Tower of Trials: Book One of Guardian Spirit
Read Tower of Trials: Book One of Guardian Spirit Online
Authors: Jodi Ralston
ContentsTOWER OF TRIALS
Book One of Guardian Spirit
By
Jodi Ralston
Copyright March 2015 Jodi Ralston.
Smashwords Edition.
Published by Chiaroscuro House, LLC. Website:
Chiaroscuro House, LLC (Dark).
Cover design by Jodi Ralston. Images: “Fantasy World” by Ellerslie/Shutterstock. Smoke texture by Fotocitizen/Pixabay.
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Summary of Story
In Avalon, half spirits face an ordeal to shed the last of their humanity and become powerful beings that dutifully serve the gods. That won’t be easy for Guard who was abandoned as an infant at the City of the Dead. He doesn’t know his human name or family, just that a part of him is still, ironically, haunted by humankind.
For this twenty-one-year-old half spirit, his ordeal approaches in the form of a young human woman. Lydia seeks the shade of her recently deceased fiancé. To restore her fiancé’s life, she must defeat the Trials of The City’s Tower and summon the shade from The Vault. Failure at any point means she will join the shade in death. For Guard, his prize is won by guiding her, whatever outcome she may earn.
While they struggle with the physical challenges in the Tower, Guard becomes more and more involved in his charge’s plight. This wakens the human emotion of compassion in him, making it difficult for him to become what he was raised to be: a guardian of the home he loves, the City of the Dead.
CHAPTER 1
The ghost seated opposite Guard stopped talking midsentence and slipped through a crack in the broken, white courtyard. Guard, pushing back the hood of his gray duster, saw that she did not act alone. Everywhere white aetheric smoke curled into hiding places; not one ghost lingered to explain.
So he guessed. “Something’s coming to Holm,” he whispered and grabbed his vanilla-like-scented bone-wood bow. His gray-gloved hand tightened. “Or has already come.”
Guard refastened his six-arrow quiver as he rose, thinking,
West Arcade, West Entry.
Last year a pack of ghouls had attacked from that direction. At that memory, his quiver shivered and merged with his duster, becoming just another part of the armor of magicked gray cloth.
On a nearby building, something white fluttered in the moonlight, resembling a tattered curtain on the white wall. That building had no curtains because it, like his home, had no window, only a doorless entrance. As Guard approached, the smoke retreated. Eyes whiter than the ancient bone-white of Holm
stared from a fissure in the brick. Then the black pupils slid toward the covered western road.
“Thanks,” Guard whispered even as his chest tightened. He dashed through shadows, heading for that broad passage. Pressing his back against the crumbling, open archway of the arcade, he held his breath, listening, fingers playing with his bowstring. Ghouls were swift of foot and fast of wing. They liked to leap from heights, like wildcats, down upon prey. They might be snuffling after a shrinking ghost, or they might be perched in a break in the roof, lying in wait. They had done so before.
That was how Guard’s adoptive father, the Guardian Spirit of Holm of Kaskey, had fallen three years ago when Guard was eighteen.
A moment passed. Then another. Guard heard no scuttling claws. No gnashing teeth. No rock dislodged to bounce against stone walls or stone floor. Guard heard . . . silence.
He softly released his breath. To steady his nerves, he raised his gray hood up and over his dark blond hair, willing it to full-armor status. It shivered once; thereafter, it would stay in place until he lowered it. The edges faded to semitransparency from his perspective, allowing a greater range of vision while leaving him protected by its magic. Those looking from the outside would see no change, just a hood. Ready, he ducked into the passage and ran as noiselessly as any full spirit would down the white cobblestones, knowing by heart the gaps and debris that would catch another mortal’s foot. So Guard went, bypassing uncovered side roads, pausing only at the archway that opened onto Western Forecourt. There he listened to . . .
Breathing. In addition to the steady lapping of the river Kaskey at the island upon which this City of the Dead sat, he heard breathing. But he did not detect the rotting odor of weak ghouls: the ones newly made or the starving. Guard crouched, lips pressed tight, and reluctantly reined in his aether-enhanced senses. Stronger ghouls sensed that probing, and they could return the favor, striking that much faster, turning hunter into a meal.
It was almost time to make his move. But he would wait until the last possible moment to draw an arrow, for the vanilla-like-scented bone-wood quiver would shortly replace a loosed arrow with another. A ghoul might lift its head to sniff that trace of magic, getting struck in the process—or it might just lunge without the hesitation, dodging. The group that had taken his foster-father had done worse. It had ripped Fuller apart before Fuller could reach for an arrow. He died bow unused and sword unsheathed. They had devoured his midsection before Guard’s first arrow cracked a thick, misshapen skull. He picked off two more before grabbing his father’s sword and slicing through the eyes and mouths on the last one’s reaching limbs.
But this time Guard had no sword, always forgetting it. He just had his favored weapon, the bow, which never left his side.
Guard closed his eyes. Pushed aside the memories and the fear. Took in one last deep breath. Then he thought,
Now. Now
. Pulling an arrow and nocking it, he lunged from cover.
Then he relaxed his draw.
A mortal man, not a ghoul, sat beside one of several headless statues, which crouched where green grass met bone-white cobblestone. This man had brought gear, a lantern, and a shrouded corpse on a travois. It, like all dead humans, cast no shadow.
Guard had been among human mortals for an hour last year, in Camlann, Holm’s nearest mortal town. Every year he borrowed his adoptive mother’s bayard horse, but this time, upon his return home, she announced that now he was twenty she would no longer so bless the anniversary of his adoption. Then she swung up on Susurrus, who had already shrunk to fit her slighter form. Mother’s guardian spirit barely paused to nod at him as she rode in her charge’s wake.
Now Guard found himself studying this human as he did those in Camlann’s main marketplace. This mortal faced the statue, his back to the corpse. Though bundled against the cold winter night, his profile could not hide his youth. Early twenties? Guard was no great judge of living flesh. A spirit’s age froze on the day he or she was made, except in the case of shades and ghosts. Those types of spirit determined their own humanlike form, which could be vague and any age. Even so, no ghost looked perfectly human, so alive, so healthy as this mortal whose skin was ruddy with cold. Beneath his knit cap, straight, light blond hair brushed stubbly cheeks. Guard rubbed his own skin but didn’t need to remove his gray gloves to know nothing would catch. Lately it took three months to grow any facial hair. A good sign. Spirits did not have beards and mustaches. Though they did have a head of hair, a leftover from their mortal shell. When this man dug in his bag and extracted something iron smelling, Guard shook himself and remembered his duty.
Holm was like all of Purgatory’s Cities of the Dead, hidden, coexisting in the same space as mortal properties or landforms. Rare were the mortals who could sense or find one, but that did not mean these mortals were welcome at City entrances; neither were the corpses they dragged behind them on litters. Iron especially was forbidden. The man was a fool, something Guard needed no arrow to frighten away. Guard replaced it in the quiver. Simpler methods would suffice. Just a little scare, but not so much he would forget to take his corpse with him.
Guard closed his duster without buttoning it with his free hand and shut his eyes. He pictured his body as smoke. Gray smoke. What came easy to all spirits, sometimes fought one not yet fully of their number. Heat filled his body and then stabbed like a hundred burning needles, but he ignored that, unraveling himself thread by thread, between one breath and the next, until he was breathing himself out into the crisp night air. Finally, the last of his form gave away, much like the reverberation of a bowstring pulled taut and then loosed. Aetherized, Guard formed two baleful eyes and several tendrils—and whipped toward the man, unleashing his most terrible growl. He reached for the startled face.
Movement. From behind the statute.
Before he could counter, a net was thrown. It dragged him down to the stones, forced him back into mortal form, which felt like it had too few and too many limbs all at once. His vision blazed white, and he heard his bow clatter to the ground. He grunted in pain; louder when someone threw him- or herself upon his shoulders and head, pinning him down.
The young man; it came from that direction, and the shout confirmed it: “Now, Lydia, now! The collar!”
And just as his vision cleared, something was thrust through the wide spacing of the net, closed around Guard’s neck, and snapped shut. The device was cold and heavy, but not magicked. “I have you now, Spirit!” a woman’s voice crowed. She hopped back from the net, coat and skirts swishing. When Guard did not move, she nodded. “Percy, you can release your hold.” She waved an iron key. “He is bound to me by the iron collar.”
“Good to hear it, dear.” Her male lifted off Guard. “Now, you don’t want to catch a cold.” He moved away, and soon his gloved hand held out a white-furred muff. Then he frowned at it. “What do you have tucked in here? It’s heavy.”
While she urged him to leave it be, to carefully return it to her bag, for she didn’t need it, and besides he had no leave to mess with her possessions in the first place, Guard flexed his hands, his legs. Though it smarted, skin torn between hot prickles and cold numbness, he could move. He clenched a fist. But Guard did not dare move much. The young woman had caught him in an ironweed net—he could see the dried purple flowers here and there. This bane would not harm him in his human form, but if even one fell in the forecourt, he’d have to scrub the stones for a week before weaker spirits could cross it. Dangerous.
How did this woman know how to wield these hateful items?
Why had he not looked for a trap?
This cunning woman, she looked young, younger than her man. And beautiful: black-haired, dark-eyed, with a round face full of color and life, she seemed as sprightly as the loose curls that bounced against the green scarf about her neck, curls freed from fur-lined, green hat.
Guard’s gaze slid to toward their covered corpse. They sought to defy death. To do so, they had captured a spirit. Or so they had thought.
Dangerous, brave trespassers.
But were they foolish?
Likely. They had trapped only a half spirit, a cambion. One they no longer deemed a threat. The woman named Lydia was not watching Guard. Instead, she was smiling down at her companion named Percy, who was smiling stupidly back up at her.
They were so distracted by each other, Guard considered aetherizing and escaping. Then thought better of it. The ironweed would be distracting and painful, but it might react violently to the transition, exploding everywhere, threatening those he guarded. And the iron—he carefully reached up and touched the collar—it would fight him even though he was only a cambion.
No, he’d wait . . . and learn more. Be cautious where he failed to be last time.
The young woman turned to Guard, and her smile fell. “I wonder what sort of spirit he is. He looks rather . . . human. And those eyes, they are rather pretty.” She gazed into her companion’s eyes, but his darker gray color meant nothing. Just a hue some mortals possessed. They did not indicate one touched by death, raised by spirits to become a guardian.
Besides, the man was blushing. Full spirits did not blush.