“Lisen,” Eloise whispered, “you are a necropath.”
“A what?” Lisen asked, still taking everything in.
“Look back into your memories,” Eloise encouraged her, “your skill with the dying.”
“Are you talking about here or there?” Lisen asked.
Eloise turned and faced her. “Something happened there?”
Lisen shrugged. “I had…a way…with the dying. It wasn’t anything special.” She thought back on her volunteer work at the Mead Nursing Home, how she often sat in the hospice wing with the dying residents and the comfort that she took from it.
“It was special,” Eloise insisted softly. “It was and always will be.”
The two of them were interrupted and forced to jump apart as a tall, dark man rushed past them up the steps into the haven, someone apparently too ill to walk on her own in his arms. Eloise stepped out behind the man, and Lisen thought first to follow them, that this man carried the one nearly dead. But then she made out two kneeling figures to her left in a corner of the yard, and between them lay a body. She hesitated only a heartbeat, steeling herself for the onslaught of the violence this soul had probably suffered. It was returning to her now—what a necropath was. She had already done this thing Eloise spoke of before she’d left here seven years ago, but only with hermits slipping away due to old age. The hermits here had planned on sending her to Rossla Haven, far away to the east, for training, but Earth had changed everything.
As she stood there, more hermits ran out of the entry, and the last two riders dismounted and ran up the steps past her and into the sanctuary. Yet the tableau of the body and the two soldiers, the soldiers recognizable from their chest plates and weapons—this tableau remained, stillness amid chaos. It called to her, and in sandaled feet she padded down the cold steps, making her way to the moment of death. She dropped to her knees beside the body—a woman, Lisen assumed from the lack of a beard—a woman in her middle years who lay without moving save for an occasional halting breath. The two guards studied Lisen as she picked up the woman’s hand.
“She’s an assassin, hermit,” the male soldier said. His beard was more closely cropped than those of all the men she’d seen here in the haven. “Poisoned herself after, likely as not. There’ll be no healing here.”
“I’m not a healer,” Lisen said softly, her eyes focused on the dying form before her. “I’m a necropath.” The guards shifted back a bit, distancing themselves from her in fear. Lisen closed herself off from their emotions. She knew non-hermits feared what hermits could do and that necropaths petrified people the most. “She will not die alone,” Lisen whispered, intimidated by the reality that was her gift.
“Don’t deserve it, I say.” The female guard spat on the ground.
“It’s not for me to judge,” Lisen replied. The two soldiers shrugged, regained their feet and backed away, and Lisen knew that despite their apprehension now, these two would both cry out for a necropath when death called out their names. Lisen sighed, then closed her eyes and waited for something—anything—to tell her what the hell she was doing.
The woman still lived, but not for long. This was the moment, the perfect moment—before the beginning of the passage, when the soul could be caught. Lisen reached in with her mind, seeking the woman’s essence.
Whirling.
Swirling.
The soul writhed in turmoil.
Lisen took another deep breath, braced herself, and, shielding herself from the soul’s confusion as best she could, she delved further in.
“No!” A long wail. “What have I…? No!”
Assassin maybe, Lisen thought, but she doesn’t sound like a willing one.
“The eyes. Oh, the eyes.” Another wail. “I cannot…. No!”
Lisen recoiled, severed all contact, even releasing the woman’s hand. She tasted…blood. No. Something very like it. Metallic. Then she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. Pushed. This woman was pushed. Someone, some unknown one, had faced the forbidden and pushed. Definitely not willing.
Lisen breathed. And breathed again. The one who had pushed still watched, and Lisen prepared to raise her defenses as best she could so that she could help this poor woman. Foolhardy as it was for someone like her with no training at all to even attempt this, Lisen believed the woman deserved a safe passage through the dark tunnel between this life and what lay beyond, that passage which necropaths called “famar,” and Lisen would not fail her. So, in spite of the danger, Lisen closed her eyes, placed her hand gingerly upon the woman’s chest and remained there, perched, awaiting the onslaught, until the woman took her last labored breath.
The soul flailed about, too agitated to make any progress. Had Lisen and this woman found themselves alone in their connection, in their sort of Vulcan mind meld, Lisen would have opened herself up completely, would have remained steadfast amidst the chaos, but she didn’t dare. Not under these circumstances. Lisen sensed that the watcher—the one who had pushed—would be waiting for her to show any hint of vulnerability and would pounce at Lisen’s first slip in order to silence her. This watcher could not risk exposure. So Lisen reached in, cautiously, but immediately withdrew, as though from an oven too hot to touch. When she sensed herself unburned, she reached in again, determined to remain and help the woman.
“Lisen.” Someone joggled her shoulder, and she jerked away from the touch. Who dared disturb her?
“Lisen.”
She whirled on the interloper, prepared to hurt her if she must to prevent further interruption, and found Eloise, who certainly knew better, standing over her.
“What?” Lisen forced out, closing her eyes to limit external stimuli, her hand still spread on the dead woman’s chest, the connection tenuous.
“Is she in possession?” Eloise asked, her voice low and calm, yet urgent and firm.
She knew too much, this sooth, this slippery seer, too much of the work of a necropath. “No,” Lisen replied. “There’s someone, a watcher. I’m partially detached.”
“Good. You recognized it. Let the woman go.”
Lisen bristled at this order. “No.” It wasn’t Eloise’s place to tell her what to do. She wasn’t Lisen’s mentor, and she certainly wasn’t her superior, not in this. How dare she!
“Leave her and come with me.”
“No!” This went against everything Lisen could remember from before, what elementary training she had been given. If the soul of this woman had been in possession, Eloise never would have suggested an early disconnection. Lisen knew very well that the consequences of such an action could be disastrous and the probability of reversing them all but impossible. Even those outside the havens called those thus afflicted “possessed.” But her cautious detachment in this case allowed for leeway.
“The one in the infirmary needs you more. Leave this one be.”
Lisen turned, eyes open again, intent on glaring Eloise down, but she drew back when she saw Eloise had pulled herself up to her full height and that the whole of her appeared to glow an ethereal red. Anger, Lisen thought, angry, too, but lacking the power to take this woman on. “But….”
“Now!”
Lisen raised her free hand, her first finger up to signal her need for a moment. Then she returned to the woman to close their bond properly. She had no idea what she was doing—it was all instinct really—but she breathed deeply, bringing herself back within herself. Then she withdrew, slowly, sending comfort and strength as she abandoned this woman to her demons and to the watcher who had conjured them.
“Ah….”
Lisen’s heart stalled.
“Who…?”
Mesmerizing. She tugged but couldn’t pull away.
“I will know….”
Tendrils of energy reached out for her through the dead woman. She couldn’t move, couldn’t pull free. This watcher, this one who had pushed, would know….
“Lisen!”
And Eloise dragged her away. She blinked and gasped f
or breath as Eloise helped her rise from the ground.
“Jesus,” Lisen murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Lisen answered, dismissing the sooth. “The name of one of Earth’s Creators. I use it way too much,” she mumbled off.
“What attacked you?” Eloise pressed for answers.
“The watcher.” Lisen shook her head, still catching her breath. “So strong. Really powerful.”
“Not a hermit, I take it.”
“How should I know?” She frowned at Eloise.
“A hermit does not take possession of a person for their own uses. It’s against our vows.”
“So was conjuring up a portal to another world, or so you said, but you did it anyway.”
“It’s not the same. I did it to protect you, not to serve my own purposes.”
“But why me?” Lisen asked, trying to trick Eloise into an answer, any answer.
“You’ll know soon enough,” Eloise replied, deflecting.
“When?” Lisen asked.
“Soon. Now, just remember,” Eloise said as she moved to lead Lisen away from the dead woman and back into the haven. “This was not a hermit, at least not one keeping vows. If I were you, I’d take care making such contact. It’s not—”
“I know,” Lisen blurted out. Eloise treated her like a child. “I do remember some things.” Then, following the sooth, Lisen turned away from the receiving yard, from the pandemonium of untethered horses and powerless guards, but she stopped before the main entry and looked back at the yard. Only then did the magnitude of it all hit her. Guards. Emperi guards. She finally recognized the emblem on their chest plates. She turned back to look at the double wooden doors of the entry but froze there, her mind beginning to fill in some of the answers. The man who’d passed her taking the steps into the haven two at a time had carried a body, the body, it seemed, of an important person. And the other two who’d followed him in—their dress, the manner in which they’d carried themselves—they were nobles. She looked to Eloise who reached out to pull her in through the doors, but Lisen balked.
Eloise had brought her back from Earth, from the life Lisen had thought her only life, just in time for this? Eloise had come to her tonight knowing who was arriving and why. This went beyond curious; this terrified Lisen—all this death and mayhem.
“Is this what you brought me back for?” Lisen asked, staring out at the yard, pointing towards it.
“No,” Eloise replied. “I brought you back for what’s upstairs. Follow me. You’ll know soon enough.”
“I’m beginning to hate that word. ‘Soon.’” Lisen yanked her hand away and stood resolute. “Well, ‘soon enough’ is now.” She had rights, and she wasn’t moving until Eloise told her everything.
The sooth opened and closed her empty hand, then sighed. “I can’t tell you, and the longer you delay down here, the less time you’ll have with the one who can.”
Seventeen years of not knowing, ten of them at Solsta, the next seven on Earth with the beast craving identity quiet within her. Now, Lisen’s hunger for knowledge gnawed at her gut, ravenous for the revelations Eloise had just promised. And yet…she couldn’t move. At the prospect of certain enlightenment, Lisen had slipped into a lethargy she could not overcome. She stared into Eloise’s grey eyes, trying to find something there, but only a flash of madness, swiftly masked, stared back. This was not the motherly Eloise she remembered.
Lisen shook her head. Irrelevant, she told herself. With a deep breath, she relinquished as many of her old notions as she could, reached out towards the sooth and flicked her hand in a carry-on gesture. The sooth turned and strode through the haven’s great door, and Lisen stepped in behind her.
They rushed down the arched hall outside the sanctuary, all the way to the back of the building where they followed the stairs up through the rock of the mountain. They ascended, Lisen’s heart racing, her thoughts skipping around in her head, making no sense whatsoever. Emperi guards? A person of importance? An “assassin”? Someone had pushed that woman, but why?
They reached the infirmary door on the second floor, and Eloise stopped, Lisen halting beside her.
“Go,” Eloise ordered. “Titus awaits.”
“What…?”
Eloise shook her head. “No. No more questions. You’ll know what to do. Just go. The answers are in there.”
Again with the damn riddles! Lisen wanted to shake the woman, make her explain, force her to stop being so slippery. But the moment—the moment swelled with urgency. So, with a sigh, Lisen reached out for the chain which would pull up the latch, and she let herself into the room, leaving behind Eloise and her frustrating refusal to give anything away.
A painful picture greeted her. In a room with the rock face for its back wall and ceiling, the woman at the center of everyone’s attention lay on a cot, writhing in the throes of a horrific death. Lisen wanted to go to her, but Hermit Titus, who sat on the side of the bed closest to Lisen, looked up and stopped her with a glance. At the foot of the bed stood the guard who had carried this woman into the haven, his dark eyes wary at Lisen’s entrance until Titus nodded a welcome. Lisen stared at the guard a moment longer, her Earthly self taken by his mystery, aroused by the long dark braid down his back, his close-cropped beard…and those eyes.
She forced herself from his gaze and instead looked across the cot to where the young female noble stood beside her seated male counterpart. Both blond, both well-appointed, both definitely of a much higher station than the guard. They might be brother and sister, but Lisen had no way of knowing.
An older hermit rushed in from the hall, pushing past Lisen and going directly to Titus. “Sallur,” Titus said to the other man. “Good. The captain has a vial. I believe it contained ural. Would you confirm that for me?”
“Ach, bad stuff, that,” this Hermit Sallur commented and turned to the guard whom Lisen could not ignore. The guard nodded towards the door, past where Lisen stood, and Lisen stepped aside as he and Sallur left the room to confer. She sighed softly at the guard’s exit, then turned back to look at the cot, where her duty lay. It would be soon. Even as a ten-year-out, before her Earthly sabbatical, she had known that ural killed, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but it killed, always, with no hope of antidote.
“Come,” Titus said, looking up at Lisen, beckoning her forward with one hand while he maintained his connection with the dying woman with the other. Lisen stepped forward, tentatively, wondering what she was supposed to do here. She’d learned bits and pieces long ago—one thing being the importance of the timing of the link before the death. Too soon, and death’s destructive force could envelope the necropath as well, paralyzing or, at the very least, weakening resolve. Too late, and the task would prove pointless.
“Lisen,” Titus said, taking Lisen’s hand as she reached the cot.
“Yes?” Lisen asked in a whisper. Grief and loss exerted their own demands on the sounds of the living.
“This is Empir Flandari.”
Lisen stared at the elder hermit. The ruler of Garla? Felled by an assassin? She looked down at the woman in the bed, seeing her fully for the first time. She may once have been handsome. The muscles of her body which now spasmed in response to the poison had probably once served her well in play and in battle. The face, now contorted, seemed strong and, oddly, familiar. The short, dark-red curls which framed her firm features had glued themselves to her pallid skin with the sweat of her torment. Empir Flandari? So even Empirs could succumb to ural, it seemed.
Titus rose, patted Lisen on the shoulder and whispered into her ear. “I leave her to you.”
“Leave?” Lisen asked, grabbing the hermit’s sleeve, speaking softly but with urgency. “You can’t leave me here. I don’t know what to do.”
“Take her hand and reach your mind out to hers. It will come,” Titus whispered, then he spoke in a normal voice for the benefit of the two nobles. “We must take our leave, my lords. It is time.”
“N
o,” Lisen said. “I’ve been away. I’m not trained. I was supposed to be trained.” She was frantic now. The woman in the yard had just been some woman, risky but irrelevant. This was the Empir. Lisen couldn’t get this one wrong.
Hermit Titus grabbed Lisen’s hands with his own. “You know more than you realize.” And into Lisen’s mind—a dying. She was only nine. Titus sat with her, but Lisen completed the passing without the hermit’s aid. Lisen’s heart began to slow; her mind, to settle.
“All right,” she said. “But you can’t stay, can you.”
Titus shook his head. “No. Necropaths must work alone.”
“But I’m—”
“Shh,” Titus interrupted her, placing his fingertips over Lisen’s lips. Then looking again to the nobles, he said, “Come and let us leave.”
And it began, with the leave-taking and the final farewells of the living to those soon to be gone, an unfamiliar ritual to Lisen but ritual nevertheless. She took the seat Titus had vacated and watched as the young woman across from her touched the Empir on the hand and followed Titus out. Only the blond man with the delicate features remained, and Lisen shielded herself from his grief. Clutching the woman’s hand, he gazed down at her, at his Empir, with the intensity of one who might hold this sun from her setting, if the power were granted him—who would save this living woman from dying if he only could. Could this be the Heir-Empir? Could this be the Ariel whose reputation for bad behavior Lisen could remember even from before? But this man did not resemble the woman on the bed.
“Ask….” The Empir spoke, the word drawn out on one long expiration of breath, her eyes locked with the noble’s. He looked up at Lisen, and Lisen met his cheerless but steady blue eyes with the blue-green ferocity of her own. Didn’t he understand that he had to go?
“What are you called?”
Lisen stared at him. “What?”
“Your name,” he ordered, his attitude of command something to which he seemed very much accustomed. “You know there isn’t any time.”
Fractured (Lisen of Solsta Book 1) Page 5
