Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (19 page)

Daum’s eyebrows raised as Tarc told him about the strangers and passed him the money. “And you say they are the same
kind
of strangers as these in here?” his eyes indicated the table of five in the big room.

Tarc
glanced briefly at the big man who’d threatened him over Daussie, glad that he had considered the question when he’d been out in the stable. “Yes, they all look fit, like caravan guards. None of them look like merchants. They are all well-armed, each carrying a sword.” Swords weren’t that uncommon. There was plenty of steel in the ruins of the ancients after all, and so it wasn’t that difficult for a smith to turn out some kind of long edged weapon. Tarc suspected that many of the swords the strangers carried weren’t very high quality. Still, not all that many people owned swords. The deputies were about the only ones who carried them within the walls of Walterston.

Daum said unhappily, “I don’t like this… I don’t like it at all.
I’d send you down to the deputies’ station to tell them about all these strangers, but they’d probably just laugh it off again, like the sheriff did when he ate lunch here.”

Tarc
thought about this for a moment. “I guess the deputies must know that there are a lot of these strangers. They must have let them in through the gate, after all.”

Daum shrugged gloomily, granting that
Tarc’s statement must be true. “Aye, but the left hand may not know what the right hand has been doing. If they came in through different gates, during different shifts of the watch, it may be that different deputies only know their own little parts of the whole elephant.”

Tarc
found this to be a strange analogy. He’d heard of elephants; the next town to the south had several elephants owned by a family that used them for heavy construction. But he’d never heard them used as an example of a concept difficult to grasp in toto. After a moment’s thought, he said, “You want me to go down to the deputy station and point it out to them anyway?”

One of the strangers approached the bar with an empty mug. Turning to take the mug, Daum said over his shoulder to
Tarc, “Nah, it’d just be a waste of your time.”

The eight strangers cast a somewhat uncomfortable pall over the great room that evening and the local crowd began leaving early. Then to Daum and Tarc’s surprise, the strangers went to bed much earlier than people usually did, claiming that they had an early day tomorrow.

Daum shook Tarc awake in the middle of the night.

“What?”
Tarc asked muzzily.

“Some thumping
around came from the strangers’ rooms a little while ago.” He said with a worried tone to his voice. “I’m hoping you can use your ghost to see what they’re doing in there in the middle of the night? Eva’s ghost can’t reach through a wall like yours can.”

Tarc
cast his ghost out into each of the guest rooms. “They’re gone,” he said wonderingly.

“What!?” Daum said. “Surely you couldn’t tell from here!”

Tarc shrugged, “I’m pretty sure I could tell if they were here. I could sense the men in the stable from this far away.”

Daum said, “
They left in the middle of the night? That just doesn’t make sense. Let’s go out in the hall so you can be absolutely sure.”

Daum picked up his candle and they quietly padded
out through Tarc’s door which Daum had left open. Out in the hallway between the guestrooms, Tarc stopped still for a moment, then turned to Daum and whispered, “There’s no one in the guest rooms. I can feel Mom and Daussie in their rooms, so I know my ghost could tell if they were there. The two men who were sleeping on the floor downstairs are gone too.”

“What in the hell could they be doing
out in the middle of the night!?”

Tarc
shrugged, “Robbing someone maybe?”

“Are you sure about the
men downstairs?”

Tarc
nodded.

Daum suddenly sucked in a hissing breath, “Can your ghost reach all the way down to the cellar?”

There was a brief pause as Tarc reached out, then he shook his head.

Daum said, “Let’s go down the stairs to the main level. From there you should be able to check
. They may be rifling the cellar.”

Feeling somewhat naked,
Tarc said, “I think we should get our knives and put on our clothes before we go down.”

Daum slumped
a little, “You’re right, it may be dangerous. I’ll get dressed and go down, you stay here.” He turned and went back into the room he shared with Eva.

Tarc
went back into his room. With his ghost sense he was able to put on his knives and dress quickly even in the dark. When Daum came back out in the hall, Tarc was waiting. “We should go together,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell where they are before they even know we’re there.”

“No!” Daum
reacted. But then he paused. After a moment he said, “Sorry, you’re right. It’ll be safer for
all
of us if you come along. Thank you.”

Quietly, they descended the stairs. Without a light it was so dark that Daum had to hold on to
Tarc’s shoulder like a blind man. As soon as they reached the main level Tarc said, “They’re not in the cellar. Or
anywhere
on the main floor for that matter.”

I
n a puzzled tone Daum said, “What in all the hells could they be doing out in the middle of the night?”

Tarc
said, “
I
surely don’t know, but I don’t think it’s something good. I’m still betting that they’re robbing someone. Shall we go see if the strangers in the stable are still there?”

In the darkness
, only Tarc’s ghost sense showed him Daum’s head rotating toward him, “You think they might have gone with these guys?!”

Tarc
shrugged, then realizing his father couldn’t see it, said, “I’m betting they did.”

A few minutes later Daum and Tarc approached the side of the stable. A half-moon lit the yard so that Daum no longer had to be led. Tarc reached out and put his hand on Daum’s shoulder. “They’re gone too,” he whispered. Then, “They took their horses.”

Daum let out a muffled curse. “Those bastards are up to no good!” After a moment’s thought he said. “I’m going to go down and roust out the deputies at the station. You go back and tell Eva and Daussie what’s going on.
Then all of you lock yourselves into your rooms.”

“Uh,”
Tarc said, thinking of the lightweight doors on the rooms, “those guys could break into the rooms pretty easy. If you think they aren’t safe there, they should hide somewhere. Like the cellar or something.”

“You’re right. You guys hide in the hayloft in the stable until we know what’s going on.” Daum turned and headed out to the street.

Tarc ran back into the tavern and up the stairs. Eva was awake when Tarc opened her door. Tarc burst into speech, telling her the strangers had left and that he and Daum were going to roust the deputies for fear the men were robbing someone. Leaving, he shouted that Daum had said for Eva and Daussie to hide in the hayloft.

N
ow completely comfortable in the stygian darkness, he ran back down the stairs using his ghost to know where to put his feet. He heard his mother calling after him, but didn’t slow to hear what she was saying for fear she was telling him to stay there at the tavern.

Daum was nearly to the deputy’s station when he heard someone running lightly up behind him. Thinking it might be one of the strangers, he stepped into a doorway and pulled out his knife. The runner slowed and stopped a few feet from the doorway.

Daum steeled himself for a fight, but then
Tarc’s voice said, “Dad?”

Daum’s tension slumped out of him and he whispered harshly, “I
told
you to hide in the hayloft with Daussie and your mother!”

“Yeah, but if I’m with you no one can sneak up on you.”

For a few moments Daum stood, warring with himself. Then, acknowledging once again the truth of his son’s statement, he said, “OK, but if we do meet anyone, you stay back.” He turned and continued quietly down the street.

When they arrived at the Deputy’s station
Tarc tugged at his father’s sleeve, stopping him. “Wait, something’s wrong!” he hissed.

“What?!” Daum whispered back.

“There are people in there, but they’re lying down! And… they aren’t as warm as, as they should be.” He paused, then continued in a choked voice, “There are puddles of warm stuff around them… I think they’re… dead.”

“Shit!” Daum said. “Is anyone else around here?”

Tarc shook his head, then realizing his father might not notice the motion in the moonlight, quietly said, “No.”

Daum said, “We should
ring the alarm here, then go warn them at the deputy’s station at the main wall gate.”

“Shouldn’t we make
sure
they’re dead first?”

“Yeah,” Daum said grimly. He knocked on the door of the station, waited a moment, then opened it. “Hello. Anyone here?”

There was no response. Daum stepped inside and called out again. There weren’t any lamps lit. Tarc didn’t know for sure, but thought that a watch station should have a lamp lit at all times so that they would be able to respond quickly in a crisis. He felt around with his ghost and realized a faintly warm spot above and to his right likely came from a lamp that was still cooling. As he focused on it he recognized that the box next to it probably held some matches.

Because matches were expensive
Tarc had a natural reluctance to using them, “Dad, there are some matches next to the lamp here. Should I use one?”

“Yes! This is a crisis for God’s sake!”

Embarrassed as he thought about it, Tarc picked up the box, pulled out a match and struck it. He’d never used a match himself, but had seen them used. The bright flare of heat he felt with his ghost startled him. He lifted the glass chimney off the lamp and held the match to the wick.

Turning,
Tarc saw his father staring around at the wreckage of the deputy’s station that Tarc had been able to feel with his ghost. Chairs were knocked over. Materials such as their ledgers and pencils lay scattered about. The two night watch deputies lay face down in spreading pools of blood. Daum cursed, then stepped over and began pulling the alarm rope. The big bell atop the station began tolling with the deep clanging that called up the men of the town. “Aren’t we going to go on?” Tarc asked.

“I thought someone would show up to ring the bell while we went on!”

Tarc’s ghost felt people heading out into the street, but they weren’t coming toward the station. “They’re supposed to go to the wall to defend it aren’t they?” Tarc said, thinking that defending the wall was exactly the wrong response when the attackers were already inside.

“Yes,” Daum said between the clangs of the bell, “but if it stops ringing I’m afraid everyone will just go back to bed!”

Tarc was pondering the fact that the town should have had some other codes set up for the bells in order to differentiate various crises when suddenly his ghost, extended as widely as he could send it, gave him bad news. “Men on horses! Coming!”

Daum cursed as he let go of the rope and said, “Let’s get out of here!”

“Too late!” Tarc said, pulling back on Daum’s arm as four horses galloped up, men vaulting off of them, swords already drawn as they landed near the door.

Tarc
and Daum ran toward the back of the station, coming only to the cell where the deputies locked up the drunk and disorderlies. Daum pulled up, “Goddammit! They don’t have a back way out?”

Tarc
’s eyes widened as he saw that Daum was correct. There wasn’t another way out! He turned, knees watery and gut twisting as he wondered if the men coming in might show any mercy. The door had already slammed open and two men had entered, swords held high.

In the lamplight
, Tarc noticed with a sense of unreality that they looked like good quality swords.

Then Daum’s arm flashed out
and a knife flew across the room. Tarc’s ghost told him it was aimed at the first man, but it was much too high and Daum hadn’t led the man far enough! Using his ghost Tarc pulled it down and to the left. He could immediately tell that he wouldn’t be able to pull it far enough down to reach the man’s chest, or even his neck!

A fleeting thought came that hitting the man in the face with the knife should slow him down.
Seeing the knife coming, the man started to duck but Tarc guided the blade unerringly to his face. It buried itself into the man’s eye.

It shot through the globe of the eye
, up through the thin plate of bone over the orbit and into the skull.

The man convulsed and began to collapse.

Tarc’s ghost took over Daum’s second knife as soon as it left Daum’s hand. Having decided the eye apparently made a good target, this time as the knife flew, Tarc lifted it away from the man’s upper chest. Tarc’s ghost made him think the men might have armor on his chest anyway.

The knife shot into the second man’s eye
.

Tarc
had already reached back over his shoulder to grab the first of his own knives. A third man crashed through the door and started to stumble over his falling companions.

Wondering at his own lack of compassion,
Tarc sent a third knife through a man’s eye and into his brain.

Recognizing that something was amiss, the fourth man slammed to a stop in the doorway, hands braced on the frame, eyes wildly looking about for
whatever threat had struck down his companions.

He didn’t see the fourth knife coming before it stopped his sight forever.

Emotions slammed through Tarc.

Tremendous relief that the four soldiers
were no longer going to kill him.

Amazement at his own control of
those knives.

Horror at what he had just done to other human beings, especially the fourth man who had begun to heave himself back into retreat just as the last knife cut him down.

Tarc
’s bladder spasmed out a squirt of urine and his bowels cramped. Then he bent to heave up the contents of his stomach.

Daum had started forward. Now he turned, grabbed
Tarc by the arm.  “Sorry Son, but we’ve
got
to get out of here,” he said, hauling Tarc along behind him even as Tarc turned his head to the side to vomit again.

When they reached the men, to
Tarc’s horror they were twitching and quivering. Their brains might be damaged beyond repair, but their bodies were still trying to go on about the business of living. One of them had a pool of vomit about his head. From the smell at least one of them had beshat himself.

Daum bent and snatched the
knives out of the men’s eyes, wiping them quickly on the men’s own clothes. He stood, “Let’s go!” he said, handing Tarc’s knives to him. “We’ve got to warn the deputies at the gate!”

Abandoning stealth, Daum started off down the street at a trot,
Tarc following behind. A few other men ran nearby, also going toward the wall. Presumably they were headed for their posts there, ready to protect Walterston from an invasion. There didn’t seem to be as many as Tarc would have expected, but, after all, only one station had rung the alarm bell and it had stopped now. During drills, all the bells in town rang so perhaps many thought it had been a false alarm.