Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  “No!” Spit frothed from Kelc’s mouth this time as he spoke, his rage surging in him. “No!”

  His hands felt aflame, but Kelc simply accepted it, raising them before him, placing them where the apparition’s chest should be. “Let me go.”

  He felt the soundless pulse of his power bound away from him and he tumbled instantly downward, glancing off of the stool and crashing to the floor.

  Lanch, his spectral eyes showing only greater fury, instantly raced down to his victim, but quicker than thought, Kelc, now on his back on the cleanroom floor, raised his hands again. “Stop,” he hissed weakly, but for a second time his words seemed absolute. Again, Kelc felt the air shiver with power. And Margin Lanch’s spirit froze, hanging in the air, its clawed arms outstretched, his hateful face wrought of murderous intent.

  Kelc kept one hand between himself and Lanch as he sat up while the other rubbed his neck and head, both raw with pain.

  “Your right?” Kelc whispered. “Because you had the power? You used it to torture, rape and kill your own daughter?” He swallowed hard, his throat swollen from rough treatment. “Now, it seems, I have the power. And this is my right.”

  Margin Lanch’s essence hung suspended in the air, not so much as a thread of his being able to waver, caught as he was in Kelc’s power. His rage pulsed from him, pounding at Kelc’s mind, as subtle as a slamming door, shearing through his thoughts time and again. Lanch wanted his blood, wanted to crack his neck as he had his own daughter’s and watch the light leave his eyes.

  This Kelc knew: Margin Lanch enjoyed killing.

  Kelc held forth his hands as if trying to engage Lanch’s ghost though he would not allow his flesh to contact the vaporous creature. But as he reached toward the spirit before him, he also reached with his mind, his will, his inexplicable sight and power, and took hold of the raging sentient core of the apparition where it resided, roughly in the specter’s gut. He took hold of it with no more trouble than he might have snatching a willful child by the ear.

  He wrapped his will about it and strangled it, shutting it off, or more specifically, he felt, boxing it up. He’d set up some sort of barrier, created from his own will, his own spirit. All at once, the incessant dread and potency of Lanch’s hatred vanished.

  “Good,” he breathed. “Now…” He inspected the spirit. From the core, in its prison, threads, it seemed, gauzy filaments of energy drifted in the air around it, seemingly always in motion, yet locked by something, Lanch’s desire to exist in a familiar form perhaps, into the form of a torso. They appeared delicate, yet as Kelc willed them to move, they resisted, only slowly giving way to him as he became adamant in his mind.

  Kelc drew his skiver, clutching the black dagger that had so frequently been at the center of his strangest happenings. He poked at Lanch’s spirit slowly, driving the dagger at a few of the drifting ghostly fibers. Before the knife contacted them, they recoiled like a viper, reeling back from the iron with a quick bend, holding away from the honed edge.

  “Don’t you run,” Kelc growled at the fleeing threads, his complete abhorrence for Lanch blinding any consideration that the spirit may suffer by his actions. “Come here,” he added.

  The lines of spirit slowly extended out, contacting the skiver, and even as they did, they seemed to dissipate into nothingness, though simultaneously Kelc felt slight tangible pulses of heat pass through the knife.

  Then, as if the knife were a hungry void, the rest of the spirit began to draw towards it. “No!” Kelc commanded, whipping the black steel back away from the ghost, causing the remainder of the hazy spirit to recoil, halting the blade’s pull, afraid that Lanch might escape intact.

  So I can pluck you apart a piece at a time, Kelc thought. “Can I…” Kelc used his thoughts to bore through the side of the box he’d created to lock up Lanch’s raging center. For an instant, the heat and malice of the spirit permeated him, but only for an instant.

  Kelc pounced on Lanch like a falcon on a mouse, taking the core of the man’s spirit roughly and thrashing it in his thoughts, ripping at it voraciously. “Just be done,” Kelc whispered severely. “Die.” He shredded the core, willing thread after thread out of it, causing the active and aware focus of the spirit to shrink and weaken.

  A bitter one-sided fight that felt as if it lasted a quarter glass to Kelc happened in the span of a single thought, so intense was his desire to devastate the soul that fueled Margin Lanch’s hatred and actions.

  As each thread tore free of its place, free from its willful function of spewing acrimony, Kelc fed it into the skiver, each one causing the blade to flare with heat. Once the center of the spirit ceased to exist, the rest of the ghost fell into the knife as if it had been sucked down a hole.

  All at once, Kelc stood alone.

  He felt dirty after so intimately embracing such cruelty: both Lanch’s and his own.

  All of his life Kelc had understood and respected that some energy, some type of soul, remained with the dead. He’d respected it, honored it, allowed that the presence of a living ghost was the reason he cared for the dead. And now he had battled a man’s soul directly and cowed it, reducing it to little more than its basest form so he could store it to… “To do what?”

  Kelc had no idea. He had only used his abilities a few times and at Lanch’s house, earlier in the day, had been the first time where he employed it in a controlled and sensible manner.

  Before that, so far as Kelc understood it, he’d used spirit to break Jista’s sword, heal Kreggen and free Henna Lanch’s ghost. In all three events he’d been terrified and felt threatened and had used as much ability as he possessed, much of it unintentionally.

  “I am a witch.” The words bothered him less each time he applied them to himself. Dark practitioner. He sneered while he thought. Just that morning he had thrown his own nature in Shaia’s face, acting as if her nature reflected an insult. “Imbecile,” he muttered. “All I’ve done since then is prove that I am a witch.”

  “Kelc?” came Adda’s voice, Kelc’s mother able to keep her tone even though he could sense her tension.

  He jumped to the ludpump against his will and snatched a bore up off of the table, though he still clutched his skiver in his other hand. “Yes, mother?”

  Adda pushed the cleanhouse door open and slipped inside, her eyes wide. She closed the door urgently.

  “Youngest, what in all the hells are you doing in here? Anyone that can sense anything could have felt you from leagues away.” Her eyes darted about the cleanhouse, anxiously searching for an explanation for the knot in her gut. “What did you do?” she hissed, trying desperately to remain quiet while fueled by fear.

  “I killed Margin Lanch’s spirit,” Kelc answered quietly. “I tore him apart…thread by thread. He was a murder…”

  “You what? Thread by thread?”

  “Yes. I split his spirit into…strands I’d call them, and broke him into tiny pieces before storing his spirit in my skiver.” Adda looked incredulous, forcing Kelc to talk faster. “He was a murderer, mother. Not only did he rape and kill Henna, his daughter, but he enjoyed it. He felt it was his right as a Symean. He felt entitled to it. He rose from his body intent on killing me. His hatred…pounded on me…”

  “Youngest,” said his mother, stopping him. “You can’t just pull a spirit apart. It won’t…You can’t.”

  Rather than respond, Kelc held up the black dagger and willed a filament of spirit to rise from it, focusing so hard on dragging out the reluctant spectral essence that he began to sweat. But even as he started to wonder if he could achieve the feat, a single strand rose from the black blade and floated in the air, slowly rotating.

  “Blood and fire,” Adda breathed. She reached out and Kelc could feel her as she exerted her will to the bit of spiritual energy. She made it stand out straight, then collapse into itself and assume the form of a tiny white ethereal bird. She then drew it to the palm of her hand where it created a near-invisible translucent coating to
her skin. This she pressed to Kelc’s head.

  Instantly, he felt the pain in his head and neck dissipate as he slowly drew a deep breath and let it gust from him.

  “Youngest,” his mother said, her voice suddenly euphoric, “you’ve made a revenant spirit as docile as air. You reduced him to…just…spirit. No intent, no will…just energy.” A low chortle rose from her. “You could do anything with that spirit. Anyone could…any practitioner.” She looked at her son, her green eyes smiling with pride. “You’ve some will in you. Some will indeed. I doubt five people in all of Oerhe could do what you’ve just done.” She shook her head. “None I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Directing spirit first requires ‘the practice.’ That is simply the term generally used for the ability to see specters, to see spirits and their energy, if you will.” Adda smirked as if her explanation was humorous. “Then,” she said, emphasizing the word, “it takes will. Against a revenant, an active spirit that feels it has some binding purpose, like murder, it takes a great deal of will. A spirit like that one infuses your mind with hate and fear.” She nodded sharply at Kelc as if to confirm her statement and he offered a quick nod back. “Most cannot suffer that and do anything else. They stand paralyzed, watching, as the spirit rips them apart.”

  “That makes no sense,” Kelc responded. He pressed his lips together. “A normal person wouldn’t even feel a ghost.”

  “Oh yes they would,” his mother shot back. “People feel when they are watched though no one is there. When a person walks through or near to a spirit, they suddenly get chills, or feel dread, or…” Adda cocks her head to the side just a bit, “…even joy. Depends on the spirit. But this much is sure, youngest: People can feel spirits.” She reached out to her son and waggled a finger in his face. “They just don’t know it.”

  “Huh.” Kelc looks down at his blade, considering it for a moment. “Why does my dagger tug at this spirit energy so strongly?”

  “It has something to do with being iron though I can explain it little better than that. Just as I can tell you that copper and brass rend the spirit from its purpose, driving it out of its body and presumably to Reman.” She shrugs. “It’s the nature of things.”

  “I see.” Kelc sheathed his skiver and looked at what remained in his other hand, the silvering bore. “Is everything alright or did I just summon Tasher and Jista back to us?”

  “It will be fine,” she answered. “I feared I might find you dead in here.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. His mother nodded once and after a moment of hesitation where she stood in deep consideration, her lips pursed, she slipped out of the cleanhouse, leaving Kelc alone with Margin Lanch’s lifeless body.

  Knowing he still had plenty to do, Kelc took the dead man’s neck into hand and thrust the bore into the hardening carotid. He sucked in a lung full of air and held it for a moment before it eased out through his nostrils. “I’m just greeching fine.”

  Kelc walked away from the fresh grave, without so much as a backwards glance. All that toil, he thought, to bury nothing.

  Varrl had performed the funeral, reciting the same words he always used, and then he’d performed the Rending.

  “The Rending,” Kelc sighed, keeping his words muted. There had been a moment after his father had touched the rod to Margin Lanch’s flesh, tapping him on each shoulder, then the stomach, and finally on his chest, a moment where he paused. Varrl watched the corpse and then slowly looked to Kelc, one eye half-squinted, a hint of a grimace on his face. “He nodded. He knew.”

  Kelc walked to the shed where he placed his broad-headed shovel in with the other tools. “Can he tell when the spirit is gone? Was he telling me that he could sense something was wrong? That he knew the spirit was gone? He knows…” That it’s me? Kelc dug thumb and forefinger into his eyes, massaging them.

  “Kelc!” Varrl barked as he walked up behind his son. Kelc nearly spun, his hand dropping instinctively to his sword hilt.

  “Yes, sir?”

  His father stepped right up to him and whispered. “Did you see?”

  “See what?”

  Varrl’s hand snaked out and smacked Kelc on the back of the head. “You need to be wary, alert, watching everything all the time, boy. There are things going on here. Sometimes I cannot understand how you make it through the day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Look here,” Varrl finally said. “He brought forth a pouch with what looked to be fine ground flour in it. “The warden left this with me and asked me to sprinkle some on any corpse we embalmed just before and after the Rending. It should flow off of them before and settle on them afterward, he said. It settled on Lanch both times.”

  “And? I haven’t been overly impressed with Tasher’s tests.” Kelc reached up and rubbed the back of his head. “It seems his efforts at discovering what’s going on are flawed.”

  The older man glared at his son for a moment before speaking. “Be that as it may, Kelc, this shows that Margin Lanch had no spirit before the Rending.” Varrl looked into Kelc’s gray-green eyes. “Did your sister visit the body?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Kelc answered back after only a moment of thought. “I worked on him and everything seemed fine and then this morning nothing looked amiss. But Tasher seemed to think something was wrong starting with the way Lanch died. How can we use this particular death as a test?”

  “If we have a witch here, we need to find out quickly.” Varrl’s eyes expressed much in their depth. Seldom had he looked to his son for aid, but Kelc could see into his father as if his mind were bare. Anger. Need. Desperation.

  “Look, father. I want this farce over with as quickly as you do. The damned wardens suspected me as one of them.” Kelc snorted and ripped his sword free, slashing at the air, trying to build his confidence enough to keep up the act. “Imbeciles! What we need to do, is plan this better. For one,” Kelc turned to his father, lowering his sword, “you might tell me in advance when you have some sort of test so that I might lend more attention. Tasher has taught you too much caution. No Symean would scurry about like we are asked to do. Two: we need to plan the mouse trap with the next body so that we can truly keep a watch.”

  “Be careful, boy, that you don’t overstep your bounds…”

  “My bounds?” Kelc growled, forcing anger over his fear. “You told the local law that I was a witch, had them take me into a field to kill me, then after I proved my worth, you recruited me to help. My bounds are to root out whatever taint darkens our names whether I have to use blades or bare hands. No one spoke of any bounds. I will do what I must, father, and no man can tell me otherwise.”

  Varrl glared at Kelc, his face flushed, jaw set and his nostrils flared. “Fine. So then what do you suppose we should do until then?” His voice made obvious his irritation and temper.

  “Nothing,” Kelc stated, glancing around them, mostly for appearance. “We want to make it seem as if the problem left with the warden. Rather than always talking about it and making everyone aware that we’re looking for any problem, we let it pass. We let whoever or whatever is doing this to us settle down. Then, with the next funeral, or the one after that, we’ll see what we can.”

  “Nothing,” Varrl growled. “Nothing? You give too much time. You hesitate too much. You have no sense on how to protect us! Have you learned nothing…”

  “You want my help with this mess, Father. I didn’t create the problem, I…”

  “And I did, is that it?” Steel sang as it cleared the man’s scabbard, just before Kelc’s blade snapped up to match it. “Your brother is no longer here to save you, boy! Your sister will not hold you like a babe to the teat.” Varrl stamped a foot, feigning attack. “And I will not tolerate such disrespect from you.”

  “I meant no disrespect. I only…”

  Varrl swept a powerful attack into Kelc, who angled his blade before it, deflecting it while he gave two steps. “Running, boy?”
/>   “This is a waste…”

  “Sparring is never a waste.” Varrl stepped into Kelc, bringing an overhead blow, but as soon as his steel met Kelc’s he bulled forward. The young man, spun away from the attack, trailing his blade, which his father easily batted from his path, chasing his son with a sideways swipe.

  Kelc leapt back and drew his skiver into his left hand.

  “Ah,” Varrl sneered, “the black blade. Going to rely on that two-handed style, like a rogue?”

  Kelc felt the spirit trapped in the blade tugging at him, calling him as if demanding to participate in the battle. As quickly as Kelc thought to include the potent energy, he stopped, realizing that his father might have some means to detect it.

  Varrl darted in and Kelc had only time to weakly swat at an oncoming thrust, distracted as he was by the draw of the spirit energy in his dagger. The point of his father’s sword scraped along his right side, followed by the man’s muscular elbow, crushing forcefully into Kelc’s chin, blasting him from his feet.

  The young man tried to roll back and gain his footing but his father drove his heavy boot into his lower back as he rolled and knocked him off balance again. Kelc grunted as the kick landed. He also tasted blood.

  “Up,” Varrl yelled, but rather than allow for that to happen, he swatted Kelc twice with the flat of his blade, first on his son’s buttocks and the second to his forehead.

  The smaller fighter landed flat on his back and Varrl held his sword tip to Kelc’s neck. “You need to take stock of things, and quickly, boy, before they get much worse. Begin with the most basic of sense.” His father’s grey eyes narrowed as he beheld his son. “You’ll never be a true Symean like this.”

  The spirit in the skiver screamed to leap up and obliterate Varrl and Kelc’s mind teetered on the edge of permitting it, but he needed to wait. Not right now, he thought. Not yet.

  “You’re dead if this were a real battle, boy.” His father sounded detached, uncaring. “You let that two-handed style confuse you. Neither hand reacted with speed. You took on my blade with that tiny dagger and it damned near killed you. Had I not pushed the thrust off, you’d be dying even now.” His father shook his head weakly. “How you ever disarmed Jista...” The man spat into the dirt and walked away from his youngest. “Clean the blood from your clothes,” called his father as he left, we can’t afford new.”