by Deck Davis
It was now that York looked at Jakub and there seemed to be recognition in his stare. Jakub wondered if the hunter remembered their brief chats all those years ago, and whether they’d made as much of an impression on him as they had on Jakub.
Sometimes it happened like that, didn’t it? Bonds could spark in a second, friendships could come and go in a week but have an impact for a lifetime.
“Jack?” said York. “That you?”
Jakub put his soul necklace back inside his shirt and fastened a button. “Close. Jakub.”
“I know your face.”
“We met once, a while ago,” said Jakub. “Turns out I’ve got a lot to thank you for.”
York sat up. He patted his chest, poking and prodding his skin as if it wasn’t his but belonged to someone else. Confusion sat heavy on his expression.
“Necromancy,” said Jakub. “I have a spell that can heal.”
“You’re the lad from the academy!”
“The very same.”
“What in all the hells are you doing out here, lad? School trip?”
Jakub grinned. “I left the academy years ago. This was a…uh…I’m not sure what you’d call it.”
“A fool’s errand into the most inhospitable arsehole in the queendom,” said York. “And I should know all about that. That’s how you wind up half-dead with a bear on top of you.”
“I understand the feeling. Only, mine was a bison, not a bear. Can you walk?”
York glanced at his foe now. He stared at the bear for a good ten seconds, and by the end his eyes were watery. “I remember a little of necromancy,” he said. “As I recall, I trapped a rabbit, and you spoke your little words and sapped the soul out of it. Is that what you did to my friend here?”
“I used the bear’s essence to heal you.”
“Huh. What a thing that is.”
Jakub held his hand out and York clasped it stronger than he expected, and rather than Jakub helping the hunter to his feet, the hunter almost dragged him down. Jakub dug in and tensed his calves and finally, the hunter was up and standing.
“Oh hells,” he said, looking at the carnage around him.
“I suppose you don’t know what’s happened here. I better explain,” said Jakub.
“Explain when we’re on our way out of here, lad. I take it we have transport?”
Ah. Transport. The missing horses. The problem resurfaced in his mind, only he had a solution now.
“Follow me,” he said.
CHAPTER 41
“You reckon that’s about big enough for a bear?” asked York, wiping sweat from his forehead “By all the gods’ hairy arses, I haven’t worked so hard in a long time.”
He held a shovel in his left hand, though despite his sweat, he’d barely used it. Jakub didn’t blame him. If he was that age and had only survived a bear attack after being doused in necromancial magic, he wouldn’t be digging graves, either. He wasn’t going to mention the fact that York hadn’t helped much.
Jakub had the other shovel, and this one was encrusted with dirt. The tools had once been used to dig holes for the slavers to piss and shit in, but now they were set to a more dignified purpose; making a grave for a great beast.
“Think I could have a moment alone?” said York.
Jakub eyed the dead bear and the grave and he thought he understood. “Sure.”
He walked a few paces away, and he saw the old hunter sitting next to the old bear with his hand on its furry chest. His lips moved but Jakub couldn’t hear the words, and he felt like he shouldn’t try.
Alone, he finally checked his necromancy levels. During the battle, he’d drained and used more essence than ever before, and the effort had exhausted him beyond a physical level and deep down into his being, and it’d be a few moons before he recovered from that.
Even so, raising an undead slaver army was very rewarding according to his experience bar. He could hardly believe the jump.
EXP to next lvl: [IIIIIIII ]
It wasn’t long since he reached the second level of journeyman, and he was already almost halfway to level three! Where Toil hadn’t been kind to his body, it had definitely helped refine his necromancy, even if he was painting his spellbook in a darker shade than he’d have liked.
He wasn’t too far from the journeyman level 3 rank now. And just one level up after that…
Wow. He was almost an expert-ranked necromancer. He could barely comprehend it, and he couldn’t believe how much it excited him.
That was the most thrilling part. When he’d joined Gunar’s caravan, he wanted to get away from the academy. To use his necromancy as little as possible. Sure, he’d resurrect a bison here and there, but he’d banked on miles and miles of doing anything other than necromancy.
So, to feel like he did now…was this what it felt like when old passions returned?
He looked right and saw that York was still sitting next to the dead bear, and his thoughts turned to Ben. It was stupid to even think it, but he missed him.
It almost made him laugh. A dead bison brought back to a semi-life by necromancy. A sack of flesh and muscle with no soul, and yet Jakub felt a panging in his stomach when he thought of him. He imagined Ben sitting by the dunes, waiting for him.
He gave a mental command, severing his reanimation link to the bison. His soul would never go to the afterlife, Jakub had robbed him of that, but at least his body could rest.
Later that evening, after packing everything that could be used or consumed into crates and loading them onto on side of the now-righted wagon, the survivors of the Toil Lusk Massacre climbed aboard and sat back as the wheels turned and carried them away from camp and northeast, toward an old province called New Sanzance. Riches didn’t await them there, but none of them cared about that now.
They traveled this way for many moons, gathering food and water whenever the opportunity arose. The going was slower than with most wagons, but then, this wagon wasn’t being pulled by horses.
Jakub and York always sat at the front in the driver’s compartment, and they watched as thirteen undead slavers pulled Helena and her people across the desert.
“They say fortune is a wheel,” said York, “and once it turns it doesn’t stop until it has gone full circle.”
Jakub was about to answer when he sensed somehow peering over the driver’s compartment. Helena was there, scowling. “Nothing fortunate about this,” she said.
He was going to query her but she disappeared, and he didn’t have the energy to go ask what was wrong.
The slavers, attached to each other and the wagon by ropes, pulled the caravaners for miles and miles across the desert. Being undead, they did not need rest, water, food, or shade. Even as they watched their former captors drag them to safety the caravaners didn’t feel any joy in the change of situation. They were empathetic people, and even if they weren’t, the residual shock of the night before stopped them smiling.
Only the mercenaries seemed like their former selves. Matthias and the few other men who made it through the evening of blood spoke in hushed tones about where they would go next, about which lords were said to be offering gold for their services.
“I’m finding a nice quiet town,” said Matthias. “Gonna get a smithy to melt my sword and armor down. Find a girl who loves a flickering fire and cozying up. Needs to be somewhere quiet.”
“Somewhere cold,” said another.
“Somewhere it rains all the feckin’ time. I want so much rain I grow gills.”
Helena spent her time with Beate curled up next to her and with blank parchment binding on her lap. Lacking ink, she wrote using bits of charcoal she’d taken from around the camp, and she wrote down the names of every person who’d set out with them to Toil, living or dead.
“We’ve nothing to sell in Sanzance,” she told her people. “But I’ll square things with you eventually. All of you. You’ll get what you’re owed.”
Some muttered that she need not do it, that she’d already lost e
nough with Gunar gone. Others stayed silent. Others still thought they were owed more than promised, but they had the sense not to say it yet.
“Hang on a second,” said Helena, looking at the people in the wagon. “Twenty of us are here, but I only have seventeen names.”
“Have you counted the necromancer and the old man?”
Helena prodded the paper. “Written and writ.” She stood up and looked from face to face, suspicion creeping into her expression.
And then a man stood up. He drew a young boy up with him, holding him by the throat.
The man’s sleeve fell to his elbow, revealing a slaver tattoo on his forearm.
“One squeeze and his throat will burst like an overripe tomato,” he said.
“It seems some of our former hosts have decided to travel with us,” said Helena. “I want every single person on this wagon to raise both their arms in the air and show me bare skin.”
“If a single arm gets raised I’ll crush this little bastard’s bones.”
Jakub, watching through the wooden slats in the driver compartment, couldn’t believe the gall of the slaver. He’d stowed away, hiding his tattoo and hoping to pass as one of the caravaners until they reached Sanzance. And now, after everything, he wouldn’t give up.
Incensed, Jakub slowly pushed his hand through the slats. He did this with as much stealth as he could. Then, with the slaver backed up close to him, he placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.
A noxious green light and an aroma of rot spread from Jakub’s fingertips and onto the slaver’s shoulder. It drifted until it found bare skin, spreading over his neck and down his sleeves to his hand.
The slaver cried in pain as Wilting Touch corrupted him. His affected flesh turned grey and then black, and the wagon filled with the smell of singed hair and rotten skin.
A mother grabbed her little boy and the folks gathered together, away from the slaver who now slouched down onto his arse and held his blackened hand against his chest and mumbled to himself like a child. A teenage boy, the one who had helped Jakub get York free, gagged on the smell.
Stop, commanded Jakub to his undead slavers, and the wagon wheels ceased turning.
“Helena’s going to see all of your arms,” he said. “Anyone who resists gets the same touch as this man.”
There was no resistance after that, and remaining rogue slavers were found. An old sailor-turned-wagon-driver named Wagner tied their hands and feet and then Jakub set the wagon rolling again.
One evening, when the rocky hills that hid New Sanzance finally appeared in the distance, the wagon stopped to rest.
Jakub and York had talked together every day now, sharing stories with each mile they traveled. It was a stupid thought to have, but he almost didn’t want the trek through Toil to end, because he knew their paths would split once they left the desert behind.
“Had any thoughts about what’s next?” said Jakub.
York stoked his stubbled face. “I reckon I’d get a good price for my house and all my trophies. Skulls, bones, furs, teeth. Don’t need any of those prizes anymore, and I’ve got a feeling I can get enough of a bounty to reach the Peppen Isles.”
“Across the sea? Why the hell would you want there?”
“Got family who want me there. Course they don’t know they want me there yet, but I’m hoping a little persistence will change that. I’ll be heading’ Dispolis way if you want to travel together some. We’ll have to give our goodbyes when the road splits at Malakai’s Creek. You can take it north to the academy, and I’ll be goin’ south.”
“I’m not headed back to…”
Jakub paused then. For the last few months, whenever anyone learned he was a necromancer and asked if he served the queen’s academy, it had become a reflex to deny any association with them.
People always asked if he’d ever served on the queen’s lines like some of the necromancers that bards sang about. When people met soldiers they usually asked them “So, have you ever killed anyone?” When they met a necromancer, the question always became “So, have you ever resurrected anyone?”
But you had to earn the master rank to be able to resurrect a person. Since leaving the academy, Jakub had just accepted that would never happen.
“There’s a college near Sanzance,” said York. “Might be worth you taking a look. It’s queendom affiliated, so I hear, but not funded like your academy. Might be a good place to find work.”
“Perhaps.”
“Unless, of course, you want to carry on traveling around the queendom and lying to yourself.”
York was right. Jakub knew that now. Necromancy, as corrupted as his spellbook was becoming, was a gift. Some would have given their souls to have his gift, and others that would have begged to be able to wield his spells for good. Maybe Jakub owed it to the queendom to learn to use it properly.
He was about to reply when a voice cried out.
“Sanzance! There she is! That’s one bronze you all owe me.”
Jakub recognized the face that owned the voice; it was one of the spotters from the caravan, a young lad with a cheerful disposition and who had first pointed out Equipoint Rock in what seemed like another age.
Seeing the towers of Sanzance peak over the hills broke something in the travelers. It was a torrent of water that washed away the tension and the horror, and one man began to sing in a low voice.
“Oh give me a whore from New Sanzance,
I’ll sup and joke and watch her dance…”
Someone threw a scattering of grain at him. “Shut up, Matthias,” said a woman.
The caravaners were silent then, each of them staring out, some at the desert and others at the settlement ahead of them.
CHAPTER 42
New Sanzance was built on the ruins of Old Sanzance, yet the townsfolk kept part of their old, ruined settlement excavated. They displayed it for the travelers that rarely visited, along with plaques explaining how dry lightning had once ignited a sulfur deposit below the ground, killing hundreds and burying them in rocks. It made for a cheerful place.
Memories of their fallen ancestors seemed to permeate the Sanzancers’ moods and Jakub found them to be a somber but helpful people. At first sight of the wagon, they had sent riders out on two-humped horses to meet them and see their identities and condition.
Once those facts were established, two dozen riders came and took each caravaners into town on horseback, and there they were given food, water, and a bed. No questions were asked at all, and Helena’s people slept soundly for the first time in weeks.
The Sanzancers lived in strange dwellings. Some were homes sculpted from clay and blasted with heat to harden them, others were places they carved out of the surrounding rocky hills. At night lamp lights glowed from these alcoves and it made the place look magical.
There was many a night that Jakub sat under the stars with a wine or a beer and he’d soak in the atmosphere and tell himself that he would leave in the morning, that he’d set back to the academy at first light. And then dawn broke and he bargained with himself, promising just one more night in this beautiful place and he would go.
Some of the townsfolk here took a while to warm to him, others never did. At first, Jakub thought it was because he was a stranger, but Helena’s people seemed to fit in so that couldn’t have been it. It was only when he asked York about it that the hunter said, “Go find a mirror.”
Lacking an actual mirror, Jakub found the most reflective metal tray he could, and he polished it until he saw a warped version of his own reflection.
He dropped the tray, and the clatter brought a worried Sanzancer in to check on him. “Everything okay, mancer, sir?”
Jakub could hardly answer. His reflection stole his words from him. First, his nose was a mess from where the coyote had caught him weeks ago. Looks had never been all that important to him, and that was a good thing now.
But his nose wasn’t the worst.
He knew that using his Raiser shade spells had co
rrupted him; he’d read the text in his level up and knew he had changed, but he wasn’t prepared for the reality.
His pale skin and his dim red eyes. He looked like the night stalkers drawn in adventure books, the people of the moonlight and shadows who would scour city streets at night and search for blood.
He could only begin to comprehend what this would mean to his life now. He was marked, and some people would act just like a scattering of the Sanzancers had; with suspicion and fear.
The academy instructors would be disappointed, but at least they would listen to his explanations. Who knew, maybe there was a way to balance the corruption? If he used his lighter necromancy powers, if he used them to help, perhaps that would change it.
Questions for another day, in another place. He told himself that again and again, and he tried to let his mind rest a little.
During the days he would help out around the village wherever he could, and this rarely involved necromancy. Mostly he helped the townsfolk fish from the dockside, mine rocks in a nearby quarry, or chop wood and carry the lumber to a mill outside of town.
Every so often one of Helena’s people asked to speak with him, and they’d thank him for how he’d helped them. Jakub told them there was no need for thanks, but inside each word of appreciation made him glow, and he felt surer now that going back to the academy was the right thing, that his necromancy had better uses than resurrecting a trader’s bison. Helena was the only one of the caravaners who never approached him.
Those days of labor and nights under the stars were precious to Jakub, all the more so because he knew it couldn’t last forever no matter how much he kept making bargains with himself.
It was York who finally broke these incessant internal negotiations. The hunter sold his crossbow to a trader and bought two mules with the gold, along with enough dry supplies and water to make the journey away from Sanzance. They would go far around the edges of Suntoil, and then onto Queen’s Head Road which would eventually lead to the queen’s roadways.
