Soulkeeper Read online

  As Dierk rolled onto his back and put his arm across his forehead he saw Vaesalaum hovering near the rooftop of the cabin, and then the world changed again. Erik was older now, and his wife (Lisa, her name was Lisa) was rocking in a chair beside the fire. Her breasts were exposed, and an infant suckled one of them. Erik stood in the doorway of the cabin, his feet frozen in place by the beautiful sight. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to move, only smile and laugh at her when Lisa glanced his way and asked if something was the matter.

  Though Erik was smiling, Dierk wished to burst into tears. By the void, this was water on a tongue that had known only thirst. The companionship, the love, it was so simple and easy, it hurt him, hurt him in a deep, confusing way that inspired sadness as much as it did happiness.

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

  Before he could answer Dierk found himself 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 moment he asked 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 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 they were a pitiful protection against the cold wind blowing in from the west. A hand touched his side. Another man, just as dirty, just as wretched, cuddled up against his back. The warmth was an awkward reprieve from the cold. Fingers slipped downward, reaching toward his crotch. Dierk felt turmoil swell inside him as his cock stiffened. The hand stroked up and down, gentle at first, then harder. All the while the man behind him said not a word.

  Tears built in his eyes as he fought with his mind. Disgust. Confusion. Shame. Dierk felt the same eruption of semen, but the accompanying emotion was far from pleasure, instead a strange, breaking sort of relief followed immediately by crushing guilt and regret. The man behind him withdrew his hand.

  “My turn now?” he asked.

  Dierk felt everything inside him break down, and what was left was decidedly not human. He turned on the man like a savage animal. There was nothing special about him, just another dirty, broken-down man of Londheim forced to live in squalor, but to Dierk’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. Dierk’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. The other stolen moments paled in comparison. There was no strange grotesqueness to this like the earlier fucking, nor foreign emotions of love and comfort. This was real in a way his mind understood. 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 void returned, but only for a moment before it too broke. Dierk’s eyes crossed, and suddenly he was back in his cellar. Erik’s body 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 that 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 power? The feeling of the convulsing man’s throat in his hands still 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 the 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.

  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 is impure, imperfect, and of no use to this land but as ash to be made anew. 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. Dierk 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 into 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 help, he could be more powerful than he’d ever dreamed.

  Quick as it appeared the fire faded, leaving only a small circle of ash upon the warm cellar 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 retrea
ted 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, but 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 Pyrekeeper?

  “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 acknowledged him. “He waits with his guards 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 looked or spoke to the creature in the presence of others, but he desperately wished to ask the nisse if it knew what his father was referencing. 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 talk expected him to be serving a third. Dierk wasn’t surprised. Albert was as handsome as he was 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 Quiet District. The two older men conversed easily with one another. 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 advisers 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 of those on the road gave way and then bowed upon their passage, but Dierk was shocked that once they were out of Quiet District many began shouting questions as they passed. Such rudeness unnerved him further. What was it they wanted to know? 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 of how the Cradle was angry? Dierk was starting to believe it.

  Soren and Albert quietly conversed, and with Dierk keeping a respectable distance behind them, he could not hear over the noise of the crowds and the rattle of the soldiers’ armor. City 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. The belly of the towering gray mountain cut a groove with its approach. The sound of its passage was like thunder.

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

  “Will it stop when it reaches the city?” Soren asked.

  “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 about?”

  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 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 Viciss. 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…your arrival. 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.

  if you enjoyed

  SOULKEEPER

  look out for

  THE GUTTER PRAYER

  The Black Iron Legacy: Book One

  by

  Gareth Hanrahan

  When three thieves—an orphan, a ghoul, and a cursed man—are betrayed by the master of the thieves’ guild, their quest for revenge uncovers dark truths about their city and exposes a dangerous conspiracy, the seeds of which were sown long before they were born.

  Cari is a drifter whose past and future are darker than she can know.

  Rat is a Ghoul, whose people haunt the city’s underworld.

  Spar is a Stone Man, subject to a terrible disease that is slowly petrifying his flesh.

  Chance has brought them together, but their friendship could be all that stands in the way of total armageddon.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Carillon crouches in the shadow, eyes fixed on the door. Her knife is in her hand, a gesture of bravado to herself more than a deadly weapon. She’s fought before, cut people with it, but
never killed with it. Cut and run, that’s her way.

  In this crowded city, that’s not necessarily an option.

  If one guard comes through the door, she’ll wait until he goes past her hiding place, then creep after him and cut his throat. She tries to envisage herself doing it, but can’t manage it. Maybe she can get away with just scaring him, or shanking him in the leg so he can’t chase them.

  If it’s two, then she’ll wait until they’re about to find the others, hiss a warning and leap on one of them. Surely, between herself, Spar and Rat, they’ll be able to take out two guards without giving themselves away.

  Surely.

  If it’s three, same plan, only riskier.

  She doesn’t let her mind dwell on the other possibility—that it won’t be humans like her who can be cut with her little knife, but something worse like the Tallowmen or Gullheads. The city has bred horrors all its own.

  Every instinct in her tells her to run, to flee with her friends, to risk Heinreil’s wrath for returning empty-handed. Better yet, to not return at all, but take the Dowager Gate or the River Gate out of the city tonight, be a dozen miles away before dawn.

  Six. The door opens and it’s six guards, all human, one two three big men, in padded leathers, maces in hand, and three more with pistols. She freezes for an instant in terror, unable to act, unable to run, caught against the cold stone of the old walls.

  And then—she feels the shock through the wall before she hears the roar, the crash. She feels the whole House of Law shatter. She was in Severast when there was an earth tremor once, but it’s not like that—it’s more like a lightning strike and thunderclap right on top of her. She springs forward without thinking, as if the explosion had physically struck her, too, jumping through the scattered confusion of the guards.

  One of them fires his pistol, point blank, so close she feels the sparks, the rush of air past her head, hot splinters of metal or stone showering down across her back, but the pain doesn’t blossom and she knows she’s not hit even as she runs.