Ghost in the Yew: Volume One of the Vesteal Series

by Blake Hausladen

  ‘But the Shadow was not finished,’ she explained sadly. ‘He created one last thing upon the world He hoped would destroy it—creatures capable of crafting their own reasons and religions, beings capable of any wickedness. And of all the creatures that have roamed beneath me, none are more deceitful or revolting. Arrogance, ignorance, and false notions of gods and reasons for being have ever stirred their action into a caustic stew. They have hung pieces of their children from my branches to sate their desires for power and have pulled down my sons and daughters to please the gods they have invented or to make better weapons with which to do murder.’

  “The Hessier,” I said.

  ‘No, human. It is you. It is mankind the Shadow crafted to unmake the world. The Hessier are men like any other.’

  The dark forms moved out into the forest, and there they multiplied and did with the world what they would. I did not believe it.

  ‘You doubt me,’ she said, and I was ashamed. ‘But hold yourself up now, human, for I can also tell you the Shadow’s craft was flawed. You are not rational beings, after all, but to make you capable of murder and magic, He had to make you capable of reason.’

  The vision shifted again, much later it seemed, to a single man upon a tall ship. Snow swirled wildly around him, and ice hung from his beard and eyebrows. In one hand, he held fast to a great wheel, and in the other he held a warm ball of white light. The notes of a song leaked from his lips.

  ‘And so it happened that the Earth came to call some of you kin. She shared Her magic with men, and they have guarded Her and I—kept us safe from the dark destroyer.’

  The vision ended there, and we were wrapped again in the darkness of the forest. She said to us slowly, mournfully, ‘Many of those I have revealed myself to do not survive what comes next. You belong to the Shadow still, and because you have been touched by the Spirit of the Earth, He is trying now to kill you. I can protect you only moments more. But have hope. He will try to pull you down, but if you can stand, you will sever yourself from Him. Stand now. Stand and join those who guard the world.’

  As she finished, the warmth of her words vanished. Gern shrieked. An icy pain stabbed my eyes and drew hooks through my flesh. The invisible force squeezed me and pulled me flat on my back.

  He was there. The Shadow had hold of my soul and meant to snatch it away from me.

  I no longer doubted the tree’s tale. I could stand and join the fight against Him, or I would die. A sick sliver of pain stabbed through me—made me angry. Made me furious. I got to one knee and then shakily I stood.

  The pain let go of me all at once, and an arresting sense of calm halted my thoughts.

  My hands warmed. I rubbed them together slowly. I marveled at the feeling—the sense of ownership.

  I had become Chaukai. I was free.

  ‘Remarkable. This is as it should be. Your road here has made you ready to defy Him. Welcome.’

  ‘And you lad?’ she asked. ‘Can you find your feet and pick up your fearsome spear?’

  I peered into the darkness toward the sound of Gern weeping. He howled in pain. I willed him up, almost moved to help him. He growled, fighting hard, but then coughed as if being crushed by all the weight of the Daavum Mountains.

  “Come on, son,” his father cheered, and the Chaukai joined in. But he continued to shriek and thrashed in the darkness.

  ‘He is dying,’ the tree said sadly.

  “No,” I told her. “Not this one. Help him.”

  ‘I have done all I can. He must rise on his own. He must break free of the Shadow’s grip or die.’

  The sound of his anguish dragged through me. The sound drew the ghosts of the Vesteal, and they rushed again around us. In the sudden glow, I saw the lad twisted upon the ground. He had given up. He had not lived long enough. He was a virgin, and he was a killer.

  A killer.

  I had fought with Gern and had known few as deadly. The Shadow had made him well. I knew what would rouse him.

  “Parsh,” I boomed then—the priest’s word for death from our motto.

  The cheering Chaukai were slapped silent, the ghosts shrieked in rage, and the Mother Yew cried, ‘Do not say such words here.’

  I ignored the tree. I ignored the enraged king and Gern’s angry father. I was not going to lose one of my men. Not while there was fight left in me. Not ever.

  “Take up that spear, soldier,” I barked over them all. “You know our enemy now. You know what will come. You know what will take Fana’s life if you do not stand and kill it. Say the words, Gernilqwa. Take up the call.”

  “Silent, the forest grows,” he whispered weakly, and I screamed the rest with him. “An end for its enemies. Parsh. Parsh. Parsh.”

  The ghosts were dashed into a frenzy, and Sahin cursed my name. The tree seemed bigger, suddenly, and very angry.

  “Solon,” I called toward a fellow killer, drew my blade, and pointed it at him. “Help me rouse our brother. You know the meat of it. Take up the call. Parsh. Parsh. Parsh.”

  The ghost swung in over me trailing great wafts of fiery ash. His eyes glowed with the desire that came with our business. He gripped his blade and leered down at me.

  “Kinsman,” I barked at him. “Look to your fellow. Remember the day you lay there and what you would have given to have such a call from your brothers at your back when the Hessier walked here and murdered your father and your nation. Take up the call.”

  He looked to Gern then with focus, and when I barked the verse, he swooped down beside me and added the dead and angry shriek of his voice to mine, “Parsh. Parsh. Parsh.”

  “We will kill them all, Gernilqwa,” I barked, “Get hold of that spear. Get hold of your guts. Give me the words, and we will kill them all.”

  “Parsh,” Gern screamed then, and the pain in his tortured call got hold of us all.

  “Parsh,” we screamed with him, screamed it with desire. “Parsh.”

  “We are not here to survive,” I raged. “We are here to kill. We were tools of the Destroyer, but now we are His doom. Say it if ever you want to set the darkness back and feed it a spear.”

  The wrath took sudden hold of Gern. His head came up, he found and lifted his spear, and then with all the rage that the wounded forest had bound up for centuries, he leapt up and flung his spear at the Shadow. “Parsh.”

  I trembled, exhausted, and as Gern turned an uncertain circle toward me, we both collapsed to the ground. The ghosts withdrew, and the world was again swallowed in darkness. But it was—different. The pitch black of the haunted forest did not trouble me, as though a layer of paranoia and worry had been peeled from my soul.

  I understood the world, and there were those in it that would learn to fear my name.

  The Mother Yew laughed then, softly, “You are most surprising, man of Zoviya. What have we invited into our number? What does a man do with such vulgar and brutal emotion?”

  “Murder.”

  “Murder is a tool of the Shadow, not the Chaukai. You exist to protect the Vesteal. Who can do murder who is not bent into His service?”

  I was tired. I had little left for her but a promise. “Ask me that again the day after I have murdered the last of Bayen’s priests and the Shadow’s Hessier.”

  Then my eyes closed.

  72

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  Two days after the engagement party, I learned how well Leger had trained the men.

  Three puffs of signal fire smoke from the scouts camped upon the road said a column of riders approached, and by the time Leger led me out to the palisade gates, Gern and his garrison stood ready upon the wall above. The lieutenant reported that Ojesti had been alerted and that the balance of the greencoats were already on the way.

  Leger looked particularly tired that morning, as did Gern for that matter, but I didn’t get a chance to ask why. We turned to the sound of hooves. The scouts were not alone. My father’s messenger and the escort Hemari I had sent with the request to marry rode in with t
hem. My back straightened. No small thing could make them turn away from an appointed task.

  The messenger spoke first. “Chancellery men and bailiffs on the road behind us, lord.”

  “How many?” I asked quickly.

  “They are a mixed bunch but number more than a thousand.”

  “Do you know their purpose?”

  “No. Beyond the sanction that you satisfied earlier this year, the palace is not aware of any writ or warrant aimed at you. I would have stopped to demand their business, but the captain did not think it wise.”

  “Report,” Leger ordered of the tall Hemari.

  He pulled off his white-crested helmet and said, “They are as he says, Colonel. Whatever their business, they mean to be about it. We put some ground between us and they, but they will arrive presently. If you do command two brigades, Lord Prince, I recommend you call upon them now.”

  I turned to Leger, “Ride out or meet them here?”

  “We meet them here. Captain, remove your men to Ojesti until this is resolved. These men must bear a writ against the prince. You cannot take sides in this.”

  I wanted to protest but held my tongue. Beyond the borders of the Kaaryon, a Hemari had little authority. The man could not oppose the chancellor.

  The officer ordered his company to move and the messenger went with them.

  Leger turned to my bodyguards, “Time to put on that Hessier plate, boys. You too, Prince, your chainmail, helm, and shield, if you please.”

  “You think it will come to blood?”

  “The chancellor means to be rid of you. Be your clever self, but know the writ they bear will only be the excuse. You defeat their writ, and if it comes to it, I’ll defeat their men.”

  “What do you intend?”

  “To rouse the town and command the cavalry. You stop them at the gate while we encircle them. Raise one flag, and we’ll block the road, two and we’ll charge.”

  “Understood,” I replied and raced with him back down the road.

  The brief section of forest between the palisade and keep was still intact, and I recalled it was the spot where I had first poked my head out of the carriage that delivered me to Urnedi and saw children upon the road. Lilly was the little girl’s name, if memory served, daughter to one of those who cooked my breakfast every morning.

  They were counting on me.

  We reached the keep, hurried into our armor, found the brothers already suited and waiting for us by ponies. The Hessier steel was alarming, regardless of the replacement basinets and their healthy faces. I could not stifle a shiver.

  When we rode out, the men from the town and the greencoats from Ojesti were already assembling on the practice field. Back at the palisade, we found Gern and his half company spread along the wall with bows at the ready. They were impressive, but I tried to keep Leger’s words well in mind. My greencoats numbered only 400.

  The bailiffs were already in sight when I stepped out before the gates. They fanned out into the wide clearing before the gatehouse. Some 200 riders led in the force. They slowed, and, after a very long moment, came to a halt. Four men in black dalmatics and a pair of senior-looking bailiffs dismounted and crossed the wide space. The bailiffs wore leg irons on their belts. The metal clanging was a sound I had forgotten. How truly evil a place Bessradi was for me to have grown up not understanding the terror of that sound. They approached with the swagger of those familiar with this power. They pointed at my men and laughed. They did not even bother to greet us.

  “Hessier steel,” the senior officer said to the other and pointed at my bodyguards. “What do you think those will go for?”

  “Hard to find a buyer, I’d imagine. A gift to the prelature, perhaps?”

  The other shrugged and then gestured the chancellor’s men toward me as if to be done with some banal formality.

  “Prince Barok,” the foremost of the chancellor’s men said with a genial smile, “your evasion of the chancellor’s writ has earned you very little.”

  I set my eyes on the man and took a step toward him. “You dare speak to a son of Vall with such a tone?”

  The impish functionary stood his ground and extended a tightly-bound satchel toward me.

  “What is this?”

  “You have read its contents twice. We are here to witness the third.”

  The moment felt too much like when I saw the Hessier upon the trail. Leger was right. These pasty-skinned toads had come for me and had the authority to do it. Their confidence could be born from nothing else. If I could not defeat the document they carried, my choices were surrender or rebellion.

  I chose a softer tone. “This manor has received no correspondence from Chancellor Parsatayn.”

  “You are a liar.”

  I heard a brief clamor of metal behind me, and the smarmy man fell back from the sudden bluster of Hessier steel. There were limits to how a prince could be treated, regardless of the man’s authority.

  He recovered quickly, but I did hear him swallow. “It is all there,” he pointed.

  I opened the case and read a series of letters—the chancellor’s against Enhedu, Fana’s response, the chancellor’s second attempt, and Selt’s response.

  “Gern,” I boomed. “Have Fana and Selt brought here, now.”

  My blood cooked and stirred. What had my scribes been up to that they kept it a secret for a season? Dia was in on it. Gern and Thell must be, too. I could not recall the Churlish Laws well enough to judge their actions.

  I decided to trust them and to be entirely Yentif. The bondsmen of princes had rights that others did not. They could not be charged with a crime without my or my father’s permission, and no man of royal blood would ever let one of his bondsmen be taken without a fight. Selt and Fana belonged to me.

  I took a hard step toward the chancellor’s man. “When were the originals sent?”

  “Originals?”

  I glared holes in the man. “You come here bearing writ against me and cannot answer my most simple question?”

  He stammered, and I took another step that carried me so close that my breath moved his hair. He retreated a pace. Another of the four stepped forward, and I knew he was the senior man from the superior smugness of his grin.

  “As you read,” he said with a soft, singsong voice. “The first letter was destroyed by your scribe and the second by your bondsman. These are faithful copies.”

  “Present your witnesses.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “You also have problems with simple questions?”

  “No, Lord Prince, I—”

  “Then present the man who witnessed the composure of the first letter.”

  “This is not necessary. The treasonous destruction of the second is act sufficient enough, yes?”

  “Very well, you concede the first letter was flawed. I accept your surrender on the point.”

  He tried to interrupt me, but I spoke over him. “Tell me then of the man who witnessed my bondsman destroy the second letter, as he clearly claims otherwise.”

  “My lord, your man’s word will not be taken at face. You must know that.”

  I laughed at the man. “Why, because he is from Enhedu?”

  “Yes, Prince. Only the word of a credentialed Kaaryon scribe will be considered. I am surprised I have to tell that to someone tutored upon the Deyalu.”

  I heard voices and turned to see Gern leading my scribes through the gates.

  “You should have checked the rolls before travelling such a long way. My bondsman is Chancellery trained.”

  “Your lies cannot be suffered. For that to be true he would need to carry the proper credentials.”

  “Bondsman,” I ordered, “retrieve your credentials for this man.”

  Selt had the document in hand and extended it toward the official with a bow.

  I stared at him. They had known the chancellor’s men were coming. I teetered on fury for the secrets they’d kept, but their calm gave me pause. There was a reason for thei
r actions and they stood ready. I gave my full attention to our enemies.

  The official finished reading the document and examined the seal upon Prince Rahan’s letter. His frustration was revealed in a tight sniff.

  “If you are satisfied, I demand you present your witness.”

  “I have no witness.”

  “So, I ask you again, where are the originals?”

  “The first was composed in error and destroyed by your scribe; the second, apparently, was damaged en route.”

  I spun upon Selt. “Gern, arrest this man. Get him out of my sight.”

  Selt bowed and Gern led him away.

  “Where are you taking him?” the official asked while they disappeared through the gates. “Your man will face charges in Bessradi.”

  “He goes where I bid him unless you bear a warrant with his name on it.”

  “I do not require it. I have my own authority.”

  “You are dreaming if you think it sufficient to lay hands on a Yentif bondsman. Fear not, he is guilty of a crime against me and will be held accountable.”

  “What do you charge him with?”

  “What would you charge me with?” I shouted so loud he stumbled backwards. “How dare you, upon the verge of civil war, come here demanding anything of me? I am third in line for the throne of Zoviya. Tell me what charge you bear, or upon my father I will bury you where Bayen will never find you.”

  He wiped my spittle from his face, looked back at his colleagues who could offer no help, and mumbled a reply. “Defrauding the Chancellery.”

  “You have a warrant with my name on it?”

  “No,” he whispered before managing to find his voice. “But I have a letter of authority. Signed by the chancellor. It is sufficient.”

  “You have already admitted that the chancellor’s first and second attempts failed to reach me.”