by Stefon Mears
But the rest of that power, that all went into the necromancer in a single flashing instant.
And it was just the one necromancer now. Because as that flare of power struck him, the second necromancer shifted into the spirit of a forest elf woman, and faded away.
The necromancer screamed in pain.
A momentary opening. Nothing more. A necromancer that experienced would adjust quickly to the unexpected influx of raw power. Turn it into a weapon. Long before Cavan could close and run him through, much less recall any of the spells that might have done the job.
But training-honed battle reflexes were faster still.
Cavan threw his spelled dagger straight into the throat of the necromancer.
And just as he had practiced a thousand times, he spoke the keywords of the spell he’d carved himself into its blade.
In the moment, Cavan could not recall the meaning of the syllables he spoke. Not even that they had anything to do with a spell. Only that after throwing that dagger, he had to say those words.
But the power of that spell had long since been committed, graven into the symbols on the blade. And triggered by Cavan’s voice uttering the right sounds, the spell did its work.
Green fire roared out from that dagger blade. Burned through the throat of the evil spellcaster, as well as a good portion of his head and shoulders.
The necromancer fell to the floor. His charred head bounced twice as it rolled away.
Well and truly dead.
Cavan stabbed the necromancer’s body through the heart anyway. Just to be sure.
Cavan felt dull. Listless. Distant even from himself. But the necromancer lay dead at his feet, and that was what mattered.
Cavan looked up, but the ghouls that still moved were fleeing down side tunnels. No longer a threat without their master.
The great big junction room seemed smaller now that it was empty of enemies. Had Cavan really pulled off that jumping spell earlier? How had he done that?
Cavan pondered, or tried to, as he glanced around him in the old, stone tunnels under the ruined monastery.
The rest of Cavan’s friends still stood. They looked a bit haggard, but no more than he felt himself.
Well, Ehren looked pristine as always, as though his white clothes had never been near dirt. And Amra looked as though she’d gotten through this latest fight without even the indignity of a bruise. She was sweating, and still covered in bits of zombie, but that was about it.
Still, Qalas looked worn from his efforts, and Reesa looked just this side of dead on her feet.
Every one of them still lived. Cavan should have felt happy about that, shouldn’t he? Elated? Grateful? Something?
He felt … less than himself. And he was sure he should have been able to think of at least one spell. Why couldn’t he think of any spells? He was sure he’d trained as a wizard, even if he’d been kicked out of that training long before he could have moved on from apprenticeship.
He figured he should remember some of that training, if he took a moment to do it.
Cavan tried to do just that, as he cleaned his blades and sheathed them. Tried to remember a simple spell to produce a spark and light a candle or some kindling.
He could remember sitting in the small, dank room where Master Powys made him practice. Focusing entirely on the wick of that stump of a yellow candle that was older than Cavan was. Although, honestly, Cavan hadn’t been all that old at the time.
“You in there?”
Amra’s voice. Followed by snapping fingers, and a slap on the face.
Cavan looked at her. Frowned. When did she come stand in front of him?
“I…” How could he describe this? How could he explain it? He felt cut off from part of himself. From a large part of himself.
Cavan tried to focus on the green and gold of her eyes. He could hear the others moving about. Doing things that he should probably have been doing too. Gathering remains maybe, or seeing to wounds.
But Cavan shook his head.
“I’m … not all here…”
“Ehren!” Amra bellowed in full command voice.
Cavan tried to finish his sentence. Tried to find the words that might explain what he was feeling, but they wouldn’t come.
Cavan looked back at Amra, but Ehren stood in her place.
Ehren stretched the skin around Cavan’s eyes. Peered in with those clear, incisive pale blues of his. Ehren had moved on to checking Cavan’s throat and the top of his head by the time Cavan got another word out.
“Torn…”
“Amra,” Ehren said, “seat him someplace and watch him while the rest of us gather what we can. We need to get him out of here…”
Ehren was still saying something, but Cavan lost the train of it.
Amra marched Cavan to a spot along the hallway and sat him down. There was a dead forest elf nearby. Cavan blinked at the corpse.
“Yeah,” Amra said, “that was the archer. Arrogant ponce. Idiot gave up all his advantage when he tossed his bow. If he’d kept it he might have turned me into a pincushion before I could get close enough to scratch him.”
Cavan nodded. The archer he remembered. Hadn’t he seen arrows in a vermillion haze? When had that been? How?
“Pretty good with those swords,” Amra continued. “Probably a warrior once. But he was too used to fighting like a hunter. Too used to ambushes and quick kills. Forgot about the ebb and flow of a proper swordfight. Fell into old patterns too quickly.”
Amra could make anything a lesson. Cavan tried to pay attention, but his focus kept drifting…
“Hey,” Amra said, crouching down and lowering her voice against the background clatter and hubbub of activity. “That elf kept calling my sword a ‘relic.’ Seemed to think it’s got powers I don’t know about. Think when we have time, you can help me…”
Amra’s sentence faded away as she took a closer look at Cavan.
She chuckled. “You’re not going to remember any of this, are you?”
“No,” Cavan said. “I mean yes. I mean—”
“Forget it,” she said, clapping Cavan on the shoulder and standing up. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Come on,” Qalas said, and Cavan realized the other three were trudging closer now. “We’ve got the remains of the knights.”
“And we need to get ourselves and our horses back to some real air,” Ehren said. He brought up the rear now.
The air. Something about the air that Cavan should have known. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it.
“What about the raiders?” Amra asked.
“They’ll have to wait,” Ehren said. “We can come back tomorrow, when the sun’s up.” His eyes flicked to Cavan. “He’s in no shape to face ghouls again anyway, and those ghouls are down here somewhere.”
The remains. The raiders. Curse it all, why couldn’t Cavan think?
Amra whistled for Cavan’s attention.
“Let’s go, recruit,” she barked in her training tones. “Gotta stand before you can walk. Gotta walk before you can run.”
Cavan stood without thinking. He even managed to walk a bit. But his focus kept drifting and his feet stopped every time.
Reesa finally had to lead Cavan out of the lair of the necromancer.
10
Cavan and his friends camped that night on a hill that looked so healthy it practically glowed, after all the death he’d seen in the last day or so.
Cavan might not have had the focus to ride well, but he could manage to stay in the saddle, and Dzint was smart enough to do the rest.
Even mounting Dzint had been glorious. A breath of fresh air. They’d ridden for hours before Cavan made the connection that mounting Dzint had provided a literal breath of fresh air. The feathers, and their air elementals.
Hadn’t Cavan done that? Called the air elementals? Bound them temporarily into the hawk feathers?
Another memory, just out of reach. Like a dream that had faded in the morning li
ght. All he knew of magic, just a faded dream.
Back at camp, Ehren examined Cavan some more, but Cavan didn’t even try to pay attention while it happened. Just stared off at the stars and let his thoughts drift wherever they wanted.
Magic. Swordplay. Riding…
Stars. Reesa. Polli…
The necromancer. His archer. The vargamort…
The vargamort. Polli. Reesa…
Somewhere in there, Cavan fell asleep.
His dreams were wild, excitable things that night. Unhinged and inconsistent, but full of meaning and depth and all the answers Cavan could have ever wanted in his life.
If only he could remember anything more about them when he woke.
Cavan roused to the sounds of Ehren’s prayers, to realize that he lay in the center of a circle of candles, each a different shade of the sun’s coloring as it moved through the sky.
Cavan was naked. Lying on a cloth of gold blanket that he had never seen before in his life.
He could smell … oil. Sunflower oil. Had someone been…
Symbols, of course. Drawn up and down Cavan’s body in sunflower oil.
The taste of orange juice was on his tongue. Couldn’t have been from one of the blessed oranges. Ehren always insisted they had to be consumed deliberately to have their proper effect. Still, Ehren must have dribbled orange juice into Cavan’s mouth as part of what he was doing.
Now Cavan realized he could smell incense too. Incense? Cavan wasn’t sure he could remember the last time Ehren had used incense. He was swinging it in time with his chants, and golden smoke issued forth. Smoke that smelled like a hot summer day.
Smoke that did not rise, but flowed down to circle Cavan, weaving in and out of the candles as it went.
Then, it was as though each candle had its own tendril of smoke, reaching out to Cavan, but stopping short of his body.
He could feel them though. How could he feel them? He felt as though he should have known the answer, but it eluded him.
Anointing oils. Incense. A circle of candles. Cavan had never seen Ehren do anything so involved as this anywhere but a temple. Usually the smiling priest just prayed, perhaps gestured.
Reesa was sitting down by Cavan’s feet, looking at him with a worried expression.
Cavan started to sit up without thinking about it.
Qalas and Amra each grabbed a shoulder and thrust him back down.
Huh. Those two were kneeling right up by Cavan’s head, just on the other side of the ring of candles. Almost as though they’d expected him to do something like sit up.
“He’s been praying since the first lightening of predawn,” Amra said softly. “If you move and mess this up…”
Cavan started to raise his hands in surrender, thought better of it, and gave her a deliberate nod instead.
“Good man,” she whispered, as the harsh syllables of Ehren’s prayers in Penthix grew louder.
“Doesn’t matter what he says,” Qalas said. “Ehren said he’ll forget and—”
“I know,” Amra said. “But it’s easier if he tries to cooperate.”
The first rays of dawn crested the horizon. Ehren’s prayers sang out loud and clear. Might have echoed for miles, from the sound of them.
Cavan would have sworn those first rays struck only him. Bathed him in their golden radiance, while Ehren continued to pray.
The whole world looked golden to Cavan now. He started to sit up — just a reflex — because the rising sun likely meant the ritual was finished. Ehren’s healing always happened in Zatafa’s first rays.
But Qalas and Amra shoved Cavan back down, and Ehren kept right on praying.
The sun continued to rise, lighting up the green and golden grasses of the hill around them and lightening the blues of the sky above. Somewhere nearby, a horse whickered. Ondiq. Cavan was pretty sure that was Ondiq’s whicker.
And through it all, Ehren’s prayers continued. His voice rose and fell. Now chanting, now singing. Always slowly circling, and keeping up that flow of incense.
The rays of the morning sun felt warmer on Cavan’s skin than he expected. Closer to the warmth of high summer than fall.
And that warmth, it didn’t stop at Cavan’s skin. It seeped on down into his muscle and sinew. Into his bones and his blood. The warmth eased inexorably down inside Cavan reaching down to the core of his self, where the worst damage had been done.
When the heat reached that part of him, he cried out in pain. It didn’t feel like warmth now. It felt blazing hot. Burning. Singeing. How could this be good? How could anything about this be good?
He tried to get up, but someone was holding his shoulders. And his feet.
He tried to thrash, but his limbs weren’t moving right.
And his eyes. He couldn’t see anything but gold now. That golden glow was everywhere. It was as though the whole of the universe was golden.
And painful. Searing. Blazing. Burning.
Wait.
The pain was receding now. Ebbing away, slow and smooth as a tide.
The warmth remained though. A different quality of warmth now. It soothed through Cavan. It didn’t really feel like healing though. It didn’t feel the way it did when Zatafa’s power helped Cavan’s wounds reknit themselves.
It was more…
More of an invitation. As though the parts of Cavan’s deepest self were being soothed, and gently reminded that other parts existed. Invited to investigate those parts. To rejoin with them.
The sun was fully above the horizon by the time Ehren stopped praying. And by then, Cavan could feel himself coming together once more.
He started to rise.
“No,” Ehren said, his voice hoarse from his efforts. “Stay where you are until you feel entirely yourself again. We both…” He yawned. “We both need more rest.”
It was nearly midday by the time Cavan felt ready to rise and dress. Ehren yet slept, in the shade of a small maple tree near the horses.
Qalas and Amra discussed something in hushed tones, and Reesa stood looking away from Cavan, southwest into the distance, as he rose. She didn’t turn around until he spoke.
“Spirit double!” Cavan said, as he fastened his brown riding breeches. “That was the spell the necromancer used against me. A kind of close echo.”
Cavan frowned. “Different spin on it though. I swear he used the damage he’d done to me to power it.”
All three of the others who were awake looked over at Cavan. All three looked glad to see Cavan up and about, but Amra still managed to be amused by him.
“Figures your first words are about a spell.”
“What do you expect?” Cavan said with a smile. “My memories are starting to catch up to my skills.”
Amra snorted. Started to turn back to Qalas.
“Hey,” Cavan said, slipping into his older, brown tunic. “It was your pushing my martial skills that kept me alive long enough to find an opening.”
“I only showed you the way,” Amra said. “You had to learn the lesson.” She smiled. “But thanks.”
The sudden show of grace to a compliment almost threw Cavan off of spitting out the other answers to questions that had occurred to him while he couldn’t think straight.
“Protazzons,” he said, tucking his tunic into his breeches. “The necromancer wanted to make me one, and he had to kill me through magic and martial means combined. That’s why they’re so rare.”
Cavan yanked on his calf-high, leather boots.
“And the tendrils of smoke from those candles. They were working into the outer edges of my aura. Holding one part of me, while you guys held down my body.”
Cavan slipped on his sword belt and fastened it as he continued.
“The star on the floor. Five pointed, because it was part of what few magics the necromancer still mastered that were not tied entirely to death. Movement magic, yes, but more importantly ways of gathering and channeling power without relying entirely on death for it.”
Cava
n shook his head, remembering the feel of that star’s glowing magic.
“He must have been planning something big. Felt like multiple wizards had channeled power through that star. Bet it had been used that way by every evil occupant since those monks were killed off or chased away.”
“Killed,” Reesa said, then shrugged. “That’s the one point all the stories agree on.”
“Anything else you find yourself suddenly remembering?” Amra asked, and she sounded a little too casual about the question.
Cavan found himself thinking about the vargamort, and Polli, and Reesa. But he didn’t think that was what Amra was asking about.
“I don’t … think so. Why?”
“No reason,” Amra said with a shrug. “Thought you might have had some great insight about the forest elf or something. You stared at his corpse long enough.”
“I did?”
“Well, near his corpse. I was never quite sure where your attention was.”
“Did you know,” Ehren said, still sounding tired, “that the lot of you talk loud enough to wake the dead?”
“Well,” Amra said, standing. “If we’re all awake, let’s go see about the rest of those remains.”
“You just want to kill off the rest of the ghouls,” Qalas said, rising.
“Well,” Amra said with a half-smile, “I’m not opposed to that. And I do recall someone saying we had to deal with that trapped entrance before we leave the area.”
Amra fluttered her eyes. “Also. And this is just a thought. Perhaps we ought to at least try to finish this quest before the god of death strikes us all down.”
That alone was argument enough to get them all on horseback and riding once more.
But before they did, Ehren cleared his throat for attention. When everyone was looking at him, he spoke with the most somber expression Cavan had seen on the smiling priest for some time.
“Let us be clear about something. The incense I needed for that rite this morning requires sunflowers that only grow in three places on this continent. They must be harvested on the morning of the winter solstice by a priest who intends to spend the next month in isolation, praying and combining them with ingredients I won’t even name here and now, in order to make that incense. And only the priest who makes it, can use it.”
