She found she could move more easily as a soul. As they walked she began to venture farther from her body of flesh. Up ahead a row of tall narrow poplars rose into the sky. She ran for them, leapt, and zoomed into branches and leaves which were all edged with fine pale hairs as thin as dandelion fluff.The tree was not solid, not nearly as solid as her body and the horse had been. It felt instead like sand or small gravel. She reported this.
“The structure of things is different in that world,” Withers said. “Press into it.”
She pressed her arm through a branch, feeling a heat as she did so, and retrieved it again. She was clinging to the tree about a dozen feet from the field below. Above her a group of small flying creatures startled from their hiding places and fluttered out of the tree. They looked like white butterflies. Some landed on her shoulders and body. One landed on the back of her naked hand. She looked down at it. It was a pretty wispy thing. She described it to Withers.
“Careful,” he said.
Suddenly her hand stung. Two more stings lanced into her foot.
She cursed and swatted at them with her hand. The strange butterflies lifted off. Those she’d hit dropped away, spiraling to the ground.
Sugar jumped out of the tree. As soon as she hit the ground, she was running, expecting the biting butterflies to follow her like an angry nest of hornets. But when she glanced back, the butterflies were trailing down, falling upon those she’d injured or killed.
“Sugar?” Withers asked.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Good thing you had your skenning, eh?”
It was. What if the whole mob of them had been able to sting her? It would have been excruciating.
“Those pretties are called gossamers. You’ll often find them about bodies of fallen souls. Sometimes the bodies of flesh that Walkers leave behind attract them as well.”
“How many Walkers are there?”
“Very few sleth know the secrets. But there are Walkers employed by the Divines. Myself, I tried to avoid areas where Divines were working.”
Sugar smelled sulfur and reported it.
“You’re not smelling that in the world of souls,” said Withers. “We’re coming up on a sulfur spring. We asked around when we learned you’d agreed to be our ferret. If you’re going to find blackspine, you’ll find it here, next to hot springs.”
They walked a little farther to a hillside where waters burbled out of the ground. The smell of rotting eggs was strong. True to its name, blackspine grew like the spines of monstrous urchins here. Withers directed her to wrench one of the spines out of the ground.
She grabbed one that looked solid and was the right diameter for her hands and twisted this way and that until it broke off at the root. The spine stood as tall as she. It was invisible in the world of the flesh, but in the world of the soul it had heft and strength. It was more like a javelin or short spear than a staff.
Withers produced a strap from a pouch and looped it around the head of her body and one shoulder. She opened the eyes of her flesh and saw the strap and pouch in that world as well. They were both made of well-worn leather. The strap was scraped, nocked, and stained. At various intervals along it were worked small bits of metal. But what appeared to be a plain strap in the world of flesh turned out to be a pack in the world of the soul with fasteners and ties. She wondered what lore allowed someone to weave in material from the world of souls.
“You have to carry your things around with you,” Withers said. “This strap allows you to do that. Now you have a weapon and some armor. I think that’s enough for the first day. Let’s go back now.”
She realized he was taking her in a large circle. They’d walked a few miles, but she’d been so absorbed, she hadn’t realized they’d come so far. On this part of the walk, a number of black gnat-like things zipped past her and gave her a scare, but Withers said they were benign. As were a cluster of dull amber creatures moving about a jumble of stone at the bottom of a hill. There were about a dozen of them, no larger than a knuckle. When she approached, they fled into the gaps in the rocks.
She crossed a stream, and found soul sank like everything else, but if she moved quickly, she could run across the face of the water. Her abilities, the sights and sounds—it was wondrous. Of all of them, her hair was the most strange. She’d sensed things all along the way, but realized something was following them through the woods. She couldn’t see it with the eyes of her soul. Nor could she hear it. But it was there. She reported this to Withers.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. But if it starts to come close, retreat to your body to be safe.”
They continued on and followed the road up a hill, Urban staying with her body. When she crested the top, a shimmering flickered behind a thin stand of trees below. She looked closer and saw that it was a soul, a person, walking through the trees. She immediately thought of the ancestors, of Mother and Da.
She described this to Withers. “I want to investigate.”
“Is this wise?” Urban asked.
“She’ll meet them sooner or later,” said Withers. “Better to learn her lessons now. Besides, sometimes these souls have insight.” He patted the hand of her flesh. “Go slowly. You don’t know what such a soul’s intentions might be. Always assess before you jump in.”
Sugar’s excitement rose. The soul might have seen her mother and father, might have news. It might lead her to them.
There was a small path next to the creek that ran at the bottom of the hollow. Withers and Urban descended with the horses and turned onto the trail, but Sugar didn’t wait for her body of flesh. She ran ahead.
The thing following them had paced her, but it now stopped, then began to move away at speed. A moment later something grunted and growled in the distance. She reached out with her senses. There were other living things about, but none of them felt far enough away to be associated with the growl, so she decided to continue to move forward.She was now some distance ahead of Withers and Urban. With the bends in the trail she’d lost sight of them, but she could still hear them with her body. She continued for maybe a hundred yards along the trail, came to the edge of a clearing, and stopped.
A number of bodies lay about the grass. There were a few goats, but also the bodies of a man and a boy. The man was alive, but mortally wounded in his leg and belly. The boy was clearly dead, two arrows sticking from his chest.
The man stroked the hair of the boy’s body of flesh and wept, oblivious to the half-dozen frights that had latched onto him, the body of his boy, and the goats. The frights were twisted like driftwood, knobby and misshapen, their many fingers split and spread like the pale roots of a plant, sinking into their victims. Each was as long as her arm. They grunted as they fed.
The soul of the boy yelled and charged the fright clinging to his father.
The fright turned menacingly, and the boy aborted his attack.
She described the scene to Withers. “Should I chase the frights off?”
“Patience. Do you hear a clicking?”
“No.”
“That means the ayten haven’t found them yet.”
Ayten, Withers had said earlier, were orangish skir that fed on souls. “I did hear an awful growl earlier, but it was in the distance.”
“I think it’s time to come back,” said Withers.
The soul of the boy charged again. This time he kicked at one fright and sent it scurrying away, but another fright turned on him, and he backed away. The man groaned and slumped to one side.
“Da,” the boy said and dropped to his knees weeping.
A beat passed and something began to emerge from the man’s mouth. Sugar watched in horror as his soul pulled itself out of his body.
“Da?” the boy asked.
The soul of the man pulled the last part of himself out and stood before his son.
At that
moment, a howl rose at the far end of the field. The souls of the dead goats there panicked and ran. A dark beast shot out of the trees and chased them. It was followed by another. And then four more. The creatures were angular and long-limbed like nightmare versions of whippets or greyhounds. They had no tails. Instead, short spikes ran down their backs. One howled. It was the howl she’d heard before. And she realized she’d felt the presence a few minutes ago but hadn’t been paying attention to them.
The frights looked up, then broke from the bodies and scurried away into the woods.
Two of the beasts stopped to tear into the goats, but the rest spied the boy and the soul of the man.
“Run!” the father yelled, then grabbed his son’s hand and sprinted for the woods. But Sugar could see they weren’t going to be fast enough. And where would they go anyway?
Sugar held the blackspine in her hand. She described the beasts to Withers. “What do I do?”
“Come back,” said Withers.
“I can’t just leave them.”
“Come back!” Withers commanded.
The dark nightmare whippets sprang onto the boy, taking him down. He screamed in agony. Two others fell upon the father.
Sugar took a step forward blackspine in hand, hesitated, but it was clear she was too late. Then one of the dark creatures spotted her.
Fear shot through her.
“Sugar!” Withers said.
“I’m coming,” she said and backed away.
The creature moved forward.
Sugar turned and fled, running faster than she ever could in the flesh. The dark creature howled and raced after her, angling through the trees.
Back upon the horse, her body tried to rise to its feet.
“Sugar!” Urban shouted. “Talk to us.”
But she was too busy to talk. The spiked beast rushed through the woods. Sugar ran, leapt, raced back down the trail. She tried to release her body from the saddle, to run to her soul, but her fingers fumbled at the ties holding her in the saddle. She tried opening her eyes briefly. The double vision disoriented her, and she almost ran into a tree.
“Bring my body!” she said with the mouth of her flesh. “Down the path!”
She fled around a bend, and this time she did careen into the trunk of a tree and sank partway into the wood. The impact hurt and she realized, again, that soul was mortal. She wrenched herself out, scrabbled back up to right herself, but the miscalculation had cost her. There was no way she’d make it back to her body now. However, as she charged down the trail, Urban appeared around a corner ahead, leading the horse with her body. Withers hurried behind, trying to keep up.
“I’m here!” she said. “I’m here!” Four long strides and she reached the horse. Just as she did, the hideous whippet burst onto the trail behind her.
Her body strained against its bindings, and she leapt upon the horse and tried to enter her flesh, but couldn’t.
Panic flooded her.
Then she realized she was wearing the skenning. She couldn’t inhabit two bodies at the same time. And she didn’t have time to take it off.
She spun around.
The whippet howled, raced toward her. It did not have a mouth like a dog, but more like a lamprey.
She faced it, held her blackspine in front of her. Just as the horrible thing leapt, she lunged. The blackspine sank deep into its body. The whippet writhed and cried out. Its brothers back with the souls of the man and boy answered.
Sugar pulled the blackspine out and stabbed the thing again and again. It fell to the earth and writhed.
She turned back to her body and shed the skenning. The other whippets raced through the trees toward her.
Withers had finally caught up, panting.
“Where do I put it?” she said with the mouth of her body.
“Put what?” Urban replied.
“The skenning?”
“Here,” Withers said and opened the copper box. She stuffed it in. Then she jumped up behind where her body sat on the horse. The creatures galloped through the woods. She fastened one clasp of the strap she wore on her body around the blackspine, then tried to slip into her body as she’d done before, but she could not.
Then she remembered she’d closed her doors. She opened them and stepped into her body. Outside her body, the approaching whippets howled. She slammed her doors shut, then remembered Urban saying weaves make an opening. It was how they worked. Which meant that even though she was shut, it could be a weakness. The howls rose to a pitch, and she untied the necklace and tore it from her.
Immediately, the awful vision and noise vanished. Moments later a chill slid past her. And another, then they were gone, and there was nothing but the blue-hued world of the flesh, Urban standing next to her, the creek burbling to the side.
“Merciful lords,” she said.
“What happened?” Urban asked.
“Howlers,” said Withers.
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
“You’re safe now,” Withers said. “There is no need to panic. You are safe in the fortress of your flesh.”
“What happened?” Urban asked again.
“It was horrible,” she said. “Horrible.”
“They took the man and boy, didn’t they?” Withers asked.
“They ripped them apart.”
Withers rubbed his knuckles slowly. “It is a beautiful world. A perilous world. I think your first lesson is now complete. You did well, ferret. Very well.”
She thought about the man and boy. “Nobody came for them,” she said. There were no ancestors guarding them. None to bring them to safety. She thought about her own mother and father. Had anyone come for them?
“You need to be smoked,” said Withers. “Then we’ll talk.”
“And I’ll send someone back to investigate the deaths,” said Urban. “It was probably a Fir-Noy raid.”
They traveled the rest of the way back to the shack in silence. Along the way she realized being apart from herself had strained her and that merging back into her flesh brought a relaxing comfort.
When they got back to the shack, they found Soddam still sitting on his stump. She dismounted and followed Withers and Urban into the shack. She said, “I knew the stories about the perilous journey in the world of souls. But they were all stories.”
“Not the same as witnessing it firsthand,” said Withers, “is it?” He retrieved a godsweed braid and laid it on the embers in the hearth.
“Do you think those horrid creatures followed us?”
“They might have,” he said. He retrieved the braid and began to wave it about. “Sometimes walking attracts attention. It’s always wise to burn a little godsweed afterwards.”
“I should have helped that man and boy,” she said.
“You weren’t ready,” he said. “You would have fallen.”
“I should have tried.”
“Not everyone can be saved,” he said. “A Walker has to reconcile himself to that fact.”
She knew his words made logical sense, but that didn’t mean they felt right. The images of the man and boy being torn by those howlers filled her mind. “Dear Creators, where were the ancestors?”
Withers said nothing.
Urban said, “With more skill, you will be able to do more in the world of souls. Maybe next time you can help. But first you have to learn. I told you I don’t compel any of my men. I think you now know the nature of your work. And its risks. Are you still in?”
Everyone in Shim’s army took risks. Her fellow candidates needed a spy. If she could increase their odds of victory, she’d be a coward not to do this thing. “Of course I’m in,” Sugar said.
Urban smiled. “Purity’s daughter indeed.”
“There you go again,” Sugar said.
“She was part of my
father’s Grove. She did not bind herself to weak thinking.”
Sugar smiled. No, Mother never did.
“She came here as one of those traveling to the city of Hope.”
“Yes,” Sugar said, “Matiga told me. When it was time to move on, she realized the promise of a distant city didn’t quite compare with the here and now of a certain smith she’d come to know.”
He nodded. “Exactly. She had her own mind. And a good thing too.”
Sugar knew the story of the trail. The One Root, the leader of all the Groves of Hismayas had led a company into the wilderness here to establish a city where they could practice their arts freely and yet be hidden from the eyes of the world. For a number of years, members of various Groves had secretly traveled to the New Lands. They’d sought out Hogan the Koramite who gave them the directions that would take them to a lake somewhere in the Wilds beyond the borders of the land to wait. Every few weeks or months, someone from the city would come and lead them into the wilderness, never to be heard or seen again. But that had all stopped. No guides had come to the lake in many years. The trail was dead. There was much speculation on what had happened and whether the city had failed or was growing, preparing to reveal itself to the world in power.
“Why do you say it was a good thing she didn’t go?” asked Sugar.
“There are some people who serve the lore. And there are others who let the lore serve them. Your mother didn’t let the Order rule her. She married and found joy in a family.”
“She came to a bad end,” said Sugar. “I don’t know if I’d call that good.”
“Are you telling me that one awful day wiped out everything that had gone before? Your mother lived and loved while she had the chance. She was a great woman. At least, she was when I knew her.”
Curse: The Dark God Book 2 Page 23
