Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  He held Shaia’s hand as they each used their free hand to hold lanterns before them, weaving through the headstones to the cleanhouse.

  Once there, Kelc unlocked and opened the door. He stepped in and just looked. “Shy,” he said, alarm growing in him.

  Henna lay just where he left her, still smiling. “Kelc,” Shy whispered, “what did you do?”

  Her flesh and robe radiated light as if she lay under a full moon. It was enough to illuminate the inside of the cleanhouse with a silvery blue aura.

  “I did nothing, Shy, I promise. I’m no greeching witch. I just…I just prepared her. I…” Kelc took an involuntary step away from the girl, bumping into his sisters. “The warden is going to come and think I know…things.”

  “Kelc,” Shaia said, far less excited than her brother, “calm down. Go in and shut the door.” While he digested her words, still swimming through the army of thoughts rushing through his mind, he watched Shy step past him to Henna and lay her hands on the girl’s stomach. It looked like the glow reduced a little bit, but that, Kelc considered, might also be the three sips of liquor. He felt a little unsteady on his feet. “Come here. Touch her.”

  “No,” Kelc said, shaking his head violently. “Shy… No.”

  “Do it,” she said. “She’s warm.” Shy’s eyes narrowed as she watched her brother. “Kelc. Stop fearing everything. Come touch this girl that you care for. Stop being so…Symean.”

  Kelc’s jaw clinched and he bit off an acidic response. Shy was right. He slid forward, pulling the door almost shut behind him. He set his lantern on the pigment table, taking great care to not knock anything over. He then drew his skiver and held it point down.

  “Kelc! For goodness sake. We’re not grave robbing ghouls and she’s not going to sit up and steal your soul. Just touch her.” Shy glared at him. “You’ve handled dead bodies all your life.”

  “Not that glowed, Shy. Look at her. The deputy is right. There are practitioners out here. How else could this happen?” he looked from the body to his sister. “What do you know about it? About…practicing.”

  “Nothing, Kelc, I’m your sister. I don’t worship demons and eat the dead.” She pulled a deep breath into her lungs and let it wash from her noisily. “I’m just not afraid right now. I just think that the dead, and their souls, are natural, and deserve respect, which is why I came out here. Maybe this light is Henna’s soul and I wanted to see what it’s like. It’s why you came out here too, so don’t try and tell me otherwise. You felt something for this girl. You worried about her spirit. You felt her.”

  “No, Shy, I didn’t.” Kelc let his head fall back, looking at the lit ceiling. “I cared. I believe it helps the spirit to take good care of the body. But I didn’t feel anything. I did the best I could and then…then she greeching had that smile on her face. Nothing more. Nothing.”

  Shaia looked at her brother for a moment before nodding. “Okay. So we’re not practitioners. Fine. The warden will be able to tell that. Rest easy.” She nodded slowly, allowing Kelc to calm down. “Kelc,” she said, looking from him to Henna. “Touch her. Offer your respects so we can go to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long, long day.”

  “Just for a moment.” He stepped up near the body, bewildered by the way she glowed. “Hells,” he whispered. “How? How can this be?”

  Shaia only shrugged, looking on Henna, her mixed emotions written on her face. Her eyes spoke only of grief, but her mouth quirked into a sad smile.

  Kelc lifted his left hand, trying to limit the shaking, and held it out over the little girl, still clutching his skiver in the right. As he did, he saw her as he had before, when he’d worked on her. He began to again feel for her, wishing that he’d been there to protect her, to save her from the fate he knew she’d suffered.

  “Poor Henna,” he told her, now looking on her smiling face. He lowered his left hand to hers. “It’s going to be okay.” He lightly patted her, trying to do so with a delicate enough touch to not disturb the pigment he’d used.

  The moment his flesh touched hers, the cleanhouse fell into blackness. Henna’s radiance vanished and both lanterns snuffed out.

  “Ah!” Kelc jumped backwards, slamming into the cleanhouse door and falling out, letting go of his skiver as it seemed to suddenly boil in his hand.

  “Kelc!” Shy screamed. She ran from the small building, jumping past her fallen brother. She reached down and grabbed his left hand, hauling him away from the cleanhouse until she stumbled to the ground, tripping over a headstone, her hands still clutching him. “Kelc. How did you do that? What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” he barked. “I don’t know what happened. Nothing.” He sat up, sliding back into Shaia. “I touched her, and then…everything went dark. I dropped my dagger. I need to get it.” He rocked forward to stand and his hand lay on the hilt of the skiver.

  Again he just froze as his flesh crawled. He knew he’d dropped it perhaps ten paces away. He slowly wrapped his fingers around the iron grip. It still felt unnaturally warm. “Shy, touch this.” He guided her hand to the handle of his blade.

  “Warm from your hand,” she whispered. “What?”

  To Kelc, it felt as if it had set out in the sun.

  “Nothing,” he said. He gripped the skiver, his thoughts raging. “We need to try and sleep.” He gained his feet and slowly made his way back to the cleanhouse door. Inside, both lanterns sat where he and Shy had left them, their flames still burning, but very low. Otherwise, normal darkness filled the building.

  As quick as he could, he stepped in, grabbed the lanterns and came out, shutting the door behind him with his foot.

  “They’re still lit,” Shaia said in disbelief.

  “Yeah.” Kelc barred and locked the door. He sheathed his dagger and took Shy’s hand. “Come on. Maybe you can get some sleep before morning.” He knew he couldn’t.

  “I can’t be alone tonight, Kelc. Not after this.” She slowed down, but kept walking toward the house, slowing her brother. “I’ll come with you to your bed, and get up before everyone else as I do every other day.”

  Despite all that had happened, Kelc still felt his pulse quicken. “Shy,” he warned.

  “Kelc, father is drunk, as well as mother. Kreg is off buying a horse so he can leave here as fast as possible in a half season.” She jerked him to a stop, spinning him to look at her. “The Territorial Warden is coming here tomorrow to harry all of us. Tonight, after all I’ve seen, I just need to be with you. We may have no other chance.” She moved close, pressing her body against his. Kelc could feel the heat of her body. “And I need to get my thoughts off of…everything.”

  Kelc just nodded and nuzzled her hair until she fell away and led him into the house. He decided that she was right. Tomorrow would be difficult, maybe far worse than that, but first, there was tonight.

  Kelc woke up alone, the previous night dominating his thoughts. It seemed to him upon reflection, that sharing his bed with Shy had been a remarkable distraction from the strangeness that occurred with his father and then Henna. After laying with her, he relived the heat, intensity and hunger in his dreams. He smiled, lying in bed, remembering both.

  After reveling in thoughts of his sister for a short while, he climbed from bed and prepared himself for Henna Lanch’s funeral. Without Kreggen, Kelc would be a functionary and that meant he must wear all of his formal dress, including his sword.

  He snatched his belt from the peg where it hung, and slung it around himself, preparing to buckle it. As he did, he paused. The skiver had been involved with both of the strange events with the dead, feeling warm or hot in each. “Is it the dagger, or was it just because it was the one in my hand?” he murmured. “Doesn’t matter,” he quickly concluded.

  He pulled his buckle from his waist and removed the skiver’s sheath. He knelt down and slid the dagger under his bed, throwing it hard enough that it skidded across the floor until the wall stopped it. Feeling particularly paranoid, with the Territorial Warde
n expected to arrive today sometime, Kelc then flung several pieces of dirty laundry under his bed, further concealing the blade.

  With that done, he stepped out of his room and walked through the house, his boots sounding out confidently. His mother and sister were in the kitchen, both still in their night clothes. His father was nowhere in sight.

  He offered a curt nod to each of them, but proceeded out the front door and off the porch, toward the storage. He could see that nothing waited on the funerary lawn, his father probably suffering the effects of the previous night’s drink.

  The freezing air seemed to knife through Kelc’s clothes, but he welcomed it, allowing it to wake him up and fend off the fatigue that little sleep brought, though the energy of the previous night also fueled him, images of Shy running through his mind, exciting him further.

  Kelc arrived at the storage where he unlocked the door and threw it open. He removed the podium and the banner, leaving the rending rod where it leaned against the wall.

  He set the lectern up and draped the banner over it, taking time to make sure the Symean crest, a silver sword and axe beneath a black spired crown, hung perfectly centered in front.

  He then returned to the storage several times, bringing benches, placing each precisely for Henna’s visitors. He then placed the grey cushions along each bench and set the tribute urns at the end of each bench. They were brown ceramic vessels that those attending might use to offer appreciation to the mortician via monetary donation.

  Kelc looked over the setup, and feeling satisfied, he brought the two halberds that his father preferred to use at the entry point of the lawn. Gripping one tightly in both hands, he raised it up and buried the spiked butt into the ground. A few moments later, he repeated the process with the second one. He stepped back and looked at the two massive pole arms. Nothing could be more Symean than stepping between the two massive blades on your way to honoring your dead, he thought, feeling both respect and wry humor. “As if Henna has had anything to do with Symean tradition other than to suffer it.”

  Kelc shook off the deluge of negative thoughts that followed his words and walked over to the cleanhouse. Behind it sat a two-wheeled cart with a small coffin atop it. Made of yellow pine by his father and expertly crafted, it represented the largest cost for burial.

  Clear lacquer coated the exterior, bringing the grain and knots of the wood alive, giving the box a smooth, reflective, rich look. Inside, black linen lined the coffin and a thin straw-filled pillow had been stitched into the lining for Henna’s head.

  Kelc ran his freezing fingertips along the wood, appreciating the perfect finish coat, thinking suddenly of the skin on Shy’s thighs, equally silky. “Hells, Kelc,” he breathed, “it’s a greeching coffin.”

  He sprang into action again, unable to spend the time he wanted ruminating on his sister and the vents of the night before, and wanting very much to get out in front of the day’s troubles. He lifted up on the front of the funereal cart and kicked the stilting leg up with his foot, where a tensioned spring held it.

  Kelc eased the cart around to the front of the cleanhouse and opened the doors, pushing them wide before turning the cart around and easing it as close to the doors as possible.

  He dropped the stilting leg of the cart back to the ground with his foot, locking it in position before carefully opening the coffin until the thin chain that limited its motion supported its weight. Several times had Kelc opened a coffin too roughly, snapping the chain.

  Henna still smiled, resting on the body board, her hands crossed on her stomach. She looked great. Kelc smiled. “Your pain is ended,” he told her, but something had changed. His smile faded. Somehow, she lacked any sense of intimacy, any sense of presence. Kelc frowned. “Skeesh.”

  He knew several things, and all of them scared him. He could feel Henna yesterday, feel her… “What? Her spirit?” In the cold air, a chill wracked his flesh. He shot a look back to his house, afraid his father might come stumbling out and see his thoughts. “I felt her.” He looked at the dead girl’s corpse, shaking his head in horror as he admitted his ability. “I know she’s gone. Shy touched her but almost nothing happened. I touched her...and she’s…gone?” He lifted his hand before him, examining his trembling flesh as if expecting to see a soul-ripping supernatural claw.

  “And Ilda,” he gasped. “I saw her.” He felt nauseous. “Her ghost.” And then he had touched her with the rod and his skiver warmed. “The blade boiled with Henna.” And I didn’t have the rod, he thought. He pushed his palms into his eyes. Dark practitioner. “And the greeching warden is coming today. Skeesh!”

  Kelc stepped to the side of the cleanhouse door, out of sight of his house, and sat down, resting against the wall. “What can I do?” he asked, his words floating away before his very eyes. “I’m a greeching witch. I’m a dead man.” He hung his head and sucked in one deep breath after another.

  He felt as if he sat there for glasses before he calmed down enough to think logically. He knew he couldn’t run. He knew that all he could do was take the day moment for moment, bearing it as well as he could.

  “Stand capable,” he told himself through gritted teeth, hating the taste of the words. “Stand greeching capable,” he muttered to himself, mocking his father as he climbed to his feet. He took a deep breath and let it ease from him. “Keep going, Kelc. That’s all there is for now.”

  He recalled his conversation from the night before, with his father. “Why would they lie about it?” he asked, mimicking his words. He stepped back to the cleanhouse door and looked to the house. Nobody. “Why would they lie?” he asked again, this time hearing his father’s answer. “Because they’ll use the truth to ruin your life whether there’s a law or not.” He sighed, his breath rattling from him. “I get to lie today…to the Territorial Warden. Hells.”

  Resigned to his oncoming fate, he moved to Henna and slipped his arms beneath her. She weighed almost nothing as Kelc lifted her, rigor holding her form, her stiff body hardly bending as he plucked her up off of the body board.

  He moved very deliberately, backing away from the table and then turning to face the funereal cart. He carried her to the coffin and gently placed her within, making certain that her head rested on the pillow. He lowered the lid back to its closed position, fearing that the chain might break if he carted her to the lawn with it open.

  He walked to the front of the cart and slid it a few paces away from the cleanhouse so he could close the doors. His father felt that it looked sloppy for the doors to hang open during the ceremony.

  Kelc carted the coffin to the lawn. Designed to tilt back in order to display the body, the cart had long front handles that he had to use, employing his own body weight against that of Henna and her coffin as he raised the handles over his head. She weighed little enough that he effortlessly lowered her into position, though with heavier bodies, tilting them occasionally required two men in order to keep the coffin from bouncing from the cart should it hit the ground too hard. If the lid was open, the body might actually fall to the ground.

  Kelc let go of the handles and moved to the other side, checking that the rear of the cart, and the coffin, sat firmly against the ground. “Good.” He reopened the coffin, again chary with the door and its thin chain.

  Testing the balance of the door, Kelc worried that the slightest breeze might force it closed, so he fetched a weir rod from the storage and set the curved wooden prop to hold the coffin open.

  He turned from the coffin just as his father stepped down from the front porch. “Have you eaten yet, boy?” he asked as he surveyed the lawn, walking straight to the podium.

  “No, sir.”

  “Where’s the rod?” asked Varrl, looking at his son through reddened eyes.

  “In the storage, sir. You ordered me to never touch it again,” Kelc answered. “I set everything else up, but did not wish to defy your order.”

  His father nodded. “Go eat something. Our guests will likely start arriving in a
nother glass or so.” He looked at the cloudy sky, trying to gauge the time. “Maybe less.” He walked around the podium and looked at Henna. “Weir rod?”

  “I feared the door might move in the wind. Small as the coffin is for her, it didn’t seem to have much weight.” Kelc waited for a response, but Varrl only nodded again and started for the storage.

  Kelc took that as dismissal and walked to the house. He could smell fried potatoes as he crossed the porch and entered.

  “I have a plate for you here, brother,” Shaia said as soon as he arrived, failing to call him “little brother” for the first time. “Come, wash your hands and eat,” she said as she carefully tilted a chilled pitcher, filling an earthenware mug with milk.

  He moved to the basin and rubbed a little root in his palms before ladling a bit of warm water over them to clean up. “Where’s mother?” he asked, turning to his sister.

  “Getting dressed,” she said, giving him a private smile that made his heart race. “I need to go change myself.” She brushed up against Kelc as she left the kitchen, the warmth of her body waking his senses as she lingered against him for the briefest moment. She stretched up and gave him a quick kiss on the ear before heading for her room. “You look very handsome in your uniform,” she whispered.

  Kelc practically collapsed onto the bench, feeling a little weak before the overwhelming desire he felt for Shaia. Funny, he thought, that while I can’t do anything about it, I feel feeble, but if I just needed to get to her to do as I please, I could tear down a rock wall with my bare hands. He sighed as he started to eat.

  Before he knew it, his plate sat empty. He left the last bit of milk in his mug, not liking it too warm. He quickly returned to his father, able to see some folks headed towards their property as he walked.

  His father worked behind the podium, arranging his script and donning his mourning shawl, a long black drape that rode down his shoulders and upper arms, nearly reaching the ground. Since guests already neared the property, Kelc stood at the front of the lawn and off to his father’s left.