Sing a Graveyard Song, page 1
part #3 of Enclave Book Series
Sing a Graveyard Song
Enclave 3
by
Remi Black
Published by Writers Ink Books
Sing a Graveyard Song
Copyright © 2018 Remi Black & Writers’ Ink
First electronic publishing rights: March 2018
All rights are reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means,
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Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America.
Acknowledgements
My especial thanks to Diane and Steve, best first readers in the world.
You question, you spot glaring inconsistencies and plot holes,
you want to understand, you spot typos. Three editors in one.
You’ve stuck with me through thick and thin.
With all my heart, thank you.
And to Deranged Doctor Design, artistic cover designers
who taught the all-important lesson about branding
while delivering beautiful covers for the Writers’ Ink cooperative.
www.writersinkbooks.com
Sealing a Soul
Earth, water, air and fire.
Blood, breath, flesh and bones.
Sun and shadow, soil and stone.
Earth to sifting dust, of which `twas shaped.
Water of brief life, to the stream belong.
Air to rushing winds, no breath to `scape.
Fire of bright spirit, the flame ever strong.
Return to the ether, no more to know strife.
Return to the gods, their gift of thy life.
Empty the vessel, out thy life pours.
Cross the great chasm, seal the last door.
Spirit to Neothera, to live nevermore.
Earth, water, air and fire.
Blood, breath, flesh and bones.
Sun and shadow, soil and stone.
Chapter 1 ~ First Night / Moones / 32nd Night of Deep Winter
Leute climbed to the caves, praying the cold had delayed the decay of Harroth’s corpse. Snowmelt slicked the path. Several times she slid backwards and saved her ascent only by clawing at the jagged rocks that bordered the path. She cared nothing for the mud, nothing for the scrapes and cuts on her hands. She cared only for the safety of the items in her scrip. She clutched it to her to prevent its knocking against rocks.
Deep caverns and shadowed crevasses pocked the mountain’s snow-smoothed face. In the caves lay death, ancient and new. Filling the upper caves were bones stacked upon bones, disinterred for centuries from Alpage’s hallowed graveyard. The lower caves served the newly dead. When winter froze the church grounds and smothered the vale, the lower caves served as temporary resting places. She climbed to those caves and to a month-old corpse, tucked away for spring burial. In that place of death, she would evoke new life. Using air and water, fire and earth, she would call the dead Harroth back to life.
Leute gained the first ledges and headed for the cave which held Harroth’s shrouded body. He had died of a hidden infection one month ago. One month of the old calendar. Thirty-two days and thirty-two nights as the full moon waned to its death. Thirty-twp days, and each day she induced Grisetta to drink a little tea to aid the delivery of her babe. Thirty-two nights, and each night she milked a newborn lamb of its rich blood. Thirty-two days and nights, while she distilled blood-based potions and practiced incantations to rouse the dead.
Today, with Dragon Moon the night before, Grisetta had delivered her son a month before his time, and Leute had sacrificed the weakening lamb for her spell. When Dragon again devoured the moon, thirty-two nights from now, her revenge would be complete.
Sheltered inside the cave, she lit a single candle. Snowmelt dripped off the lip of the entrance, trickled down the sides of the opening, and pooled on rock smoothed by centuries of passage. The cave smelled faintly of decay. Leute paused and looked down the steep slope. Twilight darkened the village far below. Lanterns bobbed along lanes and streets, like fireflies homing on a scent. In one of the houses with gleaming windows, Feldie and her apprentice Magretha helped Grisetta and her new baby. They wouldn’t look for her until long after her incantations were over, Harroth re-born, and her revenge begun.
She lifted her gaze to the snow-locked mountains on the far side of the valley. Alpenglow cast its pinkish taint on the white caps, while night already cloaked the western flanks. More than night would soon cloak Alpage.
The candle and her movement disturbed bats nesting in the cave’s maw. They swirled down. Instinctively she ducked, guarding the candle flame with a cupped hand as the bats swooped past. When the swarm had flooded out of the cave into the cold twilight, she straightened. Holding the flickering candle high, she ventured deeper, tracking the smell of old earth and slow decomposition. At a branching where the flame guttered in a wind, she bore right, toward the source. The walls verged closer. She followed the way into a cleft that funneled wind from the mountaintop. Three shrouded corpses lay one beside the other. Harroth’s would be the newest.
She put the candle in a niche then bent to tug the body away from the others. The waxed cerecloth slid easily across the slick rock. She sliced open the embroidered shroud then peeled back the protecting layers. White white skin, eyes closed, mouth bound shut, it was Harroth and not Harroth, a shell without a soul. The icy wind had kept his flesh from decaying.
Once she had the waxed bindings peeled away, she drug her scrip close and set out the essentials for her spell: her knife, water distilled from the boiling of five herbs, a copper bowl with a stand, and the flask of lamb’s blood. She lit the candle beneath the stand and lay the knife in the bowl so the metals could heat. Last out of her scrip came the clay pot that contained the most crucial ingredient. She carefully placed it beside Harroth’s head. When she unsealed the lid, the blood-scent filled the cave. Afterbirth, second-birth, rich birth that contained new life.
With everything ready, Leute closed her eyes and breathed deeply to calm her jangling excitement. When her heart rate slowed, she concentrated on the candle flame and sank into meditation. Her voice no louder than her breath, she chanted a gathering spell. Here, surrounded by solid rock that didn’t drain energy from soil and air, she would gather the power needed for the five spells of the incantation. One spell for each element and the last for chaos, the chaos she would unloose on the village of Alpage.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Wrapped well against the evening’s cold, Magretha watched the first stars peeking out in the moonless Dragon night. Soon the bowl of sky would glitter with stars, twinkling jewels on a grand lady’s velvet gown, the way she imagined the gown her father had once described. A sight she would never see unless she ventured to the lowlands as he’d once done. No grand stranger would ever come to Alpage, and she had no desire to leave her mountains.
She sighed and massaged her back, aching from the day’s physical toil. Today, last day of Deep Winter, she and Feldie and Leute had fought for the lives of a mother and her too-early babe, fighting to snatch life from grasping death. She was awed anew by the tenuous chain that linked a soul to a fragile body. An apprentice only, this day she had wielded power that a year ago she would not have dreamed of wielding. For the past hour, exhilaration had fueled her. They had won their battle to save both mother and babe. The elation had now ebbed, leaving exhaustion in its wake. Feldie had sapped more than power from her in the battle against death. Magretha massaged the small of her back and wished for a steaming bath to ease her muscles.
“Tired, my almost-daughter?”
Feldie looked as wrung out as Magretha felt. The older woman had shed her stained apron, but splotches of birth-blood flecked her sweat-damp blouse. Her tousled hair gleamed silver in the dying light. She came to Magretha and rested an arm around her waist.
“A good omen, this babe of Grisetta’s. Last child of Deep Winter. You did well tonight.”
“I was so afraid I would hurt Grisetta or the baby.”
“Yet you did not. `Tis glad I am that I took you to apprentice. This day’s work was proof of my choice. You did well with as a difficult a birth as you’ll ever encounter. A month early and the babe not turned; the mother exhausted long before the babe crowned. Without your younger power and stronger arms to do the work, I doubt that either would have lived.”
“Leute could have done as well, Feldie. Or Kortie.”
“Leute has not your gentle touch nor your power’s depth. She will never make the wise woman that you will. And Kortie is mewed up with grief for her husband Harroth. Besides, already you surpass both of my erstwhile apprentices. I fear you will soon surpass me.”
“Never, Feldie. You know
“Not as much as I should, almost-daughter.” She hugged the younger woman. “Come, Grisetta cuddles her new son close, and her family gather to celebrate. `Tis time we were on our way. You have your scrip?”
“Here. And yours.” She hoisted both packs onto her shoulder. “Thereiss said she would have hot soup and cold ale waiting for us when we finished.”
“I look forward to the ale.” Feldie looked back into the house. “Where is Leute?”
“She left quite a while ago. She said the after-birth must be buried within a hour of the babe’s birth.”
“Ah, that old superstition. The monstrous twin born with us all, buried before it saps life from the living.” Her raised eyebrows and creepy voice mocked the belief, a shocking reminder that she was an outlander. Feldie had been Alpage’s wise woman since before Magretha was born, but she had the non-native’s prejudice against certain village beliefs. “Leute is much for the superstitions, but it is as good a reason as any to dispose of the after-birth.” She wrapped her cloak tighter. “Lead on, almost-daughter. I would fill my belly before I sleep.”
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Chanting the first spell, Leute poured a circle around herself and Harroth’s body. At five equal points she dribbled candlewax. Dipping her finger in the herbed water, she wrote around each point, carefully forming the sigils of the five gods, the worshipped four and the forgotten fifth. Cold wind tinged with power swirled around her head. She used the rest of the water to write the sigils on the dead man’s skin. A sigil for each god, each god a base element. Fire signs traced over Harroth’s head, air signs over his lungs and torso, earth signs down the length of his arms and legs, water signs over his loins. Fifth god, vessel god, forgotten by all save those who needed its chaos, she traced that sign on his hands and feet and over his heart.
For the second spell, she cut her arm and dripped the new blood into the burnished copper bowl. It sizzled in the metal. An acrid tang replaced the smell of the placenta. Without cleaning the blade, she slit Harroth’s eyelids then cut two openings over his heart and two over his vitals. The fifth cut she made in his scrotum. When the heat had charred the blood, she lifted the bowl from the stand and spit on the black ash. She smeared this in each of the five cuts.
Then she took up the flask. She poured the infant lamb’s blood into each of the cuts, massaging the life-fluid into Harroth’s body, sharing the first cup between his eyes and his seed-sack before working the other four cups into the openings in his torso. With the last lines of the spell, she again wrote the sigils for the five gods over each of the blood-filled cuts.
After the third spell, the candle burned higher, feeding on the loosed energy. The grimoire from which she’d stolen the incantation had claimed the rampant power would turn smoke into a tangible wisp. Chanting, scarcely daring to believe, she reached for a trickle of smoke. At the touch of her bloody fingers, the smoke thickened and shifted to an ashy thread. Five times she worked the smoke thread into the cuts, five times she chanted the fourth spell, five times she traced power signs at the four points of his body, head and heart, scrotum and feet.
The charged air sparkled. Five times she traced the five gods’ sigils in the air, calling the winds of life, calling his spirit back to his body. The wind gushed down the cleft and howled into the room. It ripped through her hair and clothes, riming the sweat on her body. It gusted down on Harroth’s torso, filling his dead lungs with new air. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, as if he breathed. The wind whooshed around the room, picking up particles of dust that stung her skin like nettles. At every place that it pricked his skin, droplets of blood beaded.
Fifth spell was strongest spell, the spell that re-woke life. Exhausted, sticky with ice-dried sweat, Leute trembled from her labor. The power had drained her, and still it drank more and more deeply. It sucked at her innards, sapping her life-force as it built the spark that would animate Harroth’s body. She inhaled the energy-charged air. Then she dipped her hands into the viscous after-birth and scooped out enough to spread over his chest. And she sang, words charged with power, words that broke the grave. “Earth and air, water and fire, blood and breath, flesh and bones, sun and shadow, soil and stone.”
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Kortie woke, shivering in her lonely bed. Cold tears wet her cheeks. She lay silent and still, but the dream had vanished like a bubble. Just as her dreams of a long future with Harroth had vanished when he died. Tonight ending one month and started the next, a time when the four gods’ duality was greatest. Life and growth quickened in the duality, and so today she had prayed to learn that his child quickened in her womb. She dared cast no spell to find out, for just as life quickened, so too could evil be birthed. Feldie had warned her not to seed unlooked-for trouble with a thoughtless spell during the Dragon Moon. She had been tempted, but the woman’s age-old sign, more certain than any spell, thwarted her. Her courses came, killing her hope.
She curled onto her side and jerked the covers over her mouth to muffle her sobs, though there was no one in the house to hear. No one else, since he had died. No one ever, she vowed as grief wracked her. No one but Harroth, and he would never live again.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Alstera dreamed of water, a night swirling with water. Motes, elusive as a will o’wisp, danced above the waves, their sparks gleaming on the liquid darkness. Waves washed over and in to each other, building and ebbing, surging and dissipating, a ceaseless rhythm. Like a mote, her dream self floated above the waters, but she was dark, the waters below her darker on this moon-dark night, lit only by the sparkling lights.
The swirling lake washed in and out, in and out, but as she drifted above the waves, she realized a steady flow drew her with it. The current rushed and swirled, billowed and sucked, thundering with power as it gathered speed. The waters flooded over a cliff, taking her with them. Spray splashed up to soak her. The cascade plunged down and down and down, deep as an abyss. Then the waters struck bottom and exploded up to capture her. Sucked under the dark liquid, she tumbled over and over. Her senses drowning, the blood in her veins surged with the waters’ power. Her blood, her breath, her flesh, her bones, everything sucked into the elemental energy, and in this dream only her magic held self and soul together.
She plunged down another cliff. Inchoate creatures bowled in the waters with her. As powerless as she, they whorled, tossed and rolled, tumbled and twisted, shaping and losing shape, reaching and retreating, stretching and spiraling. Boulders loomed and receded as the waters rushed her along. Teeming energy gathered like a great wave, seeking an outlet.
Then the waters cascaded out of the mountains and surged into the lowlands. They broke the riverbanks and flooded outward. The wild power lost force, its thunder muted, its puissance seeped into the sleeping soil.
A dying wave cast the dreaming Alstera against an ancient oak. Its ridged bark offered a clinging hold as another wave washed over her. As it receded, the wave’s suction threatened to tow her back into the flood. Leafy branches dipped, became arms that held her against the trunk. She blinked. The bark she clung to reshaped into a face. An elemental with angled eye and brows smiled, his eyes sparkling like the motes. Then the water seeped away. The bark re-arranged itself, and when she blinked again, the oak was just an oak.
Still clutching the tree, she sat up and looked about. Hills rolled behind the great oak, lapping one beside the other, land waves that had stopped the flood’s force. Writhing runnelets snaked back to the flood. As the dark waters receded, the land glistened like polished silver, bright as a full moon on this moon-dead night. Motes exploded out of the water. They danced above the flood, circling and whirling together, the gold of their light glimmering on the waves.
Gasping for air, Alstera sagged against her rescuing tree. Waters lapped near her feet, and a waft of air rustled the winter-dried leaves above her head. A great wave surged out of the ebbing flood. The formless mass burst toward her. Between one breath and the next, it roared over her. The wave forced water into every orifice and penetrated her pores. Then it receded. Her dream-self gasped for life-giving air as the tree dribbled old leaves on her and the waters trickled away from her swamped body. When she looked down, she saw that the waters had stained her bloody.
