A Whisper of Death

by Paul Barrett

  The next morning found Fathen aboard an ugly but seaworthy carrick called the Pratanin. He stood dressed in new clothes: dark blue shirt, soft, blue silk pants that fit tightly into shin-high, leather boots, and a hooded russet cloak. A new sword hung on his side; all acquired when he and Andras woke yesterday afternoon and made preparations for their voyage.

  “Kaloas tas lias!” the captain yelled from the helm. Even without understanding Sakenin, Fathen found it easy to follow the captain’s orders by the crew’s actions. In response to the last shout, men at the ship’s fore and aft pulled up the mooring lines and tossed them to the dock.

  A brisk morning wind blew across the water, chasing away the harbor’s brackish odors, as the sun rose and cast a bright coral glow against the wooden warehouses lining the wharves.

  Fathen took a deep breath of the cleansing sea breeze, feeling much better after a night’s rest despite his aching legs. “Do you know it’s been twenty years since I’ve been on a ship,” Fathen said as two rowboats pulled the vessel away from the dock. “Twenty years I’ve wasted on this pisswater island among mind-numbed sheep.” He spat at the water. “I’m glad to be quit of it.”

  Andras stared across the water. “You’re welcome.”

  “Tell me more about yourself,” Fathen told the plain-faced man. The Inconnu, I mean, not Andras.”

  “I shall,” Andras promised, drawing his sword. “But first we’ll see what you remember of your days with a weapon.”

  Fathen groaned. “Can’t it wait for a day while I get over being sore?”

  Andras shook his head. “Your enemies will not wait for your discomfort to end. You must always be prepared to fight, and I must know how much work needs to be done.”

  “Very well.” Fathen drew his sword and stepped toward the center of the deck. “Teach me.”

  The training lasted the entire day, with only a brief break to eat from their rations. As Andras predicted in Draymed, Fathen’s skills returned despite years of atrophy. The passage of time had made him slower, and he lacked the brute strength of his youth, but he had finesse and a quick mind.

  Andras was a demanding trainer, quick with criticism, but equally profuse with praise, and willing to explain anything his pupil did not grasp. As the sun beat down on them and sweat poured from his body, Fathen began to appreciate his new mentor, and he noticed in his teacher’s eyes--just behind the disturbing glint they always held--a pleasure in again having a student.

  Midway through the day, Fathen rediscovered a feeling he had long forgotten: exhilaration. As Andras demonstrated new techniques and inculcated him in the ways of dealing death, the numbness that had crept into Fathen’s spirit left, growing fainter with each passing knot. Although the deaths of Brannon and Bereman still evoked twinges of guilt, he began to accept he had made the right choice in killing Andras to give his new master life. In that act, Fathen’s old existence died, and he now walked Krinnik with the eager curiosity of a newborn, ready to experience the life he had missed for twenty years.

  Fathen crawled gratefully into the lower bunk that evening, exhausted and sore, but elated. It amazed him how quickly a score of lethargic years could disappear. His life in Draymed belonged to a distant relative he had only heard about. Once Erick was dead, all memories of this phantom cousin would be tossed away, and Fathen could emerge into the world as the Eloa Ecrin, high priest of the Inconnu. He fell asleep thinking of the power and respect that would soon be his.

  He awoke to a scream. His eyes opened and spied a flurry of shadowy movements in the close quarters of the darkened cabin. The cry emanated from a figure standing before him. Fetid breath went across his face in a hot wash. A shape near the screamer moved, and a glint of steel flashed. The scream stopped. As the figure fell to the floor in front of Fathen, a dead hand slapped his leg.

  Fathen pushed his way out of bed, desperately reaching for his sword, but found himself forced back, a heavy weight pressed against him. He slammed onto the hard bed, someone on top of him. He flailed and pushed his assailant away.

  The weight fell from his chest. Warm wetness coated his torso, but no pain accompanied it.

  The cabin grew quiet, the only sounds the muted splash of water against the hull and the creaking of ropes from the sails. A shadow moved in the dim light. Fathen grabbed his sword and tried to fumble it from its sheath.

  Sparks flickered in the room as flint struck steel. In the brief glow, Fathen spotted Andras’ grim face and relaxed. The lantern wick caught, and light filled the room as Andras placed the glass over the flame.

  Fathen checked his blood-soaked shirt, searching for a wound. He found no cut and surmised the blood belonged to the man that had fallen on him and now lay in a lifeless heap.

  “I told you he would try to have us killed,” Andras admonished. The flickering lamplight cast him as a gore-soaked creature from the lower Hells.

  Fathen surveyed the carnage. Five bodies lay in the room, literally stacked on top of each other in the cramped confines of the cabin. Two never made it past the doorway, stabbed through the eye; one lay halfway in, a puncture to his throat ending his days. Holes gaped in the chests of the two at Fathen’s feet.

  “You killed them all yourself?” Fathen gasped.

  “Of course,” Andras answered. “They were not used to fighting in the dark. I am. If I wished, I could bring them back from death and have them kill everyone on board the ship.”

  “Then you should do it, to make them pay for their insolence,” Fathen said, a tremor in his voice.

  Andras shook his head. “That would leave no one to sail the ship. But I will make the captain aware of his error. Why did you not remain watchful, as I ordered?”

  “I apologize,” Fathen said, eyes downcast in a sincere display of humiliation. “I should have been more alert, but I was still fatigued by our journey from Draymed.”

  “That is not an excuse,” Andras said, his voice even. “If you are to be high priest, you must survive until I come into my power. To survive, you must be ever alert. I do not command often, but I insist you obey the few I give. Agreed?” The chilling light flashed in Andras’s brown eyes.

  “Agreed,” Fathen said, no longer afraid of those eyes, but respectful of the power behind them. Again looking at the carnage in the cabin, Fathen said, “What do we do now?”

  “Now we ensure the captain knows the foolishness of his attempt.”

  Captain Talas-An paced in his cabin, awaiting the return of his men. They were his five toughest. Cold-blooded murderers whom he always used for unpleasant tasks such as this. Killing members of the Fist was dangerous, but they were worth far more as corpses than as slaves. Turning their bodies over to the Paladins of Caros or the Myrmidons of Sangara in Kalador would net him more money than he made in six months of smuggling up the coast to Falan-Dar. It would sit well with his tribal council and the leaders of neighboring Hucara if they learned of his deed.

  But as the night wore on, he became uncertain. What was taking so long?

  His cabin door flew inward. Talas-An stopped pacing and turned to the open doorway. Jaranas-An, a member of the rigging crew and leader of the ship’s thugs, stepped into the room. The captain could tell immediately something was wrong but was unsure what until the thin light streaming into the doorway revealed the crewman no longer had his head.

  Talas-An backed into the cabin, eyes bulging in horror. Unable to speak, he watched, terrified, as the abomination threw a canvas sack at his feet. It landed with a dull thump and fell open. Motes of black danced before Talas-An and he trembled as five severed heads rolled from the bag and lay in front of him, staring at him with dead, accusing eyes.

  Jaranas-An’s body went limp, falling to the deck like a bundle of grain. Blood drizzled from the neck and soaked into the nearby burlap

  A voice spoke from the doorway. “Molest us again, and I will watch you burn alive while your ship sinks around you.”

  The door slammed, leaving the captain in shock, s
tanding amongst the lifeless stares of his five toughest sailors.

  As Fathen and Andras left their cabin the following morning, the ex-priest noticed the sailors avoided their gaze and came nowhere near. If one accidentally made eye contact, they turned away in haste, but not quickly enough for Fathen to miss the fear in their face. Though he maintained the same stoic manner as Andras, the sailors’ terror elated Fathen. This was the sort of righteous dread he could appreciate, the fear of greater than mortal powers he once tried to instill in his congregation, to no avail. Caros--and his priests--no longer commanded respect, but the priests of Eligos, especially the Eloa Ecrin, would demand it. Once he came into his own, Fathen would never again tolerate the things he accepted in Draymed. Impertinence would be met with severe punishment.

  He caught a young sailor staring at him. They locked eyes for a moment before the youth turned and fled across the deck. Fathen smiled.

  Fathen’s time aboard ship passed quickly. He spent mornings training with his weapon and evenings occupied with learning. Gradually, Fathen discovered the history and ways of his new master. Andras told stories of the arrival of the Inconnu, powerful entities from a place entirely unlike Krinnik. As they had with other worlds, the great beings observed first, learning what they could of those they would rule, choosing the few who were worthy enough to be offered places of power in the new world shaped by the Inconnu.

  Fathen learned of their infinite patience as they drew in more and more followers, playing on the emotions of long-held grudges between nations. The leaders were persuaded, and with the leaders came their subjects and armies.

  “Makern we persuaded easily,” Andras said as they sat in their cabin. “The Tortured Mountains are full of extractable wealth, and we promised they could have the range.”

  “But the Tortured Mountains belong to Amelan.”

  “That mattered little to us. Had Amelan joined us, we would have split the range between the countries.

  “We used the territorial disputes between Straphin and Starrasen to gain Straphin’s forces. We offered them the means to reclaim all their lands stolen centuries before.

  “Most of Falan-Dar came when we convinced the caliph that the fertile lands of Zakerin in the south were more suitable to the great Sakenin tribes than the arid desert where fate chose to place them.”

  “What do you mean, ‘most’?”

  “The Caliph is the tribal leader only as far as other nations are concerned; he holds no real power over the tribes. He could only persuade eight of the tribes to join. The others abstained or, like the Parshera, fought us.

  “We could not persuade the leaders of Zakerin, Amelan, or Starrasen. We promised them power, land, and money, but they refused. When that did not work, we threatened them with war and destruction, but they still would not submit. We gathered some rebels who joined us in hopes of bettering their lot, but despite this, the land would not be ours without a fight, much as we wished it otherwise.

  “We planned our offensive carefully; because we had the leaders of three kingdoms, we had three armies under our command. Although it would have been easy, we did not force the armies to fight. Instead, my brothers and I spoke to those whose purpose was to die on the battlefields. I explained to them why they had to fight, and spoke of the rewards for those who did fight, until every man would rather die than not fight; thus was the Fist of the Inconnu born.” Andras glanced out the small porthole in their cabin. “Enough for now; it is time to train.”

  As the days passed, Fathen learned the stories of battles waged in all corners of the world, from the eastern foothills of the Tortured Mountains to the Ruban, the southern swamps of Starrasen. The Fist fought gloriously in these battles, gaining prestige and honor for the Inconnu, but the stubbornness of those who could not see the righteousness of Eligos and his brothers were great. The Inconnu and the Fist met fierce resistance, but they never faltered, knowing they would prevail.

  Over a dinner of dried bread, hard cheese, and their last ration of salted goat, the priest learned how Saburoc, the Master of Plagues and brother to Eligos, discovered the unusual properties of the plants used by certain people to heal the wounded and cure the sick. He showed these to his brothers, and together they devised a way to put the plants to better use.

  The first gateloah created by Eligos fought alongside Fist members in the battle to take Peretan, a city in northern Amelan. The battle was a rout, the city taken in hours as the defenders fled before the undead that attacked them. Those few who stayed to fight were quickly cut down; their weapons held scant power over the creatures that swarmed around them. Imbued with the power of Elonsha, the creatures were nearly impervious to mortal weapons. Blades and axes would not slice through rotted sinew without great strength; stones and maces bounced off dry bones, leaving cracks instead of shatters. Few living things could harm the new creatures of Eligos.

  Flushed by success, Eligos taught his art to those he found most worthy, and the first Necromancers worked their magic and created legions of creatures to run rampant over the living. Cities fell. The three rebellious kingdoms began to collapse. Victory belonged to the Inconnu.

  “And then we were betrayed, my brothers killed and myself exiled,” Andras concluded bitterly before he fell silent.

  Fathen pressed him to explain further, but his mentor would say no more. Fathen realized he could fill in the details with half-remembered stories from his early days in the priesthood. Stories that, at the time, hardly seemed credible.

  The third night at sea, Fathen awoke to an eerie thrumming noise, soft but disquieting. He found Andras seated upright in his bed, back rigid, arms at his side stretching toward the floor, and a jagged smile on his face. An aura surrounded him, pulsing from black to deep purple and back. Points of red light shot through the dark nimbus, darting toward Andras from the outer edge. They leapt from their ebony cloud and landed on his skin, burrowing in and disappearing.

  Thinking him under attack, Fathen moved to help his mentor, but as soon as he approached the aura, nausea racked through his body. He caught an overwhelming scent of rotted onions. Sweat broke on his forehead, and he doubled over as his stomach clenched, his body rejecting the malignant presence of the throbbing halo.

  He retreated, his only thought to be away from this foul thing. The back of his knees hit his bed frame. He fell, landing hard on the thin mattress.

  The glow and smell faded rapidly, and with it Fathen’s nausea. Once it disappeared, Andras blinked and his eyes glowed pale white with pupils of dull red. Fathen sat on his bed, afraid to move,

  Andras smiled. “Do not cower,” he said, his voice whispery like dead leaves against a windowpane. “There is reason to be joyous. A Necromancer is dead.”

  “Erick?”

  “No, but one of his kind. Older, but not nearly as powerful, he died in fear with praise to my name on the lips of his killer.” Andras brought his hand up and ran fingers across his lips. “The Elonsha was so sweet.”

  “What happened?”

  “I absorbed the energy released by the Necromancer’s death. When someone is killed in my name, it nourishes me, but only as food nourishes a body. It is fleeting and must be replenished. But when a Necromancer is killed in my name, the nourishment is like sword and armor. It remains and increases my power. As the other Necromancers are destroyed, I will become stronger. When I am strong enough, I will reach into the Aesir, the nothingness of creation, and wrench the rest of my being into this world. Then there will be reason for all to tremble.”

  Fathen shuddered, remembering the unfathomable malice and force emanating from his mentor as the sinister aura surrounded him. For the first time, he truly realized the Inconnu’s terrifying majesty. Once whole, his master would be unstoppable. It frightened him, and he said a silent prayer of thanks to the chaos that he chose to side with this dark entity.

  The next morning found Andras in a triumphant mood. “We arrive in Kalador tomorrow, and the boy will soon be in our hands. We
shall take the day off from weapons training.” Standing at the ship’s railing, he turned from the smooth ocean to Fathen. “You show promise as a swordsman. You will be a fine Ecrin.”

  “Thank you,” Fathen said, genuinely appreciative. His new teacher showed far more forgiveness and patience than any of the priests he learned under while training in the Temple of Caros.

  Andras turned back to the ocean, staring toward Kalador as if willing it to arrive faster. Fathen followed his gaze. “Do you think he’s still in the city?”

  “Not only do I think he is still in the city, but he’s either in an oubliette or chained to a wall waiting for me to slit his throat and take his Elonsha.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “He is only one child with a few friends. Kalador is crawling with members of the Fist, and we have hired the city’s brotherhood of thieves to be on the watch for him. He won’t escape.”

  18

  Procurers are nothing but vermin. They are leeches who would suck the life from the city and destroy commerce. If I had my way, we’d burn every warren we found and throw anyone found in black in the deepest dungeon. They want black; we can give them black.

  -Narin Tarsk, Kaladorian Merchant

  “Your brother?” Erick asked after a moment of stunned silence. “Marcus is your brother?”

  “My twin, actually,” Elissia answered as she watched the departing crowd.

  “Your brother is a Procurer?” Corby asked.

  “Is everyone going to state the obvious?” Elissia snapped. “My father is Guild Master of the Procurers; so what?”

  A small voice spoke up behind them in a mixture of fear and amazement. “The Banished One.”

  They turned to the momentarily forgotten boy who stood nearby, wiping his nose with a grubby hand. His glistening eyes grew wider as he stared at Elissia.