The Sea

by A. H. Lee

  Hastafel gave a dry laugh.

  He turned to Daphne. “When we last spoke, Your Grace, I told you that the kingdoms of the Shattered Sea will be ruled by magic. You seem to have chosen necromancy over sorcery.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sairis saw the lords shifting in their saddles, glancing at each other.

  “I believe that the kingdoms of the Shattered Sea will need to take counsel from magicians,” said Daphne. “I do not believe we need become fiefdoms. Sairis has never attacked me or waged war on my people. Now let’s talk about why you’re out here. I trust you wish to discuss the terms of your surrender?”

  Hastafel gave her an appraising look. “I think you’ll agree we are at an impasse, Queen. I am in a position to give you trouble for a long time. My men can hold the Rim Forts through an extensive siege, as you well know. We can reach your kingdom before you have time to go around the forts through the mountains. In fact, I think it likely that I might reach your capital before you do.”

  Sairis felt a chill.

  “You can’t do that without leaving the forts unguarded,” said Daphne. “Your army is broken, Hastafel. You can continue your assault on my kingdom with a handful of people, but I promise in the end I will crush you. Meanwhile, rumors will run north and south that the great sorcerer’s armies are no more. Governments you have left in your wake will topple. If you meant what you said about magic ruling the Shattered Sea, you would be best advised to look to your existing conquests. Go home, and rule.”

  These were level-headed words, although Sairis could see that the border lords didn’t like them.

  “If we let him walk out of here alive, we’ll never see the end of this,” muttered someone.

  “Soft on magic,” growled another.

  Sairis glanced at the wolf. Is it exerting itself? He wished he knew more about demons.

  The sorcerer inclined his head. “Valid points, Your Grace. Although, I do think you underestimate the trouble I am capable of causing.”

  Sairis doubted that. He just thought Daphne had a good political face.

  “Here are my terms,” said Hastafel. “You will allow me and my remaining followers to depart along the coast. There will be no further hostilities between us, nor will I harm your people who are still alive in the fort.” He hesitated a moment, his eyes flicking around at them. “In exchange, you will return my sword, which I rather thoughtlessly left in your necromancer.”

  Daphne frowned. “The sword...?”

  “We don’t have it,” said Sairis and Roland at the same time.

  Hastafel’s expression did not change. “I believe you do.”

  Sairis heard the barons muttering again.

  “I require the sword to properly manage my creature,” said Hastafel, his eyes flicking briefly to the wolf. “I think you’ll agree that it would be irresponsible of me to neglect such a thing.”

  “We don’t have the sword,” said Daphne.

  The wolf spoke. “You do.” Its voice was more cultured than Sairis had expected. Its red eyes drifted over the company and Sairis felt...something.

  This was a mistake. “Stop!” he snapped out. “Whatever you’re doing, stop right now unless you want another dose of necromantic fire!”

  “I am not doing anything,” purred the wolf.

  Somewhere behind him, Sairis heard a sword drawn. “Necromancy was always the scourge of Mistala. Damned if we’re going to start celebrating it now!”

  “Inverts in line for the throne. This cannot be borne.”

  “The weakness of women will be the death of us.”

  Daphne looked at Sairis in confusion. “What is happening?”

  “It is Wrath,” said Sairis. “It can’t create rage, only draw it out. However, I’m afraid it has plenty to work with here.”

  Daphne turned to say something to the men behind her...and one of the guards with the border lords leapt off his horse. His clothes melted and ran together into black smoke as he moved.

  The wolf’s smug expression changed. “You!” it snarled as Mal rematerialized as a leopard.

  Hastafel’s composure slipped for the first time. “Malcharius! Why are you still here? I have dismissed you!”

  “Several times,” agreed Mal as he circled the wolf. “But, you see, you didn’t summon me. Not exactly.”

  Another guard jumped down from his horse. He looked like an ordinary soldier, but the voice that emerged was Candice’s. “Phillip Gosling of the murdered village of Hastafel, I bind you to my will.” She followed this with a spell that cracked through the moist air.

  Her words had an astonishing effect. Lord Hastafel crumpled as though he’d been shot. His knees hit the soggy ground with a splash, and he doubled over. She’s trying to bind him! realized Sairis. The first iteration of Hastafel’s ghost... He must have given her his name!

  “Fernus!” shrieked Hastafel in a voice that was hardly recognizable. “Kill her!”

  No one needed to be told who Fernus was. The wolf jerked towards Candice like a dog on a leash, but Mal barreled into him, and the two of them flipped over in a splashing blur of bloody foam.

  Candice’s glamour fell away as she ran towards Hastafel, who was struggling to stand, his face a rictus of shock and pain. “Dismiss that wolf!” she shouted. “I command you!”

  Hastafel responded with a flash of blue flame, but he was clearly having difficulty, and he missed her by several feet. The demon is the source of his magic, thought Sairis. She’ll have a hard time binding Hastafel as long as he’s got an astral entity to draw from. Sairis could sense the demon Wrath, its magic strong in the air as it struggled with Mal’s Lust magic. The combination was disconcerting. All around him, men were backing away or drawing weapons, looking for something to fight, or possibly something to fuck. These two armies were on the verge of attacking each other minutes ago. All they need is one careless arrow.

  “Marsden!” shouted Sairis. You’ve got to be here. I’d bet any amount of magic you put that glamour on Candice. “Where is the sword?” If we could put the wolf back inside it, Candice’s spell might work.

  “I don’t know!” The guard who’d been riding beside Candice was suddenly familiar. “It was taken during the fire! I was hoping someone would—”

  A soft grunt. Sairis couldn’t have said how he caught it over the snarls of the two fighting demons, but it seemed to bypass his ears and go straight to his chest. He turned to see Roland still sitting his horse very close to Winthrop Malconwy. Roland had a startled expression on his face, one hand clenched around his left shoulder at the join of the armor.

  Winthrop was holding a familiar glossy blade, crawling with runes and now slick with blood. He must have been keeping it in whatever spelled sheath or distortion field Marsden had used to conceal it. His eyes glittered with hate, all sense of restraint or self-preservation obliterated by the spirit of Wrath. “I will not have my family honor impugned by you!” he spat at Roland. “You have shamed our name before our own barons! You are no nephew of mine! No doubt your mother was a whore who got you from some perverse act with a witch!”

  As Roland swayed in the saddle, Winthrop reached inside his nephew’s coat and jerked out the roll of Marcus’s letters. He folded them over the sword once, twice, thrice, and sliced again and again. The fragments of soggy paper fluttered into the muddy water beneath their horses’ hooves.

  “The fact that you buggered your father’s ward proves nothing except that you are a pervert! The fact that I disapproved and tried to conceal your shame proves only that I am an honorable man!” snarled Winthrop into Roland’s increasingly pale face.

  One of the lords near Winthrop made a grab for his reins, but Winthrop set the blade beside Roland’s throat and shouted. “Do not dare to lay hands upon me! I am taking my pretender of a nephew and returning to my lands. Those of you who do not wish to be ruled by women and inverts may join me! Daphne, if you so much as send a scout after me, I will cut this creature’s throat!”

 
; Sairis looked towards the demons. Mal had backed off, panting and bleeding. The wolf was standing in front of Hastafel’s slumped body, its eyes very bright. It was feeding on Winthrop’s rage, Sairis was certain.

  Sairis turned back towards Roland. Blood was now visibly seeping around his armpit. Some of the shock had left his face, replaced by bewildered anger. He was going to make a grab for the sword. When he did, Winthrop would kill him...if he hadn’t already. Sairis thought of the ghosts endlessly flinging themselves around the moat of a tower in the mist, their voices weeping. Untenable solutions flicked fruitlessly through his head. Think!

  Sairis’s eyes fell to the water, to the fragments of letters, floating in all that remained of his wave. A drop of Roland’s blood hit the ripples and curled down among the torn pages. Roland’s blood...still laced with necromantic magic. And papers signed by a murdered man with his true name.

  Oh.

  A hand broke the surface. Winthrop’s horse shied, forcing him back from Roland as a liquid shape reared out of the muddy water. Bits of paper floated through its body. “Vengeance,” thought Sairis and almost laughed. It was the cavalry officer who had led him down Mount Cairn.

  “Marcus?” whispered Roland.

  Winthrop stared at the ghost, his eyes bulging from his face. He gave a wordless cry and slashed through its neck with Hastafel’s sword. The blood on the blade curled through the water. Rather than disintegrating, the ghost gained definition. His hair took on a touch of red. “Murderer,” he hissed.

  “No!” shrieked Winthrop. “This is black magic, dark sorcery! Don’t you all see? This is deception! Perversion!”

  “You murdered me,” rasped the spirit.

  “Marcus?” repeated Roland, reaching for the ghost in spite of his obvious pain and fear.

  The ghost raised its eyes to him. Sairis was impressed that it could muster attention for more than its primary objective. Spirits that lingered did not often retain complex interests or desires. They tended to become quite single-minded. However, the ghost looked at Roland for long enough that Winthrop took the opportunity to stab it again.

  The spirit made an animal shriek. It turned to Winthrop, opened its arms wide, and poured itself into him.

  Chapter 20. No Regrets

  Winthrop Malconwy drowned. He drowned while sitting upright in his saddle, flailing, voiceless as water poured into his nose and throat. Roland thought, at the end, that he ought to feel some trace of sorrow or regret. But he felt nothing. He thought that he should say something to Marcus.

  Could Marcus even hear him? Could anyone?

  The world seemed wrapped in linen gauze. Through a fog, he saw Candice running towards the fallen sword, but Hastafel’s demon reached it first. The wolf’s form vanished into red smoke, and he scooped up the sword as a towering knight in red armor.

  “Kill her!” repeated Hastafel.

  Roland missed what happened next. He was on the ground somehow, and Sairis was leaning over him. Men were shouting. Horses’ hooves tramped dangerously around their heads. Roland couldn’t seem to sit up. Sairis was fumbling at the ties and clasps of his breastplate, cursing. His skin crawled with lines of green light.

  Roland managed to speak. “Did he get me...that badly?”

  “It’s the sword,” panted Sairis. “It traps ghosts; that’s what it does.”

  “I feel...strange.”

  Sairis had exposed the wound in his armpit. Roland didn’t think it was mortal. His chest should not feel so heavy.

  Sairis leaned over him, his eyes intent behind his glasses. He smiled through an expression that looked like pain. “Resonance. It works both ways.” He caught his breath and added, “I regret nothing. Remember that. Not one thing, Roland.”

  Then Sairis slumped forward, and Roland could breathe again.

  * * * *

  Sairis sat on the banks of the River. No. Not the River. The moat.

  His ghostly senses insisted that it was the River, that he should jump in, shed this useless form, and fly downstream. He’d felt the call before, but it was so much stronger now that he was...dead?

  This is a trap.

  Sairis raised his eyes with an effort. The tower rose above him. It looked bigger, somehow, and darker. He could feel his connection to it like a chain. He was bound, tethered. He would never escape its pull. He would spin in circles forever, feeding the magic that had built this place. He would forget Karkaroth, his goals, his studies. He would even forget Roland and the reason he’d flung himself into this trap. In time, he would forget everything that made him unique, but he would not be gone. Not quite. And the unquenchable longing for oblivion would never end.

  The weight of that knowledge was almost unbearable. The sooner I forget, the better.

  Sairis slipped into the water.

  And came up short with a jerk.

  “Simon Harris, come back...” He felt the words, but he didn’t really understand them. Something had him. He thrashed like a fish on a line as he was drawn inexorably back to the base of the tower. A person stood there. Sairis’s spirit senses interpreted him as a ghost, but some shred of wizardly intuition remained, and he identified the aura as a glamour.

  “Simon Harris, come back,” repeated the other, and Sairis remembered his own form like a discarded glove, still familiar. He put it back on.

  “Andrew?”

  Sairis thought that he ought to feel intimidated, given the circumstances. But Marsden was staring around, wide-eyed. He looked lost.

  “You don’t spirit-walk,” whispered Sairis.

  Marsden’s face and form flickered as though he were composed of overlapping images. Sairis could see traces of the girl he’d once been, but more than that, he could see his true age. Marsden was nearly contemporary with his master, a fact that Sairis easily forgot. His spirit was tattered—many versions of himself, stitched together by his long and complicated life.

  Sairis thought about Karkaroth’s attempts to bring his former lover into the Shadow Lands. But Andrew never came here...until now.

  “Who told you?” asked Sairis.

  Marsden seemed to pull himself together. “Your name? Roland. I could get it out of your glasses, but there isn’t time. I’ve bound you to your body...”

  Sairis gave a sad smile. “That doesn’t work for long.”

  “I know. But you’re not mortally wounded, Sairis. Your ghost is just trapped.”

  “You came to the Shadow Lands to bring me back?”

  Marsden didn’t answer. He was staring at the dark and twisted trees beyond the moat, at the beguiling twilight of the wood.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” whispered Sairis.

  “No. Yes.” Marsden shook his head. “Sairis, how do we break this thing? The wolf was locked in here to guard it. The wolf is gone. We should be able to destroy it.”

  Sairis cocked an eyebrow at him. “You think I wouldn’t have already done that if I knew how? It’s older than the Sundering, Andrew.” He took a deep breath. “And I’m just an apprentice who should have stayed in his tower.”

  “You were more than ready to leave that tower. And there are two of us now.”

  Sairis laughed. “A sheltered university magician and a baby necromancer.”

  Marsden rolled his eyes. “A cautious professor and a reckless prodigy.”

  You think I’m a prodigy? Sairis didn’t know how to respond, so he gestured quickly towards the drawbridge, just visible in the low-hanging mist. “I tried to cross last time, but there were still wards. Strong ones. I’m not sure how they’re being maintained. If you walk around the tower, you can see the place where the original creator channeled the Styx into the moat. There’s probably a way to reverse it, but I don’t think I have time.”

  “Show me,” said Marsden.

  As before, no monsters threatened them at the drawbridge, but a sign flickered into existence on the far side: “None but my master shall pass.”

  Marsden stared at it for a long moment. “This
is recent,” he said at last. “You say there are wards?”

  Sairis nodded. “It’s what’s kept the hungry ghosts from wandering. I don’t understand how the wards are being renewed.”

  Marsden advanced to the edge of the bridge, examining the ground carefully. “Offhand, I’d say it’s because someone is renewing them.” There was an edge to his voice that Sairis couldn’t interpret. “Let’s see this dry ditch.”

  They walked around the outside of the moat, sticking close to the edge so as not to trigger the wards. The ghosts flashed past in the water, their keening loud in the still air. Twice, green flames jumped up somewhere in the distance, warning a ghost off from the perimeter.

  When they reached the dry ditch, Sairis was not surprised to see one of the ghosts sitting on the edge, staring towards the Styx. As he got closer, however, he noticed inconsistencies. The aura wasn’t quite right. The details of the figure were a little too well-defined. This is a spirit-walker. Another magician. Who...?

  And then he knew.

  Sairis felt dizzy as he covered the remaining distance and sat down on the edge of the ditch. He could sense Marsden somewhere behind him, hesitating.

  The spirit sitting beside Sairis looked like a wizened little man with bird-bright eyes and an unkempt beard, which was long enough for him to twist absently around one finger. A bony hand clasped a knobby knee through the fabric of worn work trousers. His eyes remained on the distant gleam of the Styx.

  Sairis cleared his throat. “Sir?”

  The necromancer Karkaroth turned and looked at his apprentice. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Karkaroth said severely, “How long have you been gone and who is cleaning the pigeon boxes?”

  Sairis couldn’t help himself. Even as a spirit, his eyes flooded. “You have been asleep for the better part of a year, sir. Your pulse is so soft and so slow that I can hardly feel it. Your breath is undetectable. Your body is...is shutting down, sir.”

  Karkaroth had never seemed to know how to respond to displays of emotion. He looked at Sairis in bewilderment. At last he said, “Is it, then? Well. A year, you say? Losing my body... That could be inconvenient.”