A Whisper of Death

by Paul Barrett

  Elissia turned to him and asked, “How do you feel?”

  “Wonderful,” Erick replied. “Still sore, but better than I have in a long time.”

  “You don’t feel nauseous?”

  “Should I?”

  Elissia pointed toward the side of the ship. Corby bent over the rail. He wore brown twill pants, a cream-colored shirt, and a blue waist-length doublet, sans buttons. Only his scuffed shoes and wide-brimmed scholar’s hat remained from his old wardrobe. Corby held the green hat in one hand.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  A passing sailor overheard and replied loudly. “Land dwellers. They’re all well and good until you get ‘em on a ship, then their stomachs show ‘em why they’ll never be navy men.”

  Laughter rolled among the mariners within earshot, but Erick still didn’t understand.

  “He’s seasick,” Elissia explained. “The motion of the water makes some people ill. Your stomach feels fine?”

  Erick nodded. “Will he be okay?”

  “It should pass in a few hours. Come on, let’s go see our cabins and put our gear away.” She walked over to Corby. “We’ll be down below if you feel like joining us.”

  The three cabins, though small, turned out to be comfortable, with soft beds, plush coverings, and copper washbasins. “These cost a lot, didn’t they?” Erick asked.

  “Almost everything we had,” Elissia said. “But it’s worth it. Ship travel is miserable enough without trying to sleep below decks, surrounded by sailors. I’d be too much of a distraction for them.”

  It took Erick a moment. “They wouldn’t touch you!”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Elissia agreed. “But it would get annoying having to stab a few before they got the hint.”

  “You could have gotten just two rooms and saved some of the money for town.”

  “I didn’t think it would be appropriate for us to share a room alone yet,” Elissia told him with a wicked grin.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Erick said. At the thought of being alone with her, his passion stirred. Thankful for the loose clothing, he nonetheless turned aside to expose less of his front to Elissia. “Corby and I could have shared a room.”

  Elissia shook her head. “That wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head again. “You’ve never slept with someone next to you, have you?”

  “No,” Erick answered.

  “If you’re not used to it, you wouldn’t get much sleep. There’ll be plenty of time for us all to share sleeping space, so enjoy your time alone.”

  “I’ve had plenty of time alone. I don’t know that it’s that enjoyable.”

  Elissia offered a small smile. “You’ll be surprised how quickly people become annoying. Let’s go to the galley and see if they have anything for Corby’s stomach.”

  As Elissia predicted, Corby recovered by midday.

  “Now, if I can avoid eating anything for the next five days and we don’t have any rough seas or foul weather,” Corby said, “I’ll be as right as a quill pen in an ink bottle.” He glanced at Erick, who leaned against the railing beside Elissia with the aplomb of a lifelong sailor. “Why didn’t you get sick?” he asked with a touch of petulance in his voice. “Everybody gets seasick on a first voyage.”

  “He’s right,” Elissia confirmed. “I was extremely ill my first time, even more so than him.”

  Erick shrugged. “I guess I have a naturally strong stomach.”

  “Considering your line of work,” Corby said, “that makes sense.”

  “Shh,” Elissia said. “As far as anyone on this ship knows, his line of work is being an acolyte of Krinnik. Make sure it stays that way.”

  Corby squared his shoulders. “I know how to keep a story straight. But how long before someone notices Geran isn’t exactly right?”

  Erick had been pondering that question. As long as they kept the chest wound hidden, the soldier would pass as alive for several weeks. But all living beings felt uneasy around the undead, even if they didn’t know the source of the discomfort. If the sailors tried to speak to the soldier, the ruse would slip even faster. Erick had left Geran in the cabin until he could decide what to do.

  Corby’s pale face gave him the answer. “Geran? You mean the soldier who’s deathly afraid of water and is going to be seasick this entire voyage?”

  Elissia and Corby both smiled. “Good idea,” Elissia said, and Erick dared to hope things might turn out well.

  Then she looked at Corby, and her smile disappeared. “You want to talk about what happened yesterday.”

  Corby frowned and tugged at his hair. “I’m not even cognizant of exactly what transpired.”

  “It’s called a blood rage. It-”

  “I’ve read about them,” Corby said. “But I thought such a thing was only endemic to the Hucaran Horsemen.”

  “No,” Elissia said. “They’re known for it because they’ve learned to harness and direct it to great effect, but it can happen to anyone in combat.”

  The frown didn’t leave Corby’s face. “I think. No, I hope, it was just the shock of seeing you in danger, and that it doesn’t happen again. I don’t want to kill anymore.”

  “I hope you don’t have to,” Elissia said. “However,” she told Erick, “you need to learn to protect yourself.”

  “What? That’s why I have Blink. And Geran will help.”

  “Unless we’re outnumbered, and they’re both busy elsewhere. We lucked out yesterday. We can’t count on that every time. You’ve got to fight.”

  “I can’t kill.”

  “I don’t like to kill either, but—”

  “You don’t understand.” Erick stared out over the water. “I can’t kill. If I do, the taint on my soul opens me too wide to the influence of Elonsha. I could become like my father, or worse.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elissia said, her almond eyes echoing her confusion.

  “Elonsha’s nature is malevolent energy,” Erick said. “The gods shield me from the ambient power, and Blink shields me when the power is active, which is every time I use it. If I kill someone with my own hands, the stain it leaves is a way in for the Elonsha that can’t be countered.”

  “But what if it’s to protect yourself, or to save a loved one? Surely the Gods know the difference.”

  “The Gods do, and that is tallied when a person goes before Alakanath to be shepherded, but Elonsha doesn’t care. All it seeks is the weakness; all it knows is the evil of the act itself.”

  “So Elonsha is stronger than the gods?” Corby asked, and Erick caught both the disbelief and underlying fear in the scholar’s voice.

  “More primal, possibly older, and certainly quicker to react. The gods are removed from Krinnik and act according to their own needs. Elonsha is here and active, and will grow stronger, now that Eligos has returned.” Another twinge of anger at his father hit Erick, but he let it go. He no longer had use for such emotions.

  Elissia sighed and looked at the deck. “I don’t understand, but I’ll take your word for it. We have a problem. You won’t kill, but you have to protect yourself. Geran and Blink can’t be everywhere. If you somehow get cut off from us, then-” A smile crossed her face. “Sometimes I’m too clever for my own good.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She reached down and pulled a dagger from her boot. “I’ll teach you how to use these. Not as useful as a sword, but better than nothing. I’ll show you how to aim for the legs, and how to hamstring, which will cripple your opponent with little chance of killing them. What do you think?”

  Erick considered it. Blink made a fine protector, but he was not invincible. Geran might eventually have to be released, and Erick didn’t know when circumstances would allow him to summon another gateloah. If Elissia could teach him to defend himself without having to kill, he would be a fool to pass up the chance. It also meant time spent with her. “I think you are very clever,” Erick
said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Great,” Elissia said. “We’ll start tomorrow. Another chapter for Corby’s book.”

  “His what?” Erick said.

  The scholar blushed and appeared ready to leap over the side to hide his embarrassment. “It was supposed to be a secret.”

  Elissia smiled and waved a dismissive hand at Corby. “He’s writing a book about his journeys with you. Right now, he’s calling it ‘The Quest for Broken Mountain.’ Congratulations, you have your own historian.”

  Erick offered a small smile, then stared at the dagger in Elissia’s hand as the full weight of what he had to accomplish bore down on him. Once he reached Broken Mountain, the other Necromancers would be there to share the burden, but with assassins and hired bandits hunting him every step of the way, even that simple goal seemed unattainable. “I hope his book has a happy ending.”

  Elissia tossed the dagger to him handle first. He managed, barely, to catch it.

  “Let’s do what we can to make sure it does,” she said.

  The following day set the ritual Erick followed, with minor variation, the first four days aboard ship. In the morning he studied in his cabin, where curious sailors couldn’t glance over his shoulder and question his choice of reading material. In the late afternoon, when the air turned cooler, he practiced knife work with Elissia. First, she had him run ten times around the ship, although by the fifth time it had turned into more of a jog, which eventually devolved into a fast walk. After that, they went through a regimen of calisthenics that soaked Erick’s clothing before he even held the dagger.

  Practice consisted of throwing and close-in work. Elissia managed to secure a three by three board that she lashed to the foremast. Erick’s first throws hit the board but bounced off. Elissia patiently taught him the proper technique for hold and release. “Think of the blade as an extension of your thumb,” she said. “Wherever your thumb points, that’s where the knife will go.”

  Erick began to grasp the concept. Soon, the knifepoint stuck in the board as often as it bounced away. When he could stick four of five throws, she backed him up another pace, and they would start over, since any change in distance changed the time of release.

  “You have to learn to judge distance,” Elissia said. “You’ll discover your best range, and you wait for your opponent to get in that measure before you throw. Even if you miss, you may distract them enough to let you get in close with your other knife.”

  After throwing, she taught him how to handle the knife in close combat, showing him feints, undercuts, overhand slices, and a variety of methods for dealing with a better-armed opponent. “The best is to stop them with some well-placed throws before they can engage. But if they get close enough to swing, you have to get closer, so they can’t hit you. At that point, it’s about speed. You have to move in, strike, and get out before they have a chance to gut you.”

  “What if they’re wearing heavy armor?” Corby asked as he watched one day.

  Elissia grimaced. “A dagger is almost useless until you are good enough to hit the weak points.” She pointed at Erick with her dirk. “So in your case, run. You’ll certainly be faster than them.”

  The days passed with Elissia teaching and Erick learning. He improved, pegging the board from ten feet away and increasing his speed with special drills Elissia taught him.

  During meals, Erick and Elissia sat together and conversed in quiet tones with their heads bent toward each other. A thrill ran through Erick’s body every time Elissia whispered to him, her breath drifting across his ear.

  Elissia spoke freely about her days in Draymed and offered as much gossip as Erick could stand about the people in town, most of whom she didn’t like, and who didn’t like her. But anytime Erick steered the questioning toward events before her arrival on the island, she would shake her head and say, “Some other time.” It left Erick frustrated but resolved to wait until she was ready, assuming such a day ever came.

  He once considered asking about the mysterious Marcus she’d mentioned but decided against it. She would probably rebuff the question like she had every other one about her past. But Erick’s bigger fear was that she would start talking about her true love Marcus, and how she longed to see him again. So Erick left the question unasked and vowed to enjoy the time he had with her. With luck, the unseen but no doubt handsome and witty Marcus had found someone else in her absence.

  At first, it worried Erick that they excluded Corby from their conversations, but the good-natured scholar soon lost his shyness and found company among the marine contingent, who gladly talked to him as he scribbled like a demented man on his sheets of parchment. One sailor in particular, a wiry, brown-haired youth with a slight limp, seemed to constantly be in Corby’s company when not on duty.

  “His name is Murrough,” Corby told them at one of the few midday meals the trio spent in each other’s company. “He’s taught me about the ships and the stars and all sorts of things…things I never even knew about.”

  With a sly grin, Elissia said, “But you’re a scholar. I thought you knew everything.”

  A blush crept onto Corby’s round cheeks. “Not everything. There are some things books don’t teach you.”

  Elissia arched an eyebrow. Corby returned her stare, but soon turned away, his face going more crimson. Elissia grinned and nodded. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the voyage.”

  The fourth night aboard ship Erick dreamed of Draymed, and everything changed. He stood on the hill, poised above the sleeping village. Behind him, the manor lay in charred ruins, the dream so vivid he smelled the bitter tang of burnt wood. A cool breeze brought the faint roar of the surf from below, pounding against the rocks as it had for innumerable years. The half-moon hung low, casting minimal light, but Erick’s dream-heightened senses allowed him to see details as though the sun hung at its apex.

  He spotted a black-haired man moving through the town, his already pale skin robbed of all color by the wan moonlight. A burlap sack rested over his shoulder. He darted toward the town center, moving from shadow to shadow.

  Dread overcame Erick. He recognized the man as one of the mercenaries they had encountered on the road to Keystone. One of the mercenaries he had left alive.

  The man reached the town well and settled beside it as he placed the sack on the ground. With a glance around, he opened the bag and removed two misshapen lumps. Erick couldn’t tell what they had been, but they were long dead. Balled clumps of insects fell from the carcasses as the man lifted them and held them over the well.

  No! Erick shouted in his head as the man dropped the infected bodies. They splashed, and the landscape rippled like water across Erick’s vision. Black waves followed the ripples and clung to the houses; pestilence dripped from the eaves and seeped into the windows.

  The man smiled, tucked the sack into his shirt, and sidled toward the nearest house. He tested the door on the small wooden building. Finding it unlocked, he slipped inside.

  Erick tried to leave the hill. He had to warn the town of the danger, but his feet remained rooted. He opened his mouth to shout an alarm, but no sound issued from his lips. His entire being cried in frustration.

  The man left the building, a drawn knife in his hand, blood dripping from the jagged blade. Erick shuddered.

  Every building in the village turned deep red, the walls glistening with crimson fluid, as if the murder of one family triggered the gory demise of the entire town. The intruder flowed toward the next house. Blood seeped from the structures, pooled at the foundations, mingled with the sticky black pestilence. Erick watched, impotent horror clenching his stomach.

  A house burst into flame. Hungry orange fire spouted from the roof, turning the building into a giant torch. Other buildings followed. Soon the entire town blazed like a bonfire meant to warm the gods.

  Erick turned from the conflagration. Beatru stood before him, dressed in a nightgown. A thin red line ran around her neck. She spoke, her voice thick. “Avenge us. Destroy
the force beckoned by your father. Seek those who remain at Twr Krinnik, so you may redeem your father’s sin. Beware the Master and watch the shadows. Shun the one who comes forth to tell lies. Beware the–”

  She stopped. Her eyes widened. She moved to speak again, but instead of words, blood ran from her mouth and landed at her feet.

  His feet finally free, Erick recoiled in horror as Beatru’s head fell from her body. It splashed into the puddle of blood with a thick, wet squish. As the gore splattered in warm droplets onto Erick’s legs, he screamed.

  16

  The Covenant is a disgrace, a coward’s way out. Why do the Gods not intervene directly? They will leave it to the Necromancers. Countless people will die who did not have to, had the Gods stepped in and not been frightened children. This is why my mistress left Heaven and will no longer counsel her brothers and sisters.

  -Gremfel of Vostra’s Gap, Primeangel to Alaisanatha

  Erick awoke with his hand over his mouth. Blink fell from his ceiling beam perch and landed on the floor with a thump. Erick dropped out of bed onto his hands and knees, the cover tangled around his waist falling with him. He crawled over to the chamber pot and vomited. Blink huddled in the corner, also retching.

  A few moments later, he heard footsteps, a knock, and then Elissia’s voice drifted through the door. “Erick, what’s wrong?”

  He tried to speak, but his stomach heaved again, and another spew gushed into the pot. Blink fared no better.

  The door opened, and Elissia ran into the room. “Great Caros, what’s wrong?” She squinted to focus in the dim light provided by the single porthole and looked from Erick to Blink, covering her nose.

  “Bad dream,” Blink managed to croak out. He dropped against the wall and dragged himself away from the mess on the floor.

  Elissia moved toward Erick, who still held his face over the chamber pot. “Are you okay?”