The Ways of Khrem

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  And some of those shadows carried little colored lanterns.

  They would be made up, and they would be flirtatious. They would be dignified, and yet they were brazen. And they would have colorful names. Names like Shadowlark Lani, Midnight Adell, Longbow Lia, Moonstone Maddy and Silver Telestra.

  Names designed to be recalled easily, and then later forgotten without remorse.

  Occasionally, they stopped and talked with another shadow and then moved on. Other times, they left the street for an alleyway as a couple. The whole process was surprisingly ordered, like a slow waltz through the night street. It possessed a certain grace and symmetry, even if the whole thing existed to serve the basest of motivations.

  A long time ago, a monster had cut into this dance and five of the dancers had died. Fear filled the night and things had briefly faltered. But then the monster vanished, five new dancers stepped into their place, and the waltz continued as before.

  I found a discarded crate in front of a nearby tavern and lugged it over to a small plaza nearby. There I set it in the corner, and took a seat to watch the view.

  The only thing to look at was the decrepit statue of some love goddess, and the people passing through the plaza. There would be nobody else on my list available to talk to this evening. It probably made sense for me to go back to the room I had rented in a nearby inn, but my mind felt too full to sleep.

  Heinryk's warning had been clear.

  Drayton knew I had my own agenda in this matter. I had never kidded myself about that. What I struggled to figure out was if Heinryk had been in that courtyard on the Captain’s initiative, or his own. I suspected the latter. He had left something unsaid, and I strove to make sense of it.

  He had seen what that piece of filth had done. Hells, he had once taken care of the carnage left behind. He could have no illusions about what we hunted. Nor had I ever sensed in him the level of Drayton’s idealism. And while that still left room for the old Watchman to play straighter than most, I doubted that what the murderer would find at Heinryk's hands would ever be mistaken for mercy.

  But whatever it was…it would pale compared to what I had in store for him.

  I intended to make him scream for a very, very long time. And then I would leave a piece of him at each place he had killed one of those women. Or maybe I would just leave him tied in one of a couple of places I knew about in the Undercity. Let him find out what a real predator was all about.

  These were the thoughts that kept me company as I watched the dance unfold.

  The hours passed, and as the night wore on the number of shadows moving through the plaza dwindled.

  The music faded as one minstrel after another packed up their instruments and headed off to a tavern, or to bed. Several of the overhead lanterns began to flicker and a couple had already burned out, leaving the plaza an even darker place than before. I had put my lantern out earlier, being no stranger to the darkness myself, so it wouldn't attract attention and unwelcome attempts at conversation. A couple of women bearing lanterns moved through the plaza, but it became obvious they were now on their way somewhere, probably to some nearby tavern to call it a night.

  Tonight's dance had apparently reached its end.

  After another few minutes, I stood, leaving the crate for whatever street urchins came along to make into firewood. Picking up my lantern, I thought for a second about relighting it. Then I chose to simply rely on the dim light from the overhead lanterns. No point in advertising myself for whatever muggers might be creeping out onto the now empty street.

  I left the corner and headed back for the lane out of the plaza.

  Unfortunately, my hope to avoid any encounters didn’t work out.

  Turning the corner into the lane, I nearly got run over by a large young man. He smelled like somebody had dumped a whole tub of lilac water over him, and wore an expensive, ill-fitted vest. Mildly drunk, he appeared to be a servant out on the town in a "borrowed" set of his master's clothes. I staggered back and recovered with a mumbled apology.

  "Sorry about that, old duff," he replied, nodding past me at the lantern bearer that stood in the plaza, “but I have to catch the last straggler of the evening.”

  Old duff?

  I suppose the evening could have ended on a worse note. I started down the lane again with a growl, and then froze as my mind suddenly came to grips with the figure it had seen in that glance back into the plaza.

  To coin a phrase…slowly, I turned.

  The young man had already strode halfway across the plaza, heading for the woman bearing the small lantern—the woman who hadn’t been there just a few seconds earlier, the woman whose features were hidden by a large shawl covered with large crescent moons.

  A shawl I hadn’t seen in seventeen years.

  “Get away from her!”

  He turned back toward me, only fifteen feet from the deadly, motionless figure that waited patiently for him.

  “I saw her first, old duff. Why don’t you just move on to the next block and see if there’s somebody else down there for you.”

  I drew my knife. This wasn’t the time for an argument.

  “You’ve got three seconds to get out of here or you’re a dead man. One...two...thr…”

  The youngster charged past me, his footsteps fading in the darkness. He had no idea that the knife-wielding madman had just saved his life.

  Of course, the downside of this little outburst of civic-mindedness was the fact it left me alone in a deserted plaza with a murderous spirit bent on vengeance. I’m sure Drayton would have been proud of me…which meant I probably deserved a giant kick in the butt for an act of colossal dumb-assery.

  Regardless, there I was.

  The phantom remained motionless, standing across the plaza from me and holding her lantern. She was so still. Not a hint of shifting cloth or rustling skirt, and I noticed her little lantern glowed with a pale, steady light as opposed to the warm flicker of an candle. Even the air seemed dead and quiet, although I noticed the temperature in the plaza seemed to be falling uncomfortably fast.

  I squinted at the apparition, trying to get a better look.

  Unfortunately the shawl hung low over its face, and only darkness showed in the area that remained. I could see nothing of the delicate features I remembered. Yet while the specter’s face couldn’t be seen, I had the definite impression her attention now focused on me.

  I swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

  I could do this. I had faced the giant tarantula avatar of Talanturos, I could face this.

  I took a single step closer.

  “Maddy? Is that you?” I quavered in a voice simply oozing terror.

  The figure neither moved nor responded.

  I didn’t know if she could hear me or not, and the temperature continued to fall at a rate that started to alarm me. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.

  I decided to back up and put a little more space between me and the specter…and that’s when I discovered I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted firmly to the ground. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t move either one of them.

  Trapped, and with panic rising within, I desperately looked back over my shoulder to see if anybody remained nearby. No such luck. Only black, empty street stretched behind me.

  And then things got worse.

  Returning my gaze to the plaza, I discovered she had moved.

  She remained motionless, holding her lantern, but the wraith now stood by the statue, halfway across the plaza toward me. I still couldn’t make out any features in the darkness under her shawl, and suddenly some instinct told me that was the very last thing I wanted to do.

  If I faced what lay concealed under that shawl, they would find me white-haired in the morning…raving or dead.

  And since flight was no longer an option, only a single alternative remained.

  “Maddy?” I choked out. “It’s me, Cargill. Don’t you remember me?”

  Nothing.


  “I’m on your side in this! I want to help you! I want to find the bastard who did this to you.”

  I still got no response, nor saw any motion from the figure, although it seemed to look straight at me.

  The cold started to get painful, and as I went to rub my arms I discovered they no longer worked either. Panic now coursed through me, and I closed my eyes while fighting to move. I failed at that attempt, too. Paralysis tightened around me like a smothering blanket…a blanket colder than all the icy hells.

  I knew I couldn’t survive much more of this.

  I opened my eyes again to find her standing right in front of me. Only the drooping shawl prevented us from being face-to-face.

  At the same time, the impression of whispering filled the air around me. There seemed to be something incoherent about it, something wrong—but then, there was something very wrong about all of this.

  “Maddy,” I gasped, “it’s me. Remember? I was Adell’s man. We knew each other!”

  Her hand rose toward the hem of her shawl.

  Time had run out.

  The cold had now seeped so deeply into me that my bones ached. Also, that strange impression of whispering rose in volume. It swirled around the pair of us like leaves in a whirlwind. And somehow the “voices” seemed confused, in conflict, and in great pain.

  “Maddy!” I fought to speak as my throat stiffened with the paralysis enveloping me. My vision began to blur around the edges, and I started to have a hard time finding the words as well. “Maddy! I was…with… Camber! You…knew me!”

  Still no response.

  She gripped the hem of her shawl and started to draw it back. The silent whispering chorus reached a crescendo…when suddenly the other, scarred hand reached up and grabbed the arm that had been about to reveal her face.

  “Cargy, run!”

  The shout reverberated without any noise at all…but the spell was broken.

  I staggered back, away from the figure, the paralysis suddenly gone.

  There should have been ice on the cobblestones, the plaza felt so cold. Gasping in the frigid air, I stared at the apparition and tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  That turned out to be difficult, too.

  It was becoming hard to think, and it felt like the ice had burned my very soul. What the hell had she done to me? I shook my head in a futile effort to clear it, then struggled to refocus on the immediate threat.

  The shrouded figure remained where she stood, once again utterly still, one hand now clasping the other to its chest. The glowing lantern rested by her feet although she had never bent to set the thing down.

  My disorientation grew worse, yet I could still feel its attention on me. Unbelievably, the temperature continued to fall. Utterly confused, I floundered in muddled desperation for a course of action.

  “RUN!”

  I didn’t have to be told again.

  I fled down the blackness of Candlewalk Lane, Camber’s voice ringing in my ears.

  Chapter Five

  “You can beat a man, you can shame a man, and you can even kill a man. But you can never defeat him. He can only do that to himself.” —General Agus IV

  “I’m telling you, Captain,” I said with a sneeze, “there was something wrong with her, with the whole picture.”

  Grabel came up the stairs and poured another kettle of hot water into the tub in which my feet were soaking.

  I had spent the last two days in bed, delirious with fever and chills. The Watch had found me shivering and gibbering in a gutter, and took me into custody. Luckily, they took me to the Watch House on Moonfallow Street, where Captain Drayton was digging through old log books.

  Once he realized who they had in their cell, he arranged for a coach to take me back to my house and an apothecary to be waiting there for us upon our arrival.

  The fever broke this morning. After a few hours of sleep, I awoke lucid, and tried to stagger down to the kitchen for some sustenance. I had been met by an apologetic looking Poole coming up the stairs, who informed me I would be returning to bed either under my own power or his.

  He also apologized for the goat tied out in my garden. The beast had only gotten loose twice, and hadn’t eaten any of the rarer herbs…yet.

  The apothecary arrived soon afterward. After a bunch of poking and prodding, he pronounced me fit to sit in my chair and have company. He then left instructions for rest, hot foot soaks, and a bag of powder that made the foulest tasting concoction I had ever had the misfortune to consume. Grabel took great care to see I got one of those revolting drinks every hour as prescribed.

  I had been passing the time by consoling myself with plans for vengeance against the apothecary, the manservant—even the damn goat—when the Captain arrived.

  Once he satisfied himself that I had my wits about me, he banished everybody else from the room, except as needed for the prescribed treatments. Taking a high-backed wicker seat from the patio, he sat across the steaming tub from me and listened to me tell of my encounter with Maddy.

  “Of course there was something wrong with her,” he soothed. “She has been dead for seventeen years. And that’s assuming you are remembering this right. You have been delirious for two days, Mr. Cargill. It would only be natural for you to be confused.”

  “I am confused, Captain,” I replied. “I am completely confused as to the events of the past two days. On the other hand, I am crystal clear on what happened in that plaza three nights ago. That was Maddy, Captain. I have no doubt of that. But there was something wrong with her, like she was injured and disoriented. And something else…something that was right in front of me and I wasn’t seeing it. Something important.”

  “But you said the voice was Camber’s. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples. “It was her voice. And Captain, only a certain small group of people in my life have ever called me ‘Cargy’, and Maddy wasn’t one of them. It was Camber, and she was trying to protect me. I think she was hurt, too.”

  “How can the dead be hurt?”

  “I don’t know, Captain!” I shouted, with a mighty sneeze for emphasis, “but she was…they were…Maddy didn’t recognize me, and I don’t think Camber even recognized me until I called her by her real name. I don’t…”

  And that’s when I remembered.

  Her hand.

  The hand that had reached up and stopped the other from revealing what waited underneath that shawl had a scar on it. Maddy always had “perfect hands.”

  “That was Camber’s hand,” I muttered aloud. “How in all the hells...”

  “Pardon?”

  I stood up in my steaming tub and gave a stentorian sneeze of realization.

  I had been almost nose-to-nose with that ghost, with only the shawl between us.

  “And she was too tall,” I said with wonder. “Maddy was a tiny little thing. She was too tall, and she had Camber’s scarred hand! I remember because Camber got that scar fighting off a man who was attacking a friend of hers.”

  I had been that friend, and my attacker had gotten a lot worse than a scarred hand for his trouble. Camber had grown up on the streets and knew her way around a knife, too.

  “And that would explain why the exorcisms failed,” Drayton replied with enthusiasm. “They were trying to exorcise the spirit of the wrong person!”

  I considered that for a moment.

  “No,” I mused thoughtfully, “I don’t think so. That was Maddy in that plaza, I would bet my house on it. I felt her presence, and her shawl was unique. But somehow…”

  The Captain folded his arms and looked skeptically at me.

  “...Somehow,” I continued, “that was also Camber. Except…”

  “Except?”

  Then it hit me.

  “Except Camber wasn’t that tall, either! She was taller than Maddy, average size, but the ghost in that plaza was tall. At least as tall as me.”

  The captain looked at me in amusement, and didn’t
say the obvious.

  “Hey! I’m tall for a girl, damnit!” I exclaimed, unconsciously straightening for effect in my steaming tub as Grabel entered the room with a cup of medicine. With a smooth pirouette, he exited without a word.

  Just great.

  I sat back down in my chair. My head started to hurt, and I needed to think.

  There was something really bad going on here, and it was something more complicated than a murdered woman’s ghost haunting a lane. Even worse, Camber was somehow trapped in the mess.

  And she was hurt.

  With a snarl, I stood back up, stepped out of the tub, and walked over to my wardrobe. I found the scribe’s robe that I used for a disguise, and started pulling it on. I didn’t see the spectacles, but those could be replaced.

  Drayton watched me from his chair, his legs crossed and his fingers steepled in his lap.

  “Mr. Cargill?” the Captain inquired mildly. “What are you doing?”

  “Duty calls, Captain,” I said in the heartiest voice I could muster. “People to interview and leads to follow. Remember, the city needs us to find that killer and put this ghost to rest before she strikes again and harms some other poor soul.”

  Okay, I may have been laying it on a little thick.

  “You may either sit back down in that chair, or get back in bed. That is the only choice before you. I suggest you exercise it before I have Poole come up here and make it for you.”

  I fell back into the chair in defeat.

  The effort of standing had started to make my head swim anyway. But that did little to assuage the guilt that snarled at me from the blackness in my heart.

  She needed me, and I was failing her.

  Again.

  “Captain,” I began, “I need to…”

  “What you need, Mr. Cargill,” Drayton interrupted, “is rest, and perhaps a little perspective. It’s obvious you have a personal stake in this matter. Had I known of your relationship to one of the victims, I would have never brought you into this business.”