When the trees were finally thinning, a frail voice came out of the darkness.
“Help me…” I looked down to discover a teenage boy at my feet, the tell-tale signs of the illness on his wan face. I resolutely stepped over him. And the next one and the one after that – a small girl with the same dark skin and hair as Marina, the girl from the stews I had helped what seemed like a lifetime ago. The entire area was littered with the bodies of the dead or dying. None of them bore the signs of battle as the earlier ghost had. Instead, they seemed to be conjured up out of more recent victims. Looking behind me, I discovered Marcus had fallen behind. Devyn continued as if he didn’t see anything.
I picked my way back to Marcus. While I knew I should step through the sick lying at our feet because Devyn had made it clear that acknowledging their presence increased their power, I couldn’t quite do it. Marcus was frozen when I reached him.
“Come on, Marcus. We’ll lose Devyn if we don’t hurry.”
“I can’t,” he said, his eyes scanning all the people on the ground. “I’ve got to try. Maybe I can save some of them.”
“They’re not real,” I reminded him. I couldn’t afford to lose another of my companions to the phantoms. If Devyn was anything to go by, once persuaded that they were real, it would be impossible to convince Marcus otherwise.
“I can’t just leave them,” he said. “I’ve got to try.”
“Marcus, please listen to me.” I looked back to where Devyn was still possible to make out on the moonlit path ahead of us. “They’re not really there; you can’t save them.”
I watched as Devyn continued to walk away from us. He was leaving me, but I couldn’t leave Marcus, even if the handfast weren’t tethering us. He was now wandering from patient to patient and I could sense him pouring his magic into the phantoms. Not a good time for the inhibitor we had been administered in the city to wear off. If merely acknowledging the existence of the spectres made them more potent on this plane, what would pouring his healing magic into them achieve?
“Marcus, stop, please stop.” I pulled at him, trying to get his attention. “Damn it, please, Marcus. They’re not real, they’re not real.”
“So many… I’ve got to help them,” he muttered, kneeling beside yet another who, if she wasn’t already dead, looked like she was knocking on death’s door. What was I saying? The form that lay on the ground looking up so beseechingly had come here from the wrong side of that door. He couldn’t help her; he couldn’t help any of them. They were already dead.
I shook him, and he barely noticed. Devyn had utterly disappeared into the night, and I was left alone with a maddened doctor pouring magic into ghosts who were faking illness and were unlikely to reward his efforts with the offerings the poor in the city had. His patients in the city… Devyn said that the dead were closer to this world than at any other time of year, that they could walk amongst us. Would the recently deceased answer my call? Perhaps if I couldn’t reason with Marcus, someone else might have better luck. Someone dead. Someone who cared for the living still. I stepped away from Marcus. We were in a copse of ash trees; an oak had helped me see a vision before. Would the silvery ash respond to my plea for assistance? I squared my shoulders and walked over to the largest one in the area, laying my palm on its cold, pale bark. Only one way to find out.
I leaned into the silvery white of the tree, closing my eyes, focusing everything I had on my call through the veil. It had been nearly two days since my last dose of the suppressant. Surely it had worn off. I pushed the greyness aside.
Otho, I summoned, calling into the heavy darkness on the other side. Come to me, Otho. Marcus needs you. Please help.
I could sense something stirring, a whirl in the sludgy air, and there he was, old Otho, whom I had met only once when he had asked Marcus to let him go. He was the first patient I had witnessed Marcus unknowingly treating with magic. His smile was kind as he approached and stepped through the chink in the veil that I held aside for him. I opened my eyes and found myself back in the copse of stricken ghosts once more. Otho looked at me and went to Marcus, needing no direction.
“Boy,” he spoke softly, his accent as strong in the afterlife as it had been when he was flesh and blood. Marcus paused at the sound of the familiar and profoundly unexpected voice.
“Otho?” he asked wonderingly, turning from the patient he was currently pouring energy into to the old man who stood over him.
“Yes, boy,” he answered. “What new foolishness is this?”
Marcus looked around him. “They’re sick… so many of them. I want to help them but I can’t save them all. I have to choose. I have to choose, Otho. What if I’ve chosen the wrong ones to save?”
“You can only save them what can be saved. Some you got to let go.” Otho indicated those around him. “Too late for me. Too late for these people. You got to accept that. Or they’ll take you with ’em.”
Marcus looked drained, as bad as he had been before he learned not to pour everything he had into the sick and dying. He looked desolate. I’d never thought about it before, but since we had told him that he
