‘Go!’ Ree roared at Smythe.
‘Right, right, going!’
Ree crawled out of the other end of the tunnel and Smythe pulled her to her feet. They were in a parallel passage, much like the one they’d just left.
Smythe danced where he stood, wringing his hands. ‘Which way, which way?’
A curse zipped out of the drainage tunnel to smash against the wall.
‘Ree!’
‘I’m thinking! Give me a moment!’
Distant shouting: more necromancers ran toward them from the left.
‘Okay, this way!’ Ree fled down the other end of the passage, Smythe close behind.
She led them on a winding chase, but they couldn’t keep this up forever. At every crossroads, there were more necromancers, or minions, or a spectre waiting to swoop down on them. She was losing track of where they were, how long they were running. Her lungs burned; Smythe gasped for breath.
‘Stop!’ She threw out her arm, catching Smythe in the chest. They were in a widened out passage lined with corpses, resting in recessed stone shelves. It was obvious this was one of the less-travelled passages; everything was blanketed in dust and curtained with cobwebs.
She looked for an empty shelf and shoved Smythe toward it. ‘Quickly, climb in and lie down.’
Smythe blinked at her. ‘Are you quite certain? I really don’t think —’
Shouts from behind them, drawing nearer. She glared at Smythe. He squeaked and slid in.
‘Close your eyes and don’t move until I tell you, okay?’ She pounded on the ceiling of the recess; dust dropped and carpeted him in grey. She ran across the room and did the same, trusting to the horribly thick dust coating her face that she was well and truly hidden.
A cabal of necromancers came running in, their fast steps mingled with the shuffling of their minions. They shouted and argued and ran on, never stopping to check what were clearly long-undisturbed corpses.
Ree let five minutes pass, then ten. When the sounds of their frantic search had long passed, she climbed out of the shelf, coughing and wiping dust from her face. ‘Smythe?’
‘Here!’ He half-fell from the shelf, as grey and pasty as any minion. He rubbed the dust on his sleeve, revealing his usual colour, then wiped his glasses on his shirt. ‘That was most resourceful! How do you come up with things like that?’
Ree shrugged and tucked her dust-coated hair behind her ears. ‘You have to do a lot of running when you’re a denizen without the Craft.’
Smythe looked around. His eyes fixed on one of the bodies. ‘Is that a scythe he’s buried with? Why would a farmer be entombed here —’
‘Smythe.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘Later.’
‘— right.’
She tried to think through the adrenaline fogging her brain and her heart beating in her ears. Her original plan didn’t seem likely to work now. Travelling any distance from here on would be fraught with pursuit. They needed to hide for the night, settle down. Necromancers were easily distracted. She doubted their hunt would be half as strong in a day’s time.
Somewhere to hide. Somewhere close. Somewhere nobody else could find.
She nodded to herself and turned to Smythe. ‘I know where to go.’
‘Top notch,’ said Smythe. He grinned at her through dust and weariness, and for a fleeting moment, Ree felt warm inside.
She led Smythe for another three hours, down stairs and through grand empty chambers, in an extended game of hide-and-seek with the denizens, but wherever they were chased, she would always guide them back. At last, they came to a steel door.
Smythe rattled the handle. ‘Festering rats!’ He pounded on the door. ‘I just want to sit down!’
Ree tapped him on the shoulder. She raised a key and her eyebrows.
Smythe reddened. ‘Terribly sorry. It’s all this “running for our lives” business. Makes it dreadfully hard to think straight.’
Once the door was safely locked behind them, Smythe froze, mouth agape. Ree tucked away a tired smile. ‘It is impressive, isn’t it?’ she said. She looked around at the small library, as if seeing it for the first time. It had a small reading room down a set of stairs to the side, and it was lined on all sides with heavy oak shelves and thick tomes in several languages. ‘There are several libraries in the crypt, some from the kings and bureaucrats, some built by some long-ago denizens, before the town was settled. This is one of the smaller ones.’
Smythe walked up to a shelf and ran his hand down the spine of a book. ‘This must be a hundred years old,’ he said. His eyes shone as if he’d just fallen in love.
‘I think that one’s … maybe a hundred and twenty? This isn’t the oldest of the libraries, but it’s cosy.’
She watched Smythe scan the books, his eyes wide with awe, his curls falling across his eyes. Something in her loosened, something that had been winding ever tighter since Usther had run off to warn the council.
She touched his elbow and gently guided him toward the stairs. ‘It’s not safe here. They might make Emberlon hand over his keys. Come on.’
‘But — all right.’ Smythe took the book he’d been eyeing, then paused to take a couple more. Ree frowned, but Smythe shook his head. ‘I’ll bring them back, I promise! I know better than to cross a librarian. I am an experienced scholar, you know.’
‘I’ve been made aware of the fact,’ said Ree, but she didn’t make him return the books.
The reading room was small; one large round table, scattered with books, and a couple lecterns between the bookshelves on the walls. The floor was mossy stone, as was most of this part of the tombs, but there were four large gems on the floor, cornering the table.
Ree stopped Smythe in the doorway, then took four books from the reading table, and placed them on the gems. Each one lowered with a click. Then she reached under a lectern and pulled a small hidden lever. The wall behind the lectern recessed, then slid aside with the grating of stone on stone.
This was a secret that was hers alone. Even Emberlon hadn’t found this passage, and she hadn’t marked it on any of the public maps. Like her father, like Usther, like any denizen of Tombtown, she didn’t share all of her knowledge.
‘Quickly.’ She waved Smythe over.
He scurried toward her, arms laden with books. ‘What would have happened if you’d pulled the lever without placing the books?’
She pointed over his head, to a small hole above the doorframe. ‘I’d have been thoroughly impaled by flying spikes.’
Smythe blanched. ‘Oh.’
She pulled a lever on the other side of the door and the wall slid back into place. Now they were in a third reading room, a secret reading room. A bedroll — Ree’s — was tucked up against the far wall.
‘A secret library inside a secret library,’ Smythe said. He straightened his glasses as he turned to Ree. ‘You really are quite incredible. I’m not sure I would believe you were real if I didn’t actually know you.’
Ree ducked her head, her cheeks heating. She didn’t know whether he meant it as a compliment, but it pleased her all the same.
They settled there for the night, Smythe reading the books he’d brought with him, Ree taking notes from the books she’d left there. There wasn’t much to eat; only the meagre provisions of jerked meat and dried fruit that Ree had hidden there in the past. They didn’t hear anyone come or go from the main library. Those denizens still searching into the night did not come near them.
At length, Ree stretched out on her bedroll while Smythe made himself comfortable on a lavish but stiff chaise longue. The candles they’d lit were dwindling, and exhaustion was coming fast for Ree. She closed her eyes.
‘Ree.’ Smythe’s voice was a whisper, though there was nobody to wake but her.
She opened her eyes. He was propped up on one elbow, gazing at her quite anxiously. ‘Mm?’
‘Thank you for saving me. I — I know I can’t completely understand, but — it must have cost you a great deal to go against
your town for me. I hope you know I take that debt seriously.’
Ree said, ‘I didn’t do it so that you’d be indebted to me.’ As she said it, she wondered why she’d done it. What it was about Chandrian Smythe that led her to such terrible decisions.
‘No — no of course not. That’s not what I — no. Sorry.’
Silence. Ree closed her eyes.
Then: ‘Ree? Why aren’t you a necromancer? That’s what they were saying, wasn’t it? Usther and the council. That you don’t practice necromancy.’
She was looking at him properly now. This moment felt very still, here alone in the darkness, knowing they were being hunted and yet so far from danger. She wasn’t used to people asking about her. She wasn’t used to people.
Smythe blinked and looked away. ‘My apologies, I didn’t mean to pry, I just —’
‘I never wanted it,’ said Ree. Smythe immediately shut up. He watched her with fierce attentiveness, as if what she was saying was important, as if it mattered what Ree did or didn’t want. She took a steadying breath. ‘It’s all my parents ever wanted for me, and everyone I know practices the Craft. I just wanted to … I don’t know. To explore. To discover. First with books, and then with maps. It just seemed like … like if I was going to learn magic, I wanted it to be something more. Like I wanted to be something more. More than the name my parents gave me.’
‘Reanima,’ said Smythe.
‘Reanima,’ Ree agreed. ‘Necromancy changes people. The more you use it, the less alive you are. Eventually, necromancers become like the Lich — not really human anymore, just power inside a withered body, going through the motions. I wanted something more.’
‘It all seems rather phenomenal to me,’ he said. ‘That this kind of power exists in the world. But it must all seem rather dull to you.’
‘Never dull,’ said Ree, with a wry smile.
Smythe rolled onto his back. Their conversation seemed to have eased him, somehow, though Ree didn’t know what he had taken from it. ‘What were you making notes about?’
She hugged her journal to her chest.
For a moment, she considered telling him. The real reason she didn’t learn the Craft. The rest of the reason. The books hidden in her room, in various stashes and secret libraries across the crypt. The rituals attempted and failed. He was so strange, and they had been through so much.
Instead, she hugged her journal to her chest and rolled over. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
Ree closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Her thoughts hummed angrily like an over-turned beehive. She thought about Smythe. About how he was a historian who had travelled to a dangerous and unknown place in service to his study. He literally studied the past, had devoted his life to it. If anyone would understand what she was trying to do … surely he would.
And tomorrow, he would leave.
She relaxed her death-grip on her journal and half-turned toward Smythe. His eyes were closed, but a frown pinched his brow, as if some heavy problem occupied him.
It took her a moment to find her voice again. Perhaps she’d been closer to sleep than she’d realised; the words rasped from her throat. ‘Smythe? Are you awake?’
The frown deepened. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. ‘Is everything alright?’ His eyes were glazed in the dark; likely, he couldn’t make her out.
It would be so easy to just roll over again and say nothing more about it. So easy, and yet …
Her heart clenched. She wanted to share this secret.
She got to her knees and lit the stout candle in the shuttered lantern in the middle of the room. It flared and flickered as she shook out the match. Smythe sat up, shading his eyes against the sudden glare.
She offered her journal to him. He took it, a question quivering on his brow. As he flicked through the pages, her fingers twitched in a barely suppressed urge to snatch it from him.
‘This is your research?’ He looked up, but Ree avoided his eyes.
She ducked her head in assent.
He rescanned the page, as if checking the evidence of his own eyes. ‘This is —’
‘Therianthropy.’ A shiver rippled down her spine. Even to name it aloud felt like a spell. She’d spent years keeping this secret — hiding her research, evading questions about her future. Her eyes met Smythe’s, expecting him to jump in with more, but he only waited.
Ree ran her hand through her hair, wondering how to explain. ‘I found a book when I was fourteen. I was with Emberlon on a collection. We were trying to find a book for — well, it doesn’t matter.’ She drew a shuddering breath. ‘It was a necromantic grimoire, but it referenced “lycanthropes, the creations of therianthropes” making superior minions, and advised obtaining the services of a therianthrope. That was my first encounter with therianthropy as a real discipline, and not a folktale.’
Smythe looked down at the journal laying open in his hands. ‘So this journal represents —’
‘Three years of my life.’ Ree stared at the familiar journal, with its many loose pages and notes thrust into it. How frustrating — how humiliating — that three years of research had not even been fruitful enough to fill one journal, however thickly bound.
When she looked at Smythe, she could see the surprise on his face — the lifted eyebrows, the lips parted in sympathy. He quickly smoothed his reaction away, but Ree still felt the bite of it.
‘What is — if you’ll excuse me — what is the limiting factor?’
A gentle way to ask her why three years of her life fit so comfortably in one book. Ree’s shoulders lifted and her jaw clenched. ‘Lack of resources. There are a lot of references to therianthropy and some first-hand accounts, but no useful guides or studies.’ She shook her head. ‘Therianthropy is old — very old. It predates bound books, and many of the scrolls on it were destroyed by witchkillers in an attempt to purge the art itself centuries ago. Even when I get my hands on a promising text, it’s often too archaic to understand, or in a language I can’t translate. But there are precious few even of them.’
Smythe nodded. His brow pinched as he considered the problem. ‘Historians speculate that therianthropy was largely an oral tradition anyway. It’s part of the mysticism around it, and why many cultures considered it barbaric, or so I hear.’
Ree snorted at the word. ‘Barbaric. As if there could be anything more sophisticated than changing your shape using only the skin of an animal. The spell work is meant to be extremely intricate.’
‘Therianthropy uses skin?’ He couldn’t quite manage to hide the revulsion in his voice, but this time Ree’s lips twitched in a scant smile.
‘Is that your only protest?’ She studied him closely, looking for signs of pity or disdain. ‘Just that it’s practically unpleasant?’
Smythe’s eyes widened. ‘I — well, yes? It’s not really for me to judge another’s course of study. “Cast not the eggs from your nest, lest you find it empty”, and all that.’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘But … honestly? I think there’s no more noble pursuit than to revive lost history. And I know I haven’t known you very long but — well.’ He straightened his glasses, eyes bright. ‘You’re quite, um — ah. You seem more than capable of doing anything you set your mind to.’ His cheeks flushed. ‘Why settle for the ordinary?’
It was like he’d dropped a stone into a still pool. Ree could feel the ripples of it moving through her. She wanted to say something back, but unlike Smythe, she couldn’t find the words.
Smythe returned her journal, and Ree again rolled over on her thin bedroll, hugging her journal to her chest and replaying their conversation in her mind.
It had been worth it to save him just for that. Just that small moment of someone seeing her. Seeing what she wanted to become, not what she had failed to be.
She turned slightly, looking at the curled shape of him in the dark. She wanted to ask him … but this wasn’t going to be a friendship. He was a man misplaced. He didn�
��t belong here.
Tomorrow, she would take him to the surface, and this whole strange episode would be over. For the first time, the thought brought her no comfort.
There is a madness in necromancy. Not in the decision to practice it: necromancy can be a beautiful and helpful magic which does not inherently harm anyone living. But in the throes of the magic itself, there is a sense of godhood. Of otherness to the world around the practitioner. Perhaps it is the nature of a magic that walks so neatly between the world of the living and the spiritual realms; it cannot help but set its practitioners apart.
Does this mean that it should be avoided, or used sparingly? I have returned to this question again and again in my studies. But ultimately, my feeling is this: a necromancer can only go mad in isolation.
And in Tombtown, there is little chance of that. The denizens are always interested in each other’s business.
~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CRAFT
Ree was first aware of her frozen cheek. She pushed herself off the cold stone and onto her bedroll; she must have rolled off it in the night. Blearily, she sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘Did you say something?’
Smythe hovered anxiously at the door, palms flat against the cool stone. ‘I think there's someone out there.’ He flashed Ree a worried look, but seemed unwilling to look away from the door for too long.
Ree stretched and got to her feet, wincing at the ache in her back and hips. Sleep was rarely comfortable, but a night on the unblanketed stone floor had certainly not made it better.
Smythe pressed his ear to the wall with an expression of intense concentration.
Ree sighed. ‘You don’t need to worry.’ She stooped and collected escapee hairpins from the floor. She tried to wrestle her hair into obedience, wincing whenever she jabbed herself with a pin. ‘They don’t know we’re here, they can’t hear us, and they have no way of finding us. Whoever is out there will leave soon enough.’
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