The Mourner's Story

The Mourner said, so quietly that I could barely hear it, “I don’t know why I’m here.”

At first I, and probably the Knight too, thought she was being metaphorical. So we just nodded in silence as the three of us gazed down into the patch of exposed urban stones.

A moment later, she said, “I mean, I can’t remember anything before…”

I glanced at her quizzically. “Before what?” I met the Knight’s puzzled gaze.

“Before…” she said, “I don’t know.” Her veil flapped. “I mean… I know my name,” she said. “There’s that, at least.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” I said.

After a long silence: “Stepping off a boat… being led through the streets. The church, rising above everything.”

“Wait,” said the Knight, “You’re saying you don’t remember anything since before the pilgrimage…”

“A few days before,” said the Mourner. “We paid the clerk. Then we went to an inn to stay for a few nights.”

“Who’s we?” I said.

“I can’t say,” she said.

The Knight and I tried as best we could to communicate with facial expressions alone. I tried to say something like, What the hell is she talking about? to which the Knight responded How the hell should I know?

“Can’t say because…” I probed, “…someone asked you not to?”

She whispered, “She doesn’t want me to talk about it.”

Should we wake everyone up? I tried to communicate with a jerk of my head back toward the sleeping bags.

The Knight gave a quick shake of his head and tried, “Madam Du Vreil, when the church officials gave me everyone’s paperwork, I read yours. It said you’re the daughter of the well-known merchant Aldo Du Vreil, known for shipping agricultural equipment used in the tobacco and food industries.”

“Yes,” she said, “that sounds right.”

But as I probed her with more questions (about her home, about her parents, whether she had any siblings) it became clear that she remembered nothing. She answered everything with a quiet, “I can’t quite remember…”

The Knight tried again, “Your paperwork said your father’s business was acquired a few years ago by Overlai Tobacco and that your father retired with your family to the Lopesan coastal estate.”

“Yes,” she said, “that sounds right.”

“Wait,” I said. “Overlai Tobacco? You mean Lilly’s father’s company?”

When the Knight shrugged and the Mourner gave another vacuous “Yes, that sounds right,” I got irritated, not with the Mourner, but with the Knight: “Don’t you think that’s a bit coincidental? There are two people on this trip connected with Overlai Tobacco?”

The Knight spread his hands helplessly, “I just do what the church tells me. It’s not my job to ask questions about the pilgrims. It’s quite common actually for pilgrims to know each other. It’s a small world, and the world of the wealthy is even smaller. Everyone with the money and time to make this trip is somehow important.” He gave me a pointed glance. “Usually.”

“I don’t think Lilly knows,” I said, glancing back at the sleeping bag. “And I don’t know about you, but this is starting to feel funny.”

“Yes,” the Mourner said, “that sounds right.”

The Knight and I just looked at each other.

“Okay,” said the Knight, “Nial and I are going to ask you some questions. If you know the answer tell us, if not just say you don’t know. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“The big church, did it have any windows?” said the Knight.

“Stained glass,” she said

The Knight continued, asking where we had stopped for the night before reaching the desert, who had told the first story around the campfire, and what had happened to the camels. She answered correctly, in the same flat voice, as if she were incredibly bored, or dead inside.

I took over: “What’s the name of the big sea around which our three nations lie?”

“I can’t quite remember,” she said.

“The South…” I prompted.

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“Yes,” she said. “That sounds right.”

“… Sea,” I finished. “And the three nations. What are their names?” When she didn’t answer, I hinted, “Drymar, Seadom, and…”

“Lopesa?” she said. “He said it a moment ago.”

“Who lives on the other side of the mountains?” I asked. When she said, “I can’t really remember…”, I hinted, “It starts with an M.”

“The morls?” she said.

“Right. Okay. So you’re pretty good at remembering things that have happened or been said recently. Hey, I don’t suppose you know who stabbed Father Ori?” I tried.

As expected: “I can’t really say…”

I layered on various questions for several minutes, some about her life back home or before the pilgrimage, some from after. Quite consistently, whenever I asked about anything before the pilgrimage, she said she couldn’t remember.

“Doesn’t that worry you?” I asked. “You’ve somehow lost your memories. I feel like that would worry me.”

“I…” she said trailing off, eyes on the buildings below. “I don’t really feel much of anything.”

“Which room did you have at the inn?” I asked.

“The one at the end of the hall,” she said.

“The one across from Father Ori?” I asked.

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“Madam Du Vreil,” said the Knight. “If you know anything, please, you must tell us.” I could detect real fear in the Knight’s voice. This whole buried city thing must really be freaking him out.

“Do you know who tried to kill Father Ori?” I asked again.

“She…” said the Mourner. “She doesn’t want me to say.”

The Knight and I exchanged a glance. Just as I was about to ask who “she” was, a spray of lukewarm blood covered my cheek and arm on the side the Mourner sat. It happened so fast that, at first, I thought it was the rain. Then, the Mourner tipped backward, her throat had been cut: I saw the gash just as I realized that someone was standing behind me. It was the Hunter, with a bloody knife.

“Don’t try anything,” said the Hunter, as the Knight and I started to scramble to our feet. “Trust me. You’re going to want to see this.”

The Knight tried something anyway. I couldn’t quite see what the Hunter did. Some kind of kick with her boot as the Knight tried to roll and draw his sword. He ended up rolling and just lying there unconscious at the edge of the sandy ravine that led to the hulking city.

“Please,” said the Hunter. “I forgot to say please. Let me try again. Nial, please don’t try anything. You’re going to want to…”

She didn’t even need to finish. The Mourner was already coughing and sitting up. Her veil, at chin length, failed to cover the blood on her neck. But the gash was gone. She turned her veiled face toward me and said, “What was the question? It seems to have slipped my mind…”

The Hunter seemed unconcerned with any of the things that I found deeply concerning. She wiped her blade calmly and sat where the Knight had been sitting. “I’ve been trying since I met her,” said the Hunter. “Watch.” To the Mourner: “Madam Du Vreil, do you remember me?”

The Mourner hesitated.

“It’s okay,” said the Hunter. “We can trust these two, I think.”

The Mourner nodded. “You came out of the cliff.”

“A cave,” said the Hunter. “That’s right. And you were looking across the sea. And do you remember what we did next?”

“Took a ship,” said the Mourner. “And then we came to the church.”

“Then what?” said the Hunter.

“You paid for me to come, and you told me not to tell.”

The Knight was beginning to stir. The Hunter got up and unbuckled the Knight’s sword, swatting his hand away as he weakly protested. I was too in awe to think of putting a stop to any of this. The Hunter was explaining to the Knight: “Don’t worry. I’ll give it back. Call me crazy but, I think you’re going to want to hear what I have to say first.” Then amicably, “Come join us when your head clears.”

The Hunter came back, followed closely by the Knight, who seemed at a loss for where to sit. He ultimately sat on my far side, away from the Mourner. I could tell from the Knight’s shallow breathing that he had noticed the blood covering the Mourner’s neck.

The Hunter said, “And that night in the inn, what happened?”

The Mourner replied, “You said you were going to go to Father Ori. And you said I shouldn’t tell.”

The Hunter said, “Stand up.”

The Mourner did.

“Now sit.” Again, the Mourner complied. “Now stand again.” Each time the Hunter gave a command, the Mourner did it. “Now jump. Now turn in a circle. Now lift up your veil. Put it down. Take off your shirt.” As the Mourner was about to do it, the Hunter said, “Just kidding. I was just messing with Nial. Sit back down, dear. I think they get the point.”

The Hunter met my eyes and said, “As you can see, we have a definite case of necromancy here. The weird thing is… I’m not a necromancer. I did, however, find her wandering a private beach at the edge of a certain tobacco plantation that I have reason to believe might be owned by a necromancer. Perhaps you have reason to believe it too, Nial.”

I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry, so I swallowed. It was enough of an answer for the Hunter, who nodded knowingly.

The rain started to fall harder, which seemed to irritate the Hunter. She looked around, searching the night for hidden dangers. Then she leaned close and said hastily, “Long story short, the Mourner is with me. She does what I say, and I can’t seem to get rid of her. When I found her, she was dead, lying in the surf at low tide. Her neck was broken, presumably from a fall from the cliffs above. When I walked up to her, she woke, coughed up some buckets of salt water, and cracked her neck into place. It was weird. Since then, she’s been doing what I tell her to. I didn’t know what to do with her, so I brought her with me. Figured I could use some help on this mission.” She looked around, again scanning the night for dangers. “Father Ori is most certainly still out there. The rest of the pilgrims…” She jerked her thumb toward the sleeping bags. “… I can’t trust them. I have reason to believe that Father Ori arranged for them to be here. I don’t know if he wants them dead or… something else. All I know is that the four of us are the only ones that aren’t here because the morls want us to be.”

As if on queue, the heavens opened up, and rain came down in sheets. I could hear the other pilgrims sputtering awake. The sand caked immediately, preventing it from falling back into the valley any time soon, ensuring that the ancient city would remain exposed to the air. The Hunter gave the Knight and I a pleading glance.

> Dearest Human, as evidence that I was a bit afraid of Asuana myself, I was sitting at some distance from them, watching in fact from across the sandy ravine they had created. The strange rooftops lay between us. On occasion, the wind brought some of their words to me. It was only later after reading Nial’s manuscripts that I realized Asuana had revealed that she knew something of my mission. I did, however, see her slit the throat of the Mourner. Needless to say, that was unexpected. Almost as unexpected as the Mourner’s resurrection a moment later.

>

> This led me to suspect that Asuana had made contact with Lilly’s father at some point in the last few years. There are few necromancers on record in the South Sea Nations, and none as powerful as Lilly’s father. I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. But I was determined to follow them into the city if they decided to take refuge there.