Take the body and give me the rest Read online

  Minsetta looked at him. ‘No, no, Seth, I won’t let you ruin the fun, the drug in the wine makes you forgetful, you’ll not be able to find the words to call your saviour, and then once you’re out of the way I’ll go and visit Lady Elizebetha’ she said.

  Surely the General knew something. He thought of it all, fighting and killing, anything the Dark Guild knew. Some knew other dark summonings, but nothing that could help him against a wailer. Where had that word come from? He thought. This thing surely was a wailer and, from her garb, she was from Dacar. He thought of the fireside at the tavern, and it came to him in a flash. It was a ghost story that Jopher had told many times. A wailer on the coast of Dacar. The ghost of a young woman who had killed herself by diving from the cliffs. She was waiting for her man who never came home from the sea, such as happened often in Dacar. It was just a story to Jopher, but now Seth could see it was real enough—and not a ghost either, but something physical.

  It leaned down with that lank dark hair over him and cold lips finding his neck. With a powerful jerk, Seth ripped himself sidewards just as those teeth sunk in. They tore into the muscles of his shoulder and side of his neck, causing him to scream out in pain. It sucked and licked noisily at the rich blood that flowed from him. Turning his head to look at it, Seth saw the eyes go from the pure white of the dead to the blue eyes of a person as it drank in his life. The face started to fill with colour as it licked and fed.

  Seth could feel the life starting to drain out of his body. He became weaker and weaker as the creature drank from him. He called to his creature with the last of his strength. He felt his call gain in strength as he slipped towards the land of the dead himself and did not need any words at all but just the connection and need. It was joined with him now and the strength of his intention and plight were all the invitation it required. The beast ripped through the void and into the world. He was filled with its burning hunger and deadly anger.

  It grabbed the feeding creature, which was now a full human reminiscent of tall and pale girl, and, grabbing the back of her white neck, ripped her from Seth and flinging her body hard into the wall. It leapt at Minsetta as she screamed in fear. It snatched her legs out from under her with a clawed forepaw, ripped into her beautiful face with those sharp teeth and began to devour her. Seth felt angry powerful words pounding in his mind from the creature: ‘Mine, never take what is mine.’

  Seth felt his wounds healing and life and clarity returning to him as everything Minsetta was flooded into him. He would have told the creature he didn’t want it, but it was all he could do to stay awake and conscious. Sounds of slaughter filled his ears as he lay on the bed, panting, with memory after bloody memory filling his mind.

  He lay in his own blood, the wound on his neck fully healed and he saw the creature looming over him, using its razor teeth to gently sever the bonds at his hands and feet.

  ‘That was much too close, young one; she almost had you. I felt you passing over. If I hadn’t been there to push you back, you would have died tonight’ it said, licking his own blood off him.

  ‘Thanks. I couldn’t find the words to summon you properly’ Seth said, sitting up and now looking at the ruined carnage that once had been Minsetta. He felt sick the sight of the near headless thing with ripped-out chest cavity and ruined form.

  The creature spoke to his thoughts. ‘We hardly need them anymore, the connection between us grows stronger all the time. Now young one you must search her memory and find the coldness you need to keep moving on. She didn’t love you; you were just a convenient ruse to get close to someone else.’

  ‘I know.’

  Seth looked at the other form of the dead girl. With her neck snapped and body slumped against the wall, she looked completely like another victim of the creature and not his assailant.

  ‘What is she?’

  ‘She’s one of your dead. My land is filled with them like rats. Try not to get killed again; I don’t like people to take what is mine.’ With that, the creature walked back through the rift, dragging the dead girl by the ankle as it went, leaving Seth alone in the room with the silence and the mutilated body of his first proper love.

  In many ways, Seth had changed since he’d taken in these new people and lives. He didn’t believe as Minsetta had said that he was a gatherer of souls. Surely, he had something deeply personal from them, but he wasn’t carrying them inside of himself. They didn’t live on in him. Sometimes their urges and ideas would rear in his mind, but that was all. One part of Stephan the General that was at odds with Seth’s own nature was that of secrecy. The General had spent decades of his life not only as a leading member of the Dark Guild but also a murderer.

  When he’d begun his affair with Minsetta, Seth would have tried to hold her hand on deck, while the General told him no. So now that she had strangely disappeared from the ship just a day out of port from Dacar, it was well that no one except for Elizebetha knew that he’d been involved with her.

  Seth was having trouble sleeping, thinking about carrying her fine body to the lower deck and throwing it into the dark sea. Crouching on the floor in her room afterwards, scrubbing her precious blood off the wood. Stephan had done that before as well.

  He had loved her and he had killed her. She would have killed him, but that didn’t change his guilt. Everyone wanted to kill him these days; you couldn’t hold that against a person. He kept wondering what The Guild could have offered her that was so tempting. She may have said it was to liberate Arisetta’s soul from inside of him, but he could see that look of greed when she mentioned a reward. Something that they had offered had pushed her over the edge.

  Chapter 14

  With the moon high in the sky over the deck of The Opulent and only two weeks left in the voyage, Seth still found himself haunting the sparing decks at midnight. Of course she wasn’t coming, but he still felt the need to be there. As he sat he heard soft footsteps approach, he raised his head from the bench. Elizebetha came to sit next to him.

  She seemed so very old in the cold, with a shawl wrapped around her.

  ‘What are you doing here every night, Seth?’ she asked.

  ‘Trying to avoid sleep is the main thing.’ It was true he had been sleeping terribly and had red-shot eyes half of the time.

  ‘Bad dreams?’ she asked.

  ‘Bad memories. She wasn’t wrong when she said that doing that to me was nothing compared to what she had done before,’ he said.

  ‘How many people had she taken?’ Elizebetha said, Seth sensing some envy in her voice.

  ‘Hundreds and hundreds. She was some kind of priestess in Pelloss. She had done summonings and given the gifts to others, not just herself. She could take someone and share out the memories, skills and life amongst many,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve heard of such things, but not imagined that anyone could bring themselves to do it,’ she said. ‘Now let’s talk of something else, if we can?’

  ‘Of course. I’d be glad to get something else on my mind,’ he said.

  ‘Have you heard of Black Rock Keep?’ she said.

  ‘Of course. It’s a Duchy right at the end of Pelloss, sort of a barrier between the Great Southern Desert and all the rest of us.’

  ‘That’s my home,’ she said.

  ‘You’re the Duchess?’ he said, shocked at his many informal chats with her and incorrectly calling her Ladyship not Duchess

  She laughed. ‘It’s fine, Seth. Truly I am, but my brother Renton has been holding my seat for me for the last ten or so years while I’ve been out gathering.’

  Seth didn’t know if he liked her usage of that word. ‘Gathering what?’ he asked.

  ‘Gathering knowledge, of course. Gathering wisdom,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, so what’s the plan? You need an escort home?’

  ‘I do, Seth. I need an escort home and have arranged passage for us on a trading caravan from Pelloss most of the way. But before we get started, there is something I need in Pelloss.’


  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Dark Guild has been around for a long time, Seth, four hundred years at least. During that time, they have been collecting as much knowledge as they can. They have a vast library in Pelloss, mostly filled with the diaries of the senior members,’ she said.

  ‘So you want me to go steal one?’ he said.

  ‘There is one I need to read, but I’ve never known the library’s location. I think they told Minsetta; I think that was her reward for killing us both, to have access to all the knowledge of The Guild.’

  Seth felt that ring true inside. He could feel that lust for knowledge in her, in him. He could hear the messenger in Pelloss give her directions to the building, tell her what to say to the guards and the amount of time she was allowed inside.

  ‘They’re expecting someone when this ship docks; they gave her a word for the guards at the gates, even,’ he said.

  ‘Can you find the place with her memories?’ she asked in an excited voice.

  He knew he could.

  A timid knock at the door preceded a timid-looking page boy walking into the lounge room where Seraphina sat reading a large old book in a leather chair. Reaching out with her fine, pale hand, she took the letter from him without saying a word of thanks. She quickly tore open the rough paper and read the words scrawled inside. It said, ‘She had already been using him to get close to the Duchess and would take him as well’.’

  She smiled to herself as she sat. It was all done now. The Pellosina woman was a legend amongst the Dark Guild; not one of them but someone they knew about. In decades past, they had helped her when she needed to flee her home country, when her sect of worshippers had grown too extreme, and for that she owed The Guild a blood debt. She was dangerous and cold in the extreme, but soon she’d have all of Stephan’s knowledge back in the family.

  They had offered her three days access to the library, but it was much more than a library; it was the collection of diaries from every member of the Dark Guild from the formation to now. It housed all of their knowledge earned with blood until now. While she was there, she was going to be drugged and thrown into a cell underneath the building until Seraphina and Dirst could get to her and retrieve her. Minsetta didn’t know that, of course, but that had been the plan of Stephan’s since he had learned Elizebetha was heading home on The Opulent . An outsider would never been given free access to all of that knowledge, she should have known that.

  Seth dreams continued to be plagued by Minsetta and the life she had lived. Before now, Stephan the General was the major character in his mind, but now her memories, impressions and ideas ran through him, overwhelming them and making the General’s seem faded and pale. She had lived one hundred years. Seth had seen how she held strongly onto her youth by the means of taking the young as victims. It was an easy practise, and he realised that he himself would already be living to a much greater age because of the four lives he’d now taken into him. He took for granted the extra strength and vitality he felt, but if it had suddenly left him and he returned to normal, he would feel like a man who hadn’t eaten or slept in days. Now, he glowed with health and life.

  During nights on The Opulent, Seth dreamed dark dreams of the Pellosi city with Minsetta at the centre. He saw her travelling to different parts of the world, to the cold northern reaches of his home and to the southern desert to dwell with the people there and to learn from them. Pelloss, though, was her home, and there she had built her following. It was more than forty years since she had fled for her life from the current king, Seth knew she had been coming back to regain what she’d had. She was a patient woman, and she had merely waited for that king to die before she could return to the city that she loved.

  When The Opulent began to cross its way into the sun-streamed bay to the main city called simply Pelloss City, he felt in a strange way like he was coming home. It was indeed an impressive place, and he almost laughed thinking of his first reaction on seeing Bloodcrest keep as a newly enlisted recruit in the North. He’d marvelled at a hall with a hearth at each end and tables to seat two hundred. Now the towering white walls of this city stood in front of him with the bay glittering in the sunshine. It was starting to feel hot as well.

  Elizebetha found him a few hours before they were to dock and pulled him aside. ‘Seth, I’ll be leaving the ship separately from you lest we give you away to anyone who might be watching the ship arrive,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, I’ll disembark and head straight there,’ he said.

  ‘As I said, there is a diary I need badly but you won’t find it in the ordinary library. You’ll have to search for it,’ she said.

  She reached back into her purse and poured a small amount of gold coins into his palm.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t got more for you, but I think you’d better go to that place with some armed company. You won’t be able to trust the guards, the food and especially the servants. Who knows what they were going to do to Minsetta when she was there and they’ll think you’re her. As you said, the guards have no idea who is coming, only someone dangerous. Who knows what they have planned?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to put you in such danger, Seth, but I need to know what he did. It’s all I’ve been searching for the last so many years.’

  Seth wasn’t afraid of the Dark Guild’s little snare; he had confidence in Stephan’s swordsmanship and Minsetta’s dark cunning. Already, Stephan was talking to him about men, not to hire them from bars and such but to buy them, slaves. Seth didn’t like the idea of that very much but knew they would be much more useful than some drunken thugs he’d picked up from a tavern.

  ‘Never fear, Elizebetha. We’ll show them the folly of playing games with the night’s darkest shadow.’

  Elizebetha shuddered and looked at him strangely. ‘Why did you say that?’ she asked.

  He laughed. ‘I don’t know; it just came to me.’

  Chapter 15

  The passengers of The Opulent were treated to the very rare sight of the Captain on deck, near the tiller as the ship came into the port and slowly docked with the many ropes cast from the deck. Seth held back and wandered the decks for the last time. He went and stood by the sparring decks as the happy and rowdy sea of people made its way with many trunks and chests of luggage off the ship. After most of them had left, Seth breathed out deeply, shook himself and also strolled off the ship.

  He felt like a part of his life was now over. He knew he’d never be that person again. By absorbing the memories and feelings of Minsetta, he’d lost so much of his own naivety. She had seen so much pain, not only in the summoning and fighting but also in love and life. He felt like what they had had was just a candle in the dark night; it could never have lasted long.

  His feet found their way easily through the city and any eyes watching him wouldn’t think for a moment that this was his first time to tread its polished cobblestone streets. Pelloss City was well ordered and prosperous. Everywhere, trade and life carried on. People had wooden stalls along the sides of most streets and every few minutes Seth would pass by some men in the bright red cloaks of the city guard. They seemed a peaceful lot, mostly talking with this or that trader about issues of orders. Seth knew from Minsetta that the new king was called the Coiner as a mockery. Trade and order were his passions, not warfare.

  Seth was happy in the knowledge he’d be left the hell alone in his visit to Pelloss. It was also nice to know that the king wasn’t a part of the Dark Guild, as far as he could tell. Seth walked on and slowly the city began to get rougher and rougher. Normally, a city’s docks were its worse feature, but in Pelloss they were the centrepiece with the white towering walls and deep bay. As he got towards the slave market, Seth started passing the familiar ill-made boarding houses, taverns and slattern houses.

  The smell of the slave market found and stung his nostrils and, at his first sight of one of the long cages with people for sale pressed against the bars, Seth was filled with a creeping dread and deep, deep burning anger. He hated slave
ry with a passion now, and he knew that lovely Pelloss, like every other one of these cities, built its wealth from it.

  Seth walked closer and closer to the cages and heard the first hails from the slave masters, keen to engage in selling with him. He looked at the wretches in the cages, like he’d been only a few short months and many lifetimes ago. As he looked at the people, they turned from being a faceless mass to individuals: an old woman on her knees at the front of the cage softly weeping, a tall and simple-looking man next to her with a faded shirt with a large mud stain on the front, three dark-skinned southerners who looked a lot like mother, father and a son, who was almost a man. Seth turned his head; he didn’t want to take them in as people.

  As he closed his eyes, the memories came now, thick and fast bursting in his mind, landing like blows. Minsetta standing at the front of a giant summoning circle. Inside, he knew, there were ten terrified slaves. Around the edges of the circle stood the people of her sect, all dressed in dark robes and with hidden faces. She summoned a rift and through it ran, literally ran, the creature he had seen the night she’d tried to take him. It ripped and tore at the slaves, killing them in an instant in front of the followers. Minsetta stood solemn, watching the carnage without expression.

  Seth had heard her words, heard her change them to, ‘And give us the rest.’ He saw the surge of power hitting not only Minsetta but her followers as well. They were all washed with the memories, the life and the power of it.

  ‘Hello, good master, looking for some fine slaves today?’ Seth was startled out of his reverie by a lanky fellow with a gold tooth engaging with him.

  Seth composed himself to the task at hand. After all, he’d bought lots of slaves because Minsetta and even Yend had before. ‘Yes I want some good footman, fighters if you have them.’