The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter XIV: To Wake the Dead

Kitri set off down the path, feeling absurdly like a small child evading a lecture. Irímé followed more slowly. He kept stopping to look back at the still-raging argument with the air of a mother hen worrying about an especially stupid chick. Before long he'd fallen so far behind Kitri that she couldn't see him any more.

Unlike him she wasn't overly concerned for Abi's safety. A woman who started a small-scale zombie apocalypse could face a sea serpent alone.

But just in case, perhaps she should warn Abi's parents about what was happening.

~~~~

"I don't believe it," Abi grumbled in Seroyawan. "You came all this way, without permission, just because you and Mirio thought I'm too stupid to be left on my own?"

Kiriyuki snorted. "You? Worried about doing anything without permission? The hypocrisy is astounding. I came here because I knew you'd make a fool of yourself if you were left unattended. And you are left unattended," she insisted, ignoring Abi's protests. "In spite of Mirio's clumsy attempts no one in your family truly knows what sort of things you meddle with."

If it wasn't beneath her dignity -- and if it wouldn't have confirmed Kiriyuki's certainty she was little more than a foolish child -- Abi would have pouted. "I don't meddle. I know exactly what I'm doing. Why do I have to keep saying that?"

Kiriyuki raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you knew what you were doing when you called up the spirits of the damned[1]."

The memory of that unfortunate incident still made Abi blush to the roots of her hair. "They weren't the spirits of the damned. They were fire pixies."

"They howled like the damned," Kiriyuki said grimly. 

Unfortunately she was right. Late one evening Abi had just wanted to light the fire without the bother of getting out of bed or calling a servant. So she cast a spell she'd recently created and hadn't yet tested. The first clue something had gone wrong was the chorus of agonised wails.

Those screams filled every corner of the palace and beyond. People on the outskirts of the city grabbed their weapons and prepared to defend themselves from whatever was making that horrific noise. The emperor's guards ran to protect him. The empress tried desperately to keep order as her ladies-in-waiting screamed and fought each other over hiding places. Mirio barricaded his younger siblings into the nursery and waited outside the door, drawn sword in hand, for the attack he thought was coming. Kiriyuki, just back from a fishing trip, heard the noise down at the seaside. She grabbed the first weapon to hand -- an old boat hook abandoned on the dock by a careless fisherman -- and hurried to the palace, fully convinced a massacre was in progress.

By the time everyone knew they were in no immediate danger, they all jumped to the wrong conclusion. A quick glance at the small bird-shaped fireballs darting around the palace and screaming at the tops of their lungs would convince anyone that these weren't really ghosts. Alas, no one was thinking clearly. Not even Abi. Certainly not when that infernal racket went on and on without end.

It took twenty priests, a small battalion of nuns, and some very discreet attempts at necromancy on Abi's behalf before they collectively realised they'd misjudged the situation. The emperor called on a group of naturalists who specialised in fire elementals. Within hours the palace was completely pixie-free. Slightly singed and definitely the worse for wear, but mercifully silent for the first time in days.

Most of the royal court still didn't know what had happened. When asked the soothsayers looked very wise and ascribed it to ominous signs in the sky and accumulated ill-fortune.

Kiriyuki and Mirio had no doubt of who was responsible. Abi avoided them as if they were wailing ghosts themselves for months afterward.

She had never tried casting spells inside the palace again. Not until she was absolutely sure of what they did and how to reverse them.