Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  “Gah!” He dropped onto his back and began climbing the bars to his prison with his feet, trying to lift his hips off of the ground, stilting himself on his neck and shoulders. Once he had, he began to shake his body while struggling to breathe. Muscles in his lower back clenched tight into a spasm. “Hnnnnn,” he rasped, trying to endure the pain until he could get the black dagger to slide from its sheath. “Greehgh!” Finally, he heard the dull thud of the knife landing on the frozen ground. He let himself drop back to the ground, where he lay for a moment, drawing his knees into his stomach to alleviate the painful tension of the muscles in his back despite the discomfort of laying on the knife.

  After recovering on the ground for a quarter glass, Kelc finally slid against one side of his cage, sitting up, his back against the bars. Using his feet to stand his skiver, point up, his clumsy arms stabilizing it somewhat, he clamped the dagger between his boots.

  Okay, he thought, looking at the weapon. Okay.

  He held his left arm out near the razor edge of the steel, stilling it by pressing his right against it. He pulled a deep breath and pressed the soft swollen stump into the blade.

  Tears dropped from his eyes as he stifled a scream. He sunk the blade in and then dragged the arm sideways, scraping skin, scab and burn away from the end of his arm. His head jerked spasmodically. Noises burst from his mouth as his arms continued to move against the skiver.

  The pain tore through arm, the flesh already injured and now, assaulting it again began to overload Kelc’s body. He wept two loud sobs before he began to howl.

  A pool of blood, ruing tissue and puss formed around his boots where they still pressed tight, sole to sole, keeping his dagger upright. Kelc tried to not look at the work he performed, but the pain, wicked through every fiber of his flesh, forcing him to lurch as if possessed.

  He tried to grab his spirit sense but he couldn’t keep hold of it, the pain too intense to be ignored. Instead he continued to shave broken material from his wrecked arm, sending spike after spike of searing pain through him, each leaving a wake of convulsion after it.

  Through tear-blurred eyes, Kelc saw Kyndron running to him, an all-black figure charging to him through the white landscape, his sword in hand. But it meant nothing to Kelc. Nothing at all.

  He kept carving on his arm, pieces of his arm dropping into the dark pool of his fluids.

  He screamed out one more time as he fell on his side, the skiver dropping over with him, his arm held tight against his belly. “Uh! Oh! Uh!” His head swam as motes of light appeared in his vision.

  “What have you done, fool?” Kyndron roared, the sound abrasive enough to focus Kelc for a moment. He looked at the tall priest, bars between them, and bared his teeth, thinking to try and communicate his purpose.

  But before he could even try, pain overcame him and he fell into darkness.

  The world slowly gave in to corruption before his eyes. Water turned a murky grey. The trees curled back to the ground with an almost audible groan, their limbs blackened and splitting. The ground reeked of age and moldy abandonment and the sky roiled with tumult, offering only ash-filled oily rain that coated those who looked to it with grime while draining them of hope.

  Kelc sat on a pale boulder, his flesh broken, his body covered in the disgusting mockery of rain, his wounds burning from whatever filth that now infested them.

  Before him, black eyes looked to him, filling his vision, commanding his attention. Beneath them, all he could see, hovering in the air as if an invisible hand casually held it, was a coppered sickle.

  “You seek to deny me,” a voice said, a voice that seemed to reflect the rank devastation of the land around him, the sound of it an injury to his ears, to his spirit. “No one denies me.”

  The sickle shot forward, lancing into Kelc’s chest, sending cold fire through his frame in every direction while simultaneously issuing acrid lyatum into Kelc’s veins.

  He wanted to scream, to pass out, to die. But the black ethereal fingers that slithered through him denied that, holding him with the pain, awake, functional and aware.

  “Ah,” murmured the caustic voice, “I begin to see.” A low hum followed this, as if the incorporeal being considered in great depth what it saw. “Kelc Varrlson,” it said, “you are indeed a wonder.” A laugh, like splintering wood, followed.

  The freezing fire focused on his wrists, its presence there surprisingly bearable since Kelc already fought with pain in those places. The flow of lyatum followed the intense pain, pooling within his injuries, dulling his perception of pain.

  “Impossible,” the horrid voice said, “and yet it sits here before my own eyes.” A wave of heat pulsed from each wrist, rising to the sickle still planted in Kelc’s chest.

  He looked at the coppered blade lazily, having forgotten that it even stood out of his chest. No blood ran from around the puncture mark, no more pain came to him because of it.

  “What in the greeching Hells?” he muttered. My tongue! He flipped it in his mouth. He ran it against his teeth.

  “What?” asked the voice. “You can talk?”

  The icy-hot power instantly rose to his mouth, filling the nerves in his tongue and teeth, generating more pain than his wrist ever did.

  His mind caved, falling to unconsciousness but the lyatum suddenly rose through him, again leaving him unable to black out and forced him to endure the agony. His teeth felt as if they swelled from within, the pain enough that he could have willingly cut every one from his mouth.

  “Stop!” he screeched. “Stop!”

  The lyatum pooled in his mouth, again dulling the pain. Kelc’s head tipped over backward, thudding hard against the boulder on which he rested. He didn’t even wince from the pain of knocking his head against stone. It was nothing.

  He just breathed while looking at a sky torn by storms that crackled with reddish lightning while dumping putrid rain on the shattered lands below.

  Kelc ignored the heavy drops as they pelted his eyes, blinking them away, feeling grit trapped behind his eyelids, scraping against his eyes. He smelled sulfur suddenly and his whole body seemed to be wrapped in hot dry air.

  The rain continued to fall but now it too felt hot, making it difficult to breathe, so stifling was the combination of the stink of the air and the sudden humidity created by the heat.

  Without warning, the icy fire that had ranged through Kelc’s body withdrew in a final scorching burst. “Gah!” Kelc bolted upright in response, only to collapse back to his stone bed as a force impacted his chest while the sickle pulled clear.

  The lyatum still within him now seemed to move without direction, ebbing from his tongue and teeth and oozing from his mouth in serpentine wisps of murky fog that disappeared as if evaporating into the wet heavy air.

  Kelc slid his eyes closed, seeking unconsciousness. Please, he begged his mind, just let go. Go to sleep. Sleep. Just sleep.

  Kelc’s eyes snapped open, beholding the awful world around him. “Hells,” he spat. He looked for the black eyes. “Kyndron’s greeching eyes!” How he hadn’t understood before now, he couldn’t explain.

  Wake up!

  His eyes snapped open again, this time looking up at Kyndron, a smirk on his angular face.

  “So, you’ve returned. I won’t apologize for my nature or the way it feels when I delve into your body and spirit.” Pointed teeth shone in his smile.

  Kelc, laying on his back, turned to a side and pushed himself upright with his left hand, only noticing he had one after using it. “It worked,” he whispered, realizing that both his hand and tongue had regenerated themselves. He swung his attention to the separated hand, seeing it between Kyndron’s legs where it remained tethered to the stake, now a fully formed grey forearm with half of an upper arm attached.

  “Yes,” Kyndron said, glancing back at the hand, “you have truly accomplished something here. And allowed me to learn how I can use it.” The tall priest backed away from the cage and snatched the writhing arm from the
ground, severing the leash. “I pared the damaged flesh from your right wrist as well. It should grow back as well as the left.”

  Kelc looked to his right arm, seeing that it had, in fact, been cleaned up.

  “You’re quite the carver,” Kelc noted, remembering the coarse butcher’s work he’d done on his left arm.

  “The Carver,” Kyndron said, another smile creasing his face, his black eyes gleaming. “It fits me well.” He lifted a large pack from the ground and hung it over one shoulder. “I will leave the prison rod with you to free yourself and I will walk away with what I know and with this,” Kyndron said, holding the animated arm up.

  Kelc’s eyes flashed purple and he reached out to the arm as fast as he could think of it and drained the spirit, both his and Errit’s. The grey flesh fell inert in Kyndron’s grasp.

  The priest gritted his teeth, glowering at Kelc. After only a few moments of reflection, he barked a laugh. “Fine then.” He released the dead arm and let it fall to the ground. “I leave here and I leave you the rod to free yourself. For three hundred years we pledge to neither attack nor hinder the other’s efforts.”

  Kelc smirked. “Three hundred years?” he snorted.

  “Three hundred years, Kelc Varrlson. If anyone can learn to defy death in Reman, it is you.” Kyndron wore a strange expression. Kelc couldn’t tell if it was sadness or anger. Perhaps both.

  “Three hundred years then, Kyndron. After that, I swear to you, I will come for you…”

  “Eht! Stop now, little man. I can still kill you now, this very instant. I’m not fond of keeping my word, but you are a resource I’d sooner not ruin.” His sword rose, point aimed at Kelc, the obsidian blade reflecting the blue sky along its length. “Three hundred years. We do not attack each other. We do not hinder one another. Not allies. Not enemies.”

  Grey-green eyes met black, each weighing and considering the other.

  “Bargain struck?” asked the demon priest.

  Kelc chewed on his lower lip for a moment. Three hundred years. He’d be dead, most likely. But then, he considered, what would it matter? What he needed, he needed now. He needed to be free of his prison. This greeching cage, he thought. I need to find Shy and Micah.

  “The vampire that I used to attack you, and the woman he took…”

  “Your sister?” Kyndron clarified, a knowing smile on his face.

  “Yes,” Kelc admitted, a chill dropping through him. “What became of them?”

  “By my hand? Nothing?” The priest looked northeast, the leather of his glove creaking as he gripped his sword more tightly.

  “What happened to them?” Kelc’s stomach sunk inside of him, weighted with the dread of the unknown. “Tell me.”

  “It seems Symea has brought several companies of Vanguard troops up from Skurgaard to aid the local law.” The priest looked around him, as if mentioning Symea’s army might summon them. “Your sister and the vampire have been harried easterly by them. But it is a trap. The worst of the Vanguard wait outside of Chinggen Mor for all of us. The vampire I can still feel. He’s that way.” The black sword cut through the air until it pointed mostly east and a little north. “Vampires are very skilled at self-preservation, Kelc Varrlson. He will live.”

  Kelc needed no more explanation. He understood what the priest meant, and he could feel how deeply Kyndron believed what he said. He shuddered, picturing Micah’s yellow eyes, thinking of Shaia.

  “Enough of this. More Symeans look to be close at hand. Three hundred years. No attacks, directly or indirectly. No hindering each other’s efforts.” Kyndron seemed nervous, almost afraid to Kelc. “Bargain struck?”

  Kelc knew he had to agree, but hated it. Hated that he’d been caught and hated that he would have to let this horrid abomination act out whatever sick plan he desired without so much as lifting a finger to halt it.

  “My sister is included in this agreement, as are my mother and brother.”

  Kyndron hissed, his eyes shooting back over his shoulder to the southwest, and Kelc knew. “Very well. You and your whole greeching family. Three hundred years. Bargain struck?”

  Kelc looked south, where his brother must be, before looking back to Kyndron. I will be the one to cause your death, he thought. He held out his hand for the rod that somehow controlled his prison. Damn it all, he growled in his mind.

  “Bargain struck.”

  The prison rod pulled at Kelc, tugging at him, drawing on his spirit even from two paces away where it lay in the snow. He looked at it, wanting to take it with him, but he couldn’t think of any way to keep it from his own flesh where it might do damage and he couldn’t find any answers to that danger in the priests’ campsite.

  What he could find was some food and an oiled tent, tinder and blankets. He even found his own scimitar amongst a pile of weapons, most of them iron or black steel. He also found a slender boot knife of black steel, which he took.

  He slid it into his boot alongside his leg and drew a slender filament of spirit from his skiver, directing it into the knife. “Hmm.” The knife drank the spirit, but unlike his skiver, he couldn’t pull it back out. Maybe it was built that way, Kelc thought. “The knife is for priests of Gul Thannon.” And they spend a lot of effort on controlling spirits and deads. He tossed the knife on the ground next to the prison rod, offering a quick shake of his head to the valuable tools he would not take, agitated at the need to abandon them to Symea.

  To the southwest, a reed of dark smoke snaked up into the sky. “Almost sunset,” Kelc whispered, “and someone’s setting up camp. Someone,” he breathed. Kreg.

  In digging around in Kelc’s spirit, or whatever Kyndron had done, the priest had discovered how involved Kelc’s family was in the current situation. The priest had turned his black eyes southwest, almost against his will, when Kelc mentioned his brother.

  “And now a camp fire.” Thoughts of Kreggen brought anxiety. How would his brother react to him? What would Kreg feel forced to do? And what would Kelc do? “I can’t fight him. And I won’t kill him.” He pulled a deep breath into his chest and sent a great cloud of vapor into the chill air. There is only one option, he told himself. “Run.” I cannot let things come to that.

  He packed everything he could into a backpack, doing a final check through the priests’ camp, searching for and finding some money, a handful of copper princes.

  He then slung the pack on his back and turned northeast, blazing through the snow in the direction Kyndron had told him would lead to his sister.

  Kyndron had gone straight east, presumably to Reman. The trail he left looked like a trench in the snow. The priest, if he was anything like Micah had been, wouldn’t tire or need any rest. No one would catch him. Kelc knew that. He also knew he needed to be careful himself. He lacked such superhuman stamina.

  He didn’t push himself overmuch, but he didn’t stop, even as darkness fell over the snow-covered grassland. He needed distance.

  The sun dropped below the horizon leaving a yellow crown in the west which faded to a pink tint and then a purple drape that finally dimmed to black in a painstakingly slow process. Kelc noted it only occasionally with a backward glance as he battered his way through snow that rose to his mid-thigh.

  His shadow, which had stretched out before him, three times longer than his height, now joined an equal darkness. It took what felt like several glasses to Kelc, but once the last light of the sun finally left the sky, the stars were enough to see by, with the snow covered ground making the most of their light.

  Sometimes it seemed as if Kelc navigated his way by looking at a mere reflection of the world, so dim did the light seem at times, but he held his course for the most part.

  Behind him, he left a trail more obvious than a drawn map. Without new snowfall to cover his steps, the deep boot holes and disrupted snow left no doubt as to how many people passed, what direction they went, and when. With no new snow in the last few days, it would be evident to anyone following that the tracks were fresh. />
  As the night persisted, the air began to freeze colder and colder. Kelc pulled his cloak tight and draped a blanket over himself, wrapping it and tying two corners across his face in an effort to protect himself from air that felt as if it could crack his skin.

  When his legs began to feel rubbery from their incessant effort, he cleared a small area, only large enough to sit down, and allowed himself a meal of jerked meat. He held the meat inside his jacket near his body to thaw before he could eat it. He also took several long pulls from a canteen of flat beer he’d gathered from the Thannonites’ camp, the icy beer sending chills through him as he swallowed.

  He estimated that he rested for a half glass before he resumed his march, plodding east mainly.

  He began to feel the hour, his eyes trying to close and his body slowing. “Guess I shouldn’t have drunk the beer,” he told himself, though only a few swallows wouldn’t affect him much. A yawn took him. “Focus yourself, Kelc.”

  He pushed himself into a jog, though that was particularly difficult with the heavy pack, his sword and two full reaches of snow on the ground. But it worked in raising his alertness as it wore his legs down, forcing him to rest again after only a short time.

  This time, he unrolled the oiled tent and laid it on the ground. He dropped onto it and pulled it overtop of himself to try and collect heat, allowing himself some warmth while his muscles recovered. After a few moments, perhaps longer, Kelc felt comfortable. He yawned and pulled the tent and blanket tighter to himself.

  “Skeesh!” The word burst from him as he woke up. He threw back the blanket and the tent and a dark sky remained overhead, but a violet tinge along the eastern horizon suggested dawn would come in only a glass or two.

  A half-moon now stood in the sky and Kelc could see far more clearly. He sat up, looking at the white landscape, and rubbed his eyes.