Revelations I
Isabel falls quiet. There’s a long walk ahead of her, and a longer night after that. She has to conserve her strength. There have been more sleepless nights in the last week than she ever had to endure as an apprentice, and even then, young as she was, she had not endured them happily.
The wind blows cold, and it carries a smell of frost as it crosses dry, brown fields on its way to the sea. Isabel can just make out the shapes of cut rows on either side of the road. Harvest time is well under way, and winter will follow, bringing with it a slight relief from the walking dead. Spirits are no less angry in winter, but bodies without the breath of life cannot keep their limbs from freezing solid, and their decay slows along with their chance of spreading pestilence. Winter, as the old sayings go, is when Sentinels retreat to their cloisters to study the same dusty tomes they studied the year before, and the year before that, going all the way back to the first Sentinel Rainier.
With a sudden ache like a knife to her ribs, Isabel misses the library in Vernay. Her superiors will learn of her failings in a few short days, when Father Pereth’s request for her replacement reaches them. They will turn her away, or worse, allow her in and follow her through the halls with looks of pity and distrust, as though she’s a vagabond relying on their charity.
Maybe it was a fluke, and everything will be normal when I get to the Belisia estate.
She almost laughs at the thought. Nothing will be normal at the Belisia estate, because Warder’s device was used there, and there is nothing normal about Warder’s device. The blasted thing shouldn’t even have worked at all.
It’s buried under the ruin of Geray’s house now, and Isabel hopes that is where it will stay.
Geray himself drags his ghostly feet half a step behind her. She doesn’t know why he looks so dour; he doesn’t have muscles that will tire or joints that will ache, and he’s getting out and about.
I should tell Berend that he’s here, Isabel tells herself, but she can’t bring herself to open her mouth and say it. What could she say? By the way, the ghost of the man you shot, who murdered your friend and at least a half-dozen other people, has been following me around for the past few days. He’s here, right now, but you can’t see him.
That would go over well.
Berend walks at an easy pace, but one hand rests on his sword, and he looks over his shoulder with every few steps. He’s never been relaxed, in the short time Isabel has known him, but he’s especially tense now. She doesn’t envy him the ire of a vengeful and underhanded noble house, but she finds herself wishing that her troubles were with the living as well.
“How much farther?” Geray asks, a raspy, dry whisper not unlike the wind.
Isabel doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know, for one, and she doesn’t need Berend asking why she’s talking to herself.
“Something’s wrong,” Geray moans. He sounds sick; weak and nauseous. He’s crossed his translucent arms around the bullet hole in his chest, and it shows through, black as the night sky. His ghostly glow has dimmed, and he trails mist like a low-hanging cloud. “Where are you taking me, Sentinel?”
It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Geray’s visible manifestation were to dissipate. He has maintained it for days now, while the ghosts Isabel has called up only linger for a few minutes before they’re sent on, but the gods only know what arcane laws of nature apply to him. She wants him gone. Still, it’s uncomfortable to see him in pain.
“It’s going to be fine,” she whispers, more to herself than to the wavering ghost.
To her surprise, Berend answers. “Right,” he says. “We’ll fix this. Don’t worry.”
His confidence is a ruse, Isabel is certain, but there’s something to be said for the fact that he’s willing to maintain it for her. He can’t fix anything—neither, by all evidence, can she—but he’ll try. It’s oddly touching.
A manor house rises from behind the next hill. It’s not large, as far as wealthy estates go, but its sprawling grounds and stone facade speak to its vast expense. The windows are dark, and the garden beds are empty, as if for winter. A few dead stalks cling to their trellises.
“Believe it or not,” Berend says, “it looked much worse when I was here last.”
A soft, arrhythmic thumping breaks through the soft whisper of the wind. It grows louder as Isabel nears the house, resolving into the distinctive sound of decaying flesh slamming against stone. The family mausoleum, weathered and austere, shakes with the efforts of the dead trapped within.
Isabel turns to Geray. He holds up his misty hands in a protest of innocence and takes several steps back. If anything, the corpses attack the door with more fervor.
“That’s not a good sign,” Berend mutters.
“I thought you said you dealt with the ghost,” says Isabel. “This place is still haunted.”
Berend holds out his arms, taking in the estate, the mausoleum, and the entire confounded situation. “We did. It was as quiet as the temple of Ondir when we left.”
“Do you think the son killed someone else?” Isabel asks. It’s preposterous, but it’s the first thing that came to mind.
“Gods, I hope not. He’s not living here yet, anyway. We should look inside.”
He crosses the garden and tries the door. It is, predictably, locked. Stepping over the fallow garden bed carefully, so as not to leave a distinctive footprint, he puts his hands around his eyes and peers into the nearest window.
“Here, hold up your light,” he says. “It looks fine. If Bessa was back, wouldn’t the house look like it did when her ghost was here?”
Isabel shrugs. “Most likely. What did it look like?”
Berend steps back. He looks at his hands, brushing them together, but they’re clean. “Full of rot,” he says. “Like the place was going to collapse from it at any moment. Dirty. Crawling with vermin.”
“She was a powerful ghost, then.” Isabel lifts the lantern and squints into the window. All the furniture has been removed from what might have been a sitting room, and the fireplace has been scrubbed out, its smooth flagstones reflecting a tiny point of light as she moves the lantern around. The walls glisten from a coat of fresh paint.
Berend gives an audible sigh, his breath clouding the glass. “I suppose she was. I guess I never thought about it like that. She was just a serving girl.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it. Anger can make a spirit strong, or fear. A good sense of oneself helps.”
A chorus of breathless, rattling moans interrupts Isabel’s thought. The mausoleum’s heavy doors shake, and the chain fastening them shut rattles with a sound like cascading metal bells. By the sound, the corpses inside are well advanced in their decay, and they’ll disintegrate before the doors fail. Or so she hopes. Geray is eyeing the chain, looking miserable.
Berend is quiet. His eyes look sunken in the dim light of the lantern. He hasn’t been having much better of a time these past few days than Isabel has.
“We can do this out here,” she says. “Going inside isn’t strictly necessary.”
“Right. What can I do?” Berend asks.
Isabel hands him the light. “Show me where her body was. If she’s still here, her connection to it might help.” She’s supposed to be able to call up a ghost from anywhere on this plane of existence, regardless of the trappings of its life, but now she’s grasping for anything that might improve her chances even slightly. Please let this work. I don’t care how.
“I think she was over here.” Berend gestures with the lantern, indicating an empty garden bed, muddy and sunken into the earth rather like an empty grave. “They probably moved her. I don’t suppose she showed up at Risoven’s chapel, did she?”
Isabel shakes her head.
“Bastards,” Berend mutters. “All right. Now what?”
“Just hold the light steady.” She takes a breath, closing her eyes and searching herself for some feeling that might indicate her connection to the divine being restored.
Nothing. She’s not sure what she expected.
She picks up a dry twig and traces a circle into the soft earth of the disturbed bed. It must have been magnificent, once—it’s six feet wide and twice as long, and littered with the thorny branches of dead rosebushes. Every one of them has been removed. Between the ghost’s rage and the damage to their roots that came with hiding a body among them, it’s possible that the entire bed could have died, but not likely.
Isabel isn’t a gardener. Maybe the Belisias just wanted a change.
She draws a second circle inside the first and scratches her sigils at regular intervals between them. She wishes she had her book. Calling up a ghost is something she can probably do in her sleep, she’s done it so many times, but the weight of the text would be a reassurance.
She does have the bell that Risoven gave her, and a candle borrowed from the temple. Berend gamely holds the lantern still while she opens it up and touches the wick to its shaky oil flame. She steps back into the circle.
“In the name of Isra, mother of creation,” Isabel begins once more, “and of Alcos, king and father, and of Ondir, lord of gates: I call the name of Bessa Kyne. Hark to me and speak.”
The bell sounds clear and loud, shattering the quiet that held the dead garden. A gust of frigid wind sweeps through, and the dry remnants of the Belisia’s roses gather against the back edge of Isabel’s circle. She ducks her head to avoid losing her hat, shielding the candle awkwardly with the hand holding the bell.
Then the wind stops, as quickly as it had come. Isabel looks up.
She finds herself staring at the back of her own head. Startled, she takes a step back, coming close to the edge of the circle before she stops herself. There are two Berends, as well, when she turns to him: one stands still in the shadows, holding the lantern, while the other holds up his hands in confusion.
Geray hasn’t doubled. He drifts closer to stand at the edge of the garden bed. “What did you do this time, Sentinel?” he complains.
“You!” Berend—the brighter version of Berend, whose red cloak is like a pool of fresh blood in broad daylight—steps forward, reaching for his weapons. “What in the hells? Stay where you are.”
He can’t draw his pistol, though Isabel can see it under his cloak. He tries again to grasp it and brings his hand up empty.
Isabel holds up her hands. “Wait.”
“The mercenary,” Geray sneers. “I suppose you thought you’d seen the last of me.”
Berend turns on his heel to face Isabel. “How is he here? Did you know he was here?”
He had to find out sooner or later. Her pang of guilt is quickly replaced by a wave of panic. Something is terribly wrong, and she can’t begin to guess what has just happened. “Quiet, both of you,” she says. “I need to think.”
“Better do it fast, Sentinel.” Geray stretches out a mist-colored arm, gesturing to the fields beyond the garden.
A crowd of ghostly figures appears around the Belisia estate, lighting up one at a time like candles in city windows. There are dozens of them, and then hundreds, pressing closer and closer.
Isabel gasps, and she feels her chest inflate. She’s back in her body. And no sooner has she had that thought than she’s outside of it again, standing a foot to the left, as ghosts surround the estate.
Thank you so much for reading! Things are about to get real conceptual, so hold on to your hats.
Space Whales Press 
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