by Deck Davis
Kortho, younger then, and a contingent of academy fighters tracked their colleague. They stormed the camp in a blaze of fire and with flashes of metal.
Jakub hid in his sleeping bag from most of it, just the way he used to on the nights his parents ‘partook’; he wasn’t as brave back then. He heard explosions, screams, the screech of metal.
“Get up,” grunted a voice.
He wouldn’t look. If he didn’t look, nothing could happen to him. That logic made sense back then.
“Jakub!”
A hand reached into his sleeping bag and grabbed his hair so hard his scalp burned. With amazing strength, they pulled him out of the bag.
The camp was ablaze; someone had poured something over the bonfire to ignite it. Horses were bolting, and adults from the other families were fighting against people.
Soldiers. Soldiers from the Queen’s army. He recognized the emblem.
A hand slapped him, and it stung worse than where his hair had been pulled.
It was his father in front of him, but he looked and sounded different. Possessed, almost, with a look of hate on his face. His father had never been kind to him at the best of times, but this night, amidst the fire and the chaos, there was an entirely different specter of anger in his face.
He had something clenched in his right hand. His skin was stained red by blood.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
Jakub shook his head.
He knew what his father was holding now; he could see the chunk of flesh between his fingers.
“Open your mouth, boy,” he growled.
Jakub clenched his mouth shut. His father held a dagger in his left hand. He pressed it against Jakub’s teeth and prized his mouth open.
Jakub tried to shout but he was too shaken by fear, and his father was too strong.
He put the chunk of flesh in Jakub’s mouth, and then held the dagger against his throat.
His own father pressing a blade to his skin, forcing him to chew the dead flesh. - he’d never forget it. Never forget how tough the flesh was, how cold it was on his tongue, how it was slick with blood, how it tasted so foul.
He felt the mage’s flesh spread in his body as he swallowed it, felt its powers course through him, infecting him.
Then he passed out.
When he woke, the camp was silent. Bodies were strewn all around, and the fire had stopped burning.
The first face he saw was a liguana’s. Jakub had never seen one before, and he was scared, but the face that looked at his was a kindly one, and the touch of the liguana’s claws on his shoulder was strangely reassuring.
It was Kortho.
After that, the other children, the ones who hadn’t been force-fed dead mage flesh, were sent across the queendom to workhouses or to families willing to take them in.
Jakub was taken to the academy. The mage’s flesh had imbued him with the aptitude for using mana in spells. From then on, his training began. That was the choice Kortho gave him; a way out. No workhouse for Jakub. No more travelling with a family who fed from the dead to serve an archaic religion.
That way of life was gone, after that, but the nightmares of it never left him. The sights and sounds visited him in his dreams when he slept in the academy dorm room; nighttime visages of his family eating flesh, of the horrible feasts of sin afterwards where they’d sing and fight and have sex.
The academy thought he was dangerous. They never took on children who’d gained their magic in the way Jakub had. After his nightmares, they moved him out of the shared dorm and into his own private room, which made him an isolated student. The other students and instructors alike treated him with distrust. Many wanted to expel him.
Kortho always fought for him, and it was only the respect the other instructors had for the master necromancer that stopped them banishing Jakub.
He’d always be grateful to Kortho, now and forever.
46
It was this that brought him back from his past and to the room under the hill, where the five corpses lay on shelves in the mist-filled room.
It was only his undying gratitude to Kortho that let him breath in deeply and cast aside his fear.
He knew what the people in the hamlet were, now. He knew why the Killeshis hadn’t just invaded their little hill and destroyed them. The Killeshis were scared of them. These people followed a religion so dark, so old, that even the Killeshis wouldn’t take them on.
It all made sense now. This was why they had taken the soldier’s body and brought it here; they were going to eat him in the hope that the combat ability deep in him would pass along with his flesh.
It was also why they had a necromancer with them, he realized. Jakub’s own family had often paid necromancers, ones not of the academy, to prepare the corpses they collected so that their rituals would work.
The banished necromancer who lived in the hamlet was performing the same service to the inhabitants.
No wonder he was expelled from the academy.
The hamlet had become more dangerous to him than he’d realized; if they knew that he was a magic user, he was sure to end up on a shelf. They’d want to taste his flesh, to chew it and tease the magic from it and digest it themselves, hoping to gain his strength.
With the memories this stirred in him, he wanted to leave. Every cell in his body cried out for him just to leave this crypt and flee from the hamlet, but he couldn’t.
Kortho had never stopped fighting for Jakub even when he risked his own reputation, and Jakub wouldn’t break the faith he’d placed in him. He wouldn’t return to the academy a failure, because Kortho would take the blame for it.
Watch the soldier’s Last Rites, and then find the inquisitor. Get Kortho back to the academy, and I’ll find the traitor’s body myself.
That was the only thing he could do.
He found the soldier on the row of shelves against the wall on the left. They’d stripped him naked, but Jakub knew it was him from the Queen’s emblem tattooed on his bicep.
He pulled out his soul necklace and then uttered the spellword of Last Rites.
Nothing happened. No essence left his necklace, and the rites didn’t appear. It didn’t make sense; he had more than enough essence, so that wasn’t a problem, and he’d used this skill already. The problem didn’t lay in his essence or his ability.
The only thing that was different now was the spell the vagrant blade had cast over him. Was that responsible? It had become a habit now to keep gripping the hilt through his pocket to keep up his guise.
So now, he waited without touching it. He counted down in his head until finally the disguise began to unravel. His vagrant clothes disappeared, restoring his normal form. The vagrant stench left him, and his black overcoat grew over his torso and arms until the disguise was gone.
He uttered the spell word again, and this time essence leaked from his necklace and into the soldier, before forming a rectangle of light in front of him.
*Necromancy Experience Gained!*
[IIIIIIIIIIIII ]
47
The Last Rites showed the slaughter scene at the outpost; bodies laid out over the floor, blood smeared everywhere. He saw it through the soldier’s eyes as he walked into the mess room.
The soldier paused. The view moved left and right as the soldier looked around, and Jakub could almost feel the dread that must have been building up in him.
Where had he been? How had he escaped the slaughter? Had he been hiding?
Jakub almost felt contempt for his cowardice in letting his fellow soldiers die, but he forced himself to watch the Rites with empathy, to try and imagine how he himself would have reacted.
The solider quickly turned around. He must have heard something, but Jakub’s rites weren’t strong enough to play the sound.
When the solider turned, though, he saw it. The soldier ran to the outpost entrance and looked outside.
There, he saw seven Killeshi warriors. Five were busy jamming decapitated heads ont
o the spikes outside. Two were holding a body.
Harry Helmund’s body. The traitor.
He saw a flash of steel as the soldier drew his blade. Self-preservation must have brought his instincts back to the fore.
The Killeshi saw him now, and they advanced. The soldier ran back into the mess room and over to the window, which was shattered. As he tried to climb out of it, the view spiraled, and then the soldier was looking up at the ceiling, with four Killeshi warriors standing above him.
They talked to each other. They shouted words at him; Jakub saw their lips move, their nostrils flare, anger light in their eyes.
And then daggers were drawn in unison.
With a stab of four daggers, the Last Rites ended.
48
The Killeshi’s had taken Harry Helmund’s body, then. They’d done what the soldiers had thought they’d never do, and they’d attacked the outpost and slaughtered everyone in there.
While they’d decapitated the soldiers and stuck their heads on spikes, they hadn’t done the same to Harry Helmund. That meant only one thing; they wanted to keep his body whole. They had gone there and killed the soldiers so they could take the body.
Well, he had his answer now. The Killeshis had the traitor. He didn’t know which tribe they were from, but he knew who would; Morrigan. He had to get back to her.
First, he needed to find the inquisitor. Now that he knew where Harry’s body was, he could focus on making sure Kortho was safe by using the inquisitor’s faster transport to get a message back to the academy, and having them send a master necromancer to meet them halfway. There was enough time.
For the first time in a while, he felt a spark of relief.
The next thing he felt was something sharp press against the back of his neck.
“Don’t move,” said a voice.
He recognized the voice straight away. It was the boy. He forced himself to stay calm.
“Let’s not do anything hasty,” Jakub said.
“You’re no vagrant, that’s for sure. Who are you?”
“Let me turn around.”
“Drop your sword.”
Without much choice in the matter, Jakub slowly pulled his sword from his sheath and let it clatter on the ground. It was the vagrant blade that he dropped, and the boy wouldn’t know that Jakub’s inventory bag was artificed, and that it was big enough to hold another blade; his blackened sword.
He just had to keep the boy calm so that he could draw it, and then take care of him before he alerted the rest of the camp.
“I’m going to turn around now,” said Jakub.
He turned to face the boy, whose nose had swollen from where Jakub had punched him. He stunk of whiskey but his eyes were curiously focused; almost piercing in their intensity.
Jakub knew that look in his eyes. It wasn’t anger, but fear. An intense concentration prompted by fear.
Fear of what? Surely not Jakub? He knew he wasn’t an intimidating figure, even with his dark necromancer overcoat.
“You’re with the academy, aren’t you?” said the boy.
“How do you know?”
“The necromancer’s robes look just like your coat.”
Jakub nodded. He could tell the boy the truth, since it didn’t matter. He’d be dead as soon as Jakub got a chance. He didn’t want to do it, but there was more at stake than the life of this teen.
“I’m a necromancer too.”
“You’re just like him. You’re all the same; you eat the flesh of the dead. You help them…my mum…the others…you help them do it.”
The accusation made Jakub flinch. It cut him deeper than the boy could realize, because Jakub knew more than most what this ritual was.
“I’m not like him,” he said.
“You are.”
“No. I know what this is. I know why the bodies are here, and I know what they do with them. Trust me. I’m not like that.”
“Then why did you need to see the body?”
“I’m here on assignment from Queen Patience. It would take too long to explain, but believe me; it doesn’t involve eating the dead.”
“I don’t believe you,” said the boy, gesturing outward with his sword. He swayed a little, the whiskey making him uncoordinated.
Jakub could take him easily. He just needed to get to his sword first.
Something stopped him. It was the look in the boy’s eyes.
“You would have killed me if you were going to,” said Jakub, “but you haven’t, and I’m guessing that you haven’t told the others, either. What do you want?”
The boy stepped back. “You really aren’t here to…do what they do?”
“No, I don’t eat the dead, and I’m guessing you don’t, too. You don’t agree with this, do you?”
“You’re trying to trick me,” said the boy.
Jakub saw a way out of this that didn’t end in violence now.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The boy kept his sword gripped tight in his right hand, but lifted his left. Jakub saw the bottle of whiskey. It was half-empty. He took a sip.
“Tell me yours first.”
“I’m Jakub.”
“That’s your real name?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Ruderen Slate,” said the boy. “They call me Rud.”
“You can lower the sword now that we’re properly introduced, Rud.”
“No. What about your clothes? Why do you look so different than before?”
“It was a spell,” said Jakub, nudging the vagrant blade on the floor. “The sword changes how I look.”
“And you aren’t with him?”
“Him?”
“The necromancer.”
“No. He isn’t with the academy anymore; he was banished years ago. I don’t even know him.”
“You’re lying.”
He needed to calm the kid down. He didn’t want to kill him, but he needed the boy to trust him if he was to avoid it. He had to open up a little.
“I know what happens here, with the bodies,” said Jakub. “I know because my family did it too. Imbibism, my father called it, but their religion has had different names over the years. I grew up with it too, Rud. I know how scary it is. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Then it’s almost your time, isn’t it? Sixteen is when they usually make you do it. It was sooner for me; my parents did it differently.”
The boy took another drink now, so much that he was glugging it. Fear sparked in his eyes.
“I was eight when my father forced me to eat dead flesh,” said Jakub.
“Eight?”
He nodded.
“They want me to do it. They set a date; three days from now,” said Rud.
“You don’t want to, do you?”
“It makes me sick, and scared. Not just the idea of it, but what they do after, the way…”
“The way it makes them act. The way it changes them. I know, Rud. It’s terrifying.”
Rud lifted the bottle of whiskey, but Jakub stepped forward and took it from him. Rud didn’t react.
“You’ve had too much,” he said.
Rud nodded. He lowered the sword. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be like them. When you have your first taste…”
“You can’t stop. You become addicted,” said Jakub. Empathy burned in him now, staring at this poor, scared boy. The teen full of bravado by the fire had gone, and even though he was years older than Jakub had been when it happened to him, he reminded him of his eight-year-old self.
“If your father forced you to do it, you must be addicted too,” said Rud. “That’s why you came down here; for a body. You’re lying to me.”
“No. You can beat it. After it happened to me, I was taken to the academy, and they cured me. Trust me now, Rud. I know what you’re going through, and I know the horrors of it all. It was forced on me once, and I wouldn’t do it again.”
“My mum says I have no choice. In three d
ays they’ll make me do it. Hyde is having his initiation the same night, but he’s looking forward to it.”
“And you don’t want to do it, do you?”
“I want to leave,” said Rud, “but I don’t know where to go. If I left the hamlet alone, the Killeshis would find me. They eat people while they’re still alive. They can smell your blood from miles away.”
“No they don’t, and no they can’t. If you want to leave, then you should let me go, quietly. If you tell the others that I’m here, they’ll be on alert. If you let me sneak out, then they will be relaxed, and you can wait for your own chance to go.”
“Take me with you,” said Rud.
The fear in Rud’s eyes tore at Jakub. He wanted to help the boy so much, just like how Kortho had helped him.
He couldn’t. It was too much of a risk, because the hamlet would come looking for Rud and Jakub couldn’t risk the added complication.
The academy words burned in his mind now; duty above self, duty above love, duty above all.
Make sure Kortho could be resurrected, and then recover Harry Helmund’s body. Save his mentor, and avoid failure. That was what he need to do.
He put his hand on Rud’s shoulder and stared deep into his eyes. It hurt him to look into his terrified stare. He saw his own face staring back at him; just a kid born into a dark world that he didn’t want to be part of.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I’m here for something more important than you could know, and I can’t take a risk.”
“If you don’t help me, you’ll never leave here,” said Rud.
Jakub reached into his inventory bag and pulled out his blade. “You can’t stop me,” he said.
Rud shook his head. “I can’t, but the necromancer and the others are back, and they’ve sealed the hamlet. They know something’s wrong. You’ll never get out of here without my help.”
“You’re sure you want to leave your family behind?” asked Jakub.
“I can’t live here like this.”
It wasn’t hard for him to believe; Jakub had lived with the same dread Rud felt. Jakub’s initiation had been forced on him, but at least Rud had a chance.
“I can take you as far as the academy when all this is done,” he said. “After that, I don’t know what they’ll do with you.”
