A Fire to Kindle (Spirit Wind Book 1), page 1
Contents
Title Page
Also by Daniel Dydek
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Scripture References
Prayer Times
Copyright
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Support for the Author
A Fire to Kindle
_____________________
Book 1 of
the SPIRIT WIND series
A Beorn Publishing book
Canton, OH
Also by Daniel Dydek
The Triumvirs epic fantasy series
By Ways Unseen
The First to Forgive
The One Known
The Spirit Wind supernatural thriller series
A Fire to Kindle
Dedication
_____________________
For Playlist Makers, and God, who can inspire an entire story in an hour
1
Normally, I loved tending to the catacombs beneath our convent. Often dark, but rarely dank, the walls and alcoves brimmed with history and religion. Sister Lucy told me often the stories of the most important dead—well, they were important to me. She made a frequent and hard point that all were equal before The Beloved. But some had done deeds so much more brave and selfless and heroic that I could not help but admire them more. Whenever it was my turn to bring the incense and pray, I’m sorry if I sought out particular ones, and perhaps prayed there more fervently.
But today had not been normal, so far. The candle I brought with me guttered constantly. I worried it was one I had cast, had been lazy or inattentive when I made the wax and all sorts of impurities had gotten in—or, more properly, hadn’t been gotten out. It looked perfectly fine, to me. And yet it weakly fought off the shadows from corners and holes, and I tripped constantly on the uneven floor.
I think that’s how I got lost. Between the tripping and the shadows and the worrying about what my hem might look like by the time I returned, I looked up once and didn’t recognize the passage where I stood. I traced over the walls with my eyes, seeing names I had never read before. Part of my job was to clean out the dust and cobwebs, too; but the task had not been done in months, it looked to me. Except behind me, where I now could see clearly the trail of my dress. I would be scolded for that, for certain.
I should have gone straight back the way I came. On a normal day, I would have. But something kept me. I thought it was merely curiosity—a trait not completely gotten out of me by the Sisters. Well, they had tried their best, but it had only been a few months so far. As I stood there in the warring shadows, my eyes kept drifting further into the dark, into the undisturbed dust. Why had no one gone that way in so long?
I took a step further in, and in my mind I thought I felt—a presence? A hum? Then, and now, I cannot tell, though I have suspicions. I might have had one last chance to decide to turn back, but I didn’t. What I know for certain is that, by the second step, I was trapped. I know that now.
In the moment, I only knew my little candle struggled more at times, and at others blazed forward brighter than a torch. The catacombs here were clearly even older. The letters carved in the faces were better-worn and more angular, the dust in them lay thicker. It smelled earthier, less like stone and wax and more like mushrooms and leaf mold. In my head I saw fleeting and dancing visions of whirling druid circles. There was a strange thrill in me, like when I would stand at the edge of the bell-tower and look down to the flagstones far below.
The visions came more frequently with each breath, each time the scents swirled through my nose—now of holly and elm. The longer they lingered, the more I saw in them—there was some festival going on in the moonlight. Drums thumped like heartbeats. Men and women ululated or sang in otherworldly, guttural tongues. I had heard that tongue once before, when pale men in thick beards and braids had stopped by our convent for an evening. I wasn’t supposed to, but I heard them talking in low voices after supper in their own language. It frightened me, then. It sounded like a language forged from violence. But in song…
So I must be forgiven, as these visions glowed and pulsed, that I thought the music was simply part of this dream festival. It took time until I realized the music was there even when the visions were gone for a moment. Only when it grew louder than the visions.
I stopped walking. The scents and visions faded for a moment, and there was only the music. One instrument, a harp. But softer and not as…plucky. Like they weren’t being created by a harp string. More like each note already existed and could simply be heard when it was supposed to be. And it seemed far distant, as if the song came to me from across far hills, now stronger, now quieter, as the wind carried it to me.
It was only then I began to actually feel the entrapment I think I entered into with that second step. Because suddenly I wanted to go, to leave the music far behind and find the Sisters and ask what this place was and what was happening to me. But I couldn’t. The desperation grew in me as the visions and music had: slowly at first, increasing desperately as I felt more and more the invisible shackles. It peaked when I tried to turn my head back the way I had come, and could not.
The wind upon which the music came grew more violent. It was my own breathing as I gasped my panic. The drums thumped faster. The dancers whirled swifter than any human limbs could possibly move. Their eyes grew wide in desperation as they felt the entrapment of my imagination. Their limbs were shackled, too, the strings leading to my mind, their movements entwined to my panic. Soon, no matter how I moved them, their desperate eyes found mine and they begged silently for me to release them, but I could not.
I could not let them go, as I could not be let go. But I could let the panic go. I focused on this. I forced myself to breathe deeply. I stopped trying to turn back. I stopped trying to move altogether, and let myself live in the moment I had found myself. Slowly I consoled myself that I was here whether I willed it now or not, and the only way out was acceptance or death. I didn’t like it, knew it was not something I should harbor. It was that attitude that had brought me to the Sisters in the first place.
The panic rose again, briefly, but I fought it down again. The drums slowed. The dancers moved slower and with grace. Their eyes thanked me, and the joy of the dance returned. The harp-wind came gently, the soft strains and notes soothed the way they had at first.
Movement came back to me. I looked down at the dust, previously undisturbed ahead of me. There were tracks, now, made with tiny little feet with long toes and claws. On the left side of the passage, the toes all pointed toward me, and were sharp and clear and I could almost count the number of those who made them. But on the right side the tracks were indistinct as though the rats had departed swiftly.
I still cannot recall seeing them. But I knew they had come and gone while I stood there. Some hoard of rats, perhaps dozens, had come while I was entrapped, watched me as I fought my panic, then left swiftly in a mad rush as I came out of it, almost as though they feared what I might do to them when I became…
Free. I could move fully again, even look behind me. I think at this point I could have chosen anything I wished. So it was again the curiosity not quite gotten out of me that extended my hand with the candle to try to read some of the names of the interred. I would have to ask the Sisters about this place, and hope they would know of it by the names. The crypts were older than them—I knew some parts of it were—but I knew they had learned about much of it, in various ways.
I now wish I had not been so curious. But it is too late for that. Here is what I read:
Bartimaeus of Holden. Worship of demons, letting of blood, strangling of two children, known. Buried without his head and hands.
Percival of Holden. Worship of demons and stars, sacrifice of white bulls, stoning of three monks, known. Buried without his head and hands.
Garrett of Holden. Worship of trees, letting of blood for sacrifice, hanging entrails of three monks, known. Buried without his head and hands.
Bruce of Holden. Worship of demons and demigods; offering of dismembered women and children; performing Blood Eagle on women, children, and clergy; abuse of women, children, and corpses for carnal pleasure. Buried without head, hands, feet, or left ribs. Consigned by monks to eternal purgatory at the edge of the Lake of Fire, in torment of flames and with unending and unrealized hope of salvation.
I realized I was praying. My eyes read the inscriptions over and over, and my feet shuffled closer. My head bowed as though being pulled by invisible threads toward the tomb of Bruce of Holden. To my horror, I realized I was praying for his salvation.
As soon as I recognized the words coming from my mouth in holiest Latin, the threads broke and I ran. Fleetingly, from the corner of my eye as I turned, I swear I saw a single pair of gleaming eyes like a rat, watching me with solemnity.
I did not stop until I reached again the stairs leading up to the surface. My candle had gone out. I don’t know how I saw where I was going. Here, though, enough steady and pleasant light peered down from the still-open door for me to see.
I wrung my hands. Something was on them, clinging. I thought it to be cobwebs. In the ligh
The cuffs were red with blood. I looked further down; my hem that I was worried would be dusty was drenched red as well. And yet my slippers were clean. I think it was that detail alone that saved me from the panic rising again, because it was so strange my mind wouldn’t let go of it. I froze at the top of the stairs, on the threshold of the sacristy. I once appreciated the cleansing feeling it gave my spirit to walk among the sacred objects after walking so long among the dead; now I feared I would sully it all. I minced through, hurrying only as I neared the opposite door and nearly bolted into the cloister.
I needed to talk to Sister Lucy first. Well, before any others. Before that I would need to change my dress. If she believed me, calmed my fears or at least explained them, I might show her the dress. Of course, it wouldn’t be as simple as that, because I didn’t have another dress. That was a luxury reserved for full Sisters, not acolytes in their first year before taking vows.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. I had been so long in the catacombs that I had missed Scuros prayers, and found Sister Lucy waiting for me in my cell. (I still hate that name, because it sounds like a prison. Perhaps it would seem so by the end of the year, before I could enter the Sisters’ Dormitories, but at the time it wasn’t like that for me.)
I stood there far more calmly than I felt, waiting for her brows to climb back down from their perch, or for her to speak, or run out screaming, or something. She took a breath.
“Child, where have you been?”
The simplicity of the question startled me, and I looked at her like a pouting child afraid to admit a mistake.
“You should have been back from the catacombs an hour ago,” she prodded.
Had it been that long? Clearly. What could I tell her? How much might she understand, or how much might she take for the flights of an unsettled mind? It occurred to me to find out how much she might already know. I cleared my throat.
“I am sorry, Sister,” I began quietly—I admit, timidly. I think I had the right. “I became lost, and wandered somehow into a passage I had never seen before. It seemed like no one had been there—” My eyes came up, and I saw a strange expression on her face. Almost as if she knew already what I was talking about. I shut my mouth and waited for her to speak.
“The catacombs are a strange place,” she said softly. Her eyes darted to the garden and back. “There are certainly alcoves to which I have never been, and no mortal soul should go.” Her voice held a question, and I was impelled to answer.
“There were several men, all from Holden—” I broke off again, this time from a sharp tsk! from Sister Lucy, and a swift cut with her hand.
She drew a deep sigh. “Rae-Anna, that was a most terrible place to find yourself lost.”
You’re telling me…
“How did you find yourself there?”
Hesitantly, with as few details as I could get by, I told her. Her eyes constantly flicked to the garden and back, as though watching for someone. In some corner of my mind, I imagined she watched for Sister Judith. Not that either of us should be afraid of her, but after only a few months I knew her to be very severe.
When I finished the story, I expected—hoped—for some explanation from her. She looked me up and down and clasped her hands again. “Well,” she said in normal tones, as though I had only told her how I had spent an afternoon in the countryside. “We must get the soil from your dress before supper. Off with us, to the washroom.”
I blinked, but she gave me no chance to ask questions as she swept from the cell, striding along the cloister—the long sheltered walk that surrounded the square garden—toward the washroom on the north wall. I glanced again at my cuffs and hem, saw the blood splashed there, and shuddered. She was not wrong—except she called it soil?
“Sister,” I asked, trembling anew as I caught up to her. “Where would blood have come from?”
Her steps faltered as she looked at me, clearly and honestly startled. “Blood?” she asked, her voice rising before she caught it and lowered it again. She gave a short, nervous chuckle as we continued on. “Clay can become very red, child, but it does not make it blood.”
We arrived at the washroom, and I stared at my dress. Despite her assurance, it looked very much like blood to me. I had seen clay stains before, those naturally gotten from playing where my mother used to scold me. And though, true, sometimes quite red, it was not the scarlet of what was on my pale sleeves now. And not with the appearance of splashing that I saw.
“Come, off with it,” Sister Lucy said sternly as I gaped like a fish.
I complied, and began scrubbing it in our washbasin. I trembled now from the cold; Sister Lucy made no comment, probably believing it proper penance for me to stand in a shift. The stains, as they came out, turned the most ordinary brown in the water, and I clenched my teeth.
“This will take too long to dry, in this weather,” Sister Lucy said. “Back to your cell, and stay in your blankets until supper. I will explain your absence to the others.”
Though they sounded to my ear as words of departing, she followed me back along the cloister and watched as I wrapped myself in the coarse wool blankets. She stood framed in the doorway of evening light, a faint nimbus around her head like the Mother, and I felt calm again. And I began to think.
“Sister,” I began, as she still made no move to leave. “Why are there men buried under there? And why those men? Why were they not…” I wasn’t entirely sure how such evil men should have been disposed of.
“Burned?”
I shrugged.
“For your first question, let me ask you: why is there an empty forge across the way?”
Forge? Oh. “Where we keep our bolts of cloth?” I asked.
Sister Lucy only raised an eyebrow.
“I guess I noticed the fireplace…”
“And an anvil?” she remarked drily.
I smiled sheepishly. “Well, that too. I guess I never wondered why.”
“You were never told?”
I shook my head.
“I am getting more forgetful each year,” she said with a sigh. “I hope I shall never forget The Beloved.” She appeared startled by her own statement, but recollected herself. “This was once a monastery, not a convent. It makes do for our needs, well enough. But that is why there are remains of men.”
I felt my heart race. “They were monks?”
Sister Lucy became somber. “There are none who are free from the enticements of the world,” she said. “Even the most devout struggle daily in the battle with demons. The greater the soul, the greater the temptations that must meet them. Envy not, dear child, the faith of those before you; for such temptations as they faced would overwhelm you in an instant.”
“But…to do so to women and children…after all else they must have done… And so why not destroy them completely? Why save them, so others might see their deeds…” Even as I said it, I began to understand.
Sister Lucy must have noticed, for she only nodded as though we both agreed. “Well spoken, child: so we all might see their deeds, and beware.”
“But the place had not seen the step of a foot for…” I trailed off again. I hadn’t told her about the rats.
At this, she sighed heavily. “There are always reasons, are there not. In truth, strange things happened down there, long ago. Long before my time, and the time of her before me. It was passed down to me that a Sister had lost her mind, visiting there. She saw visions,” she continued, looking hard at me; I had told her about those, though not in detail. “And she heard—”
“Music,” I said, feeling faint. I had left that out, too, and now wished…I don’t know what I wished. Of all the Sisters, I trusted Lucy the most, and wanted her to know. I wished that it had not happened. Silly.
“What did you hear?” she asked. Her voice held no note of fear or condemnation. It was why I trusted her. She only wanted me to tell.
“It seemed like a harp,” I said. “Except, when someone plays a harp, you can hear them pluck the strings. This seemed like the notes just…like I simply became aware of them at the proper time.”
