Spells of Undeath

by Stefon Mears

  Reesa, of course, was panting and sweaty and leaning back against a wall, but she wasn’t as used to things like this as the rest of them. She’d acquitted herself well enough against the grayed zombies, though, and she even did fairly well against the blackened zombies, thinking to sever one’s head with a double-stroke of her short swords.

  Amra, of course, seemed as tireless as ever. If the state of the air down here even affected her, Cavan couldn’t tell.

  Some things in this life were just not fair.

  At least she was a bit banged up, and as covered in zombie detritus as the rest of them, save Ehren,

  Even now, Amra was standing rear guard, certain that they were being followed. Not that Cavan could see or hear any sign of such a thing.

  At least they had this moment to catch what breath they could, in this foul place, while Ehren passed out blessed oranges, to cope with the bruises — and a couple of bites — suffered from the attacks, as well as help them regain vibrancy that the air down here tried to steal.

  And it was no wonder all of them needed oranges. Four total waves of zombies. Nearly sixty in all. And they’d had plenty of room to swarm as they’d come.

  To judge by this place, the old monks must have lived mostly underground. And though space above looked to be at a premium, down here they were downright extravagant with it.

  One main hall had led from the bottom of the stairs. Stone and mortar, all around. Wide enough that Cavan and his friends could have brought their horses and ridden, if they’d been willing to risk their horses in the lair of a necromancer.

  Well, not quite tall enough for that ride. Almost as though the monks didn’t want mounted soldiers swinging swords while riding through their basement.

  Cavan couldn’t help feeling a flash of curiosity about whether or not that had been a consideration.

  The hall had led back toward the monastery, at first, but then it had bent sharply to the right, and continued. Each bend after that had brought with it a wave of zombies.

  Sconces for torches every so often, but so full of dust and cobwebs, it didn’t seem likely that any torches had been lit down here in hundreds of years.

  The floors were not quite so dusty, though they did smell of must and age. Clearly the necromancer, or at least some of his minions, came and went through here regularly.

  There had been a few passages or rooms off of this main hall, but they’d been long since walled up. Cavan had checked those areas by both magical and nonmagical methods, but they were not concealing passages or doors.

  That did leave the question of where some of those zombies had come from. The ones that had attacked from the rear. Amra’s theory was that they dropped from the ceiling, and Cavan saw no reason to dispute it. Troubling idea though.

  “Ready?” Amra asked, her voice hushed and her eyes still watching their rear. After the chorus of assent, she spoke to Qalas, voice barely loud enough for Cavan to hear.

  “Take point a while. I think that forest elf is behind us again.”

  “Think we should bring the fight to him?” Qalas asked, just as quiet.

  “No,” Amra said, frowning. “Too much advantage. He knows this place.” She glanced around at the hall. “Besides, there’s precious little cover. I don’t relish charging a forest elf with a bow in this place. Not if I don’t have to.”

  “If we let him pick his timing…” Cavan said, letting the rest of the sentence finish itself.

  “I know,” Amra said. “But right now he’s out of range. I figure he’ll take his chance when we’re not being hit from all sides.”

  “I could call up a mist—”

  A green mist seeped around them now, but it wasn’t a mist called forth by Cavan. And it wasn’t immediately dangerous, Cavan could tell that as well. Though the origin of the mist was no doubt magical, it seemed to offer no risk of harm.

  Which was good, because Cavan had been worried that the necromancer would have spells that could just seep among them and drain their lives away. Not because Cavan had ever read that necromancers possessed such powers in any book of wizardry, but because he, too, enjoyed the stories of bards.

  At least, he enjoyed them in taverns and around fires. At the moment, he would rather not recall such things.

  Cavan turned to assure the others that this green mist was not an immediate threat—

  —and realized he stood alone in the hallway.

  The dim hallway. Not full dark, as it would be without Ehren’s blessing, but nevertheless not as bright as it ought to be. Was that because he was separated from Ehren?

  Cavan gripped the hilt of his sword, and dipped fingers into his pouch of spells.

  Someone clucked their tongue, and the echo of that sound seemed to slither around Cavan.

  “Such a waste of a pretty, pretty boy. No, no, no, pretty boy. Do not draw your weapons. Your spells. Do not die without need.”

  No speaker to go with the voice, but the voice was female. Would have sounded like a pleasant singing voice, if not for a rough undercurrent to it. As though the speaker enjoyed inflicting pain.

  Well, also the fact that the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once added to the creepy factor.

  Footsteps then, coming from ahead. But not the slow, measured footstep of a menacing figure, but the rushed, hurried footfalls of someone running in a panic.

  Around the next bend in the hall came…

  …a girl? Redheaded and young and lovely, even pale with fear and running for her life. She wore a torn, blue linen dress, and she’d lost one of her shoes.

  Wait.

  Cavan recognized her.

  Riverbend, wasn’t it? The serving girl who had arrived for their assignation to find Cavan stark naked from his bath and sitting in a pool of blood on the floor, having just defeated two would-be assassins.

  She’d run screaming then, too, but away from Cavan. Not that he blamed her. What was her name…

  “Polli?” Cavan said, slack-jawed in shock to find her here and now.

  “Cavan!” Polli cried and ran to him. Clutched him as though she could hide inside him from whatever followed her.

  That voice was laughing. “Silly girl, pretty girl, thinks she can get away. No, no, no. No escape for you, pretty girl. Silly girl. Doris always finds her playmates.”

  Cavan could hear it approaching now. A slithering, thumping sort of gait.

  Cavan slipped one consoling arm around Polli, keeping his sword arm free.

  “Don’t let her get me, Cavan,” Polli said. “She has the face of a woman, but the rest of her.”

  Polli shuddered.

  “Catch you both,” the voice said, still somehow coming from all around Cavan. “Pretty, pretty, pretty. Then we play. Then we eat. Pretty tastes best.”

  Cavan could see the shadow of this thing now, just around the corner. The shadow looked to have a head at the end of a serpentine neck, followed by a great bulk of…

  Wait. Shadow?

  With Ehren’s blessing still at least somewhat in effect?

  Cavan tried to shove Polli away, but too late.

  Polli latched onto Cavan’s throat like a lamprey, dozens of tiny teeth ripping his flesh while she sucked in as though trying to inhale him all at once.

  Pain flared through every nerve in Cavan’s body. As though acid came in through the place “Polli” bit him and spread swiftly through his veins and arteries.

  Reflexes demanded that he stab her with his magic sword. But Cavan’s muscles refused to listen to his wise reflexes. Something about the nature of the creature’s bite.

  Cavan screamed. It was all his muscles would do.

  Fortunately, the last-ditch defense he’d set up weeks back came to the fore now, when he needed it most.

  The ruby at the bottom of the hilt of Cavan’s sword was as fine a gem as any Cavan had ever seen, and he’d been raised by the best jeweler in Oltoss.

  A ruby tuned so fine it could hold a few ready spells.

  Cav
an had cast into that ruby only a handful of spells, most of which would allow him to cast his most important combat spells if he found himself without access to his spell pouch.

  However, there was one spell in that ruby that Cavan kept ready for emergencies. Such as an undead creature sucking out his life’s blood while he could do nothing, physically, about it but scream.

  Cavan’s scream of distress and pain triggered the spell.

  His sword leapt to attack without Cavan’s muscles having any say in the matter. Stabbed right through the heart of the thing wearing Polli’s face.

  “Polli” detached long enough to cry out in pain. But Cavan’s spell wasn’t finished.

  It was busy unleashing the most powerful weapon Cavan could bring to bear on any enemy: primal fire. Flame called forth from the essential nature of the element itself.

  The last time Cavan had used a spell that brought forth primal fire, he, Amra and Ehren had been traveling along the borderlands between this world and the Underworld, and facing a monstrous spider.

  Cavan had lost control of the spell then, destroying not only the spider that threatened them, but others, as well as a great deal of the forest in the area. Possibly the whole of that huge forest.

  But with a licha blade to act as a limiting factor, the primal fire flared out so blue it edged on ultraviolet, no more than a hand’s breadth outward from the dune elf steel.

  More than enough to do its job.

  “Polli” didn’t have time to scream again. She burnt to ash, and Cavan tumbled to the ground.

  Cavan lay on the hard stone of the hallway floor, his blade still clutched in his white-knuckled hand, though his spell had run its course and the primal fire was gone.

  Ehren knelt over him, slathering some kind of sticky, orange paste over Cavan’s wounded throat, while murmuring prayers. The paste smelled like swamp muck, but its cool relief was welcome enough.

  Of the five of them, only Ehren and Amra had been unharmed by the attack of … whatever that thing had been.

  Qalas had seen his sister. Believed the sight, because she was every bit as “headstrong and prone to violence” as he was, and might well have traveled this direction since he’d last seen her.

  Amra had seen a champion she had defeated down in Dunlap once, but the fight had been so good the two of them had spent the next week in bed together.

  She hadn’t been taken in for a moment.

  “If Rol had been weak enough to run blubbering up to me like I was his mother, he’d never have given me a fight in the first place.”

  Ehren hadn’t named the woman he’d seen, but he had sounded just as certain that she would never be found here in the lair of a necromancer. Not that it mattered. The moment the hall had dimmed, Ehren had spotted it for an illusion, and kept the thing at bay with his staff.

  Reesa had seen Cavan, wounded and desperate for help, which Cavan knew he’d hear about from Amra for months to follow.

  In the moment, Amra had contented herself to smirk and say, “Very believable.”

  When Cavan’s turn to talk had come, he didn’t name whom he’d seen. But that he hadn’t seen Reesa would give him something to think about, when he could afford the luxury of such thoughts.

  Qalas had suffered a decent bite, as Cavan had, but Reesa had come out the worst. Even now, she was pale, and having trouble devouring one of Ehren’s blessed oranges.

  Ehren didn’t offer oranges to Qalas or Cavan. He had too few to risk more of them just yet. Especially since there might yet be worse need ahead of them. The smelly pastes would have to suffice, though they left Cavan’s neck and jaw feeling stiff and sore.

  Not even time for a poultice. Everyone felt sure the next attack was coming soon.

  Still, better stiff and smelling of river muck than feeling more acid through his veins while his life’s blood drained away.

  “So how did we beat it?” Qalas asked, watching the front.

  “Never got within striking distance of me,” Amra said.

  “Me either,” Ehren said, and he grimaced as he continued, “and my prayers seemed to amuse it.”

  “Tell you later,” Cavan said. “Let’s push on.”

  Cavan took the lead then, with Qalas behind him, then Ehren and Reesa side by side, and Amra still watching the rear for the elvish archer.

  The next bend in the hall wasn’t really a bend. It was a room. A junction point of some sort, by the look of it. The ceiling in here arched about the height of a good silver maple tree, and Cavan would have needed three dozen running strides to cross it.

  Five other passages led out from here. A line of granite just above those passages circled the room, with symbols every few paces that had been chipped away so badly there was no telling what they were originally.

  More wall sconces for torches that hadn’t been used in ages. And alcoves along the walls appeared to have been walled off, like the other passages and doorways back down the hallway behind Cavan.

  The star of the Order of Blessed Light remained engraved on the floor, large enough that its points touched the circular walls in between, leaving only a sixth section of wall untouched by the star.

  “Just what do these monks do?” Qalas asked, frowning.

  The ground shook with the thunder of hooves.

  “I’m betting they don’t ride horses,” Cavan said, “but—”

  Amra shouted over the rest of his joke.

  “Back down the hallway. Now!”

  Amra led the way, leaving Cavan the last out of the huge chamber, just as the knights arrived.

  And they were definitely the knights whose spirits Cavan had seen back where the messenger from Istanlos appeared to them. Cavan recognized the armor here, and the coat of arms there.

  All dozen of those men and women, still ahorse, with longswords, maces and flails in their hands.

  Cavan began to wonder what happened to the raiders, but then the chill hit him.

  The chill of the grave seemed to seep outward from the knights. An involuntary shiver ran through Cavan and his friends. It was an unnatural cold, and Cavan immediately worried about what effects it would have that he could not predict.

  In the immediate, his joints stiffened up, and the wound on his throat ached.

  The knights formed ranks. One in the lead, then two-by-two, with one more riding rear guard.

  They charged toward the hall where Cavan and his friends pressed themselves against the walls, to avoid getting trampled. Cavan, Reesa and Amra on one side, Qalas and Ehren on the other.

  Closer the knights came, building speed.

  Cavan readied his sword. His limbs moved slower than they should have, but he felt confident he could cut down the legs of that first horse with his licha blade, which should spoil the charge.

  Closer still they came. The roar of their hooves echoed from the stone walls and ceiling.

  The unnatural chill doubled in strength. Cavan’s arms cramped, as did his legs. From hisses of breath down the hall from him, he suspected he was not alone in this.

  Cavan could see the milky white of the lead knight’s eyes now. His brows were heavy and down, his beard still full and red, and his dead skin only a touch sallow. He controlled his horse with his knees, using both hands to ready his great sword.

  Cavan checked his grip.

  Just then Qalas cried out, in Rentakat, the language of his homeland, Rentaka.

  Rentakat was one of the few human languages not derived from ancient Rentissi, and Cavan spoke little of the tongue himself. But if he heard right, Qalas said:

  “Istanlos, by Your will we have ridden hard and found the defiled remains. By the blood of the Godkiller I beg You. Drain the curse from these pour souls, that we may face the” — doer? Perpetrator? Yes, that made more sense — “perpetrator of this anathema.”

  And to Cavan’s surprise, Istanlos heard Qalas’ plea.

  As one, the knights and their steeds all fell. The spells that held them together melted away, leaving
only bones and rusted armor and weapons, all of which scattered down the hallway, carried by their momentum.

  That bone-chill to the air evaporated as though it had never existed.

  For a moment, the only sound was the scattering of bone and metal.

  But then the star in the junction room flared to life, a sickly, bloody red glow that gave off a kind of moist heat.

  Standing within that star was the necromancer. And he wasn’t alone.

  Cavan was grateful for one thing. That glowing red star engraved into the stonework of the floor had the five sides of the Order of the Blessed Light, and not the seven sides that the necromancer could have used for the worst sorts of spells.

  But in the moment, Cavan didn’t feel much else to be grateful for.

  When Cavan had seen the image of this necromancer in his spell of hindsight, the evil wizard had not looked very impressive. Middling height. Hazel eyes. Wrinkled, ruddy skin, and white, fluffy hair surrounding the tonsure on his scalp.

  But here, the purple and dark blue symbols woven into his black robes glowed enough to be seen over the reddish light of the star.

  The old, carved thigh bone that the necromancer held aloft, his wand, had more symbols that glowed in harmony with the ones on that robe.

  The hindsight spell had not prepared Cavan for the necromancer’s aura of power. Stronger than any he’d seen since Master Powys. Strong enough to beat at his senses without a hint of effort, even where Cavan stood.

  And standing ready at the necromancer’s back, another force of creatures called from the grave.

  These … well, Cavan wasn’t sure what they’d been in life. If they’d ever truly been alive. That was a question Cavan did not know about ghouls, and he was looking at ghouls right now. At least two dozen of them.

  Their arms and legs were too long for their torsos. Torsos that were thin, save for their bloated bellies. Their skin looked scabrous and bruised all over. What hair they had lay matted and greasy against their scalps.

  But their hands and feet ended in talons instead of nails. And their wide mouths, all too full of long, pointed, yellowed teeth.

  Their mere presence filled the air with the smell of grave dirt and old blood. And they made a constant, hushed gibbering sound.