Kalun replied, as if reciting the stanzas of a dark invocation.A thing foul and starving.
“Hold tight to me,” she commanded the brothers just as a shrieking wind blasted through the tent, carrying with it the rot of the grave and a touch so alien and strange, her flesh walked across her bones in recoil. The strength of the maelstrom tore part of the tent away from its lattice frame. The center supports creaked in protest but held in place even as the felt covering peeled back like the hide off a butchered animal. The shadows of panicked horses raced past the tent, chased by men surprised by a sudden freakish storm.
Never before had Siora felt something so abjectly vile, so abyssal and malevolent, as if the black of nightmares had formed a mouth and stretched wide around the tent, ready to tear it apart with merciless teeth and devour the pieces.
Soldiers yelled and cursed, chaos erupting as the howling gust blew over the lit brazier, sending a shower of embers to land on the one remaining swath of tent wall not yet torn away. The hiss and whoosh of felt catching fire sent more men scurrying in every direction, bellowing for water or knocking over the contorted lattice so they could stamp out the flames licking the fabric. Lamps swung wildly on chains still hanging from the slender spoke-wheel joists, the oil inside their high-sided bowls sloshing threateningly close to the bowls’ rims.
A chorus of voices shouted for Zaredis to get out of the tent. Heignored them, his attention solely on Kalun while he nearly broke Siora’s arm in an ever-tightening grip. “Brother,” he yelled above the wind howl, and his shout was no more than a whisper. Kalun’s fading apparition solidified, became less transparent, strengthened by the power of his name uttered by his twin.
A new voice cracked across the mayhem in the tent, slicing through the roar of noise like a blade. One word in a language Siora didn’t know, followed by a flare of blinding green light. The fetid wind instantly died as if cut off mid-rush with the slam of a door. Siora gasped, her own thoughts echoing the many voices raised in relief and confusion.
“What the fuck was that?” chorused through what was left of the general’s tent as soldiers stared around them and at each other. More tried to right the furniture tossed about like twigs and gather up the armor flung off their stands as if it were leaves in a whirlwind. Siora’s left hand and right arm were numb thanks to the twins’ touch, living and dead. Kalun still stood before her, undevoured and visible to his relieved brother.
Gharek no longer held the braced stance. Instead he slumped, swaying on his feet as if exhausted. Rivulets of sweat painted silvery lines from his temple to his jaw.
“Are you well, lord?” she asked him. Something glittered in his weary gaze, but he only nodded in reply.
A figure entered her field of vision, circling around Gharek with only a slight pause before halting in front of Zaredis. Like the general, this man would turn heads in a crowd, but for very different reasons. He carried himself proudly, even in the homespun sleeveless tunic and trousers he wore. That wasn’t what held Siora’s attention. Many men of every station walked proudly.
This new person sported tattoos the same way wealthy women wore their jewelry; generously, flamboyantly, and for all to see. He was a living mural of symbols and scenery, inked into his skin in rainbows of color, some vivid, others faded. They decorated his arms from wrist to shoulder. In some places she caught a glimpse of telltale shimmers and glows along those designs that looked suspiciously like sigils or wards. More of them encircled his throat and climbed up his neck to his chin while others peeked out from the neckline of his tunic, edging his collarbones. One followed the line of his jaw to partially cover one cheek, where it stopped at the corner of his eye.
His elaborate markings were emphasized by his strange coloration or lack of it. Pale hair, bleached eyebrows, and skin the color of milk. He was striking and unhandsome at the same time, and if the shimmer of those tattooed sigils hadn’t given it away, she’d guess he was either a priest or a sorcerer or both.
Zaredis practically shouted his name. He still didn’t let go of Siora’s arm. “Rurian! Thank the gods for your magic. You chased off whatever demon paid us a visit.” He frowned at the havoc around him.
“I think I took it by surprise,” Rurian replied. He had a pleasant voice, calm and accented in a way that the words were broad and flowed into one another, unlike the clipped patterns of a Kraelian’s speech.
“What was it?”
Rurian shrugged, his pale eyes flitting back and forth between Zaredis, Siora, and Kalun. “I don’t know. A demon as you said maybe, but it seeks the dead.” He turned his head to stare at Gharek for a moment. “And even a few of the living.” He continuedstaring at Gharek, who stared back as Rurian addressed Zaredis. “This is the one you were hunting?”
“Yes.” Zaredis leveled a threatening scowl on Gharek. “Were you responsible for what happened here?”
Gharek arched an eyebrow. “Had I such power, I wouldn’t be here, bound before you.”
Siora tried to shake free of Zaredis’s death grip. He finally let her go with the warning not to do the same with Kalun. She shook her arm, grateful for the return of feeling, certain she’d have a chain of bruises mottling her skin before the evening was done.
Rurian continued to watch Gharek. “I believe he’s telling the truth, general. Whatever passed through here did so of its own free will. A hunter ancient and powerful.”
Siora wrapped both her hands around Kalun’s when his voice echoed low and despairing in her mind.I cannot fight such a creature. Even with your and my brother’s aid, I barely held on.
Zaredis paced, ignoring the bustling activity around him as people continued to restore the tent, erecting the lattice walls, re-covering them with the felt that had been torn away and tossed in the grass. “What does it want with my brother?”
Siora answered this time. She, more than this sorcerer, had seen firsthand what this thing was doing. “It wants all the dead, not just Kalun. I’ve seen what it wrought in other places nearby.” She shivered at the memory of the screaming faces melded into the wall of the abandoned barn’s provender room. “I think it dwells in Mi... the cursed city.” It seemed especially unwise now to say Midrigar’s name out loud.
“That’s a day’s ride from here.”
She had a feeling, given enough time and nothing to stop thething from expanding its hunting grounds, an ocean wouldn’t protect the dead, much less a day’s ride on horseback. “I don’t think distance matters to it. If it grows stronger from eating the dead, then its reach grows longer as well.” The combined weight of both Zaredis’s and Rurian’s regard rested heavy on her shoulders, not to mention Gharek’s, which she was used to but which was no less weighty.
“You found a witch,” the sorcerer said.
Siora stiffened, her hand tightening on Kalun’s. “I’m a shade speaker, not a witch. I can see and talk to the dead. Nothing more.” Judging by Rurian’s expression, the difference was indistinguishable.
“They aren’t sorcerers,” Zaredis explained. “Not as the Empire would define them. Most are charlatans. The few that aren’t, work more like soothsayers. They don’t possess magic.” Her heartbeat accelerated when he stepped closer to her, and she observed, alarmed, the way he caressed the hilt of the dagger he still held. Surely he wouldn’t harm her. If not for her, he would lose the connection with his brother. Such practical reason did nothing to slow her heartbeat. “You, however, just did much more than chat with my brother. You stopped our visitor from taking him. How?”
Kalun echoed him.Yes, how?
Should she lie and present her guess as fact? Built on some knowledge she held from past experience? The thought came and went. Every instinct she possessed warned that neither Zaredis nor his mage would believe her.