“The ship is on fire!” Martillo yelled. “How could this have happened; we were on it today. There were five good men that were staying with the ship.”
The flames had climbed up the mast and onto the sails, and the entire deck was aflame. Even from this distance, we could see the fire on the inside through the portholes, like burning eyes. All of the sailors and other settlers stood on the edge of the cliff with Martillo, Efi, and I watched the funeral byre of their chance to go home.
The morale of the group dropped quickly after that. Even Martillo couldn’t keep up his usual jovial perk. Two men leapt off the cliff onto the rocks below within a week of the ship burning, and three more disappeared. No one witnessed either of those who jumped off the cliffs take their leap or those who disappeared leave.
One early morning a native sat at the edge of the settlement. His skin was bronzed from the sun and his eyes and hair were both an inky black. He had a blue cloth wrapped around his waist that extended to his knees, with a smaller green cloth tied around his hips and between his legs. The man’s chest was bare, and he wore a blue and orange short cape without a hood. To one side, out of his reach, was a long spear.
“Hello friend,” Martillo called from a distance. “Do you know Spanish? What brings you to our settlement?”
“I know small Spanish,” the man replied. “Pale man from you show me talk.”
“One of our men?” Martillo turned to Efi at his side. “Must have been one of our deserters. I wonder who?”
“We mean you no harm,” Efi nodded to Martillo an acknowledgment as he called out himself to the strange man. “May we come and sit with you?”
“No,” the man said flatly. “I come warn. You house demon. You need kill demon. No let demon hurt or loose.”
“Demon, what does he mean Martillo?”
“I don’t know, the only loose ghost we have with us is Brandur, and he is our friend.”
“Is he?” Efi asked.
No, I’m not. It seemed as good a time as any to finish my work. There were many abandoned homes within my range, the whole settlement was small enough where almost all the buildings were in my range when Martillo was in his hut in the center.
The two kept talking to the native in an effort to discern the danger and why people had been abandoning Libertad while I slid away. I had discovered long ago that it was much easier for me to interact with objects that had little to no aura to protect them, so while I was unable to do much physically to a person if I put enough effort into it I could knock over a lamp.
And draw a furrow in the sandy ground to the nearest fire to direct the oil towards it.
The first hut, little more than wood and dried woven grass with the spaces between stuffed with mud and grass whooshed up into flames. I knew where all the lamps in the settlement were, and enough of the huts had been abandoned so my furrows weren’t noticed or disturbed.
Second lamp down and the oil flowed through the sand to the hut that was consumed. If the huts were any further apart than the five to six paces that they were, my plan wouldn’t have worked. I knocked down my third lamp. No one had thought to go around and collect the lamps in the abandoned huts. They were too hopeful that their companions would return, and when they did, they would need the light.
There was no need to go for the fourth lamp, the fires had grown enough to hop from one hut to another. All of the men that had sailed over were scrambling to attempt to put out the fires, to wet the huts that hadn’t caught fire yet in an effort to prevent them from burning, and to save what important items that they could. Martillo and Efi left the lone native to his own devices and ran over to save the important tomes they had stored in their hut.
I backed away from the settlement and watched it burn with a smile. The second half of my personal tribute to the Sun and Patriarch of the Delgado family.
The native had picked up his spear and approached the village but made no attempt to help. He stopped next to me to watch it burn.
“Do you understand when I speak my native tongue?” He asked me.
“Yes, I do,” I answered. “Not sure how it works, something about the language of the mind?”
“Yes, some souls are endowed with that gift. So, why? The two young ones, the priests, they seem sincere.”
“They are the descendants of the man who killed me to capture my spirit so he and others could use me for my spirit’s strength. I was denied Valhalla, with its feasts and friendships, I was denied my family, a wife with child and a grandmother I had only just reconnected with, and I was denied the chance to learn my true skills in life. They have each done the same thing to other people. They have others, like me, who are locked inside of objects, unable to get free. Collected over the years by the many descendants of their patriarch. They even have spirits that are totally trapped within their objects, unable to interact with the world at all.
“This is my message to the family, to Heliodoro in whatever afterlife he is in. They ruined mine and many others’ lives and deaths, and I will make every effort to ruin theirs.”
The native nodded thoughtfully as he leaned on his spear.
“What is your name, my angry friend?”
“Brandur. Brandur Berkson.”
“Thank you, Brandur Berkson. Our priests that are gifted with the ability to glimpse the future have only seen danger and death with the people coming in the strange ocean crossing vessels. Nothing can be done to stop the devastation these travelers will bring with them but meet them in war will only speed the inevitable.”
“Why have you been so friendly to them?” I asked. His people had allowed the deserters I scared off to live at least long enough to teach this man their language.
“Why have you not asked my name? I asked for yours, Brandur Berkson.”
“I have existed far beyond the lives of anyone I have ever cared about. You will die, either by growing old, war, or treachery. I have no need for another person whose name will be useless to me sooner rather than later.”
“I feel sadness for you,” the nameless native responded. “Almost as much as I feel for the men that ran from you and stumbled upon my people. You carry much bitterness with you, take care that revenge doesn’t turn to poison when it’s on your lips.”
“There is no poison for me now. I’m tired. I long for a world that no longer exists, people who are long dead, and I hate the two who took me out of the darkness for their own glory and ideals. They claim otherwise, but they have lofty goals like any young and ambitious person has. They wish to change the world, yet they need someone to tell them how.”
“They might have. Most likely never will now because of this, what was done today. To answer you; my people took in those who ran away from you because they offer a chance to save my people. Not as my people are now. There will be no hope of that. Because of those who ran though, my people may adapt and survive in some way into the future. Sometimes the only hope is to become what is destroying you while you stay to your heart and people.”
“Good luck to you, and to your people. I’m not sure how well my friends and family fared, if they adapted, or if they were wiped out.”
“Did you ask?”
That question froze me. I didn’t even ask... When I stopped responding or reacting the native must have decided that he had enough of me and the spectacle of the burning village and left.
I just stood there and wondered what I had done and who I was, and who I had turned into.
The fires finally died down by sunset. I wandered back into the heart of the settlement. Martillo was alone with Efi laid out on the ground with tomes and metal boxes stacked all around them. Martillo openly cried over his friend, who upon closer inspection I realized was dead.
“What happened?”
Martillo looked up at me with a hate-filled glare, his fists were balled so tightly his shoulders shook and his palms bled.
“What happened, what happened?” he screamed at me. “You happened! You and your damned fi
re, you and your total disregard, you and, and, I don’t know what!
“Why? Why Brandur?!”
“This is what Heliodoro had ghosts do, or tried to have ghosts do, to my village. You and Efi have both trapped spirits, both of you followed your patriarch’s work! Heliodoro made a long list of claims, the main one being he would eventually free my spirit once he figured out a way to retain its power without me attached to it.”
“I wanted to free you with your power!”
“After you used it.”
“It might have taken your strength to do what was needed to figure out how to separate you from the pendant. I thought you had the knowledge, Heliodoro wrote that he confided in you but not what he confided.”
“And what would happen after I was freed? Will I go to Valhalla? Will I remain here forever? Will I go to any sort of afterlife?”
“I don’t know, you ungrateful wretch, I don’t know! But you at least would have been free to find out. And the ritual has been perfected, there is no wandering ghost anymore. We figured out that we need gems to have a better, deeper connection to the soul’s power, so we can keep just the power and let the person move on.”
“You blind fool!” I screamed; my rage had slowly built to the point where I couldn’t hold it in check. “Look in your gems! The person is locked in with their power, you trap the power and the spirit! You haven’t separated the two, you have only locked in the power deeper.”
“Brandur, at this point I don’t care. Efi died because of you!” Martillo sobbed, over his friend as he smoothed down Efi’s dark frazzled hair. “He had gone too long without eating, he started to get shaky and weak. Then after he moved the last load of books out of the shack he fainted, started shaking violently, and hit his head on a rock.”
“At least now he will never kill and steal another person’s spirit for their power. Never teach anyone else the secret ritual. With the settlement burned down, no way to go home, and your supplies mostly ruined, it’s unlikely that anyone else, including you, will survive. A few fewer Delgados, a few less of Heliodoro’s descendants, to continue and pass along his work.”
Martillo looked at me in jaw dropped horror.
“This entire time?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to do much in the heart of your family’s power, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could save other people, another culture, that has been labeled as ‘savages’ and less than human, from your family’s experiments. Help prevent the spread of your family’s influence and power.”
His gaze dropped from my face and became unfocused. He shook his head from side to side in disbelief, his lavish and colorful clothing soot-stained and torn. Martillo got up and walked over to a pile of lead boxes, each of which held a patra with a ghost locked inside of it and searched through the pile.
“You know,” he said, “it was because of the spread of the Arabs that Heliodoro was able to find the tome of the long-lost murus that initially discovered the trick to performing a sambadda. A son of an Indian man and his Roman wife, rich in the learning that both cultures offered, and then he delved into the mysticism of both. No one remembers his name, and his tome was damaged in the sacking of the Library of Alexandria so the name on the cover was illegible, but the murus’ tome was one that the Arab sect of The Golden Cup Society copied and traded with the Christian sect. Usually, the two cultures have nothing to do with each other, but The Golden Cup Society transcends all of the pettiness to achieve their goal: To remember all who have come before.”
Martillo found the box he had been looking for and made his way over to the sooty anvil in front of a nearby pile of coals.
“Funny, how things end up changed so drastically when twists in fate touch the world. If the Library of Alexandria hadn’t been destroyed so long ago, The Golden Cup Society wouldn’t have pushed so hard for centuries to copy and trade their saved tomes of people’s lives. Maybe you would have lived your life without Heliodoro’s interference. Maybe he wouldn’t have tracked down your wife and did to her what he did to you.”
Gently, he opened the box and pulled out a Damascus steel valknut, the pair to my own. I would have recognized it, recognized its patterns within the layered steel, anywhere.
He held Torhild’s valknut.
“No.” Shock washed over me in an icy torrent. I pushed my Odin’s sight forward, towards the valknut. It radiated a bright, seafoam green and I smelled the salty sea and raspberries in that aura.
My Torhild, trapped like me all these years.
The seafoam aura was strong but sluggish. She had been locked away for a long time as I had, and it would take some time for her to become aware of herself again. But she was here, with me! My soul sang and cried at the same time because while she was here with me she also had been denied the halls of the gods.
Then Martillo placed the valknut on the anvil ever so gently and picked up the blacksmith hammer that was next to it on the ground.
“What are you doing?” I stumbled forward, all my ghostly skills gone in an instant, my entire being focused on her and her valknut.
“You killed the only person that I ever truly loved, the only person that has ever understood me, accepted me, my best friend,” Martillo’s voice was flat and monotone. “I’m now going to destroy yours.”
Martillo lifted the hammer high above his head with a grunt, then using his whole body brought the hammer down. It sailed through the air like an eagle descending upon its prey, then struck the Damascus steel resting on the anvil. With that one blow, the valknut shattered into pieces. Vines of seafoam sprayed out from under the hammer, the screams of pain she gave wrenched through my soul as I saw her aura shatter into pieces along with the valknut. The vines slowly retracted into their respective chunk of Damascus steel, and each piece glowed with her bright seafoam green, but her screams of horror and pain never stopped. They just continued in chorus with each other through the ruins of Libertad.
“Smash mine next, like hers, please, please!” I sobbed. I dropped to my hands and knees in front of Martillo. “Please, I can’t bear to be whole while she is in pieces!”
“You shall stay whole, and you shall continue your existence knowing that you were responsible for your ghost staying a slave and your wife’s ghost being shattered. Efi and I wanted to free both of you, and we didn’t know what sort of mental state she would be in, so we left her in the box. You though, you’ve always been strong, and you could have had information that Heliodoro didn’t write down. Efi and I wanted to take down the family. Now…
“Enjoy eternity in a box, my ‘friend.’“ He pulled off my valknut with one hand and in the other, he concentrated his aura until it looked like dense green bolts of Thor’s lightning, then he held the hand with the green lightning and directed the bolts into the patterned steel of my pendant. It felt like I had been struck by lightning, every piece of me felt like it was within one of Thor’s bolts. My spirit’s strength then was pulled, gulped down in large swallows, through my connecting line and valknut, into Martillo. He switched from the assault to the drain so fast I had no time to react, and soon there was only darkness. Again.
Broken by his failed revenge and years of isolation, Brandur is deemed too dangerous and is locked away in a vault by the family who killed and trapped his ghost within his valknut pendant. Centuries later the vault that has become his tomb is accidentally found, and Brandur is reintroduced to a world that he can’t fathom. Brandur finds his hope in a young girl who unknowingly becomes a target for the family, and Brandur refuses to allow her to be killed and used. He must find living allies to help save her, but who can he trust?
If you enjoyed “The Rebellion” and Wayward Magic, continue following Brandur’s story in “The Meeting!” part of Forgotten Magic.
About the Author
A small-town girl from the Adirondack Park in Upstate New York, Gwendolyn Woodschild surrounds herself with horses, critters, family, friends, and trees. Always the avid reader, she used books to e
scape out of her school life and into worlds where the good guys win in the end.
This led to an excessive amount of daydreaming as she lived within her imaginary worlds, which ended up evolving into her art in its many forms. From a run down Ferris wheel becoming the latest focus of her photography to a dream inspiring a series of novels, she tells stories of adventure, challenge, and growth across the genres of paranormal fantasy, science fiction, and high fantasy.
“Reality is up for grabs. One man’s reality is another man’s fantasy.”
Trapper John McIntyre
This quote resonates with Gwendolyn as she turns her imaginary worlds into reality for your reading pleasure. Her current past times are avoiding having spare time, mucking stalls, writing one of her numerous projects, being “volun-told” by her nieces when and where she is taking them and a carload of friends, hiking with her husky/white shepherd mix, crocheting, and pestering her beloved grandfather.
For more information about the author, please visit: www.Ghost-Stalkers.com. Get “The Meeting” in the last installment of the Magic Underground Anthology trilogy, Forgotten Magic. Buy your copy today!
The Watcher
H. B. Lyne
This short story showcases the terrifying effects of magic gone awry. The shamanistic magic in my urban fantasy world can do great and terrible things. In the first part, “The Hunter,” we followed army veteran, Felix Jones as he desperately searched for his sister, Julie. In this part of the story, we see the shapeshifter pack, The Watch trying to undo the magic that broke the city and Felix’s further efforts to find his sister in the face of the darkest magic. I loved writing about The Watch, one of my favourite packs in Caerton. Felix is also becoming one of my favourite characters to write and I see a novel series in his future.
Wayward Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 2) Page 47