Lies of Light

10

5 Ches, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith

She hadn’t done any of the things she would have expected herself to do.

She had taken no one’s advice. She’d used none of her father’sher family’sgold. The rented flat wasn’t in the worst part of Innarlith, but it wasn’t in the best either. Deep in the Third Quarter, it was a tradesman’s flat above a vacant storefront that used to sell cheese. She hated the smell that was left behind and under any other circumstances never would have put up with it. It was the kind of building she’d have burned down just because she didn’t like it. She spent not a single silver on furniture or decorations, and even promised herselfand any disembodied spirits that might be listening inthat she would sleep on the stained mattress, sit on the flea-ridden chair, and keep her clothes in the cupboard with the rat skeleton and the hardened undergarment the previous tenantperhaps the cheesemonger’s wifehad left behind. She didn’t bring the flamberge, and had not even a slim dagger or kitchen knife with which she might cut herself.

Phyrea sat on the floor. She had a candle, but had forgotten to bring anything with which to light it, so she sat in the dark.

She folded her arms in front of her and doubled over. Her stomach hurt almost as much as her head throbbed She wanted to cut herself so badly she wanted to scream. S But she wouldn’t let herself do either of those things.

The ghosts screamed louder and louder as the room grew darker and darker.

Cut yourself.

You long for it, came a shrieking wail. We know you crave the cold bite of steel. That thin chill of the blade passing through your own flesh, and the delicious quiver of your hand as you force it to draw your own blood.

The sword.

That blade bites the best.

Use the flamberge, they screamed at her in a chorus of disembodied howls. Let it drink you in. Let it bring you to us.

One of them said, Take me home. I don’t like it here. Take me back to Berrywilde. Berrywilde…"

It sounded like a little girl, but Phyrea could feel its soul sometimes, and it was the cold, bitter, mean spirit of a devil.

“No,” she whimpered into the deathly quiet of the merchant quarter at night. “Get out of me.”

A man screamed into her ear in inarticulate rage, but no real sound disturbed the silence. The voices didn’t speak into her ear, but rather from it.

“Tell me what you want,” she asked, though they’d told her before. She wanted a different answer.

Cut yourself.

Use the swordthe sword I gave you.

Don’t give it to him. Don’t give it to the Thayan.

Go home.

Take us back to our pretty home and stay with us there forever.

Kill forme. Give us your life. Spill your blood. Phyrea shook her head.

She’d gone thererented the flat, broken from her life in whatever ways she couldin the hope of gaining some clearer understanding. Perhaps, she’d thought, in the silence of a strange place, away from the people and the places that kept the ghosts rooted in her, she might find some answers.

Did you hope to catch us off guard? one of thema little boy by the sound of his voice, but a monster by the cold dread that followed his wordsasked. What did you hope? That we would just rot in the ground, or that we would be frightened by the stench of rotten cheese? Have you ever smelted the inside of your own moldering casket?

Phyrea shook her head.

Of course you haven’t, a woman whispered at the edge of a sob. But you will.

Phyrea opened her eyes, wondering how long she’d had them closed, and saw them gathered all around her. They loomed over her, each one drawn in the air from violet light. They existed as a glow, as a sourceless luminescence, and as voices.

Free us, a little boy with one arm demanded through stern, gritted teeth.

Free yourself, the man with the scar on his cheek said.

Phyrea shook her head, pressed her hands to her temples.

Cut yourself, a woman whispered in her ear so close it made her jump. The desperation plain in the woman’s voice made tears well up in Phyrea’s eyes. Maybe it will make it go away.

Phyrea began to sob so hard she feared her ribs would crack, and that fear only made her cry some more.

Feel that little pain, the womanthe ghostwent on. Just a little pain of the body makes all the pain of the mind go away. At least for a little while, yes? Just a little? Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that make it go away? Can’t you just make it go away?

Still crying, Phyrea nodded.

Trust us, said the man with the z-shaped scarsome long-dead relative she’d never known. We love you. Will you listen while we tell you some things you need to do?

Phyrea wiped the tears from her eyes only to feel her cheeks soaked with tears again a scant heartbeat later.

Trust us, the old woman insisted.

Phyrea started to nod, and the ghosts started to laugh.