"You can command me from the depths, Talis," he sneers, "but I am no common hellhound, tail wagging at your feet. I answer as I choose?and your incessant questions only stir my hunger." Another hoof clomps down, narrowing the distance between us, the dry leaves smoldering underfoot.
Cyril takes a matching step backward, tugging me along, still muttering a steady stream of charms and curses. "We'll find Jakob another way," he urges under his breath. "Shall we send this devil back whence he came, before he dines on our souls and sharpens his claws on our bones?"
"Must you be so morbid at a time like this?" I snap.
"At a time when we're communing with a demon of the underworld? Yes. Yes, I suppose I must be morbid." Cyril jolts as the runeshield deflects a spray of flame from the grimwraith's nostrils. "A little urgency would be appreciated, Henta?"
I let him pull me a few steps back. "Jakob wouldn't have left me unattended if it were my fate to die today."
"Fine," Cyril huffs, "then you can survive to watch this beast feed on my entrails?because my spirit guide barely knows my name, let alone the moment I'm in mortal danger."
"Jakob knows your guide is useless. He wouldn't leave either of us unattended."
"I know, but-" Cyril's shoulders deflate. "We have to consider the possibility that Jakob isn't abandoning us voluntarily."
My jaw clenches. "Of course he isn't abandoning us voluntarily."
"What I mean is?" Cyril stammers, pulling us back another step. His blue eyes flicker orange, reflecting the stalking beast's horns, another surge of flame testing the runeshield. That one singed my eyebrows. "We have to at least consider that Jakob is gone." His eyes flit to mine, heavy with sorrow. "Gone?and never coming back."
I pull my hand free from his, planting my feet. "Impossible."
Before Cyril can respond, a ravenous growl shakes the trees, leaves raining down and scorching on the grimwraith's hungry breath. The demon charges across the clearing, hooves pulverizing the twigs and leaves between us. Cyril moves to shield my body with his, but we both know chivalry is useless against a charging grimwraith. I ball the shoulder of Cyril's tunic in one hand, and stretch the other palm overhead, shouting, "Emissary of Lucifer, Daemon Farorhan! By thou true name have I called thee from the depths, and I command thee hence?by right of the blood of Sariel!"
Putrid breath roars upon us, flaming horns bearing down. Within inches of goring us like skewered rodents, the grimwraith evaporates into smoke. A wave of heat and ash blows back my hair and scalds my squinting eyes. The trees shake and settle, squawking yulejays still too timid to perch. All that remains of the grimwraith's hulking body is a puff of cinders slowly drifting on the breeze.
Cyril sinks to his knees and shakes a weary head. "Thank you, Henta." He wipes the soot and sweat from his forehead. "Next time, do you think you could cut it a wee bit closer?"
***
I'm trying to sleep, truly I am.
Sleep has eluded me these two weeks, and with each passing night it becomes more of a stranger. Two weeks, and not so much as a whisper from Jakob. Meddlesome spirit hasn't given me a moment's privacy since I was an infant, and now?
I've managed to get myself into twice as many scrapes as usual-just trying to provoke him from wherever he's skittered off to-and nothing. Not a familiar ghostly chill down my spine, not a gravelly scolding or a disapproving shake of his spectral head. He's my spirit guide, his fate is eternally bound to mine. Surely if his soul were forfeit, I would sense it somehow?
I sigh, murmuring in a haze of half-slumber, "Where are you, Old Man?"
I think I was close to finding sleep at one point, following its trailing skirts across the threshold of a dream. Then the infernal crickets groaned and chattered all around, the grain swished in the night breeze, and the earth refused to give even one inch, pressing stubbornly against my shoulder. And now the campfire?It prattles loudest of all, cracking and popping and-glowing green?
Wait just a second?
My eyelids flutter open, and-bright as barley grass-the campfire flames are writhing and shimmering, dancing higher, the eerie glow flickering across Cyril's captivated face.
I press up to sit, not bothering to pluck the dried sprigs from my hair. "Why are you awake?" I squint against the sparking green, my fuzzy mind finally whirring into action. "And where did you get your hands on conveyance powder?"
Cyril's eyebrows waggle. "Talked a blacksmith into trading it for a fox pelt yesterday in the market. Convinced him 'twas actually wiltroot dust, would give him warts and bogpox." He winks and takes another pinch from a leather pouch in his hand, carefully tossing the granules into the fire. The flames surge high as a haystack, scorching my cheeks and painting the night sky a brilliant emerald.
Cyril flinches back, cautiously uncovering his eyes as the flames calm again. "Would you like to do the honors, or shall I?"
I stare transfixed, the ethereal glow swaying and snapping, flames coiling and hissing like a serpent-charmer's pet. "I, um?" I chew my lip, flicking a glance to Cyril. "I've never trusted conveyance powder. Too chancy. Too unpredictable."
"This from the girl who would singlehandedly summon a grimwraith for a chat, like she's asking a common farmhand to go halfsies on a pint of ale?" He pinches off a few more granules-this time taking care not to overdo-and flicks them into the flames, to a fanfare of green whizzes and sparks.
I scowl. "If being a Talis meant I attracted half as many farmhands as I do demons, I wouldn't mind paying for my own pint of ale."
"You can't afford your own pint of ale." Mischief dances with the emerald firelight in Cyril's eyes. "Nor can your wispy limbs hold that much drink without stumbling drunk."
I aim a pebble straight through the flames to his forehead, but he dodges in the nick of time. I frown. "Try saying that again sometime I'm not half asleep and blinded by your enchanted bonfire, and I'll show you the agony 'wispy limbs' can inflict."
Cyril snickers with glee, the imp. He manages to regain his focus on the dying flames and scrambles to scrape the last dash of conveyance powder from the pouch. Before he tosses it into the fire, his eyes meet mine. "Now or never, Henta. Are you with me?"
I watch as the flames flourish, the embers pulsing green. As the flaring sparks subside, the roar calms to a chatter of whispered crackles, echoing Cyril's words in my ears.
Now or never.
I look up to meet his eyes across the blaze.
And I nod.
***
"Have I mentioned what a phenomenally ill-conceived plan this was?" Cyril gulps, wary eyes scanning the yawning cavern around us. Sulfurous liquid sheens the walls with an eerie underground glow, drip-drops of stale water pattering from the rock-spired ceiling above.
"There was a plan involved?" I cup my hand over my nose to filter the stench of sulfur and death. "Seems to me you nicked a pouch of conveyance powder off a blacksmith, and decided to just wing it from there."
Cyril shrugs. "'Tis enough to constitute a plan, I should say."
I smirk. "And where does this 'plan' take us from here?"
"Hey, I got us to the Crossing. You can take it from here."
I scowl. "What kind of deal is that?"
"Take it as a compliment. You can solve a predicament that I cannot."
"Charming." My eyes adjust better to the low lighting, and I make out a throng of ghostly spirits meandering about-like a crowded marketplace, if all the patrons were recently departed. They wander forlornly through the space, spectral eyes dazed and lost. I'm used to ghosts and spirits-some of them even still manage to spook me-but these are just pitiful. I shake my head at Cyril. "I'm sure the small victory of outwitting you will console me when I'm trapped in eternal limbo, shuffling aimlessly with this lot."
"Nonsense." Cyril dusts a sulfurous drip from his shoulder. "We belong to the Living Realm. We'll be pulled back there as soon as the campfire flames die down. Or so they say with conveyance powder?"
"And have you ever had substa
ntiated proof of that claim?" I cross my arms. "Oh, don't give me that look. Of course you haven't got proof." I sniff the air and wrinkle my nose, cupping my hand over it again. A few of the spirits begin to alter their wandering paths, slowly shuffling our way. "We'd best get started looking. We've been noticed, and I'm counting on being long gone from this place before one of these ghouls gets too friendly."
"Stupendous plan. Knew I could count on that cunning intellect." Cyril winks, tongue pressed into his cheek, and I pull a face in reply. He grins. "Shall we?" He points the way to a slimy sidewall, smoothly stepping out of the path of a skulking dreadspirit. "Let's duck along that way. Maybe the delightfully pungent aroma will throw the beasties off our scent."
I concur, tiptoeing to the side, unconsciously pressing my palm against the dank cavern wall. I pull back my hand and debate whether to wipe the foul ooze onto my pants. I decide to use Cyril's tunic instead. Not surprisingly, he sees no harm in it. As we slink along the rocky curves-skimming the tangle of wandering spirits for a familiar face-the aimless crowd begins to take on a more determined purpose, the vaporous forms of the meandering dead veering and merging into a crowd of phantoms ambling toward us, like cattle drawn to a trough.
I have had many moments in my life of loathing my Talis blood. Count this among those moments.
Many people have claimed to see ghosts and spirits through the ages. Some shout their tales from rooftops with pride, as though recognizing a phantom is a mark of great distinction. Others curl into blubbering heaps, fearing that seeing the deceased is the first sign of madness. Still more toil over cauldrons and scattered chicken bones, laboring endless hours to coax a spirit from the deep.
And then there are we Talis.
We take one breath, utter one peep, lift one finger or stutter one heartbeat, and the dead come flocking to our doorstep. Our flesh itself is a talisman for creatures of the deep, the flame that draws all manner of ghostly moths. We are the beacons that call them back from the veil, their guiding stars to navigate the Crossing and reenter the Living Realm. We see more spirits in a week than any cockeyed street illusionist can conjure in a lifetime.
Believe me, the novelty of communing with the dead loses its shine right early for our kind. It relegates us to lives of outcasts, fugitives, peasants and thieves. Communing with creatures of the deep isn't just creepy, it's outlawed. Forbidden. Taboo at best, and punishable by beheading at worst.
We Talis are a lonely lot. Whether we die from a severed head, starvation, plague, or just catching a demon on the wrong day-we don't tend to be an enduring bunch. Cyril is all the family I can claim, and we share no blood (save whatever common thread courses through the veins of all Talis). We met when I was eight, and he seven. Collided head-on in the middle of the forest-he fleeing north from a woodwraith, I bolting south after a dreadspirit-conjuring gone awry. Our skulls knocked together like pints in a tavern, sending both of us out cold on the forest floor. We've grown into experts at dodging all manner of pursuits-assailants both with and without a pulse-and sometimes for an hour or two, we manage to convince ourselves that life borders on normal. Then a dreadspirit comes tapping on our shoulders, and the illusion evaporates.
So what in the blazes are we doing now, voluntarily entering the realm of the dead?
Technically speaking, the Crossing belongs neither to the living or the deceased-but to that hazy border betwixt the two-where misguided spirits wander, hoping to find their way to eternal rest beyond the veil. I've always wondered why that journey poses such a challenge for some spirits. Is the veil so concealed, as to be detected only by the keenest senses? Only now does the quandary strike home?
When wandering blindly through the Crossing, how does one avoid inadvertently stumbling beyond this cryptic veil?
It's a question I'd usually pose to Jakob. He would reply in his raspy, whispery spirit voice, "Even the clumsiest dimwit of drunkards cannot stumble his way across the veil, if Destiny has not so determined his fate."
Then I would say something like, "Are you calling me a clumsy, dimwitted drunkard, Old Man?", and the three of us would compete to see whose laughter could be held back longest. Cyril would crack first-he always does-and Jakob might give in to a momentary upturn of one corner of his ghostly mouth. On a day he's feeling particularly jovial.
Jakob. Stars, how I miss that old bird.
"So, do you think we should be following the putrid stench of rotting flesh, or running from it?" Cyril's innocent inquiry stirs me from my daze. "You know I love Jakob, but if he's taken to reeking like decaying pig innards?"
I turn with a hissing shush. "Jakob would die for either of us a million times over. He'd find a way to resurrect himself, just so he could die again and again, if that's what it took to save us."
I see on Cyril's face that my words cut deep. He looks away. "I know, Henta. I'm sorry for making light."
I blow out a sigh. "I'd have to worry about you if you weren't making light." I reach back to take his hand. "I'm just getting impatient."
"Getting?" He arches a cautious eyebrow.
"Okay, perpetually impatient. Now bordering on frenzied."
"Ferocious, more like. Savage, perchance?"
I nod. "Irrationally so."
"Prone to senseless and unrestrained violence?"
I nod more fervently this time, my hand finding the hilt of the dagger at my waist. "I'm on the verge of hacking through every last creature from here to the abyss, until Jakob is the only soul left standing."
"Well?" Cyril clears his throat. "Considering that mine is the only hide that dagger will injure in these wilds, what say you to trying our hand at calling Jakob's name instead?"
I pause, my fingers contemplating the leather grip of my dagger. I know a blade wouldn't do a lick of good against a swirling crowd of phantoms and dreadspirits, but it might have been cathartic to try. "You have a point," I concede. Cyril responds by pulling in a deep breath, and I follow suit, each of us bellowing Jakob's name with all our might.
Our calls echo through the dank cavern, one reverberating into the next. We stay in motion, weaving across the sprawling space and along the time-carved walls, the swirl of the ghostly throng shifting directions with our changing course, like pond fish chasing crusts of bread. The occasional straggler passes clear through me, sending a shiver down my spine and setting my heartbeat skittering.
We keep up this goose chase for hours-maybe longer-until our throats burn, and our boots have rubbed holes in our heels. I can't say whether the leaden drag of my legs is from exhaustion, or because the last of the conveyance powder is fading in the campfire embers in the Living Realm, the magic that brought us here dwindling. Whether we're reclaimed by the Living Realm, or left here to starve until we become two more mindless souls wandering the Crossing, one thing is certain: "We're never going to find him."
Cyril looks back at me and frowns. "What makes you say that?"
My voice cracks, hoarse from futile bellows and choked-back tears. "I've never had to call for Jakob before. He doesn't require words to know when I need him." I sink to sitting, unfurling my legs on the cold, sticky floor. "He's gone." My lip quivers, and for once I don't even care to squelch it. "Jakob's-"
"Don't say it." Cyril cuts me short, doubling back to kneel beside me. He shivers when an aberrant spirit's foot ambles through his body, and impatiently shoos the ghost away. "Jakob is going to be okay. We're going to find him, and bring him back with us." He takes both my hands in his, cornering my eyes into meeting his. "At least we don't have to worry about him dying. He's already got that part out of the way long ago." A faint smile quirks the corner of his mouth. "Am I right?"
I can't help but muster a tiny answering smile. I nod, sniffing back the tears.
Cyril turns his face to the rocky ceiling, his raspy voice echoing through the cavern, "Let it be known for all the ages that on this day, Henta Mourngard admitted that I am right." He smiles softly, squeezing my hands tighter as he adds in a wh
isper, "Now get up, Lazy Bones. We have a shadowspirit to locate."
***
I'm tempted to worry that this popular claim-the one alleging we'll magically revert to the Living Realm when the conveyance powder runs out-is pure bollocks. How long could one campfire take to burn down? Surely it's been at least three days.
I try to swallow, but it hangs up in the back of my throat, like my mouth is so dry it's forgotten the concept. The result is a fit of hacking and sputtering that frightens even our adoring crowd of spirits away.
Cyril catches up to me, thumping me on the back. "We need water." His voice is barely a grate, but it hasn't stopped him from doggedly calling Jakob's name. "Is it just me, or is licking that wall beginning to sound like a viable plan?"
I grimace, but admittedly give it a moment's consideration. "Wait?" My ears perk, finally able to make out something beyond the murmurs and wails of wandering spirits. If I'd known a coughing fit would repel them thus, I'd have been employing that tactic ages ago. "Do you hear that?"
Cyril strains an ear, but gives up with a shake of his head. "It's just the muck dripping from the ceiling."
"No," I insist, holding a shushing finger to my lips. "Listen harder. It's more than that."
He tries again, and this time breaks into a giddy smile. "It's flowing. And fast!" He seizes my hand and darts for the sound, the crowd of spirits moaning and wailing in our wake. We scurry around a cluster of rocky spires, our boots slipping and sliding on the moist ground, as it begins to slope downward, angling into a night-black cavern, the babble of a running stream echoing from the chasm.
Cyril slows his pace, gripping my hand tightly, as he traces a careful path into the cave. My senses shift to rely on sound over sight, while my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I wonder how my ears could have missed it before. What had seemed like a trickle-a stream at best-now echoes with the roar of a river coursing through this cave. Sweat beads on my forehead, as the dank chill of the cavern is replaced by a muggy heat, sweltering warmth and moisture trapped in this hidden space.
"Look!" Cyril's eyes are quicker than mine to adapt, and he points excitedly at the source of the watery sound. Suddenly his body goes rigid at my side. "Oh stars, no!" Excitement gives way to horror, and he darts ahead in a frantic sprint. "Please, no!"