Barb Hendee: Child of a Dead God

Despite festering resentment, Chane acknowledged his own foolishness.

He tottered and bent over to brace his hands against his knees. His left shoulder and elbow burned as if filled with embedded needles. And now he was truly hungry. His dead flesh ached for life with which to repair itself.

But why was the front door open?

Chane stumbled over, pulling it wide. Falling snow swirled in the darkness outside, and he heard a grunt off to the left.

Welstiel knelt in a drift, still naked to the waist. Thin trails of steam rose from bloodstains on his arms and chest. He leaned down, scooping armfuls of snow, and splashed it over himself, scrubbing furiously. He repeated the process over and over.

"Why?" Chane asked.

Welstiel lifted his head. Flakes of snow clung to the locks down his forehead. When his gaze landed on Chane, his expression shifted from numb horror to startled wariness.

"Awake, are you?" he asked quietly, and rose to his feet. "And reason returns once more… for the moment… but always with one foot perched upon the Feral Path."

"What are you babbling about?" Chane rasped, though that last strange reference seemed familiar.

He tensed as Welstiel approached, but he was in no condition for another fight.

"Perhaps I should not help you reach your sages," Welstiel went on, but he stared into the gorge, as if alone. "Monster with a mind…"

Chane hesitated. Welstiel had promised him letters of introduction to gain acceptance at one of the sages' main branches, across the sea-in exchange for Chane's obedient service on this journey.

"A beast," Welstiel whispered mockingly, "sent in among the learned of the cattle ."

That last word, which Chane had used so often, suggested Welstiel was fully aware of his presence, but the tone made Chane's instincts sharpen in warning. He sidestepped toward the switchback path down the gorge's sheer face, ready to bolt.

"Get back inside!" Welstiel ordered.

Chane halted.

Welstiel stood as still as ice, a pale column of flesh surrounded in a swirling white snowfall.

Chane longed for the denied pleasure of a feast. Sustaining draughts from Welstiel's cup might fuel him more than feeding would, but they left him painfully unsatisfied in other ways. But the existence he most desired still awaited him, where he would spend his nights studying history and languages in a sages' guild. He closed his eyes and saw Wynn's oval face. Could he attain this world on his own and no longer suffer Welstiel's madness?

"Now," Welstiel demanded. "Or stay and burn in the sun!"

Chane raised his eyes to the sky.

In the east, a faint glow exposed the black silhouette of the gorge's distant ridge. Where in this desolate place would he find shelter if he ran? He backed into the entry room as Welstiel followed, slamming the door shut.

"Sit," Welstiel instructed. "I will have need of you soon… to guard them until they rise."

Chane looked to the dark stairwell and finally understood.

Once before he had watched an undead feed to bursting and disgorge all it had swallowed. In faraway Bela he had crouched in an alley while his maker, Toret, took his time in choosing and killing two sailors, who rose the next nightfall as undead servants.

"You are making more of our kind?" Chane asked.

Welstiel crossed to the room's front corner and crouched to dig through his pack.

Chane remembered something else of Toret's efforts, and glanced at Welstiel's bare forearms. He saw no slashes there by which Welstiel would have force-fed his own fluids to his creations.

"They will not rise," Chane hissed. "You have not fed them from yourself."

Welstiel clicked his tongue in disgust. "More superstition… even among our kind."

Although this was not the first correction Chane had received in his new existence, he knew better than to question it. But if feeding the victim one's own fluid was not necessary, then why did one victim rise from death while another did not?

Chane's thoughts turned to the small cells lining the upper passage. He tried to count off the number of those locked away.

"How many?" he asked.

"We will not know until tomorrow's nightfall," Welstiel answered, making certain the front window shutters were soundly latched against the sun. "I took ten."

Chane stared at him. Toret had taken only two at once, and the act had nearly incapacitated him.

"Ten more?" Chane asked in disbelief. "In these mountains, with nothing to feed upon but those few still alive?"

"No," Welstiel answered. "Ten taken. Not ten undead… yet."

Chane noticed the brown glass bottle in his companion's hand.

"Not all rise from death," Welstiel said. "If I am fortunate, perhaps a third of these will." He held out the bottle. "Drink half. You have duties, and I need you whole again."

Chane recoiled. That chained beast inside him struggled against its bonds at being offered more scraps of gristle.

He was trapped not only by the sun but by what little life remained here. Where else in these winter mountains could he hope to feed enough to reach civilization? He was trapped as well by his hope for a future. That was the true manacle around his neck-and Welstiel held its chain.

Chane took the bottle.

Lost in dormancy, the sleeper heard a cry. A second, then a third unintelligible voice joined the first, alternating and growing in volume. The sleeper shifted and began to rouse.

But in the dark, a brief glint vanished. Too quick in its retreat, the flicker seemed like a light upon something huge and black undulating in the dark.

Chane awoke upon the entry room's stone floor and sat up quickly. He had never dreamed in dormancy before.

Muted moans and cries drifted down the stairwell, and Chane took brief relief in realization. The sounds had come from the dead rousing in the cells, not in his dream, and the glint in the dark, as if something moved…

Chane turned around.

A dim line of fading light stretched across the floor. The last of dusk's light crept between the window's shutters. The low fire still burned in the hearth, but the young priest's withered corpse was gone, and Welstiel was nowhere in sight. Only then did Chane notice a dim light at the top of the stairs.

The moans and agonized calls pulled at him. He took slow steps up the stairwell and saw a lantern upon the floor. Welstiel sat upon a stool just beyond it in the passage's near corner.

"Six," Welstiel whispered, his voice laced with astonishment. "Can you hear them? Six of ten, all risen. My highest hope had been three."

Chane barely heard him as longing surged at the smell of blood still on the floor. Panicked mewling escaped through the spaces below the cell doors and echoed along the stone walls. Or were they only in Chane's mind?

The second door on the left rattled.

It shuddered twice as something rammed against its inner side, and then lurched as it was pulled hard from within. A sharp grating of metal on stone snapped Chane from his morbid fascination. In place of wood shards, each door handle on the left was jammed with a plain iron shaft.

" You will now watch over them," Welstiel said. "I have other preparations to make."

Chane caught the implication. "You have been here watching all day? How… how could you keep from falling dormant?"

Welstiel ignored him. More iron bars leaned against the wall beyond his stool.

"You plan to drain more of them… and brace them in?" Chane asked.

Welstiel shook his head, still watching the one shuddering door. "The spare bars are for when one is no longer enough."

Chane stared at Welstiel, confused. Had the man abandoned all reason amid a night of gluttony, driven over the edge by his revulsion for feeding? Living priests were still trapped in the right-side cells-to satisfy the appetites of Welstiel's newborns. If he knew his creations would break free, then why wait to reinforce the doors? And why keep his new servants locked up at all?