The Spirit of Roshall
by Luke D. Evans
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Out the front window, Ister led the way as they all approached the house. Cadovis’s gaze roved about the room, taking it all in nonchalantly. His eyes alighted on the one halfway-interesting point. The painting on the wall was fairly simplistic with basic colors, but textured, with the paint seeming to rise off the canvas. The woman had a slight smile on her face, and something about her eyes seemed to look right at him. It was a creepy effect, he thought, and turned aside.
A grim expression on her face. His eyes shot back to the painting. That’s what he had told himself when he’d entered. Now she was clearly smiling, looking straight at him. Ister’s feet hit the wooden slats of the porch at the front of the house. He looked down at the cup, at the etching on the bottom of it; the woman’s face there as well, grinning back at him ear-to-ear in perfectly placed scratches and markings. His blood ran cold and his voice caught in his throat. From the bedroom, the sheets fluffed up, gradually but irreversibly, first into little lumps, then filling out into the shape of a woman.
“No!” he cried out at last. Ister had entered, and the others piled in after her. “Run! Get out of here now!”
They stood aghast, stunned, no one moving except Tranton, who made a lunge for the door. It slammed shut in his face, no one having touched it.
With his heart pounding and his mind screaming out for his spirit-sense, Cadovis realized that his spirit-sense wasn’t waiting, humming in the background; it was shouting. But something was suppressing it.
* * *
Cadovis halted, wind and snow swirling around him. He cupped a hand over his eyes, peering through blowing snow into the distance. The tower should be near, by his calculations. He turned his back to the wind and unfurled the map again across his chest, as he had so many times before. He traced a gloved finger over the route. The tree of many trunks, big as a forest itself; the island shaped like a keyhole in the teardrop lake; the cave in the mouth of a great statue, once massive and impressive, now covered in vines and moss and trees.
The tower was next. He tapped a finger on it. It had to be close, if only this infernal snow would end. He ran a hand down his long, graying beard, loosening the ice crystals clinging to the hairs. He strained for a glimpse, a silhouette, a shape through the sea of white. His father would be there, trapped inside all these years, waiting for Cadovis to come for him.
He thought back to that day again. The day he learned about his father. The day everything changed.
* * *
The woman-shaped lump under the bedsheets began to rise. One leg came out, bare to the knee, and set flat on the floor, followed by the other. The woman stood and the sheet slid off. Her clothes were tattered, dirty, ruined, but Cadovis stood transfixed on her face. It was a shapely face, almost pretty, with dark hair that hung about.
He shook his head no; words and breath strangled inside him. He took a step back.
“Cadovis?” the woman said softly. She took a step toward him.
He stumbled over something and caught himself. The others were gaping about the room, on edge and startled. Something about the house had changed. What was it? They turned toward him.
“Get out!” he rasped.
They made no move. Ister was clutching the sides of her head, gritting her teeth.
Cadovis turned back to the woman. She was reaching a hand out to him. He shook his head again, staring at the hand. It was smooth, feminine. But the more he stared at it, the more it seemed to wither, fingers curling, skin shrinking against knuckles and wrinkling. He blinked and they were smooth again. He looked away, but her face drew his eyes. It was the face in the painting and on the bottom of the goblet, he could tell that now. But it wasn’t that which unnerved him. He couldn’t be sure, though; it had been so long.
His head darted back and forth, taking in this new cabin. Dark logs, the scent of burning firewood and flickering flames on the walls. The kitchen was in the front corner, now, separated from the eating area by a windowed wall. He recognized this place. Cadovis had shared it with his mother before she died, a mother that stood before him with outstretched hand.
Something inside him wished with all his heart to take that hand. But something else — the spirit-sense, he realized — prevented him, as if physically holding back his arm. Instead, the woman stumbled and fell into him. She withered in his arms, turning to bones beneath her tatters. She threw her head back, gasping for breath as invisible hands wrapped around her throat. She choked, a terrible rasping, dying sound. Her eyes bulged.
Cadovis could only stare, dumbfounded, his hands involuntarily gripping his mother’s arms. Her skin greyed and shrunk in itself, then sloughed away, leaving bones. They, too, turned to ash and fell through his fingers.
* * *
The tower rose before him, its height disappearing into the storm above. The door pushed open with a creak and slammed to the extent of its hinges with the wind. Stairs spiraled up the round tower with no other way to go. Cadovis shoved the door closed with effort.
His heart palpitated within him. His father would be in this tower, at the top. His long journey, so near the end. He took the first step, gaping into the endless void above him. He increased his pace, running up the steps, around and around.
Eventually he slowed, still no nearer the top. How long had he been climbing? Ten minutes? An hour? Time meant nothing. He gazed into endless blackness, steps twisting ever upward. He went on, slower, each step a burden. Surely he would reach an end. He looked at his feet, willing them to the next step, the next, the next.
His head smacked against a stone. Neck bent, he looked straight into the stone cap of the tower. There was nothing here. He cried out, pounding the stone, but it did not yield. He slumped against the steps, holding his head in his hands.
When again he lifted his head, a light shone from below, a faint glow reaching him. Cadovis hurried back down, corkscrewing around the tower. A hallway opened up off the steps, leading away from the tower. He tried to fathom its presence, but there were no windows to orient himself to the outside. Could there be a bridge to another tower? Maybe a whole castle or hold? He could not figure how he’d missed it the first time.
At the end of the long passage, next to another doorway, a lamp hung on the wall. He walked toward it. The corridor stretched before him. Every step forward took him one backwards. The lamp grew more and more distant. He turned around. The steps were equally as far away. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He peeked over his shoulder. The lamp and the opening into another room were there, right behind him. He took a backward step, then another, and he was in the room.
A man had been chained to the far wall next to a window slit. Snow blew in the slit and piled next to the man. He huddled with his face against the wall, his clothes torn and ragged.
“Fa’r?” Cadovis ventured a step in his direction.
The man shifted but didn’t turn.
“Fa’r, I’ve come a long way for you.” His voice broke and tears bubbled in his eyes. He walked up to him, wary but bursting with hope.
The man grunted, pulled his legs in tighter, soles of his shoes loose and flapping, skinny calves showing through the strips that remained of his trousers.
Cadovis reached a hand out to him, laying it on his shoulder gently. The man shivered under his touch and managed a weak glance into Cadovis’s face. The man’s face was old beyond time, weathered, worn, weary. A beard as long as Cadovis’s. That gave Cadovis pause, and he touched his own beard with his free hand. Did he look as old as this man as well? He had not seen his own face in so long.
“Father!” Cadovis embraced him.
The old man didn’t seem to know what to do with his own arms, but gradually set them on Cadovis’s back. As Cadovis held him, tears streaming down his face, the old man gave the slightest squeeze, all his feeble strength would allow.
Cadovis blubbered on his shoulder, how much he’d missed him, telling him about his mother, about the command and the spirits, oh, he had missed so much! How did this happen, why are you here? Never mind, I’m here now. Father, I’m here and we can leave. Let me get these chains off you.
The man looked at Cadovis with a thin smile and kind eyes, but confusion behind them. “Are you my son?” he said in a weak, broken voice.
Underneath all the wrinkles and age and spots, Cadovis knew that face. “Hol,” he said, holding the old man’s withered cheeks in his hands. He studied his face, trying to line it up with his childhood memories. So long ago, so distorted. He had been so young. Still he wrinkled his brow.
The man turned his face away. “I do not recall having a son.” His head shook, then his frame too. “I do not remember you.”
“Shh, Father, you do not need to remember me. Not yet.”
He held the man against his chest, but a feeling tugged at him. Something wasn’t right. For one heart-stopping moment, he expected the man to fall to dust like his mother had done. He held the man at arm’s length again. He did know this man.
His heart sank within him. “Angern.”
* * *
Horrified, his mother’s dust coating his hand and the ash flitting away, Cadovis sought Ister and his men. The house was no longer a cabin. It was a great castle with cold, stone walls, empty and abandoned, ivy reaching fingers into crevices and through window holes. The air lay hot and sultry, sweat clinging to his skin instead of cooling him off.
He ran to a towering glassless window. Treetops spread away from him into a great jungle. The sky was hazy with clouds and rain, but only a heavy mist fell among them. From around the bend came shouting. He pounded down the stone hall, stopping at a large courtyard overrun with trees and vines and all manner of underbrush.
“Cadovis!” Tranton yelled. He hacked at a tree branch which had inexplicably shot toward him like some great wooden arm. The end of it fell away at his sword, and he rolled to the side.
At the same time, Ister flailed against a great serpentine vine. One of its arms, green with flakes of bark hanging from it, twisted around her form. She cried out, strangulated, dropping her weapon. Cadovis started for her, calling out her name.
Beyond her, Aralkin stood on the sill of another towering window. He was staring out at them, shaking his head.
“Aralkin! Come down, we need help!”
“I’m sorry, Cadovis. I can’t.” He shook his head slowly. “I can’t.” He took a step back and plummeted out of sight.
Cadovis stared where he had been for an extra tick, unbelieving, then again ran toward Ister, but caught up short. She hung in the air, face raised, legs and arms dangling. Still she flailed against her adversary, but weakly. A vine had slithered into her from underneath, up through her body and out her mouth.
“No!” Cadovis cried, sword outstretched, ready to strike.
The castle fell away from his eyes. The vines, the trees, the sultry air all vanished. Only the house remained. In front of the doorway, Ister hung on air itself. Tranton stood against the far wall, wrestling with the painting, far nearer than he had been in the courtyard.
Cadovis turned to the window where Aralkin had leapt. The glass was broken, and on the ground, not two men’s height below, he lay in a bloody heap, covered in cuts with glass shards jutting at every conceivable angle.
Turning back to Ister, Cadovis felt panic rise within. She was bloated horribly. If he cocked his head right, he thought he could see the vine inside her, its girth growing, stretching her out. He had only a moment to think it. Before he could, she burst. Her chest flew open, her head cracked and split like a grape, both spilling out their contents.
“Ister! No!” Tranton yelled. He had thrown down the painting. Facing Cadovis now, sword outstretched, he charged.
Copyright © 2025 by Luke D. Evans
