“What we all want. To live.”
“But they’re dead!”
The priestess nodded. “They do not know that. Or they do know but are fighting against that truth.”
Obeying the Speaker’s quiet request, the young elf returned to the fire. The others gathered around as Sa’ida told what she knew of ghosts. They are, she said, souls trapped on the mortal plane by magic, by the power of a curse, or by their own unspent desires. So numerous a legion of specters in Inath-Wakenti hinted at a great conflict in ages past. Those exiled here had been imprisoned by magical controls so strong that even their souls were not allowed to leave. Like Gilthas before her, the priestess sensed loneliness from them. Being more attuned to such things than he, she went further, explaining that over the centuries, the spirits’ loneliness had hardened into a terrible rage, a thirst to be revenged for their suffering. She shivered and rubbed her arms as if chilled.
“Perhaps they’ll depart now that their masters, the will-o’-the-wisps, have gone?” Gilthas suggested.
A scream caused all of them to flinch. Something heavy hit the canvas wall of the tent and caromed off. Sniffling sounds followed then slowly faded away.
Varanas dropped his broken stylus, which he’d snapped in two at the sound of the scream. “I cannot bear this!” he said.
“Will it go on all night, lady?”
“The dead have motives the living can scarcely comprehend,” Sa’ida answered. She repeated her hope that sunrise would disperse the ghosts.
“Here’s to the dawn,” said Hamaramis, downing a swallow of potent fluq. The Speaker and Sa’ida echoed the sentiment, lifting their small cups of kefre in salute.
A reddish glow brightened one side of the great tent, and the smell of burning canvas filled the air. Warriors, attendants, and scribes were on their feet in an instant. They couldn’t let the camp burn down around them!
Gilthas rose, leaning heavily on his staff. “Lady?” he said, offering an arm.
A high priestess could not lose face before the laddad. Exiled and humbled they might be, but theirs was a civilization stretching back millennia. The Speaker, a young adult by the standards of his race, likely had seen more summers than the most aged Khur alive. His eyes, shadowed by travail, regarded her with steady confidence.
With great dignity, Sa’ida took his thin arm.
He smiled. “There. Whatever befalls me, I shall have a healer close at hand.”
The fire was subsiding. By the time the slow-moving Gilthas passed through the door, it was almost out. A neighboring tent, belonging to the high-born Silvanesti clan of Kindrobel, had been reduced to ashes. On each side of the destroyed tent, the lane was full of pallid apparitions. Slowly, their attention shifted to Gilthas, standing in the open doorway of his tent.
He stepped outside. Embers drifted down. Sa’ida brushed stinging coals away from his face. He drew a deep breath.
“Specters of Inath-Wakenti, listen to me! You have no business with us. Begone! Leave us in peace!”
The ghosts started shuffling forward, converging on him.
“I don’t think they’re listening,” Sa’ida murmured.
“They hear me very well.” He raised his voice. “The force that held you captive is gone. Can’t you sense it? You can go to your long-denied rest!”
A dry, sighing sound filled the air, as though hundreds of I voices all whispered at once.
“I can’t understand you,” Gilthas told them patiently.
Despite his calm demeanor, Sa’ida, holding his arm, felt his pulse racing. The Pathfinder was good at dissembling, but he was frightened. So was she. She had never been among so many spirits before. The longing, the desperate greed for life emanating from the bleak assembly took her breath away. Waves of cold broke over her like showers of ice. Her magical training caused her to feel it more strongly than the elves but also equipped her to deal with it. Still, she knew a fierce, primal urge to flee.
“You’re hurting my arm,” Gilthas whispered. Embarrassed, she eased her grip.
Behind them, Hamaramis begged the Speaker to return inside. The advancing spirits were only yards away.
“I’ll not be shut in by them. Either they must go or we must.” A flash of his old strength, the strength of his illustrious ancestors, straightened Gilthas’s back and he shouted, “And we aren’t going!” He turned and thrust a finger at the nearest ghosts. “You are dead! Your time in this world is long over. Go now! Return to the realm of peace and eternal rest!”
To the surprise of all, including Gilthas himself, the advancing apparitions faltered. Their whispering subsided. Gilthas turned to the spirits on his left and repeated his command. The creeping advance halted.
Sa’ida no longer watched the ghosts; her attention was on her patient. Such power she felt from his starved, diseased frame! It burned in him like a beacon, unquenched despite his many ills.
“I am the Speaker of the Sun and Stars. I know great wrongs were done to you. You were imprisoned here by my ancestor long ago. I don’t know what crimes you committed, and I do not care. I absolve you of any guilt. You have walked the mortal world too long. It’s time for you to go.”
From the assembled spirits flowed a wave of melancholy so strong Sa’ida felt tears prick her eyes. They did not weep or wail, but their grief was manifest to the sensitive priestess.
“Your chains are broken. The door has been opened. Nothing holds you here but ancient pain and rage. Let them go. Cease your struggles. The inexorable tide of time will bear you away. You have only to cast away your hate, and go.”
The night darkened as the last embers of the burned tent winked out. Even so, it was clear to the high priestess and the elves crowded in the door of the Speaker’s tent that the ranks of ghosts were thinning. Several spirits had vanished completely. Others were so attenuated as to be barely visible. Gilthas sighed deeply. The arm Sa’ida held trembled. “I am tired,” he declared, still addressing the spirits. “But I cannot rest until I know my people are safe. What you had is gone, but no one can hurt you now, and you must not hurt in return. Farewell to you all. Gilthas, son of Tanis and Lauralanthalasa, bids you good-bye. Rest well.”
They went. One by one, the doleful spirits faded away until only darkness remained. When every single one was gone, Gilthas gave up his own struggle. Hamaramis arrived in time to help Sa’ida catch him when his knees buckled. Two warriors lifted him.
“Wait,” he commanded, voice hoarse from his oration. “General, inspect the camp for damage and casualties.”
Hamaramis watched him carried back inside the tent. The old general tried to comprehend what he had just witnessed. He had seen many things in his long life-terrible things such as the destruction of Qualinost and wondrous things such as the Speaker leading his people down a desert mountain and away from murderous nomads in the dead of night. The Speaker’s stand outside Inath-Wakenti against raging nomads had left Hamaramis amazed and awed. But it paled in comparison with the night’s events. He led a company of warriors through the camp. They found not one ghost remaining, and still he could not grasp what his sovereign had accomplished. With only the power of his words, the Speaker had exorcised hundreds of malign spirits from the land they had haunted for centuries.
None of them could know with certainty whether the spirits would return, but in his heart Hamaramis believed Gilthas Pathfinder had banished the ghosts forever.
Favaronas also witnessed the departure of the will-o’-the-wisps. Lying on his side, still paralyzed from the chest down, he was trying to find release from constant terror in sleep when a flash brought his eyes open. The great fountain of light swirling up and away from the elves’ camp reminded him of gnomish fireworks he’d seen once in Zaradene. He stared in amazement until Faeterus strode before him, blocking his line of sight.