Ghost's Sight

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Ghost’s Sight

Torquere Press Publishers

PO Box 2545

Round Rock, TX 78680

Copyright 2013 by Morwen Navarre

Cover illustration by BSClay

Published with permission

ISBN: 97
8-1-61040-522-5

www.torquerepress.com

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.

First Torquere Press Printing: August 2013

Printed in the USA

To PW for pushing me to do this;

To Neko and my snarky paladin for believing in me;

To Dani and DG for being my shoulders when I wavered.

I wouldn’t be here without you, and I love you all.

Ghost’s Sight

by Morwen Navarre

Prologue

The cry was too plaintive to ignore, a thin wail bereft of hope. It was the cry of the child the gods wanted her to find, perhaps even needed her to find. The Witch grumbled a little as she stepped over the remnants of something metallic and inconvenient for someone well on her way to fifty. She was not as limber as when she walked the path of the maid, or of the dam, for that matter. It was easier to be male, but that would mean a stunted life. Most males never took the final step past their place as sires to become truly wise. She had moved on to become a hag, and her power had grown along with her wisdom. Now she sought the male that could also take that step into wisdom. He was the one who could be a witch, a child with the Sight or so the gods whispered. How long had it been since there had been one who saw the hidden things? Too long, and the Witch paused to listen.

It tugged at her again, that cry, pulling her deeper into the ruined place. She had never experienced childbirth herself. The dam’s blood had come, and eventually, the dam’s blood had stopped coming, and that was fine by her. The Witch never needed that to define her. She had the gift and the learning. She could heal with her herbs or with the gods’ light, the potent little dot that could knit a bone or seal a wound, and which drew its power from the witchglass atop her home. She had the Seeker’s box that read the blood and gave her the ancient words, words that named the potion or poultice in her formulary. They were lost now to all but a few, along with the secrets of making witchglass or how to repair the delicate relics. Only the witches remembered the words, and the rangers, the scavengers who combed the ruined places and gave themselves fine airs.

The Witch sniffed, smelling the taint of a ranger in the air. No ranger would touch a witch. Not everything in a witch’s formulary was gentle and wholesome. There were things that could tear a man’s mind out, make him beg for death. The Witch grinned to herself, a dark and feral thing. No, she had no need to fear the unseen ranger. He would not interfere with her, or dare to touch the child she sought.

Again the cry sounded, so close now, and the Witch stepped over the threshold of a ruined building. There was a bundle, small and light, and she gathered it to her, words coming in a soft singsong. “Hush, little one. We’ll leave this place, we will, and go where the skies are kinder, hm?”

***

The child grew swiftly, all gangly arms and legs, a Northern child as pale as the moon that had filled the sky the night the Witch had brought him to her home in the valley of the Heartlands. His hair was white as milk, and his eyes the palest blue the Witch had ever seen. Ghost, she named him, and he cried in the night as though he were indeed haunted.

The Witch read and turned to the scrying mirror to consult with other witches in the hope that their formularies would hold a recipe not known to her. There was one witch, her words cadenced with the slur of the distant South. She spoke of the power of the gems that were called peridot, green and subtle. They had the power to banish the nightmares that plagued Ghost, among other things, and the Witch made careful notes in the secret writing of her craft. He might learn to dream, her witchsister murmured. The peridot might even waken the inner eye, to let him see as far as the gods.

When the moon was full again, the Witch gave Ghost a tea to make him sleep, while she took up the gods’ light. She fused the peridot to Ghost’s forehead, a thin spiral of stones that grew narrower as it turned inward, glittering green against the translucent pallor of his skin. Ghost never moved while she worked, and her voice was like honey as she murmured lullabies and brushed the sweat-soaked strands of white from his temples. She called on the Seven as she worked, and shed a drop of blood to placate the Eighth, to keep that dread one’s eyes closed. And when she was done, she washed away the sweat, laid Ghost in his little cot, and watched over him as he slept for the entire night for the first time since she had brought him home.

Chapter 1

“Fuck, Conn, pay attention,” Gerry growled, low and irritated. He ran a hand through his hair, narrowing his eyes as he glared at his younger companion. “We’re not hunting runners today. Mother’s got us after sind, and you’re spotter, so spot, you little shit.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Conn retorted, his shaggy brown hair flopping into one dark blue eye. “You’re a dependent, same as me, so don’t pull the fucking alpha shit. Only Mother tells me what to do. And I am spotting, you stupid fucker.” There was berry juice on his lips, and his fingers were stained with it, giving the lie to his words.

The young hunter frowned, watching the lithe young man turn away, poking the ground at random and with little enthusiasm. Gerry fought the urge to reach out and cuff Conn, to see the pout leave the little shit’s face. Still, if he was going to be an alpha one day himself, he needed to master his temper.

Gerry had been nine when Conn came, just turned that moon, and Mother had taken him in not a year before when his dam had died of the flux. Gerry’s sire had been long gone, and without an alpha, he would have been dead as well before a quarter-moon had gone by.

Gerry had thought it would be good to have another kid around, another dependent for Mother to train, to share the hunt and the guarding when they were both old enough to be more use. Conn was only a tiny thing at the time, four years old, or maybe five. It was hard to tell because Conn had been a runty bit, all big eyes and a mop of brown hair. The boy was a pretty enough thing, and he was quick to twine himself around Mother to get his way. He had been Mother’s dependent for nearly as long as Gerry, close to fifteen years now.

At first, it had been good. Conn was quick to learn and grateful, happy enough to be free of his sire and happier still to be done with the begging for scraps that had been his job. Mother was a skillful hunter who brought back enough meat to trade the surplus in the market for fruit and vegetables, and sometimes even sweet honey candy for a treat. No one went hungry in Mother’s house.

Gerry had done his best to befriend Conn. It seemed to work until Conn was around thirteen or so, when the kid had gone moody. Everything Gerry said angered Conn from that point onwards. He could barely breathe near the kid without some tantrum erupting, and the cause always boiled down to the same thing. Conn was afraid that Gerry was going to do something to come between Conn and Mother.

In truth, Gerry had no interest in Mother as a lover. The man just was not the type that Gerry liked. Gerry liked his lovers smaller than himself, slim and lithe, and Mother was tall and broad chested. Conn might have been closer to Gerry’s tastes, except for the outright jealousy Conn harbored for Gerry. Conn did not want to take the chance of falling in love with a fellow dependent, even if Gerry might be likely to branch off to become an alpha himself one day. Conn was going to stick with Mother. Gerry was in Conn’s way, or so Conn had apparently decided, except for those nights Conn had crawled into Gerry’s bed when Mother had turned him out.

“You’re not focused.” Mother’s voice was quiet and deep, a firm voice. Gerry looked up, a stray beam of sunlight working its way through the canopy of the trees to make him squint. “A hunt isn’t a good time to think about anything but the hunt itself.”

Gerry hung his head a little. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“Where’s Conn?” Mother’s head lifted, his dark eyes narrowed as he scanned the trees. His thick dark hair, shot through with silver now, was plaited tight and hanging to his waist, the end wrapped around with a thin strip of leather.

Gerry had once asked the man how he wound up with the name he bore. Mother had laughed and told Gerry that one of his first dependents had called him that, the old word for a dam, still used sometimes by the oldest hags. Mother had tugged on the thick braid to illustrate the confusion while Gerry had nodded, tentative, as if laughing at an alpha might get Gerry in trouble. Mother had not been angry, though. Mother had been much as he was right now, calm and quiet. That dependent was grown and long gone now, an alpha with dependents, Mother said.

Gerry shrugged one shoulder, returning to the present. “He’s spotting, I hope. We’re getting closer to where they have their lair.”

The hunt today was for sind. Sind were omnivores and opportunists. They were also agile and fierce, with a nasty habit of digging holes to bring down the fleet runners with their long, delicate legs. Their meat was considered far superior in flavor to that of the more common runners. Gerry did not agree, finding it to be a bit stronger tasting than he liked. Their pelts were as valuable a commodity as their meat, so sind traded well on the market, and Conn -- Conn again -- needed clothing. Mother could trade a few good pelts for the services of a weaver, to buy a bolt of their best cloth and have them stitch fine tunics and breeches for Conn, who complained that leather chafed.

Gerry was happy enough with his leather tunic and breeches. He and Mother had tanned the runner hides themselves, scraping one side smooth and leaving the other soft and velvety. Mother had taught him the trick of stitching the hides together with neat, small stitches. The bootmaker in the village was always happy to take a runner haunch and enough tanned leather to make a fine pair of boots, the one thing Gerry could not fashion well enough on his own.

Conn, however, pricked his fingers and swore and broke the needle. Mother had sighed and taken away the sharp bone needles before Conn could break any more. It was much the same with most of the tasks that Mother tried to teach Conn. The boy would whine and find a way to fail until Mother would sigh. Only Gerry would see the flash of triumph in Conn’s dark blue eyes. Mother held that an alpha did not abandon a dependent who could not care for their own self, and Conn played that for all he could.

Mother patted Gerry’s shoulder, his eyes averted. “Stay sharp. The whelps should be big enough now to be long gone, but if not, let them go.”

Gerry nodded. The pelts of the whelps were not as prized as those of mature sind. It was also better practice to let the whelps mature and breed, ensuring there would be sind to hunt in the future. He split away from Mother again, moving as quietly as he could, his bow ready as he drifted through the leaf fall.

The quiet was shattered when Conn screamed, a high-pitched sound filled with fear, and the low chuff of a sind filled the vacuum left when Conn’s voice faltered. Gerry did not even pause to think; he spun around to sprint through the trees in the direction of that scream, his heart pounding like a temple drum. He could hear the sound of Mother’s pursuit as well.

Without warning Gerry was falling, his leg trapped. The wind was knocked out of him when he landed hard, his bow slipping from nerveless fingers. He watched it skitter away across the leaves.

Gerry’s vision blurred with pain. He sucked in a desperate breath, his bow too far ahead of him to reach. He heard Mother’s voice and Conn’s ragged whimper, blended into one note, while he turned his head with infinite care. He heard the chuff again, and this time it was so close that he was sure he could feel the sind’s hot breath. His hand crept down his leg, feeling for his knife, and he was never so glad to touch the leather strips that bound the grip as he slid it from the sheath. His lips moved in a silent prayer, calling on the Hunter to aid him, the Father to protect him.