He was still learning about his new existence and how this body worked.
Though he had been killed—drained—by a mere vampire, he had awoken as something else. He had not burned in the dawn, as expected, nor did he thrive on blood. He could still feed by touch, though he did so in flesh instead of spirit. He no longer knew what he was.
Now he was loose in a large population that ranged between opulent wealth and desperate poverty. A few night wanderers passed by, from sailors to merchants to commoners. It had long been his intention to purchase fine clothing. What he now wore had been scavenged. Any coin he had procured had been needed for the journey itself, and he had not come all this way out of nostalgia.
It had taken more coin back at the port of Oléron on the southern, coastal end of Witeny to learn where Chane—and Wynn Hygeorht—had gone. They had stolen the orb of Spirit from him. It was hard to know in any given moment whether that mattered more to him than vengeance.
A soft shuffling caught his attention, and he turned.
A ragged beggar crouched at the mouth of a cutway between a tea shack and a lamp shop. At the sight of Sau’ilahk, the bony man raised a chipped pottery cup.
“Coins for mercy?” he asked.
“Of course,” Sau’ilahk answered quietly, stepping closer. “But I do not wish for my purse to be seen.”
He slipped into the cutway while stripping off his right glove. Turning to face the opening to the street, he backed deeper in as he dug into his pouch. He raised one silver coin into plain sight, and at the sight of that, the spindly man followed. And when the street’s lights no longer touched him ...
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!