Ravencaller by David Dalglish

Author:David Dalglish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Dierk walked past corpse after corpse hanging in Belvua, his mind lost in pure euphoria. Every single dead human had been tied to doorways and rooftops, their stomachs and rib cages opened for a Ravencaller funeral. Vaesalaum wrapped about their unharvested souls with a noticeable bulge in its belly. The creature fed well, Dierk thought, and so did he.

A million memories, Vaesalaum replied. Read. Eat. Drink.

Dierk did not fall into them like he normally would. There were just too many. Instead experiences floated over him, a sampler buffet curated by the nisse. He felt phantom punches on his chin from fights, felt wetness on his erect penis from electric snippets of encounters, sometimes from a man’s point of view, sometimes a woman’s. The world before his eyes lost its firm reality. Walls and homes gave way to fields, to forests, to tight bedroom walls and cramped barracks. Excitement would flush through him as he watched their (his) hand strike a killing blow against one of the magical creatures in last night’s battle. He had not participated like the other Ravencallers, but with so many collected memories filling him, he might as well have. Dierk walked, intoxicated, stumbling down an abandoned street with but one location in mind.

Adria’s church was but a smoldering ruin of ash and embers.

Finding her is pointless, Vaesalaum insisted. Enjoy the feast.

“No,” he said. “No, no, this time I will do it. This time I’ll tell her.”

But that meant finding her. Where might she have gone? There was no chance she’d died, he was certain of that. Sure, he’d listened in on the devastating reports delivered to his father in the dead of night. He knew the effort to retake the district had ended in colossal failure. Adria was too powerful, though. Too amazing and special to die like the rest of the humans. If only he could spot her brilliant soul, so bright it shined through walls and flesh like nothing…

“You said I now have nisse eyes,” Dierk said, an idea popping into his head. “Can you help me then? Can you help me see her?”

The long creature floated in a figure-eight path before his face. Dierk realized just how much the nisse had grown since they first met. It’d tripled in length at the least. The eyeless childlike face finally hovered still in a weird stare.

If it will make Dierk happy.

The world darkened and lost much of its color. The souls of the guards hanging from the doorways of human homes brightened so that they were unmistakable. Their pearlescent glow was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the brilliant beacon blazing several miles away. Its light passed through stone walls as if they were translucent. The edges of its beams streaked to the heavens.

“There you are, my beautiful Adria,” he whispered, a drunkard’s smile plastered across his face.

Dierk left Belvua via the cistern tunnel, following Adria’s light like a guiding star. For once he wore no disguise, and he did not care about any strange looks the haggard and nervous early-morning crowds cast his way.

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