Now Kelc laughed. His previous outbursts paled before the enjoyment he found here. Brownie had mastered the Symean man with a trait reputedly first in every Symean: stubbornness. He laughed until he couldn’t breathe and even then he wheezed, simultaneously lost to his humor while suffocating.
“Eh!” he gusted, fighting for air, his eyes drying. Brownie and Shaia fell from his sight as if only tears held the images there, replaced by the darkening sky.
Kelc lay on his back, collecting himself, glancing around him, surprised to find he was alone. How long have I been lost in thought, he wondered. He didn’t know and after only a moment’s reflection, he no longer cared. Better to have died laughing than what waits in store.
After a while, he sat up and leaned against the iron rod that held his shackles. Like the one Kyndron used, it stood out of the ground. Unlike the one Kyndron used, unlike the shackles and the iron bit, it did not seem to pull at his spirit. Or if it does, he thought, I cannot feel it.
He looked north, the faded purple silhouette of the mountains harder to see as the sun dropped below the horizon. He could see the white caps of snow on their pointed peaks, imagining himself there, wrapped in furs, riding into a small village that knew nothing of his troubles.
Adda’s son. That’s all they’d know of me. I could settle in and help their coroner, or be the one if they had none. Maybe even help their old guardian if they would let me.
“Here,” Jista said, interrupting Kelc’s thoughts, “eat this. It‘s all we have.” Dark eyes reflected the last of the sun’s light. Jista waved his hand and two Vanguard soldiers approached, both with swords at the ready. “If he does anything other than eat,” he commanded them, “then take his head off.”
The deputy leaned down and loosened and removed the bit from Kelc’s mouth and tossed it into the snow a few paces away. He then handed his prisoner a canteen.
“Two more soldiers wait beyond your sight with crossbows,” Jista said. “Your brother promises that you will cause no trouble.” The man snorted a laugh.
Kelc looked down at the thick paste of mashed root and stringy meat, a piece of bread half-covered by it.
“Thanks,” he rasped, his voice broken after wearing the bit. “Thanks,” he said again.
He ate greedily, unsure of the last time he had. As pedestrian as the meal may have seemed to him only a few days ago, it tasted magnificent now. He gulped the paste, carrots and taters, and the meat, using his bread to clean the bowl after the crude spoon he’d been given failed to scrape up a sufficient bite.
Then he drank the warm cider in the canteen until not a single drop remained. Once done, he held onto the bowl, going through the motions of eating in the growing darkness. He scraped the spoon against the interior of the bowl and lifted it to his mouth time and again despite there being no paste.
As soon as they realize I’ve finished they’ll put that damned thing back in my mouth. Until then, I need to greeching think.
Kelc. The name and the way it coursed through him felt nostalgic. Kelc Varrlson. It pulled at Kelc, dragging him away. I greeching hate this, he thought as he resisted the palpable influence that summoned him. No! he roared in his mind.
Kelc, gods damn you! Come here now!
That thought broke through the haze of instinct dominating Kelc’s response, sparking both fear and familiarity, though he could not place the voice.
Fine, he thought. Things can be no worse than they are. He glanced down at his manacles, raising his hands a knuckle, the chain following noisily.
He drew in a deep breath and held it as he let himself slide to wherever the summons took him, his spirit, it seemed, being drawn from him as if his body were merely a jug in which it lived.
He felt himself slipping down, siphoned by a power strong enough to counter the iron that bound his body. Into Oerhe he sank, his ability to sense spirit suddenly restored as his energy separated from the iron bindings and bit that held his body.
Below him he could feel the great wide river of spirit that slowly wound northeast. He could feel it already reaching to him, plucking at his essence, eager to nibble pieces of him away and carry them to an unknown destination.
He sank further into the depths of Oerhe, knuckle by knuckle, reach by reach, sliding away from his body, away from Kreggen and his deputies, into the bedrock of Symea.
“Kelc.” Micah’s voice seemed to radiate within him. “You are in danger beyond your death.”
“Micah,” Kelc responded, in thought or feeling rather than words. “Where are you? Do you have Shy with you?”
“We are in Reman now. I killed your horse thinking that it would slow them, but it hastened them instead,” Micah said. “I led your sister to Reman, to safety. But you…You are in danger. The warrior with you, Tasher, your sister says, he is a vulghast. A beastly dead.”
Kelc absorbed the idea that Shaia was safe while Micah’s warning arrived, feeling warmth and contentment with the idea that his death secured her freedom.
“Kelc. He’s a vulghast!”
“Micah,” Kelc responded, his feelings laced with despondent agitation, “whatever a vulghast is matters less by the moment. I achieved what I set out to do. You tried to help. You’re free and Shy is free…”
“You won’t die, fellow. You will be absorbed, your spirit conquered and claimed and used by this Tasher to hunt others.” Nothing followed for a time. “Kelc,” Micah began again, “the vulghast, Tasher, will use your spirit to hunt and capture your sister. If he does, he’ll possess her unique ability to string spirit to those around her. He’ll absorb spirit after spirit until-- He’ll have power like a god. And you’ll be at the heart of it. His teacher, after a fashion, because you know how to control spirit like no one I’ve ever seen. You can’t let him obtain both yours and your sister’s ability.”
“Damn it all, Micah, what is a vulghast?” The idea that this parade of misfortune could continue agitated Kelc to no end. No matter what happened, his family seemed to repeatedly bear the weight of Symea’s troubles.
“A vulghast is a man, or used to be, much like a vampire, like me. While a vampire trades his living spirit for an immortal shell, vulghasts trade all of the souls they consume, the souls of those they kill, for their ability. They gain the skills and innate abilities of those they kill, ultimately offering the souls of their victims, and themselves, to some greater demon.” Micah’s words arrived with a fearful overtone. “They live no longer than they might have, but they gain the knowledge and ability of those they dominate. Tasher could sense a powerful presence— Maybe he thought it was your brother. He may not know now that you are the power he sensed, but he will certainly claim you once they rend you and then he will have your ability. With that and his insatiable appetite, he will conquer and kill, and not only in your lands. He will come to Reman. Vulghasts are killed here. They are unable to keep the rapacity of the hunger for spirits at bay without great care. But were one to suddenly possess your command of spirit… He would dominate Reman. He could become immortal. Such a creature cannot be permitted to survive, my friend. It cannot.”
“Come kill him, then,” Kelc answered, angry. “Come and tear him…”
“I cannot. Vulghasts are bane to the dead. Living priests destroy them in Reman. Those of Talvo can raise their silver hammers and call forth the fire of the gods that blasts these vulghasts into ash, so malevolent and singular of purpose are such creatures. I would simply fuel his desires, as you will, once dead.”
“How in all the Hells am I supposed to overcome him then. My body is imprisoned, my spirit encumbered by iron.”
“Only turned iron absorbs free spirit, fellow. Perhaps that will help you.”
“Turned iron?”
“Iron that is specially forged to draw spirit. I grow weak,” Micah’s words announced, their tenacity reflecting the statement. “Your sister is safe in Reman. Do what you can. Now go.”
Kelc’s spirit catapulted straight upward, passing through soli
d rock, the sense of Oerhe’s depths straining through him.
No sooner did he begin his ascent than his eyes shot open and he gasped for air, returning life to his inanimate body. “Gah!” he gasped, sucking air into his lungs past the bit between his teeth.
“You’re back then,” Kreggen said, a frown growing on his face. Kelc labored to breathe. “I’d thought you might have taken your spirit and fled somehow. Father said your spirit far exceeded your body.” Kreggen looked away northwest, toward his childhood home. “He said it several times actually. Never where you could hear it. At first I thought it a vexing comment, but now I think he meant it with earnest respect.”
Kreg reached over to his younger brother and jerked the bit strap from over his head and removed the iron bar from Kelc’s mouth.
Kelc rolled onto his stomach and coughed, spitting the bitter taint of the black iron into the snow.
“Brother,” Kreggen said pointedly, as if oblivious to Kelc’s suffering. “There is one part of this whole mad caper that I have yet to understand. And I want you to tell me the truth, younger brother. I will not bear ill will towards you at this point. You must pay a price I cannot fathom. Just tell me and know that I am the one person, of all that yet live, that can understand your answer.”
Kelc recovered slowly, forcing his body to calm down, Kreg’s words drawing his interest.
“What?” he whispered before rubbing snow on his tongue and spitting again.
“Just tell me why,” Kreggen said, pausing in order to clamp his mouth shut for a moment, jaw muscles twitching in his cheeks while he exhaled through his nose. His eyes threatened to tear up, the extra moisture creating additional pinpoints light, reflecting the nearby camp fire. “Why did you kill mother?”
Kelc watched his brother only long enough to realize that he was serious. Then his eyes fell to his own hands, wrapped in iron where they rested in his lap. Why did you kill mother? The question stunned him. Mother. Her face swept into his thoughts, arriving out of the murky depths of his memories to offer a weak smile beneath her strong compassionate eyes.
“I didn’t.” He whispered the answer at first, speaking as much to the remembrance of his mother as to Kreggen. “I didn’t. When we left,” he said, his breath falling short as his chest constricted. He looked at his older brother. “When we left she yet lived. So far as I know, she still does.”
The older of the two only shook his head. “She’s dead. I have seen her remains. She…” He stopped, his grey eyes looking past his brother. “She was cut nearly in half.”
Kelc fell onto his back, taking in a sky rumored to house gods. Clouds blotted large parts of the starlit expanse, leaving only darkness overhead, save for a few patches of stars that shone dimly from their celestial perches.
“How?”
“How what? I told you, she was…”
“How did you see her remains?” Kelc pulled a deep breath, trying to force some of the tension from his chest. “You were east of us the entire time and never near our house, at least not where I could tell. How did you ever see her after I left?” He frowned. After I left, he thought, weighing whether he should have done so. Or should I have brought her with us?
“Her body was brought to me,” Kreggen answered mechanically. “Someone needed to verify it was her and perform the rending.”
“Rending?” Kelc snapped. “Did you do it? Touch the greeching rods to our own mother and drive her spirit from her body…”
“Kelc, I had to, but…”
“Damn you, Kreg. Don’t you…”
“Kelc,” he growled, “it did nothing. Nothing. I touched it to her but there was no...” He stopped, his expression drawn back in fright.
“You can feel it,” Kelc began to say before dropping his voice to a whisper. “You can greeching feel spirit. Hells, Kreg, when in all the Hells were you going to tell me that you can feel them, that you can wield the…”
“I can’t wield anything,” Kreg interrupted, his eyes searching around him to make sure no one heard them. “Not like that. I can tell when things are going on. Okay, yes, I can sense that.” He shook his head slowly. “But what you can do? I can feel that it is happening but I could never do it. I feel the power of it and it makes my skin crawl, Kelc. I can’t…no.” He wrung his hands together. “I’ve always been able to feel a rending and this time…someone already-- There was nothing. She’d already gone. Fled.”
“Her spirit fled,” Kelc repeated, the words echoing through him as off key as a wailing widow. As if a bur hung up in the delicate fabric of his mind, he suddenly felt as if the answer lay just before him yet he couldn’t figure it. He shook his head once as if he might rattle the answer loose. “Her spirit fled.”
Kreg nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts.
“Who is the coroner now? Without me, you or father, who took up undertaking?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even wondered.”
“Well who brought the body to you?”
Kreggen glanced over his shoulder. “Tasher did. We separated, each of us, and searched the land looking for signs of the vampire you eventually met—Travelers spoke of getting attacked and having women among their numbers taken and tortured. So Tasher went back and ran into Redven Faldson, the farrier—Guess he went out to check the shoes on our team-- and he said things weren’t right at our house. Tasher rode through and found mother and father.”
“Did he take longer than he should have to return to you?” Kelc asked, his stomach turning. “Did it seem like he took too long?”
“He said he needed time to check the entire area for practitioners… How did you know?”
Kelc raised his hands, chain clinking behind them and pressed on each side of his head, a dull throb forming there as his anger rose. Should I even tell him what I think, he wondered. Why, he asked himself. Why would it matter if mother were a sacrifice in this mess? Kreg is going to sacrifice me. “No reason, Kreg. I’m still going to be executed at dawn?”
Kreggen nodded first, narrowing his eyes at his younger brother. “Yeah.”
“An iron rod through the chest and then someone will cut my head off?”
“Kelc…” Kreggen shook his head slowly. “Let’s not…”
“Promise me something.” Kelc’s voice commanded his older brother’s attention. Kreggen nodded. “Make sure Tasher is the one doing these things to me.”
“Jista is supposed to drive the rod and…I am the one to…”
“Kreg, you are the greeching Territorial Warden. You are in charge. I plan on cursing whatever sorry skeesh-eating imbecile takes part in my murder.” His eyes blazed. “I cannot change tomorrow, but my spirit will not stop. I will not stop. Shaia showed me how, I think. I will come back in whatever way I must. And I do not want you on the other end of my hatred.”
Kreggen nodded after a few moments of thought. “Father said your spirit was greater than your body. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing you need to know,” Kelc answered, his face flushed red with anger.
I’m not telling you about Tasher, he thought. The man rode our mother down and consumed her soul. Kelc had felt it, felt his own mother’s spirit in the former warden just before the man, or vulghast as Micah called him, had jerked his essence away from Kelc’s senses.
Kreggen said nothing. He stood up and plucked the leather strap with the iron bit from the ground, fumbling with it for a moment before he reached over Kelc’s head. “Do whatever you can, younger brother. I can do nothing more.”
A drop of water splashed on Kelc’s forehead, but Kreggen turned and marched away before allowing his tears to be seen, hardly looking back to see his brother’s reaction to the bit in his mouth.
It tasted terrible, bitter and musty, but Kelc’s mind raced. Kreggen had replaced the iron bit with one of stiff leather. It did nothing to hinder his mind.
Do whatever I can, he thought, thankful for the simple but needed gift. Hells and blood! What can I greeching do?<
br />
The fire died completely, the flames falling until they only occasionally rose from an ember as it cracked into smaller pieces, the insides flaring red with fire for only moments before they, too, dimmed, leaving Kelc in almost total darkness.
The cold winter night bit at his skin but he paid it no heed. His skin would have little enough value come dawn.
He looked to the eastern horizon but only the black of night dwelt there, heavy clouds blotting the stars from the sky.
Damn it all, he thought, as a few things slowly made more and more sense to him. Tasher never faced me. On the day when the deputies tested me at the house, in Wemmerton, when they captured me…never. Because he is this greeching vulghast! He knows I’ll know, or he fears I can do something about it. He always had Pyter or Jista—even my own brother— come and get me.
And he can sense me, Kelc realized. He could have tracked me to the Hells after he caught Mother and…consumed her. Kelc’s face flushed as he thought about it: Tasher hunting his mother down in the plains and ripping her spirit from her dead body while it lay bloody in the snow, cloven nearly in half.
“Keagh!” he growled through the leather bit, wishing he could just deal with the man right then. His eyes shaded purple and he searched for spirit, but the iron bands on his hands muted his sight to only a few knuckles beyond his flesh, drawing his effort to a halt. “Hells!”
He raised his hands before his eyes as he let his spirit sense fade, watching the aura of spirit get drawn into the iron. He clenched his jaw, driving his teeth into the leather bit in his mouth, forcing bitter saliva to ooze from it.
Kelc let his anger cool, suddenly reminding himself that his emotions resulted in his defeat. Every time he’d ever gotten angry at his father and attacked, he ended up on the ground getting kicked and beaten.
So Tasher has wanted me and Shaia all along, Kelc thought. He wants to steal our souls and use our power. No wonder he speaks of invading Reman. He could be untouchable. He could know every man’s heart and wield the spirit around him… Kelc snorted. Even Tasher, a demon-possessed vulghast, would likely know better than Kelc how to use his power. And he’d use it to capture Shy, Micah said.
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 39
