Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

Sau’ilahk released the coin.

The beggar’s eyes widened—their eyes always filled with fright over a coin that might be lost in the dark.

Sau’ilahk grabbed the beggar’s throat with his gloved hand, and the man’s mouth gaped for a scream. He clenched that hand, choking off his victim’s air. He rammed his bare hand against the man’s chest, tearing aside the filthy shirt to gaunt flesh beneath, and then ...

Euphoria made Sau’ilahk’s eyelids flutter as his prey shuddered, unable to even choke.

Sau’ilahk took all of the life he felt in that decrepit form in his hands.

When it was over, melancholy followed as he dropped his prey’s shriveled husk. He wanted more and stooped to pick up the coin he had dropped ... along with any lesser ones in the beggar’s fallen cup. But he stalled upon exiting the cutway.

There was a chance that even in a near empty night street a lone beggar might have been noticed and then missed. He turned back the other way for the alley at the cutway’s rear.

“Another dead one.”

Sau’ilahk halted upon entering the alley, pivoted to the right, and looked for whoever had spoken. Light from the street at the alley’s far end revealed a small form stepping closer. Something looked wrong with its shape even before it drew near enough to see a small girl in a tattered nightgown.

Closer up, he saw the blood running down her front.

Closer still, he saw the alley’s cobble through her.

The ghost child stopped at arm’s length and looked up at him. Likely her visage was that of the moment after her death. Something had severed her throat.

“You cannot bother me,” he said.

“I would never ... old one.”

The young voice was too articulate for her age. At the creak of wooden wheels on cobble, Sau’ilahk turned the other way.

Down the alley’s other length came something long and narrow with a bulk atop it. It was rolled on two large side wheels and guided by two tall shuffling figures. When it stopped, he made out two heavily muscled men. Curiosity kept him in place.

The men rocked the rolling litter forward, tilting it until its front end clacked on the cobble. Lashed to the litter was a preserved corpse now held erect by its bonds. His hands, folded and bound over his chest, were bare, exposing bony fingers. He was dressed in a long black robe. Where his face should have been was a mask of aged leather that ended above a bony jaw supporting a withered mouth, likely more withered in death than in his last moment of life.

Stranger still, the corpse’s neck was wrapped in hardened leather, not like Sau’ilahk’s own, but rather to keep the head upright.

There were no eye slits in his mask.

“You may call me Ubâd.”

Sau’ilahk looked down and found the ghost girl standing beside him. It was she who had spoken, and not the corpse.

“A mere necromancer,” Sau’ilahk said with disdain, looking back to the corpse. “And not a good one in having joined his dead.”

“Do not assume too much, Reverent One,” the child ghost taunted, still speaking for the corpse. “I know of you, Sau’ilahk, no matter what flesh you have stolen.”

Discomfort raised tension in the back of Sau’ilahk’s neck. How did this one know who he was in not knowing the body he inhabited? And how had this lowly necromancer come to be waiting for him?

“What do you want ... corpse?” Sau’ilahk demanded.

“Oh, not yet. We wait for another.”

Sau’ilahk took a step, ready to tear the corpse apart. Soft but steady footsteps made him hesitate and look back the way the ghost child had come.

A lone cloaked and robed figure came down the alley. Something in its sure gait flooded Sau’ilahk with caution. He raised a hand, preparing to summon an elemental servitor to attack it.

A chorus of whispers filled his mind. From out of them came one clear voice in his thoughts.

Lower that hand, old ... friend.

Sau’ilahk froze in confusion. That voice and the way it reached him ... It took a moment for his memory to catch up. It had been so very long since he had last heard it ... with his own ears.

“Khalidah?”

Caution turned to wariness as the leader of the Sâ’yminfiäl—“Eaters of Silence”—stepped closer. That triad of sorcerers had been the lesser and baser of Beloved’s tools so long ago. How could that liar of liars still exist?

And then Sau’ilahk sensed a living body where the shadowed form stood.

“Show yourself!” he snarled, his hand still raised.

“I think not,” Khalidah countered, this time with a real voice. “Like you, flesh suits me once again. Unlike you, I will keep mine whole and vital for now.”

Again, Sau’ilahk was lost. He did not remember the sound of Khalidah’s voice, but he knew the voice he heard was not the right one.

“How long have you—?”

A brief while, Khalidah answered again amid the whispers. Taking flesh was such relief after so long. But I am certain you understand this.

Sau’ilahk hesitated, for there was much here he did not know. “Why are you here? How did you find me?”

“I can find all that is dead,” the ghost girl answered instead. “Even those who serve il’Samar.”

He glanced down at the child and hesitantly looked to the corpse. Il’Samar was yet another name for Beloved. So these two thought to bring back any wayward ones to their god?

“You will not call me ,” he warned Ubâd. “Take that mind-twister in his new flesh, if you wish. Gift him to Beloved, but I—”

Oh, my my, you are still such an ignorant ... priest!

Sau’ilahk spun back at that voice in his mind.

“We have no desire to serve Beloved,” Khalidah said aloud. “Have you not had enough of that yourself? Have you not had enough of our god’s broken promises? Oh, yes, I know you have.”

“We will take from Beloved what it took from us ... ,” said the little ghost, though Khalidah finished, “ And the way to kill a god is with its own tools.”

Sau’ilahk looked between the two. “You have found ... all ... of the anchors of creation?”

“We know how to get them,” Khalidah answered. “But more than that, we know where Beloved’s newest and most cherished is now.”

“The dhampir will serve us just as well as the orbs,” the ghost girl added.

Khalidah turned in the dark, heading back up the alley.

Be prepared, oh, petulant priest. I will find you again when the time comes for Beloved to die.

Sau’ilahk heard a low, breathy laugh up the alley.

Khalidah’s silhouette slipped into the far street, rounded the corner, and vanished. The attendants leveled the litter and rolled it off behind him, and the little ghost girl was suddenly gone.

Sau’ilahk had known disappointment and despair for so long that he was almost afraid to hope ... to kill his god.

Khalidah walked the street with a narrow smile, malicious but hopeful. After having gone so long without flesh, since his escape from the sect, each body he had claimed was a marvel as well as a minor struggle.

This newest one was not yet fully his own, and he paused near a tea shop closed for the night.

As a poor place, it had no glass in its windows, which were shuttered tight. It did have a worn brass sign dangling before those shutters. He could not help wanting an amusing peek, so he grabbed the sign’s bottom edge. As he turned its dimpled surface, he caught a better reflection of his current face.

“I see you,” he whispered. “And you see me, do you not ... domin?”