Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  “Hells and blood,” she whispered as her face leached of color and her eyes widened, tears instantly leaking from them. “Hells and blood. You sent her here. You sent my daughter. You worked on her…made her smile. And then you sent her.” She walked a few steps to the side of her home, into the kitchen where she leaned against a counter. “You killed Margin. You…”

  Kelc felt as if he were falling, so strong was the sensation of surprise and discomfort in him. He swooned where he stood, his right hand reflexively pressing into the icy knot that suddenly seized his stomach.

  “I didn’t,” he gasped. She’s going to tell them. She’s going to tell the warden. Kelc dropped into a cushioned chair nearby, struggling to breathe. He looked up to find Velna just before him. She dropped to her knees.

  “Thank you.” She hugged him so hard his back popped. “Thank you,” she whispered. Tears streamed down her face. “I still have two more daughters, four summers and nine. They…” She shook her head. “Thank you.”

  “Ms. Lanch,” Kelc said, relieved. “I must go. I just needed…”

  “Yes,” she said, standing up and flattening her blouse. “Yes.”

  “Payment for the burial,” Kelc said.

  “Of course.” Velna left the front room for a moment and returned with two small pouches. “This one is for the burial. Eight silver crowns.”

  “It costs only seven.” She bestowed a crooked smile on the young man and plucked one from the pouch, slipping it into her belt.

  “This second pouch is for you, young Kelc. Hide it,” she said quietly, “and use it to escape this cruel land. You’ve given me as much freedom as ever I could have expected in Symea, and now I offer what help I can to you. Take this and go.”

  He nodded, feeling exposed and terrified. Someone other than his mother and sister knew.

  “Thank you,” he muttered, turning for the door.

  “Young man,” Velna said, turning him back around. “Can you tell me? Is Henna still here?”

  Kelc felt as if he may vomit, having such a question openly asked of him. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, simply asking himself if he could tell if she still remained.

  When he opened them, he saw the girl, sitting in a small red chair near a low table in the kitchen. She smiled at him and waved. His neck hair stood on end and his skin tightened.

  “She is,” he near-inaudibly gasped, turning to again make sure that his father and the territorial warden remained far away. “Right now she sits in that little red chair there.” A tear welled from his eye and tumbled down his cheek as he spoke. Dark practitioner. He was doing it. Using his abilities on command. He could feel every muscle in his body tighten.

  “Will she stay for a while?” Velna asked, new tears forming as she looked to the chair, to her daughter’s spirit. “Will she remain with me?”

  Henna nodded and a sensation passed through Kelc like a warm summer breeze, easing some of the fear, though it was not the spirit that worried him.

  “She will,” he said quietly. “She will stay here until you die. She’ll go with you then. Be with you always.”

  “She will,” Velna squeaked as she dropped to her knees, overcome with emotion, sobbing. One of her hands reached up and took Kelc’s where it hung limply by his side, squeezing it fiercely.

  “Kelc!” called his father from without. “Time to go.”

  Kelc gave Velna’s hand a quick squeeze before letting it fall.

  “Go, young man!” she mumbled, her throat catching. “Go. And don’t stop.”

  “Slow down, now! Heee! Hee!” Varrl eased back on the driver’s bench, dragging the bundled reins wrapped about his wrists back with practiced skill, drawing the horses down to a walk.

  Kelc’s head snapped up, the change in pace interrupting his thoughts. Tasher stared right at the boy from where he sat next to Varrl, his eyes vacant as if he, too, was lost in thought.

  The house still lay before them out of sight, below the rise that surrounded it, though the willow stood before them, its naked branches starkly defined against the fading grey winter sky.

  “Hold up, now!” Varrl snapped at the horses just before the iron wrapped wheels of the wagon came to a halt. “Ho there!”

  “Why have we stopped?” Kelc asked, trying to keep his acid tone, the tone that seemed to prove he was a man of Symea. “I have enough work to do without being sidetracked and waylaid.”

  “Listen, boy.” Varrl turned on the bench and put one foot up on the travel coffin, the aged dirty leather of his boot creased and cracking in places. “You may have been allowed to sulk all over the property and play at being a maid for the past few years, but now you’re the next in line to me. Kreg and the warden are going to leave tonight after sunset.” Varrl paused, watching his son. After only a moment or two, he nodded as if to himself. “I need your help.”

  Kelc’s eyes narrowed involuntarily. “With what?”

  “Your sister, we think.” Tasher came to life as he spoke, surveying the land about them. “It seems clear enough that there is some sort of witchcraft affecting your property, though the exact nature eludes us still. For that to be the case, it must have had time to grow in nature.” The warden spat on the road. “A failing in my duties perhaps. But your sister has suddenly become prickly and afraid, all at once. She jumps like a frightened bunny around me and your older brother. Just before we left, she even overreacted to you.” Tasher climbed from the seat, his right arm still bandaged to his side. He settled onto his haunches next to Kelc, sliding into the space between the travel coffin and the wagon’s sideboard. “Your father tells me you two used to be very close.”

  “Until recently,” Kelc said.

  “Yes. Until your position and responsibility in the family were elevated. Now she begins to fear you.”

  Kelc almost laughed at how inaccurate the warden’s thoughts seemed to be. But fear stymied his mirth. Instead, he nodded, pressing his lips together.

  “After I go with your brother, we want you to watch over your sister. Keep your father apprised of any…oddities, signs of the practice.”

  “Watch over Shaia?” Kelc returned, trying to sound strong. “If you say she is a witch,” he said, “then fine. But you thought that I was as well, only days ago. This seems to be a poorly hatched egg.”

  “We thought it possible, but such folk can’t wield steel as you did. Also, had you been a practitioner, the treated copper shavings we dropped on your flesh would have flared into blue flame.” Tasher reached out and settled his left hand on Kelc’s right shoulder. “We thought the strange expression that Henna Lanch wore spoke of witchcraft.”

  Kelc pursed his lips to restrict his shock, and failing.

  “Oh yes!” Tasher said. “We came and saw her while you yet slept. Your father gave you drink and while you snored we came in well before dawn. We then left and came back later, making a spectacle of our arrival to flush you out.” Tasher shrugged. “We thought you were a witch. It was only later that we realized that your sister spent time with you while you prepared the Lanch girl. So at first, we suspected you, but now we know who really caused this. There is no one else left.” The warden smiled bitterly and his head dipped forward though his eyes stayed on Kelc’s. “And you’re going to catch her for us. Nothing could more clearly exonerate you and punish the wicked. You could end up serving with your brother one day.”

  Kelc nodded, almost unable to listen to Tasher anymore. The warden and his deputies were here the night I treated Henna, he thought. The night Shy and I slept together. “Hells,” he breathed.

  “Yeah,” Tasher said, misunderstanding. “Dark practitioners come from where they will, boy. From some of the most respected families in all of Symea. Your father thought you too weak to handle this responsibility, but I believe he is beginning to reconsider that.”

  Kelc suppressed his panicked thoughts long enough to absorb Tasher’s words, looking from the warden to his father. Varrl bobbed his head shallowly.
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  “Fine,” Kelc croaked, offering nothing more. He could hardly sit still. He needed to think, to pace, to run. His eyes threatened tears. His hands, flat on his thighs would shake if he let them up. Fear fueled anger. Damn this whole greeching mess! He raged in his mind. Catch Shy! You blind greeching fools! He thought. It’s mother. It’s me. It’s all of us. “Just get me there!”

  He brushed Tasher’s hand from his shoulder and stood, unable to remain seated any longer. He looked forward, past the warden, past his father, past the willow, to Shy. He balled his hands into fists and crossed his arms over his chest. He clamped his jaw down, grinding his teeth. Could this get any more greeching snarled up?

  Varrl looked at his youngest son and nodded, a ghost of a smile lighting on his lips. Tasher stood, interrupting Kelc’s view. “Good,” the warden said. “Good.”

  Kelc glared at the law man, wanting more than anything to be alone for a moment to collect his thoughts before anything further smashed into his life. “Get me home, warden. We’re wasting time.”

  Varrl gave the chest belt one last tug to make sure that the corpse couldn’t slide off of the polished slab of wood. The belt creaked from the stress as it bit into Margin Lanch’s swelling tissue.

  “Okay, boy. I need to send your brother off. Get the body prepared. I’ll build the coffin later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kelc answered, receiving a nod from his father as he left the cleanhouse.

  Alone. Kelc slumped against the cool stone wall near the ludpump and focused on breathing. Day by day, his life seemed to make less sense. “Catch Shy for them,” he breathed. “Hells.”

  First, Kelc knew, he needed to make sure that no one could catch him. It was his mistakes, his blundering that had been felt by the wardens. “But what exactly?’ he whispered to himself, wondering what he’d done that drew them. “What can they sense?” As far as his mother seemed to think, the wardens were confused and addled, missing things before their very eyes.

  He slid the scabbard that held his skiver from behind him to his right side and rested his palm on the hilt while scrubbing his hair with his other hand.

  “I have it all ready. All of it. I’ll be good to go in only a few moments.” Kreggens’s voice carried to the cleanhouse from the porch, soon followed by his heavy steps as he crossed the yard. “Kelc!” he called out as he leaned into the cleanhouse.

  Kelc spun to his brother, standing up straight. “Kreg,” he said, followed by a short cough. “You’re leaving?”

  “We are,” Kreg said with all the finality of the darkening sky. “It’s time to get after it and fix some things.”

  “Fix some things? Like what?”

  “Well,” Kreggen said, drawing a breath as he gave a quick glance behind him. “The way this whole thing has been handled, for one. I watched them try my own family for witchcraft without any real evidence that it existed in the first place. The way they challenged me and the family before my trial to become warden. The fact that both the warden and I could have died during that trial. None of that is how I think things should be done.”

  “Me either.” Kelc felt as if any sensible cogent thought he might have shared with his brother fled before the gravity of the moment, sucked from his mind, leaving only a tenuous anxiety and a future of regret. No, he thought. “Kreg,” he finally muttered, “I just want you…to, uh, know… You were more of a father to me…”

  “Kelc,” Kreg said, interrupting his little brother, his brows knitting while his jaw clenched. The brothers stared at each other for a few moments before Kreg finally stepped forward and hugged Kelc. “You’re the best of us, little brother. Father knows it, mother knows it. Shy and I…we know.” Kreg loosened his bear hug and stepped back enough to look his brother in the eyes. “Keep safe and follow your nature, little brother. You look at things unlike most Symeans. Find a way to make that work.” Kreg backed up two steps toward the door. “If you ever need any help with anything…” He offered a quick nod.

  “Thanks, Kreg.” Kelc knew he’d cry. He could feel it, but deep breaths held it at bay. “Ride strong and stand capable, Territorial Warden. Let nothing slow you.” Kelc performed a shallow bow.

  Kreg smiled. “Goodbye, Kelc.”

  “Goodbye.”

  The moment Kreg left, Kelc pulled the door closed and let his emotions loose.

  Had anyone walked in while he wept, it would have drawn notice to the situation. Had his father discovered how he blubbered after his older brother, it would have resulted in a Symean sermon on strength and a beating; the sort of beating that would have left Kelc recovering in bed for days.

  But Varrl saw his eldest son off, proudly sending him off to become the Territorial Warden, before immediately beginning work on Margin Lanch’s coffin while the women consoled themselves one way or another inside the house.

  The only gain, Kelc thought, as his crying finally subsided, is that Kreg took Tasher with him, leaving the property with only Varrl to oppose them.

  “Them,” he croaked. “Us.” The dark practitioners. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and slowly recovered himself. As if the facts had faded from his mind, his immediate surroundings regained focus.

  Margin Lanch’s body lay strapped to the board in the cleanhouse, the inert dead flesh of the man already settling into rigor. Though Kelc had seen many dead bodies, more than he could count, Lanch’s corpse felt like a challenge, or even a temptation.

  “Your spirit,” Kelc whispered, “doesn’t deserve to be free.” The man had been horrid in life. Why shouldn’t I claim your spirit and make use of it in whatever way I please. Panic swept up through Kelc after the thought faded from his mind. “Hells.”

  He sat down on the stubby stool in the corner of the cleanhouse and argued with himself.

  The Symean in him rejected the thought as unconscionable, though Kelc batted that aside quickly enough. His remaining concern rested in how wise another interaction with anyone’s spirit would be.

  “Can father tell?” he softly asked Lanch, looking at the body and seeing the misty spirit still lying within the lifeless shell. “Would he know? Does he know when he performs the rending?”

  His mother had told him he had the ability. She urged him to use it. “And it saved me when I fought Jista,” he reasoned. “Without Ilda’s spirit he would have carved me into pieces and thought that Symean law had been carried out.” Kelc sneered even as a bitter laugh struggled from his throat. “Hells! He would have been right.”

  The wardens had suspected that Kelc was a witch and without any interference from both his mother and the spirit he used to break Jista’s blade, he’d have died. “And they would have been greeching right.”

  I muddled around, whatever power I possessed happening almost incidentally, mother and Shy cringing at every turn, hoping I didn’t get everyone killed by drawing the damned wardens right to our door. All of it because I was an ignorant imbecile, all accidental.

  “But you,” he said, locking his eyes on Margin Lanch. “With you it would be no accident.” Henna Lanch rose in his mind, her broken neck and bloody thighs vivid in his memory. “No,” he almost hissed, “you deserve what comes to you.”

  As if rebounding Kelc’s rage to him, the spirit hidden within the dead flesh of Margin Lanch rose over the body like an ash-filled volcanic blast, erupting from the man’s gut and slamming into the ceiling.

  Kelc managed only to flatten himself against the stone cleanhouse wall, still sitting on the shop stool, as the redirected torrent of spirit coalesced into a roughly humanoid form, diving from above the cadaver to Kelc.

  Sinewy arms of grey vapor ending in long crude pointed fingers stretched to him while a nearly featureless face shone only wide black eyes with sharp brow bones that cut down across them, conveying rage.

  “It was my right!” The mental rasp of the specter screeched in Kelc’s mind, the anger and might of the words forcing him to shrink where he sat. He felt his bladder go. “My right!”

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nbsp; Kelc’s flesh burned as the gelid grip of Lanch’s ghost took hold of his shoulders and wrenched him up off of the stool, pinning him against the wall. With irrefutable strength, the spirit hauled Kelc straight up, his back skidding against the wall, until he collided with the ceiling, wrenching his head to the side.

  An oversized maw formed on the twisted face, sneering as it spoke only half a reach before Kelc’s wide eyes, though the words came straight into his mind, in the same manner as the initial howl of the wraith.

  “She asked why I did it? Why I took her? Why I beat her? Why I killed her!” Kelc kicked at the wall desperately, his feet a reach above the floor, while his head pressed into cool stone overhead with increased force, causing a momentary flash of white in his vision. His hands flailed at the ethereal arms that held him, finding nothing. “It was my right!” The words overloaded him, seemingly wrought in terror, as they coursed vehemently through his brain.

  Even more force caused something in Kelc’s neck to pop painfully. “You sent her to kill me. To question me. Me! To question me!” the spirit seethed. “You sent her! To question me! I go to rest content only after you die just as she did.”

  Kelc crushed his eyes closed, able to see the little girl, her ear flat against her shoulder, her neck snapped by her own father with the same rage and apathy that his spirit now prepared to wield against him.

  Deep within him, beyond the terror of the moment and the confusion that had become his life, deeper than his hatred for Symean rule and the fear and anger that threaded through him from being brought up as little more than property, property his father could abuse at will, he found an adamant core of strength that would not, even now, be dissuaded.

  Though his neck strained near ruin and the pain that lanced through him almost drove him into unconsciousness, Kelc croaked his answer. “No.”

  “It was my right!” the spirit said, the feel of it, pure malevolence. “It is my right.”