Nine hells! Thora!
The dead Yslander woman staggered over the fallen bodies, her clawing black fingers reaching out for Wren, and between her blue lips a tiny black tongue poked out of her mouth, a tongue shriveled and dried as a dead twig, and just as useless. The only sounds that came from her mouth were unintelligible moans, terrible gasping moans that dragged on and on between thin, wheezy breaths.
Wren blinked, suddenly realizing that the townsmen were all busy with the other corpses and there was no one between her and Thora. She loaded her sling from the small pouch of stones on her belt, and then Wren hurled a shot at the blue and black face before her. The black side of Thora’s face crunched inward as the stone glanced off, but the corpse merely stumbled as it charged at the girl.
Woden, if I die here I’ll never talk to you again, you lazy excuse for a god!
Wren thrust her hand out and shoved the aether forward, blasting the dead woman and everyone else in the road with a rolling tide of white mist. Thora flew back onto the other bodies, and all of the men were thrown forward onto the last few walking dead. But the men kept their footing, and were soon bashing and kicking the remaining corpses into silent oblivion.
But the blue and black corpse from Ysland was still moving, still struggling to sit up, still reaching out with her cold black fingers. With a lump in her throat and a few hot tears in the corners of her eyes, Wren darted forward, grabbed one of the bricks from the ground, and smashed the corpse in the face. Thora collapsed and lay still.
Wren backed away, leaving the brick were it had fallen so it would cover the face at least a little bit. The sailors and fishers all backed away from the bodies with her, all huffing and sweating and muttering to themselves. But they were all alive, and all unharmed except for a few scrapes and bruises.
When the pounding in her chest had faded, Wren said, “Will they rise again?”
“Naw.” The old sailor shook his head. “Not with the heads all bashed in. There, watch.” He pointed at the bodies.
Wren turned to look, and through the drifting aether she saw the pale shades of the dead men and women stand up out of their bodies, glance around blankly, and then fade into the darkness. Thora too emerged from her corpse and hesitated, gazing at Wren with wide, sad eyes, and then she vanished.
They’re gone. Their souls are all gone now. It’s over.
“See?” the sailor said. “Right as rain now.”
“But what’s causing it?” Wren asked.
The sailor shrugged. “Pacts with the devil? Some sort of curse? Who knows?” And the men headed back down the lane to the little beer hall overlooking the harbor.
Wren followed them. “And the bodies?”
“We’ll burn them tomorrow. No sense trying now. It’s too cold, and they’re all frozen,” the old sailor said as he went back inside.
Wren lingered in the street, alone in the dark, listening to the wind whistling around the roofs and chimneys, listening to the gentle rocking of the fishing boats just a stone’s throw away on the dark waves. Omar sauntered slowly up the lane from the water’s edge and stood beside her. “I have a theory.”
“They barely even care,” Wren said, still staring at the sea. “They fought a band of dead people in the street, bashed in people’s faces with bricks, and they just went back to their drinks like nothing happened.”
Omar grinned. “Some people adjust to awful things better than others.”
“What sort of people?”
“People who are used to awful things happening to them.”
Wren nodded slowly.
“This is Vlachia,” Omar said. “It’s a cold, hard place. In times of war, the princes fight with Raska and Rus and Hellas for scraps of gold, a handful of women, or a herd of cattle. Nothing more. In times of peace, the governors fight with each other for even less. But the farmers do fairly well, and the fishers do fairly well. The wine here is excellent. And when the wine isn’t enough to warm their bones, there is always the Church of Constantia to soothe their souls.”
“Church? You mean the gods?”
“Not gods. God. Singular.”
“Oh.” Wren pouted. “What’s his name?”
“God. Just, God.”
“If you only have one god, does that mean he doesn’t have a family?”
Omar sighed. “According to the Constantian and Roman Churches, he does. But they’re wrong about that, of course. The Mazdan Temple has the truth of it.”
“Oh.”
So many things to learn still.
Wren wrapped her sling around her wrist. “What’s your theory?”
“Hm?”
“About the walking dead,” she prodded. “You said you had a theory.”
“Oh, that.” Omar nodded. “Well, you know that when most people die, their souls just rest there in their bodies or their ashes, just sort of sleeping. And even if they do wake up, it takes some effort and some aether for them to move about as ghosts.”
“Right.”
“And your aether-craft allows you to use the aether to move anything with a soul.”
“Right.”
“So it works both ways,” Omar said. “You can use the aether to move a ghost, and a ghost can move the aether too.”
“But aether is just a mist. It can’t move anything at all. It just makes images of dead people.”
“Ah.” Omar smiled mysteriously. “But what if the aether wasn’t a mist? It evaporates in the sunlight, in the heat, but it also thickens in the dark and the cold. What if the aether froze solid? What if the aether in a corpse’s dead blood froze solid?”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Then the ghost could move the frozen aether crystals, they could move their own dead body like a puppet!” She recoiled. “Ew!”
“Ew indeed, little one, ew indeed.” Omar nodded sagely. “These corpses are buried in the permafrost, their bodies well-preserved in the cold, their blood frozen solid within hours of dying. And then, when their souls wake up, instead of just carrying their faces and voices out into the aether mist, they take their own dead bodies with them out into the world.”
Wren shuddered. “So they might not even realize they’re dead?”
“Oh, I think they do. After all, they all have to dig and crawl their way out of their own graves. Imagine falling asleep in your own bed, and then waking up in your own grave, digging up through the frozen earth, and staggering up into a graveyard on frozen, dead legs, looking down at your own frostbitten and desiccated fingers, unable to speak with your shriveled up tongue. It’s enough to drive you mad, don’t you think? And the fresh ones, like Leif, might even think they’re still alive, just wounded or sick.”
“But they’re dead! Why aren’t they just floating away like normal ghosts? Why are they clinging to their bodies at all?”
Omar shrugged. “Force of habit? Human nature? The will to live? Why ask me, I’m not a deranged corpse.”
“So, then we only need to worry about them at night, when it’s coldest, right? If they get too warm, the aether in their bodies will melt away and their souls will come free, right?”
“Maybe. Then again, this land is awash with aether. If the soul doesn’t leave the body promptly during the day, then more aether could simply freeze into the body the next night. The process could cycle on and on, forever.” He crossed the lane and opened the door to the beer hall. “Come on, it’s time for bed.”
Wren nodded and took one last look at the bodies in the road. “They move pretty fast, for dead people. And they’re strong, almost as strong as they were in life, I suppose. I just hope they can’t swim, too.”
Chapter 4. La Rosa
The next morning, Wren emerged from her warm bed and her warm breakfast onto a bright, cold street. Uphill to her left she saw a pair of men with a wheelbarrow loading and moving the blue bodies. Other yawning men and women were already out, calmly going about their chores and stepping carefully over the corpses in the road. Omar stepped out beside her, resplendent in his finely tailored Mazigh coat and boots, with his blue sunglasses hiding his eyes. Without a word, he headed down to the water and strode out onto the lonely wooden pier that reached out into the Black Sea, and began a quick negotiation with the captain of a sailing ship that was about to leave port.