Page 30 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

Ghost’s Warning

I can barely remember saying goodbye. It was probably the herbs the healer gave me for those gashes across my heart.

Or maybe I knew better than to hold that memory too tight after all the pain I’d seared into my mind from Iden and Mal, whose blood still sprayed my skin in my dreams. I remember Mira’s disappointed face as she sat beside my bed, incessant throbbing when the wounds got infected, and nothing worked.

I remember anger I could not let out, perhaps because I wasn’t sure who I should be mad at.

Mira kissed my forehead wearing her travel cloak on the day they left.

Ash saluted and walked her out. I felt abandoned, wishing they could just stay, but I had enough of my wits not to say that.

It took two months for those wounds to heal, leaving an angry pink scar over my heart. Galen hated to see it during practice, hated the reminder that his boys would be stupid enough to spar with new tech and no armor. That’s all we’d say. We didn’t want to trouble him further.

The only part of Nunbiren that still felt constant was my taam, although he was not the same man he used to be.

Galen took a step back from morning training once I healed up, using his mornings to pray and light a candle in the temple for Ash’s safety, or speak with the ancestors in the woods.

As far as I know, he got no sign or direction from these rituals. But it kept him calm, if not happier.

Taam was quieter, kinder, and never once in the next couple months did he suggest I go to the elders, plan my future for me, or rail about the new forge in the Bend. His acceptance of our situation scared me the most, but I kept my doubts to myself.

“A Galen has lived in this town for two thousand years,” he said one day, leaning in the near empty shop.

We’d tried to expand into some woodworking, but it wasn’t catching on.

“I can’t be the first to leave. And Amenirdis, the immortal Galen’s wife, might still be reborn.

She’d know to come here for Istaran and the robe. ”

“I understand,” I said, filing down the engraving on a chair I suspected no one would buy. And I did understand why he needed to believe that. For his sake, I did my best to believe it too.

We’d check the temple regularly for news about the Bend.

The soldiers were doing well, escorting settlers willing to take the risk of further Asri rebel attacks.

The volunteers came from the crowded cities and academies from all over the empire.

Red-robed priests came to town sometimes to recruit for certain trades, and by the end of summer, the town began to thin.

Ash wrote a couple times, but he was not allowed to share where he was, or anything about the classified work he was doing. He ignored my questions and said he was fine. I came to resent those letters more than look forward to them.

I turned twenty-one on a rainy day in early fall. Galen made me an ugly mess of a chocolate cake that still tasted divine. That was the day I missed Ash the most. I wondered what had changed so drastically for him to not write for a month. He wasn’t a casualty. I checked.

Six weeks later, I woke to Galen telling me to arm myself, Istaran strapped across his back. There was a stranger at the gate; signs of Attiq-ka magic. The night guard had called the elders and the governor, and Galen assembled the militia.

Dawn bled across the horizon by the time we got to the front gate. There she was, a little girl of eight or nine, standing hunched in the road with tangled black hair that brushed her shoulders. I squinted and could not make out the face she wouldn’t lift to meet us.

Governor Solonstrong arrived. He greeted Galen with a smile, then grumbled about being woken up for something like this, whatever it was.

“She just looks like she needs help.” I too couldn’t see a reason to be afraid of a child.

The black-haired night guard, Austin, just shook his head. “Watch.” He turned, cupping his hands to her. “Hello!”

She didn’t move.

“ Syo na,” Galen called out between muscled hands. “I’m Elder Galen Eirini. Who are you, child?”

She cocked her head at him, her lips forming the shape of his name in silence. Her eyes, wide and hollow, stared straight ahead. I had to make sure I wasn’t imagining this: her skin glowed, only for a moment. She fucking glowed like the faint blue of Oria.

“I have a message for you, Elder,” she said in Asri, her accent strange to me. It was difficult to untangle her voice from the sounds of the wind.

“I’m Governor Solonstrong, girl. State your business.”

She paused, disgust on her face. At the Governor’s strong Chaeten accent or his tone, I’m not sure. She dropped her head again, silent when we called again.

“Taam, who is she? What is she?” I asked. The governor whipped toward us both, the same question evident on his face.

Galen didn’t look away from her, jaw clenched, but he spoke so only I or the Governor could hear. “Attiq-ka, probably, with that glow. But she’s not well.”

“Or just another illegally trained rebel,” the Governor said. “There’s more every year, the magic sickens them, and—”

“Don’t disrespect her, governor,” Galen’s voice rumbled low. “We need to know who and what we’re dealing with. A trained rebel could still do a lot of damage. And if she’s not born with that power...” Galen shook his head at the thought.

The girl came closer, swaying like a wisp of smoke and veering away as she stepped closer to the gate. “I have a message for you, Elders.”

“And we will listen.” Galen offered her a deep Asri salute. He looked to the governor, who stood straight, offering no salute or sign of respect.

The girl raised an eyebrow.

“You look unwell, Elder. Have you eaten?” Galen said. All Attiq-ka are elders, if not more.

“Don’t offer her anything,” the Governor hissed under his breath.

The girl looked at the governor, then let her head roam, eyes dull and skin pulsing blue. “I need no food. And you won’t listen, will you? This warning is for my people. Not this demon governor.”

She lowered her head again, refusing to speak for the next fifteen minutes no matter what Galen or the Governor yelled down.

“That magic is illegal. She’s a rebel,” Solonstrong said. “This smells like a trap.”

“We agree on that last bit,” Galen said. “But I’d wager that’s a ghost. There’s a war in that child’s mind. Look at her little hands shaking. She does not seem to be fully in control of her own body.”

Part of me wondered if this was just one crazy child bringing a town to its knees by just standing there.

I’d never before seen those blue veins pulsing under golden brown skin, but I knew that was a sign of illegal Attiq-ka magic.

The priests didn’t tell us much, but no Attiq-ka in my history books or wanted posters looked disheveled and slumped like that.

The queen certainly didn’t, although her Attiq-ka mind was born into a Chaeten body.

Maybe Galen was right, or maybe this was magic gone wrong, like the governor said.

A crowd gathered behind us. Meragc’s house was just inside the wall by the gate, and I saw him on the roof of his house trying to see over, his four-year-old son Nestor fussing at his heels. Atalia, recently appointed Elder, came to join us atop the wall.

Finally, in a voice devoid of emotion, the little Asri girl spoke again. “I bring a warning from the Pathfinder.”

Galen and Atalia exchanged a worried glance, then looked to the red-faced governor.

They’d made him promise, by this point, to let the elders do all the talking, but Solonstrong didn’t seem to find this an easy task.

I knew the Pathfinder was a title from when Attiq-ka ruled the Nara: a seat on their council. There was no Pathfinder anymore.

“What is the warning, Elder?” Galen asked.

The girl’s lips barely moved as she repeated, her voice flat, “Flee south to the Bend, or east as far as Uyr Elderven. Do not go west, or east past Baren Golkhi. Your khels will fail and the ruren-sa will take you. Leave today. Move fast and do not linger.”

Ruren-sa translated to “ghost demons.” Ice pricked the back of my neck at that.

I didn’t know which type of khels that Z’har priests placed on the temple, but the magical barrier on our town wall kept ghosts from coming in.

The girl stared, calm and passive like she was drugged, experiencing none of the urgency she demanded of us.

“Thank you, Elder. Why should we avoid north and west?”

“It’s a trap,” Solonstrong said, low enough where only I and the people beside him could hear.

“Flee south to the Bend, or east as far as Uyr Elderven. Do not go west, or east past Baren Golkhi. Your khels will fail and the ruren-sa will take you. Leave today. Move fast and do not linger,” the girl repeated, in the same tone as before.

Frustration and desperation flickered in the governor’s eyes. “We need to bring her inside for questioning.”

Galen and Atalia said nothing. I’m not even sure they heard the governor with so much we all had to think about right then.

The governor leaned over to his guards below. “Seize the rebel. Bring her here!”

Austin, the stocky black-haired guard, looked up. “The ghost?”

“Now!” Solonstrong ordered.

Austin hustled to the button on the wall. Falma covered her brown hair with a helmet and took a place beside him, the same guard whose sword I’d broken on Ash’s. I’d made her a better one since, which she unsheathed now.

The gate creaked open. The child rolled her head up. I held my breath.

“No!” Galen yelled. “Do not open that gate!”

“Continue! Seize her,” Governor Solonstrong countermanded.

The guards strode out in unison, grabbing the child’s thin arm in rough grips as she tried to run away with stilting steps.

The child stiffened, wailing in their arms. Guards held her shoulders on either side as they dragged her.

Falma looked up at Solonstrong, questioning, as she and Austin dragged the child forward.

“Niire Mai! ” Galen’s scream vibrated in my chest.

Never harm , he said, but I didn’t see how they were harming her.

“The law is above your superstitions!” the Governor growled.

Just inside the gate, the girl stiffened, her body convulsing as if struck by lightning. “No—No, Elders,” she grated out.

“You are killing a child!” Galen rumbled, his words carrying over the restless crowd as he ran down to the stairs. “Take her outside! She has not harmed us!”

The guards paused after one more step, but neither appeared shocked. A low, guttural sound escaped the girl’s throat as her eyes rolled back and stilled.

Austin let go. The child crumbled in Falma’s arms, who lowered her to the ground, unmoving.

The crowd closed in. Atalia was the first to check the child’s neck for a pulse, taking a sharp breath in as Galen and I joined her, the Governor behind.

“They killed her,” Atalia said.

“How?” Solonstrong blinked down at her body.

“Because that was an Attiq-ka ghost you dragged through the khel, you black voided simpleton,” Galen said, and I heard the ring of Istaran flying from its sheath before I forced my face away from the girl. Galen held it glowing to the governor’s neck as Atalia drew her blade on Falma.

I drew my blade too, shaking as I took position across from Austin. Around us on the walls, all Asri glared and shouted, supporting their elders.

“You—you cannot threaten a governor,” Solonstrong protested.

“Tell the queen we need a new governor then,” Galen said, pressing the blade closer as Solonstrong stepped back. “Because if I thought for one moment you understood what you just did, you’d be bleeding out already. It is no sin to kill a demon.”

More in the crowd drew weapons, pressing in, jeering.

“Get out of our town, Solonstrong,” Galen said.

Atalia had already disarmed Falma. She pressed her knee into the guard’s back, her sword to her neck, poised to strike.

I was so shocked I’d stopped watching Austin.

He tried to run, but there was Meragc, running to intercept him, slashing at his leg.

Ruan came alongside, aiming at Austin’s neck, slicing with a spray.

I looked back at Atalia. Falma bled out beside the ghost girl, a clean blow through the skull.

My head reeled, unable to process what was happening.

“They both knew,” Atalia called to the crowd.

“These guards knew this girl held a ghost in her mind. They have paid for their crimes.” I took a few steps to the body of the girl by Atalia, her skin having lost all trace of the blue magic, the bright veins.

She slept there in dirty clothes and hair, but otherwise, like any child might sleep.

“Go or die, Solonstrong!” Ruan roared. “You killed both that child and the Attiq-ka!”

“Kill him!” the crowd jeered, pressing around me. I stood straight, grateful for my height that I could see. The governor protested as a dozen swords prodded him back.

The gate rumbled open. Voices chanted as the crowd shoved Mira’s father out onto the open road.