The Spirit of Roshall
by Luke D. Evans
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Gas lamps flickered. The air was still, untouched by breeze or draft. Cadovis unwrapped his knuckles, then his wrists, and flexed the joints, looking at them as he did so. He took a big breath and propped up his foot to untape his ankle.
The man was large and bulging with muscle. He could be a kaethe, the way he stood there like a monument. Cadovis was no small man. In fact, he had been described as imposing, dangerous, hard to move, but Cadovis bent his neck full back to gaze at this man. He swung at Cadovis, but the attempt was too slow. Cadovis sidestepped easily, keeping to his toes. The man kept his fists raised, pumping them up and down in front of his own face.
Oridon had come in at the end, not as a spectator. He had no money on Cadovis; he never did and never would. Yet Cadovis always won. Cadovis had seen him standing there, in the back, behind the encircling men waving their arms, shouting their encouragements. For a moment, he had been distracted. Then he had gritted his teeth.
Cadovis kept his balance centered, shifting his feet, pivoting his hips, thrusting with the center of his mass on point. The man jabbed at him, and Cadovis slid aside effortlessly, landing a kidney shot that momentarily bent the larger man sideways.
The lamps stopped flickering, turning up suddenly. Oridon was walking around the room, turning their knobs. He regarded Cadovis, sitting in just his trunks, his foot up on a stool and his muscles sore, especially in his chest. The large fighter had only landed a few shots, but they’d left a serious mark.
Cadovis’s breathing was labored, but he tried to hide it from Oridon. He turned an expressionless face toward his adoptive father. The tiredness and apathy Cadovis felt showed on his face also, he knew. He didn’t try to hide it. Instead, he cocked his head and raised his eyebrows.
The man unleashed a flurry of shots. Cadovis parried, blocking them with his forearm mostly, but a few glanced past and found his ribs, his bare breasts, his shoulder. His breath caught, then he spun out of it, around the man in a flash. He slid on one leg past the man’s legs, hauling him down by the ankles. The man fell like a great tree, and Cadovis leapt back to his feet.
Oridon held up a paper. “Summons?”
“It is.” Cadovis was the one who had created the summons, so he would know. “You’re taking lead.” Cadovis had been tying on his shoes, but let his fingers fall. “What about Tranton?”
Oridon shook his head. “He’s not beyond.”
Cadovis held up his hands as if to say, “So what?” He added: “Tranton is far more advanced than I am. He knows the tactics, investigative procedures—”
“As do you, son,” Oridon said quietly.
“Interpersonal skills,” Cadovis finished, with emphasis.
Oridon smiled. “None are perfect.”
Cadovis stood and shrugged into a pullover shirt. “I wish for Tara-Si,” he said, half under his breath.
Oridon latched onto it immediately. “You need to let go of your boyhood crush. Tara-Si will not be returning.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Cadovis snapped. “Besides she is much more than a crush.”
“She was a fantastic investigator and a great asset. But she is not here anymore.”
“She was a mentor, Fa’r. A colleague. A friend. Nothing else.”
Oridon turned away, seeming to collect his thoughts and letting the subject die.
Cadovis pounced on the fallen man’s back, raining blows one side then the other, kneeing him with one knee then the other. The man threw his weight against Cadovis, unsettling him for but a moment. In that moment, he turned over before Cadovis was upon him again, landing blows to his chest and belly and chin.
The man attempted to grab at Cadovis, but he twisted out of it with a hard torque sideways. The large fighter managed a glancing blow, another weak jab at Cadovis, but he withered as he went. He lacked leverage and momentum. He lost energy under Cadovis’s blows, wilting under the onslaught. Eventually he threw both arms out sideways in defeat.
Cadovis immediately leapt up and shoved through the spectators, out of the crowd opposite where Oridon stood.
“You will be taking Loksey, Ister, Tranton, and Aralkin.”
Cadovis’s eyes shot up to meet Oridon’s. “Just five of us again? What of Xaries?”
Oridon pursed his lips. “As I said, you are the only beyond. And no. There will be a sixth. You will be taking Angern as your second.”
“Angern?” Cadovis exclaimed. “Guss it all and by the shades! I told you I will not ride with him again. Not a chance!”
“This time you must.”
“Do you not remember—?”
“There is a house,” Oridon said, louder now. “It’s in Lût, near the town of Roshall. Strange goings-on have been reported. A marshal lost his life, so a posse went in. Two escaped with their lives but without their sanity.”
Cadovis looked over, interest slight but growing, not yet over his irritation at the inclusion of Angern. “And the others?”
Oridon shrugged. “Gone. We don’t know. No one has been back since.”
“Lost their sanity how?”
Oridon stretched out his lips in a line, shaking his head slightly. “Wild eyes. Babbling. Lost their minds completely. That’s all I know.”
“That’s where I come in. This haunting, it’s... a spirit, you think?”
Oridon nodded, his tongue visibly rolling around his cheeks. “Sure.” He seemed to be hiding something, a word on the tip of his tongue, a thought scratching at his head.
“What is it, Fa’r?” A hint of exasperation crept into his voice. “Just tell me, Dah?”
The older man paused, rubbing his short gray beard with a thick hand, bushy eyebrows bent low over deep-set eyes. “Cadovis, I have done my best to be a father to you these past years. You know that, I trust. Your mo’r and I love you very deeply and would not willingly do anything to hurt you.”
Cadovis stood, hands on hips. “I know that, Fa’r. And I’m sorry if I was short with you, but—”
Oridon held out a hand. “Let me finish, please. I know you do not recall all of your childhood. Before you came to us, I mean.”
Cadovis held a breath, unwanted images of disconnected memories flashing in his skull. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“There are good reasons for that, Cadovis. You had many night terrors after coming to us. You were insecure, angry, you lashed out at anyone. You remember this much.”
Cadovis nodded, taking shallow breaths, no longer feeling the ache in his chest, in his muscles, but reliving the ones closer to the bone.
“So trust me when I say I do not wish to speak of this. It is the very last thing I wish to do. But people have lost their lives already, and I fear you are their only hope.”
Chills ran down Cadovis’s spine. Tell me already, by the shades!
Oridon regarded Cadovis with such sad eyes that Cadovis didn’t know whether to embrace him or start crying. “It’s a spirit,” Oridon said matter-of-factly, “and it demanded you.”
Cadovis’s breath involuntarily ceased at that. He studied his father’s face. “It wants me?”
Oridon drew in his lips, his own voice hitching when he tried to speak. The last spirit who wanted Cadovis had lured him there with Xaries, after already doing the same to Tara-Si. It had wanted him. It had wanted them all, as if to collect beyonds or steal their abilities. Cadovis had prevailed, but only by the providence of his spirit-sense. Would he willingly walk into another trap, this time without Xaries even?
“Cadovis, there is more. I wish to Onyé there was not, but there is.” He waited, and Cadovis gaped at him, then jutted out his head as if to insist he continue.
“The spirit said he’s your father.”
* * *
Cadovis held up a hand, and the investigators pulled in their reins behind him. The house lay along a hollow, with all the grass, all the blooms, all the leaves on the trees dead or gone in a wide radius around the house. Birds yet chirped, but distant. The smell of plants, of all green things, had filled his nostrils as they rode, but it was now replaced by a sickly sulfur odor.
Ister and Loksey held arms across their faces. Angern had a smug expression, Cadovis thought, half of his mouth upturned, arms crossed, mustache bristling.
“Wait here,” Cadovis said as he dismounted. “Do not approach until I give the go-head. Inderre?”
“Understood, Nür Cadovis,” Aralkin and Loksey said.
“Got it,” said Ister, followed by a terse nod from Tranton.
“All yours, Cadovis. Don’t hesitate to call.”
Cadovis waited on Angern, who shrugged. “I’m here to do your bidding, so your father said.” He smirked as he emphasized “father,” as if to indicate some level of nepotism.
Cadovis glared at him an extra beat before turning to the house.
The house was plain, two-story, not more than a few rooms each level. Little more than a small box with a slanted roof and no greenery to speak of around it. He descended the slope and stepped cautiously to the front door, which stood ajar.
Cadovis pushed it open all the way. A stale odor of neglect wafted out. He glanced around the little house. The entry was a sitting area that took half of the main level. Everything appeared to be in place, if a little dusty. A painting of a woman hung on the wall, a grim expression on her face. Little else caught the eye save a few worn upholstery chairs with low backs.
On the far side of the house, against a long, distorted window, was a kitchen and eating area. A shallow washbasin had a few bugs in it and no water, the counter strewn with pottery and wooden goblets. Opposite it was a little bedroom with a daybed against the wall and a stately wardrobe on the wall across.
His spirit-sense didn’t ping, but it wasn’t sleeping either. Perhaps it was on alert because he expected a spirit. The aura hummed in the background of his mind, but nothing more.
A ladder rose to an upper level, and Cadovis climbed it to find a little loft with lots of dust and crates for storage. He descended again, tapped a finger against his thigh, then spotted a hatch in the hall between kitchen and bedroom. He hauled up the hatch and peered into a dank dirt cellar. It was maybe half his height; he lowered himself into it and crouched. Very little light entered, only slivers of sunlight from cracks and imperfections in the stone foundation. The dirt was piled and lumpy to his left, but to his right it had been excavated for cold storage. A few bottles and jars littered the area.
He pulled himself back out with a sigh. All this hype for another dud? He shook his head. There was no spirit here. He leaned out the front door and whistled shrilly, gesturing with his arm. Might as well let the crew take a gander before they rode clear back to the garrison.
Cadovis moseyed back through the house, glancing casually about. He picked up a goblet, rolled it around in his hands, felt its imperfections. It had been dropped more than once and used well. He wondered who had lived here. His fingers brushed against something etched in the bottom of the cup, and he held it up for inspection. A figure, but he couldn’t make it out.
Copyright © 2025 by Luke D. Evans
