After dismissing the thought, he returned to his current purpose. He gathered his feet beneath him and continued onward, forcing his feeble body to respond, lurching forward. His mother had suggested a short walk, after all. Whether or not she would agree that this was short, Kelc could guess, but just now he didn’t concern himself with that.
He needed to be alone. A couple of hazy days allowed him to begin really thinking some things through. He began to picture Kreggen’s injuries by Tasher and the events immediately after the battle. He remembered entering Kreg’s room and sitting down. Then, though his memories seemed to come and go, some things stuck out though he couldn’t question them while his father or the warden could hear.
Had his mother blocked the door? Kelc nodded to himself. He knew she’d done that. Why? And why had Varrl knocked the door down when Adda had clearly called to him? And why did Shy and her mother guard Kreg’s recovery so? They claimed it was pride, that they would nurse him back, but it felt otherwise to Kelc.
They seemed almost panicked at times when either Varrl or Tasher suggested a bandage needed changing. “She did just get beaten, and the warden could care less,” he breathed as he limped. And then there was an errant statement he’d heard from his mother. “Kelc helped them close.”
“Kelc helped them close,” he grunted as he staggered the last few steps, jolting to a stop. “Helped them close…Shaia had called out to mother a few times. Helped them close.” He shook his head, unable to reconcile things.
Instead he looked up at his old friend. The willow tree loomed over him, its delicate outer branches already reaching past him, the immense rutted trunk still a dozen steps away, undeniable in its strength where it took hold of Oerhe, rooted there for eternity.
“Hello,” he said to the tree, instantly feeling foolish. He chuckled as he pitched forward, ducking his head under the bare bowed branches, making his way to the robust trunk. He moved around it to the side opposite his house and lowered himself, resting his back against the rough, yet welcoming, bark.
Before Kelc lay the expansive brown grasslands, carpeting the world between him and anywhere else. “But no headstones,” he breathed. No dead bodies, their souls forced from them. “Forced,” he snorted, “from Symea. Free more like.” A frown slowly formed on his pale face. “Just like Kreg.”
His brother leaving fell on Kelc like a blow every time he considered it. Being the only son of Varrl would be a challenge, a painful challenge. Adda could see a future worth crying over and Shy would say nothing about it. “As soon as he can get out of bed.” Those were the warden’s words. “As soon as he gets up, he and I will be on our way.”
“Skeesh.” Kelc pulled his skiver from its sheath by his side, gripping it tightly, resting his eyes on the black steel. “Kreg is free. Hells!” he muttered, “Even the spirits of the dead are free, off roaming Reman. Free,” he said, trying to imagine the day that he could walk away from his house, never to return. “Free.” He wished such an existence to anyone, to everyone.
“Hells,” he yelped, dropping the skiver, the blade suddenly hot in his hand. He scooted back, keeping his legs clear of the fallen dagger, watching it, recalling the terror of witnessing Henna’s spirit.
The skiver glowed a deep red, the sort of red Kelc imagined it held while being forged, brightest at the hilt and fading considerably before hardly tinting the tip of the weapon at all. “The grass,” he hissed, noting that the dry dead grass did not burn as it reached from beneath the glowing blade.
He tentatively reached a hand to the skiver and quickly poked it halfway up the blade. It felt hot, but not blistering as it had moments before. He poked it again, nearer to the brightest spot. It felt the same, uncomfortable to the skin and yet bearable. He pressed a finger to it, unable to reconcile what he saw against what he felt. “Just hot.”
He slowly took the hilt back into his hand, feeling the hot steel against the palm of his hand, ready to drop it in an instant. Lifting the tip skyward before his eyes, he rotated the dagger. The heated red glow seemed to pass all the way through it. “Hells.”
As he watched, a vapor no more substantial than his breath seemed to fall from the skiver, though it swept back toward the blade as it dropped, never reaching the ground. Paralysis gripped Kelc. He remembered the funeral where he’d watched a similar essence choke Margin Lanch.
The delicate mist wound first around the black steel, now darkening as the pale wraith exited the blade, and began to climb up Kelc’s arm. He felt the spirit as it crossed the back of his hand, his skin prickling as if a line of ice fell upon his flesh.
He shuddered as the chill feeling reached his elbow. No sound could he make when it snaked around his upper arm, resting atop his shoulder in an eddying mere as if hesitating to advance further after so quickly ascending his torso.
Cold air poured down his front as the vapor persisted. Kelc began to suck in short forced breaths, attempting to regain some measure of calm.
“Henna?” he finally chirped. “Ilda?” Though he kept his face forward, he looked sidelong at the essence, searching for any response to his words. “Henna?” he said again. “I never…I didn’t.” He clenched his jaw, shivering against the cold air, the freezing presence of the apparition and the sheer terror that seemed to rise from his gut. “I never meant to capture you. To keep you. You’re free.” He pulled in a lungful of air. “If you can…Go. Go do…whatever awaits you.”
The mist roiled before his eyes, lifting into the air, the strands of ethereal vapor twisting within itself, a noiseless tumult only a few knuckles before Kelc’s eyes. “Go,” he said again. He mashed himself against the willow, dropping his jaw a bit as he wilted from the now vigorous display of the vapor. “Ahh!”
From the midst of the raging cloud, Henna’s face, made of translucent boiling haze, erupted, her essence nose to nose with Kelc, her eyes merely dark hollows, her thin lips turned up in the smile that Kelc had given her face after her death.
Slowly, her eyes formed, filling from within until he could make out both irises and pupils, the power he witnessed petrifying him. Her mouth settled into a flat line as a blurry arm extended up to him, resting a hand on his cheek, chilling his flesh further.
“Go,” he begged, so aghast was he to have such an undeniable specter before him. “Please. Go.”
Henna’s hand fell from his cheek and she simply stared for a time. Then all at once, she grinned, her teeth clearly defined by the mist. Slowly her trunk and head, discernible as such, drifted back away, her expression unchanging, the vapor still whipping violently around and through her, though it did not affect the form it created of the young girl.
A quick nod to Kelc, still unmoving and pressed against the rutted bark of the willow, and her face dissolved, leaving only the chaotic vapor that swirled where her features had been only moments before. An instant later, the torso disappeared as well. Before Kelc could truly consider it, the vapor dissipated completely, leaving him. “Be free,” he whispered, his voice quivering.
Once Henna left, Kelc sat still, afraid of everything. For a short while he felt as if any motion at all, any strong thought or emotion might bring a ghost to him, summon them into reality before his very eyes, forcing him to once again deal with the harsh truth that he was a dark practitioner.
“Hells and blood,” he breathed, accepting the fact that he could somehow interact with the dead. That fact simultaneously filled him with fear and rage. He eased the black dagger into its sheath, making certain that he touched it in no way.
The part of him that despised Symea and her militant narrow traditions fell back horrified before the rising zealotry of those same traditions, hammered into Kelc’s mind for nearly eighteen years, the most certain of which being the obdurate hatred and destruction of anyone who might wield powers beyond skill with a blade.
“I am a dark practitioner,” Kelc said quietly, tasting the words, finding them bitter. “I’m evil. I should go back and tell the warden.” The state
ment came out cleanly and dutifully from his mouth, almost automatically, and yet it felt caustic to his soul. “He would have my head off before I finished the sentence.” A malicious snort blasted from Kelc. “The fool can’t even lift a blade. Maybe I should kill him while he’s weak.” His head shook minutely. Even Kelc was Symean enough to dislike the idea of killing a defenseless man. “Skeesh.”
What choice do I even have, he wondered. He knew he couldn’t run. He’d get next to nowhere before the wardens were on him. Admitting it to anyone would be his end. “Hide it,” he murmured, but he knew that the strange occurrences would only continue, perhaps increase in frequency. “If father sees even one thing…” He’ll kill me, Kelc knew. “He’ll kill me…kill me.”
“You’re right.” The words were little more than a whisper.
Kelc leapt up, his body seemingly aflame in any number of places as his panicked efforts forced unwise action. He spun to face his mother even as his legs failed him, dropping him dumbly to his rear before momentum forced him to his back. “Hells!” he barked. He then groaned as the full effect of his movement registered with him, bringing soreness and nausea. “Hells,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Hells.”
“Youngest,” Adda snapped, seemingly unconcerned with her son’s current plight. “Stand capable.”
Her apparent apathy after all of her recent compassion drew Kelc’s attention. He drew in measured breaths, composing himself immediately, as if confronted with the dispassionate judgment of his father. She knows, he thought. She knows I’m a greeching witch and now I’m dead to her. He lay on the ground looking up at a pale grey sky through the naked branches of the willow, the surge of discomfort passing from him. After a few more breaths he struggled into a sitting position.
His mother knelt just behind the trunk of the massive willow, but rose and moved around it, settling back down to her knees before her boy, her eyes unreadable, stern. “Youngest,” she said, “you are a horrible danger.” Her green eyes narrowed in her still-swollen face as a frown took over her expression. She pulled a breath in and let it back out with scrupulous slowness. With little more than a quick glance at their nearby surroundings, Adda determined their level of isolation and nodded sharply. “We are alone. You more than most.”
Adda looked at Kelc while he struggled to maintain some semblance of calm. Her eyes held his, never straying to the nearby willow or falling into the brown grass.
Icy chills rose through Kelc, raising gooseflesh along his arms and legs, warning him of danger, bringing him to a completely alert state. He broke away from his mother’s intense look and quickly surveyed his surroundings before returning to her.
“What you just did,” she told him before pulling in a deep breath and letting it thread out of her mouth through her teeth, “will likely lead to your death, youngest. That was ill done.”
“Mother, I…”
“Kelc,” Adda snapped, “stand capable. Fearing what you are is the past. Fearing that others will find out is now past. Now, youngest, it is only a question of when they find out.”
“But…the test…Hull Jista…”
“You see so much and yet you are so blind, youngest. I reached out and protected you from the test.” Her eyes suddenly changed, compassion seeping back into their green hardness. “The only witch the wardens could have found was me.”
“You!” Surprise forced it out. “Mother!” Kelc found himself dizzy. “You?”
“And your sister, Kelc. Even Kreggen, I think, but he has shown not a stitch of it, nor ever used it that I could detect.” She smiled, a wan twist to her lips tinged with sadness. “You hadn’t shown any signs either until lately. But now, youngest, you burn like a forge. You have great abilities. Greater than Shy’s, greater than mine, though you know less of them than either of us.”
Kelc heard little of what she said. Shy was a witch. The thought dazed him as he thought back to the day the wardens arrived. She’d come from the house dressed so elegantly, her hair done up as if attending a dance.
“She flaunted it right before their eyes. You flaunted it,” he said aloud in disbelief, his gray eyes locked on his mother’s. “You dared them to find us out. And they were right. Our property is overrun with dark practitioners…us.”
“Youngest, they make those with the ability out to be demons. Are we such?” He shook his head dumbly. “No. We are just people. I’ve had the ability since I had eight summers, but unlike you, I developed some tact and grace with my powers. You,” she said, pursing her lips, “you hide it with all the success I might have hiding the sunrise. Tasher and his bunch have to know that something is happening here even if their fool tests failed…Copper shavings,” she spat. “Imbeciles.”
“Copper…” Kelc mumbled.
“Yes, Youngest. Copper draws spiritual energy to it and will burn those with the ability, or any work we perform, unless shields protect them. I shielded you.” Adda shrugged as if her actions and this conversation were the most commonplace thing in the world. “So the wardens found no evidence of ‘dark practitioners.’ Because of the simplest of shields.” Again she snorted, unable to hold back her contempt for their methods. “That’s why I became so exhausted and emotional over time. Holding the shield so they couldn’t feel it, from the distance they took you and your sister, drained me.”
Kelc could not speak. His world felt as if it were melting around him and pooling at his feet, leaving an entirely new one before his dread-stricken eyes.
“You snapped Jista’s sword?”
“No, youngest, you did. You focused spirit in your defense and cracked his steel like it was straw. To Shy and me that single act was louder than a thunderclap.” Adda shook her head once. “And that damned Jista just clapped you on the shoulder and told you how well you fought. Such a fool. His greatest fear standing just before his eyes and he congratulated you. Ha!”
Kelc could stand no more. Despite the pain and weakness of his body, he staggered to his feet and turned from his mother. He stared out from beneath the canopy of willow branches, beyond the grass, to a horizon that felt impossibly far away. “What else?” he asked. “What else has happened that I could not see…did not see?”
“Much, youngest. But then, much of it no longer matters. Only a little of it may be a part of your future.” Kelc heard Adda gain her feet. “You healed your brother’s wounds with Ilda Denister’s spirit.”
While fright seemed to slip into his mind, part of him could only nod, finally putting the pieces together. “You locked father out…” he mumbled almost to himself, “and Shy was terrified…” A few breaths. “…because I healed Kreg.”
“Yes,” his mother answered. “His wounds were closing before our very eyes and your father wanted into the room. Had he seen that, we all might be dead. We hid the wounds afterward. Everyone saw your brother take that sword through the lung. Had anyone then seen that there was little more than a reddish mark…” She left the consequence heavily shrouded in silence.
“Won’t he…”
“We created a superficial wound that will leave a scar.”
“Hells!” Kelc spat, but he immediately realized the need. Kreggen would have sought to do the right thing and in doing so would have likely cost everyone their lives. “Hells.”
“Youngest. There’s a little more. I feared your response to healing Kreggen, feared whether or not you’d be able to keep silent or react properly with your father so angry and abusive.” Kelc turned enough to look at his mother, her jaw set, her eyes downcast. They snapped up to meet his. “I poisoned you to keep you unconscious and in bed. It wasn’t the street fever,” she stated. “It was me.”
Kelc wanted to be angry, wanted to lash out at his mother for making him feel miserable, for lacking trust, for…everything, but again he knew she was right. He’d been terrified and bounding from one mess to the next, things happening around him that he couldn’t explain while he slowly realized that he was everything he’d been taught to fear.
“Blood and ashes, Kelc, will nothing rile you? How much will you accept before you act?” Adda’s hand flexed by her side as if she momentarily considered throttling her own son. “You have this inside of you…this power. Will you let them kill it without so much as a word in opposition?”
“Mother,” he said, calming down with as much intensity as his mother grew her anger, “acting as recklessly going forward as I have done in the past will only result in my death. Perhaps that can be avoided,” he told her, the need to take control of the situation now that his mother lost it bringing him some clarity, some acceptance of his nature. “Perhaps not. But lashing out?” He shook his head. “This is Symea. They are better at war at birth than I can ever be. I need to quiet myself and act as they expect. So must Shy…and you. Everything is a mess at home, and the less sense that it makes, the more father will beat us. We must return things to normal if we have any chance of escaping it.”
Adda nodded, a frown dominating her face. “Those are good words, youngest, but you have set into motion some things that may need answering before long.”
“What things?” he asked, feeling a sliver of fear in the confidence he’d felt only an instant before. “Mother? What things?”
“Kelc!” Varrl barked. “Wake up! Margin Lanch died last night. Get up! I’ll need you to come with me to get his body. Tasher wants to leave immediately.”
“Yes, sir!” It took nearly everything Kelc had to not sound miserable. Lanch dead. And the warden wanted to come along.
“Good. Odd he died so soon after his daughter,” his father said to no one as he exited Kelc’s room. “Interested to see…”
“Hells and greeching blood,” Kelc mouthed. Just yesterday he’d spoken to his mother and determined that the only way to survive was to hide his nature and now he had to spend the entire greeching day riding with the territorial warden because he was still recovering from his wounds and couldn’t do his actual job. “Skeesh.”
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 14
