Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  Except he’d never really seemed that frightened. Not even when he’d been fending her off with an iron sarakat as if it held all the powers of a god inside it. He was, somehow, a creature of optimism and enthusiasm in the face of a world that wanted no part of him.

  And though she could feel the tableau pulling on her like a hook in her gut, she had to admit that he was making sense. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ Smythe smiled tremulously. ‘Okay. Um — okay, what?’

  ‘I’m leaving this — in fact, you should wear it.’ She reached under the collar of her robes and withdrew the amulet her father had enchanted for her — an ancient coin minted by a long-gone queen, now set with a cloudy gem. It was icy to the touch, and she felt its absence immediately — the little comforting chill that had always sat over her heart was gone.

  She pulled it over her head and offered it to Smythe, who took it hesitantly. ‘Goodness — very cold!’

  ‘It’s a Neverscry amulet,’ said Ree. It felt strange to be handing it off. ‘Usther probably has one too — it stops anyone with a bit of your hair or one of your possessions from scrying on you. There’s a breakaway clasp, too — to pull it off in case of danger. It’ll also help you shield your mind, before your necromancy training takes effect.’ It wouldn’t work as well for him as it had for her — her father had tuned it to her, especially. But it would, perhaps, help.

  Smythe carefully lifted the chain over his head and settled the amulet against his chest, wincing a little from the cold sting of contact. ‘So you’d like us to scry for you?’

  Ree’s mouth twisted to one side. ‘Not really. But Usther can check on me if I’m not wearing it, so if anything goes horribly wrong, she’ll know.’

  She unlocked the door. ‘I’ll be back in a few days.’

  ‘May Mercur roll in your favour,’ said Smythe, invoking one of the upworlder gods of luck.

  Touched, she smiled faintly. ‘In Tombtown, we say: “Don’t die”.’

  As the door clicked shut behind her, she heard him echo the words, sounding a little bit lost.

  The only good adventurer is an undead adventurer.

  ~Tombtown proverb

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AN ENCOUNTER

  She set off through the dusty tunnels, pinning her hood to her hair. The journey to the Lich’s wing would take a few days from here, and to get to the therianthrope tableau she would have to explore passages she had never visited before, knowing the Lich would kill her if it found her.

  Without the chill bite of her father’s magic against her heart, she felt more vulnerable than she ever had before. She knew she ought to be cautious, worried even, but for the first time in so many long years of study, she had a lead. Real, tangible proof that therianthropy existed, was even exalted. Her entire body hummed with anticipation at the thought.

  She found a stone-carved ladder leading to a raised crawl-space and hauled herself up, her mind still spinning with possibilities. She imagined putting on a therianskin and the strange, amorphous feeling of shapeshifting. Her knee scraped a sharp rock, but she hardly noticed. Would it feel like being crushed, or would it be more fluid and gentle? Was therianthropy cold like necromancy, or warm like healing?

  She travelled until her feet grew sore and then more still, fingertips trailing walls of mossy stone and cracked marble, her mind living at her destination. Every now and then she would surface enough from her excitement to check her map, but all was on course.

  She managed to avoid the more dangerous chambers and passages. She passed sleepy corpses stacked on shelves and skeletal guardians that barely creaked as she went by. But as she turned the corner into a narrow brick corridor, a creature shuffled out from the shadows. Her hand went to her pouch until she recognised the familiar grey skin and lolling mouth.

  ‘Larry,’ she said gently. He gargled at her and bumped against her shoulder. ‘I thought you were with Usther. Did she send you away again?’ She patted his cheek. When she set off down the passage, he followed.

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful you’re coming with me. You sort of saved my life, too. With the Lich, I mean.’ It was strange to hear her own voice after hours of silence, but she found she was glad to have someone to talk to. Sometimes, it could get too intense inside her own head.

  Larry nodded, then nodded again, and again. Ree reached up to steady his head and his twitchings stilled. They turned onto a spiral staircase. She smiled at him, and helped him over a broken step.

  ‘Where do you even come from?’ It was an old question that she often asked him, as if he could answer back. An unsolved mystery that irked her, when she had time to consider it. ‘I heard Kylath estimate that you’re more than five hundred years old. I never heard of a necromancer older than two-fifty. How are you still going?’

  Larry walked into a stone pillar. He howled, then walked into it again. Before he could start scratching at it, Ree tugged him aside so that his path was clear.

  She checked her suneye, and the treated eyeball rolled on her palm until it was looking straight at the floor. ‘It’s getting late,’ Ree said, surprised. She had been too lost in thought to keep track, but now that she knew it, all the aches of the day rushed her all at once, clamouring for attention. ‘We can head for the Hall of Statues to rest, I think there’s —’’

  Ree walked through a doorway and froze. Two men wearing hard leather stood at the centre of a lesser tomb. One had a bow on his back; the other had his boot against the chest of a lesser dead. He kicked the body away, freeing his sword.

  Ree ducked to one side of the doorway, dragging Larry after her.

  ‘Shh!’ She put a finger to her lips.

  ‘That all of them?’ asked the archer.

  The swordsman nodded. He wiped his blade on the corpses shirt, then examined it by torchlight. ‘For now. This place is crawling with undead. You get the piece?’

  The archer chuckled and hefted a gleaming crown. Ree’s hand went to her chest: It was from one of the sacred queens. ‘Took it right from its withered old head. I was out before it noticed I was there. Made a godsawful racket as I left.’

  The swordsman sheathed his sword and seized the crown, turning it over in his hands. He whistled.

  ‘You see any necros?’ asked the archer.

  Ree sucked in a breath.

  ‘None yet. Gotta be one here somewhere waking up these bloody corpses, right? I mean: the dead don’t just wake themselves.’

  They did. They woke themselves all the time. The presence of so much dead in one place was its own source of necromantic power — all that magic had to go somewhere, and it went right back into the bodies that formed it. Most often, they woke when someone like them went stomping around, stealing their things and desecrating their graves.

  She was nearly delirious with relief that they hadn’t found anyone: adventurers accounted for nearly every death in town. She gripped the stone doorway with white-knuckled fingers.

  ‘This enough to head back?’ He waved the crown.

  She thought of the sleeping queen, woken in rage and despair as its grave was desecrated. The only sure way to put it back to sleep would be to return its crown.

  That was a geas from Morrin and a teaching from her mother: to tend the dead, to respect them, and to let them rest until needed.

  ‘Not just yet.’ The archer stretched. ‘I’ve got another day or so of looting left in me. You wanna try that weird room with all the paintings again?’

  ‘The one with the ghosts? You’re having a laugh!’

  One hit the other on the shoulder and together, they left the room. Ree hovered in the doorway a moment, caught between her mother, who demanded the dead were respected, and her father, who thought Ree was too useless to put herself in danger.

  But she wasn’t useless, and this was her home they were pilfering. It would be bad for the tomb if the queen was awake and angry — many of the sacred queens had been necromancers of untold power, and their corpses still carried that
magic.

  If they caught her, they would kill her. She might look almost like an upworlder to the other denizens, but her first encounter with Smythe had made it very clear to her how much of a denizen she truly looked.

  But she was the most careful and the most quiet of any she knew. The promise of the tableau pulled at her, but this would surely be only a few hours out of her way. Maybe her father would just kill these adventurers, or drive them out, but Ree could protect the crypt in her own way. She could put right what they set wrong.

  She hesitated for one moment more, then hurried after the adventurers, keeping low and sticking to the shadows, her soft-soled boots making barely a whisper on the ground.

  She followed them for two hours, seeking her moment. She watched them from around corners, peered up through gratings in the floor, and down from balconies and beams. They were disgusting, and brash, and obsessed with treasure. They talked of little but the liquor they would buy and the fame they would gain. Ree liked them less with every hour, and dreaded them running into a lonely acolyte or weaker practitioner, but it seemed she was the only denizen to find them. Always, she looked out for her opportunity, but the swordsman kept the crown looped through his belt and the archer was ever watchful.

  At last, in an embalming room east of the town, they settled down for the night. They shucked their packs, laid out their bedrolls, and lulled each other to sleep with lude jokes and promises of wealth.

  She waited until their breathing was long and slow, and crept out from the shadows. The swordsman’s belt was off, the crown resting between them as they slept. Ree edged toward it, wrinkling her nose at the stench of sweat that clung to them.

  She crouched and, ever so carefully, lifted the crown from the stone floor.

  ‘You!’ A hand seized her wrist. Panic jolted Ree. The archer snarled into her face as her insides froze solid. ‘I got one, Erik!’ Silver flashed in his other hand.

  Ree managed to gasp, ‘Please! Don’t—’ before the knife plunged twice and pain spread like fire. The archer kicked her to the floor as hot blood soaked across her belly. She clutched it, huddling around the pain.

  She watched red spread beneath her fingers. That was her, she thought numbly as the adventurers scrambled to their feet. That was her blood. She took one hand away and stared at the thick crimson coating it. She started to shake. Pain rolled over her in wave after wave. She coughed and sobbed and each movement was agony.

  The swordsman moved to stab her, but the archer waved him off. ‘I’ll do it. You never know if these bastards have some kind of death curse hanging over them.’ While Ree shivered on the floor, he strung his bow.

  ‘Please,’ Ree croaked. Her mouth was dry, the words would barely come. She tried to find some sympathy in the archer’s eyes as he knocked an arrow. There was none. ‘I’m not — I didn’t — I only —’

  The archer drew. Ree stared down the arrow. Feebly, she tried to crawl away, still huddled over her bleeding stomach.

  The archer frowned and spun. ‘And there’s her minion.’

  Ree followed his gaze. Larry ambled through the door. He saw Ree bleeding on the ground, made an excited noise, and stumbled toward her.

  ‘Larry,’ Ree gasped. Her vision swam. ‘’Get help. Get Pa —’

  The archer loosed; Larry flew back. He hit the wall and crumpled, an arrow between his eyes.

  Scrying is an important part of the character and communication of Tombtown. The town itself is shielded from scrying by Namura’s Ward, and scrying is the main way of family members checking in with one another across distances or for cabals to keep tabs on each other.

  Due to the (largely justified) fear of scrying, most denizens wear charms or talismans that prevent scrying, removing them when they wish to communicate. Scrying is a simple ritual rarely requiring more than a bowl of water and a drop of blood.

  But if I may comment, it seems strange that scrying should fall under the necromantic domain. One must wonder: why blood? And how is the connection made?

  Is there something greater at work than a simple spell of communication?

  But I digress.

  ~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE GODS WAIT

  ‘She’s still alive.’ A figure crouched in her vision. He smelled of blood. No. She smelled of blood. It caked her hands and leaked from her abdomen, killing her as surely as the Lich’s curse.

  ‘I’ll slit her throat.’

  Ree shuddered, which turned into a shiver, which turned into a spasm. She curled around her stomach, pain electrifying her nerves.

  ‘No! Hold on. I have a better idea.’ He leaned into Ree’s vision.

  ‘Don’t —’ It hurt to speak. ‘Please —’

  He pressed something to her stomach and Ree screamed and thrashed as the pain tripled. The man covered her mouth. ‘You be quiet you little —’

  Ree bit his hand.

  ‘— Aargh!’

  But he didn’t remove his hand. She could smell the stench of him, taste his gritty sweat in her mouth. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to cry.

  ‘Look at me.’ He half-growled the words. Ree’s eyes went to his loutish, dirt-stained face, then drifted past him. Larry still lay limply against the wall. She half-expected him to lurch up, gargling and howling, but he was terribly, horribly still. Ree closed her eyes.

  Fingers dug into her cheeks. ‘Look at me or I kill you right now.’

  Ree looked. If she’d had the energy, she’d have recoiled from the raw aggression in his eyes. But the pain was dulling; she could focus. It took her a moment to form the words, ‘What do you want?’

  The man, the archer, smirked. ‘I want you to tell me where to find the best loot in this place. If you tell me, then this healing balm I’ve pressed on your wound? I’ll give you more of it. I’ll spare your life.’ His eyes burned with greed. ‘Just tell me what I want to know. And none of your necromancer’s tricks.’

  Ree’s eyes moved down, to the potion-soaked rag he’d pressed to her abdomen. It was dulling the pain in her abdomen effectively, but there was no way it had enough power to fully heal her. One way or another, she’d die of her wounds.

  But if she could keep them talking, she’d live just a little longer. ‘I’m not a necromancer,’ she told them.

  The swordsman snorted, drawing her attention. ‘Black robe. Ugly as a corpse. Sure look like a necro to me. Besides, how do you explain that?’ He jerked his thumb at Larry’s broken body.

  Ree tried to say ‘He’s my friend,’ but the words dried up in her mouth.

  She needed to focus. She flexed her fingers; the accompanying flash brought painful clarity. If she gave them what they wanted, they would kill her. She had no doubt about that. But if she stalled them too long, they would kill her as well.

  Better to die later than die now. It would have to be a calculated risk. She drew a shuddering breath. ‘I’m not telling you anything.’

  The archer backhanded her; spittle flew from her mouth. She thought she’d chosen wrong, that he would kill her then regardless, but the swordsman grabbed the archer’s shoulder. ‘Hold on, hold on! You hear that?’

  The archer looked at Ree, then at the door. Groaning, shuffling feet. The sound of a pack of minions.

  Hope flared.

  ‘Shit! It’s not her, is it?’

  Ree gave him her best Usther-like expression, difficult with her lifeblood leaking through a hole in her abdomen. ‘Do I look like I can cast spells?’ she rasped.

  The archer raised his knife. Ree shuddered, and kept shuddering. Fear was like ice in her veins. She didn’t want to die.

  He lowered it again. ‘Tie her up. We’re taking her with us.’

  She almost wished they would make up their minds. She was dizzy with adrenaline and hope and fear.

  ‘She’s not got long left. We should leave her for the corpses to chew on.’

  ‘She’s a necro. She’s valuable. Now tie
her up!’

  The rope was coarse and abrasive on her wrists, but that was nothing to the feeling of the swordsman’s shoulder digging into her belly.

  As horrifying as her situation was, one thought consumed her: who?

  It might be a random practitioner, out on their own business. They might never even realise she was here, but if she called out, the adventurers would certainly kill her.

  Or it might be someone looking for her. Usther, or Ree’s father. If so, they would follow, and Ree needed to do everything in her power to stay alive until they found her.

  The adventurers packed up quickly and jogged away. Each step was agony for Ree, but she gritted her teeth as she bobbed against the swordsman’s sweaty back. Her eyes were fixed on Larry’s limp corpse as they left.

  He was dead. He’d been dead for years, and yet this was suddenly and shockingly different. A lesser minion could not survive the destruction of the brain. His loss hollowed her, but she had no time to mourn. No time to remember him, as he deserved.

  The world was a haze of cracked stone and mossy brick; she had no idea where she was, or how many turns they had taken.

  They stopped several times — for the swordsman to complain, for the archer to put more of his potion on her wound. Ree felt like she was being stretched, like she was a thin sheet of flesh and nerves, with fire playing over the surface. But each application of the potion made her head a little clearer, even if it did little for the narrow, hateful wounds in her abdomen.

  At length, the swordsman slung her into a corner like a sack of potatoes. She gasped; the stone jarred her bones and sent pain ricocheting through her body.

  She thought they would interrogate her then, but their faces were pale and drawn from a day of running. They set about setting up their little camp, lighting a fire, slinging down bedrolls and tearing into their rations. The smell of bread and salted pork made Ree want to vomit, though she’d gone the whole day without a proper meal.