“Tent,” Kelc said. “Pretty important.” She gave him a smile and a nod. “Mother, do we still have that oil-treated tent somewhere?”
“We should,” Adda answered. “Probably out in the work shed.”
Kelc made his way out to the shed, his boots sounding out until he dropped off of the porch steps into the snow. He saw a hazy smoke rising from the cleanhouse. His father’s body lay within, the heater running to keep him from freezing solid.
Snow still flurried, dodging around him as he walked to the shed. He threw the door open, thinking to have quite a project on his hands, but he could see as soon as his eyes adjusted to the darkness within that things were arranged differently than before.
The funerary podium sat in the back of the shed and the rending rod was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the front of the shed held a large sack, one that Kelc had watched his father bring out here, and the tent he sought. “Hells and fire! He knew everything. Had planned it all out.”
Kelc dug into the bag and found travel rations, at least two weeks’ worth, a lamp, oil, flint and tinder, a travel cooker and a wrapped pack that Kelc guessed to be a large cloak or blanket.
He knew he was wrong as soon as he picked it up. It weighed more than any blanket, but it did move like fabric. He unwrapped it and a shirt of coppery linked metal spilled fluidly past his hand to the floor.
“Whoa!” He reached down and picked it up, holding it out to admire it. “A mail shirt. Where did he keep this?” Kelc had never seen it in all his years. The links shimmered before his eyes despite being in the darkness of the shed. Kelc whistled his appreciation, finding no words.
He tossed the mail over one shoulder and hefted the large bag over the other before plucking the tent up from the ground. He walked back into the house. “Look at this!” he called out, lowering the bag and the tent before holding up the armor.
“Where did you ever find that?” Adda asked. “I thought he sold it before you were even born. In fact, I thought that it was the gold from selling it that bought this house.”
“It was wrapped up and in this bag. Father put together most of the things we’d need: the tent, cooker, lantern, oil, food. He left it all right where I would find it.” Kelc waved vaguely to the shed, still amazed.
“That’s coppered mail, Kelc. It will turn any but an expert blow, more than likely, but its real purpose is to slow spirit magic.” Adda dropped onto a kitchen stool, looking as if she’d been felled by a blow to the head.
“Mother?” Shaia jumped to her side. “Are you…”
“I’m fine. It’s just that your father served in one of the Vanguard groups of Symea’s army. They were all issued that armor and within a half-season he wanted out.” She pursed her lips, her head slowly shaking. “The armor cut him off from spiritual magic. Gods above, that’s when he likely realized his nature. He was foul indeed for a year after he left, and they mandated wearing that shirt day and night.” She rubbed her eyes. “Within a year, he came out of nowhere with this whole mortician idea, claiming that his father had been one. Hells!”
“So he found he could work with spirit and then created a function where he’d always be around the dead.” Kelc shook his head. “Makes sense looking back at it like that.” Adda nodded.
“I suppose. It’s just a guess now. If only we could have known each other’s abilities,” she said. “A lot could have been better.”
“Why would he give it to me then? Wouldn’t that cut me off as well?” Kelc now looked at the armor as if it were a snake, letting it slither from his hand onto the sofa. “I’m not the swordsman he was. Without spirit magic…”
“You’re a fine swordsman, youngest. Maybe he wanted you to sell it,” she guessed, “or maybe he thought there could be times that it would benefit you if no spirit could touch you.” She shrugged where she sat. “But that is exactly what its purpose was when they issued it. I remember hating that armor. All the spirit I attached to your father simply disappeared when he put it back on.”
“Is it magical in some way?” Shaia asked.
“I don’t think so,” Adda responded. “It has to do with the metal in it. Copper tends to disrupt spirit for some reason, iron can hold it. There are blue metals that can make spirit stronger, I’ve heard, though I’ve never seen them.”
“Well,” Kelc told them both, “I’ll take it but I can’t imagine putting it on for any reason.”
He picked it up from the sofa and carried it into his room. He packed everything he had there into a large sack which he carried out and set next to the one his father had prepared. Shaia added one of equal size and a smaller one as well.
Adda brought a basket and set it with all the other luggage. “Well,” she said, her face clouding up.
“Mother,” Shy said, stepping up to her and embracing her. The two hugged for a time before Adda disengaged her daughter.
“Which horses do you want? You’ll need to saddle them.” She turned away from her children as she spoke. “I won’t need them. Not four.”
His mother’s fate felt distant to Kelc. He couldn’t imagine what she thought to do, or even determine if she planned to survive it in any way.
“I would guess that Freska and…”
“I want Kay,” Shaia said. “I’ve raised that fool horse since she was a foal. She likes me and doesn’t mind the saddle.”
Adda picked her mantle from the kitchen table and threw it over her shoulders. “Let’s get them saddled up then. We’ve little enough time.”
The three made their way to the stable where Kelc had detached the team from the wagon earlier in the day.
Macy whuffled as the stable doors opened, stretching her neck, reaching out to them as they entered. Shy reached out and stroked her nose, whispering a greeting.
“What do you plan on doing when the wardens come, mother?” Kelc couldn’t help but ask. “This is not your mess, no matter what you say. You should not bear the brunt of this alone.”
“Well, Kelc, even if I did not want to, the wardens…”
“Will do what Kreg tells them to do,” Kelc finished.
“Perhaps. In that case I might head back to my home in the mountains of Karrod. Depending on the state of my village, I may be able to serve as Gen Jod.”
“Is that the village you lived in until you were six?” Shaia asked. “Where you lived with your grandmother?
“It is.” Kelc had never heard this, but that hardly surprised him. He’d had few enough in-depth discussions with his mother about much of anything. “But it was my mother. She held the title of Gen Jod which means ‘Old Guardian’ or ‘Grandmother’ in their old tongue. It was always a woman and she cared for all spiritual matters. But,” she said, sighing, “I need to get out of here first, and that all depends on the wardens.”
Kelc eased Freska out of her stall and placed a blanket on her back, followed by a saddle. “So, you’ll tell the wardens that you accidentally drove a sword though father and hope they spare you?”
Adda’s expression darkened, but Kelc needed to know that she had some hope for survival. “No,” she mumbled, “they’d never believe it at any rate. No woman could drive a sword with such force.”
Kelc snorted. “No man can drive a sword with such force. You could tell them that you’re not sure what happened to him and…” He blew out the rest of his air without words, unable to explain the supernatural death blow piercing his father’s chest.”
“Burn the house down.” The suggestion came from Shaia. “Let’s put him inside, you can take what you want and then burn the place down. Do it in the middle of the night and tell them you don’t know anything more.”
“Can’t they tell if you’re lying?” Kelc asked.
“It depends on what I tell them. If I tell them he’s dead and that he burned with the house and that you two have fled…”
“They’ll think we did it,” Kelc said. “They’ll come for us anyway, won’t they? They don’t need more reasoning.”
“Oh yes!” hi
s mother answered, looking at her son, then her daughter. “They will come for you, all of them, I’d guess. They’ll think it was the dark arts that caused this and they will come for you. I couldn’t do that.”
“You can do that, and you will,” Kelc told her, his tone stern. “And then you will go to this village and be their old guardian woman.”
“Gen Jod, youngest.”
“Whatever they want to call it. You will not pay the price to this land for any of this.” Kelc met her eyes until he looked aside, acquiescing with a minute nod. “Where is it located, this village?” Kelc asked her. “How would we find this place if we needed to?”
“It’s atop the Honnok peak of the Karrod mountains, almost three hundred leagues north of here.” She involuntarily turned and faced her village. “A long way.”
“How did you ever get to Symea?” Shy asked, her brown eyes glancing to her mother while she secured her saddle belt.
“Symea has ever conquered smaller nations and they conquered ours,” she told them. “One of their demands was that each year five girls would be sent to live with Symean families in order to learn their ways and survive their customs. When I turned six, they sent me. It was quite a change.”
“That I can believe.” Kelc’s voice held distaste. “Symea is like to be a change from everywhere else, what with her tradition of military, rebellion and abuse.”
“It was,” Adda said, “but don’t expect the rest of the world to be too much better, youngest. In my experience, every land has rough ways and corrupt leaders. And they usually have even less for the women,” she stated, looking to Shaia, who leaned against Kay. “So don’t leave each other’s sides, because someone will get an eyeful of Shy and think they can do whatever they desire.”
“They can try,” Kelc growled, “but I doubt they’d get very far.”
“As long as you’re together,” Adda said. “Now, let’s pack your horses and get you two out of here. I won’t feel better until I know you’re out ahead of the wardens.”
Packing the horses took no time at all. They draped the sacks over the saddle horns and secured the tent on Freska’s rump. Shaia would hold the food basket. As quick as that, they were ready to go.
They carried Varrl to his bed and laid him out. Kelc undressed him. He placed a lamp on his bedside table and then knocked it off, shattering the reservoir to allow oil to spread across the floor. He paused to look at his father, who now seemed far more peaceful without the bloody clothing. He felt little while working with the body, knowing that the spirit now resided in his skiver. The emotions tied to the man himself began to rise, but Kelc would have to sort through them at another time. He touched his father’s foot for a moment before leaving, feeling as if he should say something. But there was nothing.
“Alright,” Adda announced as soon as she saw Kelc come out of the house, trying to sound upbeat. “Get out of here and make the life you want. “Oh!” she barked, and ran into the house, appearing only a few moments later. “Here.” She tossed a small bag to Kelc who had climbed atop Freska. The sound it made in the air and the way it felt in his hand spoke of coins. “You’ll need that. Now go.”
Kelc began to dismount, but his mother rushed up to him and hugged his leg, her eyes now red-rimmed and tearing. “Stay up there and go. Both of you.” But Shy wouldn’t hear of it.
She dropped to the ground and hugged her mother, the both of them weeping. Kelc tried to hold back his tears, but they came.
“Please,” Adda begged, “go. It is better that way. Go.” She disentangled herself from Shaia. “I wish only the best for you both and hope to see you again. Now go whither you will.” She pressed both hands to her heart as tears fell freely down her face. “Go.”
Shaia climbed back up onto Kay, rubbing her eyes time and again with her forearms. Kelc stared down at his mother where she stood, astounded at the turn of events this day brought.
“Go,” Adda repeated. “Be happy.”
Kelc smiled at her and raised his hand, offering her an awkward wave, unsure of the proper way to say farewell to her for the last time.
“Goodbye, Mother.”
The snow stretched away from them on all sides like a shimmering ocean. It caught the light of the sun as it breached the thin grey clouds overhead and showed a land pulsing with light so bright Kelc had to shield his eyes from it.
Beside him, Shaia rode in silence, occasionally overtaken by her emotions. She wore a heavy mantle and had also wrapped a blanket around her torso after complaining of the cold. She sniffed and rubbed away still more tears with the back of her hand.
Kelc found that trying to think through everything left him with still more questions and all too few answers. Despite all the evidence that his father left behind to support the idea that he’d held Kelc in some high esteem, there still remained all of the abuse.
“That may have just been the Symean in him?” Kelc mumbled to himself. “Perhaps that was exactly who he was, and…”
Shaia looked to her brother, hearing him make sound. Her brown eyes looked dark, peering out from under the broad brim of her hat, but Kelc could still see how bloodshot and puffy they were. He shook his head at her. He had nothing he wanted to discuss.
So father was just a Symean bastard, like most of the men in the land. “But he could sense or use the dark arts,” Kelc whispered. “Not just sense,” he assured himself. “He said he sent the voices through the storm. And no one could do that without…I saw the spirits after all. Did he call them?” He must have, Kelc concluded. “But how could he do things without Shy and Mother feeling it? They felt everything I did.” He chewed on his bottom lip for a while, rocking with the motion of Freska as she bore him southward. “Hells.”
The sun, somewhere behind the grey clouds above, slowly dropped to the horizon as they rode, neither sibling making any conversation as they passed over the snow-covered grassland. Each of them struggled with their own shock over the situation at hand along with the unknown fate of their mother.
“Kelc,” Shaia said eventually, “It’s later in the day than it seems. It will be dark in a glass.”
He woke from his repetitive thoughts, blinking away his mental fog. “Yes,” he blurted, “we need to find a spot to set up the tent and make a fire.” He looked around them in every direction, finding only the white horizon of the snow-covered grassland. “We’re not even on a road,” he commented, almost to himself. “We can camp anywhere.” He looked to his sister and shrugged.
“Here then,” she told him. She reined Kay and dropped from the saddle. “Oh!” she said slowly, rubbing her hand into her backside. “I can’t recall the last time I rode any distance in the saddle. Always in the cart.”
Kelc felt his own soreness as he climbed down from Freska, but he’d experienced so much pain that exceeded what he now felt that he simply ignored it. Instead, he said, “We should dig out the snow and then pile it on the tent. Help keep us warm and help us blend into the snow.”
Shaia barked a laugh. “Help us blend into the snow,” she repeated. “We’ve got two horses as well. Are you going to bring them into the tent with us?” She laughed at her own observation. “Sounds cramped.”
Kelc shook his head as he crouched and used his hands to shove snow out of his path, creating a roughly circular patch with less snow. Shaia dropped down next to him to help, more meticulously cleaning up areas where her brother had just taken the majority of the snow in his first pass. It took a quarter glass to create an almost clean piece of ground.
Kelc unpacked the tent and easily set it up in the clearing. By the time it was standing and staked, his sister had a fire burning only two steps before the entrance to the tent.
“Mother packed some spiced fowl,” Shaia said. “We should eat that.” She searched through the contents of the basket Adda had packed for them. “It looks to be the quickest to spoil.”
“Okay,” Kelc said, smiling at Shy. “That sounds…” A thought struck him.
“It sounds what?” his sister asked playfully.
“Spiced fowl?” he said, emphasizing his words, seeking verification. Shaia nodded. “She only cooked for a glass, Shy. When did she make spice-rubbed fowl? Is it raw?”
“No, it’s…” She reached into the basket and brought out a tray with a towel tied over it. “It’s cooked,” she said. “You’re favorite.” Shy smiled at her brother, where he sat on the ground next to a tent stake. “There’s even biscuits in here.”
“It is, but doesn’t it take several hours to make?” His sister nodded happily before his implication hit her. She looked through the rest of the basket.
“There’s venison stew with potatoes, chicken pie and something else.” She dug around. “Looks like lamb with sauce. All of this is our favorite food. And it does all take time.”
“So mother jumped out of bed this morning and started making all of our favorites before we even woke up?” He shook his head, not happy with what he felt.
“She knew too.” Shy turned and looked north, where far beyond her sight stood their house amidst uncounted headstones. “She fooled us.” She whirled around to face Kelc. “That was no act! Mother was just as stunned as we were about everything. She cried and…and…”
“She told us what we needed to know,” Kelc said, standing up and walking to Shaia. He wrapped his arms around her. “This whole thing was planned. It makes me greeching mad, but it also makes me happy.”
“How can this make you happy?” Shy asked, her face buried in her brother’s shoulder.
“Father planned for me to take his soul. If everything was planned and they feel that Kreg is in some kind of danger, then our parents, who won’t waste a dab of silvering or even a bone,” he said, stroking his sister’s hair, “are not going to waste mother’s life. They did all of this with a purpose,” he said, trying to convince himself along with Shy. “They planned this day, and perhaps those beyond, and mother is not going to just throw her life away if she was willing to do what she did today.” Somehow he could just say that she’d killed his father. “She’s probably halfway to that village right now.”
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 22
