Ravencaller Read online

  Does Dierk not desire joy? It was Vaesalaum’s voice piercing the suddenly frozen memory. There are other experiences.

  Before Dierk could answer, the memory shifted, becoming another moment, another reenacted moment in time. Erik was running. His love and happiness had been replaced with stark terror. His cabin was on fire. Strange men surrounded it, and they wielded weapons. Lisa was crying. So was their child, but Lisa’s hands were empty. The wail grew. The fire spread.

  No more, Dierk screamed, but Erik’s mouth would not cooperate. Stop this, pull me out, pull me out!

  The void returned. The nisse shimmered into view. Though it lacked eyes, he felt the creature’s stare boring into him.

  Dierk not like violence?

  “Not like… not like that,” he said. “I never want to feel that again.”

  Vaesalaum bobbed up and down. Dierk swore its body had grown several inches since when it had first appeared.

  Human has more pages. I know what Dierk seeks.

  A dirty street of Londheim replaced the void. Erik huddled at the entrance of an alley. The sky was bright with stars. All he had were the clothes on his back and the leather shoes on his feet, and they were a pitiful protection against the cold wind blowing in from the west.

  “Ye’ awake?” a gruff voice asked. Erik looked up to see a mirrored reflection of himself. The other man was just as destitute, just as broken. There were only two differences between their haggard selves. One was that this new man was barefoot. The other was that he held a knife.

  “Get lost,” Erik said, refusing to reveal any fear.

  “Yer shoes. Give ’em.”

  Erik glared him in the eye, too cold and tired to give a shit about some short, rusted blade.

  “Get. Lost.”

  The man jabbed the knife at the air between them. The movement was quick, unsteady. His other hand reached for Erik’s left foot, and when his fingers closed about the heel, he pulled.

  Erik felt everything inside him break down, and what was left was decidedly not human. He leapt on the man like a savage animal. He was just another dirty, broken soul of Londheim forced to live in squalor, but to Erik’s eyes, he was a piece of meat to be ripped apart. His fists rained down on him, breaking his jaw and knocking loose teeth. They wrestled, the knife fell to the street unbloodied. Erik’s hands wrapped about the man’s neck, and feral strength flooded his fingers. The man gasped and gargled as his face turned to blue.

  And in that moment, that wild, vicious space of time strangling the life out of an enemy, Dierk felt alive. His every sense burned at heightened levels. Struggle. Fight. Crush. Watch the life leave the eyes of another. Dierk felt tightness in his groin and a pounding in his neck.

  The moment ended. The emptiness around him returned, but only for a moment before it, too, broke. Dierk’s eyes crossed, and suddenly he was back in his cellar, in his own body, feeling his own emotions. Erik lay before him, the symbol of the Ravencallers having faded away. Vaesalaum hovered a few feet above the dead man’s body. Dierk pushed himself to his feet, and he realized with detached awkwardness his pants were wet with semen.

  “His—his memories,” Dierk stammered. “You gave them to me?”

  Not gift. Taken. Lost upon reaping hour. Dierk accept?

  Accept? How could he refuse such a tantalizing promise? What other wonders might this strange little creature teach him? The feeling of the convulsing man’s throat crushed between his hands lingered in his mind like a pleasant warmth.

  “Of course I accept,” he said. “But what could I possibly offer you?”

  The nisse hovered closer. Earnestness tinged its cold voice.

  Bring Vaesalaum bodies. Together we share. Together we grow strong.

  Dierk quivered. He was not strong like Erik had been prior to being sucked dry by years of homelessness and abandonment. Perhaps Three-Fingers could bring him another, but how would he dispose of the bodies, or keep them from being discovered?

  “I don’t think I can,” he said. “I’m not strong, and I’m no good with weapons.”

  Vaesalaum floated over to his copy of the Book of Ravens, which lay discarded on the floor.

  Read, the nisse said. Book is key.

  Dierk tried to tamp down his excitement. The Book of Ravens was notorious for many reasons, but one was the complete anonymity of its author. The Keeping Church had launched multiple investigations, but the book appeared as old as the church itself, and its mysteries unassailable. This bizarre creature… might it be the author? Was it connected to that forgotten age when magic was real and sacrifices of blood and flesh might harness power of the void?

  “Are you a raven?” Dierk asked. “A true raven, like what we aspire to be?”

  Not raven, Vaesalaum said. Friend of raven. True ravens are the avenria. Dierk holds avenria words. Words give power. Dierk will harness that power.

  What was an avenria? And what power did the nisse intend him to possess? He joined the floating creature at the book. Pages flipped untouched until it settled on a page Vaesalaum intended him to read. It was the ninth chapter, and one he’d read many times before. On one side it detailed the hypocrisy of the Soulkeepers and their elaborate rituals and pyres. On the other, it listed the chant that Soulkeepers once used to dispose of bodies. The words seemed to glow before him, and before he realized, he’d begun repeating them aloud.

  “Anwyn of the Moon, hear me! The soul has departed. This body before me, once sacred, is sacred no more. Make this empty vessel return to the land as ash. Give me the fire. Send me the flame. Create in me your pyre so I might burn.”

  Fire burst about Dierk’s hands, an all-consuming blaze of yellow light. He stared at it in awe, for only a shred of its heat bathed his skin, and his hands felt only a pleasant kiss of its fury. He did not ask the nisse what to do with it, for the desire was clear enough by the chant. He plunged both hands into the chest of the corpse. It immediately erupted in flames. They burned with terrifying swiftness, and neither flesh nor bone could resist its sudden rage. The body withered to ash. Even the blood cracked and peeled into tiny gray flecks. Dierk’s eyes watered but he refused to look away.

  This power. This fire. It came from within him. He wasn’t helpless. He wasn’t weak. With Vaesalaum’s guidance, he could be more powerful than he ever dreamed.

  Quick as it appeared, the fire faded, leaving only a small circle of ash upon the warm stone. A heavy knock on the cellar door banished the silence. Light from upstairs flooded down the stairway. Dierk squinted against it as he scrambled to his feet. He expected a servant, but instead down came the square-jawed opposite of everything Dierk was. His hair was black, his eyes gray, and his suit immaculately pressed.

  “Dierk?” asked his father, Soren Becher, the Mayor of Londheim. “I sent a servant to fetch you twenty minutes ago. What are you doing down here?”

  Dierk shrugged, incapable of providing a good answer. Vaesalaum floated above Dierk’s shoulder, yet somehow his father gave no sign of worry or care. Instead he cast his bespectacled eyes about the cellar, no doubt searching for signs of a skinned animal. He found none. What he did notice was the stain on Dierk’s trousers. His stern features hardened.

  “Go clean yourself up,” he said. “You’re disgusting.”

  The heat in Dierk’s neck felt unbearable. He retreated up the stairs and down the hall to his room.

  “Can no one see you?” he whispered quietly while buttoning into a new pair of pants.

  Nisse seen when wanted seen, Vaesalaum answered.

  “I’m jealous,” he muttered.

  Dierk exited his room and slowly wandered back to the main foyer. The anxious looks on everyone’s faces as they rushed about kindled his curiosity. Had something happened? It seemed every day Londheim dealt with some new emergency, but this was different. He thought he saw poorly hidden fear in the eyes of their servants.

  Dierk did not address his father upon entering the foyer, only waited to be noticed.

 
“At least you’re presentable,” Soren said after a cursory examination. “Come. We’re expected at the wall.”

  The wall? Not some family meeting or dire, droning funeral presided over by a Pyrehand?

  “Why?” he dared ask. “Are we under attack?”

  “I don’t know,” Soren said. “We’ll soon find out.”

  A servant stepped in and bowed.

  “Royal Overseer Downing has arrived,” he said once Soren had acknowledged him. “He waits with his soldiers by the front steps.”

  “Impatient as always,” Soren said, adjusting his tie so its sapphire pin was perfectly centered above the knot. “Come, Dierk. Keep quiet, and if you are afraid, keep it to yourself. We must project strength before the unknown.”

  Dierk did everything he could to avoid glancing at Vaesalaum floating over his shoulder. He’d look like a maniac if he spoke to the creature in the presence of others, but he desperately wished to ask the nisse if it knew what his father referenced. Strength before the unknown? What could he mean?

  He means the approach of the demigod of change, said Vaesalaum, startling Dierk.

  You can read my thoughts?

  Humans are books, the nisse said, sounding exhausted. I read pages. Dierk is slow?

  His neck flushed with anger and embarrassment, but he did not answer, not verbally nor inside his mind.

  Dierk followed his father out the front door. Four armed soldiers stood stiff and passive around a well-dressed man in a tan suit. His hair was cut close to the scalp, and his smile was as bright as his skin was dark. A pendant hung from his neck, that of a scepter held in a closed fist. His name was Albert Downing, and he was the Royal Overseer elected by the landowners of West Orismund to rule in the Queen’s stead. He approached the end of his second ten-year term, and all expected him to be serving a third. Dierk wasn’t surprised. Albert was handsome and intelligent, and he greeted everyone as if they were a childhood friend. As politicians went, he was honest and fair. Among all of his father’s stuffy, self-important asshole friends, Dierk found Albert to be a uniquely likable presence.

  “Greetings, Overseer,” Soren said while dipping his head in respect. “My apologies for keeping you waiting.”

  “Save your apologies for actual transgressions,” Albert said. “Instead walk with me. I do not want to be gone long from the wall.”

  The seven of them exited the estate grounds and marched through the streets of Windswept District. The two older men conversed easily. Given their respective duties, they often consulted one another, each heavily influencing the other when it came to policy and law.

  “When did you first see it?” Soren asked as they walked.

  “My advisors tell me they spotted it this morning,” Albert said. “At first we thought it a trick of the light, or perhaps a strange cloud of smoke.”

  “And you no longer think that to be the case?” Soren asked.

  “I no longer know what to think,” Albert said. “You’ll understand when you see it for yourself.”

  Most people on the road gave way and then bowed upon their passage, but Dierk was shocked that once they were out of Windswept District, many began shouting questions as they passed. Such rudeness unnerved him. Their questions made no sense. Refugees? Black water? A mountain? Not helping was the distant sensation of the ground rumbling beneath his feet. What had Vaesalaum said earlier, something about how the Cradle was angry? Dierk was starting to believe it.

  With Dierk keeping a respectable distance behind the two politicians, he could not hear them over the noise of the crowds and the rattle of the city guards’ armor. More guards greeted them upon reaching the western wall at a station near the entrance. The group passed through a portcullis to reach the stone stairs upward. Dierk followed, eager for a look at whatever was causing this much commotion.

  Whatever he’d expected, it was a pale comparison to the sight of the crawling mountain. Even Soren and Albert looked shaken. Six enormous legs slammed into the earth and dragged craters open with their claws. Its belly cut a groove with its approach. The sound of its passage was like thunder.

  “It’s so much closer,” Albert said. “I was not even gone an hour.”

  “Will it stop when it reaches the city?” Soren asked. He’d taken off his spectacles and begun cleaning them with his shirt, a tic Dierk knew to mean his father was nervous and trying to hide it.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should I order an evacuation?”

  Again Albert shrugged.

  “I’ve spoken to a few of the refugees coming in from the west. If that thing bears ill intent, we are already beyond hope of evacuating in time.”

  “So we sit here and watch?” Soren asked. “Is that all we have to offer?”

  “It’s that or we launch an attack against a mountain,” Albert said. “You’re good with numbers. Pray tell me, what do you consider the odds of that succeeding to be?”

  Dierk’s father had no good response, so they waited, and they watched. Minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Dierk shifted his weight from foot to foot as the mountain crawled closer. The demigod of change, Vaesalaum had called it.

  Will it destroy us? he asked the nisse.

  Time will tell.

  Panic threatened to overcome him when the mountain opened its mouth and belched a tremendous river of star-filled black water north and south. Soldiers cried out in fear. The city trembled. Grass withered gray. A third wave rolled toward the western gate of the city, but it forked at the last moment, sparing them. It seemed every guard along the wall sighed with relief. The mountain settled down, its legs sinking into the soft earth.

  Dierk gazed upon the magnificent, awe-inspiring presence that Vaesalaum had called the demi-god of change. His father and the Royal Overseer asked questions of one another, and they fielded more from a seemingly endless stream of wealthy elites scrambling to join them upon the wall. Dierk ignored them all.

  What does this mean? he asked Vaesalaum. The mountain’s arrival… my summoning fire… you? Is the world ending?

  The little creature bobbed up and down, and he saw the faintest hint of a smile on its youthful face.

  No, not ending, its cold voice spoke within his mind. He sensed within it a powerful promise, and an overwhelming sense of excitement.

  Awakening.

  CHAPTER 1

  Vikar Forrest leaned into his chair and stated the facts as if Devin had requested the Keeping Church to remove the moon from the sky.

  “You’re asking me to authorize a raid on the biggest donor to the church in Londheim,” Forrest said. “And all this based on an anonymous testimony?”

  “And the assassination attempt Gerag made on my life with one of his bodyguards.”

  “Whose body you are no longer in possession of. I’m still going on your word.”

  Devin fought to keep calm. This had to go through cleanly. Under no circumstances would he allow the fat bastard to escape the imprisonment he deserved. He’d marched into his Vikar’s office confident in his claims, but that confidence was starting to wither under Forrest’s constant questioning.

  “Then put my word on the line. If I’m wrong, I’ll resign from the division while Gerag watches. But if I’m right…”

  His Vikar sighed.

  “If you’re right, we close down arguably the biggest soulless sex ring in all of West Orismund. Fine. You got your permission. I’ll write a note to the Mayor tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow,” Devin said. “Tonight. I fear Gerag might know I’m on to him. The more time he has, the more likely he hides his crimes.”

  Forrest’s frown was fouler than rancid butter.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I’m warning you, if you bullshit me on this, I won’t be stopping at your resignation. I’ll run you out of Londheim as a goddess-damned beggar.”

  Even though the city guard were under the direct authority of Londheim’s Mayor, Vikars could command them so long as their orders did not contradict the loc
al Mayor’s. This concession was part of the agreement reached at the second council of Nicus three centuries prior. After an hour of impatient waiting, twelve city guards led by a sergeant arrived at the Cathedral of the Sacred Mother. Three of the men bore chain tattoos across their throats signifying them as soulless, and Devin tried not to be disturbed by their presence. Ever since Jacaranda’s awakening, he was heavily torn on how to treat them.

  “Forrest wouldn’t tell me what we’re here for,” said the sergeant, a burly man named Bovalt sporting an overly long mustache. “I hope you know.”

  “I’ll explain on the way. I don’t want a weasel escaping the henhouse because the guard dog was too busy licking its own balls.”

  “Didn’t know Soulkeepers had a penchant for artsy words.”

  “I’m giving it a try,” Devin said, already liking the sergeant.

  “Well, you’re not good at it.”

  Devin explained the orders to arrest Gerag Ellington on the way to his mansion, as well as detailed where the secret tunnel beneath the district wall led to a secondary home. To Bovalt’s credit, he took it all in stride.

  “Quiet District, eh?” he said. “This’ll be a first for me. Those rich types tend to hire personal guards. Will you help out if they get mouthy?”

  “My sword and pistol are yours, Sergeant.”

  Bovalt grinned.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  They marched through the streets, taking a direct path southeast. The sooner they arrived, the less likely Gerag would have any warning. As they closed the distance, and saw smoke rising above the rooftops, Devin feared they may already be too late. A bucket brigade had formed by the time they arrived. Quiet District paid handsomely for a fire guild’s protection, and they worked rapidly and efficiently. The fire seemed localized on the mansion’s first floor, and guildsmen with rags tied over their mouths steadily progressed farther through the front door and into the halls. Meanwhile men with shovels dug a trench line about the house to prevent further spreading to the nearby mansions.