The Death of the Necromancer

by Martha Wells

  "Maybe it isn’t a trap, though that seems unlikely."

  Nicholas paused to give her a hand over a rockfall that half-blocked the path. Water was seeping up through the cracks in the floor, he noted. "Yes. I hoped he would be incautious enough to leave one or two more of our friends along the way, but that doesn’t appear to be the case." Nicholas hesitated again. The debris underfoot was becoming more varied and they were tripping over rusted metal and rotted wood. There was even something crammed up against one of the tombs that looked like the rusted skeleton of a siege engine. The catacomb was getting narrower too and the ceiling was much lower overhead. He didn’t like the look of it. Could there have been another passage along the way, that we missed in the dark? No, surely not. Surely the idea was to lure them into the sorcerer’s stronghold, not decoy them off down some dead end.

  "Look at that wall," Madeline said, pointing toward a projection that seemed to be breaking through the rocky side of the catacomb. It was made of cut stone and had a blocked-up gateway large enough to pass a carriage through. "Are we running into the lower part of the rampart again?"

  "Possibly." He moved toward it for a closer look. There was something dripping down the wall that didn’t quite have the consistency of water. Pulling the perfume-soaked scarf away from his nose and mouth, he dabbed his fingers into the dark substance streaming down the wall and sniffed them cautiously. "It’s a good thing we gave Crack the lamp." There was no telling how thickly the fumes had penetrated the air in this passage."

  "Oil?"

  "Paraffin." He glanced up at the ancient stonework woven in with the rock overhead. "If I’m right, we’re somewhere below the Bowles and Viard Cokeworks. One of their storage tanks must be leaking."

  "It’s frightening that you know that," Madeline grumbled.

  "It means we’re where I think we are. The directions I gave Crack will be accurate."

  They worked their way past the wall and almost stumbled on a set of broad steps, broken and chipped, leading down through an archway with elaborate scrolled carving. The angle of the steps and the slope of the ceiling made it impossible to see what lay beyond.

  "There’s light down there," Madeline said, low-voiced. "Torchlight."

  They exchanged a look, then she sighed. "Well, we’ve come all this way."

  Nicholas went down the steps first. Past the archway was a wide stone balcony with a broken balustrade, looking down on a bowl-shaped cave, almost twenty feet below the present level. It held a small city of free-standing crypts and mausoleums, many of fantastic design, with statues, small towers, and much ornamentation. The ghost-lichen hanging heavily from the stalactited roof gave it an otherworldly glow, as if they were looking down on a city of fayre. But Madeline was right, there were torches.

  The largest crypt was the round one in the center. It had a domed roof and had been made to look like a small-scale keep, with towers with miniature turrets. Smoky torches were jammed between some of the stones of its crenelations, casting flickering firelight on the bizarre scene. In front of it there was a broad, round stone dais, several feet high. It looked like the platforms followers of the Old Faith often built in their holy places in deep forest clearings or high in the hills.

  Nicholas moved forward, almost to the broken balustrade. "Careful," Madeline breathed. He acknowledged the warning with a distracted nod. The air was staler than that in the upper catacomb and there was a sweetish, foul smell under it. He could see there was a walkway or gallery, badly ruined in places, running from the balcony and along the walls on both sides, entirely encompassing the cave and ending in a set of stone stairs that were covered with rocks and debris from some earlier collapse. The stairs had led down to an open space in front of the dais and the keep crypt. Like a processional way, Nicholas thought. Did they hold funerals there? Make offerings? He knew very little about the Old Faith.

  There was no telling how old the place was. It might go back to the founding of the first keep that had marked the original site of Vienne. From the martial nature of the statues, these could be the tombs of the first knights and warlords of Ile-Rien.

  There was a clink from somewhere behind and above them, as if a rock had fallen. Nicholas looked back, frowning; since they had left the ghouls behind, the only sounds they had heard had been of their own making.

  Madeline had heard something too. She moved a step or two away, looking at the shadows and hollows in the cave wall above them warily.

  Nicholas motioned her back toward the stairs. He had his pistol and the sphere had been proof against the ghouls up to now, but he had the feeling they had come just a few steps too far.

  He saw something luminously white on the edge of the balcony and for an instant thought it was a lichenous growth or some underground parasite. Then it moved and he realized it was a hand.

  He shouted a warning to Madeline but it was already too late. They were coming up over the balcony in a silent wave. People— no, not people, Nicholas had time to think. Their faces were characterless, the features slack, the skin pallid and dull. Their clothes were ragged remnants but their bodies were so bloated as to make them nearly sexless and there was nothing in their eyes at all.

  Light flared brighter and cleaner than the ghost-lichen’s pale glow as the sphere reacted to them, but there were too many. Nicholas fired into the thick of them, again and again, but the bullets hardly seemed to slow them. The two nearest went down finally, their wounds bloodless, but there were still at least ten of them, more like twenty; moving with inhuman determination they pressed toward him, stumbling over the bodies of the fallen, and he had to back away. He had lost sight of Madeline but the sphere flared again, telling him she was near the base of the stairs. He shouted at her to run.

  Then something crashed into him from behind, knocking his feet out from under him, and the last thing he saw was one of the revenants leaning over him before the light vanished.

  Madeline was lost. Utterly, irretrievably, she thought. I will wander down here forever. No, forever was unlikely. She would surely be killed by something long before forever arrived.

  She had been driven back by the weight of the revenants. The sphere had accounted for a number of them but they seemed less self-aware than the ghouls and they hadn’t fled. She had heard Nicholas firing at them and hoped that meant he had been able to get away. No, she was sure of that. He had been closer to the stairs than she had. She would have made it herself if she hadn’t slipped and fallen down through that damn crevice at the edge of the stairs. Between the bad light and the dark color of the stone she hadn’t seen it until it was too late. Now she was bruised all over and hopelessly lost.

  She had found her way into a wide passage, the blocks in its walls regular and obviously shaped and set by human hands, the remains of a curving, dressed stone ceiling overhead. Whether it was part of the catacomb or some long forgotten underground level of the old fortifications, she couldn’t tell. And since I don’t have the damn map of Vienne, underground and above, memorized, like Nicholas does, small good it would do me if I did know.

  Hopefully he had been able to get back to the relative safety of the sewers. Hopefully. It infuriated her that she was stuck down here, uselessly.

  The ghost-lichen’s light was just enough that she hadn’t had to resort to her candle yet. She hadn’t been attacked again but the ghouls couldn’t be too far away; the sphere was trembling, its insides spinning like a top.

  She drew near the end of the passage and saw the regular walls deteriorated into tumbled rockfalls, though the opening still seemed to continue. She could tell the floor had a distinct slant downward which was not encouraging. Madeline peered suspiciously into the shadows and the gaps in the rock at the end of the passage. She thought she could see the gleam of eyes and a surreptitious movement there. No, the ghouls weren’t gone. She hoped they were only ghouls; she had reloaded her pistol from the box of spare ammunition in her coat pocket but it hadn’t been too effective against them before.r />
  Suddenly in the silence she heard footsteps. One person walking at a deliberate, heavy pace; the sound seemed to come from all around her. She hugged the sphere tightly, looking up and down the apparently empty passage. Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t swallow past the lump in her throat. It wasn’t Nicholas; she would have known the sound of his walk.

  Out of the shadows at the far end of the tunnel a figure appeared. Madeline stared, too overcome with shock and sudden relief to react. It was Arisilde.

  She made a motion to step forward but from the sphere in her arms came a sudden vibration, a pulse that she felt deep in her chest. She stopped in her tracks. That had been a warning.

  Arisilde came toward her. He looked as she would expect him to, very pale and thin, wearing a dressing gown of faded blue and gold. He smiled at her as he drew near and said, "Madeline, you’re here. How very good of you."

  "Yes, I’m here, Arisilde," she managed to say. The sphere felt like it was going to fly apart in her arms, its wheels clicking in furious motion.

  "And you brought the sphere." A breath of air moving down the passage lifted his wispy silver hair. He held out his arms to her. "Give it to me."

  She could feel sweat running down her back despite the cold. She said, "Come and take it, Arisilde."

  There was a hesitation but his expression of slightly daffy goodwill didn’t change. He said, "It would be better if you were to give it to me, Madeline."

  She felt that strong vibration of warning from the sphere again, as if it had reached a tendril into her heart and touched her soul in fear. She drew a deep breath. Maybe it is alive. But how could a thing of metal, even imbued with magic, be alive? How could it think? Something that was alive and powerful wouldn’t sit on a shelf in the attic at Coldcourt all this time and do nothing. Not unless it needed a person, a living being, someone who could sense magic, to live. Maybe it used the consciousness of the person who held it to think with. Maybe that’s why this sphere works for me, and the one Octave had worked for him. And if I give this one to a real sorcerer. . . . "You built this sphere with Edouard, Arisilde. Why can’t you take it from me?" Why doesn‘t it know you? Why does it tell me to be afraid of you?

  He hesitated again, then shook his head and spread his hands helplessly. "It’s because I was the one who did all these things, Madeline. I was only pretending to be unconscious all that time. I called the Sending and transformed the gargoyles in the Courts Plaza, and sent the creature into the prison. But I would never have hurt anyone. I was trying to get revenge on the men who killed Edouard, but it didn’t work." The violet eyes were distressed. "I think I’ve gone mad, I’m afraid. A little mad. But if I could hold the sphere, I think that would help me. There’s a part of myself in it, a part of me from before I went mad. If I could take that part back. . . . But you have to give me the sphere."

  Madeline watched him for a long moment, then her brows lifted and she said dryly, "Do you think all women are fools, or just me?" He looked like Arisilde and he had Arisilde’s sweet smile, but he was never Arisilde. Even if one included Isham in the plot, Madele had examined Arisilde and the notion that her grandmother could have been deceived in such a way was ridiculous. That Nicholas could have been fooled in such a way was unthinkable. Nicholas was suspicious of everyone. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had considered Arisilde as the possible culprit already and discarded the idea as simply not feasible. He had said their opponent was Constant Macob and Madeline had had to admit there was every sign in favor of it.

  He stood there, expressionless, then her eyes blurred for an instant and she was looking at another man. She had never seen him before. He was young and very thin, with lank blond hair and a weak chin, his expression vacant. His coat and trousers were muddy and his waistcoat was torn open.

  Madeline’s brow furrowed. Who the hell is this? It might be one of Macob’s victims, abducted off the street, but under the dirt his suit was a little too fine and Macob had preyed on the poor and street people he thought would not be readily missed. Then she remembered that Octave had had two other companions who had never been accounted for. Octave’s driver had mentioned them before he had been killed. This man could very well be one of them. "I take it the driver was lucky," she said to herself.

  He stepped forward and she moved back out of reach. Behind her she heard a frantic skittering among the rocks as the ghouls scrambled to get out of the sphere’s range. There was no expression at all on the man’s face; he might have been as mindless as one of the revenants. He took a sudden swing at her with his fist and she ducked away from it. She considered drawing her pistol, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to fire it down here; there was no telling what else the sound would attract.

  Watching him warily, she shifted the sphere to her right side, tucking it under her arm. His dead eyes followed it. He lurched forward and she let him grab her arm, then slammed the heel of her free hand up into his chin. His head snapped back and he staggered back a pace, tearing the sleeve of her coat. She kicked out, striking him solidly between the legs. He fell, collapsing onto the floor of the passage, obviously in pain but making no sound.

  She moved away cautiously, making sure he wasn’t about to jump back up again with inhuman strength. It didn’t look like it. That maneuver had always worked well to discourage the attentions of importunate stagehands and actors; she was glad it worked on men ensorcelled to serve necromancers.

  He rolled on the floor, making an attempt to stand and failing badly. She turned and ran up the passage, hearing the ghouls flee before her.

  Nicholas realized first that he lay sprawled on his back on a damp, dirty surface, that the dampness smelled foul, that it was cold and firelight was casting flickering reflections over stone walls. He drew a shaky breath and lifted a hand to push the hair out of his eyes. There was a clink and a tug on his wrist. Not good, he thought. He leaned his head back and saw both his wrists were manacled to a short length of chain attached to a ring sunk deeply into a stone flag. The chains were old but not rusty. Not disastrous, but definitely not good. He tried to roll onto his side, but stopped abruptly as a splitting pain shot through his head. He cautiously probed the tender knot at the back of his skull. His fingers came away bloody.

  The chains were loose enough to allow for some freedom of movement and he sat up on one elbow, slowly. He was inside one of the crypts; from the domed ceiling, it was the one shaped to resemble a miniature keep that stood in the center of the cave. It was lit by smoky torches shoved into gaps between the stones and some unhealthy radiance from the ghost-lichen came in through the large crack in the roof. The walls were covered with carving and inscriptions, obscured by layers of mold. It was not a family crypt; there was only one vault, a large, ornate, free-standing one in the center of the chamber. Atop it, carefully laid out as if for a wake, was a very old corpse.

  Time had shrunken it to bare bones, held together by withered strips of skin and muscle, festooned with the rotten remnants of leather and cloth. Nicholas thought he must be gazing on all that remained of Macob’s physical body. Except. . . . The skull is missing. Either it had been removed for some purpose of Macob’s or. . . . Or it wasn‘t in the room with the corpse when the ghouls broke in. That’s what Octave wanted to question the old Duke about. On the bier next to it lay Nicholas’s pistol.

  He squinted and sat up a little more, wincing at the pain in his shoulder and head. The missing skull was not the only oddity. There was a woven webbing or net hung from the ceiling of the chamber and suspended in it was something small and round, of dull-colored metal. For one bad moment he was afraid it was Arisilde’s sphere, which meant Madeline had been caught as well, but then he realized it was far too small. No, it’s the other sphere, he thought with relief. The one Rohan had constructed with Edouard, that Octave had obtained by blackmail.

  Except for himself and the corpse, the crypt was ostensibly empty. Madeline was nowhere to be seen. She escaped, he told himself. There was no point in
speculating on anything else. As long as she had the sphere, she was in far better case than he was.

  The crypt might appear to be deserted but Nicholas didn’t think he was unobserved. He pretended to test the strength of the chains, tugging on them and trying to work the links loose, while actually examining the locks. Someone had searched his pockets, but they hadn’t found the picks sewn into the cuff of his shirt. He didn’t want to risk using them now and betraying their existence to a hypothetical watcher. One mistake and he was dead. He was most likely dead anyway, but the tension engendered by pretending there was still hope would keep him alert.

  After a few moments he noticed the quality of light in the chamber was changing, the shadows sharpening, the torches becoming dimmer and the sick glow of the ghost-lichen correspondingly brighter and more defined. Turning his head to look at the doorway, Nicholas caught a growing radiance out of the corner of his eye. It was in the darkest corner of the crypt. He continued to watch the doorway expectantly.

  He had time to notice that the damp chill in the air was becoming more concentrated as well, the cold intensifying until his bones ached and he could feel the bite of it in his fingers. There was a slight sound like a boot sliding over stone; a deliberate betrayal. Nicholas flinched as if startled and jerked his head toward the corner.

  A figure was standing there in the shadows. It was a tall man, dressed in an old-fashioned caped and skirted greatcoat and a broad-brimmed hat. His face was gaunt almost to the point of appearing a death’s head and it was hard to get a sense of his features. His eyes were dark pits under the shadow of his hat brim, impossible to read.

  He stepped forward deliberately and said, "You needn’t introduce yourself, I assure you I know who you are."