Spirits
K arigan’s duties in the afternoon took her to the records room with an armload of reports from Connly.
While some might argue she was too senior a Rider for so simple a task, she did not mind.
It gave her something else to think about other than Eletians and wraiths, with the added benefit of seeing her friend Dakrias Brown, the castle’s chief administrator.
Her footsteps echoed in the dim, ancient corridors. Like the Rider wing, the records room lay in a more ancient part of the castle. Lamplight never seemed to adequately illuminate the way, and the rough stonework of the walls created odd textures and shadows.
Few visited this region of the castle, which, Karigan knew, was why Dakrias decided to maintain his office here rather than occupy the more opulent space in the administrative wing due his position.
When she entered the records room, the walls fell away and the ceiling vanished into a deep well of darkness the lamplight could not reach.
A dome of stained glass was up there, but it had been built over during the reign of King Agates Sealender and was only seen when lit from behind.
Sunlight had not touched it in over two hundred years.
The records room was arranged much like a library with rows of tall shelving and reading tables. It contained everything from maps, to census and tax records, and, of course, Green Rider reports, though those mostly stemmed from current times. Little Rider history had survived the Ages.
A few clerks worked among the stacks, arms loaded with ledgers, parchment, and scrolls. Dakrias stood up from his desk when he noticed her and slid his specs onto the bridge of his nose.
“Ah, Rider,” he said. He gave a quick glance into the darkness overhead before striding over to her. She glanced up, too, but saw nothing.
“Hello,” she said. “I have these reports from Captain Connly for you.”
“Ah.” Dakrias accepted them into his arms. “I am pleased the captain is as thorough as your colonel when it comes to preserving Rider records.” More softly he asked, “Any news on the colonel?”
Karigan shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Nothing that I’ve heard about in any case.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Your colonel is a very fine person and her absence is personally distressing.”
“Thank you. It is the same for her Riders.”
“I do not doubt it. Fortunately she left you all in good hands.”
It was true, Karigan thought, but she missed the colonel and fervently wished for her return.
Dakrias’ gaze darted upward into the dark a number of times as they spoke. She could not see what distracted him when she followed his gaze.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Eh?”
She pointed up.
“No. Well, maybe.” He glanced about to see if anyone was watching, then sidled closer to her and whispered, “They scatter when you come here.”
“They?” The clerks still worked among the stacks, not paying a whit of attention to their conversation, and they certainly had not scattered. One climbed a ladder to an upper shelf, a large book tucked beneath his arm.
“The spirits,” Dakrias whispered.
“Ah.”
The records room was quite haunted, and the ghosts caused Dakrias a good deal of grief. Like mischievous cats, they had a penchant for knocking objects off the shelves.
“They scatter when I come here?” Now that he mentioned it, she realized she’d not sensed any presences here or in the Rider wing, or anywhere else in the castle for that matter, for quite some time.
Dakrias nodded emphatically.
Why did they leave when she arrived? She’d been absent so much of the last year she hadn’t noticed.
And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen ghosts at all.
In fact, the spirit of the late Rider Beryl Spencer had appeared to her after the Battle of the Sleeping Waelds and led her to a chamber in the royal tombs that contained the “dragonfly device,” an ancient shield thought to have repelled the sea kings, seafaring marauders from deep in the past, and their “great weapon,” from Sacoridia’s shores.
A great weapon that may have been an actual dragon, or dragons.
Still, it was true, now that Dakrias had pointed it out, that the regular ghosts of the castle had not been conspicuous. To her at any rate.
“It seems a little rude, their vanishing like that,” said the man who used to nearly faint in fright at the presence of ghosts and had practically been driven mad by their mischief. “Or, did you do something to offend them?”
“What?” She laughed until she realized he was serious. “I don’t think so.”
She considered it as she left the records room.
She’d an ability with ghosts that she may have inherited from the maternal line of her family if the rumors were to be believed.
Her Rider ability also had something to do with it, allowing her to transcend the veil separating the living world from death.
Then there was Westrion, god of death, who used her as his avatar and, as a result, gave her some ability to control spirits, save those who had already ascended to the heavens or descended to the hells.
Had she, at some point, ordered the castle spirits to stay away from her?
She shrugged intending to dismiss the problem of scattering ghosts, but it was like an itch she couldn’t leave alone.
She needed to know if she had done something to cause them to avoid her, and if she’d be able to summon them back.
She turned around and retraced her steps toward the re cords room, but halted well short of it. Then she peered up and down the corridor to ensure no one would observe her.
She cleared her throat. “Are you there, spirits?”
Nothing. She waited. Tried again.
“It’s all right, you can come out.”
Silence, except for the footsteps of a clerk approaching with an armload of scrolls for the records room. She nodded to him, her cheeks warming. Had he heard her talking seemingly to herself?
“You aren’t trying very hard,” he told her. Cold air streamed by her at his passing.
“What?” she said in surprise.
“You ordered them away from you and they obeyed. You need to command them.”
How would he know? But as he approached the entrance to the records room, he vanished. Damnation. No wonder he knew. He was one of them. And he had come when she requested it. He was right, however, that if she were to command them, she needed to do so with authority.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and from some reservoir as dark and vast as the heavens, she said in a voice laden with compulsion that was not entirely her own, “Attend me.”
The force of releasing the command caused her to stumble backward.
Immediately the corridor cooled, swelled with moans and susurrations.
Unintelligible whispers filled her ears.
Mist suffused the space around her, ebbed and flowed with filmy figures.
She could pick out individuals attired in the fashion of other eras, some in fine dress or wearing the garb of laborers, others clad in armor.
Some bore grotesque wounds that must have been the cause of their death.
One or two were missing heads. Largely, however, they merged into an indistinct mass.
Many seemed to want her attention and closed in, babbling and murmuring.
They touched her with icy fingers that raised goosebumps on her flesh.
She caught snatches of their words: Where is my baby? To yonder hills go I; Where am I? The worst was the sobbing and wailing of despair.
She tried waving them away as though they were smoke. It simply distorted any recognizable features. She resisted the urge to bolt, for surely they would follow her. There were so many, she must have called not just the records room ghosts, but all the ghosts of the castle. Maybe some from beyond.
When she heard the screams and yells of living voices, she sprinted back to the records room and entered into a squall of papers fluttering through the air. Objects crashed to the floor. Rambunctious spirits flitted among the stacks. The chamber was thick with them.
“Rider! Look out!”
She ducked just in time as a scroll hurtled at her head, unspooling its precious parchment in a tail behind it.
“Dakrias?” she called. She spotted him tucked beneath his desk. His clerks likewise hid under tables, expressions of bewilderment and terror on their faces.
“We’re all right,” Dakrias told her. “They’ve gone berserk. Get under a table—it’s safer.”
That was true, but she paused. It was her fault the spirits were here—she had called them.
She could send them away again. Unfortunately, they’d leave behind a terrible mess.
Just as she wondered if it was possible to command spirits to tidy the records room, a knot of them approached.
They strode-floated, a mass of black around a malevolent figure in its center.
When the mass reached her, the black separated into eight figures with swords drawn, their forms shifting like smoke so that they were blurred, but she knew them to be Weapons.
The malevolent figure at their center wore a crown. His form swam and shifted as well, but he held his shape better than the ghost Weapons. The activity of the other spirits waned as though they watched and waited.
Suddenly the king was beside her. Traitor Greenies, he hissed into her ear. His eyes were blank orbs. They all must hang. Drawn and quartered.
She did not need Westrion’s influence to identify King Agates Sealender, for she had seen his gold crown resting upon his corpse, both the night he’d died—in the far distant past—and in the tombs.
He had hated his Green Riders. It was he who had sealed off the stained glass dome above the records room from the sun, for it had featured the heroics of Lil Am brioth and her Green Riders during the Long War.
He accused his own Riders of betraying him, especially Gwyer Warhein, their captain, whose ability, just like Colonel Mapstone’s, had been to discern truth and falsehoods.
He’d been a thorn in the old king’s side, for Agates had fed his populace only lies to his own advantage.
He refused to speak truth or allow his subjects to know the truth.
He was a terrible king and died without naming an heir, knowing it would plunge the realm into a bloody civil war. That had been his legacy.
Fortunately, it had given rise to Clan Hillander, Zachary’s line.
Before she could react, the Weapon ghosts were upon her, hacking into her with their swords. She felt a cold chill pass through her with each stroke. She pivoted to reveal the emblem of the Black Shields upon her shoulder. The ghosts paused, merged, and drifted back.
What is this? Agates demanded, his face in hers. All Greenies must die. Warhein must suffer for his betrayal.
The knowledge and power that was hers as Westrion’s avatar flowed through her again. “Gwyer Warhein is at peace.” A cold smile formed on her lips. “You, Agates Sealender, will not be. You are overdue for last judgment.”
I am king. The spirit now floated above her. I am the only judge. I am the law. No one may dare say otherwise.
“You are dead,” she replied, “and a place in the hells has long awaited you.”
You’ve no power over me. You are a cursed Green Rider. I do not obey. I rule here.
“You are no god.”
I am! I am King Agates! I rule all.
“Descend.” She exhaled the frost of the heavens with her words.
You cannot make me! Agates cried. I am king—all bow down to me.
“Descend.” The command crackled in the air.
The spirit screamed as it sank through the floor and into the hells. When his voice was snuffed out, the Weapons came before her and went to their knees.
“You served your king as was your duty,” she said, “yet your duty was not to one man, but to the realm and its people. As creatures of free will, you might have averted much evil, but you were turned by sophistry and greed. You are betrayers of your oath and humanity. You will join Saverill in the hells.” Saverill was the first known Weapon to commit treason.
The spirits bowed their heads and did not protest or fight when Westrion used her to cast them into the hells.
To the rest of the spirits, she commanded, “Be in peace among the lights of the heavens. Should you choose to remain, you will cease your destructive behaviors.”
As the waning flurry of papers spiraled around her, the spectral mist cleared as most spirits departed. She stumbled into one of the tables, overcome by weariness as Westrion’s presence left her. She pulled out a chair and sat hard.
“Er,” Dakrias said from beneath his desk, “is it safe to come out now?”
She was about to answer when she noticed an entity hovering just above the floor near the stacks. Gray it was, a misty vapor adrift on currents of air. She sensed its intelligence and realized it was no ordinary spirit.