Mortal Rites Read online

  Kalanath stepped forward and swung his staff at the child’s body. It passed through, making the form ripple with its motion but otherwise having no effect. At the same time, Dianthe drew her sword and thrust at it, but was forced to pull up sharply when she met no resistance and nearly skewered Alaric. Her eyes watering, Sienne snatched up her spellbook where it hung in its harness at her side and opened it to force.

  The child wailed again, and Sienne gritted her teeth and wiped tears out of her eyes. Taking two long strides to the side for a clearer shot, she read off the evocation force, feeling it burn like acid inside her mouth. As the last syllables left her lips, a bolt of magical energy blasted away from her at the creature. It struck the thing in the side. This time, its wail was one of pain and fury. It released Alaric and flew straight for Sienne.

  2

  She gabbled out force again, as quickly as she dared without ruining the spell. The magical energy hit the child full in the face. It staggered mid-swoop, but kept coming. Sienne screamed and dropped to the floor. It whooshed past her head, causing her hair to ruffle in the wake of its passing. She rolled and got to her feet. It had turned around and was headed for her again. Sienne spat out the hard-edged syllables of the evocation, but it was too fast, it would hit her before she finished the spell—

  A pearly light flared before her eyes, and the child slammed into Perrin’s shield and dissolved in a cloud of sparks. Breathing heavily, Sienne lowered her spellbook. “Thank you.”

  “That was a temporary solution,” Perrin said. “A phantasm cannot be stopped so easily.” He had his riffle of blessings out, but was scanning the room rather than looking through them.

  Sienne raced to Alaric’s side. The big man lay on his back, blinking up at the ceiling. “Are you hurt?” she asked, her heart in her throat.

  “Can’t breathe…easily…” Alaric rolled to his knees and paused there, panting like he’d run ten miles without stopping. “Like it…sucked the air…out of…my lungs.”

  “It returns!” Kalanath shouted. Sienne’s head snapped up. A knot of movement near the ladder slowly resolved into the floating figure of the child. Sienne opened her book and began reading off force. She wished she knew if the spell made any difference, or did any damage.

  The shield blessing popped like a soap bubble. “How do we kill it, Perrin?” Alaric called out, then coughed, a hacking dry sound that made Sienne’s chest ache. A force bolt shot away from her and struck the thing, making it scream again in anger.

  “We must disrupt its connection to the material world,” Perrin shouted over the screaming. “There will be a thing here—an object, or a piece of its body—”

  “How about the whole damned thing?” Dianthe cried out. She had the second chest open and was staring into it with a look of horror.

  Sienne backed toward her, not taking her eyes off the phantasm. Behind her, she heard the others gathered around the chest exclaiming, then Alaric was at her elbow, saying, “Perrin, shield us!”

  Sienne turned and ran for the chest as the phantasm once again exploded against Perrin’s new shield. “It is the last shield blessing,” Perrin said. Sienne put both hands on the edge of the chest to steady herself and bit back a horrified shriek. Tucked into the chest was the mummified body of a child, its knees drawn up beneath its chin.

  “Kitane’s eyes, it’s in here with us!” Dianthe shouted. Sienne looked up and saw the thing reforming within the shield, not five feet from her.

  “You have to burn the body!” Perrin exclaimed. Sienne whipped open her spellbook and gabbled out another evocation, this one burn. Her mouth felt raw, her tongue numb, but she managed not to tangle herself on the sharp syllables. A ray of blue fire shot away from her as she finished casting the spell, striking the tiny body and sending blue flames scattering across it.

  Something struck her in the back of the head, something cold and sharp-edged like a mouthful of needles. Instantly her throat and lungs were filled with frozen fire, numbing and burning at the same time, and she gasped for air and found nothing. She dropped to her knees so the blue flames were at eye level. Burn, she thought at them, willing them to spread, burn, and as if they could hear her thoughts, they went wild, consuming the small body until it looked like a funeral pyre.

  A wail shook the chamber, pain and anger warring with each other. Air rushed into Sienne’s lungs, cool and soothing. She coughed, sucked in air again, and sagged against the chest, heedless of the fire burning inches from her face. Hands dragged her away and helped her to sit upright. “Better?” Alaric said. She nodded. Her tongue felt swollen to three times its normal size, between the acid burn of her evocations and the freezing attack of the phantasm.

  She wiped blurry tears out of her eyes and blinked at the chest. “I thought,” she wheezed, “there were no such things as ghosts.”

  “Not as they are portrayed in popular literature, souls who are rejected by God and condemned to wander the earth,” Perrin said. “Most ghosts are summoned back from their eternal rest by necromancers wishing to avail themselves of the spirits’ knowledge. If a necromancer loses his or her control of the ghost, it becomes trapped in the material world, unable to return to the presence of God and unable to walk the world as it did in life. These are called phantasms.”

  “I’m starting to understand why the Lepporos never came back,” Dianthe said. “And what Penthea Lepporo’s mysterious illness actually was. Do you suppose it killed her here?”

  “I’m considering paying them a visit,” Alaric said darkly. He helped Sienne rise and steadied her when she wobbled. “They must have known what we’d find.”

  “Surely not,” Sienne protested. “What would be the point of sending us off to die? We hardly know them. And it’s been thirty years. Penthea’s son would have been a child when this happened.”

  “It nearly killed you, Sienne.”

  “I don’t see any point in looking for vengeance on someone who wasn’t at fault. This was entirely Penthea’s doing, assuming she was the necromancer.” Sienne gave his hand a squeeze and stepped away. “Let’s get these books upstairs and see if any of them have what we need.”

  Alaric grimaced, but climbed the ladder and shoved the fallen bookcase to one side. Sienne gathered up an armload of books and waited for him to move aside before climbing out one-handed. Her vision swam as she climbed, and her breathing felt labored, as if she had one of those chests strapped to her back. She held tight to each rung and tested her footholds carefully. It wouldn’t be much of a fall if she slipped, but that was small comfort.

  She clambered out of the hole, took a few steps into the room, and sank into one of the chairs, which groaned alarmingly under her weight. Setting her stack on the floor, she took the topmost book and leafed through it. “Ew. An anatomy book.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Dianthe said, dropping her books on the floor next to Sienne’s and sitting cross-legged beside her.

  “It is if it’s a guide to dismembering someone. Oh, how exciting, there’s a section on exsanguination. With diagrams.” She set the book aside and picked up the next one.

  “Look at this one,” Dianthe said, handing her a fat tome about twice the size of Sienne’s spellbook. “It’s in Sorjic.”

  Sienne flipped through it. “Looks like necromantic theory. I don’t see any rituals.”

  “I’ve found something,” Alaric said. “This contains a number of rituals for raising the dead, all of which include recipes for potions.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Perrin said. “The dead cannot imbibe, so cannot consume potions.”

  “Ointments, then. It’s very clear that they’re meant to be included in the rituals. Some of them specify varnwort. We should take a closer look at this later.” He tossed it to Sienne, who caught it and put it away in her pack.

  “We’re not going to tell Stefen Lepporo what we found, are we?” she asked. “And ruin his image of his mother?”

  “I do not think it is a good idea,” Ka
lanath said. “But we agreed to make the ruin safe for him to return. What can we say?”

  “That we cleared away a nest of wereboars, and it’s perfectly safe,” Alaric said, turning the pages of another book. “We’ll put the bookcases back, destroy the opening mechanism, and let Penthea’s memory rest. Besides, we don’t know it was her. It could have been any number of people.”

  “Who all had to be complicit in the cover-up,” Dianthe said. “I feel sorry for Stefen. He seemed like a nice man. Not like that old manservant whatever-his-name-was. In hindsight, he looked like he might have known the truth. He certainly went out of his way to dissuade Stefen from agreeing to our proposal.”

  “In which case, he’ll have to stay silent, or explain why he knows we’re lying,” Alaric said. “Perrin, is there any way to verify that there aren’t any more ghosts haunting this place?”

  “Phantasms, and yes,” Perrin said, “provided that Averran is willing to bless this place with his presence. I think I will make that request now. Please excuse me, I should find a central location from which to pray.” He handed his stack of books to Kalanath and left the room.

  “This one is different,” Kalanath said, holding up the top book from Perrin’s stack. “It is a diary.”

  “Perrin said he’d found a journal,” Sienne said. “May I see?”

  Kalanath handed the book to Sienne. “Well, that confirms it, Penthea was our necromancer,” Sienne said. “Her name’s inside the front cover, and it starts with a reference to trying a new ritual to summon a ghost. The first entry is dated about thirty-two years ago, and…” She skimmed through the pages. “The last one is three days before the Lepporos left the estate, and four days before Penthea’s death. I think we should read this carefully. That necromancer’s letters suggested she was researching ancient ritual, and this might be where she kept her notes.”

  “If we’re not going to tell Stefen the truth, what are we supposed to do with all these necromancy books?” Dianthe said.

  “Dump them into the basement before we seal it up,” Alaric said. “Now, this looks interesting. It’s not a real book.” He showed them what looked like a large book, its leather binding cracked with age. A ribbon bookmark dangled from between the pages. When Alaric tugged on it, they heard a click, and the cover of the book popped open. Alaric lifted it and revealed the book was actually a box, stuffed full of folded papers. “Looks like letters.”

  Kalanath took one and unfolded it. “The handwriting is too messy for me to read.” He handed it to Dianthe.

  “It’s from…I can’t make out the signature,” she said. “Looks like…he’s answering some question she has about a binding ritual.”

  “Binding?” Alaric exclaimed.

  “That’s all it says.”

  “This letter isn’t in the same handwriting,” Sienne said, unfolding another one. “It looks like Penthea shoved all her letters into this box.”

  “It’s getting late, and I want to be back in Fioretti before sunset,” Alaric said. “We’ll take these with us.”

  Sienne closed the book-box and put it into her pack with the other book and the journal. “Is that all?”

  “Not quite,” Dianthe said. “Hurry, though. Denys and I are going dancing tonight.”

  “I still don’t know what you see in him,” Alaric grumbled.

  “He’s handsome and clever,” Sienne said.

  “He’s also a guard lieutenant,” Alaric pointed out.

  “Nothing wrong with that. And he was just promoted to captain,” Dianthe said. She gathered up the books they’d already discarded and tossed them into the hole to land in a series of thumps far below. “It’s not like we’re not law abiding citizens, just because we’re scrappers.”

  “Your skill set isn’t exactly lawful.” Alaric handed her a few more books for throwing away.

  “I’m no thief. Just because I could be if I wanted doesn’t make me a criminal.”

  “Of course not,” Sienne said. “You’re the most honest person I know.”

  Perrin appeared in the doorway. “I am assured there are no more malign influences on this house,” he said. “I hesitate to ask, but do we know whose poor body we burned?”

  “It might be in the journal.” Sienne shuddered. “I’d almost rather not know. Who could do that to a child?”

  “Necromancers aren’t known for caring about morality,” Alaric said. “Or for their compassionate natures. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Penthea had a child who died of a mysterious illness, or an unfortunate fall, when he was seven or eight.”

  Sienne shuddered again. “Don’t let’s talk about it, please?” She set down the last book in her stack. “The rest of these are all necromancy theory, ideas about why necromancy works when it’s not magic, things like that. Nothing we can use.”

  Dianthe dumped the final books down the hole. “Let’s seal it up and get back to town. This place makes me ill.”

  Sienne climbed back on the little table and examined the book that had started everything. “There’s a hook here this book—it’s not a book, it’s wood painted to look like a book—connects to. I think, if we snap it off—”

  “Let me,” Alaric said, reaching past her. With a twist, he broke the mechanism and tossed the bit of metal down the hole. “Are all the incriminating things accounted for? Kalanath, help me move this bookcase.”

  With the bookcase back in place and the books restored to their shelves, there was no evidence that anything was hidden in the library. Sienne moved the table back to its original position and took one last look out the window. The sun’s rays slanted across the ocean, gilding the waves and the whitecaps. “This is a beautiful place,” she said, “but I can’t help hoping Stefen won’t choose to restore it.”

  “I can’t stop seeing that tiny body,” Dianthe said.

  “We set the child’s spirit free,” Perrin said. “Try to see that for the blessing it is.”

  “I can’t help feeling God failed that child,” Sienne said. “I don’t mean to blaspheme, but how can She abandon one of Her creations like that? Leaving it trapped for thirty years and more in that basement?”

  “It is why necromancy is so evil,” Perrin said, holding open the front door to allow the others to precede him. “Necromancers interfere with the natural progression of life and death. I know little of the details, Averran not being overly concerned with the state of the soul after death, but I am aware that God gathers Her creations to Her bosom when they die, and the spiritual laws that make that possible also allow humans to warp them to their own ends. For God to make necromancy impossible would mean preventing human spirits from reaching their eternal home.”

  “Well, it seems unfair. But I feel that way about a lot of things.”

  “You have a highly developed sense of justice, Sienne. That is not bad.”

  Sienne mounted her horse, Spark, and turned her toward the road leading home. “I guess if everything were truly, perfectly fair, a lot of us would get fates we didn’t like. It’s not like we’re perfect.”

  “Very sensible,” Alaric said, with another one of those private smiles that made Sienne’s heart beat faster.

  The Lepporo estate was half an hour’s ride east of Fioretti, capital of Rafellin, and the sun was in Sienne’s eyes all the way back. By the time they reached the eastern gate, she had a headache on top of her growing hunger. She said goodbye to Spark at the stable and trudged after Alaric toward their lodgings at Master Tersus’s house. She never minded walking behind him, particularly at this time of day, when the streets were flooded with men and women returning to their homes after the day’s labors. Alaric, over six and a half feet tall with broad shoulders and an imposing physique, broke the crowds far more easily than she could have done.

  “Are you all right, Sienne?” Dianthe said, glancing back at her.

  “Headache. And I’m hungry.”

  “You’re not still suffering from that phantasm’s attack, are you?” Alaric asked.


  “No. But I’ll be ready for an early bedtime.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Alaric sounded disappointed. Had he had something else in mind? She already knew he would never go dancing with her—he claimed he looked like a performing bear when he danced—and their relationship was still a secret from everyone but Dianthe. Sienne wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Maybe he wanted to keep their relationship secret because it didn’t mean very much to him.

  Her initial relaxed attitude toward her attraction to Alaric had faded as her feelings for him had changed. She’d been in love exactly once before, with someone who hadn’t loved her in return, and she couldn’t tell if Alaric felt for her what she felt for him. She loved being with him, loved talking to him or just sitting quietly hand in hand, and kissing, and he seemed to like that too…but what if all he cared about was the physical intimacy? What if she was just the one who was available?

  She felt so stupid. Love was one of those basic things you ought to recognize when you saw it, right? So what was wrong with her?

  The back hall of Master Tersus’s house smelled deliciously of roast chicken with rosemary, one of Sienne’s favorite dishes. Leofus, the cook and general manservant, waved his familiar spoon at them as they entered the kitchen. “Just in time,” he said. “Go get cleaned up.”

  Sienne exchanged looks with Kalanath. Leofus believed scrappers needed to be reminded of the basic etiquette of civilization, or they’d do things like come to the dinner table covered in the grime of whatever expedition they’d been on. Kalanath shrugged and propped his staff against the wall. “It is not as dirty as last time,” he murmured.

  “I still feel grimy,” Sienne replied as they all crowded into the bath house where the sink and pump were. “I don’t know how much of it is real dirt.”

  “Not much,” Alaric said, working the pump. “But try convincing Leofus of that.”

  Sienne splashed water on her face as well as her hands, just in case. Maybe after dinner she could take an actual bath. It might help her lose some of the uncomfortable feeling hanging over her like a shroud.