Child of a Dead God

by Barb Hendee

  “I’m sick of it all,” he whispered and closed his arms tightly around her.

  Magiere closed her eyes and just listened to Leesil’s slow sigh, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath her cheek.

  Leesil was a different story. His birth and training had been planned by dissidents among the Anmaglâhk, so that he might fight this coming “enemy” that Most Aged Father feared. Even the an’Croan ancestor spirits had tried to enforce his destiny.

  Unlike her, Leesil refused to even talk about it—but denial wouldn’t help.

  No one could avoid something they wouldn’t acknowledge. That was no better than raising one’s eyes to the sky and denying that a chasm lay but a few steps ahead in the path. Leesil had to recognize the forced destiny that others were trying to press on him. If not, it might take him anyway in his blindness. At some point, Magiere had to make him see this, if they were to have any chance at all in going their own way.

  But for tonight, he’d been through enough—they all had.

  The room was empty but for a high window barely within reach of the hot crystal’s glow. The light of Leesil’s amulet had faded the moment they barred the library doors to the tunnel. Li’kän’s shadow animals never reappeared, as if their presence depended upon hers, or upon the white undead’s awareness and focus.

  Magiere wondered if some unnatural barrier existed between castle and cavern. How else could this place remain so cold resting above that misty chasm of heat?

  How long had it been since she and Leesil had had a moment alone?

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said suddenly.

  She tilted her head back. “About what?”

  “Once we get home, we might add Wynn’s herb and lentil stew to the menu . . . maybe her flatbread to serve with the fish chowder. We’ll have to move the Faro table closer to the hearth by next autumn. It’s too cold by the front window—”

  “What?” Magiere grouched, playing along. “We’re not blocking half the patrons from getting near the fire.”

  “They can sit down and play a hand,” he countered. “How else am I going to earn any winnings come winter?”

  Magiere closed her eyes, listening to him prattle and imagining home and hearth on nights where the most vexing question was what to offer patrons for dinner and why the latest ale shipment was late. She slipped an arm behind Leesil’s waist beneath their cloaks.

  The headless bodies of undead still lay in the stairway chamber. Below them in the depths, that ancient white thing still waited, though imprisoned in solitude. And its master had somehow wormed into Magiere’s dreams.

  But all Leesil wanted was to hold her and talk of their tavern—their home—as if nothing had happened at all.

  And she let him.

  Wynn finished checking Sgäile’s dressing, though he grew impatient with her ministrations. The wound was clean, but she still suspected Welstiel’s blade had chipped his collarbone.

  “No lasting muscle damage . . . I would guess,” she said, “but it will take some time to heal.”

  Osha leaned against the wall. She had cut off the hem of her elven tunic and used it to bandage his head, but she could do nothing for his pain. At least he was awake and alert, and this was a good sign. Chap’s neck was healing, though she worried about infection, considering he had been deeply bitten by two walking corpses.

  Sgäile looked directly into Wynn’s face.

  “I thank you,” he said.

  She rocked back from knees to her heels and sighed. “I wish I had salve. If we were back at the guild, I could make a poultice against infection.”

  Sgäile shook his head. “Do not be concerned. It is a clean wound.”

  She expected a harsh reprimand for running off and getting lost in the night, but Sgäile leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was just too tired to bother.

  Wynn got up and went to the doorway, peering along the dark hallway. A low orange glow spilled from the next doorway ten paces away. She glanced back to Osha.

  “You rest,” she told him. “I want to check on Magiere and Leesil.”

  He started to get up. “You cannot go alone.”

  Strangely, Sgäile did not even stir. Wynn went to push Osha back down. He did not resist but began to argue again.

  “Wynn—”

  “Chap will come with me—now rest!”

  By the time she reached the door, her stomach rolled slightly.

  We should leave Magiere and Leesil in peace.

  She looked down to find Chap on her heels. “I know.”

  Where do you think you are going?

  Wynn sighed in exasperation. “I cannot leave here without more answers.”

  She pulled out her cold lamp crystal, rubbed it sharply, and headed off the other way along the corridor. Chap trotted out ahead and stopped in her way.

  “Do not tell me you have not thought the same,” she whispered. “We cannot leave without knowing what might lie within reach in the library! Who else here, besides me, could find anything of importance in that place?”

  Chap’s jowls wrinkled, but he finally turned about and headed down the corridor.

  We cannot spend all night searching . . . and you cannot carry much more when we leave, so be judicious in your choices.

  “Domin Tilswith would never forgive me if I did not try to bring some of it back.”

  With what? You do not have your pack, and I doubt the others will want to return here again before we leave these mountains.

  “We are not the only ones who came,” she answered, “and others brought packs and gear as well.”

  Chap slowed but did not stop as he glanced back at her with narrowed eyes. By the time they reached the stairway chamber, Wynn knew he was fully aware of what she had in mind.

  Black ichors covered the floor around four headless bodies. On their way to the study, Leesil and Sgäile had tossed the heads off down the columned corridor, thinking it best to separate the heads from the bodies. They had no lamp oil with which to cremate the corpses.

  Wynn swallowed hard.

  Well . . . get on with it.

  She shot Chap a seething glare and swallowed again.

  Wynn hooked her boot under the headless corpse of a small woman. The body was so heavy that she struggled to roll it over. A crude, half-flattened fold of canvas was strapped to the corpse’s back with lengths of rope. She set aside her crystal as she knelt and pulled Magiere’s old dagger.

  She cut the canvas free, preserving as much rope as possible. Black fluids oozed from the stump of the woman’s neck when she jostled the body. Wynn turned her eyes away, but her gaze fixed upon the dark robe and blue tabard. She tried not to imagine what had happened to these people when Welstiel and Chane first found them.

  Wynn pulled cut rope from under the corpse, and oily black fluids smeared over her fingers. Her stomach rolled.

  Finish up!

  Bile and dried fish welled in Wynn’s throat.

  “Be quiet!” she gasped and then gagged. “This is bad enough without you in my head, making it worse!”

  Chap grumbled and traipsed to another body, clawing it over onto its chest. He tore at its rope harness, trying to pull more canvas free. Wynn closed her eyes but still shuddered as she wiped off her hands on the body’s robe.

  When her eyes opened again, Chap stood before her with a mouthful of canvas. He turned away for the far passage in the chamber’s corner. Wynn grabbed the crystal, rope, and canvas, and scurried after him. As they stepped out into the library, the crystal’s light spilled over the ends of the tall stone casements.

  Chap dropped his canvas by the corridor’s arch, as did Wynn. But when she stepped between the nearest shelves, she could not help a shiver of thrilled anticipation. She and Chap were alone and unobserved in a place that would have taken years—or decades—for her guild to catalogue. But her awe passed quickly when she remembered how all this knowledge had come to be here.

  She was surrounded
by decaying texts penned by ancient undeads, like Li’kän.

  Chap lifted his muzzle, turning as he scanned the upper shelves.

  Wynn felt overwhelmed by the task she faced. There was so much here, and this was only one row among many, so how could she choose what was most important to take? Her stomach rolled again.

  Look first for languages you can read. Second for those you at least recognize. Focus mainly on the books. Bound texts will be older, made with materials that later grew scarce.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “But books will be the weakest, worn down with time. Pages might fall apart if touched—unlike the scrolls that have been protected by their cases.”

  This thought raised uncertainty. All this should have been done by her betters—the most skilled of cathologers among her guild. She was barely a journeyer, let alone a master or domin among that order of sages. But she was the only one here.

  And if you spot any mention of “night voice” in any language, take that text over any others . . . and those of tongues that appear to predate our current era, even if you cannot read them. Translation might be possible when—

  “Could you make this any more daunting?” Wynn asked.

  Chap glanced up at her. Sorry.

  She followed him deeper into the row as they both peered among scroll cases, books, sheaves, and even small boxes by the light of her crystal.

  And so, while Magiere, Leesil, Sgäile, and Osha rested unaware, Wynn hurried in her search, scanning for anything that hinted at secrets of a lost past.

  Anything that might unlock the mystery of events that had shattered the world so long ago.

  Magiere stood on the castle’s front steps at dawn with large snowflakes drifting down from a white sky.

  They had fashioned a makeshift hammock for the orb with cut-up canvas and rope, and scavenged leather as well from the baggage of a robed undead. With the latter, they rolled up two heated crystals from the floor brazier. Though the leather smoldered and smoked a bit, at least they needn’t worry about dried dung for fires.

  Wynn looked bleary-eyed and exhausted as she dragged out two canvas-wrapped bulks too heavy for her to lift.

  Magiere turned a suspicious glance toward Chap, and the dog quickly looked away. It wasn’t hard to guess what the two had been up to while the rest of them slept. Still, what else could she expect?

  The library contained so much more than Wynn’s selected burden. Who else might ever find this castle again, anytime soon? Perhaps what the sage had gathered would uncover something worthwhile.

  Magiere looked out across the white courtyard to the iron gates. One still stood ajar where she’d left it. The prospect of another journey weighed her down, but it was better than staying here even one more day.

  She and Leesil had whispered far into the night, turning from hopes for the future to planning their route home. They had no maps, but as long as they traveled due west, they should emerge somewhere over the Everfen, the vast swamplands south of Droevinka. From there, they could head northwest toward the coast, skirting the swampland’s northern edge.

  Leesil thought if they stayed along Droevinka’s southern border, they could pass into southern Belaski without hindrance, but Magiere had her doubts. If Droevinka’s noble houses were still warring over who would put their own on the throne of the Grand Prince, no corner of her homeland was safe. Outsiders might be cut down by any side as a potential threat—or just for convenience.

  And though desperate for word of Aunt Bieja, Magiere knew her home village of Chemestúk was too far off any sure path.

  Leesil had left Bieja money and a letter in the hope that she’d head for Miiska. Aunt Bieja was as stubborn as any woman in Magiere’s line, but she was no fool.

  Magiere sighed, tired of worrying. Once they reached Miiska, Wynn could send word to Domin Tilswith in Bela, and Magiere would find some way to track Bieja, if her aunt wasn’t waiting there. Then they could all rest in peace while deciding how best to safely deliver the orb in the hands of the Guild of Sagecraft.

  The wind picked up and snowflakes began to slant in their downward course.

  “Another blizzard brewing,” Leesil muttered.

  “Yes,” Sgäile agreed. “We must move quickly and reach camp.”

  The two crouched, and each pulled one of the orb’s hammock loops over his shoulder. Leesil also grabbed the rope sling holding the leather-wrapped fire crystals.

  “Wynn, put your hood up,” Magiere said as she turned about to heave up one of the sage’s bulky bundles.

  Wynn scowled but did as she was told, then suddenly slipped back through the castle’s cracked doors.

  “What are you doing?” Magiere called.

  Wynn emerged once again, stumbling awkwardly under the weight of a sheaf bound between mottled iron sheets. Magiere remembered it sitting on the study floor.

  “Enough!” she said. “You can’t bring every parchment in the place.”

  “This must come!” Wynn insisted. “It may be a journal . . . written by the others who were once here with Li’kän.”

  Magiere didn’t care for that idea and wondered what had happened to those others. Why had they left Li’kän behind? And how had they managed to leave at all, when the white undead had remained leashed by her hidden master through the centuries?

  “Oh, give it to me,” Magiere grumbled, taking the iron sheaf.

  She almost dropped the sudden weight, and Wynn gasped. Magiere managed to tuck it safely under one arm.

  Osha heaved up Wynn’s other bundle from the library. The young elf managed well for one who’d taken an iron bar to the head. He frowned and spoke softly in Elvish to Sgäile.

  “I know,” Sgäile answered.

  “They have rites to perform,” Wynn explained, “for the caste members that Li’kän killed.”

  Leesil frowned, glancing sidelong at her. “To camp first . . . then we’ll see how bad the weather gets.”

  Sgäile looked beyond the gates to the open plateau. “Yes, our purpose comes first.”

  Magiere headed down the steps and through the crusted snow toward the iron gates.

  Hkuan’duv could barely breathe by the time he heard voices. He and Dänvârfij had sat vigils before in bad weather. But the thin air in temperatures well below freezing left him stiff, even with his training in controlling and conserving body heat. Snow was falling again, and the wind had picked up. He had difficulty moving his arms and legs as he crawled away from the wall for a better view of the gates.

  “Sgäilsheilleache and Osha.”

  Hkuan’duv glanced back at Dänvârfij’s whisper. Her face and lips were so pale. When he turned forward, someone stepped through the gates, and he flattened in the snow.

  Magiere led with a square bundle under one arm and a larger canvas bulk strapped to her back with rope. Behind her came Léshil and Sgäilsheilleache, and something heavy swung in a canvas sling swinging between them. The majay-hì ranged nearby, and Osha came last with another canvas bundle like Magiere’s. When he took a long step, the small human female became visible, trudging beside him.

  Hkuan’duv’s gaze shifted quickly over the procession, skipping between the two canvas bundles and whatever swung between Léshil and Sgäilsheilleache. More complications—he could not be certain who carried the artifact.