not confirmation enough, he had the bruise on his hip to prove it was so.

  The buffalo started lowing. He looked over the swampy grasslands towards the sluggish river. The old man had gone herding at the crack of dawn, riding north towards a village whose rickety wooden palisades were just visible from this height. He could make out the laidback fellow sitting on a cow, a crude whipping stick in hand as he talked to another man on another beast. The stranger was sitting too straight, too dismissive in the turn of his head. This was no friend.