Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  One by one the satraps came forward to offer congratulations and present their gifts. Their rehearsed words spilled into the shine of a hundred steady candles. Not for them the frivolous abandon of a drunken, joyous night. Not when their fortunes were in the hands of a dangerous man. Kordahla stared straight ahead. With luck, Ahkdul would exercise his privilege and continue to sip goblet after goblet of wine. As tedious as this was, she had no desire to retire to the swine’s attentions. For that reason alone, she could suffer through the satraps, the distant cousins, the rich merchants currying favour with extravagant gifts that might bankrupt their house if Lord Hudassan choose to overlook their services.

  “Werril, my lords. Your Majesty, Your Highnesses,” a bowing merchant corrected himself. The crude slur in the voice should have barred him entry. The decent clothing could not disguise his rough origins, the oiliness of his hair or the dirt encrusting his nails. She swallowed her distaste as he clasped a turban in his sweating hands while spouting effusive wishes through the murmurs of his bored betters. “In celebration of this munificent union, may I offer Shah Hudassan a concubine to appease the passing of his son from under his roof?” Werril’s accomplices pushed forward a frightened young woman with large eyes and a delicate nose. Kordahla gripped the armrests of her makeshift throne so tight her knuckles turned white. Hudassan was sitting up. He nodded, well pleased. She closed her eyes as the bound slave was drawn away. “And for Lord Ahkdul, a house boy. To tend to his daily needs,” Werril continued. He cleared his throat, as though that might avert the thoughts of abuse from the mind of every courtier there. The sound carried through the silent hall. She stalled her tears and opened her eyes on a startled boy. He was a little younger than Timak, with black hair that fell over his forehead and ears. Ahkdul’s smile near drove her to retch.

  “Your gifts are acceptable,” Lord Hudassan said, waving a hand in dismissal.

  Again Werril cleared his throat. “I’ve saved the best for last, Your Majesty.” Turning his turban up, he took out a bundle and unwrapped the corners with a confident flourish. Kordahla gasped as he presented the contents with a bow. Behind her, Mariano laid a hand on her shoulder. It was all that prevented her rising.

  “Have a care,” he murmured.

  She was trembling. Too many emotions were rushing through her blood straight to her heart, and she had not an inkling what they were.

  “And where,” Lord Hudassan drawled, almost off his throne himself, “is the one from whom you procured that stone?”

  Werril rocked onto the balls of his feet. “I regret he perished, Your Majesty. I fished his remains from the river myself, at great peril I might add.”

  The seneschal accepted the cerulean blue crystal. Hudassan waved him over with a hop to the very edge of his throne. He took the crystal without a thought to peril. His tender reverence disclaimed the murder which had procured him the stone. But that Mahktos would strike him down! She was a fool to wish it. When did the gods aid a grieving mortal woman? The oldest of them had not even intervened for one of His own.

  “This is a gift unrivalled.” Her greedy wed-father had the audacity to sling it around his neck, to stand in full view of his guests. The light danced off the crystal but it held no spark within. “A mahktashaan crystal,” he announced. It was no joyous exclamation, that, but a calculated ploy, for who would dare rise in revolt against him now? He did not even glance at the merchant as he said, “You shall be rewarded for your efforts.

  Chapter 53

  THE MAHKTASHAAN’S BLACK aura was thick with brooding power. It devastated the Sight out of Sian. Her knees started quivering and her tongue became as thick as a bloated puffer.

  “All praise to Mahktos. All honour to you, Majoria,” Mahktashaan Garzene said, with a ritualistic stamp of his foot.

  Sian stepped away. Her staff had become a cumbersome stick. It hit a table. She felt along it, moved right and hit the wall. She was a blind Hill Tribe girl at the mercy of the man who had torn her memories apart.

  “What is this? The girl I saw was not blind,” the majoria asked. His voice rasped with selfishness. She could feel his eyes dissecting her down to the source of her power. The spirits needed to spare her this violation.

  “The girl is a soothsayer. She bears a message from her people,” Garzene answered.

  “You permitted this?” An undercurrent of anger heated the voice.

  “Her spirits claimed her. Nothing within my power could have prevented her destiny. She agreed to come, Levi. The Inner Circle should hear her words.”

  “Leave us. Return to your troop. The shah has given the order to attack. He needs strong mahktashaan at the border.”

  “Attack? Are we not to first threaten with our might?”

  “Do you question your shah?”

  “No, Majoria.”

  Sian turned to where she thought Garzene might be. He couldn’t leave her with this man. He wouldn’t when he saw she was shaking. He had been kind to her on the boat trip down the river, telling her about the lowland, filling her bowl with nourishing food, finding a fur-lined cloak to keep her warm. They had made the journey with bewildering speed. She had not had time to prepare.

  Two heartbeats passed; three. She felt Garzene move close. His hand brushed her cheek.

  “Sian, be true to your people.”

  She turned her face away.

  His foot stamped. His voice changed. “All honour to you, Majoria.” His reluctant footsteps receded. The fearsome man approached, heavy in his sturdy boots. She could hear nothing else but his dry breath in this deep, dark maze, down thirty-two stone steps, through forty-eight narrow doors.

  “Are you Shah?” she asked. The words cracked in her dry mouth. Her hand was too tight on her staff.

  “I am majoria, first in the heart of Mahktos, the first of all gods, and first in the favour of the shah.” He pulled the staff from her hand. “You will kneel in my presence, Akerin girl.

  She was too new to her power, and it had deserted her. She was just a girl, separated from everyone she knew. The loss of her sight terrified her. The cacophonous, teeming city overwhelmed her. But this deep, dark lair – it was devouring her. She sank to her knees. Her shame was hot in her cheeks. It was not how a Soothsayer of the Tribe should behave.

  “Show me your arm.”

  His magic pulled her arm out. He pushed up her sleeve and ran a rough sinewy claw of a hand along her healing arm. His breath quickened. The pain of the burn was long gone but she shuddered.

  “You have magic. Healing magic.”

  “No.” Her nervous hand scratched at the wall.

  “You dare lie!” His voice stabbed her with venom and she gasped. “Stand up.”

  She rose, pressing against the hexagonal stones. His rasp was fearsome in her darkness. His hands were at her temples, his good one and the charred remnant. His mind bumped inside her. She fought him, struggling and scratching while he pinned her down and his mind speared through her thoughts into memory. He tore them aside so he could clutch at the night she had rolled into the fire. She screamed with the agony of her burn. It spun her into the dreaded dizziness.

  “I will take it,” was the last thing she heard before she fell into oblivion.

  Ishoa.

  Sian was flying along the rapid river, over hills smothered in wild growth, and through vales clogged with lilies. Her spirit sight showed her the beetles digging through the dirt and the bear lumbering after salmon.

  “Ishoa?” She halted at the yawning mouth of the soothsayer’s cave. A spider dangled from a strand of silk. Beyond it, the once neat bundles of herbs were strewn over the floor, seeds crushed underfoot, baskets torn. She approached the sleeper on the furs. Ishoa faced the wall, so still, too still. A large web spanned the corner above her. Flies had perished in its threads.

  There are never two.

  Ishoa had done this for her.

  “Sian.” Soothsayer Joser was standing by the fire, muted in the spirit, not vivid in the fl
esh. The brilliant feathers of his tribe drifted around his staff.

  Her hand was empty. She was alone. So utterly alone.

  “What ails you, child?”

  Too much fear and hurt and loneliness. She could not speak of it.

  “Come sit with me.”

  Their spirits sat by the fire, its smoke curling up as the embers glowed. Joser passed a hand through the smoke, thickening it into sweet, white comfort with a chant she didn’t know. Sian wiped tears from her eyes.

  “The spirits have left me,” she said at last.

  “You would not be here if they had.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do it.”

  Joser leaned over the fire. All his spikes of hair took on an scary orange glow. “You know what must be done. You saw it in the lake.”

  She was silent.

  “Come. You must understand how much is at stake.”

  They travelled the wind, down the path to the hollow bole, along the path to the village. She wanted to flee with the stray leaves skittering past her feet, to mingle to insignificance with the forest, like the ash sprinkling from the remnants of a canopy burned open to skating clouds. Nothing was left. The longhouses were piles of charred logs. A pot rolled on its side and a strip of embroidered fabric rippled on the end of a burned branch. A few Ho’akerin hunkered under lean-tos, their miserable faces shocked into blank stares. She passed from one ragged group to the other, unseen, unheard.

  “Loyt?” He huddled against his groaning father and nibbled on a handful of burned wheat. The broken spear in his free hand wouldn’t have fended off a jackrabbit let alone an ogre.

  “Farina?” The old woman sat by the overturned water trough, nodding to the leaves.

  Sian’s hand found Joser’s. “Where is Leadsman Draykan?”

  “He has taken most of the survivors west. We lost so many Akerin that night. The Olono Range is no longer safe. The Five Tribes have dispersed.”

  A yowl spooked a rat rummaging through the spoiled remains on a broken plate. It scurried for cover in a hollow log. Loyt scrambled to his feet.

  “Maybe if we let the mahktashaan come. . .” Their magic stones killed ogres.

  Joser’s white eyes pierced her soul.

  “I’m sorry.” Maybe now he would see she wasn’t a soothsayer but a half-brained girl. Even protective Garzene had cracked his magic at the thickets baring their way.

  “Please don’t do that,” she had whispered, looking down.

  “It is a shallow score in the trunk, no deeper than a bear might make. The tree does not grow twisted for it,” the mahktashaan had said. Wet leaves had squished under his feet as he took her arm and led her away.

  “It hurts the forest,” she had said. Were it not for her staff, she would have fallen from its pain. One more unpleasant memory she could not forget.

  “They are as bad as the ogres,” she whispered to Joser.

  “Come, child.”

  He guided her south of the village, a day’s walk, two days, four. They halted on the crest of a hill and looked down its grassy slope at a thousand tiny fires burning in the night. Each hearth mirrored the beauty of the stars, and the cruelty of a predator’s eyes.

  “Is it our people?”

  A musty smell blew along the rippling grass. She drifted closer. A thousand hairy bodies rose, grunting once, twice, thrice in unison. At their head, Gor raised club and torch to the moons.

  “Tra-ain,” he called.

  Pairs of ogres stomped to face each other. They smacked their clubs together, high, low, high, low, the torches in their free hands lighting the fierce savagery of their faces.

  “Will you leave them to ravage our home?” Joser asked.

  She shook her head as she fled the horror of an army of ogres who did not fear flames.

  In the cave, she passed the climbing spider, knelt by the fire and rocked. She gulped whole breaths of the crackling seed smoke.

  Ishoa. Why did you leave me?

  Joser’s spirit entered the cave. “The spirits reach and guide you,” he said.

  She looked up with a plea on her face. “The black mahktashaan is so strong. He means to take the spirits from me.” The wind howled through the branches as she shivered.

  Joser laid a hand on her head. “Is that why you came, little one?”

  The endearment undid her. She threw herself into his arms.

  “Oh, Sian. Soothsayers walk a difficult, lonely path. Not even time will temper that. It is the price we pay.”

  “He will destroy me.”

  “He cannot if you call on the spirits. They are there, waiting for you.”

  “I don’t feel them anymore.”

  “Call them.”

  “I can’t.” Her staff had not come to her hand.

  Joser guided her to the mouth of the cave. Down on the forest floor, a wolf pup tried to pounce on mouse. The rodent scurried into a burrow but the wolf pup trotted proud after his dam. “You cannot let him win. Not if you value the way of the Tribe.”

  She could pretend to be strong like the paw of her totem even though she quivered like the like mouse. “How do I stop him?”

  “You must trust in your own strength, and pray it will be enough.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Just as Vinsant was rubbing his sleepy eyes, the majoria vacated his room. Vinsant held in a whoop of joy. Four late nights of slinking around the corner from the residence halls had taken its toll on his exuberance. Four nights of sitting against the wall, his restless legs stretched out on the hexagonal flagstones, his aching hands holding a book on mahktashaan lore so that if anyone caught him he could say he had come to ask a question on the Crystal War. Thank Mahktos there was not about to be a fifth night of tedious watching. After a fabulous afternoon outing to the docks from where the warships were about to sail, having enjoyed the best lesson in naval tactics he had ever had, he wanted his bed.

  As his dearly respected elder hurried down the dark corridor, Vinsant could not help biting his lip. Anyone in that much haste was bound to be up to an endeavour worth spying on. On the other hand, he might never get a second chance to break and enter.

  “Latchtos,” he said, looking over his shoulder. Whatever he was missing out on was bound to be awesome. The oak door swung open. How easy was that. Shaking his head at the folly of adults, he entered and crept into the bedroom. He had a vague sense something was wrong. Something beyond him being where he shouldn’t. It might have been the cover over the gold statue of Mahktos. He risked lifting the veil for a peek. The eyes were lifeless red glass, which was reassuring. He was going to have to atone for this crime big-time, and he would rather it be to Levi than Mahktos. He opened the chest and poked through an odd assortment of items until he found the casket.

  “Latchtos.”

  The lock didn’t click. He shoved his lower lip over his upper. Of course the ring would be protected, treasure that it was. He glanced at the door and wondered how much time he had. He needed something strong but thin to prise the lid open. A quick rummage on the cluttered desk turned up a paper knife. The casket proved stronger. He sure hoped Levi wouldn’t notice the bend in the tip of the knife.

  There was only one thing for it.

  “Don’t watch,” he said to the statue. Since the eyes remained glass, he threw the box against the stone wall. The corner chipped. He stomped on it. The lid cracked. He lifted one corner of the bed and let the leg drop on it. The lid caved in. Magic was a crazy thing when it could ward off other magic but was unable to withstand a physical assault. Levi must have assumed casting a spell on the lock was enough. The box was deep in the chamber of the most fearsome, most powerful, most terrifying mahktashaan in the secret lair. A finger poked into the hole let him prise apart the lid until he could fish out the ring. The diamond had to be the most prized gem in The Three Realms, maybe even the world. To think it had rested on the finger of the first majoria. And fallen from the sky. It might even have come from Mahktos himsel
f. Well, it was his now. Levi had no right to take it. If he had, he would have discussed it with the Inner Council. The ring had to be powerful and Vinsant was going to need all the help he could get when he went to rescue Kordahla. She had tried to hide how miserable she was when they talked, but she didn’t fool him. She couldn’t control her emotions across the link the way the mahktashaan could.

  He stood up. “Forthugem.” The pieces of the box stayed stubbornly apart. His rotten luck the magical taboo was still active. He piled the pieces back into the chest and covered them with parchment, cloth and knickknacks he was in too much of a hurry to identify. With luck, he would be long gone by the time the majoria discovered his vandalism, but there was no sense in taking a chance. He replaced the casket, closed the chest and considered where he could hide the ring until he was ready to leave. Levi was bound to search the chamber Branak had assigned him in this gloomy pit. Perhaps he could use the pretext of fetching a few things from his old room to find a safe place to stash his treasure, somewhere the majoria would never think to look. Levi couldn’t search the whole palace by himself, and he couldn’t enlist the help of the mahktashaan if he hadn’t disclosed its existence. It was as good a plan as any. At this hour, evading Father in the palace halls should be easy. Vinsant tucked the ring into a pocket beneath his robe, locked Levi’s door behind him, and hurried through the maze of hexagonal rooms towards the lair’s exit.