Chapter One: Tacenda

The Whisperers arrived just before dusk, and Tacenda’s song was not enough to stop them.

She screamed the refrain of the Warding Song, sliding her hands across the strings of her viol—a gift from her parents at her fourteenth birthday.

Her parents were both gone now, killed ten days earlier by the strange creatures that now assaulted the village. Tacenda had barely recovered from that grief when they’d taken Willia too. Now, they’d come for the entire village.

Since the sun had not yet set, she couldn’t see them, but she could hear their quiet overlapping voices as they flowed around her seat. They spoke in raspy tones—soft, the words indistinguishable—like an underchant to her song.

She redoubled her efforts, plucking her viol with raw fingers, sitting in her usual spot at the center of the village, by the gurgling cistern. The song should have been enough. For two years, it had stopped every terror and horror. The Whisperers, however, sounded indifferent as they flowed around Tacenda. And soon, human screams of terror rose as a horrible chorus around her.

Tacenda tried to sing louder, but her voice was growing hoarse. She coughed at her next breath. She gasped, trembling, struggling to—

Something cold brushed her. The pain in her fingers grew numb, and she gasped, leaping back, clutching her viol to her breast. All was black around her, but she could hear the thing nearby, a thousand whispers overlapping, like riffling pages, each as hush as a dying breath.

Then it moved off, ignoring her. The rest of the villagers were not so lucky. They had locked themselves in their homes—where now they shouted, prayed, and pled...until one by one, they started to go silent.

“Tacenda!” a voice shouted nearby. “Tacenda! Help!”

“Mirian?” Tacenda’s voice came out as a ragged croak. Which direction had that sound come from? Tacenda spun in the darkness, kicking over her stool with a clatter.

“Tacenda!”

There! Tacenda carefully ran her foot along the side of the cistern to feel its carved stones and orient herself, then struck out into the darkness. She knew this area well, and it had been years since she’d stumbled when crossing the village square. But still, she could not avoid that spike of fear she felt in stepping forward. Out, into that darkness that still terrified her.

This time, would she walk into the void, and never return? Would she continue to stumble in a vast, unknowable blackness, lost to all natural feeling and touch?

Instead, she reached the wall of a home, right where she’d anticipated. She felt with raw fingers, touching the windowsill, feeling Mirian’s potted herbs in a row, one of which—in her haste—she accidentally knocked off. It shattered on the cobbles.

“Mirian!” Tacenda yelled, feeling her way across the wall. Other screams still sounded in the village—some people crying for help, others shouting in a panic. Together the sounds were a tempest, but each seemed so alone.

“Mirian?” Tacenda said. “Why is your door open? Mirian!”

Tacenda felt her way into the small home, then stumbled over a body. Tears wetting her cheeks, Tacenda knelt, still holding her viol in one hand. With the other, she felt at the lace skirt—embroidered by Mirian’s own hand, during the evenings when she sometimes stayed up to keep Tacenda company. She moved her hand to the woman’s face.

Mirian had brought Tacenda tea not an hour ago. And now...her skin had already gone cold somehow, her body rigid.

Tacenda dropped her viol and pushed away, slamming back against the wall, knocking something over. The fallen item cracked as it hit the ground, an almost musical sound.

Outside, the last screams were giving out.

“Take me!” Tacenda shouted, feeling her way around the door. She scraped her arm on a sharp corner, tearing her skirt, blooding her forearm. “Take me, like you did my family!” She stumbled out into the main square again, and as more of the shouting and panic trailed off, she picked out a quieter voice. A child’s voice.

“Ahren?” She shouted. “Is that you?”

No. Bog, hear my prayer. Please...

“Ahren!” Tacenda followed the small, panicked screaming to another building. The door was locked, but that didn’t seem to stop the Whisperers. They were spirits or geists of some sort.

Tacenda felt her way to the window, where she heard a small hand pounding on the glass. “Ahren...” Tacenda said, resting her own palm against the glass. A coldness brushed past her.

“Tacenda!” the little boy screamed, voice muffled. “Please! It’s coming!”

She drew in breath, and tried—through her sobs—to force out a song. But the Warding Song wasn’t working. Maybe...maybe something else?

“Simple...simple days of warming sun...” she began, trying her old song. The joyful one she’d sung to her sister, and the people of the village, when she’d been a child. “And light that calms and will not run...”

She found the words dying on her lips. How could she sing about a warm sun she could no longer see? How could she try to calm, to bring joy, when people were dying all around her?

That song...she no longer remembered that song.

Ahren’s crying stopped as a muted thump sounded inside the building. Outside, the final screams died off. And the village grew silent.

Tacenda shrank back from the window, and then behind her, she heard footsteps.

Footsteps. The Whisperers made no such sound.

She spun toward the footsteps, and heard the rustling cloth of someone nearby, watching her.

“I hear you!” Tacenda screamed at the unseen figure. “Man of the Manor! I hear your footsteps!”

She heard breathing. The sounds, even, of the Whisperers faded away. But whoever was there, watching, remained still.

“Take me!” Tacenda screamed at the second darkness. “Be done with it!”

The footsteps, instead, retreated. A cold, lonely breeze blew through the village. Tacenda felt the last rays of sunlight give out, the air chilling. As night fell, Tacenda’s vision returned. She blinked as the blackness retreated to mere shadows, the sky still faintly warm from the sun’s recent passing. Like the embers that clung—briefly—to a wick after the fire went out.

Tacenda found herself standing near the cistern, her face a mess of tears and tangled brown hair. Her precious viol lay, wood finish scratched, just inside the door to Mirian’s house.

The village was silent. Empty save for Tacenda and corpses.