“Bone, my bone.”
He felt the demon enter the oak and come so close to him he could reach out and touch it if he dared. Lhel’s cool hand covered his.
“Keesa, see.”
Tobin opened his eyes and gasped. A boy who looked just like him crouched a few feet away. But this boy was dirty and naked, and his dull black hair was tangled around his face in filthy clumps.
I saw him that day when Mama … Tobin shoved the thought away. He didn’t think of That Day. Not ever.
The other boy glared at Tobin with eyes so black the pupils didn’t show.
“He looks like me,” Tobin whispered.
“He you. You he. Look-likes.”
“Twins, you mean?” Tobin had seen twins in Alestun.
“Twins, yes.”
The demon bared its teeth at Lhel in a soundless hiss, then scuttled to squat on the far side of the fire. The rabbit hopped back into Tobin’s lap beside the doll and went on washing.
“He doesn’t like you,” Tobin told Lhel.
“Hates,” Lhel agreed. “You mama have him. Now you have him. Keep hekkamari safe or he be lost. He need you, help you some.”
Unnerved by the demon’s unblinking glare, Tobin huddled closer to Lhel. “Why did he die?”
Lhel shrugged. “Keesa die sometime.”
The ghost crouched lower, ready to spring at her. She ignored it.
“But—but how come he didn’t go to Bilairy?” Tobin demanded. “Nari says we go to Bilairy at the gates when we die and he takes us to Astellus, who guides us to the dead lands.”
Lhel shrugged again.
Tobin squirmed in frustration. “Well, what’s its name?”
“Can’t name on dead.”
“I have to call it something!”
“Call him Brother. That he is.”
“Brother?” The ghost just stared at him and Tobin shivered again. This was worse than when it was something he couldn’t see at all. “I don’t want him looking at me all the time. And he hurts me, too. He broke my city!”
“He don’t be do that no more, now you keep hekkamari. You tell him ‘go way!’ he go way. You call him back, too, with words I teaching you. You say, so I know you know them.”
“Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.”
The spirit boy flinched, then crept closer to Tobin, who scrambled back, dropping the rabbit.
Lhel hugged him and laughed. “He don’t be hurt you. Tell him go way.”
“Go away, Brother!”
The spirit vanished.
“Can I make him go away forever?”
Lhel gripped his hand, suddenly serious. “No! You need him, I tell you.” She shook her head sadly. “Think how lonesome he be? He miss mama, like you miss. She make this hekka, care for him. She die. No care. You care now.”
Tobin didn’t like the sound of that. “What do I do? Do I have to feed him? Can I give him some clothes?”
“Spirits eat with they eye. Needs be with folk. Way you see him, that’s how your mama keep him. All she could, so sick in the heart. You call him sometime, let him look around with you so he don’t be so lonesome and hungry. You do that, keesa?”
Tobin couldn’t imagine calling a ghost on purpose, but he understood all too well what Lhel said about Brother being lonesome and lost.
He sighed, then whispered the words again. “Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.”
Brother reappeared beside him, still glowering.
“Good!” Lhel said. “You and spirit—” She linked her forefingers together.
Tobin studied the sullen face, so like his own, and yet not. “Will he be my friend?”
“No, just do as he do. Be a lot worse before you mama make hekkamari.” She made the joining sign with her fingers again. “You kin.”
“Will Nari and Father be able to see him when I call him?”
“No, ’less they got eye. Or he want.”
“But you can see him.”
Lhel tapped her forehead. “I got eye. You, too, yes? You see him a little?” Tobin nodded. “They know him, without seeing. Father. Nari. Old man at door. They know.”
Tobin felt like someone had squeezed all the air out of him. “They know who the demon is? That I have a brother? Why didn’t they tell me?”
“They don’t be ready. ’Til then, you keep your secret tight.” She tapped him over the heart. “They don’t know hekkamari. Just your mama and me. You keep it tight, just you. Don’t show it no one!”
“But how?” This brought Tobin right back to his original dilemma. “I keep putting it places to hide it, but—”
Lhel stood up and went to the door. “Yours, keesa. You carry it. Go home now.”
Brother moved along with them as they started back, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind. It appeared to walk, but it didn’t look quite right, though Tobin couldn’t say exactly why.
In a surprisingly short time, he caught sight of the watchtower roof above the treetops.
“You’re not very far from us at all!” he exclaimed. “Can I come see you again?”
“Some while, keesa.” Lhel stopped beneath a drooping birch. “Your father, he don’t like you know me. You have a new teaching, soon.” Reaching out, she cupped his cheek again and drew a design on his forehead with her thumb. “You be great warrior, keesa. I see. You remember then I help you, yes?”
“I will,” he promised. “And I’ll take care of Brother.”
Lhel patted his cheek, not quite smiling, and her lips didn’t seem to move when she said, “You will do all that must be done.”
She turned and strode away, disappearing so quickly Tobin wasn’t even certain which direction she’d gone. Brother was still with him, though, watching him with that same frightening stare. Without Lhel there, all the old fears flooded back.
“You go away!” Tobin ordered hastily. “Blood my blood, flesh my flesh, bone my bone!” To his relief, the spirit obeyed, winking out of sight like a snuffed candle. All the same, Tobin was sure he could feel it dogging his steps as he hurried home.
Using the watchtower as a guide, he found the riverbank again and hurried along it to the back wall of the keep. The usual evening sounds came from the kitchen and yard as he slipped in through the gate but there was no one in the hall. He dashed through and made it all the way to his room without meeting anyone.
The whole house smelled nicely of baking. Hiding the doll in the chest again, he shoved his ruined shoes under the wardrobe, washed his hands and face, and went downstairs for supper.
Home safe at last, he quickly forgot how frightened he’d been. He’d been gone for hours, had an adventure, and no one had even noticed. Even if he had been frightened, even if Brother wasn’t going to be his friend, or even much less scary, he somehow felt older, and closer to being the warrior who would wear his father’s armor someday.
Nari and Mynir were laying out spoons on the kitchen table while Cook tended something savory in a pot over the fire.
“There you are!” Nari exclaimed as he came in. “I was just coming up to fetch you. You’ve been so quiet this afternoon I hardly knew you were here!”
Tobin took a warm bun from the pile cooling on the sideboard and bit into it, smiling to himself.
Lhel would like these.
Chapter 14
Tobin sat beside his toy city the next day, holding the doll on his lap. Nari had gone to town with Mynir, and Cook could be counted on not to come upstairs looking for him.
The pungent aroma of fresh herbs rose in Tobin’s nostrils as he stared down into its blank face, wondering again what his mama had seen when she looked at it. Had she seen Brother? He hooked a finger under the hair cord around the doll’s neck and tugged idly at it, thinking, My hair. My blood.
And his responsibility, Lhel said, but one he wanted no part of. It had been bad enough, calling Brother when she was with him. To do it now? Here? His heart beat faster just thinking about it.
Instead, he fetched ink and a quill
from the chest and carried the doll to the window where the light was better. Dipping the quill, he tried to draw a round eye on the blank cloth face. The ink bled through the muslin and he ended up with a spidery black blotch instead. Sighing, he flicked a few drops of ink from the quill tip and tried again with a drier point. This worked better and he drew around the blotch, smoothing the edges in to make a large dark iris, and framing it with two curved horizontal lines for lids. He drew the other eye to match, and found himself looking into large black eyes not unlike Brother’s. He made an attempt at the nose and dark brows. When he reached the mouth, however, he drew it smiling. That didn’t look right at all; the eyes still looked angry, but there was no changing it now. It wasn’t a very good face, but it was still an improvement over the blank one he’d known all his life.
It made the doll seem more like his now, too, but it didn’t make it any less daunting to summon Brother. Tobin carried it to the corner furthest from the door and sat down with his back pressed to the wall. What if Brother attacked him? What if it broke the city again, or flew off to hurt someone?
In the end it was what Lhel had said about Brother being hungry that forced Tobin to utter the summons. Pressing back into the corner as far as he could, he squinted his eyes half shut and whispered, “Blood my blood. Flesh my flesh. Bone my bone.”
At the oak yesterday the spirit had crouched like a wild beast at his very feet. This time, however, Tobin had to look around to find it.
Brother stood by the door as if he’d just walked in like a living person. He was still thin and dirty, but he had on a plain, clean tunic like the one Tobin wore. He didn’t look so angry today, either. He just stood there, staring at Tobin with no expression at all, as if he was waiting for something.
Tobin stood up slowly, never taking his eyes off the ghost. “Would—would you like to come over here?”
Brother didn’t walk across the room. He was just suddenly there beside him, staring at him with those unblinking black eyes. Lhel had said to feed him by letting him look at things. Tobin held out the doll. “See? I drew a face.”
Brother showed no sign of interest or understanding. Tobin warily studied the strange face. Brother had all his features except for the crescent-shaped scar on his chin, yet he didn’t really look like Tobin at all.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Brother said nothing.
“Come on, then. I’ll show you things. Then you can go.” Tobin felt a little silly as he walked around the room showing his favorite possessions to a silent ghost. He held up his little sculptures and carvings, and the treasures his father had sent. Would Brother be jealous? Tobin wondered. He picked up a Plenimaran shield boss and held it out to him. “Would you like to have this?”
Brother accepted it with a hand that looked solid, but where their fingers appeared to touch Tobin felt only a wisp of cold air.
Tobin squatted down beside the city and Brother did the same, still holding the boss. “I’m fixing all the things you broke that day,” he told him, letting a little resentment creep into his voice. He picked up a boat and showed Brother where the mast had been mended. “Nari thinks I broke it.”
Brother still said nothing.
“It’s all right, I guess. You were afraid I’d show Nari the doll, weren’t you?” You must keep it.
Tobin was so startled he dropped the ship. Brother’s voice was faint and expressionless, and his lips didn’t move, but there was no question that he’d spoken.
“You can talk!”
Brother stared at him. You must keep it.
“I will, I promise. But you talked! What else can you say?”
Brother stared.
Tobin was stumped for a moment, wondering what you could say to a ghost. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to ask. “Do you see Mama in the tower?”
Brother nodded.
“Do you visit her?”
Another nod.
“Does—does she want to hurt me?”
Sometimes.
A knot of sorrow and fear lodged in Tobin’s chest. Hugging himself, he searched the ghost’s face. Did he see a hint of satisfaction there? “But why?”
Brother either could not or would not tell him.
“Go away then! I don’t want you here!” Tobin cried.
Brother disappeared and the brass boss clattered to the floor. Tobin stared at it a moment, then threw it across the room.
Several days passed before Tobin could summon the courage to call Brother again. When he finally did so, however, he found he wasn’t as afraid of him.
He was curious to know whether Nari could see Brother, so he ordered him to follow him into the bedchamber where Nari was changing the linens. The woman looked right at Brother without seeing him.
No one else saw him that night, either, when Tobin brought him to the kitchen briefly, thinking that looking at food might help Brother not to look so very hungry.
Alone in his bedroom that night, Tobin summoned him again to see if there was any change. There wasn’t, though. Brother looked as famished as ever.
“Didn’t you eat the food with your eyes?” Tobin asked him as Brother stood motionless at the end of his bed.
Brother tilted his head slightly, as if he were considering the question. I eat everything with my eyes.
Tobin shivered as Brother looked at him. “Do you hate me, Brother?”
A long pause. No.
“Then why are you so mean?”
Brother had no answer for this. Tobin couldn’t tell if he even understood what he’d said.
“Do you like it when I call you?”
Again, no comprehension.
“Will you be nice to me if I let you come out every day? Will you do as I say?”
Brother blinked slowly at him, like an owl in the sun.
That would have to do for now. “You mustn’t break things or hurt people anymore. That’s very bad. Father wouldn’t let you act so if you were alive.”
Father…
The cold, hissing whisper raised the hairs on Tobin’s arms. Ordering Brother away, Tobin pulled the covers around his head like a hood and stared at the flickering night lamp until Nari came to bed. After that, he only summoned Brother in the daytime.
Chapter 15
Iya and Arkoniel spent the summer in the southernmost provinces, and here Iya searched out an ancient wizard named Ranai, who lived in a little fishing village north of Erind. As a girl Ranai had fought beside Iya’s master in the Great War and been badly wounded there. Iya had prepared Arkoniel to meet her, but he still cringed inwardly at his first sight of her face when she answered their knock on her cottage door.
She was a frail, stooped woman. A necromancer’s demon had crippled her left leg and raked the left side of her head with claws of fire; the skin clung to her skull in pale waxlike ridges that did not move when she smiled or spoke.
Perhaps this was why she’d chosen to immure herself in this tiny hamlet, thought Arkoniel. The power in the woman made the hairs on the young wizard’s arms prickle.
“Greetings, Mistress Ranai,” Iya said, bowing to the old woman. “Do you remember me?”
Ranai squinted at her for a moment, then smiled. “Why, you’re Agazhar’s girl, aren’t you? But not a girl any longer. Come in, my dear. And I see you have a student of your own now. Come in and welcome, young man, and share my hearth.”
Rain pattered cozily down on the thatched roof as the old woman limped from table to hearth and back, serving them bread and soup. Iya contributed cheese and a skin of good wine they’d bought in the village. The night breeze carried the smell of wild roses and the sea through the cottage’s single window.
They spoke of small matters as they ate, but after the dishes had been cleared away Ranai fixed Iya with her good eye and said, “You’ve come here for a reason, I think.”
Arkoniel settled back with his wine, knowing by heart the conversation that would follow.
“Do you ever wonder, Ranai, wh
at we wizards might accomplish if we put our heads together?” Iya asked.
This is the two hundred and thirteenth time, Arkoniel thought. He’d kept count.
“Your master and I saw what wizards are capable of, for good and for evil,” Ranai replied. “Is that why you came all the way down here, Iya? To ask me that?”
Iya smiled. “I wouldn’t say this straight out to many, but I will to you. Where do you stand regarding the king?”
The sound portion of Ranai’s face took on a familiar look of wonder and hope. She waved a hand and the window shut itself tight. “You’ve been dreaming of her!”
“Who?” Iya asked quietly, but Arkoniel sensed her excitement. They’d found another.
“The Sad Queen, I call her,” Ranai whispered. “The dreams started about twenty years ago, but Illior sends them more often now, especially on the nights between the moon’s two crescents. Sometimes she’s young, sometimes old. Sometimes a victor, others a corpse. I never see her face clearly, but there’s always a sense of deep sorrow about her. Is she real?”
Iya did not answer her question directly. She never did, any more than she would ever show the bowl she carried in the worn leather sack. “I was granted a vision at Afra. Arkoniel will bear witness to that. In it I saw the destruction of Ero, and then a new city and a new age of wizards. But a queen must rule that new city. You know Erius will never let that happen. He follows Sakor of the Four, but it is Illior who protected Skala in the Great War and since. It’s Illior’s hand over wizards, as well. Have we served the Lightbearer well, standing idly by all these years while the great prophecy given to Thelátimos is trampled and ignored?”
Ranai drew designs in a dribble of wine on the table-top. “I’ve wondered that myself. But compared to his mother, Erius hasn’t been a bad ruler, and he won’t live forever. I might even outlive him. And that business with the female heirs? It’s not without precedent. Ghërilain’s own son Pelis seized the throne from his sister—”
“And the land was struck with a plague that killed him and thousands of others within the year,” Arkoniel reminded her.
Ranai raised an eyebrow and he saw a flash of the great woman she had been. “Don’t lecture me on history, young man. I was there. The gods struck down Pelis swiftly. But King Erius has ruled for over two decades now. Perhaps he’s right about the Oracle being misinterpreted. You know as well as I that his mother, descendent of Thelátimos though she was, was no fit ruler.”