Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  Shaia nodded, never lifting her head. She clutched him tighter and burrowed deeper. Kelc didn’t move a muscle, enjoying his sister pressed so close to him with no one to oppose it. He tightened his grip on her, a deeper desire growing in him.

  “Kelc,” she said, her voice muffled. “I can’t.”

  For two days, Kelc and Shy blazed through the snow, their horses plodding over the snow-cloaked plains with little complaint. They’d neither seen nor heard any sign of life beyond a few snow hares and a Gere Owl that likely sought the rabbits. No people.

  It provided plenty of time for reflection for both brother and sister, a time with nothing but their own thoughts to contend with while they sat on their horses, waiting to arrive at something other than more snow. Even the continuous snow, offering no stimulation or distraction, helped to insulate them to their own thoughts.

  Kelc rode with one hand lazily looped in Freska’s reins while the other rested on his leg, his thoughts on his mother and father, and how he had managed to miss all of the coincidences that now, looking back, seemed terrifically obvious.

  “Cobb Gebbelson,” he murmured to himself before snorting a laugh. The man had sold Kelc his skiver for a song, allowing him to trade his belt for it. “Just in time for me to need it,” he breathed. “I wonder how much father actually paid for the damned thing.” Varrl had only expressed his irritation over the blade a time or two and never with the sort of force such a deviation from Symean tradition should have commanded. “I’m a blind imbecile.”

  “You know what, Shy?” he said loud enough for her to hear. When he turned, she was gone. He spun and looked back and his sister still sat atop Kay a few hundred paces back.

  He jerked the reins and Freska rose onto her hind legs, spinning in the direction he pulled. “Yah!” he barked, digging into her flanks, driving her forward. Snow flew from her hooves as she flew toward Shy, urged on by her anxious rider. Kelc eased off as they closed.

  “Shy? Are you alright?” She did not answer. Kelc leaned forward, edging Freska nearer to Kay, worried. “What in all the greeching hells?” he reached out and took one of her hands. Both were squarely planted on the saddle horn. He tugged on it. “Shy!”

  “What!” she cried. “What?”

  “Shy,” Kelc said, “what happened to you?”

  “I…nothing.”

  “Your eyes, the irises, were purple. Now they’re fine, but a moment ago, they…almost glowed.” He felt as if he sounded like a fool.

  “That’s how it looks when someone works with spirits, Kelc. Anyone.” She smiled at her brother to ease his nerves. “Your eyes do that when you work with spirit. It’s why most people close their eyes when they practice, especially around other people.”

  An image leapt unbidden into Kelc’s mind. He saw his father, seething angry, or so it seemed, his hands clenched at his sides and his eyes closed. He drew deep breaths through his nose, trying to calm himself because Kreg had just threatened to wallop him. “As I walked with Jista to get tested as a witch.”

  “What?” Shaia asked. “Kelc, are you alright? You seem to be going in five directions at once.”

  “Yes, I just remembered…”

  “I can feel Kreg.”

  “You can feel him? What does that mean?”

  “I have spirit attached to him,” she said anxiously. “I can sense when he is near and I can suddenly feel him. I was focusing in on it when you rode up and shook me. He’s that way.” Her arm extended to the east, toward Chinggen Mor, toward Reman. “And getting closer.”

  “Can that even be?” Kelc asked, meaning that it should have been impossible considering that it should have taken at least two days for the wardens to even arrive at their house before beginning pursuit and that would have left them…north and west. He looked north, trying to gauge their progress. “West,” he breathed.

  “He is east,” she said adamantly, “and less than a half day east.”

  “Is he alone?” Kelc asked, feeling a stab of panic.

  “I don’t think so. There’s usually a certain awareness about someone that is alone, sort of a cautious approach to things.” She shook her head, looking to where she knew Kreg was. “He’s at ease, as if he’s with a group.”

  “Hells! How did that happen?” Kelc slowly turned Freska. “Can you tell if he’s coming straight to us? I mean, maybe he can sense your spirit magic that you’ve got attached to him.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Shy frowned. “Men can’t sense spirit the way women use it. Can you sense the spirit I have draped all over you?”

  Kelc took a moment to feel for spirit energy, but only his skiver drew his notice. “No. I can only feel this.” He drew his dagger.

  “Neither can Kreg.” She looked at her brother for a few moments. “And just so you know, your eyes turn purple as well. It’s just how a practitioner looks, so be careful.”

  “Well, whatever,” Kelc said. “Let’s put some speed to this chase and see how Kreg reacts.”

  Shaia led them, Kay leaping into a controlled gallop, followed by Freska. They drove the horses for nearly a glass before Shaia slowed Kay to a trot.

  “I can’t feel him now,” she announced as Kelc arrived next to her. “And the last I could, he was more that way.” She pointed vaguely north and east. “So now we’re out in front of him if we’re all headed to Skurgaard.”

  “We are. It’s the only distant place I know how to get to,” Kelc said. “I saw the entire trip when I…” He stopped. It was just another thing that he’d been given just in time.

  “When you flew up into that snowstorm?” she asked. “After father forgot to put the lid on a barrel of silvering and then sent voices to haunt you?”

  “Yeah.” He could only shake his head and hold at bay his astonishment and anger. “Yeah. Let’s keep the horses moving a little faster. No need to let Kreg catch up if he’s after us.”

  “He seemed too relaxed to be on the hunt. It felt as if he was just out doing something routine.” Shaia reached up and collected her hair, pushing it over her shoulder. “Besides, do you think he would really ride us down like that?”

  “Shy, he has no choice. He took the vows. He’s the Territorial Warden now. He’s no longer our brother Kreg. He’s Territorial Warden Varrlson, or whatever surname they give him. He stopped really being Kreg before he left. Ordering father around and talking to Tasher as an equal.” Kelc turned away from his sister. “Once it becomes his duty, he sees it done. Remember the way he beat Tasher in the yard?”

  “Yes.”

  Kreg had let the man skewer him. The blow would have been fatal had Kelc not healed it. Just like his father, Kreg had given his life to beat the man. “The men in our family seem to part with their lives rather easily.”

  “If you do something like that, I will come to the Hells to find you and when I do, I’ll…” Shy clicked her tongue. “You don’t want to know.” She urged Kay ahead. “And I don’t think Kreg will go out of his way to catch us. Maybe scare us from Symea, but he knows we’ll try to leave in any case so it’ll be little enough effort for him.”

  “Maybe,” Kelc said, finding some sense in her logic. Kreg just might give only enough chase to force them out of Symea in the most direct manner available, which suited Kelc just fine. “Hmmm.” There might be hope after all. “Maybe.”

  Of all the things Kelc thought could surprise him at the moment, discovering a major road would have ranked low. He hadn’t seen it, what with the snow, held somewhat aloft by the grass and the unchanging flatness of the ground over which they rode, but there it sat.

  “Did you know this was here?” Shaia asked.

  Kelc thought back on his experience in the storm, where he had been able to see every detail of the landscape between Skurgaard and his house. “Yes,” he responded unconvincingly. “It just seemed to be further east. We may be heading a little off course.”

  “How can we be off course? Doesn’t this road head straight into Skurgaard?” She arched
her eyebrows. “It’s a massive hard-packed road. It must end there.”

  “It does.” He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “But do we really want to ride to the capitol of Symea on her busiest highway? Someone might know to look for us.”

  “Okay,” she answered with a single nod of her head. “Then what did you want to do if not travel on this road?”

  “I expected to find a smaller track that ran through a town and a couple of villages.” He thought about it, trying to dislodge detail from his memory. “I figured we might need supplies and they’d be out of the way so that if there is some means for the wardens to forward our likenesses or descriptions that they might arrive later there or even not at all.”

  “That makes sense,” she said, dragging a deep breath into her expanding chest and blowing it out hard into the chill air. “So let’s head back that way.” She waved her arm vaguely southwest. “Won’t we find your track over there somewhere.”

  “We will.”

  “Good. Let’s put some distance between us and this road and then we can have something to eat.” She smiled at Kelc, a warm smile that excited him. Though they’d slept arm in arm each night, they’d done little more than kiss, and while Kelc understood that her emotions offered her pain and guilt, he couldn’t stop his body from yearning for her. “Where does this road end going northeast?” she asked, breaking into Kelc’s fantasy.

  “It heads to Chinggen Mor, but I believe it actually ends at the fortress gates of Thray Chalm.” Kelc thought back to his lessons, picturing the map of Symea. “Yeah. This road is called the Feleeris Nom Dazod. It means The Steel Corridor. Symea created it so that the Vanguard Forces could quickly get from Chinggen Mor to Skurgaard…during our fifth or sixth rebellion from the empire.”

  “Impressive,” Shy told him. “You sound like an instructor.”

  “Thanks,” he answered as he flushed, feeling sheepish. He waited out his reddened cheeks before speaking. “Can you feel Kreg?”

  “Nothing at all since yesterday. I don’t think he’s after us.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet,” Shaia agreed.

  The two of them rode not quite perpendicular from Feleeris Nom Dazod, leaving it directly behind them, again cutting across the snowy grasslands. In the distance ahead they saw a small copse of trees and made for it.

  As they closed in they could see that the trees looked to be maples, stripped of leaves, each branch encrusted with snow. Between the bases of the five trees a black spot scarred the ground where someone had recently built a campfire.

  Kelc’s eyes swept across the landscape, scrutinizing every shadow and change in texture, searching for anyone else, but he detected nothing.

  “Could you feel strangers or do you have to attach…your…spirit threads?” He stopped himself.

  “I can’t just find someone in this unless I’ve gotten to first attach my spirit to theirs.” She frowned at her brother, sharing his discomfort.

  Kelc closed his eyes and tried to spread himself over the land like a blanket. He concentrated on it, saw himself sliding along every tiny rift in the windblown snow, finding every den and warren along with whatever occupied it. But nothing happened.

  His eyes slid open. “Damn it. I’m the worst practitioner ever.”

  Shy smiled and sidestepped Kay to Freska, the horse neighing quietly. She hugged her brother. “Maybe you’re trying to do something the power isn’t designed to do.”

  “I was trying to project myself beyond my body so I could scout the land for strangers,” he admitted. “But I managed to do nothing but rest my eyes.”

  “Kelc, it all takes time. And,” she said, drawing the word out, “you told me you could only fly into that snowstorm because you fell asleep. If us witches could just throw our souls out of our bodies, we would never be surprised by anyone.”

  “True,” he answered. “Well, it looks as if whoever built that fire has left, so we might as well follow their example and burn some of these fallen branches.”

  “Sounds good.” Shaia grinned. “I’ve got to run out a ways and take care of something. You start a fire.”

  He nodded. Shy needed more privacy than Kelc did to relieve herself. Most of the time, he thought. On a perfectly flat plain, there were times when you could get no privacy. A point Shaia had made while taunting Kelc a day earlier while he was trapped in a particularly vulnerable position. He smiled thinking about it. For a moment he thought about revisiting the embarrassment on Shy.

  “Bad idea, Kelc.” He dropped from Freska’s back and drew his sword, leading the horse to the campsite. He cast a glance out to Shaia just to make sure she’d not encountered any problems, but she looked as if all was normal.

  Once he arrived at the fireplace, he tied his horse to the nearest tree and scouted things out further, making several circles around the campsite.

  The condition of the fireplace suggested that it had been used the previous night. The tracks he could find muddled the picture, but he felt confident that only one person, a man based on the size of the footprints he found, had used the site. And, he concluded, this man traveled on foot. “Ah,” he whispered as he found what he wanted. Behind another tree he found the likely placement of the traveler’s tent, small and square.

  Kelc sheathed his sword and began picking up fallen branches, most of them little more than twigs and sticks, though he did find two or three larger branches that might burn for a time.

  “Everything good?” Shaia asked as she returned.

  “Yeah,” Kelc quickly answered before returning to his efforts to get a fire started. He had an ember, but it struggled. He blew on it several times, fed it dried tinder and blew on it again before it actually caught. “Finally.” He held a larger branch out over the small flame, keeping it over the flame without suffocating it. “Everything all right with you?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” Shy kicked snow at her brother.

  “Don’t put out the fire,” he joked. “We’ll be here until sunset while I try to restart it. Not a talent I possess, building fires.”

  “You’ve had no practice,” Shy said. “I’m sure after a few years of this, you’ll be quite capable. Now, move aside so I can use this inferno to warm some stew. It’s likely frozen solid.”

  Kelc sat silently and watched his sister while she swirled a pot over the growing fire, trying to get the contents to heat. She sighed noisily and set the cooker up over the flames. “This could take a while.”

  “It’s fine,” Kelc temporized. “We need to eat. A few extra moments for lunch won’t likely change the outcome of everything.”

  “Are you sure we’re alone out here?” Shaia asked, looking at her younger brother, her expression blank. “You scouted it out as well as you could?”

  “Yes,” he said frowning. “Why? Are you worried about…”

  She scooted over to him and covered his mouth with hers, her desire obvious. Kelc wrapped her in his arms even as her hands ranged over his body.

  A short while later, the fire guttered out beneath the cold stew, but neither of them noticed.

  They came across the road Kelc sought only a few glasses into the day. On this path they would make better time, but pass only through smaller communities that would know nothing of dark practitioners and Varrl’s murder. At least, that was the plan as Kelc saw it.

  “So, this track will take us all the way into Skurgaard?” Shaia asked, looking up the narrow lane skeptically.

  “Yes. It takes its time getting there, but it ends up coming into the city from the western side.” He pictured the map in his head. “It sort of wanders, connecting a number of farming towns and then straightens out to hit Skurgaard.”

  “And how long do we yet have before we’re in Skurgaard?” she asked.

  “Days,” Kelc said before sighing. “Six, seven, maybe eight. Depends on how hard we push the horses, I guess. Any sign of Kreg?”

  “No, not for two days.” Her answer earned a nod from h
er brother.

  They allowed their horses to walk on the road, giving them a little rest after the work of trotting through the grasslands where the footing occasionally gave them issue. The nosed through the snow searching for brown grass to eat, the oats Shy had given them earlier not enough to sate them.

  Kelc continually scanned the ground ahead, unable to feel comfortable. It seemed as if something was amiss and yet nothing presented itself. He spun in the saddle and looked behind them, but sill, nothing.

  “Are you alright?” Shy asked.

  “I feel as if something is not quite right, but…” He shrugged. “I can’t tell you what, or why.” He smiled sheepishly.

  “I feel it too, I suppose.” Shaia stood up in her stirrups. “But it feels to me as if it is coming from in front of us, like the spirit there is…in flux? Upset somehow.”

  “I guess that’s what I’m feeling too, but couldn’t explain that way.” He faced forward and closed his eyes, relaxing himself as much as possible.

  An instant or a glass passed and Kelc could feel the pulse of spirit ahead. It felt disheveled, as if emotions gave confusing intention to the spirit there, which seemed to be abundant, seemingly detached from the ongoing routine of the living.

  “Shy,” he said, turning to his sister, but she already looked intently upon him. “There is a good deal of free spirit ahead of us. I can’t be sure, but it seems as if it is free to act, as if it has a purpose and yet it is not bound by the living. I…” He shook his head, feeling as if much of what he said was gibberish.

  “Ghosts,” she said, nodding. “Mother said that ghosts with a singular purpose are revenants and those are the most dangerous if they’re violent. She feared Henna Lanch would become a mindless revenant but you apparently did not instill such a murderous purpose in her.”

  “I didn’t,” her brother answered, flexing his left hand. “I just freed her to do what she wanted. I guess I imagined her just being a playful little girl forever, foolish as that sounds.”