Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  At once he felt heat settle into him, starting over him as if he covered himself with a blanket before the spirit simply dropped into him, bringing the warmth directly into his flesh.

  As foreign as his own body could feel to him, Kelc had to picture each movement of his body for it to occur, his own flesh unable to execute his demands without the work of the spirit.

  The angle of the light filtering through the devastated building changed from what must have been morning to noon and began turning toward afternoon before Kelc managed to get himself onto all fours to crawl through the tunnel the small girl had blasted for him.

  One limb at a time, he focused his thoughts on moving, allowing his hand to change position, or his leg, tedious in every motion. Yet the entire time, Kelc offered his thanks. Slow and laborious though each motion came, he knew it far exceeded what his flesh could do.

  It was nearly dark as Kelc dropped out of the inn to the alley floor. He continued to a nearby trough where snow had gathered and melted and clumsily draped himself over the side, aided still by the spirit of the old man, allowing himself a drink.

  The water moved through him like liquid ice. He felt it soothe and numb his throat before washing through his gut, forcing it to contract.

  “Ugh!” He sucked in a deep breath, unafraid of choking for the first time all day. He then forced another drink into his battered frame. His breath gusted before him, creating plumes of ice in the cold air, reminding him of another problem he yet faced.

  “Shy,” he groaned, feeling his body begin to fail even with spiritual assistance. He knew he would last only a short time longer.

  He forced himself to crawl into the building next door, which now lacked a wall. It appeared to be some sort of weaver’s place. With methodical need, he crawled through it, finding scattered and disorganized rolls of material.

  He unrolled as many as he could, pulling the long massive ribbons of cloth into a pile atop him. When he felt safe from the cold, he fell back, gingerly lowering his head to the floor. “Protect Shy,” he said, picturing any number of spirits that he’d seen before midday. “Protect me,” he added before exhaustion overcame him.

  “Over there.” A male voice, distant and hesitant. “Inside all of that.”

  “No.” Kelc’s eyes popped open upon hearing Shaia’s voice. “If ever he was trapped in that fallen mess, he somehow made his way out,” she said. “He’s in here somewhere now.”

  Her shoes sounded out against the wooden floor as she entered the weaver’s shop, the boards beneath Kelc vibrating as she came.

  “What a mess,” she observed, walking into the storage room where almost all of the material now lay in disarray.

  “Shy,” Kelc managed to say, looking up at her.

  “Kelc!” She flew to him, throwing the filmy material from before his face. “Oh, Kelc.” Her hands rose to his cheeks and he felt her energy. Tears dropped down both of their faces. “Oh. You look…” She shook her face.

  Above him, Shaia had a black eye herself and a dark trail of blood that ran down her head on the left side where dried blood still clung to her hair and ear.

  “Micah!” Shaia snapped. Kelc’s eyes narrowed as he heard light footsteps coming towards them. “Where is his sword and dagger? Get them!”

  “They lay in the square. I cannot touch them.” His hands rose helplessly. “They will injure me.

  A growl rose in Kelc’s chest. “Injure you?” he spat. With instinctive speed he fell into his spirit sense and commanded two spirits to detain Micah, to truss him up as he had been.

  The man rose from the ground, flying back into a heavy doorframe with a grunt.

  His hands rose and clawed at the spirits, tearing at them as if they were material. At once they dropped him clumsily to his feet, fleeing through the floorboards like spilled oil.

  Micah relaxed into a ready position, his eyes on Kelc, his irises reflecting a bit yellow as they nervously darted from side to side, favoring one of Kelc’s eyes and then the other.

  “Kelc!” Shaia said. “He’s going to help us. He’s…from Reman.”

  Kelc glared at Micah, his grey-green eyes boiling. No wonder Symea wishes to keep your kind in Reman!

  “And your kind,” Micah responded, answering his thoughts. “You are no less a fugitive here than I am, though I couldn’t tell you what you are. Some type of sorcerer. Your sister too, a witch to these people. Worthy of little more than a drowning death and her body burned.”

  “Perhaps,” Kelc snarled, “but I would never have killed off an entire village just to satisfy my…”

  “Kelc,” Shaia interrupted.

  “This village?” Micah lowered his hands and stood up straighter, no longer fearing more of Kelc’s attacks. “I did nothing to these unfortunates. It is the fever that did for these folks. I hid here because no one would dare enter Wemmerton with it under quarantine.” A bitter snort came from the man. “Except you.” He took two steps closer to Kelc. “And you scare the spine out of me. You tug at spirit energy like a towel pulls water. I can feel your soul’s desire to consume me even now. Many have accused me of being a beast, a predator, a hunter. But not today, fellow. In a land of ghosts and wandering spirits, that is you.”

  Kelc could feel the truth in what Micah said. “Why did you club my sister then? You approached as if you would help us and then you clubbed her instead.”

  “Had she not brandished a knife at me, I may have been able to help as I desired.”

  “A knife?” Kelc looked up at his sister who nodded minutely. “I see.” His anger began to fade, but returned only a moment later. “Why bind me up as you did, tying me to that rack and leaning me against the wall?”

  “Because…” He sounded exasperated. “I can grapple with the souls of men. I do it with these.” He held up his hands. I fight them as you might fight another man. It’s what I am and what I understand. When I touched you in the square and your soul instantly tried to consume me…” He shook his head, unconsciously taking a step back from Kelc. “I knew I needed to talk to you, because there are not too many of us in Symea.” He glanced out the doorway into the destroyed front room of the weaver’s shop. “But I needed to make sure you wouldn’t just leap on me and tear me limb from limb.” Micah frowned and dropped his eyes to the floor. “I have been bound as you were and it was very effective.” He pulled a deep breath and let it hiss quietly through his teeth as his frown deepened. “Very effective.”

  “Yes,” Kelc agreed beginning to feel sympathy for Micah.

  Shaia rose to her feet. “I’m going to get your things,” she said, looking down at her brother. “You can use the skiver to heal yourself and we can get going.” She walked to the door and Kelc noted that Micah moved from her path. He did so smoothly but with urgency.

  “My sister says you are from Reman. Why are you in Symea?”

  “Reman believes in the pantheon of gods. And while Symea claims that no such gods exist, I have seen enough to know that they do.” Micah closed his eyes for a moment. “At least one or two of them. Among them is Gul Thannon. He covets control of all spirits and has priests that conduct constant rituals to ensnare the souls of the dead, though…” a quirk of the mouth “…they aren’t very good at it. Any soul that falls to them…” He slowly shook his head.

  “A sect of Gul Thannon’s priesthood became aware of me and my nature.” Kelc raised his eyebrows. “I pass as a human most of the time, but I require…” He waved that thought away. “I would have been a good weapon if they could have controlled me. I can destroy almost any spirit. At any rate, I fled and they pursued. I’d heard that Symea was intolerant of nearly everything Reman, so I headed there. It worked out for the most part.”

  “It worked out?” Kelc lifted several blankets of material up off of himself, freeing him somewhat from the pile he’d buried himself under the night before.

  “There are protectors on the Symean border to Reman and they met me and the priests of Gul Thannon. I escape
d, but I believe all but one of the Thannonites were slaughtered.” Micah glanced again out into the front room of the building. “It would appear that Symeans have some fairly effective proofs against spirit magics.”

  “Perhaps,” Kelc said quietly, “but in my experience they know little enough…” He stopped himself. He had no clue as to whether their tools worked or not. Not with his father’s interference. Perhaps he had changed or corrupted their tests, altered their findings. “They may at that,” Kelc concluded with a nod.

  “At any rate,” Micah continued, “I fled from town to town, each of them highly suspicious of an outsider without cold steel at his hip. Half a season ago, before the snow really began to fall, I arrived here. The inhabitants dead or dying of fever, the bodies frozen in the lanes…” He shook his head. “I’m immune to such illness. So I did what I could for the living and placed all of the bodies into the square. I meant to burn them, but…” He shrugged.

  Kelc watched the man for a few moments before his thoughts arrived at another oddity. “Where are my boots?” He shook his head. “Why remove them?”

  “Nature recycles the spirit somehow or another. It sort of brings it to its weakest purest form.” Micah sucked his cheeks in for a moment, thinking. “In Reman, Gul Thannon’s priests remove people’s shoes, claiming that it reduces their ability to attack if they are revenants or unnaturally compelled spirits. The pull of the ground foils their strength, they say.” He stretched, extending his hands up over his head. “They say that’s why many places bury their dead. It traps their souls so ghosts don’t wander all over Oerhe.”

  “Does it affect you?”

  “No,” Micah answered with a weak smile, “and that fact alone has saved my life twice in Symea.”

  Kelc began to ask about that, but quick steps brought Shaia back into the room. She held Kelc’s sword and dagger, along with a large sack.

  Her eyes were wide as she burst into the room causing Micah to jump. “Kreg,” she announced. “I can feel him.” She extended an arm, pointing to the northeast. “He’s headed straight for us.”

  Passing through the seemingly infinite winding pathways within his own body, surrounded by awesomely miniscule yet delicate and detailed edifices of the human body, Kelc succumbed to the marvel of the creation.

  Through his spirit sense he watched the nearly infinite number of particles that worked in unison to allow for his life to continue as they operated almost consciously, each performing their function to the most exacting specifications.

  He could hear and feel his heartbeat as it moved with physical force the blood that coursed through him.

  He found the system of hair-like fibers that stretched all through him, each of them sensitive enough to sense his presence, some of them overwrought by the fractured tissues around them and reporting the damage through the sensation of pain.

  And the damage. It seemed as though the body tore and ripped so easily as he observed it from within and yet, with the help of spiritual essence, he could easily soothe and mend it.

  As intrinsic to his being as breathing, Kelc understood. He carefully extended his sense over the affected areas and could sense where blood flow felt restricted or tissue sat damaged or inflamed. He rebuilt the structures, easing them and returning them to healthy function, one tiny piece at a time.

  It felt as if he worked on himself for days on end, yet he performed each change as quickly as he could direct a thought. Initially, the process seemed laborious and slow yet his aptitude grew, allowing to him to alter, sense and repair a large number of functions, structures or particles simultaneously.

  Though his body felt distant, as if it sat behind a haze in his thoughts, he could feel his head stop hurting, his scraped and cut skin stop burning, his muscles return to strength.

  At times, he washed though his own body, the spirit that comprised his conscious form thrust along with all of the minute pieces in his circulatory system.

  He launched forward, then lurched to a stop time and again before finally passing through a great flap. Here the pounding of his heart felt overpowering as it thrust him from one compartment to the next. He raced through ever-narrowing paths, turning faster than he could grasp, dropping back through his body at untold speeds, in what felt like a never ending system of narrowing vessels.

  Given only a short time, he could pass through virtually every part of his body, stopping with his need to fix damage as he found it.

  After several hundred passes through the continuous circuit, Kelc finally felt no more damage or inflammation. Making a final pass, mostly for his own wonderment at the human body, he forced himself to withdraw from his spirit sense, returning to Shaia and Micah.

  “Amazing,” announced the strange man, falling back a step as Kelc’s eyes opened. “We watched as your wounds closed and faded. You are gifted, fellow. Very gifted.”

  Shaia smiled hearing Micah’s words. “Yes,” she added. “Mother said that he did things without need of learning that some labored to try a single time before they died. He is special.” Her brown eyes looked warmly on her brother. “Now heal me,” she said. “Kreggen nears.”

  Kelc reached out and took his sister’s hands in his own and closed his eyes again. Though he couldn’t see it, her wounds quickly receded and closed as if no rent had ever marred her. The black eye quickly dulled into a greenish mark and even that faded until her unblemished skin remained. Only dried and blackened blood that clung to her skin and clothes spoke of past wounds.

  Kelc’s eyes opened before the purple dimmed, forcing Micah to leap away from him. “Gods above! What…”

  “It’s the practice,” Shaia said quickly. “That’s what it looks like when someone is holding with the spirits. Do not fear.”

  “…not fear,” he muttered to himself, walking further from brother and sister as they smiled at one another. “How do you know for sure that this Kreg fellow is coming.”

  “I can…”

  “It is one of Shy’s abilities, among many. Her magic reaches into people and she can sense where they are and even, at times, what they think and feel.” Kelc leaned over to look past his sister at Micah. “She does it without thought or effort. It is very handy.”

  “And who is this Kreg? You act as if he is…”

  “He is the Territorial Warden, a law man of sorts…”

  “Has he grey hair, sort of short cut with a beard and moustache?” Micah asked, rocking from foot to foot, biting his bottom lip.

  “No,” Kelc said, shaking his head.

  “Tasher,” Shaia said with a start. “That’s Alkern Tasher, one of his deputies. Where did you see him?”

  “He led the men that met us at the border of Reman and Symea. He…” Micah shook his head, scrubbing a hand through his brown hair. “He tore through the priests of Gul Thannon as though they were untrained. He deflected their incantations with his steel- I’ve never seen such a thing- and outfought them.” He pulled in a deep breath, holding it for a moment before expelling it. “He chased me for days on end before turning aside. Perhaps he saw me heading toward the city to the south and thought to leave me to them.”

  “Your…nature doesn’t give you some means to fight such a man?” Kelc asked, his tone neutral. “Symea fears anything from Reman and you seem to have eluded the warden and his deputies.”

  “Your warden and his men seem to be armed or trained to deal with my kind. They fear no spirits. They charged their horses straight into the priests of Thannon.” Micah shrugged. “I can move very fast and seldom tire. I simply outran him.”

  “Well, we need to outrun him again, it seems. Can you keep pace with horses?” Kelc asked, looking at Micah. “We’ll…”

  “Horses?”

  “Kelc,” Shaia said, raising a hand to quiet Micah, “Freska fell lame after the square and Kay just dropped dead. I felt her fear.” Shy’s eyes misted. “Poor thing.”

  “Well, where is Freska? I can try to heal her.” Shaia only shook her head as s
he looked to Micah.

  “She was screaming,” he quickly explained. “I put her down. Her rear left leg,” he blurted and stopped. “Her…her pastern was turned- It was fractured- and she limped and cried out each time she tried to put her hoof down.” He frowned as he sucked in a breath. “I know horses,” he offered as Kelc’s face flushed. “Without understanding what you could do, no one could have helped her. I did her mercy.”

  No horses. Kelc closed his eyes and calmed himself, feeling a surprising amount of guilt linked to Freska’s death. Micah told the truth, for the most part. Some part of his story rang untrue, but not the part about Freska being lame. “It’s fine,” he said quietly. He lapsed into thought, focusing his thoughts on the problem at hand. “What in all the hells do we do? They have horses.”

  “Will they even come in here?” Micah asked. “The place is rife with fever. Unless they have some form of divine protection, they’d be fools to ride into this town. They’d risk their lives just breathing the air and if they ride around it to look it over they’ll smell the rot of death.” He shook his head fiercely. “No one would come here.”

  “You outran them on horseback?” Kelc asked. “While you were afoot?” Micah nodded. “Then you need not stay here now. Go, if you wish. We cannot move as you can. Take flight.”

  “I will do so as a last resort.” Micah’s eyes dropped to the floor as a frown formed on his face. “But you are the first people I’ve met since fleeing Reman that haven’t sought my destruction. I’d prefer to help you if I can… stay with you.”

  “Of course,” Shaia answered, her voice low. “We absolutely know what it feels like to be different and stuck in this unfeeling place. But,” she snapped, “if you ever again seek to harm either of us in any way, I will feel it, through my…magic. And if you do,” she added, heat in her voice, her eyes narrow, “we will destroy you.” She shot a quick look to her brother. “Utterly.”

  “Then I am safe,” Micah stated nervously, “for I have no intention of harming you in any way. I regret the way things unfolded when you first arrived, but now…” He shrugged. “I doubt I will make it out of Symea on my own. You seem to have some power. I feel that I am better off with you.”