​​​​21 A Fell Apparition

THREE DAYS PASSED, and Striga came for him after dark. She refused to speak, her temper foul, and threatened Wither into silence. Although there were no torches lit, it was impossible to miss her limp.

Outside in the streets was an unnatural stillness. Always the Havari ate late, drinking their spiced beverages, playing flutes or board games on the flat rooftops. It wasn’t late enough for the city to be asleep. Guards should have walked the perimeter walls with the odd patrol on the inner streets. Thievery was a serious offense in Shamar, and meant the loss of hands, which in turn meant the Street of Beggars. Wither admired how they maintained order. There were few beggars without hands in Shamar, and those were foreigners who hadn’t known better.

Tonight, as they waited at the mouth of an alley, Striga refusing to move an inch, no patrols appeared. No music wafted across the rooftops. No voices broke the stillness. No drummers or acrobats performed for outlanders, although it might have been because they’d executed all visitors. Guilt pricked at Wither, but what could he have done short of handing himself over?

The crickets were silent, and the street dogs and kecci non-existent. Just the odd lizard hunting invertebrates, scuttling from their path, suggested the city still lived.

After what seemed an eternity, she motioned him forward, readying to cross the street. All he knew was there were camels loaded with food and water waiting at the southern gates. They never made it across as she halted with a tight grip on his arm. The city’s missing denizens appeared around the corner to their right, shuffling in silence. Within minutes, hundreds filled the street, thousands, all heading in the direction of the gates. Striga shoved him back into the darkness.

‘What are they doing?’ he hissed. ‘Where are they all going?’

She grabbed him by the scruff of his tunic and pressed him against cold stone. He noticed for the first time, the bruises on her pale face, silver-white hair clumped with dirt. She looked like she’d been in a fight. ‘Shut it, mortal, if you want to take another breath.’

Then he heard it; the thudding of feet in dry dust. He turned his head a fraction and saw a beast pause opposite the alley mouth. The scaled creature had muscular legs with thick claws, a short neck and thick horned head, powerful jaws, and large teeth. Three eyes in triangular formation. A long tail slithered behind it.

It was the rider, however, who garnered Wither’s full attention. The man-like figure was pale-skinned and overlarge with the flesh of its body rotting. Something told him this was not one of the undead. Horns ran down the length of its spine and along its shoulders. The head’s shape was wrong, angular in a jarring manner. Shadow wreathed its face, but he thought he saw runes etched into its skull. The entire form appeared ghostly, as though something stolen from a nightmare and given form. Something else about it bothered him. As though he knew it.

The beast and its rider moved on. Behind it, the procession of Havari continued, men, women, and children, rich and poor. None looked left or right. They marched as though dead. Wither’s heart began to thump at the thought. ‘Are they ...?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ grunted his companion, ‘but they might as well be.’ She sighed, stepping away from him. It seemed it was the rider she feared, not the entourage. ‘You will go south. I will try to prevent what is coming, but should I fail, you will have a vital role.’

‘Is failure likely?’

‘Yes.’

He folded his arms. ‘I go nowhere until you tell me what it was. Should I not at least have some idea of what I’m facing?’

Her face spasmed with anger, but she forced it to calm. ‘The one you saw, the rider, is known as the Fetch. It is a collection of souls, and part of its form is of one whom I consider a brother. Besides him, I have eight other ... siblings. All are more terrible than I. He is the best of us. The one I love most.’

Wither was surprised to hear those words. He had not considered her someone who could feel anything.

‘It has no soul of its own,’ she continued. ‘It is a vessel, a tool for a purpose, but no less dangerous. I must retrieve my brother. I once condemned him like the others. I have to make amends.’

‘Who ... what are you?’ Dangerous, he knew, to voice such a direct question. This one had a temper but he knew she was not human.

Her form shimmered, growing taller. White horns sprouted along her bare neck and shoulders like those he’d seen on the Fetch. Her muscles increased in size. ‘I am a Torment, one of eleven, although we do not often count the eleventh. He went a different way, and was never truly one of us. The rest of us serve the one you mortals name, the Grim.’

Wither swallowed his fear. He could not back down. ‘Why should I want anything to do with you?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘If not in gratitude for stealing you from death, perhaps for the powers you have lost. Do as I bid and you will see them restored. If it helps, I do not do the Grim’s bidding in this. I will pay a price for my temerity.’

He thought about his options, while Striga restored her human-like appearance. ‘What happens, if I refuse?’

She sighed. ‘Nothing will happen to you, but this world will suffer consequences. Your role is too important for you to ignore, Wither.’

My role? ‘This is a request, and not a command?’

She nodded but appeared irritated. ‘Enough of the questions. Choose. I have other business to be about.’

He now saw she had several broken bones, her left arm limp. With all the excitement, he’d failed to notice how badly injured she was. Dare he push it further? Dare he trust her? ‘I agree to go south.’

The Torment smiled, and he found himself liking her a little. She was a force of nature, a storm, which had calmed to allow a little sunlight through. He shook himself. Was it him, or was it her making him feel this way? If the latter, she was more dangerous than he’d thought.

Wither recalled the rider. He couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity. ‘Please, I need to understand one thing.’ He waited for her nod, before asking, ‘What exactly is this Fetch going to do?’

‘They’re buried around here, somewhere,’ she muttered and began to pace, ignoring the shuffling feet in the street beyond. ‘Must be beneath the sand within the desert, but where? Many false trails, and wasted years. Five continents and two centuries with nothing to show for it but suspicions. Adal and his bloody plots within plots. I will not be thwarted, not again.’

She stopped pacing and looked him in the eyes. ‘Buried somewhere out there is an ancient form of undead, known as vampires. It seeks to awaken them. They will prove unstoppable.’ She smiled again, and it was a vicious smile. ‘You have no idea how terrible they can be.’

Wither began to back away from her. ‘This is your plan, to wipe out humankind? Why would I help you?’

She moved like a viper, and gripped his neck, lifting him off his feet. Had he thought she looked injured a moment ago?

Spectrum above, those eyes ... depthless pools of molten gold. He felt a sudden sense of recognition as if they’d met before.

‘Not my plan,’ she said, ‘but my master’s.’ She grimaced, releasing her hold. ‘The Grim’s plan. The Fetch is his servant. I have no authority over it. I have a different outcome in mind, one which involves you.’ She muttered, ‘Plots within plots. Skelet must be the guardian. He must be, the lying toad!’

‘I can’t,’ Wither said, hearing the desperation in his voice. ‘Not without my magic. I am as likely to die crossing the desert. I am helpless.’ It was all that undead bastard’s fault.

Striga paused, and said, ‘One hundred leagues south, thereabouts, lies an oasis. There is someone resident there who will help you regain your power. Your inheritance awaits you, Wither, either there or somewhere else. An inheritance your father denied you when he sold you into slavery, but blood is blood.’

His father had denied him everything, including the family name. But what inheritance? She had already suggested his family and name no longer existed.

‘Go, and take what is yours.’ She exited the alley, limping into the night. The passing throng didn’t notice.

Wither sat in the alley long after the last of Shamar’s people had passed. Later, as he headed in the direction of the gates, he halted in the empty street. A lone dog stood watching him. Wither stared at it. Every other intelligent creature had fled. It possessed a look in its eyes, which wasn’t canine.

Not knowing why, but following a hunch, he went after it. It disappeared through the doorway of a large tenement and down a dank unlit corridor. Turning left, it slunk beneath a thick curtain. Flinging it aside, Wither discovered a small room with a cot, and a candle burning low. On the cot lay a young girl, a local by her darker skin. Her black hair was braided with beads. Moving closer, the dog unbothered by his presence, he examined her and revised his opinion. She was much older than he’d thought. A woman in her mid-thirties.

‘Well now,’ he whispered, ‘who are you, and why have you brought me here?’

The dog whimpered, lay down and closed its eyes. Its death rattle followed.

The woman opened her eyes.

‡

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, he introduced himself to his camel, pulling on the reins to lower its head, blowing into its nose. The nostrils flared, as the camel pulled its head back. The woman chose to ride hers, while Wither walked. They would not wait for dawn.

The pungent two-humped camels bore several bladders of water, and wicker baskets of food, sacks of fodder. Striga had done well. He’d been surprised to find them where she’d said they’d be, and unattended. The entire city lay abandoned with not a soul or sound.

Out in the cold darkness, thousands of people, rich, poor, slave, young and old, marched silent and dumb. Going where?

Leaving Shamar, Wither headed south as Striga had suggested. He would regain his power, and he would see about this inheritance. He remained sceptical his father would have left him anything, but Striga’s tone had suggested it was something he was supposed to take.

Once dawn broke over the parched desolate land, a single fact disturbed him. There were no footprints, no sign anyone had passed this way, let alone thousands of people. There should have been something. It was as though they had vanished into the air. Striga had not told him everything.

He walked beside his camel, setting a good pace. Beside him rode a strange and silent woman. She reminded him of someone, who had been odd in her own way.

Someone he missed so much, it hurt.