“Come inside,” Ora said, staring at Rian with her usual frown.

Rian followed her into the musty house. Ora closed and locked the door behind them. The main room was small. The curtains were drawn, hardly letting any light in. Ora pulled aside the curtain over the kitchen basin. The harsh light of morning didn’t improve the room. Everything was dusty.

Ora turned to look at Rian, still frowning. “I’m not surprised Arwel ran off. I always suspected he would become a necromancer, that he was already defiled.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suspect you are defiled as well. You couldn’t have just happened upon the bodies of the buried villagers. You must go to the Sancta and become a knight or a priest. Perhaps in a year or two.”

“I don’t want to join the Sancta.” Rian knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.

Ora scowled, her entire face scrunching up. “It is your father’s fault that you and Arwel inherited that cursed magic. He should not have messed with such things.” Fortunately she seemed to ignore what he’d said.

Ora set Rian to work cleaning the house. It needed it. He lay awake in the guest room that night, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling. The window was on the wrong side of the house for the moonlight to shine across the ceiling. He lay there in complete darkness, his thoughts going back to what Ora had said that morning. Did he have magic? Was that how he found the bodies in the forest?

He closed his eyes, slipping into the usual nightmare. He awoke to the dark, musty cave. The voices whispered all around him, but he covered his ears. The dead hands touched him, trying to get his attention. At last he woke up to the sun rising. Ora put him to work again, this time around the village. She told him hard work would keep him out of trouble, would keep him from finding the same trouble as Arwel.

Rian had the nightmare again that night. He’d had it almost every night for the last year, but he continued to ignore the voices, to block out what they were saying. The dead things touching him were harder to ignore. Three days passed. He worked so hard during the day that he was exhausted at night, but he wasn’t rested in the morning. He had the nightmare every night.

On the morning of the fourth day, rumors reached Fen of a pair of wild mages evading the Sancta. Wild mages claiming they would bring back the old god of Virida and free the country from the Sancta. According to the two mages, Virida had become weak with the Sancta controlling everything.

Ora told Rian about it during breakfast, frowning at him as though he was the one fighting the Sancta. “I don’t doubt your brother is one of the two wild mages. He has committed the worst sort of blasphemy. The gods will never forgive him. The Sancta will no doubt send a knight to execute Arwel. That is the only way to save him from himself now. Those people found in the forest were probably sacrificed for some terrible ritual. They were all drained of blood.”

“Arwel can still be saved,” Rian said, weariness making him forget he couldn’t reason with her.

“He was condemned the moment he used necromancy,” Ora said, glaring piercingly with her cold gray eyes.

He’d had enough of Ora constantly telling him he, his father, and his brother were damned. “My father must have used it at some point, and no one came and killed him. He helped stop Unris—”

Ora’s face turned a deep shade of red, almost purple. She stood suddenly, almost knocking her chair over. She grabbed Rian by the front of his shirt, pulling him to his feet. She led him around to the back of the house. He didn’t dare try to pull away. What had he gotten himself into now? The doors into the cellar stood at the back of the house, facing the forest. Ora pulled the doors open, keeping a tight grip on Rian’s shirt with her other hand.

Chains lay on the ground in front of the doors, not in use. Ora pushed Rian through the dark opening. He narrowly avoided falling down the stairs. As soon as he was out of the way of the doors, she slammed them shut. He heard Ora tying the doors shut with the chains. Rian moved down the stairs carefully, one hand on the slightly damp stone wall of the cellar. He sat on the lowest step, seeing only complete darkness everywhere he looked.

It was cold down there. He shivered, pulling his knees in close. He wasn’t down there long before the whispers started. The whispers from his nightmares. He felt hands on his shoulders, then his face. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the whispers and the cold, bony hands. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep.

“Listen,” the voice in his head said.

“Who are you?” Rian asked.

The voice didn’t answer. There was no knowing if time had passed, or if it only felt like an eternity. Finally the whispers and the hands were gone, leaving him alone in the cold darkness. A creak came from above, then the light of early morning crept down the stairs. Rian blinked in the sudden light. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Ora standing at the cellar doors, frowning down at him.

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He tried not to hurry up the stairs, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing he’d been terrified down there. She closed the doors, not saying anything. Rian considered running into the forest, but where would he go?

Ora turned to face him. “Have you seen reason?”

Rian said nothing. Nothing he could say would help matters.

Ora frowned again. “I will send word to the Sancta. A knight will come and take you to the Sancta. If you wait to join them, you will go the same way as your brother.”

Rian continued to say nothing. She set him to work around the village again. That night, there was a knock on the door just after dinner. Ora opened the door and let Rian’s parents in. Andred and Mae both looked exhausted and worried. Rian stood from the table, hoping he was about to leave Ora’s house and never go back.

Ora frowned sternly. “I will send word to the Sancta in the morning. Rian must join the Sancta, or he will go down the same path as his brother.”

Mae’s frown was much scarier than Ora’s. “You have no right to send our son away.”

Ora blinked. “It is for the sake of his soul.”

“He will join the Sancta if that’s what he wants,” Andred said. “If he doesn’t want to, then he won’t.” He looked at Rian. “Let’s go home.”

Ora sputtered, looking confused for the first time Rian had seen.

Rian left the house with his parents. He almost didn’t dare ask. “Did you find Arwel?”

“No,” Mae said. “Not yet.”

Rian had the nightmare yet again that night. Despite having had it every night for a while now, he still told no one. Arwel was the only one he had ever told about the nightmare. In the morning, Rian and his parents left Fen for a gathering of the court of Virida in Derwen, the main city. They reached the main city at night, going to the inn. It was warm and crowded in there, but not particularly loud.

He followed his parents to a table in a far, dark corner of the room where three people were waiting. The woman wore soft looking tan clothes, with a polished light gray cuirass. The symbol on her cuirass made Rian tense. Four circles inside a larger one, with a gap at the bottom. The symbol of the Sancta. The woman’s long blond hair was streaked with dark gray. It was tied messily in a braid, hanging over her right shoulder. She smiled and nodded to Mae and Andred.

The man was older, with short dark gray hair. His dark blue eyes looked weary. He wore the pale yellow robes of a priest of Vitir, with a metal symbol of the Sancta on a piece of a leather around his neck. The third at the table wore a somewhat ragged black cloak with the hood up. Rian had seen that ragged cloak before. His cloak looked loose on him, how it always did.

Mae introduced the man and woman to Rian. The knight was Frida, an old friend. Dow was a priest of Vitir who had helped them before. Rian could tell his parents trusted the two. That made him less nervous about the Sancta being there.

“And you’ve met Halbert,” Andred said.

Halbert nodded. As usual, he kept the hood of his cloak up.

“We have little time before the meeting,” Dow said. “There are things we need to discuss.” He glanced around at the room. “I have gotten us a room upstairs, where we may talk without being disturbed.”

Mae looked at Rian and hesitated.

“I will stay down here with him,” Halbert said.

Oddly, Rian’s mother didn’t look reassured by that, but she went upstairs with Andred, Dow, and Frida.

“Your parents told me you found bodies buried in the forest of Fen,” Halbert said.

Rian nodded, not wanting to talk about this.

He could feel Halbert staring at him, even though he couldn’t see the man’s face. The hood of Halbert’s cloak was deep enough that Rian had never seen Halbert’s face, or any other part of him. Not even a hand.

“How did you find them?” Halbert asked.

Rian hesitated.

“Did one of the missing villagers ask you to find a body?” Halbert asked.

Rian’s breath caught. How had he known?

Halbert nodded slowly. “The soul must have moved on when you found the body. It would be clear if it hadn’t, and I’m not sure if you would instinctively know how to use the magic.”

Rian was about to tell him what he’d felt in the forest, how he’d sensed the bodies beneath the ground, but his parents came back with Dow and Frida right then.

“We should head for the castle,” Dow said. “It won’t do to be late.”

As they left the inn, Rian hoped he would get a chance to talk to Halbert more later. How had he guessed Rian had spoken to a missing villager? And he knew about the soul moving on. Maybe Ora was right and Rian did have a necromancer’s magic, but what did that mean? A terrible feeling fell over him. Would he become like Arwel? He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to his brother, why his eyes had changed after he raised those bones with magic.