CHAPTER TWO

Every person carried with them into death the final moments of their life like memorials grieving for the last spark of corporeal existence. The Song of the Dead, it was called, a lament that was not designed to endure. It faded from memory until a spirit learned to let go and achieve true freedom. Most moved on to the unknown of the other side; others chose to remain as peaceful ghosts to haunt the places where they had lived. And then there were ghouls, those who refused to stop singing the Song of the Dead because they could not accept the manner in which they died.

'Help me, Sycamore,' said the ghoul in the doorway.

Sycamore, Shepherd of the Dead, spirit of vengeance. I struggled to remember who I was within his possession. Wendal Finn, I told myself. I am Wendal Finn. My mantra, my last rock of salvation, surrounded by the endless depths of an unforgiving sea.

'Little ghoul,' Sycamore said, and he made me step over the corpse on the watch post floor. 'Can you tell me your name?'

He asked this because if a ghoul couldn't remember its name then its murderer was unobtainable, perhaps already dead. In such cases, there was nothing to be done and Sycamore would banish the ghoul from his sight. But, to my dismay, this one remembered.

'Clay Hysan.' The name was spoken with an urgent hiss, and with its uttering changed an it into a he.

'Sing me your Song, Clay Hysan. Show me how you died.'

I knew what happened next. Without words or melody, Hysan's Song came as a drab monochrome vision, a preternatural glimpse into the recent past which broke down the walls of the watch post and superimposed itself over the environment. The vision muted the voice of the city and delivered me to a sparse room somewhere in any one of Old Castle's many hidden corners; a room without windows and steeped in the flickering shadows of candlelight. Wax dripped onto bare floorboards. Dirty smoke drifted.

Hysan appeared in his Song as he would have in life. A wretch of a human, his grey beard and hair long and greasy. His naked body, brittle and grubby, had been strapped on its back to a wooden table into which words of magic had been carved. It was easy to assume that Hysan had been stolen off the streets where he lived, chosen to be a subject in the rites of the woman standing over him.

Of indeterminate age, the woman was dressed in a dusky gown that covered her from neck to foot. Sweat beaded on a head shaved smooth. With the look of a predator, face masked by concentration, she used a medical scalpel with the thinnest of blades to slice a symbol into the skin of Hysan's stomach. This woman was a Magician. Her touch was so delicate that she drew no blood. An adept, then, casting a spell. She was saying something, either talking to her captive or reciting an incantation – it was impossible to tell for her lips moved without sound. It was always the same in these visions: the Song of the Dead came in near-total silence.

Clay Hysan was looking at me, and his voice I could hear, speaking to Sycamore.

'I never learned her name.' A dry and close rustle, whispered in a vacuum, narrating his moment of death, his Song. Hysan expressed dispassion, detached from the cruelties being inflicted upon him. 'She never explained why she did this to me.'

And why would she? The Magicians of Old Castle were like fleas riding on the backs of the vermin who ruled the cities of Urdezha. Some would call them the bane of the Scientists; others, a necessary counterpart. They were secretive, hidden, keeping their purpose and reasons close to their chests. Magicians answered to their own kind only, but this woman would be answering to Sycamore.

'She promised a hot meal and a contract of employment,' Hysan explained as the woman completed the spell on his stomach and stepped back to admire her handiwork. 'Said the Magicians had need of someone like me.'

'Indeed,' said Sycamore.

The homeless made excellent spies. They understood how to manoeuvre through the city's every shadow and unseen space, and the Magicians paid them well for their services, especially when they needed to spy on the Scientists. Of course Clay Hysan would have jumped at this Magician's offer. Unfortunately for him, her intent had clearly not lived up to her promise.

'I never got my meal,' Hysan said as though reading my thoughts. 'And no, the contract wasn't what I thought it'd be.'

The woman's breath misted as she spoke into her hand and then released the words onto Hysan's stomach with a flourish. They settled on him like wisps of smoke. Blood rose from the thin cuts, just enough to detail the spell in lines and swirls of red. A barren tree, I thought the symbol resembled. The Magician blew upon the blood and it congealed, hardened, turned to scabs.

'The spell's purpose?' Sycamore thought to me. I didn't know. Perhaps an experiment to further magical prowess, or maybe part of a clandestine plan – it didn't matter. Whatever the purpose, its casting had resulted in murder.

Hysan said, 'It didn't hurt. I just felt more and more tired, and then I wasn't alive any more.'

With further words of magic and a deft hand, the Magician sliced a circle around the scabs before gently cutting under them. With care and infinite patience, she worked the scalpel until the complete spell separated from Hysan's body and floated up several inches, carried on a gossamer leaf of skin. Crimson steam began to rise from it. The magical script carved into the tabletop beneath Hysan glowed with a dim radiance. The Magician dropped the scalpel and raised her arms, chanting the crescendo of her incantation silently to my ears.

'Find her, Sycamore.' Hysan's monochrome eyes darkened with fury. 'I want my vengeance.'

And in the Song, he died. His body shrank, dried, withered, and his spirit left him. Black with the anger of injustice, it oozed over the table, stretching before slapping to the floor in oily drops. The vision faded. The final image was of the Magician staring at her spell, a red symbol on a leaf of skin thinner than a sheet of paper now resting on her open hands.

The wail of the siren returned to me; candlelight died, replaced by the gloom inside the watch post at the city wall. The ether-cannons had stopped firing. Hysan's ghoul loitered in the doorway, once again in the dark and featureless shape of a human. His stink offended my nostrils. The Song of the Dead had been sung. It was now mine to avenge.

'Come, then, Clay Hysan,' Sycamore said, retrieving the knife. It made a sucking sound as it slid free of the corpse's neck. I thrust it into my jacket pocket without cleaning the blade. 'Lead me to your murderer.'