Child of a Dead God

by Barb Hendee

  She looked about and spotted smaller writings above the desk’s remains. As she crossed, she tried not to step on the old parchments stuck to the floor by years of dried humidity. Holding the crystal close, she traced lines of marks, careful not to touch them.

  “This word . . . looks like tribal Iyindu—old Sumanese—and part of it is in the correct letters.”

  What does it say?

  “Give me a moment!” Wynn snapped. “It is nearly a dead dialect.”

  She struggled to sound it out in her head. The middle characters were too faint. She sighed in frustration. But the beginning and end caught in her mind, and the sound was familiar somehow. She thought she remembered it written somewhere else in other letters.

  Wynn hurried back to rescan the tangled passage beside the shelves. She came to one word written in Êdän-Elvish, but it spelled out the same beginning and ending as the Iyindu-Sumanese—and its middle was clear to read.

  “Il’Samar!” Wynn whispered.

  What? Chap shoved in beside her. Where do you see this?

  Wynn pointed.

  “Samar” was obscure, meaning something like “conversation in the dark.” And “il” was a common prefix for a proper noun, sometimes used for titles as well as predecessors in a person’s lineage. The old necromancer Ubâd had cried out this name as Magiere and Chap closed in upon him in Droevinka.

  Wynn hurried back to the wall above the desk, forgetting to watch her footing, and brittle parchment shredded beneath her feet.

  Now she understood the word with the faded middle, and she went over and over that sentence, trying to pick out more, but it was so badly worn.

  “ ‘Guardian’ . . . no, ‘guardians for’ . . . something that is ‘unmaking’ . . . and then il’Samar.”

  Wynn slumped in exasperation.

  “That is all I can follow. Is she . . . this woman, one of these? Welstiel spoke of ancient ones guarding whatever treasure he sought. By the look of her, she is undead, but that would mean . . .”

  All the wall writings appeared to be in the same hand, though Wynn was not certain, considering the rough surface. But she had read mention of more than one “guardian.”

  She scanned among the shelves’ contents, finally reaching for the bottom iron-bound sheaf, which looked relatively sound. It weighed more than she expected, and she knelt awkwardly, trying to set it down. The old leather binding strap had turned as hard as wood.

  “Bite this open for me.”

  Chap began gnawing the hardened hide strip. What are you looking for?

  “Other writing . . . in other hands.”

  The leather tie cracked in Chap’s teeth, and Wynn lifted the top iron plate with effort.

  The inner sheets were made from squared hide stretched thin and had withstood time better than parchment or paper. They were now as hard as bone, and their inked lettering was difficult to read on the dark squares. Wynn lifted multiple sheets at once, watching for changes in handwriting.

  And she saw them.

  At least three different people had recorded entire pages in this volume. Unlike the wall writings, these passages were coherently scripted in one matching language and letter system at a time. How old was this sheaf?

  “There are other guardians,” she whispered, growing frightened again. “Perhaps two or three. How long have they been here?”

  No . . . she is now the only one.

  Wynn raised her eyes. “We have seen no more than the corridor and this room. But at least three different hands have written these pages.”

  I sense only her . . . I cannot even sense her shadow servants . . . only her.

  Wynn glanced toward the archway, and then to the mad writing surrounding this old, decayed room.

  She has been alone . . . for longer than we can measure. And even before the others were gone . . . I would guess she has been here since . . .

  “Since the war,” Wynn finished in a whisper. “Since the Forgotten History and the war that erased it.”

  Wynn shivered in her coat, though the room was nearly warm from the brazier’s strange crystals.

  How many languages can you read?

  She squinted, making a mental count. “Well, my own tongue, Numanese, and some of its earlier predecessors . . . um . . . classical Stravinan, Belaskian of course, and the Begaine syllabary of my guild . . . general Dwarvish and one of its formal variants . . . Elvish—modern and ancient scripts, including the Êdän, though I have not fully grasped the variation used by the an’Cróan. Some Sumanese, but not much of its older derivations or the desert—”

  Wynn! Chap lowered his head, snout pointing to the hide pages. What is written here?

  She held the crystal closer. “This page is very old Sumanese—Iyindu, I think—and the handwriting does not match what is written on the walls. I learned a bit of the modern dialect, but I have little grasp of the lesser-known desert dialects.”

  Wynn placed a hand on Chap’s shoulder. “The passages are not signed, but this one mentions a name. ‘Volyno,’ in the past tense, so I would guess he was no longer present when it was written. Wait . . . here is another . . . a Sumanese name—‘Häs’saun.’ Perhaps the author of this passage, but I could be mistaken.”

  She sat back, lowering the crystal into her lap, and Chap huffed, wrinkling his snout in frustration. A flicker in the archway drew their attention.

  The translucent outline of a shadow wolf showed against the lighter dark in the corridor. The entire animal was soot black, even its eyes. All thoughts of language fled from Wynn’s mind.

  The wolf remained in the doorway, but something pale approached behind it—and walked straight through the beast into the small chamber.

  Wynn clutched the fur between Chap’s shoulders at the sight of their returned captor.

  Slender as a willow and barely taller than Wynn herself, the woman’s white body was lightly tinged with orange from the brazier’s glow. Shining hair hung like wild black corn silk across her shoulders and down over her small breasts. And where Wynn had sometimes seen a trace of brown in Chane’s eyes, she now looked into irises like hard quartz. Even the woman’s small mouth was as pale and colorless as her skin.

  Wynn’s gaze caught on the tips of metal around her neck. They peeked out through the separation of her hair.

  “Chap, those knobs and the metal,” Wynn whispered. “It looks just like Magiere’s thôrhk.”

  The woman lunged a step at these words, and Wynn ducked behind Chap as he rumbled in warning.

  The deceptively frail undead stared at Wynn. She traced her own lips with narrow fingertips, never looking at Chap. Then her gaze dropped to the pile of hide sheets opened on the floor.

  Her strangely shaped eyes narrowed, and her lips parted in a silent snarl over clenched teeth. She began to shake as her fingers hooked like claws.

  Say the name! Chap shouted into Wynn’s head. Her name!

  Wynn floundered in panic, not knowing what he meant.

  From the column of words beside the door!

  “Li . . . kun . . . ,” Wynn whispered.

  The woman froze, and her feral expression softened.

  Wynn tried to find her voice. “Li-kun!”

  The woman’s eyes opened fully. Confusion washed anger from her face.

  Her gaze flitted over the walls, wandering among patches of black scribbles, until she appeared to grow dizzy and stumbled. When she turned fully around, her back to Wynn, she stopped—and threw herself at the wall beside the door.

  She crumpled, her delicate hands dragging down the column of a name written so many times. When she reached the floor, she twisted about to squat with her knees pulled up against her bare chest.

  Do not move, Chap warned. Do nothing to disturb her for the moment.

  Wynn flinched as the woman began weakly hammering at her head with limp fists, like someone trying to dislodge a forgotten memory. She sucked in air over and over. But undead did not need to breathe, and the corners of her mouth kept
twisting, stretching.

  Was she trying to speak? If so, her voice did not come.

  “Volyno?” Wynn whispered. “Häs’saun?”

  Enough! Chap warned.

  Strands of black hair tangled over the woman’s face as she lowered her head. Her crystal irises fixed upon Wynn.

  In their frightening depths, Wynn saw anguished hunger for . . . something.

  Chap remained poised before Wynn.

  In this castle of Magiere’s dreams, he had hoped to learn more concerning what memories the Fay had stolen from him, and why they had done so. He also believed he might find answers to questions concerning Leesil and Magiere, and their future—and the forgotten conflict and an enemy of many names.

  Now all he could do was watch this ancient monster crumple into her insanity.

  This place was old—older perhaps than any stronghold in the world. He felt how devoid of life these walls had been for centuries or longer. And this white thing might be older still.

  No longer trying to speak, the woman watched Wynn.

  Your voice . . . spoken words shocked her, he told Wynn. Perhaps that is why she did not kill you.

  Wynn looked down at him.

  He was only guessing, and yet he loathed the notion of dipping into the crazed thing’s memories.

  She has been alone for so long that she had forgotten the sound of words. It seems she knows only what is written.

  Wynn’s face brushed his ear as she whispered, “What now?”

  Talk to her . . . and I will try to catch any of her memories.

  “Are you sure?”

  Do it . . . while she remains sedate.

  Wynn inched forward on her knees and pointed to herself.

  “Wynn,” she said. “And you are . . . Li-kun?”

  The woman tilted her head like a crow, or perhaps more like a hawk.

  Chap cautiously slipped into her mind. He saw nothing, as if she had no memories at all to rise in her thoughts.

  Try the other names again.

  “Who is Volyno . . . or Häs’saun?”

  At the second name, a wild barrage of broken images erupted in the woman’s head.

  Flickering white faces passed among other sights—cold peaks, an endless desert, a cowering goblin hammering at stone, massive iron doors, a pale headless corpse on a stone floor . . . the maelstrom made Chap sick.

  Her name . . . again!

  Wynn pointed to the woman. “Li-kun . . . is this your name?”

  The woman’s mouth gaped. She lunged forward onto all fours, and her black hair dangled with stray ends brushing the floor. A hoarse rasp issued from her throat. Something in the sound mimicked the way Wynn had pronounced the name.

  “Li’kän?” Wynn tried, altering her pronunciation.

  The undead studied the sage in fascination and crept forward across the floor.

  Chap shifted, ready to lunge into the woman’s face, but she slowed, hesitating. She lifted one hand and reached out to Wynn. Chap trembled.

  The undead stretched out one narrow finger, the digit slipping through the side of Wynn’s wispy brown hair.

  To the sage’s credit, she did not flinch, remaining frozen in place— even as the finger pulled down over her lips. When it passed her chin and retracted, Wynn swallowed hard and turned toward the wall beside the shelves.

  “Are these your writings?”

  Calm sanity vanished once more from Li’kän’s face.

  She clutched her own arms, scratching herself with hardened white nails. The wounds closed so quickly that barely any black fluids seeped out. Harsh, rapid hisses poured from her throat. But no matter how fast her small mouth moved, her voice would not come. Chap could not make out what she tried to say.

  Li’kän thrashed in frustration, turning circles on all fours like a dog.

  Wynn shrank back, but Chap stood his ground.

  He feared the undead no longer possessed real memories, or that after so long alone, they had faded beyond her mind’s reach.

  Chap steeled himself and slipped again into Li’kän’s mind.

  Wild blurs of images, lacking any sound, passed through a mind that was no longer rational. Then a flash of something massive, with coils of black scales, rolled and slid in a dark place. Behind it, he saw a brief glimpse of natural stone, as in an underground space. Then the image vanished, replaced by one of Chap himself.

  No, a large wolf—but it had the strange crystal sky-blue eyes of a majay-hì.

  An ancestor of the breed from long ago, exactly like those Chap had seen in Most Aged Father’s memory. Li’kän remembered one of the original born-Fay, who had come into the world during the forgotten war.

  “Il . . . sa . . . mar . . . ,” she rasped, and then her grating hiss trailed on.

  Il’Samar—the only word of her voiceless gibberish that Chap could catch.

  Why would she think of born-Fay—or any Fay—and then the enemy of many names?

  Chap recoiled, pulling from the undead’s mind, but he still wondered that she had no memory of anyone speaking—until Wynn.

  Li’kän, this walking shell of death, could write, though not coherently. But spoken language had been lost to her for so long that she had forgotten even the sound of her own name.

  Magiere felt an undead’s presence all around her, but not like ever before. It seeped from the rocks and snow and air, with no origin she could fix upon—and the pull within her pressed her to go on, upward.

  She smelled blood in the cold air’s light breeze.

  Osha leaned into the black space in the cliff’s wall and cried out, “Sgäilsheilleache!”

  Sgäile ran past Magiere. She took off on his heels with Leesil close behind. Before they reached Osha, he collapsed, his knees sinking in the snow.

  A rocky chute rose up through the gully’s stone wall, and at its bottom lay a still form slumped against one side.

  “Kurhkâge!” Sgäile whispered.

  The corpse of the tall elf had only scar tissue for one eye, and the other was still open wide. A light scattering of snow had collected on his tan face, and a white cloth partially covered his open green-gray cloak. But the chest of his tunic was dark with frozen blood around a gaping hole where the ends of shattered ribs protruded.

  Leesil hissed something under his breath, and Magiere spun about.

  He’d stopped short on the gully’s open floor, and the trail he’d broken in the snow ended where he stood. But something more had rolled ahead of his feet, something that he’d accidentally kicked from under the snowfall.

  Blood on the head’s ragged neck stump had frozen into red ice crust from the clinging snow.

  “A’harhk’nis!” Sgäile exhaled the name and shook his head in disbelief.

  “How?” Osha moaned, and then slipped into Elvish.