Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

In front of me is just a pile of ash. The walls are scorched, the windows have no glass in them, the fence is a pile of charred wood, and the fire hasn’t spared anything inside. My room is there, as is my burnt bed. So is the table where father and I ate mama’s soup. In red, on the front foundation of the house, there’s a message: Killer! Death to killers!

They’re…no, that can’t be. I know who can answer my questions.

The blacksmith’s home isn’t far from ours. Rachel definitely isn’t here, but her dad will tell me what I need to know.

Breaking into the house is easy enough. I use telekinesis to slip the bolt out of the lock and sneak in. I’m here to get answers, and I’d be perfectly happy to kill if that will help me get them. I’m wearing my death outfit—all I’m missing is a scythe.

“Get up, blacksmith, your time has come!”

What could be more fun than hearing that bastard howling wildly?

“Ah-h-h!”

The shroud of darkness and my skeleton hands touch the blacksmith’s face.

“Ready? I can take your wife, too.”

“Why don’t you just take her?”

Setting people up apparently runs in the family.

“No, just you. There’s a hole full of boiling blood and devils with pitchforks waiting to punish you for your sins. Get up.” I extend a bony hand.

His wife wakes up and runs out screaming, having heard exactly what her husband said. The blacksmith quivers.

“Two years ago, you had a daughter named Rachel and a neighbor who was a fisherman. What happened to them?”

The blacksmith, sobbing and sighing, tells me the part of the story that I couldn’t know.

“The fisherman had a son named Sagie who killed one of Teurus’ priests and ran. They couldn’t find him,” the blacksmith says, stopping to wipe his nose. “According to our laws, parents are responsible for their children, so they took them. I don’t know anything else, I swear!” He starts praying right there in the bed.

“Where’s your daughter?”

I feel an unimaginable rage. By some miracle, I don’t kill him. I need information.

“She disappeared right around that time, and we thought the slut had probably run off with the kid.”

“Why didn’t anyone suspect that your daughter was the one who killed the priest?”

The blacksmith thinks to himself and realizes what I’m getting at. His daughter isn’t there, meaning that he could be taken.

“They found a wooden dagger in the pool of the priest’s blood. When they started roughing up the slums looking for information, they found out that there were two wanderers Sagie apparently boasted to a week before the murder. He said he could rob the temple. When the guards came for Sagie, Camelia was the only one home. They showed her the dagger and asked if it belonged to her son. Arman was out fishing. When she said it did, they took her away and grabbed him when he got back.”

The dwarf’s tears stop. I boil with rage and an insatiable desire to take it out on the blacksmith, but father wouldn’t forgive me for that. The whole thing was Rachel’s fault, after all.

“Where were they taken? Where are they right now?”

Eleven flames leaped up in the room, and the blacksmith could see that I had skeleton arms and nothing but darkness under my hood. The effect was immediate: it was like someone had jabbed him with hot iron.

“Ah-h-h! I don’t know anything! They were taken away, and then Teurus’ fanatics burned their house! Destroying the whole family wasn’t enough for them!”

“What do you mean, destroying the whole family wasn’t enough?”

“Ye-e-es…” The blacksmith went back to his crying and hiccupping. “That’s what the new priest said at the parish meeting. He took them away himself.”

Apathy and emptiness overcome me.

But the blacksmith continues.

“But I don’t believe that. I remember what Arman was capable of—when he and his wife moved here, he broke my arm in a fight, and I was the one with a hammer. He went with them because he was going to find Camelia! They wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”

“…keep talking…” If there’s so much as a chance…

The flames all merge into a single fire hanging between the blacksmith and me. The darkness under my hood scares him, and I can see the coward shaking.

“He could have killed them if he wanted to,” the blacksmith says with a quiet sniff. “They told him that they had taken Camelia and would be passing judgement on their son, and that’s the only reason he went with them. When the priest said they had destroyed the killers, I didn’t believe him. Arman could have killed their whole detachment. No, something’s fishy.”

“You’re going to live. Although… Why did you call your daughter a slut if she was only fifteen?”

The blacksmith peers into the darkness, checks my height and voice.

“You’re…you’re Sagie?”

Hm, he guessed… But that’s fine. I slip off my hood, though the shroud of darkness and my gloves stay on.

“I’m death, and Sagie was sent to Hell for his sins. This is just his shell. Do you know what they call people who decide to look under my hood?”

He shakes his head so vigorously that it looks like it’s about to fall off.

“Answer me!”

“She was almost eighteen, and I’m sure she was a wanderer! We decided that the timing with the murder was just a coincidence, and that she ran off with some man.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I was only ever her father by chance. She never called me father, and she spent all her time in the city.”

“I’m going to let you live.”

I don’t need him anymore. The temple of Teurus and its priest are my new targets. Morning will come soon, so I decide to wait.

Turning on stealth mode as soon as I leave the house, I run back to the city.

I meet the sunrise right at the door to the temple, prepared to kill anyone who gets in my way. I’ve waited two years for this, and I can wait another