“That’s not foolish, Kelc.” Shy reached out and covered Kelc’s hand with her own. “That how I envision the Heavens, if such a place exists.” A wan smile creased her lips. She sighed. “So this spirit ahead…Did it feel violent or angry or anything?”
“A little,” her brother answered. “Not overwhelmingly, I suppose. I’ve been near that sort of anger and this feels nothing close to that, but there seems to be a whole lot of spirit up there. That’s pretty strange in a nation that rends the dead.”
“Should we go around?”
Kelc looked ahead, thinking about it. He didn’t know what he felt, nor did he know exactly where it lay. “Let’s continue up the road until we can at least see something, or until either one of us feels that our course must change.” His sister nodded. “And Shy,” he said, raising his eyebrows pointedly, “don’t be proud. Tell me the first instant you think heading at it is a bad idea.”
“I wouldn’t risk us now,” she said fiercely. “Not now that we have a life worth living.” She straightened in her saddle, turning her head from Kelc to the road ahead. “A life where we are free.”
Fear spiked Kelc as she spoke. Fear of a world without parents and rules, a world where whatever he was to become fell solely on him. Until a few days ago, his life had felt mapped out. He’d work for his father for three more years and then go to some village and become a mortician there. He sucked in as deep a breath as he could. Now he had no clue what the future held. And if we can’t reach Skurgaard and find passage to another, he thought, we may have no future at all.
He urged his horse forward without speaking his fears. It would be better if he considered them more deeply before he presented them to Shy.
His sister seemed a bit irritated. Kelc knew that it was because he didn’t join into her enthusiastic view of the life they would lead. But right now, he thought, I just can’t.
So instead of explaining his fears, or acting distracted, he simply forged ahead while Shaia rode behind him, silent, glaring at her brother’s back.
“Sometimes,” she said after they rode for a short while, “you can be so perceptive. So aware. It always stuns me when you’re this dense.” Kelc’s head snapped upright at both her scathing tone and her words. “I can feel you. I’ve been around you your whole life. I’ve cared for you. I’ve made love to you. I have so much spirit tied to you that I feel even the slightest twinge of emotion. Your caring, your lust, your anger, your hatred, your joy, uncertainty…I feel it all. And now, when you think you’re hiding it to protect delicate little Shy, I can feel your fear. Did you imagine you could fool me? Did you never think about what mother and I have been telling you our skills can do? Dense.”
Shaia’s face flushed red and she crossed her arms under her bosom. She scowled at her brother for a few moments and then averted her vision to the horizon, unwilling to look him in the eyes as he turned in the saddle to face her.
“Shy,” Kelc started, but she turned away, her horse heading in a more westerly course. “Shy,” he said again, louder. “I didn’t want to spoil the moment with my fear, okay? I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, or where, or how, and yet everyone in the family seems to think I have the answers to everything.”
Shaia softened a bit, but her tone still contained some heat. “No, Kelc. No one thinks you have all the answers. You have ability. Your inherent ability to grab spirit energy and break it down and use it is unique and powerful That’s what we know.” She jabbed a finger at him. “You are the one heaping everyone else on your back. You think we’re all helpless.”
“I don’t…”
“I spent the last three years knowing that I’d have to give myself over to some stinking brute who I’d only have the chance to meet once before he could bed me, Kelc.” Her expression challenged him to come up with a worse scenario. “Think about that! In the name of Symean marriage, someone I knew nothing about could have my body because he paid for me. And if he wanted to beat me bloody, or even kill me,” she hissed, “then that was his right, as a man. Live with that waiting for you!” She gestured furiously, waving her hand at seemingly anyone that would challenge her, silencing her brother again.
“I’m not delicate. I’m not terrified. I left willingly, leaving that disgusting life behind. I wanted to be with you, wanted to be free. I can handle it, fears and all. Yours or mine. And I have them. I do.” She leveled her gaze, her brown eyes aflame as they bored into Kelc’s. “What I cannot handle. What I will not allow, is you treating me as anything but your partner. We risk the same thing out here. I will not have you treat me like a child, nor will I let you use me as a reason to not confront your fears. That’s skeesh!”
Shaia dug her heels into Kay’s flanks and her horse leapt into a trot, turning back in the correct direction. She put distance between her own horse and Kelc’s as if warning him to keep back.
He watched both his sister and her mount as he rode, only occasionally allowing his eyes to drop to the snow or to the mane of his own horse as it bounced with every step. Perhaps a league passed, though to Kelc it felt far longer. “Hells,” he whispered to himself.
He brought Freska abreast his sister’s horse within only a few paces. “I’m sorry. You know I am.” He looked off ahead of them. “I’ve never been able to depend on anyone before. Not this way.”
“You’d better get used to the idea in a hurry,” Shy snapped. A few moments later she turned to look at Kelc, her eyes narrowed, her normally alluring brown eyes fierce. “I’ll have it no other way.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“It must be there,” Kelc announced as soon as the dark outline of buildings in the distance made plain the presence of a village or town. “The sense of disruption in the people, in the spirits among these people, is far stronger up there.”
“Dangerous?” his sister immediately asked. “Even I can feel the presence of so much spirit, but I can’t tell if my skin crawls because there is so much,” she said, hugging her arms to her, “or if they are angry.”
“I’m not sure it matters…” Kelc shook his head once abruptly. “They aren’t angry—They are angry but not like Margin Lanch. They are...” His eyes slid closed, and began to change to purple, he surmised.
He could feel them. Several score of spirits seemed to be free of their bodies, slowly wandering through this place, searching for a means of vengeance, it seemed. They were wrought of anger, of being wronged, Kelc thought, or of a destiny unfulfilled, but they did not seem to rage for the sake of rage, as did Lanch.
“Are we riding into the town,” Shaia asked, “because if you intend to go around, we had better start doing that.”
Kelc’s eyes snapped open, beholding the community ahead in a completely different way. It looked pleasant and tranquil, the dark wooden buildings sleepy beneath a puffy blanket of snow that seemingly held small ice crystals which would occasionally catch the sunlight and glisten.
“Let’s go in,” he said finally. “Perhaps we can sleep in a real bed and have a bath.” He looked sideways at his sister, feeling for any resistance to his decision. “We might even get information.”
“Who will we tell them we are?” Shy asked.
“Call me one of your suitors’ names and you can be a candle girl,” Kelc said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “We can claim that neither of us had any chance of inheriting the family business and we decided to run and marry. That might ruffle a few folks but not enough for them to do anything beyond advising us to return home.”
“Pellek Gallatson and Erisa Feldagar,” Shaia iterated, her voice dripping with annoyance. “How disgusting! But if their names can get us out of this land then I suppose fair’s fair. I’m going to be every manner of uncouth so that her name is smeared in mud before we leave.”
Kelc chuckled. “Just so we can leave,” he said. “To that end, we must tell them we are already married so some fool doesn’t make a claim on you just to create difficulty in our lives.”
&
nbsp; Shaia smiled at her brother, a broad stunning grin. “Married, are we?” She locked his gray-green eyes with her own, smoldering brown. “I like the sound of that.”
Kelc’s body responded instantly to the heat in her, making him squirm in the saddle while he drank in her beauty. He found that he could not speak at all, so instead he sat looking at her until she finally lowered her eyes.
“We should ride into this town and…”
Shy glanced up at him, still in control of him. “You’re right,” she said softly. “Let’s go and find this bath.” Her eyes laughed. “And this real bed.” Again, she grinned, the expression she wore more seductive than Kelc could have dreamt. He basked in it.
As soon as Shy turned from him, giving a quick snap along her reins to urge Kay, Kelc pulled a deep breath.
He suddenly realized how vulnerable he was to Shaia, how out of control he was with her and how illogical that might make him. For the second time in only a few glasses, fear trickled down his spine like freezing sweat, sparking countless other chills throughout his body. Even the briefest moments of his life where he’d let his guard down for emotional reasons had usually resulted in him getting beaten and bloodied.
“And now,” he whispered under his breath. Now that we’re fighting to get out of this horrible place, fighting for our lives… “I am losing control of myself. Hells!” He reached down and adjusted his trousers before spurring Freska forward. “Hells.”
He caught up to his sister and rode next to her, Kay and Freska abreast of each other. “Shy,” he said, unwilling to look at her, “we need to keep our guard up. I know how exciting this all is, but any mistake could steal everything away from us before we get it.”
“I know,” she said, flatly. “Perhaps I’m getting carried away, but I do realize that it can be taken away still.” She looked at her brother, but he still stared toward the village. “So I suggest we live as well, when the moment merits it.”
Kelc nodded, which pacified Shaia, allowing the two of them to quietly ride. They arrived at a post announcing the small town’s name as Wemmerton. “Wemmerton,” Kelc said aloud, as if sampling the name.
He looked into the quiet, winter-chilled streets, dimly lit by filtered sunlight that infrequently broke through the beginnings of what appeared to be a snowstorm overhead. “Quiet.”
“These are just the homes of whoever lives here,” Shy said. “They would be somewhere else, doing whatever this village does. It’s not farming.”
Kelc looked to his sister, arching one eyebrow. She waived an arm to the land around and behind them. “Not a single field, no farmhouses, no barns…nothing.” Kelc followed her gesture, realizing the truth of what she said.
“What single…industry could everyone here do?” he asked.
“Maybe they mine, or…” His sister shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s not farming so it’s likely that all of the people here go to a central square or something and return home at sunset. You saw this place when you flew within the storm. Did you not notice anything? A mine or a…” she shook her head, at a loss. “A rock quarry?”
“No,” he returned, favoring silence as they rode within a hundred paces of the first houses, the road ahead turning after the first three or four and disappearing into the heart of the little community.
It suddenly sounded as if their horses’ hooves hitting the hard-packed dirt of the road sang out with unnatural force. Kelc cringed as he and his sister entered Wemmerton, rolling his shoulders as if his back itched.
“Quiet,” Shaia observed, meaning that the small community was deathly still and completely absent the sounds of any life.
No dogs or cats scurried from view or emerged to greet them. No children cried. No smoke rose from chimneys or crept along the streets on a calm winter day. No old folk sat on porches or peered at them from within the houses they passed, which felt close, almost threatening as they rode in silence.
Kelc refused to voice his discomfort after having so many chances to turn aside. He sat stock-still, his eyes ranging from side to side, desperately searching for the slightest hint at normalcy.
Shaia bowed her head next to him, spending only a moment before she straightened up. “Kelc,” she said, “the air buzzes with spirits.”
He looked at his sister for a moment, her eyes imploring him to do something. His stomach shrank inside of him as sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. You knew the spirits were here, he told himself. You knew.
Rocking slowly in the saddle as Freska slowly ambled around the curve in the road, Kelc sucked in a breath and let it roll out his nose. Then, he let his eyes slide shut.
Anger rose up around him like a wretched scent, thick and overwhelming, coating everything it touched, tainting it. Loose spirit wreathed him in gauzy pale curls, emanating the emotion with almost physical force. Kelc labored to breathe as it abraded him, but he refused to flinch. As dominated as the spirits were by their sense of anger, they did not seem to possess an intent to do harm.
“Kelc?” He heard his sister’s voice, the concern obvious, her fear tacit. Turning to her, his eyes still clamped shut, he looked for the first time upon the soul she kept.
It filled her body with rapturous golden light, coursing within her like sunlit mercury. Tendrils of her energy reached away from her, the pale yellow within almost invisible, many of them bridging the short distance between herself and Kelc, others simply emitting into the unseen distance. All of them headed north, most to the northwest, a few to the northeast.
Though his thoughts could not form in any manner with which he could identify, Kelc knew inherently that he could link his soul with that of his sister’s, allowing her to see through him, to use his spiritual senses.
He reached out a hand toward her and she clasped it in both of hers almost instantly. As she did, a pillar of spiritual essence reached from both of them, colliding between them and creating a shared bridge.
Kelc felt her worry, but squirreled the emotion away, seizing it and burying it deep within his own energy, leaving her in a mesmerized calm.
He heard her heavy breath as she sensed the anger that encircled them, that lay draped over the entire town. He felt her excitement as she witnessed, for the first time, such spirit.
Shy released a long breath, her mouth falling open in awe as she swayed with the supernatural tide moving through the haze of spirit that seemed to be everywhere.
Together, the two of them, eyes closed atop their horses, trusted the feel of uncounted formless ghosts to herd them safely through the physical world. They let themselves be led for a moment, a day, a year. Time meant nothing.
Barely cognizant of his own body, it was through his sister’s physical response that Kelc suddenly felt panic. He urged his awareness to her and saw the first of them.
A formed apparition passed through the eddying currents of spirit, hardly disturbing the stringy clouds as he passed, and a man it certainly was.
His face crinkled with age and drawn down with toil and concern, his body emaciated, the visible portions of his arms appearing to be little more than skin-covered bone. He wore a peasant’s tunic and threadbare pants that stopped short of his battered shoes.
All of him, clothes and all, looked to be sculpted from grey cloud, cloud that still moved within his form, still eddied with natural flow and yet did not escape the shape that the specter willed it to fulfill.
The man’s arms and legs moved with painful slowness, making obvious the fact that he struggled to take even a few steps in the days before his death. And yet, Kelc noted, he glided up to Shaia with eerie ease, his left hand slowly rising.
Kelc focused on that hand, ready to shred the man’s spirit, or try to capture him if any malicious intent should arrive in him, but none became apparent.
Shaia’s panic spiked and Kelc felt her chest muscles contract and her lungs freeze while her heart beat with such speed and force that he marveled at it being contained in her thin body.
Th
e spirit reached up to her and rested his pale misty hand on her luminous gold-filled shoulder, patting it a few times before he lowered it, letting it fall to her right thigh.
Then, his hand settled on her, he turned and walked next to them, seemingly content to arrive at their destination with them.
Soon after, the spectral shape of a small girl arrived through the mist, reaching up to touch Kelc’s foot in the stirrup, again satisfied to merely touch him and walk with him.
He looked down at her, but she stared forward, her large eyes undefined in the grey motion of her energy. Long hair collected into ponytails on each side of her head, the hair swaying in unseen fluxes that seemed to move all of the spiritual energy.
By the time he finished inspecting her, more souls walked with them, all of their faces gaunt and weary, their bodies wracked with illness or malnutrition, hollows in their cheeks and vague sad shadows where their eyes should be.
All of them rested a hand on either Shaia or Kelc, their worn faces turned forward, their erratic broken gaits speaking volumes about the futility and frustration of their demise.
Their heads moved synchronously, rocking from side to side with lamentable slowness, their mouths occasionally stretching open as if to speak, though no sound came from them through the heavy frozen air. Their dark mouths simply gaped for a moment before resealing, thin dead lips pressing back together.
Still more came, crowding to them, some finding that they could not reach brother or sister without disturbing some other ghost. These laid a hand on the specter they seemingly dared not disturb, somehow finding satisfaction or purpose in simply touching the spirit that touched the living.
Men, women, old folks and young, came to them. Each spirit, cast of the same grey vapor, clothed and frail, their bodies ruined and haggard as they floated along the ground despite the limitations of their broken forms. Their sightless eyes faced forward as they pressed their numbers into the growing throng.
Still, somewhat forgotten despite its intensity, anger saturated everything. Each of the souls manifested and walking with them seemed wrought of anger, the loose spirit drifting through the air seemed rife with unsatisfied rage.
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 24
