Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  Adria closed her eyes and told herself to relax. She could worry about her powers, the implications of mass resurrection, and her new church position tomorrow. For now, she only needed to…

  She awoke to a loud knocking on the door. Devin swore as he rushed toward it, futilely trying to make it cease before it woke her.

  “What?” he asked as he flung the door open.

  “Em-emergency, Mister Soulkeeper,” a young voice said. “Ravencallers, they—they hung twelve children in the Tradeway Square. My Faithkeeper sent me to fetch Mindkeeper Adria. He was hoping she could help.”

  A novice, then, come for her aid. Adria sat up on the couch and swung her feet off.

  “How long ago?” she asked as she rubbed sleep from her eyes.

  “You don’t need to do this,” Devin said.

  “How long?”

  The novice, a young boy maybe ten or eleven years old, turned his attention her way.

  “Not but an hour ago, miss.”

  Adria pushed herself up onto unsteady feet. Anger stirred in the pit of her stomach. She’d crushed them at the cathedral, so in petty vengeance the monsters would slaughter children? Despicable. She couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t.

  “Hand me my coat,” she told Devin.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to rest longer?”

  Adria shushed him with a glare.

  “I’m going,” she said. “Are you coming with?”

  “Let me tell Jacaranda first,” he said.

  Once her coat was on, she stepped outside the house. The novice bowed low and glanced about nervously.

  “I’ll go tell them you’re coming,” he said before dashing off. Adria nodded absently. The pounding in her head had faded slightly, thank the Goddesses. She felt like she could think again. After a moment her brother exited with Tesmarie atop his shoulder.

  “Where’s Jacaranda?” she asked.

  “It’s been a rough day for her,” he said. “She doesn’t need to see this.”

  The square was about ten minutes by foot, so they began in earnest. Adria walked with her hands shoved into her pockets and her head bowed. The cold air bit at her skin. It was as if her insides had turned to ice, and been like that for hours. It didn’t take long before her every muscle ached. She was pushing herself too hard, but what choice did she have? If she could bring life back to murdered children, then she would do it, the toll be damned.

  “Sisters have mercy,” Devin whispered upon their arrival of the Tradeway Square.

  Adria calmly walked into the center of the hanging corpses. Everything about it was a blasphemy intended to hurt her very soul. Three lines of bodies hung from ropes tied to the nearby buildings. They were suspended by the wrists and throat, four in each line, to form an upside-down triangle. Their chests were flayed. Their innards were spilled out in skinny wet ropes that dangled mere inches above the bloodstained cobbles. They were children, just children, yet they’d suffered.

  Their souls called out to her, and she touched them one by one almost on reflex. The memories of their tortuous deaths overwhelmed her. She felt their pain, their fear, their trauma. What monsters would do such a thing?

  She need not ask, for as she stood within that triangle, she saw them emerge all across the surrounding rooftops.

  “Hello, Adria,” said a foxkin garbed in brown clothes and a long cloak. His red and orange fur swirled together in waves. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Adria mentally kicked herself. The novice who’d summoned them. She’d been so groggy she hadn’t noticed, but now the memory shone clearly in her mind. There’d been no soul shining within that novice’s skull. A dragon-sired creature, likely one of the shapeshifting foxkin. Adria clenched her hands into fists and cursed her carelessness.

  “And here I am,” she said, telling herself to remain calm. “Are you the one who sent the invite?”

  “Indeed. I am Gerroth, second in command of the Forgotten Children, and we have brought you here to answer for your crimes.”

  “Crimes?” she asked as she lifted her arms. “Here I stand amid the corpses of slaughtered children and you would talk to me of my crimes?”

  There were at least two dozen of the creatures, foxkin and avenria mostly. They wielded crossbows, each and every one of them, and they were all pointed her way. Her brother lifted his pistol, but she ordered him to stand down.

  “Don’t get yourself killed,” she told him. Her eyes remained focused on the foxkin in charge. “So here I am. What judgment would you hand down upon me?”

  She didn’t listen for his answer. The moment he spoke, she reached out in her mind for the most worthless of souls, of a being whose loss no man or woman would weep for and whose location she had gleaned from her awful foray into Vikar Thaddeus’s memories. With a call, the soul streaked through stone and sky faster than the blink of an eye to hover before her.

  “I have shed enough blood to last a hundred lifetimes,” Adria told the gathered monsters as Gerag Ellington’s soul hovered just above her palm. “But I will shed more if I must.”

  “We have seen your power,” Gerroth said. “It is mighty, but you cannot stop us all. Accept your death with grace. You are a power that should never have been unleashed upon the Cradle.”

  Adria had broken her connection with the children’s souls, but still the gruesome memories pricked at her like needles. Her raw mind surmounted its exhaustion with rage.

  “Have you?” she asked. Her own voice surprised her. It was calm. Deathly. “Have you truly seen my power?”

  Crossbows bristled. Fingers tightened on triggers. She could sense Devin preparing to defend her, but she would not allow him to risk his life. These monsters, these vicious beings, had no idea whom they threatened.

  “Not yet,” she whispered.

  Adria clutched Gerag’s soul in her curled fingers, and before a single bolt might fly, she ripped the shining beacon of light and memories in half.

  The explosion rocked through the square. It struck as a physical wave first, knocking the air from Adria’s lungs and sending the few bolts that did fire veering off course. That initial hit was but the prelude. A second wave followed as Gerag’s memories exploded outward in a rainbow fog. Adria felt it wash over her like fire. His memories, his emotions, they leaked and swirled without reason or order. It was pure chaos, and it warped the very physical blocks of reality.

  The stone cobbles became sandy beaches, wood floors, and stretches of grass to fit the essence that floated over it. Devin laughed as something terribly humorous assaulted him. Other creatures sobbed, screamed, or staggered about in dazed confusion. The sky above filled half with stars, the other half with daylight, and it constantly switched between the two as the soul essence rolled outward.

  Adria stood within this center, and she felt the unharnessed power begging to be used. All that had been Gerag—a wretched, lustful man prone to abuse and torture—was now scattered dust and starlight. There would be no permanence to him beyond the memories of others who knew him.

  Good, she thought. May your wretched existence be forgotten.

  The shimmering vortex extended hundreds of feet in all directions. Adria could sense the lives of every single creature within its power, be they human or dragon-sired. They were shadows cast across a field of light to her changed eyes. One by one she found those dragon-sired, those horrible monsters who had tortured and maimed innocent children, and she crushed them. She tore them. She ripped apart their hearts within their chests and shattered bones without a single bruise left upon their skin. They died, helpless, confused, and lost amid a sea of memories that were not theirs.

  No mercy. No forgiveness. Every last dragon-sired would die. Adria’s exhausted mind raged against the hollowness of their lives, of the deaths they had caused, of the field of corpses she had prayed over one by one at the cathedral. If only the Cradle could return to how it was. If only Londheim could be the sleepy city of shadows and corridors, and she a simple Mindkeeper
of a small church tucked into the corner of humble Low Dock. As the essence of the broken soul collected inside her, she felt the very powers of creation at her fingertips, but she did not create, only destroy.

  The colors passed, the emotions faded, and a shocked calm fell upon the now silent square.

  “Adria?”

  She turned to face her brother, and saw the crestfallen horror that had overtaken him. Her heart seized in her chest.

  The dragon-sired. She’d killed them.

  All of them.

  Every last one.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Tesmarie’s body lay perfectly still in Devin’s hands. No breath. No flutter of wings. Tears trickled down Devin’s face, but his voice remained completely flat.

  “Such power,” he said. “Yet we seem to only destroy.”

  “Please, Devin,” she said. “I didn’t know. I just… I was protecting us. All of us. And now that they’re gone, these children, I can save them, too…”

  Goddesses help her, his eyes, she could not look into his eyes. She recognized that pain. That brokenness.

  “And what of her?” he asked. “What of Tes?”

  Adria looked upon that tiny little body, but her eyes saw only vacant gray emptiness where there should have been a soul. These creatures, they weren’t like humans. Even if she mended her broken bones and reknit her shredded organs, she didn’t know how to reignite the spark of life. Still, she had to try. She outstretched her hand, and without need of praying the 36th Devotion, she harnessed the starlight power inside her to undo the damage to the little faery’s body. The physical form molded at her touch, but it was as she feared. Death had settled over her being. Her sparkling life was gone.

  “I’m so sorry, Devin. I can’t bring her back.”

  Let a hundred blades fall upon her neck. Let a million birds peck at her flesh. Adria would prefer anything, anything, to the look of hurt and betrayal her dear brother gave her then.

  “I understand,” he said, but did he really?

  He left her there, amid the triangle of hanging bodies, warped ground, and mutilated walls. Only the stars above did not judge her, and she flung the children’s souls to them, unable to summon the strength to restore life to their bodies.

  Unable, or unwilling. She didn’t know. She was too tired and broken to care.

  CHAPTER 42

  Devin carried Tesmarie’s body as he would a child’s, if a child could ever be so small. If people spoke, he did not hear their voices. He barely tracked where he walked, but he trusted himself to arrive there eventually. Londheim was his home. His feet would know the way.

  I’m sorry, Devin. I can’t bring her back.

  Tesmarie had once told him that their kind buried the dead instead of burning, but where was appropriate for one such as her? No human graveyard was worthy of her. Besides, those grounds were still viewed as places of shame. Tesmarie deserved better. He thought to bring her to Belvua so the dragon-sired creatures could bury her with the proper rituals and respect, but would they even accept her? She had not been one of them. She had fought to protect those she considered friends.

  And yet, it had been one of those friends that killed her.

  “You should have stayed in your forest,” Devin said, and he wiped tears from his face with his shoulder. “Damn it, you should have stayed.”

  At last he met his destination. The crossroad oak was a creature of magic and wonder in the center of a human city. It had been a place of joy and beauty, where he’d climbed its limbs as a child and laughed as Tommy announced his appointment as a Wise while bouncing up and down atop a blanket he’d brought for their impromptu picnic.

  Tommy. He should be here, Devin thought, but that would mean carrying Tesmarie to find him. That journey felt a million miles too far. No, he would have to tell Tommy of where he marked her grave, and together they could mourn again for the loss. For now, the burial was at hand. Devin closed the distance between him and the crossroad oak, only for a new wave of sadness to pass over him.

  The ancient tree lay on its side, its trunk clearly hacked at by a multitude of axes. A strange blue sap covered the grass and stump, its appearance disturbingly similar to blood. Whatever leaf-creatures had lived upon its branches were long gone. Toppled and naked, the tree seemed so much smaller than before, and so much less wondrous.

  “I’m sorry, Tes,” Devin whispered. “You deserved to have its beauty bloom above you every morning.”

  He gently placed her atop the grass and began to dig with his bare hands. The earth was soft around the many roots, and he needed only a small grave to bury her. Once finished, he laid her into it. Her body was stiff, and while her skin had resembled onyx while alive, it seemed she had fully transformed upon her death. So beautiful. So still.

  “Who am I to pray to?” Devin asked upon his knees to the empty night. “What fate awaits a soulless creature born of dragons? Will you abandon her, Sisters? Will you reject her memory as if she were unworthy of you?”

  Devin pushed the dirt over the grave, and he shed tears upon its surface.

  “What of you, dragons?” he seethed. “Will you keep her memory for the millennia to come? What solace is there in your crawling mountains and black water? Take her, you bastards. Come take her, hold her, pray over her, because I can’t. I can’t. Goddesses help me, I can’t.”

  He longed for Jacaranda to hold him. He wished for a light-hearted quip from Tommy to ensure him brighter days were ahead. Devin didn’t see them. All he saw was an unmarked grave, a fallen oak, and a city huddled in fear. What rituals were appropriate for an onyx faery? What prayers might her family and friends have given if she’d not been exiled? Devin could only offer his memories. Of the lives she’d saved. Of the joy she’d found playing with children in the market. Of the glimpse into a wondrous world where time flowed like honey and the flap of a butterfly wing took longer than a heartbeat.

  “What are we doing?” Devin asked. He leaned back and stared into nowhere with blurry vision. “What is even happening to us? I don’t want this world anymore, Sisters. Please help us. I’m scared. I don’t know what fate awaits Jacaranda. I don’t know what my sister is becoming. Please, save us from this violence. I don’t… I don’t know what path to walk. I don’t know if I have faith left to pray, for my only prayers are apologies for my broken faith.”

  His eyes closed, and he felt so empty, so cold.

  “Alma of the Beloved Dawn,” he whispered. It was desperation that guided him. He didn’t need miracles. He didn’t need the power to shake the world. He merely wanted to feel like somewhere out there, in a perfect place so opposite to their own, that a being of love and wisdom felt sympathy for his pain. “Do you hear me? Lyra of the Beloved Sun, do you hear me? Anwyn of the Beloved Moon, please, hear me. We need you, now, more than ever. I need you. Do you weep alongside me? Or am I alone?”

  “Does it matter if they hear if they do not act?” asked a voice from his nightmares. Devin slowly rose to his feet and blinked away his lingering tears. His hand shifted to the pistol holstered at his hip, not that he would have a chance to use it. Janus sat atop the crumpled trunk of the crossroad oak, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting atop his fists. His face was passive as stone, and his green eyes betrayed nothing of the thoughts swirling behind them.

  “Why are you here?” Devin asked. “Am I not miserable enough?”

  Still nothing, not the slightest hint of emotion on that cold face.

  “Truly? I came to kill you, Soulkeeper. Not out of malice toward you, I must admit. It’s your sister. I’m forbidden from harming her, but you, well…” He hopped down from the trunk. “Your death would at least cause her some distress.”

  Devin took a step back and drew his sword. He tried to muster the energy to fight, to get his blood pounding and his muscles loose, but he felt so drained, so empty. Did he have any real chance of defeating Janus one on one?

  “Get on with it then,” he said. “I
t’s been a long night, and I’d rather not spend more of it listening to your prattle.”

  But it seemed Janus had no heart for fighting, either. Instead he knelt over Tesmarie’s freshly dug grave, and he softly brushed his fingertips across the dark earth.

  “You wept for her,” he said, his eyes downcast. “You prayed for her. I never thought humanity capable of such things. We would always be monsters, or at best, curious pets.” He let out a long sigh. “I warned her, you know. I told her that living among humans would lead to her death, and so it came to pass. Your sister is an abomination, Soulkeeper. Perhaps now your eyes have opened to that truth.”

  “Yet you made her this way,” Devin said.

  “I followed orders. That’s something I think you could understand.”

  His hand sank into the earth. The soil warped and bent by his magic. Gently he lifted Tesmarie’s corpse from the grave, the dirt and grass shifting so it became an ornate oak coffin lined with silver and decorated with jade. He tucked it underneath his arm and turned with a flourish of his long black coat.

  “Where are you taking her?” Devin asked.

  A half smile pulled at Janus’s lips as he glanced over his shoulder. Finally his passive mask faltered, and when he spoke, his voice shook with rage.

  “You asked if the dragons would take her and cherish her memory for a millennia,” he said. “I go to do the same.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Janus stood before the enormous mouth of the living mountain and waited with his fingers drumming the top of Tesmarie’s coffin. Each time, the material of his fingers shifted between various stones and metals. He kept his jaw locked shut. If he weren’t careful, he might say something he’d deeply regret when Viciss emerged.

  “The sun has barely set,” the dragon demigod said when he finally stepped out from a crack between the enormous obsidian teeth. For a brief moment Janus saw him in a vaguely human form before his eyes adjusted, and he saw his true swirling nature of stars and shadow. “Why do you come to me?”