The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [71]
As she waited, she found her thoughts drifting to her parents. She was surrounded by death, conscious of the lives that had ended so abruptly that cold winter's day. She knew that some of these men and women had left behind families, a legacy of pain and want that they could not ease. Just like her father.
She had never known her mother's husband. He had been killed by Ekur, one of the powerful priests of Gilgeam and ruler of Kehrsyn's hometown of Shussel. Ekur had ruled with a hand that was incompetent in action and potent in reaction, and he had lusted after Kehrsyn's mother Sarae. Loving and devoted, Sarae refused Ekur's obscene propositions, turning down even a wealth of livestock and spices for the dalliance of a single evening. In the end, Sarae's loyalty turned and bit her as does a trained asp, for Ekur's soldiers brought the hapless woman to him, killing her husband in the process. Ekur didn't take the widow in. He simply took her.
As a child, Kehrsyn had wished that she could have known her father, had someone to love her and protect her in all the ways her mother, desperate just to find enough food, could not. Ever since the pivotal spring day by the plum tree, when she passed out of childhood and into adulthood, Kehrsyn had since wished that her father could have known her, to have had the opportunity to hold his child even once before he'd died. She found it unquenchably sad that the man had died for Sarae's faithfulness without ever getting the chance to see the fruit of their union, and the grief was made all the worse that she, that child, had been an extra mouth to feed, an extra burden on one who unwillingly sacrificed her mate on the altar of love and devotion.
By the time Kehrsyn shook herself from her melancholy, it was entirely dark outside, and she heard a light winter rain falling, droplets tinkling on the shutters and trickling down the walls. She could see a faint red glow in the kitchen from the dying embers of the hearth, but no other light remained. Assailed by the chill from without and her longing from within, Kehrsyn moved to the corner of the room, gathered a few cushions and pillows by touch, and arranged some of them on top of her to keep her warm and some beneath her for comfort. Her bag did its usual double duty as her pillow. She intended merely to rest, or maybe to catch a catnap, while she waited for the courier.
The pillows soon began to warm to her body. Brooding over memories that never were and lulled by the weeping sky, Kehrsyn let herself slide into a slight doze.
At first, Kehrsyn didn't register the significance of the fact that she'd heard the floor creak, but then she heard the whispered, bubbly voices of the dead, maddeningly just beyond understanding, like a string of familiar syllables jumbled in a nonsensical pattern.
She heard the corpses rising to their feet, whispering of blood and dark magic. They moved quietly, but in the dead of night every sliding footstep rang like a tolling bell. Their murmuring voices drew closer. Their eyes, glowing like lanterns, scanned the darkness looking for the living. The nearest zombie's neck was broken, and his head lolled around, casting irregular patterns of light and darkness as he looked for her, calling in the gurgling tongue of the deceased.
She heard the door close and latch, sealing her in with the shuffling, hungry dead. She reached for her rapier but found herself naked…
Kehrsyn awoke with a start. She glanced around, eyes wide, pupils dilated in fear. She saw that one of the corpses was indeed not where she'd last seen it. Dread gripped her heart, and bile rose in her throat, impelled by her empty stomach. She saw a flicker of light