Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(19)

Terror lanced through me. Pulse racing, I lifted the heavy, clinking shackles and studied them in the orange light that juddered through the screen, cast by a lantern swinging outside. Slowly, my heartbeat calmed. The revenant had to be confused. The shackles did look old, but the engravings…

“Those are holy symbols,” I said.

“Suit yourself, nun.”

I had expected it to argue with me. Instead, it sounded listless, defeated. For some reason, I didn’t want that. I almost wished I hadn’t woken it up.

“I need to talk to you.” I shifted back to the window so the revenant would have a view of the nighttime forest rolling past. “I need to know what’s happening out there.”

“How should I have any idea? I’ve been imprisoned inside a moldy old saint’s relic for the past century.” Finally, I detected a note of annoyance in its weak-sounding voice. “You’re a fool for trying to speak to me.”

That was probably true, but at present, I didn’t have any better options. Even if it lied to me, I might learn something useful. “Can’t you sense anything?”

My only reply was a prickly silence. Most likely, the shackles were suppressing too much of its power.

Frustrated, I began to turn away—and then something caught my eye beyond the screen. In the darkness of the forest, a wavering light had bloomed. More followed, like ghostly candles lit by an invisible hand. And they kept appearing, unfurling ahead of the harrow, lighting up the forest with their pale silver glow. I felt like we had joined one of the legendary funeral processions of Chantclere, during which thousands of votives were lit along the streets to lead the mourners onward.

But the lights belonged to wisps, First Order spirits that were waking as we passed, alerted by the life and movement of the carriage. Wisps rose from the souls of dead children and were the only type of spirit known to be completely harmless. Even shades caused headaches and malaise if they accumulated in large enough numbers—but no one had ever been hurt by wisps.

More and more lights bloomed. I had never seen so many in one place. I pictured the thin, frightened faces on the side of the road, the bodies abandoned in the towns. Children were dying. They were dying unblessed, in numbers I couldn’t imagine.

“Nun.” The revenant’s voice sounded insistent. I wasn’t sure how long it had been trying to get my attention. “That metal is consecrated. Nun? Are you listening?”

I felt a strange tingling in my palm and realized I had pressed it against the screen. When I withdrew my hand and looked at it, the revenant let slip a ripple of shock.

“You’ve hurt yourself!” it hissed.

“No. That’s how it always looks.” I showed it my other hand, the scars webbed and shiny in the harrow’s dim orange light.

A long silence elapsed. The revenant must not have noticed my hands while they had been covered in blood in the chapel. I expected it to mock me, but it only said, in an odd tone of voice, “There are a few blisters. Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t if you help me,” I replied.

It paused, startled. Then its fury boiled up like a storm, a snarled black cloud of resentment and spite. But it couldn’t do anything while I wore the shackles. I felt its rage break ineffectually against me and subside in a thwarted wave.

“Look out the window,” it snapped, giving in. “If I’m going to sense anything, it needs to be through your pitiful human eyes.”

“We’re traveling south through Roischal,” I explained as I turned back to the screen. “We’ve passed hundreds of people fleeing their homes.” Briefly, I filled in some of the details I’d noticed, like the blighted injuries and the bodies in the villages. “I heard stories in Naimes, but it’s worse than I thought—it’s getting worse quickly.”

I felt the revenant scanning the countryside. It wasn’t trying to control the movements of my eyes, but I was aware of a bizarre doubled alertness as it shared them with me, and I knew somehow that it was observing more than I was capable of seeing on my own. Its attention caught on a distant sword-flash of silver, the moonlight glancing off a broad flat ribbon winding through the hills.

“That must be what you humans call the Sevre,” it muttered to itself. “I’ve always loathed that river…. Such a wide span of running water is difficult even for revenants to cross….” It lapsed into silence as it looked around some more. “Well, I don’t see anything useful,” it informed me at last, with a sort of nasty cheer. “How tragic.”

Slowly, I raised my hand toward the screen.

“Stop! Fine! Have it your way, nun. There’s one thing I know for certain. The attack we fended off—the spirits weren’t targeting your convent at random, or even just to kill some nuns, more’s the pity. They were sent there to destroy my relic.”

I sat up straighter. “What?”

“Do I need to speak more slowly for your pathetic meat brain to keep up? They were sent there to destroy my relic. Almost certainly because I was the closest thing powerful enough to stop them.”

A pit opened in my stomach. Sent there, the revenant claimed. Something had sent them to Naimes, like an officer commanding an army. I remembered the way the thralls had roped their horses to the lichgate, cooperating with one another, just like they were following orders.