Tales from Kalgachia - 35
In the western end of Abrek Lieutenancy, not far from Fort Candycane, a young woman herded goats across a rocky, scrubby landscape.She was clad in an overcoat of wool and furs against the biting chill; though it was late autumn in the lowlands, here in the mountains it had already snowed several times; soon she would have to stable them for the winter. She trooped down the slope in the evening light, a lantern dangling from a hook on the walking stick she carried, and the goats follower, amiably allowing her to lead them.
Her father, Pàn Kǎixù, had been of Tieyanese extraction, his parents having sent him to Minarboria proper in the latter days of the Empire. When she had been born, he had given her a name in his ancestral tongue - Pàn Qīnglíng - which she much preferred, but her mother had felt that it wasn't Kalgachi enough to put on legal documents. So, instead, she had been named Chlorocyphida Pan.
She absolutely hated it.
Though her father had been full-blooded Tieyanese, her mother, a rather younger woman, was one-quarter Nezeni, at least half Laqi, and the remainder Mishalanski (though Chlorocyphida privately refused to rule out a smidgen of Archonic ancestry). As a result, her skin was a somewhat pale green, which made her look like she was nauseous, or else a monster out of foreign movies.
She hated that, too.
Her hair was thick and black and glossy; it had looked good worn long, but she had cut it to shoulder-length so it wouldn't be a nuisance. Her eyes were of a peculiar shade, somewhere at the meeting point between icy blue and cloudy gray. Their paleness, in the wrong light, caused some to think she was blind.
She didn't like to think of herself as hating anything that had come from her father, but the mistakes made about the eyes were certainly annoying.
She spent a lot of her time walking around outdoors and scrambling over obstacles in the landscape; goats, given even a moment's inattention, will get absolutely anywhere, and Chlorocyphida considered that they might very well have mastered a form a short-range teleportation for the sole purpose of causing her difficulty in trying to retrieve them. The exercise made her trim, but alas, not trim enough to entirely avoid certain comparisons with her mother's well-proportioned figure.
She absolutely hated that. She was actually willing to at least consider hating anything connecting her with her mother, but it hadn't helped that some of the looks she'd gotten from boys - even in the Gymnasium in Lithead - had had a poor ratio of brains to hormones.
Chlorocyphida was not really a hermit. She kept up with her duties to society. She had a cottage and large shed in Lyssansaevna Parish, on the outskirts of Fort Candycane, where she kept herself and her goats respectively while not roaming the landscape. She had the Urchaginka, which she generally kept pinned to her tunic. She attended church services regularly. She was, in fact, a Church partisan, and had in that capacity once helped capture a murder suspect. But all that notwithstanding, she was not always the most sociable person to be around - not misanthropic, she would say, merely very selective in who she chose to keep company with, and in turn rather carefully scrutinized by those deciding whether to keep company with her.
As a result, she spent most of her time with her goats, who were smelly but not much more so than anyone else in the parish, rather brighter than many people in said parish, and graciously understanding of her quirks. Above all else, they didn't ask questions about her. Her past, and even the pasts of her ancestors, carried too many ghosts; she felt it best to let them lie.
Chlorocyphida was still three miles from home when she encountered the stranger.
Random wanderers weren't common out this way, not this time of year. They preferred late spring or summer, when it wasn't quite so damned cold, and when the tufts of grass were greener, and there were sparse flowers, and they could use words like "picturesque" without getting slugged in the face for gross misuse of their vocabulary.
The sun was already behind the horizon, and the sky faded to purple, when she spotted the tall, dark shape shuffling across the slope away from her, toward the east. It moved a bit erratically, and she thought for a moment it might be a drunk lost on the way home, but decided instead that it was limping. She stopped, quickly checked that her pistol was loaded, just in case, and shouted, "Excuse me! Are you all right there?"
The figure stopped, seemed to glance over its shoulder, and then, to her utter astonishment, started running - limp and all. Swearing, she growled, "Come on," and sprinted after it. Her goats, with apparent glee, started stampeding after her.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Church partisan! Stay where you are!" It had no effect. She discarded the notion of shooting the figure in the leg, hitting a target that way was hard enough when everyone was standing still in broad daylight - and anyway, they couldn't move nearly fast enough to escape, not with the limp-
And then the figure abruptly stopped and whirled around, leveling what appeared to be a sword at her chest. She skidded to a halt, but only just had time to register a confused expression on a ruined face before her goats, who had no intention of stopping just when they were having fun, also arrived. One of them ducked under the sword, and neatly knocked the figure over. She ran over and planted a foot firmly on the blade, pointing her pistol at the figure, who - hand still locked firmly around the hilt - stopped trying to retrieve it. She hoisted up the lantern to get a better view of the figure, and recoiled in horror.
His skin was corpse-pale, and in many places missing, exposing muscle and tendon. Parts of his face and throat were bare, exposing skull and vocal cords. His black hair was thick and unruly, but only erratically present. He wore tattered black rags which, it seemed, had once been quite fine; the glint of silver trim could still be seen, here and there.
He looked like he couldn't possibly be alive.
Chlorocyphida got the feeling he wasn't.
No lich had been witnessed functional in well over fifty years now - other than Lord Toastypops, who appeared to run on rules of his own. Where had this one been? Who was he?
She felt like a bit of a fool aiming a weapon at someone who was already dead, but doing so appeared to be keeping him quiet, so she kept it raised, and kept her weight solidly on the sword. "Who are you?"
The man made a vague, unpleasant noise, which suggested that his voicebox was leaking air when he tried to push some through it; she shuddered at the sound of it. Whether he didn't have the voice left to answer, or merely lacked the brain, she wasn't really keen on finding out by hearing him again. She instead looked his clothes up and down. There was what might have been an epaulette… stiff collar… military? She peered closer at the epaulette. It looked like real silver, tarnished with age. Set into it was an enamel badge - a white battlemented wall beneath a grinning skull, all on a field of black.
She felt a growing chill in her gut. "No…"
The history of Minarboria was part of the basic education of every Kalgachi student. No one was expected, at that age, to memorize every unit that had been in the Shrub's own military, but everyone - everyone - who paid the least bit of attention knew at least the insignia of the force that had prepared the way for the first Great Replanting, the oldest and most dreaded: the Black Rangers.
And everyone knew who had led them.
Genuine silver epaulettes. You wouldn't find that on a low-ranking soldier, even in dress uniform.
Family was a subject that Chlorocyphida had never been comfortable with. She'd had no desire to meet her mother's family, and her father had told her more than enough about his.
My little damselfly… you should know this. I've never told your mother, because I think she would… take it the wrong way. But you need to know, so that you can keep the knowledge alive, if you have to - and prepare yourself, because you might need it.
You have some… interesting family history. And it all starts with one man.
Her hands trembling, she slowly lowered the pistol. Her gaze drifted down to the sword. The hilt was of black metal, inset with black gems, and glittered faintly in the lantern's light; but the blade reflected nothing, dark as the void, like a blade-shaped hole in the world. It felt like metal, so far as she could tell through a boot; it was hard and solid, but it looked like nothingness.
"Mors," she whispered.
The man watched her intently. One eyelid was gone, but both eyes themselves were quite intact, and a pale, icy blue the pierced the brain.
She cleared her throat. "Mors Nerrolar? ...Great-great-grandfather?"
He just stared, without apparent recognition.
Clearly he was in a bad way, but she had no idea what to do about it. She'd been greatly interested in the subject of necromancy and lichmedicine in her school days, but most of those with any expertise in those arts had been liches themselves, lost in Minarboria's decline. (She'd managed to produce an interesting purple light once, by meditation in the midst of a bog full of fungus, but that was all. The goats that hadn't wandered off in the interim had been spooked by it and she'd had to spend the entire following day rounding them up.) Clearly he needed some kind of specialist help, and with any luck, getting it would get him out of her hair.
Chlorocyphida was not a heartless person. But she'd heard enough of her family history to know that her ancestors had been cursed, and Mors most of all. She'd learned-
Ah. Yes.
She took a deep breath. "When the Father went forth, who was his son?"
He stiffened, and gave her a look of utter horror. Clearly he recognized it, even if he didn't seem happy about it. Encouraged, she proceeded. "When the Brother was seated, who stood by his side? When the Sword was pass-"
Mors lashed out with a foot, kicking her leg out from under her. "No!" he screamed, trying to scramble to his feet. "No, no, no, no!"
Chlorocyphida saw him stagger upright and try to pull the sword away; snarling, she grabbed for the hilt herself. "I'm trying to help, you stupid old-"
Her hand touched the hilt, and there was a shock, as if her arm had been hit with a block of ice, possibly from the inside; she let go, but so did Mors, who staggered back, his sword arm dangling at his side. He stared at the sword for a moment in terror, then shivered and started limping away.
The warmth returned only slowly to Chlorocyphida's arm, and she found herself attempting to get upright using only the other one. By the time she had, Mors was already disappearing behind a ridge. Swearing sulphurously, she began running, limping slightly herself (the kick had broken nothing, but left a hearty bruise), but still catching up - the old revenant wasn't in good enough shape to outrun her, even on a bad day.
She was within sight of him again when she crossed paths with the sword, which she had in fact left behind where it had fallen, but which nonetheless was now under her feet. She tripped, fell, and received several scratches on the side of her face and head for her trouble.
By the time she struggled to her feet again, Mors was nowhere in sight. She glanced around wildly, then swore again, glaring at the sword.
The sword, for its part, seemed very satisfied with itself.
