Darkness
The house is clean, the wallpaper tamely floral. Berend was expecting filth and rot, like the Belisia estate—some clear evidence of the spirits’ rage at their imprisonment—but there is nothing worse than a little dust on the wood floor.
It is dark, though, darker than it should be. The narrow entry opens into a sitting room with windows on opposite sides, facing front and back. The curtains are all open, but no light from the street passes through the glass. Isabel’s candle casts thin light on the edges of the brick fireplace and the stiff-backed chairs. It’s bright, leaving spots in Berend’s vision whenever he chances to look at it, but the halo it casts is small and weak. Darkness hangs on the room like a thick fog, cold and heavy. It tastes like a coming storm.
Is this what dark magic is like? He’s not enjoying it, but he has seen worse—the Belisia estate, for one, and the battlefields overrun by the walking dead.
The candle gutters, and through his hand on her shoulder, Berend feels Isabel’s body tense. She lets out a breath, relaxing by inches. The flame wavers once more before rallying itself and burning on. Isabel holds it up and takes another step into the room.
“What’s that?”
Berend follows the turn of her head. Sitting on top of the mantel is a blackened shape, standing out from the cream-colored wallpaper with a stark contrast. It looks as though it had been rescued from a fire, but not before being burnt beyond recognition.
He looks at it, tilting his head to one side as if that will help. Finally, the object resolves into a recognizable shape. “It’s a symbol of Alcos,” he says. His voice sounds muffled and distant to his own ears. “See? There’s the crown, and there’s the scepter.”
It isn’t burned–it’s metal, so badly tarnished that its original color is nowhere to be found. The points of the crown are dulled, and the whole thing is pitted and sagging under ts own weight, but Berend is certain of the shape.
“I thought he wasn’t devout anymore,” Isabel says. “Warder’s uncle said Geray had left the church.”
It’s strange for the holy symbol to be so badly neglected and in such a prominent place at the same time, but Berend doesn’t bother coming up with a reason for it. All he needs to know is where Geray is, and where he’s keeping Warder.
“Where now?” he asks Isabel.
As if in answer to his question, there are more footsteps above, creaking the floorboards and making an audible path down a hallway that runs the width of the house.
A crash follows, along with Warder’s voice crying, “Be careful with that!”
“Upstairs,” Berend says. But where is the staircase? He turns to look for it, and his hand slips from Isabel’s shoulder.
Darkness falls over his eyes like a blindfold. He can see nothing—not the room, not the candle, not even his own nose or the hand he brings to his face. Fear grips him like a cold fist around his chest. He doesn’t dare move his feet. The floor, for all he can tell, is gone, and he might fall into a bottomless, black abyss.
A cold hand wraps around his wrist.
He reels backward, flailing in the dark. The room, if it is indeed still there, begins to spin as he brings his sword to the ready. If only he could see—
“Berend!”
The blackness turns to dim gray, coalescing into the dim halo of a black wax candle. Attached to it is Isabel. It is her hand around Berend’s wrist. Though she lacks the vise-like strength of the walking corpses, her skin is cold as death. She has stepped around to his left, avoiding his blade, and her eyes are wide with fear.
Berend takes a steadying breath. The air tastes of cold fog and something that might be metal and might be blood. He blinks, and the room reappears, with its black windows and stiff furniture and the decaying holy symbol above the mantel.
“I told you to keep your hand on my shoulder,” Isabel says.
Berend nods. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing,” he says. “There was nothing. Only darkness.”
Isabel is still holding his wrist. “Are you all right?”
There’s nothing to be afraid of, Berend tells himself. Gods, I hate magic. “I’m fine,” he says at last, and he almost believes it. “Upstairs, then? After you, Sentinel.”
One of her brows arches in a dubious look, but Isabel places Berend’s hand back on her shoulder, leaving her hand atop it for a passing moment, as if to make sure he’s not going to wander off. She holds the candle up. “This way. I think.”
Past the fireplace is a continuation of the entry hall, and sure enough, a narrow staircase climbs up from the back. The wavering candle shows a thin layer of dust coating the steps, but for a path up the middle. It’s a bachelor’s house, like one Berend had owned for a very brief time after the Sons of Galaser were no more, and the familiarity is both comforting and unsettling.
Isabel starts up the stairs. She moves slowly, but each step creaks under her boots.
So much for sneaking up on them. Berend listens, but he can’t hear any more sound from upstairs. Maybe Geray is hiding. He hopes that Warder will say something again, to confirm he’s still alive, but nothing comes from the darkness above.
You’re going to fix Mikhail’s soul, Berend says silently. Don’t die in here, Warder.
With one foot on the last stair, Isabel stops. Her back stiffens, and the light trembles, making the shadows of the steps leap up the walls on either side. In front of her, a narrow hallway stretches on and on, past where the house’s outer wall should have been, into the far distance with no end in sight.
Berend’s stomach sinks. He thinks for a moment that he might have lost his hold on Isabel’s shoulder, but she is still there, the rough wool of her coat catching against the calluses on his hand.
“Watcher on the wall, protect us,” Isabel whispers, and her breath comes out in a white cloud.
The fine hairs inside Berend’s nose freeze with his next breath, and the ends of his fingers grow numb. The hallway has become as cold as midwinter. A frigid wind whips down the endless corridor, and Isabel shields the candle flame with her other hand. She ducks her head and shivers.
Now what? Berend tries to say, but the cold has stolen his breath and he makes no sound. They must be getting close, to encounter whatever magic this was, but he can’t ignore that every instinct he has is telling him to turn around, go back downstairs, and leave this gods-forsaken house and never come back.
A terrible crack snaps him out of his panic. Like a bolt of black lightning, a crack has formed in the plaster, tearing through the sterile wallpaper as it darts down the hall toward the stairs. Dust and frost burst forth from the crack and hang in the air around the edge of the light.
Berend turns his head away as the split reaches the stairs, and he stops himself from shielding his eyes with his hand as plaster rains down on him. Under his feet, the steps have begun to shake.
Isabel puts her cold hand over his and clambers up the last step, dragging him along with her. He stumbles, righting himself as Isabel presses them both against the uncracked wall.
“I thought,” Berend manages to say with his teeth chattering and his chest aching from the cold, “that your candle was supposed to keep the illusions away.”
Isabel shakes her head. “Not an illusion. This is a haunting.” She swallows, shivers, and adds, “Worse—this is a necromancer. These spirits are under his control, and they mean to keep us out.”
The house shakes again, and a sound like a howling wind and also like a distant, anguished moan fills the hall. For a moment, Berend thinks he can see where the corridor ends, the same wallpaper with its stoic stripes and tiny, generic flowers, but darkness swallows it once more.
A crashing sound draws Berend’s attention to the staircase. He can’t see beyond the landing, but he can hear wood breaking and splinters showering. It’s best to assume they won’t be getting out that way.
“Can’t you do something?” he asks.
“I’m thinking,” is Isabel’s reply. She’s shaking uncontrollably now, pressed against his side, and the candle is shaking as well.
A humanoid figure, all tattered clothing and wispy, too-long limbs, appears at the edge of the halo of candlelight. Its eyes are black hollows, but Berend feels as though it is staring directly at him. Another appears to its left, and another just behind, and then more until Berend and Isabel are surrounded on three sides. There must be dozens. They fill the hall, going back into the impossible depth to Berend’s right and crowding the staircase, heedless of the height of the stairs or the damage that he heard a moment ago.
The first ghost reaches out a skeletal hand toward the light. The candle gives it pause, but then it swipes at Berend, sending an icy gust of wind into his face.
He flinches. His back touches the wall behind him. They haven’t touched him yet, but it’s clear they’re getting to it, and he doesn’t want to find out what happens when they do. “Any time now, Sentinel,” he gasps.
“I can try to break his hold on them,” says Isabel. She tugs at the straps holding her book and bell to her belt, her fingers clumsy with cold. “Gods, there are so many.”
Did Geray kill each one of these people? Or did he just find some spare ghosts hanging around and gather them here? Berend doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to ask. They crowd in around the light, like curious children, but there is malice in their empty eyes as they watch Isabel’s movements.
She retrieves the book, but trying to hold it and the bell in half-frozen fingers makes her drop the latter with a metallic clang. The ghosts shrink back at the sound, their eerie light dimming for the space of a breath. They press in closer.
“Can they hurt us?” Berend asks.
“Most likely, yes. Hold this.” Isabel twists out from under Berend’s hand and places the iron candle holder in her place. “Do not let it go out.”
Berend takes in a sharp breath, anticipating the return of the dark he had seen before, but the light remains. The metal is cold. Even the place where Isabel’s hand had been swiftly loses its heat. Berend grits his teeth, feeling his skin freeze and stick in place, and holds the candle steady.
It’s harder than it looked when Isabel was carrying it. His hands shake, and frigid wind tears through the hall, dislodging scraps of wallpaper and fragments of plaster. The flame dims and sputters. He holds it close to his chest and hopes he doesn’t catch his clothes on fire, while the spirits drift closer in. If they breathed, he would hear and feel it, as close as they are, but there is nothing but the wind and their terrible, empty stares.
Isabel recovers the bell and rings it once, a piercing clear note that breaks through the roar of the wind and the creaks and groans of the house protesting its ghostly occupants. The empty eyes all turn toward her.
She holds the book open with her other hand, and the pages rustle in the unearthly wind. “In the name of Mella of the forge, and of Ondir who keeps the halls of the dead,” she reads, her voice wavering as she shivers, “I release you from the chains of necromancy. I release you from the bonds of foul magic, and from the will of he who would enslave you.”
For one moment, tense as a bowstring, there is silence.
The ghosts open mouths as dark and empty as their eyes and wail. The wind returns, whipping through the corridor with the strength of a winter storm.
Berend tries to shield the candle with his other arm, knocking his sword into the wall behind him, but he is too late. The flame sputters once more and goes out.
Forward to Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thank you for reading, and for your continued patience! I am doing my best to get back onto a regular posting schedule.
Space Whales Press 
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