Sister of the Dead

by J. C.

  With a tilt of his head, he motioned again to the stairs and took a step toward her. She slid away from him along the wall and proceeded on her own. As they reached the stairs, a crate was pulled in through the keep's doors, and Welstiel glanced back.

  It was not the one that had crushed the man-at-arms. Built like a cage of wooden struts, thick canvas panels were stretched inside its bars to hide or protect what it held.

  As Welstiel descended behind Magelia, he heard the thrash of beating wings against the canvas.

  * * * *

  Late the same night, Welstiel descended into the cellar passage. He passed the doors of the six small rooms, the first of which held Magelia locked within. He did not stop, but walked on to the end and the seventh room. Inside, he found a flurry of activity.

  Five crates had been unloaded. Several conscripted villagers and a few men-at-arms were settling the crates in place and removing their tarps.

  First the steel-bound oak box containing the muffled rage of its occupant, and then the framed canvas with its soft sounds of fluttering misery within. The third was cedar, and silent inside, while the fourth was a framework of oak surrounding an urn large enough for a man to crawl inside. The latter's weight was three or four times that of the others and, when moved, it sloshed liquid inside. Even when the box sat undisturbed, Welstiel occasionally heard liquid lap against the leather-sealed opening at its top.

  The fifth container was by far the most unsettling and intriguing.

  It measured less than half a man's height in all dimensions and was made of bound steel plates that were discolored and blackened. Steam rose with a sizzling crackle from the damp floor when it was set down, and erratic scraping came from within the metal walls. The frantic noise grew until a screech from the steel made everyone in the room flinch. Every nerve in Welstiel quivered at the sound. Then the crate sat silent.

  A villager was freeing a chain used to drag it along and brushed a hand against the discolored metal. The sizzle of his flesh filled the room and he cried out and pulled back, putting his hand to his mouth. He crumpled to the floor, whimpering, until a man-at-arms kicked him into motion again.

  Welstiel left the seventh room. He stopped outside Magelia's locked door for a moment, and then walked back up the curving stairs.

  * * * *

  Several nights passed. Welstiel had come down for supper in the main hall when a roaring and clanging resounded from the cellar below. He hurried down the stairs, taking them two at time. Ubad's screeching voice echoed in his ears before he reached the landing chamber.

  "Alive, you fools. He must remain alive!"

  Welstiel ran to the passage's end. The door to the seventh room was ajar. As he grabbed its edge to swing it open, he looked through the crack. A body leaned in the near left corner.

  Fingers crooked in anguish, the elf's hands rested limp upon his chest. His head tilted back into the corner, and his eyes gawked unblinking at the ceiling, wide balls of white with amber centers. The hanging gap of his mouth was mimicked by a slash across his throat so deep that it had split through to his windpipe. Little blood seeped from the wound, and the corpse was too pale for one of the forest people.

  Welstiel's view was suddenly blocked as a man-at-arms crashed into the chamber's front wall. He pushed the door wide.

  Near the center of the room, Ubad stood behind a large brass vat with his bony hands clenched.

  "Get up!" he shouted. "Break his legs, if you must. "

  The guard clawed up the wall to his feet, and he rushed across the room with an iron bar in his hand.

  Among the shattered remains of the oak crate stood a man, or so it appeared, struggling with Lord Massing.

  Bryen's opponent was thick and gnarled, his muscular limbs sprouting from a torso almost twice the width of a human's but only two-thirds as tall. His bushy brows and beard were coarse like chestnut horsehair around bulky rough features that made it hard to see his eyes. Iron shackles encompassed his wide wrists and ankles, but their connecting chains had been snapped and dangled loose.

  The guard stepped in, swinging the iron bar low into the prisoner's leg.

  The squat man's bare foot did not even move. The thudding impact had no more effect than striking a column of stone. He slapped the guard aside with little effort. The guard's body smashed headfirst into the back wall, and he fell to the floor, his neck broken. The iron bar rolled away.

  The prisoner roared out through yellowed teeth. "Mi ko' eag a' grunn ta gowl shiun ambi' shiu fuiliag mi!"

  Everything happened in a few blinks of the eye, but Welstiel felt locked in an eternity.

  Bryen punched the gnarled man's face, and Welstiel expected the prisoner to crumple. The man barely flinched and drove his larger fist into Bryen's sternum. Bryen buckled, and the prisoner crouched low and heaved him up into the air. Welstiel lunged forward to snatch up the iron bar, but he could not close the distance in time.

  The prisoner slammed his father down, and Welstiel felt the impact through the floor stones. He hesitated in fear, as he had little skill at arms. His chosen method of conjury was artificing, the making of objects and tools, and not spellcraft. Even so, what could he possibly conjure or summon of the elements to aid his father now?

  The air in the room began to swirl. It kicked up dust from the floor that made Welstiel blink as he looked for the source of the sudden wind in this underground chamber.

  Ubad, in his whipping charcoal robe, hovered above the floor.

  Wisplike eddies appeared in the swirling air around him, each twisting and curling, until translucent faces appeared at the head of each wisp. Their sorrowed features blurred in the air. Spirits of the dead gathered about the withered necromancer and, one by one, they broke away and dived at Bryen's opponent.

  The first spirit struck through the prisoner. He shuddered but kept pounding down upon Bryen with huge fists. Another wisp pierced the wide man's flesh, and another, until he finally screamed in pain.

  "Assist me—now!" Ubad shouted. 'Take his breath!"

  Welstiel blinked once before understanding. Such a simple thing, he should have thought of this himself, but spell-work was not his strength in conjury. He held out his cupped hands, palms facing each other, then lifted them until they framed his sight of the prisoner. Forming the lines, shapes, and symbols in his mind to overlay what his eyes saw, he began to chant.

  The air between his palms pushed outward, but he held it in place like a small entity trapped within a conjuring circle. He loathed following Ubad's commands but was determined to save his father.

  Another spirit struck the wide man. He opened his mouth to yell, but no sound issued, and he buckled, grasping his throat.

  Welstiel's head ached with concentration as he summoned the air from out of the prisoner's lungs. Free of the wide man's assault, Welstiel's father struck upward into his opponent's bearded jaw as two more spirits pierced the man's body.

  The prisoner's eyes rolled as he gasped for air, and he toppled over. Bryen was up and on him in an instant, pinning his thick arms back with the dangling chains.

  "Leave him alive, " Ubad commanded.

  Welstiel ceased chanting. His father pinned the captive's stomach against the brass vat and forced the man to lean forward over it. Before Welstiel understood what was happening, Ubad slashed open the prisoner's throat with a curved dagger.

  The hulking man bucked at the blade's passing and thrashed wildly. Bryen put his full weight on top of his captive. It did not take long for the prisoner to go limp as his blood drained into the vessel. Bryen stood up, releasing the body to flop heavily upon the floor.

  Welstiel saw the prisoner's eyes, smaller and darker than the elf's, staring blindly up at the ceiling. His mouth was clenched shut in a permanent grimace, and the thick beard was matted to his chest with his own blood.

  "Well done, my son, " Bryen said. "One dwarf is far more trouble man we expected. "

  Awareness filled Welstiel like a winter chill spreading
from Bryen's approving gaze. His father lived an unnatural existence, but this spilling of blood without thought shocked Welstiel. The thing that stood before him, offering dispassionate praise, was far less his sire than he had ever before realized.

  "We must not delay, " Ubad said urgently. "Now that it's begun, preparation must be finished immediately. "

  Bryen cast the necromancer an annoyed glance but nodded agreement. Without another word to Welstiel, he stepped to the wood-framed crate with its canvas walls. Drawing his own dagger, he slashed open one side. The canvas separated and fell away.

  Welstiel saw the prisoner within.

  Bound with leather straps instead of shackles, she was delicate. Even curled in fright at the container's rear, he could tell she would barely reach his sternum when standing.

  Her face and build were as lithe and slender as the last prisoner's had been hulking and wide. She would have been slight even standing next to the dead elf. Her two eyes, staring out in wide terror, had no irises. They were fully black like a sparrow's, and the dark rings around them showed she had not slept in days. From narrow feet to her head of feathery hair, her pale flesh appeared downy, though there were places where it had molted or been rubbed to bare cream skin.

  And bound down to her naked torso were wings of mottled grays and whites sprouting from her back. Her attempts to free them were likely what Welstiel had heard when he had first seen this container.

  Bryen grabbed her bound wrists, dragging her out and holding her up to dangle from his grip as he walked toward the vat.

  "You should retire, " Ubad said to Welstiel. "There's still much to do here, and you've exceeded your stamina. "

  Welstiel got to his feet. He was about to approach his father, but Ubad slid into his way as the necromancer followed Bryen across the room. Welstiel suddenly felt isolated and alone.

  He turned to leave. Behind him, the sound of a frantic scream was cut short. He thought of Magelia, locked in her cell, forced to listen, and he turned his eyes away as he passed her door.

  Once in his own room, Welstiel locked the door and sat at a small desk lit by the three dancing flickers in his orb. There he remained for the rest of a sleepless night with his eyes closed, flinching at the sounds of two more screams that echoed up from the seventh room beneath the keep.

  Chapter 6

  Cadell and Jan brought additional candle lanterns, and the room was illuminated around Magiere in yellow light. The stench was still so thick that she could taste it. Before her was a small heap of remains amid an old wood frame with decayed shreds of cloth still bound to it.

  At first, she thought it was two bodies, for there were too many bones for a single being. Yet there was only one skull, human shaped, but too small and narrow, with oversize eye sockets like those of the elf. There was only one set of hands and feet, with toe bones that were too long. Its limbs had been bound with leather straps now crusted hard with age, as well as another hanging loose around the frail rib cage.

  In the filth surrounding it were the remains of rotted feathers.

  "Wings?" Wynn whispered as she drew closer, holding up a crystal. "It had wings... like a bird. Perhaps female—if its make is similar to other races. "

  Magiere's gaze traced the tangled bones until the illusion of two bodies was dispelled by the memory of once seeing a dead hawk in the woods. A few feathers lying before her still held their mottled gray and white color.

  "What is it?" Jan asked, though he kept his distance a few steps away, near the large vat they'd discovered.

  Wynn shook her head and looked up, but not at the zupan's son. Magiere saw fear in the sage's unblinking eyes. For an instant, all Wynn's horror turned upon her, and Magiere backed away.

  "There's another over here by this iron box, " Leesil called from the right side of the room. "But it's... something else. I'm not sure what. "

  The words barely entered Magiere's thoughts. What did the remains of this sealed chamber reveal concerning the death of her mother? Had something been done here to Magelia in order to bring her unnatural daughter into this world?

  Magiere saw her whole life infested with the dead and undead. Even her birth was somehow forecast with these bones, yet she couldn't fathom what they told her of the past. She sensed—somehow knew—that the contents of this room were connected to her.

  There were only more questions, and no answers.

  Beside the crusted vat lay the second body they'd found. Wynn had partly cleared the hardened leather clothes from it, telling them it was—had been—a dwarf. The sage knew of these people from a seatt—dwarvish for a city stronghold or fortified haven—across the bay from the capital of her homeland, Malourne. That capital, Calm Seatt, had been named out of respect for the dwarven people who'd helped to build its first keep.

  Neither Magiere nor Leesil had ever met one of his kind. Wide framed and wide jawed, with a skull as large as a soldier's helmet, his thigh bones were as thick as her whole wrist. Slightly yellowed with age, the bones had speckled shadows in them like a hint of granite.

  "If any of this bears upon the past you're looking for, "

  Cadell said, "I don't care to know any more of it. We've enough troubles of our own. "

  "More than you thought, " Magiere replied bitterly, but she didn't explain.

  Whatever happened here had been done in haste and then sealed up. Few but Leesil could have uncovered its existence. But if she had come looking, who else might do so, as well, once word traveled of what had been found here?

  Magiere couldn't bear looking at anyone in the room. She turned her attention to the vat, and hunger churned inside her.

  The vat's outside was tarnished. Wynn had scraped away dust and grime to reveal engraved symbols, each no larger than a coin, across its entire surface. She had asked Jan for paper and charcoal to make rubbings for later study. At one side of the vat, dark stains ran down it as if the contents had been poured out or had spilled over.

  When Magiere looked inside the vessel, a thicker stain covered the bottom third of its depth, creating a dried and cracked layer. She took the crystal from Wynn, startling the sage, and lowered its light into the vat. The cracked layer in the bottom had a distinctive dark brown color, like liquefied earth dried out. When her hunger stirred again, Magiere knew what it was from instinct more than anything else.

  "They were bled... here, " she whispered.

  When she stood up, she faced the elf's corpse lying in the chamber's front left corner, and she looked down at the dwarf's.

  "Sacrificed, " Wynn whispered.

  "How long ago... " Magiere trailed off and turned to Wynn. "How old are these remains?"

  Wynn looked away, and it took a moment for her to answer.

  "It's impossible to be exact. But from decomposed animals I've studied in the past, I would guess no more than thirty years, perhaps less. "

  The sage backed toward the far side of the room. Her hand shook visibly as she pulled her short robe more securely around herself.

  "So, " Magiere asked in a hard voice. "Twenty-six years would be as good a guess? About the time I was conceived. "

  Leesil came up beside Magiere, glanced once at the vat, and tried to pull her away. Magiere jerked her arm out of his grip-In all, six corpses had been found. One was human with leather armor and a sword, perhaps a guard during the time when her father had been lord of this place—a father who might not be as unknown to Magiere as she'd once thought. Welstiel had posed as an ally during the fight with Miiska's undead, but that conflict, as with the one in Bela, had been of his making. From the beginning, he'd known of her dhampir nature, as well as the falchion and the amulets. In Bela, he'd claimed to be preparing her to assist him in gaining whatever ancient treasure he sought.

  Visions... in Bela, there had also been horrible visions. By accident, she'd stumbled upon another attribute of her dhampir nature—to experience the moment of a kill through an undead's perspective. To lure her to the capital, Welstiel murdered the co
uncil chairman's daughter and left the girl's body on her own doorstep. By chance, Magiere had walked in his steps at the death scene while holding a scrap of the girl's dress. She relived that moment, felt the victim's flesh tear in Welstiel's teeth as if she were him.

  How much more would she see with an innocent's bones in her hands? At least she would know if he had been here... if he was the one she'd come here to find.

  Magiere knelt down and wrenched the dwarf's skull from its carcass.

  "What are you doing?" Cadell said, and took a step toward her. "Enough of this. You will not desecrate—"

  "Stop it!" Leesil snapped, and he was on her from behind, grabbing for the skull. "Whatever happened here, you don't want to see it... not like that!"

  Magiere cradled the skull with one arm and snapped her shoulder back into Leesil's chest. She followed with her arm and sent him sprawling. Before he got up, she looked into the skull's sockets, the grit of bone against her bare palms and fingers.

  "No!" Leesil called.

  Magiere closed her eyes.

  Darkness. The sounds of voices around her and quickened breaths behind curses. The stench of the cold chamber filling her head.

  Nothing more, as Magiere opened her eyes again.

  "I'll have no more of this sacrilege, defiling the dead, " Cadell growled, and he stepped threateningly toward Magiere. "Get out of here. "

  Magiere tightened her grip on the skull as she raised her eyes to Cadell. She wasn't going anywhere, not without answers. She rocked back on her heels and stood up. Leesil stepped in front of her, snatching the skull from her hands.

  "Leave, " he told her. "Now. Go back to your aunt's, and wait for me. "

  "Yes, all of you go and leave this to us, " Cadell said.

  Jan looked upset but didn't speak, and Wynn remained quiet at the back of the chamber.