Death's Avenger

by Charlotte E. English

  She ignored this. ‘Well?’ she said to his serpents. ‘What shall it be?’

  Konrad tried to resign himself to disaster. Try though she might, she could not hold him forever. It must tire her to keep him bound this way, and sooner or later he would wrest himself free. He only hoped she would not do too much damage in the interval.

  But to his immense surprise, Eetapi said, in a shivery whisper, Very well.

  He was, for an instant, surprised into silence. Loyalty? From the serpents? Did they not rebel against his every order? Had they not argued with every syllable he had ever uttered, mocked him for his every mistake and delighted in his every failure? If one Malykant came to grief, The Malykt would soon install another. That was the way of it.

  Eetapi, he said. Ootapi, you must not.

  They did not hear him, trapped as he was behind the curtain of Olya’s iron will. That, or they chose to ignore him. They heaved a twin sigh, their pale, half-manifested forms flickering.

  Quite what they did, Konrad was in no position to detect. That it cost them greatly, he could well imagine; time passed, and shadows began to roil about their coiled forms.

  Eetapi screamed something in a tongue Konrad had never known.

  Then a third ghostly presence materialised by slow degrees: male, aged and furious. Cold radiated off the spirit of Jakub Vasilescu, turning the stone floor to ice at his feet.

  ‘Dedushka,’ breathed Olya. ‘How I have missed you.’

  The wraith that was Jakub stared down at Konrad, his expression more malevolent than pleased. It was not his many-times-removed great granddaughter he saw kneeling at his feet, but the dispossessed Malykant. ‘It is fit,’ he said in a wintry voice.

  Then Olya addressed Konrad again, silently this time, and the bands of pain tightened around him. Malykant, you will raise him.

  I cannot, gasped Konrad.

  These words brought instant punishment: agony wracked his tortured spirit. He screamed, and for a few blissful moments lost consciousness.

  He was brutally shaken awake. A lie, hissed Olya. Have you not, alone among all mankind, died and risen and died and risen again?

  Distantly, Konrad wondered how she knew anything about it. How long had these abominable cultists been researching his doings, spying upon his escapades, and laying their revolting plans?

  That is the truth, he admitted. But it is not by my own will that I am raised. It is no power granted to me, or to any woman or man. Only the Great Spirits can restore true life.

  Still you lie, she snapped. This cannot be the truth. She spoke, then, aloud, lifting Konrad’s arm to point at grey-faced Lev and wan Anichka. ‘One of them shall raise him, then. Are not the very best practitioners admitted into The Malykt’s Order?’

  Lev and Anichka stared back at her, glassy-eyed. Konrad could imagine a similar battle going on in each of their minds with those who held them in thrall. For a moment Anichka looked likely to break free; her eyes narrowed, she gave a tearing gasp, and her possessed body broke for the door.

  It did not last long. Her growl of rage became a scream of torment, and she collapsed.

  All this Jakub beheld with the air of a disdainful lord. And is this the best that you have to offer? My descendants’ wits have weakened along with our blood.

  ‘Why!’ screamed Olya with Konrad’s voice. Why, she snarled again inside his mind. Why will none of you aid me?

  Another wave of shattering pain accompanied these words, and Konrad’s senses deserted him again. Because, he gasped, because we cannot. What manner of necromancer are you, that you believe the fundamental laws may be so easily broken? It is given to none of us to restore anything but a semblance of life to dead flesh. Replacing parts of the body with living tissue is of no use whatsoever. Nature cannot be tricked. Your plan has failed.

  The solution, said Jakub silkily, is obvious.

  Konrad did not at all like the satisfied smile that wreathed the wraith’s ethereal face.

  ‘What solution?’ whispered Olya.

  If it must be living flesh, there is plenty of that to hand.

  He looked right into Konrad’s stolen eyes as he spoke.

  Abandon this old shell of mine, he ordered Olya. What use is it to me, when I might have a younger, stronger frame instead? I shall have this one. His smile widened.

  Konrad had no time to prepare himself. Jakub struck at once, and after a brief, surprised interval, his granddaughter joined him.

  And it was done, with extraordinary ease. In the same way that one might, with clever timing, send a tumbler spinning to the ground with a very little pressure, so Konrad’s consciousness was somersaulted out of his own body. A push from the one; a tug from the other; and Konrad was bodiless, shivering near the ceiling, made a wraith in Jakub’s place.

  He watched, helpless, as Konrad-that-was rose to his feet. The erstwhile wraith’s repulsive smile was translated to Konrad’s own face; he hated the way that grin stretched his familiar lips, hated the way his own dark eyes burned with a monstrous glee he had never been guilty of himself — not even at his very worst moments.

  Jakub stretched, rolled the shoulders of his fine new body, and nodded his satisfaction. ‘It shall suit me admirably,’ he said, and even Konrad’s voice sounded different; lighter, darker, deeper, anything but his own.

  His head tilted to look up, up at the ceiling, where Konrad’s shocked spirit clung. ‘Enjoyable, is it not?’ he said, the smile fading. ‘A century or two in that state and you, too, will trade anything at all to reverse the events of this day.’

  It would not take anywhere near so long as a century. Konrad screamed his frustration and dove, intent upon thrusting Jakub out of his stolen limbs and reclaiming his own self without an instant’s delay.

  To his humiliation, Jakub fended off this ill-judged attack with ease. And laughter. ‘You forget!’ he called, with offensive joviality. ‘I have a great deal of experience at the incorporeal state, while you have none at all.’

  This was inarguable. Konrad had enough to do to keep himself together; what was left of his being sought to dissolve into tatters and stream away, leaving him blessedly insensate. He recalled how often he had instructed his serpents to collect and bind just such a beleaguered spirit, a soul too shocked, appalled and frightened to manage the process for itself.

  What was worse, an insistent part of himself fought the necessity, for the prospect of oblivion interested him more than he could ever have expected.

  Jakub walked away. ‘Come, Olya,’ he called, and to Konrad’s horror it was Anichka who answered the summons, falling into step behind her grandfather with none of the awkward gait of before. She walked fluidly, confidently, her carriage different from the Anichka he knew.

  He cast around blindly, and soon saw her: another recently dispossessed ghost like himself, curled into a tight ball in a corner of the ceiling. She was doing better work than he: her spirit-self shone brightly, subject to none of the deterioration he fought in himself.

  This was what it meant to be among the greatest living necromancers, he supposed. Her talents far exceeded his own there.

  Master, hissed Eetapi from somewhere far too close by. What are you doing on the ceiling?

  Chapter Eight

  Bind me up, Konrad ordered his serpents. I cannot do this alone.

  But, Master—

  No questions! I will fray to ribbons before I can answer them.

  Yes, Master.

  Konrad’s relief was short-lived. He discovered, by the most unpleasant means imaginable, how repulsive a process it was to be bound back to wholeness and coherence by his serpents.

  I find that I have had enough of pain for the present, he said tightly as the wretches brutalised his fragile shade. It is not possible to be fractionally more gentle, I suppose?

  How full of complaints you are, Master, Eetapi returned with a depressing lack of sympathy. Had you rather be ribbons?

  Yes. Forget it, let me have oblivion—

 
; No. That was Ootapi, cold as winter and approximately as comforting.

  Konrad resigned himself, once again, to suffering.

  But when the process was complete, it brought a cessation of the struggle which had, in so short a space of time, already threatened to overwhelm him. There was peace enough in that, and he felt able to relax.

  A little.

  Anichka uncurled herself and hung for a moment, emanating a peaceful white light. Serenity itself. Lev, she said, and streamed away floorwards.

  The body of Lev Antonov had not been claimed. He lay insensible, his face an unhealthy shade of grey. Was he breathing? Konrad trailed down after Anichka, his wits distracted and disordered by the very strangeness of his predicament. To move in so many directions at once was disorienting; no more mere forward or backward, left or right. He might now go anywhere he pleased, but could not immediately master the means.

  At length, after only a little embarrassing error, he contrived to arrive at Anichka’s elbow. So to speak.

  You are not very good at this, are you? said Eetapi.

  It is my first time as a ghost.

  That is patently obvious.

  Whatever Anichka was doing to Lev did not look pleasant either. His big body shuddered and convulsed, his eyes bulging from his grey face, his mouth stretching in a silent scream. But he breathed; and when, after a minute or two of this treatment, he struggled to a sitting posture and bellowed, ‘Enough!’ Anichka retreated with a glow of satisfaction.

  His attempts to stand did not fare so well. He made it halfway, then staggered and abruptly sat back down again, shaking his head. ‘I see we are vanquished.’

  No! said Konrad. This is a setback, nothing more.

  Lev looked dubiously Konrad’s way. ‘Have you been ghosted before?’

  Never.

  ‘Well, I have. It is no easy matter to reverse it.’

  Easy. Konrad paused a moment to reflect. I distantly remember the days when things were occasionally easy.

  Lev nodded acceptance of this unanswerable point, and regarded Anichka instead. ‘What has become of the others?’

  I do not know, she answered.

  I think they were locked in, Konrad said. With the buffet of bodies.

  Eetapi glowed with approval at Konrad’s choice of words, which caused him instantly to regret them. You proceed apace, Master.

  He did. Was it the state of having passed beyond death that dulled a person’s reason and sensitivity? Then again, Konrad had not died, precisely. What was he now? Neither living nor dead nor undead? An uncomfortable state.

  Anichka bore it with serenity, however, and therefore so must he.

  Lev forced himself to his feet, successfully this time, and managed a creditable stagger in the direction of the door. His entourage of spirits, Konrad included, followed.

  How frustrating, Konrad soon saw, to be a ghost. He outstripped Lev’s pace with ease and went sailing ahead; but when he reached the threshold of the cavern in which Nanda was in all probability imprisoned, he found a closed door impeding his progress.

  As a man (at the height of his powers), he need only have reached out and touched the lock, then turned the handle, and in they would go.

  As a shade, he was forced to wait for Lev to perform all the action for him. Had such impotence driven Jakub mad? Then again, that man bore all the signs of having been plenty mad enough already.

  You can go through it, Master, said Ootapi, demonstrating this point. You do know that?

  Yes, he said testily, though in fact the idea had not occurred to him. But Nanda cannot.

  Oh.

  You see the difficulty.

  It is an obstacle.

  The locked door gave Lev pause, but only for a moment. Just as Konrad was reflecting on where Tasha, with her lockpicking skills, might have got to, Lev lifted a booted foot and delivered a shattering kick to the door. Three more achieved the objective: the wood, solid oak, held, but the hinges did not. The door fell inwards.

  Several faces stared back at them from the other side. Nanda was ashen, but resolved; Alexander wore a puzzled, troubled look; Diana looked enraged.

  Tasha was nowhere in evidence.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Nanda, upon beholding (as far as she could see) only Lev. ‘Where’s Konrad?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Lev brutally. At Nanda’s appalled expression, he amended the statement to: ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Anichka?’ said Diana.

  ‘The same.’

  Never had Konrad endured a greater sense of frustration than to see Nanda so distressed, and be unable even to speak to her. He tried. Nan, I am here! Not dead. Lev exaggerates, the brute. It is true that I no longer live either, precisely, but the matter is by no means as serious as all that. Can you hear me? Nan?

  She could not, nor could she see him. Her eyes remained fixed upon Lev’s face as he delivered a brief account of all that had happened since Konrad, Anichka and Lev had left the chamber. Nothing that he said appeared to ease Nanda’s distress, though it did incite her fury.

  Diana simmered with such anger, he could almost see it radiating from her. ‘Right,’ she said, tight-lipped, once Lev’s account was complete. ‘I have had enough of this coven.’

  As had Konrad.

  He lost track of the conversation thereafter, for something odd caught his eye. A flicker of movement, perhaps? Something pale, barely visible, on the far side of the room. He drifted that way to investigate.

  Whatever it was whisked out of sight as he approached. Something in the movement struck him as furtive.

  Come out, he said. There is no danger here.

  No one answered, and nothing moved.

  At length Konrad drifted away again, thoughtful. To Anichka he said: I begin to think the people here are not—

  ‘Konrad!’ yelled Tasha, rising from her recumbent posture in a single bound. ‘Please explain why your miserable corpse is walking about up there without you in it.’

  ‘He’s here?’ Nanda began looking about the chamber, as though she might see Konrad’s dispossessed shade hovering nearby if only she tried.

  ‘About two and a half feet from your left elbow.’ Tasha favoured Konrad with a look of utter contempt. ‘You’re the Malykant. You’re supposed to be better at this kind of thing.’

  In my defence, it is an event without precedent.

  ‘So what?’

  Konrad could think of no argument to offer in reply, so he made none.

  ‘Konrad?’ said Nanda, staring nearly enough at the spot he more-or-less occupied. ‘You are not dead?’

  ‘He is not,’ said Tasha. ‘Though lacking a living body amounts to the same thing after a while. Take it from me, I should know.’

  I intend to retrieve my miserable corpse, as you put it, said Konrad to Tasha.

  ‘And you’re making an excellent start so far — no, hang on. What are you doing floating about down here?’

  Regrouping. Forming up the troops. Working out what is going on down here that makes the return of Jakub Vasilescu so important.

  ‘And how is that going for you?’

  Why don’t you tell me what you discovered while you were gone?

  Tasha rolled her eyes at Diana, whose mouth — to Konrad’s indignation — twitched in response. ‘Yes, Master. You were right about the coven. They are, for the most part, thoroughly dead. They’ve moved into the house.’

  ‘What are they doing in there?’ said Diana.

  ‘As far as I can tell, they are planning a mass resurrection.’

  ‘Of whom?’ Diana’s eyes narrowed.

  Tasha shrugged. ‘Nobody went out of their way to explain that part.’

  Konrad took a look around at the bodies neatly laid out, slab by slab. These?

  ‘It would appear likely,’ said Tasha.

  But who are they? We thought they were the coven’s mortal shells but I think perhaps they are not.

  Tasha surveyed the room. ‘They could be. Why do you
think they aren’t the coven?’

  The Vasilescus are highly elitist, are they not? So attached to the ancient honour and status of their family as to be urgently desirous of restoring it. And they ejected Eino’s mother from the family for marrying someone they considered inferior. Look, then, at some of these bodies. They are dressed like farmers and servants. Do you think such people would be admitted to a coven led by Olya Vasilescu?

  ‘You make some good points.’ Tasha relayed the salient points of the argument to Nanda and Alexander.

  ‘They are not victims,’ said Alexander. Konrad noticed that the inspector was keeping his eyes carefully averted from the area Konrad occupied. ‘They are too… intact.’

  That is true, Konrad agreed. Remember the state poor Kati Vinter was left in, and Alen Petranov? They had both been hacked to pieces, their bodies discarded with missing limbs, heads… it had not been pretty.

  ‘And I do not see why they would so carefully preserve the bodies of people they had slain purely to harvest… parts,’ said Alexander.

  Nanda said, ‘If they are not coven and not the coven’s victims, then… are they vassals? If they are servants, perhaps they served the Vasilescu family in life.’

  ‘And in death,’ Diana agreed. ‘But what service are they expected to perform next?’

  Konrad drifted back to the spot where he had, shortly before, witnessed some kind of movement. Will you not come out? he entreated. As you may observe, we are inclined to take your side. And we have not been well-treated by your former masters ourselves.

  It was a gamble. Konrad’s ideas had run along similar lines to Nanda’s; he was inclined to conclude that a lifetime of service had not been sufficient for the arrogant family that had once ruled Divoro. Servants across Assevan were often tied to the area of their birth, condemned to labour all their lives for whoever owned those lands. They could not leave. Had even death failed to release the labourers of Divoro from their toil?

  A thin voice answered. The Master says as we’re to live again.

  The Master? Konrad prompted.

  Some time passed, enough that Konrad thought he had lost his conversationalist again.

  Then he heard, distantly: I’ve to answer! What harm can it do us now? Ain’t we fallen as low as can be already?