by Deck Davis
Crossbow x2
*Common*
Bolts x26
Iron Sword x1
*Common*
23 Gold coins
39 Silver Coins
102 Bronze Coins
Now this was loot. The last time he’d looted he’d found the Vagrant Sword, which was a rare weapon but underwhelming, since its ability was to make him look like a vagrant.
“Are you done?” said Morrigan. “We need to leave.” She was standing next to the boy and stroking his hair.
“This was worth it. Trust me.”
“For a book and a trinket?”
“This is a talent tome, not just an ordinary book. If you read it cover to cover three times, you learn a skill. The first read imbues you with the techniques, the second read-through gives you muscle memory of the skill, and the third gives you the experience. When I get a spare few hours, I can become a competent archer. You don’t understand how valuable this is.”
“A skill gained without practice can’t be rewarding,” she said.
Jakub put the crossbows, iron sword, gold coins, and bracelet in his inventory bag. Even though it was artificed to hold more than it should be able to, it was getting full. He needed to sell some of this stuff.
He passed the healing poultices to Morrigan. “I have a vial of restoration and I have Health Harvest, so you can take these. They’re crude, but they’ll heal you if you’re stuck.”
“I have no need for your poultice.”
She made no move to take them, so he put them on a nearby table for her.
“Sure you don’t. I’ll just leave them here for you.”
With his looting finished, it was time to work out what to do.
As the adrenaline left him, he felt a stinging pain in his side. He opened his overcoat and touched his waist. Blood smeared his fingertips.
“My wound reopened,” he said, wincing when he touched the cut on his side that he’d got in the outpost basement.
“Perhaps it is you who needs the poultice,” said Morrigan.
He shook his head. He cast Health Harvest, converting some of the essence in his necklace into a healing mist, which he directed to the wound. It closed, and some of the pain left him.
*Necromancy Experience Gained!*
[IIIIIII ]
There was so much to do now that he didn’t know where to begin. The fight had left him feeling exhausted, and he was tempted to wear his bracelet of rest. He didn’t want to build up a debt of exhaustion yet, though, so he resisted the urge.
Instead, he concentrated on the dead man on the hut floor. His academy training had taught him to be neutral about death, but even so, he thought he should feel worse about being the cause of a person’s death.
Was it worrying that he felt nothing? That his training was deep within him, and he was able to look at the corpse not as a man, but as a tool?
Touching his Resurrection glyphline tattoo, he cast Last Rites. Essence left his necklace and sought entry into the man’s skull through his ears, before swirling out of his nose and into the air, where it formed a rectangle of cobweb-like mist.
*Necromancy Experience Gained!*
[IIIIIIIII ]
“What are you doing?” said Morrigan. She seemed entranced by the rectangle, and wary of it. Jakub hadn’t expected a magic user to be suspicious of this kind of thing, but he guessed her magic, based in her green eyes, was different to his.
“It’s a spell. We call it Last Rites.”
“I thought necromancy was just giving life to those who’d lost it.”
“We have more spells than that. Shouldn’t you check on your groff? He might still be alive.”
The words seemed to spark a dread in her; her tanned Killeshi skin paled, and for a brief second her green eyes glimmered, as if dread sparked in them.
“So much happened…I forgot about him. What kind of person am I? Bert!” she said, and she ran out of the hut.
Images began to form in the rectangle. Jakub hoped that his Last Rites would show enough of the man’s last few minutes of life that he’d see where they had come from, and which direction they’d taken to get to the hut. That would give him a clue as to who these men were.
The images began on the hill crest outside the hut, where the four men approached from. They spoke to each other, but there was no sound in the Last Rites.
This wasn’t good enough. His Last Rites was too low a level; he’d need to improve it if he wanted to learn more. Increasing Last Rites would show him more of a person’s last moments, and eventually would add sound to the images, too. Not today.
“Jakub!” shouted Morrigan.
He joined her outside the hut. “I couldn’t learn anything,” he said.
She was crouched beside Bert, her groff. The animal had a bolt wedged firmly in his chest. He was still, and his eyes were glazed.
Jakub felt a wave of pity stir in him. Perhaps his training wasn’t as deep as he thought. Why had the death of an animal troubled him, when that of a man had left him cold?
“Can you bring him back?” said Morrigan.
Jakub shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“But you’re a necromancer.”
“I’m a level 2 novice. Bert is too big an animal for me to restore. I’m truly sorry,” he said, and he put his hand on her shoulder.
She shook him off. “What good are you?” she said, and stroked Bert’s head.
Jakub knew why Bert’s death had shaken him while the man’s had not. An impartial person would have said that the life of a person was worth more than an animal’s, but Jakub felt differently.
Looking at Bert, he pictured his best friend Ludwig lying there instead. Never mind that the demonic hound was already dead and dwelled in the Greylands, Jakub could still imagine how distraught he’d feel to lose him for good.
That sparked darker thoughts inside him. Thoughts and questions. He almost uttered one out loud, but knew that Morrigan wasn’t in the mental state to hear them.
He left her and went inside. The boy, with two bolts stuck in him and a hole where they’d wedged one free, passed Jakub. He joined Morrigan and simply sat beside her, looking at her with pity.
Alone in the hut, Jakub first checked his bag. His new loot was in there, as well as the ingredients for the goodlight potion.
Then he stood beside Kortho’s body. He was stretched out on the table, lifeless, his liguana scales so lacking in color that it was hard to look at.
“I need you, Kortho,” he said. “We’re in trouble. People are after us, and Ludwig won’t come to me when I summon him.”
It was just one stitching of riddles sewn into the patchwork of them in his head. So many things he couldn’t answer; why had Ludwig ignored his summons? How was he even able to do that? Who were the men who’d attacked them?
The corpse on the floor didn’t give him any answers; not only had his Last Rites revealed nothing that Jakub didn’t already know, but his armor was just dull leather with no markings or affiliations.
He wasn’t Killeshi, at least he knew that much, but that just left the people in the hamlet in the hill. Those were the only other people Jakub had encountered in the Killeshi lands.
It had to be the banished necromancer who he’d seen by the fire when he was looking through Ludwig’s eyes. The man had seen Ludwig, and must have realized that Ludwig was a binded animal, and that a fellow necromancer was nearby.
The question was, why would the necromancer care?
Unless he knew that Jakub was here for the traitor’s body, too.
Jakub had heard the necromancer’s conversation by the fire, and knew that he also sought to recover the body of Harry Helmund.
If Harry’s body had been taken from the outpost and the banished necromancer wasn’t the culprit, then who had taken him?
A squawk sounded from outside, cutting through his thoughts. He heard Morrigan shout.
“Reggie!”
38
When Jakub went
outside he found Reggie the hawk sitting on Morrigan’s outstretched arm.
“His brother and sister aren’t back,” she said. “They always fly back together. That means…”
“I’m sorry, Morrigan.”
“I’ve been hearing that word a lot since I met you.”
“Still, I’m sorry. First Bert, and now your hawks.”
“I have to see what Reggie saw,” she said.
Her eyes glowed until the green was so bright that it was hard to look at. Reggie’s eyes glowed yellow in return, and light left both their eyes, mingling in the air between them.
Morrigan tipped her head back. Her eyelids flickered, and she moved her head left, right, never fixing on a single point.
It was over with a flash of light, and when Morrigan looked at Jakub now, she seemed worried.
“A man is coming. He’s crossing the plains and heading to the hut. He’s wearing robes, and he carries a staff. There were…things…with him. Creatures; two of them.”
“It’s the necromancer,” said Jakub, feeling a tremor of cold in his chest. “What did these things look like?”
“Squat little things. Hideous, almost bestial, but there’s was something about them; like they weren’t really there.”
“It sounds like demons. They must be his binded animals…but how could Reggie see them?” Jakub wracked his brains for an explanation, before remembering the ‘price’ Morrigan had asked him to pay. “I brought Reggie back from the dead. He’s been to the Greylands, so he can see things from that realm.”
“They will pay for what they did to Bert. A few corpses aren’t enough to pay that debt,” said Morrigan.
“This man is a master necromancer, and he was banished from our academy for the things he messed around with. He’ll destroy us, Morrigan, and his Death Bind spell is likely powerful enough that his binded demons can actually hurt us. We need to leave.”
“I know a place we can go. It’s southeast of here, and nobody else knows about it.”
“That’ll be good for a start. How far away was the man?”
“Half a mile the last time Reggie saw him.”
“Okay. Get your things, and get the boy. We have the ingredients for goodlight, but carrying Kortho is going to slow us down without Bert. If this man gets within range of us…a master necromancer is a dangerous enemy.”
“Then I wish I wasn’t stuck with a novice.”
39
Jakub and Morrigan carried Kortho, but although the liguana was small, he weighed more than he had expected. They had to share the burden between them with Morrigan holding his head and chest, Jakub his legs.
She led them away from the hut and south west, where the hill dipped and the grassy plains met with more thornweeds. The boy trailed behind them.
Morrigan seemed to be following a path through the thornweeds, but to Jakub the thickets all looked the same. He trusted in her directions, but sometimes he moved too close to the thorns and saw their pricks scratch Kortho’s body, and he uttered an apology to his dead mentor at each fresh cut.
There really was no dignity in death. People often spoke of dignity when their loved ones passed, but that was only to comfort themselves. Death was ugly, and as soon as life left a body, it became just a burden of flesh and bones.
“Just over here,” said Morrigan, leading them to where the thornweeds began to thin.
Finally, they reached a hill covered in mud and vines. Morrigan stopped in the centre, where the hill rose ten feet above them.
“Set him down here,” she said.
She took her dagger from her sheath and hacked at an overgrowth of vines, before revealing the entrance to a cave.
“I haven’t used this spot in a while,” she said. “I leave provisions in all my places, but it’s been so long since I was here that there’s no telling what state they are in, or if vermin got to them.”
“We don’t have to stay for long. Just enough that I can brew the goodlight and douse Kortho with it, and then I want to get moving.”
“Where do you suggest we go?”
“I have an idea, but we’ll have to be quick.”
The cave was so dark it seemed drenched in black. The inner walls were made of mud, giving the place a cold feel. Despite that, carrying Kortho through the maze of thornweeds had built a heat in Jakub, and he took off his overcoat.
He laid it on the ground, and then opened his inventory bag and put the goodlight ingredients on it.
“I’ll need a fire,” he said.
“This place is too enclosed for smoke, and someone might see it.”
“Just a small one, and for a minute or two. I have to burn the orrograss.”
“I’ll get some branches,” said Morrigan, and left the cave.
Kortho’s body was on the ground, with the goodlight ingredients on the coat next to it. The boy stood above Kortho and peered at the dead liguana.
“Stand aside a little please,” said Jakub. “You’re blocking the light.”
The boy stood rigid by the cave wall. He seemed to always be like this; awkward in the way he stood and watched. It unnerved Jakub.
“Sit down, will you?”
The boy sat, and Jakub prepared the goodlight ingredients in the order he’d need to use them. He noticed that the boy was watching him with more than just his usual passivity, and was even leaning forward to get a better look.
“This interests you, huh?” said Jakub.
The boy opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. Jakub guessed that what happened with his tongue was so long ago that he was used to it now, and that was just sad.
“I wish you could tell me what happened to you,” he said.
It was sick. Someone had killed this boy, and there was no doubt that the same murderers had cut out his tongue, too. Had they done it when he was alive, or when he was already dead? The answer scarcely seemed to matter; it was just a morbid question born from his necromancer’s curiosity about death.
The other burning question about the kid was, who had brought him back? Someone had resurrected him after death, but they hadn’t used the same kind of necromancy taught in the academy. If they had, he’d be fully alive, but instead his was caught in an in-between state, undead but living, part of the Greylands, maybe, but part of this world too.
The kid wouldn’t like Jakub talking about that kind of thing, he decided. He’d been through enough, and if watching Jakub prepare a potion piqued his interest in any kind of way, why not let him be distracted by it?
“You can make a lot of different potions with this same mixture of ingredients,” said Jakub. “The way you prepare them, and the order you mix them in, makes something different. Cool, huh?”
The boy nodded even smiled, and that warmed Jakub a little.
“We’re making goodlight now. This will help keep my friend with us for longer. Well, not with us, but in the Greylands, where Ludwig is. Who knows? Maybe Kortho has found Ludwig in the Greylands. It’s unlikely given how big it is, but that’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
The boy nodded again, and Jakub wished he could carry on speaking about it, but he was worried about Ludwig and Kortho, and he’d rather do something practical than talk about things that made him anxious.
“Sorry I took so long,” said a voice.
Morrigan entered the cave with a bundle of branches and twigs. “It rained last night, so finding dry ones was tough.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No. We’ve lost him.”
“That’s something, at least.”
While Morrigan sat with Reggie perched on her leg and comforted the hawk, Jakub made a fire and then created a goodlight potion.
The result was a mud-colored liquid, thick and gloopy and not matching up to its name of goodlight – there was nothing good about its smell or appearance. Yet it was goodlight, sure enough.
The boy moved away from the wall and kneeled next to Kortho now, looking at Jakub and then the liguana.
“You
want to help?” said Jakub.
The boy nodded.
“We need to take off his clothes,” said Jakub.
They stripped Kortho naked, and Jakub felt a well of pity that his mentor was reduced to this. There was no dignity at all. When he found the inquisitor and they either got in touch with academy necromancers or arranged a quicker transport back to the academy for Kortho’s resurrection, Jakub would never mention this indignity to him.
Kortho would know, sure. He would know that Jakub would have had to use goodlight, and he’d know what that would involve, but Jakub would never talk about it. That was the least he could do to restore some dignity to the great necromancer.
He took the last of the rags that he’d looted in the outpost and tore them in half, giving one strip to the boy and keeping one for himself.
“Dip it in the goodlight,” he said. “We need to cover every inch of him.”
He really did mean every inch. It wasn’t a pleasant job, and Morrigan couldn’t seem to look at them. The boy didn’t flinch, and seemed as unfazed by death as Jakub was, even without academy training.
In little over an hour, just as daylight faded outside the cave, their job was complete, and Kortho was doused in goodlight.
Jakub sat back. He felt the relief at the added time he’d bought for his mentor. Now he needed to find the inquisitor, who would be arriving in the Killeshi lands soon.
First, there was something else he had to do while he still had the chance. He desperately wanted to sleep for a while, even just twenty minutes, but time was against him.
“Finished?” said Morrigan.
“Yes. You can look now. Why do you find it so distasteful?” he asked.
“What you call necromancy, I call a lack of respect for death.”
“Morrigan, you’re a centuries-old spirit living in a woman’s body. You’re going so far out on a limb here that you’re falling off the tree. Stop being such a hypocrite.”
