“It started when someone began stealing the bodies of our dead,” the man replied. Jair watched closely as the man spoke. At first glance, he’d taken the stranger for being in his middle years, but as Jair looked more carefully, he saw that hard work and deprivation had etched the man’s face more than time, and he revised his estimate of the visitor’s age downward by twenty seasons. The boy, whom Jair guessed to be twelve or thirteen summers old, seemed to shrink into himself as if wishing to disappear, or to be completely overlooked.
Something’s scared both of them badly
, Jair thought.
That’s the only thing that would bring them here
.
“A week ago, someone or something tore up our burying ground. They dug up the bodies and dragged them off.”
“Was there anything left behind, like sacrificed animals or rune markings?” Talwyn asked, leaning forward with interest.
The man looked surprised. “No, m’lady. Nothing at all, not even tracks. We thought it might be looters, but what little was buried with the bodies was left in the graves. Our village is too poor to bury anything of value with the dead, when the living make do with little.”
Talwyn nodded, and her smile gave the man courage to continue. “A few nights after that, two of the shepherds came screaming back to town in the middle of the night. They’d been out in the fields since before the grave robbings, and no one had been out to tell them about it. Swore they’d seen dead folks walking out along the ridge, and
named them, all the ones taken from the burying ground. Scared nearly out of their minds they were, and these aren’t children. These are young men who have fought off wolves and robbers.”
“The dead were walking? Where were they going?” Jair watched the men as they spoke, but nothing in their manner seemed false. Like Talwyn, he was riveted by their story.
The man gave a bitter chuckle. “The shepherds didn’t stick around, or follow. They lit out of there as soon as they realized what they’d seen. Said the dead were headed north, and that they moved sluggishly, as if pulled along by strings instead of free to move on their own.”
“Is that why you came here? To ask for help in binding your dead to their cairns?” Talwyn asked gently.
Their visitor shook his head. “No, m’lady. While I would not like to see them disturbed, the dead are dead. I wouldn’t risk the living to bring them back, if they’ve taken to wandering, so long as they leave us in peace.” His voice caught. “But that’s not the worst of it. Last night, it was like madness struck our little village. M’lady, you’ll think we’re awful people, but we’re just a small village of herders and farmers, scraping out a living and trying to pay our taxes. Even when Jared the Usurper—Crone take his soul,” the man said, spitting to the side to ward off evil, “took the throne, we didn’t run away, the way so many did. We hunkered down and let the worst of it pass us by. But we’re paying for it now, m’lady, because something’s found us. Something evil.”
“You said that madness struck. What do you mean?” Talwyn’s voice was soothing, and Jair knew that its calming effect was enhanced by her shaman’s magic.
The man shifted uncomfortably. He refused to meet her eyes. “Last night, ten people in our village were murdered. M’lady, there are only forty of us, just a few families. There warn’t no reason for it. Can’t blame strong drink, because the ones who have too much to drink on a regular basis slept through it all.” He shook his head, and dared to look up. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he had been among the grieving.
“In the space of two candlemarks, it was like a shadow fell over the village. Husbands and wives who had never quarreled took a hammer or a hatchet to each other. Parents who loved their children with all their breath wiped out their whole families. Brothers set on each other or on their parents. There’s no one untouched, no one who didn’t lose someone. And we can’t even bury the dead, for fear that they’ll be stolen away.”
At the word “shadow,” Jair and Talwyn exchanged a hurried glance. “Did anything unusual happen just before the murders?” Jair asked gently. “Anyone new visit the village or pass by? Any strange symbols or markings on the trees or rocks?”
The ragged man shook his head again. “No one’s been by our village in weeks. What with the talk of war, the traders don’t travel our way. It’s several days ride into the nearest real town of any size. We don’t have enough coin for the peddlers to make an effort to come to us, and there’s no inn or tavern nearby.” He thought for a moment.
“But there was one thing. A few days before the murders, the hedge witch in our village went raving mad. She’d been complaining of headaches that even her potions couldn’t set right, but no one else had them. When we found her, she had gouged out her eyes and was
slamming her head against a rock until she was bloody. She’d been clawing at her ears until they were practically torn from her head, and her nails were stripped down to the quick. All she’d say was that something wouldn’t stop calling her, wouldn’t stop humming in her head.”
“And where is she now?” Talwyn asked.
The man took a long breath. “Last night she got away from the ones who were watching over her. She ran into the fire and danced while she burned, and she used her magic to keep anyone from saving her. She didn’t want to be rescued. The last thing she said before she died was, ‘It stopped. I can’t hear them anymore.’ ”
Talwyn and Pevre stepped away to confer in low voices. Jair sat silently beside the man, completely at a loss for words. The boy clung to his father, hiding behind a mop of unruly dark hair that covered his face. His posture and actions made Jair think of a much younger child, one just Kenver’s age.
He’s seen horrors that would drive grown men out of their wits
, Jair thought.
Let him take his comfort where he can
.
After a few moments, Talwyn and Pevre returned. “I’ll visit your village and see if there’s anything I can do to help, although I have to warn you, I’m not sure I can set things right,” Talwyn said. She held up a hand to stave off the man’s protestations of gratitude.
“We’ll go tomorrow. I’m too spent to work the kind of magic such a visit requires. You and the boy may stay the night in our camp. You’ll be safe here.”
It was apparent to Jair that the man chafed at the delay, even as he realized the necessity. The stranger nodded in acquiescence. “As you wish, m’lady. We’re in your debt.”
Talwyn spoke to the guards in the language of the
Sworn, instructing them to make the strangers comfortable but to keep them under guard without implying that the visitors were prisoners. When the guards had shown the man and the boy out, Talwyn looked to Pevre and Jair.
“Once again, I have the feeling that our enemy across the sea isn’t waiting to bring the war to us,” Talwyn said. Jair could hear the fatigue in her voice, and he saw the tiredness that lined her face. “Even worse, they… or it… has the power to cause damage far behind the battlefields. And with all that power, whoever or whatever is behind this wants to free the Nachele to make it even worse.”
M
artris Drayke, the Summoner-King of Margolan, watched over the seer’s shoulder, giving rapt attention to the scene that was unfolding in a basin of still water. Beyral, one of the king’s rune scryers and far-seers, held her hands on either side of the basin, near but not touching the bowl. On the still surface of the water was an image of a battle being fought miles away, out on the Northern Sea. The fighting was beyond the acute eyesight of the most eagle-eyed scout, even armed with a small telescope. And so the king and two of his generals watched anxiously, breathing shallowly so as not to ripple the water with their breath.
“Fishermen can’t hold off an invading fleet for long,” General Senne murmured.
“Pashka and his people may be fishermen, but they know those waters like the inside of their own homes.” Ban Soterius was both a general and one of the king’s boyhood friends. He leaned in over the king’s shoulder. “Can Beyral make the image any sharper, Tris? I can barely see.”
Despite the gravity of the moment, the king hid a slight
smile. Soterius was one of a handful of trusted friends who still called him by his nickname. It was a fleeting reminder of the time, just over two years before, when Tris had been just a privileged second son with no aspirations to the throne, before coup and betrayal and war changed his destiny and the history of Margolan. “We can try,” Tris said, lending some of his own magic to amplify Beyral’s far-seeing.
The image sharpened and grew slightly larger. “Look there,” Senne said, reaching out to point and only barely stopping himself before he disturbed the water and might have lost the image. “Are those actually ships?”
Tris and Soterius bent to get a better look. “Some of them are,” Soterius said slowly, squinting to see better.
“But look at those ships, the ones on the right,” Tris said, feeling a chill go down his spine. “They look like hulks, as if someone hauled a wreck to the surface and made it float.”
Soterius met Tris’s eyes. “Could a summoner do that? I mean, you can call spirits back from the grave and make them solid. You have the power to raise the dead, even if Light mages don’t do such things. Can you raise ‘dead’ things like a ship hulk?”
Tris bit his lip. “Technically, yes. The wood in the ships was living at one time, so once it’s cut, even though it’s ‘dead,’ there is a thread of connection. That’s the tricky part with summoning. If you’re sloppy about how you cast a spell, in theory, you could get not only the ghost you’re trying to summon but all the dead animals, insects, and plants in the immediate area.”
“Are you telling me that Pashka’s men are fighting ghost ships?” Senne’s voice told Tris that the general was
struggling to make yet another leap of faith to believe his king. Tris knew that while Senne’s loyalty was absolute, the general wrestled to understand his liege’s magic.
“Afraid so.” As they watched, larger ships, carricks and caravels, entered the scene in the scrying bowl.
“Tolya’s privateers are sailing to the rescue,” Soterius murmured. His tone told Tris that Soterius might have accepted the privateers’ help, but he didn’t fully trust their allegiance.
“Look there!” Senne cried out, belatedly tempering his voice when he realized he had just yelled in the king’s ear. Tris and Soterius shifted their attention. “Those damn ghost ships are ramming the fishermen’s boats!”
The image in the scrying bowl was smaller than Tris would have liked, though holding even that size of an image required a large expenditure of power. But even in miniature, Tris could see a flotilla of wrecks and hulks with broken masts and shattered sides moving with impossible speed. No wind propelled them, yet they were moving quickly, and the small boats of the fishermen scrambled nimbly to avoid being run down. The bow of one of the ghost ships plowed into a small skiff, breaking it in two. Tris could see the tiny images of men throwing themselves to the side to escape being crushed by the hulk.
“Not just ramming,” Soterius said grimly. “Someone’s firing on Tolya’s and Pashka’s men from the ghost boats.” Just then, the image rippled again, as Tris concentrated his power to refocus the scrying on one of the ghost ships. He could hold that clarity for only a few seconds, but it was enough to show a skeletal crew aboard the boat sending very real arrows toward the fleet of defenders.
Tris had no idea what the fishermen and privateers made of the spectral invaders, but to their credit, both groups held their positions. As they watched, the privateers replaced regular arrows with flaming missiles, gambling that even the dead might flee from flames. The battle raged for the better part of a candlemark, with Tolya’s fire missiles scuttling a dozen of the wrecks. Pashka’s fishermen used the smaller size of their crafts to their advantage, attacking near the waterline with pikes and hooked blades fastened onto poles, sinking several more of the attackers’ ships. Where the hulks exposed their crews near the waterline, Pashka and his fishermen used their hooks to yank the skeletons into the water and bash them with the pikes.
The ghost ships pulled back, but before Senne and Soterius could exclaim in triumph, Tris saw the cause for the retreat and felt his heart thud. In the space vacated by the ghost ships, a small waterspout was beginning to form.
“Here’s hoping that our mages are paying attention,” Tris muttered under his breath. Even as he spoke, he saw their own fleet of fishing boats and privateer vessels also pull back, and then he saw the reason why. A wild wind rose out of nowhere, whipping toward the waterspout and buffeting it until it dissipated. Margolan’s motley fleet bobbed with the winds, but they did not flee.
“Are the attackers moving backward?” Soterius wondered aloud. They strained to see, but as they watched, the ghostly hulks began moving in reverse, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. Tris pointed to a disturbance in the surface of the ocean, a growing vortex that pulled the Temnottan hulks back to their grave beneath the sea.
“Their side raises a waterspout, and our side sinks a
whirlpool,” Senne said admiringly. The ghost ships’ skeletal crews remained in their positions, either stripped of reason or no longer afraid of death. The whirlpool widened, drawing more and more of the hulks into its maw. Margolan’s “navy” of fishermen and privateers reversed course sharply, maneuvering their own ships out of danger. Even at the distance of the scrying, they could see the crews dancing in celebration aboard their vessels as the last of the ghost ships sank into the whirlpool.