Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  Kelc selected a finer brush and a slightly pinker tint and began coloring her face in greater detail. Some coroners used a ball blob and just put red circles on the cheeks of the deceased, but Kelc and his father had always strived to do better, and regardless of what they’d done in the past, Henna certainly deserved better than that.

  He brought her lips from dark grey to pink and put color back into her cheeks, following the structure of her bones, creating the appearance that she might have just stood out in the cool night air. With a bit of ruddy pigment and the finest brush available, Kelc highlighted a few of the lines around her eyes, making them look far more alive. He then did the same with her ears, adding a touch more red, again making it look like they may be a little flushed from cold weather.

  He stretched his hands as he took in the overall appearance of her neck and head, allowing himself the slightest of smiles. “You are a beautiful little girl,” he told her. “I wish I had been your older brother. Been there to help.” With a quick glance behind him, checking the empty doorway of the cleanhouse, Kelc leaned forward and lightly kissed Henna’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And he was. He had spent weeks of his life recovering from severe beatings that his own father had given him. He knew the physical pain and the emotional pain. If there was any way to change it, he would. There was no explaining why or how people could be so cruel and thoughtless when dealing with their own children. How had this realm even continued with such harsh traditions?

  He crushed his eyes closed, his jaw clenched. “Finish.”

  He was dusting her hands with neutral tint when he heard footsteps outside.

  “Kelc.” He let out a breath, feeling a little more at ease when his sister’s voice reached him. “Here is the…” She sucked in a breath, causing him to spin to see her.

  “What?” he asked, more shocked to see a smile on her face than if he’d found horns growing from her head.

  “She’s beautiful,” answered Shaia, “and…happy. You’re… How did you do that?”

  “I just…”

  “Her smile… How did you make her do that?”

  Kelc’s eyes flicked to Henna’s face, to her sutured mouth. Though mostly flat, the corners of her mouth were slightly upturned, totally defying both the slack muscles and tight sutures. “I…” Cold prickles washed down his body. “She…”

  “What did you do?” Shaia asked, now very seriously. “Can you…”

  “Can I what?” he shot back. “Let’s just get the damned woolen on her. She’s seen enough.” Fear ran through his veins. He didn’t do anything, but his sister’s mood and the smile on Henna’s face made him queasy.

  “You can, my dear little brother.” She leveled her gaze on Kelc. “Even if you don’t know you can.”

  “Can what… Shy, shut up! Just help me robe her with the woolen.” Though he didn’t know why, Kelc felt panic. “Just.”

  “Okay, okay.” She turned back to the little girl. “But you did something incredible with her. Look, even her eyes are crinkled like she’s smiling.” Kelc couldn’t help but look at the dead girl’s face, seeing the truth of Shaia’s words. “Beautiful.”

  Together, brother and sister slipped the robe beneath Henna and then pull it up her arms, never letting the blanket fall from her until they fastened the woolen around her. Neither of them looked at her bloody thighs. They simply stared at her smiling face and adjusted the cloth around her frail body.

  “You brought the foot wraps?” Kelc asked, his voice weak. “I don’t want to paint her feet.”

  “I did. It seemed like they’d be warmer,” Shaia answered. “She seemed cold to me before.” She tugged one white fitted sock onto Henna’s bloodless foot. “Not anymore. Whatever you did made her warm.” A smile flittered across Shaia’s lips while she tugged the other wrap on. “She’s the perfect little girl now.”

  Kelc didn’t answer. Needing to stymie his nerves, he bent his attention to Henna’s hands, now overlapping on her stomach, white wool covering her arms up to her wrists. He finished dusting them with neutral pigment, careful to avoid the white cloth, and then picked up the pink brush again to lend the appearance of life to them. He gave them a pink tint, feathering out the powder on her skin with dozens of meticulous strokes before moving to the ruddy color again.

  He lowered himself onto a work stool and leaned in until his nose was within a few knuckles of her hands and painted in each crinkle of every knuckle, painstakingly giving every line a touch of subdued red, lending it the aspect he imagined it had while the little girl yet lived. He lost track of time as he threaded the few hairs of the brush across her hundreds of times. All at once, he leaned back, finally satisfied with what he had done. “Good,” he said out loud.

  “Very good,” echoed his sister, surprising him so badly he dropped the brush.

  “Hells, Shy!” Kelc called out. He assumed that she’d left. He drew in a lung full of air. “Hells.”

  “Sorry,” she answered immediately. “Truly. I’m sorry. You were so peaceful working on her and she looks so beautiful. Truly beautiful, and happy. I just…couldn’t leave. You love her don’t you?”

  Kelc looked at the floor between he and his sister, thinking about it. Maybe he did love her. Or maybe, he thought, she just needed love, since she got none from those who should have given to her. “She deserved my best.”

  “She certainly got it,” Shaia says, her voice earnest. “You…”

  “What in the fiery Hells is all the yelling in here?” shouted their father as he stumped into the cleanhouse. “And why are you even in here, Shaia? Don’t you have…” Varrl’s eyes settled on Henna, locked on the angelic face. Measured breaths passed as he simply looked, his rage interrupted. “Hmmm.” He turned to Shaia, his tone quieted. “Get into the house. Your mother needs help with supper.” His eyes darted from his daughter to his son. “And you get finished up in here, boy.” He looked at Kelc for a long moment, his eyes expressing…nothing.

  With that, the man left the cleanhouse.

  Shaia’s eyebrows rose as she shot her brother a look, silently mouthing, “wow” as she left to follow her father’s directions.

  Kelc could only nod as his chest again tightened, strangling his air. More than the smile on Henna’s corpse, more than Shy’s response and her cryptic words, more than the sense that Henna was somehow responding to Kelc’s efforts to comfort her, Varrl’s reaction scared him. It seemed as if he’d just figured something out about Kelc, something that immediately dropped beneath his concern.

  Never before had Kelc’s father turned aside his anger: Not for his wife’s or children’s pain, not for the sanctity of the dead, not because other folks stood nearby and would see it, not for anything. And now, Kelc thought, there may be an even worse thing than his rage.

  “Greeching Hells,” Kelc whispered, “what is going on?”

  Kelc sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his door. He didn’t know how many times he’d tried to sleep, but it just wouldn’t claim him, leaving him to stare at his ceiling in the dark, wondering.

  His thoughts seemed to come and go faster than he could acknowledge them, plaguing him with anxiety and confusion.

  What happened with Henna? “Why was she smiling?” Thinking back to that trouble-free angelic face sent shivers down his spine. It could only be devilry. “And I was the only greeching person there.” And his father knew it. He knew it.

  Kelc knotted his fingers together and knocked his fists against his forehead as if he might shake loose an explanation that he’d missed the previous hundred times he thought through the day’s events.

  “And Shy,” he breathed. “I can,” she said. She knew that something happened and she talked of it like she understood. He closed his eyes. Dark practitioners.

  The words formed in his mind for the zillionth time, coming back to him over and over. His sister knew. Or she suspected he could do something. “Skeesh.” Kelc wished he could do something, that he was
some sort of powerful warlock. At least then he would know what the hell was happening and could deal with it.

  “But now,” he mouthed. Now, he looked like some devil worshipper but didn’t have any abilities or power, or whatever he would have if he were a dark practitioner.

  He thought of his sister. Did she really understand? Did she have some otherworldly knowledge, or did she just think Kelc did because Henna lay in there with a greeching smile on her face. “Hells,” he hissed.

  And to top all of it off, the Territorial Warden was due to arrive at their house tomorrow. “He’s going to accuse father of being a practitioner and father is going to point at me,” Kelc whispered.

  The look in Varrl’s eyes told Kelc all he needed. When his father looked at Henna and saw the impossible expression she wore, it stunned him. The man had been in the world. He knew that something was wrong instantly. And when he looked at Kelc, he wasn’t angry when he should have been. No, Varrl felt nothing, because Kelc had ceased to be human. “He thinks of me as if I’m already fitted for the hangman’s noose. Not worth the trouble,” Kelc whispered. “Let the law have this one,” he whispered, speaking what he knew his father must think of him.

  He shivered, knowing he was close to the truth of the matter. His father, the man he’d experienced for nearly eighteen years, would have exploded upon seeing something he couldn’t explain, especially if Kelc was behind it. And doubly so now, after he’d spent the past few days furious with Kelc. “But he wasn’t. It just…went away.”

  So what can I do, he thought. If he ran they’d catch him, simple as that. And once they did, whatever charges they thought they had would be justified, so far as they saw it. “Only the guilty flee. They’d kill me.”

  If I stay here and wait, he thought, my own father will serve me up to them as a witch…and then what? “Do they have proofs or something?” In all his years, Kelc had never considered or asked how the warden could truly know if someone was a practitioner.

  “Maybe they don’t. Maybe, based on Symean tradition,” he sneered, “they just kill those they suspect. Better to be safer today than sorry tomorrow.”

  “Hells.” He tugged his boots on and stood, wrapping his robe about him. He still wore work breeches and a tunic. He stepped out his door, trying to be quiet in the dark, though the wooden planks only allowed for so much stealth.

  “What are you doing up?” His father’s voice sounded flat, neither angry nor excited.

  “I can’t sleep,” Kelc said, trying to emulate his father’s even tone. “What with the Territorial Warden and his damned deputy coming tomorrow to rattle us, and what it could mean for Kreg…” Kelc shook his head, unable to misdirect any better than that.

  “Stand capable, Kelc, whatever comes. Those bastards won’t shake us, if we don’t let ‘em. They’re just men. They don’t know all they could, or even should.” Varrl paused, and Kelc heard a liquid slosh in the darkness. “Want a drink, boy? Might help you sleep.”

  Kelc considered it. This day only grew odder as it went. “Yes, sir.” He stepped toward his father, where he sat on the bench in the kitchen, and felt a pitcher brush against him. He took it and smelled it. The vapor of the spirits bit at his nose.

  He tilted it back and let a little into his mouth. He nearly choked on just the fumes of it, before swallowing just to get it out of his mouth. “Ho!” he snapped. “Hells.”

  His father laughed, an old man’s enjoyment.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice lower than before, “I can’t afford that smooth aged Nemmy like the traders drink. But this’ll do for you. Take another drink and pass it back, boy.”

  Kelc did, keeping it small, but unwilling to do anything that might upset his father right now. “Here,” he said, when he could talk again.

  Varrl took it back and Kelc heard him take another swig. “Tomorrow, boy…Tomorrow…” He heard his father sigh. “Ah, what we do for the future.”

  “I’d like to wear my sword, sir. I can’t kill a warden or a deputy, but if they come at us for no reason, I guess…” Kelc gritted his teeth, mad at himself for seeming unsure, though he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. “I’d rather die with a sword in my hand, father, than get spitted like a greeching criminal.”

  His father laughed again, this time louder. “Well, well, well…you’ve learned a thing or two about being a Symean man after all. Where is all of this fight when you spar?”

  “It’s there,” Kelc said. “In fact, it causes me to make mistakes. If I could control it, I might then be a better blade.”

  “Maybe…maybe not.” The liquor sloshed in the dark. “Not everyone is a warrior. Someone has to do everything else that runs the land. The first kings were well-spoken, many of them wrote poetry and did arithmetic besides knowing swordcraft.” Another slosh. “Maybe that’s you, boy. Maybe…So many other skills, son.”

  Kelc felt tears tumbling unbidden down his cheeks and he scrubbed them from his flesh instantly. “Can I have another drink?” He didn’t really want one.

  “Yeah.” Kelc took the bottle and sipped from it, though this time the spirits didn’t taste as terrible, it seemed. “You know, boy, I…I didn’t think you had the makings of an undertaker.” Kelc felt his father’s hand rub against him, searching for the drink, and he gave it to him. “No, sir,” he said, taking another swallow. “But today, boy, with that girl… That girl. Eleven summers…fell off a greeching horse. Hmmmm.” Varrl fell silent. “You made things seem right for a time.”

  Kelc stood there in the darkness, sensing for the first time in his life, that maybe his father understood things a little better than he thought. Maybe it got to him, all of the foolish tradition and painful custom. No! Kelc’s mind yelled back. This one moment will never make amends for a lifetime of mistreatment.

  “Why did they bother to lie about her?” Kelc asked. “The girl. Why not just admit they beat her to death? There’s no law in Symea protecting her.”

  “Kelc, one day you’ll be stuck in the middle of things that all feel bigger than you,” Varrl said slowly. “This I promise you.” That brought a grim chuckle. “You’ll look at all of the greeching promises you’ve made and the responsibilities you foolishly accepted and you’ll see the right thing to do. But you won’t do it, boy.” A bitter laugh bubbled up out of his father’s throat. “No, you won’t. You’ll do some fool damned thing that makes no sense in the world except to you right then. Even moments after you do it, it’ll feel wrong, but now you have to live with it.” Varrl took another drink, though Kelc began to wonder if he should. “Then…then someone will ask you why…” His father snorted. “They’ll say, Kelc, what happened here? And you’re going to lie, boy. You’re going to tell them something that you think they want to hear. Because the truth…Ha! The truth. They’ll use the truth to ruin your life whether there’s a law or not. By our very nature, son, we are always hunted. Here anyway.” Silence stretched away from his words.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That greeching Margin Lanch!” Varrl growled. “Raping his own greeching daughter, and before she’s even old enough to bleed.” Varrl muttered something incoherent. “Breaking her neck’s probably the best greeching thing could have happened to her.” The pitcher clunked onto the wooden floor. “Times like tha…” Kelc heard Varrl as he slumped over sideways on the bench. “Bastards.” An erratic snoring sound followed the word.

  Kelc sucked in a deep breath, unsure how this day could get any stranger. He stepped past his father and picked a lantern up, striking it. He left the flame low as he turned for the door, only to face a pale specter.

  “Hells!”

  “Settle down, Kelc.” Shaia wore a coat over her shift, her feet in boots. “What happened?”

  “Father got drunk,” Kelc answered, still recovering his breathing. He waved at the man, laying over sideways, his face mashed into the kitchen bench, snoring loudly. “Told me I did a good job on Henna… He was almost decent to talk to.”

  S
haia didn’t look convinced. She frowned at her father for a moment before looking back to Kelc. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going out to visit the girl…Henna.”

  “Fine. I’ll come too.”

  Kelc’s first reaction was to oppose her, but then he nodded. “Grab a lantern,” he said as he headed to his room. There, he strapped on his blades before returning. His sister waited just inside the front door, holding a lit lantern in both hands. “Let’s go.”

  Shaia let Kelc go out first, but stayed right behind him. “She’s in the cleanhouse still, Kelc.”

  “I know. I want the rending rod.” He kept on his path to the storage shed.

  “Why?” Shy sounded upset. “You don’t need that to look in on her.”

  “I want to try something. I want to touch the rod to her, like father does. See if it…does anything.” He slowed down as he heard Shy stop, or rather, could not hear her walking. “Shy?” he turned to face her.

  She chewed her bottom lip, her brown eyes glaring at her little brother. “Don’t do this, Kelc. Father will be enraged.” She shook her head. “He’ll beat you so badly… I can’t watch him beat you anymore. It kills me to just stand there.”

  “I didn’t know it concerned you,” Kelc replied rashly. “You’ve barely spoken to me in days.”

  “Father told me I couldn’t. He said…” She clamped her jaw. “He said that I needed to stay pretty and willing for my suitors, so if he caught me chattering with you, he’d hit mother. He said that he’d make me watch her suffer what I caused.” Her voice cracked.

  “Shy,” Kelc said, feeling the fool. “I’m sorry.” He set his lamp down and went to her, hugging her tight. “I wish…”

  “I know,” she said, her words muffled by his shoulder. “I know.” She held him for another moment. “Let’s just go see Henna.” He gave her a last hard squeeze before picking up his lantern.