The Death of the Necromancer

by Martha Wells

  She held the metal up against her cheek to make sure, then shook her head. "Not the slightest twitch. But there are water pipes all around us, aren’t there? Maybe that’s confusing it."

  "Why would that confuse it?" Nicholas noted that she spoke of the sphere as if it were alive, as most sorcerers spoke of the Great Spells. He wondered if it was a habit picked up from Madele.

  "Some complicated reason having to do with natural philosophy—how should I know? But the sphere is so light, it can’t be made out of anything but copper or bronze or other metals that weigh hardly anything. Iron has magical properties; maybe it interferes with the sphere."

  "Maybe," Nicholas said, grudgingly. There could be something in what she said. "That would be just our luck to haul the damn thing down here confident that it would protect us and then discover that it won’t work." He started down the narrow walkway, choosing his path carefully.

  "Though it did work in the other sewer," Madeline pointed out, following him.

  "We’re much deeper underground now." And this was one of the oldest sewers under Vienne, that anyone knew of, anyway. The fay had been much more virulent in the past. What if it had been imbued with forgotten magical protections that were interfering with Edouard’s work? What if the old bones clogging the syphon had gotten into the water by a natural phenomenon and they were heading in the wrong direction entirely? What if, what if, what if, Nicholas thought, disgusted with himself. Why don’t we just give the hell up?

  Because he knew he was right. "Would you have followed me down here if you thought I was wrong?" he asked Madeline, out of perverse curiosity.

  She snorted in disbelief at the idiocy of the question. "Of course not. What do you take me for?"

  The channels here were almost choked at points with stinking mud and when the walkway disappeared for long sections into masses of broken stone, they had to stumble through the muck. Nicholas was glad he had bothered to get them both stout rubber-soled boots that laced up past the knee and that their gloves were thick.

  Branchements led off to both sides and Nicholas used the compass to find the first two turns they needed to take, but then the arches overhead became even more cracked and dilapidated and they encountered several blocked or abbreviated galleries that weren’t marked on the map. After taking the wrong turning down one of these blocked passages Nicholas had to stop, cursing, and look at the map.

  "We should be close, almost too close," he muttered, kneeling on a relatively dry stretch of rock as Madeline stood over him with the lamp.

  "We’re somewhere," she said suddenly. "Look at that."

  He looked up. There was a cavity hollowed out of the wall of the passage. Nicholas had thought it a partial collapse, but a closer look showed him that the walls were too regular. He stood and saw what had caught Madeline’s attention. There were chains, heavily corroded but still clearly visible, mounted on the wall. He stepped closer and realized they weren’t the remnants of some method to raise and lower dams in an ancient drainage system; they were shackles. He looked around but any other clues were hidden under years of filth. "This was a cell. They cut the sewer right through it."

  Madeline held up the lamp and squinted at the other side of the passage. There were regular hollows in that wall as well. "I bet that’s another. And that. Was there anything about an old prison on the map?"

  "No, but. . . ." He turned in a slow circle, visualizing the map, the streets above. "If we’re under Daine Street, then this could be part of the old rampart. It was demolished two hundred years ago." It wasn’t on the maps anymore, but neither was the catacomb they were looking for.

  "Nicholas," Madeline whispered suddenly. He looked around and saw she was gazing down at the sphere, her eyes intent. He stepped up and took the lamp so she could hold the sphere with both hands.

  "Close, closer." Her brows drew together, then she shook her head. "No, it’s fading, as if— It’s stopped now." She looked up and studied the walls around them thoughtfully. "It was as if something it didn’t like moved through a tunnel adjacent to this one."

  Nicholas nodded to himself. That settled all doubts on the sphere’s area of influence. "Back this way."

  They made their way back to the last branchement and Nicholas hesitated, remembering that Monde Street ran roughly east-west and would have hit the rampart, if the old structure had still been there when the much younger street was cut, at an angle. It was difficult to visualize and he didn’t want to examine the map again; the sewers paralleled the streets they serviced, and it wasn’t those streets he wanted to see, but the narrow, barely-passable roads and alleys they had replaced. "It has to be here. The catacomb must have been behind the rampart." He held up the lamp, studying the filthy, fungi-covered surface of the branchement wall.

  Madeline probed the stone beneath the spongy growth with one gloved finger. "There could be any sort of hole or door under this stuff," she said thoughtfully. "Do we know which side of the channel it’s on?"

  Nicholas shook his head. The builders could have cut a sewer right through the catacomb the same way they had cut it through the cells beneath the old rampart. "You check that side, I’ll take this one."

  Nicholas kept the lamp since she had the sphere, and though this channel wasn’t wide the light was inadequate and they had to search mostly by feel anyway. They had moved perhaps twenty feet down the wall, groping along it, when Nicholas stumbled. He felt the surface of the wall give and realized it was rotted wood, not stone. He tried to pull his arm back and felt a tug on. his sleeve. He frantically flung his weight back, thinking something had caught hold of him, but his arm came free so readily he sat down hard on the walkway. His coat sleeve had been torn and as he got to his feet he realized it must have been caught on the metal frame still holding the rotten wood in place. Idiot, he thought. But having a limb torn off by a ghoul would be most inconvenient at the moment.

  "Are you all right?" Madeline demanded, struggling toward him through the muck of the channel.

  "Yes, just startled myself." He gave her a hand up onto the walkway. He hesitated a moment, holding her gloved hand and looking at her. Her boots, trousers, and the skirts of her coat were covered in unspeakable filth and with her hat pulled low and the rags tied around her mouth and nose, she looked like a graverobber. He knew he looked worse. He said, "If the ghouls hunt by sense of smell, we’re in luck."

  "Hmm." She recaptured her hand and cradled the sphere. "It’s shaking again."

  "Then we’re on the right track," Nicholas said. He turned to the door. There wasn’t much of it left. It was low, only about five feet tall, rotted to matchstick consistency and held together only by the rusted metal frame. Nicholas widened the hole he had inadvertently made so they could peer through and found a narrow passage, the walls slick with moisture from the sewer.

  They broke away enough of the door to climb through and began to make their way down the passage. Scraping away some of the thick muck coating one of the walls, Nicholas could see it had been constructed with large cut stone blocks. The surface overhead seemed to be natural rock and the narrow corridor had been dug through it.

  "Do you think this is a section of that battlement?" Madeline whispered. "It doesn’t look like part of the sewer."

  "Yes, I think this is all that’s left of the lower course and we’re in the passage that originally led to those cells."

  "This sphere is about to shake itself apart," she said, sounding uneasy.

  "Then we’re close."

  "Nicholas." Now she sounded exasperated. "This nonchalant attitude is beginning to wear."

  "Would you prefer me to twitch hysterically?"

  "If you could bring yourself to express such an honest and genuine sentiment as hysteria then—" She stopped and caught his coat sleeve. "Wait."

  He waited, then heard it himself. A sharp knock, echoing from somewhere up ahead. It was repeated once, then silence. Nicholas moved forward a few steps, listening. He glanced back at Madeline, motio
ning that he was going to shut the lamp. She nodded and he pushed the shade down.

  After a few moments he could see the distinct glow of light ahead, a whitish, green-tinged glow, not natural daylight. He looked back toward Madeline and realized he could see her outline against the wall. "There must be ghost-lichen all through this muck," he said, quietly. "Come on."

  The light was growing—not brighter, Nicholas decided, but more defined. He could see an irregularly shaped opening ahead and there seemed to be more light beyond it.

  They drew closer and Nicholas could see this passage dead-ended into a larger chamber. As he reached the opening he heard a rustle, as if old dry paper had been brushed against rock. He motioned Madeline to come forward and as she stepped up, he accidentally brushed his fingers against the sphere.

  The metal was warm, an impossibility in the dank chill of the underground, and he felt a strange tingle in his fingertips, as if he had touched one of the electrical experiments displayed at the Exposition. He jerked his hand back and realized he had felt the contact through his gloves. At least it’s doing. . . something. He wished they had some notion of how to control it.

  He edged up to the opening, drawing the pistol out of his pocket. The passage dropped off into a large cavernous chamber, more than twenty feet high, and the ghost-lichen clustering thickly everywhere revealed pillars and the openings of crypts hollowed out of the walls. A great many life-sized statues of saints with gloomy expressions gazed down forbiddingly from niches above the crypt entrances. Nicholas thought the winged Saint Gathre, its face like something out of a hellish nightmare, was a particularly appropriate companion with whom to view the scene.

  They had found the catacomb. The floor was about a ten-foot drop from where the passage broke off, but there was a broken section of pillar just below that might be stable enough to climb. Nicholas started to step down to it when Madeline urgently thumped his shoulder and pointed.

  Something moved on the floor of the grotto, a dark form drawing back into shadow. Nicholas squinted in the dimness and saw the tattered cloth and ragged hair, the glint of bone.

  There was at least one ghoul, maybe two, moving in and out of the open crypts and darting under the collapsed arches. One of them crept around a fallen slab propped up on a broken column, poking at the dark area beneath it, as if trying to flush something. They’re hunting, Nicholas thought, watching that surreptitious motion. For us? That didn’t seem likely. If they knew to look for us they would know we hadn‘t reached the catacomb yet and they would be searching the sewer and the tunnel. That meant—

  The ghoul snarled suddenly and darted back from the slab, shielding its head. Nicholas saw the flying rock and the human arm that had thrown it and without stopping to think he leapt down onto the pillar and then to the catacomb floor.

  The ghoul whirled on him, jaws gaping, its face little more than a bare skull. He raised the pistol before he realized, he didn’t even know if bullets would hurt the thing. Madeline leapt down after him just as the ghoul darted forward. Light flared suddenly, a glow that washed out the dim radiance of the ghost-lichen and rendered the chamber in stark shadowless glare.

  The last time the sphere had demonstrated its power the event had been too quick and violent for Nicholas to really see what had happened. This time he saw it all, outlined in a white haze of light. The ghoul scrabbled at the ground, its claws throwing up dust, trying to turn and flee. Before it got more than a step it seemed to fold in on itself, then it burst apart and dropped to the floor as a pile of yellowed bone and rags.

  The bright light was abruptly gone, leaving pitch darkness in its wake. Nicholas, caught in the act of stepping forward, stumbled and cursed and behind him he heard Madeline yelp. "Are you all right?" he asked in a tense whisper.

  "Yes, dammit." She sounded more annoyed than frightened. "I hope it didn’t kill the ghost-lichen too."

  He found her arm and pulled her close. There had been more than one ghoul in here. If the sphere hadn’t disposed of all of the creatures he and Madeline were at their most vulnerable.

  Time stretched agonizingly but it was probably only a minute or so until the ghost-lichen’s glow began to return. Nicholas blinked hard, staring around, gradually able to discern the shapes of the fallen pillars and the crypt openings again. Something stirred under the propped slab and he stooped immediately to look under it.

  The face peering out at him was Crack’s. He was bruised and filthy, but alive. Nicholas caught his arm and drew him out, demanding, "Are you hurt?"

  "Not much," Crack admitted. His voice was weak and hoarse.

  "Ronsarde and Halle? Arisilde?" Nicholas asked urgently.

  "I ain’t seen none of them, not since the wall broke open."

  Madeline took his other arm and helped him sit back against the slab. "His wrist is broken," she reported, her expression grim. "How did you get here?"

  "I don’t know." Crack shook his head, his face tense with pain. "Something came through the wall from outside." He looked at Nicholas. "It was like the house in Lethe Square, that thing that came through the floor."

  Nicholas nodded. He thought this was all more than Crack’s powers of description could handle and knew he would have to ask better questions. "Did you see what happened to the others?"

  "No, I got knocked in the head and I thought the ceiling come down on top of me, then the next thing I know I was here," Crack answered. Madeline had dug a relatively clean scarf out from under her coat and was trying to fashion a sling for his injured wrist. With his good hand he gestured helplessly. "Where the hell is here?"

  "A series of old tunnels and catacombs off the Great Sewer," Nicholas said. "Were you here when you woke?"

  "I was down there." Crack turned awkwardly and pointed down the length of the catacomb. "I came this way, away from the ghouls and those other things."

  "What other things?" Madeline asked, with a worried glance at Nicholas.

  "They look like people but they come at you like animals. I think they’re those things our sorcerer talked about, that come when the ghouls are made."

  "Revenants?" Nicholas frowned. He remembered Arisilde telling them how the necromancer would have made the ghouls, using a ritual murder to give life to the bones of some long-dead corpse. He had said the victim would still have a kind of life, but would only be a soulless remnant of the person it had once been.

  "You can kill ‘em," Crack said, rubbing his forehead wearily. "I used a rock."

  Nicholas stood to look down the length of the catacomb. From this vantage point he could tell it went on for some distance, winding through the depths with the ghost-lichen throwing light on the fallen statues and broken crypts. "Was Arisilde awake when you got to his rooms?"

  Crack looked up at him worriedly. "No, but the Parscian said he would be soon."

  Nicholas nodded to himself. They should take Crack and return now, while they could. If the ghouls were here the necromancer was not far behind and he knew enough now to find the location of this place from the surface. But if the others were here, perhaps injured and stranded only a little further up the catacomb. . . . He looked down at Madeline. "Well?"

  She was watching him and had no difficulty following his train of thought. She nodded.

  Crack was too injured to accompany them but it wasn’t that great a distance through the tunnel and back to the sewer. Nicholas sat on his heels next to him and pulled out the map. He found a stub of pencil in his pocket and wrote a series of directions in the margin. "If Reynard has been successful, he should be waiting at the top of Monde Street for me with Captain Giarde and a guard detachment." If he isn‘t, at least Crack is well out of this. "This will tell them where to look for the necromancer."

  Crack took the map but shook his head. "You can’t stay here. There’s more of them things, a lot more."

  "We’ve got to," Nicholas told him. "And right now you are a liability and will better serve us by taking yourself to safety so I don’t have to worry ab
out you."

  "That ain’t fair," Crack said, through gritted teeth.

  "I feel no obligation to be fair," Nicholas said, hauling Crack to his feet and ignoring his snarl. "You should know that by now."

  It took both of them to get him up to the tunnel opening and by the end of it Crack was almost ready to admit that he wouldn’t be much help in his current state. He collapsed, panting from exertion and pain, at the mouth of the tunnel, and tried to convince them to come with him. "You shouldn’t stay. There’s more of them things, I tell you."

  "No." Nicholas handed him the lamp. He and Madeline both had candle stubs and matches in their pockets, enough to see them back through the sewer. "Now get moving."

  "I can’t walk no more," Crack said, not convincingly.

  "I need you to take the message to Reynard or it will get a damn sight worse for us," Nicholas told him patiently.

  Crack looked at Madeline in appeal. She shook her head. "I’m no help, I’m afraid."

  Cursing both of them, Crack managed to stand. They watched him make his way down the tunnel and when he was out of earshot, Madeline jumped back down to the catacomb floor, commenting, "He’s right."

  "Of course he is," Nicholas said, following her.

  "You really think we’ll find the others in here somewhere?" she asked. "Alive?"

  Nicholas stopped and looked at her. "It’s a trap, Madeline, obviously. If you don’t like it, go with Crack."

  She swore in exasperation. "I know it’s a trap, that’s the only reason to leave Crack alive. If we don’t walk into it, you think Macob will kill the others?"

  Nicholas pushed on ahead, finding a path through the ruined crypts. "I know he will."

  "Of course, stupid thing to ask," Madeline muttered, following him.

  Further down the tombs they passed were less elaborate, some mere hollows sealed with mortar. Many had been broken open over time and the floor was littered with smashed bones, moldering rags, and verdigrised metal. They had seen no more of the ghouls and none of the revenants who had attacked Crack, neither of which was a good sign. "I thought there would be some sign of them before now," Nicholas admitted.