Tris stretched out his magic. Though they heard nothing
but the sound of the rain, Tris could sense a restlessness inside Vistimar that had more to do with madness than it did the weather. Vistimar’s residents were uneasy.
They followed the Sister up the wide, front steps to a heavy oaken door bound with iron strips and studded with hobnails. The Sister gestured, and Tris felt the brush of her magic. From the other side of the door, they could hear the clunk of iron bolts drawing back and mechanical locks releasing. Vistimar might once have been built to keep unwanted visitors out, but now its formidable defenses appeared to be arrayed to keep its unwilling residents in.
Two servants appeared to take the men’s cloaks. If the Sister noted that beneath their plain cloaks Tris and the others were armed well enough for battle, she said nothing. She turned to Tris, and in the light of the entranceway candles, he had the first clear look at her features. She was in her middle years and looked to have some Isencroft blood. Her long hair had streaks of gray through it, and her skin had been roughened by the sun. But her dark eyes were clear and bright, and Tris could sense her magic swirling around her like a mantle of power. This was a mage he didn’t know, although her brown robes marked her as one of the Sisterhood, a community of elite mages that Tris’s grandmother, Bava K’aa, had once led.
“What brings you out to Vistimar on such a night, my king?”
“I need to see Alyzza. I assume you know which of your residents that is?”
Before the Sister could answer, the night air filled with cries. They came from far back in Vistimar’s corridors, and they seemed to echo from every corner of the ancient stone building. Some sounded like screams of terror, while
others, wails of pain. High-pitched keens sounded like nothing that came from a human throat. The two soldiers flinched at the noise. Tris saw that Mikhail was examining the entrance hall carefully, using his heightened senses.
“Alyzza has not been well,” the Sister said. “Forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sister Rosta.”
“As you’ve noted, Sister Rosta, it’s a bad night to be about. I have an important matter that requires me to talk with Alyzza.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. But she’s not as she was when you last saw her.” Rosta’s voice dropped, and Tris had to listen hard to hear her above the wailing. “Alyzza was once a very powerful sorceress, and a friend of your esteemed grandmother. But the battle against the Obsidian King broke her mind, and she was never quite… fully sane… after that.”
“She had moments of clarity. I’ve seen her quite lucid,” Tris countered.
Rosta nodded. “The madness came and went. The Sisterhood tried to heal her, and when her affliction did not respond to our efforts, we attempted to shelter her for her own safety, and that of others. Of late, the madness hasn’t left her.”
“Tell me what her madness is like.”
Rosta looked away and pursed her lips, thinking. “Sister Landis thinks that Alyzza is reliving her youth and the Mage War. Terrors wake her in the night. She begs for salt to ward her room, and she drives herself to collapse warding her room over and over.” Rosta shook her head. “She’s in no danger here. These walls have withstood sieges for one thousand years, and we have spelled them stone by stone. Nothing can get in.”
Tris nodded, although he was disinclined to take Rosta’s word for the security of Vistimar’s wardings.
No warding is perfect, and there’s always something that has more power than you think it does.
“What else?”
Rosta frowned. “She’s arranged all of her furniture to barricade the northern wall of her room. And we discovered that she’s been stealing small objects and hiding them in her room—worthless things, but she’s got a whole pile of odds and ends that she’s carved with symbols and strewn around the room.”
“What kind of symbols?”
Rosta met his eyes, and Tris knew that in this at least, she was telling the truth. “No one knows. We’ve called in our best rune scryers. We’ve consulted the old texts. They don’t match anything we can find. Lately, she’s taken to making blood charms.”
Tris raised an eyebrow. “Where does she get the blood?”
Rosta’s gaze was level. “It’s her own. She cuts herself. It’s a fearsome thing, m’lord. On the nights when the frenzy takes her, she dances until her clothes are soaked with sweat. She chants and sings, but no one can figure out what she’s saying. We’ve tried to tie her to her bed—for her own safety, to stop the cutting—but she can still summon strong magic, and every time, she’s ripped the shrouds from around her arms and left them in pieces.”
Another scream echoed down Vistimar’s halls. “Your residents don’t sound happy tonight, Rosta,” Tris said evenly.
Rosta sighed, and Tris could see exhaustion in the lines around her eyes. “You’ll judge us harshly by tonight, m’lord. I can’t blame you. It wasn’t always so. Vistimar is haunted
by the restless dead. That’s true. There are wretched souls who have never left these walls, and some dark spirits that torment the vulnerable. But in the last few months, it seems as if all the poor souls here are troubled. Have you watched dogs before a storm, turning and fussing? Or horses, when a killing wind is coming? It’s like that, as if they feel something on the night air or hear something on the breeze. All the Sisters have tried to use their magic to quiet them, but it’s no use. Whatever it is, it’s not for the sane to hear.”
Tris looked around the room. Once, Vistimar might have been a wealthy warlord’s prize, but now, evidence of decay was everywhere. The old castle had a dank, musty smell. Rosta was correct about restless spirits. Tris could sense them, and he knew that they felt his power and recognized it for what it was. Already, he could feel them gathering like moths to a flame.
Tris opened his mage sight. On the Plains of Spirit, Tris could see dozens of spirits. As his power focused, the spirits moved toward him, and he could see them in their human forms, with their death wounds. Some had been hanged and others stabbed. More than one had died from a fall. How many of the deaths were self-inflicted, Tris did not know at first sight, but given the uneasiness of the ghosts, he was quite sure that most had died by their own hand.
“Why do you trouble the living?” Tris added another surge of power, assuring that Rosta and the others could see the assemblage as he saw them.
“This is our home,” an old man whose neck bore the mark of a noose spoke. The noose had been badly made, and it was clear that he had died by strangulation and not from the snap of his neck.
“Then stay in peace, and leave the living alone.”
The strangled man’s ghost made a deep bow. “You mistake me, m’lord. We seek to warn them.”
“About what?”
The ghosts pressed closer around him. Tris felt their agitation. No, it was more than that. Fear. Few things retained the power to make the dead fearful. Most feared the coming of one of the Dark Aspects of the Sacred Lady. That was the most common reason Tris had found for spirits refusing to go to their rest. Others wanted to remain near loved ones, or just lingered out of a fascination with the everyday drama of life. A few were confused about whether or not they were truly dead. And more than a few were bound by the trauma of their deaths to a place or time. Those were the ghosts who appeared on the anniversary of their death or seemed doomed to reenact their final moments for eternity. And while Tris’s powers as a summoner were strong, he had learned the hard way that it took an enormous expenditure of power to banish a ghost who did not want to go, and it was not within his power to release a ghost from its self-imposed reenactment until it had made its peace.
No matter the reason that these ghosts remained at Vistimar, tonight they shared something in common. They were terrified.
“What do the dead fear?”
The strangled man’s bulging eyes fixed Tris with a steady gaze. “We fear the North Winds, m’lord. On them comes the Hollowing.”
“Hollowing?”
The strangled man nodded, bobbing his blood-bruised face. “Darkness rides the North Winds, Hollowing soul from spirit like marrow from bone. We have heard the
cries of the spirits who were extinguished, like the flame blown from a wick. We fear the judgment of the Lady, m’lord, but we fear the Hollowing more.”
“If I add my protection to Vistimar’s wardings, will you agree to leave the living in peace?”
The strangled man looked to the other spirits. Their faces held a terror Tris had rarely seen among the dead. “Your power is great, but it may not hold against the North Winds. Can you save us from the Hollowing?”
“Who brings the Hollowing? By whose power does it come?”
The strangled man considered the question. “We don’t know. But we’ve felt it like a stain at the edge of the Plains of Spirit. Can’t you sense it, Summoner?”
Tris stretched out his power beyond the gathering of spirits. Space and time on the Plains of Spirit did not correspond exactly to the mortal world. In the Nether, it was difficult for Tris to judge distance or place. But in the distance, Tris saw a darkness he had glimpsed before. More solid than a shadow, “stain” was the right word for it, and it sent a cold shiver through Tris. His power moved cautiously forward, but the darkness receded, rolling back like the tide and disappearing into the Nether. It left behind a residue, an unknown signature of magic, powerful and evil.
“I sense it,” Tris replied. He began to weave a warding of his own, both in the Plains of Spirit and around Vistimar itself. If Rosta thought to interfere, she said nothing. Tris felt for the wardings the Sisters had placed around the madhouse and added his own signature of power, his own protections. In his mage sight, the new wardings shone like a coruscating barrier, gossamer thin, yet powerful.
The spirits felt Tris’s magic and began to calm. What remained was their usual level of agitation, but not the fever pitch of frenzy.
“Thank you, m’lord,” said the strangled man. “Our duty is complete. We have delivered our warning.”
“I’m grateful for your warning,” Tris replied, gathering his power to fully return to the realm of the living. “Will you be sentinels for me? For the living?”
The strangled man looked to the others and nodded. “Yes, m’lord. We will watch.”
The spirits drifted away and Tris released his power, returning completely to himself. Rosta was watching him carefully, and in her eyes, Tris saw a mixture of admiration and caution. The two soldiers who had accompanied them looked pale but stood their ground. Soterius and Mikhail, who had seen Tris work powerful magic many times before, looked disquieted but not surprised. “Well?” Tris asked. “I made sure you could hear what the spirits had to say.”
“It’s certainly disturbing,” Mikhail replied thoughtfully. “But consistent with some of the comments I’ve heard among the
vyrkin
and
vayash moru
. There’s an edginess, a feeling that a storm is coming.”
Rosta nodded. “It’s been discussed among the Sisters, unofficially. Sister Landis will not speak of it. But the magic feels… wrong. And there is a feeling like when the wind changes before a squall that something unseen is coming.”
Tris met Rosta’s eyes. “Take me to Alyzza.”
Rosta led Tris down a long, shadowed corridor. Mikhail and Soterius followed a few paces back, and behind them,
the soldiers. Tris wasn’t sure whether Soterius had insisted that they follow out of any real belief that they could be of help, or whether after the confrontation with the spirits, no one really wanted to remain behind.
Tris could sense that the level of agitation had dropped among the residents, but there was an odd discordance in the magic that he sensed around him, as if each of the residents was playing a different instrument at once, and all of them off-key.
“We have over seventy-five mages here, all hopelessly mad,” Rosta said as they walked. “And if they are at Vistimar, they have some type of magic that makes them a threat without control of their powers.”
“How many of your residents have come within the last year?” Tris asked. He had to increase his shielding to keep the magical noise from distracting him.
Rosta paused to think. “Interesting you should ask. Fifteen of our residents were committed to our care over the last year or so. That’s more in a short span than we had seen in a while—since Jared the Usurper carried out his attacks against mages. Without a war, we often get only a handful of damaged mages each year, and most of them have just gradually declined from eccentric to unstable.”
“Is there anything different about the new residents?” Tris pressed.
Rosta nodded. “They’re more agitated than usual, and more self-destructive. We’ve had more suicides than usual.” She looked abashed. “I know Your Majesty must be judging us harshly. Our resources are few, but we do try to do our best for the poor souls given to our care. No Sister is forced to come here to serve. We come of our own will, and we would protect our charges with our lives.”
Tris nodded. “I didn’t come to judge you. I can tell that what you say is true, and I commend you for your work. Is there anything else about the newcomers? Anything at all?”
Rosta frowned as she thought. “They were all once mages of power. I know Alyzza has passed herself off as a hedge witch for close to fifty years, but in her prime, during the Mage Wars, she was a fearsome sorceress.”
“What broke her mind?”
Rosta drew a deep breath. “Have you ever heard musicians tune their instruments to a bell or chime?” When Tris nodded, she continued. “Those of us who work among the afflicted have a theory, although please don’t speak of it to Landis. She doesn’t like what she can’t prove.”