The swelter of a late afternoon drugged her into a torpor as they closed the distance between them and what was left of the old capital, Kraelag. She dozed in Gharek’s arms, waking when he nudged her shoulder and repeated her name. She blinked under the sun’s harsh light and rubbed her eyes. At some point during her nap, Gharek had rescued the book from her hands and tucked it out of sight.
They cut across a fallow field adjacent to the giant burn scar on the landscape. The acrid smell of smoke assaulted her nostrils long before she saw the stretch of scorched ground—still blackened after several seasons—that had once been the largest city in the Kraelian Empire. “Kraelag,” she said aloud.
“Even if I hadn’t seen it, I’d know we were close,” Gharek said. “The air smells burnt.” He guided the gelding toward the ruins and the overgrown avenue that led to where a double set of formidable walls with a quartet of majestic gates once surrounded the city. Nothing of either remained.
His voice took on an almost reverential tone, as if they rode toward a sacred place to pay respects. “I remember the first time I saw it after it was destroyed. It still glowed hot in spots and lit the night sky above it.”
He’d seen the aftermath; Siora had witnessed the actual destruction. “I saw the Savatar goddess burn Kraelag.” There was nobard skilled enough to capture the awful majesty of the fire goddess rising as a colossal pillar of flame surrounding the shape of a woman just before she immolated an entire city and most of an army in a matter of moments. “I remember watching her rise from the center of the city. Gigantic, enrobed in flame, tall as a mountain it seemed at the time. You don’t know how insignificant you truly are until you stand in the presence of a deity. The fire witch I mentioned? She was the goddess’s avatar. One of the Savatar chieftains was her lover.”
Gharek’s low whistle tickled the top of her head. “Of the lovers I’d take to my bed, the avatar of a goddess would be one of my last choices.”
“I don’t think she survived the possession.” Siora still thought of the fire witch on occasion. A woman possessing a stare that burned holes through a person. Old eyes in a young face and a mouth thinned with bitterness more often than not. Much like Siora’s current companion, and like him, she’d revealed a fleeting vulnerability—guilt and despair, briefly assuaged when Siora passed on a message of forgiveness to her from the ghost of a woman named Pell.
The gelding Suti suddenly snorted and pranced sideways as they climbed a short slope that dropped once more on the other side and opened onto an enormous swath of blackened field littered with mounds of charred wood and stone that had once been structures and walls, gates and homes. Here the stench of soot and ash grew choking, and Suti fought his rider’s control with increasing fervor.
Siora no longer paid attention to the remains of Kraelag, caught instead by the sight of a massive swarm of ghosts hovering over the burned fields, some shifting aimlessly in the wind like pale flagswhile others stood resolute and aware of their surroundings, their hollow-eyed gazes locked on the approaching riders.
Gharek cursed the gelding, muttering about the foolhardiness of buying unreliable nags from free traders.
“It isn’t his fault,” Siora said, holding tight to the saddle pommel as he steered the animal away from the burn field. Suti quieted, and Siora swept a hand toward the gathering wraiths she could see and Gharek could not. “For all that Domora is emptied of spirits, these lands surrounding Kraelag are not. If the wolf of the cursed city expands its reach this far, it will find a feast waiting for it. We stand on the shore of a sea of ghosts.”
As if her words opened a gate and released a dammed river, phantoms rushed toward them in torrents, spilling over and around them in an icy miasma that sent Suti into a bucking, rearing panic. The horse whinnied and tried to bolt.
“Gods damn it,” Gharek snarled, his breath floating in front of him in a chilled cloud. “Tell them to back off before I lose control of this fucking animal!”
She didn’t get the chance. The wave of wraiths retreated like an ebbing tide, though not far, and Suti settled down. Voices swelled in a cacophony of furious wails in Siora’s head. She clapped her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound.
Cries for help, pleas to be set free, demands for revenge, questions about loved ones, and worst of all, the frightened sobs of childish voices confused by their altered existence and calling out for their mothers or fathers.
Tears blinded her and she sobbed aloud. Gharek held her tight to him with one arm, himself a barrier against the battering of the hopeless and despairing dead.
“What are they saying?” His voice was a lifeline tossed to her. She grasped it and held on tight.
“Many things.” She gasped out her answer. “So many voices. Thousands of them. I can’t make sense of them all.”
Suti, shivering and snorting, half reared, and Siora nearly leapt from the saddle when Gharek bellowed, “Enough! Shut the fuck up, all of you!”
It must have looked truly bizarre to see a man on a skittish horse yelling at an empty field to be quiet in the saltiest terms, but the unorthodox response worked. The thunder of dead voices in Siora’s head went instantly quiet, and she swayed in her seat from the sudden dizziness it caused.
Gharek’s arm tightened around her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and after a moment was steady enough to focus her attention on the large ethereal crowd watching her. One wraith separated from the mass of others, floating closer, only stopping when Suti’s ears laid back flat and he pranced backward.
The phantasmic shape rippled ceaselessly, a waterfall of ethereal mist with the hint of a young face, though Siora couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.Have you come to free us, witch of the dead?
The question made every hair on Siora’s body stand straight up. She shook her head.I’m no witch, and though I can see you and talk to you, I don’t have the ability to free you from whatever chains you here. You must do it yourself.
The towering wave of desolation at her reply broke against her and nearly broke her. Their voices didn’t rise again to deafen her mind, but she drowned in their anguish. “I am so sorry,” she said aloud. “What is your name?” she asked the ghost.
We are all one name now, the spirit said, and all replied in unison.Forgotten.
The melancholy word worked its own sorcery, and the turbulent sea of sorrowing dead faded until it was just the flat plain and the haunted ash of a city’s remains.
Siora hugged Gharek’s muscled arm to where it pressed hard against her middle. “Thank you, Gharek. They’re gone.”
He didn’t let go of her. “Are you sure? No spirits still lingering for a bout of confession?”
“No. They don’t mean any harm. They aren’t like trap shadows. They’re lost, confused, caught between an awareness of their death but also still tied to the memories of lives lived in a certain place. This can happen when death is violent or sudden. It doesn’t help that the earth itself remembers and chains them here.”